If Japan's citizens did not want to be nuked, then they should have stopped their government from killing millions of Chinese, Filipinos, and other Asian neighbors. They started the killing; then they reaped what they had sowed.
Do I feel sorry they Japanese had to die? Yes. Do I think there was any other choice? No. When someone points a gun at you, you don't hold up a target to help them aim better. You fire back.
There was just recently a slashdot article about Congress passing a law to allow them to monitor what passes through anonymous networks. Many of the EU states have similar capabilities. We look at China as an example of government censorship, but maybe we ought to look at our own homes as well.
ell my Mac with OS9 isn't usable. You can't run Firefox. You can't run Internet Explorer. The old 90s-era Netscape and Opera 6 stil work, but neither properly render the web. ------ Contrast that with Win98 which can run all the latest browsers with virtually no problems. Windows simply has a longer lifespan than MacOS. About twice as long.
>>>Windows 98... only had a life cycle of 2 years
Not even close to accurate. By your logic that 98 was dead upon 2000 or m.e.'s release, then OS X 10.0 had a shitty six months lifespan, and 10.1 had a lousy one year span.
Surrogates is basically a "morality tale" about the internet, where many people spend all day at home and never leave the house, because there's no reason to (even work and shopping can be done from your terminal). The end is about unplugging everyone, so they are forced to go outdoors and be human again.
I thought it was decent - reminiscent of an Elijah Baley story (Isaac Asimov).
>>>poor audio, poor picture, why would you want to see a movie like that?
(1) It's free to download from the comfort of my recliner.
(2) No need to burn gasoline or waste time driving across town.
(3) Most movies are already "poor quality" even in high definition, so it makes no difference. (Seriously; I can't think of one good movie from this year. Hollywood plots have gone into the crapper. The best stories are found on television, or in books.)
That just means when you arrive at the theater, and the owner refuses you entrace, you can yell, "Congratulations dumb shit. You just lost $20 worth of sales," and walk away.
Businessmen hate losing money. It makes them hide in their office and cry. And it gives us, the citizens, power over them.
>>>If a judge makes a ruling "taking away your free speech" then that is the law of the land and must be respected, n
That's what the German Judges believed when they ordered the Jews to be evicted from their homes and sent-off to camps. Those judges were forced to stand in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. The Jews right to life had been violated, and the judges forced to spend time in jail. Relevance to the UK? See below...
>>>It can be overturned in two ways, firstly on appeal to a superior court, and secondly, by act of parliament.
Or thirdly by act of the People from which all power derives. A judge's ruling is only the law of the land if the people obey. The people are not bound to obey unconstitutional rules, and clearly his ruling violated the English Bill of Rights.
A law or ruling that violates that Bill is not a law. It has no power. That's why I said, if it was my newspaper, I'd ignore the ruling and publish anyway. The Right of free speech supersedes any idiot judge's opinion.
>>>Two things you have to consider though, what defines "the middle of nowhere"?
If the Greens had their way, anyplace outside city or town limits should receive ZERO subsidies. They think these subsidies encourage rural and suburban sprawl, which is bad for the environment, and therefore the subsidies should cease ASAP. They are correct on this point (subsidies do encourage sprawl), but I don't think it's possible to squeeze all American inside city limits. It's an unrealistic goal.
>>>I know most Americans get mental anguish just thinking about it, but it's not so bad as it sounds.
Well *this* American has no problems with regulating monopolies like the electric or phone providers. As far as I'm concerned Congress has the right to hold a gun to the temple of the Monopoly's CEO, if they so choose. Let's start with the CEO of the Comcast monopoly.
If the CEO doesn't like it, he has the option to open the market to competition, and give-up his monopoly.
In a hundred years I bet Europeans will be speaking English..........same way that Roman Latin gradually replaced the old Celtic languages in Spain, France, Britannia. People like to communicate, and having multiple languages inside the EU interferes with that goal. English will gradually take-over the EU the same way English replaced German and Dutch after the U.S. was integrated.
I'd be happy with just a new 2010 Civic to replace my old 97 model. So long as I don't have to pay for it, and the bill falls upon my neighbors. Using the government to steal money is fun!
Find any place with Verizon FiOS and you too can have 100 Mbit/s fiber like whoever you were talking to. Meanwhile it's worth noting that guy is the *exception* not the rule, since the average internet speed in Finland is only 6 Mbit/s..... that's less that the U.S. average of ~9 Mbit/s..... and much less than places like Delaware with ~12 Mbit/s.
Of course. The U.S. also pays about 40% in overall taxation, while the Finns pay close to 60% (a huge chunk of which comes from $4/gallon taxation and 20% sales tax). I frankly don't know if it's worth paying an extra 20% in taxation (~$20,000) just so I can upgrade from 750k to 1000k and get my porn down the pipe faster. It's not that important to me.
