In fact, there is no place in the universe with true zero gravity - even if you could find a point where all gravitational forces are balanced, only one particle could be there at a time.
Which I've always wondered about - if you went into space where there was practically nothing influencing you, and could bring in a constant source of particles (water, dirt, whatever), could you make a small planet, and would it have it's own gravity?
I'm guessing yes because of that whole whatever has mass has gravity thing, but I wonder what it would be like? Would a planet artificially made of water have a super-heated, gaseous-liquid core? Would it glow from that reaction?
Hehe, you haven't seen many Australian rallies have you?:)
Sure, sometimes someone gets caught up in it and somehow blamed for something he didn't do, or the police arrest a guy who they suspect as doing something violent, but most of the time these things get sorted out pretty quick, and to nearly everyone's satisfaction.
There have been some bad moments in the past with pepper spray and allergic reactions, and there's been regrets all `round over those, but people being who they are, this will happen eventually.
The thing is, we've never really had much cause for martyr's in Australia. We're much more interested in the guy who "gave it a fair go", regardless of whether he won or lost.
Let me just re-read my post here... Mmm hmm, yes... oka-ay... aah.
I understand your misunderstanding of my post, perhaps I should have been more particular.
I was talking about the original intention of two different groups of people, rioters and protesters.
Sure, a protest can escalate - through internal or external causes - to the point where it becomes a riot, but my point wasn't to pick apart every instance of riots, rallies, and protests over the years and specify bullet point by bullet point exactly what the differences were in each instance.
I've seen protests gone bad, and riots that have started by something seemingly innocuous - a soccer game for example - and escalated to the point where the police are out in force with bean bag guns.
It's not pretty, and I wish it hadn't happened like it did. I wish the police would use my barely thought out method of dispersing sleeping gas and men with gurney's instead of firing guns at people, rubber bullets or bean bags be damned.
I've also seen rallies and peaceful marches where the police have simply walked along with the protesters, laughing and joking along the side-lines and just giving a meaningful glance or a quiet warning to people who they thought were getting out of hand - i.e. shout all you want, swear out your slogans, and even stick out your tongue at authority figures, but don't you dare touch someone else's property or drop a glass bottle on the street.
No, it's not always the protesters fault, and it's generally even the police's fault, but it is an undeniable fact of human nature that we are a herd-like animal, and so there are times where some of us will follow whoever appears to be the strongest, whether this means shouting our slogans louder or throwing missiles at police.
We need not devise "better" weapons to stop rioters, or better defenses against the police. We need to start respecting everyone else's natural rights to live their own lives as long as that doesn't mean disrespecting other people's rights.
Until then, why can't laughing gas be used instead of tear gas?
No, when a guy goes to a rally and starts making obviously outrageous statements for the intent of inciting peaceful protesters to riot, then he's a wanker that we quietly "duff up" and hand over to the police where he's appropriately arrested for "disturbing the peace".
If he'd been beaten up by the coppers for simply being there and being mistaken for some other arsehole that said or did something to incite the police to action, as have been other unfortunate people at recent rallies, then he's a martyr.
There were other idiots at the rally, but they were more of the simply stupid variety, and when we ignored them, they went away, which is the oft prefered method of dealing with riot-inducers and people who try to escalate a peaceful protest into a small-scale war.
Not disputing your comment, just making an observation.
The funny thing about elections is that you don't need the majority to vote for you, you only need to have the most votes compared to the other people running in the election.
"Sure Bob's an ass-hole, but since the other seventy-five percent of voters split their votes up amongst ten people, Bob's your man now."
Picture a man in black - because it's fashionable - holding a poor, misguided young geek wanna-be in his arms, a.l.a. world aid advertisements.
"The young man you see before you is in dire need of rations of reality, but he is only one of many poor, unfortunate children who go by every day not knowing whether they'll see the clue tomorrow or not. Please, don't send these children your flamebait, but send them your clues. They dearly need the healthy guidance of a clue-stick."
It's very simple Andrew. A riot is the unorderly assembly of a crowd of people who are operating under the general pretext of creating chaos through the violent disruption of other people's lives.
A protest, or rally as we like to call them here in Australia, is a crowd of people collected together to cause chaos through way of peaceful, but annoying, disruption of other people's lives while loudly chanting and shouting why we're trying to draw attention to ourselves.
One, the riot, is meant to cause chaos for the sake of anarchy, whereas the other, a protest, is meant to draw attention to a Cause by interrupting other people's lives and forcing them to see that there is a perceived problem in our society.
"Please, for the sake of these children's future, show them the loving touch of a clue-stick."
This isn't a counter-argument to either you or the next comment up, merely an observation of a rally I was in several years ago.
It was a rally for the decriminalization (sp?) of cannabis.
We sang songs, smoked dope (quite illegaly) with a couple of coppers on the job watching us, and generally just annoyed people by holding up traffic and chanting corny slogans.
The few people I noticed who did try to get everyone all fired up and bloodthirsty got one of two things - the first few were, very inconspicuously, beaten up by a couple of the bigger, "gentle giants" in the crowd, and the other wankers were shoved straight into the arms of the police, who arrested the dickheads for "assaulting an officer", with a wink and a smile from the rest of us.
We'd decided on having a peaceful rally, with some civil (polite too) disobedience by our pot smoking, and we'd kept that peace through some subtly violent methods. There was no damage to property, nor people who weren't being morons.
We were Brisbanites, quietly, seriously, exercising our possible - still dunno if there's anything in the books that says we're entitled to it - right to peacefully assemble and express our displeasure at the government, and that's what we did, and because we were civil-minded, peaceful folk, we beat mary-hell out of the dumb fucks that tried to ruin it for us and then we handed them over to the police while wearing big, doped smiles.
