Comment Re:Not on my watch (Score 1) 443
Comment Another phenomenon: (Score 1) 636
Comment Re:I can't find it (Score 1) 354
Comment Pretense, much? (Score 1) 388
Really? Doubt it. The smartest people I know want nothing to do with the profit motive. I bet you've got a bunch of very bright 700-math SAT types out there, but that's not saying much. The best minds of any generation have the confidence to embark upon unconventional lives.
Comment Re:Go /. spin machine, go! (Score 1) 90
Comment Go /. spin machine, go! (Score 1) 90
Comment Reason provides means, not ends. (Score 1) 510
Otherwise thoughtful people seem to like to think that they have a "rational perspective", whatever that means. You might be better than "the masses" (whoever they are) at logically solving problems once you have a *goal*, but you can't reason your way to ends. You will end up chasing your ends to a plurality of mutually defensible and mutually assailable assumptions. If that weren't the case, moral philosophy would actually be useful, and used.
Comment They aren't for business (Score 1) 370
Comment Re:Squandered technology (Score 3, Interesting) 450
But, as you know, many people aren't participating. And I'm not just talking about microphone geeks recording Mozart for the 18,000th time.
I find the Age of Adz http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_Of_Adz to be a great example of how some artists are embracing the latest production techniques, yet employing them with careful compositional intent. Such work deserves to be delivered with the temporal and amplitude resolution with which it was created, says me.
Comment Re:A quick google search (Score 1) 845
Of course, they are only used for things like bathroom stalls because they would kick the Authorized Service Person's ass, too.
I have often thought of the one way screw (as shown in that image) coupled with a left-handed thread as somehow deep in its uselessness...
Comment Re:Excellent Work You've Invented Gnutella (Score 1) 218
Sure, you can be pessimistic and say "never work", but the sociology of online communities is a young science. An anarchical web is important to me, so these questions are worth my energy and optimism.
Comment Re:Excellent Work You've Invented Gnutella (Score 1) 218
Giant waste of time, bittorrents benefit is from the community bitching about bad torrents, you cant do that without a web of trust or a trusted third party.
But torrent search sites are neither webs of trust nor trusted third parties, right? They assist in separating the wheat from the chaff simply by allowing the wisdom of crowds to accumulate through posts linked to a torrent file.
Seems to me that this "what are people saying about this torrent?" functionality is consistent with complete decentralization; the community can in principle be built around the client instead of some site. Who hosts the discussions? Everyone who participates in them. Seems as cloud-able as anything else. Mods *can* be replaced by user ratings and associated karma, I believe.
Comment Re:Dude that would be soo cool... (Score 1) 171
That patent contains a lot of information about *how*, not just what. Of course, the language is vague and leaves you with no idea where they are with implementation; that's the lawyers' job!
I mean, this probably means *something*, right? Right?...
The system as claimed in claim 28 further comprising circuitry for determining an angle of a normal of the surface function that is correct for aiming a reflected beam into an eye of the observer using the equation: