If I was going to take the time to post in ANOTHER FSCKING LANGUAGE to a bunch of FOREIGNERS I think I could take the time to run it through a FREAKING spell checker in that language. Especially if I was going to post to a group KNOWN for it's spelling & grammer devotees!
As for you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, exactly how is it that you can so easily deduce the poster's native language? Are you likewise a Frenchman posting to this predominently english-speaking page? Did you feel slighted and defensive that we were picking on someone JUST because they were foreign? Well, hold onto your shorts and GET OVER IT!
Attention to detail counts.
Taking the time to proofread your post counts.
Using the right tags so you don't accidently turn your entire post bold and italic counts.
If you ignore everything else, consider this: When the information will be unwanted, it must be most accurate and most understandable. Anything that distracts from the message causes it to lose impact. If you rant AND mis-spell, it's easy to dismiss your opinion.
(sarcasm fueled by rage at the yet-unidentified backers of yesterday's attacks) Of course, You may not like to hear it... (/sarcasm, etc)
Side note: Bush is the same president who thinks that allowing 3rd world style arsenic-in-the-drinking-water-standards, drilling-the-ANWR, and well-nigh banning stem cell research will be good for the economy too...
That would be:
(A) the allowable arsenic standard which was fine for 99.8% of Clinton's term(s), instead of the new standard which would require replacing BILLIONS of dollars worth of water treatment plants for an unquantifiable lessening of one common environmental hazard, and
(B) the exploration of 1% of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (not drilling, at least not yet), a "refuge" that was created in the last possible moments of the Clinton presidency (Why wasn't it worth protecting before then, or was it just to make Bush look bad for wanting to look for oil there?), and
(C) the stem-cell research allowed and encouraged by President Bush, despite the lobbying of most of his advisors and the Republican Party?
Your FUD seems all the more ironic in reference to this story.
Abso-friggin-lutely! When's the last time somebody went to their doctor and asked for a drug they'd never heard of? Can't happen, can it?
If it's good to tell people there are alternatives to M$ products, why is it bad to tell doctors and patients there are alternative drugs to treat their ailments?
The ramifications of a war should not be lowered - if anything they should be raised. When that's the case, war (especially within your own borders) becomes much less palatable, and therefore the risk of war is reduced...
This is the theory behind M.A.D. - Mutual Assured Destruction. It sounds like a good idea - make the damage SO BAD that no-one would DARE start a fight. For example, replacing all boxing gloves with sawed-off shotguns. (Bet we'd see a lot fewer Title defenses, wouldn't we!)
But it doesn't work. Oh sure, nobody uses the big weapon, but they don't stop fighting. Wars WILL occur, as long as people (just like you and me) think the costs their side will pay will be less than the gains they will receive.
If it's military forces, stationed in Iceland, dedicated to preventing/repelling attacks on Iceland, then it's AN Icelandic Defense Force, even if it's not THE Icelandic Defense Force.
Iceland has just been smart enough to realize that the US would do it for them, and spent their money on other things.
Another example would be Costa Rica, which stopped spending money on defense and started spending it on their National Parks system. A very cool idea, made possible because the US is committed to their defense (it's in our interest to keep Central America stable, even those nations not hog-wild about US policies).
It would be more the case if you could hit a 90MPH fast ball,
and through your employer's negligence you lost that ability, and they threw you out on the street for it.
What negligence? This employee, and NOT all the other employees, got RSI. The employer even made efforts to mitigate or prevent the effects of RSI when the employee started feeling the symptoms.
...and you may have problems finding another job if you suddenly can't perform that duty.
Suddenly? This employee kept doing the things that led to the RSI in the first place, for several more years! Why didn't she think of a career change sooner? I quit retail sales work because some of those people made me sick to my stomach. She had actual PAIN, and continued despite it.
If you do something that injures yourself, it isn't a disability, it's a fscking INJURY. Nobody disputes that she's injured, just that she's disabled. She sued to get her self-inflicted injury declared a disability because the company couldn't have her do the work she wanted to do. She would certainly have qualified for worker's comp, but not disability.
The term "Gravity Bomb" refers to a bomb which travels to its target primarily under the influence of gravity, as opposed to a bomb with lift surfaces. That would be known as a "Glide Bomb".
Using the term "Gravity Bomb" also usually implies a "Dumb (or Iron) Bomb", one which has no onboard guidance and steering capability, as opposed to the TV-friendly "Smart Bomb" which can be steered to a particular target point. I say implies, though the example in question, Stigler's David's Sling, used a guided munition, as did Donald Kingsbury's "The Moon Goddess and the Sun", a much better read, IMHO.
