Some good points. I don't agree about reading from right to left, though. I think he is simply modifying the spacing a little bit to align the right edge - such as you see in a newspaper column or man pages. ( and he did the same with the first stanza, albeit not as accurately. Also note that both stanza's right edges are aligned at an angle.) Also combine with the other plausible theory that he is indenting continuations which exlpains why the left side is not justified.
Furthermore, the size of the strokes decrease from left to right and top to bottom, also indicating the order written.
As for the second stanza, I suspect the few overlapping characters with existing characters are simply the result of someone trying to create random symbols from their mind which already has a few in there.:)
One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted.
In other words, 17 year old highschool kids flashing their boobs on webcams or bored people modifying photos will now have their lives destroyed by these witchunts and blacklists even though they haven't abused anyone at all.
Brilliant progress our society is making in the 21st century.
I don't know how accurate it is, but the NYT worded it as if the choice is now Windows for $3 or Windows+Linux for $7, though. (perhaps part of the deal is creating that false choice?) Which option do you think various governments will prefer now?
Even more depressing is that the article says MS was "fiercely opposed" in the past but Negroponte kept going after them to try to convince them.
I bet when the military was studying psychic remote viewing and psychic assassination the project goal was for completely functional capabilities as well. How did that turn out?;)
Maybe that's the point. It may seem counterintuitive, but it is actually sometimes beneficial to groups to incite a bit of external animosity via their behaviors as a means of binding the group more strongly together because now they can think of themselves as being persecuted - legitimately or not.
Exactly. Racism is simply another expression of that same "like similar/dislike different" instinct that we share with many other animals. Fortunately we humans can sublimate our instincts to some degree with education, reason, and experience.
Nope. "life" does not enter the equation at all. Most people other than Buddhist monks have few qualms about killing a mosquito or cockroach that we all agree is alive. My theory is that it is simply about the human instinct to like the similar and dislike the different. Dogs are like us, social mammals, so killing them is bad. Roaches are alien critters - certainly alive - but quite different than ourselves and hterefore it is ok to kill them.
So the people against abortion are thinking of a blastocyst/embryo/fetus as a miniature human similar to themselves and it triggers that similarity instinct. Those that view a blastocyst as a clump of cells quite different than themselves are likely to not think it is such a big deal to destroy it.
So people are pretty much for or against abortion or the use of embryonic stem cells based on gut instinct and then they come up with rationalizations - including silly arguments distorting the meaning of the word "life" - to justify it (we're good at that).
How about donating your time with quality assurance by testing and bug reporting or submitting patches to fix bugs or add features or writing documentation and howtos and faqs or helping other users in the community out reducing their support costs so the for-profit business can thrive.. oh wait; that describes Red Hat, Mysql AB, Whatever the company it is that is behind Ubuntu. etc.:) Giving money is just one step past that! 8^)
That's pretty cool. One of the first things I did with the "digital picture frame" I got for christmas was to transcode this video of a cylindrical projection of Jupiter's atmosphere with all the bands spinning and interacting. (Found the video from APOD). Something like that would look awesome on this type of display.
It's weird that a government produced educational project like that is closed source, though.
You should read the details on how the moderation system works via the FAQs and documentation. You are misinformed about how it works. It's far less simple than excellent karma = moderator; moderators were only chosen by hand when the user base was smaller and before the system evolved to automatically choose them. It specifically targets "average" users based on their usage within half hour blocks. Perhaps your usage pattern simply deviated further from the norm the past couple years.
I often see people make this claim that posts are moderated based on agreement, but I have rarely ever seen evidence of it when I meta-moderate. Where do you get your statistically meaningful sample from to make these sweeping generalizations?
And subtly ironic and satirical jokes modded down are usually ok because it will get balanced by a funny mod from someone that did get the joke. True flamebaits and trolls rarely ever get that counter-balancing positive mod. And if a comment is too subtly sarcastic, then is it really a comment worth promoting for others to see that also won't get it until it is explained?
I'm glad there are people like Rowling and Watterson in publishing who will not allow themselves to pimp their creative works for licensing revenue.
I think you'd have to be insane to equate those two people in this context. Do you realize how huge the licensed harry potter merchandising market is? She makes millions and millions from it. Watterson doesn't do any licensing at all.
