Here's a suggestion: Why not actually go and read a history book (not one produced in the US) and see if you get a different perspective.
You mean one spouting some revisionist view of World War 2, the kind that's so popular with many Europeans these days? You people do so love to rewrite history to suit yourselves, especially when there's any sort of humiliation involved....
The beauty of the system is that spoiled-brat yuppies 'gentrify' (read 'homogenize and drive out anyone who isn't like them') a neighborhood by enacting laws that're hostile to people who aren't part of their closed socioeconomic group.
On the net no one gives a rats ass how much they whine or complain, and the laws they pass are virtually unenforceable (only good in the USA, and sometimes Europe - laughable in the other 300 nations of the world). So their bitching and moaning means little, if anything, compared to what they can do in the real world.
On the net one can thumb their noses at the yuppies and move on, leaving them to howl into the wind. Let 'em scream about 'morals' and 'standards' and 'protecting the children'; nothing they can do in the Real World (TM) will have any measurable effect on the virtual one.
And given what they've done in the real world, I'd say this is a good thing.
- Texas is 267,277 square miles in size
- there are 640 acres in one square mile
- Texas has 171,057,280 total acres
- 1/4 of an acre for every 4 people is the
same as 16 people per acre
- under your calculations Texas could hold
2,736,916,480 people.
As the world currently has six billion people, not seven, you could allot approximately 0.0285 acres per person if you wanted to divide land equally in Texas. This is about 1,241 square feet, or an area of 35 x 35 feet in total.
Note that this doesn't include any land you'd have to exempt for roads, work places, stores, utilities, or any of the other hundreds of space-taking enterprises that are necessary to actually running a city of any size. So this is purely an exercise in silliness.
In addition, it says nothing of the land required to feed all of these people, mine the coal and oil required for their power, the minerals for their appliances, and so forth.
How many people you can squeeze into any one particular area of land and how many you can actually support at a decent standard of living are two entirely different things. When a rational person refers to 'overpopulation' she means the second thing and not the first. Overpopulation isn't, has never been, a myth.
Some folks have stated that network gaming doesn't teach kids jack. Depends on how you approach it. This is how I did it at a middle school (it *won't* work for grade school - they aren't up to it yet):
I had an open lab during lunches. That meant you could come in and do email, limited chat, web browsing and, yes, gaming. I'd help with anything anyone wanted to know - except gaming. My line:
"Sure you can play games, but I don't install or support 'em. You have to do that yourself."
In spite of the whining I stood my ground, and soon thereafter large numbers of young boys and girls were hard at work trying to figure out:
a) how to locate games and demos on the internet
b) how to download these games
c) how to find the bloody files they just downloaded
d) how to install the games
e) how to alter the parameters of the cranky, old Winbloze computers when they wouldn't run the games properly
f) how to play the same games across the network so they could have fun with their friends.
So what did this teach them?
a) how to locate files on the internet and download them.
b) how to unzip compressed files, which also involved locating and installing an uncompressing program (like Winzip). Along the way they came to understand *why* the file was compressed - so that it could be made smaller and thus downloaded faster, and that so all the files needed for the game could be downloaded at once. This knowledge, of course, applies to *any* downloaded file.
c) the directory structure of the average computer and how it's set up, as well as how to use the 'find file' function when you lose something (incredibly useful for all those papers they later worked on and often saved out to an unintended place - now they could find them on their own). Also how to use the file manager to move stuff around/copy it/ transfer it to the network so that their friends could get the file without having to download it as well (much to the consternation of IT, when 100 meg demos began appearing on the system).
d) how to run through an install and what to say when a shareware game or demo asks for specific information, and how to obtain that information (e.g., "what's IPX?").
e) how to fix a variety of things when the game wouldn't run properly because the equipment is old (resetting video resolution, adding DOS drivers for sound, etc.).
f) the basics of networking and how to fool the system into letting them really bog it down with things like multiplayer Diablo and and the like.
So, games don't teach kids things? Well, maybe not programming, but many *user-oriented* tasks are the same for other applications as they are for games. You'd be surprised how handy these skills came in during regular class activities later on, and the often creative uses these middle-schoolers put their knowledge to. Sometimes the application of what they learned was even close to appalling ("you did WHAT to the principal's account???"). But quite imaginative (grin).
If you're dealing with grade school kids, forget programming and some of the other technical lameness suggested by a few other posters. Having taught kids of varying ages I guarantee that if you take this path you'll a) meet with complete incomprehension by all but one or two of your students, and b) bore the hell out of them.
