Bullshit. Money does not make you a great philanthropist. Has Bill Gates ever personally suffered to help anyone? Has he ever gone without a meal so he could give the moeny to someone else? For that matter, when he does give money, it's always in the form of a convenient photo op. He gives money he will never, ever miss, and gets good press and tax deductions for his efforts. How can that compare with someone who dedicates their life to helping others. Besides, think about what you could DO with Gate's money. A mission to Mars, the most sophisticated disease research facility in the world, etc. Instead he buys computers for schools that spend millions on his software anyway. I dont claim Bill Gates is an evil man, but I wouldn't call him a good man, and I wouldn't call him a man worthy of respect.
The important question here, is not if it was a violation of the privacy policy. This beef was potentially fatal. If you have a list of the people that bought it, and how to contact them, the only reason not to contact them is lawyers. Is anyone gonna be pissed you potentially saved their life? And even if they are, does it really matter? This isnt using their info to send them advertizements or to tell them your concerned they are eating to many junk foods. If the supermarket didnt contact me using any means possible, I'd be furious. The privacy policy has it's place, and if the company actually adheres to it, good for them. But this is obviously a situation that supercedes the condition the policy was meant to cover. It's not like not telling the customer is going to make the fact you have a list of the names of the people who bought the tainted meat dissappear. I think you need to rearrange your priorities if, after discovering you sold customers a potentially fatal product, instead of thinkinh "I need to warn these people as fast as possible", you think "I better go ask the lawyers if I'm allowed to do this.". Any food vendor is morally responsible for the safety of his food. If someone wants to give themselves a heart attack eating at your restaraunt, that's their problem, but when you put a product up for sale, you are responsible to make sure it has been handled in proper and sanitary coniditions. Putting up a disclaimer or pointing to a privacy policy doesnt magically make your responsibility go away.
The Musuem you speak of is the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Easily the most enjoyable musuem I've ever been in, the model railroad is much more then the Chicago area. The actual city is only one small part of it, it is actually a scale model of the entire route from Chicago to Seattle. There is a site for it here: http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/great_train_stor y/index.html The musuem also has a complete locomotive on display. If your ever in the area it's definitly worth seeing.
I realize thats a joke, but it won't work with most DHCP servers. Most DHCP servers I have worked with try to preserve ips, where possible. Even though you are requesting a new lease, the server just gives you back the same ip.
There are higher quality independtly powered USB hubs that eliminate that problem. There is no real difference between USB and PS/2 keyboards, but there is a big difference with high quality mice. Finally if lack of direct USB ports is still a big problem, my Asus $60 mobo has 6 USB ports, and a usb 2.0 pci card is like $15-20 dollars for four ports. Hardly the end of the world.
Your wrong about the Pocket PC. I've had several palms and handsprings, and I've used a few of the later Newtons, and none of them are really all that similiar to Pocket PC's. Pocket PC's are innovative in that they dont try to restrain themselves to being organizers. Pocket PC's are more like a small computer, with easy access to the underlying OS and file system, then an appliance like a Palm. There are a lot of Palm apps out there but none of them did anything really out there. Pocket PC's can do all the stuff the palm's do as well as jsut about anything a laptop can do (just not as convient). I've never seen a palm that can control my desktop, run a powerpoint presentation, play dvd's(in a compressed format, but still) and flash files, mount a network drive, etc. Not to mention it's possible for business's to roll out remote administration and upgrades the same way you do for laptops. MS made some very questionable interface decisions, but it's hard to argue they are a step above whats out there in raw power and functionality. Innovation can mean taking something and taking it to the next level, not just coming up with something from scratch. Your also wrong about the XBox. Whether you choose to accept it or not, the XBox is a viable gaming platform that is growing strong. I'm a Gamecube man my self, but the Xbox takes some bold steps in the console world. It is a technically superior platform, and includes standard an ethernet adaptor and hard drive. Microsoft's XBox Online is the first viable online console gaming solution and puts the ps2 to shame. Finally Media Player 9 does have a crappy interface, but it's not really any worse then quicktime. The working auto-download of codecs is one of the best things to happen to digital media in a long time. The windows media encoder software is reasonably good, and free which helps. As for the Media Center PC, It's basically a version of xp designed to act as a component of a home entertainment system, outputting mp3's and video. I dont know whats different from it and normal xp, but I imagine it has more to do with MS's plans to make a combined XBox, digital media player, and Tivo like device. The Tablet PC's are a horrible idea, but I know some artist's like them, as well as some doctor's offices etc. so they are not without a niche.
I read kuro5hin regularly, but the user moderated stories let tons of total crap in. Slashdot stories might be biased, or link to crud, but kuro5hin stories (especially political) are often filled with downright lies. The very strong liberal slant means almost anything that slams Bush on pure hearsay gets modded up, and the facts almost never make it out. If the slahdot editors actually employed the tiniest amount of effort to editing, it would be a much better system. For example, this stories content had almsot nothing to do with the linked article, and everything to do with someone carrying a torch against Clear Channel. If Slashdot editors actually bothered to read the linked articles, check sources, and check facts, it would be an effective system. Readers normally catch the errors, but most people have already reached a conclusion and write anyone that disagrees with their predisposition off as a crackpot. Just look at how many comments are attached ot this story about how evil Clear Channel is, when if you read the story, it has nothing to do with Clear Channel.
