The Knarr? That place has always seemed scary to me.
not that I'm not in there on the odd night playing shuffleboard, but...
Well, there are two kinds of bars in Washington State. Those that have pull tabs and those without. The knarr is on the cusp, if you ask me. Actually, that probably gives it a lot of character. "Character" like the big trough urinal that seats 2 or 3 and the open-air drug market in the back parking lot.
Mainly, the Knarr seems smokier than any of the other places, and that keeps me out. They had pinball last time I was there, though, which is a big plus.
It's funny you mention the Emigrant, my normal haunt is the Galway just across the street... They have trivia on Monday night at the Emigrant, maybe we could do a "team slashdot" thing:)
yeah, you'll be much happier on the ship canal bridge or the aurora bridge when the quake comes. Actually I-5 is elevated through most of downtown. And don't forget the Viaduct, which is the one thing that might actually fall down in a quake. ptiy, it's such a great road and (shhh) usually there's NO TRAFFIC on it. Except for a mariners game or I suppose a seahawks game.
My favorite place would be on the part of I-5 that isn't elevated, it's UNDER THE CONVENTION CENTER. Yeah...nothing's safer than having thousands of tons of concrete and steel above your head.
The metro bus system sucks. (every bus system sucks, except for the Peter Pan from DC to NYC to Boston.) Living in Seattle, I used to take that pile of crap that is Sound Transit all the time. One problem is the "ride free zone" downtown. The idea is great--speed buses through the busy downtown corridor by not having to wait for people to pay. The effect has been to turn the bus system into a rolling homeless shelter. Also, there are way too many bus stops. Walk a block, people. We don't need a bus stop on EVERY BLOCK you could skip a block and the bus would get you there much faster. (Try riding the 71/72/73 downtown from the U-district some morning and you will see what I'm talking about.)
Ultimately, the reason buses suck is because they don't have a right-of-way. They get stuck in traffic jams just like all those freakin' Subaru Foresters and Outbacks do.
The problem with building more roads is that it will lead to more sprawl, and then you're back to square one.
Before I was in Seattle, I lived in Washington DC. They have a subway system and it works great. I took it whenever I could. Actually, the metro is about 25 years old now and unfortunately it's pretty much at max capacity. But if you want to see the example of why NOT to just build more roads, look at Northern Virginia. Roads/interchanges the size of the I-5/I-405 split in Tukwila are EVERYWHERE. And it can still take 45 minutes to go ten miles during rush hour. Becuase developers are still building subdivisions like crazy out there, so the roads fill up.
People who think Seattle has a bad traffic problem clearly haven't seen traffic in a place like DC. We still kinda have nice fresh air out here; doubling the number of roads (hence cars) will break that. Also, the way people drive in Seattle, you could get another 10% usage out of the roads by simply getting people to drive AT the speed limit, not BELOW it, on the major interstates. Frankly, I don't think Seattle drivers have the bandwidth to handle a 16-lane collector-distributor system like where I-270 meets the DC beltway.
Also, I encourage everyone to do what I did: Move to the city and work in the city. You get a few hours of your day back, and you're not supporting Evil (be it oil-funded terrorists or oil-funded economic destruction off the coast of Spain or oil-funded politicians in the Oval Office) as much. Or, if you work on the East Side, live there too. If you're not willilng to do that, stop bitching about traffic. No job is holding a gun to your head.
Just my two cents. And please don't take this as a personal attack; I'm just like that.
Look at all the corporations. They have beige boxes. Plain boring bland beige. But we all know that black boxes are like way cooler! And you can pimp 'em out, and overclock them. It really irks "The Man" (aka Michael Dell) because he doesn't want you tricking out his system! He built a special power supply connector just to keep the shackles of oppression on you, my techno brother!
Yet, black boxes don't get props in The Man's World because they dont' Play By The Rules. The Man can offer on-site tech support when boring beige bland box blows bits. The Black box can't do that, no. The black box might not have genuine Intel parts inside. It might not be reliable, like good old beige with its Service Tag and pre-affixed OEM OS sticker. Maybe it's running pirated illegal hacker software. Or at least that's what The Man wants you to think.
Rise up! Throw off the beige bland yoke of the oppressive computer overlords and be FREE! Overclock your FSB, put head spreaders on your DDR, and RECLAIM THE POWER!!!!! Yes! Can you feel the raw energy coursing through your veins as you crack the 15,000 threshhold on 3DMark2001? THAT'S what The Man is hiding from you, the raw power and lethal speed of overclocked, unlocked, vcore boosted, CAS latency reduced-ed HARDWARE!
