One day I decided to look around ebay to see if I could find Laputa (Castle in the Sky) on DVD. I ended up getting a shrink-wrapped copy for $7.50; region-less, both Japanese/English audio/subtitles. It doesn't look dodgy: Proper covert art, packaging, silkscreening and so on, though the quality of the transfer leaves something to be desired it was worth the price. I didn't think much of it until this/. post, so I googled around for the companies credited on the DVD (Japan Another DVD Inc., Manga Animated Cartoon DVD) - to no avail, save for the obvious Studio Ghibli. Did I end up getting some kind of dodgy copy, or has this movie already been released with regionless encoding?
I've been using PHP quite heavily for a few years now; I never picked up a PHP book, not once.. Why? Simply because the community support, the IRC channel, the Online Documentation and even places like devshed simply have so much to offer! I have not even once printed or purchased even a mere shred of dead tree painted over with ink that describes or outlines PHP in any way whatsoever.
I've got 4 Apple ][gs', two of which are the "Special Woz Edition" - I don't recall them being more expensive when I purchased them; if memory serves well it was first-come-first-serve.
That said, this iPod/Madonna/Tony Hawk/etc. does seem to be a departure from the above; would you pay extra for a "Steve Jobs iPod"? Would you have paid extra for the Woz edition of the ][gs? I think back then in my early Apple days (read: Apple as a religion) I might have actually considered it, and would certainly be tempted by a Woz edition iPod (LOL) - but non-Apple celebrities? I dunno, it cheapens the allure of this product enhancement if you ask me..
* In a streaming situation, the server would store only one high quality stream, and dynamically peel it down to the client's bandwidth. Not useful. If you instead stored a hundred separate files, each optimized for its bitrate, with each being half the bitrate of the previous one, you'd still have a set of files less than twice the size of the largest file. Plus, you'd have no bit-peeling overhead. If you're streaming 100GB audio files, maybe there's a benefit, but if you're doing that, you can probably afford a second 100GB file for all the smaller files.
..yeah, and I really have the time to encode hundreds of different versions of the same audio file..
After collecting 87 megs worth of spam and a similar amount of non-spam I decided to implement the so-called 'Bayesian' method of spam filtering by way of popfile - it's a pretty slick concept; Perl code that acts as a POP3 server on your own machine - simply drop your collected spam and non-spam in to the appropriate bucket, have popfile go through them and create its indices and set up your mail client to connect to 127.0.0.1 with your username being 'my.pop.server:loginname'.
I know I've got a particularily difficult task for this filtering technique; I get an awful lot of spam that comes in every day (~100 messages per 24 hour period), some of it I actually want (I run an underground music site, and in some cases I subscribe to opt-in lists that result in something that looks like spam), the rest I could care less about.
My results have been decent for the most part; 100% of my spam ends up in my Spam folder, however there is a handful of messages that I wish to keep that end up there as well.. For the most part they are the above-mentioned 'borderline' pieces of spam (which I have been careful to put aside and have indexed by popfile anyway), I can only hope that more time and samples will yield better results. I was however surprised to find that some of the e-mails I was getting from friends were falling in to the Spam mailbox anyway; after taking a closer look, I can see why, they use an awful lot of otherwise unmentionable words - but my suspicion that I haven't gotten enough of these 'good-emails-with-bad-words' to make the filtering truly effective.
Nonetheless, it is nice to have all of my spams seemingly guaranteed to drop in to my "Spam" folder, but my usual task of manually filtering messages that made it past my existing filters in to my Spam folder has been replaced with a different (albeit quicker) task; taking messages out of my spam folder and putting them where they really belong.
Bottom-line: I still have to visually scan through my mail for legitimate messages amongst the thicket of items informing me about the exciting exploits of women at the farm, wonderful business opportunities from Nigeria and suggestions that I should buy Viagra by the boatload.. all this despite having collected a well organized and rather large collection of spam/non-spam mails. I'll stick with it for a while as I'd like to try it out and give it a proper chance, but I suspect that if you're in a similar situation then you should be prepared to tough it out..
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the 'Walking with Dinosaurs/Beasts' BBC series creators readily admit that they are stringing things together and filling in some of the gaps with their own creativity. From the colour of the skin/scales to the mating behaviour straight through to laying eggs and the way these creatures moved about is loosely based on observable science and sometimes plain old guesswork. The creators of these series simply chose the explanation that seemed most feasible or attractive and ran with it in order to push along the story (for those who are not familiar with these series; they are intended to be NG-like documentaries based on dinosaurs, following along critters as they cope with the daily struggle of life.) The 'behind the scenes' and picture-in-picture features on the DVDs mention all of this. They are not, I repeat, NOT meant to be taken as pure, unadulterated fact.
More relevantly Mozart woke up every day and was able and inspired to compose music without the existence of the DMCA or any kind of relevant copyright law for that matter..
