...or parasite on someone else's attempt to earn a living.
He was arrested, after all, not for speaking, but for selling software that busted someone else's encryption, not for security reasons or public interest reasons, but so his customers could steal IP owned by others.
People keep saying he was arrested for speaking the truth.
It is my understanding that he was arrested (for better or for worse) for selling a software product that busted the encryption (however shoddy.) Yes, his company was in another country, but he sold it to someone in this country (and no, that should not be illegal either, but it is.)
So this is nothing like the Pentagon papers at all.
> people who play games regularly seem to develop
> a mental state that we have seen before only in
> serious athletes or professionals such as
> astronauts
Well, the answer is obvious.
Professional or olympic athletes have approximately 20,000 hours of practice by the time they get to the top levels. Astronauts practice for thousands of hours to perform chores for one mission.
What's the common ground? Kids play games for thousands of hours.
> everyone on death row that doesn't win an appeal
> should be put to death. They shouldn't have a
> chance to win their way out of it.
Really. (agreement, not sarcastic rhetorical question) Does anyone want a murderer who is capable of defeating multiple, highly-trained and highly-skilled "bounty hunters" to be set free with cash and prizes? Guys like Rutger Hauer in "The Hitcher", or that guy in "Pitch Black"?
In fact, as I sit here, I'm irritated by two Microsoft "features", i.e. members of a malformed feature set.
1. Excel keeps bugging me every five minutes to safety-save a file that was opened read-only and that I have not changed. Since it's read-only, it cannot save it, so it pops up a dialog and the bar blinks in the background irritatingly. Perhaps a macro is changing something, but why can I or a macro change something opened read-only? Perhaps from a nicety standpoint it might allow me to make changes to the loaded copy, but a macro making changes?
2. Selecting text in Outlook has "select entire word" on, which I find irritating in the extreme. I cannot turn it off because the menu choice the little help paperclip tells me to select is greyed out. Help does not tell me why it is greyed out, nor how to un-grey-out it. I wish it had an automated feature to "do this for me" so it could clobber itself in the head trying to select a greyed out menu item. This would force the programmers and help writers to cover this situation.
I never took a course in bug prevention (or detection -- that would be a nice course!) I don't even remember a course that offered that even as a unit. Of course, I took comp sci in the mid 80's.
The question is: Is the degree to turn you into a programmer or just someone who understands computer theory?
> I think bugs are more common (and thus worse)
> than malformed feature sets, and bugs are
> clearly the fault of the programmers.
Many times, the malformed feature sets are the real problem, and are the fault of the programmers. Blindly exposing every little feature of the device (or virtual thingamabob) you are writing software for and giving each a little control knob continues to be a problem for Windows, and is a massive problem for Linux. As one example, someone built a computer that you didn't have to "save" your documents on. You just shut it off, turned it back on, and your editor was there with your doc in the last state. You could undo, whatever. Just because you put a HD or floppy into a system doesn't mean you create a "save" mechanism from the user's standpoint. "Modern" computer systems STILL don't get this.
Ugly drag, like the pre-operative transsexuals Eddie Murphy and Danny Bonad00chee hang out with. Ugly ones, with garish makeup, flouncy, ripped dresses, hair on their arms and oranges in their ripped, dirty, red velvet bras. That's what XML is compared to LISP.
What in god's name would someone with a brain the size of a planet care if the "common man" benefits from it? All the common man has done historically is provide massive numbers of thugs for the power hungry to make everyone's lives terrible. Indeed, the thuggery is now masked by a label, "democracy", that the power hungry have tought the "common men" is some holy thing to be worshipped, and anything, freedom included, that stands in the way is evil.
The real worry was some new type of exotic matter (a reconfiguration of the quarks that make up protons) that was a lower energy state than normal subatomic particles like protons, and that the transition to such a state would release enough energy to coerce nearby particles into it, or it would simply be a catalyst to induce nearby particles to change over.
The argument against was that far higher energy collisions happen constantly in the high atmospher, on the moon, other planets, for billions of years and they haven't fallen prey to such a situation.
