My next thought was law school, but 1) again, I have a hard time imagining IT employers footing the bill for another line of coursework which has absolutlely nothing to do with their business, and 2) I'm not evil or a scum-sucking bottom-dweller, so I'd never do well in law.
--emphasis mine--
I'm not a "scum-sucking bottom-dweller" either, but do you enjoy working in a cubicle every bit as much as I do? I thought so. That's why I have considered going to law school. My wife will be taking the bar in February, and barring (haha, get it!? --derrrrr) any unforeseen catastrophes will most likely pass and then begin practicing law. She will not be working in a big firm. She will in fact be opening up her own law practice to help people just like you who have got some real crap going on in their lives that they need legal help with solving. (death of a family member, infidelity of a spouse, irresponsibility of a business partner, the list just keeps going...)
As for your other argument about an employer paying for that level of schooling: don't think all employers are like that. I'm getting my undergrad partially funded by my employer in a field (computer engineering) which has little to do with my current job description - and my employer doesn't expect me to change once I get the degree! Some companies will like the fact that they can keep good employees around longer by helping to fund their higher education goals. I'm sure you've seen through experience that a good employee in ANY field is often hard to come by.
I'm not torn. I've cracked Civ3 in the past because leaving that CD-ROM disk with the SecureRom (or whatever copyright protection software it had on it) would usually crash my computer's OS (Windows 2000 at the time) within a few hours. I don't know why it did, but I don't really care, the fact is that it did. I don't want my OS to crash because a freakin' CD is in the drive it was intended to be used in! I paid for Civ3 and I paid for HL2, but why should I be REQUIRED to have the CD-ROM in the drive? The CD-ROM drive was not built to act as a copyright verification device. Maybe it's neat that it can to some degree, but since that's not its primary function it probably won't work all the time (like in my case).
No, I have no intention of cracking HL2 because I want to keep playing it. It's fun entertainment. But I do highly sympathize with those who wish to "crack" the CD-ROM checking on their purchased copy of HL2. It is NOT stealing. In order to steal I have to have taken the item, software, whatever without appropriately compensating the vendor on agreed upon terms. Sorry, but handing me a document AFTER I have PAID for a house stating all the 100 things I cannot do to the home and expecting me to be bound to such conditions would be laughed right out of a court of law. I don't see how software EULA's are any different.
Normally I hate de_dust, never did that well in it in the original CS because it was an awp/camper map and I am not a good 'camper.' This time around, mayhem! After about an hour I was at/near the top of the score board in terms of kills. It was great fun once again!
Nothing beats seeing the flash of a grenade going off in the hallways of de_dust, and then watching the beer cans, guns, ammo, and bodies go flying! I know, I know, "won't somebody please think of the children!" I'm sure I have now turned into a murderous, depressed, angst-ridden individual for playing this game which depicts such horrifyingly realistic death.
HL2 isn't completely linear... I have already come across at least one "shortcut" route that took me through a completely different set of circumstances than the previous direction I took (and ultimately died trying). My brother has confirmed this to be the case in another area he was playing in the game. Keep your eyes peeled.
As for the mods, you are correct, they are awesome. Well, at least CS:Source is. I played the original CS endlessly for at least a couple of years. Only over the past year or so did my desire to play CS wane. But after playing through de_dust in CS:Source I am once again addicted! If you've seen the movie "Saving Private Ryan" then you have a good idea of what it feels like to play CS:Source. Bullets ricochet off of structures near you, dirt kicks up from the ground (and the buildings in some cases) when you're getting fired at, bodies react in true physics form (grenades sometimes launch people in the air as they die) all without losing the fun of playing what I consider to be the video game equivalent of paintball.
Yes, I really hate the Steam authentication and monitoring crap. It sucks, it really does. It's the price I'm willing to pay in order to enjoy this form of entertainment though. I was actually getting nauscious from playing it for 9 hours straight on Sat., in part I think because my brain was getting too used to the realistic physical movement portrayed in the game but couldn't reconcile those images with my inner ear complete equilibrium as I sat like a bump on a log! LOL
I'd call sex a physical function, and I'd call geeks impaired in their ability to get some sex. Due to means that are usually beyond the control of said geeks.
Bathing regularly, brushing your teeth regularly, emerging from the parent's basement only once a month, and not eating 10 twinkies in one sitting is far from what can be considered a physical disability.
