Look, it's only one QBIT NOT gate. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to say potentially. Get it up to a few million QBIT gates of all sorts, and I'm sure we can arrange a port so that it will virtually run Linux. Much more interesting, however, will be if they can port Windows to it, and then write a program that will tell you "34% BSOD" so that you can tell just how potentially unstable your system is, just by thinking about running different programs. (Ummm... MSIE, with gator? 99% dead. Ooops. Better think about Mozilla Firebird... aaah. There we go.) Also interesting will be a port of ONEKO/SCHROEDINGER where you get to guess whether the cat is dead or alive (not too unlike a lot of cats I currently know.)
You're right. They want a piece of SCO.
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My guess, posted in the traditional slashdot fashion (IANAAR; IHNRT*A; IDNKWT*IATA), the submitter of this patch wanted a piece of SCO, or the next company to come along. Perhaps he wasn't a coder, or not too much of one, and wanted to be *sure* that his patch would get in. So he rolled a US-style version (which US companies would use), so as to be ready with his lawyer all cocked and aimed.
I tend to think this is not a good idea, of course; only true coders should maintain copyright.
No. I moved to one, and it is much better. If you look, you will find one too. If you know Spanish, I suggest you check out Chile, though I can't say that it is or isn't -- I can only say that it seems a likely prospect.
I should note that the country that I found quite probably is in the process of being conquered in a warless conquest of deceit by the EU... so it may not remain better. But if the people are moral, then it will remain better despite the EU -- we'll see.
But I do want to point out: Such countries as I described do exist, and you'll never find them if you don't look for them.
But, let me point this out: there are certain "powers" that have the ability to overthrow governments, and indeed have the ability to create governments all on their own. They include [with governments based on it alone]:
(1) The charismatic leader [Saddam] (2) The power of ethnicity [Bosnia/Serbia/Croatia] (3) The power of the people [Biblical stories of early Israel] (4) The power of wise leadership [ancient: judges/courts at the city gates] (5) The power of money [Hansiatic League]
Possibly it also includes the 5th house: the power of publicity, but I cannot think of a government that has run only based upon publicity.
Now, it is best when every single one of these has official representation in a government. But when one of these powers is ignored by a government, it can destroy the government in a characteristic fashion.
(1) Charismatic Leader: If ignored, you get repeated intrigue and assassination (2) Ethnicity: If ignored, you first get a division of language, and a request to split. If still ignored, you get Balkanization and racial wars. (3) Population: If ignored, you get a French style revolution. (4) Wise leadership: If ignored, you get beurocratization, and crime increases. (5) Money: If ignored, you get bribery undermining every other part of the government.
Now, my point here is that although one can say that "yes, it'll come eventually", you really do not want to see a French-style revolution. Blood flows en masse, and as often as not it is the innocent who die. So whatever you do, don't advocate "we must overturn this". There is one way that we can exercise our power, and like all the other powers, it is evil -- but this is a particularly horrid evil.
It is far better to search for a different country, one that has more freedom and morality [those two are inherently tied: people who are evil to each other cannot live with freedom], and move there.
One of my roommates does, but he's busy enough as it is.
.
Yeah. That's the way it goes. If the injustice against you is bad enough, you don't have the energy or assets to fight it.
It's that way with our prepublishing business. We're the best around, but we only have one set of contracts (big ones), and when you count contract creep, they keep it at just under or just over a barely livable wage. If we had the assets to properly pursue more leads, we could get more and better work. Oh, well.
I think that somebody has a problem, if it takes them 30 minutes to read a comic.
I finish the Sunday Non Sequitor in just under 18 minutes. If it takes someone thirty minutes, they need to switch to an easier one. Maybe Ziggy would be a better start. That one only takes me 5.
I'm up for interest. But I don't know what tools I should be using. I can do the sound mixing and the sound recording okay, I guess. I'd use Audacity and sound-record.
But what should I be using for the animation itself?
Get with the times, man... it's going to be popping up more and more, because with our current set of laws (now to be enforced on a WTO level), there is free,legal theft, without risk available.
