Hold on there, pardner. There are eight other (known) planets in the solar system, but it's a bit dismissive to suggest that they don't have life. There are several places where life, even "as we know it", could exist. You seem to be implying that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. That's not true. I can think of several places in the Solar System where life could exist:
The most obvious place: Mars. This is the most Earth-like planet in the Solar System. We know that liquid water was once abundant on Mars. We know that the temperature on Mars can get up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit at the height of summer. We know that a day on Mars is only slightly longer than a day on Earth. And we have evidence of previous life on Mars based on the composition of possible Martian meteorites. All of this adds up to something.
The oceans of Europa. The tidal forces of Europa's master Jupiter ensure a good deal of heat at the Jovian satellite's core. Though the surface of Europa is ice, we have extremely strong evidence that beneath that ice are vast oceans. We know that life exists at extreme conditions here on Earth, near these subterranean "volcanic vents"; there is no reason to believe that the same on Europa is impossible.
The oceans of methane on Titan. Although Titan's thick atmosphere has prevented direct observation by the Voyager missions, it is widely believed that oceans of methane exist on this Saturnian satellite, and many scientists believe that life forms could exist therein. The Cassini mission, en route to Saturn, will send down a probe built by ESA (the European Space Agency) that will tell us more about this fascinating world. I will be watching.
Jupiter itself. A prospect of life, which I view as unlikely but many scientists have nonetheless put forward, is that there could be gaseous organisms in the upper Jovian atmosphere. This would be extremely exciting, because it would put a whole new spin on the phrase "life as we know it."
The bottom line is that the search for life has not ceased, even in our own Solar System. There are plenty of other places where astronomers believe that life could exist; some go so far as to claim as there could be life on Io or Venus, or even some of the Uranian and Neptunian satellites! These claims are a stretch. Nevertheless, it is foolish to discount the possibility of extraterrestrial life in our neighborhood, let alone the universe.
I'm surprised that Redmond hasn't pointed this out to the press. They've tried every other angle.
MICROSOFT: FREE SOFTWARE CAN'T COMPETE "Look At The Stupid Gnu," Snorts Top Exec
REDMOND, WA (UPI) - In its latest no-holds-barred assault on the open-source software (OSS) community, Microsoft executives held the logo of the Free Software Foundation up to ridicule. Calling it "proof that free software is nothing more than a passing curiosity," the Redmond-based company pulled no punches in its critique of the animal that many people view as synonymous with this radical software movement.
"Look at it," said Microsoft bigwig Ed Muth. "It looks like the work of a third grader wacked out on Thorazine."
Embattled Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, in an interview on ZDTV, echoed Muth's sentiments. "It never ceases to amaze me," mused Gates, "that people would trust their mission-critical systems to software that sports such a cruddy-looking logo. If you want to trust your Web commerce to a goat, then by all means, go right ahead. On the other hand, if you want to run a real system, complete with talking paperclips and the prettiest dialog boxes this side of the Potomac, give us a jingle. Operators are standing by."
These sentiments echo Gates' earlier comments. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gates was quoted as saying: "People need to understand that we can do things that these pinko OSS commies can't. We've got a big R&D budget; they don't. Large companies such as ours are far more capable of producing attractive and pleasing logos than you would get from some long-hair university environment. It all boils down to the ability to compete, and they simply can't."
Gates also lambasted the familiar BSD logo. "The red devil," he explained, "is a thinly-veiled reference to Communism. Not only that, it just looks stupid. Nowhere in the free software community will you find a logo as great as our Windows logo; we spent nearly two million dollars on aesthetic engineering, and put the remaining $20,000 into software testing. The results are clear. OSS is way behind. My advice to those who are contemplating jumping on the bandwagon: Don't. Stick with the guys with the pretty logos. You'll be glad you did."
The following "article" was satire and should not have been read by any lifeless legal types.
You don't have to spend $10,000+ to get good AV equipment. I would say that a 27" TV is probably good enough (though I wouldn't go any lower than that, considering that the majority of the DVD movies you're going to watch are widescreen.) As far as audio goes, you really should look into eventually getting a Dolby Digital-ready receiver; having watched DVD movies with and without this benefit, I can say that the experience isn't quite complete without it.
