Nice touch by John Schwartz, the NYT reporter, and his editors. Notice how after being specifically asked not to name the perps he went ahead and made them the lead? Now they are the first lines of a story in a major paper of record and will even appear in the abstract of the article, and every archive search to come!
Hmmm, yes, this might make an interesting argument if there were an 'EU' to join. Since the French and the Dutch blew the whole idea out of the water, and the British are thisclose to dropping it completely, the whole who-else-wants-to-join discussion is pretty much moot at this point.
Suppose we were able to stop all human-related climate-affecting activities, right now. No automobiles, no burning of any sort...a dead stop.
How long until the warming trend corrects itself? If this has been building for decades, and it seems reasonable that it has been at least since the industrial revolution, then I think there is a sort of catastrophic momentum in play that we can't stop. Assuming that this study is on the mark, nothing we can do at this point is going to save us from decades of negative effects. Things like Kyoto or even more drastic measures might slow things a bit, but it's still going to get worse and I can't see how we'll be able to reverse the trend short of some scientific silver bullet.
Even if this idea of 'catastophic momentum' is true, I suppose it may be hyperbole on my part to say we're screwed. We'll probably adapt and survive as a species (although many species won't), but it will be a new world.
Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, Roger. I'm not thrilled with the whole post-election spin that has to be put on everything on/. lately.
But I have to respectfully disagree with your comments about conservatives giving money to corporate tax breaks rather than NASA. Funny you chose that as your example, because a common argument against space exploration has been "We have problems here on earth that need to be fixed first."
Government as a tool for solving social problems is solid liberal ground, especially when it comes to spending tax dollars.
Re:Even hard-line Islamist news portals like Firef
on
Firefox News Roundup
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The problem is that increased news coverage of terrorist threats/attacks and publicising 'what the villain has to say' increases the number of such attacks. While a cynic could argue that it's in the best interest of the media to encourage conflict and chaos, most editors and news directors would (correctly, I think) consider it immoral to do so. The terrorist mantra is "Kill one to terrorize a thousand," and this is only possible if they have an audience.
News organizations walk a fine line between covering the news and creating the news in situations like this. Never mind the legitimacy or lack thereof behind terrorist acts; the purpose of this kind of self-censorship is set boundaries on what is legitimate news and what is propaganda. Al-Jazeera has the right to set their own standards, as does Matt Drudge and anyone else who purports to publish "news".
It all comes down to credibility and how much people can trust you to be taken at your word. The New York Times on its worst day is a more credible source than The Drudge Report because they have different standards for what constitutes "news." And it shows: when Drudge goes off on something, people take it with a grain of salt because he's been wrong before. When the Times says something is important, people take it seriously because they are more credible (this is also why CBS screwing up the Bush-National Guard story is such a big deal). It's the old 'cry wolf' story - spew bs often enough and people won't take you seriously.
People can rant all they want about Big Media and bias and all that, but they fact is they have standards and are deeply concerned with maintaining their credibility.
Part of TiVo's problem is that they are a subscription service. I got a PVR as part of my satellite setup, inluded in the base price. Cable companies are starting to do the same thing, and I've seen third-party PVRs for sale on a regular basis.
Why pay a monthly fee if you don't have to? Their business model is what will kill TiVo, not just Microsoft.
...is your anectdotal evidence about who was winning. The fact that you 'personally worked' the polls and had a nice chat with your Democratic and Republican colleages means precisely boo.
I love blogs, and I read 'em all the time for insight on individual opinions and analysis. I don't turn to them for facts, because anything in them may be 1) misinterpreted, 2) misunderstood, 3) lacking any sort of research or corroboration of their veracity, or 4) opinions spouted as fact without even a hand wave towards objective data.
Your post falls firmly under #4, and as such I'll take it with a grain of salt. Likewise blogs in general. The major media doesn't get it all right, all the time, but at least they make an effort to check sources and verify stories before they run 'em.
In the US, anyways. I live in San Diego, and I have an HDTV and tuner, but I use satellite for most of my viewing and didn't get the HD receiver (many $$$$).
I was reading through a forum moderated by an engineer at one of the local stations, and he said I just needed an HDTV antenna like this one and I could get the local channels in HDTV for free.
