GWB is in no way a redneck. He is dumb but not a redneck. He wants people to think that because most people in the US are threatened by what he really is. He is a rich spoiled brat from conneticut who went to a fancy prep school (phillips exeter or phillips andover or groton i cant remember which off the bat) and was admited to Yale on the strength of being Gerge BUSH, grandson of a conn. senator. In fact Bush is even related to the british royal family. Bush has relied on being Bush his whole life the only money he ever made (when the Texas Rangers were sold) was a political favor to his father. Now he is trying to get elected using his family name, money , and connections.
In order to put all the jokes to rest here at Slashdot I would like to give Al Gore a chance to give an honest account of what he sees as his real involvement in the genesis of the internet.
A lot of people are constantly complaining about the law being behind the times and how it cant hope to keep up with technology. Some try to use these complaints as some sort of excuse to not regulate technology in the least. This atitudes show a lack of understanding of how the law works. The law cannot spend its time trying to predict each twist and turn that our culture will take and what actions will be necessary because of these twists. The law places a high value on precedents. So in a sense it constantly looks at the past. Because of this attempting to change the law is hard and will always be hard. This is necessary because a premium is placed on constancy. The law needs to be as constant as posible. What was wrong yesterday cannot out of the blue be right today or vice versa. Changes in the law will for the most part be slower than changes in society since the law is a contractual agreement between all the members of the societal group and it must wait until the societal group is ready to codify its new belief. Sure the law makes discrimination illegal but discrimination still exists. This doesn't mean that the change in the law was not a reactionto changes in society. It was necessary to go through the equal rights movement to get some changes in the law. The law follows society and tries to solidify what most people in that society believe is the correct way of dealing with specific problems. Sure the law will and can be perverted by entities that are powerful in that society (a la M$ employing the son of the chief supreme court justice) but even that shows what the belief structure of the society is. We live in a society where money is one of if not the most powerful entity and those who have can try to mould the society as the will. Sometimes the society will not tolerate those attempts because what they are shooting for is either too alien or contradictory to other values that form the culture of the society. So the law is a part of society and its culture and like any other part of society it can affect the culture and thus directly or inderectly affect itself. As a part of society it also mirrors the greater structure of society within itself.
Netscape-AOL-Lycos-TimeWarner ???????
Where do you get Lycos from? Lycos is in no way involved inthe whole AOL-Time Warner merger/buy. In fact Lycos is merging with Terra networks, the largest ISP in Spain (majority owned by Telefonica S.A.).
How about the problem is guns in the hands of violent criminal people? How about if it were up to the NRA there would be no regulations on who gets guns? Sure the NRA does some lip service about "enforcing" the laws that are already there but if it were up to them those laws wouldn't be there at all. The comment about IQ tests was obviously a joke. Sorry you and the other guy didnt get it. I was trying to indirectly put guns out of the reach of pretty much everyone. IQs over 200 only happen in less than a fraction of 1% of the population therefore almost no one would get a gun. This probably includes me ( I have only taken one IQ test and it only accurately measured to 140). I dont think the police should get guns either. I imagine you are not very intelligent either since you atempted to defeat an argument ad hominem, which is not a particularly smart thing to do. Im sorry my spelling wasnt up to your strict standards. Interesting that you chose to vote for someone who can't even pronounce half of the words his speach writers give him. Also intersting you would vote for either the Libertarians or Nader if either had a chance of being elected since Nader is about as far from the libertarians in the US political spectrum as is possible. I also find it interesting that you wont vote for Gore because he isnt a "friend" of civil liberties. Most republicans i know of only belive in one civil liberty. Freedom of speech to them is some sort of strange clause in the constitution that we would be better off without. Guns on the other hand are a god-given right. After all everyone needs a good phallic object in their life and guns are oh so powerful and manly. Of course a large number of people involved in murders (victim or agressor) have violent pasts. Still inocent people are killed by guns in the wrong hands. I see no good reason for people to have guns. Hunting is not a necessary activity. Some people might like it and what not but by the same rationale heroine and crack should be legal too. I am not sure where you got your information on murder victims and cocaine but i fail to see the relevance or connection to any argument you tried to make. Are these murders A OK because they had cocaine in ther blood? Your prejudice is showing now.
