So, I'm watching the Colbert Report, and he mentions that Conservapedia has started a project to Retranslate the Bible using only proper Conservative buzz words. While investigating this, I came across the article for Feminist Bible. In which, they complain that feminist ideas have permeated a number of newer Bible translations. And, well, yeah, Today's New International Version certainly has imposed some Gender-Neutral dialog and terminology.

Here's the problem though, they start talking about James 2:15-16, talking about how English translations make an "ungrammatical" (their words, not mine... I'm a linguist, if it sounds right it's grammatical, it may not be "proper", but it's still grammatical) rendering of a phrase in order to make it sounds more Gender-Neutral. Sure, I totally bet that the TNIV translation has done this, and guess what? It does use the plural personal pronoun to refer to an antecedent of "brother or sister". So, I'm like, "ok, I'll give you that."

But then in the footnotes, I note that they claim that this grammatical error is even in the KJV version, and in most English versions in fact. Ok, now things smell fishy, because KJV translation was done WELL BEFORE any liberal 1984-paranoid feminists could have gotten their hands on it for Gender-Neutral language. So... what's going on here?

I know of a site called BibleServer.com, which is an awesome webpage, because they provide multiple different translations, all easy to access. Ok, first up, the NIV translation. Nope, NIV uses the "grammatical" non-specifically-gendered personal pronoun "him". But, sure enough, KJV does as well. Well, this is really weird, right? Because as I noted before, KJV was well before any potential feminist influence. Well, ok, well, what about trying a different language?

German doesn't normally use their plural pronoun for non-specified or mixed gender, as they have a very DEFINED gender system. In fact, girls are given the pronoun "it", as well as "Omachen" (grandma with a dimunitive). This is because grammatical gender REQUIRES it to be used... it's not anti-feminine, it's not misogynistic, it's just the way the language works. Yet in the Luther 1984 translation, something weird is going on here... they use the 3rd-person singular subjunctive of "haben" => "haette", but they then refer to the singular antecedent with a plural pronoun. What's going on here?

So, let's look up a Spanish translation, "Version La Biblia de Dia". Spanish is a good choice for this, because they only have masculine and feminine, and even if there were a feminist rally, and there were 100 women, and one man in the crowd, the speaker would grammatically and naturally refer to the crowd as "hombres" (men). In Spanish, all non-specific singular pronouns are male, but any and all MIXED gender PLURAL pronouns are male. So, what happens here? Well, here the plural conjugation of "tener" is used: "tienen", and a plural pronoun is used to refer to this "singular" antecedent again. ("les") Ok, now I'm thoroughly confused...

Ok, wait, I know... let's stop all this work, and start walking back in the documents. Let's start with LATIN... good ol' Latin, when I want to know what misogynistic anti-feminists said about a Bible verse, I go to LATIN. Well, here they use the plural conjugation "sunt", and use a plural referent to the a "singular" antecedent again. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!

Ok, that's it... what language was the Epistle of James originally written in? Uh... Greek. Ok, let's go to the ancient greek. James 2, English and Ancient Greek side-by-side. Alright, here we go, we can go looking though this and.... brother... sister... plural conjugation... plural pronoun...

Ok, so, the reason why KJV and "most English translations" have this plural usage here is because the original freaking GREEK had this "grammatical error", not because of an error of the translators.

And Conservapedia rips on NIV all the time for being liberal biased and all, but they're the only people who, BECAUSE of a liberal attitude to update the language, altered the original meaning of the text in order to conform to proper English grammar of the time.

Ok, seriously, these are the same people who are vouching that the KJV meanings have skewed, and that "logos" should be translated with "truth" rather than "word" anymore, etc. And they're talking about how the original meaning is being lost by the modern liberal jerkwads... yet... some of the liberal jerkwads are actually ensuring that the language conforms to modern day grammar, rather than just blithely repeating the same grammatical errors made in the original Greek.

It reminds me of an amusing quote I once read, but cannot find again, so I shall paraphrase: "How fortuitous it was that God learned Greek to write the New Testament... it's however unfortunate that he had not learned the grammar better."

God can't properly agree a pronoun with a singular complex antecedent... isn't this book supposed to be infallible?

I've lurked at /. without posting for ages, mostly because I just don't have the time to interact like I used to.

But I've been clicking through the old RSS feed more and more lately, and when I saw the PAX Plague thread today, I came over to comment, since I'm kind of affected by the whole damn thing. I thought I'd take a look around since I haven't been here in awhile, and I saw that there are freaking ACHIEVEMENTS associated with our accounts. It's silly, and I'm sure it's been here forever, but I thought it was awesome and I was delighted when I read it.

