My guess is that MS-V is running OpenGL in "software" mode (i.e., the driver is doing all OpenGL calcs using the CPU, and then transferring the image to the card's image buffer using its VESA interface), whereas MS-XP is running OpenGL in "hardware" mode (i.e., the driver is using the video card's GPU). Check your OpenGL settings. My understanding is that MS-V doesn't support hardware acceleration in some older graphics cards (at least, not yet).
But a printer can only print something smaller than itself
There are several ways around that:
Print the "child" printer in several sections that then self-assemble (or that the "parent" printer assembles).
Print the child printer "folded up". After it emerges, it unfolds or is unfolded by the parent.
If the printer is, say, a 2x3x4 rectangular shape with a 2x3 (or slightly larger) opening on the 3x4 side, then the child printer emerges sideways. (That is, as the parent printer is printing its child, it extrudes it from its side. The child printer is never entirely in its parent.)
What I really want to see is KDE4 running on Qt4 directly on the Linux framebuffer; get rid of X.
Spoken like a true home user. You have no idea how essential X really is
Then run an X server on top of Qt4 when it's needed. X's big claim to fame is that it can run graphic apps over a network. Relative to network speeds, any slowdown that is due to the extra overhead of running the server on top of Qt4 would be small. The X protocol is over 20 years old, and is showing its age, despite more recent enhancements.
Of course, since you purchased the music in good faith, you have a strong defense.
No, that is not a defense at all, and probably won't even result in a reduction of damages for most people.
Does that mean that if I purchase what looks like a legal CD in a regular store (say, Target or Walmart), and it is later discovered that the CD was an illegal copy, then I am liable for up to $150,000 x the number of songs on the CD? That doesn't seem right, somehow.
You can't "have LITERALLY fallen into" an "emotion trap". I mean, it's not like someone dug an emotion trap out in the woods, and disguised it with sticks and grass, and Maxo-Texas fell into it during a recent perambulation.
Or is that what you really mean?
Note that the word "war" doesn't mean what it used to mean, i.e., armed conflict between governments. It acquired a larger meaning when LBJ started his "War on Poverty". We now have a "war" on drugs, a "war" on terrorism, a "war" on copyright violators, a "war" on spammers and phishers, a "war" on this, a "war" on that, and a "war" on the other, some of which involve violence, others that don't. (In fact, I'm still waiting for somebody to declare a "war" on violence.) So the definition "war" (or, at least, the usage of the word) has been watered down in the last 40 years.
I see nothing wrong with discussing a "war" between Linux and Microsoft. (I recently trained in a Linux terrorist training camp, and have infiltrated at least two Microsoft terrorist training camps. Geeks with guns. A frightening image.)
Disclaimer to the NSA/CIA/FBI/whatever: The above is a joke. I never trained in nor infiltrated any terrorist training camp, Linux, Microsoft, or otherwise, so please don't arrest me and send me to Gitmo.
The strict definition of "real" Science Fiction, IMO, is speculative fiction that doesn't violate the laws of physics. As more and more laws of physics get violated in a story, that story wanders from "Science Fiction" to "Sci-Fi" to "Fantasy". For example, in ST-DS9, there is a changeling named Odo who can change "his" mass, e.g., turn from a normal-sized humanoid into a mouse or water glass and back again (yet for some reason he has trouble with his face). Now, being able to change from one thing to another of the same mass and elemental composition (e.g., like Mistique from the X-Men) is Science Fiction, because we can't do it yet, but it doesn't really violate any laws of physics. (It could probably be done on human-sized entities using nanotechnology, and can already be done by very small animals (e.g., protozoa, which can extend pseudopods and the like).) Being able to change from one thing into another of a different elemental composition (e.g., from a water/carbon humanoid to a metal desk and back again) requires transmutation of elements, which is theoretically possible but would require so much energy that everyone around the being would be burned to death, so that wanders into the realm of Sci-Fi. Finally, being able to change from one thing into another of different elemental composition and mass without releasing or requiring an insane amount of energy (e.g., a 200-lb. water/carbon humanoid into a 1-lb. silicon glass and back again) would totally violate the laws of physics, so that's Fantasy.
