How so? Easier configuration? Kernel modules for USB/PCI devices? A nice widget in which I can enter my SSID, channel, and WEP key and have it actually work? I've had a really bad time with Linux distros and WiFi... since that's my only mode of networking at home, it's pretty critical that it work out of the box.
And along with WLAN (which has kept me away from Linux for the past couple years), is there support for wireless keyboard/mouse in the installer? I went to try some other distros after getting the Logitech MX duo and nothing would work because the keyboard didn't work.
Re:No One Lives Forever
on
Humor in Games?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Tron 2.0 (by the same company that did NOLF) had some good humor as well... enemies known as "Resource Hogs" would often carry names like "lookout.exe" and "wordwin.exe" and other assorted plays on Microsoft programs. Definitely more "geeky" humor, but still good.
LucasArts' Armed & Dangerous is pretty fun slapstick as well -- from the tea-brewing robot to shark launchers and topsy-turvy bombs -- and the cutscenes are just a hoot. And to top it off, it's hit the $10 bin.
The RAM limit on the older iBooks (we bought an 800 MHz G4 12.1" about a year back) is only 640 MB (128 MB soldered-in + 1 slot that can handle up to 512 MB). It might seem low, but it's twice what it was only a year ago, and it should be enough for most consumer-level apps. I know with our laptops (iBook/800 MHz G4/640 MB and PowerBook/1.33 GHz G4/ 768 MB) the extra RAM makes a world of difference.
Well... I own the originals on VHS. And the 1997 re-releases. And now the DVDs. I'd happily shell out the coin for the originals on DVD, but I'll take what I can get, because I love these movies. More precisely, I love the story that these movies tell.
The problem I have with a strict view of "movie preservation" is that it takes a static view of a fluid medium. Should Star Wars be taken as like The Mona Lisa, or is it more similar to one of Beethoven's symphonies?
In the case of The Mona Lisa, there is a single authentic version -- static, unchanging, perfect in its original form. But Beethoven's symphonies have been performed by orchestras and ensembles around the world, and each performance is different -- both from each other, and likely from Ludwig's intent.
I tend to take the view that movies fall into the latter category, a fluid medium. But that's just me.
I haven't seen anyone else, anywhere, mentioning the ONE thing that absolutely ruined ESB for me. The scene occurs right after Luke jumps down the shaft in Cloud City. Darth Vader is walking out, and the only words out of his mouth are a husky-sounding, "Bring my shuttle." There was a depth of emotion -- anger, sadness -- that I picked up on in that little scene.
Now they've got this lame voice-over from Vader, "Alert the commander to prepare for my arrival," or something like that. Throw in some re-used footage from RotJ (Vader's Death Star II arrival) for when he lands on his flagship and you've taken ALL the emotion out of Vader's revelation and its consequences (at least on his part).
Everything else I could cope with... yeah, Han shoots first, but whatever... more digital aliens, gives the ILM guys good practice... but in my opinion that single scene took a great movie and made it into a merely good movie.
Another useful app is uControl, a keyboard remapper. I mainly downloaded it to turn my touchpad into a vertical scroll bar (hold down Ctrl-Fn and mouse movement translates into scrolling), but it does a lot more besides.
What about the Expose feature of OS X? The F9 key tiles and scales all the open windows so you can choose the one you want... the F10 key tiles all the windows of the app with focus (like a big Photoshop session, for example), and you can tab between apps... the F11 key hides all the open applications so you can see the desktop (so you can drag on of those files Safari downloaded to an app). I just discovered this little trick (having had a PowerBook for a few months now), and I'm wondering how the heck I lived without it!
I've bought a couple of CDs and a few individual tracks from the iTunes music store (not to mention all the freebies I've downloaded). They sound fine, even when burned onto CDs to play on the Bose in the car. It's a bit of a pain sharing them between computers (PowerBook and PC at home and PC at work), but hey, blank CDs are cheap.
Of course, in general it's still cheaper for me to buy CDs through a service like BMG or Columbia House. I order maybe 10-20 per year from BMG and end up paying between $5 and $8 per CD. Then I can rip those myself to whatever quality I'd like and avoid the ridiculous prices that most stores charge. Sure, there's the whole shipping delay, but I'm a patient guy.
