Kind of like when I was in the British Isles and people found out I was from America and they would ask if I knew so-and-so from usually Boston or New York. Ignore the fact I lived in Arizona at the time and hadn't been to either city, there are about 300 million people in America. Can't really say that all of the British are like that, I have had that experience more than I care to remember. Bottom line: there are stupid people everywhere. The cream of the crop are a little harder to find.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but did you say that your reading of the novel is affected by critics claims that he has denied? The 7.1 outline point brings up another great critique that Ender's Game was actually written by a committee of Mormons to warm people up to forgiving. That just sounds like conspiracy theory drivel to me. I can't think of a good reason to go to someone who doesn't like an author to figure out what the original meaning was.
On the topic of the Ender/Hitler thing, all we can do is acknowledge that one side says yes and the other side says no. I have to go with the author on this one. I don't know why he would try to hide the Hitler comparisons seeing how Ender is quite detestable in man ways. The case is shaky when you see how much Ender is played and used to commit genocide, where Hitler is anything but a pawn.
Saying that 20 individuals rules out the sick person hypothesis is jumping the gun a bit. Look to some of the oldest recorded history and you have the early people of Israel with a code of conduct that had certain conditions sent out of the camp. A group of a certain number of individuals segregated from the normal population shouldn't be that unusual. Throw in an isolated gene pool and you are going to have a higher incedence of certain conditions. Seems like a perfectly plausible argument to me.
[Vizzini has just cut the rope The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up] Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE. Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Reminds me of the conspiracy theory type talk of the computer called the Beast, I think in Belgium of all places. The one that evokes panic and fear in the minds of anyone that thinks anything of the number 666. If I remember correctly it has to do with barcodes, bla, bla, bla. If you stop and think about it, how much can "they" really get from you. Think about the kind of storage capacity they would need to store the information let alone the manpower it would take to sift through the information just to get to the nuggets they would want. There is a lot of talk about certain items that people might not want "them" to know about, but what kind of resources would it take to do what people are afraid of. Sure there is a potential for abuse, and there should be logical limits to the use of the technology, but the people that have the resources to truly exploit the technology are probably set. How much good is it going to do someone to link my identity to purchasing five or six gallons of milk a week?
Of course we Slashdot types will soon see an article about a homebrew RFID killer. I wonder if my dad's old VHS erasing electromagnet would do anything? I wouldn't think that it could be considered a burglary tool considering weight and dimensions, let alone the 120V AC plug that hangs from it. It's a powerful magnet, but is it powerful enough?
Something that is presumably not taken into account is the number of digital cameras that are owned by people without suitable printers. Has that number gone up? I also would be interested to know how those stats are determined. How can you tell if 64% print at home one year and 48% the next? I don't see someone paying the money to do a proper statistical study on home picture printing habits. Statistics are good and fun, but bad statistics are useless.
I was thinking that right after I hit submit. I re-read the article and it doesn't state clearly that it is indeed talking about prints from digital cameras. That being the case, I still claim it is misleading because of the price of gas, and the cost of my time wading through the idiots that tend to populate the cheap places to buy anything. Of course there is nothing like opening up the pictures from a freshly developed roll of film to find a picture of Pokemon on the television.
The problem is the whole idea is misleading. This does not factor in the countless prints that I have from when my kids grab the camera and take pictures of TV shows and really close-up, blurry pictures of the family pets doing exciting things like sleeping. If you factor in accidental pictures and just plain bad pictures that you wish you didn't take, the price per print can shift quite dramatically in some cases. I would dare say when the kids don't touch the camera and only me or my wife take the pictures there is still around 4 prints on a 24 exposure roll that end up just getting thrown out. Add in the ones that my wife sends to her crappy grandpa that won't acknowledge she exists (you can bet we don't send good ones there), We can easily waste 25% of a roll of film. If the kids get the thing, all bets are off.
I have to ask what is the real damage that is caused by the blogs? After RTFA it appears to me that the postings in question are part of a newspaper website article discussion. I wouldn't exactly call that a blog, unless slashdot is also a blog. I don't know of any material damage that could ever be caused by slashdot posters, and even less so of anonymous posters on a newspaper website. I would say that the Bush administration has a better case for slander almost any time a Democrat Representative or Senator appears on Meet the Press and criticizes ability. Bush has more of a slander case against Green Day for the American Idiot album.
I think this is just another sad case of someone thinking the internet is a threat to their "business" and think they can sue ISP's into doing the legwork of their case for them a la RIAA and P2Pers. If the judges are indeed wrong and the US Supreme Court agrees with you then every poster here needs to worry about what they say in the hallowed halls of slashdot.org.
