Ok, I'll buy that I may have misrepresented communism, though it was not intentional. That said (man, this is way off topic) Communiss goal might have been to do away with a ruling class, but it never has and never will, since there must always be some form of ruling class in any group of people, whether you call it the police, politicians, or royalty, and my reference to Communism was made with that reality in mind. If one were to go by your definition, Soviet Russia wasn't communist either, as they most definitely had a ruling class that they never remotely attempted to do away with, as by no means did every Soviet citizen have an equal share of power, food, or, well, anything... Unless you consider that 98% of them had an equal share of suck.
From Websters Dictionary: Communism: 1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed 2 capitalized a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the U.S.S.R. b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably d : communist systems collectively.
Socialism: 1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods 2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state 3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
These are two somewhat different systems here, and to be honest, I'm rather glad I don't live in Switzerland or Sweden. Sorry, but I don't appreciate the idea of someone reaping the benefit of my hard work who has done nothing to earn it. I have enough of a problem being forced to pay Social Security as it is.
Democracy == Mob rule. Fails every time. Republics seem to work ok, until they grow stagnant or corrupt, hence the idea of a built-in revolution every few years. Historically speaking, democracies lead to communism, which, despite what China wants you to think, still doesn't work for anybody but the lucky few in power. I can see where the above-referenced system could be abused, but you know, maybe it would actually accomplish the unbelievable feat of causing HR to do some actual work for once. I mean, really, who goes to their HR dept. and says "I think my boss sucks," and expects to get away with it? An opportunity to anonymously (or at least semi-anonymously, with a layer of dedicated [hopefully impartial] interpreters) critique your work environment could lead to good things, if implemented properly; Maybe by requiring the results of such a system to be interpreted by an independant company, perhaps with no reference to the originating company/dept./employee at the lower levels until final tabulation or something.
I fail to see what fascism has to do with anything... Except that the basic corporation itself is run as a fascist (http://webster.com/dictionary/fascist/) environment, with the difference from the nation level being that one doesn't live at work (generally speaking) and is free to sever their association from their company at their own free will. This also varies from the ideals of communism in that everyone in theory puts in equal work for equal pay, as a company rewards same work with sometimes different pay and different work with different pay, leading to it's differentiation as "capitalism". The almighty "$" replaces the "race" function and the "corporation" replaces "nation".
An FYI, in case you are one of my numerous fellow Americans who likes to go around talking about this great democracy we live in, please get it right - The U.S.A. is NOT a democracy, it's a representative republic!
I'm sorry, I did not mean to exclude the current administration from the anti-intellectual crowd, as the Prez' push for religous values is indicative of the same thing. However, it has not been my experience (living in a very liberal state marked by the second or third lowest education scores in the country for years now) that the average conservative here seems to be more rational. As an ecology student and naturalist, I do not believe that anything can ever be truly 100% and there are exceptions to EVERY rule. That said, I was raised by a pair of semi-conservative republicans (one studying to be a methodist minister right now, the other a non-practicing Jew), and I came out a "little-l" libertarian myself; I don't always agree with my rents, but they are rather moderate, and I often find myself in agreement with them, so perhaps I too am biased by my upbringing. I'm nominally pro-choice, in that I'm aware that countries with few to no restrictions on abortion and extensive public health, family planning and contraception campaigns have the lowest abortion rates per capita (Japan), and that likewise, nations that absolutely prohibit abortion have the highest number of abortions per capita (Russia). I do not, however, encourage abortion and am personally very partial to the belief that you have no idea what life you might be snuffing out. I've also known wonderful people who would never have been born if their parents hadn't had an abortion first. I choose the moderate position because I feel it fits my ideals best, not because I think a woman has an unlimited right to her body, because I don't. Not when it affects the life of another anyway, unless it's a case of rape or endagerment to the life of the mother. I don't advocate bringing babies into the world under terrible or undesirable circumstances either, but for all that so many very outspoken liberal girlfriends - or friends of girlfriends - in the past have decried to me "it's my body, and my choice to do what I want with it", I feel this is true only up to a point, where you become responsible for the consequences of your actions: You had a choice, and knowing the risk, with or without birth-control (which I am very much in favor of), you chose to have sex, and babies are often the result of intercourse. I go by a "Do what you want so long as you don't hurt anybody else in the process" kind of golden rule, personally, but I am rational enough to recognize that *I* don't have to have an abortion, and that if the freedom to do so will lower the occurance, then let it be. Same way with drug use and laws. Contrast with the raving lunatics on either side of the aisle (I am NOT for even moderate bans or oversights of birth-control, abortion or drugs), but my experience here in Ga. has been that the nuts on both sides of the argument tend to be die-hard liberals, both religious and and non-religious. Perhaps Georgia is a unique case for being a very religious state in the "Bible-belt" while consistantly electing Democratic nominees, but the academic and intellectual community here with any credibility seems to be either unaffiliated moderates, non-politcals, libertarians, or republicans. Although, I must again admit I am colored by my experience and perception of liberal values, ideals, and actions, which I often find to be wrong-headed and totally lacking in intellectual integrity. I'm not really claiming that republicans or conservatives who do, have, or will hold public office possess any of these values either, as they all lie, cheat, and steal. Perhaps it was just an unconcious snipe at a former girlfriend who was very liberal and the child of two extremely liberal former (and present-day) hippies from the UK who teach at major local university and my perception of their ideals as being poorly conceived at best and the fact that they encourage these ideals in their students while supposedly providing them with an education. My experience with the academic community is consistant with your implciation of it being rather liberal, and I call it anti-intellectual bec
Crystal energy nutters, "psychics", indigo children, rebellious dabblers with various exotic non-orthodox religions and philosophies, homeopaths, and post-modernists. Especially the post-modernists.
From the worst offenders you'll hear fine things such as "it's just a THEORY and that's just your BELIEF", "doctors are stupid", "I believe humans were a product of deliberate genetic modification by aliens", "Newton's Laws of Mechanics is a rape manual", "all viewpoints are equally valid".
EXACTLY. I'm sorry, but from my experience, liberals muddy-headed with some desire to see all things or people equally so they don't offend or exclude anyone. While I believe that trying to include everyone is noble, it often blinds them to the reality of the world and so they blind themselves to obvious truths in order to continue supporting their world-view. Some famous examples are notable throughout Hollywood. You don't have to be stupid to be anti-intellectual, just willing to disregard coherent, rational thought and logic. I recall clearly a High-school teacher who was a hippie if ever there was one telling us to encourage our parents to vote for Bill Clinton, since he was the champion of the common-man and would tax the rich and elevate the poor so everyone would be an equal and have everything he or she would ever need provided to them by the government. She later told me that she felt that the laptop I used to take notes on was an unfair advantage to the other students, since I could take better notes than they could because they didn't have laptops, and besides, it might make the poorer kids feel inferior (I got better grades than most in that class anyway, even when I didn't take notes, which, of course, blew the grade curve). I have dysgraphia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia), and my family spent a large amount on money on a laptop for me (this was 1991) to use so I would be able to take decent notes, as my spelling and typing skills are fine, but I cannot write legibly to this day, and have a certificate to that effect, yet she told me I'd "just have to make do with the tools God gave you." I was in a private school the following year, but this was supposed to have been the highest ranked public school in the State at the time. It just goes to show that people who can seem reasonably intelligent may not be capable of executing logic in all areas, and may often-times find themselves and their thoughts clouded by emotion left over from past disappointments.
Sadly, it happens all too often that a science fair is judged by people who are completely out of their depth in any discussion of science.
e.g., Public School teachers.
Carter, like Neville Chamberlain before him, isn't a traitor: he's just incompetent. Whenever he has dealth with anyone operating from truly evil motives, he has failed to recognize that fact, and act accordingly. Nice guy, but definitely not the man you want in charge when a pack of maniacs commit an act of war by invading an embassy.
