"If we're just talking about instant structures for specific needs, why not fiberglass?"
Personally, I'd say the itch factor (assuming it only gets on your skin and not, say, your eyes or inhaled). And having that miracle resin you mention on all the fibers can't make things all that much better.
"You can then spray it with an epoxy to make it watertight."
That kind of takes away from the all-in-one aspect of the quickcrete stuff. Also, you're talking about transporting noxious chemicals (or, at least, more noxious than lime).
"(by cutting holes in it with any kind of saw before you sprayed epoxy on it.)"
Cutting concrete doesn't require half the hazmat handing procedures that cutting fibreglass does, and (again) that's before you soak the stuff in the miracle resin.
"I demanded that he remove the SI software/magazine display from the counter."
Best Buy owned the magazine stand, the counter, the time of the person you were outright harassing, the building the exchange took place in, the merchandise you were holding in your hand until you handed over your money for it... in short, it's their private property! If you don't like it, go away!
I'm no fan of T&A magazines, if for no other reason than because it's a lame and overused marketing gimimck. But you ask someone to change what they're doing in their own store, you do not demand. And if they say "no," that's the end of the matter. You have no right to dictate the lives and decisions of other people, no matter what your religion may tell you.
"Divert your eyes. Divert your thoughts."
Do what you will with your eyes and thoughts. Leave mine alone.
"It was so easy I finished the game without dying."
So, did you do this while religiously following the hint books so you got all the heart containers and a full stock of bottles filled with grandma's soup? Because for me, who didn't look at the book until after beating it the first time*, that final swordfight with Gannondorf really smacked me around, much more than any of the end fights in OoT.
* OK, I looked in it once: I couldn't figure out I had to shoot light arrows from the hip (sans L-targeting) at the giant doll thing in order kill it.
"You rarely fought more than one enemy at a time; "
As if! I still have nightmares about those damned swarms of dink-dinks (or whatever those little fuckers are called). And they were the easy ones. Personally, I had to fight multiple darknuts at the same time so often that I discovered that they can be duped into hurting each other.
Come to think of it, that "enemies can hurt each other" mechanic got used a lot, and wouldn't be in the game (let alone noticable) if you didn't encounter multiple enemies at once.
"the first Zelda was more intense."
What do you mean by "intense," exactly? The game was good at the time, but without having your vision obscured by teary-eyed nostalgia, it's certainly not great by today's standard. If you're lucky, you might guess where the eighth labrynth by chance, but as for finding dungeons in the second quest, it was time to call Nintendo or get your hands on that first issue of Nintendo Power. Unless, of course, the thought of randomly bombing and burning everything for hours on end turns you on... And how are you supposed to know that the whistle opens up caves now?
Or maybe you're thinking of the action elements? Sure, the darknuts are difficult, but there's no intelligence in they're difficulty. Miyamoto's first attempt at putting fencing in a video game involved enemies that changed direction at random and could only be hurt in 3 out of 4 directions. There are reasons why he chose a side-view perspective in the sequel for the action elements.
If that's the kind of "intensity" you're looking for, go pick up a copy of Ikaruga, or maybe go back to FPS. These are supposed to be adventure games, and there's nothing adventurous in going up against a raw random number generator.
"They have been using the same puzzles since A Link to the Past."
Such as? After all, this is "accurate information" (and not, say, a statement of mere opinion), so you should be able to easily rattle off a list...
"Wow! When companies do this to companies (BSA), and individuals (RIAA/MPAA)."
The sheriff's sales he's suggesting happen after receiving a favorable judgment. What the BSA and the *AA folks are attempts to "gather evidence" (or whatever euphamism they want) to use in the trial, i. e. before a judgment is rendered.
"Is pre-ordering a game really that necessary anymore?"
It is... for the store. It gives them money they can quickly squirrel away and earn some interest off of before they have to send > 95% of it to their suppliers when the game actually comes in.
Ever wonder why you see a bunch of small stores selling used games, but new game sales are dominated by large corporations?