I didn't realize how much I missed Slashdot until I spent some time here today, and I bet that anyone who joined in the last 2 years doesn't even give a shit about my stupid comments or anything, but it felt good to come back here, and feel safely among my people again.

This is a response to a video on Youtube done by a "tooltime9901", who in response to "jezuzfreek777", presents an interesting prompt. What are the "ten commandments" that an atheist should hold. This is so interesting because it comes to the fundamental philosophy of law and morality. Knowing that morality is fairly relative, and that morality cannot be viewed without context of the situation. Thus, there are justifications to killing another human. There are justifications for what would otherwise be considered theft.

Take these as examples. It is well accepted that self-defense is a legitimate justification for causing the death of someone else. Provided that said self-defense was given in a proportioned response. Thus, if someone simply attempts to assault you, you are only justified insofar as assault against that person. However, if an attacker is presenting a force which a reasonable person would find to be equivalent to lethal force, then one is justified in causing that individuals death.

Next, the justification of theft. It is well accepted that aquisition of ones own property is justified, even if the aquisition of that property would otherwise be considered theft. Thus, reaquiring ones own property is justified if someone has your property without your permission. Here is what is interesting though, you are not justified to use force or threat of force to reobtain your own propery. The use of force to obtain property is only permissible when force is being immediately or imminently used against you to obtain property from onesself.

So, we present here the point that we cannot justify a commandment-like proscription against killing another, or obtaining property in the posession of another. While proscriptions of murder and theft themselves are valid, one is then presented with the problem of defining murder and theft such that it accounts for, and allows justifications. This presents a further moral problem in that in defining murder, one can present the definition of "causing without reasonable and fair justification the death of another human being", because then one is presented with the problem of defining what a human being is. One would normally assume this to be an easy task, but recall that often a superior group of people will attempt to justify their actions by denouncing the humanity of another group. Whites denounced Blacks as humans, and thus the justification of slavery of that group, while slavery of whites was generally admonished. As well, the Nazis of Nazi Germany justified the wholesale slaughter of jews and the disabled as those categories of homo sapiens and being insufficient to warrant the protections afforded those of "human beings"

Thus, we are left with the necessity that the only commandment-like proscriptions and perscriptions afforded to us need be necessarily vague, and rather than covering specific details are presented as widely interpreted statements that present the foundation for a legal or moral system to be built upon more exactly. And thus, I can present from that notion the following six commandments, which I feel are reasonable, justifiable and rational. I use the speech of the time of King James in order to present an allegory and allusion to the commandments as they are considered by our modern age.

1. Thou shalt keep the trust of your word.
2. Thou shalt not do harm to others.
3. Thou shalt not endanger others.
4. Thou shalt honor thine obligations.
5. Thou shalt not act with intention to violate a proscription of law.
6. Thou shalt not act with knowledge, or willful ignorance to violate a requirement of law.

These six commandments actually establish the devisions of law within the common law system, and such commandments actually have equivalent notions in the civil law system.

The first commandment, I present as such, because of the importance of the issue. I see perjury and fraud as the fundamentally anti-thesis of reason, which is what a society must fundamentally be based upon. If the system cannot rely upon the word of an individual, then the system itself cannot operate. Thus, since the system must assume that parties are telling the truth, it is a fundamental requirement that this truth be told. This should not be considered to proscribe all lies, as not all lies are damaging to a moral system, however when presenting justification and context to a situation before an impartial party then the necessity of the trust in the words of the parties is paramount. And we should presume that any court, natural or not, would be impartial.

The second commandment presents a fundamental truth. We should not do harm to others. This is presented in commonlaw under the idea of intentional torts, and the third commandment presents a foundation for the idea of negligent torts. In both cases, if someone becomes harmed, either through the acts or the failure to act of another, then that person deserves the right to have their harm redressed.

The fourth commandment seems similar to the first, in that it would seem to require someone to be honest, and this is true, however it is more specific than that. The first commandment establishes the requirement that one be true in their word if there is a trust of that person's word, but it says nothing about when a trust of that person's word is fundmantally necessary. While the first commandment applies obviously where an impartial court is involved, it applies non-trivially to the announcment of obligations to others. This is the American idea of crossing ones fingers while annoucing an obligation, and thus that a trust was never intended in the announcement of that obligation. This commandment however provides that one must always place the trust of ones word in the announcement of an obligation. In the common law system, this commandment thus provides the foundation for contract law.

