I was travelling around the Yucatan a few years ago when I got hit by a major case of Montezuma's revenge. Badly, as in memory leak on four major system interfaces. At the same time.
I walked into a pharmacy around Merida and asked them (rather, my girlfriend asked them, as I'd just spent a night on the can holding a trash bin) what they'd recommend, and the dude forked over some dubious-looking pillbox. Plugged it right up, *plop*, and got rid of the nauseaheadachedizzynessblurryvisionetcetera in one shot.
During the same vacation, I picked up a fairly major sunburn, and was sold some ointment that just made the pain and redness _disappear_. It was uncanny.
My roommate back home at the time was a Roche lab technician; he blanched when he saw what I'd bought. "They're allowed to sell this shit? Legally?" He never did tell me what was in it, but damn, it was sure effective.
So no, I guess Mexican pharmacies are probably not prescription free, but I assume they take a far more pragmatic approach to what requires a prescription, like a lot of the world (judging by my mom's nosedrops that she used to have when living in Europe--.05% cocaine:-)
They already do a lo-tech version of this on a lot of turnpike highways in Italy and France. They'll measure your speed between toll stations, and have the Carabinieri waiting for you afterwards. It's pretty usual to see people who've been speeding like pig-bitten maniacs taking a rest break before passing the next toll gate.
The Dutch and UK (along with a few other countries in northern Europe) also have speed measuring stretches, with cameras spread out over a number of miles to measure your average speed.
Most insidious, in my opinion, is a system in place in the UK, which takes your picture, does some sort of plate recognition, connects to their equivalent of the department of motor vehicles, and has a fine in the mail to you automatically within minutes. I don't know any exact details of it, only having read some pretty superficial descriptions, but it's a bit frightening.
Of course, ask the virus semantics weenies. It's Fetii.
the earth is overpopulated BOO HOO
Hear hear, death sentence for parking violators. And people with B.O. And X5 drivers. And fat people who wear spandex. And the guy operating the jackhammer at 7 a.m. And rude public servants.
...become ground up and flushed down the drain
Exactly! People are starving all around the world. Soylent Green for the masses! I see a future with unimaginativable body modifications
Awesome, I've always wanted a hand on my forehead (to hold the cigarette when I'm carrying lots of stuff.) Does that count as "unimaginativable"?
Fair enough, but how can we debate morality then if it's just opinions?
Wasn't debating, was stating a view. Your point is taken.
it'd mean death to innocent and unwilling people
As I stated in another post, given the facts at my humble disposal, while I think that there's a big gray area, I don't equate clumps of cells with human beings. I also don't believe in a soul in the religious sense, so that's that for you there. And I won't keep this going by going for the inevitable, lame, cliche'd response--"prove it."
Having said that, "no matter what the cost to everyone else" is a bit of a straw man--if I'm on a lifeboat with another guy, and it's either me or him, well, I hope he's insured. If it's me or 100 people, well, who knows; people have been known to fall on hand grenades. It's not my intention to make absolute statements, I'm simply being honest about my beliefs and perfectly human, egotistical will to live.
To be honest, after yesterday evening's trip to the supermarket, I'm no longer sure whether I consider children in general, or most adults for that matter, to be human beings, but that's a topic for another day.
Excuse me? "shining diety" (sic)? Please point out where I ever mentioned worship of Man or Thing (except for Kylie) and I will gladly retract it.
Your disbelief in him won't help a whit on the last day.
Fair enough, but you just let that be my problem when the time comes, deal?
... in protecting fetuses/infants who cannot enforce their own rights
Cool how you manage to drag infants into this. As for fetuses, well, I don't believe they're human beings yet, and I'll let it stand at that. Nobody's ever convinced anyone to change their mind in the abortion shitfest (which is what this sort of comes down to), so if you don't want one, don't have one, and any other hackneyed cliches you'd care to add to this thread.
What do you think will impress your buds (and chicks) more: something bright yellow with tiger stripes that plays the Stars & Stripes Forever in glorious Surround-o-Rama THX, with a pop-up 3D projection holograph screen to show your streaming nudie clips of Kylie in the shower...