"it's not the only time this sort of thing has been done during a time of war."
War? What war? The US hasn't declared war on anybody since 1941.
"During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus entirely, essentially ignoring the right of jury trials and the Bill of Rights."
Perusing the ruling, it seems that a lot of it hinges on the fact that Congress had declared war; the accused was a belligerent because Congress declared him to be. I ask again: where's the war declaration?
"It is quite clear that members of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda are enemy belligerents in every sense of the word."
That's nice, but until I see a declaration of war by Congress, this is a law enforcement problem. War requires a list of casus belli, things to satisfy before pursuing a peace treaty (which itself needs to be ratified by the Senate). Instead, we have a situation where Congress has given the White House a series of blank checks to go out and do practically whatever they feel like "for the duration of the crisis." The USA PATRIOT Act is one of those blank checks, and I fail to see why we need to declare a new Caesar to get the executive to fulfill its law-enforcement obligations.
(Sure, there's a sunset clause in the USA PATRIOT Act. There's a sunset on copyrights, too.)
" If someone sends me a snail mail letter, the quality tends to be much higher than e-mail. "
Are we talking about all mail, or just the first class mail you get that's paid for by stamps? PRST STD, especially when paid for by permit imprint, is only a moderate improvement over spam.
Not only does it bypass local pledge drives, but the two flavors of NPR they carry that I listen to are all talk; classical music is reserved for the classical music streams.
"Also I nowhere found placing a long-distance call that complicated than in the US."
Were you making a call within the same state? Different state regulatory commissions can make interstate telephone calls about as complicated as I'd imagine international EU calls are.
"Burst's lawyers then start subpoening the backup site employees, and get testimony from the woman in charge of email backups. Her name is Candy Stark. Candy's testimony was "Oh yeah, of course we've got a master spreadsheet that matches employees to servers. How else could we search the backups? Here it is right here.""
I suspect that soon we'll be talking about former MSFT employee Candy Stark.
"No, what's holding them back is that they lack a sense of adventure, a yearning for the unknown, a thirst for knowledge. In short: they're not geeks."
If that's truly what geeks are looking for, why don't they ever leave the house?
Re:I *am* the target market for this.
on
Nero Burning for Linux
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Ahh, that's it, you'll take your money elsewhere because you are used to paying out the nose for something you can't even own."
The money will at least influence feature sets, while it seems more than a few OSS projects will implement features only when the developers feel like it.
"If I wasn't so tired (and drunk) I'd take the time to write you a script that could handle alot of the most common things needed for burning several types of CD's."
"Can" and "will" are two very different things. If nobody who is able is actually willing to do something better, what right do you have to complain when potential users go elsewhere?
"Maybe I'll work on that tomorrow"
Ah, the battle cry of the OSS movement!
"I use Linux for the same reason I bought a truck that didn't come with an EULA saying I can't open the hood."
I bought Windows for the same reason I bought a car that doesn't require me to be a certified mechanic to operate it. Just because I can open the hood of my car and maybe change the oil doesn't mean I know how to do (let alone enjoy doing) complete engine rebuilds.
"I stuck with the tools I need to get my job done and done well."
I don't want my computer to be my "job." I want it to just freakin' work (or at least a reasonable facsimile) without having to know anything about assembly language. It's similar to why I'm a console gamer.
"First of all, how many distro's do you think this will support (or be supported by)?"
Another aspect that turns me off Linux is the whole "31 flavors" aspect of it. Even if hell freezes over and I find an app to do what I want it to do (and it's more than just some website saying that the beta will be released "any day now"), I have to continue jumping through hoops to try to make it work with my flavor of choice.
"It wasn't done by a bunch of mild mannered and sheepish fucktards who did what they were told, that's for sure."
At least the folks who do what they are told actually do something.
"If you don't like my opinion, do what everyone else does, censor it by modding it down."
A pro-Linux rant on Slashdot? Modded down? You're new around here, aren't you?