Problem is that while the crackhead does get to kick me in the nuts, he does have THE BEST crack around (HL2), and therefore I am stuck enduring *some* pain for what I (and many others) consider to be a far larger gain in the enjoyment factor of the crack (HL2). Grandparent post had it right: the cracked activation codes available on IRC eliminate the foot-to-the-nads step in obtaining my 'crack', which only encourages the "pirating" of the game.
I've used cracked versions of Civ3 in the past as well because THE CD COPY-PROTECTION is more likely to hang up Windows when I'm "obeying the law" and have the CD in the drive than when I'm using a cracked version of the game. Notice: I bought the friggin' game! I should have no need or desire to have to use an illegal copy of it, and yet I do because the "real" version is more of a hassle than the cracked version.
Haven't you seen those Aetna commercials? Or maybe it's some other insurance company. The point is, anything that anyone does has the potential to get someone else killed. The who "a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong" weather effect thingy.
Just calm down everyone. According to the post he's doing better on his current drugs than before. I highly doubt this guy taking antibiotics in N. Dakota is gonna cause me to get some super virus/bacteria that can eat my flesh from the inside out and leave me quivering without any skin in a hospital bed.
Geez! The conspiracy theorists are in force on this topic discussion!
MSN's "msnbot" has been crawling/spidering my webserver (which runs Geeklog and is just another blog of my random crap) pretty extensively for weeks now. (Lie 5 times a day it seems) Searching on Google for my site's name now reveals more results from my site, but not a lot of those circle-jerk style search results pages that are just trying to generate some ad revenues. However, using the beta.search.msn.com site DOES yield a lot more random crap (mostly blogs and personal webservers) that somehow generated some kind of link to my site because of the title of one of my articles, someone linking to my site in one of their blog posts, etc.
I have a feeling MSN's new search site is gonna be mostly blogs and advertisements, not relevant information. I think it's good Google has indexed more pages, but I still believe their algorithm will continue to provide more USEFUL results than MSN. (BTW, the googlebot doesn't hit my site too frequently which tells me Google's bot understands that my site isn't updated too frequently, nor is it linked to from other important sites)
What you guys don't realize is the orders of magnitude higher that it takes to perform the whole "capitalized/not capitalized" search makes this unreasonable for Google to attempt to do. A long while back our CRM application was consistently getting hung on queries that involved customer first/last name combinations because it WAS capitalization sensitive. You see, when you tell a computer to search for "Joe JingleheiMerScHmIdT" WITH a capitalization sensitive search, it has to go through every single combination of capitalization in that name. But when all it needs to do is match "J" to "j or J", "o" to "o or O", and so forth, the search takes MUCH less time.
While it is somewhat frustrating that Google can't do this (and do it in 0.2s), the reality is that you gain a whole lot more processing power for Google's algorithm to do it's thing in presenting you with the best results when you're not sure exactly what you want out of the search. I think Google has struck a good balance so far.
I've got this really silly Modern English research paper due in three weeks, and well, I figured since I'm an aspiring programmer and all I would show my teacher just how "smart" I am by requesting that you all do some research for me. What I need is all the information you can gather from around the web (c'mon, I'm far too lazy to goto - haha! get it?! - the liberry). I also want this information to be about video games and then.
ah crap. can you just write the dang paper for me?
OK all you majority of/.'ers who voted: shutup already!
I skipped voting this year for just this reason. Everyone wants everyone else to go out and vote because "you're vote makes a difference!" or "let's make a change for America!" To that I say: Yay! I stole votes, yay!
Voting in this country DOES NOT make you (much) of a voice in government. Elections get rigged, votes get miscounted. Get over the fact that your candidate lost/won already! Voting DOES make you tied into (psychologically) one side or the other in this country. That DOES NOT mean that you know how to run a country, what issues are truly most important for our country to deal with (or how to deal with them), nor how to conduct military operations to deter terrorism or other threats to our sovereignty. Those are for specialists in those areas to decide, ultimately. Therefore, if you are one of the slim minority of/.'ers who is a military leader in the U.S. military or a politician of some sort you are the ones who can make a much more well informed decision about how to lead this country than can I or 99.5% of the/. population.