1 false positive out of 256 is another way of saying 99.6% accurate.;) Although in practice it works out to about 98% accurate according to the author; and my own tests don't dispute that. Also bear in mind that this tool is for looking through your own files for dupes, not comparing all images on the internet.:) There are obvious ways to expand the algorithm for larger datasets - and use of more processing power.
I noticed this nifty little program in debian called findimagedupes. The algorithm for fingerprinting the files for comparing similarity is neat. From the man page:
To calculate an image fingerprint:
1) Read image.
2) Resample to 160x160 to standardize size.
3) Grayscale by reducing saturation.
4) Blur a lot to get rid of noise.
5) Normalize to spread out intensity as much as possible.
6) Equalize to make image as contrasty as possible.
7) Resample again down to 16x16.
8) Reduce to 1bpp.
9) The fingerprint is this raw image data.
To compare two images for similarity:
1) Take fingerprint pairs and xor them.
2) Compute the percentage of 1 bits in the result.
3) If percentage exceeds threshold, declare files to be similar.
I think it much more likely that there is a simple correlation rather than the causation you stated. e.g. People with a personality attracting them to alternate fantasy religions also attracted them to fantasy rpgs. Especially since we are talking about such a tiny percentage of d&d players. Saying D&D can lead someone to become Wiccan is like saying playing D&D causes people to be interested in programming computers.:)
Unsubstantiated claims like yours also probably arouse ire because hey are reminiscent of the whole "Monsters and Mazes" fear-mongering of the 80s that used to go on claiming that playing d&d caused kids to commit suicide or worship demons or whatnot.
I remember a story from a few years ago about a survey of criminals that showed the two things they most fear are dogs and AIDS. Therefore the best deterrent was putting up a sign that says, "Warning: Dog has AIDS.":D
Anime, too.:) Crest of the Stars had this zero-g game that was kind of like jousting. It was achieved by tethering the two opponents with a long elastic cable.
This reminds me of the old.siq quote:
"Imagine a planet with no war and no hatred. If we found such a planet, imagine how quickly we could enslave it."
You make a very good point. Native Americans are quite a poor example, though; unless you learn your history from Disney's Pocahontas. They are humans just like the rest of us and consequently performed their share of slavery, raping, pillaging of different tribes, etc. Check out Guns, Germs, and Steel for some more rational reasoning behind the huge advantage Europeans had over over Native Americans.
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into
the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the
kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage
Slashdot Mirror
wsanqptssqpuzoewoqubugugu fqpggfqxgcgptxgfoa
Some good points. I don't agree about reading from right to left, though. I think he is simply modifying the spacing a little bit to align the right edge - such as you see in a newspaper column or man pages. ( and he did the same with the first stanza, albeit not as accurately. Also note that both stanza's right edges are aligned at an angle.) Also combine with the other plausible theory that he is indenting continuations which exlpains why the left side is not justified.
:)
Furthermore, the size of the strokes decrease from left to right and top to bottom, also indicating the order written.
As for the second stanza, I suspect the few overlapping characters with existing characters are simply the result of someone trying to create random symbols from their mind which already has a few in there.
One section is designed to make it clear that live Webcam broadcasts of child abuse are illegal, which the bill's authors argue is an "open question." Another change is aimed at closing another perceived loophole, prohibiting digital alteration of an innocent image of a child so that sexually explicit activity is instead depicted.
In other words, 17 year old highschool kids flashing their boobs on webcams or bored people modifying photos will now have their lives destroyed by these witchunts and blacklists even though they haven't abused anyone at all. Brilliant progress our society is making in the 21st century.
I don't know how accurate it is, but the NYT worded it as if the choice is now Windows for $3 or Windows+Linux for $7, though. (perhaps part of the deal is creating that false choice?) Which option do you think various governments will prefer now?
Even more depressing is that the article says MS was "fiercely opposed" in the past but Negroponte kept going after them to try to convince them.
I bet when the military was studying psychic remote viewing and psychic assassination the project goal was for completely functional capabilities as well. How did that turn out? ;)
Maybe that's the point. It may seem counterintuitive, but it is actually sometimes beneficial to groups to incite a bit of external animosity via their behaviors as a means of binding the group more strongly together because now they can think of themselves as being persecuted - legitimately or not.
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/224
Exactly. Racism is simply another expression of that same "like similar/dislike different" instinct that we share with many other animals. Fortunately we humans can sublimate our instincts to some degree with education, reason, and experience.