I dont remember where I got them, probably in one of the space police or pirates sets, but I had double sided lego bricks, It was a 2x2 yellow piece that was just the male connectors and nothing else. Not very stable but it worked. So yeah that piece has existed for many many years.
From your statements, you are obviously not a gamer or even have any knowledge of the gaming industry in general. Nintendo is in no way becoming a software only company like sega, as the GBA is the undisputed champion of the portable console arena, and it's outselling the major console. The Gamecube is in no way dead or dieing, is selling at a dirt cheap price and still making a profit (that is the point of this whole exercise). "Heavy use of assembly language" has never been the reason games were difficult to port. The reason it was dificult was because you had to deal with radically different architectures and capabilities, and had to use the device to it's fullest. The consoles today have a lot more in common then any previous generation of consoles, and are for the most part all based off a vague approximation of the PC architecture(more so for the Xbox and less for the Gamecube). Sony's PS2 is neither the cheapest nor the graphically best contender. It has the worst graphics at the highest price. It's only current strength is it's game library, which is being lost to ports. But in the end it doesn't matter, because despite the opinions of pundits who have no clue about the facts of the issue, the gaming market can support three different consoles at the same time.
Yeah cause Bush was so responsible, considering he was sworn into office on January 20th of that year. That early into the administration all the previous administration's methods were still in place. The job of preventing the World Trade Center attacks fell on the CLinton administration. They knew there were terrorists out there gunning for the U.S., and issued some travel advisiories etc. They did nothing to beef up security. And in the end, it's neither Clinton nor Bush's fault. It's the terrorist's fault. In hindsight it's easy to say we could have stopped them. But the reality of the issue is that the people responsible were the men who woke up that morning with the intention of hijacking planes and killing as many people as they could.
My grandfather suffered a heart attack and lived, despite severe damage to his heart. He lived another 15 relatively healthy years, but the last few years, the damage to his heart caught up to him, despite him being on a cosntant strict diet and daily exercise. His heart finally degraded to roughly 5% of normal heart capacity, do to all the dead and scar tissue. He spent his final year of so barely getting enough oxygen in his blood. It was like being out of breath, and no matter how hard you breath you cant seem to catch it, and you get worse and worse. It's like being strangled to death over a period of a year. So don't think a heart attack is the easy way out, you might die right away or you might die over a long period of time that can make you wish for a brain tumor to come take you.
I've never even heard of a 1 gig SD card, and 512 cards are about $150, so no. A 1 gig compact flash card is a good bit over $200. There is the line of IBM microdrives, which are around $200 for 2 gigs, but they are very fragile compared to solid state cards.
It is very rare for the computers in cars to go bad. When it happens, if you can get a replacement, it's still no big deal. But the most common car components to fail are things like the alternator, pumps, spark plugs, brakes pads, etc. These are just drop in replacements, and many parts shops offer rebuilt parts, meaning there is a supply even if the factory stops making them. These things normally dont require heavy equipment to change. None of these needs you to touch the computer. The dealerships use the computers with their fancy diagnostic scanners to find problems, but you don't need it. I'm not talking about rebuilding the transmission here. Very complicated things like that, it is wisest and cheapest to take it out yourself and take it to an independent specialist who will rebuild it for you. Believe it or not, even the most complicated fanciest car's engine works on very basic principles. And the things that fail most often are generally designed to be easily replaceable. If you open the hood of you car and think all that stuff is voodoo that takes gas, performs sacred rituals, and makes the wheels turn, then no you won't be able to do squat. You've convinced yourself it's more complicated then it actualy is. The computer handles engine timing, fuel mixture, etc. It just sends and recieves signals. When a mechanic tells you theres a problem with the computer, he ussually means its a problem with the sensors that feed data to the computer. Replace the sensor and you fix the problem. Do yourself a favor and learn a little about how car's really work. It's less complicated then you think. Then the next time the mechanic at the dealership lies to your face and laughs all the way to the bank, you can charge them with fraud.
Uhh American farmers aren't subsidized to make food. They are subsidized to not grow food. America farmland can feed our own country many times over, and if left to itself, would be so overabundant it would destroy the market, making it unprofitable for anyone to farm. We buy food from other countries because we like the taste of it, not because we need it. Our technology allows us to grow food at levels that would make the African efforts laughable. One side of my family is mostly farmers, I've seen it firsthand. the subsidies exist so farmer's can make a living while still providing more food then the market could normally bear, and keep the capability to make even more food, in case of emergency. The subsidy program was created to stop the constant boom-bust cycle and make a long term, sutainable, dependable food supply. I dont debate Africa needs to establish it's own econonmy if it's ever going to sustain itself, but jumping into the already glutted food market isn't the way. If African countries can succesfully form a stable government open to free enterprise, it can get on it's feet with manufacturing simliar to how China has become an economic powerhouse. A large part of our prosperity comes from the stability of our government. Stability means you can plan ahead, planning ahead means you can invest, investing means economic prosperity.
