Oh, I'm sure there have been more, we just haven't all commented:)
Back to the topic at hand for a moment, I'm pretty sure that comets are portals to universes consisting of nothing but shrimp, and the materials being expelled by them are simply little shrimp bits leaking through.
Arthur C. Clarke's 1978 novel "The Fountains of Paradise" is centered around the construction of a space elevator. I haven't read it in close to a decade, but I enjoyed it back in high school. The irony at the end of the book moved me a bit.
Yes. As far as I'm concerned, Castlevania: SotN is the best platformer, and probably the best action game of any type, ever released. Wonderful graphics (for the time), exceptional music, great gameplay. It had so many little touches that fleshed it out. Want to use a useful equipment slot to make your character a couple of pixels taller, though it won't affect gameplay? Put on your Secret Boots.
I found Lament of Innocence, the PS2 Castlevania game, to be a huge disappointment. Several years ago, when Koji Igarashi (the man behind SotN) announced that he was working on a new Castlevania game, he basically said that he realized that making the gameplay 3D would detract from the game more than it would add to it. The closest quote I've been able to find, in my brief search, is:
The director went on to say that maintaining the Castlevania style of gameplay in 3D "would be impossible," and that the style for the next installment "is descended from Symphony of the Night."
This is taken from a brief article referring to an interview of Koji Igarashi in PlayStation Magazine. I was incredibly disappointed to find that the team ended up producing a 3D action game. Perhaps it made "business sense"; at this point, maybe the number of people that will buy a pretty good 3D action game is greater than the number that will buy an incredibly well made 2D SotN-style platformer. If the market really can't support such excellence any more, I'm quite disappointed.
Oh, and yes, I do know about the GBA Castlevanias, and I appreciate them. I just wish that Konami would harness the power of a modern day console (as opposed to an admittedly excellent portable system) while maintaining a similar style of gameplay. Just imagining the game that might be made if they chose to do so brightens my day.
I realize that, from a pragmatic point of view, what I'm about to say is irrelevant, but...
You say "But, rendering... Some pages aren't correct, thanks to web monkeys using IE's HTML additions." I found that, after a while, I simply came to the conclusion that those pages were rendered correctly, and that the designers of the pages (or those telling the designers how to do their jobs) were just idiots.
I have found that my sblive (a simple oem Live Value model) works _much_ better with ALSA than with OSS. Not that it was difficult to set it up with either, but ALSA is a much better-designed system. I'm not trying to say that your complaints with it aren't legitimate; for all I know, they are... I just hope people don't choose to use ALSA over OSS when they have a choice.
For reference, I've used ALSA for this card on old versions of Mandrake (7?) and Debian with kernel 2.4, and on Gentoo with kernels 2.4 & 2.6.
The problem with their perspective is that it's wrong. The idea that somebody can own an idea just because they blurted it out first is absolutely ludicrous. Somebody first came up with the idea of using insulated wire to convey an electrical charge from one location to another. Should that person be the only one allowed to do so for 95+ years? What about the first person to think of making marks on paper to symbolize words and ideas? Ideas cannot truly be owned solely by given individuals, regardless of what words on pieces of paper distributed throughout a culture say. Copyright in the United States was created as a bargain "to promote science and the useful arts," with all works falling into public domain in a limited time. When that "limited time" is defined as a length of time that completely destroys the spirit of the law (I don't consider periods of time that almost certainly exceed the length of my life, birth to death, limited enough) the public has no incentive to uphold their end of the bargain. If there was anything actually redeeming about the so-called "intellectual property" released in the US, a person might be pushed to civil disobedience. As it is, however, there would be very little to gain.
Well, here's another alternative: instead of clumsily (as the attempt would no doubt be, at least at first) trying to change weather to prevent floods or hurricanes, simply stop building in the path of floods and hurricanes. True, this means that more land would need to be left wild. This is a good thing (oh, and I plan on having 0, 1, or at most 2 children, so I'm not part of the population problem).
The original duration gave an author a chance to make some money from his work before it became public domain. It is now being extended to allow huge corporations to make money for decades after the original author is dead and gone (like Walt Disney). This was arguably not the original intent.
First of all, let me state that I think javahacker and I are arguing towards the same conclusion; I'm not trying to prove him/her wrong, I just think that javahacker could make a stronger argument than he/she did. (By the way, isn't the "he/she" thing annoying? I propose we adopt a term "ge" (rhymes with "he" "she" and "key") that both implies personhood (unlike "it") and abstains from containing any information regarding gender).
