Yes, Arab the people, culture, and in the case of Saudi Arabia, the country, is obviously not synonymous with Islam the religion. But Islam the religion began in Saudi Arabia, and many Arabs today are Muslims.
> The Arab people were a fully functioning culture until > the virus that is Islam infected them.
The Arab people were a fully functioning culture before one Arab man and his deity decided to create the religion Islam, and a lot of their countrymen joined in. Actually, it was around that time that they became involved in alchemy, which later became chemistry. They still are a fully functioning culture, if you ask them. Nothing to do with viruses though.
> You cite creations that came before Islam even existed.
And ones that were created at the same time, and ones used in oil production today. Imagine that.
> You might want to get your facts straight, moron.
You are the one who doesn't read much. And don't call people names. It is rude.
> As for the rest of your liberal drivel, forget it.
First you call me a name, then you give me orders. I don't think you like me.;)
> You are wrong and I have proven that you didn't > understand anything I said - there, I say no more to you.
Okay, if it makes you feel better.
> Go ahead and hate America all you want - it doesn't > bother me.
I don't hate America at all. I love America, both the continent and the US of A.
I just don't like what the current administration is doing, which is my right as a citizen. This wonderful right, called the First Amendment, allows both you and me to speak our minds on any given issue. It allows us freedom to worship our favorite deities, whether it be Jesus, Allah, or my personal deities: Mothra and Godzilla.
> I just hope you get deported.
Sorry, but I was born here.
My parents were born here.
My dad was a sergeant in the US Army in WWII.
There is nowhere to deport me to.:b
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape." Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges. "Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
Catbeller, very, very well said.:) Will somebody please mod the parent post up to, say, Score 10?
The only thing I would add is that Al Qaeda's newest "attack" seems to be chatter about non-existing attacks on their satellite phones. This is picked up by the US, who raises the threat level to orange, and then all good Americans are called upon to be scared to death while going about their normal activities (oh, and do pick up some duct tape).
Mission accomplished: for the price of a few satellite calls.
Terrorism is the manipulation of people through terror. It doesn't require bombs, innocent deaths, or suicide missions. If the terrorists can do one big attack, and then have the US government crying color-coded wolf on their behalf for a few years, that works well for them.
Which means the one thing the average citizen of the US can do to stop terrorists is a very simple thing: stop fearing them! Without your terror, they are powerless. Without your terror, they are just a bunch of stupid thugs that any little old lady with a heavy purse can take down.
"The last hope is to fight by ourselves." Belebera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
You know, if you insist on loudly proclaiming such an unenlightened view, you could at least not use *Arabic* numbers. They detract from your arguments.
Other things you might want to avoid: star names and chemistry. Unfortunately for your beliefs, while Europe was in the Dark Ages, it was the Arabs that kept science alive.
And how do all these oil-producing countries in the Middle East produce that oil without geologists, chemists and engineers?
> America should let the Nazis/Muslims destroy Israel.
Hitler was Catholic (when he bothered to be anything but looney) and most Germans were either Catholic or Lutheran. The Nazi mentality was not kind to non-Christian peoples (and even some Christians), and was decidedly bigoted against darker skinned peoples. Do read your history books.
> Because Americans have bases in the Middle East?
Bin Laden's beef is more that the "infidel" US has bases near the most holy spot in Islam: Mecca. He is entitled to his beef. He is not entitled to have masterminded the deaths of 3,000 innocents, some of them Muslims themselves. For such a horrible crime, he deserves to be punished. Unfortunately, his arrest, trial, and punishment have not been forthcoming.
> Because America protects Israel from Muslims?
Because the US gives Israel military aid: helicopters, bombs, missiles, bulldozers, etc., which Israel uses to oppress the Palestinians and kill their kids. Palestinian resistance fighters, long since shaded into terrorism, respond in kind. Israel retaliates, and the region is sunk in an endless cycle of violence, which peace alone can break. As long as "peace" is only imposed from the outside, it will never last. True peace has to come from the hearts of those involved. There is some hope though, as some Palestinians are turning to nonviolent means of protest.
> Let's see, when the 6 Days War broke out, what reason > did those Muslims have to go on a jihad against Israel?
Maybe because Israel launched a surprise attack on Egypt? And Syria, Jordan, and Iraq came to Egypt's defense because they had signed a mutual defense agreement? That is what the World Book Encyclopedia says happened. It's kind of like if the Soviet Union had attacked the US during the Cold War and all of NATO came running to help.
See? If you avoid mentioning stuff that contradicts what you are saying, and get your history right, you too can spout ridiculous nonsense and get the masses to believe anything you say. Who knows? Someday, you might even get to be president and lead the nation to war against some looser based on your spoutings.;)
"Lola, kindness is not enough, look for the reason of hatred and anger.
When you find and understand that, love becomes the strongest power." Belabera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
> I think Apple just got tired of hearing how PCs are faster > and what not.
Yes, indeed. But its more than that. Apple labored for ten long years to get a truly modern, powerful, and beautiful OS together, only to have Motorola not deliver on very fast G4's and more importantly, not deliver the next generation processor.
And Apple needs to have the best OS and hardware, and the fastest, most powerful processor. Microsoft still has a strangle hold on the market. Despite the anger and resentment of many Windows users, they are still complacent enough to keep buying Wintel machines. Apple can't counter that with Macs that are in any way perceived to be inferior. Apple can't even compete with Macs that are just as good. Apple has to have jaw dropping, attention getting, superior Macs in order to shake Wintel users out of their complacency. Then Apple can start to break Microsoft's hold on the market.
IBM is probably more than glad to help Apple. IBM gets revenge on Microsoft for its dirty tricks regarding OS/2. Linux is also a big part of IBM's strategy and Tux plays so nicely with Apple's kitties. OS X is also a great Java desktop platform, and IBM is big into Java on the back end.
> Personally I was blown away by the keynote.
Oh, yeah! That was a real good one!:)
"Heart can reach where hand cannot. Climb over any wall..." Mothra (via Moll) "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
> Summing up, the best way to fight the RIAA goon squads > and the predatory corporations behind them is to > circulate as much new and different music as freely and > as cheaply as possible. This is not piracy, this is your > birthright.
Our birthright is not to infringe copyright laws. Our birthright is to make our own music, and to support those who make theirs. So make that music if you can. If you can't, support those that can by supporting independent artists and indie labels that treat them right. Make music outside the RIAA a legitimate and desirable path for artists to follow.
By doing this, you will not be taking the profit from a mere CD from the RIAA, you will be taking the artists away from the RIAA, freeing them from the tyranny of the big five labels. You will be stopping the big labels chilling effect on music (the "discovery" process), by allowing anyone to make music, and the public to do the discovering.
The result will be more artists, and more diverse forms of music enriching our culture. The artists will be free from abusive, bankrupting, contracts, hold their own copyrights, and be in charge of their own careers and their own music. The public will see more variety in music, and with the middleman removed, lower prices.
The evil media sharks need to go extinct, so new media industries can be born. This goes not only for the music industry, but also for all media industries where megacorps used once limited access to technologies to seize control of media, to the detriment of media producers and the public alike.
The technology is no longer a bar to entry. It is past time for anyone who can make music, sing songs, write a book, speak the truth about current events, etc., to stand up and reclaim their birthright!
Bells are ringing: Mothra, Mothra! Every heart is calling: Mothra, Mothra! Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay! New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
> I know you're retarded and a troll, but Windows hasn't > become a generic term. When you hear/think/read > Windows in a computer-context, what do you think? > Microsoft Windows. QED.
Actually, I think of the X Window System. It was this way cool GUI I was using on a job back in 1989. It had these things called windows that it ran separate programs in. It could even pretend the desktop was an aquarium, and have fish swimming behind the windows. It is still around, on OSes like BSD and Linux, and now on my Mac.
Yeah, I heard at the time that there was this new thing called "Microsoft Windows" on a PC down the hall, but it could hardly even manage to task switch. Heck, it still doesn't run too good, even after all these years. Why anyone would want to use it instead of the X Window System or Apple's OS X (or both) is beyond me.;)
"Your way of thinking is completely different from mine!" Mac user Shinoda to PC user Katagiri, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version) (From the world's biggest switch commercial, starring Apple's biggest fan: Godzilla!)
> If they let a known terrorist onto a plane and a terrorist > act happens, their heads are going to roll. Every > journalist will be screaming that, "this terrorist has been > on the FBI watch list for 2 years, a simple misspelling of > his name allowed him to foil the multi-million dolar no > fly system".
