Look at "Air Force One." Decent movie, spoiled by absolutely terrible special effects at the end.
You mean the final splashdown? It was fine. What stretched things just a bit was a middle-aged politician who could beat the shit out of a whole squad of elite Spetsnaz; or trying to work out the motivation of the Secret Service traitor; or.... the plot was a much bigger obstacle to enjoyment than the SFX, for me. Nevertheless, Gary Oldman, William Macy, and even Ford made it watchable.
Now let us talk about one of my secondary concerns: spelling and grammar. Let me be clear. As you are probably well aware, I don't think these are as important as the things I mentioned above. I want a Slashdot story to be focused, directing your attention to the URL in question. It needs to be not to long, not to short. Links should be clear. Spelling and Grammar are secondary issues.
Slashdot is not the Wall Street Journal. It is not The New York Times. Slashdot is an informal meeting ground. A town hall. A pub. A bulletin board in the quad on campus. Here people might not properly capitalize a proper noun. They might transpose letters in 'thier'. They might use jargon that isn't in oxford. And all of that is OK with me.
Now sometimes a sentence doesn't parse to me. I'm not opposed to correcting the grammar in a sentence if it just doesn't work. But I simply don't think that a typo or grammar error is a make or break problem for a Slashdot story.
And if you look down in the comments, you'll find hundreds of posts taking issue with this, and Taco responded several times, to underline his philosophy that Real Men don't care about spelling or grammar. And though he didn't mention it, obviously not about dupes, or publishing hoaxes, blatant advertising spiels, or flame bait for the Creationists to run with.
demo scheduled for April 15th which I can already forsee is going to be a potential disaster.
TFA says nothgn id happening for 60 days, so your demo is fine.
Even after, if you apply the MS patch, the worst that will happen is that it will "ask permission" before running code. Maybe once per session; maybe once and stored in a cookies. So that may be a little annoying but not disastrous.
showing up for a job interview with a long hair that hasn't been washed for 5 days
Why is is that so many people are automatically adding "unwashed" to "long hair" in this discussion? When I had long hair I had to wash it every day without fail to feel comfortable.
Nowdays I've got fairly short hair, just because it's lower maintenance. However I also have a beard for the same reason, shaving every day is a bitch (and the beard gets washed every day before you ask). And I wear sandals too, to complete the stereotype, though not to interviews.
Re:I'm the only GNU/Linux user in the office
on
Why Windows is Slow
·
· Score: 1
of course I run anti-virus and anti-spyware on my computers, and nowhere did I imply otherwise
You were talking about: "My in-laws. My wife's sister. My co-workers past and present. My work computers. The computers at my sons school." The impression was that all these were independent, if you personally are monitoring and updating security on them all then of course it's possible, but isn't at all what the average user is doing.
Re:I'm the only GNU/Linux user in the office
on
Why Windows is Slow
·
· Score: 1
I don't even personally know anyone that's ever gotten a virus on Windows. My in-laws. My wife's sister. My co-workers past and present. My work computers. The computers at my sons school.
Sorry, can't believe that. Have you actually run an anti-virus or anti-spyware app of these? Modern viruses don't pop up joke windows or try to delete files; they silently steal data, send out spam, or DDOS attacks. If it's true, you shoudl contact MS PR, they could send you around the talk shows.
"Windows sucks" is an interesting, novel, subject? Just a recipe for a classic OS religious war.
All the article generated was about five +3 informative comments saying the exact same thing as yours.
Not to mention about 300 saying the exact same, off-topic, thing as the parent.
But I do have to say the original submitter (if you can say that for a dupe), either deliberately or stupidly, I can't tell, made his summary suggest it was actually about execution speed, with his talk of drivers and such. Since the Slashdot editors seem to go for the obvious flamebait spin on stories (eg, anything that mentions "evolution") that was almost a guarantee of having his story accepted.
Re:I'm the only GNU/Linux user in the office
on
Why Windows is Slow
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If any other OS was as popular they would have just as many viruses and they would have just as much trouble with them because the people using them are still too dumb
Working in publishing I know lots of Mac users, and I can assure you that there are proportionally just as many dumb Mac users as dumb Windows users. Back in the 80s there were quite a few Mac viruses going around (by floppy disk mainly). But now despite millions of clueless Mac users on shiny new iMacs with 24/7 broadband, it's still a newsflash if any are infected with a virus -- it does happen, but it's an oddity. Roll out the "too few to target" argument if you want, but they're just more secure out of the box.
I can't understand why he is "best known for Solaris",
As the summary says, because that was the one George Clooney (re)made as a movie. At least the Rueters' story (not "AP" as the submitter wrote) didn't mention that till paragraph 3.
It gets a bit wearing that every news article that can be linked to a movie star makes that its focus in the headline.