This was demonstrably not the original intent. Constitution of the United States of America, Section 8, Clause 8: [The Congress shall have Power] To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; (Highlighting is mine, of course, and not the original text's).
Copyright is only granted in the US Constitution to create an incentive for people to create useful works; it is not granted as a property right. The framers would have considered such an idea ludicrous (in fact, Jefferson did, and said so; see the end of this post).
Of course, whether the framers believed in copyright or not should not be taken as a definitive reason to accept it or reject it. We human beings (myself included) worship "that which has come before" to a strange degree. In the US, the precedents set in our courts hugely influence future cases; they should certainly be taken into consideration, but not treated as scripture. Instead, we should reflect on past events and beliefs and make logical, reasonable, and practical decisions.
What is the logical, reasonable, and practical conclusion to come to in the case of copyright? Create a short-lived copyright (no more than ten years), and give individuals moderate (yes, this would need to be defined) freedom to copy the material for their own personal use. Don't allow people to copyright works that they merely discovered (such as the human genome). Come down extremely hard on anyone breaking copyright for profit (selling "pirated" software/movies, etc.). Much to our surprise, this is largely compatible with the word and intent of the US Constitution (it adds "fair use"). How nice.
Slightly off topic, but very related, don't allow people to patent algorithms; granting a person an exclusive right to perform certain mathematical calculations is absolutely insane.
Language and communication are only possible in an environment with a sufficiently large shared intellectual commons. Let's try not to destroy ours.
"It would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors... It would be curious... if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody... The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333
Capitalism and socialism are economic systems, communism and democracy (or republicanism, which is the system used in the US, as we don't all vote for every law) are political systems. They are on different "circles".
Just think about it for a moment; it would be possible to have a completely socialist system (no private ownership of anything) where all citizens were allowed to vote for every law (actual democracy). Yes, this would be a ponderous system, but it is a possible system. Completely socialist, completely democratic (unlike any existing nation). Obviously, these systems can't simply exist at different points on the same circle; they must exist as points on different circles.
That "skip" that you have during movies (should only be once per side) is probably a layer switch. DVDs can be made dual-layer to hold twice the data, and cheaper DVD players (like mine) don't buffer enough data into memory to play through the layer switch without freezing for a moment. I believe that the frequency of light that is shot at the disc is changed for the second pass. In any event, all the (two-dimensional) physical locations on the disk have a capability of holding two layers per side, so a double-sided double-layer DVD would have four times the capacity of a single layer, single sided DVD. I was pretty impressed when I first read about it.
I like to use anjuta, an IDE built on the GNOME libraries. A friend of mine was complaining that there were no IDEs in Linux that could compete with MS Visual Studio. I showed him anjuta, and he dropped the argument:)
You can check it out at http://anjuta.sourceforge.net.
Apparently some people swear by kdevelop which, as you may be able to tell, is a KDE application. I haven't used it much personally, but you might want to check it out at http://www.kdevelop.org
I've debated the freedom of the GPL with people before, and have come to the following belief:
When thinking about the freedom that the GPL creates, don't think about either beer or speech. Instead, think of the code as a living entity which has been granted its own freedom. Under the BSD license (considered more "free" by some because it allows anyone to do almost anything with code licensed under it) the code might be enslaved by those who are unwilling to protect or honor its freedom. Using the GPL is, in my mind, similar to arming one's code with weapons to fight off those who would otherwise enslave it. While both licenses grant the code freedom, one grants it the means to remain free, while the other does not.
When works return to the public domain, they can be recycled and used under any license. When work enters the GPL, it may never return.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't works covered under the GPL enter the public domain at exactly the same time as those works that were kept completely proprietary? The copyrights on both will end at the same time (assuming that they started at the same time and that congress ever allows a copyright to expire again).
I feel silly dignifying this with a response, but...
Let me start by saying that I'm not a rabid evolutionist, nor am I a rabid creationist. I suppose I could be called a very weak theist, but those of you who aren't philosophers should probably just think of me as agnostic. It's not exactly accurate, as I believe that there is something greater than myself, but I'm not nearly so arrogant as to say that I know what that something is (or anything else that is essentially unknowable).
In response to pkplex: they're trying to prove evolution for the same reason that you are trying to prove your very specific version of creationism; they think that it's true. They ARE looking for truth, though you (and I) might disagree with where they're looking for it.