The point isn't to teach them programming, or spreadsheets, or word processors; or to fill their heads with all sorts of slashdot/linux propaganda. They won't care about any of this. Grasping the basic idea behind an operating system will strain them enough without subjecting them to the ordeal of listening to you lecture on why one OS is better than another.
The main thing is to hook them and keep them hooked, enough so that after the class ends they'll continue to learn on their own because computers are 'cool'. You can do this through two time-honored methods: neat graphics programs in which they can do fascinating things with a minimal amount of training; and games! Games games games! Did I mention games?
Many of the more anal will think that games are a waste of time, but in fact I've used these on numerous occasions to introduce the basics of computers and better still, to teach them that computers can be incredible toys. Once you do this they'll be eager to get *more* games, in the process learning how to obtain them, install them, debug them, and perhaps eventually hack them so they can waste their friends with a neat multiplayer cheat.
At this age getting them excited and keeping them excited is enough. If you make the class interesting they'll be eager to pick up more on their own after it's done.
Remember, to a kid (and to most adults) they're not interested in the *computers*, but what *the computers can do for them*. Very few grade schoolers find anything at all interesting in coding, hardware, or OS's. A perfectly acceptable viewpoint, in my opinion, and one you can easily capitalize on.
Chuck the boring stuff, go for the glitz. The glitz is the hook to get them into the boring stuff later on. Ignore the people who push for the dull and the political; these are the folks who make kids hate computer class with a passion.
I'm not part of any movement, nor do I take marching orders from someone who assumes that 'we' all strive for the same thing.
'We' don't. What you want or don't want is no concern of mine, and rightly so. Your standards aren't my standards, and if I happen to enjoy giving the shaft to MS for past wrongs done then that's the way it's gonna play.
As for what my site does, it interprets an ENV variable that describes the browser that's knocking at the door. If the browser says "hi, I'm MSIE X" then it returns an error page saying "sorry, your browser sucks but here's a link to Opera and this will do the trick."
I've already implemented a simple solution that puts a dead halt to MS shenanigans on my website. If IE (any version) is identified as a browser the user is redirected to an 'error' page which states that IE is incapable of displaying the page properly and hey, would they like to download a free copy of Opera today? Same goes for AOL-identified browsers.
Is it illegal? Heck no, IE *isn't* capable of displaying the pages properly - because I've blocked its ability to do so. The reason is true, I just omitted explaining the cause.
It *is* my web site, after all. And damn, it's funny how many people will download Opera on the spot and install it when you set things up like that.
Hey, if MS can be sleazy then why can't I do the same as a bit of payback?
I suppose if TV matters that much to you, then go for it. I never cared enough about the programming to think I had to 'safeguard' against anything. I figure if I forget to record something, it must not have been that important to begin with.
But then I think that's true of *all* TV - that it's really not that important to get my panties in a wad about it - so I guess I'm in the minority.
Max
Re:This isn't a troll, and not that rare an opinio
on
Lord of the Geeks
·
· Score: 1
Given the stilted dialog and otherwise awkward writing, I don't think most people would think it was that great without being told a hundred times that it was, or without being told that it was the first of its kind.
But most people do, hence its popularity. And I'm rather of the opinion that they're just as capable as yourself of independent judgement, regardless of whether or not they've been "told a hundred times" that it's a good read.
Well, by golly! I already have those options with my VCR. It involves two steps:
- checking the weekly listings
- setting my VCR to record
I don't watch enough TV to actually need 6 hours of tape, so I don't even have to swap casettes during the week. All this takes 5-10 minutes.
Guess I don't need a TiVo after all.
Max
Actually get something back? You mean, like the hundreds of dollars it costs to buy the thing in the first place? Geez, the company that made my VCR seems to be doing just fine without requiring me to subscribe to a service, or stiffing me for a monthly fee...I guess TiVo's business model must suck the high hard one.
And as for paying for entertainment, I believe that's called the 'cable' bill. On top of that are 'commercials', which I have to suffer through even though I pay the 'cable' bill, and even though there are *more* of them now than there were in the pre-cable days when every channel was broadcast over the airwaves *for free*.
(And you KNOW you'd be better off without the internet. Just ask your Grandma whether you should screw around on the net or read a book, I doubt she'd direct you to your computer).
Max
Re:This isn't a troll, and not that rare an opinio
on
Lord of the Geeks
·
· Score: 1
My own opinion on first reading was that Tolkien wrote in a stiff, unnatural style about a world that had many interesting pieces, but didn't really fit together into a believable whole. Many of the people I spoke to agreed with me.
Perhaps many people did. Even more did not. Hence the popularity of his works. You seem to be in the minority here.
I still think The Hobbit was his best work.
