You're right but that's one of the main problems of most religions: believers think that the simple fact of being religious makes something (or somebody) "good". Or at least better than non-religious stuff. The "free pass" religion has been used to get.
Hey. I've got a brilliant Idea. Let's construct a thermonuclear fusion reactor at the center of the solar system. We will collect the radiation energy with photovoltaic cells pointed to the sky. As there are no moving parts, it wouldn't require much maintainence either. Why hasn't anybody implemented such a brilliant idea?
The best way is to design a system *yourself* so nobody else knows it.
I have that kind of system myself but, if I tell you what it is, it will then less secure (very much so on/.)...
So...
Anyway, I'll give you some tips.
Think of the things that you have no problem remembering. If these they are easy to find (like in a dictionary), design some combination that would not. Among those, select the ones that could be found elsewhere if your memory fails. From these select the ones easier to use and/or to consult elsewhere. Design some indexing method that will allow *you* to find them easily from these available sources. Store these indexes the way that is more convenient for you.
An example that I _do_not_ use and that's worse than the one I use: Bible quotes. Bibles are available almost everywhere. Long ones have good resistance to brute force. And the indexing is already done for you. You just have to design some basic encryption method for the index (the method depends on the storing method: simpe rotation for hand-written, as complex as you like if store on a computer: you can write a prgram to do that) and store the index in some place (the piece of paper in the wallet, some text file on your computer, whatever is more secure for your case).
In any case, you should design something that is easy to use _for_you_ or you'll end up using some other less secure but more usable system.
Ah, and don't use the example I described as now it's already known...
I agree with you that the narrative element is at least so impòrtant than the simulation (and just character simulation at that) in RPG.
And that's precisely why I think that is an extremely good idea. Because it frees the DM from all the annoying and tedious mechanical elements of the game so he can concentrate on the narrative, ambience, NPC playing and so on. And of course the program should allow the DM to "tweak" thing a bit if it needs to. Or for other things that players like as tossing the physical dice themselves.
I've been a DM for more than more than 30 years now but, as it is, mastering is too time consuming for me to do it often and well. But with this kind of help, I would probably go back to the job.
I think the idea that "such scans could one day be presented as evidence in a trial" is frightening. A real bad idea. A trial try to determine if somebody is guilty of committing some illegal action. Not if he could be a psycopath.
Another thing would be that it could be used to cure people that have this problem. This would have to be studied carefully but I don't think it's such a bad idea.
But the first one can lead to "screening" people before they have commited any crime. Preventive thought-police? Scary...
I find this long-lived and pervasive myth totally fascinating... It's a nexus of so many cultural issues; like BEV, native-only laws, exoticism, Esperanto, and the very notion of "improving" human language.
Although it's not my domain, I know Pinker's (and Chomsky's) work and I don't disagree. Sorry if I was not clear enough but what I meant was actually the contrary that you seem to have understood. That is, if in Spanish there are many names for shrimps, it's because there are lots of different shrimps in Spanish waters and Spanish people eat a lot of shrimps. Likewise for the Walloon example. And, of course, I was referring just to vocabulary, not to grammar and such.
As for the programming languages argument that I think was sound I mean that it's best if a programming language is designed to reflect better the environment that it's supposed to handle. That's the reason why I don't mind changing or even learning another language if it's more suited for the task at hand.
And sorry about the anonymous post. I just switched browsers so I'm still clumsy.
But something like that do happens in other languages. For instance "shrimp" in English or "crevette" in French corresponds with much more varieties in Spanish: camarrÃn, quisquilla, gamba, gambÃn, langostinos, carabineros and much more that I don't know because I don't like seafood. And in Walloon there are as well many names for "mud". So the argument seems sound although the example is wrong.
And about verbosity, I really don't know how this could be a bad thing nowadays. I mean, does anybody still *writes* code? I certainly don't. I just copy&paste/search&replace and little else. Source size is not a problem either. The only problem I see with it can make code difficult to read on a small screen because code can get hidden on the right side. Readable code is what matters.
