Which blizzard was that, the first one, the second one, the seventh one? 6 foot, Cor, you have it lucky. I've never seen so much bloody snow. Every day it comes down, more, more, ever more.
I'm still putting my electronics gear back together after the snow ripped out a window, frame and all, and filled my home with bloody white stuff.
"Hey, how what did you do today?"
"I shoveled out my house."
"Yeah, me too. That's what we all did today."
"No, you don't understand. I shoveled out my *house*."
Then the water pipes gave up. Arrrrrrrrrrgh!
A day of shoveling followed by a day of bailing.
I never want to see snow again. Most of this winter it's been colder here in upstate NY than in Anchorage Alaska. I need to move there for the "good" weather. Who woulda thunk it?
I used to live a few miles from Bromely Mountain in Vermont where they invented the snow gun.
I think I'll send them some friendly hate mail tomorrow.
You know, you should probably file a patent on the non troll troll now.
What I find interesting in all the obits I've read is that none of them really talk about what a controversial figure he sometimes was. He was "Mr. Nice Guy," and he truely was in many ways, but sometimes being Mr. Nice Guy brought him public criticism for it, sometimes perhaps justified.
An interesting man though, and yes, truly an American Icon.
It isn't a question of my privacy. It is a question of my *right* to be secure in my person, home, and papers.
The privacy issue is the privacy of the telemarketer or collection agency. *They* are the ones crying right to "privacy" while trying to devise ways to violate my *right* to be secure in my home by demanding entry without revealing who they are first.
If someone comes to my door wearing a ski mask and asks to be let in but won't tell me who they are, well guess what? *I ain't lettin' 'em in.*
Go figure.
What this software does is allow them to knock on my door and request entry *while disguised as my girlfriend.*
Well, as my dear, sweet, little old granny used to say, " They can blow that shit right out their fuckin' ass!"
Granny was a pisser. I miss the old bat.
Well, I can just pull the plug on the damned phone I guess. The telemarketers get more use out of it than I do. I'm not sure why I bother paying thirty bucks a month so MCI can call me and ask me to pay fifty bucks a month anyway.
I suppose then they'll find a way to legally force me to have a phone as way to protect their "freedom" to try to sell me shit I don't want.
The Fourth Ammendment to the Constitution has as one of its *overt* purposes the prevention of enforcment of certain unjust laws.
The framers knew that sooner or later the government would pass legislation that would be offensive to *the people* in some way because it flew in the face of the American concepts of freedom and individual rights.
If it isn't possible to search people's homes or sieze their papers and property than that entire class of "criminal behaviour" ( like having a meeting about overthrowing the government by force or some such) that took place in one's home and was inherently undetectable from without the home (thus giving your wife a black eye doesn't fall into the catagory) would be unenforcable.
That's the *point* of the bloody thing.
You are right, laws should be obeyed on the "honor system." That's also the bloody point. The entire idea that laws should just be calmly obeyed like sheep being led to the slaughter house is so entirely unamerican it's pathetic.
The American philosophy of law, the Constitution which it spawned, The Federalist Papers written in support of that Constitution and the next 100 years of American literary, legal and cultural history support the idea that Americans can and will simply ingnore unjust laws, and if necessary take up arms against them if they are not changed.
Laws are not the will of the people. Laws are the are the will of a few men on Capital Hill.
The people will have a voice, sooner or later. God help the men on Capital Hill if they don't listen soon enough.
In the "old days" it was done pretty much the same. If you wanted a hit you took Neil Sadaka and/or Carole King and locked them in a room with a piano and didn't let them out until they wrote a hit. Worked every time.
Then you handed it off to Little Eva, or whoever.
Before that even there was "Tin Pan Alley" which gave us such wonders as "How much is that Doggie in the Window." Crap like that resulted in the folk scare of the 40's and 50's.
I still buy the odd CD now and then, but it's "niche" stuff. Willie Dixon, Silly Wizard, I need to complete my Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span collection, Ry Cooder, that sort of thing.
