Listen, I sent an email around to my relatives, because of a series of events that lead me to believe that people who have patched their systems now have a new, much easier security hole.
Here it is:
About a week ago, I found that I was getting spammed multiple times from multiple sources, all by different routes, but within the same minute. Because of this, I concluded that this was spamming caused by viruses. Here's a link where I show the spam I got, plus a bunch of the different headers. If you're technically adept, you'll be able to figure this out. If not, well, the other links may be more useful.
I searched for more information, and got this [I suggest reading the rest of this first. After that, you can go and view the links. I believe these links are safe.]
At this point, I sent it on to my Dad, and asked him to forward it to JMU Computing Services. A few days later, he sent back to me the quoted portion that I've appended at the end of this.
Here's the summary of what's going on. It turns out that some virus/trojan horse/worm writer has gotten together with spammers. They exploit a known, but unfixable flaw in Internet Explorer to take control of your computer without you having to even click anything. All you have to do is go to the wrong website.
Once you do this, the computer installs a.DLL file that is opened when Internet Explorer starts up. The.DLL file will then download spam from the internet, and start sending it to all those addresses in your address book. Apparently, if you have P2P installed [Kazaa, for example], it makes use of that, too, to spam everyone you know. As an added bonus, because your computer is now sending out spam, it will work really slowly at everything else. Sorry, but priorities are priorities, and the spammers/virus writers have their own priorities which aren't necessarily yours.
Are you infected? Ultimately, since the real problem is in Internet Explorer, then as long as you have that, there's no way of knowing, except if your firewall reports that it is doing a lot of internet work without you clicking anything. If you don't understand firewalls, then the only way you can tell is that your computer is really, really slow on the internet. Understand that the worms used this month will change next month.
But if you are infected with the instance described in my links, the files to look for are C:\MSDOS.EXE and a file called wthunk32.dll (though I do not know where that will be. You'll have to use 'Find File' to search for it.) Now, if you have it, you can use the process described on the 2nd link above, to see if it's really spamming. Or, you can just rename it to another name (like _wthunk32.dll , with an underscore before the name, and c:\_msdos.exe), and everything should be fine. If you're worried that this might be bad advice, by all means, first make a bootable floppy, and copy these two files to the floppy before you do anything else. Then, if worst comes to worst, you can always boot the floppy, and restore things to their previous state.
Anyhow... if you notice, the advice from JMU
Computing Services, below, is "just don't use
Internet Explorer to go to any new websites." If you don't think that's acceptable, let me suggest
another option:
and download the heir to Netscape. It's free, it's open-source, and it's a ton more secure. It's what I use. It's also a lot more convenient than Internet Explorer, because it has this neat feature called "Tabs". When you right-click a link in Internet Explorer, you have the option "open in a new window". Well, you h
Well, my Helio has a nice, easy-to-read screen. It also has a e-books reading program, as well as something that can help you convert from ASCII text [as in Gutenberg works] into the proprietary [but probably discontinued] Helio format.
Better than that, it's discontinued, and essentially no more software is being written for it. So it's perfect for reading Barnes and Noble E-books! You can download all the discontinued e-books you want, and read them on your discontinued Helio in its discontinued proprietary format! What could be more perfect?
Now, lemme see... does anyone know of any books that are out of publication?
I agree wholeheartedly: A mars mission would be as much claptrap as our moon missions were. Pointless to any real space development.
Much better would be to start a moonbase.
Indeed, when it comes down to it, why bother sending men at all, initially? Send some radio/robotic controlled smelting factories, mining equipment, and transport equipment, and establish the base before you ever put anyone up there. Then send supplies and stock the place. Once that is all ready, then and only then send people. After that, get some real industries going, up there, such as better nanotube construction.
Meanwhile, down here on earth, start using our earthbound nanotube construction to make taller and taller launchpads [it turns out that, done right, nanotubes are about as strong compressively as in tension]. Those launchpads will amount to huge savings in rocket mass.
At some point, between the earthbound nanotube production, and space-based nanotube production, we should be able to get an actual space elevator going....though I don't doubt that will make a few mistakes similar to Hubble's curvature, and watch our first few NASA elevators come crashing down... (duck!)
I wrote to spidey, and he wrote back. But what he is saying is that the fan base is drying up. The writers are just as good as they ever were, but the same numbers of people are not interested any more, when you take out the franchises (star wars, star trek).
That concerns him, for it makes him think that the great masses of people are internalizing, and going from staring at the stars to staring at our belly buttons.
Search for some of my other comments on this topic to see what I think is happening, instead, if it interests you... but his concern isn't about the quality of sci-fi at all.
I agree: I could not even come close to giving Tolkien enough credit, nor did I.
Actually, the issue of Frodo losing his internal battle, but being saved by the grace of the Wise through his mercy on selfish Gollum, is inherently a copy of the Christian understanding of the nature of grace. We can't, ultimately, save ourselves. What we can do is be ready to accept the grace of being saved, and to offer grace and forgiveness to others.
