Re:Popular Front for the Liberation of Europe
on
Building the A380
·
· Score: 1
Iduno. A lot of Americans disagree with the French. This has caused them to start flinging whatever stereotyped derogatives they can get their hands on. This doesn't change the nature of the disagreement, which has to do with Iraq, not the liberation of France.
And if you're upset about those idiotic stereotypes that the hawks keep slinging here in the states... I don't understand. It makes them look like idiots. It doesn't actually help them at all. The comments about capitalism/colonialism/zionism/etc, on the other hand, make us look bad. Get mad about that. If the anti-war movement all sounded like Amos Oz, Bush wouldn't be able to dismiss them so easily, and be forced to discuss concrete issues. This would be good for everyone.
I went to the war protest in San Francisco. I'm really glad I went. Their slogans and ideals, however, were absolutely worthless. "War is terrorism." Uh, no. No, war is very different from terrorism. That's not going to get you very far when you're trying to get a hawk to see things your way.
I was totally unsurprised that Bush paid so little attention to the protests. I would too. I feel like we're on our way towards war, and that war will hurt Americans as well as the rest of the world. And the anti-war movement is organized in a manner that will have no effect whatsoever on this trajectory. Maybe I'm just taking my frustration out on you. Sorry.
E.G. Go get Ep 1 and Ep2, smoke a HUGE fatty and tell me it wasn't cool... They have LIGHTSABERS! C'mon. . .
You are correct. It is cool on the same level as Britney Spears music and the Johnny Mnemonic movie. To prove my point, imagine Ep2 starring Keanu Reeves and Britney. It would not be worse. It might even be better.
That amount of cool doesn't really beat smoking a huge fatty and masturbating. If it's not cooler than smoking a huge fatty and masturbating, I'm not spending my money on it.
Re:Popular Front for the Liberation of Europe
on
Building the A380
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's comments like that that make me ashamed to be anti-war. To quote one of my favorite people in the war opposition, Amos Oz, "The protesters have it wrong: this war campaign does not emanate from oil lust or from colonialist appetite. It emanates primarily from a simplistic rectitude that aspires to uproot evil by force."
If you think that it would have been better to have been in the soviet bloc... talk to a few Russians. They'll likely convince you otherwise. The problems with the US's recent behavior are myriad. You have accurately described none of them.
Shadowrun is based on the cyberpunk genre of science fiction. That genre was invented by Wiliam Gibson in his first book, Neuromancer. Neuromancer was the first book in a trilogy. The whole trilogy is fantastic. There are two cyberpunk short story anthologies that I can think of off the top of my head, Burning Chrome, by Wiliam Gibson, and Mirrorshades, by various authors. Both of those short story anthologies are very good, although I would recommend Gibson's more highly.
Wiliam Gibson's writing style has changed since he wrote Neuromancer, and many of his fans do not like the way that he's changed. He's certainly not writing cyberpunk anymore, as cyberpunk was posited heavily on the cold war. I love the way his writing has changed. I feel that he's the only sci fi author doing anything particularly interesting right now. His latest book, Pattern Recognition, is set in the present day (actually it seems that its set about four or five months ago), so it's only vaguely science fiction. I've liked every single Gibson book, and Pattern Recognition is my favorite yet.
If you just like the gadgets, attitude, and noir of cyberpunk fiction, then yes, there are other authors to read. I wouldn't know who to recommend. Bruce Sterling is one.
I played D&D 2nd, then AD&D 1st, then AD&D 2nd. Meanwhile, I was playing Palladium R.I.F.T.S. (boo), Shadowrun (woo!), Toons (woo!). Since then, I've played a little bit of Baron von Munchausen.
D&D 2nd felt... like a board game. It was certainly fun, but... (and this is likely just our take on it) it felt like it had too much of a concrete goal. We wanted to level our characters. It was sortof like Everquest, in that way. Lame to me.
