Would FireFly have got written if the writer was working as a plumber during the day? No, because he'd starve to death first. Joss Whedon is too mechanically inept to be a plumber. How can you tell? When he wrote the lines for Kaylee explaining why she's a good spacecraft mechanic (paraphrasing) "I don't know how I fix them, I just do", he revealed that he's one of those folks who can't get his VCR to stop flashing 12:00, and has no idea how those of us that CAN, do. There's a common trait among the severely technically inept in that they seem to think the technically skilled have some sort of instinctive understanding of these things, that we're just somehow born knowing how to replace a faulty video card; that we don't have to look at stuff and analyze how things work and sometimes read the manual. Really, it's rather insulting. The knowledge of how to write applications in C++ didn't just pop into my head the moment I sat down in front of an IDE. I had to work at it.
what bullshit. And how exactly are you going to encourage people to create new works? Written works of fiction have existed for thousands of years. Copyright as we know it has only been around for a couple hundred. Somehow, people were motivated to write before copyright! Amazing!
J K Rowling (Harry Potter) was an unemployed single mother when she wrote her first novel. In your world, she would have gone to work stacking food in a supermarket instead of wasting her time thinking she might make money as a writer. Frankly, the world of literature would not have been significantly poorer for it. The Harry Potter franchise is tripe, low-brow pablum with great marketability but little depth. You could not have picked a worse example.
Sure, but Bush is the current--and most flagrant--example. Current, sure. Most flagrant? Debatable. You only say that because you probably only have a personal memory of perhaps 5 or 6 past presidents. Go back farther and you can find some humdingers. Take a look at Lyndon Johnson. He gives Dubya a real run for his money. Between his thick-headed adherence to the "domino theory" with regard to the escalation of the war in Viet Nam, and his persistent cronyism, he was a real piece of work. Case in point: LBJ had an "old pal"/campaign contributor who was in the business of making baseball caps. LBJ ordered the US Army to adopt a new hat, one based on the classic baseball cap design, despite objections by DoD officials that the design was totally unsuitable for the purposes of military headgear. The directive was rammed through anyway, and by strange coincidence, LBJ's hat making friend got the contract. You can go back and find more presidents of the same caliber, you only need to dig a little. History books are generally overly kind (or at least overly dry), giving one the impression that corruption now is much worse than it used to be.
Only on Slashdot is a post that clearly apologises for any perceived rudeness towards anybody that it may offend labelled a troll... Nah it's perfectly reasonable. Apologizing for being an ass while being an ass is still being an ass.
"Science" has know the world is spherical for at least 1000 years. More than that! More like 2200 years. Eratosthenes made a fairly accurate calculation of it using trigonometry in 240BC. People who say "the earth being flat was accepted scientific fact" are ill-educated rubes who vaguely remember an apocryphal tale of columbus sailing to prove the world was round, which is bullcrap.
Someday someone is going to create a real perpetual motion machine and no one is going to believe them. "+1 Insightful"? More like "-1 too stupid to understand basic of physic".
It's really very simple: THERE...IS...NO...FREE...LUNCH! You either pay going in, or you pay coming out. Work doesn't happen without energy, and energy can't be created from nothing.
The last one of the top of my head was approximately two months ago at the May Day immigration reform demonstration in Los Angeles. It wasn't really a riot because the protesters weren't violent, it was more of a "run the fuck away from the cops because they decided to start shooting at us". However I think it counts because the cops employed tear gas and rubber bullets.
There has probably been a more recent one that I just haven't heard about. There have definitely been larger, more violent protests in other Western countries since then (think G8) I was actually present near the May Day rally (my wife works for one of the organizers). It wasn't even close to a riot. Heck, by your own admission, the May Day incident wasn't a riot. Hell, it was hardly even a good head busting! The only reason it got so much coverage was because the LAPD had the audacity to hit reporters. And no, you cannot define a riot based on the police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. A riot is determined by the action of the people the cops are firing at. In the absence of violence, vandalism, or other crime, you are simply wrong if you call it a riot.
And no, there haven't been more recent ones you haven't heard of. The LAPD is infamous for being bastards, and May Day was probably their most egregious transgression in a decade. As far as "other Western countries", you're actually proving his point. We don't riot in the US very often, compared to other western countries: Quebec City in 2001, french muslims burning hundreds of cars in 2005, UK football fans every time their club wins. Heck, the last riot of note in the US was the Toledo riot of 2005, when the police started firing tear gas and rubber bullets to protect a bunch of marching Nazi fucktards from an angry mob. Personally, I'm all for angry mobs running Nazis out of town on a rail, but free speech must trump decency sometimes I guess.
