At the moment I'm wondering how Ridley Scott gets the authority to make "official" statements on a movie which claims to be "based on" the book by PK Dick. In the book, Deckard is not a replicant. Granted, "based on" != "is", but that is an incredibly major change to be making.
Of course, as anyone who has actually read the book knows, there's really not much similar between the "Do Androids Dream..." and "Blade Runner". Perhaps "Inspired by" would have been a better choice of labels.
Of course, the main theme was preserved fairly well, even if plot, atmosphere, characters were mangled beyond recognition. Both book and movie share the idea that there is no difference between human and replicant, in a moral sense. (as much as I hate the word "moral" and all of its loaded meanings, there's really no other word to use) The fact that replicants were "created" in a lab rather than a uterus doesn't make them any less capable of feeling pain, love, fear, joy...Both works show this, even if they have almost no other relationship to each other.
Yes, music is a form of information, which can be replicated at almost no cost. The consumer gets his music and has to pay nothing (but the electrical bill), the music companies get nada, and everyone's happy, right?
Well, except perhaps for the musician. Who gets just as much nothing as the music company does. And, as everyone knows, TANSTAAFL. ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch," for those who don't know their Heinlein.) Which means this musician has to get a job doing something that pays. Which means he can only make music in his spare time. And sure, there are people out there who could hold down a 40- (50-, 60-) hour-a-week job and come home with enough energy to create an amazing album...But I doubt there are many. And anyone who did manage to put out good music would be slowed to Pink Floyd's release schedule ("hey, remember us? we used to put out albums in the 70's. You weren't born yet? Oh...Well....Buy our new album anyway! Please?")
When you factor in the fact that all of the producers and sound engineers out there would also have to find "real" jobs, you start to breed an environment where you can't count on all of your favorite groups releasing new music every year...Or even on *one* of your favorite groups producing new music every year. Eventually it would come to the point where it wouldn't matter whether the music was free or not, because there wouldn't be any new music for you to buy.
So you're perfectly right in that, if I download U2's upcoming album instead of buying it, I won't be removing any *thing* from their possession. I will, however, be limiting their ability to create any music for me to enjoy in the future. Thus depriving *myself*, as well as all other U2 fans in the world. Soooo, I choose to buy the album. The day it comes out. Having already listened several (hundred) times to the pirated copy of it that I downloaded in advance of its release.
You can go ahead and reproduce anything you want. Just don't be surprised when you run out of source material to reproduce, since people couldn't afford to produce (without the "re", mind you) any more original stuff.
The problem here is that, knowing the brilliance inherant to college administrators, there would most likely be cases of telnet and ftp access being removed without any alternative being provided. And we all know how useful that network would be...
This doesn't even seem to be the point of the article, though. The "expert" mentioned doesn't sound like he's worried about someone swiping your password; he sounds like he's worried that someone might find out "well, this person accessed this website on such and such a date..." and other minutiae such as that.
Replacing telnet and ftp with more secure alternatives is a good idea for security reasons, meaning that this expert is giving good advice, but, imho, for the wrong reasons.
Your concern is that an election carried out by digital signature would be vulnerable to fraudulent voting and that the laws passed would be thrown out due to this fraud.
This is a valid concern, if the digital signatures are used for the vote itself. If, however, the signatures were used for a petition process in order to get an issue onto a paper ballot, then, assuming the issue was passed on the paper ballot, it wouldn't matter how many fake digital signatures appeared on the petition. As the prior poster pointed out, by that time it would be equivalent to a write-in vote.
Of course, I think you're also making the mistake that in-person voting is perfectly secure from scams. While identifying someone in person is much more accurate than it used to be (there have been instances of more people voting in a given district than actually live there...>100% voter turnout) it's still not completely foolproof. Digital signatures will become more accurate, but neither they nor paper ballots will ever be completely infallible.
Or we could just work around the government and do it ourselves. Project Gutenberg has a few thousand books digitized and available for the masses, all done by volunteer labor. We don't need the government to distribute literature for us, nor should we be relying on them to do so.
"It is dangerous to promote the illusion that you can get anything you want by sitting in front of a computer screen." He described this as "arrogance" and "hubris".
Adjectives can have a variety of suffixes, you know...Just to be picky.
Oh yeah? Well, I'm even more snobby than you are! I disdain such low-brow pursuits as recorded (it pains me merely to think the word) music. Ugh. I pity anyone who finds the artificial screeching of recorded media pleasurable. No, true lovers of music, like myself, have acoustically perfect theatres in our basements, and if we want to listen to Dave Matthews*, then, by god, we call up Dave and have him come to our house and perform live. When we want to hear Rimsky-Korsakov, we fly in the Kiev Symphony Orchestra and have them play for us. We have our own house bands to play for us when we merely desire background noise.
