Normal digital cameras are down to like a hundred bucks for the cheap ones! I know that's not free, but the attraction of disposable film cameras has always been that they're not that much more expensive than the film. This way, you take 15 pictures, you've just paid for a camera with unlimited "film". Who's really going to use this?
A national database with all my personal info. Kept safe, no doubt, by microsofts iis. My god, there must be blackhats everywhere salivating for a chance at this sugary prize.
Cheap Bytes (bless their busy little hands) only dl's stuff and burns it, then sells it cheap. Nothing wrong with that, but Mandrake doesn't get a cut, as far as I know. The point of this story is that Mandrake, the orginisation, is having trouble making money because of shippiing problems.
I for one, happen to think it would be a real shame if they went under. Mandrake and Debian are my two favorite distros.
Please. Given how easy it would be to bias a computer model, this 'research' is laughable
It's also peer-reviewed. Maybe you shouldn't be so eager to shrug it off. Frankly, it's easy to 'bias', 'weight' and even 'falsify' just about any research. Thus, peer-review. Just saying "you could fake that so easy" doesn't really count.
Okay, so these nomadic, hunter-gathers would set fires that they have no way of controlling to facilitate 'hunting or travel'. Come on!
Actually the native americans in the southwest did it in recorded history. It doesn't take a genius to see a prarie fire, then add two and two. And if you're gutsy and fast, you can just go set one and make hunting small game really easy.
"When animals hunt other animals, it's survival of the fittest, but when humans do it, it's mass extinction?"
No, when animals hunt other animals, it's hunting. When humans use their planning abilities to destroy the possibility of ever seeing a species again, much less hunting it, it's mass extinction. Let's be clear, I'm not here to pass judgement on right and wrong, and I'm not even saying animals don't cause extinctions (dogs probably have). But, I am saying that we can plan to avoid it. If you want to act like a caveman, go right ahead, but don't use it as a philisophical point in a debate. Neolithic man wasn't much for the round table format.
The rational way to use the information presented in this study would be to say: "Hmm, even before we invented chemical plants and fishing trawlers and DDT, we were able to cause mass extinctions pretty handily. We better be even more careful in the future if we expect to have a planet with plants and animals and oh, say, oxygen." The irrational way would be to raise your arms in victory and say "Yes! One for our side you mammoth bastards"
Or, you could ignore it entirely. That's what a lot of people plan to do, I'm sure.
Yeah, I agree with you in principle, I'm just saying, why bother suing someone for a product they're going to stop making anyway? Hard to get a judges sympathy with that.
And as for being unwilling to invoke the protection of the GPL, I doubt anyone would invoke it unless they actually felt like there was a need to be protected. Laws don't exist in a vaccum, and new ideas need strong cases to be tested, or else they will end up setting the exact opposite precedent that they meant to.
Look, are you going to take a huge chunk of your time and energy and sue a small division of a huge company that probably will disappear before your brief is filed? Why would you? It would be counter-productive to you and to the software you've been working on. And if a judge dismissed it due to a real lack of evidence stemming from the fact that you can't get any paperwork out of a company that has turned into steam, then that's a real blow to the GPL. However, suing the living crap out of someone who's been eating other people's code and making millions is a pretty good incentive.
Try to come up with some examples of companies that got rich off of projects funded by the government. Now, does your head feel like exploding? Yeah, that's a lot, eh?
The fact is, all code used in government should be GPL'd by the freedom of information act. I, for one, feel that the software that processes the info that is kept on me should be available for my perusal.
Now, IANAL, or even someone who plays one on tv, but it seems to me that this rampage will come to and end once they start getting involved with people like AOL, who did sponser Gnutella, and who can afford big lawyers.
Sure, they can sue the hell out of Napster, but targeting software developers who create file sharing apps won't last long. Why? The gun lobby.
Think about it. If you can sue someone saying "Well your software could concievably take 7.00$ out of Britanny Spearses pocket" then how much easier is it to say "You create a device that exists soley for the purpose of making holes in people."
