There is a huge difference between the war on drugs and the war on terrorism.
The war on drugs is a misguided attempt to force a very narrow moral viewpoint on millions of people. Just as prohibition in the 20's failed to stop anyone from drinking, the war on drugs has not stopped a single person from doing the drug of their choice. The war on drugs has created an extremely lucrative (and tax free) global business. The war on drugs has made crimminals of millions of people who, mainly, are harming only themselves. The war on drugs has created more violent crime than any other human activity of the last century. When's the last time there was a bloody shoot out over the beer trade?
The war on drugs cannot be won. The war on drugs CAUSES violent crime. The war on drugs gives a sure source of income to any illegal endevour. The war on drugs has jailed millions of people who's only crime is to not use a state sanctioned drug. The war on drugs should end.
The war on terrorism is a completely different story. While the civil rights abuses of the USA government are alarming, the fact remains that unless stopped (killed) terrorists WILL KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE ON PURPOSE. Terrorists are evil, plain and simple. Terrorists should be hunted down and eradicated. And I am glad that the Americans have taken on the job of wiping out terrorists. It would be nice if the american's would pause for a moment to consider why they are the most hated nation on the planet, but this is secondary compared to the importance of wiping out terrorist vermin.
"I am the IT director of a major global company"
Sure you are - and I'm the Queen of Sheba.
If you think telling people what tools to use is a BAD idea at a LARGE company then you have never had anything to do with supporting the IT infrastructure at a large company. There are security issues, licensing issues, support issues, etc... Sure, you let a senior engineer install his toys (finite element analysis, that whiz bang risk analysis package), but you don't let him install whatever email client he wants. Any software that attempts to commuicate through the company fire wall is STANDARD. If you don't want to follow the rules you can go sulk and pretend your are superior at someone elses expense.
Personally, I think this email list guy is being childish going to this effort to exlcude certain email clients, but its his list and he can do what he wants on it. It isn't my business and I wouldn't dream of telling himn how to run his email list.
PC keyboards do auto-repeat in hardware. They send multiple down events once the auto-repeat is triggered. The delay before auto-repeat starts and speed can be controlled by writing to the keyboard hardware via the ports (which can be done by the OS).
Old dos games almost always installed their own int9 ISR for the keyboard as the default bios int9 isr does not handle multiple simultaneous key presses. win9x games use direct input, generally. Before direct X they were stuck with one of the win32 async keyboard functions (you would never use the standard message pump in a game!).
PC key boards send scan codes, one for the press, a second for the release (same code with high bit set). The second key pad sends the same codes as the main keypad, but preceded by a 0xe0 (I think, haven't dealt with the keyboard hardware for a while). The pause key sends multiple codes. If you ever write an ISR for the keyboard, always use the DOWN presses, not the releases as many typists actually release they keys in a different order from the presses.
I'm blown away by the fact that anyone even cares about what is on TV. 99% of the time a TV is displaying complete crap. Get a life - cancel your cable!
TV gets more annoying each year. More commercials, cut scenes, those little floating logos (I find them very distracting), split squished screens, digitally inserted placements, etc...
Really, cancel your cable. You won't miss it a bit after a couple of weeks.
But you haven't escaped from the gravity well. The second you turn off your engine the Earth's gravity WILL pull you back UNLESS you have moved far enough away that the escape velocity is under 10 mi/hr. I haven't done the math, but you would have to be a VERY far distance away, and then the Sun etc... would come into play also.
I cancelled my cable over ten years ago. I only missed it for a couple of weeks. You'll have much more time for real life. TV is too easy. You get home, a bit tired, and plunk down in front of the set - before you know it two or three hours of life are sucked away.
Cancel your cable! Enjoy life more!
As for copy protecting TV, it'll just create a market for 'mod' chips for TV's.
People are happy with their computers because they are more than fast enough to do word processing, spread-sheets, and email. Intel, not MS, has turned the PC into a commodity.
