Since discovering you as a blogger and an author, I've begun to know you as more than just Wesley Crusher. First up, despite the cheese dick writers at TNG who had no clue how to develope your character, I've always apploaded the role you portrayed. In the real world where mediocrity often rule over those who dared to dream or excel, Wesley Crusher was one of the few shining examples where the geek spirit was truly celebrated. For me, personally, you made it okay to be smart. After reading "Just a Geek", I think that aspect of Wesley Crusher is something you can truly identify with. The compeling story in your book about your own internal relationship with a controvertial fictional persona you helped create as an actor fleshed both of you out in a way Trek and Hollywood never could.
In the context of this/. post, I wonder if you have ever considered wrestling control of the character Wesley Crusher from those who have helped make your early life difficult. Have you ever considered using your own judgement to tell a story about this young man from an idealized future in a way that *you* see fit? The guy you like to call "William Fucking Shatner" has penned a number of books about Kirk. I think John De Lance has also written a novel about Q. You are an accomplished writter now, with two successful books to your credit and a number of magazine columns. What's to stop you from picking up a pen (or keyboard/laptop) and re-imagining Wesley Crusher in a way that isn't limited by political correctness, TV ratings, or studio beurocracy? In "Just a Geek", you seemed to have made peace with the tomultuous legacy Wesley have left you. But you still seemed some what regretful of the fact your left-on-the-cutting-room-floor cameo would be the last time you would bring Wesley to life. If you can pull it off, I think I wouldn't be the only one to find a Wesley Crusher novel told by the man who gave him life to be very worth reading. Please think about it.
Oddly enough, it's been predicted that small black holes may not be so black. All black holes are thought to emit hawking radiation. This process is supposed to reduce the mass of the black hole through kind of an evaporative process by bleeding "information" from the black hole. In addition to the fact that radiation intensity is inversely proportional to the size of the black hole, it is thought that sufficiently small black holes would exponentially radiate themselves out of existance with a brilliant explosion. Some have suggested somewhat tongue in cheek that they ought to be called "white holes".
Am I alone in feeling that we haven't even used hubble to the fullest extent of its abilities? Not sure why this is a priority right now.
Have you bothered to reconcile what you feel with what you know? For example, do you know how easy or hard it is to book Hubble for an observation run? Especially when it most matters? Heavenly phenomenons don't exactly conduct themselves by a schedule tailored to you or anyone elses' convenience. You don't really know when a spactacular supernova or comet collision would afford the opportunity of a lifetime to make unique discoveries.
Your lukewarm conviction of this as a priority seems to imply you feel you should have a say in how the resources going into this project should be allocated. I have no doubt that you might be a dutiful American tax payer and the GMT partner institutions, more likely than not, utilize public funding. But it should be obvious to anyone familiar with the current administration's stance on global warming that letting politics steer science is an embarassing mistake we should not allow to happen.
In the next generation episode "Relics", James Doohan reprised his role as Scotty on the Enterprise D. They didn't share any scenes together, but Wil Wheaton has fond memories of meeting the fellow on the set. An NPR story on Mr. Doohan's passing has a short inteview with Wil where he recollects geeking out on the set like a fanboy at a convention while his hero is trying to do his scenes as an actor.
I do hope people reading this realize the whole post was just a lame joke. Lets hope there wont be any fighting at all - from either side.
But just for the sake of arguement, I'd like to play devil's advocate. Is it really so bad for Taiwan to reconcile without a fight? The way I see it, Mainland China is ripe for conquest from within. more than 20 years of experience with the market economy has been adicctive for most of the country. Though a bit slow, the government *is* moving to liberalize many aspect of running the country. From an ordinary citizen's perspective, it is my experience that in recent times, having Taiwan connections brings a lot of clout in many social/business situations.
Having continued the republican legacy of the previous nationalist regime, it is only natural that the Taiwan political establishment would be able to show her big brother how "things ought to be done" in a truly free society. In so many ways, the mainland is treading a path that Taipei has already traveled. As the island pseudo-nation is further along the same road to the destination of a better society, it makes no sense to taunt or in any way antagonize a fellow traveler who may soon be shoulder to shoulder with you.
I think the most ideal scinario would be for Taiwan to try walking a line as close as possible to a good relationship and use that proximity and influence to steadily and persistantly nudge the big lumbering juggernaut in the right direction. I believe when the smoke clears, everyone will come out a winner....with the possible exception of maybe Japan and probably the US as well as other nation-states that have taken an adversarial role against China (both of them) in one capacity or another over Taiwan.