I got a good Pioneer Dolby Digital-ready receiver for around $350. It's not "top of the line" by any stretch of the imagination, but it does a hell of a job nonetheless. You're going to probably want to get a receiver with an optical Dolby output. If you've already got good, high-quality left and right speakers for your existing stereo system, a boxed set of surround speakers for the center and left/right rear channels should be fairly reasonable (but don't skimp.)
All in all, while a high-quality home theater setup isn't cheap, I don't think it's quite as expensive as you think. You can always add to it incrementally (i.e., get surround speakers first, a new receiver later, a powered subwoofer sometime after that, etc.) The results are definitely worth it.
Star Trek, as an example of popular culture, paints a pretty picture of the future. The reality of Earth history is that primitive cultures rarely survive contact with advanced cultures.
Maybe, maybe not. However, I'm not (necessarily) talking about the discovery of a race of Vulcans or anything so advanced.. just life elsewhere than Earth. Even the discovery of microorganisms on Mars would go a long way towards destroying the Earth-centric view of the Universe that a lot of people have.
I do not think that anything (as far as I have read - I have just recently come to Christ) in the Bible absolutely rules out the possibility of other life created in the universe by the Lord. I could be mistaken about this - anybody have a different opinion?
Well, not creationism in general, but the literal young-Earth kind. These are the people who believe that the Earth (and, as a consequence, the entire universe) is only 6000 years old. They take objection to the idea that there is intelligent life on other planets, since the only intelligent life that was created (in their view) was Adam and Eve, since that is all that the Bible mentions, and the Bible is completely and wholly inerrant (again, in their view.) Furthermore, since the fall of Adam and Eve from grace (the "original sin") is what they believe to be the cornerstone of Christianity, they object vehemently to the idea that humanity is not alone among the stars. (Trust me, I've run into more than one of these folks.)
In any case, I am very sorry you feel that true Christianity is a "mental illness".
My comment pertained to religious fundamentalism in general, not to any particular religion. There is nothing wrong with religion at all, so long as it is constrained to contexts where it is appropriate, and I don't mean to offend. However, I stand by my opinion that rabid fundamentalist beliefs are dangerous.
I've always thought this is cool, too. When I drag my scope out into the backyard and cruise around the galaxies in the Virgo cluster, it's kind of thought-provoking when distances are considered: when the light that you're seeing actually left some of those galaxies, dinosaurs still ruled the Earth.:-)
Confirmation of what we've suspected for a long time (that is, that life not only exists elsewhere in the Universe, but is abundant) would be a bit more than "neat.":-) It would force us to re-evaluate our place in the grand scheme of things, and it would hopefully unite us in ways that would allow us to put some of our more petty differences aside. The promotion of global peace and brotherhood would IMHO be the greatest impact that a discovery such as this would bring about. Since we'd know once and for all how insignificant we are on a universal scale, there would be more propensity for us to work with each other, rather than against.
Another positive effect of a discovery such as this is that it would sound the death knell for young-Earth biblical creationism as practiced by Christian fundamentalists. If it sounds like I'm being snide, I'm not; this would be immeasurably positive for the human race as a whole. Religious fundamentalism is the greatest threat that this world has ever known. It is mental illness masquerading as faith, and anything that helps drive it out of the human psyche once and for all would be incredibly beneficial.
If humans were to ever set up a colony in another "planatary system" and used solar panels, whould we have to change the name to stellar panels instead? Or maybe Proximus Centari panels?
Well, it's an interesting question, and we could come up with several other examples. When we establish a colony on Mars and are describing an honest, straightforward colonist, would we describe him/her as being "down-to-Mars?" If we found a new, inhabitable planet with a sizable moon and set a spacecraft down on it, would we call it a "lunar" landing?
Over time, any language is going to pick up words (adjectives, specifically) that are tied to a specific place or object, inadvertantly or otherwise. The only point I'm trying to make is that "solar system" in this context is not strictly correct, and yes, I am picking a nit (as I admitted in the subject line.)
.. the term should be "planetary system." The name of our sun being Sol, the term "Solar system" describes our planetary system. This being the case, "extrasolar planetary system" would seem to be the best phrase to describe something like this.
