Keep in mind, for every terrorist who needs to read the book "Bomb-making for Dummies", there are 10 who need to read the pamphlet "Bomb-wearing for Dummies".
Worse, these terrorists probably share them, leaving us with an unknown number who have read either the book and the pamphlet!
So, do I get extra Karma for tying the DMCA and the PATRIOT Act together?
Yes, America has never bullied anyone, right. Not like the assasination of the elected leader of Chile, putting a tyrant in his place. Not like funding the Contras in their killing spree. Not like selling weapons to the Iranians, which was clearly illegal since Ollie North got in shit about it. Not like helping Hussein get in power in the first place (to deal with their Iranian dog that wasn't obeying so well). Not like training Bin Laden to do what he does so well. And I'm sure I missed a few.
So, assuming that Bin Laden doesn't like having Bush in power (and I suspect Bush makes Bin Laden's job easy), and that U.S. laws disallow a president to serve for more than two terms, does that mean that American laws are an Al Qaeda achievement? There's a difference between causality and correlation, and sometimes a butterfly farting in a rain forest has nothing to do with a hurricane hitting New York.
That said, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda can take credit for anything they want, it doesn't make it true. PR is making people believe that it's true, and maybe their PR is that good. But that still doesn't change facts (especially when marketing/PR says it).
Do you think any religious person with any intelligence at all thinks that God created dashhounds? Or sheepdogs? Clearly, evolution works. Yet we still haven't seen the artificial means for creating a living cell (protien coat, mechanisms for powering the cell, nucleus, etc.) or the environment that would put it all together into a living cell without outside intervention.
And, yes, if you define design as predetermined by an outside source, then your computer was designed. Sure, that design evolved, just like humans have evolved over the last 5 thousand years (certainly as a proponent of evolution, you don't think it stopped, do you?). But that doesn't mean that IBM didn't publish a manual which describes the basic outline of your system. How many times do you think you have to plug a SCSI hard drive into an IDE bus before it will magically work? It's not designed to work like that. And what do you think will have to occur before your x86-compatible applications will work on a PPC platform? Do you think it might require a design change of either the hardware, the software, or both?
It's nice to see that ignorance can fall on both sides of the evolution debate.
I can manufacture any number of damaged chips, and I don't even have a fab. Now, having only the co-processor damaged, that's a little harder.
On a more serious note, if you tend to have about 2% failure, and the co-pro accounts for about half the chip, you can use half of your damaged chips as non-co-pro chips. Or you can throw them out. Which would you choose?
Commercial enterprises do the tedious things that research does poorly, like finding economical ways to get stuff in space. They do this well because it affects their success indicators (profit). The X-Prize works because it requires that someone build up the technology to get to space in a truly reuseable craft for less than $10M, or have a reasonable expectation of engaging in commercial activity afterwards, both of which are desireable. Research, and bureaucracy, have different success indicators (knowledge and grants for research, favours for bureaucracy), and so don't do things that minimize expenses. Being run by people, though, they are still affected by greed, and will use known cost-saving measures if they have somewhere else they can spend the money (cheaper flight technology means more research).
So, no, commercial interests won't cure rare diseases, or explain why butterflies fart on a remote island in the Pacific (unless it directly affects someone influential within the company). And that's why this is important. Give commercial interests a reason to make money, and they will. For things that commercial interest don't generally look out for (general welfare of the people, national pride), government-funded agencies perform better.
A good example of this was Canada giving Canadian Pacific Railways (or Canadian National Railways, doesn't matter which) land adjacent to any track they built (I think 25 miles on each side). The government didn't have the wherwithal to build a railway across 3000 miles of mostly-deserted land with no prospects of anything happening there anytime soon, but you tell a company they can have land of various types (and various profit-making capabilities), and shortly you have them blasting tunnels through mountain ranges. Sure, it cost them wads of cash, but they could sell entire towns in arable land (with a profitable route to get goods to market) along the way.
Well, here's a rough scale (just thrown together for the purposes of this discussion) for how religious someone might be.
God? Bah! Humbug!
Well, I guess there could be a god. So?
Yeah, I believe there's a god, but that isn't going to stop me from doing what I want.
Okay, God, I'll see you 4 times a year, on the high days, but don't bother me the rest of the time.
I'll really try to get to church every Sabbath.
Okay, Sabbaths, and tithes and offerings, but the other 6 days are mine.
I'll try to be a witness for You in every thing I do or say in my daily life.
I devote my life to You, and the furthering of Your Gospel.
Or, Matthew 7:15 to 20, "...by their fruits ye shall know them."
Now, I should correct myself. For all I know, FroMan falls into that last category I listed above, and I certainly don't. If I offended him, or you, I apologize.
