As I've already said, when possible come out... but, you just won't get much sympathy from me, as if you insist on staying put in the bible belt, then you have no right to whine to me about your situation.
At the end of the day you have to ask yourself: is my nice job worth living a lie for at least 8 hours a day for the next 40 years (I'm imagining you're 25 and will retire at 65)?
If the answer is "Yes", more power to you, but don't come crying to me, you've made your bed...
(I myself came from a VERY Catholic and VERY big Mexican family. Don't be a dumbass and assume my coming out was easy, especially as I came out to the whole gang... but I made that decision because in the long run it was the right choice and because I only have one life to live, and did not want to live that life in a 24/7 lie).
So, I hope you're comfortable in your self-imposed prison. I'm sad for you, as I remember how the closet felt like a coffin, and I don't like how you've given up already.
(I came out, moved to a liberal state (California), and got myself a nice high-paying white collar IT job myself, "despite" being gay.)
You do have a choice, but if you choose the closet, then suck it up and shut up.
(I'd rather you take steps to get you away from the bible belt and out of the closet, as I think it's obscene in this day and age to be still in the closet, but just like alcoholics, you have to want to help yourself...)
I read your post and understood the lot and sympathised with your view... until the last phrase, "I'm here, I'm queer, I'm a geek my dear!;-)" which made me cringe.
I think this is the first time I can honestly use the online term LOL unironically. Dude/dudette, get a sense of humor you dolt! That last line is called humor...
To be honest though, I don't give a shit what you (or any person) thinks of campness (in gay or straight men!) Yes, there are some gay men who do camp it up, and if they do that's their choice, and there are also straight camp men. I would rather have to stand next to a camp man than a smoker (insert smile here for humor-impared anonymous coward.)
At the end of the day, who gives a sh*t? Campness is not contagious, it doesn't ruin your lungs like second-hand smoke... I think the reason some straight people (usually men) have problems with campness is because it makes them uncomfortable with their own same-sex feelings.
And sorry but you're wrong. Homophobia is not a natural response, it's a learned one. Believe it or not there are straight people who are NOT homophobic, even against camp gay men.
Homophobia is an irrational fear of gays, and this fear is usually "indoctrinated" into a person via religion, via societal homophobia, or fear of the unknown. Thus why I said that being out is good: straight people who have never met a gay person before and who meet me realize that gay men are not a) after their ass, b) after their children, nor c) monsters.
Anonymous coward, next time you're going to post asinine comments like "If the gays can tone down the camp thing, then I am sure the straights can be a bit more tolerant", then at least have the (proverbial) balls to post under your own name.
To prove my geek credentials, here is a quote from an X-men movie that applies to gays and why camp gays shouldn't have to "tone down" themselves:
NightCrawler: "Excuse me. They say you can imitate anybody. Even their voice."
Mystique: (echoing NightCrawler's voice) "Even their voice."
NightCrawler: "Then why not stay in disguise all the time? You know, look like everyone else?"
(Or, to put in "auditory Gaydar" for the weenie Rick17JJ: "Girlfriend, that ith the funnieth load of boolshit I have theen in ageth!")
Next thing you know you'll be talking about flouncing abilities... in which case I come up short, as I'm a 226lb rugby-playing gay mexican-american and I don't flounce, I tackle and punch......and I wonder how Rick17JJ deals with the tons of metrosexual heterosexual males who can be more camp than my fellow gay men??
Or could it be a case of Rick17JJ calling the kettle black?
For gay Slashdot readers like me, this article is a good reminder why (situation allowing!) it's best to be out of the closet and upfront with everyone. I came out to my folks when I was 16, and have always been upfront about my gayness, and I've reaped the benefits of this:
1. no having to lie/watch everything I say 2. no worries about been "found out" if I use some gay-oriented website (such as gaydar.co.uk) 3. no blackmail is possible (I remember that it was an excuse used by government agencies in order to deny hiring gays, as they could allegedly be blackmailed about their sexuality). 4. being an out gay man, straight people who get to know me learn that gay is good/they tend to get rid of their preconceptions about gays. 5. I can use Facebook/Flickr and not give a damn about who can see who my friends/groups are.
Basically, as an out gay man I can read the article, ponder on my Facebook account, and can calmly think "So f*ck*ng what??"
This is because being out of the closet defangs homophobes in many ways..
Of course I understand why some gay/lesbian/bi folk would be in the closet (live in a small town, close-minded friends/family/employers, work for the US military etc.), but if you're in the closet and reading this, realize that in the long run it's so much nicer to "thine own self be true", and I've been so much happier since I came out all those years ago.
