Posts by Murasaki

1) Message boards : Cafe SETI : "Tommy" and other stage performances... (Message 580948)
Posted 3 Jun 2007 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I hate to put in a shameless plug for a for-profit venture, but if anyone in the Seattle, Washington, US area is really into old rock and roll, you may want to check out the production of The Who's "Tommy" going on at the Issaquah Village Theater.

A colleague at work recommended it to me and, not having gone to the theater in about 20 years, I decided what the heck.

Great choreography and great sound. The actors who played Tommy and his parents, IMHO, were far more convincing in the roles than Roger Daltrey, Ann Margret, and Oliver Reed. Not saying they were bad in the movie, just not as sympathetic or real. This play is much more human. And the music still ROCKS!

Review of "Tommy", Seattle Post Intelligencer

So while we're on the subject, anyone else have recommendations?
2) Message boards : Cafe SETI : karaoke Nite at the Cafe (Message 402614)
Posted 21 Aug 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Smackwater Jack
by Carole King

Now Smackwater Jack he bought a shotgun,
'Cause he was in a mood for a little confrontation.
He just let it all hang loose.
He didn't think about the noose.
He couldn't take no more abuse,
So he shot down the congregation.

You know you can't talk to a man,
With a shotgun in his hand.

Now big Jim the Chief stood for law and order.
He called for the guard to come and surround the border.
Now from his bulldog mouth,
As he led the posse south,
Came the cry, "We got to ride and clean up the streets,
For our wives and our daughters."

You can't talk to a man,
When he don't wanna understand.

The account of the capture wasn't in the papers,
But you know they hanged old smack right then instead of later.
You know the people were quite pleased,
Because the outlaw had been seized,
And on the whole it was a very good year,
For the undertaker.

You can't talk to a man,
With a shotgun in his hand.
3) Message boards : Cafe SETI : karaoke Nite at the Cafe (Message 353879)
Posted 1 Jul 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Vincent
by Don McLean

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and gray.
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills.
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand,
What you tried to say to me.
How you suffered for your sanity.
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze.
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue.
Morning fields of amber grain.
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand.

Now I understand,
What you tried to say to me.
How you suffered for your sanity.
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they'll listen now.

For they could not love you,
But still, your love was true,
And when no hope was left in sight,
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life as lovers often do.
But I could've told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant,
For one as beautiful as you.

Starry, Starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls.
Frameless heads on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget,
Like the strangers that you've met.
The ragged men in ragged clothes.
The silver thorn, a bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know,
What you tried to say to me.
How you suffered for your sanity.
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they're not listening still.
Perhaps they never will.
4) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Rocky's -CLOSED- (Message 305664)
Posted 14 May 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
*A familiar silhouette appears at the door* I'll buy a round for that. Here's to Rocky, and the good times.
5) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Which sports car are you? (Message 253326)
Posted 25 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Hmm, turns out I'm an "Internal Server Error". Never heard of that car...
6) Message boards : Cafe SETI : karaoke Nite at the Cafe (Message 253320)
Posted 25 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Oooh, a favorite...
---------------------------
Pat Benatar - We Belong

Many times I've tried to tell you,
Many times I've cried alone.
Always I'm surprised how well,
You cut my feelings to the bone.
Don't want to leave you really.
I've invested too much time,
To give you up that easy,
To the doubts that complicate your mind.

We belong to the light,
We belong to the thunder.
We belong to the sound of the words,
We've both fallen under.
Whatever we deny or embrace,
For worse or for better,
We belong,
We belong,
We belong together.

Maybe it's a sign of weakness,
When I don't know what to say.
Maybe I just wouldn't know,
What to do with my strength anyway.
Have we become a habit?
Do we distort the facts?
Now there's no looking forward.
Now there's no turning back,

We belong to the light,
We belong to the thunder.
We belong to the sound of the words,
We've both fallen under.
Whatever we deny or embrace,
For worse or for better,
We belong,
We belong,
We belong together.

Close your eyes and try to sleep now,
Close your eyes and try to dream.
Clear your mind and do your best,
And try to wash the palette clean.
We can't begin to know it,
How much we really care.
I hear your voice inside me.
I see your face everywhere.

We belong to the light,
We belong to the thunder.
We belong to the sound of the words,
We've both fallen under.
Whatever we deny or embrace,
For worse or for better,
We belong,
We belong,
We belong together.
-----------------
Until I read the recent posts, I was going to post something by Voltaire.
7) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The seti sci-fi and fantasy book club. (Message 250789)
Posted 20 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I don't recall the story you refer to.

I do sometimes miss Omni Magazine. I liked to call it the National Enquirer of the scientific world. Had a subscription in high school and early adulthood, though I felt they got too commercial/gizmo oriented (a la Popular Science) by the nineties.

For those of you too young to remember: Omni
8) Message boards : Cafe SETI : karaoke Nite at the Cafe (Message 250787)
Posted 20 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Styx - The Best of Times

Tonight's the night we'll make history,
Honey you and I,
'Cause I'll take any risk,
To tie back the hands of time,
And stay with you here,
Tonight.

I know you feel these are the worst of times.
I do believe it's true.
When people lock their doors,
And hide inside.
Rumor has it it's the end of paradise.
But I know,
If the world just passed us by,
Baby I know,
I wouldn't have to cry, no, no.

The best of times,
Are when I'm alone with you.
Some rain, some shine,
We'll make this a world for two.
Our memories of yesterday will last a lifetime.
We'll take the best,
Forget the rest,
And someday we'll find,
These are the best of times.
These are the best of times.

The headlines read, "These are the worst of times."
I do believe it's true.
I feel so helpless,
Like a boat against the tide.
I wish the summer wind,
Could bring back paradise.
But I know,
If the world turned upside down,
Baby I know,
You'd always be around, my, my.

The best of times,
Are when I'm alone with you.
Some rain, some shine,
We'll make this a world for two.
The best of times, (when I'm alone with you)
Are when I'm alone with you. (everything's alright)
Some rain, some shine, (Said when I'm alone with you)
We'll make this a world for two. (You brighten up the night)

--------------
Styx - AD1957
...and so my friends,
we'll say goodnight,
For time has claimed his prize.
But tonight can always last,
As long as we keep alive,
The memories of paradise...
9) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Strange Weather (Message 249832)
Posted 18 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Lessee... started yesterday around noon in Burns, Oregon (high desert). Some high clouds, temperature 30F, winds around 10mph gusting 20. Drove two hours west to Bend, Oregon (small snow flurries in between). Temperature in Bend was 8F, no wind, overcast, much ice and snow on the road from the previous night. Drove northwest to the mountain pass near Mt Hood. Temperatures in the 20s, nearly clear roadway, little wind, BEAUTIFUL clear sky all the way from there through Portland. Drove north to Tacoma, Washington, temperatures in the 30s, spectacularly clear, starry sky, heavy winds gusting excess 40, and a power outage lasting until a few hours ago.
10) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 249818)
Posted 18 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
You Can't Stop Rock And Roll - Twisted Sister


Another good one Simon. Hmm I see I'm not the only Twisted Sister listener here.

Definitely not. I enjoy the Stay Hungry album while driving to a ski area. "...Call for street justice. How many have to die?!..." That along with Metallica et al puts me in the right frame of mind to ski hard and really enjoy the day. :)
11) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The seti sci-fi and fantasy book club. (Message 247132)
Posted 13 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Have to make special mention once again: Robert A Heinlein's Starship Troopers This bears little resemblance to that horrendously bad movie.

Also The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, illustrated by D.F. Vassalo, a compilation of short witticisms and wisdoms from Heinlein's most notorious character.

Truth is, pretty much anything by the big three -- Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein -- I've very much enjoyed. The Deep Range, Gold, The Cat who Walks Through Walls, Number of the Beast, Rama series, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Foundation Series, The Robot Series, 2001/2010/2061/3001, The Songs of Distant Earth, so many others. Great reads.

Greg Bear's Eon was interesting. The sequel was okay.

K and I both recommend Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, for similar reasons that have been mentioned above.

K recommends Thomas Covenant (I couldn't really recommend it, the rapist point being too distracting for me), Fred Saberhagen's The Holmes-Dracula File, James P Hogan's The Gentle Giants of Ganymede and Inherit the Stars

I've particularly enjoyed short stories by Roger Zelazny, as they usually have an interesting spin to them. I did also enjoy his Chronicles of Amber.

Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven were good, but stop there.

Piers Anthony is a hit and miss writer with me. I liked the first two books of the Incarnations of Immortality series tremendously, but the rest of them were kinda flat.

SPECIAL SUBSET- Science fiction books for the military minded:

The Berserker series by Fred Saberhagen was always a favorite. It was in part short stories of his and contributions as well from other writers. One of the first "franchise universes" to my recollection.

For no reason I can really explain, I've really enjoyed Man/Kzin Wars series. I rather enjoy the different slant each writer brings to the overall story, I guess.

Though the main character tended to get too super-hero'ish, I really enjoyed the Honor Harrington series by David Weber.
12) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Snow storm hits US Northeast (Message 247115)
Posted 12 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I took my little girl sleding today I haven't done that in years. Then we built forts and had a snow ball battle and made snow angels. Can you imagine a grown man lying on the ground making snow angels. Brings back a lot of memories of youth. Sometimes we get so busy we forget to just live, you know what I mean?

Now, to me, if I had a snowstorm and a kid, making snow angels and forts would be an absolute necessity. I thought that was the advantage of having a kid: you have an excuse for doing things you never really wanted to give up in the first place.

Great quote from a movie: "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death."
13) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Stupid or Funny Signs [CLOSED] (Message 246815)
Posted 12 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Love the Japanese signs. Reminds me of the advertisements I used to see over there with one-off slogans in English like "I feel Coke".

K's contribution. Gotta focus on what's important in life, after all: party supplies...

14) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Battlestar Galactica is just on German TV (Message 245956)
Posted 11 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I heard the story behind the original explained a little differently: BSG was always meant to be an hour-long TV series, but they decided late in production to release the pilot and the first episode together as a feature-length movie in Canada to gather some quick cash (where my brother saw it, stationed in Newfoundland, before I did, still living in the US).

I was a fan of the old one. Then again, I was in 7th grade. I find them nearly completely unwatchable now. This new series, however, really grips me with the grittyness and imperfection of the characters. I also rather like the low, non-lazerzap tech of the show. Technically the only things that keep us from a ship like that are a strong power source, some sort of FTL engine, and artificial gravity. It's neat that for the most part they have to do things the hard way, instead of relying on the magic sensors to find someone on a planet or winning combat by "targeting the weapons array" a la Star Trek. Going for the Wing Commander-esque semi-inertial physics model was a refreshing change from Star Wars-type fighters as well.

Thing that sucks for me is I no longer have cable, so I only see it on the rare occasion my job has me stuck in a hotel out in the middle of the desert on Friday nights. Eh, well, just wait to get it on DVD, I guess. Already have Season 1.
15) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 245940)
Posted 11 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The Search Is Over - Survivor

How can I convince you,
What you see is real?
Who am I to blame you,
For doubting what you feel?
I was always reaching.
You were just a girl I knew.
I took for granted,
The friend I had in you.

I was living for a dream.
Loving for the moment.
Taking on the world,
That was just my style.
Now I look into your eyes,
I can see forever.
The search is over.
You were with me all the while.

Can we last forever?
Do we fall apart?
At times it's so confusing,
The questions of the heart.
You followed me through changes,
And patiently you'd wait,
'Til I came to my senses through,
Some miracle of fate.

I was living for a dream.
Loving for the moment.
Taking on the world,
That was just my style.
Now I look into your eyes,
I can see forever.
The search is over.
You were with me all the while.

Now the miles stretch out behind me,
Loves that I have lost.
Broken hearts lying victims of the day.
Then good luck,
It finally struck like lightning from the blue.
Every highway's leading me back to you.

Now at last I hold you.
Now all is said and done.
The search has come full-circle.
Our destinies are one.
So if you ever loved me,
Show me that you give a damn,
To know for certain,
The man I really am.

I was living for a dream.
Loving for the moment.
Taking on the world,
That was just my style.
Then I touched your heart.
I can hear you whisper,
The search is over.
Love was right before my eyes.
16) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED (Message 245931)
Posted 11 Feb 2006 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Last year I decided to try the Internet dating thing. It was short, moderately successful, but very turbulent. That's not the success story here...

I found two very old friends over the course of last year through simple searches/e-mail. One was someone I'd lost touch with after high school over twenty years ago. Favorite quote out of his first e-mail: "If I have to point to the one resource who got me into the blessed/cursed world of software [programming], it would be you and the Trash-80." Nice to know I've consistently ruined lives all my life. Ahh, old friends and good times, but that's not the big success story here...

Last summer I was trying to get a position at a local university here. Seeking any edge, I tried getting in touch with my college electronics professor, who used to be in research. A quick Google search found her. Well, the job fell through, but she and I kept corresponding, being the same age and scientifically minded. Long story short: the conversations eventually turned romantic, and we'd fallen in love by the end of the year. We've made long-term plans, in fact.

Two SETI ironies: she is the one who introduced me to SETI classic many years ago, and her sibling apparently works near Berkeley (family's just chock full o' doctorates). Hey, maybe when we visit, if I get my RAC back up (been on the road and couldn't leave the computer on, sorry), someone could give us a tour of the campus? :)

Last year was a very good year, Internet-relationshipwise.
17) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Whats your Pirate name ??? (Message 210422)
Posted 11 Dec 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Mine is Black Sam Rackham. Arr!

I have a guest here at home who, as it turns out, is Dirty Charity Rackham. I didn't even know we were related.
18) Message boards : Cafe SETI : To My Friends... (Message 210400)
Posted 11 Dec 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:

But as long as you can get here from time to time, it's good to hear news from you.


Right now we're close to the Christmas Moratorium, the time when the US Federal Aviation Administration hunkers down and makes sure every system is absolutely ready. There are backups upon backups, but nevertheless during these peak travel times we don't mess with ANYTHING, which means I can't install new equipment at all. So after this week, until New Years, I may have opportunity to loiter from time to time. :)


A lot of things have happened the past months, both good and bad. I can't tell more here. Did you know that Rocky passed away a couple of months ago? I miss him so much.


I did note the passing of Rocky, and I was very sad to see him go as well.
19) Message boards : Cafe SETI : To My Friends... (Message 208028)
Posted 9 Dec 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:


Hi Murasaki!!! Long time no see, huh?! So, how are you these days?



Hi Fuzzy! Sorry to take so long to reply. Yeah, long time. I've been in and out, traveling here and there. You'd think getting stuck in hotel rooms a lot would generate a lot of internet time, but it hasn't worked out that way so far, due to both work and many other factors.

How has everything been with you and Bouncer Jupiter?
20) Message boards : Cafe SETI : To My Friends... (Message 202355)
Posted 3 Dec 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
One of my fondest memories from childhood is, when we were very much below the poverty level, my Uncle Frank would take me to Disney World on my birthday. This was back when they still had A through E tickets. Believe me, your daughter will appreciate this immensely. Have fun. :)
21) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED (Message 177349)
Posted 13 Oct 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
If you mean kal'i'fee, "the Challenge", that could be a bitch in itself. The kal'i'fee is, as you probably know, to the death.... Although, Vulcans are known to be much stonger than Humans.... >:-) (-:<

And, kal'i'farr is a must.... Although, there are a few exceptions. >:-) (-:<


Now see, that's an example of how hard it is to get an accurate English-Vulcan dictionary. Every reference I checked said the middle syllable was an "if", not an "i". (seriously, I actually did a search on it).
22) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED (Message 176948)
Posted 12 Oct 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
....

....
You might want to stand about 10 feet away from the Vulcan cause his 7 years are up.
....

I believe I will have to warp back to Vulcan [T'Khasi] to find my mate and have my way with her. Procreation can be a bitch sometimes.... >:-) (-:<


Even more of a bitch, my dear Vulcan, when there's no place to go. Try continuously getting the "kal-if-fee" portion of it, buddy.
23) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED (Message 175951)
Posted 9 Oct 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Grrs and growls? Quick, get these dogs some raw T-bones before someone gets bit!


You dogs and wolves like chewing on ICE!!!!!!



Uh oh... *eyes the exit
24) Message boards : Cafe SETI : La Fiesta ! (Message 175950)
Posted 9 Oct 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Ooh, this looks like a happening place. Congratulations, the both of you. :)


Thanks Murasaki.

Lets have some music..

Come on..let's dance



Woohoo!...

25) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED (Message 175877)
Posted 9 Oct 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Grrs and growls? Quick, get these dogs some raw T-bones before someone gets bit!
26) Message boards : Cafe SETI : La Fiesta ! (Message 175874)
Posted 9 Oct 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Ooh, this looks like a happening place. Congratulations, the both of you. :)
27) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Our Friend Rocky Passed On. MARVIN LEE CUDD USN RETIRED. (Message 175867)
Posted 9 Oct 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I'm sorry to see you go, Rocky. You are missed. We'll keep the watch now, sailor.

"You found another home.
I know you're not alone,
on the nightshift."
28) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Holiday thread (Message 162075)
Posted 2 Sep 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Santa came early for me this year, and I got a brand new, full-time job with the Federal Aviation Administration starting next week. The job requires a LOT of travel, so I'm not sure even if I can keep this machine crunching or not living months away and possibly in remote areas. So by the time the holiday season is upon us, I may be even more incommunicado than I have been.

While I'll probably be loitering around here for several weeks more at least, I just wanted to take this opportunity, being in an overly sentimental mood today and not wanting to wait until I'm too distracted, to say Hi 'n' Bye. Alex, Byron, NA, CA, Misfit, Dogbytes, Fuzzy, Megaman, Carl, Tom, Doc Sullivan, Petit, FatB and many others: I've really enjoyed reading your posts. Can't say I've always agreed with everyone all the time, but it was thoughtful. Magenta, if you ever see this, I enjoyed our e-mails and I miss you the most.

Turn left instead of right, and in an instant, all life changes.

Good luck to everyone.

-Al
29) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hurricane Katrina (Message 158916)
Posted 29 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I was in Gulfport, Miss. when Camille hit back in 1969. It was... bad.


Gotta love it, huh? I was in Biloxi when Elena hit in 1985. That one wasn't nearly as bad as Camille and others. I count myself lucky.
30) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Gaming(Quake,HW2,Doom3...) (Message 158911)
Posted 29 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
All I usually play is Neverwinter Nights, and that only on occasion.
31) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Lets get to know each other:) (Message 157111)
Posted 26 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
What the heck. I just updated my profile pic anyway...

I'm close enough to 40 to just call it even, and have lived in many places around the US (born in Florida) as well as in northern Japan for a couple years. For the past 15 years I've lived in Tacoma, Washington. I have become one of the trees here.

I've had various hobbies over the years. I'm a walking movie and song quote. I like to ski though I don't get to much. Fairly obvious I'm into home computing. I read science fiction often. I also like reading science articles, which is mainly why I lurk here. Past hobbies included paintball, flying, wargames, RPGs, video games, martial arts, ice skating, and others too long to mention.

I'm an electronics technician, but truthfully the best job I ever had was the summer after high school when I worked at a Renaissance Festival for six weeks.
32) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How annoying. (Message 155819)
Posted 23 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Your what hurts?

Huh?

Yup!

Aye!

Wow.

Uh huh.

Whoa.

Yow!
33) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Coyolxauhqui (Message 155524)
Posted 23 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Very cool!
34) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Quote of the ....... (Message 153427)
Posted 19 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
"Rub her feet." -Robert Heinlein
35) Message boards : Cafe SETI : "Star Trek XI" (Message 152156)
Posted 16 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
"...To seek out new life in old plots and complications.
To boldly go where everyone has gone before..."

(quote from an old Star Trek spoof)

Time to break out the Voltaire again, NA.
36) Message boards : Cafe SETI : 10th Planet (Message 148979)
Posted 9 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Seems all the good name suggestions have been taken. I rather liked LV-426 myself. Or Hoth. Since I don't know that much about Roman mythology and can't offer a name in that vein, I'll just have to settle for offering "Planet Bob" (Titan AE).
37) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Never Again (Message 148917)
Posted 9 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Murasaki, without 9/11, there would be no Abu Ghraib and no camp Gitmo. You are missing the whole point.


I miss no point. I don't buy complete pacifism and inaction, but I also don't buy that we should give up anything we used to hold dear to prosecute any war, including deliberate targeting of civilians, trivializing their destruction, or violation of rights we used to agree everyone has. I wrote on this very board a while ago that we seem to have lost our soul force, our concept of "death before dishonor."

And we can keep pointing fingers all back through history: if there was no Shah, if there was no support for Israel, if there was no support for the Saudis, if there was no colonialism, if there were no Crusades, etc etc. Or in Japan: if we hadn't stifled their desire to industrialize, if Commodore Perry didn't force open Japan, if Europeans hadn't tried to gain a toehold using religion to mask economic desires. If the Mongols hadn't tried to invade Japan. If If If. What matters are the actions THEY take NOW, but more importantly what actions WE take NOW. I don't rationalize my actions by what criminals do, for I am not one.

I can see that you're one of the anti-war Americans who just cannot wait to blame America first.


Try again. Reagan republican (sans the religious bent) way back when. Proud veteran too. (edit) But then, I don't really toe any party line, preferring to apply rational thought and a few moral axioms I feel are constructive to any given topic. (/edit)

Murasaki, please note that I had never said "all Japanese are guilty for the Nanjing Massacre so bombing civilians is just fine." It was you who said


You said, "I find it hard for me to shade tears for the victim of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The cause of their suffering was the Japanese imperialism and their self-proclaimed racial superiorly that started the Pacific chapter of WWII." and the rest of your post was in support of that view. That is a blanket "earned what they got" statement, and that's why I reacted the way I did.

Civilians die in war. It's unavoidable, despite what really is the best efforts of the military to try to limit collateral damage. But I don't rationalize it by anything sounding like "they deserved it". I also don't try to deflect the conversation by coming down with some abhorrent statement that some other group of victims was somehow more deserving of memorial. You want to remember the victims of Japanese occupation, such as the horrific Bataan Death March, etc, fine. I'll join you later. But don't try to put a minus on the memorial of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to do so. If you can't "shed tears" for them, then remain respectfully silent.
38) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Never Again (Message 148714)
Posted 8 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I find it hard for me to shade tears for the victim of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The cause of their suffering was the Japanese imperialism and their self-proclaimed racial superiorly that started the Pacific chapter of WWII. Like the modem day Muslims who cheer and dance in the street after the 9/11 attack in the New York city, the Japanese people were celebrating and praising the “brave” Japanese soldiers who raped and murdered over 300,000 Chinese civilians in the invasion of Nanjing in 1937.

(snip)


So, how should muslims punish the baby in your avatar for the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib, or any other misdeeds done by the leaders of the baby's country?

What you fail to understand is that, while citizens do have responsibility for the government they live under, blanket statements like "all Japanese are guilty for the Nanjing Massacre so bombing civilians is just fine" ("all non-Muslims are infidels responsible for all the blasphemies against Allah today, so they all can be destroyed") is the exact wrong logic that CAUSES things like 9/11, 3/11, and the London attacks. Whether or not you see it as "justice" or "revenge", it's the same bigotry held by the people you despise.
39) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Never Again (Message 148461)
Posted 8 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:


Perhaps USA could have thrown both bombs into the ocean right next to Tokyo or Osaka (in the ocean)... Perhaps that would still have inspired so much fear and terror to end WWII... But only god knows...
Anyway, that's my opinion...



Forgot to say something about this earlier. One does indeed wonder. Probably wouldn't have been wise to throw both bombs down, but a single, forewarned demonstration on an unimportant piece of land maybe? After all, the Los Alamos test sure made an impression on the scientists who built the thing.

Eh, who knows? Maybe the fear of something going totally wrong like the bomb not detonating and landing relatively softly in water was too risky to contemplate. Maybe it wasn't wise to demonstrate that the Japanese should be ready to intercept all small flights of bombers. Again, second guesses on people under enormous pressure.
40) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Not radio waves? (Message 148458)
Posted 8 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Like Nightlord pointed out, gamma rays, x rays, ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, microwaves, and radio wave bands are all part of the same thing, the electromagnetic spectrum. As I understand SETI, their purpose is to search the part of the spectrum around the "hydrogen line", a relatively quiet area.

I read an article in Science News many years ago on "T-rays". This is an area of the spectrum between microwave frequencies and the far infrared. This band is relatively quiet because very little naturally occurring phenomena either produce or absorb these frequencies, if I remember the article correctly. I've idly wondered if this might not be a good place to search.

Needless to say, a big problem is that if very little interferes with it, then by corrollary it's tough to build a device to transmit or receive it (look at the huge lengths they have to go through to detect neutrinos).

As for the gravity modulation thing, interesting idea. I wonder if we might detect a signal someday by a sudden unnatural change of the spin of a neutron star by something that added a peculiar amount of mass to it. Kinda a big cosmic gravitic "gong".
41) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Never Again (Message 148287)
Posted 7 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Luckily it ended with the Tsar Bomb. Once the Russians had that one exploded above Nova Zembla, the Americans quit building their bigger bombs...

Yield was 100 Megatons, but because they wanted their air-crew to survive, they put it between 50 and 57 megatons. It was told in the news as 100 megatons!


In truth, the "city killers" were largely unpopular simply because of inefficiency. Think of the geometry of an explosion: I can either have one volume of hot air that describes a certain radius of destruction on the ground, or I can have maybe six smaller spheres that describe the same volume of hot gas, but, all added up, cover a lot more area.

Two examples of this are the MIRV and the cluster-bomb. The Multiple Independently-targetable Reentry Vehicle lets one nuclear-tipped missile go up and then split its payload over a wide area. These were popular in the late cold war because they wouldn't just kill, say, downtown Manhattan, but would destroy the boroughs, airports, bases, etc around it, while being cheaper to produce than six independent missiles.

A cluster-bomb is the same thing. It splits its payload into smaller bomblets to cover a greater area on the ground. Instead of putting one big crater in a road or runway, it hoses over a few hundred feet or so, making it far harder to repair.

No, whatever you've read, the big city-killer types weren't scary to the planners of armaggeddon, they were just inefficient.
42) Message boards : SETI@home Science : High Def Radio (Message 148121)
Posted 7 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Sort of. The thing about any digital signal is its inherent ability to reject noise in the transmission channel, the result being that a the data can be accurately reproduced with a much lower signal to noise ratio than analog. I often describe it as showing the color red in a dark room versus saying the word "red" in a noisy room. In a dark room, red could be misinterpreted as various shades of the color like maroon, whereas if, however faintly, "red" is heard in a noisy room, the receiver interprets the message exactly as spoken and won't think it's maroon.

The effect this has on real-world broadcasts is a far lower power is actually needed to be received (on the order of hundreds or even thousands of times weaker) to accurately reproduce the sound. In short, the stations may have the same transmitting power, but you'll hear them much further away. So it is essentially true that the signals don't need to be as powerful.
43) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Never Again (Message 148024)
Posted 6 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I know the usual justification: the enormous casualties incurred in the Okinawan invasion foreshadowed even greater US casualties in any invasion of the home islands.

I've often wondered how an extended blockade (since their navy, air forces, and industry were smashed) and slowly starving them out would have worked, and how history would have viewed that.

I've read there was a second urgency. The Soviets were done in Europe, moving troops east. Eventually they would invade Manchuria (Aug 8, two days after Hiroshima) and the northern islands. The bombs were a windfall for the US: they would likely shock Japan into surrendering immediately and unconditionally, giving the Soviets little excuse for invasion.

According to the book "Superfortress", by the time the bombs were dropped, they accounted for "2% of the total land area devastated by aerial bombing" on mainland Japan. This was a time before targeting computers and GPS guidance, when to get a single factory or train depot nations routinely carpet-bombed entire suburbs.

We know now that nuclear weapons have a more lasting and horrific impact through radioactive effects than an equivalent amount of explosive or incendiary devices. They didn't know that back then. Literally, nobody knew.

To me, considering the attitudes of all nations at the time, use of atomic weapons was an historic inevitability at least once, if not in 1945 in Japan, then it would have been a short time later in Europe, by one side or the other, or in Korea or China when China entered the Korean War. As it actually was, there were still many people all over America who advocated their use by US forces in Korea. In that respect, the world is probably better off that two were used when only two existed. Not a justification for the decision, just something to be thankful for in retrospect.

Still, I think we have too much tendency to try to judge, to second-guess, the huge decisions others have had to make using our modern sensibilities and hindsight. The U.S., despite being directly in the war less than four years, was war-weary, and much of the rest of the world far moreso. Neither side was very concerned about civilian casualties (look up Japan's occupation record in China, which rivals the most hideous policies of the Nazis). When you're in a war, it's hard to justify incurring casualties on your side to avoid casualties on the other side. It's easy to examine documents after the fact and say "coulda-woulda-shoulda-done", but who knew THEN if there was even a signifcant faction advocating surrender? The U.S. government didn't know what the Japanese government was thinking at the time, just the crafted messages it was sending and the tenacity Japanese forces were still showing. I don't think anyone today can realistically judge whether Truman made a "good" or "bad" decision, knowing what he did and did not know and the pressures on him to act.

Hiroshima was a tragedy. Nagasaki was an even bigger tragedy (there's some discussion about whether the decision to drop on Nagasaki was based on a misinterpretation by the US of a single admittedly ambiguous word in a broadcast from the Japanese government). Both were wrapped in a larger tragedy that was World War II.

In the end I don't believe the bombs themselves are the ultimate tragedy. The ultimate tragedy lies in unrestricted industrialized warfare coupled to nationalistic fervor and lack of understanding or compassion everywhere, by all nations, lessons the entire world failed to realize, or just didn't see any way to solve, after World War I and hence brought to hideous consequence by the more powerful machines of World War II.

Here's an interesting aside: I vaguely remember reading something many many years ago saying scientists had theorized about nuclear fusion of hydrogen way back during the time of the development of the fission bomb, but they didn't know under what conditions it occurred other than high temperatures. Apparently some physicists were worried just a little that the atomic bombs could, given sufficient available hydrogen, start an uncontrolled fusion reaction in the environment. The first bomb was tested in a desert. No data available; hydrogen is very tenuous in the atmosphere. However the one dropped on August 9 was on Nagasaki, a port city, a secondary target, and with much dihydrogen monoxide available. Chew on THAT a while...

Here's an interesting page: Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
44) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Not radio waves? (Message 147931)
Posted 6 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
A laser is far more efficient in actual transmission. Despite divergence, it still does not follow the inverse square law that applies to a radiated energy like lightbulbs and stars (put simply, the strength of the energy per unit area drops as the reciprocal of the square of distance. At 2x unit distance, the strength is 1/4, at 3x, it's 1/9, etc).

The biggest problem with laser-type devices is they're enormously inefficient devices in actually generating the beam. I read somewhere that the average laser only outputs .3% of its input energy as coherent light. This "wallplug efficiency" is the major drawback both in laser-based weapons and in laser based space communications. According to a quick internet search, they're still looking at ranges of 15% or so for even the best lasers. See High efficiency pulsed laser transmitters for deep space communication for an example.

High powered lasers have to dissipate more of this waste energy, largely in heat of course, so it becomes more difficult to make more powerful lasers when you start reaching operating temperatures that can easily damage your laser device.

Other problems have to do with the fact that we have to fire this beam through an atmosphere. One of the big problems with the high powered lasers used in the Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) experiments is as the laser fires through the atmosphere, it causes the air to heat up. When the air heats up, it refracts the beam, thereby causing the spot you first fired at not to be the one you're aiming at a few nanoseconds later.

Since there's a practical and fairly low limit to the power we output, here's where the divergence actually becomes a problem. You'd want a machine with some divergence so at interstellar distances you're blanketing a good chunk of the destination planetary system, but since you're actual energy out the aperture is woefully limited, you may not get a strong enough signal per unit area to be detected.

Sticky problems. I'd have to read a bit more and maybe work with a few of the numbers to see how practical lasers in specific would be at interstellar distances. So far as I know, NASA has been solely relying on conventional microwave emitters with waveguides and parabolic "mirrors" (the ubiquitous "satellite dish") focusing the beam for conventional "short range" space communications, i.e. everything we've sent out so far. Speaking of microwaves, looks like we've unfortunately finally lost contact with Pioneer 10.
45) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Never Again (Message 147719)
Posted 6 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
As for the subject of the thread, in 1984, my high school Asian Studies teacher, who was in the USAAF during WWII and the beginning of the occupation (WAAF I think the term is. Can't remember exactly), described the devastated landscape of Hiroshima to us from firsthand account.

Years later, she visited a museum (either there or in Nagasaki, I can't remember) and described a statue made from Japanese equivalent of pennies sent by children from all over Japan for the memorial. It was in the shape of a child raising hands to the heavens. ([EDIT] It isn't the similar statue that was dedicated in the 1990s. I've been searching for a link to one she described in 1984[/EDIT])

She was tough as nails as a teacher, and it's the only time I ever saw her break down and have to take a moment to compose herself.

Many people tend to make light of the subject. I guess it's easy to be cavalier about it when you don't have to see it firsthand.
46) Message boards : Cafe SETI : It's just not funny any more... (Message 147714)
Posted 6 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
BS!


Administrator of BS!

BS=Bachelors in STUPIDITY?


According to Heinlein (who may have plagiarized from yet another source):

BS = Bull S**t
MS = More S**t
PhD = Piled higher and deeper.

I think it was in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls", but I'm not sure. May have been "Time Enough For Love".
47) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Would we find us? (Message 147229)
Posted 5 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Am I wasting electricity crunching SETI numbers?


My humble opinion on that score is written in the bottom part of my profile.
48) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Environmental damage seen from shuttle. (Message 147171)
Posted 5 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
We need more trees to filter and replenish the atmosphere, and less concrete to reflect heat back into the atmosphere.


And herein lies the rub. Why do trees get pulled out and concrete put in? More people. Urban sprawl. "Economic development" of both rich and poor countries by deforestation to ranch or farm. All other things being equal, if we cut pollutants by 25% per capita in 50 years, but the population is up another 33%, have we gained anything?
49) Message boards : Cafe SETI : It's just not funny any more... (Message 146675)
Posted 4 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:


Wellcome back, Murasaki! Nice to see you again! Did you see that you were UOTD for some time ago? We did a Congratulations thread for you.



Well I got the e-mail and got a snapshot of the front page before it disappeared, but I didn't hit the boards. Thanks to everyone. :)
50) Message boards : Cafe SETI : It's just not funny any more... (Message 146291)
Posted 3 Aug 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Somewhat of an ironic topic for a thread for me, as I decided for awhile that I needed to be away doing other things (and yet others were thrust upon me).

But one thing I have to say I don't get-- and it isn't just Ageless that's has said it-- is removing BOINC or detaching from a project just because one doesn't like the forums. If I don't like what's going on in a BBS, I just don't read it anymore. But frankly nobody here determines, in my mind, the worthiness of contributing to a project, just contributing to the forums themselves. I will admit that I detached from CPDN because I had an error I couldn't get help on to eliminate, but that's a horse of a different color, really.

I've been "away" for awhile, every blue moon logging in to sample the "tone" and maybe catch a few science links, but nothing ever written here has ever made me want to detach from SETI. Just my two centavos.
51) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Palm-sized Nuclear Fusion (Message 112092)
Posted 17 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Very nice. The elements they're using are kinda exotic, and I know tantalum is problematic environmentally (dipped tantalum capacitors are used on some electronic assemblies, but they try to limit when they're used). Still, this could be something neat.

Now we have hot fusion via tokamaks and (theoretically according to some) cold fusion in some small devices. Would this be "warm fusion"?
52) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New Thread.... (Message 111749)
Posted 16 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Hmm, it says its diodes on the left side hurt and need replacing...
53) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Where are you from? (Message 111587)
Posted 16 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I live in Venice, a little town in southwest Florida, between Tampa and Fort Myers. Any other Floridians around here?

A long long time ago, me. I was born in Largo, and lived a good chunk of time in St Petersburg. My parents still live in New Port Richey, 37 miles north of St Pete on US 19.
54) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 111585)
Posted 16 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves
Scheherezad-ie had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves
You got a brand of magic never fails
You got some power in your corner now
Some heavy ammunition in your camp
You got some punch, pizzazz, yahoo and how
See all you gotta do is rub that lamp
And I'll say

Mister Aladdin, sir
What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order
Jot it down
You ain't never had a friend like me
No no no

Life is your restaurant
And I'm your maitre d'
C'mon whisper what it is you want
You ain't never had a friend like me

Yes sir, we pride ourselves on service
You're the boss
The king, the shah
Say what you wish
It's yours! True dish
How about a little more Baklava?

Have some of column "A"
Try all of column "B"
I'm in the mood to help you dude
You ain't never had a friend like me

Can your friends do this?
Do your friends do that?
Do your friends pull this out their little hat?
Can your friends go, poof?
Well, looky here
Can your friends go, Abracadabra, let 'er rip
And then make the sucker disappear?

So doncha sit there slack jawed, buggy eyed
I'm here to answer all your midday prayers
You got me bona fide, certified
You got a genie for your chare d'affaires
I got a powerful urge to help you out
So what-cha wish? I really wanna know
You got a list that's three miles long, no doubt
Well, all you gotta do is rub like so - and oh

Mister Aladdin, sir, have a wish or two or three
I'm on the job, you big nabob
You ain't never had a friend, never had a friend
You ain't never had a friend, never had a friend
You ain't never... had a... friend... liiiike... meeee
You ain't never had a friend like me, hah!
55) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Quote of the ....... (Message 111269)
Posted 15 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
"It's naat a toomuh. It's naat."
56) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New Thread.... (Message 111136)
Posted 14 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
What, you're not looking forward to a retelling of War of the Worlds, updated with the latest Hollywood glitter? Okay, neither am I really.

I wonder if there are statistics somewhere that give percentages of new releases in movies and TV that are actually remakes of old shows. Seems to me this list had a lot higher percentage than in previous years.
57) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Quote of the ....... (Message 111013)
Posted 14 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
There are some quotes at the bottom of this page. My favorite was in the trivia section though: "I'm working on that."
58) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Wristwatch Watch (Message 110847)
Posted 13 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ditto for me, except I don't even have a watch. :)


So the villain archaeologist in Raiders of the Lost Ark was right: "Archaeology is not an exact science. It does not deal in time schedules." :)

Since everyone is giving the model of their watches, mine is an old, beat up Timex Atlantis backlit LCD. I've had to change the battery once in over ten years (so it's about due).

When I was taking flying lessons, my mother gave me another watch with a built in analog flight computer (for those who've never seen, a manual flight computer is basically like a slide rule with wheels instead of slides, used for computing fuel usage, time to waypoint, etc). However, it's so heavy and bulky that it's practically unwearable.
59) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 110764)
Posted 13 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
One of my favorite songs:

Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone.
Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you.
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song.
I just can't remember who to send it to.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain,
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end,
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
But I always thought that I'd see you again.

Won't you look down upon me, Jesus.
You've got to help me make a stand.
You've just got to see me through another day.
My body's aching and my time is at hand,
And I won't make it any other way.

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain,
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end,
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
But I always thought that I'd see you again.

Been walking my mind to an easy time my back turned towards the sun.
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around.
Well, there's hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things to come.
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

I've seen fire and I've seen rain,
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end,
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
But I always thought that I'd see you, baby, one more time again.
60) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Wristwatch Watch (Message 110744)
Posted 13 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I hate cell phones. I hate pagers. My career field often makes the latter unavoidable, but when I'm not on-call I wear a digital wristwatch.
61) Message boards : Cafe SETI : BBCode! (Message 110536)
Posted 12 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Just read the BBCode Guide for options. :)

Bookmarked. Thanks. :)
62) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 110394)
Posted 12 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> My gripe is Maxtor. Makers of failed harddrives everywhere.

Flying formation with ya on this one. My Maxtor 120GB SATA died after a month of operation. Having never experienced a crash so soon after install, I stupidly didn't have backups of the important stuff (my previous drive was reformatted for TiVo/Linux). Luckily I fiddled with the hardware a bit, and got all the data off of it, though it took FOREVER to transfer.
63) Message boards : Cafe SETI : BBCode! (Message 110393)
Posted 12 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Does this mean I have to learn something? Ack. HTML is hard enough to dredge out of the wetware memory banks... :)
64) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Suppression of Science (Message 110349)
Posted 12 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
It isn't surprising that scientists tend to be parochial about their fields. Let's face it, if EVERY thought got published, we'd get buried in, and be funding research for, quite a collection of unsubstantiated hypothesis, like the complicated and ludicrous hypotheses of the flat-earth society.

Moreover, let's each suppose we were the ones working on theories for forty years that increasingly seem to be unsupported by the latest data. The ideal scientist would be able to accept that much of their life's work has been less than useful, but it's hard for us real human being to.

Suppose, for instance, that new evidence crops up destroying the mathematics of string theory. How easily would this group, which has fought so hard to gain acceptance, accept that the theory didn't work? I'm not making an argument against string theory, mind you. I'm just trying to call to mind a group that has a lot of pride invested in their work.

It was probably no different for those working under the "ether" model of electromagnetism, or any other theory that has been invalidated.

I'm not saying that many scientists couldn't afford to be a little more open-minded, but I'm saying I can understand why they might be a little stubborn.
65) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 110325)
Posted 12 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Long as I remember,
The rain's been comin' down.
Clouds of myst'ry pouring,
Confusion on the ground.
Good men through the ages,
Trying to find the sun,
And I wonder,
Still I wonder,
Who'll stop the rain.

I went down Virginia,
Seeking shelter from the storm.
Caught up in the fable,
I watched the tower grow.
Five year plans and new deals,
Wrapped in golden chains.
And I wonder,
Still I wonder,
Who'll stop the rain.

Heard the singers playing.
How we cheered for more.
The crowd had rushed together,
Trying to keep warm.
Still the rain kept pouring,
Falling on my ears.
And I wonder,
Still I wonder,
Who'll stop the rain.
66) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Donations (Message 110230)
Posted 11 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I for got about that too! Of course I would die if I went back to dial-up and
> I feel bad for those who have it. I am still agast at the cost of cable and
> high speed.

On a recently distributed flyer, they again advertised $30 a month with an asterisk for cable. Of course I had to go to the website to find out what the real price will be after the first three months. Turns out, it's still five dollars over the cost of my dialup ISP and extra phone line combined. And that, of course, doesn't cover the bridge and the connection charge. Considering it's convenient to have a second line for other reasons, I still can't see switching.
67) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hello world! (Message 110226)
Posted 11 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I'll still go with Robert Heinlein's simpler axiom: "Rub her feet."
68) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED (Message 109986)
Posted 11 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Too many friggin rules.....

15. No barking.
16. No growling.
17. You will not lift your leg to anything in this house.
18. This is not your room.
19. No slobbering.
20. No chewing.
21. You will wear a flea collar.
22. This is not your room.
23. No begging for food.
24. No sniffing of crotches.
25. You will not drink from the toilet.
26. This is not your room...
69) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 109981)
Posted 11 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
So you're saying the new title should have had a rhyme in it? Like "this thread you post in to gripe, about traffic and spelling and other such tripe."
70) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hello world! (Message 109924)
Posted 11 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
program Hello (output);

begin
WriteLn('Hello, World!');
end.
71) Message boards : Cafe SETI : A really Big Shoe or the fungus among Us (Message 109859)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Shouldn't Fungus be Fungi? If Virus is Virii, Hey NA help me out here.

A mushroom walks into a bar. The bartender shouts, "Hey! We don't serve vegetables in here." The mushroom replies, "But I'm a fungi."
72) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hello world! (Message 109855)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
<blockquote>Ok so I couldn't resist this little dittie:

implicit none
write(*,10)
10 format('Hello, world.')
END

</blockquote>
That looks so familiar, but I can't place it.
73) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hello world! (Message 109850)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> echo hello world

> .o0(who needs quotes)

How 'bout making it continuous?:

prompt Hello World $p$g
74) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hello world! (Message 109841)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Oh boy, I still get the easy one:
>
?"Hello world

Can't get easier than [i]that[/i], and yes, the end quote can be omitted.


I was shooting portability, which is always tricky in BASIC, so I included line numbers, the end statement, and the proper syntax. Though the DO-LOOP actually didn't exist, as I recall, in my first version, which was TRS-80 BASIC, so I guess I did use a "modern" GW-BASIC convenience after all. :)

[EDIT]
Yep, I screwed up. DO-LOOP didn't exist in TRS-80 Level II BASIC. Damn. Got an F on my project. :(

TRS-80 BASIC [/EDIT]
75) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hello world! (Message 109787)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Oh boy, I still get the easy one:

10 CLS
20 PRINT "Hello World!"
30 DO
40 a$=INKEY$
50 LOOP UNTIL (a$<>"")
60 END
76) Message boards : Number crunching : Anyone know what happened to Climate Predictor? (Message 109626)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I was getting peculiar errors earlier tonight (I didn't copy down the specifics), but it seems to be working now.
77) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 109625)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Okay, it's just a little pinprick.
There'll be no more "AA-aa-aaah", but you may feel a little sick...
78) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New Thread.... (Message 109624)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Would you say he was going in fairly "well armed"?
79) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 109621)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
That's just wrong on SO many levels.
80) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 109617)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I came here for a gripe, but this is abuse!


If it makes you feel any better, sometimes I'm the jackass who pulls out suddenly to make a left turn in front of the big truck. Not so much nowadays, but boy when I lived in New England... :)
81) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 109612)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I'm sorry, NA, but I have to, because it just didn't look right:

Merriam-Webster Online: Index
Wikipedia: Index

"Indecies" appears to be a common misspelling among programmers.

But I'm with ya on moral crusaders part.
82) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New Thread.... (Message 109564)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
In the corner, the bleary-looking penguin's mind is going in strange directions. Cat-wolf hybrids... disguised Vulcans drinking alcohol with all its "dubious benefits"... Solo, something about Norwegians flying solo... "What part brings you to these?"... I really should get more sleep...
83) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 109553)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> No, you're safe here! That was not me! But never do that again!

When my ex was in England (Alconbury RAF), I'm the one who got stuck with all the phone bills, including the one where she tells me she's decided to sleep around. Years later, I'm in Japan, she's stateside and having problems that have nothing to do with me, for some reason my MOTHER finds out and tells me I MUST call, and I get stuck with a $400 phone bill AGAIN. There ain't no justice.
84) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 109516)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> One night I came home after have been out, she had left a message on my
> answering maschine asking me to call her back, because she couldn't quite
> remember how to insert a picture in a Word document!
.oO( )

You do gotta love the people for whom the menu selection "Insert"->"Picture" isn't a bit of a giveaway. I empathize. :)

[EDIT] Advice to anyone who tries this: Gauge their level of competence with a simple insert before you bother trying to explain how to insert frames and wrap text. There's a lot of minds out there that just can't handle it. [/EDIT]
85) Message boards : Number crunching : Where did you get your system? (Message 109510)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Sorry, can't help with sites. In the PC realm, I've always put together Frankenstein computers, using whatever I can get in the local area.

I agree with Ampoliros that you should get the best motherboard you can and other things can be swapped over time. I'll caveat that I've never changed out just a processor due to the pricey nature of them, and I generally try to buy the fastest I can afford the first time, so it tends to be near the max of what my motherboard can handle anyhow.
86) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 109497)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Maybe, She somehow found out I wanted time to build a little Farm and she
> decided to keep me busy with other things. Did any of you tell here????
> HUH??

In-no-cent.
87) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The GRIPE Thread is hereby CLOSED! (Message 109493)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I've had many an occasion where someone calls me to fix their PC over the
> phone. My brother is the biggest culprit. He knows next to nothing about

I bet nearly everyone in this forum has a story about that. My particular favorite, other than when I actually worked PC repair, was my brother-in-law calling and asking me to help. Walking him thru, so many wierd errors showed up, from BSDs to program errors to lockups to even an occasional POST error. I finally asked him to remove the cover and tell me what he saw. In short it turns out the kids had opened the computer and busted the memory slots, then just set the memory back in place and closed it up.

As for a gripe, well, that would probably be my parents signing up for AOL AGAIN last week after they've been abused twice by the service, completely ignoring my advice, then calling me up asking for my help troubleshooting it. I of course did so with little protest, so it helps to gripe here. :)
88) Message boards : Number crunching : classic vs. boinc thoughts (Message 109486)
Posted 10 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Could you send me a dump using filemon.exe from www.sysinternals.com?

Fun tool site. I downloaded filemon and found that CPDN is having some sort of error:

6:15:39.218 PM hadsm3um_4.12_w:1984 OPEN C:program filesBOINCprojectsclimateprediction.net32cf_200164448lockfile SHARING VIOLATION Options: OpenIf Access: All

Repeats many times a second. I posted a question over there about it. This is not my area, so I have no idea what it means or if it's important. See what happens when you put matches in the hands of kids? :)
89) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Thread of the Day (Message 109454)
Posted 9 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Thread of the day is: Thread of the day
90) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Recommend a life experience (Message 109374)
Posted 9 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Flying above Mach 1. An F-14 or F-18 does nicely.

Used to be I'd say it wasn't possible for non-military types to do supersonic unless on the Concorde, which doesn't (err, more like DIDN'T) count. However, I hear the Russians will take you up in a MiG for a price. That price from what I hear is still a little stiff for ordinary folk, though, but it IS still possible.
91) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Recommend a life experience (Message 109182)
Posted 9 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
What was a great experience you remember in your life? What do you recommend everyone try at least once?

Here's mine: On a clear day, go down to the local small airport. Rent a plane and a flight instructor. Take a lesson. You don't have to go for a pilot's license or enroll in ground school, but EVERYONE should hold the yoke of an aircraft in their hands at least once in their life and make a few turns. I've done it, and I've convinced friends to do it. It may scare you, it may enthrall you, but everyone who has done it knows it isn't something you forget you've done.
92) Message boards : Number crunching : STOP forced user update of seti projects as device gigabitethernet0_1: 66.28.250.121: cogent ssl net is dying on its feet (Message 109178)
Posted 9 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > haha, you should try being a pilot! Height is measured in feet, horizontal
> > distance in nautical miles, speed in knots, pressure in hectopascals...
> > unless you are in the USA then pressure is millibars or in china then height
> > is now meters! there's a hell of a differance for an international pilot
> > flying at 3000ft compared to 3000m Hmmmm silly international standards!

> Well, now you're talking pilot stuff....
> How about "flight-levels".....

Or "angels"...
93) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 109050)
Posted 8 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> (SITTIN' ON) THE DOCK OF THE BAY
> - written by Otis Redding and Steve Cropper
> - lyrics as recorded by Otis Redding December 7, 1967, just three
> days before his death in a plane crash outside Madison, Wisconsin
> - #1 for 4 weeks in 1968

I knew I'd seen that song somewhere before. :) It's a great song, and it deserves a repeat play. I didn't know the details behind it. Thanks for including it! :)
94) Message boards : Cafe SETI : High cost of fuel (Message 109036)
Posted 8 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Ahh, but now we have nuclear submarines, and missiles that run on solid fuel or liquid hydrogen. The troops may still have to get out and hoof it, but the tomahawks will still be flying.
95) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The SCI Fi Channel (Message 108810)
Posted 8 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> isnt bad scifi better than none?

I'm not so certain of that...

Quark

The Creature Wasn't Nice, aka Spaceship

Logan's Run

Saturn 3

Suburban Commando

Galactica 1980

Starflight: The Plane That Couldn't Land
96) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Anyone like Movies? (Message 108771)
Posted 8 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Okay, I'm willing to admit it. There are two movies that might be considered romantic comedies that I really like tremendously: As Good As It Gets and Roxanne. I also like Joe vs the Volcano a lot, though I don't consider it a romantic comedy. You'll notice all three of those are mostly from the guy's point of view.

Bridget Jones' Diary was rather funny, and When Harry Met Sally was okay. Other than that, I'm afraid more classic style rom-coms like Sleepless in Seattle or Kate and Leopold are pretty much lost on me. As one comedian put it, "Sure, anyone can be romantic for two hours. Try the same couple four years later. 'Well I wish I'd never GONE to the Empire State Building!!!' 'Oh, YEAH?!? Well I wish you'd JUMPED OFF of it!!!' "
97) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The SCI Fi Channel (Message 108734)
Posted 8 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
My Scifi Channel favorites (in order):

Battlestar Galactica (new)
Stargate SG-1
The Invisible Man

People probably don't remember (or just didn't like) the Invisible Man, but I really enjoyed Vincent Ventresca's and Paul Ben-Victor's performances in this series. Though there were parts of this show, like most any show I suppose, that I would have eliminated, overall I found it very entertaining.

[EDIT]I did like Farscape a lot, and do like Stargate Atlantis, but just not quite as much as the three I mentioned.[/EDIT]

My top three favorite reruns on this channel are probably:

The Twilight Zone
Star Trek:TOS
Forever Knight
98) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed! (Message 108688)
Posted 8 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> hey!...anybody out there?...anyone at all?

You have reached the desktop of Murasaki. I am currently at home now, so at the tone you may start talking to a live human. *BEEP*
99) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 108629)
Posted 7 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Hate to post two in a row, but I woke up with a really wierd memory this morning. "Billy and the Boingers, originally known as Deathtöngue until the U.S. Senate Porn Rock Committee made them change it."

Billy and the Boingers (MP3 on this page)

A bird on the bass.
A tongue, what a face.
At best the music could be described as lame.
Well sure we look disgusting,
But whose chops are we busting?
In a year, maybe two, we'll seem tame.

And three years down the track,
We'll be a Las Vegas lounge act.
We'll be back.
We'll be back,
'Cause we're the Boingers.

Jimmy dropped his pants,
And Ozzy dines on bats,
And Hendrix played guitar with his teeth.
The Deadheads got their Jerry,
And Mom's got her Barry,
And Ronnie listens to guys like Falwell and Meese.

But if you don't know by now,
Bill bit the head off a cow.
That's no lie.
That's no lie,
'Cause we're the Boingers.

Was Bowie ever a fairy?
Was Debbie ever Harry?
Was Elvis ever the King? Let's not be reflective.
Does Barbra wish she was a goy?
Is George really a boy?
Is Filthy ever Divine? It's all subjective.

The answers to all this,
Lie with their psychoanalysts.
Just relax.
Just relax.
I can't relax!
I can't relax,
'Cause I'm a Boinger.
100) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Where are you from? (Message 108624)
Posted 7 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Well I'll be dipped! Nope, using XP and that's a "feature" I never knew
> about. It worked! Thanks!!!! >:-)

Yeah, there's a lot of things, especially shortcut keystrokes, Microsoft doesn't publish so you just have to luck out running across it. One of my favorites is (alt)+(enter), which will bring up the "Properties" window of a highlighted icon, so if that icon happens to be My Computer you can pull up the System Properties/Device Manager, for Internet Explorer it does Internet Settings, etc. I knew nothing about that keystroke until a colleague showed it to me at work one day. It saved a lot of time on machines where the mouse wasn't working, in conjunction with (alt)+(F4) (universal close window) and the tab and (alt)+(tab) thing.
101) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Superman Returns! (Message 108432)
Posted 7 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The only movie of Bryan Singer that I knew about was The Usual
> Suspects
. I've had the Apt Pupil for some time now, but didn't
> know Bryan Singer directed it. It's not one of my favorites but I thought it
> was well made.

He also did X-Men and X2. X-Men was only his second feature film, and IMHO he did a great job getting the best out of actors of many different levels, from the unknown ones to old vets like Patrick Stewart. On top of that, he made the movies interesting to people who've never read the comics, which I can't say for other comic book adaptations.

Bryan Singer

[EDIT] Hmm, I had seen on an entertainment news show that X-Men was his second directorship of a feature film, but that doesn't seem to agree with the IMDB database. Curious. [/EDIT]
102) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Where are you from? (Message 108402)
Posted 7 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> There's another thread here for displaying what you have on your desktop. I
> wanted to do mine but can't find a way to do a screen capture. Got one
> program but it puts this big block of gunk on the image if it's not registered. >:-(

(Shift)+(PrtScn) doesn't work? That should copy your current view to the clipboard for pasting into Paint.

Or are you using a Mac or Linux or something like that?
103) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 108398)
Posted 7 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Definitely a dated song, but still fun. Used to love to drive to this song in my old Nova...

One foot on the brake and one on the gas, hey!
Well, there's too much traffic, I can't pass, no!
So I tried my best illegal move,
Well, baby, black and white come and touched my groove again!

Go on and write me up a 125,
Post my face wanted dead or alive,
Take my license, all that jive.
I can't drive 55! Oh No!