It is inconceivable for a writer to rewrite his/her fiction novels
Lots of authors do that. One major (in SF terms anyway) is Michael Moorcock. Many who later become more famous can republish their earlier works and take the opportunity to revise or restore cuts. But sometimes, like Lucas, it proves to be an ill-advised ego-trip. Heinlein, for instance, released versions of his novels with cuts restored, eg Red Planet with an additional lecture about gun rights; proving only the wisdom of his original editors. But even when the new version is actually an improvement, as a reader I'd prefer they got on with new stuff rather than polishing up an old work. Life is too short to spend on reruns.
On the other hand, I'd really like a more convenient way to optionally restrict product searches to US-based sellers. It's time consuming to sort out all the UK sellers when I'm looking to buy electronics,
And the reverse. It's very annoying to be looking through a local (non-US) newsgroup or auction site and find it full of ads by Americans, most of whom won't or can't sell overseas anyway. They just select every group or venue vaguely relevant and spam away.
The major question is whay this is an Ask Slashdot question. No one is advocating this, it's never going to happen, and it's technically impossible to inmplement without losing almsot all fuctionality. So it becomes merely an excuse for bigots of all stripes to launch into pro/anti US diatribes.
Well, move on to the next Evolution vs Creationism flame war -- I mean article about a fossil.
This article doesn't tell you how the fossils are dated. As the result, the meaning of that skull can be seen to be entirely fabricated.
It's a news article. It only has the amusing details.
People usually believe that you can carbon date a piece of fossil and make a statement that it is 250,000 years old, but it is not the case. Radiocarbon dating only works up to about 50,000 years.
Fortunately they didn't use carbon dating for this fossil.
The new cranium from Gawis appears to be intermediate between the earlier
Homo erectus and later Homo sapiens and may be sampling
a single lineage. At the discovery site and nearby areas, significant
archaeological collections of Late Acheulean stone tool-making tradition
and numerous fossil animals were found, opening a window into an intriguing
and important period in the development of modern humans. The southwest portion
of the project area near the Gawis River contains the youngest part of the
archive which is estimated to the Middle Pleistocene. Most of the sediments
containing the cranium are sands and silts, not datable by standard geologic
methods. However, the region contains many active and recently active volcanoes
that erupted periodically, blanketing the local landscape with thin,
gray-colored layers of volcanic ash. These volcanic ash layers hold
the key to dating the Gawis cranium and associated stone tools. Some
ash layers in the Gona project area can be directly dated by the
40Ar/39Ar method, and others, by virtue of their
distinctive chemical composition, can be matched to correlative dated layers
outside the Gona area providing the opportunity to make this one of the
best-dated human ancestors notes Jay Quade, Gona project geologist.
A New Hominid Cranium from Gona, Afar, Ethiopia
Gona Palaeoanthropological Research Project, CRAFT Stone Age Institute, Indiana University
Scientists conducting palaeoanthropological field research at Gona, in the Afar Administrative State of Ethiopia have discovered a significantly complete cranium of a human ancestor estimated to be Middle Pleistocene in age. The new hominid was discovered at Gawis (pronounced "gow-wees"), in the Gona Paleoanthropological Research Project study area of Ethiopia. The discovery was reported by Sileshi Semaw, Director of the Gona Project, who is based at CRAFT Stone Age Institute, Indiana University, USA.
This is from the scientists themselves, not CNN (note, the term "missing link" is absent).
And it goes on to give details of the discovery and some photos of the skull and its discoverers. Seeing as it was only found a few weeks ago, there obviously is lots more work before any conclusions can be drawn.
And though it's predicable, of the 500 or so comments so far, about 99% are just recycling the same boring fucking flamewar about creationism vs evolution that happens every time an excuse occurs in an article here. No one is paying any attention to the specific discovery.
Personally, for instance, I found it interesting that it was an Ethiopian scientist credited with the discovery, though sponsored by an American university. That this terribly poor country can still contribute to real science is heartening. So when Americans make evolution illegal, there will be someone to carry on the torch of scientific enquiry.
Just because I called myself a thing did not make me that thing.
Yes. But you couldn't say you had been maligned if someone used the same words you did to describe you (absurd though it would be in your case). If you create a label for yourself, you might have to live with the consequences (one reason I have a gibberish name here; gave up trying to find a meaningful one, after almost a million subscribers the pool is well fished out), and I didn't want any baggage from that to weigh against my posts.
There's alot of beneficial things you can do with this information, and due to the massive amounts of data collected, very specific screens would be the only useful application.
