Ok, so an e-mail offering free software might sound too good to be true. But how would an e-mail offering exorbitantly priced software under draconian EULA terms and conditions sound?
Much agreed on the human bodies as batteries, but otherwise thought it was excellent.
Neo is an anagram of "one", the "one". This doctrine usually refers to the avatar of Satan because Satan is - unlike God who exists in TRINITY - only ONE being. Furthermore Neo takes clearly the defilers role as he fights against order and propagates anti-autoritarian behavior and the relativity of moralic values.
Already I'm not really sure if you're serious. Neo <-> one is hardly an impressive anagram, and I suspect neo is more often used to refer to something being relatively new or recent than to refer to Satan. Most Christians would hold that they are mono-theistic, I think, despite what the Jews or Muslims might say. Yes, he fights against order, and part of the order he fights against is ordered rows of human bodies used as batteries. More of a concern, I think, are all the people he kills along the way. (And here I could draw a parallel with either the Hebrew assult on the Canaanite people, or the Christian Crusades.) Lastly, you must realise that even within Christanity, there are widely different views on many moral issues. The search for absolute truth may well be a noble persuit, but the assumption that you already have it and everyone else is wrong is not.
Morpheus doesn't refers to Greek mythology but to the KABBALISTIC figure of M'orphir'ne'us, servant of the evil one and traditionally the preparator of his plans.
A name can refer to more than one thing.
Nebukadnezar was a heathen king and is mentioned in the Holy Book for serving Baal and being killed by the warth of the LORD. See the book Daniel.
Don't believe everything you read, Nebukadnezar got a lot of bad press.
And since you're a member of Mensa, perhaps you can explain this. As you surely know, the god you worship made a covenant with the Israelites on Mount Sinai, and the English translation begins thus:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
You shall have no other gods before me.
Note it does not say "There are no other gods besides me." It actually implies there are other gods. A god would not be likely to get that wrong. Of course, relative to the Israelite/Jewish view there are no other gods. But that's just their moral values. Why shouldn't other people be allowed to worship any god(s), or none, as they choose? Or, to get to the point, why should anyone else be bound by the morals that you have chosen?
I'm much in favour of making the distinction between KB, MB, GB and KiB, MiB, GiB etc. standard units. (I think it's a bit naff having non-standard standards.) But in fact the manufacturers _are_ using standard units, just not the ones we might think they should... and hence if anything, they are giving more capacity rather than less than they advertise. Especially if they say Gb rather than GB;-)
Then there's the anomoly of the 1.44MB diskette, which is neither exactly 1.44MB nor exactly 1.44MiB, so we need another unit. Probably 1.44KKiB (1.44 kilo-kibi-bytes). That's a bit of a mouthful though, and really needs a verbal abbrevation. I suggest kinky-bytes for KKiB (and for KKib, kickme-bits).
The government is specifying government software use. What they are doing is making a choice. But, you say, the people who actually have to use the system don't get to make the choice? Get real, when have the users ever been allowed to pick their own software, regardless of the country in question?
As you say, there has been a link suggested between the use of modern warm, well fitting underpants/pants, and an increased rate of stirility in men in developed nations.
It has been hypothesised that testies require a slightly lower temperature (by about 2 degrees Celcius) than the average body temperature, in order to function properly. Also tight fitting lower garments can reduce fertility in men.
Clearly, this indicates that for our own good, us men should wear skirts instead of pants. Don't worry about what to do with all those pants though, the women can wear them.
However, to be more consistent with popular media science measurement systems, we would more correctly say that a sheet of interstellar space the size of a football field and the thickness of a human hair would contain about 3000 atoms.
That's a bit verbose "a sheet the size of a football field and the thickness of a human hair". I think we need a more compact way of referring to that unit. I suggest it be called a foot-hair.
Anyway, as to why we should expect to find alien radio signals from close to stars, energy conservation is a good reason. If they have no resources, they won't be able to send a signal (no where to get the energy from).
