I find that this is just another example of how the EU is circumventing democracy.
That is its purpose: to make sure that business can proceed unrestrained by democracy. The EU is run by the unelected councillors who know that one day they will be looking for cushey jobs in industry as non-execs and "advisors". Thus, they have no interest in doing anything that in any way hampers their future employers' greed.
The parliament might actually take things into its own hands and disband the council, and that is something they will have to do someday, but that day will is far away.
The sun's gotta be something like only -3 magnitude from out there.
According to Celestia, it's -18.56, for what it's worth. (The full moon on Earth is something like -12.6, so the sun would still be bright enough to read by, by a long margin).
BZflag on full res/textures etc looks great and plays better.
Spending millions on artwork and music which nobody notices anymore is one reason EA games aren't worth buying. BZFlag is good looking and more damn fun than any commercial game I've seen in years.
The War of the Worlds trailer isn't worth watching, it simply consists of a person who ain't no Richard Burton reading out a version of the opening lines of the book "No one would have believed etc." and very little other than concerned looking American people looking at a stormy horizon. No maritans, no acting, nothing.
Speaking as someone that lives just outside of Woking (where the book is set), and who has walked his dog in the actual sandpit where the martians landed, I'd love to see the film done well, with the music from the Jeff Wayne album as the theme music if at all possible. But, alas, no one in Hollywood has any interest in doing these things well, they just take a famous name and slap it onto any old shite of a script, hire some other famous names to work on it and thank God and congress that descendants of authors can't sue for defamation of the original work.
You can call it totalitarian, but a Marxist regime, however harsh, draconian or totalitarian can not be simply fascist.
Right, I see that what you are doing is arguing the definitions. Certainly the definitions of fascism and Marxism are very different. So what? That's not the real issue. The real issue is that China is not Marxist. It does not follow Marx's ideas nor does it pursue the goals he set out in his work. It talks about them, sure. But then Bush says he's a Christian while violating everything that Jesus stood for. Who gets to define what Christianity means, Bush or Jesus? Who gets to define what Marxism means, China or Marx?
Both countries employ vastly different ideologies, but their methods are similar, merely employed with different emphasisises. That's exactly my point.
China's rulers professesed ideology is simply irrelevent, it is the way they actually govern that is the only valid judgement. In what way does life under Chinese rule actually resemble Marxism? On balance, China is much closer to fascist than Marxist. I would admit it is not a purely fascist state, but it's not any sort of Marxist state. It is also changing at the moment but it's certainly not aiming for anything that Marx would approve of.
No it's not. It may call itself a Marxist state but it can call itself the Queen of Sheba but that doesn't make it so. China is a very clear fascist state.
The term fascist seems to be misused quite often in American media.
Almost as much as the terms "communist" and "Marxist" are misused in Chinese official propaganda. But not quite.
In theory, the members of the ruling party should recieve no better treatment than anyone else.
Which is one of the easiest ways of spotting the fact that China is not Marxist, nor even anything remotely like it.
Communism does not in theory aim to exploit the masses whatsoever unlike capitalism, it is designed to do the complete opposite of that.
This is another good way of spotting the total lack of Marxism in China.
In fact, your criticisms of a tiny minority exploiting the masses beneath them are more acurately pointed towards capitalist countries, like the US
Yes, and fascist oligarchies like China.
Given the choice, I'd rather be a Chinese man in China than a black American man living in Harlem.
That's cheating: you're saying that you'd rather be a Chinese man with a free pick of the whole of China to live in than a black man living in a bad part of America. Would you prefer to be a Chinese man living in a Shanghai slum? Would poverty, disease and crime really be better for having a government which says it doesn't exist?
In any case, nobody believes in the implicit moral superiority of the USA anymore.
I never believed in it in the first place - I'm not American - so I'm not sure why you mentioned it.
the once great USA is clearly falling apart in many ways, and steadily moving towards a totalitarian and perhaps even fascist state itself.
I agree, America is starting to resemble China more and more these days. What was your point?