How will someone be able to get a job when they lack such basic skills as using a Windows based machine.
Uh....look around you. All those people using Windows and Office now, 98% of them have never had any training whatsoever. Most of 'em can't even type, though significantly more of them can type than can, say, use fdisk or regedit. They don't know the first thing about how to actually run these programs. If they need to learn an unfamiliar program, they co-pilot it with an experienced user, who probably did the same thing to learn it themselves.
I spent 30 minutes setting up screensavers with a user yesterday. Part of it was fun, but the other part was helping her become a little more familiar with the UI.
I do think it would be nice if people got some training in Microsoft products. But then Microsoft changes everything aroudn with each major release. Look at the XP desktop compared to the 2000 desktop; they're so different. The taskbar behaves completely differently now, etc. etc. So even if they do learn it in school, that knowledge will be semi-useless in two or five years.
Dude. this is slashdot. you don't have to read the article to be an expert.
By the way, it was brilliant how you refuted my arguments simply by positing that I never read the article. And I don't know how you inferred what you did in the part before the ???
For the record, my point is: The same forces which creates so many of the good things in civilization also ensures there will be bad things, and that bad things will happen if an individual sees a compelling enough good to offset the badness.
Take for example that time-bomb oil tanker two miles underwater off the coast of Spain. That's a bad thing. But before it sank, it was good. It would create wealth and add value for so many people along the way, as it gets unloaded, refined, distributed, sold, and combusted.
We all get in our cars in the morning and drive to work, knowing that by doing so, we guarantee that eventually things like this oil tanker disaster-in-the-works are bound to happen. So on the one hand we have the "good thing" of being highly mobile and the freedom that brings. And essentially the Western World has decided that we'd rather have cars and run the risk of a huge ecological disaster than NOT drive cars, and NOT run the risk of a huge ecological disaster.
The ways society justifies or rationalizes that decision-making process are many, but a really important one (possibly paramount) is Capitalism. We do things for no other reason than they will create wealth. They need not perform a useful function, creating wealth is utility in and of itself. It seems innocent enough, but a lot of it has "hidden costs", or at least costs that the capitalist won't have to pay directly, because they'll get some big government bailout or corporate welfare or special law passed, like this thing shielding Eli Lilly from lawsuits because they used mercury in their injections. See, the immunization of children represents a "good thing," they used a mercury preservative because it was cheaper, which had a "hidden cost" that didn't show up on the balance sheet at first. And now society is stepping in, to shield Eli Lilly from paying that hidden cost, because we've decided that we'd rather have Eli Lilly around in the future to create more value than to make them pay for their "oops." Which wasn't really an "oops", except in the sense of "oops, we got caught." Monsanto, GE, the S&L bailout... It's pretty obvious why we have poverty. If I could stop paying to clean up other people's messes, things might change. But that might put thousands of decent, hard-working people out of good-paying American jobs, and we can't have that!
This is all probably nothing new to you, since you've read Adam Smith.;-)
Ultimately, possesion is what leads to poverty. It also leads to having an economy. If you ask me the jury's still out, but in Western Civilization, inventing shit, finding new ways to do things, and getting rich is "morally right." Cultures that don't hold those values get disappeared by Western Civilization. Our whole "way of life" is in part predicated on greed. It's the Invisible Hand that Adam Smith was all on about.
The problem, though, is how do you get people to share without, well, completely redistributing wealth and resources? And why shouldn't there be poor people? If you're lazy, shouldn't you be poor?
These questions have been debated for centuries, and we still have poverty. We suck.
Actually, since I have a 8500 card and I was thinking of getting a HDTV (or just a good TV for like way less) and using the ATI DVI-to-component video adapter...
Have you tried the catalyst 2.4 drivers? Do they fix the problem? How big is the improvement in quality going fron S-Video to component video? If the Component Video thing still doesn't work, that would suck. (Why don't they just put VGA in on TVs nowadays?)
My plan is to make my 'puter be an "entertainment appliance" kinda like a fancy X-box (i.e. games) as well as email device and cd/dvd/mp3 player. Because basically, that's all I do with it anyway, and my living room is more comfortable than the "office" where the computer is now.
