Y'know, one thing with FL that's bothered me, was wondering how someone could possibly *not* punch all the way through a punch card...till I read Molly Ivin's column. This *does* explain it...and I always just assumed that the chads fell down into a bag, or some large trashcan. So, for those that don't know...
from Molly Ivin's column, Updated: Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2000 at 18:35 CST (http://www.startext.com/columnist/ivins2.htm)
A tray of chad with electoral dressing, please
...
What happens with the punch-card system -- and this is A-B-C to everyone who had ever been involved with these contests -- is that the trays underneath the ballots fill up with chad. People
punch through an entire ballot, they leave the little pieces of detritus, and the trays that collect them are only about one-quarter of an inch deep.
Furthermore, it is not at all unusual for the chad to clump in the front or the back of a tray, so you get a series of ballots where people tried to punch through and couldn't because they hit a pile of clumped chad underneath.
...
And if that's what happens, and if a lot of folks *are* voting one party, the clumps would wind up there, sooner, rather than evenly spaced.
Forget "crashing into the 26th floor of an office building", and think about some dork crashing into your *bedroom*, in a flying SUV, drunk, or racing, or putting on makup, or talking on their cellphone.
I'd say that *no* *one* gets to buy one of these puppies without full, no deductable, insurance covering running into my house, my yard, my garage, or my family, from above. And I want at least $5M coverage, to make sure that they *can* cover repayment (if possible, though a human life ain't replacable).
mark "oh, and just think about genengenered
flying horses...and horseshit"
I would assume that the (lazy and uninformed) Web designer for Compaq was told to add this, knows nothing about Linux or the GPL, and, as it was company assigned, used the std. form that they use for their own usual downloads.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained, perfectly easily, by stupidity.
I'm *sure* this is gonna be read (right - maybe I should say I believe in the last word, insead of the first post), but...
some of us have been into neoPaganism or Buddhism since before a good number of the kiddies here were born...*and* we also work as techies.
I *am* somewhat irritated by the "parody religions" comments. I s'pose that someone with a black-and-white worldview can't deal with "religions" that can laugh at the world, which includes themselves and their beliefs, when all they know is Protestant Xianity(1), which seems to require Absolute Sobriety about itself.
Yes, there are a good number of real hackers who are into Zen, meditation, etc - after all, how *do* you work on a *hard* problem, get a working answer...and realize you've been at the terminal for *how* many hours? That is, most certainly close to what I understand of the Zen ideal of meditation.
Then, there's Magick(2). Look at True Names(3). What do we do when we program? Create spells (watch them syntax errors), and invoke and instantiate, call daemons....
The issue of sf I've dealt with before(4). I get *so* tired of the ignorant kids here, at times.
At any rate, the answer is yes.
mark
1) to quote what was in common usage in newgroups eight years ago, Xtian is not a "denigration" - consider Xmas. It has been used by Xian religious personnel for hundreds of years, X being the Greek letter "chi", and refers to Christos...but the folks who get upset tend to be those who know *nothing* of the history of their religion.... Funnymentalists, on the other hand...that is most *certainly* an insult, though I consider it dueling with an unarmed opponent, who tend to deny reality, and, with simple logic, seem to believe in a deity that is more than just perverse.
2) Magick is spelled this way, to distinguish it from prestidigitation (state magic). The definition that I go with is, "a series of psychological techniques, used to control one's consciousness, or psi powers". Forget "deals with the Devil (tm)", that's what you do when you deal with entrepreneurs and marketdroids.
3) True Names, Vernor Vinge, around '85, I b'lieve.
4) early last week, when I responded to the Hugo awards thread.
A *lot* of y'all here read sf, but appear to know very little about fandom (I won't mention the little snots), so...
SF existed before the 1920s, but it came into existance as a genre with Hugo Gernsback's creation of Amazing Stories in '26. That's why they're called the Hugos.
Fandom began shortly after, in the late 20s and early 30s, when folks writing to the lettercols realized that that some of the other letter writers lived in their own town.
The first con was in Philly, in '36 (when half-a-dozen guys from NYC came down to Philly, to meet half a dozen guys from Philly). The first Worldcon was in 1939, with over 200 folks. It's down now, slightly, from the high point of the 80's, but Chicon, the 58th Worldcon, was over 6000 attendees, and we ate both towers of the downtown Hyatt Regency, the Fairmont, and the Swissotel.
Unlike Oscars, etc, there is no self-appointed elite, who decide what is the One True Right. Anyone who ponies up their money to join Worldcon can nominate anything (nominations close around the beginning of spring), and you can vote after that. All you have to be, is a member. So, those of us who read it the most, and who care the most, are the ones who nominate and vote.
Someone mentioned the SF-Lovers list, but I didn't see mention of the rec.arts.sf heirarchy (that was *real* busy, and had a good number of newsgroups already, when I got on the 'Net in late 91). Also, the culture of the newsgroups was *real* familiar to me...it looked and sounded just like a party at a con, or an APA (think of a snail-mail newsgroup).
We were here first, guys. Who did you think you invented a lot of this? Wassamatter, you so afraid of the Big Blue Room that you can't deal with us in person?
For more about fandom, try
http://www.enteract.com/~whitroth/silverdragon/sf
Oh...and for only about the third time I can remember, someone actually involved with a film was there to get their Hugo, when it was announced who won - both the writer *and* the director, and I don't think there was a doubt in anyone's mind that the Hugo meant to the writer what it meant to us...not when he got up there, and went incoherent!
And I can justify the subject easily: I'm a UNIX sysadmin, programmer, etc, in more languages than most of you know...*and* I was a protester in the sixties and early seventies, and I not only *don't* repudiate it, I'm proud of it.
I find this a mood piece, but it really *isn't* well written. What *is* the point? I met enough turkeys like this at protests back then. Most of those who were willing to get arrested might come, as he did, and meet someone there. He wasn't "recruited", he was looking to join a group.
He also wasn't real bright. Those who were willing to be arrested "crossed the line", I assume, and sat down, near the convention, they didn't just go out of their way to look like a troublemaker for the cops...as he did.
On the other hand, what are they there for? Many of y'all talk about freedom of speech...what do you think *this* is? Chocolate pudding?
Don't vote? It was the GOP that started pushing urine testing, and the Dems who went along, so they wouldn't be accused of being "soft on drugs".
It was the GOP that started the long failed "War on Drugs". It's the GOP that, unlike it's attitude up through the sixties, *wants* religious control over the government (if they don't freedom of religion, *I*'d say they ought to move to Iran).
To the jerk who asked about "where are the pro-poverty organizations", try those against Choice, who don't care what happens after the kid is born - they're the ones who won't fully fund Head Start, or public childcare, or more money to schools, or health for folks who can't afford health care, but give the Pentagon *more* money than it asks for (usually by enough to fully fund all of what I mentioned). Corporate welfare, but none for folks that need it...and, while they're at it, make none-corporate welfare a trap, rather than a helping hand.
And why did they do it in the streets? Maybe because the 9 companies that own 90% of all the media in this country are slanted towards the conservatives. I sure know of almost nothing that's liberal, even. Certainly none of the tv stations, nor the cable news, nor the main papers in Chicago, nor Austin, etc.
But go back to coding a vbx for Linux guys...and don't worry about *your* future, or your kids' future, till they come pounding on your door, to confiscate your computers.
mark "been there, done that, breathed the tear gas and pepperfog, didn't go out of my way to get busted, though"
The younger brother of a friend of mine from Philly...I met him in a laundromat/video arcade (they'll get *all* your quarters), back in the late seventies, was known, by name, to Atari...he'd told them about bugs in the original Star Wars arcade game on the 20th level, etc. When I met him, I watched him die...at 47M points, on the 40th or 50th level!
So that those of us with all these perfectly good older chips, after upgrading, can shove 'em onto a card, and use beowolf to buid a multiprocessor box for next to nothing?
Just after I hit the send, I realized what's even more likely, with a VUI - a virus, that speaks through your *speakers*, and yells, "Start!Accessories!MSDOS!Format c:! Yes! Yes! Yes!", and your idiot officemate who plays *everything*, or the boss who gets a Melissa-style virus, and it resends itself as if from *him*, so you *have* to listen to it....
The just-fired employee, in the center of all the office cubes, or the neighbor's nasty kid, who yells, "Start!Accessories!MSDOS!Format c: Yes! Yes! Yes!"
mark "glad I read most of my email in UNIX - virii? What virii? Oh, you mean that encoded non-running MIME attachment to the spam?"
This make perfect sense for Caldera. Before Corel came in, they were the ones in the US market pushing their release of Linux as business-oriented. By buying SCO, they can a) call their release of Linux UNIX (which might, of course, slide over to cover every release); b) gain a *large* customer base (for example, I happen to know Walgreen's uses SCO), and c) would let the SCO folks migrate to Linux, which might be what's happening, anyway, esp. since SCO has announced support for Linux, but might make it easier, and gain more upper mgmt support.
Years back, in Dr. Dobbs', Ciardi(?) had a series about a toolkit he called (and it was copyrightten) as D-Flat, and I b'lieve he mentioned it was that, since C Sharp was taken.
ShadowRun came straight from the pages of the cyberpunk wave of sf. Try reading Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy, the first of which was in paperback in '84, or Walter Jon William's Hardwired ('86).
Yes, they're a very unpleasant world, for the majority of us...and I'd place a *lot* of the blame on the corporate-funded GOP, esp.
However, government ain't quite out of the picture, yet (can you say, "Judge Jackson"?), and a good thing, too, since we've allowed the unions to become marginalized, leaving us with no other protection against the multinationals other than the gov't...and *lots* of antigov't propoganda by the same corps.
And yes, I agree - 20 years of "he who dies with the most toys, wins", and "money is a way of keeping score", has left us with slackers, and a lot of younger folks who can't see *anything* worth doing.
I see *someone* recommended the Star Blazers series (finally!). Let me add Nausicaa, or Valley of the Winds. There's a poorly edited, dubbed version, btw, call Warriors of the Wind. In*cred*ible movie.
Another film, by the same author, is called, I think, The Floating Island.
Stay away from Outlanders - the comic is *far* better.
3x3 Eyes is very good, as is Demon City.
The Lupin series is, ahhh, amusing.
mark
/. readers - 30, go off and die?
on
Too Old To Code?
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· Score: 3
Not that I expect many folks to read a post this late in the day...but...I can't *believe* all you assholes who seem to think that age has anything to do with coding ability.
I went back to school for CS when I was 29, got my first programming job at 31...and I'm 51, now.
Now, admittedly, I'm weirder, and *far* more flexible than most of y'all seem to be, since I started on IBM mainframes w/ punch cards, and JCL, and PL/1 and COBOL, and CICS, went to pc's and compiled BASIC, back to mainframes and COBOL, then back to pc's and C (learned on my own), and Pascal, then UNIX and C, and these days, sysadmin in UNIX and C, w/ Linux at home. Oh, and I've left out all the stuff I've done all that in...and if y'all want, let's spec something out, and I'll write *better*, more maintainable code then most of you.
