Christian Music will have crosses, doves, and christian fish encoded into the signal, which will probably improve the music.
Gothic music will encode pentagrams, broken crosses, and tributes to Jack Chick, but nobody will notice because it's all screaming anyway.
Country music will include images of pickup trucks, cowboy hats, and liquor bottles, but since country fans are all hicks, they will never be discovered.
The RIAA will mandate that all music have encoded into it pictures that won't survive reencoding, but that, when translated to mp3, will crash your computer.
A retinal scan only makes a good identification when the scanner is secure, which cannot be guaranteed. The danger here is that you can't change your retinas like you can change your password, but if folks assume retinal scans are 100 precent secure, there's a very real security risk. Far better is a combination of a retinal scan (something you are), a password (shared secret), and secure hardware with public key encryption (something you have).
To relate the above to the article: the main difficulty with putting everyone's retinas on their drivers license is that their retinas are no longer a secret. Right now nobody on earth has my retinas scanned. I'd like it to stay that way, but I'm resigned to some loss of personal secrets in this post 9-11 day and age.
Biometrics don't handle failure well. Imagine that Alice is using her thumbprint as a biometric, and someone steals the digital file. Now what? This isn't a digital certificate, where some trusted third party can issue her another one. This is her thumb. She has only two. Once someone steals your biometric, it remains stolen for life; there's no getting back to a secure situation.
And biometrics are necessarily common across different functions. Just as you should never use the same password on two different systems, the same encryption key should not be used for two different applications. If my fingerprint is used to start my car, unlock my medical records, and read my electronic mail, then it's not hard to imagine some very unsecure situations arising.
Biometrics are powerful and useful, but they are not keys. They are not useful when you need the characteristics of a key: secrecy, randomness, the ability to update or destroy. They are useful as a replacement for a PIN, or a replacement for a signature (which is also a biometric). They can sometimes be used as passwords: a user can't choose a weak biometric in the same way they choose a weak password.
Biometrics are useful in situations where the connection from the reader to the verifier is secure: a biometric unlocks a key stored locally on a PCM-CIA card, or unlocks a key used to secure a hard drive. In those cases, all you really need is a unique hard-to-forge identifier. But always keep in mind that biometrics are not secrets.
Losing sales to piracy is like missing an opportunity to profit. Find every one of those pirates and offer them a chance to buy your software for $10, and 90 percent of them will take you up on it. It's how to do this without eroding your market that is the problem!
Reminds me of Deep Space 9, Season 3, Episode 22, "Explorers", which I just watched this morning. Sisko and his son pilot a reconstruction of an ancient Bajoran solar-sail spacecraft to Cardassia. They run ino some difficulties with "tachyon eddies" ripping their sails off.
Wonder if there really are some kind of particle eddies which would damage the sails?
Moonrise over Kandahar
on
Lunar Power
·
· Score: 2
Look at the moon rising over Kandahar. It's only visible for a few hours at a time. That is not my definition of reliable power! Storing the energy or shipping it long distances introduces unacceptable losses.
Squishdot--A Slashcode clone
on
Zope Bible
·
· Score: 2
This seems like a good place to mention Squishdot, a weblog product for Zope. Its claim to fame is that it looks quite like Slashdot, though it is missing some features.
If you're looking to build a stripped-down slashdot-like site, Squishdot and Zope may be the answer.
I see it as a non-issue. If the school computer labs run microsoft software, the money for the licensing is still going to come out of the students' pockets, even if they don't have a line item for it on their bill. It's usually subsumed into the "technology fee".
At my school (which shall remain nameless), we the students can get MS software for only a small fee: basically the cost of the media. This is due, I'm sure, to Microsoft's academic volume license agreement. Here's what we pay, and you've got to admit, it's a damn good deal for us students.
Microsoft Office 2000 Professional: $6.00 Microsoft FrontPage 2002: $6.00 Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional: $32.00 Windows XP Professional Upgrade* $6.00 Windows 2000 Professional Upgrade* $6.00 Office XP Professional $8.00 Office 2001 for Mac $6.00 Office v. X for Mac $7.00 Visio Professional 2002 $6.00 Visual Studio.NET Academic $6.00
These are for licensed, legal copies, and as long as we get them as students, those licenses are good in perpetuam.
Good point there. The average Indian family struggles just to put food on the table, let alone buy music. The service is clearly targetted at the wealthy.
Frankly, Mars would be a much better testbed for this kind of thing than our precious Earth!