Why, the offending individual would simply be modded to oblivion.
silly child, sheesh!
Disclaimer: I am Chinese but not Communist; I believe in religious freedom and political relief for Tibet but not Taiwan Independance; I seek out new thoughts and ideas and will boldly post where none has before, but I'll shoot a phasor up your ass if you are a trolling bastard.
I find it odd that so many posts in reply to mine stands to defend Newton against unfavourable opinions. True, his other pursuits does not take away from his contributions in math and physics, but neither does it add to it, nor does his achievements in math and physics excuse what amounts to absurdity of the human spirit. It is as if all great accomplishments buys one credit to do things one would ordinarily frown upon. Seriously now, in today's society, would you be inclined to look the other way if a person of great fame and accomplishment decides to disgrace himself with acts of shame or stupidity? (Let's remain in the realm of science and technology, less someone bring up Michael Jackson.) Probably not. More often than not, we hold those individual to be role models for others to follow. Unless you're some kind of rabidly bizzare nerd groupie, it is *NOT* an all-or-nothing preposition. We celebrate Newton for his positive contributions to civilization. We are not obliged to honor the aspects of his personal life which does not.
Quackery is more or less recognizable in any age. I feel obliged to contribute an addendum of particular relevence which sheds some light on how Newton's notes on alchemy were regarded before they were lost. The following is taken from the end of Chapter 22 in Martin Gardner's "Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?"
When Newton's manuscripts on alchemy were sold in 1936 at a Sotheby auction, the economist John Maynard Keynes was the major buyer. In a brilliant speech on Newton, given at the Royal Society's Newton Tercentenary Celebration in 1947, Keynes spoke of having gone through some million of Newton's words on alchemy and found them "wholly devoid of scientific value." Newton's "deepest instincts were occult, esoteric - with a profound shrinking from the world - a rapt, consecrated, solitary perusing his studies by intense introspection, with a mental endurance perhaps never equaled."
As for Newton's discoveries in mathematics and physics, Keynes believed they resulted less from experiments than from an incredible intuition. Later Newton would dress them up with formal demonstrations and proofs which had little to do with the insights that seemed to enter his head by sheer magic. Keynes put it this way:
In the eighteenth century and since, Newton came to be thought of as the first and greatest of the modern age of scientists, a rationalist, one who taught us to think on the lines of cold and untinctured reason. I do not see him in this light. I do not think that anyone who has pored over the contents of that box which he packed up when he finally left Cambridge in 1696 and which, thought partly dispersed, have come down to us, can see him like that. Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind which looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10,000 years ago. Isaac Newton, a posthumous child born with no father on Christmas Day, 1642, was the last wonderchild to whom the Magi could do sincere and appropriate homage.
Math genius though he was, there is nothing scientific about much of what Newton did with his life. In Martin Gardner's delightful book "Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?", we are introduced to not only the Newton the Alchemist, but also Newton the Protestant fundamentalist who was obsessed with Bible codes and thought the Pope was the anti-christ.
Funny that you should mention spectroscopy, though. Newton was the one who pass white light through a prism and demonstrate it was composed of a mixture of colors. A bit more rational investigation on his part and he may very well have developed the principles of spectroscopy.
And how's that? By being so sure of yourself that you refuse to listen to any idea that isn't your own? Sounds like a great way to live your life, Mr. Bush.
What does any of that have to do with a potential interview from slashdot with the head of NASA? Hello?!?! FOCUS!!! Either put up a good arguement or rebuttal or shut the hell up. Besides, if you're going to get political, at least make some effort to do so intelligently.
You want proof that nobody outside of slashdot gives a shit about slashdotters, go ask some leaders in any tech field "Do you care what/. thinks of what you do?"
You bring me proof, I'll bring you an apology. For now, you'll just have to settle for my pity that you're too ignorant to be embarsssed by your own turpitude.
there, there, eat up.....that's right, there's a nice troll.
I wonder what Griffin, as a genuine no nonsense space scientist would make of the rants that appear on slashdot from time to time among space enthusiasts. If any of the folks who run slashdot can score an interview with him, I have a ton of questions I would like the head of NASA to address. Hey, it's possible right? As a public official, public relations are an integral part of his job. I believe he would have to regard a high profile mob like slashdot as a sort of "constituency" he needs to take seriously.
