Well, you can reserve anything you want but you still have to obey the law, and the law says you cannot refuse service to certain people for certain reasons, for instance, their national origin. Just wanted to clarify that in case anyone still thinks signs mean anything. Signs are covered by free expression. They are not necessarily enforceable.
Oh Gee, another billion dollars a week down the old rat hole. Not to mention the exploding kangaroos. They do have kangaroos in New Zealand, don't they?
The SEC Complaint Center: http://www.sec.gov/complaint.shtml Ask them why exactly they are allowing SCO to inflate their stock price by making phony charges against Linux users. This is no longer an annoyance. It is criminal activity and needs to be handled as such.
This is obviously a joke, but maybe someone SHOULD start asking the SEC--currently up to their ears in mutual fund fraud--why they haven't done anything about this attempt by SCO to inflate their stock price through unsupported charges against other companies. Are they really going to let these characters continue to issue stock on a legitimate exchange? Rather than slashdotting these guys, why not a hundred or so well-written queries of the SEC about the legitimacy of their behavior? Hit the bastards where it really hurts.
"Everyone who gave it two seconds thought had to suspect that Google would be on SCO's radar."
You people sound like the Japanese farmers in The Seven Samurai Film. Radar? You want radar? Everybody even remotely vulnerable to this kind of extortion needs to get together and preemptively hit the bastards with such a barrage of lawsuits their heads will spin. "Licenses? We don't need no stinkin' licenses. You need a good corporate psychiatrist!" See what Wall Street thinks of them apples.
"Not if we can slashdot the hell out of those sites!..."
Why do you guys always think small potatoes?
"The idea behind the suit is obviously to make all major Linux users tractable and make them reach for their checkbooks."
Absolutely. Everybody on that short list and everyone else within range of these cretins should get together, pull out their checkbooks, and sue the bejesus out of SCO. Charge them with extortion and anything else their smartest lawyers can think of. SCO wants to live by lawsuits, let them die by lawsuits. What do you think the Wall Street analysts will think when they find out a hundred companies big and small have gotten together and started the process toward nailing these bastards to the wall? Can you say "penny stock"? Can you say "dead on arrival"?
Gee, I love shooting at a moving target. Could you possibly throw in something about Jennifer Ruben's performance in Screamers? That would be really neat. I especially liked the nude scene...
To be perfectly honest, I found the lead character in the novel's fixation with his mechanical sheep quite annoying and an utter waste of time. It's not till later when reality starts to shift on him that he starts to become interesting. As in many of Dick's novels, there are two main phases of the story, and like those the second part is the one that makes it worth reading and the one upon which the movie is mainly based. Does anyone seriously think all that sheep nonsense would have added to the movie?
As for the game, it is based rather closely on the film, down to the characters and the locations and the voice overs (with the exception of Deckard himself). The game provides a good opportunity to examine some of the premises of the movie, including a much better developed version of the Deckard as replicant variant. There are several endings in the game and the points of divergence involve whether Deckard kills the replicant at any particular point.
I really don't see gutting as you describe it. What I see is a different slice taken through the same four-dimensional world. As in most of Dick's novels, he's not telling a story so much as he's describing a world, a world as viewed by an everyman and not a hero. As such, I think it's valid to replace that everyman by another whose experiences may be different but just as interesting, and whose world is the same.
As for kipple, it's just Dick's way of limiting the geography of the world, the way RPGs like to place impenetrable forests and mountains at the edges of their worlds so it's not so obvious you can't get out. The alternative is a barracade on the road as in The Thirteenth Floor, a much less satisfactory device.
So what's the point of all the questions asked in conjunction with the Voight-Kampf test? They virtually all relate to the crime/immorality of killing live animals. There's also the artificial snake scale that points Deckard in the right direction. And the very premise of the movie, the giant corporation that makes replicants--what's the point of replicants if you have plenty of healthy living humans to send offworld? There's not much in the movie that doesn't relate to artificial life forms. It's just not shoved down your throat like it is in the novel. It's a bit more subtle and requires a bit more thought to see it, but it's certainly there. And the kipple does in fact appear in the video game, though it's only hinted at by the polluted atmosphere of the movie and to some degree is transported INTO the city rather than left at the outskirts. In fact, it could be argued that the deserted apartment building in which the engineer lives IS on the outskirts. The dripping water certainly indicates it's in a rather rundown area, and Deckard is actually challenged by the police when he enters the area.
