UK dole is currently 50 uk pounds a week and it runs out after six months after which you have to sell all your possesions and spend that money.
the only people who can live on this permanantly are either living in dire poverty or making money in the black economy (ie working) or get money to support their children and spend it on themselves. The government is continiously trying to nail anybody who is visibly taking the piss out of the system and the benefits are laughably low in the first place. None of this actively encourages people to live off the backs of the rest of us, its just that a small minority still find a way to do so.
If you actively study as you suggest then you lose the right to any benefit - its very difficult to criticise people for not studying when out of work when you realise that they would have no financial support from the state if they were studying.
90% of the population would not sit infront of the tv/bar as you suggest, I suspect they would be more likely to be smashing your windows with an iron bar and stealing your possesions. A society with 90% unemployment would be very unstable and dangerous for the 10% in work. Just look at African states which have an endless cycle of civil war going on to see an example of what that would be like
Intelligent healthy young people can spend most of their waking hours doing simple tasks which do not require exceptional creativity. The deffinition of work which can be accomplished in a sixty hour working week is therefore non creative and repetitive.
If you are working sixty hours plus a week, then you are not doing work which taxes your mind and you are wasting your talents. Of course its on offer and does pay the bills and therefore is not neccessarily a bad thing from a financial point of view. However it is bad for your physical, mental, spititual and social health.
Variety is the spice of life, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy, addicts do not make good friends - I can think of no aphorisms which praise spending excessive time doing the same thing. Why do you think Archimedies is reputed to have discovered the law of displacement of water being equal to the weight of a floating body in the bath - most insights are generated when you walk away from the task and see the whole picture whilst your mind idles. Maybe your job is so simple that your not even thinking about it half of the time and you can solve the interesting problems whilst "working" - in which case a machine should be doing that "work". Thats how the industrial revolution changed the world of "work" and its comming to the world of software real soon now.
If sucess is just a question of working more hours then beware, because half the world is underemployed and they are a lot cheaper than you.
Scary sounding illness Patrick, you make sure you get an early night now, helps with the stress. Thanks for getting me started on this Linux thing way back on Slackware 0.9 a magazine cover disk here in the UK around 1992. I'm keeping my fingers crossed (or as my Swedish girlfriend says - thumbs held) that the doctors will get you sorted out this time.
It seems that the final cost of your national nuclear weapons defence program also offers you the choice of drinking radioactive water or paying your tax dollars to keep the Colorado river clean.
To summarise
"U.S. DOE announces plan to relocate Atlas Moab uranium mill tailings During a ceremony, held on January 14, 2000, high on a cliffside bench above the tailings, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced a sweeping plan for relocating the Atlas Moab tailings away from the bank of the Colorado River. With this plan, Richardson is addressing the fears of Los Angeles water officials that the water supply for millions of Southern Californians would be threatened if the 10.5 million short tons of radioactive dirt were left on the flood plain of the Colorado River. Two big hurdles remain in the drive to clear away the pile, left near Moab by Atlas when it went bankrupt: funding the multi-year project, which the DOE estimates would cost $300 million, and transferring authority from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the DOE. (Deseret News / Salt Lake Tribune Jan 15, 2000)"
"A bill ordering the Atlas uranium mill tailings dug up and moved from the flood plain of the Colorado River near Moab was approved Oct. 12, 2000 by the U.S. Senate. The measure, which passed the House on Oct. 11, now goes to the president for his signature. (Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 13, 2000) President Clinton signed the bill on Oct. 30, 2000."
"President Bush has included no money in his 2002 budget to clean up the abandoned uranium mill tailings site near Moab, Utah, where federal officials have estimated 16,000 gallons of water containing radioactive uranium tailings are leaking into the Colorado River each day. Despite legislation passed by Congress last year giving the Department of Energy authority to begin cleaning up the site, the department has set aside no specific funding to get started. (Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 24, 2001)"
So your deffinition of private property rights includes opting out of being an American - presumably developing nuclear weapons in your garage capable of persuading the Soviet Union to surrender in the cold war. What you are suggesting is that you want to opt out of your own society. You may have perfectly good reasons to do so but I think you will find that you are in a minority of one - or maybe I'm wrong and you can persuade everybody that drinking radioactive water is good for you.
Whilst you consider your options, here is a beautifull view of the waste heap to watch whilst you think about it. http://www.crh.noaa.gov/gjt/Moab.html
A very good question - I use a Nokia 5110 from 1998 to make phone calls and text, its battery lasts for over a week. Surely new phones last longer than my six year old technology?
If a modern cell phone cannot remain mobile for more than a week then it is not worth having.
There is a reason why old farts like me dont early adopt flashy new technology anymore like they used to in their youth - its because a lot of flashy new technology is flaky.
What worries me is that it has become the norm for cell phones to be so close to the bleeding edge of engineering that they cannot actually function as a utilitarian phone anymore.
Dont get me wrong, I love gadgets, but I get the feeling that the latest cell phones could go the way that quadraphonic vinyl records did in the 1970s. Rejected because the engineering (in this case the battery longevity) isnt fit for the concept yet.
Good point. If Kerry gets in, the first thing he will oversee will be the flattening of Faluja. Hardly a visible expression of a negociating stance.
However I believe that people who disagreed with the initial invasion should bear in mind the responsibility of the powerfull to clean up anything that they have made a mess of.
It is an entirely open question as to how to mend Iraq from its broken state, with the paucity of information we have in the public domain. I have no idea whether a firm militaristic approach is the best or even the only viable option in the run up to the comming elections in Iraq.