Damage lawsuits against gun manufacturers is exactly what the American judicial system is trying to discourage right now, for better or worse. It won't take long for some bright Harvard law grad to make 2+2 come out to "If we can't sue gun makers than, use of a tool to commit a crime does not implicate the tool"
Gosh, wouldn't it be horrible if someone said "Hey let's take all the homosexuals and abortion rights activists and throw them in a bag in the river"? That person would be an evil bigot.
Now, wouldn't it be even worse if a lawyer took the above phrase in quotes out of context of the whole sentence in order to paint me as an evil bigot, even though my point was exactly the opposite.
Read the posts, man! He was quoting L. RON HUBBARD, the fscking founder of this cheeseheaded snake-oil con.
I hope your day in court (should it ever come) is a lot more fairly handled.
Why don't you tax cassettes, and video cassettes, and well, hard drives because I can copy virtually anything onto those. And hey, now that I think about it, I often copy poems without the permission of the author onto a medium called 'paper', better tax that too. Oh, and sticks. Sometimes I use them to scratch symbols into the dirt without the permission of the author.
Hey, since the good 'ol USA is one of the worlds leading producers of garbage, wouldn't this make us the next OPEC? Huh, we're going to be a superpower forever!
(Sarcasm intended for the slow at humour)
Actually, what I think the first two Star Wars movies had, and the last couple didn't, were the knowledge that the world is a scary place for kids. Think about recent movies made for kids, and they all run down the Jar Jar path. It seems like lately we're so overzealous about protecting children that we've forgotten that they can percieve evil in the world. And sure, kids can be entertained by bright shiny things and squeaky voices, and there's nothing particularly wrong with that, but they also enjoy seeing things that speak to their fears.
Yeah, the first time I saw Hidden Fortress I realized how annoying Luke Skywalker was. I guess that's the price you pay for having a film that was attractive to kids and adults. I can't really picture getting my 10-year old cousin to sit through Hidden Fortress. That being said, noone said Star Wars was a REMAKE of Hidden Fortress. They said HF was the inspiration of it.
Just for the hell of it:
"Last Man Standing" and "Fistful of Dollars" were both based on "Yojimbo(the Bodyguard)" Which was not an inspiriation for the Costner movie, so don't go blaming poor Kurosawa.
I'm just saying, it's really hard to get free beer when it's illegal. I spent some time in Utah, when I was living in New Mexico (where they did repeal the blue laws, btw) and I have to say it's a beautiful state full of a bunch of self-righteous pricks. Of course, now I live in New York City, which isn't even beautiful. But there's beer a-plenty.
I knew her, I was at Concord High.
on
The Challenger
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· Score: 1
A bit dramatic, but true. I was in high school in Concord NH when the challenger blew up. Christa McAuliffe had been one of my teachers. I have to admit she was not one of my favorites, but she was the kind of teacher you could swap jokes with outside of class. Generally a nice person. Another stupid admission is that I was actually protesting the whole thing when it happened. See, even though I was a fan of the space program, the teacher in space program came right on the heels of massive cuts to federal education programs. As a student in a high school that desperately needed funds for arts and sciences, I felt like this was Reagan (remember him) throwing smoke in our eyes. In retrospect, it would probably have been better for science in general if we had gotten people excited about space. We had gotten kicked out of the cafeteria where everyone was watching the launch. There were press there, and the administration didn't want anyone spoiling their perfect picture. So I was on my way to the library to sulk when I heard an announcement over the pa. It was the principal asking everyone to stay calm in the face of this tragedy. I was really confused. It certainly never entered my mind that something could have happened to the shuttle. I thought maybe the launch didn't go off. When I got to the library, they had a tv set up to watch the launch. It was showing the explosion complete with crying witnesses and panicking reporters. I don't think I can describe the feeling. It felt for a moment like nothing really worked the way it was supposed to. I've never gotten over some feelings of guilt that I was trying to protest it. The next few days were some of the most instructive of my teenage years. I saw people who hated her, lionize her. I saw reporters trying to sneak in to the school to get reaction shots. I heard people blaming everyone they could think of, including ethnic groups. On the other hand, I saw our community really pour out support for her family. I saw people who genuinely felt pain at her loss, try to keep people calm. I guess tragedy often brings out the worst and the best in people. After all, extremes beget extremes. The last time I went back to visit my school (a long time ago, I hated the place), there was a huge shrine to Ms. McAuliffe. It had a really cheesy oil painting of her in the center. It looked like it came from of one of those places you can buy paintings of Elvis on the side of the road. Nevertheless, my throat caught a little when I saw it. She was sacrificed in the pursuit of science. It seems simultaneously noble and stupid, as ways to die go. I'd like to say that I thought her life and death had a positive effect on the world, but I'd be lying if I said I'd bet on it.
