> For best straight line ever seen on Slashdot:
> >Microsoft is working with Ford Motor Co towards car that can't crash.
They also get infinite mileage.
In theory, it's like what happens when you take a cat, and strap a piece of toast to its back, buttered-side up. Wrap some wires and magnets around it and launch it into low-earth orbit. As long as there's carpet on the floor of the spacecraft, the cat will spin and generate power indefinitely. You can do this with less than six pounds of butter per year.
Don't try prototyping this. Just about everywhere from ten feet up and low earth orbit, you end up with something that works like the opposite of the Schrodinger's Cat experiment; the waveforms always end up pretty firmly collapsed.
Come to think of it, "Don't try prototyping this" applies just as well to the buttered-cat perpetual mostion experiment as well to the Microsoft car.
> I used to work in the Risk Management department of the capital markets division of a large international bank [jpm[*cough*].com] as a programmer > >[...] > >It was a fun job. Then I found another one where I get to play with Python!
> > most of our clients are now asking questions that require approximate or probabilistic answers.'"
> >
* 42..ish
Larry: Of course, he only had the two arms and the one head, and he called himself Jim Gray.
Melinda: But you must admit, he did turn out to be from another planet.
Larry: By my yacht! Melinda Gates!
it.slashdot.org: Infinity minus 1. Improbability sum now complete.
Larry: What are you doing here?
Melinda: With a degree in human-computer interaction and another in psychology, it was either that or back to refactoring Microsoft Bob into Longhorn::Clippy on Monday.
Bill: Oh God. Ford, this is Melinda. Hi. Melinda, my semi-cousin Ford, who shares three of the same mothers as me. Is this sort of thing
going to happen every time we attempt to unify approximate and exact reasoning?
> Sounds like he wants a bunch of foreign workers who wouldn't quibble over a $20,000-30,000 salary where a US coder would expect a bit more.
Let's put it this way.
Isn't it funny that even Billgatus of Borg can't convince the Administration to let in another 100,000 engineers (be they from India or Canada) to get paid and pay Social Security and income taxes on incomes between $30-50K, but nobody blinks an eye at letting in millions of workers (mostly from Mexico) to get paid $3.00/hour washing dishes and pay no tax because they're here illegally or because their incomes are very low, despite consuming tax dollars in the form of health and education costs for their families?
I'm all for immigration -- but is it too much to ask of immigration policymakers that we import the sort of people who will be net contributors to the economy, rather than a net drain thereon?
> The two unnamed students, who go by the aliases "hulk" and "CadillacMan", allegedly used University computer systems to distribute copyrighted material. The lawyer for one student said, 'We would never condone music piracy. What we're interested in is the rights of the individual -- privacy rights being protected.'"
...because having the entire campus knowing you call yourself "hulk" or "CadillacMan" would be cruel and unusual punishment, even by RIAA's shockingly abhorrent standards.
> I've got a feeling this is going to be like a lot of those Klan marches, where about 50 idiots in white sheets show up, and 4,000 demonstrators are there to greet them. > >
WIPD is a protest-magnet, and the CopyNight people have simply used WIPD's big-money marketing of the event against them. It will be interesting to see if WIPD is "quietly" discontinued next year.
I've got a feeling this is going to be like a lot of those WTO protests, where about 50 idiots in suits show up, along with 50 agents provocateurs, so that the remaining 4,000 dissidents can have the ever-lovin' shit beaten out of them for the entertainment of the local news media.
WIPD is a protest-magnet, and the CopyNight people have simply self-identified themselves for targeting by RIAA observers who will hand over pictures of their faces to the FBI for face-recognition scans and further investigation.
If I were head of RIAA or MPAA, I'd covertly fund an organization like CopyNight. What better way to identify threats? *cracks knuckles, reclines in chair, cackles evilly*
Met him on a ranch up in San Rafael,
Saw him doing CGI, for a character that looked like mucas,
M-U-C-U-Mucus...
I saw the obese fuck in his valley of fog,
Asked him his name and in a raspy voice, he said "Lucas".
