In fact, looking at their white paper - the patent link is broken - the system they appear to have patented is a system which automatically adds any taxes you have to pay onto the bill (so, for instance, if the buyer is in Europe, adding on VAT). How on earth can you patent something like that?
Quite simply! All one has to do is patent the 'process' of addition! I can see it now...
I have patented a process whereby you can take two different numbers, those numbers representing a quantity of money or items, and make them into -one- number that represents the 'togetherness' of them. I'll call the process 'addition' because you are adding one number to another! If you want to tax an amount of a purchase, or for that matter, have more than one item on a bill, you'll have to pay me 1.5% (add an 'additional' 1.5% for using the process to determine the 1.5% total) of each bill your company sends out! Thanks!
I say fix the whole lot at MS by not installing their software. Use Linux, use OS X. Anything but the effluence flowing from the filthy beast. Maybe if more people stopped complaining about MS and started doing something about it, with their pocket-books and wallets, the whole point here would be moot.
Well, since most of my family and friends own Dells, and I'm sure a few of yours do as well, I task you with this challenge! Go try to customize a Dimension desktop without Windows. Seriously. Go forth and conquer! What? Your only choices were XP Home or XP Professional?
That is what almost all (non-geek) people who want to buy a computer do. They select a name brand, go to the site, select a system based on price-range, maybe if they are saavy they customize one or two things, then either buy it online or print the specs and run to the store.
The problem doesn't stop there. Ever owned a Macintosh? I have. Oooh, what a cool looking game, I want to play that! Eh? Windows.. where's the Mac version? Coming next summer?
While I completely agree with you in theory, and agree with your point, I felt obligated to present a day in the life of the typical home user. Windows is a fact of life that most home users just accept at face-value because it is the same thing their friends have and it is what they use at work.
I don't give a shit what games you play. I don't give a shit how fucking long you play them. I don't give a fuck if you never get laid, or get laid more than Wilt Chamberlain. I certainly don't need an accounting of your finances. I don't give a shit whether you classify yourself as a geek or not. What I do give a shit about is that you come onto these forums and berate the posters because of some prior and unsubstantiated perceptions about people you know nothing about.
I am sorry you feel persecuted by the media. Your not the first. Welcome to the real world. People are not all the stereotypes you imagine them to be. Armed with this knowledge, I charge you with going forth with your life with your eyes open. Go now. Close your browser. Open Anarchy Online, and play your game. Have fun. Enjoy life. Be happy. Fuck off.
Incidenally, would it kill all the people who throw the word 'schitzophrenia' around thinking it has something to do with multiple personalities to actually look it up in a dictionary?
Neo-conservatives strike again! Thanks Mr. Powell!
The continuing decline of the overall quality of US radio has been my primary motivation in finding alternative music sources. I tried shoutcast and spinner as well as some of the smaller webcast groups. Eventually, I just started listening to Radio 1 from the BBC. This now streams into my home 24/7 as well as my laptop at work. I have never looked back. Hopefully as folks start becoming more disgusted by the dumbed-down and monotonous crap that Clear Channel pumps into Everytown, USA, folks will start to look abroad for entertainment. The music is out there, you just have to look beyond the borders.
Some of the music is exactly what you hear in the US on Clear Channel stations, but there is a hell of a lot more music-base to generate the playlists.
While you're there, be sure to read/stream the news. CNN has been becoming even more remarkable selective in what they post lately. Another symptom of the disease that infects the deregulated media industries.
I am glad for you that your game experience has been entirely different. I'll keep the Ad Hominem attacks to a minimum.
I play on Deception. I assure you that my machine meets the specs without going into details. I think the bigger performance issues are that one shouldn't have to turn down all the effects and detail to zero before logging on to war. That is a bad workaround to a small piece of a larger problem of server instability. The server suffers when groups attack. When the last bout of guild vs guild was rolling on the mainland, we were feeling it badly outside of Khar. That alone says that the problem was not on my client-side.