The fifth, and sixth commandments establish the foundation for criminal law in the common law system. These are specifically different from commandments two and three, in that it establishes that there is a legal doctrine for a society, and individuals are under an obligation (fourth commandment) to obey this "social contract". Thus the legal system should establish two types of criminal law, and while the common law system views both of these types of criminal law as identical, there exists the legal context that one may use a justification that one was unknowing of a specific law in some cases. This commandment thus places that requirement as apparent and opaque, as opposed to the current system that is vague on the issue.

The fifth commandment sets out that there are certain acts that are defined by a legal system to be impermissible. The legal system should define these in such a matter that the acts cause an effect, which the legal system finds intolerable, and thus knowledge of the fact that the action is proscribed is waived by all as being necessary. Only the intent of the action need be defined. The person intended to perform the act, and thus must be punished.

The sixth commandment takes a different tact. It states that the legal system should deem that certain actions must be performed by all within its jurisdiction. Thus, the idea that one must register and obtain a license to operate a motor vehicle on a public street. This requirement, done by the state however, states that it is in the best interest of all to require this, but that failure to perform the requirement does not imply by necessity that a violation of the commandment occured, because there are two parts to this commandment first, the individual must know about the requirement, as no one should be held to perform a requirement without being aware that such a requirement exists. However, this is provided that the individual not be willingly ignorant of the requirement. Thus, a person charged with violating a requirement to obtain a license to drive would not be a violation if the person did not know, and had no reason to know that such a license were necessary.

So, I've probably rambled enough, but this is what I think would be the best foundation for a system of commandments.

Of course... I make a few comments in an essay that attempts to say that the social embarrassment of an individual accused of sexual assault is "vastly greater" than the social embarrassment of the victim being identified.

I objected to this because I have been the victim of sexual assault. Oddly enough, when I comment about that, it's marked as a troll or flamebait.

Not like I should be surprised with how machismo and male-dominated the geek world is. I hope the people modding me down realize that they're being just as sexist as the author, and that they're damaging the credibility of men among women.

This is one of the big reasons why I've wanted to get out of the geek world in my work life. I don't want to deal with this chauvinistic bullshit in the workplace , where I spent 8 hours of my day... at least. Not to mention, there's the expectation that I will spend 60-80 hours a week at work. The whole IT industry is so sexist it disgusts me.

Honestly, I can't believe how stupid SOME men are. Not all of them, I've met quite a few really nice cool caring and understanding guys... however... jesus christ... modding down a girl as a troll because she objects to being told that the social embarrassment of her accused sexual assaulter outweighs her suffering?

Meh, I'm done... I'm just really sick and tired of how sexist men are... it's so frustrating.

It is statistically proven [citation needed] that the #1 instrument played by programmers is still the guitar. With a generalization like that, where else would I ask a question about DIY guitar pick manufacturing than here on slashdot? (FIY: a guitar pick or plectrum is the little plasticky thingy guitar players occasionally hold while playing the guitar)

After yet another hour long strip search of my flat, moving furniture, removing carpets, checking every crevice, cavity and hole for one of the, undoubtedly thousands, picks this place seems so eager to swallow mysteriously. Usually within 12 hours of purchasing them. Yet again, I take scissors, a hotel door card and some duct tape and fabricate me something that looks and feels,... anything but like a pick.

If only I knew of some freely available never ending source of plectrum material out there. Would it be possible to pull of some harmonics from the edge of a pine corn? Tried it, didn't work. Started coming apart after 3.4 strums,...

Dear /. what's the best you have come up with to construct a pick in a pinch?

This Slashdot comment and these numbers go a long way towards explaining the highly divergent views we see on the American H1-B visa program designed for bringing highly-paid, highly-educated professionals to work in the United States to supplement an American lack of such people.

The common opinion among Slashdotters is that H1-Bs are used to bring in code monkeys who work for low wages, thereby suppressing IT, computing, and science wages. The common opinion among certain prominent American businessmen is that America doesn't produce enough highly-educated professionals of its own. The cited Wikipedia page shows why these two views, which so strongly diverge, are both actually true.

On the one hand, it appears that most H1-Bs *ARE*, in fact, used by Indian outsourcing and consulting firms to bring in wage-slaved trained monkeys. The issue is that the small but significant number of visas that American companies can obtain for themselves may well go towards exactly what Bill Gates says they go to: bringing in highly-educated people who will work for high wages in research and development.

