Slashback: Games, Goats, Galileo 165
Make sure you slip this into the fine print of your consulting contracts. Adn writes "Newsbytes is reporting in a story that David McOwen, who was facing some pretty serious charges will be let go with a fine as against a much harsher fate. If utilizing so called "unused cycles" for the greater good is a crime (I know he was not charged for that per se... but bear with me here) then makes you consider uninstalling all those SETI@Home Screensavers doesnt it? Also a larger question...If the law (in these kinds of cases) operates on the 'intent' of the accused, what is the justification for even considering it a crime?"
Playing games builds your mind and your hand-eye coordination. Bill Kendrick writes: "The results are in for the SDL Game Contest held by No Starch Press, Linux Journal and Loki Games.
First place was awarded to LBreakout by Michael Speck. Second place went to Tower Toppler by Andreas Roever. My own game, Vectoroids just barely made third place over another asteroids-style game, Rock Dodgers by Paul Holt.
Congratulations! The full list of games is listed on No Starch's results page."
Guaranteed not to be your average Slashdot book review! Alex Chiu writes "Hello. This is alex chiu. I have written an online book at http://superiching.com Teaching people how to communicate with God using I-Ching. This online book is free for everyone to read. It's at least 5 times bigger than alexchiu.com. If interested, please release this news."
You may remember Alex from the interview we did with him a little while ago -- truly a unique individual.
Flying blind and a long way from home. Vertigo01 writes: "According to this article on CNN.com, galileo has encountered some technical problems on its flyby of Io and "for unknown reasons, went into safe mode" ... (sounds like my last Win98 install) ... flight engineers hope to restore normal operation for the duration of Galileo's life, but it looks like we won't get any more pictures of Io out of her."
Victoria's Secret probably won't put this on the box. FortKnox writes "Spider Silk is long known to be one of the strongest biological structure made (5 times stronger than steel by weight). Biologists have already genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk in their milk. Now, they have successfully extracted the protein and "spun" the silk. The next, and final step, is to mass produce the silk to be available commercially. Move over kevlar, here comes something better! I want to have the first biologically built house! I wonder how insulated spider silk is...."
Next thing you know... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Next thing you know... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Good for them! (Score:2)
Because in my current position I am not allowed to even LOOK at GPL'd source code.
Socialist... moron, we OWN you.
Re:Next thing you know... (Score:1)
And you can run a Linux workstation on a 386. I wrote "Windows XP" (aka Windows DRM), with the slogan "What does M$ want to do with your cycles today?"
Re:Next thing you know... (Score:1)
Re:Next thing you know... (Score:1)
Spider Silk (Score:1)
Re:Spider Silk (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to do some serious competitive sailing, and I can tell you that spectra is rather mediocre when compared to other high-tech synthetic materials on the market currently. It doesn't even measure up to Kevlar as far as strength or streching resistence is concerned. The best that comes to my mind right now would be Vectran, but it has been several years since I was in the field, and thus new developments may have ocurred as a result of America's Cup development and such.
Re:Spider Silk (Score:1)
There are three main grades of Kevlar available: 29, 49, and 149. Respectively, they have tensile moduluses of 62 GPa, 131 GPa, and 186 GPa, and tensile strengths of 2.76 GPa, 3.6-4.1 GPa, and 3.4 GPa. There's also Kevlar Edge, but I don't know nothin' from nothin' about that.
Spectra 900 has a tensile modules of 117 GPa and Spectra 1000 has 172.0 GPa. Their tensile strengths are, respectively, 2.59 and 3.27.
Sounds pretty comparable to me, and I certainly wouldn't call it "mediocre." I also don't think Spectra is as susceptible to degradation from ultraviolet exposure, but I could be very wrong on that point. It does creep, though, which I guess could be a bad thing in sails.
All I can find on Vectran claims that its modulus and strength is similar to Kevlar-29.
Re:Spider Silk (Score:2)
Oh, and Kevlar really thrashes scissors.
Never heard of Vectran, though. Has it been around long?
Re:Spider Silk (Score:2, Informative)
Seems to mainly be used in competition sails.