I've lost a severe number of attribute points during a server crash. My petition to WP was answered as follows: [quote] Thank you for contacting the Shadowbane customer care team!
We understand that you have been experiencing difficulties with your character recently. We would like to apologize for the losses that you may have suffered, we understand that this is very frustrating for you but unfortunately we will not be doing any compensation of items or levels due to this.
Thank you for your patience understanding! [/quote]
I think that says it all about the level of support I've received, although in talking to others, this is not without precedent.
I won't bother to address the other points as most are base attacks.
Anyway, I'm glad your experience in the game is a good one and that you enjoy your time online. My experience has been different, and I have voted with my feet.
okay, I'll bite. By this rational what should be covered? The rising costs of medical insurance is fed entirely by the medical industry. It's a vicious circle that only winds up raping the people in the end. The medical industry in the US is a financial shambles. I paid $860 for a two-block ambulance ride a couple of years ago. That's 2 (two) blocks. No life-saving procedures, no fancy equipment used. Just me, sitting on a stretcher nursing a scalp laceration next to an EMT and bitching out the drunk driver that had just totalled my car. $860? I paid $3500 for my son to have an MRI. Why? Because he had fallen and given himself a nice black eye and a bloody nose. I protested the procedure, and was told that if I interfered with the procedures, I would be asked to leave the hospital as AMA (Against Medical Advice) with no further treatment rendered. This is the real reason mine and your insurance rates go up. Not because people want frivolous (of which this device is -not-) procedures covered, but because the industry has raised the rates to exorbitant levels in an effort to line their own pockets. I honestly don't know how these people sleep at night. You'd think someone in a position of authority would do something, but it's hard to stab your campaign contributors in the back I suppose.
Fuck that. This should be covered, along with LASIK, hearing aids, braces, birth control, and anything else that is not purely cosmetic. My $773 a month in insurance premiums should damn well cover anything I want to improve my direct quality of life.
Don't blame the people that want something to help with their debilitations, blame the industry that sets the financial bar too high with no recourse.
I notice that you couldn't address the other issues. That aside, I do have broadband. You'll have to explain in detail how you manage to avoid the rollback when the servers crash almost twice a day. Or perhaps you can not. Perhaps you are so 'uber' you don't get logged in the middle of combat. However, the other 99% of the people I group with -do-. There is nothing I've stated that I haven't lived through. If you really need verification, take yourself to http://ubbforums.ubi.com and login (assuming you actually have an account and play the game), browse to the server issues forum (the one that you have to be logged in to access) and do a simple comparison on the number of entries in that forum vs -any- other forum.
7755 entries in what has become the 'wtf?' forum
the closest one in size is 4565 in the 'how to build a character' forum.
Take some time and read the issues players are having with the game. Then come back, and login here and post intelligently. I filter Anonymous Cowards out of existence usually.
For those of us that have been playing this game regularly, this is only the icing on the cake for a plague of problems. This was a game that was touted for it's massive guild vs guild and player vs player capabilities. Massive warfronts and assaults utilizing seige weapons and a slew of powerful spells and powers. None of this has come to pass. The game lag is too terrible to support even the smallest of battles. PvP is almost impossible during primetime hours due to the inability of most casters to launch spells in a timely manner. (Although you -can- watch your nukes launch 45 seconds after your death)
Server downtime is extreme. Login is at times completely impossible. Rollbacks are nightly. The attrition rate among players is amazing. I've watched my guild vanish over the last few weeks as the host of problems drive out all but the most staunch of players. Ubi/Wolfpack blatantly reject petitions with no regard or consideration for the players. Every patch makes the client actually worse that it was before. This has been a nightmare for most of us. To see news like this only confirms the worst. Bad management, bad hosting, bad coding, and bad customer care have driven most from what I considered to be one of the better games to come out this spring. Just another account cancelled in a long line of departing players.
