Assuming this works, yeah, let's build it on an
island chain!!! A nice spot isolated from
the rest of the world, where it would take a
massive effort to get the power to other useful
places, like oh, say, continental Europe...
I do so hate political BS like this. Hey,
Japan has contributed quite a lot of tech to the
world since WWII, and use a lot of energy, and
perhaps deserve something like this. But really,
let's not ignore the realities of power
distribution in selecing a site for such a
huge project.
Oh, wait, our cowboy-in-chief doesn't
understand the realities of power
distribution, or any of that other nasty
scienceish-stuff. What could I have had
in mind, posing such a silly thought?
Oops, gotta go, time for my 6:00 cloned liver transplant in Vanuatu, soon the wealthiest
nation on Earth for not letting fictional
morality dictate reality...
Don't hate people for being evangelical
Christians. Their motivation is to get as
many people to heaven as possible.
Hate them? I love them. They give
me something to do over coffee on a boring
day.
And I've lost count of how many I've
converted to Buddhism (which I don't practice
myself) - Did you know that most strongly
religious people don't realize that most religions
repeat the same tired themes over and over and
over, and if you can point them to something
"close enough" that entirely predates what
they believe, it confuses them?;-)
Boy, would Uncle Screwtape feel proud of me
(if he didn't patiently wait for me to fail so
he can consume my soul slowly and painfully).
But the worst are evangelical atheists. The
only motivation there is for you to be godless
just like them so you won't be happier than they
are.
Joking aside, I think you have committed the logic
error called
bifurcation, or the "false dilemma" - You propose
that, if they don't want to "save" you so you can go
to heaven, they must want to deprive you of that
reward. In this case, it counts as a "false" dilemma
because they do not believe such a reward exists,
therefore they do not intend to "deprive" you of
it.
Atheists (who I consider almost as amusingly wrong as
anyone claiming to know the "one true" religion) believe,
in the same way a Christian believes (ie
irrationally, that no god exists. Therefore, they
only want to free people from the oppressive shackles
of religion. Any resources you devote to a nonexistant
afterlife must, in their opinion, count as purely wasted.
Any restrained behavior for reasons outside the law
(or basic health and safety) deprives you of pleasure
for no good reason. Any praying for cures or money
or peace or whatever just tries to put off the
inevitable outcome of having to deal with your problems
yourself, since no divine intervention will come.
For an analogy, if you met someone who, for every dollar
they get, they throw a dime straight up into the air
so the Great BunnyRabbit will bring them good luck,
would you consider that a valid belief, or nonsense
that, assuming said person doesn't have a screw loose,
you would do them a favor by showing them the error of
their ways? (For amusement, now go back and change
"Great BunnyRabbit" to "Jesus" or "Jehovah", and look
up the idea of the tithe).
So, as hard as it may seem to accept this, the
evangelical atheists have just as noble a goal as
the evangelical Christians (or any group
that hypes itself to an absurd extreme). If,
of course, you consider it "noble" to stubbornly
considering oneself as absolutely, unyieldingly
correct, and all others need to learn "the truth".
Too bad most of the nerds who are carried
away by the fantasy stories are more interested
in how to attach a tail to their costume
before the furry convention than in the
Christianity-laced works of C.S. Lewis.
Just because Lewis figurative picks up the
Christian Bible and beats the reader (now
"viewer") over the head with it, doesn't
mean non-Christians can't still enjoy his
work.
For a quick-n-dirty analogy, did the original
Star Wars offend non-Christians by portraying
Luke as a Christ-figure (or for those more
familar with Campbell, just one aspect of the
thousand-faced hero)? I would say no, in
particular considering its popularity with
geeks and their bothersome habit of casting
off the oppressive religions of their fathers.
For another, more recent, analogy, did you know
that, although Tolkien began writing it roughly
a decade earlier, when LotR first came out people
considered it as a sort of showing-off to Lewis
how to tell the story of Christ in a fantasy
setting in a style suitable for adults? And just
look at how geeks shunned those movies!
Personally, I would go see this. Like LotR, I
may consider it an abomination compared to the
original, and not see any of them beyond the
first. But I'll give it a shot, despite not
considering myself a Christian.
The Cheapo shredder usually shredes only
vertically, and does so usually so that there
are about 20 cuts down one page ...
On the other hand, good commercial shredders
litterall demolish the paper, turning it into
sawdust like material that would be impossible
(virtually) to reconstruct.
I have the second-cheapest cross-shredder
I could buy from WallyWorld (Yeah, I know,
evil, but show me a Mom&Pop that carries
cross-shredders). For USD$25, I end up
with 0.25" by 1.5" confetti. Good luck
putting that back together.
And for a teensy bit extra security, when I
empty the bin, I dump a cup of water on it for
good measure. 15 minutes later I have paper
mache - Even if you could still recognize
a word here and there, how do you scoop it
out of the wet blob to reassemble without
obliterating it?. I suppose I could go a step
further and burn it as well, but really, why bother? Anyone wanting my personal data that
badly can get it a lot easier than searching
my garbage for paper mush.
As a previous poster mentioned, ignorance
isn't an excuse for one's actions in the eyes
of the law.
"Ignorance of the law" does not mean the same
thing as "plausible deniability".
If congress passes a law making it illegal to
twiddle one's thumbs in public, and I do not
realize this, then the idea of ignorance not
giving me an excuse applies - The fact that I
did not know about the anti-twiddling law does
not exempt me from its penalties.
