OK, so Starbuck has an emergency spaceship hull plug on hand. ..perhaps believable. She is also such a great pilot that she can even fly a machine designed for a custom engineered organism. ..OK, but getting thin. How does she find her way back to the fleet? Dead reckoning? Just fly around `til she spotted it by eye? Sorry, but I choked on that. Space is big and even whole fleets are small. ..you'll not be finding spaceships in space without some gizmos.
Anyone getting the feeling that our (US) partners are starting to doubt our willingness, or far worse, our ability to deliver the lunch? That makes three independant mechanisms for supplying the ISS. I'm starting to think that maybe they just don't trust us (US) anymore. . .
One possible reason is that the Falcon 9 has never flown at all, much less in its maximum lift configuration. Even in this maximum lift configuration, it will only boost an extra ton into LEO over the Shuttle. I agree that the US's reliance on shuttle is the most braindead decision ever made in the US space program (would have saved tons of money and lives sticking with the Saturn V), but it is unfortunately the only thing flying right now that can do the job with the exception, perhaps, of Russia's Proton booster.
As an aside, NASA should threaten to subcontract out the remaining heavy lift operations to Russia and make a real big deal about it in the media. ..I'll bet that would free up funding for them to replace the shuttles with some real lift infrastructure!
I think you are refering to the P6 truss, which was "temporarily" attached to the Z1 truss. It is staying put for now.
They will, of course, hold off on relocating the P6 truss until after the P5 truss is installed, which isn't until STS116 (not yet scheduled).
Not as exciting as you were hoping for, perhaps, but at least they are hauling more big pieces up again. They will have enough power now for the European or the Japanese lab modules, though those are not going up until after the first set of PV arrays goes up for the starboard side. ..maybe by next summer if NASA can keep the shuttles from falling apart until then.
This makes me think of something. Has anybody else out there noticed that each version of Microsoft Word runs at about the same speed on the hardware available at the time the version was released as the previous version did on the platform? Sure, Word has been pumped full of features, but who really uses any of them? I am willing to bet that most users (over 90%) wouldn't miss anything at all using the version available over a decade ago. How much have they invested in new platforms to support the latest version to get features that they never use?
These upgrade treadmill types are the first to go shouting that product X "is dead!" This vehement shrieking about the demise of other platforms is simply an attempt to justify (deny?) their habitual need to upgrade. Rather than face the truth that they are dancing on the ends of strings pulled by various marketing machines, they cry out that the reason for their compulsive upgrade habit is that the previous platform was "dead". They vocally proclaim the demise of everything except that which they most recently purchased and imply or outright claim that they had no choice but to buy into Microsoft's latest white elephant.
It is true that most applications don't need an OS any more elaborate that DOS (or FreeDOS). Many applications would be faster, more reliable, easier for the end user to operate and easier for tech support to fix if they were properly coded for DOS rather than being built for Windows.
The retarded perception of a need to recode embedded and vertical applications for Windows is what drove me out of the software engineering business. Until the corporate decision makers wake up and unhitch themselves from Microsoft's marketing department, I will stay, quite happily, out of the coding for cash business. I code for aesthetic reasons so when aesthetics and corporate policy are at odds, I walk.
I am not too clear on why OS/2 needs another DOS Box. The one the system ships with has been better than the real thing since the early `90's. I suppose if you need that PCjr machine mode for something, then maybe you will need DOSBox. That said, I have had FreeDOS windows and fullscreen mode available from my OS/2 desktop (along with a number of other OSes) for many years. I am glad to hear that development continues on it.
Is it really that similar, though? Perhaps it's different in the USA, but many cars I've seen are assembled away from the factory.
Holy hand granades! Where do you live? Pakistan? Do they reproduce cars there using files, hammers and hand drills? Sure, I have rarely strayed far from broadband and as such have only seen places like the US, Korea, Japan and China close up; nevertheless, the production model you allude to is totally alien to me.
Yes, of course the end customer has no choice but to rip out the crap the manufacturer provided and install their own purchases. ..what do you think this is. ..a Free Market? Silly Utopian Capitalist!