The last time I tried installing Linux, the boot disc couldn't find the ATA controller card my hard drives were attached to, giving it nothing to install onto. I've bent over backwards to get XP running reasonably well on my machine, I have no desire to go even further for an operating system that everybody says is supposed to change all that. I'd rather spend my time/fustration on getting an SNES emulator to run on my PS2.
"You'll have to wait 20 years to really appreciate the original trilogy."
Having been thoroughly spoiled on episodes 1 and 2, I now know what they meant.
You had to see the Star Wars universe it was were before the darkness to see how major the changes were:
You had to the the bureaucratically hobbled, glacially slow-to-act LucasFilms to understand why it was even possible for Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones to be born.
You had to see the "Whee! This is profit!" Lucas to truly see how far the fall was from "I don't 'fear' the big movie houses... I embrace them" George.
Episodes 4, 5 and 6 really cannot stand alone. They are the prologue both to itself and this new trilogy. The events in them seem minor and unimportant... except that you know where things like "Directed by George Lucas" will lead to. The entire theater collectiely draws a breath at that point because they thought they knew what was once and could have been. And that was just knowing what happened 20 years ago. Now that we are about to see all of it (fans crying out in fustration "Star Wars used to be good!" from the internet sticks out in one's head), we can go back to episode 6 and see the shadows forming.
Yes, Jar-Jar is annoying. What, the universe of media hype and mass-marketing doesn't have annoying mascots? Besides, that's the irony: Jar-Jar and the Ewoks helped George Lucas to power. Yes, Lucas has, through interviews, come across as a whiney primadona. That's part of his story and the reason why he could fall to the dark side--large amounts of cash plays on hsi desire to be more famous and his fear of losing/failing his fans.
If Lucas were the uber-cool, swave, humble-yet-good writer/director people seem to want, what could marketing contracts offer him to tempt him to selling out? Moreover, why would he accept? The great irony of the Star Wars story is that Lucas falls to evil because of money. Because he wants the power so he can keep the fame (and income) he loves with him, and then once he's lost the adoration of his fanbase forever, he has fully accepted his role as the destroyer of dreams, taking the only income and "fame" he can, in bitterness over not being able to write as well as he used to.
And this is why there will be no "Luke Skywalker" to redeem Lucas. George doesn't want to save anybody or entertain, he just wants fame and fortune and will gladly whore himself out for another buck from another cereal box toy or cheesy poof promotional contest. He will not be saved by the Force (and especially not by "midichlorians"), because he has already made his choice, a choice he will keep making again and again every time he has the urge to put out a new "movie," forever.
(Yes, I was bored. Yes, I had too much time on my hands. Yes, I have no life.)
"If you don't do business with them they won't stay in business."
You apparently missed the part where it's been claimed that the "music" industry makes a profit from these lawsuits. They don't get their money from customers, they get them from defendants.
" It doesn't matter if they are just using the lawsuits as a revenue stream."
Yes, it does. Justice is about compensation, not profit. Profit is where capitalism comes in. It is not the role of the government to ensure anybody a profit.
"Copyright infringement is against the law,"
Perhaps, but it's civil law. It's not a misdemeanor and it's certainly not a felony.
"and I have absolutely _no_ sympathy for people who think that because it's just a "little crime" there should be just a "little penalty"."
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
--Eighth Article of Amendment, United States Constitution
Slashdot Mirror
"If we're just talking about instant structures for specific needs, why not fiberglass?"
Personally, I'd say the itch factor (assuming it only gets on your skin and not, say, your eyes or inhaled). And having that miracle resin you mention on all the fibers can't make things all that much better.
"You can then spray it with an epoxy to make it watertight."
That kind of takes away from the all-in-one aspect of the quickcrete stuff. Also, you're talking about transporting noxious chemicals (or, at least, more noxious than lime).
"(by cutting holes in it with any kind of saw before you sprayed epoxy on it.)"