The first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons seemed to be a compilation of articles from Dungeon Magazine. It worked. For an innovative campaign, your GM basically needed to be a genius, but whatever. Since the rules were a bit impossible for people of my maturity and mental stature... it became very free form. There were things that the book couldn't answer, so we flew more seat of the pants, even though it had more codified rules.
AD&D 2nd edition greatly streamlined all those issues, and it became overly tame again. It felt like it was no longer about making your own story, and simply about telling whatever story TSR had written for you. Again, lame, imho.
Since you didn't ask... I messed with Palladium RIFTS, which lent itself to monty haul looting. The mechanics were fine. Just boring campaigns. Shadowrun felt like it could have been a whole lot of fun, but I couldn't get my friends into it. I later discovered that it seemed like a whole lot of fun because it was based on Gibson's stuff, and Gibson has enough creativity and insight to make almost anything remotely related to him worthwhile. (Johny Pneumonic viewers, note how I said "almost")
Apparently Shadowrun's latest edition has remedied a lot of the specific mechanical problems.
Long since I messed around with AD&D, I discovered the Extraordinary Adventures of Baron von Munchausen roleplaying game. It is FUCKING FANTASTIC. Published by Hogshead games. Very cheap. 24 page booklet. It's completely free form, and scraps all concept of advancing your character. It combines everything I like abour RPGs and everything I like about theater. It's only too bad that the format doesn't lend itself to other genres. And it really doesn't. It takes a little practice to get good at it, but it doesn't require any preparation or a designated GM, so practice is easy to come by.
It's a lying competition. So it requires some interest in acting. If you're not interested in acting out your characters during the storytelling, check out Toons from Steve Jackson. It's also free form, but not told as a first person story.
Well. I didn't have any sex in high school either. That's why I'd suggest a change to my 12 year old self.
Also, my high school years were good, but they were the furthest thing from the best years of my life. Despite having an incredible group of friends, I was quite depressed much of the time. It apparently just took time to work things out.
I realize you're kidding and all, but... you're wrong too.
And remember, since electric motors have full torque at 0 rpm, you can light the tires on fire standing still. The 0-60 on a Prius was programed based on its eventual marketting, not its abilities. A $5 mod on a hybrid sports car could really fuck with all those "damn streetracers".
After Office 11 there might never be another "Pentagon Papers" type scandal because the government could just cut printing rights to sensitive documents. Companys will no longer have to worry about internal memos ending up on FuckedCompany.
Unless:
1) Someone reads the document, remembers it, and later recalls it at a non DRM computer.
2) Someone takes a photograph of the screen. Seen sony's tiny little cameras lately?
3) Someone uses a pencil and paper.
The only thing this does is make it inconvenient to leak secrets. This does not make it difficult. This is still a good feature, as it is currently more convenient to violate secure channels than to follow them. But it's not stopping any leaks whatsoever.
Only now you'd have 4 illegitimate children from different mothers and lots of child support payments...
(semi-joking, semi-serious)
My parents taught me all about safe sex and prophylactics when I was about 4 years old. Otherwise, I'd have that problem by now anyway. And my advice to myself at age 12 would have been, "Get a fucking vasectomy NOW, you pernicious dick."
I'd say, "Don't worry about getting shot down by girls. You'll never be able to have sex with high school girls again without serious legal consequences. Go for it. Time spent not having sex is time wasted."
Aside from that... life became excellent for me, starting exactly at the end of seventh grade. So I turned things around for myself at the age of 12. It just took the beginnings of some self confidence.
Those are all things that belong in the system software of any modern operating system.
Microsoft isn't screwing anyone simply because they integrated their features into the operating system. In order to count as screwing, it's gotta be like Spyglass, or like that pen OS guy. That'd be like saying Apple screwed Connectix by incorporating solid virtual memory into Mac OS X.
Right. But there are other creative works using English that are covered by patents, believe it or not. A business plan, for example. Makes me want to move to mars.
