I think last week's episode which has Starbuck patching a Cylon ship with her jacket,
No reason this couldn't work, if her jacket was made out of the right material.
breathing oxygen out of a tube (lucky she didn't hit a toxic hydraulic line),
Luck has nothing to do with it. She had some magical oxygen tester, the little pen-like thing that she took out a couple of times, that told her what it was.
and flying the ship based on her "pitch, roll, yaw, power" mantra was plain silly.
If you're in a lot of pain and in a difficult situation, mantras like that are a good way to keep focused and thinking.
In all fairness, BSG is better, far better, than the best Trek I've ever seen, and consistently better too. I haven't seen any Enterprise, but nobody has ever made the claim that it's better than any of the other Trek series. They deserve those ratings.
My favorite piece of BSG's overall "flavor" is the incredible continuity they offer. I watched the miniseries and all thirteen episodes over the space of about two weeks (nobody's airing the show in this country anyway, as far as I know, so I don't feel very guilty downloading them) and it was like watching one incredibly long movie. No other TV show I've seen ever did this. I never watched B5 very much, but from what I did see, the story arc was there but the show itself was often very episodic. Farscape was very good with the continuity and story arc thing too, but it was also extremely episodic.
I think this "long movie" style of writing and plot development is really cool, and I hope they can keep it up in season 2.
However, the principle is the same. He was punished for his speech. In our society, "freedom of speech" has a broader meaning, not strictly limited to government. We expect to be able to speak our minds and voice our opinions without having to constantly look over our shoulder to see who might be listening. The practice of employers firing their employees for speaking publically about work will have a chilling effect just the same as if the government were doing it.
I must respectfully disagree.
According to your definition, nobody has ever had anything approximating free speech ever. Unless I misunderstand, you claim that freedom of speech can only exist if there is freedom from consequences.
However, if there are no consequences, then exercising your freedom of speech is just venting. Why do people speak out in the first place, if not for (positive) consequences? When people hold demonstrations and rallies, they're hoping for the consequence of political change, or more followers. When this fellow was posting to his blog, we can assume he was hoping for consequences too, whether it be bragging points with his friends, more readers, or something I haven't thought of.
If I start proclaiming loudly at every opportunity, "I am a Nazi!" I will probably be disowned by my family and friends post-haste. Does this mean I have no freedom of speech?
Freedom of speech means that the government will not harass, persecute, or otherwise punish you solely for what you say. Extending this to companies becomes ridiculous; should they have kept their employee if he continually shouted, "I am a Nazi!"? Should I keep buying from a company that says offensive things in their press releases? Private consequences for public speech is standard, unsurprising, has been around since the dawn of time, and has nothing to do with freedom of speech. I'm not sure how it "will have a chilling effect" when it's nothing new.
Freedom of speech is what exists between a government and its people. It does not say anything about what two private entities do with one another because of speech, so long as this behavior stays within the law. In most states in the US, a person can be fired for no particular reason, and so this behavior would not be covered under freedom of speech.
This is a minor point, but South Africa's involvement is not at all surprising. South Africa has some pretty high technology, due to its unique position as one of the only stable democracies on the continent, and being involved in various regional conflicts. They were the continent's only nuclear power until they voluntarily gave it up, they build some of their own military aircraft, and so being handy with reactor technology is not too surprising.
I'm a non-US reader, and as you can see, I don't care. For me it's a cool technology showcase, not something I'm going to start using tomorrow. I believe that was the point of the story.
Do French pizza shops feel the same way if a person orders a pizza from a Finnish mobile? I'm just curious. I know in the states it's difficult to use an international phone to order a pizza. Usually for two reasons. Firstly the cost... no one knows what the cost is but it sounds expensive even to those not familar with mobiles having a different rate. Secondly few people know how to dial internationaly.
I honestly have no idea, I've never tried anything like it. I don't order pizza very often anyway.:-)
When you mention the cost and difficulty of dialling, you mean for the pizza place to call you? Do they actually do that? Whenever I've ordered pizzas here or in the US, they never called me back for anything.
Issues i've seen with US mobiles ordering a pizza out of the region have a different problem. You can subscribe to a landline and not subscribe to long distance service. This is becomming more and more common as mobiles offer LD as part of their monthly min plans and it saves you a few bucks in taxes. And a business that employs teens like a pizza place might not want their employees to make toll calls. Given that 10 cents/min what use to be Ma Bells evening rate circa 1982 is pretty damn close to minimum wage I can see the point. It is penny pinching but food service does have the lowest profit margin.
