There is a large community of quantum physicists who expanded von Newmann's ideas to argue that we may actually be creating subatomic particles by looking for them.
There is also a large community of the general public who believe (the much more provable theory) that we may actually be creating stories about subatomic particles (and other aspects of science) by looking for them in the popular press.
The chances of them actually doing anything to forward it are eqilivent to a ski resort opening in hell!
With a big foamed-metal board and some fans, maybe you can ski molten lava? The penalty for coming off would be a bit steep, though.
Microsoft have been doing their best to eliminate open source for quite some time now.
It's a good thing that Microsoft can't innovate, else they might be doing something more effective against Free Software than thrasing about, screaming.
As long as there are enough PHBs out there to buy Microsoft becuase its Microsoft then Microsoft won't see a need to become interoperable with open source.
Don't worry, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM - or was that Microsoft?
A local (West Oz) gummint department has just realised that their M$ re-licencing fees for this year are about $1,000,000.00; they are seriously considering ditching M$ in a test department and replacing it with Linux+StarOffice plus a few copies of Win4Lin for the remaining Windows apps. This with ditching M$ across the whole department in mind. They are already migrating to browser-based software. Many such raindrops make a flood.
[subhead] Microsoft Opponents Frustrated As Worm Proves Harmless
MSN will focus on the political issues and try to avoid going anywhere near the 196,000+ systems infected, and similar issues.
Ummm, if the cracker has any brains (and any malice left) (s)he'll get his nice, fresh list of over two hundred thousand known-vulnerable targets and release a different worm that targets a number of whitehouse systems using a mixture of DNS and IP addresses. And maybe saves itself to disk and restarts on boot.
Meantime, for the longsuffering ASP dependents, we heartily recommend visiting the ASP2PHP website. And if you're not using ASP, put IIS+Windows in the bin now and install something decent in its place. Mandrake 8.0 should do.
...because you can disable just the window.open() function, which smears most popups. You can also filter cookies.
Mozilla's ``remember this decision'' check-box on the cookie questions is also a small but exceptionally useful feature.
These features are almost certainly available largely because both browsers are Open Source (Free-Software style). As people start to notice that these browsers do more stuff that they actually want and use, and less stuff that exposes them to network abuse, lesser browsers will fall by the wayside.
If insufficient people complain about Microsoft's insensitive behaviour, it will raise more ABM (Anything But Microsoft) feeling and consequently result in more people using ABM, which in the long term is IMHO a good outcome.
Of course, a similar effect resulted if they tried to complain through MSN Messenger recently... (-:
OK, so the main opposition would be to radioactive materials potentially being released into the atmosphere...
At one stage, the US military designed a dirty no-holds-barred nuclear-propelled missile named (IIRC) Pluton. The main objection to that one was that the shockwave and radiation effects killed everything within a large number of kilometers of the flight path.
I imagine NASA have something a little cleaner in mind. It is relatively simple to produce a nuclear rocket which simply heats a non-radioactive propellant to extraordinary temperatures, and (again, IIRC) the expelled propellant isn't significantly radioactive.
Remember SkyLab falling? Yea, imagine that, but radioactive...
Skylab had a reactor aboard. It was eventually picked up in the desert some distance east of here. (-: <whine>Why are us Aussies always picking up after you Yanks?</whine>:-)
...at least, it's a DDoS client in two lines if you don't have the latest patches for it.
Seriously, I take exception to the gummint banning the tools which I must have for making sure that the boxes I administer are secure from overseas crackers (after all, since we're every man jack of us law abiding citizens here, no other Aussies could possibly crack my machines, although it seems that some legislators are actually smoking it - crack, that is).
Nah, they should have called it Free Enterprise
on
Movies in Space?
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· Score: 2
They should have called it Babylon. It could have been humanities last, best hope for peace.
Actually, the original Babylon was assembled for war, although the surface excuse given was (as the UN so often does today before ravaging a place) peaceful mutual benefit. The EU, in its early days, printed and gave out a poster showing the Tower of Babylon being built by robot-looking humanoids with mottos amounting to ``we know what we want.''
But I digress. Chode wants a slice of the action!
Ready, Fire, Aim! I protest!
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 4
the problem with vigilante justice is that there is rarely any justice in it. Just emotion.
Aye, as in this case. I wonder what the odds are that the SUV barbecue specialists drove an eco-friendly, new, non-leaky, read ``expensive'' vehicle?