Does anyone reading this work for the Government? Aren't there some kind of rules about companies delivering services as government contractors (say, software provided to libraries) that provides against misrepresenting that service? As in, calling criticism pornography?
Alright, this absolutely the last off-topic post for me. I think my last post was misunderstood, so I'll try to make myself clear. Anyway, the analogy holds. To my mother (for instance)the choice between Linux and Windows is an obvious one. Linux scares the hell out of her. To me, that is a subjective choice. It is made based upon what I would consider an arbitrary criteria (i.e. too much command line work). In the same way someone who doesn't spend much time around art could use what I would consider an arbitrary criteria (it's just scribbles)and it will still be valid for them. That's what I was trying to say. I'm nobody to say you don't get it. But, by the same token, you're nobody to say that a piece of art isn't worth what somebody who spends their lives going to art auctions wants to pay for it. Saying that art is subjective, then applying criteria to it is having your cake and eating it too. And I mean any criteria 'my kid could do that so it's worth it, or 'it's made by foreigners so it's interesting' or 'it's about something you don't understand so you won't get it'. And if you can go back in time and find a period where art wasn't plagued by elitism, pseudo-intellectualism and a host of other sins, I'd be interested in hearing about it. Art has always been the province of the upper classes. Made by the educated for the rich. If anything, art is more open today than it ever was. Museums are free, galleries take slides instead of letters from wealthy patrons, and art dealers search out 'outsider' art. Of course, it's all to make money, but at least it's not choosy about who it exploits. IMHO, a great deal of art that gets up on the walls of major galleries sucks my ass. But I also recognize that that is just my view. I also think that the percentage of crap made in the art world is much smaller than the percentage of crap that comes out of Hollywood, btu youwon't find me crapping on all movies because of it. The problem I have is that most of the time, when someone says: 'the art that gets made today is all crap', the most they've seen of it is some kind of expose on 60 minutes or something. And yeah, there is a lot of crap that people pay huge amounts of money for. People also pay huge amounts of money for breast implants, SUVs, Front Page, and a whole pile of other stupid things. But there is also a lot of vital, beautiful, life-altering art being made. And to dismiss it out of hand as elitist crap without actually going out to see it is the worst kind of ignorance. Again, this is all just my opinion. But you can hold me responsible for it. -Morgan lumpenprole@nospam_yahoo
Look, let's talk about the 'Science' of UFO's. If there was quantifiable, undeniable, openly accessible evidence of extra-terrestrial life, how come it's so hard to find? We're talking about the most major discovery in history here, at the very least some entertainment company would want to buy the rights to it. And talking about the government covering it up is ridiculous. The government is incapable of covering up that it was charging too much for postage stamps in the senate. I doubt it could cover up aliens for twenty minutes, much less 50 years like some people say. Let's look at it this way: What is more probable 1 There are advanced life forms who look damn close to us, with the ability to travel at faster than light speeds, who like to cut up cows and interfere with us sexually. 2 There are just as many gullible, neurotic people now as there were when people were seeing demons and burning witches. I mean, doesn't it strike anybody as odd that the first thing these aliens want to do is stick stuff up our asses or impregnate us? That sounds like suspiciously human behavior to me. These little sexless probers are monsters right out of textbook discussions of the id. Let the flaming begin
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Terrorist certification? What's that? Is it harder than an RHCE?
I'll have you know I'm 32, and rather attatched to my playstation. (And my blue blankie, but it's not related).
Normal digital cameras are down to like a hundred bucks for the cheap ones! I know that's not free, but the attraction of disposable film cameras has always been that they're not that much more expensive than the film. This way, you take 15 pictures, you've just paid for a camera with unlimited "film". Who's really going to use this?
