Just a note - a friend bought an iPod at CostCo. Two years later, it croaked. One day while in CostCo, he cracked a remark while talking to a manager about how disappointed he was that it had not lasted more than two years. The guy told him to bring it in. He did, they pulled up his CostCo card to confirm it was bought there (well, SOME iPod was bought there by him), and they gave him a full refund.
I'm more and more impressed by CostCo every time I hear these stories.
Nah, gmail is a much better name. First you have the brevity thing, which is always handy. Second, it rhymes with "e-mail", which is good marketing. Easy when telling people your address "'gmail' like 'email', only with a 'g' instead of an 'e'". Of course, they COULD call it "googlemail" and still use "gmail". They call it "Google Maps" but the url is "maps.google.com", just like gmail actually takes you to "mail.google.com."
First off, Reagan didn't free the hostages, the Iranians did. Because Carter became a fall guy. If it had been Reagen in power when the hostages were taken and Carter running to unseat him, I think it would have worked out the same way.
And Reagan only gave them #3 (granted, the Shah was already dead). Which we're in the process of breaking right now.
BTW, Carter not only praised the Shah "prior to the incident", he praised him prior to the revolution. As I'm sure many other US presidents did. That doesn't make him right, it just doesn't make him any more wrong than the rest. Also, keep in mind one of the big reasons the hostages all returned safely was the secret deal between Carter and Khomeini that the US wouldn't invade Iran in return for keeping them safe.
It's pretty clear that Carter was made the fall guy for decades of policy in the middle east. The Iranians were ready to kick out the Shah and if it wasn't Carter it would have been someone else. And whoever was in power, they wouldn't have just rolled over to the Iranian demands. It took time for them to drop their other demands one by one until we got them down to something our government could live with. They were also politically savvy in their timing of releasing the hostages to make it look like Iran "took down a president" (whether you believe the October Surprise conspiracy theory or not).
I just think we should keep some perspective, since Carter couldn't have fundamentally changed what happened, just fiddled with the details. The only ones who could have made a difference were the ones who were behind the decades of policy that led to the situation.
That's like saying what finally led to 9/11 was Bush ignoring the paper about an imminent Bin Laden attack. Or Clinton not capturing him. Or GHW Bush's installation of a military presence in Saudi Arabia.
But in reality, that's a very short term view. The hostage crisis was the result of numerous decisions over many decades by a bunch of world leaders. Had Carter not let the Shah in, it's very likely that something else could have precipitated the same crisis or something similar.
Errr, what? Are you blaming Carter for the Iran hostage crisis? Isn't that a bit like blaming Bush for 9/11? Granted, there are crackpots out there who want to do that, but I'd rather hope we're not among them. If you had instead said his handling of the crisis (and maybe that's what you really meant), I might be more inclined to agree. But there's only so much you can do when a country decides it hates you, primarily because of decades of western-installed government.
OMG, it's like talking to a four year old. The flood myth is that the whole WORLD was wiped out. That was the myth when it started and having discovered that their known world was larger than previously thought has not altered it. The myth just expanded to cover the new "entire world." And it's not hyperbole to say that the Judeo-Christian flood myth applies to the whole earth and not just the known world of thousands of years ago:
3: of the fowl also of the air, seven and seven, male and female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth. 4: For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I blot out from off the face of the earth. 19: And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered. 21: And all flesh perished that moved upon the earth, both fowl, and cattle, and beast, and every swarming thing that swarmeth upon the earth, and every man; 23: And He blotted out every living substance which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and creeping thing, and fowl of the heaven; and they were blotted out from the earth; and Noah only was left, and they that were with him in the ark.
This is the flood myth of Judaism and Christianity. Only the intentionally obtuse would parse my statement as claiming there was no geological evidence for ANY flooding in the region. You, sir or madam, or not arguing with me but with some strawman of your own creation. I will leave you to it. Good day.
The number of people who bought the Mac when it finally came out in 1984 dwarfed the number who ever bought a Xerox Alto in the preceeding eleven years.
Would you be able to tell the difference... Oh, I'm sure I probably wouldn't be able to tell. I only pointed it out because the GP was poking fun at other people because they would mistake a Brazilian or an Indian person for an "arabic looking" person. It just seemed a bit accidentally hypocritical.
Are you REALLY this dim? You knew that the "flood myth" mentioned was the myth that it was a global flood that destroyed everyone but Noah and the inhabitants of the Ark, a myth that persists to this day in a large part of the Jewish and Christian population. Yet you decided to take it literally and pretend I'm claiming there was never a flood of any kind. As if I had said "creation myth" and you started calling me an idiot because, duh, the Earth was created at some point, it wasn't always here since the beginning of time!!!!111 Your literal reading of my post is reminiscent as those who take a literal view of biblical stories.