Actually, this brings to mind an interesting/useful teleconference use for this mini projector... see the movie "The Island" with Ewan McGregor: in that (scifi) movie they had cell phones that had projectors built in, so they could project against a wall and so do a "video call" with the person on the other end with a nice-size projected image of the caller. If nothing else, it would be nice to be able to better see (for example) my mom's face from 5000 miles away when wishing her happy birthday, as opposed to the voice-only connection that I have to currently settle for...
While your reply is silly, at least you did it in correct Spanish, which is more than the majority of the non-Latino US population can do:D (I grew up as a Mexican-American in the USA, and I am astounded how many people in the US (whether white or latino or etc.) are afraid to try a second language! If our current US "President" can speak some Spanish (which he can, surprisingly enough!), then saner/smarter people across the US should be able to pick up a second language too!;-)
I think that before some of you folks whine and moan about Sony as if they had personally screwed you over, you ought to TRY the technology. When it comes out, try it, THEN tell us what you think of the new Sony Reader and why despite its great screen technology you won't buy it.
If you're an avid reader like me, you'll want one and may forgive Sony its past mistakes: I've owned many PDAs and eBooks (the Apple Newton, the original Palm Pilot, one of of the newer Palm PDAs, a laptop, the RocketBook eReader, the RCA 1100 and 1200,and now the Sony Librie). But until Sony's Librie, I always gave up reading eBooks after a month or so due to eye strain (because in my opinion even the newest non-eInk screens are crappy for reading from for more than a few minutes). But thanks to the eInk, the Sony Librie screen is virtually like paper. (Yes, the Librie could use a faster CPU and better book-conversion software, but aside from that it's a damn fine reader.)
I'd love for the Sony Reader to become very popular... NOT because I like Sony (I don't), but because I want mass adoption of an eInk reader so that it goes down in price and becomes as ubiquitous the iPod... Imagine, no more having to take 3 or 4 heavy paper books on your holiday, when your one eBook reader will hold 100 books at once! Imagine being able to finally get your work manuals, college textbooks, and the rest of your books in a portable, readeable format, instead of having to haul heavy dead trees anywhere (and imagine reducing the demand on the poor trees)! Imagine that due to popular demand, books that used to be out-of-print become readily available again! (I mean, I love Project Gutenberg and all, but I do want to read something more current than Emma!) I think these possibilities is why we should give the Sony Reader a chance...
Well, I just tried using Open Office on my Mac yesterday, and aside from OO being ugly, I was not able to cut and paste text from a native Mac OS X app to OO. I tried from several native OS X apps to Open Office, but no luck. And then there's the fact that having to use X11 on a Mac just feels like a kludge when TWO apps open (Open Office and X11) when you just wanna type but don't wanna use M$ Word.
I'm sorry but you're stupid. For example, despite all that George Bush Jr. has done WRONG, he WAS elected (this time anyway!) democratically/constitutionally by the portion of the population that wanted him in office. Furthermore, the fact that this Creationist sticker was considered unconstitutional shows that the Constitution (and the concept something being "unconstitutional") is still alive and kicking, thank you very much!
(I now live in the UK, and I get tired of all the nonAmerican whiners who bitch and moan about Bush and then try to tar ME/all Americans with the same brush! Sheesh!)
I don't know why some./ers are whining about this hack. We are here because we're geeks and hackers, right? The fact that someone has used their brainpower to create a cool hack should be commended, not derided!
Speaking of which, if I had these folks' technical savvy, I would have immediately bought Sony's Librie eBook, and hacked the hell out of it until I could put my own content in it! (Please, please, someone hack it!!);-)
It's funny, as it's not just the computer illiterate "idiots" who get spyware... I'm a geek, and when I have to use Windoze I now use Mozilla because MSIE tends to have a love of installing little programs the advertisers oh-so-helpfully send your way to track your clicks... (not just cookies, but actually.exes...) so I recommend Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/). (No I don't work for them, yada yada yada...) If I am surfing a website of -ahem- dubious nature, I run Ad-Aware soon after... it once found spy software that Norton Antivirus did not see at all... so while Norton was happily letting me continue surfing while the spyware connected to the Internet, Ad-Aware found the files and the running processes and zapped them!
Of course, the best way to avoid spyware is to:
Read the Install's fine print before installing some "neat" software, there's often a catch
Turn off automatic software installation in your browser
Am I the only expat US citizen who is annoyed with the general USA hypocrisy/two-facedness? On the one hand the USA acts like a prudish 89-year old school marm, wanting to prohibit alcohol/legal adult pornography...