5 years? Apparently the parent signed a 5 year lease and thought his car was taken by magic fairies at the end of 5 years. 5 years is a ridicously short time for a car to last. 15 years is more like it, but even that isn't a hard limit. Next time your car dies after 5 years, please give it to me. Tons of people wish they had a Ford or GM car that was only 5 years old. Unless it has been wrecked severly, a car can be kept going almost indefinitly on the money buying a new car would cost you if you are willing to get your hands dirty (car repair is really, really easy most of the time).
The answer is, get better friends. The whole point of IM is you can see whose online and available. For things that are time sensitive it's great. For example, I could email want to go to the movies at 7 tonight? around to all my friends. They could then reply when they get it, which might be the next day, or in 15 minutes. By the time they respond to my email, I might not be in a position I can check mine. With IM, you looks whose on, and talk with them. Furthermore, you can just strike up a chat, if you want to talk to that person, but anyone that gets annoyed if you dont chat with them is just retarded. If you just tell them you are busy at the moment, most people understand. If you dont want to be disturbed unless it's very important, put up an away message. If someone is really annoying, just block them. Most IM clients just show you as logged off, so if you need to talk to that person later, just unblock them. IM is best when used in situations where you would normally have to make a phone call, but don't want to interrupt the person the way a phone does. If IM isn't for you, dont use it. But most people like it the way it is, so I doubt it needs an overhaul. From the sounds of it, you and the people you talk with are trying to use it like a replacement for phone or email, instead of using it for what it's good at.
While I don't completely agree with the parent, I do disagree with you. We can spend money constantly trying to inject money into it, but in the end it won't help anything. You get a temporary gain, but at the end of the day you will always have the poor and the uneducated and the underprivileged. It's unfortunate, but it's true. Space programs are kinda a high risk gamble, for relatively little cost. It's like buying a lottery ticket, you know the odds are against you, but you don't miss the $1 anyway, and you got a chance. Space exploration has the chance of forever changing the human condition for the better. As long as we sit on the earth we will slowly burn through it's natural resources whatever we do. The space program is a tiny speck in the federal budget, and most of the cost overruns have been caused by petty politics, not the program itself. A quick glance at google showed me the NASA budget is around 15 billion. The Federal budget is around 2-3 trillion dollars. What great change will another 15 billion do? A small increase in another federal system, and we lose a symbol of our nation, a motivation for technological improvement ( Virtually every product you use, somewhere along the line, was impacted by technology developed for or because of the space program), and hope for a better tommorow. You can throw dirt into a fast moving river forever, and never have it fill up, or start building a bridge. The real probelm with NASA is they have to constantly fight to get their meager budget and are at the mercy of the whims of congress. The politicians need to do their job and give NASA a goal, like Kennedy did, and but out. A smart man knows the areas that arent his strengths, and most politicians couldn't tell a space shuttle from a episode of star trek.
Considering I live in South Florida, and saw some of the incidents, and saw the rest on live local news, I gotta say you are full of shit. The police were professional and did the best job they could. They only used force after giving repeated warnings, and didnt bother peaceful demonstrations at all. There were many properly permitted and peaceful demonstrations that had the full support of the city. As long as they remained peaceful and didn't block important roads etc. without permission, it wasn't a problem. The Miami police were in a tight spot, people were coming to the protests with an intent to turn it into another Seattle. Miami police didn't let that happen, and they had to use some force to do it. The reason the protests werent a big national issue is because anyone not desperatly searching for something to complain about realized that everyone has seen worse police "brutality" at an unruly rock concert.
That argument really says nothing about the need for privacy. If the child is already recieving treatment, the insurance company can't drop them by law. Besides, that has more to do with how insurance has broken our medical system and less to do with privacy. The reason privacy is important is because it allows individualism, which is neccesary for growth. For example, lets say our hypothetical office worker Bob has a kinky sex fetish. His particular desires in the sack hurt noone, and are a private matter between him and his consensual partners. He is an excellent worker, and his fetish does not effect his performance in any way. But Bob's boss uses this new tracking technology to make sure none of his employees are stealing from him. He notices Bob going to a meeting of his fellow fetishists and things Bob's fetish is "icky" and fires him. Now in an ideal world, all the Bob's bosses in the world would be tolerant, but we all realize the world doesnt work that way. Privacy advocates realize we all have our own little things that aren't quite "normal". Without privacy, we all will have that much more pressure to be "normal". Normal means bland and boring. Personally, I dont want to live like that. Think hard. Is there something you do you might be embarrassed to have on the 5'o'clock news? For example, I'm an aethiest. Most of the world assumes I'm some sort of heathen. I don't really mind, I keep my beliefs to myself and only talk about them if asked directly. Already I have people show up randomly trying to preach to me. I politely ask them to leave. I've had some reactions that bordered on violence when I've told people who ask I'm an aethiest. In the "Bible Belt" public aethiests risk having their property vandalized and fired from their jobs. Now imagine if every wacko on Earth who thinks God spoke to him could look up records and see who didnt go to church, or bought books he dissaproves of, or whatever. People in any small minority would have to hide what they think, and in effect are oppressed. The people who say "If you havent done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" doesnt realize someone probably thinks they have done something wrong.
