$90B would have bought a whole lot more oil than the US would ever save on oil from post-war Iraq.
Bush/Cheney apologists keep on repeating this sort of logic as an answer to the "War for Oil" acccusation as if there was ever a claim that Bush & co. were doing it to save the U.S. money. The U.S. spending $90B is not much skin off the backs of Bush/Cheney/Halliburton/etc., especially not after the tax cuts; that's covered by the tax-payers. The profit goes to Bush's buddies.
For some bizzare reason, I haven't found it necessary to be able to do that. All you need to do is learn how to make hard-to-guess, easy-to-remember passwords: Choose a quote or sentence, take the first (or second if you really want it to be hard) letter of each word, use numbers instead of letters for words like 'to', and alternate capitalization for the rest:
"To be or not to be, that is the question" becomes "2bOn2BtItQ" which should defeat any dictionary based attacks, and is incredibly easy to remember. Of course I also choose somewhat more obscure quotes or make up an interesting sentence.
How many times does he have to mention the fact that LOTR or his other works are in no way allegorical of the Wars that he himself experienced in the foreword and in past interviews?
Since when are people experts on every single thing that influences their views? Just because he was not intending any allegory does not mean his story was not influenced by events which -- after all -- completely changed the face of Europe. Do you seriously believe LOTR would have been the same if Tolkien had never experienced war himself?
Eggplant62 said: A blatant attempt by some big money corporate thugs to take over the finest collaborative work this world has ever seen.
Then you said: I'm partial to the Bill of Rights, myself.
I agree the Bill of Rights trumps Linux overall (though it could be argued that Linux enjoys more support than the former, unfortunately) and is a fine piece of work, but collaborative?:
The Bill of Rights: A BRIEF HISTORY: The American Bill of Rights, inspired by Jefferson and drafted by James Madison, was adopted, and in 1791 the Constitution's first ten amendments became the law of the land. Additionally, James Madison used "The Virginia Declaration of Rights" as a basis, but he essentially wrote it alone.
I think it could be argued -- independently of the individual projects' merits -- that many open-source projects are without precedent at least in their collaborative aspects.
I agree completely that it can be done much better. But look at the parent. He was talking about hand-counting traditional pen and paper ballots by example of Germany where it works well and quickly. When hand-counting the complexity of the ballot makes a very big difference indeed, thus my comparison of a typical German ballot and a typical U.S. ballot.
...on the other hand Germany where I am living is doing all of its voting the traditionall pen-and-paper-ballot way, and we get first projections minutes after the voting closes... [SNIP] And even if Germany is far smaller than the US it has still a not too small voting population
Germany generally has ballots with far fewer choices to be made than the typical U.S. ballot which combines a slew of political offices at various levels of government as well as a lengthy list of state, county, and city voter initiatives (known sometimes as propositions or proposals).
And that's not even a very large ballot by U.S. standards. In the SF Bay Area in California, the propositions section can be several pages long, and there are more statewide offices.
Two wrongs don't make a right . . . but apparently "widespread" wrongs by "educated speakers" do . . . sadly.
Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but that's how language works. If you want to be really purist, why aren't you speaking Indo-European, instead of a highly corrupted mixture of various (Anglo, Saxon, Jute, Friesian) old Germanic dialects fused with Norman and a dash of Norse, sprinkled liberally with borrowed Latin terms and tacked-on Latin rules ("don't split infinitives!"), flavored with words imported from all over the world?
BTW, "Widespread" and "Educated Speakers" are surely mutually exclusive aren't they? Though the first does indeed explain how language evolution works: Any 'wrong' which is widespread enough in a language does indeed make a right.
This all doesn't change the fact that I think Bush is an ignorant shit;-)
Except Bush can't cut the sales tax, because there is no federal sales tax!
While this is -- strictly speaking -- true, Bush's tax cuts were partly financed by cutting federal aid to the states forcing them to raise taxes at the state level...
Here is my take on this: This is not about whether Wi-Fi networks are health hazards or not, but rather the right of the parental community to exercise control over potential health hazards.
