Which is one small drop in the ocean of hate you find on right-wing sites like Free Republic or Little Green Footballs. Not that you or Bill O'Reily see that as a problem.
That's one of the many reasons I always advise people to not use Rogers.
You can get DSL lines from Bell Sympatico anywhere in Canada (I think; my exprience is limited to Ontario) and they don't impede Bittorrent in any way. I've got a 5 megabit line for $50 a month and I never notice any problems, anyway.
Because one of the tenets of this cult is to infiltrate federal governments throughout the world to increase the power and influence of the cult. They also do a host of personal intimidation tactics to critics and former members of the cult.
I'm not saying they should get the attention of law enforcement groups because they're a cult. But I am saying that when a cult acts like a criminal organization, they should not be ignored just because they are a cult.
Sometimes I help the elderly learn about computers. One thing that never fails to amaze them is Wikipedia.
Sifting the signal from the noise in a typical google search is just too complex for people that are computer novices as well as internet novices. But show them the Wikipedia plugin, where they can just search on whatever they're curious about and immediately get a single response that probably answers their question, and they'll immediately grasp just how cool the internet can be and they'll want to learn more.
I usually set windows to large or extra-large fonts, too. Just ask them which setting they find most comfortable while they are in front of the computer.
Enjoy your show. Realize that you've "stolen" nothing, as you've had precisely the same effect on NBC's bottom line as if you'd never heard of the show in the first place. That is, none at all. Feel no guilt, as you tried to pay NBC anyway, because you're a good person, but they removed the option of taking your money. Stop worrying about scolds on Slashdot. If they want to pay for DRM'd products a year late, let them. It's not your concern, just as you enjoying a show you like for free without harming anyone is none of theirs.
Because we all know that there's no way the RIAA could discover the existence of a public network used by millions of people since before the web even existed. After all, how could the hired guns at the RIAA discover anything except through reading Slashdot?
That's funny, I just deleted my torrentspy search box in Firefox yesterday because I got tired of waiting for them to reinstate comments. Torrent sites without comments are useless to me because there's so much shit floating around.
I've been using Btjunkie.org lately. They have comments and lots of files. Often I would find things there I couldn't find on Torrentspy anyway.
I live in roughly the same area as you, close to Simcoe. I've got an Ultra DSL line from bell ($50 a month for a 5 Mbit connection). I download like a fiend. Just snagged 50 gigs of Simpson episodes via Bittorrent. I've never noticed any type of throttling going on. Could you post some more info about this?
I think that book 7 was the weakest one in the series. There are too many moments where Rowling seems to relay on the reader being completely stupid/gullible. Really, many segments of it were barely above comic-book writing. That is, you imagine one possible course of action, no matter how implausible, and then bend the plot to the breaking point to make sure it happens. There was also a lot of "magic babble" that was as convincing as the "techno babble" in the typical Star Trek episode.
If the first book had been as bad as the last book, I would have thought, "not a bad fantasy, but not worth reading the other six" and probably forgotten all about it a year later. Sad to see such a great series have such a poor ending. But, in a way, it makes it easier to let go of the series, too, I guess.
All in all though it's still my favourite set of books I've read in the last five years.
By the way, for people still sneering at the series, just pick up the first book and read the first chapter. I don't know anyone that's been able to put it down. Her writing was a lot tighter back then.
Unlike some people, I remember when sci-fi on TV was truly awful, for example, 1979.
Yeah. I saw some episodes of the original Galactica this week and they were far worse than even the lowest point of the current series. It's a good thing to remember.
But there were a lot of episodes in the last couple of seasons that you could have skipped entirely without missing much. Someone commented in an earlier thread that it seems like all you have to do is watch the first and last four of each season. And there were some episodes, like that one with the Cylon ace pilot, Scar, that just stunk. That whole show seemed like stitched-together cutscenes from some new Wing Commander game. The boxing episode was video-game quality, too.
Troll? Is that how you get labeled for giving a somewhat negative opinion on current episodes of a show you've watched since day one? Was an extra ration of crack issued to the moderators today?