MS is desperately trying to force people to upgrade their OS's (subscriptions, dropping support for win9x, etc...) because for most business users there is no technical reason to upgrade. Remember, most MS customer are businesses, not home users. Only gamers need to upgrade their hardware more than once every three or four years, and even then, upgrading the video card will make an older machine good for another year or two. CAD, and some engineering and scientific applications are the only business apps I can think of off hand that benefit from something faster than a P800.
My old PII 350 runs everything I need for business, under win98, just fine. The only reason I am even considering upgrading is to play the newer games.
Some of the smaller groups are still little communities. It took only 2 days on alt.society.anarchy to kill file one guy, and peg all the regulars as capitalists or socialists.
Many of the technical groups are still usefull, and I've had good results getting directX, and Netware NDS questions answered. Google provides a great service, but for new technology the active usenet is still useful.
"Who, after all, wants their every word recorded and replayed into perpetuity?"
I do. I want to be immortal, and writing is the best way. Seeing as my career as a novelist hasn't worked out this will have to do.
I've always used my real name in posts, but I'm always polite (Canadian, hey). The first post I made that I can find under google was in 1994 in an msdos group. I had a dial-up account (a rocking 2400 Baud a think) with a small ISP my friend ran. All my blather in the anarchy groups is also there. Very cool to take a peek at what I was doing eight years ago.
Anyone else actually remeber watching the 'holiday specual' on TV?
I was pretty young, but I do remeber thinking that the cartoon (great caricature of han solo with 1000 watt smile) was the only good part.
Freedom of speech means you can say what ever you want even if others find what you say offensive. Freedom of speech has NOTHING to do with the consent of anyone who might hear your message. The whole point of freedom of speech is that you do not need anyones consent to say pretty much what ever you like. If you think freedom of speech requires consent, you might want to live in China were you need the governments consent to say a great many things.
Freedom of speech was set up so that people who's views didn't coincide with the government's view, or other powerful groups (church) view could speak their mind without risking jail time or worse.
I am really fed up with laws meant to protect idiots.
If you are too stupid to refuel your car without lighting yourself on fire you deserve a Darwin, not a new law. I do not want my government to try to make the world safe for idiots.
Many smokers (not the world's smartest people) have managed to re-fill lighters without killing themselves. I'm sure either replacing a fuel-cartridge, or re-filling it your self is within the skills possessed by most people.
Driving your car to the corner store is much more dangerous than refilling a small canister with fuel. I don't hear anyone wanting to pass laws against cars.
Ballard is in North Vancouver, British columbia, Canada. Noth Vancouver is also home of Internatial Hardsuits, the makers and designers of hard-shelled personal deep sea diving suits (Newt Suit).
Ballard isn't the only player in the fuel cell game, but they have done a great job of promoting themselves, and do have good tech.
This so true. My department has an unwritten rule that BANS ALL FREE SOFTWARE. If its free it can't be good, it won't have support, and the programmer might abandon it.
We were using a small, fast, inexpesive, ibm mainframe terminal emulator. But the guy who programmed it (yes the one guy) stopped supporting it. So we switched over to "Personal Client" big bucks, but a big company behind it that can be called for support.
Ever since this, the free software we can get away with using is small utilities - nothing on the users desktop, or that might directly affect a user.
So, its not FUD. It is the very real mindset of many managers.
The purpose of human life, and all other life, is to procreate. The fact that we can think up more noble purposes in an effort to get people to behave the way we want is interesting, but ultimately not important to "life".
You should never ask a government to PROMOTE or "guarantee" anything. As soon as a government is allowed to promote anything all of a sudden every vile thing it does is in support of whatever it is supposed to be promoting. For example, I'm going to trample all over adults rights "for the children".
The governments job is to prevent "evil". The government under no circumstances should be trying to promote "good".
All rights are artificial constructs. Rights are just laws thought up by people to clarify their thinking about other laws they are considering.
The only reason any government is required is that not all people are good. There are in fact enough bad people that it makes economic sense (not moral sense) to centralize the enforcement of laws.
As we do live in the real world, what should a government's constitution look like? A constitution is a framework controlling, reining in, all governments tendencies to continually take up more power.
Bill of rights
Everyone has the right to do whatever they like that does not directly harm other people.