Is 'potential' defined as every uninformed fear someone has? If 5 parents were to define light bulbs as potentially dangerous would that justify removing all the light bulbs in the schools?
Statements like "they probably use cell phones" or "microwaves are even worse" are pure speculation
The first one might be speculation, though it is a reasonably good guess, statistically. The second is not what people here are saying. They are (mostly) saying if such radio waves were harmful, then microwaves must be worse. I think most people with a clue about physics are saying neither is harmful.
If this action prompts independent scientific studies into radiation exposure or raises awareness of the issue, I consider this a good thing.
You mean like the radiation coming from them durn lightbulbs;-)
I just can't understand the mentality of the posters here -- they seem to religiously protect every piece of "technology" using irrational behaviour while labelling anyone with a dissenting opinion a Luddite. Sounds like a description of fanaticism to me.
Is it fanaticism to dismiss, say, arguments in favor of the flat-earth view out of hand? I think most people here are arguing from a standpoint of at least some knowledge of physics. These parents are taking the view that because it is 'radiation' (insert spooky music here) it is 'potentially' harmful which is reactionary and, yes, luddite.
Nice link. Here's one with a bit more overview: The keyword here is 'finno-ugric', which is the name of the language family to which Hungarian and Finnish (and a lot of other languages) belong.
The parent of this thread was mistaken about the peoples since there is no evidence that the Hungarian and Finnish peoples are related, just the languages; in fact the modern day Hungarians do not seem to be descended from any one distinct ethnicity. I'm too lazy too find links, but I'm sure the more industrious and curious among you can find something on the web.
The problem that comes with having friends who will see anything is that generally, they'll see anything and *like* it.
Agreed. That is why you must possess the knack, or the art of intepreting the way those friends liked something and how that corresponds to if you will like something. This is how I do it. I listen to the undertones of what they say, and what, if anything, excited them about the movie. If you know your friends well enough, this can serve as an accurate barometer of the movie's quality.
You nominally compare IDEs and then you don't name any bona fide IDEs on the open source side. Have you taken a look at either Kdevelop or Eclipse? I don't really know Eclipse, but it's gotten very good reviews from others, and I do know Kdevelop has gotten very good in the last couple of versions. It certainly has method-completion, though I'm not sure about the function argument tooltips.
Most English people. After all, it's their language...
But not only theirs. You might have forgotten that little country on the other side of the Atlantic with one or 2 English speakers. And no, the English speakers in England don't have a greater claim to the language than the other native speakers. Languages are connected to people not to countries. Modern English in England and Modern English in e.g. the U.S. are both descended from middle and old English, whereas old English came from what is now Germany. Are Germans then the true authorities on English?
Finally, do you expect someone to be an more of an expert on, say, their spleen than a biologist or a doctor? Likewise, the people who are most likely to tell you the facts about a language are Linguists. Speakers will give you their prejudices.
Thanks for the info! That's good to hear, though it only confirms my point about dictionaries trying to keep up. How many years after the reality of Helicopters did it get in there? 40? Certainly not less than 30.
The only dictionary that matter is The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language - everything else is just dialect..
Says who? Wait, let me guess: The people who believe The Oxford Dictionary is the only one that matters...
Well for the short response: I guess 'Helicopter' isn't a proper word then? It's not in there.
As another poster pointed out speakers of the language are the only true authorities; natural languages are just that: natural. They evolve. They are not invented and they don't conform to a written standard; in fact, 95% of the languages in history never even had a written form. Dictionaries attempt (and I should really stress attempt) to record the standard usage. They can't ever prescribe it, and they can't really keep up with it either.
Last little point: Everyone speaks a dialect. A dialect is a subset of a language, not a substandard version of it, as in "There are x known dialects in y language" -- not "There are also some dialects of language y". There is always at least one dialect. As linguists say (about this common conception of language vs. dialect): 'A language is a dialect with an army and a navy'. The dominant dialects of individual languages are those which happened to enjoy more political/cultural/military power at a crucial juncture in history. If Napolean had been from the Provence 'Langue d'oc' (spelling?) would be 'Standard French' and 'Langue d'oui' would be a 'dialect'. A happy (unhappy?) coincidence; nothing more, nothing less.