Given this kind of environment, it has occurred to me that computing has become a lot like the fine arts. If one starts learning at a very young age and has talent, one can still "climb to the top" and become one of the few who get well-paying, interesting jobs in R&D or a secure position in academic computer science. However, the majority who try to enter the field, particularly those without top talent or who discovered their interest too late in life (perhaps late high school or early college years), will ultimately end up in badly-paying, insecure, IT or "code-monkey" jobs.

In my opinion, such a hypothesis explains and predicts the exact patterns of educational enrollment and entrance to the computing professions we currently see. The fine arts show a similar pattern; nobody who decides on a whim to take up a musical instrument in college ever becomes a highly-payed musical star.

The counterpoint lies in the "popular" arts, wherein stars make money that the rest of us can only dream about while thousands of "wannabes" flock to the field to ultimately fail harder than any code-monkey ever will. The explanation for this is, of course, that the popular arts have been deemed as having sex appeal.

So to have more people enter computing, we can either increase the rewards of an average computing career rather than merely a top one, or we can add sex appeal.

You've been hearing about the hydrogen economy for quite a while. We're pleased to report that it is ready to go using technologies that have been in use in economically successful projects for the last twenty years.
We'll warn you in advance, however, as you're not going to find any cute, soundless cars or futuristic cityscapes. The use of hydrogen as a fuel for at least the foreseeable future begins and ends in an Iowa cornfield ...

First lets talk about our two candidate fuels, hydrogen and ammonia.

Hydrogen today comes from two sources. The first and most common is evolution from natural gas and the most common use for the H2 is as a feedstock for the Haber-Bosch process, the means by which most of the world gets its nitrogen fertilizer. The rest of the global supply, about 4% of the total, is produced by splitting water using electricity, a process known as hydrolysis.
Hydrogen can be used directly to produce energy. You can put it in a fuel cell. You can burn it directly in an internal combustion engine, but its much less efficient than a fuel cell. It is fairly nasty stuff to design for and use. Diatomic hydrogen, which is just a pair of protons with two skittish electrons to chaperon them, is a master escape artist, slipping around seals and valves. Gather a bit of it together where there might be a spark and you'll get a violent reaction. Vehicle storage requires pressurized tanks that will let go with a bang in a crash just due to pressure and then almost certainly explode and/or burn after the fact.
Ammonia, on the other hand, is a much nicer fuel. It has to be kept in pressurized containers, it is caustic, very hazardous to handle, but it requires some special attention to make it burn so there is no fire or explosion hazard in the event of a vehicle crash.
So now you're saying to yourself "Great, when can I get a conversion kit for my car?" The answer to that is simple - never, ever. We're going to use ammonia as a farm fuel.

OK, with us so far? This is the hydrogen economy part we promised, with the three hydrogen atoms bound up in an ammonia molecule being used to replace diesel in tractors and combines.

Ammonia is widely used as fertilizer in corn production, with the application of about one pound of it for every fifty six pounds(a bushel) produced. A square mile of Iowa farmland will require about forty eight tons of the stuff for nitrogen enrichment and will yield about twenty seven hundred tons of corn. You can feed a city of a hundred thousand chickens for a whole year on that ...
Every farmer in Iowa knows how to handle ammonia safely. Iowa has 800 ammonia dispensing stations. The United States has 3,100 miles of ammonia pipelines and Iowa is the nexus for them. We're fond of using Iowa because we do about 25% of the nation's corn production right here and we're smack in the middle of the country's bread basket. You can take most of what we say, scale it up by four, and have a pretty close estimate of a national plan.
So, we have farmers trained to handle the product, we have a distribution network already in place, and the diesel engines in tractors and combines need a new dual feed gas manifold to replace the existing liquid diesel system. Why a dual feed? Remember earlier when we said that ammonia wouldn't burn easily? That is true, so we have to use about 5% propane to get the combustion started.
This is not theory, not even one little bit. You can pick up a telephone and call the Hydrogen Engine Center in Algona, Iowa. Ask for Joe Lewis and tell him you want to buy an ammonia powered generator. They're selling these things now for use as power supplies in irrigation systems. Here is a picture of their production floor. Yes, thats Joe right there front and center. If you want to know more about them we did a nice article on them earlier today on the Stranded Wind web site.
This is a picture of their production floor

OK, sounds good so far, right? But 96% of the world's hydrogen comes from natural gas and that still releases carbon dioxide. Not to worry, because the solution is blowing in the wind an hour west of the Hydrogen Engine Center. Iowa has a massive supply of Stranded Wind

