...Or at least they apparently are illegal to manufacture in the state of North Carolina. I'd say that cigarettes, if anything, is a "substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.
Which is the definition of a chemical weapon of mass destruction. Start prosecuting, fellas!
Here's the problem. His argument that if a very large of minds are created and simulated, then the chances of any one mind being simulated is very high is very interesting. He has something on that track. However, he needs another assumption besides his first two: even if humans have the technological raw computing power to simulate a human life or mind, there is no guarantee that they will know how to do so. In fact, I'd say that being clever enough to simulate a human mind would be extraordinarly harder to acheive than the raw computing power. We don't even know how to beat strong human Go players just yet, even though today's computers are more than well-enough-equipped to do so. In fact, there is a very high chance (a better chance than everyone being simulated) that to simulate the human mind by computation alone is impossible for us to do. I guess a way of putting this is that the human mind may not be able to be simulated by a Turing machine.
The only possibility past this, I think, is the possibiliy that humans can create some of automata that somehow are less sophisticated than us. The implication being that there could be some sort of very long (infinite?) chain of simulations running simulations, running simulations, etc. Sort of a Men in Black thing.
Of course, another possibility is that we do exist, but our brains are being held hostage and tricked into thinking they are living, a la the Matrix. --Stephen
I would like a lawyer or at least somebody to explain to me the reasoning behind this law. How does using a honeypot to capture hacker traffic in order catch the newest vulnerabilities (remember, that's the main point of a honeypot, not catching and prosecuting hackers) differ from say, maintaining a log of who has logged on my computer?
The hacker is willfully sending my computer information in an attempt to try and get my computer to send back the juicy, sweet forbidden information to him. How does recording this, then, differ from a log, or for that matter, recording AIM conversations, recording phone conversations on my own line, keeping answering machine messages, or a billion other ways in which we keep information transmitted to us via electronic means? If information is sent to us, then we should be allowed to keep it and use it for whatever we want to. --Stephen
I love how ADV pats themselves on the back as often as possible in this "press release." My favorite line: "The Japanese anime and game studio Gainax Network Systems was one of the original production studios responsible for "Neon Genesis Evangelion.""
Not like they conceived, wrote, designed, and directed the series and movies as well...
The point of the item is not to get a piece of the Columbia, but rather the NASA signature, which would be impossible for an actual piece of the Columbia. Now, as a Public Service, Phoenix Does Dallas Presents: John Poindexter: (301) 424-6613 John Ashcroft: (816) 471-7141
vacation home: (573) 334-7044 Tom Ridge: (610) 274-3276
Hey FIST, you could have done that, or you could have looked at the PostScript version of the file. Ghostscript will search the file.
Cheers,
--Stephen
Actually, in Japan, japanese people do do the voices for the Simpsons. As far as editing content, I'm not sure they've done that, but I've seen original Japanese-only Simpsons commercials (for C.C. lemon - good stuff).
Philip Su, a University of Maryland alumnus, interned at Microsoft when he was in college and went back to work there. Su is now a lead developer on Microsoft's Tablet PC team.
"Microsoft has such a unique atmosphere," he said, "that once you're there and it clicks with you, that's the only place you want to develop software."
A large point I was trying to get across is that many of you out there are responsible for this kind of behavior. I am thoroughly convinced that if a song is catchy enough (and most are) and then played on the radio often enough, it will hit big. In the article, it says "Most people don't know why they like a certain song," and the fact is that a good deal of you out there do what you're told. There has to be *someone* buying those millions of albums, and the people that are buying those albums are people who don't know what they like. I remember back in junior high school, before I became a musician, I had no clue whether I liked a song or not if it was played on the radio. But played often enough, I found I could grow to like nearly anything.
Economically, the record companies are doing a great thing - selling you a proven product that they *know* you will like. Artistically, they are stifling music innovation, and this article is a perfect example of such. Sure, Norah Jones won best album, but look who else was nominated: Nelly, Eminem, THE DIXIE CHICKS?! How many other Norah Joneses are out there that didn't get a fair shot this year because someone didn't discover them by some lucky stroke?
