The irritating thing about this (and laws like the SSSA-whatever)
is that they do little to actually provide protection...
it's as if you lived in glass houses, and _pretended_ that it was brick...
but not shatter the illusion, you never actually knocked
on the walls very hard.(or better yet,
with those paper-walls in some houses)
Law is, in general, little more than the collective agreement of a group of people.
In any large group, deviations become harder to catch,
and either the law fragment (ie separate nations, etc),
or it becomes enforced (police, whatnot).
While does work, there are limitations to what
we can do in the nature of the medium.
A law can't directly enforce itself on someone who ignores it.
If someone else decides to walk through
the glass walls of your house and steal your safe... you're screwed.
Once you give away your privacy,
you give away the all things that separated you as an individual from the rest of the world...
you are less yourself,
and more the one who lies in judgement of your thoughts.
Interesting strategy Via's pursuing...
while I'm sure it will just end in Intel and Via
coming to a mutal licensing agreement, if it does
actually go to court(s), Via's pursuing it in
three separate avenues, and if they win in just
one of them, they've hurt intel severely.
I'm sure Intel is quite reliant on sales and
resources those three (US, England, Thailand).
On the other hand, if Intel wins, it's of relatively
less inconvience for VIA, they
just have to retool some things in their chipset
(where Intel's patents are laying claim),
but if Via wins in just one place, Intel
would have to retool the P4 itself, thanks
to the S3 patents. A much bigger job.
<begin semiunrelated rant>
Sigh. Why don't they just merge,
then get bought up by AOL/TW,
and then have complete vertical integration.
Next up: company script!
IANAPNWAEB (I am not, and probably never was an engineer, but...)
While some of this guy's interview reminds me
of psuedo science from things like the time cube,
I think their underlying principle is similar to that of a Tesla coil.
Tesla coils (for those who don't know) are able to generate huge
amounts of electricity from a small amount (yes, there are tradeoffs...
loss of amperage for one, but anyways) by the same principle
of oscillation: imagine you're pushing a friend in a swingset...
while it's a lot of effort for _them_ to push themselves so that
they swing up really high, all _you_ have to do is push a little with
your pinky, each time they hit the highest point in their swing
(ie, the resonance frequency).
Tesla coils use this idea to
generate immense arcs of electricity from a small amount, using
the small drive voltage to "push" the larger current which
is being generated in the circuit.
Sort of.
The end effect of this principle, whether
in coil or canoe, is that you still doing
all the work, it's just that it's amortized,
your work cumulatively builds upon the last...
it's not exactly breaking themodynamics,
it's just raising your mechanical efficientcy
somewhat nicely.
Still... this looks like an interesting idea,
though I really hope the man realizes there's
no water in outerspace... hopefully,
the Wired guys just took him out of context.
There was something else I was going to say...
oh yeah... I strongly encourage everyone
to go on the web to check for technical
accuracy of what I just said... I have a
generalist's idea of what I'm talking about.
One scheme I heard of (I don't use it:) )
is a semi-Cryptic mnemonic system:
it's based off an old program called
Alien Names, which would generate
scifi-ish sounding names out of english letters.
They were designed around english phonetics,
so you could pronouce them, but they
were still pretty much random line noise.
Strangley enough, it works quite well...
Though I only saw it used in one place,
when I was setting up some free shell accounts
someone gave my HS, their default password
was 'qedovako', which I _still_ haven't forgotten.
Yes, that's the password. If they haven't changed
it by now, they deserve what they get.
(why didn't _I_ change it?
prohibited by School Officials. Gotta love'em.)
anyways, just wanted to share that scheme.
Me, I use a chant... say a word,
and chant a series of numbers that fit the word's
intonation. All I have to remember is the word,
intersperse the numbers.
I'm not going to debate whether or not
this patent is valid. Tivo certainly spawned
this industry, they do deserve some credit.
If they use this patent to protect themselves
rather than stifle competition, I'm all for it.
That's what they were intended for.
However, (hehe), if they do start suing people,
then they're probably going to end up suing...
Microsoft, and Microsoft's Ultimate TV I've been
seeing. It does pretty much the same thing.
In that event, either they get a huge settlement
from Microsoft, they lose and it draws more judicial attention to the area of bad patents.
However, I'm an optimist.
Most likely, some horrible evil corporate
outcome will result, the scope of which
I can't bring myself to think of.
Oh well.
They forgot to mention another linux dvd program
called VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org)
works on my system, does css (i think),
and has subtitles.
get a pretty decent framerate too.
I saw it annouced over on freshmeat,
but never see anything mentioned about it.
just though I'd post a link.
Okay, aside from finding ways to
bypass all the Orwellian crap that
seems to be intercepting almost
every a/v medium out there, is this
actually going to become a global
phenomenon? In other words,
are these TVs (and the copy-protected
harddrives) going to go everwhere
the world over?
and are all these programs going
to go "encrypted" the world
over (I know it's not necessarily
encryption... but read the list
of properties: without "breaking" it,
it might as well be encrypted)?