But to say America is more free then Britain what a load of bollocks. in the Vietnam era blacks had no real rights You mean they couldn't vote? Couldn't hold public office? Couldn't own property? You're confusing Jim Crow with Slavery.
protesters got shot pretty often during anti Vietnam protests Your grasp of history is appalling. Try once, at Kent State University, in 1970.
now they have 'freedom of speech' on lock in such a way that anyone who tries to express free speech is ignored by the media and labelled a nut job, a idiot, a moron liberal, etc. Are you kidding? The media loves protesters. The media loves any sort of circus. I challenge you to produce a link to a single mainstream media story that labels a protesting person or group "idiot", "nutjob", or "moron liberal".
Freedom of speech only matters when your rich and powerful. Well yeah, that's always been largely the case. Nobody cares about the poor and powerless.
If freedom of speech meant anything during this time in America bush would of been impeached by now. That's quite a stretch. Even if we assume there is no freedom of speech, how would the restoration thereof logically lead to impeachment? Really, the problem is lack of rational representatives in government. That comes partly from the fact that the kind of person who wants to be elected is exactly the wrong kind of person for the job, and partly from the fact that half the population has an IQ of less than 100. Being able to speak freely is not going to make Joe Barbecue next door with his Lincoln Instigator and 30' RV vote for someone who's not for "family values" and bombing foreigners. I know, it's tough to swallow, but it's not some vast conspiracy to silence the opposition that gives us bad government; it's the fact that the government we have is the government the majority have voted for. I'm not talking about the results of a single presidential election, either. I'm talking the combined weight of hundreds of elections, at all levels, over the last century plus. Sure, our current president is a fucking twit; but when you look at ANY president closely, you begin to realize that they're ALL fucking twits to some degree. Not just presidents, but elected officials in general. People are just largely fucking twits. They're greedy, selfish, and stupid. There's no getting away from it. Public education, free speech--- all valiant efforts, but you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. Twits is what we get, because collectively, twits is what we are.
You ever heard of the Roman Empire? No? Oh well, yeah I guess that anything you don't know isn't actually real. Sorry, the US is clearly richer, provably more diverse, undeniably more powerful, and arguably more influential than the Roman Empire. The Romans were remarkable, but only for their time.
iPhone sales have either hit a million units already
Link Please. He has no link, he's pulling numbers out of his ass. The telltale sign is the second half of the sentence you quote, "or they will by the end of the coming week". What he's saying, basically, is "They've either sold a million in a day, or are going to sell a million in six days. He's stating a time span that's variable by half an order of magnitude. He doesn't have numbers. He just knows that a lot of people waited in line to buy. How many phones this means, he has no clue. QED, the one million number is sourced from his rectum.
At this point, unless his affidavit leads to compelling and PUBLIC evidence, it doesn't matter whether it was a deathbed joke or and earnest confession. It will come to nothing more than a Discovery Channel episode. Given that the decedent was a freakin' PR man for the Air Force, I doubt he was privy to any secret information at all, much less any compelling secret information about aliens. Basically all this loser knew was that something happened and they wanted it covered up with a fake story about a weather balloon. As a veteran of the military, I can assure you that it's not now and definitely was not then full of keen, erudite intellectuals. A lot of minimally educated hayseeds and urban mooks end up in the military, and they gravitate towards jobs like public relations. What did a PR man do in 1947? Hand out mimeographed press releases to reporters, and probably little else. The man's story started off being rather simple: "I dint see nuthin'", basically. Over the years it grew, till eventually he said he had been shown bodies and a 15 foot egg shaped craft. No explanation was ever given why anyone would be foolish enough to show the base PR man information of such monumental secrecy. Application of Occam's Razor gives us the most likely story: William Haut was a small time nobody till he became associated with an extraordinary event. The more extraordinary the event, the more important he became. Funny thing, when you give someone the means to make themselves more famous simply by embellishing a story that no one will ever be able to prove false*, the story will nearly always become embellished. What's more, the more you tell such a lie, the easier it gets to believe it yourself. The real story is too stupid for the romantics out there who are dead-set on finding little green men: It was a classified balloon-lofted radar reflector system that crashed. Some dumbass thought saying it was a flying saucer would be a good cover story. When it immediately became clear that the saucer story was bringing MORE attention, not less, it was quickly changed to a more mundane but plausible "weather balloon" story. Unfortunately, the damage had been done. We will forever have fools demanding to see Hangar 18 at Wright Field because of it.