I'm saying it's a highly outrageous claim, since there is a line of inventions and incremental work by unrelated scientists all over the world leading up to NVG or any other tech. So the claim would have to be that the military got them, used them but kept them quiet, then coordinated with all the scientists to give them little bits of information every few years but convinced them to keep it hush-hush. Also, they convinced the soldiers who used them to keep it quiet. Again, it's simply an outrageous claim.
Again, the problem is that when you throw around the term "people", you have to keep in mind who those people are. They are scientists in many different parts of the country, through many different decades. They would have to have all been keeping a secret. This seems incredibly less likely than that they would announce the advanced technology itself as the discovery, rather than puttering around in a lab for decades, making an incremental advance half-way work. That's where the outrageousness really comes into play.
Wiki says HD-DVD is exclusively backed by The Weinstein Company/Dimension Films (through Genius Products), and First Look Studios. A number of Warner's releases have been HD-DVD only. And then there are the non-content companies who are exclusively backing HD-DVD: Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, RCA, Kenwood, Intel, and Memory-Tech Corporation.
Personally, I think it's a bit early to be deciding who is doomed and who isn't. I think it's just as likely that both formats are doomed and there will be a "winner" only in the same way that laserdisc "won" the battle to be the next video medium after VHS. It was the format to use, there were just a low percentage of people interested in it.
My experience with T-Mobile is that reception in any major US cities and along all freeway corridors has been perfect. Only times I've had problems have been in rural areas. Caveat: I have not traveled all around the country.
I bought 1000 minutes for $100, and they don't expire until the end of next February. It's been over four months and I still have over 300 minutes left. So that's worked out to less than $20 a month. Your price will depend on how much you use it, though. But I knew I wasn't getting my money's worth out of my $50 a month plan.
Well, taking just Judeo-Christianity for an example, I don't think it will be much of a stretch. If they can maintain a flood myth in the face of a overwhelming geological evidence to the contrary, and some more fundamental groups can persist in claiming the age of the Earth at 6000 based on interpretations of the scripture, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, and if they can get over half of the American population to believe humans didn't evolve but were instead created as they are now, AND they can explain that even though Jesus came and died for people's sins that even those who died before he did would be given a retroactive chance at forgiveness, they can surely handle aliens.
No, it won't be the same religion as it is now, but it will adapt and mold itself to take new factors into account. Think about this - compare people's lives and society thousands of years ago with the world today. Now, compare that to anything we could find in an alien civilization. The first scenario is a much larger gap than the second. Maybe it would have been otherwise before the era of scifi. But at this point, we've used our imagination quite heavily in the realm of alien contact. It would be a shock, but it would be one we're expecting.
I don't quite understand why this is would be an outrageous claim Well, it's a bit like school. Remember how you always had to "show your work" to prove that you weren't cheating? No big jumps from problem to solution. Well, it's the same way with all this "current technology." Work on it has been incremental through the years. For every breakthrough you can trace the history leading up to it, and find people who almost but not quite got there. The breakthrough of silicon transistors was preceded by years of struggling with germanium transistors. That was preceded by years of trying to figure out how semiconductors worked and what they might be good for. That really picked up steam in the 1920s. And prior to the transistor, you can look at the history of vacuum tubes. They followed a parallel line of development and formed the bridge to the transistor era (early electronics and computers used vacuum tubes).
So for such a claim to NOT be outrageous, you'd have to also claim a vast conspiracy of scientists all over the world through the decades, sitting on most of their findings while publishing just enough to give an incremental step for the next breakthroughs. Or you'd need the aliens to be directing this, handing out tiny little tidbits of information to the scientists, and either swearing them to secrecy or using some sort of mind control on them. So yes, it is quite outrageous.
On the other hand, if next week some scientist produced working plans for a fusion generator that used a grand unified theory totally different than any proposed, now THAT would be what it would take to not be an outrageous claim of getting outside help.
Not really. The real problem is that there's always a small minority that wants to cheat. They drive off the large majority that just want to play a good game.
get some arabic looking guy... find out if the dumbasses can even stereotype by ethnicity or just skin tones
Interestingly enough, the term "arab" as used by many westerners is actually a stereotype of its own. Iran is not an Arab country. A large percentage of the population of Iraq (at least 20%) are not Arabs. The term has become much like the term "mexican", which is widely used in the U.S. to refer to anyone from Central or South American. It's also like saying "muslim looking."
I bring this up because your statement seems to also have this confusion, even if it's not malicious. It's as if I rewrote it the following way:
Hrmm, you guys should get some Mexican looking guy with all those permits to go around trying the same thing. Better yet, maybe Italian or Filipino just to find out if the dumbasses can even stereotype by ethnicity or just skin tones
By this standard, Microsoft deserves the credit for the GUI. The number of people who bought Windows when it finally came out dwarfed the number who ever bought a Mac.