A national database with all my personal info. Kept safe, no doubt, by microsofts iis. My god, there must be blackhats everywhere salivating for a chance at this sugary prize.
Cheap Bytes (bless their busy little hands) only dl's stuff and burns it, then sells it cheap. Nothing wrong with that, but Mandrake doesn't get a cut, as far as I know. The point of this story is that Mandrake, the orginisation, is having trouble making money because of shippiing problems.
I for one, happen to think it would be a real shame if they went under. Mandrake and Debian are my two favorite distros.
I can just see it now. "Honey, your stupid cat just popped my stereo again!", "Sorry dear, I'll get the duct tape."
On the other hand, I wonder if they work better than traditional speakers with beer spilled on them.
And I fell for it like the trollbait eating fool that I am.
It's also peer-reviewed. Maybe you shouldn't be so eager to shrug it off. Frankly, it's easy to 'bias', 'weight' and even 'falsify' just about any research. Thus, peer-review. Just saying "you could fake that so easy" doesn't really count.
Okay, so these nomadic, hunter-gathers would set fires that they have no way of controlling to facilitate 'hunting or travel'. Come on!
Actually the native americans in the southwest did it in recorded history. It doesn't take a genius to see a prarie fire, then add two and two. And if you're gutsy and fast, you can just go set one and make hunting small game really easy.
Ai-yah! Where do I begin?
"When animals hunt other animals, it's survival of the fittest, but when humans do it, it's mass extinction?"No, when animals hunt other animals, it's hunting. When humans use their planning abilities to destroy the possibility of ever seeing a species again, much less hunting it, it's mass extinction. Let's be clear, I'm not here to pass judgement on right and wrong, and I'm not even saying animals don't cause extinctions (dogs probably have). But, I am saying that we can plan to avoid it. If you want to act like a caveman, go right ahead, but don't use it as a philisophical point in a debate. Neolithic man wasn't much for the round table format.
The rational way to use the information presented in this study would be to say: "Hmm, even before we invented chemical plants and fishing trawlers and DDT, we were able to cause mass extinctions pretty handily. We better be even more careful in the future if we expect to have a planet with plants and animals and oh, say, oxygen." The irrational way would be to raise your arms in victory and say "Yes! One for our side you mammoth bastards"
Or, you could ignore it entirely. That's what a lot of people plan to do, I'm sure.
Yeah, I agree with you in principle, I'm just saying, why bother suing someone for a product they're going to stop making anyway? Hard to get a judges sympathy with that.
And as for being unwilling to invoke the protection of the GPL, I doubt anyone would invoke it unless they actually felt like there was a need to be protected. Laws don't exist in a vaccum, and new ideas need strong cases to be tested, or else they will end up setting the exact opposite precedent that they meant to.
Look, are you going to take a huge chunk of your time and energy and sue a small division of a huge company that probably will disappear before your brief is filed? Why would you? It would be counter-productive to you and to the software you've been working on. And if a judge dismissed it due to a real lack of evidence stemming from the fact that you can't get any paperwork out of a company that has turned into steam, then that's a real blow to the GPL. However, suing the living crap out of someone who's been eating other people's code and making millions is a pretty good incentive.
Try to come up with some examples of companies that got rich off of projects funded by the government. Now, does your head feel like exploding? Yeah, that's a lot, eh?
The fact is, all code used in government should be GPL'd by the freedom of information act. I, for one, feel that the software that processes the info that is kept on me should be available for my perusal.
Okay, that's not gonna happen, but still.
I think that has a lot more to do with how little was done with the Boundless web player. Why sue a dead horse?
Now, if someone could prove there was GPL'd code in IE......
Now, IANAL, or even someone who plays one on tv, but it seems to me that this rampage will come to and end once they start getting involved with people like AOL, who did sponser Gnutella, and who can afford big lawyers.
Sure, they can sue the hell out of Napster, but targeting software developers who create file sharing apps won't last long. Why? The gun lobby.