Well, thank you for the practical advice. It's what I'll probably end up doing. However, I was rather hoping for the chance to learn a bit more about how jigdo works.:-)
I only have access to dial up, so grabing a iso image or doing a net-install is uncomfortably slow. However, I *have* managed to get the first two debian cds through rare access to a University comp lab. I was wondering if/when the fix is released, would I be able to use jigdo to create a new cd image from my existing disc with with correct config file entry? Actually, this bug (though a nusiance for every install) is too minor to bother with - What I'm really curious wrt jigdo is if I can use the update feature to scan multiple CDs. The idea is to use the unchanged packages in my existing Woody cd set to form the core of a sarge set. But since woody spans 7 cds, whereas sarge spans 14 cds, there is no one to one match of the cds for an update job. Furthermore, I have no idea if enough unchanged packages exist to make this worthwile. Anyone feel like sharing some wisdom?
from the article:"We have started seeing criminal extortion over the Internet: hackers with networks of hacked machines threatening to launch DoS attacks against companies. Most of these attacks are against fringe industries -- online gambling, online computer gaming, online pornography -- and against offshore networks."
While mainstream web services are cringing in anticipation of becoming targets, it is quit amusing to watch what seems to be one kind of filth devouring another.
It may very well be the point of this whole stratagy. Perhaps Apple is taking a divide and conquer aproach to the the Wintel juggernaut. This deal with Intel may very well be the wedge they intend to use to destablize the Microsoft-Intel partnership in the PC market. Once that monopoly falls, Jobs would be in a most favorable position to take the top dog title in the big brand personal computing arena.
It seems to me this is, in large part, a marketing gimmick. The article makes a good point about how Apple's BSD based OS makes a transition to x86 architecture ideal. But I wonder why a deal with AMD isn't more cost effective? Other than being able to claim a large market share, what else does Intel have to brag about? Last I checked, the raw performance of AMD's offering is relatively on par with Intel's chips but often drastically more attractive price-wise. Has AMD slipped *that* much as of late? Apple has always seemed pricey by comparision to comparable IBM-clones for as long as I can remember. I would think that the recent push by Jobs with the introduction of the Mini was an attempt to enter the low price market, but now this news of switching to Intel chips just confuses the hell out of me. Interesting times are ahead, that's for sure.
It has been a while since I've followed the redhat camp. I was wondering if a reasonable solution exists yet for the dependancy problem that many complained about during package upgrades. As recently as a few months ago, my brother in law switched to Gentoo in frustration after he ran into too much hastle trying to get a SQL package installed on his redhat laptop. The last thing I heard with a bearing on this topic was work being done by Ian Murdock attempting to bring Redhat and Debian closer together. Does anyone know how much that effort has progressed?
Slashdot Mirror
I will if you can get Taco to implement one in the slashcode. :-P
Dear Wil,
/. post, I wonder if you have ever considered wrestling control of the character Wesley Crusher from those who have helped make your early life difficult. Have you ever considered using your own judgement to tell a story about this young man from an idealized future in a way that *you* see fit? The guy you like to call "William Fucking Shatner" has penned a number of books about Kirk. I think John De Lance has also written a novel about Q. You are an accomplished writter now, with two successful books to your credit and a number of magazine columns. What's to stop you from picking up a pen (or keyboard/laptop) and re-imagining Wesley Crusher in a way that isn't limited by political correctness, TV ratings, or studio beurocracy? In "Just a Geek", you seemed to have made peace with the tomultuous legacy Wesley have left you. But you still seemed some what regretful of the fact your left-on-the-cutting-room-floor cameo would be the last time you would bring Wesley to life. If you can pull it off, I think I wouldn't be the only one to find a Wesley Crusher novel told by the man who gave him life to be very worth reading. Please think about it.
Since discovering you as a blogger and an author, I've begun to know you as more than just Wesley Crusher. First up, despite the cheese dick writers at TNG who had no clue how to develope your character, I've always apploaded the role you portrayed. In the real world where mediocrity often rule over those who dared to dream or excel, Wesley Crusher was one of the few shining examples where the geek spirit was truly celebrated. For me, personally, you made it okay to be smart. After reading "Just a Geek", I think that aspect of Wesley Crusher is something you can truly identify with. The compeling story in your book about your own internal relationship with a controvertial fictional persona you helped create as an actor fleshed both of you out in a way Trek and Hollywood never could.
In the context of this
Victoria's Secret announced the imminent launch of their new "Patriot" line.
Oddly enough, it's been predicted that small black holes may not be so black. All black holes are thought to emit hawking radiation. This process is supposed to reduce the mass of the black hole through kind of an evaporative process by bleeding "information" from the black hole. In addition to the fact that radiation intensity is inversely proportional to the size of the black hole, it is thought that sufficiently small black holes would exponentially radiate themselves out of existance with a brilliant explosion. Some have suggested somewhat tongue in cheek that they ought to be called "white holes".