Indeed, too, as you say they got back to Shire and found things were ruined for themselves. They could not return to their innocence. That, too, is how it often is with goodness and evil. The good would rather save the good, even if it were only for others and not for themselves. The evil, on the other hand, say "if I cannot have it, then I want it destroyed."
Your irony, I suspect happens more often than you know. People do get to LOTR and stop there, using the entertainment as a drug to ward off depression. But I think that this story also functions as a kind of "way station" for people, as Frodo at Elrond's house stopped and rested before he started on the real, impossibly difficult journey. As a resting point, LOTR is great.
Link here for the full text of my reference, but that was from my Connections newsletter, which extracted some text directly from another source, and wrote its full reference: Commonweal, Jan 11 2002, Vol CXXIX, Number I, p.5
I rather suspect that the best authors have several purposes in mind when they write, and they don't release a work until they consider it good on all fronts.
Now that's funny. Because, of course, when you have a religious elementary or high school, it teaches just one brand of Christianity [that is, whatever denomination the founders happened to be]. Therefore, such schools are called parochial schools. So any Catholic prochial school would therefore be an oxymoron.
Regarding Catholic or catholic, I'm not sure what Tolkein meant. J.R.R. Tolkein was definitely Catholic in the Roman Catholic sense, and he was the one who evangelized C.S. Lewis. Lewis was on the border of "Anglican Catholic / Roman Catholic" church, and Tolkein wholeheartedly encouraged him to take the "high route". However, Lewis in the end decided that the Anglican Church was more right for him, and went on to be a great theologian. But he also respected Tolkein for his abilities: in Lewis' Space Trilogy, he models "Ransom" after his friend. Ransom, if you notice, was a philologist. That was Tolkein's job.
Indeed, if you look at the elf-runes, they look remarkably like Latvian/Lithuanian (Samogitian) ancient writing. They don't seem to have all the characters of the Viking's writing, so I strongly suspect that Tolkien drew his characters from the Samogitian culture. As an aside, if you are ever in Klaipeda, spend half a day to go to Nida, and visit the gigantic hill calendar on the south end of the town. You'll see that their monument has what looks like elf-runes. It isn't -- it's Samogitian writing.
To specifically reference the quotation I gave, though: Commonweal Jan. 11, 2002, Vol CXXIX, Number I, p.5.
The Lord of the Rings is essentially a mdeitation on the origins and nature of evil. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, was a combat veteran of World War I, and acutely sensitive to the murderous nihilism of modern warfare. He called his novel "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work," and it seems most Catholic in the way it depicts the corruption inherent in great power and especially the way those with virtuous goals are corrupted when given the coercive power to do good. The magical "ring" of the title, which must be kept away from demonic forces and eventually destroyed, cannot be used agaisnt the "evildoers" lest it destroy those who wield it. Small compromises with evil inevitably lead to willful participation in it.
That of course is a plot from a fairy-tale, and Tolkien was not ashamed of the association. Legends and fairy-tales, he argues, reveal the true nature of reality and humankind. Technology, scientific progress, and military or political triumph cannot change that reality -- we forget that truth at our peril.
This source used the big-C Catholic; also, I discover that if they are right, then I've been misspelling Tolkien.
Babylon 5 is a very popular work. As my Topic heading said, it isn't what Sci-Fi doesn't have, so much as what Tolkein does have.
In other words, if you produce a Sci-Fi work that has what people are missing, then they'll like it.
That said, I don't think it's unhealthy for Sci-Fi to fall into the background a bit. I really think that people need to see their need, and fix it by returning to God, Christianity, and the Bible. Then they'll be again able to appreciate science and Sci-Fi.
There are several things that makes Tolkein strike a chord with a lot of people:
(1) an Armageddon style battle. Not a Last battle, but a huge, all-out, good-vs-evil battle. I think people are just getting a feeling, though they're looking externally when they should be looking internally.
(2) Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Catholic work (sorry if I sound to some like I'm not being humble. I'm quoting Tolkein when I say that.) That is, it goes back to orthodox Christianity.
(3) Lord of the Rings is about internal moral struggles.
(4) Lord of the Rings upholds that the right will be victorious.
(5) Lord of the Rings gave birth to whole genres of fiction, storytelling, games, and so on.
Now, #5 explains why it was ready as the work of choice to come into film. But those others all relate to something that is lacking in our society, today, and in our lives, today. And since that lack is destroying us both internally and externally in real life, we make up for it in fantasy.
Contrast that with the 50's, when our major lack was in technology, and our fantasies (for that's what sci-fi really is) played out in that field.
Of course, better than a fantasy that fulfills your feeling of lack, is a reality that makes it right. Which fact should make a lot of people think if maybe the Catholic Church has something after all...
The reminants of the big bang (or universal black hole collapse, as I like to think of it... but that's nonstandard) would be the background radiation, nothing more.
After the big bang, you had the cooling out of our different forces, the formation of subatomic particles, the formation of Hydrogen atoms, and then the formation of giant stars.
