---That's a pretty interesting question. Islam recognises the benefits of drinking alcohol, as modern medicine recently discovered. This is a quote from the Quran, the Islamic scripture:
---"They ask you regarding wine and gambling. Say, in both of them is major sin, and there is some benefit for men, but the sin of them is far greater than benefit " (Surah Baqarah)
I could agree with that. I've always seen gambling as a fools game, but thought the fools deserved it (because they couldnt work out the math..)
---There are two key reasons why alcohol is banned in Islam:
---First, although many people will be able to control their consumption of alcohol, there is also a large number who won't be able to and who will affect those around them. And so the overall effect on society is negative. Today we can see this as broken families, drunk driving, children raised inappropriately by alcoholic parents, disease during childbirth, and so on.
Yes, improper use of alcohol does lead to all those effects. What then of the people who drink, say, one glass with a meal, and train children to be responsible? I see that training responsibility and honor is above demonizing any one such substance. For example, many 21 year olds in the US die on their birthday due to alcohol related deaths due to "going crazy" because they drank till they passed out or drove home. They were kept away from alcohol and did not learn responsibility when consuming alcohol.
I have drank alcohol since 6 years old (essentially a shot glass of red wine) with a meal. Im now 25 and I still drink wines and such with a meal. Ive never got drunk because I hate loosing control (I was drugged once and I hated it...LSD)
---Second, and in my opinion probably the more important reason, is that Islam, just like Christianity and Judaism, has the concept of being judged after you die for your actions during your lifetime. So people who do more good go to heaven, and those who do more evil go to hell. However, you can only be judged if you have free will and the ability to differentiate between good and evil (i.e. an able mind). Anything that impairs your ability to make these judgments is haram (not allowed in Islam). This also includes taking drugs for example.
In the regard of loosing control, I wholly agree. But I see what is evil is letting a substance or construct take control of your own life. For many, it is alcohol. For others, it can be other drugs, control, pornography, gambling, mammon, you name it. Loosing control is worse.
I'm Catholic, and I still take communion wine. We purchase from a local winery.
---Keep in mind though that Islam is very flexible when it comes to times of need. So for example if one needs a hallucinogen to recover from an illness, or needs to drink alcohol to avoid starvation, then it's ok to consume them.
Fair enough, I dont know of anybody who wouldnt break religious commands to keep alive from diseases or starvation.
I do thank you for replying.. A lot of times, slashdotters dont reply.
---Sounds to me like the old "information overload" phenomenon. The solution-pattern to this situation is never going to be found via incremental improvements in information processing, as the growth is exponential. Nor will an "add-on" approach solve the problem; while hyperlinks, search engines, and other qualitatively-impressive tools are awesome in their own right (and do help!), they only add a layer or two to an information-growth process that adds layers supralinearly... they're another "stop-gap measure", though they're also the best we've come up with, so far.
About that whole hyperlinks stuff... There was a project called Xanadu about reversable hyperlinks and a bunch of other things supposed to revolutionize the web, but their stuff was all hidden. Would it be possible to ressurect a form of Xanadu to something usable? The stuff on their webpages indicate hyperlinking all forms of media (which would be killer on a lot of things).
---So how to solve an unsolvable problem? Rephrase it! IMO, the problem isn't "too much information", as that's already been solved by the "biocomputer" we all watch the Simpsons with: our senses/brains already process "too much information" handily, but with lots of errors. No, the problem is that we're using the wrong approach to what we call "information" in the first place!
Well, not true. I thought autistics had the problem of NOT throwing information away. But Im sure you're researching that.
Secondly, information for us is quantified data, which does mean using numbers. Electronics can use both types: analog and digital. In digital, you can control the bits, and how they "flow". A device is either on or off. Simple. In analog, you have an infinite amount of states because everything is a continuously changing wave. The very fact of testing an analog circuit changes it in unpredictible ways. Now, analog and digital circuits have their places but digital is far easier to work with due to its binary states.
