*grins* well looking at your original posting, I think you can see why I might have mistaken you for a troll, my appologies for the implied insult:)
OK, if you're willing to stipulate a code of morals for atheists, (I hate the i before e thing too:)) which I think is a reasonable premise for any discussion down this line, then canabalism is generally ruled out by most codes of ethics/morals, (as well as being evolutionally selected against, to look at it from the atheist pov, let's not turn it into a creationist vs evolutionist argument tho, please.) If canabalism is morally repugnent ("Don't eat people, eating people is wrong"), it would follow logicly that killing people for a reason less then food would be also morally wrong. So Athiests are precluded from killing people by their own codes of morality.
Speaking personally (as opposed to Atheticly:)), if there was a way to survive without killing animals or for that matter plants, I'd be happy to go along with it. As soon as we come up with a protien substitute created without killing anything I'd be first in line to change. I'm not 100% sure they don't have souls, and killing or being part of the death of any living thing is something I would prefer to avoid. Unfortunatly in our current state of scientific development that is unrealistic.
It seems to me that my adult psyche is a stack of cards where everything that has happened to me has a greater or lesser effect on who I am now. I think you would have to reproduce this house of cards pretty much exactly to end up with me. If my 'clone' didn't get teased in school, would he have turned inward to the world of computers as much as I did?
I would know my clone would have an LD, so I would probably compensate for that much earlier then it was when I went to school (heck, learning disability are much better understood, so likely even if I ignored it, to try and produce 'myself' it would be more effectively handled by the school system.) Bullying is much more severely delt with in our current world then it was when I was a kid (at least locally, can't speak for other schools) and that would definately change.
I doubt even if I tried that I could produce a clone with my same aptitudes now. We are a product of our environments, good and bad. And our society is part of that environment.
Short of a Cyteen-like universe, where you can control every aspect of a childs upbringing, I don't see ending up with a clone that by the age of 27 resembles me physically or intellectually any more then I resemble my parents. For better or for worse, Chaos wins:). --
Remove the rocks to send email
I do not consider this to be the same thing as intelligence. Many intelligent people presumably have a very low aptitude for academics. (We've all heard the one about Einstein flunking math...:)
I would argue that you have a hidden axiom in your argument, namely that one's intelligence is actually synonymous with one's "ability to take advantage of" an educator's services. I guess I am challenging this assumption and in particular I do not believe it to be true.
I must tip my hat to you sir/madam, posting to Slashdot has made my reasoning muddy:).
Try this one on for size, just because Einstein failed Math does that imply that it was worthless to teach him? I myself have much the same LD collection as he did (not, you understand that I am comparing myself to Einstein!:)) and I was capable of learning math, I understood the theroies of math and Calculas, as my performance applied subjects (Physics in particular, being highly math dependant) demonstrates, but had problems coming out with correct answers in a pure math environment (in physics there's always a way to double check your work, if you do a number inversion, it's generally blatently obvious (well gee, the acceleration of gravity came out to 400m/s^2. Now we punch it in over here, and find that I should be flat. I think I must have goofed.) I think it's arguable that Einstein had to have learned math from somewhere, and should have been able to avail himself of the educational system despite his LD.
I believe that tests such as this one (and IQ tests for that matter) make excellent diagnostic teaching tools, but are often used for political reasons (IQ tests in particular have been used for years to prop up many cases of descrimination) to deny education to people who deserve it.
*grins* and how dare you use a word like axiom in a/. post:)?
Best back at you, --
Remove the rocks to send email
On the off chance that you're not a troll, and for anyone else who might be tempted to buy into your argument:
Just because you don't believe that if you step out of line you'll burn forever does not imply that you have no morals. People confuse athiests (and agnostics) with psychopaths (having no ethical/moral qualms). It's simply not true. Athiests simply do not believe in God. (For that matter they don't believe in the devil ethier. So maybe you can just cancel them both out and call it a wash if you perfer).
