No, it's not. The legal costs of executing someone (which are to attempt to make sure we don't execute innocent people, since it's kinda irreversible---and we still execute innocent people) exceed the costs of imprisoning them for life.
Come right out and argue from your own bloodthirsty desire for revenge. Don't pretend you're doing this out of fiscal responsibility.
However, these able-bodied societal leeches that suck down money from those of us that are middle class can rot AFAIC. Lock them up and throw away the key.
You do know how expensive it is to imprison people, right? Especially since we have to make room for a hojillion non-violent weed smokers, and thus build new prisons?
It's cheaper to educate and train someone than it is to imprison them. But both cost money, both are social spending. It's just that the latter option doesn't even pretend to have a positive effect; it just tried to prevent future harm.
Adults aren't really involved in creating the child porn now.
So, so true. Also, insightful. Child porn laws are supposed to protect kids by creating penalties for those who abuse them, or would abuse them, or think about abusing them, or something like that. I'm not sure. But things have changed since the seventies. Image and video replication is infinitely easier (digital); production is trivial---fifteen-dollar webcam at Wal-Mart instead of a basement photo lab.
These 'wonderland' creeps that they found last year (was it last year?) that were involved with white slavery and such, that's what these laws are meant to prosecute. Not some guy searching for 'lolita' on eMule.
There needs to be some division, some distinction, between porn created by evil, abusive adults, and porn created by bored teenagers under no compulsion by anyone. Because there really, really is a difference. But how do you put it into law?
And also, in Australia, the age of Porn is sixteen, not eighteen as it is here in the US. Striking, that data which is perfectly legal, no cause for concern, in Australia, will cause one to be sent to the Being Raped to Death Big House here in America. We're both supposedly civilized nations here. Sheesh. If this isn't a moral absolute (like, say, killing someone---that's pretty much a moral absolute), it's kinda scary that we have such harsh penalties. Like drugs. Maybe weed will be legal in ten years. Nice consolation prize for someone who spent five of those years in jail on some stupid possession charge.
Fucking hell, it's not like anyone's vote is going to fucking matter. Your vote counts for precisely dick unless you live in a swing state. Also, your vote counts for precisely dick if you live in a county that uses those fucking Diebold machines, which are still in use, because apparently it's too hard for (a) reporters and (b) the public to understand the concept of 'doesn't fucking work'.
Geek: Holy shit! These things don't work! See? [proof] Reporter: You smell. I distrust you. Diebold Weasel: Our machines are full of Christmassy joy. Reporter: Your hair is silver, and wavy. I wish to fellate you.
Seriously, kids. We're on the eve of the most massive, most egregious voting fraud in the history of our nation. And it's not news. Fucking great, eh?
It's like those fucking 'intelligence' exams that went
1. Read all the instructions. 2. Put your name on the paper in indestructible Sharpie.... 65. Don't do anything. Ignore everything else on this page. If you read all the instructions, you wouldn't have written anything. Else, you fail it!
Except it's... 64. Watch the debates, and form an opinion of who has the better hair. 65. Oh, right. Your vote doesn't count. See you next time! Thanks for legitimizing a manifestly corrupt and broken election system!
The old methods of manipulating the electorate via subtle and not-so-subtle propaganda are do dated. Best to just pick the winner and not mess around with all this voting shit. This election is too important to be left to the voters!
The 'th' prints at a different height than it displays on the screen. Go ahead and try it. The printed copy matches up. Apparently Word, in this respect, isn't precisely WYSIWYG.
I can't believe folks are defending this. Sure, it's probably damaging to the good guys. The bad guys'll have a field day gloating. But, kids, wishing doesn't make it so.
I'm just amazed that a forgery of this type would be so, so incompetently done. The least they could have done would be to, say, look at the already-released documents and make new ones to match them. This has just gotta be embarassing. And CBS calls themselves a news organization? Pfeh!
Folks, remember how far along thirteen episodes is. In Babylon 5, episode 13, we had *just* met Mr. Morden in that ep. The Shadows hadn't been mentioned yet. We didn't know what happened to Babylon 4. We didn't even know why the Earth-Minbari war ended. Earth politics were a distant and unimportant murmur.
