Well, I don't know what version of the Odyssey you have, but I can quote from the Samuel Butler translation of Book XXII at the Project Gutenberg
As for Melanthius, they took him through the cloister into the inner court. There they cut off his nose and his ears; they drew out his vitals and gave them to the dogs raw, and then in their fury they cut off his hands and his feet.
Here 'they' refers to Ulysses, Telemachus, and some cronies, as you'll find if you read further up the page.
I can only imagine you have a censored version that took out the gory bits.
As the Greek Geeks will know, the real (legendary) Ulysses (aka Odysseus) went on a ten-year odyssey returning home after the Trojan war. All assumed that Ulysses had died and his former wife was preyed upon by suitors seeking her hand in marriage.
To cut a long story short, Ulysses killed all the suitors when he got home and was especially cruel to a turncoat goatherd, Melanthius. Ulysses cut off his nose and ears, pulled out his genitals for dog food, then sliced off his hands and feet.
Let's home the satellite doesn't come back and find us messing about with the ISS.
It's an unusual sentiment for me, but I must applaud President Bush for being foresighted enough to pass this legislation.
I recently attended a futorological lecture at Oxford University on the possibility of genetically engineered 'persons' (not necessary human persons). The lecture was given by Nobel prize-winner John Sulston (an important figure in the human-genome project), John Harris (a bioethics expert), and was hosted by Richard Dawkins. The panel was very much in favour of continued research into genetic modification of humans, but placed a strong emphasis on the need for legislation to prevent powerful cliques from monopolising or abusing the technology.
One important point they made is that (just about) any technology can be used to give an overwhelming opportunity to those who are free to enjoy it, but that the norms of modern Western societies ensure that most people have the potential to take advantage of the majority of science's blessings. However, we can't simply trust large corporations or other powerful institutions to equitably distribute the advantages of these technologies. Regulation is needed, and Bush is providing a good first step.
So, in summary, we must continue to research and to pursue all avenues of research, but the applications of the research need to be very carefully thought through.
I'm not actually gung-ho about government funding either. I agree with you that a massive bureaucracies are very poor at arts funding and I can point at many instances when people I know have suffered because of this kind of art-by-committee.
However, my original post was meant to (whether or not it succeeded) point up the absurdities that occur when corporations rather than individuals get involved with arts funding. Corporate sponsors generally just want to be seen to be funding the arts, so they'll either throw around money indiscriminately, or (as in this case) will use the arts as an advertisement.
Sorry, I should clarify that I'm writing from a European perspective. In Europe (certainly in the UK), the arts are primarily funded by the government, or by other public bodies. Read the BBC article. In this respect, the US is much more antiquated. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised by this ASIMO story, but I am surprised none the less.
It's a shame that the Detroit public school system is in such a dire state that it has to stoop to entertaining Honda'a whims in order to gain funding. This harks back to the old days of wealthy patrons supporting the arts. Though in this case, it's a large Japanese corporation rather than individual aristocrats.
Perhaps you're thinking of normal numbers, not transcendental numbers. In that case, your statement holds true, though it has not yet been proved that Pi is normal.
For me, one of the interesting facts in the report is the amount they've spent on litigation since Oct 31, 2004: a massive $13,167,000. At least they're honest about their chances of survival: "Our limited cash resources may not be sufficient to fund continuing losses from operations and the expenses of the SCO Litigation."
I seriously doubt that anyone enjoys paying taxes, but have you actually considered the consequences of dissolving the State apparatus? First off is defence: who do you think is going to pay for a standing army? Microsoft, Disney, you? It doesn't make sense from the point of view of maximising profits for any one corporation or individual to pay for an army; as a result, no one will. Who is going to pay for the education and health care of those without financial means?
Do you really want a private judiciary? A country where justice depends on your ability to pay doesn't sound like a happy proposition to me. If you take the leash off companies like Microsoft or cartels like the RIAA, they will lock-in and DRM the crap out of you until you have no choice whatsoever and your libertarian dreams lie scattered in broken ruins.
This sounds great, but it still means that everyone will have to write slightly different code for interoperability with IE, even if it only involves an additional meta tag. Hopefully, when HTML 5 comes out, the additional meta tag won't be necessary, with the assumption that all HTML 5 web pages will be developed with IE 8 (or another standards-compliant browser) in mind.
I asked my interviewers technical questions, too. [...] Most of my interviewers at MS could not answer the question, which I found telling.
I don't know whether or not you wanted (or got) the MS job, but usually interviewers don't like being made to feel inadequate by their interviewees. In particular, they might begin to worry about their own job security. Better to show that you're good, but not quite as good as the interviewer!