For the record, I'm not an athiest, but some of my friends are, and none of them have killed me off yet:). I think we could all use with more tolerence in the world. Simply because people don't believe the same as we do does not make them evil or sub-human. This goes for clones (although I cannot see how they would be treated any differently then an identical twin would be, as that is exactly what they are), operating systems, slashdot editors, linux distributions, and even John Katz:).
Minupla, "OK, now go to your corners and come out tolerent!" --
Remove the rocks to send email
But if I'm a college administrator, my goal should be to provide my services (education) to those who are best able to take advantage of them.
Now given that, I would like the most intellegent students possible, not the ones who _currently_ know the most. Given that differing schools give a differing quality of education (self evident, do a week of volenteer work in an inner city school as a tutor in computers or whatever your specialty is if you have any doubts) students are not going to approach the SATs on the same footing, despite the fact that they may be as intelligent, or capible of assimulating the teaching.
Trying to test for intelligence, which is what they are attempting to do, is much much more difficult then testing for aptitude, which is what they are accomplishing by means of the SAT tests.
Consider my particular circumstances. I'm a dysgraphic. For the first several years of my shool life, they assumed I couldn't read. Not because I was unable to, mind you, but rather because the method they used to determine if I could read was by making me read something and then write down the answers to questions written on the blackboard. Now I'm sure you're all bright enough to figure out with the benifit of hindsight what was wrong with this method. Yep, I couldn't write. I was later diagnosed Dysgraphic, with related small and large muscle co-ordination problems. I was reading at level, but couldn't write the answers down on the piece of paper. This is an example of the problem of testing for intelligence. They assumed based on my written output that I was not intelligent enough to read. (also wrong, you can be highly intelligent and be dyslexic, but that's another story, and another example of the problems.)
Later on in my scholastic career, it became obvious that my learning disability affected me in a shotgun-like pattern that made little sense. I scored A's in honours english, and history (after we learned that I could type a lot better then I wrote, and thus began my life long passion for computers), but couldn't for the life of me learn a second language. I scored A-Bs in Physics, Chem and Comp Sci but pure math I was lucky to scrape through with a C.
Fortunaly I was born in Canada where we handle things a bit differently, and my provincial finals (standardized over the province I live in) are converted to a GPA and used to make my college entrance info. So I could tailor my class load and therefore the tests I had to take towards my strengths (obviously I avoided things like extra math classes, or any extra foriegn langues).
I doubt my SAT scores would have reflected accurately my intelligence, and probably would have missed my aptitudes too, since I'm weak in pure math and language skills, but strong in applied ones.
In a suprise announcment today Rambus announced that they were retroactively announcing their patant for magenetic-core memory. Analysts speculate that this is a defensive move by Rambus in the event of a failure in their current bussiness model to patent other peoples' ideas that are currently applicable. This new initiative would patent other peoples' ideas that are already patented.
When questioned weather he expected to be granted a patent, the CEO of Rambus pointed out Amazon's One-Click patent, and said, "What do you think?"
When further questioned if he thought there was a market for slow memory in 128 byte chunks, he pointed out that people were buying RDRAM.
Actually I was worried about batteries, but several all day bussiness trips later, I've never run my Palm V out of its recharables, and an hour on the cradle when it gets home fixes them right up, and I've ran it for about 6 hrs straight on the backlight and not run em out. (of course, I have my CPU usage for the reader app turned right down, how many Mhz do you need to write characters on the screen:).
And I find it just as bad to flip pages when I read:)
1 - *grins* I've never been able to get over the attraction of reading in bed. Can't get to sleep without it.
2 - Well reading a large hardcover in bed (as opposed to sitting at a table) is hard on the wrists for me at least:)
3 - *grins* sorry, wasn't clear... they publish it as they edit it, I assume, so you get more as you get closer to the publication date.
4 - Yep, you can go back to your web-library and download new copies (in various formats, everything from html to rtf to microsoft reader, rocket book, or pda compatable formats.) if you accidentaly nuke yours, or it's been a year and you want to reread it because the sequal just came out...