(IANAL, but I don't think that "The Statute of Anne" as passed by British Parliament in 1709 covered music compositions [unless they were printed in a book?] Mozart B:1756,D:1791 - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
You might want to check this for an alternate viewpoint.. I quote:
Much creationist literature gives an inaccurate account of the process. Based on an admittedly sloppy translation of a 1961 article by Schildknecht and Holoubek [Kofahl, 1981], Duane Gish claimed that hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones would explode spontaneously if mixed without a chemical inhibitor, and that the beetle starts with a mix of all three and adds an anti-inhibitor when he wants the explosion. [Weber, 1981] In fact, the two do not explode when mixed, as others have demonstrated. [Dawkins, 1987, p. 86-87] (Schildknecht did propose a physical inhibitor which kept the mixture from degrading in undisected beetles; in fact, the degradation he saw was probably simply a result of exposure to the air.) Gish still used the mistaken scenario after being corrected by Kofahl in 1978. [Weber, 1981] The same mistake is also repeated in books by Hitching in 1981, Huse in 1983 and 1993, and twice in a creationist magazine in 1990 [Anon, 1990a,b].
Here are more beer pots... They must of contained beer...
How many of us can work without the help of beer?:)
Next point which really got to me was the fact that NO SLAVES were used and that it was a labor of love... That's such BULLSHIT. The evidence presented allows one to conclude several facts.
I am SO with you on this one. Even if no slaves were used to build the pyramids, why would one assume it was a labour of love? This show consistently focussed on creating its own narrative, picking and chosing conclusions out of a hat without presenting the viewer with any other [equally viable] alternatives..
One of the main supporting bits of 'evidence' for the 'labour of love' theory was that they found entire families near by.. However, they didn't ask the important questions: Is it possible that entire families were slaves? Is it possible that the families found had nothing to do with the building of the pyramids whatsoever?
1) There was good food... Meats, fish, probably fruit. BUT was there enough for all? This I doubt. The better food was either a reward for the most productive teams OR for the skilled workers.
2) There were dorms... But only for about 2,000... This would mean an estimated 23,000 had to sleep elsewhere... Again leading to a conclusion of two or three possible workforces.
3) "Advanced" medical surgery was available... BUT for who? The skilled workers or the slave mules?
I'm no egyptologist/archeologist, but the 'evidence' presented in this program in regard to your points outlined above was not even close to being satisfactorily conclusive.. In my eyes, the only things I learned were as follow:
1) There was food in ancient Egypt. 2) They had rooms, presumably to hold 'stuff'. 3) There was some form of medical surgery back in those days.
An entire house of cards was built upon these easily observable but inconclusive bits of ancient history. Within the strict context of the evidence presented in this program, one could not possibly build anything more than plain old questions..
This turned out to be the most painful two hours spent in front of a television set in my recent memory..
The whole show was hopelessly drawn out and built upon conjecture.. There were two particulars that irked me: An entire string of assumptions built on the unsupported conclusion of two extremely narrow rooms being used as living quarters. And an exclamation from the humble Dr. Hawass in regard to putting to rest the accusations of 'stupid idiots' who support the theory of an even more ancient civilization: Seemingly based solely only on the opening of a sarcophagus! "Look, I found bones, you are all stooopid morons, ha ha ha, I therefore conclude that my country is the greatest in the world and these pyramids were built out of love, not by slave labour - my ego explodes with delight!!!"
Never again will I watch another program like this, having decided less than half way in that these were going to be two hours taken out of my life that I'll never get back I regretfully watched to the end as string after string of conjecture was assembled to create a fairy tale narrated by sweaty, ignorant and obscure personalities.. It was also made painfully evident that Zahi Hawass is an egotistical bufoon with butter fingers; did anyone else catch the totally uncalled for damaging to the top of the sarcophagus before he began to pry it open?
Who are these shows aimed at, seriously? Saving the true discoveries for the last five minutes of the program seems insulting; wouldn't one at the very least be interested in speculation as to what these discoveries meant, therefore warranting at least fifteen minutes at the end of the show going through the possibilities? I must admit that I was personally insulted; it's not often that I put aside that much time for television in my busy day - of course I knew it was going to be fluffy - but I didn't count on getting burned that badly.
I switched to gaim a long while ago (when I switched my primary workstation to run Linux), after having tried out many other alternatives it seemed like the only one that worked! Of course it doesn't work perfectly, often I'll have people online but not showing up as being so, the lack of file transfer through most conduits is annoying (but, in all honesty, welcome:), real-time multi-user chat just plain ain't there. My adoption of gaim despite all of the above is testament to the fact that there is an acute niche for this kind of software.. Having a Windows version is welcome news; for the rare moments where I have to boot in to Windows it'll be handy not to have to lose touch with everyone.
