Yeppers. The original story had a point. War sucks, seen from both sides.
The movie, well, it fell short of providing much of anything but gore. Gore, it had plenty. Gore and stupid pointless "heroics" just like the carboncopy horror flicks on scifi these days.
Contrast this with the Sci-Fi mini-series which managed to keep the plot quite similar, but turned Paul from a strong character plagued by the consequences of moral compromises into a whiney brat who I just wanted to slap.
You have no idea what a relief it is to find someone else who thinks that way. Doesn't seem to be many (that I've talked to, anyway) and I don't understand that.
Both versions have their good points and bad points, but from the beginning of the miniseries we get confronted with this little shit who needs to be turned over a knee, rather than the Paul of the book. That was one thing the feature film did right - Paul acted like he'd had the training and could survive the gom jabbar, and I thought it was well done. I don't know if it was the scripting, the acting, or the directing that destroyed the Paul character in the mini, (suspect a combination of all three) but it nearly ruined it for me. They could at least have done the main character right.
I wonder what, if any, weight public recognition had to do with the decision.
In my experience more of the general public know who Linus is (Linus, oh, linux! oh yeah, heard of that) than know who RMS is, in the US. I don't live in Europe, but I'd imagine it's even more so there.
So... do you know, for certain, that everyone you know, or have exchanged files with or phone messages or mail or time with, is *not* or *will not in the future* be considered a criminal or a terrorist?
Years ago I dated a woman for several months who was arrested (and eventually convicted) as being a courier for a methamphetmine distribution ring a few months after we ceased seeing each other. I had no idea what she was into, but I was visited many times by police officers who grilled me at length as to our relationship - because my phone# was in her cellphone and there were "handwritten documents" - letters, notes, journal entries - in her domicile that had my name on them - and threatened with prison for being "non-cooperative"; my apartment was searched twice, and details of the investigation leaked to local reporters.
I was "associated" with a drug ring, although I had no knowledge nor involvement in it. Fortunately I was cleared without being indicted or subpeoned, but only after several months of random interrogation and very annoying, obvious and aggravating surveillance which cost me reputation and money. Many months later there were still people spreading damaging rumors about me; I eventually moved more than a thousand miles from there, partially for personal reasons, but also because my business dried up to an extent as a result of the attention. One of the things the police threw at me was our intense exchange of phone calls over that short period. They just didn't seem to believe that maybe I was interested in her because she was an attractive woman. I spoke to a local lawyer about it who told me there was no recourse - iow, I couldn't sue the local police department for the damage caused.
I'd like to note that no public statement was ever made by the local PD regarding my innocence, despite repeated demands on the part of me and my lawyer to do so. That, to me, was criminal negligence on the part of the local PD. How many times does one see public apologies for ruining someone's life in that sort of circumstance? IF this woman turns out to have been innocently duped, will she ever recover her life? What recourse might *she* have?
In the US, we have this oft-repeated yet apparently little understood concept called "innnocent until proven guilty". Or at least we used to.
I'm not defending the woman in the article (insufficient data), but I am trying to point out just how damaging baseless allegations can be, especially when made by "authorities" and spread by the media - and if you think that you are immune to it, you might want to reconsider that. It can happen to anyone; don't think you're immune to it simply because you are innocent. People in a society are interconnected, that's why we call it a society. What are you going to do, avoid all connections with other people? There was another sort of damage there - I'm even more paranoid than I used to be when it comes to relationships. Can I sue them for it? Should I? I've been advised against it, as the burden of "proof of damages" would be too difficult. But the damage is very real.
So tell me, friend, where should the line be drawn?
Perhaps we should eliminate *all* secular and legal recognition of marriage entirely, and leave it as it should be - a private thing between consenting adults that isn't legislated at all.
Heinlein thought so, and I've always thought it was the most common sense approach.
Otherwise it's fodder for those who would feed off the system. Leave inheritance and such to written wills and civil courts.
Yeah, it's radical. Maybe it's radical enough to work.
Buy a tracfone. $29.xx at Walmart, 250 minutes for fifty bucks (or better if you want to spend more). Unless you need something that'll let you talk to your girlfriend for fourteen hours at a time, they are a pretty good deal. I recently carried mine on a trip across NW South Dakota and had a tower for just about the whole trip. No credit check, they pretty much just work, although adding minutes can be a pain sometimes, their tech support has been pretty good in my experience. Nice, too, if you want relative anonymity (ie, no name tied to the phone).
Other cell co's/phone packages have pay-as-you-go plans; last time I was at Walleyed-world there were three or four phones like that on the displays for under $100 with various plans.
Check to see what sort of service in your area is available first. Unless you are *way* the hell out there, at the very least a tracfone ought to work for you.
