Since getting 128k Ricochet wireless IP service, I've been listening to little else but streaming MP3 Shoutcast/Icecast stations. It's sweet to be able to listen to my old college radio station, streaming without wires to my laptop (I just wish they had a higher-quality stream than 24kbps - I can listen to streams up to 64kbps without a hitch.)
Once high-speed mobile internet service becomes more common, I expect to see streaming audio superceding conventional radio. These satellite audio broadcasting systems won't deliver enough bang for the buck compared to what mobile high-speed IP offers.
Seems to me there's something in the Constitution about people peaceably assembling and petitioning for a redress of grievances. I know the Bill of Rights is out of favor with many liberals, but it is still the law.
Just wanted to jump in here and remind you that the court system is in fact the branch of government charged with evaluating petitions for redress and then ruling as to the soundness of the claim and the appropriate remedy, if any.
That is to say, a legal process. A protesting mob is not a petition for redress. It is an exercise in free assembly, though, which I wholeheartedly support.
The EC is a fair system, 4 major cities should not be able to determine the election.
Pardon? I think the electoral college is crap because it explicitly works against the principle of "one man, one vote", instead allocating undue influence to sparsely populated states. I voted in California in this election (for neither Bush nor Gore, FWIW) - California has one electoral vote for (roughly) every 540,000 people. Iowa (to take a battleground state in this election) has roughly one for every 280,000. I don't call that a fair system.
I'd go so far as to say the system works as designed - it gives that extra little nudge in a tight presidential contest to rural landowners, keeping the urban poor in check. If the broken system hadn't been enshrined in the body of the constitution itself (by our clearly infallible *ahem* founding fathers), but merely in statute, it would have been trashed decades ago as contrary to the fourteenth amendment.
(Disclosute: I think both Republicrat-party candidates sucked most heartily this year, and would never have voted for either of those to jokers, even if I still lived in Florida. I would be grousing as loudly if Gush's and Bore's fortunes were reversed.
Most civilized countries have proportional representation. Damn near all have provisions for runoff elections in a race where multiple candidates leave the race too close to call (some states and counties do this, too). A one-night-only, winner-take-all electoral system produces erratic results and generates no end of controversy when the results are within the margin of error. Add in the skew towards less populous states, and you have a process of questionable legitimacy.
What needs to be done is to fix the real problem, punch-card ballots. I would definately support electronic voting in all counties.
I'm with you on trashing punch-card ballots, but a adamantly against fully-electronic balloting. With physical ballots, the number of empties is known, and the completed ballots leave a physical record. Tweaking an electronic vote tally leaves no physical trace, unlike "losing" a stack of marked ballots (the lost number being reflected in the difference between the total count of ballots before and after the election). In other words, an election could be stolen *without incurring suspicion* simply because there would be no irregularities noted - the electronic count would be the sole, indisputable count. Ugh. Ugly to contemplate.
For what it's worth, the MechWarrior game for the '86 isn't as impressive as it sounds - yer standard TI-BASIC fare.
Check out some of the ASM programs for the various calculators. There are several impressive ones on the top downloads list, but there are also some less popular gems buried in the archives that never got as much exposure.
...high speed mobile (not point-to-point) wireless. I've been using "128kbit" Ricochet service as my exclusive internet connectivity for a few months, and it rocks. I put "128kbit" in scare-quotes because what I see varies between 80kbps - 160kbps, depending on location, congestion, etc. Still always better than dialup, still good enough to let me listen to 48kbit streaming shoutcast stations from my laptop while surfing at dialup speeds, chatting on IRC, and checking mail via ssh.
It's really an amazing leap forward. Oh, and it's unmetered flat-rate - I prepaid for a year of service for $825. About as expensive as DSL or cable, but mobile and just about as fast as the low-end offerings for each.
Yes, Carnivore (or whatever it's called this week) does more than just sniff email. This is no surprise.
I don't see enough people recognizing the importance of routing information, email headers, connection logs, etc - all information which the FBI steadfastly maintains it does not need a warrant to collect.
This is probably the most important purpose of Carnivore - to build an interconnected dataset of who's talking to whom, who's visiting what sites when, etc. The message body isn't nearly as important or useful (from the law-enforcement perspective) as this information. You may be encrypting all your mail with 4096-bit PGPG but who it came from and where it's going is all right there at the top. Same with your browsing habits, telnet/ssh , voice-over-IP connections, etc. etc.