The only problem is that the thieves, if successful, will destroy the economy, resulting in feudalism and some level of starvation. But for them, if it occurs to them at all, I suspect that seems okay, since they're figuring that they'll have more assets and be able to buy the food.
Just be aware: they are wrong. It can't stop there. That is an instability cusp, if you will.
I don't want to portray these guys as all evil -- I'm sure that they have some good in them. And I am 100% sure that grace will prevail in one way or another. But by all means, don't go into this business, and encourage others to get out of it. This stuff is getting obvious. We've had things pretty good because there was honor in our business (God bless the sweat we bear); but if we choose theft and murder for whatever reason, then everything can and will come crashing down.
You cannot patent that, because the price of a patent and the price of enforcing a patent has been set way above the assets that a normal person will be able to afford.
Nor can the company you work for patent it; if they do, they won't profit from it, because they will simply be sued for some cross-licensing issue.
Sorry, but patent barratry is a privilege reserved for the nobility: the pure legal attack firms.
I need not say it again, but I will: Patent law is inherently broken.
I'd just like to point out that if this code was developed in a former Soviet satellite, and they weren't completely paid for their work, then they could have a lien against the code itself.
In that case, you could possibly find them, get *them* to claim ownership, handle the American end of the lawsuit to get the code declared theirs, and from there get it back into working order.
Okay, just assuming that this is a case in which they haven't invented anything, and it is actually a good idea [neither of which I feel able to judge], here is a workaround, NOW PUBLIC DOMAIN!
Instead of making holographic keypads, make use of the double-parabolic-mirror optical illusion. You know the kind, shown in Edmund Scientific, where there are floating coins in the air. That is clearly not a hologram, but it would work just as well.
If you feel at all inclined to make something, bookmark this reply!
(6) When frozen, take cloth out, apply a small amount of shoe polish to cloth. Blacken. Repeat step 6 until turd is completely covered with shoe polish.
(7) Explain to restaurant manager and Dept. of Health official the philosophical implications of your experiment, and the importance that it will have for PHBs all over the business world.
(8) Give polished turd a French*** name
(9) Invite PHBs to a banquet and conference.
(10) With your huge profits from so many contracts from PHBs, purchase much-needed changes in the law regarding Dept. of Health's regulations, so as to protect the polished-turd industry.
Just thought you might like to know...
*** Please note that this will only work in America. In France, you need to give it a British name. In Britain, you need to make it sound like a German beer. In Germany, the idea just won't fly, except for export.
... start writing and registering so many pointless little programs, to get your tax money, that artists and programmers will never eat again.
They won't be able to sell their work, because people will point to the "tax", and refuse to pay -- even though it's good.
Or if I don't break the system, somebody will. That system is so messed up that it could not fly.
The solution is not to standardize what is broken; the solution is to get rid of broken IP laws (to use the offensive term).
Copyright: Broken. Violates natural right of work. Also violates natural law's definition of property.
Patent: Broken. Viiolates natural law's definition of property.
Derivative works: Broken. Violates natural right to think.
Shrink wrap license: Broken. Violates definition of a contract.
Contract law itself: Broken. Assigns life as a transferable property. However, if you had a registered database of who maintained their contracts and who broke what, that would be okay. Essentially, when a contract is signed, it is registered. When it is concluded to the mutual satisfaction of both parties, it is registered as "completed". Percent completed gives you an idea of how honorable a company or person is.
I mean, assuming there are a ton of paranoid people out there, don't you could think that you would look out every window, and see someone with a parabolic dish pointed at you, if you were a come-here?
(1) The EFF will probably be able to administer remote volunteers, just as soon as they get their computer systems up and running. Don't worry -- it's in the works, man. [Sorry, couldn't resist that troll. But it does seem funny.]
(2) It never seemed to me that the Evangelical Christian movement to boycott Disney worked. Disney, if I remember correctly, is headed by a Scientologist, and he uses their methods. To me, there's no a reason to boycott Disney; there's simply no reason to ever go see one of their films [which may have subliminal soft pornography flashed up for kids, like Roger Rabbit], buy one of their products like "Winnie the Pooh" [which is stolen from the original owners; to help do this, they destroyed already-subpoenaed evidence, and recieved a slap on the writs], or do business with them and theirs in any way.