5 - *laughs* the bane of any space opera fan:)
I've been using mobipocket. They have a freebie publisher, so I can turn text or html files into mobipocket ones. *grins* I hear you ont he microsoft reader one, but that's never likely to happen as CE and PalmOS are direct competitors, and you've not seen MS Word for linux yet have you?:)
And Baen supports mobipocket directly which is a plus since I've been buying from them. --
Remove the rocks to send email
But neither I, nor anyone else can prove that I store illegal content on my machine.
Freenet is a totally peer-to-peer system. It is not possible to tell weather I'm sending the file directly to you or am just transmitting at the request of a node behind me. And if it's possible to procecute for that, then ISPs everywhere are in BIG trouble:) --
Remove the rocks to send email
Natually the router-sniffer could see that you were transmitting freenet traffic, but since it uses peer-to-peer encryption, the best you might be able to get is trafic analysis information out of it.
The other thing you could do would be to take over a node on the network, and request the material you're interested in, but since freenet uses relay nodes, you can never be sure that the information you're recieving came directly from the node you are talking to or through N relay nodes. Also the data is encrypted on the harddrive of the node operator, so you, provably, cannot know if you are storing illegal data or a copy of Johney's essay for school.
Ya, but consider the numerous disadvantages of books:
1) lack of backlight. Try reading in bed with someone who sleeps earlier then you. Backlights are your friend:)
2) wieght. Holding a book in a reading position for hours on end is hard. Esp a hard cover.
3) availability. I can buy a book from Baen's webscriptions, send it to my palm and have it the day they publish it (or earlier if I don't mind not having the whole thing at one time)
4) cost. I can buy 4 ebooks from Baen for 10$ or 2.50$/book. (incidentally, the author gets twice as much in royalties from ebook sales through Baen, to compensate for the lower publishing cost)
5) searchability. As you pointed out, rapidly seaching through an ebook to find out which side of the space opera George was on as he comes charging out of hyperspace is very handy:)
Against these benifits books have clarity of text (in a well lit environment.)
For me, the benifits outwiegh the losses. I'm hapy to be a convert:)
I have a fondness for long novels, unfortunatly they are hard to carry around in a pocket all day, being so bulky, like the Cryptonomicon hard cover I carried around. Lately I've been greading them on my palm pilot. It's perfect, light, backlit, I don't have to carry another thing around with me (since I carry my palm anyways).
It has all the convience of a book (I can read it in front of the fireplace, etc), and all the convience of a light small device.
A year ago I would have said no way. Now it's 'bring on the ebooks!'
I don't know about anyone else, but I have spent more sleepless nights playing nethack then any other 3d rendered, first person shooter. A close runner up would be TinyMush.
Games under OSS will never rival the commercial offerings
As my Logic and Rhetoric prof used to say, always beware of encompassing statements where the restrictions are implied.
Implied premises (as I read it):
Games: defined as a subset limited to high artwork games, such as first person shooters, rather then high concept games such as Civilization, Nethack, ethier one of which I'd give higher replayability scores then 99% of games to come on the market in the last 5 years. Both of which (Nethack was) could have easily come out of a small programming group in an OSS environment.
Never: Well I won't even bother here. Unbound timeframes are obvious hyperbole.
Commercial: Defined as games released by big names, such as EA? No, many of these 'commercial quality' games are produced by small shops which are aquired by large companies when they produce something promising looking. Companies that charge for their software? No, that would include all shareware companies, obviously leading to refutment of your argument...
Hrm. Argument seems to have broken down.
Could it be that the observations you cite could be explained by another premise?
Let's try one:
"99% of games are initially produced by small software houses. Of that 98% fail to produce something exciting enough to attract the attention of a distributor and therefore fail to make the shelves of EB. The lack of 'Comercial quality' OSS games is due to statistical factors rather then failure of the development model, as there are simply fewer OSS game projects."
Seems to cover the observed evidence. Of course the whole argument is specious, as 'work' is basicly defined as "appearing on the shelves of EB" which of course an OSS game is unlikely to do, not being distributed by EA or the like.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Genetic engineering, the media, and 42.
on
Spidergoats
·
· Score: 5
I find it a constant source of amazment that a group of people who think nothing of daming rivers for electricity to run their computers, (one of the more environmently friendly forms of energy creation actually).
