From your english class?
on
The Golden Ratio
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
for my english class. hope you enjoy it.
I presume you got an F. Since is a direct and obvious plagarism of the publisher's description of the book. (see: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnIn quiry.asp?isbn=0767908155) It's obvious, because it doesn't really say anything other than what can be related to the title of the book (which is not unusual for back-of-the-book descriptions) It's direct, because, well -- I can search google for any sentence in your text and find it.
I don't think that free speech requires anonimity... Basically, you add accountability.
Which would lead to -- "Children should be seen and not heard." (Because they cannot be held accountable for what they say.) "The nail that sticks up, gets hammered down." (Because you can't voice dissent without drawing attention to yourself and your family.)
Effective free speech requires anonymity -- There's usually needed a period of underground "pot-stirring" in order to add momentum to a movement. For example: Let's say your boss regularly beats the shit out of you when you walk in the door in the morning. But it's your first job, so you don't know if it's normal or not. But your family depends on your income. You could post anonymously on some forum asking "Hey everyone! Do your bosses kick your asses in the morning like mine?" / or sign your name and likely get a bigger ass whopping along with being fired.
The idea is basically this: You (the recipient) put a value (say $10) on incoming mail from strangers. If someone wants to send you mail, they have to put that in an escrow account. Then if they meet your requirements, you can recieve the mail. -- If you don't like the mail from any reason, you can take the money from escrow. If you don't do anything, escrow will be released after some time. Oh, they mention that this might not be neccessary for people you already know (whitelists).
This is just lame. The amount of "infrastructure" required is totally ridiculous. They ignore the fact that email is a general communications media / People who do not like eachother do email because it's practical / but under this nutty system, people would only email people they trust not to "steal" their money in escrow. Mailing lists, anyone?
Once again, someone thinks that you can "solve" spam for the recipient at a huge penalty to a legitimate sender.
Arrg! I hope they didn't get paid to write this tripe.
They are a literal gold mine for biotech companies.
I don't often pick nits, but this one always bothers me... Unless the extremophiles are actually an "excavation in the earth from which gold can be extracted" they are not literally a gold mine. They are figuratively a gold mine.
Anyway...
These organisms are not going to be "harvested" in Antartica for any commercial purpose, and I can't see further research in this area creating anymore disturbance to the ecosystem than the research already carried out in Antartica since the first explorers
I have to disagree. It's just not cost effective to do so now -- if there was a fish in antartica that could be ground up into an AIDS cure or cancer cure, you can be sure someone would fish it clean, ecosystem be damned.
If you are looking medium term (5-10 years), spend that time learning on your own (play with other people's code, copy small projects just to understand how they are done) -- then leverage what you already know about your own industry. Instead of getting out of medicine all together, take advantage of it -- where could you improve the process with some software? And concentrate on that.
You probably already have some contacts / potential customers.
That is wrong. A working office suite is not enough.
I think we agree here. I was responding to the concept that "there can only be one desktop if linux is to be used by the average person", which I completely disagree with. What I think you are saying is something like "for any desktop to be successful it must have support from the hardware manufacturers", which I agree with. And given that support, I believe the diversity of applications will turn out to be a good thing, not a hinderance.
Needless to say, as long as Linux distributions and desktop managers continue to proliferate, the average user's requirements will never be met. I say this as a *fact* not a *prescription*, so spare me the Linux-strength-in-diversity comments. I just think you can't have your cake (freedom/diversity) and eat it too (Linux on average desktop).
I'm sure I'm not going to be the only one to disagree with you on this point. Although I agree that the current Linux desktops may not be ready for the users you describe, I don't agree with the leap of logic that diversity necessarily means it will never be ready. That's just silliness IMO. All it takes is/one/ desktop (or suite of software options) to make it easy for these users -- perhaps it doesn't exist yet, but when it does, it can be used, even by the majority of users, regardless of whether or not there are other options.
The "unify or die" logic has always seemed like a non sequitur to me.
If some genious did crack it, then I'd imagine an auction for exclusive license to the crack would be worth a lot more than 1 million dollars. But how could you gaurantee to the winner that they'd only be the only one with the solution? (without dying, of course.)
Well the TARA archive is already slashdotted...
