while I agree with you on a sales tax being regressive, the current tax system is still unfair. Those with a lot of money already, perhaps from inheritance (Paris Hilton, anyone?) only pay taxes on their interest, and can mostly get out of that tax too.
The current talk about repealing the inheritance tax is ludicrous. It's the only tax the Paris Hiltons of the world pay at all. Look at it like this: while Daddy worked his ass off, paid his taxes on his earnings, and received the benefits of those taxes (the military protected his investements at home and abroad), if they repeal the estate tax, once he's dead, poor little rich girl never has to work again. Now she gets all the benefits of that military and police protection, the roads, the schools, etc, but doesn't have to pay for any of it! Do we really want to create a landed gentry whose offspring never have to work again?
That's great. Only posted a few minutes and all the Java devs pile on to say it couldn't possibly be true, and even if it was true, ROR still isn't very good, and besides it's not "enterprise" yet, and that Justin guy must not be a very good coder, and cry cry cry...
And most of the posters admit they haven't even read the article yet.
It's frightening to you to admit that your college degree in Java is no more than a vocational education. Pretty soon you'll be forming a union.
That's what they let you do NOW. Nothing's stopping them from disabling chapter advance and fast forward during the commercials, warnings, threats, etc (and more and more DVDs do) or even the whole movie if they wanted. Who gave the studios the option to let their DVD media break my hardware? of COURSE they're going to use that power if you make it an option.
actually that second image isn't a good example of my point, sorry! The website showed the *positive* (reversed) image against the icon. You'd see much more resemblance in the original (negative) and the icon.
Here's a website that describes the basic theory. I think they have a good point, but since they're true believers, they take it way too far and dilute the original point by trying to show how even modern day art is shroud influenced. Modern day art is much more influenced by the renaissance, which probably has no shroud influence at all (I mean seriously guys, if anybody faked it, it certainly wasn't Da Vinci or Raphael, they had WAY better things to do.)
Actually it's the other way round. The image is definitely warped, but such that it's more anatomically correct if draped. Some icons (paintings on curved wax and wood, such as this icon ) show a marked resemeblance to the shroud image, because the underlying wood is curved in the same way (the medieval idea of "3D", only you don't need red & blue glasses).
There are several books on the Shroud that purport that the overwhelming majority of religious art shows a high degree of influence from the shroud image. The paintings have a lot of anatomical weirdness due to the fact that they were copying basically a photographic negative (whether you think it's a fake or not, the image is definitely a photo-negative) without realizing the concept. In the image above, see the wide-apart large staring eyes, misshappen right cheek, and basically the hair. The hair in that painting is the artist's impression of what was more likely the cloth bound around the shroud man's head to hold his chin closed.
Here's an image from someone who's trying to prove that theory : shroud vs icon (if you disregard the coins for the moment, it does seem to show that medieval artists around Europe and Asia basically tried to copy the shroud as closely as possible even where it didn't look human.) (sorry about the partisan source for that image, first link on google).
That doesn't show it's fake, nor that it's real, but that at least the artists felt it was authentic, and many of them dated from before the carbon dating from the British museum; so it's another piece of evidence that the Brits really screwed that one up, ensuring controversy for another dozen years.
Yep, it's a scam. If you click through enough of the sites you can see that "John Sokol" also takes credit for some of the amazing video compression scams and somehow creating a CPU with 1/1000th the transistors of an Intel CPU but twice the computing power.
is this a scam? the website you linked has only a mailto link to your email address. there's no description of the business, location of business, or anything that might make me think it was a legitimate business. I call scam.
This was my theory on why driving was so much worse in South Korea (when I was there in 1994) than in the US. Koreans have an extremely strong cultural hierarchy, older being higher, and men above women. In person, the younger (or female) always deferred politely to the older person. But once they get in a car, they automatically assume they have more rank than the next guy, because they can't see his face! and proceed to drive crazily like all others should make way for the King.
Despite all the race/sex problems in America we really do have a cultural expectation of equality. When we come to a 4-way stop, Americans across the country expects to get their turn regardless of race or sex. My two cents, anyway.
