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How many Mandelbrots are there in an Ellison?

Sure. Linux is cheap. Linux is free. Does one thus conclude my consumption of linux increases?

Even if you made food free I wouldn't eat any more than I currently do. Well - I suppose SOME people might try to consume more - but then they will just get fat.

What she misses is that at ANY price there is a maximum amount people will consume and once the price drops low enough then further price declines have no meaning.

Bertrand Russell pointed this out in an essay in 1932: In Praise of Idleness

Funny that over 70 years later we still have not caught on that Russell is correct.

In fact, what people need to start realizing is that in an economy one person's expense is another person's income. When we eliminate people from the workforce we do not benefit from the "savings" because there may well be none. By leaving a segment of our work force idle all we accomplish is that we lose what they can contribute.

This is one reason that NASA really does not cost what anti-space antagonists suggest it costs. If we eliminate NASA then somewhere else a would be engineer gets pushed out of a job and can't contribute his talents to the economy. Ditto with programmers.

I could recognize myself as king of San Francisco, would that make it so?

There's several cases where software failure has been fatal.

How about the case of the THERAC-25, where several died or were seriously injured.

This is a typical case study shown in any ethics course involving software design. It turns out the cause of the severe radiation burns was from the operator entering commands and parameters faster than the unit could handle.

Then there's the Soviet pipeline that blew up due to delibrately buggy software stolen from the US.

Then there's the Osprey , had software bugs that killed 30 Marines in 3 accidents.

There's also 2 commercial jet crashes due to software problems with either radar, or just reporting position properly to the pilot, killing over 300 people in the 2 accidents.

This problem is very real. So when people joke about getting a BSOD while driving a car, it's highly plausable.

Sorry, it's just the way this is phrased brings to mind this.

MS Uber Alles!

(X) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

1835 73rd Ave NE, Medina, WA 98039
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$1000 is trivial? You must must be one of those successful nerds.

Bill's made it possible for any random high-school loser to destroy $14 billion of other people's hard work

Well, remember Bill Gates himself is a college dropout. Dis might explain dat ...

And the assination of Kennedy and the shooting of Martin Luthor King Jr., anyone who questions if the government was involved must be a nutcase. So what if Kennedy's brain was removed before the casket got to DC, even though it was well reported in the media; that must be the conspiracy nuts talking.

And Vince Foster, found covered in carpet fibers with the gun that he used to blow his brains out still in his hand neatly at his side and no blood around was well investigated by Park Rangers, you would have to be a conspracy nut to think his death, or that of Ron Brown (who was about to receive a sopena on the Clinton's activities when he dies in a plane crash, even though x-rays showed bullets in his skull) or anyone else on the Clinton body count was anything else than just a random event, right?

Any you would have to be a conspiracy nut to think that our own government did secret radiation experiments on many of it's own soldies and citizens without their knowledge, right? Oh wait, they finally admitted that, after lots of pressure from the conspiracy nuts.

How about being a conspiracy nut if you think they kept us in Vietnam when the political leaders had already decided we could (or would not) not win that war? Or that the supposed attack on the US ship that got us into it never really happened? Opps, they finally admitted both of those things too.

But conspiracy is just such a great word to throw around when you want to dismiss someone who has something to say that you don't want heard. At least we can remember how the supposedly smartest woman in the world called all those people who wrongly accused her husband of having sex with the fat broad "the vast right-wing conspiracy" while Bill told us he did not have sex with that woman. Anyone who said he did was a conspiracy nut in the vast right-wing conspiracy

If, for instance, the democratic process was subverted in some way, We The People were expected to take up our arms and restore proper government.

And it has happened. More than once.

The poster-child for this is the Battle of Athens, where returning WW II veterans overthrew a pair of political machines by force of arms.

Another less reputable example is the San Francisco Vigilance Committee's "Second Clensing" in which the cleaned out the Barbary Coast political machine.

But there are plenty more.

Note that "law and order" is just the institutionalization of vigilantism, with checks against misapplying penalties in the heat of the moment. If the instution breaks down, the people often will take the power back into their own hands, from which (according to the US's legal theories) it originates.

People in the US are normally loathe to do this except under extreme circumstances, and generally use their power to restore the institutions to proper function rather than replace them outright. (Even the Revolution started as a battle to recover what the colonists perceived as the "Rights of Free Englishmen")

Tom.

(Fuck karma).

I think this essay by the great Bertrand Russell not only outlines the historical point you have made, but why the cult of efficiency and productivity which infects our society is so destructive and devisive.

Perhaps you read it, but for those out there who have not quite realized that the promise of technology, more free time, has not materialized, please read this essay.

See here (info on Norton) and here (more Clamper info in the second article as well).

-W-

As a discordian, I will be celebrating an important religious holiday instead of Valentine's day. Emperor Norton I (patron saint of Emperor Norton I, and all things related)'s birthday is also on Feb 14.

In praise of idleness

In Praise of Idleness

San fransisco has willie brown easily one of the most corrupt politicians in the entire west coast. We have davis sucking dick for anyone who might help him get to the presidency (that includes ellison). Speaking of which just living in the same state as ellison, siebel (tom), and the like makes my skin crawl. California easily has one of the most overtaxed populace in the united states without any real state-sponsored socialist programs here that are worth mentioning, where does the money go?

Man, there's not even as much documentation on this as there is on Arkansas Sudden Death Syndrome. And here's another site on the same subject.

An as long as I'm posting, here's a nice statistical roundup of the Clinton Administration in gener.

If you're going to spout absurd conspiracy theories, it's nice to have at least some documentation for some of your claims...

Even though Mac's are beautiful machines, the corporation behind them is just as ugly as Microsoft.

This dude (maybe you've heard of him) has modded his dell laptop with a k-rad sticker

He also modded his car, perhaps you've seen it.

PLEASE DO NOT VOTE FOR FEINSTEIN!!! Here is an entire website devoted to why you should not vote for her. She's anti-civil rights, anti-Internet, anti-just about everything. I'm not a republican but I'm definitely voting for Tom Campbell, who doesn't support the war on drugs and is pro-choice. Here is Tom Campbell's voting record, and the one on his web site.