Re:I'm sure this book is good, but...
on
Bay of Souls
·
· Score: 1
His last remaining days are spent attempting to shore up some arbitrary "Western canon"...
I think that says it all right there. Bloom's choice of great books is hardly arbitrary. (I believe it was in "How to Read and Why" that he included a list of the books that he thinks make up the the core of great literature.) But they are cetainly too white, too European, and too male for a lot of folks.
Oh yeah, since this is interstate communications we're talking here, I'll cite Title 18 USC Chapter 41 - EXTORTION AND THREATS. I'm sure it's on the web.
This is dangerously close to extortion. On the face of it, obtaining identity by means of threats is probably not extortion because it is not "money or [an]other valuable thing." However, if these identities are later used to persue court cases which result in monetary settlement, this could be considered extortion.
I buy any number of CDs because I hear about some group, download some of their music, and if I enjoy it, buy their CD.
For me, filesharing has the same effect as radio. It's damn good advertising for musical groups. I don't claim that everyone out there is like me. But I would like to know how many there are. Filesharing might by a net profit gain for record companies.
When I was a little kid I used "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" on my Commodore 128. You should be able to master the letters in a couple of hours. After that comes the other symbols and finally comes speed. Without putting any special work into it since I was 7, I type at about 60 words per minute now.
Oh sure, it's prettier if you are into the modern reductionist view of IP address beauty. I, for one, continue to prefer form and substance. How can someone compare 192.168 with 10.0? Praising 10.0 is like calling a blank canvas a masterpiece. Some people would not know real IP art if it hit them in the face.
Where the hell did you work? The more usual experience is that when the big slab of meat falls to the ground, it's fine once the crushed roaches get scraped off.
The one and only point of RLVs is to be cheaper than one-time use vehicles. But they aren't. The technology and the engineering just isn't there to make them so. As an idea, the RLV has been proved to be completely worthless.
Now, it is possible through economies of scale to bring costs down a great deal. Look at what the Germans managed with the V2 rockets. But we aren't bombing England here, and there is no reason to make that expenditure right now -- certainly not for a million dollar "X-prize." And there is still no guarantee that RLVs will surpass the cost savings of one-time use vehicles.
That was an important confimation of a prediction of Einstein's theory, yes. As was the orbit of Mercury. However, the poster you replied to was correct. It is a significant fallacy to say that confirmation of one part of a theory proves the whole. It has taken until recent decades to find far more detailed evidence of relativity. And still it is not impossible that modifications will be required. In fact, it may be almost certain, given the limitations of relativity in dealing with the quantum world and forces other than gravity.
I highly doubt that they are able to pick up all that much. The grammars are unrelated. And the non-Kanji characters (non-Han characters) make up a good portion of the text. Many Kanji characters are also only there to give pronounciation of Japanese words, not meaning. For me, I can puzzle out Chinese street signs and make a stab at the meaning of a few things, but it is impossible to actually read Chinese. And Chinese writing is completely written with the "Chinese Characters" so it easier to go from Japanese to Chinese. Korean means nothing to me, but I have never even begun to study it. There might be some calligraphic transformations that I could learn to make it simpler.
So it is pretty clear. Your Chinese friends are lying to you.
No they can't. You can puzzle some Chinese meaning from a knowledge of written Japanese (which I have), but you are very limited. The meanings of the characters have diverged to some extent over the centuries. And besides, Japanese is written with a combination of Kanji and Kana, which would make the reverse process even harder.
Where death in games matter most is multi-player FPS titles. It is boring to wait for the next round once you have been killed. On the other hand, the game is pointless when there are immediate respawns. Counterstrike tries to solve this be letting you watch through the other player's eyes. RTCW tries to solve this by respawning in waves. The way I would like to see it done, is once you are killed in the 'real' game, you get transported to some secondary site with the other dead players. That way there is no down time when you get killed.
Not a problem. A good article on Japan in general that touches on the subject was published by The Atlantic in 1998. Two books that I would recommend are Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr, and Embracing Defeat by John Dower. Dogs and Demons explains the current corrupt system that has emerged in Japan, and Embracing Defeat (won a Pulitzer too) chronicles how it got that way after Japan's defeat in WWII.