If, on the other hand, I run a shipping
company (such as FedEx), no one could
reasonably expect me to know the contents
of every package I deliver. I have plausible
deniability about knowing that I delivered,
sone illegal package, and unless someone can
prove that I knew the contents of that
package and delivered it anyway, I would have
no legal liability for its contents.
The same applies to file sharing and routing
schemes such as MUTE uses. If I somehow don't
know that trading (some) MP3s online violates
the law, too bad, the RIAA can still screw me.
If I allow my computer to serve as a waystation
for packets, arguably for the same of overall
network efficiency, why would I have any
responsibility for those packets?
The word "waystation" gives me another good
analogy - Harboring a fugitive breaks the law.
Running a hotel that happens to unknowingly
have a fugitive staying there does not.
Well, yes and no. NullSoft released WinAmp
before AOL bought them out, IIRC. And produced
basically nothing while owned by AOL (other than
the quickly-retracted P2P "Waste" fiasco). And
now, I recently read, AOL no longer wants NullSoft
(and as a result, we have the first worthwhile
WinAmp update since AOL bought them, how
amusing). So, you could probably argue that
WinAmp doesn't actual come from AOL.
But, AOL still payed their bills for a few years.
Owned or whored-to, they have some close
connection.
This is like a steel cage match between bin
Laden and Hitler. Who the hell do I root
for?
Y'know, I just pondered this for a moment, and
find it somewhat odd...
Years ago, back in the prime of the dialup days,
we just couldn't hate any company more than AOL.
Anything involving them might as well have had
leprosy, as far as geeks felt.
And yet now, with this tossup (WMP vs RealOne), I
just realized that I currently use both a browser
(Mozilla) and a media player (WinAmp) heavily
funded by AOL.
Strange, how times can change. And yet, if you
asked me my general opinion of AOL, I'd still say
they suck - But I suppose I have to thank them
for sponsoring two pretty nice programs.
Scary thought - Perhaps some day, we'll have
to thank (gasp!) Microsoft for creating something
nice for us? Eeeek. Time to go hide under the
bed for a while.
Hey, I can appreciate water cooling. Keep the
chip at basically room temperature, it increases
its life and the OC'ers can push it a bit. But
-100? WHY??? What possible use can this serve?
It doesn't even seem "cool" at this point (beyond
the obvious pun). Wasting hundreds of watts, taking up way too much room (extra-large
form-factor, anyone?), needing a fork-lift to
move it... How does any of that benefit the
PC or user?
Some things have an upper limit to what still
constitutes "bigger/better/faster/harder". This
definitely crosses that line with regard to chip
cooling techniques.
But did they pay their extortion money?
on
Xandros version 2
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
Cool CD burning is integrated into the Xandros
File manager
All well and good, but have they paid royalties on
this
patent (5,666,531, owned by Optima)?
It would seem a pity to have the gestapo show
up at Xandros' HQ simply for failing to pay off
the right people...
why doesn't putting a signal over a power
line act like a big antenna?
It does. Thus we have a ubiquitous 60hz hum
that every interference-sensitive hunk o' wires
within 20 miles of a power line needs to waste
time/space/energy to filtering that frequency
out. An if the hunk 'o wires in question
actually has the express purpose of looking
in the 60hz range, good luck - It might take
less effort to fly to Siberia than to filter
out line noise yet allow a desired near-60hz
target signal to pass.
You raise good points, but unless you also work
in a library IT department, I suspect the parent
poster probably knows the requirements and
limitations of his world better than we do.
try in their own vcr/DVD player in front of
the customer. If it works, it's the customer's
problem.
How do you propose testing something like a RedHat
install CD? For the latest movie, you just pop
it in and verify it plays a few seconds. For a
Linux distro, you'd need to go through a full
install to prove to the customer that it works.
That can easily take an hour better spent doing
more productive activities. Or, just getting
the MD5 of the disc might (all but) prove it
works, but only to someone who understands the
idea of a checksum - Joe LibraryPatron will
blink and wonder how some fancy serial-number-like
thing proves that it works.
Using your argument, libraries should just close
their doors, to prevent less literated patrons
complaining they cannot read the books available,
because they have expectation they can read all
books on the shelves.
With a book, a potential reader can pick it
up, open it, and see immediately that they
don't read French, or that it has too high
of an equasion-to-text ratio for a non-mathematician,
or most other conditions that would cause them to
fail to read the book. With a CD, I see it as
very likely that someone might pick it
up ("Hey, cool, that "Linux" thing my nephew
mentioned - I wonder how Age of Empires will
look with that installed...") with no clue at
all how to use it. Worse, as in the half-joking
potential line of thought I just quoted, they
may well destroy their existing OS install without
realizing it.
Don't get me wrong, I use Linux and love it.
But regardless of whether or not we consider it
ready for the desktop of the average user, I
would say we can confidently consider it NOT
ready for the average user to install (keep in
mind that most users never even install their
own copy of Windows... It comes from Dell
or HP or whomever with an OS loaded, and they
don't change OS until they upgrade to a new
machine).
Also, you need the ROM image from an MT-32
for this to work at all. If I remember correctly,
this wasn't needed before.
Of course, due to the lack of a copyright, anyone
can freely distribute that ROM. For example, you
can currently get a copy of it from their page at
sourceforge.
