Andy Stephenson was a leading advocate of voting reform, and an opponent of black-box voting systems like Diebold's. Early this year he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He needed money to pay for surgery, and friends of his began an internet fundraiser. Various folks at FreeRepublic.com, playing the part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, claimed it was a fraud to get money, that he didn't have cancer at all.
He did. He died two months ago.
Conspiracy? Maybe not. But it doesn't "just happen" either. People do it. People support it. People look the other way, and pretend we live in the most free and democratic country in the history of the world, and crap like that.
(Full disclosure: I've volunteered for a friend of his, Gentry Lange, who's running as a Green for King Country Executive out here in Washington State)
Even with the low level of detail, there's interesting stuff for the amatuer environmentalist. Look at http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=45,59.5&hl=en&z=9 and switch back and forth between map and satellite. It would be nice it they gave dates to the map and images, but I doubt it's much more than a ten-year difference.
It's past time for the dot-coms to grow up. This isn't an issue of lowering overall taxes, it's an issue of Congress favoring one industry over another. People may claim that buying over the internet is so much more efficient. Maybe it is; if that's the case, dot-coms shouldn't need special tax breaks to succeed. We all like to think our industry is special and is changing the world. I'm sure people working at agribusinesses, Haliburton, baseball teams, and importers of Chinese ceiling fans will tell you the same thing.
Worse, it's an unfunded mandate sent down by Washington. Congress makes the rules, and the state governments lose revenue.
As a disclaimer, I should note I live next door to one of the best independent bookstores in the country (Elliot Bay Books, Seattle). I can browse the shelves, open up books, talk to real people, get suggestions from the staff, go to author readings and bookclubs. And when I buy a book, I can start reading it as I walk out the store.
If you live in northern Alaska, yes, Amazon is huge improvement. But not all of the rest of us want to see real stores driven out of business because the goverment thinks it should subsidize people for avoiding human interaction.
The best explanation I've heard for why school prayer (and, by extension, "Under God") is an important issue was on the West Wing episode "Shibboleth."
TOBY: But I'll tell you why it should be front and center. It's not the first amendment,
it's not religious freedom, it's not church and state, it's not... abstract... LEO: What is it? TOBY: It's the fourth grader who gets his ass kicked at recess 'cause he sat out the voluntary prayer in homeroom. It's another way of making kids different from other kids when they're required by law to be there. That's why you want it front and center; fourth grader; that's the prize.
It's about making non-religious and other non-Christian kids different.
Afterall, according to the rules, Quantum Physics could be considered bogus.
By which of these rules, exactly? Even when it was first proposed, Quantum physics was NOT pitched directly to the media, was NOT claimed to be suppressed by the establishment, was NOT at the edge of detection, was NOT based on anecdotal evidence, was NOT based on centuries-old information, and was NOT developed by one person in isolation. Yes, it was a radically new theory that descriped new laws of nature, but atomic-scale physics was already known to be different, since Rutherford and before.
Yes, science is often weird and disturbing and hard to understand, but that's not a reason to confuse it with pseudo-science.
Change can happen. San Francisco recently adopted Instant Runoff for local elections. It is being considered elsewhere. In particular, the Center for Voting and Democracy is working to bring fair, accurate, modern voting systems to the United States. If you go into the voting booth Tuesday and find yourself frustrated with the lack of choice, please help to make the system better.
Darned brain fog. Um...ok...hmmm...well, I think I can safely accuse of "Fondation and Earth" of being illogical, though in much more than just science (no doubt a case of an author trying to write a book in one sitting). And I'd be happy to poke holes in "Nemisis."
3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.
Admittedly, prior to Harry Potter the winning novel has never been fantasy (Lord of Light and To Your Scattered Bodies Go are probably the closest, and few people would characterize those as anything other than SF). But fantasy often wins in the short fiction catagories.
Well yes, I liked PSS better too. But this is, after all, the Hugo; it's a fan award and can be a little populist. If you want something a little more intellectual (though not always better), look at the Nebulas. I like Bujold, for example; her books are fun. But intelligent? No. Yet she's won four Hugos (3 novels, one novella).
The best way to characterize the genre is from the intention of the writer. If the writer is trying to write science fiction, it's SF (admittedly sometimes bad and illogical). It's not a precise rule; you can't just count up the how many times the author uses (telepathy | time travel | FTL travel | mythical creatures | inherited memory | returning from the dead |... ) and when it hits a magic number throw up your hands and say "That's it! This is fantasy!".