But I'm most interested in getting answers to these questions --
-- What's the license/use/citation policy? e.g. Can I make prints?
-- Can I buy/license a copy of the entire archive? (Perhaps loaded onto one of these).
bc90021: "It would seem that unless a collective of people started an online world like the SIMS, that it will be the game company that decides what is acceptable speech and what is not."
Yes, but the bigger question becomes -- Who is responsible for that what is said?
ISPs have argued, somewhat successfully, that they are not responsible for the behavior of their users -- they do not filter messages/packets/etc. based on content -- and so in this case, they are effectively creating a public space, where both an individual's right to speak freely and his responsibilty for what is said exist. However, once content is being filtered, in such a way that is not automatic, or without input from the hosts (i.e. not slashdot), the provider becomes/responsible/ for the content. So... I don't think this is a big problem. A couple of users will eventually libel someone and the provider (e.g. SIMS online) will be held responsible because they "allowed" it.
It has been my experience that typically those "profound" things that are hard to name belong to the realm of acedemics, etc. -- and most people just don't care to have them explained, they simply want to use them, or do whatever it is. It's like stopping to explain what a complex, wonderful, amazing thing the human digestive and waste systems are when all someone wants to do it sit on the damn pot.
"Why would any computer-savvy person want to move to Australia? They've got some of the toughest Internet censorship laws in the free world, IIRC..."
Maybe he likes the people... Or the countryside... Or the beaches... Or perhaps he's found a great school for his daughter... Or maybe his wife fell in love with a house there... Or maybe he's concerned with the political unrest in The States...
Who knows? But I'll bet he's got reasons a lot more important than the state of his internet access.
Although many of us respect Linus for his contributions and commitment to open source, in the same way we respect Richard Stallman for his, I certainly hope that Linus's "This is the year linux desktop will be ready" has a greater chance of coming to pass than Stallman's "This is the year HURD will be ready."
They both have and continue to play critical roles -- but sometimes they're just guessing and hoping for the best like the rest of us.
I have a 1702 that serves very well as another spare TV. (And hell, last time I looked, the C64 still worked too! But now that I think about it... it's probably been about 5 years since I promised myself I'd hack on that machine again. Oh well...)
I can't imagine thinking I'll want to hack on my Vaio or watch TV on my 30" Apex in 20 years though.
Here's a another write-up of the incident by ReliefWeb. If you're looking for a place to direct your help to, note that Niue is a member of Development and Economic Policy Division
Funding Assistance and Regional Natural Disaster Relief Fund... so these might be good places to donate.
I suppose you could also just pick a random person, transfer some money and ask them to pass it around, since there are only about 2,000 people there.
Maybe it's me, but in the thirty-some-odd international flights and untold-domestic flights I took last year, I never had my shoes set off the alarm. That would be because I took them off before going through the detector.
I don't like it - It's not right. But I do it because I have other battles to fight besides arguing about taking my damn shoes off.
Also, keep in mind that quite a few sneakers keep a metal bridge in the sole for comfort, so even if the metal is not obvious (like the steel toes in your boots?) it may still be there.
But if I had to make a suggestion -- how about looking at specialty sport shoes? e.g. car racing shoes?...or perhaps flip-flops for the airport -- there are a lot of brands built for comfort sans metal inserts.
The best new game I've played in a long while is Xenosaga... It's supposed to be a prequal to Xenogears, but I never played that so I don't count it, plus it wasn't even based on the same engine or anything (or the same characters, apparently). I think they are just vaguely related.
The speed of the 747 scrambling wouldn't be an issue with something like this because they simply keep them in the air, 24/7, ready to intercept. They wouldn't launch in reaction to a threat, they would already be in the air to intercept.
Maybe you've never heard of an old technology called SCSI (yeah, you IDE kids even know what it stands for?) but it's worked with Linux and even better OSes (*BSD, solaris, irix, etc) even longer than IDE has.
You say you want "External, hot-swappable and the ability to have more than 2 devices without significant slowdown are the main features I'd like on top of what I get from my IDE drives.", well SCSI has had all of that for 15 years. Plus, it is faster than firewire, more time-tested, and there are more people making parts that work with SCSI than firewire.