Nope. "life" does not enter the equation at all. Most people other than Buddhist monks have few qualms about killing a mosquito or cockroach that we all agree is alive. My theory is that it is simply about the human instinct to like the similar and dislike the different. Dogs are like us, social mammals, so killing them is bad. Roaches are alien critters - certainly alive - but quite different than ourselves and hterefore it is ok to kill them.
So the people against abortion are thinking of a blastocyst/embryo/fetus as a miniature human similar to themselves and it triggers that similarity instinct. Those that view a blastocyst as a clump of cells quite different than themselves are likely to not think it is such a big deal to destroy it.
So people are pretty much for or against abortion or the use of embryonic stem cells based on gut instinct and then they come up with rationalizations - including silly arguments distorting the meaning of the word "life" - to justify it (we're good at that).
How about donating your time with quality assurance by testing and bug reporting or submitting patches to fix bugs or add features or writing documentation and howtos and faqs or helping other users in the community out reducing their support costs so the for-profit business can thrive.. oh wait; that describes Red Hat, Mysql AB, Whatever the company it is that is behind Ubuntu. etc. :) Giving money is just one step past that! 8^)
That's pretty cool. One of the first things I did with the "digital picture frame" I got for christmas was to transcode this video of a cylindrical projection of Jupiter's atmosphere with all the bands spinning and interacting. (Found the video from APOD). Something like that would look awesome on this type of display.
It's weird that a government produced educational project like that is closed source, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator ;)
You should read the details on how the moderation system works via the FAQs and documentation. You are misinformed about how it works. It's far less simple than excellent karma = moderator; moderators were only chosen by hand when the user base was smaller and before the system evolved to automatically choose them. It specifically targets "average" users based on their usage within half hour blocks. Perhaps your usage pattern simply deviated further from the norm the past couple years.
I often see people make this claim that posts are moderated based on agreement, but I have rarely ever seen evidence of it when I meta-moderate. Where do you get your statistically meaningful sample from to make these sweeping generalizations?
And subtly ironic and satirical jokes modded down are usually ok because it will get balanced by a funny mod from someone that did get the joke. True flamebaits and trolls rarely ever get that counter-balancing positive mod. And if a comment is too subtly sarcastic, then is it really a comment worth promoting for others to see that also won't get it until it is explained?
*Yes, I just coined that word. So sue me.
;)
So I am unclear; are you for or against the evolution of language?
I'm glad there are people like Rowling and Watterson in publishing who will not allow themselves to pimp their creative works for licensing revenue.
I think you'd have to be insane to equate those two people in this context. Do you realize how huge the licensed harry potter merchandising market is? She makes millions and millions from it. Watterson doesn't do any licensing at all.
1 false positive out of 256 is another way of saying 99.6% accurate. ;) Although in practice it works out to about 98% accurate according to the author; and my own tests don't dispute that. Also bear in mind that this tool is for looking through your own files for dupes, not comparing all images on the internet. :) There are obvious ways to expand the algorithm for larger datasets - and use of more processing power.
I think it much more likely that there is a simple correlation rather than the causation you stated. e.g. People with a personality attracting them to alternate fantasy religions also attracted them to fantasy rpgs. Especially since we are talking about such a tiny percentage of d&d players. Saying D&D can lead someone to become Wiccan is like saying playing D&D causes people to be interested in programming computers. :)
Unsubstantiated claims like yours also probably arouse ire because hey are reminiscent of the whole "Monsters and Mazes" fear-mongering of the 80s that used to go on claiming that playing d&d caused kids to commit suicide or worship demons or whatnot.
I remember a story from a few years ago about a survey of criminals that showed the two things they most fear are dogs and AIDS. Therefore the best deterrent was putting up a sign that says, "Warning: Dog has AIDS." :D
Anime, too.:) Crest of the Stars had this zero-g game that was kind of like jousting. It was achieved by tethering the two opponents with a long elastic cable.
A "stone" with high air resistance? And instead of teammates sweeping the ice they can use their breath to influence the path of the "stone". :)
This reminds me of the old .siq quote:
"Imagine a planet with no war and no hatred. If we found such a planet, imagine how quickly we could enslave it."
You make a very good point. Native Americans are quite a poor example, though; unless you learn your history from Disney's Pocahontas. They are humans just like the rest of us and consequently performed their share of slavery, raping, pillaging of different tribes, etc. Check out Guns, Germs, and Steel for some more rational reasoning behind the huge advantage Europeans had over over Native Americans.