But seriously, the greatest weapon any elite has against the masses is the commoner's belief in his (or her) own uselessness. And in a country that's still as free (yes, free---there are lots of *much worse* places to be, which lefties always seem to not notice) as America, where the populace *believes* that they are free, they can still *act* free.
Really. The Man isn't nearly as omnipotent as you make Him out to be.
Speed is extremely, *extremely*, relative. Back when the only thing going around was USENET, a 300-baud modem could support an entire engineering department.
I'm sure once everyone's page is laden with streaming video garbage, you'll need to eat up a whole DSL line just to browse at acceptable speeds.
Dude, I'm going to have to take the blame for that one. You'll notice that that text was italicized, and hence came from my submission.
Send in bugs, get checks for $2.56, tell the grandkids.
Let's expand this a bit. Don Knuth sends $2.56 (a ``hexadecimal dollar'') for each bug so found. This money is sent in check form. No one in their right mind would actually cash them, especially since Knuth is getting on in years. (Note that he's just celebrated his millionth birthday---in base 2, of course.) I have two checks from Knuth (though for ``useful suggestions'', worth but thirty-two cents apiece), and they are possibly my most prized possessions.
And that's ``Don Bluth''. Not ``Don Knuth''. Though they're both rather devout men, that's where the similarities end, unless Don Bluth plays the organ...
... are freeloaders by choice. But I have a bandwidth cap when I'm on campus. (5gb/week.) I wouldn't give two shits if someone leeched from me all night and all day, but for the small issue of me getting my access cut off. Sharing isn't free for me; it cuts into what I can do.
Hence, the university makes a bastard of me. *sigh*.
skr1p+ k1dd1ez0rz are Luddites? Puh-leaze. They're vandals, pure and simple. They like breaking shit because it commands fear and respect among their peers. Nothing new here, folks. Same shit stupid kids have been doing for ages to get attention.
You're citing old, old data. Much has come forth since Dolly.
1. Children created through IVF turn out plenty normal. You're confusing embryos *created* in vivo with those *brought to term* in vivo. There's still no substitute for a human womb---these artificial embryos would need to be implanted into a regular ol' uterus to become children.
2. You have genes from both of your parents. The genome in the embryo is the same as the genome you had *as* an embryo. The only difference is, the first step---that of recombination---has already been done.
3. Wasn't the telomere question still up in the air? I thought most clones animals had normal lifespans, and it wasn't even shown conclusively that Dolly was aging prematurely.
Please try to keep up-to-date. These questions were all answered months ago.
Well, given that Marvin was, at the time of his death, (some two-digit number) of times as old as the universe itself, and had actually waited until The End Of The Universe at one point, you could say that at least one (most likely several) Marvin(s) existed in the universe at that point.
You're assuming that Earth was unique, the only one of its kind built.
If we assume that it simply requires **a** brain the size of a planet, not **the** brain the size of a planet that Arthur Dent lived on, the argument holds.
Instead of asking ``who the fuck is Ernest P. Worrel'', I'm sparing everyone else the trouble. He's that damned annoying ``Ernest Goes to Camp''/``Ernest Goes to Africa''/``Ernest Goes to Eroticon Six'' guy, played my Jim Varley.
Marvin, amongst numerous other complaints, claimed to have a brain the size of a planet.
Marvin, like other robots, has a computer-based brain.
The Earth is a planet.
The Earth was built by the mice as a computer, the only such planet or computer ever built.
By (2), (3), (4), and (5), the Earth must therefore be Marvin's brain.
The sole purpose of the Earth's program was to discover the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Marvin once announced that he had, in a moment of boredom, found the square root of -1, something never before done in the history of the universe, and previously believed by all sensible hyper-intelligent beings to be possibly the most difficult task to undertake, as it was dependent on the very structure of the Universe. (Most normally- intelligent beings gave up, dismissing it as impossible.)
Marvin announced that he felt a brief, but deep, sense of satisfaction after having accomplished the achievement in (8).
The Earth was apparently destroyed just as the purpose of its program was fulfilled, and a Question had been found.
By (7), the Earth computer would have felt a deep sense of satisfaction at having achieved the task it was designed to fulfil.
By (10), the sensation in (11) would have been brief.
By (6), and by the fact that emotional feelings are based in the brain, the feelings in (9), (11) and (12) are the same single feeling.
