Re: The Conversion of John C Wright

[maru dubshinki]

On 1/5/07, Ritu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Rich said:
>
> > Let's also not forget the great Hellenistic centre of learning at
> > Alexandria, which included the famous library.
>
> I sometimes wish I can forget it...thinking of what happened still makes
> me feel like crying...
>
> Ritu

Not to be a party pooper here, but I feel compelled to point out some things.

>From the EB:
"The museum and library survived for many centuries but were destroyed
in the civil war that occurred under the Roman emperor Aurelian in the
late 3rd century AD; the daughter library was destroyed by Christians
in AD 391." 

Or, from Wikipedia
"Ancient and modern sources identify four possible occasions for the
destruction of the Library:
   1. Caesar's conquest 48 BC;
   2. the attack of Aurelian in the 3rd century;
   3. the decree of Theophilus in 391;
   4. the Muslim conquest in 642 or thereafter.

Each of these has been viewed with suspicion by other scholars as an
effort to place the blame on particular actors. Moreover, each of
these events is historically problematic. In the first and second
case, there is clear evidence that the library was not in fact
destroyed at those times. The third episode has had some strong
supporters, including Edward Gibbon, but still many dispute this. The
fourth episode was not documented by any contemporary source, although
some maintain that the final destruction of the Library took place at
this time." 


~maru
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Re: The Conversion of John C Wright

[maru dubshinki]

On 1/5/07, Robert Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I guess that is part of what fascinates me about all this. That
> someone who has the ability to write as well as he does in fiction,
> will when writing a blog make it so painfully obvious that he has
> "drunk the kool-aid".
> I don't in any way begrudge him his belief and in general find
> "believers" to be reasonable in all realms only excepting a rigourous
> examination of their faith [note].
> But Wright seems to go far beyond that, he seems to have swallowed
> whole and digested the American right wing version of christianity and
> it is now a part of his being. I almost expect to see him go on an
> anti-evolution rant any day now.
...
> xponent
> Wide World Of Whatchamacallit Maru
> rob

It might be amusing to compile a list of such authors. I nominate
Orson Scott Card and Terry Goodkind to follow Wright!

~maru
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Re: Library book sales - huzzah!

[maru dubshinki]

On 11/22/06, Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> maru dubshinki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On 11/20/06, Deborah Harrell wrote:


> >  ...Also found: _Consider Philebas_
> > (?sp?), several Tony Hillerman Southwestern
> >mysteries I was looking for...

> I wonder if Consider Philebas is where Banks got his
> Consider Phlebas
> from? It's an interesting title which didn't really
> seem to be explained by the book.
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consider_Phlebas>


Hence the "(?sp?)" afterward in my post...

Actually, I think 'Philebas' sounds nicer out loud. ;)

Debbi
Borderline Snarkiness Maru


Actually, I was serious there. Reading the Wikipedia article, I see
that it's from The Wasteland.

   Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
   Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
   And the profit and loss.

   A current under sea

   Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell
   He passed the stages of his age and youth
   Entering the whirlpool.

   Gentile or Jew

   O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
   Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

But that only pushes the question off further: what did Eliot mean?
What did Banks mean about Eliot's meaning?

~maru
[Once Ummon asked
a letter light//
Are you a gardener>//
//Yes// it replied\\
//Why have turnips no roots>\\
Ummon asked the gardener\
who could not reply\\
//Because\\ said Ummon//
rainwater is plentiful]
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Re: Library book sales - huzzah!

[maru dubshinki]

On 11/20/06, Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

When I recently joshed about elephants in spaceships,
somebody here mentioned _Footfall_ as the book to
read; last week, what did I spy on the SF shelf of our
library's booksale but that very title?!  I haven't
started it (I'm in the middle of too many right now --
gonna have to start some over, like _Hyperion_, b/c
I've forgotten pertinent details], but I will get to
it at some point.  Also found: _Consider Philebas_
(?sp?), several Tony Hillerman Southwestern mysteries
I was looking for, and the middle of a Timothy Zahn
trilogy.;)

.

Debbi


I wonder if Consider Philebas is where Banks got his Consider Phlebas
from? It's an interesting title which didn't really seem to be
explained by the book. 

~maru
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Re: Why junk email will NEVER go away.

[maru dubshinki]

On 11/14/06, Gary Nunn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Last April, I created an email address to use for my mom at H & R Block.  I
only used that address for that one specific reason. I never posted it or
used it for ANYTHING else.  Since April, that email address has received
just under 3000 pieces of spam.

I emailed H&R block security with a complaint, and their response was that
when I checked the box and agreed to their terms of service, I agreed to
allow them to "share" my email address with "carefully selected partners".

I guess their carefully selected partners all sell sex aids, diet patches
and everything else you see in typical spam.

So, that made me go look at other online agreements at places I do business
with like Chase bank, credit card companies and so forth.

EVERY single company has that clause in their online terms of service that
indicate they can share your information with selected partners.

Spam will NEVER stop because companies will always share your email address
with their partners. Unfortunately, in the case of H&R Block, their
carefully selected partners really meant whoever pays us the most for our
client list.

If you doubt this, go to any company you do business with and somewhere
buried in their terms of service or privacy statement will be the clause
allowing them to share you information.


The irony here is that Gmail tagged your email as spam.

~maru
I have plenty of spam, along with some spam (on spam), spammy spam
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Re: Quote of the day.....

[maru dubshinki]

On 11/4/06, Gary Nunn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


The box said 'Requires Windows 95 or better'. So I installed LINUX.

- Unknown


I remember that quote... Used to be Unix though.

~maru
Remember, GNU's Not Unix
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Liberty means never having to say things aren't going well

[maru dubshinki]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/21/world/middleeast/21statistics.html

U.N. Says Iraq Seals Data on the Civilian Toll
By WARREN HOGE

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 20 -- The United Nations office in Baghdad says
that Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has ordered the
country's medical authorities to stop providing the organization with
monthly figures on the number of civilians killed and wounded in the
conflict there, according to a confidential cable.


The cable, dated Oct. 17 and sent to United Nations officials in New
York and Geneva by Ashraf Qazi, the United Nations envoy to Iraq, says
the prohibition may hinder the ability of his office to give accurate
accounts in its bimonthly human rights reports on the levels of
violence and the effect on Iraqi society.

Concern over the numbers of civilians who have died in Iraq has risen
sharply at a time when organized attacks by insurgents are swelling
the numbers of victims and when a new report from a team of Iraqi and
American researchers shows that more than 600,000 civilians have died
in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion.

Mr. Qazi, a former Pakistani diplomat, says that the order to let the
prime minister's office take over the release of the numbers came down
a day after a United Nations report for July and August showed a
serious upward spike in the number of dead and wounded. The leader of
the Health Ministry in Iraq appealed to be allowed to continue
supplying the figures to the United Nations but was turned down
according to a subsequent letter from the prime minister's office, Mr.
Qazi's cable said.

The existence of the cable was reported Friday by The Washington Post.

Feisal al-Istrabadi, Iraq's deputy ambassador to the United Nations,
said he had not seen the cable and therefore could not comment on its
specifics. "But what I can say is what the prime minister is aiming
for is to have one voice reflecting accurate information about the
statistics of those who are dying every day," he said. "So, the
concern was that the Ministry of Health, which has had accurate
figures to date, be the official source of the information.

"It is trying to avoid a situation where different agencies, which may
have different perspectives, put out sets of numbers that are, in
fact, not as accurate as they should be."

The most recent United Nations report, published in September, showed
that 3,590 people were killed in July and 3,009 in August in violence
across the country. Compiled by statistics from Baghdad's central
morgue and from hospitals and morgues countrywide, the report posited
an average death rate of 97 people per day.

The United Nations reports have been cited by independent researchers
as reliable indicators of the incidence of violence in Iraq and were
not disputed by the Iraqi government until the September report that
showed sharp rises in the figures.

In his cable, Mr. Qazi described a process by which his office tried
to compile the most reliable statistics.

He said that initially his office had been able to overcome Iraqi
government reluctance to release figures by obtaining statistics from
the Health Ministry's Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad.

The institute records the number of unidentified civilians killed
violently whose bodies are taken to the morgue in Baghdad, but not
those killed violently whose bodies are taken to hospitals and later
handed over to families for burial. Therefore, Mr. Qazi said, the
institute's figures represented only "an indicator, albeit imperfect,
of the growing number of civilian victims in the capital."

To come up with a more thorough account, Mr. Qazi said, the United
Nations combined the institute's findings with figures from the
Department of Operations at the Ministry of Health, which records
those killed or wounded as a result of violence from hospitals across
almost all parts of the country.

Mr. Qazi noted that the figures "may have contributed to an increased
international awareness regarding the severe consequences that the
conflict in Iraq is having on civilians."

The cable said that following the release of the last United Nations
human rights report on Sept. 20, the prime minister's office
"expressed doubts" about its accuracy.

The next day, the Ministry of Health was told that it should no longer
release its figures but instead channel them through the prime
minister's office. Mr. Qazi said he learned of this on Oct. 12.

Mr. Qazi said the United Nations would continue to seek figures from
the Department of Operations at the Ministry of Health and "use our
contacts to see what measure of verification may be possible."



~maru
Is any comment really needed?
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Re: Paradox, or, Breaking the mind of logic

[maru dubshinki]

On 10/11/06, Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
.

He does. Because of the omniintelligence hypothesis, each native
can reason like this:

(a) If there is only one blue dotted native, then, seeing that
everybody else is red dotted, this native will commit ritual
suicide in the first night.

Induction Hypothesis:

(b) Suppose that there are (N+1) blue dotted natives. Then, each
of these natives, noticing that the other (N) blue dotted natives
didn't commit suicide in the N-th night, will commit ritual
suicide in the (N+1)-th night

The naturalist provides information because he starts the process,
by forcing step (a) of the induction.

Alberto Monteiro


This is basically my conclusion as well. I put it differently, though:
with the outsider's pronouncement, each native can know reason about
the beliefs of each of the others. While it is true that the outsider
provides no new information about the physical situation to each blue
dot, each blue dot now knows something new: that each native *must*
believe there to be at least one blue dot, because the stranger told
them all so, where before each blue dot could believe that they
themself were red and the other blue dot ignorant of their status.
With this forcing of belief, the induction argument becomes operative.

~maru
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Re: Paradox, or, Breaking the mind of logic

[maru dubshinki]

On 10/11/06, David Hobby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

jdiebremse wrote:
...
> But how does this work for N(blue) = 4?
>
> The initial state is that each native has two cases:
>
> 1) There are three blue-dot natives, and each blue dot native sees two
> blue dot natives.
>
> 2) There are four blue-dot natives, including himself, and each blue dot
> native sees three blue dot natives.
>
> In this case, I don't see how the naturalist provides any additional
> information. In the initial state, every native knows that every other
> native knows that there is at least one blue dot.
>
> JDG

JDG--

Maru's original post didn't say this, but the puzzle has
an additional assumption: All the natives are expert
logicians, they all know that all are, they all know that
everybody knows that all the natives are expert logicians,
etc. Without this, nothing happens even for only two blues,
as each would say, "So, maybe the other guy sees only reds
but is dumb."


True, true, but remember this is a logic problem, after all. If we
wanted to specify all the assumptions, we'd get into silliness like
"there exists an objective reality" or "each native will succeed in
killing themselves should they try".


The role of the outsider is to make it clear to everybody
that any situation with only one blue leads to suicide.
Of course when N = 4 everybody knows there are blues, but
this is different.


But isn't the case of only one blue already clear without the outsider?


All the natives would eventually conclude that there could
not be just three blues, since each of the three would only
see two, and eventually wonder why those two hadn't killed
themselves, finally concluding that the reason was that
each of the two actually saw two blues, since the one thinking
all this was the third blue.

Etc!
 ---David


And this reasoning stands for all N equal to or greater than 3?

~maru
Mmm... sicilian...
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Paradox, or, Breaking the mind of logic

[maru dubshinki]

A while ago on #Wikipedia, I fell into a discussion with a fellow
editor. He posed me a question about the following riddle:

Suppose there is an island with a number of natives on it. Each native
has either a red or a blue spot on their forehead. But they are not
allowed to indicate to each other or otherwise divine in any direct
observational fashion what the color of their particular spot might
be. One of the iron-clad customs of these indigenous persons is that
any native who deduces the color of their spot through logic must kill
themselves that midnight.

Now, suppose further that of all the natives there, only two have blue
spots and all the rest have red spots. A outsider comes along (perhaps
he is an ignorant ethnographer), and truthfully mentions to the
natives that "At least one of you has a blue dot on your forehead."

What will happen to the natives, and how long will it take?


(Answer will be supplied below to further the cause of discussing the question)





spoiler

Are you really sure you don't want to figure it out yourself?