---Here's a challenge: is there a natural way to measure the "information-organizing capability" of a system? Meaning some approach/algorithm/technique simple enough for a kid or grandparent to understand, that most human beings will agree on, and that puts humans above machines for such things as recognizing pictures of cats (without having to have "trained" the machine on a bajillion pictures first). [Grammars are a reasonable start, but you have to explain where the grammars come from in the first place, and what metric you want to use to optimize them.]
Measuring something means to quantify. You would have to convert it to some sort of representation double the bandwidth (due to Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem) and only then are you able to duplicate it. Digital is the only way to do that, because you can control all possible states in a digital machine. That is NOT so in an analog.
Much of our Sci-Fi has come true because WE aimed for it. Star Trek Comms anybody? They're called cell phones now. When will they link back to a desktop supercomputer? I figure it wont be that long.
And look at how powerful our computers are now. They're amazing. Id dare to claim that just one of our desktops are just as powerful as the whole world of machines 20 years ago. How much more powerful do they become before they equal human intelligence? From that "Moore's Law" (which was an observation, not a law) we dont have that long to wait.
From that, who will the first human-like AI be? A digitized human.
I wasnt wishing, dreaming or fantasizing anything. There's other formats better suited for distribution. It's called a PDF. If someone needs a copy of something I have, I go into Open Office, and export PDF. Works well, and a bitch to modify.
And PDF works on a hell of a lot more platforms than 1.
Antennas are not locked to one specific frequency, but a range of them, with an increasing SWR curve for deviating off the center. For example, I make what is commonly known as a 2 Meter antenna (2 meter is distance between waves, which equates to about 144 MHz). The antenna creator would minimize SWR for the "center" which would be 146 MHZ. The center is what our license allows (144.00 MHz to 147.99 MHz @ max 1500W).
Now, for selectivity, I have to manually tune my receiving circuit to pick up a voice or chirp. Different Encoding strategies require different bandwidths (I use a 300 Hz filter for morse code (CW), and 4 KHz for voice, and a 6 MHz filter for Amateur TV). This is for selecting a specific transmission. Instead, if Im aiming for receiving RF energy, I'd just create a nice wide antenna and pick it all up. The signals would get all jumbled up, but I dont care about data, only power input.
Of course, it's mostly a moot point because of the inverse square law and all. Unless you're using refelecters, you wont have much of anything to pick up.
As an aside, SWR is Standing Wave Ratio, which represents the loss of power by reflection of RF over the wires. This power goes back into your transmitter. Too high numbers on SWR can, and WILL fry your transmitter. I've operated on a 2.0 SWR, but very hesitantly. I have a 1.2 SWR with a antenna matching network (can match impedance between 2 lines, with no more than a 10 SWR match). SWR can also eat up receiving RF (by turning it into heat on the line). If you have any sort of bad componetry, you're screwing yourself.
Linux is already just as good, and we can get work done just as well. All that really matters is that some people use MS apps that arent compatible with much, BUT many of those apps also have export to standard data types.
What I worry about is the customer backlash when they fuck over their media collections with default-DRM on Windows. That will pissoff more people than ANY EU or US judgement.
Having ravaging hordes of pissed off cusomers is bad for any business, let alone when there's a viable alternative.
Not hard. Just have a known carrier with a specific frequency and auto-tune.
I do it all the time with LEOs on K/A, but they dont have a carrier to zero-beat with. You have to do it manually, usually when there's a QSO going on.
What Tesla came up with is not alien-abduction fiction, but true.
Unlike what Tesla thought about the aether, we now know what RF energy is, how it propagates, and how it stores energy. We have a decent command over a large portion of the spectrum under visible light (400 nm and lower), and we understand that the frequency is linked to the relative energy of the RF.
I once created a 20.5 MHz version of this using a car battery, but since there's soo much energy, filtering is almost pointless. I ended up wiping out a nice 4 MHz chunk of spectrum and had the FCC on me. To put it bluntly, this stuff is worse than spark-gap xmitters. I ended up dismantling this contraption when I received my Ticket (amateur radio license)
Lest to say, it IS possible, but stick with very very low power stuff over short distances. Otherwise you'll end up doing bad things to your local electronics and receiving gear.