So i guess all that is necessary to get Bob's atention is to compare Red Hat to Micro$oft. I would be upset if someone compared the place i work in to Micro$oft. I think it isn't so much that though. I think what really scared him was that if Red Hat is like Micro$oft then he would either be Steve Balmer,or even worse Bill Gates.
I was watching the debate with my girlfriend and when GWB said that we both turned our heads and looked at each other with our mouths wide open. This is not a flaimbait or a troll but honestly how can anyone with a frontal lobe, let alone a techno geek, vote for Bush? The man is an idiot and yet manages to be a demagogue (and not in the ancient greek sense). The columbine-intenet commetn was i think also a cheap shot at Gore. Because of Gore's comment on the internet. Bush was trying to use the connection that people have with Gore and the internet and indirectly make Gore "responsible" for the columbine masacre. Im tired of idiots like Bush blaming all of societies problems on a medium for the spreding of information information instead of on ignorance. Im tired of people blaming the internet and then catering to gun wielding idiots. There should be an IQ test for gun ownership in this country. I propose the test score has to be higher than 200. Blaming columbine on the internet is irresponsible because it stops us from looking at the real motives and at the real means that were used to carry on with the murders. It is an invitation for more and more murders. I hope this costs Bush and not just because it should cost him. Maybe some of the Dotcom money will go to Gore now and the campaign will be more balanced in terms of finances. I still cant believe Bush blamed columbine on the internet. I still cant believe that the only place ive seen anyone say anything about it is on slashdot.
You can get from 2.5 to 5 hours on that tine little thing. Wow. Amazing. My 1998 Wallstreet G3 gets 3 on one battery and has a 14 inch screen. My brother's pismo G3 ($2495) gets even more time on just one battery. And now that the G4 energy usage has been lowered to about the same as a G3 why would anyone buy that Vaio laptop? The only reason i see for it is to run Windows (not in this lifetime) since there are various linuxppc distros available already. You could even get an ibook and get like 5 to 6 hours out of the bettery and pay 800 less for it. This transmeta hype is silly.
We are all here right? And we all talk about the same sutff. Because we have similar interests we interact. is that a comunity? depends on you definition of comunity. what is considered a comunity is pretty relative. Does geography of space determine a comunity? Or geography of thoughts? Obviously time is involved. We dont think we live in the same comunity George Washington and his friends lived in. Or do we? after all a lot o people think that they have more in comon with George & friends than they do with Caliph and Yussuf in the middle Yemen. How about the american doctors assosiation is that some sort of comunity? They occupy similar space at similar time and have very similar interests and concerns. All i am saying is that depending on you definition and on how strict you are about it will dictate a priori if online comunities are even posible. Once we've answered that then we can go into the world and see if the excist. that is if we believe thay are possible at all within our previously established parameters.
I think Gore would get hita few times by bill in the fierst round but everntually he would get worked up enough in his standadr asskicker mode (like when he debates) and would sweep the floor with mr. gates.
They were supposed to have a profit of 165 million but instead they said it will probably be a profit more in the 110 million dollar range. Everyone in wallstreet is still spooked from when apple nearly died a few years ago so now all the people who made a living forecasting the demise of apple are back.
Apple has had the announcement for 1 click up on the site for ages. In fact it went up as soon as they announced they were patenting the technology. This is old news and adds nothing to the previous story when apple announced they were patenting 1 click.
I honestly don't see why everyone is so pissed off at Apple about this. They wanted to offer a service to their cutomers and amazon has a patent on the service. If they had started using the 1click "patent" without licensing it they would get sued. So what would the rational action be? lincense the patent or get into a protracted legal battle that some other huge company already lost before? Once Amazon won against B&N this thing was over because a precedent was created. Every person who tries to fight Amazon on the patent will have to face an uphill battle. Im sure the cost of litigation would have been much higher so end of story. If you want to be mad at someone be mad at Amazon. I guess it is cool to diss apple on slashdot so everything they do is open to being ridiculed here.
