Re: Brin: Hrm
Related T-Shirt: http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PRODStore_Code=TOProduct_Code=GOAT-DONTASKCategory_Code=GOAT On 12/3/2010 1:21 PM, David Brin wrote: saw it! *From:* KZK evil.ke...@gmail.com *To:* brin-l@mccmedia.com *Sent:* Thu, December 2, 2010 11:04:50 PM *Subject:* Brin: Hrm http://amultiverse.com/2010/09/29/dont-ask-dont-swim/ -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Gaming Computer
On 10/25/2010 2:25 PM, anar...@gmail.com wrote: My computer seems to be dying. Anybody got any recommendations/suggestions for companies/websites/etc. that I should take a look at before buying a new one. I don't think I want to pay the Alienware markup. I've also looked at OriginPC.com but that's also a bit pricey. I've heard good things about Dell's Dell-branded power/gaming line: Dell XPS, I believe it is called. Because Dell also owns Alienware, there is some interesting back and forth between configuring the different systems, but ultimately, from what I understand, the XPS is a good call if you want to avoid the Alienware tax (which does have a few advantages, including being just a luxury BMW brand). -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Look Who's Back / Mike's crazy list of physics hypotheses that he wishes he had time to look into but doesn't have the time.
On 10/22/2010 10:35 PM, Michael Harney wrote: I'm back again. I don't really know that I am doing any better than I was when I left, but I will see. I wanted to discuss some concepts with intelligent people (some of whom may already know about some of this stuff). I will preface these that my knowledge of Quantum theory is small, and if anyone can recommend a good (emphasis on good, not overly simplified or popularized like Hawking's Books which read more like quantum physics for dummies I want nitty-gritty details) book on quantum theory, I would appreciate it. Have you tried Michio Kaku's or Brian Greene's books? In my experience they are both wonderfully accessible writers with very firm grasps in the details of quantum and string/M theories. I've certainly enjoyed what I've read from both writers. (They are also both humble, working theoreticians.) -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Down with the government
On 10/17/2010 05:44 PM, Dan Minette wrote: I've argued with the other person a lot, and found we agree on a number of topics, including the need for social justice. He just believes that government is just the good 'ol boy system run amuck, and that government programs are mostly a waste. We differ, sometimes strongly, but I usually don't have contempt for someone just because I differ with them. In fact, if you look at the demographics of tea party members, you will see that they are usually fairly well educated, above average in income, and have been modestly involved in the political process for years. It's a right wing anti-elite movement. Again, I have profound differences with them, but I try to understand and respect folks I differ with, as well as see if there is any common ground. I think this is where I have many of my most head explosion-causing difficulties with the Tea Party movement: it seems obviously to me, as a Daily Show viewer if nothing else, that the Tea Party is a whole lot of astroturfing. The grass roots are plastic and artificial. The Tea Party, to me at least, seems like a very cynical media play on the part of people well and deeply tied into the classic good ol' boy system pretending that don't have ulterior motives and aren't (knowingly) playing a possibly dangerous/explosive game of dirt, destruction, implicit racism, and explicit class warfare... Perhaps it is just me, but how is the Tea Party's anti-elite movement truly any different from the anti-intellectual/anti-elite class-baiting garbage the existing Republican party has spewed the last few election cycles? How is the Tea Party's confused stance on libertarianism that much different from the classic Republican/Right Wing confusion of/with libertarianism? Why are there such weird blind spots in the Tea Party's elite radar? Why does the anti-elitism streak fail to strongly and deeply question its leadership, its money, or its media mouthpieces? The Tea Party looks, smells, and sounds a lot like a designed and constructed media/marketing strategy to me. I can see where some of the individual candidates/supporters may actually be speaking what they believe, but I have a hard time seeing the movement as a whole as self-consistent or even at times adequately self-aware (except in worrying instances of possibly deeply self-conscious artifice). Honestly, I can't help but worry that the Tea Party is nothing more than a constructed entity designed to virally produce some of the same grass roots voting patterns such as the work done by once-obscure actual grass roots groups like Move On on the left, except without any of the intended altruism nor the real substance of an actual, ground-based grass roots movement... Instead they've managed to inherit plenty of the existing right wing stockpiles of Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. How are they any different from politics as usual or the classic good ole boy system? Just because they've given it a new name doesn't mean it is some new thing... But then, maybe I just don't understand the Tea Party as a movement at all. Maybe I'm too elite to get it, I suppose. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Trolls
On 9/7/2010 20:43, John Williams wrote: On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 5:39 PM, David Hobbyhob...@newpaltz.edu wrote: Well, that was certainly helpful. ---David I'm no help either, though. We both helped increase list traffic, which has been quite low... To be perfectly frank, I don't think anyone can be of much help on this matter with regard to Facebook. I think Facebook has made it perfectly clear that it is not in the business of enabling discussion. It's in the business of selling ads... Unfortunately, trolls use ads too. I suspect trolls actually use more ads, thus paying for the right to be jerks, but I certainly don't have the ad metrics to data mine in order to test that particular hypothesis. The lesson: more privately hosted mailing lists, less Facebook. Please. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
The Book of Enoch (was: Creationism [was: First Pluto is not a planet, and now . . . .])
On 08/03/2010 02:07 PM, Dan Minette wrote: I think that Enoch was a monotheistic Jew. Most of the common understanding of the devil comes from Enoch. Indeed, in the book of Jude, Enoch was quoted as scripture. Spinning back, somewhat, towards the topic of this list: the Book(s) of Enoch keep getting brought up in my science fiction reading lately. For this I particularly blame Neal Stephenson (I've just reached the beginning of Book 8: System of the World in Stephenson's Baroque Cycle), but there have been a few other Singularitarians out there invoking the name of Enoch in one fashion or another. Has anyone else been noticing this trend? Anyone got some interesting thoughts on the matter? Certainly my own research on the subject has primarily been the esteemed Wikipedia. One interesting thing that stands out in my mind is that Enoch's angel name after ascending is apparently transliterated Metatron. It is, of course, fascinating the modern sci-fi (or at least Transformers) sound of the name to an English-speaking audience. (I've got a feeling that this is also something that fascinated Mr. Stephenson, as I've heard it said that the Baroque Cycle is a (very) long meandering tangent en route to some sort of Singularitarian capstone...) -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: replacing fossil fuels
On 06/14/2010 07:51 PM, Dan Minette wrote: SBSP will get into that range if there is a way to get transport to GEO down into the $100 per kg or less range. Which I think will happen when Star Wars works. :-) In the field of synthetic biology prices have been falling a factor of two per year for the last decade or so. That's one of the reasons it fits the black swan model. With solar and space, it's always tomorrow when prices fall like a rock. What about nuclear? Aren't most its operating costs well known today? Why aren't we (and by we, I mean everyone, not just this list) talking more about nuclear power in light of the oil spill? I've been wondering how much the oil spill puts nuclear into perspective: off-shore drilling has put almost all of the Gulf ecosystem into turmoil with 1 (!) accident/disaster. (And a chunk of the Atlantic ecosystem if they don't cap it sooner rather than later?) Doesn't that have a larger long term impact than either (or possibly both) 3 Mile Island or Chernobyl? (Did those events cause extinctions?) I've heard the criticism that at least oil is natural, but how likely is a natural disaster that would have caused this sort of disastrous spill? (What factor of earthquake would we be talking about to cause this? Wouldn't there be more things to worry about than an oil spill in such a case-- volcanoes, tidal waves, perhaps even continental drift?) (...not to mention that it is surprising how many people today need it explained that radioactivity is also a natural effect and not all radioactivity in the world/universe is human-enriched/created...) -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Platform for gathering memories?
Nick Arnett wrote: Lesley has a Facebook page, but that doesn't really seem right for this. Anybody know of a site or software that might work well for that purpose, where people could upload, write, etc.? First of all, since you've been playing with Wiki tools for the Imaginaria Wiki you could probably setup your own simple family wiki in the time it takes to research this. One site you might look at is Geni.com. It attempts to be a social network built around your genealogy tree so it has many of the Facebook-like things of photos and profiles, but it has family-oriented privacy settings (like only my immediate family and all blood relatives). It might particularly be of interest in bringing family history to young kids because you get the graphical tree of relatives to navigate. On the other hand, I'm not sure how easy it might be for friends, rather than relatives, to contribute, if that were a goal you had in mind. I know there are also several virtual memorial sites around, some better funded than others. About a month or so ago that was a big next thing in the VC world-- Facebooks of the dead so to speak-- but I think it has already mostly fizzled out as quickly as it became a fad. Of course I'm just judging by what I read in tech journals. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: The wikipedia trolls may win again :-/
On 12/28/2009 5:18, Alberto Monteiro wrote: Yes, it's a stub, and fortunately so. Another stupid decision made in the English wikipedia was that spoilers are _not_ marked as such. Just take a look a the article about English Wikipedia does provide standard spoiler warning templates, but unlike some of the other (*cough*less useful*cough*) templates, like the lack of citation and just a stub warnings, to my knowledge there aren't Spoiler nazis in En.Wikipedia plugging them into every article in existence. The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre movie... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_the_Christ ... or about the Titanic (the nazi rip-off by Cameron)... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanic_(1997_film) ... and see how carelessly it gives the end of both movies without respect for those who don't know the stories! To be fair, the statute of spoiler limitations has run out on both of them, being semi-historical in nature. I also don't think the intentionally fictional elements of Titanic are substantial enough to be spoiled, but that's just my opinion. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Avatar
On 12/23/2009 13:11, Julia wrote: When I've seen the preview, I've had uncanny valley issues. I don't think I could sit through the whole thing without having a brain-ache. :( I don't think the previews do justice to the film because this really is one of those rare films that needs 3D to do it justice and is better the bigger the screen that you watch it on. I particularly think the uncanny valley issues with the film dissolve the more you let the film immerse you and large screens and 3D are key to that. This is something that James Cameron seems to have known all along, and part of why it has become the message to get out to encourage people to pay for that 3D or IMAX upgrade at their local popcorn stadium. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Recursion in C, as told by Kernigan, Ritchie, and Lovecraft
Alberto Monteiro wrote:
Warren Ockrassa wrote:
I really enjoyed this, but can't share it with my colleagues, since
they wouldn't get either reference.
Sometimes it's really a pain in the ass to be a programmer and
English major working in a PR department as the graphics guy.
http://www.bobhobbs.com/files/kr_lovecraft.html
joke critic
The code is wrong:
void Cthulhu
(int Ia) {
if (Ia/10)
Cthulhu (IA/10);
putchar // ftagn!
(Ia % 10 + '0');
} // neblod zin!
// is a comment in C++ and, by the arcane magic known as backwards
compatibility, crept into C compilers
/joke critic
Also, there is an undeclared variable (IA != Ia). That was the first
thing I noticed skimming it.
Beyond that, it doesn't seem like proper Kernigan and Ritchie code
because it is not formatted properly in the KR style... It almost looks
more like GNU code.
