Rather, they're BUYING the drugs in the process of establishing their cover, and also as a means of proving that someone is a dealer. The bottom line is that this mythical "street value" is a function of how much they are claiming they had to spend for the drugs on their expense accounts.;-)
These are the same "statisticians" who think that the continual seizing of multimillions of dollars worth of drugs ("street value" of course) equates somehow to "winning the war on drugs." The RIAA's logic assumes that there is an infinite demand for pirated CDs and that, therefore, any increase in speed of reproduction equates to an increase in sales. No wonder, is it not, that they can't wrap their brains around the idea of increased sales through increased exposure? These characters cannot grasp the very simplest concepts of economics. Would anyone wish to speculate on whether this results from a perspective hatched in the very nest of monopoly conditions?
Hey, this is a film that was sold as science fiction. I went to see it as science fiction. I didn't go to see an "art movie." But assuming it is in fact an art movie, it is in my estimation the second worst art movie ever made. And this is not trolling. You can read my other posts if you have any doubt as to my seriousness. I could care less about your stupid reaction. How's that for a non sequiter? You don't suppose you may just not understand the connection?
I didn't "pepper" anything with Marienbad. I mentioned it because it is the worst movie ever made. I don't look at it often for obvious reasons, but as I remember it it's a series of disjointed camera pans of what appears to be an estate somewhere in central Europe. There's no plot, no characterization, the camera work stinks (I know, that's not a technical term), it is in fact missing everything that makes a movie a movie, except that it was made with a movie camera and presumably edited in some way.
The reason Solaris comes in second is that there is actually something happening. Some guy who should know better (he's a psychiatrist after all) is having these hallucinations that turn out later not to be hallucinations but visitations from Stanislaw Lem's Soviet Era version of angels. This is why Lem wrote "science fiction," so he could write about stuff that he couldn't in any other media under Communism.
Most of my other criticisms of Marienbad apply to Solaris. There's no plot beyond some silly transformation of a psychiatrist into an angel, little characterization beyond a nut job who turns out to be another angel and a cosmonaut who thinks she's in a battle with aliens. The visuals are as dull and boring as Marienbad: a floating metal tin can orbiting over something the author can't quite decide is a planet or a star, images of Solaris that could have been done by a third year cinema student, and a 5 foot high image of George Clooney's ass.
The worst part of all is the dumb look on the face of this supposedly educated psychiatrist. Maybe it's just Clooney's inability to act very well, I don't know, but I kept thinking to myself, "this guy looks like Phil Michelson trying to figure out how to catch up to Tiger Woods." All he needed was a golf club. It would have made the movie more interesting.
Ascribing the film's badness to my inability to think deeply is an old ploy. "You just don't understand the intricacies of the bathometric accelerator." It's not that the guy's a quack or anything. There's an old children's story that deals with the same syndrome. It's called The Emperor's New Clothes.
Keep in mind that these same guys think Solaris is a good movie, whereas it is arguably the second worst movie ever made. Last Year at Marienbad will forever remain the worst. There are actually some strong similarities between the two. It is almost as difficult to figure out what the heck is going on in Solaris as it is in Marienbad. There is a bit more characterization in Solaris. A very little bit.
If you're outside of Baltimore, Bainesville (off of 695)'s pretty good for parts. They have a dynamite connector area too. If I need something now and don't want to wait for delivery I just run up there.
Actually, their original rationale was to collect addresses for their sale catalogues that they mass mailed. At some point they stopped sending them and that was when I told them, "No, you can't have my name and address." Didn't seem to phase the clerks any. It's not like they wouldn't sell to you or something.
On a similar note, in Maryland, it's no longer legal to ask for your phone number when making a credit purchase unless their's some valid reason for collecting it, like they actually need to call you up or something.
The media companies would argue that part of the value of their product is "missing." The argument's a little convoluted but I wouldn't disagree with it completely. Even more convoluted would be the argument that the "thief" has somehow not just stolen the merchandise but has usurped the ability of the manufacturer to determine how much product is manufactured, which itself affects the value of his product. Ask any physician if he'd like alternate educational systems cranking out thousands of doctors that would compete directly with him and you would get the same reaction. Nobody likes competition. Whether it's actually stealing, I'm not sure it really matters.
This is not to say I like the bastards telling me I can't make a copy of something I bought for my own use.
Gee, I wonder what the native inhabitants called it before the Nationalists invaded and set up a military dictatorship? You don't suppose they used the Portuguese name because no one recognized their native name for it?
One also has to wonder when the Chinese are going to rename Tibet.
