Yes, use the resume features and I get from "off" to desktop ready to go in under a minute, and since I'm putting on the stereo or getting a can of soda during that "less than a minute", and I only reboot once or twice a month while I use the computer for several hours a day (and it keeps doing stuff when I'm not there) I reckon I don't have an XP "advert" on my screen for more than two minutes every four hundred hours (rather than three minutes an hour)
I've got one client where the run NO filter - some folks (the names GOTTA be on the web site) get up to 100 spams a day.
I'm just a normal user, I do have far too many domain names, but I never use them on usenet and the VAST majority of spam that arrives is to "randomly selected name"@mydomain.com and today, so far, I've received over 350 spams AN HOUR! (And that's after the Brightmail filter). Someone, somewhere, has picked one of my domains and I get just *so* much crap sent to it. 95% of my domains get nothing (or just stuff sent to "billing@mydomain2.com" where that's the admin address on the whois record (never used for email or posting EVER) but one domain in particular gets totally saturated. I'm talking to my ISP about putting in a filter further up line so that only the dozen or two "names@domain" that I've actually used for signing up for things like ebay and amazon can get through and everything else will be bounced.
I use MailWasherPro for client side clean up, but since it runs first, and then email is downloaded, there are usually a few that arrive while downloading my email that haven't been "washed".
1985, had computer generated pots and pans flying around.
According to IMDb "The first Disney animated feature to use computer technology."
Now it's possible that there was hand painting over the digital stuff, but it was CGI (not full frame, but then neither was the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast)
Er... read the article, read the link, it ends up with the bit I've copied below.
This is the "don't remove tag from mattress law" all over again! RETAILERS may not tamper with the chip, in the same way they can't remove the "made in China by slave labour" tags or sew on fake "Levi's" labels. CONSUMERS can do what the hell they want with the devices once they have purchased the goods. Sheesh!
The Single Market: the European Union was set up to create a free-trade area, yet its draft Directive will undermine that. Within a few years, products such as clothes will all contain radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags, which will be used as market control devices. Think of them as like DVD region coding, only for blue jeans. Unfortunately the Directive will give them special legal status: any grey importer who tampers with RFID devices will be committing a criminal offence. At present, market control centers on trade-mark law and distribution contracts; the EU has largely managed to hammer down the trade barriers (but not entirely). RFID plus the draft Enforcement Directive will set back the cause of free trade by twenty years. It will enable brand owners to undermine the Single Market and challenge the principal economic benefit of the European Union.
Friday morning, when the NL-zonefiles were updated: the MX-records of cyberangels.nl were now pointing to us. (We made a catch-all for all adresses.) The first few hours, literally thousands of mails reached us: 5919 mails, most of them bounces. By now, the avalanche has dwindled to a trickle.
Until now - 06-07-2003, 23:00 GMT+1...
Friday was 04-07-2003, 6305 messages received on the 4th of July, the 5th of July and the 6th of July... that looks like more than two days and less than four to me!
I never even mention smof.com on slashdot and I get several hundred spams a day sent to all sorts of names@ that domain.
It's even being used as the sending domain by some b*stard spammer (no, not an open mail relay, just as the forged header) so I'm getting dozens of bounced messages a day coming back to me and so far only one "stop spamming me" message from someone that doesn't understand about forged headers.
You can't have john.name (the same way I can't buy magician.uk, I can only buy magician.co.uk (which I did))
It's firstname.lastname.name and basically that's all they allow. In theory it has to be your real name too, but somehow I managed to get the.magician.name as well as my real name, but it does leave me with an email address of the @ magician.name which isn't terribly good.
In fact, I have two. I, as an individual, had no problem in buying chris.oshea.name and the.magician.name from www.register.com
Email forwarding is setup so if you email me at
the @ magician.name it gets delivered to my home email account.
It would be a shame if it folded, but since I mainly bought these as "vanity" domains and don't publicise them, I wouldn't be too upset if.name went away...
Sometimes you're sitting in the bar chatting to work colleagues and making notes for a presentation the next day. Sometimes you just want to open your PDA and check your email without having to use slow and expensive cellphone connections. Sometimes it's nice to be able to catch up on all the latest information over breakfast before heading in to the training class And sometimes it's nice to be able to sit next to the pool and listen to classic comedy, science fiction and drama on BBC Radio 7, while you're on the other side of the planet.
It's not something I'd use often, but WiFi is a standard and if it means I basically can just open my laptop/PDA and surf the web/read email/logon to my corporate VPN and pull down the latest reports etc. without having to go hide in my room and spend time fighting with one of the several different "high speed" connections different places around the world offer (or not) then that would be great.
It's especially good in Europe where each country has a different phone socket so you either have to carry a bag of different adapters with you, or hope the hotel has phone handsets with a standard US plug for dialup... this way you can just meet people in the bar of the Marriott, update your files and then go back to your cheaper hotel somewhere else!
... a few years back on one of the cable channels over here in the UK they did a TV 3D month including a special kind of TV 3D which involves having the camera moving horizontally and special glasses... don't know how it worked but they did lots of "going around the four poster bed" type shots until one was quite dizzy!
Agnostic Muslim = Good Religous Muslim = Bad In your opinion and experience, not in mine. I know several "religious Muslims" that are among the nicest people I've ever met. I'm sorry you don't know them.
One nice man surrounded by a thousand evil men will surely be turned to evil, and may even start believing that evil is good. So at the end of the day, I don't have to convince you, as if the world becomes evil, you yoursef will be inextricably affected.... I walked into a restaurant in Ilford today So you seem to be saying you're surrounded by "a thousand evil men" and will "surely be turned to evil... "... and God said ""For the sake of ten good people," the Lord told him, "I still won't destroy the city."" Genesis 18:32.
Of course if you live in a sheltered part of the Cotswolds... and if I live but a handful of miles from Southall, in the borough of Hounslow?
Jizyah: nothing about it escalating at any of the sites I've checked so far... and according to http://www.answering-christianity.com/jizyah.htm it is approximately the same as the Zakah which is a "tax" paid by Muslims, and the Jizyah is effectively the payment for opting out of military service in a Muslim state but accepting the protection of the army. So, in effect, no different from pacifists in the UK still having to pay for tanks and guns through their taxes.
The US education department http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/glossary/ter m.JIZYAH.html defines Jizyah as "a tax paid by non-Muslims living in a Muslim State. Since the non-Muslims are exempt from military service and taxes imposed on Muslims, they must pay this tax to compensate. It guarentees them security and protection. If the State cannot protect those who paid jizyah, then the amount they paid is returned to them."
And according to this report http://www.ummah.net.pk/dharb/newsv1/nation124.htm even the Taliban only set a "nominal amount" for the Jizyah.
Of course none of this is evidence that the people you know don't see Jizyah the way you have described, and taking a few sites on the internet as evidence of *anything* is a bad idea, so I will not say you are wrong, just that the research I have done so far on Jizyah hasn't found a site that is willing to describe it the way you have.
Here in the UK most shops were not allowed to open on Sundays until very recently, and even now most of them can only open for 6 hours (usually 10-4 or 11-5)... for those religions (such as Judaism) which want to keep Saturday holy, this means that they have a direct economic penalty because of this being a "Christian" country.