So I signed my name on number 24, hey!
Yeah the judge said, "Boy, just one more,
I'm gonna throw your ass in the city joint."
Looked me in the eye, said, "You get my point?"
I said, "Yeah! Oh yeah!"

Write me up a 125,
Post my face wanted dead or alive,
Take my license, all that jive.
I can't drive 55! Oh, yeah!

I can't drive 55!
I can't drive 55!
I can't drive 55!
I can't drive 55!

When I drive that slow, you know it's hard to steer,
And I can't get get my car out of second gear.
What used to take two hours now takes all day.
It took me 16 hours to get to L.A.

Go on and write me up a 125,
Post my face wanted dead or alive,
Take my license, all that jive.
I can't drive 55!

No, no, no,
I can't drive...
(I can't drive 55!)
I can't drive...
(I can't drive 55!)
I can't drive 55!
104) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Superman Returns! (Message 108392)
Posted 7 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I'm not sure I'd have started this project while Smallville is still on the air. Seems to me it might put some people off, having two differing storylines for the same fictional character going at the same time. And Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor? I dunno. Well, I'm skeptical, but I guess if anyone can make a success of this one, Bryan Singer can.
105) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite Day of the Week Thread (Message 108260)
Posted 6 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I would have thought you would grace us with the eighth day, murasaki.........

Only "eighth day" I recalled came from the Bible:

"And on the eighth day, God created Woman. And when Man got bored with Woman, God created Monday Night Football."

Wait, maybe that was Mad Magazine...
106) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Flyers of the Day (Message 108255)
Posted 6 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> If you ever get a chance to see the Thunderbirds in action you should. It is an amazing show..

It was a bright summer Friday, near noon, at Keesler AFB in Mississippi. I was walking back from the chow hall. I worked mid shift, so this was the start of my weekend already.

I've never been in actual combat, but when a shadow crossed the sun and there was a huge *BOOOM!*, reflex took over and I hit the deck. After a few seconds, I got up and moved forward to look around the corner and see what had happened, just in time to see the T-Birds diamond formation going vertical over the flightline, doing a few impromptu maneuvers to announce their arrival at the base for the open house/airshow that weekend.

Later that day I was on-shift as dispatcher at the Keesler Aero Club. Three of the Thunderbird pilots and one of our flight instructors, a WWII P-51 veteran, came in and checked out our Cessna 172. They said that whenever possible they check out a base's aero club aircraft to fly the local area and scope out their navigation points for their show.

After their flight, they came back in, checked in the plane, and left. At that point the flight instructor just sat down and started laughing, and said to me, "It's so funny, watching these jet jockeys try to figure out again what a rudder is for."

Okay, so maybe you have to be a pilot to get why that's funny. :)
107) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite Day of the Week Thread (Message 108107)
Posted 6 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Aha! A full set. Excellent work, people.
108) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed! (Message 108088)
Posted 6 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Well, that should be really easy to fix. Thinking about it, I definitely agree it
> should be up at the top instead of all the way down here at the bottom.

Hey, if you're granting wishes, how about an extra setting in forum prefs that just puts up unread messages, with a button to show entire thread when needed? That'd really help us dialup people. :)
109) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Cloud Formation of the Day (Message 108079)
Posted 6 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
On the computers of most people who have Windows XP, there's a picture meant to be used for a backdrop called Azul.bmp. In the upper left, there's a cloud formation that looks sorta like a cartoon turtle. Just to the right of it reminds me of the floating rock with the castle on top in the painting "Castle in the Pyrenees". On the right there's a cloud that looks like Africa.

Okay, it's all a stretch, but most of the time I saw this picture I was zoned out staring at it after a hard day's work and not looking forward to a two hour drive home through rush hour traffic.
110) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite Day of the Week Thread (Message 108075)
Posted 6 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Wednesday's Song
by John Frusciante

You'll make it through the day
See things another way and behold
Listen to Wednesday's Song
This night you go home alone
How the sane go upright
How you look another night
You're back under my hat
And even knowing that you're a whore
Nothing ever meant more
Than switching rooms through a door
Out into another one
Frames flash inward
And you know
I have seen the world enough
I've drowned in my throughts alot
Deep in rains that swirl above
I canceled heaven I concede
Another word to say
When everything's O.K. you go down
And pulling up the slack
And never coming back
An alarm
Ringing to set the sun
No one ever becomes
What others thought they should've been
Inside they're what they can see
You know I do miss this girl
To show I am in a swirl of sun
Being what I've got
The joy
I canceled heaven I concede
Everything that I belive
I canceled heaven I concede.
-------------------------------

That'll work for Wednesday. Now we're just missing Thursday.
111) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite Day of the Week Thread (Message 108071)
Posted 6 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Has anyone ever written a song about Wednesday or Thursday? Those are the only two days I can't think of a song for.

Monday - "Monday, Monday", "Manic Monday", etc.
Tuesday - "Tuesday Afternoon" (The Moody Blues)
Wednesday - ?
Thursday - ?
Friday - "Thank God It's Friday"
Saturday - "Another Saturday Night", "Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting", etc.
Sunday - "Sunday, Bloody Sunday"
112) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Got gas....? (Message 107889)
Posted 5 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I like the idea of being able to use the existing gasoline-based infrastructure to distribute a fuel that can be used in fuel cell vehicles like ethanol. However, I read somewhere that the carbon tends to get into the fuel cell and deteriorates the catalyst, which is the working and expensive part of the cell (as I recall, it has to be made with a significant amount of platinum).

Types of fuel cells

Platinum metals review
113) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Where are you from? (Message 107462)
Posted 4 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > I landed in Washington State because I was assigned to McChord AFB.
>
> Are you still in? I have some friends who did a few years at McChord.

I've been out since 1997. After all the places I've lived, I realized I liked this area the best so I stayed here instead of having them ship me back east. I still live just about a block away from one of the base housing areas.
114) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed! (Message 107288)
Posted 4 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Thank you Dan.. Another day older and another day deeper in debt..
>
> .o0(ohhh wait we aren't supposed to sing in here)

Eh, screwem.

Happy birthday to you.
You live in a zoo.
You're plastered, you ba****d.
Happy birthday to you.

(That's one my mum taught me)
115) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Got gas....? (Message 107284)
Posted 4 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
This is old news, but in case someone missed it.


Hydrogen Economy in Iceland
116) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Where are you from? (Message 107240)
Posted 4 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Well that does seem to settle it. Rom is the closest one to me. About an hour and a half drive from me if traffic is marginally kind (I had a store I serviced in Bellevue at Crossroads Mall, so I'm very familiar with how marginal that kindness gets). Second closest would be Athlon Rob, a 2.5 to 3hr drive at highway speeds, I assume. When you said "South of Portland", you meant like Multnomah or Oregon City or something yes, not Salem?

[EDIT] Oops. Keeping with the topic of the forum, I'm ORIGINALLY from Largo, Florida, lived in that area a few years, as well as Nashville, TN, and Topeka, Kansas, but through high school I lived in Plymouth, Massachusetts (Pilgrims, the rock, no I don't wear belt buckles on my shoes, I'm not a tourist, I live here, and I don't answer questions...) I landed in Washington State because I was assigned to McChord AFB.[/EDIT]
117) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Where are you from? (Message 107200)
Posted 3 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Yeah, I still live in Redmond, Washington.

AHA!!! So I AM the barrier to communication between our excellent developers here. (ref: a very old joke) :)
118) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Humans as Aliens? (Message 107176)
Posted 3 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Also, Microcephaly always results in a reduced Cranium, they are not normal
> sized craniums with small brains, the Cranium and Brain are proportaional in
> size, also those suffering from Microcephaly have severally reduced Brain

For one, I wasn't suggesting your "hobbits" were just microcephalic humans. [EDIT] Although doing a more refined web search and finding the articles, I can see why you'd jump to that conclusion. Sorry for being so obscure, but I didn't know of the controversy. [/EDIT]

According to the researcher I was speaking to, who was doing this kind of research, neither of your statements about smaller cranium size always accompanying smaller brain size nor invariably reduced IQ are accurate. While "microcephaly" indicates both brain and cranial cavity reduction, this doesn't necessarily have to be the case (and if there's a separate name for the condition I'm describing, I don't know what it is). There are some people whose brains are simply suspended in greater volumes of fluid.

In any case, if you read through the link I referred to, it indicates the relationship between crude volume measurements and psychological factors such as IQ, perception, specialization, motor skill, etc are far more complicated than commonly represented by previous theory.

My whole point was you can't just measure a creature's cranial volume and tell what they could or could not do. Such correlations don't match up even in a single identified species, such as H. sapiens, let alone across species boundaries. I believe that was your point too, yes?
119) Message boards : Cafe SETI : NASA telescope/camera aircraft (Message 107139)
Posted 3 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Stephen, I hate to drift off-topic, but I just noticed the mountain in the photo for your avatar looks like a volcano cone. Is that Tahoma/Mt Rainier? It's hard for me to tell.

We had C-141s here at McChord AFB (I still live just over the fence). They began replacing them with the C-17s when I was still in (I was in a tenant unit, not the airlift wing).
120) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Humans as Aliens? (Message 107125)
Posted 3 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The diminutive Homo Floresiensis found barely 18 months ago shows us that even
> with a brain of reduced size, the thought process of these miniture Homo
> Erectus was a lot more sophisticated and advanced than anyone thought
> possible.

Just wanted to add to this part of the discussion. Years before this recent announcement, I was talking with a doctor of neurology, who told me about Microcephaly and how this "small brain" condition can be present in people with normal sized craniums (anyone of us could have this condition, which usually is only revealed by MRI or other inspection). She also pointed out that it doesn't manifest itself statistically as lower I.Q. The article referenced indicates the same thing.
121) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia - electronic games (Message 107097)
Posted 3 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Arcade favs: Tron, Asteroids Deluxe, Missile Command, Galaxian, Galaga, Berzerk, Robotron, Mad Planets, Xevious, Spy Hunter, Major Havoc, Star Wars, Ikari Warriors, Time Pilot, and oh so many others. Didn't get into most of the driving games until Sega released Virtua Racer in the mid '90s, which was the first arcade driver I remember with a really precise force-feedback setup (I can describe the mechanism if anyone cares; it's remarkably simple). Also helped that I repaired the games in the mid 90s, so I could chalk up many service games :). Didn't like pinball games until Addams Family came out in the '90s (running through the Addams Family service menu soundcheck, there were two back to back sound clips that always brought a chuckle: "It has to warm up" "so it can KILL you!!!")

Yes, I have MAME. :)

Console favs: Atari 2600 games such as Combat, Space Invaders, Laser Blast, and Pitfall. I bought a nostalgia Atari joystick two years ago that runs off battery and has ten of the old games built in, like Circus Atari, Adventure, and Yar's Revenge. My Atari 5200 was fun but short-lived.

Computer: Going back to the 80's, there was one game that was overwhelmingly fun for me on the TRS-80 model III. It was called Invasion Orion, and it was just a crude tactical starship simulator programmed in BASIC. Their version of "Star Trek" was also fun because it was machine code and ran in real time.

Handheld: I had a Coleco Football game, of course, but my favorite was my little "Battlestar Galactica: Space Alert" game. Simple 3x7 matrix of LEDs that simulate Cylons coming at the Galactica and you having to shoot them as far away as possible.
122) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Where are you from? (Message 107083)
Posted 3 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I'm in Oregon, a bit south of Portland... the nearest cruncher I can think of
> to me would be Rom... and nope, we haven't met, although I did meet FreeLarry

I'm not sure where Rom lives, but I live 15 minutes south of Tacoma on I-5. From what I understand he worked for Microsoft at one time. Does he still live in Washington?
123) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What's On Jesus' iPod? (Message 106802)
Posted 3 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
We're missing a song that Jesus would have on his iPod. My other post in karaoke reminded me of it, because it's by Ray Stevens, the same singer as the Streak:

Woke up this morning, turned on the TV set.
There in living color was something I can't forget.
This man was preaching at me, yeah, laying on the charm,
Asking me for twenty, with ten thousand on his arm.

He wore designer clothing and a big smile on his face,
Selling me salvation while the band sang 'Amazing Grace'.
Asking me for money, when he had all the signs of wealth.
I almost wrote a check out, but then I asked myself...

Would He wear a pinky ring? Would He drive a fancy car?
Would His wife wear furs and diamonds? Would His dressing room have a star?
If He came back tomorrow, there's something I'd like to know,
Can ya tell me would Jesus wear a rolex on His television show?

Would Jesus be political if He came back to Earth,
Have His second home in Palm Springs, try to hide His worth,
Take money from those poor folks if He comes back again,
And admit He's talked to all those preachers who say they've been talking to Him?

Just ask yourself would He wear a pinky ring? Would He drive a fancy car?
Would His wife wear furs and diamonds? Would His dressing room have a star?
If He came back tomorrow, there's something I'd like to know,
Could ya tell me would Jesus wear a rolex,
Would Jesus wear a rolex,
Would Jesus wear a rolex on His television show?

(Ray Stevens did a lot of great songs)
124) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 106776)
Posted 3 May 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
What can I say? Inspired by the XXX thread...

(Reporter):
Hello, everyone, this is your action news reporter with all the news
that is news across the nation, on the scene at the supermarket. There
seems to have been some disturbance here. Pardon me, sir, did you see
what happened?

(Witness):
Yeah, I did. I's standin' overe there by the t'maters, and here he
come, running through the pole beans, through the fruits and vegetables,
NEK-kid as a jay bird. And I hollered over t' my wife, Ethel, I said, "Don't
look, Ethel!" But it wuz too late, she'd already been incensed.

(Chorus)
Here he comes, look at that, look at that,
There he goes, look at that, look at that,
And he ain't wearin' no clothes.

Oh, yes, they call him the Streak.
Look at that, look at that.
Fastest thing on two feet.
Look at that, look at that.
He's just as proud as he can be,
Of his anatomy,
He gonna give us a peek.

Oh, yes, they call him the Streak.
Look at that, look at that.
He likes to show off his physique.
Look at that, look at that.
If there's an audience to be found,
He'll be streakin' around,
Invitin' public critique.

(Reporter):
This is your action news reporter once again, and we're here at the gas
station. Pardon me, sir, did you see what happened?

(Witness):
Yeah, I did. I's just in here gettin my car checked, he just appeared
out of the traffic. Come streakin' around the grease rack there, didn't
have nothin' on but a smile. I looked in there, and Ethel was gettin'
her a cold drink. I hollered, "Don't look, Ethel!" But it was too
late. She'd already been mooned. Flashed her right there in front of
the shock absorbers.

(Chorus)
He ain't crude, look at that, look at that.
He ain't lewd, look at that, look at that.
He's just in the mood to run in the nude.

Oh, yes, they call him the Streak.
Look at that, look at that.
He likes to turn the other cheek.
Look at that, look at that.
He's always makin' the news,
Wearin' just his tennis shoes.
Guess you could call him unique.

(Reporter):
Once again, your action news reporter in the booth at the gym, covering
the disturbance at the basketball playoff. Pardon me, sir, did you see
what happened?

(Witness):
Yeah, I did. Half time, I's just goin' down thar to get Ethel a snow
cone. And here he come, right out of the cheap seats, dribbling, right
down the middle of the court. Didn't have on nothing but his PF's.
Made a hook shot and got out through the concessions stand. I hollered up
at Ethel, I said, "Don't look, Ethel!" But it was too late. She'd
already got a free shot. Grandstandin', right there in front of the
home team.

(Chorus) (Witness):
Oh, yes, they call him the Streak Here he comes again.
Look at that, look at that Who's that with him?
The fastest thing on two feet Ethel!!! Is that you, Ethel?!?
Look at that, look at that What do you think you're
He's just as proud as he can be doin'? You git yer
Of his anatomy clothes on!!!
He's gonna give us a peek

Oh, yes, they call him the Streak Ethel!!! Where you goin'?
Look at that, look at that Ethel, you shameless
He likes to show off his physique hussy!!! Say it isn't so,
Look at that, look at that Ethel! Ethelllllll!!!
If there's an audience to be found
He'll be streakin' around
Invitin' public critique
125) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Funny Or Weird News [Closed] (Message 103969)
Posted 26 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > This is a somewhat old story, but it's the first time that I've heard it.
> It
> > would be something to worry about if true.
> >
> > ALIENS CAPTURE TOP-SECRET NASA MOON BASE!
> >
> > By PETE THERMOPULOUS
> > A super-secret NASA moon base -- code-named Project Prometheus
>
> And all this time I thought <a> href="http://setiweb.ssl.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=11954#103033">this
> was Prometheus[/url]

This Prometheus is obviously a ruse so NASA and the USAF can distract the public with a TV show if the name surfaces. No wonder the show has a USAF technical advisor.

Or maybe there just aren't enough cool-sounding Greek names to go around.
126) Message boards : Cafe SETI : show your Desktops here (Message 103947)
Posted 26 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
My desktop backdrop, compressed a bit, is currently in my profile.
127) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 103934)
Posted 26 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> well. I think a game like that would be enjoyable even in todays computer game
> world.

I seem to remember they did release Gunship 2000, that ran on the Amiga and PC I think, but it was not nearly as popular from what I recall. The only other Apache simulator I flew was Jane's Longbow title, which was so complex one practically needed to attend flight school to run it. I never did master that one.
128) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED (Message 103923)
Posted 26 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> (no post)

(no reply)
129) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 103918)
Posted 26 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Yea, I used a small TV as a monitor too. So if I got tired of playing Gunship,
> I'd just flick a switch and watch some TV.

Oh, man that was a good game. I had a friend with a C-64 who used to compete with me for high scores but didn't mind someone playing while he was asleep (lived in the barracks at the time), so I stayed up one night playing the Europe campaign until I finally won the CMoH. I left the computer on so he saw it when he turned on the monitor. Took him a month to beat that mission.
130) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Aliens In The Solar System (Message 103870)
Posted 26 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I think you'll find it good reading my friend, but it's certainly not the kind
> of uplifting story you've come to expect from other sci-fi novels. I myself
> am not always interested in a Hollywood style happy ending, so it appealed to
> my somewhat desolate nature. Perhaps you are the same. ;)

Yes. I like "natural" endings to stories, and naturally not everything ends happily. No book depressed me nearly as much as Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke, which as it happens is another story along the lines of this thread's topic. The image it formed was overwhelming to me, and a colleague at work confirmed I wasn't the only one. I still recommend the book. I won't go into more detail so as not to spoil it for anyone.

As you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of whom I consider "the big three": Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke.
131) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Aliens In The Solar System (Message 103843)
Posted 25 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Not to go off-topic or anything, but from reading your past posts, i see that
> you are very well read. Have you enoyed much of Joe Haldeman's work? My
> favorite of his is All My Sins Remembered. I can't quite put my finger
> on what appeals to me most about that story, but perhaps it is the fact that
> his character leads such a lonely and desolate life out there in the big bad
> universe. It's great reading for those of you who have not yet had the
> opportunity to pick it up.

I have not read that book. I don't recall if I've ever read anything by Joe Haldeman. Honestly, in the past decade or so my book reading has fallen off quite a bit, victim to the sensory inputs of cable channels and of course the Web. (University of Washington Television Channel is SOOO cool, casting very interesting lectures I can review repeatedly on my TiVo)

Since I started frequenting the boards here, I started a large post-it that is stuck to my wall here with interesting recommended book titles. All My Sins Remembered just went on it.
132) Message boards : Cafe SETI : NASA telescope/camera aircraft (Message 103837)
Posted 25 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Very cool! Thanks, Kajunfisher. :)
133) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 103831)
Posted 25 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
A little late to start this trend, but to make it easier on everyone, I will just link to lyrics wherever possible.

> And music can bring back memory just as scents can do it! When I hear
> jazzmusic, I'm set back to a certain period of my life and can suddenly
> remember things I don't think of in my daily life! Music is food for the
> soul!

Beautiful Music
134) Message boards : Cafe SETI : NASA telescope/camera aircraft (Message 103823)
Posted 25 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Are you referring to this particular variant? I know that C-141 Starlifters have been around (I had to take a few rides in them when I was in the USAF). I was wondering, though, about this particular variant.
135) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Aliens In The Solar System (Message 103819)
Posted 25 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> decide to pop on over in person and say hello. For that matter, how do we
> know that alien ships aren't passing through our solar system all the time on
> their way to someplace else? Would we even detect that? Probably not.

True, we could be missing a whole bunch of Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke book) type events where ships could be passing through just to refuel, ignoring us completely.

> If these aliens possess technology of that magnitude... why be so coy? Surely
> if they can manipulate those phenomena, then they could certainly just as
> easily send a much more direct message, such as a probe of some sort into
> orbit around us, or some other type of construct which they could easily send
> to Earth and alert us to their presence.

The conjecture is that you don't want to contact a species prematurely due to the psychological impact that would have on low-tech and conflict-driven societies. Just as an example, what advantage would causing a primitive species to drop to the ground and worship be to an interstellar species that has evolved socially to the point where they realize unchecked personal ego-trips are simply universally dangerous to their own society?

Some theorize that the rise of UFO sightings since the 1940s is directly related to the atomic age, since for the first time we truly have the power to efficiently destroy our species and possibly the entire planet, and aliens would be interested in this period because how we get through determines the character we will keep going into a galactic community. Harnessing nuclear power is one very obvious (and possibly detectable) indication we have advanced enough that the process of "natural selection" has stopped for us and our fate and development of character is more in our own hands than it ever was.

In any case, it may take a sufficiently advanced computers, together with a successful "grand unification theory" or other telltale physics advance, to figure out that a particular weave pattern in Saturn's rings cannot be caused by tidal forces, or the red spot should have dissipated or oscillates wrong. Deciphering a cryptic message may require a level of computing power roughly on par with that which is needed for developing interstellar communications, maybe even vessels, and therefore we would have made contact ourselves soon. Or it may just be a note of encouragement for a species that is close to believing they're alone in the universe and shouldn't try exploring.
136) Message boards : Cafe SETI : NASA telescope/camera aircraft (Message 103807)
Posted 25 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Is this in response to the Columbia disaster, or has this aircraft always existed?
137) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 103796)
Posted 25 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Memory Servers you well.. They were cicular magnets encased in copper wire.
> The would be negatively or positively charged based on the whether they
> represented a one or a zero. No change meant no storage found here..

Core memory was not the same as a toroidal coil or transformer. The wires ran through the center of the toroid only.

WARNING: Old Techie stuff follows.

Core memory consisted of a number of matrices of wires, one matrix for every "bit" position. At each point where horizontal and vertical wires crossed, there was a little iron toroid (doughnut shape). Each of these horizontal and vertical wires were called "half-current" wires. There was a third wire that wound through every core of a given bit matrix called the "sense" wire.

Basic physics says that whenever an electric current passes through a wire, a circular magnetic field develops around the wire. The direction of this field is directly related to the direction of the current.

The half current wires were so named because each only carried half the current needed to ovecome the "hysteresis" of a toroid. "Hysteresis", basically, says to get a magnetic field in an object to change to any given direction or strength, you have to apply a much larger field to it to do so. Therefore, these half-current wires could only change the field of the toroid where they intersected. This is how core memory was written to.

To read a core, the exact same method was used, but this is where the sense wire comes in. When a toroid field actually changes, there will be a current spike in the sense wire. So say you write a "zero" to all the cores you want to read. If any were a "one", the sense wire would spike. Notice that means that core memory information was destructive, and this "one" had to be written back to the core after reading in order to be stored again.

Since the write sites for cores were not coiled wire creating a strong magnetic field, cores had to be as small as possible by definition, using magnetic material that was fairly easy to change (low hysteresis).

[EDIT] Here's a longer explanation, with a good closeup of a core matrix: Core Memory [/EDIT]
138) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 103785)
Posted 25 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> If memory serves (pun not intended) core memory had little circular iron
> rings. That would make a semi-decent keychain ring.

The cores in any core memory unit were at most an eighth of an inch across, and FAR smaller in the case of that 512k job. You'd have to have some REALLY small keys.
139) Message boards : Cafe SETI : is there an invisible thread? (Message 103523)
Posted 25 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Sometimes when I go to the message boards screen, it hasn't updated from the last time I saw it. Refreshing manually causes the correct elapsed times to be displayed. Is that it?
140) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 103453)
Posted 24 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
In case you didn't guess, that was in Japanese. Just a pop song from an old anime. The translation may not be perfect, but it's close.

Japanese pronunciation note: The vowels are the "short" sound in English (a="ah",i="ee",e="eh") except "o", which is the long form ("oh"), and "u", which is more like "oo". It's very sing-songy, each consonant-vowel pair one single syllable. Two consonants together are in the same syllable, eg "tsu" or "tte". Words have very little inflection, unlike Chinese.

Eg kasanariaeba is simply ka-sa-na-ri-a-e-ba.

Oh yes, and karaoke is "kah"-"rah"-"oh"-"keh". Technically speaking. :) It means "empty (kara)" "orchestra (oke)" Like kara-te, "empty hand".
141) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 103448)
Posted 24 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> any kind besides a console to the computer! I have seen ferrit core
> memory! And where compilation was realtime!

Hehe. Core memory. The first system the USAF stuck me on had 220... words is best to describe, since it was 7-bit Field Data Code... of core memory. But the BEST was a "hard disk emulator" I worked on which, on a SINGLE very large card, had 512k of core memory. That's right. With parity bit that was 4,718,592 teeny little ferrite doughnuts. It was a 2 board sandwich with what just looked to the unaided eye like layers of black mats in between.
142) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 103439)
Posted 24 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Asu E Touchdown
(Touchdown to Tomorrow)

<PRE>Kimi dake ja nai "lonely" na no wa. You're not the only one who's lonely.
Tsuki ni koshikakete mite. Try sitting on the crescent moon.
Kodomo no koro ni mita yume wa, The dreams we had as children are,
Ima mo kagayaku "shining star". Still bright, like shining stars.
Kanashikute mo, However sad,
Kurushikute mo, However painful,
kesshite akiramezu ni "ride on." Never give up, ride on.
Kaze yo "kiss me" kuchizukete, Kiss me wind, kiss me.
Sora yo "hold me" dakishimete, Hold me sky, hold me.
Soo itsudemo watashitachi o mamotte. And protect us always,
Kabe o "break down" koeru made, Until we overcome and break down the walls,
Ume o "touch down" tsukamu made, Until we touch down and seize our dreams,
Soo shiawase ni naru tame ni, Because we were born,
Umareta kara. To be happy.
Kimi dake ja nai "lonely" na no wa. You're not the only one who's lonely.
Mado ni koshikaete mite. Try sitting in the windowsill.
Toorisugiteku kaotachi no, The feelings on the faces of everyone.
Kokoro no machi wa "misty blue." Spirit of the town is misty blue.
Tsumazuite mo, However obstructed,
Kizutsuite mo, However it hurts,
Tachitomare wa shinai "ride on." Get up and ride on.
Kaze yo "kiss me" kuchizukete, Kiss me wind, kiss me.
Sora yo "hold me" dakishimete, Hold me sky, hold me.
Soo itsudemo watashitachi o mamotte. And protect us always,
Kabe o "break down" koeru made, Until we overcome and break down the walls,
Ume o "touch down" tsukamu made, Until we touch down and seize our dreams,
Soo shiawase ni naru tame ni, Because we were born,
Umareta kara. To be happy.

"Romantic, do-ramatic," Romantic, dramatic.
Kasanariaeba "misty night." If we lie together it will be a misty night.
"Romantic, do-ramatic," Romantic, dramatic.
Akogare dake ja tsukamenai. I can't get what I want by longing alone.
Kaze yo "kiss me" kuchizukete, Kiss me wind, kiss me.
Sora yo "hold me" dakishimete, Hold me sky, hold me.
Soo itsudemo watashitachi o mamotte. And protect us always,
Kabe o "break down" koeru made, Until we overcome and break down the walls,
Ume o "touch down" tsukamu made, Until we touch down and seize our dreams,
Soo shiawase ni naru tame ni, Because we were born,
Umareta kara. To be happy.
</PRE>
143) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 103285)
Posted 24 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
It's getting late have you seen my mates?
Ma tell me when the boys get here.
It's seven o'clock and I want to rock.
Wanna get a belly full of beer.

My old man's drunker than a barrel full of monkeys,
And my old lady she don't care.
My sister looks cute in her braces and boots,
A handful of grease in her hair.

Don't give us none of your aggravation.
We had it with your discipline.
Saturday night's alright for fighting.
Get a little action in.

Get about as oiled as a diesel train.
Gonna set this dance alight,
`Cause Saturday night's the night I like.
Saturday night's alright alright alright.

Well they're packed pretty tight in here tonight.
I'm looking for a dolly who'll see me right.
I may use a little muscle to get what I need.
I may sink a little drink and shout out "She's with me!"

A couple of the sounds that I really like,
Are the sounds of a switchblade and a motorbike.
I'm a juvenile product of the working class,
Whose best friend floats in the bottom of a glass.
144) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 103284)
Posted 24 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> No need to raise the Jolly Roger - Old circuitry as jewelry is still old
> hardware worth reminiscing over... just in a new form.

Aye, Cap'n, if that be yer order. Marines stand down!
145) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 103272)
Posted 24 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Avast, ye scurvy thread pirates! Heave to and prepare for boarding!
146) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 103258)
Posted 24 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Here is another one that I liked alot
>
> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088960/
>
> The Big Picture (Creator)
>
> Peter O'Toole, Mariel Hemingway, Virginia Madsen...

I'd forgotten about this movie. This was a fun title. "As you know, our research here relates to the biochemical mechanisms of disease. And I am pleased to annouce this morning that God has agreed to provide us with all the answers we need for just under $800,000."

I always liked Peter O'Toole's films, even the really wierd stuff like The Ruling Class.
147) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Books that we would like Movies to be made from (Message 103254)
Posted 24 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I am afraid they would have a hard time making *ANY* Piers Anthony book series
> into a movie and keeping the rating under NC17 unless they changed one
> critical aspect of so many of his books... :-)

It'd be interesting if they tried with On a Pale Horse though.
148) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 103252)
Posted 24 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Da da da da da da da dum
> At Cafe SETI Restaurant......

Now ya' gone an' donnit...

Out in the shiny night,
The rain was softly falling.
The tracks that ran down the boulevard,
Had all been washed away.
Out of the silver light,
The past came softly calling.
And I remember the times we spent,
Inside the SETI Cafe.

Oh, it seemed like a holy place,
Protected by amazing grace,
And we would sing right out loud,
The things we could not say.
We thought we could change this world,
With words like 'love' and 'freedom'.
We were part of the lonely crowd,
Inside the SETI Cafe.

Oh, expecting to fly,
We would meet on that beautiful shore in the sweet by and by.

Some of their dreams came true,
Some just passed away,
And some of them stayed behind,
Inside the SETI Cafe.

The clouds rolled in,
And hid that shore.
Now that Glory Train,
It don't stop here no more.
Now I look at the years gone by,
And wonder at the powers that be.
I don't know why fortune smiles on some,
And let's the rest go free.

Maybe the time has drawn,
The faces I recall,
But things in this life change very slowly,
If they ever change at all.
There's no use in asking why,
It just turned out that way.
So meet me at midnight baby,
Inside the SETI Cafe.
Why don't you meet me at midnight baby,
Inside the SETI Cafe.
149) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 103115)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> That an Elizabethan lovesong might stick out from the other songs sang
> here!

Ahh. K. Well, one would hope that a bunch of people that commit their computers to searching for ET, gravity waves, etc, would be somewhat of an openminded lot overall. So, if I understand the use of the word correctly, "Cheers". :)
150) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 103107)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> .oO(Well, a little culture could be frowned at here, but I'll take the
> chance!)

Whatcha tryin' ta say? >:|
151) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Books that we would like Movies to be made from (Message 103068)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I can forgive a lot of discrepancy between the book and the movie, as long as the character and themes of the book are reflected in the movie, and the acting does the characters some measure of justice.

Take The Hunt for Red October. Essentially, they took the second half of the book and compressed it all into the final half hour or so of the movie. At first I was upset, but then I realized the time constraints placed on the movie. I was far more into it the second time around.

Also there is difficulty in translating writing where it's easy to depict thoughts and emotions and not so easy to depict scenes and actions, into film where just the opposite is true: where scene, set dressing, and action are precise and it's a tougher art to convey nuances of thought and emotion. For instance, a book can have an ongoing monologue from a character's point of view but, as shown in Blade Runner, monologues rarely play well onscreen.
152) Message boards : Cafe SETI : It all started like this..... (Message 103058)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Kieth can you please get the guys and gals in this this thread to speak in
> .... William Shakespeare ... language ?

Tis naught but likened to the most arduous of oral surgeries to compel this knave to speak in prose of such eloquence as that of this most enduring scribe.
153) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED CLOSED (Message 103045)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> message to BYRON...
>
> the most important part of the education of a human being is the things they
> learn after they are free of the regimentation of school...there is so much
> out there to be learned...to be understood...or at least pondered...a formal
> education is often seen as the end of learning...i see it as the end of the
> beginning...formal education can be seen as the "clif's notes" of life...after
> you learn what you will in school...you still have to live...then learning is
> so much more real from that point forward...all of the information that can be
> learned in formal education is out there in the world beyond the walls of
> school...there for the learning...there always has been another way...for some
> of us...a better way.

I agree. Formal schooling, while necessary, is quite limited because no matter what it has several kids who need slightly different directions but are forced to pick one, essentially, because there is generally only one class. Moreover, it's mostly an all-at-once shot, not allowing someone to absorb and apply knowledge properly.

I enjoyed going back to school to get my degree in electronics. My first classes at the beginning of my career were difficult to get through because I had nothing "visual" on which to hang the theories they were shotgunning at me. After working in the field for several years, going back for the formal degree allowed me to see the elegant geometries of the science by putting theory and math to what I'd found in practical experience. In every class there was something I didn't know that completed the puzzle for that subject. It's was like learning the mechanics and mathematics of walking.
154) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Books that we would like Movies to be made from (Message 103039)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Did either of you catch the SciFi channel's readaptation of Dune as a miniseries? As is typical for most SciFi channel originals, the acting was, in a word, bad, but as I recall the storyline was very close to the book. I don't know about the sequel they aired, Children of Dune, because I stopped at the first book. For me, for no reason I can explain, reading Frank Herbert is like pulling teeth, and it took me three tries to finish the first one.
155) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Books that we would like Movies to be made from (Message 102954)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Oh yes, and while we're at it, throw out that idiotic Starship Troopers movie and make another like the book was.

The book wasn't about a semi-Orwellian fascist future. It was about society evolving into something that preserves basic human rights, but also has a corresponding philosophy of showing responsibility to any given group prior to being allowed to lead it, e.g. you can't become an officer unless you've been enlisted for a time.

It wasn't about a bunch of troopers haplessly getting gored by a bunch of brain-sucking bugs. It was about the evolution of infantry technology into the ultimate shock troops in powered suits, and a faceoff against an aggressive hive-minded but very intelligent species.

It wasn't about an idiot who stays an idiot his entire career. It was about a boy who joins the the Mobile Infantry for all the wrong reasons and becomes a man who stays for all the right reasons.
156) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Books that we would like Movies to be made from (Message 102953)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Well, right off the top I wish that the Batman movies had been more along the lines of the Frank Miller vision. It was dark and morally ambiguous. Batman was a vigilante, outside the law. Commissioner Gordon walked a fine line supporting him. Far from the campy Adam West, and much better than the Michael Keaton character. Some similar themes are covered in the X-Men movies, but not as well as this series could have. This was the first comic I'd ever seen republished in a leatherbound hardcover.

A couple quotes that set the tone:

Clark Kent(absently musing while resolving a little military conflict): The rest of us learned to cope. The rest of us recognized the danger-- of the endless envy of those not blessed. Diana went back to her people. Hal went to the stars. And I have walked the razor's edge for so long. But you, Bruce, with your wild obsession... now the storm is growing again. They'll hunt us down again, because of you.
-----
Batman (during the final showdown with Superman): Still talking. Keep talking, Clark. You've always known just what to say. "Yes," you always said "yes" to anyone with a badge or a flag...

...You sold us out, Clark. You gave them the power that should have been ours. Just like your parents taught you to. MY parents taught me a different lesson, lying on the street, shaking in deep shock, dying for no reason at all. They showed me that the world only makes sense when you FORCE it to.
157) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 102906)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Sometimes in my bed at night,
I curse the dark and I pray for light,
And sometimes, the light's no consolation.
Blinded by a memory,
Afraid of what it might do to me,
And the tears and the sweat only mock my desperation.

Don't you know me I'm the boy next door,
The one you find so easy to ignore,
Is that what I was fighting for?

Walking on a thin line,
Straight off the front line,
Labeled as freaks loose on the streets of the city.
Walking on a thin line,
Angry all the time.
Take a look at my face, see what it's doing to me.

Taught me how to shoot to kill.
A specialist with a deadly skill.
A skill I needed to have to be a survivor.
It's over now, or so they say.
Well sometimes it don't turn out that way,
'Cause your never the same when you've been under fire.

Don't you know me I'm the boy next door,
The one you find so easy to ignore,
Is that what I was fighting for?

Walking on a thin line,
Straight off the front line,
Labeled as freaks loose on the streets of the city.
Walking on a thin line,
Angry all the time.
Take a look at my face, see what it's done to me.
158) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Berkeley Lecturer gets medieval on Laptop Thief... (Message 102886)
Posted 23 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Considering the hard drive is in an iron case for the specific purpose of conducting away any external magnetism, combined with the reluctance of the magnetic particles on a hard drive being very high, you're gonna need a lot stronger field than just a coil and an AC outlet (I used to work in an area with real "magnetic device declassifiers"). If you're that worried about getting caught with the physical device, best just to disassemble the thing, with a hatchet or hammer if nothing else, and sandpaper off the platters. No proof at that point unless the factory can track the serial number of the drive, assuming you fail to destroy that.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to send the data alone back, but the whole thing about doing a "purchase search" is overhyped. At another place I used to work (very large retail chain), it isn't like they insisted on seeing your ID when buying disks and paying cash. The cops could have subpoenaed our closed circuit television system recordings (and did on occasion, but only for perps known to have been in at a specific time), but then they get to search through days to weeks of video images matching up everyone who bought this brand of DVD, and that's just ONE store out of dozens to hundreds. Unless the professor REALLY was into some heavy stuff, that just wouldn't be seen as cost-effective to chase after one stolen computer.

Best catch, besides the thief accidentally going to a fence already under surveillance, is simply finding the MAC address, CPU ident, or whatever hitting the Internet. That stuff is beyond my experience, however.
159) Message boards : Cafe SETI : My favorite drink recipe... (Message 102445)
Posted 22 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> ¢Ý Hearts full of youth / Hearts full of truth
> Six parts gin to / one part vermouth!
¢Ü

"To the beer and benzedrine. To the way that the dean tried so hard to be 'pals' with us all."
160) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 102435)
Posted 22 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>> then. Anyone else remember Buckaroo Banzai?

> That was pretty good. If I remember, all the aliens had the last name of Big
> Booty or first name of John.

Yep, that's the one. Got the DVD right here. :)
161) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed Closed Closed !!! (Message 102432)
Posted 22 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Revisiting a quote from another thread, here's a medley, or a big heaping of Meatloaf...

...I was a varsity tackle and a helluva block,
And when I played my guitar I made the canyons rock, but...

Every Saturday night, I felt the fever grow.
You know what it's like.
All revved up with no place to go.
You know what it's like.
All revved up with no place to go...
----------------
...And all I can do is keep on telling you,
I want you, I need you,
But there ain't no way I'm ever gonna love you,
Now don't be sad, because two out of three ain't bad.
Now don't be sad, because two out of three ain't bad.

You'll never find-a gold on a sandy beach.
You'll never drill for oil on a city street.
I know you're looking for a ruby in a pile of rocks,
But there ain't no Coupe-de-Ville,
Hiding at the bottom of a Cracker Jack box.

I can't lie,
I can't tell you that I'm something I'm not.
No matter how I try,
I'll never be able,
To give you something,
Something that I just haven't got...
----------------
...I couldn't take it anymore,
My God, I was crazy,
When the feeling came upon me like a tidal wave,
I started swearing to my God and on my mother's grave,
That I would love you 'til the end of time.
I swore I'd love you 'til the end of time.

So now I'm praying for the end of time,
To hurry up and arrive.
'Cause if I have to spend another minute with you,
I don't think that I can really survive.
I never break my promise or forget my vow,
But God only knows what I could do right now.
I'm praying for the end of time,
It's all that I can do.
Praying for the end of time,
So I can end my time with you...

Songs from the Bat Out of Hell album.
162) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 102381)
Posted 22 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I'm not sure if ya'll will remember "The Keep"

Oh yeah, I remember The Keep. Nazi munching monster. As horror flicks go, which I don't generally get into, this one was cool. "Hmm, why did they put the large stones on the inside of the wall? As if it was meant to keep something in..."

> But I'm sure everyone remembers "Rambo"...

I only liked First Blood. The rest didn't have anything to grip on emotionally. I can't really explain why that bothered me, since I did like the first Die Hard. In any case, First Blood was the first of anything I remember illustrating the problem of turning someone into a killing machine, then casting them adrift back in society expecting them to just pick up and live a normal life. Plus the action wasn't TOO unrealistic, and Stallone was perfect for the part. (NOT trying to start a political discussion here, people, just explaining why the movie was good. Plenty of other threads for politics.)
163) Message boards : SETI@home Science : How much power do aliens need? (Message 102096)
Posted 21 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> How cool would it be to do a targeted transmission for an elementary or high
> school science fair project? "Hey, Bobby... what's your project over there
> doing?" "Oh, I'm attempting to contact an alien civilization with a targeted,
> low-wattage pulse transmission." What a hoot.

So the first thing ET hears from us is, "XBox Rulz!!!"
164) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Bush Tax Policy Saves Stock Market (Message 102028)
Posted 21 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I don't know the impact of losing so many
> financial/business records (always back-up!) in the destruction, but one of

There's something I had wondered about. How many of the companies in the WTC were storing backup data offsite? Obviously in this situation, just having a backup in another array of drives onsite would have been useless, but who would have considered the possibility of cataclysmic events in their backup plans? How much data was actually lost forever?
165) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Iraq National Assembly vs USA (Message 102023)
Posted 21 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> They should be grateful that we got rid of Saddam Hussein for them.

Difficult situation. How grateful would we in the Thirteen Colonies have been if France had invaded unilaterally to throw out the British before our own revolutionary war? Even if they promised to leave once the colonies were once again stable. Not exactly a perfect similarity, but it does illustrate the difficulty in overcoming nationalistic resentment for occupying armies.
166) Message boards : Cafe SETI : test (Message 102021)
Posted 21 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Simple man, simple tastes. Bacardi dark dry for me. Or maybe just some sake.
167) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101968)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Aww, now Byron, that's not a really fair comparison is it? After all, the top computer had a user interface. With user interface, power supply, etc, the system weight of the bottom chip is probably a whole three ounces. ;)
168) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101961)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> That was my first computer.. Now my watch is 1000% a better computer and cost
> me a 1000% times less..

I commented on something similar elsewhere. My first computer was the TRS-80 Mod III, 2Mhz Z80 and 64k RAM/ROM total (eventually), occupied a huge footprint on a desk, and cost $2000 not including memory upgrade and floppy drives. The graphing calculator I bought for college in 1998 was a 6MHz Z80B, 96k RAM, runs on batteries, fits in a pocket in my briefcase, and cost about $110.
169) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101949)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Baud.....Baudot....Now thats a term you don't see nor hear no more. Ah the old
> days! Remember modems that were 75 up and 1200 down. hehe

Baaaad flashbacks... IBM selectrics and selecterms... Mod 28 and 40 teletypes... AAAAAIGH!
170) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101947)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Well in the loft somewhere I got a Tandy TRS-80 Model 1. With 32K RAM and Z80
> 2Mhz Processor. I think it still works but have not tried it in ooooooohhh 25
> years. I doubt any WU would complete on that inside of a light year.

For my profile, I did some very rough calculations of how long a 2MHz Z-80 would process a classic workunit. When all was said and done, I guesstimated somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 hours. I just ratioed the clock speeds, data bus widths, etc, and I have no idea what realistic factor to multiply for the absence of an FPU, caches or the increased efficiency of the instruction pipeline. As I said, it's all very rough.
171) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101938)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hmm.. earring style kind of like those "hologram"/lasered earrings of the
> 1980s? I assume they have no hole, so one would need to be drilled... high
> speed, small drill bit should work.... now all I have to do is find some to
> practice on - a mercy sacrifice for glamour. :)

Ya know, I'm not sure about the drill. Even the smallest twist drills have a small chisel point which might cause undue stress, and the cutting area pushes material outward. A silicon chip is largely a very fine silicon crystal, and as such it fractures very easily along the crystal grain. May need sacrificial units to test whether it's actually drillable, otherwise it may require like a really tiny bell bore or even a high powered laser.

Or just put a small loop at the top of whatever backing you glue the chip to. But all this is just hypothetical, in the event you run across unencased dies. They're VERY difficult to remove intact once encased.
172) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 101931)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Dang it. DANG it. Just can't help... it's... prying... a... quote...
> out...
>
> Hon, you could help it.. and you chose not to. :) :)

Trust me, in my head it approaches compulsive behavior. I annoy everyone around me with random and not-so-random quotes.

> Meatloaf!!!!! BTW I'm vegetarian. :)

More bad habits. :) I suppose any further song quotes should be from Bread or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Are you okay with milk or should I also avoid quoting Cream? :)

[Just kidding about the "bad habit" thing. :) ]
173) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101669)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > What features in ancient computing would you like see reborn in modern
> form?
> I'd like to see a new form of math co-proccessor. I know they are on-die now
> but an addon to excellerate crunching # a little faster would be nice for
> those that need it.

Interesting. Considering some of the advances in bus technology since the FPUs started becoming integrated, maybe it's time to revisit that concept.
174) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101667)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Too bad you can't get a couple of bad processor chips, the actual
> unencased
> > chips. The way they throw light in broken up spectra would look really
> neat.
>
> I thought chips (apart from the ones that go with fish) were those little
> black things... am I on the wrong track here?

Yes, the entire package is called a chip. What I was referring to inside is the actual silicon (usually) wafer which is the functioning portion of the chip. This is called the "die", but I figured not everyone would know that term. The black (rarely other colors) plastic or ceramic case protects the die and the extremely fine leads that connect it to the legs or contacts on the outside of the chip.

Microprocessors are unusually large dies, so I figure they'd make effective earrings. Like a CD or DVD, they are generally silver in appearance and the microfine structures on them cause light to diffract in rainbow patterns. Unlike a CD or DVD, they have a pattern on them that is usually visible to the naked eye. They are also light. Downside is they're delicate, and would probably require some reinforcement attached to the back.
175) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 101664)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > > ... shhhhh don't tell, but I'm procrastinating against studying...
> > > ssssshhhh...
> >
> > Your secret are safe with me ;-)
>
> You say that to all the girls :) :) :)

Dang it. DANG it. Just can't help... it's... prying... a... quote... out...

Man (husky, low voice): On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Woman (softly): Will he offer me his mouth?
Man (softly): Yes.
Woman (softly): Will he offer me his teeth?
Man (softly): Yes.
Woman (softly): Will he offer me his jaws?
Man (softly): Yes
Woman (softly): Will he offer me his hunger?
Man(softly): Yes.
Woman (softly): Again, will he offer me his hunger?
Man (aggravated): Yes!
Woman (softly): And will he starve without me?
Man (aggravated): YES!!!
Woman (even softer): And does he love me?
Man (softly again): Yes.
Woman (softly): Yes.
Man (softly): On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Woman (softly): Yes.
Man (softly, grinning): I bet you say that to ALL the boys.
(song begins)

Sorry. Back to topic for me. :)
176) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101653)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Anyone want to replace their hard drive for a paper tape reader/puncher?

Lessee. Was it eight holes per inch on the best optically sensed models? Running with that number just for argument's sake, 120GB (let's assume 120e9 for argument's sake) that would be a tape 15 billion inches long (38.1 billion cm). Converting it gets 236,742 miles. Of course in metric the conversion was easier at the last step: 381,000km (why don't they just use megameters and gigameters for astronomical distances?) That's one long string of paper tape, over a light-second long in fact. Anyone know how much that would weigh?
177) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101646)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I have a set of 6 RAM chips - 256K I think - that I have yet to turn into
> earrings. They're so cool, they have a hole in one end, just thread the
> earring hook through and voila (sp)!

Too bad you can't get a couple of bad processor chips, the actual unencased chips. The way they throw light in broken up spectra would look really neat.
178) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101633)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I still have a stack of old punch cards for one of the programs I wrote in
> school towards the end of that technology being phased out. In school we had
> to write various programs and then code them into punch cards for the
> mainframe to process. Actually I kind of miss doing the punch cards and am
> curious as to what program I have coded on the cards I have. Been quite awhile

The card readers I worked on were phased out in 1993 (yes, 1993), and the PC we put in still transmitted the characters in Hollerith so they didn't have to reprogram the old machines. In any case, how many cards are we talking about? Is it too many to read manually? Also, the card punch we used also printed the character encoded above the punch field. Are there no characters printed on your cards?
179) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101629)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> NA's not talking ROM chips, he's talking about the old ROM cartridges that
> contained games and such for older computers. They have a glob of silicon, if
> I remember right, which covers/contains the programming. I used those on my
> first computer the Color Computer III [pictured below, the white one].

I thought he may have also been referring to the ROMs that run the old machines. On some emulators such as Apple, Amiga (WinUAE et al), and arcade video game emulators such as MAME, they don't actually include the firmware programs they can run because it violates copyright laws. For some machines, that's not much of a problem because there are plenty of pirated copies available with a quick search, but not necessarily.
180) Message boards : SETI@home Science : New Scientist News - Look out for giant triangles in space (Message 101620)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hmm. Like you indicated Murasaki, it could be a nightmare for something of
> this enormous size to be maintained. Instead of building something that big,
> they could just build something similar to the size of a large Earth-based
> system. Surely they would be able to design a much smaller sender that could
> be as effective as a planet-sized one. And think of how vulnerable a huge
> system like that would be from space debris; Imagine that you were the alien
> maintenance guy responsible for making sure this thing was working right!

Yeah, I didn't think of that. Micrometeors, comet tails, etc would shred something made out of the materials I suggested.
181) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Nostalgia Hardware (Message 101619)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
(Responding to original post about PROMs and such)

On old-style machines, recognizing which was the ROM/PROM/EPROM was usually fairly easy. Most of the time it is wider than normal, but not nearly as many pins as the processor itself. Occasionally, it's VERY easy to identify because they used an uvEPROM, so there's a little window on the top of the chip that was used to erase it. Don't count on it. When there is more than one PROM, they tend to have uniform positions with uniform-looking PCB traces from them. Most PROMs also have some sort of number indicating what program version they are, usually a sticker, but rarely printed directly on the case.

None of this is always the case. I have seen actual ROMs and some PROMs that were ordinary-looking 14- or 16-pin DIPs, and multilayer boards (rare in the era we're talking about) may hide the data/address leads. There really is no substitute for either having the schematics or simply knowing what numbers to look for.

Next you need a PROM programmer. Most PROM programmers have a readback function, so it's easy to dump a hex file image into your PC. Check the numbers printed on the chip against the PROM programmer's listing. You may have to peel a program version sticker off to do so. Don't forget that sometimes manufacturers print the chip number on the bottom.

For most PROM programmers, you'll simply have to remove the chip and put it in the ZIF socket on the programmer. If you're lucky, you have a programmer expensive enough to accept a DIP header on a ribbon cable with a DIP clip on the other end, and can read the PROM in-circuit. All I can say is, follow your PROM programmer instruction manual to the letter.

If the PROM is soldered in and you must remove it, check to see if you're really committed to this project. If you have the skills to safely remove the device, you probably didn't need to read this post anyhow. If you're still not dissuaded, go to Radio Shack and buy a desoldering tool and desoldering braid. I'm not a big fan of desoldering bulbs as they don't apply enough suction power as fast as you need it. You'll also need some sort of dental pick or machinists scribe to GENTLY push/pry on individual legs or get under the chip. Using a screwdriver in this fashion is far more likely to damage the delicate traces on the board. This will be very tedious work, and you must not get impatient. And always use some form of metal on metal heat sink on the leg you're applying heat to, whether or not you feel it's awkward to use.

Oh, and one more thing. Use a low wattage (30W or so) soldering IRON, not a soldering GUN or large iron. Once a guy in my shop with a four year electrical engineering degree burned through a $40,000 board because nobody told him that a gun applies far too much heat for a circuit board.

From there you of course need an emulator that will interpret the machine code to intel instructions (that's more NA's area than mine).
182) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Pope Benedict XVI (Message 101585)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You notice that the Vatican doesn't even acknowleges that they had a female
> pope back in the first century I think Mary was dead by then....

First century would be year 1 to year 100. Theoretically Mary was alive then.
183) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Pope Benedict XVI (Message 101530)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ratzinger!
>
> New name Benedict.
>
> Another conservative.

Did anyone really expect anything else? This is the same organization that waited until the 1980s to issue a decree officially acknowledging that Galileo was right and the Earth revolves around the Sun. "Thank God it's official." By the 24th century, they should be ready to accept womens' suffrage, contraception, and child abuse laws.

[EDIT] Oops, web sources indicate it was in 1992 that God said we could believe that, not in the '80s. [/EDIT]
184) Message boards : SETI@home Science : New Scientist News - Look out for giant triangles in space (Message 101520)
Posted 20 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Heh yea, I think radio signals are our best chance indeed; Wasn't there a
> pyramid-shaped ship in Stargate? I think that aliens would waste too many
> resources to build something like this. But hey, I'm glad that scientists are
> getting more creative.

Yes, that was Stargate. However, what I got from the article is they're likely structures that are used for nothing else but signaling, which is why I suggested the kevlar frame with the mylar sheet. A freely-orbiting object would also need some sort of system for stabilization against the effect of solar wind.

Certainly a planet-sized space station has serious engineering problems. The shuttle has to open its doors upon reaching orbit to expose more radiating surface or the electronics will cause it to overheat (of course, this is probably also due to the fact that every other surface is covered by some of the best insulation made so it can survive reentry).

Still, look at large buildings in cities. The largest have to keep the cooling running even in the dead of winter because they just generate too much heat in their cores (according to Modern Marvels on the History Channel, office buildings consume about a third of the power used in the US). Now imagine that difficulty on a planetary scale.

It's really not likely we're talking about an actual space station.
185) Message boards : SETI@home Science : New Scientist News - Look out for giant triangles in space (Message 101352)
Posted 19 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
It is an interesting article, and theoretically it's a way of harnessing a star's output for an intelligent signal. Like sending smoke signals with a star. Who knows how you would build such a huge structure (aluminized mylar in a kevlar frame?), but it isn't inconceivable.

There's one other problem with this, though. There's only a relatively random chance (unless they're trying to signal us in specific) that any such structure would be angled toward us. I pointed out in the PlanetQuest thread that there is a relatively small chance that a Jupiter sized planet orbiting at the distance of Mercury will transit it's star from our position. So to send these "smoke signals" in all directions requires ET put a LOT of them in orbit.
186) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 101161)
Posted 19 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Conan the Barbarian! How I could forget that on among my list of honorable mentions I have no idea. Frankly, among all swords and sorcery movies, this one ranks as my favorite. It had a suitably epic feel to it, great action sequences, a main character that was iconic in his role, good villains that weren't too over-the-top, and (I feel a little guilty about this last point, because this isn't how I usually rate movies) a few really toned, tanned, tough, hot women in furs and leather :) . Added bonus is the soundtrack, which is great listening to psych up to heavy physical activity.
187) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Thread closed.. (Message 100858)
Posted 18 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Thread closed in the interest of not offending anyone. My apologies if
> you
> > were offended. I meant no ill will towards anyone.
> >
> I have to disagree strongly with some of my friends here. I see nothing wrong
> with your
> post nor with the use of words by the author of the article. IMHO there has
> been a gross
> over reaction.

I agree.
188) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 100688)
Posted 18 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Then let's not forget Heavy Metal (1981). It was built upon the magazine material as well as previous titles in "adult oriented" animation like Wizards and B.C. Rock (French title: Le Chaînon Manquant) Silly movie overall, but great soundtrack and some great lines in it:

Leader: You will go with him to the queen's castle and steal the Loknar, THEN I will give you the girl.
Den: And if I refuse?
Leader: If you refuse, you die, she dies, everybody dies.
Den (narrator, voice of John Candy): Sounded reasonable to me!
189) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 100608)
Posted 18 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> It's nice to see we both like the night. It looks like some others here like
> the night as well. It's 1:36 a.m. right now and it rained a lot here a few
> hours ago. There's a lot of moisture and a nice calm breeze outside right now
> and it just feels a little eerie.

