On Wed, 15 Nov 2000 17:40:27 GMT, Pete McCutchen <p.mccutc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On Mon, 13 Nov 2000 18:27:36 GMT, Kyri <ky...@usa.net> wrote:
>[Scalia on caning] >>No, I don't. It dates from about the same time that an American >>teenager was being caned in ... very strict Indonesian country ..., and
I believe it was Hong Kong. The teenager was accused of vandalism and was sentenced to some certain number of lashes by bamboo whip.
>A google search revealed no such reference, and if Scalia had >suggested it, I'd think that somebody on the web would have noticed.
>>there was some flap over that. I am not sure whether he just said >>something along the lines of "hey, that might be a good idea here" or >>whether he actually formally proposed it.
>There is no mechanism for Supreme Court Justices to make formal policy >proposals (well, except in revising rules of procedure, that is).
>I have to say that I'm dubious about your recollection here. Scalia >may well believe in harsh sanctions, or at least be willing to uphold >them, but I don't think that he's a sadist.
>By the way, could you please put your own comments _below_ the >material to which you're responding? It makes discussions more >difficult to follow, and it's annoying.
Jerome Bigge NRA Life Member Supporter of National Health Insurance CompTIA A+ Certified Computer Technician Author of the "Warlady" & "Wartime" series. Download at "http://members.tripod.com/~jbigge"
In article <8uukr0$j3...@nnrp1.deja.com>, Kyri <ky...@usa.net> wrote:
> In article <slrn913u6i.p0o.ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk>, > ph...@comuno.freeserve.co.uk (phil hunt) wrote:
> > >Yes. They're divided between the vast majority who quote on top > > >and post on the bottom, as the Good Lord intended, and a tiny > > >minority of irritating contrarians who generally learn better > > >fairly quickly.
> Sigh. I really find it annoying to scroll through stuff I've already > read in past posts. I guess I can stand to do it this way, though.
It's why HAL put an "End" key on your keyboard - only, with Deja.com, that takes you past the end of the article and into the commercial links.
Oldest-first quoting benefits folks who come in in the middle of a conversation - they can read it in order. And if you're not quoting for their benefit, then why quote at all?
(Reading backwards is probably learnable, but please excuse me.)
Hmm, does anyone make a newsreader with a setting that _automatically_ scrolls down to the first non-quoted line? (Or to the last quoted paragraph before non-quoted text.)
Deja.com (which nicely colours each level of quoting differently, and AFAICS recognises both ">" and ":" quote characters), could achieve this with an HTML anchor in the text.
Even better would be a newsreader that could recognise text quoted /this/ way around and sort it out /that/ way instead. Or vice versa, perhaps... And then we wouldn't even _know_ that we're using different quoting styles.
As features go, I'd _much_ rather have a Deja.com killfile, though. I keep looking though the thread titled "L. Sprague de Camp" in the hope of finding common sense, but it's pretty much odious all the way down...
>> >Yes. They're divided between the vast majority who quote on top >> >and post on the bottom, as the Good Lord intended, and a tiny >> >minority of irritating contrarians who generally learn better >> >fairly quickly.
>Sigh. I really find it annoying to scroll through stuff I've already >read in past posts. I guess I can stand to do it this way, though.
In rec.arts.sf.written on Thu, 16 Nov 2000 09:24:36 GMT
Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@mailexcite.com> wrote:
>Hmm, does anyone make a newsreader with a setting that >_automatically_ scrolls down to the first non-quoted line? >(Or to the last quoted paragraph before non-quoted text.)
I can do it with the TAB key in slrn.
I could make it happen automatically if I wanted, but I don't. I don't use a colour xterm but when I do, slrn colours levels of quoted text differently, and .sigs too.
Slrn is a geek's newsreader, highly customisable, but you have to write slang macros to do it. I got someone else to write them, so my cover as a non-programmer wasn't blown.
In article <n3e51tgqg6kt48te8lbetkee4v89n1f...@4ax.com>, Pete McCutchen <p.mccutc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> By the way, could you please put your own comments _below_ the > material to which you're responding? It makes discussions more > difficult to follow, and it's annoying.
Yes, by all means. And another way to make,
discussions more difficult (and more annoying) t
o follow is to have unusual word / line breaks.
And rep1acing 1etters of the a1pha6et w1th d1g1t$ & punc2ation is 10ther 900d turn-o44.
And SHOUT unexpectedly.