--
--Max Battcher--
http://worldmaker.net
___
http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Cloud Computing Smears (Was: Google Wave)
On 10/18/2009 0:38, John Williams wrote: On Sat, Oct 17, 2009 at 8:36 PM, Julia Thompsonf...@zurg.net wrote: Er. In that sort of a situation, I myself would set up a RAID for storing the data, *much* less chance for losing it. RAID does not protect from rm -rf / , which (some variant of) is my guess at what happened. Although now they are saying most of the data is recovered, so maybe it got munged in a reversible way. Any cloud service at this point is going to be tens, if not hundreds, of servers. (Major services easily run in the thousands of servers, and if you count virtual servers the biggest services are using millions of servers already.) At this point any outage that is going to affect a service as whole is generally going to be a lot subtler (and possibly a lot nastier, such an accidental viral infection due to an underlying bug/exploit in the service) than a rm -rf /. At least, assuming the system admins are doing their jobs correctly rm -rf / to a single server is extremely unlikely to cause massive outage or damage... (As a service gets large enough hard drives are expected to fail randomly, and surprisingly frequently, and services should be designed around that problem...) -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Google Wave
Jo Anne wrote: OK, Guys, what the heck is Google Wave? Is it like what Twits do with Tweets? I know what a beta test is, but a Google Wave? Speak slowly and directly into the microphone, please. It depends on who you ask and how much hype they've ingested, digested, and are prepared to spew back at you... Basically, Google Wave is an attempt at a convergence of... well, everything that is communication, actually. It tries to converge the immediacy of IM or Twitter with the long term storage and general richness of email or forum conversations or Word documents. It has the possibility of becoming One Inbox to Rule Them All, but that invokes a lot of assumptions that may not necessarily be true nor become true. So far, I remain a skeptic of the project: considering how hard it is to explain the system I wonder if it is too complex to easily gain mainstream acceptance/usage. You can watch the long video (and it is long) trying to explain the thing at the Wave website: http://wave.google.com -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Google Wave
Bruce Bostwick wrote: I haven't chimed in on Wave or the more general subject of cloud computing yet, since I haven't used it yet (which, in some people's judgment, makes me ineligible to comment, although I consider that a questionable argument), but my misgivings about it are generally related to the same question of how valid the underlying assumptions are, as well as the overall reliability of the servers the storage lives on. In terms of specific to Google Wave: for now early adopters should trust Google's storage policies (and considering the vast number of people with Gmail addresses, many do), with the addition of the Google way-early-beta caveat. In the mid to long term other servers should start to pick up Wave usage. The entire Java source to run your own Wave server is available for use and adaptation and servers talk to each other in similar ways to email servers (so Wave participant addresses right now are things like max.battc...@googlewave.com, which look like email addresses but aren't guaranteed to be one and the same). (More accurately, the server to server protocols are based on the more recent XMPP IM standards rather than decades-old email, but the general idea is the same...) (It seems to me that a lot of the hype around the cloud computing concept is really thin on details of infrastructure, storage reliability/redundancy and backup maintenance, privacy protection, and a whole range of other unanswered questions I've had about it. And for people who seem so eager to have me store my personal data on their servers, a lot of those unanswered questions are show stoppers for me.) Well cloud computing has come to embody a lot of concepts, generally, and can be anything from marketing droid speak to a beloved panacea from the computing gods... To be honest the term in common parlance doesn't seem to have a very well-defined meaning anymore. Generally, individual cloud computing providers should be able to provide you with all of the details that you need, and your questions are unanswered, you may not be asking the right people... All of the services that I use on a daily basis are very forthright with that sort of information and I would say that I have days where I am very paranoid. It's hard to argue anything at a general cloud computing level, and just like any other set of services you have to go into each relationship with some idea of your intent and the company/entity's trustworthiness. Perhaps if you named specific services or concerns your questions might be answered. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Cloud Computing Smears (Was: Google Wave)
Bruce Bostwick wrote: Part of my concern with the concept in general is the fairly glaring admin/management deficiency described in this article: http://dailyqi.com/?p=10576 I've been avoiding most articles on this subject because there is a lot of FUD out there and very little real truth. Some of that is T-Mobile blamestorming and some of that is the usual sorts that like any opportunity to smear Microsoft. It's very easy to focus on the negative case studies in cloud computing and miss the 99.9% of the time when stuff works as it is supposed to. No one buys digital ads for articles about the status quo works, go back to sleep. Danger was acquired in February of this year and I wouldn't be surprised that the majority of the infrastructure in question predated the acquisition. Even big companies like Microsoft can't magically change infrastructure with the snap of a finger... Furthermore, to my knowledge, Microsoft/Danger have been explicitly mum about what precisely the technological glitches were that lead to the failures. It's certainly easy to presume that there were no backups at all, but at this point it is still hearsay, at best, and my money is on slander. I've heard that some of the affected customers have already started to get some of their personal data back and the press release from Microsoft declares that they are confident that they will restore the majority of it, which seems to contradict the no backups at all theory pretty well. (I doubt that they would remain confident if they were combing disks in clean rooms for good sectors...) Certainly Microsoft isn't entirely blameless, you would assume a technical audit would be an early priority in any acquisition. Presumably stability issues would be a huge priority and reliability engineers would be some of the first gated into a acquisition project. More particularly, I think that T-Mobile isn't nearly as blameless as they would like to believe or portray themselves as. Getting back to that it's who you ask the questions of problem, T-Mobile was the first call in that chain (their name is branded on the product!) and if their answer at any point was we don't know about our service's reliability or our service is absolutely reliable without connection to reality (and without in turn encouraging customers to talk to Danger if they wanted deeper answers), then they are absolutely a part of the blame and a part of the problem. All of which isn't to say that your fears, Barry, are unwarranted or that caution doesn't apply. More that I think that journalists (and almost especially tech journalists) seem to be having a harder and harder time reflecting technical reality and I think there is a need for some mechanism to break the tedious Hype then Fear/FUD/Doom/Gloom cycle. To me this is exactly the sort of story that breaks that doesn't get a healthy grain of salt... -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.ne ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: What's to read?
kananda...@aol.com wrote: OK Max, you are going to chuckle, guess what one of the other 2 Pratchetts I downloaded was? Already a good chunk of the way through Thief of Time, not as good as Night Watch to me, but it is good enough to pass some flight time. Like I said, I got a huge kick out of both of those books, but I also went into them knowing many of the cameo characters and recurring jokes/themes. Plus, I had read enough canon haggling in Discworld to know at least a few of the quirks that those two books hang a lampshade on. I was just warning you that the rest of the series is a little less meta-/quantum and possibly funnier. Whenever I read Bear and Gibson, I have to prepare myself for the possibility of a major culture immersion, something where I have to work at to get a cultural anchor (but also can create a connection/commitment to the story *belief* for a time afterwards if it is successful). I don't know anything about literary stuff like that, but examples are reading Queen of Angels/Slant, etc. In Pratchett the story seem to ease you into thinking you know the culture and then makes you do a double take that is kinda fun. You are right, the tongue in cheek is helpful strategy/stories are good and the time monks are a wild card (and from a literary perspective I could see that would allow some incongruencies in story lines). Okay, I can see that: lighter with respect to the Anathem wrap your head in this culture fast, now let me deluge you sort. I can definitely see Pratchett in that space. He is good at disarming the reader. I'm a later books fan and that makes perfect sense to me. (The first few books actually attempted to build something of a Discworld-mythology, as a satire of traditional Fantasy novels. Unlike some of the earlier books fans, I love that Pratchett's Discworld books are best when Discworld is but a thin veneer to keep satire of the contemporary world labeled as fantasy.) I guess it is like reading Heinlein, I found the older stuff first and got hooked as a young adult, saving things like the Puppet Masters for later. If I had started with the Cat who walked through walls, I am not sure I would have had the same perspectives on Heinlein. That's a good comparison. Thief of Time/Night Watch do parallel Cat in terms of some crazy people like me love them and just as many hate them, particularly for being very meta. (I'm a weird person myself... I started into Heinlein with Stranger and Cat and then worked my way through nearly everything and then back to Cat. Possibly appropriate, given the ouroborian focus of those last four books. But it does give me an interesting view on Heinlein, I guess.) If you are curious, I basically followed the HarperCollins American re-release schedule for Pratchett, which means that I started late into the series as well with Masquerade and Interesting Times, and was reading many of the earlier books alongside of new releases. (Speaking of new releases, Unseen Academicals is in stores on the 6th...) -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: What's to read?
kananda...@aol.com wrote: One recent read question (blending threads)- finally tried my first Pratchett book- Night Watch. I found it to be lighter and a good brain break, but I am not sure if there is any particular order to things. Is there another book related to Vetinari? Many. Pratchett's Discworld series at this point has many threads that wind their way through the books. Vetinari is a something of a critical nexus of several of these threads, but most particularly the Watch books (one of the first being *Guards! Guards!* if you want to attempt a somewhat more chronological study). *Night Watch* in particular is sometimes frowned upon for the book being a bizarre nexus in and of itself within the Discworld time stream. (Mostly time progresses appropriately forward across the books, albeit rarely does it matter, but *Night Watch* manages to be both contemporary and a possible prequel, all the while teasing the reader with uncertainty principles.) Some Pratchett fans that particularly hate *Night Watch* would be amazed that you find *Night Watch* lighter reading, but perhaps you lucked out by skipping *Thief of Time*, first. You might find *Night Watch* to be a subtly different beast if you re-read it after *Thief of Time*. (Personally I'm a fan of *Thief of Time* and *Night Watch*.) However, you probably want to read a lot more Discworld books before you work your way back to *Thief of Time*... If you want particular recommendations from the vasty canon of Discworld, I heartily recommend the Moist von Lipwig books: *Going Postal* and *Making Money* (in chronological order). It's a good thread unto itself with some of his (in my opinion) sharpest satire and deepest insights. Also, another great sequence that stands alone well is the Discworld Young Adult novels: *The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents*, *The Wee Free Men*, *A Hat Full of Sky*, and *Wintersmith*. (That is if Young Adult doesn't scare you, which it shouldn't, because these books are equally awesome.) Then there is every other awesome book in Discworld. :) Ask enough Pratchett fans and you'll find a glowing recommendation for any and every book, for one reason or another. Apologies for the rant, hopefully it helps, -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Politicians sell out again
John Williams wrote: On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 8:29 AM, Chris Frandsenlear...@mac.com wrote: Most of the politicians that I have personally met are not 'self-serving , rather they are making a great effort to serve. And they are good at tricking the naive into thinking that they are behaving altruistically... What a sad, cynical worldview you live in. ...while they take their money and give it to those who are best at bribing them. Hey, isn't that market forces at work? Aren't the same people that are bribing politicians the very same free market enterprises that you laud in other sentences? How is the political pork market all that different, or that far removed, from any other free market? More importantly: how is it that the politicians taking bribes are worse than the corporations giving them? I think there is just as good an argument as yours that corrupt politicians are merely victims of a corrupt market. The truth of the matter is probably even simpler: both sides have corruption. There is corruption on both sides of the equation: corruption in the free markets and corruption in politics. To laud one sort of corruption and simultaneously despise another seems to me a hypocritical thing to do. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Politicians sell out again
On 8/11/2009 18:53, Trent Shipley wrote: More fundamental is his objection to the U.S. Government. In effect, he is saying that the U.S. system of government is inherently illegitimate, largely because it is run by politicians. By John William's standards ALL representative democracy is illegitimate precisely because a representative democracy REQUIRES professional politicians. Crazy tangent: I've always wondered if it might be worth the effort to introduce a third house, a tricameral legislature of sorts, where the members are brought in through a random civic duty lottery (akin to jury duty selection in most states, perhaps). Call it the House of Peers or House of the Public, for instance. I think such a crazy idea would only work in the modern communications era. You can't expect a person to serve even a 1-year term if they have to pack their bags for Washington and may not be able to expect to have their existing job when they return (much less can't afford the salary differential during the term). However, with the Moderne Internet, I think that average folks might be persuaded to do a little bit of work for their country online every so often for even a tiny amount of compensation. You could even contemplate things like micro-terms of only a few weeks duration with the right technological leverage. With micro-terms and lots of paid eyeballs you might even get awfully close to a sort of representative wiki democracy. Even if this House was of lesser standing than the existing legislature it would be useful just to have a public oversight committee directly drawn from the public and in the same turf as existing legislatures. Anyway, it's just a crazy thought experiment (that I created for use in a short story I never wrote) and I doubt that it would be easy to amend the Constitution to try it, but it might be something to play with at local or state levels and see if it survives/replicates... -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Torchwood: Children of Earth
On 7/27/2009 20:09, William T Goodall wrote: I'll have to try that show. If you liked The Middleman you should get a kick out of Better Off Ted. I'm hoping to get the Middleman DVDs eventually and the last episode comic sounds great. I also hope someone posts the reading of the final script from Comic Con in a useful fashion for those of us who couldn't make it to Comic Con... -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Torchwood: Children of Earth
Gary Nunn wrote: Warehouse 13 - After two episodes, I'm not impressed or hooked yet, but I'll give it a few more episodes. I got a kick out of the first episode and I think that it might have staying power. Certainly it is yet another monster of the week program (albeit substitute gadget/oddity for monster), but it is playful and fun. I really like the bits of steampunk in the Warehouse itself. Certainly there are some fun things in thinking about such a crazy project that it would bring such (later in life) enemies as Thomas Edison and Nicolai Tesla together to build such a bizarre facility... There are neat hints that a deeper through-storyline is building and with Jane Espenson helming I've got a feeling that we can expect the show to cross a few boundaries that we might think are set in stone in the formula even though we've only seen a few episodes thus far. I guess most importantly is that it plays very well in a duo with Eureka (which thanks to the magic of Hulu end up scheduled on the same nights for me) and I think its good to have more science is awesome in television, even if it is pseudo-science as most of Warehouse 13 appears. Speaking of science is awesome on television, please tell me that you all are watching Better Off Ted? It's like The Office meets Eureka (with a dash of Arrested Development and a dash of Pushing Daisies); it's a fun comedy about (RD) middle management at a mega-science corporation, Veridian Dynamics, that builds crazy things like weaponized pumpkins and hover shoes. It's definitely the funniest program with two major show-stealing characters that happen to be scientists that I've seen. The last few episodes rolling are on Hulu and the premise is gentle enough that you should be able to pick it up pretty quickly. Currently the show is on the back half (6 eps) of Season 1, which I believe is also doubling as the front half leading into Season 2. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: In despair for the state of SF
Dan M wrote: There is so much good science fiction - not to mention 'slipstream', 'New Weird', etc - out there (old and new) why waste your time reading the crap? One thing I've noticed, however, is that the shelf space for what I, and from what I read most folks on Brin-L consider good sci-fi continues to shrink, being replaced by game based series, movie based series, etc. I think that is probably more the bookstores that you shop than an objective reality shift... I mean, sci-fi has always had a strong relationship with its pulp and mass media sides. If anything, the prominence of the game based sci-fi and movie based sci-fi should be a sign that that the industry is successful and healthy. Also, there is more speculative fiction slipping across the aisles into other categories. There have been a number of books added to my sci-fi wishlist recently that are categorized in the Literature areas of most bookstores, due to both the high brow prominence of some authors toeing into the waters and what appears to be an increasing tolerance by the literary elites for sci-fi/speculative themes and hooks. BTW, I don't think graphic novels inherently fit under the crap category. I thought The Watchman was very good. My son and I had one big argument over it. He argued that it was good literature. I argued it was good, but a different art form than literature because it used graphics to tell so much of the story. Certainly the graphic novel is a different medium for literature than the traditional novel, but graphic novels fit well within my definition of literature. Certainly semantics could be argued for days, but I think that graphic novels do trend closer to literature than, say, art or film. We could argue that perhaps a new term needs to be created to cluster graphic novels and illustrated novels distinctly from literature, but I don't see a strong need to differentiate between the type of literature that is the 'modern' graphic novel and 'classic literature'. Both are welcome to me, but then I'm not a high brow book critic. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Heinlein
Alberto Monteiro wrote: How is The Number of the Beast? I read an excerpt from the book way back before it was published (in Omni) and was hot to read the book after that but for one reason or the other never picked it up. If you didn't like Cat you probably won't like Number. OTOH, it makes reference to many classical sf (and fantasy) stories, so maybe if you like those other stories you will like it. Tons and tons of SF and Fantasy references and tropes. I think that I probably only caught a small percentage of them when I read that. I certainly would steer you away from Number until you've read more of Heinlein's other stuff: All four of Heinlein's last books (Time Enough for Love, The Number of the Beast, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset) act as something of a single capstone work culminating together something of a final epilogue (or rather, epilogues) for Heinlein's massive Future History, which he basically admits in Cat ends up as very much a somewhat quaint Future History of the Past by the time he's done, and embarking on a meta-journey that is both respectful to his (and other SF/Fantasy) earlier writings and yet a playful jab at them as well. If you don't like (heavy) meta-fiction or the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics you definitely should avoid the last three. I found them sometimes silly fun. As for Heinlein's politics, he certainly leaned somewhat to the libertarian side, but I think he was more complex than that (for instance, the mixture of the socialist influences that he had) and I certainly feel that a strength of his was in playing with political extremes in his works and hiding his own actual political beliefs below trying to make his character's beliefs realistically their own. At best, his works make you think and question your place in society. So certainly the political ideals in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress are flawed, but it is hard not to admire their spirit. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Bear's Halo Novels
Anyone else yet catch this news? Greg Bear is working on a trilogy of novels set in the Halo universe that is quite well known to game players at this point. Greg Bear will be playing with some of the distant past concepts of the fiction's Forerunners (a somewhat stereotypical ancient race that among other things built the titular Halo devices). I'm certainly interested to see Greg Bear playing in this space. http://kotaku.com/5200423/greg-bear-penning-halo-forerunner-trilogy -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Help with Gmail
Warren Ockrassa wrote: On Mar 18, 2009, at 7:45 PM, Jo Anne wrote: I've offered to help an SCA friend who has a Gmail account. She's moving a bunch of email (over 3000 at last count) in about 75 different labels from her account to another account so that the person taking over her *volunteer* job will have access to the 3000+ emails that have come in during my friend's tenure. I don't know if this will be of *any* help to you, but here's one discussion that came up when I searched gmail help for importing mail from one gmail account to another: http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Message-Delivery-en/browse_thread/thread/e03d11d678519a4/165e3b32ff8085d0?lnk=gstqpli=1 It looks a bit involved because you seem to need to have IMAP access with a third-party mail program. IMAP is a kind of mail-communication method; a third-party mail app would be something like Thunderbird from mozilla.org. Yep, AFAIK, right now the only way to easily move/copy emails between Gmail accounts is to use their IMAP interface. Don't let the four letter acronym scare you, the process of setting up IMAP is rather simple and Google has plenty of screenshots in their Help pages to show you how to set it up. You might start here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=enanswer=75725 Thunderbird is a good choice as it is free, and actually really nice to work with when it comes to IMAP support. It's what I'm using right now, in fact. The configuration process may take a bit of work, but once you get both accounts set up in one Thunderbird you can just Ctrl+A to select every item in a label and then drag and drop to the other label; just like moving files between folders. Just keep in mind it may take a while, particularly for a large amount of emails, but Thunderbird should give you a good idea of its progress and at least you will be able to do other things as it works. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Impossible account security questions.
