TFA smells like an herbal-medicine/magneto-therapy pseudo-science site. Just the font and the wording immediately peg it as not being peer reviewed by geeks who know their biz.
I in no way disparage herbs. I'm a big fan of bay and cilantro. But, come on.
I'm just into my third week with Paragon CRT (google it, it's out there), and I'm loving it. I wear gas permeable contacts at night, and I have 20/15 all freaking day long. It was about $1500 for the whole thing, and I've had 3 or 4 different sets of lenses: the fitting proceedure has an element of trial and error to it.
I'd researched lasik, and decided it wasn't for me. In addition to the whole "somebody cutting into my freaking eyeball" dimension, I'm involved in some full contact sports, and a detached flap doesn't sound like fun.
I strongly recommend it (the CRT thing). It's totally reversible: if I stop wearing the lenses, my vision will revert to normal (read "BAD") in a few days. No surgery, no contacts, no glasses.
Being able to play with my daughters in our sprinkler and still see their faces was absolutely precious.
Frankly, I think we should coordinate a mass buying of Firefly DVDs: every geek coast to coast should pre-order thru amzn or some such, so that these disks don't even stop in the warehouse!
I'm personaly offended that shows like "charmed" continue to polute our culture while works of art like firefly are consigend to anonymity!
I have to agree that many conlangs are essentially masturbatory works: playthings, pet projects or (shudder) fanfic. But Esperanto (and several others, Esperanto is just the "best of breed") are different. They were constructed to address the language problem, which is essentially this: Learning another natural language (well) is *hard*, and once you've done it you only know one more, you can converse with some new subset of the world populace, and at a sub-native fluency. You're still at a disadvantage against a native speaker.
But, if there were an easy language to learn (deterministic pronunciation, no iregular verbs, etc) that there were no native speakers of, everyone could learn it and use it as a common, neutral ground. Buisness could be conducted and treatys negotiated without one party being at a disadvantage, and with the effort required to learn one simple language one can now speak to the entire world.
That is the goal of Esperanto.
It is, to a degree, misty-eyed idealism. Everyone get's to keep their local cultures, idioms, and languages, but also gets the ability to communicate with everyone else in the world thru a second auxiliary language. Learning other natural languages would still be an option for scholars or hobyists (or anyone, in fact, just as it is now), but not at all necessary for the tourist, buisnessman, or head of state.
It cannot be debated that it would be a Good Thing (tm). I love the idea, and yes, I speak Esperanto. Do I think this idealistic state will ever come to be? No, not realisticly. Will I keep trying to promote Esperanto as a good idea? Yes.
I'm a hobyist (I've been labeled a language fetishist by some) and an idealist, but I'm also rational. If someone can come up with 1 sane argument against a universal auxiliary language, or a better candidate than Esperanto for this language, I'd love to hear it.
I believe someone else said it first, I just wish I could remember who and give props. But, the issue isn't that windows is everywhere. The issue is that M$ makes the office/finacial software, and makes it with proprietary doc formats. When the new VP of some company gets a new PC (which happens all the time) s/he gets a new version of Office, which requires him to upgrade the versions used by the rest of the company rather than be bothered to remember to save-down his spreadsheets.
This locks every employee into a management driven (not technology driven) upgrade cycle that hoses M$ down with cash, and holds everyones data hostage.
If document formats were to be mandated as open, all changes public, and any high-school student had all the info necessary to write a.doc renderer that would do a good enough job, then the M$ stranglehold would be broken. Their scheissware would have to compete on its technical and usability merits (read: doomed) instead of being the only choice for reading all your vital commercial docs.
Let the OS be whatever the hell it wants to be. Just enforce the abillity for any other company or OS initiative to write programs that can read and write any and all files, from M$ Money to Word to Excell, and let them write these programs for BSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows, OS/2, or Be.
Then people will actually be able to do work with the big nest of legacy docs on the platform of their choice. Then the buisness sector will have a real choice.
Then, after a year or two, we can all start telling our children stories about the big scary company that allmost ate up all the computer users untill it's achilles heel was found.
I've read studies of a GM food test that showed them to be perfectly harmless...for adults. The test in question studied modifying potatoes to produce a natural fungicide: one produced by some weed or other. The same studies on pregnant females or developing organisms (the studies in question were all done on rats, thank god) revealed that the organisms fed on the GM food (potatoes, in this study) had a readically reduced development of brain and liver, compared to the test groups. Both test groups were fed potatoes from the same parent stock as the GM potatoes, one group unaltered and one group was fed potatoes that had been HEAVILY doped (by hand) with the fungicide that the GM potatoes had been engineered to produce in minute quantities.
The upshot: Something else completely unforseen, and still not completely understood utterly destroyed the food value of this crop. And most of the industry analysis missed it. We just have a bunch more to learn about the synergies at work here. DNA seems to be (to use a hack term) a "fractal-compression" representation of the organism. Changing one little bit changes other bits in ways we can't necessarily forsee.
I can't remember the name of the scientist who did the study I reference. I got it from the book "Trust Us, We're Experts", from the same fellows who brought you "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You." Unfortunately, my only copy is at home. If you want the ref, email me.
My name is dan, and I'm reachable at the machleid.com domain.
Has anyone else noticed this acronym? This is the file extension/designation for M$ Advanced Streaming Format. I hope this doesn't give M$ a leg up to sue Apache into the ground.
Of course, they could be big about it and let their competitors run free.....
This baby is v5.0 content. It should work with the v5.0 player for Linux. If you follow the link right now, you get a video clip saying the clip you're looking for isn't here yet, perfectly viewable on my Linux box.