It all depends on how big her boobs are. No this is not off topic. Just think about it with your itty bitty little brain for a couple of weeks and you might get it.
enslaved. Another product of the American educational system, no doubt.
That's when you push the EJECT button. Oh, there's no eject button? Hmmm.
What really annoyed me at the Forbes site was the talking advertisement. I mean, blinky adds aren't annoying enough? Now you gotta watch some dork with a bad haircut drone on about how THEIR brokerage is better than the other guy's brokerage? Do they really expect ANYBODY to come back to their site ever again? Talk about the lunatics running the asylum.
What? They still haven't figured out how to purify water and dispense it through a 5 1/4" drive? Somebody, PLEASE, explain to these guys the difference between an operating system and software!
Naziware is good. Though Fascistware gives you the added satisfaction of picturing the guy hanging upside down by his feet rotting away in the Italian midday sun. Aha! I have had an enlightenment! BONITOWARE! Company motto: "The stink of dead fish but the trains always run on time!"
I am aware of these guys from comments on the aforementioned newsgroups. My general impression is that there is a certain element of jealousy at work. Folks do tend to put Steve Gibson on a pedestal, but only because he writes incredibly efficient programs in machine language that have very small footprints and work quite well. And a lot of the work he does is available for free (but not open-sourced) so there's an element of frustration among the folks who sell what he gives away.
In any event, I find the GRC groups useful especially because they keep me abreast of new security-related software that I, as a private user with no deep understanding of security or programming in general, can take to the bank, so to speak. Whatever Gibson's personal flaws (he is human), he is doing more good than harm, and that's all I can practically expect from someone who holds himself out as an expert. Trolls can always find some genuine reason to complain if they dig deeply enough, but that doesn't make them any less trolls.
Actually, I HAVE dealt with NY camera discounters and my experiences were mostly positive, though "Honest" Abe threw in something or other at one point and charged my credit card for it. No, I was talking about legitimate retailers, some of whom belong to the BBB, like the electronic branch of Office Depot. This is definitely a Samsung-related problem, as I've gotten items from these guys before, though never anything made by a Korean firm.
I just have to wonder if they aren't servicing their full-price resellers first. There was an article recently that repeated a Samsung statement that they saw no price softening in the LCD-TV market over the next year. I just have to wonder if this isn't because of some anti-competitive maneuvers on their part.
Actually, the new Samsungs (including the LTN325W I'm thinking of buying) are rated at 600:1, and I can't even FIND a review of this anywhere. What's really frustrating is that everybody charging full retail price has it in stock, while everyone discounting it doesn't have it. All this supposedly has something to do with their new Taiwan fab plants not coming up to speed as fast as they thought, but I'm a bit skeptical.
You may want to read the newsgroups at www.grc.com. These are all security related and contain information on all the latest software and hardware related thereto.
Just how exactly do these escapees from the loony ward plan on enforcing their little shrink wrap "agreement"? They certainly can't prove a jig was made from their patented jigifier. Oh wait, is it even patented? That's what patent laws are for. You make a jig like our patented jig and we can prosecute you. If they need an "agreement" (that you didn't "agree" to), they must not have a patent. If they did, it would be obvious you were making an infringing product with your new Jiffy Jigifier. So, in essence, they're manufacturing a tool that makes something that's in the public domain; and so they can keep control of their little "open source" product, they add a shrink wrap agreement that says you can't go out and do exactly what they are doing--stealing somebody else's idea because it no longer has patent protection. Sounds more like hypocrisy to me than anything else.
As for it being a "physical object," let's use the drop-it-on-your-foot test. Drop it on your foot and see if it hurts. If it does, it's a physical object. Has everybody lost their blinking minds?
It's called the Law of Mass Action, and it has nothing to do with politics or leaping out at anybody or talking funny or being a Luddite. It's a physical law that simply says that the more reactants you place in a vessel, the more product you're going to get. This applies to guns and it applies to nuclear waste. The more guns in circulation, the more people die. The more radioactive material in circulation, the more people get irradiated. You might as well pump cyanide gas into everybody's house and then pass a law telling them not to breathe for all the good developing "safe" guns or "safe" reactors is going to do.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you can reserve anything you want but you still have to obey the law, and the law says you cannot refuse service to certain people for certain reasons, for instance, their national origin. Just wanted to clarify that in case anyone still thinks signs mean anything. Signs are covered by free expression. They are not necessarily enforceable.
Oh Gee, another billion dollars a week down the old rat hole. Not to mention the exploding kangaroos. They do have kangaroos in New Zealand, don't they?
