Uhh, I'm sure the school board and the parents are aware of which individual pissed basically their entire years' salary and then some away, and for what frivolous personal reason. I quite trust the dumb sh*t won't be doing it again, and it sets an excellent precedent for other dumb sh*ts to not do the same thing.
I would just like to point out that what the musician has, that the RIAA doesn't, is their talent to go out and perform the material. Their physical presence cannot be pirated. That's why not a lot of real musicians are jumping all over Napster (sure some real dorks are joining Artists Against Piracy but I don't see anyone I respect as a musician on there). They know they can survive it. Record companies, not being able to actually own people as slaves, are unable to force musicians to perform for them.
BZZZT! Wrong! I am entitled to the use of whatever I buy, under whatever conditions I choose. That is the only issue here. If this kind of thing is sneaked into the product without my knowledge, and I am attempting to use it and it becomes worthless, I'll fucking well have an issue with the manufacturer.
It's the same thing. The flood did it all. There's a very amusing series of discussions archived here and here which touch on the whole issue of how noah's ark is basically impossible -- Really it's just joy to actually imagine a handful of extremely busy zookeepers engaged in the continuous activity of the disposal of the mega-tons of shit produced by thousands of animals, or the problem of an ark big enough to hold all those animals, and the food for a year, without collapsing on itself.
Not to mention that the flood itself would have either boiled the earth or showered it with rocks, or was simply not possible. Flood geology is a whole source of amusement in and of itself. Don't miss out on the fun -- it's almost as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.
An example of this was where a rock, known only to be a few hundred years old, was dated at several million years.
I believe that was this field trip several creationists made to the Grand Canyon to dig a newly formed chunk of lava out of a pit that was contaminated with ancient rock samples. Any competent geologist would have rejected the sample due to its obvious contamination, and indeed that's what most of them did. However, your creationist friends weren't competent geologists, or weren't interested in reality, but rather rigging the result to prove their thesis. And that, I believe, is the only instance I've ever heard of a creationist actually going outside the chapel and putting their hands on dirt to test their hypothesis. And it's quite obvious from his methodology alone that he intended to get the results he did. IANAG (I Am Not A Geologist) but in this case I don't need to be one. When someone goes out with a theoretical axe to grind, and zeroes in on data that they already know is there, and in fact borrowsed from someone else, you don't have to be an expert in the field to suspect fraud.
You'd better get some butter for your hat. I hope it's a nice tasty felt one, and not some really tough leather stuff. Ready:
Pick up a bowling ball. Hold it 32 feet above your foot. Let go. It should, at the moment it strikes your foot, achieve a speed of 32 feet per per second exactly. Now if you like, you can put the foot in your mouth to soothe the pain.
It's an oxymoron. With emphasis on the moron. The first rule of scientific creationism is: you do not question your own theory. The second rule of scientific creationism is that you DO NOT QUESTION YOUR OWN THEORY.
A theory that is not to be questioned is not a theory. The pursuit of such a theory cannot be scientific, since the process of science involves testing your assumptions against reality. Therefore it is entirely bogus, and the term is an oxymoron, a self-contradicting word or phrase.
Sorry, I beg to differ. Only someone who doesn't program would say that this is not obvious, and only 20-20 hindsight could do it. The 1-click patent is just an application of already existing technology -- namely cookies. It's more a business process and any dipshit who's done internet programming could have solved that, given the business incentive to do so. Their entire development effort on the 1-click project was probably all of 20 minutes, once they had the customer feedback and incentive to do so.
You'll probably get incentives to carry special ones that are linked to your identity. If you don't, some services may not be available to you,
You mean like the Kroger bar code keychain that they gave made me fill out an application for a few months ago -- the one that takes the price of a gallon of milk down almost a dollar? I tore that one up and threw it out and started shopping at Meijer. I will not set foot in a Kroger again until they abolish that obscenity. I don't care what they want it for; I don't think I should have to pay them to keep my privacy.
It sounds just real enough, but just farfetched enough. I will be keeping an eye out for more on this -- it looks too much like a Joey Skaggs-style joke.
My solution is to simply not give out my email address. I have about 6 completely phony Yahoo email addresses. I registered/. on one of them. No matter what I register for on the net, I use a fake address, because I have had to give up several really nice email addresses when they became engulfed in spam. Of course, my original hotmail address was by far the worst. 60+ messages a day. So far, my real email address remains unspammed.