The Jehovah's Witnesses (I am told) believe that only 144,000 people will be saved... that means the rest of us are doomed to hell in their eyes. As a Catholic I was told many times by others that I was "not a Christian". Religious intolerance
It's a good think you believe that the only good religion is a weak one and (I assume from your lack of mentioning them) that there are not Christian fundamentalists who believe every word of the bible is, er, gospel (sic). The sort of people that read "an eye for an eye" or any of the stuff below and take it as justification for a "holy war".
"Ezekiel 9:5 To the others he said while I listened, "Go through the city after him and strike people down; you must neither show pity nor spare anyone! 9:6 Old men, young men, young women, little children, and women-wipe them out, all of them! But do not touch anyone who has the mark-begin at my sanctuary!" So they began with the elders who were at the front of the temple."
"Numbers 15:32 When the Israelites were1 in the wilderness they found a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. 15:33 And those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the community. 15:34 They put him in custody, because there was no clear instruction about what should be done to him. 15:35 Then the Lord said to Moses, "The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation must stone him with stones outside the camp. 15:36 So the whole community took him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died, as the Lord commanded Moses"
Mark 16:18 Jesus lets us know how to identify his followers: "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
And sure enough there are snake-handling groups in the US (but I don't know of any that drink poison...) and there are obviously not enough God-fearing good Christians out there, as the hospitals are still full of the sick...
English hasn't. "ex cathedra" is in most good English dictionaries, as is "rendezvous", "pyjamas" and, strangely enough, most of the current English words come from other current or dead languages... who would have thought?
You have your view of Muslims in general, I have mine, they do not meet. Nothing I say will convince you, and you have failed to convince me. I have Muslim friends, none of them want to kill me or to tax me until I convert (or if they do they have hidden it well for many years).
If an entire people admire murderers, do those people themselves become carpet-bomable? Like cowboys and indians right? Or Rambo? CIA hit squads? Oliver Cromwell? Robert E. Lee? George Washington? William the Conquerer? Throughout history murderers and killers have been admired. If you are going to use oratory, then try to not make it too generalised or it weakens the effect.
Anyway, the way I look at it is that religion and all religous books... Ok, so this is all your personal opinion, that's fine, my personal opinion is different.
If one follows a book purely, then that book must contain zero passages of violence, ambiguity, hatred or subversion techniques. Well, apparantly that's what *you* believe, others have different beliefs. Logic hardly ever wins over belief so there is no point in discussing this because our beliefs differ and so your logic probably wouldn't win me over either.
Oh, and the Bible contains lots as well, particularly the old testament. One of the pronouncements of Vatican II on the Bible was that the New Testament didn't replace the Old Testament but that they should be taken together as the church's teachings. There's the stoning a woman to death for picking up sticks bit. The putting homosexuals to death bit. So many other bits of biblical hatred that if you really followed the bible you'd be out killing people now.
I cannot comment on "Jizyah" since I've never heard of it before.
There are not 300 million Muslims "oppressed" by British laws. Your estimates are wildly wrong.
I already pay nearly 40% of my wages to my "Christian" rulers.
... this has been fun, because it hasn't descended into mud slinging and has remained civil, I wish more/. comment trees were as good as this...
They're quite typical Pakistani muslims, and have a militant anti-West attitude when they arrive in the UK.
Yes, I can quite believe that. It has always been the way the many of the more fanatical have been the ones to travel (back at least to the Pilgrim fathers!)
There is brainwashing and biased media everywhere (I remember returning to the UK after living in the US in the late 1960's/early 1970s and again in the early 1980's and being very surprised that the USSR was not considered the "great Satan" and evil here in the UK, because it had been so thoroughly drummed into me when I went to school in the US) There is poverty and inequality throughout the world. In some places the leaders blame the US for it (and in some cases there really is some justification for that... arms sales, manipulative foreign policy ("we'll give you food aid, but you have to buy our technology, we'll lend you the money to do so, but then you'll be paying us interest forever, we'll provide (nearly affordable) medicines to battle Aids but you'll have to run your society the way we say you should" etc.) or at least that's how it looks to much of the rest of the world, I know it looks very different from inside the USA. Hence the surprise about September 11th and all those Americans asking "why?" and saying "it's because they are jealous of our freedom and democracy", no, it's usually not.
What you say about figureheads is of course true, but I think that many (?most? nearly all?) of them were sincere, even if some of them from a self-defence posture. There are Muslim commandments about how people should be treated that these terrorists have broken... and many Muslims around the world live straddling two societies, their religion and their society. They don't agree with the fanatical zealots that would give their lives for their faith, but they can still admire someone whose faith is that strong, in the same way I can admire nuns who take a vow of silence and poverty, and will support their right to do so, without it meaning I think I should do the same thing myself. Admiring a strong faith is not the same thing as necessarily agreeing with the subsequent actions.
I do not know the facts about Arafat (I've seen many "facts" and some of them were contradictory, and we've got a similar situation with Gerry Adams etc. and Sinn Fein over here/Northern Ireland) How do you negotiate with those groups which are tied into terrorist activities? If you don't find someone to talk to, the terrorism continues and increases, if you do, then you have to talk to someone the terrorists trust and will listen to, which usually means someone who has been an important part of those terrorist groups. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, do you have a better idea?
*Organised* religions impose this. Organised religions like Christianity, Judaism etc.
I'm glad you seem to be able to speak ex cathedra about what is and what isn't a redundant religion. Is that your personal opinion or a "fact"? And if it is a "fact", why do so many people disagree with it?
I, personally, have a personal relgion based on the one I was brought up in, but adjusted for my own comfort (e.g. the Catholic faith says "no birth control beyond the rythym method" and no sex outside of marriage. How many UK/USA Catholics do you think actually follow that to the letter?) To some people, the restrictions of a religion are comforting, it reminds them that God is in their daily lives as they say their grace before meals, their nightly prayers, wash their feet, don't eat during daylight hours during Ramadan, avoid meat on Fridays etc. They believe that "a little suffering is good for the soul". You are perfectly allowed to disagree with them, but you can only call them *wrong* in your own opinion. If it helps them get closer to their God then those restrictions have served their purpose.
Just about every religion has "rules" that prescribe your freedom. Whether it is a "requirement" to give to the poor, to not covet your neighbours goods, to not kill, to spend an hour a week in a temple of some kind etc. But then life is the same (they expect me to be in work for a certain number of hours a day and to be working and not writing slashdot replies!), the bank won't give me more money than I've paid in (or at least not without charging me extra for the priviledge), my neighbours insist on not leaving the keys in their car so I'm not free to drive it... freedom is always restricted by opportunity and by individual choices. Yes, there are some that have fewer choices than us... but that doesn't mean we are (or aren't) "free".
Religions rarely teach that "freedom" is wrong, they just teach that there are limits to freedom (where it affects your fellow man, where it conflicts with something "god" has said etc.) and since it is true that there is no complete freedom (which is proveable since we have laws and lawyers and lawcourts) what "freedoms" we each have is partly personal choice.
And whether you accept that you can be a good Christian (for example) and not believe in the real historical existance of Jesus (as a Church of England Bishop once controversially claimed) is part of that freedom. If you choose to be in a religion, then you have to decide how much of what they teach you will accept. The Taliban had a very strong belief in certain concepts as being part of their religion, which included the destruction of priceless artefacts. You and I know this to be bad and wrong, they knew it to be God's revealed will and word. If they are allowed to have "freedom of religion" then should we have a right to stop them expressing their religion (and of course the answer is, hell yes!)