Locking out competitors is the lifeblood of modern Capitalism. ..really, there is nothing else left for the present-day businessman. This is why Intellectual Property Rights is such a hot topic now days. Don't tell me you have not figured this out yourself yet. . . this is all pretty obvious.
Getting to the public transportation is tiresome because you don't get the exercise of using public transportation. The 10 minute walk to/from public transportation actually makes a difference.
Many places in the US have no public transportation within an hour walk, much less within ten minutes. In areas where there is adequate public transportation (New York City, Boston, etc.), the pre capita tonnage is visibly lower.
Secondly, you don't have much of public transportation because noone would use it.
Wrong. The US has limited public transportation because most of the key nodes in the transportation networks were bought up by General Motors, Goodyear and Standard Oil and dismantled back at the beginning of the 20th Century in an effort to boost demand for their products. Many remaining portions of the nation's public transportation network failed when they were no longer effectively interconnected with the rest of the system.
The task of reestablishing an effective national-scale public transportation network is now such a daunting one that noone is even seriously discussing it. We are not talking about just upgrading bits here and there but about acquiring right-of-ways in heavily populated areas and building the infrastructure from scratch. To get the US back to where it was in the 1920's would be an untertaking of mammoth proportions.
In areas where effective public transportation exists in the US, it is used heavily. In areas where the public transportation consists of a few busses with timetables structured erratically around the schedules of five or six elderly people, no, the systems do not attract many riders.
Now, I am not certain of which country you are from, but I doubt that you built your entire public transportation system in the last couple decades. The cost and difficulty of maintaining and expanding a transportation network in a densly populated area is far less the the cost and difficulty of building one from the ground up.
Other countries cope, if you can't you need to blame something else than geography.
Yes, the blame falls squarely upon the shoulders of unregulated Capitalism and the population's allowing itself to be connned into not protecting vital national assets. The argument that rail transport was passe was pretty convincing several decades ago. ..so convincing that many people are unaware to this day of the true costs of allowing big business to destroy the country's transportation infrastructure.
The problem is not that people do not want good public transportation, but that to build a system to replace cars in many parts of the country seems to be a prohibitively expensive and risky task.
This is a fairly old marketing tactic that one sees when there are just a few competitors in a market with a couple high stakes products targeted at consumers. The most memorable application of this tactic was when it was used by - guess who? - Microsoft! Back in the early and mid `90's, Microsoft was battling against a product that was better in every way than their own; IBM's operating system, OS/2. They made heroic efforts to prevent the adoption of OS/2 by the less technically erudite consumers (that is most of the consumers) by promising that their next version of Windows would not suck and would in fact be vastly superior to anything on the market. That they were able to grab the market with this tactic yet still not deliver on the promised features for almost a decade, and then only on hardware hundreds of times more powerful than what their former competitor requires, shows either the power of this tactic or the profound ignorance of the market.
The sad part is how many people don't see it for what it is... sort of like the liberation of Iraq;).
Yes, it is sad, but it is not surprising. This property of large groups has been known for some time.
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time." -Lincoln, 1864
This is often misquoted as "You can fool most of the people most of the time", though this may be a simple corollary to Lincoln's observation that has been updated with almost a century and a half of evidence. In order to control politics or markets, you don't need to fool all of the people all of the time.
In any case, were you using Windows 95 in the mid `90's? See, this tactic might even have worked on you, though there were plenty of people who were not fooled and you might be one of them. Nevertheless, the power of this tactic in this situation is obvious so it stands to reason that Sony would employ it in their marketing.
There are many models here in Japan with no external display. ..after all, when you are not messaging or chatting on your phone here, you are reading manga with it or watching TV or some such. Why close it up?
The swivels are not that bad once you get used to them. What is popular here now is the type that slide open. Some of them are spring loaded and some are not. Either way, they are easy to open with one hand.
His StarTAC didn't survive the toilet? Mine survived the toilet once and the Atlantic Ocean twice. Fortunately, I had not used the toilet yet when my StarTAC popped out of my jeans pocket and went for a swim, otherwise I might have been less likely to try to dry it off.
One thing I didn't like about the StarTAC was the antenna. I eventually just got a supply of them and replaced it myself whenever I broke the knob off on a beltloop or something.