Cutting concrete doesn't require half the hazmat handing procedures that cutting fibreglass does, and (again) that's before you soak the stuff in the miracle resin.
I'd wager that the inflatable houses taste better while the MRE's can be used to make sturdier shelter.
Don't forget your other, unsaid assertion:
14 year old using his right hand = very bad
Most of your little nightmare scenario might not have happened if you didn't try to enforce that one.
"coming from America where you have Hershey's or the highway,"
I was pretty damned happy with Wockenfuss, thankyouverymuch.
"I demanded that he remove the SI software/magazine display from the counter."
Best Buy owned the magazine stand, the counter, the time of the person you were outright harassing, the building the exchange took place in, the merchandise you were holding in your hand until you handed over your money for it... in short, it's their private property! If you don't like it, go away!
I'm no fan of T&A magazines, if for no other reason than because it's a lame and overused marketing gimimck. But you ask someone to change what they're doing in their own store, you do not demand. And if they say "no," that's the end of the matter. You have no right to dictate the lives and decisions of other people, no matter what your religion may tell you.
"Divert your eyes. Divert your thoughts."
Do what you will with your eyes and thoughts. Leave mine alone.
"Porn can be addictive and can ruin your life."
What can't?
" Oh come on, TOS only used the Nazi gimmick... twice."
Alright, so what's the Nazis-per-season ratio for TOS, and how does that compare to Voyager?
And using imperial Romans was kinda pushing it as well...
"It was so easy I finished the game without dying."
So, did you do this while religiously following the hint books so you got all the heart containers and a full stock of bottles filled with grandma's soup? Because for me, who didn't look at the book until after beating it the first time*, that final swordfight with Gannondorf really smacked me around, much more than any of the end fights in OoT.
* OK, I looked in it once: I couldn't figure out I had to shoot light arrows from the hip (sans L-targeting) at the giant doll thing in order kill it.
"You rarely fought more than one enemy at a time; "
As if! I still have nightmares about those damned swarms of dink-dinks (or whatever those little fuckers are called). And they were the easy ones. Personally, I had to fight multiple darknuts at the same time so often that I discovered that they can be duped into hurting each other.
Come to think of it, that "enemies can hurt each other" mechanic got used a lot, and wouldn't be in the game (let alone noticable) if you didn't encounter multiple enemies at once.
"the first Zelda was more intense."
What do you mean by "intense," exactly? The game was good at the time, but without having your vision obscured by teary-eyed nostalgia, it's certainly not great by today's standard. If you're lucky, you might guess where the eighth labrynth by chance, but as for finding dungeons in the second quest, it was time to call Nintendo or get your hands on that first issue of Nintendo Power. Unless, of course, the thought of randomly bombing and burning everything for hours on end turns you on... And how are you supposed to know that the whistle opens up caves now?
Or maybe you're thinking of the action elements? Sure, the darknuts are difficult, but there's no intelligence in they're difficulty. Miyamoto's first attempt at putting fencing in a video game involved enemies that changed direction at random and could only be hurt in 3 out of 4 directions. There are reasons why he chose a side-view perspective in the sequel for the action elements.
If that's the kind of "intensity" you're looking for, go pick up a copy of Ikaruga, or maybe go back to FPS. These are supposed to be adventure games, and there's nothing adventurous in going up against a raw random number generator.
"They have been using the same puzzles since A Link to the Past."
Such as? After all, this is "accurate information" (and not, say, a statement of mere opinion), so you should be able to easily rattle off a list...
"Wow! When companies do this to companies (BSA), and individuals (RIAA/MPAA)."
The sheriff's sales he's suggesting happen after receiving a favorable judgment. What the BSA and the *AA folks are attempts to "gather evidence" (or whatever euphamism they want) to use in the trial, i. e. before a judgment is rendered.
"Is pre-ordering a game really that necessary anymore?"
It is... for the store. It gives them money they can quickly squirrel away and earn some interest off of before they have to send > 95% of it to their suppliers when the game actually comes in.