(4) Honestly, that includes your disabled mother, and your parasailing. If your disabled mother knew everything you know about Disney, there's an excellent chance she would not have even been interested. That said, once it gets to the point that she is interested, it would be an unkindness to pick that moment to spout off about Disney, or to sulk through the trip. Still, if it is truly a big issue with you, probably those close to you should know how you feel.
(5) My view about lobster every night is pretty similar to my view about buffets, and you might consider it: do I feel better about a meal in which I have one, really good dish? Or one in which I stuff myself to the point of pain later, in order to get a good deal? Do I feel better about lobster every night? Or lobster one night, and the next night, a really good spaghetti dinner, and the night after that, a great salad?
Ever since I was in High School, I found that I preferred the latter, and ate accordingly. When our family went to buffets, for the next three or so years, they couldn't believe it, but now that it's normal to them, they just know to expect it: Mick isn't going to eat a ton.
(6) (FIXME) There is no three. Think of something to stick there.
Hi. I'm Marvin. I'm the world's most intelligent doorstop. If you run with me through the spray of that fountain, the percent chance that you'll short out my circuits is 84.217996310477714010040222, to an approximation, anyhow.
Considering by the length of time you took to roll your eyes, you might just prefer to drop meinto the pond. Science will be none the wiser.
The problem with Sci. American articles...
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... and they are all very nice and everything, is that Scientific American is not a scientific journal. It is a political journal with a scientific slant, and it's major effort is political.
When the Democrats had control of House and WhiteHouse in the first Clinton years, one of their big pushes was to scale back weapons. Just in time for that, Scientific American did a magazine-wide series of articles on the origins and destinations of the world's assault weapons.
Very interesting, really, and I doubt it was wrong -- but it wasn't science.
That said, an article in Sci Am about "more robust failure tolerant systems" could have been placed just to support a company or group of companies that can't fix their bugs, but still want to sell their product. Ouch.
Now, I'm all for fault-tolerant design, if by fault-tolerant design you mean WDTs, no input being such that you can't deal with it, systems in triplicate, and such.
But if, by fault-tolerant design, you mean "the pilot of the airbus I'm on just had to cycle power for the entire human-environment-controls system, or even the entire airplane, at once, then I'd say that someone has some more work to do.
"In 1929, the English archaeologist Sir Charles Woolley reported finding water-deposited layers as much as ten feet thick in excavations near the Euphrates..."
- Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, (1981) pp. 153-154
"...Evidence of a major flood just over 6,000 years ago has been found around Ur, where a layer of water-laid clay two and a half meters deep covers an area of more than 100,000 square kilometers. This amounts to a spread across the entire width of the Tigris-Euphrates valley from north of modern Baghdad to the coast of the Persian Gulf in what now includes parts of Iraq, Iran and Kuwait."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
Most logical, lucid people who discount that which cannot be proven find themselves coming to logical conclusions.
Not correct. All logical, lucid people discard the tiniest fraction of that which cannot be proven. And that discarding is the irrational part of them.
You don't discard that which cannot be proven, if you are logical and rational. You discard that which is disproven (which is possible).
Most logical, rational, lucid people are relatively aware of the limitations of their logic, and thus do not assume religion is wrong, especially if they have a plethora of evidence to the contrary. May I suggest reading "The Cross and the Switchblade" for one of many modern examples. Then go investigate it yourself. Or just open your eyes and heart: there are bound to be more examples of God's direct action, much closer to home. But "The Cross is the Switchblade" is an easy start.
Then think about the why behind what you saw.
Then start looking at the different religions, and see which makes the most sense, given the data you have.
Armageddon is something completely different, as far as I can tell: that is, I don't see any obvious asteroid strikes in it.
But if you want really obvious asteroid strikes (seems to have been in the Persian Gulf, causing in addition a hurricane from the heat released), try the story of Noah. But don't get it just from the Bible -- take it from the Epic of Gilgamesh.Shamash had set a stated time:
'In the morning I will let loaves of bread shower down,
and in the evening a rain of wheat!
