Don't all the Bond movies essentially have about three or four plots?
You get 3-4 plots out of the Bond movies? Let's see. Plot 1:
1. Introductory scene in which Bond performs some amazing feats of prowess (also, there is an approximately 50% probability that Bond's death will be implied/faked). This scene is essentially unrelated to the rest of the film.
2. Megalomaniac has some crazy, contrived scheme, generally to take over the world.
3. James Bond is dispatched to stop said Megalomaniac.
4. Q gives Bond some cool gadgets. Q admonishes Bond to please try to bring some of them back in "pristine condition" this time
5. None of the gadgets come back in "pristine condition."
6. Bond seduces or has sexually suggestive encounters with several women, at least one of which is affiliated with the Bad Guys in some way (she may or may not turn).
7. Bond is captured. The Bad Guys rig an overly-complicated death trap, from which Bond escapes.
8. There is a car chase. Occasionally substitute boat/motorcycle/tank for car.
9. Bond stops Bad Guy's plot. Bad Guy is optionally killed, depending on whether they want to bring him back for a later film.
Now, what are the other 2-3? Would anybody even watch a Bond film if it didn't follow this formula faithfully? Isn't the whole essence of James Bond films their predictability? What was up with the music in Goldeneye? What is the airspeed velocity of a sparrow?
I'm glad to see somebody else who thinks this way. I remember when I was in middle school and TNG was new, I just couldn't ever get into it. It just seemed like a cheap rip-off of a series I had grown up on. Granted, it had some slick SFX, but there was never any story. The Federation was too crowded by that time -- it had lost the "exploration" effect. I think I tried one episode of DS9 before deciding it was not even palatable. I had high hopes for Voyager (Star Trek: Lost in Space), but I couldn't get over the wannabe Captain Kirk woman, and again, no story. I was hoping Enterprise would be a good "back to our roots" Star Trek, but everything I've heard about it has been mediocre at best, so I haven't even bothered to watch it. I guess if I ever really need a Star Trek fix again, I'll just have to get DVDs of TOS or something.
miles upon miles of vat-grown, genetically-engineered pop superstars waiting to be activated in their lair, deep within the bowls of Mount Rosen.
You sick, sick man. The nightmarish image of hordes of freakish, genetically-engineered Brittney Spears clones, still in some hideous pupa stage, hiding inside of Hilary Rosen's substantial girth, just waiting for the Great Activation, will haunt me for the rest of my natural life. Curse you. Curse you again. Now I'm going to have to beg Taco for a (-1, Repulsive) mod.
I think the whole idea of tying copyright to an authors' life is quite silly indeed.
If the intent is to motivate people to create works, it's not necessarily silly. If I know that creating that "killer app/technology/art work" will provide a good living for me and my dependents as long as either I am alive or I have living dependents, it provides maximum incentive for me to create. Extending that copyright to allow a corp. to milk my cash cow for 75 years after my death does not provide any substantial additional motivation. If it did, there might actually be a case for it. As it is, it's just a bad law written directly by corporate interests.
There is a difference between inheriting accumulated wealth and continuing to receive royalties for a work. If we go with my example, say I die, and sometime later my wife dies. The children will then inherit whatever we received of the royalties while we were living, but will not continue to receive new royalties.
Re-read my post. I would want my wife to benefit from my work as long as she's alive. I'd want my kids to benefit from it as long as they are legal dependents (i.e., "if they were in college or something"). Once they're adults and move out of the house and start their own families, they can make their own money and I have no social obligation to continue supporting them. If I could re-write the copyright law, it would state that the copyright is in effect (meaning the creator or his beneficiaries will continue to get a royalty from it) as long as the creator is alive or has living legal dependents. There's no need for my kids to keep getting royalties from a book I wrote after they get married and have kids of their own. Where I disagree is in grouping content creators with content distributors. The constitutional clause that is the basis of copyright law specifically states that it is to encourage useful arts and sciences by granting to the creator a limited-time monopoly. It is not intended to guarantee profit to a corporation, which may have nothing to do with the actual creation of the work, for upwards of a century.
Many "content creators" want infinite copyrights, to milk out as much as possible.