Well, a lot of so called "gifted" people are also unemployed, without a girl(boy)friend, without any kind of social intelligence, etc... If it makes you feel better, go brag about your IQ, but don't expect us to sympathize much...
NASA has not provided a public display to the taxpayers of what said tax dollars have provided, other than some more boring shuttle experiments, a constanly-on-the-verge-of-shutdown space station, and several failed X-planes.
I was leaving this branch of the thread alone as it was getting hairy, but I have to interject on this one:
Hubble Telecommunications Satellites (the early ones were launched from the orbiter) Weather Mapping Satellites (some of these were also launched from the orbiter) Global Positioning Systems (ditto) Voyager Galileo and let's not forget going to the moon
Not a bad feat of accomplishments that I think most schoolkids know about. Even some taxpayers might have heard or benefited from one or two of these...
I could answer this post by trying to demonstrate that I am not being a Pollyanna, or by elaborating the idea that I am merely illustrating a point of priorities of death over knowledge, or even on a point-by-point refutal, but I'll leave it at these three words which I feel address all your concerns over my beliefs in the human race and in safeguarding my families' and indeed all of the United States' citizens lives:
I'm a veteran
Don't lecture me on the real world. I've been there.
Re:The price of exploration
on
Shuttle Politics
·
· Score: 4, Informative
~ $15 Billion is quite a shoestring.
Think so? Let's compare and contrast that amount (the sum total) against 1 (one) B2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
Hrmmm.. how many bombers do we have at 1.16b a piece? How many do we really need? Keep in mind that this doesn't even remotely account for the support infrastructure like the NASA budget did.
Thus we arrive at the moral dilemna. Let's see, we can fund science and space exploration, learning about our planet and ourselves in the process... or we can produce machines whose only viable purpose is to destroy human life and their surroundings. How much is just -one- of those snappy laser-guided missiles that we seem to be so fond of shooting at other humans?
$600,000 a pop to kill a handful of humans? I suppose I should be honored to be senselessly slaughtered by such expensive weaponry! Except I'm too [expletive] dead to appreciate it.
How about this? Let's go for the -BIG- picture for DoD:
It's a problem of priority. There are some of us that feel that advancing human knowledge is worth more than producing more machines of warfare. What a senseless waste. Perhaps Darwin was on to something.
Re:The price of exploration
on
Shuttle Politics
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Per dollar, per mile it bloody well should be.
You think so? NASA operates on a shoestring budget that is so microscopic compared the Department of Defense or virtually any other government agency it's pathetic. As a former employee, I can tell you firsthand that the public, and pardon my expression, ignorant opinions of most of the US population (read: voters) are -way- off-base. Compare the annual budget of NASA to, say one Naval warship, or one fleet of Army communication vans, or virtually anything DoD. Seriously. If you or others want to bitch about the way NASA is funded, back it up with some facts, and look around. I'll even help you!
You touched on some good points there, but I think the observation has to be made that very few albums of late have had more than one (if any) good tracks on them. I think that this is a fundamental argument for most people regarding the music industry as a whole. I believe that one of the biggest reasons we are seeing so many Greatest Hits albums of late selling like hot-cakes, is that by and large most people don't care much for today's synthesized-syncronized-dance-pop.
Coporate America has managed to convert the entire music industry to Lowest-Common-Denominator-Music. Which of course fits in so nicely with the steady schedule of Lowest-Common-Denominator-TV (read: Reality TV) and Lowest-Common-Denominator-Movies. Cater to the lowest segment of society, and everyone else will accept it because they -have no alternative choice-. This has been the design from day-one, the corporations just lacked the legal backing to make it happen. We used to have four newspapers to choose from in my home city. Now there is one. Every station but two on the FM dial (one is college radio, the other is all-80s) are owned by Clear Channel. They all play the exact same lineup more or less. The rock stations play most of the same tunes as the 'mix' stations with a little classic AC/DC thrown in just to make it 'edgy'. All the venues for music and sports have been renamed to a Corporate name: Arial Theatre, Compaq Center, MinuteMaid Park, and Reliant Arena.
