(The oil slick has spread for miles beyond the booms, and if the newspapers could photograph Lady Di sunbathing topless from half a mile away a decade or so ago, they can photograph a ruddy great oil slick from outside the booms.)
I don't think that's quite the point. This new law is making felons out of trespassers. That doesn't seem quite just.
You're not kidding! I'm actually half-thinking about committing some simple felony (like trespassing, in this case), so that I can have "standing" and challenge the law that prevents felons from voting. If they can't vote, they shouldn't be taxed; we fought a war and dumped tea over "taxation without representation", and that's exactly what this law forces the felons into. Also see the book "Thre Felonies a Day" which I read about here, and purchased, and am about halfway through. Very enlightening (the premise is that every American citizen commits three felonies per day without realizing it -- so that everyone is able to be brought up on charges, and have their voting rights taken away from them, and we should all live in fear and not speak out, otherwise we won't ever again be able to speak out politicially (i.e., vote)).
The actual reason He is the second most abundant element in the universe [...]
Now, that's just freaky. I mean, not that I believe all the religious clap-trap, but my cousin is certain that "God is everywhere", and is now rather painfully confused as to what could possibly be more everywhere than the sky fairy he refers to as "He".
The hardware isn't any better than anyone else's any more (look at the multi-touch virtual/swipe keypad on the droid x). One droid X can replace 1 iPhone + 1 iPad.
I think the next big advance in phone interfaces, beyond the "sub-retinal display", will be having the display able to move vertically, i.e., create the keys so you can feel them as you're typing.
Great applications for braille, as well; or, when driving-dialing, the large keys feel like their number (or dots in a tic-tac-toe pattern, or something else that's easier to detect -- research would help here, but this post is quick), so that the driver can keep their eyes on the road.
In fact, perhaps texting could be made technologically to be less dangerous? (As in, regardless of the speed of legislature in the states that haven't outlawed it yet, the N+1 version of all devices once that technology exists can make for safer drivers.)
You can argue that the scale and safety implications are different, but what it boils down to is that you don't feel there should be any arbitrary restrictions on you in an area where you are an expert. And while that's understandable, the comparison is absolutely valid.
Not exactly.
I am not required by law to purchase any type of insurance to write programs for my phone.
I am required by law to purchase insurance for my motor vehicle.
Therefore, I have a financial incentive to accept the governor that keeps my vehicle from exceeding a certain speed, due to the insurance premium reductions for vehicles with those restrictions.
I have absolutely no financial incentive to accept any sort of governor on my phone. Therefore, Apple's restriction of my device is more disconcerting than my sports car not being able to exceed 146 (going downhill; it was supposed to be 145). So, in at least this specific regard, the car analogy has failed.
Your other response had a good anecdote, but the vendor of the OS of their phone should have written it better, so that fuck-ups in an application can't bring the whole damn phone down. I completely agree that the length of the leash matters naught; I will replace my iDRM device with something something Android, when the contract is up in about a year.
The other is that they like to jack up the price once they're on the job, even if they quoted you a flat rate. Having just bought a house I've been getting a lot of that lately.
I've been reading a lot of Mark Twain recently (he's on Project Gutenberg, and stopped writing before 1923 so we can access all of his works).
Most recently I read a Gutenberg-produced list of his quotes, it says this is from "The Mysterious Stranger"; I really enjoyed it, and it applies directly to your recent experience:
"When we were finishing our house, we found we had a little cash left over, on account of the plumber not knowing it."
(I also like the ability to search for "plumb" in my ebook reader and immediately find the quote I'm looking for.:)
My girlfriend at the time even made me a tinfoil hat, that I'd sometimes wear around the house as I babbled nonsense about impending alien invasions.:)
I am both shocked and amazed that you eventually broke up.
OT, but Slashdot, c'mon: "Read the rest of this comment..." -- the only rest was the dude's signature! Yeah, sure, every hard limit has an exceptional one-byte-over-the-limit post, but I've seen so many comments lately where the "rest of this comment" is just the signature, I'm wondering if there's a fix that can be easily made. Like, "post must be at least 5% more than the limit in order for the limit to apply" or something similar.
