I've used Matlab academically for about half a year now, and that most anybody (but for scientists and mathematicians operating solely on huge numeric matrices, maybe) uses it is rather shocking to me. The only good thing I can really say about Matlab is that it's made me a better programmer in _other_ languages. Sometimes when you're forced to do something so horribly wrong, the right way of doing it leaps out at you. It's like being forced to ride a unicycle, and suddenly realizing why the motorcycle was invented. Not to say that it doesn't have some very advanced features; it's not a simple beast by any means and -can- do some amazing stuff, but it seems to do them so.. weirdly, and often ridiculously slowly, that it's got that crufty feeling of legacy software with stuff just stapled on all over it.
I'm hopeful about http://www.julialang.org/ the Julia language project and think it's worth at least keeping an eye on in the future.
There are an awful lot of comments here from guys sound pretty angry at a female having the audacity to not like rape and death threats for being online and visible, railing against "feminism" and the such. That's not really a community that I really care to be a part of.
Sex crimes are a real thing, and they're scary as hell. Yeah, people tend to talk big and spout crap that they'll never, ever go through with when cloaked behind anonymity of the net, but that doesn't make it any less scary to the recipient, to the point of downright horrifying when received over and over and over and over again. It's a completely legitimate complaint. I can't imagine, I don't -want- to imagine, being in that position myself. Nobody should have to put up with that, and asking the guys perpetuating this to tone it the fuck down is utterly reasonable.
Did anybody else catch this little line near the bottom?
"Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free?"
"Tinkering" with the brain? Really? Citizen, please report to Attitude Adjustment Center for Rehabilitation. I'm more terrified of someone deciding to fundamentally alter the biological basis for who I am as a person, than I am of being locked up for the rest of my life. Sure, it's a great deterrent by fear, but that's not the kind of society I want to live in, myself.
My supervisor wrote some software at my old workplace that seriously streamlined the things we did because we were doing so much bullshit on pen and paper it was ridiculous, and soon this piece of software became critical not just for the actual work but for a timeclock and a dozen other functions. He was not in a programming position; he used his personal experience to create the software far beyond his pay grade and position. The off-site executives had no idea about it for a long time; when the suits found out about the software they took it over. When he resisted the process, the political machine kicked in and he was fired/forced to resign. A nightmareish third-party development house took over the app in theory - and proceeded to not do a damn thing with it.
Worse for us who were left - code maintenance went into a limbo that left us using a piece of software unable to evolve with our workflow needs. It degraded over time until it was barely useable at all; none of the many bugs and features that had been on his "to-do" list were left unattended. But by that point we were tied to this software. We'd have had to go back in time and redesign our entire previous paper-based process from scratch, losing really tremendous time and productivity in an already tough contracted environment. It was a total nightmare. I eventually left the company and I have no idea what happened after that, except that I know my project has long since been essentially closed anyways.
So: work it out ahead of time with your bosses that you might be interested and do not, do NOT, DO NOT let them know that you've written a SINGLE line of code while under their employ. There's a good chance they'll try to simply take it from you. Even if it's not in your contract, they may still try to make a claim. Even if you think they're cool, even if your boss is your bro. Get any deals, compensation, or stipulations worked out on paper ahead of time if you don't want to simply hand them your work for a fraction of what it's worth. And consider the life cycle of your software, and how it will impact the company and people who use it as a whole.
Yes, we care. The magnetosphere both affects radio propagation and protects us from solar radiation. Since I guess I'm the only person on/. left who's over age 12, let me remind you of the major blackout that happened in 1989 from a solar flare that pounded right through what geomagnetic protection we've got. It killed some satellites, iirc, and fried a large chunk of the canadian power grid. The magnetosphere is useful and interesting, and knowing how it works can at least prepare us to... look forward to any coming apocalypse... Hmm.
Aside from that, some re-figuring of how propagation works to take advantage of this new layer for long-range radio communication may occur, if possible. It could result in a new something to bounce radio waves off of, and that's always exciting.
Either way, it gives us data about our environment.
