We need a term for postings that immediately condemn any post that happens to back up or rationally expand on information provided by a manufacturer as astroturfing. "trolling", "lying", or, if you must be precise, "slashdotting".
Moron.
Not that "To Entrap A Predator" was good, but this hidden camera, secret registration bull goes against just about every ethical journalistic rule I can think of. Reporters are paid to go and get the story. The only ethical lines they have are to report the truth in a fair manner. If the losers at DefCon really weren't doing anything wrong, they'd invite reporters in, with cameras and tape recorders and all the rest. Not to everything, but to enough that the press could see the complete and utter lack of a black-hat trading show.
(And if it IS a black-hat trading show -- well, then I've got no respect for them.)
They should be charged with violations against wiretap laws for pulling this stunt. 1: wiretap laws, in general, apply to the government. I know this might be hard for you to understand, but NBC is not a federal branch, even if it does have a three-letter acronym for a name.
2: If anything, they'd be charged with violations of espionage laws. Except that the NBC guys actually have lawyers, and usually find out what the the legal line is before they decide to try and cross it.
Look -- the press is an important part of society. It's how everyone else knows what someone else is doing. The government has no idea, and most folk will lie when they're doing something not P-C. The press is important, is valuable, and if you shun them, well, it just gives them a good reason to sneak in and try to find out what the fuck you're up to.
Hell, we just had reporters who were thrown in jail for protecting their sources. Talk to the press, get their confidence, and they'll keep you in the dark as much as they can.
No, I'm sorry, but an 8-mile range without AC on flat ground isn't "spot on" for any car.
You ARE aware that (1) the Prius has a gasoline motor, too, and (2) there are some people whose daily commute is less than 8 miles.
If I could wave a magic wand and have an 8-mile range electric-only option for MY car, I'd do it in a heart-beat. 3 miles to work, 3 miles back, and I can spend a month on a single tank of gas.
Can't wait for Little Big Planet, it's the next generation of video game. People who are always whining about games not being innovative need to check this one out. You've NEVER played a game like Little Big Planet before. 1: Huh? WTF is "Little Big Planet?"
2: Oh, you mean this. A game where you make your own levels, and get to play around in someone else's.
3: Hey, I've heard that crap before. "User generated content" on a proprietary platform is... well, how can I say this? All the creativity of Myspace, with the fun of Second Life, AND the amazing community of PS3 fanboys. Somehow that doesn't make me want to go without dinner for a month so I can afford a $700 game console ('cause, you know, you have to actually BUY a game...) any more.
4: Anyone who's complaining about boring game design isn't playing Nintendo, and hasn't ever. Maybe you'll find bad game design for DDR remakes or Quake/Halo clones, but I see plenty of innovation, across the industry, for more than a few years.
5: Single most important reason why user-generated content is a loser -- because if they could do a better job than a random program, they'd be doing it for money.
In what way are Tolkien's works not well-written works of prose? In no particular order:
The pivotal actions are all out of the hands of the protagonist
They're absurdly sexist (yes, that matters)
The pacing is poor, leading to whole chapters that are simply not enjoyable to read (a common fantasy error)
More than half of the last volume is post-climatic
The threat of Sauron is dismissed, convincingly, in the first volume
Despite nineteen years of work, Tolkien still managed to give his two major antagonists virtually the same name
The work's overall point -- that there exists evil mere mortals cannot overcome, though they must try -- is poorly implemented.
The characters are overall flat, lacking in deep shades of character or real moods; Tolkien's style exacerbates this
Now, there are are a lot of other things that Tolkien did very well, but just as you can lay virtually the entire "standard" fantasy story at Tolkien's feet, he also gets the blame for every persistent fault that fantasy endures to this day. (Dragonlance being perhaps the best example of this.)
Now, if only we could find a way to make them read books like 1984, Brave New World, Catch 22 and Fahrenheit 451... Ugh. Please, no.
1984 was crap. Pure, unadulterated, crap. It's one thing for science fiction to blur the laws of science for the sake of a good story; it's quite another for any work of fiction to ignore simple things like consistency and human nature.
