That's why I switched to the PC at home four years ago. I can surf equally well on a PC or a Mac, but the PC had a ton more games, not to mention better 3D cards (again, for the games.) Office suite? Microsoft is the standard on both machines, so again that's a push for the very occasional need to work at home.
Nope, games availability is the reason for a PC at home (heck, half the few games available for the Mac are PC ports, complete with PC-style game interface.)
Remember those good old cryptograms in crossword puzzle magazines, where you mix up each letter of the alphabet, then substitute each letter in the message for it's corresponding letter in the table?
Well, you do that, but use a different random table of letters for every single letter in your message. Since each letter has its own mixed up derivation, you have a provably secure system. The cyphered text is absolutely indistinguishable from a random series of letters -- two letters next to each other (or any two letters in the encrypted message, for that matter) have no relationship whatsoever. The only crack might be if you didn't use a truly random method of mixing up letters.
Besides, "you can't prove a negative" is usually in the context of proving that God or unicorns do not exist.
This is technically wrong, too. Proving that those things do not exist involves exhaustively and instantaneously searching all of reality. That's merely a practical problem, not a theoretical one. (Although God, if it existed, might be able to still hide from us, thus making it theoretically impossible, if it were of such a mind to hide from us. Still, that is, ironically, also just a practical problem.)
> For all the revolutionary talk about how it will
> free us from the burdens of work, now all we do
> is spend more time working, because computers
> have enabled us to do more!
Blame Walt Disney, not the economists. Increases in productivity are not turned into fewer work hours because of competition. Instead, they are turned into cheaper products (fewer paychecks needed for the same work) and more diversity in specialization of occupations (fewer people to do industry X means some people go find other stuff to do.) Both lift the standard of living.
> In the US, Congress can go ahead and pass any
> censorship law they want (and have done so in at
> least one instance.) It is up to the Supreme
> Court to nullify it if it is unconstitutional
We need a constitutional ammendment that if such a thing happens, the house master-at-arms punches every congresscritter who voted for such a measure right in the face.
When living in Europe during the gulf war^H^H^Hpolice action, I happened to watch a "democratic" chess match on the BBC.
The game played against a grandmaster. People would call in and vote on what move to make next. Would all those people thinking put together an awesome chess match that would easily defeat a grandmaster, my goodness, all those brains working?
Or would they put together an embarassment of bad move after bad move? The assistant, moving on behalf of "the people", also a grandmaster, got one veto to prevent a particularly bad move. He could have used about twenty vetos.
Needless to say, it could have gone better for "the people."
Now consider politics, where most of the "bad moves" involve increased power for the government and decreased freedom for people. How much worse would have been the chess game with some charismatic idiot arguing vehemently for even worse moves, more power for the government, all in the name of helping "the people"?
The tool of the politician is rhetoric, outright deception, and the acquisition of power. "In the name of the people, to help the people" is not a goal, just a rhetorical device to take freedom from the people.
> I play Everquest, which at least has a
> believable world and gameplay.
Isn't that the believable game where a 10-foot tall, 4000-lb. ogre, much stockier for his size than the Incredible Hulk ever dreamed of being, and wielding a huge 2-handed sword pulled the hard way out the ass of a god, does less damage to a human wizard than the human wizard, punching with his fist, does to him?
> If it's say 100 years pre-TOS, then it'll be 100
> years (give or take) in our future
It couldn't be. That's barely post-Cochrane Era (TM). Wouldn't be much of a space ship to go exploring in, even allowing for rapid scientific advancement as aided by the Vulcans.
Remember that Cochrane Era (TM) had poorer spaceflight than did Kahn, five years ago.
> We know that cultures that seek admission to the
> Federation go through a lengthy petition process
Well, the wormhole sped that up quite a bit for Bajor, let's be real. Also, remember how quickly the Feds wanted to snarf up Organia before the Klingons got there, simply because it was the only class M planet in the area, thus, like the wormhole, was a very important tactical planet.
They did that already, with the Daystrom computer....
....which was another bit of kick-a technology shoved into the locker that they could have hauled out over and over again to deal with the inferior Klingons and Romulans and so on.
Put those into half a dozen capital-class starships, slap in the phasing cloaking devices, and send them into the Klingon's territory.
Then there's Data. Why isn't he mass-produced and issued to Federation defense? He and his higher-functioning predecessor Lore are both capable of taking out a Borg cube by themselves.
> [Used the]SuperTransHyperWarp drive for 5
> seconds so now we're closer to home.
And now it's busted, and we can't fix it to use it again, and we can't even extract any useable technology to speed ourselves up even a little bit.
Whatever happened to a "sustained rate of warp 9.97?" Aren't they about 50,000 light years away? Souldn't they be nearing the core of the galaxy, where "God" resides? Once they get to that, it's only a few hours to the Federation, according to the fifth or sixth movie, with Spock's brother.