What needs to change is not the record companies. It's people's involvement in music that needs to change, because record companies react to people's taste, and until people decide for themselves what they like instead of allowing a radio station to control it, the record companies will control what people's tastes are. This is another reason why things like "music pirating" is a Good Thing. People can decide what they like more easily if they can try things out without wasting hard-earned money on CDs they won't want - the radio certainly isn't helping offer any variety. What can you do? *Pay attention.* Really listen to songs. Think about them more. Dig deeper. And don't just do this with music, do it with any sort of art that you feel inclined to pay attention to - most people that go to art museums do this, why shouldn't everyone who listens to the radio do the same thing? Many of you out there are far more critical of say, literature than music. Start listening to music critically. Also, go ahead and use Kazaa, but don't get stuff you hear on the radio - that's what the RIAA cares about anyway. Get those songs on a user's playlist that you haven't heard of if you like the mainstream songs that they've picked out. Don't let this computer program be able to calculate what we like.
This not the only reason for the child pornography fetish. Back in the (1950s?), people began drawing X-rated pornography, and the Japanese government decided that they needed to limit this somehow. Since they didn't want people to show genitals in their comics, they made the absurdly silly rule that pubic hair was not allowed to be shown in print. Unfortunately, this opens just a few loopholes. Obviously, this made matters worse as writers started depicting instead sexual acts with children to get around the government restriction on pornography.
In Japan the stories are not as black and white simply because Japanese culture is that way - only spiritual figures are seen as truly good/evil, and they believe that no one is evil, but that conflicts are simply due to different opinions. In real life, people are not evil, the don't think they are evil, they simply rationalize their immoral actions. This is opposed to the US, where Saddam is EVIL, North Korea is EVIL, and we are GOOD.
There are many reasons why it might be so popular. First, the highest selling manga in Japan is a serial that prints several comics called Shonen Jump. The comics in this serial are aimed toward oun boys, but frequently, you'll see several businessmen together reading the same issue of Jump. The book is very thick and also very cheap, and also printed not only on news print, but some of the less popular comics are printed on *pink* newsprint. Another reason for the lower price is that manga is of course in black and white, whereas ALL American comics are in color, and each 30 page comic sells for more than the price of a 200 page Jump comic.
I hate to admit it, because it gives those "all Japanese comics are porn" people fuel, but there is an incredible amount of Japanese pornography comics - and they are very popular. Add that to the fact that you can buy these things everywhere, including the large used comic stores (Mandrake, anyone?) and people are not in the least bit ashamed to be buying these things.
Another reason is that while there are comic-style manga, that are episodic and continue on for like 50 volumes, there are also manga that go on for 20 or so volumes and tell a complete story all the way through. Then, the manga is OVER. Done. None of this X-Men crap (which has turned me off to the comic) where they keep reinventing the plot, characters die and come back, etc. (and in the case of X-Men it was done simply because of the popularity of the movie) Talk to any Japanese manga writer, and they will be amazed that so many different people can write for Spiderman or Superman. The idea of another person taking over a writer's artistic view sounds completely absurd to them - and it should be. If the US followed the same economic model - lots of comics, serialized, artists thought in the same way instead of "it's my turn to write/draw for comic X", and Americans would start reading instead of "collecting" (the collection biz is NOT going to be as profitiable as back in the day folks...not when everyone is "collecting" baseball cards and comics), then perhaps American comics can have the same popularity.
Side note, some Japanese find manga a poor excuse for literacy. Ask some people about manga, and businessmen reading it, and they'll roll their eyes and say something like they should be reading books instead, that manga is too easy. However, many Japanese also really like manga, too, and many have their own guilty pleasures.