Our "founding fathers" were clearly not idiots and designed the Constitution and all other facets of our government to keep the kind of decision making power that our President, Congress, Senate, and judiciary wield in the hands of those capable of making such decisions in an informed (albeit not always unselfish) manner.
Wonder why Congressmen and women and Senators usually get to stay in Congress and the Senate for more than just one term? It takes time to learn how to lead a country, and once you've been in that role for your first few years you're already 10x more qualified than any other candidate in your home state to fulfill that role, whether you're all that good at it or not. It's the experience that counts most, and I think the majority of voters vote that way out of sheer laziness. "He/She is a recognizable name to me and I don't hate them so they're probably most qualified for the position, vote!" The battle for the Presidency is usually just a battle between who's got the most experience and the most power through their many years of service in political leadership roles. Do any of us honestly think that Kerry or Bush is necessarily the *BEST* leader in the country? I doubt it. Was John Kerry that politically powerful or well-known prior to this election? NO! Hillary Clinton is well-known and powerful, this new Barak Obama guy will be eventually be there... Kerry was just a fill in for a Democratic candidate this time around. Wait until 2008! What a battle of politically powerful people that's gonna be! LOL
So get over yourselves about the fucking election. The decision was made years ago about who would get elected this time around, and it wasn't really the American general public that made such a decision. If Kerry would've actually gotten elected it would've been a nice bonus, but I don't think the powers that be in the Democratic camp actually expected it to happen.
OK, I agree, to a degree. Some things can be considered FACT, like mathematical equations, but ultimately they still role up to modeling a theory of some larger kind. Like 1 apple plus 1 apple equals 2 apples, but aren't we talking about molecules, apple tree types, nutritional benefit etc. which means that any one apple is not going to be the same as the next apple, ultimately. In our limited context of counting apples however, 1 apple + 1 apple = 2 apples; there is no other theory to be considered.
But other things must be considered theory. To be honest, you have absolutely no infallible proof that the earth and universe were NOT created, or came into being, or whatever in just 7 24-hour days. There's also no scientific definitive proof that such a thing DID occur. Therefore, that theory, along with evolution from amoeba to human and all other forms of disputable "facts" are still just theories because the model required to prove or disprove such theories is still just far too complex and unknown to us.
So I guess I'm just saying that 1 MIT professor might have 10x the credentials of 1000 people (combined even), but that doesn't necessarily make his opinion correct on theories, only his rigid facts about a certain restricted view of a model can refute the "masses of idiots" and their proven incorrect thinking. (Like thinking that the earth is flat, when indeed it has been proven to be an imperfect sphere. When we're limiting our discussion to "flat" or "spherical" this is a fact. When we expand it to the space-time continuum, string-theory, and so forth it may not technically be true for all aspects of those much larger theories. - Although I honestly think it would still hold true even if a more refined description needed to be provided to prove that it was indeed spherical.)
Heh. Problem with your logic: your perception is your reality, therefore those 1000 idiots might be right and you're just a stubborn ass who's too deluded in your superiority over your fellow man that you can no longer realize your own idiocy. I once read that an idiot is one who thinks of himself so highly that he can't see his own flaws. Think about that.
Yeah, right! I have given up submitting documents via one of our Lotus Notes databases because IT DOESN'T ATTACH THE DOCUMENT when it sends out the notice that a new doc is available! (I know it's supposed to do this because I get responses from some customers that it worked fine, and others that it didn't!) Now how useful is that? No rhyme or reason for it either. Lotus Notes, while more secure than Outlook, is a beastly hog of an app that does little to make me actually more productive. The calendar system STILL sucks (and we're on version 6.something) along with the hodge-podge arrangement of the menu system and everything else it's a wonder I actually can keep track of my schedule at all!
Funny that this topic should come up now, as my coworker and I have been trying to come up with an ALTERNATIVE to Notes databases for a week or so now to share info amongst our team members. (computer-savvy business analyst types) I definitely prefer the Wiki concept over anything Notes offers right now for document sharing and collaboration.
I have no idea why this post got modded "Insightful." The most insight this poster displays is on his depth of knowledge of cliche ideas such as "In the old days, you worked hard, and you got ahead." or "...simply knowing how to build the better mousetrap isn't enough either..."