The reasons a lot of companies like 30 isn't because they're smarter, or better coders...it's because: a) they're cheaper, which is what the vast majority of management cares about (most of whom have never heard the phrase, "there's never time to do it right, there's always time to do it over"), and b) HR people, who disregard experience, and only look at degrees, and costs (30 also tends to cost less for benefits, as well).
Finally, younger programmers also have been so beainwashed that organizations like unions are SO BAD, and to believe that they'll be RICH by the time they're 30, or maybe 35, that they'll do *anything*, including put up with management's idiotic demands for a schedule that has no relation to reality, and the companies that treat y'all like consumables (as several 20-something friends of mine who *used* to work for Andersen Consulting agreed...including the one who once did 119 hours in *one* week, while I was working with him...).
Then they call us "geeks", and claim that we don't have a life, anyway, so they're not really abusing us....
mark "been there, done that, got a lousy t-shirt...and still programming"
I just sent Rob this, in email. ****************************************** I'm send this to you, as well as posting. I see a zillion posts...well, here's one that *means* something: put me down as literally putting my money where my mouth is, in supporting freedom of the press. If y'all take this to court, and start incurring legal fees, and need funds, I'll pony up $100 towards that. ******************************************
This *is* all in the US, both andover.net, and M$, and so it's a blatant violation of the First Amendment, both freedom of speech, and of the press. It *is* censorship. So, all you big-mouthed slashdotters, anyone else willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk?
Ok, folks, yes, you can tell telemarketers to take you off their list...and, like as not, they'll argue with you about it.
But...up till about a year and a half ago, I was getting 3-4 (or more) tele-bloody-marketer calls per week. Then, from somewhere in the depths of my magpie collection (memory), I remembered a Magic Phrase, and started using it, as did my son. These days, I *may* get 3-4 call per *month*.
The magic phrase? "I request and require that you take me off your telemarketing list". The "request and require" seems to be a serious legal formula. As a test, I tried the usual, "take me off", and had a woman argue with me...*then* I said, "request & require"...and it was as though someone had flipped a switch, and she *instantly* went into a canned speech, "blah, blah, it will take from 10 days to 2 weeks to..., if you ever want to get back on, please call blah, blah, thank you, sorry to bother you", and she hung up.
The real problem with these fools who rant about captured UFOs & aliens is that they have *no* clue, are clue hostile, and wouldn't buy a clue if you *gave* 'em a roll of quarters.
Most know zilch about science and technology, and would probably tell you that microcomputers and microwaves were gotten from UFOs.
The *real* proof that we've never found one is that there have been *no* utterly unlooked-for breakthroughs in the last 50 years, technologically speaking; that we can trace the science for *everything*.
Of course, the other proof is that, when Congress looked into the Blue Book, they couldn't find any memos, and, as some Congresscritter put it, can you imagine *any* gov't agency working for 50 years with no memos? To which I'd add, can you imagine *this* gov't, which leaks secrets like a sieve, keeping this a secret for 50 years?
On training and hiring computer-literate teachers. Kids having laptops doesn't do much, if they aren't taught anything useful on them.
Lest you think I'm overcritical, my son was in the Chicago Public School system until a year ago (at the end of 10th grade - he's now in ab alternative education program), and his high school had *one*, count 'em, "computer course"...WHICH WAS NOT A BLOODY COMPUTER COURSE, IT WAS A TYPING CLASS. They learned their way around a computer and keyboard, and then they were taught touch-typing, and spent the rest of the term doing business letter. How may other kids get that, rather than a real computer course?
Let's see the use that is being planned for the computers, before they spend the money to buy 'em. In the meantime...I read about companies that can't find anywhere to donate "obsolete" computers (which would run Lose95, or Linux, jes' fine).
mark
If anyone reads comments this far down...
on
Battlefield Earth
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· Score: 1
Lessee, as a lifelong sf fan, I read this when it came out in paperback...and thought it didn't resemble much worth reading then, and it *certainly* wouldn't be a movie without the Scienterologists pushing it.
Hubbard wrote for the pulp mags. This is *literally* a series of stories, with the same characters, for each genre - Air Adventure Stories, Jungle Adventure Stories, Spy Adventure Stories, etc, ad nauseum. The could have made a (bad) tv series out of it.
When there are novels like, oh, Snow Crash, or the Uplift War, or Downbelow Station, etc, etc, etc, that are *worth* making a movie of, and instead they make this piece of crap....
*sigh*
I have heard it said that you can tell something about a culture by its cuisine. I have also heard it said that the US is known, around the world, for creating the world's best junk food.
Oh, and a note about Scientology: the one time I met John W. Campbell, in '67, at Worldcon in NYC, someone asked about Hubbard (not surprising, given that the hotel had overbooked, and had 3 *other* conventions at the same time...and one was Scientologists), and his reply was that Hubbard had told him that he (Hubbard) was tired of writing for a penny a word, and wanted to make real money...but from then on, he waffled between believing it, and figuring that it was just a scam.
Freedom of religion? Come *on*, the made it into a Church only after they'd been rejected by the IRS and, I think, the British equivalent, from their claim to be a non-profit organization.
To some of you, including Jon, this may be the post-M$ world. For those of us who have to work in the "real" world, where most real companies are, it's still a vision.