Same thing as Gilligan's Island, except they have the advantage of making a little headway, story-wise, but not actually getting home.
And let's not forget that the Time Corps must come collect the Dr.s' mobile holo-emitter, not to mention wiping the computers and brains of everyone on board so they don't remember any of the technical details, since they repair the darned thing all the time.
Except that any brothers of Leia or Darth would be known to Darth (the uncle's hiding is doubtful to have started prior to the Emperor coming to power) which means he executed a known relative.
Then again, Saddam has executed at least one of his sons-in-law, so it is possible.
> If you can show that other people skilled in the
> art tried to solve the problem and failed where
> you succeeded, you've shown non-obviousness.
Hence the validity of Amazon's 1-click purchasing patent. In a very "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum" sort of way, it was not obvious -- except in retrospect.
It's worse than that. None of physics even attempts to explain the subjective perceptual experience. Even if it included gravity in a nice, tight package, they've still got a long way to go.
Back in the days of 300 baud modems, the University of Michigan used to charge over a thousand dollars (sixty million dollars adjusted for inflation) to set up your dorm room with a 9600 baud connection to the campus network.
> Viewing pornography perhaps doesn't hurt the
> viewer, but the person who is performing the
> pornography is often forced into the situation
> due to lack of money/lack of education about
> alternatives.
Eating Big Macs perhaps doesn't hurt the eater, but the person who is making the Big Macs is often forced into the situation due to a lack of money/lack of education about alternatives.
It's only a bad situation because of absurd social conventions and other unwanted attempts by the morally self-appointed to make it illegal.
The Battlebot field is wide open, crying for a champion, which is to say, for the first robot maker who actually practices controlling his robot for more than 15 minutes.
Slashdot Mirror
> As for myself, i believe that the universe was
> created by 10,000ft tall invisible lizard people
THEY ARE ONLY 9980 feet tall! Death to you!
That would be pretty lazy on his part. Descartes was right -- God is an evil trickster deliberately trying to decieve us about the nature of reality.
> The only ones my schools ever required prior
> approval for were the ones involving animals,
> dangerous chemicals, or high voltage.
Psychological experiments on humans were allowed? Especially "tricky" ones where the adults should have been notified, ethically, of the possibility?
No, surfing is the other use, at home anyway.
That's why I switched to the PC at home four years ago. I can surf equally well on a PC or a Mac, but the PC had a ton more games, not to mention better 3D cards (again, for the games.) Office suite? Microsoft is the standard on both machines, so again that's a push for the very occasional need to work at home.
Nope, games availability is the reason for a PC at home (heck, half the few games available for the Mac are PC ports, complete with PC-style game interface.)
To all doubters, it's very simple.
Remember those good old cryptograms in crossword puzzle magazines, where you mix up each letter of the alphabet, then substitute each letter in the message for it's corresponding letter in the table?
Well, you do that, but use a different random table of letters for every single letter in your message. Since each letter has its own mixed up derivation, you have a provably secure system. The cyphered text is absolutely indistinguishable from a random series of letters -- two letters next to each other (or any two letters in the encrypted message, for that matter) have no relationship whatsoever. The only crack might be if you didn't use a truly random method of mixing up letters.
Besides, "you can't prove a negative" is usually in the context of proving that God or unicorns do not exist.
This is technically wrong, too. Proving that those things do not exist involves exhaustively and instantaneously searching all of reality. That's merely a practical problem, not a theoretical one. (Although God, if it existed, might be able to still hide from us, thus making it theoretically impossible, if it were of such a mind to hide from us. Still, that is, ironically, also just a practical problem.)
No, the mathematics would still hold true.
It's the physics that might not.
> For all the revolutionary talk about how it will
> free us from the burdens of work, now all we do
> is spend more time working, because computers
> have enabled us to do more!
Blame Walt Disney, not the economists. Increases in productivity are not turned into fewer work hours because of competition. Instead, they are turned into cheaper products (fewer paychecks needed for the same work) and more diversity in specialization of occupations (fewer people to do industry X means some people go find other stuff to do.) Both lift the standard of living.
> In the US, Congress can go ahead and pass any
> censorship law they want (and have done so in at
> least one instance.) It is up to the Supreme
> Court to nullify it if it is unconstitutional
We need a constitutional ammendment that if such a thing happens, the house master-at-arms punches every congresscritter who voted for such a measure right in the face.
When living in Europe during the gulf war^H^H^Hpolice action, I happened to watch a "democratic" chess match on the BBC.
The game played against a grandmaster. People would call in and vote on what move to make next. Would all those people thinking put together an awesome chess match that would easily defeat a grandmaster, my goodness, all those brains working?
Or would they put together an embarassment of bad move after bad move? The assistant, moving on behalf of "the people", also a grandmaster, got one veto to prevent a particularly bad move. He could have used about twenty vetos.
Needless to say, it could have gone better for "the people."
