when was the last time you used a public restroom that was co-ed (and not single-occupant) ? They exist, but rarely. I don't think I've even encountered a public toilet that was particularly educational, let alone co-educational for multiple races, sexes, etc.
Yes, I switch the computers off, due to the "green fad", the "saving-money fad", the "they-make-the-air-hot-and-stuffy fad", the "the-unnecessary-whirring-sound-is-annoying fad", the "malware fad", the "Windows-often-works-better-after-a-reboot-anyway fad" and a few more "fads".
Of course, I'm lampooning you by using the word "fad" to mean "reason which I wish to deny", which is the only way that your sentence can make sense. Why do all those extra examples sound strange though? Because few people would systematically want to deny the possibility of saving money by turning machines off, but many a wanker like yourself wishes to deny the science on energy issues.
However, do you mean to suggest that you're likely to confuse "Scrabble" with "Scrabulous"? I regularly play Scrabulous on Facebook, and I have always assumed that was produced by whoever sells Scrabble sets. How else would they provide a Flash version of Scrabble identical in every way to the physical game, and with a name that essentially contains the name "Scrabble"? I assumed that anyone doing this without authorisation would have been sued within days.
And really, the fact that it isn't Rome is what makes the USA so special. Rome burned itself out expending all its military power to overthrow the world. The USA is a benevolent superpower.
You insensitive clod! We Romans are the benevolent superpower; it was the Greeks who were warmongers!
(Another step into the past, cue the Greeks: "You insensitive clod! We Greeks are the benevolent superpower; it was the Persians who were warmongers!" A few steps into the future, cue the Martians: "You insensitive clod! We Martians are the benevolent superpower; it was the Americans who were warmongers!")
I too have come to realise that word processors (AbiWord, KWord, and OOo Writer; don't talk to me about MS Word) have too much stuff that I just don't need for most writing tasks.
For the novel I'm writing, I've started using NoteCase, which is a small open-source application for keeping notes on things. It organises things hierarchically, so I can very easily work on separate chapters, sections and appendices, and then change their position in the hierarchy of the document without cutting and hunting for a place to paste them.
When I've finished, I'll export it as a single html document, and open it in OOo Writer for a final spellcheck and conversion to PDF.
I just want what most of us want - Results; An OS that works for me, a
speaker of English with a fully-working set of human senses and a collection of media
files that includes QT, RM, and yes, even a bit of WM. Most of us? People who only know English are a distinct minority.
You arrest someone if they commit a crime, and don't arrest them if they don't commit a crime. There ought not to be any discretion of the sort he wanted to exercise. I wouldn't say that. Some discretion is definitely advisable. I anticipated a comment like that, so that's why I said "of the sort he wanted to exercise". He was threatening to arrest me when I hadn't done anything.
It's funny because I remember flying back in the 70's and 80's where people routinely carried firearms on planes. The restriction was that they had to be long guns and unloaded. I even remember one Texan getting on a plane and commenting to his friend that he would never check his shotgun because it might get damaged by the baggage handlers. I also routinely used to carry a pocket knife with me wherever I went even up to a few years ago on planes before they were outlawed... which leads me to wonder if the per capita risk of hijacking is any different now versus what it was back then.
Around 2000, I used to carry a small penknife all the time. One day, I was catching a plane from the UK to Spain, and going through the checks. I studied the sign in front of me, which listed the things not allowed in the cabin. It mentioned drugs, volatile substances and suchlike, but said nothing about sharp objects. I continued, secure in the knowledge that everything I was carrying was OK. When it came to putting my metal objects in a box while I walked through the detector, the guy went weird about the penknife. I pointed out that it was permitted, and that if he really didn't want it in my possession during the trip, I was quite willing to let a crew member hang on to it until we got to the other end. He just told me that that wasn't possible, and that it would stay in the airport and later be sent on to me. I just wanted to catch the plane, so I said that I supposed that would have to do.
He also told me (almost trembling with officious vexation) that had I not been a UK citizen, he would have arrested me. I didn't bother arguing, but that seemed like a bizarre thing to say. You arrest someone if they commit a crime, and don't arrest them if they don't commit a crime. There ought not to be any discretion of the sort he wanted to exercise. I don't know what the charge would have been for this hypothetical arrest. Penknives are legal unless they have a flick-release, measure over four inches (11cm in Spain), or are wielded as a weapon (in the same way that a cricket bat becomes illegal if I swing it around threateningly). None of that applied. A few weeks later, I wrote to the e-mail address provided, in order to have my property returned to me, and I got a reply back saying that I'd have to send them £10 first. Since that was almost enough to buy the penknife new, I told them to keep it. It's quite a little extortion racket, especially as he only got my consent to leave my property in the airport because he failed to admit that money would be demanded for its return.