However, I had not been told a hundred times before I read it that it was the Best Thing Ever, as I am reminded several times weekly on the internet.
YMMV. As always. You don't care for it. Many others do. Big deal.
I wince every time I hear of anything containing wizards or goblins referred to as derived from Tolkien's work. Wizards and goblins were fairy-tale standards long before he came along, and they resonate deeply from the hundreds of years in which they were experimented with and tuned for maximum entertainment value.
It's rather simple: most of the fantasy published today *is* a poor rip-off of Tolkien. It has nothing to do with common elements like wizards or dragons or goblins, but the epic motif in which they're employed. Tolkien did it in a very specific way that hadn't been done before, and now every wannabe with a word-processor and a dearth of original thinking schlecks along the same path.
If you want to try out a fantasy author who gets it right using the very same concepts in a very un-Tolkien-esque fashion, check out Tad Williams trilogy. No original ideas there, either, but damn that's a good read - and it ain't another Trilogy ripoff.
I regard his work as merely a primitive early example of the western-european folklore-based fantasy novel, not the root from which all such works grow.
Then you'd be in the minority. It's also clear you haven't been to a bookstore lately. Else you'd see all the fantasy novels which are cheap imitations of Tolkien's work, vastly outnumbering those which aren't. Especially those shitty D&D novels - ye gods but those things suck.
As for the rest of this, if you're so dismissive of Tolkien why the hell bother to write the commentary in the first place? You wouldn't happen to be failed author by any chance, would you?
They're half-orcs, which Saruman created by breeding orcs to Dunlendings (tribesmen to the west of Isengard, north and west of western Rohan, near Helm's Deep). Aragorn didn't recognize them because he'd never seen the results of Saruman's secret experiments before. The 'white hand' was Saruman's insignia.
And unlike what another poster wrote, they weren't Uruk-Hai. Uruk-Hai were 'orcs version 2.0', created by Sauron to improve upon his former master's (Morgoth's) design of orcs. Uruk-hai were not crossbreeds but the careful result of millenia of breeding programs in Mordor. Like Saruman's half-orcs they were larger, stronger, smarter, and hardier than regular orcs, more capable of discipline and courage and unaffected by bright sunlight (like the Olog-Hai, or improved trolls that fought outside the Gates of Morannon in broad daylight - something ordinary trolls couldn't do).
Please remember that this *is* Utah we're talking about. Things like 'free speech' and 'separation of church and state' don't apply there.
This is the same state that voted to ban *all* school clubs in the K12 system rather than allow a single GLB student club to formed at a high school. Real open-minded, tolerant, Constitution-loving folks, those Mormons.
Of course, where I come from there's a big Mormon contingent in town courtesy of HP (they import from Utah rather than deal with 'heathens'), so my views on the bigoted, uptight, got-a-rod-of-righteousness-stuck-up-my-ass twits might just be a weeee bit biased....
After reading the number of 'pro' posts on this forum I've come to the conclusion that the straight S&M crowd is *much* bigger than I ever imagined....
I mean, Jesus H. Christ! Shocking yourself *on purposes*!? Y'all are a bunch of loons....
Max
Re:Bring back the 48-star nation
on
American Gods
·
· Score: 1
America helped in a *small* way? What's that, European revisionist history trying to make up for the actual pathetic performance y'all gave against a *single* nation in dire economic straits?
Tell me another. Tell me again how every one of you wankers folded in record time excepting Britain, and that just because the Germans couldn't get to it. If they'd been able to cross the Channel the Brits would've pissed down their leg as fast as the French did.
*Americans* won that war. With the help of Russians. The rest of you acted liked victims or bystanders.
By the gods, if ever we have have another war I hope we ally with the Germans this time. No pansies for allies and the whole thing'll be over in 6 weeks.
Max
Since when are the exploits of some socially maladjusted low-brow script kiddie "stuff that matters"? C'mon, for chrissakes - this is just another idiot teen wanker spending every waking hour on the net searching for code that *others* write just so he can prove what a 'big man' he is to the world. If he had a social life or was actually getting laid he wouldn't have time for this kind of trivial crap; but the mere fact that he *did* spend time busting into something as uninteresting as Sourceforge only proves just how pathetic the little twit really is.
These brats are a dime a dozen. They aren't news and they certain don't matter. Try remembering that the next time some sexually frustrated little boy hacks into a system that isn't even worth the effort in the first place..
Cite a single post where I ever said anything of the sort. You can't. Idiot. Because I never wrote any such thing.
In fact, if you've the brains to run a search against 'maxpublic' you'll discover that I just wrote an article claiming that 'free software' has squat to do with human rights.