...or an aloof display of studied elegance, using a tasteful accessory in a businesslike manner?
Now that I mention it, the second sounds more likely to get you respect, but the first would be pretty damn cool. Nokia are you listening? More Kylie.
you're accusing them of not following the same moral code as you do
Precisely, I would never claim otherwise. My use of "anti-humanist" refers to the idea of humanism as a system of beliefs centered on the "interests, needs and welfare of human beings." (American Heritage dictionary.) I believe that someone who would limit my life or health directly or indirectly because of his/her religious beliefs to contravene my interests, needs and welfare. So far, no inconsistency there.
See how you use the word "fundamental right"
Yes, in reference to the US Declaration of Independence. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
My argument, you will note, does not in any way shape or form refer to anything but the "Life" and "Liberty" bits, although happiness should sort of automatically follow if you're in good shape, no? I do not believe that any man has the right to decide over another's life--and yes, I oppose the death penalty. Drawing property rights into the discussion does not follow--we're talking about the life of a thinking, breathing, conscious individual--IMHO the most important thing in the world.
You're absolutely correct about the "mutually incompatible moral systems". You'll note, though, that I do not make a moral judgment, simply a pragmatic one. I want to be able to live a long and healthy life, and so should you (if you want to.) Is that unreasonable?
I am selfish. I freely admit it. I want to live. A long, happy, healthy life. And I don't need you or your "god" in order to do that.
Nor would I ever forbid you from believing what you want to believe. "...fight to the death for your right to say it" and all that.
But I will be damned before I let _anyone_ (you, the pope, whoever) dictate how long or healthy I can or should live due to his personal temporal interpretation of what they see as divine guidance. (Although if you're advising me to find truth at a URL containing "babykillers", I'm probably already damned in your eyes anyway.)
-I dunno if the 6310i is available in the US -The phone's major problem is inability to save vcards that are SMS'ed to you. -Just checked google, and it indicates isync & 6310i don't work, as the Nokia doesn't use SyncML.
So best ignore my original post (it's still a damn good phone, though.) Sorry.
-Tri-band GSM -bluetooth, GPRS/WAP (big deal) -good sound quality -great reception -well-organized display and menu functions -really well-designed keypad (not soft & mushy) -good shape (fits into your hand well, very slim, easily slides into and out of your pocket, and is comfortable to talk on -robust power connector -no fiddly moving parts to break
In short, it's a phone. It does phone stuff, and does it well. The thing's built like a Russian tank; I have dropped it on concrete at numerous angles, gotten it wet, smacked it around and generally abused it, and like all my Nokia phones, it keeps on chugging.
Don't buy this if you want a toy (MMS, photo, cute polyphonic ringtones, fashionable shape, whatever.) But as a tool, it rocks. In fact, this phone is the best piece of industrial design I've had the pleasure of using this year.
If it's a choice between your survival or mine, take a wild guess where you rank.
Now imagine that it's a choice between me and some dead unthinking pile of cells scraped out of some woman's uterus...? (Hint: if my girlfriend ever wanted/needed an abortion, I sure as hell wouldn't let a law stand in the way of it.)
One moderator with a +1 'Funny' managed to do what several eloquent, educated individuals (plus me) couldn't--that is, put this sort of statement in the right light.
Cool, let me write that down and get back to you on it when you're lying in a hospital bed in agonizing pain, unable to move, hooked up to a catheter and colostomy bag and dribbling uncontrollably.
I'd love to see some statistics on the number of "god-fearing" people currently insisting on receiving treatment they opposed for others on religious reasons at some point in time.
I don't believe in your god; I believe in Man. I don't tell you how not to spend your sunday mornings, and you, bub, don't tell me what my doctor can or cannot do.
Nice troll, let me countertroll; so you condone murder?
Tell that to Superman, or my grandma who died of Alzheimers.
If I had a disease which could potentially be cured through some kind of research, but someone else wants to prohibit that research on religious grounds, they are as guilty of murder as "christian" "scientist" "parents" who withhold treatment from their sick children (won't someone please think of the children?) for religious reasons.
