Given the slightly irreverent, snappy tone of the rest of the interview, I'm pretty sure everyone who did notice that took it to be a deliberate non-sequitur in a humorous vein.
Unfortunately, this is why this is headline news. SEX + MURDER pushes all the tabloid buttons. It's dangerous. It's dirty. Most importantly, it's someone I don't know - and therefore titillating and outrageous, but safe.
There was an extremely insightful and pertinent comment from a media observer here in Australia recently, pointing out that the popular media had moved from being a source of information to being a source of outrage. The prevalence of "Current Affairs" type programs, with their emotionally biased content, is a symptom of this.
What I find extremely depressing is the difficulty of fighting this all-pervasive new media meme. Sure, the intelligentsia dismiss it for the biased nonsense it is, but the great majority - the mythical "average person" - reads and watches this stuff, and believes what they are told. You can't tell them differently - you're not the authority figure that the "news" is. And so, emotional, biased content becomes fact in the mind of the public.
I'm a reasonably smart person, and I can't see a way to change this. It bothers me, but more than that, it scares me. A lot.
I hope someone smarter than me can see a way to make a difference. Meanwhile, I fear for my children's future...
Fair enough. My post title was a little overstated.
I do realise the importance of this discovery. I was pointing out, possibly not as clearly as I could have, that the article in question makes it sound like concrete hasn't been improved upon since the pyramids were cast, and that engineers hadn't come up with any other form of dealing with the inherent rigidity of concrete structures until now.
The pictured example looks to be at least 20 times as thick as my Grandfather's trick casting, which gives an idea of the scale of improvement (I doubt it's linear).
What will be fascinating will be to see how this technology combines with light transmitting concrete - we could be looking at a whole new class of building material.
Sometimes I wish I'd followed in my Grandfather's footsteps. Then I remember that I can't stand the smell of cement.
My Grandfather was an expert on concrete, especially pre-stressed concrete. One of his party tricks was to show off a piece of thin, flat concrete, slightly larger than a standard ruler, then bend it in an arc.
He'd created this by stretching a thin wire with weights along a form, then pouring the concrete. Once the concrete was set, he removed the weights, which caused the wire to shrink, compressing the concrete and rendering it much more flexible.
Admittedly, they're actually talking about a different technology in the article, but they make it sound like no-one's ever made bendable concrete before.
The case I referred to is US case law (not even Supreme Court case law), on Wikipedia here; I have no idea what the law is for Australian works.
Yah, I'm not too clear on it myself, thus the need to look up someone who does know.
Hey, do you guys refer to December as being "summertime" there, or does "summer" still mean June-July-August but mean cold and snowy? I'd always wondered that.
Uh.... Yes. It is Summer here. When you switch hemispheres, you switch seasons. Yesterday was 41 degrees (106 in your screwy Fahrenheit thing). I think that pretty much counts as Summer in most places. Oh, and our winters (at least, in my state) rarely get below 10 degrees (50 to you). Snow is a newsworthy event.
Incidentally, if you ever visit us, you should beware of Drop Bears.
Australia, actually, and it's likely the guard was overzealous.
I think the actual situation with galleries and the like claiming "intellectual property" on old works is that they don't want you to use them in any commercial manner without paying them. So, (by their reckoning) you can take photos, but you can't use them anywhere except private viewings...
I think I actually need to find someone who specialises in IP law and the like, and find out how this all works.
Sure, the copyright enters the public domain after n years, but then a museum or gallery or monopolistic corporation buys the artwork and claims it as their intellectual property, so you can't take photos or publish it without paying them. Even if the original artist's been dead for centuries.
Just try taking photos in an art gallery in front of a security guard if you don't believe me...
"We're not speaking the same language..."
on
Verizon Can't Do Math
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
I just love the continuing bemused, dumbstruck silences from the Verizon guy. Every time George tries to explain math, you can almost hear the rep's brain overload...
I thought I'd had some bad 'phone service experiences, but this just takes the cake.
Absolutely agreed. There's a bunch of great moments - like the bit where they're all getting awed by Kate's laptop, the specs of which sounded laughable even a couple of years later.
But my favourite thing about Hackers - the most realistic bit, which everyone seems to forget - is the time lapse shot of Dade sitting at the laptop, spending hours tracing through the hex of the Plot Device program, while his friends goof around in the background.