Maybe you should check it out. Just because you saw an ad for Firewire in Windows magazine doesn't mean it beats the best interface that has ever been -- SCSI.
Big deal. I worked for one of RR's smaller competetors a few years ago as a senior neteng... we wouldn't support Win2k betas and didn't even support the full release untill 4 or 5 months after it was released.
This is standard... companies want to make sure that their staff is 100% trained before they claim proficiency. Since XP was just released, how could they have been trained by now? Don't say betas or anything like that -- hands-on experience with release versions is the best way and the most reliable.
Just in case anyone is interested, LIDAR is actually what 'Laser radar guns' use to track your speed. So if someone ever tells you that they got pulled over because of a Laser gun, tell them it was LIDAR they should blame.
Try telling that to a cop... "No officer, its LIDAR! Really!"
I meant search slashdot. Someone posted this same type shuttle a long time ago, and then myself and a friend made a joke project of 'lets buy it and put linux on it' to poke fun at the put-linux-on-everything trend. do a search for shuttle you should find it:)
I picked up one of these at Best Buy also. I tore it apart the moment I got home; if anyone wants pics of the internals, send me an email and I'll get some high quality pics of all the components. Basically, the unit is two parts: One part is the 'mousepad' unit that has little press-button pads on it that line up under a paper insert labeled with websites (and branded shit). The paper insert has a notched corner that meets up with a few contacts to identify which branded pad is in the unit (ie, a CompUSA mysmart pad has a different notch than a BestBuy one so they link to different sites). The contacts connect to the smartcard circuit, which in turn connects to your USB hub. The smartcard itself seems to just be a simple flashmemory card (no real CPU or java on it or whatever) that stores your website passwords and favorites and branded stuff. It would be nice to be able to use this smartcard for some simple authentification; ie, pop in your smartcard to login, pull it out and your terminal is automatically locked. If anyone wants to hack at this, I can send you pics and specs of the unit, and you can get them for cheap at local stores. jason
Slashdot Mirror
for my english class. hope you enjoy it.
n quiry.asp?isbn=0767908155)
I presume you got an F. Since is a direct and obvious plagarism of the publisher's description of the book. (see: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnI
It's obvious, because it doesn't really say anything other than what can be related to the title of the book (which is not unusual for back-of-the-book descriptions)
It's direct, because, well -- I can search google for any sentence in your text and find it.
Lame.
I don't think that free speech requires anonimity ... Basically, you add accountability.
Which would lead to --
"Children should be seen and not heard." (Because they cannot be held accountable for what they say.)
"The nail that sticks up, gets hammered down." (Because you can't voice dissent without drawing attention to yourself and your family.)
Effective free speech requires anonymity -- There's usually needed a period of underground "pot-stirring" in order to add momentum to a movement.
For example: Let's say your boss regularly beats the shit out of you when you walk in the door in the morning. But it's your first job, so you don't know if it's normal or not. But your family depends on your income. You could post anonymously on some forum asking "Hey everyone! Do your bosses kick your asses in the morning like mine?" / or sign your name and likely get a bigger ass whopping along with being fired.
The idea is basically this: You (the recipient) put a value (say $10) on incoming mail from strangers. If someone wants to send you mail, they have to put that in an escrow account. Then if they meet your requirements, you can recieve the mail. -- If you don't like the mail from any reason, you can take the money from escrow. If you don't do anything, escrow will be released after some time. Oh, they mention that this might not be neccessary for people you already know (whitelists).
This is just lame. The amount of "infrastructure" required is totally ridiculous.
They ignore the fact that email is a general communications media / People who do not like eachother do email because it's practical / but under this nutty system, people would only email people they trust not to "steal" their money in escrow. Mailing lists, anyone?
Once again, someone thinks that you can "solve" spam for the recipient at a huge penalty to a legitimate sender.
Arrg! I hope they didn't get paid to write this tripe.
They are a literal gold mine for biotech companies.
I don't often pick nits, but this one always bothers me...
Unless the extremophiles are actually an "excavation in the earth from which gold can be extracted" they are not literally a gold mine. They are figuratively a gold mine.
Anyway...
