Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."
Typical. The answer, for some, to the problem of our soldiers reacting "badly" to a bloody mess isn't
"Lets get into bloody messes less!"
but is instead
"Lets come up with an idea that'll cost untold (literally) millions of dollars to get out of the research phase."
But I gotta tell you, I still prefer the voiceover. Although they fixed the "dead air" when Roy dies and Deckard just stares stupidly (sans voiceover), there is still too much lost without the voiceover. We really have no clue WHY Roy tried to kill Deckard, then saved him.
What really struck me most about this new version, partially due to the big-screen effect and partially due to it being cleaned up and the pacing feeling more well constructed, was that the thoughts and emotions playing over Roy's face in those final scenes before his own final scene (Roy holding dove after Deckard jumps across alley, Roy looking down at Deckard as he dangles about to fall) provide the "why". Not in absolute/definitive terms but in evocative terms. You, the viewer, may never know the exact "why" but Rutger Hauer's acting in those final scenes definitely provides enough to evoke some strong possibilities to think over. I like that.
Similarly with Pris's demise - to me the few extra seconds added to that scene allow her final screams to go from simple fear/pain/anger ("I've been shot!") to those of an existential rage and frustration ("I want MORE LIFE! Fucker!"). When that scene cut out there was a palpable dread and discomfort in the theater audience and I heard several people whispering "oh nos" at the screen. F*&^ing powerful.
Look, those of you who are outraged by this scalping of PS3s must be confusing this gaming console with something that matters - like a roof over your head, food, the right to vote, etc. Frankly when it's something like a video gaming station anyone who gets outraged over people making money by utilizing market forces live in a fantasyland and really need to get out more - see the world, understand that they are not the only human beings in it and that if they don't get their greatly desired PS3 the second/week/month it comes out then no one (sane) really gives a damn.
Save your outrage for something that matters. Replace PS3 and sony in this story with beenie-baby or cabbage patch kid and re-evaluate your outrage.
... and that more violent notions will be required to reverse it.
That sounds like a cop-out to me. "We can't change it without violent resistance" is not a sentiment that you should be too eager to adopt, IMHO, and most people who claim to espouse that sentiment only use it to avoid doing anything about the problems they perceive. Perhaps you're not one of those who ends up doing nothing because of that belief, but you'd be a exception if so.
The courts are not completely bought and paid for and this is still a government of elected officials. If you take an active role in the governance of your county/state/country you can help hold your representatives accountable for their votes and (in)action. It is entirely too easy to look around at all the efforts being made to strip our rights or consolidate power into the hands of a few wealthy oligarchs and say "bah, too late to make a difference" when it's absolutely not too late. The folks trying to "take it all away" aren't going to stop trying.
Some of the things that could be resisted right now, sans "violent notions" include:
The mandatory use of insecure voting machines with no papertrail. Search google.com
The consolidation and monopolization of media markets (apropos this article)
The martial aspirations of some members of our government. Search google.com
The legal subversion of end-to-end neutral data networks. Search google.com
Sorry, is that a joke? Common your yanking our chains right? You're "stuck" with neither the OS nor the hardware config - if you want to run linux, windows, or another OS you can do so - no one's stopping you. If you want to swap out the HW components go right ahead.
Really, how is that "more closed" than other Off The Shelf machines?
Maybe you have other reasons, personally or ideologically, not to buy a machine from Apple - but fear of "vendor lock in" is a non-issue.
Ok, what I want to know is how much $$ do Apple and Microsoft have invested in slashdot and other news/opinion sites? Judging by the amount of coverage these chest-beating comments get every time either side makes them you'd think they owned (sorry pWn3d) Time-Warner, OSTG, etc. and timed their chest-beating with those moments when their stock price was flying low... oh wait. That's my 6a.m. theory and I'm stickin to it!
Sites like OpenDarwin should not have to struggle to stay afloat.
While it's dissapointing to see them go, I don't quite get this attitude. Linux has 'stayed afloat' by way of a lot of struggle, along with a lot of interest, use, and momentum. As has been noted, for an end-user what did OD offer to entice them to use it as a desktop or server OS? Why would they pick OD over Linux, {Free,Open,Net,etc}BSD, Windows, OSX, or any other system? It was a nice idea (and commendable) to try provide a development environment for Darwin/OSX projects but should Apple feel compelled to support them just because they pitched their tent at Apple's door?