Changes to atmospheric conditions on Earth ought to be made slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully; but this Quicklime-ade process may be just what we need to tide us over til the hydrogen era.
Under NO circumstances should we just BURN all of our Fossil Fuel! It's too valuable for making plastic and pesticide out of!
Burroughs used to live in my hometown: Parma, Idaho. Population 2000. Here's an article from the Argus Observer (the remaining Parma newspaper died a few years ago).
Tarzan author lived in Parma Dawn Eden, Argus Observer, July 10, 2000 The Online News & Information Network for the Western Treasure Valley Argus Observer
For more than the past century, famous people have come and gone from Idaho. One man few people know resided in Parma for a short time was Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of "Tarzan."
Burroughs was born in Chicago Sept. 1, 1875, and first came to Idaho in the late 1800s, joining his brothers in working at Sweetser Ranch, located west of American Falls.
Inside the Old Fort Boise replica in Parma, a historical display about Burroughs describe how he mended fences and drove cattle at the ranch, before returning to Chicago a year later to finish school.
After bouncing between Idaho and Chicago, and marrying Emma Hulbert, a childhood neighbor in Chicago in 1900, Burroughs returned to Idaho for the third, and last time, in 1903.
He was invited by his brothers to rejoin them in Idaho. His brothers, Harry, George and Frank, along with a man named Louis Sweetser, had reorganized the Yale Dredging Co. into the Sweetser-Burroughs Mining Co.
It was written when Burroughs arrived in Idaho for the last time, his brothers were operating a gold dredge in the Stanley Basin and on the Snake River in Parma.
Parma historian, the late Lucille Peterson, once wrote that prior to Burroughs' move from Stanley to Parma in 1903, the Parma residents began making plans for a "village government." Peterson wrote that during the town election in April 1904, several nominations appeared on the ballot, one of whom was Burroughs, and he won by one vote 49 to 48. He served about one month.
It was published in the "Edgar Rice Burroughs Amateur Press Association" fanzine that Burroughs "had run as an independent but had still managed to secure enough votes to edge his way in.
"Burroughs recalled, I button-holed every voter that I met, told him that I was running for office and that I did not want to be embarrassed by not getting a single vote and asking him as a personal favor to cast his vote for me, with the result that enough of them tried to save me from embarrassment to cause my election.'"
Peterson wrote she agreed that Burroughs' decision to run as an independent was probably how he got the votes. Parma, she told one of the contributing authors of the "Edgar Rice Burroughs Amateur Press Association" fanzine, was at that time an intensely political town with two competing newspapers one Democrat and one Republican. An Independent offered an extra choice to members of both parties.
Burroughs served with the Parma town government only a short time, and after the dredging company went bankrupt, he left Idaho for the last time, moving to Utah for a job as a railroad policeman.
He eventually ended up in California where he spent the rest of his life writing.
Burroughs began his writing career when he was in his mid 30s while he was proofreading advertising for "pulp magazines" in California. It was written that his "eyes strayed to an adjoining column of the magazine, a bit of fiction, and he quickly decided that he could write imaginary tales more appealing than that one."
It was at that time he wrote, "Under the Moons of Stars," and mailed it to an All Story magazine editor, who sent Burroughs $4 for a six-part series.
In 1912, Burroughs began writing "Tarzan of the Apes." When he wrote "Tarzan," All Story Magazine purchased it for $7, and two years later it was published as a book.
The first "Tarzan" movie was released in 1918.
The story of Tarzan begins with his parents, "John Clayton," Lord Greystroke of England, and his wife, the former "Hon. Alice Rutherford." Lady Alice was pregnant when the ship, carrying the couple to her husband's mission in Africa, sinks and the couple ends up on the coast.
Their son was born in 1888, and she passed away about a year later.
Lord Greystroke died a short time later.
Upon his parents' death, the child, named John Clayton after his father, is adopted by a gray ape named "Kala." Kala's mate, "Tublat," is jealous of the child and makes his life as miserable as he can.
By the time Tarzan, named so by Kala, is 10 years old, he has the strength of a man in his prime, but he is far more agile.
He teaches himself to read and print in English, and when he is in his late teens, he encounters Caucasians.
Tarzan is returned to civilization by the Frenchman Paul d'Arnot, and eventually marries an American, Jane Porter.
Before Burroughs died March 19, 1950, at the age of 74, he wrote more than 20 books about Tarzan. All together, he was the author of more than 80 adventure stories.
During the years he lived in Idaho, Burroughs was not a writer, but when he became one in later years, he did not forget this region of the country and used characters and locales from the area in his stories.