Go inside the boat, seal the entry!'
That stated time had arrived.
In the morning he let loaves of bread shower down,
and in the evening a rain of wheat.
I watched the appearance of the weather--
the weather was frightful to behold!
I went into the boat and sealed the entry.
For the caulking of the boat, to Puzuramurri, the boatman,
I gave the palace together with its contents.
Just as dawn began to glow
there arose from the horizon a black cloud.
Adad rumbled inside of it,
before him went Shullat and Hanish,
heralds going over mountain and land.
Erragal pulled out the mooring poles,
forth went Ninurta and made the dikes overflow.
The Anunnaki lifted up the torches,
setting the land ablaze with their flare.
Stunned shock over Adad's deeds overtook the heavens,
and turned to blackness all that had been light.
The... land shattered like a... pot.
All day long the South Wind blew...,
blowing fast, submerging the mountain in water,
overwhelming the people like an attack.
Anyhow, in the region of the persion gulf, you do have about 8 feet of bottom mud all radiocarbon dating to the same year, about 5 or 8000 BC (sorry, it's hard to remember, and I don't see a good web reference off hand).
... that the British Nazis are harassing people into getting a TV?
George Bush is going to have to pick up on that one. It's a ton cheaper than the mind control satellites, now that we don't have a space shuttle to service the uploads (remember the bandwidth of a space-shuttle full of backup tapes...)
Okay, and as per a previous "funny" response to one of my posts, just so you know whether to laugh with me or at me...;->
I'd like to point out that this guy is onto something -- not with all students, but with the at-risk students.
The at-risk students typically are so because they are discovering that their parents are not interested in them, or their success, or anything except themselves.
The teachers are interested in their job, not truly in the students' success.
So you can have your database, but "nobody's interested in my success" is exactly what the student is going to respond with.
This is exactly a case where technology is not going to solve the problem -- rather, we're just going to spend more assets to say "well, yep, we knew there was a problem. Tough luck, kid."
This is a social problem, and more than that, a moral and religious problem.
Religious, because until the people get back to the spiritual root of their moral problem (not taking care of their kids, due to overwhelming ego and self-absorption), they won't solve it.
Unfortunately, I think that there is nothing that technology can do here. There is nothing that government can do here. Unless, of course, you include the 5th Estate in your definition of government, and point out that the government could stop promoting commercialism and self-absorption.
But our government has a cold war to win (whoops, I mean war on drugs; I mean illiteracy; I mean terrorism--Yeah, terrorism, that's it), and they have, in their infinite self-presumed wisdom, determined that winning a war requires a strong economy, and a strong economy requires people to buy lots of things, which means that we have to promote consumerism, which means we have to convince people that they need lots of stuff, which means we have to increase egotistical navel-gazing.
So though I don't think there is anything our government can do to solve the problem, I do think that they could do less. I think the government bears some responsibility for the problem's severity, by what they do, not by what they don't do.
You know, IANAL, but not long ago I read an IAAL slashdot comment (as opposed to IANAL), and he said that if you ask about your chances in any lawsuit, the lawyer will say "50%: it depends on how good I am vs. how good the other lawyer is, and what the judge is like."
So any question you ask, still has to be answered in a court of law if you get sued, and at that point, your chances are 50%. Except against Microsoft, which is likely to have a much better lawyer than you. Or engage in barratry. Or sponsor another company to drive you out of business with barratry.
Now, I rather suspect that in a country with a decent legal system, that "50%" answer would not be the case. But we seem to have a "50%" situation in law right now.
That being the case, I wonder if the $200 isn't $200 wasted.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, it's only one QBIT NOT gate. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to say potentially. Get it up to a few million QBIT gates of all sorts, and I'm sure we can arrange a port so that it will virtually run Linux. Much more interesting, however, will be if they can port Windows to it, and then write a program that will tell you "34% BSOD" so that you can tell just how potentially unstable your system is, just by thinking about running different programs. (Ummm... MSIE, with gator? 99% dead. Ooops. Better think about Mozilla Firebird... aaah. There we go.) Also interesting will be a port of ONEKO/SCHROEDINGER where you get to guess whether the cat is dead or alive (not too unlike a lot of cats I currently know.)