* after all complete lack of evidence is simply proof that the conspiracy is working!
No, it's true. Constant exposure via the public internet to boneheaded 'tards and their horrendous spelling has the horrifying effect of "rubbing off". Back when having an email address essentially meant you either worked/studied at a university or a large corporation, the standard of literacy on the internet was much higher. Now it's a constant vigil to keep one's spelling intact in casual writing. When attentiveness is weak--- such as first thing in the morning, particularly before feeding one's addiction to stimulants--- horrible word misuses happen. The key to telling the difference between a literate person under the influence and a typical illiterate internet dolt is that in the former, there'll likely be but one or two errors, and they'll be typos or isolated uses of homonyms.
I'm not trying to be an Apple apologist in this reply - in fact we're going to compare to my company issued 7130e Blackberry from Verizon... A stupid email toy like the BlackBerry isn't anywhere near the same class as a PDA/Smartphone. You might as well be comparing the iPhone to a pocket calculator. When you start comparing the iPhone to phones in its own class, those shortcomings are glaring.
for what it's worth, T-mobile has had my monthly payments for 3yrs now, and I *NEVER* have service (and I live in a major, populated, affluent part of Los Angeles). My treo/blackberry constantly say "no service" in my house. Today I have 5bars on my iPhone. Now, maybe this is just luck of the draw It's luck of the draw. My wife has T-Mobile and gets five bars everywhere in our new house. I have Cingular/AT&T and I have to stand on the sidewalk holding a coat hanger up in the air to check my voicemail. We live in Santa Monica.
Heh. I'm east Asian, and I have been mistaken for Mexican, and have friends mistaken for Native American. I think the US categorization scheme works something like, White/Black/Mexican/Other. Well, on the west coast, yeah. East coast it's White/Black/(Puerto Rican or Cuban)/Other. I too have been mistaken for another ethnicity. I am a ridiculous mix of [turkish/chinese/assorted european], and here in Los Angeles I often have white folks ask me to translate spanish all the time. As it happens, I do speak spanish fairly well, but I find the supposition interesting. It must be the darker skin and the funny eyes...
Or you can go with an unlocked phone with all that and more. No touchscreen, no lock-in, no lack of 3G, no closed door to third party apps. Gambling for version 2 might not be a good idea. Ugh. "No touch screen" is a bad thing.
Re:The battery is not replaceable by design.
on
Apple iPhone Dissected
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I suppose in this light it's not really planned obsolescence. Apple just built the iPhone to the minimum specs of the fickle trendy gadget crowd. No, it's planned obsolescence whether the majority are going to chuck it before it dies or not. The fact remains that it was built with a short lifetime in mind, and you simply do not have the option of using it beyond that short lifetime without resorting to drastic measures.
For someone to get the balls to stand up to the RIAA? It's more a matter of "legal wherewithal" than "balls". This is one time when the RIAA found itself in court with its trousers down. Previous instances were either a) not egregious enough, or b) the suits were dropped too early to countersue successfully.
When the police/people see the incoming phone records, will it show the spoofed number or the real number? Police and the phone company use the ANI system (Automatic Number Identification). This is the system that tracks your billing. You do not have any say in what this system records as far as Name, Number, etc. Caller ID is a separate and unrelated system. Caller ID information is usually set by the originating switch--- essentially the point where the call turns from analog to digital. If you get all your lines piped into your office via a T1, then you are in control of the device that sets the Caller ID name and number and can set it whatever you like.
Last I heard, illegal immigrants have a lower criminal rate than US citizens. Well, overlooking the obvious point that they're all technically criminals, as they're here illegally, how do you know that's true? How could they possibly count? When the only identification system they use is asking "what's your name", how can they possibly get an accurate number?
I like your style, the condescension is palpable. Thanks, I've worked hard to develop it,
The problem in that "United States" is SINGULAR not plural as you seem to think....
