Does USB still have the limitation of dividing the bus' time evenly between all devices regardless of how much bandwidth they're using? I remember that that was one of the arguments in the USB 2.0 / Firewire flamewars.
If so, I'd keep my keyboard and mouse off the bus. Besides, there's no reason to throw away working hardware.
If you play a simple fighter char with 3 weapons the most charts you will most likely ever see is 3 one for each of your weapons. Mage/cleric types need one or 2 charts for each of their spell lists and 1 for each different weapon / element thats it. we joke about it but there really are not that many charts or rules.
Funny, when I play a character in BESM, FUDGE, or any of the diceless games that my group enjoys, we don't need ANY charts. It seems that we get about role-playing just fine without them. As a bonus, WE get to describe what we happens in combat rather than let some crit table determine how our attacks played out for us.
Then again, we don't play games where fighting on stairs requires a move & maneuver check with reference to a difficulty table followed by a falling damage table check if you fail, nor games that have hygene checks to see if you've gotten sick from not bathing on a journey, nor games that come with 20+ pages of critical damage tables and seperate full-page tables for half your skills. "Rollmaster" is an abomination that plays more like a flowchart than an RPG if actually played by the rules, and if you're not playing by the rules, then why not get something that plays faster and cleaner?
Want charts and rules...
Who does? I'll never understand people who revel in this sort of mathematical minutae and call it a game.
As far as systems go, I don't think you can get simpler than GURPS 3d6 for everything (except damage ). I tried picking up AD&D a while ago and got bogged down in the system. GURPS I picked up in about 10 minutes.
Well, ignoring the many fine, completely diceless systems out there, I'd have to say that GURPS is far more complex than FUDGE or the Tri-Stat system, and I'd have to say that it's on the same level as d20. You honestly picked up the whole system including the armor vs. weapon type and the facing & movement in 10 minutes, and you couldn't handle d20?
Personally, I think GURPS is too much to deal with, but I'm a narrativist, diceless snob. I think most systems place way too much effort into "realism" when they could just be helping to tell a good story.
Read my follow-up to the AC. The ratio of fatal accidents per driver is higher for men than for women. This is irrespective of the population size. Furthermore, there are actually slightly more women than men on the road nationwide.
Your statement that you did "a comprehensive study" is either a blatant lie or a sign that you're a terrible researcher when comparing your statements against the data provided by the NHTSA and the IIHS. Men are twice as likely to be involved in a fatal accident as women, and it isn't until you reach age 70, not 50 that you start to become a statistically more dangerous driver. This is backed up with facts.
Oh, and "it's all a grand scam" is just another way of saying that it's all just a conspiracy. You have no evidence to support your claims, you never have, and you never will, so shut your idiotic misogyny.
If someone on campus or in High School will start a fight everone will gather and cheer or just want to watch two dumbasses beath each other up. If I would just hug or kiss my girlfriend on campus, there will definetly be the "get a room you two" looks and comments.
On the one hand, it might be nice to have "get a room you two" comments for fights, but I think I'd be a little uncomfortable being watched and cheered on by a ring of people when kissing my girlfriend.
On a more serious note, this mentality is one reason that I'm worried about the rise of a fascist state in America. A psychologist examining the lives of fascist leaders in the wake of WWII came up with a disturbing common trend in most of their lives -- a strong, disapproving father figure combined with a strong repression of sexuality and encouragement of violence with a projection of responsibility for immorality on an outside, hated group. They called it the "F factor," and I'm sadly disappointed that I can't find an web link about it after reading mention of it in "The Lucifer Principle," by Howard Bloom. Does that profile sound familiar for any large, politically active group in America right now?
It's a shame that "Godwin's Law" (which has been in existence long before Godwin uttered it and even long before the Internet was born) has silenced all open debate and reflection upon the rise of fascism in Europe. Most Americans honestly have no idea how Germany went from a democracy to a fanatical dictatorship after WWI. Few are even really aware of the fact that it was ever a democracy. Italian and Spanish history at the time is a complete mystery, and no one is really taught what happened in between monarchy and military dictatorship. As such, America is completely unprepared for and unaware of the changes taking place within itself right now, and the most ignorant of history are the ones leading the charge right now. If America's economy ever collapses like that of post-WWI Germany, I'd start worrying, and I'd start reading on 1930s Germany and Italy if I were you. It's really terrifying to see much of the same rhetoric used in political rallies today.