No, I am not a Conservative. I just don't like oligarchs. Something about my ancestors living under the damned Czar for too long.
Formerly known as Nationalist China, now referred to by anyone who doesn't want to anger the Butchers of Beijing as "Taiwan," the Chinese name for the island of Formosa. Isn't political correctness wonderful?
"The Space Islands Project [cyberg8t.com] -- their website looks defunct now, but what a terrific idea! Great post, by the way!"
This makes SO much sense! And imagine what you could do if you redesigned the engines to make them even more practical building blocks. You'd think that usage of these virtually free resources would have been designed into the project from the very beginning. And think of what you could do if a little effort were made to reuse some of the "expendable" junk launched into orbit every year. One begins to wonder if the whole point of NASA isn't to spend vast quantities of money on pet projects that enrich favored contractors at the expense of real exploration. But that's another episode....
4 fans. Aluminum case. 6 GB WD IDE 4+ years old. 18 GB Seagate SCSI 2+ years old. So far, no problems. I would imagine cooling is one of the big factors, as you suggest.
"...Russell, who along with Whitehead authored Principia Mathematica in an effort to base logic in arithmetic..."
As can be seen in Universal Algebra, their approach is algebraic, not arithmetical. It involves the manipulation of equations, not the calculation of numerical values, in the service of determinating truth and falsehood.
"God is all knowing, all powerful, and all loving. Because he is all knowing, he knows all the possible worlds he could have made. Because he's all poweful, he could make any worlds he knows. And because he's all-loving, he would only make the best of all the possible worlds for us of those that he knows (all of them) and can make (all of them)."
And that, dear children, is how the rabbit lost his tail....
What so amazes me is how people with such idiotic ideas rattling around in their heads could have actually found enough properly functioning brain cells to solve major problems in physics.
"which I would sign it again today if it was needed"
No comment required on the above. These are indeed Asscraft's constituents.
The above story describes a classic example of a technical fix for what is essentially a political problem. That congress would even consider a bill legalizing such nefarious activity on the part of a corporate elite speaks volumes about who these people in Washington really are. Though I do believe that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is only a matter of degree, I must say that Asscraft has taken political demagoguery to a level heretofore unknown since the invention of writing.
"Lobbying against the rightwing Republicans and Ashcroft is a good thing."
I would only amend this to say that "lobbying against the rightwing" politicians of whatever party "is a good thing." I would also dare to suggest that lobbying against leftwing politicians who have fallen under the charm of massive corporate campaign contributions to the extent that they support bozo legislation that can only lead to a technological spy-vs-spy series of escalating dirty tricks is a good thing.
Keep in mind that the distance eastward along the equator from where it crosses western South America to where it crosses Sumatra is the same as it is going in the opposite direction. The Pacific Ocean is huge. The advantage of going westward from Europe to Asia across upper North America would thus appear to be as much in that it takes the trip farther north as in that it is a more direct route.
never should have received degrees in the first place. The idea that truth can be received from some magic book passed down from a bunch of characters in robes a couple of thousand years ago flies in the face of the whole concept of determining truth through experimentation and observation. I wonder how many of this 5% of "scientists" really do hard science and how many are just technicians and/or practitioners of soft "sciences" like psychology. As for evolution being directed from outside, this was pretty much the idea of Henri Bergson expressed in his book, "Creative Evolution."
"Only 5 percent endorsed a creationist view that God created humans 'pretty much in their present form at one time within the past 10,000 years.'"
"Seriously, though, proper presentation of content ensures that the content is being accurately conveyed and is comprehensible."
I'm just trying to fathom where the blinking red windows and flashing "YOU WON" ads and X-10 pop-ups fit into this paradigm of "proper presentation." And don't leave out the Flash animations that take 15 minutes to load over dial-up. I can't help but think of the Sony Pictures website for "Swept Away." The movie can just barely get distribution in major cities and they've got real live employees building cutsy websites.
As far as I am personally concerned, the web is a cross between high tech mailorder and the old amateur mags (zines, fan- and otherwise) of yesteryear. That corporations seem to think it's a good substitute for web-offset and gravure printed glossy brochures is just hilarious. Those, of course, always did fall under the advertising department.
Wait till the patent holders get hit with a wrongful death suit or a thousand. We'll see how these priests of the God of Capitalism look after that little fiasco.
And what happens if this thing grabs a hold of an extension cord or antenna rotator wire or speaker wire that's too close to the floor or far from the wall? Does it just keep right on chugging until it has ripped your TV off the table or your monitor off your desk or your 100 lb speaker onto your cat and killed it (or a small child!) and done enough damage to cost you more than a maid would for 6 months? Not as dangerous as a robot lawnmower, I would expect, but dangerous enough. The prep for operating this thing must rival pre-washing dishes in sheer lunacy.