That said, if I could import music purchased from Real's music store into iTunes (and from thence to the iPod), I'd jump on the $0.49 thing in heartbeat. But I use iTunes for everything now, and I'm not about to start running multiple different media players just for the grins of saving a few bucks. That's my choice, and I'm sticking to it.
I can't really remember the last good SF book I read. Probably Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons. I've tried reading some of the authors mentioned... Kim Stanley Robinson, Alistair MacLeod, etc. I don't know, to me it seems like they were too busy trying to make a political/philosophical point rather than telling a good story (I put down the latest Greg Bear in utter disgust after reading about five pages). Not that I have a problem with a writer presenting their politics or philosophy, but when they do it at the expense of the story, they've just lost a reader.
So who do I like? J.R.R. Tolkien is the undisputed king of the Epic Tale. Ray Bradbury is one of the greatest storytellers I've ever read. I mentioned Dan Simmons. I've read just about everything he's written simply because he tells a good story. Kurt Vonnegut is good. Stephen King can tell rip-roaring tales (I just read Salem's Lot in about five hours). Tom Clancy is always a fun ride with lots of whiz-bang military gadgets. For Sci-Fi, Alfred Bester ranks near the top of my list (in fact, I just got my wife to read The Demolished Man in exchange for me reading Pride and Prejudice). I also like Gordon R. Dickson, Kevin J. Anderson (I loved Dogged Persistence, but then again I love short stories) and Philip K. Dick (among others)
I'd agree with the poster who suggested reading the classics, too. Stoker, Shelley, Stevenson, Wells, Verne. Huxley and Orwell. Homer. And let's not forget the Bible (every story theme ever used can be found there).
Absolutely. Now what are we gonna do about it? We've seen over and over that socialism is a miserable failure. Unfortunately it is the nature of people in power to want to maintain that power. So how do you think they do that? By getting people dependent on the government -- creating a group of people who (a) pay no taxes and (b) receive government disbursements ("working class" to a certain part of our political spectrum).
The concept of this letter is great (and I'm working for a company that provides telecom equipment and services). I'd love to see the old dogs die quickly so I could get some fun stuff to work on, and maybe have some innovation, vision, new companies, new jobs. But no, instead we get an extra 13 weeks of unemployment income.
Term limits would be incredibly helpful to reduce this dependence on goverment. Then we'd have enough turnover to avoid the little fiefdoms that show up in the House and Senate. But where are we going to find a Congress that will vote for THAT? And let's not even get started on legislating from the courts...
Election day in the U.S.A. is November 5th. So VOTE!
Best years as far as earning potential? Maybe, maybe not. Even after 7 months of unemployment I only had to take a 10% cut in salary (which, in my opinion, is still about 20% more than I probably should be making).
Then there's credit card debt. Student loans I could understand, but credit card debt? Come on, if you're smart enough to get a degree in CS/EE/CE, you should be smart enough to (1) know the evils of compound interest and (2) know not to bet the farm of future returns that might not materialize.
My wife and I made it through my period of unemployment just fine... in fact, our account balances went up! She had a stable job, we didn't (ever) carry credit card debt, and we had bought a house that we could afford on the lower of our salaries. So why the heck aren't they teaching common-sense stuff like that instead of touchy-feely nonsense in schools? Beats me.
I got to sit next to the photographer at the last wedding reception I attended. He was an older guy, near retirement, and we got to talking about digital cameras. If I remember correctly, he said that he's got about a 4 megapixel with 3x optical zoom. In his opinion (hey, he's a professional photographer), the digital camera was better than standard film for pictures that would ultimately end up being printed to less than 8x10 (that's inches, naturally). For 8x10 or bigger he preferred film, regardless of the resolution. Less blocky, he said. For what it's worth...
I'm amused by all the comments boiling this down to a simple creation versus evolution debate (and I appreciate the folks who see it as something more than that). The biggest fault of the evolutionary theory (in my opinion, at least) is that it makes the a priori assumption of naturalism. The argument can be made that anything outside of nature is not science, but I think that's a tenuous argument. After all, science is about knowledge (check a dictionary for the root if you don't believe me). At least, it used to be. It lately seems to be more of a defense of naturalism than anything else.