Gary Nunn wrote: This morning, I was trying to access a credit card webpage to check my account, it didn't like my password. I was given two security challenge questions: 1. What is the last name of your fifth grade teacher? 2. What was the license plate of your first car? I'm reasonably sure that I had the correct name for the 5th grade teacher, but I must be an incredible slacker because I didn't remember the license plate number of my first vehicle - 25 years ago. The real sad thing is that these Security Challenge questions that our banks have gotten attached to are ultimately pretty useless. The banks are faking security (and confusing consumers) because they are too cheap to pay for the sorts of things that real security are made of.[*] As someone else in this thread pointed out, more often than not these sort of questions are becoming the sorts of things that it would be _more_ secure to lock out those that can answer the questions correctly on the first try... In trying to stop identity theft the banks seem adamant to make real customers frustrated and all the while are merely encouraging smarter and more dangerous identity thieves. [*] http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/WishItWas-TwoFactor-.aspx The funny thing is that the price of hardware tokens for real two-factor authentication is getting cheaper everyday. (I bought a consumer hardware token for $40 that I can just pop into any USB port. Let's not even talk about the dwindling bulk costs of these things.) Not to mention that more and more people are *already* carrying hardware tokens for work (many virtual networks now require RSA cryptographic hash fobs or similar) or government needs (many European IDs now are smart cards with a hardware token). Just imagine if banks actually cared to invest in real security... -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net Security through annoyance Maru ___ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Darwinism
William T Goodall wrote: in _The New York Times_ 'Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live' is an example. Scientists don't talk about Darwinism, creationists do. I can't think of a recent example by just about anyone of the term darwinism that was outside of the phrase social darwinism or in reference to the darwin awards. If there is a word that must die because it has too much emotional baggage among creationists the word is evolution and unfortunately we have no better replacement and would probably lose more in changing words than we would gain... This seems to be an attempt at 'framing' the science by altering the terms of the debate. I can understand how frustrated rational people get at the rhetorical antics of the superstitious religionists but fighting truth-mangling with more truth-mangling seems wrong to me. Well, 'framing' uses the connotation of a word against its denotation, and so those most susceptible to issues of framing are those that don't bother to seek the actual definitions of a word and actual contexts of its usage. Science using framing is akin to fighting ignorance with a slightly different aerosol form of ignorance. It won't solve any real issues. But who knows how to solve the real issues here? -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net We haven't evolved past the need for words Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Metric Conversions
Bruce Bostwick wrote: On Jan 8, 2009, at 5:34 PM, Rceeberger wrote: http://xkcd.com/526/ xponent Spit Goes Cunk Maru rob Related: I've invented the worst mixed drink ever. I have to say that the best one of the lot is the 3L -- 2-Liter Bottle. It's always funny when someone asks how big a 2-Liter Bottle is in metric... 3 Liters is a better response than some of the ones I've used. It's funny how so many anti-metric people don't even realize how often they use SI units already. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Financial institution fallout
John Williams wandered around the point: On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 11:08 AM, Dan M [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's not the point being argued. You see, all but a few people understand that money is a placeholder; it is a social construct. Numbers in a computer or pieces of paper with dead presidents on them have meaning only within a society. Sophistry. Money can be converted to gold, and gold has value in every society. You are just trying to rationalize taking wealth from others because you think you know how to spend it better than they do. Hah! Money is no longer on the gold standard and is completely and totally a social contract dependent on the whims of societies and markets and the fiat of governments. Money only has value anymore because we believe it does. Money by itself is useless. Money is only useful in its buying power, at which point we aren't talking about money we are talking about the velocity of money, the current of money; money's first derivative with respect to time. (I think the analogy between economics and electricity is particularly useful and perhaps under-explored. I'd love to see more economists use circuit diagrams...) As an aside I am completely and stupendously amazed by your superlative assertion that all societies value gold. I would think that it is obvious that history shows that not every society has valued gold. Some actually valued gold for its (limited) functional purpose rather than its over-valued station as a shiny symbol of scarcity (and alchemical romance). There are even societies that never had the skill to mine for the stuff, or the reason or care or availability... Go ahead and convert all your precious wealth that they are trying to stealz to gold. Good luck doing anything actually useful with all that wealth in gold, however. I certainly won't accept gold in repayment of a debt, but I obviously accept several major fiat currencies, because of the social contract that represents between me and the people I in turn owe debts to, including but not limited to the government and its taxation. -- --Max Battcher--- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: TV Zeitgeist
WTG wrote: The fifth-columnist aspect of that is somewhat relevant but I think the dual-identity theme although related is different. I don't have an explanation and am just putting it up for discussion but it's interesting that the TV Zeitgeist has thrown this up this year. I suspect that Whedon's twist on the notion may be more subversive than _My Own Worst Enemy_ :-) The dual-identity theme seems very PKD-like at first, but I think that it makes the most sense in comparison to the lead-in show *Chuck*. They both seem to be two sides of the same escapist coin, where one average man ends up a wild spy life (one with a computer in his brain, and the other with a manufactured personality) with the real difference being drama versus comedy. One of the io9 commentators mentioned the idea of a Chuck/MOWE cross-over, and I definitely agree that that might be exactly what the two shows need: Chuck needs a little bit more serious stakes/drama at times and MOWE needs to crack a joke more often... As for Dollhouse I don't see it being that similar... sure it has the personality switching thing, but where MOWE is pretty firmly spy-fi, Dollhouse has the benefit/advantage/curse/undoing (depending on which side of the consumer/producer divide you are on, of course) of being able to be much more of a Thing a Week show vibrating amongst the action-variant genres as it wants to, and switch gears completely as often as the audience would allow. On a complete tangent: Is anyone else surprised that not only can Mike O'Malley (of Nickolodeon GUTS and _Yes, Dear_ fame) *act*, but he seems to be the most interesting character(s) on MOWE? At this point I'm wondering if Raymond (Boy Scout) and Tom (OfficeSpace-reject) are in fact secretly the real main characters of the show... -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Rock Around the World
Hey Rob, there seem to be a number of people promoting the transition of talented Japanese rock into at least the American slipstream (?), the not-quite-mainstream, but diverse and open crowds. I haven't checked out which bands you linked to in your YouTube collection, yet. However, I did have the opportunity a few months back to see Mono a Japanese post-rock band with a wonderful love of the slow-build and loud/quiet dynamic in a layered string-oriented rock band. (They were one of the bands that drew to me to the event in the first place as I had read about them on the internet just prior to the event (Terrastock 7).) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_%28Japanese_band%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrastock -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Spore
Bryon Daly wrote: But here's more wierdness: according to this article http://www.gamespot.com/news/6136091.html, GameStop stopped doing *any* used PC game trade-in business back in 2005. The used game market is almost entirely for console-based games, not PC games. So why, then, is the trade-in killing DRM targetted only at PC games? AFAIK, the Xbox 360 versions of Mass Effect and Bioshock are not saddled with the activation/install limits. I thought GameStop got out of used PC sales not because of DRM but due to a falling market at the time. We've had GameStop stores locally drop PC games entirely and I'm under the impression that GameStop would have dropped out nationally if it weren't for a sizeable chunk of Games for Windows marketing cash from Microsoft. I don't know if that is entirely true, but I'm willing to bet it's not far off the mark... The remaining issue is that game consoles are locked down and there is no feasible access to creating your own discs, but CD and DVD duplication on the PC is easy and cheap... Most modern labyrinthine DRM packages are hacks to make the PC market more like the console market. On the one hand the easy answer is to switch to sterile computing environments more like consoles (the trusted computing platforms) or to figure out better ways of dealing with piracy (potentially including outright ignoring it and accepting it as a natural loss)... but neither answer is actually easy and no one has a good solution just yet. PCs wouldn't be PCs if pushed into the monocultures that trusted computing implies, and no one has very good ideas that would work across the board when it comes to dissuading pirates or upselling pirated copies. I like it too, as a nice start. But it's realy pretty wishy-washy on its wording for many of the rights it lists: Several listed rights say Gamers have a right to demand . This is NOT the same as saying Gamers have a right to . All it boils down to is that we're allowed to *strongly ask* for . Gee thanks! I take it that it does imply some sort of listening/promotion of gamer concerns... So maybe it just means gamers can strongly ask and companies shall strongly listen, but it's way better than the companies that ignore polls, public discussions, and sometimes censor free speech on their own forums to ignore their own problems. The fun part about listening is that it can lead to sympathizing and who knows where that could lead in some cases. Right now, I can let my brother play my Steam games by letting him borrow my login information (at my own risk, admittedly), but it would be nice if I could simply from Steam Loan these games to Steam friend x or Give these games to Steam friend y. Adding in simple arbitration for game trades could be cool and it would be simple from there to create an after-market for game trading and even use that to put extra money into the pockets of the DEVELOPERS, rather than, say, the GameStop Pawn Shop empire. This would be great, but I doubt it will ever happen. I think it will happen. I figure that at some point a) people are going to band together and demand there first sale doctrine rights in a court of law, or b) some company is going to open up this support, grab a bunch of sales from happy customers, and goad other companies to follow suit. If I were to put money on it, I'm betting that Steam is the closest of all DDNs right now to offering these types of consumer tools. Steam has a limited ability to gift games already (you can buy a game with your account as a gift for someone else's account, or (at least for recent Valve bundles) if you buy a pack that contains a game you already own in your Steam account you can gift the extra copy to someone else's account. It's certainly not a far throw, technically, from the current gift-giving system to something bigger and more robust. Plus, Valve still pretends they aren't a publisher and are in tune with the plight of the small developer, and in that regard it makes perfect sense to build a developer-friendly, consumer-friendly post-market system. Unfortunately I don't have a crystal ball, so all of this is entirely speculation, but I'm of the opinion that you talk about cool ideas long enough and you never know who will hear or how the ball will get rolling... -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Books, was Proper function..