This used to be my favourite show, but there's just been too many bad episodes in the last couple of years. I don't really care if I even see it anymore, though I usually catch a repeat at some point. I'd rather see one more good season, where they are forced to wrap up the story, than several more seasons of the half-ass crap they've been coasting along with lately.
And they'd better have a really, REALLY good reason to explain why Tigh and the Chief are Cylons, or the first episode of the last season just might be the last one I ever watch. Talk about jumping the shark.
I think that the only thing to look for is patterns which we don't believe could occur in nature.
Because if you want to understand a process, and you have a fully functional model which uses that process right in front of your eyes, the smart play is to completely ignore that model, right?
I don't think that looking for life outside our galaxy is particularly interesting or useful anyway, considering that the nearest life would be millions of years away by interstellar travel. Even if it's out there, we'll never meet it or communicate with it.
And after all, any probes we might send would travel at the same speed as radio waves. I see your point. Life throughout the universe: utterly worthless and uninteresting.
Interesting post until you got to the unnecessary slam against liberals. Particularly when it's conservatives these days who tend to avoid long-term thinking.
For examples, see Iraq, AKA "the six-week long war which would pay for itself". You might also want to see "deficit spending" and "abstinence-only sex education". You can collect them on any conservative's greatest hits package.
What they should be doing is taking old, useless computers and turning them into stand-alone Wikipedia kiosks and setting them up in all classrooms. I think Wikipedia is the most useful site on the whole net.
I use it as an initial source for every bit of research I do. Often if you simply want a quick run-down on a given subject or person it's the only place you need to go. It's concise and gives full citations (or mentions where they are needed). For non-controversial subjects you can absolutely regard it as being as accurate as any encyclopedia out there.
And for controversial subjects, I think it does a better job of being objective than any other site. Every page also has a discussion page where people can note any problems they might have with an article or edit. Ever see an encyclopedia that does that? There's also good mechanisms to deal with edit wars or to request reviews of disputed articles.
It's also more comprehensive and current than any encyclopedia I've ever heard of. If something culturally significant happened yesterday there's probably already an article in Wikipedia about it.
Not only are the pirates proceeding full speed, the pirated media is superior to the original and hence more valuable. Examples:
Music -- No DRM, can play anywhere, any number of times, no restrictions.
Movies -- You can copy only the main movie so it starts up immediately without the need to even touch any controls. No menus, no half a dozen previews, no FBI or MPAA warnings. And absolutely nothing, anywhere, that is "unskippable".
Games -- No CD checks. No hunting through your house to find a CD just so you can play an old game that's already fully installed. No losing your purchase because the disk is damaged.
So, the current option offered to people who want to be legit is to buy overpriced stuff that's a pain in the ass to use and isn't as functional as the free pirate versions. What a surprise that so many people opt out of that deal.
You're right about that, Chretien did send troops over first. But Harper did single-handedly decide to transform the mission from the typical Canadian role of providing security and reconstruction aid to one of warfighting in the hills. Our mission over there now is completely different than what it was when we started and the Canadian people were not consulted about this change and for the most part strongly oppose it. Particularly as the bodybags keep coming in. We're now losing more troops than we have in any conflict since Korea.
I doubt George's going to have the time to put the US in Iran before he's done. He's got what, less than a year to go, and he's still having trouble getting troops for Iraq, right?
I hope you are right about that. In the end though I worry that Bush will simply do what he wants and the Democrats will let him get away with it, like they usually do. The decision to invade Iraq was made a week after 9/11 and all the debates and hand-wringing that took place afterwards were just cheap theatre. Bush was attacking because he wanted to, just like the medieval king he styles himself to be, and that's all there was to it. And now he's doing exactly the same thing with Iran. The carrier groups are already on their way and if he decides to launch an attack in the next month or two who is going to stop him? Then it will just be another round of "support the troops", "stay the course", blah blah blah.
Scary thing is that Stevie the Cowboy will likely agree to this...
You're right about that. I've yet to hear of any American initiative that Steven Harper didn't immediately support. He even let the USA rip us off of a billion dollars in the softwood lumber dispute, even after repeated decisions of Nafta commissions that the Americans didn't have a leg to stand on. Which makes me wonder why we're even a part of Nafta, since it's clear the same thing is going to happen anytime there's a dispute about anything.