I've heard tell that there were ancient civilizations where it was considered "noble" to barbecue your subjects if they showed disrespect to those in authority, but I'd heard it wasn't such a popular thing now-a-days.
Causing pain through non-permanent bruising thumps from a bean-bag firing gun to prevent someone being a danger to others? I can condone that if it's done in moderation.
Causing pain to prevent rioting by cooking, or at least disrupting functionality of, the internal organs of your populace? I'd like to stick you in a microwave oven for a few seconds and see how you like it.
Rioters may be deserve to be dispersed, but couldn't we do it with something like a combination of sleeping gas and big burly blokes with gurneys?
Eviscerated and barbecued. That pain the people are feeling is the fluid in their bodies getting brought up to a high enough temperature to broil them.
In your scheme, can distinguish 3. from 4. because number of questions asked is different.
It's a late reply and I'm not quite sure what you mean, but if it's "In your scheme, can't distinguish 3. from 4.", then you've gotten the point without understanding what I'm getting at.
It's a little bit, "complicated" (as much as baking a cake is complicated), but it adds a level of what we humans have as a flaw and turns it into an extra level of security - uncertainty.
By having the system make a "snap decision" based on variables that the customer possibly "gets" but doesn't understand, it hopefully forces them to pay attention to what's happening.
No Cookie? Ask one question of three pre-created questions. Display bogus image and see if the customer responds correctly, i.e. no, to whether or not it is their image. If they answer yes, politely kick them out with instructions to call their bank.
Cookie exists? Ask two questions of three pre-created questions, show picture and ask user to confirm it's their picture, awaiting a yes response. A no kicks them out blah-blah call bank.
If the user confirms correctly, ask remaining questions, then password.
Why the password last? Because we've been telling the unwashed masses for years that their password is the most important thing to remember about computers and we better not go changing it now otherwise Joe and Jane Sixpack are just gonna get more confused and listen to us even less than they do now.
Complicated? Not to me or you, but we've dumbed down IT so much already that everyone else incorrectly treats their computers like bloody toasters, and I think we'd better start making things a little more interesting so that people start thinking about what they're doing before all us geeks, nerds, and people who "know all about computers" get lynched for losing these people their money, jobs, cars, etc.
Granted, it's a very particular type of punishment, but then computer viruses are a very particular type of criminal endeavour - as long as the virus remains in a "lab", it's not a crime, it's a semi-autonomous life-like organism suited to living and breeding within "cells" of computers.
I believe we should punish people like Sven, but I think we should do it in a way that both let's them know they shouldn't do the bad thing again - like releasing the Sasser Worm - and yet we want them to become more than they are, to explore their talent and let it grow.
We just make sure that the talent and creativity is kept in a controlled environment.
I don't like war, but if I were a government official I'd be looking for not just the most effective weapons in the physical world but also the most effective weapons in the computing world. I'd also want the most effective defense systems.
I'd take a smart man who's capable of creating weapons - physical or electronic - and I'd make him work for me, free to play with his ideas, but kept in a secure environment.
Murder, child-molestation, rape... I have other punishments in mind for these people, more tailored punishments... sicker punishments.
I don't believe in a catch-all system for crime. Punish the people who need punishing, discipline those who need discipline, and teach those who need to grow.
I like the idea Terry Pratchett has expressed in his Discworld novels with the relationship between the two characters Havelock Vetinari - The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork - and Leonard of Quirm - an obvious caricature of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Upon discovering Leonard - who would draw utterly detailed pictures of roses and hands next to piece-by-piece numbered diagrams of how to build unbelievably destructive war machines, as a mental exercise - The Patrician locked Leonard up in a tower in the Patrician's Palace, with all the bits and bobs that Leonard wanted to keep himself amused.
See, if you punish the brilliant you twist them, and if you reward a brilliant man who's committed a crime against others using that brilliance then you risk giving out the message that you're advocating what they did.
The best thing would be to "lock'em up and throw away the key" as the public would like, in a highly technical facility with gadgets and doodads that they can use to experiment and create freely.
The government could get some tools out of this, and the people being "put away" would learn that although what they did was technically very clever, they shouldn't have done it in public.
It's less like prison and more like grounding I suppose.
I'm reminded of the verbal exhange between Macleane and Rochester,
M: `Is he filthy rich or stinking rich?'
R: `Fucking rich.'
[Broad Subject Line...]
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P2P and TV
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[Long-winded talking out of my ass diatribe...]:)
Firstly I think it's a good thing that even though this show was cancelled, the Creator has obviously had his own thoughts and ideas about it reaffirmed by the growing fanbase on the Net.
Imagine if you made a television show, thought it was good but wasn't sure, and was rejected by the studios? I think you'd be feeling a bit blue - either sad or very vernacular, probably both.
Imagine then that out of the blue you've gotten all these emails in your mailbox that generally say "Just saw your tv show, it was awesome. When's the next episode coming out?"
I know my first reaction would be "What The Fuck?! How did these people see my show?" I'm guessing Rogers thought much the same thing, mixed with joy that people - real people from around the world and not a studio controlled group - liked his show enough to email him and say so, and maybe some annoyance that he wasn't getting some revenue back.
Now, why do shows get made? Because people like to create things and get back responses of "wow dude, that's cool." How do they get made? With time, attention to detail, and money. There's no getting away from the money.
So we, as an audience, want entertaining television shows, movies, books, etc., and the people who create the entertainment want positive affirmation of their investment of time, "blood, sweat, and tears," and money.
We have the best media distribution network built in the history of our civilization, and we can't create a medium for exchanging worthwhile entertainment for a few bucks?
Okay, let's say you want a model based on free-to-air television - you pay nothing, see some advertisements now and then, and get to watch a television show.
Take, for example, this pilot episode of Global Frequency, add a black border to the bottom of the footage, and periodically show an ad. Or cut and paste the advertisements into certain points, like they're shown now.
