Marketing pressures people to buy machines with features they don't need so they can use software with features they don't need. In the process, we loose our desire to obtain lasting quality and elegance in design. Consider:
1. Your new game will be no more entertaining that the old one, even though the graphics are "better."
2. Your new office suite will be no more productive than your old one.
3. Your new internet based applications and clients wil be no more functional your old ones.
(4. Your new telephone will have a lifespan of 18 months. The old one still works after 25 years.)
My friends ask me why I haven't upgraded my 400mhz machine in years. Look at all this new stuff they say, look at all this eye candy. Look at these great new games.
And then I load up my MUD client, with simple, 16 color text in a 12 point font. This is my favorite game.
And then I load up my word processor, AbiWord, which renders as fast as I can type and has a nice spell-checker. This is my favorite word processor.
And then I load up Kmail, Mozilla, and all the other "normal applications" which have never had a problem with virii or worms.
And after all this they realize, the problem with my computer is THEIR expectations, not my software and hardware.
(And then they ask me when I'm going to replace my rotary phone... I can't win them all.)
See, there's this thing called humor, and it isn't always accompanied by the use of numbers as letters... I'm sorry that you didn't get it, but if I'd just said "LOLOLO!!!11!!! homophonia 50u|\|d5 1ik3 |-|0m0p|-|0bi4 !!!11!!!" it just wouldn't have been funny AT ALL.
Sweet mother of all things good and pure I wish I could mod that up.
I wrote my uncle a letter yesterday. I used some nice stationary and envelopes from a shop in Bismarck. I asked him what he thought about the current administration, and if he could lend me his copy of a certain antisocial treatise. Unfortunately, the envelope did not have enough space for me to write a return address on the outside.
(Attention Carnivore, this post is intended as a joke, for the recipient only.)
NIPCO makes a liquid (disel) fuel heater that forces air with an electric fan. This can be vented through a metal container, such as a garbage can, containing un-popped popcorn and used like an air-popper. The exhaust, if properly tuned should carry popped kernels (lower density than unpopped) out to a destination. This exhaust, if enough air is applied to prevent jamming, could then be directed through a length of dryer vent tubing (think giant slinky with plastic) to the top of a home.
I'm a big fan of the shroud. I would very much like it to be authentic, even though I ascribe no special "power" to it. I rather like the prospect of knowing a little about what Jesus looked like.
Just because I believe in God does not mean I don't want to know history, biology, geology, etc.
We (rightly) put down rebellions within our borders(cf. the Civil War). They are terrorism. It doesn't matter how political they are; actually, being especially political means you are committing treason and not just causing destruction.
Are you equating nonviolent protest with terrorism? Was president Davis or General Lee charged with treason? Or are you making a bad comparison?
We execute lots of people. Why is it so important that they use cheap bullets rather than expensive injections?
We execute people for high crimes, not for having ideas with which we do not agree.
You can't joke about killing the President, you can't say some things about Scientology...
Yes you can. Just be prepared for bogus lawsuits or social pressures as a result of being investigated.
US industry makes huge amounts of money from prison labor, with the blessing of the US gov't.
Most prison labor is limited to government contracts. Care to elaborate which industry is making money from these lost contracts?
I think the point your post misses most, is that everyone has a right to speak freely and hold what ideas they will. This is not some wonder granted by a sheet of paper in a vault in Washington D.C. It is a natural right owned by all human beings, innate, or if you prefer endowed by their creator.
Actually, this would also dredge up us tinfoil hat folks. Neither my health insurance company nor any of my health care providers have access to my SSN. (Because I make a stink and refuse when they ask for it.)
We'll know if the system is being abused though, if INS shows up at the offices of thirtysomething white lawyers in North Dakota and start asking questions.
What we need is some kind of system involving cryptographic key exchange between buyers, sellers, and their banks.
Or we could build actual reputations within the community where we live. We could deal with people we know and who know us, or at least with whom we have mutual acquaintances.
Of course this would require us to *gasp* settle down and possibly start thinking of our communities as more than stepping stones to be trod over and left behind.
Which one do you think is easier for me to make use of?
The land line telephone arived in my area very recently. This is because of low population and low demand for such technology. Many areas around me have no cellular service, this is because of low demand for such technology. I live in North Dakota. People in my state prefer personal contact, one way we encourage this is with laws that make travel easy.