Build a nice database of who's talking to whom and when, and it's much easier to find people to lean on. ("I see you emailed Bob on April 43, while he was chatting on IRC with known subversives planning protests at the Government, Inc. convention in Topeka - explain yourself citizen!")
To me, the collection of header information is the scariest part about Carnivore, especially considering the FBI's self-styled and sordid role in "ensuring domestic tranquility" by secretly attempting to undermine dissident groups and leaders (The muckraking and attempts at blackmailinng MLK Jr. being merely the most famous of many examples).
It's bad enough that they conduct illegal wiretaps - this information is considered today to be perfectly legal to snoop and store without a warrant or even probable cause. Dirty business.
It's judges like the Hon. Sydney Harris that remind me why I'm leaving IT and applying to law school. A hundred more judges like him could change the world for the better - someone's gotta step up.
-Isaac
Fraid you're out of luck with Linux, but...
on
Linux On Solbourne?
·
· Score: 3
...you might have better luck with netbsd or openbsd, if your Solbournes are the sun4c/sun4m compatible models. If they're not, then you're REALLY out of luck. There just aren't enough of these machine in the hands of free OS developers.
You know, given how well most laptops could handle 3d games, but for the non-availability of gaming chipsets, I sense a market for upgrades.
I mean, ever laptop made in the last 2-3 years has had CardBus (32bit, 33Mhz PCMCIA) and ZoomedVideo (direct write from PC-Card to vidram) support - what's stopping the production of a PC-Card 3d accelerator for PC laptops? (I understand there was one for Powerbooks a few years back).
I'd drop $300 on such an accelerator for my laptop.
...the reason it's possible for individuals to shape this process is that big money is not at stake. The current insanity in patent, trademark, and copyright law, is supported and lobbied for by some of the richest companies on the planet.
That doesn't mean one shouldn't try and change the system, but I don't think a promising sign in this particular matter will translate to other issues with greater economic footprints.
...is that there is no way to verify that the voter on the other end is an individual planning to follow through on the bargain. One person could be responsible for all the posts on a site and you could never know.
...and buy you one if you can explain with a straight face why it's a good thing that one of the candidates is likely to win the presidency on the electoral vote while losing the popular vote. ("Because my candidate won" doesn't meet my beer-buying criteria)
FWIW, don't confuse me with a Nader voter who would have supported Gore in any event.
...the networks are stringing people along to get more ratings and ad spots. They called FL for Gore while voting was still open in NW Florida (in the central time zone). That area is affectionately known as "Lower Alabama" or the "Redneck Riviera". It's GW's. And so is the state, unfortunately. And so is the election, probably. I'd be delighted to be wrong, but I'm not even defrosting the crow now.
These cheap 900mhz analog transmitter/reciever pairs just blanket the band with crap, squashing my ricochet service (which uses the 900mhz band for the mobile radios) and rendering 900mhz cordless phones useless. I don't know how the FCC allows them.
This guy's got it. In a past career I worked in Hollywood, and this is exactly how it's done - simple Director program where a keypress or mouseclick triggers the next motion/action. No studio is going to let the actor actually use the box - they might screw up and whoops, there goes a take, $5,000 or more in wasted time.
...I can assure that a whole host of investigative law enforcement bodies (mainly the FBI, but also state investigative bureaus) do in fact tap the NSA for decryption when necessary to advance a case.
They don't do this lightly, and don't like to do it, because the turnaround time is lousy, stuff sent sometimes doesn't return, and it's a bureaucratic pain in the ass. Essentially, it's only done when other leads are exhausted or stalled. It's not in the NSA's charter to conduct domestic surveillance (and I'm inclined to believe that they don't for the most part - that's the FBI's domain), but you're mistaken if you think they don't cooperate in other capacities with law enforcement.
...I can assure that a whole host of investigative law enforcement bodies (mainly the FBI, but also state investigative bureaus) do in fact tap the NSA for decryption when necessary to advance a case.
They don't do this lightly, and don't like to do it, because the turnaround time is lousy, stuff sent sometimes doesn't return, and it's a bureaucratic pain in the ass. It's not in the NSA's charter to conduct domestic surveillance (and I'm inclined to believe that they don't for the most part - the FBI has always been , but you're mistaken if you think they don't cooperate in other capacities with law enforcement.