Ever wonder why you see a bunch of small stores selling used games, but new game sales are dominated by large corporations?
"it's not the only time this sort of thing has been done during a time of war."
War? What war? The US hasn't declared war on anybody since 1941.
"During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus entirely, essentially ignoring the right of jury trials and the Bill of Rights."
And he ignored the federal courts in the process.
"In the landmark case Ex parte Quirin"
Perusing the ruling, it seems that a lot of it hinges on the fact that Congress had declared war; the accused was a belligerent because Congress declared him to be. I ask again: where's the war declaration?
"It is quite clear that members of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda are enemy belligerents in every sense of the word."
That's nice, but until I see a declaration of war by Congress, this is a law enforcement problem. War requires a list of casus belli, things to satisfy before pursuing a peace treaty (which itself needs to be ratified by the Senate). Instead, we have a situation where Congress has given the White House a series of blank checks to go out and do practically whatever they feel like "for the duration of the crisis." The USA PATRIOT Act is one of those blank checks, and I fail to see why we need to declare a new Caesar to get the executive to fulfill its law-enforcement obligations.
(Sure, there's a sunset clause in the USA PATRIOT Act. There's a sunset on copyrights, too.)
Yeah, but nobody made a movie out of 2063.
" If someone sends me a snail mail letter, the quality tends to be much higher than e-mail. "
Are we talking about all mail, or just the first class mail you get that's paid for by stamps? PRST STD, especially when paid for by permit imprint, is only a moderate improvement over spam.
My solution.
Not only does it bypass local pledge drives, but the two flavors of NPR they carry that I listen to are all talk; classical music is reserved for the classical music streams.
"Also I nowhere found placing a long-distance call that complicated than in the US."
Were you making a call within the same state? Different state regulatory commissions can make interstate telephone calls about as complicated as I'd imagine international EU calls are.
... my head hurts...
T3h F+C ha$ r0x0rd th1$ b0x0rd! PWN3D! Ph3ar 0ur 1337 f3d3ra1 sk!llz!
"If Blizzard wanted, it would be an absolute doddle for them to set up a "buy some gold" button on each player's subscription page."
It would be even nicer if they did this in lieu of monthly subscription rates.
"Burst's lawyers then start subpoening the backup site employees, and get testimony from the woman in charge of email backups. Her name is Candy Stark. Candy's testimony was "Oh yeah, of course we've got a master spreadsheet that matches employees to servers. How else could we search the backups? Here it is right here.""
I suspect that soon we'll be talking about former MSFT employee Candy Stark.
"No, what's holding them back is that they lack a sense of adventure, a yearning for the unknown, a thirst for knowledge. In short: they're not geeks."
If that's truly what geeks are looking for, why don't they ever leave the house?
"Ahh, that's it, you'll take your money elsewhere because you are used to paying out the nose for something you can't even own."
The money will at least influence feature sets, while it seems more than a few OSS projects will implement features only when the developers feel like it.
"If I wasn't so tired (and drunk) I'd take the time to write you a script that could handle alot of the most common things needed for burning several types of CD's."
"Can" and "will" are two very different things. If nobody who is able is actually willing to do something better, what right do you have to complain when potential users go elsewhere?
"Maybe I'll work on that tomorrow"
Ah, the battle cry of the OSS movement!
"I use Linux for the same reason I bought a truck that didn't come with an EULA saying I can't open the hood."
I bought Windows for the same reason I bought a car that doesn't require me to be a certified mechanic to operate it. Just because I can open the hood of my car and maybe change the oil doesn't mean I know how to do (let alone enjoy doing) complete engine rebuilds.
"I stuck with the tools I need to get my job done and done well."
I don't want my computer to be my "job." I want it to just freakin' work (or at least a reasonable facsimile) without having to know anything about assembly language. It's similar to why I'm a console gamer.
"First of all, how many distro's do you think this will support (or be supported by)?"