And I'm too lazy to do this for TNG (which, I suppose, it doesn't work for, since the continuing plot is tenuous) or Farscape (which I haven't seen).
Hmm. What has Bujold done? When I think of new and thoughtful with regards to sex, I suppose I think of Tiptree (new? dunno; dark? most certainly) and Heinlein (new? probably not; lots and lots of it? yep). Also the Tines in Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep"---because they're pack-minds communicating via short-range ultrasonics, they don't come into physical contact with each other unless they're fighting or breeding. So when one of them cuddles up to a human, he thinks of it as 'like fucking a corpse' (I may be paraphrasing.)
I'd be interested to see that paper. Did you actually have something like that, or are you just ranting? One would think that if your submission were rejected, you'd at least post it in here.
--grendel drago
Jeez, when will these people learn?
on
Database File System
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
For example, WinFS, advertised as a way to make searching work by making the file system be a relational database, ignores the fact that the real way to make searching work is by making searching work. Don't make me type metadata for all my files that I can search using a query language. Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were boring in 1973.
I've read this three times, and it gets more confusing with each one. Perhaps you're using a weird definition of 'trivial'---from what I can tell, you're saying that it's easy to just run any particular program to see if it halts or not.
So...
1. Run Program on Input. 2. Wait an infinite amount of time. 3. If Program is still running, return DOESNT_HALT. Else, return HALT.
"Wait an infinite amount of time", to me, is a nontrivial step. Were you seriously suggesting otherwise?
Well, then. This is the end of MNG, methinks. The only leverage it had was being The Only Real Open Alternative To Animated GIF, and now that's gone. The good is the enemy of the best, and all. Now that a Good Enough solution has come along, the pie-in-the-sky dreams of the MNG team will be cast to the winds.
Then again, as someone else mentioned, perhaps MNG will become a much-used standard in animation postproduction. Or something.
I just don't see it becoming a web standard now that there's something smaller and better to use.
I signed up for a Stop and Shop card a week or so ago, because they offer about a nickel off their gas, which is priced two cents higher than the cheapest guys. So... three cents on gas. But, of course, the bored kid behind the desk doesn't even look at the application before handing me a card.
Anyone else remember the first CD-based systems? "Sewer Shark" or whatever? Scads of choppy, blurry sub-VCD quality video, and not much gameplay. What a crock.
It was a turning point for console gaming. I still consider the SNES to be the pinnacle of the form.
What the fuck kind of appeasement? I keep hearing "Clinton appeased terror! Clinton appeased terror!", but I still don't know what any of you are talking about.
The Oklahoma City bombing? Arrests, convictions, one execution so far.
The Cole bombing? Arrests and convictions. (Don't know about executions.)
The first WTC bombing? Arrests and convictions (Also don't know about executions.)
I'm just sayin', I wouldn't like to be appeased by that administration.
Perhaps with Kerry, we'll stop invading random countries because Stupid Americans can't tell the difference between one country full of Brown People and another. Then again, perhaps not. We seem to love our wars.
A generation is defining itself through virtual combat, without the casualties or consequences of World War II and the Vietnam War.
Hey, Time! Or rather, Lev Whateveryournameis! If you'd take your mouth off Chuck Palahniuk's ("Our war is spiritual") worm-ridden wang for ten seconds, you'd see that we havea fucking war! And yes, people of gamer age are dying in it.
Sheesh. Damn lazy journalists.
--grendel drago
SF vs gen authors.
on
Feed
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If you have a talented author who is able to work with interpersonal issues, relationships and so on, they write "respectible" fiction. SF only get the stories written by no-talent hacks or the stories by good authors that *can't* be told as non-SF.
I disagree, but would like to include a brief and admittedly vague anecdote. Ursula K LeGuin, who became famous for her SF exploring sociological and anthropological themes---but could The Left Hand of Darkness have been told without genetically engineered androgynes?---and later tried to distance herself from her SF roots, to be more palatable to The Literary Establishment. She ended up writing a lot of bad work.
You say, That said, I'd be happy to read a SF novel which focused on interpersonal or other "non-SF" sources of conflict, where the future is just a scenery choice. There's plenty of work that does just that. It's not SF; it's a Western or a crime drama with the word 'boat' crossed out and replaced with 'transgalactic skipship' or some similar verbal frottage.