I refer to Carter as a traitorous rat not because of his complete failure to exercise a swift and decisive response in the hostage affair (this only serves as an excellent example of his complete incompetency), but for his behaviour in travelling outside the country to bad-mouth our citizens, government, and policies, as well as his habit of making cozy with leaders of anti-American nations. A local radio commentator by the name of Neal Boortz (http://www.boortz.com/) likes to say that Carter never met a dictator he didn't like, seems very true in my recollection. Wow, this is wayyyyyyyyyyy off-topic, let me see if I can draw it back together:
For a former Governor of this State who later became President, when you consider Carter's complete lack of intellectual integrity and Georgia's low educational rankings/standards, it is of no surprise to me that there are people out there who consider themselves educated (or ARE educated, like the Cobb Co. people who demanded the "Evolution is not real science" stickers in text-books) yet still equate I.D. with actual science, as these people wouldn't know science if it bit them on the ass; I should know - as an I.T. professional, I deal with them on a regular basis, and am amazed by how rapidly people's eyes glaze over the minute you say something they don't understand, like "quantum physics" or something simple like "there's something borked on the network, so don't open attachments in your email or you might get a virus". This is also well indicated in a state where one of the most popular colleges to attend's biggest draw is the popularity and record of its football team, not the quality of its education (this would be U.G.A.).
Let us face facts: As long as the Homecoming football game draws more interest than the science fair, we're doomed to this kind of intellectual mediocrity, where intelligent students have to attend private schools so as not to be bored off their rockers, and the smart-kids who don't have that option are usually outcast because others cover their intellectual inferiority in a show of name-calling and brute-force when they can get away with it; While the football player who might one day buy himself an MBA while bored in the off-season is idolized and paid ridiculous sums of money because he had genetic advantages in the physical department and was hard-headed enough to do nigh nothing else but work out throughout school. I believe in the right to freedom of religious beliefs, and freedom from a state or federal religion, freedom to spend your dollar however you want (so long as it doesn't hurt someone else), freedom to watch sports if you want... But for the love of... Rational thought, intelligent design does not belong in a classroom, unless you are in a private relgious school! Then again, for my money, my children don't belong in and will not attend public schools, which really ought to be privatized across the entire nation, IMO, with minimum standards, but my child's education should not be put in the hands of the government.
If you can't dazzle them with your intelligence, baffle them with your bullshit.
In my recollection, High School Science Fairs were as often about who had the flashiest, most inpressive presentation or display, and not necessarily who did the best science, though my experience to this effect could have had something to do with growing up in the South - I live not far from Cobb County, Ga., where Science textbooks were required to have stickers stating that evolution is only a theory and may not be taught as fact, yet the "teaching" of the "story" of Adam and Eve was encouraged. My freshman year, I built a miniature wind-tunnel and did studies on lifting bodies, animal flight and developed a concept for a novel lifting-wing and control mechanism for an "ornithopter". The Freshman-class winner that year? A study of how peanuts and soy are grown based on "science" that would have been fruity in the 1850's, complete with a dozen pictures of that traitorous rat, Jimmy Carter.
We HAVE to do something about the education standard in this country.
(/me is still hoping that intellectualism will someday return to the United States and that we will oust the relgious nutbags and anti-intellectual [dare I say, liberals] from our schools.)
Good luck to them on that. Unless they succeed in turning us into a nation of complete morons (/me patiently awaits the swing of the pendulum back towards intellectualism), that will never work, even if it did happen. There is far too much legacy equipment out there, far too many geeks, and far too many of the next generation of leaders in this country who will (please, G-d, don't let this be wishful thinking) be technically savvy enough to see through this kind of idiocy. I hope.
And still I say... If it comes out of speakers, I can rip it. If you don't like having to go through that trouble, then stop buying their music. Hate it for the artists (not really, I can't stand >99% of what I hear on the radio anyway), but get an indie label. Do tours! A couple of bands I know of with super-strong fanbases, you can't find their music on a p2p network. Why, you might ask? DRM maybe? No. The simple answer is, the fans buy the CD's from the band via their website or at a show, and then, out of respect for the artist, if they rip the CD, they don't share it. The way I see it, if you're big enough that your music is that easy to find (esp. the kind of music that gets played several times a day on several radio stations in one town), then it's essentially public property, like "xerox" and "kleenex". Be proud to be popular, go on tours (again, where almost ALL the money really is anyway), sell t-shirts, etc., because at some point, if you want to be a really huge rockstar, it's as much about image and marketing as it is about music. Take Marilyn Manson for example. I have friends from Fl. who saw him when he was just some guy and his pals pretending to be a band on Tuesday night at The Masquerade, before they'd figured out their gimmick. Once they got their gimmick down, they sold out, made a lot of money, became famous, and, IMNSHO, more power to them for it... I'm still not paying $15 for a cd to hear one, maybe two songs worth a shit, ESPECIALLY if they're effing tied to the CD and I can't copy them to whatever music playback device I want, howeve I want, at any time; That's a violation of fair use and I for one refuse to stand for it. If I were downloading their music, renaming it, and claiming it were my own original work, that would be a different story altogether.
SHUT DOWN THE RIAA: Stop buying shit pop music and boycott AMERICAN IDiOtL
Ok... I though Slashdot was a community of geeks... ?! People seem to forget that if the data becomes an audio or video stream, there is nothing you can do to prevent copying. Period. Paragraph. End of story. Unless the government suddenly bans video-cards with video inputs/mpg4 encoders and soundcards with mic jacks and RCA inputs, well... That's all you need to defeat even the toughest copyright protection. The way to stop/them/ is to demand that we have had enough! Continue to rip and download movies and music, and support your artists by seeing them live. Not only is this where most musicians make most of their money anyway, but it forces them to be beholden to their fans, not their recording execs. If the CD you have doesn't want to rip for some reason, play it as usual in your PC and find a way (there are dozens) to plug your output jacks into your input jacks and just record! Same with video, if you have a Hauppage card or the like. They can't stop you, no matter what they want you to think or how hard they work on copy protection. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay ANOTHER $15 for some CD that prolly only had 2 songs on it I liked b/c the cd got scratched.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. However, the resulting environmental impact from this form of energy generation can't help but be cleaner, if not also less harmful overall to the environment than, well, just about anything else. The heat and pollution emissions of traditional powerplants affect the weather around them, and I doubt very seriously that erecting anything short of something the size of the Great Wall of China would even remotely affect the oceans currents. And Rei is quite right. The thing wuldn't have to spin very fast at all in order to generate power... Tidal currents are forces of nature, and would generate the equivalent of HUGE amounts of torque. Also totally correct about the fish; They tend to avoid the openings in damns and other hydroelectric plants.
I recall reading something years ago, maybe in PopSci, about a turbine system that had been developed allowing for the turbine shaft to rotate in the same direction no matter which way air was passed over the blades used to spin the turbine. The way it worked is that you had a big concrete box on a shoreline with a hole in the side facing the ocean, well below the low-tide line. Another opening in the back is placed well above the high-tide line, and the constant up/down motion of tidal waters would continuously move air in one direction or another over the blades, keeping the turbine spinning and generating easy power from tidal currents. An estimate I seem to recall said that dotting just 1% of the U.S.' coastlines with them could in theory supply our power needs for another 20 years. Probably snapped up by the likes of Exxon or some Saudi Prince or Oil Cartel somewhere, never to see the light of day again.
I say build more nuclear plants and be done with it. As far as dealing with the by-products, it's high time we build a rail-gun into the side of a mountain and fling the stuff off into the sun.
Thanks kindly for the compliment; As mentioned, I had come into the thread with the intent of modding, but the topic was compelling and the lack of intelligent posting was horrifying, so I decided to try to do something about it =)
The "below average" population of Slashdot unfortunately seems to account for a disproportionate volume of the total posts. So ist leben. Hats off to those well-spoken, considerate and intelligent posters that at least make reading at +1 worthwhile.
