A nice popular work on flight is Hank Teneke's The Simple Science of Flight. One thing I particularly liked about this is that it treats birds (and insects) alongside aircraft.
I went to a cyberhate conference in Sydney a year ago. One of the interesting things about that was the huge gap between the invited US participants (McVay from Nizkor and Goldman from Hatewatch) and most of the Australian ones. McVay and Goldman were both adamantly opposed to censorship of hate speech and some of the Australians were rather surprised by that. I wrote quite a long writeup (link above) of the event for those who are interested.
In any event, it didn't turn out to be a "we must ban it" whitewash. It was particularly good having the Australian Broadcasting Authority give a speech about how wonderful filtering software was and having David Goldman blow everything they said away completely.
Danny.
maybe some Linux converts coming
on
MS DOS: A Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
I have some users who went with DOS when it
was that or MacOS, largely because they weren't
willing to give up their command lines. I
think some of those may stick with older versions
of Windows as long as they can, but others may
be ripe for conversion to GNU/Unix/Linux.
You might be interested in
my comments on RSACi (the previous incarnation of this). Basically, it's a crock.
Most sites have material that falls into multiple ICRA classifications, and labelling it all just isn't going to be feasible.
And when I looked a few years back at Australian sites that tried to rate themselves, most had either failed technically or clearly mislabelled themselves.
The percentages need to be multipled by about
2.5 to get fractions of external referers - ie in August 2001 about 35% of my traffic came from www.google.com. (Also, these figures don't include google.yahoo.com or google.co.uk or the other sites using Google.)
Re:Drop the paralyzing posturing
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, right,
this attack was carried out by a
combination of the governments of Iraq,
Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan, along with the PLO...
That's as bizarre
as saying the attack was actually aimed at
Poland, and not at the United States.
You do know that Iran and Iraq fought a long and
bloody war? That they don't speak Arabic in
Afghanistan? That the democratically elected
(yes)
government of Iran is locked in a struggle
with social and religious conservatives,
trying to reform the country?
The depressing thing is that much US
foreign policy seems almost as ignorant.
Islamic fundamentalism
on
More WTC News
·
· Score: 5, Informative
"Islamic fundamentalism" is an incredibly
badly misused
term. There is no single "Islamic fundamentalism"
any more than there is a single "Christian
fundamentalism" - there are an incredibly diverse
range of movements and people that describe themselves as fundamentalist, and making sweeping
generalisations about them (or, heaven help us,
trying to declare war on them as if they were
some kind of unified entity) makes no sense.
If the acts of a small number of Islamic fanatics
justify
killing civilians in Iran and the Yemen, then the same kind of analysis
justifies the WTC attacks themselves. After all,
all kinds of things have been done by Christian
fanatics, some of them aided and comforted by
states such as Britain and the United States.
The most terrible thing about terrorism is that
it targets totally innocent civilians; what you propose
is that the United States stoop to the same level.
ESR has a nice emotive way to word questions.
He asks
if you two could get a law
passed making proprietary licenses illegal, would you do it?
But this could be worded rather differently. After all, proprietary licenses only exist because
of legal controls on freedom expression. So I ask ESR
Do you support government-enforced controls on speech and coding,
in the form of copyright laws which allow proprietary licensing of information and software?
For a good introduction to human developmental
biology - necessary if one wants to talk sensibly
about various things damaging children's brains! -
I recommend the book Early Intelligence. That only
really covers early childhood ("the first five years"), but it gets harder to cause
developmental damage after that, so...
It's interesting that goto, one of the
first search engines to run paid listings,
is not among those listed in the complaint.
I'd guess that is because their paid results
are very clearly marked as such (even with
the "cost to advertiser").
It seems to me that Altavista's "featured
sites" are just as clearly separated from the main results as Google's "sponsored links" -- or
perhaps "featured" isn't as clear as "sponsored"?
Yeah, I think I knew there was something not
quite right about the first sentence, but I
couldn't work out how to reword it. I thought
about s/native/alien/, but the Rakshasa et al.
are hardly alien to the world! Maybe
"non-human"...
Danny.
Re:Spoilers in the review...
on
Lord of Light
·
· Score: 2
A bit late for the Slashdot story, but I've
added a "mild spoilers" warning to
the version on my own site. And I made
some other minor changes following comments here
and my email.