Alberto Monteiro wrote: John Williams wrote: Um... that's the plot of the book. She's a sexbot designed for having sex with humans but there aren't any humans left to have sex with... Now I'm wondering what happened to all the humans. I'll definitely have to check it out now. Since I didn't read it, I don't spoil it... Of course humans went extinct. As soon as sexbots exist, human will prefer to have sex with bots instead of other humans, and then sex does not create new life - extinction. The Gospel According to Futurama has a classic documentary entitled Don't Date Robots! in the episode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Dated_a_Robot It tells the plight of Billy Everyteen in the world of sexbots. This seems to be a borrowed copy of the documentary (didn't load for me): http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/48647/detail/ -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net One of many topics that are explained/foretold in the canon of Futurama Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Spore
Bryon Daly wrote: I was planning on buying Spore, but the only 3 installations for a game you purchased deal is where I've drawn my line in the DRM sand. It's a real shame becase Electronic Arts seems to have decided all their new games will have this anti-feature, and they have a number of games I'm interested in coming out. The need to research the DRM situation for every game I buy is sadly killing what interest remains for my gaming hobby. I've heard that they have updated the limitation to 5 installs and added an ability to delist a (dead, old, whatever) system to regain an install. Supposedly EA has been listening and responding to the complaints. I'm not that interested in Spore as a game, but may pick it up when the price drops or if it winds up on GameTap or Steam. I've delegated my DRM concerns to digital distribution networks and my consoles at this point. I've been buying much fewer games in retail, partly due to a loss of confidence in what amounts for games retailers, and what I do buy retail is generally (360, Wii) console discs. I've been a GameTap member for a while and I've been a Steam member for far longer. I'm on the mailing list for Greenhouse, which is slowly and carefully building a catalog, and I'm keeping an eye out for interesting content to come to Stardock's Impulse, and debating moving my CD key of Sins of a Solar Empire to an Impulse account. GOG.com looks interesting and I'm waiting on an invite. I believe that all of the above services have better DRM and DRM policies than SecuRom and other DRM du jour products used in individual games and often nowadays the same games with weird on disc DRM can be found in a digital distribution network with better DRM. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Books, was Proper function..
Well, she's a fembot, she's SUPPOSED to have android sex. Isn't that, ummm, speciest? DNA'ist? Why can't she have sex with a human? :-) Um... that's the plot of the book. She's a sexbot designed for having sex with humans but there aren't any humans left to have sex with... It could be that The Atrocity Archives is best appreciated if you know a lot of theoretical computer science, so I'll withhold comment. Did Stross come from a CS background? When you say theoretical computer science, do you mean something like Knuth or Sedgewick? Or further back, like von Neumann? Yes, Stross has a CS degree and it shows. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stross -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net The wiki has so many easy answers Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
RE: Spore
Bryon Daly wrote: The reality is that the draconian DRM really doesn't stop piracy at all. A cracked version was already available on the torrents the day before the game was on the store shelves. The pirates, of course, have that version and are never troubled by the DRM system. Only the actual paying customers who bought the game have to deal with the hassle and restrictions. So what the DRM is actually doing (and EA has more or less admitted this) is stomping the resale/trade-in market - pretty much the equivalent of if record companies tried to prevent you being able to sell your music CD's to a used record store or to donate them to a library. I agree that DRM ultimately tends to frustrate and hurt consumers more than pirates. On a side note however, I've been arguing that killing the current trade-in market (albeit preferably via DDNs rather than draconian DRM) will benefit gaming in the long run because the only remaining game-targeted retailer (GameStop) has degenerated into not much more than a pawn shop. You can't count on GameStop today to have a new copy of a game any more than 2 months old, much less 2 years, and because of that you can barely count on other retailers to have anything more in stock. GameStop has started to focus their stock of new games on games that are more likely to come back (be resold), and thus has perpetuated and exacerbated a mainstream accessible contemporary hits only mentality in gaming. Has anyone ever seen a bookstore that had a used bookstore in the back and modified what it stocked up front based upon how many copies it had of the same book in used form in the back? It's absolutely bizarre... As far as I understand it, the Steam versions of the install-limited games have the same limits, plus the Steam DRM on top of it. At least, that's how it was with Bioshock on Steam. And I think Crysis Warhead is, also. If they remove that, I'd probably go that route also. I had not heard that, but I'll look into that if I decide to buy Crysis through Steam. (I bought Bioshock on the 360.) I like Stardock Central/Impulse and I've even come to appreciate Steam. They also have the effect of preventing trade/resale, but at least they offer the alternative benefits of not needing to preserve your game disks and some CD key printed on the back of a manual or CD sleeve, etc. And they don't presume to tell you how many times you can install the software you bought. I ended up a Steam member well before most people were forced onto the system (Half-Life 2) thanks to a late Half-Life 1 + Blue Shift + Opposing Force purchase that included a join our Steam beta and never lose a CD key again promotion of sorts. I have all of the HL1 games in my Steam account and I've carried my Steam account through a succession of 3 or so computer systems over what I guess has been nearly a decade and have even used my account as a guest on others' computers to play a Half-Life game or whatever. There is absolutely something to be said for always having the latest updates and having someone host an always available backup from a DDN... I have no problem using a DDN and at this point basically prefer it. I still think that the DDNs could provide more features, though. I like Gas-Powered/Stardock's Gamer's Bill of Rights and think it is certainly a start, but there are other things that would be nice to see. For instance, I think the DDNs could promote healthy sorts of resale/trade-in. Right now, I can let my brother play my Steam games by letting him borrow my login information (at my own risk, admittedly), but it would be nice if I could simply from Steam Loan these games to Steam friend x or Give these games to Steam friend y. Adding in simple arbitration for game trades could be cool and it would be simple from there to create an after-market for game trading and even use that to put extra money into the pockets of the DEVELOPERS, rather than, say, the GameStop Pawn Shop empire. often nowadays the same games with weird on disc DRM can be found in a digital distribution network with better DRM. I wish this were more often true. For example, I'm still waiting to see Mass Effect as a download without the install limit crap. Mass Effect probably wouldn't have had as bad DRM if it weren't for EA buying Bioware/Pandemic. Score one more for nearly a monoculture in publishing and EA's weird love affair with DRM right now. I got Mass Effect for the 360. At the moment I'm favoring 360 purchases over PC purchases, for a variety of reasons, including not having to worry about DRM. -- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: What's in the works?
Alberto Monteiro wrote: In Heinlein's The Number of the Beast, the succession of USA presidents in Timeline 2 is Woodrow Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, ..., Neemiah Scudder Interregnum. I guess that he gave two 4-year mandates to each of the three brothers (is it legal to have a brother succeed another one in the USA?), which would make Ted Kennedy to leave office in 1984 - or earlier, in the case of impeachment. Or maybe each Kennedy above is a different family member, which would place Kennedy VI being elected in... hmmm... 1960 + 5 x 8... 2000 (!). It's a pity that he abandoned this idea in later books, because in To Sail Beyond the Sunset the presidents are Roosevelt, Alvin Barkley (who?), and Patton (who dies in 1961). IIRC, To Sail Beyond the Sunset had entirely different timelines from the ones in The Number of the Beast. I don't think Heinlein abandoned any ideas so much as tried to contrast them (arguably to better or worse effect depending on how much esteem you give Heinlein's final quadrology). Heinlein used the presidential succession and the first man to land on the moon as indicative of each major timeline in his last four books (with both US presidential succession and moon landing being highly variable and indicative of stronger political, social, and economic trends), and he did try to show at least a few differences between the timelines that might have resulted indirectly from vastly different presidents and moon landings. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: McCain Positions
John Garcia wrote: While I wait for a vendor to call me, I thought I'd post some McCain campaign stuff about science and the internet, taken from his website. What do you all think? *John McCain Would Place A Priority On Science And Technology Experience.*As President, John McCain will be committed to bringing talented men and women of science into the federal government. He will strive to ensure that Administration appointees across the government have adequate experience and understanding of science, technology and innovation in order to better serve the American people. This is one of the of the areas important to me, as a technology worker. There are, unfortunately, serious worries in McCain's stated technology policy (which was one of the last of his policies to be finalized and publicly posted, and yet should probably have been one of the first) and voting record. I shall refer you to the presentation of Dr. Lessig on the subject: http://lessig.org/blog/2008/08/me_on_mccain_on_technology.html (Dr. Lessig is someone that I have come to trust on the legal/political side of technology and intellectual property who knows what's at stake on the issues and is very eloquent when discussing them...) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Off-topic., monotonous posting (was Child-killing religion)
William T Goodall wrote: There are no 'technical or procedural' reasons for objecting to my posts on the matter of religion: it's an attempt by some to silence the expression of views they don't like plain and simple. Are you kidding? This is entirely about technical/procedural objections! It's rude and against many internet taboos to re-post a referenced article in it's entirety to a mailing list, because it wastes everyone's time and bandwidth. If someone is interested in an article they can follow the link you send. But beyond rudeness it's a simple, clear copyright violation. The New York Times or Google News or whatever other source you've copied would be well within their rights under the law to scour the Brin-L list for William T. Goodall re-posts and require that they be purged from the archives. This isn't censorship in any form, it's basal crass commercialism: that article is worth money to them and you just ripped them off. Furthermore, this mailing list is not your personal de.licio.us/ma.gnolia/digg/google reader shared items feed for you to track interesting articles that you read in the news, this is a discussion list. If you want to start a discussion: start one. Make a point. Provide some commentary (and no, a single Maru line isn't exactly commentary). Better yet: Ask a question or two! Ouch, that may sound more hostile than intended, so let me bottom line it: I'm probably as anti-religious as you and I would say the same thing for any other poster that posted similarly useless, rude posts that don't fit the mailing list medium and would be better in some other environment such as the aforementioned social bookmarking sites. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ Don't Copy That Floppy or News Site Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Irregulars Question
Nick Arnett wrote: If it is making a connection to your wireless router, but behaving this way, it sounds like a gateway or DNS server address problem... make sure that your wireless connection is set to get the gateway address and DNS servers via DHCP. If either of those is wrong, you'd get the symptoms you are describing. I've found that often just right-clicking on the wireless connection icon and selecting Repair can help you figure out what is wrong (in both XP and Vista). I believe that if either are the above problems are the case Repair actually should figure it out and fix things automatically... If it's something more complicated the step that Repair fails on can yield a lot of information and potential next steps. If you are seeing other computers but not internet websites you also may want to double/triple check the connection settings in your browser as well, particularly for any installed proxy/VPN set up. Also double check all of your installed firewall software (don't forget to check if your virus scanner or other third party security tool is doing firewalling of any sort). -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Indigo and Umami
William T Goodall wrote: There used to be seven colours in a rainbow and four basic flavours (sweet, sour, bitter, salt) and then indigo became a shade of violet and umami became the fifth basic flavour. Don't forget that we're down to 8 planets and up to 2 plutoids (Pluto, Eris). -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Julia Thompson wrote: On Thu, 17 Jul 2008, William T Goodall wrote: http://www.drhorrible.com/ Anyone not watching this? Cultural Event Maru I've found it quite entertaining so far (the Captain Hammer How to Be Like Me comic is also fun). I'm not. I might this weekend or something. Just keep in mind that in its current form its a limited engagement, so to speak, and that it will vanish from freely web-viewable shortly after Act 3 is posted. On the other hand, if Joss Whedon is to be believed, the eventual DVD release may be an event unto itself. (Whedon has promised that one of the commentary tracks will be Commentary! The Musical with entirely new songs, presumably a satirical commentary on commentary...) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: A videogame that will make William happy
Andrew Crystall wrote: On 7 Jun 2008 at 2:19, Charlie Bell wrote: Not really. Good games are good games. I loved Lemmings and the Lucasarts adventures (Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, Loom, The Dig...) as much as San Andreas and GTA4 (and Half Life, Far Cry, Deus Ex...). I think GTA4 as a game is fairly meh - I'm not seeing where it's taking people that GTA3 didn't. Same for Halo 3 - give me something like Gears of War instead (until you hit the silly dark sections...) GTA4 tries to up the story-telling of the series, particularly by having a protagonist with an actual background and character development. It succeeds to a certain degree due to the fact that previous GTAs mostly tacked story on as an after-thought. I quite enjoyed the dark sections in Gears, they brought some interesting tension to the game. But probably the biggest reason I enjoyed them is that they absolutely shined in co-op play. In fact it's one of the reasons that I recommend that Gears of War is very much a co-op shooter and you do yourself a disservice not to play it with some cohort. There are several areas in Gears that make much more sense when doing it with a real human compatriot and there are some interesting strategies to find in those areas. Rumor has it that Gears of War 2 will ship with 4-player coop (via System Link or Online) and if that indeed happens, it could be an amazing squad tactics experience for those willing to work together to plumb the game's depths... -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Portal (was Re: A videogame that will make William happy)