Iowa has ninety nine counties. Ten of them have perfect wind at 7.5M/s to 8.0M/s wind and around sixty more have fairly good wind in the 7.0M/s to 7.5M/s range. There are less than a hundred thousand people in that pretty gold patch in the upper left, not all that much in the way of power transmission lines, and that means we have a great deal of Stranded Wind - wind energy available with nowhere to go ... unless we devise a way to use it locally.
This is a picture of Iowa's wind distribution
We've done some fairly in depth calculations. We'd need about $7,500,000,000 to produce all of the ammonia the state requires for fertilization. That is roughly five gigawatts of wind plant and the associated ammonia production infrastructure. We've got fifteen gigawatts worth of wind that can be easily developed and only about a gigawatt of it is in use at this time. Doing the fuel, too, means scaling this up by a factor of thirty and we'll recall that Iowa is one quarter of the total corn production region. The cost of the Iraq war would have freed a very large portion of our agriculture completely from fossil fuels except for lubricants. Did you do the math on the 30x increase? The fifteen gigawatts is in the sweet spot in the upper northwest. There is cause to electrify a whole bunch of additional area in the state by installing turbines to drive the rail system, but we'll leave rail electrification for another post.

OK, this all sounds great, right? But how do we fuel cars, trucks, and other things that run on the road? What we describe above has some pretty big implications for ethanol production, too.

We won't cut and paste the article we did today calling for discussion on a strategic plan we're calling Ethanol 2.0 but we will provide a summary.
Ethanol production requires quite a number of fossil fuel inputs, on a bad day producing about 80% of the energy put into it and on a really good day 130%. The energy policy guys call this concept EROI - energy return on input. Forget all about dollars and cents, you count the amount of power that goes into a process, what you get back out of it, and then you've got your EROI ratio.
Texas crude that shot up out of Spindletop in 1901 had an amazing EROI, perhaps 100:1 or better. The often mentioned Canadian tar sands? No one is talking but we're guessing between 5:1 and 10:1 for that. They're basically trying to boil a pot of water the size of Florida up there using all of the stranded gas to do the heating. Very messy, very bad for the local environment, and way more CO2 emitted than traditional oil production means.
The EROI on ethanol using stranded wind produced ammonia as both fertilizer and fuel coupled with bioprocessing of feedlot waste is very much up in the air. We know it will be much better than the current 1.3:1 at best, but the exciting part is that it would all be carbon neutral. Yes, you heard correctly, food for the nation, two hundred million barrels of road fuel annually, and not a lick of carbon dioxide produced in the process.

OK, sounds great, but the federal energy bill was a total disaster. This will never get done, right?

Wrong!
Two weeks ago we called the office of Steve King, R, IA-05. Don't bother looking, you already hate him - he has a 100% score from Focus On The Family. We left a message about wind energy development and twenty minutes later we had a staffer on the phone who said and we quote "Tell me what you need us to do." We talked for a good half an hour and he agreed to introduce us to some other folks working in the area.
What about the state level? A welcome like the one we get from Representative King's staffer only they have budget dollars and people already working on the future in a way the rest of you will envy.
Here we've got the Iowa Office of Energy Independence and they have, amazingly enough, a $100,000,000 energy independence initiative over the next four years.
Our governor, Democrat Chet Culver, is on top of his game, pushing this initiative along with the help of a Democratic party controlled state House and Senate.
So, there you have it, hydrogen economy, no research required although new advances will be incorporated when ready, and its financially and politically in reach RIGHT NOW.
The Iowa Legislature goes into session in a few short days. We can really use some help chewing over the Ethanol 2.0 plan. We'd love to see volunteers from the other corn/wind states step up and claim their state in the forums area dedicated to activism.
(crossposted from http://www.dailykos.com/user/Stranded%20Wind on DailyKos)

I started reading about The Analogy of the Divided Line whereby the reasoning of an individual is divided into four parts.

The first part is the blanket assumption that what is seen is reality.
The second part is the higher order of understanding the particulars of reality.
The third part is an understanding that the objects around us are merely reflections, and that there is something more meaningful that gives a object its reality.
And the last part is inexistential, the understanding that there are things that exist but have no image in reality.

As I was reading this, it occured to me that Arithmetic itself is a wonderful example of this sort of reasoning.

The first level is physically tied arithmetic. Two apples and two apples are four apples, and four rows of five apples makes 20 apples, this is known to be true as you can actually count them.