Or even a (manual) bicycle. I live in Oxford, England and since it's such a small, dense city, everything is easier to get to by bicycle than by car. Most people I know (including most full Professors) ride a bike rather than drive a car.
A bicycle has a further advantage over cars and motorbikes in that if I'm stuck in really heavy traffic with no room to manoeuvre on the road, or at an interminable stop light, I can just get off my bike and carry it!
The historical trend seems to be: come up with some swanky technology and uses will be found. So my answer to your question is: hell I don't know, but I can't wait to find out.
Right now, I can see that parallel processing could make tabbed browsing a more pleasant experience, particularly if one or more tabs is showing video. Could probably help with DOM and Flash pages. Since "personal computing" pretty much equals "web browsing" these days, I'd say that's a significant change, though maybe not a "transformation".
Well who knows, maybe it could withstand such a barrage, but only by responding with equal and opposite force. Maybe this is why the researchers didn't perform a "full force running, mid air, knee extension kick" on the robot;)
Finally IE7 supports transparent PNGs, but CSS support is still poor at best. Here's a table that lists support of various CSS styles on a per-browser basis. IE doesn't look good.
This is just the next in a long line of privacy violations by social networking sites such as Facebook. They target a primarily young and non tech-savvy audience so they can get away with the most atrocious breaches in privacy until they overstep the boundary and do something that's blatantly egregious, even to the most innocent Internet users.
With Beacon, Facebook allowed other users to see our online shopping habits. I feel that the latest revelation about Beacon "calling home" won't be as resonant with the general public. We've gotten used to a data-mining culture and don't worry about some faceless "they" having access to all this information. Perhaps if we imagined these personal details being broadcast on national TV, it would be a different story.
Microsoft is not the first player in this market. Two Californian companies have already started producing devices that could be used to produce mind-controlled computer games. The technology has existed for some time and has been used to treat/assist people with severe disabilities.
Could someone explain the science behind this? I remember from high school physics that the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was used as an example of forced resonance, but now I see from the Wikipedia article that resonance has nothing to do with it, and that complicated aerodynamics come in to play. Are there any experts out there who could conjecture on how the Windbelt actually works and explain it in terms of the bridge collapse?
Well I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Takei's hilarious response to NBA player Tim Hardaway's homophobic comments. The video is available on YouTube.
Thanks very much Krisbee! I didn't realise (didn't think) there was a faster option. I've now downloaded nxclient, which is so very much faster than X11.
Slashdot Mirror
As the Greek Geeks will know, the real (legendary) Ulysses (aka Odysseus) went on a ten-year odyssey returning home after the Trojan war. All assumed that Ulysses had died and his former wife was preyed upon by suitors seeking her hand in marriage.
To cut a long story short, Ulysses killed all the suitors when he got home and was especially cruel to a turncoat goatherd, Melanthius. Ulysses cut off his nose and ears, pulled out his genitals for dog food, then sliced off his hands and feet.
Let's home the satellite doesn't come back and find us messing about with the ISS.
Hey, RMS might be a little on the large size, but Titanic? Come on.
It's an unusual sentiment for me, but I must applaud President Bush for being foresighted enough to pass this legislation.
I recently attended a futorological lecture at Oxford University on the possibility of genetically engineered 'persons' (not necessary human persons). The lecture was given by Nobel prize-winner John Sulston (an important figure in the human-genome project), John Harris (a bioethics expert), and was hosted by Richard Dawkins. The panel was very much in favour of continued research into genetic modification of humans, but placed a strong emphasis on the need for legislation to prevent powerful cliques from monopolising or abusing the technology.
One important point they made is that (just about) any technology can be used to give an overwhelming opportunity to those who are free to enjoy it, but that the norms of modern Western societies ensure that most people have the potential to take advantage of the majority of science's blessings. However, we can't simply trust large corporations or other powerful institutions to equitably distribute the advantages of these technologies. Regulation is needed, and Bush is providing a good first step.
So, in summary, we must continue to research and to pursue all avenues of research, but the applications of the research need to be very carefully thought through.
I'm not actually gung-ho about government funding either. I agree with you that a massive bureaucracies are very poor at arts funding and I can point at many instances when people I know have suffered because of this kind of art-by-committee. However, my original post was meant to (whether or not it succeeded) point up the absurdities that occur when corporations rather than individuals get involved with arts funding. Corporate sponsors generally just want to be seen to be funding the arts, so they'll either throw around money indiscriminately, or (as in this case) will use the arts as an advertisement.