I don't know if I agree with that. I think it's the Content Distributors who want infinite copyright. If I write a book, do I really care if it's still making money after I'm dead? Probably not. In fact, there is a certain amount of prestige associated with being a "classic" that anybody can download off of Project Gutenburg and read and study. The maximum reasonable term for copyright as far as benefitting the actual creator is as long as he is living or he has living dependents who rely upon revenues from his work for income (i.e., If I died an early death, but I still had my wife and kids who were in college or something, I would want them to be able to get some financial benefit from my work). The only people that are still benefitting from your copyright 75 years after you die (which is when your copyright expires) are the content distributors, who had nothing to do with creating the work, but still get to milk the old cash cow for decades.
Legal status of the moon according to the UN: http://www.oosa.unvienna.org/SpaceLaw/moon.html
This brilliant piece of work mandates that in the exploration of celestial bodies, they shall be used solely for peaceful purposes (so no lunar ICBM silos -- because for sure, that would be cost effective and make tons of sense) and "that their environments should not be disrupted." Pray tell, how do you disrupt the "environment" of a dead rock floating in space? Are we going to pollute the atmosphere -- oh wait, the moon doesn't have an atmospere. You could do nuclear testing on the moon, and it wouldn't make any difference except to the small, localized area where you do the testing, which would be radioactive rock instead of non-radioactive rock. No atmosphere to carry the radiation far and wide. No indiginous life to disrupt. No people to give cancer. They must think they're the United Federation of Planets, and they don't want to disrupt the development of the poor lesser-developed species they encounter.
Actually, Carly hit rock bottom the day she decided to spin off the one respectable part of HP -- instrumentation -- and turn it into Just Another Distributor of Mediocre PCs (and some good printers). She's just been scraping the rocks since then. And who decided it would be beneficial to replace the venerable "HP" name with "Agilent?" THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD!!! Also, the stupid wench shut down the Calculator Research division in Australia. So, basically, everything that HP once did right is now gone. Everybody say it with me: I hate Carly! I hate Carly! I hate Carly!
They already do this. Download the latest Windows Media Player. Record some songs off of a CD onto your hard drive. Now copy those files to your buddy's computer, which has the exact same version of Windows Media Player. Are you shocked that they won't play? It's because you had "Personal Rights Management" (or something -- I forget the exact term, but it sounds deceptively like it's there to protect your rights). If you are aware of the problem, as far as I know, the latest version still lets you uncheck a box so that you can listen to your music on another device, but it's only a matter of time before that check box goes away and you no longer have a choice. It's quite possilbe that this new media PC will indeed be the first product where this check box is no longer available and all of your nifty new media content is permanently locked to your little media PC.
Re:1 Gore Won. 2 The Interned American is Padilla
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
Just a P.S. -- I forgot to address the Padilla thing. Once again, it was a very unique situation where there was abundant evidence that he was conducting planning with enemy forces. He has not been charged with a crime, because it's not even legally clear that a "crime" has been committed. However, it is quite clear that he was conspiring with known terrorists to harm Americans. If he had been handed over to the DoJ, they would have been mostly helpless. Since he is being handled as an enemy combatant (not a big stretch, since he trained with and offered his services to Al Qaeda), the DoD can hold him as a war prisoner, without so much as the intention of charging him with a crime (which apparently they don't intend to do). Thus, he can be prevented from hurting anybody (I'm sorry, but you probably wouldn't be so concerned about his rights if your neighborhood were the one he bombed) or hindering American war efforts. That's the kind of thing that happens during periods of war. It warrants special circumstances that are necessary to the successful prosecution of the war, but they go away once the war has been concluded. Don't believe me? Ask your granparents about war-time rations. I'm pretty sure you don't remember them personally because they're not around anymore. When you can point me to an example of somebody who is arrested simply for being a muslim or speaking Arabic, then I will be alarmed with you. As for Padilla, if it bothers you so much, write your representative and encourage him to pressure the DoJ to give Padilla a constitutional trial for High Treason. In that case, I would definitely be on your side, but I don't know if Padilla would.