Well, having grown up with phony TV testimonials, at least, in that instance, I know I'm being lied to. There's something theatrical about TV so it's almost understandable that they'd want to tell a little story in a commercial. What irks me about these latest episodes is that they are creating a little alternate reality--phony email address, phony picture, phony personality, committee produced content, etc. I'm used to seeing a pen name used on a cheap spy novel. But when I go to a website called DaveCentral and there's a picture of "Dave" and the site purports to be the creation of one "Dave" and there's no indication otherwise, and there's an email for "Dave," then it begins to degrade the whole reality of the internet. You begin to doubt your own senses. You see a picture of some "terrorist" and you think to yourself, is this guy for real or is he just an actor? You also begin to understand how whole populations around the world can wonder whether 9/11 wasn't the work of the CIA. Their main exposure to American culture has been through products that are sold using deceptive advertising and American politicians who have been elected by lying louder and better than their opponents. Lying may not be illegal, but like any other human activity, it is not without its consequences. What these folks don't seem to have figured out is that by creating their little fantasy worlds, they devalue that reality.
"What I really want in storage is already covered by the CD, the floppy, and the DVD (though DVD is a little expensive"
This would be the ideal solution to the storage problem with increasingly larger digital camera images--along the lines of the Sony CD1000 that uses mini CDs.
Considering I just heard from Cringely that he didn't even know about an article on the PBS website next to his picture whose facts I had questioned, I'm beginning to think there's a bit more deception on the web than even I ever thought. There seems to be a real epidemic of false persons whose "pictures" are of some random person who just happens to have a nice face. Makes you wonder if old Osama isn't just some actor too, created to put a face on the faceless terrorists. Of course, I'm not surprised that M$ is engaged in this. That PBS would do it is a bit disconcerting. "Dave" of Dave Central falls somewhere in the middle.
Slashdot Mirror
Rather, they're BUYING the drugs in the process of establishing their cover, and also as a means of proving that someone is a dealer. The bottom line is that this mythical "street value" is a function of how much they are claiming they had to spend for the drugs on their expense accounts. ;-)
These are the same "statisticians" who think that the continual seizing of multimillions of dollars worth of drugs ("street value" of course) equates somehow to "winning the war on drugs." The RIAA's logic assumes that there is an infinite demand for pirated CDs and that, therefore, any increase in speed of reproduction equates to an increase in sales. No wonder, is it not, that they can't wrap their brains around the idea of increased sales through increased exposure? These characters cannot grasp the very simplest concepts of economics. Would anyone wish to speculate on whether this results from a perspective hatched in the very nest of monopoly conditions?
Hey, this is a film that was sold as science fiction. I went to see it as science fiction. I didn't go to see an "art movie." But assuming it is in fact an art movie, it is in my estimation the second worst art movie ever made. And this is not trolling. You can read my other posts if you have any doubt as to my seriousness. I could care less about your stupid reaction. How's that for a non sequiter? You don't suppose you may just not understand the connection?
I didn't "pepper" anything with Marienbad. I mentioned it because it is the worst movie ever made. I don't look at it often for obvious reasons, but as I remember it it's a series of disjointed camera pans of what appears to be an estate somewhere in central Europe. There's no plot, no characterization, the camera work stinks (I know, that's not a technical term), it is in fact missing everything that makes a movie a movie, except that it was made with a movie camera and presumably edited in some way.
The reason Solaris comes in second is that there is actually something happening. Some guy who should know better (he's a psychiatrist after all) is having these hallucinations that turn out later not to be hallucinations but visitations from Stanislaw Lem's Soviet Era version of angels. This is why Lem wrote "science fiction," so he could write about stuff that he couldn't in any other media under Communism.
Most of my other criticisms of Marienbad apply to Solaris. There's no plot beyond some silly transformation of a psychiatrist into an angel, little characterization beyond a nut job who turns out to be another angel and a cosmonaut who thinks she's in a battle with aliens. The visuals are as dull and boring as Marienbad: a floating metal tin can orbiting over something the author can't quite decide is a planet or a star, images of Solaris that could have been done by a third year cinema student, and a 5 foot high image of George Clooney's ass.
The worst part of all is the dumb look on the face of this supposedly educated psychiatrist. Maybe it's just Clooney's inability to act very well, I don't know, but I kept thinking to myself, "this guy looks like Phil Michelson trying to figure out how to catch up to Tiger Woods." All he needed was a golf club. It would have made the movie more interesting.
