well, so long PGP... I guess I'm a nitpicker but it seemed to me that not long ago The GNU was hacking many more projects than just a PGP clone and a "command-line utility" wtf? Hello! Someone call the stupid police. I seem to have these vague sort of runins with this program called emacs... come to think of it it happens pretty much every day at work. GNU's only a privacy/command line utility maker. Deh fo the GNU that made my Emacs must be a different GNU than the one this article talks about. I'd like to meet this GNU guy on the block sometime. sorry for the pun, just had to. aight, over an out.
I simply must concur and agree, but should warn that it is a very subtle effect, wonderful yes but somewhat hard to describe. I think the same thing could also be accomplished, in part, by many other things as well such as a better exore size program or better eating. So ginko is not gonna be the panacea you may be looking for but rather a good complement to an already healthy lifestyle.
Also, if you caffeine addicts still aren't satisfied try yerba. It's a wonderfully pungent tea that posesses, IMHO, better stimulating qualities, much like caffeeene, such as increased alertness and attention span, but without the jitters and it's also more of a general mood enhancer. Part of my alertness problem is not wanting to be alert, just the I don't wanna be here factor, give me a mood boost and I'll do anything for hours. Yerba. It's not yo mammas teahhh! Do be careful because in excessive quantity yerba can backfire, but about three or four doses - maybe 2 to 3 liq oz a peice? - of yerba tea and I'm ready to go do some sheeit. you may be able to find it in your local organic co-operative grocery store but I would reccommend getting it online cause it's cheaper and usually better. aight, nuff said.
the only cool part of the mozilla project is the engine, and that's only if you're a developer and interested in building your own browser. Mozilla itself is bloat ware and runs about a gazillion times slower than galeon on my ghz athlon. ok, a gazillion is a lot. And what the foobar is up with all those damned side tabs. At least the tabs in IE do something useful and load fast. I say give me a browser that looks good - read not cluttered but still aesthetic - works well, as in standards, and works fast. then maybe I'll be happy. For now I'm a galeon/konqueror and IE person. Once the mozilla project figures out how to get - what exactly is it in there that makes the thing take at LEAST three or four times as long to load as galeon? I don't see it - it's software to work swiftly I'll be happy.
uhh... no... just don't listen to it loud, tinnitis is caused by - among other things - exposure to overly loud sounds, symptoms of which include a ringing noise in the ear which can in serious cases be heard by others near your ears. our ears hear in selective ranges of sound, and listening to something loud can damage parts of your ear responsible for "hearing" the various frequency ranges. For most people the high frequencies go first because it takes more precision to hear them, hence why bass is often the only thing you can hear when the neighbors start pumping the gansta rap downstairs. Listening to something at about 90 dB for an hour or so can give you or start to give you tinnitis. It's not the music, it's the volume. And the louder you listen the faster you loose it. A good resource for info on hearing and damage due to sound levels check out some Common Misconceptions About Hearing at Digital Recordings. There are other factors than just sound levels that can cause tinnitis. For a more in depth discussion of the syndrome itself check out the tinnitis FAQ.
uh, I don't really know half of what these guys were chattering about but it was entertaining and I'm glad apple has dominic, sounds like a good guy. maybe I'll go hack up my own filesystem, I've been inspired.
I hope that these little gems of logic are impecably valid though anyone is very free to debate the truth of them as even I can see problems with them. The problem with any valid syllogism is that it must stem from some sort of inductive reasoning which is in essence a generalization based on consistent observations so the truths may not hold all the time. I hope that most of you will be able to agree with most of what I present.
consider these syllogisms:
all organizations trying to make a profit are commercial organizations
a pay-per-play website is an organization trying to make a profit
a pay-per-play website is a commercial organization
a method of increasing profits is selling more product
an interest of a commercial organization is a method of increasing profits
an interest of a commercial organization is selling more product
products that sell more units than other products are more popular than other products
this product is a product that sells more units than another product
this product is more popular than another product
going from the previous syllogisms:
a product that is more popular than another product is an interest of a commercial organization
this product is a product that is more popular than another product
this product is an interest of a commercial organization
I skipped some logical steps to get straight to my point and not bore you entirely to death with syllogism bs. The point is that a pay per play website will be interested in selling the products that are more popular because they will sell more and generate more revenue. These sites will not be interested in those singles that are not popular. Singles themselves are not interested in the other songs on the album that are not popular.
There are far more bands in this world than those on the top 40, and many of the bands who are not on the top 40 are far better musicians than some of those on the top 40. The reason for this? As I just pointed out, commercialism. It doesn't matter if you can play Chopin nocturnes at the speed of light, if people don't enjoy listening to you or the nocturnes they will not be interested, will not listen, and will not buy. Simple as that.
As the advent of the boy-bands and the sexy-girl-singer groups has hit us here in these recent years I don't know how anyone could miss this glaring difference. There is nothing new in this business of mp3 selling, it's a different format, that's all. And slightly harder to enforce or police because of the nature of it's distribution medium the internet. When audio cassette tapes came out the record companys threw a hissy fit claiming that all intellecual property rights such as artists rights or artists income but namely those of the companys to make a buck, would fly out the window. Has that happened? Hardly. There are tons of other formats that I could use to copy and distribute my music. Cassette, ADAT, mini disc, CD-RW, any of the other compression formats out there, lossy or not, mp3, wav, aif, shn. Most people realize this too but have they stopped buying CD's? Nope.
If you care about being a rock star or you care about milking the recording industry for all the pennys you can squeeze, then by all means jump on the band wagon, start getting hysterical and wave a large trout about your head, maybe even smack someone with it to get attention. Otherwise, if you really care about music, and enjoying music, do it yourself. Make it yourself, buy it yourself, get it yourself, from friends, from family, with friends with family, from the internet, from the radio. There are ways of doing anything both with and without corporate involvement. This article is simply pointing out the rise of another, possibly large and profitable, commercial bandwagon on which to ride. The real musician and the real audiophile listen not only to the music advertised to them but to the music they want to listen to, the music they only sort of like, the music they have heard, the music they have heard of, the music they haven't heard, they listen to the music that pushes boundaries and rides on the edge of being just a little too out there for most, hell even for themselves. Well roundedness is the key for anything, and that goes for music too. Even now the currently availble tools for dowloading music such as p2p nets like gnutella still leave much for me to desire primarily because of my ecclectic taste in music. Much of what I enjoy can only be found on vinyl these days, or even more "shocking", only in concert. So do what you want, pay if you want, don't if you don't want it's a matter of personal choice, and I say if you choose to hop the bandwagon, or give it money for gas, great, but I'm not gonna.
wow this guy is uniformed. anyone who doesn't know the difference between hacker and cracker shouldn't be writing an article about either in the first place.
What if you WANT to give it away for free? Is it cool that people pirate music? not really, I have, but as a musician I can say I'm less concerned with whether people buy my CD's than I am with whether they show up at my concerts.
I'd rather have them get a copy of my CD for free, realize they like it and then want to see my concert. The box office is where much the killing is made. For musicians, at least those not on the top 40 - read, most of the musicians that exist - selling CD's is not gonna bring home the bacon. Seeing a live show is just not the same as listening to a CD, there's something about being there, the sheer volume and the whole experience that makes it different. Not that I was there but I doubt Woodstock '69 the complete CD set would have the moxy that the show itself did.
so, to somehow stay on this story's topic, this bill goes against that which music and art is - freedom of expression and getting that expression to the general populace. I'm glad to see people standing up for this bill. think about it - because people want to make a buck they're forcing you to NOT give away your stuff for FREE.
but you didn't say that you had "the desire to improve my life over the level of a subsistence farmer" all you said was you needed to, or wanted to aquire more wealth so you didn't and don't starve and all I was saying was that you don't need increasing wealth to not starve, you just need enough to not starve. yeah I too have the desire to improve my own wealth beyond that of subsistence farming, and I have. and whether this desire consitutes greed is merely a matter of personal opinion - it's a moral stance, one which I do not hold. It's a sliding scale, IMHO Mr. Bill is the epitome of greed but it becomes harder and harder to figure out exactly where to draw the line when you keep going further and further down the income scale. motive is another key factor that's really just too hard to determine because it's internal.
as another little note I work 40 hours a week but would gladly work half that - at my present position of course. Enough to pay my bills, eat and maybe see a movie or buy some beer every now and then. I'd much rather have time and energy to dedicate to those things not at all commerce related. Just my stance, and call me new aged or flaky, but I like having time for meditation a lot more than I like having the extra cash to spend on CDs. I'm not saying anything about your cash spending prefs so don't worry about it. DONE
not sure about others but I've noticed lots of screwy business with the old linuxdoc.org name... there have been many a time when I had to use google's cache to find an appropriate mirror cause linuxdoc.org was down. maybe things will be getting better... lets hope so.
ok, first, all you're doing is getting defensive which accomplishes nothing. I wasn't ripping on you. I didn't say anywhere in my ramblings that it was impossible for or that of the people of poorer families cannot become lawers and doctors. in fact I'm sure that a great many of our best doctors and lawyers came from more modest backgrounds with large work ethic and desire to rise out of the less than ideal financial situation in which they were raised.
the peice of my rambling you failed to include, was noting that I said "are primarily" and not just "are" or "the only people are". And also when I literally pointed to the fact that I was on purpose simply using hyperbole to illustrate the unfair *ADVANTAGE* not *ONLY TICKET IN THE DOOR* that the richer people of this world have when it comes to living the "american dream".
The fact is you yourself said "Yeah, I've got it easy today. Yeah, I was born with a hell of an advantage over people in the third world." and that's precisely what I'm getting at. Of course you're not a crack head, you're making more than either of your parents combined. I'm also making more than my parents combined.
My father, a folk musician - not the most lucrative genre - teaches music lessons - not the most lucrative career. My mother is a part time librarian, also not the most lucrative career. I've been fairly poor most of my life but for however poor I was we still managed to live close to what could have been called a middle class lifestyle. We didn't have running water or electricity for years living in the blue ridge mountains of NC, had to use the pump well and the wood stove. Then we eventually moved to a small quiet midwestern white middle class people with day jobs town. I was lucky enough to be raised in a generous loving family.
In no way am I asking you to renounce anything. I'm not asking you to starve, that would be a waste of time for both of us. You've worked hard to get where you are and so have I. I'm just asking you to question the assumptions that have been programmed into you. The things that make you say this in the first place. That people must work. That work is good. That making money is good. That making more money is better. That it's really only important how much more successful than your parents you are. Every generation has been better off than the preceding. Those generations close to each other may not be as readily viewed as better off, but as you said compare to a hundred years ago and theres a difference.
But here's the problem. What does the standard of living "back then" have to do with the standard of living today. Of course it's better, look at all the technology we've invented, running water, sanitary systems, health care. But the poorest 10% of americans as you are so quick to take note of may be better off than the richest ten percent in some other country. Or maybe not. The point is that comparing what we were to what we are now does nothing but boost our egos and help us delude ourselves into thinking that even though people living in the bronx live in fear of death every day, that must still be better than what the bronx was like a hundred years ago - of course... just look at these nifty little numbers I pulled out of my anus. Yeah, that's sarcasm.
Capitalism HAS done some wonderful things, but in my eyes the injustices commited in it's name - for one look at the amount of toxins we pump into our world and thusly into ourselves, the unfair distribution of wealth, HMO's for cryin out loud - and it's implementation, the fact that it's become increasingly difficult to tell the difference and achieve a true separation of the government and corporations far outweighs the benefits you and I got to be priveledged with, however few, just so we could have a chance to become richer than we were.
So good for you that you choose to think about yourself and "No thanks. I choose to use my advantages to gain more wealth for myself, precisely because I don't want to starve." But starvation is a motivation to earn enough to eat not a motivating factor for gaining more wealth. That's called greed. I know you're not likely to care about the starving children in africa, after all what good is the rotten oat meal ma used to serve for breakfast gonna do for these starving kids. None. But YOU might be able to. Personally I hope you never give a dime to charity in your life because you'll only end up unsatisfied. Giving with the intention or hope of anything in return is not true giving and I believe you've already demonstrated that you are incapable of embodying this concept.