Don't get me going of the AI aspect of this whole thing. Does the program know that people are fickle and get bored? Does it know how to predict what they're going to turn to when they bored? Could it have forcast the folk scare, the advent of swing and jazz?
Not to mention anything by Tom Waits. Oh. Wait. He doesn't have hits. He's just a genius. We're agin those.
Let's see. Warren Zevon, Lyle Lovett? Nope, not as out there as Tom, but not really "marketable." Maybe we'll let 'em write a few "B" side songs and do session work.
Manhatten Transfer. Are you *crazy?* That's jazz. Everyone knows jazz is dead.
Brian Setzer wants to record *what?* Swing? Man, that's just nuts. Swing is deader than jazz.And so is he. Last year's news.
Rickie Lee Jones. Yeah, now we're talkin'. Have her make 12 new versions of "Chuck E's in Love."
Bobby McFerrin. Ok, that's it. You've gone too far now. Get the hell out of my office and don't come back!
Thanks. I'm down to one dearly beloved companion of 16 years, but in my younger days had as many as 16 about the place at a time if you count the kittens.
Sometimes they herded me bloody crazy.
"I am the cat that walks alone and all place are alike to me." - Rudyard Kipling
What I want to know is if all places are alike why they insist on being on top of the turntable when I want to play a record or why they decide they want to sleep on my keyboard just when I want to use the computer.
I'll take your word for it, and I'll give it a shot, but only if you guaruntee me the pain will end eventually.
Things like context and not knowing what's going on don't bother me at all. I watch about three Farscapes a season. I've never got any clue what's going on there either. But it's appealing
I'm not an action movie sort of guy. I like subtlety. I can watch Jane Austen movies that go on for eons with nothing happening, ever, and enjoy every moment of it. I read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for hours at a time, not for the history but just to enjoy the flavor of the language that most people today find impenetrable.
I try to watch Buffy, they say three words, and I'm bored to tears even though I think SMG is about the cutest thing to come down the pike since they invented puppies. I don't know what it is.
I have to admit I don't get this one either. I loved the movie. In fact it's one of my "cult" favorites, but I've never been able to sit through more than about 10 minutes of the TV show.
But yes, I enjoy Farscape. I wouldn't say I "flock" to it, but it's a good show and holds my interest at least.
There's no accounting for taste, and a lot of things simply boil down to that, but it does make me wonder if there's some fundamental aspect of psychology that might make one like one but not the other.
The use of the pacifier predates the existence of extasy.
By decades. In fact, it predates the internet, on which you will not yet find the sum total of human knowledge.
The use of the pacifier by those who take extasy does not constitute drug parapenalia. Nor does it's use have anything to do with it's being an upper per se. People who take dexedrin for example don't use a pacifier.
The use of a pacifier or other suckable items as a method of delivery for LSD does constitute drug paraphenalia. People were doing this before you were born, and if you are as young as you appear perhaps before your mom was born.
Jewelry itself can be made out of pure illegal suckable drugs, but that's another subject.
*Possesion* of a pipe *assumed* to be for smoking an illegal substance is a federal offense.
Ain't it grand?
One of my tobacconists also sells glass pipes. It's no accident that they sell tobacco. It removes the question of assumption.
According to the DoJ *rolling papers* are also now considered "drug paraphenalia" and a federal offense to possess, which will surprise the hell out of a lot of "roll your own" tobacco smokers I know.
When MS first announced they were going into the Office productivity market, then totally dominated by Lotus and Word Perfect, the division head said that MS wanted their fair share of that market, and they considered that fair share to be 100%.
MS isn't mean because they have Office. Office was developed as a tool to be mean with.
MS has been mean since they released their first BASIC interpreter and they aren't hated because they're big. They were hated from day *one.* I remember.
The one thing you have to understand about MS is that it's a cult of personality, and that personality is Bill. The whole history of the company is written in on his soul.
Is to have as few as possible cats to keep track of.
There comes a time when the labor of herding the cats exceeds the value of the labor they produce and the whole thing starts to go downhill.