Or not. Maybe I'm just trying to point out how silly the post I'm replying to is. No one cares how much your sound system costs. Really. Trust me. Additionally, it's not your duty to provide salvation to the masses of mp3 listeners. If people prefer to have their music stored in mp3 format, that's fine. If they prefer magnetic tapes which have been recorded over a dozen times, that's fine too. If they prefer vinyl or compact disk, more power to them. But claiming personal superiority because of your choice of music media adds absolutely nothing to the conversation besides evidence of your own feelings of inadequacy. (moderators: feel free to mark this -1, flame, and the message it's in response to -1, flamebait)
If this is all you have to contribute, I suggest you go back to your collection of "perfect" cd's and leave everyone to discuss their personal preferences in peace. Thank you, and have a nice day.
*disclaimer: the author of this post does not condone listening to Dave Matthews.
Another factor that leads to the stereotype of Russians swilling vodka like water is that, in Moscow, you can't drink the water unless you boil it, and even then it tastes pretty poor. Since vodka is considerably cheaper that fruit juice or soft drinks (and is alcoholic as a bonus), it's the drink of choice in Russia when you don't want to taste foul boiled water.
(note: IANAR (I am not a Russian). This is second-hand from my Russian language teacher, who recounted having to take someone to the hospital after he drank half a cup of Moscow tap water. Yum.)
I agree. Let us all make pilgramage to the Mecca of Minnesota, to rally around our Chosen One, he who is called Jesse of Ventura. He has shown us the way to end the evil known as NPR, beginning with the purge of that hellspawn Garrison Keillor and his devil's pulpit, Prairie Home Companion. We must not allow the horrid influences of intelligent humor to infect our children! Let us destroy this e-vile! (fru-it of the de-vile...)
Please don't de stuff like that. It really doesn't help the cause. In fact, it probably actually detracts from it. I know it's been said before, but it doesn't seem to sink in.
Consider: The DVD folk are saying that DeCSS is piracy. Theft. Criminal activity. Generally Bad Shit. They want the DeCSS people to look like Bad People.
If we, claiming to support open source and free software, send nasty letters to journalists and the press, we're only going to help our image as Bad People. By harassing the newspaper, even if they are factually wrong you're helping the DVD people's case. Is that really what you want to do?
A nice letter, pointing out the fallacies in the article and with links to reputable sources with the true information, works a lot better. For one thing, they're more likely to pay attention, admit that they may have been wrong, and correct their error. I know that when some flamebag sends e-mail to me ripping me up and down for some mistake he thinks I made, I ignore him. Generally, I apply the delete key before I've even read the whole message. No one likes to be attacked. In addition, a nasty message only helps promote the image of shadiness that the DVD contingent is trying to throw on us.
As someone who has been a copy editor, I'd just like to point out that it's not them who make up headlines. Generally, it's page editors who control content (including pictures, captions, headlines, etc), while a copy editor is more of a human spellcheck. Of course, this really makes absolutely no difference to anyone.
I suggest you try the same with Russian. In the same menu, you'll find three Russian encodings (at least, on my NT box here at work, you do): ISO, KOI8-R, and Windows. Does that mean there are three completely different Russian character sets? No...It just means there are different encodings available for the one alphabet. Now, I'll admit that I also am no expert on Chinese (and, if there is one around, it would be nice if s/he would add some knowledge to this thread), but I have heard my friends who *do* know Chinese say that there are multiple distinct spoken languages, but that they all use the same written set of characters. I'm not real sure on how that works, but I'm willing to take their work for it.
basically patented ranking by counting the number of links to the given page
Yes, in about the same way that the sun is basically a big warm thing. Neither description does justice to the object under discussion.
Google does not just count the number of other pages that link to a given page, but counts the number of other *good* pages that link to a page. If a page is linked to by a few highly reputable sources, wouldn't you expect it to have better information than a page linked to by a hundred GeoCities sites? I certainly would. Google assigns pages scores based on how "good" the pages linking to them are. A "good" page is one that has a high score. So a high scoring page is one that's linked to by high scoring pages. Which, if you think about it, brings up a few questions. Notably, where do the first high scores come from that allow other high scores?
The algorithm to-be-patented does not merely count up links, but figures out this interplay of scores and links. A little more complicated than at first blush.
I read somewhere that there's evidence the "next" ice age should have started sometime in the mid-1800's, but the industrial revolution happened just in time to flood the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and keep the glaciers at bay. If so, obviously we went a little beyond status quo, but it's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read this or even if it were a reputable source. Could someone confirm or refute my partial memory of this?