I was one of many burned with the first Unreal.. One full year of broken promises to the key of; "We're all exhausted from developing, the patches are coming soon", and the patches that did eventually come out were weak, breaking functionality left right and centre.. "We're still working hard on the patches, please don't e-mail us anymore!", it went on and on when all of a sudden boom out comes Unreal Tournament, the original Unreal was still in beta.. I ended up dropping it around then because I was fed up of the whole scenario, looking around today there seems to be a "final" patch for Unreal, but the game's back in it's box and gathering dust. I'm curious as to how their Linux initiative will unravel, but my past experience with them was lacklustre to say the least and you can bet that I won't be rushing out to the stores to buy my copy, I'm going to sit tight and wait to see what happens with all this first..
A positive application for the /. effect!
on
Crushing Experience
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· Score: 3, Funny
Watch as slashdotters from around the world bring the web server to its knees and save the poor server from extinguishing it's own life!
Why switch at all? As a computing professional and enthusiast I feel compelled to try out everything under the sun! If I like it or feel there is some justifiable reason to spend more time with it then I'll keep it around. But no marketing campaign is going to get me to throw something away..
I don't think targetting the "switch" campaign at UNIX/Linux users would yield particularily stunning results, by and large we're hackers and if we can afford it we'll accumulate as much hardware and software as we can get our hands on to tinker with.
Switching isn't an option, however accumulating more stuff certainly is:)
As far back as I can remember in my clanning days (Q1, AQ2 and CS) we had mappers create conference rooms and training areas for clan use as well as server side code to facilitate better communication and a whole bunch of 3133t kicking/banning routines for additional policing and/or entertainment value. I'm positive that others were doing it at the same time as well. How is this any different?
I've met several people who have a very strong technology background and are card counters too (one of them happened to hail from MIT) - this was a few years ago, and some of them went on to create their own.com's, which ended up booming, then folding but ultimately paying out a princely sum to these individuals.
What are they doing now? Hopping around the continent to the few casinos that haven't banned them yet and making the big bucks, though as they tell me the pickings are getting slimmer as it's just a matter of time until they get the boot and they're running out of casinos to pillage. Either way, they've got plenty of money, so it's not a major concern, but it seems as if the appeal of a casino-hopping lifestyle ended up catering to their likes more than technology. Sure, they have all the latest do-dads and high tech gadgets to play with as a result of their financial adventures, but their pursuit of technology seemed to ultimately take a back seat to lounge singers and blinking lights:)
At least in my experience none of these people made a direct correlation between their technology and card counting pursuits. Most were interested in card counting before ever hitting an "enter" key, but they are brilliant coders nonetheless.. Perhaps card counting begets good programmers, not the other way around?
When exploring this music you've got two levels to consider; the Producer and the DJ. The first creates the tracks, the second puts them in to the proper context. Context is very important when it comes to electronic music, often more so than any other genre. Part of the appeal of going out to enjoy this music is checking out a dynamic and crowd-pleasing DJ - unlike your typical act that sticks to playlists - a proper DJ will guage the crowd and be able to compensate and control accordingly, some DJs are world famous for the level of synchronization with their audience that they demonstrate. Others just keep their head down and try to get through their set.
So if you're new and rooting around for this music, definitely check out some mixed sets on top of individually produced tracks. There's just too much that can be said about context, sometimes a DJ will completely change your perception of a track by putting it in the middle or on top of other cuts, other times the DJ's set is a direct result of the venue and audience contained therein.
For a broad sampling of this concept try out twelveinch.com which features live shows and mixed sets by up and coming DJs. Since anyone can buy the music don't be afraid to look locally for someone that can serve as your gateway in to the myriad of productions that are out there - in fact, more often than not producers can't mix, so catching your favourite artist doing a mixed performance might not be as good as leaving it in the hands of a vinyl junkie that knows exactly what to do with the tracks in a crowd-pleasing setting. The genres represented on the site will give you plenty to play with especially after reading some of the excellent genre descriptions already outlined here on this thread. The DJs are very approachable and are always more than happy to answer any questions and perhaps help further (and broaden/narrow, as the case may be) your interest in the music. At last count there are more than seventy artists on the roster and about thirty or so distinctive genres which will please you for hours.
Last month, a Norwegian literary museum admitted losing access to their catalogue system after the database administrator died -- taking the password with him. Yesterday, my mother's computer died -- taking two years worth of email with it. The museum in Norway put out a radio call for hackers to help crack the code. My Mum? Well, she just cried into the phone for a while.
It might seem as though these two stories are only slightly related. To me, they both indicate a bigger problem.
Prior to the commercial internet and the arrival of cheap mass storage, computers were mostly used for pumping out paper documents. But with the explosion of email, web publishing and digital media in general, times are changing. Culture as we know it is going digital.
Constructing a history is fairly straightforward: In the physical world, works are tangible and rooted in time and place. Birth, death and marriage records maintained by governments allow us to trace who made what, and when. Mostly, stuff lasts.