Oh, and warning: These phones have other functions on them, too. Games, and shit. You don't have to use them, however;-)
Danged kids;-) (I'm only forty and you are making me feel old;-)
The negatives that the author of the linked article writes about are also true. Hauling around all of your camera gear to various spots on the globe does get a bit harder with more (and heavier) gear. I just got back from a trip to Argentina at the foot of the Andes (pics to be posted tomorrow morning) and it does take a bit more effort to pack everything you need to take with you. The gear addiction and associated costs do not stop at the camera body and lenses either. You will find yourself buying tripods, monopods, backpacks, filters, flashes, books, more books etc...etc...etc....
Kinda like the old days, huh? Just without the boxes of film and the cooler to keep them in.:-)
Actually, it makes sense to have viable samples from both men and women in the "bank", and methods to combine and bring them to term artificially - given the high possibilities of radiation damage to interplanetary travelers. If they want to have kids some day, they have relatively undamaged resources to produce them with. Space travel is kinda risky that way and will likely remain so for a while, although there are plenty of ways around it.
Of course, the real advantage there, is that everyone can screw as much as they want to with no other implications than the social ones.
Now you've done it. Some idiot is going to read this thread and produce a SciFi infomer-, er, quasi-documentary-original-movie called "Revenge of the Ants". And they'll use this plot. But the end will be that the butterfl-- naw, can't spoil it.
How about putting a limit on the features actually in the base browser download, and making (more?) officially supported extensions or add-ons? Give the user the choice of what they need.
It's one of the things that makes the causes on a particular system so damned hard to track down. I have three machines with five operating systems here, and the same version of firefox will have different rates of memory consumption on all of them, with the same tabs open. Add Extensions and it becomes a huge amount of troubleshooting, and then the solution for your install might not fit another one. Given how insanely complicated and varied operating system installs can be these days, it's not surprising.
It looks to me like the fixes they did in 2.0 are working - I just upgraded to Ubuntu 6.10 and have been torture testing firefox, about 60 tabs open right now and it's using roughly 300M memory - which is about half what 1.5 used on this same box, same tabs, etc two weeks ago, although I've only had it open for two days now. It is definitely faster as well. I'm also running it in XP on the laptop, and so far no problems, although memory usage is about 100M greater although the speed increase still seems to be there.
Nice work!
I do have a question, although not a really pressing one - I'd like to see a "dynamic bookmark import" feature that can check for new bookmarks in other browsers, and periodically add them to firefox's bookmarks, along with more sophisticated bookmark features such as tags (so one can search by those), an option to check whether the link still exists/is still the same, and some other features. Are there any expansions of the bookmark manager coming up in the future? How easy would it be for a relatively inexperienced coder such as myself to contribute?
I wouldn't be real surprised if both were true - I'd imagine there are or were sets floating around that belonged to internment camp denizens at one time, and that there were local officials who may have taken the directive to extremes.
I vaguely remember reading something similar many years ago in an autobiography of a holocaust survivor who came to the states after the war to live with relatives, but can't remember who it was or the title (read it in the 70s) - so this is interesting. If you find out any more, post it in this thread, will you?
It is NOT the responsibility of the federal government to dictate how parents should raise their kids.
It is NOT the responsibility of the state government to dictate how parents should raise their kids.
It *MAY BE* the responsibility of the local city government and/or LE dept to help the parent if their kid gets out of hand. It is still the responsiblity of the parent to try to do the best job they can. However, you can't hold them ultimately responsible - if so, one should perhaps hold the public school system to the same, right? Or the DoE can just admit that their policies aren't working... after all, they have the kids for more of each day than most parents do anymore...
Slashdot Mirror
Yeppers. The original story had a point. War sucks, seen from both sides.
The movie, well, it fell short of providing much of anything but gore. Gore, it had plenty. Gore and stupid pointless "heroics" just like the carboncopy horror flicks on scifi these days.
Plotless, pointless, and boring. *click off*
snark
Contrast this with the Sci-Fi mini-series which managed to keep the plot quite similar, but turned Paul from a strong character plagued by the consequences of moral compromises into a whiney brat who I just wanted to slap.
You have no idea what a relief it is to find someone else who thinks that way. Doesn't seem to be many (that I've talked to, anyway) and I don't understand that.
Both versions have their good points and bad points, but from the beginning of the miniseries we get confronted with this little shit who needs to be turned over a knee, rather than the Paul of the book. That was one thing the feature film did right - Paul acted like he'd had the training and could survive the gom jabbar, and I thought it was well done. I don't know if it was the scripting, the acting, or the directing that destroyed the Paul character in the mini, (suspect a combination of all three) but it nearly ruined it for me. They could at least have done the main character right.
snarked
I wonder what, if any, weight public recognition had to do with the decision.