Anyone who's looked at the intelligent design movement at all seriously will tell you that it's far more than a bunch of six-day literal creationists banded together. Jews, Christians (old-earth and young-earth, to be sure), agnostics, alien benefactors, whatever. The big difference is that they throw out the assumption of naturalism.
William Dembski, for example, uses an information theory approach, comparing some aspects of biology to other disciplines like cryptography and SETI... looking for patters that intimate that something was intentional.
Besides, if evolution is so perfectly true, what's the worry? They should be able to triumph in any of the arguments that might occur in schools, right? Right?
Thought we had a right to be considered innocent till proven guilty and a right to not be subjected to unreasonable search and seizures?
How, pray tell, can this be considered unreasonable search or seizure? They (or I, or anyone else, for that matter) are simply using P2P techniques to discover who's violating their clients' copyrighted material. They could just as easily load up any number of file sharing software packages and browse away.
Unreasonable search or seizure would be cracking into your computer, scanning its hard drives, and clearing out whatever's illegal.
They read sites to check for possible coded messages. They scan computers for useful info and turn it over to corporations for suits and to law enforcement for arrest. Would have thought for sure to get those kinds of searches you'd need a warrant.
Why? They're publicly accessible. Anyone can do the same thing. Do you think if I posted a nice hand-written notice on the company corkboard that I was going to blow up the building that they'd be violating my rights if they did something about it (like arrest me)? Come on!
One reason might be that OpenOffice is free, while GobeProductive is not...
I actually just installed OpenOffice on my home PC's Win2k drive (still gotta get it for the Linux drive). I have to admit that I've never tried GobeProductive, but I did use the old StarOffice (5.2) for a while. I thought it stunk. OpenOffice is quite comparable to MS Office in terms of usability. On my system it was quite a bit faster than MS Office as well. So let's see, OpenOffice is (1) free, (2) compatible (> 90%, probably) with MS Office, (3) available right now for multiple OS platforms. Granted, GobeProductive might be faster than OpenOffice, but come on, do you really need the file to open instantaneously?
Maybe someone will come up with a quantum office productivity suite that will open files before you need them...:-)
It's the fat in foods that make us feel full and keep us full longer.
Ain't that the truth. Here's a neat trick: try some home made pasta. Beats the pants off the boxed stuff as far as flavor goes, and it takes about a third as much to make you full.
For a good 4-6 servings, mix up three eggs, two cups of semolina flour (or other pasta flour), and one cup of plain old white bread flour. You might need more or less flour depending on the size of the eggs. Knead it until it's nice and smooth. Run it through the pasta machine (what, you don't have a pasta machine? They're worth every penny!) and throw it in boiling water for about three minutes. Drain it, toss it in the sauce, and you're ready to go...
Bob Cringely wrote a column on the same topic about a month ago. He called Palladium a Rosetta Stone for malicious hackers. Sounds like a blast.
That's just what I want, another Microsoft initiative aimed at security. They've done such a good job at it so far that now I'm a whisper away from getting my account canceled by my ISP -- all because some Outlook/Outlook Express user somewhere has Klez and our e-mail address.
What's next for the Ninth Circuit Court? That awful Declaration of Independence says, "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." And it also says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." And, still one more time, " We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States." By their impeccable logic, the Declaration of Independence references a supernatural being at least three times, and is therefore un-Constitutional. Does that mean I'll have to start drinking tea at 4pm every day again? Ack!
The sanctity of life? That's just bullshit we made up.
Great, can you come over to my lab, then? There are some interesting...experiments...I'd like to try out. While we're at it, let's all stop giving food and aid to poorer people and countries. Their lives don't mean anything. And you know what, I'm tired of wearing contacts. I think I'll find someone with 20/20 vision and steal their eyes. After all, his/her life is worthless.
Even if the sanctity of life IS something we just invented, can't you see that it's absolutely necessary for a functional society? Or are you too blinded by your great god of scientific progress?
Playing god? More bullshit we made up. There is no god.
Really? I've seen hundreds of claims like this, all backed up with little to no evidence. Gods are what people worship -- for some people it's money, for others it's progress, still others it's science. To whatever a person gives the greatest worth -- that's their god.
