Your points are well taken. What I was trying to express (probably not so well) was the irony - that the people who care the most about an air disaster are precisely the people put under the most direct pressure, mere hours after its occurrence.
I honestly don't think I've ever seen the CEO of an airline corporation, even voluntarily, publicly choke down his grief and submit to rigorous questioning after the loss of a jetliner.
One of the most poignant things about this tragedy is the NASA personnel required to go in front of the world press and try to explain what they know about what happened. The pain in their voices is obvious. How much do you think they would prefer to be commiserating with friends and loved ones instead of fighting not to break down in front of a bunch of television cameras and microphones guessing as to how their friends and colleagues died?
Just now, a reporter asked the NASA official on the stand what the crews' last words were! Jesus!
(With the greatest respect and admiration for the deceased and sympathy for their families.)
The symbolism of this tragedy is counter-productive and out of balance.
The loss of a 737 with 160 people aboard should be just as tragic, if
not more so. The simple fact that the entire nation is engrossed in
this event testifies to the depth of symbolism we attach to the journey
of humans beyond the atmosphere and gravity of earth.
We can do this,
space travel, we have decided to do this. If we have decided that this
is something the human race needs, then the occasional tragedy must be
expected. We must not allow the sensational nature of the event to color
the decision. Just because it was on film, just because of the astounding
physical properties; the speed, the height; these things should not be
allowed to amplify the relative horror.
The kind of thinking that would
demand that manned space flight be stopped because of the - entirely
predictable - chance of spectacular failure, is the kind of thinking
that would have ended any type of mechanized travel after the first
passenger jet disaster, ocean liner sinking or the first time people
died in an overturned horse-carriage.
MjM
I'll take science over religion any day. When was the last time you heard of a researcher strapping exposives to his body and blowing up a shopping mall to protest the laws of thermodynamics?
First off, I love to comment code. It serves two purposes for me, 1)It signifies that the job is done, or at least, this particular problem is solved. 2)I get to illustrate what a great hacker I am.
I have two types of comments. One is informational, what-I-did-and-why. The other is developmental, as in this-could-be-done-better. The latter is a marker and I always put the date and my initials next to it.
On the informational side, I do not comment code indiscriminately. If I do something intricate, and it is not (subjectively) evident what is going on, I will comment it.
When working with uncompiled code (CGI mainly) I've had to remove the "developmental" stuff because customers can easily see that. That's where my initials come in handy.
I'd love to be more verbose and humorous in my comments, but I find that not to be generally favored. Of course, if you're writing OSS code for fun and fame, then there's no one to tell you that your comments are whack.
Why is Sylvester Stallone worth $30M a picture? (I'm not sure that's what he makes, let's just use it for example) Is it his is uncanny characterizations? Is it his devastating ability to dissolve into a character and make you forget you're watching a movie and instead, actually viewing a snippet of real life?
I think not. It's because of Artificial Scarcity. Both movie studios and record companies have had a technological lock on their product (or, the product of their sub-contractors) for decades. There's probably 10,000 people out there who could provide the same performance as Sly. The difference is, the funnel the movie industry forces everyone into, can only allow so many to pass through.
The simple truth is, we are paying artificially high prices for entertainment and have been ever since we stopped going to vaudeville shows and hoe-downs and started buying movies and records.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that Syl ain't done nothin' on the screen that's worth $100k, let alone $1M. Perhaps we'll all end up going back to theaters. Maybe major studios will refuse to release their product in digital format (doh!) and follow Disney's lead, allow a release once every 10 years of a select sub-set. Who knows?
The problem is - as Blair Witch, among others, has amply proved - the Scarcity lock is blown. Perhaps movies/tv/music will go back to the entertainment model of the 19th century - wandering troubadors and actors whose livelihood was mean and disdained.
In the early versions of DOS (3-5) we used to take turns sector-editing command.com and changing the line that said "No such file or command" to "Learn to type " or "Get a clue, fool", etc.
I was porting a VBScript/IIS product to PerlScript/Apache. During the process, I ended up setting up an alternative Server Error (HTTP Error 500) page which Apache would return when my code caused some failure. I put an iterator on the page to spit out all the Server variables at the time of the error. At the top, I wrote a haiku and called the page Error 500 Haiku:
riding the big wave
surfing's not always easy
turn your board around
During testing, I was called to QA quite often because of what became known as "a Haiku".
Looks like I'm back to being a troll. For a while there, I was up to 2-Funny!