Again, the problem seems to be that they can't call you back, which seems to be a rare event.
I would have thought the issue would be more of a prank-protection thing. The idea being that if you have an out-of-area number, your order is probably just a joke and they won't waste any effort on you.
We've had free local calls for decades. It's natural to see resistance tward any system that costs money.
The system in the US seems to be moving towards free calls to anything anywhere. Various traditional phone companies offer unlimited in-country long distance for a flat fee, and all of the big VoIP providers do. I don't think this change indicates the loss of free local calls, but rather the contrary.
Oddly, map24 is slower than Google Maps on my computer, and the map goes all pixelized during any scrolling. This may be due to Apple's cruddy Java implementation, though.
1. On the startpage, click on the Globe icon with the text 'Maps' under it. The icon is posisioned in the upper right corner of the UI.
There is no Globe icon.
2. In the next screen there is a section in the left part of the UI titeled "Map an Address". In this section you should find a selection box with the text "country" just above it. Use this box to select the country you want to see a map of.
There is nothing titled "Map an Address", and nothing that says "country".
3. Click the 'Get map' button below.
There is no "Get map" button.
Care to try again? I don't think you're talking about the same service that the rest of us are.
What the hell is wrong with you people? It's new, it's beta and it's made by an American company. It's not going to shine your shoes and make you coffee on the first day it's out there. It's an incredibly cool app, and I'm sure they'll expand its scope in the future.
Um, ok.... those two services you linked to? They suck compared to this. They're a big reload fest, just like all other traditional web apps. Click, wait for a new picture to load, repeat endlessly. It's not interactive, it's just a normal web page with links that do interesting things.
Google's service does live zooms, live scrolling, and never leaves me waiting. If it requires breaking standards to accomplish that, then so be it. Nobody's forcing you to use it.
This may be the most impressive web application I have ever seen. It performs like a local application, incredibly fast and smooth, but it's all coming over the internet and displaying in my web browser. I can browse around the country like I was playing with a photograph! The lack of Safari support is too bad, but they say it's coming soon.
No, I have nothing constructive to add, just... wow!
There wouldn't even be much OSS (at least collaborative) without svn...
Have you completely lost your mind? Subversion has only been stable for a couple of years. I'm damned sure there was a ton of collaborative OSS before svn; Linux and Mozilla are two that just come to mind, but there a zillion others.
If you have the entire contents in memory you can be assured of not skipping if there becomes contention for the disk.
I guess you've never heard of swap?
iTunes on the mac is famous for not skipping no matter the system load, guess why?
I don't need to guess, I know: iTunes doesn't skip because it uses realtime threads for everything that needs it, and Mac OS X's realtime scheduler kicks ass for this kind of thing. OS X's audio subsystem is one of the best out there, and iTunes uses it well.
I think you underestimate people's ability to adjust.
Here in France, all cell phones have a completely separate "area code" that tells you absolutely nothing about location (as it should be, since you could be anywhere). Pizza places don't care. All calls to cell phones cost the same. I'm sure bizarro VoIP numbers will be the same.
As far as expensive wrong numbers, HUH? At this point, an expensive long-distance call in the US is maybe ten cents a minute if you're really getting screwed; how long were you planning on staying on the line for that wrong number?
Having a number that is both supposed to enable people to reach you and is tied to your location is getting more and more silly these days. People move around, and take their phones with them, so location-based numbers are becoming meaningless. You can already get VoIP numbers that have no connection with your physical location, this will just change the choice.
I guess you haven't been at it as long as I thought, so you aren't totally in "I'm screwed" territory yet. Do keep the credit-card fraud option in mind, though; they are very powerful and buyer-friendly.
Oh yeah, and, I don't HAVE a real credit card, so I'm using the only thing I can use.
I really suggest you get one, they aren't that hard to obtain, especially if you don't need a high credit limit. If you exercise self control and always pay the bill on time, they can be totally free, too.
Slashdot Mirror
I think last week's episode which has Starbuck patching a Cylon ship with her jacket,
No reason this couldn't work, if her jacket was made out of the right material.
breathing oxygen out of a tube (lucky she didn't hit a toxic hydraulic line),
Luck has nothing to do with it. She had some magical oxygen tester, the little pen-like thing that she took out a couple of times, that told her what it was.
and flying the ship based on her "pitch, roll, yaw, power" mantra was plain silly.