In an article Peterson wrote about Burroughs, she quotes him as once saying he had not learned a single rule for writing fiction. "I wrote stories which I feel would entertain me, knowing that there are millions of people just like me.
The Old Fort Boise replica in Parma is home to the Tarzan' author Edgar Rice Burroughs historical display. About six years ago, the display was created with the history of the author's life in Parma. The display also contains old Tarzan' magazines and books about the famed character Burroughs created.
I have little doubt that these folks will be sued by Sierra for infringing on their "intellectual property" much as I would be sued by Disney if I made a game starring Mickey Mouse.
The question, of course, is the outcome!
A Nethack Veteran Reminisces
on
Nethack 3.4.0
·
· Score: 1
I'll never forget when Harmony-W encountered an incubus on the 1st level and died of exhaustion.
I'll never forget the time I raised Sam-S 15 levels by succubus dancing.
Or filling a room with nymphs with a cursed bell (3.1.3), polypiling their mirrors into magic markers, and writing scrolls.
All told, I've ascended 8 times, including a tourist and a knight. I think the knight is my favorite character class because it can jump in an L shape!
I find it odd that the book is being published by Heinemann, who doesn't publish any other fiction. I wonder if Mr. Stephenson is going to get a bigger cut of the profits from Quicksilver.
I have years of experience milking and caring for goats and cows.
Goats
Are less likely to die than cows, and less expensive when they DO die
Reproduce faster than cows.
Can eat a wider variety of foods than cows
Are easier to milk than cows
Are easier to drag around than cows
Goats make less of a mess when they defecate.
The main problem with goats is that the milk tastes terrible. Some breeds are tastier than others, but I gag on most of it. Note that this is not a problem when it comes to spider silk.
Slashdot Mirror
Christian Music will have crosses, doves, and christian fish encoded into the signal, which will probably improve the music.
Gothic music will encode pentagrams, broken crosses, and tributes to Jack Chick, but nobody will notice because it's all screaming anyway.
Country music will include images of pickup trucks, cowboy hats, and liquor bottles, but since country fans are all hicks, they will never be discovered.
The RIAA will mandate that all music have encoded into it pictures that won't survive reencoding, but that, when translated to mp3, will crash your computer.
Here lies a Mac OS ninth in its line Its only survivor is doing just fine.
Et tu, Jobs?
All Macs go to heaven.
Please add your own Epitaphs for Mac OS 9, my only friend in the world. *sniff* I'm going to miss you, buddy!
The county gave him those games because those are the games they want to censor.
And frankly, this ruling isn't all that important. It's certain not to last more than a few years in today's political climate.
It should, however, be a wake-up call to game developers. How about less gratuitous violence and more plot? How about more social commentary?
A retinal scan only makes a good identification when the scanner is secure, which cannot be guaranteed. The danger here is that you can't change your retinas like you can change your password, but if folks assume retinal scans are 100 precent secure, there's a very real security risk. Far better is a combination of a retinal scan (something you are), a password (shared secret), and secure hardware with public key encryption (something you have).
To relate the above to the article: the main difficulty with putting everyone's retinas on their drivers license is that their retinas are no longer a secret. Right now nobody on earth has my retinas scanned. I'd like it to stay that way, but I'm resigned to some loss of personal secrets in this post 9-11 day and age.
Part of an article by Bruce Schneier:
Biometrics don't handle failure well. Imagine that Alice is using her thumbprint as a biometric, and someone steals the digital file. Now what? This isn't a digital certificate, where some trusted third party can issue her another one. This is her thumb. She has only two. Once someone steals your biometric, it remains stolen for life; there's no getting back to a secure situation.
And biometrics are necessarily common across different functions. Just as you should never use the same password on two different systems, the same encryption key should not be used for two different applications. If my fingerprint is used to start my car, unlock my medical records, and read my electronic mail, then it's not hard to imagine some very unsecure situations arising.
Biometrics are powerful and useful, but they are not keys. They are not useful when you need the characteristics of a key: secrecy, randomness, the ability to update or destroy. They are useful as a replacement for a PIN, or a replacement for a signature (which is also a biometric). They can sometimes be used as passwords: a user can't choose a weak biometric in the same way they choose a weak password.
