You're just miffed that they don't brew coffee over there at SCO. It's understandable, really. I'd be cranky too! Plus if it weren't for the occasional game of five against one, I'd be barking mad, or at least worse than I usually am, at any rate. And that explains a lot of things, I think. Oh! You're gonna bitch about that, too I can hear it now--Something about how Carnal Tunnel Syndrome is a life long debilitating disease, and how it rots the brain, and causes arthritis and manus capillus! Well, you can take that thought, fold it until it's all sharp corners and shove it up your ass! And we'd better not catch you enjoying that.
Of course, one should not deem themselves experts on a subject because they've played a game. Nobody is suggesting this. Did anyone ever suggest that? Nobody ever has, for all I know, and if they did, I'd be all up in their ass instead of yours. I've never heard anyone call himself or herself an expert in anything related to a game, besides being an expert at playing the game, and that's a fair metric if it's based in reality. Playing chess professionally doesn't make one an expert military strategist, and playing professional golf doesn't make one a good landscaper. Why should playing game designed for 6th graders make one an expert historian?
The game is designed to stimulate interest in and open the mind to the subjects of geography and history (and astronomy, English, math in later games) by presenting a cursory and entertaining overview of each. For any kid remotely interested in the topics, it's a step in the right direction, isn't it? By that virtue, I'd say the games did just as they were designed to do, and in fantastic style.
It is assumed that this is all the game was supposed to do, and assuming or suggesting otherwise is idiocy at best and ad hominem at worst. Unless, of course, you appreciate the in-game experience as training exercise just in case you somehow happen to get a job as a detective chasing a long legged brunette hottie in a red trench coat and broad brimmed hat, whom also likes to leave obvious clues--then you've really got a leg up on the competition, haven't you?! It's not a failing of the game designers, and it's not a failing of primary education in the western world to not present the subject in way you feel is appropriate. If anything, the people who keep track of teenage suicides should be thankful you're not in charge!
I guess it's all relative, right? Still, I bet some of those kids on the PBS contest show could've wiped the floor with you, pretty much all of the US, and many history majors, just for the fun of it and, of course, that prized trip around the country/world.
Aaaahhhh... So you've never seen an orca flip a live baby sea lion around in the air for no reason that's discernibly related to the act of predation--or for that matter the same with an average house cat with a mouse, or a dog with a squirrel? Oh, sure you could explain it away, they're just having stupid fun, after all they don't have the capacity for what we perceive as emotion, some people would say. I would not agree. I believe that dogs and cats can know when they're up to no good, and I believe they're even capable of hate and other emotions, because I've witnessed them first hand--or at least that's what I perceived. As a result, I believe many higher order animals can receive some sort of sadistic pleasure from the torment of other animals. I think they can get a high off of it in just the same way some humans get off on antisocial behavior.
I guess it depends on where you draw the line on what animals other than us can understand. Personally, I also think we do not give them enough credit.
IMO, the best arguments for legalization of marijuana is to break the cartels, allow for it to be taxed, and stop the majority of non-violent drug offenders from filling up the prison systems. I agree, it dosen't take someone to be under the influence to crash and screw up someone bad, but I guess that's the definition of accident. However, if you're willingly driving whilst loaded up on whatever chemical, it seems less of an accident to me.
And saying that there are no deaths proven to have been caused by marijuana use sounds suspiciously like the tobacco industry line of the 20's throgh the 80's. I'm sorry. Maybe it's next to impossible to overdose, and maybe cigarette, marijuana smoke aren't equally carcinogenic... The jury's still out on that one, but it's generally accepted that marijuana smoke contains more benzopyrene and cyanide and tar--partly because the average toke is longer and deeper, regardless, it contains much of the same stuff. Just like nicotene, cannabinoids were developed by the plant to either kill or ward off certian insects. It's an organic poison, just same.
If you want to smoke pot, fine. It's a personal choice, and it's no more right or wrong than other things we do. Please, though, don't do it because bad, skewed science, and incomplete studies have convinced you that it's perfectly safe. Nothing is.
Yeah, I've wondered the same. Previously, the high prices for a decently sized one have always scared me off, though I have no doubt it's worth it. I'll have to get one, I'm guessing it could also be good for CAD stuffs. It's worth a try anyhow, right?!
I totally have to agree, but I can see that it did serve a purpose. It slowed the game down, and made you think about what you wanted. Sometimes, it was difficult to draw the shapes in the heat of the moment, and my feeling that the AI god cheats compounded that issue for me. I swear he got tons of free resources--and the AI moves WAY too fast for a human to compete--not that it's necessarily very smart, though.