Should we be snobs and disdain fantasy? Of course not. I would consider "Perdido Street Station" the most intellectual of the nominees, and it's clearly not SF (Mieville calls it "weird fiction"). But it's a useful distinction even if it can be difficult to make. Should we throw away the specualtive-fiction super-genre entirely simply becuase Vonnegut and Crighton are difficult to place? (by my rule, of course, neither are SF)
As for the Asimov quote, he's haldly pure. The premise of humans originating from aliens (the Pak, in his Known Space books) is about as "illogical" as can be. But he's trying to write SF, and so that's what it is.
Reread the article: ...all software developed for the government must be licenced under the GPL. ... Rey also outlined additional details of the plan. Besides the government's GPL requirement, the policy requires that the official accounting application for Venezeula must be a GPL'ed application.
I read it that any open-source software is fine for use (with the exception of accounting, which I'd agree is weird). GPL is just the development license. That's only a problem in that government programers won't be able to have their changes folded back into non-GPL software.
Star is a game related to Hex but much more intricate. It was created by Craige Schensted (a physicist) and popularized in Games Magazine back in '83.
Star is similar to Go and Hex in the simplicity and consistancy of the rules. The play and tactics are those of Hex (connect stones on a hexagonal board), but there's an additional strategic element involving groups of connected stones that touch the edges at as many points as possible.
Seriously, the (now down-modded) grandparent post is precisely the thing copyright law should protect against. For most authors and artists, it's far more important that they're properly credited and that their work is not misquoted than it is that they have exclusive right to it, or even than they get paid. Inserting "sucked you off" all over the article and reposting as if it were the original is not only offensive to the author, it add nothing to the debate.
Exclusive copyright should only last a short period of time (a couple decades), as the framers of the constitution intended. Limited protection beyond that time (against plagerism and misrepresentation) would provide additional incentive to authors without significantly limiting the rights of the public at large.
"Much like a Microsoft crash^H^H^H^H^Hrelease date being pushed back, NASA is reporting here that we are not, in fact, all going to die on February 1st, 2019..."
C'mon, we may all hate Microsoft, but this has nothing to do with the story. Delays happen and are bad, but I seriously doubt Microsoft is the worst offender. Adding such gratuitous "humor" to stories lessens the force of honest critisism by making Slashdot look like a bunch of immature extremists who shouldn't be taken seriously.
"Funny thing is that no lessons have really been learned from the wholesale debunking and smear campaign that took place against Pons and Fleichsmann, but it has thrown up some small oddities like Muon Catalysed Fusion"
Check your facts. Muon-catalyzed fusion was researched long before the cold-fusion debacle (prior to Pons and Fleichsmann, it was called "cold fusion"). They deserve no credit for it. And it's not an "oddity"; it's easy to understand (from quantum mechanics) how muons could catalyze fusion.
Though you might not realize it from watching Star Trek, science isn't about rewriting the principles of physics just in time to save everyone from the Life-Force-Sucking Energy Creatures. Sciences is about coming up with ideas (yes, crazy ideas are ok) and testing them. Carefully. Looking for any possible flaw in your hypothesis, and honestly trying to dubunk it.
It's hard. When you've spent months or years working on something, you grow to care about it and believe in it. There's a huge temptation to see only the results that confirm what you believe. It's very easy to pretend, even to yourself, that your ideas are more important than the method, that the results show generally the right thing anyway, that the contradicting data isn't relevent.
It's also wrong. "Too much zeal", in this case, is likely dishonesty. Someone who simply comes up with cute ideas and tries to find supporting data isn't a scientist. For every Cold Fusion debacle, there are hundreds of cases of fudged results by researches with "too much zeal", every one of which muddies the waters of understanding and wastes taxpayer and corporation money.
Your so-called "zeal" does nothing to advance sciences. If the ideas are correct, careful testing will support them, and openly publishing results will allow others to reproduce them. If they can't survive, then no amount of effort will make them fly.
You're misunderstanding Dawkins. Neither he nor (AFAIK) any serious evolutionary scientist claims that evolution is a justification for social conservatism. There's a big difference between saying we are selfish (a la The Selfish Gene) and that we should be selfish.
Social Darwinism is little more than a straw man. They certainly had differences, but this wasn't one of them.
I sometimes worry that computer geeks^H^H^H^H^Hprofessionals, like most of the general public, don't actually understand science.
So I'm relieved to see stories like this. The reviewer is fascinated by a book extolling sloppy science, and that's sad. Maybe such stories (like, say this) shouldn't get posted. But it's a relief to see so many thoughtful, highly moderated comments explain what science is, what it means, and why the original post doesn't know what it's talking about.
