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And it's over. - 4 March 2007
Mar. 5th, 2007 02:41 amYeah, break’s done. Now it’s a six-week sprint to the finish. If I emerge out on the other side, I will be victorious over my schooling. Somewhere in there, I should probably find time to find a job, too. As bad as it sounds, I may just put that one on the backburner if the schoolwork gets time-consuming, which it very well could. Plus, I’m not wholly sure I can hack the whole “resume/cover letter/asking for a job” bit yet. It’s a little hard for me to sell myself to someone I haven’t met. I don’t know what they want to see, and I’m not sure what I should be showing. So I should probably clear off some time to make an appointment with the career services people and get a primer and some advice on where to go and how to go about it. This isn’t just a summer job thing anymore...
...so I’m kind of scared about the future.
While SCO was grabbing headlines about violations of code and the like, apparently Microsoft has been putting forward a similar stance, that the Linux kernel somehow violates proprietary IP. To which the response has become Show us the Code. The kernel, though, has to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lines of code, right? Wouldn’t that be much like a needle-haystack proposition? Although, if there is sufficiently large infringing code, an analyzer could probably find it. The people behind Show Us The Code believe that it’s a smoke-and-mirrors claim, and that Microsoft is being a bully again, trying to boss around people. A Very Grumpy Bunny speculates that if it is a vapour claim, then Microsoft could possibly be charged with fraud. They say “mail fraud”, which I suppose would take a different interpretation that what we traditionally think of as mail fraud. I have no idea if Microsoft will do anything about this... or even notice its existence. Such is the way of the Web - if you weren’t linked to it, there’s a good chance you’d never discover it. Things like an accidental delivery of preserved human parts to a house, rather than a lab would probably not be seen.
There are also tales of robots teaching themselves how to walk, and probably to run, later. This is a learning robot-type, so when it comes to striding, it’s supposed to have been self-taught. It saw what walking should be like, and then spent three days figuring out how it was done. Pretty neat. Of course, before you get too “cute pet robot”, recall that such a learning robot could probably be modified to learn a few more tricks, the kinds that get people wondering about Old Glory Robot Protection Insurance. Because they’re big, and made of metal.
Stephen Colbert was names person of the year by the United States Comedy Arts Festival. Which probably says a thing or two about how funny comedians find the source material for Colbert’s Report.
A leaked plan from the United Kingdom’s Home Office indicates children aged 11 to 16 are to be fingerprinted and have those prints stored in a database, apparently as a precursor to and part of a bigger biometrics programme for ID cards and passports. Critics say that this plan is making the Government more and more like Big Brother, and adding even more to the notion of a surveillance society. But no fascists yet, to take over and establish Fate as the arbiter of the country.
A recently-retired Lt. Colonel from the Air Force with Pentagon experience gives her opinion on the question of Iran - we're going to strike, but it will be mostly an air campaign, rather than ground troops. Sounds like the younger Bush will be taking a significant page from his pop’s playbook when it comes to an Iran campaign. Of course, he could surprise everyone and leave Iran alone, but the rhetoric and posturing says that’s not particularly likely to happen.
Right Wing News polled some right-wing bloggers on their opinions about various topics, and there are some eyebrows being raised over the results. 63 bloggers responded to the poll, and their results are displayed here at Right Wing News. Key findings: Nearly all those responding support the troop surge, all those responding believe humans are not the primary cause of climate change, and 84% belive the Democrats want Iraq to fail for political reasons. That last one caught the attention of the Slacktivist, who concludes that those 84% are lacking in basic civility, because they make the assumption that the Democratic party is deliberately doing evil, denying it, and will stay that way. An attitude like that, to me, inspires paranoia and the jumping at strawmen that happens when “everyone’s out to get you”. It also makes any meaningful conversation, as the Slacktivist notes, rather impossible. Out on the religious front, a University of Michigan psychologist reported that if primed with statements from a religious source condoning violence, they were more likely to inflict more aggressive behavior on others.
Going conspiracy for a bit - if the matter of the BBC supposedly reporting the collapse of Building 7 in New York nearly twenty-three minutes before the actual event occurred is on target, then those who say that 11 September was an inside job gain from it. (Unless there was an unusually on-target psychic writing copy for the BBC’s teleprompter that day.) From the same site, though, that bit it then spun outward into a conspiracy to remove the democratic vestiges from America and make Iran into a nuclear power through breaking intelligence capabilities there in advance of the detonation of a neutron bomb. Has such an object made it out of conceptual into a test product yet? One would think that even a test detonation of such a device would draw the eyes and ears of several organizations.
Moving off the world-ending conspiracies back into the realm of election votes, fraud accusations, and the somewhat stark reality that the electoral college elects the President on the recommendation of the popular vote, American Samidzat quotes analysis of an electoral reform and fraud bill. In the middle, where there are not quotes, there’s a suggestion that perhaps the Republicans were willing to let the Democrats take control in the midterm so as to crush them soundly in the next presidential race by painting them as not doing anything about the war under their watch, even when “the people” said to do so by electing them. More and more, I’m thinking politics is less like chess and more like the game of Thermonuclear War in Wargames...
A diversity of friend groups results in a diversity of things being passed your way, to the enrichment of all of us. So a piece that doesn’t denounce Harry Potter as the work of the devil is something more common now. In a sermon, transcribed at the target of the link, a Unity Church minister makes some musings about the archetypes of Harry Potter, versus those in Star Wars or other works. Since the Potterverse is not fully defined yet, with one story yet to go, the material here may or may not be still relevant once the Deathly Hollows have been explored. But for now, anyway, it’s worth a read. Somewhere, I think I want to see whether it’s using or fits into the Campbell meta-mythos, but since I haven’t actually read the material in question, I can’t pass a judgement one way or another.