Unfortunately, digital works aren't like that. Data is a commodity, stored in bulk on anonymous file systems, duplicated and destroyed by whoever has access. Every day hard drives fail, human-dependent backup systems fail. People die and their computers get wiped or thrown out. Passwords are lost and formats change. Corporate intranets are a mess -- if you've ever had the displeasure of using one, well, let's just say keeping everything is not the same as keeping everything organized.
Digital culture + geeks with attention deficit = uh oh.
In 2000 the University of California, Berkeley published a study showing that printed content represents only 0.003% of the world's total information -- most of the remainder is stored digitally. If that figure is correct, almost our entire output as a society is entrusted to one of several Microsoft operating systems and disks with twelve-month limited warranties.
*cue danger music*
Y2K, another problem brought about entirely by lack of forethought (plus a healthy dose of denial), has not served as a wake up call. Product development decisions continue to revolve around annual earnings. Technology uptake continues to be driven by novelty and the quest for cool. Even in the Open Source world, development is more about cloning commercial products than designing software to last a millennium.
Two hundred years from now, how will historians assess the early twenty-first century? They won't, because scarcely anything will be left to assess. That's right: Welcome, my friends, to the digital dark age.
A step backwards is not the solution, trees being in short supply and all. Besides, librarians and archivists have discovered that the books and papers we print now dissolve much more quickly than books printed a century ago. Paper isn't the answer: Our only viable option is to come up with a digital system that works.
To do this, we need to transform some of our ideas about computing.
Right now, files are stored on individual machines. It's up to the owners of those machines to make copies -- but individuals, until they lose something important to them, do not back up. We can look at P2P file-sharing systems, with multiple redundant copies of almost every file, for inspiration. Why not do the same with personal files, automatically creating mulitple copies of your recipe book across the network? You'd never have to back up again.
This isn't necessarily a new idea: Sun Microsystems is fond of suggesting that "the network is the computer" and the distributed computing concept has been around for a while. But people are understandably hesitant to store their personal files on a central server, much less someone else's personal computer. What of privacy, if your files are scattered all over the world?
That's where identity comes into play. The data and documents you create today are generic and anonymous -- they are not linked to your identity in the municipal records, nor are they proven to be authentically yours. In a lot of cases they aren't even datestamped accurately. This makes your files even on your own computer vulnerable -- a vulnerability that could be overcome by linking them to your official records. If you are going to be storing your files on someone else's computer, you'll want a foolproof way to identify that the files are yours.
It might seem abhorrent to think of some government program tagging and subsequently rifling through your digital stuff. But perhaps the government only needs to give us access to the citizenship records we've already paid them to maintain.
Unbreakable encryption is a viable solution, but only if data isn't locked down permanently. As morbid as it seems, a system that's aware of your death or permanent disablement can make sure those files are unencrypted at the appropriate time. The same system could make sure your files are released to the public domain, protected by copyright, or even deleted from the network for privacy reasons at the time of your demise.
We need a new universal storage mechanism: one that authenticates, protects and manages the data we create. In a future-conscious world, such functions would be a natural extension of the computing experience.
Finally, there is the issue of format. As proprietary data formats give way to XML, and XML gives way to whatever comes five years later, things are going to get lost in the shuffle. Who to call when you need to translate a fifty-year-old Word file? Not to mention the fact that binary storage will sooner or later be replaced with non-binary molecular or holographic storage.
By legislating in the interest of future generations, government could ensure that software companies publish closed formats to a public repository, forming the basis of a "universal file translator." Then, there would be some confidence in the accessibility of even the oldest data.
Regardless of what may or may not happen, nobody wants to be forgotten (at least, I know I don't). That's why a little danger music will hopefully be good for us, to get us thinking about how the storage decisions we make today are likely to affect the people that come afterward. And think about it we must, else what a great shame: To let the dawn of the Information Age turn slowly, and irreversibly, dark.
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David Emberton is an inventor, writer and musician. He flaunts what he got at emberton.com.
I don't think controlling your computer with your voice is such a bad idea - though every current implementation I have seen leaves much to be desired - it's all in how you code it.
Having voice commands like "close window", "open file" and so on is not practical for every day use, it's cumbersome and often counter-intuitive. Ben Shneiderman (and most of the voice recognition software out there) seems to be thinking too narrowly when it comes to the application of voice commands to computers - we ALL know that telling your computer to "page down" or "italicize that word" is never going to fly. But certain higher level operations could certainly save a lot of time and feel very natural. I could see a hybrid of mouse/keyboard/voice being quite effective if the voice recognition technology doesn't force you to repeat yourself or speak in a trained tone. Just imagine the following voice commands and how much longer it would take you to perform the functions described otherwise:
"Download that million dollars song by the barenaked ladies - make that an Ogg file if you can" (launches file sharing program, places query, finds appropriate file, downloads it)
"Always start the seti@home program when I've left work" (creates the appropriate cron job)
"Open an e-mail to Dave" (or "e-mail Dave")
"Remind me to buy flowers tomorrow"
Good voice recognition in tandem with some kind of contextual engine could work wonders - heck, in some cases it would increase productivity; you don't have to look away from your screen or switch windows or move your mouse in order to launch some complex task in the background. The only way I see the low-level voice commands ("close window", etc) being useful is for the disabled, otherwise we all know it's a waste of time.