Ubuntu is nice, but it still isn't as noob-friendly as I'd like to see. On a coworker's machine (he is playing around with it as his first try at a Linux desktop), we kept trying to delete a menu entry. Right click on it, in the editor, delete. It's still there. Try it again. Still there. Over and over. Close window. Still shows. Rinse, repeat. Eventually it magically goes away. That's an old problem in Gnome that has been fixed now. KDE had it too until KDE 3.
This is what we refer to as a "market failure." The Fair Use doctrine exists in part to address this, but this is an excellent example of why Fair Use doesn't go far enough. If you cannot get what you want at a fair price, the market has failed.
How has it failed? "Failed" implies an objective, and the market has no objective beyond the short-term advantage of individual players pitted against each other. It's rather like saying that evolution has "failed" if it doesn't produce a rabbit with cool claws and fangs, or whatever you would like it to produce. It's just short-term incremental adaptations with no final goal.
It is up to us to create a society which has an objective (which ought to be the greatest good), rather than pretend that our current society has one.
Sonny Crockett carried one on "Miami Vice", so there was great interest in it. [...] leaving more handguns then magazines on the market. Good! Do we really want guns in the hands of retards who buy them because they see cool guys on TV shooting them?
It's only misspelled if you're American, which I stated I am not. In REAL English, there is a[nother] 'u' in humour.
I hate to agree with an American here, but he's right on this one, although accidentally. It's "humorous".
Yeah, yeah, "humour" obviously ends in "-our" in standard English, but it loses its "u" when you add "-ous" to the end. Same with "vigour" versus "vigorous". You see?
You're both totally confusing the spoken language (standard Mandarin versus the dialects and regional languages) and the written language (modern standard characters versus traditional ones, and modern alignment versus traditional alignment).
Modern standard Chinese is written left to right from the top row downward (like English). Traditional Chinese is written top to bottom from the rightmost column leftward. Chinese people are all used to reading stuff aligned in either way, and they are both considered acceptable.
Hey, did anyone else have Simons' BASIC? It was a cartridge that you stuck in the back of the C64, and it gave you extra commands to play with! I never used to program in normal BASIC!
I remember the horrible dilemma I was faced with when I used my Dad's C128: did I insert the Simons' BASIC cartridge, or the cartridge (I forget the name) that gave a graphical user interface?
They then go to look for a job and the job market and practically every job says "Photoshop skills required." Which student is going to get hired?
Either of them. Because the guy who learnt the GIMP will interpret "Photoshop skills required" to mean "Advanced computer image editing software skills required", and will consequently answer yes to the question.
It's a bit like the online form that one of my clients wanted me to fill in the other day. It had a list of software, and I was supposed to say whether I had it or not. One of the programs was "Acrobat Reader". Now, there is no such program, because Adobe changed its name to "Adobe Reader" ages ago... and in any case I use kPDF. Did I click no for "Acrobat"? Of course not. I knew what they were getting at.
I teach English, and sometimes I have to teach some basic computer skills with it. The other day, a student asked me how to create a new slide in MS Powerpoint. I quickly showed him how to do it, even though I had never used Powerpoint, because I am an experienced computer user, familiar with OpenOffice Impress.
It's not unheard of to want to select a region of the screen with the Select tool, and then crop the image to the selection. No, we can't do that. We *have* to use the crop tool. This means that if we've already selected something, we have to forget that, and re-do it with the crop tool just so we can crop the image.
More nonsense. I've just selected an area, then used "Crop to Selection" from the Image menu. It worked.
There is stuff to be improved in the GIMP (e.g. the GIMP's windows should just be called "windows", not "dialogues"; and there should be an option to group all windows together for operating systems without virtual desktops) but the problems you cite are imaginary.
Where's the path that I just created? It's not there. I don't know what you're talking about. I've just followed your instructions in GIMP 2.4.2 and it worked.
By "steep", you mean "hard to learn", but if you plot "mastery" on the y axis and "time" on the x axis (as is normal) a steep curve means you are learning really quickly.
In any case, the curve is not really any different for most apps. Teach open source when you can.
Yeah, my distro (PCLinuxOS) is still on 2.0.0.9. We seem to be skipping 2.0.0.10 and 2.0.0.11. We have Firefox 3 in the testing section of our repo if we want it.
When my heavy beer glass gets a tiny bit of water between it and the hard table, it starts sliding around all by itself, with no wind at all. I can imagine that these stones slide similarly.
In amongst all your right-wing smearing and ranting, I discern one valid point: that the most repressive governments are likely to declare encryption illegal and punish all encryptors as harshly as they punish people caught openly opposing them. This would render encryption useless.
