The point is that this is not your tragedy. Making
fun of your own dead is insensitive, making fun of another's is deeply wounding and insulting. If you don't get that, laugh on.
Thanks, you Americans are so sensitive. The whole world has to mourn for your disasters, but when people get killed in other countries it's just an opportunuity to make dumb jokes.
Theaters should take it upon themselves to block Cell phone signals.
Cinemas here in Hong Kong proposed to do that -- cell phone abuse is probably about the worst in the world here. But the telecommunications dept refused to give them permission. The usual moronic justifications -- "what if there was a nuclear war and I needed to say goodbye to my wife", etc.
Use as your search term an incomplete title/artist, eg
"Barry Manil" and then you can see and ignore the titles with only the incomplete string. Worth doing anyway because of mispelled tracks.
Re:how to make linux desktop good for masses
on
Ark Linux
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· Score: 2
Which makes it even more interesting to speculate on what Apple's next software announcement is going to be.
They just released a new browser for Jaguar, Safari, based on Konqueror.
Yes, the richest man in the world is an idiot. Because we all know any schlub can write globally accepted software again and again. I'm fine with saying Bill Gates is a jerk, or entirely evil, but he's simply not an idiot.
Yes, Gates is a genius, and evil. But he didn't (personally) "write globally accepted software". Not for the last 20 years anyway, he's either bought it or paid other peole to write it.
3. Waiting for a mirror to appear would make news show up incredibly slow.
They don't need to wait for a mirror to appear -- just send an email to the site owner warning him and giving info on how to arrange a mirror should he so want.
4. The community automatically mirrors or pastes content that has been/.-ed you just need to spend 2 seconds reading the comments.
Sometimes.
5. The guy with the Lego site is probably tickled pink that his site just got a billion hits and probably doesn't mind things crawling to a halt for a while. It's his 15 minutes of internet fame.
Yes, especially if he has some banners or such he's earning money from, he may bitterly resent having his content displayed elsewhere without his ads.
The Oxygen in earths atmosphere came from the earliest living organisms.
It has always been my understanding that the first life used oxygen rather than producing it. Life forms capable of producing oxygen came shortly after. has been established for billions of years
Had you said millions I would have believed you.
Scientists had long suspected that organisms called cyanobacteria first started converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into food energy and oxygen billions of years ago....They discovered a durable molecular signature - "fingerprints" - unique to certain cyanobacteria that lived on the shores of the ancient oceans, long before plants, animals and other complex life emerged...The microbes may have been pumping oxygen into the atmosphere for as long as 3 1/2 billion years.
under what conditions will the education be paid for? who says the person will not go through college and then split the US therefore not benefiting anyone but themselves and their home country?
You have it backwards: the brain drain doesn't work like that -- smart people from poor countries study for advanced degrees in thhe US, then stay there to make 100 times the income they could back home, or have research opportunities impossible there.
Those that do have their education paid for may often be obligated to return home to benefit their countries -- as a form of foreign aid (teach a man to fish, etc). But many find ways to dodge that to stay in the land of milk and honey.
Typists would simply use a lowercase "l" (ell) key in lieu of 1 - you can probably still see this on very old documents if you look hard enough.
Or, of course, in any Jon Katz article.
Not just old documents -- anyone who learnt typing on a typewriter is prone to do this. I just read Thomas Harris' Hannibal, he did it a dozen times in that. I notice things like that having laid out a few books -- a little sad that a book with 20 printings still has typos. Editors today...
why invest the effort in defending such a dated technology?
You keep trying to say I love and adore floppies. I was simply responding to the statement that they were useless with some anecdotes about how I used them to get work done, and could still in a pinch. These days I'd hardly use one more than a few times a year.
I'm done here, continue arguing with your straw man if you like.
Not a single computer I have purchased in the last 5 years has come with a floppy, and the last time I built a computer
Self-built PCs obviously aren't "standard" which is what I stated I was talking about.