A) A terrorist is someone who uses people's fears to achieve their aims. Any kind of attack that would generate fear would work for the terrorist, it does not have to be on an airplane. Al Qaeda numbers over 10,000 in many countries world-wide, and is, according to the latest Pew polls, probably gaining new, unknown members because of the Iraq war. The chances of an airplane being targeted by someone in that database are extremely small.
B) Thanks to the courageous people on Flight 93, a reliable technique has been developed for stopping terrorist attacks on airplanes. At the mere sight of a stealth box cutter or weirdo lighting his shoes, the passengers implement a procedure known as the 52 passenger pile-on, while the pilot (in locked cabin) radios for fighter jet escort and makes an emergency landing. Due to the success of this technique, Al Qaeda seems to have given up on hijacking airplanes for other means.
C) For every suspected terrorist that uses the alias "John Smith", there are fifty innocent people, many American citizens, who are having their rights trampled on: arrests, interrogations, intimidation, missed flights, and most important of all, they are guilty until proven innocent. In a system that was catching terrorists, this would be a problem. In a system that is broken and catching only innocents, it is as repulsive and ridiculous as scanning for dirty bombs in subways and detaining cancer patients.
> On the other hand, false positives are going to make the > system useless as the boy who cried wolf one too many > times found out. There doesn't seem to be an easy > solution to this problem.
News-flash: the government has been crying wolf with every orange alert. All the terrorists have to do is "chatter", and sit back and laugh as the US runs around in a tizzy of fear, wasting billions, tossing away our dearly bought liberties, buying duct tape and plastic sheeting, stampeding to death in a Chicago nightclub, etc. Al Qaeda doesn't have to strike here again. Our own terror does all their dirty work, and corrupt government types are only too happy to take advantage.
The greatest threat to the US right now is not Saddam, bin Laden, WMDs, or any axis of evil. The greatest threat, the one that has stolen our hearts, is Terror. Our fear is literally destroying this nation, turning the US into its own worst nightmare. Unless we can overcome our fear (individually and collectively), we will never be more than cows stampeded by terrorists and evil men to the destruction of everything our nation stands for and holds dear. If we can overcome our fear and reclaim our hearts, then we can face down the root of terrorism, and destroy it for good.
"Lola, kindness is not enough, look for the reason of hatred and anger.
When you find and understand that, love becomes the strongest power." Belabera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
+1 Anti-american
(betraying your own country seems to be all the rage these days on slashdot) You stinking traitor.
You, and all those like you, are wrong. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights enshrine free speech and dissent as the right of every US citizen, and the basis of freedom. Without free speech, there can be no free country. And don't give me this "wartime" idiocy. If dissent during wartime was unAmerican, then sign Abraham Lincoln up as unAmerican. He dissented during a war, from the Senate floor.
You might want to do some reading to brush up on what is and isn't "American". I would suggest the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, president John Quincy Adams' speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, and Emma Lazarus' poem "The New Colossus" (Lady Liberty).
You'll only be happy when America is once more awash with blood from another Islamic attack, won't you?
I don't know about the other poster, but I will only be happy:
When the US and the World are free of terror attacks.
When the causes of terrorism are uprooted and banished for good. The proposed Department of Peace is a good start.
When tyrants are cast out by their own people (who then are free to choose their own form of government).
When no father has to watch his kids decapitated by a bomb because some rich kid lied his way into playing with his nation's oh-so-hightech military hardware. (Where are those silly WMDs anyway? Time, Newsweek, and the American people, nay, the world, wants to know.)
And when the one power greater than the world's greatest superpower, Invincible Peace, rescues her fairies Liberty and Justice, and reigns supreme. (Grant us this, Mothra!)
From someone with a better grasp of what America is all about:
She [America] well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....
[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
Microsoft Research had a research project in the late 1990's called "Millennium". It was a prototype of Microsoft's future operating system for the new millennium. It was a distributed network that in theory would embrace the entire world. Believe me, Microsoft would not lack for CPU cycles if they implemented this.
The problem Microsoft would have would be scaling SQL Server into a world-wide file system. The solution: use Microsoft's considerable lobbying power (they spent three times as much as Enron on the 2000 elections) in order to get government research redirected for their purposes.
It does look like, from the descriptions of Longhorn, that it will be at least a partial implementation of Millennium. The Borg JVM (.Net) that Millennium will run on is already here. Full, world-wide implementation of Millennium might take a while. If the world is smart, it will never be allowed to happen. All relevant metaphors ("one system [to rule them all]", "computers... assimilated", and Godzilla's wrath) apply.
Shinoda: "The age of Millennium."
Io: "What does that mean?"
Shinoda: "A thousand year kingdom. It wants to create a home for itself. There is one flaw in its plan: Godzilla."
"Godzilla 2000 [X] Millennium" (Japanese version)
> dear lord, haven't we learned our lesson from Doom, > Stargate and Half-Life ?!
And "Godzilla x Megagiras" (in 2000). Some anti-G Japanese government types have their scientist develop the Dimension Tide, a fusion powered cannon that creates a micro black hole, in an attempt to send Godzilla elsewhere. The first test on a building creates enough of a space/time hole that a dragonfly extinct for 35 million years gets through, the Meganura. Its egg sac hatches in Tokyo, flooding part of it, with the nymphs, the Meganuron (same bugs as in "Rodan") eating people to survive to adult (Meganura) form. Godzilla battles the Meganura and their queen, Megagiras, while dodging the Dimension Tide cannon (now firing from Earth orbit and while plunging into the atmosphere), giving the ever-annoying Chief Tsujimori "the tail", and carrying on his personal crusade against dirty energy sources (such as the illegal secret fusion reactor hidden in Tokyo by government types).
> science, it's done nothing but cause trouble.
Irresponsible science does do nothing but cause trouble. Godzilla has been trying to tell humanity that since 1954, but no one seems to listen. The god of Bravo (the first hydrogen bomb test that gave birth to Godzilla in 1954), Chernobyl and Tokai isn't known for his patience or his tolerance of human stupidity, especially where the atom is concerned.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape." Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges. "Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
Let's be fair, just 'cause we don't like M$, and just 'cause
they have the major share of the market, that's no reason
to throw the word monopoly around. Besides, there's no
way that M$ could be a monopoly now. They were
accused by several states for anti-competitive practices.
That in no way makes them a monopoly because there
are still other choices.
There is every reason to throw the word "monopoly" at Microsoft. They were found guilty in a federal court of law (upheld on appeal) of abusing their monopoly.
Just because the new administration's DoJ wimped out and settled for a wrist slap, doesn't negate these facts:
Microsoft has a monopoly, by antitrust definitions.
Microsoft abused that monopoly and broke the law.
Microsoft has been found guilty.
If M$ actually forced the competition out of business
(which they will never do as long as Linux gains
popularity), then they would be a monopoly, legally and
definitively. But they are not.
Where have you been? Microsoft has been ripping into one company after the other for many years, like a hungry T. Rex on a rampage.
This is a story from 1997, on just a few of Microsoft's crushed foes back then.
"Really, gentlemen, if that's the case, let's see the power of attorney given to you by Mothra."
Torahata "Mothra vs. Godzilla" 1964 IANAL, but I can sing a mean "Mosura no Uta".;)
> Remember that it's the State who will define who an > "evildoer" is, and what constitutes "evildoing".
Yep, and in the state of California, the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) is now giving terrorism warnings on non-violent peace protests. Dissent now equals terrorism.
> Orwellian surveillance systems will always be a gross > breach of a citizen's right to privacy,
Say rather "a citizen's right to security", for that is what the right really is. According to the Fourth Ammendment to the US Constitution:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated... "
Now when the government goes on about you giving up your rights for security, you can laugh at them: "You want me to give up my right to be secure for security?!?". And once the people of the US understand they have a constitutionally guaranteed right of security from searches (they understand free speech pretty well), they will tell the government where to take such idiotic ideas as TIA.
> will always be open to abuse by those in power.
Especially by departments of Homeland Security that don't have much to do and want to justify their existence. CATIC for example.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity." Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
No, I, for one, would not have preferred to live in one of the places and times that you mentioned. You are correct: what those people did was wrong.
That does not excuse or whitewash the wrong that Americans do now or in the past. The McCarthy witch-hunts, persecutions, and outright mass murder kahei mentioned are against every principle set forth by the Declaration of Independence and by the US Constitution. Such wrongs are truly un-American. They should be remembered so they are never, ever, repeated.
This nation was founded on a beautiful ideal of liberty and justice. This ideal is symbolized by our flag, and is the bright beacon Lady Liberty holds aloft. This ideal also needs to be remembered, so we can better live up to it.