Anyway, it’s probably a light load for these posts, but that’s all there is tonight. School starts anew tomorrow. Huzzah...
...so I’m kind of scared about the future.
While SCO was grabbing headlines about violations of code and the like, apparently Microsoft has been putting forward a similar stance, that the Linux kernel somehow violates proprietary IP. To which the response has become Show us the Code. The kernel, though, has to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lines of code, right? Wouldn’t that be much like a needle-haystack proposition? Although, if there is sufficiently large infringing code, an analyzer could probably find it. The people behind Show Us The Code believe that it’s a smoke-and-mirrors claim, and that Microsoft is being a bully again, trying to boss around people. A Very Grumpy Bunny speculates that if it is a vapour claim, then Microsoft could possibly be charged with fraud. They say “mail fraud”, which I suppose would take a different interpretation that what we traditionally think of as mail fraud. I have no idea if Microsoft will do anything about this... or even notice its existence. Such is the way of the Web - if you weren’t linked to it, there’s a good chance you’d never discover it. Things like an accidental delivery of preserved human parts to a house, rather than a lab would probably not be seen.
There are also tales of robots teaching themselves how to walk, and probably to run, later. This is a learning robot-type, so when it comes to striding, it’s supposed to have been self-taught. It saw what walking should be like, and then spent three days figuring out how it was done. Pretty neat. Of course, before you get too “cute pet robot”, recall that such a learning robot could probably be modified to learn a few more tricks, the kinds that get people wondering about Old Glory Robot Protection Insurance. Because they’re big, and made of metal.
Stephen Colbert was names person of the year by the United States Comedy Arts Festival. Which probably says a thing or two about how funny comedians find the source material for Colbert’s Report.
A leaked plan from the United Kingdom’s Home Office indicates children aged 11 to 16 are to be fingerprinted and have those prints stored in a database, apparently as a precursor to and part of a bigger biometrics programme for ID cards and passports. Critics say that this plan is making the Government more and more like Big Brother, and adding even more to the notion of a surveillance society. But no fascists yet, to take over and establish Fate as the arbiter of the country.
A recently-retired Lt. Colonel from the Air Force with Pentagon experience gives her opinion on the question of Iran - we're going to strike, but it will be mostly an air campaign, rather than ground troops. Sounds like the younger Bush will be taking a significant page from his pop’s playbook when it comes to an Iran campaign. Of course, he could surprise everyone and leave Iran alone, but the rhetoric and posturing says that’s not particularly likely to happen.
Right Wing News polled some right-wing bloggers on their opinions about various topics, and there are some eyebrows being raised over the results. 63 bloggers responded to the poll, and their results are displayed here at Right Wing News. Key findings: Nearly all those responding support the troop surge, all those responding believe humans are not the primary cause of climate change, and 84% belive the Democrats want Iraq to fail for political reasons. That last one caught the attention of the Slacktivist, who concludes that those 84% are lacking in basic civility, because they make the assumption that the Democratic party is deliberately doing evil, denying it, and will stay that way. An attitude like that, to me, inspires paranoia and the jumping at strawmen that happens when “everyone’s out to get you”. It also makes any meaningful conversation, as the Slacktivist notes, rather impossible. Out on the religious front, a University of Michigan psychologist reported that if primed with statements from a religious source condoning violence, they were more likely to inflict more aggressive behavior on others.
Going conspiracy for a bit - if the matter of the BBC supposedly reporting the collapse of Building 7 in New York nearly twenty-three minutes before the actual event occurred is on target, then those who say that 11 September was an inside job gain from it. (Unless there was an unusually on-target psychic writing copy for the BBC’s teleprompter that day.) From the same site, though, that bit it then spun outward into a conspiracy to remove the democratic vestiges from America and make Iran into a nuclear power through breaking intelligence capabilities there in advance of the detonation of a neutron bomb. Has such an object made it out of conceptual into a test product yet? One would think that even a test detonation of such a device would draw the eyes and ears of several organizations.
Moving off the world-ending conspiracies back into the realm of election votes, fraud accusations, and the somewhat stark reality that the electoral college elects the President on the recommendation of the popular vote, American Samidzat quotes analysis of an electoral reform and fraud bill. In the middle, where there are not quotes, there’s a suggestion that perhaps the Republicans were willing to let the Democrats take control in the midterm so as to crush them soundly in the next presidential race by painting them as not doing anything about the war under their watch, even when “the people” said to do so by electing them. More and more, I’m thinking politics is less like chess and more like the game of Thermonuclear War in Wargames...
A diversity of friend groups results in a diversity of things being passed your way, to the enrichment of all of us. So a piece that doesn’t denounce Harry Potter as the work of the devil is something more common now. In a sermon, transcribed at the target of the link, a Unity Church minister makes some musings about the archetypes of Harry Potter, versus those in Star Wars or other works. Since the Potterverse is not fully defined yet, with one story yet to go, the material here may or may not be still relevant once the Deathly Hollows have been explored. But for now, anyway, it’s worth a read. Somewhere, I think I want to see whether it’s using or fits into the Campbell meta-mythos, but since I haven’t actually read the material in question, I can’t pass a judgement one way or another.
Anyway, it’s probably a light load for these posts, but that’s all there is tonight. School starts anew tomorrow. Huzzah...