I like nights like that. Even better for me is when it's foggy outside, and lights are streaming through the tall evergreens we have here. Great nights for a walk.
190) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 100600)
Posted 17 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I worked nights for about eight years total. Always liked nights the best because I could get the job done without idiotic distractions (need to escort guests, need someone to run down to personnel and take a survey, need to sign out a vehicle and get paint, blah).

One of my most pleasant memories of Japan is coming back from downtown on Saturday nights, putting something light on the stereo, and sitting in my windowsill on the fourth floor of the dormitory I lived in, looking across the flightline, the antenna fields behind, and the city lights beyond that. It was so calm and bluesy.

Best of all, when I was more socially inclined, I always got sleep BEFORE the party.

My removable storm window panel in my bedroom is still spraypainted black to keep light out, and it's sometimes very hard to keep from reverting to mids again.
191) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 100494)
Posted 17 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
My fortune cup says, "Forget it, kid."
192) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 99652)
Posted 16 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Forgot one of my favorites in my above list: A Fish Called Wanda. Earned Kevin Kline an academy award for his performance.
193) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 99493)
Posted 16 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Does he have a towel?
194) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 99474)
Posted 16 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I have to admit i'm not a very big fan of Director's Cuts but in the case of
> Blade Runner i make an exception because of the whole narration mess.
> The original narration was added as an afterthought anyway because the studio
> felt audiences couldn't follow the plot otherwise. Yikes! Harrison Ford said
> in an interview that he hated the idea of adding narration so much, that he
> purposely did a terrible job in hopes that they wouldn't use it. As it turned
> out, the studio loved it and thought it was in keeping with Ford's character.

There's even more changes than that. Here is a web page with the same text that is on the back of my Criterion Collection laserdisc of Blade Runner. Pay attention to how some EARLIER scripts ended...

Voyager: Blade Runner

By the by, did everyone read the book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Not really engrossing (believe it or not, I had to read it as an assignment in high school), but it covers lots of things in the movie they didn't explain, like just exactly why Zhora says, "Of course it's not real. Do you think I'd be working HERE if I could afford a REAL snake?"
195) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 99461)
Posted 16 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I'll take your word that it's a good movie, but I tend to avoid movies that
> have sad stories.

This one didn't end sadly. In fact it ended very optimistically. It's just they did illustrate the sometimes despair and loneliness that Russian immigrants felt because the politics at the time dictated that they were cut off from everyone they ever knew.
196) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 99455)
Posted 16 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Damn, those are some of my favorits too. But I don't remember and haven't
> even seen Moscow on the Hudson.

It starred Robin Williams as a Soviet defector, a saxophone player for a circus. It was about the ups and downs of living in the Moscow during the Soviet era and in New York City as an immigrant/defector. It seems they really tried hard with this movie. It was pointed, sad, and funny at the same time, and tried to show all issues in an even-handed manner. Add to that, from Russian language linguists I've talked to about it, Robin Williams did an excellent job speaking Russian as it should be pronounced by Muscovites. GREAT movie.
197) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 99446)
Posted 16 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I'll add Uncle Buck just for pure fun and a good 80's feel to it. :)

Man, I miss John Candy.
198) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite 80's Movie Thread (Message 99443)
Posted 16 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
So hard to choose. I'd probably have to go with Highlander, followed by a razor thin close second and third of Blade Runner and The Terminator. But geez, there were so many I really enjoyed, from those that had biting themes to those that were just plain fun: Moscow on the Hudson, Aliens, Real Genius, Dune, City Heat, Good Morning Vietnam, Heartbreak Ridge, Moonstruck, First Blood, Back to the Future, Flash Gordon, Lethal Weapon, and so many more.
199) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Is NASA Hiding The True Color Of Mars? (Message 99344)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The thing I always wonder about such things is "why". If it's true, what does NASA or the US Government gain from altering this data? Finding evidence of microbial life doesn't seem to threaten anyone with a "Conquistador" effect.
200) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 99341)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> (I hate internal modems)
(snip)

I'm right there with ya. Still using a Phoebe 56k External. Never owned an internal at home. Can't tell what the heck an internal modem is doing.
201) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 99336)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Gee, what nice UFO ideas these are.

Yo-ho, YO-ho, a (thread) Pirate's life for me...
202) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 99333)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > By the way,, you know the original singer of your Maria... err...
> "Sophia"
> > song got shot and killed at the end of the play, yes?
> >
>
> Yes, Murasaki, I'm very well aware of the story in West Side Story! But the

Sorry, I was just trying to be ironic. :)

> But these lines moves me:
>
> Say it loud and there's music playing
> Say it soft and it's almost like praying


They ARE very moving. That play has many great lines, in and out of the songs.

"When you was my age, Doc, when my brother was my age, when my father was my age. No! You have never been my age!"
203) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 99313)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> ...to local Fidonet...

FIDONET! That's what it was! I couldn't remember that name for anything. I hardly ever got a chance to post on Fidonet boards here because their phone lines were chronically busy.
204) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 99301)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
By the way,, you know the original singer of your Maria... err... "Sophia" song got shot and killed at the end of the play, yes?

Now if you're gonna do love songs, here's my vote for the best love song ever:

I've had my share,
Of life's ups and downs,
But fate's been kind,
The downs have been few.
I guess you could say,
That I've been lucky.
I guess you could say,
That it's all because of you.

If anyone should ever write my life story,
For whatever reason there might be,
You'll be there, between each line of pain and glory,
'Cause you're the best thing that ever happened to me.
Oh, you're the best thing that ever happened to me.

There have been times,
When times were hard,
But always somehow I made it,
I made it through,
Because for every moment,
That I spent hurting,
There was a moment,
That I spent just loving you.

If anyone should ever write my life story,
For whatever reason there might be,
You'll be there, between each line of pain and glory,
'Cause you're the best thing that ever happened to me.
Oh, you're the best thing that ever happened to me.

205) Message boards : SETI@home Science : New Astronomy News part2 (Message 99072)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> ...I'm going to predict that it is a none gas planet found orbiting
> that sun at what is thought to be a distance close enough to harbor life but
> more test have to be done before we can say for sure.
> anyone else have a gues?

That was my guess as well.

I don't usually pay attention to anything that isn't an actual announcement, so I have a question: does NASA usually "pre-announce" a finding so far in advance? If not, with the hints dropped, it could backfire for NASA public relations if it isn't big.

Maybe... hopefully... we'll be narrowing down the range of a variable on the Drake Equation soon. :)
206) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [7] - CLOSED (Message 99034)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Are your old-age pensions that bad already???

Why do you think our social security issue has been such a hot debate? Direct pensions practically don't exist anymore.
207) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [7] - CLOSED (Message 99028)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> 'cept he violated the forum copywrite laws. As creator of the original thread
> I own the rights and lease them when necessary.

I'm afraid the Supreme Court case of "BradR69 vs 1_suthrn_bel_277" established legal acknowledgement of child threads even in cases of copyright infringement, with specified damages to be compensated as a separate issue.
208) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [7] - CLOSED (Message 99014)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Erratum, Chairman NeoAmsterdam. Technically, this should be Political Thread [8]. This was the long forgotten thread 7.
209) Message boards : Cafe SETI : RPG thread (Message 98899)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I roll a natural 20 making my saving throw.

Darn. I shoulda cast magic missile instead.
210) Message boards : Number crunching : Pi Calculation (Message 98897)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> It's probably my machine that's off.

I checked the entire first row of your calculation to my file. Dunno if they are accurate, but they both agree.

> Either way, 3.14159 is good enough virtually all purposes.

Yep. But I'm curious about why the program would burp like that.

> Besides, if nobody is calculating e or ã2 to a billion
> places, then why should Æ’ÃŽ?

Ahh, my old friends. 2.718 and 1.414 (with it's reciprocal .707) More uses than pi (leastways in my field), yet so underappreciated. Do numbers need publicists?
211) Message boards : Number crunching : Pi Calculation (Message 98873)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> strange, I'm glad someone caught that, I've checked a couple more sources and
> they agree with NAs' data. I'm stopping the program, saving the current file,
> uninstalling the program, then reinstall.
>
> BRB
>
> uninstalled, deleted folder, reinstalled, here the first of it"
>
>
> 3.141592817589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974944592307816406286208998628034825

Same result as last time. It's strange that it will error then go back to the correct sequence. You'd think the error would be progressive.
212) Message boards : Number crunching : Pi Calculation (Message 98867)
Posted 15 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> one day and two hours later, here you go [ft] Fred. I haven't hit the end
> yet, though I am at 8110 digits, and it's taking 6 min 45 sec/group.
>
>
> 3.1415928175897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862
(snip)

Is this a problem? Starting at the seventh digit to the right of the decimal, mmciastro's number is different from both NeoAmsterdam's post, Windows calculator, and my own file (a megabyte of decimal pi), which all agree.

[EDIT] Seems the correct sequence comes back after awhile. [/EDIT]
213) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Alien Message In Our DNA? (Message 98816)
Posted 14 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> is anyone else thinking 42?

Well, close. I was thinking it might translate to, "We're sorry for the inconvenience."
214) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How could we talk with ET ? (Message 98815)
Posted 14 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Scotty keeps
> it in his liquor cabinet next to his scotch wiskey.

"It's... umm... it's green."
215) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Texas GOP Platform (Message 98658)
Posted 14 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Gosh that was a spiel. Paul, not at you. Sometimes I'm just wondering
> if the human race is evolving to become dumber. [sigh]

Well actually... a nagging thought I have had: how many children do well educated, well motivated, intelligent and upwardly mobile people have in industrial countries? Now how many do people who aren't so bright in those same countries have? If there's ANY genetic basis for intelligence, then (insert your own conclusion here).
216) Message boards : Cafe SETI : My 3000th Post! (Message 98653)
Posted 14 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Okay, but blonde in the "Holly out of Red Dwarf" way. [nice smile through
> gritted teeth] :)

The Hilly-Holly. Not the Holly-Holly. You're not a bald man.

LISTER: OK. I'm here... What's the beef?
HOLLY: We've got a visitor.
LISTER: What?
HOLLY: A pod arrived about 20 minutes ago. Something was in it, but it's
broken free.
LISTER: Any ideas?
HOLLY: Well, I don't want to spread any panic or alarm.
LISTER: Whaddya mean, you don't wanna spread panic and alarm?
HOLLY: Well, you've always had this thing against tarantulas, haven't
you?
LISTER: (Worried) Tarantulas?
HOLLY: I mean that you've never been overly fond of them as a species,
have you?
LISTER: Well, no.
HOLLY: And the prospect of waking up and finding one crawling over your
clammy, naked, helpless body has always filled you with a kind of cold
dread?
LISTER: Well, yeah. Wotya trying to say to me, Holly?
HOLLY: I'm saying it might not be your night. Look at this. This is the
best shot the security cameras could get.

Fuzzy shot of something crawling up a corridor.

LISTER: Where is it now?
HOLLY: We lost it.
LISTER: What does Kryten think?
HOLLY: Kryten's off moon-hopping with Rimmer. Radio link's down. I'll
keep trying.

The intruder crawls into the drive room and obviously starts using LISTER's
leg as a ladder. LISTER tenses up. The CAT wanders in.

CAT: So what's the problem? Hey, you OK? You look tense.
LISTER: (Typing) > HELP
> Something is crawling up my leg. I think it's a taranshula
CAT: You're playing that dumb adventure game.
LISTER: > It's in my boxers. It's making a nest
CAT: Then buy a potion from Gandalf, the master wizard. That's what I
usually do.
LISTER: > I'm SERIOUS.

CAT looks down, then looks up again, a rather tense expression on his
face.

CAT: (Typing also) > It has an eye the size of a meatball
LISTER: > Kill it
CAT: > How?
LISTER: > I can't think straight. I've got a taranshula with an eye the
size of a meatball setting up home in my joy department. Help me.
CAT: > I'm scared
LISTER: > YOU'RE scared. How d'you think I feel?
CAT: > You haven't SEEN it!!
LISTER: > The lower half of my body has gone numb.
CAT: > That's probably for the best.
LISTER: > It's moving
> Oh *#%^**!!!!
217) Message boards : Cafe SETI : RPG thread (Message 98648)
Posted 14 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Sounds like a pretty cool game. The earliest D&D games for the computer
> that I remember were the text-based Commodore 64 games [grin]

Only text based games I played were on the TRS-80 (Haunted House and Pyramid 2000). Say the magic word: "Plugh". On the Amiga I played Bards Tale and the Gold Box D&D games (Pool of Radiance, et al).

BTW, Magenta, I just checked, and there seems to be a bit of a human problem on the server I recommended for Neverwinter Nights. Seems the DMs there have gone nuts. I recommend trying another server I used to be on called "Hawaiian Luau" under the "Story" category. The rules on death and XP there are tough, but at least you can adventure in relative peace. Ping times are a bit better on Luau anyway. Have you made another account yet? Be sure to let me know what your username is.
218) Message boards : Cafe SETI : RPG thread (Message 98614)
Posted 14 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > I'm a Wizardry fan who likes his games in 1st person. There are now some
> mods
> > for Wiz 8 availible that make it even more enjoyable.
>
> I have never heard of Wizardry. What is it?

Wizardry was a dungeon crawl way back when. The graphics were first person perspective similar to Dungeon Master or The Bard's Tale. I don't remember much about it other than it had fairly detailed character generation and skill progression, and I think at least in the one title I played (4? 6?) the storyline wasn't strictly linear.
219) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [6] - CLOSED (Message 98593)
Posted 14 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> And Martha Stewart too, surely? Why are people still apparently idolising
> her?

Got me. The right feels so persecuted by the women's movement, and Martha made them feel better about themselves.

> Then again, I still don't get why people have created "saint" Princess (?)
> Diana. The aristocracy has always had affairs - sometimes with other humans -
> it's a fact of life, get with the programme. :)

Many want to believe in a fairy tale. They'll believe the press, and spin it even higher in their own minds.

> !!!!! Hon, are you okay????

It was a very long time ago. Schoolyard stuff. We moved a lot, and I was always the new kid on the block and a geek to boot. All the after-school specials show that if a geek stands up to a bully, the bully backs down. Great stories. That wasn't exactly my experience. On two occasions someone pulled a knife, and I just practiced the better part of valor (ran). I can imagine what it would be like to be a kid these days in those same schools, now that firearms are more abundant. Like an old friend once said: can't outrun a bullet.
220) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Mac OS X.4 (Message 98574)
Posted 14 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hmm.. I thought Murasaki would have picked up on the name reference. Dude,
> remember Balder's Gate???? Minsc???? And his pet hamster Boo????

I can't remember exactly why, but I never finished Baldur's Gate. I guess part of it was my previous machine had problems with it. I'm not sure if I still have it anymore. It was part of the bundle for my last girlfriend's computer, and she took all that stuff with her when she moved out.
221) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 98462)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You're probably thinking of the 520ST which was
> 68000-based and the 5200 which was a stripped-down 800XL video

Yes, I'm probably thinking about the 520ST, not 512 (binary is in my head). Was it out around 1985? I remember having to choose between that and the Amiga 500 at the Post Exchange (I was air force on temporary assignment at an army base, so I was kinda isolated and bored), so I chose the Amiga. Did the 520ST have a built in MIDI?

I definitely remember the Atari 5200 video game system. I had one.

> ...Texas Instruments TI-99/4A...
> I own that too.

When they dropped to $50 apiece, I got one too. Didn't do much with it.

> I had a 286 for about a week. Then I got my Mac.

Only reason I had a 286 at all was my Dad thought I should learn to run Autocad, so he gave one to me.

> Damn, I feel old!

Join the club, dude.
222) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What book tickles you... (Message 98455)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> @ Murasaki: the Machinist reference is my most used on a daily basis but it

Hehe, you remember that from another thread. :) Truth is, it's nearly completely unnecessary for me, since my current trade is electronics, but I'm just used to having the info on hand from way back when. About the only time I look something up is when I occasionally need to know what size drill goes with what tap.
223) Message boards : SETI@home Science : The Theory (Message 98428)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Ah, I see where you're going with this, I think.

Check out these sources:

PhotonStar Project reference by Misfit

The PhotonStar Project

Optical SETI

Kudos to Misfit for always being ahead of the curve with timely and relevant news articles and links. :)
224) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 98413)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I would be more affraid of the average person with a knife than a gun too. but
> because someone with a knife might be more willing to use it than a person
> with a gun. then again that is only if the welder actually thinks twice. What
> would you bet you life on?

According to surveys, that doesn't seem to be the case. Especially where women are concerned, most don't want to be close enough to use a knife. A gun is much easier, as there can be a certain psychological detachment, at least beforehand. In the mind's eye, the gun is much "neater", despite the mess it can make in reality.

As I've stated elsewhere, from personal experience I found it fairly easy to evade getting stabbed, at least seriously. In the same situations, had my opponent had a gun, things could have been far, far worse. Fortunately for me, the one time an incident involved a gun, I'm the one who had it.
225) Message boards : Cafe SETI : RPG thread (Message 98257)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I don't think it's my firewall, it's more like my complete lack of
> understanding of how to join a game. And it took me a while to realise that a
> lot of the little "learning" multiplayer games were all passworded and that's
> why I couldn't join those ones. I would try to connect and then... nothing.

If you were in the lists, then I imagine one of two things were happening. One is, don't bother clicking on any server that is in red. Those are password protected "private" games.

The other is much more annoying. NWN is VERY reconfigurable. Many servers therefore require that you get on their website or Bioware's site and download "HAK" packs that override or add to your game's graphics for the modules that link to them (absolutely doesn't affect other modules, which is good because some of the haks are really bizarre, like adding realistic looking fingers and, shall we say, accurate but overly generous genitalia). Problem with the hak pack system is the module doesn't tell you you need one until you've already gone through the lengthy process of generating a character. VERY annoying.

Get online again and try a Nordock server. It's a popular module, and I've not seen one yet that was modded to require haks.

> I'd be interested in having a go with you sometime one weekend. I'm sure I
> could get the hang of it as long as I have someone reasonably patient giving
> me a bit of a hand. I just need to remember my username and password on the
> NWN site...

I think there's no penalty for just picking another name/pw. In any case, if you haven't uninstalled the game, it may have the info memorized. Let me know what time would be good for you (you're 19 or so hours ahead of me, New Zealand, right?), and what your username is. Make sure your buddy list allows me to see when you're on, too. I will do the same.

> http://eng.sacred-game.com/index.php?subsiteid=0
> It's got the main quest and subquests just like the other RPGs, but it doesn't
> run D&D rules.
>
> BTW have you tried Icewind Dale?

No, I haven't. I read the books by RA Salvatore a long time ago, but I've not bought the game. Unfortunately I'm not currently in a position to get a new game. :(
226) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Alien Message In Our DNA? (Message 98249)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I heard some report or documentary a few months ago that said our understanding of the mechanics of DNA has to be far from complete. It said there are an estimated 30,000 protein coding sites in human DNA, but an estimated 100,000 protein chains used in the human body. Can't be a 1 for 1 correspondence. Anyone know anything more about this?
227) Message boards : Cafe SETI : RPG thread (Message 98241)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I
> normally play neutral good or lawful good, because I find I just can't make
> myself nasty so chaotic and evil just don't work for me. :)

Same here.

> Once I got cable instead of dialup, I went to the NWN and Sacred sites, but I
> don't know how to join the online games. I went through the game and nothing
> happened - I just never managed to actually join one even though I had it
> selected.

Firewall problems or something? It should be easy on NWN just to select a username and password and log in. Then the list of servers, chat space, and buddy list will come up (my username is Murasaki10000. There are other Murasakis)

> I'm really only good at games when I can pause the action and sort out who's
> doing what - particularly with a casting/melee combination in a party. And
> I'm a past master at the "run away, run away" Holy Grail type approach as
> well.

I have often guided nooBs (newbies) in this regard. Trust me, it gets fairly easy. Either I go in partied with them with a similarly experienced character, or I just "shadow" them with Talon the Outcast (wizard) and raise them after they screw up. In any case, NWN is quite forgiving since it's based on the timing of the paper and pencils D&D, so it isn't usuall constant action like Diablo II or what have you until the really high levels.

> I've enjoyed playing Sacred, the reviews have said it's really similar to
> Diablo (which I also enjoy), but I'm finding it more similar to NWN. I just
> wish the sets of armour were easier to find.

Loved playing Diablo I/II online, but I kinda got tired of always being the guy who had to partner up with the Spanish-speaking nooB (very popular game in Central and South America) because nobody else could help him/her (I speak passable Spanish). I've never played Sacred.
228) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 98230)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously
considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently
of no value to us."
--Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
--Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of
science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
--Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked
with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is
a fad that won't last out the year."
--The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall,
1957

"But what... is it good for?"
--Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM,
1968, commenting on the microchip.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
--Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital
Equipment Corp., 1977

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who
would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
--David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for
investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn
better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
--A Yale University management professor in response to Fred
Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service.
(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
--H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and
not Gary Cooper."
--Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in
"Gone With The Wind."

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
--Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
--Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing,
even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about
funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay
our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So
then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't
need you. You haven't got through college yet.'"
--Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get
Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal
computer.

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum
against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge
ladled out daily in high schools."
--1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's
revolutionary rocket work.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy."
--Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project
to drill for oil in 1859.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
--Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole
Superieure de Guerre.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
--Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
--Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents,
1899.


229) Message boards : Cafe SETI : RPG thread (Message 98220)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I like Starcraft myself. :)

NWN AND Starcraft??? SISTER!!!! 8)

Generally I don't like real time strategy games because of their extremely annoying economic models (producing half a platoon of marines or building an entire city wall during a single battle, etc), but Starcraft in particular just worked for me. I loved the Aliens feel to it. I'm not GOOD at it, but I enjoy playing.

For the solo NWN campaign, I used a wizzie. With the SOU and HOTU expansion spells and Daelan Red Tiger as a meat wall, I could reconfigure spells to suit whatever was likely to come next. Using a wizzie does make the end of HOTU a rugged bear to finish, though. In case you've never been there, I won't say why.

I'm rarely online anymore, but I usually frequent a server called "0 ' (N)Lands of Nordock" in the PW story category. The server is in Norway, so there are usually Europeans on in their afternoon/evening, then US and Aussies on in our afternoon/evening. Nordock servers use different rules on death, resting, etc than the basic game, so watch out.

BTW, if you're just having TOO much trouble with the campaign game, you can play it multiplayer.
230) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 98178)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> When I first got my little 286, I was addicted to solitaire.... [blush] Then I
> moved on to harder games, like SimCity, until finally I was tolerant to most
> games apart from Civilisation....

Try spider solitaire in Windows XP. It's self-abuse, plain and simple. I've won on difficult level twice.

Only modern game I played recently, truth be told, is Neverwinter Nights, an open-ended online or offline Dungeons and Dragons game. That's where my other handle comes into play: Crash Lander. I mostly like strategy games like Masters of Orion II (NOT Civilization, though, because their military model is ridiculously simple for the level of detail in the rest of the game). I also like flight simulators alot, and since I briefly took flying lessons in '86-'87 I'm fairly good at even technical ones, but I tend to hamfist joysticks and break them within two weeks of purchase.
231) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 98167)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I remember when Space Invaders came out - thought that was sooooooo cool, then
> Galaga (sp) came out. Wow! The only video arcade game I was any good at was
> Rally X (the little car with the oil slicks etc), and I could play that for
> half an hour or so - until my whole female right/left confusion got too much
> for me when the car was coming down the screen and I would turn the car the
> wrong way.

I've had many addictions over the years. There was one we had briefly that nobody liked but me, and I wish I had it now. It was called Prop Cycle, and it was basically a stationary bicycle attached to a bigscreen TV. You had to pedal your character's flying bicycle around popping balloons hidden around twisty terrain, getting enough points before time expires. The computer read the pedals, the handlebars, and the back forth tilt of the bike, so you had full range of motion. Also there was a quiet, squirrel-cage fan under the screen that simulated the air rushing past you in dives and such. The soundtrack was also lilting and pleasant. I played many-many "service games" on it after hours.
232) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 98162)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Gosh, I hope I didn't hit a sore point.

You sorta did, but I'm not sore with you, of course. :) Just with the way things work in the really real world.

> them the publication material in PC formats (Word for text, Excel for graphs)
> because there seemed to be an "out of sync" issue for the release of these
> Office programmes between the two types of hardware.

From what I understand, there are problems with compatibility porting data. One is very basic: on long integers an MC68000 stores the most significant byte in the lowest memory address, whereas an x86 stores the least significant. This means a data file on a disk or spilling through a network connection has an inherent incompatibility that has to have byte swap routines built into EACH piece of software to compensate. That in particular isn't the fault of any one archtecture. There are logical reasons for both ways.

> Wasn't it the head of IBM in the late 1970s who thought that PCs would never
> take off (so everything would stay mainframe) and therefore IBM shot itself in
> the foot and entered the PC market rather late?

I'd say more "weak" than late. I believe the original PC design hit the market in 1979, but I'm not sure. At the time, there really wasn't much in the way of industry standards on most things, certainly not on small standalone units, so the field was open. But yes, you're right, that was the attitude of the CEOs of IBM and many others, including Digital Equipment Corporation (made very versatile minicomputers in the 1970s). The CEO of DEC publicly (metaphorically) beat up on himself for his lack of vision for years after.

> I remember all the incompatibility problems I had with hardware over the PC
> COM ports (including virtual port writes interfering with actual port writes).
> And that darn base memory permanent allocation. And don't get me started on
> having to force software to load into "high memory" in config.sys and/or
> autoexe.bat [sigh].

Yep. No foresignt whatsoever, just bandaid fixes like 8/16 IRQs, EISA, XMS/EMS, etc.

About what I said earlier on the MC68000 microprocessor versus the intel 80x86 line: I repaired video arcade games in the early nineties as a part time job (for fun, really). Of the 60 or more games I repaired, a few were really old processors like Z-80s, TMS-9900s, 6502s, etc. ONE was an 80386 system. ALL the rest were MC68000 series. Also, all the upgrades we got to the military system I worked on full time were 68000 series based, including a Hewlett-Packard Unix system. In fact, over my career, I don't remember any system other than PCs and that one video game where the engineers chose the Intel.

[EDIT] As I stated previously, if IBM hadn't basically handed Intel the business desktop computer sector, Intel might just be an historical footnote. [/EDIT]
233) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 98150)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I've never owned an Apple, although they look pretty cool. Why didn't they
> take off like the DOS-based PCs? I thought they had a good GUI from very
> early on.

IBM lost control of the PC design (and software, to Microsoft) early on. This allowed other companies, from small ones like Eagle Computers to big ones like Xerox to hit the market with 8086/8088 based PC clones.

As I recall, Apple II lines also had clones (Orange, et al). When Apple released the the Macintosh, they kept it on a very tight licensing leash. This had the effect of keeping Macintosh prices high. Truth is, the only reason Mac survived IMHO is that they did a very smart thing by targeting schools with great deals, so all the science geeks got used to Macs. [EDIT] Also desktop publishing, where PC's lack of a decent GUI hurt them.[/EDIT]

In any case, IBM had a leg up because they were known for making "serious business computers" stemming back to the 1950s. This meant the business world bought PCs and clones.

I went to Comdex in Las Vegas in 1983 and saw the market after "clones" became regular players on the market. Clones used to be rated in "percentage of compatibility": 90%, 95%, etc. This is how likely they were to run programs designed for a true IBM PC without crashing. There were many people who had other very good computer designs, but the steamroller that was the standardized PC clone was already in motion.

From personal experience, there is NOTHING great about the PC/XT/AT lines (other than the price of a clone). The Intel x86 microprocessors were a clunky compromise from their inception (idiotic address and offset memory scheme, for instance). IBM's PCs themselves were also a study in cutting corners and riding on a company's reputation to make sales. Had the world been built around the CPU EVERY other system, including Macs and Amigas, went to, the Motorola MC68000, the world would be a much happier place today, and Intel might just be a footnote. We have been punished for backwards compatibility with lousy architecture for decades.
234) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Kid Stole Dead Guys Head! (Message 98147)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Poor cows. All they do is stand in a field and moo. :(

But it's a singularly unique experience when you feed the cows and they come trotting up to you after and lick your arm with that huge 40-grit sandpaper tongue. Think your cat's tongue is rough?

Okay, I have done a FEW chores on a farm.
235) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 98144)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> :) Did you guys ever get the computer called a "BBC" in the US? They came to
> NZ in the mid-80s. What was that?

The name Acorn rings a bell, but I've never seen one here. Only computers I saw or used in the 80s were the Timex/Sinclair ZX-80/81, the various Tandys, Atari 400/800/1200/512, Texas Instruments TI-99/4A, Amiga 500/1000/2000, Vic-20, C-64/128s, various 8086/8088/80286 PC clones, and of course AppleII/IIE and spinoffs and the Macintosh line.
236) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Kid Stole Dead Guys Head! (Message 98139)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> BTW Cow Tipping is a myth...

I wouldn't know. Didn't spend much time on farms. Kid from the suburbs. Still, like any good myth, it's entertaining, so it endures.

Magenta: Cow tipping is presumably done when a cow is sleeping standing up. You get a few people to push the cow over, and it wakes up and moos on it's way down. Then run, because you now have a half ton of angry pot roast coming for you.
237) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 98134)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> What is a CoCo III?

Tandy Color Computer. If I recall correctly, they didn't use a Z-80 processor like the Mod I,3, and 4. 6502 processor? Can't remember.

I don't mind "Trash 80". It's a term of endearment to me.
238) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Kid Stole Dead Guys Head! (Message 98131)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The locals just can't stick with cow tipping, I guess. Cow tipping is a gateway prank. This is the result when it doesn't provide enough of a rush.

Just say no.
239) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Super Volcano (Message 98121)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Two fat guys tugging on each other's diapers? Can't really say I've seen any good sumo, actually. Just never was my cup of ocha.
240) Message boards : Cafe SETI : My 3000th Post! (Message 98110)
Posted 13 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Just makes me want to run out and get some DVDs of Newhart

Happy 3000th, Cap'n!
241) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Fishing (Message 97942)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > error!!!
> >
> Huh??? You don't live in Washington state??? Oregon then???

No, no. Sorry, the, "error" message was a placemarker. I tried to link to a map of the area, but the link kept getting erased when I'd try to post. :(

Your friend lives a bit further away, according to the map (I've never been to Wenatchee), but is far more downwind of any eruption from St Helens, so is in a far worse position overall. I live almost due north of the mountain.

An old girlfriend of mine lived in this area during the eruption, and she said that they heard the boom. Hard to believe at first, until I saw a map at one of the observatories a few miles from the volcano that showed that the shockwave went upward and bounced off the upper atmosphere. So just a few miles away the eruption was quiet, but there is a ring where the wave reflected back downward and they heard it. I don't recall how much ash they got here, if any. The bowl of the mountain does face in this direction.
242) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Fishing (Message 97933)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
error!!!
243) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Fishing (Message 97923)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I knew someone who lives about 100 km from it, scary, isn't it?

Actually, you "know" someone now who lives about 150 km away. Me. :)

An impressive scene here to me is to go to Crystal Mountain Ski Resort, which is very close to "Tahoma" (Mt Ranier), and take the lift to the summit. at 7000+ feet, you're still only halfway up the side of Ranier, and you have a commanding view of the other volcanoes in the area, including Mt St Helens. At that elevation you can see how they just dwarf all the other peaks.

Sorry, people, I personally have never been into photography. Dang it, come out and see them for yourselves! :)
244) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 97906)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I bought my first computer at 17 when I started full-time work - a Commodore
> 64. A couple of years later I was one of the 3 people that upgraded to a
> C-128. I used to get my monthly Ahoy magazine from the local newsagent.

Between 1985 and 1988 I didn't have a computer, but many friends had a Commodore 64. One even had a set of circuit schematics for it. This became the first computer we modified as my friend noticed there's a reset circuit built into it. I built a "bounceless switch" for it making a hardware reset for his machine so he never had to turn it off. Suprising that Commodore never included a hardware reset until the C-128 days.

I bought a Commodore Amiga in 1988, and that was my passion until 1993, when I broke down and went 386 PC. I'd had a 286, but I didn't use it much, and ended up trading it for a "Time Pilot" cocktail video game table. I used my 386 a lot more.

> My first pc was a 286... ahh, those wonderful days of MS-DOS and batch files.
> I helped a friend run a BBS system in the mid-90s... which reminds me of some
> futile converations I had in overseas feeds about people who ate fish and
> chicken meat could not be vegetarians... [sigh]

Hehe. My BBS days (1991-) are where my original handle, Lord Murasaki, came from. Friends of mine ran BBSes, but nobody I knew were on any networks, so all my conversations were local. I kinda miss "BBS breakfasts", picnics, and game events where we'd all meet and put faces to the handles.
245) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 97823)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> And I first encountered programming on a "Trash" 80 in the mid-80s at your(?)
> equivalent of high school

I bought a TRS-80 Model III (my first computer) in 1980, and a Model 4 in 83/84. As it turned out, when my high school started teaching BASIC and Pascal, they bought a lab full of Mod IIIs. For a geek, I became very popular as people could come over to finish their programs and get help as well.

[EDIT] I could afford these computers back then because we had a tool and diemaking shop in our basement, so I was the only kid in my school that had a real world job since I was 13. [/EDIT]
246) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 97811)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> If I hear one more drunk "rendition" of Born to be Wild, my views on gun
> control will resemble yours... It wouldn't be so bad if they could stay
> within an total chord's distance (rather than half-chord). [sigh]

Get your program running
Head out to the center
Terminals are waiting
For the data that you'll enter

Everybody says that you're a nerd, but
They should know that you just don't care
Got your Hewlett-Packard on your belt and
Vaseline in your hair

Like a true mommy's child
You were born, born to be mild
When your batteries die
You're always gonna cry
Born to be mild

Pencils in your pocket
Patent leather briefcase
Studying your Fortran
You got pimples on your face

Gotta do your homework
Forget about the prom dance
They think that you're a big jerk
'Cause you wear a pair of flood pants

Every day you wake up
Your oscilloscope is humming
Parties tend to break up
When they find out that you're coming

(There are many versions. This one is supposedly by Wierd Al Yankovic)
247) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 97800)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I'm sure their karoake is just as 'gawd awful' as ours is...... so much for
> 'advanced' civilization......

And like us, they probably don't pronounce it right either. "Cayereeeyoookeee, 'yall! Yeeehah!"
248) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Fishing (Message 97797)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
After growing up on the east coast of the United States, where quakes are rare, I was somewhat unnerved by my first couple in Japan. Later, though, I got used to it. I remember once a particularly noticeable one woke me halfway out of sleep, and I barely remember staggering over to the bathroom doorway, sitting down in it, and falling back to sleep there.

One day here in Washington state, in 2002 I believe, my boss and I were on lunch break, and he was getting cash from the drive thru ATM. The van starts rocking like crazy, as does the awning above us, and he yells, "What the hell is going on?!?!" As he tells it, I pointed to the bank windows, which were vibrating, and replied as if I was ordering lunch, "It's because were having an earthquake." Being my boss' first quake, he wasn't quite so calm about it. That particular quake was fun for me because, since I repaired surveillance systems, I saw a lot of comical reactions by the staff at my locations caught on video.

I haven't been down to Mt St Helens in a while, so I haven't seen the latest changes except on TV.
249) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 97787)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> And why would advanced beings, who may be able to bend space/time to their
> wills, use 1900s-style medical instruments???? Roll on the tricorder!!

Despite a century of technological progress, we still use hypodermic needles, internal combustion engines, metal knives, drop forging, stick-built housing, chemical rockets, gravity/suction operated toilets, fixed airfoil wings, and much more. If our own example is any guide, there may be many devices that just aren't easily replaced even by a very advanced civilization, or are at least easily recognized by a more primitive being.
250) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Thanks for my avatars!!! (Message 97782)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Guys, before you get over-excited, at this stage I feel obligated to point out
> that I am in my late 30s. For a number of you, it puts me in the category of
> older sister. I just hope that for others it doesn't place me as "mother".

Depending on how "late" in the 30s, best you could do is make "twin" sister to me, otherwise it's younger.
251) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Thanks for my avatars!!! (Message 97778)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I want to do everyones Avatars, I love doing them! so people need to know

Yes, but I've never seen you using the ORIGINAL Captain Avatar:

252) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Fishing (Message 97749)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Where's all the ash from the Super Volcano?

In a trillion little vials being sold at the gift shop.
253) Message boards : Cafe SETI : UFO Ideas (Message 97747)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Yea, I Love Artaxia.

I'd rather catch a rerun of My Three Symbiotes
254) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97734)
Posted 12 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Yea, but that was a funny line. I don't know who the extra was.

I haven't seen the movie in years, and I think only once even then, so I couldn't tell directly.

Overdoing it a bit, I crossreferenced a labeled quote from the movie with the IMDb database. The quote says it was a character called "Ace Tomato Agent". There are three listed on the credits: Michael Apted, Larry Cohen, and B.B. King. Refining my previous search, the sources agree it was B.B. King (yes, THE B.B. King).
255) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Experts Examine Thread of Life In The Universe (Message 97636)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
One of the reasons people give for colonizing Mars is that a NEO could smash into Earth and wipe us all out. We shouldn't have all our eggs in one basket, so to speak.

I support this notion, of course. I just keep imagining, however, the accomplishment of a massive effort to colonize Mars and terraform it. Then, ironically, after so many years of work, the first planetkilling asteroid event in human history happens to Mars.
256) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What book tickles you... (Message 97600)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long, a compilations of sayings from Robert Heinlein's favorite fictional character. Produced by D.F. Vassalo.

Excerpts:

* What are the facts? Again and again and again --- what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what "the stars foretell", avoid opinion, Care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable "verdict of history" --- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always in to an unknown future; facts are your only chance. Get the facts!

* The most preposterous notion that H. sapiens has ever dreamed up it that the Lord God of Creation, Shaper and Ruler of all the Universes, wants the saccharine adoration of His creatures, can be swayed by prayers, and becomes petulant if He does not receive this flattery. Yet this absurd fantasy, without a shred of evidence to bolster it, pays all the expenses of the oldest, largest and least productive industry in all history.

* The second most preposterous notion is that copulation is inherently sinful.

* Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.

* The only sin lies in hurting others unnecessarily. All other sins are just invented nonsense.

* Never try to outstubborn a cat.

* Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.

* Touch is the most fundamental sense. A baby experiences it, all over, before he is born and long before he learns to use sight, hearing, or taste, and no human ever ceases to need it. Keep your children short on pocket money, but long on hugs.

* Money is truthful. If a man speaks of his honor, make him pay cash.

* To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.

* A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

* Rub her feet.
257) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Thanks for my avatars!!! (Message 97595)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Could be true... I already have Murasaki as my good twin,

Near colors on the color chart. Magenta and Murasaki (purple). You have more red, and I have more blue.
258) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Super Volcano (Message 97590)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > The second part of the docu-drama was all the Xerox and IBM commericals
> every
> > 5 minutes.... ;-P
> >
> No IBM or Xerox commerical that I recall.. Did see a Quizno's commercial
> though..
>
> Still right scary.. I think I will re-inforce my roof and pack the basement
> with food water and arctic gear..

I don't usually have a problem with those, but when they show Tostinos pizza roll commercials with the kids screeching out at high volume or something else nauseating I go scrambling for the TiVo remote's fast-forward button.
259) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Thanks for my avatars!!! (Message 97465)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> This is where I also admit to owning and reading The Dancing Wu Li
> Masters and The Tao of Pooh. I also have the Te of Piglet. And Zen and the
> Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - I also read the sequel Lila (?) and was sorely
> disappointed.

Never heard of any of these except Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I read a couple chapters, but I have a short attention span for philosophy and such.

> Sadly, around 1/4 of my books are psychology texts and 1/4 are statistics.
> But I'm also going well on the Terry Pratchett discworld books - trying to
> finish Herodotus at the moment, but it's taking a while.

Most of my books are reference books: Machinery Handbook 24ed, Understanding Data Communications, switching power supply design theory, Spanish and Japanese dictionaries, a few programming references, etc, plus a few odd textbooks from college. Most science fiction books I read then give to Goodwill.
260) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space and Science Trivia II (Message 97458)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Q95:Mars has two satellites. Their names are:
> A: Miranda and Titania
> B: Phobos and Deimos
> C: Ganymede and Callisto
> D: Pallas and Vesta

Phobos and Deimos. Yes, multiple guess is too easy, but I'd have known this one in any case.
261) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Alien Message In Our DNA? (Message 97430)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I've been comeing back to this thread over and over reading the posts. No body
> has brought up the question that keeps coming to my mind. Call me sick...Call
> me perverted but if this was true I keep wondering HOW they put it there!
> Did they slap one of us humans on a table and inject it into us of did they
> do it the old fashioned way and insiminate it.
> some have said that they think we humans were put here by an alien race.
> maybey we are the offspring.

Well, all the alleged UFO abductions talk of bizarre experiments on humans, after all. Still if they were going to be that overt and ongoing with their manipulations, what would be the point of a hidden message?
262) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Alien Message In Our DNA? (Message 97429)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Gosh it's spooky how similarly you think to me.. I've found the good twin!!!
> :)

Betcha didn't realize we have something else in common, sorta. "Murasaki" means "purple" in Japanese.
263) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Thanks for my avatars!!! (Message 97428)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Order tends to chaos, chaos surely starts looking like order.... especially
> when one just happens to look up on the train to work and accidentally catches
> another person's (normally a member of the opposite sex's) eye and it looks
> like one has been staring at them. Of course, the only way they know you're
> looking at them is if they're looking at you. :)

Wasn't that Nietzsche? Something about gazing too long...

Anyhow, you bio mentions Brief History of Time. If it helps, I'll admit I cheated. Bought the book on tape and played it over and over as I drove all the way from one end of the continental US to the other. Forces you not to dwell on the stuff you don't get immediately.
264) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Thanks for my avatars!!! (Message 97387)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Yay, I have an avatar. :) :)
>
> Thanks Captain Avatar!!!

Now you just need to write a profile.
265) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97381)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
F: "...I wish none of this had happened."
G: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."
266) Message boards : Number crunching : My Boinc CC feels better now (Message 97374)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Just curious... why do you mean Pirates is more important than CPDN? :)
> >
> Pirates is helping Einstein, It's a test bed for Boinc. I don't have the
> patience for a project that takes forever/WU. Don't take offense if you
> happen to love CPDN. I simply choose not to.

As an avid CPDN cruncher, no offense taken. :) Part of the point of BOINC is to provide a lot of options for participation, giving the user license to choose whatever sparks their interest.
267) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Adolescence of P-1 (Message 97344)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> >A college student writes a computer program that runs wild, entering other
> >computers, making hidden partitions, collecting information and eventually
> >becomes aware of itself
>
> sounds a lot like Terminator. (snip)

Or Tron, Demon Seed, the new Battlestar Galactica (though becoming sentient may have came first before infiltrating computers during the first colonial war), South Park (Dawsons Creek Trapper Keeper 2000), Asimov's Robot series, etc, etc. Very popular theme in science fiction. What seems novel about this, well, novel is that the computer here wants to find its creator. Searching for a parent, God, or just insight into its own identity?
268) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Aliens In The Solar System (Message 97307)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> if aliens were in the solar system...how could they leave a message big enough
> for us to notice and investigate?...what if such a celestial structure as the
> rings of saturn were manipulated by an alien intelligence to form a "cosmic
> barcode"?...man has now been close enough (via unmanned probes) to get
> hi-definition images of those rings...is there anything between the lines for
> us to read?

Hey, maybe there's a pattern in the Great Red Spot we're not seeing. :)

[EDIT]I'm not being sarcastic. I'm thinking if they were clever aliens they may hide a message in plain sight on something painfully obvious like the red spot or Saturn's rings that at first would seem to us to be relatively permanent but a completely chaotic system until we looked really really close.[/EDIT]
269) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Alien Message In Our DNA? (Message 97305)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> But do you think it's possible that an alien civilization that is capable of
> intersteller space travel may be able to plant these "message genes" wherever
> they wanted to without causing harm to the host? This may be tricky for us,
> but maybe not for a very technologically advanced alien civilization.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say anyone being able to mount a scientific expedition at interstellar distances would HAVE to have a firm grasp of biochemistry, quantum chemistry, nanotechnology, quantum mechanics, etc. to build a sustainable vessel, sublight or otherwise. Assuming a live ET or a very smart robotic probe that can loiter for years and be bursted with complex instructions, it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine they could unravel the mystery that is DNA and protein sequencing even if it was foreign to them, notice areas that weren't being used, and be able to build nanobots that can cut and paste.

It also may be that only a few could be affected, so not everyone has the message.

So far as I can tell, the only real "flight of fancy" in this scenario, according to our grasp of science, is the actual "fancy flight" from there to here.

> A computer could be used to find obvious attention-grabbing patterns within
> these stretches of DNA, he said. If a sequence of junk units of DNA were
> displayed as an array of pixels on a screen and produced a simple image "the
> presumption of tampering would be inescapable".


Me, I'd look for probability anomalies first. If I were to perform this project, I'd encode in binary 2,3,5,7,11,13 etc all the way up to the largest prime I can represent in my selected "word size". That would be reason enough to examine the entire sequence ad infinitum, because even in something so simple the probability becomes on the order of the "monkeys pounding out Beethoven's fifth" that the sequence could possibly occur naturally with no natural selection reinforcing the pattern. And the pattern could not possibly be found until humans had sufficient technology to map the entire genome on the level of each nucleic acid.
270) Message boards : Number crunching : Can I get confirmation that Einstein is down. (Message 97299)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Last packet I got from them was today (10 April) at about 1900 UTC (err, guess for UTC that was yesterday)
271) Message boards : Cafe SETI : APB: The Fat B is Missing Again! (Message 97291)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Passengers get first access...

You'd still think he could post from time to time. He is Lt Uhura onboard that ship, after all.

[EDIT]

Posted 135 days ago by Petit Soleil

Next to the radio officer (me) who've been caught sleeping during his<br />
night watch is a 2.5 Kilo Watts PEP HF transmitter. Sweet.<br />


[/EDIT]
272) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space and Science Trivia II (Message 97270)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> >86 has got to be A. both of you got this one but Misfit got it 1st.
>
>
> But both of you got 85 wrong. Phoebe isn't a Galilean moon. I think Ganymeade
> is the largest of the Galilean moons but it isn't the outermost of the four.
> I'm gonna let 85 ride a little longer. I'm sure someone will get it.

Gonna SWAG it again and say Callisto. (I remember them in the order of Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, but I can't remember if that's the actual order).
273) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Alien Message In Our DNA? (Message 97264)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I guess that with a hypothesis like this one, almost anything is possible. If
> Professor Davies is sugesting something like this, then why not even say that
> those same aliens actually designed us as well.

That was the basis of the book 2001: A Space Oddyssey, actually. The old ones came across life in countless places in the universe, but found precious little Mind. So they cultivated, and sometimes, regrettably, had to weed...

In any case, my original thought was too broad, I'm thinking now that the best way to go about such an endeavor is not to alter an organism, but to alter the organism's offspring. Target the reproductive cells only, or the undifferentiated embryo cells "en vivo", and you don't run as much risk of killing the message's hosts.

The real trick is now to take the data from the human genome project and run it through algorithms that look for sequences that simply can't be random. The message would have to be somewhat obvious and likely would have a "key" sequence.
274) Message boards : Cafe SETI : APB: The Fat B is Missing Again! (Message 97256)
Posted 11 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I distinctly remember Petit saying he was going on
> a very long cruise (a couple of months) and would
> be back afterwards.


Lucky Bastard :)
275) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97248)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Well he's signed up for another season so obviously he survives. But while
> he's out of commission that means that egghead will be in command.

Yes. Remember the line in "33"? "Well, if the crew doesn't hate the XO, I'm not doing my job." Great complexity, with his alcoholism, the nightmarish headcase of a wife he's married to, and the fact that he's just not as well appreciated by the crew as Adama... AAAAAAH!!! GOTTA SEE THE NEXT EPISODES!!!!

That's one of the reasons I'm SOOO getting into this show. No techie tricks. A main character damages a knee or gets shot, they don't just come bouncing in the very next episode like nothing happened. I LOVED that scene where Adama was pointing out why Starbuck couldn't be in on the fuel depot raid, adding weight to the exercise machine.
276) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Alien Message In Our DNA? (Message 97237)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
It's an interesting hypothesis, but there are variables that seem difficult to overcome. For this to have occurred, ET would have had to gather all the samples of that which was evolving into humans and recode or add dormant portions. Either that or distribute the message in a retrovirus, which seems to me difficult because it would attach to DNA in locations that would be prone to mutation.

[EDIT]I suppose with sufficient nanotechnology, recoding billions of cells in each of hundreds or thousands of proto-humans isn't impossible.[/EDIT]

Perhaps someone here who has more than just high-school biology like I do could weigh in on this?
277) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97224)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> It's too bad she wont live. But then again who does?
>
> Now he's been shot by a cylon agent.

Yes, and thankfully the next season will be longer. I'm of course watching the reruns, but I'm already suffering withdrawal symptoms. Is this how Dallas fans felt when JR got shot? We KNOW who it was and I STILL desperately need to see the next one.
278) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space and Science Trivia II (Message 97216)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Q83:What is the innermost Galilean moon?

Io. Very volcanically active due to tidal forces, if I recall correctly.
279) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97208)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> So long, and thanks for all the fish.
> - A Dolphin

From the book of the same title, the fourth book in the "increasingly inaccurately named Hitchiker's Guide trilogy".
280) Message boards : Cafe SETI : RHPS thread because it was suggested (Message 97200)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Well, dang it, if nobody else is going to get around to it...

Riff Raff:
It's astounding
Time is fleeting
Madness takes its toll
But listen closely

Magenta:
Not for very much longer

Riff Raff:
I've got to keep control
(singing)
I remember doing the Time Warp
Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me

Riff and Magenta:
And the void would be calling

Chorus:
Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again

Criminologist:
It's just a jump to the left

Chorus:
And then a step to the right

Criminologist:
With your hands on your hips

Chorus:
You bring your knees in tight
But it's the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insane
Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again

Magenta:
It's so dreamy
Oh, fantasy free me
So you can't see me
No, not at all
In another dimension
With voyeuristic intention
Well secluded, I see all

Riff Raff:
With a bit of a mind flip

Magenta:
You're into the time slip

Riff Raff:
And nothing can ever be the same

Magenta:
You're spaced out on sensation

Riff Raff:
Like you're under sedation

Chorus:
Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again

Columbia:
Well I was walking down the street
Just a having a think
When a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink
He shook-a me up, he took me by surprise
He had a pick up truck and the devil's eyes
He stared at me and I felt a change
Time meant nothing, never would again

Chorus:
Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again

Criminologist:
It's just a jump to the left

Chorus:
And then a step to the right

Criminologist:
With your hands on your hips

Chorus:
You bring your knees in tight
But it's the pelvic thrust
That really drives you insane

Let's do the Time Warp again
Let's do the Time Warp again
281) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97199)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hearing captain and Scotish in the past couple of posts made me imagine a
> funny line for the USS Dallas sonar operator, Jonesy if I remember:
> Captain, there be whales here!

Where's the line originally from? Moby Dick? It was also used by Scotty in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
282) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97183)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > [EDIT]Another line I loved (I think I have the name right): "Alexei,
> you've
> > lost ANOTHER sub?"[/EDIT]

Sorry, I edited my edit after I checked the IMDb database for the Russian Ambassador's name. ;)

> A biological Mr. Beaumont :)

Same movie, experienced sonar tech is training a new guy, right?
283) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97174)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> [best russian-scotish accent] Careful Mr. Ryan things in here don't react well
> with bullets!!!

Ooooh! There's a case of "loved the book, loved the movie even though it was somewhat different." The Hunt for Red October. Sean Connery (Cpt Ramius) says this to Alec Baldwin (Jack Ryan)when they're in the missile room hunting down the KGB saboteur. Haven't seen that movie in years. Dammit, now I want it on DVD...

[EDIT]Another line I loved: "Andrei, you've lost ANOTHER sub?"

More memory lane stuff for the old guys here:
First
Second

[/EDIT]
284) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Alien Message In Our DNA? (Message 97171)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
...and THIS was a Star Trek TNG episode. ;)
285) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Aliens In The Solar System (Message 97156)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> No problem Murasaki. Was the book any good? Your mention made me do some
> searching on amazon. From what I've read of the description, it's about a
> large asteroidal object that appears above the Earth, and that it belonged to
> an extinct and highly advanced civilization.

I found it was good, however I tend to evaluate scifi not on the actual prose or character development, but on what kind of picture the themes and plot spark in my mind. Hence my recommendation of the Aliens vs Predator series, and why I can recommend Philip K. Dick stories even though his prose is a bit clunky to me (you'd think he could at least come up with pithier titles than Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?).

As I recall, Eon was a good read, and since it was given to me by another scifi buff (and one of only two people who recognized immediately where my handle of "Murasaki" came from) who said, "You should read this", I think he'd concur. Just wait until you see why the seventh chamber doesn't end... ;)
286) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97150)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I had to check myself as Enterprise never really took off here in West OZ but
> I new Ethan plays Neelix, By the way what made the line from Blade Runner pop
> into your head?

I have a very strange memory. I can't remember what I did or who I met yesterday half the time, but I can remember schematic circuit diagrams I saw over ten years ago. And I am a random quote generator. If I've seen a movie or heard a song three or so times and was paying any attention at all, I tend to remember most of it.
287) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 97139)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > altar of Roddenberry." -Coombs, played by Ethan Philips (plays Dr Phlox
>
> Dr Phlox is played by John Billingsley.

Sorry, my mistake. :) Well, sort of. I tend to check my memory against sources on the web when I think of something, but in this case my previous source had the erroneous info and I didn't examine it close enough, and for some reason I can never remember the cast names on Enterprise.

John Billingsley
288) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Aliens In The Solar System (Message 97133)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Sorry to be off-topic, but interesting fiction along these lines was Eon by Greg Bear.
289) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Cosmic Particle Accelerator (Message 97131)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hmm, a Ringworld. That's interesring, but think what would happen if the
> batteries went dead. I never read Ringworld, so I might enjoy doing so.
> I'll get it when I get Predator.

Don't want to give too much away, but in a way, they did.

Just FYI, I enjoyed Ringworld and Ringworld Engineers, but not so much Ringworld Throne, so I don't know if I'm going to read the one that is supposed to be coming out soon or not.
290) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How much Traffic did you have at one Month (Message 97129)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> My EPROM must be getting too much UV exposure.

That can happen when you spend too much time under fluorescent lights.
291) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How much Traffic did you have at one Month (Message 97126)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Now he brings up Spaceballs.

I think we already played that one out here. This was just an aftershock.
292) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What the HELL are credits for? (Message 97121)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> How do you know there are not people doing this to prove there is nobody else
> out there. A point to ponder.

In my profile, I point out that given the parameters for success I don't think we'll find a signal. I do it because:

a) Just seeking the answer advances our scientific tools, like the development of BOINC itself.
b) Assumption is a bad thing. Though my reasoning has some logic behind it, I don't know everything. After all, people just assumed we'd never see a live coelacanth either. If we seek but don't find, we're closer to knowing than assuming.
c) I simply hope I'm wrong.
293) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How much Traffic did you have at one Month (Message 97118)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
"How many A**h***s do we have on this ship?"
(Everyone stands up and raises hands)"Aye."
"I knew it. I'm surrounded by A**h***s."
294) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 96986)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Non-sequiteur, unsolicited quote of the day:

G: "You've done a man's job, sir. I suppose you're through."
D: "Finished."
G: "It's too bad she won't live. But then again who does?"
295) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 96826)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> CW. Why do you keep mispelling Goa'uld? <a> href="http://www.sg1archive.com/characters/">Check it out[/url]. >:-)

Why not? Richard Dean Anderson keeps deliberately mispronouncing it. I paraphrase someone who was on the DVD commentary track: "It's like he's always upset at being stuck on a science fiction show." As I said before, I like shows that don't always take themselves so seriously.

BTW, if you ever get the chance, listen to the commentary tracks on the Stargate SG-1 DVDs. Very entertaining, I find.