I read the original post as saying the court splits down party line when it splits. Maybe that's not what the poster really meant, but that's what it looked like to me. Otherwise the second sentence beginning with "I wonder" doesn't make any sense. The point being that when there is a split in the court, it also seems to fall with the same justices on either side. Now whether or not it has split 5-4 in a totally different way, or even 6-3, I AM too lazy to google.
Slashdot Mirror
Errr, you just repeated what he said.
Your comments are irrelevant, as Apple users are too cool to be clumsy.
Oh, and they eat their young.
It burns, burns, burns...
Just a note - a friend bought an iPod at CostCo. Two years later, it croaked. One day while in CostCo, he cracked a remark while talking to a manager about how disappointed he was that it had not lasted more than two years. The guy told him to bring it in. He did, they pulled up his CostCo card to confirm it was bought there (well, SOME iPod was bought there by him), and they gave him a full refund.
I'm more and more impressed by CostCo every time I hear these stories.
Nah, gmail is a much better name. First you have the brevity thing, which is always handy. Second, it rhymes with "e-mail", which is good marketing. Easy when telling people your address "'gmail' like 'email', only with a 'g' instead of an 'e'". Of course, they COULD call it "googlemail" and still use "gmail". They call it "Google Maps" but the url is "maps.google.com", just like gmail actually takes you to "mail.google.com."
First off, Reagan didn't free the hostages, the Iranians did. Because Carter became a fall guy. If it had been Reagen in power when the hostages were taken and Carter running to unseat him, I think it would have worked out the same way.
And Reagan only gave them #3 (granted, the Shah was already dead). Which we're in the process of breaking right now.
BTW, Carter not only praised the Shah "prior to the incident", he praised him prior to the revolution. As I'm sure many other US presidents did. That doesn't make him right, it just doesn't make him any more wrong than the rest. Also, keep in mind one of the big reasons the hostages all returned safely was the secret deal between Carter and Khomeini that the US wouldn't invade Iran in return for keeping them safe.
It's pretty clear that Carter was made the fall guy for decades of policy in the middle east. The Iranians were ready to kick out the Shah and if it wasn't Carter it would have been someone else. And whoever was in power, they wouldn't have just rolled over to the Iranian demands. It took time for them to drop their other demands one by one until we got them down to something our government could live with. They were also politically savvy in their timing of releasing the hostages to make it look like Iran "took down a president" (whether you believe the October Surprise conspiracy theory or not).
I just think we should keep some perspective, since Carter couldn't have fundamentally changed what happened, just fiddled with the details. The only ones who could have made a difference were the ones who were behind the decades of policy that led to the situation.
That's like saying what finally led to 9/11 was Bush ignoring the paper about an imminent Bin Laden attack. Or Clinton not capturing him. Or GHW Bush's installation of a military presence in Saudi Arabia.
But in reality, that's a very short term view. The hostage crisis was the result of numerous decisions over many decades by a bunch of world leaders. Had Carter not let the Shah in, it's very likely that something else could have precipitated the same crisis or something similar.
Errr, what? Are you blaming Carter for the Iran hostage crisis? Isn't that a bit like blaming Bush for 9/11? Granted, there are crackpots out there who want to do that, but I'd rather hope we're not among them. If you had instead said his handling of the crisis (and maybe that's what you really meant), I might be more inclined to agree. But there's only so much you can do when a country decides it hates you, primarily because of decades of western-installed government.
OMG, it's like talking to a four year old. The flood myth is that the whole WORLD was wiped out. That was the myth when it started and having discovered that their known world was larger than previously thought has not altered it. The myth just expanded to cover the new "entire world." And it's not hyperbole to say that the Judeo-Christian flood myth applies to the whole earth and not just the known world of thousands of years ago:
3: of the fowl also of the air, seven and seven, male and female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
4: For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I blot out from off the face of the earth.
19: And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered.
21: And all flesh perished that moved upon the earth, both fowl, and cattle, and beast, and every swarming thing that swarmeth upon the earth, and every man;
23: And He blotted out every living substance which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and creeping thing, and fowl of the heaven; and they were blotted out from the earth; and Noah only was left, and they that were with him in the ark.
This is the flood myth of Judaism and Christianity. Only the intentionally obtuse would parse my statement as claiming there was no geological evidence for ANY flooding in the region. You, sir or madam, or not arguing with me but with some strawman of your own creation. I will leave you to it. Good day.
The number of people who bought the Mac when it finally came out in 1984 dwarfed the number who ever bought a Xerox Alto in the preceeding eleven years.
There ya go.