An excellent question which God will answer or not.
Great, arguing about religious fundamentalism and then bringing God into it <grin!> Yes, for those that believe in God (and whether I do or not is not important to *my* position) he is the final and supreme Judge.
The majority of Muslims in the UK support Osama binLaden, just look at the polls that were conducted after the WTC attacks. Or you could look at the polls NOW and find that the vast majority are against him, that all the leaders of British Muslims have denounced terrorism, that there are a small number of fanatical fundamentalists who do support him. I've been to Ilford and Bradford, I'm going to a party in Ilford tomorrow night, one of my best friends teaches in an Ilford school to a class that overwhelmingly Muslim. You have got a strange idea of reality, possibly from biased news reporting or something, but no, the majority don't beat their women or "cage" them (I've never even *seen* a place that sells cages, well, except for places such as Fettered Pleasures which I think you will find sells predominantly to "white Christian" people. Our faiths used to have "commandments" and requirements, as a Catholic I should be eating fish on Friday, fasting during Lent, attending church on the holy days of obligation, etc. and our priests should not be abusing small children... it seems we have lost our ability to follow "Gods laws" and many of us have become lazy "Christians"... and then we criticise other religions because they have a dress code. Do you criticise equally the strict Jews who require their women to keep their heads/hair covered? How about the Amish?
Part of most "strong" religions is a requirement to give up something (whether it is alcohol (Methodists) or the "sins of the flesh" or pork (Judaism) to blood transfusions and medication etc.) and to take on tasks (anything from the door to door of Jehovah's witnesses, to praying five times a day to wearing of particular clothing.) The strict Jews can't operate light switches or do any other kind of "work" on the Sabbath. They dress in strange outfits (of black, with big black hats) and grow their hair weirdly (sort of dreadlocks), and I've already mentioned the requirement for wigs or headscarves on their (?married?) women.
*I* have had to wear a suit and tie to work, even when I worked in a computer department that never had customers visiting (it was a secure financial system and so visitors were *banned*), and I didn't like it. I had to wear a school uniform when I went to school, which again I detested.
"Their women"... oh dear oh dear, by your very writing you are condemning them to being possessions. Why don't you ask the women themselves what they think about it? I think you'll find a much higher percentage in favour of the various coverings (very few are "bhurkas" which, I believe, cover the face... many UK Muslim women wear "hejab" which covers the top of the head and wraps around the neck but leaves the face totally uncovered, see the BBC link below) than Bin Laden.
"English way of life" is multicultural. I was brought up in Hackney (a lot of "Indian", African, Jamaican in the shops, the schools, the churches etc.) and now live in Hounslow (a few miles from Southall, one of the largest concentrations of Asians in the UK. I get four Asian TV channels on my cable TV, and my local multiscreen cinema has four screens for Bollywood films). And no, I won't get a punch in the face, because I am polite, civil, and willing to accept cultural diversity. There are many young asians and muslims (not necessarily asian) that want to follow a "western" lifestyle, and if you actually visit Ilford and Southall (as I do regularly) you will see them doing so. Yes, sometimes against their parent's wishes (and how many "white" teenage girls have been banished from the family house and told never to return because they have become pregnant at 14-16, because they have a "black" boyfriend etc. How many "white" families are happy for their "children" (under 18) to bring back boyfriend/girlfriend to sleep with them in the family house? It's just that our "rules" are so) and the stigma against "illegitimate" children has dropped massively in the last 20 years, but I still know people that were spat on, beaten up etc. at school because they were born out of wedlock.
Ask Arsenal fans how they feel about Tottenham fans and you'll often hear a torrent of abuse and witness actual violence when matches are played. It has nothing to do with religion (the Tottenham fans are tarred with the soubriquet "Yiddos" from being so near to a major concentration of Judaism (Stamford Hill and surround areas) but the punch in the face you get has nothing to do with religion.
The "Islamic World" did not blow up the ancient Buddhas, one fundamentalist regime (The Taliban) did. If you can't tell the difference, remind me to come around and burn your house down for the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, ok? Or for turning your back on the Jews etc. during WWII? Or for turning your back on Rwanda, Indonesia and all the other recent regimes that oppressed and killed tens of thousands (or more) while we didn't get involved. Do you realise how small a percentage of Muslims agreed with the destruction of those ancient treasures? Did you see the documentary reports on how the wonderful museums of kabul were destroyed with each piece of representive art (dating back many centuries) individually destroyed? Most Muslims were aghast at that, but it is the same sort of thing that happened here in the UK during the Reformation. A bunch of fanatics, sure of "God's word"...
You know some very weird Muslims if you get a 70% agreement on views. I am worried by your "Sometimes I grow a long beard..." comment. Many are insular, and many it would seem rightly so (if you scan the BBC website for stuff on Muslims you'll find that a large number of the articles are about Muslims being attacked in the streets, in their mosques and in their homes... how biased this reporting is is hard to tell, but I think it is about as unbiased as we're likely to get in the West... and it shows a continuing oppression and terrorisation of "normal everyday" Muslims whereever they go... if you kick a dog every day, eventually it will bite you, and then you can justify getting out the big gun and shooting it.
Perhaps we wouldn't have so many rabid fundamentalists and fanatics (of all kinds) if we could reduce hatred in general... but that doesn't seem to be the Western way...
For more on UK Muslims, you could do worse than check out some of the BBC coverage such as http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2248735.stm
... one of the things about trademark laws is that it's a bit of a land rush. Since the city of Phoenix has never (to my knowledge) filed a trademark application for "Phoenix" for computer software, hardware or services, then I'm afraid the city will have to change it's name.:-) No, seriously, if a company in Phoenix wanted to set up a software company called Phoenix Software, then there *could* be a conflict, and it is up to the courts to finally adjudicate whether there could be potential confusion or "passing off". If I set up a company called "McDonalds Hard Cider" then even though McDonalds the restaurant chain don't sell or make hard cider, you can bet their lawyers would be buying new Mercedes with the profits!
Unconnected comment: The International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM) was around long before International Business Machines...
... why is being tolerant of outsiders a requirement for a country? I know *I* prefer it, and I assume you do, but that doesn't make it "right", just what we expect of a society. Some people expect a society to provide universal education and healthcare, to provide safety nets for the poorest and the unemployed, to ensure food and shelter, but this is so obviously not globally true (look how much of Africa and South America fails on the healthcare and education to name but two important social concepts, and the "right" to food and shelter is a luxury in far too many countries)
"Dark powers are gathering" on every side. There is religious fundamentalism in the USA as well, blowing up abortion clinics and killing doctors, blowing up federal buildings in Oklahoma, planting bombs in Atlanta etc. And let's just take Northern Ireland as read shall we? The Chinese (not particularly Muslim) have made their views on Tibet well known, the Russians (also not predominantly Muslim) have shown how they feel about Chechnya... and then there are the situations within countries ranging from Serbia to El Salvador (and you do remember Rwanda don't you? One MILLION dead, 100,000 still in prison on trial for genocide/murder/etc. where were we then?)... it doesn't take religion to destroy a country, look at the Congo, or Ethiopia, or so many other "third world" countries... yes there are Dark Forces out there, but they aren't (just) Muslims, and if you wiped every Muslim from the face of the planet, you'd just get the next bunch of Waco/Jonestown/KKK/VC/Black Panthers/Opus Dei/whatever declaring it God's will that the unbelievers be converted or destroyed.