You act like it was Pandora's fault they had to close off non-US access.
You've got the wrong impression, buddy. The only thing I'm criticizing mildly here, and not even directly, is the tendency to look at the web as an US-only affair. I'm definitively pro-globalization. And in the case of Internet radio there are alternatives. So if Pandora, who was clearly my first choice, is not available, I choose something else. I will certainly not sit down and whine or wait for them to fix their problems... That's capitalism...
In reality it was the media cartels greed combined with the fact that many other countries don't have statutory rates for Internet broadcasting yet.
I know that the cartels are the ones who are fucking up everything around, even their own business. But that's their problem, they are shooting themselves in the foot. Or more exactly killing themselves. Their problem and I will be happy when they finally finish themselves up.
You missed the point of my post which is that, for us non-USAmericans, advertisement on Pandora is not a bad thing as it could allow us to access it. And, if not, it does not concern us.
A US-only thingy it seems. I wanted to suscribe but that's not allowed to us who live outside the frontiers of the Empire. So I had to "choose" LastFM.
Thus I don't think advertisement would be a bad thing if it allowed access to all of us non-USAmericans. And if it doesn't, it's an US-only issue.
I still have around the StereoTek LCD shutter glasses that I used with a lowly Atari ST during the second half of the 80's. Maybe I can adapt them for the PC;-)
People will pirate when it's overpriced. When it's right-priced, most people will gladly pay for it.
Once upon a time, in the Atari ST times, I bought every release of the CAD3D/CyberStudio suite. When it moved to the PC, changing its name to 3D Studio, the price was multiplied by *30*, more or less. So, when I also had to move to the PC, I did not of course gave a penny to Autodesk for a badly ported program on an inferior platform...
I've been putting off my home cinema because of the format war. I did not want to commit myself to one format and end like my father did when the Beta/VHS/2000 with a bunch of unusable expensive junk.
But now there is an alternative (at least here in Spain): paid digital television. This way I can get high def movies from both platforms without having to commit myself to either. Anyway the stupid format war is causing video renting bussinesses to hold on waiting for one format to win and so no high def movies, either Blue Ray or HD-DVD, are available to rent
I hope this solution becomes available in more countries and causes *both* formats to fail. That'll teach them to never do the same stupid mistake again (they should have known better after the Beta fiasco).
> It wasn't WWII that broke the French, it was World War I. Their casualties were literally in > the millions; they fielded the majority of the allied land forces, and most of the war took > place on their territory. They held back, literally, the best army in the world. Fought them to > a standstill for years in the face of obscene casualties.
With a little BIG help from their little Belgian friends... It was the Belgian king Albert I who, by not allowing his relative the Kaiser to enter Belgium to take the French by surprise, put his country as a buffer against the powerful german army. Then it was the decision to flood Belgium and the courage of its little army that stopped and held the ruthless Prussians (in Visé, Dinant and many more places they simply executed all Walloon civilians and destroyed their houses). And this involvment of Belgium in this war was crucial for that war to become the first "World War" and not yet another french-german war.
I guess it is yet another case of famous "french" stuff like the "frites" ("french" fries), the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Tintin, Hercules Poirot, etc.
In Spain during Franco's dictatorship, spanish citizens needed a passport to leave Spain while Common Market tourists could enter and leave without it. We used to say it was like a jail.
When I was a kid, I used to dream about living in the United States. Today I'm not even sure I want to see it again before I die.
Like the old lonely wolf howled: "America where are you now?".
Who was burned at the stake for saying precisely this by the creationists of his days. That was persecution, not the phantom "book banning" that today's creationists crybabies complain about. Nowadays, hopefully they have lost their power; do not let them conquer it again...
What are they worried about? Competition? With the track record of catholic priests in pedofile sexual abuse cases they should look for predators in their own meatspace instead of cyberspace or blogosphere...
Instead of creationism and its "wedge", ID, it was the soviet brand of Lamarckism, Lysenkoism. As Lysenko was buddy-buddy with Big Daddy Stalin he was able to impose his crackpot ideas just as the fundies buddies of the Hick in the White House are trying to do with their fundamentalist beliefs.