Those stars all exploded long ago, creating the wealth of other elements that we see today. Life may or may not have formed at that time, but if it did, it is my guess that all such lifeforms would have been destroyed in the supernovaes of the first generation of stars. Our solar system formed from the exploded remains of one or more of those.
All of which makes these fossils impressively old, the moreso because it is not inconcievable to me that bacteria could predate planetary formation. It would indeed be interesting to look at them, and see what we see.
I liked your analysis. That said, I don't think cold fusion is necessarily impossible, but it would take some very specific molecular design to force two hydrogen nuclei to within a distance where a reasonable chance of tunnelling could be had.
I'm guessing that you'd need an explosive bond that triggered two armatures, each with a H+ nucleus attached, to swing at each other. Each armature would have to have only 2 degrees of freedom, and so on, and so forth...... and then you'd have to be able to manufacture the darn thing. Not necessarily impossible, but highly improbable.
Aside from that, though, Don Lancaster pointed out a second, more important flaw of "free energy" theories, which would also apply to cold fusion: Anyone who comes up with a "free energy source", had better darn well come up with a "free energy sink" as well, or in releasing their discovery on the planet, they'll be the worst criminal in human history.
In line with this, I imagine a new invention that makes use of a wormhole tunnel 2/3 of the way into the Sun, to heat my apartment...
These file endings have me confused. Is.wmv the ubiquitous "Windows Meta Virus"? Should I simply install it to my boot sector, or is it enough to open the file with Microsoft Outlook?
60 km. Well, the 4 loop 1-miler on your race course in track and field is always called the "1600 m dash", so 1.6 km = 1 mile. Therefore, 6.4 km = 4 miles, so 64 km = 40 miles. 60 km is 1/16 less than 64, and 1/16=.0625, so multiply that by 10 (.625) and 4 (2.5), and we get that 60 km = 37.5 miles. Easy, when you think about it.
That general method is actually quite useful in general. I've used it to convert liters to gallons (well, a pint's a pound, the world around, g = 32.2 ft/sec, 1 in = 2.54 cm, and water is 1.99 sl/ft^3), and other interesting calculations.
Thing is, though, it's necessary to practice doing these things in your head.
... is the 2-click-insert-good-floppy-and-go-to-lunch Default Debian Install.
Essentially, first click downloads the install program. Second click confirms "Do you want to run this, and install Debian as an alternate OS?" Most of the program then downloads off the internet.
Then, the program
(1) Loads all system information that it can, into a file
(2) Loads the basic program onto the hard drive, plus all required debs, and checks the hashes.
(3) Installs startup program in Windows that gives the user an option "Would you like to change your default bootup setting to Linux? (Y/N/Don't ask again)"
(4) runs ScanDisk to clean the disk
(5) runs Defrag to defrag it.
(6) rewrites the floppy with a boot disk, and boots into Linux
(7) Partitions a standard user configuration onto the HDD (or onto the alternate HDD, if you so select, thus removing the need for repartitioning)
(8) Installs the Debs
(9) Installs LILO, with 20-second timeout, and default option being Windows bootup (the polite option).
(10) Sets a waiting screen "Your Debian Linux System is Installed. Please hit any key to reboot to Windows, or 'L' to continue with Linux for now, and explore your new OS!."
Such a system should also have a kind of "new hardware" wizard which reports back any new hardware that Debian developers have never seen.
It should also have an "Error Reporting" wizard, such that if the installation process fails, then when you return to Windows you have the option, "Report Error?"
Re:If you actually do something, you're nothing.
on
The Innovators' Ball
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· Score: 1
Just thought I should mention this. The Unions themselves I guess are neither good nor bad. However, the union leaders fall directly into that classification of "people who matter, and shouldn't, and cheat".
And they do tear the business apart without benefitting the workers, quite regularly.
Case in point: my mother in law was a teacher for the Norfolk Public School system, which has a union. Norfolk is in financial trouble, because they keep starting up these building project boondogles that benefit the city leaders, though they are deep in debt. Their taxes are already through the roof, and industry can't even afford to come there with incentives, much less survive there.
Anyhow, since they're in trouble, they needed to get rid of teachers who were near retirement. So they hired the wife of the union lawyer, as the vice principal at Shore Elementary there. She went through, and harrassed the employees into leaving. Because she was the wife of the union lawyer, they got no union representation. Becauase there was a union and they were members, they couldn't get their own representation. So she was harrassed out (that is, they were making her work 80+ hours on a 40 hour contract, without extra pay) with 4 years remaining to a full pension, as opposed to now, where she gets almost nothing, figuratively speaking.
This is TYPICAL of union leadership.
It's not the unions themselves that are greedy, but the union leadership is as greedy as any business leaders, and they call strikes for their own purposes, not for union purposes; they make demands for their own purposes, and they are in the same boat as the bad management you describe.
That said, note that I said it is TYPICAL. I do not know it to be 100%.
Nonetheless, the solution is not to jump into the same boat. The solution may be to cut ties with them; it may be to leave America. But if all Americans jump in the same boat, then all Americans sink, and earned it. At the current moment, the wolves you describe have earned sinking, but not recieved it yet, and there is a reasonable chance that some of them may see their evil and abandon it, which is good for everyone.