I suspect they made it external to the core
program just in case the lawyers succeeded in
making life difficult - Using a home-made (and
thus non-copyrighted) version would get around
any objections Roland might raise. And, more
importantly, for those lucky enough to have
an MT-32 to rip the ROM from (or the 99% of us
who don't particularly give a damn about the
legality of grabing one off the internet), a
user could run with that one rather than the
home-brew one, with no liability for the
emulator's authors.
I think he meant more that it won't catch on
fire, rather than you can safely drink it. The
ethanol comparison only referred to relative
concentrations of the flamable substance (40%
served as drinks, vs 20% in fuel cells, neither
of which will light on fire).
For a comparison of safety of chemicals involved,
modern batteries contain things that will not
only will harm you if ingested, but they will
burn skin on contact. Methanol might dry out
your skin (like an astringent), but comes nowhere
near an actual caustic burn.
Genetically, they [eggs, and embryos] are
human beings. The big picture: they are the
equivalent of brain-dead humans [until they
are proven to be sentient]. They should have
about the same rights as those.
And people with Down's syndrome, or Turner's,
or Klinefelter's, or any other severe chromosomal
abnormality, do NOT genetically match a
human (and interestingly enough, that includes
a good number of people you'd consider "normal",
unlike the above-mentioned disease conditions...
XXY, as an example, where you get a reasonably
normal female with a tendancy toward masculine
traits). So, should we consider them as
animals, and have the right to treat them
the same as we would with a dog or horse?
No, I don't mean this as a troll. I just think
we need to fundamentally change the way we
view our legal and moral definition of "human".
Personally, I favor "anything capable of
supporting itself and successfully interacting
with society", with a modifier for age. Outside
that, no rights beyond basic cruelty-to-animals
style rights (though I suspect I count
as something of an extremist in that
regard). However, whichever way you look at
this, we can't just say "genetic humans have
all the rights of a full living adult human",
without having a VERY glaring grey area.
Bull crap. You'd go 85 if the limit was
80. You'd go 90 if the limit was 85.
Yes, but for the wrong reason.
People tend to drive to their (and their
car's) ability, not just a flat "five over".
Study after study has shown that people go
slower in heavy traffic, in low visibility
conditions, and when they just don't feel
on-the-ball.
So yes, I'd go as high as 90, because my car
can handle it. For that reason, I go as high
as 84 now (1 less than the "auto-tow" speed)
in good conditions. That has nothing at all
to do with the posted limit, though, beyond
avoiding excessive legal hassles. Given a
good road with no speed limit, I'd still only
go 90.
This is even worse than having to have a
LICENSE PLATE! I don't want anyone else, (LET
ALONE POLICE!) knowing who I am.
I realize you meant that as a joke, but some of
us don't want our whereabouts known at
every second of every day. This has nothing to
do with paranoia (beyond the standard healthy
dose), or a penchant for illegal activities. I
just don't want my every move tracked.
Also, realize that this has a huge potential
for abuse... I go through a toll perhaps once
a month. If I had one of these EZ Passes (or
the local equivalent, the TransPass), I would
not notice for up to a month if someone stole
it and had earned me quite a bit of debt. Now,
even aside from the bill, what happens when
my TransPass record for the past month shows
me regularly visiting a mistress, or a crime
scene, or some other place I've never gone, all
because someone thought ahead of time to cover
their tracks and use a stolen TransPass? Yeah,
suuuuuuure the police/divorce-attourney
will believe someone nabbed by pass and I just
didn't notice...
This boils down to the classic argument about
speed cameras - they don't prove a driver, just
a vehicle. Although some may justify the
inconvenience (personally, I find it reprehensible)
of getting a ticket after loaning out your car to
a friend, the situation goes from "annoyance"
to potentially "pound-me-in-the-ass-prison" or
"lose-everything-to-ex-wifey" when records like
these suffice as "evidence" of the actual driver
in court. I do not consider that even remotely
acceptible, nor should any of us.
It's a scientific outpost, with science's
typical shoestring budgets
...And they just had a nice boost to their budget
land unexpectedly in the back door. They could
charge him twice their cost for just the fuel
(likely in the 5-10k range), and come out both
looking good and ahead a few grand.
Now he wants these scients to scrap some
their research plans for the summer (it's
summer down there now, prime time research
season)
Yup, summer. Which also means they can order
new supplies and have them arrive in a timely
manner. This guy just wants fuel - Do you
suppose it costs more (both monetarily and
time-wise) to have a few hundred gallons of
fuel flown in, or a transport plane capable of
taking Johanson's RV-4 back with it?
I'll agree that the scientists have only a
minimal obligation to keep this guy alive,
but refusing to refuel him appears to create
more of a burden for everyone, as well
as passing up a great opportunity to make a
few bucks.
Before donning tinfoil hats here, remember
that all governments like to get paid.
Except that, by their actions, the NZ government
guaranteed that they won't get paid, not
only on Bruce's back-taxes, but on future income
from the deal he had set up.
When I started reading his account of this
mess, I thought the same thing myself, just
an overly-paranoid guy with a seriously
questionable hobby, who really screwed up
with paying his taxes. But the more I read,
the more it appeared that they really did
deliberately ruin him.
Well, a centralized authority in control of
the internet, while possibly restricting some
current freedoms could make tremendous positive
impacts in others. For example:
<snip> This doesn't sound all bad to me
Or for a few more examples that appeal to
various major world governments:
Outlaw the use of all "hard" cryptography.
Centralized taxation (Did you forget your meds this morning?????)