He was right. I can, and do. It's not very big, slightly smaller than a basketball, and just sits on top of the set. There are also bigger versions that can be mounted outdoors a la the old analog antennae, but that's not an option for me since I live in an apartment. The local stations have been upgrading, so the service is getting better all the time. Now, the networks have to be broadcasting in HDTV to get the benefit, obviously, but that's fairly common for primetime and major sporting events.
If I had the mod points (and the power) I'd bump you to +6.
I took the opposite route, working as a precinct captain for Gephart in '88 before drifting over to the moderate right. Yeah, there used to be one.
You hit dead center when you say that the GOP has left itself open on several fronts to an aggressive liberal party. I miss the days of having two or more viable points of view, not just "this" and "not this." A good place to start would be acknowledging and welcoming voters of moderate religious faith. There is a big group between the atheists and the born-agains, and they're just waiting for someone to take them in.
I'm hoping, honestly, that this election is a watershed for democrats the way the Johnson-Goldwater blowout was for the GOP. The soul-searching and realigning that resulted from that led to Reagan, the GOP uprising in '94, and of course the current president. I'd love to see a liberal version of this.
This is the kind of intelligent, informed discourse I love about American politics. I would have thought that the disastrous consequences of Michael Moore-esque tactics for the left this election would have put this kind of debate to rest for good, but I see it still has it's adherents.
Yeah, I voted for Bush. No, I didn't want to, but my personal policy is to vote for things rather than against them. All I heard from the Kerry camp was a litany of 'we're not Bush' and that's not good enough.
Not happy with the outcome? Welcome to the club. I was sick to the point of physical nausea when an amoral, greasy politician like Clinton was able to get re-elected. Suck it up and live with it, and do what you can to undo it in later elections.
You sound like you're a half-step from throwing Molotov cocktails at police stations and kidnapping newspaper heiresses. Knock it off and start working to make things better instead of trying to set the national whine record. I'd love to be able to choose between the Rebellion and the Empire, but life is tragically not that black and white. Painting people and groups and evil or pure of heart simply means you haven't taken a hard enough look at either point of view.
Like it or not, the people have spoken and they came down decisively on the side of the Bush crowd. I don't hate him, you, or anyone else. We're all brothers on the same side. If you haven't yet realized that the issue isn't me against you, but us against them, then you haven't been paying attention.
Finally, let me respond on your level on one issue: Integrity begins at home, motherfucker, and don't you dare call out others to take responsibility when you come out with a sniveling, whining, wailing rant and post as AC, you hypocritical, nonsensical, snot-nosed cunt.
Pardon me for being abrupt, but the reason the stories you wrote years ago didn't get published have nothing to do with being redundant with the stories that did. They didn't get published for two reasons you mentioned - they were too short, and incomplete - and one that was implied: you never gave it a shot.
Maybe there are no new themes since Shakespeare and maybe there's nothing new under the sun, but if you're a writer that shouldn't stop you. I guarantee you that if you write something with a good hero, a charming rogue, a damsel in distress, a dashing villain, and you put them through conflict and resolution in some interesting way, you've got the basis for a fine story that will be interesting to someone.
Not to mention that new readers are born every day, and maybe your rendition of an old theme will be the first time they see it. To use a baseball analogy, you can have a long and lucrative career if you never hit a home run but put up a single or double every other time at bat.
Please, go forth and write, edit, and submit for publication. And if you won't, then admit it is because you are lazy or self-concious or full of doubt or some reason besides, "I could have written The Matrix but I didn't because someone already did."
If word gets out that we all may have more machine than we need to do our jobs, then it's all over. INTC, CSCO, and the Nasdaq in general will crash, the economy will crumble, and the sky will fall.
Seriously, though...a big part of what keeps IT rocking and the money flowing in high tech is upgrades. If this ever comes to an end...(shudder)
We need more hi-res video, not less! Bigger memory footprints, not smaller!
I suppose the theory is sound, and with a average-skill poker-bot playing 10 hours a day you could make money.
One error, though, and you'll get destroyed over the long term, not rich. The bot, being a bot, will sit there and make the same mistakes over and over until you come home and see your credit card maxxed with charges to the online casino.
What then? Sit and watch the bot play, to make sure it doesn't screw up?:p
I can't believe this would ever be worth the effort, but greed makes people do strange things, I suppose.
But free broadband would disrupt the media/entertainment distribution machine, thus allowing penetration for more liberal, leftist ideas.
Right, just like the increase and expansion of media outlets in the past decade has done. The internet, Fox News, Clearchannel Communications...yep, that sure has helped the liberal cause.