So yes, yes we do care, because we care about SCIENCE! *finger thrusting into the air*
I did enjoy Dead Space a fair amount. I felt like they actually pulled off the camera perspective better than just about any other game that's tried it, the combat was pretty fun and the weapons were fairly unique and handled in interesting ways. The basic plasma cutter's vertical/horizontal switch was really neat.
It was also really quite a gorgeous environment, and came with an interesting backstory - that unfortunately really had no bearing on the actual fetch-and-shoot gameplay. The interface was also genius, and lots of interesting things to look at and listen to. The suit "powers" were fairly neat, though could've used maybe a little more "explaining", because some folks didn't seem to understand that the industrial suits were equippable with these as a matter of course, turning every worker into a sort of walking forklift with the levitator and able to do maintenance on fast-moving equipment without a total shutdown with the slow-beam. A little unusual, but plausible enough for me to think about as an interesting technological side-path.
What got me, though, was the extreme bowing to horror convention - after about 20 minutes of playing I could point to every single place a "scare" was going to happen. "Gee, I wonder if I turn around right here, if something's going to jump out at *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMSPLAT* me. Oh, would you look at that." It got old real quick if you've ever seen a horror movie in your life. Like clockwork, every vent that would "feel right" for a trap? Bad guy pops out. Every enclosed space? Gee, "alien life form warning lockdown" coming. Repetitive, predictable, over and over. The alien variety wasn't bad, but I'd also expected even more than I did. It only came down to a few types most of the time. Though admittedly gruesome and pretty well-designed types. But for a game that touted aliens are being sort of random mutations of dead flesh, they were less random than I would've hoped.
And while there were new and pretty environments to go to, the rest of the gameplay pretty much just consisted of "Oh my god we're all going to die if you don't go find the thing and bring it here! OH NO! NOW THE OTHER THING IS MISSING! Oh my god we're all going to die if you don't go find the thing and bring it here! OH NO! NOW THE OTHER OTHER THING IS MISSING!"... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
*****Spoiler alert for the coming paragraph***** And the bit with the "oh sigh everything's ok now, time to let the guard down OH MY GOD MONSTER CHICK IN THE COCKPIT LURCHING AT THE SCREEN CUT TO BLACK" - how generic can we get? I mean, seriously. Try a *little* harder for us, OK? We've only seen this style of ending in about every other horror flick or game ever made since the beginning of horror flicks. The plot as a whole, in fact, is so weak that it can be summed up extremely briefly: Stop the stupid space religion turned death cult that wants to impose its vision of rapture on everyone. It feels like they took a half-hour concept and stretched it out to about 8 hours, which is about 4 hours after I started getting the feeling of "been there, done that". Don't even get me started on the upgrade item collection and money system, generic spawn of a thousand survival horror titles. I did like the node system, though, in that it reminded me of the final fantasy X sphere grid system dumbed down. I may have been one of about 8 people who enjoyed the sphere grid, though. *****End spoiler*****
In all, it was a decent title but afterwards I left it with a bit of a dusty feeling in my mouth, like it was a great concept but.. unfinished. And with the ending above I mentioned, I'm still unsure if I'm looking forward to a sequel, unless they use it as a springboard into something really more innovative story-wise. It kind of made me mad that they thought they could even get away with that.
over 1 million user accounts now kinda blows my mind. that's awesome. I spent many a day.. and afternoon.. and night... clicking/. waiting for new stories, hoping there'd be something new to look at and maybe comment. I have a fairly high UID for back then, but knowing that there's 985,000+ people who signed up after me is kinda awe-inspiring. Congratulations on 10 years, slashdot and CmdrTaco.
What's also amazing is that the level of trolling here seems like nothing compared to the likes of Digg and friends nowadays. A real conversation is actually almost kind of possible, so far as a bunch of still socially-backwards computer dorks are able to manage not to piss each other off too badly.
in V0.61.1, I click on the GNUstep logo and it morphs into a smiley face, and says in a scrolling message various things about the evils of sloppy focus: "Repent! Sloppy focus users will burn in hell!" "Sloppy focus is a *?#@"
Methinks I should turn off sloppy focus before my window manager bites my face off.