BTW, if any of you are flying the US Flag, go check on it for me. If it is like a lot that I have seen, it is probably tattered and faded. I have seen more poor abused flags since 911 than I have in 40 years of news footage of flag-burning protests. Learn to take proper care of your flags, and grow the sense to bring them in out of the weather and night dew.
"[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice." President John Quincy Adams, 1821
> I fail to see why it's unreasonable to expect them to do > *something* to indicate that it's private. As far as I can > tell, the bill does not require your WiFi network to be > completely secure, merely to have been confiqured in a > way that indicates that you've tried to secure it.
Please remember the lowest common denominator of the target audience. Their experience with "wireless" is cordless phones and cell phones. They are going to assume the wireless network is private and secure, just like their cell phone is (or appears to them to be).
> In other words, if you turn on WEP or use IPSec, the law > definitely won't protect me if I connect to your WiFi AP; it > doesn't matter that WEP is broken, or that you've used a > silly password. What matters is that I've had to bypass > your security to use your AP.
Okay, now you have given them a headache with all those acronyms. To be obvious and simple, give them a nice big fat animated button with a picture of a padlock on it, and a caption: "Privacy". If they click it, ask them for a password, and tell them how to make a good one. Let the software handle the acronyms and the security.
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it." Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
> The NH law would seem to inject some much needed > personal responsibility into the equation. Somebody > sitting at a cafe shouldn't be accused of breaking into an > unsecured network across the street, unless they really > do break some security.
First of all, the story mentions war driving, not sitting in a cafe accidentally encountering a network. War drivers are out looking for networks. If they are also war chalkers, they share the location of networks they found, so others can prey upon them. These are the people who should be taking personal responsibility for their actions.
Secondly, look at the target audience of wireless networks. They are generally aimed at small businesses, schools, and private homes (at least the ones in CompUSA), not huge megacorps with a big IT department full of people with networking certificates.
The people who purchase wireless networking equipment and install them are ordinary people. They might not be very computer literate. They just want a gizmo to let the family's/business'/school's multiple computers share an internet connection, and maybe some files. They have no concept of "security", it is a computer gizmo and it just works some kind of magic. They buy what the nice salesperson tells them to, and follow the directions to install it. Miraculously it works, and they are happy with it.
Sometime later, they start to see some weird chalk marks on the sidewalk. They pay it no mind, just some hooligan's vandalism. Their network connection starts to slow and their computers get sick. Their ISP shuts down their internet connection, citing some "DMCA" legal thingy. Before they know it, the RIAA and the local marshal are at their door, to arrest them for sharing 10,000 music files. They are puzzled, as the only file they shared was one of the family's favorite recipe. They might not have even known that a computer can play music.
Expecting, like the NH law does, that people like these would be able to secure a network well enough to keep war drivers and others out is unreasonable. They need a working wireless network, they bought it in a box, they can barely manage to install it. They have no clue on security. If they had to get a clue, they would have to hire an expert. That would cost enough money to make them do without the wireless network in many cases.
You could ask or require manufacturers of such devices to configure them with a high level of default security, and to include easy to understand instructions on setting it up that way. Put the brains in the box, so any idiot could set one up securely.
Best of all, people could get an ethical clue, and stop breaking into other people's networks. If people can't maintain ethical behavior on their own, the government could step in with wise laws to protect society, as they do with speeding, bank robbery, murder, and other less than ethical acts. That is, after all, why we have laws in a democratic society.
"What do you think Mothra would do?" Moll, "Mosura" 1996
> Just because it's legal, that doesn't mean it's ethical.
I have scanners (but IANAL), and I don't think listening in on phone conversations is legal. And you are right, it certainly isn't ethical.
> Frankly, I'm kind of appalled at this line of thinking. > When did it become out of fashion to be a decent human > being?
I would imagine it happened when parents who both worked started entrusting the raising of their kids to schools, daycare, baby sitters, neighbors, strangers who got annoyed at their antics, and electronic baby sitters (TV, internet, etc.). Without any recognized authority to teach them right and wrong, the kids grow up nearly feral with one heck of a looter mentality.
I know because there is a pack of them loose in my neighborhood. I'd call animal control, but they would probably just run away. Oh, well, at least the kids seem to have given up their little project of trying to blow up my mailbox with firecrackers. Thank Mothra for small favors.
I have my airport network secure. Now I just need some high security fencing (the kind used to restrain a Tyrannosaurus) to secure my yard. I wonder where you get that?
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape." Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges. "Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
From my lyrics to the instrumental at the end of "Godzilla vs Biolante":
Godzilla returns! To a Japan not ready for him. A lesson it must Learn from him, Of what it must not touch:
The daughter of Godzilla, Biolante, born from his cell, and A cell from a rose, With a human soul, Made by a mad scientist.
Biolante, The daughter of Godzilla! The thorn in every rose! Her humanity Looses to the monster, Her love transformed to hatred of her father.
Godzilla returns! Japan, have you learned your lesson now? The power of The Seed of Life, Was never yours to command!
The daughter of Godzilla! The thorn in every rose! Biolante Flies out to space To search for The power to destroy her father.
As Mothra's Cosmos warned in "Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla", if she had not been defeated when she returned (as a symbiont with a crystalline space creature) by a joint effort between Godzilla and G-Force, she would have destroyed the Earth after she killed her father and brother.
Neither the God of the Atom, nor the Goddess of the Cell, tolerate humanity's meddling very well.
Re:It probably wasn't that bad of an idea
on
Nuke-Lobbing
·
· Score: 1
nolife wrote:
> Back in the 50's nuclear weapons were much less > powerful
The nukes of the mid to late 1950's (H-bombs) may have been less powerful than modern strategic weapons, perhaps, but were by no means safe at seven miles or even seventy miles.
Meet Bravo, a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb. Bravo was detonated March 1, 1954 on the Bikini Atoll. Bravo made a mile-wide crater 240 feet deep, sent a radioactive cloud 20 miles into the atmosphere, and produced a lethal nuclear hurricane that raged over hundreds of miles. The fallout brought death and disease to the crew of the Japanese ship "The Lucky Dragon" and the people of Rongelap Atoll.
On November 3, 1954, Godzilla, son of Bravo, appeared in Tokyo Bay for the first time.
> Now they are just for a strategic deterent.
You wish. With tactical nukes, Bush's mini-nukes, and depleted uranium, battlefields are becoming increasingly nuclear and radioactive. Nuclear weapons are again proliferating, and the strategic deterent factor isn't working well in countries like India and Pakistan that have few enough weapons that they can hope to survive an attack by the other.
> Standard Navy Disclaimer: I can neither confirm nor deny > the presence of nuclear weapons on this or any US Navy > vessel
I can though. If Godzilla pauses in the destruction of said vessel to feed on it, its got nukes or at least a reactor. If he just smashes it, it probably doesn't. He's also very good at finding hidden reactors, fission or fusion.
"Our people.. stricken with disease.
You.. you played with the fires of the gods.
And you dare to come here and ask us for help!
You betrayed us! You expect us to trust you after what you have done?" Infant Island Chief, "Godzilla vs. Mothra" (US Version), 1964
> Ebay is banning them purely because it is Music on > CD-R and it "must be pirated, there is NO other reason to > have music on CD-R!"
Which is exactly the RIAA's position. "Piracy" here does not mean solely file sharing, but anything that would deprive them of their divine right to as much of your money as they want. Poor indie bands and fair use also use CD-R for music, and they are just as much a threat to the RIAA as file-sharing. Every time someone downloads an mp3 file, buys from a competitor outside their cartel, or burns a backup instead of buying a new CD, an RIAA member is being deprived of "their" money.
The RIAA members are sharks: very greedy, and very, very delusional. Thump 'em on the nose (figuratively, don't go punching out CEOs however tempted), starve them by buying from nice indie bands, or, worst case scenario, call Mothra (she hates their kind for being mean to her fairies). Whatever you do, don't feed them!
This technique is working, as the big five labels are on a loosing streak, and indie labels are selling more.
"They bind our hearts: 'Let's sell them again and again!'
Our plan understands the sea; we can wait for her coming." From the song "Infanto no Musume" in the Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961).
Well, unless somebody finally implemented fetal transplant/adoption without telling me, abortion usually involves killing and removal of the fetus. And a pregnant woman who loves what she is carrying (your average "good mother-to-be") calls the fetus "her baby" or "her unborn child". So, yes, "abortion" and "pregnancy termination" are usually euphemisms for killing unborn babies. After all, your average abortion clinic is a business promoting a service, and nobody wants to go get their baby killed; they want to end their pregnancy.