Uh.. found a link:
Vectran fibres [vectran.net]
Re:Spider Silk (Score:1)
Immortal people are going to die? (Score:4, Funny)
If you know somebody is going to die, then why don't you give him an immortality device. Hmm, buf if you give him that, he won't die anymore, your prediction becomes fraud and the universe will then collapse into a singularity with infinite impropability.
Re:Immortal people are going to die? (Score:1)
Re:Immortal people are going to die? (Score:3, Funny)
Misreading the site name (Score:3, Funny)
Hmmm... now that I think about it... (goes off to register superitching.com)
---
Some say Netware is just like a wheel/ When you abend it, you can't mend it
Re:Misreading the site name (Score:1)
Bonus... (Score:4, Funny)
On the first one there (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On the first one there (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:On the first one there (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:On the first one there (Score:2)
Punishment: Teach cranky old people... (Score:1)
Re:On the first one there (Score:2)
But maybe that's only in large anti-trust cases where the defendant is a corporation and has something to gain from their sentence.
I-Ching Web Design (Score:4, Funny)
The Law (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Law (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The Law (Score:1, Troll)
Re:The Law (Score:1)
See? [unr.edu]
Re:The Law (Score:1)
malum prohibitum and malum in se. Seems correct.
Malum prohibitum crimes are crimes that are (literally) "Evil because it's prohibited". seems correct... otherwise you get the awkward double plural "prohibited evils crimes".
Check out http://ecclesia.org/lawgiver/M.asp [ecclesia.org] or perhaps http://dictionary.law.com/definition2.asp?selecte
Re:The Law (Score:1)
For example, getting married is a crime - if you do so believing that you are already married (even if you're wrong), then it's bigamy.
Similarly giving truthful evidence under oath can be a crime - if you do so believing it to be untrue.
(This is true in my local jurisdiction, anyway. YMMV)
Obviously intent can be difficult to prove, but the courts seem to manage to cope OK.
Wasn't this in the Bible? (Score:2)
Funniest quote ever. (Score:5, Funny)
``The spiders unfortunately are territorial carnivores. They eat each other, and this has caused them to resist all forms of domestication,'' Turner said.
I can see it now, "Heel boy, now sit, stand. Now spin some silk into a shirt for me!"
Re:Funniest quote ever. (Score:2, Informative)
"If you put a bunch of spiders in togeather, in a few days you are left with one big, fat, happy spider."
IIRC this was when the genetic alterations was being done to the goats, nice to see there's been progress. This has been a Army funded project for years, I remeber reading it in the WSJ back in the mid 80s.
Re:Funniest quote ever. (Score:1)
There was another funny quote about them from a couple years back. >
"If you put a bunch of spiders in togeather, in a few days you are left with one big, fat, happy spider."
IIRC this was when the genetic alterations was being done to the goats, nice to see there's been progress. This has been a Army funded project for years, I remeber reading it in the WSJ back in the mid 80s.
Does this mean we're going to end up with one big, fat, happy goat? After all, goats supposedly eat anything - how do they stop the goat eating all the silk?
Re:Funniest quote ever. (Score:1, Funny)
This was tried, France, late 1800's or so. A group of entrepreneurs shut hundreds of spiders into a disused barn, I presume with the intent of fumigating later, and then collecting the webbing and spinning.
When the Barn was opened some time later, it was found that in the absence of other food, the spiders had eaten each other.
Oh well, back to le drawing board.
you know... for girls... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:you know... for girls... (Score:1)
Unauthorized Software (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unauthorized Software (Score:1)
Finally. (Score:1)
Re:Finally. (Score:2, Funny)
Re: Finally. (Score:1)
Re: Finally. (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as you restrict their diet. A goat that's been alowed to eat whatever it wants can have some pretty gnarly-tasting milk.
Bah-h-h-h-h (Score:3, Funny)
Super-I-Ching and Alex Chiu (Score:2)
By the way, he will be coming out with your very own "One Ring" (Immortality Ring Ver 2.0) soon.
Re:Super-I-Ching and Alex Chiu (Score:3, Funny)
One scam to... oh nevermind.