Rules governing the conditions under which a movie can be shown are not something that George Lucas has come up with. This has been done before. I suppose one of the most famous examples would be the rule that Alfred Hitchcock imposed on showings of Psycho; namely, that once the movie had begin, nobody else would be allowed into the theater. Show up a minute late? Tough luck. You either saw it from the beginning, or you didn't see it at all. Paramount even went so far as to station Pinkerton guards outside of theaters to make sure that the rule was enforced.
Hitchcock and Lucas, having achieved a fair amount of notoriety, come up with rules like these simply because they can. What are theater owners going to say? "No?"
You're correct. As the sci.astro FAQ notes, "every time they (the planets) all get within about 90 degrees of each other, somebody will claim that they're 'aligned.'" The truth is that such "alignments" occur every few decades. It is perhaps unfortunate that the next one will happen in the year 2000, at a time where the doomsayers will have everybody worked up enough already.
It's tempting to say that "nobody will be using 32-bit UNIX machines in the year 2038 anyway." This inevitably will bring forth those who say "well, that's the kind of thinking that got us into the Y2K mess." This may be true, but it's important to remember that there's no reason that time_t can't be represented as a 64-bit quantity even on a 32-bit machine.
Naturally, this causes some complaints from some individuals (namely, people who write "raw" time_t values into binary files.) "If you change the representation of time_t," they complain, "my code will break!" The response? Tough. Play with fire, and you'll get burned. The representation of time_t has never been guaranteed or perpetual (at least with regards to the C language) and code that absolutely requires a specific representation is poorly written (IMHO.)
By the way, if we switch to a 64-bit signed integral type, the Sun will have long since burned out before we have to worry about the next "2038-style rollover." Seems a safe choice.
Lucas Scrambles To Make Last Minute Movie Changes
on
Star Wars Tidbits
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· Score: 4
LUCAS SCRAMBLES TO MAKE LAST MINUTE MOVIE CHANGES
MARIN COUNTY, CA (AP) - George Lucas and his entire "Phantom Menace" production crew are working around the clock, making last minute changes to the film after an unnamed poster on a widely-read Web site suggested that some of the movie's existing material might be undesirable.
"The decision to include the Fuzzy Zeewoks was controversial from the start," explained an exhausted Lucas on his way from the cutting room to a sound stage. "In the end, we decided to keep them in, and thought we had done the right thing. However, as this particular post has shown, we were wrong. As a result, we are writing the Zeewoks out of the script, and replacing them with the Exploding Toxic Womprats, which are less cute."
The post that started this entire debacle was written by Anonymous Coward, a prolific contributor on the Internet's popular Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org) web site. Coward, who can type at upwards of 1200 words per minute (estimated), is responsible for nearly one-third of the material posted there. In his Star Wars-related post, Coward claimed that he would "start shooting people in the theater" if he saw any "cuteness" such as the Fuzzy Zeewoks. This pushed Lucas over the edge, and prompted the cutting of the entire Fuzzy Zeewok subplot.
"What a blow!" said Lucas ruefully. "When you get advice from a person with the influence and social standing that Anonymous Coward has, you had better follow it." And following it he is! The long days of reworking the film has been an unprecedented, grueling trial for Lucas' production crew. However, he hastens to add: "We'll be ready by the original release date."
Although Lucas refuses to elaborate on the details of the subplot involving the Fuzzy Zeewoks, sources close to the film tell the Associated Press that it had something to do with six feet of rubber tubing, a quart of 10W-30 motor oil, and a yak.
In what the fuck kind of game do you go around and shoot things for no fucking reason? With the graphics nowadays it's gettting pretty fucking real enough. Third, what is the fucking point of these games?
Wow!
You just beat Joe Pesci's performance in "GoodFellas" for the Most Unnecessary Uses Of The Word "Fuck" Award! For your efforts, you will receive an autographed copy of Eddie Murphy's autobiography!
More of the same. There are a couple of things that I'd like to touch on here (at least one of which has been mentioned many times here already.)
