Slashback: Bots, Time Travel, Turing

More on the Battlebots trademark dispute, proof that some of your are listening to Dr. Who on the Beeb, and a memorial -- finally -- for Alan Turing, in tonight's round of updates, corrections, and further info.

That eerie, eerie theme music will get in your head all day. sideshow-voxx writes: "The BBC has announced that there will be more installments of the Audio Adventure Dr Who - Death Comes to Time available on the web in the New Year."

This is cool news (the accompanying art is a nice touch with this Dr. Who presentation), but it would be nice if they would put the episodes into more audio formats as well.

Things always seem to get more complicated. Eric Molitor, ("Linux hacker and Builder of Violator - Linux powered BattleBot that competed in May") wrote about the BattleBots vs. Battlebots story of the other day, saying:

"As a BattleBot competitor I was horrified when I noticed your article but here are some corrections... BattleBots INC != BattleBots the show.

BattleBots INC is suing and not the TV show. (Comedy Central tapes the tournaments and airs portions of the finals on a TV show. But thats just like showing NFL games mostly. The TV company just pays a licensing fee to broadcast the event.)

Do a little research and the guy registered his domain at least a year after the first BattleBots competition in Long Beach. (Early 1998) In fact the battlebots.org domain was registered after BattleBots.com, and after BattleBots applied for their TM.

So this kid (running a script kiddie hosting service no less) registers a domain after somebody applies for the TM and then asks for $5K to give it up. Sounds like cyber-squatting to me. Also take a look at the dates on the website for the replies, etc. Things don't look right ....

Still BattleBots is dumb not to have registered the .org domain.

For a little history on BattleBots and the law suits, etc. that RobotWars got into that nearly destroyed this sport take a look at http://www.robotcombat.com/history.html.

Greg and Tray gave up a lot and everybody got together to dodge RobotWars/Profile records lawsuits to prevent the sport from happening. I'd hate to see them unfairly get a bad name."

Thanks, Eric.

Something to see in England. slathering wrote with news that the Alan Turing memorial written about in this Slashdot story has finally materialized. He writes: "I read about this in this months IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (who doesn't have a website). But I found the website for the memorial itself. Apparently funding was found for the Alan Turing Memorial since it was unveiled June 23, 2001 in Manchester, England. It was funded without any donations from the computing industry."

Prejudice

[os2fan]

Homosexuality and gender identity are conditions of birth, and affect something like 11% of the population, to some degree.

In the main, you can not change it. The smart ones survive it, the dumb ones commit suicide. That's the reality. A little love and understanding, and a little openness makes life more bearable.

Alan Turning was a brilliant mathematician, he was also a homosexual. Having a gender issue does not prevent you from making a serious contribution to society. On the other hand, the very same thing, like any other defect, gives one ample scope to master other skills to a much more worthy level.

And it's sad, that we take away from these great people the fruits of their work, and at the same time, make their life more miserable for what they are. Even if this makes them what they are.

Learn to love and cherish variety. It's what make the world go around.

Irony of the Apple

[Sebastopol]

The irony of Turing holding the apple is quite a powerful message, as stated at the end of the article. Symbol of Newton, and yet he deliberately took his life with one (news to me).

Imagine helping save Europe from the Nazi's and then being prodded and forced by politicians and doctors to take libido-surpressing drugs: people who's very asses you helped save, all because they're fucking prudes.

Fuckers.

Makes me recite the anticlericalist mantra: intolerance of the intolerant. In the words of Consolidated (from Play More Music), "Yes, we're hypocrites, but for the left."

Trademark holders are the squatters

[sparcv9]

Still BattleBots is dumb not to have registered the .org domain.

Why? Are they a non-profit organization now? People always seem to forget the original intents of the com/net/org TLDs. At least there are still restrictions on edu/gov/mil. Even a lot of the gTLDs have restrictions on their categorical subdomains, like co.uk.

Re:Trademark holders are the squatters

[JAVAC THE GREAT]

I agree. They should not be allowed to have the domain on the basis they are a for-profit commercial organization. Never mind anything else. It's one thing if, like Slashdot, you had the domain before you were a for-profit organization, but for a commercial entity to actively seek to acquire a .org domain is simply ludicruous.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why is molesting children against the law? According to your idea, it shouldn't be.

Anything that takes place between consenting adults isn't morally wrong, whether it's people of the same gender, multiple partners or whips and chains.

Children are a completely different story. They aren't consenting adults. Here in the US, we've set the age at 18 years (I think it might still be lower in some states). Anyone who is at least 18 should be able to do whatever they want.

And to all the Christians who want to quote Leviticus to me, please go back and read the entire book of Leviticus. Then come back and tell me how you never eat meat with blood still in it (no medium-rare steaks for you, well-done only), or wear cotton-polyester blends (no fabric woven of 2 kinds of thread), how you never shave your beard or cut your hair, and how often you burn an ox in sacrifice to the Lord since he finds the odor pleasing.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am LDS and it is against the teachings of my church.