This has happened before. I've posted something, had it modded as a troll and then reposted it with a disclaimer. I never intentionally troll - it's just not in my nature. I actually feel slightly hurt when someone mistakes my (maybe lame) attempts at humor.
by LuxuryYacht on Thursday August 15, @02:21AM (#4075045) Alter Relationship
(User #229372 Info | http://slashdot.org/)
Download the adblocker.xpi file (Shift+click to download).
When you download the adblocker.xpi file in Netscape 7, it will add.txt to the filename (adblocker.xpi.txt).
Before saving the file, remove.txt from the filename and save the file to disk.
Then in Netscape 7 click
File | Open to install.
Then In Netscape 7 click
Edit | Preferences | Advanced - Scripts & Windows to unselect or select the Open unrequested windows
- It's not the size of your development team that matters... it's how you use it. - [ Parent ]
Direct link to the pop-up restore... (Score:5, Informative)
And this:
by edgrale (edgrale@pp.htv.NOSPAM.fi) on Thursday August 15, @01:43AM (#4074898) Alter Relationship
(User #216858 Info) (Original)
http://ufaq.org/files/adblocker.xpi
Pleas post mirrors in this thread.
[ Parent ] Re:Direct link to the pop-up restore... (Score:5, Informative)
I've tried it and it works on Netscape PR7 and 7.0 on both Linux and W2k.
Back about DOS 5 or 6 FORMAT started insisting on putting a serial number on disks. It was 4 bytes long. I remember going in with Norton's sector editor, finding it and changing it to DE AD BE EF
It's bad enough our country is destroying its technology sector with special-interest legislation, patents and the DMCA - don't make things worse by helping some other nation get a leg up by avoiding this morass if idiocy!
How does someone decide, ahead of time, without seeing a movie, that he or she wants to see an edited version?
Everyone has to learn about new movies from somewhere - do the people who want to watch these movies pre-screen the un-edited versions and then decide, "Hey this would be good for the kids if it didn't have that language and these scenes"?
Or, is there a listing in the CleanEdits store which describes the scenes which have been altered in which movies and for what reasons?
Are people just blindly trusting that the CleanEdits versions will be both 1)acceptible and 2)not a gross distortion the of basic premise of the film?
I mean, if you haven't seen a film, how do you know you won't like what's in it? Do you rely on hearsay from fellow sensitives, "You've gotta see Blue Velvet, man, but get the Clean-Edits version so your kids won't freak out about the dead cop still standing!"
I find, far more disturbing than the legal, artistic and fair-use implications, the mindset of the people who would patronize this service.
"The copyright community has to understand the reality that if consumers are not happy with the compromise...many of these illegal activities are going to continue."
Ms. Deutsch is being disingenuous here. If she was being completely candid, she would have said,
"The copyright community has to understand the reality that if consumers are not happy with the what they can get with broadband, they won't subscribe to it."
I had always understood that part of the reason Sony lost the "format wars" was due to their fumbling introduction of two-hour Betamax machines. Supposedly, these machines would not play tapes recorded by the previous generation Betamax machines. I seem to remember that Sony got all huffy about complaints, which drove annoyed consumers looking for longer-recording times to buy VHS purely out of spite.
On another note - Does anyone remember the tape-stackers that you could buy for Betamax? They would allow you to stack four or so tapes into a cartridge that hung on the outside of the machine and then somehow rotate themselves in and out of the recorder! Can anyone say "Rube Goldberg"?
Slashdot Mirror
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Sir Winston Churchill
And what was the truth doing lying around with no pants on, eh?
Uh huh!
MjM
Your points are well taken. What I was trying to express (probably not so well) was the irony - that the people who care the most about an air disaster are precisely the people put under the most direct pressure, mere hours after its occurrence.
I honestly don't think I've ever seen the CEO of an airline corporation, even voluntarily, publicly choke down his grief and submit to rigorous questioning after the loss of a jetliner.
Does that sound more cogent?
MjM
One of the most poignant things about this tragedy is the NASA personnel required to go in front of the world press and try to explain what they know about what happened. The pain in their voices is obvious. How much do you think they would prefer to be commiserating with friends and loved ones instead of fighting not to break down in front of a bunch of television cameras and microphones guessing as to how their friends and colleagues died?
Just now, a reporter asked the NASA official on the stand what the crews' last words were! Jesus!
Why don't the CEO's of airlines have to do this?