The BSD license does not compel/require/force the contribution of modifications back to the open source community which is surely one of the primary reasons NeXT/Apple picked projects that were released under that license to build off of. BSD license is akin to saying "Go forth, my child, Take my name and prosper" not "Go forth, my child, take my name and prosper and give us back some of what you do." I wouldn't make any ehtical judgement between the two, they're different approaches - best to be aware of the difference though so that you can align your expectations.
OpenDarwin's other stated goal was to provide a standalone Darwin-based alternative. That wasn't achieved either and is that the "fault" of Apple? Another stated reason for OD's closing was, in their words, "a lack of interest from the community".
Slashdroid: How dare they regulate technological progress!!
Concerned citizens of da u.s.a (CCODUSA): ehmmm, ok Dr. Moreau just because you never see the sun doesn't mean we have to risk developing heaven knows what from your high tech sunscreen.
Slashdroid: The U.S. will be dead last in nanotechnology if the government tries to regulate it's development.
CCODUSA: Better than dead.
Slashdroid: Alarmist! This is like the "Global Warming" thing you CCODUSA are trying to make people buy into!
CCODUSA: Well, hopefully not. It'd be nice if folks actually paid attention and took some reasonable preventative action this time - rather than wake up a decade from now and begin struggling to put together a coherent thought about the very possible problems of exposure to highly reactive human-engineered compounds and particulates.
Slashdroid: But we'll get beat by other countries! CCODUSA: Go live somewhere else then, if you're that eager to sign up for uncompensated human trials. At least here with regulation you'll get your 15 bucks a day to be a guinea-pig.
Maybe sd should stop parrotting every dang fool thing Dvorak writes or says?
We can all keep wishing but it doesn't look like it'll happen. I tend to click in to read the comments on Dvorak drivel purely out of a morbid curiousity, but I do click -- and as evidenced by this post, I unfortunately post too. At this moment the slashdot main index shows this story is the second-most commented story of the day - that's why/. will keep parroting/posting every tired, out-of-touch, flame-bait piece that Dvorak writes.
By the time this story posted to/. it had been announced, as I figured it would be since the www.postgresql.org home page was linking to 8.1.0 as their Latest Releases and all that was lacking was the article text for the release.
You assume they were "probably waiting" while I assume that if their linking to the release from their homepage, maybe they've put that link their because they're ready for the downloads — or as some would postulate: ready for the publicity.
It seems like every time there's a/. post about PostgreSQL there's a legion of MySQL weenies who go out of there way to bash it. I for one think the PostgreSQL development team have done outstanding work in getting this release out the door and with *major* feature upgrades as well (stored procs, blah, blah)... oh wait...
Sigh.
It can only be that there's an entire army of new/.'ers that join up between releases who've not seen the last umpteen billion flame wars on the site scroll by between MySQL, Pg, Oracle, Sybase, [insert fav DB here]. Why else would a simple anouncement of a MySQL version update *still* illicit such bigoted replies. MySQL AB have had their developement path laid out for awhile, it seems, and their chugging along it fine. Same with pretty much any other DB project/group out there.
Having spent the last week poking about w/PG8.1b{2,3} because MySQL 4.1.x was choking under heavy multi-user transactional load, I personally feel that I (still) prefer PG; but damn, folks, use want you want when you want and if you don't get what you want out of it (PG, MySQL, Solid, Oracle, Sybase, MSSQL, whatever) pick something else!
O'course/. would be a far more boring place if all the bigots left. So never mind what I just said./. is really just about the entertainment value anyway, right?
I think what would be of more impact in the long term would be for the makers of email client software to build in a "One Button Response" for junk/spam email. Many such clients already have a way to flag an email as junk/spam so that the built in spam filter can 'learn' what to filter out. Now just take that a step further and have that button also queue up an abuse report email to the ISP controlling the spammer's domain or network.
Sure there's more to it than that, but if we/they could start to get that going I think ISPs might start policing themselves a little more aggressively when they start getting the flood of true abuse reports, one for each sent/received spam email.
Seeing the commercial reminds me of a Days of Our Lives commercial:
"He's my FATHER-ER-ER!!!", followed by intense look
"I won't let you KILL HER, she's carrying MY CHILD!!! !!! !!!", followed by intense look
Is it going to be up for a Daytime Emmy (tm) even though it's running during prime-time?
