I saw it happen once. Last fall at the NuArt in Los Angeles, they were showing Blood Simple (the Coen Brothers' first film). About 2/3 of the way through, the film slipped off the guides and a big ol' hole melted through a few frames. It was kinda neat:) Took about 5 minutes and they had it up and running.
In 1996 I was working at the Mann Bruin theater in Westwood (near UCLA). We had "A Time To Kill" showing; the Saturday night it opened, I wasn't working, and I'm glad I wasn't: It slipped and burned about ten minutes before the end of the movie, and for some reason they couldn't splice it back together, so they had to give a free movie pass to every. Single. Person. In the theater. Suck.
At some point, Linux has to grow up beyond the "fight-the-power" angst-filled culture that is quickly alienating it from the corporate market (wonder why you don't see quite so many people pushing Linux anymore? It has a bad rep in corporate America.)
Good. Corporate American can go fuck itself. They're responsible for 90% of the problems we have now. Fuck their greed and fuck their pride.
Maybe this is just an underdeveloped layman's opinion, but I've always thought that we're never going to have any form of "AI" that resembles or can act like human AI, unless we construct a human-like brain structure to contain the AI in.
In other words, the only difference between "artificial" intelligence and "real" intelligence, is that one evolved in nature, and the other will be built in a lab -- but the structure will be the same. Once we understand the human brain fully and are capable of building one from parts, then we will have AI.
Ah, you're of course referring to the classic Schrodinger's Drunken Irishman quandary. Will he be drunk or not at the end of 24 hours? Until we open the box, he's both drunk AND sober!
The award should go to Hugo Weaving for his striking portrayal of Elrond in "The Fellowship of the Ring". That, and the fact that I can't even think of any other Hugos who might deserve an award.
Maybe Hurricane Hugo, but that was a while ago.
*whisper whisper* What? Oh.
Okay, then. How about a Harry Potter book? *hides*
If we ever get to the point where we need a new source for Soylent Green, we can just post that some obscure technology is dying, and kidnap everyone who pops out of the woodwork to reminisce about it!
At least, that's how we used to do it. Ah, those were the days... hang on, someone's at the dooaaRRGH NO DON'T TURN ME INTO FOOD AGUUYTQOVU5q6ew765127 kqe =-;el2qr3k
The problem is, there's no way to algorithmically tell a virus from a badly written program, or a normal user command to overwrite a file or document data.
Let's say we're using your theoretical virus-proof OS. Well, I still want to be able to open a shell window and run my programs that do things. Sometimes I'm going to want to delete files or overwrite older versions of files with newer ones.
If the OS is designed to never let the user overwrite any data, that's not going to be a very useful OS! Basically, anything a user can do via stupidity (or obscure necessity) can be replicated with a virus. Remember, a virus is just a program that does nasty things instead of word processing -- there's no way for a nonsentient OS to tell, definitively, whether a program is supposed to be deleting files or not! Even if it prompts you for confirmation that you want to delete a given file, there's no way for the computer to be sure that it's really a sentient user hitting enter, and a virus simulating an "Enter" hit from the keyboard. (Well, there are specific ways around specific attacks, but I'm talking generally. OSes cannot pass the Turing test yet!)
Maybe HER theater would never show a 3+ hour movie, but I've seen a few. Dances With Wolves and Schindler's List come to mind, both of which I saw in theaters.
As a rule, there aren't a whole lot of 3+ hour movies, for obvious reasons, but when they do come around, theaters do show them. There's also the fact that really bad movies TEND to be shorter rather than longer, although there obviously are exceptions.
Your logic is fine, but your assumptions are flawed, namely the implicit assumption that the GOVERNMENT should have a hand in enforcing "control[ling] the crap". Regardless of whether you think parents ARE doing a good or bad job, it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL for the government to do these things! Nobody, least of all the courts, say that parents shouldn't restrict their kids' access to these kinds of games; they only said that the Indianapolis city government may not make laws that do this.