If it weren't for the carpal tunnel inducing nature of the glyph drawing, and the scrolling, zooming, I'd be all for it. But seriously, if I played for any amount of time, my wrist would be killing me. That plus the game play killing micro-management, I never finished the game. It's supposed to be fun, not work, people.
Not only that, but making aluminum or magnesium is very energy intensive, not especially efficient, and we release all sorts of good stuff in the process. Sometimes, chlorine gas is bubbled through the molten metal to remove impurities. Further, aren't they draining the Dead Sea over in that direction, just to get at the mineral salts to actually produce the Aluminum, in the first place? Unless great blocks of metal fall from space, this is just as moronic as hydrogen power from conventional sources. I hope they actually try next time.
Indeed. They fit into the "Rockefeller Republican" category, afterall.. You know the liberal Republican, a nearly extinct species, save for senator McCain and a few others. I din't mean to say that conservatism is a strictly bad thing. I was just highlighting the fact that neoconservatism (which is often a terrible misnomer, as far as I'm concerned) is the new conservatism; with ten percent more Jesus in every box! Seriously, they took the worst from each side: The more extreme liberal love of government, and the extreme conservative love of greased up mini-nativity dolls to cram up everyone's ass. For cryin' out loud, people!
Conservatives: those who generally inherited a great deal of money and property and wish to retain their riches by any recourse, also those who are all too happy to sacrifice the spirit of their faith to retain their narrow view of normality.
Liberals: anyone who thinks everyone deserves a fair shake.
I'd just like to point out, there's plenty of people who fit your description of conservative who fit my version of liberal... I'd say because they, themselves, know what it's like in the ditch.
I don't see how you have to actively seek a link. All you have to do is make the mistake of telling anyone else anything about your site/page/whatever. Maybe you email someone, and they go on to check your site (without your provoking, they obtained the url from your email address), decide they like it or hate it and for whatever reason link to it in their blog or on some indexed PHPbb forum or something. It could be your grandma posting a link to your laser tag site on her retirement home's pinochle club site for any number of obtuse reasons, and then you're marked for life. Hell, there's probably a bot that spiders DNS records, and posts links to the sites it's found for the entire world to see, for all we know, and we should take that into account. That's why I'll say that your participation on the Internet is entirely opt-in, beyond that, you're fair game for pretty much everyone.
If you want to treat your web pages like they're some sort of national security threat, then you'll have them at least.htaccess passworded. Like robots.txt, I'd say that's decidedly opt-out behavior! Indeed, I wouldn't trust ANY web spider to adhere to the wishes in robots.txt, so I'd ferret them away in some more secure manner. Saying otherwise (brace yourself for yet another analogy), is like saying the US government opted-in when the Chinese stole classified missile information--because their security wasn't tight enough. In other words, a whole load of BS. If you don't want your information indexed, either don't participate on the 'net, or do make sure you've got it buttoned up.
Of course, you don't give a shit about that. Just so long as some person next door isn't getting shitfaced on dope. He can get drunk off his ass, but God Forbid that he do meth.
Just my prospective: personally, I think abusing anything of any kind (drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, Japanese school girl panties vending machines, whatever) is bad for the mind and body--but also for any kind of close relation, especially children... Without getting into morals and that crap, my argument is based on the relative damage an activity can do to a person.
I've seen too many people taken out by some of the more common stuff: alcohol, gambling, tobacco, marijuana (often as the gateway drug to other worse stuff), and it sucks. These are all things that can be done casually, but too much of it destroys people, families, and sometimes even generations. However, the speeds at which these things destroy a person/family vary greatly. Meth and other hardcore drugs, which significantly alter brain chemistry instantaneously, should be policed very tenaciously, because there is no way to use them casually.
I'll limit myself to two anecdotes: 1: these guys who used to own an engine machine shop I frequented somehow got involved with meth. It was an instant and violent transformation. One month, they were regular Joes, hardworking, and successful. The next month, they didn't do much work at all, the month after, they would take customers money to pay for their habits. In the period of six months, the once previously very beautiful (model quality, honest) wife of one of the greasers looked like she would pull tricks on the local boulevard for a high (no doubt in my mind that this is the case), and every one of their three (14, 16, 18 y.o.) daughters was pregnant. Ouch. Shortly after this, they got busted for making meth, and last I seen them, the daughters were looking quite a bit like your average geriatric. These guys were above average intelligence, but they still managed to destroy at least a dozen lives--in less than a year.