In fact, there is an excellent Issac Asimov story about a curious little man who discovers the basic principles of mathematics and invents a "paper computer." This then leads to the idea that human beings can be put into missles to fight the war and win against an opponent that uses electronic jamming techniques to thwart their guidance computers. Typically Asimov, he was about fifty years ahead of the rest of us, and had already anticipated the lameness the crutch of technology would give us. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of the story at present. However, I do know exactly where in my vast book collection it is located. So there.
Well, we can always lose the amplifiers and play on plain 'ol catgut. It's interesting you bring this up -- as the corporate culture moves to crush every alternate means of competition with them, they also crush the only thing that makes rock music work at all -- its novelty.
Rock was always about its newness, and most importantly its violent rejection of the status quo. Rock music was everything that Frank Sinatra was not, back in the fifties. And every succeeding ten years or so another revolution occurred wherein the values of the music that went before it were vehemently rejected. Right now the primary features of popular music are Britney Spears' ass and the Backstreet Boys' wimpy little goatees. There is no musicianship, and there is certainly no artistry in the music. So I am imagining that in another few months, we'll see the teeny-boppers who are swallowing that pablum will break all their records (I remember the 'disco sucks' demonstration on my elementary-school campus quite vividly -- thousands of smashed records), and they'll move on to whatever represents the diametric opposite of this shite. And since the record companies are becoming more and more apparent as the people "behind the music" the next phase may involve non-corporate music, created and distributed in non-corporate ways, as well. At least that is my hope. If not, I predict the rather pitiful death of the electric guitar / bass / drums style of music within a decade. And that's a drag, because I've invested a lot of my time in making that kind of music, and I don't think its potential has been exhausted just yet. But if it is, there are always alternatives. The point is, the record companies are trying to apply a corporate philosophy of control and containment to something (art) that has proven time and again that it simply will not be contained or controlled. If a particular medium is made unavailable, artists will simply move on to the next medium that presents itself.
"Musicians" have nothing to do with it. "Musicians" make 7 cents on the dollar on their recordings. In case you've been completely deaf and blind for the last three years or so, and don't watch VH1, and don't get out much, the musician has to pay back the studio costs, marketing costs, and tour costs out of that seven cents. So I'm sure they'd be happy to drop the price to three bucks, in return for taking fifty-one percent of their own money. It's just that the suckfly "Record Companies" wouldn't be making their skim. That is who is always responsbile for these kinds of things. BTW a home-made CD costs about $3.00 to make, including the ink and paper for the packaging. A mass-produced CD (runs of more than a thousand) no doubt costs way under fifty cents.
Is this their response to the Netzero suit?
on
Juno And Privacy
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· Score: 2
Would this have anything to do with the fact that Netzero recently sued Juno over a patent on their ad-delivery window concept? A story I believe I submitted to/. some time ago and never saw. Is this Juno's way of getting some miniscule amount of revenue back?
I would provide a link to the page on Netzero where I saw notice of the suit, but it appears to have moved.
The fundamental problem is not lack of money, nor lack of examiners. The fundamental problem is that their incentive is to grant as many patents as possible. There is no apparent penalty for failing to discover prior art, or for failing to see that the application in question is an obvious solution in a field. If a patent examiner could be fired for granting something as dull-wittedly obvious as the one-click patent they would be a little less gung-ho to do so. Instead, they are apparently paid per patent to grant them. It's run on a for-profit basis. IMHO the patent office simply needs to be shut down, all of the management fired, and reorganized with some checks and balances built in. There is no other solution.
And I dare you to find a web page that I need to visit that requires Java. I use Opera 5, the free edition, without java because I didn't see the point in downloading 7 MB of java interpreter for the.000213% of the banner ads I see that use some sort of java animation. Been using it for about a month now. Every once in a great while, I see a box that says "This applet requires a plug-in blah blah blah" and I just happily ignore it. MS is dropping Java because it will have zero impact on them, and no one in their right mind is using it for web development. I'm not saying that means anything to me -- I am, after all defecting from the IE camp because IE also is irritating and I am tired of screwing with it. When I next boot up Linux, I will probably download the free Opera for Linux and use that, just because I have no time for Netscape. But at any rate, who gives a shit what C# can do or what Java can do? I don't need either of them and won't bother visiting sites that do.
But in this case the price for this stuff is just so ridiculously high, and the disadvantages so huge, that most people won't go for it. It's got all the scuzzy charm of Divx, and Divx died a horrible, grisly death at the hands of pissed-off consumers.
I'm with you. I have no intention of buying this shit. I have better things to do than fight with the cable company through my TV. Fuck them all running.
The term is Global warming. It doesn't matter if the US is having a really cold winter. It doesn't matter if it's cold this year. The global average temperature continues to rise. This isn't some sort of fiction, and it doesn't look like it's going away. The increase will be felt mostly at the poles, where the gradual melting of icebergs will raise the sea level and drown coastal cities. The other place it will be felt is in our increasingly fucked-up climate.
It's interesting that you bring up the opinions of scientists of the 1920's to bolster your argument. Science is always an evolving game. What was known about climatology and the composition of the earth in 1920 has nothing to do with what we know today. Most of the activity causing global warming has occurred since then. So your example is worthless. In 1920 most homes in the US did not have electricity, and those that did used it for light and maybe a radio. There were probably less than a million automobiles in existence everywhere. There were at least that many on the highway with me this morning.
Global warming will not mean the summer is too hot. Most of the heat will be absorbed by the ice at the poles. Live more than 400 miles from the ocean? Global warming will mean you're going to be visiting the beach more often. Or more likely, your kids will. Or your grandkids. Global warming may also mean that you get to see more fun things like tornadoes and hurricanes, as weather patterns shift. So even if your house isn't by the sea today, it may get picked up and moved there eventually.
But looking past the end of your nose to something that may not actually have an effect on your life is probably too much to ask. You've made it clear you think science is some sort of political activity, and scientific discoveries which make you uncomfortable must be from stupid "liberalz." That's OK. You're entitled to your opinion, however poorly-informed and knee-jerk it is. It's just fortunate for the rest of us that because your views are so poorly thought-out and ill-informed, they are of no importance. Have a nice day.
I tend to think that the visibility of these artifacts and symbols is highly important lest people forget the atrocities committed under their banner. A rather distant relative of mine brought back some swastikas and other things he "relieved" a german soldier of during the war. I consider them a valuable reminder . . .
It's about time a statue was written extracting some gruesome penalty for filing these frivolous patent suits. Like maybe you are fined the amount of money expected in your suit, or maybe the lawyers involved should be faced with losing their bar certification in all 50 states, or something. Right now this stupidity goes on because there is a potential reward for doing it but no risk for failing. There needs to be a risk to put things back in balance. And it needs to be a motherfucker of risk. . .
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Uhh, I'm sure the school board and the parents are aware of which individual pissed basically their entire years' salary and then some away, and for what frivolous personal reason. I quite trust the dumb sh*t won't be doing it again, and it sets an excellent precedent for other dumb sh*ts to not do the same thing.
I would just like to point out that what the musician has, that the RIAA doesn't, is their talent to go out and perform the material. Their physical presence cannot be pirated. That's why not a lot of real musicians are jumping all over Napster (sure some real dorks are joining Artists Against Piracy but I don't see anyone I respect as a musician on there). They know they can survive it. Record companies, not being able to actually own people as slaves, are unable to force musicians to perform for them.
BZZZT! Wrong! I am entitled to the use of whatever I buy, under whatever conditions I choose. That is the only issue here. If this kind of thing is sneaked into the product without my knowledge, and I am attempting to use it and it becomes worthless, I'll fucking well have an issue with the manufacturer.
It's the same thing. The flood did it all. There's a very amusing series of discussions archived here and here which touch on the whole issue of how noah's ark is basically impossible -- Really it's just joy to actually imagine a handful of extremely busy zookeepers engaged in the continuous activity of the disposal of the mega-tons of shit produced by thousands of animals, or the problem of an ark big enough to hold all those animals, and the food for a year, without collapsing on itself.
Not to mention that the flood itself would have either boiled the earth or showered it with rocks, or was simply not possible. Flood geology is a whole source of amusement in and of itself. Don't miss out on the fun -- it's almost as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.
I believe that was this field trip several creationists made to the Grand Canyon to dig a newly formed chunk of lava out of a pit that was contaminated with ancient rock samples. Any competent geologist would have rejected the sample due to its obvious contamination, and indeed that's what most of them did. However, your creationist friends weren't competent geologists, or weren't interested in reality, but rather rigging the result to prove their thesis. And that, I believe, is the only instance I've ever heard of a creationist actually going outside the chapel and putting their hands on dirt to test their hypothesis. And it's quite obvious from his methodology alone that he intended to get the results he did. IANAG (I Am Not A Geologist) but in this case I don't need to be one. When someone goes out with a theoretical axe to grind, and zeroes in on data that they already know is there, and in fact borrowsed from someone else, you don't have to be an expert in the field to suspect fraud.
