It is when you realize that during the Clinton administration the republicans weren't thinking about the next president they were thinking about the current president. The one who everyone had a good idea was corrupt, they just couldn't prove it? You can claim it was the republicans but the list of dead buddies, the missing paper work, Madam Clinton's interesting network of friends and of course Clinton's perjury all made for very interesting incidents.
Sure the democrats have made it all about the blow job but those who actually understood the problem realized the problem wasn't with the sex. JFK banged Marilyn Monroe, no one cares. However lying under the oath is still a crime. Clinton pulled so many tricks out of his hat to get away from impeachment that I'm sure even Johnny Cochran was taking notes as well as at the same time attacking Iraq (which apparently was ok to take pot shots at them back then, but not ok now to actually solve the problem?)
Let's stop with the stupidity. Clinton was an immoral slime ball with the frat boy charm that got him through. Bush's biggest crime is he doesn't run the tightest ship and he is more concerned with our safety than with his public image. Has he done incorrect thing? Yeah, but he's doing what he believes is right. The same way we had interment camps in the 1940s. It wasn't the best course of action, but it was better than ignoring the problem completely. The difference between the two presidents is Bush actually might be thinking what's best for America as a country. Clinton certainly wasn't.
Oh and go ahead and call me a Neo-conservative fascist who is goose stepping over his fellow countrymen while saluting Fox News, because you know insulting the speaker always invalidates the facts he speaks.
This makes sense until you realize 15 years has passed.
I want to feel bad for the school but they made a deal with a company and now 15 years after the fact they are acting like they were idiots back then, that they don't have the money, that there's some other problems and it's all valid arguments, however IBM still shouldn't have to give up the entire debt, they are working with them, but we have to realize that just because the school is on the right track doesn't mean they can default on all the debts in the past to fix it.
Imagine if you sold me your car, how soon after I bought the car would you expect payment? Let's assume you were drunk and we entered into a deal that said in 15 years I'll pay you 1 million dollars. In 15 years wouldn't you expect to start collecting?
Let's assume I'm lost on the road, about a mile from where I am supposed to be. I make a call, place the phone on speaker and carefully drive with the directions of the location I'm trying to reach. There are some anti-cellphone people who would say that's dangerous, and I'm on the fence about it. But if it's the only way to find a location we are going to have to allow stuff like that. People get lost and expecting me to make a call on each street corner after pulling over is a bit ridiculous.
That being said I think something has to be done about cellphones, they can be more dangerous than liquor and smoking combined as they take more attention from some people. But at the same time the test I've seen, especially the mythbuster's false science (sorry, but their tests are barely scientific and tend to get false or directed results) tend to rely on "heavy conversation" if you're in a light conversation "I'm at the corner of Park and Green" I have a feeling the effect of a call and the effect of a hands free set is going to be different than if you give the person questions such as "name 5 things in the car", "what did you do all day".
That's not to say people don't have heavy conversations on the phone while driving, in a 24 hour period I saw a guy drive in oncoming traffic, a different guy take a turn onto a 1 way street the wrong way, and a guy come to a dead stop in the middle of the road. Phones can be bad, but they can also be a tool, and that's where we need to take them, back to being a useful tool.
Hell we're still trying to find scientific consensus on "weather is hard to predict". We barely have it on "it's getting hotter", let's not get into the quagmire of is human kind actually changing the weather, or what the proper response should be. I'd just like to start by saying Global warming hardly has a consensus, except the consensus that there's no consensus, and even that is denied by zealots who claim something must be done today with out showing true proof. But I don't want to get into another pissing contest, enough of our denizens are involved in the daily global warming one already.
Democracy is about the people getting a true say in government however. So if the public believes the scientists then the consensus will apply to the government's policies in a true democracy (in reality it's different, but let's not go applying theory today, that's a hotbed of annoyance). However if there is a scientific consensus and popular opinion doesn't agree with it, democracy will move away from applying the theory or decisions to the policies of the government.
It's the same as all war mongers. Anyone can show the Palestinians that both them and the Israeli's have a right to the Gaza Strip. It's obvious. Hell let's even say Hamas and Fatah both have a right to exist, but it doesn't mean that the people in the country are going to follow that ideology. There have been plans for peace in the area multiple times, some of them relatively simplistic and yet something screws it up. Peace is good, peace is nice, but peace as a policy doesn't work unless everyone agrees to it.
So in a TRUE democracy it is public opinion that guides the will of the government, NOT scientific consensus. That being said in reality, "scientific consensus" as it currently stand can lead the public around by their nose, to the point where it can change democratic policy of any type. No other example needs be pointed out than the Nazi government's supposed consensus that they were superior to all other races. So I believe Klaus has a very valid and interesting point, and I agree with him about the current scientific/political environment.
But in a perfect world this would not be, however the sooner we, the people, realize the difference between our governments (more of a representative republic) than a true democracy, the better.
For the same reason you can't get Sci-fi in my area unless you buy the sports package. I'll let you figure that one out yourself because I'm tired of trying.
Sorry we can't accommodate your white Anglo-Saxon European ass. Unfortunately in our country we can't discriminate, which means we can't approve people from countries that have well established security.