The worst part of it is, 1984 entered our language and gets falsely applied to any single discussion about government power. There ought'a be a extension of Godwin's Law, adding the works of George Orwell in as well.
I put away childish stories at the age of 12. Considering that you look down on a well-written story, and use the slur "gay", I think I want to nominate you for "best reason to encourage reading, EVER."
Ms. Rowling writes acceptably, and unlike far too many others managed to balance the desire for an "epic" story with one that is "fun." She didn't bother trying to mess around with any deeper commentary, and regardless of what your high-school teacher says, that's a good thing.
As to fantasy books being "childish" -- so are sports, and yet a majority of adults in the civilized world will get quite excited over at least one "professional" sport.
You seem to think that anytime you open you mouth, it's "Speech." That simply isn't so.
To use the easiest example -- if your interpretation were true, then there could be no federal penalty for telling our enemy in a time of war precisely what our battle plans are, because it's "protected speech."
It just sticks with liberals, and leaves the majority of Americans out in the cold.
You do realize that the majority of Americans identify the speaker as a right-wing nut whenever they hear someone called a "liberal", right?
"Conservatives" -- that is, the vocal right -- are as much a minority as "liberals" -- that is, the vocal left. Most Americans just wish we'd all shut up and spend half as much time improving the country as we do fighting with each other.
(It's really, REALLY easy to get a majority when you make the other minority look crazy.)
Time travel in the alternate universe sense implies that you can skip all that and simply pop in somewhere. This implies numerous things, but for starters implies that the universe has an infinite memory for everywhere it's been (and consequently, where it will be), and that this memory is not limited to the atom, particle or anything else, since it has to be remembered even if the atom/particle was destroyed or converted to energy. That's no more true than the idea that there is foreign currency means that we have an unlimited supply of dollars.
A branching-universe theory of time travel (which is what you meant) simply implies that time as we perceive it is an actual dimension that can be traveled on at all. No more, and no less. Either time is an actual spacial dimension, or it is not.
Anything further than that is pseudoscientific nonsense, akin to speculations about the nature of life on Mars or Jupiter from last century.
Honestly, even suicide bombers seem more humane to me than these "UAV operators" who kill people without the slightest risk for their own life. That's on par with WMD's
War is hell. War has always been hell, and will always be hell. Given the right situation, the USA has and will use WMDs to make hell as short as possible.
The benefit of being a military superpower is that, well, you can make the hell stay in someone else's country.
And a divorce when she discovers they're cubic zirconias. Any man who would like about what the engagement gift deserves the kind of woman who would leave him over something so trivial.
Hint: an engagement gift should have a clear dollar value, and be something that your significant other wants. If she wants a ring, get her a ring -- but don't forget to have a "how do you feel about engagement gifts" conversation first. Maybe she'd be happy with a $200 ring and a new computer, new car, or just a $4000 vacation somewhere.
Re:This is also the Pirate Party's stance
on
Patents Don't Pay
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· Score: 1
Does this mean a non-profit can circumvent a patent simply by making and giving a drug away away? No. The relevant laws usually define "commercial" so as to include "give away."
HFCS you see in soda is a table-sugar substitute blend. It's chemically the same thing, only the molocules are arranged oh-so-slightly differently. In your stomach, where it matters for anything but tastes, there's zero difference.
The problem is sugar, period. If you replaced all of the HFCS in the world today with regular sugar, you'd have the exact same obesity problem.
"Kosher for passover" Coke is made with table sugar instead of HFCS, but it's exactly as bad for you as regular HFCS Coke. (From a dietary perspective, anyway. I know it matters if you're actually Jewish.)
Please, please, PLEASE stop clouding up the argument with that false comparison. The problem is that Americans eat too much, especially too much sugar.
Here's a handy rule to remember: if you don't know how to use an apostrophe, don't use one at all. No, that's correct.
You are allowed to use an apostrophe for a simple pluralization when doing so increases readability -- such as when using letters, such as "you forgot to cross your T's". Were I to write "... your Ts", there's a high chance that it could be read as a strange "tiss" word.