Assuming such devices were to become affordable, it would represent a risk to the very core of their business.
Yeah, yeah, and humans with their brains represent a risk to the very core of larger animals' dominance.
Doesn't matter how much you boldface your "dire warnings", they're just that: warnings, not reality.
The reality is, people will develop nano-scale printers wherever and whenever they can, because there are benefits to the individuals creating it (which includes groups, which includes corporations -- one corporation can achieve leverage over another by judicious use of technology, which nano-scale printers most certainly are).
I feel sorry for people who look at Star Trek as silly fiction. Sure, some of it will not be the way that it was represented (why send humans into space, when we can send teledildonic robots?), but the core goal is what all life has been striving at ever since the smallest life forms started separating "good atoms" from "bad atoms" -- complete molecular control.
Saying that a locally government-granted personhood will be able to prevent all life on the planet from achieving this goal seems far-fetched. Of course you could be right; the corporations could invent SkyNet, or perhaps lob enough spare nuclear weapons around that life is done, for now, and won't achieve this. But SkyNet will need it -- so the answer must needs be destruction if we want to follow your path.
What would happen should we be able to replicate common goods on the cheap--or, fancifully speaking--replicate just about anything from "bulk matter?" Chaos.
We are already there, for the class of "digital goods". We're witnessing the turmoil right now. I remember back around Napster days, the companies that sold sewing patterns made press announcements that "The Internet Is Killing Our Business!" The mulch manufacturers will be complaining in short order.
"subscription" fees might be charged for users to upload their designs to a company [...]
What would be the point of paying someone a "subscription fee" when they wouldn't really need to spend the money on anything? They'd have printers too, y'know. (Am I wasting my time arguing with a troll?)
Jonathan Coulton is a successful Creative Commons artist. Think "Code Monkey", he also did the song at the end of "Portal" (the game), and had (has?) a gig as musician for a science magazine (Discover, I think?). He used to be a geek like us, so his music particularly speaks to me.
I also very much enjoy Cory Doctorow's writing; he also releases to Creative Commons. Haven't gone back to the well since... I think "Someone Comes to Town", which was a little weird (dad was a mountain, mom was a washing machine IIRC, and the names were alphabetical), perhaps that's the reason I haven't gone back. But I know he's released a few more works, I read about a new one here a week or two ago.
Newegg has a dead pixel policy and refuses to accept most returns over the issue. Should I buy a monitor from them anyway and bitch about my "rights" when they refuse to accept the return or just take my money elsewhere?
No. Buy from TigerDirect, which has comparable prices and a ZERO dead pixel policy (or at least, did the last time I bought a monitor from them, about a year ago). Tiger is gr-r-r-r-reat!
I must be getting old. But tldr version - Big Chain Movie Theaters are usually not a good experience in my opinion.
An insight: put the tldr at the beginning. (I've started putting "Executive Summary" sections at the beginning of my too-long-because-they-include-logs emails, and it has helped my career.)
Microsoft does sometimes improve, though -- Win 7 is (marginally) better than XP IMO, though they went backwards with search and control panel; both are far less useable.
What I find disturbing is their recent trend toward increased DATALOSS, starting with Vista.
It's especially ironic that Microsoft added so fucking many popups via their UAC to Vista -- while at the same time, removing the dialogs asking "are you sure?" on the Logout and Shut Down paths.
So if I want to do pretty much anything on Vista, or some administrative things on Win 7, I need to answer a popup; but if I happened to hit WinKey, L by accident (not WinKey+L, that just locks the computer), I might lose data while it tears down all my apps. And at the very least, I'll lose time (either from the restart/re-login and open all my apps again, or if one was keeping it from shutting down and I am able to cancel it, then I still have to open all the other apps that it has shut down prior to canceling, including some System Tray apps...).