I'd completely forgotten about Myst (though I never really got into it.) I wouldn't if Intelligent Cube (PS1) can be ported to work with a headmouse? I was really addicted to that game back in the day. Perhaps someone should look into a company or foundation that specializes in bringing/porting/desiging pc/board/console games and other forms of entertainment to the disabled, if such does not already exist. Too bad I'm not a developer, just a geek.
OK... After having read WAY down in this thread with the intent of moderating it, wading through all the trolls and offtopics and irrelevants, I gave up. I'll mod somewhere else... This thread desperately needs some guidance and relevance that a few +/- 1's aren't going to provide.
I'm sorry that the technology necessary to enjoy PC games isn't quite there yet for the disabled, and I cannot personally say I know of any games particularly suited or designed for a headmouse. I'm pretty good at video games, but I damn sure need every finger and movement I can get... Some games require so many potential movements on so many different axis or inputs... My keyboard is barely enough! I hate it, but I would recommend looking into some legacy games (if you haven't played it, even though the graphics aren't new hotness, it doesn't necessarily suck just b/c it's old) like King's Quest/Space Quest or perhaps the original Final Fantasy (I played it again for the 4th or 5th time last year), or perhaps a turn-based strategy game of some kind where reaction time isn't so important? Vis-a-vis Master of Orion, Civilization, etc? I admit to not knowing much about headmice beyond the basics (i.e., i don't know how configurable they are or what range of input the average user has available), but I'm sure there must be something.
Also, you people keep mentioning the implants while completely forgetting to bring up the neural/aural (read: EKG) helmet that was effectively tested at about the same time with a nearly identical set of results as the implants. The EKG can sense the same brainwave pattern shifts that were used to control the cursor via implant. Maybe the same level of precision won't be available as via true implant (at first, or perhaps maybe never) due to bandwidth limitations (imagine trying to connect your fiber-line by leaving an unterminated end pointing at a microscope lens a few feet away... The fundamental limitations of wireless as opposed to wired.) But one day in what I believe will be the not-too-distant future, the interfaces will be there, wired or not, for you to be able to enjoy your computing experience as much as I do. It may even happen that one day, children born with crippling disabilities may even be better off in the virtual world than the rest of us b/c their brain (if they receive such implants for either input or total immersion) will not worry so much about developing neural pathways for physical activities, but for more mental ones.
I hope the steady march of technology does right for you soon; I've been certain this technology was coming within my lifetime, and since the release of the new researech I'm even more certain it will be in the next 10 - 15 years, and hopefully the surgerical techniques to help you will be here even sooner.
Can _ANYBODY_ say something relevant and list a few ideas for games compatible with a headmouse?
How many times do you people have to be told??? The US is a Republicnot a Socialist Democracy, so please, get your facts straight people! Mob-rule does not work!
Rome was a republic too. Rome also fell. But yanno, during the time of the Roman Republic, the citizens of Rome were by far and large much better off than the citizens of any other land, as are the citizens of the U.S. right now... Beware those who would make our great nation a Socialist one and then subject (or subvert) it's will and the will and wants of it's people to another entity like the U.N. who just wants to steal money and resources from those who work so hard to make this country the great place it is. Billary would rather everybody get equal shares for unequal work, rather than reward those who deserve it and let those who do nothing (e.q. 60%+ of welfare recipients, IMO) and deserve support the least to rot, as it should be. Take a closer look at the LEFT and the FAR LEFT as well as it's figureheads and leaders, and you'll get a much clearer picture of Socialism and Facism than you will from the right. My biggest problem with the right-wingers is their religious agenda and anti-abortion stances, but the last thing you can do is call them facist. Pull your head out of your ass and try a dispassionate and honest observation of your own views before you start dissembling on the views of others.
Wow, this whole thread is WAY off topic... Classic example of what/. has degenerated to, I suppose. Shame on me for contributing to it, but these people need straightening out, damnit.
Bravo! Any political campaign based on hate marks those campaigning (the 'ee's and the 'ers both) as dangerous and suspect at best. If your vote is based solely on the fact that you personally dislike someone and the person you vote for has no other reasonable or logical platform besides the fact that you and they are still angry that that worthless lump of flesh Al Gore lost the election, either give up or your voter card or go somewhere else please, and quit polluting my nations politics with your ignorance and lack of forethought. Whether you call it Communism, Socialism, or the National Democratic Party, it is still Communism.
If: 1 + 2 = 3 then A + B = C then Hillary R. Clinton + Card Carrying Socialist = COMMUNIST
Communist Russia was built on facism, hate, and the blood of innocents... And you people want to elect this woman in 2008 when so much of every Democratic campaign, movement and bill the last 3+ years has been based on hate against Bush or an attempt to make our laws and land a socialiist one? This woman's speeches sound like nails on a blackboard and much more closely resemble the impassioned speeches of Hitler's (though far less moving or articulate... Speaking fluent German, being a Jew and having listened to Hitler's speeches, I can tell you I'd rather to Hitler than Hillary [Hitllary?] any day). Seriously, at least Bush's campaigns and ideals aren't based on communism and hate. He may be an asshole who doesn't always make the choice I would have made, or done it ecxactly the way I would have, but at least he's got some guts, and is motivated by what he feels is in the best interests of the nation... Not a feeling I get from either Clinton, who seem to be motivated only by money, power, and polls. Not a good combination. Maybe Bill has a higher IQ, but he showed his lack of sense when he failed to pursue Bin Laden as vigorously as he could have. And anybody who tells me Clarke is telling the truth and wasn't paid by the Clinton's to wait until exactly now to pull this shit has their heads up their asses.
Hermann Goering was by more than a few accounts a homosexual and very likely a pedophile as well.
He was also about as high as you could get in the Nazi chain of command.
Besides, if you were straight, and KNEW you were about to die (by your own hand or someone else's) and you'd just married Eva VonBraun, wouldn't you hump her before the end? The fact that he never bothered to take time to consummate his union suggests a lot, I think.
I used to have a little button that said this, but lost it ages ago.
Being from a German-Jewish family (My grandparents were chased from their ancestral home outside Nuremburg in 1942, after years of evasion), this is particularly poignant (though rather offtopic). Thank you for bringing it up.
Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
How about KNOWING the laws you are trying to enforce, you insensitive clod!:p
Oh, and to the poster who made the original reference, you not only LOST the arguement by making the comparison, you are making plain for all to see what an uneducated fool you are. Any comparison is ludicrous until Bush: 1.) Commits or attempts genocide. 2.) Invades his three closest neighbors on a mission of conquest and empire building (It's not as if we're trying to KEEP or colonialize Iraq and Afghansitan [though I've been in favor of colonizing Iraq with the option to apply for statehood in 100 years since the first Gulf War]), and, 3.) Imprisons his OWN COUNTRYMEN in death/work/detention camps. Foreign combatants DO NOT count!
Please note, I did not vote for GWB, but he was a damn sight a better choice than that spineless pansy Gore. I will almost certainly vote for Bush over whoever the Democratic nominee is (John "Effing" Kerry? NO way), seeing as there doesn't seem to be an independant running this year. He's FUBAR'd some stuff up here, but it could be a lot worse (How about three times the already ridiculous tax rate, as the Dem's would have it... Why should I give away even more of my hard-earned money so some worthless slacker who hasn't worked a day in the last 15 years can continue to live on welfare eating as well [if not better] than I do, and make more babies in- between Jerry Springer and the next soap opera?), and in the long run, the Iraq invasion was the right thing to do. Maybe some Iraqi's are protesting in the streets right now, but they are mostly blowing EACH OTHER up now, not us. Besides, were it not for the U.S. soldiers there right now, those protesting would all be dead or dying in Saddam or Uday's torture chambers. We've given them freedoms such as they've never had in their entire history. Bush has done a great thing here, and anybody who says differently (One guy [a Frenchman] said to me, "They [the Iraqi people] were neither ready for, nor deserving of liberty because they are too culturally backwards and repressed to handle freedom, like most Arabs.") is a facist at heart, pure and simple.