So many people seem to be focused on allocated domain names, perhaps forgetting in the process that these are simply aliases for IP addresses. I'd propose the following 'fix' for the problem which would require some modifications to DNS and browser software, but would make organizations like ICANN unnecessary:
- allow anyone to 'register' any domain name they choose, linking it to their IP address. They could do his with their local ISP through an automated process.
- Now there might be 1000 amazon.coms. So what? Have the local DNS return the 20 most trafficked name/IP combinations with the option to widen the search results. Any decent-sized IP will generally get the same results as any other, which means that the *first name on the list* will belong to the amazon.com online store, which is what the user was probably looking for anyway. The Nature Conservancy Amazon Rainforest project 'amazon.com' might be the 4th one down on the list. A short description could be added to the DN by the registrant so you could discern between different 'amazon.coms' by simple mouseover.
- there's no need for a central name registry as each ISP would forward DN lists in the same fashion that Usenet posts are propogated throughout the world, every 24 or 48 hours. You could even forward traffic analyses if you wanted at the same time, although this wouldn't be necessary unless you had a really small ISP with a bizarre subset of clients.
- the user, when adding to his bookmark collection, would simply extend the name to differentiate between two different amazon.com's, e.g., "amazon.com - bookstore".
The end result would be that real estate would be absolutely worthless - it only counts if it gets so much traffic that it ends up in the top 20 hits or so. IP addresses might *initially* be worth something, until users figured out that the much-trafficked IP address for amazon.com - the bookstore - has been sold for a tidy sum to amazon.com - the NC rainforest project. Which would take all of two or three days, making the sale pointless.
Ten thousand clueless users could register amazon.com with their ISP DNS and it would matter not a whit, because they'll never get the traffic required to put them within a reasonable search list. There's no way to 'drown out' the original amazon.com - the bookstore.
And anyone could have any name they want, if they don't care about traffic.
Combine this with IPv6 and you have virtually unlimited freedom in terms of names and addresses.
Note that this would still encourage originality for businesses, but the only way they get to 'keep' their precedence on the return list is through traffic. Squatting would be pointless.
Jesus - yet another goddamned idiot whining about the GPL.
Look, moron, it's really quite simple - if you don't like the terms of the GPL *don't use any fucking GPL'd code*. Stop your bitching and write your own damned code.
To my mind open source is not only a good thing, but a necessary one. Having software running on a machine, especially a business machine, that you can't break down and peruse at will - software that you have to trust doesn't have backdoors or built-in incompatibilities with the software of a competitor to that vendor, or that doesn't collect information on what you're doing on that machine and send it off to the vendor surreptitiously - is rather bad practice. This especially in light of how many times I've caught a piece of software trying to contact the vendor company over the internet when it had no business doing so.
So I see the value of open source, if only for the sake of security in my business and personal life and for my own peace of mind.
Free software, however, while quite nice is not something I equate with anything as grand as personal freedoms, universal democracy, or human rights. Equating free software with philosophical questions concerning the human condition is nonsensical. Unless you're a fanatic able to connect the dots without respect to reality-checks, the idea that free software somehow promotes freedom overall for the human race is just damned silly. Where is the evidence? Where other than in rhetoric can one find proof that this is so?
I seriously doubt that free software of any kind will promote the general welfare of the human race in any measurable sense. Open source software, however, directly promotes the welfare of the consumer by allowing the consumer to see exactly what it is that he or she is getting and how it operates on his or her system. If there are security holes, backdoors, or badly written chunks of code the consumer can discover these and dump the sods silly enough to write this trash in the first place.
Open source keeps companies honest and competitive. If the (hopefully competent) IT department of a company can review the code of two similar products it'll be able to determine precisely - not by guesswork - which is the better product. Same for the savvy consumer.
Promoting open source would allow everyone, once and for all, to compare the code of Linux and Windows and see just which OS is the better. Making both OS's free doesn't further any viable economic model beyond what open source does (except for those who don't like to pay for services rendered), and it certainly doesn't have any bearing on the advancement of human rights in any way, shape or form.
Open source is necessary. Free software is nifty, but it isn't at all required. It won't cure cancer, end world hunger, or result in the democratic overthrow of tin-pot dictatorships. And why should it? Isn't Linux (and no, I *won't* call it GNU/Linux) cool enough without also having to be the tool of a small but vocal group of technoreligious fanatics bent on reshaping the world according to their will?
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a suggestion: Why not actually go and read a history book (not one produced in the US) and see if you get a different perspective.
You mean one spouting some revisionist view of World War 2, the kind that's so popular with many Europeans these days? You people do so love to rewrite history to suit yourselves, especially when there's any sort of humiliation involved....