Let's see some more articles on the good old USA and the governments efforts to manipulate and censor the public.
MORE? In any case, that does not change the fact that China is a fascist state run my a tiny minority in order to exploit the billion people below them. As you say, not really much practical difference from "USA Inc." but certainly no better.
Although "it is easy to imagine a universe where small developers don't huddle in blasted out wreckage, waiting to be vivisected by the the next wave of EA Scion-class sawbots.", it's very hard to believe in it now.
Israel is in the same boat and is much harsher on its opposing poplulation -- and yet Israel has international support.
Depends on what you mean by international. Israel has the support of the American government and the reluctant support of a couple of others but generally speaking, the people of the world are not convinced that random executions and torture are the way to handle opposition, armed or not.
When most of us think of conservation, do we think of conserving geography itself, or the life that lives on top of and within it?
Imagine a proposal to fill in the Grand Canyon and culvert the river underneath. The geography would certainly be the main focus of attention in the ensuing fight.
to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant, but that are made conditional on our asking for them.
A classic bit of religious legalese to explain why the giant wizard in the sky acts like a complete shit most of the time. If the girl in question had been out hiking when she was bitten and fell into a coma before realising that what was going on and before she was expected back, what chance does that give her?
Religion is the state of believing that writing "factual" on the back of a copy of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" means that gryphons must really exist. It is an utter and disgusting waste of human life/lives.
a government official resiged over a major failure in his department?
Don't be silly. The person in question was a civil servent, there's no way anyone in actual government would resign over anything up to and including murder. Plus, he was simply moved to another department and never admitted any substantial fault, failure or responsibility.
the compiler does a lot of the work to ensure that the correct objects are passed to functions
I've never seen such a concise explanation of why Java, C++, C# etc. are such failures as OO languages. You pass the function to the object, man! The other way round and you're just kidding yourself that you have objects.
As far as I can see Opera is in a different class from Firefox/Mozilla (IE's just a dead relic of a bygone age, like wax cylinders). It is faster, easier to use and configure, uses less memory, and has more features that I actually use daily. I haven't tried Konq in a long time so I don't know what it's like but the others I have to use to check work and they really are quite unpleasant to use. Firefox is the best of the rest.
Govenor of Texas, brother and father both presidents? Hardy out on a limb there, was I. He might not but from a purely political point of view, he'd be mad not to.
b) win the election
I can't see the Democrats recovering in four years from this point. They really gave it a damn good shot and they still failed.
c) support Microsoft.
Again, that's hardly a radical off-the-wall notion given his family and party's ideas on big business.
I could also make the assumption that Hillary Clinton will run, win, and come down on Microsoft like a ton of bricks.
I suspect she may well run, but just imaginary threats from gay marrages and sleeper-cells of terrorists mobilised the self-rightious in huge numbers this year; just imagine what a real, live woman would do for right-wing turnout. I don't think I'll ever see a woman president no matter what her personal qualities are. Personally I wouldn't give her more than a 50-50 change of not being shot by a real wacko before election day.
Don't you mean "King Jeb Bush?" If you're going to be a conspiracy wacko, you may as well do it correctly.
It's hardly a secret that Jeb's going to be the next Republican candidate, any more than it is that Microsoft has a long, long history of taking other people's ideas and claiming that they invented them. Which bit did you think was wacko?
No matter how stupid, trivial, or ancient, they're required to license them.
You can't license what you don't own. The obvious motivation for this long list is to allow MS to claim ownership at some future date when President Jeb Bush lifts even the pathetic restrictions of the DoJ case. They know that many small companies (and that's most when compared to MS) will simply fold and pay up rather than face being ground down in court for 10 years arguing the point.
SVG is more important for Firefox: it is significant for displaying content on web pages
Is it?! I've yet to see any outside of SVG advocate sites. Until IE supports it properly it'll go the way of.png: great if you live in a little non-IE bubble, useless for the real world. I use both for passing work between members of design teams that are using different operating systems but once we want a real person to look at it with their browser it all gets converted to Flash/gifs/jpgs/css.