This is something I feel pretty strongly about--I find any religious argument against the reduction of suffering or extension of life to be anti-humanist, ignorant and intolerant. Live how you will, but don't deny me and others the fundamental right to live what we see as better lives through the advancement of medical science.
My sympathies. Honestly. This might be the right point in time to mention a solution to the l0z3r problem we had at Berkeley.
Vice Provost of information technology Ray Neff (he of the Berkeley CSUA Ray Neff Risk Tournament, so the lore goes, one day decided that Berkeley needed something on the level of CMU's Andrew system.
So Ray buckled on his suit and trusty sheaf of purchase order forms, and bought several thousand Sun 3/50 workstations and 4/whatever servers (yes, those of SMD disks.) As the story claims, this put Sun on the map, more or less.
The reaction to this, given that he put the UC CS department into hock for several years, appears to have been "you bought _what_?" Needless to say, ole' Ray wasn't given the chance to get long in the tooth in that job.
4 megs of memory, b&w 19" monitors, swap over the net. On a shared 10mbit segment. Yee-haa!
The upshot of all this is that, if someone logged onto one of these things via the modem annex to do something pointless like, oh, I dunno, CS61B homework, the machine became useless, I say USELESS for dooshing (slang for playing Netrek, the greatest game ever written.)
Good thing a certain Mr. Mehlhaff (evil ERic, to be exact) wrote a nice little proggie called "N0H0Z3RZ". ~> bin/N0H0Z3RZ would grab all ttys left of the machine's 38 total (1 being used for a twm xterm from which to start a netrek client.) All this, of course, after a swift L1-A (L1 being the equivalent of 'stop', for you post-type 3 keyboard sun weenies) to drop the box into OBP for a few minutes while waiting for the idiot currently logged in via modem to get off, then 'go' to get back to the really relevant bits.
Whacking Klingons.
It makes me nostalgic for the days when technology mattered, really.
Well he's not doing blanket deletes of all local mail origins--just providers which make it easy for users to spam, from the looks of it.
I agree wholeheartedly with you that the school of thought saying "use your provider's mail server" is misguided--which is why I'm pretty happy that the easynet blacklist (easynet.nl) is going down the tubes.
We use a Debian box with a single static IP inbound and twin DHCP (which for all intents and purposes never change) outbound for network load splitting. I tell all my friends and colleagues who use blanket blacklists (e.g. those which don't do "real" checks, like for open relays or RFC-ignorance in general) that they can just forget about receiving mail from me.
As for bounces, wellllllll...why bother? Most reply-tos and Froms are forged anyway, and the (very) few legitimate false positives that we get, as much as it pains me to say it, don't merit the extra effort involved in actually bothering with a bounce. Kind of sucks that email has come down to being such a question of rational time economy for us, but at least between the blacklists and spamsassassin, it keeps my crap down to ~5 spams a day (from about 7000 at last count without any countermeasures.)
What is the American equivalent to "getting your P45[*]"?
The expression is "pink slip", although the line between "laid off" and "fired" has blurred considerably, they're not all pink anymore, and the system by which you register for/draw unemployment pay is pretty different.
In essence, getting the boot in the US = "you better have some cash on the side."
He mentions that it sets a threshhold of user activity, such as using too many new programs within a limited space of time.
Any indication that it does some sort of observation of user activity (think bayesian learning for spam filters) to build profiles which, if exceeded by too high a metric within too short a time, would also trigger a log error?
There was an _awesome_ scene in Medal of Honor, in the level where you infiltrate the German submarine pen in Norway. Dressed as a kraut officer, you walk past two troopers having a chat in perfectly accented idiomatic German; something utterly hilarious, to the extent of "I don't know why the Norwegians are all so mad at us, we just want to bring their chicks back to Germany to breed the master race."
I'm a native German speaker, and I think I would have noticed any trace of an accent there, so I can only assume that they used real Germans to record the voiceovers. Frankly, I can't imagine a German voice actor not pissing himself laughing when asked to read something like that out loud."