When one's read a novel so often, it's easy
not to think about people reading it for the first time!
Danny.
Re:Well. . . yes and no
on
Lord of Light
·
· Score: 2
The science/fantasy division
is hardly revealed to the user gradually.
Right at the beginning of the novel we have
a pray-machine offering "high frequency"
prayers - and that kind of balance is maintained
throughout.
And I think it's a good enough book that it's not
dependent on a particular
intellectual progression by the reader. Different
people will find different things in it (I started off thinking of it as "SF" - which is what my copy is labelled as - and
ended up reading it more as an epic). So I'm
not convinced that telling the reader it's
an sf/fantasy science/religion mix up front is
going to spoil their enjoyment much. I was more worried
about the minor plot spoilers.
Danny.
Re:Spoilers in the review...
on
Lord of Light
·
· Score: 3
You're right, maybe I should have added a warning about spoilers (the rec.arts.sf.reviews
moderator added one). It's not the kind
of book where they do much damage, but even so.
Danny (who feels he should post if only to stop himself using some spare mod points on this story)
Slashdot Mirror
Danny.
In any event, it didn't turn out to be a "we must ban it" whitewash. It was particularly good having the Australian Broadcasting Authority give a speech about how wonderful filtering software was and having David Goldman blow everything they said away completely.
Danny.
Danny.
Most sites have material that falls into multiple ICRA classifications, and labelling it all just isn't going to be feasible. And when I looked a few years back at Australian sites that tried to rate themselves, most had either failed technically or clearly mislabelled themselves.
Danny.
Does anyone have a smaller one?
Danny.
- my Nestle Boycott page
- good backgrounder on baby food issues
Danny.200002: 1628: 1.70%
200004: 1116: 0.92%
200005: 3583: 3.21%
200006: 3184: 5.05%
200007: 3347: 5.83%
200008: 5085: 6.89%
200009: 6216: 5.29%
200010: 9341: 7.06%
200011: 7786: 6.18%
200012: 7345: 7.44%
200101: 8985: 8.08%
200102: 8422: 7.45%
200103: 9685: 7.60%
200104: 11588: 8.56%
200105: 12983: 9.02%
200106: 11740: 10.85%
200107: 11917: 13.23%
200108: 15378: 14.06%
The percentages need to be multipled by about 2.5 to get fractions of external referers - ie in August 2001 about 35% of my traffic came from www.google.com. (Also, these figures don't include google.yahoo.com or google.co.uk or the other sites using Google.)
Danny.
Iranian democracy is far from perfect, but that's the whole point of those trying to reform it.
Danny
The depressing thing is that much US foreign policy seems almost as ignorant.
Danny
[I have written 600 book reviews]
Interesting reading:
- Terror in the Mind of God: the Global Rise of Religious Violence
- Political Islam
Meanwhile, in Australia they are already stoning school buses with Islamic kids on them... (I have a rant about this on my home page.)Danny
[I have written 600 book reviews]
The most terrible thing about terrorism is that it targets totally innocent civilians; what you propose is that the United States stoop to the same level.
Danny.
Danny.
He asks
But this could be worded rather differently. After all, proprietary licenses only exist because
of legal controls on freedom expression. So I ask ESR
Danny.
biology - necessary if one wants to talk sensibly
about various things damaging children's brains! -
I recommend the book Early Intelligence . That only
really covers early childhood ("the first five years"), but it gets harder to cause
developmental damage after that, so...
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
It seems to me that Altavista's "featured sites" are just as clearly separated from the main results as Google's "sponsored links" -- or perhaps "featured" isn't as clear as "sponsored"?
Danny.
Danny.
Danny.
When one's read a novel so often, it's easy not to think about people reading it for the first time!
Danny.
And I think it's a good enough book that it's not dependent on a particular intellectual progression by the reader. Different people will find different things in it (I started off thinking of it as "SF" - which is what my copy is labelled as - and ended up reading it more as an epic). So I'm not convinced that telling the reader it's an sf/fantasy science/religion mix up front is going to spoil their enjoyment much. I was more worried about the minor plot spoilers.
Danny.
Danny (who feels he should post if only to stop himself using some spare mod points on this story)