So don't jump in the boat yourself. If you have to, leave. But don't turn to evil, even though you see it all around you.
So. Every geek, and indeed every human, must ask him or herself whether to try to profit by bringing misfortune to others, or whether to embrace poverty, in the unlikely hopes that that will make the world a better place.
You have to remember, "unlikely" is our own fallible judgement. But the question is a classic question of game theory, similar to the tragedy of the commons, and in recognizing the application here, this guy is very, very insightful.
The statement is made in all humility. I did not say that my rules are superior to others; I said that God's rules are superior to others. I expect that an active Buddhist, recognizing humility, would in all humility not argue with that statement. Whether he/she had read the Bible, and whether he/she agreed or disagreed, he/she would recognize humility, having lived it, and would accept it as a statement that did not require opposition.
On the other hand, there are some religions (I think Farsi is one; some variants of Hinduism would also qualify) which would not at all take any such thing well.
Ethics, if not morality, can indeed be derived without religion, but it takes faith to hold to morality when the going is hard. Anyone can be charitable and just when it's easy; some people, thankfully, are never challenged, though most are.
Regarding your ideal government, I think you would like the Netherlands. It would not be correct to say that drugs are free'n'legal there, but most of the other stuff is. But having your kind of ideal government is not a path to anything except meaningless suffering and warfare of a different kind. For an example, note that most of our Nigerian spam comes out of Amsterdam.
Not that I advocate the government enforcing religion -- look at my original post: I don't. The government is not God, and should not try to be God. But if you stop your morality at what the government says, you are doing no favor to yourself or your neighbors.
Ultimately, God's rules are best. Read the Bible to find out what they are, or don't.
You wanna know how it is? I'll tell you how it is. Giant sucking sound, that's how it is. When two servers disappear, it doesn't happen without a sound. Nosir, there's a giant sucking sound. I'll tell you, cause I've got big ears, that it's a conspiracy. Conspiracy, that's what is. When they send people to invade your daughter's wedding, and watch her, why, that's a conspiracy. And when they send three men in, claiming to be EDS, my own company, I built that company from scratch, why that's a conspiracy.
(Ross Perot)
Actually, now that that's done, I have to say, (1) I actually respect the guy on every count, and (2) I strongly suspect that there *was* a conspiracy involving his daughter's wedding and the Bushes; but I don't know. Knowing the rest of the history of the Bushes as it has appeared in the news, though, I don't discount the possibility.
Well, I know a guy who pulled something almost like that. But it was Christmas, so instead of dressing up in a workman's outfit, he actually went in dressed in a Santa Clause suit; and when someone challenged him about the loot he was carrying, he just said "Well, thars a laht balb that won't laht up on one side. I have to take it back to my workshop; I'll fix it there and bring it back." The amazing thing is that it actually worked. He was extremely slick.
Fortunately, he had a change of heart later, though. The world would be a much riskier place with more people like him around, I think.
By the way, I kindof wonder just what my kid is learning in 2nd grade, nowadays. Some of those Dr. Seuss' Crime for Kids series are a little extreme, don't you think?
... is that if you get caught in such a situation, don't go through with the bank robbery.
Rather, stop at the nearest police officer you see; and if you don't see a police officer before you see a bank or a government building with security, go into the building and ask them to call the bomb disposal squad for you. Rip off your shirt to prove it, and say "I'm going out to the parking lot. This isn't a bank robbery, but someone wants it to be; and if I don't get help quick, I'm going to die."
That said, if anyone can identify the neck piece, that would be helpful. I had some ideas, but nothing seemed to pan out in an internet search:
(1) Leg irons or cattle fetters?
(2) Double-flanged locking pipe holder, with spacers?
(3) Something used in logging?
(1) If God is God, then He is the Lord of history, and his will is anything but irrelevant. (var. of Newton's first law)
(2) God puts no country upon a pedestal. Ummm, foolsih politicians only attempt to make God put their country upon a pedestal. It doesn't work.
Christ's (God's) rules are superior to others. We need to remember that our government is not God; it only does its best, and as it judges us, we need to judge our judges with a tad more compassion. After all, even with all these corrupt politicians, we are still getting no more or less than we deserve, be that Bill Clinton, George Bush, or Arnold Schwarzenegger (I hope not).
If the people want better, perhaps they should each choose to be ruled by God, instead.
Well, once it hits news.Google's front page, the cat is out of the bag; therefore, it does start to leak out. Now, I don't know how Google automatically generates its front page. However, I do know that Slashdot sometimes appears.
But usually, when Google generates its front page, it can also generate some cross-links to other articles. Therefore, if you have even access to a small media website with a news page, posting a similar article or headline may be what does it.
So here's my advice:
Go out, gather what independant information you can, and then submit it to you local newspaper. Then see if it comes out closer to the national news, or even on Google.
Also, it might not hurt to "Search Google News" for "Electronic Voting", and then follow the first link you find...