It is either unabashed cluelessness or shocking arrogance (or a combination thereof) for people to somehow put any phenomenon in the computing industry in the light of Microsoft. To paraphrase another poster: "When will these people learn that Microsoft is not the center of the universe?" Apparently, to these people, it is simply inconceivable that anybody would use Linux (or any other non-Microsoft OS, for that matter) for any reason other than to "boycott" Microsoft.
In other words, they like to portray Linux users as black sheep; rebellious teenagers with nose rings and leather jackets, thumbing their collective noses at Bill Gates, taunting "Neener, neener! We're not using Windows!" And while it is true that there are people who use Linux for exactly this reason, from my experience this is not what drives the average Linux user.
People like Linux because of what it gives them, not because of what it takes them away from. The Redmond-centrists who believe that the industry revolves around Microsoft will probably never be convinced of this, but on the other hand, who cares? Microsoft is a lot less relevant to the growth and success of Linux than a lot of Slashdotters seem to think.
And then there's the old "OSS advocates are a bunch of commies/anarchists" (paraphrased) argument. Free, open-source software will destroy the industry, they warn! In the February 1999 issue of;login:, the USENIX Association Magazine, a freshman from MIT writes:
People ask how they can compete against Microsoft, but competing against Microsoft is incomparable to competing with the Linus Torvalds of the world, who (1) don't want to make a profit from their work and (2) don't have to pay their "employees."
He also writes:
I'm tired of OSS fans; maybe they should win, just so they can see how bad their future is. In particular, since a lot of them work day jobs and do OSS as a hobby, I think it would (be) amusing to watch them drive their own companies out of business with their free software and then have to beg for change on the street: "Starving Linux developer. Will work for food."
What this individual doesn't get (and, indeed, what just about every opponent of OSS doesn't get) is that the fact that a piece of software is free is not enough to guarantee it widespread acceptance and success. Sure, it doesn't hurt, but anybody who attributes the success of Linux solely to the fact that it's free is woefully incorrect. It almost seems as if they are completely unwilling to accept that a piece of free software can be fundamentally better than a piece of commercial software. "Don't listen to people who tell you about its supposed quality!" shouts the OSS detractor. "They're just using it because it's free!"
Complete nonsense, of course.
In fact, Linux is succeeding in many places in spite of the fact that it's free! Case in point: I work for a large corporation where we are currently in the process of migrating a series of NT workstations to Linux. The process that we had to go through to get this done was long and arduous, and most of the opposition was due to the fact that the management types simply didn't trust a "free" operating system. For us, the fact that Linux is free really doesn't matter; in any medium- to large-sized shop, the amount of money spent on desktop operating systems is miniscule compared to the buckets spent on server iron and large-scale software. We had to fight to convince them that the "free" Linux would be a better choice than the commercial Solaris x86. In the end, I'm happy to report that we won.
The bottom line is that a piece of software, be it a rinky-dink application or an operating system, will only succeed and be accepted on a large scale if it is fundamentally better than its competition, and unless the numbers are particularly extravagant, price isn't a very big consideration (in corporate markets, anyway.) If somebody comes up with a better solution, people will use it.. and it doesn't matter if that "somebody" is a large corporation or a benevolent soul a la Torvalds or Stallman. To those who portrary Linus and Linux users as the bringers of software communism, beware; your political agenda betrays you, my friends.
.. to see if he's ever had any speeding tickets. A compulsive speeder would make a terrible President, and it would be a shame for this wholesome country to elect such a man.
An article in "Human Events" also claimed that Gore wet his pants not once, but twice in the first grade. This must also be looked into.
Slashdot Mirror
The bottom line is that the search for life has not ceased, even in our own Solar System. There are plenty of other places where astronomers believe that life could exist; some go so far as to claim as there could be life on Io or Venus, or even some of the Uranian and Neptunian satellites! These claims are a stretch. Nevertheless, it is foolish to discount the possibility of extraterrestrial life in our neighborhood, let alone the universe.
I'm surprised that Redmond hasn't pointed this out to the press. They've tried every other angle.