If Microsoft went open source..
...That goes for both of you.
I would get laid..
never happening..
Nothing ventured nothing gained...
Have you bothered to reconcile what you feel with what you know? For example, do you know how easy or hard it is to book Hubble for an observation run? Especially when it most matters? Heavenly phenomenons don't exactly conduct themselves by a schedule tailored to you or anyone elses' convenience. You don't really know when a spactacular supernova or comet collision would afford the opportunity of a lifetime to make unique discoveries.
Your lukewarm conviction of this as a priority seems to imply you feel you should have a say in how the resources going into this project should be allocated. I have no doubt that you might be a dutiful American tax payer and the GMT partner institutions, more likely than not, utilize public funding. But it should be obvious to anyone familiar with the current administration's stance on global warming that letting politics steer science is an embarassing mistake we should not allow to happen.
segment in questiony Id=4762683
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
In the next generation episode "Relics", James Doohan reprised his role as Scotty on the Enterprise D. They didn't share any scenes together, but Wil Wheaton has fond memories of meeting the fellow on the set. An NPR story on Mr. Doohan's passing has a short inteview with Wil where he recollects geeking out on the set like a fanboy at a convention while his hero is trying to do his scenes as an actor.
I do hope people reading this realize the whole post was just a lame joke. Lets hope there wont be any fighting at all - from either side.
...with the possible exception of maybe Japan and probably the US as well as other nation-states that have taken an adversarial role against China (both of them) in one capacity or another over Taiwan.
But just for the sake of arguement, I'd like to play devil's advocate. Is it really so bad for Taiwan to reconcile without a fight? The way I see it, Mainland China is ripe for conquest from within. more than 20 years of experience with the market economy has been adicctive for most of the country. Though a bit slow, the government *is* moving to liberalize many aspect of running the country. From an ordinary citizen's perspective, it is my experience that in recent times, having Taiwan connections brings a lot of clout in many social/business situations.
Having continued the republican legacy of the previous nationalist regime, it is only natural that the Taiwan political establishment would be able to show her big brother how "things ought to be done" in a truly free society. In so many ways, the mainland is treading a path that Taipei has already traveled. As the island pseudo-nation is further along the same road to the destination of a better society, it makes no sense to taunt or in any way antagonize a fellow traveler who may soon be shoulder to shoulder with you.
I think the most ideal scinario would be for Taiwan to try walking a line as close as possible to a good relationship and use that proximity and influence to steadily and persistantly nudge the big lumbering juggernaut in the right direction. I believe when the smoke clears, everyone will come out a winner.
Why, the offending individual would simply be modded to oblivion.
silly child, sheesh!
Disclaimer: I am Chinese but not Communist; I believe in religious freedom and political relief for Tibet but not Taiwan Independance; I seek out new thoughts and ideas and will boldly post where none has before, but I'll shoot a phasor up your ass if you are a trolling bastard.
now then......would you care for some green tea?
I find it odd that so many posts in reply to mine stands to defend Newton against unfavourable opinions. True, his other pursuits does not take away from his contributions in math and physics, but neither does it add to it, nor does his achievements in math and physics excuse what amounts to absurdity of the human spirit. It is as if all great accomplishments buys one credit to do things one would ordinarily frown upon. Seriously now, in today's society, would you be inclined to look the other way if a person of great fame and accomplishment decides to disgrace himself with acts of shame or stupidity? (Let's remain in the realm of science and technology, less someone bring up Michael Jackson.) Probably not. More often than not, we hold those individual to be role models for others to follow. Unless you're some kind of rabidly bizzare nerd groupie, it is *NOT* an all-or-nothing preposition. We celebrate Newton for his positive contributions to civilization. We are not obliged to honor the aspects of his personal life which does not.
Quackery is more or less recognizable in any age. I feel obliged to contribute an addendum of particular relevence which sheds some light on how Newton's notes on alchemy were regarded before they were lost. The following is taken from the end of Chapter 22 in Martin Gardner's "Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?"
Math genius though he was, there is nothing scientific about much of what Newton did with his life. In Martin Gardner's delightful book "Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?", we are introduced to not only the Newton the Alchemist, but also Newton the Protestant fundamentalist who was obsessed with Bible codes and thought the Pope was the anti-christ. Funny that you should mention spectroscopy, though. Newton was the one who pass white light through a prism and demonstrate it was composed of a mixture of colors. A bit more rational investigation on his part and he may very well have developed the principles of spectroscopy.
