FYI, after a bit of searching, I found through the House Committee on Science Members List that Rep. Rivers is a Democrat (interestingly, I can't find her party affiliation mentioned anywhere on her own page).
This is not flaimbait -- I was just wondering what party she was affiliated with as I read through the article, and I thought others might want to know as well.
I can't think of any particular reason why the DMCA would have more support from any particular party, and since it was a verbal vote, I don't suppose we can find out. Hollywood may traditionally pay big bucks to Democrats, but Republicans are usually the ones associated with big businesses. Seems like the whole system is shot. Anyone care to venture a guess on whether any one group is favorable for tech issues, or if it's really just an individual issue?
"Based on sophisticated monitoring of cellular network activity, the team has been able to determine that numerous reports could not possibly be from the Ground Zero site, and have thus helped avoiding putting rescue workers at risk."
After staring at that for several minutes, I think I understand what they mean. It seems that people were essentially making prank 911 calls, claiming to be alive and trapped under what's left of the building. I know that there supposedly calls from people claiming to be trapped in the basement Tuesday night, and Mayor Guiliani confirmed that then. It would not appear those were prank calls.
Even though calls were coming in, no cell phone activity was picked up from Ground Zero. They therefore knew these were prank calls, and didn't risk lives in attempting a more aggressive dig to reach "survivors" in time.
I don't think I would have ever even imagined people doing something that low, had I not seen prank bomb threats called in the next day. Those people are the ones who deserve to be buried alive under thousands of tons of concrete.
The problem is depth. Triangulation typically works because there is only one unique point that is X units away from location A, Y units away from location B, and Z units from location C in two dimensions. I'd guess that you could set up more "noise makers", possibly at different heights, and this might work in theory -- but in practice, I think it's unfortunately too far-fetched.
After seeing this on CNN and reading an article linked to by Drudge, it would appear that the purpose of this isn't what it might appear to be at first. Some quick posters appear to think that it's being used to locate survivors within the rubble. As one poster pointed out, it simply isn't precise enought to pinpoint where in the debris the phone is, and it's particularly inaccurate at finding out how deep the phone is buried (ie, how "high" it is).
Instead, they're only trying to get a very general location of the phones, to determine whether they're at "Ground Zero" or not. If not, they could potentially be used to find if somebody's at a hospital in a coma, or if they somehow got out of NYC in time and for some reason haven't been able to contact someone.
These phones aren't really being used to locate the survivors, they're being used to gain some clue as to whether a person is buried, or might have survived. It won't do a great job of locating people, but it will help discriminate if a person is "likely dead" or "might have gotten away."
I also heard that no actual calls have to be made to trace a phone's location, but I'd guess that it must at least be turned on and able to receive a call. And yes, as many posters have said, batteries are going to be a problem this many days later. But any more information on what happened to these people will surely be welcomed by their families.
I think that most slashdotters will some one of the obscure links in this article, which go to other sections with "three expert opinions" on the situation. The first of these is linked "before" the article, so I'm betting almost everyone missed it. Here are the links to the three opinions and the article itself:
This AC makes a very good analogy that I, as someone closely tied to it, should expand upon.
TI's first graphing calculators, the TI-85 and TI-82, were "hacked" so that assembly-language programs could be written and access the calculator hardware directly. The article here seems to imply that LegOS and other independent "hacks" could somehow damage LEGO Mindstorms' reputation if they don't function properly -- with the TI calculators, it also took very little effort to install these programs (mostly games), and they crashed the calculator _very_ often.
So what did TI do? Rather than trying to patch up the holes that allowed ASM programs to be run, they added full ASM program support to their next calculators, the TI-86 and TI-83. And they even documented the systems to encourage ASM programming -- and I know many, many people who bought calculators only to play games in class. This earned them a bundle.
Now, years later, this is paying off even more. I, a 17-year-old "hacker" (at least under the definition given in the article), and several others have been hired to write programs for them, and although I can't give details I'm certain that these will also make them a good deal more money.
So what's the moral of the story? As another poster suggested, LEGO should _embrace_ these "hackers" and hire them to improve their products. It seems that whatever "danger" these independent projects have on LEGO's reputation is greatly exaggerated -- people who understand enough to send their RCX a new OS are smart enough that they won't be blaming LEGO for any flaws in it (and as far as I know, there really aren't any flaws in LegOS). Almost no harm done, but great benefits for LEGO.
Even Businessweek's article says that these have helped sell tens of thousands more units. That is not in doubt. This is a case of corporate types fearing anything they don't understand, and instantly suing it. Instead they should consider the situation here and realize how much they can benefit from it!
Seriously, though, not being too well acquanited with Unix systems, I didn't know this. Still, though, it was a joke -- I didn't mean to get you so worked up! =(
Well, it's not quite proof -- but I should point out that many prominent feminists were actually pro-porn. Not just because they wanted equality, and equality requires free expression, but because they did not believe that (most) porn was exploitative or harmful to women.
Check out http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/harm.htm for more on this. It's written by a strong feminist and cites the views of many prominent feminists.