Been there, done that. Although we were taking it in turns to go through the code, and I now can't remember what it was that was so goddamn important for us to crack. But yeah, that scene always brings back good memories.
I've just had my fifth iPod die of hard-drive failure. This one finally outlasted the three month replacement warranty*, so I won't be getting it replaced for free.
I don't think it's the iPod. I think that certain people generate iPod destroying fields, and I'm one of them. Seriously, I've met one other guy (at the Apple service centre) with the same problem (he was on his third iPod), but every other iPod owner I know has never had trouble.
I may risk buying a Shuffle - it's cheaper, with no moving parts.
*So did the first, but it died within the initial 12 month warranty.
They did. From the article: '... X-rays exposed writing on surfaces mashed together in the Mechanism, and never before seen... He declines to be specific about what the writing says. "But it was basically an instruction manual on using the mechanism, and what its purpose was," he says.'
Seconded, with a proviso: Make sure the people she's getting tech support from are patient and nice.
My mum's got a Mini, and is totally happy with it (and has now converted my Dad, a longtime Wintel user). When she first got it, though, she spent a lot of time on the phone to the Mac shop (and me). The Mac people were totally understanding and patient with her, never told her to just ring Apple, and now she's doing great.
However, there are two main Mac outfits in our little town, and the other one* is staffed almost entirely by the sort of elitist snobs who give Mac users a bad name (you know, the ones who sneer at you for asking questions). Seriously, I've never heard a single good story about their service or support, and if she'd gone there, chances are she would've given up on computers completely.
So, basically, check out where they'll be getting tech support from. Small outfits are more likely to be friendly, and not fob you off to generic Apple support (which is still pretty good) - and you'll be supporting local business.
*Adelaide people, I'm talking about NextByte. Avoid.
My favourite Special Edition premiere moment was when, in the Death Star, Obi-Wan's voice says "Run Luke, run!"
And half the audience chimed in with "SEE LUKE RUN!" (= Still makes me grin.
Original Half-Life
on
Games and Fear
·
· Score: 2, Funny
This is the only game that made me empty a whole magazine into something I knew was dead, just because it scared the crap out of me.
Evil story: Years ago, I moved into a sharehouse with a couple of friends. One of them hadn't played HL yet, so I set it up on his machine and left him to it. A couple of days later, I came home late at night and saw that the door to his room was open. He was playing one of those freaky bits where you're crawling through badly lit ventilation tunnels, and headcrabs jump out of the dark. He was hunched over the keyboard, right into it, with headphones on, with his back to me...
Naturally, I did what any good friend would do. I sneaked up behind him, grabbed his shoulders and yelled "Hi, Mat!"...
Colour blind guys are better at not being fooled by camoflague (thus, good for snipers). I've a colour-blind friend who proved this at the Army stand at the local show, when they were showing off their new camo gear. They had a picture with ten guys in camo hidden in it, saying that most people could only find two or three. My mate picked out all ten in less than half a minute. Guess it's a good thing he's a pacifist.
Anyone interested in this really should read Birth of a Paradroid", which is Andrew Braybook's developer's diary for the C64 classic Paradroid. It's a fascinating glimpse into what game writing was like back in those days...
Unfortunately still concept only, prototypes but no production. However, they seem to be getting closer, although their main focus ATM seems to be companies with vehicle fleets, such as courier companies. I know I want one.
I love it. Load it up, the very first line of the page is "SlashDot defense provided by Nexcess.Net"
There's forethought, with some free advertising thrown in.
Re:I used to live there.
on
Koalas Gone Wild
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Nothing actually eats koalas. Since their diet consists entirely of eucalyptus leaves, the meat would be almost inedible. Australia doesn't actually have any large land predators except humans. Generally, the environment is harsh enough to act as population control. In this case, the Island (as it's known to locals) lacks sufficient nastiness of climate and such to reduce the population through attrition.
I used to live there.
on
Koalas Gone Wild
·
· Score: 4, Informative
This story is something I've been keeping track of for the past ten years or so, because I actually used to live on Kangaroo Island (lovely place, don't miss it if you're visiting South Australia).