Has anyone tried booting Linux on a wristwatch yet?
And how's that? By being so sure of yourself that you refuse to listen to any idea that isn't your own? Sounds like a great way to live your life, Mr. Bush.
/. thinks of what you do?"
What does any of that have to do with a potential interview from slashdot with the head of NASA? Hello?!?! FOCUS!!! Either put up a good arguement or rebuttal or shut the hell up. Besides, if you're going to get political, at least make some effort to do so intelligently.
You want proof that nobody outside of slashdot gives a shit about slashdotters, go ask some leaders in any tech field "Do you care what
You bring me proof, I'll bring you an apology. For now, you'll just have to settle for my pity that you're too ignorant to be embarsssed by your own turpitude.
there, there, eat up.....that's right, there's a nice troll.
And the current mouse with a mighty roar that seems to be doing a good job at wagging the dog as well.
Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Gee, Brain, I don't think a trip to Mars would make you popular with the pest controller's union, poit!
"I didn't say "OMG /. R TEH S UCK"
I think it would be best for everyone if you didn't say anything at all.
"...when in fact, they don't"?
Where are you getting your facts, sir?
retarded or not, it is a no brainer deciding how to deal with the likes of you.
If you really believe what you say, if you have such a low regard for the concerns of this community, then truely, "What *ARE* you doing here"?
go away.
I wonder what Griffin, as a genuine no nonsense space scientist would make of the rants that appear on slashdot from time to time among space enthusiasts. If any of the folks who run slashdot can score an interview with him, I have a ton of questions I would like the head of NASA to address. Hey, it's possible right? As a public official, public relations are an integral part of his job. I believe he would have to regard a high profile mob like slashdot as a sort of "constituency" he needs to take seriously.
Well, thank you for the practical advice. It's what I'll probably end up doing. However, I was rather hoping for the chance to learn a bit more about how jigdo works. :-)
I only have access to dial up, so grabing a iso image or doing a net-install is uncomfortably slow. However, I *have* managed to get the first two debian cds through rare access to a University comp lab. I was wondering if/when the fix is released, would I be able to use jigdo to create a new cd image from my existing disc with with correct config file entry? Actually, this bug (though a nusiance for every install) is too minor to bother with - What I'm really curious wrt jigdo is if I can use the update feature to scan multiple CDs. The idea is to use the unchanged packages in my existing Woody cd set to form the core of a sarge set. But since woody spans 7 cds, whereas sarge spans 14 cds, there is no one to one match of the cds for an update job. Furthermore, I have no idea if enough unchanged packages exist to make this worthwile. Anyone feel like sharing some wisdom?
from the article:"We have started seeing criminal extortion over the Internet: hackers with networks of hacked machines threatening to launch DoS attacks against companies. Most of these attacks are against fringe industries -- online gambling, online computer gaming, online pornography -- and against offshore networks."
While mainstream web services are cringing in anticipation of becoming targets, it is quit amusing to watch what seems to be one kind of filth devouring another.
they're gonna be competing directly with MS!
It may very well be the point of this whole stratagy. Perhaps Apple is taking a divide and conquer aproach to the the Wintel juggernaut. This deal with Intel may very well be the wedge they intend to use to destablize the Microsoft-Intel partnership in the PC market. Once that monopoly falls, Jobs would be in a most favorable position to take the top dog title in the big brand personal computing arena.
It seems to me this is, in large part, a marketing gimmick. The article makes a good point about how Apple's BSD based OS makes a transition to x86 architecture ideal. But I wonder why a deal with AMD isn't more cost effective? Other than being able to claim a large market share, what else does Intel have to brag about? Last I checked, the raw performance of AMD's offering is relatively on par with Intel's chips but often drastically more attractive price-wise. Has AMD slipped *that* much as of late? Apple has always seemed pricey by comparision to comparable IBM-clones for as long as I can remember. I would think that the recent push by Jobs with the introduction of the Mini was an attempt to enter the low price market, but now this news of switching to Intel chips just confuses the hell out of me. Interesting times are ahead, that's for sure.
It has been a while since I've followed the redhat camp. I was wondering if a reasonable solution exists yet for the dependancy problem that many complained about during package upgrades. As recently as a few months ago, my brother in law switched to Gentoo in frustration after he ran into too much hastle trying to get a SQL package installed on his redhat laptop. The last thing I heard with a bearing on this topic was work being done by Ian Murdock attempting to bring Redhat and Debian closer together. Does anyone know how much that effort has progressed?