Please don't call me a moron for stating the facts.
If a person lives 100 miles away from the next town, and wants to keep in regular contact with me (like the folks in other states do with video phones) she can do so by driving faster. Less time in transit reduces the burden of regular contact by non-electronic means.
The point, I guess, is that the demand for fancy electronic devices can be lowered in some states merely by changing the law.
For all the commentary about "Americans" living in the past, few folks ever take culture or geography into account before they start slinging disparaging remarks. I urge all to consider the following:
1. Citizens of most States* live in sparsely populated areas, areas where the introduction of ordinary cellular service is not even in place because there are simply too few customers to support it. (In fact, only a few miles from my home is a town which bears the honor of being the last municipality in the nation to get access to land-line service, just a few years ago.)
2. In many States, electronic communication is considered impersonal and stand-offish. People are looking for more ways to engage in personal contact rather than through electronic means. This is one reason for 75mph speed limits.
3. Another cultural issue is the common preference for different appliances to do one specific thing. There is a large market for multi-watt "bag-phones" that do not even handle text, in more rural areas. (Largely because you can't operate one of those new phones while wearing thick leather gloves and driving a truck with the window rolled down.)
*The term "Citizens of most states" is used intentionally, rather than "Most Citizens of the States."
A battery, a really good battery. Something that'll make my laptop last as long as my Palm. Or maybe power a light-saber... But really all we need for our dreams to come true is a good battery.
Actually, marriage was originally a very secular thing. The church just got involved back in Europe because the local governments wanted a way to keep track of births, marriages, and deaths, and the church was already doing the recordkeeping for the other two.
I'm using the keyboard because the letters are in the right places. On 90% of those push-button phones the numbers I need are not arranged in a nice circle. Heck they don't even match my keyboard.
Come to think of it, why the heck are the numbers on most button-phones arranged differently than those on a keyboard number-pad?
Every single time Hubble images an object more than 5000 light years away, it PROVES that God did not create the universe 5000 years ago. There are arguments to support this, of course, but none of them form any basis in scripture.
How exactly does it PROVE this? The last time I read the Christian version of the origin of the world, light came first, then stars & planets.
Actually, all of our wonderful database technology and document scanners have created a problem that goes far beyond the FBI. This is news just because the FBI has tried to do something about it.
The real problem is that over the past 200 years or so, a lot of records have been generated that, while technically public, were never intended to be widely known. Consider for example, court documents. Many states require the social security numbers, home phone numbers, job information, or other very personal stuff to be included in pleadings filed with the courts. This is particularly common in divorce cases.
In the past, it wasn't much of a concern that some identity thief might go to the courthouse, ask for file C-200-87 and make some copies. Now, however, that thief can log on at a library in another state, and often request documents by the truckload without any human involvement.
Perhaps we, and the FBI, need a middle ground. Something like a "quasi-public-information" standard, where you can get the documents, but you have to show up in person and ask for them.
I've had my rotary phones ever since I moved out on my own. I like them, possibly because I an clumsy with buttons. My closest friends, however, are fond of mocking my choice as follows:
"Hi... yeah I'm over at Bob's place. I would have called sooner but he has a rotary phone."
believe should follow evidence, period. 1. What is the benefit of ending a sentence with "period."?
2. What will you allow as evidence? Only that which can be conclusively show by reproduceable experiment? Will you throw out the entire field of philosophy, and the idea that man can learn about his environment by induction? The origin of the universe is not something we can demonstrate by reproduceable experiment.
I'm tired of pretending it's OK to believe everything.
So when the thought police are formed, you'll be first to sign up?
O'Reilly was going on about Intelligent Design yesterday... it's a theory, just like evolution. Right, and just like the theory that the moon is made of cheese... to bad the facts are not on it's side.
Who is O'Reilly? Does she have a website?
Facts are facts, they are not on anyone's side. Facts however must be interpreted by human beings. We do this by looking for similarities between facts that then trying to guess why they happen. To date I've never seen a fact that could not be used to bolster either camp.
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What federal law is that? I think you may be mistaken.
Perhaps I was too veiled in making my point...
Marketing pressures people to buy machines with features they don't need so they can use software with features they don't need. In the process, we loose our desire to obtain lasting quality and elegance in design. Consider:
1. Your new game will be no more entertaining that the old one, even though the graphics are "better."
2. Your new office suite will be no more productive than your old one.
3. Your new internet based applications and clients wil be no more functional your old ones.
(4. Your new telephone will have a lifespan of 18 months. The old one still works after 25 years.)