Did you notice that only one of the top 25 was from after 1997? The Simpsons have been on a steady downslide since then, and I blame the writers. They can't seem to tell a story anymore, and instead concentrate on filling the episodes with "wackiness." And it's usually not even clever anymore. Take for example the last "Treehouse of Horror." It really feels as if each episode is written hurridly, because the older episodes feel longer and fuller.
They aren't out of ideas, they're out of wit. If you want proof, watch the show. It's not coincidence that the worst episode was made in the last year or two.
This is great: "The MPAA tried to establish by law that the VCR was infringing on copyright. Then we would go to the Congress and get a copyright royalty fee put on all blank videocassettes and that would go back to the creators [to compensate for videocassette piracy]."
And of course, the MPAA are the "creators," because who else would ever make a movie? And he's also saying this implies that the MPAA own the right to copy movies period?!
This line, too:
"What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law."
May I point Mr. Valenti to the US Code Sec. 107. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use. "Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." And he thinks no one should be allowed to copy anything, ever.
I don't see how anyone can take this guy seriously.
"It will not count against you if your guitarists are dressed as ninjas, which are cool. And by cool, we mean totally sweet"
The Max P ninjas are featured, providing an awesome soundtrack during a particuarly rainy part of the weekend, with myself on rhythm guitar. Totally sweet, indeed.
Note: these other ninjas are my friends from the anime cover band SWEK.
...that unless you're running a few thousand computers, the cost of paying IT people salary over 5 years is going to be higher than any software bill.
But you were going to pay them anyway.
This article is just another stupid spin on figures that could be interpreted anyway you want. All the information that the article gives us is that the only real significant cost is that of IT staffing. How much are they factoring in these costs? Do they include the entire salary of the entire IT team? In that case, Windows should be ashamed that it racks up anywhere near to 4% of the total cost. For a single IT tech person, paid around $60,000 (a low figure, I think) a year for 5 years, 4% of that is $12000 that the company has wasted in "software acqusition."
Furthermore, there is *nothing* inherent to Linux that incurs the extra cost of paying IT staff more. Are we to believe that IT professionals are demanding a 20% increase in salary because they are "Linux Professionals?" It's more likely to be the other way around. Are we supposed to believe that using Linux requires more IT professionals? Perhaps 10 years ago, but now Linux is an accepted part of the industry, and no longer an esoteric piece of software. As hard as it might be and as long as it might take for Granny to set up Red Hat, IT people use it just as easily if not more so than Windows 2000.
Which leads me to believe that the survey only shows us this - that companies that use Linux pay their employees 20-30% more or they hire 20-30% more staff - in which case, I say go Linux. It may also be the fact, that due to Linux's increased market share, more large companies and more IT intensive companies are using the software, thereby skewing the stats even further. Hypothetical scenario: Windows 2000 is now only used in small businesses with a single IT technician in employment. Linux is used elsewhere. According to the factors used in this survey, Windows 2000 could end up being 1000% cheaper to run than Linux! Multiply that by the fact that only 104 North American companies participated in this survey, and 11-22% more expensive is starting to look a lot more like FUD.
I'm fairly certain FatWallet doesn't steal any of the companies' fonts, colors, pictures, placement of words next to pictures, or even the wording itself. The sad thing is, if one of these companies does scream to their Congressman, they *will* listen. It seems to have become government policy that corporations have a *right* to make money. And in the spirit of this, Congress might simply squelch the means of spreading this information rather than saying, "You had a leak; it's your fault; stop whining." Honestly, this seems just a little bass-ackwards to me. A copyright is not applicable to something simply because it causes your business to lose money.
I think I've actually seen this a couple years earlier. There's actually a site, http://www.scene.org that will have contests to see who can make the best demo squeezed into 64k. There's tons of these available in the archives; here's an example.
Slashdot Mirror
...Or at least they apparently are illegal to manufacture in the state of North Carolina. I'd say that cigarettes, if anything, is a "substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.
Which is the definition of a chemical weapon of mass destruction.
Start prosecuting, fellas!