As mentioned above, the koalas were introduced to KI early last century, and thus have nothing to regulate their population growth as they do on the mainland. The problem was first brought up about a decade ago, when scientists studying the koalas noticed how large the population was getting, and predicted they'd start stripping their own food sources in a few years. Around that time, the idea of a cull by professional shooters was quietly raised, discussed, and concluded by various intelligent folk to be a good idea. Then some idiot journalist got hold of it, and beat up a huge story: "They're planning to shoot hundreds of our cute, cuddly national icons!!!" After the media stink from that, the fucking State Government stated that they would ban the shooting of the koalas. Like it was something to do with them. Anyway, to show they were doing something about the koala overpopulation problem, they instituted a capture and sterilization program. Yes, they thought they'd stop all those naughty koalas breeding, but leave them in place. Aside from the lifespan of a koala being such that they're still going to destroy their habitat, it's being completely ineffectively implimented. It takes about two to four man-hours to find and capture one koala. Sterilizing them is another half hour to hour operation, and then they've got to be kept in a cage for a day or so... I know one of the two (yes, two) vets working on this, and he's got no illusions that it's anything more than a political sop to the idiot majority who can't bear the thought of shooting those cute little animals. The fact that the notion of culling them has now arisen again shows just how effective this program has been.
And do you know what? The local media are still running with the same fucking slant!! "They're going to shoot all these cute little koala bears, how awful!"
I think 30,000 koalas starving to death would be a damn sight worse, and far crueler. I'm in favour of the cull.
Oh, and before you ask, we can't really ship them anywhere else. Unless you know somewhere that's able to accomodate 20,000 koalas on short notice, and have a few million dollars to implement the move.
I'm just waiting for a game to use Blender as their native modelling app... I'd be able to use the UI threads on the forums to heat my house.
(Note: Personally, I love the Blender UI, (as do most people who are willing to spend the time to learn it properly). That doesn't make it any less intimidating to the first time user...)
Try The Day of the Jackal (the 1973 version, not the crappy Bruce Willis remake), for one.
Sheez... I think you could pick a better example for comparison than that. I mean, watermelons exploding is a pretty well established meme. I'm sure that there've been dozens of films with such scenes.
Well, you can't get much more authoritative than that. (=
Thanks for the info, and especially thanks for the fantastic job you guys have done. I'm definitely going to be digging out my copy of "Full Throttle" next time I have a free weekend.
Slashdot Mirror
Given the slightly irreverent, snappy tone of the rest of the interview, I'm pretty sure everyone who did notice that took it to be a deliberate non-sequitur in a humorous vein.
Unfortunately, this is why this is headline news. SEX + MURDER pushes all the tabloid buttons. It's dangerous. It's dirty. Most importantly, it's someone I don't know - and therefore titillating and outrageous, but safe.
There was an extremely insightful and pertinent comment from a media observer here in Australia recently, pointing out that the popular media had moved from being a source of information to being a source of outrage. The prevalence of "Current Affairs" type programs, with their emotionally biased content, is a symptom of this.
What I find extremely depressing is the difficulty of fighting this all-pervasive new media meme. Sure, the intelligentsia dismiss it for the biased nonsense it is, but the great majority - the mythical "average person" - reads and watches this stuff, and believes what they are told. You can't tell them differently - you're not the authority figure that the "news" is. And so, emotional, biased content becomes fact in the mind of the public.
I'm a reasonably smart person, and I can't see a way to change this.
It bothers me, but more than that, it scares me.
A lot.
I hope someone smarter than me can see a way to make a difference. Meanwhile, I fear for my children's future...
Fair enough. My post title was a little overstated.
I do realise the importance of this discovery. I was pointing out, possibly not as clearly as I could have, that the article in question makes it sound like concrete hasn't been improved upon since the pyramids were cast, and that engineers hadn't come up with any other form of dealing with the inherent rigidity of concrete structures until now.
The pictured example looks to be at least 20 times as thick as my Grandfather's trick casting, which gives an idea of the scale of improvement (I doubt it's linear).
What will be fascinating will be to see how this technology combines with light transmitting concrete - we could be looking at a whole new class of building material.
Sometimes I wish I'd followed in my Grandfather's footsteps. Then I remember that I can't stand the smell of cement.
My Grandfather was an expert on concrete, especially pre-stressed concrete. One of his party tricks was to show off a piece of thin, flat concrete, slightly larger than a standard ruler, then bend it in an arc.
