Totally man. It's like everyone here is from some other planet. I've been programming in a corporation for 6 years, and now I know many professional programmers all over the country. A few work 8 hour days. The rest of us are envious. 10 is the norm. This website is full of posers.
Gabe's recounting has an obvious problem. Why would a dude who got thrown out of college himself (a story he retells proudly) snootily inquire if someone else "even attended college"?
I recall at the time that independent accounts such as one by the organizer of the event made it sound like Gabe acted like a disrespectful asshole (and come on, isn't that about what you'd expect), and Harlan responded about like you'd expect.
In any case much like the false little fuck story, it may be a funny story but it isn't true.
Giving people a coupon to vote doesn't change the threat of people trying to "influence" you to vote their way. It just changes the dynamics of enforcement a bit.
<groan> No. People can try to influence the way I vote, and I can tell them I'm voting the way they want me to, I can even take their money, but then I walk into the booth and still vote the way I want. Your ticket idea opens the door to a way to verify which way I voted (since they can just demand to vote for me). Anytime you allow third parties to verify which way people voted you introduce a whole new set of problems. Everywhere I've voted pay for votes are not a huge problem because no one wants to spend money for something they can't verify they even got. Your plan is worse than giving them a way to verify. Now you can literally give your vote away to the highest bidder.
I didn't miss the point. I just didn't bother pointing out again what others have already: it doesn't add anything. The technique in the article doesn't make me feel any more secure that my vote made it to the candidate I chose, and without that I just don't care. Introducing a layer of abstraction just moves the problem of verification. It doesn't alleviate it. What does it mean to me that I get my pattern of choices back without any verifiable connection to what those choices actually mean. I think the hope is it would confuse people enough that they would think it actually means something.
I would much rather talk about something that adds meaningful recounts to electronic voting, yet still opens the door to the efficiency benefits, and does in fact include a voter-verified step to back up the results produced.
That's why I send one possible recount you could do is a combination machine/human recount. Just pick a random sampling of ballots and verify the machine code matches the voter verified text. Once you've convinced yourself it statistically unlikely that the machine code isn't matching the text, you can save time by scanning. That is one of many forms of auditing possible with this system.
I remember one of my computer science professors telling us in college about what I believe was a journal article from the 1970's discussing electronic voting. The way you do it is a two stage process. People vote on the machine. It then prints out a paper ballot that has machine readable code and human readable type indicating your vote, all on the same ballot. You do not get to touch the ballot. It prints up behind a glass screen. There is a red button and a green button. If you approve your printed ballot, you press the green button and you see your ballot drop into the sealed ballot box, and your vote is tallied in the machine. If you disapprove you press the red button and see your ballot get shredded and your vote is not tallied in the machine, at which point you have the opportunity to restart the process. The first official count is recorded and tallied by the machines you vote on. In the event of a recount, you have the choice of scanning your printed paper ballots by machine, human recount, or a combination. Because the ballot boxes are only needed in the event of a recount they can remain sealed until such a count.
This solution has been available for more than 30 years. If anyone is making electronic voting machines that do not allow a human verifiable recount, the only possible reason is that they want to leave the possibility of fixing an election open. Which is not to say this technique isn't open to tampering, but it is no more open than paper ballot systems, unlike the contemporary electronic voting solutions.
We do not send our basketball teams to compete against the rest of the world, saying the other teams have to play slower because our folks aren't fit enough to run as fast.
We also don't relocate our teams to other countries because their players don't get paid as much.
If we happen to find a good player overseas, the first thing we do is try to lure them here with an American-size paycheck. We don't move the team to them to avoid giving them a raise.
Granted it is harder for someone in another country to be such a standout that they are discovered and recruited: that is why the Intel chief is a traitor. It is because he is moving the jobs out of America to where it is harder and a greater inconvenience for Americans to get them.
These companies love to say they are international and loyal to their shareholders, but not to any one country: that is what they say when they are talking about outsourcing. When it comes to tax breaks however they start claim they are red, white, and blue, and it would be bad for them and therefore bad for America if we tax them.
If these companies don't want to be American companies, tax their products as imports. They are penalizing American workers, and if our current administration cared at all about American workers they would penalize them in return.