My state decided it would be wise to put in a constitutional ammendment to build high-spreed rails, specifically mag-levs, across the state in one of the biggest wastes of money in state history. Thats right, our constitution says we have to build a train, regardless of the realities of the situation. Slashdot had an article about it http://slashdot.org/articles/02/08/11/0037249.shtm l?tid=126
How did this get in our constitution? Remember that episode of the Simpsons where the salesman shows up and sings the monorail song? Exact same thing on a state-wide scale.
Research is being done on Cancer, much of it government funded, and treatmentis often subsidized by government programs for those who can't afford it. At the end of the day however, cancer deaths are something we cant stop. Automobile accidents etc. and all the other accidental of medical deaths we can't do much about that isnt being done. The WTC deaths were pointless deaths. They werent deaths by accident, or deaths for a cause, they were just deaths caused by a pointless act of violence that can only lead to more death and pain. Thats the problem with terrorism, it never achieves the terrorists goals, it just makes things worse.
I'm torn between modding you as a troll or responding. What exactly, do republicans do to keep black people from voting? If memory serves, it was the Southern Democrats that successfully kept black people from voting. I live in South Florida (an extremely diverse population) and everytime someone loses discrimination gets dragged out. I've yet to see any solid evidence. Despite popular opinion, minorities dont all vote one way (just like them white devils keeping them down). Furthermore every time it gets dragged out it makes a good exscuse to fire people just trying to do their jobs to make room for more cronies. I'm calling you out. Produce evidence to back your statement up. What did republicans do? How do they manage it when the supervisor of elections is a female, minority, democrat (like mine). You wanna talk about sleazy racial practices? Every election the local democrats take vans to poor, minority neighborhoods, and offer them free rides to the poll on the implication they vote democrat. They tell them democrats are their party and look out for their interests, and republicans are filthy white fat cats. They fill them with rhetoric and drop them off at the polls, and never mind explaining their platform or policies. I'm sure republicans do it also in some areas, but I've never seen it as blatant. Do the republicans put up big "blacks not welcome" signs outside your polls? And if so, why arent you doing anything about it. If I seriously thought they were forcing minority voters to not vote, I'd be scared shitless. My personal political tendencies don't agree with either parties agenda very well, and if they were keeping minorities away, I'm sure I'd be next on the list. Finally, why do you say the Democrats that voted for Bush "lost" Gore the election. They decided for themselves, instead of following the party line. Obviously Gore didn't do a good job of convincing them he was a good candidate. A party candidate should have to earn his party members vote, and if he loses it despite the distinct advantage of being in their party, he probably wasnt a very strong candidate in the first place (not that either Bush or Gore were strong candidates). If you can convince me with proof, collected in a scientific manner, that republicans kept minorities from voting intentionally, I'll gladly vote Democrat in the coming election.
If the robots really make human labor obsolete, there would be no point in depriving others of their use. Lets say I make a robot capable of doing anything a human does but better, able to make more of itself, repair itself, and power itself. Now this robot supplies me with everything I desire. Now I can either keep this robot to myself, and put up with the hordes of people demanding I let my robot help others, or I just let my robots build some robots to help others while they arent working for me. Either way I have everything I want, but one way I'm annoying rich guy who the masses are seriously considering over running and stealing his robots, or the guy who gave the world robots. Furthermore, if I built the robots, someone else following the same train of thought can duplicate my robots, or even make better robots. Property and wealth are social constructs. If I am stronger then you, and you have something I want, I could just take it. The only thing that keeps me from doing that is knowing that a much larger, stronger force doesn't want me taking your things without compensation. Even if I am the strongest person, they are stronger when they form a suffeciently large group. Society has empowered a large group of "strong" people to punish me for using my strength to impose my will on others. This moves the contest of strength to the next level, where instead of physical strength we compete on wealth, political power, ability, etc. With no need to compete (Anything you have I want the robots will give me if I ask) theres no need for the property model. The only thing we would have to compete for is rare elements for our robots to make us things with. But with robots, noone would want to fight when they could send robots to do it for them, so the contest would be who has the best robots. Either society would split into factions fighting never ending robot wars over rare natural resources, but the elements required for adequate food/shelter/clothing are not rare enough to be worth wasting your robot army resources on, so those content to relax on the beach all day would probably be fine, or some sort of agreement or governing body would form, in which case you are back on the political power competition. However it turns out, unless someone is able to gain sole control over robot technology, which is highly unlikely (anything that a human can be build another human can duplicate.) The concept of a robot using "ruling class" which forces the working class to starve or toil for no purpose doesn't make any sense. Capitalism works because it is neccesary for us to compete, because of scarcity. Remove scarcity and there is no reason to attempt to mantain the same model.
God, whenever some cool computer hobby or TV comes up, some jackass spouts off about how we should all go read a book in a smug arragont tone. Now when someone decides to read a book, we get jackasses telling him to go outside. What's next? Are we only allowed to spend our free time jogging while drinking 100% natural wheatgrass smoothies and chatting on our cell phones about the hot dates we have planned tonight? People have different tastes. Some people like vacations exciting, others have quite enough excitement in our everyday lives and just like to relax. I think you need to take your advice, and go outside and find someone who thinks your opinion matters.
