Every design involves choices and tradeoffs. Each of these requires a decision.
In order to intelligently maintain and extend the project, the owners need to know why each decision was made: what were the design goals, what were the available alternatives, what were the constraints, and what might be done under different alternatives or constraints.
That is, explain why the design is the way it is.
"This algorithm has n-squared behavior, but
was easy to implement and test. N-squared
behavior is tolerable for a small number
of fazzbarns, and we are fairly certain that
no more than a few fazzbarns need ever be supported.
If the glup module is ever scaled up to produce
more fazzbarns, this will be a bottleneck, and
the well-known but much more involved RTTD
(Right Thing To Do) approach, with n*log(n) behavior,
would be much better."
> it is the function of the society to protect the real human beings > from the predations of corporate overlords, not to protect the profits > of corporations by allowing them to prey on humans.
Either you typed "is" when you meant "should be", or you don't get out much.
Corporations have already won this battle.
In the US, (as the DMCA and Sonny Bono copyright laws and the broadcast flag regulation amply demonstrate), it has become the function of the government to protect the profits of corporations from the illusory "rights" of consumers.
(We used to call consumers "citizens".
Sounds quaint, doesn't it?)
> If I dug through my stacks for an hour or two > I could come up with the actual wording of the > dedication, where Woody said something like > "I had fun writing them and that's what I wanted to do. > You have fun singing them."
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085,
for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our
permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give
a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it.
We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
Woody Guthrie songbook, sometime in the 30s
> I read Slate when it's linked from/. > That's about it thought;(
Then you're probably missing some great reportage and comment.
The divine Dahlia Lithwick writing about law and the Supreme Court
is worth paying actual money for, all by herself.
Add to that Tim Noah, Kaplan, Gross, Saletan...
there's some great stuff.
Of course, you should steer clear of icky kausfiles.
And Jon Katz. But as a/. reader, you already knew that.
And "Dear Prudence" is a yawn.
If you want to read advice column, go for "Since You Asked" on Salon.
There was never any real scientific rationale for the ISS. It was always a political project in search of justification.
Cassini is significant science. NEAR Shoemaker was significant. The Mars rovers are significant. Galileo was significant. Hubble is significant. Stardust is significant.
The ISS is a waste of money. Bush's "Man on Mars" directive is more of the same, in spades.
> Where's the evidence that having super-rich people is harmful?
Every hereditary aristocracy that has ever existed has served to demonstrate the drawbacks of a hereditary aristocracy. --- He's no fun -- he fell right over.
> You have to wonder exactly what Microsoft's IP department was thinking when > they decided to file this patent. Are they really going to go after open > source projects with "taskbar grouping?
More likely item 647 in a list of 666 patents infringed by whichever open source project threatens Redmond's hegemony. Do not underestimate the depth of the MS patent portfolio, nor their committment to using it to best advantage.
> not to mention the absurdity of trying to sue an OSS project.
SCO is failing on the merits because SCO has no case. This is not a syllogism:
- SCO's management is a pack of fools
- SCO is attempting to sue an OSS project
- Therefore any company who attempts to sue an OSS project
is led by a pack of fools.
> More likely, they're filing it so that no one else can file it > and then sue Microsoft (e.g. Sun).
Sun is losing in the marketplace, but they still have a large patent portfolio. IBM has one too. Most big computer companies do. They all cross-license, with the terms subject to repeated, intense renegotiation. One more arrow in the quiver means incrementally better terms in the next round of cross-licensing. Step 4: Profit!
Get up out of the chair. Leave the building. Walk half a mile or more. Look at the horizon, or at birds, or clouds -- at things far away. Every day. Daylight on the retina is registered in the pituitary. Thirty minutes to mental health.
I know you won't, but if you did, you'd feel better in a dozen different ways.
PO'ed, which unfortunately arrived after the console had
entered the death spiral, was a great, quirky,
innovative FPS. First missile-cam I ever saw.
Its creators deserved success.
> Pretty much nobody has forgotten IBM's past evil deeds. > The difference here is that they seem to have turned from > their evil ways--unlike Microsoft...
The _important_ difference is that IBM has always been technologically competent, no matter how evil their business arrangements.
Until the release of Windows 2000, no one could say that about Microsoft.
You are correct; I was mistaken. Samuel does not mention rape. The Lord commanded Joshua to kill every one of the land's inhabitants, men, women, and children, with the edge of the sword.