I agree. ..larger screens and keypads are a big plus. I also like the idea of a phone that is shaped like a phone when you are using it but still fits in your pants pocket when you are not. ..ideally without making you look like you are look abnormally happy.
I can't speak for Korea, but the Japanese are very cautious around foreigners and outsiders. To the outsider, this does make the Japanese people seem somewhat clumpy and herd-like. Within their own groups, however, there seems to be just as much desire to define themselves as individuals as in any other culture. Sure, there is the whole uniform aspect of the culture. Everyone here wears uniforms, from students to gas station attendants, from office workers to highway maintenance crews, but this just makes it that much more important for them to individualize with the details. The typical cell phone here is plastered with layers of purikura stickers and has a bewildering array of little items tied into its wrist strap eyelet. This is on top of the fact that there are literally hundreds of models of cell phone to choose from in the first place, each with its own array of accessories. I was here for months before I had met someone who had the same model phone as me.
If you really need proof of the Japanese person's need for individuality, take a look at their cars. Aside from the cookie-cutter white minipickup trucks that all of the farmers use, most cars seem to have at least a little customization done to them. For the extreme of customization, look out for those light commercial trucks driven by owner-operators. ..the ones encrusted with astonishing masses of chrome bumpers, guards, accents and light racks.
From a foreigner's superficial examination, the Japanese do seem to be marching in lockstep. The truth, however, is very different, particulary where things like cell phones are concerned. The Japanese are just as much a bunch of individuals as any other group. ..many of them just have a particularly Japanese way of expressing it that westerners are often not able to spot right away.
This sounds a lot like the reaction from Japanese associate of mine to comments about the Rape of Nanjing. Offering up proof, in the form of photographs, eye witness accounts and even official Japanese government documentation of the events only triggered furious denial with claims that the photos were staged or doctored and the reports were all from Japan-haters anyway.
The point is that he didn't want proof, despite demanding it, and there was no proof that could change his mind about what REALLY happened in Nanjing.
I short, I don't think you want proof either. Proof and evidence for points 1 and 6 above are readilly available. Documents related to the role of the Nixon administration in the overthrow and assassination of Allende where declassified a couple years ago. Try googling on "Kissenger+Allende" for starters.
Don't demand that everyone else has to try to manouver the facts past your nationalist blinders. ..Just remove you head from your ass and look around. Do a little bit of the work yourself. It is not like these things are real big secrets. Sure, Fox and CNN don't force feed this stuff to you but that is to be expected.
In the US, the broadcast news networks are all anti-Bush and pro-internationalism in their coverage. The same is true of CNN. Only Fox and conservative talk radio present the other side.
Really?? I have yet to see an anti-Bush story on the Capitalist News Network (CNN). Considering that the guy is little more than a chimp in a suit and tie it is almost impossible not to ridicule him nonetheless ALL of the networks put a great deal of effort into making our village idiot look Presidential. Perhaps they are not as quick to apologise for, rationalize and justify Bush II comments, actions and policies but they certainly never call them into question either. Sure, they don't pull their punches but that is just because they never throw any punches in the first place.
This is actually a huge problem that could do serious damage to what remains of the principles of democracy in the US. For democracy to work the press has to be critical of those in power. Big business media in the US is not only consistently failing in this regard but shamelessly cheerleading for monkey boy's regime.
Yep, there are big problems with the media in the US but the 'Liberal bias' that you imagine is not one of them.
This is particularly true for DOS games. There are few that I have not been able to get to work great under eCS. I have at times had to get elaborate with the VDM setup but it is a rare gave that cannot be made to work. . .
This anime was by far the most powerful work of art I have ever come across in ANY medium. Guaranteed to leave any reasonably intelligent and emotionally healthy human deeply disturbed.
"Bambi eyes" to the max.
I know! Isn't she so cute?
Her name is Masaki Sasami Jurai, or just Sasami, from the Tenchi Muyo series, OVAs and movies. There were also OVAs and a TV serial released in which her character was named Pretty Sammy.
I'm willing to bet the OS/2 and eComStation version of VPC will be silently snuffed out by the end of the year(if not sooner). These M$ bastards just get more evil by the day. ..