No more porn, or at least nothing hard-core
"Perfect" monitoring of all traffic, shared with all member
governments
Extradition to, say, Syria, for exercising my American freedom
of speech and religion
Sorry, but this has a LOT more potential for a bad outcome
than for improvement on the few flaws the internet currently
has. Keep the governments (any or all, doesn't matter to me)
the hell away from the net!
Fine. Let's start calling all spyware
"Gator-ware" (or "Claria-ware", to reflect their
name change, which seems unneeded and even
counterproductive considering what a great
product they seem to think they have).
We can all play their stupid little word games,
to our amusement and their detriment.
Perhaps we can even come up with an entire
themed system of sypware nomenclature...
"Gatorware" sneaks in to eat you, but if you
look closely enough, you can see it install
itself. "Crocware" boldly anounces itself
and makes you think you need it. "Clariaware"
breaks any programs that try to call a spade
a spade (such as some of the adaware removing
spyware progs out there). Hmm...
Why should the ISP or the computer manufacturer
take responsibility? They weren't responsible for
putting it there!
If that held true, I would agree with you.
It does not, however.
My parents just bought a Compaq (without
consulting me first... Not a bad machine,
but I could have done a LOT better for the
price). A bit short on memory (XP with only
256MB does not do well), so I sat down to
tweak it a bit.
It totally blew me away that AdAware found
six distinct problems on an out-of-the-box
system. Two browser hijacks, and four
questionable registry keys (possibly all
related, but irrelevant - It contained more
than zero spyware blobs direct from Compaq),
a condition I consider totally unacceptible.
So yes, Compaq, and Dell, and HP, and any other
companies that have decided to reduce costs by
sleeping with the enemy, should all have to
then suffer the support costs of people wondering
what this "Gator" thing does. AFAIK, every major
manufacturer includes Norton or Mcaffee on any
Windows machine, by default. They want fewer
tech support headaches? Include AdAware Pro
as well. Until they do that (and especially
if they put the spyware on the machine themselves),
they should not complain about (much less outright
refuse to respond to) calls concerning spyware
removal.
the process to establish the rightful owner
would have been much more complicated.
The "rightful owner"? SSC hosted it, for
which you built up a sizeable karma reserve.
However, the title of "editor" for a pool
of volunteer-submitted articles strikes me as
little more than an honorific. "Okay, you guys
will host our work, you can appoint your own
"Grand Pubah of the Linux Gazette" if you want
to.
But owned? How about the four(?) months
the LG existed before SSC became involved?
I suppose that means nothing, even though in
patent-law (which I know doesn't apply here,
but I want to give a legal/moral analogy) it
would count as prior art?
I'm sorry that some of the LG volunteers did
not see our changes as progress and did not want
to work with us to make LG a better site.
Perhaps public perception differs from the reality
in this case. But from material available at the
two LG sites, it would appear that SSC basically
wanted to turn the LG into little more than another
blog site, which after this mess came out to the
public, SSC decided to reverse around 90% of the
changes. If such an improvement, why revert to
almost the same as before the schizm?
Blogs and newssites have their uses. But an
actual, formalized journal-format has something
both lack - Permanance. The web has a major
shortage of that, which LG provided. If I want
a blog or newssite, I'll read K5 or NewsForge,
respectively. People read LG for an entirely
different reason, which SSC apparently intended
to eliminate. Thus the backlash.
As I said, SSC has built up some karma for
doing the Linux community such a service for
so long. But in case you haven't kept up on
your Slashdot reading, most of us REALLY
dislike corporate BS like this. Your actual
authors, the people who give you
something to publish, decided you no longer
served the best interests of the LG. So while
you may actually win the name, your/their readers
will follow the content, not the name.
That said, I have no particular personal interest
in the outcome of this. I'll read both
LG sites for a while, and see how this turns
out. If SSC appears more-or-less honest in
their intent, I sincerely wish you well. I
can't say, though, that I currently have a
lot of hope for that.
Such "thugs" are required to vigorously defend
their trademarks or they can be nullified.
These particular thugs registered their trademark
on the exact same day, 10/28/2003, that the
non-corporate-lackeys among them notified SSC
of their intent to split. If that alone doesn't
call the validity of their trademark into question
(or even make registering it a prosecuteably
fradulent act), I don't know what would.
Somehow I can't envision how they could manage
to place products in sitcoms and miniseries which
take place during WWII, 70's, or any other period
than present time.
More subtle placement than "oh look, the cool
and highly-emulable lead character drinks Coke,
wears Nikes, and drives a Lexus" can sometimes
work better than beating the viewer over the
head with placements. In a very old setting,
such as the Moses-with-a-PDA example, you
could have clouds vaguely look like the Nike
swish. In reasonably modern settings, such as
any time this century, many of the big names
in common products already existed, and they
can use th "nostalgia" angle to place
products.
Don't underestimate the ability of advertisers
to find ways to stick in references to products.
They will, no doubt at all.
And personally, I would prefer
product placement to normal 30-second spots.
Think of it this way - We unavoidably see
"product placement" in real life. For example,
just looking around the desk I currently sit
at, I have a Compaq computer (not mine), a
bottle of Mountain Dew, a pair of JBL speakers,
an AOL sign-on disk (unopened), a bottle of
Advil, and a sharpie.
I can clearly see the brand of all those from
just a quick glance, and think nothing of it.
By comparison, if my desk suddenly vanished for
30 seconds to allow the new 2004 Ford Destructor
to appear covered in girls or mud or whatever,
then came back at the end of a few similar
product appearances, I would find that highly
disturbing to my flow of consciousness.