Biometrics are useful in situations where the connection from the reader to the verifier is secure: a biometric unlocks a key stored locally on a PCM-CIA card, or unlocks a key used to secure a hard drive. In those cases, all you really need is a unique hard-to-forge identifier. But always keep in mind that biometrics are not secrets.
http://www.counterpane.com/insiderisks1.html
Losing sales to piracy is like missing an opportunity to profit. Find every one of those pirates and offer them a chance to buy your software for $10, and 90 percent of them will take you up on it. It's how to do this without eroding your market that is the problem!
Reminds me of Deep Space 9, Season 3, Episode 22, "Explorers", which I just watched this morning. Sisko and his son pilot a reconstruction of an ancient Bajoran solar-sail spacecraft to Cardassia. They run ino some difficulties with "tachyon eddies" ripping their sails off.
Wonder if there really are some kind of particle eddies which would damage the sails?
Look at the moon rising over Kandahar. It's only visible for a few hours at a time. That is not my definition of reliable power! Storing the energy or shipping it long distances introduces unacceptable losses.
This seems like a good place to mention Squishdot, a weblog product for Zope. Its claim to fame is that it looks quite like Slashdot, though it is missing some features.
If you're looking to build a stripped-down slashdot-like site, Squishdot and Zope may be the answer.
I see it as a non-issue. If the school computer labs run microsoft software, the money for the licensing is still going to come out of the students' pockets, even if they don't have a line item for it on their bill. It's usually subsumed into the "technology fee".
At my school (which shall remain nameless), we the students can get MS software for only a small fee: basically the cost of the media. This is due, I'm sure, to Microsoft's academic volume license agreement. Here's what we pay, and you've got to admit, it's a damn good deal for us students.
.NET Academic $6.00
Microsoft Office 2000 Professional: $6.00
Microsoft FrontPage 2002: $6.00
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional: $32.00
Windows XP Professional Upgrade* $6.00
Windows 2000 Professional Upgrade* $6.00
Office XP Professional $8.00
Office 2001 for Mac $6.00
Office v. X for Mac $7.00
Visio Professional 2002 $6.00
Visual Studio
These are for licensed, legal copies, and as long as we get them as students, those licenses are good in perpetuam.
To quote Wes Felter, "Am I the only one who thinks all the iPod kludges are stupid?"
Whereas Be is now the Epitah of everything Apple was not the Epitome of.
Where Duron's gone or how it fares
Nobody knows, and nobody cares
"Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there."
-- Clare Booth Luce, 1903-1987
Good point there. The average Indian family struggles just to put food on the table, let alone buy music. The service is clearly targetted at the wealthy.
Frankly, Mars would be a much better testbed for this kind of thing than our precious Earth!
Changes to atmospheric conditions on Earth ought to be made slowly, carefully, and thoughtfully; but this Quicklime-ade process may be just what we need to tide us over til the hydrogen era.
Under NO circumstances should we just BURN all of our Fossil Fuel! It's too valuable for making plastic and pesticide out of!
Burroughs used to live in my hometown: Parma, Idaho. Population 2000. Here's an article from the Argus Observer (the remaining Parma newspaper died a few years ago).
Tarzan author lived in Parma
Dawn Eden, Argus Observer, July 10, 2000
The Online News & Information Network for the Western Treasure Valley Argus Observer
For more than the past century, famous people have come and gone from Idaho. One man few people know resided in Parma for a short time was Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of "Tarzan."
Burroughs was born in Chicago Sept. 1, 1875, and first came to Idaho in the late 1800s, joining
his brothers in working at Sweetser Ranch, located west of American Falls.
Inside the Old Fort Boise replica in Parma, a historical display about Burroughs describe how he
mended fences and drove cattle at the ranch, before returning to Chicago a year later to finish
school.
After bouncing between Idaho and Chicago, and marrying Emma Hulbert, a childhood neighbor in
Chicago in 1900, Burroughs returned to Idaho for the third, and last time, in 1903.
He was invited by his brothers to rejoin them in Idaho. His brothers, Harry, George and Frank,
along with a man named Louis Sweetser, had reorganized the Yale Dredging Co. into the
Sweetser-Burroughs Mining Co.
It was written when Burroughs arrived in Idaho for the last time, his brothers were operating a gold dredge in the Stanley Basin and on the Snake River in Parma.
Parma historian, the late Lucille Peterson, once wrote that prior to Burroughs' move from
Stanley to Parma in 1903, the Parma residents began making plans for a "village government."
Peterson wrote that during the town election in April 1904, several nominations appeared on the ballot, one of whom was Burroughs, and he won by one vote 49 to 48. He served about one month.
