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...."
On the first one there (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:On the first one there (Score:3, Insightful)
Inviting trouble (Score:5, Insightful)
An article on slashdot with "GOAT" in the headline is inviting trouble
:)
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.
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.
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...
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: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: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.