I think your title is a little harsh, but your point is otherwise disturbingly accurate. I'm an (US) American but have glanced at a map of North America once or twice in my day. I find it interesting that our president (no, I didn't vote for him) keeps talking about the UK as "our most important friend" when in fact the countries that meet that description are to our north and south. Nothing against the UK, but if Canada had the SAS or Mexico had a few aircraft carriers floating off the coast of Iraq, maybe the current administration's short attention span would be piqued.
Of course, one of the sad proofs of your post is the location of this whole story - buried under the YRO topic and not on/.'s font page.
CL-ITIT is not related to the California Institue of Technology - or at least not directly. Per their vision statement, they were created in 2000 at UC San Diego and UC Irvine to "help ensure that California maintain(s) its leadership in the rapidly changing telecommunications and information technology marketplace."
Also, their statement on the Chiaro Networks "OptIPuter" is here. Caltech is an entirely different animal.
A friend of mine went to see a local (La Mirada, CA) production of Jesus Christ Superstar this weekend. He loved it but commented that the actor who played Judas upstaged the actor who played Jesus. It got me wondering...
If someone offered you a choice of the two roles in a new, "generic" portrayal of Christ's life (not specifically Superstar) and everything else were equal (same time on screen, same pay, etc), which would you take? Do think your decision differs from what you think most of your acting peers would have chosen and if so why?
Do it. Especially if you're kids have the vaguest interest in it. Fantastic geek bonding experience. Even if they don't, the books are still really fun stuff (not as good as Niven or Twain, but still great). They're quick reads, except that by book four Rowling begins suffering from Steven-King-Epic-Tome-ititus. I hope her editor grows a set of balls and starts editing again in book five.
Harry Potter is supposed to be this great and powerful wizard, but his friends at Hogwarts always seem to be saving his ass?
In the first book, Rowling was just using it as a crutch to make Harry a hero as quickly as possible, just as she made the "150 points for the seeker" rule in quidditch. It's a cheap trick, but no harm done as it got the setting going quickly so she could jump immediately into the meat of the tale. Thankfully, she turns it into the fame vs. reality theme in later books that other posters talk about (in the book the kid with the camera [Collin] has a much bigger role and makes Harry's life abject Hell with all the hero worship).
Anyway, don't rap her for it. I'd bet anything she's regretting the heck out of the "150 points" thing and some of the other hero trappings now that she's living with it over several books. No surprise of course - it's doubtful she was expecting even the first book to get published. It's like people who condemn Tolkien as racist for his protrayal of Orcs when in fact he was just looking for expendable, "red shirt" style bad guys. Short term decisions often don't stand up to long term scrutiny. Thankfully, in entertainment that can be forgiven.
An interesting idea, but the article seems to skim over just how much power would be needed to manipulate physical objects over and great distace (even in a perfect vacuum). I don't know enough about the physical processes involved, but from what I know about solar sails (several meters of reflective surface to move a gram or two), it'd likely take a phenomenal amount of energy to do this. (Someone please correct me if my numbers are wrong and/or there is a different mechanism is being suggested here, please...)
The only way I can imagine gathering this much energy would be with a massive solar array, one of incredibly large porportions...
...so massive that it would be best built using directed radio energy.
PS - I leave issues of inertia of the transmitting station and also the subtantial risks of a misfire/hijack of one of these transmitters into an inhabited settlement as exercises for the astute reader...
"My whole life had been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God's presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that lets you see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first compost heap"
- Bette Midler, on being named "Compost Queen" in Los Angeles, c. 1990s
C'mon, cut Swanwick a little slack. Can he help it if Tolkein plagurized him before the fact?:)
My question is this - did you like his stuff? While a few of the stories are big misses, most of the pieces are pretty fun. My personal favorite is Arsenic.
I like that there's an inherent understanding that there's an ongoing cost above and beyond just sticking some prof's powerpoint slides on a server. I guess that's another sign of a top notch institution like MIT - a commitment to the administrative and finacial costs of something like this to back up the investment in factulty and research.
Makes me that much more wistful that I didn't keep my grades up in high school to make it into the front door. SIGH I guess I should just blame Gary Gygax.
Thanks. I knew he was high on the acknowledgements/thank yous/whatever, but I don't have my copies of red/green/blue at work. I was kinda winging it from memory.