These organisms are not going to be "harvested" in Antartica for any commercial purpose, and I can't see further research in this area creating anymore disturbance to the ecosystem than the research already carried out in Antartica since the first explorers
I have to disagree. It's just not cost effective to do so now -- if there was a fish in antartica that could be ground up into an AIDS cure or cancer cure, you can be sure someone would fish it clean, ecosystem be damned.
If you are looking medium term (5-10 years), spend that time learning on your own (play with other people's code, copy small projects just to understand how they are done) -- then leverage what you already know about your own industry. Instead of getting out of medicine all together, take advantage of it -- where could you improve the process with some software? And concentrate on that.
You probably already have some contacts / potential customers.
That is wrong. A working office suite is not enough.
I think we agree here. I was responding to the concept that "there can only be one desktop if linux is to be used by the average person", which I completely disagree with. What I think you are saying is something like "for any desktop to be successful it must have support from the hardware manufacturers", which I agree with.
And given that support, I believe the diversity of applications will turn out to be a good thing, not a hinderance.
Needless to say, as long as Linux distributions and desktop managers continue to proliferate, the average user's requirements will never be met. I say this as a *fact* not a *prescription*, so spare me the Linux-strength-in-diversity comments. I just think you can't have your cake (freedom/diversity) and eat it too (Linux on average desktop).
/one/ desktop (or suite of software options) to make it easy for these users -- perhaps it doesn't exist yet, but when it does, it can be used, even by the majority of users, regardless of whether or not there are other options.
I'm sure I'm not going to be the only one to disagree with you on this point. Although I agree that the current Linux desktops may not be ready for the users you describe, I don't agree with the leap of logic that diversity necessarily means it will never be ready. That's just silliness IMO. All it takes is
The "unify or die" logic has always seemed like a non sequitur to me.
If some genious did crack it, then I'd imagine an auction for exclusive license to the crack would be worth a lot more than 1 million dollars.
But how could you gaurantee to the winner that they'd only be the only one with the solution? (without dying, of course.)
Maybe the Google front page didn't fit into the memory of the C64 ;)) Or, maybe, ...
Or maybe... it does!
Well the TARA archive is already slashdotted...
But I'm most interested in getting answers to these questions --
-- What's the license/use/citation policy? e.g. Can I make prints?
-- Can I buy/license a copy of the entire archive? (Perhaps loaded onto one of these).
bc90021: "It would seem that unless a collective of people started an online world like the SIMS, that it will be the game company that decides what is acceptable speech and what is not."
/responsible/ for the content. So... I don't think this is a big problem. A couple of users will eventually libel someone and the provider (e.g. SIMS online) will be held responsible because they "allowed" it.
Yes, but the bigger question becomes -- Who is responsible for that what is said?
ISPs have argued, somewhat successfully, that they are not responsible for the behavior of their users -- they do not filter messages/packets/etc. based on content -- and so in this case, they are effectively creating a public space, where both an individual's right to speak freely and his responsibilty for what is said exist. However, once content is being filtered, in such a way that is not automatic, or without input from the hosts (i.e. not slashdot), the provider becomes
It has been my experience that typically those "profound" things that are hard to name belong to the realm of acedemics, etc. -- and most people just don't care to have them explained, they simply want to use them, or do whatever it is. It's like stopping to explain what a complex, wonderful, amazing thing the human digestive and waste systems are when all someone wants to do it sit on the damn pot.
"Why would any computer-savvy person want to move to Australia? They've got some of the toughest Internet censorship laws in the free world, IIRC..."
Maybe he likes the people...
Or the countryside...
Or the beaches...
Or perhaps he's found a great school for his daughter...
Or maybe his wife fell in love with a house there...
Or maybe he's concerned with the political unrest in The States...
Who knows? But I'll bet he's got reasons a lot more important than the state of his internet access.
Although many of us respect Linus for his contributions and commitment to open source, in the same way we respect Richard Stallman for his, I certainly hope that Linus's "This is the year linux desktop will be ready" has a greater chance of coming to pass than Stallman's "This is the year HURD will be ready."
They both have and continue to play critical roles -- but sometimes they're just guessing and hoping for the best like the rest of us.
I have a 1702 that serves very well as another spare TV. (And hell, last time I looked, the C64 still worked too! But now that I think about it... it's probably been about 5 years since I promised myself I'd hack on that machine again. Oh well...)