MICROSOFT: FREE SOFTWARE CAN'T COMPETE
"Look At The Stupid Gnu," Snorts Top Exec
REDMOND, WA (UPI) - In its latest no-holds-barred assault on the open-source software (OSS) community, Microsoft executives held the logo of the Free Software Foundation up to ridicule. Calling it "proof that free software is nothing more than a passing curiosity," the Redmond-based company pulled no punches in its critique of the animal that many people view as synonymous with this radical software movement.
"Look at it," said Microsoft bigwig Ed Muth. "It looks like the work of a third grader wacked out on Thorazine."
Embattled Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, in an interview on ZDTV, echoed Muth's sentiments. "It never ceases to amaze me," mused Gates, "that people would trust their mission-critical systems to software that sports such a cruddy-looking logo. If you want to trust your Web commerce to a goat, then by all means, go right ahead. On the other hand, if you want to run a real system, complete with talking paperclips and the prettiest dialog boxes this side of the Potomac, give us a jingle. Operators are standing by."
These sentiments echo Gates' earlier comments. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gates was quoted as saying: "People need to understand that we can do things that these pinko OSS commies can't. We've got a big R&D budget; they don't. Large companies such as ours are far more capable of producing attractive and pleasing logos than you would get from some long-hair university environment. It all boils down to the ability to compete, and they simply can't."
Gates also lambasted the familiar BSD logo. "The red devil," he explained, "is a thinly-veiled reference to Communism. Not only that, it just looks stupid. Nowhere in the free software community will you find a logo as great as our Windows logo; we spent nearly two million dollars on aesthetic engineering, and put the remaining $20,000 into software testing. The results are clear. OSS is way behind. My advice to those who are contemplating jumping on the bandwagon: Don't. Stick with the guys with the pretty logos. You'll be glad you did."
The following "article" was satire and should not have been read by any lifeless legal types.
You don't have to spend $10,000+ to get good AV equipment. I would say that a 27" TV is probably good enough (though I wouldn't go any lower than that, considering that the majority of the DVD movies you're going to watch are widescreen.) As far as audio goes, you really should look into eventually getting a Dolby Digital-ready receiver; having watched DVD movies with and without this benefit, I can say that the experience isn't quite complete without it.
I got a good Pioneer Dolby Digital-ready receiver for around $350. It's not "top of the line" by any stretch of the imagination, but it does a hell of a job nonetheless. You're going to probably want to get a receiver with an optical Dolby output. If you've already got good, high-quality left and right speakers for your existing stereo system, a boxed set of surround speakers for the center and left/right rear channels should be fairly reasonable (but don't skimp.)
All in all, while a high-quality home theater setup isn't cheap, I don't think it's quite as expensive as you think. You can always add to it incrementally (i.e., get surround speakers first, a new receiver later, a powered subwoofer sometime after that, etc.) The results are definitely worth it.
Star Trek, as an example of popular culture, paints a pretty picture of the future. The reality of Earth history is that primitive cultures rarely survive contact with advanced cultures.
.. just life elsewhere than Earth. Even the discovery of microorganisms on Mars would go a long way towards destroying the Earth-centric view of the Universe that a lot of people have.
Maybe, maybe not. However, I'm not (necessarily) talking about the discovery of a race of Vulcans or anything so advanced
I do not think that anything (as far as I have read - I have just recently come to Christ) in the Bible absolutely rules out the possibility of other life created in the universe by the Lord. I could be mistaken about this - anybody have a different opinion?
Well, not creationism in general, but the literal young-Earth kind. These are the people who believe that the Earth (and, as a consequence, the entire universe) is only 6000 years old. They take objection to the idea that there is intelligent life on other planets, since the only intelligent life that was created (in their view) was Adam and Eve, since that is all that the Bible mentions, and the Bible is completely and wholly inerrant (again, in their view.) Furthermore, since the fall of Adam and Eve from grace (the "original sin") is what they believe to be the cornerstone of Christianity, they object vehemently to the idea that humanity is not alone among the stars. (Trust me, I've run into more than one of these folks.)
In any case, I am very sorry you feel that true Christianity is a "mental illness".
My comment pertained to religious fundamentalism in general, not to any particular religion. There is nothing wrong with religion at all, so long as it is constrained to contexts where it is appropriate, and I don't mean to offend. However, I stand by my opinion that rabid fundamentalist beliefs are dangerous.
