25% will say "Why another OS project? He should rather concentrate on MySQL/fishing/stamp collection"
Aren't they more likely to go off on the "charity" rant? You know, the one that goes "instead of spending so much [time|money] making a [homebrew OS|lego robot|wacky case mod], why doesn't the selfish bastard [pick up garbage along the highway|teach someone else's children to read|build linux based 286's for the homeless]?"
actually, I just listened to part of the comentary track on the new Aliens special edition dvd, and Cameron mentions that there is a body builder in the "suit" behind sigorny weaver, helping her move the plastic arms and feet. She was basically standing on his feet.
Heh, I stand corrected. Your source surely beats mine. I heard it from a production assistant working on "Alien Resurrection" who was also a PA for "Aliens". Now that I really think about it, the guy was a bit of a dope-- he was still a coffee gofer type PA after 10 years-- so I think I'd believe James Cameron over him.
True, but like anything else, it follows natural laws, so it is possible to predict it, if we can find an easy way to consider all the variables ( or most of them, at least ).
Which is why I am confident we will someday find a way to predict ( with 100% accuracy ) weather patterns.
My god, are you channeling Von Neumann? He said the same thing about weather and predicted 100% accurate prediction "very soon now" for quite a while. The problem is, "most of" the variables isn't enough, and there's no way to get all of the variables exactly right. Even if you had (say) a temperature sensor for each cubic inch of air space in the atmosphere, the temperature variations between the sensors will make any model you base off your sensor readings deviate from reality after a relatively small number of iterations. Complex iterative models are often insanely sensitive to initial conditions. There will never be 100% accurate weather prediction.
I remember reading an article on how they made the movie, and the loaders involved a thing plastic shell and a really strong guy inside to make it move. I could be remembering wrong,
Nah, you're remembering wrong. It'd have to be a REALLY STRONG, extremely thin 7' tall man with his arms attached to his ears (see here. It was a real mech, as I recall, but it wasn't self contained. It was tethered to a big ol' mess of control/power equipment by a bundle of hoses and cables.
Then to be able to match the identifier sent by the chip to the denomination would require a lookup to a central database
No it wouldn't. Different denominations will come from different ID series sequences. You think RFID tags come out of a big bin where they're all randomly numbered? Or do you think that casino chips are just in a big random pile where they pull them out one at a time to have an RFID tag inserted? Think about it, man.
Once you have shot out the tire and they have to get out of the car and walk
First off, it's nearly impossible to shoot out a tire. A tire is a much smaller target than a human. Second, Even if you manage to shoot a tire, that's not going to instantly make the car undrivable. I've seen police chases where all four tires have been taken out by spike strips and the driver still drove for miles. Third, when you start shooting at/near someone, the situation is instantly escalated. Are you one of those dingbats who asks "why can't the cops just shoot someone in the arm or leg?" The answer is that the only way to prevent them from shooting back is to kill them. Also, it's hard enough to hit a human size target under stress; "aiming for a leg" pretty much guarantees you'll miss and he'll start shooting back. You might say "a car thief might not have a gun", but guess what? I don't care. If he doesm he's already shown that he doesn't respect my property, so I'm not going to take the chance that he might also not respect my life.
However this link indicates that taking this kind of action may expose you to lawsuits for assult, and you should just report the crime.
The problem is that with the RIAA it may have never gotten this far. They did not attempt to detain the guy or take him down to the station or even report him. They just threated him and he signed over his property.
Threatening someone to make them sign over their property is illegal in itself, even if the threatened action is legally allowed (such as a lawsuit). If you want something from someone and they won't give it to you willingly, you have two choices:
1) due process of law
2) breakinging the law yourself
Large scale pirating, which is what those guys on the street (and some of the guys selling HK bootlegs on eBay) are in involved in, is always a criminal act, and in most cases it is a felony.
Some guy making a few extra bucks selling bootleg CDs from a parking lot isn't committing "large scale pirating", dumbass. The guys he gets the CDs from, maybe, but not some poor slob parking attendant. Get a clue, fuckwit.
