Oh, you think that is ugly public art? Apparently you have never been to Minneapolis.
That's the Wesiman Museum, a building constructed primarily to blind drivers on Washington Avenue around sunset. Note its striking wrinkled exterior, a result of poor material choices for our climate.
All in all, I'd compare its appearance to that of a discarded burger wrapper.
Isn't this kind of activity tantamount to "mantrapping", which is very illegal in the USA? For instance, if some person is swiping fruit off of your streetcorner fruit-cart, and you replace a good apple with a poisoned one, and that thief then swipes it, eats it and dies, you are guilty of mantrapping (as well as premeditated homicide).
While there is no threat of serious bodily injury in this DRM-enabled missive, it is clear to even a casual observer that the intent is to cause real harm to the downloader.
Who here thinks that if they were to put up a website offering the latest 'moviez' - which were in fact spyware or trojan-laden files, that they would not have the police or even the FBI banging at the door in less time than it takes to say 'rich web media content'? Do you think the plea of "I was only trying to help the MPAA!" would get your ass out of the sling?
Anyone get the sense of outright pandering here? Either this is 'hardware hacking lite' for your grandmother, or a really pathetic attempt to woo the/. type crowd into the folds of Forbes.
Granny: What'ca doin' there young man?
Me: I'm modding out my Sega Genesis with switches for Region, NTSC/PAL and overclocking the CPU!
Granny: Oh, you're putting a little man inside it..
But looking at the logic, it seems it could fit easily in a Spartan 3 FPGA.
Pretty amazing, isn't it; how far we have come in so little time.. And the fact that this guy took the time to properly execute the project, and document it as he went along, really allows one to gain a sense of scale when it comes to computing devices. This thing has about as much computing power as an Atari-2600 and it takes a truck to move it. And just about ten years later, we were playing pong in the living room.
And it took people to space, and back again safely. The AGC I mean, not the Atari.
Probably not. The whole point of celebrating an artist is to commend the choices he/she made. The whole point of IF is to give choices to the player.
This was a very relevant comment, but it brings up another point.
There are numerous instances of art, in which the viewer is allowed to take their own path to the presentation. This can be as basic as the angle from which we choose to view a painting or sculpture, or as technical as an installation that contains audio / video / kinetics, and alows one to interact in a way that alters, and personalizes the experience. I don't think that the ability to personalize the experience with Interactive Fiction precludes it from the ranks of art, or literature as art.
Have you ever read a book, in a not totally end-to-end fashion? Ever skipped ahead to see what might happen, looked in the middle to get a sense of what the work was about, or never read the liner notes and foreword at all? There are even books that allow young readers to chose one of many paths through a given story. There are classes for childern's literature, correct?
If conventional literature is to be held up as art, then so should be Interactive Fiction.
I wiled away a lot of hours in my youth playing the classic Infocom games. It really warms my heart to see this format prospering _twenty years_ later. You can get a Z-machine interpreter for just about anything, from Athlon64 to PalmOS.
I wonder if any of the tradtional 'printed page' literary organizations will ever embrace I.F. as a legitmate form of literature, be it prose, poetry or just 'other'? Perhaps a Pulitzer for 'Best work of Interactive Fiction?
I have a better idea.. why not just leave the rules as they are, and offer an opt-in for people who are willing to recieve such calls? Oh wait, that would be nobody.
Not sure what others have experienced, but the number of telemarketing calls that I have recieved since signing up for the list, has dropped from 5-10 PER DAY to about one a week. The federal do-not-call list is one of the few really useful things that the government has done in as long as I can remember. Yes, I hear that telemarketers are rapidly losing jobs, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to care. It might have something to do with the fact that before the list, I had to shelve my answering machine, unless I wanted to come home to 20 minutes of advertising after a day of work.
Patrick's unfortunate plight is not all that surprising to me. I lived for 27 years with two undiagnosed major medical problems, despite scores of visits to doctors and ERs.
Years of unexplained nausea & abdominal pain, weak immunity, mysterious pains that roamed randomly over my body, recurring flu-like symptoms, joint and muscle pain, headaches etc. I was called everything.. hypochondriac, liar, quitter, faker etc. So many specialists, tests, and so on, that I can't even count them all.
Finally, on yet another desperate 3am ER visit, my then-wife demanded that they look until they find something to explain all of this. Some bright ER intern plops an ultrasound on my belly (no, none of the many other "medical professionals" had ever bothered to do this..). The discussion went like this:
Intern: Do you have any history of kidney disease?
Me: No..
Intern: You do now!