L-U-C-A-Lucas,
Lu-Lu-Lu-Lu Lucas...
Well I've been around, but I ain't never seen,
A guy who raped all our childhoods in a manner obscene,
Oh, George Lucas.
Lu-Lu-Lu-Lu Lucas...
And I'm not dumb, but I can't understand,
How Jar Jar and the Ewoks came from Emperor's Hand,
Oh, George Lucas.
Lu-Lu-Lu-Lu Lucas...
Well, I got hired just a week before,
And I've never ever been a marketing whore,
But Georgy-porgy set me straight with force,
Told me "do water specials, with MonCal boobs, of course!"
I know George Lucas has me really annoyed,
But remember, if you kill him then I'll be unemployed,
Oh, George Lucas.
Lu-Lu-Lu-Lu Lucas...
Episode 5's how I want it to stay,
But I need to feed my family, so to the Sith I will pray,
For George Lucas,
Lu-lu-lu-lu-Lucas...
> He was playing what I had at the time thought of as a rather non-violent game - a space conquest game that is basically just a strategy game. There are no characters, no people of any kind in it at all, but it actually seemed to have a detrimental effect on him and he became more violent. Almost as soon as I cut his access off, his attitude and behaviour improved.
Violence: Seeing something jumping out in front of you and reflexively clicking on the mouse-button to give it both barrels of your shotgun - the screen splatters red for a moment, and then you're safe.
Nonviolence: Staring at a dialog box that reads "WARNING: Use of hypergravitic weapons is a violation of the Galactic Sentients' Rights Convention of CY3441. Estimated civilian casualties are 1.8 billion. Deploy planetkiller? [Yes | No]". You sit back in your chair and lazily circle your finger around the "Y" key before pressing it down with a satisfied grin on your face as you watch watch a video cutscene that consists of nothing more than a picture of a cityscape and a fade-to-white.
> > My best guess is that a rich guy with a few hundred million, no particular desire to live, and a slick marketing team could toss the US government in less than 24 months. > >
Gold. Pure gold.
Hell, Osama did it in less than four years and he didn't even have a slick marketing team.
> Do you really think we (the human race) has the knowledge to decode thought patterns on a wholesale basis? At best, you can correlate ONE PERSON'S prejudices to a certain pattern on a certain MRI, but only because you already knew the result before hand.
Then you scan everyone, regularly, to establish a baseline and to watch how it changes over time. Anyone who refuses to submit to a scan has something to hide - or in the case of children, has parents with something to hide.
You see that as impractical and intrusive. I see it as contracts worth billions of taxpayer dollars. Dollars well-spent to secure our children's vulnerable minds from those who would do them harm.
> and the other a live-action series, that will be set in the time between Episodes III and IV, but won't feature the main characters [ emphasis added].
I just had a nightmare vision of FRAPS video captures from within Star Wars Galaxies being re-enacted by a bunch of LARPers.
I mean, it'd definitely fit within the Star Wars Canon:
This is not the Holiday Special you were looking for.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
It's worse.
It's a LARP!
> An Indian mathematician, Chandrashekhar Khare, is poised to make a significant breakthrough in the field of number theory with his solution of part of a major outstanding problem in algebraic number theory.
503 - Service Unavailable. There is insufficient bandwidth in the server room to supply you with a copy of this paper.
>> The driving force behind the legislation to abolish analog TV is the big media companies, who want to "plug the analog hole".
> >Until the signal plugs into my robotic central nervous system, there will always be an anlogue hole... my dilated pupil.
When MPAA and Congress are through with us, there'll only be one dilated analogue hole left. On that day, we are all Goatse.
Choose no life. Choose blogging. Choose no career. Choose no family. Choose getting reamed out by your bandwidth provider after the Slashdot effect hits you. Choose to fuck up Google by linking to your friends' blogs. Choose something that makes a wiki look organized. Choose no friends. Choose to tell us all about how your girlfriend was a lousy lay. Choose to tell us how surprised you were when she dumped you the next day. Choose to continue to shovel pretentious crap that nobody but you gives a shit about.