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Bullshit. Money does not make you a great philanthropist. Has Bill Gates ever personally suffered to help anyone? Has he ever gone without a meal so he could give the moeny to someone else? For that matter, when he does give money, it's always in the form of a convenient photo op. He gives money he will never, ever miss, and gets good press and tax deductions for his efforts. How can that compare with someone who dedicates their life to helping others. Besides, think about what you could DO with Gate's money. A mission to Mars, the most sophisticated disease research facility in the world, etc. Instead he buys computers for schools that spend millions on his software anyway. I dont claim Bill Gates is an evil man, but I wouldn't call him a good man, and I wouldn't call him a man worthy of respect.
The important question here, is not if it was a violation of the privacy policy. This beef was potentially fatal. If you have a list of the people that bought it, and how to contact them, the only reason not to contact them is lawyers. Is anyone gonna be pissed you potentially saved their life? And even if they are, does it really matter? This isnt using their info to send them advertizements or to tell them your concerned they are eating to many junk foods. If the supermarket didnt contact me using any means possible, I'd be furious. The privacy policy has it's place, and if the company actually adheres to it, good for them. But this is obviously a situation that supercedes the condition the policy was meant to cover. It's not like not telling the customer is going to make the fact you have a list of the names of the people who bought the tainted meat dissappear. I think you need to rearrange your priorities if, after discovering you sold customers a potentially fatal product, instead of thinkinh "I need to warn these people as fast as possible", you think "I better go ask the lawyers if I'm allowed to do this.". Any food vendor is morally responsible for the safety of his food. If someone wants to give themselves a heart attack eating at your restaraunt, that's their problem, but when you put a product up for sale, you are responsible to make sure it has been handled in proper and sanitary coniditions. Putting up a disclaimer or pointing to a privacy policy doesnt magically make your responsibility go away.
The Musuem you speak of is the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Easily the most enjoyable musuem I've ever been in, the model railroad is much more then the Chicago area. The actual city is only one small part of it, it is actually a scale model of the entire route from Chicago to Seattle. There is a site for it here: http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/great_train_stor y/index.html
The musuem also has a complete locomotive on display. If your ever in the area it's definitly worth seeing.
I realize thats a joke, but it won't work with most DHCP servers. Most DHCP servers I have worked with try to preserve ips, where possible. Even though you are requesting a new lease, the server just gives you back the same ip.
There are higher quality independtly powered USB hubs that eliminate that problem. There is no real difference between USB and PS/2 keyboards, but there is a big difference with high quality mice. Finally if lack of direct USB ports is still a big problem, my Asus $60 mobo has 6 USB ports, and a usb 2.0 pci card is like $15-20 dollars for four ports. Hardly the end of the world.
Your wrong about the Pocket PC. I've had several palms and handsprings, and I've used a few of the later Newtons, and none of them are really all that similiar to Pocket PC's. Pocket PC's are innovative in that they dont try to restrain themselves to being organizers. Pocket PC's are more like a small computer, with easy access to the underlying OS and file system, then an appliance like a Palm. There are a lot of Palm apps out there but none of them did anything really out there. Pocket PC's can do all the stuff the palm's do as well as jsut about anything a laptop can do (just not as convient). I've never seen a palm that can control my desktop, run a powerpoint presentation, play dvd's(in a compressed format, but still) and flash files, mount a network drive, etc. Not to mention it's possible for business's to roll out remote administration and upgrades the same way you do for laptops. MS made some very questionable interface decisions, but it's hard to argue they are a step above whats out there in raw power and functionality. Innovation can mean taking something and taking it to the next level, not just coming up with something from scratch. Your also wrong about the XBox. Whether you choose to accept it or not, the XBox is a viable gaming platform that is growing strong. I'm a Gamecube man my self, but the Xbox takes some bold steps in the console world. It is a technically superior platform, and includes standard an ethernet adaptor and hard drive. Microsoft's XBox Online is the first viable online console gaming solution and puts the ps2 to shame. Finally Media Player 9 does have a crappy interface, but it's not really any worse then quicktime. The working auto-download of codecs is one of the best things to happen to digital media in a long time. The windows media encoder software is reasonably good, and free which helps. As for the Media Center PC, It's basically a version of xp designed to act as a component of a home entertainment system, outputting mp3's and video. I dont know whats different from it and normal xp, but I imagine it has more to do with MS's plans to make a combined XBox, digital media player, and Tivo like device. The Tablet PC's are a horrible idea, but I know some artist's like them, as well as some doctor's offices etc. so they are not without a niche.
I read kuro5hin regularly, but the user moderated stories let tons of total crap in. Slashdot stories might be biased, or link to crud, but kuro5hin stories (especially political) are often filled with downright lies. The very strong liberal slant means almost anything that slams Bush on pure hearsay gets modded up, and the facts almost never make it out. If the slahdot editors actually employed the tiniest amount of effort to editing, it would be a much better system. For example, this stories content had almsot nothing to do with the linked article, and everything to do with someone carrying a torch against Clear Channel. If Slashdot editors actually bothered to read the linked articles, check sources, and check facts, it would be an effective system. Readers normally catch the errors, but most people have already reached a conclusion and write anyone that disagrees with their predisposition off as a crackpot. Just look at how many comments are attached ot this story about how evil Clear Channel is, when if you read the story, it has nothing to do with Clear Channel.