How long until one of these things gets hooked up to a bigger power supply, gets 'modded' to run in continuous search mode, and then amplified to continuously turn off any TV in a 20 mile radius? I can't wait! ROFL.
You had it right about the "anti-TV activists" though. Cripes!
The "editors" have replaced Katz with self-promoting idiots who can't write worth their own weight in crap... and that's not worth much. So yes, it is a slow news day, but really not much different from a typical Slashdot news day these days.
We haven't invented technology capable of 5th-10th dimensional string warping/tearing yet. When we do, THEN we'll have be able to wrap around the screen .;)
This is ridiculous, michael. Why even post this crap. Legal "mumbo-jumbo" exists to protect someone, and is therefore of ultimate importance to be kept AS IS. Changing it with some automated software to "simplify it" is altering the terms of the agreement, which I'm sure wouldn't fly AT ALL in a court of law in nearly any jurisdiction world-wide. How is this "news for nerds, stuff that matters"? This most certainly DOES NOT matter.
The previous post had it correct still though. What if I open one my encrypted documents (that has financial data and/or passwords stored in it) and work on it while Google Desktop is running? I mean, sure I could go and block those files from Google Desktop's caching mechanism, but I certainly don't want to go and do that for every new file that's confidential.
I believe Google's Desktop is secure and safe for using FOR NOW, but if it gets hacked in the future and any confidential file was stored even once in its cache... I'd be screwed!
No, I don't think there is a major problem with the argument. After all, one could argue that the Internet itself is a HAVEN for criminal activity. Terrorist cells have used it in the past to plan attacks, child pornographers, credit card number thiefs, identity thiefs; the list goes on and on. But we don't ban the "Internets" (as George W referred to it) now do we? Why not? There is billions of dollars LOST and people's lives ruined because of the Internet. Why not ban all computer connectivity?
Because there are positive uses of the Internet, that's why. Even if the bad outweighed the good (which judging from some email inboxes these days, that is the case with all the spam and phishing schemes), the Internet would still be useful as a tool.
Lastly, the kind of copyright that the RIAA/MPAA is fighting to keep is the right for a middleman dealer in artistic talent to exist, not to compensate the artist. No one has the "right" to a paycheck of a certain size. We all have rights to liberty, freedom, and justice for all, but I certainly don't see "right to a middle-class lifestyle or better because of the earnings off of my or other's copyrighted material" in those values anywhere.
BTW, if there's anyone I'd like kicked off the airwaves, it'd be Rod Parsely, not Howard Stern. Rod Parsely gives Christians like me a really bad name through much of his ranting and raving, not to mention the fact that I really despise his twisting of the truths contained in the Bible that I believe are unalterable. If you live in or around Columbus, OH, you probably know who this guy is. Anyways, that's neither here nor there, but it should at least give the reader an indication that although Howard and Rod both have the ability to turn my stomach, it's still their free speech right to say what they want to. All I and millions of other Americans have to do is change the channel.
Stern is jumping to satellite because the FCC and its christian corporate masters hounded him off FM.
Excuse me, Doc, but I am a Christian and certainly don't agree with plenty of things the FCC and other internal-facing government agencies have been doing lately. I don't like the dangerous position for future abuse that the Patriot Act gives our government, I don't like the DMCA at all, and I don't agree with all that the FCC has done in their pseudo-policing of communications in this country even when it is directed at Howard Stern who I personally think is pretty boring and irrelevant and a waste of my time to listen to. So DO NOT lump me in with idiots and liars such as Rod Parsely as part of the "Christian corporate masters" that you think run the FCC, the US government, etc. Personally that is incredibly insulting that you'd make such a charge that ALL Christians conform to your obviously distorted view of what it means to be a Christian. I follow God and His Bible, not some political bull-shit agenda that some "Christians" claim is the only right thing for America. Yes, there are issues that are fundamental to being a Christian, but absolutely none of them have anything to do with how I am to run a government. My being a Christian is based on my salvation in Jesus Christ. It is not on my "good works" done on this earth to push some political agenda through Congress. Please refrain from insulting me so in the future. Thanks.
Slashdot is exceptionally irrelevant and pointless with their postings today. michael, you're doing a terrible job today. And you other editors, what does some excerpt from a book about money, Sharp, and Nintendo have anything to do with "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."??? It wasn't even a book review!/. has definitely exceeded my expectations of pathetic "journalism" today. Way to go!