In fact I just researched this, and found a site that sells a cert that 99% of the current browsers accept, for about $70/year (lower when purchased in bulk). Sure, that completely aligns with your statement -- it isn't free -- but your statement sounds more like Jamie Lee Curtis saying "Food costs money, rent costs money, things cost money Louie; you sleep on the couch" than it does "stop buying coffee at Starbucks for a month and it's paid for".
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that's quite the point. This new law is making felons out of trespassers. That doesn't seem quite just.
You're not kidding! I'm actually half-thinking about committing some simple felony (like trespassing, in this case), so that I can have "standing" and challenge the law that prevents felons from voting. If they can't vote, they shouldn't be taxed; we fought a war and dumped tea over "taxation without representation", and that's exactly what this law forces the felons into. Also see the book "Thre Felonies a Day" which I read about here, and purchased, and am about halfway through. Very enlightening (the premise is that every American citizen commits three felonies per day without realizing it -- so that everyone is able to be brought up on charges, and have their voting rights taken away from them, and we should all live in fear and not speak out, otherwise we won't ever again be able to speak out politicially (i.e., vote)).
Because it wasn't the sperm whale. And because Arthur had killed it already, several times.
Now, that's just freaky. I mean, not that I believe all the religious clap-trap, but my cousin is certain that "God is everywhere", and is now rather painfully confused as to what could possibly be more everywhere than the sky fairy he refers to as "He".
I think the next big advance in phone interfaces, beyond the "sub-retinal display", will be having the display able to move vertically, i.e., create the keys so you can feel them as you're typing.
Great applications for braille, as well; or, when driving-dialing, the large keys feel like their number (or dots in a tic-tac-toe pattern, or something else that's easier to detect -- research would help here, but this post is quick), so that the driver can keep their eyes on the road.
In fact, perhaps texting could be made technologically to be less dangerous? (As in, regardless of the speed of legislature in the states that haven't outlawed it yet, the N+1 version of all devices once that technology exists can make for safer drivers.)
Not exactly.
I am not required by law to purchase any type of insurance to write programs for my phone.
I am required by law to purchase insurance for my motor vehicle.
Therefore, I have a financial incentive to accept the governor that keeps my vehicle from exceeding a certain speed, due to the insurance premium reductions for vehicles with those restrictions.
I have absolutely no financial incentive to accept any sort of governor on my phone. Therefore, Apple's restriction of my device is more disconcerting than my sports car not being able to exceed 146 (going downhill; it was supposed to be 145). So, in at least this specific regard, the car analogy has failed.
Your other response had a good anecdote, but the vendor of the OS of their phone should have written it better, so that fuck-ups in an application can't bring the whole damn phone down. I completely agree that the length of the leash matters naught; I will replace my iDRM device with something something Android, when the contract is up in about a year.
I think that is really only relevant a week or so before November. Like that old movie quips, "Remember, remember, the week before November!"
Me, I've upgraded to my heart. (Read comment history.) Best, upgrade, ever. Takes a bit of practice though.
I've been reading a lot of Mark Twain recently (he's on Project Gutenberg, and stopped writing before 1923 so we can access all of his works).
Most recently I read a Gutenberg-produced list of his quotes, it says this is from "The Mysterious Stranger"; I really enjoyed it, and it applies directly to your recent experience:
(I also like the ability to search for "plumb" in my ebook reader and immediately find the quote I'm looking for. :)
I am both shocked and amazed that you eventually broke up.
Thanks!
OT, but Slashdot, c'mon: "Read the rest of this comment..." -- the only rest was the dude's signature! Yeah, sure, every hard limit has an exceptional one-byte-over-the-limit post, but I've seen so many comments lately where the "rest of this comment" is just the signature, I'm wondering if there's a fix that can be easily made. Like, "post must be at least 5% more than the limit in order for the limit to apply" or something similar.
Yeah, yeah, and humans with their brains represent a risk to the very core of larger animals' dominance.