Researchers built single-molecule motors that spin when powered by light or chemical energy (Sept. 11, vol. 156: p. 165).
Is this what you're talking about? It sounds like nano-tech to me, at least. Alas, they didn't link to the article, but I think I remember this being on/. when it came out, anyway (too lazy to go find it, sorry...). Aren't all of the articles that they mention in their own publication? Why wouldn't they have on-line versions of so many of them? Especially if they're among the top science stories of the year, I'd think they'd be important enough to publish on-line.
You can adapt, and learn to use resources wisely and parse information quickly - weeding out uninteresting stuff and finding nifty stuff, or you can just complain about it and propose that we have a computer do it for us.
And who said that those two were mutually exclusive? My computer is a resource, and it's also quite the speed demon when it comes to parsing information. Are you suggesting we use any resource *but* our computer to parse information? That seems kind of backwards to me.
I don't know which Jon meant, but, while I would fear a version of Clotho that would be an all-encompassing Ministry deciding what was double-plus-ungood and hiding that from all persons' eyes, I would welcome a *personal* version of "clotho", but it would have to be something that I trained. Just as you have to use your voice recognition software for a little while before it can accurately type as you spead, you would have to teach your filtering agent what's good and what's bad.
I agree with you, and most others in this forum, that having some entity out there filter through all of the information available, mark some of it as "good" and send that block of info to each and every person would be pretty worthless. But if each person had his or her own personalized information agent, *that* would be useful.
A few examples:
I'm listening to a song on the radio and like it. I ask my agent to find me more music off of the same album so that I can decide if i want to buy it. My agent queries the radio station to find the group and song name, checks All Music (or something similar) to find out what other songs are on the album, and then goes searching for mp3's of those songs. When it finds more music, it sends the songs to me so I can decide if I like it enough to have my agent search for the lowest price on the album and buy it for me. That way, I can spend more time listening to music and less time looking for it.
I'm talking to my girlfriend, and she mentions a movie preview that she saw that sounded interesting. I give the name to my agent and send it out, and it comes back in a little while with a quicktime preview and, if I think it looks interesting, my agent will have ready for me a list of when and where it will be playing, and will go buy two tickets for me once I choose a date. That way I can spend more time with my girlfriend.
I need to register for classes for my next semester at university. I tell my agent what classes I want to take and what the optimum schedule would be ("...and nothing before noon", or "...and no class on Fridays"). The agent scurries off to the university's time schedule and comes up with a few sample schedules for me involving those classes. I pick the one that I like best, and the agent registers me for those classes. That way I spend less time struggling with trying to fit a schedule together, with more time left to read Slashdot.
A physical node of your agent with voice-recognition/recording abilities would be useful for note-taking in casual conversation. It would record the conversation in real-time and save it into short-term memory, where any given chunk would be saved for (for example) 20 seconds. If you press a button on the node, it would transcribe whatever was currently in memory into text. That way, if I'm having a conversation on libertarian and anarchist writers with someone, and he mentions a book that I feel I should read, I simply press the button, and the agent writes out the last 20 seconds of conversation, including the book title and author. That way I don't have to interrupt the conversation to look for a piece of paper and ask my friend to repeat the title.
I'm on my way to the library, so I have my agent query the card catalog for the locations of a list of books. Some of these were culled from conversation transcripts (see previous item), some I heard about on NPR while driving and told me agent to take down, and some I saw mentioned on Slashdot. By the time I get to the library, I already have a list of locations in my hand, so I can go to each location, find my books, and check out quickly. Note, though, that I wouldn't *have* to only look at the books I had written down. I wouldn't even have to use the agent. I could do all of the browsing myself, and likely stumble across some treasure I hadn't had on my list. But if I'm in a hurry, I don't want to browse. I want to get my books and go. The agent doesn't force you to use it, it's merely a tool that is available for you to use.
Every once in a while, my "cool personal news flash" beep will sound. My agent has just found out (for example) that the Manic Street Preachers are going to be playing a show nearby next week. While I like MSP, they are so unknown in America that this concert isn't talked about on the radio and isn't even advertised on flyers around town. But, thanks to my never-resting agent, I know about this concert and can go to the show.
Basically, my vision of personal info-filtering is not an image of some vast singular entity out there deciding what news is "good" or "interesting" or "worthwhile", but of a small, slick, personal AI which I can ask to look for certain information so that I don't have to find it myself, and which can keep me updated on the information which I have found interesting in the past. I imagine this is closer to what Jon meant than the common interpretation, which is of singular central mind-control.
Try the Otherland series by Tad Williams. One of the characters has an intelligent agent of this type.
And a gun gives me the ability to shoot "whatever the fsck I want". Does this mean I *should*? Does the ability to make it *right*? Negative.