Well, a "really wet day" in the jungle doesn't reflect light; a cloud does. Therefore, we could assume that there is some kind of continuous electronic structure to a cloud, since that is typically what it takes to reflect the visible wavelengths.
That's not too hard to imagine, since the water molecule is charged, and forms bonds from charged molecule to charged molecule. In ice, those bonds are strong. In a cloud, they'll be weak, but it's still quite possible.
So my guess -- and this is all a guess, nothing more -- is that there is enough water in the air to form temporary crystalline bonds. In other words, a cloud is an ordered water suspension in the air, as opposed to a vaporous/disordered suspension of water in the air.
But by all means, if anyone knows, please do reply and say that you know. I can't say that; I can just extrapolate a few measley principles to a guess at a specific case.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, WHY CAN I NEVER GET THIS RIGHT?!?!
I ALWAYS mess up the punchline. Darn, darn darn darn DARN!
About a week ago, I found that I was getting spammed multiple times from multiple sources, all by different routes, but within the same minute. Because of this, I concluded that this was spamming caused by viruses. Here's a link where I show the spam I got, plus a bunch of the different headers. If you're technically adept, you'll be able to figure this out. If not, well, the other links may be more useful.
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/6/23747/49282
It turns out that I was right.
I searched for more information, and got this [I suggest reading the rest of this first. After that, you can go and view the links. I believe these links are safe.]
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/9/3/6257/30997
At this point, I sent it on to my Dad, and asked him to forward it to JMU Computing Services. A few days later, he sent back to me the quoted portion that I've appended at the end of this.
Here's the summary of what's going on. It turns out that some virus/trojan horse/worm writer has gotten together with spammers. They exploit a known, but unfixable flaw in Internet Explorer to take control of your computer without you having to even click anything. All you have to do is go to the wrong website.
Once you do this, the computer installs a .DLL file that is opened when Internet Explorer starts up. The .DLL file will then download spam from the internet, and start sending it to all those addresses in your address book. Apparently, if you have P2P installed [Kazaa, for example], it makes use of that, too, to spam everyone you know. As an added bonus, because your computer is now sending out spam, it will work really slowly at everything else. Sorry, but priorities are priorities, and the spammers/virus writers have their own priorities which aren't necessarily yours.
Are you infected? Ultimately, since the real problem is in Internet Explorer, then as long as you have that, there's no way of knowing, except if your firewall reports that it is doing a lot of internet work without you clicking anything. If you don't understand firewalls, then the only way you can tell is that your computer is really, really slow on the internet. Understand that the worms used this month will change next month.
But if you are infected with the instance described in my links, the files to look for are C:\MSDOS.EXE and a file called wthunk32.dll (though I do not know where that will be. You'll have to use 'Find File' to search for it.) Now, if you have it, you can use the process described on the 2nd link above, to see if it's really spamming. Or, you can just rename it to another name (like _wthunk32.dll , with an underscore before the name, and c:\_msdos.exe), and everything should be fine. If you're worried that this might be bad advice, by all means, first make a bootable floppy, and copy these two files to the floppy before you do anything else. Then, if worst comes to worst, you can always boot the floppy, and restore things to their previous state.
Anyhow... if you notice, the advice from JMU Computing Services, below, is "just don't use Internet Explorer to go to any new websites." If you don't think that's acceptable, let me suggest another option:
Go to http://www.mozilla.org.
and download the heir to Netscape. It's free, it's open-source, and it's a ton more secure. It's what I use. It's also a lot more convenient than Internet Explorer, because it has this neat feature called "Tabs". When you right-click a link in Internet Explorer, you have the option "open in a new window". Well, you h
Well, my Helio has a nice, easy-to-read screen. It also has a e-books reading program, as well as something that can help you convert from ASCII text [as in Gutenberg works] into the proprietary [but probably discontinued] Helio format.
Better than that, it's discontinued, and essentially no more software is being written for it. So it's perfect for reading Barnes and Noble E-books! You can download all the discontinued e-books you want, and read them on your discontinued Helio in its discontinued proprietary format! What could be more perfect?
Now, lemme see... does anyone know of any books that are out of publication?
Much appreciated!
...though I don't doubt that will make a few mistakes similar to Hubble's curvature, and watch our first few NASA elevators come crashing down... (duck!)
I agree wholeheartedly: A mars mission would be as much claptrap as our moon missions were. Pointless to any real space development.
Much better would be to start a moonbase.
Indeed, when it comes down to it, why bother sending men at all, initially? Send some radio/robotic controlled smelting factories, mining equipment, and transport equipment, and establish the base before you ever put anyone up there. Then send supplies and stock the place. Once that is all ready, then and only then send people. After that, get some real industries going, up there, such as better nanotube construction.
Meanwhile, down here on earth, start using our earthbound nanotube construction to make taller and taller launchpads [it turns out that, done right, nanotubes are about as strong compressively as in tension]. Those launchpads will amount to huge savings in rocket mass.