If not, then where is there going
to be some non-brain damaged
digital a/v equipment?
And if so, how does the MPAA/RIAA/Hollywood/
whatever/whoever intend to blanket
the whole world with this,
and the others that have been posted
to slashdot?
And how did they get this much power?
GAH.
makes me want to move to...
somewhere else. or more importantly,
somewhen else.
technically, it's not "illegal",
just "impossible" w/o breaking the DMCA.
It's like someone saying "we can't
legally stop you from reading a book,
but oh, by the way, we've padlocked
all of them."
(i know, the analogie's not that good...
i'm tired).
worse than this though,
something no one seems to have mentioned:
if these new hd's are incompatible
with the old ones, even over a network,
even with "normal" files,
does that mean floppies will have to
be re-done also?
so how does that work?
the way I see it,
either this would make all the old
floppies I have useless....
or they rig something where the keys
are stored on disk...
but that's stupid, as ANYONE
could easily grab them.
Eitherway, the emperor only have clothes
once there are _no_ children around
to say otherwise.
But since there are children now,
and they can't kill all of them...
I don't see how they can truly
protect this datastream,
no matter how scrambled it is.
I agree with the other post
that AmigaBasic was (relatively)
crap... especially the upper
limit on program size,
which was hard coded.
However... to offer a replacement
for your list:
ARexx was the "replacement"
for AmigaBasic,
put in (I think) in Amiga 2.1.
Personally,
I would have put in up there in
a list of any of the architectural
of software offerings
that the Amiga had...
not that one could write huge programs
with it (although I did write some arcade
games in it and nothing else),
but it went hand in hand with the
integration of the Amiga...
back in the day,
almost _every_ program came
complete with an ARexx 'port,'
and you could automate the program
via the use of scripts.
Furthermore, you could automate
multiple programs to work together
in a script.
It allowed some of the most amazing
things to be done with some simple
programming...
I would kill for a similar (perl?)
interface scheme for controlling
the gimp, gnome, etc...
(I know, gimp's already got scripting,
but ARexx scripts could operate as daemons,
which could communicate with programs
in the system, not just scripts run
_by_ the program).
It seemed that way to me too,
that the actors were more stage than screen.
But in a way, I think this is appropriate.
This is, after all, and _adaptation_ of the book,
they had to make choices.
David Lynch's adaptation focused more on
the internal thoughts of the character,
and the mystical ascpects of the story. Hence one frequent
complaint about the movie, that the voice overs
were in the way ( I don't agree, I think they
were perfect).
This one, though, seems more like a stage play,
filmed for TV. As I though, and as many
others have commented, it was very
Shakespearian (sp?) in it's nature:
The asides, such as the Baron's after Hewey's death.
For a stage play, then, they need stage actors.
In a way, it explains the absense of the voice-overs, for they aren't appropriate to the
medium of a play. Asides, and longer
monologue conversations are.
Hence, new dialgoue was created,
to supplant the lost internal thoughts.
As a movie, I'm not sure if I liked this one.
It seems dry, distant, removed from the action.
Very little of the mysticism of the book and Lynch's version comes through. The scene with
the gom-jabbar was especially flat.
On the other hand, I find that if I actually
try to think of this as a play,
and not as a simply movie, many of the
choices make sense.
If you were watching this in a theatre,
that scene would have played out wonderfully.
All in all, I think this was a descision that
they made by choice: look at the couplets
at the end of each scene, the asides,
the monologues, and the "Dune" image appearing
at the beginning... the style that was done in
reminded me in a way of the curtain
coming back up for the next act.
It is my hope that it will pick up,
now that they are done with the major
exposition part.
Did I have a point?
Nah.
-Slackergod,
failing to worship even myself since 1980.
That gives me an idea...
with such a huge storage medium,
what are the chances of actually getting such a thing?
Imagine a full LIBRARY on a disc...
selling say all the works of a given feild
up to that time (like EE)...
with maybe a little librarian-bot to search it for you. (okay, I stole that from Snow Crash).
Still... the info-junkie within me is reduced
to violent jitters at the idea.
Anyone know a way this could be done legally?
I know that direct publishing of such a thing would violate copyright laws of all the
majors copyright houses... there any way around
this?
Is it possible to win almost every time?
Not exactly...
Back in high school, for a math project, I developed
an algorithm to "play" a game of minesweeper.
Bascially, it maintained a large set of boolean equations,
each variable reprenting a square. It first did a brute force on the system.
If only one solution came up, it applied it. This actually did pretty well,
all things considered.
What I also had it do was then calculate the probabilities for
each square... and the probability of being right by random choice.
It then choose the most probable square, and prayed.