Plus the world's fastest nation, Japan (16 Mbit/s), isn't using some miracle technology.
Most of the Japanese internet hookups are DSL. The advantage the Japanese have is extremely-short cable runs due to high population densities. The U.S., Canada, Australia, and other sparely population nations don't have that "advantage" of living like sardines in tightly-packed cities.
I have nothing but a phone line, which gives me a noisy 24k or 28k analog connection. Not even cable tv reaches out here (the nearest hookup is about 100 miles south). How much do you think it will cost to dig-up those 100 miles or so of dirt to bring me 1000 kbit/s internet??? POINT: The rural argument has relevance. While it's true a lot of Americans live in cities or suburbs, a lot of Americans don't (approximately 60 million), and anyone who has driven across the 3000 miles of mostly-empty fields between New York and L.A. understands.
Also the U.S. confederation really isn't that slow when compared to other continent-spanning federations or nations:
Russian Federation 8.3 Mbit/s U.S. 7.0 E.U. 6.6 Canada 5.7 Australia 5.1 China 3.0 Brazil 2.1 Mexico 1.1 Mbit/s
>>>Except Americans those days didn't whine, they built roads
Actually there was a LOT of whining from drivers getting stuck in mud, or choking on dust. On enterprising young man named Eisenhower even organized a cross-country military expedition in order to demonstrate to Congress how crappy things were. It wasn't until ~30 years after the invention of cars that roads finally became paved (paid via a gasoline use tax on drivers), and ~60 years later that we got a modern high-speed system of roads (interstates). People were whining the whole time about how slow things were, and eventually they got it.
And now we have people whining that those roads were a mistake, because they encourage urban sprawl, and we should kill cars and replace them with trains instead. (rolls eyes)
Yeah it's a pretty stupid ruling, coming down from people who have no clue. I have a standard-def digital camera that fits inside my palm and can be easily hid inside a suit jacket..... that's all you need, not a laptop.
XP was no more a service pack of 2000, then Win7 is a service pack of Vista. And you say XP only has a long-life by mistake, but Windows 98 has also had a long life - my Win98 laptop is still usable after all these years, and supported by Firefox, Opera, and other browsers. That's equivalent to still using MacOS 9 (which is basically impossible).
>>>What's really sad is that I used to look like that Linux guy (back in college). Despite all my talk about "friends" and "sharing code" I actually had no friends, since my interests were obscure and unsharable.
QUOTE: "Linux works for you, because with youses guys computers, YOU work for the comuputers, and, and, and....." - What's really sad is that I used to look like that Linux guy (back in college). Despite all my talk about "friends" and "sharing code" I actually had no friends, since my interests were obscure and unsharable. I find this video highly accurate.
>>>Mac is your trophy wife with a PHD that doesn't require you to waste time "taking care of her", and she's ready to do anything you want all the time..........but you can't help noticing all your money is disappearing as your trophy wife swipes it from you for frequent OS and hardware upgrades. Also she has a secret love affair with a guy named Steve and obeys him, not you. At that point you decide it would have been cheaper to remain single, get a divorce, and dust-off your old but still-usable XP PC which costs virtually nothing to operate (free SP1/2/3 upgrades; long service life).
Yeah except you were correct because record players and CDs are not the same thing. Record players have the sound physically engraved on the surface, and even though some attempts were made to put records in cars, the vibration of the road were picked-up as sound.
CDs are different. CDs don't record the actual sound but just record the data (1s and 0s) so that even if they vibrate that doesn't become an audible sound on your speakers. Your friend was wrong when he said we'd have record players in cars. Nowadays we don't even have record players in our homes since they were phased out.
>>>The UK does not have a bill of rights... Please read up on UK legal matters as you clearly don't know enough.
I have been suitably reprimanded. Just one question. If the UK doesn't have a bill of rights, then what do you call this document Entitled "The English Bill of Rights" of 1689? - Looks like you don't know much about UK law either, so maybe you ought to step off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
>>>If you accept that freedom of speech can be overridden by libel laws
I don't accept libel or slander laws to be valid. You handle the problem the same way you handle trolls - state the truth, provide the facts, and then ignore the a-hole while people reach their own conclusion. You do not take away a person's right to open his/her mouth and express an opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
If Japan's citizens did not want to be nuked, then they should have stopped their government from killing millions of Chinese, Filipinos, and other Asian neighbors. They started the killing; then they reaped what they had sowed.
Do I feel sorry they Japanese had to die? Yes. Do I think there was any other choice? No. When someone points a gun at you, you don't hold up a target to help them aim better. You fire back.