The purposes of bringing up my being religious was that, in this particualr instance, my beliefs match fairly closely with FroMan's, and my religious basis may be similar to his, yet I didn't take offense to the term 'parasitic', although he did. Thus raising the question of whether his religious background was the basis for his distaste, or whether it might be cultural or educational.
Used to be, back in the old days, if you were feeling a little masochistic you'd do a little bit of self-flagellation. Nowadays, you see if you can get a quarter million people to laugh at you all at once.
>>Anything I pay for doesn't get used for business. Period.
>Clothes?
Something tells me that if the average slashdotter arrives at work unclothed, they will not only pay for him to get clothes, they'll pay him to do it immediately. Flip side, they may also bill him for therapy.
Sorry, my question was due to the root comment, where he mentions a pro-life attitude (which I don't believe is wholly religious), but not religious leanings. The only other pseudo-religious term he uses is "morality", but I've noticed those in non-religious people, too. I'm still inclined to think his original comment (the parasitic part, anyway) was due to ignorance, and popular conception, with a touch of religion. But I'm still curious as to why you went right for the religious reference. Surely no strong correlation has been found between ignorance and religion, or learning and athiesm (after all, both Einstein and Bush believe in God:D ).
Ah, then I have a question for you. Why did you assume that his offense was due to a religious basis, and not due to ignorance? Most people equate parasitic with bad. I'd say I'm as religious as FroMan, possibly more, and yes, my initial reaction was "parasitic, ew". But upon further reflection (and before I read his or your comments), I realized that they were, indeed, parasitic. So why the bias?
Ask a group of people anywhere if they want their government to protect them from themselves and would will probably get a unanimous NO. Now ask them if they want GM foods banned because they might not have the willpower to leave them on the supermarket shelves.
Two points in response to this.
I'm disappointed to say that I have relatives that think profiling (of Middle Eastern people in this case) is okay, even though just about any statistical analysis of 9/11 shows that it isn't the biggest problem in the world, the U.S., or even NYC (if you look at murders in the last 5 years). We had something that was orchestrated by probably no more than 3 dozen people in the U.S., yet we are going to assume that if we look at the (tens? hundreds? of) thousands of 20 to 30-something Middle Eastern males, that we will be likelier in catching the next attack. Never mind that the last "terrorist attack" was by a white guy (McVeigh). And yes, my relative lives in the U.S. "Please, government, protect me from the evil (obviously Middle Eastern) terrorists!"
Second, GMO foods are sold in the country I live in. (My concerns are about chimeric organisms, not so much those organisms that could be or are created through selective breeding.) And they aren't labelled as such. Although I don't think my kids will grow a second head from eating GMO foods, I'd rather not feed them to them until some real research or long-term studies have been done (how do you feel being part of the biggest, most uncontrolled lab, the U.S. public?). Some people have religious beliefs, such as not eating pork or cows, and would not like to eat anything that includes their genes. This may be ignorant, or extremist, but people should have the right to live how they want if it isn't harming themselves or others. So why can't they tell us what we're eating?
The amazing part for me was when Fox got off on the appeal (in a case brought against them by their former investigative agents) because there was no obligation to tell the truth in journalism.
And here's the explanation: When Robin Williams, an actor who's movies I always enjoyed up until that one, was asked why on earth he did that movie on Oprah, he said he had "20 million reasons", implying that he never thought the movie itself was a good reason to do it. Recall that he did a commercial selling the movie (not a trailer/preview). Ever since then, I've not assumed that his movies are good out of hand. He sold out once (some might say more), and I won't assume he won't do it again.
OTOH, although I don't always like Johnny Depp, I do respect him and have an idea of what to expect from him. And Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have none of my respect and I don't assume that a movie either of them are in is going to be good (if it is good, it's usually in spite of them). Their reward for schilling Gigli.
So yeah, movie makers, from the actors to the studio execs, at times realize at some point before the release of the movie that a movie is bad, and still try to scam us into watching it in the theatres. And I've also noticed that the real stinkers tend to pull out the stops in marketing (especially actors hyping the movie). That always raises a big red flag for me.
[asbestos unserwear] I've written a screensaver (round one) in VB (round two) that drew circular elements (round three). I specifically used scaling features built into VB to make sure my circles were circular. But I did work in pixels (round four) because my screensaver wasn't meant to be viewed in any different manner. [/asbestos underwear]
Why are you comparing "reasonable prices" and "Oil Crisis" prices? I'd think that you could say the prices are lower than when we were really restricted in accessing oil, but that wouldn't be "reasonable", now would it?
Funny as that spoof sounds, there are accidents caused every year by smoking and driving. I don't smoke, but I know where my attention would be if I dropped a flaming coal in my crotch.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep in mind, for every terrorist who needs to read the book "Bomb-making for Dummies", there are 10 who need to read the pamphlet "Bomb-wearing for Dummies".