Yeah, whatever. If they really wanted to, they could create a near-perfect activation that would be un-"fixable".
How? PKI service running that feeds the kernel specific information gleaned only by username, user_privatekey and MS_publickey. You could turn on or off certain kernel functions with the appropriate kernel calls and responses.
For that matter, does anybody know how all the fire codes, building codes, and such are offered? They too cost in the hundreds of dollars, but they are obtainable for free. What happens is that the books are referenced in court documents, and those are to be made publicly. In essence, for free.
The "license" called a EULA is NOT a license, but a demand made in duress.
The basic license I applied for was a copy under copyright law. And since there's NO way to return it, I dont give a shit of what MS says about moving OSes around. As long as Copyright law is satisfied, Im happy.
Better yet, if Xen would work properly with Win98, I could run fresh virtualized images for each app.
Win98 on current machinery is friggin FAST. Now, run each app in its own environment, with limited network access (network ONLY to host running virtualization). Instant win98 network with 1 "computer" for each program.
Slashdot Mirror
That was fairly contentless.
If you didnt read it and pretended 2 marketers yakking, it was about as interesting.
Well, that and Virtualization is the next key word. Add that to Web 2.0 and Beowulf cluster.
Zzzzzz
---That's a pretty interesting question. Islam recognises the benefits of drinking alcohol, as modern medicine recently discovered. This is a quote from the Quran, the Islamic scripture:
---"They ask you regarding wine and gambling. Say, in both of them is major sin, and there is some benefit for men, but the sin of them is far greater than benefit " (Surah Baqarah)
I could agree with that. I've always seen gambling as a fools game, but thought the fools deserved it (because they couldnt work out the math..)
---There are two key reasons why alcohol is banned in Islam:
---First, although many people will be able to control their consumption of alcohol, there is also a large number who won't be able to and who will affect those around them. And so the overall effect on society is negative. Today we can see this as broken families, drunk driving, children raised inappropriately by alcoholic parents, disease during childbirth, and so on.
Yes, improper use of alcohol does lead to all those effects. What then of the people who drink, say, one glass with a meal, and train children to be responsible? I see that training responsibility and honor is above demonizing any one such substance. For example, many 21 year olds in the US die on their birthday due to alcohol related deaths due to "going crazy" because they drank till they passed out or drove home. They were kept away from alcohol and did not learn responsibility when consuming alcohol.
I have drank alcohol since 6 years old (essentially a shot glass of red wine) with a meal. Im now 25 and I still drink wines and such with a meal. Ive never got drunk because I hate loosing control (I was drugged once and I hated it...LSD)
---Second, and in my opinion probably the more important reason, is that Islam, just like Christianity and Judaism, has the concept of being judged after you die for your actions during your lifetime. So people who do more good go to heaven, and those who do more evil go to hell. However, you can only be judged if you have free will and the ability to differentiate between good and evil (i.e. an able mind). Anything that impairs your ability to make these judgments is haram (not allowed in Islam). This also includes taking drugs for example.
In the regard of loosing control, I wholly agree. But I see what is evil is letting a substance or construct take control of your own life. For many, it is alcohol. For others, it can be other drugs, control, pornography, gambling, mammon, you name it. Loosing control is worse.
I'm Catholic, and I still take communion wine. We purchase from a local winery.
---Keep in mind though that Islam is very flexible when it comes to times of need. So for example if one needs a hallucinogen to recover from an illness, or needs to drink alcohol to avoid starvation, then it's ok to consume them.
Fair enough, I dont know of anybody who wouldnt break religious commands to keep alive from diseases or starvation.
I do thank you for replying.. A lot of times, slashdotters dont reply.
Creepy Crawler
What is inherently bad about alcohol?
I do agree that excessive alcohol usage is bad, but doesnt excessive *anything* lead to very bad things?
I know many Christians who think alcohol is the "demon drink", so Im not attacking Islam... just all the religions that have this belief.
I just get the idea of a really long flatulent fart..