And the thing that gets me is how almost every bit of their hassle had to do with choice of case. If they got a different case they probably could have used all of the original equipment. Sure it would have been slightly taller, but they would have been able to do it. They could have even had room to put in another card or two. The other thing that killed me is the test with the AMD set up mentions only needing about 10% of the CPU's full potential for most of the HTPC's regular duties and the Pentium-M set up had the heat problems at a 100% CPU load. Sure it's not a bad idea to test it to its limits before recommending the thing, but to eliminate the choice because it has problems that might not ever happen under the use it's intended for is dumb.
You forgot to mention that from the article you linked to that payola digital music downloads are up around 300% in that same period. Statistics are fun in the hands of journalists. They like to say all kinds of things. The first time declining album sales were touted there was also the fact that there were fewer albums released that year. That makes the decline in sales very logical, since there are essentially no albums any year that are must have albums for every person that purchase albums.
Re:HDTV is as significant as BW - COLOR
on
CNET's HDTV World
·
· Score: 1
It is while you're drinking superior German Beer and watching cricket
You know Douglas Adams would have something to say about that.
Regarding points 2 and 4: 2: I'm cheap, so I'm not going to see it live. 4: I'm from southern Arizona, so I'm not going to see it live. (I don't currently live in Arizona, so don't talk about how nice the weather is here)
I love watching football, but those are deal breakers for me. I'll watch it on TV. That being said, football is not my favorite sport. I'd rather watch indoor volleyball. I find the beach game boring. Say what you want about the bikinis, but if that's why you watch, go download some pr0n.
Re:HDTV is as significant as BW - COLOR
on
CNET's HDTV World
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Just a minor nit-pick: Is it legal to use the term "whilst" in reference to a sporting event? Or even in linking beer consumption to sports?
I finally finished reading the article (damn slashdot effect) and I have to agree. It seems like the guy is spending two pages whining about all the little things he doesn't like about the distro and then gives it 9 of 10 stars? I don't get it either.
I find it interesting because in a sense that could be how linux is perceived. Windows is a bunch of programmers that the article seems to indicate are so possessive of their line(s) of code that Windows can't run without it. Seems like a bunch of prima donnas. Linux could be perceived, and maybe it is perceived by the Microsoft elitist types, as a bunch of loose cannon hacker coders that put some piece of code into the cauldron and there isn't any governing entity to keep them in check. Instead of being counter-productive Linux development in reality , and stark contrast, seems to be a successful cooperative community.
Slashdot Mirror
You know Douglas Adams would have something to say about that.
Kind of like when I was in the British Isles and people found out I was from America and they would ask if I knew so-and-so from usually Boston or New York. Ignore the fact I lived in Arizona at the time and hadn't been to either city, there are about 300 million people in America. Can't really say that all of the British are like that, I have had that experience more than I care to remember. Bottom line: there are stupid people everywhere. The cream of the crop are a little harder to find.
Not in America, you insensitive clod!
$10-$15 per square inch? Yikes! I guess that nixes the idea of using the stuff on my house so wardrivers can't access my network.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but did you say that your reading of the novel is affected by critics claims that he has denied? The 7.1 outline point brings up another great critique that Ender's Game was actually written by a committee of Mormons to warm people up to forgiving. That just sounds like conspiracy theory drivel to me. I can't think of a good reason to go to someone who doesn't like an author to figure out what the original meaning was.
On the topic of the Ender/Hitler thing, all we can do is acknowledge that one side says yes and the other side says no. I have to go with the author on this one. I don't know why he would try to hide the Hitler comparisons seeing how Ender is quite detestable in man ways. The case is shaky when you see how much Ender is played and used to commit genocide, where Hitler is anything but a pawn.
Saying that 20 individuals rules out the sick person hypothesis is jumping the gun a bit. Look to some of the oldest recorded history and you have the early people of Israel with a code of conduct that had certain conditions sent out of the camp. A group of a certain number of individuals segregated from the normal population shouldn't be that unusual. Throw in an isolated gene pool and you are going to have a higher incedence of certain conditions. Seems like a perfectly plausible argument to me.
Slashdotters take note.
From http://imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes :
[Vizzini has just cut the rope The Dread Pirate Roberts is climbing up]
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Girly? Come on, it's got sword fights, wrestling, fights to the death, revenge, true lo-...Oh crap!
Now that was funny. Nicely done. I'll look for more posts from you in the...Oh crap!
You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Reminds me of the conspiracy theory type talk of the computer called the Beast, I think in Belgium of all places. The one that evokes panic and fear in the minds of anyone that thinks anything of the number 666. If I remember correctly it has to do with barcodes, bla, bla, bla. If you stop and think about it, how much can "they" really get from you. Think about the kind of storage capacity they would need to store the information let alone the manpower it would take to sift through the information just to get to the nuggets they would want. There is a lot of talk about certain items that people might not want "them" to know about, but what kind of resources would it take to do what people are afraid of. Sure there is a potential for abuse, and there should be logical limits to the use of the technology, but the people that have the resources to truly exploit the technology are probably set. How much good is it going to do someone to link my identity to purchasing five or six gallons of milk a week?
