The weird thing about this conference is that none of the Arab nations was invited to be represented, supposedly out of respect for Israel (which is a dubious way to express respect). This is especially interesting, since the whole "Islamic Terrorist" image is one of the most recent racial stereotypes to arise in (at least American) Western culture. But I suppose CNN and friends are less likely to carry stories that demonstrate the failings of CNN and friends.
It's too bad Yahoo only carries AP and not AFP, or I'd have some links to share. And remember, if you don't do it for the babies, at least do it to thwart the ragheads, right? Lovely culture.
There's a lovely lady in my neighborhood with a beard to put RMS and Cox to shame. No hormone supplements -- it just naturally happened that way. I think she's more into tatoos than mallocs, but who knows what goes on behind closed doors....
I hate dragging things like principles into jokes like this, but nevertheless, I abstained on principle from voting in this one-ballot election. Having only one choice turns the whole idea of an election into a joke (you hear me, a JOKE, Hemos!) and reminds me a bit too much of not-too-distant times in the CCCP where voter turnout for single-ballot elections was near 100% by fiat. I'm not saying Hemos is a bloody autocrat, just that he's a communistic socialist running dog of an autocrat. (Hmm, autocratic running dogs -- what will they think of next?) But hey, he's our hamster, so we love him just the same.
The big-assed coal plant doesn't matter 'cause you're just making car fuel anyway? And what are you going to do with that car fuel -- drink it? No, you're going to burn it, releasing CO2 back into the air. So basically, you've managed to engineer it so cars can run on coal via an intermediate process, but you've done nothing to reduce the net CO2 emissions. That doesn't have too many useful applications.
As for your second idea, that's pretty much how rocket propulsion is done, and you can imagine that what's appropriate for rockets is perhaps not appropriate for cars, and in any event it's expensive and still requires a "big-assed" power plant to provide the electricity for the original electrolysis, because your idea of a closed internal combustion engine by definition couldn't do any work on the outside world (which is what driving cars is all about). Heck, you wouldn't even be able to idle the damn thing, since there's still some friction and you wouldn't get 100% yield if you tried.
Maybe you should patent it anyway, since the USPTO seems to deserve patents like that.
We all know our bodies don't need any methanol floating around in them, but I can't help but wonder whether this is another step along the way to finding the holy grail of alcohol metabolism: a pill that speeds up the process of alcohol metabolism. The financial reprocussions would be enormous both for the manufacturer and for society at large which would benefit from increased productivity with saying good bye to hangovers. On the other hand, alcohol consumption would skyrocket and we'd become an even greater society of alcoholics than we currently are, not to mention all the idiots who would still manage to induce alcohol poisoning in themselves.
But just look at how societies have always grown up around the simple fact that it takes hours for people to sober up, and imagine a world without that. My cynical mind wonders what hell might replace it.
On some levels, we actually need associations like the RIAA to keep the really bad people (not us poor intellectuals (hehe)) from harming the industry. Large pirating firms.. etc.
Nonsense. We already have governments to enforce existing laws against actual crimes -- the DOJ can hold its own just fine. All organizations like the RIAA do is the stuff we don't like such as:
Enforcing a cartel atmosphere where prices are constantly inflating ($18 for a cd, huh?) and quality hasn't much improved
Lobbying Congress for some more favorable-for-the-industry-but-at-the-expense-of-e veryone-else copyright laws
Beating up on the little guy who's properly trying to use his music under fair-use doctrine but in ways contrary to the $ interests of RIAA-member corporations.
I agree with your first assertion that it's futile for us to merely hope that the RIAA will just disappear, but don't delude yourself into thinking they're actually good for something good. We don't need the RIAA any more than we need OPEC or DeBeers.
The problem with releasing a website's code under the GPL is that it's entirely possible for someone to use the code without distributing it -- what's distributed is the content generated by the code, not the code itself (or binaries thereof). This is the same problem with GPLing optimizing compilers, and it hasn't prevented anyone from releasing plenty of compilers, but it is an application where the GPL might not be ideal.