But on the other hand it acts like the stereotypical no-brained violent red-neck, where guns are readily available and violence is rampant in games, TV, movies, etc...
It's OK to teach consequence-free killing, bigotry and maiming to our children in today's America... but god forbid we/our children should see an accidental nipple on TV!!
Sometimes I think the majority of the USA's citizens need a wack across the head and an additional 70 IQ points, sheesh! (It was only when I moved out of the USA into the UK that I realized how f*ck*d up the USA's priorities are...)
One thing that people are forgetting is that, like it or not, radioactivity is EVERYWHERE. Even before our nuclear age, nature has been putting out radioactivity. Unfortunately many of us don't know this fact and act like hypochondriacs when the topic is mentioned. Here is a list of natural radioactivity (from various web sources):
1. Our bodies: about half of the radioactivity in our bodies comes from Potassium-40 (naturally-occurring radioactive form of potassium.) Potassium is important for the brain and muscles. Most of the rest of our bodies' radioactivity is from Carbon-14 and tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. These naturally-occurring radioactive substances expose our bodies to about 25 "millirem" per year, abbreviated as "mrem/yr".)
2. Radioactivity in food and water: for example, the radio- (and non-radio) active forms of iodine and sodium. The food we eat contains radium-226, thorium-232, potassium-40, carbon-14, and hydrogen-3, also known as tritium.
To quote a web page: The U. S. Department of Energy gives the following concentrations as examples:
Salad Oil 4,900 pCi/l
Milk 1,400 pCi/l
Whiskey 1,200 pCi/l
Beer 390 pCi/l
Tap Water 20 pCi/l
Brazil Nuts 14.00 pCi/g
Bananas 3.00 pCi/g
Tea 0.40 pCi/g
Flour 0.14 pCi/g
Peanuts and Peanut butter 0.12 pCi/g.
3. Flying: Flying in an airplane increases our exposure to cosmic radiation. A coast-to-coast round trip gives us a dose of about four millirem.
4. Living at higher altitudes: Generally, for each 100-foot increase in altitude, there is an increased dose of one millirem per year. (So, San Francisco vs. Boulder, for example)...
5. The rocks, soils and beaches around us are radioactive: In Ohio, radiation in soil and rocks contributes about 60 millirem in one year to our exposure. In Colorado, it is about 105 millirem per year. In Kerala, India, this radioactivity from soil and rocks can be 3,000 millirem per year, and at a beach in Guarapari, Brazil, it is over 5 millirem in a single hour -- but only a few residents who use that beach receive doses in excess of 500 millirem per year.
6. Radioactivity in our homes: A: If you live in a wood house, the natural radioactivity in the building materials gives you a dose of 30 to 50 millirem per year. B: In a brick house, it is 50 to 100 millirem per year. C: In a tightly sealed house with little ventilation, natural radioactive gases (radon) can be trapped for a longer period of time and increase your dose.
7. People/coworkers: Each person with whom we spend eight hours a day gives us a dose of about 0.1 millirem in a year.
8. Cooking: Using a gas stove can increase the dose by about two millirem per year because of radioactive materials in the natural gas.
9. Smoking: A person who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day receives a radiation dose of about 1,300 millrem per year. This is because polonium (a radioactive element) is part of the smoke and when inhaled, it gets trapped in the lungs.
10. Misc: There's also the sun, and medical X-rays...
Basically, on the whole we need not fear natural radioactivity, as our bodies evolved to cope with it (cellular repair). What we need to fear/respect is man-made radioactivity and its waste products, because when human error/greed/fallibility get involved, that is when man-made radioactivity bites us in the ass...
...the browser sniffing/restriction thing is still happening... I can't tell you how many damn times I have run into a page on the web that basically says "keep out", because I am not using a MicroSnot browser... it pisses me off, and I write a polite but irate note in such cases to the site owner/webmaster...
I love robots, but after looking at the site & the videos my "bullshit" meter went off:
The 2nd line of the page says "User logged in, proceed." This seems out of place on a technical guy's webpage, as if it were put there for the nontechnical/credulous to think "oh, computerese, must be technical and real"...
The robot makes me think of CG in several scenes.
If this robot is so fabulous, why haven't we heard anything before now? (Where are the drooling reporters to report on this neat news story?)
I find it hard to believe that one guy and his ball-and-chain could do work of the caliber (and cost) comparable to MIT or Honda's Asimo bipedal robot...