Truth is, I was kinda scared when I saw the message about your reply at my message center ("But I know Robinson must've acknowledged him somewhere!"). Human nature to assume the worst, I guess.:)
Odd, that I never thought to call those books "beautiful," and yet they absolutely are. You hit the nail right on the head. It's a shame that there aren't more works that deserve that label.
Sheffield is just the latest of a large number of SF authors pass on in the past two years. It just a consequence of demographics, but still a little sad.
In any case, Locus Magazine has acknowledged the fact and dedicated a link to it. If you have a favorite who has passed away recently, you might want to look there and then click on their obituaries. You just might discover something you didn't know about your favorite author.
I admit it: Sheffield is one of those authors that I never got around to reading (God knows there's so many). Well, now he's gone and I'm gonna make a point to pick up at least one of his books and give him a try. A quick search got me a list of his works. As with most prolific authors, though, it's difficult for me to figure out where to start.
So, here's my question: Does anyone who has read him have a suggestion on which book would be a good one as a first read? Not necesarrily his best (as that might include his series) but a single novel or collection that would give me a feel for his work and let me know if I would like to dig further into his collected works.
Thanks
City on Mars named after him - Kinda cool
on
RIP: Charles Sheffield
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
When I read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series (Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars) I noticed that one of the main cities was named Sheffield. After I saw him mentioned in Robinson's acknowledgements, I always figured that the city was named for him, but was never sure (obviously, Bradbury and other locations were named that way). I never got around to looking into it, but a quick check I ran today shows that is the case.
Kind of a neat way to honor an author you admire, doncha think?
...it's really racist of you to mention that dig about the Pacific Rim demanding gambling.
(*SIGH*)
No racism intended - it's just a fact that Pacific Rim airlines have been primary movers in in flight gaming. Gambling is more accepted there than in the West, with less stigma attached. No Asian businessman expects to get dirty looks from another passenger if he drops a bundle of his own money on blackjack, but I bet you (yes, lame pun intended) that you'd see a lot of that on any US, Canadian, or European carrier (exception: I know Swissair has at least tried gaming. 'Don't know if it's still going strong). And when you think of it, they've got a point - what business is it of anyone how someone looses their cash?
Also, the U.S. flight attendants' unions fight airborne gaming tooth and nail. As my cousin, an attendant for Delta told me "So now they'll expect us to deal with a guy who's both drunk *and* has lost $500?!"
Again, this is just a simple observation of cultural differences. The fact is that most of our Asian customers (the arilines) don't understand why we regulate gaimng so strongly in the U.S. Once we pitch the technical (and regulatory) challnanges, though, they usually decide to request different features in lieu of gaming.
I work for a major supplier of in flight entertainment systems and we are always getting pressure from customers (especially on the Pacific Rim) to implement in flight gaming (i.e. electronic poker or slots). While some of our competitors have dipped a toe into this, we have pretty much steered clear to date.
The fact is that implementing a gaming system is a nightmare, be it on the ground or in the air. IMHO, quite a bit more difficult than point of sale or banking systems. In addition to being secure, it's gotta be completely fail safe (so if a passenger's terminal goes down seconds after a jackpot he won't loose his winnings and take it out on the cabin crew). Also, it's going to be transaction heavy - hundreds of smaller, individual bets over a gambling session as opposed to, say, a higher end credit card transaction every minute at a department store cash register. If you add in the fact that gambling is a potentially addictive activity that piques the interest of organized crime, you have a recipe for any disaffected insider to slip in hacks and back doors.
On the whole, I'm not surprised that someone corrupted a gambling system. I'm just surprised that this doesn't make the newspaper more often.
OT, but about Superman's sex life...
on
Superhero Smackdown
·
· Score: 4, Funny
Maybe Vicki Vale and Lois Lane could compare notes on this...
Now, before I get modded OT, let me say I know this discussion is about the two guys in tights mixing it up. Nevertheless, I'm amazed there's a/. topic about our boy from Krypton where no one has posted a link to Larry Niven's classic essay on Superman's sex life, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex. You can find it on varius places on the web, but this is one of the better formatted ones. You will at least snicker, perhaps even LOL.
Er, then again, maybe someone did post the link but they got modded down below all threshold. Oh, well, it's only Karma.
Bill Gates was faced with this same dillema when he first set up his foundation. He went to conferences, heard pitches for thriod world EMAIL, web access, broadband, etc. Finally, he realized the same thing you have - that there was little humanitarian benefit to pushing high tech solutions where they didn't fit naturally. Instead, he got solidly behind vaccine development.