Though I agree the parent comment was very insightful, I think I could have it both ways. One of the reasons I dislike Microsoft (Or at least its business practices) is because of the degree they have egendered/exacerbated the very IP problem mentioned in the parent comment. I don't think it's the tip of the iceberg per se, since MS itself was the tip, middle, and a good portion of the bottom of the iceberg. It would be a pleasure to see them suffer the literal consequences of their actions and it would be (at least) poetic justice, with the added bonus of knowing they would be forced to at least partly aid the fight against such patents and similar ip claims.
Though I must admit I'm not too optimistic that it will necessarily turn out that rosy:-( Still, I don't see any moral ambiguity or double standard in my hopes.
No, no, no. You didn't complete the metaphor. The proper metaphor is: He finds is easier to browse through a naked array of boobs, ass, and furburger, than to try to do it through windows;-)
Slashdot Mirror
$90B would have bought a whole lot more oil than the US would ever save on oil from post-war Iraq.
Bush/Cheney apologists keep on repeating this sort of logic as an answer to the "War for Oil" acccusation as if there was ever a claim that Bush & co. were doing it to save the U.S. money. The U.S. spending $90B is not much skin off the backs of Bush/Cheney/Halliburton/etc., especially not after the tax cuts; that's covered by the tax-payers. The profit goes to Bush's buddies.
-Chris
Guess you never played Car Wars :-P
-Chris
But seriously, some acronyms work and others don't. FLOSS never seemed like a very good one to me.
;-)
Oh, I don't know... for example, you could think of it as: FLOSS is good at cleaning out the crud currently filling the gaps between hardware
-chris
For some bizzare reason, I haven't found it necessary to be able to do that. All you need to do is learn how to make hard-to-guess, easy-to-remember passwords:
Choose a quote or sentence, take the first (or second if you really want it to be hard) letter of each word, use numbers instead of letters for words like 'to', and alternate capitalization for the rest:
"To be or not to be, that is the question" becomes
"2bOn2BtItQ" which should defeat any dictionary based attacks, and is incredibly easy to remember. Of course I also choose somewhat more obscure quotes or make up an interesting sentence.
-Chris
How many times does he have to mention the fact that LOTR or his other works are in no way allegorical of the Wars that he himself experienced in the foreword and in past interviews?
Since when are people experts on every single thing that influences their views? Just because he was not intending any allegory does not mean his story was not influenced by events which -- after all -- completely changed the face of Europe. Do you seriously believe LOTR would have been the same if Tolkien had never experienced war himself?
-chris
Eggplant62 said: A blatant attempt by some big money corporate thugs to take over the finest collaborative work this world has ever seen.
Then you said: I'm partial to the Bill of Rights, myself.
I agree the Bill of Rights trumps Linux overall (though it could be argued that Linux enjoys more support than the former, unfortunately) and is a fine piece of work, but collaborative?:
The Bill of Rights: A BRIEF HISTORY:
The American Bill of Rights, inspired by Jefferson and drafted by James Madison, was adopted, and in 1791 the Constitution's first ten amendments became the law of the land.
Additionally, James Madison used "The Virginia Declaration of Rights" as a basis, but he essentially wrote it alone.
I think it could be argued -- independently of the individual projects' merits -- that many open-source projects are without precedent at least in their collaborative aspects.
-chris
I agree completely that it can be done much better. But look at the parent. He was talking about hand-counting traditional pen and paper ballots by example of Germany where it works well and quickly. When hand-counting the complexity of the ballot makes a very big difference indeed, thus my comparison of a typical German ballot and a typical U.S. ballot.
-chris
...on the other hand Germany where I am living is doing all of its voting the traditionall pen-and-paper-ballot way, and we get first projections minutes after the voting closes...