However, few governments are quite that bad. Most will punish encryptors less harshly. Furthermore, most governments (such as the Western ones that we are able to put political pressure on) can be forced not to criminalise encryption. Encryption can then help to avoid government interference in certain protests.
Note that it is these very governments that kill thousands, and more. If you are worried about the almost negligible amount of private terrorism in the West, then you ought to be trying to stop the killing that fuels it.
I haven't looked at those particular articles, but I know from long and weary experience that there is a massive bias towards keeping crap on Wikipedia. To start with, most Wikipedians are sad girlfiendless geeks obsessed with the trivia of their specialist area (usually Star Trek), which leads to a cult of "inclusionism" lest their favourite nonsense be trimmed down. Secondly, it is policy to consider every "keep" vote to be worth about five "delete" votes. With this sort of in-built tendency not to delete stuff, it makes sense to guess that anything that does manage to get deleted on Wikipedia probably deserved deletion.
Blowdart's post has an abusive style, but the point made is correct and doesn't deserve a "Troll" rating. Crappy articles being deleted is not news. It has happened since the beginning of Wikipedia. If only it were increased tenfold.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I switch the computers off, due to the "green fad", the "saving-money fad", the "they-make-the-air-hot-and-stuffy fad", the "the-unnecessary-whirring-sound-is-annoying fad", the "malware fad", the "Windows-often-works-better-after-a-reboot-anyway fad" and a few more "fads".
Of course, I'm lampooning you by using the word "fad" to mean "reason which I wish to deny", which is the only way that your sentence can make sense. Why do all those extra examples sound strange though? Because few people would systematically want to deny the possibility of saving money by turning machines off, but many a wanker like yourself wishes to deny the science on energy issues.
You insensitive clod! We Romans are the benevolent superpower; it was the Greeks who were warmongers!
(Another step into the past, cue the Greeks: "You insensitive clod! We Greeks are the benevolent superpower; it was the Persians who were warmongers!" A few steps into the future, cue the Martians: "You insensitive clod! We Martians are the benevolent superpower; it was the Americans who were warmongers!")
I too have come to realise that word processors (AbiWord, KWord, and OOo Writer; don't talk to me about MS Word) have too much stuff that I just don't need for most writing tasks.
For the novel I'm writing, I've started using NoteCase, which is a small open-source application for keeping notes on things. It organises things hierarchically, so I can very easily work on separate chapters, sections and appendices, and then change their position in the hierarchy of the document without cutting and hunting for a place to paste them.
When I've finished, I'll export it as a single html document, and open it in OOo Writer for a final spellcheck and conversion to PDF.
Most of us? People who only know English are a distinct minority.
Around 2000, I used to carry a small penknife all the time. One day, I was catching a plane from the UK to Spain, and going through the checks. I studied the sign in front of me, which listed the things not allowed in the cabin. It mentioned drugs, volatile substances and suchlike, but said nothing about sharp objects. I continued, secure in the knowledge that everything I was carrying was OK. When it came to putting my metal objects in a box while I walked through the detector, the guy went weird about the penknife. I pointed out that it was permitted, and that if he really didn't want it in my possession during the trip, I was quite willing to let a crew member hang on to it until we got to the other end. He just told me that that wasn't possible, and that it would stay in the airport and later be sent on to me. I just wanted to catch the plane, so I said that I supposed that would have to do.
He also told me (almost trembling with officious vexation) that had I not been a UK citizen, he would have arrested me. I didn't bother arguing, but that seemed like a bizarre thing to say. You arrest someone if they commit a crime, and don't arrest them if they don't commit a crime. There ought not to be any discretion of the sort he wanted to exercise. I don't know what the charge would have been for this hypothetical arrest. Penknives are legal unless they have a flick-release, measure over four inches (11cm in Spain), or are wielded as a weapon (in the same way that a cricket bat becomes illegal if I swing it around threateningly). None of that applied. A few weeks later, I wrote to the e-mail address provided, in order to have my property returned to me, and I got a reply back saying that I'd have to send them £10 first. Since that was almost enough to buy the penknife new, I told them to keep it. It's quite a little extortion racket, especially as he only got my consent to leave my property in the airport because he failed to admit that money would be demanded for its return.
That's an old problem in Gnome that has been fixed now. KDE had it too until KDE 3.
This is what we refer to as a "market failure." The Fair Use doctrine exists in part to address this, but this is an excellent example of why Fair Use doesn't go far enough. If you cannot get what you want at a fair price, the market has failed.