My guess, posted in the traditional slashdot fashion (IANAAR; IHNRT*A; IDNKWT*IATA), the submitter of this patch wanted a piece of SCO, or the next company to come along. Perhaps he wasn't a coder, or not too much of one, and wanted to be *sure* that his patch would get in. So he rolled a US-style version (which US companies would use), so as to be ready with his lawyer all cocked and aimed.
I tend to think this is not a good idea, of course; only true coders should maintain copyright.
*=silent F
No. I moved to one, and it is much better. If you look, you will find one too. If you know Spanish, I suggest you check out Chile, though I can't say that it is or isn't -- I can only say that it seems a likely prospect.
... so it may not remain better. But if the people are moral, then it will remain better despite the EU -- we'll see.
I should note that the country that I found quite probably is in the process of being conquered in a warless conquest of deceit by the EU
But I do want to point out: Such countries as I described do exist, and you'll never find them if you don't look for them.
Okay, I absolutely agree with your assessment.
But, let me point this out: there are certain "powers" that have the ability to overthrow governments, and indeed have the ability to create governments all on their own. They include [with governments based on it alone]:
(1) The charismatic leader [Saddam]
(2) The power of ethnicity [Bosnia/Serbia/Croatia]
(3) The power of the people [Biblical stories of early Israel]
(4) The power of wise leadership [ancient: judges/courts at the city gates]
(5) The power of money [Hansiatic League]
Possibly it also includes the 5th house: the power of publicity, but I cannot think of a government that has run only based upon publicity.
Now, it is best when every single one of these has official representation in a government. But when one of these powers is ignored by a government, it can destroy the government in a characteristic fashion.
(1) Charismatic Leader: If ignored, you get repeated intrigue and assassination
(2) Ethnicity: If ignored, you first get a division of language, and a request to split. If still ignored, you get Balkanization and racial wars.
(3) Population: If ignored, you get a French style revolution.
(4) Wise leadership: If ignored, you get beurocratization, and crime increases.
(5) Money: If ignored, you get bribery undermining every other part of the government.
Now, my point here is that although one can say that "yes, it'll come eventually", you really do not want to see a French-style revolution. Blood flows en masse, and as often as not it is the innocent who die. So whatever you do, don't advocate "we must overturn this". There is one way that we can exercise our power, and like all the other powers, it is evil -- but this is a particularly horrid evil.
It is far better to search for a different country, one that has more freedom and morality [those two are inherently tied: people who are evil to each other cannot live with freedom], and move there.
.
Yeah. That's the way it goes. If the injustice against you is bad enough, you don't have the energy or assets to fight it.
It's that way with our prepublishing business. We're the best around, but we only have one set of contracts (big ones), and when you count contract creep, they keep it at just under or just over a barely livable wage. If we had the assets to properly pursue more leads, we could get more and better work. Oh, well.
Sounds like your friend has a similar problem.
I think that somebody has a problem, if it takes them 30 minutes to read a comic.
I finish the Sunday Non Sequitor in just under 18 minutes. If it takes someone thirty minutes, they need to switch to an easier one. Maybe Ziggy would be a better start. That one only takes me 5.
I'm up for interest. But I don't know what tools I should be using. I can do the sound mixing and the sound recording okay, I guess. I'd use Audacity and sound-record.
But what should I be using for the animation itself?
And how do I mix it with the sound, then?
What OSS programs are good here?
Get with the times, man... it's going to be popping up more and more, because with our current set of laws (now to be enforced on a WTO level), there is free,legal theft, without risk available.
The only problem is that the thieves, if successful, will destroy the economy, resulting in feudalism and some level of starvation. But for them, if it occurs to them at all, I suspect that seems okay, since they're figuring that they'll have more assets and be able to buy the food.
Just be aware: they are wrong. It can't stop there. That is an instability cusp, if you will.
