The same way in which one writes a review without running it through a spell checker ("laiden"?), grammar checker (please make sure your nouns and verbs agree on plurality), or even understanding common turns of phrase ("grippy story"? I think you mean "gripping").
Pot. Kettle. Black. --- Refers to the aphorism: "the pot calling the kettle black." Used when indicating that a person is accusing someone else of something the accuser is him- or herself guilty of.
In other words, it is not a defense against the original charge, but a claim that the accuser is hypocritical.
This link has popped up a few places today, but just in case you missed it: the SF Chronicle did an interview with Fripp back in 1996, in which he talked about developing the startup sound to Windows 95.
I'm kind of a Fripp fan, so I got a kick out of reading this:
Q: How did you come to compose ``The Microsoft Sound''?
A: The idea came up at the time when I was completely bereft of ideas. I'd been working on my own music for a while and was quite lost, actually. And I really appreciated someone coming along and saying, ``Here's a specific problem -- solve it.''
The thing from the agency said, ``We want a piece of music that is inspiring, universal, blah- blah, da-da-da, optimistic, futuristic, sentimental, emotional,'' this whole list of adjectives, and then at the bottom it said ``and it must be 3 1/4 seconds long.''
I thought this was so funny and an amazing thought to actually try to make a little piece of music. It's like making a tiny little jewel.
See, she was an anthropology major in college. Back before we got married, we were hanging out in the living room, post-movie-watching, and having one of those shmoopy "gazing into each other's eyes" moments. She reached up to stroke my hair, then looked startled.
"Hey. Did you hit your head?"
Her hand was on the back of my head, right above the neck.
"Huh? No. Oh, that bump? I've had that forever."
She laughed. "That's an occipital bun." When I looked puzzled, she explained what it meant. Then her eyes widened. "And you... you have a supra-orbital ridge!" I knew what that one was, but I wasn't expecting what she said next.
As if she'd discovered something either fantastic or fantastically gross, she leaned in and whispered, her voice full of wonder: "You're a Neanderthal!
All you geeks can thank me for your big brains. Preferably with cash.
Well... honestly, I don't know. I hadn't thought about it. I like objects.:)
I guess what I meant was, "Good if you're a fan of objects, whatever if you're not."
Re:Ruby!
on
The Ruby Way
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Perl and Ruby have a lot in common, but they also have some extremely big differences. Probably the biggest is that Ruby is a real, honest to god Object Oriented Language. Perl ain't - it's object support is essentially bolted on. Good if you're not a big fan of objects, bad if you're not.
For a better list of differences/similarities, try here.
If a man cuts his finger off while slicing salami at work, he sues the restaurant. If you smoke three packs a day for 40 years and die of lung cancer, your family sues the tobacco company. If your neighbor crashes into a tree while driving home drunk, he sues the bartender...
Interestingly, in all of the instances you mention, you claim that it's the "victim" who does the suing.
Here's a thought: rather than blaming lawyers for accepting money for litigating cases - which is, after all, how they make a living - how about you exhort litigants, aka "regular folks," to stop suing people?
I linked to a site which had a video of Andrew Card, on The Today Show, blaming the New York Times, with an accompanying transcript.
I understand that all the progressive over there might scare you, but come on, it's W's former chief of staff being interviewed by Matt Lauer on that video. Surely you can brave the scary hippie vibes long enough to click play.
So you're saying that this isn't proof that Saddam had the ability to build a bomb in less than a year.
BUT you're saying that it is instructions for someone ELSE to build a bomb within a year.
Where you're correct: Yes, I am saying Saddam did not have the ability to build a bomb in less than a year. And I am also saying that the documents contained instructions on how to build a bomb, although I wouldn't care to speculate on a time frame.
Here's why you're utterly mistaken: the instructions were from 1991.
The Duelfer report made clear that by the time of the second Gulf war, Hussein's nuclear program was essentially nowhere. Courtesy of The Washington Post:
Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration chose to complete the U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, said Hussein's ability to produce nuclear weapons had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Inspectors, he said, found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program." - The Washington Post, Oct 7, 2004
Got it? 1991, Hussein had at least some measure of a nuclear weapons program. 2002, not so much.
The truly predictable thing about this mess is that Republicans have been asserting that this is a) proof that Hussein was within a year of building a nuclear bomb (it isn't), and b) that this is the NYT's fault.
