Slashdot Mirror

Already posted - can't mod you up.
But I can give you a suggestion: fetch "Yes minister" for yourself, enjoy it and stop being worried about the effects of your courageous posting will have on the modding of your posts - nothing irreversible or of importance is lost.

High-speed pizza delivery.

It appears that we're both right... and wrong.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde

Search the page for the word "wallpaper". Your quote shows up right below mine, and both are listed in the "Unsourced" section.

Can you give sources for your Washington and Jefferson quotes? These websites claim those quotes were actually fabricated by pro-gun websites.

I personally started with Logo and assembly language, but only because it was what was available in school (Logo) and on my DOS 2.0 floppy (DEBUG).
Looking back, BASIC may have been the most available language available on ROM at that time, so that's what folks used (despite that it supposedly 'mutilates the mind beyond recovery' according to Dijkstra http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra ).
I think now, javascript would have that advantage since it comes with the browser (and firefox is particular has got good debugging support for javascript).

Wikiquote says your sig isn't actually something Voltaire said: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire#Misattributed

The law here is very murky, and "aiding in submitting documents" probably isn't a crime. If there was a clear crime comitted here, we'd have heard specifically what it is by now.

They're looking... and it reminds me of this:

If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged. - Cardinal Richelieu*.

They'll find something.

* (source disputed)

Yeah, but net neutrality isn't going to rally all of America. There are still too many drinking Fox News like koolaid.

Also, other comments suggest violence. It won't get you net neutrality, it will only land you in jail. (MLK had it right; not the Black Panthers)

To succeed we must have a cause worthy of the support of anyone. Nationwide. Most of them currently prefer a plutocracy (bread and circuses!) -- so that's what happens.

But each person does make a difference -- use your influence. Vote with your wallet. Talk to your neighbors, coworkers, friends, family ... help them become more informed. Call your Senator and Representative. "Never give in - never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." (Winston Churchill)

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore

• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for a few good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for some good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for all good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that enough good men do nothing
• All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
• All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
• All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
• All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
• All that is needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing
• All that is needed for the triumph of evil is for enough good men to do nothing
• All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing
• All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
• All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
• All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
• All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing
• The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
• The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
• The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
• The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
• The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
• The only thing needed for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing
• The only thing needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
• The only thing that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
• The only thing that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing
• All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
• All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing
• All that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
• All that’s needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing
• All that’s needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing
• For evil to prosper all it needs is for good people to do nothing
• All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing
• All that’s necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing
• All that is required for evil to triumph is for good [wo]men to do nothing
• The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for enough good men [and women] to do nothing
• The only thing required for evil to triumph is for good men (and women!) to do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men (and women) do nothing
• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and women) do nothing
• For evil to triumph it is necessary only that good men [and women] do nothing
• All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing
• All that it takes for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing
• The only thing necessary f

As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.

        * Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"
        * Accompanies the Secret Project "The Planetary Datalinks"

(s'from Alpha Centauri)

I'm of two minds on this one. Private communications from diplomats to their masters at home are often rather brutally honest, as they have to be. To leak, intentionally, such communications is a risky venture. Think Franco-Prussian War here for a good example of just that sort of thing.

This reminds me of the famous quote from MLKJ: "An unjust law is a code that a majority inflicts on a minority that is not binding on itself. This is difference made legal. On the other hand a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal." [1]. It is often paraphrased "An unjust law is no law at all."

this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

- Winston Churchill, 29 October 1941

Communism is just a red herring.

In this house, we obey the laws of Thermodynamics!

No external power supply they say, well then, either they finally created a perpetual motion machine, or they're getting the energy from some external power supply.

Excellent Simpsons reference from episode [2F19] The PTA Disbands.

Didn't you catch him in that hit series he did a few years back -- The X-Files?

You can't win. If your job is nice but they use a bad language be happy you have a job. Trust me it is much much worse on the other side with the havenots. There are bad jobs at Walmart and and any fast food restaurant as these are the new 21st century jobs.

You can win: simply join a labour union. Yes, Wal-Mart an McDonalds will fire you, but that's because they're scared: unions can force minimum wage to be enough to live on, and they can force reasonable working hours, and unions can force vacation time, and so forth.

Minimum wage worker, you have nothing to lose but your chains, but you have the whole world to win. Join an union today, and fuck your corporate masters.

Reality is these evil corporations run the rules of the game. This is not going to change as must as I wish it would.

