I live in Kennesaw, Georgia, where the law requires every head of household over 21 to own a firearm.
Speaking from personal experience, I can think of absolutely no gun-related crime reported here in the last eight years I've lived here. Nor have I heard of any of the "accidents in the home" that gun-control advocates trumpet as a risk of gun ownership.
In the state of Georgia, there are very few barriers to gun ownership. Provided you're not a convicted felon and haven't been in a mental institution recently, you can buy and keep a gun in your home, car, or place of business. If you pay the fee in your county and don't mind being fingerprinted, you can get a permit to carry a concealed weapon pretty much anywhere besides a school, church, gov't building or public gathering. What's more, the police are very supportive of personal carry.
Lest you think we have a society of trigger-happy vigilantes, the law does provide some of the stiffest penalties in the nation for crimes committed with firearms, including a mandatory, non-negotiable five-year prison term for any crime committed with a firearm. This is the right kind of gun control: let law-abiding citizens protect themselves while providing stiff penalties for those who break the law.
Do a google search for "Kennesaw gun law," and you'll find the statistics, which pretty much speak for themselves.
I can't believe nobody's mentioned these guys. Bester was a genius, and you can't possibly know the genre without reading The Stars My Destination, which is a great, fast read written in 1956 that doesn't feel the least bit dated. He won the very first Hugo, people!
The book has a plot that doesn't rely on the gadgets or "universe" that surround it. Rather, it's the story of one man's drive for revenge against a system that he believes left him to die. All the "sci-fi" trappings are just window dressing for the story, and in many ways, that's the point.
Another one that bears mentioning is Theodore Sturgeon. I'd swear that Killdozer was the inspiration for Christine, but his real masterpiece was More Than Human, which tells the story of several idiot-savants with supernatural powers who are incapable of functioning in the world themselves, but together form an odd sort of gestalt/family unit.
In both cases, believable, human stories told from a slightly different point of view. Really, so are the stories of Hari Seldon, Case, and Luke Skywalker when you break it down.
Sony has a great format with MiniDisc recorders. They're handheld recorders that can make digital recordings from either analog or digital (lightpipe) sources. One of the nicest (and most touted) features of MiniDisc recording is the fact that you can plug the unit into the optical out of most DVD players (and the PS2) and make digital recordings of cds.
This new program essentially removes one of MiniDisc's largest selling points. I wonder if they plan to phase out the format? If so, it really screws consumers for portable music choices, as all these copy-protection schemes circumvent mp3 players as well. This will definitely hurt new CD sales worse than any P2P method, especially in urban markets, where most consumers want to listen to the stuff on headphones. Worse still, it might reinvigorate the market for blank cassette tapes, which MiniDisc was originally designed to replace. Go figure.
Maybe that's the grand plan-to force us all back into the analog age. Oh joy.
I've seen that space station before-in Space: 1999. If the producers choose to sue, then the damn blueprints will be illegal to reproduce or distribute and we'll be stuck on this dumb rock forever. Another reason to hate the DMCA...
No, Mr. Ballmer, they haven't. Thing is, you're unclear on "double jeopardy." It basically entails charging a person, under U.S. law, for the same offense twice.
We're talking here about going after Microsoft for a different set of violations in a different country. They get no slack in that case.
"Fatal Error. You need to restart your computer. You will lose all unsaved...oops, I mean, We're sorry-your call could not be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again."
Ah, Phil Hartman, underappreciated genius. May he rest in peace. He was also (among many others) the voice of Troy McClure, who you may remember from such films as "I Was a Teenage Pr0n Junkie," "Goat.se.cx Boogie," and "Karma Whores in 3D."
His role as Lyle Landley was classic, though. "North Haverbrook? Now where do I remember that name?"
There are several small distros designed to run on older hardware. Some, like tomsrtbt and coyote can run directly from a floppy, with no need for even a hard drive. Many of these started life as glorified rescue disks, but with the modular nature of Linux, it's possible, for example, to run a working mail-server on an old 386 with them.
Actually, no. Titan's atmosphere is believed to consist mostly of hydrogen and methane. It would be poisonous and unpleasant for human beings. However, both chemicals are useful organic building blocks, and Titan's surface may resemble a colder version of Earth's primordial soup, which makes it a valuable area for study.
Though I'm sad to see it change, Adult Swim really never was the anime showcase I hoped it would be. Don't get me wrong-any stateside (and UK) exposure that Cowboy Bebop can get is good, but what about when critical elements and sometimes entire episodes are edited out?
The question is: Is it better to have mainstream exposure, even if said exposure involves compromising the artists' original intent? In my case, no.
Besides, aside from Bebop, it's not like they were really taking any risks. Sailor Moon and Gundam really aren't all that left-field anyhow. What I'd really like to see is somebody doing a regular late-night run of stuff like Bebop, Lain and Jin-Roh with as few edits as possible. Something like the old Kung-Fu Gold run back in the '80's.
They can't expect a huge fan-base, but they can expect a small, very dedicated one, which, from a marketing and promotion standpoint, is much better anyway. Most of the audience for this is 20-35 year-olds, who are very likely to go out and buy this stuff on DVD if it impresses us.
Now, whenever I use that term, most people assume it's a nice way of saying "pirate copy." Thing is, many of my cds are imports or out-of-print obscurities, and I don't want to leave them in the car, where they get exposed to heat, scratching or possible theft. In fact, at $18USD a pop, I don't want to leave my regular cds in the car either, which is why I've got a holder with about 40 CDRs under my seat. It just makes life easier.
Since I'm already paying a hidden fee that the RIAA's been building in to the cost of cds since the PMRC hearings in the '80's, and I'm paying an extra tax built into the cost of the CDR discs thanks to RIAA lobbying, they're already gouging me twice for the privelege of doing something to which I'm legally entitled anyway.
With the advent of these "copy-proof" cds, I have yet to see any mention of either of those taxes going away. As far as I can tell, I'd still be paying both those premiums, even if every cd on the market was 100% copy-proof. God bless America.
I have AT&T broadband. When the guy arrived, I told him I'd be happy installing it myself. He started into how he couldn't take responsibility, etc. I then told him I was installing it on a Linux system. He got an odd look and then got a form out of his truck that said something to the effect of "I absolve so and so of any responsibility..."
All I had to get from him was the name server address. Funny thing is, he told me at first (just being nice) that he wasn't sure it would work, since the dialing software he had to install was proprietary. He even stuck around just to make sure it'd work.
Of course, it did, but the moral is that the installers are sent out to do a specific job a specific way.
Schoenberg tried the same sort of thing in 1921 or so. He invented the "twelve tone" system, in which the twelve chromatic tones were arranged according to mathematical sets. He even remarked to one of his students that he had come up with an idea that would, "ensure the domination of German music in the 20th century."
The basic idea was neat in that it removed conscious choice from the equation and resulted in melodic and harmonic combinations that wouldn't normally occur to a composer. Serialism, as it's called, is still being taught and used to this day, even if I find it tiresome myself. Basically, this is just another facet of that serial system.
It has a unique kind of icy, remote quality, but music isn't really meant to be appreciated on an intellectual level so much as an emotional one. True enough, you can have a satisfying balance of both (like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier), but purely intellectual stuff like this just isn't all that interesting outside of certain circles. Schoenberg's students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern did a much better job of writing listenable music with the system, mostly because they allowed some human influence in the model.
Almathea is one of the most unusual moons in the solar system, because it gives off more heat than it receives from the Sun."
Actually, Triton (Neptune's largest) does, too, IIRC. All the gas giants do as well.
In Amalthea's case (as well as Europa and Io), the moon is constantly being contracted and stretched by Jupiter's gravity, and those tidal forces generate heat in the moon's core. You can duplicate this effect by squeezing a piece of styrofoam in your hand and feeling it heat up.
Of course, all the gas giants have internal heat sources due to the immense gravity in their highly contracted solid cores. Neptune gives off way more heat and light than it receives from the Sun.
How about some of the real stinkers nobody wants to admit they remember, like Journey: Escape? Even better, E.T., in which the splash screen took up half the game's memory.
...or, worse even, the original (Atari) version of Pac Man, which may go down as the worst console port in history.
Seriously. Here in the states, we've got bomb-sniffing robots that trundle around on wheels. Why don't the UK police go for the total image and make a DALEK ("Dispose All Leaky Explosive Karma?") bomb-robot, spikes and all?
At least then, I'd stop making fun of the British for Blur and EMF...
"We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in."
No, you apparently get that by deluging me with junk mail i never asked for. The "noneconomic model" comes from the fact that I have never and will never do business with a company that stoops to "direct marketing."
...and this sounds like the same behavior Uncled Sam attacked Microsoft over. When the majors smell competition from an indie label (such as Matador), the simply buy and appropriate it. When that fails, they do their best to make it utterly impossible for someone to get started in the business without their "help."
Of course, the "Special Edition" theatrical re-release will just have some pointless new CG, and the "restored" scenes with Bombadil in a kilt talking like Butterfly McQueen, and it'll act to pave the way for the "prequels," which will in turn reduce Tolkein's vision to an insulting merchandising ploy and...oops. Wrong icon. --
Free-lance spacers just picked up a job. Their ship speeds away from a backwater planet silently as a steel guitar plays a c&w riff.
Say...this reminds me of something...oh, yeah, Cowboy Bebop!
Now, that's not neccessarily a bad thing. This series could garner interest in Bebop, which is a great character-driven series with a really wide potential appeal. Firefly looks to be pretty good from the premiere. Given time, it could very well turn into something truly great, like Buffy did.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking from personal experience, I can think of absolutely no gun-related crime reported here in the last eight years I've lived here. Nor have I heard of any of the "accidents in the home" that gun-control advocates trumpet as a risk of gun ownership.
In the state of Georgia, there are very few barriers to gun ownership. Provided you're not a convicted felon and haven't been in a mental institution recently, you can buy and keep a gun in your home, car, or place of business. If you pay the fee in your county and don't mind being fingerprinted, you can get a permit to carry a concealed weapon pretty much anywhere besides a school, church, gov't building or public gathering. What's more, the police are very supportive of personal carry.
Lest you think we have a society of trigger-happy vigilantes, the law does provide some of the stiffest penalties in the nation for crimes committed with firearms, including a mandatory, non-negotiable five-year prison term for any crime committed with a firearm. This is the right kind of gun control: let law-abiding citizens protect themselves while providing stiff penalties for those who break the law.
Do a google search for "Kennesaw gun law," and you'll find the statistics, which pretty much speak for themselves.
The book has a plot that doesn't rely on the gadgets or "universe" that surround it. Rather, it's the story of one man's drive for revenge against a system that he believes left him to die. All the "sci-fi" trappings are just window dressing for the story, and in many ways, that's the point.
Another one that bears mentioning is Theodore Sturgeon. I'd swear that Killdozer was the inspiration for Christine, but his real masterpiece was More Than Human, which tells the story of several idiot-savants with supernatural powers who are incapable of functioning in the world themselves, but together form an odd sort of gestalt/family unit.
In both cases, believable, human stories told from a slightly different point of view. Really, so are the stories of Hari Seldon, Case, and Luke Skywalker when you break it down.
This new program essentially removes one of MiniDisc's largest selling points. I wonder if they plan to phase out the format? If so, it really screws consumers for portable music choices, as all these copy-protection schemes circumvent mp3 players as well. This will definitely hurt new CD sales worse than any P2P method, especially in urban markets, where most consumers want to listen to the stuff on headphones. Worse still, it might reinvigorate the market for blank cassette tapes, which MiniDisc was originally designed to replace. Go figure.
Maybe that's the grand plan-to force us all back into the analog age. Oh joy.
I've seen that space station before-in Space: 1999. If the producers choose to sue, then the damn blueprints will be illegal to reproduce or distribute and we'll be stuck on this dumb rock forever. Another reason to hate the DMCA...
Seriously, all dark-Jedi in training have to start practicing that long-distance choking trick on somebody...
Oops, I meant to say this . Damn submit button...
After seeing this, I'll be sure to park my car in the garage tonight!
When's the next record coming out? After all, it's been 34 years since you did that stirring rendition of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ,..
We're talking here about going after Microsoft for a different set of violations in a different country. They get no slack in that case.
"Fatal Error. You need to restart your computer. You will lose all unsaved...oops, I mean, We're sorry-your call could not be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again."
Ah, Phil Hartman, underappreciated genius. May he rest in peace. He was also (among many others) the voice of Troy McClure, who you may remember from such films as "I Was a Teenage Pr0n Junkie," "Goat.se.cx Boogie," and "Karma Whores in 3D."
His role as Lyle Landley was classic, though. "North Haverbrook? Now where do I remember that name?"
There are several small distros designed to run on older hardware. Some, like tomsrtbt and coyote can run directly from a floppy, with no need for even a hard drive. Many of these started life as glorified rescue disks, but with the modular nature of Linux, it's possible, for example, to run a working mail-server on an old 386 with them.
Actually, no. Titan's atmosphere is believed to consist mostly of hydrogen and methane. It would be poisonous and unpleasant for human beings. However, both chemicals are useful organic building blocks, and Titan's surface may resemble a colder version of Earth's primordial soup, which makes it a valuable area for study.
Though I'm sad to see it change, Adult Swim really never was the anime showcase I hoped it would be. Don't get me wrong-any stateside (and UK) exposure that Cowboy Bebop can get is good, but what about when critical elements and sometimes entire episodes are edited out?
The question is: Is it better to have mainstream exposure, even if said exposure involves compromising the artists' original intent? In my case, no.
Besides, aside from Bebop, it's not like they were really taking any risks. Sailor Moon and Gundam really aren't all that left-field anyhow. What I'd really like to see is somebody doing a regular late-night run of stuff like Bebop, Lain and Jin-Roh with as few edits as possible. Something like the old Kung-Fu Gold run back in the '80's.
They can't expect a huge fan-base, but they can expect a small, very dedicated one, which, from a marketing and promotion standpoint, is much better anyway. Most of the audience for this is 20-35 year-olds, who are very likely to go out and buy this stuff on DVD if it impresses us.
Now, whenever I use that term, most people assume it's a nice way of saying "pirate copy." Thing is, many of my cds are imports or out-of-print obscurities, and I don't want to leave them in the car, where they get exposed to heat, scratching or possible theft. In fact, at $18USD a pop, I don't want to leave my regular cds in the car either, which is why I've got a holder with about 40 CDRs under my seat. It just makes life easier.
Since I'm already paying a hidden fee that the RIAA's been building in to the cost of cds since the PMRC hearings in the '80's, and I'm paying an extra tax built into the cost of the CDR discs thanks to RIAA lobbying, they're already gouging me twice for the privelege of doing something to which I'm legally entitled anyway.
With the advent of these "copy-proof" cds, I have yet to see any mention of either of those taxes going away. As far as I can tell, I'd still be paying both those premiums, even if every cd on the market was 100% copy-proof. God bless America.
I have AT&T broadband. When the guy arrived, I told him I'd be happy installing it myself. He started into how he couldn't take responsibility, etc. I then told him I was installing it on a Linux system. He got an odd look and then got a form out of his truck that said something to the effect of "I absolve so and so of any responsibility..."
All I had to get from him was the name server address. Funny thing is, he told me at first (just being nice) that he wasn't sure it would work, since the dialing software he had to install was proprietary. He even stuck around just to make sure it'd work.
Of course, it did, but the moral is that the installers are sent out to do a specific job a specific way.
Schoenberg tried the same sort of thing in 1921 or so. He invented the "twelve tone" system, in which the twelve chromatic tones were arranged according to mathematical sets. He even remarked to one of his students that he had come up with an idea that would, "ensure the domination of German music in the 20th century."
The basic idea was neat in that it removed conscious choice from the equation and resulted in melodic and harmonic combinations that wouldn't normally occur to a composer. Serialism, as it's called, is still being taught and used to this day, even if I find it tiresome myself. Basically, this is just another facet of that serial system.
It has a unique kind of icy, remote quality, but music isn't really meant to be appreciated on an intellectual level so much as an emotional one. True enough, you can have a satisfying balance of both (like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier), but purely intellectual stuff like this just isn't all that interesting outside of certain circles. Schoenberg's students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern did a much better job of writing listenable music with the system, mostly because they allowed some human influence in the model.
Actually, Triton (Neptune's largest) does, too, IIRC. All the gas giants do as well.
In Amalthea's case (as well as Europa and Io), the moon is constantly being contracted and stretched by Jupiter's gravity, and those tidal forces generate heat in the moon's core. You can duplicate this effect by squeezing a piece of styrofoam in your hand and feeling it heat up.
Of course, all the gas giants have internal heat sources due to the immense gravity in their highly contracted solid cores. Neptune gives off way more heat and light than it receives from the Sun.
How about some of the real stinkers nobody wants to admit they remember, like Journey: Escape? Even better, E.T., in which the splash screen took up half the game's memory.
...or, worse even, the original (Atari) version of Pac Man, which may go down as the worst console port in history.
At least then, I'd stop making fun of the British for Blur and EMF...
No, you apparently get that by deluging me with junk mail i never asked for. The "noneconomic model" comes from the fact that I have never and will never do business with a company that stoops to "direct marketing."
...and this sounds like the same behavior Uncled Sam attacked Microsoft over. When the majors smell competition from an indie label (such as Matador), the simply buy and appropriate it. When that fails, they do their best to make it utterly impossible for someone to get started in the business without their "help."
I guess he's down to hocking his enlarged penis and breasts on ebay to cover the bill...
--
Experience the originals...one last time. .
Of course, the "Special Edition" theatrical re-release will just have some pointless new CG, and the "restored" scenes with Bombadil in a kilt talking like Butterfly McQueen, and it'll act to pave the way for the "prequels," which will in turn reduce Tolkein's vision to an insulting merchandising ploy and...oops. Wrong icon.
--
Say...this reminds me of something...oh, yeah, Cowboy Bebop!
Now, that's not neccessarily a bad thing. This series could garner interest in Bebop, which is a great character-driven series with a really wide potential appeal. Firefly looks to be pretty good from the premiere. Given time, it could very well turn into something truly great, like Buffy did.
--