Noah's ark has been found, eh? If that was actually a known true statement, rather than just something that someone said and you believed (much like the theory of evolution is to others) then you'd have a very good point. I don't think you do. Here are a few very quick questions about The Ark. Dimensions for it are, as you said, given in the Old Testament. 300 cubits x 50 cubits x 30 cubits. A cubit is approximately 18 inches (it's actually a measurement from a person's elbow to the tip of the person's middle finger). We therefor have (with dimensions for my fellow Americans) 450' x 75' x 45'. This is quite the engineering project for one man and his family. The acquisition of the gopher-wood and cypress that was to be used in its construction would have been rather fun for several people. Oh, and the bible says that it was done by Noah, not by Noah and God. Let's assume, though, that it was a success, and all of the animals were brought onboard, and they all had enough to eat (including the carnivores), and everyone disembarked merrily after the end of the flood. What do the carnivores now eat? What about the herbivores? If even one member of any species (save human) died at this point, the entire species would be wiped out. Oh, and if the "God will protect them" argument is used, why not just have him float them and forget the whole "Ark" nonsense? Or just have him kill all the people that the flood was intended to kill? Even assuming they all have enough to eat AFTER the flood, what about genetic diversity? Two members of a species do not a diverse population make.
You also point out that there is historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. Good for you. I'm going to pull a similar trick: I exist. Amazing, I know. I don't, however, have a religious following. It's one thing for Jesus Christ to be a historical figure. It's another thing entirely for him to have been exactly as portrayed by a group of writings picked during a convention a little before 400 AD (I want to say 397 AD, but that might be off by a bit).
I agree that life has order and design; as I said, I'm a theist. But the existence of order and design in the universe (and even if one believes in evolution, one must either believe in an almost limitless multiverse or in a designed universe for one's beliefs to be taken seriously) does not point a person toward any particular religion. What it CAN do is point a person away from certain false systems of belief.
You're looking for a better explanation of life than is being handed you be the scientific community in general. Great. Just don't use bad arguments and the assumption that your personal religious beliefs are unquestionable truths to attack evolution. Come at it with something of substance.
Middle-button text pasting that may or may not work? I've been using Linux as my primary OS for the past two years, and use programs designed for GNOME, KDE, a straight terminal, and for themselves (staroffice, etc) and can't recall ever having a problem pasting from one app into another.
As a matter of fact, you can boot from ReiserFS. I have nothing but ReiserFS (and, unfortunately, FAT 32) on four computers running various 2.4 kernel versions. The computers were originally running Mandrake 7.1, 7.2, or 8.0, but they have since been modified to varying degrees. ReiserFS has worked great for me, but I have no experience with the other journaling filesystems.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, I'm sure there have been more, we just haven't all commented :)
Back to the topic at hand for a moment, I'm pretty sure that comets are portals to universes consisting of nothing but shrimp, and the materials being expelled by them are simply little shrimp bits leaking through.
Arthur C. Clarke's 1978 novel "The Fountains of Paradise" is centered around the construction of a space elevator. I haven't read it in close to a decade, but I enjoyed it back in high school. The irony at the end of the book moved me a bit.
Yes. As far as I'm concerned, Castlevania: SotN is the best platformer, and probably the best action game of any type, ever released. Wonderful graphics (for the time), exceptional music, great gameplay. It had so many little touches that fleshed it out. Want to use a useful equipment slot to make your character a couple of pixels taller, though it won't affect gameplay? Put on your Secret Boots.
I found Lament of Innocence, the PS2 Castlevania game, to be a huge disappointment. Several years ago, when Koji Igarashi (the man behind SotN) announced that he was working on a new Castlevania game, he basically said that he realized that making the gameplay 3D would detract from the game more than it would add to it. The closest quote I've been able to find, in my brief search, is:
This is taken from a brief article referring to an interview of Koji Igarashi in PlayStation Magazine. I was incredibly disappointed to find that the team ended up producing a 3D action game. Perhaps it made "business sense"; at this point, maybe the number of people that will buy a pretty good 3D action game is greater than the number that will buy an incredibly well made 2D SotN-style platformer. If the market really can't support such excellence any more, I'm quite disappointed.Oh, and yes, I do know about the GBA Castlevanias, and I appreciate them. I just wish that Konami would harness the power of a modern day console (as opposed to an admittedly excellent portable system) while maintaining a similar style of gameplay. Just imagining the game that might be made if they chose to do so brightens my day.
I have no idea how it's referred to in California, but I've never heard it called anything other than I-5 up here around Seattle.
I realize that, from a pragmatic point of view, what I'm about to say is irrelevant, but...
You say "But, rendering... Some pages aren't correct, thanks to web monkeys using IE's HTML additions." I found that, after a while, I simply came to the conclusion that those pages were rendered correctly, and that the designers of the pages (or those telling the designers how to do their jobs) were just idiots.