If, in order to express my negative opinion about a piece of art, I must be capable of creating something better, then I will happily admit that that work of art is the greatest ever created, and thus none of us are worthy to judge it. Therefore, it should be safely locked away in an underground vault, away from our plebeian senses.
Did you read the first line of my post? The one that said
Predictably, a lot of people are coming out fo their holes to shout "that's not special! I could do that"?
It's to those people that I say "put up or shut up."
Evaluation and creation are two separate skills, but an adept in either skill will have some familiarity with the other. An artist incapable of evaluating his/her own work is an artist incapable of change. Likewise, an art critic who has no notion of technique or a broad knowledge of works won't be able to render an informed critique of a work, merely a personal opinion which I, uninformed as I am, am perfectly capable of generating myself.
So, go ahead, express your negative opinion of art - I'm not grousing about people who do that. I just won't take you seriously if you say "Anyone/I can do that" without backing it up.
Predictably, a lot of people are crawling out of their holes to shout "that's not special! I could do that"
Well, this guy DID do it. The Mona Lisa it ain't, but at least this guy unassed himself to create something new. Good for him!
Those of you offended at this guy's "bad art", go out and create something better, and show this guy up. Otherwise, you're all talk.
Reminds me of the people who talk shit about rap requiring no talent "because it's just talking fast". It was always fun to put them on the spot and start beat-boxing, waiting for them to rap along "'cuz anyone can do that!"
The barycenter (center of mass) of the earth-moon system is some 1707 km below Earth's surface. The Earth/Luna mass ratio is larger than any other planet/moon system in our solar system, bar Pluto/Charon, but I wouldn't go so far as to call the moon a planet.
Bottom line, your thesis is based on a faulty assertion. (i.e. Earth and Luna don't revolve around a common point in space - that point is comfortably beneath the earth's surface.)
...these days, the land PARC's sitting on is worth more than the business unit. I wouldn't be surprised to see it sell to some company wanting office space in Palo Alto, or to a developer (the kind that builds buildings and sells/leases them) looking to tear down the old buildings, build a new office park, and rent it out.
You keep stating that you're in the top X% as though it makes a difference to the validity of the proposal. Now, I understand your proposal, but its one born of righteous indignation over the ease at which capital multiplies (supposedly).
I keep reminding you that I'm near the top of the income percentiles because you keep putting words in my mouth, saying that I envy the rich. Who are you talking to? My righteous indignation isn't born of "the ease at [sic] which captial multiplies" but of persons who use sophistry to make arguments as to why some income (begat of money) deserves to be taxed less than other income (begat of labor).
Either way, it's still income, and the effect on the individual is the same (more cash). The difference is that only someone with money can make money in capital gains. Hmmm...
Give a hundred years of American governance to persons with your attitude and the middle class will be gone. Given that a strong, stable middle class is a requirement for democracy, I'm in no hurry to encourage its demise by encouraging a feedback loop which concentrates capital into fewer and fewer hands, even if I'm one of the hands into which capital is falling, by virtue of my having the right skills at the right place and time.
I think we've about thrashed this one to death - we'll just have to disagree. I'm just glad we live in a society that's still permissive enough to tolerate such disagreement, especially over an issue which has vastly more powerful interests on one side vs. the other.
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Once high-speed mobile internet service becomes more common, I expect to see streaming audio superceding conventional radio. These satellite audio broadcasting systems won't deliver enough bang for the buck compared to what mobile high-speed IP offers.
-Isaac
Just wanted to jump in here and remind you that the court system is in fact the branch of government charged with evaluating petitions for redress and then ruling as to the soundness of the claim and the appropriate remedy, if any.
That is to say, a legal process. A protesting mob is not a petition for redress. It is an exercise in free assembly, though, which I wholeheartedly support.
-Isaac
Pardon? I think the electoral college is crap because it explicitly works against the principle of "one man, one vote", instead allocating undue influence to sparsely populated states. I voted in California in this election (for neither Bush nor Gore, FWIW) - California has one electoral vote for (roughly) every 540,000 people. Iowa (to take a battleground state in this election) has roughly one for every 280,000. I don't call that a fair system.