Re:1 Gore Won. 2 The Interned American is Padilla
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
From the article you linked:
Their count showed that Bush's razor-thin margin of 537 votes -- certified in December by the Florida Secretary of State's office -- would have tripled to 1,665 votes if counted according to standards advocated by his Democratic rival, former Vice President Al Gore.
Also:
Ironically, a tougher standard of counting only cleanly punched ballots advocated by many Republicans would have resulted in a Gore lead of just three votes, the newspaper reported.
The newspapers' review also discovered that canvassing boards in Palm Beach and Broward counties threw out hundreds of ballots that had marks that were no different from ballots deemed to be valid.
The papers concluded that Gore would be in the White House today if those ballots had been counted.
So what we really see is, either candidate getting his way would have resulted in him losing. The newspaper, free to choose the standard it deemed most fair (this was, after all, strictly non-official), chose the Gore method, feeling it was more inclusive. This method increased Bush's margine of victory. As for the votes that were tossed out, the article hardly makes it clear why those were tossed out and offers no opinion other than that counting those votes would have given Gore a majority. Does that mean that the votes that were "no different" should have been tossed out as well? How were the votes "no different?" What was wrong with the votes to begin with? Did they have two votes, only one of which was for Gore? I doubt that those votes were all tossed out by one person, since this is a canvassing "board." The fact that a ballot appears valid to one person and invalid to another hardly seems like a conspiracy. What this really tells us is that with a margin that thin, any one of a thousand "what if" situations can yield a different winner. But let's get back to the original question. Did the Supreme Court quash the will of the people by blocking the re-count Gore wanted? The answer is "no," because if Gore got the re-count he advocated, he would have lost by even more votes. Since you can't just read the mind of everyone who voted, you have to have some standard for what makes a vote count. That standard should approximate, "if the ballot makes it clear that this person intended to vote for exactly one candiate, and that candidate is X, then we count it as a vote for candidate X." That may not be an exact science, but if you can't be bothered to actually read the ballot and make sure that you make clear marks for the candidates you intend to vote for and no one else, you run the risk of your vote not getting counted. Remember that these manual counts were not for votes that had a single, clear vote -- those were hanlded just fine by the counting machines. I personally made sure I marked my choices very carefully and then double-checked my ballot before turning it in, because I wanted to make sure that my ballot got counted. Anybody who values his or her vote will do the same. Part of making your voice heard is speaking clearly.
Re:Well, I guess that's how Fascism takes root....
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
At first policed by officers on horseback and on foot, the protest turned violent with the arrival of police in riot gear. They arrived when protesters refused to back off a barricade near the hotel. The protesters pounded on police cars and shouted, and police responded with batons, pepper spray and "non-lethal" ammunition.
Now I know that CNN isn't a nifty, leftist, "indy" media outlet, but remember 1. The media does tend to have a liberal slant and 2. It was the Portland police, not the Secret Service, that were dealing with these protestors. The same would have happened if the visitor were any other President.
Next point? OK: the supreme court which gave the job to Bush is ruled [by] republican appointees.
Several of whom have proven to be decidedly politically moderate. If you look at the Court's voting history, you will find that, despite the majority in Republican appointees, not every opinion of the Court is in line with Republican politics. This is the entire purpose of lifetime appointments. The justices are free to vote their individual consciences without political ties or obligations.
And the fact that a complete recount, of all votes, gave the job to Gore.
I'd be interested to see a link to this recount (your whole post is a link to that indy Portland thing). Every recount I've seen, including those performed by the (again, liberal-leaning) media, certified that Bush won Florida. And, it's not exactly like Gore was championing counting every vote to give the people a voice, despite his rhetoric to that effect. Gore wanted to re-count the votes in select counties where he expected a net increase.
Bottom line: being able to take an American off the street, class them as an enemy combatant on *NO* public evidence, lock them up without access to a lawyer for as long as the President likes, is the current state of the game.