Here in Western Australia, we have forest protesters. Nice idea, but the implementation is a little... well, lacking.
For example, they tend to litter. And to track a disease known as ``dieback'' through the forests because they don't take care to clean down their vehicles. And to chop down a lot of little trees in order to build a platform from which to protest about the decimation of big trees. What? Use branches instead? Oooh, we never thought of that... nor did we think that the locals, who depend on the forest products for their own livings as well as the survival of their townships, might be a tad upset by us disrupting their livelihood. Of course, digging out culverts to stop logging trucks is de rigeur, but the environmental damage which this does is not important. And so on.
I firmly believe that we ought to leave some forests - large areas of them - strictly alone, because the fact remains that we don't really know what forests are for or how they work, and messing with mysteries before they're unravelled is generally not a survival tendency. However, a consistent, rational and energetic education and lobbying campaign is going to do a whole heap more towards this aim than the vandalism supposed-short-cut. The real motivation of many eco-terrorists is instant heroism, a ``usefulness high,'' and it shows in their actions.
$52 million US is not going to buy you a spaceport
Well... the Oz military developed a gadget called a HoveRoc, a missile which you fire from a destroyer to fly off nearby and hover, making destroyerish noises (radio, sonar etc) to attract missiles. This cost them (including the first three operational missiles) something less than a fiftieth of the price for the US military to get asingle prototype hovering (no countermeasures yet, just hovering). Conservatively scaling the $US52M by that factor means you've really got a $2.5G spaceport... (-:
Also, a lot depends on what you mean by ``spaceport.'' $Oz100M can buy a lot of bulldozer time for pushing industrial wastes into pristine lagoons, plus a concrete jetty and a tin shed for the bloke who pushes the button.
To all the ecologists who just stood up, red-faced, to abuse the living daylights out of me, they'll probably really be building the launch pad in a closed bird-poo (phosphate) mine, and lagoons would be most unsuitable targets for landing and recovering inbound gear.
On the subject of the crabs, the gobbledok who proposed little tunnels under the road is invited to stand on one of said roads during the crab season. At this point, I'd like to remind you that these little blighters are so hard and sharp that they puncture modern car tyres.
Crab season only happens for a couple of days each year, but during those days you get many millions of crabs across the road. You'd basically have to build a very low elevated roadway (say, 50cm clear of the ground) to replace practically all of the roads, in order to help noticeably. The $Oz100M for the spaceport probably wouldn't cover that.
Many more crabs would be eaten by gulls or whatever than crushed by cars. Has your sense of proportion kicked in yet?
Why do you care that MS wants your non personal info?
Well... they'll track your useage anyhow, and also know that your company exists. Moot point for MSDN anyway, but Passport links up with lots of other things. Who knows what else it will do in five years?
Microsoft aren't reknowned for letting invasive ideas languish, and caving in at any point is useless. You don't pacify a crocodile by tossing it steaks.
How aboute a website somewhere listing logins?
cypherpunk/cypherpunk
cyph3rpunk/cyph3rpunk
bigbrother1984/blinkandyoudie
msownsme/h34rt&s0u1
One still needs cookie control. On Linux, that's easy, redirect web traffic to a local proxy that strips cookies, both in headers and in URL. What about on work machines etc?
Microsoft want to take your freedom and replace it with multiple choice. In particular:
Why can't we bind it in the oceans themselves? We could build even smaller self-reproducing machines based on the very similar basic structural elements, to simply absorb the carbon, bind it into more or less insoluble forms, then die and sink to the bottom, taking the carbon with them.
We could fit a lot more of them in than we could trees, because we can also stack them vertically and there's not really any such thing as an infertile patch.
What? We've already got that?
All right, which of you jokers named it ``Algy?''
(-:
Doesn't that just scream ``redundant design,'' ``distributed processing'' and ``efficient re-use of componentry'' at you?
...since the odds against it forming there make ``astronomical'' look humdrum (try worse than 1 in 10E300), and we have nothing here that would live in that stew.
The implication in these articles is that if the spot concerned ``could support'' life, then life would spontaneously form there, as if it were no more complex than snowflakes. That's like claiming that where international airports exist, aircraft are sure to form, only more so - your average jetliner is much, much simpler than a ``simple'' one-celled lifeform.
This is just another case of scientific BELIEF rewriting scientific FACT.