How is tinkering with genetic codes more 'playing god' then creating new lakes where there were none before, changing ecological niches, probably causing new species to evolve, to fit the new ecological niches created.
How about the effect from electomagnetic fields? New roads through the countryside?
Face it people, we're playing God. We always have. Chaos theory argues that our existance on this planet will change things, even if we all stood perfectly still and didn't move for all our lives.
Like any technology, there will be ethical considerations, and we'll screw it up occasionaly.
Can we cause irreperable damage? Probably. Can we use the technology to save ourselves? Probably.
On the other hand, one of those cosmic rays could zap one of us just right and randomly cause any given mutation "naturally". Does that make it OK?
Let's face it, we already have plenty of technologies that let us wipe out the planet earth. Anyone who feels like it can use one of them, or the new one. What this gives us is a whole new way to solve problems.
Being an optimist, I like to assume that we will cause more good then harm from new techologies.
Unfortunatly, the media finds it easier to sell (insert medium here) using bad news. So we all hear about 'clones' being evil (most of which assume a clone will be of the memorex variety, not the identical twin reality), and nanotech will destroy the earth, and the internet will cause our children to become porn loving, rocket launcher shooting, black clothing wearing, 3l337 hax0rz.
I find it suprising that so many/.ers are biting on the same story we all rebel against when it's applied to us (internet bad, internet geeks evil) when it's applied to genetic engineering.
Denial of service attacks are to cracking what parking a logging truck in the no parking zone in front of a bank is to bank robbery. It takes no talent, just a disregard for public convience and a big truck/pipe.
Recently, through no fault of my own I've been forced to wear a suit and tie around. Unfortunatly a Baen pocket book makes an unsightly bulge in the suit. *sighs*. So I've recently been pulling stuff down from the Baen free library and buying them from webscriptions, and downloading them to my palm pilot. It's great, the LCD screen is as easy to read as my pocket book. I can read it for 3 hrs at a time with no ill effects, and as a bonus, it's backlit, so I can read in the dark. (Consider the benifits for a cohabitating geek who sleeps less then his/her co-geek(ette), no more having to turn the lamp on and risking waking the SO. It's great.) Now I just need to upgrade to a Vx so I can store more books at a time. 2M is getting cramped!
I first heard about this story before UBC had taken credit. I turned to the person who told me and, having heard mom's stories from when she was dating a UBC engineer, said, "You know, I bet the UBC Engineers ran out of Vancouver bridges to hang bugs off of. Imagine my suprise when I turned out to be right. Heh.
Hats off to em, going to a foriegn country, and executing this prank in a very public place, without being caught. Bravo! --
Remove the rocks to send email
*sighs* After literally years of preaching "always notify the developer first, and only send to bugtraq if the problem is not resolved" and people acting in good faith with the developers, we get this.
This will set back co-operation in the security field by years.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Re:Stormix down, but not out - read the fine print
on
Stormix Bankruptcy
·
· Score: 2
Unless I'm sadly mistaken I believe that phrase has always been the formal leagalize for the process in Canada. We don't file chapter 11, we "seek protection from creditors". Frankly it's at least more descriptive then filing chapter 11, which is simply obscure:)
Point of interest. I recall following a news story awhile back where RCMP (under pressure from the land below the 49th) tried to crack down on DirectTV pirates. IIRC, and it wasn't appealed 18 times, it was ruled that since the service is not available for sale in Canada, (and DTV goes through some serious hoops to insure it isn't) that selling and using electronic parts to circumvent security measures on it is perfectly legal.
Canada also has some different views on the RF spectrum. IE: last I checked it was illegal to manufacture a scanner that could scan 800MHz (non-digital Cell) in the US, but not Canada.
Slashdot Mirror
*grins* well looking at your original posting, I think you can see why I might have mistaken you for a troll, my appologies for the implied insult :)
:)) which I think is a reasonable premise for any discussion down this line, then canabalism is generally ruled out by most codes of ethics/morals, (as well as being evolutionally selected against, to look at it from the atheist pov, let's not turn it into a creationist vs evolutionist argument tho, please.) If canabalism is morally repugnent ("Don't eat people, eating people is wrong"), it would follow logicly that killing people for a reason less then food would be also morally wrong. So Athiests are precluded from killing people by their own codes of morality.