Max
The beauty of the system is that spoiled-brat yuppies 'gentrify' (read 'homogenize and drive out anyone who isn't like them') a neighborhood by enacting laws that're hostile to people who aren't part of their closed socioeconomic group.
On the net no one gives a rats ass how much they whine or complain, and the laws they pass are virtually unenforceable (only good in the USA, and sometimes Europe - laughable in the other 300 nations of the world). So their bitching and moaning means little, if anything, compared to what they can do in the real world.
On the net one can thumb their noses at the yuppies and move on, leaving them to howl into the wind. Let 'em scream about 'morals' and 'standards' and 'protecting the children'; nothing they can do in the Real World (TM) will have any measurable effect on the virtual one.
And given what they've done in the real world, I'd say this is a good thing.
Max
Some simple math tells me:
- Texas is 267,277 square miles in size
- there are 640 acres in one square mile
- Texas has 171,057,280 total acres
- 1/4 of an acre for every 4 people is the
same as 16 people per acre
- under your calculations Texas could hold
2,736,916,480 people.
As the world currently has six billion people, not seven, you could allot approximately 0.0285 acres per person if you wanted to divide land equally in Texas. This is about 1,241 square feet, or an area of 35 x 35 feet in total.
Note that this doesn't include any land you'd have to exempt for roads, work places, stores, utilities, or any of the other hundreds of space-taking enterprises that are necessary to actually running a city of any size. So this is purely an exercise in silliness.
In addition, it says nothing of the land required to feed all of these people, mine the coal and oil required for their power, the minerals for their appliances, and so forth.
How many people you can squeeze into any one particular area of land and how many you can actually support at a decent standard of living are two entirely different things. When a rational person refers to 'overpopulation' she means the second thing and not the first. Overpopulation isn't, has never been, a myth.
Max
Anyone who actually feels the need to make reference to how they scored on an IQ test in a public forum is quite pathetic, wouldn't you agree?
Max
Oh, I took it to mean that the commentary and reporting cluefulness will "suck" even more on Slashdot in the future.
Perhaps that means more of Katz?
Max
Just another note:
Some folks have stated that network gaming doesn't teach kids jack. Depends on how you approach it. This is how I did it at a middle school (it *won't* work for grade school - they aren't up to it yet):
I had an open lab during lunches. That meant you could come in and do email, limited chat, web browsing and, yes, gaming. I'd help with anything anyone wanted to know - except gaming. My line:
"Sure you can play games, but I don't install or support 'em. You have to do that yourself."
In spite of the whining I stood my ground, and soon thereafter large numbers of young boys and girls were hard at work trying to figure out:
a) how to locate games and demos on the internet
b) how to download these games
c) how to find the bloody files they just downloaded
d) how to install the games
e) how to alter the parameters of the cranky, old Winbloze computers when they wouldn't run the games properly
f) how to play the same games across the network so they could have fun with their friends.
So what did this teach them?
a) how to locate files on the internet and download them.
b) how to unzip compressed files, which also involved locating and installing an uncompressing program (like Winzip). Along the way they came to understand *why* the file was compressed - so that it could be made smaller and thus downloaded faster, and that so all the files needed for the game could be downloaded at once. This knowledge, of course, applies to *any* downloaded file.
c) the directory structure of the average computer and how it's set up, as well as how to use the 'find file' function when you lose something (incredibly useful for all those papers they later worked on and often saved out to an unintended place - now they could find them on their own). Also how to use the file manager to move stuff around/copy it/ transfer it to the network so that their friends could get the file without having to download it as well (much to the consternation of IT, when 100 meg demos began appearing on the system).
d) how to run through an install and what to say when a shareware game or demo asks for specific information, and how to obtain that information (e.g., "what's IPX?").
e) how to fix a variety of things when the game wouldn't run properly because the equipment is old (resetting video resolution, adding DOS drivers for sound, etc.).
f) the basics of networking and how to fool the system into letting them really bog it down with things like multiplayer Diablo and and the like.
So, games don't teach kids things? Well, maybe not programming, but many *user-oriented* tasks are the same for other applications as they are for games. You'd be surprised how handy these skills came in during regular class activities later on, and the often creative uses these middle-schoolers put their knowledge to. Sometimes the application of what they learned was even close to appalling ("you did WHAT to the principal's account???"). But quite imaginative (grin).
Max
If you're dealing with grade school kids, forget programming and some of the other technical lameness suggested by a few other posters. Having taught kids of varying ages I guarantee that if you take this path you'll a) meet with complete incomprehension by all but one or two of your students, and b) bore the hell out of them.