Occam's Internet bullshit razor: if it's too good to be true, and it's on the internet, it's probably bullshit
Of course, I'd love to be wrong (I hope I am, I'd love to see such a robot out and about working), but until we get some independent, trustworthy verification I'll take this cum grano salis (...with a grain of salt.)
...hmmm, I think the article points out the bleedin' obvious... I use my walkman as "personal space" AND "anti-freak" protection... I use public transportation LOTS, and for some reason I am a freak-magnet even though my personal "freak level" is pretty near zero: I have been acosted by people asking for money/men offering heroin and asking for sex/women with putrid teeth putting the moves on me in very bad Spanish/men or women that ramble on about their sad lives/etc...
(I DON'T know why, but these people find me on any public transport! Do I have a friggin' stamp on my forehead stating "freaks welcome"???)
Using my walkman (or even wearing headphones with the walkman turned off) helps me cast an "anti-freak" personal wall...
...hmm... sounds like a new Angband spell!;-)
I bet you the next article by the same author will be: "Water: It's wet" , sheesh!
...I'm sorry but you're making a gross over-generalization about the Latino population in California, and you must be monolingual (*spit*) yourself, as you obviously don't have a clue about the fact that bilingualism DOES work:
FYI, I have two brothers, and we three are Mexican-Americans: I was born and grew up in Mexico until I was 7 y.o., and then we moved to California. My two brothers were born & grew up in the USA. We were brought up speaking both English and Spanish (my mom spoke to us in Spanish only), and we sound like typical Californian boys... and we speak/read/write English AND Spanish just fine, muchas gracias!
And "slang ridden"?? Where have YOU been? For instance, listen to any white, English-speaking 16 year old in California, and they won't be speaking BBC English/your parents' English... they'll be speaking the argot common to any American kid... slang is not a crime, and believe it or not there are plenty of eloquent English-speaking Mexicans from/in California... (moi, for example, at the risk of being immodest;-)
Besides, from the MANY errors I've seen on Slashdot (let alone anywhere else), many native/monolingual English speakers themselves could use English lessons...
I guess what I'm trying to say is: don't assume everyone is as linguistically deficient as you may be...;-)
...ha! You bring up an excellent point... where does an "artificial" language end and "natural" one begin?
The truthful answer is that it's a muddled area... but one could argue that due to its vocab/grammar/momentum/speakers/existing culture, Esperanto could be considered "natural-ish", whereas Solresol is definitely artificial...
maybe languages constructed "a priori" should be considered "artificial" (a la Solresol) whereas those that are more "a posteriori" (a la Esperanto) should be considered "natural-ish", due to their aforementioned semblance to existing human languages/grammars?
I'm sorry you have a chip on your shoulder, as it does not help in a discussion and you end up putting words in my mouth...
I am not dismissing and demeaning kids, but I think you're throwing the baby out with the bath water... kids (being kids/young/having not yet lived life) won't have a clue as to what essential skills are needed in the "real world" (not the TV show;-)... I think it's great to give kids classes that truly catch their imagination, BUT we cannot throw out the basics; I think instead we should keep math/science/languages etc, and make them interesting (like that Bill Nye the science guy, he made science very interesting to me...)
Instead of advocating having kids draw up the curriculum as you suggest, I think kids should give feedback on it that will be acted upon (such as: "you need to change our math class, most kids in it find it taught in a very boring way..." or "Why don't you teach us to talk to the local Latino kids? All this rote memorizztion is putting us off Spanish?")...
...dear Rob, obviously your English-language reading skills are not up to par;-)... in my entry I said:
"...a MORE useful artificial language..."
Note the word "artificial"... if I meant a "natural language" like French or Spanish, I'd have said it... but in this case we are talking about artificial languages, and not natural ones (as one could argue Spanish over French or German over these two... but that's for a different dicussion/off-topic!)...
...like it or not, we DO need a literate populace to keep our society running, which does call for some useful subjects.
If kids decided the curriculum there'd be no math classes, nor computer programming classes... Shakespeare and Spanish/French would also be out, and instead we'd probably have "Pop Idol 101" and other vapid subjects (as it is we've seen studies stating that basic math skills in the US and UK need improvement pronto)....
Besides, Gen-Y's lack of enthusiasm about the world is because they're too busy getting fat in front of the Xbox and computer, instead of exploring the real word...