Kerry will have barely enough time to look at the books before he has to decide on the Falluja operation so it will probably run its course as expected. This being the case it appears that Bush has set the course of Kerrys dominion over Iraq before he has even started - a clever move by Bush. Alternately the negociations over the surrender of Faluja may mysteriously suceed once Bush is back in charge - as the Iraqui militants realise that they are facing erasure and sneak off to continue their activities elsewhere.
My point is that voting for one of the candidates is an important activity because it does have real world impact, you are entitled to choose the person who decides what happens next. Whatever happens next at the behest of either candidate will affect the world we live in, so get your voting head on and go and make your choice. This year it is an important choice because flawed though the likely candidates might be, they do have differences and either of them could win.
Even if the critics say that the US acts like a dictatorship are right then at least you get to choose your dictator. May the best man win.
I contend that it is worth criticising the site by making the distinction that the real enemy is not the aspiring ignorant but ignorance itself. A culture sophisticated enough to invent the term "Newby", "FAQ" and "HowTo" realy should have more tolerance towards aspiring newcommers. You can argue for intolerance but only if you have a concrete reason that improves upon "They annoy me becase they are not as well informed as me". So yes, babys first words are funny, but we dont laugh at baby for trying - or as I should point out in fairness - we dont laugh at them in public, and this web site is as public as it gets.
I'm also mindfull of an idea I once heard that software should be freely available to anybody who finds a use for it as expressed by some of the more political philosophies of the open software movement. It strikes me that giving a potential "ricer" the ability to do very clever things with software despite very little knowledge is a pretty powerfull expression of the idea "freely available". So I have no problem with the idea of Gentoo itself, particularly as its widespread use probably expands the pool of beta testers for new software considerably.
Being L33t with Gentoo is considerably more useful to society than being a gang member despite the similarity of speech and behaviour of the two groups. So I for one wish the very best of luck to all these people we are currently laughing at.
"I dont agree with your premise that Gentoo users are foolish and to be mocked.
You have a point that male youngsters tend to perform rutting ceremonys where they wave around the size of their arcane technical knowledge rather than their penis or fists. However this aspect of Gentoo as a phenonemon is applicable to any activity that male youth engages in. So yes, some Gentoo users are embarassingly funny, but only because we adults have to mock this sort of behaviour in order to lead youngsters towards adulthood.
What is less clear is whether your identification of the similarity of stylistic enhancement of motorised transport with loading and tweaking a computer operating system is a valid comparison. Could it be for example that your field of expertise is in the realm of literature or graphic design? This would perhaps qualify you with total ignorance of motor mechanics and operating system setup rather than a low IQ. Therefore you will be unaware that deploying Gentoo is not dissimilar to reading a book. It wouldnt make much sense unless done against the context of what you already know and the more you know the more you get out of it.
I therefore propose that your next project should be a website mocking teenagers who aspire to literary expertise, after all they are just as stupid as vehicle modifiers or Gentoo enthusiasts. For good measure why not suggest that all boys that read books are probably gay as young women are generally better at the subject. In particular you should make every effort to prevent young people from reading any books by pointing out how socially embarrasing it is for young people to be heard talking about reading. After all the world would be a better place if nobody read at all.
The joke is quite funny but you Sir are just as stupid as the people whom you mock, particularly as I note that your entire creative input on your web site consists of cutting and pasting your victims own work.
Quite possibly therefore you are a fraud as well as your creative skills suggest you are primarily a computer user with no skills from the outside world.
Consider yourself rumbled stupid person."
I havent got around to trying Gentoo yet, have never modified a vehicle except to fill the rusty holes in and mostly read non fiction.
Fascinating post. I had no idea that there was actually an internal reasoned opposition to the Hollywood joke that America appears to be from Europe. Of course the criticism has to be couched in terms of money as this is the main totem of American culture. However it is very encouraging that somebody has finally come up with an alternative point of view which reduces this totem to the status of the Emperors new clothes.
I dont personally believe that the "Elite" actually are seriously engaged in political manipulation to reduce the bulk of the population to serfdom as suggested here, rather they are engaged in protecting their ability to accumulate excess wealth.
However any reasoned opposition to the automatic assumption that 'protection of the ability to generate and concentrate wealth is the only guiding principle in life' is a good thing. A better principle would be quality of life. For example food and shelter is probably better now for more people than at any other time in history. This is not due to their extrordinary wealth, it is due to advances in technology. Most Ancient Egyptian rulers died with rotten teeth before the age of thirty, modern technology gives most of us a lifespan of 70 years or more.
Quality of life also depends on the relationship between the individual and the state. Various arrangements of social organisation are being tried by different countries, they all vary in their ability to provide quality of life for their citizens; none are perfect. In particular despite being the most economically sucessfull country in the world America does not have the reputation for the highest quality of life for the greatest number of people.
People still have to work to generate wealth and competition is a very efficient way of maximising wealth creation but these necesities have limits when applied to everything. Money is useful but it isnt everything as the Japanese for one have shown.
Absolutely. I can recall doing A/B comparisons of "Peace and Love" by the Pogues on vinyl and CD back in the day and everybody - HiFi enthusiasts or not could hear the vocals better on vinyl. This extended to a more involving soundscape on the vinyl for those who had spent money and time improving their sound reproduction equipment over the years. Whatever the differences in the preparation of the mixes and the reproduction chains it was very clear that the vinyl was more fun at that time.