If I had to pick someone who would be an authority figure on whether women are hurt or offended by porn, who would it be? Why, a prominent leader in the Women's Civil Rights movement, of course. How about Betty Friedan, author of The Feminist Mystique and co-founder of the National Organization for Women? Surely nobody can take an AP American History course in high school and not recognize the name; we studied her pretty prominently in my course. And she was not only not against pornography, she actually supported it.
These women are only devalued if they allow themselves to be. In the past, they were certainly undervalued, but that's why the Women's Suffrage and Women's Liberation movements came about. Were the situation as severe as people claim, this wouldn't be a few women who claim to be feminists fighting against porn -- it would be a genuine uprising, led by women's leaders. But it's not. Porn does not make women worthless.
I haven't been keeping tabs on the Slashdot "departments" recently, but this one --" from the j-s-mill-never-had-to-worry-about-this dept" -- caught my eye.
For the unaware, Cliff was refering to John Stuart Mill, an 18th-century British philosopher who wrote of "the tyranny of the masses," or "the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling." Mill was noting that logic and reason were being subverted by emotional arguments that appealed to the masses. It's a elitist perspective, but IMHO it's a very valid observation.
This is exactly what's happening here -- as the Salon piece very elegantly expresses, there is no evidence that porn is harmful or that censorship is helpful. In fact, it seems to me only reasonable to think the opposite. I may be biased -- but I'm a 17-year-old who's seen plenty of porn (please don't take that the wrong way), but I'm not some psychotic, violent madman or a pedophiliac. In fact, I'm first in my high school class (finishing my Junior year within the week), I'm looking at top-teir colleges, and I spent my Tuesday night last week being a productive member of my community by lobbying against an issue before the local township council (I won't get into the details of that, but as long as I'm bragging, I think I'll note that I've also finally hit the karma cap =). To see people claim that I should have all kinds of mental problems is, to be, downright offensive. This categorization is wrong, but the majority of people believe it, and that is reflected by our society.
But I think that a lot of the Slashdot crowd sees the argument put forth in the Salon article -- that censorship does not protect children, but instead leaves them unable to cope with the realities of the outside world. (There's a very enlightened judge who ruled recently that children "cannot be raised in a bubble" -- see the ruling for more.) That's why I'm such a fan of peacefire's advocacy.
But I digress. The point is, Mill's quote is the perfect embodiment of the phenomenon we're seeing here -- that is, the popular view that children must be "protected." Unfortunately, as long as the masses remain uneducated, we're fighting a losing battle. I don't know what can be done to counteract this, but I sure it hope somebody else can come up with something, and soon -- before people like me are no longer able to access these things, and are no longer able to realize this common fallacy.
Once again, Kudos to Cliff for showing once again that occasionally the slashdot editors do make very insightful commentaries in and of themselves (especially Jamie, who's written many great anti-censorship articles). Hopefully we've enlightened another person or two today.
Well, I didn't say that the Gregorian Calendar would certainly be wrong in the year 4092 -- it's just that we don't know how people will deal with the problem, so we can't be certain the date we obtain is correct and, as I said, "this algorithm should not be used for any date past December 31, 4091."
The leap year rules might be adjusted to compensate every 4000 years, or the days might be allowed to accumulate, as you suggested. Or there might be an entirely different Calendar in use. But since we don't know, it wouldn't be a good idea to try to get one of those dates, because those are much less likely to be correct.
Interesting idea -- post the link to the google cache of the article when the page hasn't even gone down, with a little "sigh" to make users think otherwise. What a great way to deceive moderators and earn karma!
(moderators: this isn't flamebait or a troll, it's just pointing out how easy it is to fool others into moderating one's post up undeservedly. You might even call it insightful =)
There are a few very minor limitations on this algorithm that are not mentioned on the page. In fact, these limitations are ignored, and lead several mistakes on that page.
The algorithm uses the Gregorian Calendar. Most countries did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until October 15, 1582, and therefore it is inaccurate for any date before that. The major exception is Great Britian which, due to the feud between the Catholic and Anglican Churches, did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until September 14, 1752.
This means that the "Doomsday"'s before 1583 are all wrong everywhere, and those before 1753 are wrong in Great Britian.
In addition, the Gregorian Calendar only considers Leap Year exceptions on a 400-year cycle, so in the year 4092 it will have drifted off by one full day. Therefore, this algorithm should not be used for any date past December 31, 4091.
In my opinion, the Doomsday algorithm isn't even the best algorithm for this job. I prefer Zeller's Algorithm, for a which a good description can be found at http://www.columbia.edu/ ~cs1005/HW03.html.
Zeller's Algorithm was first proposed by Chr. Zeller, in 1883 -- long before computers. It also allows one to find the day of week for a date using only integer division, and thus can be done easily by hand. It's much simpler than the Doomsday Algorithm appears to be.
I can't post it here correctly due to formatting limitations, but it can be found at the above lined page. It's slightly harder to memorize, but simpler to use (and program -- only took me a few minutes).
I agree. My favorite "kill-off" was Sisko joining the Prophets at the end of DS9 -- it was a fitting end for him, sacrificing his life to stop Dukat.
I wanted at least Janeway to be killed off in the Voyager finale (how anyone like her after seven seasons of bad decisions?), or, even better, the entire ship should have been destroyed. It would have been a powerful end to the series, and bring some finality to a setting we won't see for a long time to come (since the next series will be in the past). Voyager has also always been ridiculously optimistic; a little realism would be nice, especially when the series won't have any movies. This ending was just too happy and perfect.
