I have heard several times that Intel isn't a good company to work for. This just goes on to prove it. A good company would openly solicit constructive criticism on issues like this - checks and balances to ensure they don't screw up.
Punishing employees for disagreeing is highly vindictive and very myopic. This can only hurt Intel.
Naaah, the BBC Micro was the King! For one, it had a built-in assembler;-)
Seriously - you're absolutely right about the 8-bit days of C64s, Spectrums, the Acorn BBC, the Oric-1, Jupiter Ace and the rest of the crowd. You could get at the hardware directly. I'm glad I was born in 1972 - it meant I was just the right age when 8-bit computers hit their boom. I had a lot of fun with my Speccy. Talking of another topic on this Slashback, a friend and I actually wrote a MUD for networked BBC Micros (using Econet, an Acorn networking system) and ran it on our school network. It was a true client-server app too: due to memory constraints, we couldn't store everything in the server (such as location descriptions) so the client did all the user interface stuff - like parsing, loading location descriptions, item descriptions and the like, and the server kept track of where the players were, what items they had and what they were up to etc. The server ran on a Torch (basically, a BBC compatible in a massive clunky case, but because of the nonstandard keyboard, no one actually wanted to use it - so no one objected when we used it as our server).
I remember those times with great fondness. I think today's teenagers are missing out on something that was very special...
But Shellyeah.org aren't allowing any new users at the moment.
Their AUP also suggests that they will VOLUNTEER information on you to govt. agencies. Privacy doesn't look like their strong point.
You put too much faith in ballistic recovery systems. How much is a BRS with zero-zero (zero airspeed, zero altitude) capabilities going to cost? Martin Baker does it with ejection seats, but the Air Force forks out a lot of money for those things.
Forget PP-ASEL/AMEL - have you ever tried a helicopter? They don't exactly glide well when the donkey quits - mess up an autorotation and you're extremely dead. I seriously doubt this thing can even autorotate. And don't give me any of this BRS nonsense either: a ballistic chute will probably never have zero-zero (zero airspeed, zero altitude - or near enough not to kill you) capabilities without costing a fantastic amount of money.
The other snake-oil solution is Moller's skycar. That thing will never fly. He's been hawking it for years, but it's never got airborne. Moller has an interesting dream, but only the gullible invest.
One religious view, on the other hand, is something like, "God created the universe, and guided its formation in such a way as to create the Earth, and humanity." There are still questions, of course, like, "Where did God come from?" or "Why did he do this?" But I don't see how belief in a deity is in any way inherently inferior to belief in science. Both science and organized religion are a matter of faith -- you have to accept what you are tolded by the more learned "clergy."
However...this leaves one thing out which is a very important difference between science and religions. In a religious faith, it is seen as a bad thing to question the faith and try and find out whether it's the truth. In science, this exact same behaviour is seen as a good thing. This is why I feel all the mainstream religions I've learned about are vastly inferior to science.
Personally, I'm not satisfied with creationalism theories. Firstly, the unlikeliness of the Universe is nothing compared to the unlikelyness of a supreme being that could create it. That's just my opinion mind you: if you can provide me with compelling evidence to the contrary I will change my mind. Secondly, belief in a creator is just another form of resignation. All it does is push the question out one more level, as you touched on in your comment. If it was proven that there is a creator, instead of asking "where does the universe come from?", I'd be asking "where did the creator come from?". It just pushed the question on another level - and didn't really explain anything.
Of those games that are made available, my favorite, Elite is available from one of the original authors! Ian Bell's website has virtually every version of 8-bit Elite ever made. David Braben, the other half of the Elite team and author of FE:2 and FFE (the two Elite followups) says that he won't be going around shutting down people who offer the games for download (although these games are PC games). In fact, Frontier Developments is starting The Elite Club soon, and members will be able to get their mitts on the source code for FE:2 and Frontier First Encounters. And of course there's other Elite efforts, such as Christian Pinder's excellent Elite: The New Kind which comes with full sources (and can be compiled and run on Linux).