Yeah, I'm against abortion, mostly because if my natural mother had believed in it, I would never have been born (I'm yea olde handicapped bastard child of an unwed mother that's considered to be just begging for an abortion). But that's just my view, and I don't have any power over what others choose to do.
> So stealing is OK but abortion is wrong?
Copying an mp3 and giving copies to 10 friends is exactly the same crime (or lack thereof) as copying an article off the web (or photocopying one in a paper magazine) and giving copies to 10 friends. At very worst, it is copyright violation (under US law), and whether it is a violation or fair use depends on the law and the courts' interpretation thereof (IANAL). It is not stealing.
> I'd love to see the ethical system that justifies this load > of horse shit
Me, I'd love to see the ethical system that justifies the big five labels turning artists into wage-slaves, taking their copyrights, price gouging, and then treating their customers as potential thieves. I don't practice file sharing myself, but it has always struck me as pretty petty compared to what the big labels are up to.
I agree with you about the gray area between fair use and file sharing, and between file sharing and actual counterfeiting for profit. You could have chosen a far less emotionally charged gray area.
"They bind our hearts: 'Let's sell them again and again!'
Our plan understands the sea; we can wait for her coming." From the song "Infanto no Musume" in the Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961).
> There are no longer arguements about Apples being > more expensive than PCs because it is a fact that Apples > are more expensive than PCs. Especially if you consider a > full featured tower with hand picked, quality parts that > you assembled yourself.
Funny, I've seen do-it-yourself instructions in magazines for gamer's PCs that cost $3000 or more. I've also seen "Walmart Specials" for $200-300.
Now, Apple is way too classy to offer "Walmart Specials", and will happily let PCs have that price category to themselves. Otherwise, Macs and PCs cost the same: whatever you want to spend on them.
There is one case where Apple is a real bargain, and that is high end nonlinear video editing. It used to be a few years back that you had to spend half a million US dollars on software and hardware. Now you can buy a top of the line PowerMac with all the trimmings along with Apple's Pro line of video software (Final Cut Pro and its amazing friends), and pay less than $10,000(US). Doesn't $240,000(US) sound like a sweet discount?;)
"What I'm thinking is different from what you are." Belabera, "Mothra 3" 1998
> With Apple bringing out more and more software that > directly competes with MS, i fear that MS will leave the > mac path entirely.
Gee, I hope so. This G4 iMac is Microsoft free (has been for about a year), and I am really happy about it.
> b) subjective perception of no MS Office on mac will turn > down potential corporate buyers.
Objective perception of no Licensing 6 on Mac will attract corporate buyers, along with ease of use, Windows and Linux compatibility, and solid support. Thanks to Licensing 6 poisoning companies against Microsoft products, there is increasing interest out there for alternatives. Sometimes Microsoft's all-consuming greed does work against them. (BTW, yes I know companies are supposed to make a profit. When they make a profit by offering good value for your money, I call that being "prosperous". When they make a profit by extortion, I call that "greed'.)
As for office suites, there is AppleWorks, Open Office (still runs under the X window system, but Apple's X server makes it almost as easy as running under Classic), Star Office (when Open Office port makes it all the way to Aqua), and Think Free. Apple has many of the pieces of a professional level office suite out there, it is only missing a word processor and a spread sheet. There are also X programs such as AmiPro and KOffice, and an old Classic version of WordPerfect. If MS Office would go away, Corel might be persuaded to re-port WordPerfect (and maybe even its suite).
> c) Office v. X is a good piece of software (albeit bloated)
I wouldn't know that. Last time I ran Office on the Mac was the previous version. I tried something simple with it (forget what) and it crashed, taking down Classic and giving the Finder such hysterics that I had to reboot. I tried the same thing in AppleWorks, and it worked just fine. I uninstalled Office and haven't used it on a Mac since (and see no reason to pay a large bet that the next version is better). It has been years since I used IE.
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it." Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
Well, there is the concept of a just war, where war was/is considered acceptable under certain special circumstances. But even a just war is a last resort when all else fails, and with today's communication technology and organizations like the UN, there are a whole lot of other things for a civilized nation to try before going to war.
> War can be waged for liberty,
It can be, if it is yourself you are liberating (American Revolutionary War). However, if you try to liberate another nation against the will of its people, you have violated a principle of liberty called "sovereignty", and are no longer going to war for liberty's sake, but to conquer.
"World Book" gives a slang definition for "liberate": "to rob or plunder, especially in wartime." This is the definition Iraq learned for the word when the British showed up the first time to "liberate" them.
> self-defense
Perfectly acceptable when nasty conquerors show up at your doorstep and start bombing the heck out of your beautiful capital city. But in these modern times, you might want to look up UN resolution 377 (Unite for Peace). Under that resolution, if the poor invaded country can get either seven Security Council members (no veto allowed) or a simple majority of the General Assembly to agree to it, the UN can form a posse and ride to the rescue. Of course, the naughty invader runs around trying to bully and bribe their way into "no" votes, but the resolution has been used successfully ten times in the UN's history. Iraq is working on number eleven, and our tax money is going into yet more bribes.
> or to stop a genocide.
Saving lives, always a great cause. Just be careful not to kill more of the victimized group than the genocidal maniac was planning to. Otherwise, there isn't much point...
> War is a tool, a nasty sharp tool. It's what you use it for > that make your endevor evil or, perhaps, good.
Tanks, bombs, and bullets are nasty sharp tools. War is the action of sending thousands of your people out armed to the teeth to kill their people until they surrender and let you have your way. Actions generally have moral values attached to them. Mass murder coupled with mass property damage (the end result of war) is generally considered very evil. In certain very special circumstances (the just war theory) humanity has pretty much agreed to overlook the evil of the action because of the intended result is necessary and unable to be gotten without going to war.
Except for the just war exception to the rule, war is utterly evil, and is close kin to tyranny, genocide, and terrorism, sharing the same tools. To the Air Force pilot, he seems to be delivering a "package" with his plane, and releasing it with video game like controls. To the civilian it hits by accident, it is like being inside the World Trade Center towers on the morning of September 11, 2001: terror, agony, a very ugly death, grief and rage on the part of the surviving loved ones. One's country better have a seriously good reason to inflict this on another country.
That's why it is so important to go the last mile, then fifty further miles, using diplomacy to solve the problem peacefully. Well, it is for the rest of us; for genocidal maniacs who get off on pictures of mutilated dead people, of course war is going to be a favorite pastime (btw, such people are sick as well as evil).
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity." Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
> Let me make one thing clear: nothing on Linux, with or > without this system, breaks due to ``who knows what''. > That's what source code is for.
It has been a long time since it could be said that the users of Linux were all developers that can read source code. Even then, not all developers understood operating system development and were familiar enough with the Linux kernal to find the cause of any given problem in a reasonable amount of time.
With today's Linux user community, you are indeed going to run into "who knows what" given as the cause for problems in Linux. As Linux becomes more mainstream, the community is going to have to stop thinking of itself as composed entirely of kernal developers, and attitudes (such as the famous "read the friendly manual" hurled at newbies) are going to have to change.
Either that, or the newbies are going to run out and buy Macs, and all that will be left will be the kernal developers... And one lonesome little penguin.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity." Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
> You must have missed the horrific Hollywood release > [imdb.com] somehow...
That wasn't a god or a dinosaur, and therefore, not Godzilla. Besides, Godzilla was originally created from the American test of the first H-bomb in March 1954, not from any French test (just stating facts, not being a chauvinist).
Besides, the T-Rex San Diego rampage in "JP:Lost World" had more in common with Godzilla than Tristar's ridiculous attempt. Spielberg is actually a fan of Godzilla, and was saluted in 1991's "Godzilla vs. King Ghidora". Godzilla also personally emulated the T-Rex vs. jeep scene from "Jurassic Park" in "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (such a scene in Japan is considered paying homage, not a rip off). He respects Spielberg a whole lot more than Emmerich.
Godzilla actually had to fight against "Jurassic Park" at the box office. To do so, he needed an old friend to come out of retirement (actually she flew off and hid in a cave because she was mad about the very insulting 1969 "Destroy All Monsters"). Who did Godzilla call? Mothra! The 1992 "Godzilla vs. Mothra" restored the G-series to its former glory in the early 1960's, and did it competing with "Jurassic Park". Godzilla might not have made another movie without her help. Her price? The three part "Legend of the Protecting Goddess: Mothra Leo", which also served as Toho's crash course in basic CGI.