I have found that my sblive (a simple oem Live Value model) works _much_ better with ALSA than with OSS. Not that it was difficult to set it up with either, but ALSA is a much better-designed system. I'm not trying to say that your complaints with it aren't legitimate; for all I know, they are... I just hope people don't choose to use ALSA over OSS when they have a choice.
For reference, I've used ALSA for this card on old versions of Mandrake (7?) and Debian with kernel 2.4, and on Gentoo with kernels 2.4 & 2.6.
The problem with their perspective is that it's wrong. The idea that somebody can own an idea just because they blurted it out first is absolutely ludicrous. Somebody first came up with the idea of using insulated wire to convey an electrical charge from one location to another. Should that person be the only one allowed to do so for 95+ years? What about the first person to think of making marks on paper to symbolize words and ideas? Ideas cannot truly be owned solely by given individuals, regardless of what words on pieces of paper distributed throughout a culture say. Copyright in the United States was created as a bargain "to promote science and the useful arts," with all works falling into public domain in a limited time. When that "limited time" is defined as a length of time that completely destroys the spirit of the law (I don't consider periods of time that almost certainly exceed the length of my life, birth to death, limited enough) the public has no incentive to uphold their end of the bargain. If there was anything actually redeeming about the so-called "intellectual property" released in the US, a person might be pushed to civil disobedience. As it is, however, there would be very little to gain.
Well, here's another alternative: instead of clumsily (as the attempt would no doubt be, at least at first) trying to change weather to prevent floods or hurricanes, simply stop building in the path of floods and hurricanes. True, this means that more land would need to be left wild. This is a good thing (oh, and I plan on having 0, 1, or at most 2 children, so I'm not part of the population problem).
Do you have any idea who's translation you read? I'd be interested in reading it at some point.
Futurama and Malcolm in the Middle have me in their sway as well, but you've got the right idea.
Actually, though, I haven't watched more than half an hour of TV a week in several months. I wonder if the start of the season will suck me back...
First of all, let me state that I think javahacker and I are arguing towards the same conclusion; I'm not trying to prove him/her wrong, I just think that javahacker could make a stronger argument than he/she did. (By the way, isn't the "he/she" thing annoying? I propose we adopt a term "ge" (rhymes with "he" "she" and "key") that both implies personhood (unlike "it") and abstains from containing any information regarding gender).
This was demonstrably not the original intent. Constitution of the United States of America, Section 8, Clause 8: [The Congress shall have Power] To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; (Highlighting is mine, of course, and not the original text's).
Copyright is only granted in the US Constitution to create an incentive for people to create useful works; it is not granted as a property right. The framers would have considered such an idea ludicrous (in fact, Jefferson did, and said so; see the end of this post).
Of course, whether the framers believed in copyright or not should not be taken as a definitive reason to accept it or reject it. We human beings (myself included) worship "that which has come before" to a strange degree. In the US, the precedents set in our courts hugely influence future cases; they should certainly be taken into consideration, but not treated as scripture. Instead, we should reflect on past events and beliefs and make logical, reasonable, and practical decisions.
What is the logical, reasonable, and practical conclusion to come to in the case of copyright? Create a short-lived copyright (no more than ten years), and give individuals moderate (yes, this would need to be defined) freedom to copy the material for their own personal use. Don't allow people to copyright works that they merely discovered (such as the human genome). Come down extremely hard on anyone breaking copyright for profit (selling "pirated" software/movies, etc.). Much to our surprise, this is largely compatible with the word and intent of the US Constitution (it adds "fair use"). How nice.
Slightly off topic, but very related, don't allow people to patent algorithms; granting a person an exclusive right to perform certain mathematical calculations is absolutely insane.
Language and communication are only possible in an environment with a sufficiently large shared intellectual commons. Let's try not to destroy ours.
"It would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors... It would be curious... if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody... The exclusive right to invention [is] given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society." --Thomas Jefferson to Isaac McPherson, 1813. ME 13:333
Capitalism and socialism are economic systems, communism and democracy (or republicanism, which is the system used in the US, as we don't all vote for every law) are political systems. They are on different "circles".
Just think about it for a moment; it would be possible to have a completely socialist system (no private ownership of anything) where all citizens were allowed to vote for every law (actual democracy). Yes, this would be a ponderous system, but it is a possible system. Completely socialist, completely democratic (unlike any existing nation). Obviously, these systems can't simply exist at different points on the same circle; they must exist as points on different circles.
