I couldn’t agree more:[ from “Lacking in emotional content“]
“It makes sense that in a world that doesn’t support creative and caring environments, there are often more glamorous, albeit unhealthy behaviors. Rather than refocusing the extreme behavior into healthier modes of expression, the kids are forced into a magnified example of our despotic culture.”
Excerpts from a Subterranean Journal:
It’s midnight and I’m preparing for bed. Priorities for next 24 hours: meet Frank (place / time / appropriate dress as yet unknown), recover from cold (and thus preserve world tissue paper supply), buy shoelaces, recover from cold, recover from cold, recover from cold, recover from cold.
The Internet Movie Database is Ten today! I think I first saw it in about 1994, because I remember all these designs: 1998 (1), 1998 (2) and 1996.
Yeah, yeah, Meg, I see you too. She’s such a smart-arse sometimes…
I my life I have met approximately five German people, or people of German descent. They have been Andreas, Evil Michael, Astrid, Other Astrid and Max. Out of these five, approximately four of them have turned out to be gay. My deduction? 80% of German people are gay.
Text Message Theatre (Inbox) II:
[All messages copied verbatim from Nokia mobile phone]
There’s a great scene in Grosse Pointe Blank involving a confrontation between ex-lovers who have recently been reacquainted. The scene takes the form of a radio phone-in show, where members of the public have their say on what they perceive to be going on. What would you have said?
Teen Angst Moment: I think the hot bloke in advertising thinks I’m stalking him.
Whatever will Tom say next?
53 ) “A gottle of geer ” said Tom badly
32 ) “My hair’s all gone ” said Tom baldly
196 ) “I’ve chucked most of the water overboard ” said Tom balefully
236 ) “You need to hammer it completely flat, like this ” said Tom bashfully
231 ) “10 PRINT ‘HELLO WORLD’ : GOTO 10 ” said Tom basically
Seti@Home was a wonderful idea – a chance for thousands – maybe millions – of people to participate in the search for alien intelligence. What a cause to fire the imagination! THe principle was simple too. Thousands of thousands of computers can work their way through computer files much much faster than one really large one – hence members of the public take on the job of processing odds and ends of data in their computer down-times.
Fight AIDS @ Home would initially look like a similarly wonderful idea. Using the same basic concept as Seti@Home, almost infinite amounts of different drug designs can be tested over hundreds or thousands of computers. Except there is one crucial difference. This one isn’t done for the good of humanity – it’s done for the good of Entropia. They even go so far as to state:
Entropia is a for-profit corporation. In our view, profit is as necessary as oxygen for longevity; while oxygen is essential for life, it is not the purpose of living. Likewise, Entropia’s Internet computing service represents “profit with a purpose.” Some of the time, Entropia’s software will be running commercial tasks on your computer.
A few comments:
This is a tremendously powerful model for enhancing research, and I suspect one we will see a great deal more of over the next few years. You could contribute to the curing of huge social ills simply by allowing people to invisibly use your computer when you are not. But let us wait until the model is taken up by the not-for-profit institutions – because we should all contribute to a better world, but there’s no reason to make some multi-national even more absurdly rich in the process.