"Why Hal Will Never Exist". Never say never. This is not a bad idea, it just hasn't been developed properly.
Slashdot Mirror
One day I decided to look around ebay to see if I could find Laputa (Castle in the Sky) on DVD. I ended up getting a shrink-wrapped copy for $7.50; region-less, both Japanese/English audio/subtitles. It doesn't look dodgy: Proper covert art, packaging, silkscreening and so on, though the quality of the transfer leaves something to be desired it was worth the price. I didn't think much of it until this /. post, so I googled around for the companies credited on the DVD (Japan Another DVD Inc., Manga Animated Cartoon DVD) - to no avail, save for the obvious Studio Ghibli. Did I end up getting some kind of dodgy copy, or has this movie already been released with regionless encoding?
I've been using PHP quite heavily for a few years now; I never picked up a PHP book, not once.. Why? Simply because the community support, the IRC channel, the Online Documentation and even places like devshed simply have so much to offer! I have not even once printed or purchased even a mere shred of dead tree painted over with ink that describes or outlines PHP in any way whatsoever.
Thanks a lot - first bit of the linked review has spoilers; reader beware.
I've got 4 Apple ][gs', two of which are the "Special Woz Edition" - I don't recall them being more expensive when I purchased them; if memory serves well it was first-come-first-serve.
That said, this iPod/Madonna/Tony Hawk/etc. does seem to be a departure from the above; would you pay extra for a "Steve Jobs iPod"? Would you have paid extra for the Woz edition of the ][gs? I think back then in my early Apple days (read: Apple as a religion) I might have actually considered it, and would certainly be tempted by a Woz edition iPod (LOL) - but non-Apple celebrities? I dunno, it cheapens the allure of this product enhancement if you ask me..
right here
After collecting 87 megs worth of spam and a similar amount of non-spam I decided to implement the so-called 'Bayesian' method of spam filtering by way of popfile - it's a pretty slick concept; Perl code that acts as a POP3 server on your own machine - simply drop your collected spam and non-spam in to the appropriate bucket, have popfile go through them and create its indices and set up your mail client to connect to 127.0.0.1 with your username being 'my.pop.server:loginname'.
I know I've got a particularily difficult task for this filtering technique; I get an awful lot of spam that comes in every day (~100 messages per 24 hour period), some of it I actually want (I run an underground music site, and in some cases I subscribe to opt-in lists that result in something that looks like spam), the rest I could care less about.
My results have been decent for the most part; 100% of my spam ends up in my Spam folder, however there is a handful of messages that I wish to keep that end up there as well.. For the most part they are the above-mentioned 'borderline' pieces of spam (which I have been careful to put aside and have indexed by popfile anyway), I can only hope that more time and samples will yield better results. I was however surprised to find that some of the e-mails I was getting from friends were falling in to the Spam mailbox anyway; after taking a closer look, I can see why, they use an awful lot of otherwise unmentionable words - but my suspicion that I haven't gotten enough of these 'good-emails-with-bad-words' to make the filtering truly effective.
Nonetheless, it is nice to have all of my spams seemingly guaranteed to drop in to my "Spam" folder, but my usual task of manually filtering messages that made it past my existing filters in to my Spam folder has been replaced with a different (albeit quicker) task; taking messages out of my spam folder and putting them where they really belong.
Bottom-line: I still have to visually scan through my mail for legitimate messages amongst the thicket of items informing me about the exciting exploits of women at the farm, wonderful business opportunities from Nigeria and suggestions that I should buy Viagra by the boatload.. all this despite having collected a well organized and rather large collection of spam/non-spam mails. I'll stick with it for a while as I'd like to try it out and give it a proper chance, but I suspect that if you're in a similar situation then you should be prepared to tough it out..
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the 'Walking with Dinosaurs/Beasts' BBC series creators readily admit that they are stringing things together and filling in some of the gaps with their own creativity. From the colour of the skin/scales to the mating behaviour straight through to laying eggs and the way these creatures moved about is loosely based on observable science and sometimes plain old guesswork. The creators of these series simply chose the explanation that seemed most feasible or attractive and ran with it in order to push along the story (for those who are not familiar with these series; they are intended to be NG-like documentaries based on dinosaurs, following along critters as they cope with the daily struggle of life.) The 'behind the scenes' and picture-in-picture features on the DVDs mention all of this. They are not, I repeat, NOT meant to be taken as pure, unadulterated fact.
More relevantly Mozart woke up every day and was able and inspired to compose music without the existence of the DMCA or any kind of relevant copyright law for that matter..