:)), if there was a way to survive without killing animals or for that matter plants, I'd be happy to go along with it. As soon as we come up with a protien substitute created without killing anything I'd be first in line to change. I'm not 100% sure they don't have souls, and killing or being part of the death of any living thing is something I would prefer to avoid. Unfortunatly in our current state of scientific development that is unrealistic.
OK, if you're willing to stipulate a code of morals for atheists, (I hate the i before e thing too
Speaking personally (as opposed to Atheticly
Cheers,
--
Remove the rocks to send email
I wonder if Choas Theory would apply.
:).
It seems to me that my adult psyche is a stack of cards where everything that has happened to me has a greater or lesser effect on who I am now. I think you would have to reproduce this house of cards pretty much exactly to end up with me. If my 'clone' didn't get teased in school, would he have turned inward to the world of computers as much as I did?
I would know my clone would have an LD, so I would probably compensate for that much earlier then it was when I went to school (heck, learning disability are much better understood, so likely even if I ignored it, to try and produce 'myself' it would be more effectively handled by the school system.) Bullying is much more severely delt with in our current world then it was when I was a kid (at least locally, can't speak for other schools) and that would definately change.
I doubt even if I tried that I could produce a clone with my same aptitudes now. We are a product of our environments, good and bad. And our society is part of that environment.
Short of a Cyteen-like universe, where you can control every aspect of a childs upbringing, I don't see ending up with a clone that by the age of 27 resembles me physically or intellectually any more then I resemble my parents. For better or for worse, Chaos wins
--
Remove the rocks to send email
I do not consider this to be the same thing as intelligence. Many intelligent people presumably have a very low aptitude for academics. (We've all heard the one about Einstein flunking math... :)
:).
:)) and I was capable of learning math, I understood the theroies of math and Calculas, as my performance applied subjects (Physics in particular, being highly math dependant) demonstrates, but had problems coming out with correct answers in a pure math environment (in physics there's always a way to double check your work, if you do a number inversion, it's generally blatently obvious (well gee, the acceleration of gravity came out to 400m/s^2. Now we punch it in over here, and find that I should be flat. I think I must have goofed.) I think it's arguable that Einstein had to have learned math from somewhere, and should have been able to avail himself of the educational system despite his LD.
/. post :)?
I would argue that you have a hidden axiom in your argument, namely that one's intelligence is actually synonymous with one's "ability to take advantage of" an educator's services. I guess I am challenging this assumption and in particular I do not believe it to be true.
I must tip my hat to you sir/madam, posting to Slashdot has made my reasoning muddy
Try this one on for size, just because Einstein failed Math does that imply that it was worthless to teach him? I myself have much the same LD collection as he did (not, you understand that I am comparing myself to Einstein!
I believe that tests such as this one (and IQ tests for that matter) make excellent diagnostic teaching tools, but are often used for political reasons (IQ tests in particular have been used for years to prop up many cases of descrimination) to deny education to people who deserve it.
*grins* and how dare you use a word like axiom in a
Best back at you,
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Oh please. athiest != psychopath.
:). I think we could all use with more tolerence in the world. Simply because people don't believe the same as we do does not make them evil or sub-human. This goes for clones (although I cannot see how they would be treated any differently then an identical twin would be, as that is exactly what they are), operating systems, slashdot editors, linux distributions, and even John Katz :).
On the off chance that you're not a troll, and for anyone else who might be tempted to buy into your argument:
Just because you don't believe that if you step out of line you'll burn forever does not imply that you have no morals. People confuse athiests (and agnostics) with psychopaths (having no ethical/moral qualms). It's simply not true. Athiests simply do not believe in God. (For that matter they don't believe in the devil ethier. So maybe you can just cancel them both out and call it a wash if you perfer).
For the record, I'm not an athiest, but some of my friends are, and none of them have killed me off yet
Minupla, "OK, now go to your corners and come out tolerent!"