I appreciate your push for accuracy in/. readers' discussion of the story -- indeed, I agree that nobody was attempting to ban anything (well, nobody was EXPLICITLY trying to ban anything -- the people behind this ordinance, I would bet money, would LIKE to get the games banned) -- but you are masking the issue of whether the government should be involved with moral issues, by saying, wrongly, that this has nothing to do with free speech. It is most definitely a free speech issue, due to the fact that this is basically a government attempting to, by force of law, restrict access to expressive works (whether you think "Mortal Kombat" is on the same level as "Romeo and Juliet" is irrelevant; they are both valid expressive works).
This is a great quote, and I'll add some information to the slush-pile, that this was a *SERIOUS* quote from a Nintendo executive -- it was not intended as a joke.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
- Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc., 1989
Note that the quote is variously attributed to "Kristen", "Kristin", "Kristian", and "Christian" Wilson; a little research with Google turns up that "Kristian" is the most common spelling -- this quote is found in scores of places around the web, mostly message boards and personal sites.
Man, I wish we could just set our nation's resource distribution slider to 100% for technology for, like, a week. Then we'd have all this great new tech to mess around with!
Of course, we'd have to switch the slider back to 100% social for a couple weeks to quell the riots that resulted in a week of no police, social services, or law. But... nifty new toys!
They didn't do a player wipe. Not exactly. What happened was, they did the player wipe (with no warning) and every single person on Test went batshit. A day or so later, they relented and restored all the characters, but with *NO ITEMS*. So it ended up being an item wipe, not a character wipe. Nonetheless, a large contingent of people quit, but there is still a sizable population on Test -- usually 600-800 during peak hours.
I play on Test (used to play on The Nameless) and I do prefer it over live servers. It's less crowded, there's no economy (you may not like that, but I do), people are generally friendlier... it has disadvantages, but they are outweighed buy the benefits.
Not surprising at all if you think in the mindset of Christianity. God is the Creator, so anything involving the creation of life should be banned, because only God should do that. However, killing people is just fine, because after all, God spends the first several books of the Bible telling the Hebrews to wipe out every town they come across during their journey to the Promised Land. (No wonder Jews get so much crap -- they, apparently, wiped out half the Middle East on God's orders!) So killing in God's name is okay, but creating in his name isn't.
If the Constition says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."--that's pretty self-explanatory. Congress shouldn't pass any laws regarding religions or churches whatsoever; it can pass no laws which restrict speech or writing; it can pass no law to prevent people from peacefully assembling. What's there to interpret?
What's there to interpret? How about the following question: "What constitutes speech?"
The 1st Amendment only specifically mentions "speech" and "the press". What do they mean by "the press"? The freedom of the news media to publish what it likes? Or the freedom of individuals to use a printing press? Or the concept of physical publication and distribution? Or all of these? Or none of these? "The press" is *AMBIGUOUS*, and leaves us with no choice BUT to interpret.
So let's say you read the 1st Amendment completely literally. The only things that are guaranteed protection are the freedom to speak aloud, and the freedom to write, print, and distribute whatever you like. What about... artwork? If I create a piece of art that shows a caricatured black man with big lips and beady eyes supplicating before a regal white master, is that protected by the First Amendment? After all, I did not write anything, and I did not say anything.
But clearly it would be ludicrous to prohibit the expression of whatever it is that I'd be trying to express with that artwork. Yet the 1st Amendment says nothing about artwork. Now what?
Other things that are not explicitly mentioned in the 1st Amendment, but it would be (in my opinion) wrong to not consider protected: computer source code, any form of electronically stored data, sign language, rude hand gestures, facial expressions (for example, glaring at someone)... hey, how about THOUGHT? Thought isn't mentioned or even referenced by the 1st Amendment. Therefore we can prohibit certain kinds of thought, right?
My point here is that your position is untenable -- language almost by definition is ambiguous, and without something to concretely resolve that ambiguity, we are left with literally no choice but to interpret the language and figure out what it means. Unless, of course, you think that none of the above things I mentioned should be protected? Not that there's anything wrong with that -- you're entitled to your opinions, another side effect of the First Amendment.
Slashdot is SO behind. Kuro5hin had a story about this back in -96, right after the tests were done! Leave it to/. to wait 2,098 years to post a story. Sheesh.
