...and, of course, the five thousand children away at school who just had their parents vaporized by your city-destroying orbiting weapon will have no resentment at all. None of them would even consider integrating into American society, where our massive weapons are useless -- we've got qualms about killing our civillians, after all. None of these people whose families we murdered would ever consider taking such a long-term commitment of revenge, living in the United States until they can build a small nuclear weapon and sneak it into New York.
Sure. Let's just bomb them. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, don't get me started on processed sugar -- it's literally addictive. I often challenge people to see if they can give up foods containing processed sugar for a week (soda, cookies, etc.), and many of them can't do it...they literally get the shakes.
In olden times, we spent quite a bit of time foraging around for nuts, scavenging meat when we could find it, and eating a hell of a lot of fruits and vegetables -- the so-called 'scavenger-gatherer' diet is what we've mostly evolved for, and it seems to work quite well for most people -- our digestive systems weren't designed to handle eating meat all the time; sure, we can process it (we're ominivores, after all), but that doesn't mean that we should consider meat to be our primary source of fuel, and that goes double for red meat.
Honestly, meat-heavy diets aren't even good for carnivores; most pure carnivores (big and small cats, etc) die of heart problems or renal failure, which is directly linked to their diet.
Probably the healthiest 'ethnic' diets are traditional Japanese and Chinese cooking; lots of rice and fish, with a little red meat and chicken, lots of veggies and fruits.
(ps. posting AC as you can never tell how USans react when discussing their armed forces - no offense)
You know, this is off-topic, but I agree; I've got a ton of friends in the military, but when I tell people that I think that Iraq was a bad idea, they get pissy about how I 'hate the military', and how I 'need to support our troops'. I'm fscking tired of rabid nationalism being called patriotism.
I mean, come on, you'd think that by advocating that our troops be somewhere where they aren't getting shot by gurellas would be 'supporting the troops'. I mean, I don't like war, in fact -- I hate it, but I do understand that sometimes war is necessary. Note the 'sometimes'; this country is always at war -- in the past hundred years, we have been involved in six major wars, only two of which were really justifiable (maybe three). That's one war every sixteen years; and I'm not counting the 'cold war' or the 'war on drugs', each of which has eaten more resources than any other war.
Why don't we stop declaring war on other countries and start working on our own problems? How about a 'war on homeless', or a 'war on undereducation', or even a 'war against cancer'? Why the fsck do we have to fight a propped-up 'war on terrorism' when we could just as easily...I dunno...start paying back that huge national debt that we owe to a bunch of other countries?
Ok. I'm done ranting. *Not* posting as AC because I don't give a flying fsck what the Nazi-wannabes think.
I've got a safe and effective weight-loss drug; it's called adrenaline. You get it from getting off your lazy ass and exercising!
What a concept.
Americans are fat because they take in far too many calories that they never work off. Very little work done in this country involves manual labor, and yet we consume, as a nation, insane amounts of fast food, loaded with fat, salt, and high-glucose carbohydrates that never...get...used. We always drive places; walking, cycling, and running are 'recreational' activites, not methods of transport. Americans consume something like three times the average amounts of red meat as their European counterparts, and yet I don't see that many people around me who are in training for Olympic power-lifting.
I mean, christ, I mention biking eight miles to the office and people marvel at how I can cover that kind of distance without a car, even though I know seventy-year old diabetics with bowel cancer who bike more than that on a daily basis.
We don't need another drug or fad diet; we need to get people exercising. Something as stupid and simple as an hour's worth of walking on a daily basis would do more for the weight problems of this country than a whole oil-tanker loaded with Ephedra and Dr. Atkins books.
Oh, yeah: Fsck Atkins. Sure, you lose weight -- but it's not a long-term sustainable plan for eating, and it's a diet high in fat and cholesterol. Hell, the only reason why it works at all is because it basically overloads your digestive system -- which is why most Atkins-diet people complain of low energy levels; the Atkins diet is completely incompatible with sustaining any sort of exercise regimen.