[SNIP]
And even if Germany is far smaller than the US it has still a not too small voting population
Germany generally has ballots with far fewer choices to be made than the typical U.S. ballot which combines a slew of political offices at various levels of government as well as a lengthy list of state, county, and city voter initiatives (known sometimes as propositions or proposals).
Here are some examples:
Here's a German one.
And a U.S. one:
front
back
And that's not even a very large ballot by U.S. standards. In the SF Bay Area in California, the propositions section can be several pages long, and there are more statewide offices.
-chris
ROFL! It's the Maginot Line approach. I'm a consultant and I see it in all kinds of forms (both software and physical security) at companies I visit.
-chris
Just picture:
SCO = the guy who jumps out of the bathroom screaming wildly and emptying his clip.
IBM = Samuel Jackson
Holywood = John Travolta
We are now at the legal equivalent of the point where Samuel Jacson and John Travolta look at each other...
-chris
Two wrongs don't make a right . . . but apparently "widespread" wrongs by "educated speakers" do . . . sadly.
;-)
Sorry to be the one to break it to you, but that's how language works. If you want to be really purist, why aren't you speaking Indo-European, instead of a highly corrupted mixture of various (Anglo, Saxon, Jute, Friesian) old Germanic dialects fused with Norman and a dash of Norse, sprinkled liberally with borrowed Latin terms and tacked-on Latin rules ("don't split infinitives!"), flavored with words imported from all over the world?
BTW, "Widespread" and "Educated Speakers" are surely mutually exclusive aren't they? Though the first does indeed explain how language evolution works: Any 'wrong' which is widespread enough in a language does indeed make a right.
This all doesn't change the fact that I think Bush is an ignorant shit
-chris
Except Bush can't cut the sales tax, because there is no federal sales tax!
While this is -- strictly speaking -- true, Bush's tax cuts were partly financed by cutting federal aid to the states forcing them to raise taxes at the state level...
-chris
In a weakly typed language (i.e. perl), the statement will just break in mysterious ways:
./test.pl ./test.pl line 6.
$a="some string";
$a = $a + 5;
print "$a\n";
(prints 5)
If you use '-w' with Perl, as is recommended by virtually every Perl guru in existence, you get:
bash$
Argument "some string" isn't numeric in addition (+) at
5
That seems pretty non-mysterious, doesn't it?
-chris
My bicycle has never had a remote exploit despite not being secured or patched in any way :-)
:-P
However, someone did gain physical access and hit me with a complete DOS attack
-chris
Here is my take on this: This is not about whether Wi-Fi networks are health hazards or not, but rather the right of the parental community to exercise control over potential health hazards.
;-)
Is 'potential' defined as every uninformed fear someone has? If 5 parents were to define light bulbs as potentially dangerous would that justify removing all the light bulbs in the schools?
Statements like "they probably use cell phones" or "microwaves are even worse" are pure speculation
The first one might be speculation, though it is a reasonably good guess, statistically. The second is not what people here are saying. They are (mostly) saying if such radio waves were harmful, then microwaves must be worse. I think most people with a clue about physics are saying neither is harmful.
If this action prompts independent scientific studies into radiation exposure or raises awareness of the issue, I consider this a good thing.
You mean like the radiation coming from them durn lightbulbs
I just can't understand the mentality of the posters here -- they seem to religiously protect every piece of "technology" using irrational behaviour while labelling anyone with a dissenting opinion a Luddite. Sounds like a description of fanaticism to me.
Is it fanaticism to dismiss, say, arguments in favor of the flat-earth view out of hand? I think most people here are arguing from a standpoint of at least some knowledge of physics. These parents are taking the view that because it is 'radiation' (insert spooky music here) it is 'potentially' harmful which is reactionary and, yes, luddite.
-chris
Nice link. Here's one with a bit more overview: The keyword here is 'finno-ugric', which is the name of the language family to which Hungarian and Finnish (and a lot of other languages) belong.
