You realize that this attitude lets me know that all I need to do is raise my hand and say, "Bitch, make me a Turkey Pot Pie!" and you'll get right on it.
Have some faith in yourself. Best trite thing that a boss ever said to me was, "Fake it 'till you make it."
You have more legos than most people will ever see. Use the force, Luke. And quit with the self-defeating attitude. There is no standing in the way of someone who has something to prove.
Unlike with punch cards or paper ballots, there's no paper record with electronic voting that might offer a clue to the voter's intent.
Is it just me, or is this a subtle way of saying to those who read this article that 'A paper record can't be made of the votes, too bad. That's the price you pay for progress.'
Why is it so hard to imagine a printer?
And why doesn't the article point out the bogus reasons why vote-machine manufacturers have been avoiding printing the vote record?
Fair voting is the one time when the weight of your opinion exactly equals everyone elses. Anyone trying to screw wtih that should be dealt with in the HARSHEST manner.
I don't even rule out public stonings. This HAS to be fair or it doesn't work and we are screwed.
Step 1 -- Select a work to be deconstructed. This a called a "text" and is generally a piece of text, though it need not be. It is very much within the lit crit mainstream to take something which is not text and call it a text. In fact, this can be a very useful thing to do, since it leaves the critic with broad discretion to define what it means to "read" it and thus a great deal of flexibility in interpretation. It also allows the literary critic to extend his reach beyond mere literature. However, the choice of text is actually one of the less important decisions you will need to make, since points are awarded on the basis of style and wit rather than substance, although more challenging works are valued for their greater potential for exercising cleverness. Thus you want to pick your text with an eye to the opportunities it will give you to be clever and convoluted, rather than whether the text has anything important to say or there is anything important to say about it. Generally speaking, obscure works are better than well known ones, though an acceptable alternative is to choose a text from the popular mass media, such as a Madonna video or the latest Danielle Steele novel. The text can be of any length, from the complete works of Louis L'Amour to a single sentence. For example, let's deconstruct the phrase, "John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual."
Step 2 -- Decide what the text says. This can be whatever you want, although of course in the case of a text which actually consists of text it is easier if you pick something that it really does say. This is called "reading". I will read our example phrase as saying that John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual.
Step 3 -- Identify within the reading a distinction of some sort. This can be either something which is described or referred to by the text directly or it can be inferred from the presumed cultural context of a hypothetical reader. It is a convention of the genre to choose a duality, such as man/woman, good/evil, earth/sky, chocolate/vanilla, etc. In the case of our example, the obvious duality to pick is homosexual/heterosexual, though a really clever person might be able to find something else.
Step 4 -- Convert your chosen distinction into a "hierarchical opposition" by asserting that the text claims or presumes a particular primacy, superiority, privilege or importance to one side or the other of the distinction. Since it's pretty much arbitrary, you don't have to give a justification for this assertion unless you feel like it. Programmers and computer scientists may find the concept of a hierarchy consisting of only two elements to be a bit odd, but this appears to be an established tradition in literary criticism. Continuing our example, we can claim homophobia on the part of the society in which this sentence was uttered and therefor assert that it presumes superiority of heterosexuality over homosexuality.
Step 5 -- Derive another reading of the text, one in which it is interpreted as referring to itself. In particular, find a way to read it as a statement which contradicts or undermines either the original reading or the ordering of the hierarchical opposition (which amounts to the same thing). This is really the tricky part and is the key to the whole exercise. Pulling this off successfully may require a variety of techniques, though you get more style points for some techniques than for others. Fortunately, you have a wide range of intellectual tools at your disposal, which the rules allow you to use in literary criticism even though they would be frowned upon in engineering or the sciences. These include appeals to authority (you can even cite obscure authorities that nobody has heard of), reasoning from etymology, reasoning from puns, and a variety of word other games. You are allowed to use the word "problematic" as a noun. You are also allowed to pretend that the works of Freud present a correct model of human psychology and the works of Marx present a correct model of sociology and economics (it's not clear to me whether practitioners in the field actually believe Freud and Marx or if it's just a convention of the genre).
When was battery life here? Did it visit and I missed it? Did it stay with you? It didn't even call me when it was in town! Dirty SOB! I'll never trust battery life again. We're THROUGH!
Should a cable or telephone company be able to disconnect my line if I say a "dirty" word over "their" networks? No, because they are carriers of data, not enforcers. They also have limited monopolies which further limit their private status and they most likely took some sort of government subsidy to build their networks (money, land grants, tax abatements, rights of way).
