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[Dick Jones directs Kinney to threaten ED-209. Kinney points a gun at the robot.]

ED-209: Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.

Dick Jones: I think you'd better do what he says, Mr. Kinney.

[Alarmed, Kinney quickly tosses the gun away. ED-209 growls menacingly.]

ED-209: You now have 15 seconds to comply.

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

Also:

Dick Jones: ... I had a guaranteed military sale with ED-209. Renovation program. Spare parts for the next decade. Who cares if it worked or not?

In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

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

Heh, you beat me to it. The quote is often attributed to Yogi Berra, but it makes too much sense for him to have said, IMHO. The late Mr. Berra's Wikiquote page says This has also been attributed to computer scientist Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut and scientist Albert Einstein.

Ah don't keer who yew are, dat's funny right dere. ~Larry the Cable Guy

Heh, you beat me to it. The quote is often attributed to Yogi Berra, but it makes too much sense for him to have said, IMHO. The late Mr. Berra's Wikiquote page says This has also been attributed to computer scientist Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut and scientist Albert Einstein.

Ah don't keer who yew are, dat's funny right dere. ~Larry the Cable Guy

Heh, you beat me to it. The quote is often attributed to Yogi Berra, but it makes too much sense for him to have said, IMHO. The late Mr. Berra's Wikiquote page says This has also been attributed to computer scientist Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut and scientist Albert Einstein.

Ah don't keer who yew are, dat's funny right dere. ~Larry the Cable Guy

That means that forty percent of the time, it works every time.

Sorry guys, I know it's off topic, but I couldn't help it. :)

A religion is a set of tenets and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, and often codified as prayer, ritual, or religious law. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.

In the frame of western religious thought, religions present a common quality, the "hallmark of patriarchal religious thought": the division of the world in two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane. Religion is often described as a communal system for the coherence of belief focusing on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth. Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, tradition, rituals, and scriptures are often traditionally associated with the core belief, and these may have some overlap with concepts in secular philosophy. Religion is also often described as a "way of life" or a life stance.

The development of religion has taken many forms in various cultures. "Organized religion" generally refers to an organization of people supporting the exercise of some religion with a prescribed set of beliefs, often taking the form of a legal entity (see religion-supporting organization). Other religions believe in personal revelation. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system," but is more socially defined than that of personal convictions.

You might prove to a believer that their belief is false (impossible, since religion is not falsifiable - it is "personal faith and religious experience").

Or you will have to demonstrate the exact rational nature of religion, which is impossible as long as religion escapes out through "division of the world in two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane."

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. - Albert Einstein (1941)

So if you swear off all religion, Mr. Einstein says you're in bad shape. But as long as you don't swear off all science, the two ought to coexist, according to him.

> (And if you don't know who, turn in your Slashdot account by tomorrow morning.)

We're geeks, not historians... :-)

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

If these goons can't work it out between them then it's going to be hard to track down.

Those who deal in child pornography and prey on children are, to my mind, some of the worst exxamples of humanity out there.

Well, to my mind, they are still fellow human beings and fellow citizens who deserve every moral and legal right as to the rest of us.

I wouldn't bat an eye if they increased the prison sentences for them to life or allowed capital punishment.

I would shed a tear for each such measure as yet another branch was torn from the tree of liberty. I would mourn the needless waste of human life.

But it still has to remain within the bounds of our laws, the core of which is the Constitution.

The law, and even constitutions, are ultimately subject to the will of the people. People like you and others in this thread who would rather join a rabid mob than go against one and stand up for what is right. If you're too afraid of unpopularity, or condemnation, or guilt by association, to defend the rights of others, then you don't deserve a single one of those right yourself.

You, and every poster in this thread panders to hysteria by sycophantically declaring your own inflated revulsion at these crimes. Every time you do so, you further strengthen the forces that are eating away at the foundations of law and freedom in the western world. No reasonable person need declare their revulsion for these crimes. Yet everyone insists on doing so, loudly and explicitly at the earliest opportunity.

Because they are afraid.

"Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them" - Frederick Douglass. The west has submitted to the howls, intimidation and demagoguery of the Outrage Brigade. We will suffer whatever injustice or wrong they now choose to impose upon us, and it seems, will do so indefinitely. Please read the rest of the Douglass quote, and think next time before you obediently proclaim your moral standing.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Futurama#The_Problem_With_Popplers
Fry: They're like sex, except I'm having them!

Edsger Dijkstra remarked that "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense".. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].

I believe that quote was directed towards BASIC, not COBAL (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra#Sourced, first quote in the list), although I suppose he could have said that about both.

I forgot the most important part of that Douglas quote in the context of this discuss. With apologies, I reply to my own post, with the entire quote, with selected parts highlighted

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what a people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must pay for all they get. If we ever get free from all the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and, if needs be, by our lives, and the lives of others."