If you're in a lot of pain and in a difficult situation, mantras like that are a good way to keep focused and thinking.
You're either making a not-so-subtle reference to a really old post of mine, or you're being very silly. Which is it?
In all fairness, BSG is better, far better, than the best Trek I've ever seen, and consistently better too. I haven't seen any Enterprise, but nobody has ever made the claim that it's better than any of the other Trek series. They deserve those ratings.
He's using "Q" as a lazy way to write "cue".
My favorite piece of BSG's overall "flavor" is the incredible continuity they offer. I watched the miniseries and all thirteen episodes over the space of about two weeks (nobody's airing the show in this country anyway, as far as I know, so I don't feel very guilty downloading them) and it was like watching one incredibly long movie. No other TV show I've seen ever did this. I never watched B5 very much, but from what I did see, the story arc was there but the show itself was often very episodic. Farscape was very good with the continuity and story arc thing too, but it was also extremely episodic.
I think this "long movie" style of writing and plot development is really cool, and I hope they can keep it up in season 2.
However, the principle is the same. He was punished for his speech. In our society, "freedom of speech" has a broader meaning, not strictly limited to government. We expect to be able to speak our minds and voice our opinions without having to constantly look over our shoulder to see who might be listening. The practice of employers firing their employees for speaking publically about work will have a chilling effect just the same as if the government were doing it.
I must respectfully disagree.
According to your definition, nobody has ever had anything approximating free speech ever. Unless I misunderstand, you claim that freedom of speech can only exist if there is freedom from consequences.
However, if there are no consequences, then exercising your freedom of speech is just venting. Why do people speak out in the first place, if not for (positive) consequences? When people hold demonstrations and rallies, they're hoping for the consequence of political change, or more followers. When this fellow was posting to his blog, we can assume he was hoping for consequences too, whether it be bragging points with his friends, more readers, or something I haven't thought of.
If I start proclaiming loudly at every opportunity, "I am a Nazi!" I will probably be disowned by my family and friends post-haste. Does this mean I have no freedom of speech?
Freedom of speech means that the government will not harass, persecute, or otherwise punish you solely for what you say. Extending this to companies becomes ridiculous; should they have kept their employee if he continually shouted, "I am a Nazi!"? Should I keep buying from a company that says offensive things in their press releases? Private consequences for public speech is standard, unsurprising, has been around since the dawn of time, and has nothing to do with freedom of speech. I'm not sure how it "will have a chilling effect" when it's nothing new.
Freedom of speech is what exists between a government and its people. It does not say anything about what two private entities do with one another because of speech, so long as this behavior stays within the law. In most states in the US, a person can be fired for no particular reason, and so this behavior would not be covered under freedom of speech.
Since we are all individuals, it is very understandable that we would generally side with individuals.
I, however, think that they are totally justified and that all the complainers in this thread should be fired.
What benefit would this offer over simply buying a bona-fide PS2 from Sony and putting it next to your Mac?
This is a minor point, but South Africa's involvement is not at all surprising. South Africa has some pretty high technology, due to its unique position as one of the only stable democracies on the continent, and being involved in various regional conflicts. They were the continent's only nuclear power until they voluntarily gave it up, they build some of their own military aircraft, and so being handy with reactor technology is not too surprising.
That's rather odd. Last time I had a phone line without long distance, it flat-out refused to let me call anything outside the local calling area.
And if it fails, what do you do? This plan has no advantages over checking it in Mars orbit that I can see.
I'm a non-US reader, and as you can see, I don't care. For me it's a cool technology showcase, not something I'm going to start using tomorrow. I believe that was the point of the story.
Do French pizza shops feel the same way if a person orders a pizza from a Finnish mobile? I'm just curious. I know in the states it's difficult to use an international phone to order a pizza. Usually for two reasons. Firstly the cost... no one knows what the cost is but it sounds expensive even to those not familar with mobiles having a different rate. Secondly few people know how to dial internationaly.
:-)
I honestly have no idea, I've never tried anything like it. I don't order pizza very often anyway.
When you mention the cost and difficulty of dialling, you mean for the pizza place to call you? Do they actually do that? Whenever I've ordered pizzas here or in the US, they never called me back for anything.