*Way* too many companies (incl. mine) have already leaped (fallen?) to Lose2K, rather than take a wait-and-see approach.
And Jon's first cmt, about "18th century laws", makes no sense, whatsoever. If Jon means the anti-trust laws, then he's no better than M$NBC. The anti-trust laws were passed before WWI, in the 1900's and early 'teens, when unions either had little power, or often, were illegal, as a repsonse to such monopolies as Rockefeller's Standard Oil.
Newt the Grinch promised to take us back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the days of the robber barons...and did. With the little I know of Standard Oil, Microsoft is *exactly* like it, and is *explicitly* what those laws were passed to prevent. I suppose there were folks back then, who didn't see what breaking up Standard Oil would do, or mean.
Jon, do your homework. And I would not say that the, ahhh, Women of Substance Chorale has not yet begun their aria.
On the other hand, to quote Megaphone Mark Slackmeyer, from Doonesbury, nearly 30 years ago, "guilty! guilty! guilty!"
Jon's review is interesting, and the book might be worth trying...but a *lot* of the comments here indicate, as I've noticed before, the narrow vision of slashdotters.
First, though, I would suggest that before you talk about "god and physics", Jon, that you define your terms. What half the world's population views as "God" (that being Judeo-Xian-Islamic half) has no relationship to what the other half considers extant. For example, as I understand the view of Buddhism, there *is* no Big Whatever In A Nighshirt, standing seperate and apart from It's creation; rather, that there is one consciousness, though, of which we are all the split ends.
Next, I might point out to y'all that Buddhism has had a serious influence on physics since the fifties, when it started being noted that the Buddhist view of the universe, from it being billions of years old, and not 6K, to the 8-fold path of quarks, was more like the RW than the JCI view, which, in fact, does lean very much towards determinism.
Going on, we might note that it isn't neurons, per se, that are affected by quantum phenomena, but rather the molecules that influence the actions of the neurons.
Furthermore, we can also observe that, although quantum effects *appear* non-deterministic, they *are* statistically probabilistic...and that, at the macro scale devolves to what we perceive as mechanistic, just as relativistic effects are so trivial at "normal" velocities, that Newtonian mechanics are a perfectly good description.
However...and this is a *major* caveat, all physics deals, in general, with *simple* cases, with few, and controlled inputs. When we get to something as seriously complex as consciousness, we are talking about something that is obviously affected by blood chemistry (y'all taken your antidepressants today?), by social environment (there's *no* peer pressure here, right?), and, hell, for all we know, electromagnetic fields and cosmic rays, playing games with the brain chemistry (e.g., brownian motion).
To suggest "an* answer to consciousness seems to me to be a massive overstatement/simplification. To suggest that *only* humans are conscious, which I think I saw a/.er suggest, is absurd (tell me that a cat, or dog, or dolphin, is not "conscious"): rather, I'd suggest that *every* living thing is both conscious and intellegent...but that, of course, it is quantitative and qualitative, not a false black/white dichotomy.
Claiming Jesus Is The Answer to all questions, btw, is only true in the case of those who, I am constantly astounded to learn, can think well enough so as to tie their shoes in the morning, much less click a mouse and punch keys. Oh, and before you flame me, I suggest you read the argument FAQ (it's been on the Net since *long* before the Web - do a search, stupid).
Let's see...something like 75% of the US population is *not* on the Net, some people *like* things like cards, and letters, and then, of course, it's sorta hard to squeeze jars of jam, or canned hams, or sweaters, or...even books, like userfriendly, over the wires of the net.
No, guys, information is not quite everything. It's what you *do* with it, which, at some point, comes back to the physical world. If FedUps, and the other delivery services aren't obsolete, then neither is the Post Office.
mark
Literary snobbery, or a misguided attempt...
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The Sparrow
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· Score: 1
...to attract folks who Don't Read sf?
In either case, I am *so* tired of it.
When I got into sf fandom, before a good number of y'all were *born*, the criticism from the lit'ry community was that sf, the literature of ideas, "didn't have any character development or growth". So, along came the New Wave, and we got all of that, and more, in spades (e.g., Lord of Light, or Stand on Zanzibar, or...). So what happened, suddenly, lit'rature didn't tell stories, that was *so* declassee, Real Lit (tm) set moods. So thee was Dahlgren, and a number of others.
I haven't heard anything lately, other than them apparently saying that Real Lit only sets mood pieces with people that you *really* wouldn't want to know in RL, and rehashed old garbage. To me, it only shows that the majority of the Lit'ry community has never, in their lives, passed a science course, knows nothing of the computers on which they type their stories, and, in fact, knows little of how the world that they live in functions.
Their reaction, so far as I can tell, only shows that, in order to deal with their inner inferiority, they find demeaning names for those of us who *do* have a clue...or did y'all think nerd, geek, techie, and all the others were lovingly applied nicknames of approbation?
Personally, I won't play their games. I dunno why Hemos feels the need to.
Slashdot Mirror
Y'know, one thing with FL that's bothered me, was wondering how someone could possibly *not* punch all the way through a punch card...till I read Molly Ivin's column. This *does* explain it...and I always just assumed that the chads fell down into a bag, or some large trashcan. So, for those that don't know...
from Molly Ivin's column, Updated: Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2000 at 18:35 CST (http://www.startext.com/columnist/ivins2.htm)
A tray of chad with electoral dressing, please
...