At some point, between the earthbound nanotube production, and space-based nanotube production, we should be able to get an actual space elevator going.
I wrote to spidey, and he wrote back. But what he is saying is that the fan base is drying up. The writers are just as good as they ever were, but the same numbers of people are not interested any more, when you take out the franchises (star wars, star trek).
That concerns him, for it makes him think that the great masses of people are internalizing, and going from staring at the stars to staring at our belly buttons.
Search for some of my other comments on this topic to see what I think is happening, instead, if it interests you... but his concern isn't about the quality of sci-fi at all.
Actually, the issue of Frodo losing his internal battle, but being saved by the grace of the Wise through his mercy on selfish Gollum, is inherently a copy of the Christian understanding of the nature of grace. We can't, ultimately, save ourselves. What we can do is be ready to accept the grace of being saved, and to offer grace and forgiveness to others.
Indeed, too, as you say they got back to Shire and found things were ruined for themselves. They could not return to their innocence. That, too, is how it often is with goodness and evil. The good would rather save the good, even if it were only for others and not for themselves. The evil, on the other hand, say "if I cannot have it, then I want it destroyed."
Your irony, I suspect happens more often than you know. People do get to LOTR and stop there, using the entertainment as a drug to ward off depression. But I think that this story also functions as a kind of "way station" for people, as Frodo at Elrond's house stopped and rested before he started on the real, impossibly difficult journey. As a resting point, LOTR is great.
I rather suspect that the best authors have several purposes in mind when they write, and they don't release a work until they consider it good on all fronts.
Regarding Catholic or catholic, I'm not sure what Tolkein meant. J.R.R. Tolkein was definitely Catholic in the Roman Catholic sense, and he was the one who evangelized C.S. Lewis. Lewis was on the border of "Anglican Catholic / Roman Catholic" church, and Tolkein wholeheartedly encouraged him to take the "high route". However, Lewis in the end decided that the Anglican Church was more right for him, and went on to be a great theologian. But he also respected Tolkein for his abilities: in Lewis' Space Trilogy, he models "Ransom" after his friend. Ransom, if you notice, was a philologist. That was Tolkein's job.
Indeed, if you look at the elf-runes, they look remarkably like Latvian/Lithuanian (Samogitian) ancient writing. They don't seem to have all the characters of the Viking's writing, so I strongly suspect that Tolkien drew his characters from the Samogitian culture. As an aside, if you are ever in Klaipeda, spend half a day to go to Nida, and visit the gigantic hill calendar on the south end of the town. You'll see that their monument has what looks like elf-runes. It isn't -- it's Samogitian writing.
To specifically reference the quotation I gave, though: Commonweal Jan. 11, 2002, Vol CXXIX, Number I, p.5.
The Lord of the Rings is essentially a mdeitation on the origins and nature of evil. Tolkien, a devout Catholic, was a combat veteran of World War I, and acutely sensitive to the murderous nihilism of modern warfare. He called his novel "a fundamentally religious and Catholic work," and it seems most Catholic in the way it depicts the corruption inherent in great power and especially the way those with virtuous goals are corrupted when given the coercive power to do good. The magical "ring" of the title, which must be kept away from demonic forces and eventually destroyed, cannot be used agaisnt the "evildoers" lest it destroy those who wield it. Small compromises with evil inevitably lead to willful participation in it.
That of course is a plot from a fairy-tale, and Tolkien was not ashamed of the association. Legends and fairy-tales, he argues, reveal the true nature of reality and humankind. Technology, scientific progress, and military or political triumph cannot change that reality -- we forget that truth at our peril.
This source used the big-C Catholic; also, I discover that if they are right, then I've been misspelling Tolkien.
Babylon 5 is a very popular work. As my Topic heading said, it isn't what Sci-Fi doesn't have, so much as what Tolkein does have.
In other words, if you produce a Sci-Fi work that has what people are missing, then they'll like it.
That said, I don't think it's unhealthy for Sci-Fi to fall into the background a bit. I really think that people need to see their need, and fix it by returning to God, Christianity, and the Bible. Then they'll be again able to appreciate science and Sci-Fi.
(1) an Armageddon style battle. Not a Last battle, but a huge, all-out, good-vs-evil battle. I think people are just getting a feeling, though they're looking externally when they should be looking internally.
(2) Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Catholic work (sorry if I sound to some like I'm not being humble. I'm quoting Tolkein when I say that.) That is, it goes back to orthodox Christianity.
(3) Lord of the Rings is about internal moral struggles.
(4) Lord of the Rings upholds that the right will be victorious.
(5) Lord of the Rings gave birth to whole genres of fiction, storytelling, games, and so on.
Now, #5 explains why it was ready as the work of choice to come into film. But those others all relate to something that is lacking in our society, today, and in our lives, today. And since that lack is destroying us both internally and externally in real life, we make up for it in fantasy.
Contrast that with the 50's, when our major lack was in technology, and our fantasies (for that's what sci-fi really is) played out in that field.