The only guarantee of increased communication is the wider dissemination of ideas. Good ideas catch the wave of public interest and flourish, while bad ideas flounder and die. This is as it should be. Liberal and conservative has nothing to do with it.
Anyone notice that PG-13 language and violence can be nearly R, while the sexuality is always closer to PG?
I can think of a single movie, the award-winning "National Lampoon's European Vacation," that is PG-13 but features an excellent though completely gratuitous topless scene.
Sad the trend didn't continue. American puritanism rears its head in the strangest places.
You forgot the mandatory save-the-children alarmism:
- Pedophiles use P2P to propogate child pornography
If I hear one more argument about how my rights have to be curtailed For The Sake of the Children because some fringe element of society abuses those rights, I'll vomit.
You mention the job thing and then proceed to rant about the stock market. There's no particular correlation between the two - in fact, I could argue (but won't) that having fewer employees is a way to maximize profit and drive the company stock price up!
Not to mention that, while the number of new jobs created was pretty small, at least it was positive. Or that unemployment fell from 5.6% to 5.5. That's pretty low to be called 'bad.'
I just finished off 8 months of unemployment by landing a new gig at a much better salary than my old job, and in the past month have received an increasing number of calls from recruiters. I'm not saying we've warped back to 1998 (oh, the glory), but it is getting better.
Whatever the going rate for programmers in your area, with your skill set and experience. Can't hurt to ask, and don't forget that a paid position is probably going to demand more rigor than what you're used to working gratis.
If they come back with a lower number, maybe a much lower number, then you can weigh what it's worth to you and whether you really want to take it. But negotiate from a higher rate rather than a lower one.
Unless it's personally something so important to you that you want to donate your time, but if that were the case you wouldn't be asking, would you?:)
Link is here. Greatest independent bookstore in the world. Well, as far as I know.:) The technical books 'sub-store' alone is worth a visit.
I'm skipping all of the relatively obvious must-see destinations to point out one that may slip by even someone born and raised in the US. It's in Portland, but heck, if you're hiking you're going to want to make a trip up to the Pacific Northwest, anyway.
Get a cup of good northwest coffee and spend the afternoon browsing the stacks. It takes up an entire city block, so you won't get bored. Portland's a pretty good town, too. I've had a lot of fun up there, and it's beautiful to boot.
Seriously, these games need to be made so they have a real point
Then they would cease to be games, now wouldn't they?
It all comes down to managing your vices. I'm thrilled that EverQuest didn't come out until I was post-30 rather then when I was in college, because the combination of Wizardy and Bard's Tale alone probably cost me a full grade point over the years.
That said, I kept it under enough control that I graduated on time and have gone on to have a pretty good career in software development. The same can be said about my friends who drank, smoke, or even did drugs. They turned out OK....or didn't, depending on how well they could handle their indulgences. Moderation in all things, right? Personal responsibility?
If you want to improve your social life, go to more parties or do something else that is actually social. Trying to take an intrinsically insular (though fun) activity like playing a vido game and force it to have 'point' is silly and smacks of social nannyism.
If you are are going to go through life believing that the only things that can be true are the things that "feel" like they should be true, you're going to miss out on some of the coolest shit in the universe. Relativity, as I said. Not to mention quantum physics.
One of the great things about science is that it lets us pursue the "Why not?" response to "It can't be done." The modern world was built on such thinking; the Dark Ages were built on intuition.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice touch by John Schwartz, the NYT reporter, and his editors. Notice how after being specifically asked not to name the perps he went ahead and made them the lead? Now they are the first lines of a story in a major paper of record and will even appear in the abstract of the article, and every archive search to come!
Hmmm, yes, this might make an interesting argument if there were an 'EU' to join. Since the French and the Dutch blew the whole idea out of the water, and the British are thisclose to dropping it completely, the whole who-else-wants-to-join discussion is pretty much moot at this point.
How long until the warming trend corrects itself? If this has been building for decades, and it seems reasonable that it has been at least since the industrial revolution, then I think there is a sort of catastrophic momentum in play that we can't stop. Assuming that this study is on the mark, nothing we can do at this point is going to save us from decades of negative effects. Things like Kyoto or even more drastic measures might slow things a bit, but it's still going to get worse and I can't see how we'll be able to reverse the trend short of some scientific silver bullet.