Robert Carnegie Glasgow, Scotland
"Worrying Could Ruin Your Unborn Child's Life, Expectant Mothers [Are] Warned" - BBC radio comedy show _The Sunday Format_ (Tuesdays)
Oh, yeah - and use a really stupid and unreasonably long .signature, on very short postings.
On 15 Nov 2000 23:25:12 -0800, an...@home.ogre.nu (Anton Sherwood) wrote:
>: >On Mon, 13 Nov 2000 18:27:36 GMT, Kyri <ky...@usa.net> wrote: >: >> . . . It dates from about the same time that an American >: >>teenager was being caned in ... very strict Indonesian country ...,
>at 16 Nov 2000 04:56:48 GMT, Jerome Bigge<jbi...@novagate.net> writes >: I believe it was Hong Kong. The teenager was accused of vandalism >: and was sentenced to some certain number of lashes by bamboo whip.
>Malaysia, wasn't it? Though my first thought was Singapore.
It was Singapore. Jeez. I didn't bother saying anything before, since I didn't want to add to a flood of corrections, but the flood doesn't seem to have appeared, so...
Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@mailexcite.com> writes:
(replyed to text reconstructed as:)
>Pete McCutchen <p.mccutc...@worldnet.att.net> writes: >>By the way, could you please put your own comments _below_ the >>material to which you're responding? It makes discussions more >>difficult to follow, and it's annoying. > Even more annoying - don't quote at all.
Not a problem if you've got a decent thread aware newsreader. *grin*
In rec.arts.sf.written on 16 Nov 2000 11:26:21 -0800
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote: >Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@mailexcite.com> writes: >(replyed to text reconstructed as:) >>Pete McCutchen <p.mccutc...@worldnet.att.net> writes: >>>By the way, could you please put your own comments _below_ the >>>material to which you're responding? It makes discussions more >>>difficult to follow, and it's annoying. >> Even more annoying - don't quote at all.
>Not a problem if you've got a decent thread aware newsreader. *grin*
And a solid newsfeed that gets everything in the same order as the next person.
Mark Atwood wrote: > Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@mailexcite.com> writes: > > Even more annoying - don't quote at all.
> Not a problem if you've got a decent thread aware newsreader. *grin*
I dare you to name me one thread aware newsreader able to deal with Usenet's wildly uneven propagation rates. I have a good thread aware newsreader that, like any other newsreader I'm aware of, totally fails to deal with the fact that I regularly see replies (and replies to replies) to posts the originals of which have not yet arrived on my news server. Just three days ago, I saw one original post finally arrive after the reply to the reply to the reply to it had *expired* from the server. Not that I would even have known this if the respondents had not quoted the relevant parts from the original :-P
ObSF: something that has occasionally struck me is how many SF universes seem to avoid the very-common-in-RL problem of messages being transmitted at different rates, overtaking each other, getting lost, etc., without the authors even bothering to handwave about how this remarkable feat is achieved. Le Guin's ansible at least addresses the problem. But off the top of my head I cannot think of any universes (with or without FTL, which may affect the problem in very counterintuitive ways) in which the ansible or a similar infallible device has not been developed that show much evidence of having to deal with the uneven message propagation problem. Have I just not been reading the right stories, or is there an actual lack of them?
-- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Jan A. E. Six casti...@mail.utexas.edu "It is a hypothesis that the sun will rise in the morning. This means that we do not _know_ it will rise." --Wittgenstein. "Now that you come to mention it..." --Copernicus. ----------------------------------------------------------------
On 16 Nov 2000 04:56:48 GMT, an orbiting mind control laser caused jbi...@novagate.net (Jerome Bigge) to write:
>>>No, I don't. It dates from about the same time that an American >>>teenager was being caned in ... very strict Indonesian country ..., and
>I believe it was Hong Kong. The teenager was accused of vandalism >and was sentenced to some certain number of lashes by bamboo whip.
Singapore. Immortalized by Weird Al Yankovic in his song "Headline News."
