Used something like this (and the fact that you can get an approximation of distance between two coordinates from the difference in decimal degrees because 0.00166667 degrees = 1 minute of arc = 1 nautical mile = 1.15077945 statue miles ) for a dispatching system (long since defunct I'm sure) in 1995.
I would hope such a calculation would be patent proof since the equivalence between minutes of arc and nautical miles has been exploited for navigation purposes for centuries.
Lots of good posts above me so I'll just add this:
The vast majority of Americans are too busy paying for their refinanced second and third mortgages, taking their kids to baby yoga, and watching American Idol to even notice what is going on, i.e. they might as well be zombies. Seriously. Of the percentage who even have an opinion, the majority simply parrot whatever their commentator of choice has to say on the subject, be it O'Reilly or Olbermann. The remaining fraction who have the ability to see the truth and form a well thought-out opinion on this matter mostly spend their time contemplating emigration to Switzerland, the bottom of a bottle, or suicide, depending on their level of desperation.
Furthermore, because of our corrupt political system, those who see things for how they are rarely have honest representation in Washington. Getting to choose between Republicans and Democrats is like getting a choice between ointment and suppository: Either way they take it in the ass.
I worked with the legal department in charge of chargebacks at a major credit-card payment processor for about two weeks. I walked away from the deal when I figured out how evil they are.
Pretty much all you need to know about it is that the chargeback department is seen as a profit center, and they were proud of the millions in chargeback money they added to the bottom line. Sure, there were a few "bad apples" among the merchants who were frauds and got what they had coming to them. However, the vast majority were Mom and Pops who through no fault of their own wound up on the wrong end of a chargeback.
For example, Sally Suburb pays for auto repair via her Visa card, and Hubby decides it was too much and disputes the charge. There was nothing wrong with the repair, and the amount was legitimate, he just didn't thought it was too much. In due course it's charged back and now the mechanic has to come up with the full amount plus fees and expenses.
Looking over the files, I saw chargebacks had put lots of these folks out of business and into bankruptcy. I suppose I'm too much of a sentimentalist, but I couldn't be a part of that. They kept calling for months but I wouldn't even talk to them. Effin' vampires if you ask me. Nowhere in business will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, not even in insurance or banking.
Huh, I thought that y'all had to leave the line physically connected for the express purpose of being able to dial 911 for emergencies or 611 so you could talk to somebody about getting service restored. I guess that was the old days before "deregulation." Guess you can't believe everything you read in 20 year old TAP magazines.;)
I respectfully invite your attention the article "Computing versus human thinking" by Peter Naur in the January, 2007 edition of Communications of the ACM. Naur lays out an extremely sound theory of intelligence, which I found very enlightening in terms of the possibilities and limits of AI. It very much reminds me of Hofstadter's research.
Look 'em dead in the eye and growl in your best Clint Eastwood or George C. Scott as Patton, "You would do well not to make this into a matter of honor, ." Works every time.
I visited the Starfire facility in the mid-'90s. Now, it seems to me that if they'd let me, a long-haired hippie-lookin' mofo who's only reason for being there was I was schtooping the Colonel's daughter and had mentioned in small talk with him that I was interested in lasers and built that nitrogen job out of Scientific American in high school, it can't be that classified. It's not like they said anything about keep your mouth shut or made me sign anything. We did pass through a gate guarded by some serious lookin' dudes who pointed their rifles at me, but they didn't even take my name that I recall.
After we got to the top of the mountain, we went into the main building. There were a couple of dudes in suits there. I was introduced, but I don't remember who they were. Not sure if they were Congressional types or Pentagon guys or what, but the people who worked there were nice to them so I tried to be on my best behavior. We got a short lecture about the project and some of the photos they had produced were handed around.
In case you didn't RTFA, the purpose of Starfire is to use a projected laser dot to configure an adaptive-optics mirror to compensate for atmospheric distortion and allow for better terrestrial astronomy. It works pretty damn good too. The photos I saw were very impressive. Better than Hubble in some cases, which they were justifiably very proud of. They sure were a helluva lot cheaper to get than Hubble photos.
After the lecture we got a tour of the facility. There were several telescopes on the mountain, a couple of which were capable of projecting a laser. The main 'scope had a really neat setup where they could have several experiments going at once and rotate a mirror to pick which one went up the tube. Other than that there were the optical experiment tables, the adaptive-optics setup, the imaging system, and several different kinds of lasers of varying impressive powers.
