Yes, but then we'd have a country turned against its populace, which is a threat no unlike an "insurgency" style conflict where the bad guys (the people) win because they are the people and therefore have the people's support.
Recently somebody attempted to repeat the prank, but with a globe / disco-ball thing. I don't think anybody could make it out too well, but I'm pretty sure it was a big disco-ball.
Cornell had it removed, as this one wouldn't just "rot off" like the famous pumpkin of old.
There's always talk around campus of how the pumpkin prank was done, and everbody's agreed that you'd need at least...
a) a stolen key b) a pumpkin c) lots of rope d) lots of climbing experience e) balls of steel
The details of the prank have never been recovered. Interestingly, the key is the easier part of this business... not that I would know
I ran an install-fest at Cornell Univ. last semester, and it was a huge success. We distributed something on the order of 300 CDs, and helped out a huge number of folks with one-on-one install/configure walkthroughs, along with various group tutorials and presentations. A big success.
Why? Because folks who have any sort of trepidation re Linux want personal attention and communication. The Cornell Student LUG filled up with e-mails soon thereafter because people who installed and had questions wanted help from their community, not just from the anonymous faces on linuxquestions.org, etc. We gave everybody several links to sources of information/help, such as linuxquestions.org, google, our LUG, etc., and I think many folks opted for the LUG because of that sense of personal attention and help from the community that got you up-and-running.
So yes, LUGs are good for new-comers, and InstallFests take a/huge/ amount of pressure of those who have worrisome fears about what this might do to their system.
English syntax is, quite frankly, impossible to pin down. Generations of linguists have tried. And hey, we have some good theories, too. Chomsky's Minimalism, for all its problems and gaping holes, remains one of the most impressive forms of generative syntax I've ever studied.
But there are so many problems that I seriously doubt anybody will ever solve. Not only does my experience (trying to perfect a model of English grammar) lead me to believe that the task is inherintly impossible, but...
Syntax is not consistent between dialects of English. Who here doesn't have a problem with this sentence, "Anymore I like to go fishing." Probably most of you. But not all! For some speakers, "anymore" no longer requires a negative sense verb. And this isn't a strange foreign dialect... find somebody from rural PA and they will probably have heard it. You can ask them what it means! They can be amazed that you don't understand it!
Smaller differences abound! In actuality, no two speakers of English will have the same syntax. What's grammatical for one will be ungrammatical for another. I can say "There's pigs in the garden", but you may balk and say "There're pigs in the garden,". For me, either works both in natural speech and academic writing. Some of you will agree. Some of you will think the former is OK in casual speech only. Yet others will entirely reject the first utterance.
So are we to expect a grammar checker with little checkboxes for each well known variation in dialectical syntax? Sure, presuming we could pin down the major stuff first, that would work. For about one generation. Then a whole new breed of English speakers comes about with their own slightly edited syntax.
It's not a matter of being taught wrong or right in school, you see. Academia has forced us to believe that we speak English wrongly sometimes. But if it's the natural language, as people actually use it, is it so wrong? Isn't it natural for language to change? (Yes). Isn't the grammar of Shakespeare and Chaucer dramatically different from our own? Along the way, hordes of people spoke "wrongly" and now we have a different standard. Consider split infinitives ("to boldly go")... everybody uses them in casual speech. I know hardly a soul who will correct me unless they're being pedantic. Yet our standards of "Academic discourse" prevent me from using it in a paper. Sometimes. In actuality, few college professors I know actually give a damn what some stick-in-the-ass bozo has to say about split infinitives. And trust me on this: changes that we find repulsive (perhaps "Where's he at?" will be one!) will eventually become the "right" way to speak.
When a child learns the language, he doesn't learn the same syntax as I have. He hears what others utter and from this evidence constructs a grammar of his own which will very probably be different.
Anyway... as a linguist, I'm still very impressed with the grammar checker in Microsoft Word. For the true complexity of the problem, it's a solid algorithm. It can always use tweaking - don't get me wrong.
I, and I'm sure many others, would agree that flourescent lighting (the standard stuff anyway) can be a pain in the ass. The artificialness and 60 Hz buzz in poorly wired rooms can lead to all sorts of strain.
For not too much more, however, you can get the office properly wired to avoid any such 60 Hz buzz. Installing "Happy-Lights" that more closely reproduce natural sunlight is a HUGE PLUS. So shop wisely for the lights and you can find some pretty relaxing spectrums that not only keep people happy inside longer, but allow them to see better as well.
This is perhaps more interesting in what it says about the author of the article... "Isn't fair to question their character, when the core of their business strategy is trust?"