I've always thought this is cool, too. When I drag my scope out into the backyard and cruise around the galaxies in the Virgo cluster, it's kind of thought-provoking when distances are considered: when the light that you're seeing actually left some of those galaxies, dinosaurs still ruled the Earth. :-)
Confirmation of what we've suspected for a long time (that is, that life not only exists elsewhere in the Universe, but is abundant) would be a bit more than "neat." :-) It would force us to re-evaluate our place in the grand scheme of things, and it would hopefully unite us in ways that would allow us to put some of our more petty differences aside. The promotion of global peace and brotherhood would IMHO be the greatest impact that a discovery such as this would bring about. Since we'd know once and for all how insignificant we are on a universal scale, there would be more propensity for us to work with each other, rather than against.
Another positive effect of a discovery such as this is that it would sound the death knell for young-Earth biblical creationism as practiced by Christian fundamentalists. If it sounds like I'm being snide, I'm not; this would be immeasurably positive for the human race as a whole. Religious fundamentalism is the greatest threat that this world has ever known. It is mental illness masquerading as faith, and anything that helps drive it out of the human psyche once and for all would be incredibly beneficial.
If humans were to ever set up a colony in another "planatary system" and used solar panels, whould we have to change the name to stellar panels instead? Or maybe Proximus Centari panels?
Well, it's an interesting question, and we could come up with several other examples. When we establish a colony on Mars and are describing an honest, straightforward colonist, would we describe him/her as being "down-to-Mars?" If we found a new, inhabitable planet with a sizable moon and set a spacecraft down on it, would we call it a "lunar" landing?
Over time, any language is going to pick up words (adjectives, specifically) that are tied to a specific place or object, inadvertantly or otherwise. The only point I'm trying to make is that "solar system" in this context is not strictly correct, and yes, I am picking a nit (as I admitted in the subject line.)
Well I think the name Sol is accually derived from the word Solar and not the other way around.
No. This is sort of like saying that the word "tube" is actually derived from "tubular."
So Solar describes sun/star entities in general
The word you want is "stellar."
.. the term should be "planetary system." The name of our sun being Sol, the term "Solar system" describes our planetary system. This being the case, "extrasolar planetary system" would seem to be the best phrase to describe something like this.
Rules governing the conditions under which a movie can be shown are not something that George Lucas has come up with. This has been done before. I suppose one of the most famous examples would be the rule that Alfred Hitchcock imposed on showings of Psycho; namely, that once the movie had begin, nobody else would be allowed into the theater. Show up a minute late? Tough luck. You either saw it from the beginning, or you didn't see it at all. Paramount even went so far as to station Pinkerton guards outside of theaters to make sure that the rule was enforced.
Hitchcock and Lucas, having achieved a fair amount of notoriety, come up with rules like these simply because they can. What are theater owners going to say? "No?"
You're correct. As the sci.astro FAQ notes, "every time they (the planets) all get within about 90 degrees of each other, somebody will claim that they're 'aligned.'" The truth is that such "alignments" occur every few decades. It is perhaps unfortunate that the next one will happen in the year 2000, at a time where the doomsayers will have everybody worked up enough already.
It's tempting to say that "nobody will be using 32-bit UNIX machines in the year 2038 anyway." This inevitably will bring forth those who say "well, that's the kind of thinking that got us into the Y2K mess." This may be true, but it's important to remember that there's no reason that time_t can't be represented as a 64-bit quantity even on a 32-bit machine.
Naturally, this causes some complaints from some individuals (namely, people who write "raw" time_t values into binary files.) "If you change the representation of time_t," they complain, "my code will break!" The response? Tough. Play with fire, and you'll get burned. The representation of time_t has never been guaranteed or perpetual (at least with regards to the C language) and code that absolutely requires a specific representation is poorly written (IMHO.)
By the way, if we switch to a 64-bit signed integral type, the Sun will have long since burned out before we have to worry about the next "2038-style rollover." Seems a safe choice.
LUCAS SCRAMBLES TO MAKE LAST MINUTE MOVIE CHANGES
MARIN COUNTY, CA (AP) - George Lucas and his entire "Phantom Menace" production crew are working around the clock, making last minute changes to the film after an unnamed poster on a widely-read Web site suggested that some of the movie's existing material might be undesirable.