Some people will fast-forward with the slider bar on their movie player, and others will take the time to cut the ads out, but what is the ratio of people simply watching the ads to those using VCR's to fast-forward or stop-start recording now? Surely not enough for the advertisers to worry about.
Look at all the people who watch those shows that are just about ads, like "World's Raunchiest Commercials" or "World's Funniest Commercials". These things are nothing but ads.
Movies are one area where this might not work. A lot of people have put up with product placement, but then it gets to a certain point and you wonder "is this a movie or a ninety minute advertisement for soft drinks, fast foods, and cars?"
You don't want disparity or inconsistancy in your delivery medium though. Remember, a lot of people don't "get" computers, or the Internet, or IT in general, including the people we need to produce entertainment, and I'm not talking about the distributers like WB or Soly Pictures or Dosney.
A lot of writers with great ideas don't know how to set up a computer, put their work in a digital format, and pump it out onto the net aided by a machine that can take a few dollars per copy. A lot of advertisers have no idea how TCP/IP, HTTP, Apache, The *n?x's, or P2P can be used to distribute awareness of their products. A lot of people don't even know how television really works. To these people it's all either "turn it on and it's there" or "get Jonesy to do it, he's good with this technical crap."
So, we have the distribution network. Us geeks and slightly geeky people use it often. We just need to do for the Internet and media distribution what Apple did for Unix - make it seem so simple that any person can look at it and say "oh this is easy" and make it so damn convenient that people will pay a few bucks, or watch a few ads, to be entertained.
Now I know a lot of you don't like the idea of centralised netwo
For one document my preference is XHTML documents with inline CSS styling. It's ASCII, and it can look nice too.:)
For multiple documents I'll use a separate CSS file(s).
Funny thing, I still get brain dead idiots asking me to send them a word document because either their email program displays the file inline and they don't know how to save an attachment to a separate file without Outlook/Express doing it for them OR their copy of Word is so old it doesn't recognise simple CSS, and I keep telling them "I don't own Word*". Shit, I even put simple instructions - I do tech support well, I know how to simplify the instructions - in the email saying in generally two steps how to view the document.
* Yes, I know about exporting from OO.o and KO and so on. I just don't like doing it unless I really have to.
In that case they'd be better off going for the Linux server that's downstairs running my SDSL connection, web sites, email server, NAT, and firewall, instead of trying to crack an OS that's running for about four hours of each week.:)
Actually, that's what I did but without the "not secure" bit.
I got so sick of the Windows interface, function, and general "feel", that I "re-built" my machine so that Windows has a 40GB PATA drive for itself and games - games and FireFox in case I need to look up something on the net about a game. On my 80GB SATA drive I put Gentoo - I wanted to try it out and compare to Debian - and made my 160GB SATA drive a mount point inside my home dir - couldn't quite juggle my data enough to make it my home dir.
So, if some cracker really wants copies of my savegames, he can, uh, have em.:)
Work - web development, programming, writing, etc - gets done on Linux, and Windows is for play.
And nobody respond about how it's easy to secure Windows and set it up to look like what you want now with Stardock's tools and replacing the gui with LiteStep and so on. I know all this, I've been looking after my x86 computer since DOS 5 and Windows 3.0 and only caught one virus, once - nasty fucker that wiped my 125MB HDD on my first PC. Learned my lesson very quickly.
Windows just isn't what I want as a working OS, Linux is. For people less inclined to want to know how their computer works and just use it to get work done I recommend a Mac, and for games I suggest a console, or maybe an x86 PC if they like MMORPG's, based on what sort of games they like and the range of that genre on the different platforms.
So I'm not even going to try and pretend I know anything about parenting from a Father's point of view. I'll just say what my parents did.
When I was very young - 1-3 years - I was encouraged to read. Mum did this by reading me stories, pointing out the words, saying them slowly, and sometimes prompting me to either read or recall from memory what the next word was.
At about 3, 3 and a half, my family got a Vic 20, and purely because of the fact that Dad wasn't "computer-minded" and Mum was only marginally better at then Dad, I was allowed to run wild on the machine. I got given the manuals that came with it, and I could play on it any time as long as Mum and Dad were awake - no 4am early wakeups and tap-tap-tap.
When I went to pre-school Mum would walk with me to it and back. It was only about 10 minutes away on foot. When I started primary school Dad got me a bmx pushbike and I'd ride - generally in circles - while Mum walked - and shouted "come back here!".
Now my Dad likes camping, so that's what we all did for holidays from when I was about five. Nothing major like surviving in the words with only a survival knife, just camping in a tent at the Scarborough Caravan and Camping Park at Scarborough Beach, Redcliffe - gone now, sold to arsehole developers.
So far I've been using a computer - the Vic 20 was soon upgraded to a C-64 with a printer - for playing and doing homework, going camping almost every half-year, riding my bike to school, and being encouraged by my Mum to read everything I can get my hands on - including books on biology, sexual reproduction, chemistry, and physics.
At thirteen I get a junior chemistry set and I'm allowed to do what I want with it, short of burning the packaged kerosene burner outside of the kitchen. Mum had checked that none of the chemicals in the set were dangerous when mixed, although tartaric acid and bi-carb can still make a cool mess.
I also received a microscope set and some books on astronomy - I know, but Dad couldn't afford a "decent" telescope. I branched into three more areas of curiosity.
At 16 I'm riding one of my bikes - a blue mountain bike and a black tourer - everywhere I want to go. If I want to go to Brisbane - I live in Ipswich - then I ride there - hour and a half on the highway. I'm allowed to go camping on my own if I want to, having demonstrated an avid interest in camping and a proficiency for looking after myself in the bush. I'm publically regarded as nerdy by the girls at school, and privately told I'm a nice guy - being seen with a reader isn't "cool".
