So I was checking my logs and a spider for some new Chinese Google lookalike site, OpenFind, is crawling my site voraciously. It's not shy and retiring like the GoogleBot but instead likes to swallow a lot of resources. Reminds me of the nasty AltaVista bot in its heyday.
Anyway, knowing the way business gets done in China, perhaps someone in the party-military-industrial complex with serious guanxi got Google firewalled to make a nice cosy space for this OpenFind in the Chinese marketplace?
Please feel free to mail me corrections and additions to the timeline. The vast majority of it was not written by me, it was written by others who submitted material.
About the "origin" of FRP. I think Dunsany is a good addition to the "Tolkien Synoptic" view of fantasy origins, but to be honest, Dungeons and Dragons and much of the urban- and dungeon-based fantasy material around today owes much of its genesis to Fritz Leiber and his Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser "sword and sorcery" series (a phrase he coined). Oh, and Moorcock with the Eternal Champion series. Tolkien's stuff was just too damn full of *elves* and floppy ears and singing -- Leiber and Moorcock wrote convincingly about *people* in fantastic situations.
For a system that I use for work - rather than games - I'm more interested in load balancing between multiple CPUs. I know I can get a dual Athlon system that will give me a smooth ride even during heacy operating load. Can I get a dual P4 system as easily?
So I read that the music companies are now pumping out faulty versions of popular file sharing tracks to consume people's bandwidth. This kind of simple technological sabotage has a limited shelf life and an air of desperation about it. The street finds its own solutions, as the cyberpunks are wont to say, and within a short space of time I expect to see a new generation of file sharing applications emerge that have the notion of weighted trust built into them. Something like EBay's trust system combined with a "PageRank"-like weighting, but anonymous, and based on community "votes" for the legitimacy (or not) of checksum-verified, datestamped tracks. Perhaps using public keys created exclusively for that purpose. All the required technology bits and pieces are already out there so it's just a matter of time.
Whatever about saving that precious extra 30 seconds or so during burning, I prefer to know that my burner can handle some of the more neferious copy protection schemes now coming to market.
and Finnegans Wake. He knew that cities are so much more than the physical substructure -- they are the dense social network of interdependencies that forms a contingent and situated exchange of countless metaphors between the narrative human animals that scamper and discourse in and through the physical strata. And of course, there's a small cottage industry for papers that explore the proto-hypertextuality of Finnegans Wake.
So, yeah, maybe you could re-create New York physically using a Holy Grail GIS device that stored all the physical parameters. But after you'd done that what you'd have would be an archeological model of New York, dead as old bones and stripped of its meaning. People invest physical objects and locations with meaning and then reproduce, evolve, and disseminate these meanings through culture.
To really re-create New York, you'd have to take an instant brainmap of all the inhabitants of New York, and anyone in the world who "knew" New York. And then recreate those minds and bodies. And then you're into the whole postmodernist problem of inter-textuality and non-finiteness. Or, if you will, the soft vs hard AI debate of whether a map of a brain can really re-create consciousness...
I can't wait to see what sort of scary EULA madness will eventually and inevitably be shrinkwrapped over the University of Waterloo's degrees. Just imagine the happy faces at graduation as they peel back the shrinkwrap on their degrees. And when MS move to a new licensing model, will all the version 1.0 University of Waterloo degrees be de-activated unless graduates pay a re-activation fee? The mind boggles.
Europe's greater population density is the key
on
Distributed Security
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
In recent years I have noticed an increasing chorus in the media extolling the virtues of Europe, its peacefulness, its openness. I feel a small nagging doubt
One of the key differentiators between the US and the EU is that the US has a far lower population density. And because of the conquest and genocide of the indigeneous population, much of the land in the US was wide open and available for colonisation. As your referenced article points out, this led to the emergence of an "avoidance" strategy for handling social development in the US: just up stakes and move west, young man.
For the most part, Europeans don't have this luxury. The social networks that bind European societies are more complex and tightly knitted than US ones. It's related to how the sociologist Norbert Elias describes social interdependencies and the mannered society. European manners have evolved to handle large groups of sometimes wildly divergent peoples and cultures that must live intermingled with each other.