And then you argue about what laws this leads to, when you should override individual rights for the "common good" (rarely), what harm is, how the judiciary should work, etc...
It is actually common for thief's to get your pin by simply watching you key it in (over your shoulder). Then they take your reciept that you failed to take with you, go home and make their own card. This process is batched for greater efficency.
Make sure no one watches you key in your pin.
Always take your reciept.
We don't all know that seti is a waste of money. In fact, a few million people have donated their spare computer time because they think it would be important to discover alien life.
Short term thinking will be the death of the species.
You seem to be confused about what a scientist is.
If we found PROOF of aliens, all scientists would believe it. Now, getting an apparently intelligent radio signal may not be enough proof, but if we do get some good proof, of course, scientists will believe it. That's what it means to be a scientist - you look at the facts and not just your beliefs.
Moving the Earth from the centre of the universe to a minor speck around a minor star has actually had an affect on certain mainstream religions, societies attitude towards science, and other 'minor' changes. I'm sure proving that there are aliens will have a similar affect.
The idea that everything that doesn't make a profit is a waste of money will, I'm sure, be the United States downfall.
The plan is to use cloning and other gentic engineering techniques to create animals that have human organs growing in them that can be harvested for transplants into humans. This seems quite a bit less offensive than trying to grow humans minus brains for transplants.
Another goal is to create plants and animals that produce, drugs, enzymes, and other useful goodies.
So, no chimeras are planned - at least out int he open.
Close.
D&D was originally rules scattered through some war game magazines, then there was the D&D boxed set, which covered the rules up to third level.
AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) was next, rules up to level 11 in great detail with general rules that covered up to level 24 or so. AD&D consolidated the rules from D&D plus many articles in gaming magazines (Dragon mainly). AD&D second edition was an attempt to make the rules more 'sensible', and at the same time bowdlerise the game somewhat (this was at the height of the "moral majority's" power in the freedom loving USA). Most people consider AD&D second edition to be very lame. At this time TSR also released, Oriental Adventures (good add on), and SpellJammer (magic space faring ships) as well as a slew of other add on books all for AD&D (first and second edition).
Just recently Wizards of the Coast (TSR is gone, due to real bad book sales one xmas goes one rumour) released "Dungeons and Dragons" - no mention of a third edition anywhere on the cover or inside, and its quite a different system from AD&D. Most people do call these current rules the "third edition". The new rules are more consistent, and just a little more intuitive. Being thoroughly 'old school' I still prefer to use the old AD&D rules, but my kids like the new books.
Just in case some of you haven't figured out the link between the two things, I have had sex.
so in brief:
Dungeons and Dragons - boxed set
AD&D - same rules, extended and all in one set of books.
AD&D 2nd edition - sucky update
D&D (un-officially the third edition) - good reworking of the game in three books.
Slashdot Mirror
The war on drugs is a misguided attempt to force a very narrow moral viewpoint on millions of people. Just as prohibition in the 20's failed to stop anyone from drinking, the war on drugs has not stopped a single person from doing the drug of their choice. The war on drugs has created an extremely lucrative (and tax free) global business. The war on drugs has made crimminals of millions of people who, mainly, are harming only themselves. The war on drugs has created more violent crime than any other human activity of the last century. When's the last time there was a bloody shoot out over the beer trade?
The war on drugs cannot be won. The war on drugs CAUSES violent crime. The war on drugs gives a sure source of income to any illegal endevour. The war on drugs has jailed millions of people who's only crime is to not use a state sanctioned drug. The war on drugs should end.
The war on terrorism is a completely different story. While the civil rights abuses of the USA government are alarming, the fact remains that unless stopped (killed) terrorists WILL KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE ON PURPOSE. Terrorists are evil, plain and simple. Terrorists should be hunted down and eradicated. And I am glad that the Americans have taken on the job of wiping out terrorists. It would be nice if the american's would pause for a moment to consider why they are the most hated nation on the planet, but this is secondary compared to the importance of wiping out terrorist vermin.