Why is it like I'm the only one who saw that the OP wanted an OS+GUI on that same floppy? Why is it I'm the only one who read key data to possibly, just possibly, mean something other than plain text?
Why can't you see that I said "a lot of text", as the post I was replying to talked about "printing out the key data on a single page" which seems, to my puny intellect, to mean text, not porn or MP3's or whatever it is that you consider "key data". Also, as for OS+GUI, on the original Macintosh you had that on a floppy.
If you can honestly keep your key data on the same floppy you've squeezed an OS+GUI on, why not spring for the single piece of paper that can hold that same information? There is simply nothing a floppy can do for me any more.
1- Floppies are, at this moment and for at least a couple of years into the future, a standard component.
2- 1.44 MB is a lot of text. My address file, accumulating over about 10 years, is about 50k. When I used to edit books for a living, I could back up 2 or 3 versions of an 800 page book (text and layout, no illustrations of course) onto a floppy as zip files.
I had DOS boot disks with Norton Commander, Wordstar, and odds and ends that I could do basic work from. I had a box of 5 floppies that I could install my entire DTP system onto a 286 PC (later a 486).
I remember when I bought warez at $3/floppy, back before the web and CD compilations. You appreciated space more then -- and apps designed with floppies in mind didn't suffer from bloat. Fuck knows how big MS Office will be when DVD becomes the standard distribution medium.
There would be a CR violation in using Tolkien's name on his translation,
Rubbish, a person's name isn't copyright. "Tolkien" may well be a trademark, though. His son or other relatives might have some recourse under libel if it brought their name into disrepute (but in this case they've already agreed), but that's not copyright.
... Indeed, the story of beowulf is in the public domain, but any translation of it would be a derivative work protectible by copyright.
Yes, a translation is copyright. Any issues of rights of the original edition are separate (and obviously in this case the original edition is a few centuries out of copyright). The length of protection starts from the first publication, which presumably is this or next year.
He's been shooting at U.S. planes for ten years, what are you smoking?
Warplanes flying over Iraq.
Saddam cannot 'dispatch' these weapons himself. He needs his lackies to do so, and we've already made it clear that if they do, they will be killed. Maybe they have less to lose than Saddam and his family, and would rather not be executed by the U.S.?
You might have noticed it's not diffcult to find guys who don't really care if they get caught or killed if they get some kicks in against the US (or Israel or Russia or wherever) first. But it wouldn't be terribly difficult to, say, set a timed release for bio agents, catch a bus and be well away by the time it went off.
You don't fix problems by ignoring them.
You don't fix the problem of people hating your guts by beating them up. it may make you feel better temporarily, but you'kk be watching your back forever after.
I can't think of a worse thing than an opponent with nothing to lose by anything up to and including death.
Which is EXACTLY what Bush is creating now. Before Saddam was "just" oppressing his own people. He's been happy being dictator of Iraq. Even since 91 when the US attacked and humiliated him he hasn't taken any direct retaliation on the US -- and Bush has been begging the CIA to dig up any evidence that he had to give a pretext for war, I think they would have found it if he had.
But if the tanks and bombs start again with the avowed aim of putting Saddam out of power and killed or imprisoned, he REALLY has no reason not to dispatch a few kilos of anthrax, smallpox, plutonium or whatever other goodies he's put aside for a rainy day.
De Beers is planning to (or may already) etch a tiny hallmark on their diamonds because some artificial ones are now indistinguishable. (Saw this on a documentary a few months ago, so I think trustworthy.) Anyway, to a layman zircon is indistinguishable, so "look wrong" is somewhat an exaggeration, or falling for De Beers' mystique.
Biggest plot hole I noticed was in BTTF2 when old Biff takes the Delorean back to 1955, gives young Biff the almanac, then returns to his original time. He should have ended up in the "new" future where Biff is a billionaire.
Of course, you might say that there are multiple timelines, so though a new timeline was created, he "somehow" was returned to his original one. But that opens a very large can of worms. And what does old Biff get out of this? Either his life is unchanged, or he erases himself and his world. (Both results are implied at different parts of the film.)
In Four Wedings and a Funeral the very first line is "Fuck fuck fuck" as Hugh Grant realises he's slept in for another wedding. In the TV version he says "Bugger bugger bugger". Think for a moment of the literal meanings (vaginal vs anal sex) and wonder if this is cleaner?
People seem fixated on Flash. Macromedia has some other major products, including Freehand, an extremely powerful and useful graphic/layout app that, like most (all?) Macromedia apps runs well on Mac or Windows. If MS gets this it would be the start of it taking over DTP -- a field where MS products (Publisher, Word) are held in derision. Macromedia also has a somewhat dormant font editor, Fontographer. Adobe could be the next in the crosshairs.
It makes a lot more educational sense to be teaching people Windows instead of Linux.
In an office there is a staff of geeks to keep the PCs running. All the vast majority of office drones need to kow is how to type (a useful skill if you can do it properly), and select text and click on a button to make it bold, pink or whatever, then click on the print or send button. That's all most people who use Windows and Office really use it for; and if you're doing it on Windows, Linux or Mac it doesn't take more than a few hours to "switch" to whatever.
Ten years ago there was a huge variety of apps used -- for Word processing most used DOS and Wordperfect, or Word (DOS or Mac) or IBM Displaywrite or Wordstar, (we even had an antique CPM machine with Wordstar). Are people now so much more stupid than then that they'll go into shock if there isn't a start menu and a paperclip to tell them what to do? Give people credit for having brains -- it's not the specifics of each application schools should be teaching anyway. When today's kids go to work in five or ten years how much will MS stuff have changed?
While I agree that text email is a lot more useful in general than voice, one of your points is simply wrong: very few people can type faster than they can talk
OK, you're right about that -- but I think the actual information per unit time (of the sender) would be about the same, if it's something you have to think about at all. If I was doing a monologue for the equivalent of a page or more I'd be sure to either repeat myself or go off on a tangent, where with text I can check over (and usually delete slabs) to make a much more concise message. But still, the advanteges of text over speech for the recipients are decisive IMHO.
You can't seriously believe that 20 years from now you'll still be reading email from friends and relatives, can you?
Maybe, maybe not. But I was more considering business, which is probably most email. I'm also on several mailing lists, discussing various technical issues -- there's no way I'd want that in spoken word.
Text is so much easier for the reader -- you can skim the boring bits, reread the important parts, cut and paste and forward easily.
You see it on SF movies all the time for the same reason you hear beeps when text appeas on a monitor in a movie -- not becasue it's realistic, just that it's more dramatic, not really more useful. At work you can get dozens of emails a day. It would take hours more to have to listen to them rather than read them.
If you're going to extrapolate 20 years, hopefully voice recognition actually works by then. If someone chooses to send a spoken message they can, but the recipient can choose to read it as text if he prefers.
Also other problems of voicemail -- interference from ambient noise at both ends, annoyance to those nearby (unless we have portable Get SmartCones of Silence.
Radio and TV can't replace newspapers. There will be more voicemail, but it can't replace email. And the horrors of voicemail spam...
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that this is not your tragedy. Making fun of your own dead is insensitive, making fun of another's is deeply wounding and insulting. If you don't get that, laugh on.
Not the same fucking day. Four people so far killed in the fires. It's not funny. Make jokes about your own dead.
Thanks, you Americans are so sensitive. The whole world has to mourn for your disasters, but when people get killed in other countries it's just an opportunuity to make dumb jokes.
Cinemas here in Hong Kong proposed to do that -- cell phone abuse is probably about the worst in the world here. But the telecommunications dept refused to give them permission. The usual moronic justifications -- "what if there was a nuclear war and I needed to say goodbye to my wife", etc.
Use as your search term an incomplete title/artist, eg "Barry Manil" and then you can see and ignore the titles with only the incomplete string. Worth doing anyway because of mispelled tracks.
They just released a new browser for Jaguar, Safari, based on Konqueror.