Jim Sharkey wrote: Martin Lewis wrote: There is a Flash adaption: http://portal.wecreatestuff.com/ My understanding is that Portal was originally a Flash game and the Valve guys liked it so much they hired them people who created it to make a game with their engine. Portal was based on Narbacular Drop, which was a student design project at Digipen. It used a custom built 3D engine, not Flash. Valve hired all of the members of that project directly out of school, it is said. You can find Narbacular Drop on the web, hosted by the school, and try it, but it obviously has nowhere near the polish that Valve was able to give it, particularly with the addition of the writing skills of Old Man Murray alum and Psychonauts collaborator Eric Wolpaw. It's absolutely the writing that turned it from interesting tech demo to endearing game. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What were they thinking? (MS Office 2007)
Nick Arnett wrote: So... I upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 recently. Can't do half of what I used to do because I can't find anything. They seem to have succeeded in making it harder to use. The most bizarre thing is that I cannot find the Help menu anywhere. My wife, who was forced into this particular torture a few months ago, has had the same problem. The whole point of using drop-down menus in a GUI is to be table to slide the cursor across them and immediately see what's available. Somebody in Redmond apparently thought they were improving on that. It _is_ an improvement, if you give it a chance. Where over the years the Menus became nearly non-sensical containers of cruft (what was the difference between the old Edit menu and Tools or Insert? why did the Table menu show up all the time even though most of it was useless if you weren't actually working on a Table?), the Ribbon actually is broken down into mostly intelligent categories with a great deal more testing and user feedback than the old menus were ever put through. (I'm a relatively long time Office user (since Windows 3.1) and a huge fan of the new Ribbon. Admittedly I'm a young guy and I still adapt quickly to change...) All of the Ribbon buttons have huge tooltips with pictures if you can't figure out what a button does from the name, and just about everything on the Ribbon previews what it does in your document as you mouse over it. There is a bit of a relearning experience, but I think you'll find that the new placement of things generally makes logical sense. Here's a few navigational tricks that I find generally help when they are pointed out: * You can use your mouse's scroll wheel to switch tabs on the ribbon. This can be very handy for fast searches to find what you are looking for. * The new keyboard shortcuts are generally quite friendly. Press and release Alt and you'll see little letters pop up over the buttons. * When mousing over a button pressing F1 will jump you straight to that buttons topic in the help. Also, just another more general tip: * The PDF Exporter (Save As PDF) for Office 2007 is a free download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4D951911-3E7E-4AE6-B059-A2E79ED87041displaylang=en (Adobe blocked it from the out of box install, which to me is a pretty petty maneuver...) Hope some of those tips help, -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ Sometimes old dogs get good treats from new tricks Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What were they thinking? (MS Office 2007)
Curtis Burisch wrote: It _is_ an improvement, if you give it a chance. Where over the years the Menus became nearly non-sensical containers of cruft (what was the difference between the old Edit menu and Tools or Insert? schnipp I'm a software engineer, and I hate the new ribbon interface -- yet it's pervasive: all of the new applications I'm writing incorporate this. I'm writing this stuff. Yet I hate it. Maybe one day it will grow on me -- but not yet. Have some pity for the poor techies who're forced into the new paradigm! I'm a software engineer as well, but have not had the pleasure of a project that required me to use a ribbon interface. Your clients are probably asking for ribbons for ribbons sake and you may be giving them what they want but not exactly what they need... Have you seen the presentations from Jensen Harris? There's a lot of good things he talks about (including the importance of lots of usability testing and lots of automated feedback of product usage) in his presentations on and about the ribbon. Well worth the attempt to find the presentations that you can online. -- --Max Battcher-- Not all UI has to look like the current Office Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What were they thinking? (MS Office 2007)
Andrew Crystall wrote: On 24 Apr 2008 at 8:05, Nick Arnett wrote: So... I upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 recently. Can't do half of what I'd suggest upgrading further to Open Office, it's less of a change in UI from Office 2003 and costs less. ...and does half as much. OpenOffice.org one of very few applications that leaves me pining for my Windows system when I'm working in Ubuntu. It's pretty stupid and sometimes just painful to use. (The next biggest program that I switch to my Windows system for is Visual Studio.) There's no way that I could use OpenOffice.org daily. I'd rather use Vim. In fact, with Vim's inline spell check (new in 7.0) I have been using it a lot more for basic document writing than either OO.org or Office. -- --Max Battcher-- You get what you pay for Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: What were they thinking? (MS Office 2007)
Andrew Crystall wrote: On 24 Apr 2008 at 20:18, Max Battcher wrote: Andrew Crystall wrote: On 24 Apr 2008 at 8:05, Nick Arnett wrote: So... I upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 recently. Can't do half of what I'd suggest upgrading further to Open Office, it's less of a change in UI from Office 2003 and costs less. ...and does half as much. OpenOffice.org one of very few applications that leaves me pining for my Windows system when I'm working in Ubuntu. It's pretty stupid and sometimes just painful to use. (The next biggest program that I switch to my Windows system for is Visual Studio.) There's no way that I could use OpenOffice.org daily. I'd rather use Vim. In fact, with Vim's inline spell check (new in 7.0) I have been using it a lot more for basic document writing than either OO.org or Office. The only things which are missing from Open Office are a few of the more obscure and advanced functions of Excel (and you can fix sheets up perfectly well with a little research) and functionality which is better situated in products other than your office suite. YMMV, but for me there I get a huge dissonance from OO.org and many of the things that I rely on in Office simply cannot be found. Not to start a flame war, but I could probably name a bunch of little pet peeves if I sat down to. My biggest issue recently was that OO.org has been prone to more crashes lately than I'd like. I don't mind blaming that on the fact that I'm running perhaps a bit more of a beta version, but one HUGE problem struck me the other night: OO.org didn't auto-save a recoverable version of my work in progress! This has been an Office mainstay since Office 95 and it appears that OO.org does do this... mostly... just apparently not for Untitled documents, which IIRC was fixed in Office 97. Perhaps it's due to the fact that OO.org borrows just enough from older Office UI that I think I can find what I'm looking for only to hit the brick wall of not finding it. Honestly, Office 03 - OO.org is a lot harder on me than Office 03 - Office 07 because at least with Office 07 I have something that I can blame when I can't find what I'm looking for. It doesn't help that OO.org needs better Gnome integration, even after the tweaks to OO.org from Canonical/Ubuntu. It doesn't help that *nix and X have always existed in this twilight realm of copy/paste and drag and drop that almost sort of does what you expect, some of the time. This is something that continually nags at me from time to time in Ubuntu but OO.org is where things feel the worst because it particularly doesn't feel consistent between OO.org applications themselves, much less between OO.org and everything else that I use. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate Open Source and use a number of applications that I like better in spite of their commercial equivalents (Firefox, Lightningbird (Thunderbird + Lightning plugin), Vim, Inkscape, ...), but OO.org, to me, seems the lesser choice to Office. Given the choice I'd much rather work in Office than OO.org. -- --Max Battcher-- ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Mail help needed . . .
Ronn! Blankenship wrote: Since after 10+ years of my using them both Netscape and Eudora are going away, I am at the point where I have to change both browser and mail programs. I spent past several hours yesterday installing Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird and trying to import stuff from the old programs. Firefox may be a satisfactory browser but I am quite disappointed in the lack of functionality of Thunderbird as a mail client compared with Eudora, so I thought I'd ask if anyone has any (obviously, non-M$) recommendations? I would recommend looking for Thunderbird plugins to make Thunderbird more what you are looking for. I know Thunderbird isn't perfect, but it's modular enough to allow some pretty stunning things if you just tweak it it a little. Every time I evaluate other mail programs I generally keep coming back to Thunderbird. (Currently a plugin that I couldn't do without is Lightning, which adds Calendar and TODO List.) Also, I don't know if you were aware of this, but Eudora isn't exactly going away, it's just merging to use Thunderbird as a backend (in a similar fashion to the way that recent versions of Netscape were just branded versions of Firefox)... Eudora's Penelope plugin to Thunderbird is designed to bring Eudora tricks to Thunderbird's UI. Here's where I found to download recent releases of Eudora-branded Thunderbird: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Eudora_Releases More about the Penelope project: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope Maybe that plugin will help you. I have to admit that I never used Eudora, so I don't have any idea of whether the Penelope project is sufficient or not. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: On Godliness
Doug Pensinger wrote: And to those of you that are atheist; would you consider the possibility that there may be entities in the universe, evolved from lower life forms that could for all intents and purposes be considered gods? Well, anything can be a possibility. So yes, I consider it a possibility. But on the other hand, have we any evidence of higher life forms? No. So I still don't believe in them either, be they man-become-god or your average spaghetti-dinner-become-FSM. I do find interesting the idea of gods in futurity... of working to become, in some way, gods ourselves and so I think there is a lot of good things to learn from the mistakes of the various deities that are worshipped today. Hopefully we aren't doomed to repeat those mistakes. (That's the plot of Zelazny's Lord of Light, among others.) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: On Godliness
Doug Pensinger wrote: Hi Max, welcome to the list. I'm not that new, I just post extremely infrequently, leaving me most months as nothing but a lurker. If you were to shrink the a solar system with one planet full of (ostensibly) intelligent beings to the size of an atom and place it in some isolated spot on the earth. What conclusions do we think that that species could draw from their perspective? I realize that the analogy isn't perfect, but I believe that the point is salient; they wouldn't know sh** about the earth and we don't know sh** about the universe. And my point is that any conclusion that we are unique in the unimaginable vastness that is the universe for lack of evidence overestimates the utility of our perspective. Certainly. It's always important to consider how much you might not know. That doesn't mean you need to pre-assume anything about what you don't know, however. (The whole don't count your alien chickens before they are zygotes in a thick shell thing, you know?) I'm all for exploring the unknown-- projects like SETI and the Hubble telescope and whatnot. I just think we all have to admit that thus far results have been pretty scarce to come by and if we *seem* right now to be alone in the universe. I do find interesting the idea of gods in futurity... of working to become, in some way, gods ourselves and so I think there is a lot of good things to learn from the mistakes of the various deities that are worshipped today. Hopefully we aren't doomed to repeat those mistakes. (That's the plot of Zelazny's Lord of Light, among others.) Sheesh, we can't even remember lessons learned from a war a few decades ago and we're going to perfect godhood? 8^) Certainly we don't seem quite up to the challenge at the moment, but if Kurzweil's tracking for the upcoming singularity is correct we may have to sink or swim sooner than we think... (At GDC Kurzweil apparently said that those that can live to 2015 may probably live forever, I only wish I had been there to see his charts...) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ No Lifeguard on Duty in the Godhood Pool Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Writing workshops +
G. D. Akin wrote: Does anyone have any experience with or knowledge of Gotham Writers' Workshop? How about any other on-line workshops? I've been amici (inactive lurker) with Critters Workshop (http://www.critters.org/) for a while and was semi-active for a few months. It's focused around weekly critiques of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror writers and has a good mix of true amateurs and some pros (lots of prose, too, obviously). I felt it to be a very nice, well organized community. I keep meaning to return to it, but I always seem to worry about the time commitment. It's really not that bad of a time commitment if you plan ahead for it. Critters allows everyone that is a member in good standing (active) to submit a single manuscript at a time (in an egalitarian first in, first out queue, with an exception for bonafide SFWA and HWA members). The qualification to remain active is to submit 1 critique on someone else's manuscript every week for at least 3 out of every 4 weeks (75%). It's run entirely volunteer, which I think its not-for-profit status is a nice touch (no upsells to classes or ads or lopsided publishing deals). I certainly would recommend checking it out. Critters pushes the importance of the critique over being critiqued and its possible to be an active Critters member and never submit a manuscript of your own, solely for the experience of critiquing, that art of crafting polite and insightful yet relevantly constructive criticism. Hope that helps, -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin:World Building Wiki
Did you look at Orion's Arm? It has a couple of the things you mention: http://www.orionsarm.com/ Trent Shipley wrote: I am going to launch a world building wiki. The working name for the project is Red. Since world building shares a lot with encyclopedias I'm planning to use MediaWiki. I haven't decided on GFDL or Creative Commons license yet. The wiki will not be an Uplift site. These are the features that I'm thinking of as part of a fairly Luddite cannon. --Only STL travel is possible. No FTL, no worm holes. --No reactionless drives. --No antigravity. The main means of travel is by beam riding ships weighing a few grams and made of computronium. --Most forms of sophonce do not rely on quantum states Therefore, mental states can be non-destructively copied. --The galaxy is entirely colonized. Therefore we are millions of years in the future. -Therefore humans are extinct. -Therefore economic ecology is very post-singularity. --Fermi was right. All life is Terragenetic. --Sapient beings who are any distance up the eco-econ trophic levels live a LONG time. Interstellar correspondence is reasonable, even at light speed or slower. --There are many unimaginably smart sapients --The island nature of each star means that an eco-econ tends to involution. Stellar habitats tend to convert matter into huge Dyson swarms. --Dyson swarms use as much solar energy as possible. --Solar systems look like big, cold spheres from the outside. --Eco-econs suffer from relative scarcity. Feedback is sought. I'm wondering if this cannon is going to be too unpopular. Maybe no one will play with me. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Highlander: The Source - Quick, avert your eyes!