Also, science fiction is more realistic within the environment. As a plot becomes more and more unrealistic (e.g., computer screens that display "Password" in 76-point type and flash "Password Accepted" for several seconds before going to the next screen of 76-point type), it wanders into the realm of Sci-Fi. Movies where a twelve-year-old girl sits in front of a computer and joyfully exclaims "This is UNIX! I know this!" while a velocoraptor is trying to break into the room to eat her are Fantasy.
Movies like "Marooned" are Science Fiction. Movies like "Space Cowboys" and "Silent Running" are Sci-Fi. Movies like "Armageddon" and "Capricorn 1" are Fantasy (the first because a single nuke split an asteroid "the size of Texas" into exactly two pieces that barely missed the Earth but produced no tidal effects, and the second because there is no way that such a massive conspiracy could remain secret). Movies like "Independence Day" are just stupid.
On this Science Fiction / Sci-Fi / Fantasy line, BSG hovers around Sci-Fi. It has some Science-Fictional elements, such as space travel and the Cylons, some Sci-Fi elements, such as artificial gravity on most of the ships (except for the rotating one (What, couldn't they afford it?)) and Cylon resurrection and the Cylon-human hybrid, and some Fantasy elements, such as FTL travel and the recent relationship between Apollo and Starbuck.
I believe they should remove ECW from their lineup
But ECW is science fiction. So is ghost-hunting. All they need now is that "talk to dead people" guy. And Doctor Phil.
On a more serious note, I disagree with you about SF original movies. I think that the concept of SF original movies is fine; they just need to make more good ones. And they need to be real SF, not giant monsters, malevolent elevators, and so forth. And the characters need to act more intelligently, as opposed to the let's-split-up-so-that-we-can-be-killed-one-by-one crowd.
20/20 hindsight. At the time, languages like COBOL and FORTRAN (on which GMH also worked, IIRC) were revolutionary. The fact that "design flaws" can be found 50 years later is not relevant to that time. Also, the fact that COBOL is still used 50 years on, while many other languages have fallen by the wayside, should indicate that COBOL must be doing something right.
Bitching about COBOL being "deficient by design" is like bitching about the QWERTY keyboard being "deficient by design". At the time, there were valid reasons for doing things the way that they were done. The fact that things have changed since then does not necessarily invalidate decisions made at the time.
You also did not give any examples of what part(s) of the "design" you consider "deficient". Is it the verbosity ("ADD 1 TO X GIVING Y.")? Remember that the language was designed for use by business people, who would understand "ADD 1 TO X GIVING Y." more easily than C's/C++'s/Java's "Y = X + 1;", or Pascal's "Y:= X + 1". Is it the "PICTURE" clause? "PICTURE" clauses are more understandable than, say, "printf" statements ("999,999.99" vs "%9.2d" (and how do you embed that comma using a "printf" statement anyway, and how do you put parentheses around debits (rather than using a minus sign), without adding additional logic? (I suppose that you could write a general-purpose library function, but would that be any clearer (or more efficient) than COBOL's "PICTURE" clause? My guess is no.))).
COBOL works for its intended use, and more recent versions of COBOL, which incorporate technology discovered in the past 50 years (such as more sophisticated looping mechanisms and some object-oriented features), work even better.
(Disclaimer: Since I don't do business programming, I have not used COBOL since I took a course on it in college in the 1970s. I program today primarily in Python and C++, and less so in a dozen or so other languages. Still, I have followed developments in COBOL (and other languages) for my entire career, and I don't agree with the bum rap that many people with only a casual exposure to it seem to give it.)
I think you're way off base with "imaginary" (now, better known as "complex") numbers
Actually, the set of imaginary numbers is a subset of the set of complex numbers. A complex number has a real and an imaginary component. Either or both components may be zero. If only the imaginary compnent is zero, then you have a real number. If only the real component is zero, then you have an imaginary number. If both components are zero, then you enter an alternate universe where Darth Vader isn't Luke's father or something. Either that, or you just have zero.
Is there any way to make "Plain Old Text" the default instead of "HTML Formatted"?
Yes. Click the "Preferences" link near the top of this page (under the "Slashdot" logo), then click the "Comments" link on the page that comes up. On that page, near the bottom, there is a combo box labeled "Comment Post Mode". Change it to "Plain Old Text", then click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page. That should do it.