(IANAL, but I don't think that "The Statute of Anne" as passed by British Parliament in 1709 covered music compositions [unless they were printed in a book?] Mozart B:1756,D:1791 - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
You might want to check this for an alternate viewpoint.. I quote:
Much creationist literature gives an inaccurate account of the process. Based on an admittedly sloppy translation of a 1961 article by Schildknecht and Holoubek [Kofahl, 1981], Duane Gish claimed that hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones would explode spontaneously if mixed without a chemical inhibitor, and that the beetle starts with a mix of all three and adds an anti-inhibitor when he wants the explosion. [Weber, 1981] In fact, the two do not explode when mixed, as others have demonstrated. [Dawkins, 1987, p. 86-87] (Schildknecht did propose a physical inhibitor which kept the mixture from degrading in undisected beetles; in fact, the degradation he saw was probably simply a result of exposure to the air.) Gish still used the mistaken scenario after being corrected by Kofahl in 1978. [Weber, 1981] The same mistake is also repeated in books by Hitching in 1981, Huse in 1983 and 1993, and twice in a creationist magazine in 1990 [Anon, 1990a,b].
A question for those that have already seen it: Does it have the same horrific opening theme song?
How many of us can work without the help of beer?
I am SO with you on this one. Even if no slaves were used to build the pyramids, why would one assume it was a labour of love? This show consistently focussed on creating its own narrative, picking and chosing conclusions out of a hat without presenting the viewer with any other [equally viable] alternatives..
One of the main supporting bits of 'evidence' for the 'labour of love' theory was that they found entire families near by.. However, they didn't ask the important questions: Is it possible that entire families were slaves? Is it possible that the families found had nothing to do with the building of the pyramids whatsoever?
I'm no egyptologist/archeologist, but the 'evidence' presented in this program in regard to your points outlined above was not even close to being satisfactorily conclusive.. In my eyes, the only things I learned were as follow:
1) There was food in ancient Egypt.
2) They had rooms, presumably to hold 'stuff'.
3) There was some form of medical surgery back in those days.
An entire house of cards was built upon these easily observable but inconclusive bits of ancient history. Within the strict context of the evidence presented in this program, one could not possibly build anything more than plain old questions..
This turned out to be the most painful two hours spent in front of a television set in my recent memory..
The whole show was hopelessly drawn out and built upon conjecture.. There were two particulars that irked me: An entire string of assumptions built on the unsupported conclusion of two extremely narrow rooms being used as living quarters. And an exclamation from the humble Dr. Hawass in regard to putting to rest the accusations of 'stupid idiots' who support the theory of an even more ancient civilization: Seemingly based solely only on the opening of a sarcophagus! "Look, I found bones, you are all stooopid morons, ha ha ha, I therefore conclude that my country is the greatest in the world and these pyramids were built out of love, not by slave labour - my ego explodes with delight!!!"
Never again will I watch another program like this, having decided less than half way in that these were going to be two hours taken out of my life that I'll never get back I regretfully watched to the end as string after string of conjecture was assembled to create a fairy tale narrated by sweaty, ignorant and obscure personalities.. It was also made painfully evident that Zahi Hawass is an egotistical bufoon with butter fingers; did anyone else catch the totally uncalled for damaging to the top of the sarcophagus before he began to pry it open?
Who are these shows aimed at, seriously? Saving the true discoveries for the last five minutes of the program seems insulting; wouldn't one at the very least be interested in speculation as to what these discoveries meant, therefore warranting at least fifteen minutes at the end of the show going through the possibilities? I must admit that I was personally insulted; it's not often that I put aside that much time for television in my busy day - of course I knew it was going to be fluffy - but I didn't count on getting burned that badly.
I switched to gaim a long while ago (when I switched my primary workstation to run Linux), after having tried out many other alternatives it seemed like the only one that worked! Of course it doesn't work perfectly, often I'll have people online but not showing up as being so, the lack of file transfer through most conduits is annoying (but, in all honesty, welcome :), real-time multi-user chat just plain ain't there. My adoption of gaim despite all of the above is testament to the fact that there is an acute niche for this kind of software.. Having a Windows version is welcome news; for the rare moments where I have to boot in to Windows it'll be handy not to have to lose touch with everyone.
Comic Book Store Guy: "There is no emoticon adequate to express what I'm feeling right now."
CABF02 - The Computer Wore Menace Shoes
I was one of many burned with the first Unreal.. One full year of broken promises to the key of; "We're all exhausted from developing, the patches are coming soon", and the patches that did eventually come out were weak, breaking functionality left right and centre.. "We're still working hard on the patches, please don't e-mail us anymore!", it went on and on when all of a sudden boom out comes Unreal Tournament, the original Unreal was still in beta.. I ended up dropping it around then because I was fed up of the whole scenario, looking around today there seems to be a "final" patch for Unreal, but the game's back in it's box and gathering dust. I'm curious as to how their Linux initiative will unravel, but my past experience with them was lacklustre to say the least and you can bet that I won't be rushing out to the stores to buy my copy, I'm going to sit tight and wait to see what happens with all this first..