Are you REALLY this dim? You knew that the "flood myth" mentioned was the myth that it was a global flood that destroyed everyone but Noah and the inhabitants of the Ark, a myth that persists to this day in a large part of the Jewish and Christian population. Yet you decided to take it literally and pretend I'm claiming there was never a flood of any kind. As if I had said "creation myth" and you started calling me an idiot because, duh, the Earth was created at some point, it wasn't always here since the beginning of time!!!!111 Your literal reading of my post is reminiscent as those who take a literal view of biblical stories.
And you call me an idiot.
I'm saying it's a highly outrageous claim, since there is a line of inventions and incremental work by unrelated scientists all over the world leading up to NVG or any other tech. So the claim would have to be that the military got them, used them but kept them quiet, then coordinated with all the scientists to give them little bits of information every few years but convinced them to keep it hush-hush. Also, they convinced the soldiers who used them to keep it quiet. Again, it's simply an outrageous claim.
Again, the problem is that when you throw around the term "people", you have to keep in mind who those people are. They are scientists in many different parts of the country, through many different decades. They would have to have all been keeping a secret. This seems incredibly less likely than that they would announce the advanced technology itself as the discovery, rather than puttering around in a lab for decades, making an incremental advance half-way work. That's where the outrageousness really comes into play.
Wiki says HD-DVD is exclusively backed by The Weinstein Company/Dimension Films (through Genius Products), and First Look Studios. A number of Warner's releases have been HD-DVD only. And then there are the non-content companies who are exclusively backing HD-DVD: Toshiba, NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, RCA, Kenwood, Intel, and Memory-Tech Corporation.
Personally, I think it's a bit early to be deciding who is doomed and who isn't. I think it's just as likely that both formats are doomed and there will be a "winner" only in the same way that laserdisc "won" the battle to be the next video medium after VHS. It was the format to use, there were just a low percentage of people interested in it.
My experience with T-Mobile is that reception in any major US cities and along all freeway corridors has been perfect. Only times I've had problems have been in rural areas. Caveat: I have not traveled all around the country.
I bought 1000 minutes for $100, and they don't expire until the end of next February. It's been over four months and I still have over 300 minutes left. So that's worked out to less than $20 a month. Your price will depend on how much you use it, though. But I knew I wasn't getting my money's worth out of my $50 a month plan.
Well, taking just Judeo-Christianity for an example, I don't think it will be much of a stretch. If they can maintain a flood myth in the face of a overwhelming geological evidence to the contrary, and some more fundamental groups can persist in claiming the age of the Earth at 6000 based on interpretations of the scripture, even in the face of overwhelming contradictory evidence, and if they can get over half of the American population to believe humans didn't evolve but were instead created as they are now, AND they can explain that even though Jesus came and died for people's sins that even those who died before he did would be given a retroactive chance at forgiveness, they can surely handle aliens.
No, it won't be the same religion as it is now, but it will adapt and mold itself to take new factors into account. Think about this - compare people's lives and society thousands of years ago with the world today. Now, compare that to anything we could find in an alien civilization. The first scenario is a much larger gap than the second. Maybe it would have been otherwise before the era of scifi. But at this point, we've used our imagination quite heavily in the realm of alien contact. It would be a shock, but it would be one we're expecting.
Turgidson: We're still trying to figure out the meaning of that last phrase, sir.
Muffley: There's nothing to figure out, General Turgidson. This man is obviously a psychotic.
Turgidson: Well, I'd like to hold off judgment on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in.
Muffley: General Turgidson, when you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring!
Turgidson: Well, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir.
So for such a claim to NOT be outrageous, you'd have to also claim a vast conspiracy of scientists all over the world through the decades, sitting on most of their findings while publishing just enough to give an incremental step for the next breakthroughs. Or you'd need the aliens to be directing this, handing out tiny little tidbits of information to the scientists, and either swearing them to secrecy or using some sort of mind control on them. So yes, it is quite outrageous.
On the other hand, if next week some scientist produced working plans for a fusion generator that used a grand unified theory totally different than any proposed, now THAT would be what it would take to not be an outrageous claim of getting outside help.
Not really. The real problem is that there's always a small minority that wants to cheat. They drive off the large majority that just want to play a good game.
I bring this up because your statement seems to also have this confusion, even if it's not malicious. It's as if I rewrote it the following way:
By this standard, Microsoft deserves the credit for the GUI. The number of people who bought Windows when it finally came out dwarfed the number who ever bought a Mac.
I read the original post as saying the court splits down party line when it splits. Maybe that's not what the poster really meant, but that's what it looked like to me. Otherwise the second sentence beginning with "I wonder" doesn't make any sense. The point being that when there is a split in the court, it also seems to fall with the same justices on either side. Now whether or not it has split 5-4 in a totally different way, or even 6-3, I AM too lazy to google.