On that note... What right did 'God' have to go mucking about with things and making us?
Doubtful that he consulted with 'the gang' before going off and making earth, people, etc.
the 'all-powerful, he can do what he wants' argument is rather moot, because we'd seem to be mighty powerful to the little germ in a petri dish. We'd probably seem to have all of the aspects of god. We'd be too damn big to see. Able to create life or crush it at a whim. Alter the environment however we'd like.
Actually, bits of the labour protests were more about worker's rights WORLDWIDE. Setting up labour laws that take effect -internationally-. Child labour and keeping kids out of sweatshops, improving the working conditions for labourers(no more locked factory doors, fire hazards, etc), setting up a wage control to provide adequate compensation to labourers, and so on.
Allowing poorer countries to develop their economies is a good thing, yes. But at the expense of the wellbeing of the people living there? I don't know about that. They'll either be dirt-poor not working in those factories, and unable to eat, or working 15 hour shifts on production line jobs that they cannot leave from(locked doors in factories during shifts, it happens too frequently), no chance of a raise in your wage whatsoever. Sure, you may be able to eat, but it's gonna be hell to get that 10 cents a day. Meanwhile the company you're producing for is exporting the goods to america and selling them for $30, $40, $50, $100+, making sure to run the products through their 'Made In America' tag-factory before they hit the sales floor. You may assume that your expensive designer jeans were then made by a Union worker making at least minimum wage, and probably a good bit higher - In fact, the labour costs for that pair of pants are mere cents, because they're made in foreign sweatshops. Count in distribution, and what's left over is pure profit. While those people who REALLY made the goods may not be hungry, do they have a LIFE? Do they have a chance for personal development whatsoever? Do you think that if they could ever save enough money to buy a COMPUTER that they'd have the time to use it, or even the electricity to power it? How about the single mothers working in those plants, with small children/babies who they need to take care of, yet they have to be at the factory for 15 hours a day? No, she can't afford any baby formula. But she's probably making it all day, to be shipped to america. She sees so little of the profit made that it's a negligible amount.
Sure, the US Unions protesting are more upset that their jobs are being taken elsewhere, at a fraction of the cost, and they can't hope to compete with that. Because THEY DON'T WANT TO WORK FOR PENNIES A DAY. I can't say I blame them. They're tired of their livelihoods being taken from them, production plants shut down and moved to foreign countries where the sweatshop-type environments exist.
So they're self-centered in their actions. But the end result is the same - both the humanitarians and the union workers are fighting for basically the same goals - just for different reasons. The issues are so closely linked that resolving one will end up resolving the other, I think.
How about this one: I saw a monkey head transplant. They lopped the heads off of two monkeys and put one on the body of the other via a tangle of wires, tubes and IV's. It lived for, I believe roughly around 2 weeks. Mind it had no control over its 'new' body. It just sat there, a head with some tubes attached to a body. I saw the facial expression of the monkey. It was not very happy. It was fully conscious and looking around as tubes came in one ear/nostril and out the other, a mess of wires dangling from its severed neck.
The test was for studying the feasibility of head transplants for things like cryotechnology, to see if all those people who have had just their heads frozen are ever going to be able to be brought back.
I'm not voicing a particular opinion on this, but... A very large life form takes away your body and sticks tubes in your head, keeping you that way for 2 weeks until you expire. Your idea of a vacation?
Reminds me of that bit that they presented at some convention or another in the UK, the combination television, microwave, and internet-capable computer... so you could "make a pizza, browse the web, and catch up on the latest episode of Friends".
Did anyone follow the USA Survival link in the article? There was a bit on the page.. "Student Pledge to the Earth". Apparently this group has a problem with children pledging at school:
"I pledge alliegance to the world To cherish every living thing To care for Earth and Sea and Air With Peace and Freedom everywhere
recognising that people's action towards nature and each other are the source of growing damage to the environment and resources needed to meet human needs and to ensure survival and development.