--Stephen
Here's the problem. His argument that if a very large of minds are created and simulated, then the chances of any one mind being simulated is very high is very interesting. He has something on that track. However, he needs another assumption besides his first two: even if humans have the technological raw computing power to simulate a human life or mind, there is no guarantee that they will know how to do so. In fact, I'd say that being clever enough to simulate a human mind would be extraordinarly harder to acheive than the raw computing power. We don't even know how to beat strong human Go players just yet, even though today's computers are more than well-enough-equipped to do so. In fact, there is a very high chance (a better chance than everyone being simulated) that to simulate the human mind by computation alone is impossible for us to do. I guess a way of putting this is that the human mind may not be able to be simulated by a Turing machine.
The only possibility past this, I think, is the possibiliy that humans can create some of automata that somehow are less sophisticated than us. The implication being that there could be some sort of very long (infinite?) chain of simulations running simulations, running simulations, etc. Sort of a Men in Black thing.
Of course, another possibility is that we do exist, but our brains are being held hostage and tricked into thinking they are living, a la the Matrix.
--Stephen
This is too common a phenomenon!
Where's the actual story?
--Stephen
I would like a lawyer or at least somebody to explain to me the reasoning behind this law. How does using a honeypot to capture hacker traffic in order catch the newest vulnerabilities (remember, that's the main point of a honeypot, not catching and prosecuting hackers) differ from say, maintaining a log of who has logged on my computer?
The hacker is willfully sending my computer information in an attempt to try and get my computer to send back the juicy, sweet forbidden information to him. How does recording this, then, differ from a log, or for that matter, recording AIM conversations, recording phone conversations on my own line, keeping answering machine messages, or a billion other ways in which we keep information transmitted to us via electronic means? If information is sent to us, then we should be allowed to keep it and use it for whatever we want to.
--Stephen
I love how ADV pats themselves on the back as often as possible in this "press release." My favorite line: "The Japanese anime and game studio Gainax Network Systems was one of the original production studios responsible for "Neon Genesis Evangelion.""
Not like they conceived, wrote, designed, and directed the series and movies as well...
--Stephen
The point of the item is not to get a piece of the Columbia, but rather the NASA signature, which would be impossible for an actual piece of the Columbia.
Now, as a Public Service, Phoenix Does Dallas Presents:
John Poindexter: (301) 424-6613
John Ashcroft: (816) 471-7141
vacation home: (573) 334-7044
Tom Ridge: (610) 274-3276
Hey FIST, you could have done that, or you could have looked at the PostScript version of the file. Ghostscript will search the file. Cheers, --Stephen
My friend saw the flash and then some colors appear in the sky. He freaked out - he thought a nuke hit Chicago or something.
Actually, in Japan, japanese people do do the voices for the Simpsons. As far as editing content, I'm not sure they've done that, but I've seen original Japanese-only Simpsons commercials (for C.C. lemon - good stuff).
Man, only Japan would be silly enough to use watermelon as a form of currency for traveling on the subways. Sheesh.
Philip Su, a University of Maryland alumnus, interned at Microsoft when he was in college and went back to work there. Su is now a lead developer on Microsoft's Tablet PC team.
"Microsoft has such a unique atmosphere," he said, "that once you're there and it clicks with you, that's the only place you want to develop software."
Scary...
Did anyone else have any trouble taking this guy seriously because he formats his column like Jackie Harvey from The Onion?
A large point I was trying to get across is that many of you out there are responsible for this kind of behavior. I am thoroughly convinced that if a song is catchy enough (and most are) and then played on the radio often enough, it will hit big. In the article, it says "Most people don't know why they like a certain song," and the fact is that a good deal of you out there do what you're told. There has to be *someone* buying those millions of albums, and the people that are buying those albums are people who don't know what they like. I remember back in junior high school, before I became a musician, I had no clue whether I liked a song or not if it was played on the radio. But played often enough, I found I could grow to like nearly anything.