Out of respect for your beliefs, I won't tell you what I think of your church (even if you ask me to, so please don't). This doesn't mean that I feel the same way about individuals within the church.

And, no, I would never laugh at you for your beliefs. That's one of the worst sins of all, IMO.

However, please refer back to my comment about the book of Leviticus. Most church anti-gay teachings are based on the main phrase from this book (thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman). It also say literally dozens of absurd things, like those that I listed. I wasn't making any of those up, I looked them up myself. Leviticus really says those things about not wearing certain fabrics, etc. There are many other bizarre things in that book and others early in the Old Testament that we just ignore. For some reason, many folks pick that one phrase out of Leviticus. I think that's terribly hypocritical. (forgive the stength of my words, if you will. Possessing one attitude I find hypocritical doesn't make you a hypocrite in my view, it's just what you've been taught).

Also, you'll notice that the New Testament doesn't say anything about homosexuality, it just says don't judge others. When you say homosexuality is immoral you are judging others, even if you don't try to pass laws against being gay, as your church leaders have.

If you believe that all of the Bible is true, then follow all of it. But that means you'll have to stop shaving and burn the occasional ox. Oh, and not judge people.

BTW, if you give everyone in the world (all 6+ billion) 2000 square feet to live on, it would take up less than the state of Texas with the rest of the world devoid of human life.

I don't know about you, but I want a whole lot more than 2000 square feet. And considering that 1/3 of the world's people go hungry every day, I think we've got the old "be fruitful and multiply" thing pretty much down by now. Besides, check out the air quality in Houson, LA or Seattle (where I live and I've actually been to the other cities, I try to speak from experience). LA has gotten a bit better in air quality, but it's still appalling. And we're running lower on water every year. Sure we can conserve, and we should, but where do we wind up in 100/200/300/1000/5000 years? One shower a week? (how nice that would be) No gardens, lawns or landscaping except what we need to survive?

Sorry, I can't accept that one at all.

Re:Homosexual sex does not produce pregnancy.

[Anonymous Coward]

They got upset at me and accused me of being homophobic.

They were clearly wrong. This is unfortunately what happens when we get overly sensitive to an 'issue'. Of course, if no one had been prejudiced against gays in the first place then we wouldn't be in this mess.

I draw the line at marriage as I hold that sacred.

How is it less sacred if 2 gay people get married? How does this affect you? I don't know your marital status, but for the sake of debate, I'll assume you're married with a very successful relationship. 2 gay men get married in the same city where you live. At first, you're horrified. But think about this: Do you love your wife any less? Are you any less committed to her?

My guess is the answer is 'no' to both questions.

And why should 2 people who've committed their lives to each other be denied the same rights as you have? Visitation rights, inheritance rights and others shouldn't be ignored because of your moral stance.

Also, if promiscuity among gays is a problem (which does help spread AIDS, even though many gay folks won't admit it), shouldn't we then encourage monogamy by at least allowing 'civil unions', if not outright marriage?

Please don't take this as an overly judgemental statement, but I really believe that if you spend some time openly examining your moral position, you will eventually see that there is nothing at all wrong with being gay in and of itself. It is the people (and they are out there!) who do try to force it down your throat, like those people at your work, who are wrong. They want people to not only think it's ok (my opinion) but they also think they should be able to flaunt it in front of anyone, anytime (definitely not my opintion).

cybersquatting alan turing

[Anonymous Coward]

Visit alanturing.net [slashdot.org] for a good bio and archive.

Visit alanturing.{com,org} if you want to
see some cybersquatting.

I strongly recommend Andrew Hodges web site [turing.org.uk] and book

Re:Torpedo Re:Germans were beaten after Moscow 194

[duffbeer703]

The Mark VII torpedo scandal is a well known one. Less known is that the Germans suffered almost the exact same issue for over a year with signifigant impact to their U-boat operations.

There is a good reason why navies were pushing magnetic detonation: contact detonation sucks. Modern (as in post 1905) warships and some merchant vessels are sectioned off into watertight bulkheads to improve survivability in the event of a hull breach. Most ships can suffer a breach of 30-50% of its watertight compartments before sinking!

A contact-detonated torpedo often only blows a hole in one or two compartments. Thus, you need to fire four or more torpedoes which are in very limited supply (about 18 per boat, with a 20minute reload time)

Magnetic detonators explode directly beneath the hull of a ship, breaking the keel of the target and causing massive flooding. When magnetic detonators were perfected, most any non-capital ship could be sunk with a single torpedo hit.

Re:Trademark holders are the squatters

[david duncan scott]

Strictly speaking, the original intent for the .org was pretty much "other" To quote from RFC 1032 [ohio-state.edu]:

"ORG" exists as a parent to subdomains that do not clearly fall within the other top-level domains. This may include technical-support groups, professional societies, or similar organizations.

Although this implies other than corporate, government, educational institution, military, or network op's, the more specific idea of .org being NPO came a bit later.