On the validity of the patent. It does seem pretty silly to be able to patent something as "simple" as a 1 click shopping system. I used to buy lot of books from amazon and i remember when 1 click began to be offered as a service (I for one made so many impulse purchases because of it...). I also remember that my first reacition was "Oh how cool. Whata great idea. so simple yet so convinient." I also remember going to B&N later on and seein their blatant copy of Amazon's 1 click technology. My first reaction to that was: " It figures. everything they with their website is a bad attempt at copying whatever Amazon does." I felt that B&N was ripping Amazon off and that they were going to try to muscle Amazon out of the business by using their clout and provide similar services by copying Amazon's every move (This was years ago and Amazon was not the market cap monster it is now. It was more of a fledgeling internet copany). My fear at the time was what looked like a half hearted attempt by B&N to move into the internet market and win by simply being the established one. So while a patent for 1 click seems excesive I can understand wanting to keep it and patent it. I guess what i mean is that I can see both sides of the argument and it simply isnt as clear as most people here on slashdot want to make it seem.
Every single batman movie has been progresively worse than the one before it. The first one was hands down the best. I think this in part because the movies slowly began to turn more cartoonish and were less and less gothic/dark. In the first one Jack Nicholson played a Joker that really changed our perceptions of a villain that had been around for decades. I though Michael Keaton was a bad choice for the part of Batmen but I was proved wrong and to this day he is the best Batman ever. The second movie was pretty good. A little over the top and looked more fake than gothic. Dany Devito just can't compete with Jack Nicholson. Michelle Pfeifer was prety good as cat woman I always peceived cat woman as a tall brunette though. But every once in a while stupic stuff would happen in the movie like when cat woman starts licking herself. that was just silly. The third movie again was more cartoonish than the second one but it still retained some of the darkness of the dark knight. Val Kilmer was ok as Batman. He seemed to match the part than Michael Keaton but the only problem is that Val Kilmer is not such a good actor. The real problem with the movie was casting Jim Carey as the riddler. He played the riddler more like a hysterical idiot tan anything else whereas the riddle r is supposed to be one of the smartestvillains that Btman ever encouters. The fourth movie was so terrible and cartoonish that i deserves nothing more than to be mentioned. All i can say is that i hope that the new infusion of more independent film talent will take away the layers of cheese that have been slowly been adde to the Batman movies until the point where Arnold Shawrzenidiot gets to play a part. Pi was a good solid movie witha few problems but I am sure we can all see how adding the ddirector of this movie will bring some life to what is now the tired Batman series.
it is unfair because it is all based on bullshit i.e. being born in one particular spot in the planet. We hear all this crap about free trade and what not but how about freedom of movement for workers? As usual laws are made to benefit corporations.
In a sense I am very much open to the idea of having AOL have to open up IM but honestly if they do it the monopoly simply will move from being AOL's to being M$'s. Look at what hapenned with Netscape. All M$ has to do it bunddle their IM with the OS (or with office --which they are doing already). Most people will then use M$ instant messager since it is o so conviniently on their desktop already insatalled and all. At most the market will be fragmented between AOL (since it is alredy inside the horrible AOL software), M$, and maybe in the fringe Apple will then bunddle some sort of IM with Mac OS. Either way it makes me not give a fuck about the whole thing. This whole mess is simply a bunch of greedy companies trying to get the billions involved in the banners on the IM prompt. Honestly it is also not a very interesting issue since no company will be able to charge for its use all the money will be ad generated. If they do then people will switch to something else.
As much as i believe that OS X is going to kick ass and be one of if not the best OSs out there there is no way it will live up to the hype. Too many people expect too many things out of it. For some the OS has turned into some sort of holy grail of computers and nothing can live up to that. Also too many people hate apple so much that no mater what they come out with they will still complain about it. Even if OS X ended world hunger and lead humanity into a more prosperous age I know people who would still use windows because they are so prejudced against anything that has to do with apple. In fact a few days ago one of my prejudiced friends asked me if apple still made computers (he was filled with cynical gusto when he said it). I told him that their sales were growing at about 35% and added that that was faster than his beloved dell. His joy at dissing apple was short lived. In the end I think OS X wont change the world but it will go a long way into restoring some crdibility to apple and also to defeat the "toy" prejudice that many geeks have against apple.
I forgot to add Wilfrid Sellars exellent essay-book "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (Harvard Press) as part of the useful background knowledge for reading McDowell's "Mind and World."
The overall topic I am going to consider in these lectures is the way concepts mediate the relations between minds and the world. This is the first sentence of Mind and World by John McDowell (ISBN 0-674-57610-1) For those intertested in this topic I would recomend reading what is destined to become a classic in the field. It is probably the hardest book I ever read but it is definitely worth the time and effort put into it. A background in philosophy will prove very helpful (esp. Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Donald Davidson).