He made a unilateral decision to put us in Afghanistan, which most Canadians oppose very strongly. He wanted to put us in Iraq, but fortunately didn't have power at the time. He will most certainly put us in Iran if George the giggling murderer gets his way there.
Thank heavens you posted that. I had fallen under the sway of the 99.99% of scientists who say global warming is real. I'd also foolishly taken at face value the core samples from the last half a million years, the disappearing ice caps and glaciers, and so on. But your assertions, so strong and confident, more than counter-balance all of that nonsense. And the truth of your words is so obvious that you correctly didn't feel the need to even bother posting a single link to back up anything you said.
It seems obvious in retrospect. Why haven't more people tumbled to the truth that scientists always fudge their own data, and conspire to keep the fudging secret, in order to impoverish our hard-working and honest industrialists? These god damn scientists, they can never give a billionaire an even break.
Thank god for you and Rush Limbaugh, Argoff, or I just wouldn't know what to think.
First of all, it's not ad hominem to examine the beliefs of someone who is claiming authority in a subject. For example, it would be perfectly legitmate to put in a story "Dr. J. Smith, who believes in the healing powers of crystals and smoked banana peels, etc."
Second, the only ad hominem argument being made here is yours. You are dismissing all arguments and evidence in "An Inconvenient Truth" because it is narrated by Al Gore. This in itself is enough, in your mind, to label the entire movie "partisan", though you neglect to include any examples of partisanship. It's been my experience that the word "partisan" is the last refuge of those who really, desperately want to ignore an argument for which they can not form a counter.
Science isn't Democratic or Republican. Thinking so is dangerous and foolish. The current climate in American reminds me of German authorities earlier in the century rejecting "Jewish science" in favour of "Aryan science". That worked out really well, didn't it?
Over the years and after doing several security assessments using social engineering techniques, nine times out of 10 we usually get caught when that one person says "I need to call someone about what you're doing." That call to confirm, usually raises enough suspicion to stop us from proceeding. And after that person realizes what they did, word travels real fast throughout the organization that they caught the "bad guy."
He's saying that, when they do get caught, nine times out of ten it's because someone wants to verify their presence with someone higher up. I don't think he said how often they actually do get caught.
That is, an object that orbits the sun, is large enough to be round, and has "cleared the neighbourhood" of smaller objects.
Most people seem to trip up on the last part. I think the idea is that an object shouldn't have any "rivals" in its orbit, for lack of a better word. I was browsing some astronomy sites a few months ago and found a good page on Sedna which had a discussion of what should be considered a planet. This is before the recent reclassifications but I think it illustrates what the IAU was thinking. It's also interesting that Ceres was at first considered a planet but then was downgraded because it was found to just be one object in a belt of objects. This is exactly the same as what happened to Pluto.
I know there's going to be lots of weird shit in the galaxy which blurs the lines, but I think the current definition is pretty good for within our solar system. And after all, why should everything be easily classified? Isn't it the strange, hard-to-classify findings that usually advance science the most? We can make up new terms or modify the existing definitions as we find new objects.
Anyway, here's the words of someone who has forgotten more about astronomy than I've ever learned.
Population classification. This definition requires a little more explanation and a little more understanding of the solar system, but, in the end, leads to the most satisfactory definition of "planet". Just like the solar system very naturally divides itself between round objects and non-round objects, it also very naturally divides itself between solitary individuals and members of large populations. The best known example of a large population is the asteroid belt. We call it a population because one region of space contains objects with a continuous range of sizes from one moderately large object (Ceres) to a handful of slightly smaller objects (Vesta, Pallas, Hermione) to a huge number of extremely small objects (rocks, dust particles). The solitary individuals are much different. In their region of space there is only them (Earth, say) and then a collection of much much smaller objects (the near-earth asteroids), with no continuous population in between. A single example helps to dramatize the difference between a continuous population and a solitary individual. Ceres, the largest asteroid, has a diameter of 900 km. The next largest asteroid, Pallas, has a diameter of 520 km. After that is Vesta at 500 km, and Hygiea at 430 km, and the list continues on down. The jump in size between asteroids is never more than a factor of two. In contrast, the earth has a diameter of about 12,000 km, while the largest other object in the earth's vicinity, the asteroid Ganymed, has a diameter of about 41 km, a factor of 300!