By the way, Stargate SG-1 is MY favorite scifi show, but I still don't know what they call us. Gaters?
296) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 96783)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> What I think is funny is the liitle quipes I have heard Jack O'Neill say about
> Star Trek on Stargate SG-1

Best one I think didn't involve him, but from an ironic choice for casting:

"And I don't know how you can call yourself a scientist and not worship at the altar of Roddenberry." -Coombs, played by Ethan Philips (plays Dr Phlox on Enterprise)

Lest any diehard Trekkies get upset, the show pokes fun at itself a lot, too (Wormhole Extreme especially, which was an entire episode dedicated to a spoof of Stargate SG-1, and contained the priceless line that caps on BOTH shows: "Why not? They all speak English." in reference to aliens). I guess that's what happens when you put Richard Dean Anderson and Peter DeLuise on the same project.
297) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [6] - CLOSED (Message 96729)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I thought I was the only one as well. :) The perspective I come from is that,
> at least in NZ, our laws come from the UK. And the laws started from the
> protection of rich people from poor people, and everything has just been added
> to/tacked on from there. What I see as a real injustice are things like white
> collar criminals getting little jail time for their bad deeds, compared to say
> burglars, but the former tend to affect way more people/take way more money.
> I see this as inherently unfair.

No different here. Enron scandal et al proved that.

> I also don't like the argument of "guns don't kill people, people do" as it is
> a meaningless argument in the sense that the person had the gun that killed
> the other person. Oh, except I've overlooked the obvious - keep guns, get
> rid of the people. :)

We're on the same page. Part of my logic process when I formulated the question for my "cop boss" was, "all crimes require means, motive, and opportunity, and the only obvious element to beat police is means." I know from personal experience it's a lot easier to survive someone trying to stab me.
298) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Cosmic Particle Accelerator (Message 96720)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Building a collider that big Murasaki would NEED a LOT of work I'd say.

Yeah, probably have to wait until we build a Ringworld. Then we could build a large collider on the other side to protect it from the solar wind.
299) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Seti/Boinc VS Seti@home Classic (Message 96715)
Posted 10 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Personally I fail to see all the brew ha ha over this issue. Your Credits or
> Points and $1.79 will get you a venti coffee of the day at Starbucks. So who
> cares if they award one point or 10-25 credits for each work unit finished.
>
> Bragging rights are all they are worth and this time next week I will be
> bragging I went over 50K SETI credits... :)

I personally never look. I just look at processing times and CPU usage on occasion to make sure my machine is still running efficiently.
300) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [6] - CLOSED (Message 96711)
Posted 9 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> This is where I think all legislation is problematic. Legislation is
> introduced in a particular historical context that may be quite irrelevant
> decades down the track. Sometimes I think maybe the best way is to re-examine
> all legislation every 10 years and decide on the bits where time has simply
> moved on. And then change it from scratch, rather than trying to tack on the
> fixes.

Wow. I thought I was the only one with that idea. :) So many laws made sense at the time but do not work these days, yet legislation tends to add addenda and complexity to existing laws instead of reforging them entirely, which only makes the judicial system that much more complex.

> Yep, those commas really are bad. I can see now where the interpretation
> problems come in, that bit of writing is veryunclear. That second
> comma, after "state", really does seem to mean that the people have a right to
> keep and bear arms irregardless of a militia. Another thought on this -
> perhaps it was to do with the community problems of the time - law and order,
> social control, etc - so they really did need non-militia people to have
> weapons so the communities could look after themselves. Again, however, this
> historical context is so far in the past that this argument is irrelevant now
> as well.
>
> Seems to me that the only way to fix things is to reword that part of your
> constitution to update it....

This is what they call a "third rail" issue, i.e. politicoes, who have to worry about image and support so much to get elected, don't want to make a decision that would lose them support without clearly gaining it in another group. The NRA wants it unchanged. Groups advocating gun controls don't have as much money, and also often have other agendas that will still keep them from throwing whole-hearted support behind politicians that take a stand. Gridlock.

I tend to stay fairly neutral in the argument myself. Truth is I enjoy firing weapons (though I don't own any, I rent firing range pistols on occasion), however I know that the DC sniper got his weps from a legitimate gun store (about a mile or so from where I live) because with the volumes of traffic it's very easy to hide transactions. The tired old argument that "if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns" completely overlooks the fact that outlaws get guns from legitimate owners, one way or another.

My old boss used to be a cop, and one day when we were at dinner (business trip), he started talking about his dislike for gun control, and a thought occurred to me, so I asked him, "How much easier would your job have been if finding a firearm on a suspect's person or in their vehicle would have been considered by itself probable cause?" At that point, he stopped, looked thoughtful for a moment, and the conversation just ended without an answer.

The issue isn't as clear cut as all that, though. I visited some friends up in Alaska where I noticed, if you don't have a firearm, 30 yards from your door you become part of the food chain, and depressingly not all that high up on it.
301) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Funniest thing I saw on the Web today.... (Message 96700)
Posted 9 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Nah, you just become old enough to embarrass your kids when they throw the
> music on.

Never had a wife, never had kids. The upside of that is I do anything I please with no static at all.

> That's a good thing I've discovered about becoming older, I care less and less
> about what others think about my dancing. :)

Truth be told, I was considering going just to throw a "dollar vote" for keeping the show around. There are worse things kids could be doing with their time than going out into public in their underwear and dancing, I think. Unfortunately, I currently have very few of these "votes".
302) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [6] - CLOSED (Message 96698)
Posted 9 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Wow, I didn't realise it was so difficult to get a constitutional change in
> your country.

The framers of the US Constitution were concerned by minority opinions and the rights of low-population states and groups getting trampled by larger states and groups. There's something called the "Great Compromise" that, among other things, made the two legislative bodies, the Senate, which simply has two persons from every state, and the House of Representatives, which has seats according to population. One or the reasons for making it difficult to pass an amendment was to keep a bloc of a few large states from constantly tweaking the Constitution for their own aims.

> This is one bit where I get stuck. I thought (this bit of?) the 2nd amendment
> was introduced as the US didn't have a "standing" army and therefore the only
> defence at this time would have been a militia. Now that the US has all 3
> armed forces, surely (this bit of?) the 2nd amendment is out of date?

And there you get the gist of the argument.

From the text: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

On one side, we have the people who say that the wording means the right to bear arms is a right to protect us from each other and our government by keeping the power in our hands, and the other side that says the only purpose was to make up for the lack of an army and it's now completely anachronistic. The commas evidently make all the difference.
303) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Funniest thing I saw on the Web today.... (Message 96689)
Posted 9 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> :) You guessed it. One of my all-time favourite movies, I have had a crush
> on Tim Curry for 22 years now (i.e. since I first saw RHPS).
>
> How do you look in suspenders?

Well, if you were asking me, and want a visualization, try imagining suspenders on the American comedian/actor Drew Carey, then put Kelsey Grammer's (tv series Frasier) head on him. Not a pleasant visualization, eh? I think I'll have to stick with my present handle. :)

After I looked through the database, I surfed the web a bit for RHPS stuff, and found that, ironically, a theater in downtown Tacoma, Washington, where I live, is starting up the show this very Saturday night. Alas, my days of doing the Time Warp are long, long over.
304) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Funniest thing I saw on the Web today.... (Message 96661)
Posted 9 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ted Striker = main character in the movie Airplane 2

I wasn't going to point that out, but I noticed that too. Both Airplane movies in fact, as I recall. When I saw Magenta's name, I also scanned the user database, but unfortunately we are a Frank N. Furter short of having all the Rocky Horror main characters (we do have a few Riffraffs, Columbias, and Dr Scotts).
305) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How dumb can we get? (Message 96524)
Posted 9 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Now try passing a dollar coin.

Oww. That's gotta hurt. Why did you eat it in the first place? :)
306) Message boards : Number crunching : Did anyone else notice? (Message 96418)
Posted 9 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I just read your profile, (I am yet to do mine) I still remember my Vic 20
> then the Commodore 64 and then I had my Amiga running an emulator that could
> use lotus 123 and wordstar faster than any IBM of the time, ah heady days.

Ahh, memories. Had an A500, then an A1200. Used to love plinking around with a sheet music editor and paint programs (remember DPaint?) when PCs were still just displaying CGA graphics (VGA was too expensive) and beeping.
307) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Cosmic Particle Accelerator (Message 96416)
Posted 8 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Such possibilities are just amazing. First natural masers in some neutron stars and now maybe a natural particle accelerator.

I seem to remember something in Brief History of Time that if they could build a collider as big as the solar system they could observe quarks directly.
308) Message boards : Cafe SETI : APB: The Fat B is Missing Again! (Message 96413)
Posted 8 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Whew! Here I was worried when I advised someone to strap him to a flatbed and run him through the car wash. Thought someone may have accidentally drowned him. :)
309) Message boards : Number crunching : Could we have update on Classic Migration? (Message 96383)
Posted 8 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I'm thinking it could happen. :)
310) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How dumb can we get? (Message 96380)
Posted 8 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
All reminds me of an old joke:

Guy walks into a store in the middle of nowhere and asks the cashier, "Hey, bud, can I get change for an $18 bill?"

The cashier replies, "Sure. What would you like, two nines or three sixes?"
311) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How dumb can we get? (Message 96368)
Posted 8 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I hate to say this, but the expression is "Queer as a three dollar bill."; at
> least that's the way it is where I come from. As for the police--they and the
> store should brace for a lawsuit, given his comments about being publicly
> embarrassed and the complete lack of grounds for the arrest.

I've always wondered that. CAN you sue for "false arrest" and win under ordinary circumstances ("ordinary" being defined as not raped with a plunger handle or beaten on)?
312) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How dumb can we get? (Message 96364)
Posted 8 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>
> > The expression is supposed to be "queer as a three dollar bill".
> >
>
> It is now, but I am far older then you...

My parents used to use it. They're 70+.
313) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How dumb can we get? (Message 96360)
Posted 8 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Well I haven't seen a two dollar bill in maybe 15 years. Add that to the use
> of "Queer as a two dollar bill" and I can see why some young person wouldn't
> think the bills were real, but the police should have known that. At the very
> least got his name and address while they investigated whether the 2 dollar
> bills were real or not.

The expression is supposed to be "queer as a three dollar bill".
314) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 96185)
Posted 8 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Something to Lighten Up Your Search:
A Different Kind of Rejection Letter
315) Message boards : SETI@home Science : New Astronomy News part2 (Message 96138)
Posted 8 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> i read that there is a plan for a new type of telescope in the works that uses
> the old pin-hole camera method. the camera is put in orbit and the pin-hole
> shade is placed out about 120,000 miles out past the camera. it is supposed to
> be able to see planets in other systems up close. close enough to see the
> cloud cover. wow, if that could work just think of what we can discover then.

Interesting. I see the advantage of eliminating glare on the optics, but other than that I'd have some serious engineering questions. For one, at such a distance how do they synchronize the orbits of the camera and the mask and time the exposures? Also, since geometrically it would be the same thing, what's the advantage of having, say, a 1 meter hole 120,000 miles away versus having a 1mm hole 120 miles away?

[EDIT] After a quick search: Biggest Pinhole Camera Ever [/EDIT]
316) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Google Your House, Get Satellite View (Message 95870)
Posted 7 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Uh oh. Guess putting the skylight in the bathroom was a bad idea.
317) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 95854)
Posted 7 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I agree MOSTLY about the classification. But I got no idea about that show
> Murasaki. What's worse is I don't even get TV Guide over here.

Eh, well. I didn't really expect anyone to get it (or be that interested), but it was worth a shot. It was one of my all-time favorite shows. It was called Sports Night, created by the same writer that created The West Wing and A Few Good Men. Irony is I've never cared about sports.

Guess I should have gone with a more conventional (but much older) quote from a movie, like:

Seeing as how the V.P. is such a V.I.P, shouldn't we keep the P.C. on the Q.T. because if it leaks to the V.C. he could end up M.I.A. and we'd all be put on K.P.

[EDIT]Speaking of movies, did anyone see Sin City yet? I used to read some Frank Miller stuff, though I never read the comics I believe the movie was based on. I just wondered if it was worth catching in the theater.[/EDIT]
318) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 95782)
Posted 7 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I personally was going to drop it. Like Dan said, in the end what does the classification matter?

Quote for the day. Hint: TV Guide called it the "best show nobody was watching." Lasted two seasons. One of the stars had a stroke during production, so they wrote it into the storyline.

Natalie: Trip aces.

Jeremy: Straight to the jack. begins collecting poker chips

Natalie: (Aggravated she keeps losing)Can I say something? Of my entire roster of boyfriends, and BELIEVE me it is quite the lengthy list, YOU are my least favorite.

Jeremy: Hey, I'm just happy to be on the team.
319) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 95745)
Posted 6 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I was listening to C&W long before most folks up North knew it existed.
> One of the oldest FM Country stations is in Troy New York. WGNA-FM 107.7.

What you're listening to is probably just Southern Pop nowadays. Try some REAL Western. This is the only currently touring group I know of that plays a lot of authentic songs, like the one I posted above. If it doesn't have a fiddle, an acoustic guitar, a bass, brushes on the drums, and an occasional yodel, it ain't Western.

Riders in the Sky

excerpt from That's How the Yodel was Born

[EDIT]To be honest, it isn't my favorite type of music. But I'm familiar with it because my father fancied himself a country singer, so I was around recording studios alot as a young child.[/EDIT]
320) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 95708)
Posted 6 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> And Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time is also remembered from one of the coolest
> movies of Baz Luhrman [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105488/]Strictly
> Ballroom!<a>

Time after Time was also covered by Eva Cassidy on the TV series Smallville, used on the episode "Crush" during a rainy funeral scene. It was a very well done scene I thought, though I kinda wish they had used the Cyndi Lauper original. I was in high school when that came out, and it, well, brings back some good memories.

Where Western is concerned, there's very little REAL Western left. Haven't heard anyone yodel Western-style in years.

I'm an ol' cowpoke,
I don't use no soap,
I swings a rope,
And eats antelope,
No Sunday thunder's got me buffaloed.
Devastation rides upon my breath,
And I scare the ladies plum ta death,
When I rares back in the saddle
And I lets a yodel go.

Yo-di-lay-ee-oh-de-lo-oh-yo-di-lay-ee-ae-ee,
Yo-di-lay-ee-oh-de-lo-oh-yo-di-lay-ee-ae-ee,
Yo-di-lay-ee-ay-ee,
ae-de-oh-de-lay-ee-ee.

Well spin my spurs and kick my rope,
I soaked up too much campfire smoke.
This ol' cowpoke's headin for town.
Yeah I just got paid, my sich is frayed,
This ain't no social call it's a RAID!
I'm an ol' lone wolf with a barb wire tail
And it's my night to howl.

Yo-di-lay-ee-oh-de-lo-oh-yo-di-lay-ee-ae-ee,
Yo-di-lay-ee-oh-de-lo-oh-yo-di-lay-ee-ae-ee,
Yo-di-lay-ee-ay-ee,
ae-de-oh-de-lay-ee-ee.

Now some folks say that life is swell,
Some complain it's troublesome.
But I don't care if it's heaven or hell,
I'm gonna have me some fun.

Barkeep, call that a double? (yeah)
Well make mine a double-double. (alright)
Stronger whiskey and weaker women's what I say.
Yeah I'll sit here and drink 'til I get full,
Then try to stop this rodeo bull,
There'll be a whole lotta me that's a bluffin' man
And a whole lotta me that ain't.

Yo-di-lay-ee-oh-de-lo-oh-yo-di-lay-ee-ae-ee,
Yo-di-lay-ee-oh-de-lo-oh-yo-di-lay-ee-ae-ee,
Yo-di-lay-ee-ay-ee,
ae-de-oh-de-lay-ee-ee.

Weeeeelll, bustin' bottles and flyin' lead,
They broke a porch o' furniture over my head.
I had quite a time last night, that's what I hear. (Shore did, Slim)
But the mornin' comes and the sun's gettin' brighter.
I'm snakin' cross this prarie like a spider...hehehe.
I hope the sherriff ain't takin' the trail I'm makin,
Back to wherever-it-is.

Yo-di-lay-ee-oh-de-lo-oh-yo-di-lay-ee-ae-ee,
Yo-di-lay-ee-oh-de-lo-oh-yo-di-lay-ee-ae-ee,
Yo-di-lay-ee-ay-ee,
ae-de-oh-de-lay-ee-ee.
321) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 95465)
Posted 6 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You sing that again and I'll hafta go Voltaire on 'ya.

I assume you're talking about Voltaire, not Voltaire.
322) Message boards : Politics : Religious Thread [4] - CLOSED (Message 95437)
Posted 5 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I think it's interesting, though, that science itself is just as much a
> mythical cultural creation as superstition. It just showed for practical
> results.

That's kinda a fuzzy relationship. Both religion and science were born from the ability of humans to think in abstract terms, true. So were pop songs, tie-dyed fabrics, and Frank Lloyd Wright buildings. But as pointed out above, religion and science (human failings notwithstanding) diverge immediately in method and axiom.

At its core, religion seeks to build itself without questioning basic tenets, and it has been only human "failing" that has caused religions to change to suit differing worldviews. Science, on the other hand, holds that none of its laws can go without question and support, and it's only human "failing" that enshrines some misguided theories as dogma.
323) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 95421)
Posted 5 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Well, I could have posted one of the songs you might have heard before, like Time in a Bottle, Bad Bad Leroy Brown, or Operator (particularly gut-wrenching because a friend of mine went through the situation the song describes with his ex-wife and a mutual close friend of ours). But what would be the fun of that?

One more, for evil's sake.

Many may have heard The Scotsman, sung by many Celtic groups. Many may have heard Ghost Riders in the Sky as well, a very popular western song. However you may not have noticed that the songs' (meter, pace, whatever the music term is) are a near match. So I put them together, usually choosing the version of Ghost Riders in the Sky done by The Outlaws:

Well a Scotsman clad in kilt left a bar one evening fair,
And one could tell by how he walked that he'd drunk more than his share.
He fumbled 'round until he could no longer keep his feet,
Then he stumbled off into the grass...
To sleep beside the street.

Yippee yai yaaaay, Yippee yai yoooh
To sleep be-siiide the street.

Around that time two young and lovely girls just happened by,
And one says to the other with a twinkle in her eye,
"See yon sleeping Scotsman so strong and handsome-built,
I wonder if it's true what they...
Don't wear beneath the kilt."

Yippee yai yaaaay, Yippee yai yoooh
Wear be-neath the kllt.

They crept upon that sleeping Scotsman quiet as could be,
Lifted up his kilt about an inch so they could see,
And there behold for them to view beneath his Scottish skirt,
Was nothing more than God had graced...
Him with upon his birth.

Yippee yai yaaaay, Yippee yai yoooh
Graced upon his birth.

They marveled for a moment then one said "We must be gone,
Let's leave a present for our friend before we move along."
As a gift they left a blue silk ribbon tied into a bow,
Around the bonnie star...
The Scot's kilt did lift and show.

Yippee yai yaaaay, Yippee yai yoooh
Kilt did liiift and show.

Well the Scotsman woke to nature's call and stumbled towards the trees.
Behind a bush he lifts his kilt and gawks at what he sees,
And in a startled voice he says to what's before his eyes,
"Oh lad I don't know where ya been...
But I see ya won first prize."

Yippee yai yaaaay, Yippee yai yoooh
Lad ya won first priiiize.

[EDIT] For those of you who don't know the songs, count yourself lucky. [/EDIT]

(Did you know that if you try real hard you can also use the music from Stairway to Heaven with the lyrics for Gilligan's Island?)
324) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 95190)
Posted 5 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hmmm....
>
> Jim Croce more than 30 years ago.
>
> Ziggy
>
> [EDIT] A piece of my "Vinyl" collection.

The one and only.
325) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How could we talk with ET ? (Message 95189)
Posted 5 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Certain things would have to be constant between their math and ours. Maybe they have eight fingers and count in octal, or whatever, but some things are required for existence in this universe, such as pi or e or the charge on an electron. Certainly these must be known if we're receiving a radio signal at any rate. I can think of scenarios where this might not be the case, like they live on a planet that has some sort of "natural transmitters" they use but don't understand, but that's a bit of a stretch.
326) Message boards : Cafe SETI : APB: The Fat B is Missing Again! (Message 95188)
Posted 5 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
May have to call in the MIB to handle this one.
327) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 95186)
Posted 5 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > The night that I fell in love with a roller derby queen

> You got me with this one. I never recall hearing it before.

Not surprising. I'd never heard it until I bought it on CD. I hate giving away a mystery (because I'm evil) so I'll just say the singer, who often sang to an accoustic guitar, had a great affinity for singing about the lovelorn and low-born, and died way too early.
328) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 95155)
Posted 5 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Since it's still so slow, more karaoke...

Gonna tell you a story you won't believe,
But I fell in love last friday eve,
With a girl I saw on a bar room TV screen.
Well I had just got up to get my hat,
When she caught my eye, and I put it back,
And I ordered myself a couple of more shots and beers.

The night that I fell in love with a roller derby queen
Round and round, oh round and round.
Meanest hunk o' woman that anybody ever seen
Down at the arena.

Well she was five-foot six, two-fifteen,
Bleach blonde bomber with a streak of mean.
She knew how to hustle and she knew how to knuckle and fight.
And the roller derby TV said,
She was built like a 'fridgerator with a head.
All her fans call her "Tuffy", but all her buddies call her "Spike."

You know that I fell in love with a roller derby queen
Round and round, oh round and round.
Meanest hunk o' woman that anybody ever seen
Down at the arena.

Well I could not help but fall in love,
With this heavy-duty woman I've been speaking of.
Things were kinda bad 'til the day she skated into my life.
Well she might be nasty, she might be fat,
But I never met a person who would tell her that.
She's my big blonde bomber, my heavy-handed Hackensack mama.

You know that I fell in love with a roller derby queen
Round and round, oh round and round.
Meanest hunk o' woman that anybody ever seen
Down at the arena.

Round and round, oh round and round...
329) Message boards : Cafe SETI : APB: The Fat B is Missing Again! (Message 95144)
Posted 5 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Anyone have an IR scope? No way he could avoid that.
330) Message boards : SETI@home Science : SETI Science and a Big Hello to Everyone :) (Message 94988)
Posted 4 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Using the lottery example, does this mean that the winning ticket (signal) is
> going to be won (discovered) by the little old lady that only goes out and
> purchases (crunches) just one lottery ticket (work unit) a year on her
> birthday?

Hehe, it's possible. We do have some senior citizen crunchers.

Maybe it will be more like "lottery busters", though: the people who find lotteries where the payout exceeds the cost for buying every possible combination, so they band together, get financing, pool their funds, and march out to buy millions of tickets. We do have a LOT of people that build farms here, after all.

(Anyone who is going to pick nits, yes yes I realize it's not an exact corollary since there's always a winning number in a lotto drawing but not necessarily a winning packet waiting in the servers)
331) Message boards : Cafe SETI : coffees and coinage in New Zealand (Message 94970)
Posted 4 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
So does a thread GOTO a bit of a TAN.
332) Message boards : SETI@home Science : SETI Science and a Big Hello to Everyone :) (Message 94961)
Posted 4 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> It's questions like these that make me even more excited about SETI, not less.
> Thanks again for the rather insightful debate!
>
> Happy Crunching. :)
>
> Dig

I've expressed my skepticism, both in my bio and posts here, about the odds of our success in this project. But like you, I find the long odds invigorating, like the hopeful thrill some get from playing the lottery. It costs so little, and you can't win if you don't play.

This program is like the Gemini program to me. It's a stepping stone to something. It not only provides some answers technologically, but teaches us how to frame other questions. Its "fallout science" has affected other projects across the globe (CPDN, Einstein, PlanetQuest, Protein Folding, and much more are just the most direct examples). These questions on the boards here have gotten me to look up not only astronomy and such, but even crack the books in my own career field of electronics and find things I didn't know.

Happy crunching!

-Mur
333) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Do satellite TV and radio signals carry into space as well? (Message 94732)
Posted 4 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> A corollary to my other question:
>
> Do satellite signals "escape" from Earth orbit? Or are they so precisely
> directed that they don't bounce around outside te Earth atmosphere?

The signals FROM the satellites could not be detected. Take for example the satellites used for DirecTV. The transmitters themselves are 120W. That gives 1.2 picowatts (pico=one trillionth)of power over an 18 inch diameter dish, and that's only because the beam is aimed at the United States and therefore expending all it's energy in this direction. Your dish has to have a special low noise amplifier right on it to even receive these signals, and that's just from 22,000 miles away. Imagine how weak a signal would be millions of miles away.

The uplink signals (from the ground to the satellite) are quite another matter. Since they too are focused, I imagine (I have no numbers to put to this) that the signal stays relatively intact and strong as the lion's share of the power passes the satellite targeted and heads into space. I suppose one of the thousands of signals sent this way could be detected far out if an alien passing by was lucky enough.

Still, if you think about the size of all the satellite antennas on the earth added together and realize that they cover an insignificant fraction of the entire Earth, then imagine this same area compared to a sphere the size of the solar system, you can see that it's still VERY long odds that a passing spacecraft on the outer edges of the solar system would ever be in the right position to get a hit of RF. Even considering beam divergence (like a flashlight beam, the signals spread out some as they go out), that's still a lot of real estate with very very little struck by our signals.

I tried putting some numbers to a more conventional signal, one that is omnidirectional, using an insanely large transmitter on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, in another post:

Do you think a signal will be detected in your lifetime?

Realize I'm not an engineer, so I don't really know if my numbers are accurate.

More threads along these lines:

What if they're hostile?
Hostile Humans
334) Message boards : Cafe SETI : coffees and coinage in New Zealand (Message 94709)
Posted 4 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
ROFLMAO. :D
335) Message boards : Cafe SETI : coffees and coinage in New Zealand (Message 94694)
Posted 4 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> sorry for the non-html formatting of the links, but I have *no idea* how to do
> html tags. VBA, SAS and BASIC is as good as it gets for me.

Not that it really matters. Cut and paste works just fine.
336) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 94692)
Posted 4 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Always be sincere, even if you don't really mean it.

As for my earlier quote, it's been a few years since I've seen It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, but my favorite part, if I'm remembering it correctly, is when he finally gets a cookie, goes to the next house, and comes away saying, "I got a rock, and it crushed my cookie." I can relate to that the most. Finally get a small something to feel good about, then something crushes it.
337) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 94563)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Random quote for the day: "I got a rock."
338) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Terri Schiavo dies at 41 (Message 94546)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> As for the info being hyjacked, I guess it is like all other secure Data. The
> info itself is not stored on the chip, just the retrival code, and if you do
> not have physical characteristics and the location of the chip, info will not
> be released. Also the identifier in the number sequence is the only thing that

I was watching a lecture on UWTV (University of Washington Television. I love my TiVo) that talked about the current generation of RFID tags used for products and pets. Very little is currently stored on-chip, but he says that's about to change in the next few generations. There will be enough space for critical information that should be had without access to network. The impression I got is they'll have enough, for instance, to let a paramedic know of a diabetic condition even if his van's network comms is cut.

Their biggest problem, at least in the consumer goods world, is there are still dozens of active standards for these tags, so development is chaotic.
339) Message boards : Cafe SETI : You need to read this If you have heart disease.... (Message 94536)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I totally agree with you and the more I learn about this, the more pissed
> off I get at our government for letting it happen.
> I wonder if this kind of thing happens in Canada because they have
> free health care.

An official from Merck was interviewed on The Daily Show a couple weeks ago (the real interview portion, not one of the comedy skits). He said that in the first part of the 20th century, if you wanted to learn real science biochemistry, you learned it in Germany, and development occurred just as much in other countries as in the US. Nowadays, he said, you learn in the US, and (I can't recall the number exactly) the majority of all drugs are developed in the United States, and there are no overseas companies that come close in scale to companies like Merck and Pfizer in size. He claimed it was due to the lack of regulation here allowing them to recoup enormous cost of development.
340) Message boards : Cafe SETI : coffees and coinage in New Zealand (Message 94530)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
In Japan I occasionally ran across a 1 yen coin, made out of aluminum (and always mangled, it seems). Completely pointless coin. It was worth .8 cents at the time for exchange rate. Everything on the street was priced in units of 10 yen. If I recall correctly, playing a cheap arcade game was 50 yen ($.40) and a draft beer averaged 600 yen ($4.80).
341) Message boards : Cafe SETI : from Jerusalem Post Koran scholar: US will cease to exist in 2007 (Message 94524)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Did anyone watch tne Nova program about the Tsunami? Fascinating stuff. For one it showed how a tsunami wave has inherently different characteristics than a normal ocean wave that cause the wall of water to build up instead of break when it gets to shallow water, especially on gently sloping seabottoms. Thats what sent what was a twenty foot surge at the coastline three miles or more inland.

Also one of the points was that every coast in the world eventually felt the surge. It traveled 500mph (almost as fast as an airliner) and was strong enough to beach large fishing boats in Africa. Fortunately US embassies were told and warned the respective governments, so only one person died there.

It also said the subduction zone here of the Northwest coast of the US is almost exactly the same formula as the one that caused the tsunami, quakes hard once every 500 years on average, and last time was 300 years ago.

As for the religious aspect, well, God is used as an extension of parents or older brothers: "You're being mean to me! When you die God is gonna GIT you!" This is especially true in the sand religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), which shared a death fetish and had an extra tough job explaining why God made life so crappy for the lower classes in those regions.

[EDIT]Personally I think there is a different message we can read out of this guys words. I think it belies a sense of powerlessness after the events of Afghanistan and Iraq where the only hope for change people can grasp hold of is that of godly intervention... It smacks of a feeling that there is nothing people can do for themselves to raise their own hopes or achieve aspiration.

GREAT point![/EDIT]
342) Message boards : Cafe SETI : You need to read this If you have heart disease.... (Message 94515)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
And here over in Number Crunching I was hypothesizing a scenario very similar to this.

Fight AIDS @ Home
343) Message boards : SETI@home Science : PlanetQuest BOINC Project (Message 94232)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Here's one of the old threads on PlanetQuest.

PlanetQuest BOINC project
344) Message boards : SETI@home Science : SETI Science and a Big Hello to Everyone :) (Message 94227)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Being able to decode a signal's language is secondary in my mind. Just
> receiving one right now that we know is extra-terrestrial would be an
> outstanding achievement. The 'what does the message actually say' part would
> understandably come much later. I'm just trying to understand how we could
> even receive the signal to begin with, if it is sent with technology we don't
> currently possess. Right here on earth we possess technology that we didn't
> have or even comprehend 100 years ago.

Though I've been an electronics tech for a very long time, I don't have that much experience in RF theory. That being said, there are certain characteristics an intentional RF signal of any type will have from what I understand. That more relates to the math theory I was talking about. If you listen to a modem's sounds, it seems like white noise to the human ear, but to computer analyzing the spectrum, patterns emerge that can't be random. So even at higher technologies, our perspective is less like someone that doesn't understand electricity seeing lightning, but more like an ancient Egyptian recognizing what a modern house is for even if he doesn't understand the doorknobs or microwave oven.
345) Message boards : Number crunching : Playstation 2/Linux Kit and BOINC (Message 94206)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Hey, for that matter I wonder if I could run BOINC on my TiVo, which is a linux box too. :)
346) Message boards : SETI@home Science : SETI Science and a Big Hello to Everyone :) (Message 94198)
Posted 3 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Hi, and bienvenidos. I'm just a layman myself, but I'll give my own two cents on these questions.

a) The Drake Equation is more of a tool to put numbers to the speculation. It doesn't attempt to make any prediction, really, just provide categories of investigation and speculation for people to come up with their own numbers. In other words, it more frames a question than provides an answer.


b) I've thought about whether we could be "the Old Ones" ourselves, and the only reason why not would be due to modesty. On Earth, even though other people built boats with sails, only one continent really developed the technology for large, ocean-going sailing ships, leaving five others as "junior" in this regard. So it would be immodest to assume we are the "Europe" of the cosmos, and even with really small numbers in the Drake Equation it would be long odds that we are the oldest.

c) Best we can do when communicating is make certain assumptions regarding the nature of reality. First there are mathematical constants that anyone working with radio must know, like pi and e. Also concepts like yes or no, on and off, i.e. binary as a means of error avoidance and noise reduction. Hopefully mathematics will give us a way to figure out the nature of the signal we're receiving.

Beyond that I admit it's a stretch. First off, who is to say the specific design of the device the signal was meant for? Even a box to transmit audio signals could be interpreted completely differently by creatures who interpret audio cues differently from us.

Our own TV signals really require someone not only understand how to build the box to correctly interpret the audio, video RGB, and synchronization signals, but also be wired like we are to understand them, with persistence of vision, limited visual cues for motion, connection between visual and audio cues, etc. Our mind actually interprets a TV representation from what might otherwise just seem like a colored dot tracing across a screen leaving a glowing trail and muted sounds from a speaker. Even on earth, not all higher creatures are wired to understand the picture on a TV screen.

And even our own brains vary. For instance, I've never been able to see the image in those computerized pictures that were so popular a decade ago.

Where language is concerned, once we've identified it in a signal, we can only assume we can piece together what things mean by relation to ourselves: we refer to objects, so we have nouns, we have to perform actions, so we have verbs, we have to get information, so we have interrogatives, etc. Other civilizations would likely have the same concepts.

Yes, your point C is a very interesting conundrum. It might be relatively easy to notice a non-natural signal, but it's quite another matter to figure out what it means.
347) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Tell me, does the moon rotate (Message 94189)
Posted 2 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
So many sports would be kinda dull without air. In golf, the ball's spin would be pretty much irrelevant. Same with baseball. Archery would be impossible due to the minute yaw that friction puts on the shaft that would have been taken out by the now useless fletching, and even if it were stabilized there's no windage to consider. But I guess, with the increased distances you'd be setting things, the prize still goes to the one with the best eyesight and steadiest hand.
348) Message boards : Cafe SETI : from Jerusalem Post Koran scholar: US will cease to exist in 2007 (Message 94173)
Posted 2 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Well, there is a subduction zone just off the coast of Oregon and Washington that many predict could cause a disastrous tsunami for the region where I'm living, and it definitely could cause a disaster for Seattle and Tacoma as much of both cities are on tideflats. Me living several dozen feet above sea level and a mile inland, I think I'll miss the worst of it.

Still, let's imagine how high a wall of water has to be to reach, say Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, a mile high at the base of the mountain and over a thousand miles inland. Can't really take that prediction at face value.

Maybe a couple mega-tsunami, global-warming, Day after Tommorrow killers can wipe out all the coastal states. Still, I wonder how having the United States then completely composed of red states and bomber/missile bases could really be Allah's gift to help Muslims.
349) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Tell me, does the moon rotate (Message 94144)
Posted 2 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The tidal effects of sun and earth have degenerated the moon's rotation to match its revolution around the earth. There appears to be a slight wobble, though, in part due to the eccentricity of the moon's orbit. This site has a gif showing the wobble and a brief explanation of it.

Inconstant Moon

Scroll down to the heading "A different point of view".

BTW, best illustration of what the moon would be like if it didn't rotate at all is to hold a compass in your hand and watch it while you turn in a circle. Since the needle or dial constantly points in one direction, you at the center see every part of it in one turn. That doesn't happen with the moon.
350) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Terri Schiavo dies at 41 (Message 94126)
Posted 2 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I wonder how hard it would be to make a jammer for such tags. After all, the tags themselves aren't powered and only communicate by remodulating a constant carrier from the reading unit (that's a VERY small return signal). A little noise generator with a lithium battery, hmm...
351) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Karol Józef Wojtyła (1920-2005) (Message 94119)
Posted 2 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Can't say I believe in his religion, his politics, or his social agenda, but I can still light a candle for a good man who meant well.
352) Message boards : Cafe SETI : from Jerusalem Post Koran scholar: US will cease to exist in 2007 (Message 94117)
Posted 2 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Well, I lived through the 'End of the World' that was supposed to have come in 1984, and I lived through many predicted apocalypses since then, like the desperately-worded spam that told me the Rapture was to be sometime in 1997 and if I'm not prepared to at least make sure I don't accept the "mark of the beast". I think I'll adopt another wait and see attitude for this prediction. Some say they only have to be right once, but I look at it like my odds of winning the lottery: it's astronomically long odds that it will ever happen to me at all, and stupid to plan on it.

Heck, I even remember an HBO special about Nostradamus (funny name that, meaning "Our Lady") that said there was going to be an attack on "New Babylon" sometime around the end of the century igniting a 27-year war. Hey, wait a second... :)

(gotta clarify: no, I don't actually believe in any prophecy. That was a JOKE. Like predicting a war will occur has ever been a long shot.)
353) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 93889)
Posted 2 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I did karaoke in Japan when a few years before it came to the states and when they used an expensive laserdisc setup. There was only two songs with English lyrics: "My Way" and "Yesterday". We were actually advised in an orientation briefing to sing "Yesterday" because "My Way" would just torture the audience that much longer.

And it also seemed to be tradition, when invited to a "Snack" bar with a karaoke machine, that the Japanese host shoves the American up to the mike along with his daughter to sing "Yesterday" duet, which to me was bizarre because I thought the whole point of those bars were for Japanese men to get away from their family altogether. As cute as they were, it was something I could have done without. What do I know?

Butcha see, this is the advantage of Cafe SETI. Nobody sings off-key here, as far as anyone else knows...

And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain.
My friend, I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case, of which I'm certain.

I've lived a life that's full.
I've traveled each and ev'ry highway;
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Regrets, I've had a few;
But then again, too few to mention.
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption.

I planned each charted course;
Each careful step along the byway,
But more, much more than this,
I did it my way.

Yes, there were times, I'm sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew.
But through it all, when there was doubt,
I ate it up and spit it out.
I faced it all and I stood tall;
And did it my way.

I've loved, I've laughed and cried.
I've had my fill; my share of losing.
And now, as tears subside,
I find it all so amusing.

To think I did all that;
And may I say - not in a shy way,
"No, oh no not me,
I did it my way".

For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it myyyyyyyy waaaaaaaaaay!

354) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space & Science Trivia (Message 93787)
Posted 1 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Yup, that's pretty much it Murasaki. The carbon-oxygen (mostly carbon) core is
> not able to ignite to produce further fusion reactions.

BTW, though I didn't answer the question, it did cause me to do a lot of reading on the inner mechanisms of stars of various types. My understanding is a bit more complete now. Thanks for the prod! :) [Image link]
355) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space & Science Trivia (Message 93731)
Posted 1 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
dwarf[/url] star however has advanced far past the main sequence phase though. I
> made a mistake in saying Earth-sized stars instead of sun-sized stars in my
> question -- sorry.

Ahh, okay. I was wondering. From everything I knew and everything I read, by the white dwarf stage the star has pretty much used up all its hydrogen fuel.
356) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 93609)
Posted 1 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Karaoke night at the Cafe...

Got me the strangest woman
Believe me this trick's no cinch
But I really get her going
When I whip out my big 10 inch...

Record of a band that plays the blues
Well a band that plays its blues
She just love my big 10 inch
Record of her favorite blues

Last night I tried to tease her
I gave my love a little pinch
She said now stop that jivin'
Now whip out your big 10 inch...

Record of a band that plays those blues
Well a band that plays the blues
She just loves my big 10 inch
Record of her favorite blues

I, I, I cover her with kisses
And when we're in a lover's clinch
She gets all excited
When she begs for my big 10 inch...

Record of a band that plays those blues
Well a band that plays the blues
She just love my big 10 inch
Record of her favorite blues

My girl don't go for smokin'
And liquor just make her flinch
Seems she don't go for nothin'
'cept for my big 10 inch...

Record of a band that plays the blues
Band that play the blues
She just love my big 10 inch
Record of her favorite blues
357) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Free macs (Message 93604)
Posted 1 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Are you saying that an omelette is made out of chicken beaks?

No just something that popped out of and got sat on by a chicken's ass.
358) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Free macs (Message 93598)
Posted 1 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Do you eat eggs? What part of the chicken do those come from?
359) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Free macs (Message 93562)
Posted 1 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
One of the things about living in Japan way back when is I got used to ordering the largest of whatever they had by reflex, because it was basically the equivalent of an American medium size. When I came back, I forgot and ordered a large coke I forget where and got a drink about the size of a coffee can. Reverse culture shock.
360) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Terri Schiavo dies at 41 (Message 93529)
Posted 1 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ok, i understand the situation, but even in this case i think it would be more
> human to poision her, than to let her die by starvation...

This point I have to agree with. My personal view is that if you are going to leave someone or something to die, have the guts to "pull the trigger" yourself instead of letting them/it wither further. Unfortunately, the legal/medical system has a big problem with actively euthenizing patients in this fashion. They don't consider removing devices active euthenization, but lethal injection would be another matter in the courts.
361) Message boards : Number crunching : Far Far Too Much Redundancy! (Message 93519)
Posted 1 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Quote:
> Do not keep your computer on if the only purpose for doing so is to run the
> SETI@home screensaver.
>
>
> Ho, Hum, I guess I'll pass :o)
>
> Regards Hans

Eh, I heat with electric anyhow, and long before the machine malfunctions I'm gonna want another, so I'll just leave it on. :)

[EDIT] Besides, I like the whisper and the bright blue glow of the exhaust fans.[/EDIT]
362) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Terri Schiavo dies at 41 (Message 93515)
Posted 1 Apr 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
This is going to come down to the same thing as the abortion issue. It's wherever someone draws the line at where life begins, or in this case, ends. If you're determined to continue this, be prepared for another flame war.

Heard someone on TV suggest the legal stance on abortion should be governed by the greeting card saying "life begins at 40"...
363) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Terri Schiavo dies at 41 (Message 93462)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
This week, on CSI: SETI...
364) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What music floats your boat? (Message 93211)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I'm getting old. I spend more time listening to talk radio these days and
> complaining about the brain dead callers now than listening to music. LOL. May
> I need to dig out the old vinyl and CD's and sit back and relax...

Sounds similar to me. I tend to listen to NPR more than music stations.
365) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What's with this FREE junk? (Message 93208)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Don't believe in the free stuff. Like the old bumper sticker says:

Gas, grass, or a**, nobody rides for free.
366) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Freemason SETI Team Announcement (Message 93205)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Until we meet again, may the schwartz be with you.

Now don't forget other Mel Brooks classics:

"Excuse me while I whip this out"
"AAAAAUGH!!...ohhhh"

"FRAU BLEUCHER!"
*horses whinney
367) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Freemason SETI Team Announcement (Message 93145)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ah man, that movie is full of these kind of wonderful lines. That scene is
> about the most I remember that good though. It's been awhile since I've seen
> it .

Had to break out Spaceballs: The DVD and pop it into Mr. DVD to get this one correct -

Col Sanders: Try it here. Stop.

Stops "Spaceballs: the instant video tape" fast forward. Lord Helmet and Col Sanders look from the camera to the monitor, which is showing the current scene.

Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does THIS happen in the movie?
Col Sanders: Now. You're looking at now, sir. (gestures) Everything that happens now is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What happened to THEN?
Col Sanders: (shrugs) We passed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Col Sanders: Just now. We're at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
Col Sanders: When?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Col Sanders: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Col Sanders: I can't.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Col Sanders: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Col Sanders: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will THEN be Now?
Col Sanders: Soon.
Dark Helmet: How soon?
Video Tech: Sir!
Lord Helmet: What?
Video Tech: I've identified their location.
Dark Helmet: Where?
Video Tech: It's the moon of Vega.
Col Sanders: Good work. Set a course and prepare for our arrival.
Dark Helmet: When?
Video Tech: 1900 hours, Sir!
Col Sanders: By high noon they'll be our prisoners!
Dark Helmet: WHOOOO!?!?!
368) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Freemason SETI Team Announcement (Message 93124)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Dark Helmet: You find anything yet?
> Spaceballs 1: No.
> Dark Helmet: How about you guys?
> Spaceballs 2: Nothing sir.
> Dark Helmet: What about you guys, you find anything?
> Spaceballs 3: Man we ain't found sh*t!

Yes. Since there instructions were to comb the desert, the first two white teams had giant combs and the third black team had a giant afro pick. I think the next line was from Colonel Sanders: "Do you think we're taking our instructions too literally?"
369) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Sony's PSP is Out... (Message 93120)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > > > Will it find ET ?
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > > Can it make ET phone home?
> > >
> >
> > Will it do Laundry????
> >
>
> Would it want to do "my" laundry ?

Will it scrub those skids???
370) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 93117)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Q: Would it have been ethical of me to have posted the answer if I had
> a Googled-assisted answer? (That's why the Don McLean reference)

Dunno. Does this "Cafe" have terminals or a WiFi?
371) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 93115)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ack! More caffeine at this hour! :)
>
> Ah, what the heck... Thanks!

From what I understand, "barista" means "bartender", so it technically can be alcohol instead of caffeine. ;) [EDIT] Or how about some "Buzz Beer" to combine the two.[/EDIT]
372) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Freemason SETI Team Announcement (Message 93111)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Yogurt?

The Everlasting-Know-It-All.
373) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Freemason SETI Team Announcement (Message 93109)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> .o0(Is there such a thing as a "Slave Mason"?)

I imagine some of the ones who built structures like sections of the Great Wall of China were slaves.
374) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 93106)
Posted 31 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The song is about Vincent Van Gogh, whose style is being emulated on Google's
> logo today (March 30th) in honour of his birthday in 1853.

Bingo! Barista, another round for the winner! :)
375) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Sony's PSP is Out... (Message 92884)
Posted 30 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Sony just bought the TiVo ad space for it's PSP. I wonder if sales are all they expected. Neat number of gadgets inside it, but I wouldn't choose it over a good palmtop.
376) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 92876)
Posted 30 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Lessee if it has anything to do with whisky an' rye...

Yes, but what does it have to do with the picture?
377) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Doctor Who is Saturday night hit (Message 92751)
Posted 30 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Can't wait for the Daleks.

You can't please everyone. If the Daleks are the same, some people will say they're the same cheesy, cheap effect, and if they're modernized, they'll say they're ruining the mythos. Be ready for it...
378) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed See New thread! (Message 92749)
Posted 30 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey.
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills.
Sketch the trees and the daffodils.
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land...

(Lessee if anyone guesses why I'm singing this... I'm showing my age again.)
379) Message boards : Number crunching : FightAIDS@Home (Message 92646)
Posted 30 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Oh dear, I think I take that back. I just scanned through light years of flame
> throwing. Sigh...

I thought it was just a good debate. I didn't notice any personal insults hurled, just a healthy difference of opinion. Besides, we all came to an agreement we were veering too far off-topic, so it's over anyhow. :)
380) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Dumbest injury (Message 92600)
Posted 29 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Apparently, there was an incident in 1998 where someone found a condom in a McDonald’s hamburger. Here’s David Letterman’s comments:

The Top Ten List "McDonald's Excuses for the Condom in a Big Mac":

#10. We were test-marketing the new "McTrojan"..
#9. Condom … condiment-what's the damn difference?
#8. It still tastes better than the "Arch Deluxe"..
#7. It was either there or in the vanilla shake..
#6 It Turns out the rumors about Grimace and Mayor McCheese are true..
#5. We're experimenting with a new, even happier "Happy Meal"..
#4. So what-a regular Big Mac is 60% latex anyway..
#3. Employees too embarrassed to say, "Would you like condoms with that?"
#2 Drive-thru speaker broken-"Coke with lots of ice" sounded like "prophylactic device"..

And the #1 McDonald's Excuse for the Condom in a Big Mac:
#1 When you're "servicing" billions and billions, you can't be too careful.

By the way, the pickle thing was settled out of court in 2001:
Woman settles hot pickle lawsuit against McDonald's
381) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Dumbest injury (Message 92582)
Posted 29 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I've been fairly lucky where electricity is concerned. Been bit many times by 110V but never trapped where I couldn't pull away.

Worst bite I got was when I was checking the 36kV on a radar console CRT. I had the anode cable in six inch fiberglass fuse pullers, which usually was sufficient insulation. I reached down and flicked on the power and felt FIRE up and down my left leg. Turns out I was leaning on a metal filing cabinet and somehow that was just enough path to allow current to flow.

The best, though was the guy who originally taught me high voltage alignments on a 16kV monitor power supply (these are military monitors with true DC power supplies in lieu of a flyback transformer setup). He didn't have a firm grip on the procedure himself, so instead he had a firm grip on the anode cable when he told me to turn it on. BZZZZT! Soon as I heard the sound I turned it back off and he jumped back. He inspected the cable, which looked fine, and inspected the high voltage probe, which looked fine, then put them back together and told me, "Okay, turn it on again." BZZZZZT! Then my boss came in and pointed out that he should not be holding onto the anode cable directly.
382) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Fishing (Message 92574)
Posted 29 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay
by Otis Redding and Steve Cropper

Sittin' in the mornin' sun
I'll be sittin' when the evenin' come
Watching the ships roll in
And then I watch 'em roll away again, yeah

I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Ooo, I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

I left my home in Georgia
Headed for the 'Frisco bay
'Cause I've had nothing to live for
And look like nothin's gonna come my way

So I'm just gonna sit on the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Ooo, I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

Look like nothing's gonna change
Everything still remains the same
I can't do what ten people tell me to do
So I guess I'll remain the same, yes

Sittin' here resting my bones
And this loneliness won't leave me alone
It's two thousand miles I roamed
Just to make this dock my home

Now, I'm just gonna sit at the dock of the bay
Watching the tide roll away
Oooo-wee, sittin' on the dock of the bay
Wastin' time

383) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Dumbest injury (Message 92572)
Posted 29 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> and in case you wondered..... the next time I saw a chicken pot pie.... I had
> no qualms about venturing another taste.... got right back in that saddle and
> rode.
>
> mmmmmmmm, ......I've made myself hungry again.

Hope that isn't like a "pitbull shock". You know, a dog bites into a power cord and gets shocked, so it gets mad and bites into the cord again.
384) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed! (Message 92567)
Posted 29 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hmm. These are all good ideas for the board operators to consider. Let's say
> that a user was in the middle of a board discussion, and he/she did not
> complete a certain amount of WU's, then they would get cut-off from that
> discussion, I hope I understood what you were saying though. I think it would
> just be easier to restrict new SETI users to a separate questions/problems
> board.

Well, since we're kicking around this idea again, here's a reprint of my suggestion from about three months ago:

A modest proposal:

Having just one completed work unit doesn't really work. Spammers would continue by just running BOINC for a limited time.

Rights to post here should be computed by CPU time, not credit. That way those with underpowered machines aren't slighted; their efforts are just as appreciated as those with the cash for powerful machines.

Two mathematical methods come to mind:

1) Post permission using a linear scale, eg 1 CPU day = 3 posts (or 10 posts or whatever). This would be difficult if the number is too low, eg. I average about 5 posts a day.

2) On an exponential scale. As an example, I reversed the electronic formula for "decibels": numberofposts=10^(cpudays/10). This would cause the user to work for greater permission, seriously discouraging spammers. With no CPU time, the result of this formula is 1, i.e. the user gets a startup post (could be used by a nooB for a help request). At a bit over 3 days, a second post is granted by the formula. 10 days=10 posts total, 20 days=100 posts, 30=1000, etc, until the user has pretty much earned more posts than they could possibly use. This scale would effectively establish a mathematical "trust" that the user is contributing to the project for the right to post freely. Most of us would have run out the first few weeks owing to our desire to chat, but few of us exceed after about a month of CPU time (at 26 days the average gain per day is 15 posts, which is about the frequency of NA's posts as an example). If we really want we can always add a -1 to the formula and make it so you can't just open a new account every time you want to post something; you'd have to open an account and run BOINC for three days, so you might as well just continue with an account already open.
385) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed! (Message 92244)
Posted 29 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > You'd be amazed how informative a man page can be!
> >
>
> Yeah, but a woman Page would find it harder to keep secrets.
> The words "Don't tell this to anybody" Means tell only your closest
> 50 friends.
> The woman are going to flame me for this :(

Old joke-
Three best ways to spread a message: Telephone, Television, Tell a woman.

[*evil, misogynistic Murasaki is then recaptured and put back in his bottle.]
386) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Deep Space Communications (Message 92242)
Posted 29 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> http://deepspacecom.net Send your personal message to space

Great. Someone else who won't return my calls. :/
387) Message boards : Number crunching : FightAIDS@Home (Message 92235)
Posted 29 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> 1) You assume that the cheaper alternative would be less profitable yet be a
> better cure than the more expensive alternative.

Well, the cheap effective cure vs the expensive less effective cure WAS THE POINT of the exercise, to show how conflict of interest can arise in the pharmaceutical industry. Considering as an example that aspirin regimen has been found at least as effective as some more expensive drugs in heart and blood problems, this scenario isn't so outlandish to consider.

> However, if the cheaper
> alternative is a much better cure than the more expensive alternative it would
> be prescribed much more often as it would work in more cases, thus netting the
> company more profit.

This is what in economics is called an elasticity of demand, that a drug is prescribed more often because it is cheaper. This is an open market model where all alternative products are available, and is simply not the case here. The providing company, by suppressing the cheap drug, makes the market rigid. Doctors can't prescribe what simply isn't available. And over N cases, if X profit is greater than Y profit, then the company will pick X*N for their solution, regardless of Z extra deaths.

> 2) The other assumption is that the company somehow knows that there is a
> more profitable drug on the way. This simple can't be known. They can wish


It isn't unreasonable to project that the company in question knows more than one vector to pursue in attacking the disease. Drugs can weaken cell walls, interfere with key enzymes, stimulate an immune response, etc.

In any case, companies drop research and unpromising product lines all the time, many before they're ever marketed. You fail to understand that these companies are shooting for a LEVEL of performance in investment return. Yes, they actually WOULD drop a product line because it isn't the best performance for the development money they had yet to spend when they realized the product's lousy profit potential, even if no alternative existed at all.

> So yes, my model is simplistic to some degree. After all, this is a
> "cruncher" board for discussing our DC projects not an economics board.
> However, your model is equally simplistic if not moreso.

You simply assume it will ALWAYS be profitable to bring a drug to market, even if it's just cutting an initial loss, but the real world doesn't work that way. Cheap cures and 10% profit margins don't cover potential liability, profit-taking, and future R&D investments. Economic investment philosophy would override altruistic medical practice with these people, and the sick would suffer for it.
388) Message boards : Number crunching : FightAIDS@Home (Message 92082)
Posted 29 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> In your example, in the end the company is compelled to make the most profit
> possible. If they had already developed the tetracyclin alternative (which
> would be the only way to actually know if it works as drugs always have, and
> more than likely will remain for quite some time, extremely difficult to
> determine their exact effects ahead of time) then at that point the R&D
> for that option is a sunk cost. By not offering that option, even if it is
> cheaper, they are decreasing the amount of money that they make. -1000 is
> still a larger profit than -2000... It's better to lose $1000 than it is to
> lose $2000, which is effectively what they would do if they didn't offer the
> alternative at all.

Too simplistic a model.

The tetracycline cure was not known to the world. The research data was kept in the lab and didn't even make it to trials. In the story the development of the two drugs were simultaneous in response to the new bacterial strain, but it would be the same if the tetracycline derivative was developed first.

If they know it won't be profitable, then a sound business strategy says why risk clinical trials, which themselves are expensive and have the added bonus of opening companies up to litigation if they're mishandled, then having to ramp up large scale manufacturing? Better to writeoff $2M in pure research than be down $10M+ in R&D, selling doses at $2 a pop with a 10% margin, and fighting a dozen other companies for market share.

Accept the current loss, keep the data under wraps, wait until something more profitable and patentable is developed, and let your competitors waste their R&D money duplicating the research.

The very worst thing that could happen to the company at that point is corporate espionage: the data gets stolen and the drug successfully passes clinical trials, negating the possibility of a more expensive solution. Since it isn't patentable, the first company still saved money and can market the drug at the exact same profit as they would otherwise, and possibly still sue the offending competitor if the espionage could be proven.

So I'll stick by my original worry, that profit motive may be suppressing the best cures.
389) Message boards : Number crunching : FightAIDS@Home (Message 92062)
Posted 28 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I often worry about the seeming conflict of interest between profit motive and the altruism of an "ideal" medical system. It was a fictional book that got me thinking about it.

The scenario was an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Plague. A drug company's research develops a somewhat effective but expensive antibiotic, and a more effective but obscure derivative of tetracycline. The company makes the decision to suppress the tetracycline cure because there's no way to put an enforceable patent on it and recover the costs of the research, so many die from a less effective regimen.

This scenario seems frighteningly plausible, and is why I wonder if leaving medical biochemical advances almost exclusively in the hands of people with an ulterior motive is in the long term best interests of everyone. This and other scenarios illustrate that it may be in a drug company's best interests NOT to offer cures. I wonder if in a wierd way the "holistic hippies" are right: our system is biased towards long-term expensive solutions to problems that may have a simpler but less profitable fix.
390) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed..... (Message 92010)
Posted 28 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
So I'm watching UWTV (University of Washington) and a lecturer mentions Terraserver, which reminded me of this thread's recent topic. I started paying attention.