--
Remove the rocks to send email
But if I'm a college administrator, my goal should be to provide my services (education) to those who are best able to take advantage of them.
Now given that, I would like the most intellegent students possible, not the ones who _currently_ know the most. Given that differing schools give a differing quality of education (self evident, do a week of volenteer work in an inner city school as a tutor in computers or whatever your specialty is if you have any doubts) students are not going to approach the SATs on the same footing, despite the fact that they may be as intelligent, or capible of assimulating the teaching.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Trying to test for intelligence, which is what they are attempting to do, is much much more difficult then testing for aptitude, which is what they are accomplishing by means of the SAT tests.
Consider my particular circumstances. I'm a dysgraphic. For the first several years of my shool life, they assumed I couldn't read. Not because I was unable to, mind you, but rather because the method they used to determine if I could read was by making me read something and then write down the answers to questions written on the blackboard. Now I'm sure you're all bright enough to figure out with the benifit of hindsight what was wrong with this method. Yep, I couldn't write. I was later diagnosed Dysgraphic, with related small and large muscle co-ordination problems. I was reading at level, but couldn't write the answers down on the piece of paper. This is an example of the problem of testing for intelligence. They assumed based on my written output that I was not intelligent enough to read. (also wrong, you can be highly intelligent and be dyslexic, but that's another story, and another example of the problems.)
Later on in my scholastic career, it became obvious that my learning disability affected me in a shotgun-like pattern that made little sense. I scored A's in honours english, and history (after we learned that I could type a lot better then I wrote, and thus began my life long passion for computers), but couldn't for the life of me learn a second language. I scored A-Bs in Physics, Chem and Comp Sci but pure math I was lucky to scrape through with a C.
Fortunaly I was born in Canada where we handle things a bit differently, and my provincial finals (standardized over the province I live in) are converted to a GPA and used to make my college entrance info. So I could tailor my class load and therefore the tests I had to take towards my strengths (obviously I avoided things like extra math classes, or any extra foriegn langues).
I doubt my SAT scores would have reflected accurately my intelligence, and probably would have missed my aptitudes too, since I'm weak in pure math and language skills, but strong in applied ones.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
In a suprise announcment today Rambus announced that they were retroactively announcing their patant for magenetic-core memory. Analysts speculate that this is a defensive move by Rambus in the event of a failure in their current bussiness model to patent other peoples' ideas that are currently applicable. This new initiative would patent other peoples' ideas that are already patented.
When questioned weather he expected to be granted a patent, the CEO of Rambus pointed out Amazon's One-Click patent, and said, "What do you think?"
When further questioned if he thought there was a market for slow memory in 128 byte chunks, he pointed out that people were buying RDRAM.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Actually I was worried about batteries, but several all day bussiness trips later, I've never run my Palm V out of its recharables, and an hour on the cradle when it gets home fixes them right up, and I've ran it for about 6 hrs straight on the backlight and not run em out. (of course, I have my CPU usage for the reader app turned right down, how many Mhz do you need to write characters on the screen :).
:)
And I find it just as bad to flip pages when I read
--
Remove the rocks to send email
1 - *grins* I've never been able to get over the attraction of reading in bed. Can't get to sleep without it. :)
:)
:)
2 - Well reading a large hardcover in bed (as opposed to sitting at a table) is hard on the wrists for me at least
3 - *grins* sorry, wasn't clear... they publish it as they edit it, I assume, so you get more as you get closer to the publication date.
4 - Yep, you can go back to your web-library and download new copies (in various formats, everything from html to rtf to microsoft reader, rocket book, or pda compatable formats.) if you accidentaly nuke yours, or it's been a year and you want to reread it because the sequal just came out...
5 - *laughs* the bane of any space opera fan
I've been using mobipocket. They have a freebie publisher, so I can turn text or html files into mobipocket ones. *grins* I hear you ont he microsoft reader one, but that's never likely to happen as CE and PalmOS are direct competitors, and you've not seen MS Word for linux yet have you?
And Baen supports mobipocket directly which is a plus since I've been buying from them.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
But neither I, nor anyone else can prove that I store illegal content on my machine.