As for emulation, the old Sinclair Spectrum is perfectly legally emulable: Amstrad (holder of they copyright of the ROM) said basically "go ahead and use it, so long as you don't do it commercially". There is hope out there for retro games.
Basic ignorance at work here, folks. You poll people and ask, "Do you think porn should be blocked on school computers?" and what do you think the responses will be? "Uh, no, I don't think we should block porn at schools."?? Of course not! People are going to say, "Sure, block the stuff."
Not to mention the Sheeple Effect.
Surveys like this (especially when they are issued to prove a point - ie are politically loaded) are designed to elicit the result the questioner wants. You can design these "surveys" to get any answer. The best way to get sheeple...I mean people, is to prey on their desire to give consistent answers. For example:
Do you believe pornography is bad? Yes.
Do you think children should be exposed to porno at school? No!
There's porno out on the net. Do you think we should censor the net in schools so that porno can't be seen? Yes!
Do you think we should use automatic blocking software to do this? Yes! Definitely!
An alternative survey could be worded differently. Let's say the Slashdot Collective is running the survey this time, and wants to show that most people are against software filtering in schools and libraries. So they ask:
Do you believe in the freedom of speech as set forth by the constitution? Yes.
The Internet is a breakthrough in freedom of expression - more people than ever can make their voice heard. Do you think this is a good or bad thing? Definitely a good thing, oh yes!
Do you agree or disagree our children should learn about free speech? Yes!
Software to block sites has been proposed for schools and libraries. It often blocks things it's not supposed to. Do you think that such an intrusion on the freedom of speech and information should be mandated? Hell no!
This is just an example, and I'm sure the survey makers are a lot better at it than me. But basically, you can have the same person agree on opposite sides of the same point even if they answer both surveys back-to-back if the survey is well enough designed...so these surveys are actually meaningless. Pity so many people don't realise this.
Isn't this "cybercrime" treaty all hot air anyway?
Aren't there existing laws that deal with these crimes already in existence? We already have copyright law. I know in Britain, there is already the Computer Misuse Act which deals with unauthorized access to computers.
Why are they trying to invent new laws where existing ones already suffice: is this just another case of bureaucrats trying to justify their existence?
'a feature that allows parents to automatically check, with one click, what sites your kids have visited lately.'
Most browsers have had that capability for a long time. There's a little thing you can click on M$IE called "History". Obviously Mr. Gore isn't quite as knowlegable as he likes to make out. Or perhaps he's going to patent "One Click Snooping";-)
Sure, people can delete the history, but I'm sure that any scheme you care to come up with can be defeated. One of my older co-workers caught his son looking at porno just this way. I told him "Well, at least you know for sure he's into women and not into sheepshagging". He accepted the point and wasn't too hard on his son;-)
Elite was special because it was really the first time that an entire universe was crammed into a computer in a way that you really could identify with living in it.
Undoubtedly true (and even more so of FE:2 and Frontier: First Encounters that included large chunks of the Milky Way, rather than generated systems).
An interesting fact on the original 8-bit versions of Elite: the machines back then were quite limited. The eight galaxies of 256 (IIRC) stars were stored in six bytes of data. The systems and their data (the descriptions, economies, government types etc). were all generated on the fly by an algorithm.
There's one guy out there who's re-engineering Elite in C (yes, it runs on Linux as well as other OSes!) so you can check out the code and see how it's done.
Elite: The New Kind, the name of this effort, really brings the original game back to life.
It's great that it metioned one of the all-time great games from the 8-bit days: Elite. It's a game that really started a genre, and nothing has quite surpassed it. Many versions were produced. Frontier Developments is now making an Elite 4. (Elite 2 and 3 were Frontier: Elite 2 and Frontier: First Encounters respectively).
The game fired the imagination, so much so there's quite a lot of Frontier Elite Universe fiction out there on various websites (including my own), the newsgroup alt.fan.elite, plus even a JAVA Spectrum Emulator running Elite out there on the Web. The 8-bit days really were the new frontier too, where code bloat could not exist, and super-tight coding was a measure of a software house's superiority, rather than MICROS~1's share price.