I dont remember where I got them, probably in one of the space police or pirates sets, but I had double sided lego bricks, It was a 2x2 yellow piece that was just the male connectors and nothing else. Not very stable but it worked. So yeah that piece has existed for many many years.
You're almost right, Nintendo is for kids and people who play games to have fun, not to determine their dick size.
From your statements, you are obviously not a gamer or even have any knowledge of the gaming industry in general. Nintendo is in no way becoming a software only company like sega, as the GBA is the undisputed champion of the portable console arena, and it's outselling the major console. The Gamecube is in no way dead or dieing, is selling at a dirt cheap price and still making a profit (that is the point of this whole exercise). "Heavy use of assembly language" has never been the reason games were difficult to port. The reason it was dificult was because you had to deal with radically different architectures and capabilities, and had to use the device to it's fullest. The consoles today have a lot more in common then any previous generation of consoles, and are for the most part all based off a vague approximation of the PC architecture(more so for the Xbox and less for the Gamecube). Sony's PS2 is neither the cheapest nor the graphically best contender. It has the worst graphics at the highest price. It's only current strength is it's game library, which is being lost to ports. But in the end it doesn't matter, because despite the opinions of pundits who have no clue about the facts of the issue, the gaming market can support three different consoles at the same time.
Yeah cause Bush was so responsible, considering he was sworn into office on January 20th of that year. That early into the administration all the previous administration's methods were still in place. The job of preventing the World Trade Center attacks fell on the CLinton administration. They knew there were terrorists out there gunning for the U.S., and issued some travel advisiories etc. They did nothing to beef up security. And in the end, it's neither Clinton nor Bush's fault. It's the terrorist's fault. In hindsight it's easy to say we could have stopped them. But the reality of the issue is that the people responsible were the men who woke up that morning with the intention of hijacking planes and killing as many people as they could.
My grandfather suffered a heart attack and lived, despite severe damage to his heart. He lived another 15 relatively healthy years, but the last few years, the damage to his heart caught up to him, despite him being on a cosntant strict diet and daily exercise. His heart finally degraded to roughly 5% of normal heart capacity, do to all the dead and scar tissue. He spent his final year of so barely getting enough oxygen in his blood. It was like being out of breath, and no matter how hard you breath you cant seem to catch it, and you get worse and worse. It's like being strangled to death over a period of a year. So don't think a heart attack is the easy way out, you might die right away or you might die over a long period of time that can make you wish for a brain tumor to come take you.
I've never even heard of a 1 gig SD card, and 512 cards are about $150, so no. A 1 gig compact flash card is a good bit over $200. There is the line of IBM microdrives, which are around $200 for 2 gigs, but they are very fragile compared to solid state cards.
It is very rare for the computers in cars to go bad. When it happens, if you can get a replacement, it's still no big deal. But the most common car components to fail are things like the alternator, pumps, spark plugs, brakes pads, etc. These are just drop in replacements, and many parts shops offer rebuilt parts, meaning there is a supply even if the factory stops making them. These things normally dont require heavy equipment to change. None of these needs you to touch the computer. The dealerships use the computers with their fancy diagnostic scanners to find problems, but you don't need it. I'm not talking about rebuilding the transmission here. Very complicated things like that, it is wisest and cheapest to take it out yourself and take it to an independent specialist who will rebuild it for you. Believe it or not, even the most complicated fanciest car's engine works on very basic principles. And the things that fail most often are generally designed to be easily replaceable. If you open the hood of you car and think all that stuff is voodoo that takes gas, performs sacred rituals, and makes the wheels turn, then no you won't be able to do squat. You've convinced yourself it's more complicated then it actualy is. The computer handles engine timing, fuel mixture, etc. It just sends and recieves signals. When a mechanic tells you theres a problem with the computer, he ussually means its a problem with the sensors that feed data to the computer. Replace the sensor and you fix the problem. Do yourself a favor and learn a little about how car's really work. It's less complicated then you think. Then the next time the mechanic at the dealership lies to your face and laughs all the way to the bank, you can charge them with fraud.
Uhh American farmers aren't subsidized to make food. They are subsidized to not grow food. America farmland can feed our own country many times over, and if left to itself, would be so overabundant it would destroy the market, making it unprofitable for anyone to farm. We buy food from other countries because we like the taste of it, not because we need it. Our technology allows us to grow food at levels that would make the African efforts laughable. One side of my family is mostly farmers, I've seen it firsthand. the subsidies exist so farmer's can make a living while still providing more food then the market could normally bear, and keep the capability to make even more food, in case of emergency. The subsidy program was created to stop the constant boom-bust cycle and make a long term, sutainable, dependable food supply. I dont debate Africa needs to establish it's own econonmy if it's ever going to sustain itself, but jumping into the already glutted food market isn't the way. If African countries can succesfully form a stable government open to free enterprise, it can get on it's feet with manufacturing simliar to how China has become an economic powerhouse. A large part of our prosperity comes from the stability of our government. Stability means you can plan ahead, planning ahead means you can invest, investing means economic prosperity.