Does my story make more sense now?
My friends ask me why I haven't upgraded my 400mhz machine in years. Look at all this new stuff they say, look at all this eye candy. Look at these great new games.
And then I load up my MUD client, with simple, 16 color text in a 12 point font. This is my favorite game.
And then I load up my word processor, AbiWord, which renders as fast as I can type and has a nice spell-checker. This is my favorite word processor.
And then I load up Kmail, Mozilla, and all the other "normal applications" which have never had a problem with virii or worms.
And after all this they realize, the problem with my computer is THEIR expectations, not my software and hardware.
(And then they ask me when I'm going to replace my rotary phone... I can't win them all.)
If it is a proven scientific fact that old people drive like they are drunk, why are they allowd to drive?
I can think of three reasons:
1. They paid for the road, built the road, designed the road....
2. Safer drivers don't vote.
3. We, as a society, choose to accept the added risk out of respect for our elders.
See, there's this thing called humor, and it isn't always accompanied by the use of numbers as letters... I'm sorry that you didn't get it, but if I'd just said "LOLOLO!!!11!!! homophonia 50u|\|d5 1ik3 |-|0m0p|-|0bi4 !!!11!!!" it just wouldn't have been funny AT ALL.
Sweet mother of all things good and pure I wish I could mod that up.
I wrote my uncle a letter yesterday. I used some nice stationary and envelopes from a shop in Bismarck. I asked him what he thought about the current administration, and if he could lend me his copy of a certain antisocial treatise. Unfortunately, the envelope did not have enough space for me to write a return address on the outside.
(Attention Carnivore, this post is intended as a joke, for the recipient only.)
NIPCO makes a liquid (disel) fuel heater that forces air with an electric fan. This can be vented through a metal container, such as a garbage can, containing un-popped popcorn and used like an air-popper. The exhaust, if properly tuned should carry popped kernels (lower density than unpopped) out to a destination. This exhaust, if enough air is applied to prevent jamming, could then be directed through a length of dryer vent tubing (think giant slinky with plastic) to the top of a home.
Good luck!
Do you believe that the invention of the paragraph served a purpose?
How could you have credible evidence of a God that cannot be reached except by faith alone?
Isn't the whole point of Christianity salvation by faith alone? If you could prove God by evidence, you could NOT adopt Christianity.
I'm a big fan of the shroud. I would very much like it to be authentic, even though I ascribe no special "power" to it. I rather like the prospect of knowing a little about what Jesus looked like.
Just because I believe in God does not mean I don't want to know history, biology, geology, etc.
We (rightly) put down rebellions within our borders(cf. the Civil War). They are terrorism. It doesn't matter how political they are; actually, being especially political means you are committing treason and not just causing destruction.
Are you equating nonviolent protest with terrorism?
Was president Davis or General Lee charged with treason? Or are you making a bad comparison?
We execute lots of people. Why is it so important that they use cheap bullets rather than expensive injections?
We execute people for high crimes, not for having ideas with which we do not agree.
You can't joke about killing the President, you can't say some things about Scientology...
Yes you can. Just be prepared for bogus lawsuits or social pressures as a result of being investigated.
US industry makes huge amounts of money from prison labor, with the blessing of the US gov't.
Most prison labor is limited to government contracts. Care to elaborate which industry is making money from these lost contracts?
I think the point your post misses most, is that everyone has a right to speak freely and hold what ideas they will. This is not some wonder granted by a sheet of paper in a vault in Washington D.C. It is a natural right owned by all human beings, innate, or if you prefer endowed by their creator.
Actually, this would also dredge up us tinfoil hat folks. Neither my health insurance company nor any of my health care providers have access to my SSN. (Because I make a stink and refuse when they ask for it.)
We'll know if the system is being abused though, if INS shows up at the offices of thirtysomething white lawyers in North Dakota and start asking questions.
What we need is some kind of system involving cryptographic key exchange between buyers, sellers, and their banks.
Or we could build actual reputations within the community where we live. We could deal with people we know and who know us, or at least with whom we have mutual acquaintances.
Of course this would require us to *gasp* settle down and possibly start thinking of our communities as more than stepping stones to be trod over and left behind.
Which one do you think is easier for me to make use of?