The BF1942 clips are actually pretty funny--I like the Italians best--it all sounds romantic and beautiful (Va fa'in culo! I have a headwound! Mamma mia, I love you!)
Well, a "glove" needn't be some horrendous construct, like Nintendo's Power Glove (ick.)
I recall reading about some project (sorry, can't find a link) involving a little wrist bracelent leading to fingertip thingies, which essentially figured out what you were typing, without you needing a keyboard.
Similarly (once again, can't remember link) there was some toy that projected a keyboard onto any flat surface, and figured out what you were typing.
You're not going to get a holodeck type of product that lets you physically interact with "virtual" objects anytime soon, but given technologies like the ones above, shouldn't it be feasible to (a) project images into empty space (or at least make it look so via VR goggles or something similar) and (b) allow a user to interact with them by moving his hands and fingers around them, without too much extraneous hardware?
I mean, these are manual activities and shouldn't make your hands/arms really tired, any more than working on a car or watering the plants should exhaust you.
I think it'd be pretty cool to stand in the middle of a room and move stuff around in mid-air.
There's an interesting article about this at El Reg. I'm pretty worried about what's going on there; for all the failing of ICANN, it's always been sort of emblematic of the prevailing idea in western countries to keep bureaucracy from throttling the Internet. Think what you will about various nations bad handling of Internet traffic and user rights, the over-corporatization of the net, and ICANN's distasteful tactics over domain handling; the Internet as we know it is a far cry from what it might have been had the ITU been allowed to be the driving force behind it.
I don't relish the idea of the type of bureaucrat who brought us WIPO deciding by fiat where the greatest communications revolution in human history is going to go.
Slashdot Mirror
I was travelling around the Yucatan a few years ago when I got hit by a major case of Montezuma's revenge. Badly, as in memory leak on four major system interfaces. At the same time.
I walked into a pharmacy around Merida and asked them (rather, my girlfriend asked them, as I'd just spent a night on the can holding a trash bin) what they'd recommend, and the dude forked over some dubious-looking pillbox. Plugged it right up, *plop*, and got rid of the nauseaheadachedizzynessblurryvisionetcetera in one shot.
During the same vacation, I picked up a fairly major sunburn, and was sold some ointment that just made the pain and redness _disappear_. It was uncanny.
My roommate back home at the time was a Roche lab technician; he blanched when he saw what I'd bought. "They're allowed to sell this shit? Legally?" He never did tell me what was in it, but damn, it was sure effective.
So no, I guess Mexican pharmacies are probably not prescription free, but I assume they take a far more pragmatic approach to what requires a prescription, like a lot of the world (judging by my mom's nosedrops that she used to have when living in Europe--.05% cocaine
You are aware that the difference between a human foetus and a chimpansee foetus is barely detectable at the age abortions are done, right?
Hate to burst your bubble, but the difference between a lot of "adults" and a chimpanzee foetus isn't particularly detectable either.
They already do a lo-tech version of this on a lot of turnpike highways in Italy and France. They'll measure your speed between toll stations, and have the Carabinieri waiting for you afterwards. It's pretty usual to see people who've been speeding like pig-bitten maniacs taking a rest break before passing the next toll gate.
The Dutch and UK (along with a few other countries in northern Europe) also have speed measuring stretches, with cameras spread out over a number of miles to measure your average speed.
Most insidious, in my opinion, is a system in place in the UK, which takes your picture, does some sort of plate recognition, connects to their equivalent of the department of motor vehicles, and has a fine in the mail to you automatically within minutes. I don't know any exact details of it, only having read some pretty superficial descriptions, but it's a bit frightening.
And this is _without_ EZPass. Brrrr.
Is there a plural for fetus?
Of course, ask the virus semantics weenies. It's Fetii.
the earth is overpopulated BOO HOO
Hear hear, death sentence for parking violators. And people with B.O. And X5 drivers. And fat people who wear spandex. And the guy operating the jackhammer at 7 a.m. And rude public servants.
Exactly! People are starving all around the world. Soylent Green for the masses!