That is still the big distinction: if you commit infringement but don't profit by it, that's one thing (fair-use at best, a civil matter at worst), but sell it and make money and you can end up in criminal court
I think the UK is different. Here the law takes the view that reducing the market for an item is the issue and that does not depend on you making a profit, either way you've harmed the copyright holder. There is a certain logic to this but where it all starts to come apart is when the MPAA tries to argue that someone that would buy a pirated movie on DVD for 3 quid would have instead forked out 16 quid to take the family to see it at the cinema.
Slashdot Mirror
That is its purpose: to make sure that business can proceed unrestrained by democracy. The EU is run by the unelected councillors who know that one day they will be looking for cushey jobs in industry as non-execs and "advisors". Thus, they have no interest in doing anything that in any way hampers their future employers' greed.
The parliament might actually take things into its own hands and disband the council, and that is something they will have to do someday, but that day will is far away.
TWW
Yes, I always make sure I schedule hard drive and power supply failures well in advance so that everyone can save their work beforehand.
TWW
According to Celestia, it's -18.56, for what it's worth. (The full moon on Earth is something like -12.6, so the sun would still be bright enough to read by, by a long margin).
TWW
Bullshit.
BZflag on full res/textures etc looks great and plays better.
Spending millions on artwork and music which nobody notices anymore is one reason EA games aren't worth buying. BZFlag is good looking and more damn fun than any commercial game I've seen in years.
TWW
TWW
Speaking as someone that lives just outside of Woking (where the book is set), and who has walked his dog in the actual sandpit where the martians landed, I'd love to see the film done well, with the music from the Jeff Wayne album as the theme music if at all possible. But, alas, no one in Hollywood has any interest in doing these things well, they just take a famous name and slap it onto any old shite of a script, hire some other famous names to work on it and thank God and congress that descendants of authors can't sue for defamation of the original work.
TWW
You can call it totalitarian, but a Marxist regime, however harsh, draconian or totalitarian can not be simply fascist.
Right, I see that what you are doing is arguing the definitions. Certainly the definitions of fascism and Marxism are very different. So what? That's not the real issue. The real issue is that China is not Marxist. It does not follow Marx's ideas nor does it pursue the goals he set out in his work. It talks about them, sure. But then Bush says he's a Christian while violating everything that Jesus stood for. Who gets to define what Christianity means, Bush or Jesus? Who gets to define what Marxism means, China or Marx?
Both countries employ vastly different ideologies, but their methods are similar, merely employed with different emphasisises. That's exactly my point.
China's rulers professesed ideology is simply irrelevent, it is the way they actually govern that is the only valid judgement. In what way does life under Chinese rule actually resemble Marxism? On balance, China is much closer to fascist than Marxist. I would admit it is not a purely fascist state, but it's not any sort of Marxist state. It is also changing at the moment but it's certainly not aiming for anything that Marx would approve of.
TWW
No it's not. It may call itself a Marxist state but it can call itself the Queen of Sheba but that doesn't make it so. China is a very clear fascist state.
The term fascist seems to be misused quite often in American media.
Almost as much as the terms "communist" and "Marxist" are misused in Chinese official propaganda. But not quite.
In theory, the members of the ruling party should recieve no better treatment than anyone else.
Which is one of the easiest ways of spotting the fact that China is not Marxist, nor even anything remotely like it.
Communism does not in theory aim to exploit the masses whatsoever unlike capitalism, it is designed to do the complete opposite of that.
This is another good way of spotting the total lack of Marxism in China.
In fact, your criticisms of a tiny minority exploiting the masses beneath them are more acurately pointed towards capitalist countries, like the US
Yes, and fascist oligarchies like China.
Given the choice, I'd rather be a Chinese man in China than a black American man living in Harlem.
That's cheating: you're saying that you'd rather be a Chinese man with a free pick of the whole of China to live in than a black man living in a bad part of America. Would you prefer to be a Chinese man living in a Shanghai slum? Would poverty, disease and crime really be better for having a government which says it doesn't exist?