I pledge to the best of my ability to help make Earth a secure and hospitable home for present and future generations."
Is this such a bad thing to teach elementary school children? Okay, so the document has a UN logo at the top. But a logo means next to nothing when compared to the message contained in the writing itself. If the UN followed the pledge on the paper, would it be such a Bad Thing?
They also talk about how they believe the UN is, by putting its name on some national parks, going to restrict access to parts of the USA for the purpose of "safeguarding the natural resources, including plants, animals and things, that are the province of 'gaia', the earth spirit."
And they call this "ominous". Be scared, everyone. The UN won't let you tear down the national parks because they'd like to save some trees and animals. This is a CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE AMERICAN PUBLIC!
.... No. No, no, no, no NO. If you destroy all the trees for big business, what's left? a barren concrete wonderland. Yippie. No animals, no plants(except the random shrubbery-island in the middle of a concrete ocean, that is), no life.
"This is the battle today because America is in danger of losing what our ancestors fought and died for. "..."Freedom, Independence, and Sovereignty. "
Wouldn't global peace, harmony, and prosperity immensely please the long-dead souls of the founders of the united states? Tolerance and all that? Working together for a better future? The -real- founding ideals of the states. I'm pretty sure they weren't meant to just apply to a bunch of white people living on one large chunk of land on the planet. One can't be "selectively tolerant". You're either tolerant of all, or you're -not tolerant-. QED.
...There's plenty more, I'm sure. Just picking up on some of the bits that stood out to me.
columbus.rr.com has had similar problems. More people have been signing up; speeds have dropped at exponential rates; and you can't get a static IP for less than $499/month on a *24 month* contract. Even then, there is a huge clause stating that you can't use any 'high-bandwidth' services, like chat, webhosting, streaming video/audio, MUD-type games, information services, etc...!! This can be interpreted as damn near anything that a linux-user might have. Apache, NCSA, etc... I wonder if sendmail pisses them off, too.
Things like unannounced changing of IP range completely without notice for absolutely no good reason. Technical support people with the intelligence to tell you to unplug your PC for awhile when you can't grab an IP in linux -or- windows, or power off your cable modem for the next half hour. Don't want to spend any money on tolerable upgrades or tech support. We spent about a -year- without the login servers(which no one understood the existence of in the first place). our local RR newsgroups are full of spite and sad sob stories of lame support. A shame. Noone wants to leave yet, though; the only other alternative in the area is going back to dialup, and nobody wants that! Don't get me started about local phone lines.
Tis sick that a multi(m)(b)illion dollar company is so interested in profits. They own the cable lines, though, so it doesn't really matter to them what they do. They'll still have control when it's all over. Or so they think.
.ad.
apologies for turning this into a rant session about my (lack of) ISP service. Corporate america.. DIE.
Of all things, the toshiba(fear) infinia(*fear*) series PC(stock with win9x... ugh) has an onboard ATI Rage II+/2MB video, and a really @#$#$ed up onboard 16 bit sound card. Runs linux allright, though, and ATI Rage II+ is supported and works (mostly) flawlessly. The sound card, however, is pretty screwed up... I threw in an old ISA 8 bit soundblaster, though, and it works tolerably...
Masking tape, and lots of it... Preferably of the double-wide sort. Tape over the important bits that you don't want to get spraypaint in, and spray away... You can make designs with the tape, as well... Works good on the top of laptops.
Slashdot Mirror
What a loss to the community, and to his family. Thanks for the good times and /. memories, roblimo.
I've used Matlab academically for about half a year now, and that most anybody (but for scientists and mathematicians operating solely on huge numeric matrices, maybe) uses it is rather shocking to me. The only good thing I can really say about Matlab is that it's made me a better programmer in _other_ languages. Sometimes when you're forced to do something so horribly wrong, the right way of doing it leaps out at you. It's like being forced to ride a unicycle, and suddenly realizing why the motorcycle was invented. Not to say that it doesn't have some very advanced features; it's not a simple beast by any means and -can- do some amazing stuff, but it seems to do them so.. weirdly, and often ridiculously slowly, that it's got that crufty feeling of legacy software with stuff just stapled on all over it.