For excessively small boards, under 10x10 and/or high mine density,
it didn't do so well. For larger boards, however,
it did much better. I think it was around 75%-80%
sucessful at winning a game.
So, to answer your question... by my algorithm, 30%-ish of the
games are won simply by blind luck.
I'm not sure how this relates to P=NP. It would be kinda funny if my algorthm
was actually applicable to that, but I don't think it is.
On the other hand, it wasn't that sophisticated an
algorithm... I don't remember everything that clearly,
but I think I had a slightly better one that I never fully developed.
I've just created a new device,
I call it the:Key:board.
This wonderful device is designed to faciliate
the translation of urls on paper into ASCII
character codes. To prove it's MINE, I've
rearranged the 'q' and 'w' keys, and
all output has been xor'ed with 0xf0.
By using any other method except my proprietary
:Keyboard:Reader:Software,
you are violating my god-given right to implement
my buisness plan, as well as my IP.
But don't worry, I'm not going to go after
you. I'm going to go after all the companies
who are facilitating URL lookups via my competitors...
I'm suing google, altavista, infind, msn, yahoo....
By gummy, I'm gonna be rich!
(for the humour impaired, that was a JOKE!)
On another note, while I am getting tired
of the cuecat articles, this one seemed particularly funny...
To respond to Mancide's question,
I think DC has gotten caught up in the
Napster-style fever that's sweeping the
corporate nation: Shoot^H^H^H^H^H sue the messenger!
Or in particular...
If someone provides a service, that could in some
way be used against your 'rights',
sue them, cause it would be to hard to sue the individuals.
It's a sad trend in modern legal affairs:
Look at older laws, such as the old copyright laws...
If you didn't pursue each individual, you lost it...
the idea being, if things got to the point that
you _couldn't_ feasably sue all the violators,
then the can of worms had been open too long,
you had been lax in your actions,
and deserved what you got.
Nowadays, it's more law-by-coverage:
sue _everyone_, make _everything_ in a category
illegal. Then you control the field.
Sadly, since our "justice" system is based
on legal precendent, not common sense,
(if we make a mistake, we're gonna stick with it!),
in(s)ane shit like this is bound to create
precedent sooner or later.
BTW, my christmas tree this year...
it'll be lit up by a daisy chain
of somethings glowing pretty red,
with ps2 cords on them.
It seems to me that a geek house,
or as we refer to it, a house o' l33t,
just sort of happens...
Two of us moved into an apartment, networked 2 computers.
Some friends moved in, brought more equipment...
with each addition, it grew, in an organic fashion.
Now cat 5 runs throughout the entire apartment, to every corner.
The moral is, don't set _out_ to make a geek house, it will come to you eventually,
just build it up peice by peice, and one day you'll notice: damn this place is sweet.
I'm going to die from EM radiation, and I _like it_.
(This is a response to numerous other replies on this thread) MP3's, whether or not they have a true 'header' such as an ID3v2 tag, are a streaming format by nature. The mp3 itself is composed of individual frames, each of which is less than 1/50th of a second long. For VBR encoding, the encoding changes from frame to frame. The frames can be easily identified, even in a hex editor... they all begin with a 'sync' signal, being FFFX, byte aligned. Once you figure out how long the frame is, from the data in the frame's header, it's very easy to cut out parts frame by frame. here's some perl code I wrote a while back for parsing an mp3 apart... I used it to create a simple mp3 editor. (Can't find that right now). Also, for those interested, you might want to go to ID3.org, which is where I got most of my info.
Just so this response stays on topic (hahaha), I don't see how they could do this without making it REALLY easy to strip them, unless the ads were overlayed on top of the audio data itself. In that case, some sort of stripper (like the karoke plugins for XMMS) out to be able to strip out the data. In any case, as long as I can strip them out, I love this idea... just like banner ads, they make people money, and don't bother me at all. If anyone gets an actual example of such an mp3, please post it here (or atleast email it to me!). -Slackergod
The beauty of this whole message (and the above addendum:) is that if enough people did this, the internet _would_ actually clean up for 1 day. Of course, how many million suckers^H^H^H^Hpeople would that require? Then, I look around me... I think we've got enough.
Maybe I'm just a weirdo, some old-fashioned throwback to days long gone by, (then again, I'm just 19), but the lady's "question" of "how are you going to get the image of porn out of my child's mind?" irritates me.
Her implication was that, obvious a library attendant couldn't be expected to watch every child. Obviously the child can't do it themselves. So who could, but CensorWare!
Well, one thing my parents have told me is that a parent's job is to be resonsible for their children under the children can be responsible for themselves in that situtation. Seems to me, instead of a computer-nanny (isn't some censorware prog. called that?) as the conclusion, the inescapable conclusion I come to is that one of the child PARENTS needs to be watching them.
That is what a parent is for, right? The public library is NOT a day-care service. Maybe some libraries offer this, but certainly that is something different. Gah!
Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, but one of the main things wrong with modern society is our belief in our "right to freedom", while ignoring the accompanying responsibilities. Sure, you could argue a specific case might have extenuating circumstances, but that's a _specific_ case, it should not be used to cause a broad determination for ALL cases. If that logic worked in my math class, the homework would be much easier.
Like you said, modern DSP's can do watermarking in real time. Since these (supposedly) can only be played on a new type of CD player, let the watermark be encrypted into the CDDA stream _by_ the drive, with it's serial number, everytime you play an audio track through it. (This could even work with older CD in the new drive). Then, when they find a pirated mp3, get the watermark, track sales records, find the drive that played it, and find the pirate (or at least the original owner of the drive). Sorta like the PIII serial numbers.
(RANT) Gah! If any of this has a grain of truth, I'm NEVER letting go of my old CDROM drive. Curse their copy-protected foulness! (/RANT)
better yet, if the authors could please just tar up the script and its data files, let us download it... probably less wear on their server (and then some mirrors could go up).
I would offer to be a mirror, but @HOME would get REALLY pissed.
All the foods you mention were directed by humans, but this is refering to the creation by humans of a food item (sure, they're re-using genes, but still...) I'll use a math analogy... Think of all the genes, etc., vectors. The sum combination of these is a vector space. All directed evolution stays (relatively) in this space, and can be accounted for.
This means that for the most part, no mutation will occur which is SO drastic that the environment cannot address it's effect, and form a balance.
But consider GE: it basically amount to, (in the math analogy) throwing in a vector parallel to all the others. It exists outside the vector space, and all equations that held true for that space may, or may not, get f***ed. (sorry for the language). Likewise, GE may or may not harm the environment. But it may or may not be equipped to handle it, unlike in the above example. If it can't, it will destruct.
So certainly, directed evolution is different than GE in this sense, but what is wrong with GE, if it helps? Nothing, I would say, except that if the ecosystem can't quite deal with it, it can only hurt in the long run. Maybe it can do some good, but almost all GE, such as Monsanto's, is financially motivated, not "for the good of all", as is almost all research nowdays (at least indirectly).
I have nothing against strawberries, but how about the GE that resist certain pesticides, etc? One could ask the converse: why not use naturally-based pesticides, which they are already immune to? The answer is (kinda) obviously money. And anyway, the insects aren't there to eat everything, they are there to _regulate the strawberries_.
Sigh...rant I about more?... yes...
One more thing, the idea of a Terminator Gene, and the implications of it and cross-pollination which have been mentioned earlier in the comments: It seems to me that the implications of such seem to parallel the idea of a computer virus sent to destroy competeing software... oh, I don't know, to sum things up: 1. I just don't like it. 2. I'm not happy here (earth). No other options though.
Happy Y2K, 2038, etc... how we do love our apocalypses.
Don't want to make a long argument, or delve into a philosophical discourse, but uh...
I think what he was trying to point out was that the modern trend towards 'new is better, unless proven otherwise' should not be applied quite as often as 'new may be good, all sides should be considered'. However, in today's financially-motivated world, 'new' is almost always marketed, shoved down our throats, and profitted from before it's long term effects are known.
Regarding the food chain, sure humans are the most powerful creatures on this planet, (with our technology), and we have used that to arrive at the top of the food chain. But that in no way means we belong there, or at least should act like we are. A chain (in this context) implies an interdepedant network of resources and creatures, all caught in a (delicate?) balance.
But we act as if the world exists as a shopping market, picking and choosing, without concern for the impact... we live for the moment, concerned for our lives _at this time_. Sure, our quality of life is better now, you say: medicines, food, housing, etc. But, this comes at a price: cancer, over-eating, man-made poisons (the natural ones CAN/WILL be recycled), and we slowly lose touch with how we affect our environment, and vice versa.
Sure, maybe quality of life seems better now, but again, at what cost? If I rememeber my old Anthropology classses, Hunter-Gatherers in those old 'cave-man' times, worked gathering around 15 hours a week. Sure, there were downsides, it all depends on what you value in life.
Slashdot Mirror
their computor has no speall chekor.
Have No Fear, Citizen!
The Office of Homeland Security will protect you!
(hey buddy, take a load off,
look over there... A terrorist!)
Of course he does dear, now be quiet.
But he doesn't!
He has clothes for as long as we say he has clothes, so say he has clothes, and be quiet.
The irritating thing about this (and laws like the SSSA-whatever)
is that they do little to actually provide protection...
it's as if you lived in glass houses, and _pretended_ that it was brick...
but not shatter the illusion, you never actually knocked
on the walls very hard.(or better yet,
with those paper-walls in some houses)
Law is, in general, little more than the collective agreement of a group of people.
In any large group, deviations become harder to catch,
and either the law fragment (ie separate nations, etc),
or it becomes enforced (police, whatnot).