That's what they want you to think. But greater evil has fallen in the past. Even Soviet Russia fell. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Or, to put it another way: evil only wins when good men let it.

"Somebody set us up the bomb" came *before* "How are you, gentlemen", with several lines in between.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zero_Wing#Introduction

This seems like the kind of fundamentally important Slashdot issue on which I will earn a +1 Informative. :P

Samuel L. Clemens (with a degree of uncertainty (; )
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Statistics

That was from IBM, not MS. Look it up, really!

I can find Bill Gates denying he said it. I can find someone saying they don't believe him. I can even find someone saying that the quote is likely apocryphal.

It doesn't seem like anybody is actually reliably attributed to this quote. So, either it's a meme that's stuck, or Bill Gates is lying, or it's mis-attributed and nobody knows who said it.

Anybody got something more definitive?

The only people I ever hear calling him "messiah" are right-wingers.

And the obvious follow-up:

• Obama: ...Will you please listen? I'm not the Messiah! Do you understand? Honestly!
• Woman: Only the true Messiah denies his divinity!
• Obama: What? Well, what sort of chance does that give me? All right, I am the Messiah!
• Crowd: He is! He is the Messiah!
• Obama: Now, fuck off!
• [Silence]
• Arthur: How shall we fuck off, oh Lord?
• Obama: Oh, just go away! Leave me alone!

Thank you, Life of Brian"

Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Several times in "The Door Into Summer" (1957) Heinlein used variations of the statement "Engineering is the art of the practical and depends more on the total state of the art than it does on the individual engineer. When railroading time comes you can railroad - but not before." He attributed it to Charles Fort, who apparently phrased it as "If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time." (1931)

So people were thinking the same thing almost 80 years ago, and i would not be at all surprised if others had stated the same idea in different ways even earlier. (Victor Hugo coined the phrase "One cannot resist an idea whose time has come" in 1851, even if it wasn't specifically about technology.) In terms of the idea of people coming up with the same ideas simultaneously, this guy is a little slow out the gate :)

No, actually. Patents aren't supposed to reward inspiration, they're supposed to reward work. They're to help with the 99% perspiration that the invention process involves. Even if the particular invention is "obvious", that doesn't mean there isn't a shitload of work to do, and that somebody won't have to put in the hours (with no financial support) in order to develop the idea into any usable form.

Oh, and I am particularly disgusted that you didn't use your first post privileges to make a lame joke about timeliness over inspiration! That was a quality opportunity missed! ;-)

[incredulously] A certain point of view?

Here is physicist Richard Feynman's take on the meaning of life. For more insights, check out his page on wikiquote here.

I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about a little, but if I can't figure it out, then I go to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.

from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire :

Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write

Compare it to the (unalienable IMO) right to make money

Am I the only one?
Atomic batteries to power. Turbines to speed.
Wikiquote
YouTube

All this quotes are pure lies:
search for "must expel Arabs and take" in
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion

search for "We must use terror, assassination, intimidation"
http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=22&x_article=775

etc...

some arab supported seem to just LOVE using lies as the best weapon.

A platform touted as being a secure replacement for facebook ought to consist of secure code from day 1.

That is the complete opposite of open source rule of thumb #1 (or is it #7?): release early, release often.

To quote Miss Frizzle, "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"

Back in 1930, some Senators came close to banning the dial telephone...

Seriously? An eighty-year-old resolution -- that didn't even pass -- is the best and most current example of laughable Senate conduct you can come up with? Are any of the Senators who voted for this measure even still alive, let alone still sitting in the Senate? This is sort of like judging the quality of the U.S. Army based on the leadership qualities of General Pershing, or the calibre of New York newspapers on the conduct of Randolph Hearst.

In 1987, Bill Gates declared that "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."

In 1996, Steve Jobs announced that "If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."

Warren Buffett bought US Air and Dexter Shoe in the early 1990s.

Even people widely-recognized as brilliant screw up from time to time. If you want to argue against a policy proposal, do it on the merits, not on the basis of a cheap shot at an eighty-year-old boner.

Back in 1930, some Senators came close to banning the dial telephone...

Seriously? An eighty-year-old resolution -- that didn't even pass -- is the best and most current example of laughable Senate conduct you can come up with? Are any of the Senators who voted for this measure even still alive, let alone still sitting in the Senate? This is sort of like judging the quality of the U.S. Army based on the leadership qualities of General Pershing, or the calibre of New York newspapers on the conduct of Randolph Hearst.