MS hit that point many years ago. They have a lot of money though, and a profit margin that's nearly obscene, so they can afford a lot of cats, so they get them.
You want more, better, faster product from MS? Cut the staff in half, starting with middle management.
Daimler and Benz invented the automobile working alone. The Wright Bros. invented the aeroplane working alone. It takes a team of engineers and designers 6 months to *two years* to make a change in a Ford's hood ornament.
That would work, *IF* they had the power to halt production until their bug was worked out and got a bonus for doing it.
Dream on.
Most bugs in commercial code exist because the coders work under pressure to a deadline they didn't even have a hand in making. Not because they're bad coders. The quality of the coders is nearly irrelevant, which is why MS can employ so many of the best coders in the world and still turn out crap product.
Many other bugs are introduced as part of the basic architecture by *marketing,* not the coders.(Can you say Outlook Express? I knew you could)
This isn't about good code. It's about marketing product.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, ya got me. :)
KFG
Which blizzard was that, the first one, the second one, the seventh one? 6 foot, Cor, you have it lucky. I've never seen so much bloody snow. Every day it comes down, more, more, ever more.
I'm still putting my electronics gear back together after the snow ripped out a window, frame and all, and filled my home with bloody white stuff.
"Hey, how what did you do today?"
"I shoveled out my house."
"Yeah, me too. That's what we all did today."
"No, you don't understand. I shoveled out my *house*."
Then the water pipes gave up. Arrrrrrrrrrgh!
A day of shoveling followed by a day of bailing.
I never want to see snow again. Most of this winter it's been colder here in upstate NY than in Anchorage Alaska. I need to move there for the "good" weather. Who woulda thunk it?
I used to live a few miles from Bromely Mountain in Vermont where they invented the snow gun.
I think I'll send them some friendly hate mail tomorrow.
KFG
Dude, they're only *pixels.* Lighten up.
Also, at the end of a game of chess no one has *really* commited Regicide. It's just symbolic.
Don't get me going about Chutes and Ladders though. That game is disgusting. Oh, the humanity!
KFG
Nah, I think it probably has something to do with it's being a great game.
Who woulda thunk it, eh?
KFG
You know, you should probably file a patent on the non troll troll now.
What I find interesting in all the obits I've read is that none of them really talk about what a controversial figure he sometimes was. He was "Mr. Nice Guy," and he truely was in many ways, but sometimes being Mr. Nice Guy brought him public criticism for it, sometimes perhaps justified.
An interesting man though, and yes, truly an American Icon.
KFG
Well sure, YOU were the one they falsely billed and didn't pay up, causing them to have to waste time and money harrassing you.
Sheesh. Some people just don't get it.
KFG
Or, one can view it as being fed a straight line, giving one the opportunity to reveal the joke.
Some trolls are just a good respose waiting the happen.
KFG
It isn't a question of my privacy. It is a question of my *right* to be secure in my person, home, and papers.
The privacy issue is the privacy of the telemarketer or collection agency. *They* are the ones crying right to "privacy" while trying to devise ways to violate my *right* to be secure in my home by demanding entry without revealing who they are first.
If someone comes to my door wearing a ski mask and asks to be let in but won't tell me who they are, well guess what? *I ain't lettin' 'em in.*
Go figure.
What this software does is allow them to knock on my door and request entry *while disguised as my girlfriend.*
Well, as my dear, sweet, little old granny used to say, " They can blow that shit right out their fuckin' ass!"
Granny was a pisser. I miss the old bat.
Well, I can just pull the plug on the damned phone I guess. The telemarketers get more use out of it than I do. I'm not sure why I bother paying thirty bucks a month so MCI can call me and ask me to pay fifty bucks a month anyway.
I suppose then they'll find a way to legally force me to have a phone as way to protect their "freedom" to try to sell me shit I don't want.
Oh. Wait. *I didn't say that.*
Oh Shit. Now I've gone and done it.
KFG
Someone is using the wrong organ to "listen" with.