Gary Nunn wrote: Well, the SciFi channel has done it once again. The new Highlander movie, Highlander: The Source, is so bad that I can't stand the watch the rest of it. Hideous plot, hideous acting, hideous special effects. I thought Highlander 2 was bad, but this one easily takes the prize. It's almost worse than Tremor: The Series. This is an all new low for terrible SciFi channel programming. IIRC, Sci-Fi didn't pay much of anything for it. They simply saved the last work of Highlander's big money producer (I don't recall his name, but he died just recently) from the oblivion it probably deserved (it was actually filmed with the hopes of making theaters and probably would have gone straight to the DVD bargain bin if Sci-Fi hadn't spent the few dollars it did to call it a Sci-Fi original and air it on a few random Saturdays). -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Flash Gordon question - Possible Spoilers
Gary Nunn wrote: Possible Spoilers S P O I L E R S P A C E Anyone watching Flash Gordon? I missed this somewhere, but why does Baylin choose to stay on Earth as opposed to going back to Mongo? It's odd, but I remember that episode but I don't remember it being explained very well... It was largely a I was only a hired killer, but I hated who I was and where I was in life and you're kind of cute, Flash thing to me, particularly because Ming sent her ex-husband after her to kill her when she failed at her task on Earth. It seems the normal OCD sci-fi watchers aren't into the show because I'm not turning up much more of a synopsis than my own poor recollection on the usual OCD sources... -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Add To Lexicon: Googleganger
I prefer the portmanteau doppelgoogle, which is how I've seen it for a few years now. I think it's easier on the tongue and has more linguistic merit than googleganger which doesn't make as much sense in my opinion. But that's just my opinion. On 9/30/07, Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21050562/site/newsweek/ Eve Fairbanks knew something was up four years ago when her mother drove six hours-from her home in northern Virginia to New Haven, Conn., where Eve was a sophomore at Yale-just to have lunch with her. After a meal of risotto came the moment of truth: I know about the porn, Mom told her. It was an honest mistake: Eve's name popped up on a handful of X-rated sites when her mother had Googled her out of maternal curiosity. But that Eve Fairbanks wasn't her Eve-it was a Googlegänger, a virtual doppelgänger with the same name. Obviously [mom] wanted to hear my side of the story, says Eve. but she put a lot of trust in Google as a source.. Hey! I got an astrophysicist Googleganger! http://www.google.com/search?hl=enq=Robert+Seeberger xponent Twins Maru rob ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Iron Man Movie
On 9/18/07, Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cool trailer or what? I definitely like the Lord of War vibe the trailer gives off. A subtle examination of Tony Stark as the playboy Howard Hughes/Halliburton-style defense contractor that he has always been in the comics could come off pretty intriguing, particularly as it looks like they'll follow Iron Man's origin story pretty closely (albeit swapping contemporary Iraq for comic-contemporary Vietnam/Gulf War). -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Religion is Valuable: Why it Must Be Encouraged
Robert Seeberger wrote: - Original Message - From: William T Goodall [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Killer Bs Discussion brin-l@mccmedia.com Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 11:46 AM Subject: Re: Religion is Valuable: Why it Must Be Encouraged On 30 Jul 2007, at 14:21, Julia Thompson wrote: On Mon, 30 Jul 2007, William T Goodall wrote: Blacks also go to different churches of course. Some choose to go to all-black or mostly-black churches, others don't. I could go on for a good number of sentences on the subject, but I don't know that you'd be interested. If you care about what I know on the subject and would like me to type for awhile, let me know. I'm guessing the the better educated and paid the black person is the whiter the church they attend. Wrong! xponent Mega-Churches Maru rob That's been some of my experience too, but for somewhat different reasons. (Our major mega-churches are all mostly-WASPs, to my knowledge.) I have several black friends and acquaintances (I don't know any better way to say that without sounding like Colbert...) that are well standing (good education, reasonable income) that go out of there way (30-minute commutes, what have you) to go to mostly-black/mostly-poor neighborhoods for church services. I have a lot of respect for that as there seems to be a genuine feeling of wanting to stay rooted/grounded in the community (and problems and hopes) of their family and further putting their money to good use in a community that they know. One of the few places where I feel that religion actually is serving some sort of good... -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: TV Series: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
On 7/24/07, Gary Nunn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The IMDB shows 13 episodes, but this sounds like one of the short term mid-season replacements that won't have much of a following after the first few episodes. Oh, it will have a following if history is to be the judge: this is how Fox consistently orders many of their best stuff, and just about all of their genre stuff. It's like they are trying to fail. (The more I learn about Rupert Murdoch the more I wonder if this is actually the case.) Two major examples of this mid-season order of only a part of a season off the top of my head being Sonnenfeld's live action The Tick and Whedon's Firefly. I'm willing to bet that Fox will air the 13 episodes of the Sarah Conner Chronicles out of order as well. It's weirder because I heard there was a bit of a bidding war on this high profile project (seriously, who in this country hasn't seen even the first Terminator film?), with ABC hoping to keep some of the sci-fi viewers it has picked up with Lost... I really have no idea what Fox is doing on this one... There is a very small possibility that the show's production hasn't geared up in time and that actually is when the show will be ready to start, but I doubt it. My biggest bet is that it is merely Fox once again trying to blast through mid-season Nielsen Sweeps at the expense of viewers and show producers and the rest of the season of television... One more reason I think Nielsen ratings suck. But all of that is just my opinion, -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Straczynski Fan Update
On 6/21/07, Mauro Diotallevi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've seen some people on this list mention being fans of J. Michael Straczynski, the creator/writer of Babylon 5, Jeremiah, writer of the Spider-Man comic, etc. Here is some news about movies he is writing or has written. Quick tip, for those that don't know: jmsnews.com is a nice way to keep track of his news posts. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Dick Cheney's least favorite TV show?
On 6/4/07, Alberto Monteiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: AFAWKSF (as far as we know so far) the genes for the Heroes powers are a natural occurance and must be fairly widespread thoughout the general population in order to have the numbers of meta-humans seen. It seems that those superpowers were triggered by some recent event. Except for Claire the cheerleader (and maybe her mother), none of them had superpowers before 2006. Not really. Some of it was just slow powers to understand/grasp (Peter). Some of it was external augmentation of some sort (Ted, Matt). Some of it was accidental discovery (Claire, Hiro). There wasn't one event particular. It mostly seems a coincidence that the slice of 17-35 year olds Season 1 focused on all got to know their powers in roughly the same 6 month period. There are enough people outside of that window on the show to suggest that powers have been around for a while (Linderman, Devaux, Ms. Petrelli, Claude Rains, possibly quite a few others). The next Chapter of Heroes (Season 2) is titled Generations. Huge spoilerish extrapolation: Heroes seems to be implying that the hero talents really are just about as common as dirt; possibly dating in the gene pool as far back as at least the 17th Century Japan... I think that this focus on multiple generations just below the surface and yet not much more distinct than the average person could be built up really well. If done well I think it would be one of the major things truly setting this storyline apart from the similar ones (frex: X-Men) and slightly more realistic from a genetics standpoint (not that mutant powers ever can be all that genetically realistic)... I'm really looking forward to seeing how the writers expand this mythos in the coming seasons... -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Heroes - Generations
On 6/4/07, Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you want spoilers you can always go to Wikipedia, or spoilerfix, or SpoilerTV, but only the smallest of cats have slipped out of the bag. If you haven't discovered it yet, as far as I'm concerned Heroes Wiki (heroeswiki.com) is the definitive reference guide to the show/universe. It's officially unofficial, if you know what I mean (fan run and edited, but shows creators mention it/link to it and at this point its well entrenched as the source for encyclopedia-style information), and has been a very handy guide since only a few episodes in... -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Political Dementia
On 5/16/07, Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: jon louis mann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: snipped all but: by the way; what is maru? IIRC, Rob wrote a nice post about that when I was a List newbie and asked the same thing; I won't be anywhere near as thorough, but, in short: Maru is part of a Japanese ship's name, as in 'Kobayashi Maru.' On-List, it's used as part of a post signature title, and usually relates to the content of the post, with humor, silliness or even seriousness value-added. If you look back at Rob's recent posts, you'll see. Double and triple entendres are additional admirable features, worth more points in the ongoing I'm terribly clever, don't you agree? games. evil grin Considering the naval nature of Maru, I guess it makes it all the more appropriate that my first read yielded: ...are additional Admiral features... I seriously never realized that the Brin-L was a secret naval warfare simulation... but then again, I guess just about all debate is when you are a Vice-Admiral of the Narrow Seas*, not that anyone here is, of course. * Just found it a perfect time to use an old insult: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1719448 -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ You Sunk My Battleship Maru ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: transportation
On 5/9/07, Alberto Monteiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Gwern Branwen wrote: As I recall, wasn't the Hindenburg disaster due to the flammable paint and a known design flaw which allowed the buildup of static electricity? I have little doubt we could do better today. Helium could be used instead of Hydrogen. If cost is the problem, then use Methane. The only reason the Hindenburg itself didn't use Helium was that the biggest source of Helium was the United States (and there was that embargo between the US and Germany). I'm guessing Helium shouldn't be that tough to get a hold of nowadays. Think about all the Helium we use just for children's parties in this country... Plus, I remember someone telling me that some sort of Helium-Hydrogen cocktail (I don't remember any details and I'm not a chemist) would be a good compromise between the inert Helium and the cheap Hydrogen. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: transportation
On 5/9/07, jon louis mann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So what about all of the packages — and people — that (in the words of the commercial) absolutely, positively, have to be there by 9 AM? -- Ronn! :) for the present, those people have to be satisfied, but some day, in the not too distant furure, it will no longer be realistic to ship freight all over the world to meet deadlines, -- jlm I think there's a place for high deadline freight/passenger travel... but I think that so often in our culture we are forgetting that there is just as much a place as leisurely travel, and that if there is no reason for it to be there next day, why pay for next day air. Our culture is quagmired in this do it yesterday hustle and bustle and sometimes we forget to take our time to even enjoy our meals... When I was working in food service (at an amusement park) I was amazed at what I call the eating pressure wave. Generally people would start to hurry up eating as the people around them started to leave and would leave themselves soon afterward, particularly if they felt the other people around them had been there before they sat down. What this amounted to was very noticeable waves of people leaving at around the same time regardless of when they arrived. It never ceased to amaze and inform me. At a supposedly leisure establishment (an amusement park) people never seemed to actually take the time to sit and enjoy the food they bought and were often pressured by invisible peer pressure to eat faster than strictly necessary... I've come to the point where I'm starting to appreciate that sometimes people need to just slow down. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Conservation
Mauro Diotallevi wrote: That's why I'm also not a big fan of Dan Minette's plan to raise gasoline taxes by 50 cents per gallon every year for the next 10 years, unless there was some offset in place for the working poor. People below certain income levels can qualify for programs like food stamps -- maybe they can qualify for a card that they could swipe at the pump that would automatically eliminate some of the taxes. Then I might go for Dan's plan. Of course, a black market for such cards would immediately spring up, and it would be extremely difficult to police. Also, by letting some people not pay the taxes you end up offsetting some of the environmental benefit of the tax. That's certainly not a bad plan. The way to keep this from hurting the poor is to make sure that most, if not all, of the taxes went directly to regional mass transit efforts. I also think that this country would do well to start moving some of the major interstate funds back into encouraging reliable interstate mass transit passenger travel. It's still remarkable to me how we sold one of the most prized passenger rail networks in the world to bankrupt frauds... I keep saying that maybe it's about time we took back the inner-city commercial rail lines for public use as easy right of ways for more modern passenger light rail systems... There's just so much that could be done to benefit transportation, and yet right now legislators are still just thinking inside the interstate roads for masses of congested automobiles box. Remind me sometime to talk about my crazy idea for air travel... -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: conservation
jon louis mann wrote: Catapults? Luxury Zeppelins. I think it's high time we had nice luxury zeppelin travel. Floating 5-star bars in the sky with ample leg room and good views. No airports, no TSA, no rush, under the radar for the most part... just debarking from private fields and decorated mooring towers, hopefully near nice city entertainment districts or near good mass transit to such... Who wouldn't enjoy the retro-futuristic cruise ships of the sky? There's no reason we couldn't bring back a sense of luxury to mass transit. There's no reason we couldn't bring back a sense of personal ownership and investment to mass transit. (You can't run a passenger Zeppelin without a personal name like The Heart of Helium and a well uniformed Captain that would die before another man piloted her...) We might not ever see luxury rail travel again in this country, but if someone is willing to give me a few million dollars I'd be happy to start building a fleet of my airships... Pipe Dream? Perhaps. But I'd rather take a leisurely zeppelin ride with a micro-brew or a bourbon on a rocks and chatting with some classy noir dame than ride the modern sardine can that is an airplane... Sometimes the future isn't as good as it used to be. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Not reading statistics gets a Drubbing
On 4/9/07, Alberto Monteiro [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dan Minette wrote: So, in conclusion, while I don't know that Dawkins has such a gene (or even if such a gene exists) Dawkins has not provided sufficient information to falsify that statement. Instead, the correct answer appears to be a definite maybe. I would guess there is strong evidence that Dawkins _has_ this religious gene. He seems like a guy who will create a religion around himself :-) Hard to resist the temptation to point to the South Park episodes on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_God_Go -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ Science damn you! ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: NASA Goes Deep
On 2/25/07, Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Would you feel differently if the manned program was doing something that was actually useful? If the program had set up permanent zeroG manufacturing lines making products that could only be made in space, would the bang for the buck equations be more favorable to you? One of the results from our space program that we have seen is that yeast in low-gravity conditions generates better, more alcoholic beer. We just need to convince Anheuser-Busch or Coors or Miller to spend the cash to build a giant beer manufacturing plant in Space. Who wouldn't buy space beers? It's makes a whole lot more sense than a lot of the flavored beers and energy beers the big guys keep putting onto shelves... I demand to see a race for the first beer brewed in space to reach store shelves. Perhaps we need a Beer X-Prize. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. --Samuel Butler ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: First Amendment takes a hit