Uh, I think that would be ``reframing an observation.'' There's no shortage of exciting and imaginitive - and, unfortunately, bankrupt - explanations proposed for ``anomalies'' in orthodox theories, rather than cleanly rewriting the theories as should be done. Just ask J Harlan Bretz about that.
...shielding it from cosmic radiation would be a problem.
The only obvious way to shield is very expensive: use several, and go mining on Mercury and maybe Mars (both totally hostile environments) to bury many tonnes of delicate instruments a mile or so down. I'd like to see the budget for that!
Maybe they invent particles to make their theories look good - said theories having been proposed vaguely enough to encompass almost anything - then coalesce the theories down around the data as it arrives, calling anything which doesn't fit ``anomalous'' (note the perspective: reality doesn't fit the theory, so reality must be the anomaly, not theory!), then either delete the few offending data from their datasets because it's anomalous, or occasionally when it can't be swept under the carpet, declare it to be a great and rare mystery then set about making a special-case patch to the theory in the hope of eventually having it all work.
Want a clear, real-world example of this? Try radio-isotope dating.
If you're copying data (not analogue) signals with ECC regularly, you replace the medium when it gets dodgy. Also, you have at least two copies in separate places as human error or disaster (fire, tornado, RIAA visit, Dubya makes being in possesion of your CD collection a hanging offence) might wipe out all media in one location together.
Technology being what it is, though, you might have trouble getting an interface/drive that slow and klunky when refresh time comes around.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
I guess then that Dubyah will only support-church-sanctioned licences. And since he'll be going to those in a position of social authority to ask about said licences, and people in power seldom give away that power, the implication is that we're headed for another Dark Ages, albeit with digital watches.
The essence of the Dark Ages was centralised and absolute political power, steered by ecclesiastical authorities for whom no sacrifice (by other people, of course) was too great.
I do wish someone with both a brain and political power understood the difference between freedom and mere multiple choice. I do wish those willing to order fire put to the fagots actually read and believed what their example had to say on the topic. Then we wouldn't be facing the apocalypse for which Dubyah is a trigger. Sigh.
Darwin's Dangerous Idea, by Daniel C. Dennett, is another excellent book about the moral implications of evolution.
Mein Kampf not only explores the implications more honestly, it also includes a great deal of information about implementing a practical program to achieve some of the ends mentioned. Of course, you do have to play down a lot of the genocide and cruelty which inevitably ensues, but then one does not make an omelette without breaking eggs, does one?
For the humour-impaired, that was sarcasm.
I sometimes wonder whether Adolf's notes from his time in the German boy-scouts-analog could be assembled and printed as ``Mein Kampfuer''? (-:
Linux wins hands down in server space; I have a fellow consultant who replaced a VB app that had taken months to develop (and still didn't work) with Zope in 15 minutes. The proper objectness of it (VB still doesn't really have it) helped a lot. Nice looking is up to you, but it is free and workable. (-:
Slashdot Mirror
There is also a large community of the general public who believe (the much more provable theory) that we may actually be creating stories about subatomic particles (and other aspects of science) by looking for them in the popular press.
With a big foamed-metal board and some fans, maybe you can ski molten lava? The penalty for coming off would be a bit steep, though.
It's a good thing that Microsoft can't innovate, else they might be doing something more effective against Free Software than thrasing about, screaming.
Don't worry, nobody ever got fired for buying IBM - or was that Microsoft?
A local (West Oz) gummint department has just realised that their M$ re-licencing fees for this year are about $1,000,000.00; they are seriously considering ditching M$ in a test department and replacing it with Linux+StarOffice plus a few copies of Win4Lin for the remaining Windows apps. This with ditching M$ across the whole department in mind. They are already migrating to browser-based software. Many such raindrops make a flood.
[subhead] Microsoft Opponents Frustrated As Worm Proves Harmless
MSN will focus on the political issues and try to avoid going anywhere near the 196,000+ systems infected, and similar issues.
Ummm, if the cracker has any brains (and any malice left) (s)he'll get his nice, fresh list of over two hundred thousand known-vulnerable targets and release a different worm that targets a number of whitehouse systems using a mixture of DNS and IP addresses. And maybe saves itself to disk and restarts on boot.
Meantime, for the longsuffering ASP dependents, we heartily recommend visiting the ASP2PHP website. And if you're not using ASP, put IIS+Windows in the bin now and install something decent in its place. Mandrake 8.0 should do.