As a reader has already posted, I'm 100% that there is no spy/mal-ware on my machine, and even if there were, I don't see how it would be possible for software on my machine to cause googles search engine to display bad results (unless the malware were redirecting me to a fake page, which isn't the case here). No, this is quite definitely a meta-tag/database exploit being done to Google... I'm just surprised that it's been allowed to continue, as this is essentially Google's ersatz competitors cheating them out of some free advertising, and were it me in charge, you can be certain I'd have put a stop to it immediately.
By the way, if you've never seen what I'm talking about, simply follow the link in my original post to the google search I did for - what else - Google, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.
Actually, if I remember correctly, this is about what Altavista has looked like for some time now. Also note that by doing a WhoIs for Altavista.com, you will find that Altavista is owned by Yahoo!... Which I just don't know about, to be honest. I use their mail service, but their search page is so bloated and ugly, full of content I neither want nor need from a search engine. As a result, Google is set as my home page, and when I want to check my web-mail account, I have a hotlink directly to https://mail.yahoo.com (cleartext password transmission is bad, mmmm'kay?). When I want information, want it fast, and want it organized in manner that at least vaguely appears to be relevant, I go to Google.
Waaayyyyy back in the day when I used to work at D.E.C. ('97 to early '99), I and most of my friends and co-workers swore by Altavista... Guess it also didn't hurt that I could feel the hum from the servers that powered it through my chair some days. Boy have things changed, but then, not much changed for the better after the Comwhaq buyout.
One major annoyance with Google lately though... Those stupid results that come back as the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th result for evey search I've run in the last month+... You know, the ones that say "Find 'x' using the free 2020 search toolbar", and, "Find 'x' on smartpages.com," and "Find 'x' With Free Websearch Tools." What is up with this??? Why for they cannot make these go away, bitte? If I wanted to search for these somewhere else, I would do so. Why is Google doing free advertising for these people, as they are obviously not paid ads, but standard returns that appear to be just a database/dictionary/meta-tag exploit... Someone at Google must know about this, and I just don't understand why it's been allowed to continue, as this has completely ruined so much of their credibility since now 3 out of the first five results of any query are now completely unrelated and inaccurate =(
Otherwise, I've been loving on Google about 2 1/2 years now, and I haven't really looked back, even when I read sites (1, and 2) that called into question google's privacy practices, I wasn't really deterred, but these bad returns may be all it takes to make me start considering another move.
Oooh, my feelings are so hurt. I think it's rather more obvious that you are trying to shift your negative body issues off on me, you ignornant, scurrilous, corner-hiding, pillow-biter.
Apparently you don't live in the U.S. I asked for examples of better places to live; I see none forthcoming. Wherever the fuck it is you are from, I'll 100% guran-fucking-tee that I'm better of than you are. So your life and your country sucks... Wahhhhh... My pussy hurts for you. If you are going to take the sorry state of the shit-hole you live in out on someone, at least come up with a better arguement than just "wrong".
THE WHOLE DISCUSSION is that the U.S. makes it's laws and policies for the happiness, protection and betterment of the U.S.'s citizens, NOT to make some jackass on some piss-poor island rich through theft. Get a job!
By the way, at 6'1", 155 lbs. with an I.Q. that has never officially tested lower than 150, if all that makes me a fat retard (who doesn't hide behind anonymity, and can post more than a dozen words with an actual POINT, not just a flame), then what the hell kind of scum-sucking bottom feeder are you?
For those of you wondering why I'm even bothering, it's because I love pointing out to AC troll's what ignorant cock-smokers they are.
>> one major function of a democracy is to protects the rights of the minority, not force the will of the majority on everyone.
The U.S. is not, I repeat NOT a democracy! When are you idiots going to pull your heads out of your collective liberal asses and recognize this???
Democracies are 100% about enforcing the rule of the majority over the minority, as a democracy essentially entails every individual having an equal say in their government, which is essentially mob-rule. A Republic, on the other hand, like the U.S., has officials elected to office to do the ruling, supposedly representing the interests of those that elected them, thus insuring that the wants/wills of the vocal (and often uninformed) majority do not trample the rights of the minority, while also ensuring that the oft-times very vocal and educated minority does not trample the rights of the majority (see Saudi Arabia, or North Korea, for example).
Besides, on-line gambling IS legal in the U.S.... Gambling on sports just happenes to be illegal for any number of reasons, good or ill, and, right or wrong, our current representatives feel it is in the best interests of the American people that sports gambling on-line should be illegal. Don't like it? Vote. When enough people also agree with you to cause a change in your representative leadership, you'll get what you want through the process that was designed by our founding fathers for fairness and equality, not through extortion and threats the way the WTO would have it.
Being a libertarian, I'm all for letting people do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as they don't injure anyone else in the process... The problem is, gambling almost never helps anyone but the casino. On the other hand, look at how many lives have been ruined by gambling; And I'm not referring to the gambler, but their families. How many children, wives, husbands, brothers, mothers, friends, etc. have seriously financially injured (if not obliterated) by the inability of a friend or family member to realize that just because they THINK they have the inside scoop they just HAVE to win... And shit, never mind the $3k they lost yesterday, really, they're gonna make it all back and then some tonight, really...
I've known whole families that were ruined because of one person's addiction, and when it hurts innocent people is when I have a problem with it. Maybe more express regulations on gambling (e.g. You cannot spend more than 1/4 of the total current sum of your checking account, 1/52nd your annual income, or 1/16th of your net worth or something to that effect, and perhaps other clauses, such as a waiver signed upon entry [physical or electronic] to the casino making only the gambler beholden for their potential debt, leaving friends, family, and business immune to collection) over the internet and in person.
Also, consider that yes, the U.S. is the 1000 lb. gorilla, and as another reader pointed out, really, wtf are ya gonna do? Like we really give a shit about the WTO and what it thinks. The WTO is just a pansy-assed trade version of the UN, neither of whom would exist without the U.S., and neither of whom's opinion we give a damn about. The U.N. at least has a military arm, and you can see how concerned about that we are.
Fsck globalization. I know it has to happen eventually, but of all the shithole places to live on this rock, the U.S. is by far the best off of all of them. even with all the silly problems we may have, our laws are better for us than your are, as is the average Joe's legal and governmental representation. Name, for example,one major country with a real economy that actually has laws against police brutality (damn sure isn't France or Germany... I should know, I'm originally from Germany, and I know what happens firsthand when you talk shit at the Polizei or J'endarmes) Ok, I'm sure there are a few, but not many, and I'd be willing to bet that country won't let you own a gun, either. I'm really not for other countries deciding that they don't like the fact that our national policy prevents them from trying to fleece American's out of their hard earned cash with underhanded electronic versions of the "3 cups" game, etc. How about actually PRODUCING something that people want? This, to me, is reminiscent of the couple of people I've met in Paris and London that admitted over drinks to supplementing their income by stealing from unawares tourists, and then rationalizing these peoples lack of alertness as all the reason they need, not realizing these people are generally just trying to enjoy their vacations in a supposedly friendly country, not survive a criminal war-zone. One Parisian told me, "Well, they weren't exactly using it at the moment," the item in question was a purse at the victim's feet while taking a photo, "and since she wasn't using it, she obviously didn't need it, so I took it." This is essentially the old gypsy line, "Anything that is not nailed down is mine. Anything I can pry up with a claw-hammer is not nailed down."
So yeah, screw what some other pissant nation thinks our national policy should be. Our national policies and laws are decided by OUR (occasionally corrupt) politicians and lawmakers, not YOUR money-grubbing and almost certainly perfidous "representatives". You don't like it? Make your own money, crawl up out of your hole your own damn self, and come invade us, but don't ever ask us for economic or military aid again. Your shitty economy is not our fault, nor our problem, seeing as how THE US HAS
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent informative please - This is good information; I wish more /.'ers wrote like the above author.