Of course you could solve crimes with total surveillance (which term I repeat, as I think it is appropriate; or "Big Brotther Police State" would also fit the bill). However, you ignore the other foreseeable consequences of allowing a government to track you (by "you" I do mean everyone) so minutely. The "neighbour looking out the window" is very different; firstly because s/he is not the government, and secondly is not compiling a dossier linked to your file that will be kept forever and accessible to an undetermined number of government functionaries and quite likely to others with connections. The temptation to extend this to look for more and more infractions, to cover more and more of the population, is irresistible. Just look at what J Edgar Hoover did 50 years ago with his relatively primitive resources.
"Irhabi posted a 20-page message titled "Seminar on Hacking Websites," to the Ekhlas forum. It provided detailed information on the art of hacking, listing dozens of vulnerable Web sites to which one could upload shared media.
"Irhabi released his will on the Internet. In it, he provided links to help visitors with their own Internet security and hacking skills in the event of his absence."
So, let me get this straight, if you're a propagandist for a terrorist group, you're a terrorist?
TFA: "The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007.... Scotland Yard arrested a 22-year-old West Londoner, Younis Tsouli, suspected of participating in an alleged bomb plot. In November, British authorities brought a range of charges against him related to that plot....British investigators eventually confirmed to us that they believe he is Irhabi 007."
So he called himself "terrorist", and he was allegedly involved with a real-world bomb plot. So not so sensationalist.
TFA does not answer the most interesting question. AFAIK in germany you can copy a copyrighted work as much as you want within your household under fair use provisions. This is supported by an extra levy on CD writers, blank media, etc. Does the new law change any of these provisions in favour of the plutocrats or not?
RTFA. "Frau Zypries has ruled that it will still be legal to copy a legitimately bought DVD for limited private use."
No but when someone that's been thrice convicted of robbing liquor stores wanders into a liquor store at 1am, you can pre-dispatch the police.
After the first thousand false alarms, will the police still think this is a good idea? And then when he REALLY wants to rob a liquor store, he wears a Groucho mask.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still using a "tired old VCR", you insensitive clod.
You mean the final splashdown? It was fine. What stretched things just a bit was a middle-aged politician who could beat the shit out of a whole squad of elite Spetsnaz; or trying to work out the motivation of the Secret Service traitor; or.... the plot was a much bigger obstacle to enjoyment than the SFX, for me. Nevertheless, Gary Oldman, William Macy, and even Ford made it watchable.
Just look at Taco's policy on article spelling and formatting:
And if you look down in the comments, you'll find hundreds of posts taking issue with this, and Taco responded several times, to underline his philosophy that Real Men don't care about spelling or grammar. And though he didn't mention it, obviously not about dupes, or publishing hoaxes, blatant advertising spiels, or flame bait for the Creationists to run with.TFA says nothgn id happening for 60 days, so your demo is fine. Even after, if you apply the MS patch, the worst that will happen is that it will "ask permission" before running code. Maybe once per session; maybe once and stored in a cookies. So that may be a little annoying but not disastrous.
Why is is that so many people are automatically adding "unwashed" to "long hair" in this discussion? When I had long hair I had to wash it every day without fail to feel comfortable.
Nowdays I've got fairly short hair, just because it's lower maintenance. However I also have a beard for the same reason, shaving every day is a bitch (and the beard gets washed every day before you ask). And I wear sandals too, to complete the stereotype, though not to interviews.
You were talking about: "My in-laws. My wife's sister. My co-workers past and present. My work computers. The computers at my sons school." The impression was that all these were independent, if you personally are monitoring and updating security on them all then of course it's possible, but isn't at all what the average user is doing.
Sorry, can't believe that. Have you actually run an anti-virus or anti-spyware app of these? Modern viruses don't pop up joke windows or try to delete files; they silently steal data, send out spam, or DDOS attacks. If it's true, you shoudl contact MS PR, they could send you around the talk shows.
"Windows sucks" is an interesting, novel, subject? Just a recipe for a classic OS religious war.
All the article generated was about five +3 informative comments saying the exact same thing as yours.
Not to mention about 300 saying the exact same, off-topic, thing as the parent.
But I do have to say the original submitter (if you can say that for a dupe), either deliberately or stupidly, I can't tell, made his summary suggest it was actually about execution speed, with his talk of drivers and such. Since the Slashdot editors seem to go for the obvious flamebait spin on stories (eg, anything that mentions "evolution") that was almost a guarantee of having his story accepted.
Working in publishing I know lots of Mac users, and I can assure you that there are proportionally just as many dumb Mac users as dumb Windows users. Back in the 80s there were quite a few Mac viruses going around (by floppy disk mainly). But now despite millions of clueless Mac users on shiny new iMacs with 24/7 broadband, it's still a newsflash if any are infected with a virus -- it does happen, but it's an oddity. Roll out the "too few to target" argument if you want, but they're just more secure out of the box.