...because you can disable just the window.open() function, which smears most popups. You can also filter cookies. Mozilla's ``remember this decision'' check-box on the cookie questions is also a small but exceptionally useful feature. These features are almost certainly available largely because both browsers are Open Source (Free-Software style). As people start to notice that these browsers do more stuff that they actually want and use, and less stuff that exposes them to network abuse, lesser browsers will fall by the wayside.
I'll put on my camel-hair shirt and with locust-and-honey bowl in hand, state that:
If insufficient people complain about Microsoft's insensitive behaviour, it will raise more ABM (Anything But Microsoft) feeling and consequently result in more people using ABM, which in the long term is IMHO a good outcome. Of course, a similar effect resulted if they tried to complain through MSN Messenger recently... (-:
mod_ruby has been around for a while, and last I looked there were several templating systems.
At one stage, the US military designed a dirty no-holds-barred nuclear-propelled missile named (IIRC) Pluton. The main objection to that one was that the shockwave and radiation effects killed everything within a large number of kilometers of the flight path.
I imagine NASA have something a little cleaner in mind. It is relatively simple to produce a nuclear rocket which simply heats a non-radioactive propellant to extraordinary temperatures, and (again, IIRC) the expelled propellant isn't significantly radioactive.
Skylab had a reactor aboard. It was eventually picked up in the desert some distance east of here. (-: <whine>Why are us Aussies always picking up after you Yanks?</whine>
...at least, it's a DDoS client in two lines if you don't have the latest patches for it.
Seriously, I take exception to the gummint banning the tools which I must have for making sure that the boxes I administer are secure from overseas crackers (after all, since we're every man jack of us law abiding citizens here, no other Aussies could possibly crack my machines, although it seems that some legislators are actually smoking it - crack, that is).
Actually, the original Babylon was assembled for war, although the surface excuse given was (as the UN so often does today before ravaging a place) peaceful mutual benefit. The EU, in its early days, printed and gave out a poster showing the Tower of Babylon being built by robot-looking humanoids with mottos amounting to ``we know what we want.''
But I digress. Chode wants a slice of the action!
Here in Western Australia, we have forest protesters. Nice idea, but the implementation is a little... well, lacking.
For example, they tend to litter. And to track a disease known as ``dieback'' through the forests because they don't take care to clean down their vehicles. And to chop down a lot of little trees in order to build a platform from which to protest about the decimation of big trees. What? Use branches instead? Oooh, we never thought of that... nor did we think that the locals, who depend on the forest products for their own livings as well as the survival of their townships, might be a tad upset by us disrupting their livelihood. Of course, digging out culverts to stop logging trucks is de rigeur, but the environmental damage which this does is not important. And so on.
I firmly believe that we ought to leave some forests - large areas of them - strictly alone, because the fact remains that we don't really know what forests are for or how they work, and messing with mysteries before they're unravelled is generally not a survival tendency. However, a consistent, rational and energetic education and lobbying campaign is going to do a whole heap more towards this aim than the vandalism supposed-short-cut. The real motivation of many eco-terrorists is instant heroism, a ``usefulness high,'' and it shows in their actions.
Well... the Oz military developed a gadget called a HoveRoc, a missile which you fire from a destroyer to fly off nearby and hover, making destroyerish noises (radio, sonar etc) to attract missiles. This cost them (including the first three operational missiles) something less than a fiftieth of the price for the US military to get asingle prototype hovering (no countermeasures yet, just hovering). Conservatively scaling the $US52M by that factor means you've really got a $2.5G spaceport... (-:
Also, a lot depends on what you mean by ``spaceport.'' $Oz100M can buy a lot of bulldozer time for pushing industrial wastes into pristine lagoons, plus a concrete jetty and a tin shed for the bloke who pushes the button.
To all the ecologists who just stood up, red-faced, to abuse the living daylights out of me, they'll probably really be building the launch pad in a closed bird-poo (phosphate) mine, and lagoons would be most unsuitable targets for landing and recovering inbound gear.
On the subject of the crabs, the gobbledok who proposed little tunnels under the road is invited to stand on one of said roads during the crab season. At this point, I'd like to remind you that these little blighters are so hard and sharp that they puncture modern car tyres.
Crab season only happens for a couple of days each year, but during those days you get many millions of crabs across the road. You'd basically have to build a very low elevated roadway (say, 50cm clear of the ground) to replace practically all of the roads, in order to help noticeably. The $Oz100M for the spaceport probably wouldn't cover that.