The point isn't to teach them programming, or spreadsheets, or word processors; or to fill their heads with all sorts of slashdot/linux propaganda. They won't care about any of this. Grasping the basic idea behind an operating system will strain them enough without subjecting them to the ordeal of listening to you lecture on why one OS is better than another.
The main thing is to hook them and keep them hooked, enough so that after the class ends they'll continue to learn on their own because computers are 'cool'. You can do this through two time-honored methods: neat graphics programs in which they can do fascinating things with a minimal amount of training; and games! Games games games! Did I mention games?
Many of the more anal will think that games are a waste of time, but in fact I've used these on numerous occasions to introduce the basics of computers and better still, to teach them that computers can be incredible toys. Once you do this they'll be eager to get *more* games, in the process learning how to obtain them, install them, debug them, and perhaps eventually hack them so they can waste their friends with a neat multiplayer cheat.
At this age getting them excited and keeping them excited is enough. If you make the class interesting they'll be eager to pick up more on their own after it's done.
Remember, to a kid (and to most adults) they're not interested in the *computers*, but what *the computers can do for them*. Very few grade schoolers find anything at all interesting in coding, hardware, or OS's. A perfectly acceptable viewpoint, in my opinion, and one you can easily capitalize on.
Chuck the boring stuff, go for the glitz. The glitz is the hook to get them into the boring stuff later on. Ignore the people who push for the dull and the political; these are the folks who make kids hate computer class with a passion.
Max
I'm not part of any movement, nor do I take marching orders from someone who assumes that 'we' all strive for the same thing.
'We' don't. What you want or don't want is no concern of mine, and rightly so. Your standards aren't my standards, and if I happen to enjoy giving the shaft to MS for past wrongs done then that's the way it's gonna play.
As for what my site does, it interprets an ENV variable that describes the browser that's knocking at the door. If the browser says "hi, I'm MSIE X" then it returns an error page saying "sorry, your browser sucks but here's a link to Opera and this will do the trick."
It works. Amazingly well, actually.
Max
I've already implemented a simple solution that puts a dead halt to MS shenanigans on my website. If IE (any version) is identified as a browser the user is redirected to an 'error' page which states that IE is incapable of displaying the page properly and hey, would they like to download a free copy of Opera today? Same goes for AOL-identified browsers.
Is it illegal? Heck no, IE *isn't* capable of displaying the pages properly - because I've blocked its ability to do so. The reason is true, I just omitted explaining the cause.
It *is* my web site, after all. And damn, it's funny how many people will download Opera on the spot and install it when you set things up like that.
Hey, if MS can be sleazy then why can't I do the same as a bit of payback?
:-)
Max
I suppose if TV matters that much to you, then go for it. I never cared enough about the programming to think I had to 'safeguard' against anything. I figure if I forget to record something, it must not have been that important to begin with.
But then I think that's true of *all* TV - that it's really not that important to get my panties in a wad about it - so I guess I'm in the minority.
Max
Given the stilted dialog and otherwise awkward writing, I don't think most people would think it was that great without being told a hundred times that it was, or without being told that it was the first of its kind.
But most people do, hence its popularity. And I'm rather of the opinion that they're just as capable as yourself of independent judgement, regardless of whether or not they've been "told a hundred times" that it's a good read.
Max
Well, by golly! I already have those options with my VCR. It involves two steps: - checking the weekly listings - setting my VCR to record I don't watch enough TV to actually need 6 hours of tape, so I don't even have to swap casettes during the week. All this takes 5-10 minutes. Guess I don't need a TiVo after all. Max
Actually get something back? You mean, like the hundreds of dollars it costs to buy the thing in the first place? Geez, the company that made my VCR seems to be doing just fine without requiring me to subscribe to a service, or stiffing me for a monthly fee...I guess TiVo's business model must suck the high hard one.
And as for paying for entertainment, I believe that's called the 'cable' bill. On top of that are 'commercials', which I have to suffer through even though I pay the 'cable' bill, and even though there are *more* of them now than there were in the pre-cable days when every channel was broadcast over the airwaves *for free*.
(And you KNOW you'd be better off without the internet. Just ask your Grandma whether you should screw around on the net or read a book, I doubt she'd direct you to your computer).
Max
My own opinion on first reading was that Tolkien wrote in a stiff, unnatural style about a world that had many interesting pieces, but didn't really fit together into a believable whole. Many of the people I spoke to agreed with me.
Perhaps many people did. Even more did not. Hence the popularity of his works. You seem to be in the minority here.
I still think The Hobbit was his best work. However, I had not been told a hundred times before I read it that it was the Best Thing Ever, as I am reminded several times weekly on the internet.