In any case, nobody believes in the implicit moral superiority of the USA anymore.
I never believed in it in the first place - I'm not American - so I'm not sure why you mentioned it.
the once great USA is clearly falling apart in many ways, and steadily moving towards a totalitarian and perhaps even fascist state itself.
I agree, America is starting to resemble China more and more these days. What was your point?
TWW
MORE? In any case, that does not change the fact that China is a fascist state run my a tiny minority in order to exploit the billion people below them. As you say, not really much practical difference from "USA Inc." but certainly no better.
TWW
TWW
TWW
I see a vision of robots...BIG steam driven robots guided by reins and a team of engineers with theodolites. I call this creation "Sergent Bhrama".
Bloody hell, where'd I leave me pills?
TWW
Depends on what you mean by international. Israel has the support of the American government and the reluctant support of a couple of others but generally speaking, the people of the world are not convinced that random executions and torture are the way to handle opposition, armed or not.
TWW
Imagine a proposal to fill in the Grand Canyon and culvert the river underneath. The geography would certainly be the main focus of attention in the ensuing fight.
TWW
A classic bit of religious legalese to explain why the giant wizard in the sky acts like a complete shit most of the time. If the girl in question had been out hiking when she was bitten and fell into a coma before realising that what was going on and before she was expected back, what chance does that give her?
Religion is the state of believing that writing "factual" on the back of a copy of "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" means that gryphons must really exist. It is an utter and disgusting waste of human life/lives.
TWW
TWW
Don't be silly. The person in question was a civil servent, there's no way anyone in actual government would resign over anything up to and including murder. Plus, he was simply moved to another department and never admitted any substantial fault, failure or responsibility.
In other words: business as usual.
TWW
In what way? I've never had any trouble with them (at least since iptables came in). What did you need to do which made it complicated?
TWW
I've never seen such a concise explanation of why Java, C++, C# etc. are such failures as OO languages. You pass the function to the object, man! The other way round and you're just kidding yourself that you have objects.
TWW
TWW
Govenor of Texas, brother and father both presidents? Hardy out on a limb there, was I. He might not but from a purely political point of view, he'd be mad not to.
b) win the election
I can't see the Democrats recovering in four years from this point. They really gave it a damn good shot and they still failed.
c) support Microsoft.
Again, that's hardly a radical off-the-wall notion given his family and party's ideas on big business.
I could also make the assumption that Hillary Clinton will run, win, and come down on Microsoft like a ton of bricks.
I suspect she may well run, but just imaginary threats from gay marrages and sleeper-cells of terrorists mobilised the self-rightious in huge numbers this year; just imagine what a real, live woman would do for right-wing turnout. I don't think I'll ever see a woman president no matter what her personal qualities are. Personally I wouldn't give her more than a 50-50 change of not being shot by a real wacko before election day.
TWW
It's hardly a secret that Jeb's going to be the next Republican candidate, any more than it is that Microsoft has a long, long history of taking other people's ideas and claiming that they invented them. Which bit did you think was wacko?
TWW
You can't license what you don't own. The obvious motivation for this long list is to allow MS to claim ownership at some future date when President Jeb Bush lifts even the pathetic restrictions of the DoJ case. They know that many small companies (and that's most when compared to MS) will simply fold and pay up rather than face being ground down in court for 10 years arguing the point.
TWW
Is it?! I've yet to see any outside of SVG advocate sites. Until IE supports it properly it'll go the way of .png: great if you live in a little non-IE bubble, useless for the real world. I use both for passing work between members of design teams that are using different operating systems but once we want a real person to look at it with their browser it all gets converted to Flash/gifs/jpgs/css.
TWW
I think the UK is different. Here the law takes the view that reducing the market for an item is the issue and that does not depend on you making a profit, either way you've harmed the copyright holder. There is a certain logic to this but where it all starts to come apart is when the MPAA tries to argue that someone that would buy a pirated movie on DVD for 3 quid would have instead forked out 16 quid to take the family to see it at the cinema.
TWW