The "Strong AI" theory (not problem) is the idea that an artificially intelligence that looks like its thinking (passes the Turing test) is actually thinking. This implies we need to model artificially intelligence brains after our own.
P=NP is talking about the difficulty of solving non-polynomial problems (like the Traveling Salesman problem) in polynomial time. A bunch of computer theory is devoted to saying that if you could solve any NP problem in P time, you could solve all of them in P time. P problems tend to be feasible to resolve on Turing-equivalent computers; NP not so much.
But it's quantum computing that will likely allow us to solve NP problems; and a Quantum computer gets us no further towards AI. Artificial intelligence is really quite unrelated.
Your thinking is the sad result of so much copyright fear from the RIAA and MPAA. "Copyrights" and "intellectual property" aren't natural laws - they're artificial constructs, and if we (as a nation, as a world) decide they get in the way of the advance of culture or society or just plain old happiness, we should water them down or eliminate them.
This idea doesn't cover the excuse that almost all these companies use - that they only acquire patents "defensively." Under your plan, even those in the "VPL" have a big incentive to pull down as many patents as possible (even with good intentions). What we need is to get to a world where people are not submitting these software patents.
One unnatural mechanic leads to another. If the computer/console was an appliance that saves progress constantly (or at least, often enough not to matter), then saving the game is as easy as walking away and turning off the machine.
Of course this only works in-game if your game has been designed so that Death isn't used as a "punishment". If your game design allows players to go down unreversible dead-ends, then you have to have save-game functionality to allow them to back up. One hack leads to another.
Ok, so everybody is making fun of this story with all its inane questions.
But think of this: DRM in software makes it possible for corporations to give an exact answer to every one of these inane questions.
Where we used to have "common sense", unregulated uses of the media - for example, loaning your CD to your buddy for the afternoon - software will very soon dictate EXACTLY when and where you have each and every one of these inane rights.
If we don't act to protect the unregulated use of the media, code will decide it for us.
You need to read Lessig's book : (http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0465039138)
If the ability to copy an "eBook" or do whatever is only enabled by the technology, whether you have the "right" to do so is irrelevant. The company making the hardware/software implements your "right" in software, and they're telling you you can't. Your rights are now granted by Microsoft, not by the Constitution.
What's worse, even if the DCMA and laws like it are repealed, the hardware/software are still effectively hampering your rights. Even if it is technically "legal" to work around DRM (and the DCMA makes it illegal today), unless you are a skilled programmer, you're still unable to exercise your fair use rights around digital material. This is why DRM is inherently evil.
In our local Professional Photographers Association chapter there are many photographers who see no moral problem with copying MP3s (or, more often,Photoshop!) between themselves, yet scream with indignation when someone copies one of their images digitally from their own promotional website.
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The Internet will make your prices come down to the point that stealing your image is more trouble than paying you for it.
What he's talking about is that this discovery pushes the lower bounds of the "wobble" technique for finding planets. Therefore as we get better instruments, it's reasonable to think we WILL find more earth-size planets.
To use your fish analogy, we're using wimpy hooks and catching small fry. As we get bigger and stronger hooks we keep pulling bigger fish. It's therefore reasonable to proceed with buying even bigger hooks, in the hopes that we haven't yet caught the biggest fish out there yet.
Lucasfilm's Sony camera, on which they have filmed Episode II, and which was considered to completely supercede analog film, picks up 1920x1080 resolution. You don't really need that much resolution to look fantastically better than what passes for film these days.
Slashdot Mirror
while I agree with you on a sales tax being regressive, the current tax system is still unfair. Those with a lot of money already, perhaps from inheritance (Paris Hilton, anyone?) only pay taxes on their interest, and can mostly get out of that tax too.
The current talk about repealing the inheritance tax is ludicrous. It's the only tax the Paris Hiltons of the world pay at all. Look at it like this: while Daddy worked his ass off, paid his taxes on his earnings, and received the benefits of those taxes (the military protected his investements at home and abroad), if they repeal the estate tax, once he's dead, poor little rich girl never has to work again. Now she gets all the benefits of that military and police protection, the roads, the schools, etc, but doesn't have to pay for any of it! Do we really want to create a landed gentry whose offspring never have to work again?