Of course, better than a fantasy that fulfills your feeling of lack, is a reality that makes it right. Which fact should make a lot of people think if maybe the Catholic Church has something after all...
The reminants of the big bang (or universal black hole collapse, as I like to think of it... but that's nonstandard) would be the background radiation, nothing more.
After the big bang, you had the cooling out of our different forces, the formation of subatomic particles, the formation of Hydrogen atoms, and then the formation of giant stars.
Those stars all exploded long ago, creating the wealth of other elements that we see today. Life may or may not have formed at that time, but if it did, it is my guess that all such lifeforms would have been destroyed in the supernovaes of the first generation of stars. Our solar system formed from the exploded remains of one or more of those.
All of which makes these fossils impressively old, the moreso because it is not inconcievable to me that bacteria could predate planetary formation. It would indeed be interesting to look at them, and see what we see.
I liked your analysis. That said, I don't think cold fusion is necessarily impossible, but it would take some very specific molecular design to force two hydrogen nuclei to within a distance where a reasonable chance of tunnelling could be had.
... and then you'd have to be able to manufacture the darn thing. Not necessarily impossible, but highly improbable.
I'm guessing that you'd need an explosive bond that triggered two armatures, each with a H+ nucleus attached, to swing at each other. Each armature would have to have only 2 degrees of freedom, and so on, and so forth...
Aside from that, though, Don Lancaster pointed out a second, more important flaw of "free energy" theories, which would also apply to cold fusion: Anyone who comes up with a "free energy source", had better darn well come up with a "free energy sink" as well, or in releasing their discovery on the planet, they'll be the worst criminal in human history.
In line with this, I imagine a new invention that makes use of a wormhole tunnel 2/3 of the way into the Sun, to heat my apartment...
These file endings have me confused. Is .wmv the ubiquitous "Windows Meta Virus"? Should I simply install it to my boot sector, or is it enough to open the file with Microsoft Outlook?
60 km. Well, the 4 loop 1-miler on your race course in track and field is always called the "1600 m dash", so 1.6 km = 1 mile. Therefore, 6.4 km = 4 miles, so 64 km = 40 miles. 60 km is 1/16 less than 64, and 1/16=.0625, so multiply that by 10 (.625) and 4 (2.5), and we get that 60 km = 37.5 miles. Easy, when you think about it.
That general method is actually quite useful in general. I've used it to convert liters to gallons (well, a pint's a pound, the world around, g = 32.2 ft/sec, 1 in = 2.54 cm, and water is 1.99 sl/ft^3), and other interesting calculations.
Thing is, though, it's necessary to practice doing these things in your head.
Otherwise, you won't be a geek.
Essentially, first click downloads the install program. Second click confirms "Do you want to run this, and install Debian as an alternate OS?" Most of the program then downloads off the internet.
Then, the program (1) Loads all system information that it can, into a file
(2) Loads the basic program onto the hard drive, plus all required debs, and checks the hashes.
(3) Installs startup program in Windows that gives the user an option "Would you like to change your default bootup setting to Linux? (Y/N/Don't ask again)"
(4) runs ScanDisk to clean the disk
(5) runs Defrag to defrag it.
(6) rewrites the floppy with a boot disk, and boots into Linux
(7) Partitions a standard user configuration onto the HDD (or onto the alternate HDD, if you so select, thus removing the need for repartitioning)
(8) Installs the Debs
(9) Installs LILO, with 20-second timeout, and default option being Windows bootup (the polite option).
(10) Sets a waiting screen "Your Debian Linux System is Installed. Please hit any key to reboot to Windows, or 'L' to continue with Linux for now, and explore your new OS!."
Such a system should also have a kind of "new hardware" wizard which reports back any new hardware that Debian developers have never seen.
It should also have an "Error Reporting" wizard, such that if the installation process fails, then when you return to Windows you have the option, "Report Error?"
And they do tear the business apart without benefitting the workers, quite regularly.
Case in point: my mother in law was a teacher for the Norfolk Public School system, which has a union. Norfolk is in financial trouble, because they keep starting up these building project boondogles that benefit the city leaders, though they are deep in debt. Their taxes are already through the roof, and industry can't even afford to come there with incentives, much less survive there.
Anyhow, since they're in trouble, they needed to get rid of teachers who were near retirement. So they hired the wife of the union lawyer, as the vice principal at Shore Elementary there. She went through, and harrassed the employees into leaving. Because she was the wife of the union lawyer, they got no union representation. Becauase there was a union and they were members, they couldn't get their own representation. So she was harrassed out (that is, they were making her work 80+ hours on a 40 hour contract, without extra pay) with 4 years remaining to a full pension, as opposed to now, where she gets almost nothing, figuratively speaking.
This is TYPICAL of union leadership.
It's not the unions themselves that are greedy, but the union leadership is as greedy as any business leaders, and they call strikes for their own purposes, not for union purposes; they make demands for their own purposes, and they are in the same boat as the bad management you describe.
That said, note that I said it is TYPICAL. I do not know it to be 100%.