The second level is route memorization. One knows that the concept of math is more than simply counting numbers, and that many operations have simple systematic answers, that do not require you to count the entirety of the result. Thus,2+2=4 and 4*5=20 because that's what the results of the arithmetic operation are.

The third level is an understanding of the principles behind math. That there is an abstract level behind math, that guides all the principles. You might realize that scalar math is simply 1x1 matrix math. You know that 2+2=4 not because you have been told so, but that the definition of the elements hold that the operation must produce that, but that "+" means much more than simply addition, but can include a number of ideas, such as the idea of logical or, or the construction of a set which strictly supersets both sets used as operands (Union operation). You know that 4*5=20 not because you have been told so, but because you know and understand how multiplication works, and that it is an agumentation of addition, thus n*m = sum(1-n, m), and inserting the values four and five, you retreive 5+5+5+5, which is defined in the context of the vector field we are using is 20.

The final level, is the cause of many people being considered to be raving lunatics. It's the understanding that numbers themselves do not having meaning, but rather that everything is derived from nothing. 0 is the cardinality of the empty set, while 1 is the cardinality of the powerset of the empty set, while 2 is defined as the cardinaltiy of the powerset of one, and that every number N is the cardinality of the powerset of N-1. Maths working in this field are like lambda calculus is to computation, because the lambda operation is the most basic of all operations, and breaking down math into the most basic of all elements, the empty set, you end up able to prove not only that 4*5=20 because it equals sum(1-4, 5) = 5+5+5+5 = 20, but because you know that n+m = incr(1-n, m) (where inc is like the Sigma Summation operator and the Pi Product operator, showing a sequential series of incrementations). Thus you know:
4*5 = sum(1-4, 5
        = 5+5+5+5
        = incr(1-5, 5) + 5 + 5
        = incr(1-(incr(1-5, 5)), 5) + 5
        = incr(1-(incr(1-(incr(1-5, 5), 5), 5)

And knowing that a single incrementation step is defined as
inc(x) = { x=0 : emptyset
                      x!=0 : powerset(f(x-1)) }

Thus that "numbers" are inexistential sets of literally nothing (various combinations (not permutations) of empty sets) and that finally collapsing them to a definition results in us taking the cardinality of the set in order to understand the value. Thus continuing above:
4*5 = incr(1-(incr(1-(incr(1-5, 5), 5), 5)
        = incr(1-(incr(1-inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(5))))), 5), 5)
        = incr(1-(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(5))))))))))), 5)
        = inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(5)))))))))))))))

Inserting the definition of five:
        = inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(emptyset))))))))))))))))))))

By applying the inc function we end up with:
        = powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(emptyset))))))))))))))))))))

Whose cardinality is 20.

Having defined and proven addition, and the very definition of numbers themselves, you have broken free of any physical manifestation of mathematics. You are truly looking at what mathematics really is a priori, you are not bound to "it is defined this way" or "it was taught to me to be this value" or "I counted it myself", but rather you understand that all of those are merely images and reflections on a cave wall with regard to what really really is math.

You no longer "perform" math based on axioms, instruction, or the crude rudimentary counting, but rather based off of a priori proofs. You know of the existance and nature of math, because you understand what it really is.

At this point, do you become truly enlightened about math, and you understand why such variations as there are exist, because you can extract all of them from nothing.

This feels like a mega-spam entry, and I'm very self conscious about posting it, but I'm excited about this and I wanted to share . . .

I just published my third book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives. I mention it here because it's all about growing up in the 70s, and coming of age in the 80s as part of the D&D/BBS/video game/Star Wars figures generation, and I think a lot of Slashdot readers will relate to the stories in it.

I published a few of the stories on my blog, including Blue Light Special. It's about the greatest challenge a ten year-old could face in 1982: save his allowance, or buy Star Wars figures?

After our corduroy pants and collared shirts and Trapper Keepers and economy packs of pencils and wide-ruled paper were piled up in our cart, our mom took our three year-old sister with her to the make-up department to get shampoo and whatever moms buy in the make-up department, and my brother and I were allowed to go to the toy department.

"Can I spend my allowance?" I said.

"If that's what you want to do," my mom said, another entry in a long string of unsuccessful passive/aggressive attempts to encourage me to save my money for . . . things you save money for, I guess. It was a concept that was entirely alien to me at nine years old.

"Keep an eye on Jeremy," she said.

"Okay," I said. As long as Jeremy stood right at my side and didn't bother me while I shopped, and as long as he didn't want to look at anything of his own, it wouldn't be a problem.