If you liked NWN and SoU and HotU, go get the Prestige "Upgrade" at nwnprc.netgamers.co.uk
;-D
Well, if you want 75+ classes, a real epic spell system, a bunch of new spells, psionics, and everything else, go get it
Well, that and I like my human Wizard 7/Red Wizard 23/Lich 10. Casts necro spells with 65 or so DC.. Momento Mori = you die.
---Sounds to me like the old "information overload" phenomenon. The solution-pattern to this situation is never going to be found via incremental improvements in information processing, as the growth is exponential. Nor will an "add-on" approach solve the problem; while hyperlinks, search engines, and other qualitatively-impressive tools are awesome in their own right (and do help!), they only add a layer or two to an information-growth process that adds layers supralinearly ... they're another "stop-gap measure", though they're also the best we've come up with, so far.
About that whole hyperlinks stuff... There was a project called Xanadu about reversable hyperlinks and a bunch of other things supposed to revolutionize the web, but their stuff was all hidden. Would it be possible to ressurect a form of Xanadu to something usable? The stuff on their webpages indicate hyperlinking all forms of media (which would be killer on a lot of things).
---So how to solve an unsolvable problem? Rephrase it! IMO, the problem isn't "too much information", as that's already been solved by the "biocomputer" we all watch the Simpsons with: our senses/brains already process "too much information" handily, but with lots of errors. No, the problem is that we're using the wrong approach to what we call "information" in the first place!
Well, not true. I thought autistics had the problem of NOT throwing information away. But Im sure you're researching that.
Secondly, information for us is quantified data, which does mean using numbers. Electronics can use both types: analog and digital. In digital, you can control the bits, and how they "flow". A device is either on or off. Simple. In analog, you have an infinite amount of states because everything is a continuously changing wave. The very fact of testing an analog circuit changes it in unpredictible ways. Now, analog and digital circuits have their places but digital is far easier to work with due to its binary states.
---Here's a challenge: is there a natural way to measure the "information-organizing capability" of a system? Meaning some approach/algorithm/technique simple enough for a kid or grandparent to understand, that most human beings will agree on, and that puts humans above machines for such things as recognizing pictures of cats (without having to have "trained" the machine on a bajillion pictures first). [Grammars are a reasonable start, but you have to explain where the grammars come from in the first place, and what metric you want to use to optimize them.]
Measuring something means to quantify. You would have to convert it to some sort of representation double the bandwidth (due to Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem) and only then are you able to duplicate it. Digital is the only way to do that, because you can control all possible states in a digital machine. That is NOT so in an analog.
What?
Much of our Sci-Fi has come true because WE aimed for it. Star Trek Comms anybody? They're called cell phones now. When will they link back to a desktop supercomputer? I figure it wont be that long.
And look at how powerful our computers are now. They're amazing. Id dare to claim that just one of our desktops are just as powerful as the whole world of machines 20 years ago. How much more powerful do they become before they equal human intelligence? From that "Moore's Law" (which was an observation, not a law) we dont have that long to wait.
From that, who will the first human-like AI be? A digitized human.
The "stats" are probably what you have heard.
Those numbers are what every fanatic touts. However, it ONLY shows how good the admin can, well, admin.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with crackpots buying airtime rights. Thats protected under the freedom of speech, Bill 1.
And you have a choice whether to send that crackpot your money. Or are you dismissing self-choice?
Damn straight.
If I met him, Id buy him a few drinks (well, as many as he wants. he deserves it).
That there's still no equivalent to the old PGPphone.
;)
That thing ROCKS
I wasnt wishing, dreaming or fantasizing anything. There's other formats better suited for distribution. It's called a PDF. If someone needs a copy of something I have, I go into Open Office, and export PDF. Works well, and a bitch to modify.
And PDF works on a hell of a lot more platforms than 1.
Antennas are not locked to one specific frequency, but a range of them, with an increasing SWR curve for deviating off the center. For example, I make what is commonly known as a 2 Meter antenna (2 meter is distance between waves, which equates to about 144 MHz). The antenna creator would minimize SWR for the "center" which would be 146 MHZ. The center is what our license allows (144.00 MHz to 147.99 MHz @ max 1500W).
