Agreed. Read David Foster Wallace's short story "Lyndon" for a not-so-highly fictionalized description of how LBJ's office worked when he was in the Senate.
Well, let's see. I know a Sylvan & Sylvia (not married, but together ~4 yrs), a Phil & Phyllis (my gf's parents, happily married 25+ years), and an Alan and Keiko (which I guess don't sound that similar when you say them out loud, but they're married too).
I hate it too, of course, but I have to admit loving it in a sick sort of way. It's so....nerdy.
Does anyone besides me wonder about the popularity of Mission: Impossible on this new medium? Oooh, I know. They should make an auto-degrading movie of William Gibson's auto-degrading prose poem Agrippa (that will probably be just as bad and sell just as poorly).
What if the entire movie was based, not just on Katz's book, but on the Slashdot community's reaction to it?
The opening titles would begin with a bunch of really lame dorks who appear on screen for no reason and shout "FIRST CAMEO DUDE!!!"
The film would be periodically interrupted with hysterically funny haiku, apropos of what was happening in the plot at that moment.
Of course, there would have to be a retelling of the legend of Pygmalion, starring MEEPT as Pygmalion and Natalie Portman as Galatea.
The closing credits could have somebody reading the Slashdot Address, the M&M-breeding article, or a Generic Flame--or perhaps all three at once, since no one will actually be paying attention.
Maybe the dialogue in the film itself could be moderated to different volume levels.
"Terse: The gratuitously sententious explication of an undeniable superfluity of informational concepts best reserved for the interior surface of the pressed wood pulp integument hereof."
This is not new, either in philosophy or in the movies. (My favorite movie example, btw, is Dark Star, in which a disgruntled crewman has to argue phenomenology with an intelligent thermonuclear weapon.)
Prodded by a curious/. reader in private mail (thanks Ganesh), I went and dug up the name of the formula--it's called the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index if anyone cares.
There's a numerical formula used by economists (and the FTC if I recall correctly) to give a rough picture of the degree of monopoly or oligopoly in a given industry:
Take the sum of the squares of market shares of the various competitors, and you will get a value ranging from 0 (for what amounts to perfect competition, i.e., a very large number of infinitesimal competitors) to 10,000 (for an absolute monopoly). If the figures in the story are true, then:
GWB didn't pull one switch, or inject one prisoner.
Interesting to speculate on how things might go if that *were* part of the gov's job description. But immaterial, given that the signing of 112 death warrants is a set of intentional acts and not the automatic grinding of some sort of abstract governmental machinery.
W/r/t your tidy cause-and-effect position: Nevermind the moral implications of state-sanctioned homicide, try telling that to the hundreds of people in the U.S. alone who were executed despite being teenagers, mentally retarded, or provably innocent.
Instead of -O-12, why don't we use -g7 (for extra glasnost and debugging information)? Come on, admit it...I bet we'd all love to see our elected representatives' symbol tables.
112 PEOPLE OFFICIALLY MURDERED by W. during his tenure as governor. Some of them citizens of other nations.
What does *that* say about W.'s support of basic human rights? I think the sanctity of your driver's license photo and credit card statement kind of pale in comparison.
Re:No WuName to Normal Translator
on
Humpday Quickies
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· Score: 1
Yeah, for some reason my girlfriend is really not that happy about being Tha Prickly Comedian. Go figure--I think it's great.
Also, even though it is a one-way function, there are still some neat things you can do with it. For instance, here's a cycle of length 3 that I found:
Tha Ever So Weary Assistant -> Big Gay Mule -> Excitable Misunderstood Genius -> Tha Ever So Weary Assistant
Well, I was kind of hoping I could melt them down if need be, to recover the precious metals. Also, my girlfriend got them for me for Christ-Related Consumer Festival and wants me to wear them to New Year's dinner. But I'll keep the bomb thing in mind.
Maybe the reason people "seemed not to get" your contention is that it was vague and mostly incorrect.
Miranda rights apply *after you have been arrested or taken into custody*. Perjury, to pick another example, only applies to *statements made under oath*.
The point is that there are times and places that occasion specific consequences of speech. Don't blithely extrapolate and say that those consequences apply to an open forum like Slashdot. Slashdot is, in many ways, an embodiment of what's right about free speech (and especially anonymous free speech, which many people forget is also constitutionally protected.)
(ObDisclaimer: IANAL. And on a personal note: If you let Them scare you into silence, they don't have to take you to court--they've already won.)
Funny--I was just thinking, as I packed this morning for my weekend in darkest Vermont, that this will probably be the only time I ever bring a battery-powered emergency radio and a pair of cufflinks on the same trip.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. Read David Foster Wallace's short story "Lyndon" for a not-so-highly fictionalized description of how LBJ's office worked when he was in the Senate.
What do you *mean* you've never been to Alpha Centauri? It's only 4.3 light-years away....