We're forced to tighten the northern borders of our country which we have friendly relationships with, but the southern border needs to be an open gate, because nothing wrong ever goes down there. No one would try smuggling in anything or anyone from Mexico, right? We have to allow any cuban refugee residency in America if they get here, but hard working immigrants from other countries have to go through a million steps to get even a working visa. We will ignore the fact a black man kills a white man and claims self defense, but a white police officer, someone who has sworn to protect our people who even acts rudely to a black man, or even tries to defend himself is a racist bigoted animal that needs to be put down.
As you see we are a country that is so involved in not appearing biased that we fuck ourselves over. But at the same time I have one question. Why if we are so bad do we still have a thriving tourism industry, do people still want to come to america? We barely produce anything worthwhile, we import almost everything, so what's the point? The point is even if we suck, we're still number one, which makes me ask what's wrong with your corner of the world?
Besides with the real question is if you know about your little convention already, it's more than 2 days away, is it that you can't even be hassled enough with planning a trip more than 48 hours in advance? If that's the case we don't need your negative political ideology/hatred and contempt for our people/lazy ways. We have enough of those already here. Hell we have enough of them in our government on both sides of the isle already. Personally I say good riddens if a little inconvenience for you means you don't want to come back.
Seriously I've seen Obama reaching out to youTube and I've heard all the others reaching out to the internet, but seriously who believes it? Do you really think Obama even looks at youTube for anything other than the stupid funny moment of the night? I know I don't and I have more time than him.
In America we have a problem, the voters are realizing that puppet number one or jackass number two isn't going to really change the country. Many of us are losing interest in politics, and those who are still interested only care about a few key issues. This "outreach to the youth generation" is just a political maneuver. Did Bill Clinton actually care about kids when he went on MTV? No he cared about votes, he won the election and became the same style of bureaucrat (admittedly a more charismatic version than others).
I'm not saying "boo" but I'm at least reminding people that meaningless political maneuvers that will only last until the person gets voted in shouldn't sway you to vote for X candidate, actually learn who the candidates are and more importantly who they represent, if you're instead.
BTW, if you aren't convinced yet this is yet another political farce, the line "video selection process will remain a complete secret." should have tipped you off.
I'm getting sick of these. You think if there's a million monkeys who bid on a random service no one would come up with proxy bidding (the site will bid for you up to a certain amount) or buy it now buttons, yet there's patents on both of them.
I get really sick when simplistic business practices are considered treated the same as "trade secrets" even when they are publicly released. I get the feeling that America has become less of a free economy and more of a "patent hell". You certainly can build a better mouse trap, until the first company says they thought up the idea of a mouse trap and then your screwed.
I see this becoming like ADD and ADHD, where a few of us actually have it to the point where when we are an adult we can't shake off some of the tendencies. But then then it was classified as a major problem, and all of a sudden EVERYONE has it, and those of us who actually have it (not just appear to have it) get screwed. Suddenly it's Normal to have it, and that it's "ok" to have it, when half the people I saw with ADD were just suffering from normal adolescents that they weren't even growing out of because it was "ok" that's what made me understand what bullshit is. That was the point I told my psychiatrist to go to hell, and dealt with the problem myself because no external source could give it me. I still have some of the tendencies but the fact is I've dealt with them rather then just accepted them and most people don't realize I ever had an issue with it (and it was a severe case).
We have the same situation with autism currently. So many kids are being diagnosed with them, but is it merely a case of a genetic defect that is all of a sudden present in them or is it a case of a diagnosis that is just too broad and doesn't realize the term "borderline" really should be "is similar but not really". Personally the research and the cases I've seen seems to be the later. That doesn't mean there isn't autism, but the severe cases are getting grouped with the "normal" cases of anti-social kids who have imaginary friends (imagine a kid having that?)
Even the behaviors involved with the identification of the conditions are often at odds with itself.
But even this makes me believe gaming addiction is ripe for another "autism" where there's people with serious problems (read "people who play themselves to death", aka the two Korean gentlemen I read about 6 months ago.) who really do need help, will once again get clumped in with anti-social people who'd prefer to play a game than go to a bar. Do I play games more than I should? Yeah, but I do it rather then going out all night and partying. Losing a job because you're playing WoW is an issue, but preferring to have fun playing games doesn't qualify as a disorder, just as reading too many fiction books isn't one. Sadly the AMA tends to broaden their definitions too much to if you play more than 2 hours of games a day you're sick and need help.
Let's ignore the fact that he had suicidal comments where a judge ordered him to go in for outpatient treatment. This was 2 years before the incident but there's no mention of that. Privacy is an issue, when you have 5 or 6 points where people were saying "he was crazy" but no one is able to connect those dots because everyone is afraid to violate the student's privacy that's an issue.
Privacy advocates can pretend that it doesn't matter but it does. This is a case where it could have been stopped long before it got to this level, but instead because people were afraid of violating the student's rights to privacy and getting one of these groups coming down on them, they instead they felt like they were forced to say nothing. That seems like a perfect solution.
I hate this fact that we can talk all about the trail of tears still, but we can't mention the fact that the Native Americans reacted violently to our expansion and that's why we had a conflict. Manifest destiny though is perhaps the ugliest situation we ever had, yet it's promoted as the best.
I hate this soft culture we are brining up who don't learn about our travesties done to us and against us. What's next? 50 years from now we learn about how America brutally attacked the germans in World War 2 and Pearl harbor never happened? Operation: Desert Storm was about Americans getting oil, and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait never happened? If we are going to ever grow as a society we need to tell the whole story, not the side that agrees with the current political climate.