Frank Ney N4ZHG WV/EMT-B LPWV NRA(L) ProvNRA GOA CCRKBA JPFO -- If you're a politician, bureaucrat, or cop whose livelihood depends on the drug war, you're fully as contemptible as any pusher, smuggler, or cocaine baron -- more so, because, unlike them, you profit directly by destroying what was once the greatest freedom ever known to humankind. -- Mirelle Stein, _The Productive Class_ Just Say No to Gestapo Tactics http://www.freespeech.org/justsayno Abuses by the BATF http://www.hamnet.net/~n4zhg/batfabus.html
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On 15 Nov 2000 11:04:47 -0800, an orbiting mind control laser caused Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> to write:
>> > I have to say that I'm dubious about your recollection here. Scalia >> > may well believe in harsh sanctions, or at least be willing to uphold >> > them, but I don't think that he's a sadist. >> I'm quite sure that he did in fact suggest corporal punishment for >> taggers (some years ago), but since I can't offer you any decent >> references, I don't mind if you don't believe me. Nor do I think his >> suggesting that would mean that he's a sadist.
>Anyone who has spent a day scrubbing graffiti off of their walls, >sidewalks, windows, and car would consider merely caning the punks to >be getting off *lightly*.
I'd have to go look for it, but I think there was one instance in Texas of someone shooting a tagger.
Frank Ney N4ZHG WV/EMT-B LPWV NRA(L) ProvNRA GOA CCRKBA JPFO -- If you're a politician, bureaucrat, or cop whose livelihood depends on the drug war, you're fully as contemptible as any pusher, smuggler, or cocaine baron -- more so, because, unlike them, you profit directly by destroying what was once the greatest freedom ever known to humankind. -- Mirelle Stein, _The Productive Class_ Just Say No to Gestapo Tactics http://www.freespeech.org/justsayno Abuses by the BATF http://www.hamnet.net/~n4zhg/batfabus.html
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On Sun, 12 Nov 2000 01:05:32 GMT, an orbiting mind control laser caused jab...@my-deja.com to write:
>> We practiced slavery well into the twentieth century.
>----Isn't it being done now? ISTR reading somewhere that prisons in >some US states rent out convict labour. Now, even assuming the >convicts are (presently) being paid a pittance for their work, it's not >too big a leap to imagine some politician proposing that the convict's >wages be appropriated for, say, a victim's compensation fund or law >enforcement.
You're a bit behind on the news -- that's exactly what's happening.
Yet another incentive to prosecute the War on Politically Incorrect Drugs.
Frank Ney N4ZHG WV/EMT-B LPWV NRA(L) ProvNRA GOA CCRKBA JPFO -- If you're a politician, bureaucrat, or cop whose livelihood depends on the drug war, you're fully as contemptible as any pusher, smuggler, or cocaine baron -- more so, because, unlike them, you profit directly by destroying what was once the greatest freedom ever known to humankind. -- Mirelle Stein, _The Productive Class_ Just Say No to Gestapo Tactics http://www.freespeech.org/justsayno Abuses by the BATF http://www.hamnet.net/~n4zhg/batfabus.html
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On 09 Nov 2000 13:22:58 -0800, an orbiting mind control laser caused Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> to write:
>jbi...@novagate.net (Jerome Bigge) writes: >> that then the money to pay the guard's wages was in >> my hand (or in the business checking account) instead >> of having to wait perhaps a couple of months to get paid. >> So perhaps the medical industry would prefer to make a >> bit less money upon the assurance they are going to get >> paid instead of having to wait for years for some poor sucker >> to come up the thousands of dollars necessary for the bill.
>It's starting to happen. More and more doctors and clinics are >offering sometimes LARGE (50%) discounts for "cash in hand".
I wish that would happen in Los Angeles -- but I'm paying full freight for my medical expenses.
Frank Ney N4ZHG WV/EMT-B LPWV NRA(L) ProvNRA GOA CCRKBA JPFO -- If you're a politician, bureaucrat, or cop whose livelihood depends on the drug war, you're fully as contemptible as any pusher, smuggler, or cocaine baron -- more so, because, unlike them, you profit directly by destroying what was once the greatest freedom ever known to humankind. -- Mirelle Stein, _The Productive Class_ Just Say No to Gestapo Tactics http://www.freespeech.org/justsayno Abuses by the BATF http://www.hamnet.net/~n4zhg/batfabus.html
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ze...@zip.com.au (Zebee Johnstone) writes: > In rec.arts.sf.written on 16 Nov 2000 11:26:21 -0800 Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote: > >Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@mailexcite.com> writes: > >(replyed to text reconstructed as:) > >>Pete McCutchen <p.mccutc...@worldnet.att.net> writes: > >>>By the way, could you please put your own comments _below_ the > >>>material to which you're responding? It makes discussions more > >>>difficult to follow, and it's annoying. > >> Even more annoying - don't quote at all. > >Not a problem if you've got a decent thread aware newsreader. *grin* > And a solid newsfeed that gets everything in the same order as the > next person. > Unlikley at best.