YMMV. As always. You don't care for it. Many others do. Big deal.
I wince every time I hear of anything containing wizards or goblins referred to as derived from Tolkien's work. Wizards and goblins were fairy-tale standards long before he came along, and they resonate deeply from the hundreds of years in which they were experimented with and tuned for maximum entertainment value.
It's rather simple: most of the fantasy published today *is* a poor rip-off of Tolkien. It has nothing to do with common elements like wizards or dragons or goblins, but the epic motif in which they're employed. Tolkien did it in a very specific way that hadn't been done before, and now every wannabe with a word-processor and a dearth of original thinking schlecks along the same path.
If you want to try out a fantasy author who gets it right using the very same concepts in a very un-Tolkien-esque fashion, check out Tad Williams trilogy. No original ideas there, either, but damn that's a good read - and it ain't another Trilogy ripoff.
I regard his work as merely a primitive early example of the western-european folklore-based fantasy novel, not the root from which all such works grow.
Then you'd be in the minority. It's also clear you haven't been to a bookstore lately. Else you'd see all the fantasy novels which are cheap imitations of Tolkien's work, vastly outnumbering those which aren't. Especially those shitty D&D novels - ye gods but those things suck.
As for the rest of this, if you're so dismissive of Tolkien why the hell bother to write the commentary in the first place? You wouldn't happen to be failed author by any chance, would you?
Max
They're half-orcs, which Saruman created by breeding orcs to Dunlendings (tribesmen to the west of Isengard, north and west of western Rohan, near Helm's Deep). Aragorn didn't recognize them because he'd never seen the results of Saruman's secret experiments before. The 'white hand' was Saruman's insignia.
:-)
And unlike what another poster wrote, they weren't Uruk-Hai. Uruk-Hai were 'orcs version 2.0', created by Sauron to improve upon his former master's (Morgoth's) design of orcs. Uruk-hai were not crossbreeds but the careful result of millenia of breeding programs in Mordor. Like Saruman's half-orcs they were larger, stronger, smarter, and hardier than regular orcs, more capable of discipline and courage and unaffected by bright sunlight (like the Olog-Hai, or improved trolls that fought outside the Gates of Morannon in broad daylight - something ordinary trolls couldn't do).
And yes, I'm a Tolkien fan.
Max
Any film where the main character is named 'Drizzt' is one I'll take a pass on.
Max
two words:
Lend-Lease
Look it up.
Max
Please remember that this *is* Utah we're talking about. Things like 'free speech' and 'separation of church and state' don't apply there.
This is the same state that voted to ban *all* school clubs in the K12 system rather than allow a single GLB student club to formed at a high school. Real open-minded, tolerant, Constitution-loving folks, those Mormons.
Of course, where I come from there's a big Mormon contingent in town courtesy of HP (they import from Utah rather than deal with 'heathens'), so my views on the bigoted, uptight, got-a-rod-of-righteousness-stuck-up-my-ass twits might just be a weeee bit biased....
Max
After reading the number of 'pro' posts on this forum I've come to the conclusion that the straight S&M crowd is *much* bigger than I ever imagined....
I mean, Jesus H. Christ! Shocking yourself *on purposes*!? Y'all are a bunch of loons....
Max
America helped in a *small* way? What's that, European revisionist history trying to make up for the actual pathetic performance y'all gave against a *single* nation in dire economic straits? Tell me another. Tell me again how every one of you wankers folded in record time excepting Britain, and that just because the Germans couldn't get to it. If they'd been able to cross the Channel the Brits would've pissed down their leg as fast as the French did. *Americans* won that war. With the help of Russians. The rest of you acted liked victims or bystanders. By the gods, if ever we have have another war I hope we ally with the Germans this time. No pansies for allies and the whole thing'll be over in 6 weeks. Max
Since when are the exploits of some socially maladjusted low-brow script kiddie "stuff that matters"? C'mon, for chrissakes - this is just another idiot teen wanker spending every waking hour on the net searching for code that *others* write just so he can prove what a 'big man' he is to the world. If he had a social life or was actually getting laid he wouldn't have time for this kind of trivial crap; but the mere fact that he *did* spend time busting into something as uninteresting as Sourceforge only proves just how pathetic the little twit really is.
These brats are a dime a dozen. They aren't news and they certain don't matter. Try remembering that the next time some sexually frustrated little boy hacks into a system that isn't even worth the effort in the first place..
Max
Cite a single post where I ever said anything of the sort. You can't. Idiot. Because I never wrote any such thing.