Slashdot Mirror
--emphasis mine--
I'm not a "scum-sucking bottom-dweller" either, but do you enjoy working in a cubicle every bit as much as I do? I thought so. That's why I have considered going to law school. My wife will be taking the bar in February, and barring (haha, get it!? --derrrrr) any unforeseen catastrophes will most likely pass and then begin practicing law. She will not be working in a big firm. She will in fact be opening up her own law practice to help people just like you who have got some real crap going on in their lives that they need legal help with solving. (death of a family member, infidelity of a spouse, irresponsibility of a business partner, the list just keeps going...)
As for your other argument about an employer paying for that level of schooling: don't think all employers are like that. I'm getting my undergrad partially funded by my employer in a field (computer engineering) which has little to do with my current job description - and my employer doesn't expect me to change once I get the degree! Some companies will like the fact that they can keep good employees around longer by helping to fund their higher education goals. I'm sure you've seen through experience that a good employee in ANY field is often hard to come by.
I'm not torn. I've cracked Civ3 in the past because leaving that CD-ROM disk with the SecureRom (or whatever copyright protection software it had on it) would usually crash my computer's OS (Windows 2000 at the time) within a few hours. I don't know why it did, but I don't really care, the fact is that it did. I don't want my OS to crash because a freakin' CD is in the drive it was intended to be used in! I paid for Civ3 and I paid for HL2, but why should I be REQUIRED to have the CD-ROM in the drive? The CD-ROM drive was not built to act as a copyright verification device. Maybe it's neat that it can to some degree, but since that's not its primary function it probably won't work all the time (like in my case).
No, I have no intention of cracking HL2 because I want to keep playing it. It's fun entertainment. But I do highly sympathize with those who wish to "crack" the CD-ROM checking on their purchased copy of HL2. It is NOT stealing. In order to steal I have to have taken the item, software, whatever without appropriately compensating the vendor on agreed upon terms. Sorry, but handing me a document AFTER I have PAID for a house stating all the 100 things I cannot do to the home and expecting me to be bound to such conditions would be laughed right out of a court of law. I don't see how software EULA's are any different.
Last night: de_dust for 1.5 hrs straight.
Normally I hate de_dust, never did that well in it in the original CS because it was an awp/camper map and I am not a good 'camper.' This time around, mayhem! After about an hour I was at/near the top of the score board in terms of kills. It was great fun once again!
Nothing beats seeing the flash of a grenade going off in the hallways of de_dust, and then watching the beer cans, guns, ammo, and bodies go flying! I know, I know, "won't somebody please think of the children!" I'm sure I have now turned into a murderous, depressed, angst-ridden individual for playing this game which depicts such horrifyingly realistic death.
HL2 isn't completely linear... I have already come across at least one "shortcut" route that took me through a completely different set of circumstances than the previous direction I took (and ultimately died trying). My brother has confirmed this to be the case in another area he was playing in the game. Keep your eyes peeled.
As for the mods, you are correct, they are awesome. Well, at least CS:Source is. I played the original CS endlessly for at least a couple of years. Only over the past year or so did my desire to play CS wane. But after playing through de_dust in CS:Source I am once again addicted! If you've seen the movie "Saving Private Ryan" then you have a good idea of what it feels like to play CS:Source. Bullets ricochet off of structures near you, dirt kicks up from the ground (and the buildings in some cases) when you're getting fired at, bodies react in true physics form (grenades sometimes launch people in the air as they die) all without losing the fun of playing what I consider to be the video game equivalent of paintball.
Yes, I really hate the Steam authentication and monitoring crap. It sucks, it really does. It's the price I'm willing to pay in order to enjoy this form of entertainment though. I was actually getting nauscious from playing it for 9 hours straight on Sat., in part I think because my brain was getting too used to the realistic physical movement portrayed in the game but couldn't reconcile those images with my inner ear complete equilibrium as I sat like a bump on a log! LOL
Bathing regularly, brushing your teeth regularly, emerging from the parent's basement only once a month, and not eating 10 twinkies in one sitting is far from what can be considered a physical disability.
