Furniture, Costikyan and Stafford, Boronia/Linux, Political Madness, Spiritual Machines

[tcpip]

Yes, furniture. Not something that is often discussed here. caseopaya found some lovely chairs that suit our dining table and a beautiful liquour cabinet to adorn our deco apartment. Mmmm... old dark wood. More of that please, it makes me go weak at the knees (along with old Mont Blanc pens, automatic winding Longines watches and neoclassical statuettes). If I wasn't such an egg-head I'm sure I could happily become an antiques dealer.

Have recently been in correspondence with the esteemed Greg Costikyan about using his wargame, Barbarian Kings, for our DragonQuest world (to which anthanum has been introduced to). Also recently received items (French Glorantha map and Hero Wars Deluxe) from Greg Stafford however he neglected to give a dedication as agreed; it's hard to be an aging fanboy when the object of your fandom is forgetful.

Twice this week have travelled to deepest darkest suburbia (Boronoia) to introduce a very sharp elderly lady (86 years with a exceptional intellect and motor skills) to the joys of Ubuntu. Have consistently received a "mount: function not implemented error" which has been quite frustrating. One downside of the first visit was that I turned off her monitor (a sensible matter of course). Unfortunately with her hearing and vision not being spot on she couldn't hear the POST, the MS-Windows start-up and couldn't tell that her monitor was switched off (I did ask all these questions). A three hours of travel for a 2 second repair task.. Last night wore many hats at the Linux Users of Victoria general meeting as Li­der sin Miedo was ill. Almost 60 people in attendence; David Jones from Intel (core architecture and roadmap) and Michael Still from Google (hacking Linksys NSLU2) were the superb speakers.

The Bulletin pulls apart the $100bn of utter nonsense that the Australian government is purchasing for defense over the next ten years. From anthony_baxter. Feel rather "in the know" having had two officers complain about some of these upcoming white elephants some time past. The United States HoR passes a bill to prevent suits challenging unconstitutional government actions advancing religion. While we're at it, lederhosen points out the retroactive end of habeas corpus in the United States. baralier follows up with more detail.

This Sunday I'm presenting at the Melbourne Unitarian Church (110 Grey St East Melbourne) at 11am on the topic "The Age of Spiritual Machines", mainly derived from the book of the same title by Ray Kurzweil.

Comments

[severina-242.livejournal.com]

Oi! Wanna catch up for drinks and or coffee sometime soon?

[longhairedbum.livejournal.com]

The unitarian church has an interest in transhumanism? Oh my!

[lederhosen.livejournal.com]

Clarification there - I haven't read the bill closely enough to be certain, but I think the retroactivity clause applies to that bill's redefinition of torture & related things, not to the suspension of habeas corpus which is implemented elsewhere in the same bill.

[pache.livejournal.com]

Feel rather "in the know" having had two officers complain about some of these upcoming white elephants some time past.

I'm very curious to know which elements in particular they regarded as white elephants. Haven't researched a much about this, but I've definitely got the feeling the Abrams are ridiculous & informed (from appearances) opinions JSF are remarkably split... I've seen major criticisms of the JSF on the grounds of range, but since then the supposed range on wikipedia has been upgraded by ~1000km (?!?!?)... JSF is the one that concerns me most, personally. Australia really seems to need an independant long-range fighter/bomber, which seems to be something most other 'first world' nations don't really need.

Kinda funny, on the one hand I can't stand the entire military thing - we really shouldn't need one - on the other hand... as T-Bird put it, "This is the really real world" - hence it's idiotic to try and ignore fundamental things like defense, no matter how peaceful our nation might be within its own borders.

[military-chic.livejournal.com]

hey, lev

i was the girl sitting in the foyer, and smiled at you.

i had to fly. but i was intrigued to see your speech, and am spitting fucking chips at missing it. care to catch up?

lucretia

[tempusfrangit.livejournal.com]

You need to send me an email about UU. *sighs*