As far as I am concerned, my values are more important then anybody elses...
That's the problem. People like you that place your values as inherently superior to those of others are responsible for more death and suffering than anyone else, whether you are a nationalist, a racist, or a religious fanatic. "Us vs. Them" mentality is the root of all conflict. It's built into our brains, but the difference between sentients and lower animals is the ability to work against ones own biological programming to be something better.
That you make your distinctions over something as arbitrary and unchangeable as the color of someone's skin just makes you petty and shallow.
I think I am entitled to saying so out loud weather you like it or not.
We're also entitled to dislike you and not want to have anything to do with throwbacks like you. Oh, and if you feel so entitled to speak out, why not do it logged in instead of fully embodying the phrase Anonymous Coward?
See? A conspiracy theory. I figured such a baseless assertion would come down to that. On the other hand, insurance companies and the National Highway Traffic & Safety Administration will tell you differently.
Oh, and "AARP" doesn't explain how women are supposed to be more dangerous than men despite having 50% of the ratio of fatal accidents per driver compared to men. Admittedly, women do have more total accidents than men in nearly every age group by about 20-50%, but almost all of these accidents are minor fender-benders making them overall far less dangerous and adjusting insurance rates accordingly.
This is not simply a blind generalisation. I did a comprehensive field study, and I have determined that women and people over the age of 50 should be required to take an advanced driving test on a yearly basis in order to maintain a valid driver's license.
Yeah, yeah, and my comprehensive field studies show that smoking doesn't cause cancer. I'm not going to provide any data either; my assertion that I did a comprehensive field study should be enough.
Hey, if women drivers are so much worse than men, why do insurance companies charge men more than women? Why do drivers under the age of 25 get charged more than those over 50? Could it be because actuaries have looked at the numbers and determined which groups have a higher risk? Nah, must be some sort of conspiracy!
Humans already have a range of expected emotional responses that are ingrained into us by culture.
Honestly, if a co-worker of mine bared his teeth and cringed or tried to wave his arms about, draw himself up tall, and shriek, I'd be convinced that he was stark, raving insane. While the researchers are trying to make a point about showing off your emotions better, I think they miss the need in human society to NOT show your emotions at times.
Heck, even confrontational chimps will hide their nervousness until after a stand-off.
Your "response" to an email is a DoS. That's already illegal, and the FBI does track down offenders that cause significant damage. Even if this worked, you would have a problem with forged return addresses and hijacked machines -- see how sympathetic the feds are to users who hose an innocent victim. Furthermore, it doesn't account for asshats who decide to DoS any random person they dislike.
This is why your "solution" is a vigilantism. It advocates breaking the law and dismisses innocent victims. That's why I checked the "stupid idea, stupid person" option at the end.
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it (*) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(*) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses (*) Asshats (*) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email (*) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam (*) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves (*) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud (*) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. (*) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Yea and nay. I'm from AHS in good ole' boy country, but I'm probably not the person you're thinking of.
The person you're probably thinking of registered his AOL screen name right as we were talking about a character that I was playing on the weekends in a table-top RPG while we were in my dad's classroom. (That right there ought to tell you who I am.) I've used the same nick as him for several years, which causes me a mix of amusement and mild irritation since we move in similar enough circles online. Do a Google search on my nick, and you'll see what I mean.
Then again, I could just be assuming. You might be someone that knows that nick from me instead of from him.