Think about it. If you can sue someone saying "Well your software could concievably take 7.00$ out of Britanny Spearses pocket" then how much easier is it to say "You create a device that exists soley for the purpose of making holes in people."
Damage lawsuits against gun manufacturers is exactly what the American judicial system is trying to discourage right now, for better or worse. It won't take long for some bright Harvard law grad to make 2+2 come out to "If we can't sue gun makers than, use of a tool to commit a crime does not implicate the tool"
Gosh, wouldn't it be horrible if someone said "Hey let's take all the homosexuals and abortion rights activists and throw them in a bag in the river"? That person would be an evil bigot.
Now, wouldn't it be even worse if a lawyer took the above phrase in quotes out of context of the whole sentence in order to paint me as an evil bigot, even though my point was exactly the opposite. Read the posts, man! He was quoting L. RON HUBBARD, the fscking founder of this cheeseheaded snake-oil con.
I hope your day in court (should it ever come) is a lot more fairly handled.
Why don't you tax cassettes, and video cassettes, and well, hard drives because I can copy virtually anything onto those. And hey, now that I think about it, I often copy poems without the permission of the author onto a medium called 'paper', better tax that too. Oh, and sticks. Sometimes I use them to scratch symbols into the dirt without the permission of the author.
Hey, since the good 'ol USA is one of the worlds leading producers of garbage, wouldn't this make us the next OPEC? Huh, we're going to be a superpower forever! (Sarcasm intended for the slow at humour)
Actually, what I think the first two Star Wars movies had, and the last couple didn't, were the knowledge that the world is a scary place for kids. Think about recent movies made for kids, and they all run down the Jar Jar path. It seems like lately we're so overzealous about protecting children that we've forgotten that they can percieve evil in the world. And sure, kids can be entertained by bright shiny things and squeaky voices, and there's nothing particularly wrong with that, but they also enjoy seeing things that speak to their fears.
Yeah, the first time I saw Hidden Fortress I realized how annoying Luke Skywalker was. I guess that's the price you pay for having a film that was attractive to kids and adults. I can't really picture getting my 10-year old cousin to sit through Hidden Fortress. That being said, noone said Star Wars was a REMAKE of Hidden Fortress. They said HF was the inspiration of it.
Just for the hell of it: "Last Man Standing" and "Fistful of Dollars" were both based on "Yojimbo(the Bodyguard)" Which was not an inspiriation for the Costner movie, so don't go blaming poor Kurosawa.
I'm just saying, it's really hard to get free beer when it's illegal. I spent some time in Utah, when I was living in New Mexico (where they did repeal the blue laws, btw) and I have to say it's a beautiful state full of a bunch of self-righteous pricks. Of course, now I live in New York City, which isn't even beautiful. But there's beer a-plenty.
Or, is that Freespace mission?
A bit dramatic, but true. I was in high school in Concord NH when the challenger blew up. Christa McAuliffe had been one of my teachers. I have to admit she was not one of my favorites, but she was the kind of teacher you could swap jokes with outside of class. Generally a nice person.
Another stupid admission is that I was actually protesting the whole thing when it happened. See, even though I was a fan of the space program, the teacher in space program came right on the heels of massive cuts to federal education programs. As a student in a high school that desperately needed funds for arts and sciences, I felt like this was Reagan (remember him) throwing smoke in our eyes. In retrospect, it would probably have been better for science in general if we had gotten people excited about space.
We had gotten kicked out of the cafeteria where everyone was watching the launch. There were press there, and the administration didn't want anyone spoiling their perfect picture.
So I was on my way to the library to sulk when I heard an announcement over the pa. It was the principal asking everyone to stay calm in the face of this tragedy. I was really confused. It certainly never entered my mind that something could have happened to the shuttle. I thought maybe the launch didn't go off.
When I got to the library, they had a tv set up to watch the launch. It was showing the explosion complete with crying witnesses and panicking reporters. I don't think I can describe the feeling. It felt for a moment like nothing really worked the way it was supposed to. I've never gotten over some feelings of guilt that I was trying to protest it.
The next few days were some of the most instructive of my teenage years. I saw people who hated her, lionize her. I saw reporters trying to sneak in to the school to get reaction shots. I heard people blaming everyone they could think of, including ethnic groups.