Yes-and-no; it depends on how likely I am to collect the full amount back from the money I've dished out. In an ideal (or at least sane) world, everyone would pay me back, and I'd make money; but in the real world, people default, and if enough people default, I lose money.
Given my experience with humanity, 'specially in the US, methinks that Mister Super Human will grow up to be pretty pissed off at his peers, unless he's "gifted" with an IQ of twelve.
We're still dealing with small screens, battery life, and durability problems. A 320x240 screen is way too small for a textbook or classroom note-taking; there's a reason why most students still use full-size notebooks, even though smaller ones exist), and four to six hours of battery life wouldn't even get me through one day of classes, much less a night of studying from an uncomfortable, small screen.
Furthermore, I've used a Zaurus[1], and while it's one of the most durable PDAs I've run across, I still didn't feel that it could take student-level pounding. We're talking about crap that can get stuffed in a backpack, dunked in a pool, have hot coffee poured on it, sat on, kicked, stepped on, dropped, and generally subjected to insane abuse. In order for a notebook/textbook tablet device to work for students, it has to be almost indestructable. You have to be able to write on the screen with normal pens without leaving ink stains (quite doable), because I guarantee that normal stili will get lost or misplaced.
The current crop of palmtops, while certainly usable for many things, is not suitable as a textbook/notebook replacement.
[1] I work as a sysadmin, and get to evaluate new hardware purchases.
The big problem with ebooks lies in the readers; devices capable of reading ebooks are bulky, fragile, expensive, and nominally not as easy on the eyes as paper; in addition, most of them are read-only, which means that you can't write notes in the margin or hilight passages for later use.
Personally, I'd like to see a low-power (eight to sixteen hours on a single charge) tablet-PC-like device, one which is as easy on the eyes as a normal book (not that hard, really[1]), has a small-but-useful amount of storage (say, 8M of RAM and 512M of compactflash), and into which I can upload textbooks and course notes for all of my college courses. It has to be durable as well; I should be able to accidentally knock this thing off a table into an aquarium, and it should still work.
Give it some simple handwriting recognition, some decent calculation software, and the ability to link up with a desktop via a USB cable, and you could sell tons of these things to college students. I know I'd jump at the opportunity to not lug around a 40lb backpack, laptop case, two-inch binder filled with notes...oh, and a rew reference manuals...even if it cost me a few hundred bucks. Textbook publishers could also get in on the game; charge half as much for an E-book (which can't be resold), and use this as incentive to sell the tablet devices. Everyone wins -- the publishers make more money (no printing, shipping, or warehousing costs), the tablet maker wins, and the students win (less back strain, cheaper textbooks, ability to have an entire library in a satchel).
[1] If you're willing to keep it black-and-white, just use a farly high-resolution LCD, and use a plain white sheet of paper as a background; the paper will reflect ambient light properly, except where the LCD is active -- presto, paper-like black-on-white text, just like a book.
And they're going to subscribe for what, exactly? Internet access?
Most ISP AUPs don't allow you to resell internet access -- you can share it for free (most of the time), but when you start reselling their services, they'll want a cut, and if you don't give it to them, they'll have quite a nicely sized legal lever to pry it out of you.
Add to that the fact that 48 tenants times twenty dollars per month per tenant equals about the cost of a T1, and you're not looking at much of a profit. One to three hundred dollars a month, at most, giving him a three year time to realize his original investment.
I can't see Campbell as Zaphod -- Zaphod is supposed to be a swingin' frood who is so hip he can't see over his pelvis. Myers fits this better than Campbell does by a long shot, although I certainly wouldn't say he'd be ideal. You need someone who can pretend they live in the 60's in a campy-yet-believable way. And with a less powerful chin.
I could see Goldblum for Ford, except he's a bit too deadpan, but yeah, he's probably better than Wilson.