And, actually, there *is* "a fscking thing [I] can do about it". I can vote for congresspeople who will pass laws -- at least in America -- that will give law enforcement the power to stop you from copying. The Constitution *can* be ratified. The fourth amendment *can* be repealed. The freedom from search and seizure *can* be taken away from you. Laws *can* be passed making encryption illegal, and they can be enforced. If I want to go further, and "deal with it" myself, rather than by proxy through voting, I can continue my education in computer engineering, graduate, and join the NSA. If Echelon can't actually do everything we think it can, I *can* help it do more. As a spook, I *can* help the United States continue the apparent trend of treating the world as a playground for our military, so that, eventually, all of the world will have either been annexed or have become a "satellite nation", so that the aforementioned violations of privacy reach you whereever you are, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
However, I hope I don't have to. I feel that everything I just named off as thing I *can* do about it are wrong. But, as you seem to think, if it *can* be done, it obviously is not only acceptable, but RIGHT. And all of those things I just said *can* be done. Which means that you must think they're right. Which means that you won't complain when they haul you off to Room 101. And which means that you will love Big Brother.
Reactions from a 20-year-old geek who fits, well, almost all of what you described yourself as (s/guitar/bass guitar/ and s/creation/evolution):
I. The fact that you can use Roman numerals correctly is a credit to your home-grown math skills. I know plenty of 14-year-olds who couldn't write 1-100 in Roman numerals, no matter how much time you gave. (heck, most adults I've met are the same way...)
II. Congratulations on your schooling. I wish all children were so fortunate.
III. My greatest lament about home schooling is that much of it is religiously funded. All of the home schooled children I have met have had grants to their families from religious organizations for purchase of textbooks and other materials. (one girl, when she was a HS freshman, showed me her biology text, which had an entire chapter on the evils of evolutionism.) While I don't begrudge you (or anyone) the right to believe what you want (even though I disagree with you on the creation thing), I wish it were possible for all persons, regardless of religious affiliation, to get equal financial assistance with home schooling. Someone in this thread I believe suggested vouchers working for home schooling. I believe that is an excellent idea, as long as, as they suggested, the vouchers be dependant on the child's passing equivelency testS. Plural. Every few years, to make sure the kid is still ahead of his "peers". Don't wait until graduation to see if the kid is being screwed over for the cash. And make sure the parent has a HS degree (for teaching an elementary/middle school age kid) or a college degree (for teaching HS age kid). Sure, it doesn't ensure that the parent is capable of teaching, but you have to have *some* measure.
IV. I can think freely, out of the box It appears that, while being independant of government brainwashing, you may not be quite as free from corporate brainwashing.;)
V. Sleeping 4 am to 10 am? I'm jealous. 6 hours of sleep a night is enough for maintainance, but I need at least 8 or 9 to feel good. (were I Christian, I'd be doomed for my envy of someone I know who requires only 3-4 hours of sleep every 48 hours...think of how much more coding you could do that way...)
VI. You mention being free to focus on what you like. Out of curiousity, what *do* you like? And how far have you gone with it? Chemistry? Physics? Calculus? If you have so much free time, and already program in four languages and seem to enjoy it, spend some of that free time looking into this stuff. You'll probably enjoy it. (though I don't know what your parents' education is like; will they be able to keep up with you when you're working on differential equations at 17?) Philosophy? Economics? Your sig file advocates Libertarianism; how much have you read on it? (not saying anything negative; just wondering how thorough your understanding is) VII. Along similar lines, you claim an ability to think freely and believe what you think is right. You also appear to hold Christian beliefs. How much have you studied other religions, or the history/background of your own? (again, I'm not flaming or even challenging. I'm merely curious as to how much inquiry went into the decision of Christianity as a personal belief system.) Thanks for sharing; I'm someone who got around many of the limitations of the US education system (with more than a little help from my parents) and I'm always interested in hearing from others who have successfully worked around the system.
Please note that no action on your part is necessary to take advantage of the updated Hotmail.
Wow, really? Yesterday we could "take advantage of" Hotmail with a very simple action. Now it requires no action whatsoever? I'm impressed; these Microsoft guys make themselves easier to take advantage of every day.
I think that Red Hat should probably pursue *all* of these acquisitions. This would allow them to get rid of all of their cash on hand, and allow them to lose money continuously from this point forward. After all, they can't possibly follow the model of Amazon.com and other such successful internet businesses if they're actually making money. I mean, who wants to buy stock in a company that actually makes money?
I know the Unabomber was a murder and never should have done what he did, but did anyone read his dissertation on technology and society?