What's the point? For my dollars and time, I expect something of quality. Sadly, this is exactly what is lacking most from all the corporate-owned media forms of late.
This post brought to you by: Pepsi, AOL, Enron, Shell, and Michelin Tires
I think Netbotz are the best I've seen so far. I have used them in multiple server rooms for security as well as monitoring. They have temp, humidity, a camera, and are web-enabled. Very sweet!
For those who think it's a legitimate story because it's posted on Yahoo!, remember it's a Weekly World News story. Y'know like the crazy magazines in the MiB movie. Here's a selection from this week's headlines [yahoo.com]: 1. WHY HASN'T MY NEIGHBOR AGED? [yahoo.com] 2. First Interview With A Talking Fish! [yahoo.com] 3. Saddam Starred in Gay Porn Films! [yahoo.com]
Since it's the Weekly World News && Slashdot, let's go ahead and handle it right:
1-3. Saddam starred in Gay Porn Film with my ageless neighbors talking Fish!
This way we can cut down on our reading time here and go back to Google News!
Check your sources people.. This one comes from the Weekly World News. Surely the same credible news source that gave us Batboy and the visage of Satan over the New Mexico desert.
In other/. news today: Bill Gates takes over kernel 2.5 maintenance: said to have 'Great Plans' for Linux The Detroit Big 3 pull their SUV line and produce feul-efficient cars and George Bush admits he cannot read on a fourth-grade level
Perhaps we can get slashboxes for the Weekly World News, and the Enquirer! Maybe Taco can call them a 'Plum' too!
With every iteration, laws become more restrictive more intrusive and more unintelligable. Until one day, noone can live a day of their lives without fear that somehow they are breaking some law and right and wrong are so far removed from the law that only your political connections or your subserviance will keep you out of harms way.
I find your ideas to be intriguing. I'd like to sign up for your newsletter.
Seriously though, that is the best rant I've read in a while! Are you Michael Moore's love-child?
Ok please tell me what books you have read over the past 6 months. also what movies you watched.
and can you give me a list of the phone numbres you called last week?
thanks.
It doesnt bug you right.. If it does then what are you trying to hide?
Books: Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis and other stories
The Tao of Pooh
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living
Tao Te Jing
Awakening the Mind, Lightening the Heart - His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Numbers:
Pizza Hut my ex-wife work
My point? I agree with the librarians in spirit, and I greatly dislike the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and der Fatherland,etc. but honestly.. What can you graft from this list? Seriously. I'm a fairly literate Zen Taoist with buddhist leanings? I have a weight problem? I'm divorced? So what. Just ask me. I'll tell you. I know that it is not status quo for the/. crowd to -not- kneejerk to every little issue, but one must really put life in perspective. McCarthyism died. Bad legislation dies. This is the beauty of the system. Laws are passed that suck every day. Most are repealed or forgotten. Prohibition? My point? Step back from the rabid crowd and look around you. Think about it from the big picture.
This is a welcome to change to the usual copy/paste from the linked articles we usually get. This is so decent it's alomst as useful as the time that guy posted the step-by-step on Gentoo that was so good I went home and installed on the spare PC. Bravo!
Otherwise I'm glad to see the P2P community keeping pace (or should I say, one step ahead of) with the best in file serving. I'm not sure that RedHat would be pleased about it, but it was bound to happen that the ISOs would be released back to the community in record time regardless of paid subscriptions. In the end, I think they'll find it difficult to release anything without the inevitable leaks. This seems to hold true for Microsoft as well, as they contend with leak after leak of their beta and developer images. Information wants to be free!!
Slashdot Mirror
In fact, looking at their white paper - the patent link is broken - the system they appear to have patented is a system which automatically adds any taxes you have to pay onto the bill (so, for instance, if the buyer is in Europe, adding on VAT). How on earth can you patent something like that?