I held my brother's hand as we tried to walk, but ended up running, across the store, past a flashing blue light special, to the toy department. Once there, we wove our way past the bicycles and board games until we got to the best aisle in the world: the one with the Star Wars figures.

I'm really proud of this book, and the initial feedback on it has been overwhelmingly positive. I've been reluctant to mention it here, because of the spam issue, but I honestly do think my stories will appeal to Slashdotters.

After the disaster with O'Reilly on Just A Geek, I've decided to try this one entirely on my own, so I'm responsible for the publicity, the marketing, the shipping, and . . . well, everything. If this one fails, it will be because of me, not because a marketing department insisted on marketing it as something it's not.

Of course, I hope I can claim the same responsibility if (when?) it finds its audience . . . which would be awesome.

Re: Laughing and Crying

Thomas Friedman thinks America doesn't educate enough native students
through graduate school. He claims that the lack of native-born Ph.D
students shows this trend.

I must respectfully disagree. American-born students don't go to
graduate school because they know what's good for their wallet. A
report by the National Center for Education Statistics shows that, in
the 2004-2005 school year, 75% of full-time, first-time undergraduate
students at 4-year institutions (also known as college kids) had
financial aid of some sort. Now that the federal government has cut
back on grants and scholarships, the most common financial aid is the
student loan.

So with three-quarters of college students in college on someone else's
dime, should it surprise anyone that they want to join the job market
and make money immediately after school? When you have loan payments
due each month, going back to graduate school for a tiny stipend and an
academic career track simply looks repulsive.

American students are not stupid or uneducated, they simply know what's
good for them.

But foreign students receive all kinds of scholarships not open to
native-born Americans (search CollegeBoard.com if unsure). They also
find that going to graduate school brings them more respect and a higher
income back home than returning with merely a bachelor's degree, and
they find that graduate school provides a good road to stay here if they
so wish. So most graduate students come from abroad.

Can we get more American-born students in graduate school? Yes. We
just need to lower the economic cost of graduate and/or undergraduate
education. Therefore, I propose the establishment of a charitable
nonprofit organization dedicated to providing scholarships to science
and engineering undergraduates on the basis of "more money for better
grades", starting at nothing for F's and scaling up to full tuition for A's.

I would proudly donate to such an organization.

With their educational funds back in their pockets, more science and
engineering students will have the ability to afford graduate school.
Even those who don't attend graduate school will swell the ranks of the
scientifically educated Americans.

-- Eli Z. Gottlieb

Simple tasks like switching between Firefox and Thunderbird are driving the load on my machine up over 4, and if I'm trying to run Amarok at the same time, it drives it up to 8. In fact, my machine frequently climbs up into the 7-9 range, bringing my apps to a crawl and frustrating the hell out of me.

So I've decided it's time to buy a new computer. I'm going to replace my aging Sony Vaio desktop machine (which runs Linux) with something newer that has more RAM, a faster processor, and a bigger hard drive.

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure where to start looking. A quick walk through Circuit City a month or so ago lead me to believe I can get a rather "big" computer for as low as five hundred bucks, which further leads me to believe that if I were to buy something online, I can get a huge pile of RAM, a fast processor, and a big honkin' hard drive for even less.

I run Kubuntu, and use KDE as my desktop (though I occasionally switch to Gnome when I get bored) and I mostly use Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Amarok, and run PokerStars in wine. I'm looking for something that can do all of that without slowing my machine to a crawl.

Anyone have any suggestions on where to start looking?

Edit: I don't think I have the patience to build my own machine out of individual parts. I also don't have any real loyalty to any particular company or architecture. New Egg has lots of machines with AMD processors, and though I've always had Intel processors because more things seemed to run on x86, that's not as much of an issue as it once was, right?

After a year's trial of not putting a score to games, I'm going back to using a game score. Games are now be scored on a 5 point scale. There's just no need for the level of granularity of a 10 point scale (or more ... what's the difference between a 5.5 and a 5.7?).

When the Computer Games World folks removed scores, they received a huge outcry. Their experience was one of frustration: so many people just want their review score, their words may just as well not have been there. They went back to using review scores to maintain readership.

With Slashdot reviews, I experienced the opposite: no one said a thing. Occasionally review scores would result in a comment thread; their lack prompted no response whatsoever. I'm going to go back to using review score in an effort to promote conversation.