I don't want to portray these guys as all evil -- I'm sure that they have some good in them. And I am 100% sure that grace will prevail in one way or another. But by all means, don't go into this business, and encourage others to get out of it. This stuff is getting obvious. We've had things pretty good because there was honor in our business (God bless the sweat we bear); but if we choose theft and murder for whatever reason, then everything can and will come crashing down.
You cannot patent that, because the price of a patent and the price of enforcing a patent has been set way above the assets that a normal person will be able to afford.
Nor can the company you work for patent it; if they do, they won't profit from it, because they will simply be sued for some cross-licensing issue.
Sorry, but patent barratry is a privilege reserved for the nobility: the pure legal attack firms.
I need not say it again, but I will: Patent law is inherently broken.
I'd just like to point out that if this code was developed in a former Soviet satellite, and they weren't completely paid for their work, then they could have a lien against the code itself.
In that case, you could possibly find them, get *them* to claim ownership, handle the American end of the lawsuit to get the code declared theirs, and from there get it back into working order.
Okay, just assuming that this is a case in which they haven't invented anything, and it is actually a good idea [neither of which I feel able to judge], here is a workaround, NOW PUBLIC DOMAIN!
Instead of making holographic keypads, make use of the double-parabolic-mirror optical illusion. You know the kind, shown in Edmund Scientific, where there are floating coins in the air. That is clearly not a hologram, but it would work just as well.
If you feel at all inclined to make something, bookmark this reply!
- MickLinux
After posting this, I decided that this one just wasn't good. Someone mod this one out of sight.
(1) take warm turd from toilet.
(2) Put warm turd on hard surface (like plate)
(3) Put turd in walk-in freezer
(4) Get cloth and shoe polish
(5) Put cloth in freezer
(6) When frozen, take cloth out, apply a small amount of shoe polish to cloth. Blacken. Repeat step 6 until turd is completely covered with shoe polish.
(7) Explain to restaurant manager and Dept. of Health official the philosophical implications of your experiment, and the importance that it will have for PHBs all over the business world.
(8) Give polished turd a French*** name
(9) Invite PHBs to a banquet and conference.
(10) With your huge profits from so many contracts from PHBs, purchase much-needed changes in the law regarding Dept. of Health's regulations, so as to protect the polished-turd industry.
Just thought you might like to know...
*** Please note that this will only work in America. In France, you need to give it a British name. In Britain, you need to make it sound like a German beer. In Germany, the idea just won't fly, except for export.
... start writing and registering so many pointless little programs, to get your tax money, that artists and programmers will never eat again.
They won't be able to sell their work, because people will point to the "tax", and refuse to pay -- even though it's good.
Or if I don't break the system, somebody will. That system is so messed up that it could not fly.
The solution is not to standardize what is broken; the solution is to get rid of broken IP laws (to use the offensive term).
Copyright: Broken. Violates natural right of work. Also violates natural law's definition of property.
Patent: Broken. Viiolates natural law's definition of property.
Derivative works: Broken. Violates natural right to think.
Shrink wrap license: Broken. Violates definition of a contract.
Contract law itself: Broken. Assigns life as a transferable property. However, if you had a registered database of who maintained their contracts and who broke what, that would be okay.
Essentially, when a contract is signed, it is registered. When it is concluded to the mutual satisfaction of both parties, it is registered as "completed". Percent completed gives you an idea of how honorable a company or person is.
Trade Name: Not broken, as far as I can see.
I mean, assuming there are a ton of paranoid people out there, don't you could think that you would look out every window, and see someone with a parabolic dish pointed at you, if you were a come-here?
I mean, just in case, and all that...
I seem to remember a slashdot article about huge masses of people who form at some remote location, and just go walking through for the fun of it.
Like in Pennsylvania, a whole bunch of "Maryland tourists" showed up and started wandering through a small town in a huge mass.
Might some Vegas casino be a good place to mob like this? Everyone walking in, looking left and right and walking quickly up and down the aisles?
Every 4 minutes, they can stop to throw a dollar in a machine, and whoop "I won!" when they clearly didn't.
Then resume the walk.
Then disappear after 30 minutes, and never explain anything to management.