Say what you will about Bill, but he knows how to leverage his money to the task at hand.
PS - And, please, no flames on "he only donates a tiny fraction of his money, so he's still evil incarnate..." I was just using the guy as an example.
Great point! DMA"s actions smack of a straw man, don't they?
"Well, you might not like us very much, but we're still better than those cowboys running around out there, spamming without the DMA Golden Seal of Approval(tm). What was that? Why we can't effectively hunt down those cowboys? Well, if you consumers were to just buy more directly marketed products so our members can contribute more to our enforcement budget..."
The obvious flaw in this scheme is the presumption that the Direct Marketing Association speaks for all spammers. The ease with which one can set up a spamming operation, the exact thing that makes spam so attractive, works against this. After all, if some sleezeball can set up an operation on a few junk servers in his basement, why would he bother joining a "professional" organization and adhere to a set of "ethics" in the first place? (And, yes, I use both terms very loosely in talking about "legitimate" direct marketers).
Additionally, since a vast amount of spam is fraudulent (or so my Nigerean Finance Ministry contacts tell me), assuming ethical standards for any of these people is absurd.
Let's face it - spamming is no more a profession than being a heroin dealer. To expect professional standards out of them is equally fruitless.
when said party usually does not implement
their `idea' but really waits for someone else to do the hard work just so that they can sue them later?
O.k. First, a disclaimer. I work as a software engineer in civil aviation and have worked on military areospace products previously. I have also had peripheral exposure to patents back in my academic days. Therefore, I may not be coming from the same background as you might. I also have not personally been granted a patent even though many of my coworkers have. With that said, though...
I have never seen a patent that was not implemented in an actual, shipped product. Usually, the patents are developed by engineers facing a specific problem who come up with a unique solution. If the solution is recognized as being novel and extendable to a general case, the patent process is kicked into high gear. By the time the engineer gets his pretty bass patent plate for his cube wall, the original solution is already embedded in a product rolling off the assembly line.
While I understand that there have been abuses of the patent process in the past (and, yes, especially in the software arena), the system works quite well, thank you. As to "stiffling innovation," I think you have to look at the big picture.
Patents allow for at least some protection against reverse engineering, which the trade secrets do not. Any time you ship a physical product, be it a be it an executable binary, a mechanical gizmo, or a new pharmacutical (sic), reverse engineering jeapordizes not just the final solution you came up with but (more importantly) all the R&D you placed into the product in the first place. For example, it is not unusual for thousands of new drugs to be researched for each one that makes it to the patent office, to say nothing of those that make it to clinical trials. If patents did not exist to protect against reverse engineering, then no one would put any money into R&D beyond specific, immediate applications - and we'd all be much worse for it.
Trade secrets can protect specific implementations. But it is patents that protect broader ideas as well as the up front R&D required to derive them in the first place. Expiration dates on patents force innovation to continue and prevent companies from sitting on their patents for too long. If you have complaints against the current state of the US or European patent offices, go ahead and gripe. But to condemn the entire concept of the patent is short sighted and foolish.
O.K. First, I know that this completely goes against the strengths of learning Latin that the article cites - better reasoning skills, stronger grasp of many modern languages, etc. Nevertheless, here goes...
Every now and then (mostly in writing science fiction), I need a term translated into Latin. Google and Babblefish, offer many languages, but no Latin. Searching elsewhere, I have found many online Latin dictionaries, but since a lot of Latin's difficulty is in the formation of words for tense, possesives,etc. (see the much cited Life of Brian sketch) this is worthless to me.
So, does anyone know of any online Latin translating engines akin to Babblefish or Google? Any information would be appreciated.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, one of the sad proofs of your post is the location of this whole story - buried under the YRO topic and not on /.'s font page.
Forget your piddly 100K of Orcs. I can't wait to see the CGI scene showing that horde charging the theatres!!
Here's slashdot's article on the academic paper (which is here).
Also, their statement on the Chiaro Networks "OptIPuter" is here. Caltech is an entirely different animal.
If someone offered you a choice of the two roles in a new, "generic" portrayal of Christ's life (not specifically Superstar) and everything else were equal (same time on screen, same pay, etc), which would you take? Do think your decision differs from what you think most of your acting peers would have chosen and if so why?