Finding the Ultimate Question was deemed to be the single most difficult task undertaken by hyper-intelligent beings in the history of the universe, as it was dependant on the very structure of the Universe -- as well as Life and Everything.
By (6), (8), (13), and (14), Marvin (the Earth) had clearly solved the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
By (8) and (15), the Question is "What is the square root of -1?".
I don't think you need ``vocational training'' to wash dishes. There exist what we call ``idiot jobs'', which require a) a reasonably able body, and b) the IQ of a retarded orangutan. Many of us work these jobs during our college years, for whatever reason, and shudder to think of the adults who work them their entire lives.
I agree wholeheartedly that the ``everyone should go to college!'' mentality is ridiculous. A quarter of Americans go to undergraduate school. Many of them are idiots. I know, I tutor them. They think they're still in high school; they think they can copy and paste the pseudocode the TA posts on his site, and get away with not *actually* understanding the basics of C++. (UConn apparently requires freshmen to take the introductory programming course. Psych majors are not *meant* to take programming. *shudder*.
I know, there are exceptions... but I tutor. I'm exposed to high levels of Idiot Radiation on a twice-weekly basis. It's not pretty.
Come on, only a tiny percentage of those who go to college *now* produce anything useful or innovative. The rest sort of slide through like they did in high school. Why would we want to squeeze more unmotivated high school kids into college?
I'm all for anyone who truly wants to get a degree going to school. But a lot of people just don't care, and you can't make them. If you try, you get an eight-year high school.
But yes, this was at SIGGRAPH, called ``Protrude, Flow''. They had to put signs up so that people wouldn't try to touch it. They also had funky lighting so that it looked *really* otherworldly.
Definitely the most surreal thing at the show. It ties ``Meeting Jim Blinn'' for my coolest SIGGRAPH moment.
Note: LA sucks. Be glad it's in San Antonio next year...
I suppose the only ``problem'' with the Cold War was that it ended... the Soviets seemed invincible enough in the fifties, but they eventually crumbled, and the military-industrial complex risked obsolescence.
Well, no more of that shit, we're at war with terrorism! Even better than being at war with drugs---even that couldn't screw us into getting national ID cards, but we can now be in a perpatual state of war, enough so that everyone's favorite cash cow can be fed monthly, to keep our country safe from a poorly-defined, literally never-ending threat.
These are new and interesting times we live in, my friends...
"You are running Outlook 97 or Outlook 98. You should consider upgrading to the latest version of Outlook to ensure you have the most recent product and security enhancements."
Hmm. Is this telling me that there are no patches available, and my only choice is to pay cash money and upgrade to Outlook 2000?
Yeah, it provides useful information, but it still feels like they're trying to shaft me.
You might want to try looking into the Student Volunteer program as well. You get go-anywhere passes, discounted merchandise (well, some of it is dicounted), meal vouchers and they put you in a very, very nice hotel. (Westin Bonaventure for me.)
(You probably remember the SVs. We were the people in the dorky red vests...)
Is there an itemized list of What Linux Needs To Become Enterprise-Ready somewhere?
I'm hearing vague chants of ``scalability!'' and ``ease of administration!'' here, but it would be much more productive, I think, if there were a concrete, to-the-point summary of what Linux's design goals need to be for acceptance in the enterprise.
Slashdot Mirror
Damn, I crack me up.
But seriously, the greatest weapon any elite has against the masses is the commoner's belief in his (or her) own uselessness. And in a country that's still as free (yes, free---there are lots of *much worse* places to be, which lefties always seem to not notice) as America, where the populace *believes* that they are free, they can still *act* free.
Really. The Man isn't nearly as omnipotent as you make Him out to be.
-grendel drago
Speed is extremely, *extremely*, relative. Back when the only thing going around was USENET, a 300-baud modem could support an entire engineering department.
I'm sure once everyone's page is laden with streaming video garbage, you'll need to eat up a whole DSL line just to browse at acceptable speeds.
-grendel drago
Dude, I'm going to have to take the blame for that one. You'll notice that that text was italicized, and hence came from my submission.
Let's expand this a bit. Don Knuth sends $2.56 (a ``hexadecimal dollar'') for each bug so found. This money is sent in check form. No one in their right mind would actually cash them, especially since Knuth is getting on in years. (Note that he's just celebrated his millionth birthday---in base 2, of course.) I have two checks from Knuth (though for ``useful suggestions'', worth but thirty-two cents apiece), and they are possibly my most prized possessions.