The other: the older brother of my grandmother. He's been a pothead since way before it was fashionable. Apparently, back when my great-grandmother was still alive, the whole of our family was fairly well to do, and they could afford all of the toys they ever wanted. When he got into weed (not alcohol, or anything else), he proceeded to fuck up every classic car the family had. 50's and 60's Corvettes, Cadilacs, Chevy's, anything you can imagine, they had it, he mangled it. Since great gamma died, he's squandered literally tens of millions of dollars of property, antiques, cars, and businesses. It's really too bad she was so senile when she wrote the will, because he got most of what was left over. Like I said, he's always been a pothead, but his daughter is now a meth head with 4 kids: one pregnant 13 year old, one incredibly obese 15 year old son, a 17 year old with 2 kids of her own, and one dead.
And this is why I say that anyone who says that weed doesn't fuck some people over is full of BS. Indeed, I've smoked, at first just to see what it was all about, and just because it's not a one-way road to misery like some other drugs. I must say that I'm not especially impressed, but it's fun to do socially anyway. No doubt, there are people that can handle it but there's always some weak willed asshole that will succumb to even mildly addictive behaviors. This is why I'm NOT against legalization. Once people get over its taboo quality, they'll realize it's just not that great.
Well, the sail probably would go up in a big fireball, if it were caught on fire, but it might burn too fast to do much damage to the wood. I'm sure there was the occasional sail immolated by the odd random flaming arrow. Might be possible to do, might not...
However, even if the "death ray" weren't so deadly, I imagine it certainly could be possible to actually, permanently BLIND the people on the boats, without catching anything on fire--and that would have just about the same effect, wouldn't it?! After the majority of the crew is blind, the ship is crippled and is pretty much helpless. Think about it: it's bad enough looking into the sun for any amount of time. It actually hurts; but what if there were even a few tens of times that brightness pointed at your face? It would certainly suck to be you, that's what. You could hardly function on a ship and still try to retain your vision, unless the Romans invented smoked glass lenses just special for Archimedes' benefit. Maybe Myth Busters and MIT together can find a volunteer to test it out, like a child molester, RIAA executive, politician or somesuch?
Heh, yeah, that may be true that there's tons of the stuff out in the midwest... But that assumes you, as a land owner have mineral rights to your land. It's pretty rare anymore for the government to not own the mineral rights, so that's something to be aware of. Even on large tracts of farm and grazing country, it's likely you have no right to anything below the surface of the earth. If the BLM comes knocking they will not be pleased--and since you have to get permits and what not to drill, they're almost certianly going to know.
And that's the really upsetting thing, the BLM auctions off mineral leases to oil companies, who then have the legal right to come in and drill pretty much anywhere they damn well please on your land, upsetting your animals and terrain, but you do get rent on the areas they use... Whoopty do. Let's have all the farmers say a big Thank You to the president, for looking after the oil interests above all else. I guess they expect the subsidies are to make up for it; and some have the balls to call others socialists.
Oh please, there is no thechnical limitation where you preceive one, assuming there is an imput to use to search, you could use one specific page to search with, with scrolly-deals, and hypertext-ish links to pages in the book which would update another page with the info you searched for. The book could be complete with full page B&W illustration in some raster or vector form, just like a real book. Let's see that with an ebook. Plus, with the paper, energy is only consumed when the page is refreshed. Assuming it dosen't take much energy to refresh pages, a battery, or a solar panel on the cover could power it for ages.
Naturally, this is a few years down the road, but I can totally see it happening, and it will be better.
Once you've set your exposure, adjusted curves and stuff, then have exported or rasterized from the RAW file, is this really different than having all of your operations work directly on RAW? I mean, that's the purpose of the digital negative, right? Once you've extracted the information in a way that you find aesthetically and technically pleasing, then you can go on and do your stuff like you normally would. I don't see a real benefit to operating directly on the raw file, except to move step one to the end of all your steps. Super high resolution drum scans are good enough to import as a 24 bit TIFF, I hardly see operating on a few megapixel files in this manner as a groundbreaking improvement.
But, isn't this a bug in the grand scheme of things, even if it's not in the software? Does Beta have to necessarily apply only to software? I don't think so. Hardware can also be said to have alpha and beta tests, though they're usually in house, or covertly via trusted customers. I've beta tested printers and other hardware, and any defect can crop up anywhere in the long chain of processes that eventually should result in some graphic being correctly applied to paper, or whatever the end result of the operation should be. That's what beta describes--they've gone from testing individual components (the servers, the individual parts of software, etc), to testing the system as a whole, In The Real World--or as close as they can safely come to it.
If some company gives me a beta lawnmower to use because they expect I'll test it, I have to recognize that it that could break down prematurely or otherwise not work like I'd expect a normal, production lawnmower (even from the same company) to work. Maybe it could throw fire out of the exhaust, and squirt fuel out of the tank... Who knows! All they're saying is to beware of relying on their lawnmower, because it's possible they've overlooked something that may cause the lawnmower to rip up all of your customers' grass instead of cutting it neatly. It's experimental.
