A friend IM'd me that there was a really cheap offer on Imation CD-R's, a 25pk for $1.99. This would normally cost around $19.99. He was at least 2nd generation finding out the URL, and had already ordered 20. That's 500 CD-R's for 50$ total, and they're worth around $500, and maybe 300$ at a computer show if you wanted to unload them. I ordered 20 packs as well and hoped for the best. However, within 30 minutes from my order, the offer disappeared and I got an email that there had been errors with my request or something. Oh well.
This reminded me of another story the same friend told me , about someone he knew who found a really expensive monitor for some ridiculously low price and ordered some. However, in that case the offer was honored, at least for the first few people.
I wonder if there are people sitting on fat pipes that just look through online stores all day, buying frequent small quantities of items with typos in the price and then selling them. I bet there's at least a few people who survive like that. They're probably working on their own version of a system like pricewatch to detect typos. And I bet they milk the typo for all it's worth by not telling anyone and not buying large amounts. Thursday, June 15, 2000
I will admit I am excited to have gold dollar coins
because spending them will have Dickensian
overtones. They are well-suited for being carried about
in small, filthy drawstring purses, and they are ideal for
stacking obsessively in the manner of Charles Dickens'
most famous creation, Scrooge McDuck.
Newspapers stuffed inside of knit caps are
one way to jam frequencies. But this method is not terribly
reliable and the newspaper needs to be changed regularly. The
other, hidden danger associated with using newspaper is it
requires buying and possibly reading current news stories that
might be sending encoded messages to crazy people from the
very same shadow organization the crazy people are trying to
combat.
Thursday, June 15, 2000
indiepoplive I know this is all over the place, but I finally went to the computer lab with 8 zipdisks and downloaded the dismemberment plan, modest mouse, and built to spill shows. They rock sooo much. Wednesday, June 14, 2000
1
0
hot
cold
male
female
energy
matter
win
lose
good
bad
happy
sad
moving
still
alive
dead
day
night
exist
not exist
possible
impossible
true
false
integers
reals
absolutist
relativist
Some things aren't really opposites, but we think of them that way. We define maximum and minimum and interpolate from there. But I think there's a constant reality added. Wednesday, June 14, 2000
Oh, I who long to grow,
I look out side myself.
and the tree inside me grows.
This is an idea to create a written ideographic language that everyone on earth could learn. Then they'd be able to communicate with each other but wouldn't have to give up their spoken language. (Similar to how different types of spoken chinese can communicate by writing). It's good because it starts with the typical "the world has problems, what shall we do" despair, but concludes that a new language will solve them all. Also it's full of japanese -> english conversion goodness.
from here:
A traditional language is like inches and feet. It's easy for the native users since the images are attached to them. But they need translation to understand other just like you need conversion each time to
compare to other measurements.
A language is a container of images just like a container to bake cake. Various containers bake cakes in various forms even from the same ingredients. It is rational to cut a
rectangular cake into rectangular pieces, but for a circular cake, radial cutting is the rational way. Each language has peculiar rationality. When you have only experienced the rectangular one, you might
ask the others to cut their cake by your rectangular way.
It would be good that everybody has two kinds of thinking methods. People could always compare their thinking with universally wide opened another thought. This custom would raise their reason,
and could help keep the world in peace.
Knowledge generated from these questions: Buddhism is probably not an ornamental flower
Buddhism is probably not an aquatic plant
Buddhism is probably not a Mountain
Buddhism probably doesn't tell time
Things I didn't know Buddhism was probably not made from milk
You cannot put something into buddhism
Buddhism does help one accomplish tasks
Buddhism cannot be heard
an awesome game of 20 questions which constantly updates and adds new inferences to the database. The above is a result from me thinking of buddhism; it didn't guess it. But for almost any animate thing it's right on the money.
Monday, June 12, 2000
Another problem with the net is that it’s still ‘technology’, and ‘technology’, as the computer scientist Bran Ferren memorably defined it, is ‘stuff
that doesn’t work yet.’ We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked
out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‘crash’ when we tried to use them.