Yes, Gates is a genius, and evil. But he didn't (personally) "write globally accepted software". Not for the last 20 years anyway, he's either bought it or paid other peole to write it.
They don't need to wait for a mirror to appear -- just send an email to the site owner warning him and giving info on how to arrange a mirror should he so want.
4. The community automatically mirrors or pastes content that has been /.-ed you just need to spend 2 seconds reading the comments.
Sometimes. 5. The guy with the Lego site is probably tickled pink that his site just got a billion hits and probably doesn't mind things crawling to a halt for a while. It's his 15 minutes of internet fame.
Yes, especially if he has some banners or such he's earning money from, he may bitterly resent having his content displayed elsewhere without his ads.
You have it backwards: the brain drain doesn't work like that -- smart people from poor countries study for advanced degrees in thhe US, then stay there to make 100 times the income they could back home, or have research opportunities impossible there.
Those that do have their education paid for may often be obligated to return home to benefit their countries -- as a form of foreign aid (teach a man to fish, etc). But many find ways to dodge that to stay in the land of milk and honey.
Or, of course, in any Jon Katz article.
Not just old documents -- anyone who learnt typing on a typewriter is prone to do this. I just read Thomas Harris' Hannibal, he did it a dozen times in that. I notice things like that having laid out a few books -- a little sad that a book with 20 printings still has typos. Editors today...
You keep trying to say I love and adore floppies. I was simply responding to the statement that they were useless with some anecdotes about how I used them to get work done, and could still in a pinch. These days I'd hardly use one more than a few times a year.
I'm done here, continue arguing with your straw man if you like.
Self-built PCs obviously aren't "standard" which is what I stated I was talking about.
Why is it like I'm the only one who saw that the OP wanted an OS+GUI on that same floppy? Why is it I'm the only one who read key data to possibly, just possibly, mean something other than plain text?
Why can't you see that I said "a lot of text", as the post I was replying to talked about "printing out the key data on a single page" which seems, to my puny intellect, to mean text, not porn or MP3's or whatever it is that you consider "key data". Also, as for OS+GUI, on the original Macintosh you had that on a floppy.
1- Floppies are, at this moment and for at least a couple of years into the future, a standard component.
2- 1.44 MB is a lot of text. My address file, accumulating over about 10 years, is about 50k. When I used to edit books for a living, I could back up 2 or 3 versions of an 800 page book (text and layout, no illustrations of course) onto a floppy as zip files.
I had DOS boot disks with Norton Commander, Wordstar, and odds and ends that I could do basic work from. I had a box of 5 floppies that I could install my entire DTP system onto a 286 PC (later a 486).
I remember when I bought warez at $3/floppy, back before the web and CD compilations. You appreciated space more then -- and apps designed with floppies in mind didn't suffer from bloat. Fuck knows how big MS Office will be when DVD becomes the standard distribution medium.
Worked for Harry Flashman, and at least one posthumous movie was made from the Flashman papers, found after his death by George Macdonald Fraser.
Rubbish, a person's name isn't copyright. "Tolkien" may well be a trademark, though. His son or other relatives might have some recourse under libel if it brought their name into disrepute (but in this case they've already agreed), but that's not copyright.
Yes, a translation is copyright. Any issues of rights of the original edition are separate (and obviously in this case the original edition is a few centuries out of copyright). The length of protection starts from the first publication, which presumably is this or next year.
Warplanes flying over Iraq.
Saddam cannot 'dispatch' these weapons himself. He needs his lackies to do so, and we've already made it clear that if they do, they will be killed. Maybe they have less to lose than Saddam and his family, and would rather not be executed by the U.S.?
You might have noticed it's not diffcult to find guys who don't really care if they get caught or killed if they get some kicks in against the US (or Israel or Russia or wherever) first. But it wouldn't be terribly difficult to, say, set a timed release for bio agents, catch a bus and be well away by the time it went off.
You don't fix problems by ignoring them.
You don't fix the problem of people hating your guts by beating them up. it may make you feel better temporarily, but you'kk be watching your back forever after.