Zen is not mysticism. The dictionary definition that you got is not as technical and indepth as a religious one. Under religious definition Zen is not mysticism because one of the fist moves in Buddhism was to move away from metaphysics. Zen and Buddhism are pragmatic efforts looking into ending dukha. Nagarjuna considered by many to be the most important Buddhist figure after Shakhamunni Buddha stated: "Nirvana is Samsara." Which means that Buddhists are not looking into any "transcendent" realities they just look at this reality differently.
It is not X. It is not ~X. It is not not X. it is not not ~X.
This reminds me of an experiment that coke performed a while a ago. They had vending machines that would fluctuate the price of drinks depending on the time and the temperature. So if it was 100 degrees and in the middle of rush hour it would charge more than when it was cool and between breakfast and lunch. This kind of selling is pretty strange in our society where haggling and such other things are not the norm anymore. On a random note. I wonder what would happen if you used another browser than IE or Netscape.
I think the ruling is intended to do exactly what it says: ensure that the Academy Awards for film continue to be awards for film. Don't be ridiculous. So if a book comes out first in digital format it shouldn't be posible for it to win the national book award just because it didnt have pages made out of paper first? How about if Star wars 2 is released in digital form first? should it be allowed to be nominated for an oscar (special effects most likely) even though it wasn't on film first? This is not an issue about the medium in which a movie is contained it is a issue aboput distribution. The big studios control distribution right now and they want to keep it that way so they will exert as much power as the can to keep it that way.
That is the whole point though. No one country could exert their particular prejudices over the net. Only things that are illegal in most contries would be illegal. It would be a sort of democracy of the values (i use values in the dictionary definition not the bullshit GOP sense) of all of humanity. the internet is a universal medium so maybe it is time we face it as the whole of humanity not as the fragmented bunch of nationalistic political states.
Maybe the UN should have police powers over the internet. So internet crimes thet become international matters fall under the jurisdiction of some UN task force. That way it no one country is infringing over another country's jurisdiction. I know the US uses their muscle to force things in the UN but it seems a little bit better to have to at least do this more subtly through the UN than doing it outright as simply the US.
Slashdot Mirror
GWB is in no way a redneck. He is dumb but not a redneck. He wants people to think that because most people in the US are threatened by what he really is. He is a rich spoiled brat from conneticut who went to a fancy prep school (phillips exeter or phillips andover or groton i cant remember which off the bat) and was admited to Yale on the strength of being Gerge BUSH, grandson of a conn. senator. In fact Bush is even related to the british royal family. Bush has relied on being Bush his whole life the only money he ever made (when the Texas Rangers were sold) was a political favor to his father. Now he is trying to get elected using his family name, money , and connections.
Since it will keep a few kids from damaging their youg minds by reaching Dick Armey's website.
In order to put all the jokes to rest here at Slashdot I would like to give Al Gore a chance to give an honest account of what he sees as his real involvement in the genesis of the internet.
A lot of people are constantly complaining about the law being behind the times and how it cant hope to keep up with technology. Some try to use these complaints as some sort of excuse to not regulate technology in the least. This atitudes show a lack of understanding of how the law works. The law cannot spend its time trying to predict each twist and turn that our culture will take and what actions will be necessary because of these twists. The law places a high value on precedents. So in a sense it constantly looks at the past. Because of this attempting to change the law is hard and will always be hard. This is necessary because a premium is placed on constancy. The law needs to be as constant as posible. What was wrong yesterday cannot out of the blue be right today or vice versa. Changes in the law will for the most part be slower than changes in society since the law is a contractual agreement between all the members of the societal group and it must wait until the societal group is ready to codify its new belief. Sure the law makes discrimination illegal but discrimination still exists. This doesn't mean that the change in the law was not a reactionto changes in society. It was necessary to go through the equal rights movement to get some changes in the law. The law follows society and tries to solidify what most people in that society believe is the correct way of dealing with specific problems. Sure the law will and can be perverted by entities that are powerful in that society (a la M$ employing the son of the chief supreme court justice) but even that shows what the belief structure of the society is. We live in a society where money is one of if not the most powerful entity and those who have can try to mould the society as the will. Sometimes the society will not tolerate those attempts because what they are shooting for is either too alien or contradictory to other values that form the culture of the society. So the law is a part of society and its culture and like any other part of society it can affect the culture and thus directly or inderectly affect itself. As a part of society it also mirrors the greater structure of society within itself.