Growing a person to harvest him for organs? Well, we do have abortions, and if there's nothing wrong with abortion, there can't be anything wrong with that. As long as it isn't conscious, there's no big deal.
Excellent! So if I bop someone on the head and knock 'em out, I can kill them without a second thought. They're not conscious, right? You are correct, though, in saying that growing a person for organs is not morally different than abortion. For those of us who think that abortion is murder, however...
Seriously. Not to be a wet noodle, but these guys are pretty much pulling numbers from where the sun don't shine.
Anyone who believes that there is not an assload of planets that could possibly support sentient life is incredibly arrogant.
Anyone who believes that a "god-like being" would only create life on a singular planet is even more arrogant.
No personal offense intended, but isn't is also then true that anyone who dogmatically asserts the opposite is equally arrogant? Let's remember that science is (or is supposed to be) the search for knowledge (from the Latin sciens, having knowledge). These guys can make their estimates all they want. But the fact is that there is currently exactly one known planet with life: Earth. Later facts might prove them right. But they might prove them wrong, too.
While I'm sure it's not the only example of the dangers of the acceleration of news coverage, CNN recently ran a story in which the Taliban claimed to have shot down a U.S. Special Forces helicopter. Seems like reasonable news. But according to a blurb on Plastic, CNN could have gotten the real skinny on the story if they'd bothered to do a little research. As another poster noted earlier, journalists can't be bothered to take the time for fact-checking. The drive is to get the breaking news first, regardless of whether it must later be retracted. Facts? We don' need no stinkin' facts!
The biggest problem is that much of the hysterical news-watching public just plain doesn't care about facts. Sensationalism, spin and sordid details are the name of the game. Katz mentioned the Lewinsky scandal, a fine example of media sensationalism that glossed over the facts (like perjury and obstruction of justice) with sordid details (like activities with cigars and telephones). Welcome to the world of infotainment.
Larry Ellison penned an editorial in the Wall Street Journal last week, and it made it to today's free web-based opinion page, Opinion Journal. You can find it here. He makes the argument that everyone's tracking us anyway, so why not just compile it all into one database? Thanks, Larry, but no thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
-Better wifi support built in
... since that's my only mode of networking at home, it's pretty critical that it work out of the box.
How so? Easier configuration? Kernel modules for USB/PCI devices? A nice widget in which I can enter my SSID, channel, and WEP key and have it actually work? I've had a really bad time with Linux distros and WiFi
And along with WLAN (which has kept me away from Linux for the past couple years), is there support for wireless keyboard/mouse in the installer? I went to try some other distros after getting the Logitech MX duo and nothing would work because the keyboard didn't work.
Tron 2.0 (by the same company that did NOLF) had some good humor as well ... enemies known as "Resource Hogs" would often carry names like "lookout.exe" and "wordwin.exe" and other assorted plays on Microsoft programs. Definitely more "geeky" humor, but still good.
LucasArts' Armed & Dangerous is pretty fun slapstick as well -- from the tea-brewing robot to shark launchers and topsy-turvy bombs -- and the cutscenes are just a hoot. And to top it off, it's hit the $10 bin.
The RAM limit on the older iBooks (we bought an 800 MHz G4 12.1" about a year back) is only 640 MB (128 MB soldered-in + 1 slot that can handle up to 512 MB). It might seem low, but it's twice what it was only a year ago, and it should be enough for most consumer-level apps. I know with our laptops (iBook/800 MHz G4/640 MB and PowerBook/1.33 GHz G4/ 768 MB) the extra RAM makes a world of difference.
Well ... I own the originals on VHS. And the 1997 re-releases. And now the DVDs. I'd happily shell out the coin for the originals on DVD, but I'll take what I can get, because I love these movies. More precisely, I love the story that these movies tell.
The problem I have with a strict view of "movie preservation" is that it takes a static view of a fluid medium. Should Star Wars be taken as like The Mona Lisa, or is it more similar to one of Beethoven's symphonies?
In the case of The Mona Lisa, there is a single authentic version -- static, unchanging, perfect in its original form. But Beethoven's symphonies have been performed by orchestras and ensembles around the world, and each performance is different -- both from each other, and likely from Ludwig's intent.
