> >For example, in the Matrix universe, what functional reason would the
> >machines have for plugging humans into a simulation (besides the obvious
> >of being a plot device)?
>
> Maybe the machines, who presumably were once "enslaved" by humanity, are
now
> obsessed with enslaving humanity in ret
> Using humans or any other animal as an energy source is of course foolish
since the energy needed to create a human is far greater than the energy
that the human can generate. You could run machines on plants thus
converting sunlight into complex carbohydrates that can be used as fuel. But
why bo
> I mean, Morpheus may not have been perfect, but I find Laurence
> Fishburne to be very easy on the eyes. And I'm not complaining about
> Keanu Reeves, either.
Yes, all we talk about is _eyes_. Not ears. My ears were definitely NOT
entertained by the dialogues (and monologues).
Best regards, Kl
> WindowsT comes with solitaire. Do Macs come with solitaire or any other
card games?
Nope, I guess. Ya know:
"Linux is for networking,
Mac is for working,
Windows is for Solitaire"
(originator of this unknown to me)
- Klaus
___
http://www.mccmedia.c
> > > It could provide incentive for people to buy safer and smaller cars.
No. Not really. Heavier cars are safer in crashes, because they can simply
push aside smaller opponents, while losing only little speed. The negative
accleration is what kills you in a car crash. Heavier car = less negative
> Cameras are getting cheap enough to use everywhere. Just ask our friends
> in the UK. But it's important that we keep the government honest - that's
> how we ward off the big brother syndrome.
Funny thing is that goverments are strongly opposed to observation of
politicans, both during their wo
> Religious fanaticism is a poison.
Well, I consider *every* kinf od fanaticism a poison. It means absense of
reason, which is one thing which justifies the word "sapiens" after the word
"homo".
> > find in our particular superstition of Christianity one redeeming
> > feature. They are all alike
> > President Bush has asked Congress for $72.4 billion
> to fund
> > the "Global War on Terror" through fiscal year 2006.
> About
> > $65 billion will go toward the wars in Iraq and
> Afghanistan,
> I'm curious about the rationale for hiring a company
> based in/owned by the UAE (two of the 911
Dave Land <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> PS: This is one reason that Peggy and I are registered for
> permanent absentee voter status.
Well...perhaps you'll vote in 2006 for a change. Although you might not be
aware of your "vote" =:-O
- Klaus ;-)
_
> "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
Yup. However, some people cannot tell a man from a bird
- Klaus
___
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
> I've been on AOl since 1990, and my email address (my last name
> @aol.com) is something that I enjoy because I never, ever have to
> repeat it for anybody. So many people have stupid email addresses
> like [EMAIL PROTECTED] or some such nonsense. Mine is 12
> characters, made up of two parts tha
> For the last few months you have been able to buy lasers that could
> pop balloons, melt trash bags, cut electrical tape, and melt through
> plastic.
And more easily blind people than the class 1 lasers.
Want to kill someone? Wait till he drives past on th efreeway, point the
laser at his eyes
> >And more easily blind people than the class 1 lasers.
> >
> >Want to kill someone? Wait till he drives past on th efreeway, point the
> >laser at his eyes and there he goes. The perfect crime, killing people
with
> >an intuitive "point and click" interface.
>
>
> I have a class 1 green laser rat
> embed DRM everywhere. IBM and Microsoft have instead stressed genuinely
> useful applications, like signing programs to be certain they don’t
> contain a rootkit. But at this week’s RSA show, Lenovo showed off a
ROFLMAO!