Nonetheless, the solution is not to jump into the same boat. The solution may be to cut ties with them; it may be to leave America. But if all Americans jump in the same boat, then all Americans sink, and earned it. At the current moment, the wolves you describe have earned sinking, but not recieved it yet, and there is a reasonable chance that some of them may see their evil and abandon it, which is good for everyone.
So don't jump in the boat yourself. If you have to, leave. But don't turn to evil, even though you see it all around you.
You have to remember, "unlikely" is our own fallible judgement. But the question is a classic question of game theory, similar to the tragedy of the commons, and in recognizing the application here, this guy is very, very insightful.
Someone mod this up.
The statement is made in all humility. I did not say that my rules are superior to others; I said that God's rules are superior to others. I expect that an active Buddhist, recognizing humility, would in all humility not argue with that statement. Whether he/she had read the Bible, and whether he/she agreed or disagreed, he/she would recognize humility, having lived it, and would accept it as a statement that did not require opposition.
On the other hand, there are some religions (I think Farsi is one; some variants of Hinduism would also qualify) which would not at all take any such thing well.
Ethics, if not morality, can indeed be derived without religion, but it takes faith to hold to morality when the going is hard. Anyone can be charitable and just when it's easy; some people, thankfully, are never challenged, though most are.
Regarding your ideal government, I think you would like the Netherlands. It would not be correct to say that drugs are free'n'legal there, but most of the other stuff is. But having your kind of ideal government is not a path to anything except meaningless suffering and warfare of a different kind. For an example, note that most of our Nigerian spam comes out of Amsterdam.
Not that I advocate the government enforcing religion -- look at my original post: I don't. The government is not God, and should not try to be God. But if you stop your morality at what the government says, you are doing no favor to yourself or your neighbors.
Ultimately, God's rules are best. Read the Bible to find out what they are, or don't.
You wanna know how it is? I'll tell you how it is. Giant sucking sound, that's how it is. When two servers disappear, it doesn't happen without a sound. Nosir, there's a giant sucking sound. I'll tell you, cause I've got big ears, that it's a conspiracy. Conspiracy, that's what is. When they send people to invade your daughter's wedding, and watch her, why, that's a conspiracy. And when they send three men in, claiming to be EDS, my own company, I built that company from scratch, why that's a conspiracy.
(Ross Perot)
Actually, now that that's done, I have to say, (1) I actually respect the guy on every count, and (2) I strongly suspect that there *was* a conspiracy involving his daughter's wedding and the Bushes; but I don't know. Knowing the rest of the history of the Bushes as it has appeared in the news, though, I don't discount the possibility.
... wanted the Customs to lose some important data? For example, if they were to lose all records of a certain recent import ...
Fortunately, he had a change of heart later, though. The world would be a much riskier place with more people like him around, I think.
By the way, I kindof wonder just what my kid is learning in 2nd grade, nowadays. Some of those Dr. Seuss' Crime for Kids series are a little extreme, don't you think?
Rather, stop at the nearest police officer you see; and if you don't see a police officer before you see a bank or a government building with security, go into the building and ask them to call the bomb disposal squad for you. Rip off your shirt to prove it, and say "I'm going out to the parking lot. This isn't a bank robbery, but someone wants it to be; and if I don't get help quick, I'm going to die."
That said, if anyone can identify the neck piece, that would be helpful. I had some ideas, but nothing seemed to pan out in an internet search:
(1) Leg irons or cattle fetters?
(2) Double-flanged locking pipe holder, with spacers?
(3) Something used in logging?
(1) If God is God, then He is the Lord of history, and his will is anything but irrelevant. (var. of Newton's first law)
(2) God puts no country upon a pedestal. Ummm, foolsih politicians only attempt to make God put their country upon a pedestal. It doesn't work.
Christ's (God's) rules are superior to others. We need to remember that our government is not God; it only does its best, and as it judges us, we need to judge our judges with a tad more compassion. After all, even with all these corrupt politicians, we are still getting no more or less than we deserve, be that Bill Clinton, George Bush, or Arnold Schwarzenegger (I hope not).
If the people want better, perhaps they should each choose to be ruled by God, instead.
But usually, when Google generates its front page, it can also generate some cross-links to other articles. Therefore, if you have even access to a small media website with a news page, posting a similar article or headline may be what does it.
So here's my advice:
Go out, gather what independant information you can, and then submit it to you local newspaper. Then see if it comes out closer to the national news, or even on Google.
Also, it might not hurt to "Search Google News" for "Electronic Voting", and then follow the first link you find...
That's not too hard to imagine, since the water molecule is charged, and forms bonds from charged molecule to charged molecule. In ice, those bonds are strong. In a cloud, they'll be weak, but it's still quite possible.
So my guess -- and this is all a guess, nothing more -- is that there is enough water in the air to form temporary crystalline bonds. In other words, a cloud is an ordered water suspension in the air, as opposed to a vaporous/disordered suspension of water in the air.
But by all means, if anyone knows, please do reply and say that you know. I can't say that; I can just extrapolate a few measley principles to a guess at a specific case.