I must commend this industrious gentleman for pioneering the first pda that can double as a bar of soap. Now there's no reason to be without your palm wherever you go, although some have been known to use their palms in the shower before, wink wink, nudge nudge, if you know what I mean.
What do you mean "when it comes out"?
on
Free Solaris 8
·
· Score: 2
The BeOS has been out for a while and is currently at release # 4.5.2. Do you mean "released" for some non-x86 non-ppc hardware?
It's not just an operating system. Solaris is an "operating environment".
Let's see. Solaris=environment while linux=penguin. Environments (as we all know) get abused by developers whereas penguins swim around and micturate on the environment. Highly metaphorical, no? Ok, maybe no.
The Kansas state board of education decided that evolution would not be covered by the comprehensive state education tests. It was a administrative, not judicial, decision, and schools are still free to teach it, although that may vary with funding.
A friend is running a bunch of firewire hard drives on his mac -- he does a lot of video capture and is constantly filling up his drives. He just yanks one out and puts another in, and they're more than fast enough for his purposes. I'd mention the company names if I could remember them.
America Online, with 20 million subscribers, said complaints about interference by its latest software are overblown and the result of customers not understanding that if they click yes during installation to allow AOL to become their default Internet browser, AOL largely takes over all the online functions on the computer.
This is AOL, right? The service for people who aren't supposed to know anything about computers and therefore can't be trusted to make the correct decision during installations, right? Way to go shoot your money cow, AOL.
"If a member picks yes, we make their lives simple," said Jeff Kimball, AOL's executive director for its client software.
Simple, eh? Well, that is the future of corporatism where everything is merged into one entity, and all you have to do is pay homage to the master and his one true way. Marge Peircy's He, She, and It comes readily to mind.
I am surprised that CNN is reporting about this, with the merger with AOL and all, but I guess they were really strapping for some news since the y2k riots never materialized and they started running reruns.
The stable kernel branch is not beta (it's release quality), and it's certainly more stable than most other software that gets pushed out the door by certain corporations. Most of the system apps you're running have had stable versions for years. Most of the non system apps you're running have had stable versions for years.
In conclusion: Linux is not an unstable beta product and is not one by definition. Just because there's always a development version getting kicked around at a furious pace (and immediately so after a stable version is declared so), doesn't speak to the contrary.
There's not much more special about this particular eclipse, but don't discount the general interest in eclipses of all kinds.
People usually hate feeling small, but they still get a big kick out of experiencing the wonders of the cosmos (cue Carl Sagan and his billions of stars). People have been awed by eclipses, be they solar or lunar, for millennia. Think of it as a chance to poop on Aristotle's grave regarding his immutable heavens and heavenly bodies.
At least it's something more worthwhile than a mere date roll-over in an arbitrary calendar.
The last total lunar eclipse visible from the United States occured on Sept. 26, 1996. North Americans won't have another opportunity to see a total lunar eclipse until May 16, 2003. However, on July 16, 2000, Hawaii, Australia and Asia will see the longest total lunar eclipse in 140 years (since 1859). It will last 1 hour and 47 minutes.
At least according to the Associated Press, folks on the west coast will also be able to view the total eclipse on July 16. I'm less likely to go with the AP on this one, though.
This company has successfully corrupted DVDs with one of the biggest gripes that consumers have with VHS tapes: they corrode over time and the image quality is reduced.
It makes you wonder what will happen when DVD writers finally become commonplace: under fair use doctrine, it's ok to duplicate your media to guard against unintended distruction (ie backups). Just copy the self-destructing DVD to a normal DVD disc, and you're all set.
If you really want news that matters (but which doesn't specifically implicate nerds) then you'll have to step out of slashdot for a moment.
Florida's new legislation denying death-row inmates due process is being challenged, and Texas is (again) slated to execute a paranoid schizophrenic (Larry Keith Robison) this friday.