The UK has a significant Muslim population which is pacifist and tolerant of others. It also has a small minority of extremists that hide behind the majority to commit acts of terrorism. This is true of the "white christians" in the UK also (see British National Party, Class War etc.) Don't recall the National Socialist (Nazi) party claiming to be Muslims but they are out there too, and growing again in places like Germany...
Never said the USA was "evil", but that's a very nice debating trick, thanks. I said "Is the USA the enemy of the world?" We were Hitler's enemy in WWII, that didn't make *us* evil, but it did make us his enemies. You seem to be arguing that the USA *is* in fact the enemy of the Islamic world, or am I misunderstanding your point?
Yes, in fact it _is_ a crime "to send a murderer to kill a murderer who will murder again", at least in most civilised countries (including the USA and the UK) check with any lawyer. However mitigating circumstances and various other things can be argued at trial time to get the offence reclassed as manslaughter or possibly even "self defence". Manslaughter is still a crime.
How many died during Desert Storm? How many of those were "innocent" or guilty of nothing more than a little looting? Who _really_ knows... all we know is that many 10s of thousands lost their lives and I think it would have been a good idea to have taken Saddam out then while in the course of a "legitimate" war (he had invaded another country, they asked for help, voila, internationally sanctioned right to go kick the crap out of him).
These things can be one sided you know...... to a lot of the world the USA is manipulistic, biased, greedy, smug, invasive, bullying, demanding, threatening, dangerous and overbearing. There are downsides as well.
The USA has *power*. This is frightening to those that don't have it. The USA takes sides (both as a country and as a collection of people) with countries like Israel and groups like the IRA (or so it appears to the rest of the world).
Here in the UK I have seen little real *evidence* that Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaida destroyed the Twin Towers (though I do believe he was responsible), but I see the US rattling sabres and about to get us involved in a war that will cause every terrorist with a knife, gun or bomb to come boiling out of the sewers and attack my family and friends in our houses, churches, tube stations, water supplies etc. The weapons of mass destruction worry me a lot, but so do random acts of smaller terrorism; as I've lived in London during the IRA bombings and had to live with the everyday knowledge that the bag on the seat opposite me on the bus may have a bomb in it.
You learn to live with that fear, but it never goes away (too many of the bombs went off near where friends and family lived or worked and I'm just lucky that no one I knew well was actually injured or killed, though many people were).
Terrorism is bad and wrong. But I'm not convinced that the War on Iraq will reduce terrorism one iota. It may bring some level of peace to Irag (perhaps the same level of peace that Vietnam got)
Saddam needs to be stopped for what he is doing to his own people (particularly the smaller tribes in the hills), and if he is building up weapons of mass destruction then those need to be destroyed (children shouldn't play with guns, though I'm worried about how few "grown ups" there are in the world of international diplomacy) but it must be done in a way that tells the rest of the region that the US is *not* anti-Islamic or else we will all reap the whirlwind.
My home Sony MD recorder has a "Time Machine" option, same idea. It is always storing the last six (I think) seconds in memory and when you hit "record" it starts by putting those six seconds on the MD and speeds up catching up with the live input so it records "before" you press the button. Olympus have the same thing in some of their digital cameras, it is always storing the picture in memory and when you press the shutter button it can deduct your reaction time and take the picture "just before" you pressed the button. Another company (Nikon?) have a similar multishot system that works the other way around, you press down the button and it starts writing pictures into memory as quickly as it can, when you release the button the last five images are stored to your memory card.
only a few weeks ago/.ers were complaining about why anyone would buy the new Sony bluetooth enabled digital camera... and don't forget Sony use memorys(t)ick not the neat 1Gb IBM microdrives, so this basically gives you something that can back up your digital camera while you're travelling. So you take your pictures of, say, the Eiffel tower, sit down for a coffee and by the time you're finished the camera has transferred everything to the hard disk and you can clear the memory stick and go take pictures of the Louvre!
Just like Bach and Mozart in fact. Music by the numbers.
And let's not get started on some of the "dance" and "trance" stuff...... and you certainly won't like Irish music sessions where it is the same "widdle-dee-widdle-dee" music for hours on end (A twice, then B, then back to A, now switch to another almost identical jig and repeat)
Glass music is fine for what it is, background music that has a "texture" but rarely a tune . I only sit down to "listen" to Glass music when I want my mind to go blank and unwind, and that's pretty much perfect for these films!
There are better descriptions scattered below between the flame bait and other comments.
The first film (Koyaanisqatsi) came out when I was at college and was recommended as a film to watch while stoned. I don't/didn't do drugs so I went and saw it straight and still enjoyed it very much.
It's basically beautiful cinematography using speeded up and slowed down footage of things like the moon rising behind office blocks, clouds shooting across the sky, thousands of people zooming up and down escalators etc. intercut to show the beauty and balance in nature and the "out of balance" city life (but even the city footage is glorious and has been used in so very very many ads since... like all the cars zooming along the streets of New York at night, stopping and going at bank after bank of traffic lights) And with almost hypnotic music by Philip Glass.
If you like that sort of thing, then this is the among the best examples. If you don't, then don't watch it. Some people like this stuff, some like slasher films, so go to see the next Jim Carrey/Adam Sandler movie, everyone is different.
But it's not SciFi, Anime or anything like that, so I'm not sure why it is Slash-dot. Except that the strong rhythmic patterns in the music and the camera trickery is the sort of stuff that a lot of us nerds happen to enjoy!
That was what this thread was about, but apparantly your short attention span meant that you'd missed that... the same way you miss the point of "artsy" stuff.
You are fine the way you are, and if you're enjoying life then that's wonderful.
I hate self-indulgent "artsy" crap, but I do like stuff that makes me wonder or dream and the Qatsi films have done this for me. Beautiful scenery, wonderful camera work and a soundtrack to relax into (almost "trance"). You might find it soporific and boring, that's certainly a valid viewpoint. I found it uplifting and intriguing.
I happen to like good design (in pens, cars, computers etc.) which all come from the "artsy" side of things. You don't have to like them, ok?
I like to listen to music, which isn't productive or useful. I like to watch a nice sunset, also not productive or useful. I like to drive to places, look at them, and come home again (not productive or useful). I like to watch sitcoms on TV (certainly not productive or useful!) Life, for me, is a balance between what must be done to survive (e.g. a job to earn money), and those bits that I do to enjoy my life that cost money/time but give me enjoyment.
"A moving picture version of a national geographic magazine". Oh, you didn't get the point then? Never mind, you probably wouldn't have enjoyed any of the rest of the film and it would have been a waste of your time. I'm sure you spent those 90 minutes more productively and usefully (feeding the hungry? housing the homeless? ending crime? All those are certainly better things to do with that time than watching a film you don't enjoy)
Have a wondeful life (really!) but don't be too hard on those of us that happen to occasionally enjoy something "artsy"... I'll watch sports and comedy and current events too, and I'll go out and do things also, "artsy" is just like the chocolate sprinkled on a cappuchino (grin!) fine for those that like it, but not necessary for those who like their coffee strong and black.
Philip Glass did Einstein on the Beach, Emo Philips did (in a show I saw on TV but I think it was a "live" video of his stage show) Einstein AT the Beach. It doesn't (to my recollection) contain that line you wanted, but I haven't watched it in at least ten years so it's possible...