...why not teach the kids a MORE useful artificial language: Esperanto? Esperanto at least helps them NOW in their life if they want to make penpals/friends worldwide, read a diverse range of books, or if they want to then move onto Spanish/Italian/French/other languages (using their REAL-WORLD grammar skills gained via Esperanto as a tool to aid further language learning...) OR, encourage the kids to then move from Elvish to Esperanto? I say this because in my opinion Elvish is a linguistic dead end for them, whereas Esperanto is a "gateway" to a whole community (Fer instance: Q: how many books, websites and magazines are regularly printed in Elvish? (a: very few, versus Esperanto's many, many....)
...ha ha ha... the picture of the cute guy hugging the robot is what sold me... (I'm so gay!) It's a perfect picture: 1 cute guy (the gay equivalent of the (unnecessary) big-breasted women on covers of UK tech magazines), + 1 cute robot, equals at least 1 new buyer... *rolls eyes* I AM such a gay geek!... (uh, no, I am NOT thinking about a human-robot three-way...;-) (Anyone else think the guy hugging the robot looks like Francis from Malcolm in the Middle???)
I am SO happy Eric Raymond wrote this... just a few days ago I too was trying to set up my printer via CUPS, and ended up giving up/swearing up a storm. Bitchy comments from some Slashdot readers aside, we ought to listen to this man... Linux's main strength AND disadvantage is that the majority of the code writers/users are (like moi) tech-savvy geeks. But, the UI should not force us to become a full-fledge sysadmin every time we want to install a damn printer (or plugin, or etc...) Believe it or not, even though I am a geek, sometimes I just want to use the printer without giving a rat's ass how it happens as long as it happens. It's one of the few times that I don't hate MicroBarf or (cr)Apple. What many of the open source projects need is to recruit a local WinDoze/Macinosh weenie (their boss for example), and have them run through the projects' UI. If the user finds the UI easy, then great! Otherwise, it should be back to the (G)UI drawing board. Obscurity does not lead to usability, people!
Slashdot Mirror
As I've already said, when possible come out... but, you just won't get much sympathy from me, as if you insist on staying put in the bible belt, then you have no right to whine to me about your situation.
At the end of the day you have to ask yourself: is my nice job worth living a lie for at least 8 hours a day for the next 40 years (I'm imagining you're 25 and will retire at 65)?
If the answer is "Yes", more power to you, but don't come crying to me, you've made your bed...
(I myself came from a VERY Catholic and VERY big Mexican family. Don't be a dumbass and assume my coming out was easy, especially as I came out to the whole gang... but I made that decision because in the long run it was the right choice and because I only have one life to live, and did not want to live that life in a 24/7 lie).
So, I hope you're comfortable in your self-imposed prison. I'm sad for you, as I remember how the closet felt like a coffin, and I don't like how you've given up already.
(I came out, moved to a liberal state (California), and got myself a nice high-paying white collar IT job myself, "despite" being gay.)
You do have a choice, but if you choose the closet, then suck it up and shut up.
(I'd rather you take steps to get you away from the bible belt and out of the closet, as I think it's obscene in this day and age to be still in the closet, but just like alcoholics, you have to want to help yourself...)
I read your post and understood the lot and sympathised with your view... until the last phrase, "I'm here, I'm queer, I'm a geek my dear! ;-)" which made me cringe.
I think this is the first time I can honestly use the online term LOL unironically. Dude/dudette, get a sense of humor you dolt! That last line is called humor...
To be honest though, I don't give a shit what you (or any person) thinks of campness (in gay or straight men!) Yes, there are some gay men who do camp it up, and if they do that's their choice, and there are also straight camp men. I would rather have to stand next to a camp man than a smoker (insert smile here for humor-impared anonymous coward.)
At the end of the day, who gives a sh*t? Campness is not contagious, it doesn't ruin your lungs like second-hand smoke... I think the reason some straight people (usually men) have problems with campness is because it makes them uncomfortable with their own same-sex feelings.
And sorry but you're wrong. Homophobia is not a natural response, it's a learned one. Believe it or not there are straight people who are NOT homophobic, even against camp gay men.
Homophobia is an irrational fear of gays, and this fear is usually "indoctrinated" into a person via religion, via societal homophobia, or fear of the unknown. Thus why I said that being out is good: straight people who have never met a gay person before and who meet me realize that gay men are not a) after their ass, b) after their children, nor c) monsters.
Anonymous coward, next time you're going to post asinine comments like "If the gays can tone down the camp thing, then I am sure the straights can be a bit more tolerant", then at least have the (proverbial) balls to post under your own name.
To prove my geek credentials, here is a quote from an X-men movie that applies to gays and why camp gays shouldn't have to "tone down" themselves:
NightCrawler: "Excuse me. They say you can imitate anybody. Even their voice."