I can't imagine thinking I'll want to hack on my Vaio or watch TV on my 30" Apex in 20 years though.
Here's a another write-up of the incident by ReliefWeb. If you're looking for a place to direct your help to, note that Niue is a member of Development and Economic Policy Division Funding Assistance and Regional Natural Disaster Relief Fund ... so these might be good places to donate.
I suppose you could also just pick a random person, transfer some money and ask them to pass it around, since there are only about 2,000 people there.
Maybe it's me, but in the thirty-some-odd international flights and untold-domestic flights I took last year, I never had my shoes set off the alarm. That would be because I took them off before going through the detector.
...or perhaps flip-flops for the airport -- there are a lot of brands built for comfort sans metal inserts.
... and dude, relax.
I don't like it - It's not right. But I do it because I have other battles to fight besides arguing about taking my damn shoes off.
Also, keep in mind that quite a few sneakers keep a metal bridge in the sole for comfort, so even if the metal is not obvious (like the steel toes in your boots?) it may still be there.
But if I had to make a suggestion -- how about looking at specialty sport shoes? e.g. car racing shoes?
good luck!
The best new game I've played in a long while is Xenosaga... It's supposed to be a prequal to Xenogears, but I never played that so I don't count it, plus it wasn't even based on the same engine or anything (or the same characters, apparently). I think they are just vaguely related.
The speed of the 747 scrambling wouldn't be an issue with something like this because they simply keep them in the air, 24/7, ready to intercept. They wouldn't launch in reaction to a threat, they would already be in the air to intercept.
Maybe you've never heard of an old technology called SCSI (yeah, you IDE kids even know what it stands for?) but it's worked with Linux and even better OSes (*BSD, solaris, irix, etc) even longer than IDE has.
You say you want "External, hot-swappable and the ability to have more than 2 devices without significant slowdown are the main features I'd like on top of what I get from my IDE drives.", well SCSI has had all of that for 15 years. Plus, it is faster than firewire, more time-tested, and there are more people making parts that work with SCSI than firewire.
Maybe you should check it out. Just because you saw an ad for Firewire in Windows magazine doesn't mean it beats the best interface that has ever been -- SCSI.
jason
Big deal. I worked for one of RR's smaller competetors a few years ago as a senior neteng... we wouldn't support Win2k betas and didn't even support the full release untill 4 or 5 months after it was released.
This is standard... companies want to make sure that their staff is 100% trained before they claim proficiency. Since XP was just released, how could they have been trained by now? Don't say betas or anything like that -- hands-on experience with release versions is the best way and the most reliable.
Just in case anyone is interested, LIDAR is actually what 'Laser radar guns' use to track your speed. So if someone ever tells you that they got pulled over because of a Laser gun, tell them it was LIDAR they should blame.
Try telling that to a cop... "No officer, its LIDAR! Really!"
jason
I meant search slashdot. Someone posted this same type shuttle a long time ago, and then myself and a friend made a joke project of 'lets buy it and put linux on it' to poke fun at the put-linux-on-everything trend. do a search for shuttle you should find it :)
I'm surprised that no one has posted that this is REALLY old news... I posted this in 1999 i think. Do a search...
I picked up one of these at Best Buy also. I tore it apart the moment I got home; if anyone wants pics of the internals, send me an email and I'll get some high quality pics of all the components. Basically, the unit is two parts: One part is the 'mousepad' unit that has little press-button pads on it that line up under a paper insert labeled with websites (and branded shit). The paper insert has a notched corner that meets up with a few contacts to identify which branded pad is in the unit (ie, a CompUSA mysmart pad has a different notch than a BestBuy one so they link to different sites). The contacts connect to the smartcard circuit, which in turn connects to your USB hub. The smartcard itself seems to just be a simple flashmemory card (no real CPU or java on it or whatever) that stores your website passwords and favorites and branded stuff. It would be nice to be able to use this smartcard for some simple authentification; ie, pop in your smartcard to login, pull it out and your terminal is automatically locked. If anyone wants to hack at this, I can send you pics and specs of the unit, and you can get them for cheap at local stores. jason