Perhaps BeOS is over and done with, but not like OS/2. OS/2 is still quite lively in the form of eComStation. Folks over at OSNews just get a little excitable whenever the BeCorpse BeTwitches . . .
In fact, I don't believe that any ATMs even made it up to an OS/2 Warp 4 installation
I actually saw a field service guy working on an ATM that I go to on occasion. I watched it booting when he was finished. It most certainly was running Warp 4, though it didn't have the WarpCenter running and was using the LaunchPad instead.
When the ATM application loaded it had fancy new graphics and such. ..It had been upgraded!
Yep. ..this was last week and in the US even. ..OS/2 dead? That was the news back in `96. This Microsoft cheerleading is getting rather dull. . .
"Oh those noble pharmaceutical companies! What true heros of the age!". ..Well, this would sound almost reasonable if most of the research for creating new drugs wasn't done on the public dime. The large pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than on R&D. YOU believe that they spend so much on R&D because of all of the marketing dollars that they have spent getting you to believe this. ..Do a little basic research of your own on this subject and see if you still feel like helping these societal parasites with their PR campaign.
we must remember that there have been patents, big companyies, monopolies and greedy people in the past who held great sway on the way things were done. But somehoe things worked out and we made it through
Some of these problems did not just go away naturally and of their own accord. It took a tremendous amount of effort to at least partially free this country from the death-grip of trusts, monopolies and robber-barons the first time around. Sure, now we are more aware of the threats to public intrests that monopolies pose but the strategists for big business have learned a thing or two as well and have not been idle.
Perhaps the most remarkable success of big business has been the consolidation of all the mass media into a couple corporations. This makes it easier to censor or spin the programming (so that it tastes great AND has less content!) to present big business in a positive or at least neutral frame of reference. Big business has learned that when properly done they can control the publics' perception of their actions such that huge numbers of halfwits will sing the corporate anthem and gleefully spout the company PR line even while they are being robbed blind.(Why yes, I am refering to the Gate's Jugend and Microserfs here!)
The lesson here is not "See, it happened before. ..don't worry. ..be happy". It is "See, this has happened before and we are letting it happen again". Too many suckers buying the same old (modernized and repackaged) propaganda. ..
"There is a sucker born every minute."
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."
-PT Barnum
But as more and more software becomes free I can see fewer developers getting paid to program.
Most developers do not make their money selling shrink-wrapped software. We make it by maintaining code and making modifications in it to accomodate changing needs of the users. My employer doesn't actually make very much from licensing fees. ..The real money is in the support contract. Releasing our code under the GPL would have little impact upon my employer's bottom line. ..unless someone else decided to learn the application from an engineering level and start supporting it as well. ..in which case they would have to release the modified code back to the wild and my employer's customers would benefit as much as the new guy's. I really don't see a problem here.
I don't know for certain but I am willing to wager that a fair amount of GPLed code was initially paid for by someone. . .
IBM has already faced MS in a software showdown (OS/2 vs NT), and they were trashed soundly. (IBM never could get OS/2 ver. 2 - 32 bit - to run as fast as OS/2 ver. 1.x). HP doesn't even want to try. So they have adopted Linux, using open source as a devolopment arm to compete with MS. The GPL removes competition.
Well, actually OS/2 ver 2.x does run substantially faster than ver 1.x. ..on modern hardware. Yes, on a i286 class machine, OS/2 v1.x will outrun its 32 bit offspring. The reasons, however, should be self evident.
What I find annoying here is that you seem to be implying that IBM lost the "showdown" with Microsoft because OS/2 is slower than NT(2k,XP, what have you) or less technically capable. This is just not true (The PC Week comparison of NT and Warp Server in April of `96 where OS/2 running on one processor blew the doors off NT running on four comes to mind).
To my knowledge, Microsoft has never trashed anyone, soundly or otherwise, with the merits of their technology. OS/2 has always (and still does, BTW) run faster and more reliably than NT on the same hardware.
Microsoft did not "trash" IBM in the quest for the desktop through legal and fair competition. Some of the illegal and anticompetitive methods that M$ employed are now, in fact, part of the public record. Real competiton in a free marketplace where product stand on their merits can only help OS/2.