Choose your future. Choose life. But why would I want to do a thing like that?
I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reason? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got a blog?
> Microsoft's "shared source license" has been a complete failure at the design level.
Due to the rising cost of energy, ink, and/or toner, we urge all authors to reduce their word count wherever possible. For instance, the string ('s "shared source license") in the preceding article is redundant and may be eliminated.
> And just whos side is the electronics industry (e.g. computer and computer part makers, TV set makers etc).
The problem is that the decision makers aren't buying what the electronics makers are selling.
"Mistakes hurt us.... Why are we making them? To some the answer is obvious: corporate capture of the decision making process. This is a nicely cynical conclusion. But wait. There are economic interests on both sides. The film and music industries are tiny compared to the consumer electronics industry.'"
Would you rather snort your line of cocaine from between Titney'S pears, or Ballmer's monkey-manboobs?
Put yourself in the place of a Senator and have some compassion:)
>
Read the original message again: it's implied that it is over half the population of the U.S..
Yes, it was. My point was that that half is utterly irrelevant when it comes to the decisionmaking process.
Look at the re-election rates for incumbents. In most districts, merely enough pull that your Party superiors put you on the ballot guarantees you re-election for life, and that goes double for the Senate.
I'm willing to compromise between 100,000,000 and 535. In order-of-magnitudes, that's 10^8 vs. 10^2.728. If we split the difference, we get 10^5.364, or 200,000 lobbyists and Party officials.
> > Is half the population of the U.S. just completely blind and ignorant to the damage these guys are doing to our country?
> >No. More than half.
More than half... of whom?
Last time I checked, the only halves that mattered were "half of 435" and "half of 100".
And the answer to the original question is "of course they do". Show some respect to the nobility -- you can start by resolving not to insult the intelligence of your betters, fellow serf.
> When did suits leave? Why'd they leave? And what kind of suits are we speaking of (business, swimming, wet)? Because if swim suits left, I wish someone would have told me.
Business suits. As in, "the wearing of".
For those of you asking - that's precisely the sort of thing these PR firms do. Issue a few press releases saying "In hard economic times, more formal dress is returning to the workplace as a means of repudiating the excesses that led to the dot-com crash", and bolster it with a parallel "Metrosexuality is cool" spin, and all of a sudden, people are convinced that buying a suit and ceasing to observe casual Fridays in anything less than a sport coat, will get them promoted,
laid, or both.
From the article:
Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.'
This thinly-disguised Slashvertisement has been brought to you by Public Relations 'R' Us, leaders in astroturfing since 2005!:)
Remember. The objective of the 6 o'clock "news" is to fill the time between advertisements.
You lead with violence. You promise "weather after the break". You run the ads. You run a celebrity sex story. You promise "weather after the break and SOMETHING THAT CAN KILL YOUR CHILDREN. You run the ads. You show the weather. More ads. You've got nothing else to run, so you finally put in some fluff, tell the parents that unless their kids wear a suit, and get a job at a PR firm, they'll STARVE TO DEATH.
Then you run yet more ads, and then you fill up the rest of the time slot with whatever else the PR firms have given you.
You can actually "watch" the 6 o'clock news (that is, the actual content, and only the fluffy PR-generated "human interest stories" you're interested in) in less than 30 seconds by glancing at the headlines from any major news network, and combining them with a scan through Fark, Slashdot, and a political blog that caters to your own prejudices.
Slashdot Mirror
>
>Microsoft is working with Ford Motor Co towards car that can't crash.
They also get infinite mileage.
In theory, it's like what happens when you take a cat, and strap a piece of toast to its back, buttered-side up. Wrap some wires and magnets around it and launch it into low-earth orbit. As long as there's carpet on the floor of the spacecraft, the cat will spin and generate power indefinitely. You can do this with less than six pounds of butter per year.