Ok, I'll buy that I may have misrepresented communism, though it was not intentional. That said (man, this is way off topic) Communiss goal might have been to do away with a ruling class, but it never has and never will, since there must always be some form of ruling class in any group of people, whether you call it the police, politicians, or royalty, and my reference to Communism was made with that reality in mind. If one were to go by your definition, Soviet Russia wasn't communist either, as they most definitely had a ruling class that they never remotely attempted to do away with, as by no means did every Soviet citizen have an equal share of power, food, or, well, anything... Unless you consider that 98% of them had an equal share of suck.
From Websters Dictionary: Communism: 1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed
2 capitalized a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the U.S.S.R. b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably d : communist systems collectively.
Socialism: 1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3 : a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
These are two somewhat different systems here, and to be honest, I'm rather glad I don't live in Switzerland or Sweden. Sorry, but I don't appreciate the idea of someone reaping the benefit of my hard work who has done nothing to earn it. I have enough of a problem being forced to pay Social Security as it is.
Democracy == Mob rule. Fails every time. Republics seem to work ok, until they grow stagnant or corrupt, hence the idea of a built-in revolution every few years. Historically speaking, democracies lead to communism, which, despite what China wants you to think, still doesn't work for anybody but the lucky few in power. I can see where the above-referenced system could be abused, but you know, maybe it would actually accomplish the unbelievable feat of causing HR to do some actual work for once. I mean, really, who goes to their HR dept. and says "I think my boss sucks," and expects to get away with it? An opportunity to anonymously (or at least semi-anonymously, with a layer of dedicated [hopefully impartial] interpreters) critique your work environment could lead to good things, if implemented properly; Maybe by requiring the results of such a system to be interpreted by an independant company, perhaps with no reference to the originating company/dept./employee at the lower levels until final tabulation or something.
I fail to see what fascism has to do with anything... Except that the basic corporation itself is run as a fascist (http://webster.com/dictionary/fascist/) environment, with the difference from the nation level being that one doesn't live at work (generally speaking) and is free to sever their association from their company at their own free will. This also varies from the ideals of communism in that everyone in theory puts in equal work for equal pay, as a company rewards same work with sometimes different pay and different work with different pay, leading to it's differentiation as "capitalism". The almighty "$" replaces the "race" function and the "corporation" replaces "nation".
An FYI, in case you are one of my numerous fellow Americans who likes to go around talking about this great democracy we live in, please get it right - The U.S.A. is NOT a democracy, it's a representative republic!
I'm sorry, I did not mean to exclude the current administration from the anti-intellectual crowd, as the Prez' push for religous values is indicative of the same thing. However, it has not been my experience (living in a very liberal state marked by the second or third lowest education scores in the country for years now) that the average conservative here seems to be more rational. As an ecology student and naturalist, I do not believe that anything can ever be truly 100% and there are exceptions to EVERY rule. That said, I was raised by a pair of semi-conservative republicans (one studying to be a methodist minister right now, the other a non-practicing Jew), and I came out a "little-l" libertarian myself; I don't always agree with my rents, but they are rather moderate, and I often find myself in agreement with them, so perhaps I too am biased by my upbringing. I'm nominally pro-choice, in that I'm aware that countries with few to no restrictions on abortion and extensive public health, family planning and contraception campaigns have the lowest abortion rates per capita (Japan), and that likewise, nations that absolutely prohibit abortion have the highest number of abortions per capita (Russia). I do not, however, encourage abortion and am personally very partial to the belief that you have no idea what life you might be snuffing out. I've also known wonderful people who would never have been born if their parents hadn't had an abortion first. I choose the moderate position because I feel it fits my ideals best, not because I think a woman has an unlimited right to her body, because I don't. Not when it affects the life of another anyway, unless it's a case of rape or endagerment to the life of the mother. I don't advocate bringing babies into the world under terrible or undesirable circumstances either, but for all that so many very outspoken liberal girlfriends - or friends of girlfriends - in the past have decried to me "it's my body, and my choice to do what I want with it", I feel this is true only up to a point, where you become responsible for the consequences of your actions: You had a choice, and knowing the risk, with or without birth-control (which I am very much in favor of), you chose to have sex, and babies are often the result of intercourse. I go by a "Do what you want so long as you don't hurt anybody else in the process" kind of golden rule, personally, but I am rational enough to recognize that *I* don't have to have an abortion, and that if the freedom to do so will lower the occurance, then let it be. Same way with drug use and laws. Contrast with the raving lunatics on either side of the aisle (I am NOT for even moderate bans or oversights of birth-control, abortion or drugs), but my experience here in Ga. has been that the nuts on both sides of the argument tend to be die-hard liberals, both religious and and non-religious. Perhaps Georgia is a unique case for being a very religious state in the "Bible-belt" while consistantly electing Democratic nominees, but the academic and intellectual community here with any credibility seems to be either unaffiliated moderates, non-politcals, libertarians, or republicans. Although, I must again admit I am colored by my experience and perception of liberal values, ideals, and actions, which I often find to be wrong-headed and totally lacking in intellectual integrity. I'm not really claiming that republicans or conservatives who do, have, or will hold public office possess any of these values either, as they all lie, cheat, and steal. Perhaps it was just an unconcious snipe at a former girlfriend who was very liberal and the child of two extremely liberal former (and present-day) hippies from the UK who teach at major local university and my perception of their ideals as being poorly conceived at best and the fact that they encourage these ideals in their students while supposedly providing them with an education. My experience with the academic community is consistant with your implciation of it being rather liberal, and I call it anti-intellectual bec
Crystal energy nutters, "psychics", indigo children, rebellious dabblers with various exotic non-orthodox religions and philosophies, homeopaths, and post-modernists. Especially the post-modernists.
From the worst offenders you'll hear fine things such as "it's just a THEORY and that's just your BELIEF", "doctors are stupid", "I believe humans were a product of deliberate genetic modification by aliens", "Newton's Laws of Mechanics is a rape manual", "all viewpoints are equally valid".
EXACTLY. I'm sorry, but from my experience, liberals muddy-headed with some desire to see all things or people equally so they don't offend or exclude anyone. While I believe that trying to include everyone is noble, it often blinds them to the reality of the world and so they blind themselves to obvious truths in order to continue supporting their world-view. Some famous examples are notable throughout Hollywood. You don't have to be stupid to be anti-intellectual, just willing to disregard coherent, rational thought and logic. I recall clearly a High-school teacher who was a hippie if ever there was one telling us to encourage our parents to vote for Bill Clinton, since he was the champion of the common-man and would tax the rich and elevate the poor so everyone would be an equal and have everything he or she would ever need provided to them by the government. She later told me that she felt that the laptop I used to take notes on was an unfair advantage to the other students, since I could take better notes than they could because they didn't have laptops, and besides, it might make the poorer kids feel inferior (I got better grades than most in that class anyway, even when I didn't take notes, which, of course, blew the grade curve). I have dysgraphia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysgraphia), and my family spent a large amount on money on a laptop for me (this was 1991) to use so I would be able to take decent notes, as my spelling and typing skills are fine, but I cannot write legibly to this day, and have a certificate to that effect, yet she told me I'd "just have to make do with the tools God gave you." I was in a private school the following year, but this was supposed to have been the highest ranked public school in the State at the time. It just goes to show that people who can seem reasonably intelligent may not be capable of executing logic in all areas, and may often-times find themselves and their thoughts clouded by emotion left over from past disappointments.
Sadly, it happens all too often that a science fair is judged by people who are completely out of their depth in any discussion of science.
e.g., Public School teachers.
Carter, like Neville Chamberlain before him, isn't a traitor: he's just incompetent. Whenever he has dealth with anyone operating from truly evil motives, he has failed to recognize that fact, and act accordingly. Nice guy, but definitely not the man you want in charge when a pack of maniacs commit an act of war by invading an embassy.