Next we went into the main dome. We were informed that the main telescope could depress below 0 degrees and the dome could be lowered in 30 seconds, and raised in two minutes by machine, or ten minutes if the hand cranks had to be employed. At the end of the telescope I spotted a disc with "Raytheon" on it. I casually asked, "What's the radar for?" "To make sure there are no aircraft entering the beam path," the tour guide replied. The suit dudes were very surprised by my question so I mostly shut up for the rest of the tour. We then exited the platform so they could open the dome and slew the telescope.
Next came the control room. There were a bunch of guys in there, some in uniform and some in civvies. The were all business and didn't say much. They showed us the computer that had the ephemeris of every object in orbit down to the size of a quarter. All the computers were UNIX and X Windows, FYI. As a software guy, I thought the interface left something to be desired, but that's just me. Tracking an object with the 'scope was as simple as clicking on the desired target. We watched the 'scope slew through a CCTV monitor located near the target computer. Sadly, conditions were unfavorable for a test firing, so I didn't get to see the big mother fire.
Last they took us down to the "shack" where the guide-star laser was produced and sent through a smaller scope. The guys in here were friendlier, hippie/scientist types. I rapped with them a little while the brass talked amongst themselves. They were really excited about their laser because it was very powerful and very yellow, which worked out good for their astronomy.
Understand, the men who worked on this project never, ever said anything about it's use as a weapon. They always talked about it in terms of the astronomy. They had a nice telescope with a honkin' big laser under it, a radar on the front of it, and a computer that could track the 'scope on every object in orbit, up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, but officially the fact that Starfire could be used as a weapon never occurred to them
One of the principles of guerrilla warfare is that you must take your arms and ammunition from your enemies because you have no other way to procure them. If your guerrilla band is small and lightly armed, you take small bites and only ambush small detachments. You only have to eliminate one enemy patrol to have nice automatic rifles and the ammunition that goes with them. You might even get some grenades and a rocket or two.
One other thing to consider: What makes you think the entirety of the military will side with the government?
Why the editors accept submissions like this while rejecting scores of others, I'll never know.
GMD, you're one of my main men and I always love to read your comments. But you're smarter than that, man:
Controversy = More Comments More Comments = More Page Views More Page Views = More Money More Money = More Dope More Dope = More misleading summaries submitted by jackasses who need to add their two cents accepted
As far as scanning for emotional content in phone calls, I'd be happy if they could just program the thing to 1) provide a meaningful caller id (I'm so tired of "800-000-0000") and 2) understand the phrase "Add this number to your do not call list." I can see where using software like this in a customer service situation could be useful. Just how long will it be until some unscrupulous telemarketer gets a hold of it and uses it to prey upon the weak and lonely in an even more systematic manner?
Don't forget their cack-handed bungling of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Sometimes I swear they sit in their offices with their $20,000 furniture and say to themselves, "Fuck those nerds. Fuck them up their stupid asses. They like Farsape? I'll destroy it because I hate fucking nerds. Stargate is one of the most popular shows on our network? Cancelled! How ya like me now, nerds? I'm gonna put wrestling on, and next I'm gonna put golf on. I hold the rights to almost all the shows you love but I'm gonna put on Ghost Hunters five nights a week. I hate you all you fucking nerdy bastards. You'll watch what I want or I'll throw you down onto your eight-sided dice!"
Sorry about that. The SciFi network people have been pissing me off with this bullshit for years. Seems like they'll never figure out that they aren't gonna get that teen and 18-24 demographic they'd like no matter what they put on, unless they just give up on SciFi altogether.
It's like I always say, to the point that my friends call it "Rickwood's Second Law of Computing": "If the data model is correct, all things are possible." I learned that on my first "real" programming job. It's fundamental to building database applications. Even so, I'm constantly mystified by the data model choices people make.
For example, I do a lot of work with a mid-range ERP. This crapplication suite is written in COBOL. There are comments in the code from the Seventies. They claim to be "database independent." By which they mean that can treat any RDBMS available in the market as COBOL flat files. No primary keys. No foreign keys. Flat files. Really. All the join logic is implemented in the COBOL code, so figuring out which tables can join with which is lots of fun. On the other hand, once you've divined the secrets of the tables you rarely lack for work, even if it is just genning up SELECT statements into reports in Perl.
Won't somebody please, please think of the database?
I will no doubt get replies that "Scripting Language X would be better", but I have the most experience with Perl. So if time was of the essence, that's what I'd use. Perl is a Swiss Army Knife in this kind of situation, and you can easily get just about any kind of blade or tool you might want to deal with files and formatting via CPAN.
You can use Perl to fix the file names, restructure the directories, extract the content, put it into a database, and even drive the new site if you'd like. No matter what the choice of new site software, Perl can salvage the existing content and transform it into whatever format you require.
If I had more time I might choose Ruby instead simply because I like programming in it more. However the choice of ready-made tools via the Ruby CPAN equivalent is somewhat less.
No matter what scripting language you choose, you'll be saving time in the long run. Building tools is always time well spent. Indeed, taking a few hours or even days to write a script that makes a weeks-to-months long job of reformatting take hours is one of the great joys of programming for a living.
Post Scriptum: I'm sure you already did, but just in case: Don't forget to back up the original. Thrice. They'll tell you it's already backed up. That's fine. Make three of your own anyway. If they'll let you, lock one in the safe. "Whenever testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey."
In brief, in the UK they have passed laws allowing people to placed under a court order if they have "engaged in conduct which caused or was likely to cause alarm, harassment or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as him or herself...". Violation of the order can result in criminal charges being brought before the court. I am not making this up.
In the current media climate, what journalism needs is FACTS backed up by well researched and thought out opinion. Not ten million myspace blogs.
It's funny you say that. Over the weekend I saw the Tom Brokaw piece about global warming. While some of the information in that program was fact-ish, it was hard to pick out the actual facts for all the opinion around them. What I really want from my news is just the facts and to how many decimal places. I don't need opinion.
I'll go even further and say that in this day and age it is a journalist's sacred duty to present the facts just as the are, trying their damnedest not to allow their opinion to seep through. People don't have the time and the resources to go out and do the research necessary to understand a situation and find the facts for themselves. Rightly or wrongly, we trust journalists to do so for us. Reasonable people don't need to be told what to think.
It is my belief that far too many people never hear the facts, only factoids designed to reinforce the opinion that the media outlet already presented. This happens on both sides of just about every controversial issue. One side's opinion is that global warming is already happening and we're doomed. The other side says there's no proof of global warming and everything is fine. They both have purported facts to back up their opinions, and clearly they can't both be right. Now instead of having the necessary facts to make up my own mind, I have to decided who's opinion I'd rather trust, or would rather back if I'm looking at it from a purely political-economic viewpoint, as some do.
Especially in the US, people seem to pick up more on the lies and innuendo than they do on any actual facts. A talk show host says, "The economy is booming!" No concrete evidence supporting this statement is offered, beyond a few carefully selected factoids that back the host's position. It is repeated daily for weeks, even months. When I speak to people who listen to the show, and ask them about the economy, more often than not I get the exact works of the host repeated back to me. Even if the person isn't doing well financially, they still say, "The economy is booming!"
So, please, journalists, keep your opinions to yourselves. Those of us who's aren't journalists don't have time to parse the facts out of your opinions any more than we have time to seek out those facts for ourselves.
Quoth Anonymous Coward at 1:30 Wednesday 07 June 2006 (#15485314)
The Paladin thing doesn't work. All the power players will gravitate to Paladin, since it's the most powerful at the highest level, regardless if it takes longer to get there.
Unlike AC above, I belive the Paladin ideas you express could be made to work. Furthermore, I think you could make it so that only casuals would want to play the Paladin. Have reputation decay at a rate that it would need to be replenished by a good deed every few hours of gameplay and rig it such that the good deeds aren't terribly rewarding except in terms of reputation. I would think that reputation should only decay if you're online, and even then only if you're online for long enough, i.e. you don't take an hours worth of rep hit just for logging on for five minutes to check your mail. Additionally, if your reputation slips too much, you lose power and abilities until you've redeemed yourself. Having too much money or spending too much time looting dungeons for gear could also negatively impact your reputation.
The Paladin idea, and most of the other ideas you express sound really great, Thangodin. They sound like a game I'd really like to play. Sadly I don't believe I'll ever get the chance.
Let me preface this by saying that I really enjoy playing WoW, have more than one 60th level character, have alts of varying levels in every class, and am part of a guild that's trying to get over the hump into raiding Molten Core. I'm old enough to know that Diablo is just rogue/nethack/angband with pretty graphics and I'm not an anti-gaming nut. It's just that I bumped into The Daedalus Project one day and my eyes were opened to why the major online RPGs get called "EverCrack" and the like.
Many online RPGs work the way they do because the reward structure creates a conditioned response in the player, such that they desire to continue playing to continue to get the "good feelings" they get when they reach a reward milestone, i.e. level up, find a magic item, etc. Leveling up, and in WoW at least reputation grinding, are scheduled rewards. If you keep doing what you're doing, assuming you are doing something for which you get experience or reputation, you'll eventually reach the milestone and get your reward. (Ding!) Magic items are random rewards, and provide the impetus to keep playing as the player thinks, "Maybe the Polearm of Pure Pwnage will drop off the next rat."