That sounds so very, very pathetic. How can people waste so much of their time playing a pointless game? Now, if you'll excuse me, Battle for Wesnoth is waiting.
The US Constitution does not anywhere state that things like rights to freedom of speech, a speedy and fair trial, etc., apply only on US soil. So the whole Gitmo thing is unconstitutional, even though it is occurring on foreign soil to non-US citizens (some of whom may indeed be terrorists), because the abuses there are being perpetrated by the US federal government at a time when a declaration of war is not in effect. All the lies of George W Bush, Dick Cheny, and others do not alter this fact, nor does the recent passing of clearly unconstitutional legislation by the US Congress that tries to give more powers to the President than those to which he is entitled.
By violating his oath of office (which includes the phrase "protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America"), George W Bush (and others, including those members of the US Congress, be they Republican, Democrat, or "Independent", who voted for the "Rubber Stamp Anything That The President Does That Furthers His Imaginary War on Terror" Act) are comitting treason. They should be impeached and removed from office ASAP, and then be tried for their crimes (in a Constitutional manner, of course).
To add to the parent post, there are a very few places in the US Constitution where citizenship (or something equivalent thereto) is explicitly mentioned (e.g., who can run for US President, etc.), which is an even stronger argument that those places in the US Constitution that do not explicitly mention citizenship are therefore meant to apply equally to all people, citizens and non-citizens alike.
the fate that awaits our own galaxy, which is likely to collide with the (cosmically) nearish Andromeda galaxy in about six billion years time Intersting stuff.. but when you consider time scales like this what kind of practical applications does this have? Can anyone explain what knowledge is gained from these pretty pictures?
You may not appreciate it now, but six billion years from now you'll be glad that someone was paying attention.
Only six billion years to armageddon. Have you built your bomb shelter yet?
the 4D people would have to call time the -fifth- dimension
No, the Fifth Dimension is a singing group (or at least it was at one time; I don't know about currently).
Time is often incorrectly called the "Fourth Dimension", but it's not the same kind of dimension as spatial dimension, so it really shouldn't be lumped in with them. Here is an illustrative analogy:
You have three kids, and your neighbor has a kid. You might call your third-born kid your "third kid", but you wouldn't call your neighbor's kid your "fourth kid".
Time is like that. When some theories postulate eleven or more spatial dimensions, and others postulate two or more temporal dimensions, it is very confusing to lump temporal and spatial dimensions together. In fact, physicists should come up with another term when referring to temporal dimensions. I suggest "goober", because it isn't currently being used for anything important. So you could say that our reality appears to be composed of "three spatial dimensions and one temporal goober", or even just "three dimensions and one goober" (even though some theories postulate that reality may consist of many more dimensions and goobers than that). This would help clarify things immensely.
What's the origin of this ["Get off my lawn you damn kids"] phrase?
When I was a kid, back in the 1960s, we used to play outside. That's right, outside. I know that that seems unbelievable to kids today, but it's true; we used to play outside. One of the places we used to go to was Johnny's Gully. (It didn't actually belong to Johnny, but it was behind his house, so we called it Johnny's Gully.) There was a shortcut we could take to get there that ran across this old guy's lawn. Whenever he'd catch us crossing his lawn to get to Johnny's Gully, he'd yell at us. Sometimes he'd yell, "Get off my lawn, you damn kids!". Sometimes he'd yell, "If I catch you on my lawn again, you're dead! I've got a gun, and I'm not afraid to use it!". And so forth.
Now, I'm sure that he's not the only person who ever did this, and it's likely that anyone who yelled things like that in today's Nanny State would immediately be arrested for and convicted of child abuse and placed on some sort of stupid government list and be forbidden from living within 1000 yards of a public school and all sorts of other nonsense that placates the public without actually doing anything to protect children, but this was back in the 1960s, when we could go play in Johnny's Gully a half-mile from home without adult supervision and our parents never worried that we might be abducted by some nutjob and I've lost my train of thought here. Oh, yeah, I'm sure that many old people from that time yelled things like that to kids, so "Get off my lawn, you damn kids!" became a kind of indicator of crochetyness (sp?).
My guess is that today, either people don't care as much about their lawns as they used to, or, more likely, kids play more indoors and are on a tight parental leash when they are outdoors, so the opportunity to trespass on other people's properties is greatly diminished, leading to a corresponding diminishment of the use of that particular phrase in real life. Nonetheless, the phrase is still used by people to indicate that a particular argument or point-of-view is curmugeony, or that a person is a curmugeon.
Your signature The "USAPATRIOT" Act has nothing to do with patriotism, so I pronounce it "the you sap at riot act" to avoid confusion. literally makes absolutely no sense and is annoying.
Just like the USAPATRIOT Act, which makes no sense (for its purported purpose -- stopping terrorism), and is annoying to people who value their freedom. The problem is that pronouncing it "the patriot act" or "the you ess eh (Canadian pronunciation of "eh") patriot act" lends it an air of legitimacy, like it's actually a patriotic law passed by patriots doing their patriotic duty. It's more accurate to pronounce it as a series of nonsense words, because that more accurately reflects what the Act actually is. However, since you find it annoying, I'll change my signature to something less controversal, at least for a while. Happy?
Also, the politically-correct term for them is "dwarves of color", er, "short stars of color", uh, "stars of color of diminutive...", ah, ah, "vertically challenged stars of color". Yeah, that's it, "vertically challenged stars of color".
The President is allowed to break laws and lie about it, however he must not get a blow job and lie about it.
Lying while under oath about getting a blow job is breaking the law. It's called "perjury". The current president may have the blood of tens of thousands of innocent people on his hands, and may be turning this country into a fascist dictatorship, but at least he never committed perjury about naughty things he did with his pee-pee in the oval office. Get some perspective, man!
About the only way I know of to preserve content for long periods of time is to etch the information in clearly legible plain text on gold tablets. [...] The only problem with this strategy [...] is that sometimes the gold itself as bullion is more valuable than the information it contains.
Nickel or nickel alloys can be used, which are less intrinsically valuable (although any material, especially metal, has some intrinsic value). Here are twocompanies that micro-etch information onto nickel or nickel alloys. You can also try carving stone tablets.
Just try watching any given TV show from the 70's. It must have taken monumental stupidity a) to write that stuff, b) to watch that stuff.
There are good and bad TV shows in any era. Some bad shows from current times (or the recent past) are "Friends", "Steinfelt", "24", the one that that "Three's Company" guy (the one that died recently) and that "Married with Children"/Leela from "Futurama" babe were in, the one with John Belushi's brother, "Fear Factor", etc. Some good shows from around the 1970s (plus or minus a few years) were "Real People", "Saturday Night Live" (original cast), "Happy Days" (first and second seasons), "Roots", "60 Minutes", "Evening Shade", "Nightline", "Salvage", "WKRP", "Hill Street Blues", "Barney Miller", and "Taxi", and there were many other non-stupid (i.e., halfway decent albeit unexceptional) shows like "Quark", "Mork and Mindy" (pre-Jonathon Winters), "Welcome Back Kotter" (first season), "Land of the Giants", "Sonny and Cher", and so forth.
And PBS/BBC shows have, for the most part, been consistantly good from the 1960s to the present day ("Mystery", "Masterpiece Theatre", "Are You Being Served", "As Time Goes By", "Frontline", "Red Dwarf", "Nova", "The McNeil/Lehrer Report" / "The McNeil/Lehrer News Hour" / "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer", "BBC World News", "Doctor Who", "This Old House", etc., etc.).
Slashdot Mirror
My guess is that MS-V is running OpenGL in "software" mode (i.e., the driver is doing all OpenGL calcs using the CPU, and then transferring the image to the card's image buffer using its VESA interface), whereas MS-XP is running OpenGL in "hardware" mode (i.e., the driver is using the video card's GPU).
Check your OpenGL settings.
My understanding is that MS-V doesn't support hardware acceleration in some older graphics cards (at least, not yet).
After it emerges, it unfolds or is unfolded by the parent.
(That is, as the parent printer is printing its child, it extrudes it from its side.
The child printer is never entirely in its parent.)
X's big claim to fame is that it can run graphic apps over a network.
Relative to network speeds, any slowdown that is due to the extra overhead of running the server on top of Qt4 would be small.