So the lecturer also mentions the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, so I go there.

So I'm browsing through the SDSS website and I get to this page:

Stars and Nebulae

Again, I'm reminded of this thread because on it there is the familiar spectral classes of stars summarized in the mnemonic "Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me".

I put this question to you, however, because I'm noticing two that were left out, classes L and T. I'm thinking the mnemonic should be updated, so any suggestions? "Lower" and "There"?
391) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space & Science Trivia (Message 91803)
Posted 28 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Q65: In 1992 there was a comet that pasted inside of Jupitor Roche limit and
> was pulled into 21 piecesthat looped out away from Jupitor in long elliptical
> orbits. At this point they where discovered on photograph. The pieces then
> fell back and slammed into Jupitor over a period of 6 days in July1994. What
> is the name of the comet which is named after it's discoverers?

Shoemaker-Levy?
392) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed..... (Message 91795)
Posted 28 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Much more resolution.Think they will let us use the satilite from "Enemy of
> the State" That would be nice. LOL

Sorry, you can only use the Titsat from Patriot Games. But hey, that one was good enough for Jack Ryan to identify the terrorist woman from her breast size.
393) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Registration Date Falled (Message 91757)
Posted 28 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Mine was reading as 1999 before as well. Technically this might actually be accurate, as I first learned about this project and started crunching in school (I was gone awhile between then and now). I had thought I'd used the same account info before and somehow it had "caught up" with me. But now it's changed back, and the current date of 2003 is definitely accurate for when I reopened my account. Something wierd is happening with the dates, I guess.
394) Message boards : Number crunching : Boinc 4.27 (Windows) (Message 91752)
Posted 28 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Most software tends to be released much too early - generally speaking. IMO
> software should go through enough beta cycles to eliminate all known
> bugs. But I see over and over that impatient developers feel they must
> release after 3rd beta.

Most of that is commercial pressure, i.e. marketers and managers trying to push software onto the shelves and get sales moving. The dynamic for this kind of freeware should be somewhat different, though I imagine Berkeley has its deadlines too.
395) Message boards : SETI@home Science : JIMO cancelled (Message 91690)
Posted 28 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Anyway, considering its almost as expensive to send someone to the Moon as it
> is to Mars, It seems stupid to be returning there. Rather concentrate
> resources on Mars, If you have to send man there, than split the resources
> with the Moon.

It can go both ways. There are some advantages to having an intermediate moonbase, not the least of which, I feel, is possibly serving purely scientific astronomy goals.

Scientists give reasons for going back to the moon first
396) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Dumbest injury (Message 91685)
Posted 28 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Share your story of personal injury and embarrassment here. What's the dumbest way you or someone around you got injured?

Here's mine:

I was 16 years old, dragging a ten-foot 6x6 inch wooden pole across the yard to get it out of the way. There was a 1-inch diameter iron pole in the yard whose original purpose I don't know but we used to use to set up a volleyball net. The pole was freestanding on a three foot or so diameter base that looked roughly like a big metal wagon wheel. I dragged the heavy wooden pole right up to it and dropped it onto this wagon wheel, not really paying attention to the fact that the wagon wheel was on uneven ground and the part I just dropped it on had a gap underneath. The wood pole forced the wagon wheel edge down, and the upright iron towards me. I think I heard a "ponggg" as the iron hit me in the head. I staggered around, never losing my feet, thinking someone had hit me until I pushed through the tunnel vision and realized I'd done it to myself.
397) Message boards : Number crunching : For Heaven's sake, people, stop whining about S@H/BOINC's problems. (Message 91662)
Posted 27 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Wow. When I started this thread, I never expected the debate to run to over ninety posts, most very on-topic and many rather lengthy. My intent was to deflect some of the flak the SETI staff seems to get over problems they have little control over or time to address.

It's strange that I can accept without comment so many opinions that seem outlandish and insulting on many subjects both in the mundane world and in Cafe SETI, yet this one just winds me up. It's likely because I empathize with the developers since I have spent long years in electronics repair.

Over the years I've discovered what seems to be a rule: most people, including tech types, believe every job outside their own career field should take ten minutes to do if the person in that field was competent, so by corollary everyone must be incompetent or lazy. Many people operate under the notion that only they are required to work a full day and still have problems they can't fix. This is especially true of career fields where someone is inconvenienced while others spend the majority of time chasing down bugs, like mechanics and programmers.

So many of the posts during the time of the power outages, and indeed about BOINC in general, suggest that since "X" problem is not addressed immediately, perfectly, and quickly, the project team must be trying to sabotage their own project. Few seem to be able to "walk in the other person's moccassins" far enough to realize that it's a chore to make this project work and will be so for years to come, and the developers don't deserve abuse.

Sure we've been asked to volunteer our time and our resources, but what we also need to understand is that to participate in a project like this we also need to, as my boss once put it, "take ownership". My personal view is that the programming errors, server crashes, power outages, etc are in the end MY problems to deal with as best I can, so deal with them I do. While SETI was down my CPU usage dropped to 50%, so I solved it by attaching to Einstein. BOINC was calling out my dialup far too frequently, so I disabled network access and reenabled for retries at certain times of day. None of this required any special expertise, technical proficiency, or nasty-grams to BOINC, just a little ownership in at least trying to solve "my own" problems.

I'm proud of my participation in Classic SETI AND that it led to the launch of BOINC. I feel that, in a moral way, I "own" this project, and I'm committed to seeing it progress, including showing moral as well as technical support for the developers. Sure they need to know about problems, and we need to tell them responsibly and clearly about problems we're having, but they don't need to be handed extra grief and insults along with it. I'm convinced they're just as committed as we are. I'm not a customer here. I am, peripherally at least, part of the staff.
398) Message boards : Number crunching : Keep yer cheeze, I am outta whine (Message 91614)
Posted 27 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Strangely enough, Lysdexia's type annoys me more than any. One of the few advantages humans have over computers is the ability to pick out the essence of a message despite transmission and protocol errors. Lysdexia wastes time correcting things everyone understood anyhow.

I was trained as a classic nitpick, but to date on this board I have only done so once, when someone who wasn't a native English speaker used the word "physician" in place of the word "physicist". Even at that, I only did so because, on a science-related board, both terms could possibly have meaning in the same post and cause confusion, and I apologized for any embarassment it might have generated.

Such people remind me of an editorial I heard on NPR one day. An English teacher was getting, as she put it, "persnickety" about people making up words like "networking". I believe that life moves too fast to wait and worry about what ivy-covered English professors in ivy-covered halls have to say about it. Screw the nitpickers.
399) Message boards : Team Recruitment Center : Crunch for the team that started it all: The Planetary Society (Message 91604)
Posted 27 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Interesting that you mention it, as i have my recently retired K6-2 box
> sitting on my living room floor even as we speak. The thing has just been
> such an incredible workhorse for me for six years, it almost brought a tear to
> my eye to replace it.

Isn't it weird how some boxes feel like that? I built a P-166 machine in 1995 when I was in the military, at a time when the fastest was a 200. I used that machine six years, of which two years were in college (1998-2000). I upgraded the graphics card four times, if you include the Voodoo-I add-on. It had originally contained my first CD-ROM, a 3X SCSI (with cartridge!) on a Soundblaster 16 I bought for a previous machine. I added my first DVD-ROM to it, along with an MPEG decoding card (yes, the video card passed through TWO other cards at that point). Through this and many other mods (its final config had NO slots left!), the machine lasted until 2001. It was semi-retired to a child's room then to run educational software, and lasted another year there.

I like my current 2.8GHz hyperthreading, digitizing, DVD-cutting monster, but I sometimes miss that old machine.

[EDIT] Oops, forgot to mention, the P-166 was the first machine I crunched SETI Classic on! :) [/EDIT]
400) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [6] - CLOSED (Message 91588)
Posted 27 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> There has been a lot of debates and documetary programmes on this on tv, and,
> even it's good that the wall was teared down, the collaps of the political
> systems in East-Europe has come with a price.
>
> So after the frenzy of victory back in 1989 and the years after, the hangovers
> have been hard and painfull.
>
> Unemployment and very high costs of living is a huge issue and the former
> Eastgermans is by many Germans from the West Germany considered as second
> class citicens. So many Germans from the former Eastgermany have started to
> dream about the "good old days"!

East Germany, like all Eastern Bloc countries, missed out on the massive infrastructure-building times of the 1950s and 1960s.

The irony is that if it wasn't for the overall economic collapse of these countries, reunification might not have been possible in the first place.
401) Message boards : Number crunching : any one know of a free program to get dial up to disconnect/stay disconnected (Message 91363)
Posted 26 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Might be easiest just to select "Disable BOINC network access" in the file menu. That's what I did in the last round of SETI server outages (per someone else's suggestion), and it didn't adversely affect the other projects. I'd just manually enable a couple times a day to let the projects update as needed.
402) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What music floats your boat? (Message 91352)
Posted 26 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> That's funny Murasaki. Well, what can I say, I just like Duran Duran for some
> reason. Maybe it's cuz I like 80's pop-rock music or something. I even like

Hey, no judgements from me! Besides the Barry Manilow I mentioned, I own every CD Wham! made, so I have absolutely no room to talk. :)

> Barbarian[/i] soudtrack, I think that you might like the soundtrack from the
> movie Black Rain. You can find it at Amazon.

I'll see if I can find it, thanks.
403) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What music floats your boat? (Message 91327)
Posted 26 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Draw by Bonnie Raitt, and Rio by Duran Duran.[/i]

I can't listen to Rio. It's not that I dislike the song, but I once heard someone sing it as Elmer Fudd, and I can never get it out of my head. "Huh name is Wio and she dances on the sand..." The Reflex is another. My roommate in Air Force technical school was studying radar maintenance, and he'd sing, "The Re-flex Kystron's re-so-nant fre-quen-cy is on the riiiiise."
404) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space & Science Trivia (Message 91156)
Posted 26 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I agree with you 5 and 1/2 of 13.( or should I call you 2.36infinite) I also
> think it was ironic that the Enterprise never made orbit. was it on spite ,
> you think?
> To carry the name "Enterprise" and go where no man has gone before then to
> never get into orbit was a big letdown to me.(I'm a trekky)

According to this site, twice it was considered for refit to become operational.

Wikipedia: Enterprise

"Boldly going nowhere"
405) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Imagine if (Message 91106)
Posted 26 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Well, if somehow they could receive a television signal and monitor our modern-day fantasies, they'd learn an essential truth about humans: we tend to love in dark corners and hate in large crowds.
406) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Imagine if (Message 91019)
Posted 25 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Now if you think YOUR connection is laggy sometimes, imagine what it will be like when ol' Korg of Klinshai clicks on an apartment listing.
407) Message boards : Number crunching : Message from server: No work sent (Daily quota of 2 WU reached) (Message 90529)
Posted 24 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Am I right in that I read that the project won't be live until 2006? Is that
> correct?
>
> It sounds like a great project! I'm excited about it. Thanks for posting the
> link.
>
> Torrey Lauer
> Rainbow Sky Travel
> www RainbowSkyTravel com

Old Planetquest Thread
408) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Seti@Home "Classic" vs Boinc? (Message 90432)
Posted 24 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> People didn't Windows when it first came out either, now some couldn't ever
> think of doing DOS commands!

Bizarrely enough, when Win95 came out, and all the way up through Win98, Microsoft compiled a "progman.exe", which is the interface for Windows 3.1 and back. I guess this was for users who just couldn't stand the changes inherent in Explorer. You could get into the system.ini file and replace explorer.exe with progman.exe in the "Shell=" entry, and Win 95 would look like Win 3.1.

Also, on most incarnations of the install disk from Microsoft, there was a folder called "oldmsdos" or some such that had many of the MSDOS commands old guys like me used to use.

By the way, the shell could be another executable as well. I read about a guy who set it to "sol.exe" because he felt that Windows was only good for playing solitaire. I tried it. It works.
409) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Atheist thread (Message 90426)
Posted 24 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Ancient joke:

Q: What does an agnostic, dyslexic, insomniac do?

A: Stays up all night wondering if there really is a doG.
410) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Atheist thread (Message 90411)
Posted 24 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Heh, I think you COULD use the phrase like that. Although the first thing that
> came to my mind was two two-legged guys.

The condition would still be reversible. After the race, the diagnostics can be separated again easily into their component agnostics. Maybe this would be an "agnostitomy"?
411) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Atheist thread (Message 90404)
Posted 24 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I guess you could say diagnostics instead of two agnostics Murasaki. Or hey,
> why not triagnostics for three, and so on.

Then I guess the phrase "running diagnostics" would be a three-legged race somewhere other than a church picnic?
412) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Graphics (Message 90400)
Posted 24 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Plus I thought the whole idea of boinc was to have 2 projects running at
> once?
>
> (As my Einstein is saying paused)

I don't think the way BOINC schedules project runtime is 100% balanced. For many months I was just on Climate Predictor and SETI. Climate Predictor takes a very long time to run a single model (600 or more hours versus 3 for SETI packets) so only one CPDN model is ever on my computer with my current settings (1 day's cache). Occasionally, I noticed that Climate Predictor would suspend and two SETI packets would be processing concurrently instead. No big deal, since they generally stay even, but it mathematically wasn't possible to be a perfect 50-50 split.
413) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Atheist thread (Message 90392)
Posted 24 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Agnostic: A person who believes that the human mind cannot know whether
> there is a God or an ultimate cause, or anything beyond material phenomena.

So would 'diagnostic' mean there's two of them?
414) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Male Pattern Baldness? (Message 90175)
Posted 24 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Maybe he was a big Benny Hill fan, and is trying to recreate that sound when Benny would smack the little bald guy's head.
415) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Plain language help, please (Message 90172)
Posted 24 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Also, it's a good idea to look at the messages tab and see if BOINC has just sent a request in the past several seconds by comparing the last few messages to your system clock. That way you won't cut off BOINC while it's waiting for a server to respond.

Under ordinary circumstances, I leave my system set so BOINC can dial out by itself and the system will disconnect when the connection is idle. That way I don't have to deal with it at all unless something strange, like SETI being down, is causing problems. Post a reply if you need to know how to set automatic connect/disconnect, or just use Windows help under the subject heading of "configuring redial options".
416) Message boards : Number crunching : For Heaven's sake, people, stop whining about S@H/BOINC's problems. (Message 89766)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Which restaurant is most likely to lose your business?

Depends. In which one am I the customer versus being part of the team?
417) Message boards : Number crunching : Keep yer cheeze, I am outta whine (Message 89653)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Generally, I've found most dialup connections errors are due to local configuration problems within Windows. As for the chronic accessing, I've solved it by either detaching from a down project or suspending network access.

But I guess I'm just one of those "pasty-faced project team butt kissers" who has the "bleeding edge" dialup connection (i.e. one that works). Or could be I just don't take problems so personally.
418) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed..... (Message 89624)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> YOUNG DOCTORS IN LOVE

RIGHT! Here I though calling it an actual medical movie would throw everyone. ;)

> LOL!...and i think we should concentrate our efforts on building an ark...so
> we can float on whatever sea that is produced.

Then maybe we should build a submarine. "So we sailed... beneath the waves... in our yel-low... sub-marine. Wee all live in a yellow submarine. Yellow submarine. Yellow submarine..." Wait. that doesn't fit. The sea in that song was called the "Sea of Green". That's an odd color. What exactly have you been drinking, Fat B?

*Murasaki looks at his own stein

What exactly have *I* been drinking?
419) Message boards : Number crunching : For Heaven's sake, people, stop whining about S@H/BOINC's problems. (Message 89584)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> This doesn't mean I endorse those "they don't know what their doing ..."
> posts. I don't. But a good question or complaint (to me) is fine. Just be
> considerate to others and think about it before posting.

Fair enough.
420) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed..... (Message 89576)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> That's why he wears a kilt. No zipper to get in the way. He also carries a
> life-ring in case of sudden floods.

How did that old joke go? Something about sheep being able to hear zippers a mile away... nevermind. For the flood, should we build a dam or an ark?

For some reason I'm reminded of a quote from a medical movie: "Due to a mixup in Urology, there will be no apple juice served today."
421) Message boards : Number crunching : For Heaven's sake, people, stop whining about S@H/BOINC's problems. (Message 89542)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Seems to me it would be better to not respond at all than to rub salt in
> someone wounds.

Frankly, if people feel that being "forced" to switch to BOINC is a "wound", maybe they actually should find another hobby. They should have been around when MSDOS users were forced to upgrade to Win95, and no longer could avoid Microsoft's windowing scheme. Times change, and growth comes with growing pains.

I've been an electronics tech for many years and had to deal with many people who have no idea what it's like to troubleshoot and repair something, let alone something that doesn't vibrate, leak, make odd noises, or give other obvious signs like an engine often does. In my job, many users wanted to blame me when something breaks and there just isn't any way of getting around inconveniencing them. This is the same grief Berkeley is getting.

Just a few quick quotes cut and pasted from the recent posts:

"Personally, I thin BOINC is going to drive away many thousands of current supporters of seti - they should find a way to continue to use and improve seti Classic."

"What have this Shit of Equiment to do with Science"

"Seems a bit strange. It seems as the Seti project is sabotaged or someone wants to kill this project."

These and many other posts are just pointless. People need to understand that it isn't just the individual projects themselves that are experimental but the whole process as well, and the individual user simply has to grow and become more savvy because it just is never going to be a bulletproof system. Moreover, these projects are typically run by overworked, underpaid people who don't deserve grief for trying to do so much with so little.

If nothing else, my post is meant to point out that there are at least a few of us who aren't trying to come off like SETI owes us something. We understand how tough a time they're having, and we'll be patient.
422) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed..... (Message 89457)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>
> > > "Hic, the Fat (pissed) One"
> >
> > Bookmarked and why are you pissed??
>
> He meant that drinking makes him piss.

On the other side of the pond, it'd just mean he's drunk.
423) Message boards : Number crunching : Couple of Thoughts on Network Bandwidth (Message 89445)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I just tried zip compressing and got the same results. Maybe compression could be worked into the next BOINC release. There'd probably have to be some extra handshaking involved so the servers wouldn't try to send compressed work units to users running previous versions of the software.
424) Message boards : Number crunching : Does Seti/Boinc harm a laptop? (Message 89424)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> ... or just stick it in the 'fridge.

Just don't turn the thermostat down too low and damage the LCD display. ;)
425) Message boards : Number crunching : For Heaven's sake, people, stop whining about S@H/BOINC's problems. (Message 89417)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> P.S. I'm not clever enough to add formating like Murasaki, so I guess that
> will give people more reason to complain...

I cheated on the formatting. I typed it into Microsoft Word, converted it to HTML in the menus, went to the menus and selected "View Source", then cut and pasted the source text with the formatting marks. I knew it'd be a long rant, and people would me more likely to read if the key points were in bold. ;)
426) Message boards : Number crunching : Multiple projects? (Message 89398)
Posted 23 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Basically the rule is "one work unit per CPU at one time". I have hyperthreading so my computer appears to have two CPUs from BOINC's standpoint. This was actually a problem when I only had .1 day's work cached, as only one work unit would be on hand. CPU usage stayed nailed at 50% until I started caching multiple WUs, when it could process two concurrently.

By the way, I experimented with turning hyperthreading off, but that caused no end of other problems with my system.
427) Message boards : Number crunching : Did the electrician swing by SSL yet? (Message 89371)
Posted 22 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> High load 3 phase devices while excruciatingly expensive are generally
> available with in a week or 2 from the time of ordering. Unless of course
> they're very old & different from the current standard in which case the
> entire switch board requires probably replacing & rewiring just to replace
> the breakers with newer ones.
> That's always fun.

When I was in high school, we had a fully functional tool and die making shop in our cellar. One day a thunderstorm came up suddenly while Dad was using a surface grinder, and WHAMMMO!!! Power hit took took out the three phase converter. I was two floors directly above in my room when the bolt hit. Not sure how long I lay right where I was unable to move. In any case, it took forever to get the capacitors we needed to repair the system.
428) Message boards : Cafe SETI : For Heaven's sake, people, stop whining about S@H/BOINC's problems. (Message 89345)
Posted 22 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
<B><P>Oh, for Heaven's sake, stop whining, people!</B> If you can't stand the problems SETI has been having recently, fine, but they're doing the best they can. A few of you have had legitimate questions, but most of you, especially the more recent Classic users, are just whining. <B>Cut them some slack</B>. Points to remember before you rant:</P>
<P>1) <B>This distributed processing stuff is VERY new territory</B>, and with BOINC the people at Berkeley are trying to make it better to participate on ALL levels, including those who create these projects like Oxford and UWM. We are blazing new territory here. It's like were accompanying Lewis and Clark, and you are whining about not having roads and restaurants along the way.</P>
<P>2) <B>BOINC is going through an evolutionary process same as any other software</B>. Even as much as people complain about it, most people wouldn't be able to even RUN a computer if it weren't for Microsoft Windows. Most of you just pulled your PC out of the box, turned it on, and answered a few questions. Windows automates a tremendous amount of things that us old-timers had to hammer our way through with a great deal of difficulty. Most of you don't remember the tremendous difficulties we had with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. You never had to constantly tweak the config.sys, autoexec.bat, and system.ini files to get anything to run. <B>Right now, BOINC is the same way as Windows 3.1 used to be, so if you're looking for a quick fix to make BOINC run as smoothly as your operating system did right out of the box, you're in for a lot of heartbreak. Software is INVARIABLY far from ideal in the beginning</B>.</P>
<P>3) <B>Try to remember these people have FAR fewer resources than commercial software developers</B>. I'd bet World of Warcraft spent more in a WEEK in development costs than has been spent on all of SETI classic and BOINC combined, yet even Blizzard stumbled on their launch due to technical bugs and higher than anticipated demands. Berkeley is doing as well as they can with what they have.</P>
<P>4) <B>Berkeley doesn't owe us ANYTHING</B> but maybe an occasional posted "thanks" for participating. We are not paying them and they aren't paying us. They don't demand anything of us. Stop acting like SETI@HOME is a service they owe us. Personally, I feel lucky to participate in things like this, and if the current problems have caused me a little inconvenience fiddling with the software to cut down on the network access, so be it.</P>
429) Message boards : Number crunching : For Heaven's sake, people, stop whining about S@H/BOINC's problems. (Message 89343)
Posted 22 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
<B><P>Oh, for Heaven's sake, stop whining, people!</B> If you can't stand the problems SETI has been having recently, fine, but they're doing the best they can. A few of you have had legitimate questions, but most of you, especially the more recent Classic users, are just whining. <B>Cut them some slack</B>. Points to remember before you rant:</P>
<P>1) <B>This distributed processing stuff is VERY new territory</B>, and with BOINC the people at Berkeley are trying to make it better to participate on ALL levels, including those who create these projects like Oxford and UWM. We are blazing new territory here. It's like were accompanying Lewis and Clark, and you are whining about not having roads and restaurants along the way.</P>
<P>2) <B>BOINC is going through an evolutionary process same as any other software</B>. Even as much as people complain about it, most people wouldn't be able to even RUN a computer if it weren't for Microsoft Windows. Most of you just pulled your PC out of the box, turned it on, and answered a few questions. Windows automates a tremendous amount of things that us old-timers had to hammer our way through with a great deal of difficulty. Most of you don't remember the tremendous difficulties we had with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. You never had to constantly tweak the config.sys, autoexec.bat, and system.ini files to get anything to run. <B>Right now, BOINC is the same way as Windows 3.1 used to be, so if you're looking for a quick fix to make BOINC run as smoothly as your operating system did right out of the box, you're in for a lot of heartbreak. Software is INVARIABLY far from ideal in the beginning</B>.</P>
<P>3) <B>Try to remember these people have FAR fewer resources than commercial software developers</B>. I'd bet World of Warcraft spent more in a WEEK in development costs than has been spent on all of SETI classic and BOINC combined, yet even Blizzard stumbled on their launch due to technical bugs and higher than anticipated demands. Berkeley is doing as well as they can with what they have.</P>
<P>4) <B>Berkeley doesn't owe us ANYTHING</B> but maybe an occasional posted "thanks" for participating. We are not paying them and they aren't paying us. They don't demand anything of us. Stop acting like SETI@HOME is a service they owe us. Personally, I feel lucky to participate in things like this, and if the current problems have caused me a little inconvenience fiddling with the software to cut down on the network access, so be it.</P>
430) Message boards : SETI@home Science : For Heaven's sake, people, stop whining about S@H/BOINC's problems. (Message 89340)
Posted 22 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
<B><P>Oh, for Heaven's sake, stop whining, people!</B> If you can't stand the problems SETI has been having recently, fine, but they're doing the best they can. A few of you have had legitimate questions, but most of you, especially the more recent Classic users, are just whining. <B>Cut them some slack</B>. Points to remember before you rant:</P>
<P>1) <B>This distributed processing stuff is VERY new territory</B>, and with BOINC the people at Berkeley are trying to make it better to participate on ALL levels, including those who create these projects like Oxford and UWM. We are blazing new territory here. It's like were accompanying Lewis and Clark, and you are whining about not having roads and restaurants along the way.</P>
<P>2) <B>BOINC is going through an evolutionary process same as any other software</B>. Even as much as people complain about it, most people wouldn't be able to even RUN a computer if it weren't for Microsoft Windows. Most of you just pulled your PC out of the box, turned it on, and answered a few questions. Windows automates a tremendous amount of things that us old-timers had to hammer our way through with a great deal of difficulty. Most of you don't remember the tremendous difficulties we had with MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. You never had to constantly tweak the config.sys, autoexec.bat, and system.ini files to get anything to run. <B>Right now, BOINC is the same way as Windows 3.1 used to be, so if you're looking for a quick fix to make BOINC run as smoothly as your operating system did right out of the box, you're in for a lot of heartbreak. Software is INVARIABLY far from ideal in the beginning</B>.</P>
<P>3) <B>Try to remember these people have FAR fewer resources than commercial software developers</B>. I'd bet World of Warcraft spent more in a WEEK in development costs than has been spent on all of SETI classic and BOINC combined, yet even Blizzard stumbled on their launch due to technical bugs and higher than anticipated demands. Berkeley is doing as well as they can with what they have.</P>
<P>4) <B>Berkeley doesn't owe us ANYTHING</B> but maybe an occasional posted "thanks" for participating. We are not paying them and they aren't paying us. They don't demand anything of us. Stop acting like SETI@HOME is a service they owe us. Personally, I feel lucky to participate in things like this, and if the current problems have caused me a little inconvenience fiddling with the software to cut down on the network access, so be it.</P>
431) Message boards : Cafe SETI : New (BoInc) ScreenSaver actually Burns!! (Message 89275)
Posted 22 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > I've seen one, a Sony 23" widescreen, that bizarrely enough would keep
> an
> > image of bright white letters that had been static for a long time on
> the
> > screen. Even then, though, it was just a temporary effect and faded after
> 20
> > minutes or so.
> >
>
> Probably some of the crystals getting frozen in their energized state, and
> taking a bit of time to calm down.

Could be. I've never really figured out why. The effect looked like an outline of where the letters were. I was thinking it may have something to do with the fact that this particular monitor ran really warm by LCD standards (internal power supply, very bright backlight, etc). Maybe the white letters caused just enough heating so the plastic in that area swelled.
432) Message boards : Cafe SETI : New (BoInc) ScreenSaver actually Burns!! (Message 89251)
Posted 22 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
It is still possible for a cathode ray tube monitor of any generation to get screen burn. However, CRT monitors nowadays are operated at much higher scan rates, so it is far less of a problem than with those of yesteryear or ordinary televisions. It takes a long time before they actually burn an image. Personally, when I was running 24/7 with CRT monitors, I would just turn them off anyway to save power.

If you are using an LCD monitor, you don't have to worry about burn at all. I've seen one, a Sony 23" widescreen, that bizarrely enough would keep an image of bright white letters that had been static for a long time on the screen. Even then, though, it was just a temporary effect and faded after 20 minutes or so.
433) Message boards : Cafe SETI : poor performance (Message 88871)
Posted 21 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> But it's really snafu ATM.
> First UC facility management doesn't do there job to provide such a simple
> task as to deliver sustained energy supply to it's buildings.
> Then the ISP Cogent cut them off the low-voltage connection to the outer
> world.
>
> If I would be a conspiracy theorist, I'll know what to think of this....and
> you btw ;)

Uh, oh. We may have some backstory filler for another episode of the X Files
434) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Fishing (Message 88618)
Posted 20 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Kip Addotta
"Wet Dream"

It was April the 41st, being a quadruple leap year,
I was driving in downtown Atlantis
My Barracuda was in the shop, so I was in a rented Stingray,
and it was overheating.
So I pulled into a Shell station, they said I'd blown a Seal.
I said,"Fix the damn thing and leave my private life out of it OK Pal?
While they were doing that I walked over to a place called the Oyster bar;
a real dive. But I knew the owner, he used to play for the Dolphins.
I said, "Hi Gil" You have to yell, he's hard of Herring.

(Chorus:)
I had a Wet Dream, cruisin' through the Gulf Stream,
Oooh, ooh, ooh, ooh... Wet Dream...

Gil was also down on his luck,
fact is he was barely keeping his head below water.
I Bellied up to the Sand bar, he poured the usual-
Rusty Snail, hold the Grunion, shaken, not stirred, with a peanutbutter
and Jellyfish sandwich on the side, heavy on the Mako.
I slipped him a Fin, on Porpoise, I was feelin' good.
I even dropped a Sand-Dollar in the box for Jerry's Squids,
For the halibut.
Well, the place was crowded, we were packed in like Sardines.
They were all there to listen to the big band sounds of Tommy Dorsel
What Sole!
Tommy was rockin' the place with a very popular Tuna -
"Salmon chanted evening".
And the stage was surrounded by screaming Groupers,
probably there to see the Bass player.
One of them, was this cute little Yellowtail,
and she was giving me the eye.
So I figured this is my chance for a little fun, you know...
Piece of pisces.
but she said things I just couldn't Fathom. She was too deep.
Seemed to be under a lot of Pressure. Boy could she drink
She drank like a... she drank a lot!
I said, "What's your sign" She said, "Aquarium".
I said," Great! Let's get Tanked!"

I invited her up to my place for a little midnight Bait.
I said,"C'mon baby, it'll only take a few Minnows...".
She threw me that same old line, "Not tonight, I got a Haddock"
And she wasn't kiddin' either, cause in came the biggest meanest
looking Haddock I'd ever seen come down the pike.
He was covered with Muscles. He came over to me, he said,"Listen
Shrimp, don't you come Trollin' around here." What a Crab.
This guy was steamed. I could see the Anchor in his eyes.
I turned to him I said," Aboloney! You're just being shellfish!"
Well, I knew there was going to be trouble and so did Gil cause
he was already on the phone to the Cods.
The Haddock hits me with a Sucker punch. I catch him with a left hook
He Eels over. It was a Fluke, but there he was lying on the Deck,
flat as a Mackrel, Kelpless.
I said,"Forget the Cods, Gil. This guy's gonna need a Sturgeon."
Well, the Yellowtail was impressed with the way I Landed her boyfriend.
She came over to me she said, "Hey, big boy, you're really a game fish.
What's your name?" I said,"Marlin"

Well, from then on we had a whale of a time. I took her to dinner. I
took her to dance. I bought her a bouquet of Flounders.
And then I went home with her. And what did I get for my troubles?
A case of the Clams.


435) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Drilling in Alaska (Message 88602)
Posted 20 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Roman citizen: "So it's one, two, three, four, five, six... uh... VII?"
Shopkeeper: "Seven"
Citizen: "Yes, yes. Seven, eight, nine, ten, right?"
Shopkeeper: "Right."
Citizen: "Very well. Give me one two bags of cloves."
Shopkeeper: "You mean twelve?"
Citizen: "I mean cloves."
Shopkeeper: "No, no. One two is twelve."
Citizen: "I see... so your address is not one two zero, it's twelve zero."
Shopkeeper: "No, that's a hundred and twenty."
Citizen: "OH FORGET IT!!! I WILL NEVER LEARN THIS 'DECIMAL' NONSENSE IF I LIVE TO BE C!"

-From a comedy skit by, I think, The Frantics.
436) Message boards : SETI@home Science : En route to Mars, Why colonize the Moon before going to Mars? -- NASA scientists give their reasons (Message 88337)
Posted 20 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Some people say that
> the powder on the surface would pose a significant hurdle to overcome, not to
> mention those that say no gravity at all would allow truly immense power and
> scope. Would we get better results from a large mirror 10X the size of the
> Keck 1&2 or would money be better spent on something akin to TPF-I?

That's a good question, but I imagine that if there really is an industrial process (construction, optics, and electronics fabrication, as well as mining and processing) set up on the moon, then many types of devices will be built. Money is an interesting question: would industry be run as a private concern or will the base just run as a commune of government employees?

The environment is a strange problem. I imagine that a shell will have to be built just like on Earth, though instead of protecting the device from weather and atmosphere borne dust this will be for protection from the temperature extremes, "thermal blooming", etc of exposure to Sol (remember one of the initial problems with the Hubble was the machine vibrated as the sunrise suddenly heated up the solar panels). As for the moondust itself, I imagine they'll engineer charged dust collection grids and such to keep it away. Also the observatories could be built on just enough elevation to protect them from the "charged leaping" dust described in the article Byron's post above links to.
437) Message boards : SETI@home Science : En route to Mars, Why colonize the Moon before going to Mars? -- NASA scientists give their reasons (Message 88082)
Posted 19 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
What I would like to see, though I guess it won't be in my lifetime, is enough industry on the moon to be able to build real terrestrial-style observatories. Look at the fantastically detailed pictures the relatively diminutive Hubble telescope returns. Imagine Keck observatory (or something even larger, since mirrors can be even bigger in the light gravity) on the far side of the moon, away from even light pollution from earthshine.
438) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Political Thread [7] (Message 87906)
Posted 19 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
This is not the America I thought I served.

I see posts here that say the rule of law is just a "nice thing to have" but completely disposable when it's inconvenient, like when people are trying to kill us. I guess I misunderstood American history class. Supposedly the founders of this country risked their very lives and the lives of their children on the idea that the rule of law WAS more important than even the risk of death. They understood a simple concept we are losing: Death before Dishonor.

Without it, we are no different than Saddam, who also tortured and maimed others to protect his own life and livelihood and those of his kin. He himself decided, with out due process or appeal, who was enemy of the state and who was friend, and our government is doing exactly that now. To couch it in the "needs of war" or "eventual benefit of democracy and peace" or "our way is freedom" is hypocrisy, pure and simple. Ethics are what you have when nobody is looking. Ethics are what you have when it's inconvenient to keep them.

This is not a "new kind of war". The Japanese practiced the same methods as the terrorists in the Pacific in World War II, maiming, torturing and beheading prisoners. Despite that, we didn't by and large give in to the temptation to reciprocate their actions. We won the war, and the peace that followed. Vietnam was the same kind of guerilla warfare and we used the same practices as in Iraq, and we lost. WMD tech notwithstanding, we have fought despots, torturers, pirates, guerillas, and terrorists throughout our history. And historically, every time we gave in to our temptation to brutalize our enemies, we may have won the war, but we failed to win the peace.

Here is just one likely scenario. Supposedly we are fighting to keep those who torture and maim and kill innocents out of our country. Will we? We're training our young soldiers now in those very methods. Some of these soldiers will come back and become police and other civic officials. Are they just going to forget the methods they learned there? No they won't, so the real question is: Are we going to be so okay with their methods when they're using them on us? Shall we torture high school kids to find the drug dealers in order to protect those same high schooler's lives? After all, more Americans die of drugs and alcohol each year than died in the entire war on terrorism thus far. How will you feel if your kid is grabbed and "interrogated" because he "looks like a suspect"? But we have rights, you say? You already said rule of law is inconvenient when protecting lives, so that would apply to the war on drugs as well. Congratulate us, for we kept the animals out by making ourselves animals.

Things like this are examples of exactly why upholding the rule of law is MORE important than protecting life and property. If those that support the current administration don't start upholding the checks and balances that made this government something different from anything else that existed 200 years ago, we will degenerate to the point where we're no different than the old Soviet Union, pretending to hold elections where we have a choice, pretending our way is superior, and pretending we have any real rights.

This is not the America that I fought for when I stood the thin green line against totalitarianism. For some reason, I actually believed what they told me, that a soldier could be both a warrior and a representative of the best ideals of the country he represents, and the extra risk was worth it. I thought, when I signed up, that there was a morality that superceded simply protecting one life by destroying another.
439) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Fishing (Message 87633)
Posted 18 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I haven't been fishing since they revoked my license to buy dynamite.
440) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Drilling in Alaska (Message 87631)
Posted 18 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The truly interesting part of the equations is that the fertilizers used to grow corn (and just about everything else) are made using petroleum products, from what I hear. So the question is, is there really much of a net gain in energy versus just skipping the whole growth and fermentation process and just burning the oil directly? I'd be interested in seeing some numbers on this.
441) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Have you checked your profile lately? (Message 87503)
Posted 18 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Have I checked my profile lately? Sure. It looks roughly like Alfred Hitchcock, or a shape similar to holding a dead frog upright letting its rear legs dangle.
442) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space & Science Trivia (Message 87429)
Posted 18 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Those are good additions. Christianity did ban a lot of scientific thought.
> They didn't want science getting in the way of religous thinking.
>
> I didn't know the one about the concrete.

Where Rome is concerned, there are many other examples of terrible, purposeful loss, like plumbing and the surprisingly sophisticated thermal engineering that went into building structures like bath houses. These also became "vain" and "sinful" and were lost. Medicine also is about a thousand years behind because not only did the church suppress any scientific investigation of the human body during the dark ages, but even before the conversion to Christianity the Romans did a good job suppressing the lore and technology of the people they conquered.
443) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Want to talk about SETI@home, etc for "average" folks (Message 87426)
Posted 18 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I can sort of relate participating in BOINC projects, for me at least, to what it must be like to be a guard at Buckingham Palace. I don't in any way influence the project, just like the guard doesn't participate in whatever goes on inside the palace. The only choice I continue to make is to devote my time to "standing guard" by keeping my machine on and processing something that seems useful, important, and interesting. In that way, I do still feel a little like one of the elite, if a geeky sort of elite.
444) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Drilling in Alaska (Message 87413)
Posted 18 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Yeah, NIMBY is a very fickle obstacle for things to happen. I don't think
> it's so much because of community outcry as it is the suspicions still
> lingering from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The newer generation
> generators might be better and I hope we pursue the ITER project, whether in
> Japan or France.

Pushing ITER as a solution has been brought up in another alternative energy thread several months ago. I can't seem to link to the actual thread now, so here's a reprint of what I wrote in response (edited down a lot):

I did a report on ITER in 1998 for a writing class. Back then it was a fiscal black hole and morass of differing bureaucracies trying to hammer out who does and pays for what. ITER didn't respond very quickly to advances in the component technologies, like computer power and magnetic field research advances such as the "stellarator" concept of confinement. It didn't play to the strength of multinational science efforts, which is multiple experiments by different agencies each comparing results and refining each other's efforts. I doubt ITER's situation has changed from the looks of the recent bickering about the site. And, according to news releases yesterday, ITER won't be generating electricity until 2050 in any event.

The original posts
445) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space & Science Trivia (Message 87391)
Posted 18 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Indeed, sometimes scientists and historians don't fully appreciate just how
> smart ancient people really were. Of the many things that science and history

Two things leap to mind that were lost when Christianity took over the Roman Empire and started banning scientific thought. One is the methods the Romans used for working with concrete. The other is the loss of the beginnings of the calculus by Archimedes, 1100 years before Newton. I wonder where we'd be if we hadn't lost them, and other technologies from other cultures as well. We might be having this conversation on Mars right now. The speculation just makes me crazy.
446) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space & Science Trivia (Message 87390)
Posted 18 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Murasaki welcome to the thread.

Good to be here. :)

> After this incedent I began also writeing my code with mixtures of high/low
> caps... It made it a lot easier to read. so I did gain from it.

I've never done any real programming professionally. Never been that good at it. In any case, I first learned BASIC way back when system memory was measured in single and double digits of K. I was taught by a guy who was a self-employed jack of all trades used to trying to massage big programs into small spaces, and he had nothing good to say about putting remarks in the program.

The very next year they started giving programming classes in BASIC and Pascal in my high school. I was so unused to putting in remarks and so used to compacting code into as small a space as possible that I was constantly marked off for "unreadable programs".

> Also in college I never had to take and English or Literature class. They
> said my highschool grade were good enough I didn't need to. I think they where
> wrong but at the time I was glad I didn't have to take them.

I have to grudgingly admit that Eng 101 and Technical Writing actually did help my writing a bit, though I hate writing classes.
447) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space & Science Trivia (Message 85971)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> when I posted the question I had some serious debate within myself. Like you
> pointed out "Major" could mean a lot of things.
> there are closer galaxies some spiral some barby using the word major ....I
> probaly messed upbut at the same time I wanted to shake things up.

Cool. Blame my schoolteachers. First the grade school teachers threw logically tricky questions and exercises at us that made us examine carefully every word of every question or instruction in order to supposedly boost our powers of observation. Then our high school teachers got upset when we'd dissect every typo or grammatical error they made on an essay question. :)

> [edit] Oops, I guess the Lesser Magellanic Cloud is a "disturbed bar spiral"
> or some such. [/edit]
> The lesser Magellic Galaxies are not spirals yet.

After I posted, I decided to do a quick search, and read this site: Small Magellanic Cloud Hey, what do I know of a bar disk versus bar spiral? Dammit, Jim, I'm a technician, not a cosmologist. :)
448) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hopelessly devoted...to you... (Message 85968)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Murasaki if you meant the Texas Instruments TI-89, you can download a free
> guidebook at:
> http://education.ti.com/us/product/tech/89/features/features.html

Thanks for finding the page for me. Since I still can't find the printed manual, that saved me a step. :)
449) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Atheist thread (Message 85964)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I've noticed that only two science fiction series discussed organized religion
> at all.
>
> ST:DS9, owing to the location, had to discuss Bajor and the Prophets, while
> they never truly talked about Klingon divinity (It was alluded to a few times,
> but not really discussed). The other time was one episode of Babylon 5 - If
> memory serves, the Lieutenant was reciting Kaddish (Could any Babylonians
> confirm/deny this?).

Both the Battlestar Galactica series also get into religion.

The first had episodes referring to a monotheistic god, showed "angels" that were highly advanced non-corporeal beings, and one was a "fallen angel" that an onscreen reference indicated was somehow connected with the Cylons ("Count Iblis" had the same voice as the Cylon Imperious Leader).

The new Battlestar Galactica puts the humans still worshipping the pantheon of Greek gods, the "Lords of Kobol", and at least a couple of the humanform cylons believe in a monotheistic god. The Cylon in the new Baltar's head is slowly converting him from atheism to the belief that he is an instrument of god's divine will.

By the way, I was a big fan of the original series when I was in junior high, but nevertheless, despite a few criticisms, the new series has really won me over. I highly encourage everyone familiar with the old to give it a chance, at least for a couple episodes. Also, check out the IMDB database for the user comments on the new series. I found they unanimously came to the same opinion I did: really skeptical at first, but the depth of story and the all-too-human characters really win people over.
450) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hopelessly devoted...to you... (Message 85963)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Aaaaaugh!!! The way this thread is titled, it keeps bringing to mind an old Olivia Newton John song.

>A slide-rule, an abacus, a pencil and paper, a TI-81, and a G4.
>But most of the time I just do it in my head.

I just put batteries back in my old TI-89. Now if only I could remember how to run it, like getting it to reply in decimal instead of fractions. Where's that damn manual...
451) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Just curious...how would one run multiple BOINC projects? (Message 85868)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Just curious: why did you dettach from seti? you don't have to do that because
> seti is down ;)

I got tired of it dialing out so often trying to find a server (four packet results to upload, each causing a dial about once an hour and at different times). Add to that dials for CPDN and Einstein, and it tends to be annoying when I'm actually at the computer and trying to do something else, or when I'm trying to go to sleep (I'm an insomniac, yet I'd forget to turn the speaker back on when I woke up, which is a bad combination). There's no way of suspending an individual project short of detaching it, and I didn't want to suspend network access because 1) I didn't really think about it, and 2) even if I did I'd worry a little about how it would affect the other projects.
452) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Atheist thread (Message 85867)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Actually I like it, really. I even like Battlestar Galactica.

Which one? The original series or the new one? I first assumed you meant the original, which is so disco-pop-70s with the shiny good guys and window-dressing women I sometimes wonder what I ever saw in it (I guess, despite all that, it is still fun).

I guess the new series is "Battlestar Galactica Reimagined".

Battlestar Galactica info
453) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Just curious...how would one run multiple BOINC projects? (Message 85860)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Mine are set to 0.1 - 0.5 day, so I never have more than max 2 - 3 WU's in
> cache. Then I don't miss the deadlines.

I guess I should also explain that I'm on dialup, and I've had a rare but recurring problem with the modem locking up during sync. I keep the modem speaker on so I can hear when this happens, because I may have to reset the machine afterwards, as sometimes this will lock up the network and prevent the OS from attempting redial. So to cut down on the number of daily dials and hence the noise, I like to cache a bit of work. Therein lies the balancing act.

[edit] I once had the machine set to 7 days, but then a different disaster struck and I lost my cached packets. I felt very bad about losing so many packets others were waiting on for credit, so I backed off the settings to 1 day [/edit]
454) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Just curious...how would one run multiple BOINC projects? (Message 85853)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> With multi-projects the cache can be kept at 1 day or smaller.
> I am running with .2 connections per day on all projects.

My project prefs are set at 1 day. It's just that Einstein demands its data fast. :)
455) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Just curious...how would one run multiple BOINC projects? (Message 85846)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
And watch out for how much work you have stored. I detached from SETI while it was down and ran CPDN and Einstein. BOINC downloaded enough data for a few days processing on the 50-50 share. When I reattached to SETI, giving each project 33% time now, I still had all the packets already downloaded for Einstein, and as a result they barely had enough time to finish before the report deadline.
456) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Space & Science Trivia (Message 85832)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Q47: What is the closest major spiral galaxy to our own and the only
> visable
> > galaxy to the naked eye apart from the milkyway?
> >
>
> A47: The Andromeda.
> yep your right again. your on a roll now.
>
> By the way those are some good questions you be posting.

I don't mean to pick, but the way the question is worded leads to two answers. If I recall correctly in the southern hemisphere the Magellanic clouds, which are globular galaxies, are visible to the naked eye as well (I've never been there to see for myself).

[edit] Oops, I guess the Lesser Magellanic Cloud is a "disturbed bar spiral" or some such. [/edit]
457) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Hi im new member (Message 85827)
Posted 14 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Greetings, Marius, from the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
458) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How about the weather in your neck of the woods? (Message 85819)
Posted 13 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Absolutely beautiful here in Tacoma today. Clear skies and 63 degrees. Humidity 32%. I just walked down to the corner store admiring the blossoming trees (plum? cherry? I don't know the difference between trees) and evergreens along the way.
459) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Mount St. Helens report (Message 84503)
Posted 9 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I am more worried about the volcano under Yellowstone National Park. It might


Me personally, I'm more worried more about Mt Ranier erupting. It's less than a hundred miles from where I live in Tacoma (less than St Helens, and to the southeast). I'm fairly okay here elevationwise, but there's a huge area going from the mountain to the Tacoma tideflats and up north to Renton that could be buried under mud or flooded out with glacier melt, depending on the severity. They also project Ranier (should be called Tahoma) is due.
460) Message boards : SETI@home Science : End of Conspiracy Theories? Spacecraft Snoops Apollo Moon Sites (Message 84371)
Posted 9 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
As laughable as this moon-landing conspiracy subject is, it isn't even my favorite conspiracy theory, though it's evidently part of it:

The Flat Earth Society

I can never tell if these people are serious or not, but either way it gives me a chuckle.
461) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Hostile Humans (Message 84366)
Posted 9 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> What makes you think that human nature is a universal constant? We could be
> the exception, rather than the rule.

Short answer: Occam's Razor. The simplest answer is a technological race would develop as we developed, through competition for survival.

As I stated in another post in this forum, there's a valid line of logic that says that a species develops the ability to create and use technology because initially it gives a survival advantage in an intensely competitive environment. The goal of technology is to be dominant in one's environment, and that implies an instinct for selfishness (or "species selfishness" in any case). It is extremely unlikely that a species would develop the complex changes for "extreme" intelligence needed for abstract concepts, the ability to use complex tools, AND the capacity for language to pass on information without natural selection reinforcing success.

Our only example so far of a technological species-- humans-- has a barely checked competitive and combative nature about it despite how "enlightened" we've become socially. Given we don't yet fully understand the effort it will take to become a starfaring race, we have little else to speculate on the
social and moral philosophy required for the endeavor. Our own space race seems to make progress only in response to direct competition and ultimate reward, be it winning the Cold War or the X-Prize. Look what lack of "purely scientific curiosity" and obvious tangible reward did for SETI's funding in the US Congress.

Frankly we have little data to indicate a starfaring race WOULDN'T be as selfish and hostile as we are. The only counterargument seems to be a species has to limit aggression to survive its own nuclear age. So far we seem to be doing that without shedding the basic hostilities that are at our core as a species.
462) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What music floats your boat? (Message 84355)
Posted 9 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I like rock and roll. I like music where the beat doesn't come in a can, and where melody isn't repeating the same six notes over and over through the song with absolutely no change or embellishment. I need to hear some thought in the music, as well as actual musical talent. I need someone actually attempting to sing, and musicians actually playing and attempting to stay in sync with each other. I also like lyrics that don't bore me with the same obvious plastic rhyme. The last part I can't really describe. It doesn't necessarily have to be high poetry. An example is what I'm listening to now:

In a dark and sweaty room in '69,
Tables turning,
Dancing girls, silly girls, all kinds of girls,
And it was loud.
Tuning up to madness in the backroom,
Candles burning.
Present the Stinking Hippie,
And throw the naked thunder to the crowd,
In our Hungry Daze.
(Deep Purple, Hungry Daze, from the album Perfect Strangers)

Not high poetry, but it does inspire images in my head. Guess I'm just old fashioned.

Some of my favorites:

Basil Pouledris, Conan the Barbarian, original soundtrack
Vangelis, Blade Runner, original soundtrack
Barry Manilow, This One's for You
Metallica, S&M
Jim Croce, Photographs and Memories, His Greatest Hits
Alice Cooper, Greatest Hits
Moody Blues, On the Threshold of a Dream
Billy Idol, Rebel Yell
Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
463) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Social Security (2) (Message 83879)
Posted 8 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Let's look at the really big picture: even if you take all these dollars and invest it in these individual retirement accounts, even if it is managed absolutely perfectly, honestly, and honorably, it STILL comes down to laborers currently in the labor force supporting the retirees. Whether it's taken in payroll and corporate taxes to support Social Security or in increased dividend demands by a larger pool of stock and bond holders, it's still dollars that have to go to people not participating in the actual labor force. It will always be "X" amount of workers supporting "Y" amount of people in real terms.

Here's a news flash: money isn't the root of ANY economic machine, capitalist, commie, or whatever. It is just the grease. LABOR is the actual moving part of the machine (and when I say "labor", I mean everyone who actively contributes to the business enterprise, from the janitorial staff to the boardroom execs). LABOR brings the farmer's crops from the good earth to grandma's table and the televisions from the raw mineral state to in-home and tuned into HGTV. An economy with lots of money and a short labor supply simply balances out by inflation.

So, even if every baby boomer had saved massive amounts of money, they'd still be just as hosed when they came up for retirement because prices would skyrocket when all this money started re-entering circulation. The same will happen when today's young laborer attempts to use his retirement account. Again, "X" amount of labor, for "Y" amount of people. Either way, some system will determine how much "fruit of a person's labor" a current laborer actually gets to keep and how much will go to supporting retirees, so a change cannot realistically help today's labor force with their own retirement. It's still going to take a certain amount of labor to keep any given retiree fed and in his polyester-plaid golfing shorts.

From that point of view, I rather prefer social security as-is since it's "backup system" in case dear old Dad-in-law's retirement fund suddenly takes an unexpected hit because some Enron guy decided to "steal the grease from his part of the machine". At least this way, TWO separate institutions have to steal from him to cause him to starve, one of which can't claim "corporate secrets" and "right to confidentiality" to hide their misdeeds.
464) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Back (Message 83741)
Posted 8 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I must admit I didn't consider disabling the network access in BOINC. That may have helped, though I don't know how it would have affected CPDN or Einstein. Considering I only lost a day's worth of SETI processing, I figured detaching was the safest thing to do.

I don't have to worry about dialup charges per se since everything is flat rate, but it's the fact of occupying the phone so often when I and my TiVo both need it as well. Even with a short disconnect time it was off-hook a LOT. It also makes a lot of noise, since I find I need to keep my speaker on to monitor the connection in case the handshaking locks up (admittedly, this is a rare occurrence, but does happen and it can lock the network access up entirely).
465) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Back (Message 83632)
Posted 7 Mar 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Unfortunately, this outage was a very bad thing for my dialup connection. Having multiple units to send back and no apparent way to just suspend operations on the project meant my computer was trying to phone out every few minutes to retry upload, request more work, etc. I ended up having to detach the project and dump the completed packets. BOINC really needs a couple more controls to alleviate this, if nothing else a "suspend project" switch for when we know the project is down.
466) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What music floats your boat? (Message 83003)
Posted 27 Feb 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Used to play in a good little country band. Rocky Top, Orange Blossom Special,
> Long Black Veil, Queen Of the Silver Dollar, all of Johnny Cash's stuff, lots
> of other great stuff back then. I used to sing Okee From Muskogee. (They
> wouldn't let me sing anything else by myself.) :-D

Haven't thought about those titles in quite a while. I only know small portions of the lyrics myself.

My father moved us to Nashville when I was six to try to make it in country music. I vaguely remember hearing him playing on the radio at the old Opry building downtown. He spent a lot of time in Canada and England during and after the time he and my mother split (Mom used to sing with him sometimes at the dives they used to play in Florida before we moved). Eventually he gave it up.

I was so impressed at the time, I sang one of my father's songs in show and tell one day. Unfortunately for me, in kindergarten a song titled (if I recall correctly) "Don't Make Love to Mabel with Mary on Your Mind" WILL get a note sent home.
467) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Do you think a signal will be detected in your lifetime? (Message 82994)
Posted 27 Feb 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> 1. Consider Seti@home is only searching a very specific narrow band of
> frequencies - see the links on the Seti Classic pages. The arguments over
> this narrow band have raged since the inception of radio seti. It implies
> that we search for a contact signal rather than a wideband splurge of
> communications broadcast.

Actually, my point I was trying to show with the numbers is the Contact scenario is the only signal we can possibly receive. Any signal not intended for us and tightly focused on us would literally be a trillion times too weak for a receiver in our star system to pick up. And conversely ET will never hear our open air broadcasts for the same reason.

My numbers were even overly optimistic, using a huge transmitter that has to my knowledge never been used on Earth for practical transmission, and ignored many factors, like interference from natural noise, noise in the receiving set, degradation by the atmospheres at the destination and--presumably--source, and a myriad other things that can go wrong with a radio signal.

I will state it again clearly: from what I know of radio theory, it is not possible to pick up a signal like our open-air television or radio from a distance even as close as the nearest star system to ours.

Given that, looking on the hydrogen line is logical given the limited resources SETI has. I'd like to look in other "quiet areas" of the spectrum too, but I understand SETI's reasoning.
468) Message boards : SETI@home Science : What if they're hostile? (Message 82146)
Posted 23 Feb 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
If they are hostile? We are, put simply, hosed.

Stargate SG-1, Independence Day, and Battlefield Earth notwithstanding, it's just ludicrous to think there is ANY defense to an extraplanetary attack. There's a HUGE advantage to being outside the gravity well. Look at the difficulty we have developing devices to intercept a reentry vehicle from a terrestrial ICBM despite the plume from the booster device being a HUGE arrow pointing out the target's trajectory. Now imagine an object the same size as this reentry vehicle, only it isn't attached to a huge flaming booster so we don't get any warning of its launch. It can also be traveling MUCH faster being assisted by gravity from Earth and Sun, up to the limits ET designs into it's protection from the heat of atmospheric entry.

As an example, if you took an old WWII V2 rocket to the moon, it would have enough power to launch against anywhere on earth. That's how easy it is to develop an effective delivery system to attack targets "in the well" from far away.

