Tresspass isn't always illegal where I live. If I break in to warn you that your house is on fire, its OK. If I tresspass without breaking in and just look around it is considered a minor crime, and in most cases there would be no charges laid.
The internet isn't just for Americans, you should keep this in mind when making sweeping statements about what is illegal.
I'm a programmer who paints, with brushes on canvas, as a hobby. Art can be done with computers, and in many ways it is much more difficult working worth computers. Pencils and brushes are intuitive to use, they do what you want without really thinking about it. I can't say I get that same ease of use from any computer art program.
Just as not everything done with paint is art, not everything done on the computer is art, but art trancends any tools - it is human creativity and expression.
Why would you care what an 'art critic' thinks? These are the same people that think blowing paint out your ass onto paper is 'fine art' (I didn't make that up).
Art critics are part of a corrupt cabal only interested in making themselves feel important, and increasing the profits made at select art galleries. Any group that thinks geometric abstract painting is 'art' isn't worth consulting.
For CS no one language is going to allow the student to learn everything required to be a good programmer, or a good CS. A number of languages should be taught, each one highlighting one aspect of being a good programmer.
I'd start with c. Its not as hard as assembler, but it is close enough to the hardware to teach about:
varibles
pointers
memory allocation
stacks vs heaps
loops
branches
recursion
simple i/o
simple program design
c, as it is a small language and doesn't take too long to learn the basic syntax is a good language to learn about data structures and simple algorithms.
heaps
queues
hashes, with buckets
stacks
trees
But you don't want to spend too much time with c or you'll get too many bad habits that have to be undone when you move onto an OO language. I still program in c++ as if objects are just fancy structs:)
Next you want to learn some OOP. Now java or c++ is taught. All that OOP stuff that you have to get your head around is now the focus. Forget about registers, memory allocation, etc... just think about objects, inheritance, etc...
Then other languages should be offered to highlight various fields:
Assembler, hardware people, device drivers
More C, see assembler
APL, just to drive the student crazy.
LISP
PERL, great for little dirty text processing
VB - lots of jobs out there for this one
Java - lots of jobs, again
Anyone wanting to be a good programmer should get a taste of a number of languages. Once you're employed you'll become expert in the inhouse language. What's really important to learn is the underlying concepts used to create good software. Knowledge of useful algorithms, data structures, and programming techniques that can be applied in whatever language you end up using.
The other guy is a twit, but you made one minor error: not all anarchists are against property. There are two main schools of anarchists, the socialist European tradition, and the capitalist American tradition. They hate each other. The anarcho-capitalists basiclly can't believe anyone would voluntarily join a socialist society, "You'll get the fruits of my labour over my dead body", while the socialist-anarchists can't believe a real anarchist wouldn't want to help his fellow man out as much as possible. Hang out in alt.society.anarchy for a couple of nights and this will become very clear.
The MAIN reason corporations exist is to limit liability. Take away limited liability and you don't realy have a corporation anymore. I certainly wouldn't invest in something if it meant I could lose not only my investement, but my home and other assests if things failed. Just ask the 'names' of Lloyds just how risky this can be.
I do like the idea of revoking the charter of criminial corps.
When are the American's going to update all their anthems and slogans to reflect the fact that they are now the land of "governed", not the land of the "free".
Age verification over the internet doesn't work. A kid too stupid to not think of writing down Dad's CC number isn't smart enough enough to start up a web browser. Filtering doesn't work either. Porn still slips through,and all kinds of legit educational material (any site that offends the sensabilities of the filter's creator) are blocked.
I don't want the government protecting my children. When the government protects them it just means training the kids to be good little conformists and consumers. I'll protect my own kids, thank you very much.
Worried that little johnny will view porn at the library? Well, then you've blown it as a parent. Most kids too young to be viewing porn will just think its 'wierd' and move on. Kids old enough to be interested, likely aren't going to be harmed. If they see something really disgusting (and it is out there), I hope my children will ask me (or another trusted adult) about it.