But the appointed President isn't interested in helping workers. He is busily turning the income tax into just a salary tax. Meaning if you have to work for your money (like people at the bottom do) the government taxes you more. Meaning it is harder to work your way to top, and easier to squat at the top while doing nothing.
We need a new Moore's law! Well Gordon Moore had better to get to work formulating it. What the hell is the matter with that guy? Does he only make one law a century or something. Has the bastard not noticed the old law is crapping out?! Seriously though, I hate when proper nouns are misused to form new pronouns.
Watergate is called Watergate because the break-in was at the Watergate Hotel. So where exactly is the Lewinsky-gate hotel? The travel-gate sounds nice: how many stars does it have? Urgh!
Similarly if it isn't a law by Moore, it isn't a new Moore's law. It is a new law, that replaces Moore's law.
The record companies have a monopoly. They illegally collude to fix prices and control the market. Whenever that happens, people work extra hard to find a way around it. There is no sense calling these people criminals for wanting the music industry to be reasonable. That's the kettle calling the sugar black.
I'm sure p2p does cut down on the sales of some artists.
Those artists you hear on the radio or a club in passing, and think "hey, that seems cool." In earlier days you would have to buy the album to discover it is total crap and the artist is a talentless hack. But now p2p gets the word out before you get robbed. The record companies are all upset, because their whole business is putting blind people in fields of shit and asking them to find a rose. That is to say, they intentionally pump up one hit wonders to sell as many records as possible, but don't put as much effort into the whole album, and do even worse by most second albums.
It is in their interest to make money on talentless hacks, because while a talentless hack may be capable of producing a one hit wonder (usually with a longtime producer working with them on the track), they won't be able to achieve long-term success or the power that comes with it to demand reasonable percentages from the record company and creative control. Hence by having ten artists sell 10 million records a piece, they make more money than on a talented band with staying power who sells 100 million records.
It is a pump and dump but for music instead of the stock market. And just when they get the scheme nearly perfected, p2p comes along and lets people preview what they'll be getting in advance. At which point reasonable people pinch their noses and walk away from what the record companies would prefer that they buy.
Furthermore, those in the record industry that bitch and moan about the artists being robbed are a bunch of liars and hypocrites. They steal from their artists in numbers that p2p can never touch. They make it almost impossible for an artist to audit independently how many records they've sold, but inevitably when artists do audit (usually in a very limited area), they discover they are being paid even less than the lousy terms in their contracts. No part of this argument is about the artists: that is just a smokescreen for what's really going on.
It is the record companies' feces trade that they are worried about: they want to continue getting you to trade the money earned with the sweat of your back for fertilizer, meanwhile all their cows are starving in the field and they claim it is your fault for not buying enough sewage.
That business model, like all pump and dump schemes, eventually has to fail. Right now they are just trying to legislate a delay for the day of reckoning, while they can try to come up with a new scheme to sell us formulaic shit we don't want.
Notice that creative, independent, offbeat, artists invariably seem to make up the examples people use when they need to point to somebody who successfully leverages the Internet and p2p. Artists, in the grandest sense of the word, often can do very well in that environment.
When people can sample music freely, and be picky about the artists they will support, the music industry can no longer control the market. And that is what they are afraid of. So stop calling it stealing or copyright infringement. The only thing being stolen is the RI's ability to sell stuff people don't really want to hear (not after they've heard the good music out there).
If you took away this monopoly, instead of 5 gigantic record companies that fix prices and control the market together illegally, you would see 500 small record companies become medium sized. Smaller record companies benefit the consumer, because now there is competition. The cost of producing, promoting, and distributing has fallen way down thanks to technology, but the big record companies keep taking more and more for this service, both from their artists and the consumers.
That was a funny comment, but do remember that in all the recounts that occurred in Florida AFTER the whole bru-haha, Dubya still came out ahead.
To say Bush won every media recount (those are the recounts that happened after the election) is a distortion. The truth is Bush won every recount using only undervotes (i.e. where the problem with the ballot was a hanging chad or there was only a dimple) (See USA Today). That is the most widely used standard, and the one that Gore was asking for, so ultimately Bush won. Fine.
But I think it might worth at least mentioning that if you include the overvotes (such as where people checked Gore and wrote in Gore) Gore won. That is to say, if the standard is voter intent, in every recount more people went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than Bush. So when you say Bush won every recount, be sure and include that little footnote, because otherwise people may think you are being dishonest. See Guardian.See USA Today.See Salon.See Washington Post.