Not. It doesn't have to be in same order. That's why the "References" header contains message id's.
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote: >ze...@zip.com.au (Zebee Johnstone) writes: >> In rec.arts.sf.written on 16 Nov 2000 11:26:21 -0800 Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote: >> >Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@mailexcite.com> writes: >> >(replyed to text reconstructed as:) >> >>Pete McCutchen <p.mccutc...@worldnet.att.net> writes: >> >>>By the way, could you please put your own comments _below_ the >> >>>material to which you're responding? It makes discussions more >> >>>difficult to follow, and it's annoying. >> >> Even more annoying - don't quote at all. >> >Not a problem if you've got a decent thread aware newsreader. *grin* >> And a solid newsfeed that gets everything in the same order as the >> next person. >> Unlikley at best.
>Not. It doesn't have to be in same order. That's why the "References" >header contains message id's.
If I do not recieve the referenced post before the post referencing it, the header can spell out "happy days are here again", it doesn't make any difference.
>On 09 Nov 2000 13:22:58 -0800, an orbiting mind control laser caused Mark >Atwood <m...@pobox.com> to write:
>>jbi...@novagate.net (Jerome Bigge) writes: >>> that then the money to pay the guard's wages was in >>> my hand (or in the business checking account) instead >>> of having to wait perhaps a couple of months to get paid. >>> So perhaps the medical industry would prefer to make a >>> bit less money upon the assurance they are going to get >>> paid instead of having to wait for years for some poor sucker >>> to come up the thousands of dollars necessary for the bill.
>>It's starting to happen. More and more doctors and clinics are >>offering sometimes LARGE (50%) discounts for "cash in hand".
>I wish that would happen in Los Angeles -- but I'm paying full freight for my >medical expenses.
From what I've heard, the discounts aren't offered up front--you have to ask. If you haven't asked, it's probably worth a try. -- Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
In article <3A143D3C.1466...@mail.utexas.edu>, Jan Six
<casti...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote: >Mark Atwood wrote: ... >ObSF: something that has occasionally struck me is how many SF universes >seem to avoid the very-common-in-RL problem of messages being >transmitted at different rates, overtaking each other, getting lost, >etc., without the authors even bothering to handwave about how this >remarkable feat is achieved. Le Guin's ansible at least addresses the >problem. But off the top of my head I cannot think of any universes >(with or without FTL, which may affect the problem in very >counterintuitive ways) in which the ansible or a similar infallible >device has not been developed that show much evidence of having to deal >with the uneven message propagation problem. Have I just not been >reading the right stories, or is there an actual lack of them?
I recall a story or novel (title and author forgotten) which deals with sending single-bit messages into the past (or from the future, depending on where you are in the story.)
"A Fire Upon The Deep" by Vernor Vinge mentions data-rates and bandwidth, including using AI to compensate for low-bit-rate video...
Really annoying is Star Trek, where every alien they meet not only uses compatible audio and video transmission spectra and signal encodings, but (apparently) completely compatible visual and audio spectrums as well. About 3% (more or less) of mankind doesn't even see colors the same way as the majority... what would a TV image look like if the inventors were all red-green colorblind? Insects and people without corneas can see some wavelengths of ultraviolet... My cheap $99 digital video camera see infrared! [I removed the glass that filters out infrared, and added a glass that filters out visible light.]
In article <k_j_r_a_y-EAFDFB.15321716112...@nntp.ix.netcom.com>, Keith Ray <k_j_r_...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Really annoying is Star Trek, where every alien they meet not only uses > compatible audio and video transmission spectra and signal encodings, > but (apparently) completely compatible visual and audio spectrums as > well. About 3% (more or less) of mankind doesn't even see colors the > same way as the majority... what would a TV image look like if the > inventors were all red-green colorblind? Insects and people without > corneas can see some wavelengths of ultraviolet...
Well, I guess they start from the common 21 centimetre (?) hydrogen spectral line that SETI was so interested in, negotiate compatible biological perceptual systems, and go on from there?
The Tholians appear to be an exception.
On he previous question, I just mentioned that James White's _Sector General_ hospital stories don't have digital error correction for interstellar communication, and they really, really need it. Hyper-radio reception is lousy.