Hey, I wasn't trying to say you're an apologist for Monsanto or anything. Anyone who's been paying attention knows they are evil bastards. You seem very reasonable and not evil or anything.
Actually I have this idea, to make an "evil" version of my resume, and see if I can get a job at Monsanto with it. In the cover letter, something about taking my career to the next level...
Saying that "a gene is a gene" is kinda like saying tin and plutonium are both metals.
The genetic hybridization which has of course been going on in crops for even, and the deliberate selecting of traits by man, is one form of "GMO." But it's a lot different than actually splicing genes from a salmon into a strawberry. In the "natural world" you just can't do that.
Personally I draw the line at creating hybrids that involve directly manipulating the DNA. If you can't make it happen "in dirt" then I don't like it. And I think it's disingenuous to assert that the creatures in the fly room are no different from flies that just mutated "naturally."
Everyone loves to say how no studies have shown GMO is bad...Well, sometimes studies take a long time. And the results can be massaged. Thimerosal is still being used as a preservative in the medical field even though it contains mercury. And of course there are studies showing it to be safe, and that mercury amalgam filling are safe too. Given a choice, I'll avoid mercury all the same.
As a consumer, I want at the very least the option of knowing what's in my food, what's in my fillings, and what's in my contact lens solution. I don't want to play GMO Roulette, but I am when I shop at the non-hippy grocery store.
And if GMO is so harmless, why not let educated consumers know that those strawberries have some salmon gene in them? Then we could decide for ourselves if we wanted to support such products.
intellectual property laws in the U.S. and probably most other countries are terrible when it comes to gene patenting, and that this is at the root of much of the problem
I'm not sure of the mathematical words for the proof, but it goes like this:
Hmmm... the ages of the kids can be expressed as x, x+4, and x+8.
For x greater than 3:
x+4 mod 3 = x+1 mod 3 X+8 mod 3 = x+2 mod 3
Clearly, it's impossible for x, x+1, and x+2 to all NOT be divisible by three... The only way that x, x+4, and x+8 can all be prime is when x=3, which is kinda the "trivial" case.
There's no way to avoid hitting a multiple of three somewhere along the way.
elakazal, I have to take issue with a lot of what you've said.
A: During the harvesting process, a certain amount of seed will be left behind. Seeds have a tendency to grow naturally, even when it's in violation of the EULA.
B: This happens because nature actually doesn't give a shit what the lawyers say. However, if your crop contaimnates my land, that creates a nuisance and waste of my property for which you are liable. You might be responsible for destroying my crops too.
C: A farmer in Canada was successfully prosecuted by Monsanto for growing their corn. He maintains it blew in from a neighboring farm. He lost. Google will tell you more, or I'm sure you can learn all about it elsewhere in this thread.
D: "Mr. Farmer, we're so sorry we had to sue you for inadvertantly using our technology (also known as corn.) Since you've already paid for it, feel free to begin using our Better Than Nature corn."
As the GMO product becomes more widely dispersed throughout the environment, there will evetually be no non-GMO stuff out there. Then, you will need an EULA for your lawn, and a special Monsanto Happy Tyke brand bowl for your GMO-corn flakes. Farmers will have to suscribe to Corn 6.0, which allows them the license to plant corn, but only for two years. Terms subject to change.
What mechanism exists for those who prefer non-GMO products to stem the tide? Lawyers and patents and evil corporations are co-opting the right to fucking put shit in dirt and make it grow.
We live in a dark age, we just can't see it for all the fluorescent lights in our cubicles.
I am aware that MS probably considers the scenario described in that first paragraph to be piracy. There's a big difference between MS saying that it's piracy and it actually being piracy.
MS's claim about OEM OS'es seems to hinge on the meaning of ORIGINAL PC ONLY. What does that mean, specifically? If I replace the CPU, do I need to buy a new copy of windows? What if I get a new HDD? Video Card? Motherboard? Case? Monitor? Sticker? Keyboard?
Interestingly, in Windows XP there's product activation. After I put a new hard drive and video card in a XP box, I was told I had to re-activate. But it didn't tell me that "you now have a 'New Computer' and this OEM version of Windows XP is only licensed for your original computer. Take out the new hardware if you want Windows to function."
Now why do you think that is? I think it's because the whole concept of OEM'd products, and the terminology MS has come up with, is certainly very open to interpretation and speculation.