Today I still ride my bike - now a black dual-suspension mountain bike - everywhere, I still read a lot, I use my computer a lot - Athlon XP 2600, 1GB RAM, 280GB HDD, Gentoo Linux and Windows 2000 - and I upgrade it and look after it myself, and I go camping when I can get the time and I'm not adverse to walking long distances through scrubby, uneven terrain.
The thing was, my parents never said "you have to like these particular things". They just encouraged me to look after myself, and did it in somewhat subtle ways.
I'd take you but I'm busy right now, why don't you ride your bike? I don't know the answer son, look it up in that book there... This is how you make a campfire... Explorers used to walk from, say here, to that blueish mountain off in the distance a hundred years ago, just to see what was on top... Look, look, it turns blue when you swirl the water this way, and changes back to red when you leave it alone... Ever noticed son how the images look smaller when you look through binoculars backwards? We've got some new stories, they're called Great Books of the Western World... Okay you can call these bulletin board things, but only local calls (new 386 with a modem)... Where's your sister (good for gaining detective skills that one)?
Sure, I wasn't a great kid, and I did a lot of stuff kids do like skipping school, getting annoyed at certain vegetables, staying out after my curf
When it comes to hardware, that depends on a couple of things.
If it was a case where the drivers were supplied by the manufacturer of the hardware in an easily adaptable form, or the specs were practically shouted from the rooftops, then you could say it's Linux's fault - or more accurately, it's a flaw in the F/OS Software.
But considering how manufacturers - as well as you, me, and Joe Sixpack if he so felt inclined - can quite easily download the source to Linux, the GNU software, X11, CUPS, and numerous other bits of F/OS Software, making it so damn easy to know how to program the drivers correctly, I would say that the manufacturers are more at fault than the F/OSS programmers.
That my generally declining opinion of the public at large - American, Australian, European, Asian, Etc - is not without cause.
Like I said in my more rant-like post concerning the PATRIOT Act, most people today want convenience.
They don't want Rights, or Freedom, or the ability to think whatever they like, they want Convenience and Comfort.
They don't want to have to think about something that might make them uncomfortable or that they have to learn to understand. They want someone else to process it, break it down into bite-size chunks, and regurgitate it up in the form of convenient fast food, comfortable television programming, uncontroversial news, positive government reports, and the latest cookie-cutter entertainment.
The public at large are idiots and need to learn that the only thing more convenient then when we have now would be all of us in a fucking mylar bags to live in, being fed introveinously and waste removed with more pipes, and having our eyes and ears hardwired into a mindless hash of multimedia crap.
Maybe then they'll stop looking for the most convenient and comfortable solution to all their problems and start thinking for themselves...
To the article and a fair number of the comments in here, and although it's fairly fanciful, read all the way before passing judgement please.
About 10 years ago I used to regularly play a Role Play Game called Shadowrun, and it had a fairly dark, Blade Runner-ish view of the future - 2050 and beyond.
Now we're not, so far, heading into mass corporate wars, amended politics for nigh-infinite terms, and social upheaval verging on very bloody revolution right before the end of the Mayan fifth age and heading into the sixth, but from where I'm sitting, it might not be such a bad thing to happen.
You, me, and most of the other people here on Slashdot are, at least likely to be, fairly intelligent and observant people, and I'm guessing that when you look at the current state of politics and society today you must be feeling pretty ambiguous about it all.
On the one hand we've got politicians who are, quite obviously, stuffing their pockets full of as much benefits as they can get their grubby hands on - reminds me of a t-shirt I saw once with a pig-nosed fat-ass in a three piece suit eating money - while the public at large responds with "Duhr? TV gooood." whenever you point it out to them, and on the other hand there are a few people working in politics - not politicians, that word has become an insult - who are not just looking out for their own interests and are trying to do their damndest for the public, and some of the public recognise that.
The problem is laziness coupled with greed. The politicians want a huge fucking piece of the pie, while the public in general is lazy enough to accept the illusion that they're getting a slice also, and they're too lazy to think about it and realise they're getting fucked up the ass.
Most people are so fucking lazy in fact that if you said to them "you know, you could get an extra 5 miles per gallon if you read a book and tuned that engine" or "don't blow fifty dollars on a dinner for two, here's a recipe for a four course meal you can cook yourself that'll rival anything from a fancy restaurant" that they'd shrug and say something like "I can't be bothered".
I can't be bothered.
I can't be bothered cooking something when I get home from work because I'm too tired, I'll just have something from a fast food place. I can't be bothered understanding how the basics of my engine work so I can save a few bucks and change my own oil. I can't be bothered ironing my own suit/jeans/shirts/skirts. I can't be bothered thinking about what's happening in the world.
They can't be bothered with all that junk, but they can be bothered whinging about it, or throwing money at it until someone else takes care of it for them.
Sure, dry cleaning is convenient. Fast food is convenient. Mechanics are convenient. A fancy restaurant is convenient. Lot's of things we can go out and buy are convenient, but they've become a crutch.
People in general have taken convenience and a helping hand from the government and turned them into dependencies, and you know what? The government is simply going with the flow and slowly turning those growing dependencies into a tangible part of life.
It's politi-fu. Man needs a hand? Sure, just sign this, fill out these, and we'll keep a watchful eye on you while we help you out for a while. Don't worry, we're here to help.
Mother finds her child watching something she regards as porn? No problem, this department will help you protect your children by making new laws that say kids aren't allowed to watch these shows, and to help, we'll make sure the studios can't show them between certain times.
Oh, and while you're at it, would you two mind taking one of these? Don't worry, it's just a little card that lets us protect you if you happen to be driving through a bad neighbourhood and your car breaks down, or something happens at your kid's school and we need to get in touch with you, no matter where you are at the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Which I've always wondered about - if you went into space where there was practically nothing influencing you, and could bring in a constant source of particles (water, dirt, whatever), could you make a small planet, and would it have it's own gravity?