A tube amp has a similar capacity to boost the listeners involvement with the music and make it a more enjoyable experience. Accuracy is an initial goal in sound reproduction but it is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to make the experience more enjoyable. Different kinds of music have different criteria that must be satisfied to achieve that goal and correspondingly different equipment that can satisfy that goal. Classical music can sound terrific through eletrostatic speakers in a larger room, chart music sounds great on a car stereo, dance music sounds better in a club where the bass hits you.
Very few people have a soundsystem in a room that allows anything like a theoretically accurate reproduction of the recorded material, merely because of room boundary reflections - try running the system outside without the room adding its characteristic sound if you dont believe this. Experimentation with sound sources and reproduction chains is the only current way to find the best system for your own objectives - there is no gold standard that will give you the best result, the current affection for low bit rate mp3 is proof of this. The sound is not accurate but its suitability for portable music and commodity computer hardware and network transmission outweighs the lack of accuracy.
When hardware and network bandwith improves there will probably be a shift back to lossless formats and cheap DSP optimisation of soundfields in rooms to return to more accurate sound reproduction. But for now one way of enjoying music more could well be to play an iPod through a vintage tube radio, you will never know until you try it.
HHGTTG was hugely inspirational back in the day here in the UK. Back at the end of the 70's the punk music fashion in music was violent and negative, allbeit exhuberant and youthfull. We were a decade away from the moon landings and were just entering the decade of the Yuppy, power dressing, padded shoulders and the triumph of the Golgafrinchams. But I digress, it was a time when science and the arts were at war and you had to be on one side or the other and HHGTTG was firmly on the side of the female astrophysicist who prefered a boyfriend who could take her on a tour of a black hole to Arthurs feeble small talk ( Notwithstanding the extra arm that said boyfriend "grew specially for you Trillian" )
So to set the scene, HHGTTG was, and possibly still is, the most scientifically friendly work of humour to hit the big time in the last six thousand years. At the time most computers were adressed with punched cards and Adams intuitively understood that a decent computer would look like a WiFi tablet pc hooked to the internet. Something which he described as a book of all known knowledge of the universe with "dont panic" scribed in large friendly letters on the cover - QED.
Even better Adams was of the radical (at that time) opinion that no one was going to tell him "the answer to life the universe and everything", it was patently clear that this was either too vague a question or that you had to figure out the answer step by step for yourself. His attitude was new because it anticeded a movement begun in the sixties to seek answers from gurus or to define oneself entirely in terms of opposition to the "establishment" - Adams rejected that and used humour to point out that it is your job (possibly your entire reason for existing) to figure out things for yourself.
Twenty years after its first incarnation its not going to set the world on fire and probably wont punch the buttons of the future like it did first time around. After all, today we are, the brands we purchase, and watchers of three simultaneous tv channels, and what we are, is clearly defined by what we are not. (If I got that wrong then feel free to explain what is going on these days...). However I have high hopes for this new series of HHGTTG because it was written by a man who liked technology and respectfully took the proverbial micky out of fashion and accepted wisdom.
Remarkably for those cynics amongst us who say that radical youth becomes conservative conservatives without changing a single idea over the passage of time, Adams mockeries still ring true to me in middle age. It is also sobering to realise that his entire lifes work is more or less defined by something like six months work in 1978, and whatever it was, 9 radio programs. This is probably the most important reason to get hold of the radio stream - as an experience the radio play is an order of magnitude more powerfull than the books.
Let me be the first to welcome our new overlord radio transmissions....
We have a DJ called John Peel here in the UK on BBC national public radio who plays an interesting mixture of very new (live sessions and demo's) and everything from the entire recorded history of music (Though less than in the past as the current fashion is "new music only"). He has survived fashionable executives at the BBC since 1967 having started his craft at WRR radio in Dallas. The website lables him with a "Rock and alt" tag. One assumes that the odd Blues, Soul, Industrial, Swing, Reggae, Trance, Zydico, Gospel, Folk, Jazz, etc tune are covered by "alt"... The stream I am listening to at the momment is playing Jimmy Reed "Baby, What you want me to do?".
You might not like the relative lack of chart music and some styles you hear could make you unwell. However the playlist has always been a consistently good source to find back catalogue, new bands and new styles of music to buy.
You probably wouldnt put it on during a party either, there is a place for stations and programs that you can do that with.
For geek appeal also note that many shows are done through a broadband link to the BBC live from his house in the countryside. He may be an ecleptic one-off phenomenom, but radio desperately needs more along similar lines.
In what way is your design suited to zero gravity? Possibly with your moniker you favour low pressure trousers as made fashionable by the inhabitants of Mir?
I'm tired of fantasy showing up in SF bookshops, In fact I'm tired of backward looking costume drama altogether - unless its well researched biography.
I am wondering though, is this fascinaton for "fantasy" all because of generation X or what? Science fiction used to be about possible futures, but in its most popular current form - fantasy - its all about rehashing bad relationships first recorded in Greek plays, mediated through a miasma of fondly remembered mediaeval feudal society. Admittidly I can cope with minor hits from the 80's being recycled by rap artists because rap is the fashion of the times. But if you want a recycled Greek play then Shakespeare and Walt Disney between them have done most of the variations possible in our four dimensional universe. (true there may be space for a few more if the string theory people turn out to be correct about the eleven dimensions swirling round my blinking cursor at this very momment.)
I am forced to conclude however that we hate our current societies so much that the only interesting future we want to read about is mediaeval feudalism. This may go some way to explaining why people can behave so badly these days, sacking cities and burning the inhabitants to death was standard practise a thousand years ago when you wanted to raise an issue.