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all count as solitary individuals by this definition. Pluto and Quaoar do not. Pluto is clearly a member of the Kuiper belt population, as can be seen from the fact that there are objects in the same vicinity slightly smaller than Pluto (Quaoar, 2004 DW, Varuna), and then even a larger number slightly smaller than that, and then on down.
What about Sedna? Sedna is currently the only object known in its orbital vicinity, but we strongly suspect that there will be many others found out there with time. We thus feel it is more reasonable to classify Sedna as a member of a large population (the inner Oort cloud of objects) rather than a solitary object. This classification saves us from having to go back and reclassify Sedna in a decade when we find more objects!
Since there is a clear scientific distinction between solitary individuals and members of large populations it is instructive to come up with words to describe these objects. The large populations can each be descri
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Which is one small drop in the ocean of hate you find on right-wing sites like Free Republic or Little Green Footballs. Not that you or Bill O'Reily see that as a problem.
That's one of the many reasons I always advise people to not use Rogers.
You can get DSL lines from Bell Sympatico anywhere in Canada (I think; my exprience is limited to Ontario) and they don't impede Bittorrent in any way. I've got a 5 megabit line for $50 a month and I never notice any problems, anyway.
Because one of the tenets of this cult is to infiltrate federal governments throughout the world to increase the power and influence of the cult. They also do a host of personal intimidation tactics to critics and former members of the cult.
I'm not saying they should get the attention of law enforcement groups because they're a cult. But I am saying that when a cult acts like a criminal organization, they should not be ignored just because they are a cult.
Sometimes I help the elderly learn about computers. One thing that never fails to amaze them is Wikipedia.
Sifting the signal from the noise in a typical google search is just too complex for people that are computer novices as well as internet novices. But show them the Wikipedia plugin, where they can just search on whatever they're curious about and immediately get a single response that probably answers their question, and they'll immediately grasp just how cool the internet can be and they'll want to learn more.
I usually set windows to large or extra-large fonts, too. Just ask them which setting they find most comfortable while they are in front of the computer.
Install Azureus. Go here.
Enjoy your show. Realize that you've "stolen" nothing, as you've had precisely the same effect on NBC's bottom line as if you'd never heard of the show in the first place. That is, none at all. Feel no guilt, as you tried to pay NBC anyway, because you're a good person, but they removed the option of taking your money. Stop worrying about scolds on Slashdot. If they want to pay for DRM'd products a year late, let them. It's not your concern, just as you enjoying a show you like for free without harming anyone is none of theirs.
Except it's not stealing and never has been. If you want to act morally superior, you should start by not telling lies.
Because we all know that there's no way the RIAA could discover the existence of a public network used by millions of people since before the web even existed. After all, how could the hired guns at the RIAA discover anything except through reading Slashdot?
That's funny, I just deleted my torrentspy search box in Firefox yesterday because I got tired of waiting for them to reinstate comments. Torrent sites without comments are useless to me because there's so much shit floating around.
I've been using Btjunkie.org lately. They have comments and lots of files. Often I would find things there I couldn't find on Torrentspy anyway.
I live in roughly the same area as you, close to Simcoe. I've got an Ultra DSL line from bell ($50 a month for a 5 Mbit connection). I download like a fiend. Just snagged 50 gigs of Simpson episodes via Bittorrent. I've never noticed any type of throttling going on. Could you post some more info about this?
I! take! products! much! more! seriously! when! they! abuse! exclamation! marks!
I think that book 7 was the weakest one in the series. There are too many moments where Rowling seems to relay on the reader being completely stupid/gullible. Really, many segments of it were barely above comic-book writing. That is, you imagine one possible course of action, no matter how implausible, and then bend the plot to the breaking point to make sure it happens. There was also a lot of "magic babble" that was as convincing as the "techno babble" in the typical Star Trek episode.