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, use the resume features and I get from "off" to desktop ready to go in under a minute, and since I'm putting on the stereo or getting a can of soda during that "less than a minute", and I only reboot once or twice a month while I use the computer for several hours a day (and it keeps doing stuff when I'm not there) I reckon I don't have an XP "advert" on my screen for more than two minutes every four hundred hours (rather than three minutes an hour)
A bit obvious, but type "US Patent" into Google and get
http://www.uspto.gov/patft/
Type in the number (including commas) and you'll get the full text of the patent.
HTH!
I've got one client where the run NO filter - some folks (the names GOTTA be on the web site) get up to 100 spams a day. I'm just a normal user, I do have far too many domain names, but I never use them on usenet and the VAST majority of spam that arrives is to "randomly selected name"@mydomain.com and today, so far, I've received over 350 spams AN HOUR! (And that's after the Brightmail filter). Someone, somewhere, has picked one of my domains and I get just *so* much crap sent to it. 95% of my domains get nothing (or just stuff sent to "billing@mydomain2.com" where that's the admin address on the whois record (never used for email or posting EVER) but one domain in particular gets totally saturated. I'm talking to my ISP about putting in a filter further up line so that only the dozen or two "names@domain" that I've actually used for signing up for things like ebay and amazon can get through and everything else will be bounced. I use MailWasherPro for client side clean up, but since it runs first, and then email is downloaded, there are usually a few that arrive while downloading my email that haven't been "washed".
1985, had computer generated pots and pans flying around.
According to IMDb "The first Disney animated feature to use computer technology."
Now it's possible that there was hand painting over the digital stuff, but it was CGI (not full frame, but then neither was the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast)
This is the "don't remove tag from mattress law" all over again! RETAILERS may not tamper with the chip, in the same way they can't remove the "made in China by slave labour" tags or sew on fake "Levi's" labels. CONSUMERS can do what the hell they want with the devices once they have purchased the goods. Sheesh!
Friday morning, when the NL-zonefiles were updated: the MX-records of cyberangels.nl were now pointing to us. (We made a catch-all for all adresses.) The first few hours, literally thousands of mails reached us: 5919 mails, most of them bounces. By now, the avalanche has dwindled to a trickle.
...
... that looks like more than two days and less than four to me!
Until now - 06-07-2003, 23:00 GMT+1
Friday was 04-07-2003, 6305 messages received on the 4th of July, the 5th of July and the 6th of July
I never even mention smof.com on slashdot and I get several hundred spams a day sent to all sorts of names@ that domain.
It's even being used as the sending domain by some b*stard spammer (no, not an open mail relay, just as the forged header) so I'm getting dozens of bounced messages a day coming back to me and so far only one "stop spamming me" message from someone that doesn't understand about forged headers.
You can't have john.name (the same way I can't buy magician.uk, I can only buy magician.co.uk (which I did))
It's firstname.lastname.name and basically that's all they allow. In theory it has to be your real name too, but somehow I managed to get the.magician.name as well as my real name, but it does leave me with an email address of
the @ magician.name which isn't terribly good.
In fact, I have two. I, as an individual, had no problem in buying chris.oshea.name and the.magician.name from www.register.com
.name went away ...
Email forwarding is setup so if you email me at
the @ magician.name
it gets delivered to my home email account.
It would be a shame if it folded, but since I mainly bought these as "vanity" domains and don't publicise them, I wouldn't be too upset if
Sometimes you're sitting in the bar chatting to work colleagues and making notes for a presentation the next day.
... this way you can just meet people in the bar of the Marriott, update your files and then go back to your cheaper hotel somewhere else!
Sometimes you just want to open your PDA and check your email without having to use slow and expensive cellphone connections.
Sometimes it's nice to be able to catch up on all the latest information over breakfast before heading in to the training class
And sometimes it's nice to be able to sit next to the pool and listen to classic comedy, science fiction and drama on BBC Radio 7, while you're on the other side of the planet.
It's not something I'd use often, but WiFi is a standard and if it means I basically can just open my laptop/PDA and surf the web/read email/logon to my corporate VPN and pull down the latest reports etc. without having to go hide in my room and spend time fighting with one of the several different "high speed" connections different places around the world offer (or not) then that would be great.
It's especially good in Europe where each country has a different phone socket so you either have to carry a bag of different adapters with you, or hope the hotel has phone handsets with a standard US plug for dialup
... a few years back on one of the cable channels over here in the UK they did a TV 3D month including a special kind of TV 3D which involves having the camera moving horizontally and special glasses ... don't know how it worked but they did lots of "going around the four poster bed" type shots until one was quite dizzy!
Agnostic Muslim = Good
... I walked into a restaurant in Ilford today ... " ... and God said ""For the sake of ten good people," the Lord told him, "I still won't destroy the city."" Genesis 18:32.
... and if I live but a handful of miles from Southall, in the borough of Hounslow?
... and according to http://www.answering-christianity.com/jizyah.htm it is approximately the same as the Zakah which is a "tax" paid by Muslims, and the Jizyah is effectively the payment for opting out of military service in a Muslim state but accepting the protection of the army. So, in effect, no different from pacifists in the UK still having to pay for tanks and guns through their taxes.
r m.JIZYAH.html defines Jizyah as "a tax paid by non-Muslims living in a Muslim State. Since the non-Muslims are exempt from military service and taxes imposed on Muslims, they must pay this tax to compensate. It guarentees them security and protection. If the State cannot protect those who paid jizyah, then the amount they paid is returned to them."
m even the Taliban only set a "nominal amount" for the Jizyah.
... for those religions (such as Judaism) which want to keep Saturday holy, this means that they have a direct economic penalty because of this being a "Christian" country.
... that means the rest of us are doomed to hell in their eyes. As a Catholic I was told many times by others that I was "not a Christian". Religious intolerance
...
Religous Muslim = Bad
In your opinion and experience, not in mine. I know several "religious Muslims" that are among the nicest people I've ever met. I'm sorry you don't know them.
One nice man surrounded by a thousand evil men will surely be turned to evil, and may even start believing that evil is good. So at the end of the day, I don't have to convince you, as if the world becomes evil, you yoursef will be inextricably affected.
So you seem to be saying you're surrounded by "a thousand evil men" and will "surely be turned to evil
Of course if you live in a sheltered part of the Cotswolds
Jizyah: nothing about it escalating at any of the sites I've checked so far
The US education department http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/reference/glossary/te
And according to this report http://www.ummah.net.pk/dharb/newsv1/nation124.ht
Of course none of this is evidence that the people you know don't see Jizyah the way you have described, and taking a few sites on the internet as evidence of *anything* is a bad idea, so I will not say you are wrong, just that the research I have done so far on Jizyah hasn't found a site that is willing to describe it the way you have.
Here in the UK most shops were not allowed to open on Sundays until very recently, and even now most of them can only open for 6 hours (usually 10-4 or 11-5)
The Jehovah's Witnesses (I am told) believe that only 144,000 people will be saved
It's a good think you believe that the only good religion is a weak one and (I assume from your lack of mentioning them) that there are not Christian fundamentalists who believe every word of the bible is, er, gospel (sic). The sort of people that read "an eye for an eye" or any of the stuff below and take it as justification for a "holy war".