Agreed on the Stones for Disaster Area. Didn't even think of that. But who would be the captan of the Vogon fleet?
Christopher Lloyd as Slartibartfast. Mike Myers as Zaphod Beeblebrox. Owen Wilson as Ford Prefect. January Jones as Trillian. Alan Rickman as...someone. Maybe the waiter at Milliways? He just has to be in there somewhere.
Yeah, I know, too expensive, but I think it would work pretty well.
You said it. Those evil Republicans even fixed it so that no Democrats were even listed on the ballot in this election.
It has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans; it has to do with two simple things: Lack of Accounting and Conflict of Interest.
The first is simple enough; anyone who works with computers can tell you that faking and/or modifying records is a pretty trivial process. With no physical trail, there is no way to verify that the votes are being counted properly -- period. I'd have no problem with electronic voting systems if they just printed out two receipts for the voter -- one which is kept at the polls, and the other which can be taken home by the voter if they wish.
The second is much more sinister; the CEO of Diebold (maker of Our Favorite Voting Systems) has as much *said* that he intends to hand the next election to Bush. I'd be screaming bloody murder if he was a Democrat and wanted to hand the election to Dean. The point is, the person who is solely responsible for totalling the votes had better be impartial, or subject to verification by third parties. In the case of these new voting systems, neither is the case.
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...and, of course, the five thousand children away at school who just had their parents vaporized by your city-destroying orbiting weapon will have no resentment at all. None of them would even consider integrating into American society, where our massive weapons are useless -- we've got qualms about killing our civillians, after all. None of these people whose families we murdered would ever consider taking such a long-term commitment of revenge, living in the United States until they can build a small nuclear weapon and sneak it into New York.
Sure. Let's just bomb them. What could possibly go wrong?
Oh, don't get me started on processed sugar -- it's literally addictive. I often challenge people to see if they can give up foods containing processed sugar for a week (soda, cookies, etc.), and many of them can't do it...they literally get the shakes.
In olden times, we spent quite a bit of time foraging around for nuts, scavenging meat when we could find it, and eating a hell of a lot of fruits and vegetables -- the so-called 'scavenger-gatherer' diet is what we've mostly evolved for, and it seems to work quite well for most people -- our digestive systems weren't designed to handle eating meat all the time; sure, we can process it (we're ominivores, after all), but that doesn't mean that we should consider meat to be our primary source of fuel, and that goes double for red meat.
Honestly, meat-heavy diets aren't even good for carnivores; most pure carnivores (big and small cats, etc) die of heart problems or renal failure, which is directly linked to their diet.
Probably the healthiest 'ethnic' diets are traditional Japanese and Chinese cooking; lots of rice and fish, with a little red meat and chicken, lots of veggies and fruits.
(ps. posting AC as you can never tell how USans react when discussing their armed forces - no offense)
You know, this is off-topic, but I agree; I've got a ton of friends in the military, but when I tell people that I think that Iraq was a bad idea, they get pissy about how I 'hate the military', and how I 'need to support our troops'. I'm fscking tired of rabid nationalism being called patriotism.
I mean, come on, you'd think that by advocating that our troops be somewhere where they aren't getting shot by gurellas would be 'supporting the troops'. I mean, I don't like war, in fact -- I hate it, but I do understand that sometimes war is necessary. Note the 'sometimes'; this country is always at war -- in the past hundred years, we have been involved in six major wars, only two of which were really justifiable (maybe three). That's one war every sixteen years; and I'm not counting the 'cold war' or the 'war on drugs', each of which has eaten more resources than any other war.
Why don't we stop declaring war on other countries and start working on our own problems? How about a 'war on homeless', or a 'war on undereducation', or even a 'war against cancer'? Why the fsck do we have to fight a propped-up 'war on terrorism' when we could just as easily...I dunno...start paying back that huge national debt that we owe to a bunch of other countries?
Ok. I'm done ranting. *Not* posting as AC because I don't give a flying fsck what the Nazi-wannabes think.