The results of the substitution of Darwinism with Lamarckism were dire for the URSS, so dire that they were not even able to feed their own people and had to buy their bread from their worst rival and enemy, the USA. I personnally think that that fatal error has much more to do with the demise of the soviet regime than the polish Pope and such.
Now that's happening for the USA. Even here in Spain we are welcoming back scientists that are unable to keep up their line of work in the USA... despite the much higher pay in the States. And not only in the field of stem cell research a big tabu for the fundies. Other issues like the Crusade on Drugs histeria are also hampering research.
A good example is Manuel Guzmán. While working in the US he discovered that THC (as in pot, marijuana) could be helpful in treating cancer. In the US research that could prove that an illegal drug has some beneficial effect is not only politically incorrect but simply not allowed, so he had to go back to Spain to follow his investigation. And now he is getting results... in Spain, not in the US...
At first it would seem that could benefit us European quite a bit as we do not share these religious prejudices and we will benefit from the fugue of brains from the US. But I certainly do *not* want to see the world's first power side with theocracies like Iran and Saudi Arabia in certain areas...
For me the solution is simple: politics and beliefs should not mingle with science. Easier to say than to do;-)
Slashdot Mirror
When reading code speed is not the most important thing. Here quality is more important.
And the quality of alignment brought to you by fixed-length fonts is more important than any marginal gain in reading speed.
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
Really.
People only buy movies they really, really like. The others, they rent them.
Delaying rent will not cause people to buy them bu to download them. Thus "proving" that piracy is really, really bad, evil and unAmerican...
It looks like they are getting smarter :-/
You're right but that's one of the main problems of most religions: believers think that the simple fact of being religious makes something (or somebody) "good". Or at least better than non-religious stuff. The "free pass" religion has been used to get.
So no need to care, it'll be "good" anyway...
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El Guerrero del Interfaz
Why did you choose it if you you did not like it?
Well, that. Before podcasts, there was Pointcast.
It failed but it was basically that, news podcasts without the iPod.
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
Hey. I've got a brilliant Idea. Let's construct a thermonuclear fusion reactor at the center of the solar system. We will collect the radiation energy with photovoltaic cells pointed to the sky. As there are no moving parts, it wouldn't require much maintainence either. Why hasn't anybody implemented such a brilliant idea?
Man, I can't believe nobody got it...
Brillant (that's the word) indeed!.
The best way is to design a system *yourself* so nobody else knows it.
I have that kind of system myself but, if I tell you what it is, it will then less secure (very much so on /.)...
So...
Anyway, I'll give you some tips.
Think of the things that you have no problem remembering. If these they are easy to find (like in a dictionary), design some combination that would not. Among those, select the ones that could be found elsewhere if your memory fails. From these select the ones easier to use and/or to consult elsewhere. Design some indexing method that will allow *you* to find them easily from these available sources. Store these indexes the way that is more convenient for you.
An example that I _do_not_ use and that's worse than the one I use: Bible quotes. Bibles are available almost everywhere. Long ones have good resistance to brute force. And the indexing is already done for you. You just have to design some basic encryption method for the index (the method depends on the storing method: simpe rotation for hand-written, as complex as you like if store on a computer: you can write a prgram to do that) and store the index in some place (the piece of paper in the wallet, some text file on your computer, whatever is more secure for your case).
In any case, you should design something that is easy to use _for_you_ or you'll end up using some other less secure but more usable system.
Ah, and don't use the example I described as now it's already known...
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
I agree with you that the narrative element is at least so impòrtant than the simulation (and just character simulation at that) in RPG.
And that's precisely why I think that is an extremely good idea. Because it frees the DM from all the annoying and tedious mechanical elements of the game so he can concentrate on the narrative, ambience, NPC playing and so on. And of course the program should allow the DM to "tweak" thing a bit if it needs to. Or for other things that players like as tossing the physical dice themselves.
I've been a DM for more than more than 30 years now but, as it is, mastering is too time consuming for me to do it often and well. But with this kind of help, I would probably go back to the job.