What happens with the punch-card system -- and this is A-B-C to everyone who had ever been involved with these contests -- is that the trays underneath the ballots fill up with chad. People
punch through an entire ballot, they leave the little pieces of detritus, and the trays that collect them are only about one-quarter of an inch deep.
Furthermore, it is not at all unusual for the chad to clump in the front or the back of a tray, so you get a series of ballots where people tried to punch through and couldn't because they hit a pile of clumped chad underneath.
...
And if that's what happens, and if a lot of folks *are* voting one party, the clumps would wind up there, sooner, rather than evenly spaced.
Yeah, it's a hardware problem.
Forget "crashing into the 26th floor of an office building", and think about some dork crashing into your *bedroom*, in a flying SUV, drunk, or racing, or putting on makup, or talking on their cellphone.
I'd say that *no* *one* gets to buy one of these puppies without full, no deductable, insurance covering running into my house, my yard, my garage, or my family, from above. And I want at least $5M coverage, to make sure that they *can* cover repayment (if possible, though a human life ain't replacable).
mark "oh, and just think about genengenered
flying horses...and horseshit"
I would assume that the (lazy and uninformed) Web designer for Compaq was told to add this, knows nothing about Linux or the GPL, and, as it was company assigned, used the std. form that they use for their own usual downloads.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained, perfectly easily, by stupidity.
mark
I'm *sure* this is gonna be read (right - maybe I should say I believe in the last word, insead of the first post), but...
some of us have been into neoPaganism or Buddhism since before a good number of the kiddies here were born...*and* we also work as techies.
I *am* somewhat irritated by the "parody religions" comments. I s'pose that someone with a black-and-white worldview can't deal with "religions" that can laugh at the world, which includes themselves and their beliefs, when all they know is Protestant Xianity(1), which seems to require Absolute Sobriety about itself.
Yes, there are a good number of real hackers who are into Zen, meditation, etc - after all, how *do* you work on a *hard* problem, get a working answer...and realize you've been at the terminal for *how* many hours? That is, most certainly close to what I understand of the Zen ideal of meditation.
Then, there's Magick(2). Look at True Names(3). What do we do when we program? Create spells (watch them syntax errors), and invoke and instantiate, call daemons....
The issue of sf I've dealt with before(4). I get *so* tired of the ignorant kids here, at times.
At any rate, the answer is yes.
mark
1) to quote what was in common usage in newgroups eight years ago, Xtian is not a "denigration" - consider Xmas. It has been used by Xian religious personnel for hundreds of years, X being the Greek letter "chi", and refers to Christos...but the folks who get upset tend to be those who know *nothing* of the history of their religion.... Funnymentalists, on the other hand...that is most *certainly* an insult, though I consider it dueling with an unarmed opponent, who tend to deny reality, and, with simple logic, seem to believe in a deity that is more than just perverse.
2) Magick is spelled this way, to distinguish it from prestidigitation (state magic). The definition that I go with is, "a series of psychological techniques, used to control one's consciousness, or psi powers". Forget "deals with the Devil (tm)", that's what you do when you deal with entrepreneurs and marketdroids.
3) True Names, Vernor Vinge, around '85, I b'lieve.
4) early last week, when I responded to the Hugo awards thread.
A *lot* of y'all here read sf, but appear to know very little about fandom (I won't mention the little snots), so...
SF existed before the 1920s, but it came into existance as a genre with Hugo Gernsback's creation of Amazing Stories in '26. That's why they're called the Hugos.
Fandom began shortly after, in the late 20s and early 30s, when folks writing to the lettercols realized that that some of the other letter writers lived in their own town.
The first con was in Philly, in '36 (when half-a-dozen guys from NYC came down to Philly, to meet half a dozen guys from Philly). The first Worldcon was in 1939, with over 200 folks. It's down now, slightly, from the high point of the 80's, but Chicon, the 58th Worldcon, was over 6000 attendees, and we ate both towers of the downtown Hyatt Regency, the Fairmont, and the Swissotel.
Unlike Oscars, etc, there is no self-appointed elite, who decide what is the One True Right. Anyone who ponies up their money to join Worldcon can nominate anything (nominations close around the beginning of spring), and you can vote after that. All you have to be, is a member. So, those of us who read it the most, and who care the most, are the ones who nominate and vote.
Someone mentioned the SF-Lovers list, but I didn't see mention of the rec.arts.sf heirarchy (that was *real* busy, and had a good number of newsgroups already, when I got on the 'Net in late 91). Also, the culture of the newsgroups was *real* familiar to me...it looked and sounded just like a party at a con, or an APA (think of a snail-mail newsgroup).
We were here first, guys. Who did you think you invented a lot of this? Wassamatter, you so afraid of the Big Blue Room that you can't deal with us in person?
For more about fandom, try
http://www.enteract.com/~whitroth/silverdragon/sf
Oh...and for only about the third time I can remember, someone actually involved with a film was there to get their Hugo, when it was announced who won - both the writer *and* the director, and I don't think there was a doubt in anyone's mind that the Hugo meant to the writer what it meant to us...not when he got up there, and went incoherent!
mark
And I can justify the subject easily: I'm a UNIX sysadmin, programmer, etc, in more languages than most of you know...*and* I was a protester in the sixties and early seventies, and I not only *don't* repudiate it, I'm proud of it.
I find this a mood piece, but it really *isn't* well written. What *is* the point? I met enough turkeys like this at protests back then. Most of those who were willing to get arrested might come, as he did, and meet someone there. He wasn't "recruited", he was looking to join a group.