He'd created this by stretching a thin wire with weights along a form, then pouring the concrete. Once the concrete was set, he removed the weights, which caused the wire to shrink, compressing the concrete and rendering it much more flexible.
Admittedly, they're actually talking about a different technology in the article, but they make it sound like no-one's ever made bendable concrete before.
Note that there is no request for a password.
The implications of this are left as an exercise for the reader...
Be warned: If you're viewing xkcd for the first time, you might end up reading through all of them. It's simple but brilliant.
Yah, I'm not too clear on it myself, thus the need to look up someone who does know.
Uh.... Yes. It is Summer here. When you switch hemispheres, you switch seasons.
Yesterday was 41 degrees (106 in your screwy Fahrenheit thing). I think that pretty much counts as Summer in most places.
Oh, and our winters (at least, in my state) rarely get below 10 degrees (50 to you). Snow is a newsworthy event.
Incidentally, if you ever visit us, you should beware of Drop Bears.
Australia, actually, and it's likely the guard was overzealous.
I think the actual situation with galleries and the like claiming "intellectual property" on old works is that they don't want you to use them in any commercial manner without paying them. So, (by their reckoning) you can take photos, but you can't use them anywhere except private viewings...
I think I actually need to find someone who specialises in IP law and the like, and find out how this all works.
Sure, the copyright enters the public domain after n years, but then a museum or gallery or monopolistic corporation buys the artwork and claims it as their intellectual property, so you can't take photos or publish it without paying them. Even if the original artist's been dead for centuries.
Just try taking photos in an art gallery in front of a security guard if you don't believe me...
I just love the continuing bemused, dumbstruck silences from the Verizon guy. Every time George tries to explain math, you can almost hear the rep's brain overload...
I thought I'd had some bad 'phone service experiences, but this just takes the cake.
Absolutely agreed. There's a bunch of great moments - like the bit where they're all getting awed by Kate's laptop, the specs of which sounded laughable even a couple of years later.
But my favourite thing about Hackers - the most realistic bit, which everyone seems to forget - is the time lapse shot of Dade sitting at the laptop, spending hours tracing through the hex of the Plot Device program, while his friends goof around in the background.
Been there, done that. Although we were taking it in turns to go through the code, and I now can't remember what it was that was so goddamn important for us to crack.
But yeah, that scene always brings back good memories.
Oh, and the titles montage is brilliant.
I've just had my fifth iPod die of hard-drive failure. This one finally outlasted the three month replacement warranty*, so I won't be getting it replaced for free.
I don't think it's the iPod. I think that certain people generate iPod destroying fields, and I'm one of them.
Seriously, I've met one other guy (at the Apple service centre) with the same problem (he was on his third iPod), but every other iPod owner I know has never had trouble.
I may risk buying a Shuffle - it's cheaper, with no moving parts.
*So did the first, but it died within the initial 12 month warranty.
Penny Arcade have done that joke a number of times...
Remember folks, always document your calculators
They did.
From the article:
'... X-rays exposed writing on surfaces mashed together in the Mechanism, and never before seen... He declines to be specific about what the writing says. "But it was basically an instruction manual on using the mechanism, and what its purpose was," he says.'
Seconded, with a proviso: Make sure the people she's getting tech support from are patient and nice.
My mum's got a Mini, and is totally happy with it (and has now converted my Dad, a longtime Wintel user).
When she first got it, though, she spent a lot of time on the phone to the Mac shop (and me). The Mac people were totally understanding and patient with her, never told her to just ring Apple, and now she's doing great.
However, there are two main Mac outfits in our little town, and the other one* is staffed almost entirely by the sort of elitist snobs who give Mac users a bad name (you know, the ones who sneer at you for asking questions). Seriously, I've never heard a single good story about their service or support, and if she'd gone there, chances are she would've given up on computers completely.
So, basically, check out where they'll be getting tech support from. Small outfits are more likely to be friendly, and not fob you off to generic Apple support (which is still pretty good) - and you'll be supporting local business.
*Adelaide people, I'm talking about NextByte. Avoid.
My favourite Special Edition premiere moment was when, in the Death Star, Obi-Wan's voice says "Run Luke, run!"
And half the audience chimed in with "SEE LUKE RUN!"
(= Still makes me grin.
This is the only game that made me empty a whole magazine into something I knew was dead, just because it scared the crap out of me.