There would be ample opportunity to launch thousands of tiny canisters of some biological weapon from far out where we wouldn't notice and never see them coming before they rain down on the earth. If ET didn't care about the biosphere at all, just send a killer asteroid or twelve our way. We've already got a bunch of candidate NEOs they can use for relatively little energy, at least compared to the energy it must have taken to get here.

And before someone suggests another defense base on Pluto, I'd really like to point out that, even with sufficient technology to make something like that, what says that you have to get to Earth by going past Pluto, or any other planet? If you think that way, to paraphrase from a popular movie, you are thinking FAR too two-dimensionally (really one-dimensionally, since the planets aren't lined up in a neat row from the sun to some "exit" sign in the system"). Any interstellar vehicle delivered system can just as easily come from ninety degrees to our ecliptic. It's something they never seem to show on Star Trek.

As an aside, don't count on an alien species being peaceful by necessity in order to build interstellar technology. I once read a counterargument that seems to hold merit. Our only example of an intelligent, high-technology species seems to indicate that a species develops intelligence in order to progressively dominate and control its environment, which indicates an inbuilt competitive tendency coupled with a certain lack of sympathy for the plight of other species. It isn't proven yet that keeping this attitude would be ultimately self-destructive.
469) Message boards : Cafe SETI : US Statehood (Message 82140)
Posted 23 Feb 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The Americans didn't take any land by military force?
>
> Ever heard of the Phillipines, Cuba, and Peurto Rico?
>
> The only reason why the Americans let the Phillipines go is WWII.
> They still occupy part of Cuba, and Puerto Rico has already been covered.
>
> Ever heard the term 'Manifest Destiny'?
>
> If America had had to pay for all the technology (programmable computers, the
> jet engine, radar etc etc etc) that Britan GAVE to America during WWII, they
> would still be paying.

As an American who knows a fair amount of history, I was with you right up to the end statement. Gotta say that considering the massive amount of aid that poured into England long before America entered the war makes any percieved debt for these items pretty much a wash. There are a lot of US Navy and Merchant Marine sailors who, before 1941, "bought" this cooperation with their lives to feed and arm England. Considering the massive sacrifice by all concerned in those times, I don't think tallying a scorecard of who gave what is quite appropriate.
470) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Save the Vuhlkanu [just for Fat B] (Message 81485)
Posted 21 Feb 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I have to admit I've liked very few of the endings in the Star Trek material, including TNG. It seemed so very contrived to have Q trick them into starting an anomaly, then have to defeat it by coordinating efforts in three times. Somehow this teaches Picard something he didn't learn in, say, the episode when a future Picard ends up on the Enterprise a few hours before it's destroyed and unable to communicate with the current Picard, who must now try to deduce whether time and causality are immutable or not. While I get the revisiting "trial" aspect, it just didn't work for me. Perhaps I was biased by seeing Denise Crosby, an actress who irritates me only marginally less than listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas songs over and over, get another appearance on the show.
471) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Closed..... (Message 81459)
Posted 21 Feb 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > > Wasn't Musky president after Herbert Humphey
> > >
> >
> >
> Musky was in charge of the dogs untill he Cried and lost the election!

I thought Muskie was Deputy Dawg's running mate.
472) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Do you think a signal will be detected in your lifetime? (Message 81454)
Posted 21 Feb 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
In my bio, I've pointed out that there's something called an "inverse square law" that applies to radiated energy, such as omnidirectional radio signals. Basically this says that if you get a certain amount of energy at a certain range, than moving the object x further away from the source means you get 1/(x^2) of the energy hitting the target object. Let's do the math (please someone check my math, as I am quite rusty).

Assume a transmitter on planet X orbiting Alpha Centauri that induces one gigawatt of power in a radiotelescope-sized receiving antenna one mile away (a ludicrously high amount, but let's run with it). Alpha Centauri is approximately 4.3 light years, or approximately 5.9x10^12 miles. That's 1x10^9 watts divided by 34.81x10^24, or approximately 2.9x10^-17 watts. That's sixteen zeroes in front of that 2. Ordinary radio receivers, just as a reference, tend to cut out at around the sixth zero, and we're talking a signal strength a trillion times weaker. I'm not sure how low radiotelescope thresholds go, but at some point we're talking about heat from sunlight causing more activity in the antenna than this signal. Seems like long odds of catching the Centauran super-broadcast version of "My Favorite Martian."

No, it is not possible for us to pick up an unintentional signal from a planet in another star system. It would HAVE to be a Contact scenario, where they somehow knew we were here and were sending us a tightly focused signal (which on their end still seriously sucks down the power). We have to face the possibility that this may not happen simply because it would be very difficult to detect this small planet from any great distance, and even so the aliens would be trying to strike all candidate planets, so it really depends on their commitment to the broadcast project. Can you imagine humans setting up thousands of transmitter beams broadcasting for centuries and millenia while waiting for a signal back?

All in all, I doubt this project will produce a positive result. I participate anyway, because I don't believe hypothetical skepticism like I've shown is enough reason not to try. People much smarter than me have been wrong before. This project costs so little in the grand scheme of things. Also this is a good testbed for tackling the problems of distributed computing projects. Just look at the evolution from SETI classic to BOINC.
473) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Save the Vuhlkanu [just for Fat B] (Message 81422)
Posted 21 Feb 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Frankly, elements that should have been in Enterprise have been missing from the start. Being set before the Horatio Hornblower feel of TOS and the bludgeoning political correctness of TNG and the rest, it should have felt somehow different, more gritty. The mythos was supposed to be that ships bereft of the sophisticated sensor arrays and instantaneous comms equipment should have been more independent, rough, and really operated more like WWII subs than the modern "Aegis cruiser" system that TNG et al had. That was part of the charm of the first season TOS, the fact that the person in the command chair had enormous control and enormous responsibility being so far from home, and the 1701's technology certainly didn't get her out of every scrape.

Instead Enterprise continued through all seasons to have the same perfect, carpeted-deck feel of all the other shows besides TOS. Even setting aside that the mythos of the other series were shredded by elements like humans seeing Romulans and apparently all Vulcans show emotion after all, the moral philosophy was always too neat and tidy, and the technology always worked too perfectly. There just was nothing prequel about this series, and so it quite frankly wasn't interesting to me, especially the rather ludicrous Xindi episodes (lessee, let's send our test weapon to cut a big gash in the planet we want to destroy instead of measuring the effects on a rock closer to home, because surely that won't WARN our enemies that someone is trying to kill them).

In any case, what in the world made UPN feel that moving Enterprise to Friday nights -- to contend with the rabid fan base Stargate SG-1 has -- would actually IMPROVE ratings?

Though I do like a few of the characters, and it was good to see Brent Spiner have a little fun, I'm really not going to miss this series.

By the by, the war with the Dominion in DS-9 would not have happened if Roddenberry hadn't passed on. He was always putting forth his view that humans would evolve to the point where they would be sage and wise and always find a way to outgrow war, and both TOS and TNG reflected that.
474) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Good Samaritan Laws Continued (Message 71978)
Posted 20 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Here in Washington State:

RCW § 4. 24. 300 Persons rendering emergency care or transportation - Immunity from liability - Exclusion

Any person, including but not limited to a volunteer provider of emergency or medical services, who without compensation or the expectation of compensation renders emergency care at the scene of an emergency or who participates in transporting, not for compensation, therefrom an injured person or persons for emergency medical treatment shall not be liable for civil damages resulting from any act or omission in the rendering of such emergency care or in transporting such persons, other than acts or omissions constituting gross negligence or wilful or wanton misconduct. Any person rendering emergency care during the course of regular employment and receiving compensation or expecting to receive compensation for rendering such care is excluded from the protection of this subsection.

[Added by Laws 1975, chapter 58-1. Amended by Laws 1985, chapter 443-19, effective July 1, 1985]

RCW § 4. 24. 310 Persons rendering emergency care or transportation - Definitions

For the purposes of RCW § 4.24.300 the following words and phrases shall have the following meanings unless the context clearly requires otherwise:

(1) "Compensation" has its ordinary meaning but does not include nominal payments, reimbursement for expenses, or pension benefits.
(2) "Emergency care" means care, first aid, treatment, or assistance rendered to the injured person in need of immediate medical attention and includes providing or arranging for further medical treatment or care for the injured person. Except with respect to the injured person or persons being transported for further medical treatment or care, the immunity granted by RCW § 4.24.300 does not apply to the negligent operation of any motor vehicle.
(3) "Scene of an emergency" means the scene of an accident or other sudden or unexpected event or combination or circumstances which calls for immediate action other than in a hospital, doctor's office, or other place where qualified medical personnel practice or are employed.

[Added by Laws 1975, chapter 58-2. Amended by Laws 1985, chapter 443-20, effective July 1, 1985]
475) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Ridiculous Thread (Message 71976)
Posted 20 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>
>
> Just to irritate the hell out of Fox News true believers!

That's just like our prez, posing for a picture with a sword while avoiding going into battle with it.
476) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Lincoln Memorial 28 Aug 63 (Message 71882)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Sorry...It's the responsibility of the US government to ensure as safe and
> free environment in which every citizen can pursue a basic level of welfare.
> The way you're reading into "...promote the general welfare..." statement
> makes me think you support forced distribution of wealth.

I don't. But the way you ignore it completely makes me believe you use the document only when it works in your perceived favor.

> As to your last point...Just because the general population wants something
> doesn't mean they should have it. Do you think it's OK to have discrimination
> if the general populace wants it? I didn't think so.

Hmm, interesting. Should we discriminate against a fry cook for a lifesaving operation because he doesn't make as much money as a stockbroker? He's just "not worth" saving? Funny how the right seems to believe in an economic Darwinism.

In any case, the discrimination argument doesn't wash because it runs afoul of many items in and out of the Constitution and its amendments. It's also very debatable whether slavery and racism was EVER the majority opinion in the US as a whole.

> "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety,
> deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin

Now that's just ridiculous. National healthcare insurance is absolutely no threat to liberty or national security. But if we must throw around quotes we think are applicable, then, not being a Christian myself but being from a Christian background, I know of a few quotes the so called Christian Right seems to miss completely in their quest for moral rectitude and social responsibility:

Matthew|25:41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart
from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
angels:
Matthew|25:42 For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was
thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
Matthew|25:43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye
clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
Matthew|25:44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we
thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in
prison, and did not minister unto thee?
Matthew|25:45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you,
Inasmuch as ye did [it] not to one of the least of these, ye did [it] not
to me.

I guess Jesus was a Commie, eh?
477) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Lincoln Memorial 28 Aug 63 (Message 71849)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> BTW, it's not the government's responsibility to provide health care to its
> citizens. If you want free handouts, migrate.

Resolving the healthcare crisis to stop things like appendix operations driving blue collar workers into bankruptcy seems to me to be for the general benefit of most everyone concerned. Hmm, seems to me I read something about "...promote the general welfare..." someplace. Now where was that?

If this is truly a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people", seems to me that if the general population wants some sort of government insured healthcare, then that alone makes it EXACTLY the government's responsibility.
478) Message boards : Cafe SETI : who's your favorite sci-fi writer? (Message 71633)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The line between scifi and fantasy is rather ambiguous. I remember reading one of McCaffrey's books that explained in scifi terms the origins of the dragons and dragonriders. My science fiction teacher (yes, we actually had a course in science fiction in high school) even once tried to convince all of us that Star Wars could not be considered scifi at all because they completely disregarded a plethora of known physical laws in the movies, eg, walking out in what should be a hard vacuum with just a breath mask in ESB, so it has to be fantasy.

I read "Man in the High Castle" by Philip K Dick. That was in the Scifi section, but is really just alternate history fiction.

My personal definition is that science fiction is just a subset of the fantasy genre that places some restrictions on the scientific feasibility of the story.
479) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [6] - CLOSED (Message 71550)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Not that I want to wade too far into this discussion (again), but isn't saying Iraq supported Al Quaeda because they had contact with them a bit like saying the US supported the Soviet Union because they had an embassy there and sold them grain? Al Quaeda is a fact of life in the Islamic world just as the Soviet Union was a fact of life in the Cold War, and likely every nation had some encounters with them other than through law enforcement, whether or not they're an "established state". Seems to me the mistake in the Iraq-Al Quaeda link is in the degree and nature of the contact.
480) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Low Carb Cafe Seti is now open.. (Message 71538)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
And to think people get freaked out over eating sashimi. Would you like some hot wine with that? :)
481) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [6] - CLOSED (Message 71527)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Curious. I'm at 1280x1024, medium font selected in the browser, and the page is wrapping just fine.
482) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Lincoln Memorial 28 Aug 63 (Message 71518)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You really need to read his post again.. He is not just talking about a one
> day event on the capital mall.. He's talking about the complete disruption of
> EVERYTHING.. TOTAL PARALYSIS and if you think that is done peacefully you
> really need to think that over again..

And you need to realize that the boycotts and civil disobedience I'm talking about that worked were not just "one day" events, just like any successful strike. Your position was that Dr. King would never use "total paralysis" as a tool, and I'm telling you that it was his favorite tool to use to the utmost of his community's ability. It doesn't have to be violent to qualify.
483) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Lincoln Memorial 28 Aug 63 (Message 71513)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Just out of curiousity how do you think a "total paralysis, stagnation" would
> be accomplished if not by force?
>
> Even during his famous "I have a dream" speech Dr. King did not stop the
> normal flow of events in DC. I will agree that any crowd that big would by
> defination disrupt the "normal flow", but he did not do so to deliberately
> create chaos.

You're saying all those people parked on the mall didn't disrupt the "normal flow" of the U.S. Capitol. I bet the Capitol Police had a different view.

For one, does a child have to hold a gun on his parent to get his way? How many parents give in to noisy kids just to stop them from "disrupting the flow?"

African American Oddyssey Read the short entry about the bus boycotts in Alabama.

The protests DID disrupt the "normal flow" as you call it. No protest succeeds unless it demonstrates to the other side that there's more at stake than just an intellectual argument, because the other side is already convinced that it is right and doesn't need to change. Dr. King did use the fact that blacks were important to the day to day functioning of life. Boycotts and civil disobedience did bring aspects of life to stagnation in addition to garnering media coverage (which in turn causes others, on both sides, to disrupt the status quo). Just because both sides weren't shooting at each other doesn't mean it wasn't disruptive.

[EDIT] Want to talk about "total paralysis/stagnation?" I was told about a pornographic video store that opened in Mountain Home, Idaho. Someone from the community decided to set up a camera and openly videotape everyone patronizing the store. Due to paralysis and stagnation, the store closed up and left. Maybe people's civil rights were violated, but you have to admit there was no violence.
484) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Fermi paradox (Message 71498)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>
> > "For one, just mentioning any noticeable flaws in one theory does not
> prove the
> > other true." - mura

>
> You said you did not like the assumptions in the Fermi Paradox. I simply was
> pointing out that the Drake Equation is nothing but assumptions, that are
> (even worse) all multiplied times each other. For the Drake Equation to be
> useful, you not only have to get the assumptions right, you actually have to
> get them all right, or it gives you the wrong answer. BTW if any
> of the many assumptions in the Drake Equation turn out to be 0 (zero),
> then the answer is: There is no intelligent alien life.

Again you're missing the point that you could find something in the Drake Equation that completely invalidates it and it still does not prove one way or the other the validity of the Fermi Paradox.

> Actually the Fermi Paradox is not a proof. It is a Paradox. Hence the name.

That's a matter of semantics, like saying "the Uncertainty Principle isn't a theorem, it's a principle, hence the name" even though it is in fact a theorem. The Fermi Paradox is put forward by proponents as a theorem testable by observation, among them the observations that we have not been visited or contacted by alien intelligences and when we explore other systems we won't find anything. The first observation is put forward as a proof.
485) Message boards : Cafe SETI : How cold is it where you are? (Message 71494)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Tacoma / McChord Air Force Base
Last Update on 18 Jan 15:55 PST

Lt Rain

61°F
(16°C) Humidity: 88 %
Wind Speed: SSW 10 MPH

Barometer: 30.11 in (1019.80 mb)
Dewpoint: 57°F (14°C)
Wind Chill: 60°F (16°C)
Visibility: 7.00 Miles
486) Message boards : Cafe SETI : who's your favorite sci-fi writer? (Message 71491)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I have to say my favorites are the "big three", Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke.

Clarke just has great, largely "hard science" stories like The Deep Range or the Rama series. If you try to read Childhood's End though, and you really "get into" stories, prepare to be depressed.

Asimov's stories are amazing to me. His prose is nothing spectacular, but I'll finish a story and it'll hit me like a freight train, "Man that was a good story!" Read a short story called Gold and you'll see what I mean.

Heinlein is especially a favorite for Starship Troopers, which not only was a fun read but kinda cemented in my mind what I believe is the way things should be: in all aspects of society one should not be allowed to lead until at some time in their life they had to put the group before themselves.
487) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Fermi paradox (Message 71481)
Posted 19 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> As opposed to, say - the <a> href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation"> Drake Equation? [/url]
>
I guess there are no assumptions there to worry about.

For one, just mentioning any noticeable flaws in one theory does not prove the other true.

For another, the Drake equation merely provides an equation for mathematical speculation. The equation itself is simply a list of questions to be answered, i.e the values for the variables themselves. Unlike the Fermi Paradox, it was never meant to be logical proof of anything.
488) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Fermi paradox (Message 71151)
Posted 18 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
My biggest problem with the Fermi Paradox is to me it makes a few too many assumptions.

One is that you can apply a mathematical model to expansion simply governed by whatever value you give for speed of any hypothetical spaceship. Expansion in human history was certainly facilitated by larger, more reliable technology, but the social, political, environmental, etc factors that affected our expansion across the globe are legion. Our expansion simply doesn't correspond to any curve of speed of travel, and it's fallacious to assume any alien species would follow a simple linear trend of expansion.

To put that expansion trend in perspective, if a do-it-yourself homeowner builds a garage, they can be said to have established an expansion rate by calculating the increase in square feet by the number of years they've owned the house. By the Fermi logic, eventually the expansion must continue until the house is impinging on the neighbors' properties.

Another is the assumption of practicality. So far, we have not found it practical to build spacegoing ships to even colonize our own system, let alone other star systems, and there as yet isn't even a projected technology to make the energy requirements and life support mechanisms possible. The Fermi Paradox just assumes suitable technology will be available and appealing to advanced civilizations, and gives this as the reason why they can't exist.
489) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Plea to Fellow Posters (Message 71148)
Posted 18 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ooh! I'd forgotten about those...
> ...and a bottle of the Ol' Janx Spirit. They're gonna need some booze to cope
> with it...

I'll take the full Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster please.
490) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Lincoln Memorial 28 Aug 63 (Message 71146)
Posted 18 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> img
> src="http://www.brawl-hall.com/gallery/data88/media/5/about_to_turn_ugly.jpg"
>

Why did you just post something I had to go into the task manager to kill?
491) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Lincoln Memorial 28 Aug 63 (Message 71141)
Posted 18 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > a mere demonstration is not at all what I had in mind.
> >
> > I think the situation demands total paralysis, stagnation, an end to the
> > 'return to normal'.
> >
>
> What does avocating this type of action have anything to do with a man that
> preached peaceful resolution to the difficulties that plaque mankind?
>
> Do not dishonor him in this manner!!!!

On the contrary, that's what Dr King stood for. That's exactly what the boycotts during the civil rights movement were about: paralyzing the infrastructure that used blacks without treating them fairly and equally. Non-violence does not mean "no active protest" or "no effect", it just means no meeting brutality with brutality.

Or as Dr King himself said: We must meet brute force with soul force.
492) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Children of the 40's, 50's, 60's or 70's (Message 71139)
Posted 18 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I don't know if I'm included in this, because my high school years were 80-84, but tough toenails I'm gonna comment anyway. :)

I try not to get nostalgic about the eras past in general. I know I really only miss them for what Neil Simon said "is the most selfish reason of all: Because I was young."

I certainly remember sitting at the dinner table and eating, and sometimes it was fun, but my personal experience on that was that it was usually just another opportunity for my parents to fight over something because nothing was distracting them. I don't subscribe to the theory that yelling is better than no communication at all, because they never solved a darn thing. I heard the same arguments over and over that were really just a constant battle for dominance, and it was much better when we finally decided to eat in the living room and watch TV.

My first computer was a TRS-80 model III (see my profile), It certainly was far easier to understand in detail than this monster I'm typing on, but it certainly could not be called "exciting". Had my first "multiplayer" game on it when a friend of mine and I would play a game called "Invasion Orion" and split up the available ships in the "Judgement Day" scenario, I.E take turns entering orders during the human interaction portion. When I say "ship", realize I'm talking about a square on the screen with a number beside it that doesn't move until the end of the turn, which takes several minutes to process after the human is done with inputs. Certainly I remember those days fondly and I very much miss my old friend, but honestly I rather more enjoyed the session of Neverwinter Nights I just played online before writing this.

I watch shows like the Six Million Dollar Man or the first Battlestar Galactica, and I wonder what I saw in them. Frankly I find them not nearly as entertaining as Stargate SG-1 or Farscape. The evolution of TV and movies have in most cases made what I see nowadays much better not just in special effects, but in the courtesy of not treating the audience like a bunch of idiots (literally network execs called the original Star Trek "too cerebral" for the television viewing audience. Go figure).

I didn't use a slide rule, but when I took flying lessons I did use its cousin, a mechanical flight computer. What fun holding onto the yoke of the plane trying to keep it level and at the same time spin the wheel to recalculate your groundspeed, etc. My old trainer gave me great advice in this regard: buy the biggest flight computer you can find so you can see the hashmarks and numbers more clearly in flight. The electronic flight calculator I eventually bought, which was VERY expensive back then, didn't require nearly the same level of dexterity and coordination to use. I wish I was still flying in part because the age of GPS and electronic maps must be a godsend to pilots.

I think there was a "sweet spot" (no pun intended) between the development of the birth control pill and the general rise of persistent STDs like herpes and antibiotic resistant bacteria, and certainly there can be some regret for any of us that missed those "carefree" days of the sexual revolution. But the revolution is over. By the way, does anyone know who won? :)

No I don't truly miss the past for itself. This is not to say that there aren't a lot of problems today. It amazes me when I see someone pick up a phone to call someone not thirty feet away. Things like that are just sad. We have definite problems in socialization and information overload. Still, on balance I rather prefer today to yesterday. Like the old song says: "Because the good ol' days weren't always good and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems."
493) Message boards : Cafe SETI : A chat with Stephen Hawking (Message 71132)
Posted 18 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> When oil runs out, we'll replace it
> with something else, even if it means going back to horse and wain.

That particular solution would literally be impossible. There'd have to be high ratio of horses to people just to deliver food in industrialized countries, and those that rely on shipping overseas would be really hosed over. Millions will starve.
494) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What does you're handle mean? (Message 71130)
Posted 18 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
One day I was getting ready to log onto my first BBS in 1991, but I needed a handle. I remembered a Japanese woman who wrote one of the first more or less romance novels in history. Her name was Murasaki Shikibu, and the novel was The Tale of Genji. From what I understand the main character is a somewhat quixotic character attracted to women he can never attain, which is rather fitting for me. I thought of picking Genji, but I figured that'd be too on the nose.

Long story short, I picked Murasaki and have used it since that time. "Murasaki" in Japanese literally means "purple".
495) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Another wierd PC fix (Message 70609)
Posted 17 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Here's a wierd fix. I've been offline the past day and a half because my Maxtor 120GB SATA drive, which has only been in-system for about two months, suddenly locked up. From the sounds, it appeared the heads wouldn't load.

This of course made me very despondent, mainly because I took the last drive and reformatted it for my TiVo, and I hadn't yet procured another drive to back up all the data I've collected the past fifteen years. Honestly, I've never before had a drive fail in so short a time, and since I'm unemployed (I actually bought the drive many months ago when I had a job) I didn't want to spend the money. Stupid me.

In any case, after dozens of power cycles trying to get the heads to load, jar loose, or whatever, I took off the drive controller and took a good hard look at the entire case. I noticed a silver disc that, upon closer inspection, looked to be right under the bump in the top of the case where the stepper motor for the heads has to be. This disc appeared to be the end of the motor's spindle. Figuring I had nothing to lose at this point, I took some pliers, got a real firm grasp on what little of the metal pokes through the case, and gave an ever-so-slight turn. I powered up the drive, and voila it worked. Evidently the heads were stuck, possibly by a bit of moisture or excess lubrication in the "landing zone" where they park on shutdowns. The drive still doesn't work well, but it was enough to recover all my data onto another drive bought with the Christmas money my parents sent me, and even better I didn't lose my SETI or Climate Predictor work. Fortune favors the foolish. :)
496) Message boards : Cafe SETI : My Pet Monster (Message 70601)
Posted 17 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Here is a pic of the little creature that has been taking up so much of my
> time recently, a baby Yemen (or veiled) Chameleon. Picture taken about an hour
> ago.

What a cutie. :) I've always liked especially how they look like they're wearing teeny oven mitts.
497) Message boards : Cafe SETI : A chat with Stephen Hawking (Message 70595)
Posted 17 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
We are a creature that pushes environments and their ability to sustain our population. In the past the spot shortages in resources such as game, timber, and depleted farmland could be overcome by migration, but the population is too large for that now.

Our root difficulty here is one can't "unscramble the egg" if disaster is coming. Cut down too many trees and find out you've critically damaged the Earth's animal life support system, you can't just say "my bad" and put the trees back. Regeneration may take time you no longer have.

Continue along the curves of oil consumption to a point where there is absolutely no doubt that you're going to run out, and you may not get the chance to develop alternate fuels before it has a disastrous effect on food production, heating, etc. Assuming an optimistic "something will come up" is like ignoring the remote possibility of an asteroid strike: there's ample evidence it can happen, it only has to happen once, and if we're not prepared we may be too late to stop it by the time we see it coming.

Population itself is a serious problem. Our agriculture does have an entropic effect on the available farmland. Salts build up in fields that take generations to wash away. Topsoil erodes, non-natural chemicals build up in aquifers, etc. Critical loss of arable farmland is a problem that is only a couple hundred years away, not thousands or millions. Maybe population growth is leveling in developed countries, and maybe it will do so even in the countries that paradoxically are least capable of supplying themselves with basic needs, but there is some evidence that even our current population is not sustainable long term. How long do we assume all will be well?

I remember back when scientists were saying the earth is heading into another ice age. Some say this 'flip-flop' of position to global warming says that climatology itself just can't be trusted. On the contrary, it very likely shows just how effortlessly we've managed to break the cycle the earth has gone through for billions of years in just a few decades.

These points are not 'pessimistic', just scientific. They're good questions whose answers have significant consequences and don't deserve to be easily dismissed by anyone. Nobody's suggesting that we get depressed, lay down, and die. Quite the contrary, the 'doomsayers' are saying, "Move forward as fast as possible in the direction of conservation and change. Let's get some options as soon as possible. Mostly lets not assume we will have options until we actually do have them. Let's be as careful about Earth's safety as we are about our own families." This is the essence of enlightened self-interest.
498) Message boards : Cafe SETI : If you weren't reading this what would you be doing? (Message 70577)
Posted 17 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
TiVo. My shows wait for me (Stargates, Dead Zone, Smallville, The West Wing, Battlestar Galactica, Cowboy Bebop, etc, etc).
499) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What music are you listening to right now if any? (Message 70576)
Posted 17 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Jim Croce, Greatest Hits (Operator, Time in a Bottle, Bad Bad Leroy Brown, etc). But I may take out Dogbyte's choice next and listen to that.
500) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favourite time of year? (Message 69626)
Posted 15 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> 25 consecutive winters above 61 N latitude in Alaska won't make you crazy if
> you use studded tires.

There is still a certain art to living like that, from what I hear. My father used to spend a lot of time in Saskatchewan (late 1960s), where the locals taught him the fine art of building a small fire under the crankcase to gently heat the oil before trying to start the engine.

As for studded tires, it was an unfortunate necessity when I lived in northern Japan, but they sure played hell on the roads digging ruts that took all summer to repair.
501) Message boards : Cafe SETI : submerge this! (Message 69619)
Posted 15 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> FYI
>
> Did you know that there is no such word as
> Resubmerged in the Dictionary, if it had a meaning
> it would be to go back under, to submerge back into
> the deep dark water.

The old system of ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls determining what words should be anointed as legitimate just doesn't hold up very well in our fast paced informational society. 'Resubmerged' is just another example of our increasingly and understandably Lego-oriented view toward word construction in general. IMHO, Oxford and Webster need to catch up or step aside.
502) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favourite time of year? (Message 69595)
Posted 15 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Having spent 14 consecutive winters above 61 N latitude in Alaska I can say
> with authority that humans are a tropical spieces and should only venture into
> wintery regions for recreational purposes or when they really need to shoot a
> moose or smell a forest of spruce and alder.
> Anyone who likes fastening chains to tires while freezing their ass off has
> issues that need addressing by mental health professionals

I once said the same thing to a colleague of mine, and he replied that if you're too cold you can always put something else on, but if you're too hot there's a limit to how much you can take off. I had to concede the point.
503) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What is your fav film of all time? (Message 69594)
Posted 15 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Agreed, Airplane is a very funny and witty movie. BUT, there is one running
> joke in it I bet most did not get since no one I've asked did get it:
>
> When viewing the 'jet airplane' flying along and hearing the roar of the
> engines, the engines we hear are not jet engines but piston engines.
> Propeller engines. Go listen. And that adds to what makes it such a fun
> movie!

After watching 12 O'Clock High at a very young age and being an aviation nut ever since, no way I'd miss that one. I laughed far out of proportion to the joke. For some reason it just kept cracking me up.
504) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Ridiculous Thread (Message 69588)
Posted 15 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
Answers from famous personalities.

Plato: For the greater good.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.

Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!

Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams: Forty-two.

Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.

Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Early): The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.

Ludwig Wittgenstein (Late): Because it had reached bedrock, and its spade was turned.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle: To actualize its potential.

Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Salvador Dali: The Fish.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus: For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann Friedrich von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.

David Hume: Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.

Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?

The Sphinx: You tell me.

Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.

Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.

Molly Yard: It was a hen!

Gene Roddenberry: To boldly go where no chicken...

Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
505) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Joke of the Day (Message 69587)
Posted 15 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
An older gentleman was standing at a bus stop, observing a young man
with orange, green, and blue spiked hair. After a few moments, the
young man said, "What's the matter, old man, haven't you ever done
anything wild?"

The old man smiled and said, "Well, yes. I once had sex with a parrot,
and I was wondering if you might be my son . . . "
506) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Low Carb Cafe Seti is now open.. (Message 69267)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Raspberry Jello with chili powder anyone?

Sorry, just slipped out. :)
507) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Irritate and annoy your fellow SETIzens (Message 69248)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
An informal little game we used to play when I worked nights was "most irritating song". Dig up the song you hated the most but couldn't get out of your head, the catchy commercial jingles, the kiddie songs, the pop culture nightmares. Post the lyrics here. If a song gets stuck in your head, come back to this thread and give it a -1. Vote negative, vote often!

Here's one the older folks here might recognize.

[Heat Miser]
I'm Mister Green Christmas
I'm Mister Sun
I'm Mister Heat Blister
I'm Mister Hundred and One
They call me Heat Miser,
What ever I touch
Starts to melt in my clutch
I'm too much!

[Chorus]
He's Mister Green Christmas
He's Mister Sun
He's Mister Heat Blister
He's Mister Hundred and One

[Heat Miser]
They call me Heat Miser,
What ever I touch
Starts to melt in my clutch

[Chorus]
He's too much!

[Heat Miser]
Thank you!
I never want to see a day
That's under sixty degrees
I'd rather have it eighty,
Ninety, one hundred degrees!
(spoken)
Oh, some like it hot, but I like it
REALLY hot! Hee hee!

[Chorus]
He's Mister Green Christmas
He's Mister Sun

[Heat Miser]
Sing it!

[Chorus]
He's Mister Heat Blister
He's Mister Hundred and One

[Heat Miser]
They call me Heat Miser,
What ever I touch
Starts to melt in my clutch
I'm too much!

[Everybody]
Too Much!
508) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What is your fav film of all time? (Message 64734)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> "The Day The Earth Stood Still"

Very good choice.

Thinking about it, my favorite movie would definitely be Highlander. I've watched it over and over many times. There's just a combination of factors involved. First I love sword fighting scenes. I love the theme of immortality not being quite as much of a gift, especially for those who love, as one might think. I love the cinematography; the camera angles are just beautiful in so many places, like the long shot of Conner's family sword marking Heather's grave while their hut (and metaphorically their brief happy life) burns to ash in the background and he is walking away leaving it all behind, with Queen playing "Who Wants to Live Forever" on the soundtrack. Clancy Brown as the Kurgan is just the Ultimate Bad Guy for me ("Hi, I'm Candy" "Of COURSE you are...").

I might have gone with Blade Runner or The 13th Warrior, but Highlander is still slightly above them for me.
509) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [6] - CLOSED (Message 64725)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Prince Harry dressed as a Nazi at a costume party. Does anyone else see this
> an a non-story? Did he espouse facist ideas? Did he call anyone by a racial
> slur? If the kids in my neighborhood dress as witches and monsters, are they
> supporting their local covens or the democratic party? I think not! Doesn't
> anyone have a sense of humor any more?

A friend of mine was stationed at RAF Lakenheath during the early eighties. While he was there he bought a fake concert T-shirt that said "Hitler: European Tour" on it and had a list on the back of the names and dates of the countries Germany invaded, with a big "Cancelled" marked over Great Britain. He says over there people thought it quite amusing, but when he came back to the states he got such a ration of crap from every bozo on the street that he ended up putting the shirt in a drawer and never wearing it again.
510) Message boards : Cafe SETI : SETI the Song - Dr. Love's Hommage to SETI@home (Message 64695)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> enjoyed the SETI song DR. LOVE...i was doing the SETI dance while i was
> listening...made me feel GOOD!

What is a "SETI dance"? Hold your ears out with your hands and bop around looking upward? :)
511) Message boards : Cafe SETI : @ SETI staff: an ignore button would be nice. (Message 64675)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I dont plan on entertaining any more fools

But, I'm a fool and I've found you quite entertaining. No more?
512) Message boards : Cafe SETI : @ SETI staff: an ignore button would be nice. (Message 64646)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> An addition to the idea. Add up all of the scores for your posts, multiply by
> some number say 1000, and you have to have more CS than that to post again.

This was my idea on posting permission:

A modest proposal
513) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 64629)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ok. Thanks. I'd say that pretty much explains why.
> If it's on DVD I'll ask Ziggy to pick it up. I kinda
> like this new one and now I'm curious about the old one.

It is on DVD, released this year in one of those odd shaped boxes that guarantee you can't stack it neatly.

I'll be perfectly honest here. I watch reruns of the old series on SciFi channel and I find I'm not that interested in them. They're very "disco '70s" and the writing just wasn't that great. For me they don't have the same replay value that much of Star Trek the original series has, yet I still have to say I really enjoyed them back then. I'm not sure if it is the premise of the series I still like or just the fact that I was young when I first watched them and there was so little decent scifi back then.

Anyhow, here's a link the Scifi channel keeps for the classic series:

Classic Battlestar Galactica
514) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 64607)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hey Guys,
>
> When was that original Battlestar Galactica made?
> I'm 31 and I don't remember ever seeing or hearing
> about it. I don't want to wake Ziggy just to ask
> him for that.
>
> Dominique

Battlestar Galactica was on US television in 1978-79. To drum up funds, the pilot was released as a movie in Canada in 1978 if I recall correctly.

There was a sort-of second season called Galactica 1980 that nobody likes to talk about because it was perfectly awful.
515) Message boards : Cafe SETI : A chat with Stephen Hawking (Message 64598)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You just brought up someting I didnt think about. The "several months" in
> space. Robots dont have a problem if the oxygen supply somehow becomes
> contaminated or depleted... same with the food and water supply. In fact none

(snip)

I guess I should clarify my position before I continue. I don't think this is the time to be planning a manned mission to Mars either, when there are shorter steps we should be focusing on (better presence in space than the ISS, a manned moonbase, etc). In addition, I so intensely dislike the current administration that I absolutely don't want them to get any credit for doing something that will really be done by people that are by far their superiors morally and intellectually, so this further clouds my reason on this matter.

That being said, a manned mission to Mars will have the best computers and manipulator arms in existence: a human. A manned mission, despite the life support overhead, will have a huge advantage. Look at the worries we have now with maneuvering the current rovers. The robots have always been a short tumble from being completely useless, so every little move has to be done with extraordinary care by a committee of programmers. A human with a pickaxe and a few instruments back at base can get hundreds of times more data than sending the same human+life support mass in mechanical robots to Mars.
516) Message boards : Cafe SETI : A chat with Stephen Hawking (Message 64564)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Or imagine JPL's mistakes happening with a manned mission. Something
> simple
> > like mixing up inches with centimeters. Billions of dollars to make a
> human
> > pancake.
> --------------------
> situations like that are when human pilots come in handy.

This is about the only real reason why the shuttles were still flying. A human can, for one, NOTICE a problem robots and cameras miss. Certainly on a Mars mission the several months in space will give the crew plenty of time to go over every excruciating detail of the equipment en route. A manned mission can compensate for the myriad things that might go wrong with deployment.
517) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 64556)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> This Boomer is a babe :)

That does tend to take the edge off my disappointment, I'll admit. :)

> One thing I miss and I think really screws with the continuity is the lack of
> lasers. That kind of advanced technology and they are still using their own
> form of space bullets.

Yes, and it is a dramatic departure from the original series. Still, we can say the same for the Alien and Aliens, which were thoroughly enjoyable partially because of the weaponry. So far the best way to kill individuals is still an overdose of kinetic energy, from the club of a caveman to the slug of the army's latest weapon. It's kinda like farming: for all our fancy technology and tricks of the trade, it's still planting seeds in dirt.

[EDIT] By the way, for me it's often the little things that make TV enjoyable for me. In this BG pilot, it was when Starbuck was rescuing Apollo by locking gun struts together and crash landing on the deck of the Galactica. The actress' expression when she said, "Sure I know what I'm doing... I think" was CLASSICALLY Starbuck, right out of Dirk Benedict's repertoire.
518) Message boards : Cafe SETI : What is your fav film of all time? (Message 64547)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> In fact I quite like most 'organic' sci-fi.
>
> I actually like Lexx.

I liked Lexx, but the "organic" show I admired most was Farscape. This is the first series I'd ever seen that very obviously tried really hard to break the Star Trek "they look like us, they act like us" mold in their treatment of aliens. Of course they don't always succeed in this measure, but still the efforts were quite novel.

On topic: If you forced me to pick just one movie to be favorite, it'd probably be Highlander.
519) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 64530)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Just a friendly reminder...
>
> SciFi's Battlestar Galactica
> new series starts this Friday, Jan 14 at 9/8C

Very aware of it. TiVo set to high priority record.

I must admit, though, I was somewhat disappointed with the pilot last December. The feel was kinda wrong to me. It didn't feel as, well, "epic" as the first half of the original movie felt. This may be due to their chucking the classical score and replacing it with jungle moans and drums. I found the simulated hand cam jerkiness in the space scenes to be just annoying. Also the attack on Caprica was dull: just a bunch of mushroom clouds. Most of the rest of it is okay, though I wish Boomer had been like the original character: the solid go-to person that was sort of a yardstick to measure the eccentricites of the main characters.

For the record, I have no problem with Starbuck being a woman. I actually like the updated Baltar character and his new "demon" cylon in his head. I also applaud them for going for the more "Wing Commander video game" feel to space combat.
520) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 64508)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
<P>Uh oh, Rachel, you've given me an excuse. Now I practice my typing...</P>
<P>Bold=Favorites</P>
<FONT><P>DVD: <B>The 13th Warrior</B>, 2010, <B>Aladdin (disney)</B>, <B>As Good as it Gets</B>, Battlestar Galactica (original movie/pilot), Better Off Dead, Boondock Saints, Buckaroo Banzai, Caddyshack, The Cheap Detective, <B>City Heat</B>, Clockwork Orange, <B>Conan the Barbarian</B>, Crimson Tide, The Dead Zone (original movie), <B>The Dead Zone (TV Series)</B>, Doctor Strangelove, Dune, The Emperor's Club (gift, not choice), <B>Excalibur</B>, <B>A Few Good Men</B>, The Fifth Element, <B>A Fish Called Wanda</B>, <B>Flash Gordon (80s movie)</B>, Footloose, Force 10 From Navarone, <B>The Fugitive (90s movie)</B>, Galaxy Quest, Garfield (gift, not choice), The Gods Must Be Crazy parts 1 and 2, Good Morning Vietnam, Heartbreak Ridge, <B>Highlander</B>, The Hobbit, <B>Independence Day</B>, <B>Joe vs the Volcano</B>, Kindergarten Cop, <B>Lethal Weapon</B>, Life of Brian, <B>The Lord of the Rings extended editions</B>, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Mannequin, <B>The Mask of Zorro</B>, Master and Commander, Matrix trilogy, <B>Maverick</B>, The Meaning of Life, <B>Men in Black</B>, <B>Monsters Inc</B>, <B>Moscow on the Hudson</B>, The Pianist (gift, not choice), <B>Pirates of the Carribbean</B>, Real Genius, The Recruit (gift, not choice), The Replacement Killers, The Road Warrior, <B>Roxanne</B>, Running Scared, <B>Ruthless People</B>, Spaceballs, <B>Sports Night (TV series)</B>, Stargate, <B>Stargate SG-1 (TV series)</B>, The Terminator, <B>Terminator 2: Judgement Day</B>, <B>Three Kings</B>, Titan AE, Total Recall, Tron, Wargames, Wizards, <B>X-Men</B>, <B>X2</B>.</P>
<P>Laserdisc: The Abyss, <B>Aliens</B>, Area 88 (anime), Beverly Hills Cop, <B>Blade Runner</B>, Bubblegum Crisis (anime), <B>The Crow</B>, The Dagger of Kamui (anime), Fantasia, <B>Ferris Bueller's Day Off</B>, Hamlet (90s movie), Heavy Metal, <B>Hot Shots part Deux</B>, Kimagure Orange Road (anime), Lightning Jack, <B>The Lion in Winter</B>, Mad-X01/Riding Bean (anime), MASH (movie), The Mermaid Forest (anime), Patriot Games, Pinocchio, <B>Predator</B>, <B>The Princess Bride</B>, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ran (Akira Kurosawa's Japanese spin on Shakespeare's King Lear), Robot Carnival (anime), Snow White, <B>Star Wars episodes 4-6 (original films)</B>, Star Trek 2-3-4-6, Superman II, Top Gun, <B>Twice Upon a Time</B>, Under Seige, Urusei Yatsura (anime)</P>
<P>VHS: <B>The Man with One Red Shoe</B>, Be Forever Yamato (anime), Final Yamato (anime)</P></FONT>
521) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Another year over (Message 64458)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> "MY RESOLUTION"
>
> My name is Willie and I am a smoker, I have not had a ciggy since last Monday
> morning, 3rd January, my Niquitin CQ patch (21mg) is firmly attached to my
> right shoulder, this is the longest I have ever been without a ciggy, so far
> so good, lets hope I really don't end up looking like my mate Fat Bastard...
>
> Pressures on !
>
> "MY RESOLUTION"

Back in the days before nicotine patches and gum, my stepfather, who'd been smoking for nearly thirty years by that time (started VERY early in life) decided to quit. He was a real bastard to live with for nearly two years, but he did successfully kick it. Nowadays, he can't stand to be around it. He says it's not because of temptation, it just literally makes him sick to be in a smoky room.
522) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED (Message 64439)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Masters
> of the sea drop anchor to make a San Diego port call


I love seeing tall ships. Back in high school, my family went on an outing to see a parade of tall ships as they sailed through Boston harbor. One of the ships in the parade was, of course, the USS Constitution, which is part of a naval museum in Boston and from what I understand is still a commissioned navy ship to this day.

I didn't get to witness the particular part where the Constitution sailed by its younger "sibling", the aircraft carrier USS Constitution, but I hear it was a sight to see. It seems the sailing ship Constitution decided to fire a salute at the carrier. It also seems that they did this full broadside from closer to the carrier than was advisable. The story is that the concussion from the salute, which had in typical fashion already caused the sailing ship to list to port, reflected off the curved hull of the carrier and back down at the sailing ship, making it list even further to port and nearly capsizing it.
523) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favourite drink? (Message 64430)
Posted 14 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
In a bar: Miller Genuine Draft, Long Island Iced Tea, or Sake.

Out of home, non-alcohol: Tea (straight, most any flavor), iced tea (no lemon no sugar), or cola.

At home: Cola, all the time. Doesn't much matter which brand. I never buy alcohol to drink at home, and I'm just not patient enough to make tea.

I don't like coffee.
524) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 64206)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Is it just me, or has the use of the gratuitous nude scene declined in Hollywood movies in recent years? Seems to me that back in the eighties there were a lot more of the relatively pointless boob shots (eg, Die Hard, the couple interrupted making out on the office desk when something else could just as well served as the distraction allowing Bruce Willis to escape). They used to use those shots a lot to make sure the movie got the R rating.
525) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Joke of the Day (Message 64201)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
A bump with a few limericks:

There once was a woman named Bright
Who traveled much faster than light.
She took off one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night.
----------
There once was a man named Kew
Whose limericks all ended at two
----------
There once was a man named Laird
Whose rhyming was often impaired
His limericks would tend
To come to an end
Suddenly

















...but were often repaired.
526) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favourite time of year? (Message 64192)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I've always liked this time of year. I'm just not a bright-light person, and I like the long nights. I especially like foggy or crisp nights. Maybe it's because as a young boy I was very pale, couldn't tan, and so got badly sunburnt a lot because I lived in Florida.

I also used to ski. Nothing like getting up early and heading up to the area and watching the sky brighten as I'm sitting in the lounge drinking tea (I usually got there very early, when the ski patrol got there). Then as soon as the lifts start running, I'd head up to the summit and look at what was often a dramatically orange dawn shining off the Olympic mountain range far in the distance. I also especially enjoyed lazily gliding down the slope through an afternoon snowstorm after a morning of hard exercise.
527) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Mail-in Rebates (Message 64187)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I am getting more and more upset with the idea of mail-in rebates. For those
> of you who do not know what this is, it is the practice by certain
> retailers/manufacturers to allow a rebate of some (or all) of the sale price
> of an item by mailing in a form, proof of purchase and sometimes proof of
> prior purchase (upgrade rebate). Though it usually is done with computer
> products, I just heard an ad on the radio for a mail-in rebate for paint!
>
> These guys rely on the buyer's: laziness, failure to follow instructions and
> missing deadlines (purchase date or postmark) that are often very short, or
> simply not remembering a rebate that never comes.
>
> What if there was a concerted effort to boycott all products that use this
> marketing practice? Is anyone with me? To the barricades boys! (and
> girls!)
>
> . . . or am I the only one who feels this way?

I worked for a big retailer, and I saw this system firsthand. I'm with you, buddy. I always thought it was a terribly deceptive practice that, as a practical matter, I avoid when making purchases. I have literally bought a more expensive item rather than condone the practice. One of the things that irks me about rebates is I get charged sales tax on the money they're going to send back to me. Whatever happened to just charging a fair price in the first place?
528) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Joke of the Day (Message 63883)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
A girl asks her boyfriend to come over Friday night and have dinner with
her parents. Since this is such a big event, the girl announces to her
boyfriend that after dinner, she would like to go out and make love for
the first time.

Well, the boy is ecstatic, but he has never had sex before, so he takes a
trip to the pharmacist to get some condoms.

The pharmacist helps the boy for about an hour. He tells the boy
everything there is to know about condoms and sex. At the register, the
pharmacist asks the boy how many condoms he'd like to buy, a 3-pack,
10-pack or family pack. The boy insists on the family pack because he
thinks he will be rather busy, it being his first time and all.

That night, the boy shows up at the girls parents house and meets his
girlfriend at the door.

"Oh I'm so excited for you to meet my parents, come on in!"

The boy goes inside and is taken to the dinner table where the girl's
parents are seated. The boy quickly offers to say grace and bows his
head. A minute passes, and the boy is still deep in prayer, with his head
down. 10 minutes pass, and still no movement from the boy.

Finally, after 20 minutes with his head down, the girlfriend finally
leans over and whispers to the boyfriend, "I had no idea you were this
religious."

The boy turns, and whispers back, "I had no idea your father was a
pharmacist."
529) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Cafe SETI/ Come in and have some Coffee.. (Message 63862)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Darn it, I just can't let go of it. How do people come up with these things?

Okay, I can sorta understand the guy who first pointed at a cow and said, "okay, see those things hanging down under the cow? I'm gonna go tug on one and whatever comes out I'm gonna drink it." Baby cows survive the experience and it's essentially the same function as human females have.

I can even sorta understand alcoholic spirits. People started squeezing juice out of fruits and vegetables and after that it was an inevitable industrial accident leading to the eureka moment.

But how the heck does someone discover the really weird stuff? How did anyone discover smoking tobacco, for instance? Was it someone clearing a field and burning plant refuse, then standing there sucking in the smoke? Was it someone who was deliberately experimenting? "Let's make a little tube so we can suck in the smoke from corn husks. No good. Okay, let's try geraniums and clovers next. Still nothing..."

Is there really someone out there who sees any pile of stinking, organic-looking goo as a smorgasbord opportunity? It just boggles the mind...
530) Message boards : SETI@home Science : WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT? (Message 63815)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Counting this year, The Boston Red Sox have now won 5 World Series, since the
> last time the Cubs have won the World Series.

Point taken. :)
531) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Cafe SETI/ Come in and have some Coffee.. (Message 63808)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> i'd never thought of beer that way...but it is very much a waste product of
> yeast...still...somehow the mental picture i get of yeast waste is not as
> disturbing as the thought of drinking something that had passed through a
> civet cat's digestive tract.

True enough. All I have to think about is the times I've seen intestinal worms plopping out of a cat's butt to nix the idea of EVER trying something like that.
532) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Cafe SETI/ Come in and have some Coffee.. (Message 63795)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> people that drink that "cat dung" coffee know what it's like to drink
> #$%!...and live to taste it!

Eh, well. To each his own. When you think about it, all alcoholic beverages are just yeast pee.
533) Message boards : SETI@home Science : WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT? (Message 63780)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I also believe that the Chicago Cubs will win the World Series during my
> lifetime.
>
> I believe this, even though Haley's comet has visited twice
> since the last time the Cubs won the World Series.
>
> (Oh yeah .. and the Titanic was still floating.)

Any Red Sox fans want to expound on the point of unexpected wins?
534) Message boards : Number crunching : Boinc current cost ! (Message 63717)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> It shouldn't be that hard to regulate the temperature of the bed, either.
> Find a thermocouple or other heat sensing device in the temperature range of a
> standard waterbed. Design a circuit / thermostat to control when to pump the
> heated water into the bed. The issue here now becomes, what to do with the
> heated water when the thermostat is saying the watertemp of the bed is too
> high.

If there is an original heater, the regulator could switch in secondary cooling fans by throwing a relay instead of being wired to heating coils. Really depends on the specific design of the regulator.

> Another option is to use fewer CPUs to heat the bed without the above
> mentioned bohemoth and use the waterbed heater to top off the heat, thereby
> still retaining the temperature regulation of the standard waterbed heater.
> This will keep the waterbed heater from running as much but still retain the
> water resoviour (sp? i'm sorry, i'm tired) to cool the CPUs.

Even better.

> Now, the question becomes, how to pipe this all into the house without making
> a total mess. If the PC's are in the bedroom it isn't near as big of a
> problem. but, for us with PC's in other rooms the plumbing aspect becomes a
> nightmare really quick.

Mount the PCs in the pedestal unit, sealed in plastic just in case of a leak. In our solution, there's no worry about occluding fans and such, and all the construction underneath will dampen the noise the pump we're using makes.

[EDIT] If control is really needed in another room, I've successfully attached VGA monitors with 25' extensions on them with no visible degradation of picture, and repeating amps are available. I'm wondering if an IR mouse and keyboard can be repeated by those IR to RF remote control repeaters that Radio Shack sells.
535) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Cafe SETI/ Come in and have some Coffee.. (Message 63674)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> anybody want to play monopoly?...or some other board game?
>
> and if not monopoly...what is your favorite board game?

Car Wars anyone? Oh, you're probably looking for something sold by Hasbro. Nevermind.
536) Message boards : Number crunching : Boinc current cost ! (Message 63653)
Posted 13 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>
> > Why not bye watercooling for the CPU and use it to heat the waterbed?
> > How many watercoold CPU’s would you need to heat the waterbed?
>

>
> LOL! I love this idea...use the waterbed as a giant radiator for the water
> cooler! As far has how many, that's pretty simple really. We know that we
> get at least 40 watts of heat or so with SETI running; at idle, it's probably
> another 20 or so. So that's 60 watts or so of heat being transferred to the
> waterbed; I'd bet the waterbed heater isn't much more than that. Ultimately it
> would depend on how well the waterbed is insulated (i.e. how big a comforter
> is on there). If you take the comforter off during the day, you could probably
> run 2-3 PC's using the waterbed as the radiator!

Good guesses. Waterbed heaters are generally 100-300W from what I can tell. Assuming efficient dissipation into the "bed reservoir" itself, three or four PC's should do it. Only problem is most waterbed heaters are temperature regulating. This ability would be lost, so the actual dissipation would have to be balanced not to overheat or underheat the bed.

Actually, this idea would solve a problem that led to my worst disaster with a waterbed. I didn't fill the mattress high enough, and in the night I slept in such a way as to press a spot on the mattress down so that top, bottom, liner, and heater vinyl were all making contact. Without water dissipating the heat, the vinyl melted, welded, and ripped, including the lining, and the bed leaked many gallons before I woke up and quickly drained the rest of the bed. This system, heating the water itself, would eliminate the worry about welding the vinyl to the heater.

By the way, heat dissipation in a microchip is generally proportional to the frequency the circuit is running at and how much of the chip is actually running. Any overclocker has seen this since higher speeds need better coolers. Any digitally-run transistor (one that is expected to be running either fully on or fully off at any given time) dissipates the most heat during the time when it's changing from one state to another, hence, assuming transition times for the signal are equal across all frequencies, the higher the frequency a transistor is switched at, the more time it spends in this "resistance region" dissipating energy.

The higher power dissipation for running SETI therefore is probably due to the computer running instructions that cause more of the transistor field on the processor to change states (floating point subprocessor?) than it would otherwise running basically integer and "no operation" instructions 99% of the time.
537) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Captain Avatar (Message 63583)
Posted 12 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Is that hat from the Love Boat?

He borrowed it from Marc aka Petit Soleil for the photoshoot. :)

The fictional character that inspired my original "Captain Avatar" post for Timmy also wore one, of course.
538) Message boards : SETI@home Science : WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT? (Message 63566)
Posted 12 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Sorry to reply to my own post, but I remember the argument now. Time dilation says that the more intense the local gravity the slower time appears for that object from the point of view of the rest of the universe, so matter collapsing to a singularity will never make it to that "point", so to speak.
539) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 63544)
Posted 12 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> If you didn't like the last temptation, you're bound to like "The Life of
> Brian" - who couldn't!?
>
> "He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy! "

Most memorable quote (may be paraphrasing a bit)...

Brian: You're all individuals! You can think for yourselves!
Crowd: (in unison) Yes, Lord! We're all individuals.
Lone voice in the crowd: I'm not.
540) Message boards : SETI@home Science : WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT? (Message 63526)
Posted 12 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I don't believe in "singularities" as the engines of black holes. I think
(snip)

I can't remember what it was, but I read something that indicates you're not alone believing that a singularity per se cannot actually exist. I can't for the life of me remember where I read that or what the reasoning behind it was, but it sounded like a rational argument to me, admittedly a layman.

Speaking of singularities, someone once pointed out to me that if kinetic energy essentially adds mass to an object, and to accelerate an object with mass to lightspeed requires infinite energy, then there's a point where the mass of any object would exceed the limits at which the object must collapse to a "neutron star" and eventually, if the acceleration continues, a singularity.

[EDIT: I have no idea how this would reconcile that, from its own point of reference, the object has gained no mass]

Combine this with the easier to prove idea that radiation striking the front of an object accelerating towards lightspeed will be blue-shifted eventually to the point where even the microwave background radiation will strike the object with the energy of an X-ray or gamma ray. Accelerating humans to even a significant fraction of lightspeed for an interstellar journey becomes a depressingly improbable event.
541) Message boards : SETI@home Science : WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT? (Message 63011)
Posted 11 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
This isn't really a belief for me so much as an (incorrect) picture. I often imagine being able to look at time as a spatial dimension like the "visible three". Along this axis, all matter and energy would appear as long threads impossibly interwoven, stemming all the way back to the beginning of time. This picture puts me in mind of ancient mythology about fate weaving a tapestry of life, only in my visualization it isn't just life and no thread is ever cut (conservation of matter/energy).