You do know that 'MRE' stands for 'Meals Rejected by Ethiopians', right?
I've got a safe and effective weight-loss drug; it's called adrenaline. You get it from getting off your lazy ass and exercising!
What a concept.
Americans are fat because they take in far too many calories that they never work off. Very little work done in this country involves manual labor, and yet we consume, as a nation, insane amounts of fast food, loaded with fat, salt, and high-glucose carbohydrates that never...get...used. We always drive places; walking, cycling, and running are 'recreational' activites, not methods of transport. Americans consume something like three times the average amounts of red meat as their European counterparts, and yet I don't see that many people around me who are in training for Olympic power-lifting.
I mean, christ, I mention biking eight miles to the office and people marvel at how I can cover that kind of distance without a car, even though I know seventy-year old diabetics with bowel cancer who bike more than that on a daily basis.
We don't need another drug or fad diet; we need to get people exercising. Something as stupid and simple as an hour's worth of walking on a daily basis would do more for the weight problems of this country than a whole oil-tanker loaded with Ephedra and Dr. Atkins books.
Oh, yeah: Fsck Atkins. Sure, you lose weight -- but it's not a long-term sustainable plan for eating, and it's a diet high in fat and cholesterol. Hell, the only reason why it works at all is because it basically overloads your digestive system -- which is why most Atkins-diet people complain of low energy levels; the Atkins diet is completely incompatible with sustaining any sort of exercise regimen.
Yes-and-no; it depends on how likely I am to collect the full amount back from the money I've dished out. In an ideal (or at least sane) world, everyone would pay me back, and I'd make money; but in the real world, people default, and if enough people default, I lose money.
"Any sufficiently advanced incompetent is indistinguishable from magick violence."
And there, in a nutshell, lies U.S. foreign policy.
BTW, it's "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." It's Asimov, and shows up in the first book of the original Foundation triolgy.
Given my experience with humanity, 'specially in the US, methinks that Mister Super Human will grow up to be pretty pissed off at his peers, unless he's "gifted" with an IQ of twelve.
We're still dealing with small screens, battery life, and durability problems. A 320x240 screen is way too small for a textbook or classroom note-taking; there's a reason why most students still use full-size notebooks, even though smaller ones exist), and four to six hours of battery life wouldn't even get me through one day of classes, much less a night of studying from an uncomfortable, small screen.
Furthermore, I've used a Zaurus[1], and while it's one of the most durable PDAs I've run across, I still didn't feel that it could take student-level pounding. We're talking about crap that can get stuffed in a backpack, dunked in a pool, have hot coffee poured on it, sat on, kicked, stepped on, dropped, and generally subjected to insane abuse. In order for a notebook/textbook tablet device to work for students, it has to be almost indestructable. You have to be able to write on the screen with normal pens without leaving ink stains (quite doable), because I guarantee that normal stili will get lost or misplaced.
The current crop of palmtops, while certainly usable for many things, is not suitable as a textbook/notebook replacement.
[1] I work as a sysadmin, and get to evaluate new hardware purchases.
The big problem with ebooks lies in the readers; devices capable of reading ebooks are bulky, fragile, expensive, and nominally not as easy on the eyes as paper; in addition, most of them are read-only, which means that you can't write notes in the margin or hilight passages for later use.
Personally, I'd like to see a low-power (eight to sixteen hours on a single charge) tablet-PC-like device, one which is as easy on the eyes as a normal book (not that hard, really[1]), has a small-but-useful amount of storage (say, 8M of RAM and 512M of compactflash), and into which I can upload textbooks and course notes for all of my college courses. It has to be durable as well; I should be able to accidentally knock this thing off a table into an aquarium, and it should still work.
