Religion and freedom have never really gotten along, from the persecution of Galileo to the demands by Orthodox Jews that Jerusalem shut down its cinemas on Friday night to Islamic attacks on writers and reporters in some Middle Eastern countries. Technology, a disseminator of so much information, a force for freedom, has always come under fire as Satan's ally.
Technology has always come under fire as Satan's ally?
Let's see, the first movable type printing press was a huge invention for disseminating information (I'm talking Gutenburg here). And what was the first output of this press? "Women of few virtues and fewer garments?", nah, the Bible. Of course, printing lots of Bibles did affect the religious status quo soon after.
I see Katz mentions Islam. Don't stereotype one religion based on a intolerant, minority sect. Read a little about Islam, almost all the ancient Greek texts were saved and spread by Islam during the middle ages. Also, Islam in the middle ages invented algebra and alcohol.
Speaking of saving and restoring information, many monasteries did that in the middle ages too.
I havn't read the artical yet, but a "Christian action game" That sounds pretty damn dull...
Really? Not all Christians are like Ned Flanders, open your mind a little.
Just a few Christian scenarios that could be fun games, some action and some strategy. I'll end up focusing more on strategy games, though, since I like them a lot more than trigger happy action games.
Action games
Feed the masses: You have to keep splitting loaves and fishes, and lobbing them to the hungry masses, while the masses keep growing and growing. Similar to "The awful green things from outer space" though I don't know if it was ever made into a computer game.
Fight the lions: You're a Christian in the early Roman Empire, and you're thrown to the lions in the Colosseum. Survive.
Friar Tuck: You have to grab the gold from the church poor box to feed the poor, outwit the sheriff, sneak food to the people in the jail, hmm, has some potential.
The Exorcist: You have to launch an exorcism spell without getting struck by pea soup.
Strategy games
There are a wealth of infiltration/revolution type strategy games to be had in the Christiam milieu.
Convert the Emperor: You're a member of a small, illegal cult. You have to spread through Rome while being persecuted. If you can convert the Emperor, you win.
Crusades: You have to plan and battle to win back the Holy Lands from the infidels (who also consider them their Holy Lands).
Luther!: You are upset with the direction the Church has taken. You want to change's it's vision, and Open Source the Bible. If you start enough offshoot churches, you win.
Liberation Theology: You are a leftist Christian in a repressive Central American dictatorship. You want to have a Christian centered revolt to free the people.
You didn't read the link, did you? Here it is again.
a) The Death Star was not in low orbit.
2000 km is a pretty low orbit for something as massive as the Death Star.
b) There's no particular reason to think that the explosion released a significant amount of radiation.
What's your hypothesis for the Death Star's powerplant?
c) On a sheer mass scale, the Death Star wasn't nearly big enough to cover Endor in ash even if it had blown inside the atmosphere. It massed maybe half what the first one did, if it was lucky. Besides which, the thing broke into small enough pieces that it would have all burned up on entry into the atmosphere.
What do you mean it massed half what the first one did? It's twice the size, whatever that means, and has a diameter of 800-960 km.
So, it burns up into pieces upon rentry? Where do the dust sized pieces of the Death Star go? If the Ewoks are lucky, they precipitate straight down, otherwise they suffer a severe overcast sky for a decade. Unless those pieces of dust "burn" all the way into energy, hmm, e=mc^2, you figure out the joules released into the atmosphere.
You think they survived having the Death Star blown up over the planet while it was in low orbit? They're toast, and Endor is a desolate, ash covered radioactive hell hole, or at least it should be.
Unless, just maybe, it was a Potemkin Death Star, built to lure Skywalker, built out of tin foil and sticks. Yeah, we can rationalize that.
A few other good sites, are Daemon news, for all sorts of info on the *BSDs, and FreeBSD Rocks for FreeBSD information, and FreeBSD Zine for more information, and finally, to buy your own cuddly daemon, FreeBSD Mall. George
I did a little research (which I should have done before posting, but hey, why would I not want to shoot off my mouth) and realized Turing's Bombe's decrypted Enigma, while Colossus decrypted Lorenz, two entirely different encryption machines.