On the other hand, I saw our community really pour out support for her family. I saw people who genuinely felt pain at her loss, try to keep people calm.
I guess tragedy often brings out the worst and the best in people. After all, extremes beget extremes.
The last time I went back to visit my school (a long time ago, I hated the place), there was a huge shrine to Ms. McAuliffe. It had a really cheesy oil painting of her in the center. It looked like it came from of one of those places you can buy paintings of Elvis on the side of the road.
Nevertheless, my throat caught a little when I saw it. She was sacrificed in the pursuit of science. It seems simultaneously noble and stupid, as ways to die go. I'd like to say that I thought her life and death had a positive effect on the world, but I'd be lying if I said I'd bet on it.
Does anyone reading this work for the Government? Aren't there some kind of rules about companies delivering services as government contractors (say, software provided to libraries) that provides against misrepresenting that service? As in, calling criticism pornography?
Alright, this absolutely the last off-topic post for me. I think my last post was misunderstood, so I'll try to make myself clear.
Anyway, the analogy holds. To my mother (for instance)the choice between Linux and Windows is an obvious one. Linux scares the hell out of her. To me, that is a subjective choice. It is made based upon what I would consider an arbitrary criteria (i.e. too much command line work). In the same way someone who doesn't spend much time around art could use what I would consider an arbitrary criteria (it's just scribbles)and it will still be valid for them.
That's what I was trying to say. I'm nobody to say you don't get it. But, by the same token, you're nobody to say that a piece of art isn't worth what somebody who spends their lives going to art auctions wants to pay for it. Saying that art is subjective, then applying criteria to it is having your cake and eating it too. And I mean any criteria 'my kid could do that so it's worth it, or 'it's made by foreigners so it's interesting' or 'it's about something you don't understand so you won't get it'.
And if you can go back in time and find a period where art wasn't plagued by elitism, pseudo-intellectualism and a host of other sins, I'd be interested in hearing about it. Art has always been the province of the upper classes. Made by the educated for the rich. If anything, art is more open today than it ever was. Museums are free, galleries take slides instead of letters from wealthy patrons, and art dealers search out 'outsider' art. Of course, it's all to make money, but at least it's not choosy about who it exploits.
IMHO, a great deal of art that gets up on the walls of major galleries sucks my ass. But I also recognize that that is just my view. I also think that the percentage of crap made in the art world is much smaller than the percentage of crap that comes out of Hollywood, btu youwon't find me crapping on all movies because of it.
The problem I have is that most of the time, when someone says: 'the art that gets made today is all crap', the most they've seen of it is some kind of expose on 60 minutes or something. And yeah, there is a lot of crap that people pay huge amounts of money for. People also pay huge amounts of money for breast implants, SUVs, Front Page, and a whole pile of other stupid things. But there is also a lot of vital, beautiful, life-altering art being made. And to dismiss it out of hand as elitist crap without actually going out to see it is the worst kind of ignorance.
Again, this is all just my opinion. But you can hold me responsible for it.
-Morgan lumpenprole@nospam_yahoo
Look, let's talk about the 'Science' of UFO's. If there was quantifiable, undeniable, openly accessible evidence of extra-terrestrial life, how come it's so hard to find? We're talking about the most major discovery in history here, at the very least some entertainment company would want to buy the rights to it. And talking about the government covering it up is ridiculous. The government is incapable of covering up that it was charging too much for postage stamps in the senate. I doubt it could cover up aliens for twenty minutes, much less 50 years like some people say.
Let's look at it this way: What is more probable
1 There are advanced life forms who look damn close to us, with the ability to travel at faster than light speeds, who like to cut up cows and interfere with us sexually.
2 There are just as many gullible, neurotic people now as there were when people were seeing demons and burning witches.
I mean, doesn't it strike anybody as odd that the first thing these aliens want to do is stick stuff up our asses or impregnate us? That sounds like suspiciously human behavior to me. These little sexless probers are monsters right out of textbook discussions of the id.
Let the flaming begin
Morgan
lumpenprole@nospam_yahoo.com