According to my calculations, that's roughly 1 out of every 700 people. Heck, I'd say that's a remarkable acheivement on behalf of the worldwide charities and modern medicine
well heck, only one out of every few hundred people is a murderer. I'd say that's a remarkable achievment on the part of... wait, who makes people not be murderers? well heck, only one out of every few oil tankers crashes so only one out of every few remaining natural wildlife habitats is destroyed on a regular basis. I'd say that's a remarkable improvement on... oh wait, it's not an improvement at all. the fact is there are people in the US who live in much more dangerous - read inner cities - environments all day long than some people in Tunisia who live on a clean fresh water lake but *gasp* don't have electricity or *screech* a computer!
The fact that the USA started capitalist and is still capitalist attests to the fact that it works and it benefits EVERYBODY
wrong. sorry. just wrong. capitalism benefits those who are rich already. the lawers and the doctors of our world are primarily those people who grew up in upscale middle class homes or mansions with trust funds and trips to new zealand over the summer. enough cash to send you to harvard or yale and enough political heft because of that cash to get you in in the first place. yeah the idea that you COULD make it big, the land of "opportunity" exists... but in order to get funding to milk your cow you have to trade in your cow as collateral for a security deposit on the 20 dollars it cost to buy the pail - all in case your business gets screwed. oh wait, it just did. Yeh, that works real well. yeah this is an exaggerated view of stuff but it's a fact that if you grow up in a middle or upper class family you are more likely to succeed in the contemporary globally economic connotation of the word, that is, get an education that's worth something, get a job, keep that job, get a good, job, keep that job, hell even get promoted. if you're an average male WASP which I'm willing to bet many slashdotters are then you likely have not a clue how easy you've got it. for one you have or have access to a computer, something most of the worlds population cannot say. for two you were probably fed, you've probably taken antibiotics before, you probably know what tylenol, aspirin, coffee, red bull, guiness, weed, viagra, and prozac are. That you even know that you have the option to sustain your erections when you are 60 means you are living in a world above most - a world dominated by a corporate marketplace that wants you to think a particular way, wants you to feel a particular way. Your basic needs have been satisfied and instead of worrying whether you'll eat tonight you're probably worrying whether to waste the time it takes to make mac'n'cheese or just stuff that twinky in your face. cmon. really, in a land where you can buy twinkies, you know you don't have it that bad... what you don't know, is how bad everyone else has it.
am I the only one who, though I admit this proposal sounds cool, wouldn't shell out the bucks just to have a freakin certificate telling me I belong to an organization three people large? Wahoo! The election's coming up, oh I wonder who'll win oh the suspense!
I wish people would address and discuss the real issue at stake here. What I believe too many of these posters have failed to neglect in their responses is that they do NOT live in the scenario this article poses - one in which corporations and government become less distinguishable from one another. And in this scenario they simply might not have the option of using anything free, or turning on a spam filter in the first place.
A free economy does not suppose a free people. Even an economy in which one thinks he is free may not be free. A government is supposed to serve it's people and corporations are supposed to serve their customers.
Please indulge my imagination for a moment. Pretend that corporations have been merging for long enough that only two remain, the civil service provider and the corporate service provider. *eerie music* The Final Merger. Now turn both concepts into one and you have Service Commerce. You are provided everything. The opportunity to spend money, the opportunity to have your garbage collected. The opportunity to get higher education so you can be an engineer or an art major.
What you are not provided is the ability to choose who provides you these services. You don't get to choose the popups you see, they just popup. You don't have the option to get free information, you must subscribe. Since the advent of Service Commerce the head CEO's and execs now own roughly 80% of the world's money while the rest of us all get paid the same regardless of duties.
Then consider that instead of being fired, bad workers are just put into the correctional work force where they no longer even choose whether they will watch a particular commercial or speak a certain way. Those on the outside may still opt out but are none the less hurded through the Service Commerce machine.
My point is that all the common intrusive examples - spam, popups, subscriptions - posed by this article are no more the root problem of this orwellian prophesy than run down housing tenaments and squalid living conditions are the root problem of inner city violence. They merely reflect the state of the organization.
So what can we do? Simple, we can know. We can get educated. We can know our rights. We can vote not because it's just one vote but because we are allowed to. We can realize that we are consumers and we DO vote EVERY DAY. For all those who have already expressed their vote for linux and the Open Source community, wonderful, you've already started to make a difference and you know it and you are proud.
If you use linux for any of the same reasons as I do I can bet you are a perfectionist of sorts, perhaps a rebel, iconoclastic even and desire complete and full knowlege and control of your computer. Now realize that you have the same power to control your government, the people that put arsenic in your drinking water, BHG in your food and carbon monoxide in your air. Go vote at the next school board election, go rant at the next city buget proposal, write your congress people, write an editorial, join a peace rally, join a hate rally. Let your own voice be not heard, but affective (yes affective, not effective). Get mad. Go vote.
umm... duh? screw tech details, learn the meaning
on
Review: Panic Room
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· Score: 1
so since the matrix has been around for a bit I'll tackle it so everyone else won't have panic room "spoiled" for them and cause these following comments pissed me off... seriously guys, the panic room may not have been the best movie I've seen but the reasons just about everyone has been ripping on it are irrelevant. anyway: here goes my blabbering...
Why fight the agents in The Matrix, where they rule, instead of the real world?
because the agents don't exist in the "real" world
Why use humans to turn food into energy, when you could use fuel cells, or bacteria, or just burn it.
why not, aparently in the world of the matrix this AI has figured that it's the best way. realize we're talking about technology with capabilities millenia beyond our current grasp of the universe.
Why provide the humans with *any* dream world, perfect or otherwise?
psychological and physical health are very co-dependent. you don't usually see normal - and by normal I mean the measure of normal internal to that person, not what that person projects to us the outside world - productive members of society slicing themselves with razor blades and forgetting to shower for months. I seem to remember the matrix informing the audience that if you die in the matrix... i.e. you THINK you're dead then you die in the real world too. consider the ai NEEDS to keep people alive for this great source of energy... you got a better idea?
Two dozen other similarly dificult to answer questions.
like? one of the many concepts in the matrix was to question all your assumptions. the matrix was a blend of many forms of mythology. everything from the bible to classic greek myths to buhdism and existentialism.
take the bible:
1) name of their ship the nebakanezzer - no I don't know how to spell it - anyway, name of a historical jewish king.