Even if this idea of 'catastophic momentum' is true, I suppose it may be hyperbole on my part to say we're screwed. We'll probably adapt and survive as a species (although many species won't), but it will be a new world.
But I have to respectfully disagree with your comments about conservatives giving money to corporate tax breaks rather than NASA. Funny you chose that as your example, because a common argument against space exploration has been "We have problems here on earth that need to be fixed first."
Government as a tool for solving social problems is solid liberal ground, especially when it comes to spending tax dollars.
News organizations walk a fine line between covering the news and creating the news in situations like this. Never mind the legitimacy or lack thereof behind terrorist acts; the purpose of this kind of self-censorship is set boundaries on what is legitimate news and what is propaganda. Al-Jazeera has the right to set their own standards, as does Matt Drudge and anyone else who purports to publish "news".
It all comes down to credibility and how much people can trust you to be taken at your word. The New York Times on its worst day is a more credible source than The Drudge Report because they have different standards for what constitutes "news." And it shows: when Drudge goes off on something, people take it with a grain of salt because he's been wrong before. When the Times says something is important, people take it seriously because they are more credible (this is also why CBS screwing up the Bush-National Guard story is such a big deal). It's the old 'cry wolf' story - spew bs often enough and people won't take you seriously.
People can rant all they want about Big Media and bias and all that, but they fact is they have standards and are deeply concerned with maintaining their credibility.
Why pay a monthly fee if you don't have to? Their business model is what will kill TiVo, not just Microsoft.
I love blogs, and I read 'em all the time for insight on individual opinions and analysis. I don't turn to them for facts, because anything in them may be 1) misinterpreted, 2) misunderstood, 3) lacking any sort of research or corroboration of their veracity, or 4) opinions spouted as fact without even a hand wave towards objective data.
Your post falls firmly under #4, and as such I'll take it with a grain of salt. Likewise blogs in general. The major media doesn't get it all right, all the time, but at least they make an effort to check sources and verify stories before they run 'em.
I was reading through a forum moderated by an engineer at one of the local stations, and he said I just needed an HDTV antenna like this one and I could get the local channels in HDTV for free.
He was right. I can, and do. It's not very big, slightly smaller than a basketball, and just sits on top of the set. There are also bigger versions that can be mounted outdoors a la the old analog antennae, but that's not an option for me since I live in an apartment. The local stations have been upgrading, so the service is getting better all the time. Now, the networks have to be broadcasting in HDTV to get the benefit, obviously, but that's fairly common for primetime and major sporting events.
I took the opposite route, working as a precinct captain for Gephart in '88 before drifting over to the moderate right. Yeah, there used to be one.
You hit dead center when you say that the GOP has left itself open on several fronts to an aggressive liberal party. I miss the days of having two or more viable points of view, not just "this" and "not this." A good place to start would be acknowledging and welcoming voters of moderate religious faith. There is a big group between the atheists and the born-agains, and they're just waiting for someone to take them in.
I'm hoping, honestly, that this election is a watershed for democrats the way the Johnson-Goldwater blowout was for the GOP. The soul-searching and realigning that resulted from that led to Reagan, the GOP uprising in '94, and of course the current president. I'd love to see a liberal version of this.
Yeah, I voted for Bush. No, I didn't want to, but my personal policy is to vote for things rather than against them. All I heard from the Kerry camp was a litany of 'we're not Bush' and that's not good enough.
Not happy with the outcome? Welcome to the club. I was sick to the point of physical nausea when an amoral, greasy politician like Clinton was able to get re-elected. Suck it up and live with it, and do what you can to undo it in later elections.
You sound like you're a half-step from throwing Molotov cocktails at police stations and kidnapping newspaper heiresses. Knock it off and start working to make things better instead of trying to set the national whine record. I'd love to be able to choose between the Rebellion and the Empire, but life is tragically not that black and white. Painting people and groups and evil or pure of heart simply means you haven't taken a hard enough look at either point of view.
Like it or not, the people have spoken and they came down decisively on the side of the Bush crowd. I don't hate him, you, or anyone else. We're all brothers on the same side. If you haven't yet realized that the issue isn't me against you, but us against them, then you haven't been paying attention.
Finally, let me respond on your level on one issue: Integrity begins at home, motherfucker, and don't you dare call out others to take responsibility when you come out with a sniveling, whining, wailing rant and post as AC, you hypocritical, nonsensical, snot-nosed cunt.