If you need a hint, you can always Google the problem. It's a classic
logic problem you know.




Well, if you're sure.

Begin spoilers



All the natives will eventually kill themselves. The precise number of
days is something like N+1 days.
The reason is that if either blue dot looks around, and sees the other
blue dot, they should believe that they are probably red (since most
natives are red), and thus there is only one blue dot, the other guy.
So they believe that the other blue dot will kill themselves that day.
Now, he won't (because there is another blue dot, and he is using the
same reasoning - to him, it's the *other* blue dot who should be
killing himself). On the second day, nobody will be dead, and so the
second blue dot must conclude that the reason for this is because they
themself are the second blue dot. Both will kill themselves. This same
reasoning can be generalized (mathematical induction?) for all numbers
2 and above, since if 3 blue dots, they will wait to day 3 before all
the blues are dead, and so forth. If there is only one blue dot, then
they will kill themselves immediately, since there is at least one
blue dot, and they know that everybody except themself is red, thus
they must be the blue dot.

Anyway, once the blues have killed themselves off, all the reds will
immediately commit suicide: they followed the blues' reasoning after
all, and know that all the blues are dead, which means that they are
red, and so since they know, they must kill themselves.
So that's that. Necessary background is over and done with.

The problem that fellow editor posed me (once I'd solved the original
riddle) was this: in the case of 2 blue dots and a bunch of reds, each
blue dot *already* knows what the original stranger told them, that
there was at least one blue dot. They can see the other blue dot! So
it's quite obvious to them that there is at least one blue dot, and so
the stranger tells them absolutely nothing new - they already knew
what he told me, after all. What is not quite as obvious is that if
the stranger is removed, the 2 blues will exist in stasis; in the
first round, each will be waiting for the other to do something (their
situations remember are absolutely symmetrical), and so *every* round
they will be waiting  for the other to do something, and of course
that means they never do anything. The reds are irrelevant since they
don't affect matters until the blues are gone.

Now, the stranger appears to be absolutely useless, but nevertheless,
removed from the picture the whole thing breaks down in the case where
N = 2. What is the use of the useless stranger?

~maru
   We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
   But it is on the space where there is nothing
   That the usefulness of the wheel depends.
   We turn clay to make a vessel;
   But it is on the space where there is nothing
   That the usefulness of the vessel depends.
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Re: The Morality of Killing Babies

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/24/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


By "regulars", I think he means people who post frequently.

How frequently is frequent enough, I don't know.

So I don't know how many he means.

Julia


Well, we can find out simply by asking each poster whether they get
enough roughage in their daily diet.

~maru
the least intrusive methods are best...
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Re: Brin: basic is evil, why it must be eradicated

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/23/06, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Maru wrote:
>
>> The Wikipedia entry for R is under "GNU-S" :-)
>
>
> I hate to play the pedantic resident Wikipedia expert here,
>
marudubinski, I presume :-)


You forgot the "Dr."! ...(Nah, I'm kidding.)


Ok, but if we want to use the search engine from the initial page, it's much
simpler to search for "GNU-S" then to search for "R" :-P

Alberto Monteiro


Certainly, but how many people know of it as the GNU implementation of
the S programming language (or is it family now? Doesn't seem very
clear) rather than as the "R programming language"? Google hits prove
nothing of course, but "R programming language" gets ~50,300,000 ghits
and GNU-S ~3,910,000  (I'm not including hits for "GNU S", since
looking over the top 20 shows it to be a rather ambiguous term, but
even "GNU-S"'s first hit is for the mail reader Gnus).

~maru
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Re: Brin: basic is evil, why it must be eradicated

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/22/06, Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
.

The Wikipedia entry for R is under "GNU-S" :-)

Alberto Monteiro


I hate to play the pedantic resident Wikipedia expert here, but it's
actually at [[R (programming language)]]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_%28programming_language%29), like it
should (since programming languages' whose name are ambiguous are
supposed to be disambiguated rather than be at [[R programming
language]], which could be misleading). Now, [[GNU S]] and [[GNU-S]]
do indeed redirect to the actual article, but that's not the same
thing as the article being at those names...

~maru
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Re: Jobs, not trees! (Collapse, Chapter 2)

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/11/06, Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
..

No. Anytime a culture squanders its resources, it
runs the risk of destroying itself; it may be made
worse by the natural environment (like Greenland) or
climatic change (frex the little ice age).

An aside: has anyone proposed that part of what led to
the downfall of Egypt was its resource depletion by
building monuments to/for the dead? Although they
certainly survived many centuries - and of course had
a very large area to exploit, with neighbors to
plunder and so forth.

Debbi
who got to recheck the book out, 'cause it wasn't on
hold! :)


I'm not sure the pyramids and other funerary things can really explain
much of the ancient Egyptians. I mean, the big pyramids were Old
Kingdom predominantly, and the interregnums, Middle and New Kindgoms
were more inclined to rock tombs, and it was during those periods that
Egypt reached its zenith and approached its nadir, no?
Also, would the pyramids have had all that much of an economic effect?
The farmers were not all that busy in the periods they were
conscripted, and I don't think there would be much of an opportunity
cost - if the farmers weren't working on various infrastructural
improvement projects and vanity projects like pyramids and temples,
what enduring gains could they have made? Not much; it's nowhere
comparable to today where any nation that forced a sizable proportion
of its populace to do manual labor on vanity projects would be eaten
alive by the opportunity costs.

~maru
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Re: I Recommend...........

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/9/06, Robert G. Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


One day the boy met the monster that went west
"I have a name" said the boy.
"It's a wonderful name."
And then the monster that went west said...
"I don't need a name."
"I'm happy even if I don't have a name."
"Because we're monsters without names."
The boy ate the monster that went west.
Even though he now had a name
There was no one left to call him by his name.
Johan.
It is a wonderful name.

xponent

Monster Maru

rob


I *knew* another Brin-eller would discover Monster one day!

Now we can have semi-involved discussions of whether Monster would be
better as a live action series, why the ending themes are so
compelling, and whether the early portions of the series moves too
slowly.

~maru
/tenma-chan!
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Re: unholy OS wars

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/6/06, Richard Baker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

JohnR said:

> What we really need is an OS with all of the advantages of XP and
> Ubuntu and none of the disadvantages of either. Then maybe we
> would have a decent operating system.

That's called "OS X". Oh, except for the fact that OS X is much easier
to use (and prettier!) than XP.

And traditional Unix doesn't actually make a whole heap of sense. Why
are there dozens of different configuration file formats? Why does no
other Unix have things like launchd and lookupd but rather a rats nest
of systems for starting processes and looking up directory data?

Rich


Tradition!
Why, without tradition, we'd be like... like a fiddler on a roof!

Non-facetious answer: you're seriously underestimating the incredible
constraint of backwards compatibility. There's millions and millions
of lines of C and other Unixy languages programs, representing
uncountable millions of dollars and man-hours of which crucial bits
depend on that "rats nest". Rewriting that for a more sensible
operating system design is simply unfeasible - I've heard that IBM
maintains backwards compatibility for programs back to the IBM 360 and
even earlier -- they're not doing it for the hell of it you know.

There are endless scads of research operating systems that are clearly
superior to the big 6 - in capability (Genera, the LMI OS, Plan 9),
mathematically verified reliability and security guarantees (think
Coyotos and such), extensibility (SPING, the Lisp machine OSs) etc.
And why has essentially none of them caught on? (I'm going to except
GNU HURD here since there's an outside possibility that when it gets
POSIX decently implemented the Debian HURD project might actually
accomplish something)

No backwards compatibility.  Go ahead and analyze the various big 6:
Windows was backwards compatible with DOS, which was the first big
mover in the small microcomputers; Mac OS X, see Mac OS 9 and the
larger microcomputers; the BSDs and Linux were determinedly backwards
compatible with the long lineage of Unix.

If people don't value security enough to take the comparatively
trivial tasks of switching from Microsoft Word to OpenOffice's
formats, and so on and so forth, why the *dickens* do you think the
*developers* will dive back into their code to port to some novel
operating system which presumably would otherwise break their programs
in all sorts of novel ways (since otherwise there would seem to be
little point to the new OS)? Chicken and egg problem.

In the short-term, that rats nest is utterly rational. Unfortunately,
the short term turns into the long term.

~maru
notice I'm typing this with a Qwerty keyboard...
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Re: Religious freedom

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/4/06, Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


On 04/09/2006, at 6:44 AM, Andrew Crystall wrote:

>>
>> Really. So Keith Henson is not an atheist? I'd be surprised to
>> learn that.
>
> Yes, there's allways the odd one. But in my experience, the people
> opposing Scientology are in the ratio of arround 20:1
> theists:atheists.

Maybe because the families of people affected are more often theists,
maybe because there are just MORE theists than atheists in the first
place?

Charlie


That first might be closer to the truth; I recall hearing that as a
percentage of the population (willing to admit it to a pollster),
atheists were not much above 10%, if that.

~maru
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Re: Religious freedom

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/2/06, William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


On 2 Sep 2006, at 11:49PM, Nick Arnett wrote:

> On 9/2/06, PAT MATHEWS <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> TIME! Everything's been repeated - asserted, not debated - several
>> times
>> over and we're getting into battling assertions now with ad hominem
>> trimmings.
>
>
> I resent that. I believe I wrote something original about pink
> unicorns.
>
Perhaps the pink unicorn is actually the elephant in the room that
nobody talks about? Perhaps a pink elephant. Or an elephantine
unicorn? Or some strange hybrid of unicorn and elephant? Perhaps an
indeterminate number of them are performing a gavotte on the head of
a pin?

After all, nobody can prove a negative and it's all just a theory
anyway...

Third Policeman Maru

--
William T Goodall


Clearly that the pink unicorn is actually an Invisible Pink Unicorn,
as no one can see it.

ph34r t3h |_||\|1C0rN's |-|00\/3s!

~maru
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Re: Religious freedom

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/2/06, Andrew Crystall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Here's just the best link again: http://www.xenu.net

And you know who fights them? Not your precious atheists, it's
Christians and Jews.

AndrewC


Really. So Keith Henson is not an atheist? I'd be surprised to learn that.

~maru
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Henson#Henson_versus_Scientology
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Re: unholy OS wars (was Re: history is evil, why it must be eradicated)

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/3/06, Andrew Crystall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On 4 Sep 2006 at 1:33, William T Goodall wrote:

> > In the UK, the difference for someone like me who builds my own is in
> > the region of 60% more expensive for the mac in raw performance
> > terms, and I cannot get a base spec Mac which suits me as a gamer.
>
> So by non-technophile you don't mean somebody who doesn't build their
> own PC or run Linux. OK, so what do the technophiles do then?

I build my own PC because when I was first doing it ('92) that was
the only realistic option. It remains far cheaper and I can ensure
build quality.

And I have Linux...I just don't use it as my primary OS.

That wasn't what I meant, however. That's just your take on what I
typed, running a post of multiple parts into one.

And yes, I despite blue LED's. My case sits beside my desk. Its a
utilitarian grey and pale blue, and its best features are the power
button is on the top front and it has a carry handle on top.

AndrewC


Could you elaborate on this? I'm kind of curious since I don't think
computer building has been discussed on list, and I've been
contemplating building a PC for some time now (following the template
of Ars Technica's Hot Rod
(http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-200608.ars/3),
although I'd probably wait for a decent AMD replacement for the Core 2
Duo processors they reccomend - I just plain don't like Intel.
Something about them bugs me.)

~maru
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Re: unholy OS wars

[maru dubshinki]

On 9/3/06, William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


On 4 Sep 2006, at 2:27AM, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro wrote:

> Andrew Crystall wrote:
>>
>>> A low-end Mac Pro will cost you $2,124 compared with $3,071 for a
>>
>> In America. For one specific model. And with a very expensive Windows
>> PC make for comparison. And without similar options for warranty,
>> etc.
>>
> Here in Brazil it's even worse. A Mac costs about twice as much
> as the equivalent PC-cum-Windoze.
>

But that's a short sighted view. The Mac is much cheaper in the long
term. I recently retired an old Mac still in working order, that was
nearly ten years old. Ten years of useful life!

Reliable technical sources available on the internet confirm that a
Windows PC connected to the internet is filled with backdoors,
trojans, key-loggers and other malware in ten minutes. Ten minutes of
useful life!

Thus even if a Mac cost $100,000 and a PC only $1 over the course of
ten years the Mac would work out cheaper! Still only $100,000 whereas
you'd need over $500,000 worth of PCs!

Comparisons Maru
--
William T Goodall


Oh, how I wish PCs cost only $1... I'd buy a couple dozen and stick
Linux on them; even accounting for the time to set up OpenMosix and a
networked file system (to cope with those darn PCs dying on you every
few years), I'd still be ahead by scores of thousands of dollars.