Like I said, it's ok. You can't be expected to know everything, although you should know what the fuck you're talking about if you're going to rant like you did. Too bad you didn't know what the fuck you were talking about, huh? Now you look like a pedantic ass who is too stupid to be correct when he's engaging in pedantry. "United States" is singular. Application of punctuation to indicate possession, however, is not based on whether the noun it applies to is a two word collective noun or a single word, it is based on whether the last word ends in an 'S'. The rules for punctuating "States" to indicate possession are the same as whether the word "United" is there or not. If you exercise a little reading comprehension, you'll note that I never said "United States" was plural, I said that the "editors" do not know how to apply the rules for plural possessive, based on the fact that they changed "States" to the singular "State". They were operating under the plural/singular rules, not me. Knowing the rules would have gotten them the right punctuation (even if it was for the wrong reason) as they refer to the larger (and more applicable) rule of "Possessives Ending in S get only an apostrophe at the end".
I read the article, and it failed to specify which state has united to build an anti-satellite weapons arsenal.
Or perhaps the trained chimps who who are the editors/janitors for slashdot meant United States', but are too hampered by crippling illiteracy to know how to apply punctuation correctly so as to indicate plural possessive. That's OK though, because it's not like they're being paid to be editors, right?
Not being privy to the argument I can only speculate, but I bet that there are other tests that people would like to perform on the prototype wings, which they won't be able to do if they break them during the load test. Actually, no, not as such. Once the wings have been deflected past 150% max load, they are completely unserviceable and decertified. They have no further testing value after that, as they have officially transitioned from "aircraft part" to "broken garbage".
But what I would pay money for (not this much) is a phone I could sit on, get soaking wet with sweat (it's 95 degrees with >70% humidity here), drop on concrete, etc... and still have the thing work.
You know what I would pay money for? A phone that detected when someone fails to do a simple google search and then sent a few dozen volts through the intertubes and shocked the person before they could publicly bitch irritating me and making themselves look silly in the process.
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/27248.html
br
But maybe that's just me. It is just you. What he's asking for is a phone like the iPhone that can be dropped, sat on, etc. The Siemens M75 is no iPhone. It's a thick, small-screened bar format phone. Everyone knows they've been making ruggedized phones like that for years. Hell, I had a Nextel i58 five years ago. Ruggedized phones don't have jack shit for features though. Subsequently, people like me (and, I suspect, the GP poster) who need/want complex features but work in harsh environments are forced to choose between carrying a separate PDA (in a hard case) or putting up with frequent breakage from flimsy full-featured phones.
A software maker has a right to determine how the consumer uses the product. In the absence of a legal, signed contract, no they don't.
There are no laws against this at the moment Doctrine of first sale. In the absence of a legal, signed contract, you can use their software to wipe your ass and there's nothing they can do about it.
To use one of your hated analogies: There is no law against rubbing garbage on yourself. However, what's so bad about people wearing closepins on their noses when they want to visit you? What the heck are you talking about?
Slashdot Mirror
J K Rowling (Harry Potter) was an unemployed single mother when she wrote her first novel. In your world, she would have gone to work stacking food in a supermarket instead of wasting her time thinking she might make money as a writer. Frankly, the world of literature would not have been significantly poorer for it. The Harry Potter franchise is tripe, low-brow pablum with great marketability but little depth. You could not have picked a worse example.
It's really very simple: THERE...IS...NO...FREE...LUNCH! You either pay going in, or you pay coming out. Work doesn't happen without energy, and energy can't be created from nothing.
There has probably been a more recent one that I just haven't heard about. There have definitely been larger, more violent protests in other Western countries since then (think G8) I was actually present near the May Day rally (my wife works for one of the organizers). It wasn't even close to a riot. Heck, by your own admission, the May Day incident wasn't a riot. Hell, it was hardly even a good head busting! The only reason it got so much coverage was because the LAPD had the audacity to hit reporters. And no, you cannot define a riot based on the police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. A riot is determined by the action of the people the cops are firing at. In the absence of violence, vandalism, or other crime, you are simply wrong if you call it a riot.
And no, there haven't been more recent ones you haven't heard of. The LAPD is infamous for being bastards, and May Day was probably their most egregious transgression in a decade. As far as "other Western countries", you're actually proving his point. We don't riot in the US very often, compared to other western countries: Quebec City in 2001, french muslims burning hundreds of cars in 2005, UK football fans every time their club wins. Heck, the last riot of note in the US was the Toledo riot of 2005, when the police started firing tear gas and rubber bullets to protect a bunch of marching Nazi fucktards from an angry mob. Personally, I'm all for angry mobs running Nazis out of town on a rail, but free speech must trump decency sometimes I guess.
protesters got shot pretty often during anti Vietnam protests Your grasp of history is appalling. Try once, at Kent State University, in 1970.
now they have 'freedom of speech' on lock in such a way that anyone who tries to express free speech is ignored by the media and labelled a nut job, a idiot, a moron liberal, etc. Are you kidding? The media loves protesters. The media loves any sort of circus. I challenge you to produce a link to a single mainstream media story that labels a protesting person or group "idiot", "nutjob", or "moron liberal".