Wow. That fits right in with the whole Adobe CS blocking scans of money.
Incidentally, my ISP TOS states that 'no copyrighted work can be transmitted over their data lines'. Considering that what I am typing is copyright (C)me 2004, I am in clear violation of their TOS. So is anyone who uses the network.
due to some missed upgrade of my DSL modem, my download and upload speeds have been reversed. I u/l at 760 and d/l at 128.
Most people would be "HEY! THIS SUCKS! FIX IT!" to their ISP. I have decided to hold off for a bit.
I am often bittorrenting and VNC home from work - this speed has been only a boon for that stuff. Bittorrent never gave me the speeds I get now, and everyone on the other side is my new best friend. At work, I often have to upload giant inDesign files and hundreds of megs of photos. From work (with the normal speeds in place) such a task was estimated at 10+ hours. From home, it took an hour. Nice - less babysitting from me, and I get to go home early.
That said, I wonder why I *haven't* gotten a letter since my upload speed is beyond even the top level service they offer, and is often maxed out.
The nice thing is that this is their fault and not me 'hacking' it.
I wish this was a 'feature' that I could choose on a web interface: "Choose 760dl/128up or 128dl/760up".
That would be great for the times when I want to dl the newest trailer from Apple, then switch over when I am uploading files to my websites, or running an Unreal server for pals.
After getting my hands on a prototype, I have found that due to US Treasury restrictions, the new Sony Minidisc Player will not allow any content containing the word, "money".
As it happens, this rejects the following songs:
ABBA - "Money, Money, Money" COOL MO D - "Mo' Money" PINK FLOYD - "Money" PET SHOP BOYS - "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)" BEATLES - "Money"
PRIMITIVE RADIO GODS - "Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth (With Money In My Hand)"
SUPERGRASS - "In It For The Money"
PSYCHEDELIC FURS - "All That Money Wants"
RAGGA TWINS - "Money"
DIRE STRAITS - "Money For Nothing"
WONDERSTUFF - "It's Yer Money I'm After Baby"
PATTI SMITH - "Free Money"
LIVING COLOUR - "Money Talks"
LOU REED - "No Money Down"
BIG PIG - "Money God"
PRINCE - "Money Don't Matter"
PINK FLOYD - "Money"
STEVE VAI - "Dirty Cash"
STYLE COUNCIL - "Money Go Round"
TOM WAITS - "Til The Money Runs Out"
CYNDI LAUPER - "Money Changes Everything"
FLYING LIZARDS - "Money"
NEIL YOUNG - "Loose Change"
NENEH CHERRY - "Money Love"
SMASHING PUMPKINS - "Pennies"
AC/DC - "Money Talks"
DONNA SUMMER - "She Works Hard For The Money"
MORPHINE - "Murder For The Money"
THE CHURCH - "Blood Money"
MICHAEL JACKSON - "Money"
EVERCLEAR - "Heartspark Dollarsign"
SPINAL TAP - "Gimme Some Money"
PRETENDERS - "Brass In Pocket"
PUFF DADDY - 'It's All About the Benjamins'
Plus many, many more. I cannot recommend this product in its current form, as this is unresonable copy protection.
Strangely, REM's - "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) plays perfectly. Hmm. Nothing beats apathy.
Adobe CS (Counterfeit Stoppers) is an inexpensive and reliable screening device for counterfeit bills. Adobe CS is perfect for any cash business!
To use, start Adobe CS by taking off the cap. Then simply mark a small line on U.S. currency. If the mark is amber, the bill is genuine. If the mark is dark, the bill is suspect. To maintain the effectiveness of Adobe CS, replace cap immediately after each use.
Please note: If you are using Adobe CS to check your counterfeit bills for accuracy, please replace the cap and turn yourself in to your local Secret Service office.
At 4.95, Adobe CS won't last long! Special bulk discounts are available on large purchases of Adobe CS!
If you go to the Digimark filter in PS 5, 6 and 7 and run 'detect watermark' it will always say, "No Watermark Found", and the (C) disappears.
I do hundreds of scans a month, and this still happens. It's annoying, but I haven't found a time when PS won't let me manipulate the image.
Concerning the performance, it looks like the standards for the initial (C) are much lower than the 'real' Digimark watermark detection, which would explain the false positives, and lead me to believe that you're not taking *too* much of a hit when initially opening the image.