2) neo, morpheus, trinity. the THREE key players. 3 is a classic mythical number along with many others like 7 and 12. This triplet mirrors the concept of the father the son and the holy ghost. is it any coincidence that neo is one spelled backwards and trinity begins with tri, the prefix for 3. morpheus? don't ask me.
3) neo is jesus. ai taking over the earth and scorching the sky = armageddon = the advent of the matrix. The coming of neo is jesus's second coming.
4) the name of the last human town is Zion. Can't get much more directly biblical than all this.
5) still not convinced? In the end neo DIES and RESURRECTS... seems there was this little holiday many of us just celebrated not long ago called easter.
greek mythology:
1) the oracle, look her up
2) sits on a three legged stool, wears a dress of orange and green - look for a classical drawing - and the cupboards and cabinets are orange and green
3) the oracle typically resides at the edge of a large chasm from which wafts a smoke which stuns anyone breathing it into a sort of stupor, makes them lazy or whatever so she can have her way with them... and from which wafts a welcoming scent - the munchies man, she's makin munchies! what a pot head.
so lets all have phun an over analyze why the matrix wouldn't work today and completely ignore any statement these guys may have had about the meaning of life or the way we live our lives.
cmon, really, this stuff is childs play, if you're interested there's about ten times as much other stuff you can find if you look close. do your own research, I'm done spoon feeding you. IMHO Problem with techies - I am going and have to go with my experience, the techies I've met, including myself - is they're only grounded in what they dig - i.e. techy stuff. Show me a techie who can analyze literature by extracting the fallacies of technology and I'll show you a techie with useless trivia. Show me a techie who can analyze literature by extracting and relating other than the most ostensible layer of rhetoric and I'll show you a nerd among techies. When will this change?
I think someone did this to my computer minus my knowledge cause I all of a sudden, within the last few days have this new little "favorites" bar with stupid shite like "win an x box" links. how do I kill it? I can't find an uninstaller.
yeah, I understand the placement thing... I remember when the first mission impossible came out and all the people at my local theater had mission impossible shirts on and they had that (new at the time) single color apple logo on them and of course there were plenty of macs strewn about the movie. placement is a powerful suggestive technique and I'd go almost as far as to say it's a better mechanism than perhaps any other form of advertising - except perhaps word of mouth - to get people to want the thing.
People think in terms of their social existence and part of that existence, for many is TV and the movies - media. Integrate your product into those identified-with social structures and you have a powerful, if subtle, persuasion and reason to want the thing, that is, it drips of culture real and imagined because - I'm gonna venture out on a limb here and say - if you enjoy watching a particular show chances are many of your friends do too, there's something you can all identify with and one of those things you identify with, conciously willingly or not is the set, including all props and computers and trolls and hair styles. BUT!! I think Apple should ALSO invest time and money in getting their commercials out.
People do watch commercials, people do pay attention to them - no not all the time - but they do. Just think of any time you've ever talked with anyone about a funny commercial you saw - excepting maybe those who don't have TV's but I really don't care about them cause they don't pertain to this in the first place - c'mon if you've ever seen tv or watched it even on a semi regular basis there are probably a few commercials you remember. There's a reason those superbowl commercial guys get paid so much, cause they put out hard hitting sometimes funny sometimes thought provoking commercials that stick in people's heads.
Product placement in the media is all well and good. But apple should ALSO concentrate on commercial placement. Both techniques combined could make for a killer advertising scheme. End transmission. Bleah!!!
I've been a computer user for... sheei** since I was old enough to know what one was. I started out on one of those old RadioShack Tandy TRaSh 80 Color III's those old keyboards you hook up to your TV and program in BASIC. Those were the days. Then I got a real computer. My Macintosh Performa 6400 200Mhz... wow that thing kicked ass back in the day. I did so much with that thing. I was certainly a Mac evangelist. Learned C and C++ on that, HTML, made my first few web sites on it with the help of Photoshop and BBEdit. Then I got another real computer. It is what has become my Athlon 1Ghz, 320Meg RAM, 40Gig HD, nVidia GeForce 2, etc. etc... which I've built myself the same way the author of this article pointed out, piece by piece. I started out with a grandaddy of an old giant noisy desktop mega ATX case and slowly replaced parts and case till the only thing left of that original beast is my Sound card and a couple sticks of RAM. My point I guess if I have one is that PC's rock. Macs rock. I agree that Macs are expensive but if you HAVE the cash and you DO want one, then do it up. Personally I can think of plenty of other stuff I'm gonna buy before I buy a new G4:( but alas such is life.
And btw, this guy's "fuzzy math" shines through, I like how he pointed out some specs and a price, then only one or two of the same specs and another lower price (I think he left out ram) then he hid behind absolutely no backup whatsoever, claiming to have some sort of "rocking" system for like a grand. I don't know about other folks but I have a rockin system and unfourtunately altogether it didn't just cost a grand. If I had every feature that the new G4's had then I'm sure I'd be coming close to about 2 grand, I think I probably am already. Price only matters to those who are greedy.
another little point I didn't like was about this whole Mhz business - just isn't a good comparison factor between machines. There are so many other hardware factors that can influence overall performance. Even if you get your system specs completely tight, each uses such and such rpm hard drives made by the same company, exactly 256megs 168 pin DIMMS at 133, there are still plenty of other factors... os, the compiler the os was compiled on, the system the os was compiled on, the programs you're running, the compiler THEY we're compiled with, your bus speed, your chipset, your entire architechture, the size of your chip cache, how many chip specific features the compiler you're using takes advantage of, how many OS specific features your programs take advantage of... the list goes on. I think this guy mentioned that he's never seen a mac respond as quickly as he feels his PC does on a regular basis. Hmmm, sounds like as a PC fanatic this guy really uses macs a lot... riiiiiight. Wonder if he's actually used any of the programs compiled with support for the G4's new architechture. In short this guys reasons for what he says are IMHO stupid. Sorry for the long windedness, just wasting time. peace.
one more quickie, apple should advertise more. apple has numerous commercials posted on their web site. why? I mean I get a kick out of em but no one else likely will unless they're already mac fans. I've seen a fairly recent new iMac commercial but that's it. Where are the logos at the sporting events, during survivor, all these giant shows? ok... over and out for real.