The X protocol is over 20 years old, and is showing its age, despite more recent enhancements.
Oops. Yes.
That doesn't seem right, somehow.
You can't "have LITERALLY fallen into" an "emotion trap".
I mean, it's not like someone dug an emotion trap out in the woods, and disguised it with sticks and grass, and Maxo-Texas fell into it during a recent perambulation.
Or is that what you really mean?
Note that the word "war" doesn't mean what it used to mean, i.e., armed conflict between governments.
It acquired a larger meaning when LBJ started his "War on Poverty".
We now have a "war" on drugs, a "war" on terrorism, a "war" on copyright violators, a "war" on spammers and phishers, a "war" on this, a "war" on that, and a "war" on the other, some of which involve violence, others that don't.
(In fact, I'm still waiting for somebody to declare a "war" on violence.)
So the definition "war" (or, at least, the usage of the word) has been watered down in the last 40 years.
I see nothing wrong with discussing a "war" between Linux and Microsoft.
(I recently trained in a Linux terrorist training camp, and have infiltrated at least two Microsoft terrorist training camps.
Geeks with guns.
A frightening image.)
Disclaimer to the NSA/CIA/FBI/whatever: The above is a joke.
I never trained in nor infiltrated any terrorist training camp, Linux, Microsoft, or otherwise, so please don't arrest me and send me to Gitmo.
BRB, I hear helicoptors.
On, shi
As more and more laws of physics get violated in a story, that story wanders from "Science Fiction" to "Sci-Fi" to "Fantasy".
For example, in ST-DS9, there is a changeling named Odo who can change "his" mass, e.g., turn from a normal-sized humanoid into a mouse or water glass and back again (yet for some reason he has trouble with his face).
Now, being able to change from one thing to another of the same mass and elemental composition (e.g., like Mistique from the X-Men) is Science Fiction, because we can't do it yet, but it doesn't really violate any laws of physics.
(It could probably be done on human-sized entities using nanotechnology, and can already be done by very small animals (e.g., protozoa, which can extend pseudopods and the like).)
Being able to change from one thing into another of a different elemental composition (e.g., from a water/carbon humanoid to a metal desk and back again) requires transmutation of elements, which is theoretically possible but would require so much energy that everyone around the being would be burned to death, so that wanders into the realm of Sci-Fi.
Finally, being able to change from one thing into another of different elemental composition and mass without releasing or requiring an insane amount of energy (e.g., a 200-lb. water/carbon humanoid into a 1-lb. silicon glass and back again) would totally violate the laws of physics, so that's Fantasy.
Also, science fiction is more realistic within the environment.
As a plot becomes more and more unrealistic (e.g., computer screens that display "Password" in 76-point type and flash "Password Accepted" for several seconds before going to the next screen of 76-point type), it wanders into the realm of Sci-Fi.
Movies where a twelve-year-old girl sits in front of a computer and joyfully exclaims "This is UNIX! I know this!" while a velocoraptor is trying to break into the room to eat her are Fantasy.
Movies like "Marooned" are Science Fiction.
Movies like "Space Cowboys" and "Silent Running" are Sci-Fi.
Movies like "Armageddon" and "Capricorn 1" are Fantasy (the first because a single nuke split an asteroid "the size of Texas" into exactly two pieces that barely missed the Earth but produced no tidal effects, and the second because there is no way that such a massive conspiracy could remain secret).
Movies like "Independence Day" are just stupid.
On this Science Fiction / Sci-Fi / Fantasy line, BSG hovers around Sci-Fi.
It has some Science-Fictional elements, such as space travel and the Cylons, some Sci-Fi elements, such as artificial gravity on most of the ships (except for the rotating one (What, couldn't they afford it?)) and Cylon resurrection and the Cylon-human hybrid, and some Fantasy elements, such as FTL travel and the recent relationship between Apollo and Starbuck.
So is ghost-hunting.
All they need now is that "talk to dead people" guy.
And Doctor Phil.
On a more serious note, I disagree with you about SF original movies.
I think that the concept of SF original movies is fine; they just need to make more good ones.
And they need to be real SF, not giant monsters, malevolent elevators, and so forth.