And you know, maybe if minority votes counted for as much as a non-minority vote, that would make a difference. See New York Times.
Personally before Florida, I thought the voter's intent was the standard. How silly.
Then there was the minorities being intimidated at the polls thing. Then there was Republican officials writing on a bunch of ballots to "fill in missing information." I'm not saying they didn't just fill in missing social security numbers, but it is obviously a violation of election standards to have partisan non-election officials writing on ballots. There are media references for all this stuff too. Go find them yourself. I'm tired.
This article is by Ian Murdock, who is the Ian in Debian. The logo isn't there because of a direct relationship to the subject of the article; the Debian logo is there because of a direct relationship to the author.
Notice that his current project (Progeny) is about companies looking to build on a 'distribution neutral platform', and the link in the article goes to a page about 'Progeny Componentized Linux.' Believe or not Gentoo is not the only highly configurable linux game in town: Progeny seems to be playing that game, but at the enterprise not the consumer level. He's definitely not thinking of Gentoo for this role. He's talking about Progeny.
Ahoy, what is so bad about bein' called a pirate, I want t' know? Besides callin' thin's waht they aren't is pratically the national pastime nowadays. Now where can I find a bottle o'rum?
But the Republicans got their independant council, remember? Unlimited budget, years and years of investigation, and he found (gasp) Clinton lied about an affair under oath. Oh Jesus someone save us!
Someone in Bush's whitehouse compromises an agent whose mission involves intercepting terrorists trying to buy weapons of mass destruction, compromising a front company set up by the CIA for such purpose, and you think it is the same thing. Even if the accusations from your questionable source are true, at worst it is making public investigations by people on the outside: it is not stealing internal papers of Congressman. It is not compromising national security. I thought Republicans cared about fighting terrorism. I guess that is just when it involves giving away defense contracts. When it comes to something that could actually be effective, it just doesn't rise to the same level of importance does it?
Not to mention the whole lying to Congress about WMD thing. Lying to Congress vs lying about an affair in civil court: which matters more? But since Bush lied in only 17 words, it doesn't count, right? I guess "I did not have sex with that woman." doesn't count either; I mean that is only 8 words.
Some of the stuff your link is talking about is public record anyway. I don't see indication of breaking and entering to obtain said files there. Even just obtaining the files in this case, was done illegally.
No one said Republicans have a monopoly on corruption in Washington, but they sure have perfected it.
It's even more interesting that they show a supposed Linux laptop displaying a Windows style error message with non-sensical text. So
1) to make linux look bad they need to make it look like Windows.
2) they can't even come up with a common error message in Linux that people actually see (because those kind of of errors get fixed in Linux). Unlike say:
"The driver for the display device got stuck in an infinite loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your display device vendor for any driver updates. "
The last two Windows XP laptops I've used got this BSOD error with different video cards and up to date drivers, although usually they just froze up and quit working entirely. Under Linux, this problem "with the device" or "driver" disappeared.
Score one for civil liberties....the Supreme Court of Washington state ruled today that a warrant is required by police to use GPS tracking devices to track suspects.
Which brings us to the Patriot Act, which makes this ruling totally moot if you get some feds involved that can mutter the t-word. As in "Oh yeah. I almost forgot judge that we thought he might be like a terrorist and stuff, so no warrant required." Although why even explain it to a judge when a military tribunal will do? But why bother with a tribunal when you can just hold the person indefinitely without ever charging them?
But it sure is a relief to have this one on the books. If we ever get the constitution back, it might even matter.
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and figuring that the turnout hovers around 50% as it is
If that is the case probably 50% of the people who signed, won't actually vote. All it took to sign was being a registered voter: it did not require that you actually vote in elections. Therefore that stat cuts the set of those who signed too. If 50% of the people who once cared enough to sign the voter registration paperwork now don't care enough to actually vote, what makes you think those who sign a petition shoved in their face care either?
I am looking at the ACLU news page and it is right on top! Certainly a better resource than "Boing Boing".
Re:James Cameron and Alien
on
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Okay you caught me. I had forgotten that Cameron directed the sequel. Still, the guy who directed the sequel gets the credit for the look of this case? It still doesn't make sense.
Most people I talk to think "Aliens" (the sequel) is the far better film, which is something I do not agree with.