Concerning the money check - Any checking is annoying and unacceptable as it assumes you are a criminal. Counterfeiters will *absoulutely* be able to get around this. Photoshop 7 doesn't check for this AFAIK, and that will run on a G5. All Adobe has done is inconvience users, assume that they are all criminals, hurt the performance of their product, and taken it upon themseves to police what their customers scan.
Taken to extremes, will Adobe build in Child Pornography checking? Or scan your hard drives for incriminating pictures or files? Where doess it end? And why is something I buy for editing images checking and deciding what I can do with it?
At least, this could open Adobe up to legal problems - if their checks fail and someone is 'allowed' to do what should have been 'prevented'.
All in all, it sucks. If I wanted a currency checker, I'd buy a 12 dollar pen.
I was listening to NPR yesterday, and there was an interview with the Secretary of Pork Projects That Do Little Other Than Assure Folks Who Don't Do Any Research On Anything That Is Shoveled Down Their Throats, and he said that this was not 'foolproof', but would make great strides in protecting us from terrorism.
I say bullshit.
Anyone who is ready to give their life in order to kill as many Americans as they can will have a backup plan. There are many ways into the country. And who checks the accuracy of the info the first time through?
Besides, this is an excellent example of treating the symptoms and not the cause.
I really think if we had a foreign policy that didn't run the equivalent of a rape-and-pillage mission every 6 months, we could forgo the whole war on terrorism.
Of course, it would be hard to powergrab and make billions of $$$ if that was the case.
Good ol' Tom Ridge was interviewed on the Tonight Show a while back. He said that the WOT would never end. I think he meant the War on Peace.
I am far more terrrified of our 'elected' officials than any AK toting zealot.
You would be surprised as to how many 'premade' loops I have heard out there - I hear Acid loops on commercials all the time. There is also a Roland 808?? 'sampling 4 track' that I hear loops from quite a bit.
I will agree however that most 'album musicians' sample themselves and loop that. Nothing like going through 2 1/2 hours of drumming to find that 'perfect loop'...
I won't be buying one either as it most certainly will break while running...
INTO WALLS.
This is not your fathers 10 meg Corvus hard drive, people. You can run with it, as long as your left leg isn't 8 inches longer than your right. Even then you're ok, if you have ol' Pa Ingalls make you a goddam elevator shoe.
I would love to hear about anyone who had a iPod go bad on them from running. Until then, I dub thee 'Troll'.
Slashdot Mirror
RIAA: (Hand reaching into sky, as heart is cluched) AHHhhhhggghh!
Random Chick: Ohh Vendor! Let's do it!
This one act play is brought to you by the stale ideas of the MPAA. Thank you.
Have some faith in yourself. Best trite thing that a boss ever said to me was, "Fake it 'till you make it."
You have more legos than most people will ever see. Use the force, Luke. And quit with the self-defeating attitude. There is no standing in the way of someone who has something to prove.
Sincerely,
Dr. Phil
Is it just me, or is this a subtle way of saying to those who read this article that 'A paper record can't be made of the votes, too bad. That's the price you pay for progress.'
Why is it so hard to imagine a printer?
And why doesn't the article point out the bogus reasons why vote-machine manufacturers have been avoiding printing the vote record?
Fair voting is the one time when the weight of your opinion exactly equals everyone elses. Anyone trying to screw wtih that should be dealt with in the HARSHEST manner.
I don't even rule out public stonings. This HAS to be fair or it doesn't work and we are screwed.
Step 1 -- Select a work to be deconstructed. This a called a "text" and is generally a piece of text, though it need not be. It is very much within the lit crit mainstream to take something which is not text and call it a text. In fact, this can be a very useful thing to do, since it leaves the critic with broad discretion to define what it means to "read" it and thus a great deal of flexibility in interpretation. It also allows the literary critic to extend his reach beyond mere literature. However, the choice of text is actually one of the less important decisions you will need to make, since points are awarded on the basis of style and wit rather than substance, although more challenging works are valued for their greater potential for exercising cleverness. Thus you want to pick your text with an eye to the opportunities it will give you to be clever and convoluted, rather than whether the text has anything important to say or there is anything important to say about it. Generally speaking, obscure works are better than well known ones, though an acceptable alternative is to choose a text from the popular mass media, such as a Madonna video or the latest Danielle Steele novel. The text can be of any length, from the complete works of Louis L'Amour to a single sentence. For example, let's deconstruct the phrase, "John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual."