KFG
The Fourth Ammendment to the Constitution has as one of its *overt* purposes the prevention of enforcment of certain unjust laws.
The framers knew that sooner or later the government would pass legislation that would be offensive to *the people* in some way because it flew in the face of the American concepts of freedom and individual rights.
If it isn't possible to search people's homes or sieze their papers and property than that entire class of "criminal behaviour" ( like having a meeting about overthrowing the government by force or some such) that took place in one's home and was inherently undetectable from without the home (thus giving your wife a black eye doesn't fall into the catagory) would be unenforcable.
That's the *point* of the bloody thing.
You are right, laws should be obeyed on the "honor system." That's also the bloody point. The entire idea that laws should just be calmly obeyed like sheep being led to the slaughter house is so entirely unamerican it's pathetic.
The American philosophy of law, the Constitution which it spawned, The Federalist Papers written in support of that Constitution and the next 100 years of American literary, legal and cultural history support the idea that Americans can and will simply ingnore unjust laws, and if necessary take up arms against them if they are not changed.
Laws are not the will of the people. Laws are the are the will of a few men on Capital Hill.
The people will have a voice, sooner or later. God help the men on Capital Hill if they don't listen soon enough.
And then God help us all.
KFG
In the "old days" it was done pretty much the same. If you wanted a hit you took Neil Sadaka and/or Carole King and locked them in a room with a piano and didn't let them out until they wrote a hit. Worked every time.
Then you handed it off to Little Eva, or whoever.
Before that even there was "Tin Pan Alley" which gave us such wonders as "How much is that Doggie in the Window." Crap like that resulted in the folk scare of the 40's and 50's.
I still buy the odd CD now and then, but it's "niche" stuff. Willie Dixon, Silly Wizard, I need to complete my Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span collection, Ry Cooder, that sort of thing.
Don't get me going of the AI aspect of this whole thing. Does the program know that people are fickle and get bored? Does it know how to predict what they're going to turn to when they bored? Could it have forcast the folk scare, the advent of swing and jazz?
Feh!
KFG
Not to mention anything by Tom Waits. Oh. Wait. He doesn't have hits. He's just a genius. We're agin those.
Let's see. Warren Zevon, Lyle Lovett? Nope, not as out there as Tom, but not really "marketable." Maybe we'll let 'em write a few "B" side songs and do session work.
Manhatten Transfer. Are you *crazy?* That's jazz. Everyone knows jazz is dead.
Brian Setzer wants to record *what?* Swing? Man, that's just nuts. Swing is deader than jazz.And so is he. Last year's news.
Rickie Lee Jones. Yeah, now we're talkin'. Have her make 12 new versions of "Chuck E's in Love."
Bobby McFerrin. Ok, that's it. You've gone too far now. Get the hell out of my office and don't come back!
KFG
Thanks. I'm down to one dearly beloved companion of 16 years, but in my younger days had as many as 16 about the place at a time if you count the kittens.
Sometimes they herded me bloody crazy.
"I am the cat that walks alone and all place are alike to me." - Rudyard Kipling
What I want to know is if all places are alike why they insist on being on top of the turntable when I want to play a record or why they decide they want to sleep on my keyboard just when I want to use the computer.
KFG
My favorite is the way hitting the escape key escapes the password to logon to W95/98.
That's like having a car you can start either with the key or just by pushing the big red button on the dashboard.
Oh yeah, really makes *me* want to park the 'Vette at the mall.
KFG
having Britney Spears rerecord the same song over, and over, and over and . . .Arrrrgh! Just shoot me now.
KFG
I'll take your word for it, and I'll give it a shot, but only if you guaruntee me the pain will end eventually.
Things like context and not knowing what's going on don't bother me at all. I watch about three Farscapes a season. I've never got any clue what's going on there either. But it's appealing
I'm not an action movie sort of guy. I like subtlety. I can watch Jane Austen movies that go on for eons with nothing happening, ever, and enjoy every moment of it. I read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for hours at a time, not for the history but just to enjoy the flavor of the language that most people today find impenetrable.