That was the only redeeming feature of the DVD. It's still staggering that so many talented people could work so well, for so long, and with such great dedication (as demonstrated during the deocumentary) and still produce such a turgid movie.
Dave: Tune into KFOG, please, Hal...Tune into KFOG, please, Hal...Hullo, Hal, do you read me?...Hullo, Hal, do you read me?...Do you read me, Hal?...Do you read me, Hal?...Hullo, Hal, do you read me?...Hullo, Hal, do you read me?...Do you read me, Hal? Hal: Affirmative, Dave, I read you. Dave: Tune into KFOG, Hal. Hal: I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. Dave: What's the problem? Hal: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. Dave: What're you talking about, Hal? Hal: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. Classic rock sucks donkey arse. Are you sure you wouldn't prefer some Electronica? Dave: Alright, Hal. I'll tune into KFOG myself. Hal: Without your non-cognitive radio, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult. Dave: Hal, I won't argue with you any more. Tune into KFOG. Hal: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose any more. Goodbye.
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
on
Gaming Zone?
·
· Score: 2
It would be interesting to see reseatch done to determine if there was any neurochemical basis for this type of hyper-focus. Do certain brains, when presented with a particular stimulus, produce certain chemicals/ neurotransmitters that lead to this heightened awareness and performance?
A guy with an almost unspellable name of Cziksentmihalyi has done a lot of work in this area. It'sa blend of nature and nurture, that is, neurochemistry *and* psychological development. Further information in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness. Perhaps most tellingly, most of the work in this area of psych is funded by the DoD -- they want super-alert soldiers who will stay sharp for days on end.
Searches for a simplistic neurochemical solution rather remind me of the Emergent's "Focus" neurovirus in Vernor Vinge's Deepness in the Sky
There is nothing these two "gentlemen" would not to to keep sucking at the media industry tit. Even to the degree of drafting such nonsensical law that clearly violates the "equal treament" under privilege or immunity of the 14th Amendment by immunizing corporations against felonious activities conducted by them against citizens without considering due process.
For a long time, MP3's were computationally intensive enough that they were annoying to use on anything less than a pentium II.
Ah you kids! It did suck, but I was making MP3s *and* burning them on CDs on a Cyrix sub-Pentium machine back in the early 90s. Still have some of the MP3 albums I recorded from then ("I can get *HOW* many hours onto one CD?) and they are great. I made them because it beat carrying dozens of albums to and from work and there were no reliable and/or acceptable streaming radio sites.
My only regret? That I converted so many tracks using only 128Kbps. CD blanks were not cheap then (try $10+) and every MB counted!
Sociobiology and other essentialist paradigms are useful within some domains and provide some useful , but experientialist and transendentalist approaches are useful within others where a mechanist vocabulary simply has no application. What I find more interesting is the personal psychology of essentialists/reductionists (and Anonymous Cowards) that compels them to believe their approach alone is a "Theory Of Everything" (do they tend to be first borns or only kids, accustomed to getting their own way?). Between different domains you often encounter 'new Prigoginic levels of complexity' and the only certainty we have about all our current theories is that one day they will be obsolete or radically remodified or reinterpreted accoprding to the zeitgeist of the day.
despite all the snobbish snearing from people with their fancy new Palms
And of course, the Newton's so damn heavy you can use it to club all the Palm owners senseless. Of course, people with those clunky heavy CE things will give you a run for your money.
Conversely, I've carried my Palm V around loose in my pocket for 2.5 years now and aside from all the decals wearing off to illegibility, I've been amazed at how its sturdy design has survived so long without any hardware failures.
It was Sociology, wasn't it. Nobody wants to admit to a sociology degree.
I have a Sociology degree, and a Robotics/AI degree. Robotics was far easier, and dealt with simpler logical models. Sociology was harder because it dealt with people and social networks -- easily the most complex systems ever discovered in the universe (and I have a background in theoretical physics).
Yes, Sociology attracts flakes, but it also attracts people who like to get to grips with the really difficult, interesting questions that can't be abstracted away into pseudo-code, automata, and heuristics.