Which is EXACTLY what Bush is creating now. Before Saddam was "just" oppressing his own people. He's been happy being dictator of Iraq. Even since 91 when the US attacked and humiliated him he hasn't taken any direct retaliation on the US -- and Bush has been begging the CIA to dig up any evidence that he had to give a pretext for war, I think they would have found it if he had.
But if the tanks and bombs start again with the avowed aim of putting Saddam out of power and killed or imprisoned, he REALLY has no reason not to dispatch a few kilos of anthrax, smallpox, plutonium or whatever other goodies he's put aside for a rainy day.
De Beers is planning to (or may already) etch a tiny hallmark on their diamonds because some artificial ones are now indistinguishable. (Saw this on a documentary a few months ago, so I think trustworthy.) Anyway, to a layman zircon is indistinguishable, so "look wrong" is somewhat an exaggeration, or falling for De Beers' mystique.
Of course, you might say that there are multiple timelines, so though a new timeline was created, he "somehow" was returned to his original one. But that opens a very large can of worms. And what does old Biff get out of this? Either his life is unchanged, or he erases himself and his world. (Both results are implied at different parts of the film.)
In Four Wedings and a Funeral the very first line is "Fuck fuck fuck" as Hugh Grant realises he's slept in for another wedding. In the TV version he says "Bugger bugger bugger". Think for a moment of the literal meanings (vaginal vs anal sex) and wonder if this is cleaner?
People seem fixated on Flash. Macromedia has some other major products, including Freehand, an extremely powerful and useful graphic/layout app that, like most (all?) Macromedia apps runs well on Mac or Windows. If MS gets this it would be the start of it taking over DTP -- a field where MS products (Publisher, Word) are held in derision. Macromedia also has a somewhat dormant font editor, Fontographer. Adobe could be the next in the crosshairs.
In an office there is a staff of geeks to keep the PCs running. All the vast majority of office drones need to kow is how to type (a useful skill if you can do it properly), and select text and click on a button to make it bold, pink or whatever, then click on the print or send button. That's all most people who use Windows and Office really use it for; and if you're doing it on Windows, Linux or Mac it doesn't take more than a few hours to "switch" to whatever.
Ten years ago there was a huge variety of apps used -- for Word processing most used DOS and Wordperfect, or Word (DOS or Mac) or IBM Displaywrite or Wordstar, (we even had an antique CPM machine with Wordstar). Are people now so much more stupid than then that they'll go into shock if there isn't a start menu and a paperclip to tell them what to do? Give people credit for having brains -- it's not the specifics of each application schools should be teaching anyway. When today's kids go to work in five or ten years how much will MS stuff have changed?
OK, you're right about that -- but I think the actual information per unit time (of the sender) would be about the same, if it's something you have to think about at all. If I was doing a monologue for the equivalent of a page or more I'd be sure to either repeat myself or go off on a tangent, where with text I can check over (and usually delete slabs) to make a much more concise message. But still, the advanteges of text over speech for the recipients are decisive IMHO.
Maybe, maybe not. But I was more considering business, which is probably most email. I'm also on several mailing lists, discussing various technical issues -- there's no way I'd want that in spoken word. Text is so much easier for the reader -- you can skim the boring bits, reread the important parts, cut and paste and forward easily. You see it on SF movies all the time for the same reason you hear beeps when text appeas on a monitor in a movie -- not becasue it's realistic, just that it's more dramatic, not really more useful. At work you can get dozens of emails a day. It would take hours more to have to listen to them rather than read them.
If you're going to extrapolate 20 years, hopefully voice recognition actually works by then. If someone chooses to send a spoken message they can, but the recipient can choose to read it as text if he prefers.
Also other problems of voicemail -- interference from ambient noise at both ends, annoyance to those nearby (unless we have portable Get Smart Cones of Silence. Radio and TV can't replace newspapers. There will be more voicemail, but it can't replace email. And the horrors of voicemail spam...