I know there is a utility that's standard on many linux/unix type distro's called I believe kbd or xkb that let's you select and or alter/edit the keymap of your keyboard so you can map a particular key to a different function. I remember reading some sort of howto on doing this so you can switch the functionality of the left ctrl and the caps lock key to further reduce pinky strain when typing emacs commands, make it like the sun keyboards.
Slashdot Mirror
well, so long PGP... I guess I'm a nitpicker but it seemed to me that not long ago The GNU was hacking many more projects than just a PGP clone and a "command-line utility" wtf? Hello! Someone call the stupid police. I seem to have these vague sort of runins with this program called emacs... come to think of it it happens pretty much every day at work. GNU's only a privacy/command line utility maker. Deh fo the GNU that made my Emacs must be a different GNU than the one this article talks about. I'd like to meet this GNU guy on the block sometime. sorry for the pun, just had to. aight, over an out.
I simply must concur and agree, but should warn that it is a very subtle effect, wonderful yes but somewhat hard to describe. I think the same thing could also be accomplished, in part, by many other things as well such as a better exore size program or better eating. So ginko is not gonna be the panacea you may be looking for but rather a good complement to an already healthy lifestyle.
Also, if you caffeine addicts still aren't satisfied try yerba. It's a wonderfully pungent tea that posesses, IMHO, better stimulating qualities, much like caffeeene, such as increased alertness and attention span, but without the jitters and it's also more of a general mood enhancer. Part of my alertness problem is not wanting to be alert, just the I don't wanna be here factor, give me a mood boost and I'll do anything for hours. Yerba. It's not yo mammas teahhh! Do be careful because in excessive quantity yerba can backfire, but about three or four doses - maybe 2 to 3 liq oz a peice? - of yerba tea and I'm ready to go do some sheeit. you may be able to find it in your local organic co-operative grocery store but I would reccommend getting it online cause it's cheaper and usually better. aight, nuff said.
the only cool part of the mozilla project is the engine, and that's only if you're a developer and interested in building your own browser. Mozilla itself is bloat ware and runs about a gazillion times slower than galeon on my ghz athlon. ok, a gazillion is a lot. And what the foobar is up with all those damned side tabs. At least the tabs in IE do something useful and load fast. I say give me a browser that looks good - read not cluttered but still aesthetic - works well, as in standards, and works fast. then maybe I'll be happy. For now I'm a galeon/konqueror and IE person. Once the mozilla project figures out how to get - what exactly is it in there that makes the thing take at LEAST three or four times as long to load as galeon? I don't see it - it's software to work swiftly I'll be happy.
uhh... no... just don't listen to it loud, tinnitis is caused by - among other things - exposure to overly loud sounds, symptoms of which include a ringing noise in the ear which can in serious cases be heard by others near your ears. our ears hear in selective ranges of sound, and listening to something loud can damage parts of your ear responsible for "hearing" the various frequency ranges. For most people the high frequencies go first because it takes more precision to hear them, hence why bass is often the only thing you can hear when the neighbors start pumping the gansta rap downstairs. Listening to something at about 90 dB for an hour or so can give you or start to give you tinnitis. It's not the music, it's the volume. And the louder you listen the faster you loose it. A good resource for info on hearing and damage due to sound levels check out some Common Misconceptions About Hearing at Digital Recordings. There are other factors than just sound levels that can cause tinnitis. For a more in depth discussion of the syndrome itself check out the tinnitis FAQ .
uh, I don't really know half of what these guys were chattering about but it was entertaining and I'm glad apple has dominic, sounds like a good guy. maybe I'll go hack up my own filesystem, I've been inspired.
I hope that these little gems of logic are impecably valid though anyone is very free to debate the truth of them as even I can see problems with them. The problem with any valid syllogism is that it must stem from some sort of inductive reasoning which is in essence a generalization based on consistent observations so the truths may not hold all the time. I hope that most of you will be able to agree with most of what I present.
consider these syllogisms:
all organizations trying to make a profit are commercial organizations
a pay-per-play website is an organization trying to make a profit
a pay-per-play website is a commercial organization
a method of increasing profits is selling more product
an interest of a commercial organization is a method of increasing profits
an interest of a commercial organization is selling more product
products that sell more units than other products are more popular than other products
this product is a product that sells more units than another product
this product is more popular than another product
going from the previous syllogisms:
a product that is more popular than another product is an interest of a commercial organization
this product is a product that is more popular than another product
this product is an interest of a commercial organization
I skipped some logical steps to get straight to my point and not bore you entirely to death with syllogism bs. The point is that a pay per play website will be interested in selling the products that are more popular because they will sell more and generate more revenue. These sites will not be interested in those singles that are not popular. Singles themselves are not interested in the other songs on the album that are not popular.
There are far more bands in this world than those on the top 40, and many of the bands who are not on the top 40 are far better musicians than some of those on the top 40. The reason for this? As I just pointed out, commercialism. It doesn't matter if you can play Chopin nocturnes at the speed of light, if people don't enjoy listening to you or the nocturnes they will not be interested, will not listen, and will not buy. Simple as that.
As the advent of the boy-bands and the sexy-girl-singer groups has hit us here in these recent years I don't know how anyone could miss this glaring difference. There is nothing new in this business of mp3 selling, it's a different format, that's all. And slightly harder to enforce or police because of the nature of it's distribution medium the internet. When audio cassette tapes came out the record companys threw a hissy fit claiming that all intellecual property rights such as artists rights or artists income but namely those of the companys to make a buck, would fly out the window. Has that happened? Hardly. There are tons of other formats that I could use to copy and distribute my music. Cassette, ADAT, mini disc, CD-RW, any of the other compression formats out there, lossy or not, mp3, wav, aif, shn. Most people realize this too but have they stopped buying CD's? Nope.