I'm guessing yes because of that whole whatever has mass has gravity thing, but I wonder what it would be like? Would a planet artificially made of water have a super-heated, gaseous-liquid core? Would it glow from that reaction?
Idle thoughts.
How come no-one ever links to the web site of the creator of Badgers? Weebls Stuff.
I prefer the song about Kenya. :)
Hehe, you haven't seen many Australian rallies have you? :)
Sure, sometimes someone gets caught up in it and somehow blamed for something he didn't do, or the police arrest a guy who they suspect as doing something violent, but most of the time these things get sorted out pretty quick, and to nearly everyone's satisfaction.
There have been some bad moments in the past with pepper spray and allergic reactions, and there's been regrets all `round over those, but people being who they are, this will happen eventually.
The thing is, we've never really had much cause for martyr's in Australia. We're much more interested in the guy who "gave it a fair go", regardless of whether he won or lost.
Let me just re-read my post here... Mmm hmm, yes... oka-ay... aah.
I understand your misunderstanding of my post, perhaps I should have been more particular.
I was talking about the original intention of two different groups of people, rioters and protesters.
Sure, a protest can escalate - through internal or external causes - to the point where it becomes a riot, but my point wasn't to pick apart every instance of riots, rallies, and protests over the years and specify bullet point by bullet point exactly what the differences were in each instance.
I've seen protests gone bad, and riots that have started by something seemingly innocuous - a soccer game for example - and escalated to the point where the police are out in force with bean bag guns.
It's not pretty, and I wish it hadn't happened like it did. I wish the police would use my barely thought out method of dispersing sleeping gas and men with gurney's instead of firing guns at people, rubber bullets or bean bags be damned.
I've also seen rallies and peaceful marches where the police have simply walked along with the protesters, laughing and joking along the side-lines and just giving a meaningful glance or a quiet warning to people who they thought were getting out of hand - i.e. shout all you want, swear out your slogans, and even stick out your tongue at authority figures, but don't you dare touch someone else's property or drop a glass bottle on the street.
No, it's not always the protesters fault, and it's generally even the police's fault, but it is an undeniable fact of human nature that we are a herd-like animal, and so there are times where some of us will follow whoever appears to be the strongest, whether this means shouting our slogans louder or throwing missiles at police.
We need not devise "better" weapons to stop rioters, or better defenses against the police. We need to start respecting everyone else's natural rights to live their own lives as long as that doesn't mean disrespecting other people's rights.
Until then, why can't laughing gas be used instead of tear gas?
No, when a guy goes to a rally and starts making obviously outrageous statements for the intent of inciting peaceful protesters to riot, then he's a wanker that we quietly "duff up" and hand over to the police where he's appropriately arrested for "disturbing the peace".
If he'd been beaten up by the coppers for simply being there and being mistaken for some other arsehole that said or did something to incite the police to action, as have been other unfortunate people at recent rallies, then he's a martyr.
There were other idiots at the rally, but they were more of the simply stupid variety, and when we ignored them, they went away, which is the oft prefered method of dealing with riot-inducers and people who try to escalate a peaceful protest into a small-scale war.
Not disputing your comment, just making an observation.
The funny thing about elections is that you don't need the majority to vote for you, you only need to have the most votes compared to the other people running in the election.
"Sure Bob's an ass-hole, but since the other seventy-five percent of voters split their votes up amongst ten people, Bob's your man now."
Picture a man in black - because it's fashionable - holding a poor, misguided young geek wanna-be in his arms, a.l.a. world aid advertisements.
"The young man you see before you is in dire need of rations of reality, but he is only one of many poor, unfortunate children who go by every day not knowing whether they'll see the clue tomorrow or not. Please, don't send these children your flamebait, but send them your clues. They dearly need the healthy guidance of a clue-stick."
It's very simple Andrew. A riot is the unorderly assembly of a crowd of people who are operating under the general pretext of creating chaos through the violent disruption of other people's lives.
A protest, or rally as we like to call them here in Australia, is a crowd of people collected together to cause chaos through way of peaceful, but annoying, disruption of other people's lives while loudly chanting and shouting why we're trying to draw attention to ourselves.
One, the riot, is meant to cause chaos for the sake of anarchy, whereas the other, a protest, is meant to draw attention to a Cause by interrupting other people's lives and forcing them to see that there is a perceived problem in our society.
"Please, for the sake of these children's future, show them the loving touch of a clue-stick."
This isn't a counter-argument to either you or the next comment up, merely an observation of a rally I was in several years ago.
It was a rally for the decriminalization (sp?) of cannabis.
We sang songs, smoked dope (quite illegaly) with a couple of coppers on the job watching us, and generally just annoyed people by holding up traffic and chanting corny slogans.
The few people I noticed who did try to get everyone all fired up and bloodthirsty got one of two things - the first few were, very inconspicuously, beaten up by a couple of the bigger, "gentle giants" in the crowd, and the other wankers were shoved straight into the arms of the police, who arrested the dickheads for "assaulting an officer", with a wink and a smile from the rest of us.
We'd decided on having a peaceful rally, with some civil (polite too) disobedience by our pot smoking, and we'd kept that peace through some subtly violent methods. There was no damage to property, nor people who weren't being morons.
We were Brisbanites, quietly, seriously, exercising our possible - still dunno if there's anything in the books that says we're entitled to it - right to peacefully assemble and express our displeasure at the government, and that's what we did, and because we were civil-minded, peaceful folk, we beat mary-hell out of the dumb fucks that tried to ruin it for us and then we handed them over to the police while wearing big, doped smiles.
It was a pleasant day.
I've heard tell that there were ancient civilizations where it was considered "noble" to barbecue your subjects if they showed disrespect to those in authority, but I'd heard it wasn't such a popular thing now-a-days.