I also found a link stating that Colossus does outperform a modern Pentium. The link is of a presentation given in July of 1998 for Pentium comparisons.
They claim they performance is because of the parallelism of the Colossus.
I looked all over the Artemis web page, and couldn't find much more on Duncan.
I'm guessing here, but I'm thinking the seven women designed and built the hardware, and Duncan did the software part, thus, the women didn't work much with Duncan, and they became the focus of the third party stories.
Maybe one of those eight people read slashdot, and they can illuminate.
Talking about Colossus - a computer that blew the socks off ENIAC and (in a recent benchtest) was shown to be faster than a Pentium II for code-cracking - would devastate US pride. A British computer from the 1940's, superior to a modern American high-tech system? That's one hell of an ego-basher.
Do you have a link for this? I've heard about Colossus being faster than a PII, but have never seen anything concrete.
If we assume that Colossus was twice as fast as a PII, and the generic PII is four times as fast as a P100, then Turing's Colussus was about 800 times faster than his Bombe. Damn, that really blows Moore's law away.
I prefer the Gnotepad+ satellite. Sure, it may require an X Launch delivery system, which is resource intensive and reuires more modern hardware, but it sure is pretty, what with all the colored fonts and italics and all.
I dunno, spending lots of time outnumbered by smart, geeky women sounds kind of fun. But then I've always worked well with women, and have had several women managers and co-workers.
I think it's great that's it was a multidisplinary team. On my two Aerospace engineering class projects ( 4 person business turboprop and experimental solar sail), it was all Aerospace undergrads, we fudged the EE and CS stuff. No women on our teams either, if I recall, you would have had to combine the classes of 88, 89 and 90 to get six women Aerospace undergrads.
Actually, normal spacecraft almost never get hit by space junk. The only incident I know of was when Challenger took a paint chip moving at God's own speed on its windshield. The windshield cracked so badly that it had to be replaced, and the crew was lucky to survive.
Tell me more. Did NASA have comprehensive glass coverage on the shuttle, and how much did their premiusm go up? Did the insurance company take their word on it, or did they want to see the damage? Did a glass shop fly up into orbit to replace it? Was the shuttle able to pass inspection as long as the crack wasn't in the pilot's line of site?
I guess this explains the retention of memories in the face of my extreme cannabis intake...
I thought loss of short term memory with cannabis was more of a myth. In fact, I almost think I remember reading it one night on the web, I can't remember the url, but the top graphic was nearly the same color as a lucite bong I used to use.
What about girls? I'm so wired on caffeine right now that I'm not even horny, I'd rather find a X-Window for my NT so I can play lincity without leaving my cube to go into the lab.
More seriously, caffeine can cause breast tenderness and lumps, if I recall.
Personally, I was never sure why these features were considered superior. If they had been logical about it, they would have gone for brown eyed people, who have faster visual response times in daylight (see cricket stats), and I'd pick people who were sunburn-resistant...
Ooh, I can imagine a great science fiction story where they genetically created superpeople are...
black!
I wonder how many parents would be itching to make their children more sunburn resistant and have better visual response if the genetic engineering made them look black?
It would sure make a strange scene at the country club.
Personally, I'm a little skeptical of the link between myopia and intelligence, since one of the more information links was from eugenics.net, and it might be environmental differences masquerading as genetic (ie. if your parents read lots of books, you will too).
On the other hand, how can you refuse parents the right to prevent passing on myopia, asthma and other hereditary ailments to their offspring, if the technology is there?
On the other hand, what if myopia and intelligence have a genetic link?
At one time, elm trees dominated cities in the Northeast usa. Then, an organism came along with a special affinity for elms, Dutch Elm Disease, and nearly wiped out every elm tree. They had such little genetic diversity that Dutch Elm Tree nearly removed them from the gene pool.