I fondly remember the BBC Micro too. A great machine: see the website, the BBC Lives! for emulators and the background of this superb machine.
On a Windoze NT system, if you declare a variable but don't initialize it, it's often set to 0xAAAAAAAA (in the case of an int - yes, 32 bits, at least on WinNT). Or -1431655766 if you prefer.
But if you declare it globally, it's initialized to zero.
Actually, UV radiation is harmful to most organic molecules since it is of sufficient energy to break many of the bonds which hold the molecules together. That is also why it is harmful to us (in the most fundamental sense).
Thanks for your reply. You can probably tell I wasn't all that attentive during my chemistry classes;-)
Even so, I would have thought the interior of a meteorite would be a pretty UV-free place, allowing organic compounds to continue to exist, just as beneath the Earth's surface when the solar system was new.
It'd be nice to know exactly what organic compounds they found in this lump of rock. Sadly, the article in the popular press (which is of course well known for its accuracy and reliablity, yeah right!) doesn't say.
An amusing stress reliever is this. Play with tape. Duct tape, scotch tape, old QIC-tape, any tape. Sticky is best. Tape co-workers to the wall, that sort of thing. You can have so much fun with tape.
Or other Tape-Man fun you can have:
When a co-worker is not in, tape the bottom of their mouse (over the ball) so it doesn't work. You have to do this to a hardware guy, really. Watch them going mad checking that the thing is connected to their PC (extra points if their mouse port is hard to get to). Bonus points if they call up office support and order a new mouse. Extra bonus points if they pull out a multimeter to check the mouse before they think to turn the mouse over and check the ball;-)
It seems like nobody here really has cottoned onto what organic matter is. Organic matter != living matter.
Someone earlier talked about UV light destroying organic matter. It might be harmful to humans - but organic matter itself?
Organic matter basically means the chains-of-carbon-atom type molecules. It doesn't mean living matter. Gasoline is an organic compound. So is methane, ethane, butane, propane, heptane etc. Ethanol (C2H5OOH, common alcohol) is organic matter. Methylethylketone (MEK, commonly used as solvent, cleaning agent or paint thinner) is organic matter. None of these things alone are living or about to spring to life. In fact, gasoline is very toxic, but it's still an organic compound. To briefly summarize, organic chemistry centres around carbon-based chemistry: not necessarily the chemistry of life.
It is the long carbon chain molecules that make life possible. What I expect they have found in this meteorite are long-chain carbon molecules - not microbes or anything like that. Even so, this is still a very interesting find.
It comes down to the old "sheeple" thing I so enjoy ranting on about. (Perhaps I'm getting ritualized with my sheeple rants...)
Basically all but 10% of the population are not people - they are just sheep - sheeple as I call them. They just believe everything on TV, have no skepticism, have no creativity. Perform their anti-work, go home, sit in front of the TV for the next few hours, then follow the talking head on TV like a herd of sheep. Scared like a herd of sheep.
Actually, I gave up TV long ago. There just isn't anything worth watching (especially the news which is so laughably inaccurate and trivial). Nobody will even take any personal risk any more. Now I don't mind if others don't want to take a bit of personal risk, but what I really object to is them telling me I shouldn't do it either or in even worse cases - petitioning the government to enact legislation to prevent me from doing it because "they know best". I just wish they'd go and bugger off.
I was fortunate to avoid this sort of thing happening when I graduated not so long ago.
However, some of my colleagues were not. It seems that they were hired for "software development jobs" and as soon as they arrived, they were put on the test team, running dull and boring test scripts, day in and out. Talk about being shafted. I think management knew that nobody would willingly sign up for that kind of test job, so they got the new college hires doing it by stealth (most people into programming find testing soul-destroying - especially when they have to run scripts, instead of figuring out inventive ways to hack the system...)
But if I want a machine to put Linux on - without getting MS Windows anywhere near it, why should I be obliged to buy MS Windows? If I tell a vendor I'd like a PC without an operating system, I expect not to be forced to buy MS Windows "because I might pirate it otherwise". Am I all of a sudden guilty until proven innocent?