24 hours later, I was diagnosed with PROFOUNDLY ADVANCED Polycystic Kidney Disease. My kidneys were so enlarged that they were squashing all of my other organs out of place. This hadn't happend overnight; it was with me all of my life, slowly getting worse every year. Once they had the kidneys figured out, it wasn't long until they had the Fibromyalgic illness / chronic fatigue diagnosed as well. Needless to say, after 27 years of suffering, I was less than totally impressed with the medical profession.
In short, the system sometimes fails.. and when it does, it can be a real doozy. Hang in there Pat, every illness has a cause, and yours will surely be found. Blessed be.
Good point EngAndy.. I should have mentioned that caveat.
Fine on the tires ('tyres' as per the Brits), but really bad for paintwork. I swear, propylene glycol brake fluid (like DOT3) could be sold as an alternative to Zip-Strip. Whenever we filled a brake reservoir on a cycle, we'd always flush the area & any paintwork with lots of fresh water. Better safe than screwed.
BTW, if I spelled it 'tires' in the UK, would I go to 'goal'?;-)
I upgrade when it's free to do so.. like when one of my friends is upgrading, and drops off their old stuff at my place - all the while *thanking* me for taking it. Truth is, a computer is possibly the worst place to 'invest' your money - perhaps even worse than a typical vehicle.
Despite the large amount of work I do on & around computers, I find that my needs are actually quite minimal. The K6-2 475 / 96MB laptop I'm writing from right now suits me just great, and is currently the fastest machine I own. Linux (Slackware in this case) goes a long way to make this kind of strategy a reality.
Also, it seems a bit out of character for the typical liberal, environmentally concious geek to constantly feed the beast by overconsuming electronics & gadgets. We do want to keep our nice little green world pretty, yes?
Personally, I would not feel right about indexing and displaying images of these people being victimized, without their consent. But there is an even bigger issue at hand here..
People, torture is very real, very horrid, and it happens to folks just like you & I every damn day. I have personally known victims of political torture, one of whom was still totally unable to sleep even 25 years after his experiences. Can you say goddamn heartbreaking? When I see torture depicted in movies and television, it makes me ill. Sorry if this is shrill, but listen up: TORTURE IS NOT FUCKING ENTERTAINMENT. To use it as such demeans the experiences of victims everywhere. These people need your support, compassion and understanding a whole hell of a lot more than the film industry needs your $9 to watch this crap.
Next time you think about seeing a film that depicts torture for your viewing pleasure, why not just send the $9 to Amnesty International, or some other human rights group that fits your own political leanings.
Good point on the C-64, but it's worth mentioning that the early VIC-20 power supplies were much worse. Pretty much everyone I knew that had a '20, including myself, lost a supply.
Despite the promises or anything you have heard, never, EVER use Armor All on a plastic or vinyl surface that is not already dried/perished/damaged. Armor All is very good at removing the native polymers in the plastic and replacing them with itself. Once it has made it into the surface, you will continually need to replenish the Armor All or risk losing the plastic. I have seen this product ruin more dashboards, tires, motorcycle seats, trim rubber and so on than I would care to recall.
If you want an Armor All type finish on your plastics, use a hand glaze or plastic dressing. These products are available from auto stores, and auto paint suppliers. Slightly off-topic: if you want your old car/cycle tires to look like new, use a little brake fluid on a rag.. works miracles.
Can someone elaborate on how shot noise applies to optical systems, specifically, cinematography? Since the original source material is conventional 'analog' film, at what point is the noise introduced? How is it introduced? (Yes I realize that film is not a pure analog format; the resolution being limited by the grain size of the emulsion - but at the same time, it's not what we consider digital.)
You should learn Linux anyway, if you are curious about it. If you enjoy computers, you will really appreciate what you can learn from Linux.
In terms of security, a well patched Linux system is almost certainly better than an unpatched Windows system. Microsoft provides the occasionally useful security patch, but if you stay aware, you will do better with Linux.. for now.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, you think that is ugly public art? Apparently you have never been to Minneapolis.
That's the Wesiman Museum, a building constructed primarily to blind drivers on Washington Avenue around sunset. Note its striking wrinkled exterior, a result of poor material choices for our climate.
All in all, I'd compare its appearance to that of a discarded burger wrapper.
I for one welcome our fucking gigantic copyrighted chromium-bean wielding overlords.
Oh wait.. Chicago, the Windy City. Now I get it.
Isn't this kind of activity tantamount to "mantrapping", which is very illegal in the USA? For instance, if some person is swiping fruit off of your streetcorner fruit-cart, and you replace a good apple with a poisoned one, and that thief then swipes it, eats it and dies, you are guilty of mantrapping (as well as premeditated homicide).