The land line telephone arived in my area very recently. This is because of low population and low demand for such technology. Many areas around me have no cellular service, this is because of low demand for such technology. I live in North Dakota. People in my state prefer personal contact, one way we encourage this is with laws that make travel easy.
Please don't call me a moron for stating the facts.
If a person lives 100 miles away from the next town, and wants to keep in regular contact with me (like the folks in other states do with video phones) she can do so by driving faster. Less time in transit reduces the burden of regular contact by non-electronic means.
The point, I guess, is that the demand for fancy electronic devices can be lowered in some states merely by changing the law.
For all the commentary about "Americans" living in the past, few folks ever take culture or geography into account before they start slinging disparaging remarks. I urge all to consider the following:
1. Citizens of most States* live in sparsely populated areas, areas where the introduction of ordinary cellular service is not even in place because there are simply too few customers to support it. (In fact, only a few miles from my home is a town which bears the honor of being the last municipality in the nation to get access to land-line service, just a few years ago.)
2. In many States, electronic communication is considered impersonal and stand-offish. People are looking for more ways to engage in personal contact rather than through electronic means. This is one reason for 75mph speed limits.
3. Another cultural issue is the common preference for different appliances to do one specific thing. There is a large market for multi-watt "bag-phones" that do not even handle text, in more rural areas. (Largely because you can't operate one of those new phones while wearing thick leather gloves and driving a truck with the window rolled down.)
*The term "Citizens of most states" is used intentionally, rather than "Most Citizens of the States."
A battery, a really good battery. Something that'll make my laptop last as long as my Palm. Or maybe power a light-saber... But really all we need for our dreams to come true is a good battery.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
/. lawyers forum together. If you're interested, hit www.mackoff.com and send "Bob" an email.
Me too, we should get a
Actually, marriage was originally a very secular thing. The church just got involved back in Europe because the local governments wanted a way to keep track of births, marriages, and deaths, and the church was already doing the recordkeeping for the other two.
I'm using the keyboard because the letters are in the right places. On 90% of those push-button phones the numbers I need are not arranged in a nice circle. Heck they don't even match my keyboard.
Come to think of it, why the heck are the numbers on most button-phones arranged differently than those on a keyboard number-pad?
Every single time Hubble images an object more than 5000 light years away, it PROVES that God did not create the universe 5000 years ago. There are arguments to support this, of course, but none of them form any basis in scripture.
How exactly does it PROVE this? The last time I read the Christian version of the origin of the world, light came first, then stars & planets.
Actually, all of our wonderful database technology and document scanners have created a problem that goes far beyond the FBI. This is news just because the FBI has tried to do something about it.
The real problem is that over the past 200 years or so, a lot of records have been generated that, while technically public, were never intended to be widely known. Consider for example, court documents. Many states require the social security numbers, home phone numbers, job information, or other very personal stuff to be included in pleadings filed with the courts. This is particularly common in divorce cases.
In the past, it wasn't much of a concern that some identity thief might go to the courthouse, ask for file C-200-87 and make some copies. Now, however, that thief can log on at a library in another state, and often request documents by the truckload without any human involvement.
Perhaps we, and the FBI, need a middle ground. Something like a "quasi-public-information" standard, where you can get the documents, but you have to show up in person and ask for them.
I've had my rotary phones ever since I moved out on my own. I like them, possibly because I an clumsy with buttons. My closest friends, however, are fond of mocking my choice as follows:
"Hi... yeah I'm over at Bob's place. I would have called sooner but he has a rotary phone."
believe should follow evidence, period.
1. What is the benefit of ending a sentence with "period."?
2. What will you allow as evidence? Only that which can be conclusively show by reproduceable experiment? Will you throw out the entire field of philosophy, and the idea that man can learn about his environment by induction? The origin of the universe is not something we can demonstrate by reproduceable experiment.
I'm tired of pretending it's OK to believe everything.
So when the thought police are formed, you'll be first to sign up?
O'Reilly was going on about Intelligent Design yesterday... it's a theory, just like evolution. Right, and just like the theory that the moon is made of cheese... to bad the facts are not on it's side.
Who is O'Reilly? Does she have a website?
Facts are facts, they are not on anyone's side. Facts however must be interpreted by human beings. We do this by looking for similarities between facts that then trying to guess why they happen. To date I've never seen a fact that could not be used to bolster either camp.