And that's ``Don Bluth''. Not ``Don Knuth''. Though they're both rather devout men, that's where the similarities end, unless Don Bluth plays the organ...
-grendel drago
Yeah!
*looks around sheepishly*
At least I can tell my grandkids I got a story on Slashdot, too. Even if it wasn't on the front page...
-grendel drago
But remember, it's not always free for the ``freeloaders'' to share. Some of us have severe bandwidth limitations...
-grendel drago
... are freeloaders by choice. But I have a bandwidth cap when I'm on campus. (5gb/week.) I wouldn't give two shits if someone leeched from me all night and all day, but for the small issue of me getting my access cut off. Sharing isn't free for me; it cuts into what I can do.
Hence, the university makes a bastard of me. *sigh*.
-grendel drago
skr1p+ k1dd1ez0rz are Luddites? Puh-leaze. They're vandals, pure and simple. They like breaking shit because it commands fear and respect among their peers. Nothing new here, folks. Same shit stupid kids have been doing for ages to get attention.
-grendel drago
You're citing old, old data. Much has come forth since Dolly.
1. Children created through IVF turn out plenty normal. You're confusing embryos *created* in vivo with those *brought to term* in vivo. There's still no substitute for a human womb---these artificial embryos would need to be implanted into a regular ol' uterus to become children.
2. You have genes from both of your parents. The genome in the embryo is the same as the genome you had *as* an embryo. The only difference is, the first step---that of recombination---has already been done.
3. Wasn't the telomere question still up in the air? I thought most clones animals had normal lifespans, and it wasn't even shown conclusively that Dolly was aging prematurely.
Please try to keep up-to-date. These questions were all answered months ago.
-grendel drago
Well, given that Marvin was, at the time of his death, (some two-digit number) of times as old as the universe itself, and had actually waited until The End Of The Universe at one point, you could say that at least one (most likely several) Marvin(s) existed in the universe at that point.
-grendel drago
You're assuming that Earth was unique, the only one of its kind built.
If we assume that it simply requires **a** brain the size of a planet, not **the** brain the size of a planet that Arthur Dent lived on, the argument holds.
-grendel drago
Change ``is the'' to ``is a/an''.
-grendel drago
Instead of asking ``who the fuck is Ernest P. Worrel'', I'm sparing everyone else the trouble. He's that damned annoying ``Ernest Goes to Camp''/``Ernest Goes to Africa''/``Ernest Goes to Eroticon Six'' guy, played my Jim Varley.
http://us.imdb.com/Mlinks?0119068
That sort of thing.
-grendel drago
-
The Answer to the Question is 42.
-
Marvin, amongst numerous other complaints, claimed to have a brain the size of a planet.
- Marvin, like other robots, has a computer-based brain.
-
The Earth is a planet.
- The Earth was built by the mice as a computer, the only such planet or computer ever built.
- By (2), (3), (4), and (5), the Earth must therefore be Marvin's brain.
- The sole purpose of the Earth's program was to discover the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
- Marvin once announced that he had, in a moment of boredom, found the square root of -1, something never before done in the history of the universe, and previously believed by all sensible hyper-intelligent beings to be possibly the most difficult task to undertake, as it was dependent on the very structure of the Universe. (Most normally- intelligent beings gave up, dismissing it as impossible.)
- Marvin announced that he felt a brief, but deep, sense of satisfaction after having accomplished the achievement in (8).
- The Earth was apparently destroyed just as the purpose of its program was fulfilled, and a Question had been found.
- By (7), the Earth computer would have felt a deep sense of satisfaction at having achieved the task it was designed to fulfil.
- By (10), the sensation in (11) would have been brief.
- By (6), and by the fact that emotional feelings are based in the brain, the feelings in (9), (11) and (12) are the same single feeling.
- Finding the Ultimate Question was deemed to be the single most difficult task undertaken by hyper-intelligent beings in the history of the universe, as it was dependant on the very structure of the Universe -- as well as Life and Everything.
- By (6), (8), (13), and (14), Marvin (the Earth) had clearly solved the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
- By (8) and (15), the Question is "What is the square root of -1?".
- By (1) and (16), the square root of -1 is 42.