Another aspect that turns me off Linux is the whole "31 flavors" aspect of it. Even if hell freezes over and I find an app to do what I want it to do (and it's more than just some website saying that the beta will be released "any day now"), I have to continue jumping through hoops to try to make it work with my flavor of choice.
"It wasn't done by a bunch of mild mannered and sheepish fucktards who did what they were told, that's for sure."
At least the folks who do what they are told actually do something.
"If you don't like my opinion, do what everyone else does, censor it by modding it down."
A pro-Linux rant on Slashdot? Modded down? You're new around here, aren't you?
The last time I tried installing Linux, the boot disc couldn't find the ATA controller card my hard drives were attached to, giving it nothing to install onto. I've bent over backwards to get XP running reasonably well on my machine, I have no desire to go even further for an operating system that everybody says is supposed to change all that. I'd rather spend my time/fustration on getting an SNES emulator to run on my PS2.
So an unelected body will serve as the protector of people's rights? I want a senate, too!
"You'll have to wait 20 years to really appreciate the original trilogy."
Having been thoroughly spoiled on episodes 1 and 2, I now know what they meant.
You had to see the Star Wars universe it was were before the darkness to see how major the changes were:
You had to the the bureaucratically hobbled, glacially slow-to-act LucasFilms to understand why it was even possible for Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones to be born.
You had to see the "Whee! This is profit!" Lucas to truly see how far the fall was from "I don't 'fear' the big movie houses... I embrace them" George.
Episodes 4, 5 and 6 really cannot stand alone. They are the prologue both to itself and this new trilogy. The events in them seem minor and unimportant... except that you know where things like "Directed by George Lucas" will lead to. The entire theater collectiely draws a breath at that point because they thought they knew what was once and could have been. And that was just knowing what happened 20 years ago. Now that we are about to see all of it (fans crying out in fustration "Star Wars used to be good!" from the internet sticks out in one's head), we can go back to episode 6 and see the shadows forming.
Yes, Jar-Jar is annoying. What, the universe of media hype and mass-marketing doesn't have annoying mascots? Besides, that's the irony: Jar-Jar and the Ewoks helped George Lucas to power. Yes, Lucas has, through interviews, come across as a whiney primadona. That's part of his story and the reason why he could fall to the dark side--large amounts of cash plays on hsi desire to be more famous and his fear of losing/failing his fans.
If Lucas were the uber-cool, swave, humble-yet-good writer/director people seem to want, what could marketing contracts offer him to tempt him to selling out? Moreover, why would he accept? The great irony of the Star Wars story is that Lucas falls to evil because of money. Because he wants the power so he can keep the fame (and income) he loves with him, and then once he's lost the adoration of his fanbase forever, he has fully accepted his role as the destroyer of dreams, taking the only income and "fame" he can, in bitterness over not being able to write as well as he used to.
And this is why there will be no "Luke Skywalker" to redeem Lucas. George doesn't want to save anybody or entertain, he just wants fame and fortune and will gladly whore himself out for another buck from another cereal box toy or cheesy poof promotional contest. He will not be saved by the Force (and especially not by "midichlorians"), because he has already made his choice, a choice he will keep making again and again every time he has the urge to put out a new "movie," forever.
(Yes, I was bored. Yes, I had too much time on my hands. Yes, I have no life.)
"If you don't do business with them they won't stay in business."
You apparently missed the part where it's been claimed that the "music" industry makes a profit from these lawsuits. They don't get their money from customers, they get them from defendants.
Yes, it does. Justice is about compensation, not profit. Profit is where capitalism comes in. It is not the role of the government to ensure anybody a profit.
"Copyright infringement is against the law,"
Perhaps, but it's civil law. It's not a misdemeanor and it's certainly not a felony.
"and I have absolutely _no_ sympathy for people who think that because it's just a "little crime" there should be just a "little penalty"." --Eighth Article of Amendment, United States Constitution
Let me get this straight: You're saying the United Nations would be an OK place if it weren't for all the nations
I'm sorry, that's like trying to separate, say, BMI and the RIAA.