If you care about being a rock star or you care about milking the recording industry for all the pennys you can squeeze, then by all means jump on the band wagon, start getting hysterical and wave a large trout about your head, maybe even smack someone with it to get attention. Otherwise, if you really care about music, and enjoying music, do it yourself. Make it yourself, buy it yourself, get it yourself, from friends, from family, with friends with family, from the internet, from the radio. There are ways of doing anything both with and without corporate involvement. This article is simply pointing out the rise of another, possibly large and profitable, commercial bandwagon on which to ride. The real musician and the real audiophile listen not only to the music advertised to them but to the music they want to listen to, the music they only sort of like, the music they have heard, the music they have heard of, the music they haven't heard, they listen to the music that pushes boundaries and rides on the edge of being just a little too out there for most, hell even for themselves. Well roundedness is the key for anything, and that goes for music too. Even now the currently availble tools for dowloading music such as p2p nets like gnutella still leave much for me to desire primarily because of my ecclectic taste in music. Much of what I enjoy can only be found on vinyl these days, or even more "shocking", only in concert. So do what you want, pay if you want, don't if you don't want it's a matter of personal choice, and I say if you choose to hop the bandwagon, or give it money for gas, great, but I'm not gonna.
wow this guy is uniformed. anyone who doesn't know the difference between hacker and cracker shouldn't be writing an article about either in the first place.
What if you WANT to give it away for free? Is it cool that people pirate music? not really, I have, but as a musician I can say I'm less concerned with whether people buy my CD's than I am with whether they show up at my concerts.
I'd rather have them get a copy of my CD for free, realize they like it and then want to see my concert. The box office is where much the killing is made. For musicians, at least those not on the top 40 - read, most of the musicians that exist - selling CD's is not gonna bring home the bacon. Seeing a live show is just not the same as listening to a CD, there's something about being there, the sheer volume and the whole experience that makes it different. Not that I was there but I doubt Woodstock '69 the complete CD set would have the moxy that the show itself did.
so, to somehow stay on this story's topic, this bill goes against that which music and art is - freedom of expression and getting that expression to the general populace. I'm glad to see people standing up for this bill. think about it - because people want to make a buck they're forcing you to NOT give away your stuff for FREE.
as another little note I work 40 hours a week but would gladly work half that - at my present position of course. Enough to pay my bills, eat and maybe see a movie or buy some beer every now and then. I'd much rather have time and energy to dedicate to those things not at all commerce related. Just my stance, and call me new aged or flaky, but I like having time for meditation a lot more than I like having the extra cash to spend on CDs. I'm not saying anything about your cash spending prefs so don't worry about it. DONE
not sure about others but I've noticed lots of screwy business with the old linuxdoc.org name... there have been many a time when I had to use google's cache to find an appropriate mirror cause linuxdoc.org was down. maybe things will be getting better... lets hope so.
ok, first, all you're doing is getting defensive which accomplishes nothing. I wasn't ripping on you. I didn't say anywhere in my ramblings that it was impossible for or that of the people of poorer families cannot become lawers and doctors. in fact I'm sure that a great many of our best doctors and lawyers came from more modest backgrounds with large work ethic and desire to rise out of the less than ideal financial situation in which they were raised.
the peice of my rambling you failed to include, was noting that I said "are primarily" and not just "are" or "the only people are". And also when I literally pointed to the fact that I was on purpose simply using hyperbole to illustrate the unfair *ADVANTAGE* not *ONLY TICKET IN THE DOOR* that the richer people of this world have when it comes to living the "american dream".
The fact is you yourself said "Yeah, I've got it easy today. Yeah, I was born with a hell of an advantage over people in the third world." and that's precisely what I'm getting at. Of course you're not a crack head, you're making more than either of your parents combined. I'm also making more than my parents combined.
My father, a folk musician - not the most lucrative genre - teaches music lessons - not the most lucrative career. My mother is a part time librarian, also not the most lucrative career. I've been fairly poor most of my life but for however poor I was we still managed to live close to what could have been called a middle class lifestyle. We didn't have running water or electricity for years living in the blue ridge mountains of NC, had to use the pump well and the wood stove. Then we eventually moved to a small quiet midwestern white middle class people with day jobs town. I was lucky enough to be raised in a generous loving family.
In no way am I asking you to renounce anything. I'm not asking you to starve, that would be a waste of time for both of us. You've worked hard to get where you are and so have I. I'm just asking you to question the assumptions that have been programmed into you. The things that make you say this in the first place. That people must work. That work is good. That making money is good. That making more money is better. That it's really only important how much more successful than your parents you are. Every generation has been better off than the preceding. Those generations close to each other may not be as readily viewed as better off, but as you said compare to a hundred years ago and theres a difference.
But here's the problem. What does the standard of living "back then" have to do with the standard of living today. Of course it's better, look at all the technology we've invented, running water, sanitary systems, health care. But the poorest 10% of americans as you are so quick to take note of may be better off than the richest ten percent in some other country. Or maybe not. The point is that comparing what we were to what we are now does nothing but boost our egos and help us delude ourselves into thinking that even though people living in the bronx live in fear of death every day, that must still be better than what the bronx was like a hundred years ago - of course... just look at these nifty little numbers I pulled out of my anus. Yeah, that's sarcasm.
Capitalism HAS done some wonderful things, but in my eyes the injustices commited in it's name - for one look at the amount of toxins we pump into our world and thusly into ourselves, the unfair distribution of wealth, HMO's for cryin out loud - and it's implementation, the fact that it's become increasingly difficult to tell the difference and achieve a true separation of the government and corporations far outweighs the benefits you and I got to be priveledged with, however few, just so we could have a chance to become richer than we were.
So good for you that you choose to think about yourself and "No thanks. I choose to use my advantages to gain more wealth for myself, precisely because I don't want to starve." But starvation is a motivation to earn enough to eat not a motivating factor for gaining more wealth. That's called greed. I know you're not likely to care about the starving children in africa, after all what good is the rotten oat meal ma used to serve for breakfast gonna do for these starving kids. None. But YOU might be able to. Personally I hope you never give a dime to charity in your life because you'll only end up unsatisfied. Giving with the intention or hope of anything in return is not true giving and I believe you've already demonstrated that you are incapable of embodying this concept.
oh well, too late, bah
According to my calculations, that's roughly 1 out of every 700 people. Heck, I'd say that's a remarkable acheivement on behalf of the worldwide charities and modern medicine
well heck, only one out of every few hundred people is a murderer. I'd say that's a remarkable achievment on the part of... wait, who makes people not be murderers? well heck, only one out of every few oil tankers crashes so only one out of every few remaining natural wildlife habitats is destroyed on a regular basis. I'd say that's a remarkable improvement on... oh wait, it's not an improvement at all. the fact is there are people in the US who live in much more dangerous - read inner cities - environments all day long than some people in Tunisia who live on a clean fresh water lake but *gasp* don't have electricity or *screech* a computer!