There was just recently a slashdot article about Congress passing a law to allow them to monitor what passes through anonymous networks. Many of the EU states have similar capabilities. We look at China as an example of government censorship, but maybe we ought to look at our own homes as well.
ell my Mac with OS9 isn't usable. You can't run Firefox. You can't run Internet Explorer. The old 90s-era Netscape and Opera 6 stil work, but neither properly render the web. ------ Contrast that with Win98 which can run all the latest browsers with virtually no problems. Windows simply has a longer lifespan than MacOS. About twice as long.
>>>Windows 98... only had a life cycle of 2 years
Not even close to accurate. By your logic that 98 was dead upon 2000 or m.e.'s release, then OS X 10.0 had a shitty six months lifespan, and 10.1 had a lousy one year span.
Surrogates is basically a "morality tale" about the internet, where many people spend all day at home and never leave the house, because there's no reason to (even work and shopping can be done from your terminal). The end is about unplugging everyone, so they are forced to go outdoors and be human again.
I thought it was decent - reminiscent of an Elijah Baley story (Isaac Asimov).
>>>poor audio, poor picture, why would you want to see a movie like that?
(1) It's free to download from the comfort of my recliner.
(2) No need to burn gasoline or waste time driving across town.
(3) Most movies are already "poor quality" even in high definition, so it makes no difference. (Seriously; I can't think of one good movie from this year. Hollywood plots have gone into the crapper. The best stories are found on television, or in books.)
>>>Your reading skills have failed you.
>>>
>>>what kind of asshole has such a narrow worldview
Thanks. I was just expressing my opinion that this "no laptop" rule won't stop me from carrying a tiny SD cam into a theater. No need to insult me.
That just means when you arrive at the theater, and the owner refuses you entrace, you can yell, "Congratulations dumb shit. You just lost $20 worth of sales," and walk away.
Businessmen hate losing money. It makes them hide in their office and cry. And it gives us, the citizens, power over them.
Hmmmm.
Will knowing these numbers help me procreate before I die?
>>>If a judge makes a ruling "taking away your free speech" then that is the law of the land and must be respected, n
That's what the German Judges believed when they ordered the Jews to be evicted from their homes and sent-off to camps. Those judges were forced to stand in Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. The Jews right to life had been violated, and the judges forced to spend time in jail. Relevance to the UK? See below...
>>>It can be overturned in two ways, firstly on appeal to a superior court, and secondly, by act of parliament.
Or thirdly by act of the People from which all power derives. A judge's ruling is only the law of the land if the people obey. The people are not bound to obey unconstitutional rules, and clearly his ruling violated the English Bill of Rights.
A law or ruling that violates that Bill is not a law. It has no power. That's why I said, if it was my newspaper, I'd ignore the ruling and publish anyway. The Right of free speech supersedes any idiot judge's opinion.
>>>Two things you have to consider though, what defines "the middle of nowhere"?
If the Greens had their way, anyplace outside city or town limits should receive ZERO subsidies. They think these subsidies encourage rural and suburban sprawl, which is bad for the environment, and therefore the subsidies should cease ASAP. They are correct on this point (subsidies do encourage sprawl), but I don't think it's possible to squeeze all American inside city limits. It's an unrealistic goal.
>>>I know most Americans get mental anguish just thinking about it, but it's not so bad as it sounds.
Well *this* American has no problems with regulating monopolies like the electric or phone providers. As far as I'm concerned Congress has the right to hold a gun to the temple of the Monopoly's CEO, if they so choose. Let's start with the CEO of the Comcast monopoly.
If the CEO doesn't like it, he has the option to open the market to competition, and give-up his monopoly.
In a hundred years I bet Europeans will be speaking English..... .....same way that Roman Latin gradually replaced the old Celtic languages in Spain, France, Britannia. People like to communicate, and having multiple languages inside the EU interferes with that goal. English will gradually take-over the EU the same way English replaced German and Dutch after the U.S. was integrated.
Forget the flying car.
I'd be happy with just a new 2010 Civic to replace my old 97 model. So long as I don't have to pay for it, and the bill falls upon my neighbors. Using the government to steal money is fun!
You could just move.
Find any place with Verizon FiOS and you too can have 100 Mbit/s fiber like whoever you were talking to. Meanwhile it's worth noting that guy is the *exception* not the rule, since the average internet speed in Finland is only 6 Mbit/s..... that's less that the U.S. average of ~9 Mbit/s..... and much less than places like Delaware with ~12 Mbit/s.
Of course. The U.S. also pays about 40% in overall taxation, while the Finns pay close to 60% (a huge chunk of which comes from $4/gallon taxation and 20% sales tax). I frankly don't know if it's worth paying an extra 20% in taxation (~$20,000) just so I can upgrade from 750k to 1000k and get my porn down the pipe faster. It's not that important to me.