Louis Wu, I found your challenge verbose. In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap. --Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld"
Other good quotes (almost all of which belong to Speaker-to-Animals/Chmee):
If you can heat some bourbon, I can drink it. If you cannot heat it, I can still drink it. --Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld"
Exercise is wonderful. I could sit and watch it all day. --Louis Wu, "Ringworld"
A docile kzin. You sought to produce a docile kzin, Nessus. If you think you have produced a docile kzin, come and rejoin us. --Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld'
It does not disturb me to play a god. It disturbs me to play a god badly. --Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld"
To kidnap a kzin is probably a mistake. --Chmeee, "The Ringworld Engineers"
Scars are like memories. We do not have them removed. --Chmeee, "The Ringworld Engineers"
Hindmost: The easy way to find out is to accelerate until something happens. Louis: I do not believe I heard a Pierson's puppeteer say that. --"The Ringworld Engineers"
Chmeee: With such a weapon I could boil the Earth to vapor. Louis Wu: Shut up. Chmeee: It was a natural thought, Louis. --"The Ringworld Engineers"
Chmeee: Furthermore, they [kzinti] of the Map of Earth have fulfilled an ancient daydream of my people. Louis: Oh? Chmeee: Conquering Earth, you idiot. --"The Ringworld Engineers"
HA HA HA HA HA HA HAA!!!That'sfunny! Next thing, you'll be telling us he's been bad for defense contractors and pharmaceutical companies. What a comedian!
This one's too scary and too possibly real to be funny.
Anyone familiar with the use of emminent domain to seize low value property and give it to private developers to turn into something worth some property taxes?
Bester wrote "The Demolished Man" in 1953 when William Gibson was about 5.
You owe it to yourself to read "The Demolished Man." Aside from the prominent use of telepaths in the story, it was in every way a proto-cyberpunk novel as well as being just one of the best-written books I've ever read. Bester's "The Stars My Desitination" is even better, though. It takes an intelligent look at what society would be like if everyone could teleport at a whim and tosses it into the background of one of the most vivid revenge stories ever told. Gulliver Foyle is the single greatest "larger-than-life" protagonist that I've ever seen. His indomitable will is monstrous and his passion and fury leaps out and grabs the reader.
The practice in Roman families came from naming sons in the order of their birth. Japanese samurai families would also adopt a convention of naming children based on the order of their births.
Some common names from Kate Monk's Onomastikon:
1st Son -- Ichiro (mod.-ichi or -kazu suffix) 2nd Son -- Jiro, Chojiro (ji suffix) 3rd Son -- Saburo, Kanzaburo (zo suffix 3rd son) 4th Son -- Shiro, Heishiro 5th Son -- Goro, Daigoro
Note the common elements of each name. Ichi, ji, sabu, shi, go. These correspond to certain (in some cases uncommonly used) pronunciations of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. The -ro suffix means "son" and acts as a counting suffix for counting off sons. -Zabu- is just an inflected pronunciation of -sabu-. Many of these names also have homonyms where different kanji characters are used that have different meaning, but these are merely clever plays on the numbered system and were still reserved for children of appropriate birth.
Yeah. That's pretty cool, and that's exactly the sort of engineering that I support.
What I don't support are: 1) Crops that allow for (and demand) the heavy use of pesticides, herbicides, and other poisons that contaminate my food supply. 2) Crops that grow drugs and other chemicals that don't need to be in the food supply and can contaminate neighbor's crops. 3) Suing innocent farmers who got their crops contaminated and ruined by your whiz-bang patented crapola.
We should be using GM to reduce the use of poisons and to increase the healthiness of food, and we should be doing it in such a way that doesn't impact other farmers. I'm perfectly comfortable with "pharming" so long as it can't cross-pollinate.
SCO never killed people nor caused children to be born with birth defects. Monsanto is far, far more irresponsible with their power. They created Agent Orange, Bovine Growth Hormone, and PCBs and have covered up known health problems caused by them for decades until exposed by whisteblowers. They created Terminator Seeds which destroy the ability of developing nations to maintain sustainable crops, and they've created a whole slew of "Roundup Ready" crops that are genetically engineered to withstand having pesticides dumped all over them (which are suspected to cause cancer). The sue small farmers whose crops are contaminated by pollen containing their patented seeds and financially ruin them.
I don't like to toss the word Evil around casually like some people, but Monsanto is Satan's Flaming, Spike-Studded Cockring.
One of my favorite quotes: "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) job." -- Phil Angell, Director of Corporate Communications, Monsanto
Fox is not bashing the research. Actually, CBS, NBC and ABC are blasting the numbers more while Fox is challenging the reasoning.