That's great. Only posted a few minutes and all the Java devs pile on to say it couldn't possibly be true, and even if it was true, ROR still isn't very good, and besides it's not "enterprise" yet, and that Justin guy must not be a very good coder, and cry cry cry...
And most of the posters admit they haven't even read the article yet.
It's frightening to you to admit that your college degree in Java is no more than a vocational education. Pretty soon you'll be forming a union.
That's what they let you do NOW. Nothing's stopping them from disabling chapter advance and fast forward during the commercials, warnings, threats, etc (and more and more DVDs do) or even the whole movie if they wanted. Who gave the studios the option to let their DVD media break my hardware? of COURSE they're going to use that power if you make it an option.
actually that second image isn't a good example of my point, sorry! The website showed the *positive* (reversed) image against the icon. You'd see much more resemblance in the original (negative) and the icon.
Here's a website that describes the basic theory. I think they have a good point, but since they're true believers, they take it way too far and dilute the original point by trying to show how even modern day art is shroud influenced. Modern day art is much more influenced by the renaissance, which probably has no shroud influence at all (I mean seriously guys, if anybody faked it, it certainly wasn't Da Vinci or Raphael, they had WAY better things to do.)
Actually it's the other way round. The image is definitely warped, but such that it's more anatomically correct if draped. Some icons (paintings on curved wax and wood, such as this icon ) show a marked resemeblance to the shroud image, because the underlying wood is curved in the same way (the medieval idea of "3D", only you don't need red & blue glasses).
There are several books on the Shroud that purport that the overwhelming majority of religious art shows a high degree of influence from the shroud image. The paintings have a lot of anatomical weirdness due to the fact that they were copying basically a photographic negative (whether you think it's a fake or not, the image is definitely a photo-negative) without realizing the concept. In the image above, see the wide-apart large staring eyes, misshappen right cheek, and basically the hair. The hair in that painting is the artist's impression of what was more likely the cloth bound around the shroud man's head to hold his chin closed.
Here's an image from someone who's trying to prove that theory : shroud vs icon (if you disregard the coins for the moment, it does seem to show that medieval artists around Europe and Asia basically tried to copy the shroud as closely as possible even where it didn't look human.) (sorry about the partisan source for that image, first link on google).
That doesn't show it's fake, nor that it's real, but that at least the artists felt it was authentic, and many of them dated from before the carbon dating from the British museum; so it's another piece of evidence that the Brits really screwed that one up, ensuring controversy for another dozen years.
Yep, it's a scam. If you click through enough of the sites you can see that "John Sokol" also takes credit for some of the amazing video compression scams and somehow creating a CPU with 1/1000th the transistors of an Intel CPU but twice the computing power.
In fact I doubt your Mexican story altogether.
is this a scam? the website you linked has only a mailto link to your email address. there's no description of the business, location of business, or anything that might make me think it was a legitimate business. I call scam.
the most thoughtful and thoughtprovoking post I have read on Slashdot in 4 years. bravo. but no mod points today.
This was my theory on why driving was so much worse in South Korea (when I was there in 1994) than in the US. Koreans have an extremely strong cultural hierarchy, older being higher, and men above women. In person, the younger (or female) always deferred politely to the older person. But once they get in a car, they automatically assume they have more rank than the next guy, because they can't see his face! and proceed to drive crazily like all others should make way for the King.
Despite all the race/sex problems in America we really do have a cultural expectation of equality. When we come to a 4-way stop, Americans across the country expects to get their turn regardless of race or sex. My two cents, anyway.
The "Strong AI" theory (not problem) is the idea that an artificially intelligence that looks like its thinking (passes the Turing test) is actually thinking. This implies we need to model artificially intelligence brains after our own.