Worse, these terrorists probably share them, leaving us with an unknown number who have read either the book and the pamphlet!
So, do I get extra Karma for tying the DMCA and the PATRIOT Act together?
Hell, just reformat and mirror Canada, eh? And if you're still mad at England, just uninstall "God Save the [King,Queen]".
Yes, America has never bullied anyone, right. Not like the assasination of the elected leader of Chile, putting a tyrant in his place. Not like funding the Contras in their killing spree. Not like selling weapons to the Iranians, which was clearly illegal since Ollie North got in shit about it. Not like helping Hussein get in power in the first place (to deal with their Iranian dog that wasn't obeying so well). Not like training Bin Laden to do what he does so well. And I'm sure I missed a few.
So, assuming that Bin Laden doesn't like having Bush in power (and I suspect Bush makes Bin Laden's job easy), and that U.S. laws disallow a president to serve for more than two terms, does that mean that American laws are an Al Qaeda achievement? There's a difference between causality and correlation, and sometimes a butterfly farting in a rain forest has nothing to do with a hurricane hitting New York.
That said, Bin Laden and Al Qaeda can take credit for anything they want, it doesn't make it true. PR is making people believe that it's true, and maybe their PR is that good. But that still doesn't change facts (especially when marketing/PR says it).
Do you think any religious person with any intelligence at all thinks that God created dashhounds? Or sheepdogs? Clearly, evolution works. Yet we still haven't seen the artificial means for creating a living cell (protien coat, mechanisms for powering the cell, nucleus, etc.) or the environment that would put it all together into a living cell without outside intervention.
And, yes, if you define design as predetermined by an outside source, then your computer was designed. Sure, that design evolved, just like humans have evolved over the last 5 thousand years (certainly as a proponent of evolution, you don't think it stopped, do you?). But that doesn't mean that IBM didn't publish a manual which describes the basic outline of your system. How many times do you think you have to plug a SCSI hard drive into an IDE bus before it will magically work? It's not designed to work like that. And what do you think will have to occur before your x86-compatible applications will work on a PPC platform? Do you think it might require a design change of either the hardware, the software, or both?
It's nice to see that ignorance can fall on both sides of the evolution debate.
I can manufacture any number of damaged chips, and I don't even have a fab. Now, having only the co-processor damaged, that's a little harder.
On a more serious note, if you tend to have about 2% failure, and the co-pro accounts for about half the chip, you can use half of your damaged chips as non-co-pro chips. Or you can throw them out. Which would you choose?
Commercial enterprises do the tedious things that research does poorly, like finding economical ways to get stuff in space. They do this well because it affects their success indicators (profit). The X-Prize works because it requires that someone build up the technology to get to space in a truly reuseable craft for less than $10M, or have a reasonable expectation of engaging in commercial activity afterwards, both of which are desireable. Research, and bureaucracy, have different success indicators (knowledge and grants for research, favours for bureaucracy), and so don't do things that minimize expenses. Being run by people, though, they are still affected by greed, and will use known cost-saving measures if they have somewhere else they can spend the money (cheaper flight technology means more research).
So, no, commercial interests won't cure rare diseases, or explain why butterflies fart on a remote island in the Pacific (unless it directly affects someone influential within the company). And that's why this is important. Give commercial interests a reason to make money, and they will. For things that commercial interest don't generally look out for (general welfare of the people, national pride), government-funded agencies perform better.
A good example of this was Canada giving Canadian Pacific Railways (or Canadian National Railways, doesn't matter which) land adjacent to any track they built (I think 25 miles on each side). The government didn't have the wherwithal to build a railway across 3000 miles of mostly-deserted land with no prospects of anything happening there anytime soon, but you tell a company they can have land of various types (and various profit-making capabilities), and shortly you have them blasting tunnels through mountain ranges. Sure, it cost them wads of cash, but they could sell entire towns in arable land (with a profitable route to get goods to market) along the way.
Or, Matthew 7:15 to 20, "...by their fruits ye shall know them."
Now, I should correct myself. For all I know, FroMan falls into that last category I listed above, and I certainly don't. If I offended him, or you, I apologize.
The purposes of bringing up my being religious was that, in this particualr instance, my beliefs match fairly closely with FroMan's, and my religious basis may be similar to his, yet I didn't take offense to the term 'parasitic', although he did. Thus raising the question of whether his religious background was the basis for his distaste, or whether it might be cultural or educational.
And here it is.
Used to be, back in the old days, if you were feeling a little masochistic you'd do a little bit of self-flagellation. Nowadays, you see if you can get a quarter million people to laugh at you all at once.
>>Anything I pay for doesn't get used for business. Period.
>Clothes?