MjM
(With the greatest respect and admiration for the deceased and sympathy for their families.)
The symbolism of this tragedy is counter-productive and out of balance. The loss of a 737 with 160 people aboard should be just as tragic, if not more so. The simple fact that the entire nation is engrossed in this event testifies to the depth of symbolism we attach to the journey of humans beyond the atmosphere and gravity of earth.
We can do this, space travel, we have decided to do this. If we have decided that this is something the human race needs, then the occasional tragedy must be expected. We must not allow the sensational nature of the event to color the decision. Just because it was on film, just because of the astounding physical properties; the speed, the height; these things should not be allowed to amplify the relative horror.
The kind of thinking that would demand that manned space flight be stopped because of the - entirely predictable - chance of spectacular failure, is the kind of thinking that would have ended any type of mechanized travel after the first passenger jet disaster, ocean liner sinking or the first time people died in an overturned horse-carriage.
MjM
I'll take science over religion any day. When was the last time you heard of a researcher strapping exposives to his body and blowing up a shopping mall to protest the laws of thermodynamics?
So what's the chance that the ID of the 600+ file-sharer turns out to be a P2P "Garbage" Spreader hired by the RIAA?
MjM
I only mod up...
First off, I love to comment code. It serves two purposes for me, 1)It signifies that the job is done, or at least, this particular problem is solved. 2)I get to illustrate what a great hacker I am.
I have two types of comments. One is informational, what-I-did-and-why. The other is developmental, as in this-could-be-done-better. The latter is a marker and I always put the date and my initials next to it.
On the informational side, I do not comment code indiscriminately. If I do something intricate, and it is not (subjectively) evident what is going on, I will comment it.
When working with uncompiled code (CGI mainly) I've had to remove the "developmental" stuff because customers can easily see that. That's where my initials come in handy.
I'd love to be more verbose and humorous in my comments, but I find that not to be generally favored. Of course, if you're writing OSS code for fun and fame, then there's no one to tell you that your comments are whack.
MjM
I only mod up...
On Error GoTo Hell
I remember writing some VB code that said:
"On Error Goto Dodge"
"Dodge" was my error handler as in, "get the hell out of..."
MjM
I only mod up...
January 2, 2003
From: William Gates III
To: All Employees
1: The sky is falling!
2: ???
3: Profit!!!
Thank you,
- Bill
MjM
I only moderate up...
To me, that's the best thing about it, the UP button.
MjM
I only mod up...
7.4 We wish to clarify that by the term 'Free Software' used above, we are referring to 'freedom', as in 'swatantryam' - not 'soujanyam'.
Which one of these is 'beer'?
MjM
Why is Sylvester Stallone worth $30M a picture? (I'm not sure that's what he makes, let's just use it for example) Is it his is uncanny characterizations? Is it his devastating ability to dissolve into a character and make you forget you're watching a movie and instead, actually viewing a snippet of real life?
I think not. It's because of Artificial Scarcity. Both movie studios and record companies have had a technological lock on their product (or, the product of their sub-contractors) for decades. There's probably 10,000 people out there who could provide the same performance as Sly. The difference is, the funnel the movie industry forces everyone into, can only allow so many to pass through.
The simple truth is, we are paying artificially high prices for entertainment and have been ever since we stopped going to vaudeville shows and hoe-downs and started buying movies and records.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that Syl ain't done nothin' on the screen that's worth $100k, let alone $1M. Perhaps we'll all end up going back to theaters. Maybe major studios will refuse to release their product in digital format (doh!) and follow Disney's lead, allow a release once every 10 years of a select sub-set. Who knows?
The problem is - as Blair Witch, among others, has amply proved - the Scarcity lock is blown. Perhaps movies/tv/music will go back to the entertainment model of the 19th century - wandering troubadors and actors whose livelihood was mean and disdained.
It's going to be interesting, that's for sure.
MjM
I only mod up...
In the early versions of DOS (3-5) we used to take turns sector-editing command.com and changing the line that said "No such file or command" to "Learn to type " or "Get a clue, fool", etc.
MjM
I only mod up...
I was porting a VBScript/IIS product to PerlScript/Apache. During the process, I ended up setting up an alternative Server Error (HTTP Error 500) page which Apache would return when my code caused some failure. I put an iterator on the page to spit out all the Server variables at the time of the error. At the top, I wrote a haiku and called the page Error 500 Haiku:
riding the big wave
surfing's not always easy
turn your board around
During testing, I was called to QA quite often because of what became known as "a Haiku".