Most vendors feel this way too. They will gladly sell you an OEM version of Windows, so long as you buy some piece of hardware at the same time. I'm not quite sure how far they push it, like does buying a case fan or cool LED thingie count, but a HDD, CPU, or video card will definitely "qualify" you to purchase the OEM version of Windows.
The silence from Microsoft on "what constitutes a PC" is just another example of FUD. People who agree with your assessment that my scenario is piracy pay $300 for a product. People who know "the deal" pay $150 for that same product.
It's kind of like a tax on not knowing anything about how "computers" work. And if MS were serious about it, they would make Product Activation function differently in an OEM version of Windows, and not let you "re-activate" after enough hardware has changed. However, if they did that, everyone would get all up in arms because upgrading video card and adding a new HDD does not a new computer make. So they continue making an extra $150 per sale off the straight-laced and/or ingorant consumer because those people are afraid of the Big Bad EULA.
On top of that, most people get windows with a new computer. If you look at the $300 pricetag for Windows XP Pro full retail version, it strongly encourages you to just get a new Dell for $550. You get XP Pro, and a computer too. Unfortunately you get the lame-ass "system recovery" disk but with the most recent Dells I've seen that CD is just a Windows XP Pro CD without the fancy hologram. You can, for example, copy the I386 folder onto a blank hard drive and set up XP that way.
Personally, I just pirate the stuff. Or should I say, I set my system clock ahead to 2104 when installing Windows, and now the 30-day trial won't expire any time soon. (in XP there's a similar deal to make the activation clock get reset, though it's less elegant.)
By the way, I leared that system clock trick from contractors who were working at Microsoft. Apparently they had to do this on their test systems because they only had the trial versions of MS product. Go figure.
And don't even think about Elvis' "Lemonade, that cool refreshing drink." After the lawyers get through with you there will be a blue suede shoe stickin out yo' ass.
On the other hand some of the works of Blind Lemon Jefferson might be public domain these days. Or you may have to wait until 2150. (Or the War on Terrorism is over, whichever comes first.)
Finland, Finland, Finland, The country where I want to be, Pony trekking or camping, Or just watching TV. Finland, Finland, Finland. It's the country for me.
You're so near to Russia, So far from Japan, Quite a long way from Cairo, Lots of miles from Vietnam.
When you say "you feel dirty" how do you think you compare to those poor schmucks whose job was to incincerate all the bodies during the holocaust? Are their actions excusable because the alternative would have been death? Or are you less evil because your crime, though of your own volition, is comparatively so less heinous?
I used to work for the military, by the way. These days I hope I'm doing better work in the healthcare field. I am pretty sure that I have directly contributed to the death of at least one Iraqi radar technician.
If you're in a corporate setting, then you should be installing Office from an Administrative Installation Point and have configured your install to override Outlook's default to send HTML, and changed it to Rich Text or Plain Text.
They can always go up to the menu bar and change it if they suddenly decide they need to send HTML emails.
By the way, I really, seriously, very strongly doubt that HTML mail format is necessary for your marketing group or whatever. I find it excpetionally unlikely that they are WRITING EMAIL IN HTML and that this is as core competency of your sales dogma. Most likely they are attaching files to email, which works fine with plain text.
HTML email actually IS evil. There's completely no point to it. And in fact it's part of the spam problem: Let's say a HTML email contains a ref to some JPG somewhere. You read the (spam) HTML email, your 'puter dowloads the JPG. Congratulations, now the spammer can check his web logs and determinie how many people got the message! If s/he's really crafty, you could even tell which recipients got it by cross-indexing the HTTP GET request with the virtual file name you've set up like 01010012001012712.jpg -> sucker1001@hotmail.com. Now you put that name on your "known good accounts" list and sell it.
Slashdot Mirror
The Knarr? That place has always seemed scary to me.
not that I'm not in there on the odd night playing shuffleboard, but...
Well, there are two kinds of bars in Washington State. Those that have pull tabs and those without. The knarr is on the cusp, if you ask me. Actually, that probably gives it a lot of character. "Character" like the big trough urinal that seats 2 or 3 and the open-air drug market in the back parking lot.
Mainly, the Knarr seems smokier than any of the other places, and that keeps me out. They had pinball last time I was there, though, which is a big plus.