Problem is that while the crackhead does get to kick me in the nuts, he does have THE BEST crack around (HL2), and therefore I am stuck enduring *some* pain for what I (and many others) consider to be a far larger gain in the enjoyment factor of the crack (HL2). Grandparent post had it right: the cracked activation codes available on IRC eliminate the foot-to-the-nads step in obtaining my 'crack', which only encourages the "pirating" of the game.
I've used cracked versions of Civ3 in the past as well because THE CD COPY-PROTECTION is more likely to hang up Windows when I'm "obeying the law" and have the CD in the drive than when I'm using a cracked version of the game. Notice: I bought the friggin' game! I should have no need or desire to have to use an illegal copy of it, and yet I do because the "real" version is more of a hassle than the cracked version.
Haven't you seen those Aetna commercials? Or maybe it's some other insurance company. The point is, anything that anyone does has the potential to get someone else killed. The who "a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong" weather effect thingy.
Just calm down everyone. According to the post he's doing better on his current drugs than before. I highly doubt this guy taking antibiotics in N. Dakota is gonna cause me to get some super virus/bacteria that can eat my flesh from the inside out and leave me quivering without any skin in a hospital bed.
Geez! The conspiracy theorists are in force on this topic discussion!
MSN's "msnbot" has been crawling/spidering my webserver (which runs Geeklog and is just another blog of my random crap) pretty extensively for weeks now. (Lie 5 times a day it seems) Searching on Google for my site's name now reveals more results from my site, but not a lot of those circle-jerk style search results pages that are just trying to generate some ad revenues. However, using the beta.search.msn.com site DOES yield a lot more random crap (mostly blogs and personal webservers) that somehow generated some kind of link to my site because of the title of one of my articles, someone linking to my site in one of their blog posts, etc.
I have a feeling MSN's new search site is gonna be mostly blogs and advertisements, not relevant information. I think it's good Google has indexed more pages, but I still believe their algorithm will continue to provide more USEFUL results than MSN. (BTW, the googlebot doesn't hit my site too frequently which tells me Google's bot understands that my site isn't updated too frequently, nor is it linked to from other important sites)
Maybe not, but now it does list www.google.com! ROFL!
r e+ evil+than+satan+himself%22&FORM=QBHP
http://beta.search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=%22mo
What you guys don't realize is the orders of magnitude higher that it takes to perform the whole "capitalized/not capitalized" search makes this unreasonable for Google to attempt to do. A long while back our CRM application was consistently getting hung on queries that involved customer first/last name combinations because it WAS capitalization sensitive. You see, when you tell a computer to search for "Joe JingleheiMerScHmIdT" WITH a capitalization sensitive search, it has to go through every single combination of capitalization in that name. But when all it needs to do is match "J" to "j or J", "o" to "o or O", and so forth, the search takes MUCH less time.
While it is somewhat frustrating that Google can't do this (and do it in 0.2s), the reality is that you gain a whole lot more processing power for Google's algorithm to do it's thing in presenting you with the best results when you're not sure exactly what you want out of the search. I think Google has struck a good balance so far.
I've got this really silly Modern English research paper due in three weeks, and well, I figured since I'm an aspiring programmer and all I would show my teacher just how "smart" I am by requesting that you all do some research for me. What I need is all the information you can gather from around the web (c'mon, I'm far too lazy to goto - haha! get it?! - the liberry). I also want this information to be about video games and then.
ah crap. can you just write the dang paper for me?
OK all you majority of /.'ers who voted: shutup already!
/.'ers who is a military leader in the U.S. military or a politician of some sort you are the ones who can make a much more well informed decision about how to lead this country than can I or 99.5% of the /. population.
I skipped voting this year for just this reason. Everyone wants everyone else to go out and vote because "you're vote makes a difference!" or "let's make a change for America!" To that I say: Yay! I stole votes, yay!
Voting in this country DOES NOT make you (much) of a voice in government. Elections get rigged, votes get miscounted. Get over the fact that your candidate lost/won already! Voting DOES make you tied into (psychologically) one side or the other in this country. That DOES NOT mean that you know how to run a country, what issues are truly most important for our country to deal with (or how to deal with them), nor how to conduct military operations to deter terrorism or other threats to our sovereignty. Those are for specialists in those areas to decide, ultimately. Therefore, if you are one of the slim minority of
Our "founding fathers" were clearly not idiots and designed the Constitution and all other facets of our government to keep the kind of decision making power that our President, Congress, Senate, and judiciary wield in the hands of those capable of making such decisions in an informed (albeit not always unselfish) manner.