Gmail is a service, and software, and definitely a huge, undoubtedly complicated system. This is a bug in the service part of Gmail, because The System(tm) (being Google's responsibility or not) didn't work as they expected, and that's why it's beta. They haven't got the kinks worked out.
It dosen't sound idiotic at all, to this geek. I'd much rather flip the pages in a book than scroll with a scrolly deal. It's MUCH more intuitive. Plus, does one really need the 200 pages as the grandparent suggested? Make it 50 pages, such that once you reach the 50th page, you open the book from page one and you get page 51, and so on. This way, it's much less complicated, and much less bulky, but you still have the opportunity to go back and fourth as you see fit.
Plus, if it really gets good, make the sucker into a full blown PDA. The first few pages could be reserved for things like email, contact database, calendars, etc. that work like a PDA's, but much larger and at higher resolutions... It could be basically like a journal with typeface instead of ink scribbles--or if you like the scribbles you get a full page touch sensor that records and stores your writings--and it dosen't even have to translate your chicken scratch to ASCII.
Yeah, those types of lawyers may not be rolling in the money like some, but they still get paid pretty good. Starting salaries even in poor areas are in the $30,000 area for public defenders, a few thousands more for prosecutors, and the salaries are going up simply because, well, many are headed towards more lucurative areas of law. Whoda' guessed. If one hangs around, it's a relatively short time till you can make over a hundred grand as a public defender in a county around a metro area (where population density dictates the need for lawyers, but it's far enough out to avoid killer living expenses), and one can do alright. I know this because, at least in my area, because I'm involved and I have access to the county auditor, and this is not at all a rich or super populated area... I was curious because I was thinking of backing up an engineering degree with some law degree, and well, it's nice to know where your tax dollars go. They also get all sorts of nice benefits, and retirement possibilities. Contrast that to a Nuclear Engineer I know, he has 4 years experience (about the same time the $100,000 prosecutor has under his belt), and I come to find out, that's normalcy for that field, though he gets good benefits. Makes me glad that I do my own thing, because that sounds just a bit underpaid!
The thing is, as I see it, the public defender may help against the government falling on a few dozen people in his working life, but the enginners of the world are responsible, every day, for the lives of thousands to millions of people. Seems like there is some disparity of responsibility there. Also being a lawyer, it's fairly easy to couple that skill with various business degrees and score a position in a company that pays very nicely, I just don't feel sorry for your average joe law dude. They put bread on the table, and if they're at all fiscally responsible they aught to be good for ten grand if they decide to shoot their mouth off. Of course, I realize some lawyers are decent humans, they deserve to live, and all that jazz... I guess.
Oh please... The poor, starving professional lawyers, won't everyone please give them a nickel for a cup of soup? Bwahahaa. Show me a lawyer who got into practice for the express purpose of altruism and not BMWs, Mercedes, 10,000sqft mansions and blonde bimbos with libidos like the average jackrabbit, and I'll give a Ferrari to the local charity that collects vehicles for abused spouses... That'll blow 'em out of the water! Oh, oh, OH! Before anyone accuses me of not being witty, that was satire!
If there is a lawyer out there (and I myself know plenty) that is not ass-bleeding rich enough to afford a semi-modest donation to a non-profit ONCE in his life (it's even tax deductible for fuck's sake), it's because they either just started lawyerin', have taken Matthew 19:24 to heart, are lying (and I know a few assbleeders who drive modest cars [purposefully] who would lie to your face about their wealth), or because they're an honest-to-goodness saint sent from above on a mission of good from the ether.
MAYBE, just MAYBE there is the occasional lawyer out there who mixes or even tries to balance Doing Good with the expectation of getting paid well. You'd have a better chance to get hit by lightning, find pirate gold in your basement, and then win the powerball in the same day--then to trip on a lawyer who wouldn't off his grandmother for the right sum. Who in their right mind would want to be a lawyer, go through the school and all the BS required of a lawyer, if they didn't expect to make up for all that expense and hardship in a BIG way? Right... A martyr. There are easier paths of martyrdom--and that brings me to a suggestion. We should round 'em up, strap 'em with explosives and send them to Iraq to be dropped as smart bombs!
Re:How about adding music?
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IMDb Turns 15
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· Score: 1
No doubt, and since Amazon owns it, at least they could point to the soundtracks, or the individual tracks from the movie, if they're not in the Official Soundtack. Goddamnit, that reminds me... The Transporter soundtrack still has me pissed off. #@&^$%* (WHY!)
Slashdot Mirror
Now that's just too cool. Awesome idea.