Of course we Slashdot types will soon see an article about a homebrew RFID killer. I wonder if my dad's old VHS erasing electromagnet would do anything? I wouldn't think that it could be considered a burglary tool considering weight and dimensions, let alone the 120V AC plug that hangs from it. It's a powerful magnet, but is it powerful enough?
Something that is presumably not taken into account is the number of digital cameras that are owned by people without suitable printers. Has that number gone up? I also would be interested to know how those stats are determined. How can you tell if 64% print at home one year and 48% the next? I don't see someone paying the money to do a proper statistical study on home picture printing habits. Statistics are good and fun, but bad statistics are useless.
I was thinking that right after I hit submit. I re-read the article and it doesn't state clearly that it is indeed talking about prints from digital cameras. That being the case, I still claim it is misleading because of the price of gas, and the cost of my time wading through the idiots that tend to populate the cheap places to buy anything. Of course there is nothing like opening up the pictures from a freshly developed roll of film to find a picture of Pokemon on the television.
The problem is the whole idea is misleading. This does not factor in the countless prints that I have from when my kids grab the camera and take pictures of TV shows and really close-up, blurry pictures of the family pets doing exciting things like sleeping. If you factor in accidental pictures and just plain bad pictures that you wish you didn't take, the price per print can shift quite dramatically in some cases. I would dare say when the kids don't touch the camera and only me or my wife take the pictures there is still around 4 prints on a 24 exposure roll that end up just getting thrown out. Add in the ones that my wife sends to her crappy grandpa that won't acknowledge she exists (you can bet we don't send good ones there), We can easily waste 25% of a roll of film. If the kids get the thing, all bets are off.
I have to ask what is the real damage that is caused by the blogs? After RTFA it appears to me that the postings in question are part of a newspaper website article discussion. I wouldn't exactly call that a blog, unless slashdot is also a blog. I don't know of any material damage that could ever be caused by slashdot posters, and even less so of anonymous posters on a newspaper website. I would say that the Bush administration has a better case for slander almost any time a Democrat Representative or Senator appears on Meet the Press and criticizes ability. Bush has more of a slander case against Green Day for the American Idiot album.
I think this is just another sad case of someone thinking the internet is a threat to their "business" and think they can sue ISP's into doing the legwork of their case for them a la RIAA and P2Pers. If the judges are indeed wrong and the US Supreme Court agrees with you then every poster here needs to worry about what they say in the hallowed halls of slashdot.org.
And the thing that gets me is how almost every bit of their hassle had to do with choice of case. If they got a different case they probably could have used all of the original equipment. Sure it would have been slightly taller, but they would have been able to do it. They could have even had room to put in another card or two. The other thing that killed me is the test with the AMD set up mentions only needing about 10% of the CPU's full potential for most of the HTPC's regular duties and the Pentium-M set up had the heat problems at a 100% CPU load. Sure it's not a bad idea to test it to its limits before recommending the thing, but to eliminate the choice because it has problems that might not ever happen under the use it's intended for is dumb.
You forgot to mention that from the article you linked to that payola digital music downloads are up around 300% in that same period. Statistics are fun in the hands of journalists. They like to say all kinds of things. The first time declining album sales were touted there was also the fact that there were fewer albums released that year. That makes the decline in sales very logical, since there are essentially no albums any year that are must have albums for every person that purchase albums.
You know Douglas Adams would have something to say about that.
Regarding points 2 and 4:
2: I'm cheap, so I'm not going to see it live.
4: I'm from southern Arizona, so I'm not going to see it live. (I don't currently live in Arizona, so don't talk about how nice the weather is here)
I love watching football, but those are deal breakers for me. I'll watch it on TV. That being said, football is not my favorite sport. I'd rather watch indoor volleyball. I find the beach game boring. Say what you want about the bikinis, but if that's why you watch, go download some pr0n.
Just a minor nit-pick: Is it legal to use the term "whilst" in reference to a sporting event? Or even in linking beer consumption to sports?
I finally finished reading the article (damn slashdot effect) and I have to agree. It seems like the guy is spending two pages whining about all the little things he doesn't like about the distro and then gives it 9 of 10 stars? I don't get it either.
Once you watch a football game in HDTV, you can't watch it any other way.
I find it interesting because in a sense that could be how linux is perceived. Windows is a bunch of programmers that the article seems to indicate are so possessive of their line(s) of code that Windows can't run without it. Seems like a bunch of prima donnas. Linux could be perceived, and maybe it is perceived by the Microsoft elitist types, as a bunch of loose cannon hacker coders that put some piece of code into the cauldron and there isn't any governing entity to keep them in check. Instead of being counter-productive Linux development in reality , and stark contrast, seems to be a successful cooperative community.