DS9 was taken by surprise? DS9 was always expected to have 7 seasons, and it did. The finale wasn't anything thrown together; it was a seven-episode, well-planned arc. I find your post hard to believe. . . are you just another troll showing that posters can be wrong, but sound right, and be modded up, or do you have some serious evidence of this?
I respectfully disagree -- I really liked Wesley Crusher; I thought that the child genius who, at first, is never given a chance to show his abilities (yet later saves the ship many times) is a character I can relate to (and he reminds me of Spiderman =). The Black Ooze may not have been the best idea, but the idea of Tasha Yar being killed by a force beyond our control for no reason was revisited many times as the characters realized life isn't fair.
I just watched the finale again right after finishing my last post, and taped it for good measure.
After the second viewing, I feel even more strongly that the finale brings out the worst in the series. It relies entirely on inventing all-powerful future technology while abandoning Janeway's (already horrible) character.
Let's count the number of things fabricated to make this episode possible: tachyon immunizations, anti-tachyon pulses to close temporal rifts, Klingon time travel technology, retractable armor for ships (which mysteriously malfunctions at one point, so that the future Harry Kim must help Janeway), transphasic torpedos (while Voyager used its supposed allotment of 32 torpedoes in the first season alone), transwarp hubs, nueral interfaces, a quick allusion to future stealth technology, Borg adaptations against various aforementioned technology, a borg-killing virus, and the ability to hide inside Borg spheres. Am I still missing anything? Oh, at the last second they realize they can destroy the hub and get home, with no explanation, overcoming another plot obstacle. I bet that if I watch it again, I'll find more.
And then there's Janeway. The future Janeway is great - devious and cunning, and she appears to have been truly scared and changed by her experiences. On the other hand, the present Janeway is an entirely different person than she was in the beginning of the series -- she abandons the Temporal Prime Directive, after numerous occasions in which she refused to allow the ship to get home because of Prime Directive issues. I sure hope that she gets Court Marshalled and jailed when she gets back (anyone who saw the last Captain Braxton time travel episode: "You are hereby placed under arrest for crimes you will commit"). It's completely, 100% out of character for her to do these acts, let alone for her to accept Admiral Janeway as really being a future version of herself. She's too damn stubborn to listen to anyone else.
Not to mention the inherent time travel issue that comes up all the time and is never explained: now that Janeway's home, you can be sure that Starfleet will make sure she can't try to go back in time again. If so, then she won't guide the crew home, and we'll revert to the alternate future. In that one, Janeway does help the crew, and we go to the "real" future, which then brings us to the alternate future again. . . etc, etc, etc. This issue comes up in many episodes, where the actual time travel negates the reason for time travel in the future, which leads to this temporal paradox.
By the way, did anyone else notice that Ron Moore was cited in the credits as Visual Effects Supervisor? Wasn't he the writer who left the show because he saw that putting Berman and Braga in charge was stupid?
I don't think I've seen anyone who's seen all of Star Trek and doesn't think that Voyager was the worst of them all. It certainly doesn't compare to TNG and DS9, because those were thinking shows.
In TNG and DS9 (excluding the first few DS9 seasons) -- and now Andromeda, another great show -- most episodes consisted of a problem which was usually overcome by wit, intelligence, or skill from the crew. For instance, in TNG, the Borg were always these physically invincible enemies, and the crew had to come up with some intricate plot to overcome them. DS9 also made viewers think, usually using displomatic issues (the various alliances formed by the various races) or religious ones (the role of the prophets, as God or fate, affecting the lives of the characters). DS9's resolution of the many, many plot arcs in the last 7 episodes showed great planning and the great character development throughout the series, and it was a very fitting sendoff that ended the series in the proper spirit.
TNG and DS9 also relied heavily on continuity of certain plot arcs. In DS9, this is obvious. In TNG, it was a bit more subtle, but after rewatching most of the series and reading through the Star Trek Encyclopedia, I think that realizing the small way in which each and every episode was somehow connected to the larger themes makes the show seem even better. And the TNG and DS9 characters showed growth and development while still remaining consistent to what we knew of them.
Voyager abandoned all of this. The only concerted effort to maintain a story arc, with Voyager and the Kazons, was abandoned three seasons into the show. The rest of the series was just isolated episodes -- I could miss any one, and not care at all because it had no bearing on the larger outcome of the series. There were a few small attempts at bringing back some old characters toward the end, such as Lt. Carey and the aliens who blackmailed the Doctor in the next-to-last episode, but only fans who truly followed the series (especially online) noticed these links, and they were not at all important to the plot of the individual episodes.
Voyager also abandoned continuity by completely forgetting about their limits on shuttles and photon torpedoes. I found several sites online a while ago tracking those, and they lost the amount they started with many, many times over. Characters -- except the Doctor -- almost never developed, either, as an experience in one episode would be forgotten the next (this was fixed a bit in the last season).