I was conflating Samue's account with the earlier conquest in Numbers, where God commands the Chosen People to enslave the virgin daughters of their enemies:
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? . . . Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. Numbers 31: 15-18
Even here, rapine is an inference, although I think a defensible one.
Go read the Book of Joshua. http://www.gutenberg.net/etext05/web0610. txt Unilateral agression. Conquest. Pillage. Rape. Genocide. All _directly_commanded_ by God.
> > You think buildings would be safer if every builder was allowed > > to "innovate" their own designs?
> Yes. Before building codes, people built buildings that stood and > worked properly because if they didn't, they might die.
Bah.
The Great Chicago Fire.
The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.
Bam, Iran.
the Lisbon earthquake that stars in _Candide_
Left to their own devices, people continually, seemingly irrepressibly build unsafe houses on beaches, cliffs, floodplains, earthquake faults, mudslide-prone hillsides -- and die in droves in consequence.
Without building codes, 10 X more fatalities in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California.
There is no disappearing of the true Dhamma until a fals Dhamma arises in the world.
When the false Dhamma arises, he makes the true Dhamma to disappear.
Slashdot Mirror
AI is bogus.
1 /qid=1155242163/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-4246079-1703018?i e=UTF8&s=books
See The Jargon File entry for micro-Lenat
http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/microLenat.html
For a more literary perspective on the attempt
to imbue machine intelligence with common sense,
see _Galatea_2.2_ by Richard Powers,
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312423136/sr=1-
---
He's no fun; he fell right over.
> Only 3 consoles have ever been sold at a loss:
> the Sega Saturn,
> the Dreamcast,
> and the Xbox
The 3DO sold at a loss for quite a while.
I believe that Trip's business plan was
to make it up in $3 royalties.
Every design involves choices and tradeoffs.
Each of these requires a decision.
In order to intelligently maintain and extend
the project, the owners need to know why each
decision was made: what were the design goals,
what were the available alternatives,
what were the constraints, and what might be
done under different alternatives or constraints.
That is, explain why the design is the way it is.
"This algorithm has n-squared behavior, but
was easy to implement and test. N-squared
behavior is tolerable for a small number
of fazzbarns, and we are fairly certain that
no more than a few fazzbarns need ever be supported.
If the glup module is ever scaled up to produce
more fazzbarns, this will be a bottleneck, and
the well-known but much more involved RTTD
(Right Thing To Do) approach, with n*log(n) behavior,
would be much better."
He's no fun; he fell right over.
Nausea at the retreat from the courage and ideals
that once characterized this nation.
Once we were the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Now we're the land of the secretly-surveiled,
and the home of the anxious-about-safety.
"When the freedom they wished for most
was the freedom from responsibility,
then Athens ceased to be free,
and never was free again."
- Edith Hamilton
Henry Spencer
Chris Torek
Steve Summit
"He's no fun -- he fell right over."
> it is the function of the society to protect the real human beings
> from the predations of corporate overlords, not to protect the profits
> of corporations by allowing them to prey on humans.
Either you typed "is" when you meant "should be",
or you don't get out much.
Corporations have already won this battle.
In the US, (as the DMCA and Sonny Bono copyright laws and the
broadcast flag regulation amply demonstrate), it has become
the function of the government to protect the profits of
corporations from the illusory "rights" of consumers.
(We used to call consumers "citizens".
Sounds quaint, doesn't it?)
> If I dug through my stacks for an hour or two
> I could come up with the actual wording of the
> dedication, where Woody said something like
> "I had fun writing them and that's what I wanted to do.
> You have fun singing them."
"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085,
for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our
permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give
a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it.
We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."
Woody Guthrie songbook, sometime in the 30s
> I read Slate when it's linked from
> That's about it thought
Then you're probably missing some great reportage and comment.
The divine Dahlia Lithwick writing about law and the Supreme Court
is worth paying actual money for, all by herself.
Add to that Tim Noah, Kaplan, Gross, Saletan
there's some great stuff.
Of course, you should steer clear of icky kausfiles.
And Jon Katz. But as a
And "Dear Prudence" is a yawn.
If you want to read advice column, go for "Since You Asked" on Salon.
Even with a full crew, the ISS is scientifically useless.
Too much vibration, orbit too low (so the shuttle can reach it).
Not a good enough vacuum.
NASA had to browbeat scientists into making up some sort of
experiments that could be done there. No important science
was _ever_even_proposed_.
---
He's no fun -- he fell right over.
