slashdot2233, slashdot did not work for me. Something about not finding the "Subscriber ID". It was a good idea, but is it possible the NYT site has a way to block this kind of shared login?
The testing world is a lot like politics. It is funny to watch the testers (especially in the OT world) spin every test as successful. In the THAAD program for instance, we got to watch in the news as the interceptor failed test after test. That is, the missile failed to impact with the target. However, the tests are documented so that even in this case, the test is successful. Actually, any test that you get to take, regardless of pass or fail can be considered successful -- you tested it -- wheather it worked or not is another matter entirely.
Scramjets are really a neat propulsion system . . . I hope they got it to work.
Good argument, but I take a small issue with this premise:
OTOH, according to GR, gravity as we perceive it is essentially a secondary effect due to the curvature of spacetime. To "block" it, you would have to be able to uncurve spacetime in the vicinity you wish to block.
You are saying that in order to block an effect you have to eliminate the cause. I don't believe that this is a very good assumption. Of course this may be bacause of my general ignorance in the field of GR. I do know however that most of our great thinkers (including Physicists) transcended what they could measure, and took it on faith that something did exist. The greatness comes in proving that this previously unmeasurable thing exists. I would postulate that with the faith that gravity can be "blocked" at least partially, that we will figure out how. This guy may not have done it, but at least it is provoking others to study the problem.
Yeah, he blew this one. There is a lot of study academically going on now on hallucinogens in general. Check out MAPS for a good starting point.
As for the consciousness remark he made ("consciousness is marginal."), I for one will disagree. And that is what MAPS is all about (along with the likes of Richard Schultes, the late Terrence McKenna, Dennis McKenna, and a slew of other "psyconauts" out there).
Certainly you are correct in your definitions. I will take heed, because I do agree that understanding it's structure and rules are necessary to keep it out of corruption. I was simply painting a picture of the corruption that exists. A representative form of government must fall on the side of the people when faced with The Market vs The People. The Market should only be able to influence the government through the People who are working within the Market, as they have the same influence over the Government as any other person. This point I believe is beyond the syntactical discussion points and why I labled them previously as pedantic. Currently our market economy, and the corporations within have an unfair influence over the government. This works against the people and our freedoms.
The lead of the Justice branch of government acted illegally in the way it interfered with the presidential election. And one small correction to what you said: the majority of states require that the electors vote with the majority. So it is not so dire as a vote being 250 Million to 1 going for the 1. Our representative system is set up to reward the majority.
In spite of your attitude, you are not responding to what I wrote. Unless of course you are saying that a democratic republic relies on candidates lying to their constituents in order to take office, relying on large corporations to finance their incredibly expensive run for office and then assuring those corporations advantages over the people in the market place, and shielding the majority of candidates from the public to ensure keeping the power in the hands of the corrupt. Hmmm, I don't think that is what our founding fathers had in mind, and whether you refer to it as a democracy or as a democratic republic does not matter. These things are still outside the bounds of those systems.
Perhaps you should now go out and get your own clue. I would recommend some research and travel.
So the situations described are perfectly ok and understandable within a democratic republic? Or are you simply being pedantic? What exactly, beyond a simple syntactic discrepancy are you trying to point out?
What you say is simply true. As an owner in several corporations, as well as a board member in a couple and an officer in one, I can tell you that it is only true for a very small minority of shareholders. That minority is the holder of a large portion of voting stock. My point was that just having a vote no longer counts. In corporations the number of votes you have is directly tied to the amount of money you have (you need to buy your votes). Increasingly in our gov't this is true, because of my previous assertion that the gov't is influenced by corporations much more than an individual's vote.
If you own 10,000 shares of Sony, you do not get a say in the policies. You simply get to vote for the directors when they come up for election. Different corporations have different terms for directors, and some have very long terms. So while what you say is theoretically correct, I am more interested in the practicalities, which are quite anti individual/consumer and quite pro corporation/majority shareholder (ie, pro rich, and screw the poor).
The people who own the corporation do not get to say what the corporation does, what it's policies are, or how it acts. The shareholders do get to vote for the leaders (board members) and in turn the board members appoint the officers (CEO, CFO, etc). So as a shareholder you don't get to tell Sony that you are against the RIAA etc. Furthermore there is nothing in a corporation's charter by law that says the corporation has to be respectful of human or civil rights in any way shape or form. So corporations like Shell are free to open fire on activists in Africa, killing them rather than hearing their complaints. Governments are supposed to act differently, with the intention of the people in mind.