Many more crabs would be eaten by gulls or whatever than crushed by cars. Has your sense of proportion kicked in yet?
Well... they'll track your useage anyhow, and also know that your company exists. Moot point for MSDN anyway, but Passport links up with lots of other things. Who knows what else it will do in five years?
Microsoft aren't reknowned for letting invasive ideas languish, and caving in at any point is useless. You don't pacify a crocodile by tossing it steaks.
How aboute a website somewhere listing logins?
One still needs cookie control. On Linux, that's easy, redirect web traffic to a local proxy that strips cookies, both in headers and in URL. What about on work machines etc?
Microsoft want to take your freedom and replace it with multiple choice. In particular:
Why can't we bind it in the oceans themselves? We could build even smaller self-reproducing machines based on the very similar basic structural elements, to simply absorb the carbon, bind it into more or less insoluble forms, then die and sink to the bottom, taking the carbon with them.
We could fit a lot more of them in than we could trees, because we can also stack them vertically and there's not really any such thing as an infertile patch.
What? We've already got that?
All right, which of you jokers named it ``Algy?''
(-:
Doesn't that just scream ``redundant design,'' ``distributed processing'' and ``efficient re-use of componentry'' at you?
And maybe it was the fear of being buried in billions of tonnes of speeding, sediment-laden water that killed off the trilobites?
A pity; I'd like some for my garden pool, and am looking forward to live ones being discovered, as the Coelacanth was.
How about you?
The implication in these articles is that if the spot concerned ``could support'' life, then life would spontaneously form there, as if it were no more complex than snowflakes. That's like claiming that where international airports exist, aircraft are sure to form, only more so - your average jetliner is much, much simpler than a ``simple'' one-celled lifeform.
Think about it.
Yah, that does explain a lot more. And here's another with a slightly different angle.
Uh, I think that would be ``reframing an observation.'' There's no shortage of exciting and imaginitive - and, unfortunately, bankrupt - explanations proposed for ``anomalies'' in orthodox theories, rather than cleanly rewriting the theories as should be done. Just ask J Harlan Bretz about that.
...shielding it from cosmic radiation would be a problem.
The only obvious way to shield is very expensive: use several, and go mining on Mercury and maybe Mars (both totally hostile environments) to bury many tonnes of delicate instruments a mile or so down. I'd like to see the budget for that!
Maybe they invent particles to make their theories look good - said theories having been proposed vaguely enough to encompass almost anything - then coalesce the theories down around the data as it arrives, calling anything which doesn't fit ``anomalous'' (note the perspective: reality doesn't fit the theory, so reality must be the anomaly, not theory!), then either delete the few offending data from their datasets because it's anomalous, or occasionally when it can't be swept under the carpet, declare it to be a great and rare mystery then set about making a special-case patch to the theory in the hope of eventually having it all work.
Want a clear, real-world example of this? Try radio-isotope dating.
...that you won't learn how to eat the case as well (and be renamed Elevenactin?) you naughty fungus, you...
Technology being what it is, though, you might have trouble getting an interface/drive that slow and klunky when refresh time comes around.
I guess then that Dubyah will only support-church-sanctioned licences. And since he'll be going to those in a position of social authority to ask about said licences, and people in power seldom give away that power, the implication is that we're headed for another Dark Ages, albeit with digital watches.
The essence of the Dark Ages was centralised and absolute political power, steered by ecclesiastical authorities for whom no sacrifice (by other people, of course) was too great.
I do wish someone with both a brain and political power understood the difference between freedom and mere multiple choice. I do wish those willing to order fire put to the fagots actually read and believed what their example had to say on the topic. Then we wouldn't be facing the apocalypse for which Dubyah is a trigger. Sigh.
Mein Kampf not only explores the implications more honestly, it also includes a great deal of information about implementing a practical program to achieve some of the ends mentioned. Of course, you do have to play down a lot of the genocide and cruelty which inevitably ensues, but then one does not make an omelette without breaking eggs, does one?
For the humour-impaired, that was sarcasm.
I sometimes wonder whether Adolf's notes from his time in the German boy-scouts-analog could be assembled and printed as ``Mein Kampfuer''? (-:
Linux wins hands down in server space; I have a fellow consultant who replaced a VB app that had taken months to develop (and still didn't work) with Zope in 15 minutes. The proper objectness of it (VB still doesn't really have it) helped a lot. Nice looking is up to you, but it is free and workable. (-: