Yeah, let's kill all the slashdotters, they're nothing but a bunch of losers, fit only to be exterminated! Everyone pitch in and kill a slashdotter, right now! Let's purify geekdom for all time!!
[waiting]
[tapping foot]
Damn, we're all still here. I guess "hate speech" isn't all that effective after all.
Coincidentally, last week's article by Ron Paul makes exactly those points:
...the nation remains incredibly sensitive
about matters of race, despite the outward progress of the last 40 years. A nation that once prided itself on a sense of rugged individualism has become uncomfortably obsessed with racial group identities.
...It's disconcerting to see third parties become involved and presume to speak collectively for minority groups. It is precisely this collectivist mindset that is at the heart of racism.
...government as an institution is particularly ill suited to combating bigotry in our society. Bigotry at its essence is a sin of the heart, and
we can't change people's hearts by passing more laws and regulations.
...Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist.
The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.
More importantly, in a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct our sins, we should understand that racism will endure until we stop thinking in terms of groups and begin thinking in terms of individual liberty.
Really? I must have seen some "imported Belgian chocolate" under the Ghirardelli label (almost typed "giardia" -- ooops:) and never looked beyond that.
Maybe I've just been lucky, but one reason I've generally preferred Hershey's is because their stuff *has* been consistent. At least, in any given form factor. Their milk chocolate bars and kisses don't actually taste quite the same. And the little bars are not the same as the big bars. (Said as a "supertaster" and then some... per the dye test, my tongue is one solid taste bud.) When I buy it, it's usually as the half-pound bar, and maybe that all comes from one plant, I dunno.
If a company has multiple production facilities, there are often radical differences among their nominally-identical outputs, even if a given plant's output is always consistent.
Most of the time I make my own Chocolate Glop -- cocoa (or bitter chocolate when I'm feeling extravagant), sugar, evaporated milk, butter, a dash of salt, and sometimes a drop of mint, cooked (er, nuked) into a yummy goo, which I then proceed to eat as a meal (after all, chocolate IS a basic food group!!:) Someday I ought to figure out how to get it to a pourable-to-solid state, as I really prefer the strongly contrasting flavours (sweet and chocolate) that my Glop has -- rather like German Sweet chocolate, but a whole lot cheaper:)
Ick. I just pour it off, rinse and repeat til there's no free oil left. Then again, I like my peanut butter dense enough that you have to slice it, rather than spread it.
Best peanut butter I ever has was a jar of Skippy (back in the 1970s, before they fucked with the formula) that literally had to be sliced to get it out of the jar. Tasted WONDERFUL. Wish I knew where they went wrong, cuz I want more just like it.:)
Not only that, but they started double-grinding the peanuts, because that makes for a mixture that will flow at a lower temperature (cheaper to produce). The result of all this tampering is that most commercial peanut butters now feel greasy and taste like shortening, and are only tolerable if kept in the fridge. Once an opened jar gets to room temp, it's never edible again -- stays soft and greasy forever.
I've seen a number of similar changes over the decades, where some small substitution became allowed, but changed first a product, then an industry, beyond recall. Many products that I used to adore and ate all the time, became unsatsifying and sometimes actively unpleasant. The upshot is that I no longer use ANY of those products.
And not just niche products, either (like the beloved but now gone Hydrox Cookie). Margarine, iced tea mix, and peanut butter are among the foods that I can no longer eat, or have radically reduced my use of, because they're just not what they used to be. Worse, prices went up while quality went down.
I would rather pay a fair price, and get the real thing, than pay a little less (or even a lot less) and find myself with no satisfactory options -- which is what happens every single time an existing standard gets diluted.
"Everything is smaller, more expensive, and not as good as it used to be." -- Andy Rooney
Oddly enough, I also prefer Hershey's to Giardelli. In fact I don't like most imported chocolate -- too oily/greasy-tasting, and not enough real chocolate flavour. Hershey's at least isn't oily in the mouth.
Speaking of grease, someone recently gave me a bag of Nestle Chunks. I expected them to taste like regular chocolate chips... egads, they don't taste like much of anything, except grease!
============
All that aside... if fundamental components can be substituted, it's only a matter of time before they want to swap cacao for cocoa... and there is nothing more detestable than FAKE chocolate.