Mystique: (echoing NightCrawler's voice) "Even their voice."
NightCrawler: "Then why not stay in disguise all the time? You know, look like everyone else?"
Mystique: "Because we shouldn't have to."
LOL the best load of bullshit I've read in ages!
(Or, to put in "auditory Gaydar" for the weenie Rick17JJ: "Girlfriend, that ith the funnieth load of boolshit I have theen in ageth!")
Next thing you know you'll be talking about flouncing abilities... in which case I come up short, as I'm a 226lb rugby-playing gay mexican-american and I don't flounce, I tackle and punch... ...and I wonder how Rick17JJ deals with the tons of metrosexual heterosexual males who can be more camp than my fellow gay men??
Or could it be a case of Rick17JJ calling the kettle black?
For gay Slashdot readers like me, this article is a good reminder why (situation allowing!) it's best to be out of the closet and upfront with everyone. I came out to my folks when I was 16, and have always been upfront about my gayness, and I've reaped the benefits of this:
1. no having to lie/watch everything I say
2. no worries about been "found out" if I use some gay-oriented website (such as gaydar.co.uk)
3. no blackmail is possible (I remember that it was an excuse used by government agencies in order to deny hiring gays, as they could allegedly be blackmailed about their sexuality).
4. being an out gay man, straight people who get to know me learn that gay is good/they tend to get rid of their preconceptions about gays.
5. I can use Facebook/Flickr and not give a damn about who can see who my friends/groups are.
Basically, as an out gay man I can read the article, ponder on my Facebook account, and can calmly think "So f*ck*ng what??"
This is because being out of the closet defangs homophobes in many ways..
Of course I understand why some gay/lesbian/bi folk would be in the closet (live in a small town, close-minded friends/family/employers, work for the US military etc.), but if you're in the closet and reading this, realize that in the long run it's so much nicer to "thine own self be true", and I've been so much happier since I came out all those years ago.
I'm here, I'm queer, I'm a geek my dear! ;-)
Actually, this brings to mind an interesting/useful teleconference use for this mini projector... see the movie "The Island" with Ewan McGregor: in that (scifi) movie they had cell phones that had projectors built in, so they could project against a wall and so do a "video call" with the person on the other end with a nice-size projected image of the caller. If nothing else, it would be nice to be able to better see (for example) my mom's face from 5000 miles away when wishing her happy birthday, as opposed to the voice-only connection that I have to currently settle for...
While your reply is silly, at least you did it in correct Spanish, which is more than the majority of the non-Latino US population can do :D (I grew up as a Mexican-American in the USA, and I am astounded how many people in the US (whether white or latino or etc.) are afraid to try a second language! If our current US "President" can speak some Spanish (which he can, surprisingly enough!), then saner/smarter people across the US should be able to pick up a second language too! ;-)
If you're an avid reader like me, you'll want one and may forgive Sony its past mistakes: I've owned many PDAs and eBooks (the Apple Newton, the original Palm Pilot, one of of the newer Palm PDAs, a laptop, the RocketBook eReader, the RCA 1100 and 1200,and now the Sony Librie).
But until Sony's Librie, I always gave up reading eBooks after a month or so due to eye strain (because in my opinion even the newest non-eInk screens are crappy for reading from for more than a few minutes). But thanks to the eInk, the Sony Librie screen is virtually like paper. (Yes, the Librie could use a faster CPU and better book-conversion software, but aside from that it's a damn fine reader.)
I'd love for the Sony Reader to become very popular... NOT because I like Sony (I don't), but because I want mass adoption of an eInk reader so that it goes down in price and becomes as ubiquitous the iPod... Imagine, no more having to take 3 or 4 heavy paper books on your holiday, when your one eBook reader will hold 100 books at once! Imagine being able to finally get your work manuals, college textbooks, and the rest of your books in a portable, readeable format, instead of having to haul heavy dead trees anywhere (and imagine reducing the demand on the poor trees)! Imagine that due to popular demand, books that used to be out-of-print become readily available again! (I mean, I love Project Gutenberg and all, but I do want to read something more current than Emma!) I think these possibilities is why we should give the Sony Reader a chance...
Well, I just tried using Open Office on my Mac yesterday, and aside from OO being ugly, I was not able to cut and paste text from a native Mac OS X app to OO. I tried from several native OS X apps to Open Office, but no luck. And then there's the fact that having to use X11 on a Mac just feels like a kludge when TWO apps open (Open Office and X11) when you just wanna type but don't wanna use M$ Word.