I'm hopeful about http://www.julialang.org/ the Julia language project and think it's worth at least keeping an eye on in the future.
There are an awful lot of comments here from guys sound pretty angry at a female having the audacity to not like rape and death threats for being online and visible, railing against "feminism" and the such. That's not really a community that I really care to be a part of.
Sex crimes are a real thing, and they're scary as hell. Yeah, people tend to talk big and spout crap that they'll never, ever go through with when cloaked behind anonymity of the net, but that doesn't make it any less scary to the recipient, to the point of downright horrifying when received over and over and over and over again. It's a completely legitimate complaint. I can't imagine, I don't -want- to imagine, being in that position myself. Nobody should have to put up with that, and asking the guys perpetuating this to tone it the fuck down is utterly reasonable.
Yes, actually.
(Link to paper.)
Did anybody else catch this little line near the bottom?
"Is it really OK to lock someone up for the best part of the only life they will ever have, or might it be more humane to tinker with their brains and set them free?"
"Tinkering" with the brain? Really? Citizen, please report to Attitude Adjustment Center for Rehabilitation. I'm more terrified of someone deciding to fundamentally alter the biological basis for who I am as a person, than I am of being locked up for the rest of my life. Sure, it's a great deterrent by fear, but that's not the kind of society I want to live in, myself.
I've seen this happen.
My supervisor wrote some software at my old workplace that seriously streamlined the things we did because we were doing so much bullshit on pen and paper it was ridiculous, and soon this piece of software became critical not just for the actual work but for a timeclock and a dozen other functions. He was not in a programming position; he used his personal experience to create the software far beyond his pay grade and position. The off-site executives had no idea about it for a long time; when the suits found out about the software they took it over. When he resisted the process, the political machine kicked in and he was fired/forced to resign. A nightmareish third-party development house took over the app in theory - and proceeded to not do a damn thing with it.
Worse for us who were left - code maintenance went into a limbo that left us using a piece of software unable to evolve with our workflow needs. It degraded over time until it was barely useable at all; none of the many bugs and features that had been on his "to-do" list were left unattended. But by that point we were tied to this software. We'd have had to go back in time and redesign our entire previous paper-based process from scratch, losing really tremendous time and productivity in an already tough contracted environment. It was a total nightmare. I eventually left the company and I have no idea what happened after that, except that I know my project has long since been essentially closed anyways.
So: work it out ahead of time with your bosses that you might be interested and do not, do NOT, DO NOT let them know that you've written a SINGLE line of code while under their employ. There's a good chance they'll try to simply take it from you. Even if it's not in your contract, they may still try to make a claim. Even if you think they're cool, even if your boss is your bro. Get any deals, compensation, or stipulations worked out on paper ahead of time if you don't want to simply hand them your work for a fraction of what it's worth. And consider the life cycle of your software, and how it will impact the company and people who use it as a whole.
Yes, we care. The magnetosphere both affects radio propagation and protects us from solar radiation. Since I guess I'm the only person on /. left who's over age 12, let me remind you of the major blackout that happened in 1989 from a solar flare that pounded right through what geomagnetic protection we've got. It killed some satellites, iirc, and fried a large chunk of the canadian power grid. The magnetosphere is useful and interesting, and knowing how it works can at least prepare us to... look forward to any coming apocalypse... Hmm.
Aside from that, some re-figuring of how propagation works to take advantage of this new layer for long-range radio communication may occur, if possible. It could result in a new something to bounce radio waves off of, and that's always exciting.
Either way, it gives us data about our environment.
So yes, yes we do care, because we care about SCIENCE! *finger thrusting into the air*
Otherwise, no, feel free to not give a shit. :D
I did enjoy Dead Space a fair amount. I felt like they actually pulled off the camera perspective better than just about any other game that's tried it, the combat was pretty fun and the weapons were fairly unique and handled in interesting ways. The basic plasma cutter's vertical/horizontal switch was really neat.