Something tells me that if the average slashdotter arrives at work unclothed, they will not only pay for him to get clothes, they'll pay him to do it immediately. Flip side, they may also bill him for therapy.
Sorry, my question was due to the root comment, where he mentions a pro-life attitude (which I don't believe is wholly religious), but not religious leanings. The only other pseudo-religious term he uses is "morality", but I've noticed those in non-religious people, too. I'm still inclined to think his original comment (the parasitic part, anyway) was due to ignorance, and popular conception, with a touch of religion. But I'm still curious as to why you went right for the religious reference. Surely no strong correlation has been found between ignorance and religion, or learning and athiesm (after all, both Einstein and Bush believe in God :D ).
Ah, then I have a question for you. Why did you assume that his offense was due to a religious basis, and not due to ignorance? Most people equate parasitic with bad. I'd say I'm as religious as FroMan, possibly more, and yes, my initial reaction was "parasitic, ew". But upon further reflection (and before I read his or your comments), I realized that they were, indeed, parasitic. So why the bias?
Ask a group of people anywhere if they want their government to protect them from themselves and would will probably get a unanimous NO. Now ask them if they want GM foods banned because they might not have the willpower to leave them on the supermarket shelves.
Two points in response to this.
I'm disappointed to say that I have relatives that think profiling (of Middle Eastern people in this case) is okay, even though just about any statistical analysis of 9/11 shows that it isn't the biggest problem in the world, the U.S., or even NYC (if you look at murders in the last 5 years). We had something that was orchestrated by probably no more than 3 dozen people in the U.S., yet we are going to assume that if we look at the (tens? hundreds? of) thousands of 20 to 30-something Middle Eastern males, that we will be likelier in catching the next attack. Never mind that the last "terrorist attack" was by a white guy (McVeigh). And yes, my relative lives in the U.S. "Please, government, protect me from the evil (obviously Middle Eastern) terrorists!"
Second, GMO foods are sold in the country I live in. (My concerns are about chimeric organisms, not so much those organisms that could be or are created through selective breeding.) And they aren't labelled as such. Although I don't think my kids will grow a second head from eating GMO foods, I'd rather not feed them to them until some real research or long-term studies have been done (how do you feel being part of the biggest, most uncontrolled lab, the U.S. public?). Some people have religious beliefs, such as not eating pork or cows, and would not like to eat anything that includes their genes. This may be ignorant, or extremist, but people should have the right to live how they want if it isn't harming themselves or others. So why can't they tell us what we're eating?
The amazing part for me was when Fox got off on the appeal (in a case brought against them by their former investigative agents) because there was no obligation to tell the truth in journalism.
In the spirit of ignorance, wouldn't that be a French wall, French being the opposite of freedom to uninformed Americans?
I have a one-word rebuttal: Toys.
And here's the explanation: When Robin Williams, an actor who's movies I always enjoyed up until that one, was asked why on earth he did that movie on Oprah, he said he had "20 million reasons", implying that he never thought the movie itself was a good reason to do it. Recall that he did a commercial selling the movie (not a trailer/preview). Ever since then, I've not assumed that his movies are good out of hand. He sold out once (some might say more), and I won't assume he won't do it again.
OTOH, although I don't always like Johnny Depp, I do respect him and have an idea of what to expect from him. And Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have none of my respect and I don't assume that a movie either of them are in is going to be good (if it is good, it's usually in spite of them). Their reward for schilling Gigli.
So yeah, movie makers, from the actors to the studio execs, at times realize at some point before the release of the movie that a movie is bad, and still try to scam us into watching it in the theatres. And I've also noticed that the real stinkers tend to pull out the stops in marketing (especially actors hyping the movie). That always raises a big red flag for me.
Well, not too demanding, are we?
[asbestos unserwear]
I've written a screensaver (round one) in VB (round two) that drew circular elements (round three). I specifically used scaling features built into VB to make sure my circles were circular. But I did work in pixels (round four) because my screensaver wasn't meant to be viewed in any different manner.
[/asbestos underwear]
If item 2 is done with visual aids (of sufficient quality), then yes. If the visual aids are of poor quality, then bleeding of eyes may occur.
Why are you comparing "reasonable prices" and "Oil Crisis" prices? I'd think that you could say the prices are lower than when we were really restricted in accessing oil, but that wouldn't be "reasonable", now would it?
I personally think you would disable one of the better features, and excuses, of the robotic lawnmower if you installed this.
...who read that as "New Safety Feature Detects Flash"? And thought it made sense?
You missed the part about keying the ass-clown's Porsche...no scratches that way, my ass.
Funny as that spoof sounds, there are accidents caused every year by smoking and driving. I don't smoke, but I know where my attention would be if I dropped a flaming coal in my crotch.