Well, the way I see it, they're essentially patenting an implementation of TCP. Surely the open-source community can implement a functionally equal TCP? As far as I know, this wouldn't violate the patent.
Is this correct?
Either way... yeah, that's a real friendly thing to do. Way to go.
Re:Role Playing Games: some random thoughts
on
Videogames as Art
·
· Score: 1
You make a good point: I have been imprecise in my words. (That/is/ what you are saying, right?)
To be more precise: RPG's do not depend on the craft of the written word as much as literature.
More randomness: Anybody can write a novela about three brothers and their relationships with each other and their father. But Dostoevsky makes it artful through more than the mere story - through his presantation of the story.
But like I said: in the final analysis, the question (for me) comes down to: does it move you?
Role Playing Games: some random thoughts
on
Videogames as Art
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Consider the case of Role Playing Games: what is the difference between Literature as Art and RPGs as art? Not much, insofar as they both tell a story. Consider the plots from various Final Fantasy games (I think 7 specifically, as it's the one I played the most): they are not necessarily simple stories made only to provide a backbone for the game.
But that can't be all there is to it, right? Literature is a craft of writing, whereas RPGs do not involve the same amount of writing. So you can generalize and say that the 1) story and 2) presentation of the story make something 'artful'. The presentation in a novel is in the writing style, whereas the presentation in a game is more visual.
But how can the presentation of the story of an RPG qualify as 'artful' ?
For me, the real issue it comes down to, when discussing the Art-worthiness of a work is: does it move you?
If anybody out there lives in Nevada or near the Eastern High Sierras of California, I envy you:
I would be in my car, or on my motorcycle, without hesitation, to enjoy a three hour drive into nowhere.
In the time I lived in the Eastern High Sierras (www.deepsprings.edu) I was lucky enough to witness two Leonid showers. They were, witout fail, among the most awe-some night-time events of my life.
So, you desert dwellers... waste no time in making the decision to go.
(I was also once witness to a paraselene - a fabulous sort of full-circle moon-rainbow. Beautiful!)
Yes, but it seems to me (in my admittedly limited experience of "Life" with the capital L) that this is intrinsicly bound to fail.
Humans are not so predictable as might be imagined. No peice of code, even self-mutating, could possibly capture the variation in thought, imagination, humor, intelligence, personality, (oh the list goes on!) that I see every day in the people around me.
As humans, we are fundamentally creative - but for anyone to write an algorithm for this very same creativity would be... well... impossible by the very nature of creativity: it cannot be systematized!
We are not rational creatures. We do not have instruction sets - as useful as they may be;) . In fact, I would argue that without some fair degree of plain old irrationality, we would be acting inhuman. This forms the basis of my major beef with Ayn Rand.
I tend to see any rational attempt to understand human nature in the same way I see modeling and conceptualizing of the real world in the Arts and Sciences: it's all just modeling. We make better models and then come to see that they fail. They capture certain things and leave other things out. The best we can do is to keep making models.
The real thing, though? That takes something super-human.
Granted I didn't read the entire article you posted, but...
It seems that this is plausible iff EVERY car on the road has this sort of autopilot. Human error can occur very quickly (in non-autopilot cars. alcohol?), and sometimes there really are no escape routes (unless you're on a motorcycle - the size and agility help!!).
I therefore don't see how it would be feasible to introduce this technology so long as older cars continue to exist. No one will want to buy them initially (for safety and cost), and thus their numbers remain extremely low, further hindering autopiloting cars.
To the best of my knowledge, electronic voting has been used in Brazil with great confidence, near perfectly reflecting the final ballot count (manual count). In the recent Lula election, specifically, I remember being quite impressed with the speediness of the system in determining the candidates of the run-off.
So what are the Brazilians doing that we aren't? How is it different, and how can we make it the same?
Or maybe I'm totally wrong about the quality of their system?
This reminds me of my famous "Baling Brew". For some time I used to get up at 3:30-ish AM once a week or so to bale alfalfa on this farm.
So I developed a habit, during my early breakfast, of stuffing the filter basket so full of grounds that the farm manager told me I was drinking tar for breakfast. I'd leave some leftover in a warm pot for my second-breakfast (woo hoo!) and I could always trust it'd all be there waiting for me when I got back.
Of course, I had another recipe which involved re-brewing strong coffee with fresh ground... but that's another story.
This comment is posted/way/ too late for any substantial moderation, but here it goes anyway: as far as I can tell, the biggest key to success w/ the opposite sex is Confidence, with a capital C. At least, that's what I've been told. Personally, I got lucky...