Which Americans have been taken off of the streets and classed as enemy combatants? I am aware of the Saudi guy who claimed, and it was later verified, that he was born in America. He was not taken off of the street. He was captured with a number of other armed enemy combatants who were fighting American troops, and if I remember correctly, he had not lived in America since he was a child. So, while he is technically an American citizen, the circumstances in which he was captured easily qualified him as an enemy combatant. Whether or not you agree with what has happened to him specifically, it is unlikely to affect you. The concensus among legal analysts is that this is such a specialized case, that even if he is held and tried without the normal rights of citizenship, it would be a huge and unlikely leap to extrapolate that to apply to any random Joe pulled off the street with a sign that says, "I Hate George Bush." Basically, little or no precedent will be set by this.
Also, probably the most important. It's one thing to draw a circuit in PSpice or MentorGraphics and watch your simulations do their thing neatly and precisely. It's another thing altogether to deal with realities, like the fact that simple conductors actually do have finite impedances and capacitances, that wires arranged the wrong way can cause inductance problems and that the 60 Hz noise from the lights can cause a hum in your audio amplifier.
No, CS is EE for dummies. They get all of our drop-outs. Since./ doesn't have an equation editor, it goes like this: "The limit as GPA approaches 0 of the integral from 0 to GPA of EE equals CS."
Unless the year is 2000, and you live in Southern Florida, and it's a very close election, and we find out that whoever wins Florida wins the whole bag, and then suddenly every vote cast in the state is scrutinized with the utmost care and your vote really does count, except that you couldn't be bothered to get off of your arse to go vote because you thought your vote didn't count. Or it wasn't important enough for you to take the trouble to read the ballot card before punching random holes in it, and now you're just absolutlely positive that you voted for the wrong guy, so could I please go back and do it again? The whole concept of a Republic is that your vote does count, but only in an indirect way. It is intentionally designed that way to prevent the "tyrrany of the majority." The truth is, money notwithstanding, in the final analysis, Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen and Bill Gates and everybody else only get one vote each (not including hobos off the street that Democrats pick up in vans and pay them one pack of cigarettes for each vote they cast at a different precinct for the Democratic candidate). The only thing money buys you is exposure. People who care enough to get off their lazy butts and do something more productive than post complaints on Slashdot really can make a difference. How many people that are posting these comments about how their rights have been infringed and that we're being oppressed have ever once bothered to even write their congreess people about the issue? Maybe a few, but I suspect most are just falling into the herd mentality of "it's cool to rip on the U.S. on./, plus it gets me Karma!"
P.S. -- If you're going to raise the tired old cry of "The votes didn't count in Florida because the votes weren't counted, and Bush just screwed the voters, and their voice was never heard," please provide, at a minimum, one single re-count that did not validate the final results (i.e., Bush winning Flordia's electoral votes). I have yet to see one.
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
what's more important the quote? or whether it's attibuted properly?
Well, if we are working off of the premise that the quote is important because it is a statement of how Caesar, ruler of basically the known world at the time, subjugated his people, I'd say it's pretty important who said it. If Caesar had actually said that a couple of thousand years ago, then it would be a first hand account of how he gained power. If some anti-war fanatic made it up in 1968 to justify attacking an ROTC building on a university campus and spitting on anybody in uniform, then I'd say there is quite a difference.
By the way, I came across this quote recently:
The very stability of a free nation is based almost entirely upon the ability of the distributors of artistic works to carefully and tightly control the distribution of those works, charging whatever price they deem reasonable and fair, and acting with swift impunity in punishing, with our without the official sanction of the government, those who infringe on their rights to control those works. It is the essence of democracy that both the artists and the distributors of artistic works be paid substantially for each copy of a work, lest we fall into tyrrany. I know this, because I am George Washington, and that is how we founded this great and noble nation.
--George Washington.
I'm not entirely sure if George Washington said that, but hey, somebody said it, and it is applicable to an issue currently being discussed, so it must be important.
If he were still alive, and were writing software instead of fiction, would he program in Perl?
If he were still alive and writing bad software instead of bad fiction, I would do the world a favor and shoot him myself. All of his software would be written in INTERCAL, for which he would think himself very clever, and Computer Science and Engineering professors everywhere would waste entire semesters forcing students to decipher it because it would be considered a "masterwork" of software.