He also wasn't real bright. Those who were willing to be arrested "crossed the line", I assume, and sat down, near the convention, they didn't just go out of their way to look like a troublemaker for the cops...as he did.
On the other hand, what are they there for? Many of y'all talk about freedom of speech...what do you think *this* is? Chocolate pudding?
Don't vote? It was the GOP that started pushing urine testing, and the Dems who went along, so they wouldn't be accused of being "soft on drugs".
It was the GOP that started the long failed "War on Drugs". It's the GOP that, unlike it's attitude up through the sixties, *wants* religious control over the government (if they don't freedom of religion, *I*'d say they ought to move to Iran).
To the jerk who asked about "where are the pro-poverty organizations", try those against Choice, who don't care what happens after the kid is born - they're the ones who won't fully fund Head Start, or public childcare, or more money to schools, or health for folks who can't afford health care, but give the Pentagon *more* money than it asks for (usually by enough to fully fund all of what I mentioned). Corporate welfare, but none for folks that need it...and, while they're at it, make none-corporate welfare a trap, rather than a helping hand.
And why did they do it in the streets? Maybe because the 9 companies that own 90% of all the media in this country are slanted towards the conservatives. I sure know of almost nothing that's liberal, even. Certainly none of the tv stations, nor the cable news, nor the main papers in Chicago, nor Austin, etc.
But go back to coding a vbx for Linux guys...and don't worry about *your* future, or your kids' future, till they come pounding on your door, to confiscate your computers.
mark "been there, done that, breathed the tear gas and pepperfog, didn't go out of my way to get busted, though"
The younger brother of a friend of mine from Philly...I met him in a laundromat/video arcade (they'll get *all* your quarters), back in the late seventies, was known, by name, to Atari...he'd told them about bugs in the original Star Wars arcade game on the 20th level, etc. When I met him, I watched him die...at 47M points, on the 40th or 50th level!
mark "I did beat SWIII a number of times"
So that those of us with all these perfectly good older chips, after upgrading, can shove 'em onto a card, and use beowolf to buid a multiprocessor box for next to nothing?
*That* might be useful.
mark
Just after I hit the send, I realized what's even more likely, with a VUI - a virus, that speaks through your *speakers*, and yells, "Start!Accessories!MSDOS!Format c:! Yes! Yes! Yes!", and your idiot officemate who plays *everything*, or the boss who gets a Melissa-style virus, and it resends itself as if from *him*, so you *have* to listen to it....
mark
The just-fired employee, in the center of all the office cubes, or the neighbor's nasty kid, who yells, "Start!Accessories!MSDOS!Format c: Yes! Yes! Yes!"
mark "glad I read most of my email in UNIX -
virii? What virii? Oh, you mean
that encoded non-running MIME
attachment to the spam?"
This make perfect sense for Caldera. Before Corel came in, they were the ones in the US market pushing their release of Linux as business-oriented. By buying SCO, they can
a) call their release of Linux UNIX (which
might, of course, slide over to cover
every release);
b) gain a *large* customer base (for example,
I happen to know Walgreen's uses SCO), and
c) would let the SCO folks migrate to Linux,
which might be what's happening, anyway,
esp. since SCO has announced support for
Linux, but might make it easier, and gain
more upper mgmt support.
Think, 20 years ago, of IBM and DEC.
mark
Years back, in Dr. Dobbs', Ciardi(?) had a series about a toolkit he called (and it was copyrightten) as D-Flat, and I b'lieve he mentioned it was that, since C Sharp was taken.
Oh, Micro$oft.....
mark
Jon,
ShadowRun came straight from the pages of the cyberpunk wave of sf. Try reading Gibson's Neuromancer trilogy, the first of which was in paperback in '84, or Walter Jon William's Hardwired ('86).
Yes, they're a very unpleasant world, for the majority of us...and I'd place a *lot* of the blame on the corporate-funded GOP, esp.
However, government ain't quite out of the picture, yet (can you say, "Judge Jackson"?), and a good thing, too, since we've allowed the unions to become marginalized, leaving us with no other protection against the multinationals other than the gov't...and *lots* of antigov't propoganda by the same corps.
And yes, I agree - 20 years of "he who dies with the most toys, wins", and "money is a way of keeping score", has left us with slackers, and a lot of younger folks who can't see *anything* worth doing.
We can only hope for the backlash....
mark
I see *someone* recommended the Star Blazers series (finally!). Let me add Nausicaa, or Valley of the Winds. There's a poorly edited, dubbed version, btw, call Warriors of the Wind. In*cred*ible movie.
Another film, by the same author, is called, I think, The Floating Island.
Stay away from Outlanders - the comic is *far* better.
3x3 Eyes is very good, as is Demon City.
The Lupin series is, ahhh, amusing.
mark
Not that I expect many folks to read a post this late in the day...but...I can't *believe* all you assholes who seem to think that age has anything to do with coding ability.
I went back to school for CS when I was 29, got my first programming job at 31...and I'm 51, now.
Now, admittedly, I'm weirder, and *far* more flexible than most of y'all seem to be, since I started on IBM mainframes w/ punch cards, and JCL, and PL/1 and COBOL, and CICS, went to pc's and compiled BASIC, back to mainframes and COBOL,
then back to pc's and C (learned on my own), and Pascal, then UNIX and C, and these days, sysadmin in UNIX and C, w/ Linux at home. Oh, and I've left out all the stuff I've done all that in...and if y'all want, let's spec something out, and I'll write *better*, more maintainable code then most of you.