Freedom of speech only matters when your rich and powerful. Well yeah, that's always been largely the case. Nobody cares about the poor and powerless. If freedom of speech meant anything during this time in America bush would of been impeached by now. That's quite a stretch. Even if we assume there is no freedom of speech, how would the restoration thereof logically lead to impeachment? Really, the problem is lack of rational representatives in government. That comes partly from the fact that the kind of person who wants to be elected is exactly the wrong kind of person for the job, and partly from the fact that half the population has an IQ of less than 100. Being able to speak freely is not going to make Joe Barbecue next door with his Lincoln Instigator and 30' RV vote for someone who's not for "family values" and bombing foreigners. I know, it's tough to swallow, but it's not some vast conspiracy to silence the opposition that gives us bad government; it's the fact that the government we have is the government the majority have voted for. I'm not talking about the results of a single presidential election, either. I'm talking the combined weight of hundreds of elections, at all levels, over the last century plus. Sure, our current president is a fucking twit; but when you look at ANY president closely, you begin to realize that they're ALL fucking twits to some degree. Not just presidents, but elected officials in general. People are just largely fucking twits. They're greedy, selfish, and stupid. There's no getting away from it. Public education, free speech--- all valiant efforts, but you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. Twits is what we get, because collectively, twits is what we are.
Link Please.
He has no link, he's pulling numbers out of his ass. The telltale sign is the second half of the sentence you quote, "or they will by the end of the coming week". What he's saying, basically, is "They've either sold a million in a day, or are going to sell a million in six days. He's stating a time span that's variable by half an order of magnitude. He doesn't have numbers. He just knows that a lot of people waited in line to buy. How many phones this means, he has no clue. QED, the one million number is sourced from his rectum.
* after all complete lack of evidence is simply proof that the conspiracy is working!
No, it's true. Constant exposure via the public internet to boneheaded 'tards and their horrendous spelling has the horrifying effect of "rubbing off". Back when having an email address essentially meant you either worked/studied at a university or a large corporation, the standard of literacy on the internet was much higher. Now it's a constant vigil to keep one's spelling intact in casual writing. When attentiveness is weak--- such as first thing in the morning, particularly before feeding one's addiction to stimulants--- horrible word misuses happen. The key to telling the difference between a literate person under the influence and a typical illiterate internet dolt is that in the former, there'll likely be but one or two errors, and they'll be typos or isolated uses of homonyms.
The problem in that "United States" is SINGULAR not plural as you seem to think.
Talk about being a pedantic ass...
I read the article, and it failed to specify which state has united to build an anti-satellite weapons arsenal.
Or perhaps the trained chimps who who are the editors/janitors for slashdot meant United States', but are too hampered by crippling illiteracy to know how to apply punctuation correctly so as to indicate plural possessive. That's OK though, because it's not like they're being paid to be editors, right?
You know what I would pay money for? A phone that detected when someone fails to do a simple google search and then sent a few dozen volts through the intertubes and shocked the person before they could publicly bitch irritating me and making themselves look silly in the process.
http://www.mobiledia.com/news/27248.html
br But maybe that's just me. It is just you. What he's asking for is a phone like the iPhone that can be dropped, sat on, etc. The Siemens M75 is no iPhone. It's a thick, small-screened bar format phone. Everyone knows they've been making ruggedized phones like that for years. Hell, I had a Nextel i58 five years ago. Ruggedized phones don't have jack shit for features though. Subsequently, people like me (and, I suspect, the GP poster) who need/want complex features but work in harsh environments are forced to choose between carrying a separate PDA (in a hard case) or putting up with frequent breakage from flimsy full-featured phones.
There are no laws against this at the moment Doctrine of first sale. In the absence of a legal, signed contract, you can use their software to wipe your ass and there's nothing they can do about it.
To use one of your hated analogies: There is no law against rubbing garbage on yourself. However, what's so bad about people wearing closepins on their noses when they want to visit you? What the heck are you talking about?