Perhaps all machines should come pre-installed with Solaris too, to prevent piracy of Solaris...
I found this document incredibly patronizing. It's like Nanny Microsoft Knows What's Best.
I think it is very likely that anyone who asks for a "naked PC" knows what they are doing, and are fully aware of how to install an operating system. I buy all my PCs without an operating system (in fact, I buy a collection of parts and assemble them). If a vendor gives me the Microsoft-sanctioned spiel, I'll just have to politely tell him not to patronize me.
Or is it just a scheme to make Linux users pay for a MICROS~1 operating system each time they upgrade their machine?
US99955555: A System For Shortening Workplace Restroom Trips
Inventors: Smith; Dylan, League City, Texas Crapper; Thomas, London, UK
Catbert and Swirlies Incorporated Houston, Texas
October 10th, 2000
A system comprised of a computer (1) and a motorized bathroom stall door (3) and a motorized toiler roll retraction system (12) controlled by the computer (1). The computer is used in tandem with an employees id badge (7) to keep a log of the time spent on the toilet (14). The computer is used to time individual trips and deny access to the toilet stall if the employee has used up their daily credit of Restroom Trip Points. If the employee exceeds the amount of time allocated for a single restroom trip, the toilet roll retractor (12) is activated by the computer to retract the toilet roll, and the door opener (3) is used to open the bathroom door. If the employee has used all of their restroom trip points and attempts to gain access to the toilet, the door will not open. This system should increase workplace productivity by preventing prolonged bathroom breaks.
The United States is built on immigration. I would bet good money that you're not a pure descendant from a native American Indian.
Foreign workers come and spend money, pay taxes (that fund this military) - in short, they create additional wealth.
Thirdly, non-citizens are not allowed to actually join the military. Speaking as one of your filthy, stinking, rotten foreigners, I would actually like to join the Air Force but I am forbidden from doing so.
(At the end of the day, I'm going back home - at least my home isn't some third world country like some of these guys who are going to get shipped back to poverty). At least I have the right to defend freedom and democracy and even vote back home. Remember that Boston Tea Party gig? Taxation without representation? Guess what happens when you're a furrriner in the United States. Taxed without any representation.)
Firstly, there's 409: The Movie (someone else posted a link to this already - I don't have it to hand). If you watch 409 then look at the size of the file, you'll have to agree that DivX is awesome.
I personally want to use DivX for my camcorder. I'm not putting anything I tape onto VHS it's all going straight onto my computer - using the Firewire link on my Sony camcorder and some inexpensive software, I can store my home video in a number of formats: MPEG-2 so I can use my Dxr-3 card to watch them on a TV, or if I want to give the video to a friend, I can get a hell of a lot of good quality video on a CD-ROM if I turn it into DivX. Or even email shorter ones.
And this means I'm not constrained by PAL-vs-NTSC either (which is an issue for me, since I have lots of friends who are in PAL countries). If I send them a CD-ROM of stuff DivX'd instead of on VHS, they can still watch it.
Remember the thing about the Boston tea-party? All that stuff about taxation without representation from the original group of immigrants?
Well, as a non-naturalized immigrant, you have to pay tax - but you can't vote. Taxation without representation. Those same immigrants who have now been here for a few generations now seem fit to resume taxation without representation.
Slashdot Mirror
Punishing employees for disagreeing is highly vindictive and very myopic. This can only hurt Intel.
Intel is not a company I'd like to work for.
Seriously - you're absolutely right about the 8-bit days of C64s, Spectrums, the Acorn BBC, the Oric-1, Jupiter Ace and the rest of the crowd. You could get at the hardware directly. I'm glad I was born in 1972 - it meant I was just the right age when 8-bit computers hit their boom. I had a lot of fun with my Speccy. Talking of another topic on this Slashback, a friend and I actually wrote a MUD for networked BBC Micros (using Econet, an Acorn networking system) and ran it on our school network. It was a true client-server app too: due to memory constraints, we couldn't store everything in the server (such as location descriptions) so the client did all the user interface stuff - like parsing, loading location descriptions, item descriptions and the like, and the server kept track of where the players were, what items they had and what they were up to etc. The server ran on a Torch (basically, a BBC compatible in a massive clunky case, but because of the nonstandard keyboard, no one actually wanted to use it - so no one objected when we used it as our server).