"Ezekiel 9:5 To the others he said while I listened, "Go through the city after him and strike people down; you must neither show pity nor spare anyone! 9:6 Old men, young men, young women, little children, and women-wipe them out, all of them! But do not touch anyone who has the mark-begin at my sanctuary!" So they began with the elders who were at the front of the temple."
"Numbers 15:32 When the Israelites were1 in the wilderness they found a man gathering wood on the sabbath day. 15:33 And those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron, and to all the community. 15:34 They put him in custody, because there was no clear instruction about what should be done to him. 15:35 Then the Lord said to Moses, "The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation must stone him with stones outside the camp. 15:36 So the whole community took him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died, as the Lord commanded Moses"
Mark 16:18
Jesus lets us know how to identify his followers: "They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
And sure enough there are snake-handling groups in the US (but I don't know of any that drink poison...) and there are obviously not enough God-fearing good Christians out there, as the hospitals are still full of the sick
English hasn't. "ex cathedra" is in most good English dictionaries, as is "rendezvous", "pyjamas" and, strangely enough, most of the current English words come from other current or dead languages ... who would have thought?
...
You have your view of Muslims in general, I have mine, they do not meet. Nothing I say will convince you, and you have failed to convince me. I have Muslim friends, none of them want to kill me or to tax me until I convert (or if they do they have hidden it well for many years).
If an entire people admire murderers, do those people themselves become carpet-bomable?
Like cowboys and indians right? Or Rambo? CIA hit squads? Oliver Cromwell? Robert E. Lee? George Washington? William the Conquerer? Throughout history murderers and killers have been admired. If you are going to use oratory, then try to not make it too generalised or it weakens the effect.
Anyway, the way I look at it is that religion and all religous books
Ok, so this is all your personal opinion, that's fine, my personal opinion is different.
If one follows a book purely, then that book must contain zero passages of violence, ambiguity, hatred or subversion techniques.
Well, apparantly that's what *you* believe, others have different beliefs. Logic hardly ever wins over belief so there is no point in discussing this because our beliefs differ and so your logic probably wouldn't win me over either.
Oh, and the Bible contains lots as well, particularly the old testament. One of the pronouncements of Vatican II on the Bible was that the New Testament didn't replace the Old Testament but that they should be taken together as the church's teachings. There's the stoning a woman to death for picking up sticks bit. The putting homosexuals to death bit. So many other bits of biblical hatred that if you really followed the bible you'd be out killing people now.
I cannot comment on "Jizyah" since I've never heard of it before.
There are not 300 million Muslims "oppressed" by British laws. Your estimates are wildly wrong.
I already pay nearly 40% of my wages to my "Christian" rulers.
... this has been fun, because it hasn't descended into mud slinging and has remained civil, I wish more /. comment trees were as good as this ...
... arms sales, manipulative foreign policy ("we'll give you food aid, but you have to buy our technology, we'll lend you the money to do so, but then you'll be paying us interest forever, we'll provide (nearly affordable) medicines to battle Aids but you'll have to run your society the way we say you should" etc.) or at least that's how it looks to much of the rest of the world, I know it looks very different from inside the USA. Hence the surprise about September 11th and all those Americans asking "why?" and saying "it's because they are jealous of our freedom and democracy", no, it's usually not.
... and many Muslims around the world live straddling two societies, their religion and their society. They don't agree with the fanatical zealots that would give their lives for their faith, but they can still admire someone whose faith is that strong, in the same way I can admire nuns who take a vow of silence and poverty, and will support their right to do so, without it meaning I think I should do the same thing myself. Admiring a strong faith is not the same thing as necessarily agreeing with the subsequent actions.
... freedom is always restricted by opportunity and by individual choices. Yes, there are some that have fewer choices than us ... but that doesn't mean we are (or aren't) "free".
They're quite typical Pakistani muslims, and have a militant anti-West attitude when they arrive in the UK.
Yes, I can quite believe that. It has always been the way the many of the more fanatical have been the ones to travel (back at least to the Pilgrim fathers!)
There is brainwashing and biased media everywhere (I remember returning to the UK after living in the US in the late 1960's/early 1970s and again in the early 1980's and being very surprised that the USSR was not considered the "great Satan" and evil here in the UK, because it had been so thoroughly drummed into me when I went to school in the US)
There is poverty and inequality throughout the world. In some places the leaders blame the US for it (and in some cases there really is some justification for that
What you say about figureheads is of course true, but I think that many (?most? nearly all?) of them were sincere, even if some of them from a self-defence posture. There are Muslim commandments about how people should be treated that these terrorists have broken
I do not know the facts about Arafat (I've seen many "facts" and some of them were contradictory, and we've got a similar situation with Gerry Adams etc. and Sinn Fein over here/Northern Ireland) How do you negotiate with those groups which are tied into terrorist activities? If you don't find someone to talk to, the terrorism continues and increases, if you do, then you have to talk to someone the terrorists trust and will listen to, which usually means someone who has been an important part of those terrorist groups. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, do you have a better idea?
*Organised* religions impose this. Organised religions like Christianity, Judaism etc.
I'm glad you seem to be able to speak ex cathedra about what is and what isn't a redundant religion. Is that your personal opinion or a "fact"? And if it is a "fact", why do so many people disagree with it?
I, personally, have a personal relgion based on the one I was brought up in, but adjusted for my own comfort (e.g. the Catholic faith says "no birth control beyond the rythym method" and no sex outside of marriage. How many UK/USA Catholics do you think actually follow that to the letter?) To some people, the restrictions of a religion are comforting, it reminds them that God is in their daily lives as they say their grace before meals, their nightly prayers, wash their feet, don't eat during daylight hours during Ramadan, avoid meat on Fridays etc. They believe that "a little suffering is good for the soul". You are perfectly allowed to disagree with them, but you can only call them *wrong* in your own opinion. If it helps them get closer to their God then those restrictions have served their purpose.
Just about every religion has "rules" that prescribe your freedom. Whether it is a "requirement" to give to the poor, to not covet your neighbours goods, to not kill, to spend an hour a week in a temple of some kind etc. But then life is the same (they expect me to be in work for a certain number of hours a day and to be working and not writing slashdot replies!), the bank won't give me more money than I've paid in (or at least not without charging me extra for the priviledge), my neighbours insist on not leaving the keys in their car so I'm not free to drive it
Religions rarely teach that "freedom" is wrong, they just teach that there are limits to freedom (where it affects your fellow man, where it conflicts with something "god" has said etc.) and since it is true that there is no complete freedom (which is proveable since we have laws and lawyers and lawcourts) what "freedoms" we each have is partly personal choice.
And whether you accept that you can be a good Christian (for example) and not believe in the real historical existance of Jesus (as a Church of England Bishop once controversially claimed) is part of that freedom. If you choose to be in a religion, then you have to decide how much of what they teach you will accept. The Taliban had a very strong belief in certain concepts as being part of their religion, which included the destruction of priceless artefacts. You and I know this to be bad and wrong, they knew it to be God's revealed will and word. If they are allowed to have "freedom of religion" then should we have a right to stop them expressing their religion (and of course the answer is, hell yes!)
An excellent question which God will answer or not.
... it seems we have lost our ability to follow "Gods laws" and many of us have become lazy "Christians" ... and then we criticise other religions because they have a dress code. Do you criticise equally the strict Jews who require their women to keep their heads/hair covered? How about the Amish?