Worst of all, Voyager was not a "thinking" show -- every episode was solved by what many call the "particle-of-the-week." Every time Voyager was in a seemingly inescapable predicament, they didn't come up with a witty solution like in TNG -- they just inverted a new particle, or pulse, or weapon. This formula was used in 90% of the shows, including the finale. Chris DiBona picked up on this a bit in his review -- the producers have made the Borg weak and feeble with the paradoxical Borg "Queen," weapons from the future, and a magical Borg-killing virus. Whatever happened to TNG's Best of Both Worlds, when one Borg Cube took out the entire Federation fleet? The Enterprise solved that with intelligent characters outwitting the Borg systems (Data "hacks" in), not powerful uber-weapons.
The largest continuity issue with the Voyager finale was that they were able to take a transwarp conduit right home to Earth -- if the Borg could do that, why didn't they transport right to Earth in The Best of Both Worlds? The Borg are no longer menacing; they're weak and stupid.
Voyager's finale also exploits the worst lapse of character yet. Janeway's always been a goodie-two-shoes since episode one, opting to follow the Prime Directive while her people suffer and die. Why is it that she's now willing to accept help from the future? If the character refuses every opportunity to get home with even the slightest repurcussions, why is it she's willing to accept such a blatant violation of her own principles in this episode? The future Janeway in this episode showed that she had changed and developed enough to accept this, but the past Janeway has totally abandoned her character.
Finally, the series has backed Star Trek into a corner. There's little chance of another future series, because Voyager keeps inventing magical technology to solve everything. Worst of all is Time Travel -- as soon as one race gets time travel, they can just go back and do what they like. If any race beats the Federation to it, they'll go back and take over history. And there are many races more advanced than the Federation; if not, the ships would face no challenges and the show would have no premise. If the Federation develops time travel, then there's nothing to stop their peaceful existence, and there's nothing left to drive Star Trek. That's why they need to go back in time now; I just wonder what they'll do after the new series.
Your statement about the legal driving age is incorrect. Here in New Jersey, where you used to have to be 17 to get a license, a new law has just gone into effect creating the "graduated license." When a student is 16, if they pass driver's ed and 6 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction, they can get a permit; but at 17, rather than getting a full license, they'll get a "provisional license." This means that they cannot drive between midnight and 5 am, and -- much worse -- they cannot drive with more than 1 person younger than them in the car. They can't get a full license until 18, and if they don't go through the test and behind-the-wheel training, each milestone is delayed between 6 months and one year.
As a 17 year-old who received a license about 8 months ago, before the new law went into effect, I cannot even begin to relay how utterly ridiculous this is. Since I have a car, I have to drive around friends and classmates all the time; this would not be possible with the new rules. And as a straight-A student, first in my class, I'm gravely insulted by the thought that I would not possess the same rights just because of my age, when (I don't want to be conceited, but this is necessary...) I'm a much safer driver and intellectually superior to a many, many people who I also see on the road. There are many people who probably can't handle a license, but discriminating by age is downright wrong.
Methinks this disclaimer should appear on every Katz article =)
Not to start a flamewar, but Katz's periodic sensationalist articles (with big words!) are not only ridiculous, but they're the last thing slashdot needs the editors are already under fire for bias in their articles (and article selection). ..
[Moderators: This is not a Troll; it is a correction of a significant factual error (whether intentional or not) by the previous poster.]
False. The Drake equation says the number of communicable civilizations in the galaxy is directly proportional to the amount of time we look.
Take the equation:
N = R * f(p) * n(e) * f(l) * f(i) * f(c) * L
L is the length of time that we search. Anyone with a background up through Pre-Algebra will realize that, since all the factors are multiplied together, if any one of the other factors is equal to zero, there can still be zero communicable civilizations no matter how long we look.
Furthermore, Drake did not specify a unit for the measurement of time -- and well he shouldn't, because the Drake equation isn't intended to evaluate out to an absolute answer (such as the previous posters' claim of one per year), but rather to serve as a general guideline showing the proportionality of all of these elements.
I'm not sure what point the parent post to this was trying to make nor how it got moderated up, but I do know that it is a completely misinterpretation of the Drake equation.
[Moderators: This is a rant, not a troll or flamebait. Please rate accordingly.]
So who can I contact to tell them that this rebate proposal sucks? It may be a slight bit more favorable for those who have already had problems with their drives, but look at what the "settlement" offers me:
Scott Noveck, as a member of the settlement class, you are entitled to your choice of one of the following rebates:
$10.00 toward the purchase of a Zip® 250 Drive; or $5.00 toward the purchase of a Zip® 100 Drive;
By definition, if I'm entitled to this rebate, I've already got a Zip drive. Why should I have to spend the money for a whole new drive to take advantage of the rebate?
or $25.00 toward the purchase of a Zip® 250 Drive and a 6-pack of Zip® 250 disks; or $12.50 toward the purchase of a Zip® 100 Drive and a 6-pack of Zip® 100 disks; or $10.00 toward the purchase of six Zip® 250 disks; or $5.00 toward the purchase of six Zip® 100 disks;
Same issue as above with the drives, and I've already got all the disks I need. Why can't I just get my rebate in cash? I'm not going to waste money buying more overpriced disks to take advantage of my rebate, either.
or $5.00 toward the purchase of a Pocket Zip® - PC Drive; or $17.50 toward the purchase of a Pocket Zip® - PC Drive and a 10 pack of Pocket Zip® media; or $10.00 toward the purchase of a Pocket Zip® - PC Drive and a 4 pack of Pocket Zip® media.
And these options, too, would require me to spend money on more Iomega products to take advantage of this settlement. In order for me to take advantage of these offers, I must buy a product that Iomega profits off of.
Ludicrousness aside, I have to admit that I'm very satisfied with my USB Zip drive. It's been very useful for my purposes, and I even purchased an Iomega CD-RW drive because of my satisfaction with the Zip drive and a nice low price. The only problem I've had is the AC Adaptor failing (and standard AC Adaptors don't fit), but after calling tech support I got it replaced in 5 days. I certainly don't deserve any of these rebates, because I have had no problems, but if I did deserve them, I'd be pretty pissed.
And the obligatory hide-the-karma-whoring comment: It may seem like a pretty neat idea, as this story's submitter thought, but look at the message this is sending -- people are so gullible that a massive advertising campaign can make or break a movie. Remember, many websites does not a good movie make. I, for one, will wait until I see the reviews. The last time I saw a movie based on advertising alone, I wound up watching Independence Day. Should have known better =)
This amazing work of Katz satire, published by Jamie exactly one year ago today, is far superior to this article. Read it and see why the Katzalator is so prominent among today's buzzword-crazed media.
[URL snipped. I don't feel like being moderated down because of someone else refering to a porn site. Read the parent post for the actual address if you like.]
You call that quality?!? Your lack of standards is deplorable! Where are the videos? Where's the live, 24-7-365, streaming models? How about the Hot and Horny Sorority Girls?
In fact, there isn't even any pornography on that site! It's merely links, mostly to family-oriented "unofficial fan pages" and such. Fellow slashdot readers, I urge you to restrain yourselves from visiting that sorry excuses for a pornographic webpage. I've seen Kids 'R' Us catalogs more revealing than that!
It's obvious that there's a very serious issue here. Should we allow ourselves to be satisfied by this disgraceful attempt to garner advertising revenues, then net porn will never achieve its full potential. Demand better!
Slashdot Mirror
This is not flaimbait -- I was just wondering what party she was affiliated with as I read through the article, and I thought others might want to know as well.
I can't think of any particular reason why the DMCA would have more support from any particular party, and since it was a verbal vote, I don't suppose we can find out. Hollywood may traditionally pay big bucks to Democrats, but Republicans are usually the ones associated with big businesses. Seems like the whole system is shot. Anyone care to venture a guess on whether any one group is favorable for tech issues, or if it's really just an individual issue?
Even though calls were coming in, no cell phone activity was picked up from Ground Zero. They therefore knew these were prank calls, and didn't risk lives in attempting a more aggressive dig to reach "survivors" in time.
I don't think I would have ever even imagined people doing something that low, had I not seen prank bomb threats called in the next day. Those people are the ones who deserve to be buried alive under thousands of tons of concrete.
The problem is depth. Triangulation typically works because there is only one unique point that is X units away from location A, Y units away from location B, and Z units from location C in two dimensions. I'd guess that you could set up more "noise makers", possibly at different heights, and this might work in theory -- but in practice, I think it's unfortunately too far-fetched.
Instead, they're only trying to get a very general location of the phones, to determine whether they're at "Ground Zero" or not. If not, they could potentially be used to find if somebody's at a hospital in a coma, or if they somehow got out of NYC in time and for some reason haven't been able to contact someone.
These phones aren't really being used to locate the survivors, they're being used to gain some clue as to whether a person is buried, or might have survived. It won't do a great job of locating people, but it will help discriminate if a person is "likely dead" or "might have gotten away."
I also heard that no actual calls have to be made to trace a phone's location, but I'd guess that it must at least be turned on and able to receive a call. And yes, as many posters have said, batteries are going to be a problem this many days later. But any more information on what happened to these people will surely be welcomed by their families.
Eben Moglen's Opinion
Mike Dooley's Opinion
Ronald Johnston's Opinion
The main article, by Paul Keegan
TI's first graphing calculators, the TI-85 and TI-82, were "hacked" so that assembly-language programs could be written and access the calculator hardware directly. The article here seems to imply that LegOS and other independent "hacks" could somehow damage LEGO Mindstorms' reputation if they don't function properly -- with the TI calculators, it also took very little effort to install these programs (mostly games), and they crashed the calculator _very_ often.
So what did TI do? Rather than trying to patch up the holes that allowed ASM programs to be run, they added full ASM program support to their next calculators, the TI-86 and TI-83. And they even documented the systems to encourage ASM programming -- and I know many, many people who bought calculators only to play games in class. This earned them a bundle.
Now, years later, this is paying off even more. I, a 17-year-old "hacker" (at least under the definition given in the article), and several others have been hired to write programs for them, and although I can't give details I'm certain that these will also make them a good deal more money.
So what's the moral of the story? As another poster suggested, LEGO should _embrace_ these "hackers" and hire them to improve their products. It seems that whatever "danger" these independent projects have on LEGO's reputation is greatly exaggerated -- people who understand enough to send their RCX a new OS are smart enough that they won't be blaming LEGO for any flaws in it (and as far as I know, there really aren't any flaws in LegOS). Almost no harm done, but great benefits for LEGO.
Even Businessweek's article says that these have helped sell tens of thousands more units. That is not in doubt. This is a case of corporate types fearing anything they don't understand, and instantly suing it. Instead they should consider the situation here and realize how much they can benefit from it!
Seriously, though, not being too well acquanited with Unix systems, I didn't know this. Still, though, it was a joke -- I didn't mean to get you so worked up! =(
If I had to pick someone who would be an authority figure on whether women are hurt or offended by porn, who would it be? Why, a prominent leader in the Women's Civil Rights movement, of course. How about Betty Friedan, author of The Feminist Mystique and co-founder of the National Organization for Women? Surely nobody can take an AP American History course in high school and not recognize the name; we studied her pretty prominently in my course. And she was not only not against pornography, she actually supported it.
These women are only devalued if they allow themselves to be. In the past, they were certainly undervalued, but that's why the Women's Suffrage and Women's Liberation movements came about. Were the situation as severe as people claim, this wouldn't be a few women who claim to be feminists fighting against porn -- it would be a genuine uprising, led by women's leaders. But it's not. Porn does not make women worthless.
For the unaware, Cliff was refering to John Stuart Mill, an 18th-century British philosopher who wrote of "the tyranny of the masses," or "the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling." Mill was noting that logic and reason were being subverted by emotional arguments that appealed to the masses. It's a elitist perspective, but IMHO it's a very valid observation.
This is exactly what's happening here -- as the Salon piece very elegantly expresses, there is no evidence that porn is harmful or that censorship is helpful. In fact, it seems to me only reasonable to think the opposite. I may be biased -- but I'm a 17-year-old who's seen plenty of porn (please don't take that the wrong way), but I'm not some psychotic, violent madman or a pedophiliac. In fact, I'm first in my high school class (finishing my Junior year within the week), I'm looking at top-teir colleges, and I spent my Tuesday night last week being a productive member of my community by lobbying against an issue before the local township council (I won't get into the details of that, but as long as I'm bragging, I think I'll note that I've also finally hit the karma cap =). To see people claim that I should have all kinds of mental problems is, to be, downright offensive. This categorization is wrong, but the majority of people believe it, and that is reflected by our society.
But I think that a lot of the Slashdot crowd sees the argument put forth in the Salon article -- that censorship does not protect children, but instead leaves them unable to cope with the realities of the outside world. (There's a very enlightened judge who ruled recently that children "cannot be raised in a bubble" -- see the ruling for more.) That's why I'm such a fan of peacefire's advocacy.
But I digress. The point is, Mill's quote is the perfect embodiment of the phenomenon we're seeing here -- that is, the popular view that children must be "protected." Unfortunately, as long as the masses remain uneducated, we're fighting a losing battle. I don't know what can be done to counteract this, but I sure it hope somebody else can come up with something, and soon -- before people like me are no longer able to access these things, and are no longer able to realize this common fallacy.
Once again, Kudos to Cliff for showing once again that occasionally the slashdot editors do make very insightful commentaries in and of themselves (especially Jamie, who's written many great anti-censorship articles). Hopefully we've enlightened another person or two today.
The leap year rules might be adjusted to compensate every 4000 years, or the days might be allowed to accumulate, as you suggested. Or there might be an entirely different Calendar in use. But since we don't know, it wouldn't be a good idea to try to get one of those dates, because those are much less likely to be correct.
It should work as follows:
2 + (8*26)/10 + 73 + 73/4 + 19/4 - 2*19
= 2 + 208/10 + 73 + 18 + 4 - 38
= 2 + 20 + 73 + 18 + 4 - 38
= 79 % 7 = 2 -> Monday
(moderators: this isn't flamebait or a troll, it's just pointing out how easy it is to fool others into moderating one's post up undeservedly. You might even call it insightful =)
The algorithm uses the Gregorian Calendar. Most countries did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until October 15, 1582, and therefore it is inaccurate for any date before that. The major exception is Great Britian which, due to the feud between the Catholic and Anglican Churches, did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until September 14, 1752.
This means that the "Doomsday"'s before 1583 are all wrong everywhere, and those before 1753 are wrong in Great Britian.
In addition, the Gregorian Calendar only considers Leap Year exceptions on a 400-year cycle, so in the year 4092 it will have drifted off by one full day. Therefore, this algorithm should not be used for any date past December 31, 4091.
In my opinion, the Doomsday algorithm isn't even the best algorithm for this job. I prefer Zeller's Algorithm, for a which a good description can be found at http://www.columbia.edu/ ~cs1005/HW03.html .
Zeller's Algorithm was first proposed by Chr. Zeller, in 1883 -- long before computers. It also allows one to find the day of week for a date using only integer division, and thus can be done easily by hand. It's much simpler than the Doomsday Algorithm appears to be.
I can't post it here correctly due to formatting limitations, but it can be found at the above lined page. It's slightly harder to memorize, but simpler to use (and program -- only took me a few minutes).
I wanted at least Janeway to be killed off in the Voyager finale (how anyone like her after seven seasons of bad decisions?), or, even better, the entire ship should have been destroyed. It would have been a powerful end to the series, and bring some finality to a setting we won't see for a long time to come (since the next series will be in the past). Voyager has also always been ridiculously optimistic; a little realism would be nice, especially when the series won't have any movies. This ending was just too happy and perfect.
DS9 was taken by surprise? DS9 was always expected to have 7 seasons, and it did. The finale wasn't anything thrown together; it was a seven-episode, well-planned arc. I find your post hard to believe. . . are you just another troll showing that posters can be wrong, but sound right, and be modded up, or do you have some serious evidence of this?
I respectfully disagree -- I really liked Wesley Crusher; I thought that the child genius who, at first, is never given a chance to show his abilities (yet later saves the ship many times) is a character I can relate to (and he reminds me of Spiderman =). The Black Ooze may not have been the best idea, but the idea of Tasha Yar being killed by a force beyond our control for no reason was revisited many times as the characters realized life isn't fair.
After the second viewing, I feel even more strongly that the finale brings out the worst in the series. It relies entirely on inventing all-powerful future technology while abandoning Janeway's (already horrible) character. Let's count the number of things fabricated to make this episode possible: tachyon immunizations, anti-tachyon pulses to close temporal rifts, Klingon time travel technology, retractable armor for ships (which mysteriously malfunctions at one point, so that the future Harry Kim must help Janeway), transphasic torpedos (while Voyager used its supposed allotment of 32 torpedoes in the first season alone), transwarp hubs, nueral interfaces, a quick allusion to future stealth technology, Borg adaptations against various aforementioned technology, a borg-killing virus, and the ability to hide inside Borg spheres. Am I still missing anything? Oh, at the last second they realize they can destroy the hub and get home, with no explanation, overcoming another plot obstacle. I bet that if I watch it again, I'll find more.
And then there's Janeway. The future Janeway is great - devious and cunning, and she appears to have been truly scared and changed by her experiences. On the other hand, the present Janeway is an entirely different person than she was in the beginning of the series -- she abandons the Temporal Prime Directive, after numerous occasions in which she refused to allow the ship to get home because of Prime Directive issues. I sure hope that she gets Court Marshalled and jailed when she gets back (anyone who saw the last Captain Braxton time travel episode: "You are hereby placed under arrest for crimes you will commit"). It's completely, 100% out of character for her to do these acts, let alone for her to accept Admiral Janeway as really being a future version of herself. She's too damn stubborn to listen to anyone else.
Not to mention the inherent time travel issue that comes up all the time and is never explained: now that Janeway's home, you can be sure that Starfleet will make sure she can't try to go back in time again. If so, then she won't guide the crew home, and we'll revert to the alternate future. In that one, Janeway does help the crew, and we go to the "real" future, which then brings us to the alternate future again. . . etc, etc, etc. This issue comes up in many episodes, where the actual time travel negates the reason for time travel in the future, which leads to this temporal paradox.
By the way, did anyone else notice that Ron Moore was cited in the credits as Visual Effects Supervisor? Wasn't he the writer who left the show because he saw that putting Berman and Braga in charge was stupid?
In TNG and DS9 (excluding the first few DS9 seasons) -- and now Andromeda, another great show -- most episodes consisted of a problem which was usually overcome by wit, intelligence, or skill from the crew. For instance, in TNG, the Borg were always these physically invincible enemies, and the crew had to come up with some intricate plot to overcome them. DS9 also made viewers think, usually using displomatic issues (the various alliances formed by the various races) or religious ones (the role of the prophets, as God or fate, affecting the lives of the characters). DS9's resolution of the many, many plot arcs in the last 7 episodes showed great planning and the great character development throughout the series, and it was a very fitting sendoff that ended the series in the proper spirit.
TNG and DS9 also relied heavily on continuity of certain plot arcs. In DS9, this is obvious. In TNG, it was a bit more subtle, but after rewatching most of the series and reading through the Star Trek Encyclopedia, I think that realizing the small way in which each and every episode was somehow connected to the larger themes makes the show seem even better. And the TNG and DS9 characters showed growth and development while still remaining consistent to what we knew of them.
Voyager abandoned all of this. The only concerted effort to maintain a story arc, with Voyager and the Kazons, was abandoned three seasons into the show. The rest of the series was just isolated episodes -- I could miss any one, and not care at all because it had no bearing on the larger outcome of the series. There were a few small attempts at bringing back some old characters toward the end, such as Lt. Carey and the aliens who blackmailed the Doctor in the next-to-last episode, but only fans who truly followed the series (especially online) noticed these links, and they were not at all important to the plot of the individual episodes.
Voyager also abandoned continuity by completely forgetting about their limits on shuttles and photon torpedoes. I found several sites online a while ago tracking those, and they lost the amount they started with many, many times over. Characters -- except the Doctor -- almost never developed, either, as an experience in one episode would be forgotten the next (this was fixed a bit in the last season).
Worst of all, Voyager was not a "thinking" show -- every episode was solved by what many call the "particle-of-the-week." Every time Voyager was in a seemingly inescapable predicament, they didn't come up with a witty solution like in TNG -- they just inverted a new particle, or pulse, or weapon. This formula was used in 90% of the shows, including the finale. Chris DiBona picked up on this a bit in his review -- the producers have made the Borg weak and feeble with the paradoxical Borg "Queen," weapons from the future, and a magical Borg-killing virus. Whatever happened to TNG's Best of Both Worlds, when one Borg Cube took out the entire Federation fleet? The Enterprise solved that with intelligent characters outwitting the Borg systems (Data "hacks" in), not powerful uber-weapons.
The largest continuity issue with the Voyager finale was that they were able to take a transwarp conduit right home to Earth -- if the Borg could do that, why didn't they transport right to Earth in The Best of Both Worlds? The Borg are no longer menacing; they're weak and stupid.
Voyager's finale also exploits the worst lapse of character yet. Janeway's always been a goodie-two-shoes since episode one, opting to follow the Prime Directive while her people suffer and die. Why is it that she's now willing to accept help from the future? If the character refuses every opportunity to get home with even the slightest repurcussions, why is it she's willing to accept such a blatant violation of her own principles in this episode? The future Janeway in this episode showed that she had changed and developed enough to accept this, but the past Janeway has totally abandoned her character. Finally, the series has backed Star Trek into a corner. There's little chance of another future series, because Voyager keeps inventing magical technology to solve everything. Worst of all is Time Travel -- as soon as one race gets time travel, they can just go back and do what they like. If any race beats the Federation to it, they'll go back and take over history. And there are many races more advanced than the Federation; if not, the ships would face no challenges and the show would have no premise. If the Federation develops time travel, then there's nothing to stop their peaceful existence, and there's nothing left to drive Star Trek. That's why they need to go back in time now; I just wonder what they'll do after the new series.
As a 17 year-old who received a license about 8 months ago, before the new law went into effect, I cannot even begin to relay how utterly ridiculous this is. Since I have a car, I have to drive around friends and classmates all the time; this would not be possible with the new rules. And as a straight-A student, first in my class, I'm gravely insulted by the thought that I would not possess the same rights just because of my age, when (I don't want to be conceited, but this is necessary...) I'm a much safer driver and intellectually superior to a many, many people who I also see on the road. There are many people who probably can't handle a license, but discriminating by age is downright wrong.
Not to start a flamewar, but Katz's periodic sensationalist articles (with big words!) are not only ridiculous, but they're the last thing slashdot needs the editors are already under fire for bias in their articles (and article selection). . .
False. The Drake equation says the number of communicable civilizations in the galaxy is directly proportional to the amount of time we look.
Take the equation:
L is the length of time that we search. Anyone with a background up through Pre-Algebra will realize that, since all the factors are multiplied together, if any one of the other factors is equal to zero, there can still be zero communicable civilizations no matter how long we look.Furthermore, Drake did not specify a unit for the measurement of time -- and well he shouldn't, because the Drake equation isn't intended to evaluate out to an absolute answer (such as the previous posters' claim of one per year), but rather to serve as a general guideline showing the proportionality of all of these elements.
I'm not sure what point the parent post to this was trying to make nor how it got moderated up, but I do know that it is a completely misinterpretation of the Drake equation.
So who can I contact to tell them that this rebate proposal sucks? It may be a slight bit more favorable for those who have already had problems with their drives, but look at what the "settlement" offers me:
By definition, if I'm entitled to this rebate, I've already got a Zip drive. Why should I have to spend the money for a whole new drive to take advantage of the rebate? Same issue as above with the drives, and I've already got all the disks I need. Why can't I just get my rebate in cash? I'm not going to waste money buying more overpriced disks to take advantage of my rebate, either. And these options, too, would require me to spend money on more Iomega products to take advantage of this settlement. In order for me to take advantage of these offers, I must buy a product that Iomega profits off of.Ludicrousness aside, I have to admit that I'm very satisfied with my USB Zip drive. It's been very useful for my purposes, and I even purchased an Iomega CD-RW drive because of my satisfaction with the Zip drive and a nice low price. The only problem I've had is the AC Adaptor failing (and standard AC Adaptors don't fit), but after calling tech support I got it replaced in 5 days. I certainly don't deserve any of these rebates, because I have had no problems, but if I did deserve them, I'd be pretty pissed.
NO EXPENSE SPARED WITH OUTRAGEOUS PROMOTION OF 'AI'
And the obligatory hide-the-karma-whoring comment: It may seem like a pretty neat idea, as this story's submitter thought, but look at the message this is sending -- people are so gullible that a massive advertising campaign can make or break a movie. Remember, many websites does not a good movie make. I, for one, will wait until I see the reviews. The last time I saw a movie based on advertising alone, I wound up watching Independence Day. Should have known better =)
This amazing work of Katz satire, published by Jamie exactly one year ago today, is far superior to this article. Read it and see why the Katzalator is so prominent among today's buzzword-crazed media.
You call that quality?!? Your lack of standards is deplorable! Where are the videos? Where's the live, 24-7-365, streaming models? How about the Hot and Horny Sorority Girls?
In fact, there isn't even any pornography on that site! It's merely links, mostly to family-oriented "unofficial fan pages" and such. Fellow slashdot readers, I urge you to restrain yourselves from visiting that sorry excuses for a pornographic webpage. I've seen Kids 'R' Us catalogs more revealing than that!
It's obvious that there's a very serious issue here. Should we allow ourselves to be satisfied by this disgraceful attempt to garner advertising revenues, then net porn will never achieve its full potential. Demand better!