That being said I never knew that Oregon trail came from one company. I'm always amazed about how much attention this game still gets but damn if every time there's an article I don't learn something new.
The last show kind of spoke to me in an odd way. I mean don't get me wrong, I loved the episode before with the huge blood bath, but that is a very rare occurrence in Sopranos. Sopranos is more about the drama, and that's what we get in the episode.
That being said the ending had me hooked because every couple seconds I was saying "oh god don't do it here" and I had a feeling it was his final scene. But I believe the ending was his death, as Bobby Baccala said in the first episode this season you don't even hear it. Why else cut the music and the screen? I think the show was over and so was his life.
But that will be a series ender people will talk about for years, and as such kudos to David Chase.
This type of response is annoying for people read, and it just shows the replier is picking and choosing his battles. Either way what I expect from AC, but when you're ready to have something worthy of my time, please feel free to sign up and get a better way to respond to people that doesn't hurt your credibility.
Oh and please don't reply to me and introduce 3 times the amount of white space as I originally put in, because I'm sure as hell am not going to read another one of those responses.
Seriously, can an algorithm be biased? YES! Very much so. Imagine if we had an algorithm that rated people on a 100 point scale. If your skin color is white you get 100 points to start with, black people get 0 points. That's biased.
Does that mean the company behind the algorithm is biased? Yeah again. In this case (not necessarily Avvo's case) this algorithm is blatantly biased, trying to rate people on their skin color.
Does this mean it's illegal? Not unless the law has changed. If he wants to litigate then he needs to prove the algorithm is biased (and a few anomalies doesn't mean it's biased, it means it has a flaw) Avvo has to be biased in such a way they are making a profit over the difference. Avvo has to be deliberating trying to damage someone's career for it to even be illegal.
If the algorithm is running correctly and there's no X factor (meaningless stastical values, such as the color of the skin) then there's no crime here. They might not have a perfect algorithm but they arn't claiming it.
If the lawyer in question wanted to fix this correctly, he should bring this to the attention of the site, point out numerous cases of people being graded too harshly and then publicize the data to the public if need be. From the sound of it, there's little to no proof except some lawyers feeling they are being treated unfairly. From the sound of it, that's sour grapes, there's no defamation.
Just because an algorithm is poorly designed it doesn't mean it's crap, errors happen even with great algorithm's first iterations. There's still a burden of proof on the lawyer and I'm not hearing any real proof yet.
Someone has to patent something almost necessary. And sadly this isn't even "life threatening" We already have patents on treatments and no one really cares that they cost a lot of money, what we need is a patent on an everyday occurrence. Driving, walking, sitting, breathing something that we can't live with out but we expect to have. Then get the patent holder to litigate to the point you can never do it with out paying them some exorbitant feet. Only then will people understand why patent law is wrong.
I've commonly pointed out that if the hammer was patented any other idiot could make hammers but they would be forced not to. However even that doesn't sell people on why patents are useless because people also see a need for patents. What needs to happen is people to realize exactly what can be patented, and how much you can charge for the use of a patent. We don't need to make them worthless, but litigation over them is easy because you don't have to make your patent available at a reasonable course, and you can infringe on a patent with out realizing it.
Hey the paris hilton story was entertaining, she completely cracked. I love it.
But I agree with you without incident? Wow! so you mean everything worked... like It has 90 percent of the time with the shuttle? Like why they test and rest the shuttle before launch?
Tell me when another one blows or we find aliens, sadly space has once again become boring. I'm sorry to say it but until I'm going up, I really could care less, the rate we are going (people afraid to fund it) we'll not even land on mars in my life time. I'm only 25! Even the stephen hawking and lord british space flight was only mildly entertaining (lucky bastards).
But this is hardly the worst article. The political section has very little "news for nerds" it's been turned into biased propeganda like many other websites. Your rights online is more about small corporations business rather then people. We have "fuck microsoft" over 90 percent of the site. Fuck Sony on games. Books mostly talk about books that are passing. And the rest? Either the news of the day (which you can read on any other site) or agenda pushing. A little benign good news isn't a bad thing in that case.
It's not a bad thing, but slashdot has turned from a very niche site into a propeganda site. But even there it's still a little less biased than most others. Though any fight about global warming or politics has the same ways to get karma (attack bush, go pro global warming). So it gets tired after a while.
I've been using trillian. Not for months, but YEARS! I've destroyed computers in shorter periods of time, and all I can say is Trillian is amazing. They don't ask for money, they don't try to cheat or guilt you, but their pro offerings are worth the cash if you need it. I've rarely had crashes (mostly when doing odd things) and in the last year their internet transfers are blazing fast (90K+ to AIM users).
Basically I want NOTHING more from trillian. It does everything it should in Basic and does it all well. It had tabs before the rest, it had logging before the rest. These are two of the most important niceties I've seen.
Trust me here, grab the basic, if you aren't happy think about the Pro but it's bar none the best out there, and I really have tried them all.
Divx has been gaining enough support there that it's worth looking at. I'm not looking for stuff to work on antiquated devices, but can it work on the Ipod Video, is it easy to get codecs for use with software? Can you transcode it easily (minimal processor power)? Or even can you convert it easily?
The biggest problem any audio codec has is getting people to realize that while it might be better than MP3 for what ever reason you want to sell us, the new codec also has to be around the same size, and able to be converted to MP3 or AAC easily enough (that means 1 step processes)? or be playable in Mp3 players (it won't be but this is an option)?