"What, that we are being invaded by little green men from outer space? Let's just keep it as our secret. You can tell your son about it when he's born, Major Spielberg." "Godzilla vs. King Ghidora", 1991, US version
Slashdot Mirror
An AC wrote:
;)
:b
> Arab != Muslim
Yes, Arab the people, culture, and in the case of Saudi Arabia, the country, is obviously not synonymous with Islam the religion. But Islam the religion began in Saudi Arabia, and many Arabs today are Muslims.
> The Arab people were a fully functioning culture until
> the virus that is Islam infected them.
The Arab people were a fully functioning culture before one Arab man and his deity decided to create the religion Islam, and a lot of their countrymen joined in. Actually, it was around that time that they became involved in alchemy, which later became chemistry. They still are a fully functioning culture, if you ask them. Nothing to do with viruses though.
> You cite creations that came before Islam even existed.
And ones that were created at the same time, and ones used in oil production today. Imagine that.
> You might want to get your facts straight, moron.
You are the one who doesn't read much. And don't call people names. It is rude.
> As for the rest of your liberal drivel, forget it.
First you call me a name, then you give me orders. I don't think you like me.
> You are wrong and I have proven that you didn't
> understand anything I said - there, I say no more to you.
Okay, if it makes you feel better.
> Go ahead and hate America all you want - it doesn't
> bother me.
I don't hate America at all. I love America, both the continent and the US of A.
I just don't like what the current administration is doing, which is my right as a citizen. This wonderful right, called the First Amendment, allows both you and me to speak our minds on any given issue. It allows us freedom to worship our favorite deities, whether it be Jesus, Allah, or my personal deities: Mothra and Godzilla.
> I just hope you get deported.
Sorry, but I was born here.
My parents were born here.
My dad was a sergeant in the US Army in WWII.
There is nowhere to deport me to.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
Catbeller, very, very well said. :) Will somebody please mod the parent post up to, say, Score 10?
The only thing I would add is that Al Qaeda's newest "attack" seems to be chatter about non-existing attacks on their satellite phones. This is picked up by the US, who raises the threat level to orange, and then all good Americans are called upon to be scared to death while going about their normal activities (oh, and do pick up some duct tape).
Mission accomplished: for the price of a few satellite calls.
Terrorism is the manipulation of people through terror. It doesn't require bombs, innocent deaths, or suicide missions. If the terrorists can do one big attack, and then have the US government crying color-coded wolf on their behalf for a few years, that works well for them.
Which means the one thing the average citizen of the US can do to stop terrorists is a very simple thing: stop fearing them! Without your terror, they are powerless. Without your terror, they are just a bunch of stupid thugs that any little old lady with a heavy purse can take down.
"The last hope is to fight by ourselves."
Belebera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
An AC wrote:
;)
> 100.. 100.. 6
You know, if you insist on loudly proclaiming such an unenlightened view, you could at least not use *Arabic* numbers. They detract from your arguments.
Other things you might want to avoid: star names and chemistry. Unfortunately for your beliefs, while Europe was in the Dark Ages, it was the Arabs that kept science alive.
And how do all these oil-producing countries in the Middle East produce that oil without geologists, chemists and engineers?
> America should let the Nazis/Muslims destroy Israel.
Hitler was Catholic (when he bothered to be anything but looney) and most Germans were either Catholic or Lutheran. The Nazi mentality was not kind to non-Christian peoples (and even some Christians), and was decidedly bigoted against darker skinned peoples. Do read your history books.
> Because Americans have bases in the Middle East?
Bin Laden's beef is more that the "infidel" US has bases near the most holy spot in Islam: Mecca. He is entitled to his beef. He is not entitled to have masterminded the deaths of 3,000 innocents, some of them Muslims themselves. For such a horrible crime, he deserves to be punished. Unfortunately, his arrest, trial, and punishment have not been forthcoming.
> Because America protects Israel from Muslims?
Because the US gives Israel military aid: helicopters, bombs, missiles, bulldozers, etc., which Israel uses to oppress the Palestinians and kill their kids. Palestinian resistance fighters, long since shaded into terrorism, respond in kind. Israel retaliates, and the region is sunk in an endless cycle of violence, which peace alone can break. As long as "peace" is only imposed from the outside, it will never last. True peace has to come from the hearts of those involved. There is some hope though, as some Palestinians are turning to nonviolent means of protest.
> Let's see, when the 6 Days War broke out, what reason
> did those Muslims have to go on a jihad against Israel?
Maybe because Israel launched a surprise attack on Egypt? And Syria, Jordan, and Iraq came to Egypt's defense because they had signed a mutual defense agreement? That is what the World Book Encyclopedia says happened. It's kind of like if the Soviet Union had attacked the US during the Cold War and all of NATO came running to help.
See? If you avoid mentioning stuff that contradicts what you are saying, and get your history right, you too can spout ridiculous nonsense and get the masses to believe anything you say. Who knows? Someday, you might even get to be president and lead the nation to war against some looser based on your spoutings.
"Lola, kindness is not enough, look for the reason of hatred and anger.
When you find and understand that, love becomes the strongest power."
Belabera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
RestiffBard wrote:
:)
> I think Apple just got tired of hearing how PCs are faster
> and what not.
Yes, indeed. But its more than that. Apple labored for ten long years to get a truly modern, powerful, and beautiful OS together, only to have Motorola not deliver on very fast G4's and more importantly, not deliver the next generation processor.
And Apple needs to have the best OS and hardware, and the fastest, most powerful processor. Microsoft still has a strangle hold on the market. Despite the anger and resentment of many Windows users, they are still complacent enough to keep buying Wintel machines. Apple can't counter that with Macs that are in any way perceived to be inferior. Apple can't even compete with Macs that are just as good. Apple has to have jaw dropping, attention getting, superior Macs in order to shake Wintel users out of their complacency. Then Apple can start to break Microsoft's hold on the market.
IBM is probably more than glad to help Apple. IBM gets revenge on Microsoft for its dirty tricks regarding OS/2. Linux is also a big part of IBM's strategy and Tux plays so nicely with Apple's kitties. OS X is also a great Java desktop platform, and IBM is big into Java on the back end.
> Personally I was blown away by the keynote.
Oh, yeah! That was a real good one!
"Heart can reach where hand cannot. Climb over any wall..."
Mothra (via Moll) "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
Simonetta wrote:
> Summing up, the best way to fight the RIAA goon squads
> and the predatory corporations behind them is to
> circulate as much new and different music as freely and
> as cheaply as possible. This is not piracy, this is your
> birthright.
Our birthright is not to infringe copyright laws. Our birthright is to make our own music, and to support those who make theirs. So make that music if you can. If you can't, support those that can by supporting independent artists and indie labels that treat them right. Make music outside the RIAA a legitimate and desirable path for artists to follow.
By doing this, you will not be taking the profit from a mere CD from the RIAA, you will be taking the artists away from the RIAA, freeing them from the tyranny of the big five labels. You will be stopping the big labels chilling effect on music (the "discovery" process), by allowing anyone to make music, and the public to do the discovering.
The result will be more artists, and more diverse forms of music enriching our culture. The artists will be free from abusive, bankrupting, contracts, hold their own copyrights, and be in charge of their own careers and their own music. The public will see more variety in music, and with the middleman removed, lower prices.
The evil media sharks need to go extinct, so new media industries can be born. This goes not only for the music industry, but also for all media industries where megacorps used once limited access to technologies to seize control of media, to the detriment of media producers and the public alike.
The technology is no longer a bar to entry. It is past time for anyone who can make music, sing songs, write a book, speak the truth about current events, etc., to stand up and reclaim their birthright!
Bells are ringing: Mothra, Mothra! Every heart is calling: Mothra, Mothra!
Come on, Tok Wira, these sharks have gotta pay! New Kirk calling Mothra, we need you today!
An AC wrote:
;)
> I know you're retarded and a troll, but Windows hasn't
> become a generic term. When you hear/think/read
> Windows in a computer-context, what do you think?
> Microsoft Windows. QED.
Actually, I think of the X Window System. It was this way cool GUI I was using on a job back in 1989. It had these things called windows that it ran separate programs in. It could even pretend the desktop was an aquarium, and have fish swimming behind the windows. It is still around, on OSes like BSD and Linux, and now on my Mac.
Yeah, I heard at the time that there was this new thing called "Microsoft Windows" on a PC down the hall, but it could hardly even manage to task switch. Heck, it still doesn't run too good, even after all these years. Why anyone would want to use it instead of the X Window System or Apple's OS X (or both) is beyond me.
"Your way of thinking is completely different from mine!"