(I now live in the UK, and I get tired of all the nonAmerican whiners who bitch and moan about Bush and then try to tar ME/all Americans with the same brush! Sheesh!)
Speaking of which, if I had these folks' technical savvy, I would have immediately bought Sony's Librie eBook, and hacked the hell out of it until I could put my own content in it! (Please, please, someone hack it!!) ;-)
Of course, the best way to avoid spyware is to:
- Read the Install's fine print before installing some "neat" software, there's often a catch
- Turn off automatic software installation in your browser
- Don't use MSIE
- Don't use Windows!
My two cents...But on the other hand it acts like the stereotypical no-brained violent red-neck, where guns are readily available and violence is rampant in games, TV, movies, etc...
It's OK to teach consequence-free killing, bigotry and maiming to our children in today's America... but god forbid we/our children should see an accidental nipple on TV!!
Sometimes I think the majority of the USA's citizens need a wack across the head and an additional 70 IQ points, sheesh! (It was only when I moved out of the USA into the UK that I realized how f*ck*d up the USA's priorities are...)
1. Our bodies: about half of the radioactivity in our bodies comes from Potassium-40 (naturally-occurring radioactive form of potassium.) Potassium is important for the brain and muscles. Most of the rest of our bodies' radioactivity is from Carbon-14 and tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. These naturally-occurring radioactive substances expose our bodies to about 25 "millirem" per year, abbreviated as "mrem/yr".)
2. Radioactivity in food and water: for example, the radio- (and non-radio) active forms of iodine and sodium. The food we eat contains radium-226, thorium-232, potassium-40, carbon-14, and hydrogen-3, also known as tritium.
To quote a web page: The U. S. Department of Energy gives the following concentrations as examples:
3. Flying: Flying in an airplane increases our exposure to cosmic radiation. A coast-to-coast round trip gives us a dose of about four millirem.
4. Living at higher altitudes: Generally, for each 100-foot increase in altitude, there is an increased dose of one millirem per year. (So, San Francisco vs. Boulder, for example)...
5. The rocks, soils and beaches around us are radioactive: In Ohio, radiation in soil and rocks contributes about 60 millirem in one year to our exposure. In Colorado, it is about 105 millirem per year. In Kerala, India, this radioactivity from soil and rocks can be 3,000 millirem per year, and at a beach in Guarapari, Brazil, it is over 5 millirem in a single hour -- but only a few residents who use that beach receive doses in excess of 500 millirem per year.
6. Radioactivity in our homes:
A: If you live in a wood house, the natural radioactivity in the building materials gives you a dose of 30 to 50 millirem per year.
B: In a brick house, it is 50 to 100 millirem per year.
C: In a tightly sealed house with little ventilation, natural radioactive gases (radon) can be trapped for a longer period of time and increase your dose.
7. People/coworkers: Each person with whom we spend eight hours a day gives us a dose of about 0.1 millirem in a year.
8. Cooking: Using a gas stove can increase the dose by about two millirem per year because of radioactive materials in the natural gas.
9. Smoking: A person who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day receives a radiation dose of about 1,300 millrem per year. This is because polonium (a radioactive element) is part of the smoke and when inhaled, it gets trapped in the lungs.
10. Misc: There's also the sun, and medical X-rays...
Basically, on the whole we need not fear natural radioactivity, as our bodies evolved to cope with it (cellular repair). What we need to fear/respect is man-made radioactivity and its waste products, because when human error/greed/fallibility get involved, that is when man-made radioactivity bites us in the ass...
Not to be a pain in the ass, but I believe the correct (English-language) name and spelling of their money is "Roubles", not "rupels"...
...the browser sniffing/restriction thing is still happening... I can't tell you how many damn times I have run into a page on the web that basically says "keep out", because I am not using a MicroSnot browser... it pisses me off, and I write a polite but irate note in such cases to the site owner/webmaster...
Of course, I'd love to be wrong (I hope I am, I'd love to see such a robot out and about working), but until we get some independent, trustworthy verification I'll take this cum grano salis (...with a grain of salt.)
(I DON'T know why, but these people find me on any public transport! Do I have a friggin' stamp on my forehead stating "freaks welcome"???)
Using my walkman (or even wearing headphones with the walkman turned off) helps me cast an "anti-freak" personal wall...
...hmm... sounds like a new Angband spell! ;-)
I bet you the next article by the same author will be: "Water: It's wet" , sheesh!
FYI, I have two brothers, and we three are Mexican-Americans: I was born and grew up in Mexico until I was 7 y.o., and then we moved to California. My two brothers were born & grew up in the USA. We were brought up speaking both English and Spanish (my mom spoke to us in Spanish only), and we sound like typical Californian boys... and we speak/read/write English AND Spanish just fine, muchas gracias!