Maybe there are no new themes since Shakespeare and maybe there's nothing new under the sun, but if you're a writer that shouldn't stop you. I guarantee you that if you write something with a good hero, a charming rogue, a damsel in distress, a dashing villain, and you put them through conflict and resolution in some interesting way, you've got the basis for a fine story that will be interesting to someone.
Not to mention that new readers are born every day, and maybe your rendition of an old theme will be the first time they see it. To use a baseball analogy, you can have a long and lucrative career if you never hit a home run but put up a single or double every other time at bat.
Please, go forth and write, edit, and submit for publication. And if you won't, then admit it is because you are lazy or self-concious or full of doubt or some reason besides, "I could have written The Matrix but I didn't because someone already did."
Seriously, though...a big part of what keeps IT rocking and the money flowing in high tech is upgrades. If this ever comes to an end...(shudder)
We need more hi-res video, not less! Bigger memory footprints, not smaller!
One error, though, and you'll get destroyed over the long term, not rich. The bot, being a bot, will sit there and make the same mistakes over and over until you come home and see your credit card maxxed with charges to the online casino.
What then? Sit and watch the bot play, to make sure it doesn't screw up? :p
I can't believe this would ever be worth the effort, but greed makes people do strange things, I suppose.
Right, just like the increase and expansion of media outlets in the past decade has done. The internet, Fox News, Clearchannel Communications...yep, that sure has helped the liberal cause.
The only guarantee of increased communication is the wider dissemination of ideas. Good ideas catch the wave of public interest and flourish, while bad ideas flounder and die. This is as it should be. Liberal and conservative has nothing to do with it.
Here's hoping your admiration of Robinson's works do not extend to mimicking his writing style. :p
I can think of a single movie, the award-winning "National Lampoon's European Vacation," that is PG-13 but features an excellent though completely gratuitous topless scene.
Sad the trend didn't continue. American puritanism rears its head in the strangest places.
More porn spam.
- Pedophiles use P2P to propogate child pornography
If I hear one more argument about how my rights have to be curtailed For The Sake of the Children because some fringe element of society abuses those rights, I'll vomit.
Not to mention that, while the number of new jobs created was pretty small, at least it was positive. Or that unemployment fell from 5.6% to 5.5. That's pretty low to be called 'bad.'
I just finished off 8 months of unemployment by landing a new gig at a much better salary than my old job, and in the past month have received an increasing number of calls from recruiters. I'm not saying we've warped back to 1998 (oh, the glory), but it is getting better.
The sky is not, in fact, falling.
Everything looks so weird with no comments...
If they come back with a lower number, maybe a much lower number, then you can weigh what it's worth to you and whether you really want to take it. But negotiate from a higher rate rather than a lower one.
Unless it's personally something so important to you that you want to donate your time, but if that were the case you wouldn't be asking, would you? :)
Good luck.
I'm skipping all of the relatively obvious must-see destinations to point out one that may slip by even someone born and raised in the US. It's in Portland, but heck, if you're hiking you're going to want to make a trip up to the Pacific Northwest, anyway.
Get a cup of good northwest coffee and spend the afternoon browsing the stacks. It takes up an entire city block, so you won't get bored. Portland's a pretty good town, too. I've had a lot of fun up there, and it's beautiful to boot.
Where's Val Kilmer when you need him...
Then they would cease to be games, now wouldn't they?
It all comes down to managing your vices. I'm thrilled that EverQuest didn't come out until I was post-30 rather then when I was in college, because the combination of Wizardy and Bard's Tale alone probably cost me a full grade point over the years.
That said, I kept it under enough control that I graduated on time and have gone on to have a pretty good career in software development. The same can be said about my friends who drank, smoke, or even did drugs. They turned out OK....or didn't, depending on how well they could handle their indulgences. Moderation in all things, right? Personal responsibility?
If you want to improve your social life, go to more parties or do something else that is actually social. Trying to take an intrinsically insular (though fun) activity like playing a vido game and force it to have 'point' is silly and smacks of social nannyism.
Young Einstein: "That's Relativity."
(with apologies to Yahoo Serious)
If you are are going to go through life believing that the only things that can be true are the things that "feel" like they should be true, you're going to miss out on some of the coolest shit in the universe. Relativity, as I said. Not to mention quantum physics.
One of the great things about science is that it lets us pursue the "Why not?" response to "It can't be done." The modern world was built on such thinking; the Dark Ages were built on intuition.