While does work, there are limitations to what
we can do in the nature of the medium.
A law can't directly enforce itself on someone who ignores it.
If someone else decides to walk through
the glass walls of your house and steal your safe... you're screwed.
Once you give away your privacy,
you give away the all things that separated you as an individual from the rest of the world...
you are less yourself,
and more the one who lies in judgement of your thoughts.
or some such.
-Slackergod
Interesting strategy Via's pursuing...
while I'm sure it will just end in Intel and Via
coming to a mutal licensing agreement, if it does
actually go to court(s), Via's pursuing it in
three separate avenues, and if they win in just
one of them, they've hurt intel severely.
I'm sure Intel is quite reliant on sales and
resources those three (US, England, Thailand).
On the other hand, if Intel wins, it's of relatively
less inconvience for VIA, they
just have to retool some things in their chipset
(where Intel's patents are laying claim),
but if Via wins in just one place, Intel
would have to retool the P4 itself, thanks
to the S3 patents. A much bigger job.
<begin semiunrelated rant>
Sigh. Why don't they just merge,
then get bought up by AOL/TW,
and then have complete vertical integration.
Next up: company script!
</the rant shall never end>
-Slackergod
IANAPNWAEB (I am not, and probably never was an engineer, but...)
While some of this guy's interview reminds me
of psuedo science from things like the time cube,
I think their underlying principle is similar to that of a Tesla coil.
Tesla coils (for those who don't know) are able to generate huge
amounts of electricity from a small amount (yes, there are tradeoffs...
loss of amperage for one, but anyways) by the same principle
of oscillation: imagine you're pushing a friend in a swingset...
while it's a lot of effort for _them_ to push themselves so that
they swing up really high, all _you_ have to do is push a little with
your pinky, each time they hit the highest point in their swing
(ie, the resonance frequency).
Tesla coils use this idea to
generate immense arcs of electricity from a small amount, using
the small drive voltage to "push" the larger current which
is being generated in the circuit.
Sort of.
The end effect of this principle, whether
in coil or canoe, is that you still doing
all the work, it's just that it's amortized,
your work cumulatively builds upon the last...
it's not exactly breaking themodynamics,
it's just raising your mechanical efficientcy
somewhat nicely.
Still... this looks like an interesting idea,
though I really hope the man realizes there's
no water in outerspace... hopefully,
the Wired guys just took him out of context.
There was something else I was going to say...
oh yeah... I strongly encourage everyone
to go on the web to check for technical
accuracy of what I just said... I have a
generalist's idea of what I'm talking about.
-Slackergod
One scheme I heard of (I don't use it :) )
is a semi-Cryptic mnemonic system:
it's based off an old program called
Alien Names, which would generate
scifi-ish sounding names out of english letters.
They were designed around english phonetics,
so you could pronouce them, but they
were still pretty much random line noise.
Strangley enough, it works quite well...
Though I only saw it used in one place,
when I was setting up some free shell accounts
someone gave my HS, their default password
was 'qedovako', which I _still_ haven't forgotten.
Yes, that's the password. If they haven't changed
it by now, they deserve what they get.
(why didn't _I_ change it?
prohibited by School Officials. Gotta love'em.)
anyways, just wanted to share that scheme.
Me, I use a chant... say a word,
and chant a series of numbers that fit the word's
intonation. All I have to remember is the word,
intersperse the numbers.
-Slackergod
I'm not going to debate whether or not
this patent is valid. Tivo certainly spawned
this industry, they do deserve some credit.
If they use this patent to protect themselves
rather than stifle competition, I'm all for it.
That's what they were intended for.
However, (hehe), if they do start suing people,
then they're probably going to end up suing...
Microsoft, and Microsoft's Ultimate TV I've been
seeing. It does pretty much the same thing.
In that event, either they get a huge settlement
from Microsoft, they lose and it draws more judicial attention to the area of bad patents.
However, I'm an optimist.
Most likely, some horrible evil corporate
outcome will result, the scope of which
I can't bring myself to think of.
Oh well.
Slackergod out.
They forgot to mention another linux dvd program
called VideoLAN (http://www.videolan.org)
works on my system, does css (i think),
and has subtitles. get a pretty decent framerate too.
I saw it annouced over on freshmeat,
but never see anything mentioned about it.
just though I'd post a link.
-Slackergod
Okay, aside from finding ways to
bypass all the Orwellian crap that
seems to be intercepting almost
every a/v medium out there, is this
actually going to become a global
phenomenon? In other words,
are these TVs (and the copy-protected
harddrives) going to go everwhere
the world over?
and are all these programs going
to go "encrypted" the world
over (I know it's not necessarily
encryption... but read the list
of properties: without "breaking" it,
it might as well be encrypted)?
If not, then where is there going
to be some non-brain damaged
digital a/v equipment?