From the Article:
"You really are getting the sense the problems are concentrated in those groups that have historically been the most challenging for Nielsen to measure," said Giles Lundberg, executive vice president of research and marketing at Fox.
Fox is bashing both the numbers and the conclusions. Why? Because it hurts the report hurts ad revenue in one of the most heavily invested demographics in advertising.
Also...... it's the liberal organizations...
How could you honestly think that large businesses like the modern media conglomerates would be biased towards anyone but the party of Big Business? You should read "What Liberal Media?" by Eric Alterman. The Liberal Media Myth is perpetuated by conservative ideologues to make everything but their own conservative viewpoints look biased and wrong. It's a lie repeated often enough that people have accepted it as the truth without ever being able to really cite clear examples of liberal bias.
Now, let's say that Trolltech changes the proprietary Qt license, or adds some secret API calls (like Microsoft did), so that proprietary Qt will only run on Trolltech Linux.
This is where the logic of your "insidious" conspiracy theory breaks down. It's thoroughly impossible for Qt to do this thanks to the fact that they'd have to give away the code to any changes to the Linux kernel or to other Free libraries on which it depends. The most that Trolltech could do was write their own, self-contained library, which would be licensed under no different of a license than the rest of Qt.
Let's go through all of Trolltech's options for perfidy with the answer for defeating these options:
1) Add new APIs to the proprietary version. A) Developers reimplement these features in the GPL version.
2) Add hidden APIs to the proprietary version. A) Only useful if they add functionality that is different from the GPL version (see above). Cannot hide dependent code in Free software, like the kernel or core libraries.
Slashdot Mirror
Does USB still have the limitation of dividing the bus' time evenly between all devices regardless of how much bandwidth they're using? I remember that that was one of the arguments in the USB 2.0 / Firewire flamewars.
If so, I'd keep my keyboard and mouse off the bus. Besides, there's no reason to throw away working hardware.
If you play a simple fighter char with 3 weapons the most charts you will most likely ever see is 3 one for each of your weapons. Mage/cleric types need one or 2 charts for each of their spell lists and 1 for each different weapon / element thats it. we joke about it but there really are not that many charts or rules.
...
Funny, when I play a character in BESM, FUDGE, or any of the diceless games that my group enjoys, we don't need ANY charts. It seems that we get about role-playing just fine without them. As a bonus, WE get to describe what we happens in combat rather than let some crit table determine how our attacks played out for us.
Then again, we don't play games where fighting on stairs requires a move & maneuver check with reference to a difficulty table followed by a falling damage table check if you fail, nor games that have hygene checks to see if you've gotten sick from not bathing on a journey, nor games that come with 20+ pages of critical damage tables and seperate full-page tables for half your skills. "Rollmaster" is an abomination that plays more like a flowchart than an RPG if actually played by the rules, and if you're not playing by the rules, then why not get something that plays faster and cleaner?
Want charts and rules
Who does? I'll never understand people who revel in this sort of mathematical minutae and call it a game.
As far as systems go, I don't think you can get simpler than GURPS 3d6 for everything (except damage ). I tried picking up AD&D a while ago and got bogged down in the system. GURPS I picked up in about 10 minutes.
Well, ignoring the many fine, completely diceless systems out there, I'd have to say that GURPS is far more complex than FUDGE or the Tri-Stat system, and I'd have to say that it's on the same level as d20. You honestly picked up the whole system including the armor vs. weapon type and the facing & movement in 10 minutes, and you couldn't handle d20?
Personally, I think GURPS is too much to deal with, but I'm a narrativist, diceless snob. I think most systems place way too much effort into "realism" when they could just be helping to tell a good story.
Read my follow-up to the AC. The ratio of fatal accidents per driver is higher for men than for women. This is irrespective of the population size. Furthermore, there are actually slightly more women than men on the road nationwide.
Your statement that you did "a comprehensive study" is either a blatant lie or a sign that you're a terrible researcher when comparing your statements against the data provided by the NHTSA and the IIHS. Men are twice as likely to be involved in a fatal accident as women, and it isn't until you reach age 70, not 50 that you start to become a statistically more dangerous driver. This is backed up with facts.