Don't try prototyping this. Just about everywhere from ten feet up and low earth orbit, you end up with something that works like the opposite of the Schrodinger's Cat experiment; the waveforms always end up pretty firmly collapsed.
Come to think of it, "Don't try prototyping this" applies just as well to the buttered-cat perpetual mostion experiment as well to the Microsoft car.
>
>[...]
>
>It was a fun job. Then I found another one where I get to play with Python!
Huh? The story's supposed to end with the line "VAXen, my children, just don't belong some places." :-)
>
> * 42..ish
Larry: Of course, he only had the two arms and the one head, and he called himself Jim Gray.
Melinda: But you must admit, he did turn out to be from another planet.
Larry: By my yacht! Melinda Gates!
it.slashdot.org: Infinity minus 1. Improbability sum now complete.
Larry: What are you doing here?
Melinda: With a degree in human-computer interaction and another in psychology, it was either that or back to refactoring Microsoft Bob into Longhorn::Clippy on Monday.
Bill: Oh God. Ford, this is Melinda. Hi. Melinda, my semi-cousin Ford, who shares three of the same mothers as me. Is this sort of thing going to happen every time we attempt to unify approximate and exact reasoning?
Melinda: Very probably, I'm afraid.
Bill: Bill Gates, this is a very large drink. Hi.
A koan: If your answer isn't "yes", the answer is "neither". If your answer is "yes", the answer is "mu".
Let's put it this way.
Isn't it funny that even Billgatus of Borg can't convince the Administration to let in another 100,000 engineers (be they from India or Canada) to get paid and pay Social Security and income taxes on incomes between $30-50K, but nobody blinks an eye at letting in millions of workers (mostly from Mexico) to get paid $3.00/hour washing dishes and pay no tax because they're here illegally or because their incomes are very low, despite consuming tax dollars in the form of health and education costs for their families?
I'm all for immigration -- but is it too much to ask of immigration policymakers that we import the sort of people who will be net contributors to the economy, rather than a net drain thereon?
So, umm... If Microsoft is so evil, are supposed to go to the web pages and help them get it Slashdotted off the 'net? Or not? Life's so confusing!
>
> WIPD is a protest-magnet, and the CopyNight people have simply used WIPD's big-money marketing of the event against them. It will be interesting to see if WIPD is "quietly" discontinued next year.
I've got a feeling this is going to be like a lot of those WTO protests, where about 50 idiots in suits show up, along with 50 agents provocateurs, so that the remaining 4,000 dissidents can have the ever-lovin' shit beaten out of them for the entertainment of the local news media.
WIPD is a protest-magnet, and the CopyNight people have simply self-identified themselves for targeting by RIAA observers who will hand over pictures of their faces to the FBI for face-recognition scans and further investigation.
If I were head of RIAA or MPAA, I'd covertly fund an organization like CopyNight. What better way to identify threats? *cracks knuckles, reclines in chair, cackles evilly*
>
> Clearly a SEP field in place here.
As long as we're merging Star Wars and HHGTTG...
"Binks? Jar-Jar Binks? You're a jerk, Binks. A complete kneebiter."
Saw him doing CGI, for a character that looked like mucas,
M-U-C-U-Mucus...
I saw the obese fuck in his valley of fog,
Asked him his name and in a raspy voice, he said "Lucas".
L-U-C-A-Lucas,
Lu-Lu-Lu-Lu Lucas...
Well I've been around, but I ain't never seen,
A guy who raped all our childhoods in a manner obscene,
Oh, George Lucas.
Lu-Lu-Lu-Lu Lucas...
And I'm not dumb, but I can't understand,
How Jar Jar and the Ewoks came from Emperor's Hand,
Oh, George Lucas.
Lu-Lu-Lu-Lu Lucas...
Well, I got hired just a week before,
And I've never ever been a marketing whore,
But Georgy-porgy set me straight with force,
Told me "do water specials, with MonCal boobs, of course!"
I know George Lucas has me really annoyed,
But remember, if you kill him then I'll be unemployed,
Oh, George Lucas.
Lu-Lu-Lu-Lu Lucas...