Granted, most of the SciFi that we see today is purely Space Opera so I'm not surprised, it was just so striking to see the commercial of BSG.
Apple has relaxed their QA goals so much in their needless drive for questionable and poorly thought out features (Spotlight, Dashboard, etc.) that the mountain of bugs that now exist in OS X is too much for anyone not on their payroll to submit, particularly when their online bug reporter is buggy itself, totally a black box, and frankly bugs languish there for months and years with zero change and no feedback other than emails that go out around the time of major point updates stating "we think it might not happen in the new version of OS X, thank you for the $129 dollar upgrade fee"
What sucks is that I used to encourage people to check out the Macintosh platform because it was reasonably solid and I felt like folks would have a chance to discover what was good about it with minimal occurrences of bugs to scare them away; now I actually feel compelled to tell people not to bother because right now OS X 10.4.x is such a travesty.
Here's two fantastic show-stopper bugs that when working in concert would send even the most eager "Switcher" running:
Mouse pointer disappears on main monitor
All keyboard input other than control-keys (command, control, escape, option) is ignored.
"Yes, I realize that typing and moving the mouse doesn't actually seem to do anything; but bear with it, the Mac is really a great platform. Rather than play blind target practice, press and hold the power-button until the machine cuts power, then..."
It's a sad day when the most accurate way to describe how to reproduce a bug is:
Dashboard gets that info for you in the background. (Dashboard occasionally updates that info, too)
Widget developers: Please please don't start doing this, the dual 2.2 Ghz G5 I have at work is already mysteriously missing so many CPU cycles with all the cruft in OS X; the last thing I need are dashboard widgets going off to the internet to update information just in case I want to check it out.
A well behaved widget will go do something only when I ask it to, not of it's own volition.
It seems that Camino's form elements are keyboard accessible; they just don't all consistently highlight visually to let you know that the keyboard focus is on the element.
Native widgets can be a mixed bag. I don't use Camino primarily because it uses native widgets for it's form elements (or some approximation thereof) and just like Safari, these widgets don't seem to be keyboard accessible. I've tried basically every browser available for the mac and in the end I keep end up in Mozilla because being able to set and toggle select boxes, radios, etc is a priceless feature and without it I feel handcuffed (fingercuffed?)
Hear, hear; FUD. We have MyISAM tables larger than 2G in size operating fine; and they are very quick to access in a mostly read-only pattern, as expected with MySQL.
The MySQL vs. PG vs. INSERT-FAVORITE-DB-HERE debate is tiring enough without the FUD being so readily cast about, and when the FUD doesn't change over the years it's even more so. Though it does make responses rather simple:
<fx: pastes standard response>
Use what's appropriate to your needs. Don't jump in head-first without understanding the strengths and limitations of your database choice and then later complain about what was your own poor judgement. There are responsive and useful mailing lists and user groups for all these dbs, use them. Each system has it's feature set, each system has it's gotchas MySQL , PostgreSQL
, Oracle, etc.
<end paste>
After recent coverage on slashdot about breathing it had to happen. Hiro Antagonist has rebutted all claims against food and explains why eating really is cool.
So for all you fashion victims out there: white is the new black, Moto is the new Sony, C is the new B, my sig can beat up your sig.
Slashdot Mirror
Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."
Typical. The answer, for some, to the problem of our soldiers reacting "badly" to a bloody mess isn't "Lets get into bloody messes less!" but is instead "Lets come up with an idea that'll cost untold (literally) millions of dollars to get out of the research phase."
And Steve.
What really struck me most about this new version, partially due to the big-screen effect and partially due to it being cleaned up and the pacing feeling more well constructed, was that the thoughts and emotions playing over Roy's face in those final scenes before his own final scene (Roy holding dove after Deckard jumps across alley, Roy looking down at Deckard as he dangles about to fall) provide the "why". Not in absolute/definitive terms but in evocative terms. You, the viewer, may never know the exact "why" but Rutger Hauer's acting in those final scenes definitely provides enough to evoke some strong possibilities to think over. I like that.
Similarly with Pris's demise - to me the few extra seconds added to that scene allow her final screams to go from simple fear/pain/anger ("I've been shot!") to those of an existential rage and frustration ("I want MORE LIFE! Fucker!"). When that scene cut out there was a palpable dread and discomfort in the theater audience and I heard several people whispering "oh nos" at the screen. F*&^ing powerful.