Sadly, the decision to use these sorts of psychologically manipulative reward structures is not some vast conspiracy to sap the strength of the gamer segment of the population. These and similar techniques have been used for at least a century in the form of slot machines and then pinball games and now computer games. The entirety of the reason for developing the conditioned response in their players is that, all other things being equal, a game that uses such techniques will make more money than a game that doesn't.
Hey, man, you're not universally ignored, it's just that there isn't much agreement about what the root of the ontology should be. For at least a decade I've been asking anybody I thought might have an answer worth hearing, "What are the properties of the uber-object?" Never gotten the same answer twice. This isn't really suprising as how people view and categorize the world is greatly effected by their experiences and knowledge.
For what it's worth, I can think of two reasons you feel univerally ignored. First, I think people don't look past your "example ontology" to see the underlying sense of the fractal thicket and why it's a good idea. Second, I feel like ontological-taxinomic-semantic AI people are looked down upon by people who think that only neural nets and axiomatic reasoning is "Real AI." Sadly, these are the people who seem to control the funding for research.
My main goal for now is an ontological database, i.e. a database that isn't made up of columns and rows, but stores data by concept in a given ontology and allows searches based on the strength of the connections between concepts.
I find it fascinating that you and I seem to have thought along the same lines. Many times in the last ten years I've sat down to create a schema for the "Uber-Ontology of the Theory of Everything, including kittens, and this time I mean it." Got notebooks filled with 'em. I have shelves filled with Hofstader and Minsky and dozens of others. Never have found the answer. It does make me feel better that at least I'm not the only one asking the question.
Since when do teenagers need encouragement to procure and consume alcohol and marijuana? I'm sure the same study could be used to link video games to mood swings, dancing, and chronic masturbation.
You know, I originally had five in the title, but I figured some smartass would come along and say there were only four constants on the left hand side so the title should say four.
Bob went to Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Even in the early Seventies, when so many of the nation's college campuses were in turmoil, this was a quiet, Catholic Jesuit college. The most famous alumnus of Gonzaga is Bing Crosby, and he made many donations to his alma mater, including a substantial collection of memorabilia. The crown jewel of this collection was his 1944 Oscar for "Going my Way".
Even this serene campus in Washington had malcontents though, one of which was Bob's roommate. The powers that be had done something to offend him, and so they hatched a plan to get even. They would steal Bing's Oscar.
Having seen too many episodes of "It Takes a Thief", they had an elaborate scheme for getting into the case where the Oscar was housed involving ventilation ducts, suction cups, and ropes and pulleys. In the process of casing the museum, one of them leaned against the case and it simply slid open. Astonished, they looked around and saw they were alone in the room, and then looked back at each other. Without a word, Bob stuffed the statue into his jacket and they walked out fore-and-aft with the statue between them, past all the folks at the student center in broad daylight.
They then went back to their room, which faced the building where museum was, and waited. Not too long afterward they heard sirens, and when the police cars showed up, the old lady in charge of the museum came running out with her hand to her head and collapsed dramatically in a way that women don't do much anymore. Soon it was all over the campus, the Oscar was gone.
After a couple of days, the pair released a "hostage photo" to the school paper, making a set of ridiculous demands. This only intensified the search for the guilty, and when the heat got to be too much, they dropped the Oscar into the mailbox, ending the "Great Oscar Scandal of 1972."
Not quite ending, as it turns out. Several weeks later, Bob was called into the college president's office. Knowing what was coming, he swallowed hard and just went in. He got the expected lecture about, "I know it was you", "stealing is a sin", and "respecting the rights of others". Then at the end, the President made a confession: When he had been a student at Gonzaga, he resented the ass-kissing that the college gave the old crooner, and had always wanted to steal the statue. "How did you do it", he asked. Bob tells the story, and the old man just chuckled and sent Bob away with a stern warning.
Months later, when Bob goes to the Registrar to pay for the next semester, he realized that there had been some kind of mistake involving the tution check from his parents, and started scrambling to come up with the money. The registrar stops him: His tuition had been paid in full, as he was the recipient of a full presidential scholarship.
I know my old econ prof doesn't read slashdot, so he's unlikely to post his own story. I've called him "Bob", to protect the guilty. A quick Google search appears to confirm that the prank happened. Whether or not it was really my prof that did it, I can't say. The proceeding is my butchered recollection of his tale as told to me in his backyard many years ago, that almost certainly contains errors of fact and leaves out crucial details.
At the time though, it was hands down, no bullshit, the God damned funniest story I had ever heard.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish more people understood this as well as you do. The real question to my mind is what, if anything, can be done about it?