:)
Freenet is a totally peer-to-peer system. It is not possible to tell weather I'm sending the file directly to you or am just transmitting at the request of a node behind me. And if it's possible to procecute for that, then ISPs everywhere are in BIG trouble
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Natually the router-sniffer could see that you were transmitting freenet traffic, but since it uses peer-to-peer encryption, the best you might be able to get is trafic analysis information out of it.
The other thing you could do would be to take over a node on the network, and request the material you're interested in, but since freenet uses relay nodes, you can never be sure that the information you're recieving came directly from the node you are talking to or through N relay nodes. Also the data is encrypted on the harddrive of the node operator, so you, provably, cannot know if you are storing illegal data or a copy of Johney's essay for school.
Hope that helps,
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Ya, but consider the numerous disadvantages of books:
:)
:)
:)
1) lack of backlight. Try reading in bed with someone who sleeps earlier then you. Backlights are your friend
2) wieght. Holding a book in a reading position for hours on end is hard. Esp a hard cover.
3) availability. I can buy a book from Baen's webscriptions, send it to my palm and have it the day they publish it (or earlier if I don't mind not having the whole thing at one time)
4) cost. I can buy 4 ebooks from Baen for 10$ or 2.50$/book. (incidentally, the author gets twice as much in royalties from ebook sales through Baen, to compensate for the lower publishing cost)
5) searchability. As you pointed out, rapidly seaching through an ebook to find out which side of the space opera George was on as he comes charging out of hyperspace is very handy
Against these benifits books have clarity of text (in a well lit environment.)
For me, the benifits outwiegh the losses. I'm hapy to be a convert
--
Remove the rocks to send email
I have a fondness for long novels, unfortunatly they are hard to carry around in a pocket all day, being so bulky, like the Cryptonomicon hard cover I carried around. Lately I've been greading them on my palm pilot. It's perfect, light, backlit, I don't have to carry another thing around with me (since I carry my palm anyways).
It has all the convience of a book (I can read it in front of the fireplace, etc), and all the convience of a light small device.
A year ago I would have said no way. Now it's 'bring on the ebooks!'
--
Remove the rocks to send email
I don't know about anyone else, but I have spent more sleepless nights playing nethack then any other 3d rendered, first person shooter. A close runner up would be TinyMush.
Games under OSS will never rival the commercial offerings
As my Logic and Rhetoric prof used to say, always beware of encompassing statements where the restrictions are implied.
Implied premises (as I read it):
Games: defined as a subset limited to high artwork games, such as first person shooters, rather then high concept games such as Civilization, Nethack, ethier one of which I'd give higher replayability scores then 99% of games to come on the market in the last 5 years. Both of which (Nethack was) could have easily come out of a small programming group in an OSS environment.
Never: Well I won't even bother here. Unbound timeframes are obvious hyperbole.
Commercial: Defined as games released by big names, such as EA? No, many of these 'commercial quality' games are produced by small shops which are aquired by large companies when they produce something promising looking. Companies that charge for their software? No, that would include all shareware companies, obviously leading to refutment of your argument...
Hrm. Argument seems to have broken down.
Could it be that the observations you cite could be explained by another premise?
Let's try one:
"99% of games are initially produced by small software houses. Of that 98% fail to produce something exciting enough to attract the attention of a distributor and therefore fail to make the shelves of EB. The lack of 'Comercial quality' OSS games is due to statistical factors rather then failure of the development model, as there are simply fewer OSS game projects."
Seems to cover the observed evidence. Of course the whole argument is specious, as 'work' is basicly defined as "appearing on the shelves of EB" which of course an OSS game is unlikely to do, not being distributed by EA or the like.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
I find it a constant source of amazment that a group of people who think nothing of daming rivers for electricity to run their computers, (one of the more environmently friendly forms of energy creation actually).
/.ers are biting on the same story we all rebel against when it's applied to us (internet bad, internet geeks evil) when it's applied to genetic engineering.
How is tinkering with genetic codes more 'playing god' then creating new lakes where there were none before, changing ecological niches, probably causing new species to evolve, to fit the new ecological niches created.