This brings me to your comment that "The GPL removes competition". This is ludicrous. There is nothing about the GPL that makes it impossible for Microsoft to try to code a better product than Linux. The GPL just pulls some of Microsoft's illegal teeth. ..makes it more difficult for them to employ their prefered anticompetitive practices. ..In fact, in a market dominated by a monopoly that achieved its position illegally, the GPL, through Linux, actually introduces some competitive forces!
You are correct when you point out that IBM is in the business of selling hardware and service. To IBM the software is just something that helps to sell the hardware. Given Microsoft's history and their monopoly status, if IBM (or IBM's customers) wants to use an OS other than the M$ offerings for their low end and light weight systems then IBM must find an alternative that M$ cannot control, pervert or destroy. The GPL is one aspect of Linux that contributes to its Teflon-like Microsoft-proofing.
IBM likes Linux because it does what they need it to do and because, due in part to the nature of the GPL, they don't have to worry about it falling victim to Microsoft's evil ways.
The world doesn't have a population problem, it has a resource problem. Given unlimited resources you could really pack them onto the planet!
We don't have unlimited resources though so controlling the burn rate is important.
The thing is that you would have to knock off hundreds of millions of Chinese to make even a slight dent in the global resource consumption problem.
On the other hand, selectively culling a few million of the most wealthy Americans will realise HUGE progress towards getting resource utilization down to sustainable levels!
Just something to keep in mind when you are talking about trying to deal with over-population issues. . .
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so Starbuck has an emergency spaceship hull plug on hand. . .perhaps believable. She is also such a great pilot that she can even fly a machine designed for a custom engineered organism. . .OK, but getting thin. How does she find her way back to the fleet? Dead reckoning? Just fly around `til she spotted it by eye? Sorry, but I choked on that. Space is big and even whole fleets are small. . .you'll not be finding spaceships in space without some gizmos.
Anyone getting the feeling that our (US) partners are starting to doubt our willingness, or far worse, our ability to deliver the lunch? That makes three independant mechanisms for supplying the ISS. I'm starting to think that maybe they just don't trust us (US) anymore. . .
As an aside, NASA should threaten to subcontract out the remaining heavy lift operations to Russia and make a real big deal about it in the media. . .I'll bet that would free up funding for them to replace the shuttles with some real lift infrastructure!
They will, of course, hold off on relocating the P6 truss until after the P5 truss is installed, which isn't until STS116 (not yet scheduled).
Not as exciting as you were hoping for, perhaps, but at least they are hauling more big pieces up again. They will have enough power now for the European or the Japanese lab modules, though those are not going up until after the first set of PV arrays goes up for the starboard side. . .maybe by next summer if NASA can keep the shuttles from falling apart until then.
These upgrade treadmill types are the first to go shouting that product X "is dead!" This vehement shrieking about the demise of other platforms is simply an attempt to justify (deny?) their habitual need to upgrade. Rather than face the truth that they are dancing on the ends of strings pulled by various marketing machines, they cry out that the reason for their compulsive upgrade habit is that the previous platform was "dead". They vocally proclaim the demise of everything except that which they most recently purchased and imply or outright claim that they had no choice but to buy into Microsoft's latest white elephant.
It is true that most applications don't need an OS any more elaborate that DOS (or FreeDOS). Many applications would be faster, more reliable, easier for the end user to operate and easier for tech support to fix if they were properly coded for DOS rather than being built for Windows.
The retarded perception of a need to recode embedded and vertical applications for Windows is what drove me out of the software engineering business. Until the corporate decision makers wake up and unhitch themselves from Microsoft's marketing department, I will stay, quite happily, out of the coding for cash business. I code for aesthetic reasons so when aesthetics and corporate policy are at odds, I walk.
I am not too clear on why OS/2 needs another DOS Box. The one the system ships with has been better than the real thing since the early `90's. I suppose if you need that PCjr machine mode for something, then maybe you will need DOSBox. That said, I have had FreeDOS windows and fullscreen mode available from my OS/2 desktop (along with a number of other OSes) for many years. I am glad to hear that development continues on it.