Basically assume I have 1 million files in a directory with any tagging system that is available for the system (Movies don't have this to my knowledge). Assume I need format X which is a widely used format (let's go with Mpeg1/divx/or xvid, as they all are fairly large).
How long will it take to convert your file into the format assuming I have 1 million hours of video? This is called a magnitude test, but I've had to deal with 20 gigs of APE at one point. The format turned out to be worthless because people were doing all sorts of odd things with.cue files, and no ape converter understood this. Then it turned out that either the ID3 or APE itself got boned because the ID3 tags had Japanese characters instead of English characters. And so on. End result, I ditched the APE format, got rid of the 20 gigs of files and will never use APE again, it might be a perfectly suitable format, but converting it should have been a 1 time easy to do thing and it turned into a monstrous situation.
This stuff CAN be handled by well-crafted software, but the codec should work with the software not having the software work around the codecs limitations (Aka Transcoding. NEVER require it, but always allow it. If a device can only play WMVs, you'll have to convert your files to the correct codec (what ever the 360 allows) but I still have trouble transcoding.mov files, and it's the format's fault, not the software, so don't disallow transcoding but don't force it to be the only way to get data out.) If possible find ways to allow users to encode from your format to their target format.
Even worse is the fact they have 5 codecs? Indepth look at video codec? More like "really fast look". I've used more codecs when I was converting old tv shows. Divx, Xvid? WMP7? x264 and Cinepak?
How about these tests....
Which one is the least hassle to set up?
Which one is the least hassle to convert from or to?
Which one is the most accepted format? (let's be honest, APE and FLAC might be good audio codecs, too bad only a handful of players play them but Mp3s play on every player out there that I know of).
The one thing I've learned with codecs is the one that looks best tends to be the biggest hassle and least supported. And it's not because people are pig headed, it's usually there's issues with the format. Same thing with the container classes. MKV? OGM? WMV? I'm still getting AVIs 90 percent of the time because it's the most acceptable container. I liked MKV but until people support it, there's no use. I can't easily convert a MKV to the PSP format so it loses it's functionality.
I'm almost definite that the European numbers there are reflecting Europe. While as the PS3 numbers are reflecting Europe and Australia. Apparently there's a large amount of Australian gamers, I know IGN just recently opened a AU branch.
I could be wrong, but that's probably a little more likely considering the other numbers from the Wii.
Vista unlike OSX has yet to institute upgrade buying. Granted it's probably coming knowing Microsoft's history and they have enough other problems, we don't need to fake up apple's business practices for Microsoft.
No, we are only a step closer when people REALIZE they lose the ability. Currently most people don't understand what patents are being used for. They always get the abstract stuff like if I make a part for a computer, you can't make the same part and sell it. They don't understand the stupidity. Three patents that really show that off is.
Ebay or someone has a patent on the automatic bidding (proxy bidding is what they call it or something). No other site can have that with out getting the license.
Namco has a patent on having a little minigame at the begining of their game (see ridge racer). No other company can do that now because it's namco's idea?
Microsoft. See Microsoft, google, and all the other companies that have more patents then they can ever use or should be allowed. The fact you NEED a patent to be in business is sad.
The only way to get patent reform is to make a ridiculous patent (breathing, driving, tires) and then enforce it until people are inconvenienced and they understand that the patent law is what's inconveniencing them. No large company is going to push for patent reform when they have patents, but the people need to be where this starts, and not like it is now. We need whole states loads of people pushing for this.
Because Bush personally did it, or said "sodomize them and then take pictures" Let's realize we are in a war here, and some people are ill suited for war or command. But blaming Bush because of 1 prison that was mismanaged is a joke, did rumsfeld fuck up? Yeah. Did Bush tell him to do it? It still doesn't look like it or are you going to try to say that Bush is guilty because he hired him.
If you hire an employee at your company and he goes and burns down the store next door are you responsible? So why should we hold Bush to that level? If we expect Bush to babysit every one of his subordinates, then why have a cabinet.
Considering Clinton is still treated like the popular Jock of presidents rather than the buffoon who's illegal and immoral activities left a tarnish on the Oval Office. I think Bush will not be seen that poorly at least for a while. The big thing is history seems to love war. If it wasn't for the fact we pulled out of Korea and Vietnam those would be considered successes. There were protesters back in WW2, yet you never hear about them.
Lower poll numbers and all are just an example of people's lack of faith in our government, not particularly poor government. The biggest problem is news organizations are digging into our politicians far more than they ever would before. It started with the Clinton scandal, and now every action Bush has done has also been scrutinized and analyzed until it's completely out of context. If you think it'll stop this time, then you really haven't been paying attention because both sides are now willing to do it. It's easy then running a campaign on the issue, because apparently the rules now are when you enter politics your personal life is fair game.
I'd like to see some analysis on people who care about politics still or watch news about it or so on. I'm sure it's dropped remarkably in the last 10 years.
I mean seriously, is bush misspeaking news? Apparently it is. Is Clinton misspelling a word on a banner news? Now it is. If anything politics is more petty and that's hurt my interest more than anything else. And the fact that half the time the news about politicians is so taken out of context that we'll need a Paul Harvey to tell us the rest of the story is just the icing on this cake.