In my experience more of the general public know who Linus is (Linus, oh, linux! oh yeah, heard of that) than know who RMS is, in the US. I don't live in Europe, but I'd imagine it's even more so there.
snark
> The only way to incinerate things in space practically would be with a electric plasma arc
Why not a solar collecting mirror? Just eject the trash thru the focus at low velocity. A mirror could be just cheap foil and framework, too.
snark
We aren't wolves, and neither are we sheep. That's the major flaw in your argument.
We have *choice*, even if we rarely use it wisely; commentary about sustainable ecosystems aside...
snark!d
So... do you know, for certain, that everyone you know, or have exchanged files with or phone messages or mail or time with, is *not* or *will not in the future* be considered a criminal or a terrorist?
Years ago I dated a woman for several months who was arrested (and eventually convicted) as being a courier for a methamphetmine distribution ring a few months after we ceased seeing each other. I had no idea what she was into, but I was visited many times by police officers who grilled me at length as to our relationship - because my phone# was in her cellphone and there were "handwritten documents" - letters, notes, journal entries - in her domicile that had my name on them - and threatened with prison for being "non-cooperative"; my apartment was searched twice, and details of the investigation leaked to local reporters.
I was "associated" with a drug ring, although I had no knowledge nor involvement in it. Fortunately I was cleared without being indicted or subpeoned, but only after several months of random interrogation and very annoying, obvious and aggravating surveillance which cost me reputation and money. Many months later there were still people spreading damaging rumors about me; I eventually moved more than a thousand miles from there, partially for personal reasons, but also because my business dried up to an extent as a result of the attention. One of the things the police threw at me was our intense exchange of phone calls over that short period. They just didn't seem to believe that maybe I was interested in her because she was an attractive woman. I spoke to a local lawyer about it who told me there was no recourse - iow, I couldn't sue the local police department for the damage caused.
I'd like to note that no public statement was ever made by the local PD regarding my innocence, despite repeated demands on the part of me and my lawyer to do so. That, to me, was criminal negligence on the part of the local PD. How many times does one see public apologies for ruining someone's life in that sort of circumstance? IF this woman turns out to have been innocently duped, will she ever recover her life? What recourse might *she* have?
In the US, we have this oft-repeated yet apparently little understood concept called "innnocent until proven guilty". Or at least we used to.
I'm not defending the woman in the article (insufficient data), but I am trying to point out just how damaging baseless allegations can be, especially when made by "authorities" and spread by the media - and if you think that you are immune to it, you might want to reconsider that. It can happen to anyone; don't think you're immune to it simply because you are innocent. People in a society are interconnected, that's why we call it a society. What are you going to do, avoid all connections with other people? There was another sort of damage there - I'm even more paranoid than I used to be when it comes to relationships. Can I sue them for it? Should I? I've been advised against it, as the burden of "proof of damages" would be too difficult. But the damage is very real.
So tell me, friend, where should the line be drawn?
snarked
Perhaps we should eliminate *all* secular and legal recognition of marriage entirely, and leave it as it should be - a private thing between consenting adults that isn't legislated at all.
Heinlein thought so, and I've always thought it was the most common sense approach.
Otherwise it's fodder for those who would feed off the system. Leave inheritance and such to written wills and civil courts.
Yeah, it's radical. Maybe it's radical enough to work.
snark'd
A company proposes an open linux cellphone, and there aren't enough nerds left on slashdot to even fill a page with intelligent comments.
That's lame, my friend. Slashdot is bleeding it's best readers.
snarkd
linuxdevices.com seems to have had a link at one time, but it's apparently gone now
w ww.linuxdevices.com/sponsors/SP8515396280.html+ope nmoko&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1&client=firefox-a
google cache: http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:6NxUy-LDPgcJ:
8:20MT
Odd there isn't more
snark'd
I assume you are living in the US.
;-)
;-) (I'm only forty and you are making me feel old ;-)
Buy a tracfone. $29.xx at Walmart, 250 minutes for fifty bucks (or better if you want to spend more). Unless you need something that'll let you talk to your girlfriend for fourteen hours at a time, they are a pretty good deal. I recently carried mine on a trip across NW South Dakota and had a tower for just about the whole trip. No credit check, they pretty much just work, although adding minutes can be a pain sometimes, their tech support has been pretty good in my experience. Nice, too, if you want relative anonymity (ie, no name tied to the phone).
Other cell co's/phone packages have pay-as-you-go plans; last time I was at Walleyed-world there were three or four phones like that on the displays for under $100 with various plans.
Check to see what sort of service in your area is available first. Unless you are *way* the hell out there, at the very least a tracfone ought to work for you.