Well, let's see. I know a Sylvan & Sylvia (not married, but together ~4 yrs), a Phil & Phyllis (my gf's parents, happily married 25+ years), and an Alan and Keiko (which I guess don't sound that similar when you say them out loud, but they're married too).
The rest of the world don't care about your laws.
With the exception of Berne Convention signatories, of course....
I hate it too, of course, but I have to admit loving it in a sick sort of way. It's so....nerdy.
Does anyone besides me wonder about the popularity of Mission: Impossible on this new medium? Oooh, I know. They should make an auto-degrading movie of William Gibson's auto-degrading prose poem Agrippa (that will probably be just as bad and sell just as poorly).
What if the entire movie was based, not just on Katz's book, but on the Slashdot community's reaction to it?
The opening titles would begin with a bunch of really lame dorks who appear on screen for no reason and shout "FIRST CAMEO DUDE!!!"
The film would be periodically interrupted with hysterically funny haiku, apropos of what was happening in the plot at that moment.
Of course, there would have to be a retelling of the legend of Pygmalion, starring MEEPT as Pygmalion and Natalie Portman as Galatea.
The closing credits could have somebody reading the Slashdot Address, the M&M-breeding article, or a Generic Flame--or perhaps all three at once, since no one will actually be paying attention.
Maybe the dialogue in the film itself could be moderated to different volume levels.
Not bad, but how about:
"Terse: The gratuitously sententious explication of an undeniable superfluity of informational concepts best reserved for the interior surface of the pressed wood pulp integument hereof."
This is not new, either in philosophy or in the movies. (My favorite movie example, btw, is Dark Star , in which a disgruntled crewman has to argue phenomenology with an intelligent thermonuclear weapon.)
Go get your copy of Abelson and Sussman's Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs from the shelf. Find the chapter on streams. 'Nuff said.
As in "Back-Arswards"?
Prodded by a curious /. reader in private mail (thanks Ganesh), I went and dug up the name of the formula--it's called the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index if anyone cares.
There's a numerical formula used by economists (and the FTC if I recall correctly) to give a rough picture of the degree of monopoly or oligopoly in a given industry:
Take the sum of the squares of market shares of the various competitors, and you will get a value ranging from 0 (for what amounts to perfect competition, i.e., a very large number of infinitesimal competitors) to 10,000 (for an absolute monopoly). If the figures in the story are true, then:
Verisign = 60%
Thawte = 39%
Everyone else total = 1%
So--
OLD: 60^2 + 39^2 + negligible = 5121
NEW: 99^2 + negligible = 9801
Hmmm.....
GWB didn't pull one switch, or inject one prisoner.
Interesting to speculate on how things might go if that *were* part of the gov's job description. But immaterial, given that the signing of 112 death warrants is a set of intentional acts and not the automatic grinding of some sort of abstract governmental machinery.
W/r/t your tidy cause-and-effect position: Nevermind the moral implications of state-sanctioned homicide, try telling that to the hundreds of people in the U.S. alone who were executed despite being teenagers, mentally retarded, or provably innocent.
Whoops--you can't. They're dead.
Instead of -O-12, why don't we use -g7 (for extra glasnost and debugging information)? Come on, admit it...I bet we'd all love to see our elected representatives' symbol tables.
112 PEOPLE OFFICIALLY MURDERED by W. during his tenure as governor. Some of them citizens of other nations.
What does *that* say about W.'s support of basic human rights? I think the sanctity of your driver's license photo and credit card statement kind of pale in comparison.
If you're looking for something to do in the meantime, why not check out The Hideous Jabbering Head Of Abraham Lincoln?
Also, even though it is a one-way function, there are still some neat things you can do with it. For instance, here's a cycle of length 3 that I found:
Tha Ever So Weary Assistant
-> Big Gay Mule
-> Excitable Misunderstood Genius
-> Tha Ever So Weary Assistant
I think you mean Steve Jackson, and the answer was about four months--which was a lot quicker than the actual resolution of his case (3+ years).
I think this means that Amiga has officially had more incarnations than Doctor Who.
Well, I was kind of hoping I could melt them down if need be, to recover the precious metals. Also, my girlfriend got them for me for Christ-Related Consumer Festival and wants me to wear them to New Year's dinner. But I'll keep the bomb thing in mind.
Miranda rights apply *after you have been arrested or taken into custody*. Perjury, to pick another example, only applies to *statements made under oath*.
The point is that there are times and places that occasion specific consequences of speech. Don't blithely extrapolate and say that those consequences apply to an open forum like Slashdot. Slashdot is, in many ways, an embodiment of what's right about free speech (and especially anonymous free speech, which many people forget is also constitutionally protected.)
(ObDisclaimer: IANAL. And on a personal note: If you let Them scare you into silence, they don't have to take you to court--they've already won.)
Funny--I was just thinking, as I packed this morning for my weekend in darkest Vermont, that this will probably be the only time I ever bring a battery-powered emergency radio and a pair of cufflinks on the same trip.
Heh. Touché.
Verified, responded-to, and fix suggested (in private email to billybob and CmdrTaco).