Is having truly free speech where some people inevitably abuse that speech better than having speech regulated by governments who inevitably abuse their regulatory powers themselves? Participatory democracies don't have a great track record when it comes to allowing unpopular opinions to be heard. In most of Europe today -- to pick one example -- you will serve jail time for questioning the holocaust.
That worries you? Here in New Zealand not too long ago, someone was arrested for burning the national flag outside parliment buildings. Can you imagine that? Turns out there was some special piece of law just to protect the flag, or something. Who in their right mind would get so worked up about a useless bit of rag with some lines and stars on it? (If he had burnt a nice patchwork quilt or something, I might be able to understand.)
From the entire article it is apparent that they expect nothing less than a steady stream of royalty money coming in all by itself by just declaring "commodore is our brand name", fighting all people who setup sites of their own, and bringing out some software emulator for the PC that they blindly assume 6 million people will buy from them.
Their statement somehow reminds me of the SCO thing, especially with the questionable "facts" -- regarding the C64 being the biggest selling home computer of all time, I'm not sure whether that's assuming the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh are not home computers, or that they each comprise several different home computers...
Their actions, however, are well justified according to Gatesian Capitalism -- what's the point in all those people writing all those emulators, games, etc., if no-one's making any money off it? Damn lazy OSS communists. They must all be unemployed if they have enough time to give away their labour for free. And since they're all unemployed, they're bludgers, because they're not giving anything back, as anything that's given freely is valueless... Someone should send them a wake-up call. Charging them for the Commodore trademark will ensure that they have to sell their products to cover the royalties, which means they will then be producing a valuable product, and no longer be bludgers... Or perhaps they could just avoid the trademark? Call it a commie emulator instead (random thought).
On balance the "good internet" outweighs the bad (at least for now). Having that resource available beats the shit out of being able to download the latest Britney Spears mp3. (as in fact would repeatedly punching yourself in the nuts, but you get the idea)
Hey, I happen to
thumpOw! like Britney Spears' latest thumpOw! mp3, if you thumpOw! don't mind. (I need a new past-time, this hurts too much.)
--
The reason why Storm Troopers suck at
everything has finally been explained.
They're New Zealanders!
Well now, that's a bit harsh. Genetically speaking, the Storm Troopers are actually one New Zealander. I think they do quite well for one person really, what with being largely responsible for almost conquering the known universe.
What people forget when they compare New Zealand's achievements with other countries', is that there aren't very many New Zealanders. Often, although it may seem like there are quite a few New Zealanders in some situation (sporting event, movie, bid for galactic supremecy), there are actually only a few (or in this case one), doing a lot of different things.
Yes, and focal distance too. Different focal distances are generally not handled by computer generated 3D virtual reality thingies, because its a very difficult problem. This results in an everything's-always-in-focus-even-though-things-so mehow-seem-to-be-at-different-distances-and-it-loo ks-kind-of-weird virtual world for people with 2 eyes. And, as mentioned, for people who don't have the 2-eye thing going on, focal distance rules, and everything just looks flat.
Interesting device. I developed the software used on the NOSC/SPAWAR laser-based volumetric display back in '96.
Rotating double helix... Krypton laser... the description is cool in and of itself!:-)
The device in this story really does look like a crystal ball too... The only other thing I need is a beat-up old caravan, and appropriate gypsie clothes.:-D
Covert terrorist activities now uncovered in Iraq were far more serious than even the staunchest Bush advocate could have feared. US Marines in Baghdad today (Monday 4/14/03) uncovered secret bunkers containing many tens of thousands of illegal copies of works of American intellectual property.
Captain Pitalist of the US Marines commented on the seriousness of the situation: "Saddam's regime has already defrauded the American recording industry out of billions of dollars, without us even knowing it. Had this been allowed to continue much longer, the entire US economy would have been in ruins."