These "applications" are not real-world applications as we know them. Only
> label on the one I have here) that the human eye isn't very sensitive
> to it. The green ones lase at 532nm, which is near the wavelength
> (~550nm) where the human eye is most sensitive, so the beam from a
> green laser is much more visible than that from a red laser of the
> same power, making
> Yes, Trusted Computing is used for DRM
Don't despair, back doors are currentyl being considered:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4713018.stm
Ross Anderson remarks:
"I’m in favour of court-mandated shortcuts past rights-management systems,
on competition-policy grounds. In our APIG su
> >who had a meeting Tuesday evening and came home through some really
> >nasty fog, and who really, really wishes the county had sprung for
> >paint on one road in particular
>
> I'd be interested in the answer to that question, too, but afaik we
> haven't had any thick fog like that since I got i
> If you want to discuss the list's titular subject, then feel free,
> but don't be too surprised if those of us who are guilty of the
> political focus of the list become strangely quiet :-).
To: "Killer Bs Discussion"
Opps. Doesn't "Bush" belong to the "Killer Bs"? ;-)
- Klaus
__
> > I was surprised to see that it's only 67 hp... I drove my mother's
> > Prius a
> > while ago and it seemed zippier than that. Lots of torque, I guess.
The advantage of electric motors is that the torque much less dependent on
the revs/minute than with an infernal combustion engine.
An elet
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/12/07/germany.scientology.ap/index.html
> >
> > Germany's top security officials said Friday they consider the goals
> > of the Church of Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of
> > the nation's constitution and will seek to ban the organization.
>
> People blame communication issues on Mercury being retrograde.
> >>>And they're stupid or ignorant people. FFS.
> >>
> >>I just don't get the whole astrology thing. It makes absolutely no
> >>sense when you consider the pairs of identical twins that were born
> >>within minutes of each other
> > People blame communication issues on Mercury being retrograde.
>
> And they're stupid or ignorant people. FFS.
> >>>
> >>> I just don't get the whole astrology thing. It makes absolutely
> >>> no sense when you consider the pairs of identical twins that
> >>> were born with
> 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 tha
> >In the memo released by the FDA, Dr. Curtis Rosebraugh, an agency
> >medical officer, wrote: "As an example, she [Woodcock] stated that we
> >could not anticipate, or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors such
> >as the medication taking on an 'urban legend' status that would lead
> >adolescent
> "Make no mistake," McIntyre adds. "Today's RFID inventory tags could
> evolve into embedded homing beacons. Unchecked, this technology could
> become a Big Brother bonanza and a civil liberties nightmare."
Next thing we'll hear is that this technology help us to prevent terrorism,
and everybdy
> > >... Now, ... it seems
> > > that the same pair of mockingbirds has built a nest
> > > in the bush at my
> > > mailbox, and in the spirit of protecting their nest,
> > > one of them
> > > attacks me every time I go to or near the mailbox.
If they attack, they have something to protect, so I gu
> My experience with MRIs comes mostly from having my head examined,
> but I'm pretty sure that the room is a Faraday cage to contain the
> substantial RF output, so it would be just about impossible to make a
> cell phone work in there. You'd probably have to build a cell inside
> the room
> A little taste of our small (but not for a Maltese) dog:
>
>
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2326268951915604926&q=kairo&pl=true
Apparently the dog is trained to retrieve cameras. This could become
profitable
- klaus ;-)
_
Th
> >To turn the question around: why not just rap the knuckles of the
> >hunter/explorer kids and force them to Sit Down! Shut Up! and Pay
Attention!
>
> Yes, why not? :P
Because it's not democratic to tell a child to "pay attention". Ya know,
"democracy = freedom".
Which is funny, because kids
> Well with the expression of interest in gaming that was put forth on the
> console side of things, I figured it was just as well to see what games
that
> you all play online.
I used to play "Counter Strike", "Day of Defeat", "Natural Selection" and
"Science & Industry". All of these are first pe
"Nick Lidser" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I used to be a *fanatical* StarCraft player. My brother is trying to
>> get me to play DDO, since he's all the way in Utah, but otherwise I
>> just don't have the time.
> DDO? Dungeons and Dragons Online? Or was this a typo and you meant to say
> DoD, D
> Every Sunday Christians congregate to drink blood
> in honour of their zombie master.