The reasons a lot of companies like 30 isn't because they're smarter, or better coders...it's because:
a) they're cheaper, which is what the vast majority of management cares about (most of whom have never heard the phrase, "there's never time to do it right, there's always time to do it over"), and
b) HR people, who disregard experience, and only look at degrees, and costs (30 also tends to cost less for benefits, as well).
Finally, younger programmers also have been so beainwashed that organizations like unions are SO BAD, and to believe that they'll be RICH by the time they're 30, or maybe 35, that they'll do *anything*, including put up with management's idiotic demands for a schedule that has no relation to reality, and the companies that treat y'all like consumables (as several 20-something friends of mine who *used* to work for Andersen Consulting agreed...including the one who once did 119 hours in *one* week, while I was working with him...).
Then they call us "geeks", and claim that we don't have a life, anyway, so they're not really abusing us....
mark "been there, done that, got a lousy t-shirt...and still programming"
Folks,
I just sent Rob this, in email.
******************************************
I'm send this to you, as well as posting. I see a zillion posts...well, here's one that *means* something: put me down as literally putting my money where my mouth is, in supporting freedom of the press. If y'all take this to court, and start incurring legal fees, and need funds, I'll pony up $100 towards that.
******************************************
This *is* all in the US, both andover.net, and M$, and so it's a blatant violation of the First Amendment, both freedom of speech, and of the press. It *is* censorship. So, all you big-mouthed slashdotters, anyone else willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk?
mark
Ok, folks, yes, you can tell telemarketers to take you off their list...and, like as not, they'll argue with you about it.
But...up till about a year and a half ago, I was getting 3-4 (or more) tele-bloody-marketer calls per week. Then, from somewhere in the depths of my magpie collection (memory), I remembered a Magic Phrase, and started using it, as did my son. These days, I *may* get 3-4 call per *month*.
The magic phrase? "I request and require that you take me off your telemarketing list". The "request and require" seems to be a serious legal formula. As a test, I tried the usual, "take me off", and had a woman argue with me...*then* I said, "request & require"...and it was as though someone had flipped a switch, and she *instantly* went into a canned speech, "blah, blah, it will take from 10 days to 2 weeks to..., if you ever want to get back on, please call blah, blah, thank you, sorry to bother you", and she hung up.
So - try it, you'll like it.
mark "42"
The real problem with these fools who rant about captured UFOs & aliens is that they have *no* clue, are clue hostile, and wouldn't buy a clue if you *gave* 'em a roll of quarters.
Most know zilch about science and technology, and would probably tell you that microcomputers and microwaves were gotten from UFOs.
The *real* proof that we've never found one is that there have been *no* utterly unlooked-for breakthroughs in the last 50 years, technologically speaking; that we can trace the science for *everything*.
Of course, the other proof is that, when Congress looked into the Blue Book, they couldn't find any memos, and, as some Congresscritter put it, can you imagine *any* gov't agency working for 50 years with no memos? To which I'd add, can you imagine *this* gov't, which leaks secrets like a sieve, keeping this a secret for 50 years?
mark
On training and hiring computer-literate teachers. Kids having laptops doesn't do much, if they aren't taught anything useful on them.
Lest you think I'm overcritical, my son was in the Chicago Public School system until a year ago (at the end of 10th grade - he's now in ab alternative education program), and his high school had *one*, count 'em, "computer course"...WHICH WAS NOT A BLOODY COMPUTER COURSE, IT WAS A TYPING CLASS. They learned their way around a computer and keyboard, and then they were taught touch-typing, and spent the rest of the term doing business letter. How may other kids get that, rather than a real computer course?
Let's see the use that is being planned for the computers, before they spend the money to buy 'em. In the meantime...I read about companies that can't find anywhere to donate "obsolete" computers (which would run Lose95, or Linux, jes' fine).
mark
Lessee, as a lifelong sf fan, I read this when it came out in paperback...and thought it didn't resemble much worth reading then, and it *certainly* wouldn't be a movie without the Scienterologists pushing it.
Hubbard wrote for the pulp mags. This is *literally* a series of stories, with the same characters, for each genre - Air Adventure Stories, Jungle Adventure Stories, Spy Adventure Stories, etc, ad nauseum. The could have made a (bad) tv series out of it.
When there are novels like, oh, Snow Crash, or the Uplift War, or Downbelow Station, etc, etc, etc, that are *worth* making a movie of, and instead they make this piece of crap....
*sigh*
I have heard it said that you can tell something about a culture by its cuisine. I have also heard it said that the US is known, around the world, for creating the world's best junk food.
Oh, and a note about Scientology: the one time I met John W. Campbell, in '67, at Worldcon in NYC, someone asked about Hubbard (not surprising, given that the hotel had overbooked, and had 3 *other* conventions at the same time...and one was Scientologists), and his reply was that Hubbard had told him that he (Hubbard) was tired of writing for a penny a word, and wanted to make real money...but from then on, he waffled between believing it, and figuring that it was just a scam.
Freedom of religion? Come *on*, the made it into a Church only after they'd been rejected by the IRS and, I think, the British equivalent, from their claim to be a non-profit organization.
mark "seen this for a *long* time...."
To some of you, including Jon, this may be the post-M$ world. For those of us who have to work in the "real" world, where most real companies are, it's still a vision.
*Way* too many companies (incl. mine) have already leaped (fallen?) to Lose2K, rather than take a wait-and-see approach.