Said a spokesperson for the Whitehouse: "We expected to find a few WMDs, hell, maybe even a nuclear missile or two, but this... All I can say is we're lucky... we're all damn lucky this was caught right now. It doesn't bear thinking about, how many livelihoods would have been lost..."
As to the first computer, I don't quite understand what you are contesting. By Wilkes' machine you do mean EDSAC completed in 1949?
Is 'go into service' the operative phrase here? Do you mean the first computer to do something useful? In that case, I don't disagree, but I do think it's beside the point. If we are talking about the first computer to do X, X could equally be compile a program for itself from a high level language, emulate another computer, or run a multitasking operating system, these are all significant things, but Baby was still the first computer.
Or is 'stored program computer' the operative phrase? Are you suggesting that Baby wasn't a stored program computer?
Or since you don't actually specify EDSAC, do you mean Wilkes had already built a computer before Baby?
As to the Von Neumann Architecture, like I said, I think this is probably a more difficult question.
You seem to suggest that Atanasoff had thought of the Von Neumann Architecture in the 1930s? (I'm not disagreeing, but you don't make it absolutely clear that this is what you are saying.) I understand that Konrad Zuse had thought of the Von Neumann Architecture in the 1930s, and had written about it in a patent application (info here), so I don't know if that would have preceded Atanasoff or not.
But then, it may have crossed Charles Babbage's mind too (whether or not he though it was a worthwhile idea). And it's even possible that Archimedes had written about the Von Neumann Architecture in the Alexandrian Library. Not that I'm saying he did, but who would know?
I'm not sure if you're talking about the first computer built -- computer being used to refer to what is now known as the Von Neumann Architecure -- or when this architecure was designed. If it's building the first computer, then I think I can say with reasonable confidence that the first computer was the Small Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), also sometimes referred to as the Mark 1 prototype or Baby, and was built at Manchester University by Tom Kilburn and Frederic Calland Williams, being completed in June 1948. If it's the design of the architecure in question, this may be a more difficult question.
This page is informative, I think. It claims that Wilkes' EDSAC was the first computer, but has what I consider a weak argument -- it suggests that EDSAC was the first computer, because it was the first useful computer. That seems a bit beside the point. Ok, so Baby was just designed as an experimental machine, but it could still run programs stored in memory, just not very big ones (initially a memory of 32 words, each 32-bits).
Anyway, I say I have reasonable confidence in this, because I believe the question came up on Slashdot not too long ago, and I think it was rather done to death at the time.
Ok, kind of right, but you're missing the point. Don't you know that capitalism is all about choice? Choice is good for everyone. It works like this:
The majority of consumers choose to buy the monopoly product, because it is the only one they have heard of, or because it is the same product everyone around them is using.
A handful of consumers choose to buy one of several minority products, because it has a feature they need.
The developers at all companies choose how to code their respective products, massively duplicating work, because they are working in isolation from the developers at all the other companies.
The directors of the monopoly company choose to sell their product for just a little less than the minority products, because although their massive sales easily cover research and design, they want to squeeze as much money as possible out of the consumer.
The major shareholders of the monopoly company choose the luxury cars, yachts, and waterfront mansions they want.
Besides, if OSS became popular, then the ensuring code and standards sharing between free projects might result in consumers having a choice of more than one product, and that particular kind of choice is bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, so an e-mail offering free software might sound too good to be true. But how would an e-mail offering exorbitantly priced software under draconian EULA terms and conditions sound?
--
James G
Much agreed on the human bodies as batteries, but otherwise thought it was excellent.
Already I'm not really sure if you're serious. Neo <-> one is hardly an impressive anagram, and I suspect neo is more often used to refer to something being relatively new or recent than to refer to Satan. Most Christians would hold that they are mono-theistic, I think, despite what the Jews or Muslims might say. Yes, he fights against order, and part of the order he fights against is ordered rows of human bodies used as batteries. More of a concern, I think, are all the people he kills along the way. (And here I could draw a parallel with either the Hebrew assult on the Canaanite people, or the Christian Crusades.) Lastly, you must realise that even within Christanity, there are widely different views on many moral issues. The search for absolute truth may well be a noble persuit, but the assumption that you already have it and everyone else is wrong is not.