SF is about hwo technology changes us. Vinge's "Realtime" series for stasis fields, "The Left Hand of Darkness" for a lack of gender, "1984" for two-way television and "Brave New World" for a genetically engineered caste system. I say that no really great work of SF could be re-cast in what you call a non-SF locale.
SF isn't just scenery. A lot of it is crap, but that can be said for general fiction as well. It's been unfairly ghettoized, its authors shunned until after their deaths, then grave-robbed for buzzwords and plot points. (See: Philip K Dick, Paycheck; Isaac Asimov, I, Robot; Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers.)
And the shunning of SF continues into other media, TV and movies. With the exception of Trek, which has its own problems, and which (I'm told) has gone straight to hell lately, what SF is there on television? What was the last SF movie you saw? And I mean real SF. Look what's considered SF.
There's a tendency among the general readership to shun SF. I can't imagine why someone would have such an aversion to picking up "The Left Hand of Darkness" or "A Deepness in the Sky". Do you know what causes it?
While I am definitely not a Communist (nor is much of anyone else in the past 10 years, as you'd notice if you'd check out a news source besides Fox News Channel;-) )
China is. I think the most populous nation in the world counts. Also North Korea and Cuba.
Communism is not dead! It's just... resting... after a prolonged squawk, you see.
Slashdot Mirror
Execution is cheaper...
No, it's not. The legal costs of executing someone (which are to attempt to make sure we don't execute innocent people, since it's kinda irreversible---and we still execute innocent people) exceed the costs of imprisoning them for life.
Come right out and argue from your own bloodthirsty desire for revenge. Don't pretend you're doing this out of fiscal responsibility.
--grendel drago
However, these able-bodied societal leeches that suck down money from those of us that are middle class can rot AFAIC. Lock them up and throw away the key.
You do know how expensive it is to imprison people, right? Especially since we have to make room for a hojillion non-violent weed smokers, and thus build new prisons?
It's cheaper to educate and train someone than it is to imprison them. But both cost money, both are social spending. It's just that the latter option doesn't even pretend to have a positive effect; it just tried to prevent future harm.
--grendel drago
Adults aren't really involved in creating the child porn now.
So, so true. Also, insightful. Child porn laws are supposed to protect kids by creating penalties for those who abuse them, or would abuse them, or think about abusing them, or something like that. I'm not sure. But things have changed since the seventies. Image and video replication is infinitely easier (digital); production is trivial---fifteen-dollar webcam at Wal-Mart instead of a basement photo lab.
These 'wonderland' creeps that they found last year (was it last year?) that were involved with white slavery and such, that's what these laws are meant to prosecute. Not some guy searching for 'lolita' on eMule.
There needs to be some division, some distinction, between porn created by evil, abusive adults, and porn created by bored teenagers under no compulsion by anyone. Because there really, really is a difference. But how do you put it into law?
And also, in Australia, the age of Porn is sixteen, not eighteen as it is here in the US. Striking, that data which is perfectly legal, no cause for concern, in Australia, will cause one to be sent to the Being Raped to Death Big House here in America. We're both supposedly civilized nations here. Sheesh. If this isn't a moral absolute (like, say, killing someone---that's pretty much a moral absolute), it's kinda scary that we have such harsh penalties. Like drugs. Maybe weed will be legal in ten years. Nice consolation prize for someone who spent five of those years in jail on some stupid possession charge.
--grendel drago
Fucking hell, it's not like anyone's vote is going to fucking matter. Your vote counts for precisely dick unless you live in a swing state. Also, your vote counts for precisely dick if you live in a county that uses those fucking Diebold machines, which are still in use, because apparently it's too hard for (a) reporters and (b) the public to understand the concept of 'doesn't fucking work'.
...
...
Geek: Holy shit! These things don't work! See? [proof]
Reporter: You smell. I distrust you.
Diebold Weasel: Our machines are full of Christmassy joy.
Reporter: Your hair is silver, and wavy. I wish to fellate you.
Seriously, kids. We're on the eve of the most massive, most egregious voting fraud in the history of our nation. And it's not news. Fucking great, eh?