Reasonable point about the nominations, and of course the other catagories are sprinkled with fantasy. Perhaps I'm just bitter because I don't want to have to read all the books just to stay current with the Hugos.
As for the boundary, it's like obscenity..."I know it when I see it".:)
Any genre boundry is difficult. Is Michael Crighton science fiction? Kurt Vonnegut? Is Gabriel Garcia Marquez fantasy? A case could be made on either side of any of them. In general, I would say science fiction makes an effort, at least, to portray something that might be possible, while fantasy doesn't. It's more an issue of the intention of the author than a checklist of characteristics.
In this case, though, the point is moot here. Harry Potter is fantasy, no question. The other books I mentioned really aren't even that close to the border.
Yes, I know, the rules specify the field of "science fiction or fantasy." And I have nothing against fantasy; I read a little. But last year's Harry Potter novel didn't belong there. Fantasy is a different genre and has its own awards.
None of the other 48 award winning novels are fantasy. About the closest are the Zelazny winners (Lord of Light,...And Call Me Conrad) and To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Farmer). Those are clearly science fiction at the core, but with some fantasy-like setting.
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Perl 6. Papa says, "If you see it in Slashdot, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Perl 6?
Technical Article
on
ULTra Robo-Taxi
·
· Score: 4, Informative
For a more technical description of the ULTra, try
Yes! I'd make the term of the first phase shorter, but that's the right approach.
Suppose you write a novel. Consider a time far in the future, say, 30 years after you're dead. Your children are dead; you're grandchildren are old, and they would hold the copyright. How upset would if:
1) Someone reprinted the novel, but didn't pay your grandchildren, but kept the profits themselves?
2) Someone reprinted the novel, paid your grandchildren, but claimed to have written it themselves (without permission)?
3) Someone reprinted the novel, paid your grandchildren, attributed you, but changed the story so the moral and meaning were completely different (without permission, without noting there was a change)?
I, and I think most people, would be far more upset with (2) and (3) than (1). The credit and integrity of the work should be protected for a long time. Monetary rights aren't nearly as important, not in the long term.*
Still not convinced? Consider:
4) Someone wants to reprint your work, but your grandchildren, who own exclusive rights to your work, hold out for more money, and in the end won't let them.
Slashdot Mirror
Andy Stephenson was a leading advocate of voting reform, and an opponent of black-box voting systems like Diebold's. Early this year he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He needed money to pay for surgery, and friends of his began an internet fundraiser. Various folks at FreeRepublic.com, playing the part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, claimed it was a fraud to get money, that he didn't have cancer at all.
He did. He died two months ago.
Conspiracy? Maybe not. But it doesn't "just happen" either. People do it. People support it. People look the other way, and pretend we live in the most free and democratic country in the history of the world, and crap like that.
(Full disclosure: I've volunteered for a friend of his, Gentry Lange, who's running as a Green for King Country Executive out here in Washington State)
Even with the low level of detail, there's interesting stuff for the amatuer environmentalist. Look at http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=45,59.5&hl=en&z=9 and switch back and forth between map and satellite. It would be nice it they gave dates to the map and images, but I doubt it's much more than a ten-year difference.
It's past time for the dot-coms to grow up. This isn't an issue of lowering overall taxes, it's an issue of Congress favoring one industry over another. People may claim that buying over the internet is so much more efficient. Maybe it is; if that's the case, dot-coms shouldn't need special tax breaks to succeed. We all like to think our industry is special and is changing the world. I'm sure people working at agribusinesses, Haliburton, baseball teams, and importers of Chinese ceiling fans will tell you the same thing.
Worse, it's an unfunded mandate sent down by Washington. Congress makes the rules, and the state governments lose revenue.
As a disclaimer, I should note I live next door to one of the best independent bookstores in the country (Elliot Bay Books, Seattle). I can browse the shelves, open up books, talk to real people, get suggestions from the staff, go to author readings and bookclubs. And when I buy a book, I can start reading it as I walk out the store.
If you live in northern Alaska, yes, Amazon is huge improvement. But not all of the rest of us want to see real stores driven out of business because the goverment thinks it should subsidize people for avoiding human interaction.
It's about making non-religious and other non-Christian kids different.
Try sodaplay, a fun applet which allows users to simulate walking creatures made from soda straws. Good for encouraging creativity and stuff.
Afterall, according to the rules, Quantum Physics could be considered bogus.