Couple of thoughts about your post:
(1) The EFF will probably be able to administer remote volunteers, just as soon as they get their computer systems up and running. Don't worry -- it's in the works, man. [Sorry, couldn't resist that troll. But it does seem funny.]
(2) It never seemed to me that the Evangelical Christian movement to boycott Disney worked. Disney, if I remember correctly, is headed by a Scientologist, and he uses their methods.
To me, there's no a reason to boycott Disney; there's simply no reason to ever go see one of their films [which may have subliminal soft pornography flashed up for kids, like Roger Rabbit], buy one of their products like "Winnie the Pooh" [which is stolen from the original owners; to help do this, they destroyed already-subpoenaed evidence, and recieved a slap on the writs], or do business with them and theirs in any way.
(4) Honestly, that includes your disabled mother, and your parasailing. If your disabled mother knew everything you know about Disney, there's an excellent chance she would not have even been interested. That said, once it gets to the point that she is interested, it would be an unkindness to pick that moment to spout off about Disney, or to sulk through the trip. Still, if it is truly a big issue with you, probably those close to you should know how you feel.
(5) My view about lobster every night is pretty similar to my view about buffets, and you might consider it: do I feel better about a meal in which I have one, really good dish? Or one in which I stuff myself to the point of pain later, in order to get a good deal? Do I feel better about lobster every night? Or lobster one night, and the next night, a really good spaghetti dinner, and the night after that, a great salad?
Ever since I was in High School, I found that I preferred the latter, and ate accordingly. When our family went to buffets, for the next three or so years, they couldn't believe it, but now that it's normal to them, they just know to expect it: Mick isn't going to eat a ton.
(6) (FIXME) There is no three. Think of something to stick there.
Hi. I'm Marvin. I'm the world's most intelligent doorstop. If you run with me through the spray of that fountain, the percent chance that you'll short out my circuits is 84.217996310477714010040222, to an approximation, anyhow.
Considering by the length of time you took to roll your eyes, you might just prefer to drop meinto the pond. Science will be none the wiser.
... and they are all very nice and everything, is that Scientific American is not a scientific journal. It is a political journal with a scientific slant, and it's major effort is political.
When the Democrats had control of House and WhiteHouse in the first Clinton years, one of their big pushes was to scale back weapons. Just in time for that, Scientific American did a magazine-wide series of articles on the origins and destinations of the world's assault weapons.
Very interesting, really, and I doubt it was wrong -- but it wasn't science.
That said, an article in Sci Am about "more robust failure tolerant systems" could have been placed just to support a company or group of companies that can't fix their bugs, but still want to sell their product. Ouch.
Now, I'm all for fault-tolerant design, if by fault-tolerant design you mean WDTs, no input being such that you can't deal with it, systems in triplicate, and such.
But if, by fault-tolerant design, you mean "the pilot of the airbus I'm on just had to cycle power for the entire human-environment-controls system, or even the entire airplane, at once, then I'd say that someone has some more work to do.
Anyhow, here's a link, with sample text:
"In 1929, the English archaeologist Sir Charles Woolley reported finding water-deposited layers as much as ten feet thick in excavations near the Euphrates..."
- Isaac Asimov, In The Beginning, (1981) pp. 153-154
"...Evidence of a major flood just over 6,000 years ago has been found around Ur, where a layer of water-laid clay two and a half meters deep covers an area of more than 100,000 square kilometers. This amounts to a spread across the entire width of the Tigris-Euphrates valley from north of modern Baghdad to the coast of the Persian Gulf in what now includes parts of Iraq, Iran and Kuwait."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
Not correct. All logical, lucid people discard the tiniest fraction of that which cannot be proven. And that discarding is the irrational part of them.
You don't discard that which cannot be proven, if you are logical and rational. You discard that which is disproven (which is possible).
Most logical, rational, lucid people are relatively aware of the limitations of their logic, and thus do not assume religion is wrong, especially if they have a plethora of evidence to the contrary. May I suggest reading "The Cross and the Switchblade" for one of many modern examples. Then go investigate it yourself. Or just open your eyes and heart: there are bound to be more examples of God's direct action, much closer to home. But "The Cross is the Switchblade" is an easy start.
