> You know, everyday about 100,000 people place their lives > in the trust of software 'black boxes' on planes and not a > peep from the newly political geeks.
That's because the black boxes in planes are there to record what happens if something fucks up. The Diebold voting machines, on the other hand, are there to fuck something up and not record it.
> Especially given Shakespeare's dominance in English literature, it's > not surprising that "realism" has become a kind of critical gold > standard for all forms of literature.
I might be missing your point, but I'm not quite sure why you're linking Shakespeare with realism, considering he predated it as a theatrical movement by some 250 years or so.
> Cultural snobs who would never be so provincial to require painting > to be representational, will nonetheless require that stories be > representational to be "interesting".
This is less true than it used to be--in theater, at least. Tony Kushner's Angels In America is only realistic in fits and starts, and Suzan-Lori Parks (a Pulitzer Prize winner) writes plays that are positively Brechtian.
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> Does US law not have something similar?
Theoretically, yes. Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution says:
No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.
Given the way the government's been treating the Consititution lately, though, I wouldn't hold my breath about this actually being enforced. =P
> But will the volcano run linux?
Yes, but only Caldera.
> So how many human-like robots have you seen on your way to work lately?
Well, I did walk past the accounting department on my way in...
> But what if you receive a Power Point presentation from your
> manager called "ReadThisOrYourFired.ppt"?
I'd quit. I refuse to work for anyone who can't tell the difference between a possessive pronoun and a contraction.
An old comment of mine from when someone mentioned this a few years ago:
> The mines decide as a group what configuration is best and then move to fill the gap.
I wonder how they go about deciding...
"Okay, Frank...hop over into that gap right there."
"Shit, no! Larry just got run over by a TANK! Did you see that shit? You hop into the gap, asshole!"
> I smell a rat.
Really? You're supposed to be smelling pine freshness. Please file a bug report.
> Fortunately, games cannot be owned, under current US IP law.
> They can be pwned, but that's something altogether different.
I believe that was decided in L33T h4X0r vs. STFU n00b.
> I, for one, welcome our new invisible overlords.
Invisible overlords? Frankly, I can't see it happening.
> Yeah, I heard that once you've had Chimp Poontang you just can't get enough...
I believe you mean "orangutang".
Thanks! I'll be here all week...
> I mean all that hair and leathery lips!
It doesn't seem to have slowed Paris Hilton down.
> I'd assume its relatively difficult to make satellites out of sticks and dirt.
Nah, that part's easy.
The launching, on the other hand...
> Masturbating in the conference room can't be far off!
They already have this.
It's called PowerPoint.
> This is nothing new, my health insurance has an online system and so do many others.
Yeah, but this is Dell--if you die, they'll stick a restore CD in your mouth and have you back up and walking around in about an hour.
> Correction - it takes some highly enriched uranium,
> a library card, and an electrician to make a nuclear weapon.
Or if you're MacGyver, the library card, a putty knife, and the game ball from the 1987 Superbowl.
> Jungle voodoo orgies...
Are you hiring?
> You know, everyday about 100,000 people place their lives
> in the trust of software 'black boxes' on planes and not a
> peep from the newly political geeks.
That's because the black boxes in planes are there to record what happens if something fucks up. The Diebold voting machines, on the other hand, are there to fuck something up and not record it.
> Especially given Shakespeare's dominance in English literature, it's
> not surprising that "realism" has become a kind of critical gold
> standard for all forms of literature.
I might be missing your point, but I'm not quite sure why you're linking Shakespeare with realism, considering he predated it as a theatrical movement by some 250 years or so.
> Cultural snobs who would never be so provincial to require painting
> to be representational, will nonetheless require that stories be
> representational to be "interesting".
This is less true than it used to be--in theater, at least. Tony Kushner's Angels In America is only realistic in fits and starts, and Suzan-Lori Parks (a Pulitzer Prize winner) writes plays that are positively Brechtian.
> 5342 is a lot of screenshots.
They needed to take that many--5,340 of them are blue.
Does it only work if you're snowboarding down a hillside and parachuting off a cliff while slamming a Mountain Dew?
> [...] right now I'm going to guess it's running on a mixture of molten plastic, metal, and smoke.
Oh, like Keith Richards.
I keep getting an image in my head of Newton's Laws of Whittlin', and it won't go away.
Because even the aliens are outsourcing everything to India.
Is anyone else picturing the Verizon guy in a lab coat standing over test subjects and repeating "Do you have cancer now? Good!"?
> Why would you pay for your own shackles?
Because my wife complained that the garbage bag zip ties were irritating her wrists.
> Hey, I can get a monkey to respond differently to its environment by sending electric shocks to any part of its anatomy,
Or as scientists call it, the Peter Gabriel Principle.