Forget body armor -- I want climbing ropes! (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, can you imagine how freaky it would be to suspend your body weight from a rope so thin that you might not even be able to see the end of it?
Re:Forget body armor -- I want climbing ropes! (Score:1)
Re:Forget body armor -- I want climbing ropes! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Forget body armor -- I want climbing ropes! (Score:2, Interesting)
Big disadvantage with this, though, is that the thinner it gets, the trickier it is to get into your quickdraw. I had length-matched 'draws with BD 'hotwire' krabs on them in the crux section so I wouldn't fumble the clip. A 3mm spider-silk rope wuld be very tricky to clip with - like using prussik cord. perhaps you could stiffen a section in the manner of the Beal program ropes to make clipping easier and the sheath more durable?
3mm - fine for topropes, no good for real climbing
Re:Forget body armor -- I want climbing ropes! (Score:5, Funny)
Damn.
Babelfish just looks at me funny when I feed it this.
--Blair
Re:Forget body armor -- I want climbing ropes! (Score:1)
F7c is around 5.12c/d or around Australian 27-28. There's not a bad conversion chart at http://www.australianbouldering.com/
Hmmm, methinks it's time to dust off the chalk bag (no, that ain't Anthrax!)
Um... I prefer ropes that bounce thanks... (Score:1)
Still, might make great sheaf material. No idea how this would affect diameter though...
Re:Forget body armor -- I want climbing ropes! (Score:1)
Re:Forget body armor -- I want climbing ropes! (Score:2, Interesting)
Spider silk is stretchy and abrasion resistant! (Score:1)
What gives you the idea that spider silk is non-stretching? Au contraire, spider silk is very stretchy. [sciencenews.org] University of Wyoming researchers found the gene for capture silk which, while also very sticky, can stretch up to 3 times its original length. That's a bit too far, and it would be REALLY tough to handle (how would you let go?).
Dragline silk, though (which is what I imagine we'd want for climbing) is what Nexia is producing [nexiabiotech.com]. It's only 1/5th as stretchy as capture silk (see first link, above), which means it'll stretch to 1.4 times its original length -- plenty of "shock absorption" to keep you from getting cut in two.
And although Nexia doesn't say anything about abrasion resistance, they do say they're hoping to create fibers with specific properties for specific applications. I do agree that the fibers may need to be sheathed in something else (maybe even dragline silk would be too sticky -- who knows?), but I still think it'd be a vast improvement over what we carry today.
hahahahah (Score:1, Redundant)
go to when you can't get rid of that damn jock
itch.
Tower Toppler (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Tower Toppler (Score:3, Informative)
Play Connect The Goats! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Play Connect The Goats! (Score:3, Funny)
now that you're posting stuff by alex chieu (Score:2, Funny)
Inviting trouble (Score:5, Insightful)
An article on slashdot with "GOAT" in the headline is inviting trouble
:)
Safe mode for Galileo (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Safe mode for Galileo (Score:1)
"Dave? Dave?"
McOwen still got too much (Score:5, Insightful)
McOwen used resources without permission. Ideally that gets you a talking-to from a supervisor, at worst it gets you fired.
Taking legal action against an employee for it is way overboard, and even 80 hour community service and $2100 is too much, considering he was fired from a subsequent job, and probably has had his life turned upside down for a few months (I believe he and his wife had a newborn at the time). The reason we should have a fair legal system is so you don't have to go through this kind of thing. What on earth was the attorney general thinking? Where they trying to meet some quota or something? Testing out a new law?
Anyway, glad to see things turned out all right, and he didn't have to go to court, where he probably wouldn't have had enough money to win the case.
Re:McOwen still got too much (Score:3)
Oh, nonsense. He was at a university, ,allegedly
a center of learning. A good one would applaud
him for his initiative: capturing otherwise wasted
resources for purposes of advancing scientific research. If there were some reason that the
screensavers caused a problem, then the right response would be to ask the guy to uninstall the screen savers.
I love this comment (Score:1)
It takes a whole new dimension when first you read : "The reason we should have a fair legal system "
If your actual legal system is in the view of : I have money, the best lawer possible, so now move and abandon the case, well yes, you're in trouble...