You apparently have no idea whatsoever about the causes of the California energy crisis.
The providers initially claimed that they were being pinched by gov't mandated low prices, and actual high prices in the free market, but this was factually incorrect. The high prices in the "free market" were... here's the surprise: government mandated, and chosen by the power providers. They siphoned money out of the customers via PG&E, which really was pinched. There was surplus energy at the same time as the rolling blackouts.
If I read all these comments correctly, SBC can charge whatever they like to Covad/Speakeasy. They just have to charge the same amount to their own ISP divisions.
Seems like they should be able to profit just fine. If Covad is really undercutting them so viciously, then they could just raise prices on the line, and make their profit before Covad.
I think the reason they're actually getting hosed is that Cable companies are competing too well.
The students should really set up their own, internal P2P network. This would put less tax on the University's external bandwidth, downloads would be quicker, and, assuming it's restricted to local users, the RIAA couldn't really prove any wrongdoing. (Although their FUD generally scares universities enough.)
Universities are generally big enough to support a network on their own. They should.
Limewire uses Rendezvous now (on os X at least). All p2p apps should. It's exactly the best use of Rendezvous.
There are simpler ways to solve these problems. For example, if I own some land, and you own 100% of the surrounding land, you must provide me access to the land. If there is no other way for me to access my property, you must grant right of way.
Also, laying fiber does *not* provide a natural local monopoly: You can go around many, many obstacles. At some point, someone will prefer to take your cash than see you go another route.
Also, these Libertarian ideals will not function in a monopoly, as far as I can imagine. We would still need antitrust legislation.
Yes. That would be fine. As would actual deregulation. If phone companies want to be able to cross all those million private property boundries with force of arms behind them, then the government should own those lines. Otherwise... I don't see a problem with taking away their leins on private property, and telling them that they no longer operate a utility. They must pay landowners to cross their property. And they aren't the only ones that can do it.
Either option works for me. Our current situation is crony capitalism, plain and simple.
Bells should lose their monopoly/utility status. They should also lose government mandated leins to lay their wire. Then they can own the existing wires, if they like, but anyone has to be able to lay their own. And the cost of land should be real, to all the competitors.
Same for the wireless spectrum. The government monopolies have been proven to be much, much less beneficial than freemarket driven bandwidth use. Regulate all spectrum like we regulate the visual spectrum and 2.4 GHz: You cannot blind anyone.
I'm a damn liberal Democrat, and I can see that the libertarian answers are the correct ones in these situations. The existing legislation is profit-driven. Crony capitalism at its worst.
Yeah. I've gotta agree with you there. If someone misuses a term, and that causes real confusion of meaning, then it's fair to politely request clarification. If they misuse a term, but that does not cause confusion of meaning, then all you can do (politely) is to use the word correctly, or use the correct word.
So I am diminished:) RMS doesn't need to be such a jerk. He could (and damn well better) remain just as ever-vigilant.
He didn't object to the use of the phrase "open source," but I'd suggest that that's because it was used accurately.
People on both sides of the Free Software vs Open Source debate usually get equally upset when folks misuse the words. They mean different things. Even RMS doesn't get angry when folks discuss Open Source. He corrects them when they mistakenly suggest that he promotes Open Source Software.
This is something that should be integrated with the operating system. I'm dying for Apple to dump money into MacOnLinux, port it to Mac OS X, and make it use a hardware optimized QuartzGL -> NativeOS' OpenGL pathway. Shouldn't even be hard for them. Samuel Rydh just doesn't have that much time in the day.
It'd make me much more likely to buy an Apple desktop, and I'd certainly shell out an extra $100 for the product itself
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Iduno. A lot of Americans disagree with the French. This has caused them to start flinging whatever stereotyped derogatives they can get their hands on. This doesn't change the nature of the disagreement, which has to do with Iraq, not the liberation of France.
