"If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain." There is no record of anyone hearing Churchill say this. Paul Addison of Edinburgh University makes this comment: "Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie, who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?"
I stopped listening to commercial radio, sold my T.V. and rarely go to the big cinemas because the content is rarely worthwhile and I can't bear the advertising.
I think the problem is deeper than people realize, it's not just the commercials causing interruptions in the program, or product placement appearing in the program, but it is the programs themselves altering content to appeal to what the advertisers feel that the viewers will find appealing.
The existing advertising model is severely flawed because the audience of television and radio is not the viewer or listener, but the advertiser. The advertiser wants lots of eyes on their product and does not want to be associated with ideas or values which might be controversial. The most obvious place this happened has been in newspapers and magazines.
I will stop reading articles online when interruption based advertising becomes commonplace. Not just because the dancing crap is distracting, but because the site skews its content dramatically to appeal to those advertisers.
They can make posters, promote with other cross channel media in order to educate the public about the product.
"Educate the public?!"
Bah.
You'd think that people didn't have a natural NEED or DRIVE to CONSUME, PERFORM and SHARE music. The record industry corrupts commercial radio with payola, flogs the same cruddy musicians with posters for years on end, sues Internet radio stations, sues online guitar tablature sites like Olga out of existence, sits on copyrights until the recordings are historical, installs rootkits on our PCs, and they charge everyone money for playing or performing any recordings.
If the music industry put 1/10 of the effort that the film industry put into promotion, I don't think we'd have a problem.
Top ways that new music has reached me since 1994:
Piracy
My local pub
College Radio
Word of mouth
The film industry
Aside from getting an album on a shelf in a CD store, they do NOTHING to promote music. In fact, they couldn't do more to repress music if they tried.
Down with commercial radio, and down with the record industry.
...so that they would include the package with their phones including an Google icon in the main menu of a phone....
The problem here is when the target platform is Windows mobile.
This is something that the article gets very wrong. Even if Google gives the platform away for free, it won't be as powerful as what MS did to Netscape... which was to not only give it away for free, but to include it with every machine and enforce non-installation of competitor software... and yet, even then, Microsoft has many other air supplies.
Google needs to entrench, else they'll be overthrown at the first sign of weakness. Microsoft is trying hard to buy equivalents in the marketplace. It is only a matter of time before MS becomes a reasonable alternative.
Trolltech is exploitive of Linux. They're providing QT to the KDE community so as to promote the sales of their development platform. While many people don't see this as a problem, I personally do.
The "KDE Myths" page, should be more upfront and less marketing speak, the truth is that many people simply don't care about restrictions to closed software development. The original Qt licenses were absurd, today's is at least as legal as the GPL. Unlike Redhat, Sun, Netscape, or other FOSS-positive companies, they're not selling support and giving back to the community. They're using the GPL to create a problem which the LGPL was designed to solve, but TT charges a per-developer license fee to circumvent.
"... The LGPL is a solution to a problem that Qt doesn't have. The whole point of the LGPL is to make the development of proprietary programs possible: but Qt already allows everyone to develop proprietary programs, by providing an alternative commercial license [for a fee] to those willing to do so...."
Given that projects like OO and Mozilla depend on dual-licenses, is it conceivable that OO might ever actually use the native KDE toolkit?
When the party starts hitting level 20ish, I'd shelve the characters and we'd all roll up new characters.
We'd occasionally take the high level characters off the shelves when I'd dream up some major event for the realm, then we'd play them out in battles which affected the political landscape. The high level party would never personally meet the low level party though.
Some of the best high level games I've played have been with nemesis-parties... groups of NPCs which are nearly as detailed as PCs and have a personal vendetta against the PC party. It's great seeing the PC's faces when they get to the end of a major quest and somebody beat them to it... PC's start raising armies to invade kingdoms ruled by the NPCs.... while their low level characters fight to dodge the draft:-)
I don't have time for D&D anymore, even if I did, it's hard to find good players who don't spend the whole night fighting against the DM.
Speaking of British newspapers, this is one of the worst:
In a story from the British tabloid newspaper "The Sun," music legend Sir Elton John has posted comments online that call for the internet to be closed down.
The source is crazy. A tabloid journalist selectively quoting from comments posted online? The photo of Elton John is probably stock footage, only placed there to make people think that he was interviewed or something.