There was never any real scientific rationale for the ISS.
It was always a political project in search of justification.
Cassini is significant science. NEAR Shoemaker was significant.
The Mars rovers are significant. Galileo was significant.
Hubble is significant. Stardust is significant.
The ISS is a waste of money.
Bush's "Man on Mars" directive is more of the same, in spades.
> Where's the evidence that having super-rich people is harmful?
Every hereditary aristocracy that has ever existed
has served to demonstrate the drawbacks of a hereditary aristocracy.
---
He's no fun -- he fell right over.
> You have to wonder exactly what Microsoft's IP department was thinking when
:
> they decided to file this patent. Are they really going to go after open
> source projects with "taskbar grouping?
More likely item 647 in a list of 666 patents infringed
by whichever open source project threatens Redmond's hegemony.
Do not underestimate the depth of the MS patent portfolio,
nor their committment to using it to best advantage.
> not to mention the absurdity of trying to sue an OSS project.
SCO is failing on the merits because SCO has no case.
This is not a syllogism
- SCO's management is a pack of fools
- SCO is attempting to sue an OSS project
- Therefore any company who attempts to sue an OSS project
is led by a pack of fools.
> More likely, they're filing it so that no one else can file it
> and then sue Microsoft (e.g. Sun).
Sun is losing in the marketplace, but they still have a large
patent portfolio. IBM has one too. Most big computer companies
do. They all cross-license, with the terms subject to repeated,
intense renegotiation. One more arrow in the quiver means
incrementally better terms in the next round of cross-licensing.
Step 4: Profit!
---
He's no fun -- he fell right over.
Scientific American
Discover
The Atlantic Monthly
Harpers Magazine
The New Yorker
Natural History
Get up out of the chair. Leave the building. Walk half a mile or more.
Look at the horizon, or at birds, or clouds -- at things far away.
Every day. Daylight on the retina is registered in the pituitary.
Thirty minutes to mental health.
I know you won't, but if you did, you'd feel better in a dozen different ways.
> 3DO has these great games
The Shockwave series from EA was superb.
PO'ed, which unfortunately arrived after the console had
entered the death spiral, was a great, quirky,
innovative FPS. First missile-cam I ever saw.
Its creators deserved success.
> Pretty much nobody has forgotten IBM's past evil deeds. ...
> The difference here is that they seem to have turned from
> their evil ways--unlike Microsoft
The _important_ difference is that IBM has always been technologically
competent, no matter how evil their business arrangements.
Until the release of Windows 2000, no one could say that about Microsoft.
= When was last the time you saw MS use their patents?
Yust yu vate.
Or maybe the world is just running out of good project names.
Project STRETCH
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7030
You are correct; I was mistaken. Samuel does not mention rape.
The Lord commanded Joshua to kill every one of the land's
inhabitants, men, women, and children, with the edge of the sword.
I was conflating Samue's account with the earlier conquest
in Numbers, where God commands the Chosen People to enslave
the virgin daughters of their enemies
And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive? . . . Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman
that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that
have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
Numbers 31: 15-18
Even here, rapine is an inference, although I think a defensible one.
Go read the Book of Joshua.. txt
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext05/web0610
Unilateral agression. Conquest. Pillage. Rape. Genocide.
All _directly_commanded_ by God.
> This is the ultimate in inconsiderate selfishness.
> The name you give a child is the name that child is
> going to be stuck with
Check the date. YHBT. YHL. HAND.
> Br4d
> J4n37
Dr. Scott!
Rocky!
Hmm, where have I seen similar claims .... aha!a h, right.
Prior art from 1981 : THE LAST ONE
http://www.presshere.com/html/pw8102.htm
Ye
> > You think buildings would be safer if every builder was allowed
> > to "innovate" their own designs?
> Yes. Before building codes, people built buildings that stood and
> worked properly because if they didn't, they might die.
Bah.
The Great Chicago Fire.
The Great San Francisco Earthquake and Fire.
Bam, Iran.
the Lisbon earthquake that stars in _Candide_
Left to their own devices, people continually, seemingly irrepressibly
build unsafe houses on beaches, cliffs, floodplains, earthquake faults, mudslide-prone hillsides -- and die in droves in consequence.
Without building codes, 10 X more fatalities in
the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California.
There is no disappearing of the true Dhamma until a fals Dhamma arises in the world.
When the false Dhamma arises, he makes the true Dhamma to disappear.
Samyutta-Nikaya II, 224