Researchers today are still looking for elm's that have a resistance to this disease (though I think they have a few likely trees).
How about getting breeding children without the gene for sickle cell anemia. Sounds like a marvelous idea, sickle cell being very destructive in Africa.
Except being a carrier apparently gives you some protection against malaria (iirc), which is why such a disease with a negative reproductive impact is still around.
Something that may be closer to many slashdot readers, myopia. Who wouldn't want to free theur children from the need to wear glasses? However, correlations have been found between myopia and intelligence. Is it because four-eyes like to read, or is there a genetic link between brain size and the size of the eyeball? If it comes down to an either or, do you pick between a brainy kid who may need glasses, or a less smart kid who doesn't?
My point, anything that reduces genetic diversity in a species puts that species that much closer to a catastrophic pandemic.
That said, I don't think this will be an issue by the time I procreate again, though I fear my daughter may have to make this choice.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot the best game of all, Sodom and Gomorrah!
Kewl, we can then sell it to the segfault crowd
LOT'S WIFE, NAKED AND TURNED TO SALT
George
Cool ideas!
I hope some creative people are reading and will work on some of these and similar ideas.
Thanks, but I find the ideas easy, it's the execution that would require two or three more of me.
George
This whole paragraph bothers me.
Religion and freedom have never really gotten along, from the persecution of Galileo to the demands by Orthodox Jews that Jerusalem shut down its cinemas on Friday night to Islamic attacks on writers and reporters in some Middle Eastern countries. Technology, a disseminator of so much information, a force for freedom, has always come under fire as Satan's ally.
Technology has always come under fire as Satan's ally?
Let's see, the first movable type printing press was a huge invention for disseminating information (I'm talking Gutenburg here). And what was the first output of this press? "Women of few virtues and fewer garments?", nah, the Bible. Of course, printing lots of Bibles did affect the religious status quo soon after.
I see Katz mentions Islam. Don't stereotype one religion based on a intolerant, minority sect. Read a little about Islam, almost all the ancient Greek texts were saved and spread by Islam during the middle ages. Also, Islam in the middle ages invented algebra and alcohol.
Speaking of saving and restoring information, many monasteries did that in the middle ages too.
Oh well, flamebait builds posts.
George
I havn't read the artical yet, but a "Christian action game" That sounds pretty damn dull...
Really? Not all Christians are like Ned Flanders, open your mind a little.
Just a few Christian scenarios that could be fun games, some action and some strategy. I'll end up focusing more on strategy games, though, since I like them a lot more than trigger happy action games.
Action games
Feed the masses: You have to keep splitting loaves and fishes, and lobbing them to the hungry masses, while the masses keep growing and growing. Similar to "The awful green things from outer space" though I don't know if it was ever made into a computer game.
Fight the lions: You're a Christian in the early Roman Empire, and you're thrown to the lions in the Colosseum. Survive.
Friar Tuck: You have to grab the gold from the church poor box to feed the poor, outwit the sheriff, sneak food to the people in the jail, hmm, has some potential.
The Exorcist: You have to launch an exorcism spell without getting struck by pea soup.
Strategy games
There are a wealth of infiltration/revolution type strategy games to be had in the Christiam milieu.
Convert the Emperor: You're a member of a small, illegal cult. You have to spread through Rome while being persecuted. If you can convert the Emperor, you win.
Crusades: You have to plan and battle to win back the Holy Lands from the infidels (who also consider them their Holy Lands).
Luther!: You are upset with the direction the Church has taken. You want to change's it's vision, and Open Source the Bible. If you start enough offshoot churches, you win.
Liberation Theology: You are a leftist Christian in a repressive Central American dictatorship. You want to have a Christian centered revolt to free the people.
I could go on, and on, but I won't.
George
You didn't read the link, did you? Here it is again.
a) The Death Star was not in low orbit.