Slashdot Mirror
It is when you realize that during the Clinton administration the republicans weren't thinking about the next president they were thinking about the current president. The one who everyone had a good idea was corrupt, they just couldn't prove it? You can claim it was the republicans but the list of dead buddies, the missing paper work, Madam Clinton's interesting network of friends and of course Clinton's perjury all made for very interesting incidents.
Sure the democrats have made it all about the blow job but those who actually understood the problem realized the problem wasn't with the sex. JFK banged Marilyn Monroe, no one cares. However lying under the oath is still a crime. Clinton pulled so many tricks out of his hat to get away from impeachment that I'm sure even Johnny Cochran was taking notes as well as at the same time attacking Iraq (which apparently was ok to take pot shots at them back then, but not ok now to actually solve the problem?)
Let's stop with the stupidity. Clinton was an immoral slime ball with the frat boy charm that got him through. Bush's biggest crime is he doesn't run the tightest ship and he is more concerned with our safety than with his public image. Has he done incorrect thing? Yeah, but he's doing what he believes is right. The same way we had interment camps in the 1940s. It wasn't the best course of action, but it was better than ignoring the problem completely. The difference between the two presidents is Bush actually might be thinking what's best for America as a country. Clinton certainly wasn't.
Oh and go ahead and call me a Neo-conservative fascist who is goose stepping over his fellow countrymen while saluting Fox News, because you know insulting the speaker always invalidates the facts he speaks.
This makes sense until you realize 15 years has passed.
I want to feel bad for the school but they made a deal with a company and now 15 years after the fact they are acting like they were idiots back then, that they don't have the money, that there's some other problems and it's all valid arguments, however IBM still shouldn't have to give up the entire debt, they are working with them, but we have to realize that just because the school is on the right track doesn't mean they can default on all the debts in the past to fix it.
Imagine if you sold me your car, how soon after I bought the car would you expect payment? Let's assume you were drunk and we entered into a deal that said in 15 years I'll pay you 1 million dollars. In 15 years wouldn't you expect to start collecting?
Let's assume I'm lost on the road, about a mile from where I am supposed to be. I make a call, place the phone on speaker and carefully drive with the directions of the location I'm trying to reach. There are some anti-cellphone people who would say that's dangerous, and I'm on the fence about it. But if it's the only way to find a location we are going to have to allow stuff like that. People get lost and expecting me to make a call on each street corner after pulling over is a bit ridiculous.
That being said I think something has to be done about cellphones, they can be more dangerous than liquor and smoking combined as they take more attention from some people. But at the same time the test I've seen, especially the mythbuster's false science (sorry, but their tests are barely scientific and tend to get false or directed results) tend to rely on "heavy conversation" if you're in a light conversation "I'm at the corner of Park and Green" I have a feeling the effect of a call and the effect of a hands free set is going to be different than if you give the person questions such as "name 5 things in the car", "what did you do all day".
That's not to say people don't have heavy conversations on the phone while driving, in a 24 hour period I saw a guy drive in oncoming traffic, a different guy take a turn onto a 1 way street the wrong way, and a guy come to a dead stop in the middle of the road. Phones can be bad, but they can also be a tool, and that's where we need to take them, back to being a useful tool.
Hell we're still trying to find scientific consensus on "weather is hard to predict". We barely have it on "it's getting hotter", let's not get into the quagmire of is human kind actually changing the weather, or what the proper response should be. I'd just like to start by saying Global warming hardly has a consensus, except the consensus that there's no consensus, and even that is denied by zealots who claim something must be done today with out showing true proof. But I don't want to get into another pissing contest, enough of our denizens are involved in the daily global warming one already.
Democracy is about the people getting a true say in government however. So if the public believes the scientists then the consensus will apply to the government's policies in a true democracy (in reality it's different, but let's not go applying theory today, that's a hotbed of annoyance). However if there is a scientific consensus and popular opinion doesn't agree with it, democracy will move away from applying the theory or decisions to the policies of the government.
It's the same as all war mongers. Anyone can show the Palestinians that both them and the Israeli's have a right to the Gaza Strip. It's obvious. Hell let's even say Hamas and Fatah both have a right to exist, but it doesn't mean that the people in the country are going to follow that ideology. There have been plans for peace in the area multiple times, some of them relatively simplistic and yet something screws it up. Peace is good, peace is nice, but peace as a policy doesn't work unless everyone agrees to it.
So in a TRUE democracy it is public opinion that guides the will of the government, NOT scientific consensus. That being said in reality, "scientific consensus" as it currently stand can lead the public around by their nose, to the point where it can change democratic policy of any type. No other example needs be pointed out than the Nazi government's supposed consensus that they were superior to all other races. So I believe Klaus has a very valid and interesting point, and I agree with him about the current scientific/political environment.
But in a perfect world this would not be, however the sooner we, the people, realize the difference between our governments (more of a representative republic) than a true democracy, the better.
For the same reason you can't get Sci-fi in my area unless you buy the sports package. I'll let you figure that one out yourself because I'm tired of trying.
Sorry we can't accommodate your white Anglo-Saxon European ass. Unfortunately in our country we can't discriminate, which means we can't approve people from countries that have well established security.