In our current state however, our government can tend to act more like a corporation, indeed taxpayer money gets spent to subsidise protecting corporate interests, and corporations have far greater influence over the government than any other group of people. The way this should work is: one person, one vote. If a corporation wants to influence political action, then it can do so only because the people that make up the corporation get to vote. End of influence. As it is, our "leaders" and lawmakers are easily bought or otherwise influenced away from protecting the people from corporate interests, and towards lining the people up and bending them over the corporate table. Thank you sir, may I have another?
I think he was only off by 18 years. My radio this morning was talking of a Gov't initiative that would encourage Cable installers, Postal Workers, Utility workers, etc. to report any "unusual findings" to the police/FBI for leads. WTFO. So now when I tell the Cable guy to take a hike, he gets mad and tells the FBI that something about me and/or my house looked wrong. The FBI does periodic searches and no longer has to tell me about them, and eventually finds a bit of pot. I get hauled off to prison for life for supporting terrorism (just like the TV commercials kids!) and do not get any legal rights because it is a national security matter. Perhaps they would not abuse this power this way.
But if I was a political activist, and very vocal in disapproval of gov't policy, then the FBI would have incentive to abuse the power. How corrupt are our leaders? Cheney looks like he is so corroded that if he cleaned up there'd be nothing left. We've got some pretty good congress persons, but also some really slimey ones. And the media has a stranglehold on political information so the two parties control elections completely.
Who says we are not already living under a totalitarian rule? (this is not a troll, and if someone can demonstrate another view point, please do) A democracy where you only get to pick the decision maker, but can't effect any direction afterwords (unless you are a rich corporation), where the individual vote is a mere symbol and does not directly elect the winner, where you only hear anything about two candidates out of eight or more, and where those two candidates simply lie about their intentions. What would you call this kind of democracy?
Given the power of the media, and Television in particular, to, as Noam Chomsky puts it "manufacture consent", do you see any sinister side to the ultimate perfection of CG? Given that media conglomerates do not act in the interest of their audience, and that the CG field will be getting better and better while the technology gets cheaper and cheaper, can you envision a day when we the public will not be able to differentiate from animated fiction and filmed reality? Right now things are pretty easy to differentiate, but what will the situation be in 10 or 20 years? Is there concern in the industry over this potential?
Caffine is an alcaloid. Alcaloids are known to be psychoactive, and in small quantities almost all are stimulants. There is a vast array of research into Alcaloids and their effects on the brain. Most of the researchers tend to say that, under the proper usage environment, philosophy, and conditions, these chemicals can be very beneficial. Terrence McKenna (crackpot? perhaps) was convinced that they contributed to the dawn of language and logic in human and human ancestors. Check out the link above for some more information on caffine and other alcaloids.
I have noticed this too, but I tend now to include Mac OS X in the *nix, or *ux categories. The writers may not intend this, and perhaps will flame the idea, but I think it is essentially valid. In my mind OS X is a proprietary unix based kernel with a proprietary window manager and GUI built on top of it. In the Linux world you can take the previous, replace "proprietary" with "open source" and OS X with Linux or other equivelency and it fits like a white sequenced glove.
Along these lines, the basic CDRW version ($498) seems like a great deal. If I were to purchase all of these parts seperately I think I would end up spending just as much. The difference would be that I might end up with a better graphics card, but I would also have to spend time getting Mandrake installed. Not too hard, especially without needing any Windows partition. Can this price point be beat anywhere? Any Mandrake users out there have their own preference on hardware configurations to look for? What CPU/GPU combination does the Mandrake community like best? Also, is there a driver problem for DVD-CDRW in Mandrake, and if so, should I stick to just CDRW? Can I get an IPod to work with Mandrake? I have had linux boxen at home in the past, but right now they are serving time as storage area filler in my garage. The hardware is just out of date, and I like buying new stuff every few years. I will keep a couple of Win2K machines going, but want a new linux box. Now seems to be a good time. I guess I'm looking for advice (no flames or bricks please) on what you, the linux community, would do in my place given $500 to blow.