In 1987, Bill Gates declared that "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."

In 1996, Steve Jobs announced that "If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."

Warren Buffett bought US Air and Dexter Shoe in the early 1990s.

Even people widely-recognized as brilliant screw up from time to time. If you want to argue against a policy proposal, do it on the merits, not on the basis of a cheap shot at an eighty-year-old boner.

If you did in fact "walk your talk" then you would simply had committed suicide.

  at the compost pile. so as not to waste that sack of toxic waste you'll call a corpse.
and where did you find a wind up computer and magic fairies to bring you the internet, Mr. Kaczynski

Do [English Teachers] believe that the aim of teaching English is to increase the exact and beautiful use of the language? Or that it is to inculcate and augment patriotism? Or that it is to diminish sorrow in the home? Or that it has some other end, cultural, economic, or military? [...] ...it was [English teachers'] verdict by a solemn referendum that the principal objective in teaching English was to make good spellers, and that after that came the breeding of good capitalizers. [...] ...pedagogy in the United States is fast descending to the estate of a childish necromancy, and that the worst idiots, even among pedagogues, are the teachers of English. It is positively dreadful to think that the young of the American species are exposed day in and day out to the contamination of such dark minds. What can be expected of education that is carried on in the very sewers of the intellect? How can morons teach anything that is worth knowing?

* The Lower Depths (1925)

From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Spaceballs

        [Dark Helmet and Sandurz come across an image of themselves viewing the screen. As they react, the screen mimics what they are doing]
        Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at?! When does this happen in the movie?!
        Colonel Sandurz: "Now". You're looking at "now", sir. Everything that happens now [indicates himself and Helmet] is happening "now". [Indicates the screen]
        Dark Helmet: What happened to "then"?
        Colonel Sandurz: We passed "then".
        Dark Helmet: When!?
        Colonel Sandurz: Just now. Were at "now," now.
        Dark Helmet: Go back to "then"!
        Colonel Sandurz: When?
        Dark Helmet: Now!
        Colonel Sandurz: "Now?"
        Dark Helmet: Now!
        Colonel Sandurz: I can't.
        Dark Helmet: Why!?
        Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
        Dark Helmet: When!?
        Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
        Dark Helmet: ... When will "then" be "now"?
        Colonel Sandurz: Soon.
        Dark Helmet: [backpedals in shock] How soon?
        [Corporal rewinds the tape back to scene showing protagonists wandering in desert.]
        Corporal: Sir!
        Dark Helmet: What?!
        Corporal: We have identified their location.
        Dark Helmet: Where?!
        Corporal: It's the moon of Vega!
        Colonel Sandurz: Good work, set a course and prepare for our arrival!
        Dark Helmet: [increasingly panicked] When?!
        Corporal: 1900 hours, sir!
        Colonel Sandurz: By high noon tomorrow, they will be our prisoners!
        Dark Helmet: Who?!! [mask falls down]

Actually, that was a quote from Emiliano Zapata. Couldn't find a date when he said it, but he did come before James Brown. Just by a small margin though.

*WOOOOSH*

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Red_vs_Blue

Sarge: May I introduce, our new Light-Reconnaissance vehicle. (Rotating around the new jeep) It has 4-inch Armor Plating; M.A.G Bumper Suspension; a mounted machine gunner position, and total seating for three. Gentlemen! This is the M12 LRV! I like to call it the 'Warthog'.
Simmons: Why 'Warthog,' Sir?
Sarge: Because 'M12 LRV' is too hard to say in conversation, son.
Grif: No, but, why 'Warthog'? I mean, it doesn't really look like a pig...
Sarge: Say that again?
Grif: I think it looks more like a Puma.
Sarge: What in Sam Hell is a 'Puma'?
Simmons: Uhh, you mean like the shoe company?
Grif: No. Like a Puma. It's a big cat, it's like a lion.
Sarge: You're making that up.
Grif: I'm telling you, it's a real animal.
Sarge: Simmons, I want you to poison Grif's next meal.
Simmons: Yes sir!
Sarge: Look, see these two tow hooks? They look like tusks, and what kind of animal has tusks?
Grif: A walrus.
Sarge: Didn't I just tell you to stop making up animals?!

I'm going to have to call 'citation needed' on you there. Einstein was quite clearly a believer in God.

Definitely not in the traditional way, no

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. My God created laws that take care of that. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws.

Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression.

Evidently, when he speaks of "god" he sort of means "the universe", and not any biblical character.