Ignite nitrogen? How stupid are you? Nitrogen is so UNREACTIVE that until the 20th century no one had EVER made it react chemically, much less ignite. You can spray it on fires to smother them.
Your diggers (who deserve a darwin award for not calling the usual numbers before digging) are in much more danger from the electricity thatn the liquid nitrogen. You watch to many movies. Unless your digger bathes himself in the LN2 on purpose he isn't in any danger of being frozen.
Its a test basicly, they aren't too concerned with cost. Why bother at all? No one wants new overhead wires in their neighborhood. Putting BIG transmission lines underground is VERY expensive. Using superconducting cable you can use an existing small tunnel and put a LOT more electricity through it. It will only be economical in urban areas for many years to come. As for safety, superconductiing or not, shorts etc... are detected and the power is shut off automatically. Its a normal part of the design of any transmission and distribution system. I'm sure they will be monitoring the pressure of the liquid nitrogen, and a drop in pressure will trigger safety shut offs. This sort of "protection and control" is completley routine.
Just for reference, liquid nitrogen costs about the same as milk, and is not much more dangerous unless you stick and hold your hand in a vat of it.
The allisn 250 that the bike uses nrmally generates 450 t 700 HP. Its 45" by 19.5" They claim the bike has abut 300 hp, s its a bit detuned.
Guess what key n my keybard stpped wrking just nw.
All very true, and past about 20 or 30 feet you get zero 3d from parallex.
BUT, you must go see CyberWorld in 3D at an IMAX theatre, excellent, clear, 3D. Uses polarized glasses, and is very effective. The movie is just a bunch of cool 3D CGI shorts strung together with a lame narrative, but its pretty neat watching 500 people all reach out and try to touch something that isn't there. Many of the segments are mind boggling, and a couple are very funny.
When 3D is faked in movies, or computers, a much more intense 3D effect can be generated than you ever get in nature.
Ethonal sounds great, but did you now that the by-products of factories that make ethonal from organics is a terrible, poisonous sludge that is very difficult to get rid of?
Last time I looked into it, it was a pretty serious problem. Anyone know if this little problem has been solved?
The sooner we get industry into the space, the sooner we can stop fouling our own nest.
The argument that anything spaced based must be expensive, evil, and 'we shouldn't waste money on it while x,y, or z bad things still happen on Earth' is short sighted, and illogical. Whats better for the Earth: burning down the Amazon rain forest and strip mining it, OR mining the moon? Whats better for the Earth, damming every river on the planet, building fission power plants every where, and burning fossil fuels as fast as we can, OR using 100% renewable, virtually free, spaced based solar power.
Its time to start the commercial exploitation of space! Save the Earth! Exploit Space!
LOW density microwaves will be used to beam the power down. These powerful microwaves can be stopped with a sheet of ordinary household aluminum foil. There won't be any 'localized disaster' if something goes wrong.
Very large arrays of antenna's will be receiving the power. At energy densities that will NOT destroy anything. It would warm you up, and I would want to stand in it, but that's it.
"Killer Bees" are not genetically modified. They are simply African Bees that a researcher let escape by accident in South America. People have been moving perfectly natural animals to new habits and creating all sorts of trouble without any genetic modification.
We have been doing genetic modification by normal breeding for thousands of years. We can do it a LOT faster now, but it isn't intrinsically more dangerous.
Seems to me the only people against genetically modified foods are rich people living in the West who can afford all they want to eat. Starvation isn't an issue for them. People dying of starvation all over the rest of the world are quite happy to have the benefits of genetically modified foods:
foods with extra vitamins
foods that store better (very important where the roads are poor)
disease and pest resistance
less reliance on chemical pesticides
The real problem is the patents that lock up many useful genetic modifications so that rich western corps can make a buck while third world people starve. Really, for most of the world the choice is clear and simple: use genetically altered crops or starve.
Large scale geneticly modified crops are already being used world wide. The horse has left the barn. Any technology can be abused, and I'm not a all surprised that the tobacco industry used genetics to alter their own crops. This like saying we shouldn't used use TCP/IP because Microsoft does. The good things possible with genetic modifications should not be feared because of an all ready ethically challenged industries abuse.