Agreed.
"Aliens" lacks subtlety and any sense of restraint. For instance, remember how powerful the acid blood was in the first film? It ate through several decks of the ship. Just attempting to kill the creature was a dangerous proposition due to this novel defense mechanism. In the second film characters will be standing nearly next to the aliens blasting them to bits with machine guns. What is the consequence of all that powerful acid flying around?: Once they have to take off their armor. As a writer, Cameron didn't have the discipline to keep his characters from making hamburger out of the aliens.
"Alien" on the other hand is textbook of suspense. The suspense is so thick that, Scott scares you with a cat; at least it scared me the first time I saw it. I would classify "Alien" as one of the only intelligent horror films. It just happens to be a horror film with a science fiction premise.
People with undisciplined minds will like the undisciplined movie because they don't have the patience to deal with suspense. To decide which film I like better I only needed to ask myself which film effected me more. When I saw "Aliens" I thought it was exciting, and promptly forgot all about it until I read your post. It's Cameron's fault: it is, in my opinion, a forgettable movie. When I saw "Alien" my heart rate raced a few times and adrenaline was in my blood. I'll never forget it.
I look primarily for movies that effect me. If I looked for movies that made me say just say "whoa" or "cool," I guess I would like "Aliens" more too.
Giger who? James Cameran is the primary influence!
on
Alien Case Mod
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· Score: 5, Insightful
This isn't an Aliens theme so much as it's an H.R. Giger tribute. The alien theme was only one of his works...
Exactly what I was thinking, but this guy manages to mention Giger only once... You have to click on "Front/Door Closed" to see it. He says "the blend of mechanical and organic is reminiscent of Giger's early paintings."
The whole thing is Giger.
On the main page he says "...I decided to blend a bit of James Cameron's futuristic military look-and-feel into the piece. Worn steel, subtle detail and well-used armor all played a part in my inspiration."
So the guy who directed Titanic gets a front page nod as an influence while Giger is relegated to a secondary link, where we learn his "early paintings" had an influence on the front. I don't even see any Terminator in it. Where the hell does Cameran come in? Is he planning to put a steam-outlined handprint on the case window or something?
Maybe he thinks Cameran directed Alien? But that was Ridley Scott, and even crediting with inventing the Alien look would be, well, wrong anyway. I don't get it.
People who hack have other hobbies. Big deal. Lots of people have lots of different hobbies, and hacking doesn't necessarily have to be one of them. Most total slackers I've known have been interested in things like "metalsmithing, sewing, baking bread, making soap, knot tying, brewing beer, woodcarving, yogurt and cheese." Those are the kinds of things they do instead of working.
As to this going to the core of some essential geekness, I think that is just self-centered, elitist garbage. The human race is such a diverse set, that attempting to draw boundaries around groups based on many traits usually ends up being vapor.
So now that the geeks have claimed interesting hobbies, does that mean the cool slackers will have to watch more television or something? Perhaps we could patent all these hobbies, and sue the slackers for infringing on our turf.
I don't mean to be a party pooper. By all means, all of you go ahead. I just won't be participating in the circle jerk. I hope you don't revoke my membership to geekdom. Fleeing elitism and arrogance is what made me an outsider in the first place.
If the sample is recognisable as a major part of another song, it should have to be cleared for use by the artist. Simple as that.
Well thank God someone's solved that problem. Now why don't you take on world hunger or the environment.
Trouble with your reductionalist BS is that you can take sounds from other tracks and arrange them in a sufficently creative way to create a new original work. Take Negativland's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" : it contains a recognizable sample from U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" but is obviously an original work which is critical of the record industry establishment. While I recognize the sample, I can't find the ideas represented in the original work of U2, nor do I recognize the overall song structure. Something has obviously been created.
IMHO this is not what Puffy does for instance; Puffy essentially steals all the music from a song and sets different lyrics to it... like Wierd Al.
Copyright has been totally perverted and sampling is a casualty as much as anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
Totally man. It's like everyone here is from some other planet. I've been programming in a corporation for 6 years, and now I know many professional programmers all over the country. A few work 8 hour days. The rest of us are envious. 10 is the norm. This website is full of posers.
Gabe's recounting has an obvious problem. Why would a dude who got thrown out of college himself (a story he retells proudly) snootily inquire if someone else "even attended college"?