While there is no threat of serious bodily injury in this DRM-enabled missive, it is clear to even a casual observer that the intent is to cause real harm to the downloader.
Who here thinks that if they were to put up a website offering the latest 'moviez' - which were in fact spyware or trojan-laden files, that they would not have the police or even the FBI banging at the door in less time than it takes to say 'rich web media content'? Do you think the plea of "I was only trying to help the MPAA!" would get your ass out of the sling?
I find this totally sickening.
Anyone get the sense of outright pandering here? Either this is 'hardware hacking lite' for your grandmother, or a really pathetic attempt to woo the /. type crowd into the folds of Forbes.
Granny: What'ca doin' there young man?
Me: I'm modding out my Sega Genesis with switches for Region, NTSC/PAL and overclocking the CPU!
Granny: Oh, you're putting a little man inside it..
Me: Um.. I love you granny!
It is like playing "where's wally"
You've never actually seen "Where's Waldo?", have you?
But looking at the logic, it seems it could fit easily in a Spartan 3 FPGA.
Pretty amazing, isn't it; how far we have come in so little time.. And the fact that this guy took the time to properly execute the project, and document it as he went along, really allows one to gain a sense of scale when it comes to computing devices. This thing has about as much computing power as an Atari-2600 and it takes a truck to move it. And just about ten years later, we were playing pong in the living room.
And it took people to space, and back again safely. The AGC I mean, not the Atari.
Probably not. The whole point of celebrating an artist is to commend the choices he/she made. The whole point of IF is to give choices to the player.
This was a very relevant comment, but it brings up another point.
There are numerous instances of art, in which the viewer is allowed to take their own path to the presentation. This can be as basic as the angle from which we choose to view a painting or sculpture, or as technical as an installation that contains audio / video / kinetics, and alows one to interact in a way that alters, and personalizes the experience. I don't think that the ability to personalize the experience with Interactive Fiction precludes it from the ranks of art, or literature as art.
Have you ever read a book, in a not totally end-to-end fashion? Ever skipped ahead to see what might happen, looked in the middle to get a sense of what the work was about, or never read the liner notes and foreword at all? There are even books that allow young readers to chose one of many paths through a given story. There are classes for childern's literature, correct?
If conventional literature is to be held up as art, then so should be Interactive Fiction.
I wiled away a lot of hours in my youth playing the classic Infocom games. It really warms my heart to see this format prospering _twenty years_ later. You can get a Z-machine interpreter for just about anything, from Athlon64 to PalmOS.
I wonder if any of the tradtional 'printed page' literary organizations will ever embrace I.F. as a legitmate form of literature, be it prose, poetry or just 'other'? Perhaps a Pulitzer for 'Best work of Interactive Fiction?
I have a better idea.. why not just leave the rules as they are, and offer an opt-in for people who are willing to recieve such calls? Oh wait, that would be nobody.
Not sure what others have experienced, but the number of telemarketing calls that I have recieved since signing up for the list, has dropped from 5-10 PER DAY to about one a week. The federal do-not-call list is one of the few really useful things that the government has done in as long as I can remember. Yes, I hear that telemarketers are rapidly losing jobs, but for some reason I just can't bring myself to care. It might have something to do with the fact that before the list, I had to shelve my answering machine, unless I wanted to come home to 20 minutes of advertising after a day of work.
I knew they'd find a way to screw it up.
Patrick's unfortunate plight is not all that surprising to me. I lived for 27 years with two undiagnosed major medical problems, despite scores of visits to doctors and ERs.
Years of unexplained nausea & abdominal pain, weak immunity, mysterious pains that roamed randomly over my body, recurring flu-like symptoms, joint and muscle pain, headaches etc. I was called everything.. hypochondriac, liar, quitter, faker etc. So many specialists, tests, and so on, that I can't even count them all.
Finally, on yet another desperate 3am ER visit, my then-wife demanded that they look until they find something to explain all of this. Some bright ER intern plops an ultrasound on my belly (no, none of the many other "medical professionals" had ever bothered to do this..). The discussion went like this:
Intern: Do you have any history of kidney disease?
Me: No..
Intern: You do now!
24 hours later, I was diagnosed with PROFOUNDLY ADVANCED Polycystic Kidney Disease. My kidneys were so enlarged that they were squashing all of my other organs out of place. This hadn't happend overnight; it was with me all of my life, slowly getting worse every year. Once they had the kidneys figured out, it wasn't long until they had the Fibromyalgic illness / chronic fatigue diagnosed as well. Needless to say, after 27 years of suffering, I was less than totally impressed with the medical profession.