The trick is not tripping a gate in the NSA spy machine. When the wind changes, all that information will be available to hunt you down. Actually, the trick is to learn to live in a society where the government is watching you.
There is very little that can or should be done to keep a federal detective from asking questions of the wrong guy, or peeking in to what he thinks is you doing drugs and really is just you smoking after sex with your wife. What you need to do is understand your rights, and know when (and where and how) to cry foul when they cross the line from "honest investigation" to "unlawful snooping."
Come off it, Republicans aren't facists, Mussolini made the trains run on time. When have this lot made anything work. Actually, he didn't. You'd think that he would, and I think he SAID that he would...
so, actually, the Republicans are exactly like facists.
for making Vista perform as well as XP Pro on my system 0: Shut down the dock. 1: Pick a low-stress theme 2: Turn on background indexing et al. 3: Turn on your PC, and let it run for a few hours. 4: Tun Off background indexing et al. 5: Drop a 1 GB or so USB drive into a spare slot.
That should take care of everything Vista does to slow down, and everything it can do to speed you up. If you're complaining about your graphics drivers, well, bitch at AMD and Nvidia.
"Right to Read" where you have to have a license to read a book you borrowed from the library or from a friend.
Stallman is an anti-copyright extremist. An easy from him should be taken with the same grain of salt as an essay from the Pope about atheism.
In pure legal terms, you do have a license to read any book that you have a physical copy of. And there are some works where you only get a copy if you agree to a more strict license, which includes control of said physical copy.
Music has always been something that was freely exchanged throughout human history. Songs belonged in the public domain, even if no one thought of it and framed it in those terms. There were just songs that people had always sang or played, and had no apparent author.
Such music, btw, is crap. Imagine the top-40 crapfest you hear today, only without the spit and polish money brings. We've had literally centuries of musicians creating new and good music, and they did so chiefly because they were guaranteed fame and a fair chance at fortune if their song became popular.
FWIW, if you DO own a coffee shop, spend the $300 and have your lawyer get you what you need to be free and clear. And then tell those bill collectors to fuck off.
I really can not understand it, what is it there in the USA that people, even some Britons (I live in Britain today) want to live there??
Honesty about how crappy government is. We know our government is a bunch of jack-booted thugs. In fact, that's essentially our basic founding principle.
That, and the world's biggest economy, with a respectable GDP even given a virtually wide-open immigration policy (which drags the darn thing down, as every tom dick and harry comes and fails to get the American dream) and virtually exploited natural resources (which prop up the economy of other countries, like UAE.)
When it all comes down to it, it's all about the benjamins.
If you can point me to proof that there's any artist out there that really wants things to be this way, I'd be shocked. Which way? That a songwriter gets paid when you play her song? Or that a venue that earns money by having music gets a bill for said music?
And I've worked in small businesses. They suck. You think Starbucks is bad? Try that little coffee shop after a dozen years or so.
How classic "my lie was uncovered, so lets criticize the investigator's spelling [rather than my ridiculous assumption that half the women in some random country are secretly killed with no trail left behind in the media]" Expand "honor killings" to "any killing of a female due to society, including lack of treatment" -- that is, include infanticide of girls, abortions of female regencies, women dying in childbirth, unreported murder of wives and daughters, suicides due to sexism, and the classic murder of a woman due to the dishonor brought to her family, as it's not that ridiculous.
The numbers I'd be interested in are a total population breakdown, by gender and immigrant status, for each 10 years of adult life and at least each 2 years of childhood and pre-birth.
(And if you're going to criticize my country, take a page from Michael Moore and slam our health care system.)
Slashdot Mirror
(And if it IS a black-hat trading show -- well, then I've got no respect for them.) They should be charged with violations against wiretap laws for pulling this stunt. 1: wiretap laws, in general, apply to the government. I know this might be hard for you to understand, but NBC is not a federal branch, even if it does have a three-letter acronym for a name.
2: If anything, they'd be charged with violations of espionage laws. Except that the NBC guys actually have lawyers, and usually find out what the the legal line is before they decide to try and cross it.