Having said that, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that ANYTHING even semi-streamlined (or compact for its weight) dropping from 50,000 feet is going to make a pretty damn big hole. Bomb shelters aside, few targets of military value are heavily armored on top, since most weapons are shooting at their sides, not their tops. Several existing anti-tank weapons take advantage of that fact, such as the Swedish "BILL" rocket, which flies about a meter above the shooters line-of-sight to the target. Once at the target, it fires a conventional armor-piercing warhead downward at 45 degrees into the thinner overhead armor.
If you had always used only licensed software, you wouldn't have a problem now. It's the companies that skated along, ignoring the EULA every-swinging-time, that put THEMSELVES behind the freakin' 8-ball.
You took money away from the companies that made the software, money that could have paid for further development, or bug-fixing, or whatever. We'll never know what that money would have gone for, 'cuz you didn't pay it.
And now, when you are called to account, you cry "Intimidation!" Bah! You hid the true cost of doing business from yourself, and now the bill has come due.
Maybe it is time to consider Open Source equivalents. But this time, consider all the costs, not just the obvious ones. License fees, sufficient copies of the software, training for the users, personalization/modification to meet your business's needs, etc. In the end, you may find "software compliance" is cheaper than the alternative. Or not, but until you really do the math, you'll never know.
Are you going to pay their publicity costs, so they can make radio appearances, get magazine space, host a fan site? Are you going to pay tour costs, so they can come to your city? Are you going to chip in some extra tax money for all those who support the recording industry who end up on welfare? (Not the execs, who won't be starving any time soon. I mean the secretaries, the food vendors, the gofers.)
You want to tear down the whole industry, eliminate everybody in the music supply chain but you and the artist? Just pay her/him/them? Is that what you want, bunky?
And your reason was what, again? Because YOU think you're paying too much? Because "music just wants to be free"? Because you CAN get music for free from the internet, and you don't want to pay for it anymore?
IANAL, and IANA Recording Industry Employee, I'm just another geek working at a Help Desk. But I do know simple economics, and I gotta say, you seem to have over-simplified your musician payment scheme. I'll bet you're ALREADY practicing "digital distribution", are you sending the musicians any do-re-mi?
Say what you want about Rosen & the gang, I bet they've spent a lot more time thinking about this than you have. They want to keep getting paid, and they can see that things are changing in the music world, just as well as you can. But they're responsible to the artists, their employees, their shareholders to get the money for the music.
I know I'm fighting the/. tide, but I'd rather see the RIAA fixed than eliminated. There's plenty of money in there, let's work on shifting where it's piling up so more gets to the artist!
Since when? Did Taco post that, or Cowboy Neal, or anybody else who WORKS here? (It must have been the day I was writing my congress-critter to tell him to vote against ratifying the Treaty that no other "developed" nation has ratified yet either.)
I make money, like all the editors here. I like my work, like most of the editors here. But despite liking my job, and getting paid for it on the side, because it IS a paid job, I try to do it as good as I can. I am a professional.
What does your being a professional have to do with the choices of the editors of/.? Are you implying that, because they don't share your all-consuming interests, they are somehow "unprofessional?"
Now, in case you don't realise this, it is US who pay these people their income, mostly through ad revenues. We are their customers. Your opinion that 'THATS FINE' is like Adobe customers saying 'THATS FINE' when Adobe sells them crap.
Do you mean that those of us who were satisfied with the news as given are settling for, as you so elegantly put it, "crap"? Check your holier-than-thou attitude at the door, fella, this is THEIR soapbox, not yours. If you've got a better mousetrap, then put out the URL and lets see it!
Lastly, I said in my previous post that I LIKE slashdot, I APPRECIATE slashdot, BUT my criticism stands. It's my opinion, it's a well explained opinion too.
Pretty proud of your little opinion, are you?
Oh wait, one more thing. What you call 'obscure' is all over the world considered to be a MAJOR milestone of very big importance. It even surpasses your beloved American right of Free Speech or the DMCA. If you can't BREATHE, you cannot speak you know. Reconsider your opinion and read the article I pointed out, and also try and find somewhat less American centric news reporting about it, it's worth the read, PARTICULARLY for nerds who want to be around and who want their children to be around for a few more generations.
And finally the truth comes out. You're just another America-basher, puzzled by FREE SPEECH, embittered by the realization that Americans don't consider your opinions important.