Should there be controls? Of course? Should consumers be able to make informed choices? Of course. If you don't want to buy gen-mod foods, then don't. Lobby for labelling. But please, don't try to force me to adhere to your fears.
I am so pleased that some people are so driven and ambitious that they work like crazy, do ruthless business deals, and pretty much devote their every waking hour to building up a whole industry.
Now, I don't have to do that. I can enjoy the fruits of these monomanical over achievers and buy a PC with more computing power than the combined power of all the computers in the world, only 50 years a go, for less than a weeks wages.
I don't care if billionaires are happy, as long as their ilk keep working hard. It lets me get a decent job I like, earn enough to support my own modest ambitions, and induldge my hobbies. If everyone was as ambitious as me we'd still be living in caves because it was a comfortable living. Good thing that nutbar over achiever Grogg just wasn't satisfied with the status quo, good thing he really, really wanted something more. Everyone told him that he was nuts, working all year to clear that land and PLANT stuff. It was too much work, all that grain wasn't going to make him happy.
We should all buy an over achiever a drink, and thank them for doing the work we less ambitious would never do.
We used a digi-view to digitize art for a video game I worked on way back in 1989 (Spelljammer, D&D in space). EA Deluxe Paint on the Amiga and PC had compatible file formats. We'd digitize on the amiga using the digi-view (couldn't afford a colour camera), and copy it over to the PC on floppies. We digitized models, and people in costumes this way to be used in the game. We bought huge sheets of bright green construction paper that hung in the behind the models, then it was easy to use a stencil to grab the forground model and place it over a hand drawn background.
The Mummy Returns is completely mindless spectacle that is perfect to take your 9 to 14 year old kids (or nieces and nephews) to on a rainy afternoon. Not too scary, no bad language, non-stop action; perfect for kids and adults who want to switch off their brains for a couple of hours.
The USA patent office has decided that anything that doesn't have prior art is not obvious. Obviously, if it has prior art it isn't obvious.The problem with this, is that things that are too obvious to publish have no prior art, an are thus patentable.
Anyone read "Oath of Fealty", Niven and Pournelle.
Describes life in an Archology, and presumes such a building would tend to become a city state. You wouldn't ever have to leave the building, work, play, etc... in it, nice safe controlled enviroment with cameras everywhere.
The building in the story has a diving board at the top for the benefit of suicides (land marks like this are always popular with suicides). Of course, under the board is were the automatic nets are.
Re:Slashdot: News for Stoners?
on
First Arcology?
·
· Score: 1
Suburban sprawl is much more wasteful than hi-rises. If single-family dwellings were abandoned it would save incredible amounts of land and energy.
Higher densities allow better public transport (its hard to make a bus service break even in the suburbs) which in turn cuts down on pollution from cars. Higher densities use less land, allowing for more parks and farms. It takes less resources to build a hi-rise to house X people, than to build houses to house X people. building up, instead of out is the way to go.
The absolutely most wasteful way to house people is single-family dwellings. Hi-rises preserve the beavers and rats natural habitat.
Only tropical dams have this problem with the release of CO2 when the flooded vegetation rots. Dams built in colder climates release C02 much more slowly (in northern Canda, resevoirs release virtually no CO2), and if the area to be flooded is cleared first it greatly reduces the problem.
Slashdot Mirror
The internet isn't just for Americans, you should keep this in mind when making sweeping statements about what is illegal.
You need the keys to VIEW the DVD.
My guess is that Sony made this up to get free publicity: Oh yah, so advanced the USA wants to ban it.
Just as not everything done with paint is art, not everything done on the computer is art, but art trancends any tools - it is human creativity and expression.
Art critics are part of a corrupt cabal only interested in making themselves feel important, and increasing the profits made at select art galleries. Any group that thinks geometric abstract painting is 'art' isn't worth consulting.