The fact that the USA started capitalist and is still capitalist attests to the fact that it works and it benefits EVERYBODY
wrong. sorry. just wrong. capitalism benefits those who are rich already. the lawers and the doctors of our world are primarily those people who grew up in upscale middle class homes or mansions with trust funds and trips to new zealand over the summer. enough cash to send you to harvard or yale and enough political heft because of that cash to get you in in the first place. yeah the idea that you COULD make it big, the land of "opportunity" exists... but in order to get funding to milk your cow you have to trade in your cow as collateral for a security deposit on the 20 dollars it cost to buy the pail - all in case your business gets screwed. oh wait, it just did. Yeh, that works real well. yeah this is an exaggerated view of stuff but it's a fact that if you grow up in a middle or upper class family you are more likely to succeed in the contemporary globally economic connotation of the word, that is, get an education that's worth something, get a job, keep that job, get a good, job, keep that job, hell even get promoted. if you're an average male WASP which I'm willing to bet many slashdotters are then you likely have not a clue how easy you've got it. for one you have or have access to a computer, something most of the worlds population cannot say. for two you were probably fed, you've probably taken antibiotics before, you probably know what tylenol, aspirin, coffee, red bull, guiness, weed, viagra, and prozac are. That you even know that you have the option to sustain your erections when you are 60 means you are living in a world above most - a world dominated by a corporate marketplace that wants you to think a particular way, wants you to feel a particular way. Your basic needs have been satisfied and instead of worrying whether you'll eat tonight you're probably worrying whether to waste the time it takes to make mac'n'cheese or just stuff that twinky in your face. cmon. really, in a land where you can buy twinkies, you know you don't have it that bad... what you don't know, is how bad everyone else has it.
am I the only one who, though I admit this proposal sounds cool, wouldn't shell out the bucks just to have a freakin certificate telling me I belong to an organization three people large? Wahoo! The election's coming up, oh I wonder who'll win oh the suspense!
looks like this version of KDE may finally get me to switch over from gnome... we'll see.
I wish people would address and discuss the real issue at stake here. What I believe too many of these posters have failed to neglect in their responses is that they do NOT live in the scenario this article poses - one in which corporations and government become less distinguishable from one another. And in this scenario they simply might not have the option of using anything free, or turning on a spam filter in the first place.
A free economy does not suppose a free people. Even an economy in which one thinks he is free may not be free. A government is supposed to serve it's people and corporations are supposed to serve their customers.
Please indulge my imagination for a moment. Pretend that corporations have been merging for long enough that only two remain, the civil service provider and the corporate service provider. *eerie music* The Final Merger. Now turn both concepts into one and you have Service Commerce. You are provided everything. The opportunity to spend money, the opportunity to have your garbage collected. The opportunity to get higher education so you can be an engineer or an art major.
What you are not provided is the ability to choose who provides you these services. You don't get to choose the popups you see, they just popup. You don't have the option to get free information, you must subscribe. Since the advent of Service Commerce the head CEO's and execs now own roughly 80% of the world's money while the rest of us all get paid the same regardless of duties.
Then consider that instead of being fired, bad workers are just put into the correctional work force where they no longer even choose whether they will watch a particular commercial or speak a certain way. Those on the outside may still opt out but are none the less hurded through the Service Commerce machine.
My point is that all the common intrusive examples - spam, popups, subscriptions - posed by this article are no more the root problem of this orwellian prophesy than run down housing tenaments and squalid living conditions are the root problem of inner city violence. They merely reflect the state of the organization.
So what can we do? Simple, we can know. We can get educated. We can know our rights. We can vote not because it's just one vote but because we are allowed to. We can realize that we are consumers and we DO vote EVERY DAY. For all those who have already expressed their vote for linux and the Open Source community, wonderful, you've already started to make a difference and you know it and you are proud.
If you use linux for any of the same reasons as I do I can bet you are a perfectionist of sorts, perhaps a rebel, iconoclastic even and desire complete and full knowlege and control of your computer. Now realize that you have the same power to control your government, the people that put arsenic in your drinking water, BHG in your food and carbon monoxide in your air. Go vote at the next school board election, go rant at the next city buget proposal, write your congress people, write an editorial, join a peace rally, join a hate rally. Let your own voice be not heard, but affective (yes affective, not effective). Get mad. Go vote.
so since the matrix has been around for a bit I'll tackle it so everyone else won't have panic room "spoiled" for them and cause these following comments pissed me off... seriously guys, the panic room may not have been the best movie I've seen but the reasons just about everyone has been ripping on it are irrelevant. anyway: here goes my blabbering...
Why fight the agents in The Matrix, where they rule, instead of the real world?
because the agents don't exist in the "real" world
Why use humans to turn food into energy, when you could use fuel cells, or bacteria, or just burn it.
why not, aparently in the world of the matrix this AI has figured that it's the best way. realize we're talking about technology with capabilities millenia beyond our current grasp of the universe.
Why provide the humans with *any* dream world, perfect or otherwise?
psychological and physical health are very co-dependent. you don't usually see normal - and by normal I mean the measure of normal internal to that person, not what that person projects to us the outside world - productive members of society slicing themselves with razor blades and forgetting to shower for months. I seem to remember the matrix informing the audience that if you die in the matrix... i.e. you THINK you're dead then you die in the real world too. consider the ai NEEDS to keep people alive for this great source of energy... you got a better idea?
Two dozen other similarly dificult to answer questions.
like? one of the many concepts in the matrix was to question all your assumptions. the matrix was a blend of many forms of mythology. everything from the bible to classic greek myths to buhdism and existentialism.
take the bible:
1) name of their ship the nebakanezzer - no I don't know how to spell it - anyway, name of a historical jewish king.
2) neo, morpheus, trinity. the THREE key players. 3 is a classic mythical number along with many others like 7 and 12. This triplet mirrors the concept of the father the son and the holy ghost. is it any coincidence that neo is one spelled backwards and trinity begins with tri, the prefix for 3. morpheus? don't ask me.
