Slashdot Mirror

I've lived in both places. Canada is just as fucked up as the States. (Probably get modded flamebait, but take a look at the facts, because the Truth hurts...)

- It's illegal to buy, get this, MILK (?!?!) from a dairy farmer. (Right now, you can own part of the cow, to get around this stupid law.)

- It's illegal for the farmer to sell his grain to anyone other than the Wheat board. A number of years back, there was a farmer who owned land on both sides of the East-West dviding line. He was fined $10,000+ when he tried to sell his WHOLE crop at the higher price that the Eastern Wheat board was paying.

- Hemp protein contains ALL 20 known amino acids including the 9 essential amino acids (EAAs) our bodies cannot produce, yet this *natural* plant is illegal to posess or grow?!?! (I'm NOT talking about the hallucinogen type. The US constitution was written on Hemp paper for Christ's sake.)

What's that old adage?

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the republic.
Tactus.

--
The evolution & "supposed" pre-ancient history of man is a crock.
One of the many proofs that intelligent pre-historic civilizations existed long BEFORE man's ancient civilizations...
1. Progression of "apparent" history of "man" - Hominidae is 3 millions years old
2. Geological Time Frames perspective
3. A machined 3D relief map 120-million years old in a 1-ton stone, with inscriptions. WTF?!

> My point regarding herbivoires is that if we observe cattle are built for eating vegetation and we call them herbivoires, it doesn't mean they can't get the same sustinence from meat.

Yes it does mean exactly that. Take a look at Dr T. Campbell's studies. He is a bio-researcher for 40+ years, at Cornell.

> Words like "natural" don't fit into it...
Ugh, what do you think Cows have been eating for the past say, few million years?? They weren't cooking meat on the BBQ, mate.

How do you think Mad Cow Disease spreads? When the dead cows are ground up, and fed to other cows. It's a little hard to get, when they don't eat other animals.

> do you have a better idea as to how to dispose of the animal remains?
We never had a lot of dead animals, since they were for the most part healthy. If you have a lot of dying cows, you got bigger problems to worry about.

We usually buried them, so they could be natually broken down (bio-degradable), and replenish the soil.

Peace

--
The evolution & "supposed" pre-ancient history of man is a crock.
One of the many proofs that intelligent pre-historic civilizations existed long BEFORE man's civilizations...
1. Progression of "apparent" history of "man" - Hominidae is 3 millions years old
2. Geological Time Frames perspective
3. A machined 3D relief map 120-million years old in a 1-ton stone, with inscriptions. WTF?!

> Is that why the PS2 is an absolute horror to program for (as seen by the poor-looking games that come out on it)?

Partially.

It's a multi-processor machine - It has (only) 7 "cpus".

You think multi-threading is hard with 2 cpus?! Try keeping the EE (main cpu), VU0, VU1 (the 2 vector units, with 4K and 16K of RAM respectively, used for physics, and transorms, respectively), the GPU, and shuttingling data from the IOP to main ram, and IOP to the SPU, ALL in sync, *without* data stalls. Gee, you think this is trivial? ;-)

> Having Linux (which the PS2 does) doesn't seem to have made development any easier.
I'm not aware of any professional game developer using linux on the PS2. It already has it's own propiertary OS - you don't need a more bloated one. Every K counts, when you only got 40 megs total RAM.

You only have 4 megs of VRAM (video). After reserving memory for the screen (640x480), double-buffered, and a z-buffer, you only have ~ 2 megs left. Guess we'll have upload textures every bloody frame. Shit, how come we're out of main memory?! Fortunately none of the sound data has to even touch main memory.

> The developers that don't have a huge budget can't afford to make PS2 games, they flock to Xbox.
Dev kits are expensive whatever route you go.

One of the factors is that the XBox is way easier to develop fore. Most PC developers can easily get a handle on the 733 Mhz + GeForce 3.