Step 2 -- Decide what the text says. This can be whatever you want, although of course in the case of a text which actually consists of text it is easier if you pick something that it really does say. This is called "reading". I will read our example phrase as saying that John F. Kennedy was not a homosexual.
Step 3 -- Identify within the reading a distinction of some sort. This can be either something which is described or referred to by the text directly or it can be inferred from the presumed cultural context of a hypothetical reader. It is a convention of the genre to choose a duality, such as man/woman, good/evil, earth/sky, chocolate/vanilla, etc. In the case of our example, the obvious duality to pick is homosexual/heterosexual, though a really clever person might be able to find something else.
Step 4 -- Convert your chosen distinction into a "hierarchical opposition" by asserting that the text claims or presumes a particular primacy, superiority, privilege or importance to one side or the other of the distinction. Since it's pretty much arbitrary, you don't have to give a justification for this assertion unless you feel like it. Programmers and computer scientists may find the concept of a hierarchy consisting of only two elements to be a bit odd, but this appears to be an established tradition in literary criticism. Continuing our example, we can claim homophobia on the part of the society in which this sentence was uttered and therefor assert that it presumes superiority of heterosexuality over homosexuality.
Step 5 -- Derive another reading of the text, one in which it is interpreted as referring to itself. In particular, find a way to read it as a statement which contradicts or undermines either the original reading or the ordering of the hierarchical opposition (which amounts to the same thing). This is really the tricky part and is the key to the whole exercise. Pulling this off successfully may require a variety of techniques, though you get more style points for some techniques than for others. Fortunately, you have a wide range of intellectual tools at your disposal, which the rules allow you to use in literary criticism even though they would be frowned upon in engineering or the sciences. These include appeals to authority (you can even cite obscure authorities that nobody has heard of), reasoning from etymology, reasoning from puns, and a variety of word other games. You are allowed to use the word "problematic" as a noun. You are also allowed to pretend that the works of Freud present a correct model of human psychology and the works of Marx present a correct model of sociology and economics (it's not clear to me whether practitioners in the field actually believe Freud and Marx or if it's just a convention of the genre).
When was battery life here? Did it visit and I missed it? Did it stay with you? It didn't even call me when it was in town! Dirty SOB! I'll never trust battery life again. We're THROUGH!
Wow. That fits right in with the whole Adobe CS blocking scans of money.
Incidentally, my ISP TOS states that 'no copyrighted work can be transmitted over their data lines'. Considering that what I am typing is copyright (C)me 2004, I am in clear violation of their TOS. So is anyone who uses the network.
Sorry, that's supposed to be Badfinger's "Money". Ya got me. :)
Most people would be "HEY! THIS SUCKS! FIX IT!" to their ISP. I have decided to hold off for a bit.
I am often bittorrenting and VNC home from work - this speed has been only a boon for that stuff. Bittorrent never gave me the speeds I get now, and everyone on the other side is my new best friend. At work, I often have to upload giant inDesign files and hundreds of megs of photos. From work (with the normal speeds in place) such a task was estimated at 10+ hours. From home, it took an hour. Nice - less babysitting from me, and I get to go home early.
That said, I wonder why I *haven't* gotten a letter since my upload speed is beyond even the top level service they offer, and is often maxed out.
The nice thing is that this is their fault and not me 'hacking' it.
I wish this was a 'feature' that I could choose on a web interface: "Choose 760dl/128up or 128dl/760up".
That would be great for the times when I want to dl the newest trailer from Apple, then switch over when I am uploading files to my websites, or running an Unreal server for pals.
Whatever. I don't care.
Now eight.
I don't know about you, but *any* amount of time spent by a pile of dog shit in my microwave is too long.