Oh, and "it's all a grand scam" is just another way of saying that it's all just a conspiracy. You have no evidence to support your claims, you never have, and you never will, so shut your idiotic misogyny.
If someone on campus or in High School will start a fight everone will gather and cheer or just want to watch two dumbasses beath each other up. If I would just hug or kiss my girlfriend on campus, there will definetly be the "get a room you two" looks and comments.
On the one hand, it might be nice to have "get a room you two" comments for fights, but I think I'd be a little uncomfortable being watched and cheered on by a ring of people when kissing my girlfriend.
On a more serious note, this mentality is one reason that I'm worried about the rise of a fascist state in America. A psychologist examining the lives of fascist leaders in the wake of WWII came up with a disturbing common trend in most of their lives -- a strong, disapproving father figure combined with a strong repression of sexuality and encouragement of violence with a projection of responsibility for immorality on an outside, hated group. They called it the "F factor," and I'm sadly disappointed that I can't find an web link about it after reading mention of it in "The Lucifer Principle," by Howard Bloom. Does that profile sound familiar for any large, politically active group in America right now?
It's a shame that "Godwin's Law" (which has been in existence long before Godwin uttered it and even long before the Internet was born) has silenced all open debate and reflection upon the rise of fascism in Europe. Most Americans honestly have no idea how Germany went from a democracy to a fanatical dictatorship after WWI. Few are even really aware of the fact that it was ever a democracy. Italian and Spanish history at the time is a complete mystery, and no one is really taught what happened in between monarchy and military dictatorship. As such, America is completely unprepared for and unaware of the changes taking place within itself right now, and the most ignorant of history are the ones leading the charge right now. If America's economy ever collapses like that of post-WWI Germany, I'd start worrying, and I'd start reading on 1930s Germany and Italy if I were you. It's really terrifying to see much of the same rhetoric used in political rallies today.
As far as I am concerned, my values are more important then anybody elses ...
That's the problem. People like you that place your values as inherently superior to those of others are responsible for more death and suffering than anyone else, whether you are a nationalist, a racist, or a religious fanatic. "Us vs. Them" mentality is the root of all conflict. It's built into our brains, but the difference between sentients and lower animals is the ability to work against ones own biological programming to be something better.
That you make your distinctions over something as arbitrary and unchangeable as the color of someone's skin just makes you petty and shallow.
I think I am entitled to saying so out loud weather you like it or not.
We're also entitled to dislike you and not want to have anything to do with throwbacks like you.
Oh, and if you feel so entitled to speak out, why not do it logged in instead of fully embodying the phrase Anonymous Coward?
See? A conspiracy theory. I figured such a baseless assertion would come down to that.
On the other hand, insurance companies and the National Highway Traffic & Safety Administration will tell you differently.
Oh, and "AARP" doesn't explain how women are supposed to be more dangerous than men despite having 50% of the ratio of fatal accidents per driver compared to men. Admittedly, women do have more total accidents than men in nearly every age group by about 20-50%, but almost all of these accidents are minor fender-benders making them overall far less dangerous and adjusting insurance rates accordingly.
Also, the young and the male are overall more likely to disregard traffic laws.
This is not simply a blind generalisation. I did a comprehensive field study, and I have determined that women and people over the age of 50 should be required to take an advanced driving test on a yearly basis in order to maintain a valid driver's license.
Yeah, yeah, and my comprehensive field studies show that smoking doesn't cause cancer. I'm not going to provide any data either; my assertion that I did a comprehensive field study should be enough.
Hey, if women drivers are so much worse than men, why do insurance companies charge men more than women? Why do drivers under the age of 25 get charged more than those over 50? Could it be because actuaries have looked at the numbers and determined which groups have a higher risk? Nah, must be some sort of conspiracy!
Humans already have a range of expected emotional responses that are ingrained into us by culture.
Honestly, if a co-worker of mine bared his teeth and cringed or tried to wave his arms about, draw himself up tall, and shriek, I'd be convinced that he was stark, raving insane. While the researchers are trying to make a point about showing off your emotions better, I think they miss the need in human society to NOT show your emotions at times.
Heck, even confrontational chimps will hide their nervousness until after a stand-off.