I recall at the time that independent accounts such as one by the organizer of the event made it sound like Gabe acted like a disrespectful asshole (and come on, isn't that about what you'd expect), and Harlan responded about like you'd expect.
In any case much like the false little fuck story, it may be a funny story but it isn't true.
Giving people a coupon to vote doesn't change the threat of people trying to "influence" you to vote their way. It just changes the dynamics of enforcement a bit.
<groan> No. People can try to influence the way I vote, and I can tell them I'm voting the way they want me to, I can even take their money, but then I walk into the booth and still vote the way I want. Your ticket idea opens the door to a way to verify which way I voted (since they can just demand to vote for me). Anytime you allow third parties to verify which way people voted you introduce a whole new set of problems. Everywhere I've voted pay for votes are not a huge problem because no one wants to spend money for something they can't verify they even got. Your plan is worse than giving them a way to verify. Now you can literally give your vote away to the highest bidder.
I didn't miss the point. I just didn't bother pointing out again what others have already: it doesn't add anything. The technique in the article doesn't make me feel any more secure that my vote made it to the candidate I chose, and without that I just don't care. Introducing a layer of abstraction just moves the problem of verification. It doesn't alleviate it. What does it mean to me that I get my pattern of choices back without any verifiable connection to what those choices actually mean. I think the hope is it would confuse people enough that they would think it actually means something.
I would much rather talk about something that adds meaningful recounts to electronic voting, yet still opens the door to the efficiency benefits, and does in fact include a voter-verified step to back up the results produced.
That's why I send one possible recount you could do is a combination machine/human recount. Just pick a random sampling of ballots and verify the machine code matches the voter verified text. Once you've convinced yourself it statistically unlikely that the machine code isn't matching the text, you can save time by scanning. That is one of many forms of auditing possible with this system.
I remember one of my computer science professors telling us in college about what I believe was a journal article from the 1970's discussing electronic voting. The way you do it is a two stage process. People vote on the machine. It then prints out a paper ballot that has machine readable code and human readable type indicating your vote, all on the same ballot. You do not get to touch the ballot. It prints up behind a glass screen. There is a red button and a green button. If you approve your printed ballot, you press the green button and you see your ballot drop into the sealed ballot box, and your vote is tallied in the machine. If you disapprove you press the red button and see your ballot get shredded and your vote is not tallied in the machine, at which point you have the opportunity to restart the process. The first official count is recorded and tallied by the machines you vote on. In the event of a recount, you have the choice of scanning your printed paper ballots by machine, human recount, or a combination. Because the ballot boxes are only needed in the event of a recount they can remain sealed until such a count.
This solution has been available for more than 30 years. If anyone is making electronic voting machines that do not allow a human verifiable recount, the only possible reason is that they want to leave the possibility of fixing an election open. Which is not to say this technique isn't open to tampering, but it is no more open than paper ballot systems, unlike the contemporary electronic voting solutions.
Is this a joke?
We do not send our basketball teams to compete against the rest of the world, saying the other teams have to play slower because our folks aren't fit enough to run as fast.
We also don't relocate our teams to other countries because their players don't get paid as much.
If we happen to find a good player overseas, the first thing we do is try to lure them here with an American-size paycheck. We don't move the team to them to avoid giving them a raise.
Granted it is harder for someone in another country to be such a standout that they are discovered and recruited: that is why the Intel chief is a traitor. It is because he is moving the jobs out of America to where it is harder and a greater inconvenience for Americans to get them.
These companies love to say they are international and loyal to their shareholders, but not to any one country: that is what they say when they are talking about outsourcing. When it comes to tax breaks however they start claim they are red, white, and blue, and it would be bad for them and therefore bad for America if we tax them.
If these companies don't want to be American companies, tax their products as imports. They are penalizing American workers, and if our current administration cared at all about American workers they would penalize them in return.
But the appointed President isn't interested in helping workers. He is busily turning the income tax into just a salary tax. Meaning if you have to work for your money (like people at the bottom do) the government taxes you more. Meaning it is harder to work your way to top, and easier to squat at the top while doing nothing.
So much for the American dream.
We need a new Moore's law! Well Gordon Moore had better to get to work formulating it. What the hell is the matter with that guy? Does he only make one law a century or something. Has the bastard not noticed the old law is crapping out?!