I'll be the DM of my retirement home, yeah ;-)
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
I think the idea that "such scans could one day be presented as evidence in a trial" is frightening. A real bad idea. A trial try to determine if somebody is guilty of committing some illegal action. Not if he could be a psycopath.
Another thing would be that it could be used to cure people that have this problem. This would have to be studied carefully but I don't think it's such a bad idea.
But the first one can lead to "screening" people before they have commited any crime. Preventive thought-police? Scary...
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
So the argument seems sound although the example is wrong.
It is a very interesting point. Depending on what you mean by "the argument", it's not sound. Popular culture is way behind the science on this.
Check out Pinker's "The Language Instinct": http://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-Steven-Pinker/dp/0060976519. Whether or not you accept his whole thesis, it's undeniable that the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" is dead and has been for 75 years.
I find this long-lived and pervasive myth totally fascinating... It's a nexus of so many cultural issues; like BEV, native-only laws, exoticism, Esperanto, and the very notion of "improving" human language.
Although it's not my domain, I know Pinker's (and Chomsky's) work and I don't disagree. Sorry if I was not clear enough but what I meant was actually the contrary that you seem to have understood. That is, if in Spanish there are many names for shrimps, it's because there are lots of different shrimps in Spanish waters and Spanish people eat a lot of shrimps. Likewise for the Walloon example. And, of course, I was referring just to vocabulary, not to grammar and such.
As for the programming languages argument that I think was sound I mean that it's best if a programming language is designed to reflect better the environment that it's supposed to handle. That's the reason why I don't mind changing or even learning another language if it's more suited for the task at hand.
And sorry about the anonymous post. I just switched browsers so I'm still clumsy.
Well, I did not know that. Thanks for the info.
But something like that do happens in other languages. For instance "shrimp" in English or "crevette" in French corresponds with much more varieties in Spanish: camarrÃn, quisquilla, gamba, gambÃn, langostinos, carabineros and much more that I don't know because I don't like seafood. And in Walloon there are as well many names for "mud". So the argument seems sound although the example is wrong.
And about verbosity, I really don't know how this could be a bad thing nowadays. I mean, does anybody still *writes* code? I certainly don't. I just copy&paste/search&replace and little else. Source size is not a problem either. The only problem I see with it can make code difficult to read on a small screen because code can get hidden on the right side. Readable code is what matters.
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/03/egnorance-combo-arrogance.html
You act like it was Pandora's fault they had to close off non-US access.
You've got the wrong impression, buddy. The only thing I'm criticizing mildly here, and not even directly, is the tendency to look at the web as an US-only affair. I'm definitively pro-globalization. And in the case of Internet radio there are alternatives. So if Pandora, who was clearly my first choice, is not available, I choose something else. I will certainly not sit down and whine or wait for them to fix their problems... That's capitalism...
In reality it was the media cartels greed combined with the fact that many other countries don't have statutory rates for Internet broadcasting yet.
I know that the cartels are the ones who are fucking up everything around, even their own business. But that's their problem, they are shooting themselves in the foot. Or more exactly killing themselves. Their problem and I will be happy when they finally finish themselves up.
You missed the point of my post which is that, for us non-USAmericans, advertisement on Pandora is not a bad thing as it could allow us to access it. And, if not, it does not concern us.
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EL Guerrero del Interfaz
A US-only thingy it seems. I wanted to suscribe but that's not allowed to us who live outside the frontiers of the Empire. So I had to "choose" LastFM.
Thus I don't think advertisement would be a bad thing if it allowed access to all of us non-USAmericans. And if it doesn't, it's an US-only issue.
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
I still have around the StereoTek LCD shutter glasses that I used with a lowly Atari ST during the second half of the 80's. Maybe I can adapt them for the PC ;-)
It's about time.
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
I'm already there, you ignorant clod!
People will pirate when it's overpriced. When it's right-priced, most people will gladly pay for it.