And the characters need to act more intelligently, as opposed to the let's-split-up-so-that-we-can-be-killed-one-by-on
At the time, languages like COBOL and FORTRAN (on which GMH also worked, IIRC) were revolutionary.
The fact that "design flaws" can be found 50 years later is not relevant to that time.
Also, the fact that COBOL is still used 50 years on, while many other languages have fallen by the wayside, should indicate that COBOL must be doing something right.
Bitching about COBOL being "deficient by design" is like bitching about the QWERTY keyboard being "deficient by design".
At the time, there were valid reasons for doing things the way that they were done.
The fact that things have changed since then does not necessarily invalidate decisions made at the time.
You also did not give any examples of what part(s) of the "design" you consider "deficient".
Is it the verbosity ("ADD 1 TO X GIVING Y.")?
Remember that the language was designed for use by business people, who would understand "ADD 1 TO X GIVING Y." more easily than C's/C++'s/Java's "Y = X + 1;", or Pascal's "Y
Is it the "PICTURE" clause?
"PICTURE" clauses are more understandable than, say, "printf" statements ("999,999.99" vs "%9.2d" (and how do you embed that comma using a "printf" statement anyway, and how do you put parentheses around debits (rather than using a minus sign), without adding additional logic? (I suppose that you could write a general-purpose library function, but would that be any clearer (or more efficient) than COBOL's "PICTURE" clause? My guess is no.))).
COBOL works for its intended use, and more recent versions of COBOL, which incorporate technology discovered in the past 50 years (such as more sophisticated looping mechanisms and some object-oriented features), work even better.
(Disclaimer: Since I don't do business programming, I have not used COBOL since I took a course on it in college in the 1970s.
I program today primarily in Python and C++, and less so in a dozen or so other languages.
Still, I have followed developments in COBOL (and other languages) for my entire career, and I don't agree with the bum rap that many people with only a casual exposure to it seem to give it.)
A complex number has a real and an imaginary component.
Either or both components may be zero.
If only the imaginary compnent is zero, then you have a real number.
If only the real component is zero, then you have an imaginary number.
If both components are zero, then you enter an alternate universe where Darth Vader isn't Luke's father or something.
Either that, or you just have zero.
Click the "Preferences" link near the top of this page (under the "Slashdot" logo), then click the "Comments" link on the page that comes up.
On that page, near the bottom, there is a combo box labeled "Comment Post Mode".
Change it to "Plain Old Text", then click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.
That should do it.
That sounds so very, very pathetic.
How can people waste so much of their time playing a pointless game?
Now, if you'll excuse me, Battle for Wesnoth is waiting.
The US Constitution does not anywhere state that things like rights to freedom of speech, a speedy and fair trial, etc., apply only on US soil.
So the whole Gitmo thing is unconstitutional, even though it is occurring on foreign soil to non-US citizens (some of whom may indeed be terrorists), because the abuses there are being perpetrated by the US federal government at a time when a declaration of war is not in effect.
All the lies of George W Bush, Dick Cheny, and others do not alter this fact, nor does the recent passing of clearly unconstitutional legislation by the US Congress that tries to give more powers to the President than those to which he is entitled.
By violating his oath of office (which includes the phrase "protect and defend the constitution of the United States of America"), George W Bush (and others, including those members of the US Congress, be they Republican, Democrat, or "Independent", who voted for the "Rubber Stamp Anything That The President Does That Furthers His Imaginary War on Terror" Act) are comitting treason.
They should be impeached and removed from office ASAP, and then be tried for their crimes (in a Constitutional manner, of course).
To add to the parent post, there are a very few places in the US Constitution where citizenship (or something equivalent thereto) is explicitly mentioned (e.g., who can run for US President, etc.), which is an even stronger argument that those places in the US Constitution that do not explicitly mention citizenship are therefore meant to apply equally to all people, citizens and non-citizens alike.
Only six billion years to armageddon.
Have you built your bomb shelter yet?
Time is often incorrectly called the "Fourth Dimension", but it's not the same kind of dimension as spatial dimension, so it really shouldn't be lumped in with them.
Here is an illustrative analogy:Time is like that.
When some theories postulate eleven or more spatial dimensions, and others postulate two or more temporal dimensions, it is very confusing to lump temporal and spatial dimensions together.