Mac user Shinoda to PC user Katagiri, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
(From the world's biggest switch commercial, starring Apple's biggest fan: Godzilla!)
maelstrom wrote:
> If they let a known terrorist onto a plane and a terrorist
> act happens, their heads are going to roll. Every
> journalist will be screaming that, "this terrorist has been
> on the FBI watch list for 2 years, a simple misspelling of
> his name allowed him to foil the multi-million dolar no
> fly system".
A) A terrorist is someone who uses people's fears to achieve their aims. Any kind of attack that would generate fear would work for the terrorist, it does not have to be on an airplane. Al Qaeda numbers over 10,000 in many countries world-wide, and is, according to the latest Pew polls, probably gaining new, unknown members because of the Iraq war. The chances of an airplane being targeted by someone in that database are extremely small.
B) Thanks to the courageous people on Flight 93, a reliable technique has been developed for stopping terrorist attacks on airplanes. At the mere sight of a stealth box cutter or weirdo lighting his shoes, the passengers implement a procedure known as the 52 passenger pile-on, while the pilot (in locked cabin) radios for fighter jet escort and makes an emergency landing. Due to the success of this technique, Al Qaeda seems to have given up on hijacking airplanes for other means.
C) For every suspected terrorist that uses the alias "John Smith", there are fifty innocent people, many American citizens, who are having their rights trampled on: arrests, interrogations, intimidation, missed flights, and most important of all, they are guilty until proven innocent. In a system that was catching terrorists, this would be a problem. In a system that is broken and catching only innocents, it is as repulsive and ridiculous as scanning for dirty bombs in subways and detaining cancer patients.
> On the other hand, false positives are going to make the
> system useless as the boy who cried wolf one too many
> times found out. There doesn't seem to be an easy
> solution to this problem.
News-flash: the government has been crying wolf with every orange alert. All the terrorists have to do is "chatter", and sit back and laugh as the US runs around in a tizzy of fear, wasting billions, tossing away our dearly bought liberties, buying duct tape and plastic sheeting, stampeding to death in a Chicago nightclub, etc. Al Qaeda doesn't have to strike here again. Our own terror does all their dirty work, and corrupt government types are only too happy to take advantage.
The greatest threat to the US right now is not Saddam, bin Laden, WMDs, or any axis of evil. The greatest threat, the one that has stolen our hearts, is Terror. Our fear is literally destroying this nation, turning the US into its own worst nightmare. Unless we can overcome our fear (individually and collectively), we will never be more than cows stampeded by terrorists and evil men to the destruction of everything our nation stands for and holds dear. If we can overcome our fear and reclaim our hearts, then we can face down the root of terrorism, and destroy it for good.
"Lola, kindness is not enough, look for the reason of hatred and anger.
When you find and understand that, love becomes the strongest power."
Belabera, "Mothra 3: King Ghidora Attacks"
An AC wrote:
You, and all those like you, are wrong. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights enshrine free speech and dissent as the right of every US citizen, and the basis of freedom. Without free speech, there can be no free country. And don't give me this "wartime" idiocy. If dissent during wartime was unAmerican, then sign Abraham Lincoln up as unAmerican. He dissented during a war, from the Senate floor.
You might want to do some reading to brush up on what is and isn't "American". I would suggest the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, president John Quincy Adams' speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, and Emma Lazarus' poem "The New Colossus" (Lady Liberty).
I don't know about the other poster, but I will only be happy:
From someone with a better grasp of what America is all about:
John Quincy Adams, July 4, 1821
Microsoft Research had a research project in the late 1990's called "Millennium". It was a prototype of Microsoft's future operating system for the new millennium. It was a distributed network that in theory would embrace the entire world. Believe me, Microsoft would not lack for CPU cycles if they implemented this.
The problem Microsoft would have would be scaling SQL Server into a world-wide file system. The solution: use Microsoft's considerable lobbying power (they spent three times as much as Enron on the 2000 elections) in order to get government research redirected for their purposes.
It does look like, from the descriptions of Longhorn, that it will be at least a partial implementation of Millennium. The Borg JVM (.Net) that Millennium will run on is already here. Full, world-wide implementation of Millennium might take a while. If the world is smart, it will never be allowed to happen. All relevant metaphors ("one system [to rule them all]", "computers ... assimilated", and Godzilla's wrath) apply.
Shinoda: "The age of Millennium."
Io: "What does that mean?"
Shinoda: "A thousand year kingdom. It wants to create a home for itself. There is one flaw in its plan: Godzilla."
"Godzilla 2000 [X] Millennium" (Japanese version)
sweeney37 wrote:
> dear lord, haven't we learned our lesson from Doom,
> Stargate and Half-Life ?!
And "Godzilla x Megagiras" (in 2000). Some anti-G Japanese government types have their scientist develop the Dimension Tide, a fusion powered cannon that creates a micro black hole, in an attempt to send Godzilla elsewhere. The first test on a building creates enough of a space/time hole that a dragonfly extinct for 35 million years gets through, the Meganura. Its egg sac hatches in Tokyo, flooding part of it, with the nymphs, the Meganuron (same bugs as in "Rodan") eating people to survive to adult (Meganura) form. Godzilla battles the Meganura and their queen, Megagiras, while dodging the Dimension Tide cannon (now firing from Earth orbit and while plunging into the atmosphere), giving the ever-annoying Chief Tsujimori "the tail", and carrying on his personal crusade against dirty energy sources (such as the illegal secret fusion reactor hidden in Tokyo by government types).
> science, it's done nothing but cause trouble.
Irresponsible science does do nothing but cause trouble. Godzilla has been trying to tell humanity that since 1954, but no one seems to listen. The god of Bravo (the first hydrogen bomb test that gave birth to Godzilla in 1954), Chernobyl and Tokai isn't known for his patience or his tolerance of human stupidity, especially where the atom is concerned.
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
nycroft wrote:
There is every reason to throw the word "monopoly" at Microsoft. They were found guilty in a federal court of law (upheld on appeal) of abusing their monopoly.
Just because the new administration's DoJ wimped out and settled for a wrist slap, doesn't negate these facts:
Where have you been? Microsoft has been ripping into one company after the other for many years, like a hungry T. Rex on a rampage.
This is a story from 1997, on just a few of Microsoft's crushed foes back then.
"Really, gentlemen, if that's the case, let's see the power of attorney given to you by Mothra." ;)
Torahata "Mothra vs. Godzilla" 1964
IANAL, but I can sing a mean "Mosura no Uta".
NeoTron wrote:
> Remember that it's the State who will define who an
> "evildoer" is, and what constitutes "evildoing".
Yep, and in the state of California, the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center (CATIC) is now giving terrorism warnings on non-violent peace protests. Dissent now equals terrorism.
> Orwellian surveillance systems will always be a gross
> breach of a citizen's right to privacy,
Say rather "a citizen's right to security", for that is what the right really is. According to the Fourth Ammendment to the US Constitution:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated... "
Now when the government goes on about you giving up your rights for security, you can laugh at them: "You want me to give up my right to be secure for security?!?". And once the people of the US understand they have a constitutionally guaranteed right of security from searches (they understand free speech pretty well), they will tell the government where to take such idiotic ideas as TIA.
> will always be open to abuse by those in power.
Especially by departments of Homeland Security that don't have much to do and want to justify their existence. CATIC for example.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
No, I, for one, would not have preferred to live in one of the places and times that you mentioned. You are correct: what those people did was wrong.
That does not excuse or whitewash the wrong that Americans do now or in the past. The McCarthy witch-hunts, persecutions, and outright mass murder kahei mentioned are against every principle set forth by the Declaration of Independence and by the US Constitution. Such wrongs are truly un-American. They should be remembered so they are never, ever, repeated.
This nation was founded on a beautiful ideal of liberty and justice. This ideal is symbolized by our flag, and is the bright beacon Lady Liberty holds aloft. This ideal also needs to be remembered, so we can better live up to it.
BTW, if any of you are flying the US Flag, go check on it for me. If it is like a lot that I have seen, it is probably tattered and faded. I have seen more poor abused flags since 911 than I have in 40 years of news footage of flag-burning protests. Learn to take proper care of your flags, and grow the sense to bring them in out of the weather and night dew.
"[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice."
President John Quincy Adams, 1821
farnz wrote:
> I fail to see why it's unreasonable to expect them to do
> *something* to indicate that it's private. As far as I can
> tell, the bill does not require your WiFi network to be
> completely secure, merely to have been confiqured in a
> way that indicates that you've tried to secure it.
Please remember the lowest common denominator of the target audience. Their experience with "wireless" is cordless phones and cell phones. They are going to assume the wireless network is private and secure, just like their cell phone is (or appears to them to be).