The other theory, that it would create a black hole, never held much water because it would radiate away its mass instantly, far more rapidly than any nearby particles falling into it could replenish it. It requires being at the core of a massive gravity well to keep feeding it to overcome this (presumably, and that assumes black holes actually exist.) In one story I read, it was estimated a black hole would have to be about the size of a marble before it could feed itself fast enough on (or in) a planet (at which point, you'd only have a few seconds left to live anyway. You'd probably die a fraction of a second before being pulled in because your body was torn apart, atom-by-atom, by the tidal force difference in the gravity between your feet and your head.)
A good point. The 0 law is just socialist nonsense designed to tie together (lamely) Asimov's two big sci-fi universes.
Any robot should have brain-locked at the concept of inducing quadrillions of people to 30,000 years of war and murder and galactic dictatorship because that was somehow "better" than having humans owning multiple robots and sitting back and enjoying long lives. The whole point of the 3 laws was that humans were to be the decision makers.
And if a well-paid engineer nerd purchased the deluxe Sandra Bullock model, complete with Angelina Jolie lips and Jennifer Lopez ass, would that increase or decrease the likliness of future marriages?
> People have been saying since the fifties that,
> in 10 or 20 years, we'll have sufficient
> computing power for a machine to become
> intelligent.
It might very well be the case that they were right, and we just haven't figured it out, yet.
I mean, on slashdot recently they had the article about building a giant kite to lift monoliths into place. The argument wasn't whether they could have built it, they could have as it was done only using ancient techniques.
Rather, the question is did they actually do that? I mean, one could, in theory, build a giant mechanical, steam-powered spider, complete with rockets (not just bombs or cannonballs) capable of blowing up large buildings all using mid 1800's technology.
> Ted Kaczynski predicts that humanity will easily
> drift into a position of such dependence on
> intelligent machines that it will ultimately
> have little choice but to accept
> all the machines' decisions.
The "breads and circuses" understanding of Democracy predicts that humanity will easily drift into a position of such dependence on massive government that it will ultimately have little choice but to accept all the power hungry politicians' decisions.
All you who hold democracy as God (as opposed to freedom) just wait until the people who are mostly machines start winning elections. They don't need food, so you will start to be portrayed as using up resources needlessly that could be much better used supporting machinery and what-not.
That vegetarian needs an acre of FARMLAND to survive for a year?
Nah, that will never happen. People without implants will simply be left behind, marginalized and slow-witted.
A nerd is an outcast -- Fonzie used the word "nerd" as an anti-Fonzie, anti-cool.
We learned in revenge of the nerds that nerds included the intellectually elite (though some were not nerds) as well as other social misfits like geeks (Boogar), stereotypically gay males (Llamar), and mu-cows.
> You're right, of course. Which is why if I were
> stronger than you, I'd beat you up for saying
> that.
Let me tell you, having an 18 intelligence and being physically strong is everything you probably dream of. I was a lineman on my highschool football team. Contrary to Dungeons and Dragons rules, or EverQuest rules, not every 18 intelligence or Erudite struggles to lift a stuffed Teddy bear.
> One of my friends recently was glad that he was
> not one of the top programmers at his firm.
Although Dogbert's Guide to Management recommended keeping pay low through hinting at coming layoffs, even it never went so far as to suggest employees might themselves choose lower pay so as to remain around.
I'm sure management was well-rewarded at his firm when only the sucky and inexperienced newbie programmers remained to finish projects. More likely the good ones found jobs quickly and at even or even better pay.
Well, what about the "Them's fightin' words!" defense?
No less an arch-liberal than Billy himself said he would have punched (mindslip - insert name here) in the nose when he said Hillary was a "congenital liar." He would have been found innocent by a jury by this defense, even though that particular "fightin' words" statement is demonstrably true!
Slashdot Mirror
...or parasite on someone else's attempt to earn a living.
He was arrested, after all, not for speaking, but for selling software that busted someone else's encryption, not for security reasons or public interest reasons, but so his customers could steal IP owned by others.
People keep saying he was arrested for speaking the truth.
It is my understanding that he was arrested (for better or for worse) for selling a software product that busted the encryption (however shoddy.) Yes, his company was in another country, but he sold it to someone in this country (and no, that should not be illegal either, but it is.)
So this is nothing like the Pentagon papers at all.