Sorry, I should clarify that I'm writing from a European perspective. In Europe (certainly in the UK), the arts are primarily funded by the government, or by other public bodies. Read the BBC article. In this respect, the US is much more antiquated. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised by this ASIMO story, but I am surprised none the less.
It's a shame that the Detroit public school system is in such a dire state that it has to stoop to entertaining Honda'a whims in order to gain funding. This harks back to the old days of wealthy patrons supporting the arts. Though in this case, it's a large Japanese corporation rather than individual aristocrats.
Perhaps you're thinking of normal numbers, not transcendental numbers. In that case, your statement holds true, though it has not yet been proved that Pi is normal.
For me, one of the interesting facts in the report is the amount they've spent on litigation since Oct 31, 2004: a massive $13,167,000. At least they're honest about their chances of survival: "Our limited cash resources may not be sufficient to fund continuing losses from operations and the expenses of the SCO Litigation."
I seriously doubt that anyone enjoys paying taxes, but have you actually considered the consequences of dissolving the State apparatus? First off is defence: who do you think is going to pay for a standing army? Microsoft, Disney, you? It doesn't make sense from the point of view of maximising profits for any one corporation or individual to pay for an army; as a result, no one will. Who is going to pay for the education and health care of those without financial means?
Do you really want a private judiciary? A country where justice depends on your ability to pay doesn't sound like a happy proposition to me. If you take the leash off companies like Microsoft or cartels like the RIAA, they will lock-in and DRM the crap out of you until you have no choice whatsoever and your libertarian dreams lie scattered in broken ruins.
This sounds great, but it still means that everyone will have to write slightly different code for interoperability with IE, even if it only involves an additional meta tag. Hopefully, when HTML 5 comes out, the additional meta tag won't be necessary, with the assumption that all HTML 5 web pages will be developed with IE 8 (or another standards-compliant browser) in mind.
Or even a (manual) bicycle. I live in Oxford, England and since it's such a small, dense city, everything is easier to get to by bicycle than by car. Most people I know (including most full Professors) ride a bike rather than drive a car.
A bicycle has a further advantage over cars and motorbikes in that if I'm stuck in really heavy traffic with no room to manoeuvre on the road, or at an interminable stop light, I can just get off my bike and carry it!
The historical trend seems to be: come up with some swanky technology and uses will be found. So my answer to your question is: hell I don't know, but I can't wait to find out. Right now, I can see that parallel processing could make tabbed browsing a more pleasant experience, particularly if one or more tabs is showing video. Could probably help with DOM and Flash pages. Since "personal computing" pretty much equals "web browsing" these days, I'd say that's a significant change, though maybe not a "transformation".
Well who knows, maybe it could withstand such a barrage, but only by responding with equal and opposite force. Maybe this is why the researchers didn't perform a "full force running, mid air, knee extension kick" on the robot ;)
Finally IE7 supports transparent PNGs, but CSS support is still poor at best. Here's a table that lists support of various CSS styles on a per-browser basis. IE doesn't look good.
This is just the next in a long line of privacy violations by social networking sites such as Facebook. They target a primarily young and non tech-savvy audience so they can get away with the most atrocious breaches in privacy until they overstep the boundary and do something that's blatantly egregious, even to the most innocent Internet users. With Beacon, Facebook allowed other users to see our online shopping habits. I feel that the latest revelation about Beacon "calling home" won't be as resonant with the general public. We've gotten used to a data-mining culture and don't worry about some faceless "they" having access to all this information. Perhaps if we imagined these personal details being broadcast on national TV, it would be a different story.
Microsoft is not the first player in this market. Two Californian companies have already started producing devices that could be used to produce mind-controlled computer games. The technology has existed for some time and has been used to treat/assist people with severe disabilities.
Could someone explain the science behind this? I remember from high school physics that the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was used as an example of forced resonance, but now I see from the Wikipedia article that resonance has nothing to do with it, and that complicated aerodynamics come in to play. Are there any experts out there who could conjecture on how the Windbelt actually works and explain it in terms of the bridge collapse?
Hasn't anyone rumbled that this is just a PR exercise for Travelex? Plus I'm sure it's given a little extra spending cash to the academics involved.
Well I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Takei's hilarious response to NBA player Tim Hardaway's homophobic comments. The video is available on YouTube.
Perhaps because .ca.us would refer to any California (USA) website, not specifically to governmental ones.
Thanks very much Krisbee! I didn't realise (didn't think) there was a faster option. I've now downloaded nxclient, which is so very much faster than X11.