Movies that Matter!

Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters: "Doctor Monkey writes 'Initial reviews are up at Ain't It Cool News from a 'work-in-progress' screening of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in Pasadena, CA. Reaction seems mixed-to-positive, mostly due to some uneven performances. But it looks like the film is not a complete bastardization of Adams' work.'"

Woot.

This was a long time coming, and I have high hopes. Now all we need to do is resurrect Blakes 7, Dr. Who, and get the Red Dwarf movie off the ground..

Here's hoping for more great SciFi!

insanity strikes my head often

So, the (tm jesster) other nite, I was just thinking how superduper (tm) it would be to go to the (tm jesster) store and buy some cookies.

So, I did.

They were yummy.

Yes, they were.

Really yummy.

End of win2k

"Microsoft has confirmed that they will no longer issue security updates for Windows 2000. In addition, standard support for Windows 2000 is currently scheduled to end in June."

- From OS News

Wow. Microsoft must be hard up for cash if they are threatining half of their installed base to upgrade or loose support. They have also said that there will be no more browser upgrades until Longhorn - slated to release in '06 or '07 - well past the target date of '04.

Win2k to XP is not a small upgrade. Especially XP SP2 - that breaks lots of older applications.

Now, more then ever, it is time to look into jumping off the upgrade rollercoaster and switch to a stable OS that has had security in mind for a lot longer then Windows and Microsoft ever had. One where the developers understand that security and useablity can coexist. Check out Macs, Some Linux Distro or BSD.

Windows viruses under Linux

Some folks (who have waaaay to much time on their hands) are testing windows viruses running on Linux under Wine. No, really - check it out!

Sicko Computers...

Ok... let's do the math.

It is commonly held that Microsoft Windows has about 90% of the market share on PC's. If we are to belive the advert, 9 out of 10 computers are infested with spyware.

That's about 90%.

Hmm...

The Buddhist Attitude to God

"If the creator of the world entire
They call God, of every being be the Lord
Why does he order such misfortune
And not create concord?

If the creator of the world entire
They call God, of every being be the Lord
Why prevail deceit, lies and ignorance
And he such inequity and injustice create?

If the creator of the world entire
They call God, of every being be the Lord
Then an evil master is he, (O Aritta)
Knowing what's right did let wrong prevail!"

From The Buddhist Attitude to God


"The Buddha argues that the three most commonly given attributes of God, viz. omnipotence, omniscience and benevolence towards humanity cannot all be mutually compatible with the existential fact of dukkha (suffering or un-satisfactoriness)...A fundamental Buddhist belief is that all phenomena without exemption (including all animate beings) have three essential characteristics. These are dukkha (explained above), anicca (impermanence), and anattá (insubstantiality, "no-soul"). The attributes of God are not consistent with these universal marks of existence. Thus God must be free from dukkha; he must be eternal (and hence not subject to anicca); finally he must have a distinct unchanging identity (and therefore lack the characteristic of anattá)."

From The Buddhist Attitude to God

If God exists, and he/she/it is omnibenevolent as the teachings of the christian church have us belive, then what about evil? Suffering? The Devil? The Common Cold? Why would he create all of these things that are meant to harm us, cause us pain, and kill us painfully?

Forget Human evilness - let's talk about cancer and TB and Tsunami's!

Just some things I am currently pondering...

What is really real?

I am currently reading 'The Quantum and the Lotus' – a very good book. It talks about the convergence between modern scientific theory and Buddhist philosophy.

One of the passages talks about how reality is an illusion, and how we collectivity determine what reality is. Now this has interesting ramifications. For example, if you were to live in a culture where everyone believed in pixies, then perhaps they would actually exist, as far as that culture extended.

How can that be?

I will take a example that they used in the book, and expand on it a bit.

Say, that you are a person living on an island in a river. To one side, there is a farmhouse, and to the other side there is a copse of trees. There is a rainbow above, that stretches from the farmhouse to the copse of trees.

From your perspective, being confined to that island – would it not be easy to believe that the rainbow comes from the farmhouse and stretches across the sky, and your entire universe, to the copse of trees? What sort of belief structure would you come up with? Would you venerate the farmhouse and trees? What would you feel about the little figures that you could see living in the farmhouse?

Meditate on what life and your beliefs would be like living on that island.

Now, say, you were plucked off the island, and placed into the farmhouse's front yard. Would the experience live up to the beliefs? Where would the rainbow be – that you had seen coming from the farmhouse? What would that do to your world view and beliefs?

Reality really depends on the observer. A cat, dog, insect and human have radically different views of what reality is. Is any of their views less probable, or less real then ours? How about the world view of a bat, that only sees thought reflected sound?

I propose that what we call reality is in fact a convenient illusion, created in part by our minds to deal with the world around us, and in part created by the collective beliefs of all of us to provide a common frame of reference to enable communication.

Reality is taught to us by our community and our parents.


-Tsyko

Yahoo! News - Army Prepares 'Robo-Soldier' for Iraq

Army Prepares 'Robo-Soldier' for Iraq: "Made by a small Massachusetts company, the SWORDS, short for Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems, will be the first armed robotic vehicles to see combat"

The story goes on to talk about how this machine was created using off the shelf gear for only $2 million and in six months. Fantastic results do not need fantastic budgets. It's nice to see folks who can think out of the box.

Right now they are mounting an automatic rifle on the little buggers, but have expermented with rocket launchers, grenade lauchers, the Metal Storm launcher and a .50 cal.

Gaming Funny

Ok. so one of the games that I play is called Traveller. This webcomic displays some of the problems with Science Fiction meeting reality.

Morning Coffee

How evil are you?

from here

Kind of dissapointing - I had always hoped that I was Evil. Guess I need to work on that.

Also - you need to check this commercial out.

Thanks Justus for giving me a good morning laugh!