Episode 5's how I want it to stay,
But I need to feed my family, so to the Sith I will pray,
For George Lucas,
Lu-lu-lu-lu-Lucas...
(Thanks, Weird Al, for that second-last verse.)
Violence: Seeing something jumping out in front of you and reflexively clicking on the mouse-button to give it both barrels of your shotgun - the screen splatters red for a moment, and then you're safe.
Nonviolence: Staring at a dialog box that reads "WARNING: Use of hypergravitic weapons is a violation of the Galactic Sentients' Rights Convention of CY3441. Estimated civilian casualties are 1.8 billion. Deploy planetkiller? [Yes | No]". You sit back in your chair and lazily circle your finger around the "Y" key before pressing it down with a satisfied grin on your face as you watch watch a video cutscene that consists of nothing more than a picture of a cityscape and a fade-to-white.
>
> Gold. Pure gold.
Hell, Osama did it in less than four years and he didn't even have a slick marketing team.
Then you scan everyone, regularly, to establish a baseline and to watch how it changes over time. Anyone who refuses to submit to a scan has something to hide - or in the case of children, has parents with something to hide.
You see that as impractical and intrusive. I see it as contracts worth billions of taxpayer dollars. Dollars well-spent to secure our children's vulnerable minds from those who would do them harm.
I, for one, welcome our herring-fed overlords!
I just had a nightmare vision of FRAPS video captures from within Star Wars Galaxies being re-enacted by a bunch of LARPers.
I mean, it'd definitely fit within the Star Wars Canon:
This is not the Holiday Special you were looking for.
I've got a bad feeling about this.
It's worse.
It's a LARP!
503 - Service Unavailable. There is insufficient bandwidth in the server room to supply you with a copy of this paper.
>
>Until the signal plugs into my robotic central nervous system, there will always be an anlogue hole... my dilated pupil.
When MPAA and Congress are through with us, there'll only be one dilated analogue hole left. On that day, we are all Goatse.
I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. And the reason? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got a blog?
Due to the rising cost of energy, ink, and/or toner, we urge all authors to reduce their word count wherever possible. For instance, the string ('s "shared source license") in the preceding article is redundant and may be eliminated.
Thank you for your co-operation.
- The Management
Me: That stash of magazines under my bed... It's not what it looks like!
Dad: Well, I hope not. Because it looks like you're masturbating to a 35-year old copy of Electronics magazine!
(Credit due to bash.org.)
The problem is that the decision makers aren't buying what the electronics makers are selling.
Would you rather snort your line of cocaine from between Titney'S pears, or Ballmer's monkey-manboobs?
Put yourself in the place of a Senator and have some compassion :)
Yes, it was. My point was that that half is utterly irrelevant when it comes to the decisionmaking process.
Look at the re-election rates for incumbents. In most districts, merely enough pull that your Party superiors put you on the ballot guarantees you re-election for life, and that goes double for the Senate.
I'm willing to compromise between 100,000,000 and 535. In order-of-magnitudes, that's 10^8 vs. 10^2.728. If we split the difference, we get 10^5.364, or 200,000 lobbyists and Party officials.
> *10 seconds after hiberny*
> *Hood on fire*
> *Not good*
Not good? With a nice chianti and a side of fava beans, it's fantastic!
>
>No. More than half.
More than half... of whom?
Last time I checked, the only halves that mattered were "half of 435" and "half of 100".
And the answer to the original question is "of course they do". Show some respect to the nobility -- you can start by resolving not to insult the intelligence of your betters, fellow serf.
Business suits. As in, "the wearing of".
For those of you asking - that's precisely the sort of thing these PR firms do. Issue a few press releases saying "In hard economic times, more formal dress is returning to the workplace as a means of repudiating the excesses that led to the dot-com crash", and bolster it with a parallel "Metrosexuality is cool" spin, and all of a sudden, people are convinced that buying a suit and ceasing to observe casual Fridays in anything less than a sport coat, will get them promoted, laid, or both.
From the article: