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The girl-on-railway-bridge one is fake, isn't it?

This seems to be that bridge from the other side: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Onari-kaido_overhead_bridge(Soubu-line).jpg

(But it says something that I had to check... probably that I've never been to Japan.)

And here is the bravest man of all, testing the rules to the bleeding edge

RichieX

God bless RichieX, guy is a hero.

If only that was a joke...

Why does the "No Penis" template page contain an image of a penis?

If only that was a joke...

Point by point, you are out of your head!

Region coding MIGHT serve that purpose were it not for the very few and wide ranging regions that are designated. "Censorship" as an argument doesn't fly. A DVD sold in Japan is no different from a VHS tape sold in Japan or a book sold in Japan. It's media. There is no need for regions based on this and was NEVER a requirement by any national government. Not ever. And the argument that without it, a DVD couldn't meet whose requirements? What requirements might those be?

As for your comment about child porn in Japan? Please, if you are going to make an argument like that, don't make it with someone who has lived there. Child porn is as illegal there as it is in the U.S. If you said something like Thailand, I couldn't argue with you -- I have never been there and the reputation for child exploitation there is pretty self-evident. But once again, the regions designated do not reflect individual governments. It designates the following general areas: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/DVD-Regions_with_key-2.svg

You will note that wide sweeping regions like region 2 cover an extremely wide range of cultures and standards that are extremely politically incompatible. Region 4, once again demonstrates VERY different cultures and standards. In fact, only ONE region could survive your claim to the need for censorship or government import standards or the like. That would be region 6, the nation that is most likely to be otherwise region-free.

As for paying for music? I know plenty and most of them actually buy through iTunes or whatever Zune offers up. You and your acquaintances are hardly a fair statistical sampling group. You could belong to a cult that bans music and dancing for all I know. And there are lots of obvious reasons why CD sales are on the decline and many of them play a significant role. "Video killed the radio star" was a prophetic song from the 80's and that seems to be one of the priorities that have survived the changing times and declining economy. Frankly, the people who sit around listening to music have likely declined in favor of other things in general. But all the conjecture is irrelevant. There are going to be people who pay and people who don't pay. Law suits, higher or lower prices and "hearts and minds" campaigns ain't gonna change it. Smart business will factor it in with the cost of doing business and continue with their trillion-dollar-mega-business.

Not to mention, there are no sidewalks, and the roads have little shoulder. Perhaps early suburbs were more bike friendly. That was when they looked like this, but modern suburbs are designed for cars. The houses are stretched farther apart, and the only thing connecting developments are 4 lane highways.

And I've found the Mona Lisa! http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Mona_Lisa.jpg But even if I print it out its not even close to the real thing.

1982 GMC RTS
    40' long, 8.5' (102") wide
    $2500. eBay auction

    A little something like this originally (not mine). This one has the NYC MTA paint job. Mine doesn't have the yellow lights on the windshield, and only flat windows, no sliders, which is what I wanted. Different cities had different specs on their orders.

    A random example of a completed project (not mine).

    A lot of people prefer the MCI buses (generally retired Greyhound buses), or Prevost buses if they have lots of money to burn. :) I wanted the extra space inside (more than an MCI) and less vertical height outside so I can fit more gracefully down city streets. It hides very nicely in storage lots where there are 53' trailers, or at truck stops. I changed the differential gears for highway driving. max speed was 60mph, which was scary on an Interstate. Now I've seen it up to 90mph with a 3300 pound car in tow (passing on an Interstate, so I could move back to the slow lane and slow back down to 70mph).

    I guess the best part is, when its closer to complete, I can set up to run on WVO. :)

German: Apple vs. standard.

Find the @.

And here is where I completely disagree with you. MS had a choice to include alternatives to IE, they choose the lesser evil for them and removed IE. Now ask yourself which browser is most likely going to be bundled with OEM setups?

One other thing, you did have a choice before.

Interesting you should mention classic cars. Jaguar adopted their name after the war for that exact reason; they were originally called S.S. Cars, named for owner William Lyons' preceding company Swallow Sidecars. Their logo actually resembled (to my mind) the German imperial eagle.

Have any naked baby photos of your kids? Remember the mother who got arrested at Wal-Mart after taking such photos to be developed?

I don't have any naked baby photos of my kids, however I have sick naked baby porn like this (NSFW, child porn!!). I mean holy shit look at that flying naked baby porn, that is some sick fucking shit, that makes me want to throw up, I hope the guy who painted this abomination gets castrated, sent to jail and raped by inmates.

The middle ages called, they want their alchemy back.

More of what we're missing :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YQEOT9yARk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwnfLF9vTOU

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Deathvalleysky_nps_big.jpg

So you'd work for no pay, just the satisfaction of a job well done? Sweet. I have a great job for you.

You're being an obvious Troll, or are just being stupid and thoughtless. I of course never said that I would work for free. Money, however, is a very weak motivational tool (except for the very shallow of mind). Most people work because of necessity. This is my excuse. Outside of the financial marketplace of work I do what other people consider to be "work" for more important reasons. And when I am at Work, I have already stated that my efforts go towards helping the company and being honest, and not just working for free or to score bonus points or Employee of the Month status. I'll leave that up to you people who have been conditioned to chase the dollar.

MS CEO Steve Ballmer lied about a false programmer shortage for decades.

I don't know, I don't think there have been very many FALSE programmers. Not sure whether it's considered a shortage though.

It's not my fault the guy wandered into the thread at the precise moment I was pointing at the door warning "We're about to be invaded by rabid loons". If he wants to self-identify that way, that's funny.

But it's a nice day. Rather than sit here and argue about it I think I'll put my dog in the boat and tease some fish for a while.

/And yes, this is off topic. Thanks for noticing.

At this point, I'll take Linux with a GCC toolchain over VxWorks for any embedded project just to avoid the single-company support choke point and the costs and hassles with licensing. The nominally higher levels of integration and sophistication of commercial products aren't worth it.

Totally, agreed TSoMI jumped the shark after TSoMI2 -- both in gameplay and graphics.

Looks like wikipedia has already been updated:
* Original Cover
* Special Edition

Is there a specific name for the style of art that the first two had? (Besides Good :)

Totally, agreed TSoMI jumped the shark after TSoMI2 -- both in gameplay and graphics.

Looks like wikipedia has already been updated:
* Original Cover
* Special Edition

Is there a specific name for the style of art that the first two had? (Besides Good :)

> He loses the argument. End of story.

Not at all. Everyone seems to miss the point here.

That was just an tribute to Wikimedia General Counsel and Legal Coordinator who happens to be ... Mike Godwin itself (yes).

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Godwin
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-July/031128.html

Look at some of the early SGI workstations or PC's with graphics accelerator boards - every separate function (video RAM to analog RAMDAC, pixel processing, motherboard bus interface) was a separate ASIC with some other chips to handle communication.

Picard, palm, and face? Like this? Now *I* am seeing things...

Unfortunately in the southern hemisphere the spin is reversed, which could result in the anti-god particle. They'll play with black holes, but there are limits to their hubris.

The next version is the Trans-equator Hadron Collider (THC) which will circle the equator and have a branch that passes through the core in an attempt to discover stuff that's like, really cool, man. Here's a diagram.

Oh, and the whole thing with the world going through a cooling period now probably has something to do with it.

Great Cthulhu's corpse, do we have to go through this again?

Let's go over the chart. 1998 (the big uppy spiky thing near the end of the graph) was a huge warm year, because of El Nino, not because of global warming per se. 2008 (the downy liney thing at the end of the graph) was an exceptionally cool year, because of La Nina, and not because of any long-term cooling trend.

Get rid of those two points, and the whole "we're going through a global cooling period" argument melts away like so much glacier.

Excluding 1998, every year of the new millennium has been warmer than every single year that has come before it, back thousands of years.

From Wikipedia:

From June 2007 on, data indicated a weak La Niña event, strengthening in early 2008 and weakening in late 2008, with a forecast return to neutral conditions in 2009.

The El Niño of 1997-1998 was particularly strong and brought the phenomenon to worldwide attention. The event temporarily warmed air temperature by 1.5C, compared to the usual increase of 0.25C associated with El Niño events.

The Amazon, Yangtze and Yellow rivers would like a word with you.

I just stared at a list of the longest rivers in the world and was thoroughly unable to find a significant correlation that would indicate most rivers flow north/south. You can cite the Nile which happens to flow north/south and has some benefits from that all you want, that doesn't really have anything to do with what most rivers do.

If you were to claim wind patterns were biased in a certain direction though, that would be a claim one could support with evidence: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Earth_Global_Circulation.jpg

Happen to have any concrete reason to say that rivers tend to go north/south?

Population is at most plateaued if not reducing and has been for quite awhile, the one exception being heavily muslim countries. The US is barely at replacement rate, nearly all of Europe has been reducing dramatically and many places are at what's called lowest-low, from which no culture has ever survived. Basically you can kiss the French and Italians good bye. There may be french and italians later on but in name only, their DNA won't know what a baguette or ravioli is and they'll speak arabic as a second (it'll be second at least at first) language. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/WorldPopulation.png Perhaps your still thinking of the hysteria of the late 70's and forgot to update your knowledge rolodex =)

You make a very good case, but I was talking scheme of things. 72 tons is well off that graph. A large fertilizer truck bomb could probably do the same damage minus radiation (or plus radiation if it was dispersed in the explosion).

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Imfree.jpg ... Rise of the Triad, an all around awesome game by the way; And for those not already amongst the enlightened: http://rott.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fun/ http://rott.classicgaming.gamespy.com/hell/

It's not as if insects won't have bacteria.

I wonder if the amber has certain properties that exchanges certain materials with its captive animals to aid preservation. Maybe we don't see much larger things because there's not much amber dripping from a tree.

http://paleobiol.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/28/3/389

This article seems to say spiders are preserved in amber, but since the bloodsuckers that host the paper want $15 for just one day access to the paper, I'm not that desperate to know what the article says.

I found a picture of what looks like might be a sizable spider in amber:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aranya_fosilitzada_a_l'ambre.JPG

Using Google Images shows a lot of spiders in amber, so maybe something as big as a tarantula might show up there.

Wikipedia has a useful FAQ about the relicensing.

The parent post makes some good points about what was undesirable about the GFDL. In addition, there's the issue of needless proliferation of licenses. What everybody originally intended here was to make a commons that everyone could draw from. If A makes an animation, and B writes a song, and C performs B's song, and A, B, and C all try their best to put their work in the commons, then D should be able to come along and make a video consisting of A's animation with a sound track consisting of C's performance of B's song. There shouldn't be artificial obstacles just because A, B, and C chose different licenses.

I'm not saying there should only be one free-as-in-speech license for written materials. We do need at least two, because there are real philosophical differences between BSD-style licenses and GPL-style licenses. But there is not a real philosophical difference between the GFDL and CC-BY-SA.

From the Licensing Update page http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_update (Emphasis mine):-

Motivation

The core motivations for this proposed change are as follows:

        * We cannot currently share text (in either direction) with projects that use the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike Licenses. The Creative Commons licenses are used by hundreds of thousands of authors world-wide (see statistics), having quickly become the most widely used legal tool to release rights on works other than software. This interoperability barrier with other non-profit organizations and online communities who share knowledge freely is therefore counter to Wikimedia's mission.

        * The GFDL includes some potentially onerous provisions, such as the requirement to include the full license text with each copy. These requirements impede re-use of both text and multimedia (spoken or printed versions of articles, prints of images, etc.). Wikimedia is committed to the widest possible dissemination of free knowledge. While our terms of use have always allowed for lower barriers to re-use, their inconsistency with the license text leads to fear, uncertainty, and doubt about what is legal and what is not. It advantages those re-users who can afford legal advice and research over those who cannot. This is counter to Wikimedia's mission.

The bold passage was one I found particularly relevant. Gotta love that freedom, eh Richard?

Concerning my own personal message to the FSF regarding this decision, I think the great Duke Nukem said it best.

"Eat shit and die." ;)

The first 3d accelerated game I played was Quake 2 on a Matrox M3D PowerVR card.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Matrox_m3d_powercr_card.jpg

Perhaps they should use something more like this.

hmmm, aren't those fat multi-color pens and multi-color typewriter ribbon evidence of prior art?

hope they don't find out about using carbon paper (CC = carbon copy) to transfer a copy of the letter you're typing onto another document or i'll have to pay insane royalties each time i forward those dumb internet chain letters i send to over 9000 of my friends!!

/fat freddy sez

Yeah, that'll take care of it. We'll just get rid of all the car companies.

Not all of them. Just get rid of those that bet their future on big gas guzzlers -- and lost. Let Darwin and Adam Smith take care of that.

It's amazing how people who think we should do nothing to fight global warming because it would cost too much are the same who propose spending as much or more to save companies that are among the causes of global warming.

Yeah, that'll take care of it. We'll just get rid of all the car companies.

Not all of them. Just get rid of those that bet their future on big gas guzzlers -- and lost. Let Darwin and Adam Smith take care of that.

It's amazing how people who think we should do nothing to fight global warming because it would cost too much are the same who propose spending as much or more to save companies that are among the causes of global warming.

NY already has some of the highest taxes in the country. I think by calling it a fat tax they hope to make it seem less egregious. What they need to do is make serious budget cuts.

Your response:

As far as cutting the budget: there's only about 16% of the budget that's discretionary.

My response to your response:

Are you confusing the Federal budget with the State of New York's?

Basically, what I'm trying to point out is that, because the GP was talking about budget cuts for the State of New York, your mention of the status of the Federal budget and its discretionary spending seems completely irrelevant.

Also, I found it odd that you gave a link to an 18-minute talk, when all the information he mentions regarding the Federal budget and mandatory spending could have been summed up with this image, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Basic/Simple Chart
A more in-depth chart is also available from the same source:
Complex Chart

NY already has some of the highest taxes in the country. I think by calling it a fat tax they hope to make it seem less egregious. What they need to do is make serious budget cuts.

Your response:

As far as cutting the budget: there's only about 16% of the budget that's discretionary.

My response to your response:

Are you confusing the Federal budget with the State of New York's?

Basically, what I'm trying to point out is that, because the GP was talking about budget cuts for the State of New York, your mention of the status of the Federal budget and its discretionary spending seems completely irrelevant.

Also, I found it odd that you gave a link to an 18-minute talk, when all the information he mentions regarding the Federal budget and mandatory spending could have been summed up with this image, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Basic/Simple Chart
A more in-depth chart is also available from the same source:
Complex Chart

Doctorow is a writer so his problem may be slightly different, but it seems to me that for much of the media industry today the problem is more of too high costs than too low income, no matter what "pirates" do.

To make a standardized measurement, let's limit ourselves to one well-defined segment: 007. Look at this graph. Investment in James Bond films has gone steadily up without a corresponding return in profits. The first 007 movie, "Dr. No", cost $1 million to make ïn 1962 and got $60 million in the box office, a 60:1 ratio. "Casino Royale" cost $100 million and got $600 million, ten times less.

One could argue that James Bond jumped the shark, but in adjusted dollars "Dr. No" got about as much income as "Casino Royale", yet cost 1/16th as much adjusted for inflation. People are still paying as much to see James Bond today as they paid in 1962.