Either we have regressed a thousand years since 1953, or, and this is a less appealing idea, or civilisation has not advanced a gnats whisker for the last thousand years.
Seeing as the Egyptians, despite building the largest and most long lasting structures on the planet, wore the same kind of sandles for four thousand years (yes that is twice the length of time between Christ and us). I have my suspicions that a couple of hundred years of advancing technology since the industrial revolution have counted for nothing.
Most of us are designed to be and want to be mediaeval surfs.
Average users are often assisted by technically savvy friends or offspring. The argument to switch has become fairly clear over the summer with a spate of IE exploits. I have switched and in my capacity as "offspring" will be switching my parents the next time I visit them. This is despite the occasional rendering problem that Firefox exhibits on some sites (slashdot for example). Firefox seems to do its job well, its fairly quick compared to Netscape bloatware and it has a clean and tidy interface without tons of advertising link toolbars and other worthless clutter. Average users want something that doesnt download porn dialers blitzes the screen with online gambling popups or keeps appearing in the news as subject to security exploits. Offered a free and functional alternative to IE I think the average user would be becoming quite keen to switch. It also offers the advantage that IE can be reserved for the single job of accessing banks and other browser specific services with some assurance that the browser has not been subverted by visiting untrustworthy sites. Switching OS is a much bigger change where the case for swopping is not overwhelming, the case for switching browsers is much clearer and therefore a far more sellable proposition. Comparing changing OS to switching browser is a poor comparison.
The Great Depression was worldwide, economists now understand that the damage was mostly self inflicted through poor understanding of how economics works, nobody was in a fit state to help anybody else.
Space exploration business directly supports the advancement and the construction of new weapons systems. Maintaining a space exploration program would therefore seem to be a reasonable way to invest in future defence technologies.
Providing food to underdeveloped countries is a less than satisfactory way of helping starving people to feed themselves. Other activities aimed at improving these countries ability to sell their goods and international pressure to prevent local wars are a higher added value investment than food dumping.
The shuttles though ultimately flawed because they were built before their time are part of a program that draws international respect and admiration. It would be a pity, though somewhat ironic if they were lost to a storm - a storm being the sort of thing in a third world country that would usefully cause us to send food.
We live in an interconnected world and a great deal of it watches American tv, in many senses the world is America these days. Those shuttles are just as much ours for those of us living outside the states as they are for those who live in the US. I for one am keeping my fingers crossed or as they say in Sweden "thumbs held".
Cant RTFA yet but very suprised to hear that Wrinkle in Time is on the list. There was I thinking that I had an absolutely obscure book as my favorite childrens book but it now turns out to be important enough to be banned.
I think I am rather pleased to discover this, I am just wondering what was seen as so objectionable in this sentimental family story with a splash of science fiction and politics.
Seems like there might be yet another well meaning group of zealots whom I would best avoid for a peacefull life. Is it just me or is the "western" world less rather than more tolerant than it was twenty years ago.
If the sixties was some kind of cultural childhood, I cant wait for culture to reach retirement and wisdom, so we can all start enjoying ourselves again. This should be on the cards by the end of the decade when the twenty year olds of the mid sixties will be retiring....
I bought the DVD and a player just so I could watch this.
"Oh yes, one more thing. A meteor strike on hold 42b has destroyed the ships entire supply of toilet paper"
Unsubtle reference to 2001 in the sentient bomb, a cryogenically preserved captain and a rust bucket of a ship years before Alien made spacecraft look mundane. Not forgetting the terifying encounter with the ships own Alien in the elevator...
Vietnam vets playing air guitar rather than Bill and Ted but seriously funny in a way that boarders on something dark.
It did for Science Fiction in its day, what "Dog Soldiers" has just done for horror
Re:Fighting for us ? absoulutely!
on
Semper WiFi
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The people there now are most certainly "fighting for us"
Now Saddam Hussain has gone, the occupying force has an absolute responsibility to hand the country over to responsible governance. The alternative would be balkanisation and the development of mini states led by fanatics. Many of these warlords would benefit greatly from supporting global terrorism.
Dont kid yourself, Iraq is most deffinitely a threat now and it is a vital responsibility of the occupying forces to support the development of the new government - for our sakes as much as for the Iraquis
For many people opposition to the war before it began was for this very reason - that we doubted that the US would be capable of returning Iraq to peace and prosperity after removing their vile dictator. In particular we doubted that the American electorate had the stomach to take responsibility for the winning of the peace after the war.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of starting the thing, it is now of vital importance to finish the job.
I'm currently unemployed but dont get JSA because I have savings for a rainy day. I dont have a television either, but I'm getting very good BBC coverage of the Olympics over broadband.
Whats your problem? get rid of your television, save the licence fee and buy some DVD's to play on your PC if you want to watch things like The West Wing. As a bonus you wont have to watch all the advertising on cable channels either!
Or am I the only person in the UK doing this? (Shh dont tell anyone else how to beat the system or everyone will be doing it and they will find a way to stop it...)
Slashdot Mirror
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/blateyron/sundials/gb/inde x.html
Download their excellent windows program and make one for free instead
UK dole is currently 50 uk pounds a week and it runs out after six months after which you have to sell all your possesions and spend that money.
the only people who can live on this permanantly are either living in dire poverty or making money in the black economy (ie working) or get money to support their children and spend it on themselves. The government is continiously trying to nail anybody who is visibly taking the piss out of the system and the benefits are laughably low in the first place. None of this actively encourages people to live off the backs of the rest of us, its just that a small minority still find a way to do so.