Give it some simple handwriting recognition, some decent calculation software, and the ability to link up with a desktop via a USB cable, and you could sell tons of these things to college students. I know I'd jump at the opportunity to not lug around a 40lb backpack, laptop case, two-inch binder filled with notes...oh, and a rew reference manuals...even if it cost me a few hundred bucks. Textbook publishers could also get in on the game; charge half as much for an E-book (which can't be resold), and use this as incentive to sell the tablet devices. Everyone wins -- the publishers make more money (no printing, shipping, or warehousing costs), the tablet maker wins, and the students win (less back strain, cheaper textbooks, ability to have an entire library in a satchel).
[1] If you're willing to keep it black-and-white, just use a farly high-resolution LCD, and use a plain white sheet of paper as a background; the paper will reflect ambient light properly, except where the LCD is active -- presto, paper-like black-on-white text, just like a book.
Let's see that one stand up in court.
And they're going to subscribe for what, exactly? Internet access?
Most ISP AUPs don't allow you to resell internet access -- you can share it for free (most of the time), but when you start reselling their services, they'll want a cut, and if you don't give it to them, they'll have quite a nicely sized legal lever to pry it out of you.
Add to that the fact that 48 tenants times twenty dollars per month per tenant equals about the cost of a T1, and you're not looking at much of a profit. One to three hundred dollars a month, at most, giving him a three year time to realize his original investment.
Uruklink does offer DSL service to a few neigborhoods. I have a 256K line that goes down a few hours a week and a few days a month
Does this mean you have an Uruk-Hai-speed connection?
I don't know about that, but they sound more reliable than Comcast.
He called the Iraqi Linux Users Group "iLug." Don't tell Apple.
Why would they sue him over his use of the name of their first portable computer in 1985?
"Umm, Richard M. Nixon has passed away..."
Which means he's in a more stable condition than Cheney. And likely more photogenic to boot.
it is confirmed that Nixon will be replacing Cheney as Bush's running mate in the upcoming elections...
Oh, come on, "crisco", "speculum", and "pissed-off iguana" are hardly words that could offend even the most sensible of ears.
From what I heard, he got sued into nonexistence by some sompany called SCrOtum.
Donald Rumsfeld
The Vogons aren't *that* bad.
Please, go and shoot yourself now.
Come now, Marvin, do I look like a tank to you?
I can't see Campbell as Zaphod -- Zaphod is supposed to be a swingin' frood who is so hip he can't see over his pelvis. Myers fits this better than Campbell does by a long shot, although I certainly wouldn't say he'd be ideal. You need someone who can pretend they live in the 60's in a campy-yet-believable way. And with a less powerful chin.
I could see Goldblum for Ford, except he's a bit too deadpan, but yeah, he's probably better than Wilson.
Agreed on the Stones for Disaster Area. Didn't even think of that. But who would be the captan of the Vogon fleet?
Christopher Lloyd as Slartibartfast.
Mike Myers as Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Owen Wilson as Ford Prefect.
January Jones as Trillian.
Alan Rickman as...someone. Maybe the waiter at Milliways? He just has to be in there somewhere.
Yeah, I know, too expensive, but I think it would work pretty well.
You said it. Those evil Republicans even fixed it so that no Democrats were even listed on the ballot in this election.
It has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans; it has to do with two simple things: Lack of Accounting and Conflict of Interest.
The first is simple enough; anyone who works with computers can tell you that faking and/or modifying records is a pretty trivial process. With no physical trail, there is no way to verify that the votes are being counted properly -- period. I'd have no problem with electronic voting systems if they just printed out two receipts for the voter -- one which is kept at the polls, and the other which can be taken home by the voter if they wish.
The second is much more sinister; the CEO of Diebold (maker of Our Favorite Voting Systems) has as much *said* that he intends to hand the next election to Bush. I'd be screaming bloody murder if he was a Democrat and wanted to hand the election to Dean. The point is, the person who is solely responsible for totalling the votes had better be impartial, or subject to verification by third parties. In the case of these new voting systems, neither is the case.
Fast food?
No, that's just a field where everything is just plain *wrong*.