Quite simply! All one has to do is patent the 'process' of addition! I can see it now...
I have patented a process whereby you can take two different numbers, those numbers representing a quantity of money or items, and make them into -one- number that represents the 'togetherness' of them. I'll call the process 'addition' because you are adding one number to another! If you want to tax an amount of a purchase, or for that matter, have more than one item on a bill, you'll have to pay me 1.5% (add an 'additional' 1.5% for using the process to determine the 1.5% total) of each bill your company sends out! Thanks!
Well, since most of my family and friends own Dells, and I'm sure a few of yours do as well, I task you with this challenge! Go try to customize a Dimension desktop without Windows. Seriously. Go forth and conquer! What? Your only choices were XP Home or XP Professional?
That is what almost all (non-geek) people who want to buy a computer do. They select a name brand, go to the site, select a system based on price-range, maybe if they are saavy they customize one or two things, then either buy it online or print the specs and run to the store.
The problem doesn't stop there. Ever owned a Macintosh? I have. Oooh, what a cool looking game, I want to play that! Eh? Windows.. where's the Mac version? Coming next summer?
While I completely agree with you in theory, and agree with your point, I felt obligated to present a day in the life of the typical home user. Windows is a fact of life that most home users just accept at face-value because it is the same thing their friends have and it is what they use at work.
You, sir, are a fucking tosser.
I don't give a shit what games you play. I don't give a shit how fucking long you play them. I don't give a fuck if you never get laid, or get laid more than Wilt Chamberlain. I certainly don't need an accounting of your finances. I don't give a shit whether you classify yourself as a geek or not. What I do give a shit about is that you come onto these forums and berate the posters because of some prior and unsubstantiated perceptions about people you know nothing about.
I am sorry you feel persecuted by the media. Your not the first. Welcome to the real world. People are not all the stereotypes you imagine them to be. Armed with this knowledge, I charge you with going forth with your life with your eyes open. Go now. Close your browser. Open Anarchy Online, and play your game. Have fun. Enjoy life. Be happy. Fuck off.
Incidenally, would it kill all the people who throw the word 'schitzophrenia' around thinking it has something to do with multiple personalities to actually look it up in a dictionary?
[blinks]
[checks URL]
[rereads post]
[checks URL]
Are you lost? This is slashdot.
it's the bunny rabbit that lends itself to the business-saavy of this OS!
must.. have.. the bunny OS!!
Ed Wood did this already! Only.. you know.. from outer space.
Neo-conservatives strike again! Thanks Mr. Powell!
The continuing decline of the overall quality of US radio has been my primary motivation in finding alternative music sources. I tried shoutcast and spinner as well as some of the smaller webcast groups. Eventually, I just started listening to Radio 1 from the BBC. This now streams into my home 24/7 as well as my laptop at work. I have never looked back. Hopefully as folks start becoming more disgusted by the dumbed-down and monotonous crap that Clear Channel pumps into Everytown, USA, folks will start to look abroad for entertainment. The music is out there, you just have to look beyond the borders.
Here ya go!
Radio 1 - Rock and Pop
Radio 1 Xtra - Rap and Hip Hop
Some of the music is exactly what you hear in the US on Clear Channel stations, but there is a hell of a lot more music-base to generate the playlists.
While you're there, be sure to read/stream the news. CNN has been becoming even more remarkable selective in what they post lately. Another symptom of the disease that infects the deregulated media industries.
Enjoy!
I am glad for you that your game experience has been entirely different. I'll keep the Ad Hominem attacks to a minimum.
I play on Deception. I assure you that my machine meets the specs without going into details. I think the bigger performance issues are that one shouldn't have to turn down all the effects and detail to zero before logging on to war. That is a bad workaround to a small piece of a larger problem of server instability. The server suffers when groups attack. When the last bout of guild vs guild was rolling on the mainland, we were feeling it badly outside of Khar. That alone says that the problem was not on my client-side.