If you actively study as you suggest then you lose the right to any benefit - its very difficult to criticise people for not studying when out of work when you realise that they would have no financial support from the state if they were studying.
90% of the population would not sit infront of the tv/bar as you suggest, I suspect they would be more likely to be smashing your windows with an iron bar and stealing your possesions. A society with 90% unemployment would be very unstable and dangerous for the 10% in work. Just look at African states which have an endless cycle of civil war going on to see an example of what that would be like
Ahem... thanks, yes well spotted ... my deliberate error was nothing to do with sleep deprivation at all...
Absolutely
Intelligent healthy young people can spend most of their waking hours doing simple tasks which do not require exceptional creativity. The deffinition of work which can be accomplished in a sixty hour working week is therefore non creative and repetitive.
If you are working sixty hours plus a week, then you are not doing work which taxes your mind and you are wasting your talents. Of course its on offer and does pay the bills and therefore is not neccessarily a bad thing from a financial point of view. However it is bad for your physical, mental, spititual and social health.
Variety is the spice of life, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy, addicts do not make good friends - I can think of no aphorisms which praise spending excessive time doing the same thing. Why do you think Archimedies is reputed to have discovered the law of displacement of water being equal to the weight of a floating body in the bath - most insights are generated when you walk away from the task and see the whole picture whilst your mind idles. Maybe your job is so simple that your not even thinking about it half of the time and you can solve the interesting problems whilst "working" - in which case a machine should be doing that "work". Thats how the industrial revolution changed the world of "work" and its comming to the world of software real soon now.
If sucess is just a question of working more hours then beware, because half the world is underemployed and they are a lot cheaper than you.
Scary sounding illness Patrick, you make sure you get an early night now, helps with the stress. Thanks for getting me started on this Linux thing way back on Slackware 0.9 a magazine cover disk here in the UK around 1992. I'm keeping my fingers crossed (or as my Swedish girlfriend says - thumbs held) that the doctors will get you sorted out this time.
Your argument whilst superficially attractive seems to be based on jealousy greed and ignorance.
a ntenna.nl/wise/570/5419.html
For example, in related geographical, geological and political news
http://www.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www.
It seems that the final cost of your national nuclear weapons defence program also offers you the choice of drinking radioactive water or paying your tax dollars to keep the Colorado river clean.
To summarise
"U.S. DOE announces plan to relocate Atlas Moab uranium mill tailings
During a ceremony, held on January 14, 2000, high on a cliffside bench above the tailings, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced a sweeping plan for relocating the Atlas Moab tailings away from the bank of the Colorado River. With this plan, Richardson is addressing the fears of Los Angeles water officials that the water supply for millions of Southern Californians would be threatened if the 10.5 million short tons of radioactive dirt were left on the flood plain of the Colorado River.
Two big hurdles remain in the drive to clear away the pile, left near Moab by Atlas when it went bankrupt: funding the multi-year project, which the DOE estimates would cost $300 million, and transferring authority from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to the DOE. (Deseret News / Salt Lake Tribune Jan 15, 2000)"
"A bill ordering the Atlas uranium mill tailings dug up and moved from the flood plain of the Colorado River near Moab was approved Oct. 12, 2000 by the U.S. Senate. The measure, which passed the House on Oct. 11, now goes to the president for his signature. (Salt Lake Tribune, Oct. 13, 2000)
President Clinton signed the bill on Oct. 30, 2000."
"President Bush has included no money in his 2002 budget to clean up the abandoned uranium mill tailings site near Moab, Utah, where federal officials have estimated 16,000 gallons of water containing radioactive uranium tailings are leaking into the Colorado River each day. Despite legislation passed by Congress last year giving the Department of Energy authority to begin cleaning up the site, the department has set aside no specific funding to get started. (Las Vegas Review-Journal, April 24, 2001)"
So your deffinition of private property rights includes opting out of being an American - presumably developing nuclear weapons in your garage capable of persuading the Soviet Union to surrender in the cold war. What you are suggesting is that you want to opt out of your own society. You may have perfectly good reasons to do so but I think you will find that you are in a minority of one - or maybe I'm wrong and you can persuade everybody that drinking radioactive water is good for you.
Whilst you consider your options, here is a beautifull view of the waste heap to watch whilst you think about it.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/gjt/Moab.html
A very good question - I use a Nokia 5110 from 1998 to make phone calls and text, its battery lasts for over a week. Surely new phones last longer than my six year old technology?
If a modern cell phone cannot remain mobile for more than a week then it is not worth having.
There is a reason why old farts like me dont early adopt flashy new technology anymore like they used to in their youth - its because a lot of flashy new technology is flaky.
What worries me is that it has become the norm for cell phones to be so close to the bleeding edge of engineering that they cannot actually function as a utilitarian phone anymore.
Dont get me wrong, I love gadgets, but I get the feeling that the latest cell phones could go the way that quadraphonic vinyl records did in the 1970s. Rejected because the engineering (in this case the battery longevity) isnt fit for the concept yet.
Good point. If Kerry gets in, the first thing he will oversee will be the flattening of Faluja. Hardly a visible expression of a negociating stance.
However I believe that people who disagreed with the initial invasion should bear in mind the responsibility of the powerfull to clean up anything that they have made a mess of.
It is an entirely open question as to how to mend Iraq from its broken state, with the paucity of information we have in the public domain. I have no idea whether a firm militaristic approach is the best or even the only viable option in the run up to the comming elections in Iraq.