- Frederick Douglas - 1857

Excellent stuff!

fyi: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now

Do we obey those laws as well, or do we just look at them from a distance while continuing to act as we please?

now my privacy is being raped 8 ways to Sunday, but its worth it for that 15 extra milliseconds of my life.

It's Franklin time: people willing to share their privacy for temporary performance increases deserve neither. (the temporary means that javascript sites will eventually find a good use for this extra speed of chrome, thus in the end you will waste more time to run the same scripts)

"One way to get rid of them is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere. Like the time we went over to Shelbyville during the war, I wore an onion on my belt....which was the style at the time...you couldn't get those white ones, you could only get those big yellow ones.................now where was I........oh yeah, the important thing was I was wearing an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time, you couldn't get those... (trails off)"

source

study Jabberwocky's code in order to learn the logic patterns used to 'woo the ladies'.

I was just going to use Jabberwacky (! Jabberwocky) to do all of the tedious small talk and then take over after she agrees to meet. Similar to the way I used MMO Glider to do all of the tedious stuff in Wacraft, and then take over when it gets interesting.

I'm just glad Doc Brown gave up time travel to study the other great mystery of the universe.

"Narrator: (Parodying the PSA shown before films) You wouldn't steal a handbag. You wouldn't steal a car. You wouldn't steal a baby. You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet. You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet. And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow. And then steal it again! Downloading films is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences."

-- The IT Crowd

I had the same reaction to the title. "[T]he teaching of BASIC should be rated as a criminal offence: it mutilates the mind beyond recovery." —Edsger W. Dijkstra

I agree that Python would almost definitely be the best first choice as far as language. It has simple syntax without sacrificing expressive power. Dynamic typing and native lists defer the need to understand memory-related details, and may encourage students to write flexible code without having to learn about explicit polymorphism. Perhaps most importantly, as an interpreted language, Python allows the students to "be the program" and tinker with the language one line at a time.

Java is a good second choice if you want them to have type-safety and to work with a more conventional syntax, so long as you don't let the students fall into the trap of just using the libraries to do everything without understanding the underlying computational processes, as warned in this essay (and as cited by the great ESR).

Is this anything like SCMODS they used to get Elwood?

"My name is Linus Torvalds and I am your god."

        * Jokingly introducing himself, at the 1998 Linux Expo in Durham, North Carolina

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

it's just the market leveling itself out

wait for the market to recover

The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again.
--John Maynard Keynes

I tend to like Paul Krugman's analysis of the situation: the government needs to step in, but unfortunately Paulson's initially proposed plan was terrible. Extensive modifications produced something barely acceptable as a stopgap, and then sweetened it up to get it passed.

The original plan was vague about how it would work, but it appears to have been based on the assumption that troubled financial institutions were merely suffering from a liquidity problem. Krugman has argued in his blog that these troubled banks may have an insolvency problem. In this case for the original Paulson plan to work, the government would have to buy up junk assets for more than their fair market value. This would amount to a handout.

The modified plan calls for the government to receive an equity stake in the banks that are bailed out. After the banks recover, the government could sell its stake, and recover its the money spent. If it works in this way the plan would be more of a $700B investment, rather than an outright handout.

Krugman has argued that, as in past crises the government has successfully responded by taking temporary ownership of financial institutions, the action here should be similar.

And let's not forget high-speed pizza delivery. Sorry couldn't help myself.

Seems like your friend cited George Best

Of course, there will always be protesters to the idea, claiming that the average citizen is an idiot and that elections stops those from getting elected. However, looking at some of those who actually are elected right now, you can see that that argument doesn't make a lot of sense.

Ha, ha, very funny. Now, all jokes and funny pictures aside, you do need a certain standard of intelligence to become elected. You simply can't have charisma without it for one. Bush is on the lower end of the scale, and even his "charisma" often lets him down. Seriously, is it really worth it to allow retards, or fundamentalist zealots (true zealots, not ones hampered by politics) behind the most armed up country of all time?

This is most unfortunate. Never would there have been a more appropriate place to call someone a team-killing fucktard.

Except he didn't actually say that (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattributed).

No, I just switched his COBOL quote out for the BASIC one on my whiteboard at work on Monday.

The BASIC one is

It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.

See: Wikiquote

First they laugh at you ... then they ignore you ... then they fight you ... then you win ...

thank you for quoting Gandhi http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gandhi#Quotes_about_Gandhi but you really should have included the source

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.

"There's something behind the scenes"

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I can't tell you why Ford is so stupid. ...

Then by your own words, you haven't adequately explained Ford's stupidity, leaving malice as a still viable option.

"There's something behind the scenes"

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

I can't tell you why Ford is so stupid. Like my 3rd grade-teaching niece says, "I don't speak retard".