~maru
/I hear the PDP-11 equivalent today would be less than $1...
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Re: James A. van Allen, 1914-2006

[maru dubshinki]

On 8/10/06, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

<>



-- Ronn! :)

"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever."
-- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy


That's really too bad. My father studied under him as a student, and
he seemed like a neat guy (quite aside from his accomplishments).

~maru
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Re: Moving to Montana Soon?

[maru dubshinki]

On 8/2/06, Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Collapse by Jarred Diamond
Part One: Modern Montana
Chapter One: Under Montana's Big Sky

Diamond picks Montana for his first chapter because he can gage the
attitudes of the people that live there, because it provides a contrast to
the more fragile societies discussed in later chapters and because it
illustrates the five main themes of the book: human impacts on the
environment; climate change; a society's relations with neighboring
friendly societies; a society's exposure to acts of other potential
hostile societies; and the importance of a society's responses to it's
problems. He uses Montana as a reference for the reader. A familiar
situation with which we can relate to the more severe problems he
discusses later on.

A similarity to my home town of Morgan Hill, Ca. to the Bitterroot Valley
is the contrast in attitudes of the old timers; farmers and ranchers with
sizeable land holdings and upper-middle class to upper class professionals
with a fondness for the small town atmosphere in close proximity to a
major metropolitan area. Morgan Hill has a slow-growth policy that allows
a limited number of new housing units per year. This is frustrating to
landowners because there is a huge demand for housing in the area.

Montana's environmental problems include toxic wastes, forests, soils,
water, climate change, biodiversity losses and introduced pests and while
Diamond classifies Montana as probably the least damaged of the lower 48
states, the problems he describes seem severe.

One interesting conundrum he discusses is the conflict between businesses
that exist to make money and "moral obligations" to clean up after
themselves. Is this a good argument against the preeminence of a free
market economy or can we have both a strong economy and a clean
environment?



Fascinating! Read on.

--
Doug
Me and the pygmy pony over by the dental floss bush, maru


This is a long-standing and fascinating (IMO) objection to market economies.

After all, economic activities driven by market economics seem to
inevitably fall into tragedies of the commons, which is exactly what
one sees here: the penalties fall on (other people's) descendants in
the far future, or even if they manifest soon enough to be on a
company's radar (remember that there is discounting of possible future
liabilities going on here; I dunno what the discount rate is, but it's
probably pretty high when you consider examples like the tobacco
companies), they are often negative externalities for which the
company can get off scot-free.  What makes Montana such a good example
is that because of the light long-term population of Indians, we can
see pretty well just how our birds done come home to roost.

Unsurprisingly, I think this is very much a matter of tradeoffs.
Clearly a market economy can find effective ways to minimize long-term
impacts if the market is sufficiently distorted (say, by government
regulations), but almost by definition, such a distorted market is not
The Efficient Market, and so there's a real cost there.

~maru
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Re: My Wraptures-ready Sunday

[maru dubshinki]

On 7/30/06, Gibson Jonathan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Greetings Tribe of Brin,

For those of you who use graphics in your work and play I have a small
treat.
I am pleased to announce to this small group the imminent public
offering of my multi-CD image libraries. Not a must-buy Wall Street
deal to buy stock in an image company, but a gift to the world open
source-ish. I'm hoping to generate good ju-ju releasing this
intellectual property after many years under moth-ball, The hope is
traffic flocks, leaves a gratuity, and {ideally} purchases the newer,
snappier, yet-more clever HD-sized textures vastly better suited to
this XXIst century. You folks are invited to scratch-n-sniff the
original collection as I prepare for a fall-winter launch of my
high-def Pro line. I'm only telling a handful of friends and you folk
as I am not terribly interested in generating publicity - yet. I'm
eager for technical & business feedback and of course curious where the
low-key viral marketing leads. If I suddenly end up with a tiger by
the tail, then all the better.

http://www.formandfunction.com/wraptures/index.html

...


Gigabytes of fun. Enjoy!
- Jonathan -


For what it is worth, your link is down for me.

~maru
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Re: Look on my works, ye mighty...

[maru dubshinki]

On 7/30/06, Charlie Bell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Not yet - it's silly money in the bookshops here, and the library
doesn't have it yet. But don't wait on me, i'll just put the
discussion to one side 'til i can catch up.

Charlie


Far be it from me to encourage breaking of - oh, what the heck.

You know you can find it online pretty easily, right? For example, a
quick search turned up an audio version of all things:
http://www.isohunt.com/torrents.php?ihq=collapse+diamond

~maru
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Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex

[maru dubshinki]

On 7/24/06, David Hobby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

maru dubshinki wrote:
> I think having them cancel out would be a better idea. We could
> formalize each god as "really" being a infinite series of ethical
> axioms (covering every possible action), each of which says to do or
> do not a specific something; with an infinite number of gods, every
> possible binary string of axioms will be represented, but each one
> will cancel out (since if we have one god with YYYNNN, we *know*
> there is another with NNNYYY) with another god's string. I suspect
> we need not worry about one string "outvoting" another string, since
> subsets of the infinite-gods set could themselves be infinite?

Maru--

Yes, that's the kind of thing I was thinking of. Alberto
was talking about probability. Since all probabilities
sum to one, that might well imply that each god got
probability zero.

You seem to be looking at this in terms of voting. Maybe
you can make it work, but infinite elections do have
problems...

By the way, some of the ethical axioms would contradict
each other, so some of the possible strings would be
contradictory. I presume you'll stick with tradition,
and assign them all gods too? : )

 ---David

As well to count the angels Maru


"The Gods Must Be Crazy"?

~maru
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Re: Wealthy couples travel to U.S. to choose baby's sex

[maru dubshinki]

On 7/19/06, David Hobby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Alberto Monteiro wrote:
> Dan Minette wrote:
>> So, I don't think it is helpful to make arguments based on one's own
>> axiom set and then expect them to sound "reasonable" to someone who
>> holds a different axiom set.
>>
> Or we can hold "all" sets of axioms, assign a prior probability
> to each of them, then apply Bayesian analysis with real world
> examples and get a posteriori probability for each sets. And
> then decide based on some conservative criterium, like "do not
> kill if it's murder with 5% or more probability".
>
> Alberto Monteiro

Alberto--

Interesting, but there might be some obstacles. There are
an infinite number of axiom sets based on the pronouncements
of gods. I imagine that we would have some difficulty
agreeing on what probability to assign them. : )

(The obvious solution is to assign all gods probability
zero, but that too might prove unpopular...)

 ---David


I think having them cancel out would be a better idea. We could
formalize each god as "really" being a infinite series of ethical
axioms (covering every possible action), each of which says to do or
do not a specific something; with an infinite number of gods, every
possible binary string of axioms will be represented, but each one
will cancel out (since if we have one god with YYYNNN, we *know*
there is another with NNNYYY) with another god's string. I suspect
we need not worry about one string "outvoting" another string, since
subsets of the infinite-gods set could themselves be infinite?

~maru
we can clearly through a simple diagonal argument along the lines of
cantor that the number of angels is uncountable, and thus the number
of angels that can dance on the head of a pin is the same number as
the number of real numbers...
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Re: Internet Archive Wayback Machine

[maru dubshinki]

On 7/17/06, Gary Nunn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I'm not sure if this archive is cool or disturbing. Cool for historic
purposes, but a bit disturbing if you once posted things you may not want
potential employers to find.


>From the webpage...

About the Wayback Machine

Browse through 55 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.
To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page
where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the
archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages
at as close a date as possible. Keyword searching is not currently
supported.


http://www.archive.org/web/web.php


One of the things that saddens me most about the current state of
Wikipedia is that we don't use the Internet Archive all that much. So
many dead links just get removed. It's heart-breaking.

~maru
on the cool side here
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Re: Physics Prof Finds Thermate in WTC Physical Samples

[maru dubshinki]

On 6/27/06, Robert J. Chassell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Although at least muon-catalyzed cold fusion worked . . . although
in the short life of a muon, it apparently cannot catalyze enough
fusion reactions to make as much energy as it took to make the
muon in the first place, so it is not a great new source of
energy.

Muon-catalyzed fusion is elegant: the muons cause protons to come
closer together!  If I remember rightly, a muon as currently produced
by humans must catalyze more than 800 fusion reactions before the
method becomes energy-effective.  (I cannot remember how many a muon
catalyzes, but the number is, or was, considerably smaller.)

I was in Provo at the time, and I'll try to find a summary I wrote
of what went on if anyone's interested . . .

Yes, I am curious.

--
Robert J. Chassell


The number appears to have been around 100.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion

~maru
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Re: Let your fingers do the computing . . .

[maru dubshinki]

On 6/5/06, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

At 03:19 PM Monday 6/5/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > >Shocking, just shocking. :-)
> > >
> > >Dan M.
> >
> >
> > And the second time you use it, it'll be revolting.
> >
>But, the third time you use it, you will get a charge out of it. :-)
>
>Dan M.
>
>
>___
>And the 4th time you use it stops working because the grease from
>the potatoe chips and buffalo chicken wings have destroyed the screen


Methinks you have stumbled upon its main vulnerability . . .


--Ronn! :)


Dammit! Were only I your parents, I could ground you both and end
these horribly punny jokes!

~maru
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Re: When BatLeths Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have BatLeths

[maru dubshinki]

On 5/31/06, Horn, John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> On Behalf Of Damon Agretto
>
> You guys and your swords. I'll take a pollaxe...

Never bring a sword, batleth or a poleaxe to a gunfight!

 - jmh


I think you meant never bring the weapon of public opinion (a pollaxe)
to a knife fight.

~maru
Of course, one should never bring a gun to a political fight either...
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Re: Good Math, Bad Math entry

[maru dubshinki]

On 5/21/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

http://goodmath.blogspot.com/2006/05/magic-23.html

Mark takes on pyramidiots (as one commenter tags them).

If you enjoy people poking fun at conspiracy theorists, this is a
must-read.  If you have absolutely no interest in that sort of thing,
don't click the link.  :)

Julia


If I didn't know better, I'd say that's just a bunch of Discordians having fun.

~maru
hail eris!
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Re: Autism PSA

[maru dubshinki]

On 5/16/06, Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On May 16, 2006, at 8:20 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> Documentary Film on Autism Stuns Internet Viewers
> "Autism Every Day" produced for Autism Speaks.

This is very difficult to watch: my heart is breaking for these parents
and their children...

I think it's impossible for me to say this without pissing somebody
off --
 including myself -- but watching this reminded me that there are worse
things than having your child die of brain cancer.

Dave


I'm curious- where are you guys getting the file from? The linked
Autism Speaks page doesn't work- nothing downloads.

~maru
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Re: Brin: BASIC

[maru dubshinki]

On 5/8/06, Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


The Fool wrote:
>
> I don't get it.  QBasic came standard with MS-DOS 5-7.
>
But not with Mac...

BTW, I can find Linux compilers/interpreters for all languages
[C/C++, Fortran, Pascal, Perl, Python, Haskell, Prolog, etc],
but not BASIC. Maybe Mac lacks BASIC too. Can this be an
anti-M$ Conpiracy? :-)

Alberto Monteiro


Then you're not really trying. I found an article with "overviews of
Purebasic, Realbasic, HBasic, Gambas, XBasic, KBasic, and Phoenix
Object Basic." (all for linux, apparently) in 10 or so seconds of
Googling.

~maru
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Re: Religious affiliations of superheroes

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/28/06, Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> maru dubshinki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That anime girl-hero one... *apprehensively*...
> wouldn't happen to be Man-Faye, would it?

Ah, yes -- that was it!  Do I need to know something
else about that one?  One now gets the feeling that
fishiness is ongoing...

Debbi
who is perpetually amazed at the bizarre Colorado
weather: T-shirt Sunday, snow and ice Mon-Tues, 70's
yest, and snow again today!


Man-Faye is a bit of a running joke in anime fan-dom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-Faye  <-- has the gory details.

~maru
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Re: Optimism for the USA

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/27/06, Klaus Stock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > inspired later Muslim philosophers and theologians. For example, the
> > Brethren of Sincerity
> > (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brethren_of_Sincerity
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_the_Brethren_of_Sincerity
> > - full disclosure: I wrote those articles) took a position that the
> > Creator was unbounded in ability and attributes, and that to even
> > describe him in remotely earthly (or comprehensible for that metter)
> > terms was to commit a falsity.
>
> Heck. At least visually God resembles a human, as the Bible tell us so.
>
> Darwinists however might conculde that this means very little, because
> during the creation of the universe, apparently no complex structures
> existed - so the similarities with God won't neccessarily extend past the
> basic structure/interaction of elementary particles and energy.
>
> This discussion can of course be circumvented by adopting one of the most
> popular religious viewpoint ("kill all non-belivers").
>
> - Klaus

Yes, that is true. But it is easy to work around such an objection: of
course God could take on a human form, or that's how we perceive him.
Similarly, the Brethren were not Hanbali theologians; they and quite a
few of the other schools accepted multiple non-literal exoteric and
esoteric readings of the scriptures, and indeed, even allegory.