Or maybe it's because, despite what feminists want to believe, men are just generally built bigger than women. There's nothing wrong with men and women being different. I agree with you that there is a problem with many men being domineering and abusive, which is something that needs to be addressed both harshly and separately (I personally think that men who abuse their wives and children should just be shot), but that does not mean it's wrong for men and women to be different. My wife is a petite little thing at five feet tall and just over 100 pounds. I find that quite attractive, and she finds it attractive that I am bigger than her and that I do "manly" heavy lifting and such. And you know what? Neither of us is oppressed or unhappy. I don't push her around. I respect her as a person and as my equal. We have a very good, healthy relationship, and we are still very, very different. Different is a good thing. I personally would hate for her to take off her clothes, and here I see this big, beefy, hairy, manly thing in front of me. And she would hate to be it. She likes being petite and pretty, and I like seeing her that way. So what, exactly, is wrong with this relationship?
In fact nowadays you can't write a single line of code without a chance of having a stupid patent somewhere which forbid it ! this is just slightly exaggerated.
ABSTRACT:
A method of introducing those starting to learn a computer programming language or method to the basic constructs and syntax of said language or method by causing said learner to write, compile and run a simplistic but functionally complete program that outputs to a text console the message "Hello, World!"
That should just about cover the last known sanctuary of freedom in programming. I'd probably get the patent too.
Re:Musical innovation is across the pond in Europe
on
Napster Not To Blame
·
· Score: 1
They actually had talent, wrote their own songs, some were even (God forbid) classically trained.
Pretty well offtopic, but...
My wife dragged me to a Barry Manilow concert about a month ago, and I thought, "You know, this guy is really, really, cheesy, but behind all that chesse, he actually has some real talent." One thing I noticed is that one of his more popular songs starts and ends with some Chopin. So when we got home, I poked around the web looking for information on the guy. I found out
1. Even though he looks about 30, he's actually closer to 60.
2. He started out not as a pre-packaged performer, but as a song writer, and still writes a fair amount of his own stuff.
3. The guy went to Juliard for crying out loud. Say what you will about how sickeningly cheesy Manilow is, you don't get into Juliard without something to show for it.
It was kind of an interesting moment for me, because I've never liked Barry Manilow, but having been forced to listen to him, I found that I was able to appreciate and respect him as a musician because he has some real, bona fide talent. I'm pretty sure that none of the Backstreet Boys attended Juliard (or probably even high school choir class), so it's a lot easier to not like them and not respect them. The other interesting thing was that in going to this concert I dreaded, I saw a really great opening act by a guy named Curtis Stigers doing some nice jazz. I liked it so much, I went and bought his CD and got it autographed while Barry was prancing around doing his opening act. So, I'm not sure if this has a point, but the end result was, I still don't particularly like Barry Mainlow, but I have a lot more respect for him, and out of being dragged to a dreaded concert, I found a smaller act I really like.
But then I work mostly with hardware engineers. Perhaps software people are more partisan?
You're telling me you don't write your Verilog code and spice modules in vi? You dirty heathen! What? You use OrCAD and PSpice for Windows?!?! Ahhhhhhhhh!!! The blasphemy!!!
Slashdot Mirror
1. Introductory scene in which Bond performs some amazing feats of prowess (also, there is an approximately 50% probability that Bond's death will be implied/faked). This scene is essentially unrelated to the rest of the film.
2. Megalomaniac has some crazy, contrived scheme, generally to take over the world.
3. James Bond is dispatched to stop said Megalomaniac.
4. Q gives Bond some cool gadgets. Q admonishes Bond to please try to bring some of them back in "pristine condition" this time
5. None of the gadgets come back in "pristine condition."
6. Bond seduces or has sexually suggestive encounters with several women, at least one of which is affiliated with the Bad Guys in some way (she may or may not turn).
7. Bond is captured. The Bad Guys rig an overly-complicated death trap, from which Bond escapes.
8. There is a car chase. Occasionally substitute boat/motorcycle/tank for car.
9. Bond stops Bad Guy's plot. Bad Guy is optionally killed, depending on whether they want to bring him back for a later film.
Now, what are the other 2-3? Would anybody even watch a Bond film if it didn't follow this formula faithfully? Isn't the whole essence of James Bond films their predictability? What was up with the music in Goldeneye? What is the airspeed velocity of a sparrow?