The US trade deficit just hit 26.5 billion dollars.
Civil war is still raging in Burundi. Pregnant Burundian refugees in neighboring Tanzania are especially feeling the pinch.
But if you'd rather only busy yourself with tech news, you can always play with stories like National Sorbents, Inc. Introduces DRY N' LOCK Product for the Mortuary Service Industry ("a proprietary new product that dramatically reduces the leakage of body fluids and embalming chemicals from cadavers"). Just think of all the fun you can have with that one!
You're forgetting that the first amendment made to the US constitution was a concession that it is impossible to regulate the content of speech without bias, and that therefore no one can be trusted to enforce any speech codes.
A couple gripes: you say "we" when you mean to say "we Americans". Not everyone in this forum (or on the internet in general) is American.
Your proposal of yet another Bill of Rights is stupid for several reasons
It undermines the common respect for the actual (American) Bill of Rights. The whole point of such bills is that they outline fundamental and inviolable rights, and they cannot be simply legislated or dismantled under any conditions other than constitutional crises.
What, pray tell, would you enshrine in such a bill? The right not to be offended? The right not to be exposed to profanity? It is insane to try to guarantee these things for the reasons cited above and for others. If you want a good read, try Cohen v. California (1971), where the US Supreme Court pointedly noted that it is "often true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric".
Your fetish with hostile environment threatens to undermine many other cherished freedoms. The suppression of mere hostility is a poor prize to be purchased with the coin of libery.
The somebody is Kaa and the sig is Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots. For all I know, it might not be original, but a good rule is to cite what you have so that the original source might eventually if not immediately be found.
A good corrolary to Kaa's law would be this: /'s corrolary to Kaa's law: Since the majority are idiots, a preponderance of the evidence says you're one of them.
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The weird thing about this conference is that none of the Arab nations was invited to be represented, supposedly out of respect for Israel (which is a dubious way to express respect). This is especially interesting, since the whole "Islamic Terrorist" image is one of the most recent racial stereotypes to arise in (at least American) Western culture. But I suppose CNN and friends are less likely to carry stories that demonstrate the failings of CNN and friends.
It's too bad Yahoo only carries AP and not AFP, or I'd have some links to share. And remember, if you don't do it for the babies, at least do it to thwart the ragheads, right? Lovely culture.
There's a lovely lady in my neighborhood with a beard to put RMS and Cox to shame. No hormone supplements -- it just naturally happened that way. I think she's more into tatoos than mallocs, but who knows what goes on behind closed doors....
I hate dragging things like principles into jokes like this, but nevertheless, I abstained on principle from voting in this one-ballot election. Having only one choice turns the whole idea of an election into a joke (you hear me, a JOKE, Hemos!) and reminds me a bit too much of not-too-distant times in the CCCP where voter turnout for single-ballot elections was near 100% by fiat. I'm not saying Hemos is a bloody autocrat, just that he's a communistic socialist running dog of an autocrat. (Hmm, autocratic running dogs -- what will they think of next?) But hey, he's our hamster, so we love him just the same.
The big-assed coal plant doesn't matter 'cause you're just making car fuel anyway? And what are you going to do with that car fuel -- drink it? No, you're going to burn it, releasing CO2 back into the air. So basically, you've managed to engineer it so cars can run on coal via an intermediate process, but you've done nothing to reduce the net CO2 emissions. That doesn't have too many useful applications.
As for your second idea, that's pretty much how rocket propulsion is done, and you can imagine that what's appropriate for rockets is perhaps not appropriate for cars, and in any event it's expensive and still requires a "big-assed" power plant to provide the electricity for the original electrolysis, because your idea of a closed internal combustion engine by definition couldn't do any work on the outside world (which is what driving cars is all about). Heck, you wouldn't even be able to idle the damn thing, since there's still some friction and you wouldn't get 100% yield if you tried.