--
The evolution & supposed pre-ancient history of man is a crock...
One of the many proofs that something intelligent existed long BEFORE man supposed came into being:
Progression of "apparent" history of "man" - Hominidae is 3 millions years old
Geological Time Frames perspective
A machined 3D relief map 120-million years old in a 1-ton stone, with inscriptions. WTF?!

But there's another reason not to do this. Software is copyrightable and patentable for a reason. The code itself may be protected by copyright, but a patent is for something else entirely. It's for the innovative methods, processes, combinations, etc, the inventor has implemented in code. It covers not just that exact code, but also other methods of implementing the same invention. This means, for instance, that someone can't just reimplement it in a different language and use it freely.

Let's be honest though, I imagine copyright law would extend fairly happily to covering a simple translation of your copyrighted source code to a new language. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'll still get sued for copyright violation if I take the latest Harry Potter book and translate it into French.

Even if I just translate the ideas of the Harry Potter over, I can still get in some difficulty, as this guy in Russia found out. That case is far from cut and dried (the link is fairly old, and I forget what the final results of the case were), but it certainly made it to court. If source code were held to the same levels with regard to copyright I don't think there would be any need for software patents as you claim.

Jedidiah.

I'd say that as long as the rest of the world is laughing at us, we're doing just fine.

Yeah, it's so hard for Americans to find foreign news. It would be cool if there was a box you could sit down in front of that would somehow talk to foreign news organizations and get their news. They could hook up to organizations like Le Monde, Xinhua, Pravda, and the BBC, and let you read the stories they put out. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to keep dreaming.

Nuclear Reactors Existed on Earth Two Billion Years Ago
So let me guess...so form of 'mankind' wiped itself out with a nuclear exchange way back when...

Sorry to reply to my own post, by its Piri Reis, not Piraeus, a town in Greece... Heres an excerpt from a reasonable article in Pravda

Medieval maps show Antarctica without an ice cap or partially covered with ice. The precision of the 16th century cartographers was very high and even surprising. Their data surpassed the technical possibilities even of the late Middle Ages (for example, the determination of the longitude of a relief within one minute). This level was reached by mankind in the late 18th century, while in some cases, the 20th...

Thank you, caffeine...

Just a link to back up that comment about Antarctica here.

As a side note, I wouldn't call the contemporary Pravda a paragon of truth, either. In some ways, it's even worse than the old Pravda -- back in the old days, you could at least trust them to be liars.

According to an article I found in Pravda, there is a boy who claims to have been a Martian in a past life. He says the Martians are still there, just moved underground when they lost their atmosphere. It seems he would know all about the oceans.

Here's the link:
The Boriska-Boy From Mars

Even better is this.

It talks about some stuff that the RSA is doing toward their manned Mars mission. Kind of interesting. You've got to love the headline though: "Russians conquered Mars 30 years ago".

I thought Pravda wasn't a propaganda machine anymore. Guess I was only partly right, just the headlines are.

The explanation

another page on the bad astronomy links to the trueth about Moon. By the way, "pravda" on russian means "trueth".

Or what kind of second rate education you received, but this has been known for a while. The USSR had several regions of the moon covered by robots.

Oh and yes, my "American education" didn't "censor" this info as yours supposedly has. Maybe it was your "American ignorance" or "American laziness" which prevented you from retaining this information when it was actually taught to you.

Anyway, in OTHER news, Russia Also Conquered Mars 30 years ago.

I enjoyed reading this piece over on Pravda about how America faked moon landing & how Russia is just The Best!(tm)

Care to explain how he's "clearly infringing" anything? The phonetic similarities are incidental. In my accent, I first pronounced his domain as 'mike.rowe.soft.dot.com' whereas I pronounce Microsoft's as 'microsoft.dot.com'. The phonetic similarities wouldn't even be close enough to confuse mediocre speech recognition unless you're a mushmouth, although the tool likely wouldn't recognize the spelling for Mike's site anyway.

As for similarities in the way they're spelled, the only thing the two domains share is 'soft' and '.com'. If somebody is so abysmally stupid that they could misspell microsoft as mikerowesoft, they probably aren't smart enough to by typing on their own anyway.

This is no different than the Nissan car company abusing Uzi Nissan because of his name. Corporate abuse of power, plain and simple. Am I jumping to conclusions? You betcha. But, maybe before somebody flames me for it, they ought to stop and consider why I'd automatically assume that a big corporate would be abusing it's power in this situation. I don't suppose I've come to expect that from these companies based on their past actions, right? Noooooo.... they're just good little capitalists struggling to earn a living like the rest of us. They would NEVER play the courts or stomp helpless individuals over make-believe issues like this. Uh uh. Obviously, Mr. Rowe is a bad, horrible, stinking, dirty, godless commie and Microsoft is doing its Patriotic Duty (TM) in stomping the shit out of him.

OK... that sarcasm seemed to cross into something else entirely...

So what happens when a tyranny is created?

We should repair our own democracy first before forcing it on the rest of the world.
And Taiwan is not really democratic

Somebody really has a wrong guy and it's not me. Just look here or here. Ok, so he hasn't turned in both his parents but just his father. What's the difference?

Another press release

Could this be similar to the famous 1908 Siberian explosion? Has the earth's core stopped spinning? Darn you, Art Bell.

Ahh yes, all hijackers are muslim extremists, ahh okay, let's turn to our old friend google and take the first 3 links:

In Russia, we have this story

And did you forget about CUBAN hijackers?

And if you look at this article, oh wow, look, peruvians, algerians, columbians, brazilians

In the future please make sure your rantings are equal opportunity , thanks.

After reading this, I thought the comment about 9/11 terrorists having valid paperwork was questionable. This article disputes that the passports were valid. Amazingly invalid, as it turns out.

Try reading this or this or this .

On May 28, Univention GmbH obtained a preliminary injunction from the Bremen, Germany, Regional Court. The order prohibits SCO-Caldera from circulating.

Further, the Bremen Court Order provides for a fine of up to 250,000 Euros (around $250,000 U.S.) or jail time for every violation of the Court Order.

With regards to tibet, the military significance of a country is influenced to a large degree by its economic importance. With massive mineral wealth, including minerals needed for high technology and the space programme, china had to invade them. Add that fact to the fact that the China-Russia oil pipeline is on schedule and underway, you can see why America has to take more resources from other nations just to maintain the balance of power.

Why do you think we went to war in iraq? If we were concerned with humanitarian issues, we would be all over Uzbekistan.

We're not.

Why? Their main wealth is derived from cotton, which is deminishing because massive use of agrochemicals has destroyed their environment and ariable lands. Furthermore, they're useless as a base right now, but that may change in future.

With regards to Imperialism, yes since the 20th Century empire building was frowned upon. Instead the superpowers started up client states which they armed, used to extract natural resourses and committed to proxy wars. The only major difference between a colony and a client state is that a colony has a Governer General, and a client state has a Benevolant-President-For-Life.

The bottom line is that Empires never went out of fashion since the day they were invented in ancient sumeria. Some people ran from them and settled out in Australia, or Northern Europe or Central America. Some empires fell over and died, because running empires is hard to do. But eventually one empire or another will come for you.

Unless you are an empire yourself, you are screwed.

You've got the attitude backwards, it is not "the rest of the world be damned so long as we are wealthy and safe."

The hard truth of the matter is "To remain alive, safe and reasonably well off, we must damn the rest of the world."

The planet earth is closed. Few things fall from the cosmos to provide us wealth. Under this atmosphere it is a zero sum game.

Anybody who uses a computer or a cell phone has funded the violence in the congo because both sides are arming themselves with the sale of the mineral coltan which is used to make capacitors for high technology electronics like cell phones and 802.11b. We don't stop buying from the militias, simply because there is no other source to mine. Instead we let people like you buy a computer or a car or a nice pair of jeans or a public transport ticket or any number of other blood soaked consumer products knowing that you will never truly find out how the atoms which come together to provide those products and services are actually the result of untold human misery.