"The decision to include the Fuzzy Zeewoks was controversial from the start," explained an exhausted Lucas on his way from the cutting room to a sound stage. "In the end, we decided to keep them in, and thought we had done the right thing. However, as this particular post has shown, we were wrong. As a result, we are writing the Zeewoks out of the script, and replacing them with the Exploding Toxic Womprats, which are less cute."
The post that started this entire debacle was written by Anonymous Coward, a prolific contributor on the Internet's popular Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org) web site. Coward, who can type at upwards of 1200 words per minute (estimated), is responsible for nearly one-third of the material posted there. In his Star Wars-related post, Coward claimed that he would "start shooting people in the theater" if he saw any "cuteness" such as the Fuzzy Zeewoks. This pushed Lucas over the edge, and prompted the cutting of the entire Fuzzy Zeewok subplot.
"What a blow!" said Lucas ruefully. "When you get advice from a person with the influence and social standing that Anonymous Coward has, you had better follow it." And following it he is! The long days of reworking the film has been an unprecedented, grueling trial for Lucas' production crew. However, he hastens to add: "We'll be ready by the original release date."
Although Lucas refuses to elaborate on the details of the subplot involving the Fuzzy Zeewoks, sources close to the film tell the Associated Press that it had something to do with six feet of rubber tubing, a quart of 10W-30 motor oil, and a yak.
Jesse Berst contributed to this story.
In what the fuck kind of game do you go around and shoot things for no fucking reason? With the graphics nowadays it's gettting pretty fucking real enough. Third, what is the fucking point of these games?
Wow!
You just beat Joe Pesci's performance in "GoodFellas" for the Most Unnecessary Uses Of The Word "Fuck" Award! For your efforts, you will receive an autographed copy of Eddie Murphy's autobiography!
Great job!
In other words, they like to portray Linux users as black sheep; rebellious teenagers with nose rings and leather jackets, thumbing their collective noses at Bill Gates, taunting "Neener, neener! We're not using Windows!" And while it is true that there are people who use Linux for exactly this reason, from my experience this is not what drives the average Linux user.
People like Linux because of what it gives them, not because of what it takes them away from. The Redmond-centrists who believe that the industry revolves around Microsoft will probably never be convinced of this, but on the other hand, who cares? Microsoft is a lot less relevant to the growth and success of Linux than a lot of Slashdotters seem to think.
He also writes:
What this individual doesn't get (and, indeed, what just about every opponent of OSS doesn't get) is that the fact that a piece of software is free is not enough to guarantee it widespread acceptance and success. Sure, it doesn't hurt, but anybody who attributes the success of Linux solely to the fact that it's free is woefully incorrect. It almost seems as if they are completely unwilling to accept that a piece of free software can be fundamentally better than a piece of commercial software. "Don't listen to people who tell you about its supposed quality!" shouts the OSS detractor. "They're just using it because it's free!"
Complete nonsense, of course.
In fact, Linux is succeeding in many places in spite of the fact that it's free! Case in point: I work for a large corporation where we are currently in the process of migrating a series of NT workstations to Linux. The process that we had to go through to get this done was long and arduous, and most of the opposition was due to the fact that the management types simply didn't trust a "free" operating system. For us, the fact that Linux is free really doesn't matter; in any medium- to large-sized shop, the amount of money spent on desktop operating systems is miniscule compared to the buckets spent on server iron and large-scale software. We had to fight to convince them that the "free" Linux would be a better choice than the commercial Solaris x86. In the end, I'm happy to report that we won.
The bottom line is that a piece of software, be it a rinky-dink application or an operating system, will only succeed and be accepted on a large scale if it is fundamentally better than its competition, and unless the numbers are particularly extravagant, price isn't a very big consideration (in corporate markets, anyway.) If somebody comes up with a better solution, people will use it
Sorry about the length.
.. to see if he's ever had any speeding tickets. A compulsive speeder would make a terrible President, and it would be a shame for this wholesome country to elect such a man.
An article in "Human Events" also claimed that Gore wet his pants not once, but twice in the first grade. This must also be looked into.