Economically, the record companies are doing a great thing - selling you a proven product that they *know* you will like. Artistically, they are stifling music innovation, and this article is a perfect example of such. Sure, Norah Jones won best album, but look who else was nominated: Nelly, Eminem, THE DIXIE CHICKS?! How many other Norah Joneses are out there that didn't get a fair shot this year because someone didn't discover them by some lucky stroke?
What needs to change is not the record companies. It's people's involvement in music that needs to change, because record companies react to people's taste, and until people decide for themselves what they like instead of allowing a radio station to control it, the record companies will control what people's tastes are. This is another reason why things like "music pirating" is a Good Thing. People can decide what they like more easily if they can try things out without wasting hard-earned money on CDs they won't want - the radio certainly isn't helping offer any variety.
What can you do? *Pay attention.* Really listen to songs. Think about them more. Dig deeper. And don't just do this with music, do it with any sort of art that you feel inclined to pay attention to - most people that go to art museums do this, why shouldn't everyone who listens to the radio do the same thing? Many of you out there are far more critical of say, literature than music. Start listening to music critically. Also, go ahead and use Kazaa, but don't get stuff you hear on the radio - that's what the RIAA cares about anyway. Get those songs on a user's playlist that you haven't heard of if you like the mainstream songs that they've picked out.
Don't let this computer program be able to calculate what we like.
--Stephen
"Here's a sports almanac from 1995 to 2003..."
This not the only reason for the child pornography fetish. Back in the (1950s?), people began drawing X-rated pornography, and the Japanese government decided that they needed to limit this somehow. Since they didn't want people to show genitals in their comics, they made the absurdly silly rule that pubic hair was not allowed to be shown in print. Unfortunately, this opens just a few loopholes. Obviously, this made matters worse as writers started depicting instead sexual acts with children to get around the government restriction on pornography.
The school uniforms didn't help much.
--Stephen
In Japan the stories are not as black and white simply because Japanese culture is that way - only spiritual figures are seen as truly good/evil, and they believe that no one is evil, but that conflicts are simply due to different opinions. In real life, people are not evil, the don't think they are evil, they simply rationalize their immoral actions. This is opposed to the US, where Saddam is EVIL, North Korea is EVIL, and we are GOOD.
--Stephen
There are many reasons why it might be so popular.
First, the highest selling manga in Japan is a serial that prints several comics called Shonen Jump. The comics in this serial are aimed toward oun boys, but frequently, you'll see several businessmen together reading the same issue of Jump. The book is very thick and also very cheap, and also printed not only on news print, but some of the less popular comics are printed on *pink* newsprint. Another reason for the lower price is that manga is of course in black and white, whereas ALL American comics are in color, and each 30 page comic sells for more than the price of a 200 page Jump comic.
I hate to admit it, because it gives those "all Japanese comics are porn" people fuel, but there is an incredible amount of Japanese pornography comics - and they are very popular. Add that to the fact that you can buy these things everywhere, including the large used comic stores (Mandrake, anyone?) and people are not in the least bit ashamed to be buying these things.
Another reason is that while there are comic-style manga, that are episodic and continue on for like 50 volumes, there are also manga that go on for 20 or so volumes and tell a complete story all the way through. Then, the manga is OVER. Done. None of this X-Men crap (which has turned me off to the comic) where they keep reinventing the plot, characters die and come back, etc. (and in the case of X-Men it was done simply because of the popularity of the movie) Talk to any Japanese manga writer, and they will be amazed that so many different people can write for Spiderman or Superman. The idea of another person taking over a writer's artistic view sounds completely absurd to them - and it should be. If the US followed the same economic model - lots of comics, serialized, artists thought in the same way instead of "it's my turn to write/draw for comic X", and Americans would start reading instead of "collecting" (the collection biz is NOT going to be as profitiable as back in the day folks...not when everyone is "collecting" baseball cards and comics), then perhaps American comics can have the same popularity.
