Slashdot Mirror

As the body count continues to rise, a shaken nation is struggling to cope in the wake of the mass deaths sweeping the world population. With no concrete figures available at this early stage, experts estimate at least 250,000 U.S. citizens have died in the last month alone, with death tolls across the globe reaching into the millions.

The wave of deaths has left a brutal aftermath, rocking survivors with feelings of loss and horror, traumatizing the American cultural landscape to its core and leaving behind emotional devastation some say may take years to heal.

What's worse, experts say, the crisis shows no signs of letting up any time soon.

"Oh, my God," sobbed Edina, MN resident Elizabeth Kendrick, 42, whose father, retired insurance actuary Gilbert Ploman, 68, lost his life last Thursday at Shady Villa Nursing Home. "He was a good man, a kind man who never did anything to deserve this terrible fate. Why did something like this have to happen? Oh, God, why?"

This research is now a decade old, but it's the most recent I can find. The 100% death epidemic is just terrible.

But is this measure enough?

The Onion: 95% of Americans missing the point http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29245

Although the TRS-80 was launched the same year as the Apple II and the Commodore PET personal computers... it benefited from the distribution network and brand identity of Radio Shack.

Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that. Is anyone else here old enough to remember when Radio Shack had a positive brand identity?

Have you seen Photoshop CS3? Adobe has hardly been asleep. Auto-align and countless other features kick ass. Yes, for basic image editing, cheap/free tools are getting better and more common, but Adobe keeps moving forward with very difficult to create features that work freaking great. Do any of those free editors have anything that works as well as the Healing Brush? (Which came out over five years ago, BTW.) It took me literally seconds to erase a drawing, made with a fat purple felt marker, that was on my friend's arm in a photo, with that tool--something that would have taken much longer with the clone tool and would not have looked as good.

Cropping and resizing can be done from the command-line. A GUI app with Core Image effects is literally trivial to make. (Fer chrissakes, such a thing was DEMOED at the 2004 WWDC.) But Adobe still comes up with tons and tons of features in every release, and no cheap app can touch those with a ten foot pole.

I'm not saying that these apps aren't great. They're great for home users and light duties, like making images for the Web. But most home users don't buy Photoshop in the first place--it gets bought by companies who don't mind paying $1,000 a seat for an app that their employees will use day-in, day-out. And these companies are not going to touch any of the apps you mention.

Back on topic, there is not a single good reason for Apple to buy Adobe unless you just thinks it's cool if every single product you like is made by the same company. (I bet the author also wishes Apple would buy BMW and make a cute little White coupe.) Personally, I like competition--not just Apple vs. Adobe, but Apple vs. Windows. I like being able to run CS on the Windows box that's next to my Macs. Both platforms have their strengths and uses. I do not want to live in this world.

Excellent post (and ignore the guy who doesn't get that "the Leopard" is part of the joke--this thing is packed with lots of subtle, subtle jokes) but you should have mentioned that you actually did write that--since you obviously didn't whip that up for a slashdot comment, I went to google to find the source so I could accuse you of plagiarism, only to be led here. Nicely done. But next time, give credit where credit is due--even if it's to yourself. A) you deserve it and B) it'll save me some time. :-)

Again, great job. The whole thing is great, top to bottom (and the punchline is a killer.) Well played. The style reminds me a bit of this guy with the way he gets details wrong and is unaware of some major things.

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/earthquake_sets_japan_back_to_2147

You're ignoring all the subtle strategy.

And W. should do the introduction...

World's worst pandemic

hmmm, makes me wonder if congress will bring back the money for evil bill to help pay for it

But my seed is pure.

this guy? http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33526/

Funny story:

Chess Supercomputer beaten up by more popular computer

China is taking care of this problem with their usual efficiency, so stop giving them a hard time.

Aha! I read about you in the paper!

Here it is: Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Own A Television

Hey, it's your doppleganger!

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694

At first, I thought this was a joke from The Onion, but holy guano, Batman! It's for real!

I'm not particularly upset, though. I.B.M. already is known to systematically exploit their huge patent portfolio, as would be expected by their shareholders, but I've not heard of them doing so, recently at least, in an offensive manner. I.B.M. has been trying hard, for business reasons, to be a "good citizen". If anyone has to have such a patent, best that it be them. If nothing else, it'll put a bit of a damper on the true patent trolls.

Will this be you?

Jonathon Green, is that you?

While traffic violations do cover a number of items, you can apply non-traffic-specific laws as well. How about "reckless endangerment" or any variety of other laws that might still be within the limitations?

Cold case, and no evidence. All he admits to is the speeding; his own testimony doesn't say he did anything reckless. How do you prosecute him for that? "Your honor, we think he may have done something reckless about a year ago, though we have no specific ideas about what reckless acts he may have committed. We have no witnesses, just the defendant's testimony that he drove fast."

tm

Obligatory Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/34118

They used to market only to doctors, and should go back to that. You don't just go to a doctor and say "I would like to order some of the pills I saw on TV." Any doctor who doesn't flatly refuse such a request should lose his license to practice medicine.