Erm, yes, but the blood is fake
- Klaus ;-)
_
This mail sent using V-webmail - http://www.v-webmail.orgg
__
> Two of the "top 7" logical fallacies.
Aw. My favourite is "this saying rhymes, so it must be true."
- Klaus ;-)
_
This mail sent using V-webmail - http://www.v-webmail.orgg
___
http://www.mccmed
> > Who discredited Marxism?
> >
> Communism :-)
>
> > It's out of favour for sure, but when was the official
> > accreditation lost?
> >
> 1989, the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
Did it discredit Marxism, or did it just discredit centrally planned
economy?
> > And are we talking Marxism here, or
> I don't see how it works this way. Let me propose a defiantly
> non-scientific method for predicting the weather 2 months in advance. It
is
> "ask Jimmy." Let's assume, for reasons unknown, that Jimmy has an uncanny
> ability to predict the local weather two months in advance. We find that
>
> > They found that a genetic mutation that gives its carriers
> > protection against the HIV virus became relatively common among
> > white Europeans about 700 years ago
>
>
> So the HIV virus was designed by White People to kill Black People!
> "THEY" had convinced me that it had been fnord d
> The "Were you there???" is a favourite creationist canard, and it
> rankles me to see it espoused by people on "our side".
Sure. I was also there when God pulled though the whole creation. I can
confirm that everything ist true, except for the assertion about the
"creation in six days". Since
> What was that about cell-phone radiation not being able to penetrate the
> skull again?
Gee.
Smoking is harmful,
alcolhol is harmful,
cell phones are harmful...
...what will come next?
Something really stupid like "buring mineral oil products is harmful"?
- Klaus
_
> Scientists say dodos killed by natural disaster
>
> By Tim Cocks Mon Jul 3, 10:47 AM ET
>
> PORT LOUIS (Reuters) - Scientists who unearthed a mass dodo grave in
> Mauritius say they have found evidence showing the birds were killed
> by a natural disaster long before humans arrived on the Ind
> Let's look at the automobiles. Big trucks, such as semi's and dump
trucks,
Why always automobiles? They are *not* the biggest source of air pollution
(even though everybody tries to tell us so). Houses are. Funny thing about
cars is also that they require catalytic converters, which generate N2
> be a conspiracy of the type alleged, thousands of
> _perfectly ordinary_ people would have to be involved.
There was an estimate that in the GDR, one out of seven persons worked for
the Stasi ("Staatssicherheit" = "state security"), in one way or the other.
Most were of course IMs ("Inoffizielle
> Think of Mesopotamia. When it was the cradle of civilization it was the
> fertile
> crescent. Now it is mostly desert (that is it is Iraq). How did this
happen?
I guess Bush has the answer to that :-)
> Over time the people living in the region degraded the environment (cut
down
> the tre
> form of public architecture. For example, there are stone markers
> that mark the solstices, and little evidence of city life. It is
> So, in terms of discussion questions:
>
> Diamond related in the Chapter on the Pitcairn Islands how trading
> with friendly neighbors can sustain a civiliz
> I don't know if this has already been suggested, but I have
> recently learned the programming language R, and it seems that
> it's exactly what you would like to use to teach your kids
> how to use a computer:
>
> (a) it's free and available for _all_ systems [M$, Linux, Mac]
How about the goo
"Alberto Monteiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Klaus Stock suggested:
> >
> > OTOH, on more modern computers, one might teach the child OOA and
> > OOP with some Smalltalk system.
> >
> From...