You're just miffed that they don't brew coffee over there at SCO. It's understandable, really. I'd be cranky too! Plus if it weren't for the occasional game of five against one, I'd be barking mad, or at least worse than I usually am, at any rate. And that explains a lot of things, I think. Oh! You're gonna bitch about that, too I can hear it now--Something about how Carnal Tunnel Syndrome is a life long debilitating disease, and how it rots the brain, and causes arthritis and manus capillus! Well, you can take that thought, fold it until it's all sharp corners and shove it up your ass! And we'd better not catch you enjoying that.
Of course, one should not deem themselves experts on a subject because they've played a game. Nobody is suggesting this. Did anyone ever suggest that? Nobody ever has, for all I know, and if they did, I'd be all up in their ass instead of yours. I've never heard anyone call himself or herself an expert in anything related to a game, besides being an expert at playing the game, and that's a fair metric if it's based in reality. Playing chess professionally doesn't make one an expert military strategist, and playing professional golf doesn't make one a good landscaper. Why should playing game designed for 6th graders make one an expert historian?
The game is designed to stimulate interest in and open the mind to the subjects of geography and history (and astronomy, English, math in later games) by presenting a cursory and entertaining overview of each. For any kid remotely interested in the topics, it's a step in the right direction, isn't it? By that virtue, I'd say the games did just as they were designed to do, and in fantastic style.
It is assumed that this is all the game was supposed to do, and assuming or suggesting otherwise is idiocy at best and ad hominem at worst. Unless, of course, you appreciate the in-game experience as training exercise just in case you somehow happen to get a job as a detective chasing a long legged brunette hottie in a red trench coat and broad brimmed hat, whom also likes to leave obvious clues--then you've really got a leg up on the competition, haven't you?! It's not a failing of the game designers, and it's not a failing of primary education in the western world to not present the subject in way you feel is appropriate. If anything, the people who keep track of teenage suicides should be thankful you're not in charge!
I guess it's all relative, right? Still, I bet some of those kids on the PBS contest show could've wiped the floor with you, pretty much all of the US, and many history majors, just for the fun of it and, of course, that prized trip around the country/world.
Aaaahhhh... So you've never seen an orca flip a live baby sea lion around in the air for no reason that's discernibly related to the act of predation--or for that matter the same with an average house cat with a mouse, or a dog with a squirrel? Oh, sure you could explain it away, they're just having stupid fun, after all they don't have the capacity for what we perceive as emotion, some people would say.
I would not agree. I believe that dogs and cats can know when they're up to no good, and I believe they're even capable of hate and other emotions, because I've witnessed them first hand--or at least that's what I perceived. As a result, I believe many higher order animals can receive some sort of sadistic pleasure from the torment of other animals. I think they can get a high off of it in just the same way some humans get off on antisocial behavior.
I guess it depends on where you draw the line on what animals other than us can understand. Personally, I also think we do not give them enough credit.
Just save a little bit for me :)
IMO, the best arguments for legalization of marijuana is to break the cartels, allow for it to be taxed, and stop the majority of non-violent drug offenders from filling up the prison systems. I agree, it dosen't take someone to be under the influence to crash and screw up someone bad, but I guess that's the definition of accident. However, if you're willingly driving whilst loaded up on whatever chemical, it seems less of an accident to me.
And saying that there are no deaths proven to have been caused by marijuana use sounds suspiciously like the tobacco industry line of the 20's throgh the 80's. I'm sorry. Maybe it's next to impossible to overdose, and maybe cigarette, marijuana smoke aren't equally carcinogenic... The jury's still out on that one, but it's generally accepted that marijuana smoke contains more benzopyrene and cyanide and tar--partly because the average toke is longer and deeper, regardless, it contains much of the same stuff. Just like nicotene, cannabinoids were developed by the plant to either kill or ward off certian insects. It's an organic poison, just same.
If you want to smoke pot, fine. It's a personal choice, and it's no more right or wrong than other things we do. Please, though, don't do it because bad, skewed science, and incomplete studies have convinced you that it's perfectly safe. Nothing is.
Yeah, I've wondered the same. Previously, the high prices for a decently sized one have always scared me off, though I have no doubt it's worth it. I'll have to get one, I'm guessing it could also be good for CAD stuffs. It's worth a try anyhow, right?!
I totally have to agree, but I can see that it did serve a purpose. It slowed the game down, and made you think about what you wanted. Sometimes, it was difficult to draw the shapes in the heat of the moment, and my feeling that the AI god cheats compounded that issue for me. I swear he got tons of free resources--and the AI moves WAY too fast for a human to compete--not that it's necessarily very smart, though.
If it weren't for the carpal tunnel inducing nature of the glyph drawing, and the scrolling, zooming, I'd be all for it. But seriously, if I played for any amount of time, my wrist would be killing me. That plus the game play killing micro-management, I never finished the game. It's supposed to be fun, not work, people.