RTFA. It isn't about "slow" as in execution speed, it's about "slow" as taking a long time to come to market and introduce new features.
As the summary says, because that was the one George Clooney (re)made as a movie. At least the Rueters' story (not "AP" as the submitter wrote) didn't mention that till paragraph 3.
It gets a bit wearing that every news article that can be linked to a movie star makes that its focus in the headline.
Lots of authors do that. One major (in SF terms anyway) is Michael Moorcock. Many who later become more famous can republish their earlier works and take the opportunity to revise or restore cuts. But sometimes, like Lucas, it proves to be an ill-advised ego-trip. Heinlein, for instance, released versions of his novels with cuts restored, eg Red Planet with an additional lecture about gun rights; proving only the wisdom of his original editors. But even when the new version is actually an improvement, as a reader I'd prefer they got on with new stuff rather than polishing up an old work. Life is too short to spend on reruns.
And the reverse. It's very annoying to be looking through a local (non-US) newsgroup or auction site and find it full of ads by Americans, most of whom won't or can't sell overseas anyway. They just select every group or venue vaguely relevant and spam away.
The major question is whay this is an Ask Slashdot question. No one is advocating this, it's never going to happen, and it's technically impossible to inmplement without losing almsot all fuctionality. So it becomes merely an excuse for bigots of all stripes to launch into pro/anti US diatribes. Well, move on to the next Evolution vs Creationism flame war -- I mean article about a fossil.
It's a news article. It only has the amusing details.
People usually believe that you can carbon date a piece of fossil and make a statement that it is 250,000 years old, but it is not the case. Radiocarbon dating only works up to about 50,000 years.
Fortunately they didn't use carbon dating for this fossil.
University of Arizona page about this discovery:
Change your posting preference to "Plain Old Text" and it will.
Here is the REAL missing link.
This is from the scientists themselves, not CNN (note, the term "missing link" is absent).And it goes on to give details of the discovery and some photos of the skull and its discoverers. Seeing as it was only found a few weeks ago, there obviously is lots more work before any conclusions can be drawn.
And though it's predicable, of the 500 or so comments so far, about 99% are just recycling the same boring fucking flamewar about creationism vs evolution that happens every time an excuse occurs in an article here. No one is paying any attention to the specific discovery.
Personally, for instance, I found it interesting that it was an Ethiopian scientist credited with the discovery, though sponsored by an American university. That this terribly poor country can still contribute to real science is heartening. So when Americans make evolution illegal, there will be someone to carry on the torch of scientific enquiry.
Yes. But you couldn't say you had been maligned if someone used the same words you did to describe you (absurd though it would be in your case). If you create a label for yourself, you might have to live with the consequences (one reason I have a gibberish name here; gave up trying to find a meaningful one, after almost a million subscribers the pool is well fished out), and I didn't want any baggage from that to weigh against my posts.
Of course you could solve crimes with total surveillance (which term I repeat, as I think it is appropriate; or "Big Brotther Police State" would also fit the bill). However, you ignore the other foreseeable consequences of allowing a government to track you (by "you" I do mean everyone) so minutely. The "neighbour looking out the window" is very different; firstly because s/he is not the government, and secondly is not compiling a dossier linked to your file that will be kept forever and accessible to an undetermined number of government functionaries and quite likely to others with connections. The temptation to extend this to look for more and more infractions, to cover more and more of the population, is irresistible. Just look at what J Edgar Hoover did 50 years ago with his relatively primitive resources.
"Irhabi posted a 20-page message titled "Seminar on Hacking Websites," to the Ekhlas forum. It provided detailed information on the art of hacking, listing dozens of vulnerable Web sites to which one could upload shared media.
"Irhabi released his will on the Internet. In it, he provided links to help visitors with their own Internet security and hacking skills in the event of his absence."
TFA: "The savvy, English-speaking, presumably young webmaster taunted his pursuers, calling himself Irhabi -- Terrorist -- 007.... Scotland Yard arrested a 22-year-old West Londoner, Younis Tsouli, suspected of participating in an alleged bomb plot. In November, British authorities brought a range of charges against him related to that plot....British investigators eventually confirmed to us that they believe he is Irhabi 007."
So he called himself "terrorist", and he was allegedly involved with a real-world bomb plot. So not so sensationalist.
Oh good, total surveillance. Track everybody all the time. And if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to complain about.
Actual crimes are ALREADY reported. People buying liquor at 1AM are not committing a crime.
RTFA. "Frau Zypries has ruled that it will still be legal to copy a legitimately bought DVD for limited private use."
After the first thousand false alarms, will the police still think this is a good idea? And then when he REALLY wants to rob a liquor store, he wears a Groucho mask.
Facial hair? I doubt this light can penetrate hair.