This picture is why certain tenets of string theory are so appealing to my imagination.

I know this visualization is an impossible one because of, if nothing else, quantum uncertainty (all threads would have a definite course), and I'm way off-base. Still, in my mind's eye the flow is visually appealing.
542) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 62866)
Posted 10 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Guess it's all still a symptom of what I call in movies "Bad-Guy
> Disease"
> > (can't hit a main character, unless it's just one ultimately expendable
> > character hit somewhere around the center of the movie).
>
> Uh! I can't help it, but I came to think of Brandon Lee in The Crowe!!! The
> bad guys really hit there! :-(

There's a guy who I think could have had a great career. Terrible tragedy.
543) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Schrödingers cat... (Message 62865)
Posted 10 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> No, Schrödinger used the cat as an example to explain the principles of
> indefiniteness (is this translated correct???) in quantum mechanics, which
(snip)

The word you're looking for in English is "uncertainty".

Great explanation! :)
544) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Ridiculous Thread (Message 61575)
Posted 7 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Why is "brasierre" singular and "panties" plural?
545) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Ridiculous Thread (Message 61570)
Posted 7 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
ADULT EDUCATION
Academic Year 04-05

SELF-IMPROVEMENT

1100 Creative Suffering
1101 Overcoming Peace of Mind
1102 You and Your Birthmarks
1103 Guilt Without Sex
1104 The Primal Shrug
1105 Ego Gratification Through Violence
1106 Molding Your Child's Behavior Through Guilt & Fear
1107 Dealing with Post-Realization Depression
1108 Whine Your Way to Alienation
1109 How to Overcome Self-Doubt Through Pretense & Ostenation

BUSINESS & CAREER

BC1 "How I Made $100 in Real Estate"
BC2 Money Can Make You Rich
BC3 Packaging & Selling Your Child
BC4 Career Opportunities in El Salvador
BC5 How to Profit From Your Body
BC6 The Underachiever's Guide to Very Small Business Opportunities
BC7 Tax Shelters For The Indigent
BC8 Looter's Guide to American Cities
BC9 Mortgage Reduction Through Arson

CRAFTS

C101 Self - Actualization Through Macrame
C102 Needlecraft For Junkies
C103 Cuticle Crafts
C104 Gifts For The Senile
C105 How to Draw Genitals
C106 Bonsai Your Pet
C107 Cat Hair Macrame

HOME ECONOMICS

EC101 How to Convert Your Kirby Vacuum to a Fully - Automatic Rifle
EC102 How You Can Convert Your Family Room Into a Garage
EC103 Burglarproof Your Home With Cement
EC104 Basic Kitchen Taxidermy
EC105 Sinus Drainage at Home
EC106 1001 Uses For Your Vacuum
EC107 Repair & Maintenance of Your Virginity
EC108 How to Convert a Wheelchair Into a Dune Buggy
EC109 What to do With Your Conversation Pit

HEALTH

H101 Creative Tooth Decay
H102 Exorcism & Acne
H103 High Fiber Sex
H104 Suicide & Your Health
H105 Biofeedback & How to Stop
H106 Skate Yourself to Regularity
H107 Understanding Nudity
H108 Tap Dance Your Way to Social Ridicule
H109 Optional Body Functions
H110 Dressing Right/Dressing Left - How It Can Change Your Life
H111 The Braille System of the Female Anatomy
546) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED (Message 61562)
Posted 7 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The Rules of Combat

1. If the enemy is in range, so are you.
2. Incoming fire has the right of way.
3. Don't look conspicuous: it draws fire.
4. The easy way is always mined.
5. Try to look unimportant, they may be low on ammo.
6. Professionals are predictable, it's the amateurs that are dangerous.
7. The enemy invariably attacks on one of two occasions: a.When you're ready
for them, or b.When you're not ready for them.
8. Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy someone else to shoot at.
9. If you can't remember, the claymore is pointed at you.
10. If your attack is going well, you have walked into an ambush.
11. Don't draw fire, it irritates everyone around you.
12. The only thing more accurate than incoming enemy fire is incoming
friendly fire.
13. When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend.
14. If it's stupid but works, it isn't stupid.
15. When in doubt empty the magazine.
16. Never share a fox hole with anyone braver than you.
17. Anything you do can get you shot. Including doing nothing.
18. Make it too tough for the enemy to get in and you can't get out.
19. Mines are equal opportunity weapons.
20. A Purple Heart just proves that were you smart enough to think of a plan,
stupid enough to try it, and lucky enough to survive.
21. Don't ever be the first, don't ever be the last and don't ever volunteer
to do anything.
22. The quartermaster has only two sizes: too large and too small.
23. Five second fuses only last three seconds.
24. It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just
bombed.
25. Always remember your weapon and equipment were made by the lowest bidder.
26. Don't mess with the Marines.
547) Message boards : Cafe SETI : A point to ponder or things to make you go HMMMM (Message 61459)
Posted 7 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Looks to me there are two kinds of humans
> Those who enjoy killing other humans
> And those who dont
> Those who dont are easy pickings for those who do
> Lucky for most of us most humans dont

Dunno. I think there are a few "Batmen" out there that fall into the role of defender.

Tacoma shootout in 1989
548) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 61443)
Posted 7 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I figured I'd get some documentation on the shootout I mentioned above. Evidently it was only hundreds of rounds, not thousands. Make what you will about the fact that it was between drug dealers and U.S. Army rangers.

Rebirth comes to Tacoma's hilltop
Tacoma reclaims the streets
549) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 61438)
Posted 7 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Your right, but in the Movies they make it sound like all these bad guys are
> some sort of Elite Guard Unit for the Head Bad Guy. You would thing the Head
> Bad Guy would see if the guys he hires could hit something else besides thin
> air ... ;)

Guess it's all still a symptom of what I call in movies "Bad-Guy Disease" (can't hit a main character, unless it's just one ultimately expendable character hit somewhere around the center of the movie). It exists in real life. I've heard stories of a fight in downtown Tacoma 15 or so years back, where something like 4000 rounds were exchanged without hitting any of the participants.

From the song "Cow Pattie"

...And the whole town got as quiet as a church,
When the killer stepped out for the draw.

Forty shots rang out.

Forty people fell.

Patty and the killer missed each other,
But they shot that town to hell.
550) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Cafe SETI/ Come in and have some Coffee.. (Message 61428)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Alas Diabetes has stopped me from enjoying this most disliked pleasure. Maybe
> with the rise of Sucralose and Tagalose I may one day get to sample a nice
> peice of Fruitcake.

Here's hoping, friend. Several of my friends have had various types of diabetes, and frankly I believe those who don't have it tend to trivialize it too much.
551) Message boards : Cafe SETI : A point to ponder or things to make you go HMMMM (Message 61365)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Our Human intelligence should allow us to learn from nature. While it is true
> that some forms of fish, birds, insects and mammals will eat there own, they
> don't kill for the sake of killing. They eat what they kill. Though some
> recent studies have seen the killing for the sake of killing behavior in
> Dolphins; however, Dolphins do has a brain very similar to humans. There are
> always expections like the one that Cas noted with the Lion Pride and the new
> male doesn't always kill the cubs. Momma usually stops that behavior, unless
> she too has been replaced.

Most cat species kill as play, especially as kittens. It's how they learn. I think instead of making parables about other species it's far better to directly understand and compensate for our own nature, our own species. This I believe is the intrinsic problem with your analogies.

We have removed ourselves from nature. We are not subject to the orignal environments in which we developed. As such we have attributes that go uncompensated for. Much of the cruelty we visit upon each other stems from the fact that we feel the need for struggle and success we don't often get from our artificial environment. For instance, adolescents today in the US do not have the kind of life and death struggle that they would have back during the depression or WWII, so they invent it. Sometimes it manifests as activism like in the 60s, sometimes in the violence of a street gang (not all gang members are from down and out poor families).

Violence is part of our species, and no amount of philosophical legislation will make it simply disappear. Our intrinsic natures and urges need to be understood as humans, a far more complex combination of instinct, drive, and intelligence, than any other species. We need a society that can somehow compensate for our contentious nature without being so destructive.

[EDIT] I'd probably be more in tune with the nature analogies if, for example, the fish you were talking about had developed a religion that says that the other symbiotic species was anathema before God, yet the first species as a whole overcame that tendency to rationalize suddenly turning on and killing their symbiotes.
552) Message boards : Cafe SETI : A point to ponder or things to make you go HMMMM (Message 61320)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Fish pee and poop in the water the live in, but they still co-exist in
> harmony.

Well, to use an example more appropriate to your intended analogy, there are many, many fish species that will cannabalize their own young. In their environment, this natural contention presumably weeds out the slow (or maybe there's a recessive gene for luck) and makes the species as a whole better genetically. This is a process humans have largely, but not totally I admit, abandoned.

Another sad example is a certain species of ground-dwelling bird (I can't remember exactly which) usually lays two eggs. The first chick that hatches will slowly push the second chick out of the nest as it struggles to stay. The parents sit right there as the younger one, exposed to the elements, dies alone not six inches away. This always happens, and is natural for this species.

I'm all for humans learning to treat each other better. I just have a problem with overly romanticizing nature. Read Gary Larsen's (author of "The Far Side") book, "There's a Hair in my Dirt", where he talks about people loving nature without really understanding it.
553) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 61309)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Movies like "Finding Nemo" and "Toy Story" have the advantage of being mostly
> cartoons, so the occasional "human" figure can get away with looking like a
> cartoon. If you're suggesting that more realistic human characters might be
> produced by paying more attention to the three dimentional characteristics of
> things like skin and hair, that may be true, but traditional films get it
> right (so do photos, both digital and chemical).

True, but I include movies that attempted to put up relatively convincing actors too, like Final Fantasy.

Using live humans in effects sequences (green-screen, wires, etc) imposes its own set of problems, most notably hazards and discomfort of the actors as well as lighting. That's why a convincing CGI actor would be desirable in some parts.
554) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Cafe SETI/ Come in and have some Coffee.. (Message 61305)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> And I say "Sweets for the sweet" ;-)

And "nuts for the..."

Nevermind. Don't worry about the folks eating bananas or fruitcake either.

MMM baklava. Makes me miss Quincy Market in Boston. Lobster rolls and baklava. Great weekends.
555) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 61300)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> When I was in Chicago last week I saw the 3-D, IMAX version of "The Polar
> Express". I know some critics thought the digital characters looked creepy,
> and not life-like, but I saw them as the next step in digitizing real looking
> human characters for movies. The advantage of computer generated actors is
> that they are not bound by physical laws like gravity, and in this fantasy
> movie, that freedom was used to great effect. Now, the plot was not exactly
> Dickens, but it was fun and it may one day become a classic, especially the
> 3-D version (perhaps packaged with 3-D glasses).

I haven't seen this, but watching other recent CGI movies like Finding Nemo, I think I noticed at least one element that's missing from current computer animations. Texture mapping of skin features is essentially a two-dimensional process, but real skin is seen in three dimensions. You see the redness from the blood flowing through capillaries millimeters beneath the skin, bruising and tattoos have depth to them, etc. There are subtle changes to this depth appearance looking from different angles as well. This three-dimensional environment is not simulated, so moving human characters look kinda off.
556) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 61293)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The bad guys still do that today! All the gangs have the small automatic
> weapons or semi-auto pistols, and they pump out sooo many bullets and hit
> everything, including sometimes, their intended target! I think they should
> make time on the range MANDATORY for all gun purchases! Hit what you mean to,
> not the neighbors!

That's terrific, except do you really think the gangs got the weapons anywhere that would require them to take this course? Hint: they don't buy them in stores.
557) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 61292)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
My absolute favorite in this regard is in every movie, if someone is standing almost completely out in the open with only a single iron hand rail between them and the guy with the machine gun, every shot from the machine gun will hit the iron railing.

[edit] and of course the bullets never ricochet badly, either.
558) Message boards : Cafe SETI : A point to ponder or things to make you go HMMMM (Message 61286)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Why is it that a grouper can work with a Moray to ensure each is fed and we
> humans can not peacefully co-exist to ensure our own existence?
>
> Why is that a small shrimp and an even smaller fish can swim into the mouth of
> a grouper to clean that groupers gills and know they will not be eaten, and we
> humans will pounce without warning on the innocent?
>
> Why is it that a tiny fish will defend its territory from a bigger fish
> knowing the bigger fish will swim away, and we humans can not do the same?
>
> Are we not supposed to be the more intelligent species on this planet?

Then again, a cow poops where she eats. There's a real danger in analogy.
559) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Joke of the Day (Message 61172)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Another from the archives:

Latin references

Agametic pusillanimity - Faint heart never won fair lady
Amedical diurnal pomiance - An apple a day keeps the doctor away
Amorous terricircumflexion - Love makes the world go around
Arboreal silvanoscope - What to see the forest for the trees with
Autoproctolepsy - Make an ass of oneself
Bimanual ablutionary reciprocity - One hand washes the other
Bonumeration - Count your blessings
Chronocide - Killing time
Chronopantraumatherapy - Time heals all wounds
Contralaterograminal hyperviridiance - The grass is greener on the other side
Cornotaural tenacity - Taking the bull by the horns
Dorsal mordancy - Backbiting
Dorsoreciprocal abrasion - You scratch my back, I scratch yours
Eluopetric abryolexy - A rolling stone gathers no moss
Equidulcent rosaliance - A rose by any other name
Equinavicularity - To be in the same boat with
Equine chromatic disparity - Horse of a different color
Excapillary homolavation - I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair
Exocardial autoprandiation - Eat your heart out
Exsartagous inflagration - Out of the frying pan, into the fire
Extritial neo-adventism - Out with the old, in with the new
Fabial effusion - Spill the beans
Felinolingual seizure - Cat got your tongue
Felinophonic similitude - The cat's meow
Fumoincendiary juxtaposition - Where there's smoke, there's fire
Hippospectral diversion - Horse of a different color
Horticultural circumflagellation - Beating around the bush
Hyperculinary putrefaction - Too many cooks spoil the broth
Hypermordant mandency - Biting off more than you can chew
Hypoclimatosis - Under the weather
Infracaninophilia - Love of the underdog
Lactoprofundant lachrymosis - Crying over spilled milk
Literolachrolepsy - Read 'em and weep
Maternocaligal calceation - Your mother wears army boots
Monolithic biavicide - Killing two birds with one stone
Nondissipatory nonpenuriance - Waste not, want not
Nonparticipatory nonsuperance - Nothing ventured, nothing gained
Octoglobular postolepsy - Behind the eightball
Optical simiomimicry - Monkey see, monkey do
Opticredulous equivalence - Seeing is believing
Ortectomy - Taking out the garbage
Ovular polycorbulation - Putting your eggs in many baskets
Pedal endojugulepsy - Putting your foot in your mouth
Postovular gallinomics - Counting your chickens before they hatch
Presaltoscope - What you look through before you leap
Proctalgia - A pain in the rear
Rubrocervix - Redneck
Saxovolvant amuscation - A rolling stone gathers no moss
Scapular frigidity - Cold shoulder
Scapulorotary apposition - Shoulder to the wheel
Simioavunculosis - A monkey's uncle
Simioluminosity - Monkeyshines
Superaquatic hemoviscosity - Blood is thicker than water
Ultimoglobular succulence - Good to the last drop
Unifacial millenavicular ejaculation - The face that launched a thousand ships
Vitrodomopetrojection - Throwing a stone from a glass house
Xanthodorsal striatosis - A yellow stripe down one's back
Xanthogaster - Yellowbelly
560) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 61123)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Okay then, a few unsolicited recommendations:

City Heat: Comedy. Burt Reynolds is an ex-cop private eye in Chicago during Prohibition. Clint Eastwood is chief of detectives and his ex-partner. Much of this movie is admittedly cliche, but I liked the comedy interaction between typical wiseguy Reynolds and typically stiff, stoic Eastwood, especially on the off times when Eastwood has the punchline and it's so deadpan unexpected it's hilarious.

Twice Upon a Time: Animated comedy. One of George Lucas' lesser known films. The guy who played the original voice of Garfield plays the part of Ralph, the all-purpose animal. He and his sidekick Mum, a Charlie Chaplin looking guy who speaks only in sound effects, are trying to be heroes, but are tricked into helping the evil Synonamess Botch into furthering his evil plans to sabotage the Cosmic Clock and bring non-stop nightmares to The Rushers of Din. They're joined by Rod Rescueman, a completely inept aspiring superhero, and a Brooklyn accented fairy godmother. Lots of double-entendre and puns in this one. I hear there's an uncut version that really isn't for kids. All in all, a relatively obscure but fun movie. Look for the "Nixon-Agnew" tattoo on Botch's stomach.
561) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Movie Thread (Message 61099)
Posted 6 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I avoided seeing these movies for the same reason I avoided, as the Daily Show once put it, "Feel-Good Disaster Flicks" like Titanic. Frankly they all associate in my mind as overly-hyped movies of questionable worth and little purpose that I pretty much already know before I see them. There has been a lot of suffering by a lot of people, good and bad, and I don't need yet another movie whose only purpose is to tell me how cruel people, or life itself, can be. For that I'll just rely on the History Channel.
562) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Happy 100,000.00 Timmy (Message 60913)
Posted 5 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> >
> >
>
> . How does nitrous oxide create more horsepower?
>
> Nitrous oxide provides the oxygen that allows an engine to burn more fuel,
> more burned fuel equals more power.
>
>
> . What is nitrous backfire?
>
> Nitrous backfires can be caused by two situations. 1. A nitrous system that is
> two rich or a system that atomizes the fuel poorly, thus causing pooling or
> puddling of fuel in the intake manifold. 2. A system that is operated too
> lean.
>
> Are there any dangers or things to stay away from while using nitrous?
>
> Of course, NX recommends that no more than an additional 20 horsepower per
> cylinder be used on a stock engine, with a stock fuel pump. Always be sure you
> are using clean, uncontaminated nitrous. Also, be sure you have the highest
> octane fuel available, I.E. 93 octane premium for, stock compression, street
> cars and the highest motor octane fuel available for competition type
> vehicles.
>
>
>
> http://www.speedworx.com/cgi-local/shop.pl/SID=1104892209.18211/page=nosfaq.htm

Interestingly, the nitrous itself doesn't burn per se, but acts as an intercooling effect, lowering cylinder temperature and raising pressure in the mixture, resulting in more power. The N2O molecule does break down at higher temperatures, liberating oxygen to be used for further combustion.
563) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Joke of the Day (Message 60905)
Posted 5 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
A husband and wife are going through their morning routine when there's a knock at the door. Since the husband is in the shower, the wife quickly wraps up in a robe and goes downstairs to answer it.

Outside the door is their neighbor, Bob, who says, "I'll give you eight hundred dollars if you'll open that robe and let me see."

At first the wife was going to object, then she thinks about it for a second, then opens her robe. Bob looks at her for a moment, then gives her the eight hundred dollars as promised and leaves.

Confused but happy, the wife walks back upstairs. "Who was that at the door," her husband asks.

"It was Bob," the wife replies.

Her husband asks, "Did the bastard bring the eight hundred bucks he owes me?"
564) Message boards : Cafe SETI : . . . regarding a Common-Sensibility ISSUE @ *hand* (Message 60185)
Posted 4 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

-John Donne
565) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The fifteen (CRASH) ...uh, ten commandments. (Message 60184)
Posted 4 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I thought it was, "On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me... a beer." (music plays out)
566) Message boards : SETI@home Science : "Was Einstein a Plagiarist?" (Message 60176)
Posted 4 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Put very simply, the commonly held value for the speed of light isn't in question. Just because the value was known only roughly in years past, just because students might not perform their college experiments quite correctly (I've seen a few fires in student labs from even simple experiments, so you can't sell me on a bunch of physics students conclusively proving anything besides the notion that a few should switch majors), simply doesn't invalidate the value that we use for lightspeed. Antennas, laser-based range finders and navigation systems, radars, even microwave ovens would not work today if the value wasn't correct to a high degree of accuracy. Say what you will about the "mindless zombies following ridiculous unquestioned dogma" but the formulas WORK. They ALWAYS work. Wavelength of signal is (3*10^8m/s)/(f cycle/s). There is no getting around it. We electronics techs use it to build and calibrate electronics. There's a real practical experiment done every day, not "flat-earth" stuff. That is accurate for the speed of light.

Relativity predicted that nothing with mass can exceed lightspeed. Collider experiments years later validated this prediction. All observation of physical phenomena in the universe validate it. Superbubba, you have offered nothing to explain this away. Your arguments have boiled down to "we don't know until we try to accelerate a human to that speed." That is a nonsense position. That's the same thing as saying "We don't know Saturn's atmosphere is lethal until a human goes there and dies trying to breathe it." Bring some experimentation to show that anything is exceeding light speed (not just this supposed speed matter moving away from the center of the universe, which I still have yet to find any supporting documentation on). Until then, redefine lightspeed using word-play ("absolute" versus "definition") all day, it's still the barrier, and every experiment shows it.

BTW, directed at some people here, I personally don't care what anyone here actually does for a living. While a few might be closer to the discussion than others due to their profession, I find it counterproductive to consider it in this forum. Were here to have fun kicking around scientific ideas and even bickering a little. Heck, even in my chosen profession I'll listen to what a layman has to say and try to consider the meaning, not the credentials of the source. You never know where you'll find enlightenment.

[EDIT] In specific, I may not agree with Superbubba's position since I find ample data against it, but like all people here who pose questions, it does cause me to think and question, which is a good thing.
567) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Do you guys take part in other projects ? (Message 60097)
Posted 4 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Seti and Climate Prediction, 50/50. I've thought about LHC, but decided that I didn't want to spread resources so thin. I'll link to another project if available data becomes thin on one of these.
568) Message boards : SETI@home Science : The Origin of Life on Earth (Message 60092)
Posted 4 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Tell that to the girls who refuse to date/marry/reproduce-with my friend Josh,
> who is only 4 feet 11 inches tall.

Well, I did use the qualifier "few" traits. :) However, he doesn't have to set off in a hunting party with a stone spear and risk getting killed to impress anyone, so all he has to do is set sights sufficiently low, no pun intended, to attract that plump homely office worker in the admin section and *bang* genetics pass on. Evolution becomes extinct.
569) Message boards : SETI@home Science : The Origin of Life on Earth (Message 59777)
Posted 3 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Skimming the article, I noticed something that I find kinda humorous to think about. As a general rule, humans more and more are surviving with physical conditions that would be fatal or reproductively unattractive were they subject to life in nature. It can be argued that there's few traits left that actually convey a "survival advantage" to reproductive age or are disqualifiers to reproduction. Therefore, as this natural selection gives way, humans may stop "evolving" altogether, so by the definition of the article, humans will no longer be living.

Just a silly thought.
570) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Another year over (Message 59770)
Posted 3 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Another year has passed me by
Still I look a myself and cry
What kind of man have I become?
All of the years I've spent in search of myself
And I'm still in the dark
'Cause I can't seem to find the light alone.

excerpted from Man in the Wilderness by Styx.
571) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Ridiculous Thread (Message 59100)
Posted 1 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
If a mime is walking through the forest and a tree falls on him, does he make a sound?
572) Message boards : Cafe SETI : ATTN: THE PUNK WHO'S -1ING ME. (Message 58899)
Posted 1 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> &#9835;I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints
> the sinners are much more fun, and only the good die young
¢Ý
>

Well they showed you a statue,
Told you to pray,
Built you a temple,
And locked you away.
573) Message boards : SETI@home Science : "Was Einstein a Plagiarist?" (Message 58890)
Posted 1 Jan 2005 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Many many so called scientist of the day ranted up and down that if you
> attempted to faster then the speed of sound you would die.

Again my point that they had no real medical data to back it up. My old electronics professor (I've mentioned her elsewhere; PhD in neurology) once pointed out to me that more than a few MDs, even popular ones, sometimes don't have a really good grasp on scientific methodology or reason, or even higher math (you have to hand it to them, though, for the sheer massive volumes of things they have to memorize and recognize even to become a passable intern). However, the only real known danger, other than jet lag, of going that speed is the effects of suddenly contacting objects that aren't traveling on a similar vector.

> There are many many things in this would that can be weighed and measured.
> But the conclusions that you draw from it is not necessarily the truth. Hell
> even Einstein questioned his theorem's.

Very very true. One of the things scientists and laymen alike lose sight of is that there is no such thing as "truth" in science, only observational data, theories (which can be "disproven" but never truly "proven", just supported by observed data), and in a minor category in math there are axioms, which are baseline operations which have no true "proof" besides their own self-evidence in observation (we learned them in geometry when we were introduced to proofs, but for the life of me I can't remember even one of them; I think there are six?).

Einstein was a good scientist in that, despite the fact that he was human and had lots of pride in his lifetime's work, he was willing to admit that he didn't know everything and blundered on occasion. That doesn't mean he was always wrong either.

> OK here is one for you... The speed of light moves at about 120,000 mps.
> Right? more or less... Do not know! never been there... nor has any one that i
> know of!

Observations of lightspeed have been made from a great many effects, from the observed difference in the orbits of Jupiter's moons to measuring radio signal propagation here on earth to controlling the robots on Mars.

Even in my job, we have to take into account light speed and fractions thereof. An electrical signal typically propagates down a wire at .7 of light speed, but this varies greatly by the properties of the wire and the signal itself; in no case does an electrical effect ever meet or exceed light speed. I have to know these properties when I do things like set up devices such as time-domain reflectometers for measuring the electrical integrity of long cables.

Lightspeed is also important constant when making radio antennas, determining the carrier frequency shift for correctly receiving high speed data signals from a moving source such as an aircraft, and, as fast as computers are running nowadays, even matters when designing high speed circuit boards.

This leads to the famous geek tagline: 3x10^8 meters/second, it's not just a good idea, it's the Law.

> BUT! The Earth moves at over a 1,000,000 mps relative the the center of the
> universe as we know it!
>
> Solve that one!

I'm not a physicist myself, but if I understand the concept of spacetime, there is no edge or center. In any case, all the observed material, i.e. other galaxies, are heading away at far less than the speed of light, so much so that most of visible light is still in the visible spectrum after the "red shifting", so I'm really not sure where your datum of 1M miles per second comes from.

Maybe lightspeed is somehow exceedable. There's at least one experiment I know of involving quantum tunelling that seems to exceed it (though I imagine it'd be hard to design a practical starship Enterprise around a device that exceeds light in 1 nanometer bursts). But so far even the efforts to accelerate the tiniest particles kinetically has failed to do so, and failed in proportion to relativistic prediction.
574) Message boards : SETI@home Science : "Was Einstein a Plagiarist?" (Message 58792)
Posted 31 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Every thing revolves around the earth. You will sail of the end of the earth.
> No man will ever fly. You cant send a radio signal across the sea. You will
> never go faster then the speed of sound// Umm we just hit 6.7 mack! No man
> will ever go in to space. No privet party will ever get a man in to space.
> Using a radio telescope to find ET? what a wast of resources.

Your examples were made by people who relied more on philosophy or religion than math and observation, or were simply making a knee-jerk comment without any data to back it up, and therein lies the difference. Saying relativity is just "rubbish" and calling relativity's formulas "mathematical doubletalk" while all evidence so far proves it accurate is actually playing into the camp of these "flat earth"ers.

By that logic, a person could just jump to the moon using the power of their body with no mechanical help. After all, every year atheletes jump further and further, it's just a mathematical theory that says a human doesn't have the energy to do just that, and it's just a few observations like no earth species can be seen jumping that far that seems to prove it.

> History is full of people that have told us you just cant do it.

History is also full of people who said you can do it and were wrong.
575) Message boards : Cafe SETI : ATTN: THE PUNK WHO'S -1ING ME. (Message 58759)
Posted 31 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Thank you Admiral. I don't want to be associated with Keanu - I'm not a
> Matrix geek, I don't delude myself from living in reality.

Still, "Neo" meant a lot before The Matrix, and will mean the same after the movies are forgotten. You even have a new definition: Near Earth Object. :)

> I find that names
> - especially handles - carry some weight when one is introduced ("Hi, I'm
> 'IronOre'" "Hi, I'm 'BoogerBoy'" "Hi, I'm 'Wassamatta U.'") as it says conveys
> identity and/or values. Mine is the obfuscated nom de pulme of my
> great city, and it comes from the animé-ish need to rebuild destroyed cities,
> like NeoTokyo.

I must express agreement. I've used the same handle, "Murasaki", since I first logged onto BBSes in 1991 (actually, the full handle was originally "Lord Murasaki" to differentiate me from the literary figure I took it from, but "Murasaki" is conveniently 8 characters long). Some have asked me why I stubbornly refuse to use anything else, considering the methods and protocols for these forums have changed over the years, but I always reply that it would somehow be dishonest for me to change identity once I've chosen it, even on a different board.

> "NeoYork" would have been too stupid to consider, and "New New York" is
> associated with "Futurama" (Why they ever took it off the air is beyond me).

I miss it too. My TiVo still catches the reruns for me from Cartoon Network.
576) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Happy New Year! (Message 58728)
Posted 31 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
"Merry New Year!!!" -Eddie Murphy, Trading Places
577) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Earthquake in Asia (Message 58712)
Posted 31 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Guess you havn't seen "Day After Tomorrow", where New York City is over-run
> by a huge wave.

> Guess you haven't lived under Ghouliani, where New York City is over-run by a
> fascist pig - 2810 days he's a prick, one day he does his job, and now he's a
> hero?

You DARE to blaspheme the name of the Great J? How dare you! How terribly... honest.

Next thing you know you'll be critical of the other "hero" who was so impressive in leadership as to fly to the area, grab a bullhorn, and make a speech.
578) Message boards : SETI@home Science : "Was Einstein a Plagiarist?" (Message 58711)
Posted 31 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You cant go the speed of light / you cant test the theory if you cant go the
> speed of light x so no one even Try's to test it - we cant go the speed of
> light = There be dragons here!

It's actually been tested in several ways and shown to be quite accurate. First off, right off the bat it accounted for the inconsistency between Newtonian formulas for gravity and the the actual orbital period of Mercury.

In particle physics, you CAN get particles moving near the speed of light. Relativity has predicted quite accurately the delay in the death of unstable particles by adding more kinetic energy to them at the time of their creation, i.e. making them move faster extends their lifetime from our perspective due to relative time dilation, and the time delays corresponded with Einstein's math.

These and many other experiments were predicted by the theory and shown to be valid. Just because we can't move anything faster than light doesn't mean the theory doesn't make testable predictions. This is the heart of what's aggravating so many physicists today: relativity and quantum mechanics are at odds in many ways, yet both when tested prove true.
579) Message boards : Number crunching : Thread closed! (Message 58605)
Posted 31 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Just 4.6K after a sukoshi over a month. I'm also doing ClimatePrediction, though, splitting 50/50.
580) Message boards : Number crunching : New BOINC user. (Message 58578)
Posted 31 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Yes, you're right, John! I read the Lensman series about 3 yrs ago (I had read
> it once before when I was just a kid as well), and I decided to make my nick
> Kinnison. It's also that in messenger and a few other things.
> Not too many people recognise where the nick came from, I'm impressed ;)
>
> Chris aka Kinnison.

I read them about eight years ago, but I didn't remember any of the character names.
581) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Earthquake in Asia (Message 58457)
Posted 30 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> What is beginning to disturbe me is the swarm of reporters here (UK) that are
> pouncing on returning tourists. Yes I'm sure these people feel lucky to be
> alive. Yes I'm sure they have seen some terrible sights in the last few days.

The news has it's own version of Boyle's Law, having to expand or contract available news to fit the half-hour or forty-page container it's in. This and the effort for ratings leads to the exploitative sticking of a camera in the face of a local at the airport to try to put a face on it like yours or mine.

I'm trying to imagine being there and not trying to spend the rest of the vacation time helping out.

> Being alive is not the only thing they should be grateful for. The main thing
> is that they can jump on a plane and in less than 24 hours be back in a
> comfortable life where everything just returns to normal.

A really good quote came from the movie Soul Man. It's about a white kid who disguises himself as black in order to get a scholarship. He gets caught near the end of course. At one point he's sitting across from James Earl Jones who says, "You have learned what it's like to live with discrimination."

The kid replies, "Not really. I knew if it got to be too much I could always go back."

> It is those left behind, the locals who have lost family, friends, business's,
> homes and hope that we must feel truely sorry for. They have little to look
> forward to except disease and starvation. it will be many years (if ever)
> before many of these communities can "return to normal".

Our biggest problem is that we can relate better to the death of one far easier than we can relate to the deaths of 50,000. Unless people we personally knew are among the lost or unhomed, it doesn't seem somehow as real to us. How choked up do people get over the movie Titanic, and contrast this to how people react when they first hear about the real Titanic tragedy in a textbook.

In the current tragedy, we didn't know the guy who worked at being the best tradesman, husband, and father he could be, only to see his home and family swept out to sea. We don't relate to the vain young woman who had a lot to learn about how to treat people but deep down had a good heart yet will never get the chance to learn and grow and love. We can't remember the little girl who had a smile like the Sun and died helpless and in terror. In a group of 50,000 dead, these are likely common stories, yet we don't see it.
582) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Earthquake in Asia (Message 58344)
Posted 30 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> >>>so I guess asking the US military to do anything usefull maybe
> calling on them to do the impossible.
>
> Let them drop their guns and climb on C-130's to Sri Lanka and Jakarta to
> start building ports, roads, hospitals power plants, whatall- something
> usefull. They can always go back to Iraq.
> They'll be there for the next 15 years anyway...cc

According to the news, there's a carrier group that has been dispatched to do exactly that.

EDIT: One of the few events I was in on in the Air Force was hurricane Elena when it rolled over the Mississippi gulf coast in 1985. For a week I was clearing the runway so the C-5s could land with relief supplies, digging people out, becoming a human traffic light, etc. It's actually advantageous to have a US military presence in a disaster area.
583) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Earthquake in Asia (Message 58233)
Posted 29 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
This event, like the recent Florida hurricanes, Mt St Helens, et al, should serve to remind us that despite our hubris we're just a thin layer of biological slime on an immense geological and meteorological machine. A little humility is in order.
584) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Near Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 (Message 58158)
Posted 29 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You can keep something of this magnitude secret for only so long - Like SARS
> and more recently AIDS/HIV in China, it will be found out.
>
> My question is what are the plans? Not in case of <a> href="http://lookinside2-images.amazon.com/Qffs+v35lepVVga5mgM4DvENCXH3mvf34MHpuVpMceYxiKxdgJIyHuZVYcriM0dI">disaster[/url],
> but as to prevent the impact. Are we going to break it like a rack at
> billiards? Are we going to push it off-course by using fusion and lotsa
> thrust? Are we going to send Bruce Willis? .o0(No, let's not - He was cool in
> Armageddon)
>
> That's the kind of question that nobody seems to be answering.

Maybe that's a quieter goal of the recent cometary missions: to learn how to land an object on a light, irregularly-shaped object. Practice makes perfect. On the surface of a planet-killer asteroid a thermonuclear device might ablate enough material to alter the object's trajectory.
585) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Near Earth Asteroid 2004 MN4 (Message 58108)
Posted 29 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
A nagging thought I just can't get rid of. If it were going to hit, which I'm not saying it is, would anyone official admit it openly? Headlines like "Earth likely hosed in 25 years, think twice about having kids" really wouldn't play well, and has unpredictable results. Seems to me efforts on a system of deflection would be made quietly, and nobody would ever say impact odds are high whether they were or not.

Another nagging thought. Effort is made to colonize Mars, on the "eggs in more than one basket theory." Then, ironically, the Martian colony is the first impact event.
586) Message boards : Number crunching : New BOINC user. (Message 58107)
Posted 29 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Seems to me your machine is probably running out of memory. 112MB (which is a strange number, by the way) is kinda small for XP, so the system may be pushing memory to and from disk too often. Also, if you're just running the machine as-is out of the box there may be a bunch of crap stealing space in memory (desktop management crap, video management crap, etc, all this "value added" stuff that can screw up a machine).

I'm running a 2.8GHz P4 with 1GB RAM and a packet takes roughly four hours (processing two packets concurrently), which seems to be in proportion to your "predicted time". For reasons other than BOINC I'm running with virtual memory disabled.

By the way, you can stop the SETI screensaver from bouncing by setting your vertical and horizontal oscillation frequency to zero in the graphics preferences. I found it annoying as well.
587) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Laughter cures all (Message 58103)
Posted 29 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Here's an old song, one of my favorites. The ultimate country music song:

Life Sucks, Then You Die
by The Fools

My house burnt down in a flash of thunder.
My wife ran off with a one-legged plumber.
The crops fell dead when the riverbed went dry.
My dog got squashed by a pickup truck.
My son ran away and got hooked on drugs.
My daughter's knocked up by the class of '85.

People say that life is good.
It don't seem good to me.
I'm lost without a paddle,
And I'm headed up shit creek.
People say that life is fun,
But I don't know why.
As far as I can tell,
Life sucks, then you die.

The government dumps its toxic waste,
Right on top of my mother's grave.
A team of experts say it won't do her no harm.
But my sheep went crazy and killed my mule.
I cut of my dick with a power tool,
Fixing a hole where a meteor hit the barn.

People say that life is good,
But I just piss and moan.
I got one foot on a banana peel,
The other in the Twilight Zone.
People say that life is fun,
But I don't know why.
As far as I can tell,
Life sucks, then you die.

I went to the store to buy some shells.
The gun went off and blew the owner to hell.
Now I'm sitting here in jail, singing this song.
And one guy wants to cut me with a knife.
Another guy wants me to be his wife.
I wish they'd hang me before something really goes wrong.

People say that life is good.
Give thanks for what you have.
When all you have is nothing,
Then nothing makes you glad.
People say that life is fun,
But I don't know why.
As far as I can tell,
Life sucks, then you die.
588) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Cafe SETI/ Come in and have some Coffee.. (Message 58102)
Posted 29 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Why I liked <a> href="http://archive.salon.com/travel/wlust/2000/05/05/piernas/index.html">Santiago[/url]...

Combining Starbucks with Hooters.
589) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Does anyone know about Arthur C. Clarke (Message 57967)
Posted 28 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Forgive my little grey cells for they grow the rust: Why is that name
> familiar...?

For those who didn't visit the website:

Arthur C. Clarke, notable scientist and writer. Authored many "hard science fiction" books such as Rendezvous with Rama, Cradle, Childhood's End, The Hammer of God, The Deep Range, 2001: A Space Oddyssey, etc. When one thinks of science fiction greats, his is one of three names, along with Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein.

He is also credited with inventing the concept of the geostationary telecommunications satellite in 1945.

Personally, he's a bit of a hero of mine.
590) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The Cafe SETI/ Come in and have some Coffee.. (Message 57898)
Posted 28 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:

> Yeah, I once drove a volkswagon about a quarter mile without oil, Yes those
> idiot lights actually do mean something...

A friend of mine had a Buick Apollo in which the oil light kept coming on. I told him that's usually a bad thing, but he said it's no big deal. That's about when the engine siezed. He had owned the car about eight hours. Surprisingly, amongst my friends that was not the record for the shortest time owning a car.
591) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57830)
Posted 28 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!! is correct, including the spelling though i
> wonder what it came out like in japanese. and was the movie subtitled or
> dubbed. When I first watched 'Mystery Science Theatre: the Movie' in a theatre
> I was surprised when people would laugh at something and I hadn't a clue as to
> what. Or I would laugh and people would look at me strangely.

Both the movies I saw in the cinema in Hachinohe were subtitled. I'm not sure what AAAAAAAAH would look like in katakana (I don't really think it needs translation; the Japanese have generally the same reaction to impending deceleration trauma/granite poisoning that westerners do). The other movie was "Harlem Nights" and again I was the only one laughing when Eddie shot Arsenio and his posse without aiming.
592) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57822)
Posted 28 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hottest Star Trek Character[/url]
593) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Laughter cures all (Message 57814)
Posted 28 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I'll change the pics to links in a few days
>
>
>
> I'll change the pics to links in a few days
>


According to this website, the second crane didn't go in. The last photo is faked.

Strange Event
594) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57805)
Posted 28 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>
> In the movie Star Tek V: the final frontier, What did Captian Kirk scream
> when falling down El Capitan.
>
> Extra Points if you can tell me what movie it was from

Dang, there's a weakness of mine. I intensely disliked that movie, so I've only seen it once. The few humorous moments were ruined a bit for me as I saw it in Hachinohe, Japan, where amongst stoic Japanese moviegoers I was the only one laughing at the jokes.
595) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The whole 'Tracking people on message boards' thing is creepy. (Message 57652)
Posted 27 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> But getting back to the definition of "byte", we know that all computers
> (post-6502, c. 1980s) group bits in eights and call them bytes. (Yeah,
> there's octals and n[y|i]bbles and 7-bit systems, but they're not used anymore
(snip)

I worked on a computer installed in 1982 that used 18-bit words, the Hughes 5118ME. Besides the weird word length, the machine language (which we were forced to use for diagnostic purposes by entering code via octal thumbwheels) was conspicuously without "register-immediate" instructions, forcing programmers to keep all computatonal data in separate segments from executable code. For all of that, it was a fairly fast machine for its day.

This computer was still being used in 1997 when I left the place.
596) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57519)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>
> Khan you make a multiple choice quiz, that way we can chekov the answers if
> it's no to much tribble - if yar'll can do it

The testing-bashirs picard at multiple choice ones especially. They accuse these standard tests of archer motive, to crusher the creativity of students.
597) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57508)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> (10) What did William Shatner do that most upset diehard trekkies?
> Ate them for dinner. Quite tasty, too.

Can't be true. Shatner would have had a coronary by now on a 25% fat "meat and couch potato" diet.
598) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57506)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > 1) What does "NCC" stand for?
> The Starfleet starship registry prefix "NCC" doesn't officially mean anything
> other than it is the standard prefix for starships in service. There have been
(snip)

Very good! I really figured everyone would miss the Kahless question and the City on the Edge of Forever one. On question 1, I'd still accept NCC being "Naval Construction Contract", though I believe there has never been official canon and it's just fan material.

The Doctor in #7 was referring to Voyager. The ship's emergency hologram, as he was upgraded and became more self-aware, always agonized over what name to take, but never officially chose one. He tried on several, and in the alternate timeline future on Earth I believe he picked "Joe".

dbernat got #11 correct. In response to Kirk's offer of a choice, Kahn said, "Have you ever read Milton?" If I recall correctly, Kirk filled in the quote for Scotty.

The answer to #10, of course, refers mostly to the skit he performed on Saturday Night Live imitating a Star Trek convention (which personally I found hilarious) that broadcasted his disdain for trekkies on popular national television. The "convention manager" points to a contract when he has words with Shatner, hinting at how fans were important to Shatner's economic success, but the contrition message at the end seems lost on most fans. I believe there's a book called, "Get a Life", which he wrote on that and subsequent experiences with fandom.
599) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57454)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Softball questions... maybe

1) What does "NCC" stand for?
2) What episode introduced Kahless?
3) What does Commander Sisko's father do for work?
4) How many species of Xindi are there? What are they?
5) In what episode did Dr. McCoy say, "I'm a doctor, not a psychiatrist."
6) What was the hull of the doomsday machine made of?
7) What is the Doctor's name?
8) When did the Botany Bay launch?
9) In "Star Trek: First Contact", why was Riker amazed by Earth's moon?
10) What did William Shatner do that most upset diehard trekkies?
11) Where did Kahn get his final words? What did he hint at quoting when he chose exile on Seti Alpha 5 in the first place?
12) What nearly got Wesley thrown out of Starfleet Academy?
600) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57430)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Murasaki
>
> Did you get my message?
>
> Santa

Yes, thank you.
601) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57427)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Nichelle Nichols was considering leaving the original series. Who, in
> part at
> > least, convinced her not to? Extra credit if you can say why this later
> caused
> > problems between her and William Shatner.
> >
>
> Dr. Martin Luther King. Um... Shatner was a lousy kisser ?

Correct. Dr King asked her to stay because he considered her character a positive role model.

The kiss, though being the first interracial kiss on television, was not the problem. Years later, as the cast were busy writing memoirs, rumor has it that Shatner promised not to use the anecdote until Nichols had "Hailing Frequencies" published. He apparently went back on his word.
602) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57416)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I believe that the movie failed to mention that the Bird of Prey referenced
> was a scout and not the much larger Bird of Prey. I have ST:3 on tape, but
> it's packed somewhere or I would watch it to find out for sure.

I have the movie here on laserdisc, but I don't need to review it for this one. On approach to the Genesis planet, Checkov is telling Kirk, "I'd swear there was something there, sir."
Kirk: "A ship?" (not sure of the exact line)
Checkov: "For an instant, a scout class vessel."
603) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57413)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Nichelle Nichols was considering leaving the original series. Who, in part at least, convinced her not to? Extra credit if you can say why this later caused problems between her and William Shatner.
604) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57406)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>
> O.k. Who is "Herbert" - and what did spock say to shut them up
>

Ick, arguably the worst episode ever made in any series. The Way to Eden. "Herbert was a was a minor official, notorious for his limited and rigid thought patterns." The label was applied by the space hippies to Captain Kirk. I remember Spock playing the harp and the hippies getting burned by the acidic plant life on Eden, but I don't remember much else.
605) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57402)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:

> The answer given here is for the Bird of Prey Scout located at this <A> href="http://members.aol.com/jakster33/K-22BoP.html">link[/url].

I go for the film references, which in themselves may be impossible, but nevertheless fan stuff tends to drift. Case in point, I have sitting beside me an original Starfleet Technical manual (bought it in grade school). In it there's a map of the UFP exploration zone with points all the way across it that NCC-1701 visited on its five year mission. The radius of the zone is listed as 4750 parsecs from the center to the neutral zones. That means, at warp eight, it would have taken the Enterprise 30 years to get from Earth to the Romulan border.
606) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57390)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Murasaki, What is the name of that penquin in your Avatar?
>
> I think it's chewi?

Chilly Willy, a cartoon character from WAAAAY back.
607) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57388)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> James Doohan - Right middle finger during WWII.

I've literally watched Star Trek TOS all my life (I was born in 1966, and father was a fan), and I didn't know that until about a month ago.
608) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57386)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > Ok, give me something hard to figure out, I'll figure it out in less than
> an
> > hour!
> >
>
> what is the normal number of crew members manning a Bird of Prey ?
>

According to Sulu in Star Trek III, "About a dozen officers and men."
609) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57380)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ok, give me something hard to figure out, I'll figure it out in less than an
> hour!

Truth be told, the Klingon one was the toughest I could come up with myself. A couple years ago as I watched a rerun of DS9, I recognized Michael Ansara's voice, so I paused the TiVo on the credits and took a hard look, recognized the actor names, and realized it was a reunion show because I also remembered John Colicos from Errand of Mercy.

Which cast member is missing a finger, and which one is it?
610) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The whole 'Tracking people on message boards' thing is creepy. (Message 57374)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> That it true to a certain extent. Let's look at this from the ISP's point of
> view:
> If one of the users gets "Zombied" (meaning that their box was taken over and
> used by the Evil Haxor to do his/her evil bidding) then changeing the IP@ of
> that customer can lock out the Evil Haxor. He/she then has to do a scan within
> range to find that users box again in order to use it. For the ISP it cuts
> down on bandwidth used by the Zombied user's box thus freeing up bandwidth for
> other users.
> Rather than use up bandwidth to scan all customers, it is easier to just
> rotate IP@ of many automatically.

The explanation I was given was a lot simpler than that. IP addresses have a theoretical limit of 2^32 addresses, or about four billion. In reality however, there is significant overhead in the internet itself for addresses consumed by routers, gateways, web servers, ftp servers, etc, as well as addresses reserved for local networks (192.168.X.X, 10.X.X.X, etc). Add to that the inefficiency that any given ISP not using 100% of its assigned address space couldn't just "lend" the addresses to someone else on the internet until it has enough customers to fill out the address space.

The result is ISPs NEVER have enough addresses to run 100% of their customers at the same time, cable, DSL, or dialup (just like the phone company doesn't have enough bandwidth or switching capacity for every line in the world to be used at the same time). They purchase a block of addresses that best suits their practical needs and those IPs are shared. When a user goes idle, the IP eventually gets reassigned.

I seem to remember back in my days working for a small ISP that we maintained something like a 10 to 1 ratio of users to IPs and available phone lines.
611) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Avatar Help! (Message 57336)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Round of applause for Timmy, the Avatarist!

Should we call him... Captain Avatar? (obscure anime reference probably nobody gets)
612) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Avatar Help! (Message 57329)
Posted 26 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You are right Sirak was Spock's Father..

Umm... I don't mean to pick, but Spock's father was Sarek.
613) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Christmas greetings! (Message 57302)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
OOOH OOOH OOOH. That reminds me of a great Christmas movie to watch today. I'm going to dig out my laserdisc of The Lion in Winter. Peter O'Toole (King Henry) and Katherine Hepburn (Queen Elanor) in the ultimate dysfunctional family. Reminds me of home.

EDIT: Favorite quote:

John - "Poor John. Nobody ever says 'poor John'. If I were on fire, I doubt anyone would urinate on me to put the fire out."

Richard (his brother) - "Why don't we strike a flint and see?"
614) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57299)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Ok, I answered all three prerequisites. What do I win? ;-)

The satisfaction of a job well done.
615) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The whole 'Tracking people on message boards' thing is creepy. (Message 57298)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Layer 7: Application
> Layer 6: Presentation
> Layer 5: Session
> Layer 4: Transport
> Layer 3: Network, TCP/IP protocol
> Layer 2: Data Link, IP-adress
> Layer 1: Physical, Mac-adress

Now you've sent me scrambling for my old books. You're one layer off. MAC is data link, IP is network, and TCP is Transport.

OSI Model
616) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57293)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I missed the "Klingon" qualifier - Oops! I had originally answered "Lt.
> Commander (Ambassador?) Worf, Miles O'Brien and Keiko O'Brien. (Michael Dorn,
> Colm Meany, and I forget)", and no I didn't go to Memory Alpha.
>
> I loved DS9 - Whatever happened to it? I mean, why isn't it (Or ST:TNG, for
> that matter) being shown on NYC TV?

It's currently on SpikeTV in the daytime.
617) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57289)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Kor - Once More Unto the Breach
> Kang - Day of the Dove
> Koloth - The Trouble With Tribbles

Once More Unto the Breach was a DS9 episode, not the original series episode.
618) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57279)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Kang, Kor and Koloth. Michael Ansara, William Campbell and John Scoleos (or
> something like Scoleos).

The late John Colicos. Also played "Baltar" on the original Battlestar Galactica series. Two out of three prerequisites met, but you haven't mentioned the names of the original episodes...
619) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57275)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You have to pay close attention to the question. Any captain of any ship named
> Enterprise. Length of time isn't specified, nor is alternate reality or "reset
> button" episodes. Continue with Jellico, Riker, T'pol...

That is captains by Starfleet official order, not just "Scotty you have the bridge".
620) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57274)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
>
> > A friend of mine once asked me to list all the captains of a starship
> named
> > Enterprise in any of the Star Trek movies or series. I came up with a
> much
> > more extensive list than he expected. Try naming them all (truth is I
> don't
> > know the full answer to this one offhand).
> >
>
> Archer, April, Pike, Kirk, Harriman, GarretpickPicqu..., well you know the
> last.

You have to pay close attention to the question. Any captain of any ship named Enterprise. Length of time isn't specified, nor is alternate reality or "reset button" episodes. Continue with Jellico, Riker, T'pol...
621) Message boards : Cafe SETI : So what did Santa bring you? (Message 57271)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Uhhhh, what part of PST are you in?

Tacoma, Washington.
622) Message boards : Cafe SETI : So what did Santa bring you? (Message 57269)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> It does work in summer - If you spring forward, your local time (XST) is
> closer to GMT (XDT), so whatever difference there was is now +1.
> Example:
EST=UTC-5, PST=UTC-8
EDT=UTC-4, PDT=UTC-7 


True, but there is no MDT. That's where it gets confusing when calling my sister.
623) Message boards : Cafe SETI : a little Quiz for the people here (Message 57268)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Three Klingons in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine reprised their roles from the original series. What are the character names? Which were the episodes in TOS that they appeared in? What were the names of the actors?

A friend of mine once asked me to list all the captains of a starship named Enterprise in any of the Star Trek movies or series. I came up with a much more extensive list than he expected. Try naming them all (truth is I don't know the full answer to this one offhand).
624) Message boards : Cafe SETI : So what did Santa bring you? (Message 57257)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I'm still somewhat confused about this UTC thing. All I really know is that I
> can look at my local time, add 8 and come up with UTC time. Now, from my
> location perspective on this planet, do I go from east to west or from west to
> east? Example: Arizona (USA) is one (local) time zone from me. Here it's
> 10:54 AM, there it's 11:54 AM. Is Arizona -9 or -7? I've no idea which way
> it goes.

Simply put, as you get closer to Greenwich, England, you get closer to zero. You and I are in PST, -8. MST is an hour closer, which is -7.

This doesn't work in the summer, of course, because if I recall correctly states in the mountain time zone do not observe Daylight Savings Time.
625) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED (Message 57178)
Posted 25 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
This is not really a "military story" but it did happen while I was in the US Air Force stationed in Japan.

I took a class in "iaido", which is formal practice with the "katana", or "samurai sword". One day we received our swords, and one of the students left the box it came in behind after class. My "sensei" (instructor) gave it to me to give to him.

This guy was a US civilian working in the base personnel office. When I went down there to give it to him a few days later, I found out from another American civilian that he had gone on vacation. I went back to his desk and just left the box on top of it.

A couple weeks later, I met up with the guy and asked if he'd gotten the box. He burst out laughing and said, "Yes, I did, in fact."

When he got back from vacation, all the Japanese employees at the office would not talk to him. Every one of them rushed by him and refused to speak unless absolutely necessary. When they had to speak to him, they always looked agitated and left as quickly as possible. None of the American employees knew why.

Finally he asked one Japanese guy why everyone was acting so weird, and finally he got the straight story. It seems the Yakuza, or Japanese organized crime syndicate, have a tradition of leaving a sword box on someone's desk when he's been marked for assassination. This is a terror tactic that says, "here is the box that contained the sword that will kill you," and warns everyone else not to be around when the end comes.

Happy Holidays to everyone. :)
626) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Adopt a sheep defend nature! Baaa Baaaa (Message 56269)
Posted 21 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
ROFL. :) The Clinton years, also known as "Sex between the Bushes"
627) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Who knows the full, accurate story? (Message 56218)
Posted 21 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> This seems to cover participation in the message boards. In one of those
> legal twists that American jurisprudence is famous for, it may be that if
> SETI@home provides a moderator, they may open themselves to greater liability
> since the task of moderator probably carries with it a responsibility or a
> duty to protect users from eachother's libelous, obscene and insulting posts.

That may very well be true. Before the advent of "samaritan laws", there were many successful lawsuits against people who performed CPR and emergency first aid on strangers only to get sued for not being perfect at it. Tragic to think that walking away while someone dies is the safest bet.
628) Message boards : Cafe SETI : To all: Against software patents.. (Message 56215)
Posted 21 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
In the US, I've always found the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to be a fascinating combination. I guess it was linked during Prohibition, but in the nowadays these areas only have a casual relationship. After all, any alcohol related shooting is usually handled by the local police or at most the FBI.
629) Message boards : Cafe SETI : ET's brain (Message 56214)
Posted 21 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
A quick search on related material:

A related article on the monkey brain monitoring: Monkey Brain Operates Machine

Synapse chip taps into brain chemistry

World's first brain prosthesis revealed

Blind man wired for sight

Human evolution expanded brains to increase expertise capacity not IQ: A resolution of the normal IQ but small brain anomaly.
630) Message boards : Cafe SETI : ET's brain (Message 56208)
Posted 21 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I think the revolution is closer than we know. There was a documentary about a chip that embeds into a spot on the cerebral cortex and has many tiny microhooks that probe down into the area and can monitor the electrical signals in a small area with great precision. They had a monkey with this chip embedded into it's motor control area. The monkey played a video game that gave it rewards, and meanwhile a computer, monitoring the game and with algorithms that can "train" itself to patterns in the neuron firings, was controlling a robotic arm in another room. The arm eventually was trained to mimic the exact movements of the monkey's real arm. Moreover, with training the arm would still move when the monkey was prompted to "imagine" playing the game without actually playing it.