How about the effect from electomagnetic fields? New roads through the countryside?
Face it people, we're playing God. We always have. Chaos theory argues that our existance on this planet will change things, even if we all stood perfectly still and didn't move for all our lives.
Like any technology, there will be ethical considerations, and we'll screw it up occasionaly.
Can we cause irreperable damage? Probably. Can we use the technology to save ourselves? Probably.
On the other hand, one of those cosmic rays could zap one of us just right and randomly cause any given mutation "naturally". Does that make it OK?
Let's face it, we already have plenty of technologies that let us wipe out the planet earth. Anyone who feels like it can use one of them, or the new one. What this gives us is a whole new way to solve problems.
Being an optimist, I like to assume that we will cause more good then harm from new techologies.
Unfortunatly, the media finds it easier to sell (insert medium here) using bad news. So we all hear about 'clones' being evil (most of which assume a clone will be of the memorex variety, not the identical twin reality), and nanotech will destroy the earth, and the internet will cause our children to become porn loving, rocket launcher shooting, black clothing wearing, 3l337 hax0rz.
I find it suprising that so many
Nuff Said.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
You have my thanks for informing me of such a cool Spider Robinson quote that I was unaware of. *tosses a mug into the fireplace in your honor!*
Cheers!
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Denial of service attacks are to cracking what parking a logging truck in the no parking zone in front of a bank is to bank robbery. It takes no talent, just a disregard for public convience and a big truck/pipe.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Acutally...
Recently, through no fault of my own I've been forced to wear a suit and tie around. Unfortunatly a Baen pocket book makes an unsightly bulge in the suit. *sighs*. So I've recently been pulling stuff down from the Baen free library and buying them from webscriptions, and downloading them to my palm pilot. It's great, the LCD screen is as easy to read as my pocket book. I can read it for 3 hrs at a time with no ill effects, and as a bonus, it's backlit, so I can read in the dark. (Consider the benifits for a cohabitating geek who sleeps less then his/her co-geek(ette), no more having to turn the lamp on and risking waking the SO. It's great.) Now I just need to upgrade to a Vx so I can store more books at a time. 2M is getting cramped!
--
Remove the rocks to send email
I first heard about this story before UBC had taken credit. I turned to the person who told me and, having heard mom's stories from when she was dating a UBC engineer, said, "You know, I bet the UBC Engineers ran out of Vancouver bridges to hang bugs off of. Imagine my suprise when I turned out to be right. Heh.
Hats off to em, going to a foriegn country, and executing this prank in a very public place, without being caught. Bravo!
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Violence (on tv, in movies, in computer games, even in D&D games) has long been a traditional scapegoat for insuffiently involved parents.
That being said, I certinaly see no need for *me* to be exposed to it, so I don't watch it. Nuff said.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
If you think this bad, check out this letter to Iambe. Our industry has its rotten spots alright.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
The phrase security guarantee is inapporpiate since noone can guarantee security. This is a security bug bounty.
And 500$ is an insignifigant amount of money compared to the damage that a DNS bug can cause.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
*sighs* After literally years of preaching "always notify the developer first, and only send to bugtraq if the problem is not resolved" and people acting in good faith with the developers, we get this.
This will set back co-operation in the security field by years.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Unless I'm sadly mistaken I believe that phrase has always been the formal leagalize for the process in Canada. We don't file chapter 11, we "seek protection from creditors". Frankly it's at least more descriptive then filing chapter 11, which is simply obscure :)
--
Remove the rocks to send email
Point of interest. I recall following a news story awhile back where RCMP (under pressure from the land below the 49th) tried to crack down on DirectTV pirates. IIRC, and it wasn't appealed 18 times, it was ruled that since the service is not available for sale in Canada, (and DTV goes through some serious hoops to insure it isn't) that selling and using electronic parts to circumvent security measures on it is perfectly legal.
Canada also has some different views on the RF spectrum. IE: last I checked it was illegal to manufacture a scanner that could scan 800MHz (non-digital Cell) in the US, but not Canada.
FWIW,
--
Remove the rocks to send email