In an ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all cooperation is voluntary, all parties to such cooperation benefit or they need not participate. There are no values, no "social" responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily form. link

If you have a reference that shows Friedman confusing "ideal free markets" (or free markets as "ideal" is a somewhat needless qualifier in this context) with "perfect information symmetry" then please share it. I'll grant you a few days to dust off your voluminous references.

1-2-3-4-5? That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard of in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!

Spaceballs

JGG

Thanks. :) Found it.

"It's not like God came down and said "OK it's now Cambrian time, lets pop out those hominids riding dinosaurs, and while your at it, lets change the color of the strata to mauve.

Right?"

Exactly. He said "Let there be Ediacaran creatures." And it was good. Well, better than the single-celled stuff He had made earlier, anyway.

He said "Let there be halkieriids and hyolithids." And it was good.

He said "Let there be archaeocyathids" And it was good.

And then He said "Let there be brachiopods." And that was also good.

And then He said "Let there be trilobites." And it was good.

And then He said "Let there be this and that and this other different species of trilobites, plus those little lobopod worms (some armored, some not), some echiuriod worms, some more brachiopods, some anomalocaridids, zillions more arthropod-like creatures (I'm inordinately fond of these), some more sponges, some more cnidarians, are few priapulid worms, other worms, some more halkieriids, some more of these, some more of those, and some weird chordate things (some interesting plans for those that I'll save for later)", and it was still good.

And then He said "Dang, this is !#$!ing taking forever, and I'm still only in the Cambrian. !%!^&! this."

So He pressed the "reset" button, cleared the Earth of life, and invented evolution instead. Which then unfolded according to His plan without being so fiddly and high-maintenance as creating everything by Hand. No one need know that He started things twice.

Honestly I don't see how a normal person could possibly care about Afghanistan given the way it's reported.

Long ago, Adam Smith wrote a nice little summation of why most people don't care about Afghanistan:

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adam_Smith#Far-away_disasters

Would you be willing to give up your computer in order to save the lives of three strangers in Africa?

Even with this WikiLeaks story, the overwhelming focus of most of these stories are about whether WikiLeaks is doing something dangerous.

Because, as I said, there's not much new in them, mostly just additional pieces of information about what we already knew. The Washington Post, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, and NYT features on it right when it was released had lots of non-meta reporting.

Here's articles on civilian casualties: http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com?date=2000-07-27&zoom=3&subs=anews.afghanistan+civilian+casualties%2Cperiodical.Time%2Cevent

A good reporter would find a story that really matters and then look for a way to tell the story so that people will care.

Have you read the actual leaked reports? Most of it is so dry that very few people would sit around and read them. The fact that you know what they discuss is most likely because reporters took the time to read them and explain them in interesting terms.

"God is an iron". http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Spider_Robinson#God_Is_An_Iron_.281977.29
RIP Jeanne Robinson

Ah, that's one of my favorite episodes. :D
"I've seen this movie. It hits Paris."
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stargate_SG-1/Season_5#Fail_Safe_.5B5.17.5D

It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.

Take *that* Fermi.

If you got a bunch of engineers and said "figure out how to solve our energy problem", they could throw together a nuclear power system that could power the world into the next millennium - and it would be cheap, it would be clean, and it would be safe.

ADM Rickover thinks differently:

• An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in purpose. (7) Very little development will be required. It will use off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not being built now.
   
• On the other hand a practical reactor can be distinguished by the following characteristics: (1) It is being built now. (2) It is behind schedule. (3) It requires an immense amount of development on apparently trivial items. (4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build because of its engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is heavy. (8) It is complicated.
   

> oh well, i'm figuring that he's probably right seeing as science is just a bunch of atheistic dogma anyway...

Considering that Max Plank said:
  "Eine neue wissenschaftliche Wahrheit pflegt sich nicht in der Weise durchzusetzen, daß ihre Gegner überzeugt werden und sich als belehrt erklären, sondern vielmehr dadurch, daß ihre Gegner allmählich aussterben und daß die heranwachsende Generation von vornherein mit der Wahrheit vertraut gemacht ist."
which is translated as
  "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
or paraphrased as the common English phrase:
  "Truth never triumphs -- its opponents just die out."
  "Science advances one funeral at a time."

You might be right on the dogma bit.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win.

-- Ghandi.

You realize it is Gandhi?

"An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one." — George Mikes.

I reckon an Ankh-Morporkian can congregate alone, but my national stereotypes aren't up to picking a real nationality for it.