Seriously though, I hate when proper nouns are misused to form new pronouns.
Watergate is called Watergate because the break-in was at the Watergate Hotel. So where exactly is the Lewinsky-gate hotel? The travel-gate sounds nice: how many stars does it have? Urgh!
Similarly if it isn't a law by Moore, it isn't a new Moore's law. It is a new law, that replaces Moore's law.
The record companies have a monopoly. They illegally collude to fix prices and control the market. Whenever that happens, people work extra hard to find a way around it. There is no sense calling these people criminals for wanting the music industry to be reasonable. That's the kettle calling the sugar black.
I'm sure p2p does cut down on the sales of some artists.
Those artists you hear on the radio or a club in passing, and think "hey, that seems cool." In earlier days you would have to buy the album to discover it is total crap and the artist is a talentless hack. But now p2p gets the word out before you get robbed. The record companies are all upset, because their whole business is putting blind people in fields of shit and asking them to find a rose. That is to say, they intentionally pump up one hit wonders to sell as many records as possible, but don't put as much effort into the whole album, and do even worse by most second albums.
It is in their interest to make money on talentless hacks, because while a talentless hack may be capable of producing a one hit wonder (usually with a longtime producer working with them on the track), they won't be able to achieve long-term success or the power that comes with it to demand reasonable percentages from the record company and creative control. Hence by having ten artists sell 10 million records a piece, they make more money than on a talented band with staying power who sells 100 million records.
It is a pump and dump but for music instead of the stock market. And just when they get the scheme nearly perfected, p2p comes along and lets people preview what they'll be getting in advance. At which point reasonable people pinch their noses and walk away from what the record companies would prefer that they buy.
Furthermore, those in the record industry that bitch and moan about the artists being robbed are a bunch of liars and hypocrites. They steal from their artists in numbers that p2p can never touch. They make it almost impossible for an artist to audit independently how many records they've sold, but inevitably when artists do audit (usually in a very limited area), they discover they are being paid even less than the lousy terms in their contracts. No part of this argument is about the artists: that is just a smokescreen for what's really going on.
It is the record companies' feces trade that they are worried about: they want to continue getting you to trade the money earned with the sweat of your back for fertilizer, meanwhile all their cows are starving in the field and they claim it is your fault for not buying enough sewage.
That business model, like all pump and dump schemes, eventually has to fail. Right now they are just trying to legislate a delay for the day of reckoning, while they can try to come up with a new scheme to sell us formulaic shit we don't want.
Notice that creative, independent, offbeat, artists invariably seem to make up the examples people use when they need to point to somebody who successfully leverages the Internet and p2p. Artists, in the grandest sense of the word, often can do very well in that environment.
When people can sample music freely, and be picky about the artists they will support, the music industry can no longer control the market. And that is what they are afraid of. So stop calling it stealing or copyright infringement. The only thing being stolen is the RI's ability to sell stuff people don't really want to hear (not after they've heard the good music out there).
If you took away this monopoly, instead of 5 gigantic record companies that fix prices and control the market together illegally, you would see 500 small record companies become medium sized. Smaller record companies benefit the consumer, because now there is competition. The cost of producing, promoting, and distributing has fallen way down thanks to technology, but the big record companies keep taking more and more for this service, both from their artists and the consumers.
That was a funny comment, but do remember that in all the recounts that occurred in Florida AFTER the whole bru-haha, Dubya still came out ahead.
To say Bush won every media recount (those are the recounts that happened after the election) is a distortion. The truth is Bush won every recount using only undervotes (i.e. where the problem with the ballot was a hanging chad or there was only a dimple) (See USA Today). That is the most widely used standard, and the one that Gore was asking for, so ultimately Bush won. Fine.
But I think it might worth at least mentioning that if you include the overvotes (such as where people checked Gore and wrote in Gore) Gore won. That is to say, if the standard is voter intent, in every recount more people went to the polls intending to vote for Gore than Bush. So when you say Bush won every recount, be sure and include that little footnote, because otherwise people may think you are being dishonest. See Guardian. See USA Today. See Salon. See Washington Post.
And you know, maybe if minority votes counted for as much as a non-minority vote, that would make a difference. See New York Times.
Personally before Florida, I thought the voter's intent was the standard. How silly.