You'd better get some butter for your hat. I hope it's a nice tasty felt one, and not some really tough leather stuff. Ready:
Pick up a bowling ball. Hold it 32 feet above your foot. Let go. It should, at the moment it strikes your foot, achieve a speed of 32 feet per per second exactly. Now if you like, you can put the foot in your mouth to soothe the pain.
There! Enjoy.
It's an oxymoron. With emphasis on the moron. The first rule of scientific creationism is: you do not question your own theory. The second rule of scientific creationism is that you DO NOT QUESTION YOUR OWN THEORY.
A theory that is not to be questioned is not a theory. The pursuit of such a theory cannot be scientific, since the process of science involves testing your assumptions against reality. Therefore it is entirely bogus, and the term is an oxymoron, a self-contradicting word or phrase.
Sorry, I beg to differ. Only someone who doesn't program would say that this is not obvious, and only 20-20 hindsight could do it. The 1-click patent is just an application of already existing technology -- namely cookies. It's more a business process and any dipshit who's done internet programming could have solved that, given the business incentive to do so. Their entire development effort on the 1-click project was probably all of 20 minutes, once they had the customer feedback and incentive to do so.
You mean like the Kroger bar code keychain that they gave made me fill out an application for a few months ago -- the one that takes the price of a gallon of milk down almost a dollar? I tore that one up and threw it out and started shopping at Meijer. I will not set foot in a Kroger again until they abolish that obscenity. I don't care what they want it for; I don't think I should have to pay them to keep my privacy.
I'm sure you meant to say "highest cost of living, didn't you?
It sounds just real enough, but just farfetched enough. I will be keeping an eye out for more on this -- it looks too much like a Joey Skaggs-style joke.
Or, from Cult of the Dead Cow (CDC!) who probably also have a means of upgrading virus software remotely without user interaction.
My solution is to simply not give out my email address. I have about 6 completely phony Yahoo email addresses. I registered /. on one of them. No matter what I register for on the net, I use a fake address, because I have had to give up several really nice email addresses when they became engulfed in spam. Of course, my original hotmail address was by far the worst. 60+ messages a day. So far, my real email address remains unspammed.
In fact, there is an excellent Issac Asimov story about a curious little man who discovers the basic principles of mathematics and invents a "paper computer." This then leads to the idea that human beings can be put into missles to fight the war and win against an opponent that uses electronic jamming techniques to thwart their guidance computers. Typically Asimov, he was about fifty years ahead of the rest of us, and had already anticipated the lameness the crutch of technology would give us. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name of the story at present. However, I do know exactly where in my vast book collection it is located. So there.
Well, we can always lose the amplifiers and play on plain 'ol catgut. It's interesting you bring this up -- as the corporate culture moves to crush every alternate means of competition with them, they also crush the only thing that makes rock music work at all -- its novelty.
Rock was always about its newness, and most importantly its violent rejection of the status quo. Rock music was everything that Frank Sinatra was not, back in the fifties. And every succeeding ten years or so another revolution occurred wherein the values of the music that went before it were vehemently rejected. Right now the primary features of popular music are Britney Spears' ass and the Backstreet Boys' wimpy little goatees. There is no musicianship, and there is certainly no artistry in the music. So I am imagining that in another few months, we'll see the teeny-boppers who are swallowing that pablum will break all their records (I remember the 'disco sucks' demonstration on my elementary-school campus quite vividly -- thousands of smashed records), and they'll move on to whatever represents the diametric opposite of this shite. And since the record companies are becoming more and more apparent as the people "behind the music" the next phase may involve non-corporate music, created and distributed in non-corporate ways, as well. At least that is my hope. If not, I predict the rather pitiful death of the electric guitar / bass / drums style of music within a decade. And that's a drag, because I've invested a lot of my time in making that kind of music, and I don't think its potential has been exhausted just yet. But if it is, there are always alternatives. The point is, the record companies are trying to apply a corporate philosophy of control and containment to something (art) that has proven time and again that it simply will not be contained or controlled. If a particular medium is made unavailable, artists will simply move on to the next medium that presents itself.
"Musicians" have nothing to do with it. "Musicians" make 7 cents on the dollar on their recordings. In case you've been completely deaf and blind for the last three years or so, and don't watch VH1, and don't get out much, the musician has to pay back the studio costs, marketing costs, and tour costs out of that seven cents. So I'm sure they'd be happy to drop the price to three bucks, in return for taking fifty-one percent of their own money. It's just that the suckfly "Record Companies" wouldn't be making their skim. That is who is always responsbile for these kinds of things. BTW a home-made CD costs about $3.00 to make, including the ink and paper for the packaging. A mass-produced CD (runs of more than a thousand) no doubt costs way under fifty cents.