My "Intro to Engineering" class read a segment of it in discussion sections. The purpose was to examine argumentative fallacies (it's an english class disguised as an engineering class, or vice versa), but a lot of people chose to look at the content of the excerpt...What he was saying rather than how he was saying it. It turned out that over half of my class agreed with what he was saying about the evils of technology in modern life. And this was a class of engineering students.
The truly scary thing is that they were trying to use exactly the same arguments that the Unabomber used in the excerpt which we were told, "today we're going to examine common fallacies in argumentative reasoning" before we were handed it. These people didn't seem to realize that a certain argument made just as little sense when they said it as when he said it.
I beg your pardon? This sounds like an incitement to holy war...And a fairly poorly written one at that.
It would be far too valuable under a BSD...
Huh? How can something be *too* valuable? That's silly; the more value we can pump into things like this, the better. (Assuming they don't have value in and of themselves, which is a rather faulty assumption.) Plus, saying that it would be "too valuable" seems to undermine your statement that it shouldn't be GPL. If it shouldn't be GPL and is too valuable for BSD, then what *should* it be? You seem to agree with the idea that it should be free [speech], but only quibbling over the liscense. Which would you pick?
under the GPL the code becomes useless
Absolutely baseless FUD. It may be true (though I feel very strongly that it's not), but you need to back your statement up in order to give it any merit whatsoever. If you're going to troll for license fanatics, at least do it convincingly.
I would think it would be good for project morale to say, "Look how good we're doing! We can process the data blocks faster than we receive them!" Seems to me that the purpose of this project is to get something done, to make some progress...Not to keep everybody busy for as long as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
At the moment I'm wondering how Ridley Scott gets the authority to make "official" statements on a movie which claims to be "based on" the book by PK Dick. In the book, Deckard is not a replicant. Granted, "based on" != "is", but that is an incredibly major change to be making.
Of course, as anyone who has actually read the book knows, there's really not much similar between the "Do Androids Dream..." and "Blade Runner". Perhaps "Inspired by" would have been a better choice of labels.
Of course, the main theme was preserved fairly well, even if plot, atmosphere, characters were mangled beyond recognition. Both book and movie share the idea that there is no difference between human and replicant, in a moral sense. (as much as I hate the word "moral" and all of its loaded meanings, there's really no other word to use) The fact that replicants were "created" in a lab rather than a uterus doesn't make them any less capable of feeling pain, love, fear, joy...Both works show this, even if they have almost no other relationship to each other.
Yes, music is a form of information, which can be replicated at almost no cost. The consumer gets his music and has to pay nothing (but the electrical bill), the music companies get nada, and everyone's happy, right?
Well, except perhaps for the musician. Who gets just as much nothing as the music company does. And, as everyone knows, TANSTAAFL. ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch," for those who don't know their Heinlein.) Which means this musician has to get a job doing something that pays. Which means he can only make music in his spare time. And sure, there are people out there who could hold down a 40- (50-, 60-) hour-a-week job and come home with enough energy to create an amazing album...But I doubt there are many. And anyone who did manage to put out good music would be slowed to Pink Floyd's release schedule ("hey, remember us? we used to put out albums in the 70's. You weren't born yet? Oh...Well....Buy our new album anyway! Please?")
When you factor in the fact that all of the producers and sound engineers out there would also have to find "real" jobs, you start to breed an environment where you can't count on all of your favorite groups releasing new music every year...Or even on *one* of your favorite groups producing new music every year. Eventually it would come to the point where it wouldn't matter whether the music was free or not, because there wouldn't be any new music for you to buy.
So you're perfectly right in that, if I download U2's upcoming album instead of buying it, I won't be removing any *thing* from their possession. I will, however, be limiting their ability to create any music for me to enjoy in the future. Thus depriving *myself*, as well as all other U2 fans in the world. Soooo, I choose to buy the album. The day it comes out. Having already listened several (hundred) times to the pirated copy of it that I downloaded in advance of its release.
You can go ahead and reproduce anything you want. Just don't be surprised when you run out of source material to reproduce, since people couldn't afford to produce (without the "re", mind you) any more original stuff.
Thank you, and have a nice day...
The problem here is that, knowing the brilliance inherant to college administrators, there would most likely be cases of telnet and ftp access being removed without any alternative being provided. And we all know how useful that network would be...
This doesn't even seem to be the point of the article, though. The "expert" mentioned doesn't sound like he's worried about someone swiping your password; he sounds like he's worried that someone might find out "well, this person accessed this website on such and such a date..." and other minutiae such as that.
Replacing telnet and ftp with more secure alternatives is a good idea for security reasons, meaning that this expert is giving good advice, but, imho, for the wrong reasons.
Your concern is that an election carried out by digital signature would be vulnerable to fraudulent voting and that the laws passed would be thrown out due to this fraud.