Now, for selectivity, I have to manually tune my receiving circuit to pick up a voice or chirp. Different Encoding strategies require different bandwidths (I use a 300 Hz filter for morse code (CW), and 4 KHz for voice, and a 6 MHz filter for Amateur TV). This is for selecting a specific transmission. Instead, if Im aiming for receiving RF energy, I'd just create a nice wide antenna and pick it all up. The signals would get all jumbled up, but I dont care about data, only power input.
Of course, it's mostly a moot point because of the inverse square law and all. Unless you're using refelecters, you wont have much of anything to pick up.
As an aside, SWR is Standing Wave Ratio, which represents the loss of power by reflection of RF over the wires. This power goes back into your transmitter. Too high numbers on SWR can, and WILL fry your transmitter. I've operated on a 2.0 SWR, but very hesitantly. I have a 1.2 SWR with a antenna matching network (can match impedance between 2 lines, with no more than a 10 SWR match). SWR can also eat up receiving RF (by turning it into heat on the line). If you have any sort of bad componetry, you're screwing yourself.
Why bother?
Linux is already just as good, and we can get work done just as well. All that really matters is that some people use MS apps that arent compatible with much, BUT many of those apps also have export to standard data types.
What I worry about is the customer backlash when they fuck over their media collections with default-DRM on Windows. That will pissoff more people than ANY EU or US judgement.
Having ravaging hordes of pissed off cusomers is bad for any business, let alone when there's a viable alternative.
Not hard. Just have a known carrier with a specific frequency and auto-tune.
I do it all the time with LEOs on K/A, but they dont have a carrier to zero-beat with. You have to do it manually, usually when there's a QSO going on.
How do you propose to "encrypt" photons?
You can encrypt DATA, not matter/energy.
What Tesla came up with is not alien-abduction fiction, but true.
Unlike what Tesla thought about the aether, we now know what RF energy is, how it propagates, and how it stores energy. We have a decent command over a large portion of the spectrum under visible light (400 nm and lower), and we understand that the frequency is linked to the relative energy of the RF.
I once created a 20.5 MHz version of this using a car battery, but since there's soo much energy, filtering is almost pointless. I ended up wiping out a nice 4 MHz chunk of spectrum and had the FCC on me. To put it bluntly, this stuff is worse than spark-gap xmitters. I ended up dismantling this contraption when I received my Ticket (amateur radio license)
Lest to say, it IS possible, but stick with very very low power stuff over short distances. Otherwise you'll end up doing bad things to your local electronics and receiving gear.
KC9JEF.
Yeah, whatever. If they really wanted to, they could create a near-perfect activation that would be un-"fixable".
How? PKI service running that feeds the kernel specific information gleaned only by username, user_privatekey and MS_publickey. You could turn on or off certain kernel functions with the appropriate kernel calls and responses.
Unless the booklet is gold and silver, It's hardly worth 500$
I like this idea as a backup strategy, so that you can copy the "image" once a week so that you will NEVER lose your data.
I guess I should have explained.
We, the taxpayers have paid for this paper, yet we also must pay for copies of the very document we paid for to begin with.
That's what I dont like. Akin to double-taxation.
(from the BuyMe screen liknked from schneider...)
survey by The Conference Board (sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security)
Anybody know how to get this report for free?
For that matter, does anybody know how all the fire codes, building codes, and such are offered? They too cost in the hundreds of dollars, but they are obtainable for free. What happens is that the books are referenced in court documents, and those are to be made publicly. In essence, for free.
I wonder if the same could be done for this...
USian goes with MEian and THEYun.
If I dont get inside, MOMun and POPun will kick my ASSun.
(true, i concede that --un is stupid)
The "license" called a EULA is NOT a license, but a demand made in duress.
The basic license I applied for was a copy under copyright law. And since there's NO way to return it, I dont give a shit of what MS says about moving OSes around. As long as Copyright law is satisfied, Im happy.
Better yet, if Xen would work properly with Win98, I could run fresh virtualized images for each app.
Win98 on current machinery is friggin FAST. Now, run each app in its own environment, with limited network access (network ONLY to host running virtualization). Instant win98 network with 1 "computer" for each program.