On 2/21/07, Ronn! Blankenship [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 10:17 PM Wednesday 2/21/2007, Gary Nunn wrote: Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime. Arguably it may be in response to such events as those described in the following article from CNN today: quote Ryan Patrick Halligan was bullied for months online. Classmates sent the 13-year-old boy instant messages calling him gay. He was threatened, taunted and insulted incessantly by so-called cyberbullies. In 2003, Ryan killed himself. /quote Full article at http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/02/21/cyberbullying.ap/index.html. I hate to sound insensitive, but this is one of the stupidest things I think I've read in a few days. A) There's a real failure to do root cause analysis by these parents involved. B) There's a real failure to focus on pro-active *parent* education on this there intarweb. First of all, bullying is bullying is bullying and stopping insulting instant messages isn't going to stop bullying, it's just going to cause amazing enforcement issues. Second of all, the parents should be informed that their kids bring this stuff on themselves. If a kid is worried about cyberbullying (which is a term I hope to never use or see again, but figure it'll stick unfortunately), the parents should realize that there are plugs to be killed. Myspace and Instant Messenger applications are *opt-in*. Shut it down, close it out, start a different account, find a better Instant Messenger that allows you to screen who messages you (Jabber servers require explicit permissions), whatever... Honestly, why do people chase these sort of scapegoats? -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. --Samuel Butler ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Myers-Briggs (was: Blog entry with interesting comment)
Dave Land wrote: And, of course, each is a spectrum: Because they are spectra there are a number of encoding schemes out there to try to disambiguate those that move or are near the lines, and some psychologists will tell you the categorizations are meaningless without the full test and knowledge specific choices within it. (...and others will tell you taking the test is only every valid once or not at all or only on full moons.) For instance, I sometimes find it useful to use xNTP, because I'm pretty firm as far as the NTP side of the spectrum in every test I've taken and generally in my judgment of the system itself says. The I/E I tend to flip-flop depending on several factors. Another choice would be to use something like I?NTP, as the I is often more dominant, but again, subject to change. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Gospel Of Judas
Jim Sharkey wrote: William T Goodall wrote: Two millennia of fanwankery hasn't managed to patch up those plot holes. Elephants on the back of a giant turtle makes more sense. True, and it's a lot funnier. Although Pratchett also relies on his fans to keep all his continuity ducks in a row, and he still can't always manage it either. :) I personally love how he managed to blame it on his own characters in Thief of Time. How can he be expected to keep continuity when his characters keep messing with the timeline? :) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Gospel Of Judas
Charlie Bell wrote: On 19/04/2006, at 12:53 AM, Deborah Harrell wrote: But I have problems with the 'planned betrayal,' as this makes Judas a stool pigeon, and God an underhanded schemer. Indeed, it brings to mind the entire Garden bit as another planned betrayal. Precisely. It's yet more of why this loving god made less and less sense to me. There's just too much vengeance and sadism ascribed to this deity... just makes no sense. Mind you, neither does much else of it, to me. Not any more. I personally see it as the inherent flaw in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions. I can't understand why people would choose to worship a deity (Yahweh/God/Allah) that punishes with the one hand and simultaneously provides and supports with the other hand. It's why I don't fault the Niceans for coming up with their (somewhat odd) Trinitarian belief: because it is an easy way out when you can claim that the left hand is truly ignorant of the doings of the right (as well as the easiest way to end a debate, by saying: hey, you are all right _at the same time_. 3=1, 1=3, God=devine human son=crazy near-pantheistic voodoo cloud). The soap opera digests that are Polytheism is just so much easier to explain/take in comparison. So what if Odin didn't always know the stupid stuff Thor and Loki were out doing? As a child, Frankenstein's creature was a horrible monster who probably deserved to be hunted down and burned; as an adult, it is Dr. Frankenstein who ought to be censured for his abandonment of his faulty creation, once it goes from being lovely to hideous. It didn't ask to be made thusly. As a kid I once spent quite a while explaining to someone why Marvel Comics were better morality tales than large parts of the Christian Bible. I also had so many arguments that the Luddite interpretation of Frankenstein was much less meaningful than the Creator abandoning his creation interpretation. It was weird how many adults around me told me I was stupid for siding with the poor creature. I've often wondered which one was the preferred interpretation of Mary Shelley. Her husband was a notorious Luddite, from what I'm told, and so its easy to see why Frankenstein might be anti-technological, but I always wonder if perhaps Mary Shelley found that sympathy with her creation (by way of the maniac Doctor) and realized that the technology was frightening, but the real morality is in what you _do_ with that technology. xponent The Heresy Of Rob Maru I find myself more a heretic than ever, as I mature. I started out very heretic, so I'm sometimes afraid there is nowhere to go but less. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: The Gospel Of Judas
Robert Seeberger wrote: In terms of morality and ethics *why* one chooses can be more important than *what* one chooses. Yuck! I know you state can be and not the absolute are, but you still are positing that in some cases the ends justify the means and worse the intent justify the means. I'm only hurting you because I think in the end it will help you. Of all of the slippery slopes in Judeo-Christian ethics, this is the one that irks me the most, and one that has been used to do so much ill in the world. As a pragmatist I can certainly understand that there may be some situations where that might be the case. But I still see it as an awful moral slope to stand on as ones basic morality. In that sense I much prefer the (Nichiren) Buddhist focus on one's actions and their consequences. Not decisions, but actions. Less time in the head, more room for repercussions to hit you (karma, whether you believe it is cosmic or simply inter-personal). Again, something I've felt myself, but in this case I find the idea a bit solipsistic (maybe narcissistic is a better word). Not being much on Bible literalism, I feel that the Garden story is a metaphor for the birth of human self-awareness. In that sense the shame of loosing the Garden is akin to a longing for the golden-age where we didn't have to think so much.(As Homo Sapiens it is our nature to think about things even when those things pain us.) But it elevates stupidity, nostalgia and ignorance over knowledge and futurity! There was no golden age, ever. Just mindless, ignorant, brutal survival. The Bible is backward. It starts in beauty and ends in pain. Life so often starts with pain and ends with some semblance of beauty, albeit so often hidden in pain: the beauty of love, of experience and wisdom, of the power of family and society. Human history seems to have started amidst turmoil and pain, and I'd love to hope ends in brilliant beauty. I've always joked that I could write a better bible if I thought people might actually care to read it. Only problem is I'd have to conscientiously leave out the Monotheism, Patriarchal Society, Vengeance and Miracles, and then you don't have much of a bible. A good story, perhaps, but nothing people would battle to the death over, which appears to be such a major goal of Western Civilization's organized religion. (I sometimes wonder if the Greeks did too good of a job in trying to separate the useful Philosophy from Religion that all that was left was the Irrational stuff...) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Great Sam Harris Interview
Dan Minette wrote: One thing that struck methe fundamental reason for the last big European war was simply elbow room. Generally the term used is lebensraum, or living room, which is a German word. It was not the reason for the war, but it was a large part of Germany's policy toward/with several nations, in particular Russia/Soviet Union. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Tales From Earthsea.........Anime!!!!!
Damon Agretto wrote: I think SR would be really neat in Linklater's style of animation. Its a very neat way to both break from reality and yet stay firmly grounded in reality. I think that would do a lot to hinder my enjoyment. Dunno, I personally like anime (at least for one reason) for its artistic stylings. Funny, I often _dislike_ anime (at least for one reason) for its artistic stylings. To each his own, eh? Something done in rotoscope (or its 21st C equivalent) always seemed a bit like cheating! :) I suppose you'd say the same thing for any other computer effects overlaid on top of live action footage? Was Sky Captain cheating? Heck, Tron used chemical processing, was that cheating? I've heard some great things about Linklater's first film in the style (Waking Life), at least from the people I know that have actually seen it. (It's got a 79%-FRESH on Rotten Tomatoes, which has become my favorite indicator of a film's worth.) The A Scanner Darkly trailers have me intrigued and I'm hoping for a good translation of the book. (I have to admit I'm skeptical with Woody and Keanu, but it can't be that tough to play druggies, can it?) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Tales From Earthsea.........Anime!!!!!
Damon Agretto wrote: Agree. It doesn't have to be a Japanese story, but it does have to have that look and feel. Howl's Moving Castle is anime, Ice Age isn't. But I do agree that Startide is far more likely to work as an animated or largely animated feature. (Might work in the Babe style, mind...) I don't think the Ghibli style would work for SR, IMHO. At least not for me. However, I wouldn't mind the Otomo or Oshii style (Akira and Ghost in the Shell respectively), which tends to be a bit more sober and realistic. I think SR would be really neat in Linklater's style of animation. Its a very neat way to both break from reality and yet stay firmly grounded in reality. http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/warner_independent_pictures/ascannerdarkly Too bad it seems to be notoriously slow/needlessly expensive (how many delays has it been?). -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: FEAR THE FUTURE: In-Sleep Advertising
Dave Land wrote: Folks, No, really: In. Sleep. Advertising. This is a sign of the end times. Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century? Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and written in the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee! Bender: Quit squawking, flesh wad. Nobody's forcing you to buy anything. Amy: Yeah. I mean we all have commercials in our dreams but you don't see us running off to buy brand-name merchandise at low, low prices. [After a long silence they get up and run out.] -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: FEAR THE FUTURE: In-Sleep Advertising
Dave Land wrote: Folks, No, really: In. Sleep. Advertising. This is a sign of the end times. Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century? Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games and on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and written in the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee! Bender: Quit squawking, flesh wad. Nobody's forcing you to buy anything. Amy: Yeah. I mean we all have commercials in our dreams but you don't see us running off to buy brand-name merchandise at low, low prices. [After a long silence they get up and run out.] -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Seti at Home
Nick Lidster wrote: Well Jo Anne after my last format, I went to download the installer as normal and I received the BOINC software... it is not bad at all IMO. And it seems to runner faster then the previous client. I've noticed a few irritating bugs (most annoying is that there seems to be a slow memory+cpu leak, even with it told only to work in screensaver mode). On the plus side, you can use the same client to sign up for other good scientific causes like [EMAIL PROTECTED] and ClimatePrediction.net. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Isaac Hayes quits SouthPark -- Update
The Fool wrote: But in late January, Hayes suffered a stroke, and members of Scientology took advantage if his infirmed condition to issue a statement claiming to be Hayes leaving the show. Today the story gains momentum as the New York Post picks it up and now names names: (Hayes is) at home recuperating and did not issue the press release which said he was quitting because the show made fun of his faith. That release was put out by fellow Scientologist Christina Kumi Kimball, a fashion executive for designer Craig Taylor … 'Hayes loves 'South Park' and needs it for income. He has a new wife and a baby on the way.' http://www.nypost.com/gossip/pagesix/65830.htm Anyone else curious how Isaac Hayes might feel now after this week's Super Adventure Club episode? -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I'm gonna win, trust in me / I have come to save this world / and in the end I'll get the grrrl! --Machinae Supremacy, Hero (Promo Track) ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Isaac Hayes quits SouthPark over Scientology Ep
Dave Land wrote: On Mar 14, 2006, at 12:23 AM, The Fool wrote: Hyprocrisy. One more good reason not to watch South Park. I was deeply insulted when a friend that I *thought* knew me better said that he thought I'd enjoy that show. Really? I would claim it as one more good reason *to* watch South Park. Sure, South Park can be crude and juvenile at first glance, but below the surface: who else out there is doing as much biting socio-political and religious satire? (The hypocrisy in question was in the form of a voice actor's choice, not in terms of South Park itself which remains something of an equal-opportunity satire show.) The episode in question completely angered many Scientologists. If you watch it, though, it really isn't all that scathing (nowhere near as mean and vicious as South Park has been to several varieties of Christian doctrine, such as more recently: the Mel Gibson school of violent worship). In fact, the worrying thing is that most of what is scathing about it is actual Scientology doctrine repeated in the midst of the episode. It's just sad that Scientology is so inherently funny. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: New Battlestar Galactica - no spoilers.
Michael Harney wrote: One series that I hope wraps up in this or the next season is Stargate: SG-1. Despite Ben Browder being one of my favorite actors, I think the series has had a good run and really needs to conclude rather than running it until it fizzles out like Sci-fi Channel seems intent on doing. I would interested to see it continue for some time. No American Sci-Fi tv show has yet to build a good wrong across cast generations. I'm not saying that SG-1 could ever be as venerable as, say, Dr. Who, but I would love to see at least one show in my lifetime survive a decent secondary run with a new lead. The key here is, are the writers up to the challenge? (Slider's writers in a few key seasons certainly were not.) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Let's Roll
Doug Pensinger wrote: The one possible conspiracy that would require few people to commit and would thus be more easily contained; willful negligence. I believe the FBI were at the PA crash site quicker than any response to the Radar Operators' queries about military action against the rogue flights. The 9/11 Commission Timeline shows so many points of potential criminal negligence... -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ History bleeds for tomorrow / for us to realize and never more follow blind --Machinae Supremacy, Deus Ex Machinae, Title Track ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Let's Roll
Dave Land wrote: I can't help but think that I'm turning into a relative in my family who has always been a JFK-assassination conspiracy freak as I become more and more interested in uncovering the truth of 9/11. I love conspiracies for entertainment value alone. (My interests lie in virtual/synthetic world creation and conspiracies are ripe elements for emotional story telling.) As an apprentice fiction writer, I felt played on 9/11. I didn't have to the words to describe it then, but now I think I could list a few things. But, this is one Conspiracy I'm actually afraid of examining too deeply. Look into the abyss and, well... -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ History bleeds for tomorrow / for us to realize and never more follow blind --Machinae Supremacy, Deus Ex Machinae, Title Track ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Query: spoken numbers in 1200 AD
Steve Sloan wrote: Not if you routinely have to divide numbers into thirds or sixths, something that's not too uncommon in the real world. Thirds and sixths are pretty common in nature. 12 is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, a much better list of factors than the puny 2 and 5 you get with base 10. Don't deal enough with fractions, I guess, to care. Also, by this reasoning the best bet is Base 60 (used by the Sumerians). I'm not sure I'd care to use Base 60 for all numbers. Also, my real world prefers metric and things that were designed to the fit the radix we use daily, instead of historical oddities. and all the more ridiculous for your religious ranting and racism. I didn't see either of those things in Robert's post. Covert in post, overt in referenced website of poster. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. --Samuel Butler ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Query: spoken numbers in 1200 AD
Robert J. Chassell wrote: I am curious, because of my fury that in the Middle Ages, Christian Europe adopted an Indian/Arabic base 10 numerical system rather than the better base 12 system. Base 12 fits the number of Christian Apostles. It fits the number of eggs in dozen. In base 12, you can count on one hand. As a person who has had to work across radixes it is much easier to deal with radixes that are powers of two (binary, base 4, octal, hexadecimal) than any other arbitrary base. There's a reason computers use binary or unary. Base 12 sounds ridiculous, and all the more ridiculous for your religious ranting and racism. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ History bleeds for tomorrow / for us to realize and never more follow blind --Machinae Supremacy, Deus Ex Machinae, Title Track ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: My annual Xmas tirade... Was RE: An armed society ...