I see a future with unimaginativable body modifications
Awesome, I've always wanted a hand on my forehead (to hold the cigarette when I'm carrying lots of stuff.) Does that count as "unimaginativable"?
Fair enough, but how can we debate morality then if it's just opinions?
Wasn't debating, was stating a view. Your point is taken.
it'd mean death to innocent and unwilling people
As I stated in another post, given the facts at my humble disposal, while I think that there's a big gray area, I don't equate clumps of cells with human beings. I also don't believe in a soul in the religious sense, so that's that for you there. And I won't keep this going by going for the inevitable, lame, cliche'd response--"prove it."
Having said that, "no matter what the cost to everyone else" is a bit of a straw man--if I'm on a lifeboat with another guy, and it's either me or him, well, I hope he's insured. If it's me or 100 people, well, who knows; people have been known to fall on hand grenades. It's not my intention to make absolute statements, I'm simply being honest about my beliefs and perfectly human, egotistical will to live.
To be honest, after yesterday evening's trip to the supermarket, I'm no longer sure whether I consider children in general, or most adults for that matter, to be human beings, but that's a topic for another day.
Excuse me? "shining diety" (sic)? Please point out where I ever mentioned worship of Man or Thing (except for Kylie) and I will gladly retract it.
Your disbelief in him won't help a whit on the last day.
Fair enough, but you just let that be my problem when the time comes, deal?
Cool how you manage to drag infants into this. As for fetuses, well, I don't believe they're human beings yet, and I'll let it stand at that. Nobody's ever convinced anyone to change their mind in the abortion shitfest (which is what this sort of comes down to), so if you don't want one, don't have one, and any other hackneyed cliches you'd care to add to this thread.
OK, fair enough, but consider this:
What do you think will impress your buds (and chicks) more: something bright yellow with tiger stripes that plays the Stars & Stripes Forever in glorious Surround-o-Rama THX, with a pop-up 3D projection holograph screen to show your streaming nudie clips of Kylie in the shower...
Now that I mention it, the second sounds more likely to get you respect, but the first would be pretty damn cool. Nokia are you listening? More Kylie.
you're accusing them of not following the same moral code as you do
Precisely, I would never claim otherwise. My use of "anti-humanist" refers to the idea of humanism as a system of beliefs centered on the "interests, needs and welfare of human beings." (American Heritage dictionary.) I believe that someone who would limit my life or health directly or indirectly because of his/her religious beliefs to contravene my interests, needs and welfare. So far, no inconsistency there.
See how you use the word "fundamental right"
Yes, in reference to the US Declaration of Independence. "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
My argument, you will note, does not in any way shape or form refer to anything but the "Life" and "Liberty" bits, although happiness should sort of automatically follow if you're in good shape, no? I do not believe that any man has the right to decide over another's life--and yes, I oppose the death penalty. Drawing property rights into the discussion does not follow--we're talking about the life of a thinking, breathing, conscious individual--IMHO the most important thing in the world.
You're absolutely correct about the "mutually incompatible moral systems". You'll note, though, that I do not make a moral judgment, simply a pragmatic one. I want to be able to live a long and healthy life, and so should you (if you want to.) Is that unreasonable?
I am selfish. I freely admit it. I want to live. A long, happy, healthy life. And I don't need you or your "god" in order to do that.
Nor would I ever forbid you from believing what you want to believe. "...fight to the death for your right to say it" and all that.
But I will be damned before I let _anyone_ (you, the pope, whoever) dictate how long or healthy I can or should live due to his personal temporal interpretation of what they see as divine guidance. (Although if you're advising me to find truth at a URL containing "babykillers", I'm probably already damned in your eyes anyway.)
That is all. Now try again.
Oh yeah, I should probably mention that
-I dunno if the 6310i is available in the US
-The phone's major problem is inability to save vcards that are SMS'ed to you.
-Just checked google, and it indicates isync & 6310i don't work, as the Nokia doesn't use SyncML.
So best ignore my original post (it's still a damn good phone, though.) Sorry.