The parent of this thread was mistaken about the peoples since there is no evidence that the Hungarian and Finnish peoples are related, just the languages; in fact the modern day Hungarians do not seem to be descended from any one distinct ethnicity. I'm too lazy too find links, but I'm sure the more industrious and curious among you can find something on the web.
-Chris
The problem that comes with having friends who will see anything is that generally, they'll see anything and *like* it.
Agreed. That is why you must possess the knack, or the art of intepreting the way those friends liked something and how that corresponds to if you will like something. This is how I do it. I listen to the undertones of what they say, and what, if anything, excited them about the movie. If you know your friends well enough, this can serve as an accurate barometer of the movie's quality.
-chris
You nominally compare IDEs and then you don't name any bona fide IDEs on the open source side. Have you taken a look at either Kdevelop or Eclipse? I don't really know Eclipse, but it's gotten very good reviews from others, and I do know Kdevelop has gotten very good in the last couple of versions. It certainly has method-completion, though I'm not sure about the function argument tooltips.
-chris
Says who?
Most English people. After all, it's their language...
But not only theirs. You might have forgotten that little country on the other side of the Atlantic with one or 2 English speakers. And no, the English speakers in England don't have a greater claim to the language than the other native speakers. Languages are connected to people not to countries. Modern English in England and Modern English in e.g. the U.S. are both descended from middle and old English, whereas old English came from what is now Germany. Are Germans then the true authorities on English?
Finally, do you expect someone to be an more of an expert on, say, their spleen than a biologist or a doctor? Likewise, the people who are most likely to tell you the facts about a language are Linguists. Speakers will give you their prejudices.
-chris
Thanks for the info! That's good to hear, though it only confirms my point about dictionaries trying to keep up. How many years after the reality of Helicopters did it get in there? 40? Certainly not less than 30.
-chris
The only dictionary that matter is The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language - everything else is just dialect..
Says who? Wait, let me guess: The people who believe The Oxford Dictionary is the only one that matters...
Well for the short response: I guess 'Helicopter' isn't a proper word then? It's not in there.
As another poster pointed out speakers of the language are the only true authorities; natural languages are just that: natural. They evolve. They are not invented and they don't conform to a written standard; in fact, 95% of the languages in history never even had a written form. Dictionaries attempt (and I should really stress attempt) to record the standard usage. They can't ever prescribe it, and they can't really keep up with it either.
Last little point: Everyone speaks a dialect. A dialect is a subset of a language, not a substandard version of it, as in "There are x known dialects in y language" -- not "There are also some dialects of language y". There is always at least one dialect. As linguists say (about this common conception of language vs. dialect): 'A language is a dialect with an army and a navy'. The dominant dialects of individual languages are those which happened to enjoy more political/cultural/military power at a crucial juncture in history. If Napolean had been from the Provence 'Langue d'oc' (spelling?) would be 'Standard French' and 'Langue d'oui' would be a 'dialect'. A happy (unhappy?) coincidence; nothing more, nothing less.
-Chris
You can't have it both ways.
:-( Still, I don't see any moral ambiguity or double standard in my hopes.
Though I agree the parent comment was very insightful, I think I could have it both ways. One of the reasons I dislike Microsoft (Or at least its business practices) is because of the degree they have egendered/exacerbated the very IP problem mentioned in the parent comment. I don't think it's the tip of the iceberg per se, since MS itself was the tip, middle, and a good portion of the bottom of the iceberg. It would be a pleasure to see them suffer the literal consequences of their actions and it would be (at least) poetic justice, with the added bonus of knowing they would be forced to at least partly aid the fight against such patents and similar ip claims.
Though I must admit I'm not too optimistic that it will necessarily turn out that rosy
-Chris
Um, The Zoo? ;-)
No, no, no. You didn't complete the metaphor. The proper metaphor is: ;-)
He finds is easier to browse through a naked array of boobs, ass, and furburger, than to try to do it through windows
-chris
I can relate. If I could, I would smite you for your reprehensible misuse of verb tenses.
;-)
hmmm.. in this case it's aspect not tense which was used 'improperly'
-chris