I tend to take the view that movies fall into the latter category, a fluid medium. But that's just me.
I haven't seen anyone else, anywhere, mentioning the ONE thing that absolutely ruined ESB for me. The scene occurs right after Luke jumps down the shaft in Cloud City. Darth Vader is walking out, and the only words out of his mouth are a husky-sounding, "Bring my shuttle." There was a depth of emotion -- anger, sadness -- that I picked up on in that little scene.
... yeah, Han shoots first, but whatever ... more digital aliens, gives the ILM guys good practice ... but in my opinion that single scene took a great movie and made it into a merely good movie.
Now they've got this lame voice-over from Vader, "Alert the commander to prepare for my arrival," or something like that. Throw in some re-used footage from RotJ (Vader's Death Star II arrival) for when he lands on his flagship and you've taken ALL the emotion out of Vader's revelation and its consequences (at least on his part).
Everything else I could cope with
Another useful app is uControl, a keyboard remapper. I mainly downloaded it to turn my touchpad into a vertical scroll bar (hold down Ctrl-Fn and mouse movement translates into scrolling), but it does a lot more besides.
What about the Expose feature of OS X? The F9 key tiles and scales all the open windows so you can choose the one you want ... the F10 key tiles all the windows of the app with focus (like a big Photoshop session, for example), and you can tab between apps ... the F11 key hides all the open applications so you can see the desktop (so you can drag on of those files Safari downloaded to an app). I just discovered this little trick (having had a PowerBook for a few months now), and I'm wondering how the heck I lived without it!
I've bought a couple of CDs and a few individual tracks from the iTunes music store (not to mention all the freebies I've downloaded). They sound fine, even when burned onto CDs to play on the Bose in the car. It's a bit of a pain sharing them between computers (PowerBook and PC at home and PC at work), but hey, blank CDs are cheap.
Of course, in general it's still cheaper for me to buy CDs through a service like BMG or Columbia House. I order maybe 10-20 per year from BMG and end up paying between $5 and $8 per CD. Then I can rip those myself to whatever quality I'd like and avoid the ridiculous prices that most stores charge. Sure, there's the whole shipping delay, but I'm a patient guy.
That said, if I could import music purchased from Real's music store into iTunes (and from thence to the iPod), I'd jump on the $0.49 thing in heartbeat. But I use iTunes for everything now, and I'm not about to start running multiple different media players just for the grins of saving a few bucks. That's my choice, and I'm sticking to it.
So who do I like? J.R.R. Tolkien is the undisputed king of the Epic Tale. Ray Bradbury is one of the greatest storytellers I've ever read. I mentioned Dan Simmons. I've read just about everything he's written simply because he tells a good story. Kurt Vonnegut is good. Stephen King can tell rip-roaring tales (I just read Salem's Lot in about five hours). Tom Clancy is always a fun ride with lots of whiz-bang military gadgets. For Sci-Fi, Alfred Bester ranks near the top of my list (in fact, I just got my wife to read The Demolished Man in exchange for me reading Pride and Prejudice). I also like Gordon R. Dickson, Kevin J. Anderson (I loved Dogged Persistence, but then again I love short stories) and Philip K. Dick (among others)
I'd agree with the poster who suggested reading the classics, too. Stoker, Shelley, Stevenson, Wells, Verne. Huxley and Orwell. Homer. And let's not forget the Bible (every story theme ever used can be found there).
Absolutely. Now what are we gonna do about it? We've seen over and over that socialism is a miserable failure. Unfortunately it is the nature of people in power to want to maintain that power. So how do you think they do that? By getting people dependent on the government -- creating a group of people who (a) pay no taxes and (b) receive government disbursements ("working class" to a certain part of our political spectrum).
The concept of this letter is great (and I'm working for a company that provides telecom equipment and services). I'd love to see the old dogs die quickly so I could get some fun stuff to work on, and maybe have some innovation, vision, new companies, new jobs. But no, instead we get an extra 13 weeks of unemployment income.
Term limits would be incredibly helpful to reduce this dependence on goverment. Then we'd have enough turnover to avoid the little fiefdoms that show up in the House and Senate. But where are we going to find a Congress that will vote for THAT? And let's not even get started on legislating from the courts...