Yeah, no chance there. If somebody on the road isn't looking, you'll be hit.
My last car was totaled when somebody didn't see me stopped waiting to make a left hand turn. Plenty of lights there, and I wasn't a small object. If I were on a bicycle, I'd probably be dead.
There's nothing you can do except to cycle defensively and ask your city to consider wide lanes or bicycle lanes. A mirror *might* help, but most of them suck.
It's not a bad idea. I'm looking for a small plastic one just to deal with this kind of thing. Most mirrors are fragile, easily thrown out of adjustment, difficult to depend upon, and easily stolen. By fragile, I mean think about what happens in a bicycle rack. You can't depend on them either because you're bouncing around, looking at a small, fixed mirror to see if a car is coming up on your left... you still have to do a shoulder check.
The police don't take bicycle theft and vandalism seriously. I once had a motorist run up on to the sidewalk and run over my bicycle, I confronted the motorist who didn't take any responsibility, took down the license plate, called the police. The motorist left and the police wouldn't even run the plate. I was just a kid at the time and I had no way to replace the wheel. I had to walk the bike home on my shoulder.
I think I just have to not be surprised if there's some hybrid 5 feet behind me. It's not like I cut them off or anything, it's just surprising to encounter a silent car.
You're either stupid or trolling. I'll assume stupid:
Why do you think I was turning my head?
I own a car too, I even drive it
We should wait behind cyclists unless it is safe to pass.
If you don't like waiting behind cyclists, you should support initiatives to widen the outermost lanes of traffic and/or add bicycle lanes to your city.
Driving is a privilege, not a right.
Getting to and from work, buying groceries or running similar errands is a necessity.
Where *is* there a road tax? Really? Are you talking about the fuel tax? That's embedded in the price of everything we buy.
I had one sneak up on me while walking in an underground parking lot. You don't realize how much you depend on your hearing until you turn you head and see a car 5 feet from you rolling into your path.
When cycling, I've turned my head to make a lane change, expecting the closest car to be 50' behind me, but was surprised when one was right at my rear wheel.
"What the system should not be used for, is so the new police Lt. can check up on where his girlfriend's car was seen last night. If he does, he should be straight out of a job. "
An ex-girlfriend of mine was a passport officer. When she first met me, she looked me up in her database. It's a quick way to find out if I am/was married, have a criminal record, stuff like that. Normally, she'd be taking chances doing this, but in this case, she is the person who's watching the people who are watching for people abusing the system.
Now if all the systems are linked, she'll learn about this Slashdot post and I'm going to get a full cavity search next time I fly anywhere.
On the other hand, she was trained at interrogation and intimidation tactics, so she might have just been making things up to provoke a response.
Never date anyone who interrogates people for a living:-(
The government is not asking for the child's foreskin to be cut off. The parent is. I'm saying that just as it would be child abuse to brand a child's butt, it should be illegal to cut off their foreskin.
I'm not sure why it is not considered child abuse. It's unnecessary, irreversible, impairs sexual function and they don't even use anaesthetic. Branding a child would be less damaging.
Perhaps you are not aware, but this would outlaw Judaism among other religions. Why be such an extremist?
A very nice straw man argument. I'm not even sure why there should be controversy over my position.
I have seen botched circumcisions, and I don't think that parents should have any right to impose a medically unnecessary procedure on children which has both risks and even when successful, demonstrated impact on sexual function.
The part that you seem to be missing is that the child has no choice.
Parents are asking doctors to perform a medically unnecessary procedure on their children which has very real risks and very real effects on sexual function.
This is why I said "on children" and "unless medically necessary"
I take it you haven't seen the common botch jobs on circumcision? "Bowing", pain during erections... and complete penis removal are potential complications.
It's hard to draw any parallel between men and women. Female circumcision is definitely sinister and not a good comparison... maybe the best anatomical parallel would be to remove the clitoral hood and make a girl wear a g-string backwards for the rest of her life. It would seriously affect sensitivity of her clitoris.
My point is only that just because your doctor got it right, don't assume that other doctors do. Honestly, I think unless medically necessary, circumcising a child of any gender should be illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
In America, the government are dissidents, and they shoot *you!*
It's not a deep nugget of wisdom. It was a clever insult. Best not to read too deeply into it.