I haven't seen true max HDTV-capable TV's anywhere near a normal retail price, only $40,000+ industrial strength Richie Rich stuff.
Do the broadcast stations broadcasting HDTV broadcast the highest resolution?
> people who play games regularly seem to develop
> a mental state that we have seen before only in
> serious athletes or professionals such as
> astronauts
Well, the answer is obvious.
Professional or olympic athletes have approximately 20,000 hours of practice by the time they get to the top levels. Astronauts practice for thousands of hours to perform chores for one mission.
What's the common ground? Kids play games for thousands of hours.
I downloaded the Diakatana demo when it came out, fought a few frogs, and decided it was a great FPS.
F***ing Piece of Shit.
A truly marvelous FPS.
Note that Romero was actually correct: content is king. He proved the negative.
He was, of course (you idiots) referring to Thief III: You Are Their
Oh wait, that's spelled wrong, too.
Well, the good Shining, Kubrick's, was disclaimed by King, and he remade it into his inferior image of what it should have been.
> everyone on death row that doesn't win an appeal
> should be put to death. They shouldn't have a
> chance to win their way out of it.
Really. (agreement, not sarcastic rhetorical question) Does anyone want a murderer who is capable of defeating multiple, highly-trained and highly-skilled "bounty hunters" to be set free with cash and prizes? Guys like Rutger Hauer in "The Hitcher", or that guy in "Pitch Black"?
Given the gig+ size of the MS OS installations, that amounts to an ADBB of 500 million bytes for a Microsoft OS.
I'm glad they're working on this!
In fact, as I sit here, I'm irritated by two Microsoft "features", i.e. members of a malformed feature set.
1. Excel keeps bugging me every five minutes to safety-save a file that was opened read-only and that I have not changed. Since it's read-only, it cannot save it, so it pops up a dialog and the bar blinks in the background irritatingly. Perhaps a macro is changing something, but why can I or a macro change something opened read-only? Perhaps from a nicety standpoint it might allow me to make changes to the loaded copy, but a macro making changes?
2. Selecting text in Outlook has "select entire word" on, which I find irritating in the extreme. I cannot turn it off because the menu choice the little help paperclip tells me to select is greyed out. Help does not tell me why it is greyed out, nor how to un-grey-out it. I wish it had an automated feature to "do this for me" so it could clobber itself in the head trying to select a greyed out menu item. This would force the programmers and help writers to cover this situation.
I never took a course in bug prevention (or detection -- that would be a nice course!) I don't even remember a course that offered that even as a unit. Of course, I took comp sci in the mid 80's.
The question is: Is the degree to turn you into a programmer or just someone who understands computer theory?
> I think bugs are more common (and thus worse)
> than malformed feature sets, and bugs are
> clearly the fault of the programmers.
Many times, the malformed feature sets are the real problem, and are the fault of the programmers. Blindly exposing every little feature of the device (or virtual thingamabob) you are writing software for and giving each a little control knob continues to be a problem for Windows, and is a massive problem for Linux. As one example, someone built a computer that you didn't have to "save" your documents on. You just shut it off, turned it back on, and your editor was there with your doc in the last state. You could undo, whatever. Just because you put a HD or floppy into a system doesn't mean you create a "save" mechanism from the user's standpoint. "Modern" computer systems STILL don't get this.
> To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Ugly drag, like the pre-operative transsexuals Eddie Murphy and Danny Bonad00chee hang out with. Ugly ones, with garish makeup, flouncy, ripped dresses, hair on their arms and oranges in their ripped, dirty, red velvet bras. That's what XML is compared to LISP.
...spelling of it, either."
What in god's name would someone with a brain the size of a planet care if the "common man" benefits from it? All the common man has done historically is provide massive numbers of thugs for the power hungry to make everyone's lives terrible. Indeed, the thuggery is now masked by a label, "democracy", that the power hungry have tought the "common men" is some holy thing to be worshipped, and anything, freedom included, that stands in the way is evil.
The real worry was some new type of exotic matter (a reconfiguration of the quarks that make up protons) that was a lower energy state than normal subatomic particles like protons, and that the transition to such a state would release enough energy to coerce nearby particles into it, or it would simply be a catalyst to induce nearby particles to change over.