I try to watch Buffy, they say three words, and I'm bored to tears even though I think SMG is about the cutest thing to come down the pike since they invented puppies. I don't know what it is.
KFG
I have to admit I don't get this one either. I loved the movie. In fact it's one of my "cult" favorites, but I've never been able to sit through more than about 10 minutes of the TV show.
But yes, I enjoy Farscape. I wouldn't say I "flock" to it, but it's a good show and holds my interest at least.
There's no accounting for taste, and a lot of things simply boil down to that, but it does make me wonder if there's some fundamental aspect of psychology that might make one like one but not the other.
KFG
The use of the pacifier predates the existence of extasy.
By decades. In fact, it predates the internet, on which you will not yet find the sum total of human knowledge.
The use of the pacifier by those who take extasy does not constitute drug parapenalia. Nor does it's use have anything to do with it's being an upper per se. People who take dexedrin for example don't use a pacifier.
The use of a pacifier or other suckable items as a method of delivery for LSD does constitute drug paraphenalia. People were doing this before you were born, and if you are as young as you appear perhaps before your mom was born.
Jewelry itself can be made out of pure illegal suckable drugs, but that's another subject.
KFG
Children's pacifiers are "drug paraphenalia."
You dip the pacifier in acid and then suck on it. The pacifier itself looks innocent.
That would because it *is,* but tell that to the cop.
I imagine the plastic jewelry is being used similarly.
Anything can drug paraphenalia.
It's doofey. (That's my word of the month, but if this keeps up it may well become the word of my lifetime)
KFG
And what if you want to, say, lend your car to your mom?
This is why I also object to bio-keys.
What am I supposed to do, pry out my eye and give it to my mom so she can run to the store?
It's doofey.
KFG
*Possesion* of a pipe *assumed* to be for smoking an illegal substance is a federal offense.
Ain't it grand?
One of my tobacconists also sells glass pipes. It's no accident that they sell tobacco. It removes the question of assumption.
According to the DoJ *rolling papers* are also now considered "drug paraphenalia" and a federal offense to possess, which will surprise the hell out of a lot of "roll your own" tobacco smokers I know.
KFG
You are correct, and as I said, I can already trust my computer in these regards.
This definition is NOT what MS is talking about when they say "Trustworthy" computing however.
KFG
When MS first announced they were going into the Office productivity market, then totally dominated by Lotus and Word Perfect, the division head said that MS wanted their fair share of that market, and they considered that fair share to be 100%.
MS isn't mean because they have Office. Office was developed as a tool to be mean with.
MS has been mean since they released their first BASIC interpreter and they aren't hated because they're big. They were hated from day *one.* I remember.
The one thing you have to understand about MS is that it's a cult of personality, and that personality is Bill. The whole history of the company is written in on his soul.
God have mercy on it.
KFG
Is to have as few as possible cats to keep track of.
There comes a time when the labor of herding the cats exceeds the value of the labor they produce and the whole thing starts to go downhill.
MS hit that point many years ago. They have a lot of money though, and a profit margin that's nearly obscene, so they can afford a lot of cats, so they get them.
You want more, better, faster product from MS? Cut the staff in half, starting with middle management.
Daimler and Benz invented the automobile working alone. The Wright Bros. invented the aeroplane working alone. It takes a team of engineers and designers 6 months to *two years* to make a change in a Ford's hood ornament.
The man month truly is mythical.
KFG
That would work, *IF* they had the power to halt production until their bug was worked out and got a bonus for doing it.
Dream on.
Most bugs in commercial code exist because the coders work under pressure to a deadline they didn't even have a hand in making. Not because they're bad coders. The quality of the coders is nearly irrelevant, which is why MS can employ so many of the best coders in the world and still turn out crap product.
Many other bugs are introduced as part of the basic architecture by *marketing,* not the coders.(Can you say Outlook Express? I knew you could)
This isn't about good code. It's about marketing product.
KFG