And "slang ridden"?? Where have YOU been? For instance, listen to any white, English-speaking 16 year old in California, and they won't be speaking BBC English/your parents' English... they'll be speaking the argot common to any American kid... slang is not a crime, and believe it or not there are plenty of eloquent English-speaking Mexicans from/in California... (moi, for example, at the risk of being immodest ;-)
Besides, from the MANY errors I've seen on Slashdot (let alone anywhere else), many native/monolingual English speakers themselves could use English lessons...
I guess what I'm trying to say is: don't assume everyone is as linguistically deficient as you may be... ;-)
The truthful answer is that it's a muddled area... but one could argue that due to its vocab/grammar/momentum/speakers/existing culture, Esperanto could be considered "natural-ish", whereas Solresol is definitely artificial...
maybe languages constructed "a priori" should be considered "artificial" (a la Solresol) whereas those that are more "a posteriori" (a la Esperanto) should be considered "natural-ish", due to their aforementioned semblance to existing human languages/grammars?
I am not dismissing and demeaning kids, but I think you're throwing the baby out with the bath water... kids (being kids/young/having not yet lived life) won't have a clue as to what essential skills are needed in the "real world" (not the TV show ;-) ... I think it's great to give kids classes that truly catch their imagination, BUT we cannot throw out the basics; I think instead we should keep math/science/languages etc, and make them interesting (like that Bill Nye the science guy, he made science very interesting to me...)
Instead of advocating having kids draw up the curriculum as you suggest, I think kids should give feedback on it that will be acted upon (such as: "you need to change our math class, most kids in it find it taught in a very boring way..." or "Why don't you teach us to talk to the local Latino kids? All this rote memorizztion is putting us off Spanish?") ...
"...a MORE useful artificial language..."
Note the word "artificial"... if I meant a "natural language" like French or Spanish, I'd have said it... but in this case we are talking about artificial languages, and not natural ones (as one could argue Spanish over French or German over these two... but that's for a different dicussion/off-topic!)...
If kids decided the curriculum there'd be no math classes, nor computer programming classes... Shakespeare and Spanish/French would also be out, and instead we'd probably have "Pop Idol 101" and other vapid subjects (as it is we've seen studies stating that basic math skills in the US and UK need improvement pronto). ...
Besides, Gen-Y's lack of enthusiasm about the world is because they're too busy getting fat in front of the Xbox and computer, instead of exploring the real word...
...why not teach the kids a MORE useful artificial language: Esperanto? Esperanto at least helps them NOW in their life if they want to make penpals/friends worldwide, read a diverse range of books, or if they want to then move onto Spanish/Italian/French/other languages (using their REAL-WORLD grammar skills gained via Esperanto as a tool to aid further language learning...)
OR, encourage the kids to then move from Elvish to Esperanto? I say this because in my opinion Elvish is a linguistic dead end for them, whereas Esperanto is a "gateway" to a whole community (Fer instance: Q: how many books, websites and magazines are regularly printed in Elvish? (a: very few, versus Esperanto's many, many....)
...ha ha ha... the picture of the cute guy hugging the robot is what sold me... (I'm so gay!) It's a perfect picture: 1 cute guy (the gay equivalent of the (unnecessary) big-breasted women on covers of UK tech magazines), + 1 cute robot, equals at least 1 new buyer... *rolls eyes* I AM such a gay geek!... (uh, no, I am NOT thinking about a human-robot three-way... ;-) (Anyone else think the guy hugging the robot looks like Francis from Malcolm in the Middle???)
I am SO happy Eric Raymond wrote this... just a few days ago I too was trying to set up my printer via CUPS, and ended up giving up/swearing up a storm. Bitchy comments from some Slashdot readers aside, we ought to listen to this man... Linux's main strength AND disadvantage is that the majority of the code writers/users are (like moi) tech-savvy geeks. But, the UI should not force us to become a full-fledge sysadmin every time we want to install a damn printer (or plugin, or etc...) Believe it or not, even though I am a geek, sometimes I just want to use the printer without giving a rat's ass how it happens as long as it happens. It's one of the few times that I don't hate MicroBarf or (cr)Apple. What many of the open source projects need is to recruit a local WinDoze/Macinosh weenie (their boss for example), and have them run through the projects' UI. If the user finds the UI easy, then great! Otherwise, it should be back to the (G)UI drawing board. Obscurity does not lead to usability, people!