About this time last year I honestly expected that I'd pass not only into but through college before any women decided to go out with me. In fact, I'd been uttering almost the exact same statements you'd been saying: "God damnit, women complain about a lack of 'nice guys'... we're all here listening to your complaints!"
Anyway, after my first date w/ my current (only, and hopefully only ever) girlfriend, she told me that one of the things about
me that she was most impressed with was that I was REAL. I tried not to be patronizingly nice... I assumed more of an attitude that I would with a close friend.
Another important detail, probably, was that I took the advances - to my disbelief I wasn't immidiately rejected upon asking her out.
Well... the three things that I basically figured out are: 1) Be confident 2) Don't wait for them to come around and ask you out. and 3) Be REAL. And I don't mean that
like a California Surfer Dude says "Be real, man... awsome... dudical" or whatever (no offense, anyone). Be yourself - your/normal/ self, not your extra nice self.
Perhaps the other movie you mentioned is the Miyazaki film "Grave of the Fireflies"? But, if my memory serves me right, the kids lost their parents in a firebombing. Though I can't be sure... haven't seen it in a while. Anyway, all Miyazaki films seem to be good (totoro, mononoke, grave of the fireflies, laputa, kiki's delivery service, etc., etc.)
I took the C++ exam, twice - the second time for fun;) It had just changed from Pascal (thank god) into a language I actually knew. The only problem was that the AP Board had created the test with all sorts of small style details that really bugged me. The first exam in C++ contained the infamous "Quilt Question" in the free response section. The students had such a hard time with the question that they dropped it completely for the level A students... AB students were graded on it. Our teacher did have to learn all sorts of stuff and as a result many students had bad style and a terrible grasp on the syntax; one particular example was the difference between funtion returns in C/C++ and Pascal. I agree with an earlier post - even though I can't stand pseudo-code, it would probably be better to use it at the AP level. Languages will come and go, but pseudo-code stays the same. Besides, some students find it easier to learn with that kind of syntax (though I personally prefer C/C++ to pseudo any day).
(oh. i should point out that the quilt question was difficult not because of syntax, but because of the actually question phrasing.)
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but then we'd have a country turned against its populace, which is a threat no unlike an "insurgency" style conflict where the bad guys (the people) win because they are the people and therefore have the people's support.
For that price Toyota could just as well give 'em a Prius!
Recently somebody attempted to repeat the prank, but with a globe / disco-ball thing. I don't think anybody could make it out too well, but I'm pretty sure it was a big disco-ball.
Cornell had it removed, as this one wouldn't just "rot off" like the famous pumpkin of old.
There's always talk around campus of how the pumpkin prank was done, and everbody's agreed that you'd need at least...
a) a stolen key
b) a pumpkin
c) lots of rope
d) lots of climbing experience
e) balls of steel
The details of the prank have never been recovered. Interestingly, the key is the easier part of this business... not that I would know
I ran an install-fest at Cornell Univ. last semester, and it was a huge success. We distributed something on the order of 300 CDs, and helped out a huge number of folks with one-on-one install/configure walkthroughs, along with various group tutorials and presentations. A big success.
/huge/ amount of pressure of those who have worrisome fears about what this might do to their system.
Why? Because folks who have any sort of trepidation re Linux want personal attention and communication. The Cornell Student LUG filled up with e-mails soon thereafter because people who installed and had questions wanted help from their community, not just from the anonymous faces on linuxquestions.org, etc. We gave everybody several links to sources of information/help, such as linuxquestions.org, google, our LUG, etc., and I think many folks opted for the LUG because of that sense of personal attention and help from the community that got you up-and-running.
So yes, LUGs are good for new-comers, and InstallFests take a
But there are so many problems that I seriously doubt anybody will ever solve. Not only does my experience (trying to perfect a model of English grammar) lead me to believe that the task is inherintly impossible, but...
Syntax is not consistent between dialects of English. Who here doesn't have a problem with this sentence, "Anymore I like to go fishing." Probably most of you. But not all! For some speakers, "anymore" no longer requires a negative sense verb. And this isn't a strange foreign dialect... find somebody from rural PA and they will probably have heard it. You can ask them what it means! They can be amazed that you don't understand it!
Smaller differences abound! In actuality, no two speakers of English will have the same syntax. What's grammatical for one will be ungrammatical for another. I can say "There's pigs in the garden", but you may balk and say "There're pigs in the garden,". For me, either works both in natural speech and academic writing. Some of you will agree. Some of you will think the former is OK in casual speech only. Yet others will entirely reject the first utterance.