~maru
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Re: Optimism for the USA

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/25/06, Robert J. Chassell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> [I don't say it in the draft, but I have heard that for the past 600
> or so years, various Muslim theologians have said that their God is
> omnipotent and unrestrained. Does anyone know whether this is true?]

>  Robert J. Chassell

Hard to say. I'm not really sure what you are trying to get across?
The supreme deity as omnipotent? That's been around for a lot longer
than 600 years, and Islamic theology is no slouch in picking up neat
innovations like omniscience or omnipotence. Unrestrained does sound a
little more iffy; it reminds me of the Greek Neoplatonists who
inspired later Muslim philosophers and theologians. For example, the
Brethren of Sincerity
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brethren_of_Sincerity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_of_the_Brethren_of_Sincerity
- full disclosure: I wrote those articles) took a position that the
Creator was unbounded in ability and attributes, and that to even
describe him in remotely earthly (or comprehensible for that metter)
terms was to commit a falsity.

~maru
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Re: Evolutionary Psychology, Memes and the Origin of War

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/25/06, Horn, John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > On Behalf Of Keith Henson
> >
> > I have not been posting here much for a while...
>
> How goes the war against the Cult?
>
>  - jmh

Well, the last I or Wikipedia have heard was that he had quietly
decamped Canada for somewhere in the US.

~maru
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Re: Jack Chick parody

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/23/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> http://www.angelfire.com/alt/c4ts2101/tract.html
>
> Three points to the first person to post my favorite text from it.  :)
>
> Julia

"When all you powers are combine... I AM GOD-JESUS!"

~maru
well, if it isn't, it should be.
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Re: Religious affiliations of superheroes

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/20/06, Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yes, I just got to this one (I'm still catching up)...
>
> --- Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > I know I've lost a lot of sleep wondering about
> > this. If you've lain awake
> > at night wondering if Superman is a Methodist or
> > Jimmy Olsen is Lutheran,
> > here are the answers.
> >
> http://www.adherents.com/lit/comics/comic_book_religion.html
>
> Did anyone see Leno last night, and the segment on 'if
> you were a superhero, who would you be?'
> *Hysterical!*
> Monkey Girl, Ice Bitch, Talking Man, and some guy who
> thought he should gross folk out by portraying one of
> the anime girl-heros (don't recall the name).
> EarthMan wore skins, Thunderbolt a T-shirt...Stan Lee
> was there. Excelsior!
>
> Debbi
> aka Lead Mare
> Superpowers: being a werehorse
>  neighing loud enough to rupture eardrums
>  striking hooves on metal starts fires
>  tail can crack like a whip
> (I'll pass on the expulsion of grass fermention
> products... )

That anime girl-hero one... *apprehensively*... wouldn't happen to be
Man-Faye, would it?

~maru
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Re: Linux suckz

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/14/06, Alberto Vieira Ferreira Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Maru Dubshinki wrote:
...
>> an apt-get away. But I see you are a KDE man.  You
> > deserve what you get, you and the GNOME partisans both. Perdition on
> > both your houses!
> >
> If you hate both KDE and GNOME, what else do you like? I got accostumed to
> KDE, and I am conservative [if it ain't broken, don't fix it] :-)
>
> Alberto Monteiro

At the risk of shocking the more tenderminded persons in the audience,
I must confess that my chosen "window manager" is ratpoison.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratpoison
When I need a program that doesn't quite fit the ratpoison paradigm, I
switch over to fluxbox.
Gnome and KDE are slow stifling mountains of cruft and ill-functionality.

~maru
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Re: Great Sam Harris Interview

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/12/06, Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 4/12/06, The Fool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >
> > I believe only in the purity of math.  Everything else is nonsense.
>
>
> Seriously?  And what do you do with Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem?
>
> Nick

Based on what I've read of the Fool's messages, of the dilemma it
poses, I think he would accept the incompleteness choice.

~maru
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Re: Great Sam Harris Interview

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/11/06, Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, 11 Apr 2006 08:33:08 -0700, Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> >  Isn't it blindingly obvious that the bin Ladens of this world find
> > followers because of the social and economic conditions where they
> > recruit?
>
> No, that's not obvious at all.  I'm pretty sure that many of his recruits
> are middle/upper income types.  I would argue that it is the wealth of the
> region that stimulates terrorism and that if the Middle East was
> economically and politically irrelevant there would be no epidemic of
> terrorism.
>
> --
> Doug

Seconded. I remember reading the 9/11 report and interestedly looking
at the wealth statistics- predominately middle and upper class (bin
Laden himself being a good example).

~maru
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Re: Linux suckz

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/13/06, Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> maru dubshinki wrote:
...
> > Shouldn't it be used on a partition?
> >
> Both uses are possible. But _after_ I have installed the
> system, there's no safe way to create a partition.

Well, not easily. I'm pretty sure the Reisers and Ext2 and up support resizing.

> > And if you are using it on a
> > partition, are you running as root? And if so, is your partition set
> > to be a swap partition?
> >
> There should be no problem with mkswap, because I had done that before,
> with Fedora Core 2 and some of those one-CD-distros.
>
> > If all that doesn't work, just use Debian or Ubuntu. :)
> >
> :-)
>
> I tried Kubuntu, but I hated it. How can a linux distro come
> _without_ gcc and make?

Meh. It's just an apt-get away. But I see you are a KDE man.  You
deserve what you get, you and the GNOME partisans both. Perdition on
both your houses!

Incidentally, I'm probably trying to teach my grandmother to sew here,
but are you really sure you're using the right kind of file? The man
pages make it sound like a very specific, profane kind of file is
needed.

> Alberto Monteiro

~maru
Tomorrow, tomorrow, it's just an apt-get install tomorrow away...
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Re: Linux suckz

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/12/06, Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> After a F&R [long story...], I am trying to install Fedora Core 4
> in my home computer. So far, no problem that I could not solve
> or see a chance to solve, except this:
>
>   mkswap file1
>
> returns error
>
>   file1: Permission denied
>
> Does anyone know what the hell is going on? mkswap worked with
> every other distro I tried.
>
> Alberto Monteiro
>

Reading the mkswap man page- why are you trying to use it on a file?
Shouldn't it be used on a partition? And if you are using it on a
partition, are you running as root? And if so, is your partition set
to be a swap partition?

If all that doesn't work, just use Debian or Ubuntu. :)

~maru
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Re: Tales From Earthsea.........Anime!!!!!

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/9/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Robert Seeberger wrote:
>
> > (I'd provide a link but Wiki seems to be down)
>
> AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!
> AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!
> AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!
> AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!  AAAIGH!
>
> Julia

If you think that annoys you, a mere reader/dilettante editor, what do
you think it does to adminstrators like me?

~maru
On the positive side, it is back up, though slowly. Stupid Florida
colos and crappy power supplies!
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Re: Robert Jordan

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/6/06, The Fool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
...
> Further updates by Jordan himself:
> <>
>
> <>
>
> So help me, if I don't find out definitively who killed asmo, rggrgr!

Forget Asmodean. It was obviously Slayer or Graendal. (Lanfear, alas,
while almost perfect in everyway as a suspect, was trapped at the time
of his death.)

What *I* want to know is what Herid Fel discovered about how to refix
the Dark One's prison as well as the Creator made it, just before the
gholam made hamburger out of'im.

~maru
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Re: Unspeakably offensive canine behavior

[maru dubshinki]

On 4/1/06, Nick Lidster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I figured id use this group for this little question... what do you all know
> about cobweb plots and its relation to chaos theory? My friend is working
> with them now and explained it just simply as they are related to chaos
> theory. Any helpful guidance would be great.
>
> Nick
>

RTFW?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobweb_plot

~Maru
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Re: NASA Reinstates the Dawn Mission

[maru dubshinki]

On 3/27/06, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> March 27, 2006
>
> Erica Hupp/Dean Acosta
> Headquarters, Washington
> (202) 358-1237/1400
>
> RELEASE: 06-108
>
> NASA REINSTATES THE DAWN MISSION
>
> NASA senior management announced a decision Monday to reinstate the
> Dawn mission, a robotic exploration of two major asteroids. Dawn had
> been canceled because of technical problems and cost overruns.
>
> The mission, named because it was designed to study objects dating
> from the dawn of the solar system, would travel to Vesta and Ceres,
> two of the largest asteroids orbiting the sun between Mars and
> Jupiter. Dawn will use an electric ion propulsion system and orbit
> multiple objects.
>
> The mission originally was approved in December 2001 and was set for
> launch in June 2006. Technical problems and other difficulties
> delayed the projected launch date to July 2007 and pushed the cost
> from its original estimate of $373 million to $446 million. The
> decision to cancel Dawn was made March 2, 2006, after about $257
> million already had been spent. An additional expenditure of about
> $14 million would have been required to terminate the project.
> ...

I look forward to seeing the results we'll get from the Robots of Dawn.

~M. Maru
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Re: hardware suckz

[maru dubshinki]

On 3/23/06, Steve Sloan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> maru dubshinki wrote:
>
>  > Actually Linux can read NTFS, and fairly well. I once helped
>  > a friend set it up so he could listen to his music collection -
>  > but the real problem is that you have to go in via the command
>  > line (AFAIK), and Windows is *extremely* hostile to CLIs, what
>  > with all the special characters and spaces in the file names.
>  > Not to mention we couldn't seem to get tab completion to work, so
>  > it was manual copy-paste-quoting. Not fun.
>
> If this was from Linux, couldn't you have bundled together each
> directory -- or even large directory tree -- you wanted to keep
> into a tarball on the working Linux drive? That would have at
> least saved a lot of individual file copying.
> __
> Steve Sloan . Huntsville, Alabama => [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Well, yes we could have. But this was a dual-boot system (obviously),
and there was barely enough space on the Linux partition for Ubuntu
and a reasonable selection of extra programs. So

~Maru
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Re: hardware suckz

[maru dubshinki]

On 3/22/06, Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The Fool wrote:
> >
> >> Fat32
> >
> > There's your problem _Right There_.
> >
> > Unless you are using some version of win9x that needs to be able to see
> > this partition, you need to be using NTFS.  It's better in every
> > way. And you can compress NTFS drives.
> >
> > See if you can't dig up an old version of scandisk.exe or norton
> > utilities DOS version.
> >
> But NTFS is not visible to Linux.

> If Linux did it, then Linux can fix it :-P
>
> But I still think it was not a software bug, but a hardware bug.
>
> Alberto Monteiro

Actually Linux can read NTFS, and fairly well. I once helped a
friend set it up so he could listen to his music collection - but the
real problem is that you have to go in via the command line (AFAIK),
and Windows is *extremely* hostile to CLIs, what with all the special
characters and spaces in the file names. Not to mention we couldn't
seem to get tab completion to work, so it was manual
copy-paste-quoting. Not fun.
As for writing, the devs have it working, but they caution users that
it is very much alpha and that there are drives that have been screwed
up by being written to. Not something I would use, but fortunately, it
is not a problem I will face anytime soon.

~Maru
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Re: TV Weekend

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 3/18/06, The Fool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> --
> From: Maru Dubshinki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
> On 3/17/06, Robert G. Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Dr Who is on Sci-Fi tonight
> >
> > The final episode of FullMetal Alchemist is on tomorrow on Cartoon
> > Network.
> >
>
>
> I suggest y'all watch it; it really is a good ending, especially when
> you consider they had to come up with it from scratch, as  Arakawa
> never penned an ending to date.
>
> My comrades dislike the episode, as they feel it makes for a lousy
> ending,
>
>
> -
> Doesn't the ending occur in the theatrical movie or am I mistaken?

Both endings are *a* ending, but not *the* ending, if you catch my
drift. Strictly speaking, the manga is canon by the usual reckoning of
these things, and both the TV series ending and the movie are not in
the manga, so take them as you will. Myself, I would've been perfectly
happy if Shamballa never came out, as it wasn't very good.

~maru
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Re: TV Weekend

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 3/17/06, Robert G. Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dr Who is on Sci-Fi tonight
>
> The final episode of FullMetal Alchemist is on tomorrow on Cartoon
> Network.
>
>
>
> xponent
> Viewer Maru
> rob

I suggest y'all watch it; it really is a good ending, especially when
you consider they had to come up with it from scratch, as  Arakawa
never penned an ending to date.