This is a valid concern, if the digital signatures are used for the vote itself. If, however, the signatures were used for a petition process in order to get an issue onto a paper ballot, then, assuming the issue was passed on the paper ballot, it wouldn't matter how many fake digital signatures appeared on the petition. As the prior poster pointed out, by that time it would be equivalent to a write-in vote.
Of course, I think you're also making the mistake that in-person voting is perfectly secure from scams. While identifying someone in person is much more accurate than it used to be (there have been instances of more people voting in a given district than actually live there...>100% voter turnout) it's still not completely foolproof. Digital signatures will become more accurate, but neither they nor paper ballots will ever be completely infallible.
Or we could just work around the government and do it ourselves. Project Gutenberg has a few thousand books digitized and available for the masses, all done by volunteer labor. We don't need the government to distribute literature for us, nor should we be relying on them to do so.
Adjectives can have a variety of suffixes, you know...Just to be picky.
Oh yeah? Well, I'm even more snobby than you are! I disdain such low-brow pursuits as recorded (it pains me merely to think the word) music. Ugh. I pity anyone who finds the artificial screeching of recorded media pleasurable. No, true lovers of music, like myself, have acoustically perfect theatres in our basements, and if we want to listen to Dave Matthews*, then, by god, we call up Dave and have him come to our house and perform live. When we want to hear Rimsky-Korsakov, we fly in the Kiev Symphony Orchestra and have them play for us. We have our own house bands to play for us when we merely desire background noise.
Or not. Maybe I'm just trying to point out how silly the post I'm replying to is. No one cares how much your sound system costs. Really. Trust me. Additionally, it's not your duty to provide salvation to the masses of mp3 listeners. If people prefer to have their music stored in mp3 format, that's fine. If they prefer magnetic tapes which have been recorded over a dozen times, that's fine too. If they prefer vinyl or compact disk, more power to them. But claiming personal superiority because of your choice of music media adds absolutely nothing to the conversation besides evidence of your own feelings of inadequacy. (moderators: feel free to mark this -1, flame, and the message it's in response to -1, flamebait)
If this is all you have to contribute, I suggest you go back to your collection of "perfect" cd's and leave everyone to discuss their personal preferences in peace. Thank you, and have a nice day.
*disclaimer: the author of this post does not condone listening to Dave Matthews.
Another factor that leads to the stereotype of Russians swilling vodka like water is that, in Moscow, you can't drink the water unless you boil it, and even then it tastes pretty poor. Since vodka is considerably cheaper that fruit juice or soft drinks (and is alcoholic as a bonus), it's the drink of choice in Russia when you don't want to taste foul boiled water.
(note: IANAR (I am not a Russian). This is second-hand from my Russian language teacher, who recounted having to take someone to the hospital after he drank half a cup of Moscow tap water. Yum.)
I agree. Let us all make pilgramage to the Mecca of Minnesota, to rally around our Chosen One, he who is called Jesse of Ventura. He has shown us the way to end the evil known as NPR, beginning with the purge of that hellspawn Garrison Keillor and his devil's pulpit, Prairie Home Companion. We must not allow the horrid influences of intelligent humor to infect our children! Let us destroy this e-vile! (fru-it of the de-vile...)
Everyone knows I'm joking, right?
Please don't de stuff like that. It really doesn't help the cause. In fact, it probably actually detracts from it. I know it's been said before, but it doesn't seem to sink in.
Consider: The DVD folk are saying that DeCSS is piracy. Theft. Criminal activity. Generally Bad Shit. They want the DeCSS people to look like Bad People.
If we, claiming to support open source and free software, send nasty letters to journalists and the press, we're only going to help our image as Bad People. By harassing the newspaper, even if they are factually wrong you're helping the DVD people's case. Is that really what you want to do?
A nice letter, pointing out the fallacies in the article and with links to reputable sources with the true information, works a lot better. For one thing, they're more likely to pay attention, admit that they may have been wrong, and correct their error. I know that when some flamebag sends e-mail to me ripping me up and down for some mistake he thinks I made, I ignore him. Generally, I apply the delete key before I've even read the whole message. No one likes to be attacked. In addition, a nasty message only helps promote the image of shadiness that the DVD contingent is trying to throw on us.
As someone who has been a copy editor, I'd just like to point out that it's not them who make up headlines. Generally, it's page editors who control content (including pictures, captions, headlines, etc), while a copy editor is more of a human spellcheck. Of course, this really makes absolutely no difference to anyone.