... oh dear oh dear, by your very writing you are condemning them to being possessions. Why don't you ask the women themselves what they think about it? I think you'll find a much higher percentage in favour of the various coverings (very few are "bhurkas" which, I believe, cover the face ... many UK Muslim women wear "hejab" which covers the top of the head and wraps around the neck but leaves the face totally uncovered, see the BBC link below)
...
..." comment. Many are insular, and many it would seem rightly so (if you scan the BBC website for stuff on Muslims you'll find that a large number of the articles are about Muslims being attacked in the streets, in their mosques and in their homes ... how biased this reporting is is hard to tell, but I think it is about as unbiased as we're likely to get in the West ... and it shows a continuing oppression and terrorisation of "normal everyday" Muslims whereever they go ... if you kick a dog every day, eventually it will bite you, and then you can justify getting out the big gun and shooting it.
... but that doesn't seem to be the Western way ...
Great, arguing about religious fundamentalism and then bringing God into it <grin!> Yes, for those that believe in God (and whether I do or not is not important to *my* position) he is the final and supreme Judge.
The majority of Muslims in the UK support Osama binLaden, just look at the polls that were conducted after the WTC attacks.
Or you could look at the polls NOW and find that the vast majority are against him, that all the leaders of British Muslims have denounced terrorism, that there are a small number of fanatical fundamentalists who do support him.
I've been to Ilford and Bradford, I'm going to a party in Ilford tomorrow night, one of my best friends teaches in an Ilford school to a class that overwhelmingly Muslim. You have got a strange idea of reality, possibly from biased news reporting or something, but no, the majority don't beat their women or "cage" them (I've never even *seen* a place that sells cages, well, except for places such as Fettered Pleasures which I think you will find sells predominantly to "white Christian" people.
Our faiths used to have "commandments" and requirements, as a Catholic I should be eating fish on Friday, fasting during Lent, attending church on the holy days of obligation, etc. and our priests should not be abusing small children
Part of most "strong" religions is a requirement to give up something (whether it is alcohol (Methodists) or the "sins of the flesh" or pork (Judaism) to blood transfusions and medication etc.) and to take on tasks (anything from the door to door of Jehovah's witnesses, to praying five times a day to wearing of particular clothing.) The strict Jews can't operate light switches or do any other kind of "work" on the Sabbath. They dress in strange outfits (of black, with big black hats) and grow their hair weirdly (sort of dreadlocks), and I've already mentioned the requirement for wigs or headscarves on their (?married?) women.
*I* have had to wear a suit and tie to work, even when I worked in a computer department that never had customers visiting (it was a secure financial system and so visitors were *banned*), and I didn't like it. I had to wear a school uniform when I went to school, which again I detested.
"Their women"
than Bin Laden.
"English way of life" is multicultural. I was brought up in Hackney (a lot of "Indian", African, Jamaican in the shops, the schools, the churches etc.) and now live in Hounslow (a few miles from Southall, one of the largest concentrations of Asians in the UK. I get four Asian TV channels on my cable TV, and my local multiscreen cinema has four screens for Bollywood films). And no, I won't get a punch in the face, because I am polite, civil, and willing to accept cultural diversity. There are many young asians and muslims (not necessarily asian) that want to follow a "western" lifestyle, and if you actually visit Ilford and Southall (as I do regularly) you will see them doing so. Yes, sometimes against their parent's wishes (and how many "white" teenage girls have been banished from the family house and told never to return because they have become pregnant at 14-16, because they have a "black" boyfriend etc. How many "white" families are happy for their "children" (under 18) to bring back boyfriend/girlfriend to sleep with them in the family house? It's just that our "rules" are so) and the stigma against "illegitimate" children has dropped massively in the last 20 years, but I still know people that were spat on, beaten up etc. at school because they were born out of wedlock.
Ask Arsenal fans how they feel about Tottenham fans and you'll often hear a torrent of abuse and witness actual violence when matches are played. It has nothing to do with religion (the Tottenham fans are tarred with the soubriquet "Yiddos" from being so near to a major concentration of Judaism (Stamford Hill and surround areas) but the punch in the face you get has nothing to do with religion.
The "Islamic World" did not blow up the ancient Buddhas, one fundamentalist regime (The Taliban) did. If you can't tell the difference, remind me to come around and burn your house down for the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades, ok? Or for turning your back on the Jews etc. during WWII? Or for turning your back on Rwanda, Indonesia and all the other recent regimes that oppressed and killed tens of thousands (or more) while we didn't get involved. Do you realise how small a percentage of Muslims agreed with the destruction of those ancient treasures? Did you see the documentary reports on how the wonderful museums of kabul were destroyed with each piece of representive art (dating back many centuries) individually destroyed? Most Muslims were aghast at that, but it is the same sort of thing that happened here in the UK during the Reformation. A bunch of fanatics, sure of "God's word"
You know some very weird Muslims if you get a 70% agreement on views. I am worried by your "Sometimes I grow a long beard
Perhaps we wouldn't have so many rabid fundamentalists and fanatics (of all kinds) if we could reduce hatred in general
For more on UK Muslims, you could do worse than check out some of the BBC coverage such as
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2248735.stm
And read sites such as the Muslim Council of Great Britain, and the The Islamic Society of Britain
... one of the things about trademark laws is that it's a bit of a land rush. Since the city of Phoenix has never (to my knowledge) filed a trademark application for "Phoenix" for computer software, hardware or services, then I'm afraid the city will have to change it's name. :-) No, seriously, if a company in Phoenix wanted to set up a software company called Phoenix Software, then there *could* be a conflict, and it is up to the courts to finally adjudicate whether there could be potential confusion or "passing off". If I set up a company called "McDonalds Hard Cider" then even though McDonalds the restaurant chain don't sell or make hard cider, you can bet their lawyers would be buying new Mercedes with the profits!
...
Unconnected comment:
The International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM) was around long before International Business Machines
... why is being tolerant of outsiders a requirement for a country? I know *I* prefer it, and I assume you do, but that doesn't make it "right", just what we expect of a society. Some people expect a society to provide universal education and healthcare, to provide safety nets for the poorest and the unemployed, to ensure food and shelter, but this is so obviously not globally true (look how much of Africa and South America fails on the healthcare and education to name but two important social concepts, and the "right" to food and shelter is a luxury in far too many countries)
... and then there are the situations within countries ranging from Serbia to El Salvador (and you do remember Rwanda don't you? One MILLION dead, 100,000 still in prison on trial for genocide/murder/etc. where were we then?) ... it doesn't take religion to destroy a country, look at the Congo, or Ethiopia, or so many other "third world" countries ... yes there are Dark Forces out there, but they aren't (just) Muslims, and if you wiped every Muslim from the face of the planet, you'd just get the next bunch of Waco/Jonestown/KKK/VC/Black Panthers/Opus Dei/whatever declaring it God's will that the unbelievers be converted or destroyed.
...
... all we know is that many 10s of thousands lost their lives and I think it would have been a good idea to have taken Saddam out then while in the course of a "legitimate" war (he had invaded another country, they asked for help, voila, internationally sanctioned right to go kick the crap out of him).