This is the truth in which we live. Once upon a time, when the first human beings (or their ancestors) could travel faster than they could overpopulate and area, we were able to spread from messopotamia and walk over oceans during the great ice age. We didn't have to take the fruits of creation from another person's mouth just to feed our own.

I propose to use any means needed to go back to those days. If it takes a nuclear rocket to take us to the stars. So be it. If it takes research which might produce a stable negative strangelet (a particle which reacts with normal matter to produce more stable negative strangelets) so be it.

We have to get off the planet, and begin spreading the human empire to other stars. If we don't we will mine this planet dry and strangle each other fighting over the scraps. And if we somehow avert that, then somebody else who beleives in imperial power will get us.

In fact, I would even hazard a guess that somebody who belie

Maybe you need to do a little more research.

Also, I think you need to also take into account that during a fair chunk of the time you're mentioning, the Russian space program was kind of out-of-order - If you cut the regeme change period out, it could take you back to the good old days...

March 18, 1980 - a Vostok rocket exploded on its launch pad while being refueled, killing 50 at the Plesetsk Space Center.

I poked around on google news, and it seems that just recently some (literally) crazy aussi computer engineer tried to hijack a plane (with wooden stakes), but got his ass kicked, because he's not Buffy, and the flight crew weren't vamps... The guy is a committed (to a mental instituion:) Christian, and was raving about Armageddon.

Also, a woman wrote a threatening note to a flight attendant. She's crazy, too.

No sane people have hijacked planes lately, except in Israel. This guy didn't figure out the one-time-only thing with that kind of hijacking, so you've got to wonder about his sanity. He tried to rush the cockpit on an El Al flight, and got his ass kicked.

Oh, and I found this insane diatribe from Pravda. I wonder whether that's the same Pravda as during the Soviet era, because they're talking about the poor capitalists getting fucked over by the Earth Summit people, and how George Bush is saving the world from sustainable development, and how that's great...

Not to mention this site. Watch out for those Armenians...

2. The Soviet Union dissolved in 1989. After 1989 there was no USSR, no repressive govt, no torture chambers for subversives or whatever else you might be implying.
...
The repressive state they were 'a product of' ceased to exist when these boys were 13 and 8.


While the USSR no longer exists, it would be silly to think that everything that it had done was magically undone the day it ceased to be.

I suggest you take a trip to Berlin, stand at Checkpoint Charlie (or anywhere else along the wall), look left and look right.

I did this last Spring, on Spring Break. It's a very powerful experience. I was too young to understand the full implications of what was happening when the wall fell, but today I realize that the effects of the USSR live on and will for quite some time.

Whether or not the grandparent post was trolling, it's resonable to consider the USSR's effects on the people it controlled. It made a lasting impression on many societies.


Think about this one: How long did it take after abolition for the status of blacks in America to change? Where those born 20 years after abolition, able to live their lives blissfully unware that it had ever happened?

Maybe societies don't change instantly, even if you'd like to think so. If you want an example of this in relation to the topic at hand, I suggest you do a search on the word "propiska."

Here's a link from about a month ago.

It is scary for a freedom loving person to live in Amerikkka right now.

PRAVDA: The truth

Curiously enough, Pravda also has a story on the subject.

Curiously enough, Pravda also has a story on the subject.

Pravda.
They're biased, but they're so utterly blunt in telling things how they are that they'll make you split your sides laughing at times.

Roadmap for War on Iraq and the New American Empire brought to by:

Elliott Abrams , Gary Bauer
William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush
Dick Cheney , Eliot A. Cohen
Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky
Steve Forbes , Aaron Friedberg
Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney
Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan
Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby
Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle
Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen
Donald Rumsfeld , Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz

xyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzyxyzzy

I can't say it's one of my favorites, but it's certainly a different perspective.

They tried diplomatic pressure and other means with America alongside. It didn't work.

But it did work, in the end there were results and that's why a lot of countries wanted the weapons inspectors to go on with their work. If there is proof, that the Iraq has a significant number of B- or C-weapons the USA never presented it. In the end the Iraq was complying (though grudgingly) with the demands layed down by the UN. In the meantime north Korea more or less publicly announced their intention to produce nuclear bombs, so shouldn't Bush et al. strike at north Korea before going for the Iraq?