By which of these rules, exactly? Even when it was first proposed, Quantum physics was NOT pitched directly to the media, was NOT claimed to be suppressed by the establishment, was NOT at the edge of detection, was NOT based on anecdotal evidence, was NOT based on centuries-old information, and was NOT developed by one person in isolation. Yes, it was a radically new theory that descriped new laws of nature, but atomic-scale physics was already known to be different, since Rutherford and before.
Yes, science is often weird and disturbing and hard to understand, but that's not a reason to confuse it with pseudo-science.
(Anti-disclaimer: IAAP)
Change can happen. San Francisco recently adopted Instant Runoff for local elections. It is being considered elsewhere. In particular, the Center for Voting and Democracy is working to bring fair, accurate, modern voting systems to the United States. If you go into the voting booth Tuesday and find yourself frustrated with the lack of choice, please help to make the system better.
Didn't you know it was a pen name? :)
Darned brain fog. Um...ok...hmmm...well, I think I can safely accuse of "Fondation and Earth" of being illogical, though in much more than just science (no doubt a case of an author trying to write a book in one sitting). And I'd be happy to poke holes in "Nemisis."
Ok, I'm going to stop now.
From the
constitution of the WSFS:
3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.
Admittedly, prior to Harry Potter the winning novel has never been fantasy (Lord of Light and To Your Scattered Bodies Go are probably the closest, and few people would characterize those as anything other than SF). But fantasy often wins in the short fiction catagories.
Well yes, I liked PSS better too. But this is, after all, the Hugo; it's a fan award and can be a little populist. If you want something a little more intellectual (though not always better), look at the Nebulas. I like Bujold, for example; her books are fun. But intelligent? No. Yet she's won four Hugos (3 novels, one novella).
The best way to characterize the genre is from the intention of the writer. If the writer is trying to write science fiction, it's SF (admittedly sometimes bad and illogical). It's not a precise rule; you can't just count up the how many times the author uses (telepathy | time travel | FTL travel | mythical creatures | inherited memory | returning from the dead | ... ) and when it hits a magic number throw up your hands and say "That's it! This is fantasy!".
Should we be snobs and disdain fantasy? Of course not. I would consider "Perdido Street Station" the most intellectual of the nominees, and it's clearly not SF (Mieville calls it "weird fiction"). But it's a useful distinction even if it can be difficult to make. Should we throw away the specualtive-fiction super-genre entirely simply becuase Vonnegut and Crighton are difficult to place? (by my rule, of course, neither are SF)
As for the Asimov quote, he's haldly pure. The premise of humans originating from aliens (the Pak, in his Known Space books) is about as "illogical" as can be. But he's trying to write SF, and so that's what it is.
Reread the article:
...all software developed for the government must be licenced under the GPL.
...
Rey also outlined additional details of the plan. Besides the government's GPL requirement, the policy requires that the official accounting application for Venezeula must be a GPL'ed application.
I read it that any open-source software is fine for use (with the exception of accounting, which I'd agree is weird). GPL is just the development license. That's only a problem in that government programers won't be able to have their changes folded back into non-GPL software.
Star is a game related to Hex but much more intricate. It was created by Craige Schensted (a physicist) and popularized in Games Magazine back in '83.
Star is similar to Go and Hex in the simplicity and consistancy of the rules. The play and tactics are those of Hex (connect stones on a hexagonal board), but there's an additional strategic element involving groups of connected stones that touch the edges at as many points as possible.
Seriously, the (now down-modded) grandparent post is precisely the thing copyright law should protect against. For most authors and artists, it's far more important that they're properly credited and that their work is not misquoted than it is that they have exclusive right to it, or even than they get paid. Inserting "sucked you off" all over the article and reposting as if it were the original is not only offensive to the author, it add nothing to the debate.
Exclusive copyright should only last a short period of time (a couple decades), as the framers of the constitution intended. Limited protection beyond that time (against plagerism and misrepresentation) would provide additional incentive to authors without significantly limiting the rights of the public at large.
"Much like a Microsoft crash^H^H^H^H^Hrelease date being pushed back, NASA is reporting here that we are not, in fact, all going to die on February 1st, 2019 ..."
C'mon, we may all hate Microsoft, but this has nothing to do with the story. Delays happen and are bad, but I seriously doubt Microsoft is the worst offender. Adding such gratuitous "humor" to stories lessens the force of honest critisism by making Slashdot look like a bunch of immature extremists who shouldn't be taken seriously.