And if you're upset about those idiotic stereotypes that the hawks keep slinging here in the states... I don't understand. It makes them look like idiots. It doesn't actually help them at all. The comments about capitalism/colonialism/zionism/etc, on the other hand, make us look bad. Get mad about that. If the anti-war movement all sounded like Amos Oz, Bush wouldn't be able to dismiss them so easily, and be forced to discuss concrete issues. This would be good for everyone.
I went to the war protest in San Francisco. I'm really glad I went. Their slogans and ideals, however, were absolutely worthless. "War is terrorism." Uh, no. No, war is very different from terrorism. That's not going to get you very far when you're trying to get a hawk to see things your way.
I was totally unsurprised that Bush paid so little attention to the protests. I would too. I feel like we're on our way towards war, and that war will hurt Americans as well as the rest of the world. And the anti-war movement is organized in a manner that will have no effect whatsoever on this trajectory. Maybe I'm just taking my frustration out on you. Sorry.
E.G. Go get Ep 1 and Ep2, smoke a HUGE fatty and tell me it wasn't cool... They have LIGHTSABERS! C'mon. . .
You are correct. It is cool on the same level as Britney Spears music and the Johnny Mnemonic movie. To prove my point, imagine Ep2 starring Keanu Reeves and Britney. It would not be worse. It might even be better.
That amount of cool doesn't really beat smoking a huge fatty and masturbating. If it's not cooler than smoking a huge fatty and masturbating, I'm not spending my money on it.
It's comments like that that make me ashamed to be anti-war. To quote one of my favorite people in the war opposition, Amos Oz, "The protesters have it wrong: this war campaign does not emanate from oil lust or from colonialist appetite. It emanates primarily from a simplistic rectitude that aspires to uproot evil by force."
If you think that it would have been better to have been in the soviet bloc... talk to a few Russians. They'll likely convince you otherwise. The problems with the US's recent behavior are myriad. You have accurately described none of them.
Shadowrun is based on the cyberpunk genre of science fiction. That genre was invented by Wiliam Gibson in his first book, Neuromancer. Neuromancer was the first book in a trilogy. The whole trilogy is fantastic. There are two cyberpunk short story anthologies that I can think of off the top of my head, Burning Chrome, by Wiliam Gibson, and Mirrorshades, by various authors. Both of those short story anthologies are very good, although I would recommend Gibson's more highly.
Wiliam Gibson's writing style has changed since he wrote Neuromancer, and many of his fans do not like the way that he's changed. He's certainly not writing cyberpunk anymore, as cyberpunk was posited heavily on the cold war. I love the way his writing has changed. I feel that he's the only sci fi author doing anything particularly interesting right now. His latest book, Pattern Recognition, is set in the present day (actually it seems that its set about four or five months ago), so it's only vaguely science fiction. I've liked every single Gibson book, and Pattern Recognition is my favorite yet.
If you just like the gadgets, attitude, and noir of cyberpunk fiction, then yes, there are other authors to read. I wouldn't know who to recommend. Bruce Sterling is one.
I played D&D 2nd, then AD&D 1st, then AD&D 2nd. Meanwhile, I was playing Palladium R.I.F.T.S. (boo), Shadowrun (woo!), Toons (woo!). Since then, I've played a little bit of Baron von Munchausen.
D&D 2nd felt... like a board game. It was certainly fun, but... (and this is likely just our take on it) it felt like it had too much of a concrete goal. We wanted to level our characters. It was sortof like Everquest, in that way. Lame to me.
The first edition of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons seemed to be a compilation of articles from Dungeon Magazine. It worked. For an innovative campaign, your GM basically needed to be a genius, but whatever. Since the rules were a bit impossible for people of my maturity and mental stature... it became very free form. There were things that the book couldn't answer, so we flew more seat of the pants, even though it had more codified rules.