So when Bush couldn't convince the world that Iraq was threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction he switched rhetorics and talked about having to free the Iraq of that evil dictator Saddam. Now Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator, but that's none of the USAs business, as it hasn't been for the past 20 years (like when the USA even supported the current Iraqi regime). The last demand that Saddam now leave the country within 48 hours is not an ultimatum, it's a joke. Everyone can imagine that that'd be suicide for Saddam.

This war isn't about terrorism either, it's easier to construct a link from Osama bin Laden to Bush than to Saddam Hussein, and war isn't a means to get at terrorists who're probably not even in the attacked country. As a result of the war even more terrorist attacks are expected in the US and the threat level is raised.

So the war isn't about chemical weapons or terrorists, neither is it an idealistic mission to free the Iraq people from their evil dictator (or do the USA now intend to attack any country where the government isn't to their liking?). Many people (even inside the US) see it that way and that's how they arrive at the conclusion that the war isn't justified but is just about oil and distracting the american people from their problems at home.

This war is also a very bad precedent, as it shows that the USAs government doesn't care what the UN have to say on the issue, they do what they damn well please anyway. So now whenever any country wants to start a war all they need are some unsupportable and made up reasons and then they can go ahead? Or is that only right for the USA but noone else?

Also the arrogant way the USA dealt with the UN and other nations (and also opposition at home) has weakened the UN and hurt diplomatic relationships worldwide. More and more the USA is percieved

Here is an english version of a recent article in Pravda (influential russian newspaper) that uncovers where Microsoft donations were going for years.

Messed up a link: Porn funds terrorism

Also, read Al-Jazeera, the only real news outlet in the Arab world. They don't publish in English, but the Ajeeb translation site will translate it for you.

In the business press, there's too much cheerleading. It's not like the old days, when Malcom Forbes Sr. ran Forbes, ran tough stories about corporate corruption, and accepted the risk of lawsuits. ("Go ahead, sue me. I'm a billionare.")

I go to a number of sites for "news" news; I find that the "same" news is very different coming from different countries:
BBC News, which everyone's familiar with;
CNN, the epitome of US government-sanctioned news;
The Economist, of course;
The Times of London,
Japan Today,
Pravda,
The Beijing Review,
Le Monde, and
The Tehran Times

...and a couple of sites for tech and science news:
EurekAlert, a great site for science and medicine press releases,
the former, but still running, Hacker News Network,
BottomQuark,
the phenomenal journal Nature,
Science magazine,
and, of course, The Source.

Some good comics, most of which you will all know, but which I love; here are a couple you might not know:
Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet, a comic that actually features a female sysadmin/techgoddess, and
Bateman Political cartoons, a fun political comic updated regularly.

And, of course, take a look at my sig... Click every day.

Some examples:

http://english.pravda.ru/society/2002/06/04/29723_ .html

http://news.awse.com/23-Feb-2002/Technology/8727.h tm

http://www.cairotimes.com/news/game0634.html

-Tom

Nah, they'll just outfit them with those russian underwater guns and we'll see mercinaries being hired to protect the country from incursion... wasn't that the plot of anachronox?

The chairman of the department for the struggle against high-tech crimes of the Moscow Central Directorate for Internal Affairs, Lieutenant Colonel Dmitry Chepchugov, has recently released a statement about pornsites. Dmitry Chepchugov stated that the income earned from pornsites is being used to fund extremist and terrorist organizations.

Read the full story.

"The world today needs some serious work to become even as good a world is was 30 years ago.
"
Cast your mind back...
1972...

Only in the last few years where minorities allowed to ride in the front of a bus.

Automobiles produced an ungodly amount of pollutant (There are 4 time as many cars on the roads in LA now, but only half the pollution.

Children were beaten regularly and this was considered normal (I'm not talking about a swat here)
It was very near impossible for a woman to get a decent career, and if she did, she could make half what her male counter part earned.