> In other words, if you turn on WEP or use IPSec, the law
> definitely won't protect me if I connect to your WiFi AP; it
> doesn't matter that WEP is broken, or that you've used a
> silly password. What matters is that I've had to bypass
> your security to use your AP.
Okay, now you have given them a headache with all those acronyms. To be obvious and simple, give them a nice big fat animated button with a picture of a padlock on it, and a caption: "Privacy". If they click it, ask them for a password, and tell them how to make a good one. Let the software handle the acronyms and the security.
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it."
Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
peripherals.guide wrote:
> The NH law would seem to inject some much needed
> personal responsibility into the equation. Somebody
> sitting at a cafe shouldn't be accused of breaking into an
> unsecured network across the street, unless they really
> do break some security.
First of all, the story mentions war driving, not sitting in a cafe accidentally encountering a network. War drivers are out looking for networks. If they are also war chalkers, they share the location of networks they found, so others can prey upon them. These are the people who should be taking personal responsibility for their actions.
Secondly, look at the target audience of wireless networks. They are generally aimed at small businesses, schools, and private homes (at least the ones in CompUSA), not huge megacorps with a big IT department full of people with networking certificates.
The people who purchase wireless networking equipment and install them are ordinary people. They might not be very computer literate. They just want a gizmo to let the family's/business'/school's multiple computers share an internet connection, and maybe some files. They have no concept of "security", it is a computer gizmo and it just works some kind of magic. They buy what the nice salesperson tells them to, and follow the directions to install it. Miraculously it works, and they are happy with it.
Sometime later, they start to see some weird chalk marks on the sidewalk. They pay it no mind, just some hooligan's vandalism. Their network connection starts to slow and their computers get sick. Their ISP shuts down their internet connection, citing some "DMCA" legal thingy. Before they know it, the RIAA and the local marshal are at their door, to arrest them for sharing 10,000 music files. They are puzzled, as the only file they shared was one of the family's favorite recipe. They might not have even known that a computer can play music.
Expecting, like the NH law does, that people like these would be able to secure a network well enough to keep war drivers and others out is unreasonable. They need a working wireless network, they bought it in a box, they can barely manage to install it. They have no clue on security. If they had to get a clue, they would have to hire an expert. That would cost enough money to make them do without the wireless network in many cases.
You could ask or require manufacturers of such devices to configure them with a high level of default security, and to include easy to understand instructions on setting it up that way. Put the brains in the box, so any idiot could set one up securely.
Best of all, people could get an ethical clue, and stop breaking into other people's networks. If people can't maintain ethical behavior on their own, the government could step in with wise laws to protect society, as they do with speeding, bank robbery, murder, and other less than ethical acts. That is, after all, why we have laws in a democratic society.
"What do you think Mothra would do?"
Moll, "Mosura" 1996
An AC wrote:
> Just because it's legal, that doesn't mean it's ethical.
I have scanners (but IANAL), and I don't think listening in on phone conversations is legal. And you are right, it certainly isn't ethical.
> Frankly, I'm kind of appalled at this line of thinking.
> When did it become out of fashion to be a decent human
> being?
I would imagine it happened when parents who both worked started entrusting the raising of their kids to schools, daycare, baby sitters, neighbors, strangers who got annoyed at their antics, and electronic baby sitters (TV, internet, etc.). Without any recognized authority to teach them right and wrong, the kids grow up nearly feral with one heck of a looter mentality.
I know because there is a pack of them loose in my neighborhood. I'd call animal control, but they would probably just run away. Oh, well, at least the kids seem to have given up their little project of trying to blow up my mailbox with firecrackers. Thank Mothra for small favors.
I have my airport network secure. Now I just need some high security fencing (the kind used to restrain a Tyrannosaurus) to secure my yard. I wonder where you get that?
Chief Tsujimori: "I won't let you get away. I will never let you escape."
Godzilla elegantly lifts his tail skyward to give her the "finger", crashes it down on the water, and submerges.
"Godzilla X Megagiras", 2000
Worst of all:
Biolante!
From my lyrics to the instrumental at the end of "Godzilla vs Biolante":
Godzilla returns!
To a Japan not ready for him.
A lesson it must
Learn from him,
Of what it must not touch:
The daughter of Godzilla,
Biolante, born from his cell, and
A cell from a rose,
With a human soul,
Made by a mad scientist.
Biolante,
The daughter of Godzilla!
The thorn in every rose!
Her humanity
Looses to the monster,
Her love transformed to hatred of her father.
Godzilla returns!
Japan, have you learned your lesson now?
The power of
The Seed of Life,
Was never yours to command!
The daughter of Godzilla!
The thorn in every rose! Biolante
Flies out to space
To search for
The power to destroy her father.
As Mothra's Cosmos warned in "Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla", if she had not been defeated when she returned (as a symbiont with a crystalline space creature) by a joint effort between Godzilla and G-Force, she would have destroyed the Earth after she killed her father and brother.
Neither the God of the Atom, nor the Goddess of the Cell, tolerate humanity's meddling very well.
nolife wrote:
> Back in the 50's nuclear weapons were much less
> powerful
The nukes of the mid to late 1950's (H-bombs) may have been less powerful than modern strategic weapons, perhaps, but were by no means safe at seven miles or even seventy miles.
Meet Bravo, a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb. Bravo was detonated March 1, 1954 on the Bikini Atoll. Bravo made a mile-wide crater 240 feet deep, sent a radioactive cloud 20 miles into the atmosphere, and produced a lethal nuclear hurricane that raged over hundreds of miles. The fallout brought death and disease to the crew of the Japanese ship "The Lucky Dragon" and the people of Rongelap Atoll.
On November 3, 1954, Godzilla, son of Bravo, appeared in Tokyo Bay for the first time.
> Now they are just for a strategic deterent.
You wish. With tactical nukes, Bush's mini-nukes, and depleted uranium, battlefields are becoming increasingly nuclear and radioactive. Nuclear weapons are again proliferating, and the strategic deterent factor isn't working well in countries like India and Pakistan that have few enough weapons that they can hope to survive an attack by the other.
> Standard Navy Disclaimer: I can neither confirm nor deny
> the presence of nuclear weapons on this or any US Navy
> vessel
I can though. If Godzilla pauses in the destruction of said vessel to feed on it, its got nukes or at least a reactor. If he just smashes it, it probably doesn't. He's also very good at finding hidden reactors, fission or fusion.
"Our people.. stricken with disease.
You.. you played with the fires of the gods.
And you dare to come here and ask us for help!
You betrayed us! You expect us to trust you after what you have done?"
Infant Island Chief, "Godzilla vs. Mothra" (US Version), 1964
mesach wrote:
> Ebay is banning them purely because it is Music on
> CD-R and it "must be pirated, there is NO other reason to
> have music on CD-R!"
Which is exactly the RIAA's position. "Piracy" here does not mean solely file sharing, but anything that would deprive them of their divine right to as much of your money as they want. Poor indie bands and fair use also use CD-R for music, and they are just as much a threat to the RIAA as file-sharing. Every time someone downloads an mp3 file, buys from a competitor outside their cartel, or burns a backup instead of buying a new CD, an RIAA member is being deprived of "their" money.
The RIAA members are sharks: very greedy, and very, very delusional. Thump 'em on the nose (figuratively, don't go punching out CEOs however tempted), starve them by buying from nice indie bands, or, worst case scenario, call Mothra (she hates their kind for being mean to her fairies). Whatever you do, don't feed them!
This technique is working, as the big five labels are on a loosing streak, and indie labels are selling more.
"They bind our hearts: 'Let's sell them again and again!'
Our plan understands the sea; we can wait for her coming."
From the song "Infanto no Musume" in the Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961).
An AC wrote:
> you're calling abortion baby killing?
Well, unless somebody finally implemented fetal transplant/adoption without telling me, abortion usually involves killing and removal of the fetus. And a pregnant woman who loves what she is carrying (your average "good mother-to-be") calls the fetus "her baby" or "her unborn child". So, yes, "abortion" and "pregnancy termination" are usually euphemisms for killing unborn babies. After all, your average abortion clinic is a business promoting a service, and nobody wants to go get their baby killed; they want to end their pregnancy.
Yeah, I'm against abortion, mostly because if my natural mother had believed in it, I would never have been born (I'm yea olde handicapped bastard child of an unwed mother that's considered to be just begging for an abortion). But that's just my view, and I don't have any power over what others choose to do.
> So stealing is OK but abortion is wrong?