Used something like this (and the fact that you can get an approximation of distance between two coordinates from the difference in decimal degrees because 0.00166667 degrees = 1 minute of arc = 1 nautical mile = 1.15077945 statue miles ) for a dispatching system (long since defunct I'm sure) in 1995.
I would hope such a calculation would be patent proof since the equivalence between minutes of arc and nautical miles has been exploited for navigation purposes for centuries.
Lots of good posts above me so I'll just add this:
The vast majority of Americans are too busy paying for their refinanced second and third mortgages, taking their kids to baby yoga, and watching American Idol to even notice what is going on, i.e. they might as well be zombies. Seriously. Of the percentage who even have an opinion, the majority simply parrot whatever their commentator of choice has to say on the subject, be it O'Reilly or Olbermann. The remaining fraction who have the ability to see the truth and form a well thought-out opinion on this matter mostly spend their time contemplating emigration to Switzerland, the bottom of a bottle, or suicide, depending on their level of desperation.
Furthermore, because of our corrupt political system, those who see things for how they are rarely have honest representation in Washington. Getting to choose between Republicans and Democrats is like getting a choice between ointment and suppository: Either way they take it in the ass.
I worked with the legal department in charge of chargebacks at a major credit-card payment processor for about two weeks. I walked away from the deal when I figured out how evil they are.
Pretty much all you need to know about it is that the chargeback department is seen as a profit center, and they were proud of the millions in chargeback money they added to the bottom line. Sure, there were a few "bad apples" among the merchants who were frauds and got what they had coming to them. However, the vast majority were Mom and Pops who through no fault of their own wound up on the wrong end of a chargeback.
For example, Sally Suburb pays for auto repair via her Visa card, and Hubby decides it was too much and disputes the charge. There was nothing wrong with the repair, and the amount was legitimate, he just didn't thought it was too much. In due course it's charged back and now the mechanic has to come up with the full amount plus fees and expenses.
Looking over the files, I saw chargebacks had put lots of these folks out of business and into bankruptcy. I suppose I'm too much of a sentimentalist, but I couldn't be a part of that. They kept calling for months but I wouldn't even talk to them. Effin' vampires if you ask me. Nowhere in business will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, not even in insurance or banking.
Huh, I thought that y'all had to leave the line physically connected for the express purpose of being able to dial 911 for emergencies or 611 so you could talk to somebody about getting service restored. I guess that was the old days before "deregulation." Guess you can't believe everything you read in 20 year old TAP magazines. ;)
I respectfully invite your attention the article "Computing versus human thinking" by Peter Naur in the January, 2007 edition of Communications of the ACM. Naur lays out an extremely sound theory of intelligence, which I found very enlightening in terms of the possibilities and limits of AI. It very much reminds me of Hofstadter's research.
The ID "requirement" was put in place after TWA Flight 800 in 1996. Just sayin'.
Look 'em dead in the eye and growl in your best Clint Eastwood or George C. Scott as Patton, "You would do well not to make this into a matter of honor, ." Works every time.
I visited the Starfire facility in the mid-'90s. Now, it seems to me that if they'd let me, a long-haired hippie-lookin' mofo who's only reason for being there was I was schtooping the Colonel's daughter and had mentioned in small talk with him that I was interested in lasers and built that nitrogen job out of Scientific American in high school, it can't be that classified. It's not like they said anything about keep your mouth shut or made me sign anything. We did pass through a gate guarded by some serious lookin' dudes who pointed their rifles at me, but they didn't even take my name that I recall.
After we got to the top of the mountain, we went into the main building. There were a couple of dudes in suits there. I was introduced, but I don't remember who they were. Not sure if they were Congressional types or Pentagon guys or what, but the people who worked there were nice to them so I tried to be on my best behavior. We got a short lecture about the project and some of the photos they had produced were handed around.
In case you didn't RTFA, the purpose of Starfire is to use a projected laser dot to configure an adaptive-optics mirror to compensate for atmospheric distortion and allow for better terrestrial astronomy. It works pretty damn good too. The photos I saw were very impressive. Better than Hubble in some cases, which they were justifiably very proud of. They sure were a helluva lot cheaper to get than Hubble photos.
After the lecture we got a tour of the facility. There were several telescopes on the mountain, a couple of which were capable of projecting a laser. The main 'scope had a really neat setup where they could have several experiments going at once and rotate a mirror to pick which one went up the tube. Other than that there were the optical experiment tables, the adaptive-optics setup, the imaging system, and several different kinds of lasers of varying impressive powers.