Here's MY point, Dutchie, I love hearing other people's opinions, AS LONG AS they are germane to the discussion at hand. Stick to the subject, and stop trying to steer it into your little bayou of interest.
If you think a union is a good idea, go join one. But first, ask yourself if you want to belong to a group that turns EVERY encounter with management into an adversarial one. And charges you, monthly, for the privilege of doing so.
My union experience? I was required to belong to the IAT&SE (Intl. Assoc. of Theatrical & Stage Employees), because I worked in the movie business (I was an usher at a theater.) We never saw a union official (I was told that no-one had ever seen one) but we paid dues to them just the same, 18% of our pitiful salary. We asked for union cards, we were ignored. We asked for names & contact info, we were ignored. We found out on our own and called them, we were told "We just talk to management, you need to contact us in writing about your benefits." and then hung up on.
I'd write it off to a few bad apples, but everybody that I know that belonged to a union has a similar story. I ask you again, why add an automatically-argumentative third-party into the already contentious relationship you have with your employer? And if you and your employer are getting along, why do you need a union?
Slashdot Mirror
If I was going to take the time to post in ANOTHER FSCKING LANGUAGE to a bunch of FOREIGNERS I think I could take the time to run it through a FREAKING spell checker in that language. Especially if I was going to post to a group KNOWN for it's spelling & grammer devotees!
As for you, Mr. Anonymous Coward, exactly how is it that you can so easily deduce the poster's native language? Are you likewise a Frenchman posting to this predominently english-speaking page? Did you feel slighted and defensive that we were picking on someone JUST because they were foreign? Well, hold onto your shorts and GET OVER IT!
Attention to detail counts.
Taking the time to proofread your post counts.
Using the right tags so you don't accidently turn your entire post bold and italic counts.
If you ignore everything else, consider this: When the information will be unwanted, it must be most accurate and most understandable. Anything that distracts from the message causes it to lose impact. If you rant AND mis-spell, it's easy to dismiss your opinion.
(sarcasm fueled by rage at the yet-unidentified backers of yesterday's attacks) Of course, You may not like to hear it
That would be:
(A) the allowable arsenic standard which was fine for 99.8% of Clinton's term(s), instead of the new standard which would require replacing BILLIONS of dollars worth of water treatment plants for an unquantifiable lessening of one common environmental hazard, and
(B) the exploration of 1% of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (not drilling, at least not yet), a "refuge" that was created in the last possible moments of the Clinton presidency (Why wasn't it worth protecting before then, or was it just to make Bush look bad for wanting to look for oil there?), and
(C) the stem-cell research allowed and encouraged by President Bush, despite the lobbying of most of his advisors and the Republican Party?
Your FUD seems all the more ironic in reference to this story.
Abso-friggin-lutely! When's the last time somebody went to their doctor and asked for a drug they'd never heard of? Can't happen, can it?
If it's good to tell people there are alternatives to M$ products, why is it bad to tell doctors and patients there are alternative drugs to treat their ailments?
How about: Allan Steele, David Weber, Stephen Gould?
This is the theory behind M.A.D. - Mutual Assured Destruction. It sounds like a good idea - make the damage SO BAD that no-one would DARE start a fight. For example, replacing all boxing gloves with sawed-off shotguns. (Bet we'd see a lot fewer Title defenses, wouldn't we!)
But it doesn't work. Oh sure, nobody uses the big weapon, but they don't stop fighting. Wars WILL occur, as long as people (just like you and me) think the costs their side will pay will be less than the gains they will receive.
Iceland has just been smart enough to realize that the US would do it for them, and spent their money on other things.
Another example would be Costa Rica, which stopped spending money on defense and started spending it on their National Parks system. A very cool idea, made possible because the US is committed to their defense (it's in our interest to keep Central America stable, even those nations not hog-wild about US policies).
What negligence? This employee, and NOT all the other employees, got RSI. The employer even made efforts to mitigate or prevent the effects of RSI when the employee started feeling the symptoms.
Suddenly? This employee kept doing the things that led to the RSI in the first place, for several more years! Why didn't she think of a career change sooner? I quit retail sales work because some of those people made me sick to my stomach. She had actual PAIN, and continued despite it.
If you do something that injures yourself, it isn't a disability, it's a fscking INJURY. Nobody disputes that she's injured, just that she's disabled. She sued to get her self-inflicted injury declared a disability because the company couldn't have her do the work she wanted to do. She would certainly have qualified for worker's comp, but not disability.
BTW, will you offer an upgrade to Wigwag, the faster flag technology (TM) ?