I refer to Carter as a traitorous rat not because of his complete failure to exercise a swift and decisive response in the hostage affair (this only serves as an excellent example of his complete incompetency), but for his behaviour in travelling outside the country to bad-mouth our citizens, government, and policies, as well as his habit of making cozy with leaders of anti-American nations. A local radio commentator by the name of Neal Boortz (http://www.boortz.com/) likes to say that Carter never met a dictator he didn't like, seems very true in my recollection. Wow, this is wayyyyyyyyyyy off-topic, let me see if I can draw it back together:
For a former Governor of this State who later became President, when you consider Carter's complete lack of intellectual integrity and Georgia's low educational rankings/standards, it is of no surprise to me that there are people out there who consider themselves educated (or ARE educated, like the Cobb Co. people who demanded the "Evolution is not real science" stickers in text-books) yet still equate I.D. with actual science, as these people wouldn't know science if it bit them on the ass; I should know - as an I.T. professional, I deal with them on a regular basis, and am amazed by how rapidly people's eyes glaze over the minute you say something they don't understand, like "quantum physics" or something simple like "there's something borked on the network, so don't open attachments in your email or you might get a virus". This is also well indicated in a state where one of the most popular colleges to attend's biggest draw is the popularity and record of its football team, not the quality of its education (this would be U.G.A.).
Let us face facts: As long as the Homecoming football game draws more interest than the science fair, we're doomed to this kind of intellectual mediocrity, where intelligent students have to attend private schools so as not to be bored off their rockers, and the smart-kids who don't have that option are usually outcast because others cover their intellectual inferiority in a show of name-calling and brute-force when they can get away with it; While the football player who might one day buy himself an MBA while bored in the off-season is idolized and paid ridiculous sums of money because he had genetic advantages in the physical department and was hard-headed enough to do nigh nothing else but work out throughout school. I believe in the right to freedom of religious beliefs, and freedom from a state or federal religion, freedom to spend your dollar however you want (so long as it doesn't hurt someone else), freedom to watch sports if you want... But for the love of... Rational thought, intelligent design does not belong in a classroom, unless you are in a private relgious school! Then again, for my money, my children don't belong in and will not attend public schools, which really ought to be privatized across the entire nation, IMO, with minimum standards, but my child's education should not be put in the hands of the government.
If you can't dazzle them with your intelligence, baffle them with your bullshit.
In my recollection, High School Science Fairs were as often about who had the flashiest, most inpressive presentation or display, and not necessarily who did the best science, though my experience to this effect could have had something to do with growing up in the South - I live not far from Cobb County, Ga., where Science textbooks were required to have stickers stating that evolution is only a theory and may not be taught as fact, yet the "teaching" of the "story" of Adam and Eve was encouraged. My freshman year, I built a miniature wind-tunnel and did studies on lifting bodies, animal flight and developed a concept for a novel lifting-wing and control mechanism for an "ornithopter". The Freshman-class winner that year? A study of how peanuts and soy are grown based on "science" that would have been fruity in the 1850's, complete with a dozen pictures of that traitorous rat, Jimmy Carter.
We HAVE to do something about the education standard in this country.
(/me is still hoping that intellectualism will someday return to the United States and that we will oust the relgious nutbags and anti-intellectual [dare I say, liberals] from our schools.)
Good luck to them on that. Unless they succeed in turning us into a nation of complete morons (/me patiently awaits the swing of the pendulum back towards intellectualism), that will never work, even if it did happen. There is far too much legacy equipment out there, far too many geeks, and far too many of the next generation of leaders in this country who will (please, G-d, don't let this be wishful thinking) be technically savvy enough to see through this kind of idiocy. I hope.
And still I say... If it comes out of speakers, I can rip it. If you don't like having to go through that trouble, then stop buying their music. Hate it for the artists (not really, I can't stand >99% of what I hear on the radio anyway), but get an indie label. Do tours! A couple of bands I know of with super-strong fanbases, you can't find their music on a p2p network. Why, you might ask? DRM maybe? No. The simple answer is, the fans buy the CD's from the band via their website or at a show, and then, out of respect for the artist, if they rip the CD, they don't share it. The way I see it, if you're big enough that your music is that easy to find (esp. the kind of music that gets played several times a day on several radio stations in one town), then it's essentially public property, like "xerox" and "kleenex". Be proud to be popular, go on tours (again, where almost ALL the money really is anyway), sell t-shirts, etc., because at some point, if you want to be a really huge rockstar, it's as much about image and marketing as it is about music. Take Marilyn Manson for example. I have friends from Fl. who saw him when he was just some guy and his pals pretending to be a band on Tuesday night at The Masquerade, before they'd figured out their gimmick. Once they got their gimmick down, they sold out, made a lot of money, became famous, and, IMNSHO, more power to them for it... I'm still not paying $15 for a cd to hear one, maybe two songs worth a shit, ESPECIALLY if they're effing tied to the CD and I can't copy them to whatever music playback device I want, howeve I want, at any time; That's a violation of fair use and I for one refuse to stand for it. If I were downloading their music, renaming it, and claiming it were my own original work, that would be a different story altogether.
SHUT DOWN THE RIAA: Stop buying shit pop music and boycott AMERICAN IDiOtL
Ok... I though Slashdot was a community of geeks... ?! People seem to forget that if the data becomes an audio or video stream, there is nothing you can do to prevent copying. Period. Paragraph. End of story. Unless the government suddenly bans video-cards with video inputs/mpg4 encoders and soundcards with mic jacks and RCA inputs, well... That's all you need to defeat even the toughest copyright protection. The way to stop /them/ is to demand that we have had enough! Continue to rip and download movies and music, and support your artists by seeing them live. Not only is this where most musicians make most of their money anyway, but it forces them to be beholden to their fans, not their recording execs. If the CD you have doesn't want to rip for some reason, play it as usual in your PC and find a way (there are dozens) to plug your output jacks into your input jacks and just record! Same with video, if you have a Hauppage card or the like. They can't stop you, no matter what they want you to think or how hard they work on copy protection. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay ANOTHER $15 for some CD that prolly only had 2 songs on it I liked b/c the cd got scratched.
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. However, the resulting environmental impact from this form of energy generation can't help but be cleaner, if not also less harmful overall to the environment than, well, just about anything else. The heat and pollution emissions of traditional powerplants affect the weather around them, and I doubt very seriously that erecting anything short of something the size of the Great Wall of China would even remotely affect the oceans currents. And Rei is quite right. The thing wuldn't have to spin very fast at all in order to generate power... Tidal currents are forces of nature, and would generate the equivalent of HUGE amounts of torque. Also totally correct about the fish; They tend to avoid the openings in damns and other hydroelectric plants.
I recall reading something years ago, maybe in PopSci, about a turbine system that had been developed allowing for the turbine shaft to rotate in the same direction no matter which way air was passed over the blades used to spin the turbine. The way it worked is that you had a big concrete box on a shoreline with a hole in the side facing the ocean, well below the low-tide line. Another opening in the back is placed well above the high-tide line, and the constant up/down motion of tidal waters would continuously move air in one direction or another over the blades, keeping the turbine spinning and generating easy power from tidal currents. An estimate I seem to recall said that dotting just 1% of the U.S.' coastlines with them could in theory supply our power needs for another 20 years. Probably snapped up by the likes of Exxon or some Saudi Prince or Oil Cartel somewhere, never to see the light of day again.
I say build more nuclear plants and be done with it. As far as dealing with the by-products, it's high time we build a rail-gun into the side of a mountain and fling the stuff off into the sun.
Thanks kindly for the compliment; As mentioned, I had come into the thread with the intent of modding, but the topic was compelling and the lack of intelligent posting was horrifying, so I decided to try to do something about it =)
Never forget:
Half the people in the world are below average.
The "below average" population of Slashdot unfortunately seems to account for a disproportionate volume of the total posts. So ist leben. Hats off to those well-spoken, considerate and intelligent posters that at least make reading at +1 worthwhile.