In fact, if you've the brains to run a search against 'maxpublic' you'll discover that I just wrote an article claiming that 'free software' has squat to do with human rights.
Here's *another* quarter. Twit.
Max
So many people seem to be focused on allocated domain names, perhaps forgetting in the process that these are simply aliases for IP addresses. I'd propose the following 'fix' for the problem which would require some modifications to DNS and browser software, but would make organizations like ICANN unnecessary:
- allow anyone to 'register' any domain name they choose, linking it to their IP address. They could do his with their local ISP through an automated process.
- Now there might be 1000 amazon.coms. So what? Have the local DNS return the 20 most trafficked name/IP combinations with the option to widen the search results. Any decent-sized IP will generally get the same results as any other, which means that the *first name on the list* will belong to the amazon.com online store, which is what the user was probably looking for anyway. The Nature Conservancy Amazon Rainforest project 'amazon.com' might be the 4th one down on the list. A short description could be added to the DN by the registrant so you could discern between different 'amazon.coms' by simple mouseover.
- there's no need for a central name registry as each ISP would forward DN lists in the same fashion that Usenet posts are propogated throughout the world, every 24 or 48 hours. You could even forward traffic analyses if you wanted at the same time, although this wouldn't be necessary unless you had a really small ISP with a bizarre subset of clients.
- the user, when adding to his bookmark collection, would simply extend the name to differentiate between two different amazon.com's, e.g., "amazon.com - bookstore".
The end result would be that real estate would be absolutely worthless - it only counts if it gets so much traffic that it ends up in the top 20 hits or so. IP addresses might *initially* be worth something, until users figured out that the much-trafficked IP address for amazon.com - the bookstore - has been sold for a tidy sum to amazon.com - the NC rainforest project. Which would take all of two or three days, making the sale pointless.
Ten thousand clueless users could register amazon.com with their ISP DNS and it would matter not a whit, because they'll never get the traffic required to put them within a reasonable search list. There's no way to 'drown out' the original amazon.com - the bookstore.
And anyone could have any name they want, if they don't care about traffic.
Combine this with IPv6 and you have virtually unlimited freedom in terms of names and addresses.
Note that this would still encourage originality for businesses, but the only way they get to 'keep' their precedence on the return list is through traffic. Squatting would be pointless.
Max
Jesus - yet another goddamned idiot whining about the GPL.
Look, moron, it's really quite simple - if you don't like the terms of the GPL *don't use any fucking GPL'd code*. Stop your bitching and write your own damned code.
IT'S THAT SIMPLE.
Here's a quarter, buy a clue.
Max
To my mind open source is not only a good thing, but a necessary one. Having software running on a machine, especially a business machine, that you can't break down and peruse at will - software that you have to trust doesn't have backdoors or built-in incompatibilities with the software of a competitor to that vendor, or that doesn't collect information on what you're doing on that machine and send it off to the vendor surreptitiously - is rather bad practice. This especially in light of how many times I've caught a piece of software trying to contact the vendor company over the internet when it had no business doing so.
So I see the value of open source, if only for the sake of security in my business and personal life and for my own peace of mind.
Free software, however, while quite nice is not something I equate with anything as grand as personal freedoms, universal democracy, or human rights. Equating free software with philosophical questions concerning the human condition is nonsensical. Unless you're a fanatic able to connect the dots without respect to reality-checks, the idea that free software somehow promotes freedom overall for the human race is just damned silly. Where is the evidence? Where other than in rhetoric can one find proof that this is so?
I seriously doubt that free software of any kind will promote the general welfare of the human race in any measurable sense. Open source software, however, directly promotes the welfare of the consumer by allowing the consumer to see exactly what it is that he or she is getting and how it operates on his or her system. If there are security holes, backdoors, or badly written chunks of code the consumer can discover these and dump the sods silly enough to write this trash in the first place.
Open source keeps companies honest and competitive. If the (hopefully competent) IT department of a company can review the code of two similar products it'll be able to determine precisely - not by guesswork - which is the better product. Same for the savvy consumer.
Promoting open source would allow everyone, once and for all, to compare the code of Linux and Windows and see just which OS is the better. Making both OS's free doesn't further any viable economic model beyond what open source does (except for those who don't like to pay for services rendered), and it certainly doesn't have any bearing on the advancement of human rights in any way, shape or form.
Open source is necessary. Free software is nifty, but it isn't at all required. It won't cure cancer, end world hunger, or result in the democratic overthrow of tin-pot dictatorships. And why should it? Isn't Linux (and no, I *won't* call it GNU/Linux) cool enough without also having to be the tool of a small but vocal group of technoreligious fanatics bent on reshaping the world according to their will?
Max