The main problem, IMHO, is not reduced income for intellectual property owners, the problem is reduced creativity. They not only seem unable to create a character to replace 007, they also need to spend sixteen times as much to create the same level of special effects.

It would probably be different if the ants were native.

They actually got here from South America through a port in Mobile, Alabama.
And now they're more than just a Mobile, Alabama problem.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/FireantmapUSA.jpg

Furthur reading on the RIFA (Red imported fire ant)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_imported_fire_ant

Hopefully Atlantis isn't this vehicle or else I might not be able to resist any longer the urge to knock these people off the road.

Theora could really take off if a Flash-based decoder could be made for it, so that no codec download was required, and any video site could use it transparently. But how much of the video decoding for Youtube is actually written in Flash, and how much is done by a H264 accelerator
  I'm fairly sure the video playback youtube uses is built into the flash vm. The custom stuff written in actionscript (flash's scripting language) just the interface controls etc.

Afaict actionscript is pretty slow as a programming language so writing a full video codec in it's probablly not very pracical.

Java OTOH is capable of doing a full decoder and one is indeed availible from http://www.flumotion.net/cortado/ for an example of it in use see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tupolev_Tu-95.ogg .

The Bait&Switch comment seems a little vague -- but a practical reason for free high quality codecs can be found on WikiMedia:

Why are free codecs important? Wikimedia (and anyone else that wants to switch to free formats) wonâ(TM)t have to pay millions of dollars to in licensing costs to use the h.264 codec and wonâ(TM)t have to sacrifice quality in the process. More importantly it means anyone can encode or decode these files without paying for a license to do so. This means both free and proprietary software can support this format. Where as previously only controlled free as in beer distributions like adobe flash could support video on the web. It enables free software projects like firefogg to package the encoder and give it away for free. It helps opens up the video communication platform for distributed two-way communication.

Replying to myself: .5 Ma chart: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

(wiki) "Present carbon dioxide levels are likely higher now than at any time during the past 20 Myr" (citing: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig3-2.htm )

A main part of the problem is that sand storms blow so much sand on surrounding grasslands, it kills the plants and spreads the desert. I don't see how a wall could help, unless it was kilometers high. It would need to stop this ?

Recently a company that monitors peer-to-peer networks said it found classified information about the systems used on board the president's helicopter in a shared folder on a computer in Iran, after a file containing the data was accidentally leaked on a peer-to-peer network last summer.

It's true, I saw these files and it appears our nation's most important secrets have been released to one of our most dangerous enemies. They are a move-by-move account of every Freecell game played by Obama. From that, the Iranians have been able to extrapolate his strategy for the Iraq theater and predict his every move, ergo, peer to peer file sharing must be stopped.

Reading this story kind of makes me want to draw up a huge exploded view diagram of Marine One with Hello Kitty on a treadmill in the middle of the cabin powering the main rotor ... and then seed it as top secret documents on Bittorrent.

Then, upon seeing this Slashdot article, I finally understand. The ostrich is a very distant relative of the dinosaurs.

One ostrich egg could probably provide 10 servings of scrambled eggs -- and enough cholesterol to kill a gorilla.

So, my best guestimate about actual market penetration of Linux is probably about 5-6%. It seems about right to me.

I doubt it. For instance, Wikipedia users are only 1.45% Linux. Given the attachment of Wikipedia to the free software movement, this is probably an overestimate if anything. I'd figure 1% is about right.

It could be worse, they could call it a "Human Rights Commission". Oh wait, they already did that in Canada to stomp on free speech rights (and lots of other insanity occurring too). Read Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy In The Name Of Human Rights to get a summary of how much things like this have screwed up anything resembling free speech in Canada. I've been following the insanity of HRCs in Canada and I was STILL surprised by the content of this book, and it's a STRONG forewarning to anybody in any other countries trying to stifle free speech in the name of preventing "hate crimes."