A name can refer to more than one thing.
Don't believe everything you read, Nebukadnezar got a lot of bad press.
And since you're a member of Mensa, perhaps you can explain this. As you surely know, the god you worship made a covenant with the Israelites on Mount Sinai, and the English translation begins thus:
Note it does not say "There are no other gods besides me." It actually implies there are other gods. A god would not be likely to get that wrong. Of course, relative to the Israelite/Jewish view there are no other gods. But that's just their moral values. Why shouldn't other people be allowed to worship any god(s), or none, as they choose? Or, to get to the point, why should anyone else be bound by the morals that you have chosen?I'm much in favour of making the distinction between KB, MB, GB and KiB, MiB, GiB etc. standard units. (I think it's a bit naff having non-standard standards.) But in fact the manufacturers _are_ using standard units, just not the ones we might think they should... and hence if anything, they are giving more capacity rather than less than they advertise. Especially if they say Gb rather than GB ;-)
Then there's the anomoly of the 1.44MB diskette, which is neither exactly 1.44MB nor exactly 1.44MiB, so we need another unit. Probably 1.44KKiB (1.44 kilo-kibi-bytes). That's a bit of a mouthful though, and really needs a verbal abbrevation. I suggest kinky-bytes for KKiB (and for KKib, kickme-bits).
The government is specifying government software use. What they are doing is making a choice. But, you say, the people who actually have to use the system don't get to make the choice? Get real, when have the users ever been allowed to pick their own software, regardless of the country in question?
As you say, there has been a link suggested between the use of modern warm, well fitting underpants/pants, and an increased rate of stirility in men in developed nations.
It has been hypothesised that testies require a slightly lower temperature (by about 2 degrees Celcius) than the average body temperature, in order to function properly. Also tight fitting lower garments can reduce fertility in men.
Clearly, this indicates that for our own good, us men should wear skirts instead of pants. Don't worry about what to do with all those pants though, the women can wear them.
Yes, yes it does.
That's a bit verbose "a sheet the size of a football field and the thickness of a human hair". I think we need a more compact way of referring to that unit. I suggest it be called a foot-hair.
Anyway, as to why we should expect to find alien radio signals from close to stars, energy conservation is a good reason. If they have no resources, they won't be able to send a signal (no where to get the energy from).
That worries you? Here in New Zealand not too long ago, someone was arrested for burning the national flag outside parliment buildings. Can you imagine that? Turns out there was some special piece of law just to protect the flag, or something. Who in their right mind would get so worked up about a useless bit of rag with some lines and stars on it? (If he had burnt a nice patchwork quilt or something, I might be able to understand.)
Their statement somehow reminds me of the SCO thing, especially with the questionable "facts" -- regarding the C64 being the biggest selling home computer of all time, I'm not sure whether that's assuming the IBM PC and Apple Macintosh are not home computers, or that they each comprise several different home computers...
Their actions, however, are well justified according to Gatesian Capitalism -- what's the point in all those people writing all those emulators, games, etc., if no-one's making any money off it? Damn lazy OSS communists. They must all be unemployed if they have enough time to give away their labour for free. And since they're all unemployed, they're bludgers, because they're not giving anything back, as anything that's given freely is valueless... Someone should send them a wake-up call. Charging them for the Commodore trademark will ensure that they have to sell their products to cover the royalties, which means they will then be producing a valuable product, and no longer be bludgers... Or perhaps they could just avoid the trademark? Call it a commie emulator instead (random thought).
Well now, that's a bit harsh. Genetically speaking, the Storm Troopers are actually one New Zealander. I think they do quite well for one person really, what with being largely responsible for almost conquering the known universe.