So are we to expect a grammar checker with little checkboxes for each well known variation in dialectical syntax? Sure, presuming we could pin down the major stuff first, that would work. For about one generation. Then a whole new breed of English speakers comes about with their own slightly edited syntax.
It's not a matter of being taught wrong or right in school, you see. Academia has forced us to believe that we speak English wrongly sometimes. But if it's the natural language, as people actually use it, is it so wrong? Isn't it natural for language to change? (Yes). Isn't the grammar of Shakespeare and Chaucer dramatically different from our own? Along the way, hordes of people spoke "wrongly" and now we have a different standard. Consider split infinitives ("to boldly go")... everybody uses them in casual speech. I know hardly a soul who will correct me unless they're being pedantic. Yet our standards of "Academic discourse" prevent me from using it in a paper. Sometimes. In actuality, few college professors I know actually give a damn what some stick-in-the-ass bozo has to say about split infinitives. And trust me on this: changes that we find repulsive (perhaps "Where's he at?" will be one!) will eventually become the "right" way to speak.
When a child learns the language, he doesn't learn the same syntax as I have. He hears what others utter and from this evidence constructs a grammar of his own which will very probably be different.
Anyway... as a linguist, I'm still very impressed with the grammar checker in Microsoft Word. For the true complexity of the problem, it's a solid algorithm. It can always use tweaking - don't get me wrong.
Still, I don't trust it further than I can spit.
Do you really want to be paying the defendant's legal bill if you lose a case where you, the little guy, are suing a large corporation?
You thought of "NT - LUG" ? Maybe it's my dyslexia, but I read it as NutLug. Perhaps this is something like lugnut?
is he hosting the website on his motorcycle? With 802.11?
I, and I'm sure many others, would agree that flourescent lighting (the standard stuff anyway) can be a pain in the ass. The artificialness and 60 Hz buzz in poorly wired rooms can lead to all sorts of strain.
For not too much more, however, you can get the office properly wired to avoid any such 60 Hz buzz. Installing "Happy-Lights" that more closely reproduce natural sunlight is a HUGE PLUS. So shop wisely for the lights and you can find some pretty relaxing spectrums that not only keep people happy inside longer, but allow them to see better as well.
This is perhaps more interesting in what it says about the author of the article...
"Isn't fair to question their character, when the core of their business strategy is trust?"
Well, the way I see it, they're essentially patenting an implementation of TCP. Surely the open-source community can implement a functionally equal TCP? As far as I know, this wouldn't violate the patent.
Is this correct?
Either way... yeah, that's a real friendly thing to do. Way to go.
Anybody got a mirror?
You make a good point: I have been imprecise in my words. (That /is/ what you are saying, right?)
To be more precise: RPG's do not depend on the craft of the written word as much as literature.
More randomness: Anybody can write a novela about three brothers and their relationships with each other and their father. But Dostoevsky makes it artful through more than the mere story - through his presantation of the story.
But like I said: in the final analysis, the question (for me) comes down to: does it move you?
Consider the case of Role Playing Games: what is the difference between Literature as Art and RPGs as art? Not much, insofar as they both tell a story. Consider the plots from various Final Fantasy games (I think 7 specifically, as it's the one I played the most): they are not necessarily simple stories made only to provide a backbone for the game.
But that can't be all there is to it, right? Literature is a craft of writing, whereas RPGs do not involve the same amount of writing. So you can generalize and say that the 1) story and 2) presentation of the story make something 'artful'. The presentation in a novel is in the writing style, whereas the presentation in a game is more visual.
But how can the presentation of the story of an RPG qualify as 'artful' ?
For me, the real issue it comes down to, when discussing the Art-worthiness of a work is: does it move you?
...until someone hacks it and they catch it wandering down the interstate towards my college.
If anybody out there lives in Nevada or near the Eastern High Sierras of California, I envy you: I would be in my car, or on my motorcycle, without hesitation, to enjoy a three hour drive into nowhere.
In the time I lived in the Eastern High Sierras (www.deepsprings.edu) I was lucky enough to witness two Leonid showers. They were, witout fail, among the most awe-some night-time events of my life.
So, you desert dwellers... waste no time in making the decision to go.
(I was also once witness to a paraselene - a fabulous sort of full-circle moon-rainbow. Beautiful!)
Yes, but it seems to me (in my admittedly limited experience of "Life" with the capital L) that this is intrinsicly bound to fail.
;) . In fact, I would argue that without some fair degree of plain old irrationality, we would be acting inhuman. This forms the basis of my major beef with Ayn Rand.