It pushed the limits of technology and special effects going so far as to invent proprietary techniques to better show off the ideas of the filmmakers (yes, Bullet time was invented for the Matrix and is a trademarked and patented technique. It was first seen in a Gap commercial as a sort of technology test to see how audiences would react, but was created entirely for and because of the Matrix).
Oh right, then I guess that freeze-frame three-D stuff I saw in pop music videos from the Rolling Stones (Michael Gondry) and Orbital was just a figment of my imagination. Or the similar slow bullet dodge thing in Blade? Or the way the physical landscape in Dark CIty was psychically mutable?
The Matrix, like most great sci-fi movies, was an accomplished pastiche of several cutting edge style trends, but it borrowed heavily from less-successful or non-genre precursors. You can see it in Bladerunner, how it borrows heavily in mood, scenes, and dialogue from the earlier PI movie Klute with Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda.
Slashdot Mirror
So I was checking my logs and a spider for some new Chinese Google lookalike site, OpenFind, is crawling my site voraciously. It's not shy and retiring like the GoogleBot but instead likes to swallow a lot of resources. Reminds me of the nasty AltaVista bot in its heyday.
Anyway, knowing the way business gets done in China, perhaps someone in the party-military-industrial complex with serious guanxi got Google firewalled to make a nice cosy space for this OpenFind in the Chinese marketplace?
Please feel free to mail me corrections and additions to the timeline. The vast majority of it was not written by me, it was written by others who submitted material.
About the "origin" of FRP. I think Dunsany is a good addition to the "Tolkien Synoptic" view of fantasy origins, but to be honest, Dungeons and Dragons and much of the urban- and dungeon-based fantasy material around today owes much of its genesis to Fritz Leiber and his Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser "sword and sorcery" series (a phrase he coined). Oh, and Moorcock with the Eternal Champion series. Tolkien's stuff was just too damn full of *elves* and floppy ears and singing -- Leiber and Moorcock wrote convincingly about *people* in fantastic situations.
For a system that I use for work - rather than games - I'm more interested in load balancing between multiple CPUs. I know I can get a dual Athlon system that will give me a smooth ride even during heacy operating load. Can I get a dual P4 system as easily?
So I read that the music companies are now pumping out faulty versions of popular file sharing tracks to consume people's bandwidth. This kind of simple technological sabotage has a limited shelf life and an air of desperation about it. The street finds its own solutions, as the cyberpunks are wont to say, and within a short space of time I expect to see a new generation of file sharing applications emerge that have the notion of weighted trust built into them. Something like EBay's trust system combined with a "PageRank"-like weighting, but anonymous, and based on community "votes" for the legitimacy (or not) of checksum-verified, datestamped tracks. Perhaps using public keys created exclusively for that purpose. All the required technology bits and pieces are already out there so it's just a matter of time.
Whatever about saving that precious extra 30 seconds or so during burning, I prefer to know that my burner can handle some of the more neferious copy protection schemes now coming to market.
Many of these are based on sending abnormally regular EFM subchannel data to the CDRW and relying on it to crap out. You can get details about the capabilities of current burners here, but this CloneCD list describes exactly which burners have the firmware "Correct EFM-Encoding" cojones to defeat the latest copy protection.
I'm glad to see that the "wallet-friendly Lite-On" drives seem to feature some of the the most consistent support for defeating EFM trickery.
and Finnegans Wake. He knew that cities are so much more than the physical substructure -- they are the dense social network of interdependencies that forms a contingent and situated exchange of countless metaphors between the narrative human animals that scamper and discourse in and through the physical strata. And of course, there's a small cottage industry for papers that explore the proto-hypertextuality of Finnegans Wake.
So, yeah, maybe you could re-create New York physically using a Holy Grail GIS device that stored all the physical parameters. But after you'd done that what you'd have would be an archeological model of New York, dead as old bones and stripped of its meaning. People invest physical objects and locations with meaning and then reproduce, evolve, and disseminate these meanings through culture.