Basically, the problem is that the bureaucracy that exists now is exactly the same one that existed in the pre-War government. The U.S. only replaced the politicians. After the war, many of the top-level bureaucrats were the same ones that had been appointed by Emperor Hirohito before the war. Today the bureaucracies are enormously unresponsive to public sentiment. Their main organizational purpose is to maintain the same percentage of funding as a part of the budget that they had just after the war. So they invent things for themselves to do. Pointless building projects, that kind of thing. Kerr relates a couple of projects that were simply so stupid (tearing up historical neighborhoods for no reason) that the public was able to stop them through dedicated protests - only to find out later that the projects simply got quietly rescheduled a couple years into the future and proceeded apace. The current breed of Japanese politicians are even worse. You hear about corruption scandals every week that only take place in other Western democracies once a decade. Organized crime owns a substantial part of the economic and political pie (again dating back to reconstruction under the Americans). Basically, the politicians only exist to peddle influence. They have almost no real power. The real power lies in the hands of bureaucracies, organized crime, and corporate leaders. In that order.
Wouldn't the Trade Ministry be considered a bureaucracy?
If you want to insult me instead of presenting a rational argument, that is fine. But get your facts straight first, you dumbass. Trade minister is a cabinet post. Hiranuma is a big-time LDP honcho.
Working together might be an intelligent thing to do (except for the problem of everyone speaking different languages -- I sure as hell would not ever want to run any tri-national coding project). But I think you are underestimating national pride and how much everybody hates the Japanese over there. It could be a Japanese originated PR-type thing. Reading the article, I notice that it is Japanese Government ministers announcing the project.
The plan is to be proposed by Japanese Trade Minister Takeo Hiranuma at a meeting of economic ministers from the three nations in Phnom Penh on Wednesday, it said, adding that agreement was seen as likely.
Agreement is "seen as likely." What the hell do they mean by that? It sounds like the classic Japanese government made-up project. Now, if this were the bureaucracies pushing it instead of the politicians, there would be some real power behind the idea. But you have to remember the character of Japanese government.
I did not mean to advocate any particular method of dealing with the problem -- only to point out that the problem exists.
One thing that you might do, however, is tax corporations that use foreign labor in the same way that you would tax foreign goods. I would imagine that there are other solutions as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah, since this is interstate communications we're talking here, I'll cite Title 18 USC Chapter 41 - EXTORTION AND THREATS. I'm sure it's on the web.
This is dangerously close to extortion. On the face of it, obtaining identity by means of threats is probably not extortion because it is not "money or [an]other valuable thing." However, if these identities are later used to persue court cases which result in monetary settlement, this could be considered extortion.
As the next President of the USA, I promise to make fixing this problem one of my top priorities.
I buy any number of CDs because I hear about some group, download some of their music, and if I enjoy it, buy their CD.
For me, filesharing has the same effect as radio. It's damn good advertising for musical groups. I don't claim that everyone out there is like me. But I would like to know how many there are. Filesharing might by a net profit gain for record companies.
Anybody have a hotmail account hack for this yet?
I just tried it and got the same error.
Very cool. You checked the box so it'll show up on the top 100 list right? (They update every half hour.)
Anything above 100 wpm would put you in about the top 2/10ths of 1% of typists. Take this test and tell us how you do.
Fictional?!? Say it ain't so! That strange smiling black lady on the computer box was like a mother to me.
I checked google for a typing speed test and found this: http://www.typingtest.com/
I'm getting about 70 words a minute. Pretty neat. I should become a secretary and ditch programming.
When I was a little kid I used "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing" on my Commodore 128. You should be able to master the letters in a couple of hours. After that comes the other symbols and finally comes speed. Without putting any special work into it since I was 7, I type at about 60 words per minute now.
Oh sure, it's prettier if you are into the modern reductionist view of IP address beauty. I, for one, continue to prefer form and substance. How can someone compare 192.168 with 10.0? Praising 10.0 is like calling a blank canvas a masterpiece. Some people would not know real IP art if it hit them in the face.
Don't say that too loudly. They might surrender to us. Do you know how much it would cost to occupy both Iraq and France?
Where the hell did you work? The more usual experience is that when the big slab of meat falls to the ground, it's fine once the crushed roaches get scraped off.