I'm glad to see somebody else who thinks this way. I remember when I was in middle school and TNG was new, I just couldn't ever get into it. It just seemed like a cheap rip-off of a series I had grown up on. Granted, it had some slick SFX, but there was never any story. The Federation was too crowded by that time -- it had lost the "exploration" effect. I think I tried one episode of DS9 before deciding it was not even palatable. I had high hopes for Voyager (Star Trek: Lost in Space), but I couldn't get over the wannabe Captain Kirk woman, and again, no story. I was hoping Enterprise would be a good "back to our roots" Star Trek, but everything I've heard about it has been mediocre at best, so I haven't even bothered to watch it. I guess if I ever really need a Star Trek fix again, I'll just have to get DVDs of TOS or something.
Daewoo is Korean.
There is a difference between inheriting accumulated wealth and continuing to receive royalties for a work. If we go with my example, say I die, and sometime later my wife dies. The children will then inherit whatever we received of the royalties while we were living, but will not continue to receive new royalties.
Re-read my post. I would want my wife to benefit from my work as long as she's alive. I'd want my kids to benefit from it as long as they are legal dependents (i.e., "if they were in college or something"). Once they're adults and move out of the house and start their own families, they can make their own money and I have no social obligation to continue supporting them. If I could re-write the copyright law, it would state that the copyright is in effect (meaning the creator or his beneficiaries will continue to get a royalty from it) as long as the creator is alive or has living legal dependents. There's no need for my kids to keep getting royalties from a book I wrote after they get married and have kids of their own. Where I disagree is in grouping content creators with content distributors. The constitutional clause that is the basis of copyright law specifically states that it is to encourage useful arts and sciences by granting to the creator a limited-time monopoly. It is not intended to guarantee profit to a corporation, which may have nothing to do with the actual creation of the work, for upwards of a century.
Actually, Carly hit rock bottom the day she decided to spin off the one respectable part of HP -- instrumentation -- and turn it into Just Another Distributor of Mediocre PCs (and some good printers). She's just been scraping the rocks since then. And who decided it would be beneficial to replace the venerable "HP" name with "Agilent?" THAT'S NOT EVEN A WORD!!! Also, the stupid wench shut down the Calculator Research division in Australia. So, basically, everything that HP once did right is now gone. Everybody say it with me: I hate Carly! I hate Carly! I hate Carly!
They already do this. Download the latest Windows Media Player. Record some songs off of a CD onto your hard drive. Now copy those files to your buddy's computer, which has the exact same version of Windows Media Player. Are you shocked that they won't play? It's because you had "Personal Rights Management" (or something -- I forget the exact term, but it sounds deceptively like it's there to protect your rights). If you are aware of the problem, as far as I know, the latest version still lets you uncheck a box so that you can listen to your music on another device, but it's only a matter of time before that check box goes away and you no longer have a choice. It's quite possilbe that this new media PC will indeed be the first product where this check box is no longer available and all of your nifty new media content is permanently locked to your little media PC.
Just a P.S. -- I forgot to address the Padilla thing. Once again, it was a very unique situation where there was abundant evidence that he was conducting planning with enemy forces. He has not been charged with a crime, because it's not even legally clear that a "crime" has been committed. However, it is quite clear that he was conspiring with known terrorists to harm Americans. If he had been handed over to the DoJ, they would have been mostly helpless. Since he is being handled as an enemy combatant (not a big stretch, since he trained with and offered his services to Al Qaeda), the DoD can hold him as a war prisoner, without so much as the intention of charging him with a crime (which apparently they don't intend to do). Thus, he can be prevented from hurting anybody (I'm sorry, but you probably wouldn't be so concerned about his rights if your neighborhood were the one he bombed) or hindering American war efforts. That's the kind of thing that happens during periods of war. It warrants special circumstances that are necessary to the successful prosecution of the war, but they go away once the war has been concluded. Don't believe me? Ask your granparents about war-time rations. I'm pretty sure you don't remember them personally because they're not around anymore. When you can point me to an example of somebody who is arrested simply for being a muslim or speaking Arabic, then I will be alarmed with you. As for Padilla, if it bothers you so much, write your representative and encourage him to pressure the DoJ to give Padilla a constitutional trial for High Treason. In that case, I would definitely be on your side, but I don't know if Padilla would.