I've lost a severe number of attribute points during a server crash. My petition to WP was answered as follows:
[quote]
Thank you for contacting the Shadowbane customer care team!
We understand that you have been experiencing difficulties with your character recently. We would like to apologize for the losses that you may have suffered, we understand that this is very frustrating for you but unfortunately we will not be doing any compensation of items or levels due to this.
Thank you for your patience understanding!
[/quote]
I think that says it all about the level of support I've received, although in talking to others, this is not without precedent.
I won't bother to address the other points as most are base attacks.
Anyway, I'm glad your experience in the game is a good one and that you enjoy your time online. My experience has been different, and I have voted with my feet.
okay, I'll bite. By this rational what should be covered? The rising costs of medical insurance is fed entirely by the medical industry. It's a vicious circle that only winds up raping the people in the end. The medical industry in the US is a financial shambles. I paid $860 for a two-block ambulance ride a couple of years ago. That's 2 (two) blocks. No life-saving procedures, no fancy equipment used. Just me, sitting on a stretcher nursing a scalp laceration next to an EMT and bitching out the drunk driver that had just totalled my car. $860? I paid $3500 for my son to have an MRI. Why? Because he had fallen and given himself a nice black eye and a bloody nose. I protested the procedure, and was told that if I interfered with the procedures, I would be asked to leave the hospital as AMA (Against Medical Advice) with no further treatment rendered. This is the real reason mine and your insurance rates go up. Not because people want frivolous (of which this device is -not-) procedures covered, but because the industry has raised the rates to exorbitant levels in an effort to line their own pockets. I honestly don't know how these people sleep at night. You'd think someone in a position of authority would do something, but it's hard to stab your campaign contributors in the back I suppose.
Fuck that. This should be covered, along with LASIK, hearing aids, braces, birth control, and anything else that is not purely cosmetic. My $773 a month in insurance premiums should damn well cover anything I want to improve my direct quality of life.
Don't blame the people that want something to help with their debilitations, blame the industry that sets the financial bar too high with no recourse.
I notice that you couldn't address the other issues. That aside, I do have broadband. You'll have to explain in detail how you manage to avoid the rollback when the servers crash almost twice a day. Or perhaps you can not. Perhaps you are so 'uber' you don't get logged in the middle of combat. However, the other 99% of the people I group with -do-. There is nothing I've stated that I haven't lived through. If you really need verification, take yourself to http://ubbforums.ubi.com and login (assuming you actually have an account and play the game), browse to the server issues forum (the one that you have to be logged in to access) and do a simple comparison on the number of entries in that forum vs -any- other forum.
7755 entries in what has become the 'wtf?' forum
the closest one in size is 4565 in the 'how to build a character' forum.
Take some time and read the issues players are having with the game. Then come back, and login here and post intelligently. I filter Anonymous Cowards out of existence usually.
For those of us that have been playing this game regularly, this is only the icing on the cake for a plague of problems. This was a game that was touted for it's massive guild vs guild and player vs player capabilities. Massive warfronts and assaults utilizing seige weapons and a slew of powerful spells and powers. None of this has come to pass. The game lag is too terrible to support even the smallest of battles. PvP is almost impossible during primetime hours due to the inability of most casters to launch spells in a timely manner. (Although you -can- watch your nukes launch 45 seconds after your death)
Server downtime is extreme. Login is at times completely impossible. Rollbacks are nightly. The attrition rate among players is amazing. I've watched my guild vanish over the last few weeks as the host of problems drive out all but the most staunch of players. Ubi/Wolfpack blatantly reject petitions with no regard or consideration for the players. Every patch makes the client actually worse that it was before. This has been a nightmare for most of us. To see news like this only confirms the worst. Bad management, bad hosting, bad coding, and bad customer care have driven most from what I considered to be one of the better games to come out this spring. Just another account cancelled in a long line of departing players.
Hey Buddy! I have a job! and.. uh..
hrmm..