Holy hand granades! Where do you live? Pakistan? Do they reproduce cars there using files, hammers and hand drills? Sure, I have rarely strayed far from broadband and as such have only seen places like the US, Korea, Japan and China close up; nevertheless, the production model you allude to is totally alien to me.
Yes, of course the end customer has no choice but to rip out the crap the manufacturer provided and install their own purchases. . .what do you think this is. . .a Free Market? Silly Utopian Capitalist!
Locking out competitors is the lifeblood of modern Capitalism. . .really, there is nothing else left for the present-day businessman. This is why Intellectual Property Rights is such a hot topic now days. Don't tell me you have not figured this out yourself yet. . . this is all pretty obvious.
Geezle/2
Many places in the US have no public transportation within an hour walk, much less within ten minutes. In areas where there is adequate public transportation (New York City, Boston, etc.), the pre capita tonnage is visibly lower.
Secondly, you don't have much of public transportation because noone would use it.
Wrong. The US has limited public transportation because most of the key nodes in the transportation networks were bought up by General Motors, Goodyear and Standard Oil and dismantled back at the beginning of the 20th Century in an effort to boost demand for their products. Many remaining portions of the nation's public transportation network failed when they were no longer effectively interconnected with the rest of the system.
The task of reestablishing an effective national-scale public transportation network is now such a daunting one that noone is even seriously discussing it. We are not talking about just upgrading bits here and there but about acquiring right-of-ways in heavily populated areas and building the infrastructure from scratch. To get the US back to where it was in the 1920's would be an untertaking of mammoth proportions.
In areas where effective public transportation exists in the US, it is used heavily. In areas where the public transportation consists of a few busses with timetables structured erratically around the schedules of five or six elderly people, no, the systems do not attract many riders.
Now, I am not certain of which country you are from, but I doubt that you built your entire public transportation system in the last couple decades. The cost and difficulty of maintaining and expanding a transportation network in a densly populated area is far less the the cost and difficulty of building one from the ground up.
Other countries cope, if you can't you need to blame something else than geography.
Yes, the blame falls squarely upon the shoulders of unregulated Capitalism and the population's allowing itself to be connned into not protecting vital national assets. The argument that rail transport was passe was pretty convincing several decades ago. . .so convincing that many people are unaware to this day of the true costs of allowing big business to destroy the country's transportation infrastructure.
The problem is not that people do not want good public transportation, but that to build a system to replace cars in many parts of the country seems to be a prohibitively expensive and risky task.
The sad part is how many people don't see it for what it is... sort of like the liberation of Iraq ;).
Yes, it is sad, but it is not surprising. This property of large groups has been known for some time.
"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time." -Lincoln, 1864
This is often misquoted as "You can fool most of the people most of the time", though this may be a simple corollary to Lincoln's observation that has been updated with almost a century and a half of evidence. In order to control politics or markets, you don't need to fool all of the people all of the time.
In any case, were you using Windows 95 in the mid `90's? See, this tactic might even have worked on you, though there were plenty of people who were not fooled and you might be one of them. Nevertheless, the power of this tactic in this situation is obvious so it stands to reason that Sony would employ it in their marketing.
There are many models here in Japan with no external display. . .after all, when you are not messaging or chatting on your phone here, you are reading manga with it or watching TV or some such. Why close it up?
The swivels are not that bad once you get used to them. What is popular here now is the type that slide open. Some of them are spring loaded and some are not. Either way, they are easy to open with one hand.
His StarTAC didn't survive the toilet? Mine survived the toilet once and the Atlantic Ocean twice. Fortunately, I had not used the toilet yet when my StarTAC popped out of my jeans pocket and went for a swim, otherwise I might have been less likely to try to dry it off.
.larger screens and keypads are a big plus. I also like the idea of a phone that is shaped like a phone when you are using it but still fits in your pants pocket when you are not. . .ideally without making you look like you are look abnormally happy.
One thing I didn't like about the StarTAC was the antenna. I eventually just got a supply of them and replaced it myself whenever I broke the knob off on a beltloop or something.
I agree. .