Woah, it looks like you just blew the lid off this whole scandal! Thank you for your astute observations, noble citizen!

He cheated.

Why do we keep putting crap in phones?

Name one other thing that I carry with me at almost all times, and has the spare computing cycles to perform these other actions?

I don't need a tire pressure gauge, a fountain pen, blood pressure monitor, or a cigarette lighter in my phone. I'll use my phone for making phone calls.

Yippee for you, don't buy one. I bet you don't own a TV either, right?

I bet you don't even own a television

I will gladly pay the protection money to Yahoo to keep DRM away.

Not me. I not only want downloads to be free of DRM, but free of cost. MP3s should be the same as a commercial - they cost the band/label/company a small sum up front, but result in later sales.

If my friends can get you to listen to their stuff, you're likely to like it and go to their shows and buy their CDs. Buy their CDs, not "license" them. Unlike the RIAA labels and the bands (and bands' copyrights) the labels own, most indie musicians (including my friends) aren't thieves.

As Michael Crawford pointed out several years ago on K5, there are Tens of Thousands of free, Legal Music Downloads on the internet, which he linked in his article (I believe he has the story mirrored on his own site).

As I pointed out on my site, Yahoo sucks! If you use their "music search" (unless they've fixed it; the linked blagh entry is from Oct 2005) their only links are to music download sales. Free music isn't listed at all! I won't redundantly go into detail in this comment as I ranted enough two years ago. Where'd those horse bones go?

What's worse, "do no evil" Google is no better. Despite the fact that the love of money is the root of all evil, money is all they're about. Google's "advanced search" lets you search for specific file types, but not MP3s!

Yahoo (and Google) are on the side of mammon. Our internet (yes, fellow nerds, OUR internet) that started out as a free repository, free as in beer and free as in speech, has been nearly 100% co-opted by the god of Mammon, so badly that none of you remember the old internet, where we would bitch and moan and threaten boycotts of any site that dared es much as showed a banner ad (yes, even I've caved somewhet, having Google ads at the bottom of pages).

Now the internet is nearly 100% about commerce, with only a few truly free places. Yay sites like Wikipedia and Uncyclopedia. The Onion is another; they do commerce, but they don't shove it in your face and even have fake ads that make fun of internet advertising.

But these places are few and far between.

Someone needs to make a REAL music search; one where you can find not only The Station's CDs and paid downloads, but SHNs and Oggs of live shows. You can find them, but it ain;t easy.

This has no value at all to me. I don't buy downloads (OR bottled water, fools). MP3s are and should be free. When I buy music, I buy CDs from the bands at their shows. If I want RIAA dreck, I can get MP3s free off of the radio.

Buying MP3s, buying bottles of the same water that used to come free from drinking fountains, what's next, buying air?

-mcgrew

PS: Get off my lawn you damned stupid kids. And take your WMAs and bottled water with you!

Microsoft has already patented one and zero

>head explodes<

Jackie Harvey, is that you?

It's hot on the tail of RC Cola!

some sort of ego problem, huh?

Here.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930

Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of office suites. Open Office was the office suite to use - it had two 'O's. Then the other guys came out this damn ooo build. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with the official OpenOffice.org build. That's three 'O's. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened--the bastards forked it and went to four 'O's. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three 'O's. Suddenly, we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to five 'O's.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30660
"In 1972, we arrested the members of the A-Team for a crime they swore they didn't commit," Gen. Stephen Lupo said. "They broke out of our maximum-security stockade, and from that moment forth, I thought of nothing but their recapture. However, a recent audit of their file has revealed that the arrest of the Alpha Force members was made in error. The U.S. military deeply regrets the mistake."

According to a report released Monday by the Modern Language Association, speakers of the Star Trek-based Klingon language outnumber individuals fluent in Navajo by a margin of more than seven-to-one.

"Navajo, a 3,000-year-old Native American tonal language belonging to the Athabaskan/Na-Dené group of tongues, is clearly dying and will likely be extinct by 2010," MLA president Frederick Toback said. "Fortunately, though, the sad, steady decline of this once-proud Native American tongue has been more than offset by a rising interest in Klingon culture."

Where's the fucking news?

Slightly related onion article.

I got a copy of his court filing. Here it is.

You're this guy, aren't you?

It would probably be a lot like this:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29620

Google announces plan to destroy all information it can't index.

Apparently you're not the only one to wonder...

I remember reading just yesteday about AMD's 3-core chips.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930

Actually, I heard he was moving to Ford to help with their latest project.

That's not the first time The Onion has been prophetic.