I have a job!
NASA has not provided a public display to the taxpayers of what said tax dollars have provided, other than some more boring shuttle experiments, a constanly-on-the-verge-of-shutdown space station, and several failed X-planes.
I was leaving this branch of the thread alone as it was getting hairy, but I have to interject on this one:
Hubble
Telecommunications Satellites (the early ones were launched from the orbiter)
Weather Mapping Satellites (some of these were also launched from the orbiter)
Global Positioning Systems (ditto)
Voyager
Galileo
and let's not forget going to the moon
Not a bad feat of accomplishments that I think most schoolkids know about. Even some taxpayers might have heard or benefited from one or two of these...
I could answer this post by trying to demonstrate that I am not being a Pollyanna, or by elaborating the idea that I am merely illustrating a point of priorities of death over knowledge, or even on a point-by-point refutal, but I'll leave it at these three words which I feel address all your concerns over my beliefs in the human race and in safeguarding my families' and indeed all of the United States' citizens lives:
I'm a veteran
Don't lecture me on the real world. I've been there.
Think so? Let's compare and contrast that amount (the sum total) against 1 (one) B2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
B2 Info
Hrmmm.. how many bombers do we have at 1.16b a piece? How many do we really need? Keep in mind that this doesn't even remotely account for the support infrastructure like the NASA budget did.
Thus we arrive at the moral dilemna. Let's see, we can fund science and space exploration, learning about our planet and ourselves in the process... or we can produce machines whose only viable purpose is to destroy human life and their surroundings. How much is just -one- of those snappy laser-guided missiles that we seem to be so fond of shooting at other humans?
Cruise Missle
$600,000 a pop to kill a handful of humans? I suppose I should be honored to be senselessly slaughtered by such expensive weaponry! Except I'm too [expletive] dead to appreciate it.
How about this? Let's go for the -BIG- picture for DoD:
DoD Budget
It's a problem of priority. There are some of us that feel that advancing human knowledge is worth more than producing more machines of warfare. What a senseless waste. Perhaps Darwin was on to something.
Per dollar, per mile it bloody well should be.
You think so? NASA operates on a shoestring budget that is so microscopic compared the Department of Defense or virtually any other government agency it's pathetic. As a former employee, I can tell you firsthand that the public, and pardon my expression, ignorant opinions of most of the US population (read: voters) are -way- off-base. Compare the annual budget of NASA to, say one Naval warship, or one fleet of Army communication vans, or virtually anything DoD. Seriously. If you or others want to bitch about the way NASA is funded, back it up with some facts, and look around. I'll even help you!
NASA Budget
This reality check brought to by the Office of Management and Budget!
You touched on some good points there, but I think the observation has to be made that very few albums of late have had more than one (if any) good tracks on them. I think that this is a fundamental argument for most people regarding the music industry as a whole. I believe that one of the biggest reasons we are seeing so many Greatest Hits albums of late selling like hot-cakes, is that by and large most people don't care much for today's synthesized-syncronized-dance-pop.
Coporate America has managed to convert the entire music industry to Lowest-Common-Denominator-Music. Which of course fits in so nicely with the steady schedule of Lowest-Common-Denominator-TV (read: Reality TV) and Lowest-Common-Denominator-Movies. Cater to the lowest segment of society, and everyone else will accept it because they -have no alternative choice-. This has been the design from day-one, the corporations just lacked the legal backing to make it happen. We used to have four newspapers to choose from in my home city. Now there is one. Every station but two on the FM dial (one is college radio, the other is all-80s) are owned by Clear Channel. They all play the exact same lineup more or less. The rock stations play most of the same tunes as the 'mix' stations with a little classic AC/DC thrown in just to make it 'edgy'. All the venues for music and sports have been renamed to a Corporate name: Arial Theatre, Compaq Center, MinuteMaid Park, and Reliant Arena.