MjM
I only mod up...
This has happened before. I've posted something, had it modded as a troll and then reposted it with a disclaimer. I never intentionally troll - it's just not in my nature. I actually feel slightly hurt when someone mistakes my (maybe lame) attempts at humor.
Ah well, c'est le computique.
MjM
I only mod up...
What if Bush were to campaign for regime change..
MjM
for the humor impaired, this is a joke, not a troll
What if Bush were to campaign for regime change..
MjM
I only mod up...
From this:
Slashdot Article
There's this:
And this:by LuxuryYacht on Thursday August 15, @02:21AM (#4075045) Alter Relationship (User #229372 Info | http://slashdot.org/) Download the adblocker.xpi file (Shift+click to download).
When you download the adblocker.xpi file in Netscape 7, it will add .txt to the filename (adblocker.xpi.txt).
Before saving the file, remove .txt from the filename and save the file to disk.
Then in Netscape 7 click File | Open to install.
Then In Netscape 7 click Edit | Preferences | Advanced - Scripts & Windows to unselect or select the Open unrequested windows
- It's not the size of your development team that matters ... it's how you use it. - [ Parent ]
Direct link to the pop-up restore... (Score:5, Informative)
http://ufaq.org/files/adblocker.xpi
Pleas post mirrors in this thread.
[ Parent ] Re:Direct link to the pop-up restore... (Score:5, Informative)
I've tried it and it works on Netscape PR7 and 7.0 on both Linux and W2k.
MjM
I only mod up...
Don't drink the Pengiun's water, Robin!", screamed Ballmerman at the top of his lungs.
It was too late...
MjM
I only mod up...
Back about DOS 5 or 6 FORMAT started insisting on putting a serial number on disks. It was 4 bytes long. I remember going in with Norton's sector editor, finding it and changing it to DE AD BE EF
Yeah, I know...
MjM
I only mod up...
Thanks for my first big laugh of the day.
And on top of that, you're the first in the thread to spell "friendliness" correctly.
Garsh!
MjM
I only mod up...
Good Lord! Don't help this person!
It's bad enough our country is destroying its technology sector with special-interest legislation, patents and the DMCA - don't make things worse by helping some other nation get a leg up by avoiding this morass if idiocy!
Show some patriotism!
MjM
Satire Impaired? Please don't mod
How does someone decide, ahead of time, without seeing a movie, that he or she wants to see an edited version?
Everyone has to learn about new movies from somewhere - do the people who want to watch these movies pre-screen the un-edited versions and then decide, "Hey this would be good for the kids if it didn't have that language and these scenes"?
Or, is there a listing in the CleanEdits store which describes the scenes which have been altered in which movies and for what reasons?
Are people just blindly trusting that the CleanEdits versions will be both 1)acceptible and 2)not a gross distortion the of basic premise of the film?
I mean, if you haven't seen a film, how do you know you won't like what's in it? Do you rely on hearsay from fellow sensitives, "You've gotta see Blue Velvet, man, but get the Clean-Edits version so your kids won't freak out about the dead cop still standing!"
I find, far more disturbing than the legal, artistic and fair-use implications, the mindset of the people who would patronize this service.
What are they thinking?
MjM
I only mod up...
"The copyright community has to understand the reality that if consumers are not happy with the compromise...many of these illegal activities are going to continue."
Ms. Deutsch is being disingenuous here. If she was being completely candid, she would have said,
"The copyright community has to understand the reality that if consumers are not happy with the what they can get with broadband, they won't subscribe to it."
Amen!
MjM
I only mod up...
I had always understood that part of the reason Sony lost the "format wars" was due to their fumbling introduction of two-hour Betamax machines. Supposedly, these machines would not play tapes recorded by the previous generation Betamax machines. I seem to remember that Sony got all huffy about complaints, which drove annoyed consumers looking for longer-recording times to buy VHS purely out of spite.
On another note - Does anyone remember the tape-stackers that you could buy for Betamax? They would allow you to stack four or so tapes into a cartridge that hung on the outside of the machine and then somehow rotate themselves in and out of the recorder! Can anyone say "Rube Goldberg"?
MjM
I only mod up...
Due to Slashdot's line length restrictions, lines of code over 50 characters long may not display correctly.
Isn't this something that can be fixed in Perl?
MjM
I only mod up...