I suggest you try the same with Russian. In the same menu, you'll find three Russian encodings (at least, on my NT box here at work, you do): ISO, KOI8-R, and Windows. Does that mean there are three completely different Russian character sets? No...It just means there are different encodings available for the one alphabet. Now, I'll admit that I also am no expert on Chinese (and, if there is one around, it would be nice if s/he would add some knowledge to this thread), but I have heard my friends who *do* know Chinese say that there are multiple distinct spoken languages, but that they all use the same written set of characters. I'm not real sure on how that works, but I'm willing to take their work for it.
Yes, in about the same way that the sun is basically a big warm thing. Neither description does justice to the object under discussion.
Google does not just count the number of other pages that link to a given page, but counts the number of other *good* pages that link to a page. If a page is linked to by a few highly reputable sources, wouldn't you expect it to have better information than a page linked to by a hundred GeoCities sites? I certainly would. Google assigns pages scores based on how "good" the pages linking to them are. A "good" page is one that has a high score. So a high scoring page is one that's linked to by high scoring pages. Which, if you think about it, brings up a few questions. Notably, where do the first high scores come from that allow other high scores?
The algorithm to-be-patented does not merely count up links, but figures out this interplay of scores and links. A little more complicated than at first blush.
If you dig a little past the article linked to, you can find the Science News folks giving way to a little bit of levity...
Check out this interview with the 2-million-year-old man from their "Top Stories of the Millennium", for example.
slightly off-topic, but...
I read somewhere that there's evidence the "next" ice age should have started sometime in the mid-1800's, but the industrial revolution happened just in time to flood the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and keep the glaciers at bay. If so, obviously we went a little beyond status quo, but it's an interesting idea. Unfortunately, I don't remember where I read this or even if it were a reputable source. Could someone confirm or refute my partial memory of this?
They *did* mention the following item:
Researchers built single-molecule motors that spin when powered by light or chemical energy (Sept. 11, vol. 156: p. 165).
Is this what you're talking about? It sounds like nano-tech to me, at least. Alas, they didn't link to the article, but I think I remember this being on /. when it came out, anyway (too lazy to go find it, sorry...). Aren't all of the articles that they mention in their own publication? Why wouldn't they have on-line versions of so many of them? Especially if they're among the top science stories of the year, I'd think they'd be important enough to publish on-line.
And who said that those two were mutually exclusive? My computer is a resource, and it's also quite the speed demon when it comes to parsing information. Are you suggesting we use any resource *but* our computer to parse information? That seems kind of backwards to me.
I don't know which Jon meant, but, while I would fear a version of Clotho that would be an all-encompassing Ministry deciding what was double-plus-ungood and hiding that from all persons' eyes, I would welcome a *personal* version of "clotho", but it would have to be something that I trained. Just as you have to use your voice recognition software for a little while before it can accurately type as you spead, you would have to teach your filtering agent what's good and what's bad.
I agree with you, and most others in this forum, that having some entity out there filter through all of the information available, mark some of it as "good" and send that block of info to each and every person would be pretty worthless. But if each person had his or her own personalized information agent, *that* would be useful.
Basically, my vision of personal info-filtering is not an image of some vast singular entity out there deciding what news is "good" or "interesting" or "worthwhile", but of a small, slick, personal AI which I can ask to look for certain information so that I don't have to find it myself, and which can keep me updated on the information which I have found interesting in the past. I imagine this is closer to what Jon meant than the common interpretation, which is of singular central mind-control.
Try the Otherland series by Tad Williams. One of the characters has an intelligent agent of this type.
And a gun gives me the ability to shoot "whatever the fsck I want". Does this mean I *should*? Does the ability to make it *right*? Negative.
And, actually, there *is* "a fscking thing [I] can do about it". I can vote for congresspeople who will pass laws -- at least in America -- that will give law enforcement the power to stop you from copying. The Constitution *can* be ratified. The fourth amendment *can* be repealed. The freedom from search and seizure *can* be taken away from you. Laws *can* be passed making encryption illegal, and they can be enforced. If I want to go further, and "deal with it" myself, rather than by proxy through voting, I can continue my education in computer engineering, graduate, and join the NSA. If Echelon can't actually do everything we think it can, I *can* help it do more. As a spook, I *can* help the United States continue the apparent trend of treating the world as a playground for our military, so that, eventually, all of the world will have either been annexed or have become a "satellite nation", so that the aforementioned violations of privacy reach you whereever you are, Mr. Anonymous Coward.
However, I hope I don't have to. I feel that everything I just named off as thing I *can* do about it are wrong. But, as you seem to think, if it *can* be done, it obviously is not only acceptable, but RIGHT. And all of those things I just said *can* be done. Which means that you must think they're right. Which means that you won't complain when they haul you off to Room 101. And which means that you will love Big Brother.
Grow up.