I'd completely forgotten about Myst (though I never really got into it.) I wouldn't if Intelligent Cube (PS1) can be ported to work with a headmouse? I was really addicted to that game back in the day. Perhaps someone should look into a company or foundation that specializes in bringing/porting/desiging pc/board/console games and other forms of entertainment to the disabled, if such does not already exist. Too bad I'm not a developer, just a geek.
OK... After having read WAY down in this thread with the intent of moderating it, wading through all the trolls and offtopics and irrelevants, I gave up. I'll mod somewhere else... This thread desperately needs some guidance and relevance that a few +/- 1's aren't going to provide.
I'm sorry that the technology necessary to enjoy PC games isn't quite there yet for the disabled, and I cannot personally say I know of any games particularly suited or designed for a headmouse. I'm pretty good at video games, but I damn sure need every finger and movement I can get... Some games require so many potential movements on so many different axis or inputs... My keyboard is barely enough! I hate it, but I would recommend looking into some legacy games (if you haven't played it, even though the graphics aren't new hotness, it doesn't necessarily suck just b/c it's old) like King's Quest/Space Quest or perhaps the original Final Fantasy (I played it again for the 4th or 5th time last year), or perhaps a turn-based strategy game of some kind where reaction time isn't so important? Vis-a-vis Master of Orion, Civilization, etc? I admit to not knowing much about headmice beyond the basics (i.e., i don't know how configurable they are or what range of input the average user has available), but I'm sure there must be something.
Also, you people keep mentioning the implants while completely forgetting to bring up the neural/aural (read: EKG) helmet that was effectively tested at about the same time with a nearly identical set of results as the implants. The EKG can sense the same brainwave pattern shifts that were used to control the cursor via implant. Maybe the same level of precision won't be available as via true implant (at first, or perhaps maybe never) due to bandwidth limitations (imagine trying to connect your fiber-line by leaving an unterminated end pointing at a microscope lens a few feet away... The fundamental limitations of wireless as opposed to wired.) But one day in what I believe will be the not-too-distant future, the interfaces will be there, wired or not, for you to be able to enjoy your computing experience as much as I do. It may even happen that one day, children born with crippling disabilities may even be better off in the virtual world than the rest of us b/c their brain (if they receive such implants for either input or total immersion) will not worry so much about developing neural pathways for physical activities, but for more mental ones.
I hope the steady march of technology does right for you soon; I've been certain this technology was coming within my lifetime, and since the release of the new researech I'm even more certain it will be in the next 10 - 15 years, and hopefully the surgerical techniques to help you will be here even sooner.
Can _ANYBODY_ say something relevant and list a few ideas for games compatible with a headmouse?
McFLYYYYYYYY!
Eschew Obfuscation
How many times do you people have to be told???
/. has degenerated to, I suppose. Shame on me for contributing to it, but these people need straightening out, damnit.
The US is a Republic not a Socialist Democracy, so please, get your facts straight people! Mob-rule does not work!
Rome was a republic too. Rome also fell. But yanno, during the time of the Roman Republic, the citizens of Rome were by far and large much better off than the citizens of any other land, as are the citizens of the U.S. right now... Beware those who would make our great nation a Socialist one and then subject (or subvert) it's will and the will and wants of it's people to another entity like the U.N. who just wants to steal money and resources from those who work so hard to make this country the great place it is. Billary would rather everybody get equal shares for unequal work, rather than reward those who deserve it and let those who do nothing (e.q. 60%+ of welfare recipients, IMO) and deserve support the least to rot, as it should be. Take a closer look at the LEFT and the FAR LEFT as well as it's figureheads and leaders, and you'll get a much clearer picture of Socialism and Facism than you will from the right. My biggest problem with the right-wingers is their religious agenda and anti-abortion stances, but the last thing you can do is call them facist. Pull your head out of your ass and try a dispassionate and honest observation of your own views before you start dissembling on the views of others.
Wow, this whole thread is WAY off topic... Classic example of what
Bravo! Any political campaign based on hate marks those campaigning (the 'ee's and the 'ers both) as dangerous and suspect at best. If your vote is based solely on the fact that you personally dislike someone and the person you vote for has no other reasonable or logical platform besides the fact that you and they are still angry that that worthless lump of flesh Al Gore lost the election, either give up or your voter card or go somewhere else please, and quit polluting my nations politics with your ignorance and lack of forethought. Whether you call it Communism, Socialism, or the National Democratic Party, it is still Communism.
/bin/laden
If: 1 + 2 = 3 then A + B = C then
Hillary R. Clinton + Card Carrying Socialist = COMMUNIST
Communist Russia was built on facism, hate, and the blood of innocents... And you people want to elect this woman in 2008 when so much of every Democratic campaign, movement and bill the last 3+ years has been based on hate against Bush or an attempt to make our laws and land a socialiist one? This woman's speeches sound like nails on a blackboard and much more closely resemble the impassioned speeches of Hitler's (though far less moving or articulate... Speaking fluent German, being a Jew and having listened to Hitler's speeches, I can tell you I'd rather to Hitler than Hillary [Hitllary?] any day). Seriously, at least Bush's campaigns and ideals aren't based on communism and hate. He may be an asshole who doesn't always make the choice I would have made, or done it ecxactly the way I would have, but at least he's got some guts, and is motivated by what he feels is in the best interests of the nation... Not a feeling I get from either Clinton, who seem to be motivated only by money, power, and polls. Not a good combination. Maybe Bill has a higher IQ, but he showed his lack of sense when he failed to pursue Bin Laden as vigorously as he could have. And anybody who tells me Clarke is telling the truth and wasn't paid by the Clinton's to wait until exactly now to pull this shit has their heads up their asses.
--
root@yggsdrasil> grep
Hermann Goering was by more than a few accounts a homosexual and very likely a pedophile as well.
He was also about as high as you could get in the Nazi chain of command.
Besides, if you were straight, and KNEW you were about to die (by your own hand or someone else's) and you'd just married Eva VonBraun, wouldn't you hump her before the end? The fact that he never bothered to take time to consummate his union suggests a lot, I think.
Thnak you for that!
I used to have a little button that said this, but lost it ages ago.
Being from a German-Jewish family (My grandparents were chased from their ancestral home outside Nuremburg in 1942, after years of evasion), this is particularly poignant (though rather offtopic). Thank you for bringing it up.
Anyway, bravo!
Godwin's Law prov. [Usenet] "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin's Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
:p
How about KNOWING the laws you are trying to enforce, you insensitive clod!
Oh, and to the poster who made the original reference, you not only LOST the arguement by making the comparison, you are making plain for all to see what an uneducated fool you are. Any comparison is ludicrous until Bush:
1.) Commits or attempts genocide.
2.) Invades his three closest neighbors on a mission of conquest and empire building (It's not as if we're trying to KEEP or colonialize Iraq and Afghansitan [though I've been in favor of colonizing Iraq with the option to apply for statehood in 100 years since the first Gulf War]), and,
3.) Imprisons his OWN COUNTRYMEN in death/work/detention camps. Foreign combatants DO NOT count!
Please note, I did not vote for GWB, but he was a damn sight a better choice than that spineless pansy Gore. I will almost certainly vote for Bush over whoever the Democratic nominee is (John "Effing" Kerry? NO way), seeing as there doesn't seem to be an independant running this year. He's FUBAR'd some stuff up here, but it could be a lot worse (How about three times the already ridiculous tax rate, as the Dem's would have it... Why should I give away even more of my hard-earned money so some worthless slacker who hasn't worked a day in the last 15 years can continue to live on welfare eating as well [if not better] than I do, and make more babies in- between Jerry Springer and the next soap opera?), and in the long run, the Iraq invasion was the right thing to do. Maybe some Iraqi's are protesting in the streets right now, but they are mostly blowing EACH OTHER up now, not us. Besides, were it not for the U.S. soldiers there right now, those protesting would all be dead or dying in Saddam or Uday's torture chambers. We've given them freedoms such as they've never had in their entire history. Bush has done a great thing here, and anybody who says differently (One guy [a Frenchman] said to me, "They [the Iraqi people] were neither ready for, nor deserving of liberty because they are too culturally backwards and repressed to handle freedom, like most Arabs.") is a facist at heart, pure and simple.