I remember those times with great fondness. I think today's teenagers are missing out on something that was very special...
But Shellyeah.org aren't allowing any new users at the moment. Their AUP also suggests that they will VOLUNTEER information on you to govt. agencies. Privacy doesn't look like their strong point.
Forget PP-ASEL/AMEL - have you ever tried a helicopter? They don't exactly glide well when the donkey quits - mess up an autorotation and you're extremely dead. I seriously doubt this thing can even autorotate. And don't give me any of this BRS nonsense either: a ballistic chute will probably never have zero-zero (zero airspeed, zero altitude - or near enough not to kill you) capabilities without costing a fantastic amount of money.
The other snake-oil solution is Moller's skycar. That thing will never fly. He's been hawking it for years, but it's never got airborne. Moller has an interesting dream, but only the gullible invest.
Dylan Smith (PP-ASEL, IR)
However...this leaves one thing out which is a very important difference between science and religions. In a religious faith, it is seen as a bad thing to question the faith and try and find out whether it's the truth. In science, this exact same behaviour is seen as a good thing. This is why I feel all the mainstream religions I've learned about are vastly inferior to science.
Personally, I'm not satisfied with creationalism theories. Firstly, the unlikeliness of the Universe is nothing compared to the unlikelyness of a supreme being that could create it. That's just my opinion mind you: if you can provide me with compelling evidence to the contrary I will change my mind. Secondly, belief in a creator is just another form of resignation. All it does is push the question out one more level, as you touched on in your comment. If it was proven that there is a creator, instead of asking "where does the universe come from?", I'd be asking "where did the creator come from?". It just pushed the question on another level - and didn't really explain anything.
As for emulation, the old Sinclair Spectrum is perfectly legally emulable: Amstrad (holder of they copyright of the ROM) said basically "go ahead and use it, so long as you don't do it commercially". There is hope out there for retro games.
Not to mention the Sheeple Effect.
Surveys like this (especially when they are issued to prove a point - ie are politically loaded) are designed to elicit the result the questioner wants. You can design these "surveys" to get any answer. The best way to get sheeple...I mean people, is to prey on their desire to give consistent answers. For example:
Do you believe pornography is bad?
Yes.
Do you think children should be exposed to porno at school?
No!
There's porno out on the net. Do you think we should censor the net in schools so that porno can't be seen?
Yes!
Do you think we should use automatic blocking software to do this?
Yes! Definitely!
An alternative survey could be worded differently. Let's say the Slashdot Collective is running the survey this time, and wants to show that most people are against software filtering in schools and libraries. So they ask:
Do you believe in the freedom of speech as set forth by the constitution?
Yes.
The Internet is a breakthrough in freedom of expression - more people than ever can make their voice heard. Do you think this is a good or bad thing?
Definitely a good thing, oh yes!
Do you agree or disagree our children should learn about free speech?
Yes!
Software to block sites has been proposed for schools and libraries. It often blocks things it's not supposed to. Do you think that such an intrusion on the freedom of speech and information should be mandated?
Hell no!
This is just an example, and I'm sure the survey makers are a lot better at it than me. But basically, you can have the same person agree on opposite sides of the same point even if they answer both surveys back-to-back if the survey is well enough designed...so these surveys are actually meaningless. Pity so many people don't realise this.
Aren't there existing laws that deal with these crimes already in existence? We already have copyright law. I know in Britain, there is already the Computer Misuse Act which deals with unauthorized access to computers.
Why are they trying to invent new laws where existing ones already suffice: is this just another case of bureaucrats trying to justify their existence?