Not only that, but making aluminum or magnesium is very energy intensive, not especially efficient, and we release all sorts of good stuff in the process. Sometimes, chlorine gas is bubbled through the molten metal to remove impurities. Further, aren't they draining the Dead Sea over in that direction, just to get at the mineral salts to actually produce the Aluminum, in the first place? Unless great blocks of metal fall from space, this is just as moronic as hydrogen power from conventional sources. I hope they actually try next time.
Like the Kennedys, Rockefellers.
Indeed. They fit into the "Rockefeller Republican" category, afterall.. You know the liberal Republican, a nearly extinct species, save for senator McCain and a few others. I din't mean to say that conservatism is a strictly bad thing. I was just highlighting the fact that neoconservatism (which is often a terrible misnomer, as far as I'm concerned) is the new conservatism; with ten percent more Jesus in every box! Seriously, they took the worst from each side: The more extreme liberal love of government, and the extreme conservative love of greased up mini-nativity dolls to cram up everyone's ass. For cryin' out loud, people!
My experience:
Conservatives: those who generally inherited a great deal of money and property and wish to retain their riches by any recourse, also those who are all too happy to sacrifice the spirit of their faith to retain their narrow view of normality.
Liberals: anyone who thinks everyone deserves a fair shake.
I'd just like to point out, there's plenty of people who fit your description of conservative who fit my version of liberal... I'd say because they, themselves, know what it's like in the ditch.
I don't see how you have to actively seek a link. All you have to do is make the mistake of telling anyone else anything about your site/page/whatever. Maybe you email someone, and they go on to check your site (without your provoking, they obtained the url from your email address), decide they like it or hate it and for whatever reason link to it in their blog or on some indexed PHPbb forum or something. It could be your grandma posting a link to your laser tag site on her retirement home's pinochle club site for any number of obtuse reasons, and then you're marked for life. Hell, there's probably a bot that spiders DNS records, and posts links to the sites it's found for the entire world to see, for all we know, and we should take that into account. That's why I'll say that your participation on the Internet is entirely opt-in, beyond that, you're fair game for pretty much everyone.
.htaccess passworded. Like robots.txt, I'd say that's decidedly opt-out behavior! Indeed, I wouldn't trust ANY web spider to adhere to the wishes in robots.txt, so I'd ferret them away in some more secure manner. Saying otherwise (brace yourself for yet another analogy), is like saying the US government opted-in when the Chinese stole classified missile information--because their security wasn't tight enough. In other words, a whole load of BS. If you don't want your information indexed, either don't participate on the 'net, or do make sure you've got it buttoned up.
If you want to treat your web pages like they're some sort of national security threat, then you'll have them at least
I'd guess that it's just about as easy if you're that close, you know, simply to grab the ball?
It's true. I can't deny it :( Yes, I am also a Dumbass, but it's Lieutenant Commander Dwayne Dumbass to you!
Of course, you don't give a shit about that. Just so long as some person next door isn't getting shitfaced on dope. He can get drunk off his ass, but God Forbid that he do meth.
Just my prospective: personally, I think abusing anything of any kind (drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, Japanese school girl panties vending machines, whatever) is bad for the mind and body--but also for any kind of close relation, especially children... Without getting into morals and that crap, my argument is based on the relative damage an activity can do to a person.
I've seen too many people taken out by some of the more common stuff: alcohol, gambling, tobacco, marijuana (often as the gateway drug to other worse stuff), and it sucks. These are all things that can be done casually, but too much of it destroys people, families, and sometimes even generations. However, the speeds at which these things destroy a person/family vary greatly. Meth and other hardcore drugs, which significantly alter brain chemistry instantaneously, should be policed very tenaciously, because there is no way to use them casually.
I'll limit myself to two anecdotes: 1: these guys who used to own an engine machine shop I frequented somehow got involved with meth. It was an instant and violent transformation. One month, they were regular Joes, hardworking, and successful. The next month, they didn't do much work at all, the month after, they would take customers money to pay for their habits. In the period of six months, the once previously very beautiful (model quality, honest) wife of one of the greasers looked like she would pull tricks on the local boulevard for a high (no doubt in my mind that this is the case), and every one of their three (14, 16, 18 y.o.) daughters was pregnant. Ouch. Shortly after this, they got busted for making meth, and last I seen them, the daughters were looking quite a bit like your average geriatric. These guys were above average intelligence, but they still managed to destroy at least a dozen lives--in less than a year.