1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a
career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it
until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
The Pornolizer This is one of those web filter things (like the redneckizer, porky pigizer, etc), but it's all porn. Hilarious:
Assad's Son "Bust-a-Cunt" Bashar Set to Rule "Up the Arse" Syria - The unclefucking son of Syria's late President "Long Finger" Hafez al-Assad was
unclefucked chief of the fingerfucking army Sunday, virtually shaging that he will take over from the sodomiteing 'great lion' who shaged for 30 ejaculates. Vice
"Suck my tits dry" President Abdel-Halim "Ass-stitcher" Khaddam, now fisting president, blowed Bashar al-Assad commander of the assfucking screwed forces
after asslicking him from colonel to lieutenant-general, a government spokesman said.
Sunday, June 11, 2000
New York times tech 2010 Some interesting articles about future technology (no registration required)
Skytran : an overhead electric pod transport system.
SkyTran travels above street-level so it doesn't compete with traffic.
SkyTran doesn't need to stop at intersections.
Speeds capable up to 150 MPH
SkyTran runs on electricity with an efficiency equivalent to 300 MPG.
Measured in raw acreage,
grass is the country's
largest single crop; more
than that, it gives shape
and meaning to the
weekend for millions of
Americans. But within just a
few years, powerful
growth-regulating
chemicals now available
only to professional
groundskeepers will put a
picture-perfect lawn within easy reach of even the laziest Joe
Mow.
the tantalizing possibility of a dwarf lawn: each
blade genetically programmed to top out at one and a half
inches.
Inside-out tanning : take a pill or apply a cream that'll turn on or off the genes to make you light or dark. If it's a cream, punks'll make patterned skin tatoos to go along with their implants & body modifications. Sunday, June 11, 2000
Benford's law states that in listings, tables of statistics, etc., the digit 1 tends to occur with probability , much greater than the expected 10% (i.e., one digit out of 10).
The reason this happens is that you're really taking a random variable over a random range. So if you choose a number from 1-10, first digits are equally distributed, but if you choose from 1-20 you have 11 numbers starting with 1, 2 with 2, and each other digit only has 1. Here's some real-world samples:
... Mice exposed to BPA weighed 20 percent more than normal when examined at puberty.
The chemical did not affect the mother, but instead it altered the babies' growth patterns and accelerated timing of sexual maturity
When both humans and mice were exposed to the same relative dose of chemical estrogens, the effects were nearly identical. Both experienced similar types of abnormalities of the reproductive system.
The plastics industry will get out the big guns discrediting and discouraging all this type of research. Expect it...
Men who watch their favorite sports team compete - and win - experience the same type of testosterone surges as the players themselves, according to a graduate student at the University of Utah.
From an article about sports-watching & testosterone. They should do a similar study with women watching really sentimental shows on tv, maybe they get a nice estrogen bump out of it...
both from alt penis Saturday, June 10, 2000
A silly idea: basketball where the average height of the men on the floor at any time must be 6' or less. I think it'd be interesting; some teams would play 3 giants and 2 midgets, while some other ones would have 5'11 guys who are better than everyone in the NBA but weren't tall enough. if you think about it, since you generally need to be at least 6'3" to get into the NBA, a large portion of the population is eliminated. So there must be some 5' 10" guys who can shoot better than Jordan. Saturday, June 10, 2000
If undeniable evidence of the existence of advanced extraterrestrial life were observing or visiting earth, I am confident governments would:
Handle the situation quite capably
Have difficulty in deciding what to do and admit their difficulty
Pretend to handle the situation, but not really be able to
Declare Martial Law
Abdicate and run away
If undeniable evidence of the existence of advanced extraterrestrial life were confirmed , psychologically
I am fully prepared to handle it.
I would have to rethink my place in the Universe.
I would be seriously shaken.
I would be distraught to the point of potential suicide.
I don’t care one way or the other.
Also, an interesting overview of a class on Extraterrestrial life. It's nice to remember that one day we really will discover extretarrestrial life. Then all mythological religions will be up the creek; hopefully it'll be the last straw for self-important religions. I don't see why people don't see the similarity between pure simple racism and the maximal centricity (race-centric, rome-centric, earth centric, relation to God centric) of religions. They claim as much as science lets them get away with, and even more if they can kill the scientists who say it. I can't wait to hear ridiculous things the pope says, and late night evangelical tv psychos will get even more interesting. Saturday, June 10, 2000
Evil Napster, takes from me.