Slashdot Mirror
I saw it happen once. Last fall at the NuArt in Los Angeles, they were showing Blood Simple (the Coen Brothers' first film). About 2/3 of the way through, the film slipped off the guides and a big ol' hole melted through a few frames. It was kinda neat :) Took about 5 minutes and they had it up and running.
In 1996 I was working at the Mann Bruin theater in Westwood (near UCLA). We had "A Time To Kill" showing; the Saturday night it opened, I wasn't working, and I'm glad I wasn't: It slipped and burned about ten minutes before the end of the movie, and for some reason they couldn't splice it back together, so they had to give a free movie pass to every. Single. Person. In the theater. Suck.
Offtopic, but does McCain's quote remind anyone of the Tick?
"Villains, I say to you now: Knock off all that evil!" -- The Tick
(Be warned - this post is offtopic.)
;)
Your sig says "There is one thing humans can never do: be descendant from apes."
Computers descended from humans, and humans descended from apes. Therefore computers descended from apes.
Maybe this is just an underdeveloped layman's opinion, but I've always thought that we're never going to have any form of "AI" that resembles or can act like human AI, unless we construct a human-like brain structure to contain the AI in.
In other words, the only difference between "artificial" intelligence and "real" intelligence, is that one evolved in nature, and the other will be built in a lab -- but the structure will be the same. Once we understand the human brain fully and are capable of building one from parts, then we will have AI.
More like the Satanic Verses. *rimshot* Thank you! I'll be here all week, unfortunately.
Ah, you're of course referring to the classic Schrodinger's Drunken Irishman quandary. Will he be drunk or not at the end of 24 hours? Until we open the box, he's both drunk AND sober!
Every time I hear "Special Forces", I always think of "Special Olympics."
I probably shouldn't let the Special Forces guys hear me say tha*CRUNCH* AAGH! MY NECK!
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" won the Hugo Award for 2001. The post was a reference to that.
The award should go to Hugo Weaving for his striking portrayal of Elrond in "The Fellowship of the Ring". That, and the fact that I can't even think of any other Hugos who might deserve an award.
Maybe Hurricane Hugo, but that was a while ago.
*whisper whisper* What? Oh.
Okay, then. How about a Harry Potter book? *hides*
If we ever get to the point where we need a new source for Soylent Green, we can just post that some obscure technology is dying, and kidnap everyone who pops out of the woodwork to reminisce about it!
At least, that's how we used to do it. Ah, those were the days... hang on, someone's at the dooaaRRGH NO DON'T TURN ME INTO FOOD AGUUYTQOVU5q6ew765127 kqe =-;el2qr3k
The problem is, there's no way to algorithmically tell a virus from a badly written program, or a normal user command to overwrite a file or document data.
Let's say we're using your theoretical virus-proof OS. Well, I still want to be able to open a shell window and run my programs that do things. Sometimes I'm going to want to delete files or overwrite older versions of files with newer ones.
If the OS is designed to never let the user overwrite any data, that's not going to be a very useful OS! Basically, anything a user can do via stupidity (or obscure necessity) can be replicated with a virus. Remember, a virus is just a program that does nasty things instead of word processing -- there's no way for a nonsentient OS to tell, definitively, whether a program is supposed to be deleting files or not! Even if it prompts you for confirmation that you want to delete a given file, there's no way for the computer to be sure that it's really a sentient user hitting enter, and a virus simulating an "Enter" hit from the keyboard. (Well, there are specific ways around specific attacks, but I'm talking generally. OSes cannot pass the Turing test yet!)
*looks at story*
*looks at Beowulf joke*
Forget it.
Maybe HER theater would never show a 3+ hour movie, but I've seen a few. Dances With Wolves and Schindler's List come to mind, both of which I saw in theaters.
As a rule, there aren't a whole lot of 3+ hour movies, for obvious reasons, but when they do come around, theaters do show them. There's also the fact that really bad movies TEND to be shorter rather than longer, although there obviously are exceptions.
Your logic is fine, but your assumptions are flawed, namely the implicit assumption that the GOVERNMENT should have a hand in enforcing "control[ling] the crap". Regardless of whether you think parents ARE doing a good or bad job, it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL for the government to do these things! Nobody, least of all the courts, say that parents shouldn't restrict their kids' access to these kinds of games; they only said that the Indianapolis city government may not make laws that do this.