That (unverifiable) quote dates back to 1981, when computers were running a hell of a lot less than 512k. Misjudging how fast computers would become and how cheap they'd get isn't being technically incompetent, it's just being short sited.

*yes bad source, but all the links for this quote are blogs and mailing lists and the like

remember: quantity != quality. Usually the opposite is true.

It depends on the situation. If you have a situation where you can break a problem into parallel, independent, and redundant tasks, then Quantity has a quality all its own. That's why the space shuttle has 3 computers and it's the principle behind all those _____@Home distributed computing projects. It's the principle behind using redundant clusters. Quantity doesn't necessarily deliver quality, but it can be used that way.

Heck, it's the key point in the advantages of market competition. If you're willing to spend the money to have 3 or 4 teams of .NET developers work on independent implementations of a system and then you pick the best one, you've got a reasonable chance of getting a good system if you let the teams know that quality, not feature bloat, will be the success factor for who gets the completion bonus. Theoretically, software markets would externalize that process but, unfortunately, quality ranks too low in the purchasing criteria of most software customers.

When Shakespeare wrote "first kill all the lawyers"* his ire was somewhat misdirected.

You know it was Jack Cade, the villian of the piece, that said this right?

FYI: Apparently, it was "Dick the butcher", and not "Jack Cade". Cade did concur, though.

Sources:
* http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_VI,_Part_2
* http://www.shakespeare-literature.com/Henry_VI,_part_2/13.html
* http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/2ws0210.txt

Q: With web crackdowns like this becoming more and more frequent do you think we will start to see similar (overt) activities from US and European governments?

A: In order to do this in the U.S. on any significant scale ( e.g. China), there would have to be a pervasive, gradual (so as not to raise alarms in the general populace) erosion of 1st Amendment Constitutional sensibilities. There are several pretexts that could be used to accomplish this, all of which are based on fears of one sort or another. I doubt very much if commercial concerns would succeed directly, but certainly commercial interests are capable of co-opting gov't, as we have seen many times in U.S. history. Consider how the confinement into concentration camps of U.S. citizens in WW II was rendered acceptable to the population at large by spreading FUD regarding the possibility of Japanese 5th column activity. I say that in the end fear is much more powerful than greed, both as a motivator and as a pretext. The notion of "the enemy within" is powerful indeed.

As fears of terrorism and 5th column activity within our borders increase, it becomes easier and easier to sway popular sentiment away from safeguarding 1st Amendment rights and move it towards safety and security. I need not repeat the admonition of Benjamin Franklin to this audience. I make no judgement as to the legitimacy of such a move when we are at genuine extremity, but in any other circumstance, it would be a tragedy.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
--- George Bernard Shaw

I'm not at all sure your criticism is based on the correct quotation source; cf: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Nietzsche#The_Gay_Science_.281882.29 Now back to nvidia....

If you're conservative when you're young, you have no heart-
If you're liberal when you're old, you have no brain-

Winston Churchill (?)

Misquoted. Easy to see since Churchill wouldn't have said "liberal" when he meant something along the lines of "communist", "socialist" or "social democrat". Saying "liberal" when talking about one of the latter three things is a thoroughly American thing. "Liberal" parties in the rest of the world are more like what Americans know as "Libertarians", just usually a bit more sane.

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

Bigot. The world needs both idealists and realists.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. --- George Bernard Shaw

Melissa: This is where the fish lives.

"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
--Benjamin Franklin http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin

To the mods who gave this a '-1, Flamebait', please be aware of the quote about Emacs "Emacs is a nice operating system. The only thing it lacks is a good editor."[1] If you don't know history, you're condemned to reinvent Unix (poorly) [2].

[1: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emacs]
[2: http://www.postel.org/pipermail/internet-history/2001-November/000068.html]

As a rule of thumb, the more qualifiers there are before the name of a country, the more corrupt the rulers. A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the last place in the world you'd want to live.

-- (Paul Graham)

"A sammich without bread isn't a sammich -- it's meat with mustard on your hands!" -- P. Potomus Esq.

It has been misattributed to both, but was actually by Rita Mae Brown. (Source: wikiquote.)

Sheridan: This is Captain John J. Sheridan. Serial number XO7Y39-Alpha. Security code: obsidian.
Ivanova: This is Commander Susan Ivanova. Serial number Z48M27-Epsilon. Security code: griffin.
Michael Garibaldi: This is Chief Warrant Officer Michael Garibaldi. Serial number V17L98. Security code: peekaboo.
. . .
Ivanova: Peekaboo?
Garibaldi: Would you have guessed it?

(linky)

"One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities."

Bill Gates, 1998, in a memo to the Office product group.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#proprietary-ie-capabilities

http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/2000/PX02991.pdf