But then, those who are using it are probably not the best judges of brains anyway:
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=112
I stopped listening to commercial radio, sold my T.V. and rarely go to the big cinemas because the content is rarely worthwhile and I can't bear the advertising.
I think the problem is deeper than people realize, it's not just the commercials causing interruptions in the program, or product placement appearing in the program, but it is the programs themselves altering content to appeal to what the advertisers feel that the viewers will find appealing.
The existing advertising model is severely flawed because the audience of television and radio is not the viewer or listener, but the advertiser. The advertiser wants lots of eyes on their product and does not want to be associated with ideas or values which might be controversial. The most obvious place this happened has been in newspapers and magazines.
I will stop reading articles online when interruption based advertising becomes commonplace. Not just because the dancing crap is distracting, but because the site skews its content dramatically to appeal to those advertisers.
"Educate the public?!"
Bah.
You'd think that people didn't have a natural NEED or DRIVE to CONSUME, PERFORM and SHARE music. The record industry corrupts commercial radio with payola, flogs the same cruddy musicians with posters for years on end, sues Internet radio stations, sues online guitar tablature sites like Olga out of existence, sits on copyrights until the recordings are historical, installs rootkits on our PCs, and they charge everyone money for playing or performing any recordings.
If the music industry put 1/10 of the effort that the film industry put into promotion, I don't think we'd have a problem.
Top ways that new music has reached me since 1994:
Aside from getting an album on a shelf in a CD store, they do NOTHING to promote music. In fact, they couldn't do more to repress music if they tried.
Down with commercial radio, and down with the record industry.
The problem here is when the target platform is Windows mobile.
This is something that the article gets very wrong. Even if Google gives the platform away for free, it won't be as powerful as what MS did to Netscape... which was to not only give it away for free, but to include it with every machine and enforce non-installation of competitor software... and yet, even then, Microsoft has many other air supplies.
Google needs to entrench, else they'll be overthrown at the first sign of weakness. Microsoft is trying hard to buy equivalents in the marketplace. It is only a matter of time before MS becomes a reasonable alternative.
"g"OS, with Google plastered all over their website.
They're going to be sued out of existence in 15 minutes.
Trolltech is exploitive of Linux. They're providing QT to the KDE community so as to promote the sales of their development platform. While many people don't see this as a problem, I personally do.
The "KDE Myths" page, should be more upfront and less marketing speak, the truth is that many people simply don't care about restrictions to closed software development. The original Qt licenses were absurd, today's is at least as legal as the GPL. Unlike Redhat, Sun, Netscape, or other FOSS-positive companies, they're not selling support and giving back to the community. They're using the GPL to create a problem which the LGPL was designed to solve, but TT charges a per-developer license fee to circumvent.
http://kdemyths.urbanlizard.com/myth/65/
"... The LGPL is a solution to a problem that Qt doesn't have. The whole point of the LGPL is to make the development of proprietary programs possible: but Qt already allows everyone to develop proprietary programs, by providing an alternative commercial license [for a fee] to those willing to do so. ..."
Given that projects like OO and Mozilla depend on dual-licenses, is it conceivable that OO might ever actually use the native KDE toolkit?
You'll reprioritize when your starving children become zombies and your parent tries to kill you.
Anyone who does business with New Zealand might not be aware of the change and the need to update their systems.
E.g. sites hosting NZ content outside of NZ, or even banks doing business with customers in NZ.
The change impacts the world and should be applied to all systems.
Most of Slashdot uses Windows.
http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2006/12/18/statistics-slashdot-and-digg/
That's a succinct and cromulent argument. English is continually embiggened.
I think you forgot to s/lubed/plastered/g in your story. At least you didn't forget s/bathhouse/lounge/g, that would have been embarassing.
When the party starts hitting level 20ish, I'd shelve the characters and we'd all roll up new characters.
We'd occasionally take the high level characters off the shelves when I'd dream up some major event for the realm, then we'd play them out in battles which affected the political landscape. The high level party would never personally meet the low level party though.
Some of the best high level games I've played have been with nemesis-parties... groups of NPCs which are nearly as detailed as PCs and have a personal vendetta against the PC party. It's great seeing the PC's faces when they get to the end of a major quest and somebody beat them to it... PC's start raising armies to invade kingdoms ruled by the NPCs.... while their low level characters fight to dodge the draft :-)
I don't have time for D&D anymore, even if I did, it's hard to find good players who don't spend the whole night fighting against the DM.