It's funny you mention the Emigrant, my normal haunt is the Galway just across the street... They have trivia on Monday night at the Emigrant, maybe we could do a "team slashdot" thing :)
yeah, you'll be much happier on the ship canal bridge or the aurora bridge when the quake comes. Actually I-5 is elevated through most of downtown. And don't forget the Viaduct, which is the one thing that might actually fall down in a quake. ptiy, it's such a great road and (shhh) usually there's NO TRAFFIC on it. Except for a mariners game or I suppose a seahawks game.
My favorite place would be on the part of I-5 that isn't elevated, it's UNDER THE CONVENTION CENTER. Yeah...nothing's safer than having thousands of tons of concrete and steel above your head.
Fellow citizen of seattle:
The metro bus system sucks. (every bus system sucks, except for the Peter Pan from DC to NYC to Boston.) Living in Seattle, I used to take that pile of crap that is Sound Transit all the time. One problem is the "ride free zone" downtown. The idea is great--speed buses through the busy downtown corridor by not having to wait for people to pay. The effect has been to turn the bus system into a rolling homeless shelter. Also, there are way too many bus stops. Walk a block, people. We don't need a bus stop on EVERY BLOCK you could skip a block and the bus would get you there much faster. (Try riding the 71/72/73 downtown from the U-district some morning and you will see what I'm talking about.)
Ultimately, the reason buses suck is because they don't have a right-of-way. They get stuck in traffic jams just like all those freakin' Subaru Foresters and Outbacks do.
The problem with building more roads is that it will lead to more sprawl, and then you're back to square one.
Before I was in Seattle, I lived in Washington DC. They have a subway system and it works great. I took it whenever I could. Actually, the metro is about 25 years old now and unfortunately it's pretty much at max capacity. But if you want to see the example of why NOT to just build more roads, look at Northern Virginia. Roads/interchanges the size of the I-5/I-405 split in Tukwila are EVERYWHERE. And it can still take 45 minutes to go ten miles during rush hour. Becuase developers are still building subdivisions like crazy out there, so the roads fill up.
People who think Seattle has a bad traffic problem clearly haven't seen traffic in a place like DC. We still kinda have nice fresh air out here; doubling the number of roads (hence cars) will break that. Also, the way people drive in Seattle, you could get another 10% usage out of the roads by simply getting people to drive AT the speed limit, not BELOW it, on the major interstates. Frankly, I don't think Seattle drivers have the bandwidth to handle a 16-lane collector-distributor system like where I-270 meets the DC beltway.
Also, I encourage everyone to do what I did: Move to the city and work in the city. You get a few hours of your day back, and you're not supporting Evil (be it oil-funded terrorists or oil-funded economic destruction off the coast of Spain or oil-funded politicians in the Oval Office) as much. Or, if you work on the East Side, live there too. If you're not willilng to do that, stop bitching about traffic. No job is holding a gun to your head.
Just my two cents. And please don't take this as a personal attack; I'm just like that.
Black Servers -- that doesn't sound very PC...
Yeah, unfortunately my rant is like two years too late. I have a few black dell boxes here, too. Mixing in with the white ones.
But there's still no yellow, red, or brown boxes.
To combat this, I am converting the office to all five color iMacs on MLK day this time around. That will add some diversity to this place!
Yes! It is computer racism!
Look at all the corporations. They have beige boxes. Plain boring bland beige. But we all know that black boxes are like way cooler! And you can pimp 'em out, and overclock them. It really irks "The Man" (aka Michael Dell) because he doesn't want you tricking out his system! He built a special power supply connector just to keep the shackles of oppression on you, my techno brother!
Yet, black boxes don't get props in The Man's World because they dont' Play By The Rules. The Man can offer on-site tech support when boring beige bland box blows bits. The Black box can't do that, no. The black box might not have genuine Intel parts inside. It might not be reliable, like good old beige with its Service Tag and pre-affixed OEM OS sticker. Maybe it's running pirated illegal hacker software. Or at least that's what The Man wants you to think.
Rise up! Throw off the beige bland yoke of the oppressive computer overlords and be FREE! Overclock your FSB, put head spreaders on your DDR, and RECLAIM THE POWER!!!!! Yes! Can you feel the raw energy coursing through your veins as you crack the 15,000 threshhold on 3DMark2001? THAT'S what The Man is hiding from you, the raw power and lethal speed of overclocked, unlocked, vcore boosted, CAS latency reduced-ed HARDWARE!
The Revolution is not a valid Win32 application
How will someone be able to get a job when they lack such basic skills as using a Windows based machine.