The other: the older brother of my grandmother. He's been a pothead since way before it was fashionable. Apparently, back when my great-grandmother was still alive, the whole of our family was fairly well to do, and they could afford all of the toys they ever wanted. When he got into weed (not alcohol, or anything else), he proceeded to fuck up every classic car the family had. 50's and 60's Corvettes, Cadilacs, Chevy's, anything you can imagine, they had it, he mangled it. Since great gamma died, he's squandered literally tens of millions of dollars of property, antiques, cars, and businesses. It's really too bad she was so senile when she wrote the will, because he got most of what was left over. Like I said, he's always been a pothead, but his daughter is now a meth head with 4 kids: one pregnant 13 year old, one incredibly obese 15 year old son, a 17 year old with 2 kids of her own, and one dead.
And this is why I say that anyone who says that weed doesn't fuck some people over is full of BS. Indeed, I've smoked, at first just to see what it was all about, and just because it's not a one-way road to misery like some other drugs. I must say that I'm not especially impressed, but it's fun to do socially anyway. No doubt, there are people that can handle it but there's always some weak willed asshole that will succumb to even mildly addictive behaviors. This is why I'm NOT against legalization. Once people get over its taboo quality, they'll realize it's just not that great.
Well, the sail probably would go up in a big fireball, if it were caught on fire, but it might burn too fast to do much damage to the wood. I'm sure there was the occasional sail immolated by the odd random flaming arrow. Might be possible to do, might not...
However, even if the "death ray" weren't so deadly, I imagine it certainly could be possible to actually, permanently BLIND the people on the boats, without catching anything on fire--and that would have just about the same effect, wouldn't it?! After the majority of the crew is blind, the ship is crippled and is pretty much helpless.
Think about it: it's bad enough looking into the sun for any amount of time. It actually hurts; but what if there were even a few tens of times that brightness pointed at your face? It would certainly suck to be you, that's what. You could hardly function on a ship and still try to retain your vision, unless the Romans invented smoked glass lenses just special for Archimedes' benefit. Maybe Myth Busters and MIT together can find a volunteer to test it out, like a child molester, RIAA executive, politician or somesuch?
As silly as I'd feel talking to a robotic squirrel phone, I'd mostly just hope it wouldn't bury my nuts when I was sleeping.
Heh, yeah, that may be true that there's tons of the stuff out in the midwest... But that assumes you, as a land owner have mineral rights to your land. It's pretty rare anymore for the government to not own the mineral rights, so that's something to be aware of. Even on large tracts of farm and grazing country, it's likely you have no right to anything below the surface of the earth. If the BLM comes knocking they will not be pleased--and since you have to get permits and what not to drill, they're almost certianly going to know.
And that's the really upsetting thing, the BLM auctions off mineral leases to oil companies, who then have the legal right to come in and drill pretty much anywhere they damn well please on your land, upsetting your animals and terrain, but you do get rent on the areas they use... Whoopty do. Let's have all the farmers say a big Thank You to the president, for looking after the oil interests above all else. I guess they expect the subsidies are to make up for it; and some have the balls to call others socialists.
Oh please, there is no thechnical limitation where you preceive one, assuming there is an imput to use to search, you could use one specific page to search with, with scrolly-deals, and hypertext-ish links to pages in the book which would update another page with the info you searched for. The book could be complete with full page B&W illustration in some raster or vector form, just like a real book. Let's see that with an ebook. Plus, with the paper, energy is only consumed when the page is refreshed. Assuming it dosen't take much energy to refresh pages, a battery, or a solar panel on the cover could power it for ages.
Naturally, this is a few years down the road, but I can totally see it happening, and it will be better.
Once you've set your exposure, adjusted curves and stuff, then have exported or rasterized from the RAW file, is this really different than having all of your operations work directly on RAW? I mean, that's the purpose of the digital negative, right? Once you've extracted the information in a way that you find aesthetically and technically pleasing, then you can go on and do your stuff like you normally would. I don't see a real benefit to operating directly on the raw file, except to move step one to the end of all your steps. Super high resolution drum scans are good enough to import as a 24 bit TIFF, I hardly see operating on a few megapixel files in this manner as a groundbreaking improvement.
But, isn't this a bug in the grand scheme of things, even if it's not in the software? Does Beta have to necessarily apply only to software? I don't think so. Hardware can also be said to have alpha and beta tests, though they're usually in house, or covertly via trusted customers. I've beta tested printers and other hardware, and any defect can crop up anywhere in the long chain of processes that eventually should result in some graphic being correctly applied to paper, or whatever the end result of the operation should be. That's what beta describes--they've gone from testing individual components (the servers, the individual parts of software, etc), to testing the system as a whole, In The Real World--or as close as they can safely come to it.
