culture that prides themselves on traditional values of honor, discretion and privacy
-A culture where people willingly register their personal information with the local police officers (for "emergency use only")
-Where privacy is referred to as "puraibashii" because the language has no native term for the concept?
-Where people have commonly faced discrimination in housing, employment, and marriage based on information the government-listed family register?
Must be a different Japan than the one I lived in:)
After starting 3 or 4 Zork-style text adventures (Applesoft Basic on an Apple ][e) and not finishing them, I decided to write "Unfinished Adventure."
It was a half-serious game where you wandered around a half-finished text-game world. For example there was a castle you could walk behind, and see that it was just a prop made of canvas. You could also go "offstage" to the green room, and meet non-player characters, who were sitting, learning their parts. And every once in a while, and "game designer" character would appear, walking around trying to "debug" the game.
Didn't there use to be a guy who would write Linux drivers for any device, as long as you would give him one of the devices? I seem to remember seeing a claim like that on a Linux website a few years ago. Don't know how good his work was, but he probably acquired a pretty good collection of hardware, though.
I really like the acronym "MP" for "member of parliament." I wish we Americans could adopt a similar convention and start referring to our representatives as "MC's" (members of Congress). It's short, succinct, gender neutral, and can include both houses.
Compared to any of these:
Write your congressman
Write your senator or congressperson
Write your congressional representative
Write your congressman or congresswoman
Write your congresscritter
... "Write your MC" is so much easier!
Unfortunately, since so many of us associate "MC" with rap music, my usage probably won't catch on.
Doesn't Iran have pretty strict censorship?
on
Live from Iran, Film88
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I can't help but wonder, will this service be available in Iran itself? How many of the movies offered online are illegal to watch in Iran (for promoting "sex," "immorality," and being "anti-Islamic?") Will local religious fundementalists shut down the service before the MPAA can?
I'm running 1.0rc1 at home right now, but I'd like to see a list of exactly what changes have been made in 1.0. Most other open source projects are good about listing the exact changes from version to version, but I can't find such info for Mozilla. Anyone?
Answer: Never, because it is only through government that corporations can truly threaten our liberty.
Note some of the most common ways that corporations abuse their power:
lobbying for preferential treatment under the (confusing and complex) tax laws
using the goverment to steal property for them, through abuse of imminent domain
putting competitors out of business, not by competing or by making superior products, but by lobbying the government for regulations that their competitors are unable to afford.
forcing (I mean truly forcing, as in "threat of fines and jail time) you and me to buy their products, by having the government make them "mandatory."
All these are impossible for a corporation, no matter how evil, to accomplish on its own. They require cooperation of politicians and bureaucrats who are more interested in power than in doing what is just.
The principle of "separation of church and state" is strongly ingrained in our society. We need to defend the idea of "separation of corporation and state" just as strongly.
Astronomer (giving a lecture in a planetarium): "And in about 2 billion years, the sun will exhaust its fuel supply and explode, consuming the earth and all the planets."
Woman in audience: "Excuse me, did you say 2 billion years?"
Astronomer: "Yes, 2 billion years."
Woman: "Oh, what a relief! For a moment I thought you said '2 million years.'"
What is that called where people do things without some tangible benefit for themselves?
Communism? Fascism? Socialism? Theocracy? Totalitarianism?
What is that called where people are free to voluntarily do things without some tangible benefit for themselves?
Capitalism:)
Seriously, to get back on topic, the "think cycle" idea sounds really neat, and I hope it contributes to some creative solutions to some very real problems.
IANAV (I am not a violinist) but I think the biggest advantage of a MIDI violin is simply the ability to practice silently.
For someone like me, who lives in a small apartment where disturbing the neighbors is a concern, being able to play the violin, with all the tactile feedback of the real thing, yet without making a racket, would be extremely desirable.
Electric guitarists, keyboardists, and drummers have had the ability to practice using headphones for years. I believe there are also attachments for the trumpet and saxophone to allow "silent" playing. This innovation (if it works as well as the article claims) just extends that ability to a new instrument.
I've been supporting the idea of letting people choose their own usernames for a while now, after working in a large company that uses the 1st initial - lastname convention.
My main reasons:
1) People often change their names, especially women who get married or divorced. A user-chosen handle shouldn't ever have to be changed
2) Usernames based on real names usually end up with collisions. If you have 4 people named S. Johnson, you can have sjohnson1, sjohnson2, etc. But then when the first S. Johnson leaves the organization, sjohnson3 will want to know why she can't have her username changed to "just sjohnson"
3) Instant messaging and certAin OnLine services where people get to choose "creative" handles, have become so commonplace that carrying over the convention to a business or academic environment shouldn't be too difficult, even to those ouside geek culture.