My comrades dislike the episode, as they feel it makes for a lousy
ending, but I think it is beautifully tragic and ironic (though I
never can get over how throughout the entire series, Winry gets
screwed over. Poor Winry...)

Discuss this among yourselves.

~Maru
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Re: Possibly explaining why flatulence has been a recent topic on several lists

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 3/14/06, Robert Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
...
> This thread is going down the crapper.
> 
>
>
> xponent
> Thomas Maru
> rob

I'll thank you to can that toilet talk! Won't someone think of the children?

~Maru
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Re: Um, does this make any sense?

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 2/17/06, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> http://www.timecube.com/
>
> I'll explain where I found the link after a suitable number of people
> have expressed their bogglement.
>
> Julia

Did you find it here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube

~Maru
Until Emails are CUBIC in all their faces (atheistic and catholic)
mailing lists will continue to be subeverted by the Scientific
Establishment which DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW EMAIL IS TRIANGULAR. This
comes from the obvious observation that -1 x -1=+1 is stupid and evil.
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Re: Hyperion

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 2/15/06, Jim Sharkey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
...
> I was on the fence about them because it seemed to me that Simmons'
> editor was letting him get far too verbose in some sections, probably
> adding a good 50+ pages of fluff between the two Endymion books,
> which made sections of them drag.  And then I also have a pet peeve
> about authors who change the established rules of their universe
> because it's convenient (that's why I think Goodkind's pretty much a
> hack, excepting the first and sixth SoT books), which I felt Simmons
> did a fair amount of. But the last 50-100 pages of _Rise of Endymion_
> I found to be incredibly affecting, and they rescued the series for
> me.
>
> Jim

Going off on a tangent here... you liked Faith of the Fallen? Ugh. I
was disgusted when I realized I was reading a *bad* rehash of Ayn
Rand- if I wanted Randian ideologues spouting off in fiction at me,
I'll go to the source, thank you every much. Totally spoiled the
series for me.

~Maru
One was just plain awesome though.
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Re: Perspectives: Political Humour from John Cleese

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 2/14/06, Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and
> thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of
> your independence, effective immediately. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen
> Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states,
> commonwealths, and territories (excepting Kansas, which she does not
> fancy). Your new prime minister, Tony Blair, will appoint a governor
> for America without the need for further  elections. Congress and the
> Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year
> to determine whether any of you noticed.
>
>
> To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following
> rules are introduced with immediate effect: You should look up
> "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up aluminium,
> and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how
> wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter 'U' will be
> reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you
> will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and
> the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise. Generally, you
> will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look
> up vocabulary). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with
> filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and
> inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as US
> English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft
> spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated
> letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize.
>
>
> You will relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen".
> July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.
>
>
> You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers,
> or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists
> shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only
> be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out
> without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown
> up enough to handle a gun. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to
> own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit
> will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.
>
>
> All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for
> your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what
> we mean.  All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you
> will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same
> time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit
> of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you
> understand the British sense of humour.  The Former USA will adopt UK
> prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) -roughly $6/US
> gallon. Get used to it.
>
>
> You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries
> are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato
> chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in
> animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.  The cold
> tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at
> all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as
> beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be
> referred to as Lager. American brands will be referred to as
> Near-Frozen Gnat's Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of
> further confusion.
>
>
> Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good
> guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play
> English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue
> in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's
> ears removed with a cheese grater.
>
>
> You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of
> proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will,
> in time, be  allowed to play rugby which has some similarities to
> American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every
> twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of
> nancies.  Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not
> reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which
> is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware
> that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is
> understandable.
>
>
> You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.
>
>
> An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's
> Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all
> monies due (backdated to 1776).
>
>
> Thank you for your cooperation.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Nick Arnett

http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/revocation.asp

~Maru
__

Re: Hyperion

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 2/14/06, Jim Sharkey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hrm.  I think after reading the Endymion books I'd have to add a
> fourth line, wherein the Shrike is there to protect Aenea, possibly
> sent by those in the Void.  Though it could be an intercepted and
> altered Shrike from the UIs, or sent by the human UI to defend its
> third part.

The difficulty with this is, what was that fourth Shrike doing while
the other three were messing around with the pilgrims and various
political situations? I'd suggest that this was the Reaper faction AI-
since when you think about it, what Aenea did was to upset the status
quo, rip the TechnoCore out of their comfortable dead-end evolutionary
niche (forcing them out into unsearched evolutionary fitness
landscapes, laden with Lions and Tigers, and Bears oh my!); which is
exactly what Ray's reaper functions did on a smaller scale.

> The other three you listed make reasonable sense; however, I will
> admit that I never considered the various Shrikes to be separate
> timelines as much as they were foci in the war to establish one
> future.  That is, they were developed by one faction then co-opted by
> the various factions in their struggles.

That makes sense too- one Shrike and  one set of Time Tombs, not a
couple co-valent ones phasing in and out, if that makes sense-
intermittently controlled by different factions. I'm not completely
sure because I seem to remember some incidents which had to take place
simultaneously, but since I can't remember what those were, I'll drop
this.

> What I found interesting about the first two books was not the SF
> portions of it nearly as much as the *human* portions.  The stories of
> the pilgrims were all gripping, and that's what I liked about Hyperion
> more than the future conflicts and all.  It was the people in the
> books, not the events surrounding them, that really spoke to me.  In
> fact, to some extent Simmons' insistent EYKIW's (everything you know
> is wrong) in Endymion irked me, and I felt cheapened the first two a
> little bit.  I still liked them, but for different reasons and
> certainly not as much as the Cantos.

The focus in Endymion was on Raul and Aenea, who just couldn't carry
that sort of load- it took at least 6 interesting characters from all
sorts of genres and everything Simmons could warp and borrow from
Kelly's Out of Control to make the first two, and the second two just
didn't have that sort of firepower.
Endymion still made me fairly happy because it included a decent quota
of new and interesting and farout ideas, but there were far more in
the Hyperions.

> Jim
> Listening to the living Maru

~Maru
Listening to the music of the spheres
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Re: Hyperion (was RE: Take The Catholic Geocentrism Challenge)

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 2/13/06, Jim Sharkey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Fair enough.  Well, I think the Rachel/Kassad timelines diverge and
> converge at times, so that's one-and-half or two, depending on your
> POV.  I'd say Brawne Lamia's timeline could be thought of as
> another, while Het Masteen's could be third.
>
> But that's only thoughts after the fact.  Certainly the pilgrims
> share a common past, and while they seem to have possibly divergent
> futures, I never really thought of their futures as separate
> timelines.  But then, metaphysics has never been my strong suit.  :)
>
> Jim

I never thought of putting it in per-character terms. I always broke
it down into factions- ie. you had the first timeline, in which
TechnoCore and humand warred, which sent back Mnemosyne; you had the
other timeline with the twin UIs, which dispatched one of the shrikes,
and you had a third faction which sent back yet *another* shrike to
fetch Weintraub's daughter (which I suspect to have been the Reaper
faction). At least, three timelines made the most sense to me. I'd be
interested to hear your thinking on it.

~Maru
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Re: Hyperion (was RE: Take The Catholic Geocentrism Challenge)

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 2/13/06, Jim Sharkey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Maru Dubshinki wrote:
> >Jim Sharkey wrote:
> >> Anyone feel like having, I dunno, and actual book discussion on
> >>this here ostensibly SF literature list?  :)
> >I'll take you up on that challenge.
>
> Uh-oh!  :)
>
> >How many different timelines do you think were interacting in the
> >first two books?
>
> Do you mean in terms of alternate/possible futures?
>
> Jim

I don't like to use those terms, since it makes the various
world-lines sound less real and influential than they were.

~Maru
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Re: Hyperion (was RE: Take The Catholic Geocentrism Challenge)

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 2/13/06, Jim Sharkey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> The Fool wrote:
> >Teilhard de Chardin
>
> Courtesy of the hearty recommendations of _Hyperion_ by all of you,
> I actually know who this guy is!  :-)  The local library *finally*
> had a copy of _Hyperion Cantos_, and I recently finished it.  While
> the two Endymion books have gotten a trifle self-indulgent IMO,
> _Hyperion_ and _Fall of Hyperion_ were excellent, and I thank the Brin
> list for pointing me toward them.  Not to mention any number of other
> tasty books!
>
> Anyone feel like having, I dunno, and actual book discussion on this
> here ostensibly SF literature list?  :)
>
> Jim
> Silly Optimist Maru

I'll take you up on that challenge.
How many different timelines do you think were interacting in the
first two books? (IMO, this is one of the fundamental questions for
the Hyperion Cantos).

Incidentally, if any of you are interested in the TechnoCore AI Ummon,
I wrote a kick-ass article on the original Ummon at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yunmen_Wenyan

~Maru
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Re: Brin: Something of interest

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 1/26/06, Jim Sharkey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
...
> Mr. Smith fought back against the administration, standing his ground
> that kids risking getting their limbs blown off to prosecute
> President Bush's war ought to get some more benefits.  Imagine
> thinking such a thing was appropriate!!  Well, Mr. Smith's reward for
> this one oppositional stance to the administration's policies?
> Removal from his post as chair on the committee to which he'd
> dedicated most of his 20+ years in Congress.  He may have even been
> removed from the committee entirely, but I'm fuzzy on that detail.

> Jim

>From his website, apparently removed entirely. However, "As a champion
of global human rights since being elected to Congress, Smith is proud
to have been selected as Chairman of the International Relations
Committee's new "super" subcommittee entitled "Africa, Global Human
Rights, and International Operations.""
I gues that's something...

~Maru
What? no mention on Wikipedia? Unpossible!
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Re: Technique

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 1/13/06, Robert Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
...
> I think you can make a good argument that the terrorists have won
> ~something~.
> They have caused us to volunteer to give up some freedom and
> convenience. If *I* have to be searched to travel from Houston to
> Memphis or Atlanta, then we have given up something. And I don't think
> this exact method of protection has actually made us safer than some
> less rigorous method would or could... Unless one considers Mrs.
> Smith from Peoria to be a serious threat.
>
>
> xponent
> Fragile Maru
> rob

I would argue that what they've won is a ~trillion dollar unnecessary
military expenditure (even if you discount Stiglitz's estimate solely
for the Iraq War, I'd say lumping in homeland security expenditures
for the War on Terror and the costs of Afghanistan definitely bump the
total cost of 9/11 up to one trill, easy).

One hell of a bang for their buck.

~Maru
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A clone's best friend

[Maru Dubshinki]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=7101&refer=asia&sid=auCcoOaqyTuY

*Stem Cell Researcher Hwang Faked All Human Papers, Panel Says*

"Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk faked
both his first and second papers on human stem-cell research, dashing
hopes that his work is a breakthrough in treatments for diabetes and
Parkinson's disease.

Stem cells stored at Seoul National University, DNA fingerprints and
photographs submitted to Science magazine for its 2004 paper were
found to be fabricated, the university said in a statement after a
monthlong investigation. The panel backed Hwang's claim that he cloned
the world's first dog. "

I would have been crushed if it were all vile damnable lies.

~Maru
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Re: Google: creator of the universe = FSM #1hit......News at 11

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 1/8/06, Robert G. Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
...
> The worldwide popularity of the FSM puts a whole new spin on "If god
> did not exist we would need to create him" (where is that quote from?)
>
> http://urlx.org/google.com/19ef
>
>
> xponent
> Hee Haw! Maru
> rob

Voltaire.

~Maru
The ways of the wiki are dark and deep
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Re: Query on trust

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 1/8/06, Robert J. Chassell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> 
> But it is hard to convey the equivalent information on a
> low-resolution display or in one dimension.
>
> How would you display this information on a low-resolution display,
> such as Lynx, or in one dimensions, such as with text that is
> converted to speech by Emacspeak (for car drivers, for example)?
>
> --
> Robert J. Chassell
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
> http://www.rattlesnake.com  http://www.teak.cc


ASCII art. At the outside limit, treat a screenshot of the full resolution
output
and feed it as input to one of the video --> ASCII programs (like HasciiCam;
 http://ascii.dyne.org/. Don't know how well it works, never used it.)
Then, you can use that for textbrowsers/low-resolution displays.
I dunno how well this would be comprehensible when fed through emacspeak
however.

~Maru
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Re: Have a Nice Winter Break...

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 12/26/05, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > What? No "Nice Newtonmas?  Or what about
> > our Flying Spaghetti Monsterism brethren?
> > And as always, those poor Discordian people
> > are totally neglected. I expected better of you.
>
> OK, I'm a little fuzzy on the whole Pastafarianism thing.
>
> What, besides September 19, is considered a holy day for the followers
> of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
>
> Julia
>
> fnord


Err...
(hm, when did I ever let facts get in the way of anything?)