I'd go so far as to say the system works as designed - it gives that extra little nudge in a tight presidential contest to rural landowners, keeping the urban poor in check. If the broken system hadn't been enshrined in the body of the constitution itself (by our clearly infallible *ahem* founding fathers), but merely in statute, it would have been trashed decades ago as contrary to the fourteenth amendment.
(Disclosute: I think both Republicrat-party candidates sucked most heartily this year, and would never have voted for either of those to jokers, even if I still lived in Florida. I would be grousing as loudly if Gush's and Bore's fortunes were reversed.
Most civilized countries have proportional representation. Damn near all have provisions for runoff elections in a race where multiple candidates leave the race too close to call (some states and counties do this, too). A one-night-only, winner-take-all electoral system produces erratic results and generates no end of controversy when the results are within the margin of error. Add in the skew towards less populous states, and you have a process of questionable legitimacy.
I'm with you on trashing punch-card ballots, but a adamantly against fully-electronic balloting. With physical ballots, the number of empties is known, and the completed ballots leave a physical record. Tweaking an electronic vote tally leaves no physical trace, unlike "losing" a stack of marked ballots (the lost number being reflected in the difference between the total count of ballots before and after the election). In other words, an election could be stolen *without incurring suspicion* simply because there would be no irregularities noted - the electronic count would be the sole, indisputable count. Ugh. Ugly to contemplate.
-Isaac
See ticalc.org to satisfy your curiosity.
For what it's worth, the MechWarrior
game for the '86 isn't as impressive as it sounds - yer standard TI-BASIC fare.
Check out some of the ASM programs for the various calculators. There are several impressive ones on the top downloads list, but there are also some less popular gems buried in the archives that never got as much exposure.
Enjoy!
-Isaac
For what it's worth, the MechWarriorCheck out some of the ASM programs for the various calculators. There are several impressive ones on the top downloads list, but there are also some less popular gems buried in the archives that never got as much exposure.
Enjoy!
-Isaac
It's really an amazing leap forward. Oh, and it's unmetered flat-rate - I prepaid for a year of service for $825. About as expensive as DSL or cable, but mobile and just about as fast as the low-end offerings for each.
-Isaac
I don't see enough people recognizing the importance of routing information, email headers, connection logs, etc - all information which the FBI steadfastly maintains it does not need a warrant to collect.
This is probably the most important purpose of Carnivore - to build an interconnected dataset of who's talking to whom, who's visiting what sites when, etc. The message body isn't nearly as important or useful (from the law-enforcement perspective) as this information. You may be encrypting all your mail with 4096-bit PGPG but who it came from and where it's going is all right there at the top. Same with your browsing habits, telnet/ssh , voice-over-IP connections, etc. etc.
Build a nice database of who's talking to whom and when, and it's much easier to find people to lean on. ("I see you emailed Bob on April 43, while he was chatting on IRC with known subversives planning protests at the Government, Inc. convention in Topeka - explain yourself citizen!")
To me, the collection of header information is the scariest part about Carnivore, especially considering the FBI's self-styled and sordid role in "ensuring domestic tranquility" by secretly attempting to undermine dissident groups and leaders (The muckraking and attempts at blackmailinng MLK Jr. being merely the most famous of many examples).
It's bad enough that they conduct illegal wiretaps - this information is considered today to be perfectly legal to snoop and store without a warrant or even probable cause. Dirty business.
-Isaac
-Isaac
-Isaac
You know, given how well most laptops could handle 3d games, but for the non-availability of gaming chipsets, I sense a market for upgrades.
I mean, ever laptop made in the last 2-3 years has had CardBus (32bit, 33Mhz PCMCIA) and ZoomedVideo (direct write from PC-Card to vidram) support - what's stopping the production of a PC-Card 3d accelerator for PC laptops? (I understand there was one for Powerbooks a few years back).
I'd drop $300 on such an accelerator for my laptop.
Just one data point,
-Isaac
That doesn't mean one shouldn't try and change the system, but I don't think a promising sign in this particular matter will translate to other issues with greater economic footprints.
-Isaac
...is that there is no way to verify that the voter on the other end is an individual planning to follow through on the bargain. One person could be responsible for all the posts on a site and you could never know.
Don't take candy from strangers, kids.
-Isaac
FWIW, don't confuse me with a Nader voter who would have supported Gore in any event.