The thing I always liked about Intel chips was their low power absorption and their low heat. Though they're a bit pricy in comparison, AMD chips were power-hungry and thus produced heat as if they had uranium cores.
Intel chips were great for Mini-ITX cube PCs if you didn't want them to burn, as they ran cool enough to easily run with heat pipe technology. They were even better for laptops, since you didn't have them draining the battery like crazy . On the regular PC front, they would famously run cool overclocked to extremes, like from 1.6-2.4 or from 2.2-3.0 on cheap stock cooling alone.
Now, it seems like they've lost that advantage.
Hello, McFly! It may be hard for the Intel fanboiss\ to accept, but the Pentium IV has held the title of "hottest/most power hungry chip" for about a year. They "lost that advantage" (?) quite some time ago when they decided the mHz number was more important than efficiency. Besides, if you want actually cool chips, get a VIA/Cyrix.
Tell that to my dad. The only time he'd use the plural was when he was shouting "pick up these damn legos, I'm tired of stepping on them barefoot!" Not the best time to correct him.
these EX-cops should be brought up on charges of impersonating a police officer and potentially discrimination
Discrimination based on race is only illegal if you're hiring people. In this case it's perhaps (at most) an indicator that the RIAA knows it's in the wrong and has subsequently chosen a the societal sub-group that's unlikely to go to the police (for obvious reasons).
When the penalty for a crime is relative to the severity of the crime, you have a pretty good system.
"Penalties" and "punishments" can only be handed down by the State, and the whole notion of tailoring the penalty to the severity of the crime only works for extremely powerful entities (like the state) who can sit on top of the perpetrator while they weigh the pros and cons. Individuals do not have the luxury of vast State-like power to give them time to think about how to handle a given situation. Anyone who thinks we're "too civilized" for such things as shooting burglars is fooling themselves. We're savages living in upholstered caves. Accept it and move on.
i just don't believe that death is just punishment for auto theft.
It's not punishment unless the state or other entity with authority metes it out. If it's me shooting a burglar it's simply the result of the situation. Many situations result in death. Is being struck by lightning a punishment for walking in a thunderstorm? Is death in a fiery plane crash punishment for riding in a poorly maintained aircraft? Some people won't fly because they might die in a crash. Likewise, some people don't burglarize homes because they might die of a shotgun wound. The notions of "impartial", "fair", and "deserve" have nothing to do with the realities of life outside of the law. In my home, I am not The State; I have no obligation to give an intruder a fair trial before I shoot him. Why? Because fair trials exist to ensure that entities entrusted with sweeping powers don't abuse those powers. Me, I'm just some guy trying to live. If you don't want to get shot, don't climb through my window wearing a ski mask. The State may examine my actions afterward to judge whether they were justified, but so long as I acted within the law, I will be fine.
Now let's apply your reasoning that it's okay to do "whatever it takes to protect your property". In this case, the "property right" belongs to the RIAA.
Your argument is invalid right there. A man selling CD's in violation of copyright law has certainly not taken the property in question (the copyright) from the copyright holder. The only way to do that would be to fraudulently claim transfer of ownership of said copyright and have same put in your name with the US copyright office. Now, tell me which one of these marginally literate immigrants has had the copyright to the latest Brittney album put into his name. Yeah, that's right, you can't; because none of them has. Copyright violation is not a property crime, it is a violation of copyright law. It is very important to understand the distinction. Feel free to draw whatever moral parallels to property crime you might wish, but understand that legally the two are not the same thing.
As a police officer told me, there is no such thing as a citizen's arrest, but there's also no reason you can't restrain someone until the police arrive.
The police officer who told you that is a bonehead. He obviously doesn't know what the word "arrest" means. What he means (but doesn't know how to say) is that a citizen's arrest is not the same thing as an arrest by a sworn officer of the state. He's trying to be clever but is really just making an incorrect semantic distinction. Like many cops, he probably knows lots of big, important sounding words, and (mostly) knows how to use them correctly, but doesn't actually understand what they mean. Watch a few episodes of COPS and you'll see what I mean...
do the laws you mentioned (impersonating a police officer, etc.) even apply to illegal aliens? Maybe the RIAA is more intelligent than we think.