Oh yes, Moderator, Flamebait is -1. Honesty would put me in "Insightful", or Offtopoc. Now make you choice, and remember : I have more money, and the best lawyer...
Ooops, got carried away 8)
On a more serious note (Score:4, Insightful)
I think they just decided to use public opinion against "cracking" and made McOwen a criminal ("Look, he's trying to break codes [distributed.net] on company time. He must be a criminal"). Sorry, not criminal, what's the buzzword again? Ah, terrorist...
Houses?? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean, as opposed to all the wooden houses that we currently live in, all produced from 100% inorganic trees?
Super I-Ching (Score:4, Insightful)
From what I picked up, I-Ching is more a method of telling the future than conversing with the supernatural. Then again, I think the idea is that seeing the future and talking to God are kinda the same thing.
As you may be aware, Alex's main claim to fame is that he is the purveyor of the eternal life rings. These cheat death by stopping or even reversing aging. However, they can't protect from accidents, some diseases, being shot (how I'm glad I'm not American...) That's where I-Ching comes in. If you can see the future, you can avoid being shot or whatever. So you need both the rings and I-Ching to really be immortal. They complement each other nicely.
I-Ching is performed by throwing coins or something. (I wasn't really clear on this.) The results, as well as the time/date/year (on Beijing time) and maybe some other variables, go through a complex analysis. Future events, as well as vagely the time and place they will occur, come out. Those who are better at I-Ching will be able to figure out more. Oh yeah, and when I say complex, I mean it. It looks like learning Java was easier than learning I-Ching. There's 5 elements and hexagrams and bonding and lines and more fun than I can handle.
The most interesting part is how logical it is. It might not be backed up by properly controlled scientific evidence, but the method itself really makes sense if you let it make sense. It's just like getting answers from a complex physics equation.
So here's the moral of the story, children: Just because it makes sense to you, doesn't make it correct. People who can use this lesson include:
Politicians (Tax cuts create jobs! The economists say so, I understand it, it must be true!)
Almost anyone who argues about anything (Yes, that includes you. And me.)
Alex Chiu, the subject of the day. This can actually be used to understand his website. He wrote something down. It made sense to him, so now he doesn't understand that it might not be true.
</rant> ;-)
Re:Super I-Ching (Score:2, Informative)
The I-ching is the reading of the meanings of tri-grams. Tri-grams are made up of three lines - either solid or broken.
Each coin represents one line. Heads=solid Tails=broken.
So if you throw three coins it will be something like: heads, heads, tail (usually you predetermine that you are going to read the coins leftmost first - or something.)
so H,H,T would look like:
---
---
- -
and you would look up this trigram symbol for its meaning....
sometimes you would throw 3 times and look up all three symbols to get a more in depth reading.
Re:Super I-Ching (Score:1)
Re:Super I-Ching (Score:2)
f(i-ching inputs) = bullshit
You won't even need to use your fingers, as with those party-trick arithmetic methods!
Re:Super I-Ching (Score:2)
Yarrow stalks, traditionally. That's why Bruce Schneier's strong pseudorandom number generator is called Yarrow.
http://www.counterpane.com/yarrow.html
But anything that gives random bits will do - coin flips, dice, thermal noise on a diode, radioactive decay, lava lamps (http://www.sciencenews.org/20010512/mathtrek.asp
Why Goats? (Score:1)
-- Genetically alter silkworms to produce the spider silk.
-- Genetically alter cows to produce the silk laden milk, since they would produce much higher yields than goats.
The article is a little short on details, and it makes it appear like after the spider domestication failed, they went straight to goats. Anybody know why the above two examples are inferior to genetically altered goats?
Re:Why Goats? (Score:2, Informative)
Goats
Are less likely to die than cows, and less expensive when they DO die
Reproduce faster than cows.
Can eat a wider variety of foods than cows
Are easier to milk than cows
Are easier to drag around than cows
Goats make less of a mess when they defecate.
The main problem with goats is that the milk tastes terrible. Some breeds are tastier than others, but I gag on most of it. Note that this is not a problem when it comes to spider silk.