Election day in the U.S.A. is November 5th. So VOTE!
Best years as far as earning potential? Maybe, maybe not. Even after 7 months of unemployment I only had to take a 10% cut in salary (which, in my opinion, is still about 20% more than I probably should be making).
... in fact, our account balances went up! She had a stable job, we didn't (ever) carry credit card debt, and we had bought a house that we could afford on the lower of our salaries. So why the heck aren't they teaching common-sense stuff like that instead of touchy-feely nonsense in schools? Beats me.
Then there's credit card debt. Student loans I could understand, but credit card debt? Come on, if you're smart enough to get a degree in CS/EE/CE, you should be smart enough to (1) know the evils of compound interest and (2) know not to bet the farm of future returns that might not materialize.
My wife and I made it through my period of unemployment just fine
I got to sit next to the photographer at the last wedding reception I attended. He was an older guy, near retirement, and we got to talking about digital cameras. If I remember correctly, he said that he's got about a 4 megapixel with 3x optical zoom. In his opinion (hey, he's a professional photographer), the digital camera was better than standard film for pictures that would ultimately end up being printed to less than 8x10 (that's inches, naturally). For 8x10 or bigger he preferred film, regardless of the resolution. Less blocky, he said. For what it's worth...
I'm amused by all the comments boiling this down to a simple creation versus evolution debate (and I appreciate the folks who see it as something more than that). The biggest fault of the evolutionary theory (in my opinion, at least) is that it makes the a priori assumption of naturalism. The argument can be made that anything outside of nature is not science, but I think that's a tenuous argument. After all, science is about knowledge (check a dictionary for the root if you don't believe me). At least, it used to be. It lately seems to be more of a defense of naturalism than anything else.
... looking for patters that intimate that something was intentional.
Anyone who's looked at the intelligent design movement at all seriously will tell you that it's far more than a bunch of six-day literal creationists banded together. Jews, Christians (old-earth and young-earth, to be sure), agnostics, alien benefactors, whatever. The big difference is that they throw out the assumption of naturalism.
William Dembski, for example, uses an information theory approach, comparing some aspects of biology to other disciplines like cryptography and SETI
Besides, if evolution is so perfectly true, what's the worry? They should be able to triumph in any of the arguments that might occur in schools, right? Right?
Thought we had a right to be considered innocent till proven guilty and a right to not be subjected to unreasonable search and seizures?
How, pray tell, can this be considered unreasonable search or seizure? They (or I, or anyone else, for that matter) are simply using P2P techniques to discover who's violating their clients' copyrighted material. They could just as easily load up any number of file sharing software packages and browse away.
Unreasonable search or seizure would be cracking into your computer, scanning its hard drives, and clearing out whatever's illegal.
They read sites to check for possible coded messages. They scan computers for useful info and turn it over to corporations for suits and to law enforcement for arrest. Would have thought for sure to get those kinds of searches you'd need a warrant.
Why? They're publicly accessible. Anyone can do the same thing. Do you think if I posted a nice hand-written notice on the company corkboard that I was going to blow up the building that they'd be violating my rights if they did something about it (like arrest me)? Come on!
One reason might be that OpenOffice is free, while GobeProductive is not...
:-)
I actually just installed OpenOffice on my home PC's Win2k drive (still gotta get it for the Linux drive). I have to admit that I've never tried GobeProductive, but I did use the old StarOffice (5.2) for a while. I thought it stunk. OpenOffice is quite comparable to MS Office in terms of usability. On my system it was quite a bit faster than MS Office as well. So let's see, OpenOffice is (1) free, (2) compatible (> 90%, probably) with MS Office, (3) available right now for multiple OS platforms. Granted, GobeProductive might be faster than OpenOffice, but come on, do you really need the file to open instantaneously?
Maybe someone will come up with a quantum office productivity suite that will open files before you need them...
It's the fat in foods that make us feel full and keep us full longer.
Ain't that the truth. Here's a neat trick: try some home made pasta. Beats the pants off the boxed stuff as far as flavor goes, and it takes about a third as much to make you full.