Issues i've seen with US mobiles ordering a pizza out of the region have a different problem. You can subscribe to a landline and not subscribe to long distance service. This is becomming more and more common as mobiles offer LD as part of their monthly min plans and it saves you a few bucks in taxes. And a business that employs teens like a pizza place might not want their employees to make toll calls. Given that 10 cents/min what use to be Ma Bells evening rate circa 1982 is pretty damn close to minimum wage I can see the point. It is penny pinching but food service does have the lowest profit margin.
Again, the problem seems to be that they can't call you back, which seems to be a rare event.
I would have thought the issue would be more of a prank-protection thing. The idea being that if you have an out-of-area number, your order is probably just a joke and they won't waste any effort on you.
We've had free local calls for decades. It's natural to see resistance tward any system that costs money.
The system in the US seems to be moving towards free calls to anything anywhere. Various traditional phone companies offer unlimited in-country long distance for a flat fee, and all of the big VoIP providers do. I don't think this change indicates the loss of free local calls, but rather the contrary.
Oddly, map24 is slower than Google Maps on my computer, and the map goes all pixelized during any scrolling. This may be due to Apple's cruddy Java implementation, though.
Read the title: "Google Launches Mapping Service". We're not talking about Mapquest.
1. On the startpage, click on the Globe icon with the text 'Maps' under it. The icon is posisioned in the upper right corner of the UI.
There is no Globe icon.
2. In the next screen there is a section in the left part of the UI titeled "Map an Address". In this section you should find a selection box with the text "country" just above it. Use this box to select the country you want to see a map of.
There is nothing titled "Map an Address", and nothing that says "country".
3. Click the 'Get map' button below.
There is no "Get map" button.
Care to try again? I don't think you're talking about the same service that the rest of us are.
I've had ten invites left since forever, and it's still ten today. The huge jump must not be including everybody.
What the hell is wrong with you people? It's new, it's beta and it's made by an American company. It's not going to shine your shoes and make you coffee on the first day it's out there. It's an incredibly cool app, and I'm sure they'll expand its scope in the future.
Um, ok.... those two services you linked to? They suck compared to this. They're a big reload fest, just like all other traditional web apps. Click, wait for a new picture to load, repeat endlessly. It's not interactive, it's just a normal web page with links that do interesting things.
Google's service does live zooms, live scrolling, and never leaves me waiting. If it requires breaking standards to accomplish that, then so be it. Nobody's forcing you to use it.
This may be the most impressive web application I have ever seen. It performs like a local application, incredibly fast and smooth, but it's all coming over the internet and displaying in my web browser. I can browse around the country like I was playing with a photograph! The lack of Safari support is too bad, but they say it's coming soon.
No, I have nothing constructive to add, just... wow!
There wouldn't even be much OSS (at least collaborative) without svn...
Have you completely lost your mind? Subversion has only been stable for a couple of years. I'm damned sure there was a ton of collaborative OSS before svn; Linux and Mozilla are two that just come to mind, but there a zillion others.
If you have the entire contents in memory you can be assured of not skipping if there becomes contention for the disk.
I guess you've never heard of swap?
iTunes on the mac is famous for not skipping no matter the system load, guess why?
I don't need to guess, I know: iTunes doesn't skip because it uses realtime threads for everything that needs it, and Mac OS X's realtime scheduler kicks ass for this kind of thing. OS X's audio subsystem is one of the best out there, and iTunes uses it well.
I think you underestimate people's ability to adjust.
Here in France, all cell phones have a completely separate "area code" that tells you absolutely nothing about location (as it should be, since you could be anywhere). Pizza places don't care. All calls to cell phones cost the same. I'm sure bizarro VoIP numbers will be the same.
As far as expensive wrong numbers, HUH? At this point, an expensive long-distance call in the US is maybe ten cents a minute if you're really getting screwed; how long were you planning on staying on the line for that wrong number?
Having a number that is both supposed to enable people to reach you and is tied to your location is getting more and more silly these days. People move around, and take their phones with them, so location-based numbers are becoming meaningless. You can already get VoIP numbers that have no connection with your physical location, this will just change the choice.
I guess you haven't been at it as long as I thought, so you aren't totally in "I'm screwed" territory yet. Do keep the credit-card fraud option in mind, though; they are very powerful and buyer-friendly.
Oh yeah, and, I don't HAVE a real credit card, so I'm using the only thing I can use.
I really suggest you get one, they aren't that hard to obtain, especially if you don't need a high credit limit. If you exercise self control and always pay the bill on time, they can be totally free, too.