It was also really quite a gorgeous environment, and came with an interesting backstory - that unfortunately really had no bearing on the actual fetch-and-shoot gameplay. The interface was also genius, and lots of interesting things to look at and listen to. The suit "powers" were fairly neat, though could've used maybe a little more "explaining", because some folks didn't seem to understand that the industrial suits were equippable with these as a matter of course, turning every worker into a sort of walking forklift with the levitator and able to do maintenance on fast-moving equipment without a total shutdown with the slow-beam. A little unusual, but plausible enough for me to think about as an interesting technological side-path.
What got me, though, was the extreme bowing to horror convention - after about 20 minutes of playing I could point to every single place a "scare" was going to happen. "Gee, I wonder if I turn around right here, if something's going to jump out at *BLAMBLAMBLAMBLAMSPLAT* me. Oh, would you look at that." It got old real quick if you've ever seen a horror movie in your life. Like clockwork, every vent that would "feel right" for a trap? Bad guy pops out. Every enclosed space? Gee, "alien life form warning lockdown" coming. Repetitive, predictable, over and over. The alien variety wasn't bad, but I'd also expected even more than I did. It only came down to a few types most of the time. Though admittedly gruesome and pretty well-designed types. But for a game that touted aliens are being sort of random mutations of dead flesh, they were less random than I would've hoped.
And while there were new and pretty environments to go to, the rest of the gameplay pretty much just consisted of "Oh my god we're all going to die if you don't go find the thing and bring it here! OH NO! NOW THE OTHER THING IS MISSING! Oh my god we're all going to die if you don't go find the thing and bring it here! OH NO! NOW THE OTHER OTHER THING IS MISSING!" ... et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
*****Spoiler alert for the coming paragraph*****
And the bit with the "oh sigh everything's ok now, time to let the guard down OH MY GOD MONSTER CHICK IN THE COCKPIT LURCHING AT THE SCREEN CUT TO BLACK" - how generic can we get? I mean, seriously. Try a *little* harder for us, OK? We've only seen this style of ending in about every other horror flick or game ever made since the beginning of horror flicks. The plot as a whole, in fact, is so weak that it can be summed up extremely briefly: Stop the stupid space religion turned death cult that wants to impose its vision of rapture on everyone. It feels like they took a half-hour concept and stretched it out to about 8 hours, which is about 4 hours after I started getting the feeling of "been there, done that". Don't even get me started on the upgrade item collection and money system, generic spawn of a thousand survival horror titles. I did like the node system, though, in that it reminded me of the final fantasy X sphere grid system dumbed down. I may have been one of about 8 people who enjoyed the sphere grid, though.
*****End spoiler*****
In all, it was a decent title but afterwards I left it with a bit of a dusty feeling in my mouth, like it was a great concept but.. unfinished. And with the ending above I mentioned, I'm still unsure if I'm looking forward to a sequel, unless they use it as a springboard into something really more innovative story-wise. It kind of made me mad that they thought they could even get away with that.
over 1 million user accounts now kinda blows my mind. that's awesome. I spent many a day.. and afternoon.. and night... clicking /. waiting for new stories, hoping there'd be something new to look at and maybe comment. I have a fairly high UID for back then, but knowing that there's 985,000+ people who signed up after me is kinda awe-inspiring. Congratulations on 10 years, slashdot and CmdrTaco.
What's also amazing is that the level of trolling here seems like nothing compared to the likes of Digg and friends nowadays. A real conversation is actually almost kind of possible, so far as a bunch of still socially-backwards computer dorks are able to manage not to piss each other off too badly.
in V0.61.1, I click on the GNUstep logo and it morphs into a smiley face, and says in a scrolling message various things about the evils of sloppy focus:
"Repent! Sloppy focus users will burn in hell!"
"Sloppy focus is a *?#@"
Methinks I should turn off sloppy focus before my window manager bites my face off.
.ad.
On that note... What right did 'God' have to go mucking about with things and making us?