I can't recommend this thing highly enough.
It's got:
-Tri-band GSM
-bluetooth, GPRS/WAP (big deal)
-good sound quality
-great reception
-well-organized display and menu functions
-really well-designed keypad (not soft & mushy)
-good shape (fits into your hand well, very slim, easily slides into and out of your pocket, and is comfortable to talk on
-robust power connector
-no fiddly moving parts to break
In short, it's a phone. It does phone stuff, and does it well. The thing's built like a Russian tank; I have dropped it on concrete at numerous angles, gotten it wet, smacked it around and generally abused it, and like all my Nokia phones, it keeps on chugging.
Don't buy this if you want a toy (MMS, photo, cute polyphonic ringtones, fashionable shape, whatever.) But as a tool, it rocks. In fact, this phone is the best piece of industrial design I've had the pleasure of using this year.
If it's a choice between your survival or mine, take a wild guess where you rank.
Now imagine that it's a choice between me and some dead unthinking pile of cells scraped out of some woman's uterus...? (Hint: if my girlfriend ever wanted/needed an abortion, I sure as hell wouldn't let a law stand in the way of it.)
Now try again.
Awesome.
One moderator with a +1 'Funny' managed to do what several eloquent, educated individuals (plus me) couldn't--that is, put this sort of statement in the right light.
I am awed.
Cool, let me write that down and get back to you on it when you're lying in a hospital bed in agonizing pain, unable to move, hooked up to a catheter and colostomy bag and dribbling uncontrollably.
I'd love to see some statistics on the number of "god-fearing" people currently insisting on receiving treatment they opposed for others on religious reasons at some point in time.
I don't believe in your god; I believe in Man. I don't tell you how not to spend your sunday mornings, and you, bub, don't tell me what my doctor can or cannot do.
Man, I knew leaving the US was a good thing.
Nice troll, let me countertroll; so you condone murder?
Tell that to Superman, or my grandma who died of Alzheimers.
If I had a disease which could potentially be cured through some kind of research, but someone else wants to prohibit that research on religious grounds, they are as guilty of murder as "christian" "scientist" "parents" who withhold treatment from their sick children (won't someone please think of the children?) for religious reasons.
This is something I feel pretty strongly about--I find any religious argument against the reduction of suffering or extension of life to be anti-humanist, ignorant and intolerant. Live how you will, but don't deny me and others the fundamental right to live what we see as better lives through the advancement of medical science.
Now flame away.
-Hotels.
-Flights.
-Rental Cars.
-Anything via the Internet or phone.
Good luck with the cash, dude. I like the sentiment, I agree with it, but realistically?
My sympathies. Honestly. This might be the right point in time to mention a solution to the l0z3r problem we had at Berkeley.
Vice Provost of information technology Ray Neff (he of the Berkeley CSUA Ray Neff Risk Tournament, so the lore goes, one day decided that Berkeley needed something on the level of CMU's Andrew system.
So Ray buckled on his suit and trusty sheaf of purchase order forms, and bought several thousand Sun 3/50 workstations and 4/whatever servers (yes, those of SMD disks.) As the story claims, this put Sun on the map, more or less.
The reaction to this, given that he put the UC CS department into hock for several years, appears to have been "you bought _what_?" Needless to say, ole' Ray wasn't given the chance to get long in the tooth in that job.
4 megs of memory, b&w 19" monitors, swap over the net. On a shared 10mbit segment. Yee-haa!
The upshot of all this is that, if someone logged onto one of these things via the modem annex to do something pointless like, oh, I dunno, CS61B homework, the machine became useless, I say USELESS for dooshing (slang for playing Netrek, the greatest game ever written.)
Good thing a certain Mr. Mehlhaff (evil ERic, to be exact) wrote a nice little proggie called "N0H0Z3RZ". ~> bin/N0H0Z3RZ would grab all ttys left of the machine's 38 total (1 being used for a twm xterm from which to start a netrek client.) All this, of course, after a swift L1-A (L1 being the equivalent of 'stop', for you post-type 3 keyboard sun weenies) to drop the box into OBP for a few minutes while waiting for the idiot currently logged in via modem to get off, then 'go' to get back to the really relevant bits.