Once upon a time, in the Atari ST times, I bought every release of the CAD3D/CyberStudio suite. When it moved to the PC, changing its name to 3D Studio, the price was multiplied by *30*, more or less. So, when I also had to move to the PC, I did not of course gave a penny to Autodesk for a badly ported program on an inferior platform...
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
More precisely "Songs from the Stars" by Norman Spinrad.
Any earlier reference?
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El Guerrero del Interfaz
I've been putting off my home cinema because of the format war. I did not want to commit myself to one format and end like my father did when the Beta/VHS/2000 with a bunch of unusable expensive junk.
But now there is an alternative (at least here in Spain): paid digital television. This way I can get high def movies from both platforms without having to commit myself to either. Anyway the stupid format war is causing video renting bussinesses to hold on waiting for one format to win and so no high def movies, either Blue Ray or HD-DVD, are available to rent
I hope this solution becomes available in more countries and causes *both* formats to fail. That'll teach them to never do the same stupid mistake again (they should have known better after the Beta fiasco).
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
> It wasn't WWII that broke the French, it was World War I. Their casualties were literally in
> the millions; they fielded the majority of the allied land forces, and most of the war took
> place on their territory. They held back, literally, the best army in the world. Fought them to
> a standstill for years in the face of obscene casualties.
With a little BIG help from their little Belgian friends... It was the Belgian king Albert I who, by not allowing his relative the Kaiser to enter Belgium to take the French by surprise, put his country as a buffer against the powerful german army. Then it was the decision to flood Belgium and the courage of its little army that stopped and held the ruthless Prussians (in Visé, Dinant and many more places they simply executed all Walloon civilians and destroyed their houses). And this involvment of Belgium in this war was crucial for that war to become the first "World War" and not yet another french-german war.
I guess it is yet another case of famous "french" stuff like the "frites" ("french" fries), the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Tintin, Hercules Poirot, etc.
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
The setting is not quite the same but it's very possible got the inspiration there.
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
In Spain during Franco's dictatorship, spanish citizens needed a passport to leave Spain while Common Market tourists could enter and leave without it. We used to say it was like a jail.
When I was a kid, I used to dream about living in the United States. Today I'm not even sure I want to see it again before I die.
Like the old lonely wolf howled: "America where are you now?".
--
El Guerrero del Interfaz
Who was burned at the stake for saying precisely this by the creationists of his days. That was persecution, not the phantom "book banning" that today's creationists crybabies complain about. Nowadays, hopefully they have lost their power; do not let them conquer it again...
What are they worried about? Competition? With the track record of catholic priests in pedofile sexual abuse cases they should look for predators in their own meatspace instead of cyberspace or blogosphere...
Instead of creationism and its "wedge", ID, it was the soviet brand of Lamarckism, Lysenkoism. As Lysenko was buddy-buddy with Big Daddy Stalin he was able to impose his crackpot ideas just as the fundies buddies of the Hick in the White House are trying to do with their fundamentalist beliefs. The results of the substitution of Darwinism with Lamarckism were dire for the URSS, so dire that they were not even able to feed their own people and had to buy their bread from their worst rival and enemy, the USA. I personnally think that that fatal error has much more to do with the demise of the soviet regime than the polish Pope and such. Now that's happening for the USA. Even here in Spain we are welcoming back scientists that are unable to keep up their line of work in the USA... despite the much higher pay in the States. And not only in the field of stem cell research a big tabu for the fundies. Other issues like the Crusade on Drugs histeria are also hampering research. A good example is Manuel Guzmán. While working in the US he discovered that THC (as in pot, marijuana) could be helpful in treating cancer. In the US research that could prove that an illegal drug has some beneficial effect is not only politically incorrect but simply not allowed, so he had to go back to Spain to follow his investigation. And now he is getting results... in Spain, not in the US... At first it would seem that could benefit us European quite a bit as we do not share these religious prejudices and we will benefit from the fugue of brains from the US. But I certainly do *not* want to see the world's first power side with theocracies like Iran and Saudi Arabia in certain areas... For me the solution is simple: politics and beliefs should not mingle with science. Easier to say than to do ;-)