Watch as slashdotters from around the world bring the web server to its knees and save the poor server from extinguishing it's own life!
Why switch at all? As a computing professional and enthusiast I feel compelled to try out everything under the sun! If I like it or feel there is some justifiable reason to spend more time with it then I'll keep it around. But no marketing campaign is going to get me to throw something away..
:)
I don't think targetting the "switch" campaign at UNIX/Linux users would yield particularily stunning results, by and large we're hackers and if we can afford it we'll accumulate as much hardware and software as we can get our hands on to tinker with.
Switching isn't an option, however accumulating more stuff certainly is
As far back as I can remember in my clanning days (Q1, AQ2 and CS) we had mappers create conference rooms and training areas for clan use as well as server side code to facilitate better communication and a whole bunch of 3133t kicking/banning routines for additional policing and/or entertainment value. I'm positive that others were doing it at the same time as well. How is this any different?
I've met several people who have a very strong technology background and are card counters too (one of them happened to hail from MIT) - this was a few years ago, and some of them went on to create their own .com's, which ended up booming, then folding but ultimately paying out a princely sum to these individuals.
:)
What are they doing now? Hopping around the continent to the few casinos that haven't banned them yet and making the big bucks, though as they tell me the pickings are getting slimmer as it's just a matter of time until they get the boot and they're running out of casinos to pillage. Either way, they've got plenty of money, so it's not a major concern, but it seems as if the appeal of a casino-hopping lifestyle ended up catering to their likes more than technology. Sure, they have all the latest do-dads and high tech gadgets to play with as a result of their financial adventures, but their pursuit of technology seemed to ultimately take a back seat to lounge singers and blinking lights
At least in my experience none of these people made a direct correlation between their technology and card counting pursuits. Most were interested in card counting before ever hitting an "enter" key, but they are brilliant coders nonetheless.. Perhaps card counting begets good programmers, not the other way around?
Y(ou)ANAL
When exploring this music you've got two levels to consider; the Producer and the DJ. The first creates the tracks, the second puts them in to the proper context. Context is very important when it comes to electronic music, often more so than any other genre. Part of the appeal of going out to enjoy this music is checking out a dynamic and crowd-pleasing DJ - unlike your typical act that sticks to playlists - a proper DJ will guage the crowd and be able to compensate and control accordingly, some DJs are world famous for the level of synchronization with their audience that they demonstrate. Others just keep their head down and try to get through their set.
So if you're new and rooting around for this music, definitely check out some mixed sets on top of individually produced tracks. There's just too much that can be said about context, sometimes a DJ will completely change your perception of a track by putting it in the middle or on top of other cuts, other times the DJ's set is a direct result of the venue and audience contained therein.
For a broad sampling of this concept try out twelveinch.com which features live shows and mixed sets by up and coming DJs. Since anyone can buy the music don't be afraid to look locally for someone that can serve as your gateway in to the myriad of productions that are out there - in fact, more often than not producers can't mix, so catching your favourite artist doing a mixed performance might not be as good as leaving it in the hands of a vinyl junkie that knows exactly what to do with the tracks in a crowd-pleasing setting. The genres represented on the site will give you plenty to play with especially after reading some of the excellent genre descriptions already outlined here on this thread. The DJs are very approachable and are always more than happy to answer any questions and perhaps help further (and broaden/narrow, as the case may be) your interest in the music. At last count there are more than seventy artists on the roster and about thirty or so distinctive genres which will please you for hours.
Last month, a Norwegian literary museum admitted losing access to their catalogue system after the database administrator died -- taking the password with him. Yesterday, my mother's computer died -- taking two years worth of email with it. The museum in Norway put out a radio call for hackers to help crack the code. My Mum? Well, she just cried into the phone for a while.
It might seem as though these two stories are only slightly related. To me, they both indicate a bigger problem.
Prior to the commercial internet and the arrival of cheap mass storage, computers were mostly used for pumping out paper documents. But with the explosion of email, web publishing and digital media in general, times are changing. Culture as we know it is going digital.
Constructing a history is fairly straightforward: In the physical world, works are tangible and rooted in time and place. Birth, death and marriage records maintained by governments allow us to trace who made what, and when. Mostly, stuff lasts.
Unfortunately, digital works aren't like that. Data is a commodity, stored in bulk on anonymous file systems, duplicated and destroyed by whoever has access. Every day hard drives fail, human-dependent backup systems fail. People die and their computers get wiped or thrown out. Passwords are lost and formats change. Corporate intranets are a mess -- if you've ever had the displeasure of using one, well, let's just say keeping everything is not the same as keeping everything organized.
Digital culture + geeks with attention deficit = uh oh.