It's not legal to rob, rape, assault, batter, kidnap, or falsly represent yourself as a law enforcement officer to ANYONE, be they citizens or not. It's no more legal to strongarm an illegal immigrant than it is to strongarm a foreign tourist with a visa. Immigration status is a federal issue. LAPD doesn't get paid to enforce federal law, so they don't. They don't even report illegals to "La Migra" because there's so many and it'd make no difference if they did. The RIAA is taking advantage of the fact that many illegal immigrants don't know this when they "lean on" them.
it's alse one reason that sodium-vapor streetlights are used - they emit light at one particular wavelength (yellowy/orange) and give you sharp vision / high contrast lighting.
(Drifting off topic here, but...)
An acquaintance of mine is an EMT and he HATES those lights for that very reason. Apparently it's extremely difficult to tell the difference between blood and other liquids under those lights. Subsequently, they end up having to shine their flashlights around trying to see if it's blood, water, coffee, oil, or whatever soaking some guy's shirt, and even then it's hard to tell.
I take it your definition of a tree hugger or a wacko is someone who's an expert in their field and has studied most of their lives to specialize in certain subjects and speaks of those subjects.
Wheras what? Some dumbass formulaic writer who has no real skills beyond schmoozing the hollywood elite, and an opinion on everything but experience in virtually nothing is more qualified to speak?
So you base your opinions entirely upon the "credentials" of the speaker rather than the soundness of his argument? How scientific.
now we're hearing that all the oil is going to be running out soon. If this is the case
It's not the case, at least not by any reasonable projection. The amount of known, untapped reserves of crude oil have increased dramatically over the last few decades. The rate it's being discovered has grown faster than the rate of consumption, in fact. No rational analysis of the numbers could result in a pronouncement of "oil is going to be running out soon". In the 70's, it was projected that we had ~30 years worth of oil left. Now, 30 years later, we have projections of between 40 and 50 years worth remaining. I'm not saying that we'll keep finding more of it forever or that using more is better, mind you, but the "running out of oil" bit is no longer a credible line of reasoning.
or shit, simply realize when they're handling inkjet paper instead of valid currency(there's a clear difference in feel any cashier worth their salt will recognize.)
Print your counterfeits on Crane's Crest Fluorescent Opaque White. Doesn't have the red/blue fibers, but the feel is almost identical. Print out your next batch of resumes on this paper. Your resume will stand out from the others because is "feels more valuable".
I couldn't agree more, but I believe the reason is animal cruelty. People are drafted rarely, but only after they have the priveledge of voting. The rest of the armed forces are all volunteers. Dogs are neither capable of voting or of volunteering, so someone would raise a fuss about it.
There are already dogs in the military, and they dogo to war. The whole "robot dog" thing comes from Wired and Yobotics (the prototype builder). The Army asked for a 4-legged robot. Yobotics decided to call the project "big dog", despite the fact that the prototype is "the size of a great dane". Judging by its size, it's actually more like a robot mule. But Wired, in its usual slapdash "too cool to be accurate" style, makes it sound like the Army is going around looking for an Aibo with a laser gun on its head.
They are not even close. A dictator keeping his people poor while he lives in luxury is not what Marx had in mind. True communism is an impossibility that relies on all people being born equal and without any amibition. All it takes is one person to use his advantage (whether it be strength or intelligence or personality) to take control and it all falls apart. Those countries only maintain "communism" out of fear, poverty, and oppression.
The communism you see in Cuba, et al is communism in the real world. It is the result of setting up a marxist state using human beings. Just because the results are different from what Marx thought they ought to be doesn't mean it's not communism-- it means Marx was a fucking idiot.
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Aren't they more likely to go off on the "charity" rant? You know, the one that goes "instead of spending so much [time|money] making a [homebrew OS|lego robot|wacky case mod], why doesn't the selfish bastard [pick up garbage along the highway|teach someone else's children to read|build linux based 286's for the homeless]?"
no hot drinks? What the heck is that about? Coffeine and tobacco prohibition I can understand, but hot drinks? wha' happen?