"Dark powers are gathering" on every side. There is religious fundamentalism in the USA as well, blowing up abortion clinics and killing doctors, blowing up federal buildings in Oklahoma, planting bombs in Atlanta etc. And let's just take Northern Ireland as read shall we? The Chinese (not particularly Muslim) have made their views on Tibet well known, the Russians (also not predominantly Muslim) have shown how they feel about Chechnya
The UK has a significant Muslim population which is pacifist and tolerant of others. It also has a small minority of extremists that hide behind the majority to commit acts of terrorism. This is true of the "white christians" in the UK also (see British National Party, Class War etc.) Don't recall the National Socialist (Nazi) party claiming to be Muslims but they are out there too, and growing again in places like Germany
Never said the USA was "evil", but that's a very nice debating trick, thanks. I said "Is the USA the enemy of the world?" We were Hitler's enemy in WWII, that didn't make *us* evil, but it did make us his enemies. You seem to be arguing that the USA *is* in fact the enemy of the Islamic world, or am I misunderstanding your point?
Yes, in fact it _is_ a crime "to send a murderer to kill a murderer who will murder again", at least in most civilised countries (including the USA and the UK) check with any lawyer. However mitigating circumstances and various other things can be argued at trial time to get the offence reclassed as manslaughter or possibly even "self defence". Manslaughter is still a crime.
How many died during Desert Storm? How many of those were "innocent" or guilty of nothing more than a little looting? Who _really_ knows
Or is the USA the enemy of the rest of the world?
... ... to a lot of the world the USA is manipulistic, biased, greedy, smug, invasive, bullying, demanding, threatening, dangerous and overbearing. There are downsides as well.
These things can be one sided you know
The USA has *power*. This is frightening to those that don't have it. The USA takes sides (both as a country and as a collection of people) with countries like Israel and groups like the IRA (or so it appears to the rest of the world).
Here in the UK I have seen little real *evidence* that Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaida destroyed the Twin Towers (though I do believe he was responsible), but I see the US rattling sabres and about to get us involved in a war that will cause every terrorist with a knife, gun or bomb to come boiling out of the sewers and attack my family and friends in our houses, churches, tube stations, water supplies etc. The weapons of mass destruction worry me a lot, but so do random acts of smaller terrorism; as I've lived in London during the IRA bombings and had to live with the everyday knowledge that the bag on the seat opposite me on the bus may have a bomb in it.
You learn to live with that fear, but it never goes away (too many of the bombs went off near where friends and family lived or worked and I'm just lucky that no one I knew well was actually injured or killed, though many people were).
Terrorism is bad and wrong. But I'm not convinced that the War on Iraq will reduce terrorism one iota. It may bring some level of peace to Irag (perhaps the same level of peace that Vietnam got)
Saddam needs to be stopped for what he is doing to his own people (particularly the smaller tribes in the hills), and if he is building up weapons of mass destruction then those need to be destroyed (children shouldn't play with guns, though I'm worried about how few "grown ups" there are in the world of international diplomacy) but it must be done in a way that tells the rest of the region that the US is *not* anti-Islamic or else we will all reap the whirlwind.
My home Sony MD recorder has a "Time Machine" option, same idea. It is always storing the last six (I think) seconds in memory and when you hit "record" it starts by putting those six seconds on the MD and speeds up catching up with the live input so it records "before" you press the button.
Olympus have the same thing in some of their digital cameras, it is always storing the picture in memory and when you press the shutter button it can deduct your reaction time and take the picture "just before" you pressed the button.
Another company (Nikon?) have a similar multishot system that works the other way around, you press down the button and it starts writing pictures into memory as quickly as it can, when you release the button the last five images are stored to your memory card.
only a few weeks ago /.ers were complaining about why anyone would buy the new Sony bluetooth enabled digital camera ... and don't forget Sony use memorys(t)ick not the neat 1Gb IBM microdrives, so this basically gives you something that can back up your digital camera while you're travelling. So you take your pictures of, say, the Eiffel tower, sit down for a coffee and by the time you're finished the camera has transferred everything to the hard disk and you can clear the memory stick and go take pictures of the Louvre!
Just like Bach and Mozart in fact. Music by the numbers.
... ... and you certainly won't like Irish music sessions where it is the same "widdle-dee-widdle-dee" music for hours on end (A twice, then B, then back to A, now switch to another almost identical jig and repeat)
And let's not get started on some of the "dance" and "trance" stuff
Glass music is fine for what it is, background music that has a "texture" but rarely a tune . I only sit down to "listen" to Glass music when I want my mind to go blank and unwind, and that's pretty much perfect for these films!
There are better descriptions scattered below between the flame bait and other comments.
... like all the cars zooming along the streets of New York at night, stopping and going at bank after bank of traffic lights)
The first film (Koyaanisqatsi) came out when I was at college and was recommended as a film to watch while stoned. I don't/didn't do drugs so I went and saw it straight and still enjoyed it very much.
It's basically beautiful cinematography using speeded up and slowed down footage of things like the moon rising behind office blocks, clouds shooting across the sky, thousands of people zooming up and down escalators etc. intercut to show the beauty and balance in nature and the "out of balance" city life (but even the city footage is glorious and has been used in so very very many ads since
And with almost hypnotic music by Philip Glass.
If you like that sort of thing, then this is the among the best examples. If you don't, then don't watch it. Some people like this stuff, some like slasher films, so go to see the next Jim Carrey/Adam Sandler movie, everyone is different.
But it's not SciFi, Anime or anything like that, so I'm not sure why it is Slash-dot. Except that the strong rhythmic patterns in the music and the camera trickery is the sort of stuff that a lot of us nerds happen to enjoy!
That was what this thread was about, but apparantly your short attention span meant that you'd missed that ... the same way you miss the point of "artsy" stuff.
... I'll watch sports and comedy and current events too, and I'll go out and do things also, "artsy" is just like the chocolate sprinkled on a cappuchino (grin!) fine for those that like it, but not necessary for those who like their coffee strong and black.
You are fine the way you are, and if you're enjoying life then that's wonderful.
I hate self-indulgent "artsy" crap, but I do like stuff that makes me wonder or dream and the Qatsi films have done this for me. Beautiful scenery, wonderful camera work and a soundtrack to relax into (almost "trance"). You might find it soporific and boring, that's certainly a valid viewpoint. I found it uplifting and intriguing.
I happen to like good design (in pens, cars, computers etc.) which all come from the "artsy" side of things. You don't have to like them, ok?
I like to listen to music, which isn't productive or useful. I like to watch a nice sunset, also not productive or useful. I like to drive to places, look at them, and come home again (not productive or useful). I like to watch sitcoms on TV (certainly not productive or useful!) Life, for me, is a balance between what must be done to survive (e.g. a job to earn money), and those bits that I do to enjoy my life that cost money/time but give me enjoyment.
"A moving picture version of a national geographic magazine". Oh, you didn't get the point then? Never mind, you probably wouldn't have enjoyed any of the rest of the film and it would have been a waste of your time. I'm sure you spent those 90 minutes more productively and usefully (feeding the hungry? housing the homeless? ending crime? All those are certainly better things to do with that time than watching a film you don't enjoy)
Have a wondeful life (really!) but don't be too hard on those of us that happen to occasionally enjoy something "artsy"
Philip Glass did Einstein on the Beach, Emo Philips did (in a show I saw on TV but I think it was a "live" video of his stage show) Einstein AT the Beach. It doesn't (to my recollection) contain that line you wanted, but I haven't watched it in at least ten years so it's possible ...
Really? I thought that 24fps was cinema speed (film) and 25fps (50 interleaved) was for NTSC video.