The Day the Phones Stopped, by Leonard Lee.
Some of the incidents on the page are covered in this book, which mainly addresses the problem of becoming overly dependent on software for real-life, mission-critical applications.
Unfortunately the book, published 10 years ago, appears to be out of print, but as I recall, the issues it covered are even more relevant today.
I had a Compuserve account from around 1991, when you could access its service with just a modem and a simple terminal program (I even used to connect to CS on a word processor). When they were bought by AOL, I should have listened to my friends and canceled it right there, but still, I kept the account, partly as a "backup ISP" and partly out of nostalgia.
When I decided to get broadband a few weeks ago, I decided to cancel the CS account, which I had hardly used for a couple of years.
I went to their website, thinking I'd get the number for tech support. But at www dot compuserve dot com, all I found, to my horror, was a "portal"-looking thing, covered with advertising. Poking around their site, there was a link to get access numbers, but no tech support info whatsoever. I ended up doing a Google search to get the CS customer support line.
Next I called the number and waited on hold for over 40 minutes. Now, I don't mind waiting if I eventually get a knowlegable person on the line. That was not the case. Instead I got a guy who only wanted to upgrade me to "Compuserve 2000" for which he'd send me a free CD.
"But I use Linux. Will your CD work on my computer?"
"Um, well, it should."
Just for kicks, I let them send me the CD, Curiously enough, the setup.exe would not execute on my computer (I didn't try running it under WINE). Called back. Waited on hold again. Asked again to cancel the service. This time the service rep lied to me, saying that my account was in "backup" and that I wasn't being charged for the service. I persisted, and got the account cancelled. She reminded me to remove any files I might have on their servers. It's been over a month ago, and they still haven't deleted my old CS webpage.
In short, once-great Compuserve has, in my opinion, joined the Dark Side.
With modern graphics and 3D sound processing, I'll bet it wouldn't be too hard to add at least some of the sensory experience. The sounds would be easiest- imagine a 3D sound setup where the printer sounds like it's over in one corner, and every time you click a key, an old-fashioned loud key click comes from the location of your keyboard..
The smell of the pizza crusts and the actual feel of the keyboard would of course still have to be left to the imagination.
And let's not forget...
A Jedi master named "Yoda" (could very well be a Japanese surname) who speaks in Japanese word-order (verb at the end of the sentence, as in "Your father he is.")
The Salon article begins with, "Computers helped transport people to the moon and back.."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that on the Apollo 11 mission, the LEM's landing computer failed just before touchdown, forcing Armstrong and Aldrin to switch to manual control.
One of the big issues with translating between human languages is context. While many words have more or less direct equivilants in other languages ("dog"(en) "perro"(es)), you're always going to run into slang, cultural references, and especially, jargon, where the particular usage will not be in a standard dictionary, and only by the context can the actual meaning be inferred (Example: the word "anchor" in the context of sailing versus the context of webpage design).
Not that this can't be overcome with the distributed model the article discusses, but I still think it will be a while before we see computer translation that doesn't require at least some degree of human assistance.
While the technology may work well for some languages, like Japanese, which only has 5 vowel sounds, I wonder if they've done any testing with speakers of other languages that have a larger number of sounds.
At any rate, I agree it really sounds like something from a William Gibson novel.
On X (where X = a date sometime before 1980 = Bell's birthday | anniversery of Bell's death)
, all telephone lines in North America went silent for Y (where Y= 1 | 2) second(s), as a tribute to Alexander Bell.
I surf a lot of pages in Japanese. While I've found Netscape sufficient for viewing Japanese (and other double-byte character set) language pages, I've often had trouble getting things like web forms to work (this is on the Linux version).
One of my biggest disappointments with Opera (which I last tried out about a year ago) was its lack of support for far eastern languages. I hear this has been resolved in newer versions.
BeOS's NetPositive actually worked the best for me as far as displaying and inputting Japanese.
Anyway, it would be nice if more of these "browser comparison" articles included internationalization (i18n) along with "speed," "standards compliance," "ease of installation", etc. as one of the features tested.
Slashdot Mirror
culture that prides themselves on traditional values of honor, discretion and privacy
:)
-A culture where people willingly register their personal information with the local police officers (for "emergency use only")
-Where privacy is referred to as "puraibashii" because the language has no native term for the concept?