I'd start with c. Its not as hard as assembler, but it is close enough to the hardware to teach about:
varibles
pointers
memory allocation
stacks vs heaps
loops
branches
recursion
simple i/o
simple program design
c, as it is a small language and doesn't take too long to learn the basic syntax is a good language to learn about data structures and simple algorithms.
heaps
queues
hashes, with buckets
stacks
trees
Searching and sorting algoriths
binary search
quick sort
merge sort
heap sort
But you don't want to spend too much time with c or you'll get too many bad habits that have to be undone when you move onto an OO language. I still program in c++ as if objects are just fancy structs :)
Next you want to learn some OOP. Now java or c++ is taught. All that OOP stuff that you have to get your head around is now the focus. Forget about registers, memory allocation, etc... just think about objects, inheritance, etc...
Then other languages should be offered to highlight various fields:
Assembler, hardware people, device drivers
More C, see assembler
APL, just to drive the student crazy.
LISP
PERL, great for little dirty text processing
VB - lots of jobs out there for this one
Java - lots of jobs, again
Anyone wanting to be a good programmer should get a taste of a number of languages. Once you're employed you'll become expert in the inhouse language. What's really important to learn is the underlying concepts used to create good software. Knowledge of useful algorithms, data structures, and programming techniques that can be applied in whatever language you end up using.
So why doesn't BountyQuest go after these lamers? http://www.bountyquest.com/
The other guy is a twit, but you made one minor error: not all anarchists are against property. There are two main schools of anarchists, the socialist European tradition, and the capitalist American tradition. They hate each other. The anarcho-capitalists basiclly can't believe anyone would voluntarily join a socialist society, "You'll get the fruits of my labour over my dead body", while the socialist-anarchists can't believe a real anarchist wouldn't want to help his fellow man out as much as possible. Hang out in alt.society.anarchy for a couple of nights and this will become very clear.
I do like the idea of revoking the charter of criminial corps.
Age verification over the internet doesn't work. A kid too stupid to not think of writing down Dad's CC number isn't smart enough enough to start up a web browser. Filtering doesn't work either. Porn still slips through,and all kinds of legit educational material (any site that offends the sensabilities of the filter's creator) are blocked.
I don't want the government protecting my children. When the government protects them it just means training the kids to be good little conformists and consumers. I'll protect my own kids, thank you very much.
Worried that little johnny will view porn at the library? Well, then you've blown it as a parent. Most kids too young to be viewing porn will just think its 'wierd' and move on. Kids old enough to be interested, likely aren't going to be harmed. If they see something really disgusting (and it is out there), I hope my children will ask me (or another trusted adult) about it.
Ignite nitrogen? How stupid are you? Nitrogen is so UNREACTIVE that until the 20th century no one had EVER made it react chemically, much less ignite. You can spray it on fires to smother them.
Your diggers (who deserve a darwin award for not calling the usual numbers before digging) are in much more danger from the electricity thatn the liquid nitrogen. You watch to many movies. Unless your digger bathes himself in the LN2 on purpose he isn't in any danger of being frozen.
Just for reference, liquid nitrogen costs about the same as milk, and is not much more dangerous unless you stick and hold your hand in a vat of it.
The allisn 250 that the bike uses nrmally generates 450 t 700 HP. Its 45" by 19.5" They claim the bike has abut 300 hp, s its a bit detuned.
Guess what key n my keybard stpped wrking just nw.
BUT, you must go see CyberWorld in 3D at an IMAX theatre, excellent, clear, 3D. Uses polarized glasses, and is very effective. The movie is just a bunch of cool 3D CGI shorts strung together with a lame narrative, but its pretty neat watching 500 people all reach out and try to touch something that isn't there. Many of the segments are mind boggling, and a couple are very funny.
When 3D is faked in movies, or computers, a much more intense 3D effect can be generated than you ever get in nature.
Last time I looked into it, it was a pretty serious problem. Anyone know if this little problem has been solved?
The argument that anything spaced based must be expensive, evil, and 'we shouldn't waste money on it while x,y, or z bad things still happen on Earth' is short sighted, and illogical. Whats better for the Earth: burning down the Amazon rain forest and strip mining it, OR mining the moon? Whats better for the Earth, damming every river on the planet, building fission power plants every where, and burning fossil fuels as fast as we can, OR using 100% renewable, virtually free, spaced based solar power.