Good info on the American 'Noble Experiment'
PROHIBITION: A LESSON IN THE FUTILITY (AND DANGER) OF PROHIBITING
Sure you are - and I'm the Queen of Sheba.
If you think telling people what tools to use is a BAD idea at a LARGE company then you have never had anything to do with supporting the IT infrastructure at a large company. There are security issues, licensing issues, support issues, etc... Sure, you let a senior engineer install his toys (finite element analysis, that whiz bang risk analysis package), but you don't let him install whatever email client he wants. Any software that attempts to commuicate through the company fire wall is STANDARD. If you don't want to follow the rules you can go sulk and pretend your are superior at someone elses expense.
Personally, I think this email list guy is being childish going to this effort to exlcude certain email clients, but its his list and he can do what he wants on it. It isn't my business and I wouldn't dream of telling himn how to run his email list.
Old dos games almost always installed their own int9 ISR for the keyboard as the default bios int9 isr does not handle multiple simultaneous key presses. win9x games use direct input, generally. Before direct X they were stuck with one of the win32 async keyboard functions (you would never use the standard message pump in a game!).
PC key boards send scan codes, one for the press, a second for the release (same code with high bit set). The second key pad sends the same codes as the main keypad, but preceded by a 0xe0 (I think, haven't dealt with the keyboard hardware for a while). The pause key sends multiple codes. If you ever write an ISR for the keyboard, always use the DOWN presses, not the releases as many typists actually release they keys in a different order from the presses.
TV gets more annoying each year. More commercials, cut scenes, those little floating logos (I find them very distracting), split squished screens, digitally inserted placements, etc...
Really, cancel your cable. You won't miss it a bit after a couple of weeks.
But you haven't escaped from the gravity well. The second you turn off your engine the Earth's gravity WILL pull you back UNLESS you have moved far enough away that the escape velocity is under 10 mi/hr. I haven't done the math, but you would have to be a VERY far distance away, and then the Sun etc... would come into play also.
That is an odd thing to complain about when there are so many other glaring human rights problems that are much more serious in china.
Cancel your cable! Enjoy life more!
As for copy protecting TV, it'll just create a market for 'mod' chips for TV's.
MS is desperately trying to force people to upgrade their OS's (subscriptions, dropping support for win9x, etc...) because for most business users there is no technical reason to upgrade. Remember, most MS customer are businesses, not home users. Only gamers need to upgrade their hardware more than once every three or four years, and even then, upgrading the video card will make an older machine good for another year or two. CAD, and some engineering and scientific applications are the only business apps I can think of off hand that benefit from something faster than a P800.
My old PII 350 runs everything I need for business, under win98, just fine. The only reason I am even considering upgrading is to play the newer games.
Are they actually deleted, or "marked as deleted" and simply not displayed?
Many of the technical groups are still usefull, and I've had good results getting directX, and Netware NDS questions answered. Google provides a great service, but for new technology the active usenet is still useful.
I do. I want to be immortal, and writing is the best way. Seeing as my career as a novelist hasn't worked out this will have to do.
I've always used my real name in posts, but I'm always polite (Canadian, hey). The first post I made that I can find under google was in 1994 in an msdos group. I had a dial-up account (a rocking 2400 Baud a think) with a small ISP my friend ran. All my blather in the anarchy groups is also there. Very cool to take a peek at what I was doing eight years ago.
Anyone else actually remeber watching the 'holiday specual' on TV?
I was pretty young, but I do remeber thinking that the cartoon (great caricature of han solo with 1000 watt smile) was the only good part.
Freedom of speech was set up so that people who's views didn't coincide with the government's view, or other powerful groups (church) view could speak their mind without risking jail time or worse.
Vader was the best pilot in the Galaxy and the pod race 'foreshadows' this talent.
Just in case you haven't noticed, Stars Wars is pretty much a kids series of films - not Shakespear.
How do you know thats why Lucas let in as extras? Maybe he justed wanted to them die on screen too.
If you are too stupid to refuel your car without lighting yourself on fire you deserve a Darwin, not a new law. I do not want my government to try to make the world safe for idiots.