Also, probably the most important. It's one thing to draw a circuit in PSpice or MentorGraphics and watch your simulations do their thing neatly and precisely. It's another thing altogether to deal with realities, like the fact that simple conductors actually do have finite impedances and capacitances, that wires arranged the wrong way can cause inductance problems and that the 60 Hz noise from the lights can cause a hum in your audio amplifier.
No, CS is EE for dummies. They get all of our drop-outs. Since ./ doesn't have an equation editor, it goes like this: "The limit as GPA approaches 0 of the integral from 0 to GPA of EE equals CS."
P.S. -- If you're going to raise the tired old cry of "The votes didn't count in Florida because the votes weren't counted, and Bush just screwed the voters, and their voice was never heard," please provide, at a minimum, one single re-count that did not validate the final results (i.e., Bush winning Flordia's electoral votes). I have yet to see one.
By the way, I came across this quote recently:
The very stability of a free nation is based almost entirely upon the ability of the distributors of artistic works to carefully and tightly control the distribution of those works, charging whatever price they deem reasonable and fair, and acting with swift impunity in punishing, with our without the official sanction of the government, those who infringe on their rights to control those works. It is the essence of democracy that both the artists and the distributors of artistic works be paid substantially for each copy of a work, lest we fall into tyrrany. I know this, because I am George Washington, and that is how we founded this great and noble nation.
--George Washington.
I'm not entirely sure if George Washington said that, but hey, somebody said it, and it is applicable to an issue currently being discussed, so it must be important.
Or maybe it's because, despite what feminists want to believe, men are just generally built bigger than women. There's nothing wrong with men and women being different. I agree with you that there is a problem with many men being domineering and abusive, which is something that needs to be addressed both harshly and separately (I personally think that men who abuse their wives and children should just be shot), but that does not mean it's wrong for men and women to be different. My wife is a petite little thing at five feet tall and just over 100 pounds. I find that quite attractive, and she finds it attractive that I am bigger than her and that I do "manly" heavy lifting and such. And you know what? Neither of us is oppressed or unhappy. I don't push her around. I respect her as a person and as my equal. We have a very good, healthy relationship, and we are still very, very different. Different is a good thing. I personally would hate for her to take off her clothes, and here I see this big, beefy, hairy, manly thing in front of me. And she would hate to be it. She likes being petite and pretty, and I like seeing her that way. So what, exactly, is wrong with this relationship?
A method of introducing those starting to learn a computer programming language or method to the basic constructs and syntax of said language or method by causing said learner to write, compile and run a simplistic but functionally complete program that outputs to a text console the message "Hello, World!"
That should just about cover the last known sanctuary of freedom in programming. I'd probably get the patent too.
My wife dragged me to a Barry Manilow concert about a month ago, and I thought, "You know, this guy is really, really, cheesy, but behind all that chesse, he actually has some real talent." One thing I noticed is that one of his more popular songs starts and ends with some Chopin. So when we got home, I poked around the web looking for information on the guy. I found out
1. Even though he looks about 30, he's actually closer to 60.
2. He started out not as a pre-packaged performer, but as a song writer, and still writes a fair amount of his own stuff.
3. The guy went to Juliard for crying out loud. Say what you will about how sickeningly cheesy Manilow is, you don't get into Juliard without something to show for it.
It was kind of an interesting moment for me, because I've never liked Barry Manilow, but having been forced to listen to him, I found that I was able to appreciate and respect him as a musician because he has some real, bona fide talent. I'm pretty sure that none of the Backstreet Boys attended Juliard (or probably even high school choir class), so it's a lot easier to not like them and not respect them. The other interesting thing was that in going to this concert I dreaded, I saw a really great opening act by a guy named Curtis Stigers doing some nice jazz. I liked it so much, I went and bought his CD and got it autographed while Barry was prancing around doing his opening act. So, I'm not sure if this has a point, but the end result was, I still don't particularly like Barry Mainlow, but I have a lot more respect for him, and out of being dragged to a dreaded concert, I found a smaller act I really like.