The SEC Complaint Center: http://www.sec.gov/complaint.shtml
Ask them why exactly they are allowing SCO to inflate their stock price by making phony charges against Linux users. This is no longer an annoyance. It is criminal activity and needs to be handled as such.
This is obviously a joke, but maybe someone SHOULD start asking the SEC--currently up to their ears in mutual fund fraud--why they haven't done anything about this attempt by SCO to inflate their stock price through unsupported charges against other companies. Are they really going to let these characters continue to issue stock on a legitimate exchange? Rather than slashdotting these guys, why not a hundred or so well-written queries of the SEC about the legitimacy of their behavior? Hit the bastards where it really hurts.
"Everyone who gave it two seconds thought had to suspect that Google would be on SCO's radar."
You people sound like the Japanese farmers in The Seven Samurai Film. Radar? You want radar? Everybody even remotely vulnerable to this kind of extortion needs to get together and preemptively hit the bastards with such a barrage of lawsuits their heads will spin. "Licenses? We don't need no stinkin' licenses. You need a good corporate psychiatrist!" See what Wall Street thinks of them apples.
"Not if we can slashdot the hell out of those sites!..."
Why do you guys always think small potatoes?
"The idea behind the suit is obviously to make all major Linux users tractable and make them reach for their checkbooks."
Absolutely. Everybody on that short list and everyone else within range of these cretins should get together, pull out their checkbooks, and sue the bejesus out of SCO. Charge them with extortion and anything else their smartest lawyers can think of. SCO wants to live by lawsuits, let them die by lawsuits. What do you think the Wall Street analysts will think when they find out a hundred companies big and small have gotten together and started the process toward nailing these bastards to the wall? Can you say "penny stock"? Can you say "dead on arrival"?
This is closely related to Franklin's First Law: Whatever you are searching for, there is always a rock group by the same name.
Gee, I love shooting at a moving target. Could you possibly throw in something about Jennifer Ruben's performance in Screamers? That would be really neat. I especially liked the nude scene...
To be perfectly honest, I found the lead character in the novel's fixation with his mechanical sheep quite annoying and an utter waste of time. It's not till later when reality starts to shift on him that he starts to become interesting. As in many of Dick's novels, there are two main phases of the story, and like those the second part is the one that makes it worth reading and the one upon which the movie is mainly based. Does anyone seriously think all that sheep nonsense would have added to the movie?
As for the game, it is based rather closely on the film, down to the characters and the locations and the voice overs (with the exception of Deckard himself). The game provides a good opportunity to examine some of the premises of the movie, including a much better developed version of the Deckard as replicant variant. There are several endings in the game and the points of divergence involve whether Deckard kills the replicant at any particular point.
I really don't see gutting as you describe it. What I see is a different slice taken through the same four-dimensional world. As in most of Dick's novels, he's not telling a story so much as he's describing a world, a world as viewed by an everyman and not a hero. As such, I think it's valid to replace that everyman by another whose experiences may be different but just as interesting, and whose world is the same.
As for kipple, it's just Dick's way of limiting the geography of the world, the way RPGs like to place impenetrable forests and mountains at the edges of their worlds so it's not so obvious you can't get out. The alternative is a barracade on the road as in The Thirteenth Floor, a much less satisfactory device.
So what's the point of all the questions asked in conjunction with the Voight-Kampf test? They virtually all relate to the crime/immorality of killing live animals. There's also the artificial snake scale that points Deckard in the right direction. And the very premise of the movie, the giant corporation that makes replicants--what's the point of replicants if you have plenty of healthy living humans to send offworld? There's not much in the movie that doesn't relate to artificial life forms. It's just not shoved down your throat like it is in the novel. It's a bit more subtle and requires a bit more thought to see it, but it's certainly there. And the kipple does in fact appear in the video game, though it's only hinted at by the polluted atmosphere of the movie and to some degree is transported INTO the city rather than left at the outskirts. In fact, it could be argued that the deserted apartment building in which the engineer lives IS on the outskirts. The dripping water certainly indicates it's in a rather rundown area, and Deckard is actually challenged by the police when he enters the area.
It's a complete novel, not a short story. You obviously haven't read it.
And might I suggest the entire business of the artificial animals does more than hint at some kind of radioactive calamity.
Yes, the SI system is based on the MKS system: Meter, Kilogram, Second.
It all depends on how big her boobs are. No this is not off topic. Just think about it with your itty bitty little brain for a couple of weeks and you might get it.
enslaved. Another product of the American educational system, no doubt.