Many smokers (not the world's smartest people) have managed to re-fill lighters without killing themselves. I'm sure either replacing a fuel-cartridge, or re-filling it your self is within the skills possessed by most people.
Driving your car to the corner store is much more dangerous than refilling a small canister with fuel. I don't hear anyone wanting to pass laws against cars.
Ballard isn't the only player in the fuel cell game, but they have done a great job of promoting themselves, and do have good tech.
We were using a small, fast, inexpesive, ibm mainframe terminal emulator. But the guy who programmed it (yes the one guy) stopped supporting it. So we switched over to "Personal Client" big bucks, but a big company behind it that can be called for support.
Ever since this, the free software we can get away with using is small utilities - nothing on the users desktop, or that might directly affect a user.
So, its not FUD. It is the very real mindset of many managers.
The purpose of human life, and all other life, is to procreate. The fact that we can think up more noble purposes in an effort to get people to behave the way we want is interesting, but ultimately not important to "life".
You should never ask a government to PROMOTE or "guarantee" anything. As soon as a government is allowed to promote anything all of a sudden every vile thing it does is in support of whatever it is supposed to be promoting. For example, I'm going to trample all over adults rights "for the children".
The governments job is to prevent "evil". The government under no circumstances should be trying to promote "good".
All rights are artificial constructs. Rights are just laws thought up by people to clarify their thinking about other laws they are considering.
The only reason any government is required is that not all people are good. There are in fact enough bad people that it makes economic sense (not moral sense) to centralize the enforcement of laws.
As we do live in the real world, what should a government's constitution look like? A constitution is a framework controlling, reining in, all governments tendencies to continually take up more power.
Bill of rights
Everyone has the right to do whatever they like that does not directly harm other people.
And then you argue about what laws this leads to, when you should override individual rights for the "common good" (rarely), what harm is, how the judiciary should work, etc...
Make sure no one watches you key in your pin.
Always take your reciept.
Short term thinking will be the death of the species.
If we found PROOF of aliens, all scientists would believe it. Now, getting an apparently intelligent radio signal may not be enough proof, but if we do get some good proof, of course, scientists will believe it. That's what it means to be a scientist - you look at the facts and not just your beliefs.
Moving the Earth from the centre of the universe to a minor speck around a minor star has actually had an affect on certain mainstream religions, societies attitude towards science, and other 'minor' changes. I'm sure proving that there are aliens will have a similar affect.
The idea that everything that doesn't make a profit is a waste of money will, I'm sure, be the United States downfall.
Define civilized. Personly, I'd exclude most Americans.
Another goal is to create plants and animals that produce, drugs, enzymes, and other useful goodies.
So, no chimeras are planned - at least out int he open.
D&D was originally rules scattered through some war game magazines, then there was the D&D boxed set, which covered the rules up to third level.
AD&D (Advanced Dungeons and Dragons) was next, rules up to level 11 in great detail with general rules that covered up to level 24 or so. AD&D consolidated the rules from D&D plus many articles in gaming magazines (Dragon mainly). AD&D second edition was an attempt to make the rules more 'sensible', and at the same time bowdlerise the game somewhat (this was at the height of the "moral majority's" power in the freedom loving USA). Most people consider AD&D second edition to be very lame. At this time TSR also released, Oriental Adventures (good add on), and SpellJammer (magic space faring ships) as well as a slew of other add on books all for AD&D (first and second edition).
Just recently Wizards of the Coast (TSR is gone, due to real bad book sales one xmas goes one rumour) released "Dungeons and Dragons" - no mention of a third edition anywhere on the cover or inside, and its quite a different system from AD&D. Most people do call these current rules the "third edition". The new rules are more consistent, and just a little more intuitive. Being thoroughly 'old school' I still prefer to use the old AD&D rules, but my kids like the new books.
Just in case some of you haven't figured out the link between the two things, I have had sex.
so in brief:
Dungeons and Dragons - boxed set
AD&D - same rules, extended and all in one set of books.
AD&D 2nd edition - sucky update
D&D (un-officially the third edition) - good reworking of the game in three books.