Wonder why Congressmen and women and Senators usually get to stay in Congress and the Senate for more than just one term? It takes time to learn how to lead a country, and once you've been in that role for your first few years you're already 10x more qualified than any other candidate in your home state to fulfill that role, whether you're all that good at it or not. It's the experience that counts most, and I think the majority of voters vote that way out of sheer laziness. "He/She is a recognizable name to me and I don't hate them so they're probably most qualified for the position, vote!" The battle for the Presidency is usually just a battle between who's got the most experience and the most power through their many years of service in political leadership roles. Do any of us honestly think that Kerry or Bush is necessarily the *BEST* leader in the country? I doubt it. Was John Kerry that politically powerful or well-known prior to this election? NO! Hillary Clinton is well-known and powerful, this new Barak Obama guy will be eventually be there... Kerry was just a fill in for a Democratic candidate this time around. Wait until 2008! What a battle of politically powerful people that's gonna be! LOL
So get over yourselves about the fucking election. The decision was made years ago about who would get elected this time around, and it wasn't really the American general public that made such a decision. If Kerry would've actually gotten elected it would've been a nice bonus, but I don't think the powers that be in the Democratic camp actually expected it to happen.
OK, I agree, to a degree. Some things can be considered FACT, like mathematical equations, but ultimately they still role up to modeling a theory of some larger kind. Like 1 apple plus 1 apple equals 2 apples, but aren't we talking about molecules, apple tree types, nutritional benefit etc. which means that any one apple is not going to be the same as the next apple, ultimately. In our limited context of counting apples however, 1 apple + 1 apple = 2 apples; there is no other theory to be considered.
But other things must be considered theory. To be honest, you have absolutely no infallible proof that the earth and universe were NOT created, or came into being, or whatever in just 7 24-hour days. There's also no scientific definitive proof that such a thing DID occur. Therefore, that theory, along with evolution from amoeba to human and all other forms of disputable "facts" are still just theories because the model required to prove or disprove such theories is still just far too complex and unknown to us.
So I guess I'm just saying that 1 MIT professor might have 10x the credentials of 1000 people (combined even), but that doesn't necessarily make his opinion correct on theories, only his rigid facts about a certain restricted view of a model can refute the "masses of idiots" and their proven incorrect thinking. (Like thinking that the earth is flat, when indeed it has been proven to be an imperfect sphere. When we're limiting our discussion to "flat" or "spherical" this is a fact. When we expand it to the space-time continuum, string-theory, and so forth it may not technically be true for all aspects of those much larger theories. - Although I honestly think it would still hold true even if a more refined description needed to be provided to prove that it was indeed spherical.)
Heh. Problem with your logic: your perception is your reality, therefore those 1000 idiots might be right and you're just a stubborn ass who's too deluded in your superiority over your fellow man that you can no longer realize your own idiocy. I once read that an idiot is one who thinks of himself so highly that he can't see his own flaws. Think about that.
Or maybe you're just trollin' for karma, I dunno.
Yeah, right! I have given up submitting documents via one of our Lotus Notes databases because IT DOESN'T ATTACH THE DOCUMENT when it sends out the notice that a new doc is available! (I know it's supposed to do this because I get responses from some customers that it worked fine, and others that it didn't!) Now how useful is that? No rhyme or reason for it either. Lotus Notes, while more secure than Outlook, is a beastly hog of an app that does little to make me actually more productive. The calendar system STILL sucks (and we're on version 6.something) along with the hodge-podge arrangement of the menu system and everything else it's a wonder I actually can keep track of my schedule at all!
Funny that this topic should come up now, as my coworker and I have been trying to come up with an ALTERNATIVE to Notes databases for a week or so now to share info amongst our team members. (computer-savvy business analyst types) I definitely prefer the Wiki concept over anything Notes offers right now for document sharing and collaboration.
I have no idea why this post got modded "Insightful." The most insight this poster displays is on his depth of knowledge of cliche ideas such as "In the old days, you worked hard, and you got ahead." or "...simply knowing how to build the better mousetrap isn't enough either..."
Give me a break!