5 years? Apparently the parent signed a 5 year lease and thought his car was taken by magic fairies at the end of 5 years. 5 years is a ridicously short time for a car to last. 15 years is more like it, but even that isn't a hard limit. Next time your car dies after 5 years, please give it to me. Tons of people wish they had a Ford or GM car that was only 5 years old. Unless it has been wrecked severly, a car can be kept going almost indefinitly on the money buying a new car would cost you if you are willing to get your hands dirty (car repair is really, really easy most of the time).
The answer is, get better friends. The whole point of IM is you can see whose online and available. For things that are time sensitive it's great. For example, I could email want to go to the movies at 7 tonight? around to all my friends. They could then reply when they get it, which might be the next day, or in 15 minutes. By the time they respond to my email, I might not be in a position I can check mine. With IM, you looks whose on, and talk with them. Furthermore, you can just strike up a chat, if you want to talk to that person, but anyone that gets annoyed if you dont chat with them is just retarded. If you just tell them you are busy at the moment, most people understand. If you dont want to be disturbed unless it's very important, put up an away message. If someone is really annoying, just block them. Most IM clients just show you as logged off, so if you need to talk to that person later, just unblock them. IM is best when used in situations where you would normally have to make a phone call, but don't want to interrupt the person the way a phone does. If IM isn't for you, dont use it. But most people like it the way it is, so I doubt it needs an overhaul. From the sounds of it, you and the people you talk with are trying to use it like a replacement for phone or email, instead of using it for what it's good at.
While I don't completely agree with the parent, I do disagree with you. We can spend money constantly trying to inject money into it, but in the end it won't help anything. You get a temporary gain, but at the end of the day you will always have the poor and the uneducated and the underprivileged. It's unfortunate, but it's true. Space programs are kinda a high risk gamble, for relatively little cost. It's like buying a lottery ticket, you know the odds are against you, but you don't miss the $1 anyway, and you got a chance. Space exploration has the chance of forever changing the human condition for the better. As long as we sit on the earth we will slowly burn through it's natural resources whatever we do. The space program is a tiny speck in the federal budget, and most of the cost overruns have been caused by petty politics, not the program itself. A quick glance at google showed me the NASA budget is around 15 billion. The Federal budget is around 2-3 trillion dollars. What great change will another 15 billion do? A small increase in another federal system, and we lose a symbol of our nation, a motivation for technological improvement ( Virtually every product you use, somewhere along the line, was impacted by technology developed for or because of the space program), and hope for a better tommorow. You can throw dirt into a fast moving river forever, and never have it fill up, or start building a bridge. The real probelm with NASA is they have to constantly fight to get their meager budget and are at the mercy of the whims of congress. The politicians need to do their job and give NASA a goal, like Kennedy did, and but out. A smart man knows the areas that arent his strengths, and most politicians couldn't tell a space shuttle from a episode of star trek.
Considering I live in South Florida, and saw some of the incidents, and saw the rest on live local news, I gotta say you are full of shit. The police were professional and did the best job they could. They only used force after giving repeated warnings, and didnt bother peaceful demonstrations at all. There were many properly permitted and peaceful demonstrations that had the full support of the city. As long as they remained peaceful and didn't block important roads etc. without permission, it wasn't a problem. The Miami police were in a tight spot, people were coming to the protests with an intent to turn it into another Seattle. Miami police didn't let that happen, and they had to use some force to do it. The reason the protests werent a big national issue is because anyone not desperatly searching for something to complain about realized that everyone has seen worse police "brutality" at an unruly rock concert.
That argument really says nothing about the need for privacy. If the child is already recieving treatment, the insurance company can't drop them by law. Besides, that has more to do with how insurance has broken our medical system and less to do with privacy. The reason privacy is important is because it allows individualism, which is neccesary for growth. For example, lets say our hypothetical office worker Bob has a kinky sex fetish. His particular desires in the sack hurt noone, and are a private matter between him and his consensual partners. He is an excellent worker, and his fetish does not effect his performance in any way. But Bob's boss uses this new tracking technology to make sure none of his employees are stealing from him. He notices Bob going to a meeting of his fellow fetishists and things Bob's fetish is "icky" and fires him. Now in an ideal world, all the Bob's bosses in the world would be tolerant, but we all realize the world doesnt work that way. Privacy advocates realize we all have our own little things that aren't quite "normal". Without privacy, we all will have that much more pressure to be "normal". Normal means bland and boring. Personally, I dont want to live like that. Think hard. Is there something you do you might be embarrassed to have on the 5'o'clock news? For example, I'm an aethiest. Most of the world assumes I'm some sort of heathen. I don't really mind, I keep my beliefs to myself and only talk about them if asked directly. Already I have people show up randomly trying to preach to me. I politely ask them to leave. I've had some reactions that bordered on violence when I've told people who ask I'm an aethiest. In the "Bible Belt" public aethiests risk having their property vandalized and fired from their jobs. Now imagine if every wacko on Earth who thinks God spoke to him could look up records and see who didnt go to church, or bought books he dissaproves of, or whatever. People in any small minority would have to hide what they think, and in effect are oppressed. The people who say "If you havent done anything wrong, you have nothing to hide" doesnt realize someone probably thinks they have done something wrong.