Ascribing the film's badness to my inability to think deeply is an old ploy. "You just don't understand the intricacies of the bathometric accelerator." It's not that the guy's a quack or anything. There's an old children's story that deals with the same syndrome. It's called The Emperor's New Clothes.
Keep in mind that these same guys think Solaris is a good movie, whereas it is arguably the second worst movie ever made. Last Year at Marienbad will forever remain the worst. There are actually some strong similarities between the two. It is almost as difficult to figure out what the heck is going on in Solaris as it is in Marienbad. There is a bit more characterization in Solaris. A very little bit.
If you're outside of Baltimore, Bainesville (off of 695)'s pretty good for parts. They have a dynamite connector area too. If I need something now and don't want to wait for delivery I just run up there.
Actually, their original rationale was to collect addresses for their sale catalogues that they mass mailed. At some point they stopped sending them and that was when I told them, "No, you can't have my name and address." Didn't seem to phase the clerks any. It's not like they wouldn't sell to you or something.
On a similar note, in Maryland, it's no longer legal to ask for your phone number when making a credit purchase unless their's some valid reason for collecting it, like they actually need to call you up or something.
"Nothing has been 'taken,' nothing is 'missing,'"
The media companies would argue that part of the value of their product is "missing." The argument's a little convoluted but I wouldn't disagree with it completely. Even more convoluted would be the argument that the "thief" has somehow not just stolen the merchandise but has usurped the ability of the manufacturer to determine how much product is manufactured, which itself affects the value of his product. Ask any physician if he'd like alternate educational systems cranking out thousands of doctors that would compete directly with him and you would get the same reaction. Nobody likes competition. Whether it's actually stealing, I'm not sure it really matters.
This is not to say I like the bastards telling me I can't make a copy of something I bought for my own use.
Gee, I wonder what the native inhabitants called it before the Nationalists invaded and set up a military dictatorship? You don't suppose they used the Portuguese name because no one recognized their native name for it?
One also has to wonder when the Chinese are going to rename Tibet.
No, I am not a Conservative. I just don't like oligarchs. Something about my ancestors living under the damned Czar for too long.
Formerly known as Nationalist China, now referred to by anyone who doesn't want to anger the Butchers of Beijing as "Taiwan," the Chinese name for the island of Formosa. Isn't political correctness wonderful?
"The Space Islands Project [cyberg8t.com] -- their website looks defunct now, but what a terrific idea! Great post, by the way!"
This makes SO much sense! And imagine what you could do if you redesigned the engines to make them even more practical building blocks. You'd think that usage of these virtually free resources would have been designed into the project from the very beginning. And think of what you could do if a little effort were made to reuse some of the "expendable" junk launched into orbit every year. One begins to wonder if the whole point of NASA isn't to spend vast quantities of money on pet projects that enrich favored contractors at the expense of real exploration. But that's another episode....
"...give it room to breathe!"
4 fans. Aluminum case. 6 GB WD IDE 4+ years old. 18 GB Seagate SCSI 2+ years old. So far, no problems. I would imagine cooling is one of the big factors, as you suggest.
"...Russell, who along with Whitehead authored Principia Mathematica in an effort to base logic in arithmetic..."
As can be seen in Universal Algebra, their approach is algebraic, not arithmetical. It involves the manipulation of equations, not the calculation of numerical values, in the service of determinating truth and falsehood.
"God is all knowing, all powerful, and all loving. Because he is all knowing, he knows all the possible worlds he could have made. Because he's all poweful, he could make any worlds he knows. And because he's all-loving, he would only make the best of all the possible worlds for us of those that he knows (all of them) and can make (all of them)."
And that, dear children, is how the rabbit lost his tail....
What so amazes me is how people with such idiotic ideas rattling around in their heads could have actually found enough properly functioning brain cells to solve major problems in physics.
"which I would sign it again today if it was needed"
No comment required on the above. These are indeed Asscraft's constituents.
The above story describes a classic example of a technical fix for what is essentially a political problem. That congress would even consider a bill legalizing such nefarious activity on the part of a corporate elite speaks volumes about who these people in Washington really are. Though I do believe that the difference between Republicans and Democrats is only a matter of degree, I must say that Asscraft has taken political demagoguery to a level heretofore unknown since the invention of writing.
"Lobbying against the rightwing Republicans and Ashcroft is a good thing."