If some company gives me a beta lawnmower to use because they expect I'll test it, I have to recognize that it that could break down prematurely or otherwise not work like I'd expect a normal, production lawnmower (even from the same company) to work. Maybe it could throw fire out of the exhaust, and squirt fuel out of the tank... Who knows! All they're saying is to beware of relying on their lawnmower, because it's possible they've overlooked something that may cause the lawnmower to rip up all of your customers' grass instead of cutting it neatly. It's experimental.
Gmail is a service, and software, and definitely a huge, undoubtedly complicated system. This is a bug in the service part of Gmail, because The System(tm) (being Google's responsibility or not) didn't work as they expected, and that's why it's beta. They haven't got the kinks worked out.
It dosen't sound idiotic at all, to this geek. I'd much rather flip the pages in a book than scroll with a scrolly deal. It's MUCH more intuitive. Plus, does one really need the 200 pages as the grandparent suggested? Make it 50 pages, such that once you reach the 50th page, you open the book from page one and you get page 51, and so on. This way, it's much less complicated, and much less bulky, but you still have the opportunity to go back and fourth as you see fit.
Plus, if it really gets good, make the sucker into a full blown PDA. The first few pages could be reserved for things like email, contact database, calendars, etc. that work like a PDA's, but much larger and at higher resolutions... It could be basically like a journal with typeface instead of ink scribbles--or if you like the scribbles you get a full page touch sensor that records and stores your writings--and it dosen't even have to translate your chicken scratch to ASCII.
I'd pick one up in an instant!
Yeah, those types of lawyers may not be rolling in the money like some, but they still get paid pretty good. Starting salaries even in poor areas are in the $30,000 area for public defenders, a few thousands more for prosecutors, and the salaries are going up simply because, well, many are headed towards more lucurative areas of law. Whoda' guessed. If one hangs around, it's a relatively short time till you can make over a hundred grand as a public defender in a county around a metro area (where population density dictates the need for lawyers, but it's far enough out to avoid killer living expenses), and one can do alright. I know this because, at least in my area, because I'm involved and I have access to the county auditor, and this is not at all a rich or super populated area... I was curious because I was thinking of backing up an engineering degree with some law degree, and well, it's nice to know where your tax dollars go. They also get all sorts of nice benefits, and retirement possibilities. Contrast that to a Nuclear Engineer I know, he has 4 years experience (about the same time the $100,000 prosecutor has under his belt), and I come to find out, that's normalcy for that field, though he gets good benefits. Makes me glad that I do my own thing, because that sounds just a bit underpaid!
The thing is, as I see it, the public defender may help against the government falling on a few dozen people in his working life, but the enginners of the world are responsible, every day, for the lives of thousands to millions of people. Seems like there is some disparity of responsibility there. Also being a lawyer, it's fairly easy to couple that skill with various business degrees and score a position in a company that pays very nicely, I just don't feel sorry for your average joe law dude. They put bread on the table, and if they're at all fiscally responsible they aught to be good for ten grand if they decide to shoot their mouth off. Of course, I realize some lawyers are decent humans, they deserve to live, and all that jazz... I guess.
Oh please... The poor, starving professional lawyers, won't everyone please give them a nickel for a cup of soup? Bwahahaa. Show me a lawyer who got into practice for the express purpose of altruism and not BMWs, Mercedes, 10,000sqft mansions and blonde bimbos with libidos like the average jackrabbit, and I'll give a Ferrari to the local charity that collects vehicles for abused spouses... That'll blow 'em out of the water! Oh, oh, OH! Before anyone accuses me of not being witty, that was satire!
If there is a lawyer out there (and I myself know plenty) that is not ass-bleeding rich enough to afford a semi-modest donation to a non-profit ONCE in his life (it's even tax deductible for fuck's sake), it's because they either just started lawyerin', have taken Matthew 19:24 to heart, are lying (and I know a few assbleeders who drive modest cars [purposefully] who would lie to your face about their wealth), or because they're an honest-to-goodness saint sent from above on a mission of good from the ether.
MAYBE, just MAYBE there is the occasional lawyer out there who mixes or even tries to balance Doing Good with the expectation of getting paid well. You'd have a better chance to get hit by lightning, find pirate gold in your basement, and then win the powerball in the same day--then to trip on a lawyer who wouldn't off his grandmother for the right sum. Who in their right mind would want to be a lawyer, go through the school and all the BS required of a lawyer, if they didn't expect to make up for all that expense and hardship in a BIG way? Right... A martyr. There are easier paths of martyrdom--and that brings me to a suggestion. We should round 'em up, strap 'em with explosives and send them to Iraq to be dropped as smart bombs!
No doubt, and since Amazon owns it, at least they could point to the soundtracks, or the individual tracks from the movie, if they're not in the Official Soundtack. Goddamnit, that reminds me... The Transporter soundtrack still has me pissed off. #@&^$%* (WHY!)