I. The fact that you can use Roman numerals correctly is a credit to your home-grown math skills. I know plenty of 14-year-olds who couldn't write 1-100 in Roman numerals, no matter how much time you gave. (heck, most adults I've met are the same way...)
II. Congratulations on your schooling. I wish all children were so fortunate.
III. My greatest lament about home schooling is that much of it is religiously funded. All of the home schooled children I have met have had grants to their families from religious organizations for purchase of textbooks and other materials. (one girl, when she was a HS freshman, showed me her biology text, which had an entire chapter on the evils of evolutionism.) While I don't begrudge you (or anyone) the right to believe what you want (even though I disagree with you on the creation thing), I wish it were possible for all persons, regardless of religious affiliation, to get equal financial assistance with home schooling. Someone in this thread I believe suggested vouchers working for home schooling. I believe that is an excellent idea, as long as, as they suggested, the vouchers be dependant on the child's passing equivelency testS. Plural. Every few years, to make sure the kid is still ahead of his "peers". Don't wait until graduation to see if the kid is being screwed over for the cash. And make sure the parent has a HS degree (for teaching an elementary/middle school age kid) or a college degree (for teaching HS age kid). Sure, it doesn't ensure that the parent is capable of teaching, but you have to have *some* measure.
IV. I can think freely, out of the box It appears that, while being independant of government brainwashing, you may not be quite as free from corporate brainwashing. ;)
V. Sleeping 4 am to 10 am? I'm jealous. 6 hours of sleep a night is enough for maintainance, but I need at least 8 or 9 to feel good. (were I Christian, I'd be doomed for my envy of someone I know who requires only 3-4 hours of sleep every 48 hours...think of how much more coding you could do that way...)
VI. You mention being free to focus on what you like. Out of curiousity, what *do* you like? And how far have you gone with it? Chemistry? Physics? Calculus? If you have so much free time, and already program in four languages and seem to enjoy it, spend some of that free time looking into this stuff. You'll probably enjoy it. (though I don't know what your parents' education is like; will they be able to keep up with you when you're working on differential equations at 17?) Philosophy? Economics? Your sig file advocates Libertarianism; how much have you read on it? (not saying anything negative; just wondering how thorough your understanding is) VII. Along similar lines, you claim an ability to think freely and believe what you think is right. You also appear to hold Christian beliefs. How much have you studied other religions, or the history/background of your own? (again, I'm not flaming or even challenging. I'm merely curious as to how much inquiry went into the decision of Christianity as a personal belief system.) Thanks for sharing; I'm someone who got around many of the limitations of the US education system (with more than a little help from my parents) and I'm always interested in hearing from others who have successfully worked around the system.
Wow, really? Yesterday we could "take advantage of" Hotmail with a very simple action. Now it requires no action whatsoever? I'm impressed; these Microsoft guys make themselves easier to take advantage of every day.
I think that Red Hat should probably pursue *all* of these acquisitions. This would allow them to get rid of all of their cash on hand, and allow them to lose money continuously from this point forward. After all, they can't possibly follow the model of Amazon.com and other such successful internet businesses if they're actually making money. I mean, who wants to buy stock in a company that actually makes money?
(remove tongue from cheek...)
My "Intro to Engineering" class read a segment of it in discussion sections. The purpose was to examine argumentative fallacies (it's an english class disguised as an engineering class, or vice versa), but a lot of people chose to look at the content of the excerpt...What he was saying rather than how he was saying it. It turned out that over half of my class agreed with what he was saying about the evils of technology in modern life. And this was a class of engineering students.
The truly scary thing is that they were trying to use exactly the same arguments that the Unabomber used in the excerpt which we were told, "today we're going to examine common fallacies in argumentative reasoning" before we were handed it. These people didn't seem to realize that a certain argument made just as little sense when they said it as when he said it.
It would be far too valuable under a BSD...
Huh? How can something be *too* valuable? That's silly; the more value we can pump into things like this, the better. (Assuming they don't have value in and of themselves, which is a rather faulty assumption.) Plus, saying that it would be "too valuable" seems to undermine your statement that it shouldn't be GPL. If it shouldn't be GPL and is too valuable for BSD, then what *should* it be? You seem to agree with the idea that it should be free [speech], but only quibbling over the liscense. Which would you pick?
under the GPL the code becomes useless
Absolutely baseless FUD. It may be true (though I feel very strongly that it's not), but you need to back your statement up in order to give it any merit whatsoever. If you're going to troll for license fanatics, at least do it convincingly.
I would think it would be good for project morale to say, "Look how good we're doing! We can process the data blocks faster than we receive them!" Seems to me that the purpose of this project is to get something done, to make some progress...Not to keep everybody busy for as long as possible.