Netscape-AOL-Lycos-TimeWarner ??????? Where do you get Lycos from? Lycos is in no way involved inthe whole AOL-Time Warner merger/buy. In fact Lycos is merging with Terra networks, the largest ISP in Spain (majority owned by Telefonica S.A.).
How about the problem is guns in the hands of violent criminal people? How about if it were up to the NRA there would be no regulations on who gets guns? Sure the NRA does some lip service about "enforcing" the laws that are already there but if it were up to them those laws wouldn't be there at all. The comment about IQ tests was obviously a joke. Sorry you and the other guy didnt get it. I was trying to indirectly put guns out of the reach of pretty much everyone. IQs over 200 only happen in less than a fraction of 1% of the population therefore almost no one would get a gun. This probably includes me ( I have only taken one IQ test and it only accurately measured to 140). I dont think the police should get guns either. I imagine you are not very intelligent either since you atempted to defeat an argument ad hominem, which is not a particularly smart thing to do. Im sorry my spelling wasnt up to your strict standards. Interesting that you chose to vote for someone who can't even pronounce half of the words his speach writers give him. Also intersting you would vote for either the Libertarians or Nader if either had a chance of being elected since Nader is about as far from the libertarians in the US political spectrum as is possible. I also find it interesting that you wont vote for Gore because he isnt a "friend" of civil liberties. Most republicans i know of only belive in one civil liberty. Freedom of speech to them is some sort of strange clause in the constitution that we would be better off without. Guns on the other hand are a god-given right. After all everyone needs a good phallic object in their life and guns are oh so powerful and manly. Of course a large number of people involved in murders (victim or agressor) have violent pasts. Still inocent people are killed by guns in the wrong hands. I see no good reason for people to have guns. Hunting is not a necessary activity. Some people might like it and what not but by the same rationale heroine and crack should be legal too. I am not sure where you got your information on murder victims and cocaine but i fail to see the relevance or connection to any argument you tried to make. Are these murders A OK because they had cocaine in ther blood? Your prejudice is showing now.
So i guess all that is necessary to get Bob's atention is to compare Red Hat to Micro$oft. I would be upset if someone compared the place i work in to Micro$oft. I think it isn't so much that though. I think what really scared him was that if Red Hat is like Micro$oft then he would either be Steve Balmer,or even worse Bill Gates.
I was watching the debate with my girlfriend and when GWB said that we both turned our heads and looked at each other with our mouths wide open. This is not a flaimbait or a troll but honestly how can anyone with a frontal lobe, let alone a techno geek, vote for Bush? The man is an idiot and yet manages to be a demagogue (and not in the ancient greek sense). The columbine-intenet commetn was i think also a cheap shot at Gore. Because of Gore's comment on the internet. Bush was trying to use the connection that people have with Gore and the internet and indirectly make Gore "responsible" for the columbine masacre. Im tired of idiots like Bush blaming all of societies problems on a medium for the spreding of information information instead of on ignorance. Im tired of people blaming the internet and then catering to gun wielding idiots. There should be an IQ test for gun ownership in this country. I propose the test score has to be higher than 200. Blaming columbine on the internet is irresponsible because it stops us from looking at the real motives and at the real means that were used to carry on with the murders. It is an invitation for more and more murders. I hope this costs Bush and not just because it should cost him. Maybe some of the Dotcom money will go to Gore now and the campaign will be more balanced in terms of finances. I still cant believe Bush blamed columbine on the internet. I still cant believe that the only place ive seen anyone say anything about it is on slashdot.
You can get from 2.5 to 5 hours on that tine little thing. Wow. Amazing. My 1998 Wallstreet G3 gets 3 on one battery and has a 14 inch screen. My brother's pismo G3 ($2495) gets even more time on just one battery. And now that the G4 energy usage has been lowered to about the same as a G3 why would anyone buy that Vaio laptop? The only reason i see for it is to run Windows (not in this lifetime) since there are various linuxppc distros available already. You could even get an ibook and get like 5 to 6 hours out of the bettery and pay 800 less for it. This transmeta hype is silly.