What's the point? For my dollars and time, I expect something of quality. Sadly, this is exactly what is lacking most from all the corporate-owned media forms of late.
This post brought to you by: Pepsi, AOL, Enron, Shell, and Michelin Tires
I think Netbotz are the best I've seen so far. I have used them in multiple server rooms for security as well as monitoring. They have temp, humidity, a camera, and are web-enabled. Very sweet!
Check these out
For those who think it's a legitimate story because it's posted on Yahoo!, remember it's a Weekly World News story. Y'know like the crazy magazines in the MiB movie. Here's a selection from this week's headlines [yahoo.com]:
1. WHY HASN'T MY NEIGHBOR AGED? [yahoo.com]
2. First Interview With A Talking Fish! [yahoo.com]
3. Saddam Starred in Gay Porn Films! [yahoo.com]
Since it's the Weekly World News && Slashdot, let's go ahead and handle it right:
1-3. Saddam starred in Gay Porn Film with my ageless neighbors talking Fish!
This way we can cut down on our reading time here and go back to Google News!
Check your sources people.. This one comes from the Weekly World News. Surely the same credible news source that gave us Batboy and the visage of Satan over the New Mexico desert.
/. news today:
In other
Bill Gates takes over kernel 2.5 maintenance: said to have 'Great Plans' for Linux
The Detroit Big 3 pull their SUV line and produce feul-efficient cars
and George Bush admits he cannot read on a fourth-grade level
Perhaps we can get slashboxes for the Weekly World News, and the Enquirer!
Maybe Taco can call them a 'Plum' too!
With every iteration, laws become more restrictive more intrusive and more unintelligable. Until one day, noone can live a day of their lives without fear that somehow they are breaking some law and right and wrong are so far removed from the law that only your political connections or your subserviance will keep you out of harms way.
I find your ideas to be intriguing. I'd like to sign up for your newsletter.
Seriously though, that is the best rant I've read in a while! Are you Michael Moore's love-child?
* cue-in "Johnny Comes Marching Home" music *
Maj. Kong: "Goldie, how many times have I told you guys that I don't want no horsing around on the airplane?"
I laughed hysterically to this image. However, you just missed the Slashdot demographic by about 20 years! Made my day though!
For those that didn't get the great reference:
Dr Strangelove or 'How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb'
one can only hope.. :)
Ok please tell me what books you have read over the past 6 months.
/. crowd to -not- kneejerk to every little issue, but one must really put life in perspective. McCarthyism died. Bad legislation dies. This is the beauty of the system. Laws are passed that suck every day. Most are repealed or forgotten. Prohibition? My point? Step back from the rabid crowd and look around you. Think about it from the big picture.
also what movies you watched.
and can you give me a list of the phone numbres you called last week?
thanks.
It doesnt bug you right.. If it does then what are you trying to hide?
Books:
Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis and other stories
The Tao of Pooh
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living
Tao Te Jing
Awakening the Mind, Lightening the Heart - His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Numbers:
Pizza Hut
my ex-wife
work
My point? I agree with the librarians in spirit, and I greatly dislike the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and der Fatherland,etc. but honestly.. What can you graft from this list? Seriously. I'm a fairly literate Zen Taoist with buddhist leanings? I have a weight problem? I'm divorced? So what. Just ask me. I'll tell you. I know that it is not status quo for the
This is a welcome to change to the usual copy/paste from the linked articles we usually get. This is so decent it's alomst as useful as the time that guy posted the step-by-step on Gentoo that was so good I went home and installed on the spare PC. Bravo!
Otherwise I'm glad to see the P2P community keeping pace (or should I say, one step ahead of) with the best in file serving. I'm not sure that RedHat would be pleased about it, but it was bound to happen that the ISOs would be released back to the community in record time regardless of paid subscriptions. In the end, I think they'll find it difficult to release anything without the inevitable leaks. This seems to hold true for Microsoft as well, as they contend with leak after leak of their beta and developer images. Information wants to be free!!