Pretty obvious, in hindsight...-grendel drago
At the showing I saw, the whole theater went nuts when the broom hit Ron in the face. It was just such a slapstick surprise, it just *worked*.
I don't think you need ``vocational training'' to wash dishes. There exist what we call ``idiot jobs'', which require a) a reasonably able body, and b) the IQ of a retarded orangutan. Many of us work these jobs during our college years, for whatever reason, and shudder to think of the adults who work them their entire lives.
I agree wholeheartedly that the ``everyone should go to college!'' mentality is ridiculous. A quarter of Americans go to undergraduate school. Many of them are idiots. I know, I tutor them. They think they're still in high school; they think they can copy and paste the pseudocode the TA posts on his site, and get away with not *actually* understanding the basics of C++. (UConn apparently requires freshmen to take the introductory programming course. Psych majors are not *meant* to take programming. *shudder*.
I know, there are exceptions... but I tutor. I'm exposed to high levels of Idiot Radiation on a twice-weekly basis. It's not pretty.
Come on, only a tiny percentage of those who go to college *now* produce anything useful or innovative. The rest sort of slide through like they did in high school. Why would we want to squeeze more unmotivated high school kids into college?
I'm all for anyone who truly wants to get a degree going to school. But a lot of people just don't care, and you can't make them. If you try, you get an eight-year high school.
-grendel drago
They're like the vigilante USENET Cabal! (Motto: There Is No USENET Cabal.)
Hmm. I suppose if you don't know all about MAPS, you're unlikely to remember the Cabal, either.
Damn, you pointed it out first.
But yes, this was at SIGGRAPH, called ``Protrude, Flow''. They had to put signs up so that people wouldn't try to touch it. They also had funky lighting so that it looked *really* otherworldly.
Definitely the most surreal thing at the show. It ties ``Meeting Jim Blinn'' for my coolest SIGGRAPH moment.
Note: LA sucks. Be glad it's in San Antonio next year...
-grendel drago
I suppose the only ``problem'' with the Cold War was that it ended... the Soviets seemed invincible enough in the fifties, but they eventually crumbled, and the military-industrial complex risked obsolescence.
Well, no more of that shit, we're at war with terrorism! Even better than being at war with drugs---even that couldn't screw us into getting national ID cards, but we can now be in a perpatual state of war, enough so that everyone's favorite cash cow can be fed monthly, to keep our country safe from a poorly-defined, literally never-ending threat.
These are new and interesting times we live in, my friends...
-grendel drago
Are there even camels in Afghanistan?
You know that the Egyptians and the Afghans are as far apart as the Greek and the Chinese, right?
-grendel drago
"You are running Outlook 97 or Outlook 98. You should consider upgrading to the latest version of Outlook to ensure you have the most recent product and security enhancements."
Hmm. Is this telling me that there are no patches available, and my only choice is to pay cash money and upgrade to Outlook 2000?
Yeah, it provides useful information, but it still feels like they're trying to shaft me.
-grendel drago
Hey, heroes can be made by wit, daring and bravery, not just by gamma rays and the planet Krypton. One word: Batman.
Semi-low-tech environment. Cowboy attitude. Sounds familiar.
Oh yeah, this could be a good thing.
-grendel drago
People, that was NOT REALTIME RENDERING. Really. It was OpenGL previewing. Lit, shaded, high-poly-count previewing, yes. But just a very nice preview.
The final shots had an average of ten or so layers on each frame. Not to mention that they were antialiased in the first place.
Trust me, people, it's a LONG way from being realtime.
-grendel drago
I got Jim Blinn's autograph. Yes, I'm a fanboy.
You might want to try looking into the Student Volunteer program as well. You get go-anywhere passes, discounted merchandise (well, some of it is dicounted), meal vouchers and they put you in a very, very nice hotel. (Westin Bonaventure for me.)
(You probably remember the SVs. We were the people in the dorky red vests...)
-grendel drago
I mean, a server where root can't log on at all, even from the console, isn't that useful.
Well, there's su, but that's beside the point.
-grendel drago
Is there an itemized list of What Linux Needs To Become Enterprise-Ready somewhere?
I'm hearing vague chants of ``scalability!'' and ``ease of administration!'' here, but it would be much more productive, I think, if there were a concrete, to-the-point summary of what Linux's design goals need to be for acceptance in the enterprise.
-grendel drago