Re:Why Goats? (Score:2, Funny)
ratty.
Re:Why Goats? (Score:1)
From another article in Forbes:
The advantages of goats over cows are detailed in another reply.
Re:Why Goats? (Score:2, Informative)
Forgot the link:
http://www.forbes.com/global/2001/0219/061.html [forbes.com]
Re:Why Goats? (Score:1)
Re:Why Goats? (Score:1)
SDL game contest downloads (Score:3, Informative)
Although some were disappointed that their games didn't win, everyone has been very polite and understanding. That says a lot about the open source/free software development community. It really was a pleasure to deal with everyone involved in the contest.
-John (one of four SDL game contest judges)
Great. (Score:5, Funny)
Great, now God's going to get slashdotted.
Re:Great. (Score:3, Funny)
The God that can be Slashdotted is Not the True God.
Schwab
Re:Great. (Score:3, Funny)
If you meet God on the web, Slashdot him.
Spidergoats! (Score:5, Funny)
There will be all kinds, just like with spiders! We'll have daedly black-widow goats, which kill with a single bite! Wolf-goats (there's an irony!) that stalk about on their massive hairy legs! Jumping goats! Goats that, you know, dig those little holes with the fake top thingies and jumpout at their prey... maybe they'll use sewers.
The web-spinning goats will feast on large birds - the raptor population will be decimated. Mexico and Canada would dig massive moats to keep them in the States, and Britain will patrol our waters and airspace to preserve the quarantine, but the goats will weave parachute thingies and fly across the waters on the winds.
The goatspiders will soon cover the entire planet. They will adapt to every environment, forcing humanity into underground fortresses. The goatspiders will improve upon our technology and colonize the solar system, being contacted by the Culture, who don't even notice humanity. Soon our kind will be nothing more than few highly isolated communities deep beneath the planet's surface. At that point, it's only a matter of time before humanity's flame is exitnguished entirely.
But we'll have lots of really comfortable lingerie!
Re:Spidergoats! (Score:1)
Re:Spidergoats! (Score:1)
I'm not sure I trust any plan that includes (Score:4, Funny)
`That's where the goats come in'
.
Goat spider silk (Score:1)
background on all this can be found
here [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Goat spider silk (Score:2)
Might be the next evolution to the "wet t-shirt" contest!
The XP Files... (Score:1)
What you don't know is that XP is just covering up Microsofts attempt to distribute the worlds first "micronet" that is processing hundreds of trillions of flops a day, everyday.
What is happening, and you the public don't know is XP is really a work of art and uses less processing power the windows 3.11! All that drive spinnig, Proccessor time, and bandwidth is MicroNet juicing your systems unused processor time. Playing it off as XP's poor coding is better than admitting they are jacking your cycles.
What else are you really going to do with p4 2ghz machines besides secretly back the worlds largest distributive net project. Your just part of Big Bills world wide web farm baby.
book review (Score:1)
Nope, there are lots of people are mentally ill and even more who want to rip people off with claims for a product that cannot possibly be true.
how odd... (Score:1)
You're supposed to crash BEFORE you go into safe mode.
Or at least that's what Win98 has always told me
Magius_AR
Re:Strong, but Bulky! (Score:5, Insightful)
A great thing about using steel as a construction material is that not much eats it. You can leave steel on it's own for a while, and count on it to stay pretty much in the same condition you left it. On the other hand, I'm sure there's been a nice little biological niche carved out by insects/bacteria/whatever that eat old abandoned cobwebs. I'd hate to see what would happen when they discover your bridge :)
Re:Strong, but Bulky! (Score:2)
By "not much", are you perhaps to the 20% of our atmosphere which undergoes exothermic reactions with iron? Steel bridges (to use your example) have a whole lot of thought put into "how can we plant this in the middle of salt water spray and expect it to still be here in ten years?"
Should have hit preview... (Score:1)
Re:Taco, tsk, tsk! (Score:1, Insightful)
Just stop fucking whining about it. It's not CmdrTaco who's bitchslapping that post and its replies, it's the moderators who you're successfully pissing off with this inane spam.
Yeah yeah, so I've been trolled, whatever. Yay for you.