Kerry will have barely enough time to look at the books before he has to decide on the Falluja operation so it will probably run its course as expected. This being the case it appears that Bush has set the course of Kerrys dominion over Iraq before he has even started - a clever move by Bush. Alternately the negociations over the surrender of Faluja may mysteriously suceed once Bush is back in charge - as the Iraqui militants realise that they are facing erasure and sneak off to continue their activities elsewhere.
My point is that voting for one of the candidates is an important activity because it does have real world impact, you are entitled to choose the person who decides what happens next. Whatever happens next at the behest of either candidate will affect the world we live in, so get your voting head on and go and make your choice. This year it is an important choice because flawed though the likely candidates might be, they do have differences and either of them could win.
Even if the critics say that the US acts like a dictatorship are right then at least you get to choose your dictator. May the best man win.
Probably true :-). But its always easier to be a critic than to have something to say dont you think?
I contend that it is worth criticising the site by making the distinction that the real enemy is not the aspiring ignorant but ignorance itself. A culture sophisticated enough to invent the term "Newby", "FAQ" and "HowTo" realy should have more tolerance towards aspiring newcommers. You can argue for intolerance but only if you have a concrete reason that improves upon "They annoy me becase they are not as well informed as me". So yes, babys first words are funny, but we dont laugh at baby for trying - or as I should point out in fairness - we dont laugh at them in public, and this web site is as public as it gets.
I'm also mindfull of an idea I once heard that software should be freely available to anybody who finds a use for it as expressed by some of the more political philosophies of the open software movement. It strikes me that giving a potential "ricer" the ability to do very clever things with software despite very little knowledge is a pretty powerfull expression of the idea "freely available". So I have no problem with the idea of Gentoo itself, particularly as its widespread use probably expands the pool of beta testers for new software considerably.
Being L33t with Gentoo is considerably more useful to society than being a gang member despite the similarity of speech and behaviour of the two groups. So I for one wish the very best of luck to all these people we are currently laughing at.
I say let them in and the more the merrier.
Slashdotted or not I emailed them
"I dont agree with your premise that Gentoo users are foolish and to be mocked.
You have a point that male youngsters tend to perform rutting ceremonys where they wave around the size of their arcane technical knowledge rather than their penis or fists. However this aspect of Gentoo as a phenonemon is applicable to any activity that male youth engages in. So yes, some Gentoo users are embarassingly funny, but only because we adults have to mock this sort of behaviour in order to lead youngsters towards adulthood.
What is less clear is whether your identification of the similarity of stylistic enhancement of motorised transport with loading and tweaking a computer operating system is a valid comparison. Could it be for example that your field of expertise is in the realm of literature or graphic design? This would perhaps qualify you with total ignorance of motor mechanics and operating system setup rather than a low IQ. Therefore you will be unaware that deploying Gentoo is not dissimilar to reading a book. It wouldnt make much sense unless done against the context of what you already know and the more you know the more you get out of it.
I therefore propose that your next project should be a website mocking teenagers who aspire to literary expertise, after all they are just as stupid as vehicle modifiers or Gentoo enthusiasts. For good measure why not suggest that all boys that read books are probably gay as young women are generally better at the subject. In particular you should make every effort to prevent young people from reading any books by pointing out how socially embarrasing it is for young people to be heard talking about reading. After all the world would be a better place if nobody read at all.
The joke is quite funny but you Sir are just as stupid as the people whom you mock, particularly as I note that your entire creative input on your web site consists of cutting and pasting your victims own work.
Quite possibly therefore you are a fraud as well as your creative skills suggest you are primarily a computer user with no skills from the outside world.
Consider yourself rumbled stupid person."
I havent got around to trying Gentoo yet, have never modified a vehicle except to fill the rusty holes in and mostly read non fiction.
This joke site did not make me laugh, this one did though.
http://www.chavscum.co.uk/
Fascinating post. I had no idea that there was actually an internal reasoned opposition to the Hollywood joke that America appears to be from Europe. Of course the criticism has to be couched in terms of money as this is the main totem of American culture. However it is very encouraging that somebody has finally come up with an alternative point of view which reduces this totem to the status of the Emperors new clothes.
I dont personally believe that the "Elite" actually are seriously engaged in political manipulation to reduce the bulk of the population to serfdom as suggested here, rather they are engaged in protecting their ability to accumulate excess wealth.
However any reasoned opposition to the automatic assumption that 'protection of the ability to generate and concentrate wealth is the only guiding principle in life' is a good thing. A better principle would be quality of life. For example food and shelter is probably better now for more people than at any other time in history. This is not due to their extrordinary wealth, it is due to advances in technology. Most Ancient Egyptian rulers died with rotten teeth before the age of thirty, modern technology gives most of us a lifespan of 70 years or more.
Quality of life also depends on the relationship between the individual and the state. Various arrangements of social organisation are being tried by different countries, they all vary in their ability to provide quality of life for their citizens; none are perfect. In particular despite being the most economically sucessfull country in the world America does not have the reputation for the highest quality of life for the greatest number of people.
People still have to work to generate wealth and competition is a very efficient way of maximising wealth creation but these necesities have limits when applied to everything. Money is useful but it isnt everything as the Japanese for one have shown.
As Dirk Maggs the producer of the show points out "tv is such a limited medium". Radio has something special to offer check out his explanation here.
http://www.crazydogaudiotheatre.com/maggs.php
its fun
Absolutely. I can recall doing A/B comparisons of "Peace and Love" by the Pogues on vinyl and CD back in the day and everybody - HiFi enthusiasts or not could hear the vocals better on vinyl. This extended to a more involving soundscape on the vinyl for those who had spent money and time improving their sound reproduction equipment over the years. Whatever the differences in the preparation of the mixes and the reproduction chains it was very clear that the vinyl was more fun at that time.