Dec. 25 is. I just declared it Spaghetti day, by the power vested
in me as an official POEE Pope and Knight of the Pentagon.
So there.

~Maru
I see dead fnords.
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Re: Have a Nice Winter Break...

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 12/24/05, Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Political correctness past moderation!
>
> So, hope your Solstice was Soulful, and Merry
> Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kool Kwanzaa, and
> Delightful Diwali (although that's a bit late, I
> think!).
>
> I just finished a costumed Christmas ride, Renaissance
> dress for me and bells for Darby.  Fun!  Last night I
> decorated the tree (cut on the property), and earlier
> in the week I made rolled-and-cut sugar cookies (*no,*
> not from a tube; from scratch!).  Got a few presents
> to wrap yet, and part of tomorrow's dinner to start...
>
> Debbi
> Bashir The Cat Thinks The Tree Is For His Pleasure Maru


What? No "Nice Newtonmas?  Or what about
our Flying Spaghetti Monsterism brethren?
And as always, those poor Discordian people
are totally neglected. I expected better of you.

~Maru
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Re: Online Trust L3

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 12/18/05, Robert J. Chassell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> ..
> Jurors should evaluate an article in several ways.  An encyclopedia
> entry, for example, requires one evaluation for accuracy and another
> for style.  Thus, an inaccurate article that claims the earth is flat
> might show great style.
>
> The evaluation should be on a scale of one through five, with five the
> best.  Moreover, since people pay attention to the words that frame an
> option, the scale should be:
>
> 5 -- excellent
>  much better than expected
>
> 4 -- good
>  better than expected
>
> 3 -- normal
>  expected
>
> 2 -- bad
>  worse than expected
>
> 1 -- terrible
>  much worse than expected
>
> A minimum number of jurors must judge before the results are
> published.  Otherwise, a few people will effect many.  As a beginning,
> I suggest a minimum of twelve.  However, as I said above, editors
> might want to look at infrequently judged items.
>
> Administrators must choose when (or whether) to ask editors to edit a
> modifiable posting.  As a beginning, I suggest a threshold in which a
> majority of posters say that accuracy or style is less than normal.
> (This is in addition to editing that ordinary people may do.  Editors
> are, to some extent, `insiders', which means they have duties as well
> rights.)
>
> Every one needs to see a profile of judgements.  In some situations,
> the profile will bimodal.  For example, I suspect that in 2003 in the
> United States, we would have seen a bimodal distribution of accuracy
> judgements about an article that claimed that in 2002 Saddam Hussein
> and the Iraqi government were giving chemical, biological, or nuclear
> weapons to Al Qaeda.  On the other hand, I expect that every accuracy
> judgement about a claim that the earth is flat would tell us that the
> article is at level 1, and is much less accurate than expected.
> (Style judgements might be different; the article would be wrong but
> might be well written.)
>
> At the same time, many entries will be judged the same way, so an
> average should be posted, too.
>
>
> Jurors might also tell us their confidence about their judgements.
>
> For example, regarding accuracy, many might be confident that Michael
> Faraday was not born in the 17th century since he worked in the 19th
> century, but be not so certain whether he was born in the latter 18th
> century (as he was) or early 19th.
>
> As a practical matter, I expect that jurors will be more confident in
> style judgements than accuracy judgements.
>
> A confidence scale could use five levels:
>
> 5 -- entirely certain
>
> 4 -- strongly certain, but some doubt
>
> 3 -- moderately certain
>
> 2 -- somewhat uncertain, but a little confidence
>
> 1 -- completely uncertain
>
> To show certainty, an accuracy or style profile would have to be three
> dimensional.  Each level of accuracy or style displays its own
> confidence scale.
>
> A high-resolution computer or printed output can do this readily.  The
> output is an image.  It is harder to convey the equivalent information
> on a low-resolution display, as with Lynx, or with an audio output for
> the blind, such as Emacspeak.
>
> (Since car drivers should keep their eyes on the road, audio is
> becoming more and more important.  Consequently, every design must
> consider it as one of several different kinds of output.)
>
> Is it true that in common law countries randomly selected jurors serve
> both on grand and petit juries?
>
> What more should I add?  (I am thinking of adding this, or part of
> this, to `Choice and Constraint'.  See
>
> http://www.rattlesnake.com/notions/Choice-and-Constraint.html
>
> for the HTML, the same directory for the other output formats)
>
> --
> Robert J. Chassell


Some interesting ideas here, Rob.

Looks to me like you are trying to do several things here-
you want multidemensional judgments (2, if I understand you);
one for general quality (including comprehensiveness, formatting,
and prose quality), and the other for accuracy.

It would be neat if someone were to write a plugin for Wikipedia's
wiki software (MediaWiki) which displayed a little Cartesian 2-d graph,
where x could be general quality and y accuracy (or vice versa),
and all one had to do was mouse-click in the right location, and your vote
would be registered.

~Maru
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Re: 'The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, '

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 12/9/05, Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Folks,
>
> Last night, I invested 45 minutes in watching Mr. Pinter's speech.
>
> It was stunning. Not so much the production (although the three-
> camera setup with a deep-blue backdrop and a large photograph of a
> younger Pinter was used well enough) but the man, his ideas and his
> delivery.
>
> His offer to write a speech for President Bush and his delivery of
> that speech are spellbinding. He makes no attempt to imitate Bush's
> mannerisms or accent, but the short sentences, the danger masked by a
> smile is very Bush. If you don't watch the whole thing, watch that
> bit, very near the end.
>
> Dave


Dare I hope there is a  copy of the speech floating around online, and it
was that you watched?

~Maru
Mmm, that's good demagoguery!
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Re: ChistiaNazi's and Rape: Vileness

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 12/7/05, The Fool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> <>
>
> To put it more clearly, if a woman consents to extramarital sex, she is
> committing a moral offense which is equal to that committed by the man
> who engages in consensual sex with her, or by the man who, in the
> absence of such consent, rapes her. Christianity knows no hierarchy of
> sins. Since only the woman who is not entertaining the possibility of
> sex with a man and is subsequently raped can truly be considered a
> wholly innocent victim under this ethic, it is no wonder that women who
> insist that internal consent is the sole determining factor of a
> woman's victimization find traditional Western morality to be
> inherently distasteful.
>
> ...
>
> And while "might makes right" is the true essence of atheist amorality,
> it is not exactly the most convincing means of attempting to assert the
> moral evil of the rapist. As for Utilitarians in a demographically
> declining West, it is quite easy to make numerous cases for the
> inherent common good of rape on societal and social Darwinist grounds
> that are more powerful than the comparatively nebulous cases to the
> contrary.


Fool, you aren't advocating this, right? 'Cause there are many arguments
on Utilitarian grounds to the contrary.

~Maru
Offense by Omission?
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Re: Work photos

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 11/10/05, Robert G. Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
>
> These are pictures of a project I have been working on, off and on,
> over the last few months.
>
>
> xponent
> Lots Of Pipe Maru
> rob

"Nitrous Oxide supply in The Womens Building"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/61875881/

Heh.

~Maru
"Say, where can I get me one of *those*?"
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Re: Knife of Dreams

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 10/15/05, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The Fool wrote:
> > --
> > From: Maru Dubshinki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> > to a satisfactory conclusion; no, I think of the human costs. WoT
> > started way back when *Reagan* was president AFAIK.  How many fans
> > have died, to never see WoT finished? How many readers has WoT
> > outlasted?
> >
> > 
> > If by 'Reagan' you mean the chimperor's father...
>
> Publication date of January 1990 would indicate that Bush 41 was
> president.  (Very easy to go to amazon.com and check publication dates!)
>
> Now, when Reagan was president, the big fantasy thing I remember was
> people desperate for the next David Eddings installment.  I never got
> very far into any of his stuff.  (And this continued into the Bush 41
> administration -- at the end of 1989, no less than 3 of my friends were
> overjoyed to get the latest one of his at Christmas.)
>
> Julia

I do not trust Amazon for publication dates. In the course of my Star
Wars work for Wikipedia, I've found many publication dates that were
simply wrong, even for the editions listed as the first published. 
But in this case, yeah, it does seem to have started in '90. Still, 15
years is a long time.

~Maru
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Re: Knife of Dreams

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 10/15/05, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ritu wrote:
>
> > Julia, if you are in the mood to read a yet-unfinished grand fantasy
> > series, George R.R. Martin's _A Song of Ice and Fire_ has my vote. I'd
> > recommend Jordan only if you have nothing else to read and are unable to
> > sleep or find other diversions.
>
> Unlikely to happen in the next 10 years.  :)
>
> Julia

Actually, you know what saddens me most about WoT?  It's not that
Jordan desperately needs an editor to trim down his series and get him
to evaluate seriously  what scenes and subplots really add to the
experience (WoT exhibits all the telltale signs of an edifice
encrusted with cruft and tottering.  When fan discussions begin
showing the signs of a full-blown academic discipline, complete with
jargon, methods,  a literature, and rank, you know that the subject
books have perhaps gotten far too baroque for their own good. Hell,
the WoT faq is beginning to approach book-length itself, and that is
just the faqs, and outdated faqs at that!), or that the length and the
sprawling plot and characters may exceed Jordan's capability to bring
to a satisfactory conclusion; no, I think of the human costs. WoT
started way back when *Reagan* was president AFAIK.  How many fans
have died, to never see WoT finished? How many readers has WoT
outlasted?

~Maru
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Re: Knife of Dreams

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 10/14/05, The Fool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > From: The Fool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >
> > Reminder:  It comes out tomarrow.
>
> Yes, very nice indeed.  Much better than the previous 3/5s of a book.

Does it actually dare I hope out loud?  move the plot forward
without introducing *even more* complications?

~Maru
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Re: The dark side of faith

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 10/3/05, William T Goodall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The LA Times has picked up on the story...
>
> http://tinyurl.com/7fxny
>
> "The dark side of faith
> By ROSA BROOKS
> IT'S OFFICIAL: Too much religion may be a dangerous thing.
.

William, we get it.  Post stories or studies now which don't
demonstrate correlation, but rather *causation*, and we'll be
interested.

~Maru
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Re: Brin: Pictures of Brin

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 10/2/05, David Brin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> These photos all came from me and I give permission
> for wiki use.
>
> Problem is that you must copy them from Tripod.
> Linking to them will make tripod inactivate them.
>
> Or use images at http://www.davidbrin.com/
>
> The rest of you!  I am serializing an important essay
> on the evils of gerrymandering at
> http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/
>
> Thrive all!
>
>
> With cordial regards,
>
> David Brin
> www.davidbrin.com

I really hate to be a pain and take up more time, but I've spoken with
higher ups at Wikipedia to get exactly the image policy, and the
license must satisfy at a minimum this criteria:
They must be freely reusable by anyone, for commercial and
non-commercial purposes.  Giving permission for wiki use, while
admirable, has been decided not sufficient, as then *only* Wikipedia
can use it, which then brings you right back to proprietary licenses,
precisely the thing Wikipedia was designed to avoid. :(
If you see your way clear to licensing it under the GNU Free
Documentation License,  or perhaps releasing into the public domain,
or releasing all rights (not quite the same thing as public domain,
but effectivel), or possibly one of the Creative Commons licenses (but
not one of the ones that forbid commercial usage or commercial use),
well that would go just swimmingly with your article.

~Maru
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Re: Brin: Pictures of Brin

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 10/2/05, Doug Pensinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Maru wrote:
>
> > Anyone know of any Free (as in software and speech) pictures for our
> > beloved G. David Brin?
> >
> > I ask because the Wikipedia article is shockingly devoid of his visage:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brin
> >
>
> http://david-brin.tripod.com/
>
> --
> Doug

Those are nice photos, very much along the lines of what I was hoping
for. But looking the pages over, I don't see any mention of licensing,
a vital issue for Wikipedia.


~Maru
Speaking of Wikipedia, yesterday I was made an admin on it.  Go me!
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Brin: Pictures of Brin

[Maru Dubshinki]

Anyone know of any Free (as in software and speech) pictures for our
beloved G. David Brin?

I ask because the Wikipedia article is shockingly devoid of his visage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brin

~Maru
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Re: Guns kill people

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 9/20/05, Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> Mauro Diotallevi wrote:
> > On 9/3/05, Nick Lidster <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>ok I have to say it
> >>
> >>
> >>"Guns don't kill people, people kill people."
> >>
> >>
> >>Nick "high noon" Lidster
> >
> >
> > Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people. Allow people all the guns
> > they want, but make bullets illegal.
> 
> Bullets don't kill people. Pinpoint momentum trauma kills people.
> 
> Julia


Pinpoint momentum trauma don't kill people; loss of blood, changes in the
chemical balance of cells,
and bacterial infection kill people.