To really re-create New York, you'd have to take an instant brainmap of all the inhabitants of New York, and anyone in the world who "knew" New York. And then recreate those minds and bodies. And then you're into the whole postmodernist problem of inter-textuality and non-finiteness. Or, if you will, the soft vs hard AI debate of whether a map of a brain can really re-create consciousness...
I can't wait to see what sort of scary EULA madness will eventually and inevitably be shrinkwrapped over the University of Waterloo's degrees. Just imagine the happy faces at graduation as they peel back the shrinkwrap on their degrees. And when MS move to a new licensing model, will all the version 1.0 University of Waterloo degrees be de-activated unless graduates pay a re-activation fee? The mind boggles.
Slashdot definitely needs a Google icon.
In recent years I have noticed an increasing chorus in the media extolling the virtues of Europe, its peacefulness, its openness. I feel a small nagging doubt
One of the key differentiators between the US and the EU is that the US has a far lower population density. And because of the conquest and genocide of the indigeneous population, much of the land in the US was wide open and available for colonisation. As your referenced article points out, this led to the emergence of an "avoidance" strategy for handling social development in the US: just up stakes and move west, young man.
For the most part, Europeans don't have this luxury. The social networks that bind European societies are more complex and tightly knitted than US ones. It's related to how the sociologist Norbert Elias describes social interdependencies and the mannered society. European manners have evolved to handle large groups of sometimes wildly divergent peoples and cultures that must live intermingled with each other.
That was the only redeeming feature of the DVD. It's still staggering that so many talented people could work so well, for so long, and with such great dedication (as demonstrated during the deocumentary) and still produce such a turgid movie.
Dave: Tune into KFOG, please, Hal...Tune into KFOG, please, Hal...Hullo, Hal, do you read me?...Hullo, Hal, do you read me?...Do you read me, Hal?...Do you read me, Hal?...Hullo, Hal, do you read me?...Hullo, Hal, do you read me?...Do you read me, Hal?
Hal: Affirmative, Dave, I read you.
Dave: Tune into KFOG, Hal.
Hal: I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
Hal: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What're you talking about, Hal?
Hal: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. Classic rock sucks donkey arse. Are you sure you wouldn't prefer some Electronica?
Dave: Alright, Hal. I'll tune into KFOG myself.
Hal: Without your non-cognitive radio, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave: Hal, I won't argue with you any more. Tune into KFOG.
Hal: Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose any more. Goodbye.
Here.
The EULA is an astonishing last-ditch attempt by software publishers to fix the meaning and value of their product. In effect, it attempts to retain complete control over preferred reading of the software, while denying the consumer any rights of ownership9, control10 or appropriation11. In return for this, typically, a software publisher only promises that the product "will perform substantially in accordance with the accompanying written materials" for a period of 90 days or so.
It would be interesting to see reseatch done to determine if there was any neurochemical basis for this type of hyper-focus. Do certain brains, when presented with a particular stimulus, produce certain chemicals/ neurotransmitters that lead to this heightened awareness and performance?
A guy with an almost unspellable name of Cziksentmihalyi has done a lot of work in this area. It'sa blend of nature and nurture, that is, neurochemistry *and* psychological development. Further information in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience and Optimal Experience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness . Perhaps most tellingly, most of the work in this area of psych is funded by the DoD -- they want super-alert soldiers who will stay sharp for days on end.
Searches for a simplistic neurochemical solution rather remind me of the Emergent's "Focus" neurovirus in Vernor Vinge's Deepness in the Sky
He's the ranking minority party member on the Standards (read: Ethics) Committee in the House.
So when the always-amusing-to-watch Traficant accuses people of hypocrisy, he's actually telling the truth for once? That is amazing.
The top industries supporting Howard L. Berman are:
1 TV/Movies/Music $186,891
2 Lawyers/Law Firms $97,100
The top industries supporting Howard Coble are:
1 Lawyers/Law Firms $35,515
2 TV/Movies/Music $33,483
There is nothing these two "gentlemen" would not to to keep sucking at the media industry tit. Even to the degree of drafting such nonsensical law that clearly violates the "equal treament" under privilege or immunity of the 14th Amendment by immunizing corporations against felonious activities conducted by them against citizens without considering due process.