-Where people have commonly faced discrimination in housing, employment, and marriage based on information the government-listed family register?
Must be a different Japan than the one I lived in
After starting 3 or 4 Zork-style text adventures (Applesoft Basic on an Apple ][e) and not finishing them, I decided to write "Unfinished Adventure."
It was a half-serious game where you wandered around a half-finished text-game world. For example there was a castle you could walk behind, and see that it was just a prop made of canvas. You could also go "offstage" to the green room, and meet non-player characters, who were sitting, learning their parts. And every once in a while, and "game designer" character would appear, walking around trying to "debug" the game.
Didn't there use to be a guy who would write Linux drivers for any device, as long as you would give him one of the devices?
I seem to remember seeing a claim like that on a Linux website a few years ago. Don't know how good his work was, but he probably acquired a pretty good collection of hardware, though.
>At least the government has legal restrictions on what it can/can't do.
Not that legal restrictions have ever stopped the government from doing anything (read the 10th Ammendment lately?)
Don't patents expire after 7 years (or is it 14)?
(Then again, I guess there's a risk that they might start extending patents to ridiculous lengths, like they've done with copyrights...)
I really like the acronym "MP" for "member of parliament." I wish we Americans could adopt a similar convention and start referring to our representatives as "MC's" (members of Congress). It's short, succinct, gender neutral, and can include both houses.
... "Write your MC" is so much easier!
Compared to any of these:
Write your congressman
Write your senator or congressperson
Write your congressional representative
Write your congressman or congresswoman
Write your congresscritter
Unfortunately, since so many of us associate "MC" with rap music, my usage probably won't catch on.
I can't help but wonder, will this service be available in Iran itself? How many of the movies offered online are illegal to watch in Iran (for promoting "sex," "immorality," and being "anti-Islamic?") Will local religious fundementalists shut down the service before the MPAA can?
I'm running 1.0rc1 at home right now, but I'd like to see a list of exactly what changes have been made in 1.0. Most other open source projects are good about listing the exact changes from version to version, but I can't find such info for Mozilla. Anyone?
Answer: Never, because it is only through government that corporations can truly threaten our liberty. Note some of the most common ways that corporations abuse their power:
lobbying for preferential treatment under the (confusing and complex) tax laws
using the goverment to steal property for them, through abuse of imminent domain
putting competitors out of business, not by competing or by making superior products, but by lobbying the government for regulations that their competitors are unable to afford.
forcing (I mean truly forcing, as in "threat of fines and jail time) you and me to buy their products, by having the government make them "mandatory."
All these are impossible for a corporation, no matter how evil, to accomplish on its own. They require cooperation of politicians and bureaucrats who are more interested in power than in doing what is just.
The principle of "separation of church and state" is strongly ingrained in our society. We need to defend the idea of "separation of corporation and state" just as strongly.
Astronomer (giving a lecture in a planetarium): "And in about 2 billion years, the sun will exhaust its fuel supply and explode, consuming the earth and all the planets."
Woman in audience: "Excuse me, did you say 2 billion years?"
Astronomer: "Yes, 2 billion years."
Woman: "Oh, what a relief! For a moment I thought you said '2 million years.'"
What is that called where people do things without some tangible benefit for themselves?
:)
Communism? Fascism? Socialism? Theocracy? Totalitarianism?
What is that called where people are free to voluntarily do things without some tangible benefit for themselves?
Capitalism
Seriously, to get back on topic, the "think cycle" idea sounds really neat, and I hope it contributes to some creative solutions to some very real problems.
IANAV (I am not a violinist) but I think the biggest advantage of a MIDI violin is simply the ability to practice silently.
For someone like me, who lives in a small apartment where disturbing the neighbors is a concern, being able to play the violin, with all the tactile feedback of the real thing, yet without making a racket, would be extremely desirable.
Electric guitarists, keyboardists, and drummers have had the ability to practice using headphones for years. I believe there are also attachments for the trumpet and saxophone to allow "silent" playing. This innovation (if it works as well as the article claims) just extends that ability to a new instrument.
Elegant tools for a more civilized age.
I've been supporting the idea of letting people choose their own usernames for a while now, after working in a large company that uses the 1st initial - lastname convention.