/. readers' discussion of the story -- indeed, I agree that nobody was attempting to ban anything (well, nobody was EXPLICITLY trying to ban anything -- the people behind this ordinance, I would bet money, would LIKE to get the games banned) -- but you are masking the issue of whether the government should be involved with moral issues, by saying, wrongly, that this has nothing to do with free speech. It is most definitely a free speech issue, due to the fact that this is basically a government attempting to, by force of law, restrict access to expressive works (whether you think "Mortal Kombat" is on the same level as "Romeo and Juliet" is irrelevant; they are both valid expressive works).
I appreciate your push for accuracy in
Stop the madness now, lest your child be the next to become IT.
Nooo!! Please don't let my children become gyroscopically-stabilized two-wheeled electric scooters!! *sob*
Man, I wish we could just set our nation's resource distribution slider to 100% for technology for, like, a week. Then we'd have all this great new tech to mess around with!
Of course, we'd have to switch the slider back to 100% social for a couple weeks to quell the riots that resulted in a week of no police, social services, or law. But... nifty new toys!
There's nothing like waking up in the morning to a nice, hot cup of decaf DDR-SDRAM!
*slurp* *CRUNCH* AARRGHH!! *bleed profusely*
*reads the rest of the story*
Ah, shit.
They didn't do a player wipe. Not exactly. What happened was, they did the player wipe (with no warning) and every single person on Test went batshit. A day or so later, they relented and restored all the characters, but with *NO ITEMS*. So it ended up being an item wipe, not a character wipe. Nonetheless, a large contingent of people quit, but there is still a sizable population on Test -- usually 600-800 during peak hours.
I play on Test (used to play on The Nameless) and I do prefer it over live servers. It's less crowded, there's no economy (you may not like that, but I do), people are generally friendlier... it has disadvantages, but they are outweighed buy the benefits.
Not surprising at all if you think in the mindset of Christianity. God is the Creator, so anything involving the creation of life should be banned, because only God should do that. However, killing people is just fine, because after all, God spends the first several books of the Bible telling the Hebrews to wipe out every town they come across during their journey to the Promised Land. (No wonder Jews get so much crap -- they, apparently, wiped out half the Middle East on God's orders!) So killing in God's name is okay, but creating in his name isn't.
Once again, thank you, Religions of the Book.
What's there to interpret? How about the following question: "What constitutes speech?"
The 1st Amendment only specifically mentions "speech" and "the press". What do they mean by "the press"? The freedom of the news media to publish what it likes? Or the freedom of individuals to use a printing press? Or the concept of physical publication and distribution? Or all of these? Or none of these? "The press" is *AMBIGUOUS*, and leaves us with no choice BUT to interpret.
So let's say you read the 1st Amendment completely literally. The only things that are guaranteed protection are the freedom to speak aloud, and the freedom to write, print, and distribute whatever you like. What about... artwork? If I create a piece of art that shows a caricatured black man with big lips and beady eyes supplicating before a regal white master, is that protected by the First Amendment? After all, I did not write anything, and I did not say anything.
But clearly it would be ludicrous to prohibit the expression of whatever it is that I'd be trying to express with that artwork. Yet the 1st Amendment says nothing about artwork. Now what?
Other things that are not explicitly mentioned in the 1st Amendment, but it would be (in my opinion) wrong to not consider protected: computer source code, any form of electronically stored data, sign language, rude hand gestures, facial expressions (for example, glaring at someone)... hey, how about THOUGHT? Thought isn't mentioned or even referenced by the 1st Amendment. Therefore we can prohibit certain kinds of thought, right?
My point here is that your position is untenable -- language almost by definition is ambiguous, and without something to concretely resolve that ambiguity, we are left with literally no choice but to interpret the language and figure out what it means. Unless, of course, you think that none of the above things I mentioned should be protected? Not that there's anything wrong with that -- you're entitled to your opinions, another side effect of the First Amendment.
Slashdot is SO behind. Kuro5hin had a story about this back in -96, right after the tests were done! Leave it to /. to wait 2,098 years to post a story. Sheesh.
What they say? All your customers are belong to MS?