I mean, nevermind that righty-blogs were falling all over themselves pressing for the release of these. Somehow, they were convicned that opening these documents would unleash an "Army of Davids," and the President pushed to have the documents declassified and published before anyone had the chance to read them. Now that it turns out that, oops, hey, instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb are in there, Andrew Card is blaming - who else? - the NYT.
And this is after they'd already found instructions on how to make sarin in there.
Heh. This is a bit off topic, since I actually quit this position rather than getting laid off, but the story goes like this:
1. My kid is born. She has signifigant health problems. I warn my boss that I'm going to need to take an extended leave because she can't be put into day care, but since I have a big chunk of paid leave time saved up, it shouldn't be a problem. He says, basically, "cool." 2. A week before my leave is to start, my boss hands me a list of dates for which I am "approved for leave." Notably absent: most of the next week, as well as a handful of days sprinkled in later on. Immediately after giving me the list, he leaves to go on vacation. 3. HR, after first suggesting I talk it out with my boss (who is on vacation) asks if it's possible for me to bring my kid to work with me. I explain - again - that toting an infant with a compromised immune system around the office, where I'm expected to crawl under desks and do wiring, and where hundreds of people pass through every day, is not smart. Eventually I get someone to fess up that I can take the whole time unpaid through the Family Medical Leave Act (the one which this Congress has attempted several times to repeal). My wife works, so I take the time off unpaid.
It could have ended here, but my boss was angry at me for what he perceived as a slight. And so:
4. I start getting e-mails from work asking me to do remote administration tasks from home. I do, and submit my hours at the end of the week (remember, I'm on unpaid leave). The boss, angry, sends out an e-mail to his staff demanding that nobody request any of my time without clearing it through him first. 5. More requests come in. I fulfill them, submit the hours. The boss demands to know why I worked without consulting him: I forward him the requests, and ask him to take it up with the people requesting the work (all of whom report to him). He responds that since some of the work should have been done before I left - not that he said anything at the time - he isn't paying. 6. I get an offer for a new job with a 50% increase in salary. I fax the boss my very polite resignation, then go and collect a check for all the leave time I had saved up and was denied the use of.
Don't mistreat your workers. Sooner or later, it bites you on the ass.
The sound was all that level had going for it, though. The "running through the trail of blood" puzzle was just annoying.
On the other hand... man, the sound was freaky.
Re:Half Life 2, Ravenholm
on
Games and Fear
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· Score: 1
Yeah... although I have to say that as soon as the level started, I groaned a little. "Crap. Another one of these "scaaaaary" levels." I'm tired of them.
And since my computer is pretty much obsolete, the worst thing about the steroid zombie things for me was that by the time I heard one, I knew that my framerate was going to drop to 1 frame every other seconds. *Screeeeech* *rending and slapping sounds, with accompanying slide show*. "Whoops. Guess I'm dead."
As Benjamin Disraeli (or Mark Twain, or was it Lord Courtney? who knows...) might have said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and web analytics."
I've had iTunes stop me from burning the track "Good Fortune," by PJ Harvey, in any context. It plays fine, but evidently it decided that I wasn't allowed to burn it anymore.
I double checked this by trying to burn a copy of just the album with which it came, rather than the mix I'd created. It burned every song on the album, with the exception of "Good Fortune."
I'll double check that again tonight by creating a brand new playlist and attempting to burn it, but I'm quite sure that I didn't try to burn that album seven times. I didn't even like the rest of the album that much.
And the average lay user would give a crap about how "inelegant" this is why?
Here's why: because even if the average user does bother to burn a CD every time he downloads new files (which, by the way, iTunes DRM counts against a maximum number of times you can burn a given track), trying to re-import them back into iTunes will leave the songs without any metadata. So sure: you can go back to the days before Gracenote (or whatever), reimport import however many albums you bought, and just input all the track info by hand, but the rest of us would prefer something that... you know, doesn't suck.
These aren't issues that only geeks care about. They're issues that only geeks know to care about.
Uh. Surely if YouTube is the ticking time bomb of copyright infringement that it's claimed to be, then what's happening is Google transferring money from the hands of Google investors into a holding tank for eventual litigants.
I mean, if you were Ballmer, wouldn't you be thrilled that Google had bought YouTube?
Heh. Mostly unrelated, but: about ten years ago, I kept getting calls at 3 or 4 in the morning from what appeared to be a computer, by which I mean, I got the whining and screeching of a modem on the other end.