Doubtful that he consulted with 'the gang' before going off and making earth, people, etc.
the 'all-powerful, he can do what he wants' argument is rather moot, because we'd seem to be mighty powerful to the little germ in a petri dish. We'd probably seem to have all of the aspects of god. We'd be too damn big to see. Able to create life or crush it at a whim. Alter the environment however we'd like.
perspective, perspective, perspective...
.ad.
It looks sort of like playing 'Doom' with the IDBEHOLD,V invulnerability code on. ;)
.ad.
Actually, bits of the labour protests were more about worker's rights WORLDWIDE. Setting up labour laws that take effect -internationally-. Child labour and keeping kids out of sweatshops, improving the working conditions for labourers(no more locked factory doors, fire hazards, etc), setting up a wage control to provide adequate compensation to labourers, and so on.
Allowing poorer countries to develop their economies is a good thing, yes. But at the expense of the wellbeing of the people living there? I don't know about that. They'll either be dirt-poor not working in those factories, and unable to eat, or working 15 hour shifts on production line jobs that they cannot leave from(locked doors in factories during shifts, it happens too frequently), no chance of a raise in your wage whatsoever. Sure, you may be able to eat, but it's gonna be hell to get that 10 cents a day. Meanwhile the company you're producing for is exporting the goods to america and selling them for $30, $40, $50, $100+, making sure to run the products through their 'Made In America' tag-factory before they hit the sales floor. You may assume that your expensive designer jeans were then made by a Union worker making at least minimum wage, and probably a good bit higher - In fact, the labour costs for that pair of pants are mere cents, because they're made in foreign sweatshops. Count in distribution, and what's left over is pure profit. While those people who REALLY made the goods may not be hungry, do they have a LIFE? Do they have a chance for personal development whatsoever? Do you think that if they could ever save enough money to buy a COMPUTER that they'd have the time to use it, or even the electricity to power it? How about the single mothers working in those plants, with small children/babies who they need to take care of, yet they have to be at the factory for 15 hours a day? No, she can't afford any baby formula. But she's probably making it all day, to be shipped to america. She sees so little of the profit made that it's a negligible amount.
Sure, the US Unions protesting are more upset that their jobs are being taken elsewhere, at a fraction of the cost, and they can't hope to compete with that. Because THEY DON'T WANT TO WORK FOR PENNIES A DAY. I can't say I blame them. They're tired of their livelihoods being taken from them, production plants shut down and moved to foreign countries where the sweatshop-type environments exist.
So they're self-centered in their actions. But the end result is the same - both the humanitarians and the union workers are fighting for basically the same goals - just for different reasons. The issues are so closely linked that resolving one will end up resolving the other, I think.
The Hunger Site
How about this one: I saw a monkey head transplant. They lopped the heads off of two monkeys and put one on the body of the other via a tangle of wires, tubes and IV's. It lived for, I believe roughly around 2 weeks. Mind it had no control over its 'new' body. It just sat there, a head with some tubes attached to a body. I saw the facial expression of the monkey. It was not very happy. It was fully conscious and looking around as tubes came in one ear/nostril and out the other, a mess of wires dangling from its severed neck.
The test was for studying the feasibility of head transplants for things like cryotechnology, to see if all those people who have had just their heads frozen are ever going to be able to be brought back.
I'm not voicing a particular opinion on this, but... A very large life form takes away your body and sticks tubes in your head, keeping you that way for 2 weeks until you expire. Your idea of a vacation?
.ad.
"... eventually toasters and microwaves."
...mmmm, toast.
.ad.
Reminds me of that bit that they presented
at some convention or another in the UK, the
combination television, microwave, and
internet-capable computer... so you could "make
a pizza, browse the web, and catch up on the
latest episode of Friends".
Dear god. When will the hurting stop?
Did anyone follow the USA Survival link in the article? There was a bit on the page.. "Student Pledge to the Earth". Apparently this group has a problem with children pledging at school:
..."Freedom, Independence, and Sovereignty. "
.ad.
"I pledge alliegance to the world
To cherish every living thing
To care for Earth and Sea and Air
With Peace and Freedom everywhere
recognising that people's action towards nature and each other are the source of growing damage to the environment and resources needed to meet human needs and to ensure survival and development.