~Maru 
outlaw chemicals and bacteria
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Re: New trigonometry is a sign of the times

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 9/18/05, Robert G. Seeberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> http://physorg.com/news6555.html
> 
> Mathematics students have cause to celebrate. A University of New
> South Wales academic, Dr Norman Wildberger, has rewritten the arcane
> rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from
> the trigonometric toolkit.
> 
> What's more, his simple new framework means calculations can be done
> without trigonometric tables or calculators, yet often with greater
> accuracy.
> 
> Established by the ancient Greeks and Romans, trigonometry is used in
> surveying, navigation, engineering, construction and the sciences to
> calculate the relationships between the sides and vertices of
> triangles.
> 
> "Generations of students have struggled with classical trigonometry
> because the framework is wrong," says Wildberger, whose book is titled
> Divine Proportions: Rational Trigonometry to Universal Geometry (Wild
> Egg books).
> 
> Dr Wildberger has replaced traditional ideas of angles and distance
> with new concepts called "spread" and "quadrance".
> 
> These new concepts mean that trigonometric problems can be done with
> algebra," says Wildberger, an associate professor of mathematics at
> UNSW.
> 
> "Rational trigonometry replaces sines, cosines, tangents and a host of
> other trigonometric functions with elementary arithmetic."
> 
> "For the past two thousand years we have relied on the false
> assumptions that distance is the best way to measure the separation of
> two points, and that angle is the best way to measure the separation
> of two lines.
> 
> "So teachers have resigned themselves to teaching students about
> circles and pi and complicated trigonometric functions that relate
> circular arc lengths to x and y projections – all in order to analyse
> triangles. No wonder students are left scratching their heads," he
> says.
> 
> "But with no alternative to the classical framework, each year
> millions of students memorise the formulas, pass or fail the tests,
> and then promptly forget the unpleasant experience.
> 
> "And we mathematicians wonder why so many people view our beautiful
> subject with distaste bordering on hostility.
> 
> "Now there is a better way. Once you learn the five main rules of
> rational trigonometry and how to simply apply them, you realise that
> classical trigonometry represents a misunderstanding of geometry."
> 
> Wild Egg books: http://wildegg.com/
> Divine Proportions: 
> web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~norman/book.htm
> 
> 
> xponent
> Wonders How This Will Affect Power Factor Correction Maru
> rob
> 

Doesn't this scheme make it really hard to calculate distances? 
From the looks of it, it involves a lot of square-rooting.

~Maru
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Re: Katrina: Republican Political Tool(AreYouLonesomeTonightEdition)

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 9/18/05, Ritu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> 
> Warren Ockrassa wrote:
> 
> > On Sep 17, 2005, at 9:13 PM, Ritu wrote:
> >
> > > I can't reveal too many details [signed a non-disclosure agreement]
> > > but it was pretty and nice and sensible
> >
> > The first half of that sentence suggests Microsoft owns the future
> > world.
> >
> > The second half suggests the opposite.
> 
> *g*
> 
> I can safely reveal this: No Microsoft in that world.
> 
> Ritu


Hmm, so Apple triumphed and immediately set up an even more despotic rule 
than Microsoft.
But their clients are so happy with the eye-candy and user interface that 
they couldn't care less
about their enslavement?

~Maru
not really surprised
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Re: Irregulars question: Linux distributions

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 9/5/05, Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> On Sep 5, 2005, at 6:18 PM, Ronn!Blankenship wrote:
> 
> >> is a universe of possibilities. We haven't even *begun* to discuss
> >> the
> >> other Unixes out there!
> >
> > Any suggestions appreciated.
> 
> Then I hope you won't mind a mention of FreeBSD, about which I knew
> nothing
> until I started using a FreeBSD-based flavor of Unix recently, one
> from a
> certain fruit-themed company in Cupertino.
> 
> It'll be a while 'til you can get a copy of OS X that will run on
> non-Apple Intel hardware, but in the meanwhile, FreeBSD itself is very
> well-regarded from a security standpoint and has all the requisite bits
> and pieces.
> 
> And when you *can* get a copy of OS X that will run on arbitrary Intel
> hardware, you will be in for the treat of your Unixy life.
> 
> Dave


I assume you meant to prefix "legally" in front of every ocurrence of "a 
copy", correct?

~Maru
Now me, my opinion of Mac OS X is that adherents of it are merely attempting 
to raise a prettier monopoly in place of Microsoft. MS learned from the 
best.
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Re: Irregulars question: Linux distributions

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 9/5/05, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> 
> So, any recommendations?
> 
> _
> ¹As I mentioned a few days ago when I was trying
> to get these new hard drives installed, I have
> the latest version (8.0) of Partition Magic and
> the Boot Magic program which comes with it in
> order to accomplish this (though I haven't set
> them up that way yet), and I left 100GB on the
> primary hard drive for a Linux partition, just in
> case those facts are of significance . . .
> 
> 
> -- Ronn! :)
> 

Well, Ubuntu plays nice with Windows, as do Fedora and Mandrake. Linspire is 
(I think) temporarily free as in beer, and SuSe is fairly popular. Of 
course, there is Debian as well, if you are the moral Free Software type, 
but Ubuntu is generally more useable. It's good you left a primary partition 
open. That'll make things easier.
If you don't mind building the distro yourself mostly, Gentoo has 
unparalleled comprehensive package management, which is also the most 
up-to-date. My personal experience is that it's somewhat unstable (one 
particular program, ncurses, particularly fubars things up), though as 
always YMMV.

~Maru
is a universe of possibilities. We haven't even *begun* to discuss the other 
Unixes out there!
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Re: FLCL followup

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 9/1/05, Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> "Ride on Shooting Star" is pretty cool.
> 
> What I like, of course, is the lyrics I can get. There aren't many.
> "Spider" and "Sniper", sure. "Grunge Hamster" was a bit harder.
> 
> "Ride on shooting star" I got of course.
> 
> But there's this bit, I swear, that sounds like
> 
> "Sometimes you don't want it
> try to duke it out"
> 
> This makes sense to me. Or it did. Sometimes you don't want a thing;
> sometimes you have to fight.
> 
> So perusing the transliterations I find this, in phonetic Japanese:
> 
> sandanjû no yô ni (Sometimes you don't want it)
> utai tsutzuketa (Try to duke it out)
> 
> This is the phonetic rendering that sounds so much like "Sometimes you
> don't want it…" The translation is:
> 
> like a shotgun
> I kept on singing
> 
> I think I like my version better.
> 
> 
> --
> Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books


Heh. I'd like to hear what you made of "Hybrid Rainbow", or "Blues Drive 
Monster".
On a side note, have you heard any of their other stuff, like "Skeleton 
Liar" (a personal favorite)
or "Backseat Dog", or "Funny Bunny" for that matter?

~Maru
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Re: The Doom That Came To N'Warlins - II

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 9/1/05, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> At 07:07 AM Thursday 9/1/2005, Alberto Monteiro wrote:
> >Russell Chapman wrote:
> > >
> > > Under marshall law, in a state of emergency (and I understand both
> > > have been declared) these people should be rounded up and used as
> > > labour to clean up flooded hospitals or something. Makes me so angry
> > > to think of some small business owner who is going to come in when
> > > he sorts out his home, only to find someone thought they deserved to
> > > just take the stock.
> > >
> >Those looters should at least show some ethics, like demolishing
> >the looted stores to their grounds - this would even make the
> >owners thankful, because they would get full insurance for the
> >stores.
> 
> 
> Anyone who is looting big-screen TVs, computers, DVDs, and other
> high-ticket electronic items from stores in an area where there is no
> electricity and there is not likely to be electricity for weeks at the
> earliest (more likely months) has already shown evidence of somewhat
> less-than-perfect reasoning . . .
> 
> 
> -- Ronn! :)
> 

Perfectly rational: the transportation costs of getting those items to a 
location where it would be useful
are far smaller than the cost of the items themselves, if they were 
purchased in an area with electricity. And the value
of those items are still enough to make the effort of looting worthwhile 
even after a few months of non-use.

~Maru
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Re: This post made in honor of Ronn

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/23/05, Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Aug 22, 2005, at 10:31 PM, Maru Dubshinki wrote:
> 
> > Didja like how I threw in some legitimate scholarship like Freud's
> > anal fixation theories of sexual maturation, and the Great mother
> > religious motif, and Jung's shadow, just to camouflage the nonsense?
> 
> Since that's how it's usually done by groups with "serious" complaints,
> I'd bet that was the part that had Gautam going for a moment. ;)
> 
> Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books

Heh. That amuses me almost as much as writing it did.
Well shoot- now that I've thought about it a little more, I could have
had a decent paragraph ranting against the cultural imperialism of
denigrating a person's "unique" spelling.  Oh well.

~Maru
next time
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Re: This post made in honor of Ronn

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/23/05, Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> --- Maru Dubshinki <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Clearly what we have here is a rather progressive
> > youngster, a shining
> > example of the further march of liberty: this
> > wimmin, or persun, is
> > advocating that toilet paper be liberated from its
> > constricted role of
> > cleaning our bottoms. They hold with Freud that this
> > fixation on the
> > anus is infantilizing, and retarding of progress
> > integrating the self;
> > in short blocking personal growth.  Thusly, we must
> > change the "role"
> > which toilet paper plays to clean other areas, such
> > as the nostrils,
> > or the mouth, other bodily orifices.  I dare say
> > that in this cry for
> > progress we can see a covert dialectic, leading to a
> > synthesis of the
> > negative, or "shadow" aspects of the whole
> > metemphysical nature of
> > toilet paper: what could be more subversive than
> > turning an item that
> > is meant to clean, and tragically, be immediately
> > disposed of into a
> > representation of the Great Mother that the
> > patriarchal Western
> > scientific society has repressed and demonized than
> > by into the
> > embodiment of its enemy, waste, and permament waste
> > at that?
> >
> > ~Maru
> 
> Frighteningly enough, it wasn't entirely clear to me
> that this was a satire the first time I read it...
> 
> Gautam Mukunda

Didja like how I threw in some legitimate scholarship like Freud's
anal fixation theories of sexual maturation, and the Great mother
religious motif, and Jung's shadow, just to camouflage the nonsense?

~Maru
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Re: This post made in honor of Ronn

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/23/05, Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Aug 22, 2005, at 10:02 PM, Maru Dubshinki wrote:
> 
> > Thusly, we must change the "role"
> > which toilet paper plays to clean other areas, such as the nostrils,
> > or the mouth, other bodily orifices.
> 
> Oh, I see, so its proper role, according to you, is cleaning? What a
> typically phallocentric white-male view. I suppose you expect it to be
> barefoot and pregnant besides!
> 
> And by the way, it's NOT "toilet paper". Toilet paper is the name given
> to it by its oppressors. It's REALLY "ribbon-formed tree pulp" (RFTP).
> 
> If you were REALLY interested in RFTP liberation, you'd be refusing to
> put ANY role distinctions on it. Only by being unroled can RFTP be
> truly free to reach the lengths of its potential.
> 
> 
> --
> Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books

I shall not lower myself to answer the baseless calumnies of this
persun, save to note solely that the statement "phallocentric
white-male view" is especially ripe for deconstruction and deviant
textual readings coming from him.  Furthermore, if this "Ockrossa"
*really* did care, like he claims, about RFTP freedom, he would never
say such biased, regressive, and outrageous to liberated sensibilities
things like "lengths of its potential."  What about square RFTPs, you
insensitive clod?! Are their viewpoints of no value, non-privileged
and censored?!

~Maru
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Re: Physics question

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/22/05, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >If a physicist were here,
> 
> There are at least two physicists here: Rich and myself.  I've only been
> active on the list for about six years, so maybe you didn't notice that I'm
> here. :-)

I did not know that.  There really should be a short page listing
names and professions of major posters, to prevent such amusing errors
as that.

> 
> >he'd probably smack us and tell us to
> >distinguish between entropy and the arrow of time/dimension of time.
> 
> That's not the real problem: the real problem in this thread is that you
> are trying to force special relativity (SR) into a classical physics box.
> In classical physics, we have x,y,z space, and a separate dimension t. We
> have  d^2 =x^2+y^2+z^2 (where d is the distance between two objects.)  The
> values for x, y, and z are coordinate system dependant: x, y, and z can be
> defined by any three orthanormal vectors (orthanormal vectors are both
> mutually orthogonal and have value 1).  The value of d is coordinate system
> independent.

A minor point: why are you representing the cartesian distance formula
in squared form? I've always elsewhere seen it as sqrt(x^2+y^2+z^2). 
And I agree partially: the time discussion is flowing out of the
absolute zero?=space travel discussion, which does suffer from the
Newtonian space problem.  But I'm not sure our time discussion is
similarly flawed.