Side note, some Japanese find manga a poor excuse for literacy. Ask some people about manga, and businessmen reading it, and they'll roll their eyes and say something like they should be reading books instead, that manga is too easy. However, many Japanese also really like manga, too, and many have their own guilty pleasures.
--Stephen
Did you notice that only one of the top 25 was from after 1997? The Simpsons have been on a steady downslide since then, and I blame the writers. They can't seem to tell a story anymore, and instead concentrate on filling the episodes with "wackiness." And it's usually not even clever anymore. Take for example the last "Treehouse of Horror." It really feels as if each episode is written hurridly, because the older episodes feel longer and fuller.
They aren't out of ideas, they're out of wit. If you want proof, watch the show. It's not coincidence that the worst episode was made in the last year or two.
--Stephen
This is great: "The MPAA tried to establish by law that the VCR was infringing on copyright. Then we would go to the Congress and get a copyright royalty fee put on all blank videocassettes and that would go back to the creators [to compensate for videocassette piracy]."
And of course, the MPAA are the "creators," because who else would ever make a movie? And he's also saying this implies that the MPAA own the right to copy movies period?!
This line, too:
"What is fair use? Fair use is not a law. There's nothing in law."
May I point Mr. Valenti to the US Code Sec. 107. - Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use.
"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright."
And he thinks no one should be allowed to copy anything, ever.
I don't see how anyone can take this guy seriously.
The Max P ninjas are featured, providing an awesome soundtrack during a particuarly rainy part of the weekend, with myself on rhythm guitar. Totally sweet, indeed.
Note: these other ninjas are my friends from the anime cover band SWEK.
But you were going to pay them anyway.
This article is just another stupid spin on figures that could be interpreted anyway you want. All the information that the article gives us is that the only real significant cost is that of IT staffing. How much are they factoring in these costs? Do they include the entire salary of the entire IT team? In that case, Windows should be ashamed that it racks up anywhere near to 4% of the total cost. For a single IT tech person, paid around $60,000 (a low figure, I think) a year for 5 years, 4% of that is $12000 that the company has wasted in "software acqusition."
Furthermore, there is *nothing* inherent to Linux that incurs the extra cost of paying IT staff more. Are we to believe that IT professionals are demanding a 20% increase in salary because they are "Linux Professionals?" It's more likely to be the other way around. Are we supposed to believe that using Linux requires more IT professionals? Perhaps 10 years ago, but now Linux is an accepted part of the industry, and no longer an esoteric piece of software. As hard as it might be and as long as it might take for Granny to set up Red Hat, IT people use it just as easily if not more so than Windows 2000.
Which leads me to believe that the survey only shows us this - that companies that use Linux pay their employees 20-30% more or they hire 20-30% more staff - in which case, I say go Linux. It may also be the fact, that due to Linux's increased market share, more large companies and more IT intensive companies are using the software, thereby skewing the stats even further. Hypothetical scenario: Windows 2000 is now only used in small businesses with a single IT technician in employment. Linux is used elsewhere. According to the factors used in this survey, Windows 2000 could end up being 1000% cheaper to run than Linux! Multiply that by the fact that only 104 North American companies participated in this survey, and 11-22% more expensive is starting to look a lot more like FUD.
I'm fairly certain FatWallet doesn't steal any of the companies' fonts, colors, pictures, placement of words next to pictures, or even the wording itself. The sad thing is, if one of these companies does scream to their Congressman, they *will* listen. It seems to have become government policy that corporations have a *right* to make money. And in the spirit of this, Congress might simply squelch the means of spreading this information rather than saying, "You had a leak; it's your fault; stop whining." Honestly, this seems just a little bass-ackwards to me. A copyright is not applicable to something simply because it causes your business to lose money.
They got Conan O' Brien to be part of the graveyard!
I think I've actually seen this a couple years earlier. There's actually a site, http://www.scene.org that will have contests to see who can make the best demo squeezed into 64k. There's tons of these available in the archives; here's an example.