Current model of advertising just isn't
efficient enough, and horribly outdated on
top of that.
Real, formal ads don't so much count as an
"outdated" business model, as an annoying one.
People have always sought ways to remove
annoyances from their lives, whether or not
the source of those annoyances either allows
it or not. Advertisers took advantage of the
general omplacency of society by making
commercial content more and more annoying, but
now that consumers have a means of addressing
that, it no longer works. Nothing "fair" or
"unfair" or "outdated" about this, just the
never-ending arms escalation of "get people
to do what we want" vs "screw you, we'll do
what we want".
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming this works, yeah, let's build it on an island chain!!! A nice spot isolated from the rest of the world, where it would take a massive effort to get the power to other useful places, like oh, say, continental Europe...
I do so hate political BS like this. Hey, Japan has contributed quite a lot of tech to the world since WWII, and use a lot of energy, and perhaps deserve something like this. But really, let's not ignore the realities of power distribution in selecing a site for such a huge project.
Oh, wait, our cowboy-in-chief doesn't understand the realities of power distribution, or any of that other nasty scienceish-stuff. What could I have had in mind, posing such a silly thought?
Oops, gotta go, time for my 6:00 cloned liver transplant in Vanuatu, soon the wealthiest nation on Earth for not letting fictional morality dictate reality...
Don't hate people for being evangelical Christians. Their motivation is to get as many people to heaven as possible.
;-)
Hate them? I love them. They give me something to do over coffee on a boring day.
And I've lost count of how many I've converted to Buddhism (which I don't practice myself) - Did you know that most strongly religious people don't realize that most religions repeat the same tired themes over and over and over, and if you can point them to something "close enough" that entirely predates what they believe, it confuses them?
Boy, would Uncle Screwtape feel proud of me (if he didn't patiently wait for me to fail so he can consume my soul slowly and painfully).
But the worst are evangelical atheists. The only motivation there is for you to be godless just like them so you won't be happier than they are.
Joking aside, I think you have committed the logic error called bifurcation, or the "false dilemma" - You propose that, if they don't want to "save" you so you can go to heaven, they must want to deprive you of that reward. In this case, it counts as a "false" dilemma because they do not believe such a reward exists, therefore they do not intend to "deprive" you of it.
Atheists (who I consider almost as amusingly wrong as anyone claiming to know the "one true" religion) believe, in the same way a Christian believes (ie irrationally, that no god exists. Therefore, they only want to free people from the oppressive shackles of religion. Any resources you devote to a nonexistant afterlife must, in their opinion, count as purely wasted. Any restrained behavior for reasons outside the law (or basic health and safety) deprives you of pleasure for no good reason. Any praying for cures or money or peace or whatever just tries to put off the inevitable outcome of having to deal with your problems yourself, since no divine intervention will come.
For an analogy, if you met someone who, for every dollar they get, they throw a dime straight up into the air so the Great BunnyRabbit will bring them good luck, would you consider that a valid belief, or nonsense that, assuming said person doesn't have a screw loose, you would do them a favor by showing them the error of their ways? (For amusement, now go back and change "Great BunnyRabbit" to "Jesus" or "Jehovah", and look up the idea of the tithe).
So, as hard as it may seem to accept this, the evangelical atheists have just as noble a goal as the evangelical Christians (or any group that hypes itself to an absurd extreme). If, of course, you consider it "noble" to stubbornly considering oneself as absolutely, unyieldingly correct, and all others need to learn "the truth".
Too bad most of the nerds who are carried away by the fantasy stories are more interested in how to attach a tail to their costume before the furry convention than in the Christianity-laced works of C.S. Lewis.
Just because Lewis figurative picks up the Christian Bible and beats the reader (now "viewer") over the head with it, doesn't mean non-Christians can't still enjoy his work.
For a quick-n-dirty analogy, did the original Star Wars offend non-Christians by portraying Luke as a Christ-figure (or for those more familar with Campbell, just one aspect of the thousand-faced hero)? I would say no, in particular considering its popularity with geeks and their bothersome habit of casting off the oppressive religions of their fathers.
For another, more recent, analogy, did you know that, although Tolkien began writing it roughly a decade earlier, when LotR first came out people considered it as a sort of showing-off to Lewis how to tell the story of Christ in a fantasy setting in a style suitable for adults? And just look at how geeks shunned those movies!
Personally, I would go see this. Like LotR, I may consider it an abomination compared to the original, and not see any of them beyond the first. But I'll give it a shot, despite not considering myself a Christian.
The Cheapo shredder usually shredes only vertically, and does so usually so that there are about 20 cuts down one page
...
On the other hand, good commercial shredders litterall demolish the paper, turning it into sawdust like material that would be impossible (virtually) to reconstruct.
I have the second-cheapest cross-shredder I could buy from WallyWorld (Yeah, I know, evil, but show me a Mom&Pop that carries cross-shredders). For USD$25, I end up with 0.25" by 1.5" confetti. Good luck putting that back together.
And for a teensy bit extra security, when I empty the bin, I dump a cup of water on it for good measure. 15 minutes later I have paper mache - Even if you could still recognize a word here and there, how do you scoop it out of the wet blob to reassemble without obliterating it?. I suppose I could go a step further and burn it as well, but really, why bother? Anyone wanting my personal data that badly can get it a lot easier than searching my garbage for paper mush.
As a previous poster mentioned, ignorance isn't an excuse for one's actions in the eyes of the law.