Copying an mp3 and giving copies to 10 friends is exactly the same crime (or lack thereof) as copying an article off the web (or photocopying one in a paper magazine) and giving copies to 10 friends. At very worst, it is copyright violation (under US law), and whether it is a violation or fair use depends on the law and the courts' interpretation thereof (IANAL). It is not stealing.
> I'd love to see the ethical system that justifies this load
> of horse shit
Me, I'd love to see the ethical system that justifies the big five labels turning artists into wage-slaves, taking their copyrights, price gouging, and then treating their customers as potential thieves. I don't practice file sharing myself, but it has always struck me as pretty petty compared to what the big labels are up to.
I agree with you about the gray area between fair use and file sharing, and between file sharing and actual counterfeiting for profit. You could have chosen a far less emotionally charged gray area.
"They bind our hearts: 'Let's sell them again and again!'
Our plan understands the sea; we can wait for her coming."
From the song "Infanto no Musume" in the Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961).
An AC wrote:
;)
> There are no longer arguements about Apples being
> more expensive than PCs because it is a fact that Apples
> are more expensive than PCs. Especially if you consider a
> full featured tower with hand picked, quality parts that
> you assembled yourself.
Funny, I've seen do-it-yourself instructions in magazines for gamer's PCs that cost $3000 or more. I've also seen "Walmart Specials" for $200-300.
Now, Apple is way too classy to offer "Walmart Specials", and will happily let PCs have that price category to themselves. Otherwise, Macs and PCs cost the same: whatever you want to spend on them.
There is one case where Apple is a real bargain, and that is high end nonlinear video editing. It used to be a few years back that you had to spend half a million US dollars on software and hardware. Now you can buy a top of the line PowerMac with all the trimmings along with Apple's Pro line of video software (Final Cut Pro and its amazing friends), and pay less than $10,000(US). Doesn't $240,000(US) sound like a sweet discount?
"What I'm thinking is different from what you are."
Belabera, "Mothra 3" 1998
selderr wrote:
> With Apple bringing out more and more software that
> directly competes with MS, i fear that MS will leave the
> mac path entirely.
Gee, I hope so. This G4 iMac is Microsoft free (has been for about a year), and I am really happy about it.
> b) subjective perception of no MS Office on mac will turn
> down potential corporate buyers.
Objective perception of no Licensing 6 on Mac will attract corporate buyers, along with ease of use, Windows and Linux compatibility, and solid support. Thanks to Licensing 6 poisoning companies against Microsoft products, there is increasing interest out there for alternatives. Sometimes Microsoft's all-consuming greed does work against them. (BTW, yes I know companies are supposed to make a profit. When they make a profit by offering good value for your money, I call that being "prosperous". When they make a profit by extortion, I call that "greed'.)
As for office suites, there is AppleWorks, Open Office (still runs under the X window system, but Apple's X server makes it almost as easy as running under Classic), Star Office (when Open Office port makes it all the way to Aqua), and Think Free. Apple has many of the pieces of a professional level office suite out there, it is only missing a word processor and a spread sheet. There are also X programs such as AmiPro and KOffice, and an old Classic version of WordPerfect. If MS Office would go away, Corel might be persuaded to re-port WordPerfect (and maybe even its suite).
> c) Office v. X is a good piece of software (albeit bloated)
I wouldn't know that. Last time I ran Office on the Mac was the previous version. I tried something simple with it (forget what) and it crashed, taking down Classic and giving the Finder such hysterics that I had to reboot. I tried the same thing in AppleWorks, and it worked just fine. I uninstalled Office and haven't used it on a Mac since (and see no reason to pay a large bet that the next version is better). It has been years since I used IE.
"At this moment, it has control of systems all over the world.
And...we can't do a damn thing to stop it."
Miyasaka, "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (Japanese version)
zulux wrote:
> War is not evil.
Well, there is the concept of a just war, where war was/is considered acceptable under certain special circumstances. But even a just war is a last resort when all else fails, and with today's communication technology and organizations like the UN, there are a whole lot of other things for a civilized nation to try before going to war.
> War can be waged for liberty,
It can be, if it is yourself you are liberating (American Revolutionary War). However, if you try to liberate another nation against the will of its people, you have violated a principle of liberty called "sovereignty", and are no longer going to war for liberty's sake, but to conquer.
"World Book" gives a slang definition for "liberate": "to rob or plunder, especially in wartime." This is the definition Iraq learned for the word when the British showed up the first time to "liberate" them.
> self-defense
Perfectly acceptable when nasty conquerors show up at your doorstep and start bombing the heck out of your beautiful capital city. But in these modern times, you might want to look up UN resolution 377 (Unite for Peace). Under that resolution, if the poor invaded country can get either seven Security Council members (no veto allowed) or a simple majority of the General Assembly to agree to it, the UN can form a posse and ride to the rescue. Of course, the naughty invader runs around trying to bully and bribe their way into "no" votes, but the resolution has been used successfully ten times in the UN's history. Iraq is working on number eleven, and our tax money is going into yet more bribes.
> or to stop a genocide.
Saving lives, always a great cause. Just be careful not to kill more of the victimized group than the genocidal maniac was planning to. Otherwise, there isn't much point...
> War is a tool, a nasty sharp tool. It's what you use it for
> that make your endevor evil or, perhaps, good.
Tanks, bombs, and bullets are nasty sharp tools. War is the action of sending thousands of your people out armed to the teeth to kill their people until they surrender and let you have your way. Actions generally have moral values attached to them. Mass murder coupled with mass property damage (the end result of war) is generally considered very evil. In certain very special circumstances (the just war theory) humanity has pretty much agreed to overlook the evil of the action because of the intended result is necessary and unable to be gotten without going to war.
Except for the just war exception to the rule, war is utterly evil, and is close kin to tyranny, genocide, and terrorism, sharing the same tools. To the Air Force pilot, he seems to be delivering a "package" with his plane, and releasing it with video game like controls. To the civilian it hits by accident, it is like being inside the World Trade Center towers on the morning of September 11, 2001: terror, agony, a very ugly death, grief and rage on the part of the surviving loved ones. One's country better have a seriously good reason to inflict this on another country.
That's why it is so important to go the last mile, then fifty further miles, using diplomacy to solve the problem peacefully. Well, it is for the rest of us; for genocidal maniacs who get off on pictures of mutilated dead people, of course war is going to be a favorite pastime (btw, such people are sick as well as evil).
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
jcast wrote:
> Let me make one thing clear: nothing on Linux, with or
> without this system, breaks due to ``who knows what''.
> That's what source code is for.
It has been a long time since it could be said that the users of Linux were all developers that can read source code. Even then, not all developers understood operating system development and were familiar enough with the Linux kernal to find the cause of any given problem in a reasonable amount of time.
With today's Linux user community, you are indeed going to run into "who knows what" given as the cause for problems in Linux. As Linux becomes more mainstream, the community is going to have to stop thinking of itself as composed entirely of kernal developers, and attitudes (such as the famous "read the friendly manual" hurled at newbies) are going to have to change.
Either that, or the newbies are going to run out and buy Macs, and all that will be left will be the kernal developers... And one lonesome little penguin.
"The path of peace is yours to discover for eternity."
Japanese version of "Mothra" (1961)
An AC wrote:
> You must have missed the horrific Hollywood release
> [imdb.com] somehow...
That wasn't a god or a dinosaur, and therefore, not Godzilla. Besides, Godzilla was originally created from the American test of the first H-bomb in March 1954, not from any French test (just stating facts, not being a chauvinist).
Besides, the T-Rex San Diego rampage in "JP:Lost World" had more in common with Godzilla than Tristar's ridiculous attempt. Spielberg is actually a fan of Godzilla, and was saluted in 1991's "Godzilla vs. King Ghidora". Godzilla also personally emulated the T-Rex vs. jeep scene from "Jurassic Park" in "Godzilla 2000 Millennium" (such a scene in Japan is considered paying homage, not a rip off). He respects Spielberg a whole lot more than Emmerich.
Godzilla actually had to fight against "Jurassic Park" at the box office. To do so, he needed an old friend to come out of retirement (actually she flew off and hid in a cave because she was mad about the very insulting 1969 "Destroy All Monsters"). Who did Godzilla call? Mothra! The 1992 "Godzilla vs. Mothra" restored the G-series to its former glory in the early 1960's, and did it competing with "Jurassic Park". Godzilla might not have made another movie without her help. Her price? The three part "Legend of the Protecting Goddess: Mothra Leo", which also served as Toho's crash course in basic CGI.
"What, that we are being invaded by little green men from outer space? Let's just keep it as our secret. You can tell your son about it when he's born, Major Spielberg."
"Godzilla vs. King Ghidora", 1991, US version