If the first book had been as bad as the last book, I would have thought, "not a bad fantasy, but not worth reading the other six" and probably forgotten all about it a year later. Sad to see such a great series have such a poor ending. But, in a way, it makes it easier to let go of the series, too, I guess.
All in all though it's still my favourite set of books I've read in the last five years.
By the way, for people still sneering at the series, just pick up the first book and read the first chapter. I don't know anyone that's been able to put it down. Her writing was a lot tighter back then.
Unlike some people, I remember when sci-fi on TV was truly awful, for example, 1979.
Yeah. I saw some episodes of the original Galactica this week and they were far worse than even the lowest point of the current series. It's a good thing to remember.
But there were a lot of episodes in the last couple of seasons that you could have skipped entirely without missing much. Someone commented in an earlier thread that it seems like all you have to do is watch the first and last four of each season. And there were some episodes, like that one with the Cylon ace pilot, Scar, that just stunk. That whole show seemed like stitched-together cutscenes from some new Wing Commander game. The boxing episode was video-game quality, too.
Troll? Is that how you get labeled for giving a somewhat negative opinion on current episodes of a show you've watched since day one? Was an extra ration of crack issued to the moderators today?
This used to be my favourite show, but there's just been too many bad episodes in the last couple of years. I don't really care if I even see it anymore, though I usually catch a repeat at some point. I'd rather see one more good season, where they are forced to wrap up the story, than several more seasons of the half-ass crap they've been coasting along with lately.
And they'd better have a really, REALLY good reason to explain why Tigh and the Chief are Cylons, or the first episode of the last season just might be the last one I ever watch. Talk about jumping the shark.
I think that the only thing to look for is patterns which we don't believe could occur in nature.
Because if you want to understand a process, and you have a fully functional model which uses that process right in front of your eyes, the smart play is to completely ignore that model, right?
I don't think that looking for life outside our galaxy is particularly interesting or useful anyway, considering that the nearest life would be millions of years away by interstellar travel. Even if it's out there, we'll never meet it or communicate with it.
And after all, any probes we might send would travel at the same speed as radio waves. I see your point. Life throughout the universe: utterly worthless and uninteresting.
Interesting post until you got to the unnecessary slam against liberals. Particularly when it's conservatives these days who tend to avoid long-term thinking.
For examples, see Iraq, AKA "the six-week long war which would pay for itself". You might also want to see "deficit spending" and "abstinence-only sex education". You can collect them on any conservative's greatest hits package.
What they should be doing is taking old, useless computers and turning them into stand-alone Wikipedia kiosks and setting them up in all classrooms. I think Wikipedia is the most useful site on the whole net.
I use it as an initial source for every bit of research I do. Often if you simply want a quick run-down on a given subject or person it's the only place you need to go. It's concise and gives full citations (or mentions where they are needed). For non-controversial subjects you can absolutely regard it as being as accurate as any encyclopedia out there.
And for controversial subjects, I think it does a better job of being objective than any other site. Every page also has a discussion page where people can note any problems they might have with an article or edit. Ever see an encyclopedia that does that? There's also good mechanisms to deal with edit wars or to request reviews of disputed articles.
It's also more comprehensive and current than any encyclopedia I've ever heard of. If something culturally significant happened yesterday there's probably already an article in Wikipedia about it.
Not only are the pirates proceeding full speed, the pirated media is superior to the original and hence more valuable. Examples:
Music -- No DRM, can play anywhere, any number of times, no restrictions.
Movies -- You can copy only the main movie so it starts up immediately without the need to even touch any controls. No menus, no half a dozen previews, no FBI or MPAA warnings. And absolutely nothing, anywhere, that is "unskippable".
Games -- No CD checks. No hunting through your house to find a CD just so you can play an old game that's already fully installed. No losing your purchase because the disk is damaged.
So, the current option offered to people who want to be legit is to buy overpriced stuff that's a pain in the ass to use and isn't as functional as the free pirate versions. What a surprise that so many people opt out of that deal.