...
Evil story: Years ago, I moved into a sharehouse with a couple of friends. One of them hadn't played HL yet, so I set it up on his machine and left him to it.
A couple of days later, I came home late at night and saw that the door to his room was open.
He was playing one of those freaky bits where you're crawling through badly lit ventilation tunnels, and headcrabs jump out of the dark. He was hunched over the keyboard, right into it, with headphones on, with his back to me...
Naturally, I did what any good friend would do. I sneaked up behind him, grabbed his shoulders and yelled "Hi, Mat!"
He didn't speak to me for a week.
Colour blind guys are better at not being fooled by camoflague (thus, good for snipers). I've a colour-blind friend who proved this at the Army stand at the local show, when they were showing off their new camo gear. They had a picture with ten guys in camo hidden in it, saying that most people could only find two or three. My mate picked out all ten in less than half a minute. Guess it's a good thing he's a pacifist.
Anyone interested in this really should read Birth of a Paradroid", which is Andrew Braybook's developer's diary for the C64 classic Paradroid. It's a fascinating glimpse into what game writing was like back in those days...
Well, there's this.
Unfortunately still concept only, prototypes but no production. However, they seem to be getting closer, although their main focus ATM seems to be companies with vehicle fleets, such as courier companies.
I know I want one.
I love it. Load it up, the very first line of the page is "SlashDot defense provided by Nexcess.Net"
There's forethought, with some free advertising thrown in.
Nothing actually eats koalas. Since their diet consists entirely of eucalyptus leaves, the meat would be almost inedible.
Australia doesn't actually have any large land predators except humans. Generally, the environment is harsh enough to act as population control. In this case, the Island (as it's known to locals) lacks sufficient nastiness of climate and such to reduce the population through attrition.
This story is something I've been keeping track of for the past ten years or so, because I actually used to live on Kangaroo Island (lovely place, don't miss it if you're visiting South Australia).
As mentioned above, the koalas were introduced to KI early last century, and thus have nothing to regulate their population growth as they do on the mainland.
The problem was first brought up about a decade ago, when scientists studying the koalas noticed how large the population was getting, and predicted they'd start stripping their own food sources in a few years. Around that time, the idea of a cull by professional shooters was quietly raised, discussed, and concluded by various intelligent folk to be a good idea.
Then some idiot journalist got hold of it, and beat up a huge story: "They're planning to shoot hundreds of our cute, cuddly national icons!!!"
After the media stink from that, the fucking State Government stated that they would ban the shooting of the koalas. Like it was something to do with them.
Anyway, to show they were doing something about the koala overpopulation problem, they instituted a capture and sterilization program. Yes, they thought they'd stop all those naughty koalas breeding, but leave them in place. Aside from the lifespan of a koala being such that they're still going to destroy their habitat, it's being completely ineffectively implimented.
It takes about two to four man-hours to find and capture one koala. Sterilizing them is another half hour to hour operation, and then they've got to be kept in a cage for a day or so...
I know one of the two (yes, two) vets working on this, and he's got no illusions that it's anything more than a political sop to the idiot majority who can't bear the thought of shooting those cute little animals.
The fact that the notion of culling them has now arisen again shows just how effective this program has been.
And do you know what? The local media are still running with the same fucking slant!!
"They're going to shoot all these cute little koala bears, how awful!"
I think 30,000 koalas starving to death would be a damn sight worse, and far crueler. I'm in favour of the cull.
Oh, and before you ask, we can't really ship them anywhere else. Unless you know somewhere that's able to accomodate 20,000 koalas on short notice, and have a few million dollars to implement the move.
I'm just waiting for a game to use Blender as their native modelling app... I'd be able to use the UI threads on the forums to heat my house.
(Note: Personally, I love the Blender UI, (as do most people who are willing to spend the time to learn it properly). That doesn't make it any less intimidating to the first time user...)
Try The Day of the Jackal (the 1973 version, not the crappy Bruce Willis remake), for one.
Sheez... I think you could pick a better example for comparison than that. I mean, watermelons exploding is a pretty well established meme. I'm sure that there've been dozens of films with such scenes.
Well, you can't get much more authoritative than that. (=
Thanks for the info, and especially thanks for the fantastic job you guys have done. I'm definitely going to be digging out my copy of "Full Throttle" next time I have a free weekend.