Oh, and warning: These phones have other functions on them, too. Games, and shit. You don't have to use them, however
Danged kids
snark!d
itscrap
;-)
Oh great, another tag meme.
snarkd
sorry for the late reply...
;*)
My apologies, just thought it might be a helpful addition, I'd like to see if he's been thinking along those lines as well.
*slinks away*
snarke(d)
Begun, these tag wars have.
youreit!
snarkd
That's what camcorders are for.
(Yeah, more expense. So how is that different from the film days, when it was singleshot and super8 or VHS?)
(I expect that in the future the two products will... become one.)
snarkd
The negatives that the author of the linked article writes about are also true. Hauling around all of your camera gear to various spots on the globe does get a bit harder with more (and heavier) gear. I just got back from a trip to Argentina at the foot of the Andes (pics to be posted tomorrow morning) and it does take a bit more effort to pack everything you need to take with you. The gear addiction and associated costs do not stop at the camera body and lenses either. You will find yourself buying tripods, monopods, backpacks, filters, flashes, books, more books etc...etc...etc....
:-)
Kinda like the old days, huh? Just without the boxes of film and the cooler to keep them in.
snarkd
Actually, it makes sense to have viable samples from both men and women in the "bank", and methods to combine and bring them to term artificially - given the high possibilities of radiation damage to interplanetary travelers. If they want to have kids some day, they have relatively undamaged resources to produce them with. Space travel is kinda risky that way and will likely remain so for a while, although there are plenty of ways around it.
;-)
Of course, the real advantage there, is that everyone can screw as much as they want to with no other implications than the social ones.
Hmm. Where have I seen that before?
snarky
Or "kit"
snarky
Now you've done it. Some idiot is going to read this thread and produce a SciFi infomer-, er, quasi-documentary-original-movie called "Revenge of the Ants". And they'll use this plot. But the end will be that the butterfl-- naw, can't spoil it.
snarky
and keep thunderbird bare and modular as well. Please. snarky
Or compromise?
How about putting a limit on the features actually in the base browser download, and making (more?) officially supported extensions or add-ons? Give the user the choice of what they need.
s
It's one of the things that makes the causes on a particular system so damned hard to track down. I have three machines with five operating systems here, and the same version of firefox will have different rates of memory consumption on all of them, with the same tabs open. Add Extensions and it becomes a huge amount of troubleshooting, and then the solution for your install might not fit another one. Given how insanely complicated and varied operating system installs can be these days, it's not surprising.
It looks to me like the fixes they did in 2.0 are working - I just upgraded to Ubuntu 6.10 and have been torture testing firefox, about 60 tabs open right now and it's using roughly 300M memory - which is about half what 1.5 used on this same box, same tabs, etc two weeks ago, although I've only had it open for two days now. It is definitely faster as well. I'm also running it in XP on the laptop, and so far no problems, although memory usage is about 100M greater although the speed increase still seems to be there.
Nice work!
I do have a question, although not a really pressing one - I'd like to see a "dynamic bookmark import" feature that can check for new bookmarks in other browsers, and periodically add them to firefox's bookmarks, along with more sophisticated bookmark features such as tags (so one can search by those), an option to check whether the link still exists/is still the same, and some other features. Are there any expansions of the bookmark manager coming up in the future? How easy would it be for a relatively inexperienced coder such as myself to contribute?
snarky
I wouldn't be real surprised if both were true - I'd imagine there are or were sets floating around that belonged to internment camp denizens at one time, and that there were local officials who may have taken the directive to extremes.
I vaguely remember reading something similar many years ago in an autobiography of a holocaust survivor who came to the states after the war to live with relatives, but can't remember who it was or the title (read it in the 70s) - so this is interesting. If you find out any more, post it in this thread, will you?
snarkth
It's all in caps though, so it's probably spam...
So... does SETI run spamassassin on potential messages? Do they have any false positives? Or does the spellchecker reject it outright?
*snark*
It is NOT the responsibility of the federal government to dictate how parents should raise their kids.
It is NOT the responsibility of the state government to dictate how parents should raise their kids.
It *MAY BE* the responsibility of the local city government and/or LE dept to help the parent if their kid gets out of hand. It is still the responsiblity of the parent to try to do the best job they can. However, you can't hold them ultimately responsible - if so, one should perhaps hold the public school system to the same, right? Or the DoE can just admit that their policies aren't working... after all, they have the kids for more of each day than most parents do anymore...
*snark*
With proper parenting, the kids shouldn't think killing/harming others is the answer.
Are all the walls blue in your fantasy world?
Perhaps we should ban Army recruiting ads, and the evening news, then... oh, and ban Bush the younger, please.
*snark*