"Funny thing is that no lessons have really been learned from the wholesale debunking and smear campaign that took place against Pons and Fleichsmann, but it has thrown up some small oddities like Muon Catalysed Fusion"
Check your facts. Muon-catalyzed fusion was researched long before the cold-fusion debacle (prior to Pons and Fleichsmann, it was called "cold fusion"). They deserve no credit for it. And it's not an "oddity"; it's easy to understand (from quantum mechanics) how muons could catalyze fusion.
Though you might not realize it from watching Star Trek, science isn't about rewriting the principles of physics just in time to save everyone from the Life-Force-Sucking Energy Creatures. Sciences is about coming up with ideas (yes, crazy ideas are ok) and testing them. Carefully. Looking for any possible flaw in your hypothesis, and honestly trying to dubunk it.
It's hard. When you've spent months or years working on something, you grow to care about it and believe in it. There's a huge temptation to see only the results that confirm what you believe. It's very easy to pretend, even to yourself, that your ideas are more important than the method, that the results show generally the right thing anyway, that the contradicting data isn't relevent.
It's also wrong. "Too much zeal", in this case, is likely dishonesty. Someone who simply comes up with cute ideas and tries to find supporting data isn't a scientist. For every Cold Fusion debacle, there are hundreds of cases of fudged results by researches with "too much zeal", every one of which muddies the waters of understanding and wastes taxpayer and corporation money.
Your so-called "zeal" does nothing to advance sciences. If the ideas are correct, careful testing will support them, and openly publishing results will allow others to reproduce them. If they can't survive, then no amount of effort will make them fly.
He doesn't even mention the radical changes to regexps in Perl 6, as described in the recent Apocalypse 5 and Synopsis 5.
You're misunderstanding Dawkins. Neither he nor (AFAIK) any serious evolutionary scientist claims that evolution is a justification for social conservatism. There's a big difference between saying we are selfish (a la The Selfish Gene) and that we should be selfish.
Social Darwinism is little more than a straw man. They certainly had differences, but this wasn't one of them.
I sometimes worry that computer geeks^H^H^H^H^Hprofessionals, like most of the general public, don't actually understand science.
So I'm relieved to see stories like this. The reviewer is fascinated by a book extolling sloppy science, and that's sad. Maybe such stories (like, say this) shouldn't get posted. But it's a relief to see so many thoughtful, highly moderated comments explain what science is, what it means, and why the original post doesn't know what it's talking about.
Reasonable point about the nominations, and of course the other catagories are sprinkled with fantasy. Perhaps I'm just bitter because I don't want to have to read all the books just to stay current with the Hugos.
:)
As for the boundary, it's like obscenity..."I know it when I see it".
Any genre boundry is difficult. Is Michael Crighton science fiction? Kurt Vonnegut? Is Gabriel Garcia Marquez fantasy? A case could be made on either side of any of them. In general, I would say science fiction makes an effort, at least, to portray something that might be possible, while fantasy doesn't. It's more an issue of the intention of the author than a checklist of characteristics.
In this case, though, the point is moot here. Harry Potter is fantasy, no question. The other books I mentioned really aren't even that close to the border.
Yes, I know, the rules specify the field of "science fiction or fantasy." And I have nothing against fantasy; I read a little. But last year's Harry Potter novel didn't belong there. Fantasy is a different genre and has its own awards.
...And Call Me Conrad) and To Your Scattered Bodies Go (Farmer). Those are clearly science fiction at the core, but with some fantasy-like setting.
None of the other 48 award winning novels are fantasy. About the closest are the Zelazny winners (Lord of Light,
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Perl 6. Papa says, "If you see it in Slashdot, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Perl 6?
Personal Public Transport
Lots of discussion of transportation systems, network layout, engineering, control, etc.
Yes! I'd make the term of the first phase shorter, but that's the right approach.
Suppose you write a novel. Consider a time far in the future, say, 30 years after you're dead. Your children are dead; you're grandchildren are old, and they would hold the copyright. How upset would if:
1) Someone reprinted the novel, but didn't pay your grandchildren, but kept the profits themselves?
2) Someone reprinted the novel, paid your grandchildren, but claimed to have written it themselves (without permission)?
3) Someone reprinted the novel, paid your grandchildren, attributed you, but changed the story so the moral and meaning were completely different (without permission, without noting there was a change)?
I, and I think most people, would be far more upset with (2) and (3) than (1). The credit and integrity of the work should be protected for a long time. Monetary rights aren't nearly as important, not in the long term.*
Still not convinced? Consider:
4) Someone wants to reprint your work, but your grandchildren, who own exclusive rights to your work, hold out for more money, and in the end won't let them.