How has it failed? "Failed" implies an objective, and the market has no objective beyond the short-term advantage of individual players pitted against each other. It's rather like saying that evolution has "failed" if it doesn't produce a rabbit with cool claws and fangs, or whatever you would like it to produce. It's just short-term incremental adaptations with no final goal.
It is up to us to create a society which has an objective (which ought to be the greatest good), rather than pretend that our current society has one.
Good! Do we really want guns in the hands of retards who buy them because they see cool guys on TV shooting them?
I hate to agree with an American here, but he's right on this one, although accidentally. It's "humorous".
Yeah, yeah, "humour" obviously ends in "-our" in standard English, but it loses its "u" when you add "-ous" to the end. Same with "vigour" versus "vigorous". You see?
You're both totally confusing the spoken language (standard Mandarin versus the dialects and regional languages) and the written language (modern standard characters versus traditional ones, and modern alignment versus traditional alignment).
Modern standard Chinese is written left to right from the top row downward (like English). Traditional Chinese is written top to bottom from the rightmost column leftward. Chinese people are all used to reading stuff aligned in either way, and they are both considered acceptable.
The situation is similar in Japanese.
Hey, did anyone else have Simons' BASIC? It was a cartridge that you stuck in the back of the C64, and it gave you extra commands to play with! I never used to program in normal BASIC!
I remember the horrible dilemma I was faced with when I used my Dad's C128: did I insert the Simons' BASIC cartridge, or the cartridge (I forget the name) that gave a graphical user interface?
Either of them. Because the guy who learnt the GIMP will interpret "Photoshop skills required" to mean "Advanced computer image editing software skills required", and will consequently answer yes to the question.
It's a bit like the online form that one of my clients wanted me to fill in the other day. It had a list of software, and I was supposed to say whether I had it or not. One of the programs was "Acrobat Reader". Now, there is no such program, because Adobe changed its name to "Adobe Reader" ages ago... and in any case I use kPDF. Did I click no for "Acrobat"? Of course not. I knew what they were getting at.
I teach English, and sometimes I have to teach some basic computer skills with it. The other day, a student asked me how to create a new slide in MS Powerpoint. I quickly showed him how to do it, even though I had never used Powerpoint, because I am an experienced computer user, familiar with OpenOffice Impress.
More nonsense. I've just selected an area, then used "Crop to Selection" from the Image menu. It worked.
There is stuff to be improved in the GIMP (e.g. the GIMP's windows should just be called "windows", not "dialogues"; and there should be an option to group all windows together for operating systems without virtual desktops) but the problems you cite are imaginary.
I don't know what you're talking about. I've just followed your instructions in GIMP 2.4.2 and it worked.
By "steep", you mean "hard to learn", but if you plot "mastery" on the y axis and "time" on the x axis (as is normal) a steep curve means you are learning really quickly.
In any case, the curve is not really any different for most apps. Teach open source when you can.
Yeah, my distro (PCLinuxOS) is still on 2.0.0.9. We seem to be skipping 2.0.0.10 and 2.0.0.11. We have Firefox 3 in the testing section of our repo if we want it.
Indeed.
When my heavy beer glass gets a tiny bit of water between it and the hard table, it starts sliding around all by itself, with no wind at all. I can imagine that these stones slide similarly.
In amongst all your right-wing smearing and ranting, I discern one valid point: that the most repressive governments are likely to declare encryption illegal and punish all encryptors as harshly as they punish people caught openly opposing them. This would render encryption useless.
However, few governments are quite that bad. Most will punish encryptors less harshly. Furthermore, most governments (such as the Western ones that we are able to put political pressure on) can be forced not to criminalise encryption. Encryption can then help to avoid government interference in certain protests.
Note that it is these very governments that kill thousands, and more. If you are worried about the almost negligible amount of private terrorism in the West, then you ought to be trying to stop the killing that fuels it.
The summary title is stupid.
AIDS is not auto-immune; it is immuno-deficient. The FA doesn't mention AIDS. Try this.
I haven't looked at those particular articles, but I know from long and weary experience that there is a massive bias towards keeping crap on Wikipedia. To start with, most Wikipedians are sad girlfiendless geeks obsessed with the trivia of their specialist area (usually Star Trek), which leads to a cult of "inclusionism" lest their favourite nonsense be trimmed down. Secondly, it is policy to consider every "keep" vote to be worth about five "delete" votes. With this sort of in-built tendency not to delete stuff, it makes sense to guess that anything that does manage to get deleted on Wikipedia probably deserved deletion.
Blowdart's post has an abusive style, but the point made is correct and doesn't deserve a "Troll" rating. Crappy articles being deleted is not news. It has happened since the beginning of Wikipedia. If only it were increased tenfold.