Maybe you should patent it anyway, since the USPTO seems to deserve patents like that.
We all know our bodies don't need any methanol floating around in them, but I can't help but wonder whether this is another step along the way to finding the holy grail of alcohol metabolism: a pill that speeds up the process of alcohol metabolism. The financial reprocussions would be enormous both for the manufacturer and for society at large which would benefit from increased productivity with saying good bye to hangovers. On the other hand, alcohol consumption would skyrocket and we'd become an even greater society of alcoholics than we currently are, not to mention all the idiots who would still manage to induce alcohol poisoning in themselves.
But just look at how societies have always grown up around the simple fact that it takes hours for people to sober up, and imagine a world without that. My cynical mind wonders what hell might replace it.
Nonsense. We already have governments to enforce existing laws against actual crimes -- the DOJ can hold its own just fine. All organizations like the RIAA do is the stuff we don't like such as:
Enforcing a cartel atmosphere where prices are constantly inflating ($18 for a cd, huh?) and quality hasn't much improved
Lobbying Congress for some more favorable-for-the-industry-but-at-the-expense-of-e veryone-else copyright laws
Beating up on the little guy who's properly trying to use his music under fair-use doctrine but in ways contrary to the $ interests of RIAA-member corporations.
I agree with your first assertion that it's futile for us to merely hope that the RIAA will just disappear, but don't delude yourself into thinking they're actually good for something good. We don't need the RIAA any more than we need OPEC or DeBeers.
The problem with releasing a website's code under the GPL is that it's entirely possible for someone to use the code without distributing it -- what's distributed is the content generated by the code, not the code itself (or binaries thereof). This is the same problem with GPLing optimizing compilers, and it hasn't prevented anyone from releasing plenty of compilers, but it is an application where the GPL might not be ideal.
Congratulations all the same.
I must commend this industrious gentleman for pioneering the first pda that can double as a bar of soap. Now there's no reason to be without your palm wherever you go, although some have been known to use their palms in the shower before, wink wink, nudge nudge, if you know what I mean.
The BeOS has been out for a while and is currently at release # 4.5.2. Do you mean "released" for some non-x86 non-ppc hardware?
But it has the same root. Isn't English wonderful?...
It's not just an operating system. Solaris is an "operating environment".
Let's see. Solaris=environment while linux=penguin. Environments (as we all know) get abused by developers whereas penguins swim around and micturate on the environment. Highly metaphorical, no? Ok, maybe no.
The Kansas state board of education decided that evolution would not be covered by the comprehensive state education tests. It was a administrative, not judicial, decision, and schools are still free to teach it, although that may vary with funding.
There's this page which has a lot of commentary (ranting) about the Meese report. An online copy of the actual report is elusive.
A friend is running a bunch of firewire hard drives on his mac -- he does a lot of video capture and is constantly filling up his drives. He just yanks one out and puts another in, and they're more than fast enough for his purposes. I'd mention the company names if I could remember them.
Try looking at hpcalc.org sometime. There's so much there for the HP, you'll hardly believe it. (Can the TI run civilization? Thought not.)
It's a jihad out there -- watch out.
Try looking at sometime. There's so much there for the HP, you'll hardly believe it. (Can the TI run civilization? Thought not.)
It's a jihad out there -- watch out.
America Online, with 20 million subscribers, said complaints about interference by its latest software are overblown and the result of customers not understanding that if they click yes during installation to allow AOL to become their default Internet browser, AOL largely takes over all the online functions on the computer.
This is AOL, right? The service for people who aren't supposed to know anything about computers and therefore can't be trusted to make the correct decision during installations, right? Way to go shoot your money cow, AOL.
"If a member picks yes, we make their lives simple," said Jeff Kimball, AOL's executive director for its client software.
Simple, eh? Well, that is the future of corporatism where everything is merged into one entity, and all you have to do is pay homage to the master and his one true way. Marge Peircy's He, She, and It comes readily to mind.