-Isaac
-Isaac
At least that's how it looks to me in the bizzare, "Logan's Run" world of IT, where the only people over 30 have titles that start with "C".
Only half-joking,
-Isaac
These cheap 900mhz analog transmitter/reciever pairs just blanket the band with crap, squashing my ricochet service (which uses the 900mhz band for the mobile radios) and rendering 900mhz cordless phones useless. I don't know how the FCC allows them.
-Isaac
-Isaac
They don't do this lightly, and don't like to do it, because the turnaround time is lousy, stuff sent sometimes doesn't return, and it's a bureaucratic pain in the ass. Essentially, it's only done when other leads are exhausted or stalled. It's not in the NSA's charter to conduct domestic surveillance (and I'm inclined to believe that they don't for the most part - that's the FBI's domain), but you're mistaken if you think they don't cooperate in other capacities with law enforcement.
-Isaac
They don't do this lightly, and don't like to do it, because the turnaround time is lousy, stuff sent sometimes doesn't return, and it's a bureaucratic pain in the ass. It's not in the NSA's charter to conduct domestic surveillance (and I'm inclined to believe that they don't for the most part - the FBI has always been , but you're mistaken if you think they don't cooperate in other capacities with law enforcement.
-Isaac
Did you read the first line of my post? The one that said
Predictably, a lot of people are coming out fo their holes to shout "that's not special! I could do that"?
It's to those people that I say "put up or shut up."
Evaluation and creation are two separate skills, but an adept in either skill will have some familiarity with the other. An artist incapable of evaluating his/her own work is an artist incapable of change. Likewise, an art critic who has no notion of technique or a broad knowledge of works won't be able to render an informed critique of a work, merely a personal opinion which I, uninformed as I am, am perfectly capable of generating myself.
So, go ahead, express your negative opinion of art - I'm not grousing about people who do that. I just won't take you seriously if you say "Anyone/I can do that" without backing it up.
-Isaac
Well, this guy DID do it. The Mona Lisa it ain't, but at least this guy unassed himself to create something new. Good for him!
Those of you offended at this guy's "bad art", go out and create something better, and show this guy up. Otherwise, you're all talk.
Reminds me of the people who talk shit about rap requiring no talent "because it's just talking fast". It was always fun to put them on the spot and start beat-boxing, waiting for them to rap along "'cuz anyone can do that!"
-Isaac
Um, George Clinton coined that phrase ~20 years ago.
I bet you think Guns'N'Roses wrote "Knockin' on Heaven's Door".
-Isaac
The barycenter (center of mass) of the earth-moon system is some 1707 km below Earth's surface. The Earth/Luna mass ratio is larger than any other planet/moon system in our solar system, bar Pluto/Charon, but I wouldn't go so far as to call the moon a planet.
Bottom line, your thesis is based on a faulty assertion. (i.e. Earth and Luna don't revolve around a common point in space - that point is comfortably beneath the earth's surface.)
See this link for greater detail.
-Isaac
...these days, the land PARC's sitting on is worth more than the business unit. I wouldn't be surprised to see it sell to some company wanting office space in Palo Alto, or to a developer (the kind that builds buildings and sells/leases them) looking to tear down the old buildings, build a new office park, and rent it out.
Only half-kidding,
-Isaac
I keep reminding you that I'm near the top of the income percentiles because you keep putting words in my mouth, saying that I envy the rich. Who are you talking to? My righteous indignation isn't born of "the ease at [sic] which captial multiplies" but of persons who use sophistry to make arguments as to why some income (begat of money) deserves to be taxed less than other income (begat of labor).
Either way, it's still income, and the effect on the individual is the same (more cash). The difference is that only someone with money can make money in capital gains. Hmmm...
Give a hundred years of American governance to persons with your attitude and the middle class will be gone. Given that a strong, stable middle class is a requirement for democracy, I'm in no hurry to encourage its demise by encouraging a feedback loop which concentrates capital into fewer and fewer hands, even if I'm one of the hands into which capital is falling, by virtue of my having the right skills at the right place and time.
I think we've about thrashed this one to death - we'll just have to disagree. I'm just glad we live in a society that's still permissive enough to tolerate such disagreement, especially over an issue which has vastly more powerful interests on one side vs. the other.
-Isaac