My state decided it would be wise to put in a constitutional ammendment to build high-spreed rails, specifically mag-levs, across the state in one of the biggest wastes of money in state history. Thats right, our constitution says we have to build a train, regardless of the realities of the situation. Slashdot had an article about it http://slashdot.org/articles/02/08/11/0037249.shtm l?tid=126
How did this get in our constitution? Remember that episode of the Simpsons where the salesman shows up and sings the monorail song? Exact same thing on a state-wide scale.
Research is being done on Cancer, much of it government funded, and treatmentis often subsidized by government programs for those who can't afford it. At the end of the day however, cancer deaths are something we cant stop. Automobile accidents etc. and all the other accidental of medical deaths we can't do much about that isnt being done. The WTC deaths were pointless deaths. They werent deaths by accident, or deaths for a cause, they were just deaths caused by a pointless act of violence that can only lead to more death and pain. Thats the problem with terrorism, it never achieves the terrorists goals, it just makes things worse.
I'm torn between modding you as a troll or responding. What exactly, do republicans do to keep black people from voting? If memory serves, it was the Southern Democrats that successfully kept black people from voting. I live in South Florida (an extremely diverse population) and everytime someone loses discrimination gets dragged out. I've yet to see any solid evidence. Despite popular opinion, minorities dont all vote one way (just like them white devils keeping them down). Furthermore every time it gets dragged out it makes a good exscuse to fire people just trying to do their jobs to make room for more cronies. I'm calling you out. Produce evidence to back your statement up. What did republicans do? How do they manage it when the supervisor of elections is a female, minority, democrat (like mine). You wanna talk about sleazy racial practices? Every election the local democrats take vans to poor, minority neighborhoods, and offer them free rides to the poll on the implication they vote democrat. They tell them democrats are their party and look out for their interests, and republicans are filthy white fat cats. They fill them with rhetoric and drop them off at the polls, and never mind explaining their platform or policies. I'm sure republicans do it also in some areas, but I've never seen it as blatant. Do the republicans put up big "blacks not welcome" signs outside your polls? And if so, why arent you doing anything about it. If I seriously thought they were forcing minority voters to not vote, I'd be scared shitless. My personal political tendencies don't agree with either parties agenda very well, and if they were keeping minorities away, I'm sure I'd be next on the list. Finally, why do you say the Democrats that voted for Bush "lost" Gore the election. They decided for themselves, instead of following the party line. Obviously Gore didn't do a good job of convincing them he was a good candidate. A party candidate should have to earn his party members vote, and if he loses it despite the distinct advantage of being in their party, he probably wasnt a very strong candidate in the first place (not that either Bush or Gore were strong candidates). If you can convince me with proof, collected in a scientific manner, that republicans kept minorities from voting intentionally, I'll gladly vote Democrat in the coming election.
If the robots really make human labor obsolete, there would be no point in depriving others of their use. Lets say I make a robot capable of doing anything a human does but better, able to make more of itself, repair itself, and power itself. Now this robot supplies me with everything I desire. Now I can either keep this robot to myself, and put up with the hordes of people demanding I let my robot help others, or I just let my robots build some robots to help others while they arent working for me. Either way I have everything I want, but one way I'm annoying rich guy who the masses are seriously considering over running and stealing his robots, or the guy who gave the world robots. Furthermore, if I built the robots, someone else following the same train of thought can duplicate my robots, or even make better robots. Property and wealth are social constructs. If I am stronger then you, and you have something I want, I could just take it. The only thing that keeps me from doing that is knowing that a much larger, stronger force doesn't want me taking your things without compensation. Even if I am the strongest person, they are stronger when they form a suffeciently large group. Society has empowered a large group of "strong" people to punish me for using my strength to impose my will on others. This moves the contest of strength to the next level, where instead of physical strength we compete on wealth, political power, ability, etc. With no need to compete (Anything you have I want the robots will give me if I ask) theres no need for the property model. The only thing we would have to compete for is rare elements for our robots to make us things with. But with robots, noone would want to fight when they could send robots to do it for them, so the contest would be who has the best robots. Either society would split into factions fighting never ending robot wars over rare natural resources, but the elements required for adequate food/shelter/clothing are not rare enough to be worth wasting your robot army resources on, so those content to relax on the beach all day would probably be fine, or some sort of agreement or governing body would form, in which case you are back on the political power competition. However it turns out, unless someone is able to gain sole control over robot technology, which is highly unlikely (anything that a human can be build another human can duplicate.) The concept of a robot using "ruling class" which forces the working class to starve or toil for no purpose doesn't make any sense. Capitalism works because it is neccesary for us to compete, because of scarcity. Remove scarcity and there is no reason to attempt to mantain the same model.
God, whenever some cool computer hobby or TV comes up, some jackass spouts off about how we should all go read a book in a smug arragont tone. Now when someone decides to read a book, we get jackasses telling him to go outside. What's next? Are we only allowed to spend our free time jogging while drinking 100% natural wheatgrass smoothies and chatting on our cell phones about the hot dates we have planned tonight? People have different tastes. Some people like vacations exciting, others have quite enough excitement in our everyday lives and just like to relax. I think you need to take your advice, and go outside and find someone who thinks your opinion matters.