Causing pain through non-permanent bruising thumps from a bean-bag firing gun to prevent someone being a danger to others? I can condone that if it's done in moderation.
Causing pain to prevent rioting by cooking, or at least disrupting functionality of, the internal organs of your populace? I'd like to stick you in a microwave oven for a few seconds and see how you like it.
Rioters may be deserve to be dispersed, but couldn't we do it with something like a combination of sleeping gas and big burly blokes with gurneys?
Eviscerated and barbecued. That pain the people are feeling is the fluid in their bodies getting brought up to a high enough temperature to broil them.
It's a late reply and I'm not quite sure what you mean, but if it's "In your scheme, can't distinguish 3. from 4.", then you've gotten the point without understanding what I'm getting at.
It's a little bit, "complicated" (as much as baking a cake is complicated), but it adds a level of what we humans have as a flaw and turns it into an extra level of security - uncertainty.
By having the system make a "snap decision" based on variables that the customer possibly "gets" but doesn't understand, it hopefully forces them to pay attention to what's happening.
I think the order should be more like:
Why the password last? Because we've been telling the unwashed masses for years that their password is the most important thing to remember about computers and we better not go changing it now otherwise Joe and Jane Sixpack are just gonna get more confused and listen to us even less than they do now.
Complicated? Not to me or you, but we've dumbed down IT so much already that everyone else incorrectly treats their computers like bloody toasters, and I think we'd better start making things a little more interesting so that people start thinking about what they're doing before all us geeks, nerds, and people who "know all about computers" get lynched for losing these people their money, jobs, cars, etc.
Granted, it's a very particular type of punishment, but then computer viruses are a very particular type of criminal endeavour - as long as the virus remains in a "lab", it's not a crime, it's a semi-autonomous life-like organism suited to living and breeding within "cells" of computers.
I believe we should punish people like Sven, but I think we should do it in a way that both let's them know they shouldn't do the bad thing again - like releasing the Sasser Worm - and yet we want them to become more than they are, to explore their talent and let it grow.
We just make sure that the talent and creativity is kept in a controlled environment.
I don't like war, but if I were a government official I'd be looking for not just the most effective weapons in the physical world but also the most effective weapons in the computing world. I'd also want the most effective defense systems.
I'd take a smart man who's capable of creating weapons - physical or electronic - and I'd make him work for me, free to play with his ideas, but kept in a secure environment.
Murder, child-molestation, rape... I have other punishments in mind for these people, more tailored punishments... sicker punishments.
I don't believe in a catch-all system for crime. Punish the people who need punishing, discipline those who need discipline, and teach those who need to grow.
I like the idea Terry Pratchett has expressed in his Discworld novels with the relationship between the two characters Havelock Vetinari - The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork - and Leonard of Quirm - an obvious caricature of Leonardo Da Vinci.
Upon discovering Leonard - who would draw utterly detailed pictures of roses and hands next to piece-by-piece numbered diagrams of how to build unbelievably destructive war machines, as a mental exercise - The Patrician locked Leonard up in a tower in the Patrician's Palace, with all the bits and bobs that Leonard wanted to keep himself amused.
See, if you punish the brilliant you twist them, and if you reward a brilliant man who's committed a crime against others using that brilliance then you risk giving out the message that you're advocating what they did.
The best thing would be to "lock'em up and throw away the key" as the public would like, in a highly technical facility with gadgets and doodads that they can use to experiment and create freely.
The government could get some tools out of this, and the people being "put away" would learn that although what they did was technically very clever, they shouldn't have done it in public.
It's less like prison and more like grounding I suppose.
With a latex bag of spaghetti bolognaise.
"My name is Louie, my password is my Mumma's Special with extra garlic."
I'm reminded of the verbal exhange between Macleane and Rochester,
M: `Is he filthy rich or stinking rich?'
R: `Fucking rich.'
[Long-winded talking out of my ass diatribe...] :)
Firstly I think it's a good thing that even though this show was cancelled, the Creator has obviously had his own thoughts and ideas about it reaffirmed by the growing fanbase on the Net.
Imagine if you made a television show, thought it was good but wasn't sure, and was rejected by the studios? I think you'd be feeling a bit blue - either sad or very vernacular, probably both.
Imagine then that out of the blue you've gotten all these emails in your mailbox that generally say "Just saw your tv show, it was awesome. When's the next episode coming out?"
I know my first reaction would be "What The Fuck?! How did these people see my show?" I'm guessing Rogers thought much the same thing, mixed with joy that people - real people from around the world and not a studio controlled group - liked his show enough to email him and say so, and maybe some annoyance that he wasn't getting some revenue back.
Now, why do shows get made? Because people like to create things and get back responses of "wow dude, that's cool." How do they get made? With time, attention to detail, and money. There's no getting away from the money.
So we, as an audience, want entertaining television shows, movies, books, etc., and the people who create the entertainment want positive affirmation of their investment of time, "blood, sweat, and tears," and money.
We have the best media distribution network built in the history of our civilization, and we can't create a medium for exchanging worthwhile entertainment for a few bucks?
Okay, let's say you want a model based on free-to-air television - you pay nothing, see some advertisements now and then, and get to watch a television show.
Take, for example, this pilot episode of Global Frequency, add a black border to the bottom of the footage, and periodically show an ad. Or cut and paste the advertisements into certain points, like they're shown now.
Some people will fast-forward with the slider bar on their movie player, and others will take the time to cut the ads out, but what is the ratio of people simply watching the ads to those using VCR's to fast-forward or stop-start recording now? Surely not enough for the advertisers to worry about.
Look at all the people who watch those shows that are just about ads, like "World's Raunchiest Commercials" or "World's Funniest Commercials". These things are nothing but ads.