> There is perfect symmetry.  Each observation is equally valid.
> 
> Finally, two objects that are timelike (a signal at the speed of light can
> travel from one point in spacetime to another), will have the same sequence
> in time for all observers.  Two objects that are spacelike (a signal at the
> speed of light cannot travel from one point in spacetime to another), will
> be simultaneous in one inertial system, have A before B for some reference
> systems, and have B before A in the remainder of the reference systems.
> 
> Hope this helps.  If there are any questions, just yell.
> 
> Dan M.

How exactly does that work for space-like relationships?  Is this
potential to mix up ordering of A and B what allows reverse time
travel?

~Maru
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Re: This post made in honor of Ronn

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/23/05, Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> An example of the true value of a Harvard education,
> drawn from a recent post on the Harvard Boston recent
> grads email list, as part of a request for a roommate:
> 
> "Looking for someone similar to the two of us already
> in the house: mid-20's young professional or grad
> student. Someone who is clean, respectful, easy to get
> along with, who values having a nice home, and
> doesn't mind emptying the dishwasher or changing the
> role of toilet paper."
> 
> So, does anyone have any ideas as to new _roles_ for
> toilet paper?  Apparently the old one isn't sufficient
> anymore :-)
> 
> Gautam Mukunda

Clearly what we have here is a rather progressive youngster, a shining
example of the further march of liberty: this wimmin, or persun, is
advocating that toilet paper be liberated from its constricted role of
cleaning our bottoms. They hold with Freud that this fixation on the
anus is infantilizing, and retarding of progress integrating the self;
in short blocking personal growth.  Thusly, we must change the "role"
which toilet paper plays to clean other areas, such as the nostrils,
or the mouth, other bodily orifices.  I dare say that in this cry for
progress we can see a covert dialectic, leading to a synthesis of the
negative, or "shadow" aspects of the whole metemphysical nature of
toilet paper: what could be more subversive than turning an item that
is meant to clean, and tragically, be immediately disposed of into a
representation of the Great Mother that the patriarchal Western
scientific society has repressed and demonized than by into the
embodiment of its enemy, waste, and permament waste at that?

~Maru
I promise I won't do that again.
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Re: Mindless and Heartless

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/22/05, Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> - Original Message -
> From: "Nick Arnett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" 
> Sent: Monday, August 22, 2005 6:23 PM
> Subject: Re: Mindless and Heartless
> 
> 
> > On Mon, 22 Aug 2005 17:39:30 -0500, Dan Minette wrote
> > > > Perhaps someone wants to argue that GWB
> > > > should *not* have to endure a half-hour
> > > > with her, and maybe even that he's not
> > > > accountable to her (or even the public).
> > >
> > > Why, because of her views, is half an hour with her more important than
> > > half an hour with her other son, or his father (both of whom seem to
> > > think his death is a nobel sacrifice).
> >
> > Cite, please.
> 
> Sure, no problem Nick.
> 
> 
> Others in the family bitterly opposed Cindy's stance. In a statement, her
> sister-in-law - Casey's aunt - said that "the rest of the Sheehan family
> supports the troops, our country and our president." Cindy's surviving son
> begged her to come home. It was revealed that her husband had filed for
> divorce. Their son's death, as in so many families, had strained their
> marriage rather than, as in others, making it stronger.
> 
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/cdlee
> 
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20050819/cm_usatoday/cindysheehandecampsleavingverymixedmessages;_ylt=AqYNJoNff80.ib6rG5dFNmys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3YWFzYnA2BHNlYwM3NDI-
> 
> Dan M.

Tsk, tsk, tsk, Dan.  Did you check the source?  The Drudge Report.
http://www.drudgereport.com/flashcs.htm
Let's count the weak links: first, an item on Matt Drudge's website,
who is a known (and I believe self-avowed) hard-core rightwinger.  A
weak link, but not decisive. Ad hominem and all that. I'll simply
confine myself to mentioning that Drudge has made up stuff in the
past; does anyone remember how Drudge broke the news that John Kerry
commited adultery? The item claims that they received an e-mail (a
form of communication easily faked, both on the sending and receiving
ends, as spammers demonstrate to everyone's daily dismay), which
itself is said to say:

"Our family has been so distressed by the recent activities of Cindy
we are breaking our silence and we have collectively written a
statement for release. Feel free to distribute it as you wish.

Thanks, Cherie

In response to questions regarding the Cindy Sheehan/Crawford Texas
issue: Sheehan Family Statement:

The Sheehan Family lost our beloved Casey in the Iraq War and we have
been silently, respectfully grieving. We do not agree with the
political motivations and publicity tactics of Cindy Sheehan. She now
appears to be promoting her own personal agenda and notoriety at the
the expense of her son's good name and reputation. The rest of the
Sheehan Family supports the troops, our country, and our President,
silently, with prayer and respect.

Sincerely,

Casey Sheehan's grandparents, aunts, uncles and numerous cousins. " 

How much editing the DR did is unknown.  Furthermore, it is unclear
just who is signing it: a "Cherie" certainly signed it, who is
apparently an aunt on the paternal side of the dead son, but who else
is unclear. Which grandparents (are Sheehan's grand-parents even
alive? I do not know.), unspecified (even unenumerated!) "aunts,
uncles and numerous cousins".  None of which have publicly stated that
they support the e-mail, or even that the e-mail is genuine.  Cindy
Sheehan has stated that her aunt's politics and that of several other
family members are opposite hers, but sheer probability dictates that,
which helps the probability of validity only a little.  So the most
likely scenario?  It's a plausible fake, or the aunt going it alone.

It is unfortunate that the MSM chooses to elide discussion of the source.

~Maru
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Re: Physics question

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/22/05, Damon Agretto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> >Minimum speed of time is the opposite: all possible acceleration, that
> >is, light speed.Intuitively, this should make time stand still,
> >and it does. And faster still would be going backwards in time
> >(tachyons, anyone?).
> 
> Speaking of which, if this were possible, HOW exactly would time go
> backwards? Would time flow backwards ONLY for the internal time reference
> (I assume; i.e. nuclear decay would go backwards, etc), or would you
> actually be able to see the universe go "backwards" in time in the same way
> we can now see the universe go forwards?
> 
> Damon.

If a physicist were here, he'd probably smack us and tell us to
distinguish between entropy and the arrow of time/dimension of time. 
My understanding is that "going backwards" in time is the same as
moving about, just the place we move is, in our time reference system,
prior to our ownl; entropy would still proceed forward as usual.  Now,
what entropy going backwards consistently would look like, or whether
we could even be meaningfully said to live, is a whole different
kettle of worms.

~Maru
IANAP; I only play one on the radio
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Re: Physics question

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/22/05, Andrew Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> No, that's good, that's what I was thinking too. And the Big Bang part
> is an interesting angle.. Is there somewhere like that, can we identify
> a centre of our universe?. And what about the maximum speed of time?
> 
> Andrew

A physical centre? No; the Big Bang happened everywhere, to paraphrase
one physicist.  It was space expanding, not stuff expanding outwhere
from one point.

~Maru
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Re: Physics question

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/22/05, Andrew Paul <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Yes, and thus there are places, where time is going faster, relative to
> earth... eg places going slower (as we are going rather fast). And is
> there a minimum and maximum speed of time?
> 
> Andrew

Well, assuming Green's metaphor holds,  yes.  Quite simply: maximum
speed of time would be a constant inertial reference frame; no
accelerating in any direction.  To be the furthest into the
time-dimension (ie, farthest into the future, if that makes sense),
you would have to have a frame that was not accelerating since the Big
Bang.
Minimum speed of time is the opposite: all possible acceleration, that
is, light speed.Intuitively, this should make time stand still,
and it does. And faster still would be going backwards in time
(tachyons, anyone?).

~Maru
deaf leading the blind. Or is it blind leading the blind?
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Re: Irregulars Question: mod format in Linux

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/21/05, Alberto Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Does anyone know wtf is a .mod file in Linux? How can I get useful things out
> of it? It seems like it's a zip-like bundle of stuff.
> 
> Alberto Monteiro

Really, Alberto. I'm somewhat disapointed in you.  

But for your browsing delectation, here are some scrumptious links
(I'll be assuming here that you are not talking about the Fortran
thingy):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOD_(file_format) ,
http://groups.google.com/group/bit.listserv.coco/browse_thread/thread/f934c8fc1a5ae2d4/fb39a89903eddc0e?lnk=st&q=.mod+file&rnum=10&hl=en#fb39a89903eddc0e
or
http://tinyurl.com/8gccq ,
http://www.modarchive.com/


~Maru

"I have millions of gathas
instant sures for every trouble
if you need a friend
try the Tientai Mountains
join me deep in the cliffs
we'll talk about truth and mystery
you won't see me though
you'll just see the mountains"
-pick up
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shide
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Re: David Brin's blog

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 8/17/05, d.brin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
/in the interests of brevity, much cut
> To this end, I have corresponded for years with experts in several
> fields, suggesting certain lines of investigation. (I'm not shy.) And
> now... you are all invited to drop in and view An Open Letter To
> Researchers In The Fields Of Addiction, Brain Chemistry And Social
> Psychology.
> 
> Paste in this address: http://www.davidbrin.com/addiction.html ...
> and feel free to tell your biologist pals. I cannot think of any
> single scientific result that might do more to help heal society and
> empower the pragmatists, while marginalizing screeching dogmatists of
> every stripe.
 /more cut

Your idea is pretty interesting: my sense of it is that you are
proposing that politics these days are not rational, and that the
reason (or a major contributing reason) is that public discourse has
been warped by extreme ideologues, who have thrived and (like a warped
Gresham's Law) driven out better, more moderate sensible commentators,
by hooking into the consumer's reward feedback loops using
self-righteousness.
I had wondered what plausible mechanisms there existed to explain that
most disagreements in politics are dishonest; have you by any chance
seen one of Robin Hanson's papers, entitled "Are Disagreements
Honest?" In it they pretty persuasively show that most arguers are
irrational, and suggest countermeasures:
http://hanson.gmu.edu/deceive.pdf
or, in Google-ized html versions:
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:DKPRjOn9YOoJ:www.gmu.edu/jbc/Tyler/deceive.pdf+&hl=en
http://tinyurl.com/akr4d 

~Maru
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Curious coincidence

[Maru Dubshinki]

I was reading Slate the other day, and I saw the article on a new
presentation of that old mainstay, the periodic table.  It is quite
visually interesting, as the elements are arranged in a spiral (hence
the name, "Chemical Galaxy").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Galaxy

But what struck me most was the acute resemblance to Stanislaw Ulam's
prime number spiral.
http://www.numberspiral.com/
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PrimeSpiral.html

The strange coincidences in this world sometimes are pretty impressive.

~Maru
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Re: MTG_fans=3A_Yer_missin_out

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 7/21/05, Jim Sharkey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> Some of his homegrown spells are just other cards renamed.  There are a few 
> neat ones among them, but he crosses up on when things should be an instant 
> and when they should be sorceries a few times.  There are also a few that are 
> just strictly better or worse versions of other cards, which is kinda meh IMO.
> 
> The "repeat" mechanic is neat.  This is one I'd love to see; the arguments 
> alone of whether or not it's better than storm would be worth the price of 
> admission.  :)
> 
> "Stall" is...OK.  I think it would probably be better on big fatties for the 
> Timmies rather than on weenies.  A 2/2 flyer for one mana is ridiculously 
> cheap, true, and it *would* allow for a number of quick flying beats by turn 
> three, but if it doesn't come out turn one, it's practically useless.
> 
> A few of his decisions are puzzling; a pumpable 1/1 for one mana?  And it's 
> common?  It's better than Nantuko Shade!
> 
> OTOH, his costless splice spells are decent; the black one in particular is 
> cool.  Pit's Pull could rock, and the lands that allow you to choose 
> depletion or pain are neat, though maybe a bit powerful; I mean, Starlit Lake 
> would allow you to play Lightning Angel on turn 2 in Extended; that's strong 
> stuff and well worth 2 damage!
> 
> The goblin Spikes would make in their pants over Tar-Lan Palace, I think.  :)
> 
> Overall, despite any criticisms I may have made, it's not a bad effort.  He 
> managed to get a little in there for Johnny, Timmy and Spike, which is good.
> 
> Jim
> I believe in the heart of the cards Maru

Wait a sec- That's Yu-Gi-Oh! You traitor!


~Maru
anyone understand the rest of it?
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Re: Not unexpected news

[Maru Dubshinki]

On 7/20/05, Ronn!Blankenship <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> About 3-1/2 hours ago:
> 
> <>
> 
> 
> --Ronn! :)


He's dead, Jim.


~Maru

/teh obvious
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