After a few weeks, a conversation with someone about fax machines tripped something in my head. "Dude - of course! Fax machine!" So I started leaving my computer on every night, with the fax software that came bundled with it set to "auto answer".
It was some company trying to sell me a vacation package. A pointed fax back to their helpful reply number which included the phrases "private number," "harassment," and "legal action" put an end to it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think he's been watching too much of The Colbert Report.
In other words, it is not a defense against the original charge, but a claim that the accuser is hypocritical.
Hey asshole, I'm the guy who jumped on your head. You want to know what sucked most of all?
When I finally got to the front of the line, there was a sign that said, "We've sold out of Wiis, try another castle."
Okay, I'm feeling pretty dumb right now.
:)
On the other hand, Eno and Fripp aren't exactly strangers. So hey, at least I was in the right neighborhood.
I'm kind of a Fripp fan, so I got a kick out of reading this:
Oh, yeah, definitely. Know how I know? My wife.
See, she was an anthropology major in college. Back before we got married, we were hanging out in the living room, post-movie-watching, and having one of those shmoopy "gazing into each other's eyes" moments. She reached up to stroke my hair, then looked startled.
"Hey. Did you hit your head?"
Her hand was on the back of my head, right above the neck.
"Huh? No. Oh, that bump? I've had that forever."
She laughed. "That's an occipital bun." When I looked puzzled, she explained what it meant. Then her eyes widened. "And you... you have a supra-orbital ridge!" I knew what that one was, but I wasn't expecting what she said next.
As if she'd discovered something either fantastic or fantastically gross, she leaned in and whispered, her voice full of wonder: "You're a Neanderthal!
All you geeks can thank me for your big brains. Preferably with cash.
Well... honestly, I don't know. I hadn't thought about it. I like objects. :)
I guess what I meant was, "Good if you're a fan of objects, whatever if you're not."
Perl and Ruby have a lot in common, but they also have some extremely big differences. Probably the biggest is that Ruby is a real, honest to god Object Oriented Language. Perl ain't - it's object support is essentially bolted on. Good if you're not a big fan of objects, bad if you're not.
For a better list of differences/similarities, try here.
Interestingly, in all of the instances you mention, you claim that it's the "victim" who does the suing.
Here's a thought: rather than blaming lawyers for accepting money for litigating cases - which is, after all, how they make a living - how about you exhort litigants, aka "regular folks," to stop suing people?
Warning: IANAL.
You're right. I'm sure they contaminated that video from The Today Show with their icky hippie juice. I stand corrected.
Are you kidding me?
I linked to a site which had a video of Andrew Card, on The Today Show, blaming the New York Times, with an accompanying transcript.
I understand that all the progressive over there might scare you, but come on, it's W's former chief of staff being interviewed by Matt Lauer on that video. Surely you can brave the scary hippie vibes long enough to click play.
Where you're correct: Yes, I am saying Saddam did not have the ability to build a bomb in less than a year. And I am also saying that the documents contained instructions on how to build a bomb, although I wouldn't care to speculate on a time frame.
Here's why you're utterly mistaken: the instructions were from 1991.
The Duelfer report made clear that by the time of the second Gulf war, Hussein's nuclear program was essentially nowhere. Courtesy of The Washington Post:
Got it? 1991, Hussein had at least some measure of a nuclear weapons program. 2002, not so much.
The truly predictable thing about this mess is that Republicans have been asserting that this is a) proof that Hussein was within a year of building a nuclear bomb (it isn't), and b) that this is the NYT's fault.
I mean, nevermind that righty-blogs were falling all over themselves pressing for the release of these. Somehow, they were convicned that opening these documents would unleash an "Army of Davids," and the President pushed to have the documents declassified and published before anyone had the chance to read them. Now that it turns out that, oops, hey, instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb are in there, Andrew Card is blaming - who else? - the NYT.
And this is after they'd already found instructions on how to make sarin in there.
Unbelievable.
Heh. This is a bit off topic, since I actually quit this position rather than getting laid off, but the story goes like this:
1. My kid is born. She has signifigant health problems. I warn my boss that I'm going to need to take an extended leave because she can't be put into day care, but since I have a big chunk of paid leave time saved up, it shouldn't be a problem. He says, basically, "cool."