Then there was the minorities being intimidated at the polls thing. Then there was Republican officials writing on a bunch of ballots to "fill in missing information." I'm not saying they didn't just fill in missing social security numbers, but it is obviously a violation of election standards to have partisan non-election officials writing on ballots. There are media references for all this stuff too. Go find them yourself. I'm tired.
This article is by Ian Murdock, who is the Ian in Debian. The logo isn't there because of a direct relationship to the subject of the article; the Debian logo is there because of a direct relationship to the author.
Notice that his current project (Progeny) is about companies looking to build on a 'distribution neutral platform', and the link in the article goes to a page about 'Progeny Componentized Linux.' Believe or not Gentoo is not the only highly configurable linux game in town: Progeny seems to be playing that game, but at the enterprise not the consumer level. He's definitely not thinking of Gentoo for this role. He's talking about Progeny.
Ahoy, what is so bad about bein' called a pirate, I want t' know? Besides callin' thin's waht they aren't is pratically the national pastime nowadays. Now where can I find a bottle o'rum?
But the Republicans got their independant council, remember? Unlimited budget, years and years of investigation, and he found (gasp) Clinton lied about an affair under oath. Oh Jesus someone save us!
Someone in Bush's whitehouse compromises an agent whose mission involves intercepting terrorists trying to buy weapons of mass destruction, compromising a front company set up by the CIA for such purpose, and you think it is the same thing. Even if the accusations from your questionable source are true, at worst it is making public investigations by people on the outside: it is not stealing internal papers of Congressman. It is not compromising national security. I thought Republicans cared about fighting terrorism. I guess that is just when it involves giving away defense contracts. When it comes to something that could actually be effective, it just doesn't rise to the same level of importance does it?
Not to mention the whole lying to Congress about WMD thing. Lying to Congress vs lying about an affair in civil court: which matters more? But since Bush lied in only 17 words, it doesn't count, right? I guess "I did not have sex with that woman." doesn't count either; I mean that is only 8 words.
Some of the stuff your link is talking about is public record anyway. I don't see indication of breaking and entering to obtain said files there. Even just obtaining the files in this case, was done illegally.
No one said Republicans have a monopoly on corruption in Washington, but they sure have perfected it.
It's even more interesting that they show a supposed Linux laptop displaying a Windows style error message with non-sensical text. So
1) to make linux look bad they need to make it look like Windows.
2) they can't even come up with a common error message in Linux that people actually see (because those kind of of errors get fixed in Linux). Unlike say:
"The driver for the display device got stuck in an infinite loop. This usually indicates a problem with the device itself or with the device driver programming the hardware incorrectly. Please check with your display device vendor for any driver updates. "
The last two Windows XP laptops I've used got this BSOD error with different video cards and up to date drivers, although usually they just froze up and quit working entirely. Under Linux, this problem "with the device" or "driver" disappeared.
"LINUX Kernel Error! Recompile Driver!" My ass!
The paper cited in the first link is from a professor I once had.
On his website I found his full article, if you want some details about watermarking techniques. It's has a lot more meat than presentation slides.
Score one for civil liberties....the Supreme Court of Washington state ruled today that a warrant is required by police to use GPS tracking devices to track suspects.
Which brings us to the Patriot Act, which makes this ruling totally moot if you get some feds involved that can mutter the t-word. As in "Oh yeah. I almost forgot judge that we thought he might be like a terrorist and stuff, so no warrant required." Although why even explain it to a judge when a military tribunal will do? But why bother with a tribunal when you can just hold the person indefinitely without ever charging them?
But it sure is a relief to have this one on the books. If we ever get the constitution back, it might even matter.
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and figuring that the turnout hovers around 50% as it is
If that is the case probably 50% of the people who signed, won't actually vote. All it took to sign was being a registered voter: it did not require that you actually vote in elections. Therefore that stat cuts the set of those who signed too. If 50% of the people who once cared enough to sign the voter registration paperwork now don't care enough to actually vote, what makes you think those who sign a petition shoved in their face care either?
I am looking at the ACLU news page and it is right on top!
Certainly a better resource than "Boing Boing".
Okay you caught me. I had forgotten that Cameron directed the sequel. Still, the guy who directed the sequel gets the credit for the look of this case? It still doesn't make sense.