Humans are not so predictable as might be imagined. No peice of code, even self-mutating, could possibly capture the variation in thought, imagination, humor, intelligence, personality, (oh the list goes on!) that I see every day in the people around me.
As humans, we are fundamentally creative - but for anyone to write an algorithm for this very same creativity would be... well... impossible by the very nature of creativity: it cannot be systematized!
We are not rational creatures. We do not have instruction sets - as useful as they may be
I tend to see any rational attempt to understand human nature in the same way I see modeling and conceptualizing of the real world in the Arts and Sciences: it's all just modeling. We make better models and then come to see that they fail. They capture certain things and leave other things out. The best we can do is to keep making models.
The real thing, though? That takes something super-human.
Granted I didn't read the entire article you posted, but...
It seems that this is plausible iff EVERY car on the road has this sort of autopilot. Human error can occur very quickly (in non-autopilot cars. alcohol?), and sometimes there really are no escape routes (unless you're on a motorcycle - the size and agility help!!).
I therefore don't see how it would be feasible to introduce this technology so long as older cars continue to exist. No one will want to buy them initially (for safety and cost), and thus their numbers remain extremely low, further hindering autopiloting cars.
Best 3rd grade field trip ever!
To the best of my knowledge, electronic voting has been used in Brazil with great confidence, near perfectly reflecting the final ballot count (manual count). In the recent Lula election, specifically, I remember being quite impressed with the speediness of the system in determining the candidates of the run-off.
So what are the Brazilians doing that we aren't? How is it different, and how can we make it the same?
Or maybe I'm totally wrong about the quality of their system?
This reminds me of my famous "Baling Brew". For some time I used to get up at 3:30-ish AM once a week or so to bale alfalfa on this farm.
So I developed a habit, during my early breakfast, of stuffing the filter basket so full of grounds that the farm manager told me I was drinking tar for breakfast. I'd leave some leftover in a warm pot for my second-breakfast (woo hoo!) and I could always trust it'd all be there waiting for me when I got back.
Of course, I had another recipe which involved re-brewing strong coffee with fresh ground... but that's another story.
http://www.dreamworksgames.com/Games/Kitchen/
Hilarious, but I think M$ was referring (reefer-ing?) to the above game.
This comment is posted /way/ too late for any substantial moderation, but here it goes anyway: as far as I can tell, the biggest key to success w/ the opposite sex is Confidence, with a capital C. At least, that's what I've been told. Personally, I got lucky...
/normal/ self, not your extra nice self.
About this time last year I honestly expected that I'd pass not only into but through college before any women decided to go out with me. In fact, I'd been uttering almost the exact same statements you'd been saying: "God damnit, women complain about a lack of 'nice guys'... we're all here listening to your complaints!"
Anyway, after my first date w/ my current (only, and hopefully only ever) girlfriend, she told me that one of the things about
me that she was most impressed with was that I was REAL. I tried not to be patronizingly nice... I assumed more of an attitude that I would with a close friend.
Another important detail, probably, was that I took the advances - to my disbelief I wasn't immidiately rejected upon asking her out.
Well... the three things that I basically figured out are: 1) Be confident 2) Don't wait for them to come around and ask you out. and 3) Be REAL. And I don't mean that
like a California Surfer Dude says "Be real, man... awsome... dudical" or whatever (no offense, anyone). Be yourself - your
Perhaps the other movie you mentioned is the Miyazaki film "Grave of the Fireflies"? But, if my memory serves me right, the kids lost their parents in a firebombing. Though I can't be sure... haven't seen it in a while. Anyway, all Miyazaki films seem to be good (totoro, mononoke, grave of the fireflies, laputa, kiki's delivery service, etc., etc.)
I took the C++ exam, twice - the second time for fun ;) It had just changed from Pascal (thank god) into a language I actually knew. The only problem was that the AP Board had created the test with all sorts of small style details that really bugged me. The first exam in C++ contained the infamous "Quilt Question" in the free response section. The students had such a hard time with the question that they dropped it completely for the level A students... AB students were graded on it. Our teacher did have to learn all sorts of stuff and as a result many students had bad style and a terrible grasp on the syntax; one particular example was the difference between funtion returns in C/C++ and Pascal. I agree with an earlier post - even though I can't stand pseudo-code, it would probably be better to use it at the AP level. Languages will come and go, but pseudo-code stays the same. Besides, some students find it easier to learn with that kind of syntax (though I personally prefer C/C++ to pseudo any day).
(oh. i should point out that the quilt question was difficult not because of syntax, but because of the actually question phrasing.)