My main reasons:
1) People often change their names, especially women who get married or divorced. A user-chosen handle shouldn't ever have to be changed
2) Usernames based on real names usually end up with collisions. If you have 4 people named S. Johnson, you can have sjohnson1, sjohnson2, etc. But then when the first S. Johnson leaves the organization, sjohnson3 will want to know why she can't have her username changed to "just sjohnson"
3) Instant messaging and certAin OnLine services where people get to choose "creative" handles, have become so commonplace that carrying over the convention to a business or academic environment shouldn't be too difficult, even to those ouside geek culture.
The Day the Phones Stopped, by Leonard Lee.
Some of the incidents on the page are covered in this book, which mainly addresses the problem of becoming overly dependent on software for real-life, mission-critical applications.
Unfortunately the book, published 10 years ago, appears to be out of print, but as I recall, the issues it covered are even more relevant today.
I had a Compuserve account from around 1991, when you could access its service with just a modem and a simple terminal program (I even used to connect to CS on a word processor). When they were bought by AOL, I should have listened to my friends and canceled it right there, but still, I kept the account, partly as a "backup ISP" and partly out of nostalgia.
When I decided to get broadband a few weeks ago, I decided to cancel the CS account, which I had hardly used for a couple of years.
I went to their website, thinking I'd get the number for tech support. But at www dot compuserve dot com, all I found, to my horror, was a "portal"-looking thing, covered with advertising. Poking around their site, there was a link to get access numbers, but no tech support info whatsoever. I ended up doing a Google search to get the CS customer support line.
Next I called the number and waited on hold for over 40 minutes. Now, I don't mind waiting if I eventually get a knowlegable person on the line. That was not the case. Instead I got a guy who only wanted to upgrade me to "Compuserve 2000" for which he'd send me a free CD.
"But I use Linux. Will your CD work on my computer?"
"Um, well, it should."
Just for kicks, I let them send me the CD, Curiously enough, the setup.exe would not execute on my computer (I didn't try running it under WINE). Called back. Waited on hold again. Asked again to cancel the service. This time the service rep lied to me, saying that my account was in "backup" and that I wasn't being charged for the service. I persisted, and got the account cancelled. She reminded me to remove any files I might have on their servers. It's been over a month ago, and they still haven't deleted my old CS webpage.
In short, once-great Compuserve has, in my opinion, joined the Dark Side.
The most likely tactic would be trying to offer "upgrade" deals, like "for an $_____, you can download the HIGH BITRATE version of this song!"
With modern graphics and 3D sound processing, I'll bet it wouldn't be too hard to add at least some of the sensory experience. The sounds would be easiest- imagine a 3D sound setup where the printer sounds like it's over in one corner, and every time you click a key, an old-fashioned loud key click comes from the location of your keyboard..
The smell of the pizza crusts and the actual feel of the keyboard would of course still have to be left to the imagination.
And let's not forget...
A Jedi master named "Yoda" (could very well be a Japanese surname) who speaks in Japanese word-order (verb at the end of the sentence, as in "Your father he is.")
The Salon article begins with, "Computers helped transport people to the moon and back.."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that on the Apollo 11 mission, the LEM's landing computer failed just before touchdown, forcing Armstrong and Aldrin to switch to manual control.
One of the big issues with translating between human languages is context. While many words have more or less direct equivilants in other languages ("dog"(en) "perro"(es)), you're always going to run into slang, cultural references, and especially, jargon, where the particular usage will not be in a standard dictionary, and only by the context can the actual meaning be inferred (Example: the word "anchor" in the context of sailing versus the context of webpage design).
Not that this can't be overcome with the distributed model the article discusses, but I still think it will be a while before we see computer translation that doesn't require at least some degree of human assistance.
While the technology may work well for some languages, like Japanese, which only has 5 vowel sounds, I wonder if they've done any testing with speakers of other languages that have a larger number of sounds.
At any rate, I agree it really sounds like something from a William Gibson novel.
They should have it working by the second service pack or so.
On X (where X = a date sometime before 1980 = Bell's birthday | anniversery of Bell's death) , all telephone lines in North America went silent for Y (where Y= 1 | 2) second(s), as a tribute to Alexander Bell.
I surf a lot of pages in Japanese. While I've found Netscape sufficient for viewing Japanese (and other double-byte character set) language pages, I've often had trouble getting things like web forms to work (this is on the Linux version).
One of my biggest disappointments with Opera (which I last tried out about a year ago) was its lack of support for far eastern languages. I hear this has been resolved in newer versions.
BeOS's NetPositive actually worked the best for me as far as displaying and inputting Japanese.
Anyway, it would be nice if more of these "browser comparison" articles included internationalization (i18n) along with "speed," "standards compliance," "ease of installation", etc. as one of the features tested.