And if so, how does the MPAA/RIAA/Hollywood/
whatever/whoever intend to blanket
the whole world with this,
and the others that have been posted
to slashdot?
And how did they get this much power?
GAH.
makes me want to move to...
somewhere else. or more importantly,
somewhen else.
-Slackergod.
technically, it's not "illegal",
just "impossible" w/o breaking the DMCA.
It's like someone saying "we can't
legally stop you from reading a book,
but oh, by the way, we've padlocked
all of them."
(i know, the analogie's not that good...
i'm tired).
worse than this though,
something no one seems to have mentioned:
if these new hd's are incompatible
with the old ones, even over a network,
even with "normal" files,
does that mean floppies will have to
be re-done also?
so how does that work?
the way I see it,
either this would make all the old
floppies I have useless....
or they rig something where the keys
are stored on disk...
but that's stupid, as ANYONE
could easily grab them.
Eitherway, the emperor only have clothes
once there are _no_ children around
to say otherwise.
But since there are children now,
and they can't kill all of them...
I don't see how they can truly
protect this datastream,
no matter how scrambled it is.
-Slackergod
I agree with the other post
that AmigaBasic was (relatively)
crap... especially the upper
limit on program size,
which was hard coded.
However... to offer a replacement
for your list:
ARexx was the "replacement"
for AmigaBasic,
put in (I think) in Amiga 2.1.
Personally,
I would have put in up there in
a list of any of the architectural
of software offerings
that the Amiga had...
not that one could write huge programs
with it (although I did write some arcade
games in it and nothing else),
but it went hand in hand with the
integration of the Amiga...
back in the day,
almost _every_ program came
complete with an ARexx 'port,'
and you could automate the program
via the use of scripts.
Furthermore, you could automate
multiple programs to work together
in a script.
It allowed some of the most amazing
things to be done with some simple
programming...
I would kill for a similar (perl?)
interface scheme for controlling
the gimp, gnome, etc...
(I know, gimp's already got scripting,
but ARexx scripts could operate as daemons,
which could communicate with programs
in the system, not just scripts run
_by_ the program).
It seemed that way to me too,
that the actors were more stage than screen.
But in a way, I think this is appropriate.
This is, after all, and _adaptation_ of the book,
they had to make choices.
David Lynch's adaptation focused more on
the internal thoughts of the character,
and the mystical ascpects of the story. Hence one frequent
complaint about the movie, that the voice overs
were in the way ( I don't agree, I think they
were perfect).
This one, though, seems more like a stage play,
filmed for TV. As I though, and as many
others have commented, it was very
Shakespearian (sp?) in it's nature:
The asides, such as the Baron's after Hewey's death.
For a stage play, then, they need stage actors.
In a way, it explains the absense of the voice-overs, for they aren't appropriate to the
medium of a play. Asides, and longer
monologue conversations are.
Hence, new dialgoue was created,
to supplant the lost internal thoughts.
As a movie, I'm not sure if I liked this one.
It seems dry, distant, removed from the action.
Very little of the mysticism of the book and Lynch's version comes through. The scene with
the gom-jabbar was especially flat.
On the other hand, I find that if I actually
try to think of this as a play,
and not as a simply movie, many of the
choices make sense.
If you were watching this in a theatre,
that scene would have played out wonderfully.
All in all, I think this was a descision that
they made by choice: look at the couplets
at the end of each scene, the asides,
the monologues, and the "Dune" image appearing
at the beginning... the style that was done in
reminded me in a way of the curtain
coming back up for the next act.
It is my hope that it will pick up,
now that they are done with the major
exposition part.
Did I have a point?
Nah.
-Slackergod,
failing to worship even myself since 1980.
That gives me an idea...
with such a huge storage medium,
what are the chances of actually getting such a thing?
Imagine a full LIBRARY on a disc...
selling say all the works of a given feild
up to that time (like EE)...
with maybe a little librarian-bot to search it for you. (okay, I stole that from Snow Crash).
Still... the info-junkie within me is reduced
to violent jitters at the idea.
Anyone know a way this could be done legally?
I know that direct publishing of such a thing would violate copyright laws of all the
majors copyright houses... there any way around
this?
Dreaming of "Earth's SF/F, Vol 1: 1900-2000"
-Slackergod
Is it possible to win almost every time?
Not exactly...
Back in high school, for a math project, I developed
an algorithm to "play" a game of minesweeper.
Bascially, it maintained a large set of boolean equations,
each variable reprenting a square. It first did a brute force on the system.
If only one solution came up, it applied it. This actually did pretty well,
all things considered.
What I also had it do was then calculate the probabilities for
each square... and the probability of being right by random choice.
It then choose the most probable square, and prayed.
For excessively small boards, under 10x10 and/or high mine density,
it didn't do so well. For larger boards, however,
it did much better. I think it was around 75%-80%
sucessful at winning a game.
So, to answer your question... by my algorithm, 30%-ish of the
games are won simply by blind luck.
I'm not sure how this relates to P=NP. It would be kinda funny if my algorthm
was actually applicable to that, but I don't think it is.
On the other hand, it wasn't that sophisticated an
algorithm... I don't remember everything that clearly,
but I think I had a slightly better one that I never fully developed.
democracy: government by the people.
plutocracy: government by the rich.
hypocracy: government by lying sons-of-bitches.
I've just created a new device, :Key:board.
I call it the
This wonderful device is designed to faciliate
the translation of urls on paper into ASCII
character codes. To prove it's MINE, I've
rearranged the 'q' and 'w' keys, and
all output has been xor'ed with 0xf0.
By using any other method except my proprietary
:Keyboard:Reader:Software,
you are violating my god-given right to implement
my buisness plan, as well as my IP.
But don't worry, I'm not going to go after
you. I'm going to go after all the companies
who are facilitating URL lookups via my competitors...
I'm suing google, altavista, infind, msn, yahoo....
By gummy, I'm gonna be rich!
(for the humour impaired, that was a JOKE!)
On another note, while I am getting tired
of the cuecat articles, this one seemed particularly funny...
To respond to Mancide's question,
I think DC has gotten caught up in the
Napster-style fever that's sweeping the
corporate nation: Shoot^H^H^H^H^H sue the messenger!
Or in particular...
If someone provides a service, that could in some
way be used against your 'rights',
sue them, cause it would be to hard to sue the individuals.
It's a sad trend in modern legal affairs:
Look at older laws, such as the old copyright laws...
If you didn't pursue each individual, you lost it...
the idea being, if things got to the point that
you _couldn't_ feasably sue all the violators,
then the can of worms had been open too long,
you had been lax in your actions,
and deserved what you got.
Nowadays, it's more law-by-coverage:
sue _everyone_, make _everything_ in a category
illegal. Then you control the field.
Sadly, since our "justice" system is based
on legal precendent, not common sense,
(if we make a mistake, we're gonna stick with it!),
in(s)ane shit like this is bound to create
precedent sooner or later.
BTW, my christmas tree this year...
it'll be lit up by a daisy chain
of somethings glowing pretty red,
with ps2 cords on them.
-slackergod
(IANAL,IANARS,IANAC,IAARL)
It seems to me that a geek house,
or as we refer to it, a house o' l33t,
just sort of happens...
Two of us moved into an apartment, networked 2 computers.
Some friends moved in, brought more equipment...
with each addition, it grew, in an organic fashion.
Now cat 5 runs throughout the entire apartment, to every corner.
The moral is, don't set _out_ to make a geek house, it will come to you eventually,
just build it up peice by peice, and one day you'll notice: damn this place is sweet.
I'm going to die from EM radiation, and I _like it_.
-Slackergod
(This is a response to numerous other replies on this thread) ,
MP3's, whether or not they have a true 'header'
such as an ID3v2 tag, are a streaming format by
nature. The mp3 itself is composed of individual
frames, each of which is less than 1/50th of
a second long. For VBR encoding, the encoding
changes from frame to frame. The frames
can be easily identified, even in a hex editor...
they all begin with a 'sync' signal,
being FFFX, byte aligned. Once you figure
out how long the frame is, from the data in the
frame's header, it's very easy to cut out parts frame by frame.
here's some perl code I wrote a while back for parsing an mp3 apart...
I used it to create a simple mp3 editor. (Can't find that right now).
Also, for those interested, you might want to go to ID3.org
which is where I got most of my info.
Just so this response stays on topic (hahaha),
I don't see how they could do this without
making it REALLY easy to strip them,
unless the ads were overlayed on top of the
audio data itself. In that case, some sort of
stripper (like the karoke plugins for XMMS)
out to be able to strip out the data.
In any case, as long as I can strip them out,
I love this idea... just like banner ads,
they make people money, and don't bother
me at all.
If anyone gets an actual example of such an
mp3, please post it here (or atleast email it
to me!).
-Slackergod
The beauty of this whole message :)
(and the above addendum
is that if enough people did this,
the internet _would_ actually clean up
for 1 day. Of course, how many million
suckers^H^H^H^Hpeople would that require?
Then, I look around me...
I think we've got enough.
-Slackergod
(wishing I had something more insightful to say)
Maybe I'm just a weirdo,
some old-fashioned throwback
to days long gone by,
(then again, I'm just 19),
but the lady's "question"
of "how are you going to get
the image of porn out of my
child's mind?" irritates me.
Her implication was that,
obvious a library attendant
couldn't be expected to watch
every child. Obviously the
child can't do it themselves.
So who could, but CensorWare!