Movies are one area where this might not work. A lot of people have put up with product placement, but then it gets to a certain point and you wonder "is this a movie or a ninety minute advertisement for soft drinks, fast foods, and cars?"
You don't want disparity or inconsistancy in your delivery medium though. Remember, a lot of people don't "get" computers, or the Internet, or IT in general, including the people we need to produce entertainment, and I'm not talking about the distributers like WB or Soly Pictures or Dosney.
A lot of writers with great ideas don't know how to set up a computer, put their work in a digital format, and pump it out onto the net aided by a machine that can take a few dollars per copy. A lot of advertisers have no idea how TCP/IP, HTTP, Apache, The *n?x's, or P2P can be used to distribute awareness of their products. A lot of people don't even know how television really works. To these people it's all either "turn it on and it's there" or "get Jonesy to do it, he's good with this technical crap."
So, we have the distribution network. Us geeks and slightly geeky people use it often. We just need to do for the Internet and media distribution what Apple did for Unix - make it seem so simple that any person can look at it and say "oh this is easy" and make it so damn convenient that people will pay a few bucks, or watch a few ads, to be entertained.
Now I know a lot of you don't like the idea of centralised netwo
Some pictures from a non-skewed perspective?
Imagining the scene:
Bruce "The Hacker" Hackett gets up from his seat in the right rows of the auditorium, walks to the centre, takes pictures.
Man from Microsoft says,
"No pictures please! We cannot allow photos to be taken of these new and cutting-edge features."
In a fit of uncontrollable laughter Bruce drops his camera and has a heart-attack from an overdose of humour.
No, straight pictures are too dangerous.
---Hmm, not as funny as the picture in my mind.
For one document my preference is XHTML documents with inline CSS styling. It's ASCII, and it can look nice too. :)
For multiple documents I'll use a separate CSS file(s).
Funny thing, I still get brain dead idiots asking me to send them a word document because either their email program displays the file inline and they don't know how to save an attachment to a separate file without Outlook/Express doing it for them OR their copy of Word is so old it doesn't recognise simple CSS, and I keep telling them "I don't own Word*". Shit, I even put simple instructions - I do tech support well, I know how to simplify the instructions - in the email saying in generally two steps how to view the document.
* Yes, I know about exporting from OO.o and KO and so on. I just don't like doing it unless I really have to.
In that case they'd be better off going for the Linux server that's downstairs running my SDSL connection, web sites, email server, NAT, and firewall, instead of trying to crack an OS that's running for about four hours of each week. :)
Actually, that's what I did but without the "not secure" bit.
I got so sick of the Windows interface, function, and general "feel", that I "re-built" my machine so that Windows has a 40GB PATA drive for itself and games - games and FireFox in case I need to look up something on the net about a game. On my 80GB SATA drive I put Gentoo - I wanted to try it out and compare to Debian - and made my 160GB SATA drive a mount point inside my home dir - couldn't quite juggle my data enough to make it my home dir.
So, if some cracker really wants copies of my savegames, he can, uh, have em. :)
Work - web development, programming, writing, etc - gets done on Linux, and Windows is for play.
And nobody respond about how it's easy to secure Windows and set it up to look like what you want now with Stardock's tools and replacing the gui with LiteStep and so on. I know all this, I've been looking after my x86 computer since DOS 5 and Windows 3.0 and only caught one virus, once - nasty fucker that wiped my 125MB HDD on my first PC. Learned my lesson very quickly.
Windows just isn't what I want as a working OS, Linux is. For people less inclined to want to know how their computer works and just use it to get work done I recommend a Mac, and for games I suggest a console, or maybe an x86 PC if they like MMORPG's, based on what sort of games they like and the range of that genre on the different platforms.
So I'm not even going to try and pretend I know anything about parenting from a Father's point of view. I'll just say what my parents did.
When I was very young - 1-3 years - I was encouraged to read. Mum did this by reading me stories, pointing out the words, saying them slowly, and sometimes prompting me to either read or recall from memory what the next word was.
At about 3, 3 and a half, my family got a Vic 20, and purely because of the fact that Dad wasn't "computer-minded" and Mum was only marginally better at then Dad, I was allowed to run wild on the machine. I got given the manuals that came with it, and I could play on it any time as long as Mum and Dad were awake - no 4am early wakeups and tap-tap-tap.
When I went to pre-school Mum would walk with me to it and back. It was only about 10 minutes away on foot. When I started primary school Dad got me a bmx pushbike and I'd ride - generally in circles - while Mum walked - and shouted "come back here!".
Now my Dad likes camping, so that's what we all did for holidays from when I was about five. Nothing major like surviving in the words with only a survival knife, just camping in a tent at the Scarborough Caravan and Camping Park at Scarborough Beach, Redcliffe - gone now, sold to arsehole developers.
So far I've been using a computer - the Vic 20 was soon upgraded to a C-64 with a printer - for playing and doing homework, going camping almost every half-year, riding my bike to school, and being encouraged by my Mum to read everything I can get my hands on - including books on biology, sexual reproduction, chemistry, and physics.
At thirteen I get a junior chemistry set and I'm allowed to do what I want with it, short of burning the packaged kerosene burner outside of the kitchen. Mum had checked that none of the chemicals in the set were dangerous when mixed, although tartaric acid and bi-carb can still make a cool mess.
I also received a microscope set and some books on astronomy - I know, but Dad couldn't afford a "decent" telescope. I branched into three more areas of curiosity.
At 16 I'm riding one of my bikes - a blue mountain bike and a black tourer - everywhere I want to go. If I want to go to Brisbane - I live in Ipswich - then I ride there - hour and a half on the highway. I'm allowed to go camping on my own if I want to, having demonstrated an avid interest in camping and a proficiency for looking after myself in the bush. I'm publically regarded as nerdy by the girls at school, and privately told I'm a nice guy - being seen with a reader isn't "cool".