This is the kind of thing that we as people/citizens are powerless to stop (cynical POV), and that allows the paradox to exist. Those who try to raise awareness, and those that resist the effects, can be potentially marginalized by the very thing they are trying to fight. Perhaps more irony there than paradox. So it seems the only resistance to it is to ignore it, and let those who don't see it simply live under its thumb. Of course how can anyone be sure that they have not been *socially engineered* in some way? Is it possible to escape it's grasp? Uh oh, I was about to quote Ram Das. Time to stop.
Uhhh, these are things that are not only tolerated, but nutured in civilized society (wrongly so). Perhaps this is what you meant. I would say that there are many people in this country whose views on oil consumption, drugs, or politics has nothing to do with truth and has everything to do with social engineering. This is now how groups with money influence the much larger groups without money.
Disinformation about global warming, nutrition, the role of ethnogens, the importance of money, and an infinite number of other things too long to go on about (especially in this pendantic way) is tolerated. I would say that this tolerance is yet another example of Social Engineering.
Oh well, it's not like this is on topic or that there is anything to do about it, so mod me down to oblivion. Or what about: AT&T good, hackers bad.
That sounds like the annoying kind of behaviour that makes Windows so awkward to use. Why on earth do developers have to be so egotistical that they shove their wiz-bang gadgetry in your face by default? Of course I do this myself, but my users probably love it. If I am working in a window, the only way that window should lose focus is if I directly "tell" it to. Windows violates this premise all of the time. My older unix machines never did . . . Are the KDE developers perhaps looking to closely at the competition?
Hmmm. Every time i snort, especially with acid, I end up crashing for at least the better part of the next day. Of course hitting the old bong pipe is a nice part of the crash, but all in all I try to stay away from snort. Acid is ok every once in a while, but peyote, salvia, and good ol shrooms are much preferable.
Re:This surprises you how?
on
Digital Dark Ages?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I have to take a dissenting view here. Most of the article struck me as being absolute crap. The author seemingly ignores the propensity for technology to improve. Hard Drive reliability keeps improving, as does the capacity and speed. However, this is a very crude technology and will soon give way to other methods that are even better, bigger, and faster. Access protocols are getting better and better as well, and the few places left that only have a single person able to access important data are, well, at the risk of being redundant, few. Sure data will be lost, but a digital dark age? That is crap. Right now there is no storage medium that helps future generations out. Paper can get lost, wet, burned, torn, eaten by wild boars, and even soaked in ink. Cuneiform on stone tablets can be hard to read, the tablets can break, turn to dust, get stepped on by sasquatch. Cave art is pretty secure, but the meanings tend to get lost. I have had data that I first put on digital media nearly 20 years ago, and it is still on a few of my hard drives. It has survived HD failures, computer upgrades, countless M$ induced massive corruption of HD, and I somehow manage to recreate it each time. I have not taken special measures, indeed I have probably been quite careless with it. I have also lost some data forever. But as technology gets better, we will have storage systems that will keep data forever (or long enough anyway).
The biggest problem is finding an 8086 machine on which I can still play digr.
Go ahead. Practice juggling with those 80GB western digitals. They are nearly indestructable. The data? We'll find it.
Re:Corporate lackeys will win every time
on
Open-Source Biology
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I had the same notion. But then reconsidered a bit after reading a post further down. The "closed" scientific group will never benefit from an open review of their modifications. This could send them down the wrong tracks for long periods. IN the OSS movement it is the equivalent of the group debug session. Simply stated there is value to the giver in sharing knowledge openly.
Re:Windows on the desktop, Linux/BSD on the server
on
A Linux User Goes Back
·
· Score: 1
The X based desktop that I used (IRIX) I loved. I loved especially the fact that the active window (the one that accepted your keystrokes) did not have to be on top. Windows always bugs me because of this. Why should giving a window focus automatically move it to the top? Moving a window to the top should automatically give it focus, but this also should be up to the user. I never thought of X as being slow in the IRIX environment, though I did use all command line stuff for file management etc because the graphical way (drag and drop) took forever.
You are right about the scripting inside a shell with sed, (n)awk, and perl. Windows (DOS) has never and probably wont ever let you do these things. In this way Windows machines do not let you automate the mindnumbingly repetitive tasks. You have to write a VB, Asp or VC program, which just takes too long in comparison.
Umm I suppose that the cards dont really interact per say. But I don't think they need to in order to be considered interactive. The fact that the player is interacting with a deck of cards I believe would make solitare interactive. From dictionary.com:
2: capable of acting on or influencing each other
The state of the cards influences the player, who then changes the state of the cards, which then in turn influence the player. I think that the term game implies some sort of interaction.