Heh, I stand corrected. Your source surely beats mine. I heard it from a production assistant working on "Alien Resurrection" who was also a PA for "Aliens". Now that I really think about it, the guy was a bit of a dope-- he was still a coffee gofer type PA after 10 years-- so I think I'd believe James Cameron over him.
Which is why I am confident we will someday find a way to predict ( with 100% accuracy ) weather patterns.
My god, are you channeling Von Neumann? He said the same thing about weather and predicted 100% accurate prediction "very soon now" for quite a while. The problem is, "most of" the variables isn't enough, and there's no way to get all of the variables exactly right. Even if you had (say) a temperature sensor for each cubic inch of air space in the atmosphere, the temperature variations between the sensors will make any model you base off your sensor readings deviate from reality after a relatively small number of iterations. Complex iterative models are often insanely sensitive to initial conditions. There will never be 100% accurate weather prediction.
Nah, you're remembering wrong. It'd have to be a REALLY STRONG, extremely thin 7' tall man with his arms attached to his ears (see here. It was a real mech, as I recall, but it wasn't self contained. It was tethered to a big ol' mess of control/power equipment by a bundle of hoses and cables.
No it wouldn't. Different denominations will come from different ID series sequences. You think RFID tags come out of a big bin where they're all randomly numbered? Or do you think that casino chips are just in a big random pile where they pull them out one at a time to have an RFID tag inserted? Think about it, man.
First off, it's nearly impossible to shoot out a tire. A tire is a much smaller target than a human. Second, Even if you manage to shoot a tire, that's not going to instantly make the car undrivable. I've seen police chases where all four tires have been taken out by spike strips and the driver still drove for miles. Third, when you start shooting at/near someone, the situation is instantly escalated. Are you one of those dingbats who asks "why can't the cops just shoot someone in the arm or leg?" The answer is that the only way to prevent them from shooting back is to kill them. Also, it's hard enough to hit a human size target under stress; "aiming for a leg" pretty much guarantees you'll miss and he'll start shooting back. You might say "a car thief might not have a gun", but guess what? I don't care. If he doesm he's already shown that he doesn't respect my property, so I'm not going to take the chance that he might also not respect my life.
Threatening someone to make them sign over their property is illegal in itself, even if the threatened action is legally allowed (such as a lawsuit). If you want something from someone and they won't give it to you willingly, you have two choices:
1) due process of law
2) breakinging the law yourself
The RIAA has chosen 2).
Some guy making a few extra bucks selling bootleg CDs from a parking lot isn't committing "large scale pirating", dumbass. The guys he gets the CDs from, maybe, but not some poor slob parking attendant. Get a clue, fuckwit.
Probably just thermal conduction compound residue. You know, that white zinc-based greasy crap that goes between the heatsink and the chip die.
Hello, McFly! It may be hard for the Intel fanboiss\ to accept, but the Pentium IV has held the title of "hottest/most power hungry chip" for about a year. They "lost that advantage" (?) quite some time ago when they decided the mHz number was more important than efficiency. Besides, if you want actually cool chips, get a VIA/Cyrix.
Tell that to my dad. The only time he'd use the plural was when he was shouting "pick up these damn legos, I'm tired of stepping on them barefoot!" Not the best time to correct him.
So, when these CD sellers get hassled by these RIAA clowns does it go this way:
"Are you guys cops?"
"No, ma'am. We're musicians."
Discrimination based on race is only illegal if you're hiring people. In this case it's perhaps (at most) an indicator that the RIAA knows it's in the wrong and has subsequently chosen a the societal sub-group that's unlikely to go to the police (for obvious reasons).
"Penalties" and "punishments" can only be handed down by the State, and the whole notion of tailoring the penalty to the severity of the crime only works for extremely powerful entities (like the state) who can sit on top of the perpetrator while they weigh the pros and cons. Individuals do not have the luxury of vast State-like power to give them time to think about how to handle a given situation. Anyone who thinks we're "too civilized" for such things as shooting burglars is fooling themselves. We're savages living in upholstered caves. Accept it and move on.