Today I still ride my bike - now a black dual-suspension mountain bike - everywhere, I still read a lot, I use my computer a lot - Athlon XP 2600, 1GB RAM, 280GB HDD, Gentoo Linux and Windows 2000 - and I upgrade it and look after it myself, and I go camping when I can get the time and I'm not adverse to walking long distances through scrubby, uneven terrain.
The thing was, my parents never said "you have to like these particular things". They just encouraged me to look after myself, and did it in somewhat subtle ways.
I'd take you but I'm busy right now, why don't you ride your bike? I don't know the answer son, look it up in that book there... This is how you make a campfire... Explorers used to walk from, say here, to that blueish mountain off in the distance a hundred years ago, just to see what was on top... Look, look, it turns blue when you swirl the water this way, and changes back to red when you leave it alone... Ever noticed son how the images look smaller when you look through binoculars backwards? We've got some new stories, they're called Great Books of the Western World... Okay you can call these bulletin board things, but only local calls (new 386 with a modem)... Where's your sister (good for gaining detective skills that one)?
Sure, I wasn't a great kid, and I did a lot of stuff kids do like skipping school, getting annoyed at certain vegetables, staying out after my curf
When it comes to hardware, that depends on a couple of things.
If it was a case where the drivers were supplied by the manufacturer of the hardware in an easily adaptable form, or the specs were practically shouted from the rooftops, then you could say it's Linux's fault - or more accurately, it's a flaw in the F/OS Software.
But considering how manufacturers - as well as you, me, and Joe Sixpack if he so felt inclined - can quite easily download the source to Linux, the GNU software, X11, CUPS, and numerous other bits of F/OS Software, making it so damn easy to know how to program the drivers correctly, I would say that the manufacturers are more at fault than the F/OSS programmers.
That my generally declining opinion of the public at large - American, Australian, European, Asian, Etc - is not without cause.
Like I said in my more rant-like post concerning the PATRIOT Act, most people today want convenience.
They don't want Rights, or Freedom, or the ability to think whatever they like, they want Convenience and Comfort.
They don't want to have to think about something that might make them uncomfortable or that they have to learn to understand. They want someone else to process it, break it down into bite-size chunks, and regurgitate it up in the form of convenient fast food, comfortable television programming, uncontroversial news, positive government reports, and the latest cookie-cutter entertainment.
The public at large are idiots and need to learn that the only thing more convenient then when we have now would be all of us in a fucking mylar bags to live in, being fed introveinously and waste removed with more pipes, and having our eyes and ears hardwired into a mindless hash of multimedia crap.
Maybe then they'll stop looking for the most convenient and comfortable solution to all their problems and start thinking for themselves...
No, probably not. Does black look good in Mylar?
To the article and a fair number of the comments in here, and although it's fairly fanciful, read all the way before passing judgement please.
About 10 years ago I used to regularly play a Role Play Game called Shadowrun, and it had a fairly dark, Blade Runner-ish view of the future - 2050 and beyond.
Now we're not, so far, heading into mass corporate wars, amended politics for nigh-infinite terms, and social upheaval verging on very bloody revolution right before the end of the Mayan fifth age and heading into the sixth, but from where I'm sitting, it might not be such a bad thing to happen.
You, me, and most of the other people here on Slashdot are, at least likely to be, fairly intelligent and observant people, and I'm guessing that when you look at the current state of politics and society today you must be feeling pretty ambiguous about it all.
On the one hand we've got politicians who are, quite obviously, stuffing their pockets full of as much benefits as they can get their grubby hands on - reminds me of a t-shirt I saw once with a pig-nosed fat-ass in a three piece suit eating money - while the public at large responds with "Duhr? TV gooood." whenever you point it out to them, and on the other hand there are a few people working in politics - not politicians, that word has become an insult - who are not just looking out for their own interests and are trying to do their damndest for the public, and some of the public recognise that.
The problem is laziness coupled with greed. The politicians want a huge fucking piece of the pie, while the public in general is lazy enough to accept the illusion that they're getting a slice also, and they're too lazy to think about it and realise they're getting fucked up the ass.
Most people are so fucking lazy in fact that if you said to them "you know, you could get an extra 5 miles per gallon if you read a book and tuned that engine" or "don't blow fifty dollars on a dinner for two, here's a recipe for a four course meal you can cook yourself that'll rival anything from a fancy restaurant" that they'd shrug and say something like "I can't be bothered".
I can't be bothered.
I can't be bothered cooking something when I get home from work because I'm too tired, I'll just have something from a fast food place. I can't be bothered understanding how the basics of my engine work so I can save a few bucks and change my own oil. I can't be bothered ironing my own suit/jeans/shirts/skirts. I can't be bothered thinking about what's happening in the world.
They can't be bothered with all that junk, but they can be bothered whinging about it, or throwing money at it until someone else takes care of it for them.
Sure, dry cleaning is convenient. Fast food is convenient. Mechanics are convenient. A fancy restaurant is convenient. Lot's of things we can go out and buy are convenient, but they've become a crutch.
People in general have taken convenience and a helping hand from the government and turned them into dependencies, and you know what? The government is simply going with the flow and slowly turning those growing dependencies into a tangible part of life.
It's politi-fu. Man needs a hand? Sure, just sign this, fill out these, and we'll keep a watchful eye on you while we help you out for a while. Don't worry, we're here to help.
Mother finds her child watching something she regards as porn? No problem, this department will help you protect your children by making new laws that say kids aren't allowed to watch these shows, and to help, we'll make sure the studios can't show them between certain times.
Oh, and while you're at it, would you two mind taking one of these? Don't worry, it's just a little card that lets us protect you if you happen to be driving through a bad neighbourhood and your car breaks down, or something happens at your kid's school and we need to get in touch with you, no matter where you are at the time.