How long until one of these things gets hooked up to a bigger power supply, gets 'modded' to run in continuous search mode, and then amplified to continuously turn off any TV in a 20 mile radius? I can't wait! ROFL.
You had it right about the "anti-TV activists" though. Cripes!
The "editors" have replaced Katz with self-promoting idiots who can't write worth their own weight in crap... and that's not worth much. So yes, it is a slow news day, but really not much different from a typical Slashdot news day these days.
We haven't invented technology capable of 5th-10th dimensional string warping/tearing yet. When we do, THEN we'll have be able to wrap around the screen . ;)
This is ridiculous, michael. Why even post this crap. Legal "mumbo-jumbo" exists to protect someone, and is therefore of ultimate importance to be kept AS IS. Changing it with some automated software to "simplify it" is altering the terms of the agreement, which I'm sure wouldn't fly AT ALL in a court of law in nearly any jurisdiction world-wide. How is this "news for nerds, stuff that matters"? This most certainly DOES NOT matter.
The previous post had it correct still though. What if I open one my encrypted documents (that has financial data and/or passwords stored in it) and work on it while Google Desktop is running? I mean, sure I could go and block those files from Google Desktop's caching mechanism, but I certainly don't want to go and do that for every new file that's confidential.
I believe Google's Desktop is secure and safe for using FOR NOW, but if it gets hacked in the future and any confidential file was stored even once in its cache... I'd be screwed!
No, I don't think there is a major problem with the argument. After all, one could argue that the Internet itself is a HAVEN for criminal activity. Terrorist cells have used it in the past to plan attacks, child pornographers, credit card number thiefs, identity thiefs; the list goes on and on. But we don't ban the "Internets" (as George W referred to it) now do we? Why not? There is billions of dollars LOST and people's lives ruined because of the Internet. Why not ban all computer connectivity?
Because there are positive uses of the Internet, that's why. Even if the bad outweighed the good (which judging from some email inboxes these days, that is the case with all the spam and phishing schemes), the Internet would still be useful as a tool.
Lastly, the kind of copyright that the RIAA/MPAA is fighting to keep is the right for a middleman dealer in artistic talent to exist, not to compensate the artist. No one has the "right" to a paycheck of a certain size. We all have rights to liberty, freedom, and justice for all, but I certainly don't see "right to a middle-class lifestyle or better because of the earnings off of my or other's copyrighted material" in those values anywhere.
BTW, if there's anyone I'd like kicked off the airwaves, it'd be Rod Parsely, not Howard Stern. Rod Parsely gives Christians like me a really bad name through much of his ranting and raving, not to mention the fact that I really despise his twisting of the truths contained in the Bible that I believe are unalterable. If you live in or around Columbus, OH, you probably know who this guy is. Anyways, that's neither here nor there, but it should at least give the reader an indication that although Howard and Rod both have the ability to turn my stomach, it's still their free speech right to say what they want to. All I and millions of other Americans have to do is change the channel.
Excuse me, Doc, but I am a Christian and certainly don't agree with plenty of things the FCC and other internal-facing government agencies have been doing lately. I don't like the dangerous position for future abuse that the Patriot Act gives our government, I don't like the DMCA at all, and I don't agree with all that the FCC has done in their pseudo-policing of communications in this country even when it is directed at Howard Stern who I personally think is pretty boring and irrelevant and a waste of my time to listen to. So DO NOT lump me in with idiots and liars such as Rod Parsely as part of the "Christian corporate masters" that you think run the FCC, the US government, etc. Personally that is incredibly insulting that you'd make such a charge that ALL Christians conform to your obviously distorted view of what it means to be a Christian. I follow God and His Bible, not some political bull-shit agenda that some "Christians" claim is the only right thing for America. Yes, there are issues that are fundamental to being a Christian, but absolutely none of them have anything to do with how I am to run a government. My being a Christian is based on my salvation in Jesus Christ. It is not on my "good works" done on this earth to push some political agenda through Congress. Please refrain from insulting me so in the future. Thanks.
Slashdot is exceptionally irrelevant and pointless with their postings today. michael, you're doing a terrible job today. And you other editors, what does some excerpt from a book about money, Sharp, and Nintendo have anything to do with "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."??? It wasn't even a book review! /. has definitely exceeded my expectations of pathetic "journalism" today. Way to go!