Do it. Especially if you're kids have the vaguest interest in it. Fantastic geek bonding experience. Even if they don't, the books are still really fun stuff (not as good as Niven or Twain, but still great). They're quick reads, except that by book four Rowling begins suffering from Steven-King-Epic-Tome-ititus. I hope her editor grows a set of balls and starts editing again in book five.
Harry Potter is supposed to be this great and powerful wizard, but his friends at Hogwarts always seem to be saving his ass?
In the first book, Rowling was just using it as a crutch to make Harry a hero as quickly as possible, just as she made the "150 points for the seeker" rule in quidditch. It's a cheap trick, but no harm done as it got the setting going quickly so she could jump immediately into the meat of the tale. Thankfully, she turns it into the fame vs. reality theme in later books that other posters talk about (in the book the kid with the camera [Collin] has a much bigger role and makes Harry's life abject Hell with all the hero worship).
Anyway, don't rap her for it. I'd bet anything she's regretting the heck out of the "150 points" thing and some of the other hero trappings now that she's living with it over several books. No surprise of course - it's doubtful she was expecting even the first book to get published. It's like people who condemn Tolkien as racist for his protrayal of Orcs when in fact he was just looking for expendable, "red shirt" style bad guys. Short term decisions often don't stand up to long term scrutiny. Thankfully, in entertainment that can be forgiven.
The only way I can imagine gathering this much energy would be with a massive solar array, one of incredibly large porportions...
...so massive that it would be best built using directed radio energy.
PS - I leave issues of inertia of the transmitting station and also the subtantial risks of a misfire/hijack of one of these transmitters into an inhabited settlement as exercises for the astute reader...
- Bette Midler, on being named "Compost Queen" in Los Angeles, c. 1990s
The Cold War never happened - the Soviet Union never existed.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to take my tinfoil hat to the dry cleaners...
My question is this - did you like his stuff? While a few of the stories are big misses, most of the pieces are pretty fun. My personal favorite is Arsenic.
I like that there's an inherent understanding that there's an ongoing cost above and beyond just sticking some prof's powerpoint slides on a server. I guess that's another sign of a top notch institution like MIT - a commitment to the administrative and finacial costs of something like this to back up the investment in factulty and research.
Makes me that much more wistful that I didn't keep my grades up in high school to make it into the front door. SIGH I guess I should just blame Gary Gygax.
Also, I have a personal favorite for microfiction online, now that Michael Swanwick is writing a story for every element in the periodic table.
Truth is, I was kinda scared when I saw the message about your reply at my message center ("But I know Robinson must've acknowledged him somewhere!"). Human nature to assume the worst, I guess. :)
Odd, that I never thought to call those books "beautiful," and yet they absolutely are. You hit the nail right on the head. It's a shame that there aren't more works that deserve that label.
In any case, Locus Magazine has acknowledged the fact and dedicated a link to it. If you have a favorite who has passed away recently, you might want to look there and then click on their obituaries. You just might discover something you didn't know about your favorite author.
So, here's my question: Does anyone who has read him have a suggestion on which book would be a good one as a first read? Not necesarrily his best (as that might include his series) but a single novel or collection that would give me a feel for his work and let me know if I would like to dig further into his collected works.
Thanks
Kind of a neat way to honor an author you admire, doncha think?
(*SIGH*)
No racism intended - it's just a fact that Pacific Rim airlines have been primary movers in in flight gaming. Gambling is more accepted there than in the West, with less stigma attached. No Asian businessman expects to get dirty looks from another passenger if he drops a bundle of his own money on blackjack, but I bet you (yes, lame pun intended) that you'd see a lot of that on any US, Canadian, or European carrier (exception: I know Swissair has at least tried gaming. 'Don't know if it's still going strong). And when you think of it, they've got a point - what business is it of anyone how someone looses their cash?
Also, the U.S. flight attendants' unions fight airborne gaming tooth and nail. As my cousin, an attendant for Delta told me "So now they'll expect us to deal with a guy who's both drunk *and* has lost $500?!"
Again, this is just a simple observation of cultural differences. The fact is that most of our Asian customers (the arilines) don't understand why we regulate gaimng so strongly in the U.S. Once we pitch the technical (and regulatory) challnanges, though, they usually decide to request different features in lieu of gaming.