I can't speak for Korea, but the Japanese are very cautious around foreigners and outsiders. To the outsider, this does make the Japanese people seem somewhat clumpy and herd-like. Within their own groups, however, there seems to be just as much desire to define themselves as individuals as in any other culture. Sure, there is the whole uniform aspect of the culture. Everyone here wears uniforms, from students to gas station attendants, from office workers to highway maintenance crews, but this just makes it that much more important for them to individualize with the details. The typical cell phone here is plastered with layers of purikura stickers and has a bewildering array of little items tied into its wrist strap eyelet. This is on top of the fact that there are literally hundreds of models of cell phone to choose from in the first place, each with its own array of accessories. I was here for months before I had met someone who had the same model phone as me.
.the ones encrusted with astonishing masses of chrome bumpers, guards, accents and light racks.
.many of them just have a particularly Japanese way of expressing it that westerners are often not able to spot right away.
If you really need proof of the Japanese person's need for individuality, take a look at their cars. Aside from the cookie-cutter white minipickup trucks that all of the farmers use, most cars seem to have at least a little customization done to them. For the extreme of customization, look out for those light commercial trucks driven by owner-operators. .
From a foreigner's superficial examination, the Japanese do seem to be marching in lockstep. The truth, however, is very different, particulary where things like cell phones are concerned. The Japanese are just as much a bunch of individuals as any other group. .
The point is that he didn't want proof, despite demanding it, and there was no proof that could change his mind about what REALLY happened in Nanjing.
I short, I don't think you want proof either. Proof and evidence for points 1 and 6 above are readilly available. Documents related to the role of the Nixon administration in the overthrow and assassination of Allende where declassified a couple years ago. Try googling on "Kissenger+Allende" for starters.
Don't demand that everyone else has to try to manouver the facts past your nationalist blinders. . .Just remove you head from your ass and look around. Do a little bit of the work yourself. It is not like these things are real big secrets. Sure, Fox and CNN don't force feed this stuff to you but that is to be expected.
Really?? I have yet to see an anti-Bush story on the Capitalist News Network (CNN). Considering that the guy is little more than a chimp in a suit and tie it is almost impossible not to ridicule him nonetheless ALL of the networks put a great deal of effort into making our village idiot look Presidential. Perhaps they are not as quick to apologise for, rationalize and justify Bush II comments, actions and policies but they certainly never call them into question either. Sure, they don't pull their punches but that is just because they never throw any punches in the first place.
This is actually a huge problem that could do serious damage to what remains of the principles of democracy in the US. For democracy to work the press has to be critical of those in power. Big business media in the US is not only consistently failing in this regard but shamelessly cheerleading for monkey boy's regime.
Yep, there are big problems with the media in the US but the 'Liberal bias' that you imagine is not one of them.
This is particularly true for DOS games. There are few that I have not been able to get to work great under eCS. I have at times had to get elaborate with the VDM setup but it is a rare gave that cannot be made to work. . .
This anime was by far the most powerful work of art I have ever come across in ANY medium. Guaranteed to leave any reasonably intelligent and emotionally healthy human deeply disturbed.
Her name is Masaki Sasami Jurai, or just Sasami, from the Tenchi Muyo series, OVAs and movies. There were also OVAs and a TV serial released in which her character was named Pretty Sammy.
You can avoid Sasami here and here for starters.
I have been thinking about avoiding these myself.
I'm willing to bet the OS/2 and eComStation version of VPC will be silently snuffed out by the end of the year(if not sooner). These M$ bastards just get more evil by the day. . .
Perhaps BeOS is over and done with, but not like OS/2. OS/2 is still quite lively in the form of eComStation. Folks over at OSNews just get a little excitable whenever the BeCorpse BeTwitches . . .
I actually saw a field service guy working on an ATM that I go to on occasion. I watched it booting when he was finished. It most certainly was running Warp 4, though it didn't have the WarpCenter running and was using the LaunchPad instead.
When the ATM application loaded it had fancy new graphics and such. . .It had been upgraded!
Yep. . .this was last week and in the US even. . .OS/2 dead? That was the news back in `96. This Microsoft cheerleading is getting rather dull. . .
"Oh those noble pharmaceutical companies! What true heros of the age!". . .Well, this would sound almost reasonable if most of the research for creating new drugs wasn't done on the public dime. The large pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than on R&D. YOU believe that they spend so much on R&D because of all of the marketing dollars that they have spent getting you to believe this. . .Do a little basic research of your own on this subject and see if you still feel like helping these societal parasites with their PR campaign.