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smalltal
"I, who did not until that moment even believe the word 'spirit' had any
meaning"
In fact, 'spirit' has several meanings:
- breath
- courage
- vigor
- thought
- ghost
- the B2 stealth bomber
- an airline
- the MER-A mars rover
- the asteroid 37452
- an F1 racing team (from the 80s)
- a music band
> > Hmmm, I wonder if the Mac's "save to pdf" option in the print options
> > will allow you to get past that. :-)
>
>
> I doubt it. Even non-DRM'd pdf's that don't "phone home" can disable
> printing altogether, so I doubt they'd leave any sort of save-to-file
> loophole open in their nasty DR
> Except Bertelsmann are the masterminds behind all sorts of CD
> copy-protection quackery, such as the scheme that was "cracked" by marking
> the outer edge of the CD with a black magic marker. I'd also bet they
were
> they driving force behind the Sony-BMG rootkit disaster.
They also tried to "
> >>> Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly."
> >>
> >> Good for Jobs and Apple!
> >
> > Like in "Embrace, extend and extinguish"?
> > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish)
>
> That's a Microsoft tactic, not an Apple one. Apple doesn't even own
> the underlying form
> > Why egotistical? Science is not about uncovering mysteries and truths,
> > it's about modeling observation. The Big Bang does a very good job of
> > that.
>
> As long as the universe is 74% "mysterious" dark energy, for which there
is no
> direct evidence.
Yup, but we've got indirect "evide
> And remember that Brin, in His page, urged His Legions of Terror
> to start wikying!!! It's a pity that there's so little information about
> the Uplift Universe and His other books in the Wikipedia.
Reminds me of the library which all the recaes in the Uplist universe have
access to. People fro
> > STRANGE BUT TRUE: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets
> > There is a reason cats prefer meaty wet food to dry
> > kibble, and disdain sugar entirely.
> > opened a package of apple turnovers...he immediately
> > jumped up and ...licked
> > the sugar off each and every one of the turnovers.
> > Perhaps h
"Alberto Monteiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Ronn! Blankenship wrote:
> > This suggests the universe could be packed with planets that
> > have two suns. Sunsets on some of those worlds would resemble the
> > ones on Tatooine.
> >
> A _real double sunset_ would be a rare occasion, because eve
> horses...not sure what it says - that Barbie has vampy
> clothes and a ridiculously over-sexed figure, but
> can't open its legs...
What for? Have you ever paid Ken a closer look?
- klaus ;-)
_
This mail sent using V-webmail - http://www.
> So, if you can get your wife interested, there you go. :) At 2 eps per
> week, you can have it all watched in a little over a year. (Then
Of course, there is there is the little point that
your TV sets work two ways, so THEY will see what your watching. And, of
course, when you watch re-ru
> >> Some of the newer Barbies are designed to sit on a
> >> horse, so they do bend adequately for that.
>
> Ah. At one point, I saw for sale Barbies that came with horses they
> could ride. I don't know anything about collecting horses, different
> brands, etc.
Yes, I remember a TV ad for "B
> with a cork-screw and tugged out of the bottle. (Incidentally, is
> there any reason cork is used in wine bottles other than tradition?
> why not a conventional bottle-cap? Is it just wine connoisseur
> stubborness, "I'd never drink wine with a bottle cap!")
You're correct. While there is small
Drag out 10" and "ingress" is not a good sentence if somebody who
likes to overhear conversations just happens to walk by.
Thank gawd you didn't mention a rectifier.
to walk by within earshot will probably be folks I know.
Earshot.
Luckily, you wrote "folks I know", and not "folks I knew"
> Most of all, Mr. Bradbury knew how the future would feel: louder,
> faster, stupider, meaner, increasingly inane and violent. Collective
> cultural amnesia, anhedonia, isolation. The hysterical censoriousness
> of political correctness. Teenagers killing one another for kicks.
> Grown-ups read
Hi,
> Which they still haven't named!
probably the usual money launderin.
- Klaus
___
http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
> I know as a fact that the Defense Department said they
> would require that all programming for applications they used would have to
> be done in Ada (I think within 5 years) because Ada was a compiler that
> automatically eliminated bugs.
AFAIK, the Ada compiler can detect many programmer mista
> This plays into some recent conversations about "efficiency" vs "resilience."