The fact is that implementing a gaming system is a nightmare, be it on the ground or in the air. IMHO, quite a bit more difficult than point of sale or banking systems. In addition to being secure, it's gotta be completely fail safe (so if a passenger's terminal goes down seconds after a jackpot he won't loose his winnings and take it out on the cabin crew). Also, it's going to be transaction heavy - hundreds of smaller, individual bets over a gambling session as opposed to, say, a higher end credit card transaction every minute at a department store cash register. If you add in the fact that gambling is a potentially addictive activity that piques the interest of organized crime, you have a recipe for any disaffected insider to slip in hacks and back doors.
On the whole, I'm not surprised that someone corrupted a gambling system. I'm just surprised that this doesn't make the newspaper more often.
Now, before I get modded OT, let me say I know this discussion is about the two guys in tights mixing it up. Nevertheless, I'm amazed there's a /. topic about our boy from Krypton where no one has posted a link to Larry Niven's classic essay on Superman's sex life, Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex. You can find it on varius places on the web, but this is one of the better formatted ones. You will at least snicker, perhaps even LOL.
Er, then again, maybe someone did post the link but they got modded down below all threshold. Oh, well, it's only Karma.
Check out http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/31/19 27246&mode=thread&tid=156 for this same discussion with an emphasis on embedded computing.
Bill Gates was faced with this same dillema when he first set up his foundation. He went to conferences, heard pitches for thriod world EMAIL, web access, broadband, etc. Finally, he realized the same thing you have - that there was little humanitarian benefit to pushing high tech solutions where they didn't fit naturally. Instead, he got solidly behind vaccine development.
Say what you will about Bill, but he knows how to leverage his money to the task at hand.
PS - And, please, no flames on "he only donates a tiny fraction of his money, so he's still evil incarnate..." I was just using the guy as an example.
"Well, you might not like us very much, but we're still better than those cowboys running around out there, spamming without the DMA Golden Seal of Approval(tm). What was that? Why we can't effectively hunt down those cowboys? Well, if you consumers were to just buy more directly marketed products so our members can contribute more to our enforcement budget..."
Additionally, since a vast amount of spam is fraudulent (or so my Nigerean Finance Ministry contacts tell me), assuming ethical standards for any of these people is absurd.
Let's face it - spamming is no more a profession than being a heroin dealer. To expect professional standards out of them is equally fruitless.
O.k. First, a disclaimer. I work as a software engineer in civil aviation and have worked on military areospace products previously. I have also had peripheral exposure to patents back in my academic days. Therefore, I may not be coming from the same background as you might. I also have not personally been granted a patent even though many of my coworkers have. With that said, though...
I have never seen a patent that was not implemented in an actual, shipped product. Usually, the patents are developed by engineers facing a specific problem who come up with a unique solution. If the solution is recognized as being novel and extendable to a general case, the patent process is kicked into high gear. By the time the engineer gets his pretty bass patent plate for his cube wall, the original solution is already embedded in a product rolling off the assembly line.
While I understand that there have been abuses of the patent process in the past (and, yes, especially in the software arena), the system works quite well, thank you. As to "stiffling innovation," I think you have to look at the big picture.
Patents allow for at least some protection against reverse engineering, which the trade secrets do not. Any time you ship a physical product, be it a be it an executable binary, a mechanical gizmo, or a new pharmacutical (sic), reverse engineering jeapordizes not just the final solution you came up with but (more importantly) all the R&D you placed into the product in the first place. For example, it is not unusual for thousands of new drugs to be researched for each one that makes it to the patent office, to say nothing of those that make it to clinical trials. If patents did not exist to protect against reverse engineering, then no one would put any money into R&D beyond specific, immediate applications - and we'd all be much worse for it.
Trade secrets can protect specific implementations. But it is patents that protect broader ideas as well as the up front R&D required to derive them in the first place. Expiration dates on patents force innovation to continue and prevent companies from sitting on their patents for too long. If you have complaints against the current state of the US or European patent offices, go ahead and gripe. But to condemn the entire concept of the patent is short sighted and foolish.
Every now and then (mostly in writing science fiction), I need a term translated into Latin. Google and Babblefish, offer many languages, but no Latin. Searching elsewhere, I have found many online Latin dictionaries, but since a lot of Latin's difficulty is in the formation of words for tense, possesives,etc. (see the much cited Life of Brian sketch) this is worthless to me.
So, does anyone know of any online Latin translating engines akin to Babblefish or Google? Any information would be appreciated.