Most browsers have had that capability for a long time. There's a little thing you can click on M$IE called "History". Obviously Mr. Gore isn't quite as knowlegable as he likes to make out. Or perhaps he's going to patent "One Click Snooping" ;-)
Sure, people can delete the history, but I'm sure that any scheme you care to come up with can be defeated. One of my older co-workers caught his son looking at porno just this way. I told him "Well, at least you know for sure he's into women and not into sheepshagging". He accepted the point and wasn't too hard on his son ;-)
Elite was special because it was really the first time that an entire universe was crammed into a computer in a way that you really could identify with living in it.
Undoubtedly true (and even more so of FE:2 and Frontier: First Encounters that included large chunks of the Milky Way, rather than generated systems).
An interesting fact on the original 8-bit versions of Elite: the machines back then were quite limited. The eight galaxies of 256 (IIRC) stars were stored in six bytes of data. The systems and their data (the descriptions, economies, government types etc). were all generated on the fly by an algorithm.
There's one guy out there who's re-engineering Elite in C (yes, it runs on Linux as well as other OSes!) so you can check out the code and see how it's done. Elite: The New Kind, the name of this effort, really brings the original game back to life.
It's great that it metioned one of the all-time great games from the 8-bit days: Elite. It's a game that really started a genre, and nothing has quite surpassed it. Many versions were produced. Frontier Developments is now making an Elite 4. (Elite 2 and 3 were Frontier: Elite 2 and Frontier: First Encounters respectively).
The game fired the imagination, so much so there's quite a lot of Frontier Elite Universe fiction out there on various websites (including my own), the newsgroup alt.fan.elite, plus even a JAVA Spectrum Emulator running Elite out there on the Web. The 8-bit days really were the new frontier too, where code bloat could not exist, and super-tight coding was a measure of a software house's superiority, rather than MICROS~1's share price.
I fondly remember the BBC Micro too. A great machine: see the website, the BBC Lives! for emulators and the background of this superb machine.
On a Windoze NT system, if you declare a variable but don't initialize it, it's often set to 0xAAAAAAAA (in the case of an int - yes, 32 bits, at least on WinNT). Or -1431655766 if you prefer.
But if you declare it globally, it's initialized to zero.
Thanks for your reply. You can probably tell I wasn't all that attentive during my chemistry classes ;-)
Even so, I would have thought the interior of a meteorite would be a pretty UV-free place, allowing organic compounds to continue to exist, just as beneath the Earth's surface when the solar system was new.
It'd be nice to know exactly what organic compounds they found in this lump of rock. Sadly, the article in the popular press (which is of course well known for its accuracy and reliablity, yeah right!) doesn't say.
Or other Tape-Man fun you can have:
When a co-worker is not in, tape the bottom of their mouse (over the ball) so it doesn't work. You have to do this to a hardware guy, really. Watch them going mad checking that the thing is connected to their PC (extra points if their mouse port is hard to get to). Bonus points if they call up office support and order a new mouse. Extra bonus points if they pull out a multimeter to check the mouse before they think to turn the mouse over and check the ball ;-)
As a former BOFH, how many points do you get if your coozy bounces off root's keyboard *just* in the right manner to do "rm -rf /"? ;-)
Someone earlier talked about UV light destroying organic matter. It might be harmful to humans - but organic matter itself?
Organic matter basically means the chains-of-carbon-atom type molecules. It doesn't mean living matter. Gasoline is an organic compound. So is methane, ethane, butane, propane, heptane etc. Ethanol (C2H5OOH, common alcohol) is organic matter. Methylethylketone (MEK, commonly used as solvent, cleaning agent or paint thinner) is organic matter. None of these things alone are living or about to spring to life. In fact, gasoline is very toxic, but it's still an organic compound. To briefly summarize, organic chemistry centres around carbon-based chemistry: not necessarily the chemistry of life.
It is the long carbon chain molecules that make life possible. What I expect they have found in this meteorite are long-chain carbon molecules - not microbes or anything like that. Even so, this is still a very interesting find.
Basically all but 10% of the population are not people - they are just sheep - sheeple as I call them. They just believe everything on TV, have no skepticism, have no creativity. Perform their anti-work, go home, sit in front of the TV for the next few hours, then follow the talking head on TV like a herd of sheep. Scared like a herd of sheep.