2. A week before my leave is to start, my boss hands me a list of dates for which I am "approved for leave." Notably absent: most of the next week, as well as a handful of days sprinkled in later on. Immediately after giving me the list, he leaves to go on vacation.
3. HR, after first suggesting I talk it out with my boss (who is on vacation) asks if it's possible for me to bring my kid to work with me. I explain - again - that toting an infant with a compromised immune system around the office, where I'm expected to crawl under desks and do wiring, and where hundreds of people pass through every day, is not smart. Eventually I get someone to fess up that I can take the whole time unpaid through the Family Medical Leave Act (the one which this Congress has attempted several times to repeal). My wife works, so I take the time off unpaid.
It could have ended here, but my boss was angry at me for what he perceived as a slight. And so:
4. I start getting e-mails from work asking me to do remote administration tasks from home. I do, and submit my hours at the end of the week (remember, I'm on unpaid leave). The boss, angry, sends out an e-mail to his staff demanding that nobody request any of my time without clearing it through him first.
5. More requests come in. I fulfill them, submit the hours. The boss demands to know why I worked without consulting him: I forward him the requests, and ask him to take it up with the people requesting the work (all of whom report to him). He responds that since some of the work should have been done before I left - not that he said anything at the time - he isn't paying.
6. I get an offer for a new job with a 50% increase in salary. I fax the boss my very polite resignation, then go and collect a check for all the leave time I had saved up and was denied the use of.
Don't mistreat your workers. Sooner or later, it bites you on the ass.
In at least one or two of id's games, the second letter of the name is capitalized. By the time Doom came out, however, it was all lowercase.
:)
I spent a couple of minutes trying to google a reference for this, but was unable. Please take my word.
The sound was all that level had going for it, though. The "running through the trail of blood" puzzle was just annoying.
On the other hand... man, the sound was freaky.
Yeah... although I have to say that as soon as the level started, I groaned a little. "Crap. Another one of these "scaaaaary" levels." I'm tired of them.
And since my computer is pretty much obsolete, the worst thing about the steroid zombie things for me was that by the time I heard one, I knew that my framerate was going to drop to 1 frame every other seconds. *Screeeeech* *rending and slapping sounds, with accompanying slide show*. "Whoops. Guess I'm dead."
The sugar would be angel dust. Milk, though... dunno. Malt liquor?
Thanks. All the bleach in the world isn't going to help me with that mental image.
As Benjamin Disraeli (or Mark Twain, or was it Lord Courtney? who knows...) might have said: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and web analytics."
I've had iTunes stop me from burning the track "Good Fortune," by PJ Harvey, in any context. It plays fine, but evidently it decided that I wasn't allowed to burn it anymore.
I double checked this by trying to burn a copy of just the album with which it came, rather than the mix I'd created. It burned every song on the album, with the exception of "Good Fortune."
I'll double check that again tonight by creating a brand new playlist and attempting to burn it, but I'm quite sure that I didn't try to burn that album seven times. I didn't even like the rest of the album that much.
Here's why: because even if the average user does bother to burn a CD every time he downloads new files (which, by the way, iTunes DRM counts against a maximum number of times you can burn a given track), trying to re-import them back into iTunes will leave the songs without any metadata. So sure: you can go back to the days before Gracenote (or whatever), reimport import however many albums you bought, and just input all the track info by hand, but the rest of us would prefer something that... you know, doesn't suck.
These aren't issues that only geeks care about. They're issues that only geeks know to care about.
Uh. Surely if YouTube is the ticking time bomb of copyright infringement that it's claimed to be, then what's happening is Google transferring money from the hands of Google investors into a holding tank for eventual litigants.
I mean, if you were Ballmer, wouldn't you be thrilled that Google had bought YouTube?
Jayne!
A man they called Jayne!
Our love for him ain't hard to exp... nevermind.
Heh. Mostly unrelated, but: about ten years ago, I kept getting calls at 3 or 4 in the morning from what appeared to be a computer, by which I mean, I got the whining and screeching of a modem on the other end.
After a few weeks, a conversation with someone about fax machines tripped something in my head. "Dude - of course! Fax machine!" So I started leaving my computer on every night, with the fax software that came bundled with it set to "auto answer".
It was some company trying to sell me a vacation package. A pointed fax back to their helpful reply number which included the phrases "private number," "harassment," and "legal action" put an end to it.