Most people I talk to think "Aliens" (the sequel) is the far better film, which is something I do not agree with.
Agreed.
"Aliens" lacks subtlety and any sense of restraint. For instance, remember how powerful the acid blood was in the first film? It ate through several decks of the ship. Just attempting to kill the creature was a dangerous proposition due to this novel defense mechanism. In the second film characters will be standing nearly next to the aliens blasting them to bits with machine guns. What is the consequence of all that powerful acid flying around?: Once they have to take off their armor. As a writer, Cameron didn't have the discipline to keep his characters from making hamburger out of the aliens.
"Alien" on the other hand is textbook of suspense. The suspense is so thick that, Scott scares you with a cat; at least it scared me the first time I saw it. I would classify "Alien" as one of the only intelligent horror films. It just happens to be a horror film with a science fiction premise.
People with undisciplined minds will like the undisciplined movie because they don't have the patience to deal with suspense. To decide which film I like better I only needed to ask myself which film effected me more. When I saw "Aliens" I thought it was exciting, and promptly forgot all about it until I read your post. It's Cameron's fault: it is, in my opinion, a forgettable movie. When I saw "Alien" my heart rate raced a few times and adrenaline was in my blood. I'll never forget it.
I look primarily for movies that effect me. If I looked for movies that made me say just say "whoa" or "cool," I guess I would like "Aliens" more too.
This isn't an Aliens theme so much as it's an H.R. Giger tribute. The alien theme was only one of his works...
Exactly what I was thinking, but this guy manages to mention Giger only once... You have to click on "Front/Door Closed" to see it. He says "the blend of mechanical and organic is reminiscent of Giger's early paintings."
The whole thing is Giger.
On the main page he says "...I decided to blend a bit of James Cameron's futuristic military look-and-feel into the piece. Worn steel, subtle detail and well-used armor all played a part in my inspiration."
So the guy who directed Titanic gets a front page nod as an influence while Giger is relegated to a secondary link, where we learn his "early paintings" had an influence on the front. I don't even see any Terminator in it. Where the hell does Cameran come in? Is he planning to put a steam-outlined handprint on the case window or something?
Maybe he thinks Cameran directed Alien? But that was Ridley Scott, and even crediting with inventing the Alien look would be, well, wrong anyway. I don't get it.
People who hack have other hobbies. Big deal. Lots of people have lots of different hobbies, and hacking doesn't necessarily have to be one of them. Most total slackers I've known have been interested in things like "metalsmithing, sewing, baking bread, making soap, knot tying, brewing beer, woodcarving, yogurt and cheese." Those are the kinds of things they do instead of working.
As to this going to the core of some essential geekness, I think that is just self-centered, elitist garbage. The human race is such a diverse set, that attempting to draw boundaries around groups based on many traits usually ends up being vapor.
So now that the geeks have claimed interesting hobbies, does that mean the cool slackers will have to watch more television or something? Perhaps we could patent all these hobbies, and sue the slackers for infringing on our turf.
I don't mean to be a party pooper. By all means, all of you go ahead. I just won't be participating in the circle jerk. I hope you don't revoke my membership to geekdom. Fleeing elitism and arrogance is what made me an outsider in the first place.
Who said he didn't? I just said that Puffy is doing musically something similar to Weird Al, only not funny (at least not intentionally).
Puffy gets permission too by the way. Would you like to try again?
If the sample is recognisable as a major part of another song, it should have to be cleared for use by the artist. Simple as that.
Well thank God someone's solved that problem. Now why don't you take on world hunger or the environment.
Trouble with your reductionalist BS is that you can take sounds from other tracks and arrange them in a sufficently creative way to create a new original work. Take Negativland's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" : it contains a recognizable sample from U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" but is obviously an original work which is critical of the record industry establishment. While I recognize the sample, I can't find the ideas represented in the original work of U2, nor do I recognize the overall song structure. Something has obviously been created.
IMHO this is not what Puffy does for instance; Puffy essentially steals all the music from a song and sets different lyrics to it... like Wierd Al.
Copyright has been totally perverted and sampling is a casualty as much as anything else.
This confirms that someone in marketing is involved despite my first impressions of the project:
MSN iLoo Q&As with Tracy Blacher - consumer marketing manager for MSN
I love the logo on this one!:
Article: MSN Crafts Web-Enabled Toilet