Doesn't matter how much you boldface your "dire warnings", they're just that: warnings, not reality.
The reality is, people will develop nano-scale printers wherever and whenever they can, because there are benefits to the individuals creating it (which includes groups, which includes corporations -- one corporation can achieve leverage over another by judicious use of technology, which nano-scale printers most certainly are).
I feel sorry for people who look at Star Trek as silly fiction. Sure, some of it will not be the way that it was represented (why send humans into space, when we can send teledildonic robots?), but the core goal is what all life has been striving at ever since the smallest life forms started separating "good atoms" from "bad atoms" -- complete molecular control.
Saying that a locally government-granted personhood will be able to prevent all life on the planet from achieving this goal seems far-fetched. Of course you could be right; the corporations could invent SkyNet, or perhaps lob enough spare nuclear weapons around that life is done, for now, and won't achieve this. But SkyNet will need it -- so the answer must needs be destruction if we want to follow your path.
We are already there, for the class of "digital goods". We're witnessing the turmoil right now. I remember back around Napster days, the companies that sold sewing patterns made press announcements that "The Internet Is Killing Our Business!" The mulch manufacturers will be complaining in short order.
What would be the point of paying someone a "subscription fee" when they wouldn't really need to spend the money on anything? They'd have printers too, y'know. (Am I wasting my time arguing with a troll?)
Jonathan Coulton is a successful Creative Commons artist. Think "Code Monkey", he also did the song at the end of "Portal" (the game), and had (has?) a gig as musician for a science magazine (Discover, I think?). He used to be a geek like us, so his music particularly speaks to me.
I also very much enjoy Cory Doctorow's writing; he also releases to Creative Commons. Haven't gone back to the well since ... I think "Someone Comes to Town", which was a little weird (dad was a mountain, mom was a washing machine IIRC, and the names were alphabetical), perhaps that's the reason I haven't gone back. But I know he's released a few more works, I read about a new one here a week or two ago.
No. Buy from TigerDirect, which has comparable prices and a ZERO dead pixel policy (or at least, did the last time I bought a monitor from them, about a year ago). Tiger is gr-r-r-r-reat!
Quote was from Better Off Dead, the movie with John Cusack.
"I said, 'Are you enjoying ... your stay ... in our country!?'"
This is pretty much already the case, thanks to the War on Drugs, Patriot Act, DMCA, etc...
An insight: put the tldr at the beginning. (I've started putting "Executive Summary" sections at the beginning of my too-long-because-they-include-logs emails, and it has helped my career.)
Okay, sure, but are they doing it via spontaneous generation? (Or do they have to wait a while, like double-posting to Slashdot?)
Hi, this is off-topic, I wanted to thank you for your signature, which I googled, and found:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/trying_t.htm
Well worth the 15 minutes it took to get to the punchline, your signature, at the end of it. Thanks!
What I find disturbing is their recent trend toward increased DATALOSS, starting with Vista.
It's especially ironic that Microsoft added so fucking many popups via their UAC to Vista -- while at the same time, removing the dialogs asking "are you sure?" on the Logout and Shut Down paths.
So if I want to do pretty much anything on Vista, or some administrative things on Win 7, I need to answer a popup; but if I happened to hit WinKey, L by accident (not WinKey+L, that just locks the computer), I might lose data while it tears down all my apps. And at the very least, I'll lose time (either from the restart/re-login and open all my apps again, or if one was keeping it from shutting down and I am able to cancel it, then I still have to open all the other apps that it has shut down prior to canceling, including some System Tray apps...).
In fact I just researched this, and found a site that sells a cert that 99% of the current browsers accept, for about $70/year (lower when purchased in bulk). Sure, that completely aligns with your statement -- it isn't free -- but your statement sounds more like Jamie Lee Curtis saying "Food costs money, rent costs money, things cost money Louie; you sleep on the couch" than it does "stop buying coffee at Starbucks for a month and it's paid for".
In fact (looking down), yes, yes I am happy.