We're forced to tighten the northern borders of our country which we have friendly relationships with, but the southern border needs to be an open gate, because nothing wrong ever goes down there. No one would try smuggling in anything or anyone from Mexico, right? We have to allow any cuban refugee residency in America if they get here, but hard working immigrants from other countries have to go through a million steps to get even a working visa. We will ignore the fact a black man kills a white man and claims self defense, but a white police officer, someone who has sworn to protect our people who even acts rudely to a black man, or even tries to defend himself is a racist bigoted animal that needs to be put down.
As you see we are a country that is so involved in not appearing biased that we fuck ourselves over. But at the same time I have one question. Why if we are so bad do we still have a thriving tourism industry, do people still want to come to america? We barely produce anything worthwhile, we import almost everything, so what's the point? The point is even if we suck, we're still number one, which makes me ask what's wrong with your corner of the world?
Besides with the real question is if you know about your little convention already, it's more than 2 days away, is it that you can't even be hassled enough with planning a trip more than 48 hours in advance? If that's the case we don't need your negative political ideology/hatred and contempt for our people/lazy ways. We have enough of those already here. Hell we have enough of them in our government on both sides of the isle already. Personally I say good riddens if a little inconvenience for you means you don't want to come back.
Seriously I've seen Obama reaching out to youTube and I've heard all the others reaching out to the internet, but seriously who believes it? Do you really think Obama even looks at youTube for anything other than the stupid funny moment of the night? I know I don't and I have more time than him.
In America we have a problem, the voters are realizing that puppet number one or jackass number two isn't going to really change the country. Many of us are losing interest in politics, and those who are still interested only care about a few key issues. This "outreach to the youth generation" is just a political maneuver. Did Bill Clinton actually care about kids when he went on MTV? No he cared about votes, he won the election and became the same style of bureaucrat (admittedly a more charismatic version than others).
I'm not saying "boo" but I'm at least reminding people that meaningless political maneuvers that will only last until the person gets voted in shouldn't sway you to vote for X candidate, actually learn who the candidates are and more importantly who they represent, if you're instead.
BTW, if you aren't convinced yet this is yet another political farce, the line "video selection process will remain a complete secret." should have tipped you off.
Nah dude, Flame thrower is where it's at. It's more "extreme".
I'm getting sick of these. You think if there's a million monkeys who bid on a random service no one would come up with proxy bidding (the site will bid for you up to a certain amount) or buy it now buttons, yet there's patents on both of them.
I get really sick when simplistic business practices are considered treated the same as "trade secrets" even when they are publicly released. I get the feeling that America has become less of a free economy and more of a "patent hell". You certainly can build a better mouse trap, until the first company says they thought up the idea of a mouse trap and then your screwed.
I see this becoming like ADD and ADHD, where a few of us actually have it to the point where when we are an adult we can't shake off some of the tendencies. But then then it was classified as a major problem, and all of a sudden EVERYONE has it, and those of us who actually have it (not just appear to have it) get screwed. Suddenly it's Normal to have it, and that it's "ok" to have it, when half the people I saw with ADD were just suffering from normal adolescents that they weren't even growing out of because it was "ok" that's what made me understand what bullshit is. That was the point I told my psychiatrist to go to hell, and dealt with the problem myself because no external source could give it me. I still have some of the tendencies but the fact is I've dealt with them rather then just accepted them and most people don't realize I ever had an issue with it (and it was a severe case).
We have the same situation with autism currently. So many kids are being diagnosed with them, but is it merely a case of a genetic defect that is all of a sudden present in them or is it a case of a diagnosis that is just too broad and doesn't realize the term "borderline" really should be "is similar but not really". Personally the research and the cases I've seen seems to be the later. That doesn't mean there isn't autism, but the severe cases are getting grouped with the "normal" cases of anti-social kids who have imaginary friends (imagine a kid having that?)
Even the behaviors involved with the identification of the conditions are often at odds with itself.
But even this makes me believe gaming addiction is ripe for another "autism" where there's people with serious problems (read "people who play themselves to death", aka the two Korean gentlemen I read about 6 months ago.) who really do need help, will once again get clumped in with anti-social people who'd prefer to play a game than go to a bar. Do I play games more than I should? Yeah, but I do it rather then going out all night and partying. Losing a job because you're playing WoW is an issue, but preferring to have fun playing games doesn't qualify as a disorder, just as reading too many fiction books isn't one. Sadly the AMA tends to broaden their definitions too much to if you play more than 2 hours of games a day you're sick and need help.
Let's ignore the fact that he had suicidal comments where a judge ordered him to go in for outpatient treatment. This was 2 years before the incident but there's no mention of that. Privacy is an issue, when you have 5 or 6 points where people were saying "he was crazy" but no one is able to connect those dots because everyone is afraid to violate the student's privacy that's an issue.
Privacy advocates can pretend that it doesn't matter but it does. This is a case where it could have been stopped long before it got to this level, but instead because people were afraid of violating the student's rights to privacy and getting one of these groups coming down on them, they instead they felt like they were forced to say nothing. That seems like a perfect solution.
I hate this fact that we can talk all about the trail of tears still, but we can't mention the fact that the Native Americans reacted violently to our expansion and that's why we had a conflict. Manifest destiny though is perhaps the ugliest situation we ever had, yet it's promoted as the best.
I hate this soft culture we are brining up who don't learn about our travesties done to us and against us. What's next? 50 years from now we learn about how America brutally attacked the germans in World War 2 and Pearl harbor never happened? Operation: Desert Storm was about Americans getting oil, and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait never happened? If we are going to ever grow as a society we need to tell the whole story, not the side that agrees with the current political climate.