Using the term "Gravity Bomb" also usually implies a "Dumb (or Iron) Bomb", one which has no onboard guidance and steering capability, as opposed to the TV-friendly "Smart Bomb" which can be steered to a particular target point. I say implies, though the example in question, Stigler's David's Sling , used a guided munition, as did Donald Kingsbury's "The Moon Goddess and the Sun" , a much better read, IMHO.
Having said that, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that ANYTHING even semi-streamlined (or compact for its weight) dropping from 50,000 feet is going to make a pretty damn big hole. Bomb shelters aside, few targets of military value are heavily armored on top, since most weapons are shooting at their sides, not their tops. Several existing anti-tank weapons take advantage of that fact, such as the Swedish "BILL" rocket, which flies about a meter above the shooters line-of-sight to the target. Once at the target, it fires a conventional armor-piercing warhead downward at 45 degrees into the thinner overhead armor.
(But I digress ...)
Hear hear!
If you had always used only licensed software, you wouldn't have a problem now. It's the companies that skated along, ignoring the EULA every-swinging-time, that put THEMSELVES behind the freakin' 8-ball.
You took money away from the companies that made the software, money that could have paid for further development, or bug-fixing, or whatever. We'll never know what that money would have gone for, 'cuz you didn't pay it.
And now, when you are called to account, you cry "Intimidation!" Bah! You hid the true cost of doing business from yourself, and now the bill has come due.
Maybe it is time to consider Open Source equivalents. But this time, consider all the costs, not just the obvious ones. License fees, sufficient copies of the software, training for the users, personalization/modification to meet your business's needs, etc. In the end, you may find "software compliance" is cheaper than the alternative. Or not, but until you really do the math, you'll never know.
You want to tear down the whole industry, eliminate everybody in the music supply chain but you and the artist? Just pay her/him/them? Is that what you want, bunky?
And your reason was what, again? Because YOU think you're paying too much? Because "music just wants to be free"? Because you CAN get music for free from the internet, and you don't want to pay for it anymore?
IANAL, and IANA Recording Industry Employee, I'm just another geek working at a Help Desk. But I do know simple economics, and I gotta say, you seem to have over-simplified your musician payment scheme. I'll bet you're ALREADY practicing "digital distribution", are you sending the musicians any do-re-mi?
Say what you want about Rosen & the gang, I bet they've spent a lot more time thinking about this than you have. They want to keep getting paid, and they can see that things are changing in the music world, just as well as you can. But they're responsible to the artists, their employees, their shareholders to get the money for the music.
I know I'm fighting the /. tide, but I'd rather see the RIAA fixed than eliminated. There's plenty of money in there, let's work on shifting where it's piling up so more gets to the artist!
Since when? Did Taco post that, or Cowboy Neal, or anybody else who WORKS here? (It must have been the day I was writing my congress-critter to tell him to vote against ratifying the Treaty that no other "developed" nation has ratified yet either.)
What does your being a professional have to do with the choices of the editors of
Do you mean that those of us who were satisfied with the news as given are settling for, as you so elegantly put it, "crap"? Check your holier-than-thou attitude at the door, fella, this is THEIR soapbox, not yours. If you've got a better mousetrap, then put out the URL and lets see it!
Pretty proud of your little opinion, are you?
And finally the truth comes out. You're just another America-basher, puzzled by FREE SPEECH, embittered by the realization that Americans don't consider your opinions important.
Here's MY point, Dutchie, I love hearing other people's opinions, AS LONG AS they are germane to the discussion at hand. Stick to the subject, and stop trying to steer it into your little bayou of interest.
Sing it, brother! (or sister ...)
If you think a union is a good idea, go join one. But first, ask yourself if you want to belong to a group that turns EVERY encounter with management into an adversarial one. And charges you, monthly, for the privilege of doing so.
My union experience? I was required to belong to the IAT&SE (Intl. Assoc. of Theatrical & Stage Employees), because I worked in the movie business (I was an usher at a theater.) We never saw a union official (I was told that no-one had ever seen one) but we paid dues to them just the same, 18% of our pitiful salary. We asked for union cards, we were ignored. We asked for names & contact info, we were ignored. We found out on our own and called them, we were told "We just talk to management, you need to contact us in writing about your benefits." and then hung up on.
I'd write it off to a few bad apples, but everybody that I know that belonged to a union has a similar story. I ask you again, why add an automatically-argumentative third-party into the already contentious relationship you have with your employer? And if you and your employer are getting along, why do you need a union?