>>: >On Mon, 13 Nov 2000 18:27:36 GMT, Kyri <ky...@usa.net> wrote: >>: >> . . . It dates from about the same time that an American >>: >>teenager was being caned in ... very strict Indonesian country ...,
>>at 16 Nov 2000 04:56:48 GMT, Jerome Bigge<jbi...@novagate.net> writes >>: I believe it was Hong Kong. The teenager was accused of vandalism >>: and was sentenced to some certain number of lashes by bamboo whip.
>>Malaysia, wasn't it? Though my first thought was Singapore.
>It was Singapore. Jeez. I didn't bother saying anything before, >since I didn't want to add to a flood of corrections, but the flood >doesn't seem to have appeared, so...
>Singapore. Honest. You could look it up.
Indeed. I too figured there would be a flood of corrections, and was surprised not to see one.
Singapore has a rather unique political culture. Due partly to its small size, no doubt.
> >[Scalia on caning] > >>No, I don't. It dates from about the same time that an American > >>teenager was being caned in ... very strict Indonesian country ..., and
> I believe it was Hong Kong. The teenager was accused of vandalism > and was sentenced to some certain number of lashes by bamboo whip.
> >A google search revealed no such reference, and if Scalia had > >suggested it, I'd think that somebody on the web would have noticed.
"Keith Ray" <k_j_r_...@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message news:k_j_r_a_y-EAFDFB.15321716112000@nntp.ix.netcom.com... > Really annoying is Star Trek, where every alien they meet not only uses > compatible audio and video transmission spectra and signal encodings, > but (apparently) completely compatible visual and audio spectrums as > well. About 3% (more or less) of mankind doesn't even see colors the > same way as the majority... what would a TV image look like if the > inventors were all red-green colorblind? Insects and people without > corneas can see some wavelengths of ultraviolet... My cheap $99 digital > video camera see infrared! [I removed the glass that filters out > infrared, and added a glass that filters out visible light.]
I think it's the under-appreciated computers doing all the translating. ISTR a few eps of DS9 addressing this. After all, we already know at least some systems are capable of human-level (at least) MI. It's only a matter of time until Voyager's holodoc tries to create some yiffable holo-nurses, borrows some resources from the ship's main computer, and ends up awakening the ship. I wonder how much of the ship's computer's programming is dedicated to keep it from waking up, like the defensive measures against datasphere MIs in Banks' _Feersum Endjinn_.
-- Joe Foster <mailto:jfos...@ricochet.net> Got Thetans? <http://www.xenu.net/> WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above They're coming to because my cats have apparently learned to type. take me away, ha ha!
One thing people should keep in mind while dealing with slavery in SF and Fantasy or historical fiction, particularly the emotional dynamics of it, is the "Stockholm Syndrome" effect.
The Stockholm Syndrome was named after a case in Sweden in which hostages held by kidnappers/robbers came to emotionally identify with, and even love, their captors.
Patty Hearst was another example of the same thing.
Personally I think this is a basic human trait, with its roots in evolutionary biology. It's much harder for even fairly brutal people to kill those who like them, when the killing is to be done at close range and one-on-one. It's fairly easy to kill people who hate you and show it.
Hence the widespread (although of course far from universal) human tendency to identify with power. Those who were good at this(*) tended to leave more descendants.
A very similar phenomenon is used by various cults to ensure the loyalty of their initiates, and by military basic training.
Isolate the subject from former associations and familiar people and routines; make them totally dependent on the whim of all-powerful superiors; subject them to intense stress to break down resistance.
The result is often an imprinting on the authority figure, a sort of auto-brainwashing. It's more effective if used knowingly and with skill, but it'll quite often work even if it's unintentional.
(*) or at faking it, of course; but that's much harder. Few people are good actors for long. -- S.M. Stirling
Jan Six <casti...@mail.utexas.edu> wrote: > ObSF: something that has occasionally struck me is how many SF universes > seem to avoid the very-common-in-RL problem of messages being > transmitted at different rates, overtaking each other, getting lost, > etc., without the authors even bothering to handwave about how this > remarkable feat is achieved. Le Guin's ansible at least addresses the > problem. But off the top of my head I cannot think of any universes > (with or without FTL, which may affect the problem in very > counterintuitive ways) in which the ansible or a similar infallible > device has not been developed that show much evidence of having to deal > with the uneven message propagation problem. Have I just not been > reading the right stories, or is there an actual lack of them?
F.M. Busby shows problems with communication delays with STL star travel.
-- JBM "Moebius strippers only show you their back side." -- Unknown