Uh....look around you. All those people using Windows and Office now, 98% of them have never had any training whatsoever. Most of 'em can't even type, though significantly more of them can type than can, say, use fdisk or regedit. They don't know the first thing about how to actually run these programs. If they need to learn an unfamiliar program, they co-pilot it with an experienced user, who probably did the same thing to learn it themselves.
I spent 30 minutes setting up screensavers with a user yesterday. Part of it was fun, but the other part was helping her become a little more familiar with the UI.
I do think it would be nice if people got some training in Microsoft products. But then Microsoft changes everything aroudn with each major release. Look at the XP desktop compared to the 2000 desktop; they're so different. The taskbar behaves completely differently now, etc. etc. So even if they do learn it in school, that knowledge will be semi-useless in two or five years.
Oh, wait, you were joking. Ha ha. Nevermind.
Dude. this is slashdot. you don't have to read the article to be an expert.
;-)
By the way, it was brilliant how you refuted my arguments simply by positing that I never read the article. And I don't know how you inferred what you did in the part before the ???
For the record, my point is: The same forces which creates so many of the good things in civilization also ensures there will be bad things, and that bad things will happen if an individual sees a compelling enough good to offset the badness.
Take for example that time-bomb oil tanker two miles underwater off the coast of Spain. That's a bad thing. But before it sank, it was good. It would create wealth and add value for so many people along the way, as it gets unloaded, refined, distributed, sold, and combusted.
We all get in our cars in the morning and drive to work, knowing that by doing so, we guarantee that eventually things like this oil tanker disaster-in-the-works are bound to happen. So on the one hand we have the "good thing" of being highly mobile and the freedom that brings. And essentially the Western World has decided that we'd rather have cars and run the risk of a huge ecological disaster than NOT drive cars, and NOT run the risk of a huge ecological disaster.
The ways society justifies or rationalizes that decision-making process are many, but a really important one (possibly paramount) is Capitalism. We do things for no other reason than they will create wealth. They need not perform a useful function, creating wealth is utility in and of itself. It seems innocent enough, but a lot of it has "hidden costs", or at least costs that the capitalist won't have to pay directly, because they'll get some big government bailout or corporate welfare or special law passed, like this thing shielding Eli Lilly from lawsuits because they used mercury in their injections. See, the immunization of children represents a "good thing," they used a mercury preservative because it was cheaper, which had a "hidden cost" that didn't show up on the balance sheet at first. And now society is stepping in, to shield Eli Lilly from paying that hidden cost, because we've decided that we'd rather have Eli Lilly around in the future to create more value than to make them pay for their "oops." Which wasn't really an "oops", except in the sense of "oops, we got caught." Monsanto, GE, the S&L bailout... It's pretty obvious why we have poverty. If I could stop paying to clean up other people's messes, things might change. But that might put thousands of decent, hard-working people out of good-paying American jobs, and we can't have that!
This is all probably nothing new to you, since you've read Adam Smith.
peace bro
Was there poverty before money?
Ultimately, possesion is what leads to poverty. It also leads to having an economy. If you ask me the jury's still out, but in Western Civilization, inventing shit, finding new ways to do things, and getting rich is "morally right." Cultures that don't hold those values get disappeared by Western Civilization. Our whole "way of life" is in part predicated on greed. It's the Invisible Hand that Adam Smith was all on about.
The problem, though, is how do you get people to share without, well, completely redistributing wealth and resources? And why shouldn't there be poor people? If you're lazy, shouldn't you be poor?
These questions have been debated for centuries, and we still have poverty. We suck.
Actually, since I have a 8500 card and I was thinking of getting a HDTV (or just a good TV for like way less) and using the ATI DVI-to-component video adapter...
Have you tried the catalyst 2.4 drivers? Do they fix the problem? How big is the improvement in quality going fron S-Video to component video? If the Component Video thing still doesn't work, that would suck. (Why don't they just put VGA in on TVs nowadays?)
My plan is to make my 'puter be an "entertainment appliance" kinda like a fancy X-box (i.e. games) as well as email device and cd/dvd/mp3 player. Because basically, that's all I do with it anyway, and my living room is more comfortable than the "office" where the computer is now.
Hey, I wasn't trying to say you're an apologist for Monsanto or anything. Anyone who's been paying attention knows they are evil bastards. You seem very reasonable and not evil or anything.