P=NP is talking about the difficulty of solving non-polynomial problems (like the Traveling Salesman problem) in polynomial time. A bunch of computer theory is devoted to saying that if you could solve any NP problem in P time, you could solve all of them in P time. P problems tend to be feasible to resolve on Turing-equivalent computers; NP not so much.
But it's quantum computing that will likely allow us to solve NP problems; and a Quantum computer gets us no further towards AI. Artificial intelligence is really quite unrelated.
Don't bother finishing Quarantine - Egan didn't finish it either. It's a deus ex machina ending.
Your thinking is the sad result of so much copyright fear from the RIAA and MPAA. "Copyrights" and "intellectual property" aren't natural laws - they're artificial constructs, and if we (as a nation, as a world) decide they get in the way of the advance of culture or society or just plain old happiness, we should water them down or eliminate them.
This idea doesn't cover the excuse that almost all these companies use - that they only acquire patents "defensively." Under your plan, even those in the "VPL" have a big incentive to pull down as many patents as possible (even with good intentions). What we need is to get to a world where people are not submitting these software patents.
Ok, what's the alternative? Can you think of one with a) a real-world example country that b) isn't a dismal failure ?
It says it costs about $3000 to replace the batteries, and it should be done every 20,000 miles.
A Qs .htm
http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_F
not bad for a $220,000 sports car that gets 70mpg equivalent.
One unnatural mechanic leads to another. If the computer/console was an appliance that saves progress constantly (or at least, often enough not to matter), then saving the game is as easy as walking away and turning off the machine.
Of course this only works in-game if your game has been designed so that Death isn't used as a "punishment". If your game design allows players to go down unreversible dead-ends, then you have to have save-game functionality to allow them to back up. One hack leads to another.
For example, see The Sims. No save game required.
Ok, so everybody is making fun of this story with all its inane questions.
But think of this: DRM in software makes it possible for corporations to give an exact answer to every one of these inane questions.
Where we used to have "common sense", unregulated uses of the media - for example, loaning your CD to your buddy for the afternoon - software will very soon dictate EXACTLY when and where you have each and every one of these inane rights.
If we don't act to protect the unregulated use of the media, code will decide it for us.
I got these ideas from Lawrence Lessig .
You need to read Lessig's book : (http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0465039138)
If the ability to copy an "eBook" or do whatever is only enabled by the technology, whether you have the "right" to do so is irrelevant. The company making the hardware/software implements your "right" in software, and they're telling you you can't. Your rights are now granted by Microsoft, not by the Constitution.
What's worse, even if the DCMA and laws like it are repealed, the hardware/software are still effectively hampering your rights. Even if it is technically "legal" to work around DRM (and the DCMA makes it illegal today), unless you are a skilled programmer, you're still unable to exercise your fair use rights around digital material. This is why DRM is inherently evil.
Parrot was in good shape and blazingly fast, last time I spoke to Dan Sugalski.
Yes, I would say that.
In our local Professional Photographers Association chapter there are many photographers who see no moral problem with copying MP3s (or, more often,Photoshop!) between themselves, yet scream with indignation when someone copies one of their images digitally from their own promotional website.
What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The Internet will make your prices come down to the point that stealing your image is more trouble than paying you for it.
Before a power outage destroys his program!
Perhaps in order to ensure that the game's premise remains in a fictional country?
No, if you're the terrorist, you're going to put it on the Visa you stole out of that creditcard database you hacked.
So some other poor schmuck who actually OWNED said Visa gets Guantanamo Bay, while YOU can go right onboard, sir.
What he's talking about is that this discovery pushes the lower bounds of the "wobble" technique for finding planets. Therefore as we get better instruments, it's reasonable to think we WILL find more earth-size planets.
To use your fish analogy, we're using wimpy hooks and catching small fry. As we get bigger and stronger hooks we keep pulling bigger fish. It's therefore reasonable to proceed with buying even bigger hooks, in the hopes that we haven't yet caught the biggest fish out there yet.
Lucasfilm's Sony camera, on which they have filmed Episode II, and which was considered to completely supercede analog film, picks up 1920x1080 resolution. You don't really need that much resolution to look fantastically better than what passes for film these days.