Save your outrage for something that matters. Replace PS3 and sony in this story with beenie-baby or cabbage patch kid and re-evaluate your outrage.
The courts are not completely bought and paid for and this is still a government of elected officials. If you take an active role in the governance of your county/state/country you can help hold your representatives accountable for their votes and (in)action. It is entirely too easy to look around at all the efforts being made to strip our rights or consolidate power into the hands of a few wealthy oligarchs and say "bah, too late to make a difference" when it's absolutely not too late. The folks trying to "take it all away" aren't going to stop trying.
Some of the things that could be resisted right now, sans "violent notions" include:
- The mandatory use of insecure voting machines with no papertrail. Search google.com
- The consolidation and monopolization of media markets (apropos this article)
- The martial aspirations of some members of our government. Search google.com
- The legal subversion of end-to-end neutral data networks. Search google.com
Just to name a few.Sorry, is that a joke? Common your yanking our chains right? You're "stuck" with neither the OS nor the hardware config - if you want to run linux, windows, or another OS you can do so - no one's stopping you. If you want to swap out the HW components go right ahead. Really, how is that "more closed" than other Off The Shelf machines? Maybe you have other reasons, personally or ideologically, not to buy a machine from Apple - but fear of "vendor lock in" is a non-issue.
Ok, what I want to know is how much $$ do Apple and Microsoft have invested in slashdot and other news/opinion sites? Judging by the amount of coverage these chest-beating comments get every time either side makes them you'd think they owned (sorry pWn3d) Time-Warner, OSTG, etc. and timed their chest-beating with those moments when their stock price was flying low... oh wait. That's my 6a.m. theory and I'm stickin to it!
Sites like OpenDarwin should not have to struggle to stay afloat.
While it's dissapointing to see them go, I don't quite get this attitude. Linux has 'stayed afloat' by way of a lot of struggle, along with a lot of interest, use, and momentum. As has been noted, for an end-user what did OD offer to entice them to use it as a desktop or server OS? Why would they pick OD over Linux, {Free,Open,Net,etc}BSD, Windows, OSX, or any other system? It was a nice idea (and commendable) to try provide a development environment for Darwin/OSX projects but should Apple feel compelled to support them just because they pitched their tent at Apple's door?
The BSD license does not compel/require/force the contribution of modifications back to the open source community which is surely one of the primary reasons NeXT/Apple picked projects that were released under that license to build off of. BSD license is akin to saying "Go forth, my child, Take my name and prosper" not "Go forth, my child, take my name and prosper and give us back some of what you do." I wouldn't make any ehtical judgement between the two, they're different approaches - best to be aware of the difference though so that you can align your expectations.
OpenDarwin's other stated goal was to provide a standalone Darwin-based alternative. That wasn't achieved either and is that the "fault" of Apple? Another stated reason for OD's closing was, in their words, "a lack of interest from the community".
Slashdroid: How dare they regulate technological progress!!
Concerned citizens of da u.s.a (CCODUSA): ehmmm, ok Dr. Moreau just because you never see the sun doesn't mean we have to risk developing heaven knows what from your high tech sunscreen.
Slashdroid: The U.S. will be dead last in nanotechnology if the government tries to regulate it's development.
CCODUSA: Better than dead.
Slashdroid: Alarmist! This is like the "Global Warming" thing you CCODUSA are trying to make people buy into!
CCODUSA: Well, hopefully not. It'd be nice if folks actually paid attention and took some reasonable preventative action this time - rather than wake up a decade from now and begin struggling to put together a coherent thought about the very possible problems of exposure to highly reactive human-engineered compounds and particulates.
Slashdroid: But we'll get beat by other countries!
CCODUSA: Go live somewhere else then, if you're that eager to sign up for uncompensated human trials. At least here with regulation you'll get your 15 bucks a day to be a guinea-pig.
We can all keep wishing but it doesn't look like it'll happen. I tend to click in to read the comments on Dvorak drivel purely out of a morbid curiousity, but I do click -- and as evidenced by this post, I unfortunately post too. At this moment the slashdot main index shows this story is the second-most commented story of the day - that's why /. will keep parroting/posting every tired, out-of-touch, flame-bait piece that Dvorak writes.