It's not punishment unless the state or other entity with authority metes it out. If it's me shooting a burglar it's simply the result of the situation. Many situations result in death. Is being struck by lightning a punishment for walking in a thunderstorm? Is death in a fiery plane crash punishment for riding in a poorly maintained aircraft? Some people won't fly because they might die in a crash. Likewise, some people don't burglarize homes because they might die of a shotgun wound. The notions of "impartial", "fair", and "deserve" have nothing to do with the realities of life outside of the law. In my home, I am not The State; I have no obligation to give an intruder a fair trial before I shoot him. Why? Because fair trials exist to ensure that entities entrusted with sweeping powers don't abuse those powers. Me, I'm just some guy trying to live. If you don't want to get shot, don't climb through my window wearing a ski mask. The State may examine my actions afterward to judge whether they were justified, but so long as I acted within the law, I will be fine.
Your argument is invalid right there. A man selling CD's in violation of copyright law has certainly not taken the property in question (the copyright) from the copyright holder. The only way to do that would be to fraudulently claim transfer of ownership of said copyright and have same put in your name with the US copyright office. Now, tell me which one of these marginally literate immigrants has had the copyright to the latest Brittney album put into his name. Yeah, that's right, you can't; because none of them has. Copyright violation is not a property crime, it is a violation of copyright law. It is very important to understand the distinction. Feel free to draw whatever moral parallels to property crime you might wish, but understand that legally the two are not the same thing.
The police officer who told you that is a bonehead. He obviously doesn't know what the word "arrest" means. What he means (but doesn't know how to say) is that a citizen's arrest is not the same thing as an arrest by a sworn officer of the state. He's trying to be clever but is really just making an incorrect semantic distinction. Like many cops, he probably knows lots of big, important sounding words, and (mostly) knows how to use them correctly, but doesn't actually understand what they mean. Watch a few episodes of COPS and you'll see what I mean...
It's not legal to rob, rape, assault, batter, kidnap, or falsly represent yourself as a law enforcement officer to ANYONE, be they citizens or not. It's no more legal to strongarm an illegal immigrant than it is to strongarm a foreign tourist with a visa. Immigration status is a federal issue. LAPD doesn't get paid to enforce federal law, so they don't. They don't even report illegals to "La Migra" because there's so many and it'd make no difference if they did. The RIAA is taking advantage of the fact that many illegal immigrants don't know this when they "lean on" them.
(Drifting off topic here, but...)
An acquaintance of mine is an EMT and he HATES those lights for that very reason. Apparently it's extremely difficult to tell the difference between blood and other liquids under those lights. Subsequently, they end up having to shine their flashlights around trying to see if it's blood, water, coffee, oil, or whatever soaking some guy's shirt, and even then it's hard to tell.
So you base your opinions entirely upon the "credentials" of the speaker rather than the soundness of his argument? How scientific.
It's not the case, at least not by any reasonable projection. The amount of known, untapped reserves of crude oil have increased dramatically over the last few decades. The rate it's being discovered has grown faster than the rate of consumption, in fact. No rational analysis of the numbers could result in a pronouncement of "oil is going to be running out soon". In the 70's, it was projected that we had ~30 years worth of oil left. Now, 30 years later, we have projections of between 40 and 50 years worth remaining. I'm not saying that we'll keep finding more of it forever or that using more is better, mind you, but the "running out of oil" bit is no longer a credible line of reasoning.
Print your counterfeits on Crane's Crest Fluorescent Opaque White. Doesn't have the red/blue fibers, but the feel is almost identical. Print out your next batch of resumes on this paper. Your resume will stand out from the others because is "feels more valuable".
There are already dogs in the military, and they do go to war. The whole "robot dog" thing comes from Wired and Yobotics (the prototype builder). The Army asked for a 4-legged robot. Yobotics decided to call the project "big dog", despite the fact that the prototype is "the size of a great dane". Judging by its size, it's actually more like a robot mule. But Wired, in its usual slapdash "too cool to be accurate" style, makes it sound like the Army is going around looking for an Aibo with a laser gun on its head.
The communism you see in Cuba, et al is communism in the real world. It is the result of setting up a marxist state using human beings. Just because the results are different from what Marx thought they ought to be doesn't mean it's not communism-- it means Marx was a fucking idiot.