That "skip" that you have during movies (should only be once per side) is probably a layer switch. DVDs can be made dual-layer to hold twice the data, and cheaper DVD players (like mine) don't buffer enough data into memory to play through the layer switch without freezing for a moment. I believe that the frequency of light that is shot at the disc is changed for the second pass. In any event, all the (two-dimensional) physical locations on the disk have a capability of holding two layers per side, so a double-sided double-layer DVD would have four times the capacity of a single layer, single sided DVD. I was pretty impressed when I first read about it.
Apparently some people swear by kdevelop which, as you may be able to tell, is a KDE application. I haven't used it much personally, but you might want to check it out at http://www.kdevelop.org
When thinking about the freedom that the GPL creates, don't think about either beer or speech. Instead, think of the code as a living entity which has been granted its own freedom. Under the BSD license (considered more "free" by some because it allows anyone to do almost anything with code licensed under it) the code might be enslaved by those who are unwilling to protect or honor its freedom. Using the GPL is, in my mind, similar to arming one's code with weapons to fight off those who would otherwise enslave it. While both licenses grant the code freedom, one grants it the means to remain free, while the other does not.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but won't works covered under the GPL enter the public domain at exactly the same time as those works that were kept completely proprietary? The copyrights on both will end at the same time (assuming that they started at the same time and that congress ever allows a copyright to expire again).
I feel silly dignifying this with a response, but...
Let me start by saying that I'm not a rabid evolutionist, nor am I a rabid creationist. I suppose I could be called a very weak theist, but those of you who aren't philosophers should probably just think of me as agnostic. It's not exactly accurate, as I believe that there is something greater than myself, but I'm not nearly so arrogant as to say that I know what that something is (or anything else that is essentially unknowable).
In response to pkplex: they're trying to prove evolution for the same reason that you are trying to prove your very specific version of creationism; they think that it's true. They ARE looking for truth, though you (and I) might disagree with where they're looking for it.
Noah's ark has been found, eh? If that was actually a known true statement, rather than just something that someone said and you believed (much like the theory of evolution is to others) then you'd have a very good point. I don't think you do. Here are a few very quick questions about The Ark. Dimensions for it are, as you said, given in the Old Testament. 300 cubits x 50 cubits x 30 cubits. A cubit is approximately 18 inches (it's actually a measurement from a person's elbow to the tip of the person's middle finger). We therefor have (with dimensions for my fellow Americans) 450' x 75' x 45'. This is quite the engineering project for one man and his family. The acquisition of the gopher-wood and cypress that was to be used in its construction would have been rather fun for several people. Oh, and the bible says that it was done by Noah, not by Noah and God. Let's assume, though, that it was a success, and all of the animals were brought onboard, and they all had enough to eat (including the carnivores), and everyone disembarked merrily after the end of the flood. What do the carnivores now eat? What about the herbivores? If even one member of any species (save human) died at this point, the entire species would be wiped out. Oh, and if the "God will protect them" argument is used, why not just have him float them and forget the whole "Ark" nonsense? Or just have him kill all the people that the flood was intended to kill? Even assuming they all have enough to eat AFTER the flood, what about genetic diversity? Two members of a species do not a diverse population make.
You also point out that there is historical evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. Good for you. I'm going to pull a similar trick: I exist. Amazing, I know. I don't, however, have a religious following. It's one thing for Jesus Christ to be a historical figure. It's another thing entirely for him to have been exactly as portrayed by a group of writings picked during a convention a little before 400 AD (I want to say 397 AD, but that might be off by a bit).
I agree that life has order and design; as I said, I'm a theist. But the existence of order and design in the universe (and even if one believes in evolution, one must either believe in an almost limitless multiverse or in a designed universe for one's beliefs to be taken seriously) does not point a person toward any particular religion. What it CAN do is point a person away from certain false systems of belief.
You're looking for a better explanation of life than is being handed you be the scientific community in general. Great. Just don't use bad arguments and the assumption that your personal religious beliefs are unquestionable truths to attack evolution. Come at it with something of substance.
Middle-button text pasting that may or may not work? I've been using Linux as my primary OS for the past two years, and use programs designed for GNOME, KDE, a straight terminal, and for themselves (staroffice, etc) and can't recall ever having a problem pasting from one app into another.
As a matter of fact, you can boot from ReiserFS. I have nothing but ReiserFS (and, unfortunately, FAT 32) on four computers running various 2.4 kernel versions. The computers were originally running Mandrake 7.1, 7.2, or 8.0, but they have since been modified to varying degrees. ReiserFS has worked great for me, but I have no experience with the other journaling filesystems.