A tube amp has a similar capacity to boost the listeners involvement with the music and make it a more enjoyable experience. Accuracy is an initial goal in sound reproduction but it is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is to make the experience more enjoyable. Different kinds of music have different criteria that must be satisfied to achieve that goal and correspondingly different equipment that can satisfy that goal. Classical music can sound terrific through eletrostatic speakers in a larger room, chart music sounds great on a car stereo, dance music sounds better in a club where the bass hits you.
Very few people have a soundsystem in a room that allows anything like a theoretically accurate reproduction of the recorded material, merely because of room boundary reflections - try running the system outside without the room adding its characteristic sound if you dont believe this. Experimentation with sound sources and reproduction chains is the only current way to find the best system for your own objectives - there is no gold standard that will give you the best result, the current affection for low bit rate mp3 is proof of this. The sound is not accurate but its suitability for portable music and commodity computer hardware and network transmission outweighs the lack of accuracy.
When hardware and network bandwith improves there will probably be a shift back to lossless formats and cheap DSP optimisation of soundfields in rooms to return to more accurate sound reproduction. But for now one way of enjoying music more could well be to play an iPod through a vintage tube radio, you will never know until you try it.
Fair comment, I know he was a Mac fan but what would you use for real today in a play/film?
Maybe a modern cell phone with a large display would do the trick, though I think something more A4 in size would look better.
As the thing was a book perhaps we should be looking forward to some of the gadgets comming up that use digital paper?
HHGTTG was hugely inspirational back in the day here in the UK. Back at the end of the 70's the punk music fashion in music was violent and negative, allbeit exhuberant and youthfull. We were a decade away from the moon landings and were just entering the decade of the Yuppy, power dressing, padded shoulders and the triumph of the Golgafrinchams. But I digress, it was a time when science and the arts were at war and you had to be on one side or the other and HHGTTG was firmly on the side of the female astrophysicist who prefered a boyfriend who could take her on a tour of a black hole to Arthurs feeble small talk ( Notwithstanding the extra arm that said boyfriend "grew specially for you Trillian" )
So to set the scene, HHGTTG was, and possibly still is, the most scientifically friendly work of humour to hit the big time in the last six thousand years. At the time most computers were adressed with punched cards and Adams intuitively understood that a decent computer would look like a WiFi tablet pc hooked to the internet. Something which he described as a book of all known knowledge of the universe with "dont panic" scribed in large friendly letters on the cover - QED.
Even better Adams was of the radical (at that time) opinion that no one was going to tell him "the answer to life the universe and everything", it was patently clear that this was either too vague a question or that you had to figure out the answer step by step for yourself. His attitude was new because it anticeded a movement begun in the sixties to seek answers from gurus or to define oneself entirely in terms of opposition to the "establishment" - Adams rejected that and used humour to point out that it is your job (possibly your entire reason for existing) to figure out things for yourself.
Twenty years after its first incarnation its not going to set the world on fire and probably wont punch the buttons of the future like it did first time around. After all, today we are, the brands we purchase, and watchers of three simultaneous tv channels, and what we are, is clearly defined by what we are not. (If I got that wrong then feel free to explain what is going on these days...). However I have high hopes for this new series of HHGTTG because it was written by a man who liked technology and respectfully took the proverbial micky out of fashion and accepted wisdom.
Remarkably for those cynics amongst us who say that radical youth becomes conservative conservatives without changing a single idea over the passage of time, Adams mockeries still ring true to me in middle age. It is also sobering to realise that his entire lifes work is more or less defined by something like six months work in 1978, and whatever it was, 9 radio programs. This is probably the most important reason to get hold of the radio stream - as an experience the radio play is an order of magnitude more powerfull than the books.
Let me be the first to welcome our new overlord radio transmissions....
We have a DJ called John Peel here in the UK on BBC national public radio who plays an interesting mixture of very new (live sessions and demo's) and everything from the entire recorded history of music (Though less than in the past as the current fashion is "new music only"). He has survived fashionable executives at the BBC since 1967 having started his craft at WRR radio in Dallas. The website lables him with a "Rock and alt" tag. One assumes that the odd Blues, Soul, Industrial, Swing, Reggae, Trance, Zydico, Gospel, Folk, Jazz, etc tune are covered by "alt"... The stream I am listening to at the momment is playing Jimmy Reed "Baby, What you want me to do?".
t ml
You might not like the relative lack of chart music and some styles you hear could make you unwell. However the playlist has always been a consistently good source to find back catalogue, new bands and new styles of music to buy.
You probably wouldnt put it on during a party either, there is a place for stations and programs that you can do that with.
Have a listen and see what you think...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/johnpeel/index.sh
For geek appeal also note that many shows are done through a broadband link to the BBC live from his house in the countryside. He may be an ecleptic one-off phenomenom, but radio desperately needs more along similar lines.
In what way is your design suited to zero gravity? Possibly with your moniker you favour low pressure trousers as made fashionable by the inhabitants of Mir?
I'm tired of fantasy showing up in SF bookshops, In fact I'm tired of backward looking costume drama altogether - unless its well researched biography.
I am wondering though, is this fascinaton for "fantasy" all because of generation X or what? Science fiction used to be about possible futures, but in its most popular current form - fantasy - its all about rehashing bad relationships first recorded in Greek plays, mediated through a miasma of fondly remembered mediaeval feudal society. Admittidly I can cope with minor hits from the 80's being recycled by rap artists because rap is the fashion of the times. But if you want a recycled Greek play then Shakespeare and Walt Disney between them have done most of the variations possible in our four dimensional universe. (true there may be space for a few more if the string theory people turn out to be correct about the eleven dimensions swirling round my blinking cursor at this very momment.)