I am surprised that CNN is reporting about this, with the merger with AOL and all, but I guess they were really strapping for some news since the y2k riots never materialized and they started running reruns.
The stable kernel branch is not beta (it's release quality), and it's certainly more stable than most other software that gets pushed out the door by certain corporations. Most of the system apps you're running have had stable versions for years. Most of the non system apps you're running have had stable versions for years.
In conclusion: Linux is not an unstable beta product and is not one by definition. Just because there's always a development version getting kicked around at a furious pace (and immediately so after a stable version is declared so), doesn't speak to the contrary.
There's not much more special about this particular eclipse, but don't discount the general interest in eclipses of all kinds.
People usually hate feeling small, but they still get a big kick out of experiencing the wonders of the cosmos (cue Carl Sagan and his billions of stars). People have been awed by eclipses, be they solar or lunar, for millennia. Think of it as a chance to poop on Aristotle's grave regarding his immutable heavens and heavenly bodies.
At least it's something more worthwhile than a mere date roll-over in an arbitrary calendar.
The last total lunar eclipse visible from the United States occured on Sept. 26, 1996. North Americans won't have another opportunity to see a total lunar eclipse until May 16, 2003. However, on July 16, 2000, Hawaii, Australia and Asia will see the longest total lunar eclipse in 140 years (since 1859). It will last 1 hour and 47 minutes.
At least according to the Associated Press, folks on the west coast will also be able to view the total eclipse on July 16. I'm less likely to go with the AP on this one, though.
This company has successfully corrupted DVDs with one of the biggest gripes that consumers have with VHS tapes: they corrode over time and the image quality is reduced.
It makes you wonder what will happen when DVD writers finally become commonplace: under fair use doctrine, it's ok to duplicate your media to guard against unintended distruction (ie backups). Just copy the self-destructing DVD to a normal DVD disc, and you're all set.
If you really want news that matters (but which doesn't specifically implicate nerds) then you'll have to step out of slashdot for a moment.
Florida's new legislation denying death-row inmates due process is being challenged, and Texas is (again) slated to execute a paranoid schizophrenic (Larry Keith Robison) this friday.
The US trade deficit just hit 26.5 billion dollars.
Civil war is still raging in Burundi. Pregnant Burundian refugees in neighboring Tanzania are especially feeling the pinch.
But if you'd rather only busy yourself with tech news, you can always play with stories like National Sorbents, Inc. Introduces DRY N' LOCK Product for the Mortuary Service Industry ("a proprietary new product that dramatically reduces the leakage of body fluids and embalming chemicals from cadavers"). Just think of all the fun you can have with that one!
Because with a name like KX133, how could it fail? You don't get any more 1337 than that (or should that be KX1337...). Way to target your audience!
A couple gripes: you say "we" when you mean to say "we Americans". Not everyone in this forum (or on the internet in general) is American.
Your proposal of yet another Bill of Rights is stupid for several reasons
It undermines the common respect for the actual (American) Bill of Rights. The whole point of such bills is that they outline fundamental and inviolable rights, and they cannot be simply legislated or dismantled under any conditions other than constitutional crises.
What, pray tell, would you enshrine in such a bill? The right not to be offended? The right not to be exposed to profanity? It is insane to try to guarantee these things for the reasons cited above and for others. If you want a good read, try Cohen v. California (1971), where the US Supreme Court pointedly noted that it is "often true that one man's vulgarity is another's lyric".
Your fetish with hostile environment threatens to undermine many other cherished freedoms. The suppression of mere hostility is a poor prize to be purchased with the coin of libery.
The somebody is Kaa and the sig is Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots. For all I know, it might not be original, but a good rule is to cite what you have so that the original source might eventually if not immediately be found.
A good corrolary to Kaa's law would be this:
/'s corrolary to Kaa's law: Since the majority are idiots, a preponderance of the evidence says you're one of them.