Slashdot Mirror
slashdot2233, slashdot did not work for me. Something about not finding the "Subscriber ID". It was a good idea, but is it possible the NYT site has a way to block this kind of shared login?
Scramjets are really a neat propulsion system . . . I hope they got it to work.
OTOH, according to GR, gravity as we perceive it is essentially a secondary effect due to the curvature of spacetime. To "block" it, you would have to be able to uncurve spacetime in the vicinity you wish to block.
You are saying that in order to block an effect you have to eliminate the cause. I don't believe that this is a very good assumption. Of course this may be bacause of my general ignorance in the field of GR. I do know however that most of our great thinkers (including Physicists) transcended what they could measure, and took it on faith that something did exist. The greatness comes in proving that this previously unmeasurable thing exists. I would postulate that with the faith that gravity can be "blocked" at least partially, that we will figure out how. This guy may not have done it, but at least it is provoking others to study the problem.
As for the consciousness remark he made ("consciousness is marginal."), I for one will disagree. And that is what MAPS is all about (along with the likes of Richard Schultes, the late Terrence McKenna, Dennis McKenna, and a slew of other "psyconauts" out there).
The lead of the Justice branch of government acted illegally in the way it interfered with the presidential election. And one small correction to what you said: the majority of states require that the electors vote with the majority. So it is not so dire as a vote being 250 Million to 1 going for the 1. Our representative system is set up to reward the majority.
Perhaps you should now go out and get your own clue. I would recommend some research and travel.
So the situations described are perfectly ok and understandable within a democratic republic? Or are you simply being pedantic? What exactly, beyond a simple syntactic discrepancy are you trying to point out?
If you own 10,000 shares of Sony, you do not get a say in the policies. You simply get to vote for the directors when they come up for election. Different corporations have different terms for directors, and some have very long terms. So while what you say is theoretically correct, I am more interested in the practicalities, which are quite anti individual/consumer and quite pro corporation/majority shareholder (ie, pro rich, and screw the poor).
The people who own the corporation do not get to say what the corporation does, what it's policies are, or how it acts. The shareholders do get to vote for the leaders (board members) and in turn the board members appoint the officers (CEO, CFO, etc). So as a shareholder you don't get to tell Sony that you are against the RIAA etc. Furthermore there is nothing in a corporation's charter by law that says the corporation has to be respectful of human or civil rights in any way shape or form. So corporations like Shell are free to open fire on activists in Africa, killing them rather than hearing their complaints. Governments are supposed to act differently, with the intention of the people in mind.
In our current state however, our government can tend to act more like a corporation, indeed taxpayer money gets spent to subsidise protecting corporate interests, and corporations have far greater influence over the government than any other group of people. The way this should work is: one person, one vote. If a corporation wants to influence political action, then it can do so only because the people that make up the corporation get to vote. End of influence. As it is, our "leaders" and lawmakers are easily bought or otherwise influenced away from protecting the people from corporate interests, and towards lining the people up and bending them over the corporate table. Thank you sir, may I have another?
But if I was a political activist, and very vocal in disapproval of gov't policy, then the FBI would have incentive to abuse the power. How corrupt are our leaders? Cheney looks like he is so corroded that if he cleaned up there'd be nothing left. We've got some pretty good congress persons, but also some really slimey ones. And the media has a stranglehold on political information so the two parties control elections completely.
Who says we are not already living under a totalitarian rule? (this is not a troll, and if someone can demonstrate another view point, please do) A democracy where you only get to pick the decision maker, but can't effect any direction afterwords (unless you are a rich corporation), where the individual vote is a mere symbol and does not directly elect the winner, where you only hear anything about two candidates out of eight or more, and where those two candidates simply lie about their intentions. What would you call this kind of democracy?
Given the power of the media, and Television in particular, to, as Noam Chomsky puts it "manufacture consent", do you see any sinister side to the ultimate perfection of CG? Given that media conglomerates do not act in the interest of their audience, and that the CG field will be getting better and better while the technology gets cheaper and cheaper, can you envision a day when we the public will not be able to differentiate from animated fiction and filmed reality? Right now things are pretty easy to differentiate, but what will the situation be in 10 or 20 years? Is there concern in the industry over this potential?
Caffine is an alcaloid. Alcaloids are known to be psychoactive, and in small quantities almost all are stimulants. There is a vast array of research into Alcaloids and their effects on the brain. Most of the researchers tend to say that, under the proper usage environment, philosophy, and conditions, these chemicals can be very beneficial. Terrence McKenna (crackpot? perhaps) was convinced that they contributed to the dawn of language and logic in human and human ancestors. Check out the link above for some more information on caffine and other alcaloids.
Submersive sites are those hosted at SeaLand.
Under WalMart with Lindows and Mandrake For All
I have noticed this too, but I tend now to include Mac OS X in the *nix, or *ux categories. The writers may not intend this, and perhaps will flame the idea, but I think it is essentially valid. In my mind OS X is a proprietary unix based kernel with a proprietary window manager and GUI built on top of it. In the Linux world you can take the previous, replace "proprietary" with "open source" and OS X with Linux or other equivelency and it fits like a white sequenced glove.
Along these lines, the basic CDRW version ($498) seems like a great deal. If I were to purchase all of these parts seperately I think I would end up spending just as much. The difference would be that I might end up with a better graphics card, but I would also have to spend time getting Mandrake installed. Not too hard, especially without needing any Windows partition. Can this price point be beat anywhere? Any Mandrake users out there have their own preference on hardware configurations to look for? What CPU/GPU combination does the Mandrake community like best? Also, is there a driver problem for DVD-CDRW in Mandrake, and if so, should I stick to just CDRW? Can I get an IPod to work with Mandrake? I have had linux boxen at home in the past, but right now they are serving time as storage area filler in my garage. The hardware is just out of date, and I like buying new stuff every few years. I will keep a couple of Win2K machines going, but want a new linux box. Now seems to be a good time. I guess I'm looking for advice (no flames or bricks please) on what you, the linux community, would do in my place given $500 to blow.
This is the kind of thing that we as people/citizens are powerless to stop (cynical POV), and that allows the paradox to exist. Those who try to raise awareness, and those that resist the effects, can be potentially marginalized by the very thing they are trying to fight. Perhaps more irony there than paradox. So it seems the only resistance to it is to ignore it, and let those who don't see it simply live under its thumb. Of course how can anyone be sure that they have not been *socially engineered* in some way? Is it possible to escape it's grasp? Uh oh, I was about to quote Ram Das. Time to stop.
Disinformation about global warming, nutrition, the role of ethnogens, the importance of money, and an infinite number of other things too long to go on about (especially in this pendantic way) is tolerated. I would say that this tolerance is yet another example of Social Engineering.
Oh well, it's not like this is on topic or that there is anything to do about it, so mod me down to oblivion. Or what about: AT&T good, hackers bad.
That sounds like the annoying kind of behaviour that makes Windows so awkward to use. Why on earth do developers have to be so egotistical that they shove their wiz-bang gadgetry in your face by default? Of course I do this myself, but my users probably love it. If I am working in a window, the only way that window should lose focus is if I directly "tell" it to. Windows violates this premise all of the time. My older unix machines never did . . . Are the KDE developers perhaps looking to closely at the competition?
Hmmm. Every time i snort, especially with acid, I end up crashing for at least the better part of the next day. Of course hitting the old bong pipe is a nice part of the crash, but all in all I try to stay away from snort. Acid is ok every once in a while, but peyote, salvia, and good ol shrooms are much preferable.
The biggest problem is finding an 8086 machine on which I can still play digr. Go ahead. Practice juggling with those 80GB western digitals. They are nearly indestructable. The data? We'll find it.
I had the same notion. But then reconsidered a bit after reading a post further down. The "closed" scientific group will never benefit from an open review of their modifications. This could send them down the wrong tracks for long periods. IN the OSS movement it is the equivalent of the group debug session. Simply stated there is value to the giver in sharing knowledge openly.
You are right about the scripting inside a shell with sed, (n)awk, and perl. Windows (DOS) has never and probably wont ever let you do these things. In this way Windows machines do not let you automate the mindnumbingly repetitive tasks. You have to write a VB, Asp or VC program, which just takes too long in comparison.
Oh how I miss my SGI machines . . .
2: capable of acting on or influencing each other
The state of the cards influences the player, who then changes the state of the cards, which then in turn influence the player. I think that the term game implies some sort of interaction.
I hear ya. This annoying slashdot news center definitely keeps me from getting work done. Anyone successfull in getting it off their desktop?