In fact, physicists should come up with another term when referring to temporal dimensions.
I suggest "goober", because it isn't currently being used for anything important.
So you could say that our reality appears to be composed of "three spatial dimensions and one temporal goober", or even just "three dimensions and one goober" (even though some theories postulate that reality may consist of many more dimensions and goobers than that).
This would help clarify things immensely.
That's right, outside.
I know that that seems unbelievable to kids today, but it's true; we used to play outside.
One of the places we used to go to was Johnny's Gully.
(It didn't actually belong to Johnny, but it was behind his house, so we called it Johnny's Gully.)
There was a shortcut we could take to get there that ran across this old guy's lawn.
Whenever he'd catch us crossing his lawn to get to Johnny's Gully, he'd yell at us.
Sometimes he'd yell, "Get off my lawn, you damn kids!".
Sometimes he'd yell, "If I catch you on my lawn again, you're dead! I've got a gun, and I'm not afraid to use it!".
And so forth.
Now, I'm sure that he's not the only person who ever did this, and it's likely that anyone who yelled things like that in today's Nanny State would immediately be arrested for and convicted of child abuse and placed on some sort of stupid government list and be forbidden from living within 1000 yards of a public school and all sorts of other nonsense that placates the public without actually doing anything to protect children, but this was back in the 1960s, when we could go play in Johnny's Gully a half-mile from home without adult supervision and our parents never worried that we might be abducted by some nutjob and I've lost my train of thought here.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure that many old people from that time yelled things like that to kids, so "Get off my lawn, you damn kids!" became a kind of indicator of crochetyness (sp?).
My guess is that today, either people don't care as much about their lawns as they used to, or, more likely, kids play more indoors and are on a tight parental leash when they are outdoors, so the opportunity to trespass on other people's properties is greatly diminished, leading to a corresponding diminishment of the use of that particular phrase in real life.
Nonetheless, the phrase is still used by people to indicate that a particular argument or point-of-view is curmugeony, or that a person is a curmugeon.
The problem is that pronouncing it "the patriot act" or "the you ess eh (Canadian pronunciation of "eh") patriot act" lends it an air of legitimacy, like it's actually a patriotic law passed by patriots doing their patriotic duty.
It's more accurate to pronounce it as a series of nonsense words, because that more accurately reflects what the Act actually is.
However, since you find it annoying, I'll change my signature to something less controversal, at least for a while.
Happy?
- It's scared shitless of larger stars.
- Suntan lotion.
Also, the politically-correct term for them is "dwarves of color", er, "short stars of color", uh, "stars of color of diminutiveYeah, that's it, "vertically challenged stars of color".
The current president may have the blood of tens of thousands of innocent people on his hands, and may be turning this country into a fascist dictatorship, but at least he never committed perjury about naughty things he did with his pee-pee in the oval office.
Get some perspective, man!
Here are two companies that micro-etch information onto nickel or nickel alloys.
You can also try carving stone tablets.
Some bad shows from current times (or the recent past) are "Friends", "Steinfelt", "24", the one that that "Three's Company" guy (the one that died recently) and that "Married with Children"/Leela from "Futurama" babe were in, the one with John Belushi's brother, "Fear Factor", etc.
Some good shows from around the 1970s (plus or minus a few years) were "Real People", "Saturday Night Live" (original cast), "Happy Days" (first and second seasons), "Roots", "60 Minutes", "Evening Shade", "Nightline", "Salvage", "WKRP", "Hill Street Blues", "Barney Miller", and "Taxi", and there were many other non-stupid (i.e., halfway decent albeit unexceptional) shows like "Quark", "Mork and Mindy" (pre-Jonathon Winters), "Welcome Back Kotter" (first season), "Land of the Giants", "Sonny and Cher", and so forth.
And PBS/BBC shows have, for the most part, been consistantly good from the 1960s to the present day ("Mystery", "Masterpiece Theatre", "Are You Being Served", "As Time Goes By", "Frontline", "Red Dwarf", "Nova", "The McNeil/Lehrer Report" / "The McNeil/Lehrer News Hour" / "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer", "BBC World News", "Doctor Who", "This Old House", etc., etc.).