It's like those fucking 'intelligence' exams that went
1. Read all the instructions.
2. Put your name on the paper in indestructible Sharpie.
65. Don't do anything. Ignore everything else on this page. If you read all the instructions, you wouldn't have written anything. Else, you fail it!
Except it's
64. Watch the debates, and form an opinion of who has the better hair.
65. Oh, right. Your vote doesn't count. See you next time! Thanks for legitimizing a manifestly corrupt and broken election system!
The old methods of manipulating the electorate via subtle and not-so-subtle propaganda are do dated. Best to just pick the winner and not mess around with all this voting shit. This election is too important to be left to the voters!
--grendel drago
The 'th' prints at a different height than it displays on the screen. Go ahead and try it. The printed copy matches up. Apparently Word, in this respect, isn't precisely WYSIWYG.
I can't believe folks are defending this. Sure, it's probably damaging to the good guys. The bad guys'll have a field day gloating. But, kids, wishing doesn't make it so.
I'm just amazed that a forgery of this type would be so, so incompetently done. The least they could have done would be to, say, look at the already-released documents and make new ones to match them. This has just gotta be embarassing. And CBS calls themselves a news organization? Pfeh!
--grendel drago
Folks, remember how far along thirteen episodes is. In Babylon 5, episode 13, we had *just* met Mr. Morden in that ep. The Shadows hadn't been mentioned yet. We didn't know what happened to Babylon 4. We didn't even know why the Earth-Minbari war ended. Earth politics were a distant and unimportant murmur.
And I'm too lazy to do this for TNG (which, I suppose, it doesn't work for, since the continuing plot is tenuous) or Farscape (which I haven't seen).
--grendel drago
*blinks*
Never quite thought of it that way before. Who was McCoy's other half, then?
--grendel drago
Hmm. What has Bujold done? When I think of new and thoughtful with regards to sex, I suppose I think of Tiptree (new? dunno; dark? most certainly) and Heinlein (new? probably not; lots and lots of it? yep). Also the Tines in Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep"---because they're pack-minds communicating via short-range ultrasonics, they don't come into physical contact with each other unless they're fighting or breeding. So when one of them cuddles up to a human, he thinks of it as 'like fucking a corpse' (I may be paraphrasing.)
--grendel drago
I'd be interested to see that paper. Did you actually have something like that, or are you just ranting? One would think that if your submission were rejected, you'd at least post it in here.
--grendel drago
Joel on Software said it best:
For example, WinFS, advertised as a way to make searching work by making the file system be a relational database, ignores the fact that the real way to make searching work is by making searching work. Don't make me type metadata for all my files that I can search using a query language. Just do me a favor and search the damned hard drive, quickly, for the string I typed, using full-text indexes and other technologies that were boring in 1973.
I think I've discovered a new frontier of Karmawhoring. "+1 Porno"!
--grendel drago
I've read this three times, and it gets more confusing with each one. Perhaps you're using a weird definition of 'trivial'---from what I can tell, you're saying that it's easy to just run any particular program to see if it halts or not.
So...
1. Run Program on Input.
2. Wait an infinite amount of time.
3. If Program is still running, return DOESNT_HALT. Else, return HALT.
"Wait an infinite amount of time", to me, is a nontrivial step. Were you seriously suggesting otherwise?
--grendel drago
Link to Wikipedia directly, not FreeDictionary. FreeDictionary is an outdated and spammalicious copy of Wikipedia.
--grendel drago
Poor man. Here, have some amateur lesbian porn. (No joke. Stuff's impossible to find, but there it is.)
Clearly not work-safe, of course.
--grendel drago
One time, I was doing a crossword.
DI_K
12. Can be floppy or hard.
Couldn't make this sort of thing up if I tried.
--grendel drago
Well, then. This is the end of MNG, methinks. The only leverage it had was being The Only Real Open Alternative To Animated GIF, and now that's gone. The good is the enemy of the best, and all. Now that a Good Enough solution has come along, the pie-in-the-sky dreams of the MNG team will be cast to the winds.
Then again, as someone else mentioned, perhaps MNG will become a much-used standard in animation postproduction. Or something.
I just don't see it becoming a web standard now that there's something smaller and better to use.