That's when you push the EJECT button. Oh, there's no eject button? Hmmm.
What really annoyed me at the Forbes site was the talking advertisement. I mean, blinky adds aren't annoying enough? Now you gotta watch some dork with a bad haircut drone on about how THEIR brokerage is better than the other guy's brokerage? Do they really expect ANYBODY to come back to their site ever again? Talk about the lunatics running the asylum.
You need not to mix mathematical parens with non-mathematical, grammatical parens. It gets rather confusing and looks terrible.
;-)
You may be better at mathematics, but I know more about typographical standards.
What? They still haven't figured out how to purify water and dispense it through a 5 1/4" drive? Somebody, PLEASE, explain to these guys the difference between an operating system and software!
One would think they'd use Tron OS, which is open source, as well as being real time.
Naziware is good. Though Fascistware gives you the added satisfaction of picturing the guy hanging upside down by his feet rotting away in the Italian midday sun. Aha! I have had an enlightenment! BONITOWARE! Company motto: "The stink of dead fish but the trains always run on time!"
I am aware of these guys from comments on the aforementioned newsgroups. My general impression is that there is a certain element of jealousy at work. Folks do tend to put Steve Gibson on a pedestal, but only because he writes incredibly efficient programs in machine language that have very small footprints and work quite well. And a lot of the work he does is available for free (but not open-sourced) so there's an element of frustration among the folks who sell what he gives away.
In any event, I find the GRC groups useful especially because they keep me abreast of new security-related software that I, as a private user with no deep understanding of security or programming in general, can take to the bank, so to speak. Whatever Gibson's personal flaws (he is human), he is doing more good than harm, and that's all I can practically expect from someone who holds himself out as an expert. Trolls can always find some genuine reason to complain if they dig deeply enough, but that doesn't make them any less trolls.
Actually, I HAVE dealt with NY camera discounters and my experiences were mostly positive, though "Honest" Abe threw in something or other at one point and charged my credit card for it. No, I was talking about legitimate retailers, some of whom belong to the BBB, like the electronic branch of Office Depot. This is definitely a Samsung-related problem, as I've gotten items from these guys before, though never anything made by a Korean firm.
I just have to wonder if they aren't servicing their full-price resellers first. There was an article recently that repeated a Samsung statement that they saw no price softening in the LCD-TV market over the next year. I just have to wonder if this isn't because of some anti-competitive maneuvers on their part.
Actually, the new Samsungs (including the LTN325W I'm thinking of buying) are rated at 600:1, and I can't even FIND a review of this anywhere. What's really frustrating is that everybody charging full retail price has it in stock, while everyone discounting it doesn't have it. All this supposedly has something to do with their new Taiwan fab plants not coming up to speed as fast as they thought, but I'm a bit skeptical.
You may want to read the newsgroups at www.grc.com. These are all security related and contain information on all the latest software and hardware related thereto.
There's a subtle difference between doing what everybody else (read: MS) is doing and not doing anything wrong.
Just how exactly do these escapees from the loony ward plan on enforcing their little shrink wrap "agreement"? They certainly can't prove a jig was made from their patented jigifier. Oh wait, is it even patented? That's what patent laws are for. You make a jig like our patented jig and we can prosecute you. If they need an "agreement" (that you didn't "agree" to), they must not have a patent. If they did, it would be obvious you were making an infringing product with your new Jiffy Jigifier. So, in essence, they're manufacturing a tool that makes something that's in the public domain; and so they can keep control of their little "open source" product, they add a shrink wrap agreement that says you can't go out and do exactly what they are doing--stealing somebody else's idea because it no longer has patent protection. Sounds more like hypocrisy to me than anything else.
As for it being a "physical object," let's use the drop-it-on-your-foot test. Drop it on your foot and see if it hurts. If it does, it's a physical object. Has everybody lost their blinking minds?
I canned ATT when I realised they were an ad-supported service. They are the last people in the world who should be waving the anti-spam flag.
It's called the Law of Mass Action, and it has nothing to do with politics or leaping out at anybody or talking funny or being a Luddite. It's a physical law that simply says that the more reactants you place in a vessel, the more product you're going to get. This applies to guns and it applies to nuclear waste. The more guns in circulation, the more people die. The more radioactive material in circulation, the more people get irradiated. You might as well pump cyanide gas into everybody's house and then pass a law telling them not to breathe for all the good developing "safe" guns or "safe" reactors is going to do.