We are all here right? And we all talk about the same sutff. Because we have similar interests we interact. is that a comunity? depends on you definition of comunity. what is considered a comunity is pretty relative. Does geography of space determine a comunity? Or geography of thoughts? Obviously time is involved. We dont think we live in the same comunity George Washington and his friends lived in. Or do we? after all a lot o people think that they have more in comon with George & friends than they do with Caliph and Yussuf in the middle Yemen. How about the american doctors assosiation is that some sort of comunity? They occupy similar space at similar time and have very similar interests and concerns. All i am saying is that depending on you definition and on how strict you are about it will dictate a priori if online comunities are even posible. Once we've answered that then we can go into the world and see if the excist. that is if we believe thay are possible at all within our previously established parameters.
I think Gore would get hita few times by bill in the fierst round but everntually he would get worked up enough in his standadr asskicker mode (like when he debates) and would sweep the floor with mr. gates.
They were supposed to have a profit of 165 million but instead they said it will probably be a profit more in the 110 million dollar range. Everyone in wallstreet is still spooked from when apple nearly died a few years ago so now all the people who made a living forecasting the demise of apple are back.
Apple has had the announcement for 1 click up on the site for ages. In fact it went up as soon as they announced they were patenting the technology. This is old news and adds nothing to the previous story when apple announced they were patenting 1 click.
I honestly don't see why everyone is so pissed off at Apple about this. They wanted to offer a service to their cutomers and amazon has a patent on the service. If they had started using the 1click "patent" without licensing it they would get sued. So what would the rational action be? lincense the patent or get into a protracted legal battle that some other huge company already lost before? Once Amazon won against B&N this thing was over because a precedent was created. Every person who tries to fight Amazon on the patent will have to face an uphill battle. Im sure the cost of litigation would have been much higher so end of story. If you want to be mad at someone be mad at Amazon. I guess it is cool to diss apple on slashdot so everything they do is open to being ridiculed here.
On the validity of the patent. It does seem pretty silly to be able to patent something as "simple" as a 1 click shopping system. I used to buy lot of books from amazon and i remember when 1 click began to be offered as a service (I for one made so many impulse purchases because of it...). I also remember that my first reacition was "Oh how cool. Whata great idea. so simple yet so convinient." I also remember going to B&N later on and seein their blatant copy of Amazon's 1 click technology. My first reaction to that was: " It figures. everything they with their website is a bad attempt at copying whatever Amazon does." I felt that B&N was ripping Amazon off and that they were going to try to muscle Amazon out of the business by using their clout and provide similar services by copying Amazon's every move (This was years ago and Amazon was not the market cap monster it is now. It was more of a fledgeling internet copany). My fear at the time was what looked like a half hearted attempt by B&N to move into the internet market and win by simply being the established one. So while a patent for 1 click seems excesive I can understand wanting to keep it and patent it. I guess what i mean is that I can see both sides of the argument and it simply isnt as clear as most people here on slashdot want to make it seem.
Every single batman movie has been progresively worse than the one before it. The first one was hands down the best. I think this in part because the movies slowly began to turn more cartoonish and were less and less gothic/dark. In the first one Jack Nicholson played a Joker that really changed our perceptions of a villain that had been around for decades. I though Michael Keaton was a bad choice for the part of Batmen but I was proved wrong and to this day he is the best Batman ever. The second movie was pretty good. A little over the top and looked more fake than gothic. Dany Devito just can't compete with Jack Nicholson. Michelle Pfeifer was prety good as cat woman I always peceived cat woman as a tall brunette though. But every once in a while stupic stuff would happen in the movie like when cat woman starts licking herself. that was just silly. The third movie again was more cartoonish than the second one but it still retained some of the darkness of the dark knight. Val Kilmer was ok as Batman. He seemed to match the part than Michael Keaton but the only problem is that Val Kilmer is not such a good actor. The real problem with the movie was casting Jim Carey as the riddler. He played the riddler more like a hysterical idiot tan anything else whereas the riddle r is supposed to be one of the smartestvillains that Btman ever encouters. The fourth movie was so terrible and cartoonish that i deserves nothing more than to be mentioned. All i can say is that i hope that the new infusion of more independent film talent will take away the layers of cheese that have been slowly been adde to the Batman movies until the point where Arnold Shawrzenidiot gets to play a part. Pi was a good solid movie witha few problems but I am sure we can all see how adding the ddirector of this movie will bring some life to what is now the tired Batman series.
it is unfair because it is all based on bullshit i.e. being born in one particular spot in the planet. We hear all this crap about free trade and what not but how about freedom of movement for workers? As usual laws are made to benefit corporations.