That being said I never knew that Oregon trail came from one company. I'm always amazed about how much attention this game still gets but damn if every time there's an article I don't learn something new.
The last show kind of spoke to me in an odd way. I mean don't get me wrong, I loved the episode before with the huge blood bath, but that is a very rare occurrence in Sopranos. Sopranos is more about the drama, and that's what we get in the episode.
That being said the ending had me hooked because every couple seconds I was saying "oh god don't do it here" and I had a feeling it was his final scene. But I believe the ending was his death, as Bobby Baccala said in the first episode this season you don't even hear it. Why else cut the music and the screen? I think the show was over and so was his life.
But that will be a series ender people will talk about for years, and as such kudos to David Chase.
This type of response is annoying for people read, and it just shows the replier is picking and choosing his battles. Either way what I expect from AC, but when you're ready to have something worthy of my time, please feel free to sign up and get a better way to respond to people that doesn't hurt your credibility.
Oh and please don't reply to me and introduce 3 times the amount of white space as I originally put in, because I'm sure as hell am not going to read another one of those responses.
Seriously, can an algorithm be biased? YES! Very much so. Imagine if we had an algorithm that rated people on a 100 point scale. If your skin color is white you get 100 points to start with, black people get 0 points. That's biased.
Does that mean the company behind the algorithm is biased? Yeah again. In this case (not necessarily Avvo's case) this algorithm is blatantly biased, trying to rate people on their skin color.
Does this mean it's illegal? Not unless the law has changed. If he wants to litigate then he needs to prove the algorithm is biased (and a few anomalies doesn't mean it's biased, it means it has a flaw) Avvo has to be biased in such a way they are making a profit over the difference. Avvo has to be deliberating trying to damage someone's career for it to even be illegal.
If the algorithm is running correctly and there's no X factor (meaningless stastical values, such as the color of the skin) then there's no crime here. They might not have a perfect algorithm but they arn't claiming it.
If the lawyer in question wanted to fix this correctly, he should bring this to the attention of the site, point out numerous cases of people being graded too harshly and then publicize the data to the public if need be. From the sound of it, there's little to no proof except some lawyers feeling they are being treated unfairly. From the sound of it, that's sour grapes, there's no defamation.
Just because an algorithm is poorly designed it doesn't mean it's crap, errors happen even with great algorithm's first iterations. There's still a burden of proof on the lawyer and I'm not hearing any real proof yet.
Someone has to patent something almost necessary. And sadly this isn't even "life threatening" We already have patents on treatments and no one really cares that they cost a lot of money, what we need is a patent on an everyday occurrence. Driving, walking, sitting, breathing something that we can't live with out but we expect to have. Then get the patent holder to litigate to the point you can never do it with out paying them some exorbitant feet. Only then will people understand why patent law is wrong.
I've commonly pointed out that if the hammer was patented any other idiot could make hammers but they would be forced not to. However even that doesn't sell people on why patents are useless because people also see a need for patents. What needs to happen is people to realize exactly what can be patented, and how much you can charge for the use of a patent. We don't need to make them worthless, but litigation over them is easy because you don't have to make your patent available at a reasonable course, and you can infringe on a patent with out realizing it.
Hey the paris hilton story was entertaining, she completely cracked. I love it.
But I agree with you without incident? Wow! so you mean everything worked... like It has 90 percent of the time with the shuttle? Like why they test and rest the shuttle before launch?
Tell me when another one blows or we find aliens, sadly space has once again become boring. I'm sorry to say it but until I'm going up, I really could care less, the rate we are going (people afraid to fund it) we'll not even land on mars in my life time. I'm only 25! Even the stephen hawking and lord british space flight was only mildly entertaining (lucky bastards).
But this is hardly the worst article. The political section has very little "news for nerds" it's been turned into biased propeganda like many other websites. Your rights online is more about small corporations business rather then people. We have "fuck microsoft" over 90 percent of the site. Fuck Sony on games. Books mostly talk about books that are passing. And the rest? Either the news of the day (which you can read on any other site) or agenda pushing. A little benign good news isn't a bad thing in that case.
It's not a bad thing, but slashdot has turned from a very niche site into a propeganda site. But even there it's still a little less biased than most others. Though any fight about global warming or politics has the same ways to get karma (attack bush, go pro global warming). So it gets tired after a while.
I've been using trillian. Not for months, but YEARS! I've destroyed computers in shorter periods of time, and all I can say is Trillian is amazing. They don't ask for money, they don't try to cheat or guilt you, but their pro offerings are worth the cash if you need it. I've rarely had crashes (mostly when doing odd things) and in the last year their internet transfers are blazing fast (90K+ to AIM users).
Basically I want NOTHING more from trillian. It does everything it should in Basic and does it all well. It had tabs before the rest, it had logging before the rest. These are two of the most important niceties I've seen.
Trust me here, grab the basic, if you aren't happy think about the Pro but it's bar none the best out there, and I really have tried them all.
Divx has been gaining enough support there that it's worth looking at. I'm not looking for stuff to work on antiquated devices, but can it work on the Ipod Video, is it easy to get codecs for use with software? Can you transcode it easily (minimal processor power)? Or even can you convert it easily?