Well, if you look at the increasing prevalence of the nanny state, the decreasing rights to privacy, free speech, fair use, etc, etc.... we ARE losing freedoms. Yeah, not as dramatically as Pravda propaganda would have it, but we ARE "giving up essential liberty for a little temporary safety".
And as you say it doesn't matter all that much which monkey is temporarily minding the zoo, when the inmates are clamouring to be kept "safe" from overblown dangers.:/
If you're in a restaurant, eating their food, you are their customer. If you then use their wifi hotspot, you're STILL their customer -- just of a different product, which was included with and paid for by your meal.
I think it'll hinge more on whether some outfit is already a business, or is reselling any form of goods or services, than on the traditional definition of an ISP.
[reads article] It does point up how much more power media personalities have in some parts of the world. Here, the Don Imus thing was a blip. There, it's a harbinger of doom.
Tho I can't truly disagree with the article's concluding paragraph:
"To the American people themselves their remains no evidence that they know, much less care, about the dire state of their once Free Nation."
"Why They Behave Like Russians" by John Fischer, is an interesting book on the subject, and it goes into how the *embedded culture* generates its own choice of government. Russian gov't hasn't really changed much over the centuries, just who gets to play the game. Frex, as some have pointed out, the KGB didn't go away, they just changed their uniforms.
Good point. And the main thing Bush has to lose -- is the election for the next Republican candidate for president, since his actions WILL reflect on the party at large, in the minds of most voters, whether he actually has any continuing influence or not.
(What an ugly run-on sentence. Oh well, this is Slashdot, not high school English.:)
I'm reminded of the Cold War version of Radio Moscow. You'd hear about bad weather or a notable car crash or the like, but never, ever a word against the wondrous Soviet.
This makes me feel sad, as I think of the Russian people as our friends, even when their gov't is not.
Hmmm... I've noticed different results when I use old Netscape 3 (which I do most of the time, and nearly always with Google), and Mozilla. And I think it's because however Google sets their ID/login cookie does not happen automatically with NS3. (*IF* I log in manually, then it sticks for a few weeks, but then goes away by itself.) Whereas when I use Moz, I'm obviously logged in all the time whether I did it or not -- it IDs me by my gmail address.
And I think it's reasonable to assume that search companies DO save and datamine search results, even *if* the data is not personally identifiable: What do advertisers want to know more than anything else? What people are LOOKING for, obviously!!
I know a bunch of people who do competition photography, and make their own prints on various brands of inkjet photo printers. They all say the same thing: stuff printed with aftermarket ink simply doesn't last as well. Prints look just as good for the first couple years, but after that they undergo noticeable fading and tone changes. They also tell me the real difference is whether the ink is pigment-based (doesn't fade) or dye-based (most do fade).
That said... I suspect it depends a lot on just whose aftermarket ink you buy. I've read that Canon and Epson actually make some of the 3rd party inks. And some off-brands probably ARE crap. But back when I had an inkjet, I used "Fillmore" brand refill ink, and it was definitely better than the original Canon ink, at a tiny fraction of the price. Dried faster, blacker-black, *much* more smear-resistant, about equivalent in fade-resistance.
And all that said... I have a laser printer now, and would NEVER go back to a @#$%^&! inkjet!!
My experience with Samsung anything is that they have a distressing tendency to die literally one day out of warranty. (My mom, who is very easy on her stuff, has had that happen several times with Samsung electronics.) IF they get past that point, they'll live as long as anything, but... if they'd just die while still IN warranty, I wouldn't be upset!
Good job! I'll remember about that next time I see such beasts hoping for a new home.
I once miscegenated two totally unrelated dead scanners to get one working scanner -- one had a bad element, the other had a dead everything-else. But the elements were about the same size and had the same type of plug, so I thought what the hell, worst that happens is I still have two dead scanners. With a little duct tape to secure the element in the mount, guess what, it now works just fine.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, let's kill all the slashdotters, they're nothing but a bunch of losers, fit only to be exterminated! Everyone pitch in and kill a slashdotter, right now! Let's purify geekdom for all time!!
[waiting]
[tapping foot]
Damn, we're all still here. I guess "hate speech" isn't all that effective after all.
To misquote the 1800s newspaperman (whose name escapes me) who first said it...
"Some of them have but one redeeming feature, and that is a colossal Gaul."
Egads!!
Really? I must have seen some "imported Belgian chocolate" under the Ghirardelli label (almost typed "giardia" -- ooops :) and never looked beyond that.
:) Someday I ought to figure out how to get it to a pourable-to-solid state, as I really prefer the strongly contrasting flavours (sweet and chocolate) that my Glop has -- rather like German Sweet chocolate, but a whole lot cheaper :)
Maybe I've just been lucky, but one reason I've generally preferred Hershey's is because their stuff *has* been consistent. At least, in any given form factor. Their milk chocolate bars and kisses don't actually taste quite the same. And the little bars are not the same as the big bars. (Said as a "supertaster" and then some... per the dye test, my tongue is one solid taste bud.) When I buy it, it's usually as the half-pound bar, and maybe that all comes from one plant, I dunno.
If a company has multiple production facilities, there are often radical differences among their nominally-identical outputs, even if a given plant's output is always consistent.
Most of the time I make my own Chocolate Glop -- cocoa (or bitter chocolate when I'm feeling extravagant), sugar, evaporated milk, butter, a dash of salt, and sometimes a drop of mint, cooked (er, nuked) into a yummy goo, which I then proceed to eat as a meal (after all, chocolate IS a basic food group!!
True. I find such distinctions interesting. :)
Holy hamhocks, was that a fun read! Thanks for posting it.
:)
And the post about belabour =/= beleaguer... since I find reading the synomymy entertaining, but hadn't noticed that one
Ick. I just pour it off, rinse and repeat til there's no free oil left. Then again, I like my peanut butter dense enough that you have to slice it, rather than spread it.
:)
Best peanut butter I ever has was a jar of Skippy (back in the 1970s, before they fucked with the formula) that literally had to be sliced to get it out of the jar. Tasted WONDERFUL. Wish I knew where they went wrong, cuz I want more just like it.
Not only that, but they started double-grinding the peanuts, because that makes for a mixture that will flow at a lower temperature (cheaper to produce). The result of all this tampering is that most commercial peanut butters now feel greasy and taste like shortening, and are only tolerable if kept in the fridge. Once an opened jar gets to room temp, it's never edible again -- stays soft and greasy forever.
I've seen a number of similar changes over the decades, where some small substitution became allowed, but changed first a product, then an industry, beyond recall. Many products that I used to adore and ate all the time, became unsatsifying and sometimes actively unpleasant. The upshot is that I no longer use ANY of those products.
And not just niche products, either (like the beloved but now gone Hydrox Cookie). Margarine, iced tea mix, and peanut butter are among the foods that I can no longer eat, or have radically reduced my use of, because they're just not what they used to be. Worse, prices went up while quality went down.
I would rather pay a fair price, and get the real thing, than pay a little less (or even a lot less) and find myself with no satisfactory options -- which is what happens every single time an existing standard gets diluted.
"Everything is smaller, more expensive, and not as good as it used to be." -- Andy Rooney
Oddly enough, I also prefer Hershey's to Giardelli. In fact I don't like most imported chocolate -- too oily/greasy-tasting, and not enough real chocolate flavour. Hershey's at least isn't oily in the mouth.
Speaking of grease, someone recently gave me a bag of Nestle Chunks. I expected them to taste like regular chocolate chips... egads, they don't taste like much of anything, except grease!
============
All that aside... if fundamental components can be substituted, it's only a matter of time before they want to swap cacao for cocoa... and there is nothing more detestable than FAKE chocolate.
I *knew* I couldn't be alone... I also eat bitter chocolate, and think it tastes great. I love it with lightly-sweetened tea, for contrast.
:)
Of course, I will also eat plain dry cocoa, if nothing else is available
Well, if you look at the increasing prevalence of the nanny state, the decreasing rights to privacy, free speech, fair use, etc, etc. ... we ARE losing freedoms. Yeah, not as dramatically as Pravda propaganda would have it, but we ARE "giving up essential liberty for a little temporary safety".
:/
And as you say it doesn't matter all that much which monkey is temporarily minding the zoo, when the inmates are clamouring to be kept "safe" from overblown dangers.
If you're in a restaurant, eating their food, you are their customer. If you then use their wifi hotspot, you're STILL their customer -- just of a different product, which was included with and paid for by your meal.
I think it'll hinge more on whether some outfit is already a business, or is reselling any form of goods or services, than on the traditional definition of an ISP.
But how do they define an ISP? Is anyone who provides access to others an "ISP" ?? I can see a court interpreting it that way.
[reads article] It does point up how much more power media personalities have in some parts of the world. Here, the Don Imus thing was a blip. There, it's a harbinger of doom.
Tho I can't truly disagree with the article's concluding paragraph:
"To the American people themselves their remains no evidence that they know, much less care, about the dire state of their once Free Nation."
"Why They Behave Like Russians" by John Fischer, is an interesting book on the subject, and it goes into how the *embedded culture* generates its own choice of government. Russian gov't hasn't really changed much over the centuries, just who gets to play the game. Frex, as some have pointed out, the KGB didn't go away, they just changed their uniforms.
f iscmiss
http://www.archive.org/details/whytheybehavelik00
Pretty damned insightful for a book written in 1947.
(I'm glad to see this in the archive; damned if I know where my dead-tree copy is.)
Good point. And the main thing Bush has to lose -- is the election for the next Republican candidate for president, since his actions WILL reflect on the party at large, in the minds of most voters, whether he actually has any continuing influence or not.
:)
(What an ugly run-on sentence. Oh well, this is Slashdot, not high school English.
I'm reminded of the Cold War version of Radio Moscow. You'd hear about bad weather or a notable car crash or the like, but never, ever a word against the wondrous Soviet.
This makes me feel sad, as I think of the Russian people as our friends, even when their gov't is not.
Well, you don't get a full cart for $70, so getting only a half-full drop for a buck probably seems reasonable enough to them...!!
[goes off, looks up how many drops are in a ml]
Apparently about 25 drops per ml. I've seen carts with as little as 25ml of ink. So... a buck a drop is a pretty good guestimate!!
But I ain't about to mortgage the farm to test that theory either.
Hmmm... I've noticed different results when I use old Netscape 3 (which I do most of the time, and nearly always with Google), and Mozilla. And I think it's because however Google sets their ID/login cookie does not happen automatically with NS3. (*IF* I log in manually, then it sticks for a few weeks, but then goes away by itself.) Whereas when I use Moz, I'm obviously logged in all the time whether I did it or not -- it IDs me by my gmail address.
And I think it's reasonable to assume that search companies DO save and datamine search results, even *if* the data is not personally identifiable: What do advertisers want to know more than anything else? What people are LOOKING for, obviously!!
Scary thing is, the ink really DOES cost a buck a drop :/
I know a bunch of people who do competition photography, and make their own prints on various brands of inkjet photo printers. They all say the same thing: stuff printed with aftermarket ink simply doesn't last as well. Prints look just as good for the first couple years, but after that they undergo noticeable fading and tone changes. They also tell me the real difference is whether the ink is pigment-based (doesn't fade) or dye-based (most do fade).
That said... I suspect it depends a lot on just whose aftermarket ink you buy. I've read that Canon and Epson actually make some of the 3rd party inks. And some off-brands probably ARE crap. But back when I had an inkjet, I used "Fillmore" brand refill ink, and it was definitely better than the original Canon ink, at a tiny fraction of the price. Dried faster, blacker-black, *much* more smear-resistant, about equivalent in fade-resistance.
And all that said... I have a laser printer now, and would NEVER go back to a @#$%^&! inkjet!!
My experience with Samsung anything is that they have a distressing tendency to die literally one day out of warranty. (My mom, who is very easy on her stuff, has had that happen several times with Samsung electronics.) IF they get past that point, they'll live as long as anything, but... if they'd just die while still IN warranty, I wouldn't be upset!
Good job! I'll remember about that next time I see such beasts hoping for a new home.
I once miscegenated two totally unrelated dead scanners to get one working scanner -- one had a bad element, the other had a dead everything-else. But the elements were about the same size and had the same type of plug, so I thought what the hell, worst that happens is I still have two dead scanners. With a little duct tape to secure the element in the mount, guess what, it now works just fine.
Yeah, I've seen that too.
Silliest one I ever heard: Someone who used a fake name but their real credit card number and address!