Actually I have this idea, to make an "evil" version of my resume, and see if I can get a job at Monsanto with it. In the cover letter, something about taking my career to the next level...
Saying that "a gene is a gene" is kinda like saying tin and plutonium are both metals.
The genetic hybridization which has of course been going on in crops for even, and the deliberate selecting of traits by man, is one form of "GMO." But it's a lot different than actually splicing genes from a salmon into a strawberry. In the "natural world" you just can't do that.
Personally I draw the line at creating hybrids that involve directly manipulating the DNA. If you can't make it happen "in dirt" then I don't like it. And I think it's disingenuous to assert that the creatures in the fly room are no different from flies that just mutated "naturally."
Everyone loves to say how no studies have shown GMO is bad...Well, sometimes studies take a long time. And the results can be massaged. Thimerosal is still being used as a preservative in the medical field even though it contains mercury. And of course there are studies showing it to be safe, and that mercury amalgam filling are safe too. Given a choice, I'll avoid mercury all the same.
As a consumer, I want at the very least the option of knowing what's in my food, what's in my fillings, and what's in my contact lens solution. I don't want to play GMO Roulette, but I am when I shop at the non-hippy grocery store.
And if GMO is so harmless, why not let educated consumers know that those strawberries have some salmon gene in them? Then we could decide for ourselves if we wanted to support such products.
intellectual property laws in the U.S. and probably most other countries are terrible when it comes to gene patenting, and that this is at the root of much of the problem
You are a wise pundit!
I'm not sure of the mathematical words for the proof, but it goes like this:
Hmmm... the ages of the kids can be expressed as x, x+4, and x+8.
For x greater than 3:
x+4 mod 3 = x+1 mod 3
X+8 mod 3 = x+2 mod 3
Clearly, it's impossible for x, x+1, and x+2 to all NOT be divisible by three... The only way that x, x+4, and x+8 can all be prime is when x=3, which is kinda the "trivial" case.
There's no way to avoid hitting a multiple of three somewhere along the way.
elakazal, I have to take issue with a lot of what you've said.
A: During the harvesting process, a certain amount of seed will be left behind. Seeds have a tendency to grow naturally, even when it's in violation of the EULA.
B: This happens because nature actually doesn't give a shit what the lawyers say. However, if your crop contaimnates my land, that creates a nuisance and waste of my property for which you are liable. You might be responsible for destroying my crops too.
C: A farmer in Canada was successfully prosecuted by Monsanto for growing their corn. He maintains it blew in from a neighboring farm. He lost. Google will tell you more, or I'm sure you can learn all about it elsewhere in this thread.
D: "Mr. Farmer, we're so sorry we had to sue you for inadvertantly using our technology (also known as corn.) Since you've already paid for it, feel free to begin using our Better Than Nature corn."
As the GMO product becomes more widely dispersed throughout the environment, there will evetually be no non-GMO stuff out there. Then, you will need an EULA for your lawn, and a special Monsanto Happy Tyke brand bowl for your GMO-corn flakes. Farmers will have to suscribe to Corn 6.0, which allows them the license to plant corn, but only for two years. Terms subject to change.
What mechanism exists for those who prefer non-GMO products to stem the tide? Lawyers and patents and evil corporations are co-opting the right to fucking put shit in dirt and make it grow.
We live in a dark age, we just can't see it for all the fluorescent lights in our cubicles.
I am aware that MS probably considers the scenario described in that first paragraph to be piracy. There's a big difference between MS saying that it's piracy and it actually being piracy.
MS's claim about OEM OS'es seems to hinge on the meaning of ORIGINAL PC ONLY. What does that mean, specifically? If I replace the CPU, do I need to buy a new copy of windows? What if I get a new HDD? Video Card? Motherboard? Case? Monitor? Sticker? Keyboard?
Interestingly, in Windows XP there's product activation. After I put a new hard drive and video card in a XP box, I was told I had to re-activate. But it didn't tell me that "you now have a 'New Computer' and this OEM version of Windows XP is only licensed for your original computer. Take out the new hardware if you want Windows to function."
Now why do you think that is? I think it's because the whole concept of OEM'd products, and the terminology MS has come up with, is certainly very open to interpretation and speculation.
Most vendors feel this way too. They will gladly sell you an OEM version of Windows, so long as you buy some piece of hardware at the same time. I'm not quite sure how far they push it, like does buying a case fan or cool LED thingie count, but a HDD, CPU, or video card will definitely "qualify" you to purchase the OEM version of Windows.