AOL owns ICQ.
In a sense I am very much open to the idea of having AOL have to open up IM but honestly if they do it the monopoly simply will move from being AOL's to being M$'s. Look at what hapenned with Netscape. All M$ has to do it bunddle their IM with the OS (or with office --which they are doing already). Most people will then use M$ instant messager since it is o so conviniently on their desktop already insatalled and all. At most the market will be fragmented between AOL (since it is alredy inside the horrible AOL software), M$, and maybe in the fringe Apple will then bunddle some sort of IM with Mac OS. Either way it makes me not give a fuck about the whole thing. This whole mess is simply a bunch of greedy companies trying to get the billions involved in the banners on the IM prompt. Honestly it is also not a very interesting issue since no company will be able to charge for its use all the money will be ad generated. If they do then people will switch to something else.
As much as i believe that OS X is going to kick ass and be one of if not the best OSs out there there is no way it will live up to the hype. Too many people expect too many things out of it. For some the OS has turned into some sort of holy grail of computers and nothing can live up to that. Also too many people hate apple so much that no mater what they come out with they will still complain about it. Even if OS X ended world hunger and lead humanity into a more prosperous age I know people who would still use windows because they are so prejudced against anything that has to do with apple. In fact a few days ago one of my prejudiced friends asked me if apple still made computers (he was filled with cynical gusto when he said it). I told him that their sales were growing at about 35% and added that that was faster than his beloved dell. His joy at dissing apple was short lived. In the end I think OS X wont change the world but it will go a long way into restoring some crdibility to apple and also to defeat the "toy" prejudice that many geeks have against apple.
I forgot to add Wilfrid Sellars exellent essay-book "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" (Harvard Press) as part of the useful background knowledge for reading McDowell's "Mind and World."
The overall topic I am going to consider in these lectures is the way concepts mediate the relations between minds and the world. This is the first sentence of Mind and World by John McDowell (ISBN 0-674-57610-1) For those intertested in this topic I would recomend reading what is destined to become a classic in the field. It is probably the hardest book I ever read but it is definitely worth the time and effort put into it. A background in philosophy will prove very helpful (esp. Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, and Donald Davidson).
Zen is not mysticism. The dictionary definition that you got is not as technical and indepth as a religious one. Under religious definition Zen is not mysticism because one of the fist moves in Buddhism was to move away from metaphysics. Zen and Buddhism are pragmatic efforts looking into ending dukha. Nagarjuna considered by many to be the most important Buddhist figure after Shakhamunni Buddha stated: "Nirvana is Samsara." Which means that Buddhists are not looking into any "transcendent" realities they just look at this reality differently.
It is not X. It is not ~X. It is not not X. it is not not ~X.
This reminds me of an experiment that coke performed a while a ago. They had vending machines that would fluctuate the price of drinks depending on the time and the temperature. So if it was 100 degrees and in the middle of rush hour it would charge more than when it was cool and between breakfast and lunch. This kind of selling is pretty strange in our society where haggling and such other things are not the norm anymore.
On a random note. I wonder what would happen if you used another browser than IE or Netscape.
I think the ruling is intended to do exactly what it says: ensure that the Academy Awards for film continue to be awards for film. Don't be ridiculous. So if a book comes out first in digital format it shouldn't be posible for it to win the national book award just because it didnt have pages made out of paper first? How about if Star wars 2 is released in digital form first? should it be allowed to be nominated for an oscar (special effects most likely) even though it wasn't on film first? This is not an issue about the medium in which a movie is contained it is a issue aboput distribution. The big studios control distribution right now and they want to keep it that way so they will exert as much power as the can to keep it that way.
That is the whole point though. No one country could exert their particular prejudices over the net. Only things that are illegal in most contries would be illegal. It would be a sort of democracy of the values (i use values in the dictionary definition not the bullshit GOP sense) of all of humanity. the internet is a universal medium so maybe it is time we face it as the whole of humanity not as the fragmented bunch of nationalistic political states.
Maybe the UN should have police powers over the internet. So internet crimes thet become international matters fall under the jurisdiction of some UN task force. That way it no one country is infringing over another country's jurisdiction. I know the US uses their muscle to force things in the UN but it seems a little bit better to have to at least do this more subtly through the UN than doing it outright as simply the US.