Crushing souls, and wrecking dreams,
MP3 you violate,
Copyrights, you desecrate
Pirates burning our CDs,
Screwing with my reality.
Evil Napster, devil from beyond
Demon Napster....begone.
Sunday, June 4, 2000
J.R.R. Tolkien : a section from "the two towers", and a chilling poem in some constructed language.
Robert Frost : 4 poems. I love the voices of these old poets.
mp3lit Friday, June 2, 2000
When computers were introduced into tournament bridge about 18 years ago,
some players were puzzled and others outraged by the random hands the computer
dealt and complained that the computers were not working right.
it takes just seven ordinary, imperfect shuffles to mix a deck of cards
thoroughly, researchers have found. Fewer are not enough and more do not
significantly improve the mixing.
...Asked whether he expected bridge players to
change their shuffling habits, Mr. Kaplan replied, ''There will be a few who
will be affected and will doggedly shuffle seven times to the irritation of
everyone else.''
It has long been an article of faith among duplicate players that computer deals are markedly more distributional (more extreme hands) than "normal" deals generated by humans. They are right about that, but wrong in concluding that there is a flaw in computer dealing. It is, we now know the "normal" deals that are abnormal.
I don't know about this - the game was invented before automatic shuffling. Although perfect shuffling makes it more interesting in terms of long & weird hands, it doesn't make sense to say that's more normal. It conforms with neither history nor practice, only with an abstraction.
also, an interesting result from the main article:
He derived a
mathematical proof showing that if a deck is perfectly shuffled eight times, the
cards will be in the same order as they were before the shuffling.
all via dad, thanks! your story has been vindicated.
Friday, June 2, 2000
Heya. I've been having fun with my new digital camera: a Kodak DC280 with a 32mb compactflash card. The quality is really good, especially the sharp outside shots. Also, 32mb is more than enough, it's enough to hold 52 pictures at maximum settings, and around 150 at totally reasonable highest quality/smaller size settings.
I'll put up a picture page soon and you can be introduced to my wonderful roommates, all of whom independently gave the finger to the camera while being photographed.
on the Japan front, things are moving along nicely. I leave July 15th, and as soon as I get net access there I'll put up lots of pictures of "everyday japan". Thursday, June 1, 2000
In the most striking of the new experiments a pulse of light that enters a transparent chamber filled with specially prepared cesium gas is pushed to speeds of 300 times the normal speed of light. That is so fast that, under these peculiar circumstances, the main part of the pulse exits the far side of the chamber even before it enters at the near side.
It is as if someone looking through a window from home were to see a man slip and fall on a patch of ice while crossing the street well before witnesses on the sidewalk saw the mishap occur--a preview of the future. But Einstein's theory, and at least a shred of common sense, seem to survive because the effect could never be used to signal back in time to change the past--avert the accident, in the example.
That is why the authentic pilgrims go on foot as the great saint did long ago. It takes about 60 days to hike the 1,647 km [1,000 miles], going deep into rugged mountains, plodding along sandy beaches, rocky coasts, through fields and hills, villages and towns. Indeed, it is a walking Zen.
An 88 temple pilgrimage. Maybe after I'm done with my job there I can do it. It'd be awfully nice to wander a beautiful tropical island for two months... Tuesday, May 30, 2000
History of Calculus A simple thought experiment disproving Aristotle's claim that heavier objects fall faster:
Drop 3 identical 10-pound weights off the tower; all three will hit the ground simultaneously.
Now try it again, but first connect two of the three weights
with a short piece of thread; this has no effect, and the three weights still hit the ground simultaneously.
I think the reason nobody thought of this earlier has something to do with a hazy conception of distinct "objects". The idea that things have definite boundaries, and some kind of unsureness about what happens when you connect them in various ways. It's the same thing as on star trek, how transporters know exactly where your body ends, and if someone grabs you when you're transporting, they come along too. Also, magic typically works this way in books. And there's that folk tale, where someone carrying a door and a backpack straps the backpack around the door, so "the door carries the backpack", and all they have to carry is the door. (Of course, this was pointing out their stupidity...)