2000 km is a pretty low orbit for something as massive as the Death Star.
b) There's no particular reason to think that the explosion released a significant amount of radiation.
What's your hypothesis for the Death Star's powerplant?
c) On a sheer mass scale, the Death Star wasn't nearly big enough to cover Endor in ash even if it had blown inside the atmosphere. It massed maybe half what the first one did, if it was lucky. Besides which, the thing broke into small enough pieces that it would have all burned up on entry into the atmosphere.
What do you mean it massed half what the first one did? It's twice the size, whatever that means, and has a diameter of 800-960 km.
So, it burns up into pieces upon rentry? Where do the dust sized pieces of the Death Star go? If the Ewoks are lucky, they precipitate straight down, otherwise they suffer a severe overcast sky for a decade. Unless those pieces of dust "burn" all the way into energy, hmm, e=mc^2, you figure out the joules released into the atmosphere.
Follow the link and get back to me.
George
Y not off the Ewoks too?
You think they survived having the Death Star blown up over the planet while it was in low orbit? They're toast, and Endor is a desolate, ash covered radioactive hell hole, or at least it should be.
Unless, just maybe, it was a Potemkin Death Star, built to lure Skywalker, built out of tin foil and sticks. Yeah, we can rationalize that.
George
A few other good sites, are Daemon news, for all sorts of info on the *BSDs, and FreeBSD Rocks for FreeBSD information, and FreeBSD Zine for more information, and finally, to buy your own cuddly daemon, FreeBSD Mall. George
Here's a second for the East Coast, maybe even within a few hours of Rochester, NY.
I'm even wearing my daemon T-shirt today.
George
I looked all over the site, and not a word about Raj, or even Rerun!
Does anyone remember when Rerun got caught taping a Doobies concert? "Which Doobie you be?" Ah, memories.
George
I did a little research (which I should have done before posting, but hey, why would I not want to shoot off my mouth) and realized Turing's Bombe's decrypted Enigma, while Colossus decrypted Lorenz, two entirely different encryption machines.
I also found a link stating that Colossus does outperform a modern Pentium. The link is of a presentation given in July of 1998 for Pentium comparisons.
They claim they performance is because of the parallelism of the Colossus.
George
I see your point.
I looked all over the Artemis web page, and couldn't find much more on Duncan.
I'm guessing here, but I'm thinking the seven women designed and built the hardware, and Duncan did the software part, thus, the women didn't work much with Duncan, and they became the focus of the third party stories.
Maybe one of those eight people read slashdot, and they can illuminate.
George
Talking about Colossus - a computer that blew the socks off ENIAC and (in a recent benchtest) was shown to be faster than a Pentium II for code-cracking - would devastate US pride. A British computer from the 1940's, superior to a modern American high-tech system? That's one hell of an ego-basher.
Do you have a link for this? I've heard about Colossus being faster than a PII, but have never seen anything concrete.
One data point I do have is comparing Turing's earlier Bombe with a P100. The link mentions a P100 doing in 8 minutes what a Bombe did in 900 minutes (15 hours).
If we assume that Colossus was twice as fast as a PII, and the generic PII is four times as fast as a P100, then Turing's Colussus was about 800 times faster than his Bombe. Damn, that really blows Moore's law away.
George
I prefer the Gnotepad+ satellite. Sure, it may require an X Launch delivery system, which is resource intensive and reuires more modern hardware, but it sure is pretty, what with all the colored fonts and italics and all.
George
Sucks to be him?
I dunno, spending lots of time outnumbered by smart, geeky women sounds kind of fun. But then I've always worked well with women, and have had several women managers and co-workers.
I think it's great that's it was a multidisplinary team. On my two Aerospace engineering class projects ( 4 person business turboprop and experimental solar sail), it was all Aerospace undergrads, we fudged the EE and CS stuff. No women on our teams either, if I recall, you would have had to combine the classes of 88, 89 and 90 to get six women Aerospace undergrads.