The argument against was that far higher energy collisions happen constantly in the high atmospher, on the moon, other planets, for billions of years and they haven't fallen prey to such a situation.
The other theory, that it would create a black hole, never held much water because it would radiate away its mass instantly, far more rapidly than any nearby particles falling into it could replenish it. It requires being at the core of a massive gravity well to keep feeding it to overcome this (presumably, and that assumes black holes actually exist.) In one story I read, it was estimated a black hole would have to be about the size of a marble before it could feed itself fast enough on (or in) a planet (at which point, you'd only have a few seconds left to live anyway. You'd probably die a fraction of a second before being pulled in because your body was torn apart, atom-by-atom, by the tidal force difference in the gravity between your feet and your head.)
A good point. The 0 law is just socialist nonsense designed to tie together (lamely) Asimov's two big sci-fi universes.
Any robot should have brain-locked at the concept of inducing quadrillions of people to 30,000 years of war and murder and galactic dictatorship because that was somehow "better" than having humans owning multiple robots and sitting back and enjoying long lives. The whole point of the 3 laws was that humans were to be the decision makers.
And if a well-paid engineer nerd purchased the deluxe Sandra Bullock model, complete with Angelina Jolie lips and Jennifer Lopez ass, would that increase or decrease the likliness of future marriages?
> People have been saying since the fifties that,
> in 10 or 20 years, we'll have sufficient
> computing power for a machine to become
> intelligent.
It might very well be the case that they were right, and we just haven't figured it out, yet.
I mean, on slashdot recently they had the article about building a giant kite to lift monoliths into place. The argument wasn't whether they could have built it, they could have as it was done only using ancient techniques.
Rather, the question is did they actually do that? I mean, one could, in theory, build a giant mechanical, steam-powered spider, complete with rockets (not just bombs or cannonballs) capable of blowing up large buildings all using mid 1800's technology.
> Ted Kaczynski predicts that humanity will easily
> drift into a position of such dependence on
> intelligent machines that it will ultimately
> have little choice but to accept
> all the machines' decisions.
The "breads and circuses" understanding of Democracy predicts that humanity will easily drift into a position of such dependence on massive government that it will ultimately have little choice but to accept all the power hungry politicians' decisions.
All you who hold democracy as God (as opposed to freedom) just wait until the people who are mostly machines start winning elections. They don't need food, so you will start to be portrayed as using up resources needlessly that could be much better used supporting machinery and what-not.
That vegetarian needs an acre of FARMLAND to survive for a year?
Nah, that will never happen. People without implants will simply be left behind, marginalized and slow-witted.
Didn't we all go through this some months ago?
A nerd is an outcast -- Fonzie used the word "nerd" as an anti-Fonzie, anti-cool.
We learned in revenge of the nerds that nerds included the intellectually elite (though some were not nerds) as well as other social misfits like geeks (Boogar), stereotypically gay males (Llamar), and mu-cows.
> You're right, of course. Which is why if I were
> stronger than you, I'd beat you up for saying
> that.
Let me tell you, having an 18 intelligence and being physically strong is everything you probably dream of. I was a lineman on my highschool football team. Contrary to Dungeons and Dragons rules, or EverQuest rules, not every 18 intelligence or Erudite struggles to lift a stuffed Teddy bear.
> One of my friends recently was glad that he was
> not one of the top programmers at his firm.
Although Dogbert's Guide to Management recommended keeping pay low through hinting at coming layoffs, even it never went so far as to suggest employees might themselves choose lower pay so as to remain around.
I'm sure management was well-rewarded at his firm when only the sucky and inexperienced newbie programmers remained to finish projects. More likely the good ones found jobs quickly and at even or even better pay.
Well, what about the "Them's fightin' words!" defense?
No less an arch-liberal than Billy himself said he would have punched (mindslip - insert name here) in the nose when he said Hillary was a "congenital liar." He would have been found innocent by a jury by this defense, even though that particular "fightin' words" statement is demonstrably true!
Why are audio recordings illegal?
Were there too many cases of someone saying, "Hey, repeat after me, 'I killed that guy!'" and some bozo repeated that?