Then think about the why behind what you saw.
Then start looking at the different religions, and see which makes the most sense, given the data you have.
But if you want really obvious asteroid strikes (seems to have been in the Persian Gulf, causing in addition a hurricane from the heat released), try the story of Noah. But don't get it just from the Bible -- take it from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Shamash had set a stated time: ...,
'In the morning I will let loaves of bread shower down,
and in the evening a rain of wheat!
Go inside the boat, seal the entry!'
That stated time had arrived.
In the morning he let loaves of bread shower down, and in the evening a rain of wheat.
I watched the appearance of the weather--
the weather was frightful to behold!
I went into the boat and sealed the entry.
For the caulking of the boat, to Puzuramurri, the boatman,
I gave the palace together with its contents.
Just as dawn began to glow
there arose from the horizon a black cloud.
Adad rumbled inside of it,
before him went Shullat and Hanish,
heralds going over mountain and land.
Erragal pulled out the mooring poles,
forth went Ninurta and made the dikes overflow.
The Anunnaki lifted up the torches,
setting the land ablaze with their flare.
Stunned shock over Adad's deeds overtook the heavens,
and turned to blackness all that had been light.
The... land shattered like a... pot.
All day long the South Wind blew
blowing fast, submerging the mountain in water,
overwhelming the people like an attack.
Anyhow, in the region of the persion gulf, you do have about 8 feet of bottom mud all radiocarbon dating to the same year, about 5 or 8000 BC (sorry, it's hard to remember, and I don't see a good web reference off hand).
No matter: it isn't just made up.
... that the British Nazis are harassing people into getting a TV?
;->
George Bush is going to have to pick up on that one. It's a ton cheaper than the mind control satellites, now that we don't have a space shuttle to service the uploads (remember the bandwidth of a space-shuttle full of backup tapes...)
Okay, and as per a previous "funny" response to one of my posts, just so you know whether to laugh with me or at me...
I'd like to point out that this guy is onto something -- not with all students, but with the at-risk students.
The at-risk students typically are so because they are discovering that their parents are not interested in them, or their success, or anything except themselves.
The teachers are interested in their job, not truly in the students' success.
So you can have your database, but "nobody's interested in my success" is exactly what the student is going to respond with.
This is exactly a case where technology is not going to solve the problem -- rather, we're just going to spend more assets to say "well, yep, we knew there was a problem. Tough luck, kid."
This is a social problem, and more than that, a moral and religious problem.
Religious, because until the people get back to the spiritual root of their moral problem (not taking care of their kids, due to overwhelming ego and self-absorption), they won't solve it.
Unfortunately, I think that there is nothing that technology can do here. There is nothing that government can do here. Unless, of course, you include the 5th Estate in your definition of government, and point out that the government could stop promoting commercialism and self-absorption.
But our government has a cold war to win (whoops, I mean war on drugs; I mean illiteracy; I mean terrorism--Yeah, terrorism, that's it), and they have, in their infinite self-presumed wisdom, determined that winning a war requires a strong economy, and a strong economy requires people to buy lots of things, which means that we have to promote consumerism, which means we have to convince people that they need lots of stuff, which means we have to increase egotistical navel-gazing.
So though I don't think there is anything our government can do to solve the problem, I do think that they could do less. I think the government bears some responsibility for the problem's severity, by what they do, not by what they don't do.
You know, IANAL, but not long ago I read an IAAL slashdot comment (as opposed to IANAL), and he said that if you ask about your chances in any lawsuit, the lawyer will say "50%: it depends on how good I am vs. how good the other lawyer is, and what the judge is like."
So any question you ask, still has to be answered in a court of law if you get sued, and at that point, your chances are 50%. Except against Microsoft, which is likely to have a much better lawyer than you. Or engage in barratry. Or sponsor another company to drive you out of business with barratry.
Now, I rather suspect that in a country with a decent legal system, that "50%" answer would not be the case. But we seem to have a "50%" situation in law right now.
That being the case, I wonder if the $200 isn't $200 wasted.
Comments, anyone? (Especially lawyers?)