The one and only point of RLVs is to be cheaper than one-time use vehicles. But they aren't. The technology and the engineering just isn't there to make them so. As an idea, the RLV has been proved to be completely worthless.
Now, it is possible through economies of scale to bring costs down a great deal. Look at what the Germans managed with the V2 rockets. But we aren't bombing England here, and there is no reason to make that expenditure right now -- certainly not for a million dollar "X-prize." And there is still no guarantee that RLVs will surpass the cost savings of one-time use vehicles.
That was an important confimation of a prediction of Einstein's theory, yes. As was the orbit of Mercury. However, the poster you replied to was correct. It is a significant fallacy to say that confirmation of one part of a theory proves the whole. It has taken until recent decades to find far more detailed evidence of relativity. And still it is not impossible that modifications will be required. In fact, it may be almost certain, given the limitations of relativity in dealing with the quantum world and forces other than gravity.
I highly doubt that they are able to pick up all that much. The grammars are unrelated. And the non-Kanji characters (non-Han characters) make up a good portion of the text. Many Kanji characters are also only there to give pronounciation of Japanese words, not meaning. For me, I can puzzle out Chinese street signs and make a stab at the meaning of a few things, but it is impossible to actually read Chinese. And Chinese writing is completely written with the "Chinese Characters" so it easier to go from Japanese to Chinese. Korean means nothing to me, but I have never even begun to study it. There might be some calligraphic transformations that I could learn to make it simpler.
So it is pretty clear. Your Chinese friends are lying to you.
No they can't. You can puzzle some Chinese meaning from a knowledge of written Japanese (which I have), but you are very limited. The meanings of the characters have diverged to some extent over the centuries. And besides, Japanese is written with a combination of Kanji and Kana, which would make the reverse process even harder.
Where death in games matter most is multi-player FPS titles. It is boring to wait for the next round once you have been killed. On the other hand, the game is pointless when there are immediate respawns. Counterstrike tries to solve this be letting you watch through the other player's eyes. RTCW tries to solve this by respawning in waves. The way I would like to see it done, is once you are killed in the 'real' game, you get transported to some secondary site with the other dead players. That way there is no down time when you get killed.
Not a problem. A good article on Japan in general that touches on the subject was published by The Atlantic in 1998. Two books that I would recommend are Dogs and Demons by Alex Kerr, and Embracing Defeat by John Dower. Dogs and Demons explains the current corrupt system that has emerged in Japan, and Embracing Defeat (won a Pulitzer too) chronicles how it got that way after Japan's defeat in WWII.
Basically, the problem is that the bureaucracy that exists now is exactly the same one that existed in the pre-War government. The U.S. only replaced the politicians. After the war, many of the top-level bureaucrats were the same ones that had been appointed by Emperor Hirohito before the war. Today the bureaucracies are enormously unresponsive to public sentiment. Their main organizational purpose is to maintain the same percentage of funding as a part of the budget that they had just after the war. So they invent things for themselves to do. Pointless building projects, that kind of thing. Kerr relates a couple of projects that were simply so stupid (tearing up historical neighborhoods for no reason) that the public was able to stop them through dedicated protests - only to find out later that the projects simply got quietly rescheduled a couple years into the future and proceeded apace. The current breed of Japanese politicians are even worse. You hear about corruption scandals every week that only take place in other Western democracies once a decade. Organized crime owns a substantial part of the economic and political pie (again dating back to reconstruction under the Americans). Basically, the politicians only exist to peddle influence. They have almost no real power. The real power lies in the hands of bureaucracies, organized crime, and corporate leaders. In that order.
Wouldn't the Trade Ministry be considered a bureaucracy?
If you want to insult me instead of presenting a rational argument, that is fine. But get your facts straight first, you dumbass. Trade minister is a cabinet post. Hiranuma is a big-time LDP honcho.
If Japan were really planning on doing this, they would do it themselves. China would as well, I believe. I wonder who is really behind this effort?
I did not mean to advocate any particular method of dealing with the problem -- only to point out that the problem exists.
One thing that you might do, however, is tax corporations that use foreign labor in the same way that you would tax foreign goods. I would imagine that there are other solutions as well.
There is never any situation then, that a community will benefit from tariffs?