I would only amend this to say that "lobbying against the rightwing" politicians of whatever party "is a good thing." I would also dare to suggest that lobbying against leftwing politicians who have fallen under the charm of massive corporate campaign contributions to the extent that they support bozo legislation that can only lead to a technological spy-vs-spy series of escalating dirty tricks is a good thing.
Keep in mind that the distance eastward along the equator from where it crosses western South America to where it crosses Sumatra is the same as it is going in the opposite direction. The Pacific Ocean is huge. The advantage of going westward from Europe to Asia across upper North America would thus appear to be as much in that it takes the trip farther north as in that it is a more direct route.
never should have received degrees in the first place. The idea that truth can be received from some magic book passed down from a bunch of characters in robes a couple of thousand years ago flies in the face of the whole concept of determining truth through experimentation and observation. I wonder how many of this 5% of "scientists" really do hard science and how many are just technicians and/or practitioners of soft "sciences" like psychology. As for evolution being directed from outside, this was pretty much the idea of Henri Bergson expressed in his book, "Creative Evolution."
"Only 5 percent endorsed a creationist view that God created humans 'pretty much in their present form at one time within the past 10,000 years.'"
Roger Zelazny did several books from various religious perspectives also, for example "Lord of Light," all from a decidedly SF perspective of course.
"Seriously, though, proper presentation of content ensures that the content is being accurately conveyed and is comprehensible."
I'm just trying to fathom where the blinking red windows and flashing "YOU WON" ads and X-10 pop-ups fit into this paradigm of "proper presentation." And don't leave out the Flash animations that take 15 minutes to load over dial-up. I can't help but think of the Sony Pictures website for "Swept Away." The movie can just barely get distribution in major cities and they've got real live employees building cutsy websites.
As far as I am personally concerned, the web is a cross between high tech mailorder and the old amateur mags (zines, fan- and otherwise) of yesteryear. That corporations seem to think it's a good substitute for web-offset and gravure printed glossy brochures is just hilarious. Those, of course, always did fall under the advertising department.
I always figured the problem with a home supercomputer would be the electric bill. Am I wrong about that?
Wait till the patent holders get hit with a wrongful death suit or a thousand. We'll see how these priests of the God of Capitalism look after that little fiasco.
And what happens if this thing grabs a hold of an extension cord or antenna rotator wire or speaker wire that's too close to the floor or far from the wall? Does it just keep right on chugging until it has ripped your TV off the table or your monitor off your desk or your 100 lb speaker onto your cat and killed it (or a small child!) and done enough damage to cost you more than a maid would for 6 months? Not as dangerous as a robot lawnmower, I would expect, but dangerous enough. The prep for operating this thing must rival pre-washing dishes in sheer lunacy.
Well, having grown up with phony TV testimonials, at least, in that instance, I know I'm being lied to. There's something theatrical about TV so it's almost understandable that they'd want to tell a little story in a commercial. What irks me about these latest episodes is that they are creating a little alternate reality--phony email address, phony picture, phony personality, committee produced content, etc. I'm used to seeing a pen name used on a cheap spy novel. But when I go to a website called DaveCentral and there's a picture of "Dave" and the site purports to be the creation of one "Dave" and there's no indication otherwise, and there's an email for "Dave," then it begins to degrade the whole reality of the internet. You begin to doubt your own senses. You see a picture of some "terrorist" and you think to yourself, is this guy for real or is he just an actor? You also begin to understand how whole populations around the world can wonder whether 9/11 wasn't the work of the CIA. Their main exposure to American culture has been through products that are sold using deceptive advertising and American politicians who have been elected by lying louder and better than their opponents. Lying may not be illegal, but like any other human activity, it is not without its consequences. What these folks don't seem to have figured out is that by creating their little fantasy worlds, they devalue that reality.
"What I really want in storage is already covered by the CD, the floppy, and the DVD (though DVD is a little expensive"
This would be the ideal solution to the storage problem with increasingly larger digital camera images--along the lines of the Sony CD1000 that uses mini CDs.
Yeah. He actually blamed it on the OTHER Cringely until I sent him a link.
So, who's the guy on PBS? Is he a fraud too?
Considering I just heard from Cringely that he didn't even know about an article on the PBS website next to his picture whose facts I had questioned, I'm beginning to think there's a bit more deception on the web than even I ever thought. There seems to be a real epidemic of false persons whose "pictures" are of some random person who just happens to have a nice face. Makes you wonder if old Osama isn't just some actor too, created to put a face on the faceless terrorists. Of course, I'm not surprised that M$ is engaged in this. That PBS would do it is a bit disconcerting. "Dave" of Dave Central falls somewhere in the middle.