In 2000 the University of California, Berkeley published a study showing that printed content represents only 0.003% of the world's total information -- most of the remainder is stored digitally. If that figure is correct, almost our entire output as a society is entrusted to one of several Microsoft operating systems and disks with twelve-month limited warranties.
*cue danger music*
Y2K, another problem brought about entirely by lack of forethought (plus a healthy dose of denial), has not served as a wake up call. Product development decisions continue to revolve around annual earnings. Technology uptake continues to be driven by novelty and the quest for cool. Even in the Open Source world, development is more about cloning commercial products than designing software to last a millennium.
Two hundred years from now, how will historians assess the early twenty-first century? They won't, because scarcely anything will be left to assess. That's right: Welcome, my friends, to the digital dark age.
A step backwards is not the solution, trees being in short supply and all. Besides, librarians and archivists have discovered that the books and papers we print now dissolve much more quickly than books printed a century ago. Paper isn't the answer: Our only viable option is to come up with a digital system that works.
To do this, we need to transform some of our ideas about computing.
Right now, files are stored on individual machines. It's up to the owners of those machines to make copies -- but individuals, until they lose something important to them, do not back up. We can look at P2P file-sharing systems, with multiple redundant copies of almost every file, for inspiration. Why not do the same with personal files, automatically creating mulitple copies of your recipe book across the network? You'd never have to back up again.
This isn't necessarily a new idea: Sun Microsystems is fond of suggesting that "the network is the computer" and the distributed computing concept has been around for a while. But people are understandably hesitant to store their personal files on a central server, much less someone else's personal computer. What of privacy, if your files are scattered all over the world?
That's where identity comes into play. The data and documents you create today are generic and anonymous -- they are not linked to your identity in the municipal records, nor are they proven to be authentically yours. In a lot of cases they aren't even datestamped accurately. This makes your files even on your own computer vulnerable -- a vulnerability that could be overcome by linking them to your official records. If you are going to be storing your files on someone else's computer, you'll want a foolproof way to identify that the files are yours.
It might seem abhorrent to think of some government program tagging and subsequently rifling through your digital stuff. But perhaps the government only needs to give us access to the citizenship records we've already paid them to maintain.
Unbreakable encryption is a viable solution, but only if data isn't locked down permanently. As morbid as it seems, a system that's aware of your death or permanent disablement can make sure those files are unencrypted at the appropriate time. The same system could make sure your files are released to the public domain, protected by copyright, or even deleted from the network for privacy reasons at the time of your demise.
We need a new universal storage mechanism: one that authenticates, protects and manages the data we create. In a future-conscious world, such functions would be a natural extension of the computing experience.
Finally, there is the issue of format. As proprietary data formats give way to XML, and XML gives way to whatever comes five years later, things are going to get lost in the shuffle. Who to call when you need to translate a fifty-year-old Word file? Not to mention the fact that binary storage will sooner or later be replaced with non-binary molecular or holographic storage.
By legislating in the interest of future generations, government could ensure that software companies publish closed formats to a public repository, forming the basis of a "universal file translator." Then, there would be some confidence in the accessibility of even the oldest data.
Regardless of what may or may not happen, nobody wants to be forgotten (at least, I know I don't). That's why a little danger music will hopefully be good for us, to get us thinking about how the storage decisions we make today are likely to affect the people that come afterward. And think about it we must, else what a great shame: To let the dawn of the Information Age turn slowly, and irreversibly, dark.
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David Emberton is an inventor, writer and musician. He flaunts what he got at emberton.com.
Practice safe hex - wear gloves!
I don't think controlling your computer with your voice is such a bad idea - though every current implementation I have seen leaves much to be desired - it's all in how you code it.
Having voice commands like "close window", "open file" and so on is not practical for every day use, it's cumbersome and often counter-intuitive. Ben Shneiderman (and most of the voice recognition software out there) seems to be thinking too narrowly when it comes to the application of voice commands to computers - we ALL know that telling your computer to "page down" or "italicize that word" is never going to fly. But certain higher level operations could certainly save a lot of time and feel very natural. I could see a hybrid of mouse/keyboard/voice being quite effective if the voice recognition technology doesn't force you to repeat yourself or speak in a trained tone. Just imagine the following voice commands and how much longer it would take you to perform the functions described otherwise:
"Download that million dollars song by the barenaked ladies - make that an Ogg file if you can" (launches file sharing program, places query, finds appropriate file, downloads it)
"Always start the seti@home program when I've left work" (creates the appropriate cron job)
"Open an e-mail to Dave" (or "e-mail Dave")
"Remind me to buy flowers tomorrow"
Good voice recognition in tandem with some kind of contextual engine could work wonders - heck, in some cases it would increase productivity; you don't have to look away from your screen or switch windows or move your mouse in order to launch some complex task in the background. The only way I see the low-level voice commands ("close window", etc) being useful is for the disabled, otherwise we all know it's a waste of time.
"Why Hal Will Never Exist". Never say never. This is not a bad idea, it just hasn't been developed properly.