Your "response" to an email is a DoS. That's already illegal, and the FBI does track down offenders that cause significant damage. Even if this worked, you would have a problem with forged return addresses and hijacked machines -- see how sympathetic the feds are to users who hose an innocent victim. Furthermore, it doesn't account for asshats who decide to DoS any random person they dislike.
This is why your "solution" is a vigilantism. It advocates breaking the law and dismisses innocent victims. That's why I checked the "stupid idea, stupid person" option at the end.
I've always wanted to fill out one of these and since Slashdot provided a nice link, here we go:
Your post advocates a
(*) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (*) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
(*) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(*) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(*) Asshats
(*) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(*) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
(*) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
(*) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(*) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(*) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Yea and nay. I'm from AHS in good ole' boy country, but I'm probably not the person you're thinking of.
The person you're probably thinking of registered his AOL screen name right as we were talking about a character that I was playing on the weekends in a table-top RPG while we were in my dad's classroom. (That right there ought to tell you who I am.) I've used the same nick as him for several years, which causes me a mix of amusement and mild irritation since we move in similar enough circles online. Do a Google search on my nick, and you'll see what I mean.
Then again, I could just be assuming. You might be someone that knows that nick from me instead of from him.
My personal favorite is:
Louis Wu, I found your challenge verbose. In challenging a kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap.
--Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld"
Other good quotes (almost all of which belong to Speaker-to-Animals/Chmee):
If you can heat some bourbon, I can drink it. If you cannot heat it, I can still drink it.
--Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld"
Exercise is wonderful. I could sit and watch it all day.
--Louis Wu, "Ringworld"
A docile kzin. You sought to produce a docile kzin, Nessus. If you think you have produced a docile kzin, come and rejoin us.
--Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld'
It does not disturb me to play a god. It disturbs me to play a god badly.
--Speaker-to-Animals, "Ringworld"
To kidnap a kzin is probably a mistake.
--Chmeee, "The Ringworld Engineers"
Scars are like memories. We do not have them removed.
--Chmeee, "The Ringworld Engineers"
Hindmost: The easy way to find out is to accelerate until something happens.
Louis: I do not believe I heard a Pierson's puppeteer say that.
--"The Ringworld Engineers"
Chmeee: With such a weapon I could boil the Earth to vapor.
Louis Wu: Shut up.
Chmeee: It was a natural thought, Louis.
--"The Ringworld Engineers"
Chmeee: Furthermore, they [kzinti] of the Map of Earth have fulfilled an ancient daydream of my people.
Louis: Oh?
Chmeee: Conquering Earth, you idiot.
--"The Ringworld Engineers"
The only people he is bad for is Enron...
HA HA HA HA HA HA HAA!!! That's funny!
Next thing, you'll be telling us he's been bad for defense contractors and pharmaceutical companies. What a comedian!
No, no, no. You didn't get the syntax right at all!
(map (quit reader (bash reader LISP)) (for sake Bob))
(and (is it (fill language wonder)) (become (just-like LISP (subtract all-languages LISP)) happy))
See, much more readable!
Why not just listen to NPR on the radio?!
...You insensitive clod!
Because my local NPR station plays light string music instead of talk radio 90% of the time that I'm near a radio!
This one's too scary and too possibly real to be funny.
Anyone familiar with the use of emminent domain to seize low value property and give it to private developers to turn into something worth some property taxes?
I'm going to name MY first born son "|<1|< /\/\41 633|< 4$$!"
Bester wrote "The Demolished Man" in 1953 when William Gibson was about 5.
You owe it to yourself to read "The Demolished Man." Aside from the prominent use of telepaths in the story, it was in every way a proto-cyberpunk novel as well as being just one of the best-written books I've ever read. Bester's "The Stars My Desitination" is even better, though. It takes an intelligent look at what society would be like if everyone could teleport at a whim and tosses it into the background of one of the most vivid revenge stories ever told. Gulliver Foyle is the single greatest "larger-than-life" protagonist that I've ever seen. His indomitable will is monstrous and his passion and fury leaps out and grabs the reader.
Bester is one of my favorite authors of all time.