Whacking Klingons.
It makes me nostalgic for the days when technology mattered, really.
Well he's not doing blanket deletes of all local mail origins--just providers which make it easy for users to spam, from the looks of it.
I agree wholeheartedly with you that the school of thought saying "use your provider's mail server" is misguided--which is why I'm pretty happy that the easynet blacklist (easynet.nl) is going down the tubes.
We use a Debian box with a single static IP inbound and twin DHCP (which for all intents and purposes never change) outbound for network load splitting. I tell all my friends and colleagues who use blanket blacklists (e.g. those which don't do "real" checks, like for open relays or RFC-ignorance in general) that they can just forget about receiving mail from me.
As for bounces, wellllllll...why bother? Most reply-tos and Froms are forged anyway, and the (very) few legitimate false positives that we get, as much as it pains me to say it, don't merit the extra effort involved in actually bothering with a bounce. Kind of sucks that email has come down to being such a question of rational time economy for us, but at least between the blacklists and spamsassassin, it keeps my crap down to ~5 spams a day (from about 7000 at last count without any countermeasures.)
...haven't had my resume listed their in eons. It's obviously not because of your spelling.
:-)
The expression is "pink slip", although the line between "laid off" and "fired" has blurred considerably, they're not all pink anymore, and the system by which you register for/draw unemployment pay is pretty different.
In essence, getting the boot in the US = "you better have some cash on the side."
He mentions that it sets a threshhold of user activity, such as using too many new programs within a limited space of time.
Any indication that it does some sort of observation of user activity (think bayesian learning for spam filters) to build profiles which, if exceeded by too high a metric within too short a time, would also trigger a log error?
There was an _awesome_ scene in Medal of Honor, in the level where you infiltrate the German submarine pen in Norway. Dressed as a kraut officer, you walk past two troopers having a chat in perfectly accented idiomatic German; something utterly hilarious, to the extent of "I don't know why the Norwegians are all so mad at us, we just want to bring their chicks back to Germany to breed the master race."
I'm a native German speaker, and I think I would have noticed any trace of an accent there, so I can only assume that they used real Germans to record the voiceovers. Frankly, I can't imagine a German voice actor not pissing himself laughing when asked to read something like that out loud."
The BF1942 clips are actually pretty funny--I like the Italians best--it all sounds romantic and beautiful (Va fa'in culo! I have a headwound! Mamma mia, I love you!)
Well, a "glove" needn't be some horrendous construct, like Nintendo's Power Glove (ick.)
I recall reading about some project (sorry, can't find a link) involving a little wrist bracelent leading to fingertip thingies, which essentially figured out what you were typing, without you needing a keyboard.
Similarly (once again, can't remember link) there was some toy that projected a keyboard onto any flat surface, and figured out what you were typing.
You're not going to get a holodeck type of product that lets you physically interact with "virtual" objects anytime soon, but given technologies like the ones above, shouldn't it be feasible to (a) project images into empty space (or at least make it look so via VR goggles or something similar) and (b) allow a user to interact with them by moving his hands and fingers around them, without too much extraneous hardware?
I mean, these are manual activities and shouldn't make your hands/arms really tired, any more than working on a car or watering the plants should exhaust you.
I think it'd be pretty cool to stand in the middle of a room and move stuff around in mid-air.
Of course you didn't. Nobody exp...oh bugger.
There's an interesting article about this at El Reg. I'm pretty worried about what's going on there; for all the failing of ICANN, it's always been sort of emblematic of the prevailing idea in western countries to keep bureaucracy from throttling the Internet. Think what you will about various nations bad handling of Internet traffic and user rights, the over-corporatization of the net, and ICANN's distasteful tactics over domain handling; the Internet as we know it is a far cry from what it might have been had the ITU been allowed to be the driving force behind it.
I don't relish the idea of the type of bureaucrat who brought us WIPO deciding by fiat where the greatest communications revolution in human history is going to go.