It was published in the "Edgar Rice Burroughs Amateur Press Association" fanzine that Burroughs "had run as an independent but had still managed to secure enough votes to edge his way in.
"Burroughs recalled, I button-holed every voter that I met, told him that I was running for
office and that I did not want to be embarrassed by not getting a single vote and asking him as a personal favor to cast his vote for me, with the result that enough of them tried to save me from embarrassment to cause my election.'"
Peterson wrote she agreed that Burroughs' decision to run as an independent was probably how he got the votes. Parma, she told one of the contributing authors of the "Edgar Rice Burroughs
Amateur Press Association" fanzine, was at that time an intensely political town with two competing newspapers one Democrat and one Republican. An Independent offered an extra choice to members of both parties.
Burroughs served with the Parma town government only a short time, and after the dredging company went bankrupt, he left Idaho for the last time, moving to Utah for a job as a railroad policeman.
He eventually ended up in California where he spent the rest of his life writing.
Burroughs began his writing career when he was in his mid 30s while he was proofreading advertising for "pulp magazines" in California. It was written that his "eyes strayed to an adjoining column of the magazine, a bit of fiction, and he quickly decided that he could write imaginary tales more appealing than that one."
It was at that time he wrote, "Under the Moons of Stars," and mailed it to an All Story magazine editor, who sent Burroughs $4 for a six-part series.
In 1912, Burroughs began writing "Tarzan of the Apes." When he wrote "Tarzan," All Story
Magazine purchased it for $7, and two years later it was published as a book.
The first "Tarzan" movie was released in 1918.
The story of Tarzan begins with his parents, "John Clayton," Lord Greystroke of England, and his wife, the former "Hon. Alice Rutherford." Lady Alice was pregnant when the ship, carrying the couple to her husband's mission in Africa, sinks and the couple ends up on the coast.
Their son was born in 1888, and she passed away about a year later.
Lord Greystroke died a short time later.
Upon his parents' death, the child, named John Clayton after his father, is adopted by a gray ape named "Kala." Kala's mate, "Tublat," is jealous of the child and makes his life as miserable as he can.
By the time Tarzan, named so by Kala, is 10 years old, he has the strength of a man in his
prime, but he is far more agile.
He teaches himself to read and print in English, and when he is in his late teens, he encounters Caucasians.
Tarzan is returned to civilization by the Frenchman Paul d'Arnot, and eventually marries an American, Jane Porter.
Before Burroughs died March 19, 1950, at the age of 74, he wrote more than 20 books about Tarzan. All together, he was the author of more than 80 adventure stories.
During the years he lived in Idaho, Burroughs was not a writer, but when he became one in later years, he did not forget this region of the country and used characters and locales from the area in his stories.
In an article Peterson wrote about Burroughs, she quotes him as once saying he had not learned a single rule for writing fiction. "I wrote stories which I feel would entertain me, knowing that there are millions of people just like me.
The Old Fort Boise replica in Parma is home to the Tarzan' author Edgar Rice Burroughs
historical display. About six years ago, the display was created with the history of the
author's life in Parma. The display also contains old Tarzan' magazines and books about the famed character Burroughs created.
Copyright 2000 Wick Communications, Inc.
I have little doubt that these folks will be sued by Sierra for infringing on their "intellectual property" much as I would be sued by Disney if I made a game starring Mickey Mouse.
The question, of course, is the outcome!
I'll never forget when Harmony-W encountered an incubus on the 1st level and died of exhaustion.
I'll never forget the time I raised Sam-S 15 levels by succubus dancing.
Or filling a room with nymphs with a cursed bell (3.1.3), polypiling their mirrors into magic markers, and writing scrolls.
All told, I've ascended 8 times, including a tourist and a knight. I think the knight is my favorite character class because it can jump in an L shape!
Sid-W ascended to demi-godhood
On behalf of the geeks of the world, congratulations. Are we invited to the wedding?
I find it odd that the book is being published by Heinemann, who doesn't publish any other fiction. I wonder if Mr. Stephenson is going to get a bigger cut of the profits from Quicksilver.
Goats
Are less likely to die than cows, and less expensive when they DO die
Reproduce faster than cows.
Can eat a wider variety of foods than cows
Are easier to milk than cows
Are easier to drag around than cows
Goats make less of a mess when they defecate.
The main problem with goats is that the milk tastes terrible. Some breeds are tastier than others, but I gag on most of it. Note that this is not a problem when it comes to spider silk.
Here's a link to some folks planning on doing exactly this in South Africa. I'm still betting on the aussies.