Look -- the press is an important part of society. It's how everyone else knows what someone else is doing. The government has no idea, and most folk will lie when they're doing something not P-C. The press is important, is valuable, and if you shun them, well, it just gives them a good reason to sneak in and try to find out what the fuck you're up to.
Hell, we just had reporters who were thrown in jail for protecting their sources. Talk to the press, get their confidence, and they'll keep you in the dark as much as they can.
Yes.
Not everyone who learns math has apples, flagpoles, or even handles physical money.
Feng Shuei could be a good hook to geometry, if you're willing to break the rules and just make it conform to the lesson.
No, I'm sorry, but an 8-mile range without AC on flat ground isn't "spot on" for any car.
You ARE aware that (1) the Prius has a gasoline motor, too, and (2) there are some people whose daily commute is less than 8 miles.
If I could wave a magic wand and have an 8-mile range electric-only option for MY car, I'd do it in a heart-beat. 3 miles to work, 3 miles back, and I can spend a month on a single tank of gas.
2: Oh, you mean this. A game where you make your own levels, and get to play around in someone else's.
3: Hey, I've heard that crap before. "User generated content" on a proprietary platform is... well, how can I say this? All the creativity of Myspace, with the fun of Second Life, AND the amazing community of PS3 fanboys. Somehow that doesn't make me want to go without dinner for a month so I can afford a $700 game console ('cause, you know, you have to actually BUY a game...) any more.
4: Anyone who's complaining about boring game design isn't playing Nintendo, and hasn't ever. Maybe you'll find bad game design for DDR remakes or Quake/Halo clones, but I see plenty of innovation, across the industry, for more than a few years.
5: Single most important reason why user-generated content is a loser -- because if they could do a better job than a random program, they'd be doing it for money.
Sorry, it just doesn't make sense.
Do you buy a household generator for your electricity generating needs?
Exact same reasoning applies, both pro and con. The determents to an all-electric car are battery weight and battery cost, not electricity generation.
Now, there are are a lot of other things that Tolkien did very well, but just as you can lay virtually the entire "standard" fantasy story at Tolkien's feet, he also gets the blame for every persistent fault that fantasy endures to this day. (Dragonlance being perhaps the best example of this.)
1984 was crap. Pure, unadulterated, crap. It's one thing for science fiction to blur the laws of science for the sake of a good story; it's quite another for any work of fiction to ignore simple things like consistency and human nature.
The worst part of it is, 1984 entered our language and gets falsely applied to any single discussion about government power. There ought'a be a extension of Godwin's Law, adding the works of George Orwell in as well.
The 1400s called. They want their prejudices back.
Ms. Rowling writes acceptably, and unlike far too many others managed to balance the desire for an "epic" story with one that is "fun." She didn't bother trying to mess around with any deeper commentary, and regardless of what your high-school teacher says, that's a good thing.
As to fantasy books being "childish" -- so are sports, and yet a majority of adults in the civilized world will get quite excited over at least one "professional" sport.
You seem to think that anytime you open you mouth, it's "Speech." That simply isn't so.
To use the easiest example -- if your interpretation were true, then there could be no federal penalty for telling our enemy in a time of war precisely what our battle plans are, because it's "protected speech."
It just sticks with liberals, and leaves the majority of Americans out in the cold.
You do realize that the majority of Americans identify the speaker as a right-wing nut whenever they hear someone called a "liberal", right?
"Conservatives" -- that is, the vocal right -- are as much a minority as "liberals" -- that is, the vocal left. Most Americans just wish we'd all shut up and spend half as much time improving the country as we do fighting with each other.
(It's really, REALLY easy to get a majority when you make the other minority look crazy.)
A branching-universe theory of time travel (which is what you meant) simply implies that time as we perceive it is an actual dimension that can be traveled on at all. No more, and no less. Either time is an actual spacial dimension, or it is not.
Anything further than that is pseudoscientific nonsense, akin to speculations about the nature of life on Mars or Jupiter from last century.