As it happens, this rejects the following songs:
ABBA - "Money, Money, Money"
COOL MO D - "Mo' Money"
PINK FLOYD - "Money"
PET SHOP BOYS - "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)"
BEATLES - "Money"
PRIMITIVE RADIO GODS - "Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth (With Money In My Hand)"
SUPERGRASS - "In It For The Money"
PSYCHEDELIC FURS - "All That Money Wants"
RAGGA TWINS - "Money"
DIRE STRAITS - "Money For Nothing"
WONDERSTUFF - "It's Yer Money I'm After Baby"
PATTI SMITH - "Free Money"
LIVING COLOUR - "Money Talks"
LOU REED - "No Money Down"
BIG PIG - "Money God"
PRINCE - "Money Don't Matter"
PINK FLOYD - "Money"
STEVE VAI - "Dirty Cash"
STYLE COUNCIL - "Money Go Round"
TOM WAITS - "Til The Money Runs Out"
CYNDI LAUPER - "Money Changes Everything"
FLYING LIZARDS - "Money"
NEIL YOUNG - "Loose Change"
NENEH CHERRY - "Money Love"
SMASHING PUMPKINS - "Pennies"
AC/DC - "Money Talks"
DONNA SUMMER - "She Works Hard For The Money"
MORPHINE - "Murder For The Money"
THE CHURCH - "Blood Money"
MICHAEL JACKSON - "Money"
EVERCLEAR - "Heartspark Dollarsign"
SPINAL TAP - "Gimme Some Money"
PRETENDERS - "Brass In Pocket"
PUFF DADDY - 'It's All About the Benjamins'
Plus many, many more. I cannot recommend this product in its current form, as this is unresonable copy protection.
Strangely, REM's - "It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) plays perfectly. Hmm. Nothing beats apathy.
If you look at my next post, you can see I already did :)
To use, start Adobe CS by taking off the cap. Then simply mark a small line on U.S. currency. If the mark is amber, the bill is genuine. If the mark is dark, the bill is suspect. To maintain the effectiveness of Adobe CS, replace cap immediately after each use.
Please note: If you are using Adobe CS to check your counterfeit bills for accuracy, please replace the cap and turn yourself in to your local Secret Service office.
At 4.95, Adobe CS won't last long! Special bulk discounts are available on large purchases of Adobe CS!
I do hundreds of scans a month, and this still happens. It's annoying, but I haven't found a time when PS won't let me manipulate the image.
Concerning the performance, it looks like the standards for the initial (C) are much lower than the 'real' Digimark watermark detection, which would explain the false positives, and lead me to believe that you're not taking *too* much of a hit when initially opening the image.
Concerning the money check - Any checking is annoying and unacceptable as it assumes you are a criminal. Counterfeiters will *absoulutely* be able to get around this. Photoshop 7 doesn't check for this AFAIK, and that will run on a G5. All Adobe has done is inconvience users, assume that they are all criminals, hurt the performance of their product, and taken it upon themseves to police what their customers scan.
Taken to extremes, will Adobe build in Child Pornography checking? Or scan your hard drives for incriminating pictures or files? Where doess it end? And why is something I buy for editing images checking and deciding what I can do with it?
At least, this could open Adobe up to legal problems - if their checks fail and someone is 'allowed' to do what should have been 'prevented'.
All in all, it sucks. If I wanted a currency checker, I'd buy a 12 dollar pen.
You might also want to steal comments from someone who doesn't have 1765 comments, and does have a life...
You AC whoring McWhores!
Now, if you were using XGrid to create a beowulf cluster of John Mayers demoing GarageBand, you might have something there.
I say bullshit.
Anyone who is ready to give their life in order to kill as many Americans as they can will have a backup plan. There are many ways into the country. And who checks the accuracy of the info the first time through?
Besides, this is an excellent example of treating the symptoms and not the cause.
I really think if we had a foreign policy that didn't run the equivalent of a rape-and-pillage mission every 6 months, we could forgo the whole war on terrorism.
Of course, it would be hard to powergrab and make billions of $$$ if that was the case.
Good ol' Tom Ridge was interviewed on the Tonight Show a while back. He said that the WOT would never end. I think he meant the War on Peace.
I am far more terrrified of our 'elected' officials than any AK toting zealot.
You need to change the file extention to .AAC first, though.
I will agree however that most 'album musicians' sample themselves and loop that. Nothing like going through 2 1/2 hours of drumming to find that 'perfect loop'...
GarageBand could also use a 100+ usb midi keyboard, iPhoto is sorta worthless without a digital camera, iMovie needs a video camera to be useful...
None of those things came with the old Powerbook.
Look on the bright side. At least your iBook didn't come with 'white spots' as standard equipment. :(
INTO WALLS.
This is not your fathers 10 meg Corvus hard drive, people. You can run with it, as long as your left leg isn't 8 inches longer than your right. Even then you're ok, if you have ol' Pa Ingalls make you a goddam elevator shoe.
I would love to hear about anyone who had a iPod go bad on them from running. Until then, I dub thee 'Troll'.
If it makes you feel better, GarageBand is hugely UNDERpriced...buy both and you'll come out even.
Last I checked, my 15" AL Powerbook has a 1/8" line in, 1/8" headphone out, and built in mic....