I think a lot of childhood games have this idea too, if you're touching a "base" in tag, you're safe, so if you're touching someone who's touching the base, it transmits through you. Where did we get this idea? And what would have happened if you had given the above example to any Aristotlean "philosopher" in the many years his ideas reigned? Saturday, May 27, 2000
... Where it can affect people, where it is
about money, is for the band that sells 600 copies of their CD, ok? If they all of a sudden go from selling 600 copies of
their CD down to 50 copies, because the other 550 copies get downloaded for free, that's where it starts affecting real
people with real money.
I think you missed the point. It'd be more like they'd only sell 50, but get 50,000 downloads. Then more people would know about them; their shows would be packed, they'd play bigger venues and make more money, and be able to quit their jobs and just make music and tour.
You're forgetting the whole point of all this: copies cost nothing, so it's difficult to charge money for them. In general, it's difficult to keep up a market on something that costs nothing. Of course, that won't stop people from trying. But in the end, you can't win. The only thing you can validly sell is your presence and your performance.
Personally, I'd much prefer to see a world where there were 10 times as many artists, and they all had to support themselves by live performance. It'd make for better shows, and it would be good for people to get out more. Friday, May 26, 2000
Q: I got a message from this guy at school who I’m totally crushing on, and the subject says "ILOVEYOU." Should I open it?
A: No. It may be the virus.
Friday, May 26, 2000
Dissection Any polygon can be dissected in a finite number of pieces to form any other of the same area. Especially look at the beautiful table of dissections about halfway down the page.
Amazingly, a circle can be dissected into a square with ~10^50 pieces. I don't think an actual solution is known yet though. Who'd a thunk it. Thursday, May 25, 2000
Everyone is drunk: murderers and their victims, drowning victims, suicides, drivers and pedestrians killed in traffic accidents, victims of heart attacks and ulcers
and from A cnn article, a joke that's probably funnier in russian if you're a morbid alcoholic.
During World War II, five or six
people of various nationalities -- Polish, French, English,
Russian -- escaped from a German prison camp. Nazis
went after them with their guns and dogs in hot pursuit.
After shooting and picking off the escapees one by one, only
the Russian and the Pole were alive and left hiding. It was
then that the Russian stood up, opened his great coat,
pulled out a submachine gun and mowed down all the
Germans.
"Why didn't you do that before?" gasped the Pole.
The Russian pulled a bottle of vodka from his pocket,
smiling. "Because," he said. "Now it's two on a bottle."
http://blah.blah/dir/alpha.html, it will take you to
http://blah.blah/dir/.
And if you're at a dir, it cuts off the last part. Very useful for getting around people's sites that aren't organized very well. I've replaced all standard toolbars with bookmarklets of the same function, plus additional stuff like "target links to new window", "show last modified date (very useful)", etc. Wednesday, May 24, 2000
In the U.S., it is the custom to appear at the exact time set for an appointment or a social engagement. For example, if you are invited to a dinner at 6:30
p.m., the host and hostess expect you to arrive at that time. When you are late, your hosts may be annoyed, even angry.
This Halloween, I dressed up as Microsoft Internet Explorer 5, and it was the best Halloween ever! How could it not be? As Microsoft says, Internet Explorer 5 not only displays Web pages faster, it's designed to save you time on the things you do most often! Sweet! Of course, my costume was a big hit everywhere I went.
first page images are messed up, but it gets funnier. Wednesday, May 24, 2000
Philosophies of Masturbation An overview of classical and modern philosopher's viewpoints on masturbation, which describes ideas about the philosophical nature of sexuality in general. Not surprisingly, classical philosophers are obviously influenced by the church, and when marraige comes up they abandon all philosophical investigation.
unfortuntately, some of the modern philosophers join them in condemning it, although for different reasons. I was surprised, I thought most modern people thought it was fine and natural. Monday, May 22, 2000
Straight Acting Quiz This is quiz to see how feminine you act. (to take it, you should imagine you're gay). It's an interesting perspective on what femininity is. Monday, May 22, 2000
Thin, reflective sails could be propelled through space by
sunlight, microwave beams or laser beams — just as the wind
pushes sailboats on Earth. Rays of light from the Sun would
provide tremendous momentum to the gigantic structure. The
sail will be the largest spacecraft ever built, spanning 440 yards
— twice the diameter of the Louisiana Superdome.