.cue files, and no ape converter understood this. Then it turned out that either the ID3 or APE itself got boned because the ID3 tags had Japanese characters instead of English characters. And so on. End result, I ditched the APE format, got rid of the 20 gigs of files and will never use APE again, it might be a perfectly suitable format, but converting it should have been a 1 time easy to do thing and it turned into a monstrous situation.
.mov files, and it's the format's fault, not the software, so don't disallow transcoding but don't force it to be the only way to get data out.) If possible find ways to allow users to encode from your format to their target format.
The biggest problem any audio codec has is getting people to realize that while it might be better than MP3 for what ever reason you want to sell us, the new codec also has to be around the same size, and able to be converted to MP3 or AAC easily enough (that means 1 step processes)? or be playable in Mp3 players (it won't be but this is an option)?
Basically assume I have 1 million files in a directory with any tagging system that is available for the system (Movies don't have this to my knowledge). Assume I need format X which is a widely used format (let's go with Mpeg1/divx/or xvid, as they all are fairly large).
How long will it take to convert your file into the format assuming I have 1 million hours of video? This is called a magnitude test, but I've had to deal with 20 gigs of APE at one point. The format turned out to be worthless because people were doing all sorts of odd things with
This stuff CAN be handled by well-crafted software, but the codec should work with the software not having the software work around the codecs limitations (Aka Transcoding. NEVER require it, but always allow it. If a device can only play WMVs, you'll have to convert your files to the correct codec (what ever the 360 allows) but I still have trouble transcoding
Even worse is the fact they have 5 codecs? Indepth look at video codec? More like "really fast look". I've used more codecs when I was converting old tv shows. Divx, Xvid? WMP7? x264 and Cinepak?
How about these tests....
Which one is the least hassle to set up?
Which one is the least hassle to convert from or to?
Which one is the most accepted format? (let's be honest, APE and FLAC might be good audio codecs, too bad only a handful of players play them but Mp3s play on every player out there that I know of).
The one thing I've learned with codecs is the one that looks best tends to be the biggest hassle and least supported. And it's not because people are pig headed, it's usually there's issues with the format. Same thing with the container classes. MKV? OGM? WMV? I'm still getting AVIs 90 percent of the time because it's the most acceptable container. I liked MKV but until people support it, there's no use. I can't easily convert a MKV to the PSP format so it loses it's functionality.
I'm almost definite that the European numbers there are reflecting Europe. While as the PS3 numbers are reflecting Europe and Australia. Apparently there's a large amount of Australian gamers, I know IGN just recently opened a AU branch.
I could be wrong, but that's probably a little more likely considering the other numbers from the Wii.
Vista unlike OSX has yet to institute upgrade buying. Granted it's probably coming knowing Microsoft's history and they have enough other problems, we don't need to fake up apple's business practices for Microsoft.
No, we are only a step closer when people REALIZE they lose the ability. Currently most people don't understand what patents are being used for. They always get the abstract stuff like if I make a part for a computer, you can't make the same part and sell it. They don't understand the stupidity. Three patents that really show that off is.
Ebay or someone has a patent on the automatic bidding (proxy bidding is what they call it or something). No other site can have that with out getting the license.
Namco has a patent on having a little minigame at the begining of their game (see ridge racer). No other company can do that now because it's namco's idea?
Microsoft. See Microsoft, google, and all the other companies that have more patents then they can ever use or should be allowed. The fact you NEED a patent to be in business is sad.
The only way to get patent reform is to make a ridiculous patent (breathing, driving, tires) and then enforce it until people are inconvenienced and they understand that the patent law is what's inconveniencing them. No large company is going to push for patent reform when they have patents, but the people need to be where this starts, and not like it is now. We need whole states loads of people pushing for this.
Because Bush personally did it, or said "sodomize them and then take pictures" Let's realize we are in a war here, and some people are ill suited for war or command. But blaming Bush because of 1 prison that was mismanaged is a joke, did rumsfeld fuck up? Yeah. Did Bush tell him to do it? It still doesn't look like it or are you going to try to say that Bush is guilty because he hired him.
If you hire an employee at your company and he goes and burns down the store next door are you responsible? So why should we hold Bush to that level? If we expect Bush to babysit every one of his subordinates, then why have a cabinet.
Considering Clinton is still treated like the popular Jock of presidents rather than the buffoon who's illegal and immoral activities left a tarnish on the Oval Office. I think Bush will not be seen that poorly at least for a while. The big thing is history seems to love war. If it wasn't for the fact we pulled out of Korea and Vietnam those would be considered successes. There were protesters back in WW2, yet you never hear about them.
Lower poll numbers and all are just an example of people's lack of faith in our government, not particularly poor government. The biggest problem is news organizations are digging into our politicians far more than they ever would before. It started with the Clinton scandal, and now every action Bush has done has also been scrutinized and analyzed until it's completely out of context. If you think it'll stop this time, then you really haven't been paying attention because both sides are now willing to do it. It's easy then running a campaign on the issue, because apparently the rules now are when you enter politics your personal life is fair game.
I'd like to see some analysis on people who care about politics still or watch news about it or so on. I'm sure it's dropped remarkably in the last 10 years.
I mean seriously, is bush misspeaking news? Apparently it is. Is Clinton misspelling a word on a banner news? Now it is. If anything politics is more petty and that's hurt my interest more than anything else. And the fact that half the time the news about politicians is so taken out of context that we'll need a Paul Harvey to tell us the rest of the story is just the icing on this cake.