Some of these problems did not just go away naturally and of their own accord. It took a tremendous amount of effort to at least partially free this country from the death-grip of trusts, monopolies and robber-barons the first time around. Sure, now we are more aware of the threats to public intrests that monopolies pose but the strategists for big business have learned a thing or two as well and have not been idle.
Perhaps the most remarkable success of big business has been the consolidation of all the mass media into a couple corporations. This makes it easier to censor or spin the programming (so that it tastes great AND has less content!) to present big business in a positive or at least neutral frame of reference. Big business has learned that when properly done they can control the publics' perception of their actions such that huge numbers of halfwits will sing the corporate anthem and gleefully spout the company PR line even while they are being robbed blind.(Why yes, I am refering to the Gate's Jugend and Microserfs here!)
The lesson here is not "See, it happened before. . .don't worry. . .be happy". It is "See, this has happened before and we are letting it happen again". Too many suckers buying the same old (modernized and repackaged) propaganda. . .
"There is a sucker born every minute." "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." -PT Barnum
Most developers do not make their money selling shrink-wrapped software. We make it by maintaining code and making modifications in it to accomodate changing needs of the users. My employer doesn't actually make very much from licensing fees. . .The real money is in the support contract. Releasing our code under the GPL would have little impact upon my employer's bottom line. . .unless someone else decided to learn the application from an engineering level and start supporting it as well. . .in which case they would have to release the modified code back to the wild and my employer's customers would benefit as much as the new guy's. I really don't see a problem here.
I don't know for certain but I am willing to wager that a fair amount of GPLed code was initially paid for by someone. . .
Well, actually OS/2 ver 2.x does run substantially faster than ver 1.x. . .on modern hardware. Yes, on a i286 class machine, OS/2 v1.x will outrun its 32 bit offspring. The reasons, however, should be self evident.
What I find annoying here is that you seem to be implying that IBM lost the "showdown" with Microsoft because OS/2 is slower than NT(2k,XP, what have you) or less technically capable. This is just not true (The PC Week comparison of NT and Warp Server in April of `96 where OS/2 running on one processor blew the doors off NT running on four comes to mind).
To my knowledge, Microsoft has never trashed anyone, soundly or otherwise, with the merits of their technology. OS/2 has always (and still does, BTW) run faster and more reliably than NT on the same hardware.
Microsoft did not "trash" IBM in the quest for the desktop through legal and fair competition. Some of the illegal and anticompetitive methods that M$ employed are now, in fact, part of the public record. Real competiton in a free marketplace where product stand on their merits can only help OS/2.
This brings me to your comment that "The GPL removes competition". This is ludicrous. There is nothing about the GPL that makes it impossible for Microsoft to try to code a better product than Linux. The GPL just pulls some of Microsoft's illegal teeth. . .makes it more difficult for them to employ their prefered anticompetitive practices. . .In fact, in a market dominated by a monopoly that achieved its position illegally, the GPL, through Linux, actually introduces some competitive forces!
You are correct when you point out that IBM is in the business of selling hardware and service. To IBM the software is just something that helps to sell the hardware. Given Microsoft's history and their monopoly status, if IBM (or IBM's customers) wants to use an OS other than the M$ offerings for their low end and light weight systems then IBM must find an alternative that M$ cannot control, pervert or destroy. The GPL is one aspect of Linux that contributes to its Teflon-like Microsoft-proofing.
IBM likes Linux because it does what they need it to do and because, due in part to the nature of the GPL, they don't have to worry about it falling victim to Microsoft's evil ways.
The world doesn't have a population problem, it has a resource problem. Given unlimited resources you could really pack them onto the planet!
We don't have unlimited resources though so controlling the burn rate is important.
The thing is that you would have to knock off hundreds of millions of Chinese to make even a slight dent in the global resource consumption problem.
On the other hand, selectively culling a few million of the most wealthy Americans will realise HUGE progress towards getting resource utilization down to sustainable levels!
Just something to keep in mind when you are talking about trying to deal with over-population issues. . .