Wearing seatbelts was almost unheard of.

we were very close to a nuclear war.

Now if you go back to the fifties, it gets far worse. [Pinko hating, lynchings, internments]

People are more aware of other now then they have been for a long time.

I think you need to stop pining for "the good ol' days and start think about how you can make tomorrow good.

I suspect you are under 40 and confusing the realities of the early 70's with you fond childhood memories.

URL error correction :

Now chew on this, there are gigantic asteroids routinely passing by at a distance less than between the earth and moon, and there is an approaching black hole [GRO J1655-40] which could swallow earth in a little as 6000 years

Thank you for grounding that pontificating idiot. I have been the beneficiary of good will and goof treatment, and i try to give back. I don't his denigration of the western world rhetoric. Go live on a farm, butthead, no one is stopping you. And you can fornicate with Laura Ingles and have an Amish family.

All politics are local, make things pleasant around you, and if everyone does it, it manifests on a grand scale. This top down legislation of morality from figures and soap box artists like the aforementioned deacon of moral authority fucks it up worse. Your moral-mettling is the problem.

This idiot stumbled like one poster said on a Rand novel, but his ruminations plain suck.

And I get sick of this anti corporate and anti rich people drivel. My health care is paid by the companies I work for, and I've been given generous tips and opportunities by rich folk in this life. I don't buy your gloom and doom terminator 2 movie crap. Everyone I know who is doing well is hardworking and a bit lucky, and they feel lucky because they were endorsed by someone, probably better off than themselves, and this was the inroad to their success. Kissing a little ass and then performing when you get your foot in the door does wonders to one's lifestyle.

We aren't good, we aren't evil, we JUST ARE. Chew on that for a while. I've seen people that make me sick, and that make me happy. Surround yourself with those that make you happy, crack a beer, fuck a lover, and be fucking glad you aren't starving to death, have a keyboard to type shit on and aren't getting bombed or forced into labor.

Now chew on this, , and there is an approaching black hole [GRO J1655-40] which could swallow earth in a little as 6000 years, thank you Hubble Telescope [the symbol of CORPORATE GREED right? Not.], and many, many extinction level events possible in the near future, with nuclear war probably the LEAST likely to wipe life on earth away. This is all coming, inevitably - if not in a human time frame, in a geological time frame, if not geological, then it's a guaranteed certainty in the universal time frame. We better focus on getting off the third rock from the Sun and stop fucking around so much or our whole civilization, existence, way of life, our genetic code, our will to survive will be preempted, extinguished, put out to pasture, end, finito, gone. And we will be space dust with no one to tell our story and no way of any other sentient life of finding out. Ashes to ashes, baby. This is where we all hope [secretly] there s a God, otherwise it's cold and dark, and we are fucking around with precious little time.

I would post as me, but since this isnt a me too post and its critical of some sap who got a +5 from groupthinkers, I'll go AC. Sorry.

If Stalin knew that Pravda.ru would be around so long, I think he'd be proud. His propaganda machine has outlived him and continues on even today. It is always fun to check the top stories at Pravda.ru and see what the "Russian slant" is. Best headline I see on there right now: Where Is Stalin When You Need Him?.

If you've ever been to Russia you will know that it is still a police state.

Yes. Anyone who doubts that this is true should read this story: Fifth Column of Information Terrorists in Moscow.

This really speaks for itself: "As the hostage drama was developing, the majority of Russian media was obviously becoming more and more provocative; in that situation, the Ministry for Press should have warned the media of their incorrect reports from the drama scene, and if the warning proved ineffective, sanctions should have been applied to disobedient media."

My Russian Professor in college used to regularly speak about how here we pretended to have freedom but had none while in the Soviet Union they had very little freedom but what there was was all REAL freedom

You're so right! Because of your REAL freedoms, you can print these articles in your national [is there still a nation?] paper.

Secret Chinese Pyramids Evidence of Alien Visitors?

mysterious vampire

UFO PREVENTS BLAST AT CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR PLANT

No offense, we thank you for all your Russian Brides!