On the flip side, I read a short article about breakthroughs in stimulating neurons with semiconductor chips. The difficulty has always been to stimulate the nerve without destroying it. They are much better at controlling the stimulus nowadays. We've probably all seen the experiments that have been conducted in South America to stimulate the visual cortex to give blind people a measure of crude electronic "sight". (As an electronics guy, I wish I could redesign their through-skin interface, which looks like a big gnarly cannon plug. I would have designed a much more elegant single serial or fiberoptic cable solution).

> Personally, I'd like to think we could either evolve or (by technological
> means) activate the 90% (or so) of the brain that isn't used. However, time

That whole 90% of the brain isn't used is an often quoted statistic that was made before the existence of MRI machines. One of my college professors a few years ago had her PhD in neurology, and was a researcher at Harvard for many years. She said to me that just the opposite is true: 90% of the brain IS used. Information and processing in the brain is not a one-for-one bit correspondence like it is in a computer. It is a far more complicated process involving strength and frequency of neuron firings, feedback-reinforced firing, and interconnection builds between neurons. Some researchers even suggest that in certain structures quantum effects may play a role, though she did not subscribe to that hypothesis. Especially where memory is concerned, you can sorta think of the brain as a variable compression file, like an MPEG: the more you have to cram into the file the less precise any given frame actually is.

Another fascinating thing she saw on MRIs is that there are many people among us whose brains are actually very much smaller than the size of their cranial space. Their brains are literally suspended in fluid. Yet cognitive tests show very little difference between these people and "normal" sized people in most cases. So when someone says "I have half a mind to..." they just might.
631) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Christmas greetings! (Message 55963)
Posted 20 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Since it seems many here are familiar with Tom Lehrer, a song seems appropriate here:

A Christmas Carol

Christmas time is here, by golly.
Disapproval would be folly.
Deck the halls with hunks of holly.
Fill the cup and don't say when.

Kill the turkeys, ducks, and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother here we go again.

On Christmas day you can't get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore.
There's time to rob him all the more,
The other three hundred and sixty four.

Relations sparing no expense will,
Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil
"Just the thing I need, how nice."

It doesn't matter how sincere it is,
Or how heartfelt the spirit.
Sentiment will not endear it.
What's important is the price.

Hark the harold tribunes sing,
Advertising wondrous things.

God rest ye merry merchants,
May ye make the yuletide pay.

Angels we have heard on high,
Tell us to go out and buy.

Soooo....
Let those raucous sleighbells ring oh,
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Riding his reindeer across the sky.
Don't stand underneath when they fly by.
632) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Community? (Message 54431)
Posted 16 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I need to live where people are friendly.
> Backwater living- up in the hills, down in the swamps- for me it's where it's
> happening.

I must admit I am somewhat jealous of this. I cannot live there. Over the years my own heart has become hard. I love humanity. I am polite and follow the rules just because I see the need for community and commonality. But I find myself despising humans on an individual level. It's a flaw of mine.
633) Message boards : Politics : Religious Thread [4] - CLOSED (Message 54430)
Posted 16 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
"God" is the ultimate parent. As you got older, your parents got old. You saw their flaws. They got frail. They died. I think many people's comfort in the "personal God" is an outgrowth of the desire to have that safety of the very young years back again.

With God, some regress not just to the point where "the purpose of life" is known, but even to the point in childhood where the question itself was meaningless. Nevertheless, whether God exists or not is the ultimate Schroedinger's cat equation, and in a box that appears to be impregnable.

I think we run into "chicken and egg" problems when we say our laws are based on religious beliefs. Humans developed as a social animal. Our very bodies grew dependent on a support network and division of labor. As a result, for example, "Thou shalt not kill" was a good rule to keep vendettas from ruining the tribe and destroying the unity and relative safety that was so hard-earned.

Find any example of even the most hardy loner still living in the Alaskan interior or the Australian outback today, and you will find a person who has relied very much on the technology and training that society has provided. No human is ever truly feral.

Survival and safety results in enlightened self-interest, then society, then rituals and customs, and eventually laws. We stuck these laws, for people who were too selfish and questioned them and were too unenlightened to figure out why, under an umbrella of the unknown forces. The same forces that drove the moon and the wind and the host of things we at the time found unfathomable. We called it God. Just as the parent was the authority whether or not you understood the rules at the time, so God is the source of rules your society's leaders of days of yore thought must exist as indisputable to preserve order and allow human life to flourish. They are in truth man's laws, made and given weight by man. At worst I'd call this disingenuous; I don't classify this misrepresentation by itself as evil.

That the name of God has been used for much that is reprehensible is an example of why we MUST have some way of getting past dogmatic adherence to these old, and in modern context sometimes inexplicable, laws. Childhood's end.
634) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Twas a Dark and Stormy Night... (Message 54190)
Posted 15 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
a heartwarming rendition of the theme to Gilligan's Island with the lyrics translated into Esperanto.

"Frankie my boy," he thought to himself, "you've really...
635) Message boards : Cafe SETI : US telemarketers will get our cellphone numbers 1-1-05 unless... (Message 54146)
Posted 15 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> It's very irritating to have five or six competing theories on what's what.
> Depending on the state you're in, it could be that the tele-bums have the
> right or might not...

Free speech ends at the doorstep. I have a right to privacy. Within the residence they are trying to use my bought-and-paid-for resources for their advertising without any sort of compensation and without allowing me to make the decision to accept the package deal. That's the difference between telemarketing and TV advertising, and that's what the politicians are dancing around.
636) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Community? (Message 54145)
Posted 15 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I've contemplated why people are the way they are, standoffish and antisocial towards strangers. I think there's a lot that goes into it, and just pointing to one thing like overcrowding is too simplistic. When I was in Japan, I met many people in cities that were very helpful even to the point of putting themselves out.

Availability of media could have something to do with it. We don't have to entertain each other, we have machines to do it for us. Nobody sits on the front porch and talks or plays in a jug-band anymore. We are far more detached from each other than we used to be, even a few years ago. Before the Internet became cheap to access, us old guys had Bulletin Board Systems, which were simpler local computer setups we could do the same thing we're doing now. Occasionally, we'd organize breakfasts or picnics (or a medieval court or a game of Starfleet Battles) and see each other face to face. I doubt we'd be able to organize an effective "SETI breakfast", with folks flying in from Europe and Argentina and the like, so in a way the Internet is sort of a barrier.

Crime and fraud have to do with some of it. Around here there's a common tactic of panhandling for "five bucks for gasoline." And it's often not straightforward either; the person tries to engage you socially first. There's the door to door and mall prowlers that try to sell magazine subscriptions by claiming to be taking a survey. Add to that people who are directly trying to steal from you, like the guy who asked my Mom for the time of day then tried to yank her watch from her wrist. Enough examples of this and one gets to believe that anyone talking to you is trying to get something from you.

I believe in part that the loss of more complicated social interactions in various cultures is part of it. Over the years, celebrations have gotten bigger, but much less participatory, and few involve people outside the family. To me, this is an understandable loss. Life is FAR more complicated today, with far too many things to learn. Imagine for a second, that Benjamin Franklin (for those outside the US, pick someone intelligent from a few hundred years ago in your country in place of Franklin) was suddenly transported through time to you and you had to explain everything you do during the day. He didn't have to learn to operate a car or a web browser or keep up with telephone calls. Then you ask him about what it was like in his time, and he'd tell you about arcane esoterica of social interaction that you would never have time to deal with.

Still it's sad that we've lost basic kindnesses. When I was in school in Plymouth, Massachusetts, my Dad built a removable carriage on our riding lawn mower and welded up an attachment for a huge snowblower. Being a middle class neighborhood, the kids didn't shovel snow for extra cash. Since it took Dad longer to suit up than it did to plow the driveway and the long trail to the back door (Dad tends to overkill when he builds things), he plowed out everyone up and down the block. Now even in suburban Massachusetts, you don't get real friendly with your neighbors. We'd had a fight with the people next door who built their fence eight feet over the property line. So they were the first ones to show up at the door quizzically asking about the plowing, then trying to pay Dad for it, then just leaving gifts on the doorstep for it. The rest of the neighborhood followed. A "thank you" would have been just fine, but these people were just too confused about why someone would ever do something for someone else "just because".

I've said more in this post than I ever have to nearly all my neighbors.
637) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Crows and Other Corvids as Clever as Great Apes, New Studies Show (Message 54138)
Posted 15 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I've heard these birds tend to displace the pigeons in Brooklyn, though

Monk Parrots
638) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Opinions Please: Best Laptop (Message 54136)
Posted 15 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I find it ironic that it becomes necessary to keep writing instruments around in the presence of the computer, which by definition is for storage, communication, and calculation. One additional necessity for me is to keep a calculator, since it's much easier to hit that than punch up windows calculator every five minutes. Usually it's just an ordinary calculator, unless I'm taking a class, and then it's a graphing one.
639) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Twas a Dark and Stormy Night... (Message 54132)
Posted 15 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Even when his mind was completely clear, he never understood why he liked to crunch machines, even over women or drugs. If only he could find a mechanical drug dispenser. Ah well. Finally he decided...
640) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Twas a Dark and Stormy Night... (Message 53917)
Posted 14 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
warehouse a few blocks away near the docks, ablaze despite the gale. Feebly turning his collar to the storm,...
641) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Your perfect night in? (Message 53916)
Posted 14 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I had one perfect weekend once seems like a hundred years ago... ahh but that is a story for another time.

An ideal evening? It begins with an active day, maybe even a workout. After a shower and a change, and maybe a nap, it's out to a good meal, or just order in. I love Italian food. Yes the surround sound cinema and HD television can be helpful, but I haven't had the system until comparatively recently. The movie depends on the mood at that point. A nice big-budget action-adventure is often good, but I sometimes like "feel good" flicks that usually other people dislike (Joe vs the Volcano, The Princess Bride, As Good as it Gets, Twice Upon a Time, etc). There's also watching city lights or a fire while listening to oldies like George Winston, Jim Croce, James Taylor, Steely Dan, Dave Sanborn, Vangelis (soundtrack to Blade Runner especially), Dave Benoit, etc.
642) Message boards : Cafe SETI : This is All Very Bizarre (Message 53910)
Posted 14 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> My introduction by Obi Wan to Forcism made me a ready convert but sadly we
> Forcists are few in number as I've yet to meet another and am ready to learn
> how to make stuff float.
> It's an important part of the religion- but I just cant do it yet...cc

According to the latest source material, you probably lack the exotic infection that allows you to move things.
643) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Please can we have some peace on the forum today? (Message 53904)
Posted 14 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I think it was Will Smith's grandmother that said, "If you are really an artist you wouldn't need that kind of language."
644) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Peace Initiative reopens or reminder (Message 53901)
Posted 14 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Bartender, I'll have what the guy on the floor is having.
645) Message boards : Number crunching : CPU speedlimit :-) (Message 52590)
Posted 10 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
P4 2.8 (non-overclocked), HT, 800MHz FSB, allowing "always running" and sharing equally with climateprediction.net. Results range from 4 to 5 hours. Variability possibly depends in part on using the computer for other functions.
646) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Cassini-Huygens mission - CLOSED (Message 52564)
Posted 10 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The large circular feature
> > rotating into view in the southern hemisphere is probably an impact
> > structure.
> > <a>
> href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=../multimedia/images/large-moons/images/PIA06145.jpg&type=image">Waning
> > Iapetus[/url] - (<a>
> href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA06145.jpg">PIC[/url])
> >
>
> HOLY CRAP! IT'S THE DEATH STAR!
>

That didn't escape the folks at NASA either...

That's no space station...
647) Message boards : Cafe SETI : testing vivitar only (Message 52551)
Posted 10 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Not many remember those berlin airlift days, I surely appreciate your comment,
> thank you.

That's too bad. To me, the Berlin Airlift is right next to the Cuban Missile Crisis as two examples of confrontations that could have began a devastating conflict but didn't because of the nerve and discipline of the people involved. And the Airlift especially since working so long keeping up the schedule of flights had to make aircrews really punchy.

A lot of the kids younger than me don't quite understand the scale of things, I think. Nowadays we worry about a single bomb going off in the heart of a city at the hands of a terrorist. Back in the time when you were in, and through the time when I was in the USAF, we worried about one mistake causing thousands of bombs to rain down everywhere ending all human life on this ball of mud in less than a day from start to finish.
648) Message boards : Cafe SETI : FireFox Fans: Help spread the word by joining the team "Firefox Rocks!" (Message 52322)
Posted 9 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The problem is that Verizon and Cablevision are at each other's throat around
> here. Niether one respects the other's lines. I wouldn't be amazed if I was
> litening in on a Cablevision VoIP "call".
>
> Since I called in the repair request I haven't had any static on my line, and
> my downloads are a solid 192KB/s.

It's surprising how little can interfere even with a slow data connection. At my last job I had a location that had a persistent problem with bad links on the burg alarm main phone line. Also the line fault in the burg panel wouldn't detect if I just pulled the "tip" line open, so I'd have to pull both tip and ring at once to induce a fault. Took a while to notice but I finally found that the cross connect wire for the "tip" line was laying against another line's punch-down on the block. Not making metal to metal connection, just making contact with the insulation of the cross-connect wire. I moved the wire a few millimeters away, and the problems disappeared.
649) Message boards : Cafe SETI : testing vivitar only (Message 52285)
Posted 8 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You have to give us old people a little slack ha

A vet of the Berlin Airlift has definitely earned several points of slack with me.
650) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Christmas greetings! (Message 52281)
Posted 8 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Lucky Berry-Baubles. Ooooo-kay. :/
651) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Monday night football- (Message 52124)
Posted 8 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
"...and on the Eighth Day God created woman. And when man tired of woman, God created Monday Night Football..."
652) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 52102)
Posted 8 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The landscape covered with bomb craters and unexploded ordinance is quickly
> being replaced by half million buck condo communities and other scarier
> evidences of alien invasion like giant rolls of tall chain-link fence.

As I recall, didn't they also use to use depleted uranium ordinance on the island? I don't think that'd be my favorite vacation spot. I have a thing about "trace radioactive elements". When I was in Japan, my girlfriend at the time decided to visit Nagasaki. I couldn't get leave to go with her, and secretly I was rather glad about it.
653) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 51975)
Posted 7 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Murasaki-
> It is my hope that in the nearest future you may be so fortunate as to inhabit
> a domicile that is better fixed to the earth- unless of course you are of the
> rare breed who doesn't mind an errant gust of wind upsetting your favorite cup
> of coffee the moment you get settled at seven in the morning to read the want
> ads.

That part isn't the problem. There are metal tie downs at several points along the bottom. However one side of the place, which is metal skinned, faces due south. A mile away along that line is a very large army base, and in specific, firing ranges. Small arms fire is nearly unnoticeable unless I'm outside, but artillery training really rattles the cage.
654) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 51785)
Posted 6 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> As a former resident of the Tempe Travel Trailer Villa located on scenic
> Apache Boulevard in Tempe, Arizona-
> I can tell you from first hand experience that many Americans feel people who
> live in small boxes are somehow bereft of the refined sensibilities required
> to be socially on par with the mainstream.

As a CURRENT resident of a single-wide in a low-rent but surprisingly low-key section of town, I agree.
655) Message boards : Cafe SETI : FireFox Fans: Help spread the word by joining the team "Firefox Rocks!" (Message 51720)
Posted 6 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hope your DSL install goes better than mine did. It turned out that I had by
> wires crossed at the drop, so not only was I hearing a third party's calls,
> but my DSL modem was picking up their traffic, too! :-P

Sounds like Conan the Technician double-punched you. I like keeping a buttset around so inevitably when Qwest screws up my lines (about once every two years), I can disconnect the house at the network interface, check lines, and tell them it has to be their fault.
656) Message boards : Cafe SETI : CLOSED (Message 51661)
Posted 5 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Action figure G.I. Joe was introduced by Hasbro Inc. in 1964. The latest
> versions shout commands and sport weapons like their real counterparts.
> Life-like action products can pollute kids' play, engender violence, some say,
> but stores are packed with such playthings this season...

The article below contains some Christian references, and I know after the rants by WW we here have been conditioned to tune people like that out. This isn't a Christian rant; I first read it in Rolling Stone magazine, without the god references as I recall.

Trained to Kill

It makes a compelling argument. I am not a pacifist. I have never regretted my time served in the military. Violence is sometimes very necessary, because it's the only way to get someone to comply with something they don't understand or believe (tell me you can always reason with a drunk who has a gun, or one of these "righteous god" people, who are just as bad). Still, I think the kids may have spent too long in boot camp.
657) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Mount St. Helens report (Message 51529)
Posted 5 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Considering I'm about a hundred miles north of it, I'm glad there haven't been any big eruptions yet.
658) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 51526)
Posted 5 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> LOS ANGELES – The computer term "master/slave," which was banned as racially
> offensive by a Los Angeles County purchasing department, has been named this
> year's greatest victim of political correctness...

My World Cultures/Asian Studies teacher in high school was a remarkable woman. US Army Air Force in 1945, world traveler, and very learned. Soon after I graduated she ran for selectman in the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts and won by a landslide. Not long after that a friend of mine and I invited her to dinner and during it I asked her if she was going to change the title of the office to "Selectwoman" or "Selectperson". She replied, "Neither. I'm secure enough in my femininity that I don't have to have my title changed to reflect it."
659) Message boards : SETI@home Science : The "big bang didn't happen" thread. (Message 51460)
Posted 5 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> A lot of physicist have problems with the string theory because it can't be
> verify with observation. The math works, it could explain many things but it
> is still not a "physic" law, but very interresting though.

True, very true. If one accepts the definition of "theory" in Hawking's "Brief History of Time" as something that "makes predictions provable by observation", then so far String Theory isn't really a theory. So far it has not predicted anything that can be tested. It would probably better be called "String Hypothesis" or "String Postulate".

One of the things that support the Big Bang as a theory is the background microwave radiation seen everywhere in the sky. From what I read, it was a prediction by the theory that ended up fitting an observation.

One of the other qualities of any theory, according to Hawking, is that no theory is ever considered "proven". His example was Newtonian physics, which work to a certain degree of accuracy (hence the equations are still commonly used today) but had to be replaced by the more complicated relativity theory.
660) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite sci-fi and fantasy reads (Message 51406)
Posted 4 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I can only vouch for what I've read, so my list is rather short:
> Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
> Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man
> Kurt Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House (One of the few required
> reads for high school english class that I did read)

I was going to mention Hitchhiker's Guide, but I read your bio a while ago and I didn't want to steal your thunder. :) I read the series as it came out (when I was in high school and beyond). Though I was depressed by the end of Mostly Harmless, I love the series and I have the leatherbound hardback edition on my shelf (the only other leatherbound volumes on the shelf are the complete works of Shakespeare, a combined Frankenstein/Dracula, and Frank Miller's Batman series). Don't forget your towel, and don't panic.
661) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Favorite sci-fi and fantasy reads (Message 51218)
Posted 4 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
What's your favorite science fiction/fantasy book? Why? Inquiring minds want to know.

I'll mention one: if you can find a copy of the book "Alternate Outlaws", check it out (it is out of print, but you may still be able to find it in secondhand stores). It contains alternate reality stories where some notables in crime, or not, lead different lives. Lee Harvey Oswald is a rogue FBI agent taking the law into his own hands. "Ma Theresa" runs an outlaw Robin Hood type gang with the two "Al"s, Schweitzer and Einstein. Airships become commonplace decades earlier partially replacing trains, and becoming an irresistible target for the James gang.

I've also read a sequel called "Alternate Generals", which is good but requires more in-depth knowledge of military history to recognize the characters involved.

For classics, I also highly recommend Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, which bears little resemblance to that idiotic movie. On this title, realize Heinlein did not have a pacifist philosophy, and it shows.
662) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Ridiculous Thread (Message 51212)
Posted 4 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I just joined the Mile High Club. Yep, flew my first solo yesterday.
663) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 51206)
Posted 4 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The way I see it, it's only a matter of time before telecommunications becomes
> a matter of necessity like clean water, heat, and electricity. I hope that
> the Supreme Court will recognize the difference between subscribed content and
> the distribution system. If they need a precedent, take a look at the
> electric grid here: Keyspan generates the electricity, but it's LiPA who owns
> the transmission lines (Or was it the other way around?).

I wish I could believe that, but considering that, despite the market manipulations and energy disasters recently, trends toward de-regulation seem to be advancing, I don't forsee cable being changed to a necessary utility. While you're right that satellite TV is not an adequate substitute, I don't believe that, between the fact that satellite exists and that even after the conversion to ATSC signals one will be able to receive open-air broadcasts (need a converter box, of course for old TVs), legislators will still succumb to the argument that alternatives are available so the cable system isn't a monopoly. Kinda like saying you're power isn't a monopoly because you can always buy a generator.
664) Message boards : SETI@home Science : "Was Einstein a Plagiarist?" (Message 51204)
Posted 4 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy mentions the ship that was designed to
> travel faster than anything else, and it ran on bad news since nothing travels
> quite as quickly as that. The benefit was amazing: One could go anywhere
> nearly instantaneously, since bad news spreads faster than the speed of light.
> There was a downside, however, that anyone aboard the vessel was not
> welcomed, because of the bad news.
>
> Office gossip never travels fast enough to compete with bad news.

Ahead warp factor "downsizing".
665) Message boards : SETI@home Science : "Was Einstein a Plagiarist?" (Message 51197)
Posted 4 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
That is a very interesting phenomenon. I suppose we also have to consider Schroedinger's catting around, as well. The probability that any given promiscuous assistant is in the boss's office having a quick tryst is in the minds of all observing employees a probability wave of both possibilities at once until the door is opened and the event is observed. Of course, observing the event does collapse the probabilities and affects the outcome of the event.
666) Message boards : SETI@home Science : "Was Einstein a Plagiarist?" (Message 51159)
Posted 4 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> However, it is well known that the speed of light is frequently exceeded by
> the speed of a good, juicy rumor.

Well, ironically it is true that some experiments indicate the speed of light can be exceeded by certain quantum effects. Using these as the communications channel, a rumor COULD be the fastest thing to travel. :)
667) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 51054)
Posted 3 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
At least it isn't a massive firebombing campaign. I read a book called "Superfortress" which stated the "atomic bombs accounted for two percent of the total land area destroyed by bombing" in Japan. That Falluja still exists does illustrate changing times and changing warfare.
668) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The CHRISTMAS thread (Message 50899)
Posted 3 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I see one more Christmas special on TV and I think I'll scream...
> And it's not even the 3rd of December, yet!!

Recommendation: pick up DVDs of Die Hard and Lethal Weapon, my favorite Christmas shows.
669) Message boards : Politics : Religious Thread [3] - CLOSED (Message 50890)
Posted 3 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Though most of Leviticus seems to be about what you can and can't hump and some rules for barbecueing, there are some other curious rules:

Leviticus|19:19 Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.

Wear a blended sweater, go to hell. Plant turnips and peas together, go to hell. Breed longhorn cows with holstein, go to hell.

Leviticus|19:27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.

There goes my trimmed goatee. I can't see what the rounding of the head's corners mean, unless it was directed at Darth Maul.

Leviticus|19:28 Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I [am] the LORD.

Should have thought twice about that Yosemite Sam tat on your shoulder. Note the pause for station identification.

Leviticus|21:17 Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever [he be] of thy seed in their generations that hath [any] blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. Leviticus|21:18 For whatsoever man [he be] that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Leviticus|21:19 Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Leviticus|21:20 Or crookbacked, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; Leviticus|21:21 No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.

Verily therefore seminaries and monasteries need not be handicapped accessible. Evidently priests can't even have zits. Rabbi male models?

Fascinating rules. Since homosexuality, fornication, bestiality, and incest are among these Leviticus rules, then if accepting Jesus saves you from these sins, the sexual sins are forgivable. If not, why miss heaven by an inch? A sinful anchor on the arm is as good as a romp in the hay with your sister.
670) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Opinions Please: Best Laptop (Message 50768)
Posted 2 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Hyper-Transport/Hyper-Threading is better than the same processor without
> H-T.
> Front Side Bus - the higher the MHz the better.
> RAM - the higher the number, the faster it is - PC3200 (333MHz) is slower than
> PC3700 (400MHz); the lower the CAS/CL the faster the RAM - CAS 2.5 is faster
> than CAS 3.0; ECC (error correcting code) registered is better than
> non-registered; etc.. But, it all comes with a price.

Very good list! Don't forget to buy two identical sticks of RAM and install them in the same color-coded slots to take full advantage of dual channel architecture motherboards.
671) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 50644)
Posted 2 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
ROFLMAO. :)

A long time ago I had a Commodore Amiga 500 computer. About that time I was seeing a girl from Colombia, who didn't speak any English. One day she calls me up and asks me what I'm doing. Forgetting the implications for a second, I replied, "Estoy jugando con mi Amiga." It was like a bomb went off on the other side of the phone. I finally calmed her down, and we had a good laugh about it.
672) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 50637)
Posted 2 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> feliz should always be pronounced as an "S", unless you're from
> Spain, in which case it turns into an English soft "TH". Under no
> circumstance should you ever fail to pronounce the "z" as an "s" in Buenos
> Aires. Saying Brazil with the Zee is understandable, but make
> sure you know where your wallet is - You've proven yourself a foreigner. And
> do not ever pronounce the "z" as the "TH". Galicians are the butt of all
> Argentine jokes in the same way that Poles are in the States. You don't want
> that kind of attention.

ROFLMAO. :) I'm afraid no matter where I go (or what I say) I'll stand out.

I'm reminded of our briefings on traveling in Japan fifteen or so years ago. They told us try to blend in with the crowd. I have a picture in my photos from my point of view of a sea of dark-haired heads in a crowd in a train station. I was taking the picture of course from my height six inches or more above it all, and running through my blonde-haired head was the thought, "Yeah, I blend." :)
673) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Paralyzed Person Walks Again - CLOSED (Message 50628)
Posted 2 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> This could give rise to a whole new gender of B movies. :)
>
> Anthony, why take the risk when in most cases your very own stem cells, once
> they have been regenerated, can cure you. Only for certain genetic diseases
> would you require donor stem cells. Scientists are working on using the same
> technology used to regenerate your stem cells to replace defective genes. So,
> in the not to distance future we won’t need donor stem cells.

True, you have to screen carefully not only for possibility of rejection but for genetic defects, especially in stem cell lines that have been around awhile. The holy grail will be to be able to substitute DNA from the patient, or better yet somehow trick existing patient cells into breeding undifferentiated ones, but that is evidently a LOOOONG way off.
674) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 50626)
Posted 2 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> It´s a very big fight and we can discuss it other day, but I don´t know if we
> can close our frontiers in this era. UK did it in the XVIII century, and
> Germany, by the hand of List th XIX century...it´s too late for us.

Well, to be sure a total protectionist system won't work. You still want computers from China and such. We also grow some pretty good oranges (naranjos?) in Florida. Still I point once again to the Japanese, who didn't close markets entirely, but put foreign imports under severe restrictions for many many years forcing Mitsubishi, Sony, Toyota, etc to develop infrastructure inside Japan itself.
675) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 50623)
Posted 2 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Who wants to learn Spanish? So we can communicate with more accuracy. It´s not
> difficult. For example, Mr. Utzig already knows.
> Example:
>
Tuve cuatro anios en la escuela y una novia de Colombia, pero mi vocabulario no es bastante para mas de "Donde esta la biblioteca" y otras palabras faciles. Palabras largas son mas facil porque mucho del tiempo son como los en ingles. Tambien, no tengo accentos en mi computador. Usted tiene mas en ingles, pues creo que puede continuar en ingles, por favor. Si necesita, puede hablar en espanol, pero necesito mucho tiempo a traducir.

Hablo un poco de japones tambien. :)
676) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 50571)
Posted 2 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Another day I will try to explain what I was referring to when I said about
> your foot in our neck.
> Now, I simply will say this:
> We were all right with UK. We have always been until Malvinas War. We were
> commercial partners, and in the 1930´s decade it was a said that Argentina was
> part of the "commercial" British Empire. The issue was simple: they sold us
> textiles and machines and we fed their people (joint with Canada and
> Australia, but better and cheaper)
> But when the star declined to UK and rised to US, it was the beginning of our
> end. US produced the same products of us PLUS machines, pcs, cars, etc. We or
> anybody can beat them. You are invincible. Perhaps other industrial countries
> can fight with you. But we, in our agricultural based escheme, we simpluy
> can´t fight your subsidies.

Seems to me if you HAVE food, cotton, wool, iron, concrete, etc, then relying on manufactured imports is just silly. This decline you speak of with the UK didn't happen overnight. Argentina knew what was going on in Europe. You say you're an economics professor, and you seem to be showing a similar blindness my college economics professor showed. Occurs to me if you're not getting the textiles, than make some textile mills. If you're not getting TVs, then make TVs. You're not a bunch of idiots. You have far more resources than Japan did, not near the population crunch, and still you blame someone else. If nothing else, you said your people starve, yet you are an agricultural exporter. You don't see a potential fix there (read about "government cheese" in US history)? One of the way Japan "solves" unemployment is they keep some jobs around that could be done more efficiently by machines to employ the less intellectual, like street sweepers. Leastways that's the way it was when I was there in 1988 to 1990.
677) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 50559)
Posted 2 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> You had your civil war. And many of our domestic problems were financed by the
> CIA, so begin to think that it´s not that easy to us to do things
> right...because we got your foot in our neck.

I'm trying to imagine why "our foot is on your neck". The cold war is over. Everything possible to grow here is grown here for food. There's nothing much the US can steal from you. You don't make cell phones or televisions. The US pays for oil in very above board, traceable dealings. The money your country receives SHOULD be turned around to buy what you NEED from other countries. What are your rich men doing with it? Are you sure you're not being redirected to "hate the rich country" by thieves who live in your own?

Again, it's better here simply because we don't conspire and blame and fight as much. Our civil war was a four year affair over a hundred years ago (1861 to 1865). Afterwards, the US struggled to rebuild what was destroyed and more. We came close to civil war in the 1960s with some believing that only violence would solve the civil rights problem. WE DIDN'T START SHOOTING EACH OTHER, BUT INSTEAD OVER THE YEARS STARTED BEING MORE FAIR TO EACH OTHER.

A better example of what's possible if people stop blaming someone else for everything is Japan, which (admittedly with some US help) rebuilt its infrastructure to the point where their gross national product became the LARGEST in the world by the mid eighties. Seems to me if the US was so awful and oppressive to everyone, especially old enemies, Japan would never have had that opportunity. The simplest answer is the truth: if your country is poor, it's because you've been unable to unite and build a better life on your own.

Have you ever heard of the US Federal Emergency Management Agency? This is the agency that responds to natural disasters in and outside the United States. In cooperation with the US military and International Red Cross, when disasters strike anywhere in the world they go out to help save lives and rebuild infrastructure (when four hurricanes hit Florida this year, nobody sent THEIR emergency management agencies to help US).

I don't agree with the war in Iraq, but that is irrelevant to your situation. Whether you want to believe it or not, the US has actually been a good neighbor to you, and your troubles originate in your own country. As long as you don't try to threaten us with nuclear weapons or run airplanes into our buildings, we'll let you solve the problems yourself.
678) Message boards : Politics : Political Thread [5] - CLOSED (Message 50508)
Posted 2 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> 1. The claim of 100,000 Iraqi casualties is wrong.
>
> 2. There is no credible evidence that the United States used napalm gas, and
> this story is probably the result of biased reporting.

Probably so, and here I'd like to point to something that doesn't seem to get much play in the media and with those who criticize the United States for not being concerned enough about collateral damage and civilian casualties. A 500 pound free fall unguided bomb costs $268.50 US dollars. A B1-B Lancer intercontinental bomber can carry 96 of these at once, for a total payload value of $25,776. The cheapest modification one can make is to put a GPS/inertal package on the bomb. This package costs $21,000 for only ONE 500 pound bomb. Laser, TV guidance, etc, is even more expensive. The US military opts for the expensive packages anywhere there's a remote chance of collateral damage when it would be FAR easier and just as effective to drop a dozen or so "dumb packages" on the target. Unguided weapons are reserved only for military targets in the middle of nowhere. The US spends billions of dollars developing weapons that go only where they're supposed to. Sure mistakes and malfunctions happen, but at least a little credit should be given to the fact that the US largely tries to make warfare more humane, as opposed to the enemy in Iran and Afghanistan, who in both cases feel that killing civilians they hate and hiding behind civilians they "like" is the ONLY way to get their message across.

> 3. Failure of the UN to enforce cease-fire agreements, possibly due to
> corruption of UN officials, was an act of war justifying US action.

I'm not sure this is so right in the context of precedent. Technically the situation in Korea, which was also a UN action, is also a cease-fire situation similar to the end of the first Gulf War. Over the past fifty years or so, there have been numerous very outrageous violations of the cease fire accords (on both sides), but the US has been loathe to reinitiate hostilities with North Korea despite the strong evidence, like their own statements, non-cooperation with the non-proliferation treaty, etc., that North Korea has operational nuclear capability.
Between Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, I believe Iraq was chosen for invasion because it was the "safest" target to hit, i.e. it was actually KNOWN that they DIDN'T have an effective WMD program as yet. The purpose was to make an example to the world that the US, despite the post Vietnam Cold war era, does have the political will to go to war unilaterally if it percieves the necessity.

> 4. A form of government that allows participation by a broad majority of
> citizens (a democracy) is being developed in Iraq.

As long as we're picking nits, the word "democracy" has been redefined repeatedly until it fits the US governmental model, which technically is a republic (...and to the republic for which it stands...). A republic is where we "hire" (i.e. vote for) a representative to decide issues for us in government so we don't have to spend so much time governing ourselves, which is what happens. True democracy would be all of us meeting together downtown every week to decide local, state, and federal issues by direct vote, which is what Athens used to do a couple millenia ago and which by and large has been abandoned everywhere. Democratic ideal is served somewhat by the first amendment right to petition, and by the initiative processes of several states and local town hall meetings, but that still doesn't change the fact that legislators can take actions which the majority does not support, and the best we can do is remember this fact and "fire" them in the next election.

I think the word "republic" has gotten a bad image because so many countries that are clearly NOT republics call them selves that, like the "People's Republic of China". In these countries, you can't fire the representative that fails to represent.

A republic is what is being set up in Iraq. The very understandable fear is that the first vote the people make will be to elect a bunch of religious zealots, who will decide to bring Iraq right back to a government that doesn't feel the need to listen to its citizenry's opinion, making such an election the LAST decision Iraqi's make for themselves. At least in our case Bush WILL be out of office in 2009 no matter what due to term limits.

> 5. The oil for food program was abused by Saddam, and funds were diverted to
> his own personal use and to rebuilding his military, which funds could
> otherwise have been used to feed and medicate the Iraqi people.

the General Accounting Office estimates that two out of every five dollars going to Iraqi reconstruction is actually wasted in bribes, graft, and overpricing by Iraqi contractors. Not as bad as the oil for food program, but nevertheless nobody can claim the moral high ground here to the unbiased eye.

> 6. Luca is not jealous of the United States.

I saw the post about "notice so and so is buying his laptop." I am SICK TO DEATH of the idiotic perception that ALL AMERICANS live easy and fat. I'm dead broke, and the only reason I have this computer is because I bought it when I had a job AND I don't have other things to pay for like a wife and kids. Most people I know that are married have to have their wives work a job as well just to pay the rent and buy food just like the rest of the world. If the US, Canada, Japan (these days), and other countries are generally better off livingwise, it's ultimately because of the tendency of the citizens to BUILD things, keep the rich and powerful in check, and not to "shit where they eat" in pointless civil wars, religious factional fighting, and wars with their neighbors. Even at that, I see a lot of people, white people right alongside black and hispanic, downtown who are homeless and lined up for a hot meal and a smelly mattress at the shelter just like everywhere else in the world.
679) Message boards : SETI@home Science : The "big bang didn't happen" thread. (Message 50474)
Posted 1 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> The big band, or the time in the universe history where the temperature was at
> Plank limit, seemed to have occurred everywhere and at the same time in an
> already existing and expanding space. If there as been an "explosion" we
> should look at it as an explosion that have occurred in each point of the
> space. The Big Bang is nothing more then the moment where we can define the
> notion of space and time. It is our space and time horizon, no one can see how
> the universe was before or if this event is really the beginning of our
> universe. Was there something before? Nobody knows.

See, that's the thing that can only be expressed mathematically. Everyone imagining anything always imagines from the "outside" and with linear time as a reference. As you point out, spacetime is self contained. Space, time, and all the components of the universe at the beginning are all wrapped up as something inconceivable in human terms (infinitely dense is as close a description as most people, including me unfortunately, can even conceive).

String theory, which I realize is not widely accepted, does propose dimensions outside the normal universe, and one offshoot describes the existence of "branes" (short for membrane), essentially multidimensional strings if I get the theory correct, and our universe is one brane. Events like the Big Bang are where branes interact in "not-space-not-time". Again, all I get from all of this is it's nearly useless to try to picture any of it, just study the math.

BTW, I don't mean to be picky, but you use the term "physician" in your above statements. That is somewhat confusing, because in English it means "health care worker" or "medical doctor". The term you're looking for is "physicist", which is a scientist specializing in physics. Again, I don't mean to insult and I would have told you privately if I'd had a way. I just offer this for clarity because both physics and medicine tend to be discussed on these boards (and where brain chemistry is concerned, some theorize quantum interactions in some structures, which would be one place where the two sciences merge). If I remember correctly, your native language is French, and I do have tremendous respect for your command of English, which is far, Far, FAR better than my command of my other languages, namely Spanish and Japanese. I don't speak French at all, even though my last name is the French word for "battle".
680) Message boards : Number crunching : More Than 20 Results Per Page (Message 50408)
Posted 1 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
How about a link that just makes a text file of all results? It'd save space, is easy to view, and easy just to save to disk.
681) Message boards : Science (non-SETI) : Paralyzed Person Walks Again - CLOSED (Message 50400)
Posted 1 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> Secondly, using someone else’s stem cells will in effect reprogram your
> genetic code with the donor's genetic code”.

The new cells won't "reprogram" your genetic code. It's no different than getting an already differentiated set of cells like a blood transfusion or a liver transplant.

A most extreme example of cells from two separate organisms are chimeras. Not the legendary critters, but people who are the result of two fertilized eggs. There has already been a few cases where someone has taken a genetic test and been misidentified, only to find when a sample of the SAME tissue as the comparison was taken a match was found. The cells from the two eggs combined while all cells were in the undifferentiated stage, so unlike siamese twins the cells only formed one organism.

DNA Tests Shed Light on 'Hybrid Humans'

I just dread the day when they're using undifferentiated cells for breast or penis enlargement.
682) Message boards : SETI@home Science : The "big bang didn't happen" thread. (Message 50392)
Posted 1 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I seem to remember some scientists hypothesizing about the possibility of having a sort of repeating spiral collapse near miss if it were a closed universe. Unfortunately, the latest data indicates an open and accelerating universe, which would tend to support the big bang theory.

It's hard to imagine a time when the universe was so compressed that matter wasn't matter as such, but then again it's hard to explain snow to a tribesman who's lived in the tropics all his life.
683) Message boards : SETI@home Science : PlanetQuest BOINC Project (Message 50386)
Posted 1 Dec 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> :)
> Probably a greater chance for PlanetQuest to find something than Seti.

Very true. I've already expressed my skepticism as to whether SETI will be successful (see my profile). I do SETI (and climate predictor) because I believe in trying anyway (so many people don't get the yin-yang of having both optimism and skepticism), especially since I have the resources on-hand. These people who are looking to invest in more hardware, however, deserve to know the odds of success. Doesn't mean they shouldn't try if they have the means and interest (heck, I'd probably do it if I had a place I could set up a telescope, but alas I rent).
684) Message boards : SETI@home Science : PlanetQuest BOINC Project (Message 50160)
Posted 30 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I kinda wondered about the odds of finding a planet in such a fashion. So far one has, but that may be a severe stroke of luck. If our solar system is a guide, then most planets around any given star are more or less on the same plane (the ecliptic), and therefore will only transit a star if the observer is roughly on the same plane. The question is, how roughly?

I decided to break out a pencil and paper (and a large eraser) and try out my rusted trigonometry. I worked out the geometry that would make the disc of the planet just miss the disc of the star (i.e, the angle the plane the planet travels absolutely must be less than this from us to transit even partially). I put our position at 100 light years away. I entered the formulas into Excel and plugged in numbers. I figured the best option would be for a planet the size of Jupiter at around the orbital distance of Mercury from a star identical to our sun (such a configuration would be a probable candidate for detection via the star's wobble anyway). The result was .68 degrees. This gives any given star system with this configuration a one in 132 chance of being aligned correctly. Moving Jupiter out to where it actually is in our solar system results in this cutoff angle dropping to .05 degrees off the ecliptic. Moving the observer to 50 light years results in a decrease in the angle (getting closer is worse), but a negligible one.

We're not really sure how likely stars are to have planets and my calculations don't take into account how much of Jupiter would have to have covered the sun to be noticeable. This makes the job even tougher. Anyone who participates in this project should realize that the likelihood for success is low. However, I could understand if one had the means one would do it anyway. Long shot doesn't mean no chance. That's why my computer runs 24/7 looking for ET. :)
685) Message boards : Politics : Religious Thread [3] - CLOSED (Message 50036)
Posted 30 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Wow, I shouldn't get into this thread, but during my web surfing (does anyone call it that anymore?) today, I came across something I am just compelled to share. I have a few people in my family like WW. Over the years I've come to understand that everyone establishes a few sources, rightly or wrongly, as spewing forth the "unvarnished truth" on any given subject, whether it's the Bible, Stephen Hawking, or CNN, and anyone else weighing in on a subject is greeted with skepticism or outright contempt. How the "trust" switch is clicked on and off in people's minds I have no idea. In my family we have an uneasy truce; we don't launch into these discussions anymore because the arguments have played themselves out with nobody "converting" to anyone else's point of view. Whenever the Christians like my sister fly off into a bout of "witnessing", I just let it pass quietly, listening politely, and it's over soon enough. They humor me as well in politics, I've noticed. There are after all two classes of people we love: there is family and then there are those we choose to love.

> God's Word: PI=3.

I'll grant that as an approximation of PI. After all, it's closer than 2 or 4, which is the hallmark of a correctly rounded number. PI is an irrational number, so even the text file I have with PI extended out to one million decimal digits (yep, I have a megabyte devoted to PI for no particular reason) is still technically an approximation (wonder how they plugged that 1.4 cubit crack).

But evidently it appears the Quran is more accurate in far more elusive measurements. Muslims claim it states the earth, moon and sun are in orbits, and it measures the speed of light:

IslamiCity.com - A Sine On the Road to Makka

"The only sin lies in hurting others unnecessarily. All other sins are invented nonsense." -Robert Heinlein
686) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The CHRISTMAS thread (Message 49899)
Posted 29 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I guess it's time for this old file again, for anyone who might not have seen it before:

In case you've wondered: IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help
from that renown scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am
pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000
species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of
these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out
flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world.
BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish
and Buddhist cihldren, that reduces the workload to to 15% of the
total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an
average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8
million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different
time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to
west (which seemes logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with good children,
Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump
down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents
under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the ney,
get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that
each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the
earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of
our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles
per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops
to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding
and etc.

This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000
times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-
made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4
miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles
per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming
that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2
pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who
is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer
can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer"
(see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal anount, we cannot do the
job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases
the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430.
Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen
Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous
air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of deer
will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In
short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the
reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of
a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces
17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems
ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015
pounds of force.

In conclusion -

If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
687) Message boards : SETI@home Science : There's nothing like flying in an SR-71. Well, almost. (Message 49889)
Posted 29 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The SR-71 would definitely qualify, being just about the most uniquely suited for its job and still the fastest (unclassified) production aircraft in existence. What I'd like to fly, though, is a North American P-51D Mustang or an F/A-18 Hornet.
688) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Giant Radio Telescope Idea (Message 49884)
Posted 29 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> modulated signal...Since we don't have a clue about what ET might be sending,
> on wich mode should I set my receiver ? AM, FM, CW, SSB, etc.
> The diagram is surely straight forward but I am missing the basic principles
> of such a system.

If I had to throw a guess at it, I'd say set the radio to FM. I'm not that good with radio theory, but I seem to remember my old professor said no matter how fancy we get, there are three types of modulation: amplitude, frequency, and phase modulation. Then she pointed out that phase modulation is just frequency modulation with a different control. As I recall, amplitude modulation causes sidebands that are the carrier+intelligence and carrier-intelligence. Unless the intelligence signal is just a steady tone, it should appear on a spectrum analyzer as if the sidebands move.
689) Message boards : SETI@home Science : "Was Einstein a Plagiarist?" (Message 49879)
Posted 29 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> If you went faster than the speed of light would you be warping for lack of
> a better word and in laymen dummie terms I can understand why can't you go
> faster than the speed of light?

> I believe (although I'm probably incorrect) that is has to do with the fact
> that mass is involved. Anyone wanna do some correcting work?

I am TERRIBLE at trying to comprehend, let alone explain, more than the very basics of relativity, so this may not be quite right.

First off, nothing with any mass at all ever, ever, ever reaches the speed of light.

The velocity of the ship and the person inside walking forward are not strictly additive in space/time from the point of view of someone outside the ship. From the point of view of the person walking, he sees himself traveling at, say, 2 m/s. There's the hitch. From the point of view of the person outside, he's traveling far slower due to time dilation, so from the outside neither the spaceship, astronaut, or any part of either ever appear to be traveling at or faster than the speed of light.

From the point of view of the astronaut, it's the rest of the the universe that is traveling at near the speed of light, and presumably at no point does the universe around him appear to be traveling faster than light from his reference either. That's the part that really bakes my noodle. Space, time, acceleration, and the time dilation effect are not absolute, and somehow this all resolves itself when the astronaut decelerates to the reference of the observer.

One of the more bizarre things I've read recently is experimental evidence appears to confirm that light doesn't travel at the speed of light even through a vacuum. Since energy and mass are related, even a photon has negligible mass, and therefore cannot travel the speed of light. Moreover, the more energetic the photon, the slower it goes. (This is where Murasaki's head goes *bang*)
690) Message boards : SETI@home Science : "Was Einstein a Plagiarist?" (Message 49797)
Posted 29 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> I remember once hearing a rumor that Einstein came up with his ideas by simply
> using his imagination. "What would happen if I were in a rocket moving at the
> speed of light?"
>
> A few minutes later, after he'd gotten an intuitive "feel" for the physics, he
> went off to see if the numbers added up.
>
> Whatta guy. :-)

I must admit, it's an intuitive feel that's beyond me. "Hmm, if I were in a rocket near the speed of light, I'd... hmm... aha! Be moving very slowly around the cabin."
691) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The CHRISTMAS thread (Message 49789)
Posted 29 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> > What did you ask Santa for ?
> I haven't asked yet but will do it here and now!
>
>

I once read a good scifi story called "Beggars in Spain". Despite the bizarre title, it was about people whose parents wanted to give them an advantage so they had them genetically altered so they didn't need sleep. Neat idea. Also in the real world the news had something about a pill that can substitute for a nap (I only saw the trailer, as I am completely uninterested in local news broadcasts). Maybe you'll sorta get your wish soon. :)
692) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Opinions Please: Best Laptop (Message 49668)
Posted 28 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Toshiba, Toshiba, and TOSHIBA. Working repairing PCs from 98 to 00, Toshibas were the ones that came in with problems like "latte spilled in keyboard" or "CMOS battery dead" while Compaq et al were the ones with "bizarre hardware malfunction" or "screen dead" or "value added software causing incompatibility problems". And working retail electronics from 00 to 04, well, I generally found the Toshibas to be best bang for the buck with least irritating add-on complications to the software.

And I think my spaceship knows which way to go.
Tell my wife I love her very much (She knows).
Ground control to Major Tom
Your signal's dead
There's something wrong.
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
693) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The CHRISTMAS thread (Message 49665)
Posted 28 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> <a> href="http://reuters.myway.com/article/20041127/2004-11-27T232111Z_01_N27172567_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-RETAIL-BLACKFRIDAY-DC.html">U.S.
> Holiday Shopping Starts with $8 Billion Day[/url]
>
Didn't realize we weren't the only ones to call it "Black Friday". It ain't a fun day for a tech. Glad I missed it this year.
694) Message boards : Cafe SETI : The CHRISTMAS thread (Message 49629)
Posted 28 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Dear Santa,

I could use a new job. My last one was for a retail chain installing repairing everything electronic there is to repair in such a place (I agree with Petit's statement above about HP. In my opinion HP makes the most reliable printers, inkjet or laser, and has for years). I couldn't handle a fourth year going through the Christmas madness for a bunch of ungrateful, shortsighted managers who believe they're so superior just because they work in an office not on a sales floor. Maybe I'm being too picky, but what I really want is a job I like doing, maybe even with people who understand everyone from the CEO to the custodian is human and important.

Since I won't get that, I'll just take more money, please.

If you've also got it, maybe also the love of a good woman. I'll settle for the like of an okay one. Not necessarily looking for Ms Right, just Ms Right Now.
695) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Giant Radio Telescope Idea (Message 49627)
Posted 28 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
The setup above is fascinating and not that expensive (For instance, I looked up the receiver's replacement model, the Icom 8500 and found it's about $1600). I also browsed the mini manual and it all sounds straightforward enough. From the diagram above I wondered about the 44kHz sample rate of the audio card. Transmitting in the low GHz range for the carrier usually indicates the need for a high data rate in the intelligence, but then I guess the initial goal isn't to be able to actually decode the signal, just look for something that stands out from the noise (A standard US television signal operates on a horizontal frequency of 15.75kHz, so the above sample rate would get less than three samples per line, not nearly enough to tell what the signal actually contained).

The other issue in the thread, however, is how to get more than one collector on the project. Assuming you solve the coordinated aiming and tracking, which doesn't seem to be too tricky with good mechanicals and a couple known points of reference in the sky for calibration, can more than one source increase signal gathering and cancel internal noise just by algebraically adding the signals? Is it something more tricky? In other words, how do the VLAs actually combine?
696) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Direction of the space programs. (Message 49533)
Posted 27 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
> as for BUSH'S "mars or bust" declaration...like many of the things he has
> said...his declaration seems to lack conviction...and of course the supposed
> initiative is lacking meaningful funding.

I hear you there, friend. I was cautiously optimistic during the State of the Union address a couple years ago where W announced funding for hydrogen transportation research. I say cautious because I was disappointed but not too surprised when there was no tangible result. So I completely discounted "Mars or bust" as a not too subtle attempt to swing a few votes.

> it is hard to get behind a program that seems to have no meaniingfull goal...i
> remember a time when things were different...when space exploration was a
> national dream...and many of the technologies we enjoy today are the children
> of that effort...if we could get beyond the "live for today, profit for today"

I want to believe that the space efforts of the sixties were inspired at the top by a loftier purpose, but I'm afraid I've grown cynical in my old age. Knowing more about the politics of the time and the physics behind certain things it seems to me now that most of the support at the top was just to beat the USSR to the goal; the message was "if you harbor any notion of exploiting the moon, remember it's really expensive and we can get there first." And above all, it was a PR coup for the west. That's the only reason I can see why support for the lunar missions rapidly evaporated on BOTH sides, the USSR never attempting to prove they could do it too.
697) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Direction of the space programs. (Message 49526)
Posted 27 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I started to respond to this in another thread, but I was drifting so far off the topic that I figured I should start a new thread.

(From Dan Bur Michel)
> i always knew we would have computers this fast and star trek (cellphone)
> communicators...i just didn't think it would take this long for the technology
> to advance...i'm still waiting for humans to attempt manned interplanetary
> expeditions...we are way behind in space exploration...at least according to
> my expectation...sometmes i feel i am from the future and am just sitting here
> waiting for my ride home to be invented.

My biggest disappointment with the space program is the International Space Station itself and the lack of vision it represents. Here's a construction project that will be a third of the way through its operational life by the time it's completed. Then they'll probably de-orbit it just like all the rest. We spend so much money getting all this junk into orbit and there's no sustainability, no recycling, no industry. All agencies are so busy studying the microscopic effects of this and that it seems that no agency wants to tackle the big problems, like building a foundry or getting facilities needed for a more self-sustained presence. Whatever happened to the vision of a large spinning torus hull so crews don't HAVE to suffer microgravity constantly? Maybe spend some millions less and put off a few science projects now and redirect the investment into an infrastructure that makes future experiments easier.

And seems to me that our space program would be an easier sell if at least a few of the stated mission goals didn't make my neighbor's eyes glaze over in incomprehension. Notice ol' Bushie-boy's "Mars or Bust" announcement was more of a hit precisely BECAUSE it was something the average hick-cowboy-wannnabe could wrap his head around.
698) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Ridiculous Thread (Message 49465)
Posted 27 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I had the Dinky Toys diecast metal Moonbase Interceptor, Passenger Eagle (never understood why the cockpit area and landing pods were painted green), and Cargo Eagle. Cost quite a bit for a grade school kid to buy here in the US. I think they're still in the attic at my parents' place. And the Dr Who intro was awesome BECAUSE it was spooky. Very memorable.

For the ridiculous (true story): One of the things I keep in a photo album is a newspaper clipping from when I lived in Mississippi. It was an ad in a local newspaper that said "Learn to Read" and gave the dates, times, and logo of the TV station. Call me crazy, but I think those ad dollars may have been more effectively spent elsewhere.
699) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Stupid Smart Questions (Message 49442)
Posted 26 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
I can't remember where I got this, but...

WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
Answers from famous personalities.

Plato: For the greater good.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (Early): The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Ludwig Wittgenstein (Late): Because it had reached bedrock, and its spade was turned.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann Friedrich von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Saddam Hussein: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Gene Roddenberry: To boldly go where no chicken...
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
700) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Ridiculous Thread (Message 49430)
Posted 26 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
CR: Here's an interesting thing. That first TRS-80, as I wrote, was 2MHz Z80 with 4k (64k after an upgrade) and cost me $2000. I bought another in 1983, a Model 4 with 64k and a 4MHz Z80A CPU for $1650 (128k after an upgrade, and I had a really good job in high school to pay for all this, by the way). Fast forward to when I went back to college in 1998. My coursework required a graphing calculator. I bought a TI-86 which had a Z80B 8MHz and 96k of memory (has to be split between mass storage and main memory, but whatever) which cost $130.

Speeker: Back in the early and mid 70s, science fiction in the US in particular wasn't very good until Star Wars put the genre back on the map. At the time all that we had besides reruns of Star Trek and Lost in Space were half-hearted attempts like Planet of the Apes and Logan's Run (purists may say I'm ignoring shows like the Six Million Dollar Man, so I guess I should acknowledge that there was SOME Hollywood sort-of scifi that was somewhat decent). British imports (Space:1999 et al) were really the only interesting new shows on TV for a scifi nut like me.

For the main subject of this thread: A favorite Steven Wright'ism-
I installed a skylight in my place the other day. The upstairs neighbors are furious.
701) Message boards : Cafe SETI : Ridiculous Thread (Message 49349)
Posted 26 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Red Dwarf, Monty Python, Benny Hill, Space 1999, UFO, MI-5 (originally called "Spooks" I believe, but that's a racial slur here), Doctor Who, Black Adder, Fawlty Towers, The Eastenders, The Avengers. These are just shows that immediately leap to mind. Many, many shows have made the leap across the pond, and not all of them just on PBS. Red Dwarf in particular was a favorite of mine. "Smoke me a kipper. I'll be back for breakfast."
702) Message boards : SETI@home Science : Giant Radio Telescope Idea (Message 49335)
Posted 26 Nov 2004 by Profile Murasaki
Post:
Your idea is interesting, but the hardware won't support it. I used to maintain DirecTV distribution systems for retail electronics showrooms. First off, the LNB (the microwave receiver at the focus of the dish) is very specific to the Ku band. This would have to be replaced. The RG-6 coaxial cable that is typically installed is very noisy and doesn't transmit microwave frequencies; the signals are downconverted to a set of intermediate frequencies (IF) from 950-1450MHz (just above UHF channel 83) and even at that the losses are large. Basically all that would be used would be the reflector dish itself, which is relatively cheap and not that precise itself.

That being said, I saw a documentary recently that talked about what looked like a mini VLA as a pet project by some millionaire. It looked like it used the same reflectors as those used on C-band satellite, and was set up in an area about the size of a large back yard. Maybe a project like this could be done by a small group like a small college or even an astronomy club. Anyone have any ideas?


Previous 20


 
©2024 University of California
 
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.