What people forget when they compare New Zealand's achievements with other countries', is that there aren't very many New Zealanders. Often, although it may seem like there are quite a few New Zealanders in some situation (sporting event, movie, bid for galactic supremecy), there are actually only a few (or in this case one), doing a lot of different things.
I agree it's speculation not prediction. But speculation doesn't (shouldn't?) retrospectively change to prediction once found to be true.
Yes, and focal distance too. Different focal distances are generally not handled by computer generated 3D virtual reality thingies, because its a very difficult problem. This results in an everything's-always-in-focus-even-though-things-so mehow-seem-to-be-at-different-distances-and-it-loo ks-kind-of-weird virtual world for people with 2 eyes. And, as mentioned, for people who don't have the 2-eye thing going on, focal distance rules, and everything just looks flat.
Rotating double helix... Krypton laser... the description is cool in and of itself! :-)
The device in this story really does look like a crystal ball too... The only other thing I need is a beat-up old caravan, and appropriate gypsie clothes. :-D
Covert terrorist activities now uncovered in Iraq were far more serious than even the staunchest Bush advocate could have feared. US Marines in Baghdad today (Monday 4/14/03) uncovered secret bunkers containing many tens of thousands of illegal copies of works of American intellectual property.
Captain Pitalist of the US Marines commented on the seriousness of the situation: "Saddam's regime has already defrauded the American recording industry out of billions of dollars, without us even knowing it. Had this been allowed to continue much longer, the entire US economy would have been in ruins."
Said a spokesperson for the Whitehouse: "We expected to find a few WMDs, hell, maybe even a nuclear missile or two, but this... All I can say is we're lucky... we're all damn lucky this was caught right now. It doesn't bear thinking about, how many livelihoods would have been lost..."
Didn't RealBasic used to be multi-platform? Perhaps I'm thinking of something else.
As to the first computer, I don't quite understand what you are contesting. By Wilkes' machine you do mean EDSAC completed in 1949?
As to the Von Neumann Architecture, like I said, I think this is probably a more difficult question.
You seem to suggest that Atanasoff had thought of the Von Neumann Architecture in the 1930s? (I'm not disagreeing, but you don't make it absolutely clear that this is what you are saying.) I understand that Konrad Zuse had thought of the Von Neumann Architecture in the 1930s, and had written about it in a patent application (info here), so I don't know if that would have preceded Atanasoff or not.
But then, it may have crossed Charles Babbage's mind too (whether or not he though it was a worthwhile idea). And it's even possible that Archimedes had written about the Von Neumann Architecture in the Alexandrian Library. Not that I'm saying he did, but who would know?
I'm not sure if you're talking about the first computer built -- computer being used to refer to what is now known as the Von Neumann Architecure -- or when this architecure was designed. If it's building the first computer, then I think I can say with reasonable confidence that the first computer was the Small Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), also sometimes referred to as the Mark 1 prototype or Baby, and was built at Manchester University by Tom Kilburn and Frederic Calland Williams, being completed in June 1948. If it's the design of the architecure in question, this may be a more difficult question.
This page is informative, I think. It claims that Wilkes' EDSAC was the first computer, but has what I consider a weak argument -- it suggests that EDSAC was the first computer, because it was the first useful computer. That seems a bit beside the point. Ok, so Baby was just designed as an experimental machine, but it could still run programs stored in memory, just not very big ones (initially a memory of 32 words, each 32-bits).
Anyway, I say I have reasonable confidence in this, because I believe the question came up on Slashdot not too long ago, and I think it was rather done to death at the time.
Ok, kind of right, but you're missing the point. Don't you know that capitalism is all about choice? Choice is good for everyone. It works like this:
Besides, if OSS became popular, then the ensuring code and standards sharing between free projects might result in consumers having a choice of more than one product, and that particular kind of choice is bad.