I play Microsoft's advocate from time to time, because as evil as people think they are they are more often just misunderstood, IMNSHO. People seem to anthropomorphized Microsoft into the demi-God of computer problems. Dan Minette wrote: What percentage of the operating systems business does Microsoft have? Isn't it close to 95%? Last time I saw anything: 75-80% total, 50% or less of the Server market, 50% or less of the nerd market. Quick question: how many OSes would you like to know how to use every day? Microsoft gives away features that are the main source of income for other companies (i.e. Microsoft Explorer vs. Netscape). This is much more of a Vertical Monopoly problem than a Monopoly problem. Our Anti-Trust Laws do not affect Vertical Monopolies, otherwise Sony, Viacom, Times Warner and others should be facing court battles. Every feature that Microsoft has given away for free has been things that should be included in an Operating System. Do you want to be *required* to pay a third party to listen to music? Do you want to be *required* to pay a third party to use something as integral to the network experience as a web browser? Do you want to be *required* to pay a third party to use something as integral to the health of your PC as an anti-virus program? Microsoft does it and over-rich third parties whine about Monopolistic tendencies. Apple does it (iTunes, iPhoto, i*, Final Cut *, ...) and people hail it as the second coming! Linux does it every day, and has done it since the beginning... Why is Microsoft the exception to the rule? I cannot think of a comparable action by Wal-Mart. Price Gouging; Unfair Trade Agreements; Service Bundling; All-In-One-Stop-Shopping. There's an entire documentary on some of this if you care, but again, these are all Vertical Monopoly problems coming from the fact that Wal-Mart sells everything and owns quite a bit of the production systems as well. If I own a PC computer (not including Apples, which I'd label , it's hard to get away from Microsoft. If I want to buy most retail items, I can and do go to Target. Depends on your definition of hard. You can install Linux on your PC pretty easily nowadays, and you can try before you buy (spend the time installing) with very easy Live CDs (ask your neighborhood geek for a good Live CD, or order the Ubuntu CDs, which has an included Live CD to help you decide to install Ubuntu). Sure, there's a learning curve, but have you ever had two VCRs that used the exact same menu system? An Operating System is like a Gaggle of VCRs, in that respect. That's a tough cookie to crack and one of the reasons business and individuals have standardized on one (Windows); whether they like it or not they can use it where ever they come to it.Imagine the mess we'd have if there weren't a standard OS on most PCs. How many OSes do you think you can learn and keep fresh on day to day? In this case, the fact that there is a Monopoly is not from evilness on Microsoft's part, but from request/need of the market itself. Before Computers that was unprecedented in Capitalist markets (which goes to show how Computer software may in fact be a Socialist organism). People need to start realizing that the blame for Microsoft's profluence is partly their own. (The only real solution to the Microsoft Problem would be to institutionalize/nationalize the Operating System. Some States and Countries are already working on this, in fact, at least for government work.) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. --Samuel Butler ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Defeat in Victory
Robert Seeberger wrote: From where I'm viewing, a corner seems to have been turned in recent months and most people in the US share opinions that are more leftish than they were over the last few years. Arguably the true American center has always been more to the left than right. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ History bleeds for tomorrow / for us to realize and never more follow blind --Machinae Supremacy, Deus Ex Machinae, Title Track ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: My annual Xmas tirade...
Alberto Monteiro wrote: I agree that any OS should include those things. But Micro$oft is Evil not for including them, but for _not_ including other basic things that any decent OS should include, like _any_ programming language support (C, C++, or even b*sic), any reasonable text editor, any reasonable command language, etc. All of the latest Microsoft Compilers (languages include C++, C#, VB.NET, others) are free and most likely are already installed on your computer. IMO, Notepad is a reasonable text editor. When I want features I want something like Vim and I don't expect Microsoft to deal with the Vim v. Emacs debate. The cmd.exe and Windows Script Host together support quite a bit of reasonable commands, and the Monad Shell in beta-testing provides everything but the kitchen sink. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income. --Samuel Butler ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: left-right inanities
Doug Pensinger wrote: Did you mean to send a Google search? Can you (or anyone else) suggest a particular site? There are as many ways to read RSS as there are people. My email client (Thunderbird) supports it out of the box and makes RSS reading like email reading, that's my preferred way. Other people like the way their browser (Firefox) handles RSS (live bookmarks). On the opposite end of things is something like Bloglines or Reader.Google.com. There are a veritable ton of RSS readers out there. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ History bleeds for tomorrow / for us to realize and never more follow blind --Machinae Supremacy, Deus Ex Machinae, Title Track ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Brin: Re: Bush claim revives al-Jazeera bombing fears
Alberto Monteiro wrote: Robert Seeberger wrote: Purportedly, the terrorists hate us for our freedoms. But we have no problem doing to ourselves what terrorist would not be able to do, and doing unto innocent Moslems what we fear they might do to us. It seems that I am reading The Sound of His Wings... You will have to explain that to me. I come away completely clueless here. The Sound of His Wings is Heinlein's _unwritten_ story [or should I say history?] about the rise of Nehemiah Scudder. I've always had the damnedest time not bringing up Nehemiah Scudder when talking about politics lately. Luckily for us G. W. Bush doesn't have the Minister's charisma and charm that Scudder could exude. The one redeeming thing, at least, is that in all of Heinlein's major timelines where Scudder appeared the response a few years/decades later (often thanks to the Masons, interestingly enough) was Political Left, and a sometimes very hard left (the For Us, The Living timeline went semi-Socialist (full blown Social Credit for anyone who loves US-historical political parties)). Heinlein realized that the stupid populace might just vote for some rabid moron, but also realized that in Democracy there is always a second chance. (Even if you have to, as Thomas Jefferson realized, once and while bathe democracy in bloody revolt.) -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ History bleeds for tomorrow / for us to realize and never more follow blind --Machinae Supremacy, Deus Ex Machinae, Title Track ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Email return address spoofing
Horn, John wrote: My wife and I have registered the domain name cleaver-horn.com. Some enterprising spammer out there has discovered that domain and started using it as the return address on their spam. So our inbox is filling up with return mail, mail failture and anti-spam messages all supposedly sent from email addresses like [EMAIL PROTECTED] and such.. This, obviously, is very annoying. Other than setting up some filters that send anything without a certain valid email prefixes to the great bit bucket, is there anything we can do about this? Get a good spam filter. A spam filter will filter out the anti-spam spam just as easily as the normal spam. Is this something that is inevitable for anyone with a domain name? Is it only a matter of time? Yes and yes, sadly. One of my greatest worries is that some ISP or spam-filter out there will decide that all mail coming from my domain must be spam and will block it all. Does that happen? Is that something I should even worry about? Yes, it happens all too often. You really can't stop an ISP from deciding that your domain name is only used for spam; all you can really do in this day and age is to keep several back up email accounts just in case. Sometimes if you (or better, your intended recipient at that ISP) email an ISP and say my domain isn't spam they will listen, but most ISPs really don't have any decent policies for dealing with this. A really good ISP is often going to be able to tell the difference between spoofed and real spam domains, but there aren't that many good ISPs left in the world. Too many hire cheap hourly workers with itchy trigger fingers. Even worse, this goes beyond just domain names, but mail servers as well. If your host isn't that large either, you are going to end up fighting people claiming your host is a spammer, too. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: This is to type on?
Julia Thompson wrote: My impression is that keyboards didn't always come with dedicated keys for moving the cursor, and it was on one of those that didn't that Dan first learned to use a keyboard properly I once got used to using a keyboard that had both the full NUM PAD and a full arrow pad with diagonals and a center space key. That was pretty useful, and every now and then for a game I'll miss it, then remember I can use the NUM PAD if I turn NUM LOCK off and use it. Games are the rare exception where I might turn off the NUM LOCK. Otherwise there are just so many long numbers that are much easier/quicker to type on the num pad. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I have no idea what I'm doing. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: And now for something completely different …
Warren Ockrassa wrote: Who the heck is doing their ad work now? I shudder to think what kind of childhood must have fed into these creative ideas. Between that and the shrieking mutants Quizno's was using a while back, all I can imagine is that the current edgy idea on Mad Ave is Freak 'em out so bad they can't think straight, and they'll spend their money *everywhere*. By random lot alone we'll get *some* of it. Hey, don't discriminate against the childhoods of the British, I'm sure they have normal childhoods. The Quizno's Spongemonkeys guy works across the Pond from Madison Ave where he specializes in the British equivalent of college/stoner humour (with a U!). You can treat yourself (or torture yourself if so inclined) to other tidbits of his portfolio at RatherGood.com. I actually have to give Quizno's props for thinking Outside Madison Ave., as they've hired first the British slacker culture guy and then a Hollywood reject (the talking baby producer/director/voice guy tried that stupid schtick in that awful Baby Bob television show). -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Does the NYT EVER print anything that isn't dogawful tripe or Propaganda?
The Fool wrote: [snipped nice list] Sluggy Freelance is my main daily strip. I would add: VGCats (.com) to your list; nothing like weird video game cats. Kevin and Kell (herdthinners.com) was started by a syndicated print comic artist and is purely online. Girl Genius (girlgeniusonline.com) is really interested because it started as a published cult series (as in comic store comic) and is going online because Studio Foglio thinks its an easier format (regardless of whether or not the business model is better). Also, some of the ones you mentioned (and a whole bunch more) can be summed up by pointing out the big Internet syndicates (comic hosts) such as Keenspot and Drunk-Duck. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I have no idea what I'm doing. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: FLCL and Paranoia Agent
Steve Sloan wrote: Maybe it's just a way of passing the torch to The Batman. The Batman isn't a bad show, but it's not even remotely as good as Batman: Animated. The villains are much more shallow, for one thing. That sounds like the answer to me. There were a lot of people unsatisfied when Batman Beyond was cancelled. The movie about The Joker helped some... I guess that Epilogue was one final chance to give the Batman Beyond characters a chance to finish things right. (IIRC, Batman Beyond was created specifically for the show, not drawing on previous comics, which made it something special to its hard-core fans.) This hard-core fan says what I just said, but from someone who knows what he is talking about: http://www.batbeyond.com/ -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ I have no idea what I'm doing. ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: 250 mile per gallon cars?
Gary Nunn wrote: If this is real, no doubt the Bush Administration will propose laws banning this technology on ethical or theological grounds so that their oil producing buddies won't feel the pinch from this. Not exactly real. Uses external battery sources and thus not entirely reliant on gasoline and thus miles per gallon doesn't hold much meaning here. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Harry Potter Discussion (Spoilers!!!) L3
Warren Ockrassa wrote: I don't believe they are like every other children's title out there. They are a mix of familiar elements from two strands of children's literature - boarding school and fantasy - that in terms of quality sit somewhere in the middle of the field. I'll wager you're more immersed in better books for kids. For that reason I'm guessing you don't live in the States. ;) I remember Reading Rainbow used to always harp on the Carnegie Award winners, and I remember teachers that also did that. Interesting to find out later in life that the Carnegie Awards are British. Odd to see such a major instance of our having to import good thinking. I find it ironic, too, that the worst player in the Franchise Books for Kids, with their awful advertising direct in our public schools, the Scholastic Corporation, also just happens to be the ones publishing the American editions of the Harry Potter series. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ Support Open/Free Mythoi: Read the manifesto @ mythoi.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
Re: Harry Potter Discussion (Spoilers!!!) L3
Jim Sharkey wrote: I've always wondered if she didn't create Snape's visuals with Rickman in mind. He's just too perfect a fit. What's fun about the movies is watching these fine English actors hamming it up and having a good time. Emma Thompson in particular cracked me up. I've been very partial to Rickman since GalaxyQuest (I'll admit I'm a dork). Whether or not Rowling wrote the character with Rickman in mind, I'm sure it was probably somewhere between Rickman and McKellan that I saw in the part. Dame Maggie Smith, I thought, was another brilliantly cast actor. It is amazing that the filmmakers were able to tie together and contract such a great cast for the movies. There aren't as many great, classically trained actors in work outside of Shakespearean performances, and here they are doing kid's movies. Of course, I still find it amazing that the books have pushed kids to read several thousand pages of text. -- --Max Battcher-- http://www.worldmaker.net/ Support Open/Free Mythoi: Read the manifesto @ mythoi.com ___ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