Next we went into the main dome. We were informed that the main telescope could depress below 0 degrees and the dome could be lowered in 30 seconds, and raised in two minutes by machine, or ten minutes if the hand cranks had to be employed. At the end of the telescope I spotted a disc with "Raytheon" on it. I casually asked, "What's the radar for?"
"To make sure there are no aircraft entering the beam path," the tour guide replied. The suit dudes were very surprised by my question so I mostly shut up for the rest of the tour. We then exited the platform so they could open the dome and slew the telescope.
Next came the control room. There were a bunch of guys in there, some in uniform and some in civvies. The were all business and didn't say much. They showed us the computer that had the ephemeris of every object in orbit down to the size of a quarter. All the computers were UNIX and X Windows, FYI. As a software guy, I thought the interface left something to be desired, but that's just me. Tracking an object with the 'scope was as simple as clicking on the desired target. We watched the 'scope slew through a CCTV monitor located near the target computer. Sadly, conditions were unfavorable for a test firing, so I didn't get to see the big mother fire.
Last they took us down to the "shack" where the guide-star laser was produced and sent through a smaller scope. The guys in here were friendlier, hippie/scientist types. I rapped with them a little while the brass talked amongst themselves. They were really excited about their laser because it was very powerful and very yellow, which worked out good for their astronomy.
Understand, the men who worked on this project never, ever said anything about it's use as a weapon. They always talked about it in terms of the astronomy. They had a nice telescope with a honkin' big laser under it, a radar on the front of it, and a computer that could track the 'scope on every object in orbit, up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, but officially the fact that Starfire could be used as a weapon never occurred to them
One of the principles of guerrilla warfare is that you must take your arms and ammunition from your enemies because you have no other way to procure them. If your guerrilla band is small and lightly armed, you take small bites and only ambush small detachments. You only have to eliminate one enemy patrol to have nice automatic rifles and the ammunition that goes with them. You might even get some grenades and a rocket or two.
One other thing to consider: What makes you think the entirety of the military will side with the government?
Controversy = More Comments
More Comments = More Page Views
More Page Views = More Money
More Money = More Dope
More Dope = More misleading summaries submitted by jackasses who need to add their two cents accepted
As far as scanning for emotional content in phone calls, I'd be happy if they could just program the thing to 1) provide a meaningful caller id (I'm so tired of "800-000-0000") and 2) understand the phrase "Add this number to your do not call list." I can see where using software like this in a customer service situation could be useful. Just how long will it be until some unscrupulous telemarketer gets a hold of it and uses it to prey upon the weak and lonely in an even more systematic manner?
Don't forget their cack-handed bungling of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Sometimes I swear they sit in their offices with their $20,000 furniture and say to themselves, "Fuck those nerds. Fuck them up their stupid asses. They like Farsape? I'll destroy it because I hate fucking nerds. Stargate is one of the most popular shows on our network? Cancelled! How ya like me now, nerds? I'm gonna put wrestling on, and next I'm gonna put golf on. I hold the rights to almost all the shows you love but I'm gonna put on Ghost Hunters five nights a week. I hate you all you fucking nerdy bastards. You'll watch what I want or I'll throw you down onto your eight-sided dice!"
Sorry about that. The SciFi network people have been pissing me off with this bullshit for years. Seems like they'll never figure out that they aren't gonna get that teen and 18-24 demographic they'd like no matter what they put on, unless they just give up on SciFi altogether.
That's why you always, and I mean always, hold out for a cut of the gross. A cut of the net is for chumps.
That gets a Right On!
It's like I always say, to the point that my friends call it "Rickwood's Second Law of Computing": "If the data model is correct, all things are possible." I learned that on my first "real" programming job. It's fundamental to building database applications. Even so, I'm constantly mystified by the data model choices people make.
For example, I do a lot of work with a mid-range ERP. This crapplication suite is written in COBOL. There are comments in the code from the Seventies. They claim to be "database independent." By which they mean that can treat any RDBMS available in the market as COBOL flat files. No primary keys. No foreign keys. Flat files. Really. All the join logic is implemented in the COBOL code, so figuring out which tables can join with which is lots of fun. On the other hand, once you've divined the secrets of the tables you rarely lack for work, even if it is just genning up SELECT statements into reports in Perl.
Won't somebody please, please think of the database?
I will no doubt get replies that "Scripting Language X would be better", but I have the most experience with Perl. So if time was of the essence, that's what I'd use. Perl is a Swiss Army Knife in this kind of situation, and you can easily get just about any kind of blade or tool you might want to deal with files and formatting via CPAN.