The Americans vote for a lot of other dumb things on their ballots. It's a stupid process. The whole thing needs to be overhauled.
http://www.danbricklin.com/log/sampleballot.htm
Speaking of British newspapers, this is one of the worst:
The source is crazy. A tabloid journalist selectively quoting from comments posted online? The photo of Elton John is probably stock footage, only placed there to make people think that he was interviewed or something.
Yeah, no chance there. If somebody on the road isn't looking, you'll be hit.
My last car was totaled when somebody didn't see me stopped waiting to make a left hand turn. Plenty of lights there, and I wasn't a small object. If I were on a bicycle, I'd probably be dead.
There's nothing you can do except to cycle defensively and ask your city to consider wide lanes or bicycle lanes. A mirror *might* help, but most of them suck.
It's not a bad idea. I'm looking for a small plastic one just to deal with this kind of thing. Most mirrors are fragile, easily thrown out of adjustment, difficult to depend upon, and easily stolen. By fragile, I mean think about what happens in a bicycle rack. You can't depend on them either because you're bouncing around, looking at a small, fixed mirror to see if a car is coming up on your left... you still have to do a shoulder check.
The police don't take bicycle theft and vandalism seriously. I once had a motorist run up on to the sidewalk and run over my bicycle, I confronted the motorist who didn't take any responsibility, took down the license plate, called the police. The motorist left and the police wouldn't even run the plate. I was just a kid at the time and I had no way to replace the wheel. I had to walk the bike home on my shoulder.
I think I just have to not be surprised if there's some hybrid 5 feet behind me. It's not like I cut them off or anything, it's just surprising to encounter a silent car.
You're either stupid or trolling. I'll assume stupid:
Where *is* there a road tax? Really? Are you talking about the fuel tax? That's embedded in the price of everything we buy.
As a cyclist, I'm worried.
The things are silent. It's already started with the hybrids.
http://www.operationgadget.com/2007/02/how_shoul d_cyclists_protect_th.html
I had one sneak up on me while walking in an underground parking lot. You don't realize how much you depend on your hearing until you turn you head and see a car 5 feet from you rolling into your path.
When cycling, I've turned my head to make a lane change, expecting the closest car to be 50' behind me, but was surprised when one was right at my rear wheel.
"What the system should not be used for, is so the new police Lt. can check up on where his girlfriend's car was seen last night. If he does, he should be straight out of a job. "
An ex-girlfriend of mine was a passport officer. When she first met me, she looked me up in her database. It's a quick way to find out if I am/was married, have a criminal record, stuff like that. Normally, she'd be taking chances doing this, but in this case, she is the person who's watching the people who are watching for people abusing the system.
Now if all the systems are linked, she'll learn about this Slashdot post and I'm going to get a full cavity search next time I fly anywhere.
On the other hand, she was trained at interrogation and intimidation tactics, so she might have just been making things up to provoke a response.
Never date anyone who interrogates people for a living :-(
The government is not asking for the child's foreskin to be cut off. The parent is. I'm saying that just as it would be child abuse to brand a child's butt, it should be illegal to cut off their foreskin.
I'm not sure why it is not considered child abuse. It's unnecessary, irreversible, impairs sexual function and they don't even use anaesthetic. Branding a child would be less damaging.
A very nice straw man argument. I'm not even sure why there should be controversy over my position.
I have seen botched circumcisions, and I don't think that parents should have any right to impose a medically unnecessary procedure on children which has both risks and even when successful, demonstrated impact on sexual function.
The part that you seem to be missing is that the child has no choice.
Parents are asking doctors to perform a medically unnecessary procedure on their children which has very real risks and very real effects on sexual function.
This is why I said "on children" and "unless medically necessary"
I take it you haven't seen the common botch jobs on circumcision? "Bowing", pain during erections... and complete penis removal are potential complications. It's hard to draw any parallel between men and women. Female circumcision is definitely sinister and not a good comparison... maybe the best anatomical parallel would be to remove the clitoral hood and make a girl wear a g-string backwards for the rest of her life. It would seriously affect sensitivity of her clitoris. My point is only that just because your doctor got it right, don't assume that other doctors do. Honestly, I think unless medically necessary, circumcising a child of any gender should be illegal.
I look forward to exploiting this low-cost labour for click-farms.