Well, one thing my parents
have told me is that a parent's
job is to be resonsible for
their children under the children
can be responsible for themselves
in that situtation. Seems to me,
instead of a computer-nanny
(isn't some censorware prog. called that?)
as the conclusion, the inescapable
conclusion I come to is that
one of the child PARENTS needs
to be watching them.
That is what a parent is for, right?
The public library is NOT
a day-care service.
Maybe some libraries offer
this, but certainly that is
something different. Gah!
Maybe I'm blowing this
out of proportion,
but one of the main things
wrong with modern society
is our belief in our "right to freedom",
while ignoring the accompanying
responsibilities.
Sure, you could argue a specific
case might have extenuating circumstances,
but that's a _specific_ case,
it should not be used to cause
a broad determination for ALL cases.
If that logic worked in my math
class, the homework would be much easier.
-Slackergod
you don't think the world has ended?
look around.
Like you said, modern DSP's can do
watermarking in real time.
Since these (supposedly) can only
be played on a new type of CD player,
let the watermark be encrypted into the CDDA
stream _by_ the drive, with it's serial number,
everytime you play an audio track through it.
(This could even work with older CD in the new
drive). Then, when they find a pirated
mp3, get the watermark, track sales records,
find the drive that played it, and find the
pirate (or at least the original owner of the
drive). Sorta like the PIII serial numbers.
(RANT)
Gah!
If any of this has a grain of truth, I'm
NEVER letting go of my old CDROM drive.
Curse their copy-protected foulness!
(/RANT)
-Slackergod
better yet, if the authors
could please just tar up the
script and its data files,
let us download it...
probably less wear on their server
(and then some mirrors could go up).
I would offer to be a mirror,
but @HOME would get REALLY pissed.
Hmm... the titles says it all, but...
All the foods you mention were directed
by humans, but this is refering to the
creation by humans of a food item
(sure, they're re-using genes, but still...)
I'll use a math analogy...
Think of all the genes, etc., vectors.
The sum combination of these is a vector space.
All directed evolution stays (relatively)
in this space, and can be accounted for.
This means that for the most part,
no mutation will occur which is SO drastic that
the environment cannot address it's effect,
and form a balance.
But consider GE: it basically amount to,
(in the math analogy) throwing in a vector
parallel to all the others. It exists outside
the vector space, and all equations that held
true for that space may, or may not, get f***ed.
(sorry for the language). Likewise, GE
may or may not harm the environment.
But it may or may not be equipped to handle
it, unlike in the above example. If it can't,
it will destruct.
So certainly, directed evolution is different
than GE in this sense, but what is wrong with
GE, if it helps? Nothing, I would say,
except that if the ecosystem can't quite deal
with it, it can only hurt in the long run.
Maybe it can do some good, but almost all GE,
such as Monsanto's, is financially motivated,
not "for the good of all", as is almost all
research nowdays (at least indirectly).
I have nothing against strawberries,
but how about the GE that resist certain
pesticides, etc? One could ask the converse:
why not use naturally-based pesticides,
which they are already immune to? The answer
is (kinda) obviously money. And anyway, the
insects aren't there to eat everything, they
are there to _regulate the strawberries_.
Sigh...rant I about more?... yes...
One more thing, the idea of a Terminator Gene,
and the implications of it and cross-pollination
which have been mentioned earlier in the comments:
It seems to me that the implications of such
seem to parallel the idea of a computer virus
sent to destroy competeing software...
oh, I don't know, to sum things up:
1. I just don't like it.
2. I'm not happy here (earth).
No other options though.
Happy Y2K, 2038, etc... how we do love our
apocalypses.
-Slackergod
Don't want to make a long argument,
or delve into a philosophical discourse,
but uh...
I think what he was trying to point out was that
the modern trend towards 'new is better, unless
proven otherwise' should not be applied quite as
often as 'new may be good, all sides should be
considered'. However, in today's
financially-motivated world, 'new' is almost always marketed, shoved down our throats,
and profitted from before it's long term effects
are known.
Regarding the food chain, sure humans are the
most powerful creatures on this planet,
(with our technology), and we have used that
to arrive at the top of the food chain.
But that in no way means we belong there,
or at least should act like we are.
A chain (in this context) implies an
interdepedant network of resources and creatures,
all caught in a (delicate?) balance.
But we act as if the world exists as a shopping
market, picking and choosing, without concern
for the impact... we live for the moment,
concerned for our lives _at this time_.
Sure, our quality of life is better now,
you say: medicines, food, housing, etc.
But, this comes at a price: cancer,
over-eating, man-made poisons (the natural ones
CAN/WILL be recycled), and we slowly lose touch
with how we affect our environment, and vice versa.
Sure, maybe quality of life seems better now,
but again, at what cost? If I rememeber
my old Anthropology classses, Hunter-Gatherers
in those old 'cave-man' times, worked gathering
around 15 hours a week. Sure, there were
downsides, it all depends on what you value
in life.
-Slackergod