I am forced to conclude however that we hate our current societies so much that the only interesting future we want to read about is mediaeval feudalism. This may go some way to explaining why people can behave so badly these days, sacking cities and burning the inhabitants to death was standard practise a thousand years ago when you wanted to raise an issue.
Either we have regressed a thousand years since 1953, or, and this is a less appealing idea, or civilisation has not advanced a gnats whisker for the last thousand years.
Seeing as the Egyptians, despite building the largest and most long lasting structures on the planet, wore the same kind of sandles for four thousand years (yes that is twice the length of time between Christ and us). I have my suspicions that a couple of hundred years of advancing technology since the industrial revolution have counted for nothing.
Most of us are designed to be and want to be mediaeval surfs.
Average users are often assisted by technically savvy friends or offspring. The argument to switch has become fairly clear over the summer with a spate of IE exploits. I have switched and in my capacity as "offspring" will be switching my parents the next time I visit them. This is despite the occasional rendering problem that Firefox exhibits on some sites (slashdot for example). Firefox seems to do its job well, its fairly quick compared to Netscape bloatware and it has a clean and tidy interface without tons of advertising link toolbars and other worthless clutter. Average users want something that doesnt download porn dialers blitzes the screen with online gambling popups or keeps appearing in the news as subject to security exploits. Offered a free and functional alternative to IE I think the average user would be becoming quite keen to switch. It also offers the advantage that IE can be reserved for the single job of accessing banks and other browser specific services with some assurance that the browser has not been subverted by visiting untrustworthy sites. Switching OS is a much bigger change where the case for swopping is not overwhelming, the case for switching browsers is much clearer and therefore a far more sellable proposition. Comparing changing OS to switching browser is a poor comparison.
The Great Depression was worldwide, economists now understand that the damage was mostly self inflicted through poor understanding of how economics works, nobody was in a fit state to help anybody else.
Space exploration business directly supports the advancement and the construction of new weapons systems. Maintaining a space exploration program would therefore seem to be a reasonable way to invest in future defence technologies.
Providing food to underdeveloped countries is a less than satisfactory way of helping starving people to feed themselves. Other activities aimed at improving these countries ability to sell their goods and international pressure to prevent local wars are a higher added value investment than food dumping.
The shuttles though ultimately flawed because they were built before their time are part of a program that draws international respect and admiration. It would be a pity, though somewhat ironic if they were lost to a storm - a storm being the sort of thing in a third world country that would usefully cause us to send food.
We live in an interconnected world and a great deal of it watches American tv, in many senses the world is America these days. Those shuttles are just as much ours for those of us living outside the states as they are for those who live in the US. I for one am keeping my fingers crossed or as they say in Sweden "thumbs held".
Cant RTFA yet but very suprised to hear that Wrinkle in Time is on the list. There was I thinking that I had an absolutely obscure book as my favorite childrens book but it now turns out to be important enough to be banned.
I think I am rather pleased to discover this, I am just wondering what was seen as so objectionable in this sentimental family story with a splash of science fiction and politics.
Seems like there might be yet another well meaning group of zealots whom I would best avoid for a peacefull life. Is it just me or is the "western" world less rather than more tolerant than it was twenty years ago.
If the sixties was some kind of cultural childhood, I cant wait for culture to reach retirement and wisdom, so we can all start enjoying ourselves again. This should be on the cards by the end of the decade when the twenty year olds of the mid sixties will be retiring....
I bought the DVD and a player just so I could watch this.
s _2002_review.shtml
"Oh yes, one more thing. A meteor strike on hold 42b has destroyed the ships entire supply of toilet paper"
Unsubtle reference to 2001 in the sentient bomb, a cryogenically preserved captain and a rust bucket of a ship years before Alien made spacecraft look mundane. Not forgetting the terifying encounter with the ships own Alien in the elevator...
Vietnam vets playing air guitar rather than Bill and Ted but seriously funny in a way that boarders on something dark.
It did for Science Fiction in its day, what "Dog Soldiers" has just done for horror
http://www.bbc.co.uk/films/2002/04/12/dog_soldier
The people there now are most certainly "fighting for us"
Now Saddam Hussain has gone, the occupying force has an absolute responsibility to hand the country over to responsible governance. The alternative would be balkanisation and the development of mini states led by fanatics. Many of these warlords would benefit greatly from supporting global terrorism.
Dont kid yourself, Iraq is most deffinitely a threat now and it is a vital responsibility of the occupying forces to support the development of the new government - for our sakes as much as for the Iraquis
For many people opposition to the war before it began was for this very reason - that we doubted that the US would be capable of returning Iraq to peace and prosperity after removing their vile dictator. In particular we doubted that the American electorate had the stomach to take responsibility for the winning of the peace after the war.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of starting the thing, it is now of vital importance to finish the job.
I'm currently unemployed but dont get JSA because I have savings for a rainy day. I dont have a television either, but I'm getting very good BBC coverage of the Olympics over broadband.
Whats your problem? get rid of your television, save the licence fee and buy some DVD's to play on your PC if you want to watch things like The West Wing. As a bonus you wont have to watch all the advertising on cable channels either!
Or am I the only person in the UK doing this? (Shh dont tell anyone else how to beat the system or everyone will be doing it and they will find a way to stop it...)