You can use Perl to fix the file names, restructure the directories, extract the content, put it into a database, and even drive the new site if you'd like. No matter what the choice of new site software, Perl can salvage the existing content and transform it into whatever format you require.
If I had more time I might choose Ruby instead simply because I like programming in it more. However the choice of ready-made tools via the Ruby CPAN equivalent is somewhat less.
No matter what scripting language you choose, you'll be saving time in the long run. Building tools is always time well spent. Indeed, taking a few hours or even days to write a script that makes a weeks-to-months long job of reformatting take hours is one of the great joys of programming for a living.
Post Scriptum: I'm sure you already did, but just in case: Don't forget to back up the original. Thrice. They'll tell you it's already backed up. That's fine. Make three of your own anyway. If they'll let you, lock one in the safe. "Whenever testing or reconfiguring, always mount a scratch monkey."
In brief, in the UK they have passed laws allowing people to placed under a court order if they have "engaged in conduct which caused or was likely to cause alarm, harassment or distress to one or more persons not of the same household as him or herself...". Violation of the order can result in criminal charges being brought before the court. I am not making this up.
o r+order
http://www.google.com/search?q=anti-social+behavi
It's funny you say that. Over the weekend I saw the Tom Brokaw piece about global warming. While some of the information in that program was fact-ish, it was hard to pick out the actual facts for all the opinion around them. What I really want from my news is just the facts and to how many decimal places. I don't need opinion.
I'll go even further and say that in this day and age it is a journalist's sacred duty to present the facts just as the are, trying their damnedest not to allow their opinion to seep through. People don't have the time and the resources to go out and do the research necessary to understand a situation and find the facts for themselves. Rightly or wrongly, we trust journalists to do so for us. Reasonable people don't need to be told what to think.
It is my belief that far too many people never hear the facts, only factoids designed to reinforce the opinion that the media outlet already presented. This happens on both sides of just about every controversial issue. One side's opinion is that global warming is already happening and we're doomed. The other side says there's no proof of global warming and everything is fine. They both have purported facts to back up their opinions, and clearly they can't both be right. Now instead of having the necessary facts to make up my own mind, I have to decided who's opinion I'd rather trust, or would rather back if I'm looking at it from a purely political-economic viewpoint, as some do.
Especially in the US, people seem to pick up more on the lies and innuendo than they do on any actual facts. A talk show host says, "The economy is booming!" No concrete evidence supporting this statement is offered, beyond a few carefully selected factoids that back the host's position. It is repeated daily for weeks, even months. When I speak to people who listen to the show, and ask them about the economy, more often than not I get the exact works of the host repeated back to me. Even if the person isn't doing well financially, they still say, "The economy is booming!"
So, please, journalists, keep your opinions to yourselves. Those of us who's aren't journalists don't have time to parse the facts out of your opinions any more than we have time to seek out those facts for ourselves.
Unlike AC above, I belive the Paladin ideas you express could be made to work. Furthermore, I think you could make it so that only casuals would want to play the Paladin. Have reputation decay at a rate that it would need to be replenished by a good deed every few hours of gameplay and rig it such that the good deeds aren't terribly rewarding except in terms of reputation. I would think that reputation should only decay if you're online, and even then only if you're online for long enough, i.e. you don't take an hours worth of rep hit just for logging on for five minutes to check your mail. Additionally, if your reputation slips too much, you lose power and abilities until you've redeemed yourself. Having too much money or spending too much time looting dungeons for gear could also negatively impact your reputation.
The Paladin idea, and most of the other ideas you express sound really great, Thangodin. They sound like a game I'd really like to play. Sadly I don't believe I'll ever get the chance.
Let me preface this by saying that I really enjoy playing WoW, have more than one 60th level character, have alts of varying levels in every class, and am part of a guild that's trying to get over the hump into raiding Molten Core. I'm old enough to know that Diablo is just rogue/nethack/angband with pretty graphics and I'm not an anti-gaming nut. It's just that I bumped into The Daedalus Project one day and my eyes were opened to why the major online RPGs get called "EverCrack" and the like.
Many online RPGs work the way they do because the reward structure creates a conditioned response in the player, such that they desire to continue playing to continue to get the "good feelings" they get when they reach a reward milestone, i.e. level up, find a magic item, etc. Leveling up, and in WoW at least reputation grinding, are scheduled rewards. If you keep doing what you're doing, assuming you are doing something for which you get experience or reputation, you'll eventually reach the milestone and get your reward. ( Ding! ) Magic items are random rewards, and provide the impetus to keep playing as the player thinks, "Maybe the Polearm of Pure Pwnage will drop off the next rat."