Actually, I gave up TV long ago. There just isn't anything worth watching (especially the news which is so laughably inaccurate and trivial). Nobody will even take any personal risk any more. Now I don't mind if others don't want to take a bit of personal risk, but what I really object to is them telling me I shouldn't do it either or in even worse cases - petitioning the government to enact legislation to prevent me from doing it because "they know best". I just wish they'd go and bugger off.
However, some of my colleagues were not. It seems that they were hired for "software development jobs" and as soon as they arrived, they were put on the test team, running dull and boring test scripts, day in and out. Talk about being shafted. I think management knew that nobody would willingly sign up for that kind of test job, so they got the new college hires doing it by stealth (most people into programming find testing soul-destroying - especially when they have to run scripts, instead of figuring out inventive ways to hack the system...)
But if I want a machine to put Linux on - without getting MS Windows anywhere near it, why should I be obliged to buy MS Windows? If I tell a vendor I'd like a PC without an operating system, I expect not to be forced to buy MS Windows "because I might pirate it otherwise". Am I all of a sudden guilty until proven innocent?
Perhaps all machines should come pre-installed with Solaris too, to prevent piracy of Solaris...
I think it is very likely that anyone who asks for a "naked PC" knows what they are doing, and are fully aware of how to install an operating system. I buy all my PCs without an operating system (in fact, I buy a collection of parts and assemble them). If a vendor gives me the Microsoft-sanctioned spiel, I'll just have to politely tell him not to patronize me.
Or is it just a scheme to make Linux users pay for a MICROS~1 operating system each time they upgrade their machine?
Inventors:
Smith; Dylan, League City, Texas
Crapper; Thomas, London, UK
Catbert and Swirlies Incorporated Houston, Texas
October 10th, 2000
A system comprised of a computer (1) and a motorized bathroom stall door (3) and a motorized toiler roll retraction system (12) controlled by the computer (1). The computer is used in tandem with an employees id badge (7) to keep a log of the time spent on the toilet (14). The computer is used to time individual trips and deny access to the toilet stall if the employee has used up their daily credit of Restroom Trip Points. If the employee exceeds the amount of time allocated for a single restroom trip, the toilet roll retractor (12) is activated by the computer to retract the toilet roll, and the door opener (3) is used to open the bathroom door. If the employee has used all of their restroom trip points and attempts to gain access to the toilet, the door will not open. This system should increase workplace productivity by preventing prolonged bathroom breaks.
Foreign workers come and spend money, pay taxes (that fund this military) - in short, they create additional wealth.
Thirdly, non-citizens are not allowed to actually join the military. Speaking as one of your filthy, stinking, rotten foreigners, I would actually like to join the Air Force but I am forbidden from doing so.
(At the end of the day, I'm going back home - at least my home isn't some third world country like some of these guys who are going to get shipped back to poverty). At least I have the right to defend freedom and democracy and even vote back home. Remember that Boston Tea Party gig? Taxation without representation? Guess what happens when you're a furrriner in the United States. Taxed without any representation.)
I personally want to use DivX for my camcorder. I'm not putting anything I tape onto VHS it's all going straight onto my computer - using the Firewire link on my Sony camcorder and some inexpensive software, I can store my home video in a number of formats: MPEG-2 so I can use my Dxr-3 card to watch them on a TV, or if I want to give the video to a friend, I can get a hell of a lot of good quality video on a CD-ROM if I turn it into DivX. Or even email shorter ones.
And this means I'm not constrained by PAL-vs-NTSC either (which is an issue for me, since I have lots of friends who are in PAL countries). If I send them a CD-ROM of stuff DivX'd instead of on VHS, they can still watch it.
Remember the thing about the Boston tea-party? All that stuff about taxation without representation from the original group of immigrants?
Well, as a non-naturalized immigrant, you have to pay tax - but you can't vote. Taxation without representation. Those same immigrants who have now been here for a few generations now seem fit to resume taxation without representation.