It sucks for us, but it's good for /. and Dvorak
You assume they were "probably waiting" while I assume that if their linking to the release from their homepage, maybe they've put that link their because they're ready for the downloads — or as some would postulate: ready for the publicity.
Sigh.
It can only be that there's an entire army of new /.'ers that join up between releases who've not seen the last umpteen billion flame wars on the site scroll by between MySQL, Pg, Oracle, Sybase, [insert fav DB here]. Why else would a simple anouncement of a MySQL version update *still* illicit such bigoted replies. MySQL AB have had their developement path laid out for awhile, it seems, and their chugging along it fine. Same with pretty much any other DB project/group out there.
Having spent the last week poking about w/PG8.1b{2,3} because MySQL 4.1.x was choking under heavy multi-user transactional load, I personally feel that I (still) prefer PG; but damn, folks, use want you want when you want and if you don't get what you want out of it (PG, MySQL, Solid, Oracle, Sybase, MSSQL, whatever) pick something else!
O'course /. would be a far more boring place if all the bigots left. So never mind what I just said. /. is really just about the entertainment value anyway, right?
FLAME ON!
Sure there's more to it than that, but if we/they could start to get that going I think ISPs might start policing themselves a little more aggressively when they start getting the flood of true abuse reports, one for each sent/received spam email.
"He's my FATHER-ER-ER!!!", followed by intense look
"I won't let you KILL HER, she's carrying MY CHILD!!! !!! !!!", followed by intense look
Is it going to be up for a Daytime Emmy (tm) even though it's running during prime-time? Granted, most of the SciFi that we see today is purely Space Opera so I'm not surprised, it was just so striking to see the commercial of BSG.
Ah well, off to finish reading The Algebraist ;)
What sucks is that I used to encourage people to check out the Macintosh platform because it was reasonably solid and I felt like folks would have a chance to discover what was good about it with minimal occurrences of bugs to scare them away; now I actually feel compelled to tell people not to bother because right now OS X 10.4.x is such a travesty.
Here's two fantastic show-stopper bugs that when working in concert would send even the most eager "Switcher" running:
- Mouse pointer disappears on main monitor
- All keyboard input other than control-keys (command, control, escape, option) is ignored.
"Yes, I realize that typing and moving the mouse doesn't actually seem to do anything; but bear with it, the Mac is really a great platform. Rather than play blind target practice, press and hold the power-button until the machine cuts power, then..."It's a sad day when the most accurate way to describe how to reproduce a bug is:
"Install Tiger. Use it for awhile."
Widget developers: Please please don't start doing this, the dual 2.2 Ghz G5 I have at work is already mysteriously missing so many CPU cycles with all the cruft in OS X; the last thing I need are dashboard widgets going off to the internet to update information just in case I want to check it out.
A well behaved widget will go do something only when I ask it to, not of it's own volition.
Shouldn't this be in politics.slashdot.org?
dur, I'd not noticed that "News for nerds, stuff that matters"(tm) was just a trademark; not a statement of fact or intent. What a tool I am.
It seems that Camino's form elements are keyboard accessible; they just don't all consistently highlight visually to let you know that the keyboard focus is on the element.
Native widgets can be a mixed bag. I don't use Camino primarily because it uses native widgets for it's form elements (or some approximation thereof) and just like Safari, these widgets don't seem to be keyboard accessible. I've tried basically every browser available for the mac and in the end I keep end up in Mozilla because being able to set and toggle select boxes, radios, etc is a priceless feature and without it I feel handcuffed (fingercuffed?)
The MySQL vs. PG vs. INSERT-FAVORITE-DB-HERE debate is tiring enough without the FUD being so readily cast about, and when the FUD doesn't change over the years it's even more so. Though it does make responses rather simple:
<fx: pastes standard response>
Use what's appropriate to your needs. Don't jump in head-first without understanding the strengths and limitations of your database choice and then later complain about what was your own poor judgement. There are responsive and useful mailing lists and user groups for all these dbs, use them. Each system has it's feature set, each system has it's gotchas MySQL , PostgreSQL , Oracle, etc.
<end paste>
So for all you fashion victims out there: white is the new black, Moto is the new Sony, C is the new B, my sig can beat up your sig.
<fx: retch>