The practice in Roman families came from naming sons in the order of their birth. Japanese samurai families would also adopt a convention of naming children based on the order of their births.
Some common names from Kate Monk's Onomastikon:
1st Son -- Ichiro (mod.-ichi or -kazu suffix)
2nd Son -- Jiro, Chojiro (ji suffix)
3rd Son -- Saburo, Kanzaburo (zo suffix 3rd son)
4th Son -- Shiro, Heishiro
5th Son -- Goro, Daigoro
Note the common elements of each name. Ichi, ji, sabu, shi, go. These correspond to certain (in some cases uncommonly used) pronunciations of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. The -ro suffix means "son" and acts as a counting suffix for counting off sons. -Zabu- is just an inflected pronunciation of -sabu-. Many of these names also have homonyms where different kanji characters are used that have different meaning, but these are merely clever plays on the numbered system and were still reserved for children of appropriate birth.
Yeah. That's pretty cool, and that's exactly the sort of engineering that I support.
What I don't support are:
1) Crops that allow for (and demand) the heavy use of pesticides, herbicides, and other poisons that contaminate my food supply.
2) Crops that grow drugs and other chemicals that don't need to be in the food supply and can contaminate neighbor's crops.
3) Suing innocent farmers who got their crops contaminated and ruined by your whiz-bang patented crapola.
We should be using GM to reduce the use of poisons and to increase the healthiness of food, and we should be doing it in such a way that doesn't impact other farmers. I'm perfectly comfortable with "pharming" so long as it can't cross-pollinate.
SCO never killed people nor caused children to be born with birth defects. Monsanto is far, far more irresponsible with their power. They created Agent Orange, Bovine Growth Hormone, and PCBs and have covered up known health problems caused by them for decades until exposed by whisteblowers. They created Terminator Seeds which destroy the ability of developing nations to maintain sustainable crops, and they've created a whole slew of "Roundup Ready" crops that are genetically engineered to withstand having pesticides dumped all over them (which are suspected to cause cancer). The sue small farmers whose crops are contaminated by pollen containing their patented seeds and financially ruin them.
I don't like to toss the word Evil around casually like some people, but Monsanto is Satan's Flaming, Spike-Studded Cockring.
One of my favorite quotes:
"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) job."
-- Phil Angell, Director of Corporate Communications, Monsanto
Fox is not bashing the research. Actually, CBS, NBC and ABC are blasting the numbers more while Fox is challenging the reasoning.
... it's the liberal organizations ...
From the Article:
"You really are getting the sense the problems are concentrated in those groups that have historically been the most challenging for Nielsen to measure," said Giles Lundberg, executive vice president of research and marketing at Fox.
Fox is bashing both the numbers and the conclusions.
Why? Because it hurts the report hurts ad revenue in one of the most heavily invested demographics in advertising.
Also...
How could you honestly think that large businesses like the modern media conglomerates would be biased towards anyone but the party of Big Business? You should read "What Liberal Media?" by Eric Alterman. The Liberal Media Myth is perpetuated by conservative ideologues to make everything but their own conservative viewpoints look biased and wrong. It's a lie repeated often enough that people have accepted it as the truth without ever being able to really cite clear examples of liberal bias.
Honestly, that's the single most Insightful thing I've read in this entire thread.
This should be the manifesto for our generation.
Now, let's say that Trolltech changes the proprietary Qt license, or adds some secret API calls (like Microsoft did), so that proprietary Qt will only run on Trolltech Linux.
This is where the logic of your "insidious" conspiracy theory breaks down. It's thoroughly impossible for Qt to do this thanks to the fact that they'd have to give away the code to any changes to the Linux kernel or to other Free libraries on which it depends. The most that Trolltech could do was write their own, self-contained library, which would be licensed under no different of a license than the rest of Qt.
Let's go through all of Trolltech's options for perfidy with the answer for defeating these options:
1) Add new APIs to the proprietary version.
A) Developers reimplement these features in the GPL version.
2) Add hidden APIs to the proprietary version.
A) Only useful if they add functionality that is different from the GPL version (see above). Cannot hide dependent code in Free software, like the kernel or core libraries.
3) #2, except that