Score -
1: This game is unfinished or unplayable. It is not worth playing, purchasing, or renting.
2: This game has serious flaws, but may contain enough fun to be worth renting for a weekend.
3: This game is flawed, but will appeal to genre fans. Any gamer might enjoy renting it, but this won't ever be a classic.
4: This game is above average, and excels in the genre it supports. A classic for the genre, likely to be a part of a genre fan's collection, and well worth a look for every gamer.
5: This game is a classic title. It transcends genre, and is worth playing by almost any gamer. Certain to be a part of many serious gamers' collections, and definitely worth purchasing.

Dear ,
        I feel appalled that the "Electronic Modernization Surveillance Act", known by most people for legalizing the NSA's tyrannical spying program, has made it out of committee. In a free America, that would not have happened.

        This repugnant and fascist bill will not aid in securing America, its people or its liberties. Instead, it merely enables the government to obtain warrants it uses for Orwellian fishing expeditions which, under just law not maimed to win political games, they could never justify. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act courts can already grant warrants, even retroactively, to wiretap foreign nationals, and normal courts grant warrants to wiretap American citizens suspected of crimes. In a free America, government searches for perpetrators of crimes already committed using evidence, instead of lying in wait for an easy case against an unfortunate citizen.

        But the Bushivik regime has not sought warrants. Instead, they spy on Americans without justification of law or morality, and now try to retroactively legalize their transgressions. They have no real concern for safety from crime, terrorism or any other scourge - else they would emulate the good example of nations like Israel that deal with such issues constantly and well. In a free America, the government protects the liberties of the people instead of trying to become Thought Police draped in a flag and holding a cross.

        The only way for you to win my money or my vote in the future is to struggle for the return of civil liberties in general, and vote this bill down in specific. This bill not only removes the need for real Probable Cause to issue a warrant - a legal standard written into the Fourth Amendment - but it allows the executive branch to monitor any man's, woman's or child's communications for 90 days with no warrant whatsoever, as long as they call that 90 day period "after a terrorist attack". In a free America, we do not tolerate the destruction of our liberties, especially those we enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

Election time draws ever nearer. Vote this bill down, or I will vote you down, and you will never see one cent from my wallet in donations. In a free America, officials who vote away civil liberties don't keep their offices.

Vote "no" on the Electronic Modernization Surveillance Act, and vote "yes" to restoring the Bill of Rights,

Dear Representative [Name],
I, personally, feel appalled to learn that the "Electronic Modernization Surveillance Act", known among common folk for legalizing the NSA's vile and tyrannical spying program, has made it out of commitee.

This repugnant and fascist bill will only allow the government to obtain warrants for cheap fishing expeditions which, under just law not maimed to win political games, they could never justify. The FISA courts could already grant warrants for wiretapping on foreigners and normal federal courts could grant them to tap everyday Americans suspected of crimes. But the Bushivik Regime has not sought warrants. Instead, they illegally spy on Americans with no justification, and now try to retroactively legalize their transgressions. They simply want to spy on American citizens; they want to become Thought Police draped in an American flag and holding a cross.

I [have/have not] voted for you in the past, [but/and] I assure you the only way to win my vote or my money in the future is to vote this bill down. This bill not only removes the need for real Probable Cause to issue a warrant - a legal standard written into the Fourth Amendment - but it allows the government to monitor any man's, woman's or child's communications for 90 days with no warrant whatsoever, as long as they can call that 90 day period "after a terrorist attack". True Americans will not tolerate the destruction of our liberties, especially those we enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Vote this bill down, or I will vote you down.

In a truly free country I could threaten more seriously.

Vote NO on the Electronic Modernization Surveillance Act,
[Constituent's Name here]

I've got new headers and documentation up for EDI, the Extensible Driver Interface. Its aim is to be a uniform, kernel-portable API for programming device drivers. Everyone who reads this, please take a look and maybe even contact me to help! I can be reached by my email address, or in #edi on WyldRyde IRC network.

The EDI framework wraps kernel and driver functionality in "classes", which can actually be written in any language capable of ecompiling functions to machine code. A standard set of classes exist for the kernel to supply to the driver, drivers will (RSN) be able to implement one of a standard set of classes representing driver types, and either kernel or driver can expose any other class they like. This means that non-standard functionality can be added or required of any kernel or driver as long as standard functionality is exposed, freeing OS and driver developers to code what they damn well want to.

Note that this is a pure API, it doesn't care what kind of environment drivers run in. It only cares that the correct function calls are accessible, so it can be used under a micro- or macro- kernel.

A better overview of EDI itself is available in the documentation part of the tarball. Happy hacking!

[edit]The new version of EDI communicates via classes and includes an example driver.[/edit]