Would this have anything to do with the fact that Netzero recently sued Juno over a patent on their ad-delivery window concept? A story I believe I submitted to /. some time ago and never saw. Is this Juno's way of getting some miniscule amount of revenue back?
I would provide a link to the page on Netzero where I saw notice of the suit, but it appears to have moved.
The fundamental problem is not lack of money, nor lack of examiners. The fundamental problem is that their incentive is to grant as many patents as possible. There is no apparent penalty for failing to discover prior art, or for failing to see that the application in question is an obvious solution in a field. If a patent examiner could be fired for granting something as dull-wittedly obvious as the one-click patent they would be a little less gung-ho to do so. Instead, they are apparently paid per patent to grant them. It's run on a for-profit basis. IMHO the patent office simply needs to be shut down, all of the management fired, and reorganized with some checks and balances built in. There is no other solution.
And I dare you to find a web page that I need to visit that requires Java. I use Opera 5, the free edition, without java because I didn't see the point in downloading 7 MB of java interpreter for the .000213% of the banner ads I see that use some sort of java animation. Been using it for about a month now. Every once in a great while, I see a box that says "This applet requires a plug-in blah blah blah" and I just happily ignore it. MS is dropping Java because it will have zero impact on them, and no one in their right mind is using it for web development. I'm not saying that means anything to me -- I am, after all defecting from the IE camp because IE also is irritating and I am tired of screwing with it. When I next boot up Linux, I will probably download the free Opera for Linux and use that, just because I have no time for Netscape. But at any rate, who gives a shit what C# can do or what Java can do? I don't need either of them and won't bother visiting sites that do.
But in this case the price for this stuff is just so ridiculously high, and the disadvantages so huge, that most people won't go for it. It's got all the scuzzy charm of Divx, and Divx died a horrible, grisly death at the hands of pissed-off consumers.
I'm with you. I have no intention of buying this shit. I have better things to do than fight with the cable company through my TV. Fuck them all running.
The term is Global warming. It doesn't matter if the US is having a really cold winter. It doesn't matter if it's cold this year. The global average temperature continues to rise. This isn't some sort of fiction, and it doesn't look like it's going away. The increase will be felt mostly at the poles, where the gradual melting of icebergs will raise the sea level and drown coastal cities. The other place it will be felt is in our increasingly fucked-up climate.
It's interesting that you bring up the opinions of scientists of the 1920's to bolster your argument. Science is always an evolving game. What was known about climatology and the composition of the earth in 1920 has nothing to do with what we know today. Most of the activity causing global warming has occurred since then. So your example is worthless. In 1920 most homes in the US did not have electricity, and those that did used it for light and maybe a radio. There were probably less than a million automobiles in existence everywhere. There were at least that many on the highway with me this morning.
Global warming will not mean the summer is too hot. Most of the heat will be absorbed by the ice at the poles. Live more than 400 miles from the ocean? Global warming will mean you're going to be visiting the beach more often. Or more likely, your kids will. Or your grandkids. Global warming may also mean that you get to see more fun things like tornadoes and hurricanes, as weather patterns shift. So even if your house isn't by the sea today, it may get picked up and moved there eventually.
But looking past the end of your nose to something that may not actually have an effect on your life is probably too much to ask. You've made it clear you think science is some sort of political activity, and scientific discoveries which make you uncomfortable must be from stupid "liberalz." That's OK. You're entitled to your opinion, however poorly-informed and knee-jerk it is. It's just fortunate for the rest of us that because your views are so poorly thought-out and ill-informed, they are of no importance. Have a nice day.
I tend to think that the visibility of these artifacts and symbols is highly important lest people forget the atrocities committed under their banner. A rather distant relative of mine brought back some swastikas and other things he "relieved" a german soldier of during the war. I consider them a valuable reminder . . .
It's about time a statue was written extracting some gruesome penalty for filing these frivolous patent suits. Like maybe you are fined the amount of money expected in your suit, or maybe the lawyers involved should be faced with losing their bar certification in all 50 states, or something. Right now this stupidity goes on because there is a potential reward for doing it but no risk for failing. There needs to be a risk to put things back in balance. And it needs to be a motherfucker of risk. . .
It should be noted that the word "aqua" described a light blue color for several centuries before anyone ever heard of Dipshit Steve Jobs. Thank you.