Plus the world's fastest nation, Japan (16 Mbit/s), isn't using some miracle technology.
Most of the Japanese internet hookups are DSL. The advantage the Japanese have is extremely-short cable runs due to high population densities. The U.S., Canada, Australia, and other sparely population nations don't have that "advantage" of living like sardines in tightly-packed cities.
Hypothetical situation:
I live in Cowpatch Idaho.
I have nothing but a phone line, which gives me a noisy 24k or 28k analog connection. Not even cable tv reaches out here (the nearest hookup is about 100 miles south). How much do you think it will cost to dig-up those 100 miles or so of dirt to bring me 1000 kbit/s internet??? POINT: The rural argument has relevance. While it's true a lot of Americans live in cities or suburbs, a lot of Americans don't (approximately 60 million), and anyone who has driven across the 3000 miles of mostly-empty fields between New York and L.A. understands.
Also the U.S. confederation really isn't that slow when compared to other continent-spanning federations or nations:
Russian Federation 8.3 Mbit/s
U.S. 7.0
E.U. 6.6
Canada 5.7
Australia 5.1
China 3.0
Brazil 2.1
Mexico 1.1 Mbit/s
>>>Except Americans those days didn't whine, they built roads
Actually there was a LOT of whining from drivers getting stuck in mud, or choking on dust. On enterprising young man named Eisenhower even organized a cross-country military expedition in order to demonstrate to Congress how crappy things were. It wasn't until ~30 years after the invention of cars that roads finally became paved (paid via a gasoline use tax on drivers), and ~60 years later that we got a modern high-speed system of roads (interstates). People were whining the whole time about how slow things were, and eventually they got it.
And now we have people whining that those roads were a mistake, because they encourage urban sprawl, and we should kill cars and replace them with trains instead. (rolls eyes)
Yeah it's a pretty stupid ruling, coming down from people who have no clue. I have a standard-def digital camera that fits inside my palm and can be easily hid inside a suit jacket..... that's all you need, not a laptop.
XP was no more a service pack of 2000, then Win7 is a service pack of Vista. And you say XP only has a long-life by mistake, but Windows 98 has also had a long life - my Win98 laptop is still usable after all these years, and supported by Firefox, Opera, and other browsers. That's equivalent to still using MacOS 9 (which is basically impossible).
>>>What's really sad is that I used to look like that Linux guy (back in college). Despite all my talk about "friends" and "sharing code" I actually had no friends, since my interests were obscure and unsharable.
- The Return of the Geek -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjpn3L3bSJQ
- Geek #2 BSD (whatever the frak that is)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFAJDbV9Vfs
- AmigaOS (8 second reboot)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp0ukoM_rNQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qw66688OCho (x86 version)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mg6wrYCT9Q
Another video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmbfWayfikY PC gets an upgrade; Mac gets terminated & replaced.
I've been waiting for a chance to dust-off this video. And here it is:
PC v. Mac v. Linux - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-L-0s-7-Z0
QUOTE: "Linux works for you, because with youses guys computers, YOU work for the comuputers, and, and, and....." - What's really sad is that I used to look like that Linux guy (back in college). Despite all my talk about "friends" and "sharing code" I actually had no friends, since my interests were obscure and unsharable. I find this video highly accurate.
>>>Mac is your trophy wife with a PHD that doesn't require you to waste time "taking care of her", and she's ready to do anything you want all the time..... .....but you can't help noticing all your money is disappearing as your trophy wife swipes it from you for frequent OS and hardware upgrades. Also she has a secret love affair with a guy named Steve and obeys him, not you. At that point you decide it would have been cheaper to remain single, get a divorce, and dust-off your old but still-usable XP PC which costs virtually nothing to operate (free SP1/2/3 upgrades; long service life).
Yeah except you were correct because record players and CDs are not the same thing. Record players have the sound physically engraved on the surface, and even though some attempts were made to put records in cars, the vibration of the road were picked-up as sound.
CDs are different. CDs don't record the actual sound but just record the data (1s and 0s) so that even if they vibrate that doesn't become an audible sound on your speakers. Your friend was wrong when he said we'd have record players in cars. Nowadays we don't even have record players in our homes since they were phased out.
>>>The UK does not have a bill of rights... Please read up on UK legal matters as you clearly don't know enough.
I have been suitably reprimanded. Just one question. If the UK doesn't have a bill of rights, then what do you call this document Entitled "The English Bill of Rights" of 1689? - Looks like you don't know much about UK law either, so maybe you ought to step off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
>>>If you accept that freedom of speech can be overridden by libel laws
I don't accept libel or slander laws to be valid. You handle the problem the same way you handle trolls - state the truth, provide the facts, and then ignore the a-hole while people reach their own conclusion. You do not take away a person's right to open his/her mouth and express an opinion.