For a good 4-6 servings, mix up three eggs, two cups of semolina flour (or other pasta flour), and one cup of plain old white bread flour. You might need more or less flour depending on the size of the eggs. Knead it until it's nice and smooth. Run it through the pasta machine (what, you don't have a pasta machine? They're worth every penny!) and throw it in boiling water for about three minutes. Drain it, toss it in the sauce, and you're ready to go...
Bob Cringely wrote a column on the same topic about a month ago. He called Palladium a Rosetta Stone for malicious hackers. Sounds like a blast.
That's just what I want, another Microsoft initiative aimed at security. They've done such a good job at it so far that now I'm a whisper away from getting my account canceled by my ISP -- all because some Outlook/Outlook Express user somewhere has Klez and our e-mail address.
What's next for the Ninth Circuit Court? That awful Declaration of Independence says, "When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." And it also says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." And, still one more time, " We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States." By their impeccable logic, the Declaration of Independence references a supernatural being at least three times, and is therefore un-Constitutional. Does that mean I'll have to start drinking tea at 4pm every day again? Ack!
Btw, if I go kill 444 poeple and then claim to be a "atheist" is atheisism now evil?
Sorry. Josef Stalin and a host of other Communists (who were, by definition, atheists) already beat you to it...
The sanctity of life? That's just bullshit we made up.
Great, can you come over to my lab, then? There are some interesting...experiments...I'd like to try out. While we're at it, let's all stop giving food and aid to poorer people and countries. Their lives don't mean anything. And you know what, I'm tired of wearing contacts. I think I'll find someone with 20/20 vision and steal their eyes. After all, his/her life is worthless.
Even if the sanctity of life IS something we just invented, can't you see that it's absolutely necessary for a functional society? Or are you too blinded by your great god of scientific progress?
Playing god? More bullshit we made up. There is no god.
Really? I've seen hundreds of claims like this, all backed up with little to no evidence. Gods are what people worship -- for some people it's money, for others it's progress, still others it's science. To whatever a person gives the greatest worth -- that's their god.
Growing a person to harvest him for organs? Well, we do have abortions, and if there's nothing wrong with abortion, there can't be anything wrong with that. As long as it isn't conscious, there's no big deal.
Excellent! So if I bop someone on the head and knock 'em out, I can kill them without a second thought. They're not conscious, right? You are correct, though, in saying that growing a person for organs is not morally different than abortion. For those of us who think that abortion is murder, however...
How to turn water into wine:
- Plant grape seeds.
- Add water to soil containing grape seeds.
- Harvest grapes.
- Mash 'em up.
- Let the juice ferment for a while. Voila -- water to wine.
Is it really that unbelievable? It's a shortcut -- nothing more, nothing less. And I'm sure you're now a creationist.Anyone who believes that there is not an assload of planets that could possibly support sentient life is incredibly arrogant.
Anyone who believes that a "god-like being" would only create life on a singular planet is even more arrogant.
No personal offense intended, but isn't is also then true that anyone who dogmatically asserts the opposite is equally arrogant? Let's remember that science is (or is supposed to be) the search for knowledge (from the Latin sciens, having knowledge). These guys can make their estimates all they want. But the fact is that there is currently exactly one known planet with life: Earth. Later facts might prove them right. But they might prove them wrong, too.
While I'm sure it's not the only example of the dangers of the acceleration of news coverage, CNN recently ran a story in which the Taliban claimed to have shot down a U.S. Special Forces helicopter. Seems like reasonable news. But according to a blurb on Plastic, CNN could have gotten the real skinny on the story if they'd bothered to do a little research. As another poster noted earlier, journalists can't be bothered to take the time for fact-checking. The drive is to get the breaking news first, regardless of whether it must later be retracted. Facts? We don' need no stinkin' facts!
The biggest problem is that much of the hysterical news-watching public just plain doesn't care about facts. Sensationalism, spin and sordid details are the name of the game. Katz mentioned the Lewinsky scandal, a fine example of media sensationalism that glossed over the facts (like perjury and obstruction of justice) with sordid details (like activities with cigars and telephones). Welcome to the world of infotainment.
Larry Ellison penned an editorial in the Wall Street Journal last week, and it made it to today's free web-based opinion page, Opinion Journal. You can find it here. He makes the argument that everyone's tracking us anyway, so why not just compile it all into one database? Thanks, Larry, but no thanks.