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TFA smells like an herbal-medicine/magneto-therapy pseudo-science site. Just the font and the wording immediately peg it as not being peer reviewed by geeks who know their biz.
I in no way disparage herbs. I'm a big fan of bay and cilantro. But, come on.
albeit indirectly, a beer powered battery.
I'm just into my third week with Paragon CRT (google it, it's out there), and I'm loving it. I wear gas permeable contacts at night, and I have 20/15 all freaking day long. It was about $1500 for the whole thing, and I've had 3 or 4 different sets of lenses: the fitting proceedure has an element of trial and error to it.
I'd researched lasik, and decided it wasn't for me. In addition to the whole "somebody cutting into my freaking eyeball" dimension, I'm involved in some full contact sports, and a detached flap doesn't sound like fun.
I strongly recommend it (the CRT thing). It's totally reversible: if I stop wearing the lenses, my vision will revert to normal (read "BAD") in a few days. No surgery, no contacts, no glasses.
Being able to play with my daughters in our sprinkler and still see their faces was absolutely precious.
Frankly, I think we should coordinate a mass buying of Firefly DVDs: every geek coast to coast should pre-order thru amzn or some such, so that these disks don't even stop in the warehouse!
I'm personaly offended that shows like "charmed" continue to polute our culture while works of art like firefly are consigend to anonymity!
I have to agree that many conlangs are essentially masturbatory works: playthings, pet projects or (shudder) fanfic. But Esperanto (and several others, Esperanto is just the "best of breed") are different. They were constructed to address the language problem, which is essentially this:
Learning another natural language (well) is *hard*, and once you've done it you only know one more, you can converse with some new subset of the world populace, and at a sub-native fluency. You're still at a disadvantage against a native speaker.
But, if there were an easy language to learn (deterministic pronunciation, no iregular verbs, etc) that there were no native speakers of, everyone could learn it and use it as a common, neutral ground. Buisness could be conducted and treatys negotiated without one party being at a disadvantage, and with the effort required to learn one simple language one can now speak to the entire world.
That is the goal of Esperanto.
It is, to a degree, misty-eyed idealism. Everyone get's to keep their local cultures, idioms, and languages, but also gets the ability to communicate with everyone else in the world thru a second auxiliary language. Learning other natural languages would still be an option for scholars or hobyists (or anyone, in fact, just as it is now), but not at all necessary for the tourist, buisnessman, or head of state.
It cannot be debated that it would be a Good Thing (tm). I love the idea, and yes, I speak Esperanto. Do I think this idealistic state will ever come to be? No, not realisticly. Will I keep trying to promote Esperanto as a good idea? Yes.
I'm a hobyist (I've been labeled a language fetishist by some) and an idealist, but I'm also rational. If someone can come up with 1 sane argument against a universal auxiliary language, or a better candidate than Esperanto for this language, I'd love to hear it.
I believe someone else said it first, I just wish I could remember who and give props. But, the issue isn't that windows is everywhere. The issue is that M$ makes the office/finacial software, and makes it with proprietary doc formats. When the new VP of some company gets a new PC (which happens all the time) s/he gets a new version of Office, which requires him to upgrade the versions used by the rest of the company rather than be bothered to remember to save-down his spreadsheets.
.doc renderer that would do a good enough job, then the M$ stranglehold would be broken. Their scheissware would have to compete on its technical and usability merits (read: doomed) instead of being the only choice for reading all your vital commercial docs.
This locks every employee into a management driven (not technology driven) upgrade cycle that hoses M$ down with cash, and holds everyones data hostage.
If document formats were to be mandated as open, all changes public, and any high-school student had all the info necessary to write a
Let the OS be whatever the hell it wants to be. Just enforce the abillity for any other company or OS initiative to write programs that can read and write any and all files, from M$ Money to Word to Excell, and let them write these programs for BSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows, OS/2, or Be.
Then people will actually be able to do work with the big nest of legacy docs on the platform of their choice. Then the buisness sector will have a real choice.
Then, after a year or two, we can all start telling our children stories about the big scary company that allmost ate up all the computer users untill it's achilles heel was found.
I've read studies of a GM food test that showed them to be perfectly harmless...for adults. The test in question studied modifying potatoes to produce a natural fungicide: one produced by some weed or other. The same studies on pregnant females or developing organisms (the studies in question were all done on rats, thank god) revealed that the organisms fed on the GM food (potatoes, in this study) had a readically reduced development of brain and liver, compared to the test groups. Both test groups were fed potatoes from the same parent stock as the GM potatoes, one group unaltered and one group was fed potatoes that had been HEAVILY doped (by hand) with the fungicide that the GM potatoes had been engineered to produce in minute quantities.
The upshot: Something else completely unforseen, and still not completely understood utterly destroyed the food value of this crop. And most of the industry analysis missed it. We just have a bunch more to learn about the synergies at work here. DNA seems to be (to use a hack term) a "fractal-compression" representation of the organism. Changing one little bit changes other bits in ways we can't necessarily forsee.
I can't remember the name of the scientist who did the study I reference. I got it from the book "Trust Us, We're Experts", from the same fellows who brought you "Toxic Sludge Is Good For You." Unfortunately, my only copy is at home. If you want the ref, email me.
My name is dan, and I'm reachable at the machleid.com domain.
Has anyone else noticed this acronym? This is the file extension/designation for M$ Advanced Streaming Format. I hope this doesn't give M$ a leg up to sue Apache into the ground.
Of course, they could be big about it and let their competitors run free.....
And Open Source Windows......
And Open all document formats......
This baby is v5.0 content. It should work with the v5.0 player for Linux. If you follow the link right now, you get a video clip saying the clip you're looking for isn't here yet, perfectly viewable on my Linux box.