3) neo is jesus. ai taking over the earth and scorching the sky = armageddon = the advent of the matrix. The coming of neo is jesus's second coming.
4) the name of the last human town is Zion. Can't get much more directly biblical than all this.
5) still not convinced? In the end neo DIES and RESURRECTS... seems there was this little holiday many of us just celebrated not long ago called easter.
greek mythology:
1) the oracle, look her up
2) sits on a three legged stool, wears a dress of orange and green - look for a classical drawing - and the cupboards and cabinets are orange and green
3) the oracle typically resides at the edge of a large chasm from which wafts a smoke which stuns anyone breathing it into a sort of stupor, makes them lazy or whatever so she can have her way with them... and from which wafts a welcoming scent - the munchies man, she's makin munchies! what a pot head.
so lets all have phun an over analyze why the matrix wouldn't work today and completely ignore any statement these guys may have had about the meaning of life or the way we live our lives.
cmon, really, this stuff is childs play, if you're interested there's about ten times as much other stuff you can find if you look close. do your own research, I'm done spoon feeding you. IMHO Problem with techies - I am going and have to go with my experience, the techies I've met, including myself - is they're only grounded in what they dig - i.e. techy stuff. Show me a techie who can analyze literature by extracting the fallacies of technology and I'll show you a techie with useless trivia. Show me a techie who can analyze literature by extracting and relating other than the most ostensible layer of rhetoric and I'll show you a nerd among techies. When will this change?
I think someone did this to my computer minus my knowledge cause I all of a sudden, within the last few days have this new little "favorites" bar with stupid shite like "win an x box" links. how do I kill it? I can't find an uninstaller.
yeah, I understand the placement thing... I remember when the first mission impossible came out and all the people at my local theater had mission impossible shirts on and they had that (new at the time) single color apple logo on them and of course there were plenty of macs strewn about the movie. placement is a powerful suggestive technique and I'd go almost as far as to say it's a better mechanism than perhaps any other form of advertising - except perhaps word of mouth - to get people to want the thing.
People think in terms of their social existence and part of that existence, for many is TV and the movies - media. Integrate your product into those identified-with social structures and you have a powerful, if subtle, persuasion and reason to want the thing, that is, it drips of culture real and imagined because - I'm gonna venture out on a limb here and say - if you enjoy watching a particular show chances are many of your friends do too, there's something you can all identify with and one of those things you identify with, conciously willingly or not is the set, including all props and computers and trolls and hair styles. BUT!! I think Apple should ALSO invest time and money in getting their commercials out.
People do watch commercials, people do pay attention to them - no not all the time - but they do. Just think of any time you've ever talked with anyone about a funny commercial you saw - excepting maybe those who don't have TV's but I really don't care about them cause they don't pertain to this in the first place - c'mon if you've ever seen tv or watched it even on a semi regular basis there are probably a few commercials you remember. There's a reason those superbowl commercial guys get paid so much, cause they put out hard hitting sometimes funny sometimes thought provoking commercials that stick in people's heads.
Product placement in the media is all well and good. But apple should ALSO concentrate on commercial placement. Both techniques combined could make for a killer advertising scheme. End transmission. Bleah!!!
I've been a computer user for... sheei** since I was old enough to know what one was. I started out on one of those old RadioShack Tandy TRaSh 80 Color III's those old keyboards you hook up to your TV and program in BASIC. Those were the days. Then I got a real computer. My Macintosh Performa 6400 200Mhz... wow that thing kicked ass back in the day. I did so much with that thing. I was certainly a Mac evangelist. Learned C and C++ on that, HTML, made my first few web sites on it with the help of Photoshop and BBEdit. Then I got another real computer. It is what has become my Athlon 1Ghz, 320Meg RAM, 40Gig HD, nVidia GeForce 2, etc. etc... which I've built myself the same way the author of this article pointed out, piece by piece. I started out with a grandaddy of an old giant noisy desktop mega ATX case and slowly replaced parts and case till the only thing left of that original beast is my Sound card and a couple sticks of RAM. My point I guess if I have one is that PC's rock. Macs rock. I agree that Macs are expensive but if you HAVE the cash and you DO want one, then do it up. Personally I can think of plenty of other stuff I'm gonna buy before I buy a new G4 :( but alas such is life.
And btw, this guy's "fuzzy math" shines through, I like how he pointed out some specs and a price, then only one or two of the same specs and another lower price (I think he left out ram) then he hid behind absolutely no backup whatsoever, claiming to have some sort of "rocking" system for like a grand. I don't know about other folks but I have a rockin system and unfourtunately altogether it didn't just cost a grand. If I had every feature that the new G4's had then I'm sure I'd be coming close to about 2 grand, I think I probably am already. Price only matters to those who are greedy.
another little point I didn't like was about this whole Mhz business - just isn't a good comparison factor between machines. There are so many other hardware factors that can influence overall performance. Even if you get your system specs completely tight, each uses such and such rpm hard drives made by the same company, exactly 256megs 168 pin DIMMS at 133, there are still plenty of other factors... os, the compiler the os was compiled on, the system the os was compiled on, the programs you're running, the compiler THEY we're compiled with, your bus speed, your chipset, your entire architechture, the size of your chip cache, how many chip specific features the compiler you're using takes advantage of, how many OS specific features your programs take advantage of... the list goes on. I think this guy mentioned that he's never seen a mac respond as quickly as he feels his PC does on a regular basis. Hmmm, sounds like as a PC fanatic this guy really uses macs a lot... riiiiiight. Wonder if he's actually used any of the programs compiled with support for the G4's new architechture. In short this guys reasons for what he says are IMHO stupid. Sorry for the long windedness, just wasting time. peace.
one more quickie, apple should advertise more. apple has numerous commercials posted on their web site. why? I mean I get a kick out of em but no one else likely will unless they're already mac fans. I've seen a fairly recent new iMac commercial but that's it. Where are the logos at the sporting events, during survivor, all these giant shows? ok... over and out for real.
I know there is a utility that's standard on many linux/unix type distro's called I believe kbd or xkb that let's you select and or alter/edit the keymap of your keyboard so you can map a particular key to a different function. I remember reading some sort of howto on doing this so you can switch the functionality of the left ctrl and the caps lock key to further reduce pinky strain when typing emacs commands, make it like the sun keyboards.