And Jon's first cmt, about "18th century laws", makes no sense, whatsoever. If Jon means the anti-trust laws, then he's no better than M$NBC. The anti-trust laws were passed before WWI, in the 1900's and early 'teens, when unions either had little power, or often, were illegal, as a repsonse to such monopolies as Rockefeller's Standard Oil.
Newt the Grinch promised to take us back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, the days of the robber barons...and did. With the little I know of Standard Oil, Microsoft is *exactly* like it, and is *explicitly* what those laws were passed to prevent. I suppose there were folks back then, who didn't see what breaking up Standard Oil would do, or mean.
Jon, do your homework. And I would not say that the, ahhh, Women of Substance Chorale has not yet begun their aria.
On the other hand, to quote Megaphone Mark Slackmeyer, from Doonesbury, nearly 30 years ago,
"guilty! guilty! guilty!"
mark
Jon's review is interesting, and the book might be worth trying...but a *lot* of the comments here indicate, as I've noticed before, the narrow vision of slashdotters.
/.er suggest, is absurd (tell me that a cat, or dog, or dolphin, is not "conscious"): rather, I'd suggest that *every* living thing is both conscious and intellegent...but that, of course, it is quantitative and qualitative, not a false black/white dichotomy.
First, though, I would suggest that before you talk about "god and physics", Jon, that you define your terms. What half the world's population views as "God" (that being Judeo-Xian-Islamic half) has no relationship to what the other half considers extant. For example, as I understand the view of Buddhism, there *is* no Big Whatever In A Nighshirt, standing seperate and apart from It's creation; rather, that there is one consciousness, though, of which we are all the split ends.
Next, I might point out to y'all that Buddhism has had a serious influence on physics since the fifties, when it started being noted that the Buddhist view of the universe, from it being billions of years old, and not 6K, to the 8-fold path of quarks, was more like the RW than the JCI view, which, in fact, does lean very much towards determinism.
Going on, we might note that it isn't neurons, per se, that are affected by quantum phenomena, but rather the molecules that influence the actions of the neurons.
Furthermore, we can also observe that, although quantum effects *appear* non-deterministic, they *are* statistically probabilistic...and that, at the macro scale devolves to what we perceive as mechanistic, just as relativistic effects are so trivial at "normal" velocities, that Newtonian mechanics are a perfectly good description.
However...and this is a *major* caveat, all physics deals, in general, with *simple* cases, with few, and controlled inputs. When we get to something as seriously complex as consciousness, we are talking about something that is obviously affected by blood chemistry (y'all taken your antidepressants today?), by social environment (there's *no* peer pressure here, right?), and, hell, for all we know, electromagnetic fields and cosmic rays, playing games with the brain chemistry (e.g., brownian motion).
To suggest "an* answer to consciousness seems to me to be a massive overstatement/simplification. To suggest that *only* humans are conscious, which I think I saw a
Claiming Jesus Is The Answer to all questions, btw, is only true in the case of those who, I am constantly astounded to learn, can think well enough so as to tie their shoes in the morning, much less click a mouse and punch keys. Oh, and before you flame me, I suggest you read the argument FAQ (it's been on the Net since *long* before the Web - do a search, stupid).
mark
Lessee, in no special order
Internal combustion engines (gas *and* diesel)
These run not only cars, but trucks, and
(*sigh* these days, locomotives), and
generate electricity
Flight
Refrigeration (refrigerators, air conditioning - and if y'all don't think the latter is important, *you* think about going to school in TX in June...)
Antibacterials (esp. TB and polio vaccines)
Aspirin (invented in the 1890's) besides a painkiller, a febrifuge.
anaesthetics
electronic communication (radio, tv, phones)
radar and lasers
computers (of course) in particular, and electronics in general
nuclear physics (the bomb, x-ray machines, etc)
biochemistry - plastics, glues
birth control medications
medical technology (repairs and replacement)
reinforced concrete
photography (incl. films)
I think that covers it...
Let's see...something like 75% of the US population is *not* on the Net, some people *like* things like cards, and letters, and then, of course, it's sorta hard to squeeze jars of jam, or canned hams, or sweaters, or ...even books, like userfriendly, over the wires of the net.
No, guys, information is not quite everything. It's what you *do* with it, which, at some point, comes back to the physical world. If FedUps, and the other delivery services aren't obsolete, then neither is the Post Office.
mark
...to attract folks who Don't Read sf?
In either case, I am *so* tired of it.
When I got into sf fandom, before a good number of y'all were *born*, the criticism from the lit'ry community was that sf, the literature of ideas, "didn't have any character development or growth". So, along came the New Wave, and we got all of that, and more, in spades (e.g., Lord of Light, or Stand on Zanzibar, or...). So what happened, suddenly, lit'rature didn't tell stories, that was *so* declassee, Real Lit (tm) set moods. So thee was Dahlgren, and a number of others.
I haven't heard anything lately, other than them apparently saying that Real Lit only sets mood pieces with people that you *really* wouldn't want to know in RL, and rehashed old garbage. To me, it only shows that the majority of the Lit'ry community has never, in their lives, passed a science course, knows nothing of the computers on which they type their stories, and, in fact, knows little of how the world that they live in functions.
Their reaction, so far as I can tell, only shows that, in order to deal with their inner inferiority, they find demeaning names for those of us who *do* have a clue...or did y'all think nerd, geek, techie, and all the others were lovingly applied nicknames of approbation?
Personally, I won't play their games. I dunno why Hemos feels the need to.
mark