Its time to start the commercial exploitation of space! Save the Earth! Exploit Space!
LOW density microwaves will be used to beam the power down. These powerful microwaves can be stopped with a sheet of ordinary household aluminum foil. There won't be any 'localized disaster' if something goes wrong.
Very large arrays of antenna's will be receiving the power. At energy densities that will NOT destroy anything. It would warm you up, and I would want to stand in it, but that's it.
We have been doing genetic modification by normal breeding for thousands of years. We can do it a LOT faster now, but it isn't intrinsically more dangerous.
Seems to me the only people against genetically modified foods are rich people living in the West who can afford all they want to eat. Starvation isn't an issue for them. People dying of starvation all over the rest of the world are quite happy to have the benefits of genetically modified foods:
foods with extra vitamins
foods that store better (very important where the roads are poor)
disease and pest resistance
less reliance on chemical pesticides
The real problem is the patents that lock up many useful genetic modifications so that rich western corps can make a buck while third world people starve. Really, for most of the world the choice is clear and simple: use genetically altered crops or starve.
Large scale geneticly modified crops are already being used world wide. The horse has left the barn. Any technology can be abused, and I'm not a all surprised that the tobacco industry used genetics to alter their own crops. This like saying we shouldn't used use TCP/IP because Microsoft does. The good things possible with genetic modifications should not be feared because of an all ready ethically challenged industries abuse.
Should there be controls? Of course? Should consumers be able to make informed choices? Of course. If you don't want to buy gen-mod foods, then don't. Lobby for labelling. But please, don't try to force me to adhere to your fears.
I am so pleased that some people are so driven and ambitious that they work like crazy, do ruthless business deals, and pretty much devote their every waking hour to building up a whole industry.
Now, I don't have to do that. I can enjoy the fruits of these monomanical over achievers and buy a PC with more computing power than the combined power of all the computers in the world, only 50 years a go, for less than a weeks wages.
I don't care if billionaires are happy, as long as their ilk keep working hard. It lets me get a decent job I like, earn enough to support my own modest ambitions, and induldge my hobbies. If everyone was as ambitious as me we'd still be living in caves because it was a comfortable living. Good thing that nutbar over achiever Grogg just wasn't satisfied with the status quo, good thing he really, really wanted something more. Everyone told him that he was nuts, working all year to clear that land and PLANT stuff. It was too much work, all that grain wasn't going to make him happy.
We should all buy an over achiever a drink, and thank them for doing the work we less ambitious would never do.
Things sure have changed.
The Mummy Returns is completely mindless spectacle that is perfect to take your 9 to 14 year old kids (or nieces and nephews) to on a rainy afternoon. Not too scary, no bad language, non-stop action; perfect for kids and adults who want to switch off their brains for a couple of hours.
The USA patent office has decided that anything that doesn't have prior art is not obvious. Obviously, if it has prior art it isn't obvious.The problem with this, is that things that are too obvious to publish have no prior art, an are thus patentable.
Describes life in an Archology, and presumes such a building would tend to become a city state. You wouldn't ever have to leave the building, work, play, etc... in it, nice safe controlled enviroment with cameras everywhere.
The building in the story has a diving board at the top for the benefit of suicides (land marks like this are always popular with suicides). Of course, under the board is were the automatic nets are.
Higher densities allow better public transport (its hard to make a bus service break even in the suburbs) which in turn cuts down on pollution from cars. Higher densities use less land, allowing for more parks and farms. It takes less resources to build a hi-rise to house X people, than to build houses to house X people. building up, instead of out is the way to go.
The absolutely most wasteful way to house people is single-family dwellings. Hi-rises preserve the beavers and rats natural habitat.
Only tropical dams have this problem with the release of CO2 when the flooded vegetation rots. Dams built in colder climates release C02 much more slowly (in northern Canda, resevoirs release virtually no CO2), and if the area to be flooded is cleared first it greatly reduces the problem.