Sadly, the decision to use these sorts of psychologically manipulative reward structures is not some vast conspiracy to sap the strength of the gamer segment of the population. These and similar techniques have been used for at least a century in the form of slot machines and then pinball games and now computer games. The entirety of the reason for developing the conditioned response in their players is that, all other things being equal, a game that uses such techniques will make more money than a game that doesn't.
Hey, man, you're not universally ignored, it's just that there isn't much agreement about what the root of the ontology should be. For at least a decade I've been asking anybody I thought might have an answer worth hearing, "What are the properties of the uber-object?" Never gotten the same answer twice. This isn't really suprising as how people view and categorize the world is greatly effected by their experiences and knowledge.
For what it's worth, I can think of two reasons you feel univerally ignored. First, I think people don't look past your "example ontology" to see the underlying sense of the fractal thicket and why it's a good idea. Second, I feel like ontological-taxinomic-semantic AI people are looked down upon by people who think that only neural nets and axiomatic reasoning is "Real AI." Sadly, these are the people who seem to control the funding for research.
My main goal for now is an ontological database, i.e. a database that isn't made up of columns and rows, but stores data by concept in a given ontology and allows searches based on the strength of the connections between concepts.
I find it fascinating that you and I seem to have thought along the same lines. Many times in the last ten years I've sat down to create a schema for the "Uber-Ontology of the Theory of Everything, including kittens, and this time I mean it." Got notebooks filled with 'em. I have shelves filled with Hofstader and Minsky and dozens of others. Never have found the answer. It does make me feel better that at least I'm not the only one asking the question.
Since when do teenagers need encouragement to procure and consume alcohol and marijuana? I'm sure the same study could be used to link video games to mood swings, dancing, and chronic masturbation.
You know, I originally had five in the title, but I figured some smartass would come along and say there were only four constants on the left hand side so the title should say four.
Some days you can't win for losing.
Bob went to Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Even in the early Seventies, when so many of the nation's college campuses were in turmoil, this was a quiet, Catholic Jesuit college. The most famous alumnus of Gonzaga is Bing Crosby, and he made many donations to his alma mater, including a substantial collection of memorabilia. The crown jewel of this collection was his 1944 Oscar for "Going my Way".
Even this serene campus in Washington had malcontents though, one of which was Bob's roommate. The powers that be had done something to offend him, and so they hatched a plan to get even. They would steal Bing's Oscar.
Having seen too many episodes of "It Takes a Thief", they had an elaborate scheme for getting into the case where the Oscar was housed involving ventilation ducts, suction cups, and ropes and pulleys. In the process of casing the museum, one of them leaned against the case and it simply slid open. Astonished, they looked around and saw they were alone in the room, and then looked back at each other. Without a word, Bob stuffed the statue into his jacket and they walked out fore-and-aft with the statue between them, past all the folks at the student center in broad daylight.
They then went back to their room, which faced the building where museum was, and waited. Not too long afterward they heard sirens, and when the police cars showed up, the old lady in charge of the museum came running out with her hand to her head and collapsed dramatically in a way that women don't do much anymore. Soon it was all over the campus, the Oscar was gone.
After a couple of days, the pair released a "hostage photo" to the school paper, making a set of ridiculous demands. This only intensified the search for the guilty, and when the heat got to be too much, they dropped the Oscar into the mailbox, ending the "Great Oscar Scandal of 1972."
Not quite ending, as it turns out. Several weeks later, Bob was called into the college president's office. Knowing what was coming, he swallowed hard and just went in. He got the expected lecture about, "I know it was you", "stealing is a sin", and "respecting the rights of others". Then at the end, the President made a confession: When he had been a student at Gonzaga, he resented the ass-kissing that the college gave the old crooner, and had always wanted to steal the statue. "How did you do it", he asked. Bob tells the story, and the old man just chuckled and sent Bob away with a stern warning.
Months later, when Bob goes to the Registrar to pay for the next semester, he realized that there had been some kind of mistake involving the tution check from his parents, and started scrambling to come up with the money. The registrar stops him: His tuition had been paid in full, as he was the recipient of a full presidential scholarship.
I know my old econ prof doesn't read slashdot, so he's unlikely to post his own story. I've called him "Bob", to protect the guilty. A quick Google search appears to confirm that the prank happened. Whether or not it was really my prof that did it, I can't say. The proceeding is my butchered recollection of his tale as told to me in his backyard many years ago, that almost certainly contains errors of fact and leaves out crucial details.
At the time though, it was hands down, no bullshit, the God damned funniest story I had ever heard.
(e^(pi * i)) + 1 = 0
e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0
What do e, i and pi have in common?