George
Actually, normal spacecraft almost never get hit by space junk. The only incident I know of was when Challenger took a paint chip moving at God's own speed on its windshield. The windshield cracked so badly that it had to be replaced, and the crew was lucky to survive.
Tell me more. Did NASA have comprehensive glass coverage on the shuttle, and how much did their premiusm go up? Did the insurance company take their word on it, or did they want to see the damage? Did a glass shop fly up into orbit to replace it? Was the shuttle able to pass inspection as long as the crack wasn't in the pilot's line of site?
Thanks,
George
If you looked at the projected lifetime, I think the odds of space junk hitting it in the week or two that it's alive are pretty remote.
Of course, there's always a first time.
George
I guess this explains the retention of memories in the face of my extreme cannabis intake...
I thought loss of short term memory with cannabis was more of a myth. In fact, I almost think I remember reading it one night on the web, I can't remember the url, but the top graphic was nearly the same color as a lucite bong I used to use.
George
What about girls?
What about girls? I'm so wired on caffeine right now that I'm not even horny, I'd rather find a X-Window for my NT so I can play lincity without leaving my cube to go into the lab.
More seriously, caffeine can cause breast tenderness and lumps, if I recall.
George
Personally, I was never sure why these features were considered superior. If they had been logical about it, they would have gone for brown eyed people, who have faster visual response times in daylight (see cricket stats), and I'd pick people who were sunburn-resistant...
Ooh, I can imagine a great science fiction story where they genetically created superpeople are...
black!
I wonder how many parents would be itching to make their children more sunburn resistant and have better visual response if the genetic engineering made them look black?
It would sure make a strange scene at the country club.
George
Start Open Source TV.
You know, get a decent web cam that is close to broadcast television quality.
Get a decent AV computer, that lets you do streaming video in addition to live stuff.
Get a fat pipe.
Start your own TV station.
Take requests from audience members interactively.
Maybe charge $19.95 a month for a special members only channel.
Oops, I just described 90% of the pron sites.
George
Personally, I'm a little skeptical of the link between myopia and intelligence, since one of the more information links was from eugenics.net, and it might be environmental differences masquerading as genetic (ie. if your parents read lots of books, you will too).
But I thought it raised an interesting point.
George
On the other hand, how can you refuse parents the right to prevent passing on myopia, asthma and other hereditary ailments to their offspring, if the technology is there?
On the other hand, what if myopia and intelligence have a genetic link?
Mr 20-400 myself
George
At one time, elm trees dominated cities in the Northeast usa. Then, an organism came along with a special affinity for elms, Dutch Elm Disease, and nearly wiped out every elm tree. They had such little genetic diversity that Dutch Elm Tree nearly removed them from the gene pool.
Researchers today are still looking for elm's that have a resistance to this disease (though I think they have a few likely trees).
How about getting breeding children without the gene for sickle cell anemia. Sounds like a marvelous idea, sickle cell being very destructive in Africa.
Except being a carrier apparently gives you some protection against malaria (iirc), which is why such a disease with a negative reproductive impact is still around.
Something that may be closer to many slashdot readers, myopia. Who wouldn't want to free theur children from the need to wear glasses? However, correlations have been found between myopia and intelligence. Is it because four-eyes like to read, or is there a genetic link between brain size and the size of the eyeball? If it comes down to an either or, do you pick between a brainy kid who may need glasses, or a less smart kid who doesn't?
My point, anything that reduces genetic diversity in a species puts that species that much closer to a catastrophic pandemic.
That said, I don't think this will be an issue by the time I procreate again, though I fear my daughter may have to make this choice.
George
Exactly how do you translate "l am 3l337 hax0r d00d" into Serbian?
George
That would be Boeing that bought McDonnel-Douglas. Only two major commercial aircraft builders these days.
Thanks, I no longer read the trade mags, and don't have too many contacts in the aero world.
Would that make it BoMcGrumDoug?
George