Chretien put us in Afghanistan
You're right about that, Chretien did send troops over first. But Harper did single-handedly decide to transform the mission from the typical Canadian role of providing security and reconstruction aid to one of warfighting in the hills. Our mission over there now is completely different than what it was when we started and the Canadian people were not consulted about this change and for the most part strongly oppose it. Particularly as the bodybags keep coming in. We're now losing more troops than we have in any conflict since Korea.
I doubt George's going to have the time to put the US in Iran before he's done. He's got what, less than a year to go, and he's still having trouble getting troops for Iraq, right?
I hope you are right about that. In the end though I worry that Bush will simply do what he wants and the Democrats will let him get away with it, like they usually do. The decision to invade Iraq was made a week after 9/11 and all the debates and hand-wringing that took place afterwards were just cheap theatre. Bush was attacking because he wanted to, just like the medieval king he styles himself to be, and that's all there was to it. And now he's doing exactly the same thing with Iran. The carrier groups are already on their way and if he decides to launch an attack in the next month or two who is going to stop him? Then it will just be another round of "support the troops", "stay the course", blah blah blah.
Scary thing is that Stevie the Cowboy will likely agree to this...
You're right about that. I've yet to hear of any American initiative that Steven Harper didn't immediately support. He even let the USA rip us off of a billion dollars in the softwood lumber dispute, even after repeated decisions of Nafta commissions that the Americans didn't have a leg to stand on. Which makes me wonder why we're even a part of Nafta, since it's clear the same thing is going to happen anytime there's a dispute about anything.
He made a unilateral decision to put us in Afghanistan, which most Canadians oppose very strongly. He wanted to put us in Iraq, but fortunately didn't have power at the time. He will most certainly put us in Iran if George the giggling murderer gets his way there.
You just duped a story from three days ago. Do you guys even read your own site?
Thank heavens you posted that. I had fallen under the sway of the 99.99% of scientists who say global warming is real. I'd also foolishly taken at face value the core samples from the last half a million years, the disappearing ice caps and glaciers, and so on. But your assertions, so strong and confident, more than counter-balance all of that nonsense. And the truth of your words is so obvious that you correctly didn't feel the need to even bother posting a single link to back up anything you said.
It seems obvious in retrospect. Why haven't more people tumbled to the truth that scientists always fudge their own data, and conspire to keep the fudging secret, in order to impoverish our hard-working and honest industrialists? These god damn scientists, they can never give a billionaire an even break.
Thank god for you and Rush Limbaugh, Argoff, or I just wouldn't know what to think.
First of all, it's not ad hominem to examine the beliefs of someone who is claiming authority in a subject. For example, it would be perfectly legitmate to put in a story "Dr. J. Smith, who believes in the healing powers of crystals and smoked banana peels, etc."
Second, the only ad hominem argument being made here is yours. You are dismissing all arguments and evidence in "An Inconvenient Truth" because it is narrated by Al Gore. This in itself is enough, in your mind, to label the entire movie "partisan", though you neglect to include any examples of partisanship. It's been my experience that the word "partisan" is the last refuge of those who really, desperately want to ignore an argument for which they can not form a counter.
Science isn't Democratic or Republican. Thinking so is dangerous and foolish. The current climate in American reminds me of German authorities earlier in the century rejecting "Jewish science" in favour of "Aryan science". That worked out really well, didn't it?
He's saying that, when they do get caught, nine times out of ten it's because someone wants to verify their presence with someone higher up. I don't think he said how often they actually do get caught.
Most people seem to trip up on the last part. I think the idea is that an object shouldn't have any "rivals" in its orbit, for lack of a better word. I was browsing some astronomy sites a few months ago and found a good page on Sedna which had a discussion of what should be considered a planet. This is before the recent reclassifications but I think it illustrates what the IAU was thinking. It's also interesting that Ceres was at first considered a planet but then was downgraded because it was found to just be one object in a belt of objects. This is exactly the same as what happened to Pluto.
I know there's going to be lots of weird shit in the galaxy which blurs the lines, but I think the current definition is pretty good for within our solar system. And after all, why should everything be easily classified? Isn't it the strange, hard-to-classify findings that usually advance science the most? We can make up new terms or modify the existing definitions as we find new objects.
Anyway, here's the words of someone who has forgotten more about astronomy than I've ever learned.