Yup. And neither "efficiency" nor "resilience" will help you in the
end if you don't ponder some important questions first. Like: "do we
measure altitude in feet or meters?", or "should we check if the old
guidance s
Hi,
> last big innovation, and are have Apple winning market share on style
> instead of companies providing innovation that turns the world upside down
I vaguely remember that I the past it took about 50 years from an
innovation to appear until it became mainstream.
Okay, my favourite example (
>>
>> We need a black swan.
>>
> Maybe we already have it. The wiki model is working for editing
> wikipedias (not only _the_ Wikipedia, but many other clones, parodies,
> porn sites or just silly stuff), It began with IMDB and if they hadn't
> been such stupid jerks IMDB would have turned itself i
>>I vaguely remember that I the past it took about 50 years from an
> innovation to appear until it
>>became mainstream.
> Huh? It took geosteering 3 years to drop the price of oil by a factor of 3.
My rant about the "50 years" wasn't really meant seriously. Just the
preparation to the conclus
Okay, back to my discussion with myself ;-)
> This, of course, a tendency only. But it's sufficient and it surely
> kills innovation. I wonder how much further this tendency will go.
I always found it hard to swallow when SciFi authors wrote about "old
degenerate races". Not only Dr. Brin; it als
>> So at this point I can only conclude that the Republicans are congenital
>> liars.
> You are wearing selective blinders. All politicians are liars.
But not all are congenital.
Luckily, most voters do not care if the lies are plausible or at least
delivered convincingly.
- Klaus
___
> I think you are correct in that. The only thing I would add is that the
> design of the Fukushima plant was very old, and that modern designs are
> even safer.
Um, like the german SNR-300 design? Yup, the first reactor with a core
catcher! Which was, of course, dismantled. Apparently, there's on
>> This issue is not being resolved rationally, but then very
>> few people approach problems that way.
> Twitter compressed solution
> "Really cheap power if we bootstrap by building one power satellite
> and use it for propulsion lasers to bring up parts for thousands. "
> If anyone wants to k
>> Wind just needs one, effective storage. The lack of it is why
>> wind power cannot be counted on as part of peak demand.
>> It only made sense when natural gas was expensive.
>>
> Here in Brazil, Wind is used as part of the electric grid (there is a
> country-wide electric grid, only some parts
> In fact, the other major sin of the Greens (in addition to being against
> nuclear power)
That's their political agenda. When the CDU announced that the nuclear
power plants in Germany will be shut down, the greens were not
alltogether sure if they really wanted that... ;-)
> is the opposition
>> So, they were fired up when the windmills were down due to low
>> wind. Now, with cheap natural gas, the building of windmills has slown down
>> to a virtual halt.
> Well, cheap currently. It is just one carbon tax away from being
> expensive. And to my mind the only question is when that tax
>> >How were the European Greens responsible for keeping
>> Uganda poor, by
>> turning them away from nuclear?
>> Two ways:
>> 1) They have extremely strict and unreasonable standards for
>> imported food.
>> For example, its virtually impossible for US food products
>> to be sold there.
Unrea
>> Of course, it would make sense to integrate water and wind plants,
> probably even using the wind
>>turbines to power the pumps directly. But that's a problem with politics,
> not technology.
> I beg to differ. The obvious problem is geography. Pump storage is highly
> used in Switzerland, a
>>Unfortunately, we already have surplus crop and other produce. In order to
> keep the price up,
>>surplus is destroyed.
> I goggled for that in the US, and it referred to this happening during the
> Great Depression, when prices were so low during the deflationary era that
> it wasn't worth the
Hi,
>> Their entire ecconomic model, with artifically low value on their
>> currency, and the disdaining of IP right of other countries, fits
>> this.
Well, selling products at prices below below production cost and
(aggressive) disdaining of IP right of other countries has happened
before. So.
76 matches
Mail list logo