Now consider politics, where most of the "bad moves" involve increased power for the government and decreased freedom for people. How much worse would have been the chess game with some charismatic idiot arguing vehemently for even worse moves, more power for the government, all in the name of helping "the people"?
The tool of the politician is rhetoric, outright deception, and the acquisition of power. "In the name of the people, to help the people" is not a goal, just a rhetorical device to take freedom from the people.
> I play Everquest, which at least has a
> believable world and gameplay.
Isn't that the believable game where a 10-foot tall, 4000-lb. ogre, much stockier for his size than the Incredible Hulk ever dreamed of being, and wielding a huge 2-handed sword pulled the hard way out the ass of a god, does less damage to a human wizard than the human wizard, punching with his fist, does to him?
> If it's say 100 years pre-TOS, then it'll be 100
> years (give or take) in our future
It couldn't be. That's barely post-Cochrane Era (TM). Wouldn't be much of a space ship to go exploring in, even allowing for rapid scientific advancement as aided by the Vulcans.
Remember that Cochrane Era (TM) had poorer spaceflight than did Kahn, five years ago.
And who can forget that infamous male-in-a-skirt-and-I-don't-mean-kilt brief shot in TNG...
> We know that cultures that seek admission to the
> Federation go through a lengthy petition process
Well, the wormhole sped that up quite a bit for Bajor, let's be real. Also, remember how quickly the Feds wanted to snarf up Organia before the Klingons got there, simply because it was the only class M planet in the area, thus, like the wormhole, was a very important tactical planet.
They did that already, with the Daystrom computer....
....which was another bit of kick-a technology shoved into the locker that they could have hauled out over and over again to deal with the inferior Klingons and Romulans and so on.
Put those into half a dozen capital-class starships, slap in the phasing cloaking devices, and send them into the Klingon's territory.
Then there's Data. Why isn't he mass-produced and issued to Federation defense? He and his higher-functioning predecessor Lore are both capable of taking out a Borg cube by themselves.
> [Used the]SuperTransHyperWarp drive for 5
> seconds so now we're closer to home.
And now it's busted, and we can't fix it to use it again, and we can't even extract any useable technology to speed ourselves up even a little bit.
Whatever happened to a "sustained rate of warp 9.97?" Aren't they about 50,000 light years away? Souldn't they be nearing the core of the galaxy, where "God" resides? Once they get to that, it's only a few hours to the Federation, according to the fifth or sixth movie, with Spock's brother.
Same thing as Gilligan's Island, except they have the advantage of making a little headway, story-wise, but not actually getting home.
And let's not forget that the Time Corps must come collect the Dr.s' mobile holo-emitter, not to mention wiping the computers and brains of everyone on board so they don't remember any of the technical details, since they repair the darned thing all the time.
Except that any brothers of Leia or Darth would be known to Darth (the uncle's hiding is doubtful to have started prior to the Emperor coming to power) which means he executed a known relative.
Then again, Saddam has executed at least one of his sons-in-law, so it is possible.
> hat one of the plans for the new series is a
> Star Fleet Academy setting.
Oh, no. Those few lame acadamy episodes with Wesley "Westly, the boy?" were bad enough as it was. I still loathe the Tom Paris character to this day.
Is he the drummer in Everclear's AM Radio video?
> If you can show that other people skilled in the
> art tried to solve the problem and failed where
> you succeeded, you've shown non-obviousness.
Hence the validity of Amazon's 1-click purchasing patent. In a very "The Inmates Are Running the Asylum" sort of way, it was not obvious -- except in retrospect.
It's worse than that. None of physics even attempts to explain the subjective perceptual experience. Even if it included gravity in a nice, tight package, they've still got a long way to go.
It was my understanding that this was NOT an obvious idea.
Amazon's chief had to keep beating the heads of the programmers, who kept putting up confirmation-of-order dialog boxes, making it a 2-click process.
Of course, that it's cool and intuitive makes it obvious...after the fact, which is not what makes a patent invalid.
Back in the days of 300 baud modems, the University of Michigan used to charge over a thousand dollars (sixty million dollars adjusted for inflation) to set up your dorm room with a 9600 baud connection to the campus network.
> We'll just bypass that annoying low-bandwidth
> optical interface!
Wrong! The optical interface is plenty high enough, thank you.
It's the OCR software that is the disgusting bottleneck in this situation.
> Viewing pornography perhaps doesn't hurt the
> viewer, but the person who is performing the
> pornography is often forced into the situation
> due to lack of money/lack of education about
> alternatives.
Eating Big Macs perhaps doesn't hurt the eater, but the person who is making the Big Macs is often forced into the situation due to a lack of money/lack of education about alternatives.
It's only a bad situation because of absurd social conventions and other unwanted attempts by the morally self-appointed to make it illegal.
The Battlebot field is wide open, crying for a champion, which is to say, for the first robot maker who actually practices controlling his robot for more than 15 minutes.