--
All your terrorist base are belong to U.S.!
As a reader has already posted, I'm 100% that there is no spy/mal-ware on my machine, and even if there were, I don't see how it would be possible for software on my machine to cause googles search engine to display bad results (unless the malware were redirecting me to a fake page, which isn't the case here). No, this is quite definitely a meta-tag/database exploit being done to Google... I'm just surprised that it's been allowed to continue, as this is essentially Google's ersatz competitors cheating them out of some free advertising, and were it me in charge, you can be certain I'd have put a stop to it immediately.
By the way, if you've never seen what I'm talking about, simply follow the link in my original post to the google search I did for - what else - Google, and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.
Actually, if I remember correctly, this is about what Altavista has looked like for some time now. Also note that by doing a WhoIs for Altavista.com, you will find that Altavista is owned by Yahoo!... Which I just don't know about, to be honest. I use their mail service, but their search page is so bloated and ugly, full of content I neither want nor need from a search engine. As a result, Google is set as my home page, and when I want to check my web-mail account, I have a hotlink directly to https://mail.yahoo.com (cleartext password transmission is bad, mmmm'kay?). When I want information, want it fast, and want it organized in manner that at least vaguely appears to be relevant, I go to Google.
Waaayyyyy back in the day when I used to work at D.E.C. ('97 to early '99), I and most of my friends and co-workers swore by Altavista... Guess it also didn't hurt that I could feel the hum from the servers that powered it through my chair some days. Boy have things changed, but then, not much changed for the better after the Comwhaq buyout.
One major annoyance with Google lately though... Those stupid results that come back as the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th result for evey search I've run in the last month+... You know, the ones that say "Find 'x' using the free 2020 search toolbar", and, "Find 'x' on smartpages.com," and "Find 'x' With Free Websearch Tools." What is up with this??? Why for they cannot make these go away, bitte? If I wanted to search for these somewhere else, I would do so. Why is Google doing free advertising for these people, as they are obviously not paid ads, but standard returns that appear to be just a database/dictionary/meta-tag exploit... Someone at Google must know about this, and I just don't understand why it's been allowed to continue, as this has completely ruined so much of their credibility since now 3 out of the first five results of any query are now completely unrelated and inaccurate =(
Otherwise, I've been loving on Google about 2 1/2 years now, and I haven't really looked back, even when I read sites (1, and 2) that called into question google's privacy practices, I wasn't really deterred, but these bad returns may be all it takes to make me start considering another move.
Oooh, my feelings are so hurt. I think it's rather more obvious that you are trying to shift your negative body issues off on me, you ignornant, scurrilous, corner-hiding, pillow-biter.
Apparently you don't live in the U.S. I asked for examples of better places to live; I see none forthcoming. Wherever the fuck it is you are from, I'll 100% guran-fucking-tee that I'm better of than you are. So your life and your country sucks... Wahhhhh... My pussy hurts for you. If you are going to take the sorry state of the shit-hole you live in out on someone, at least come up with a better arguement than just "wrong".
THE WHOLE DISCUSSION is that the U.S. makes it's laws and policies for the happiness, protection and betterment of the U.S.'s citizens, NOT to make some jackass on some piss-poor island rich through theft. Get a job!
By the way, at 6'1", 155 lbs. with an I.Q. that has never officially tested lower than 150, if all that makes me a fat retard (who doesn't hide behind anonymity, and can post more than a dozen words with an actual POINT, not just a flame), then what the hell kind of scum-sucking bottom feeder are you?
For those of you wondering why I'm even bothering, it's because I love pointing out to AC troll's what ignorant cock-smokers they are.
>> one major function of a democracy is to protects the rights of the minority, not force the will of the majority on everyone.
The U.S. is not, I repeat NOT a democracy! When are you idiots going to pull your heads out of your collective liberal asses and recognize this???
Democracies are 100% about enforcing the rule of the majority over the minority, as a democracy essentially entails every individual having an equal say in their government, which is essentially mob-rule. A Republic, on the other hand, like the U.S., has officials elected to office to do the ruling, supposedly representing the interests of those that elected them, thus insuring that the wants/wills of the vocal (and often uninformed) majority do not trample the rights of the minority, while also ensuring that the oft-times very vocal and educated minority does not trample the rights of the majority (see Saudi Arabia, or North Korea, for example).
Besides, on-line gambling IS legal in the U.S.... Gambling on sports just happenes to be illegal for any number of reasons, good or ill, and, right or wrong, our current representatives feel it is in the best interests of the American people that sports gambling on-line should be illegal. Don't like it? Vote. When enough people also agree with you to cause a change in your representative leadership, you'll get what you want through the process that was designed by our founding fathers for fairness and equality, not through extortion and threats the way the WTO would have it.
Being a libertarian, I'm all for letting people do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as they don't injure anyone else in the process... The problem is, gambling almost never helps anyone but the casino. On the other hand, look at how many lives have been ruined by gambling; And I'm not referring to the gambler, but their families. How many children, wives, husbands, brothers, mothers, friends, etc. have seriously financially injured (if not obliterated) by the inability of a friend or family member to realize that just because they THINK they have the inside scoop they just HAVE to win... And shit, never mind the $3k they lost yesterday, really, they're gonna make it all back and then some tonight, really...
I've known whole families that were ruined because of one person's addiction, and when it hurts innocent people is when I have a problem with it. Maybe more express regulations on gambling (e.g. You cannot spend more than 1/4 of the total current sum of your checking account, 1/52nd your annual income, or 1/16th of your net worth or something to that effect, and perhaps other clauses, such as a waiver signed upon entry [physical or electronic] to the casino making only the gambler beholden for their potential debt, leaving friends, family, and business immune to collection) over the internet and in person.
Also, consider that yes, the U.S. is the 1000 lb. gorilla, and as another reader pointed out, really, wtf are ya gonna do? Like we really give a shit about the WTO and what it thinks. The WTO is just a pansy-assed trade version of the UN, neither of whom would exist without the U.S., and neither of whom's opinion we give a damn about. The U.N. at least has a military arm, and you can see how concerned about that we are.
Fsck globalization. I know it has to happen eventually, but of all the shithole places to live on this rock, the U.S. is by far the best off of all of them. even with all the silly problems we may have, our laws are better for us than your are, as is the average Joe's legal and governmental representation. Name, for example,one major country with a real economy that actually has laws against police brutality (damn sure isn't France or Germany... I should know, I'm originally from Germany, and I know what happens firsthand when you talk shit at the Polizei or J'endarmes) Ok, I'm sure there are a few, but not many, and I'd be willing to bet that country won't let you own a gun, either. I'm really not for other countries deciding that they don't like the fact that our national policy prevents them from trying to fleece American's out of their hard earned cash with underhanded electronic versions of the "3 cups" game, etc. How about actually PRODUCING something that people want? This, to me, is reminiscent of the couple of people I've met in Paris and London that admitted over drinks to supplementing their income by stealing from unawares tourists, and then rationalizing these peoples lack of alertness as all the reason they need, not realizing these people are generally just trying to enjoy their vacations in a supposedly friendly country, not survive a criminal war-zone. One Parisian told me, "Well, they weren't exactly using it at the moment," the item in question was a purse at the victim's feet while taking a photo, "and since she wasn't using it, she obviously didn't need it, so I took it." This is essentially the old gypsy line, "Anything that is not nailed down is mine. Anything I can pry up with a claw-hammer is not nailed down."
So yeah, screw what some other pissant nation thinks our national policy should be. Our national policies and laws are decided by OUR (occasionally corrupt) politicians and lawmakers, not YOUR money-grubbing and almost certainly perfidous "representatives". You don't like it? Make your own money, crawl up out of your hole your own damn self, and come invade us, but don't ever ask us for economic or military aid again. Your shitty economy is not our fault, nor our problem, seeing as how THE US HAS