Honestly, even suicide bombers seem more humane to me than these "UAV operators" who kill people without the slightest risk for their own life. That's on par with WMD's
War is hell. War has always been hell, and will always be hell. Given the right situation, the USA has and will use WMDs to make hell as short as possible.
The benefit of being a military superpower is that, well, you can make the hell stay in someone else's country.
Hint: an engagement gift should have a clear dollar value, and be something that your significant other wants. If she wants a ring, get her a ring -- but don't forget to have a "how do you feel about engagement gifts" conversation first. Maybe she'd be happy with a $200 ring and a new computer, new car, or just a $4000 vacation somewhere.
HFCS is the main culprit.
No, it isn't.
HFCS you see in soda is a table-sugar substitute blend. It's chemically the same thing, only the molocules are arranged oh-so-slightly differently. In your stomach, where it matters for anything but tastes, there's zero difference.
The problem is sugar, period. If you replaced all of the HFCS in the world today with regular sugar, you'd have the exact same obesity problem.
"Kosher for passover" Coke is made with table sugar instead of HFCS, but it's exactly as bad for you as regular HFCS Coke. (From a dietary perspective, anyway. I know it matters if you're actually Jewish.)
Please, please, PLEASE stop clouding up the argument with that false comparison. The problem is that Americans eat too much, especially too much sugar.
You are allowed to use an apostrophe for a simple pluralization when doing so increases readability -- such as when using letters, such as "you forgot to cross your T's". Were I to write "... your Ts", there's a high chance that it could be read as a strange "tiss" word.
There is very little that can or should be done to keep a federal detective from asking questions of the wrong guy, or peeking in to what he thinks is you doing drugs and really is just you smoking after sex with your wife. What you need to do is understand your rights, and know when (and where and how) to cry foul when they cross the line from "honest investigation" to "unlawful snooping."
so, actually, the Republicans are exactly like facists.
1: Pick a low-stress theme
2: Turn on background indexing et al.
3: Turn on your PC, and let it run for a few hours.
4: Tun Off background indexing et al.
5: Drop a 1 GB or so USB drive into a spare slot.
That should take care of everything Vista does to slow down, and everything it can do to speed you up. If you're complaining about your graphics drivers, well, bitch at AMD and Nvidia.
"Right to Read" where you have to have a license to read a book you borrowed from the library or from a friend.
Stallman is an anti-copyright extremist. An easy from him should be taken with the same grain of salt as an essay from the Pope about atheism.
In pure legal terms, you do have a license to read any book that you have a physical copy of. And there are some works where you only get a copy if you agree to a more strict license, which includes control of said physical copy.
Music has always been something that was freely exchanged throughout human history. Songs belonged in the public domain, even if no one thought of it and framed it in those terms. There were just songs that people had always sang or played, and had no apparent author.
Such music, btw, is crap. Imagine the top-40 crapfest you hear today, only without the spit and polish money brings. We've had literally centuries of musicians creating new and good music, and they did so chiefly because they were guaranteed fame and a fair chance at fortune if their song became popular.
FWIW, if you DO own a coffee shop, spend the $300 and have your lawyer get you what you need to be free and clear. And then tell those bill collectors to fuck off.
I really can not understand it, what is it there in the USA that people, even some Britons (I live in Britain today) want to live there??
Honesty about how crappy government is. We know our government is a bunch of jack-booted thugs. In fact, that's essentially our basic founding principle.
That, and the world's biggest economy, with a respectable GDP even given a virtually wide-open immigration policy (which drags the darn thing down, as every tom dick and harry comes and fails to get the American dream) and virtually exploited natural resources (which prop up the economy of other countries, like UAE.)
When it all comes down to it, it's all about the benjamins.
And I've worked in small businesses. They suck. You think Starbucks is bad? Try that little coffee shop after a dozen years or so.
The numbers I'd be interested in are a total population breakdown, by gender and immigrant status, for each 10 years of adult life and at least each 2 years of childhood and pre-birth.
(And if you're going to criticize my country, take a page from Michael Moore and slam our health care system.)