AD&D 2nd edition greatly streamlined all those issues, and it became overly tame again. It felt like it was no longer about making your own story, and simply about telling whatever story TSR had written for you. Again, lame, imho.
Since you didn't ask... I messed with Palladium RIFTS, which lent itself to monty haul looting. The mechanics were fine. Just boring campaigns. Shadowrun felt like it could have been a whole lot of fun, but I couldn't get my friends into it. I later discovered that it seemed like a whole lot of fun because it was based on Gibson's stuff, and Gibson has enough creativity and insight to make almost anything remotely related to him worthwhile. (Johny Pneumonic viewers, note how I said "almost")
Apparently Shadowrun's latest edition has remedied a lot of the specific mechanical problems.
Long since I messed around with AD&D, I discovered the Extraordinary Adventures of Baron von Munchausen roleplaying game. It is FUCKING FANTASTIC. Published by Hogshead games. Very cheap. 24 page booklet. It's completely free form, and scraps all concept of advancing your character. It combines everything I like abour RPGs and everything I like about theater. It's only too bad that the format doesn't lend itself to other genres. And it really doesn't. It takes a little practice to get good at it, but it doesn't require any preparation or a designated GM, so practice is easy to come by.
It's a lying competition. So it requires some interest in acting. If you're not interested in acting out your characters during the storytelling, check out Toons from Steve Jackson. It's also free form, but not told as a first person story.
Well. I didn't have any sex in high school either. That's why I'd suggest a change to my 12 year old self.
Also, my high school years were good, but they were the furthest thing from the best years of my life. Despite having an incredible group of friends, I was quite depressed much of the time. It apparently just took time to work things out.
I realize you're kidding and all, but... you're wrong too.
And remember, since electric motors have full torque at 0 rpm, you can light the tires on fire standing still. The 0-60 on a Prius was programed based on its eventual marketting, not its abilities. A $5 mod on a hybrid sports car could really fuck with all those "damn streetracers".
After Office 11 there might never be another "Pentagon Papers" type scandal because the government could just cut printing rights to sensitive documents. Companys will no longer have to worry about internal memos ending up on FuckedCompany.
Unless:
1) Someone reads the document, remembers it, and later recalls it at a non DRM computer.
2) Someone takes a photograph of the screen. Seen sony's tiny little cameras lately?
3) Someone uses a pencil and paper.
The only thing this does is make it inconvenient to leak secrets. This does not make it difficult. This is still a good feature, as it is currently more convenient to violate secure channels than to follow them. But it's not stopping any leaks whatsoever.
Only now you'd have 4 illegitimate children from different mothers and lots of child support payments...
(semi-joking, semi-serious)
My parents taught me all about safe sex and prophylactics when I was about 4 years old. Otherwise, I'd have that problem by now anyway. And my advice to myself at age 12 would have been, "Get a fucking vasectomy NOW, you pernicious dick."
I'd say, "Don't worry about getting shot down by girls. You'll never be able to have sex with high school girls again without serious legal consequences. Go for it. Time spent not having sex is time wasted."
Aside from that... life became excellent for me, starting exactly at the end of seventh grade. So I turned things around for myself at the age of 12. It just took the beginnings of some self confidence.
Those are all things that belong in the system software of any modern operating system.
Microsoft isn't screwing anyone simply because they integrated their features into the operating system. In order to count as screwing, it's gotta be like Spyglass, or like that pen OS guy. That'd be like saying Apple screwed Connectix by incorporating solid virtual memory into Mac OS X.
Right. But there are other creative works using English that are covered by patents, believe it or not. A business plan, for example. Makes me want to move to mars.
You apparently have no idea whatsoever about the causes of the California energy crisis.
The providers initially claimed that they were being pinched by gov't mandated low prices, and actual high prices in the free market, but this was factually incorrect. The high prices in the "free market" were... here's the surprise: government mandated, and chosen by the power providers. They siphoned money out of the customers via PG&E, which really was pinched. There was surplus energy at the same time as the rolling blackouts.