--grendel drago
What's sng?
Okay, it's a simple question, so I googled it. sng is a minilanguage allowing editing of PNG data in texty form. Hence the above.
Seems kinda interesting, actually.
--grendel drago
Err. Google is pitting their not-inconsiderable technological DOOM COCK against efforts to "make your own solution". That's the whole point.
--grendel drago
You... must... be... kidding.
Well, at least we know what OOG THE OPEN SOURCE CAVEMAN uses.
--grendel drago
I signed up for a Stop and Shop card a week or so ago, because they offer about a nickel off their gas, which is priced two cents higher than the cheapest guys. So... three cents on gas. But, of course, the bored kid behind the desk doesn't even look at the application before handing me a card.
Say hello to "John Whorfin".
--grendel drago
Anyone else remember the first CD-based systems? "Sewer Shark" or whatever? Scads of choppy, blurry sub-VCD quality video, and not much gameplay. What a crock.
It was a turning point for console gaming. I still consider the SNES to be the pinnacle of the form.
--grendel drago
What the fuck kind of appeasement? I keep hearing "Clinton appeased terror! Clinton appeased terror!", but I still don't know what any of you are talking about.
The Oklahoma City bombing? Arrests, convictions, one execution so far.
The Cole bombing? Arrests and convictions. (Don't know about executions.)
The first WTC bombing? Arrests and convictions (Also don't know about executions.)
I'm just sayin', I wouldn't like to be appeased by that administration.
Perhaps with Kerry, we'll stop invading random countries because Stupid Americans can't tell the difference between one country full of Brown People and another. Then again, perhaps not. We seem to love our wars.
--grendel drago
A generation is defining itself through virtual combat, without the casualties or consequences of World War II and the Vietnam War.
Hey, Time! Or rather, Lev Whateveryournameis! If you'd take your mouth off Chuck Palahniuk's ("Our war is spiritual") worm-ridden wang for ten seconds, you'd see that we have a fucking war! And yes, people of gamer age are dying in it.
Sheesh. Damn lazy journalists.
--grendel drago
If you have a talented author who is able to work with interpersonal issues, relationships and so on, they write "respectible" fiction. SF only get the stories written by no-talent hacks or the stories by good authors that *can't* be told as non-SF.
I disagree, but would like to include a brief and admittedly vague anecdote. Ursula K LeGuin, who became famous for her SF exploring sociological and anthropological themes---but could The Left Hand of Darkness have been told without genetically engineered androgynes?---and later tried to distance herself from her SF roots, to be more palatable to The Literary Establishment. She ended up writing a lot of bad work.
You say, That said, I'd be happy to read a SF novel which focused on interpersonal or other "non-SF" sources of conflict, where the future is just a scenery choice. There's plenty of work that does just that. It's not SF; it's a Western or a crime drama with the word 'boat' crossed out and replaced with 'transgalactic skipship' or some similar verbal frottage.
SF is about hwo technology changes us. Vinge's "Realtime" series for stasis fields, "The Left Hand of Darkness" for a lack of gender, "1984" for two-way television and "Brave New World" for a genetically engineered caste system. I say that no really great work of SF could be re-cast in what you call a non-SF locale.
SF isn't just scenery. A lot of it is crap, but that can be said for general fiction as well. It's been unfairly ghettoized, its authors shunned until after their deaths, then grave-robbed for buzzwords and plot points. (See: Philip K Dick, Paycheck; Isaac Asimov, I, Robot; Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers.)
And the shunning of SF continues into other media, TV and movies. With the exception of Trek, which has its own problems, and which (I'm told) has gone straight to hell lately, what SF is there on television? What was the last SF movie you saw? And I mean real SF. Look what's considered SF.
There's a tendency among the general readership to shun SF. I can't imagine why someone would have such an aversion to picking up "The Left Hand of Darkness" or "A Deepness in the Sky". Do you know what causes it?
--grendel drago
While I am definitely not a Communist (nor is much of anyone else in the past 10 years, as you'd notice if you'd check out a news source besides Fox News Channel ;-) )
China is. I think the most populous nation in the world counts. Also North Korea and Cuba.
Communism is not dead! It's just... resting... after a prolonged squawk, you see.
--grendel drago