I pledge to the best of my ability
to help make Earth a secure and hospitable
home for present and future generations."
Is this such a bad thing to teach elementary school children? Okay, so the document has a UN logo at the top. But a logo means next to nothing when compared to the message contained in the writing itself. If the UN followed the pledge on the paper, would it be such a Bad Thing?
They also talk about how they believe the UN is, by putting its name on some national parks, going
to restrict access to parts of the USA for the purpose of "safeguarding the natural resources, including plants, animals and things, that are the province of 'gaia', the earth spirit."
And they call this "ominous". Be scared, everyone. The UN won't let you tear down the national parks because they'd like to save some trees and animals. This is a CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE AMERICAN PUBLIC!
.... No. No, no, no, no NO. If you destroy all the trees for big business, what's left? a barren concrete wonderland. Yippie. No animals, no plants(except the random shrubbery-island in the middle of a concrete ocean, that is), no life.
"This is the battle today because America is in danger of losing what our ancestors fought and died for. "
Wouldn't global peace, harmony, and prosperity immensely please the long-dead souls of the founders of the united states? Tolerance and all that? Working together for a better future? The -real- founding ideals of the states. I'm pretty sure they weren't meant to just apply to a bunch of white people living on one large chunk of land on the planet. One can't be "selectively tolerant". You're either tolerant of all, or you're -not tolerant-. QED.
...There's plenty more, I'm sure. Just picking up on some of the bits that stood out to me.
.end political rant/commentary.
ARA - fighting fascism everywhere
columbus.rr.com has had similar problems. More people have been signing up; speeds have dropped at exponential rates; and you can't get a static IP for less than $499/month on a *24 month* contract. Even then, there is a huge clause stating that you can't use any 'high-bandwidth' services, like chat, webhosting, streaming video/audio, MUD-type games, information services, etc...!! This can be interpreted as damn near anything that a linux-user might have. Apache, NCSA, etc... I wonder if sendmail pisses them off, too.
Things like unannounced changing of IP range completely without notice for absolutely no good reason. Technical support people with the intelligence to tell you to unplug your PC for awhile when you can't grab an IP in linux -or- windows, or power off your cable modem for the next half hour. Don't want to spend any money on tolerable upgrades or tech support. We spent about a -year- without the login servers(which no one understood the existence of in the first place).
our local RR newsgroups are full of spite and sad sob stories of lame support. A shame. Noone wants to leave yet, though; the only other alternative in the area is going back to dialup, and nobody wants that! Don't get me started about local phone lines.
Tis sick that a multi(m)(b)illion dollar company is so interested in profits. They own the cable lines, though, so it doesn't really matter to them what they do. They'll still have control when it's all over. Or so they think.
.ad.
apologies for turning this into a rant session about my (lack of) ISP service. Corporate america.. DIE.
Joel was still the best. He was my hero for -years-. And how could you beat dr. forrester and TV's Frank? Those were the days.
You know, I think Joel was really Thom Yorke in disguise... *blink* *blink*
.ad.
"...we hope that you choke."
Of all things, the toshiba(fear) infinia(*fear*) series PC(stock with win9x... ugh) has an onboard ATI Rage II+/2MB video, and a really @#$#$ed up onboard 16 bit sound card. Runs linux allright, though, and ATI Rage II+ is supported and works (mostly) flawlessly. The sound card, however, is pretty screwed up... I threw in an old ISA 8 bit soundblaster, though, and it works tolerably...
.ad.
You know... A message like this posted on a pretty much pro-linux site... Hmmmm. I think someone just wants to cause some trouble.
.ad.
Either way.
Everybody, laugh with me at OLE as loud as you can... You know you want to. Not only that, you can't help it.
Masking tape, and lots of it... Preferably
:)
.ad.
of the double-wide sort. Tape over the important
bits that you don't want to get spraypaint
in, and spray away... You can make designs with
the tape, as well... Works good on the top of
laptops.
Have fun.