If I read all these comments correctly, SBC can charge whatever they like to Covad/Speakeasy. They just have to charge the same amount to their own ISP divisions.
Seems like they should be able to profit just fine. If Covad is really undercutting them so viciously, then they could just raise prices on the line, and make their profit before Covad.
I think the reason they're actually getting hosed is that Cable companies are competing too well.
The students should really set up their own, internal P2P network. This would put less tax on the University's external bandwidth, downloads would be quicker, and, assuming it's restricted to local users, the RIAA couldn't really prove any wrongdoing. (Although their FUD generally scares universities enough.)
Universities are generally big enough to support a network on their own. They should.
Limewire uses Rendezvous now (on os X at least). All p2p apps should. It's exactly the best use of Rendezvous.
Soap.
Exactly.
There are simpler ways to solve these problems. For example, if I own some land, and you own 100% of the surrounding land, you must provide me access to the land. If there is no other way for me to access my property, you must grant right of way.
Also, laying fiber does *not* provide a natural local monopoly: You can go around many, many obstacles. At some point, someone will prefer to take your cash than see you go another route.
Also, these Libertarian ideals will not function in a monopoly, as far as I can imagine. We would still need antitrust legislation.
But where are these 15-year olds who know what a surfactant is? :)
Every single one. What did you do to wash the vasoline off your hands?
Yes. That would be fine. As would actual deregulation. If phone companies want to be able to cross all those million private property boundries with force of arms behind them, then the government should own those lines. Otherwise... I don't see a problem with taking away their leins on private property, and telling them that they no longer operate a utility. They must pay landowners to cross their property. And they aren't the only ones that can do it.
Either option works for me. Our current situation is crony capitalism, plain and simple.
We need to start saying what we mean:
Bells should lose their monopoly/utility status. They should also lose government mandated leins to lay their wire. Then they can own the existing wires, if they like, but anyone has to be able to lay their own. And the cost of land should be real, to all the competitors.
Same for the wireless spectrum. The government monopolies have been proven to be much, much less beneficial than freemarket driven bandwidth use. Regulate all spectrum like we regulate the visual spectrum and 2.4 GHz: You cannot blind anyone.
I'm a damn liberal Democrat, and I can see that the libertarian answers are the correct ones in these situations. The existing legislation is profit-driven. Crony capitalism at its worst.
Yeah. I've gotta agree with you there. If someone misuses a term, and that causes real confusion of meaning, then it's fair to politely request clarification. If they misuse a term, but that does not cause confusion of meaning, then all you can do (politely) is to use the word correctly, or use the correct word.
:) RMS doesn't need to be such a jerk. He could (and damn well better) remain just as ever-vigilant.
So I am diminished
He didn't object to the use of the phrase "open source," but I'd suggest that that's because it was used accurately.
People on both sides of the Free Software vs Open Source debate usually get equally upset when folks misuse the words. They mean different things. Even RMS doesn't get angry when folks discuss Open Source. He corrects them when they mistakenly suggest that he promotes Open Source Software.
You can't webscrape my browsing history, or my physical address, or my IP addy, or my credit card number. You can't webscrape auctions from 1998.
This is special. Let's see how many bogus fax requests ebay gets this weekend.
Also, why are you calling me "white man"?
"Tonto, we're surrounded by Indians!"
"What do you mean 'we', white man?"
We seem to be agreeing so vehemently that we've started an argument. I hate it when that happens.
This is something that should be integrated with the operating system. I'm dying for Apple to dump money into MacOnLinux, port it to Mac OS X, and make it use a hardware optimized QuartzGL -> NativeOS' OpenGL pathway. Shouldn't even be hard for them. Samuel Rydh just doesn't have that much time in the day.
It'd make me much more likely to buy an Apple desktop, and I'd certainly shell out an extra $100 for the product itself