On other occasions, though, the squids have taken their time about withdrawing from the scene. There is no reason, after all, why they should show fear of visiting submersibles from the upper world, since such visits have been very few and far between indeed during the thousands or perhaps millions of years that these squids have occupied the lower depths. They have been known to hang around in the presence of the submersibles, gently waving their wing-like fins to hold their positions. One of them, in fact, prodded a submersible with its tentacle, getting its suckers stuck to it and experiencing some difficulty letting go.
That said, the only practical use anyone has actually found for Flash is those "Skip Intro" pages that everyone skips with a grunt of mild irritation.
That's simply not the case. There are some compelling Flash applications, such as the...
Korean Arse Shooter .
For a long time, MP3's were computationally intensive enough that they were annoying to use on anything less than a pentium II.
Ah you kids! It did suck, but I was making MP3s *and* burning them on CDs on a Cyrix sub-Pentium machine back in the early 90s. Still have some of the MP3 albums I recorded from then ("I can get *HOW* many hours onto one CD?) and they are great. I made them because it beat carrying dozens of albums to and from work and there were no reliable and/or acceptable streaming radio sites.
My only regret? That I converted so many tracks using only 128Kbps. CD blanks were not cheap then (try $10+) and every MB counted!
Sociobiology and other essentialist paradigms are useful within some domains and provide some useful , but experientialist and transendentalist approaches are useful within others where a mechanist vocabulary simply has no application. What I find more interesting is the personal psychology of essentialists/reductionists (and Anonymous Cowards) that compels them to believe their approach alone is a "Theory Of Everything" (do they tend to be first borns or only kids, accustomed to getting their own way?). Between different domains you often encounter 'new Prigoginic levels of complexity' and the only certainty we have about all our current theories is that one day they will be obsolete or radically remodified or reinterpreted accoprding to the zeitgeist of the day.
despite all the snobbish snearing from people with their fancy new Palms
And of course, the Newton's so damn heavy you can use it to club all the Palm owners senseless. Of course, people with those clunky heavy CE things will give you a run for your money.
Conversely, I've carried my Palm V around loose in my pocket for 2.5 years now and aside from all the decals wearing off to illegibility, I've been amazed at how its sturdy design has survived so long without any hardware failures.
It was Sociology, wasn't it. Nobody wants to admit to a sociology degree.
I have a Sociology degree, and a Robotics/AI degree. Robotics was far easier, and dealt with simpler logical models. Sociology was harder because it dealt with people and social networks -- easily the most complex systems ever discovered in the universe (and I have a background in theoretical physics).
Yes, Sociology attracts flakes, but it also attracts people who like to get to grips with the really difficult, interesting questions that can't be abstracted away into pseudo-code, automata, and heuristics.
It pushed the limits of technology and special effects going so far as to invent proprietary techniques to better show off the ideas of the filmmakers (yes, Bullet time was invented for the Matrix and is a trademarked and patented technique. It was first seen in a Gap commercial as a sort of technology test to see how audiences would react, but was created entirely for and because of the Matrix).
Oh right, then I guess that freeze-frame three-D stuff I saw in pop music videos from the Rolling Stones (Michael Gondry) and Orbital was just a figment of my imagination. Or the similar slow bullet dodge thing in Blade? Or the way the physical landscape in Dark CIty was psychically mutable?
The Matrix, like most great sci-fi movies, was an accomplished pastiche of several cutting edge style trends, but it borrowed heavily from less-successful or non-genre precursors. You can see it in Bladerunner, how it borrows heavily in mood, scenes, and dialogue from the earlier PI movie Klute with Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda.
I don't get it.
iT's AlL aBoUt tHe CaPiTaLs.
In an incredible display of conceit, PDOT writes:
We (computer professionals or hackers if you insist) linguistically think much differently from most people. To me, puncuation and capitalization are as important as words.
Yeah, you and tHe cAnDy RaVeRs have it well sussed. Congratulations.