"Ignorance of the law" does not mean the same thing as "plausible deniability".
If congress passes a law making it illegal to twiddle one's thumbs in public, and I do not realize this, then the idea of ignorance not giving me an excuse applies - The fact that I did not know about the anti-twiddling law does not exempt me from its penalties.
If, on the other hand, I run a shipping company (such as FedEx), no one could reasonably expect me to know the contents of every package I deliver. I have plausible deniability about knowing that I delivered, sone illegal package, and unless someone can prove that I knew the contents of that package and delivered it anyway, I would have no legal liability for its contents.
The same applies to file sharing and routing schemes such as MUTE uses. If I somehow don't know that trading (some) MP3s online violates the law, too bad, the RIAA can still screw me. If I allow my computer to serve as a waystation for packets, arguably for the same of overall network efficiency, why would I have any responsibility for those packets?
The word "waystation" gives me another good analogy - Harboring a fugitive breaks the law. Running a hotel that happens to unknowingly have a fugitive staying there does not.
WinAmp is AOL? Time to uninstall.
Well, yes and no. NullSoft released WinAmp before AOL bought them out, IIRC. And produced basically nothing while owned by AOL (other than the quickly-retracted P2P "Waste" fiasco). And now, I recently read, AOL no longer wants NullSoft (and as a result, we have the first worthwhile WinAmp update since AOL bought them, how amusing). So, you could probably argue that WinAmp doesn't actual come from AOL.
But, AOL still payed their bills for a few years. Owned or whored-to, they have some close connection.
This is like a steel cage match between bin Laden and Hitler. Who the hell do I root for?
Y'know, I just pondered this for a moment, and find it somewhat odd...
Years ago, back in the prime of the dialup days, we just couldn't hate any company more than AOL. Anything involving them might as well have had leprosy, as far as geeks felt.
And yet now, with this tossup (WMP vs RealOne), I just realized that I currently use both a browser (Mozilla) and a media player (WinAmp) heavily funded by AOL.
Strange, how times can change. And yet, if you asked me my general opinion of AOL, I'd still say they suck - But I suppose I have to thank them for sponsoring two pretty nice programs.
Scary thought - Perhaps some day, we'll have to thank (gasp!) Microsoft for creating something nice for us? Eeeek. Time to go hide under the bed for a while.
Just that - Why?
Hey, I can appreciate water cooling. Keep the chip at basically room temperature, it increases its life and the OC'ers can push it a bit. But -100? WHY??? What possible use can this serve?
It doesn't even seem "cool" at this point (beyond the obvious pun). Wasting hundreds of watts, taking up way too much room (extra-large form-factor, anyone?), needing a fork-lift to move it... How does any of that benefit the PC or user?
Some things have an upper limit to what still constitutes "bigger/better/faster/harder". This definitely crosses that line with regard to chip cooling techniques.
Cool CD burning is integrated into the Xandros File manager
All well and good, but have they paid royalties on this patent (5,666,531, owned by Optima)?
It would seem a pity to have the gestapo show up at Xandros' HQ simply for failing to pay off the right people...
why doesn't putting a signal over a power line act like a big antenna?
It does. Thus we have a ubiquitous 60hz hum that every interference-sensitive hunk o' wires within 20 miles of a power line needs to waste time/space/energy to filtering that frequency out. An if the hunk 'o wires in question actually has the express purpose of looking in the 60hz range, good luck - It might take less effort to fly to Siberia than to filter out line noise yet allow a desired near-60hz target signal to pass.
(For those in the UK, change "60" to "50")
I could not disagree more.
You raise good points, but unless you also work in a library IT department, I suspect the parent poster probably knows the requirements and limitations of his world better than we do.
try in their own vcr/DVD player in front of the customer. If it works, it's the customer's problem.
How do you propose testing something like a RedHat install CD? For the latest movie, you just pop it in and verify it plays a few seconds. For a Linux distro, you'd need to go through a full install to prove to the customer that it works. That can easily take an hour better spent doing more productive activities. Or, just getting the MD5 of the disc might (all but) prove it works, but only to someone who understands the idea of a checksum - Joe LibraryPatron will blink and wonder how some fancy serial-number-like thing proves that it works.
Using your argument, libraries should just close their doors, to prevent less literated patrons complaining they cannot read the books available, because they have expectation they can read all books on the shelves.
With a book, a potential reader can pick it up, open it, and see immediately that they don't read French, or that it has too high of an equasion-to-text ratio for a non-mathematician, or most other conditions that would cause them to fail to read the book. With a CD, I see it as very likely that someone might pick it up ("Hey, cool, that "Linux" thing my nephew mentioned - I wonder how Age of Empires will look with that installed...") with no clue at all how to use it. Worse, as in the half-joking potential line of thought I just quoted, they may well destroy their existing OS install without realizing it.
Don't get me wrong, I use Linux and love it. But regardless of whether or not we consider it ready for the desktop of the average user, I would say we can confidently consider it NOT ready for the average user to install (keep in mind that most users never even install their own copy of Windows... It comes from Dell or HP or whomever with an OS loaded, and they don't change OS until they upgrade to a new machine).
Also, you need the ROM image from an MT-32 for this to work at all. If I remember correctly, this wasn't needed before.
Of course, due to the lack of a copyright, anyone can freely distribute that ROM. For example, you can currently get a copy of it from their page at sourceforge.
I suspect they made it external to the core program just in case the lawyers succeeded in making life difficult - Using a home-made (and thus non-copyrighted) version would get around any objections Roland might raise. And, more importantly, for those lucky enough to have an MT-32 to rip the ROM from (or the 99% of us who don't particularly give a damn about the legality of grabing one off the internet), a user could run with that one rather than the home-brew one, with no liability for the emulator's authors.
I wouldn't recomend drinking methonol.
I think he meant more that it won't catch on fire, rather than you can safely drink it. The ethanol comparison only referred to relative concentrations of the flamable substance (40% served as drinks, vs 20% in fuel cells, neither of which will light on fire).
For a comparison of safety of chemicals involved, modern batteries contain things that will not only will harm you if ingested, but they will burn skin on contact. Methanol might dry out your skin (like an astringent), but comes nowhere near an actual caustic burn.
Genetically, they [eggs, and embryos] are human beings. The big picture: they are the equivalent of brain-dead humans [until they are proven to be sentient]. They should have about the same rights as those.
And people with Down's syndrome, or Turner's, or Klinefelter's, or any other severe chromosomal abnormality, do NOT genetically match a human (and interestingly enough, that includes a good number of people you'd consider "normal", unlike the above-mentioned disease conditions... XXY, as an example, where you get a reasonably normal female with a tendancy toward masculine traits). So, should we consider them as animals, and have the right to treat them the same as we would with a dog or horse?
No, I don't mean this as a troll. I just think we need to fundamentally change the way we view our legal and moral definition of "human". Personally, I favor "anything capable of supporting itself and successfully interacting with society", with a modifier for age. Outside that, no rights beyond basic cruelty-to-animals style rights (though I suspect I count as something of an extremist in that regard). However, whichever way you look at this, we can't just say "genetic humans have all the rights of a full living adult human", without having a VERY glaring grey area.
Bull crap. You'd go 85 if the limit was 80. You'd go 90 if the limit was 85.
Yes, but for the wrong reason.
People tend to drive to their (and their car's) ability, not just a flat "five over". Study after study has shown that people go slower in heavy traffic, in low visibility conditions, and when they just don't feel on-the-ball.
So yes, I'd go as high as 90, because my car can handle it. For that reason, I go as high as 84 now (1 less than the "auto-tow" speed) in good conditions. That has nothing at all to do with the posted limit, though, beyond avoiding excessive legal hassles. Given a good road with no speed limit, I'd still only go 90.
This is even worse than having to have a LICENSE PLATE! I don't want anyone else, (LET ALONE POLICE!) knowing who I am.
I realize you meant that as a joke, but some of us don't want our whereabouts known at every second of every day. This has nothing to do with paranoia (beyond the standard healthy dose), or a penchant for illegal activities. I just don't want my every move tracked.
Also, realize that this has a huge potential for abuse... I go through a toll perhaps once a month. If I had one of these EZ Passes (or the local equivalent, the TransPass), I would not notice for up to a month if someone stole it and had earned me quite a bit of debt. Now, even aside from the bill, what happens when my TransPass record for the past month shows me regularly visiting a mistress, or a crime scene, or some other place I've never gone, all because someone thought ahead of time to cover their tracks and use a stolen TransPass? Yeah, suuuuuuure the police/divorce-attourney will believe someone nabbed by pass and I just didn't notice...
This boils down to the classic argument about speed cameras - they don't prove a driver, just a vehicle. Although some may justify the inconvenience (personally, I find it reprehensible) of getting a ticket after loaning out your car to a friend, the situation goes from "annoyance" to potentially "pound-me-in-the-ass-prison" or "lose-everything-to-ex-wifey" when records like these suffice as "evidence" of the actual driver in court. I do not consider that even remotely acceptible, nor should any of us.
It's a scientific outpost, with science's typical shoestring budgets
...And they just had a nice boost to their budget
land unexpectedly in the back door. They could
charge him twice their cost for just the fuel
(likely in the 5-10k range), and come out both
looking good and ahead a few grand.
Now he wants these scients to scrap some their research plans for the summer (it's summer down there now, prime time research season)
Yup, summer. Which also means they can order new supplies and have them arrive in a timely manner. This guy just wants fuel - Do you suppose it costs more (both monetarily and time-wise) to have a few hundred gallons of fuel flown in, or a transport plane capable of taking Johanson's RV-4 back with it?
I'll agree that the scientists have only a minimal obligation to keep this guy alive, but refusing to refuel him appears to create more of a burden for everyone, as well as passing up a great opportunity to make a few bucks.
Before donning tinfoil hats here, remember that all governments like to get paid.
Except that, by their actions, the NZ government guaranteed that they won't get paid, not only on Bruce's back-taxes, but on future income from the deal he had set up.
When I started reading his account of this mess, I thought the same thing myself, just an overly-paranoid guy with a seriously questionable hobby, who really screwed up with paying his taxes. But the more I read, the more it appeared that they really did deliberately ruin him.
Just one more reason to hate the tax-man.
<snip>
This doesn't sound all bad to me
Or for a few more examples that appeal to various major world governments:
Sorry, but this has a LOT more potential for a bad outcome than for improvement on the few flaws the internet currently has. Keep the governments (any or all, doesn't matter to me) the hell away from the net!
Gator/Claria doesn't like us calling it spyware?
Fine. Let's start calling all spyware "Gator-ware" (or "Claria-ware", to reflect their name change, which seems unneeded and even counterproductive considering what a great product they seem to think they have).
We can all play their stupid little word games, to our amusement and their detriment.
Perhaps we can even come up with an entire themed system of sypware nomenclature... "Gatorware" sneaks in to eat you, but if you look closely enough, you can see it install itself. "Crocware" boldly anounces itself and makes you think you need it. "Clariaware" breaks any programs that try to call a spade a spade (such as some of the adaware removing spyware progs out there). Hmm...
Why should the ISP or the computer manufacturer take responsibility? They weren't responsible for putting it there!
If that held true, I would agree with you.
It does not, however.
My parents just bought a Compaq (without consulting me first... Not a bad machine, but I could have done a LOT better for the price). A bit short on memory (XP with only 256MB does not do well), so I sat down to tweak it a bit.
It totally blew me away that AdAware found six distinct problems on an out-of-the-box system. Two browser hijacks, and four questionable registry keys (possibly all related, but irrelevant - It contained more than zero spyware blobs direct from Compaq), a condition I consider totally unacceptible.
So yes, Compaq, and Dell, and HP, and any other companies that have decided to reduce costs by sleeping with the enemy, should all have to then suffer the support costs of people wondering what this "Gator" thing does. AFAIK, every major manufacturer includes Norton or Mcaffee on any Windows machine, by default. They want fewer tech support headaches? Include AdAware Pro as well. Until they do that (and especially if they put the spyware on the machine themselves), they should not complain about (much less outright refuse to respond to) calls concerning spyware removal.
the process to establish the rightful owner would have been much more complicated.
The "rightful owner"? SSC hosted it, for which you built up a sizeable karma reserve. However, the title of "editor" for a pool of volunteer-submitted articles strikes me as little more than an honorific. "Okay, you guys will host our work, you can appoint your own "Grand Pubah of the Linux Gazette" if you want to.
But owned? How about the four(?) months the LG existed before SSC became involved? I suppose that means nothing, even though in patent-law (which I know doesn't apply here, but I want to give a legal/moral analogy) it would count as prior art?
I'm sorry that some of the LG volunteers did not see our changes as progress and did not want to work with us to make LG a better site.
Perhaps public perception differs from the reality in this case. But from material available at the two LG sites, it would appear that SSC basically wanted to turn the LG into little more than another blog site, which after this mess came out to the public, SSC decided to reverse around 90% of the changes. If such an improvement, why revert to almost the same as before the schizm?
Blogs and newssites have their uses. But an actual, formalized journal-format has something both lack - Permanance. The web has a major shortage of that, which LG provided. If I want a blog or newssite, I'll read K5 or NewsForge, respectively. People read LG for an entirely different reason, which SSC apparently intended to eliminate. Thus the backlash.
As I said, SSC has built up some karma for doing the Linux community such a service for so long. But in case you haven't kept up on your Slashdot reading, most of us REALLY dislike corporate BS like this. Your actual authors, the people who give you something to publish, decided you no longer served the best interests of the LG. So while you may actually win the name, your/their readers will follow the content, not the name.
That said, I have no particular personal interest in the outcome of this. I'll read both LG sites for a while, and see how this turns out. If SSC appears more-or-less honest in their intent, I sincerely wish you well. I can't say, though, that I currently have a lot of hope for that.
Ok, their machines may be a bit flaky, but do you have any evidence of "draconian agendas"?
How about their CEO publically stating he would do everything he can to secure a republican victory in 2004? Sound enough like an "agenda" qualify?
You can read more about it here.
Such "thugs" are required to vigorously defend their trademarks or they can be nullified.
These particular thugs registered their trademark on the exact same day, 10/28/2003, that the non-corporate-lackeys among them notified SSC of their intent to split. If that alone doesn't call the validity of their trademark into question (or even make registering it a prosecuteably fradulent act), I don't know what would.
Somehow I can't envision how they could manage to place products in sitcoms and miniseries which take place during WWII, 70's, or any other period than present time.
More subtle placement than "oh look, the cool and highly-emulable lead character drinks Coke, wears Nikes, and drives a Lexus" can sometimes work better than beating the viewer over the head with placements. In a very old setting, such as the Moses-with-a-PDA example, you could have clouds vaguely look like the Nike swish. In reasonably modern settings, such as any time this century, many of the big names in common products already existed, and they can use th "nostalgia" angle to place products.
Don't underestimate the ability of advertisers to find ways to stick in references to products. They will, no doubt at all.
And personally, I would prefer product placement to normal 30-second spots. Think of it this way - We unavoidably see "product placement" in real life. For example, just looking around the desk I currently sit at, I have a Compaq computer (not mine), a bottle of Mountain Dew, a pair of JBL speakers, an AOL sign-on disk (unopened), a bottle of Advil, and a sharpie. I can clearly see the brand of all those from just a quick glance, and think nothing of it. By comparison, if my desk suddenly vanished for 30 seconds to allow the new 2004 Ford Destructor to appear covered in girls or mud or whatever, then came back at the end of a few similar product appearances, I would find that highly disturbing to my flow of consciousness.
Current model of advertising just isn't efficient enough, and horribly outdated on top of that.
Real, formal ads don't so much count as an "outdated" business model, as an annoying one. People have always sought ways to remove annoyances from their lives, whether or not the source of those annoyances either allows it or not. Advertisers took advantage of the general omplacency of society by making commercial content more and more annoying, but now that consumers have a means of addressing that, it no longer works. Nothing "fair" or "unfair" or "outdated" about this, just the never-ending arms escalation of "get people to do what we want" vs "screw you, we'll do what we want".