In short, the system sometimes fails.. and when it does, it can be a real doozy. Hang in there Pat, every illness has a cause, and yours will surely be found. Blessed be.
Good point EngAndy.. I should have mentioned that caveat.
Fine on the tires ('tyres' as per the Brits), but really bad for paintwork. I swear, propylene glycol brake fluid (like DOT3) could be sold as an alternative to Zip-Strip. Whenever we filled a brake reservoir on a cycle, we'd always flush the area & any paintwork with lots of fresh water. Better safe than screwed.
BTW, if I spelled it 'tires' in the UK, would I go to 'goal'? ;-)
I upgrade when it's free to do so.. like when one of my friends is upgrading, and drops off their old stuff at my place - all the while *thanking* me for taking it. Truth is, a computer is possibly the worst place to 'invest' your money - perhaps even worse than a typical vehicle.
Despite the large amount of work I do on & around computers, I find that my needs are actually quite minimal. The K6-2 475 / 96MB laptop I'm writing from right now suits me just great, and is currently the fastest machine I own. Linux (Slackware in this case) goes a long way to make this kind of strategy a reality.
Also, it seems a bit out of character for the typical liberal, environmentally concious geek to constantly feed the beast by overconsuming electronics & gadgets. We do want to keep our nice little green world pretty, yes?
Personally, I would not feel right about indexing and displaying images of these people being victimized, without their consent. But there is an even bigger issue at hand here..
People, torture is very real, very horrid, and it happens to folks just like you & I every damn day. I have personally known victims of political torture, one of whom was still totally unable to sleep even 25 years after his experiences. Can you say goddamn heartbreaking? When I see torture depicted in movies and television, it makes me ill. Sorry if this is shrill, but listen up: TORTURE IS NOT FUCKING ENTERTAINMENT. To use it as such demeans the experiences of victims everywhere. These people need your support, compassion and understanding a whole hell of a lot more than the film industry needs your $9 to watch this crap.
Next time you think about seeing a film that depicts torture for your viewing pleasure, why not just send the $9 to Amnesty International, or some other human rights group that fits your own political leanings.
spending $25 million to make $10 million
Q: Know how to make a small fortune in space travel?
A: Start with a large one.. ;-)
In all seriousness, nice going folks. You won that fair & square; hats off!
Good point on the C-64, but it's worth mentioning that the early VIC-20 power supplies were much worse. Pretty much everyone I knew that had a '20, including myself, lost a supply.
Despite the promises or anything you have heard, never, EVER use Armor All on a plastic or vinyl surface that is not already dried/perished/damaged. Armor All is very good at removing the native polymers in the plastic and replacing them with itself. Once it has made it into the surface, you will continually need to replenish the Armor All or risk losing the plastic. I have seen this product ruin more dashboards, tires, motorcycle seats, trim rubber and so on than I would care to recall.
If you want an Armor All type finish on your plastics, use a hand glaze or plastic dressing. These products are available from auto stores, and auto paint suppliers. Slightly off-topic: if you want your old car/cycle tires to look like new, use a little brake fluid on a rag.. works miracles.
So.. exactly how much will these cost per watt, vs. conventional photovoltaic cells?
Details, details..
It is tasty and nutritious, being packed with beta carotene
The notable exception being the afforementioned 'Scariest pumpkin', which is packed with something entirely different. Pray that it's flushable.
..with the Gentoo crowd.
The once impossible dream of actually compiling the Linux kernel on every boot is now a shining reality.
Can someone elaborate on how shot noise applies to optical systems, specifically, cinematography? Since the original source material is conventional 'analog' film, at what point is the noise introduced? How is it introduced? (Yes I realize that film is not a pure analog format; the resolution being limited by the grain size of the emulsion - but at the same time, it's not what we consider digital.)
Well, too bad I posted to this discussion, because the phrase "Overblown toilet FUD" is the funniest fucking thing I have heard in ages. +5 funny.
Is pretty much what one would have to be smoking, before one might consider drinking water from an Asian toilet.
Seriously. Locate, which, whereis, find, grep are all great tools, but this would be simply awesome to have.
You should learn Linux anyway, if you are curious about it. If you enjoy computers, you will really appreciate what you can learn from Linux.
In terms of security, a well patched Linux system is almost certainly better than an unpatched Windows system. Microsoft provides the occasionally useful security patch, but if you stay aware, you will do better with Linux.. for now.