The silence from Microsoft on "what constitutes a PC" is just another example of FUD. People who agree with your assessment that my scenario is piracy pay $300 for a product. People who know "the deal" pay $150 for that same product.
It's kind of like a tax on not knowing anything about how "computers" work. And if MS were serious about it, they would make Product Activation function differently in an OEM version of Windows, and not let you "re-activate" after enough hardware has changed. However, if they did that, everyone would get all up in arms because upgrading video card and adding a new HDD does not a new computer make. So they continue making an extra $150 per sale off the straight-laced and/or ingorant consumer because those people are afraid of the Big Bad EULA.
On top of that, most people get windows with a new computer. If you look at the $300 pricetag for Windows XP Pro full retail version, it strongly encourages you to just get a new Dell for $550. You get XP Pro, and a computer too. Unfortunately you get the lame-ass "system recovery" disk but with the most recent Dells I've seen that CD is just a Windows XP Pro CD without the fancy hologram. You can, for example, copy the I386 folder onto a blank hard drive and set up XP that way.
Personally, I just pirate the stuff. Or should I say, I set my system clock ahead to 2104 when installing Windows, and now the 30-day trial won't expire any time soon. (in XP there's a similar deal to make the activation clock get reset, though it's less elegant.)
By the way, I leared that system clock trick from contractors who were working at Microsoft. Apparently they had to do this on their test systems because they only had the trial versions of MS product. Go figure.
As is "aqua" or "carbon" or whatever it's called.
Those Evil Geniuses at slashdot have "themed" this thread so that it has the visual look-and-feel of a Mac!
Nice work, lads.
Okay, I have no idea what this means. Crickets are the consciences of little wooden children?
What aspect of my liberal arts eductaion has been severely neglected to the point that I have no idea what you're talking about??
By the way, I was gonna make a dumb joke about Macsbug, but that looks pretty pointless now.
LOL I hadn't even thought of that but of course you are sooo right!
P2P Killed Elvis
That would be a great bumper sticker, even if nobody understood what it means.
And don't even think about Elvis' "Lemonade, that cool refreshing drink." After the lawyers get through with you there will be a blue suede shoe stickin out yo' ass.
On the other hand some of the works of Blind Lemon Jefferson might be public domain these days. Or you may have to wait until 2150. (Or the War on Terrorism is over, whichever comes first.)
That reminds me of what I did to make your little sister so popular.
It's too bad that the parent is modded down as flamebait, because everything he's said is right on the money.
So the chip is fast. No, it's more than fast. It's like really fast. It's the fastest Pentium out there by like a whopping ten percent or something.
Pardon me while I pee my pants, I'm so excited.
It will .
Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,
Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.
Finland, Finland, Finland.
It's the country for me.
You're so near to Russia,
So far from Japan,
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.
When you say "you feel dirty" how do you think you compare to those poor schmucks whose job was to incincerate all the bodies during the holocaust? Are their actions excusable because the alternative would have been death? Or are you less evil because your crime, though of your own volition, is comparatively so less heinous?
I used to work for the military, by the way. These days I hope I'm doing better work in the healthcare field. I am pretty sure that I have directly contributed to the death of at least one Iraqi radar technician.
People will do anything for money.
If you're in a corporate setting, then you should be installing Office from an Administrative Installation Point and have configured your install to override Outlook's default to send HTML, and changed it to Rich Text or Plain Text.
They can always go up to the menu bar and change it if they suddenly decide they need to send HTML emails.
By the way, I really, seriously, very strongly doubt that HTML mail format is necessary for your marketing group or whatever. I find it excpetionally unlikely that they are WRITING EMAIL IN HTML and that this is as core competency of your sales dogma. Most likely they are attaching files to email, which works fine with plain text.
HTML email actually IS evil. There's completely no point to it. And in fact it's part of the spam problem: Let's say a HTML email contains a ref to some JPG somewhere. You read the (spam) HTML email, your 'puter dowloads the JPG. Congratulations, now the spammer can check his web logs and determinie how many people got the message! If s/he's really crafty, you could even tell which recipients got it by cross-indexing the HTTP GET request with the virtual file name you've set up like 01010012001012712.jpg -> sucker1001@hotmail.com. Now you put that name on your "known good accounts" list and sell it.