The disaster that was "s.gif" (or "trans.gif" in some circles) used as a layout tool was horribly over-used - and the 'net is a worse place because of it. In most projects now, I seek to replace all instances with a "compatible" approach.
I create a class:.spacer{
line-height:0;
font-size:0; }
Then I replace all those hundreds (and sometimes THOUSANDS) of references to s.gif with the following:
I use a span sometimes, as required - if the DIVs alone cause layout issues.
Disclaimer: I am a fan of Space Elevators. A BIG fan. Some very very serious problems have yet to be solved though.
I keep pimping the lightcraft thing because it is so logical and so beautiful: (short version)
1) 100% of launch mass reaches orbit. (Ok, 1% may ablate during the ascent) 2) Gigawatt class Lasers are 100% COOL. 3) Cents per kilo to LEO 4) Can you say "Anti Ballistic Missile Defence System that **SHOCK HORROR** actually works" 5) Entirely new industry created. 6) Laser can be reflected back from space to slag enemy locations. Surgical Strike weapon "par excellence". 7) Lasers can be defocused on orbit and used as Search And Rescue illumination at night time 8) Lasers can be defocused and used to illuminate work environments on the Luna surface at night. 9) Lasers will launch light-sail craft to relativistic velocities inside our own solar system for trans-solar robotic exploration. 10) Nothing says "Inbound Bug Eyed Alien Tamer" like 50 x Gigawatt class Lasers focused on a single point. 11) Lasers can be focused on inbound NEOs or asteroids to deflect them from striking the Earth. A change of only 2cm/s is required to prevent a collision. Light pressure rocks! 12) Interstellar laser-based messaging system, with Gigabyte/second class bandwidth. 13) Megatons of payload into LEO every year. 14) system operates 24/7 in any one of the above jobs.
Simply put, there are no technical hurdles to this system. There are already lasers in the 50 megawatt range - all we need to do is develop pulsed lasers at an order of magnitude more powerful. That should be no problem at all.
As to the defensive (In the USA read as "Offensive") capabilities of this system, well, I've had numerous emails with Liek Miyabo about this, and he refuses to discuss these options. To me, this indicates interest by the US military. Hell, if I were Bush (which, thank God, I'm not!) then I'd be all over this technology. I guess the erason there hasn't been a coupel of billion thrown at it, is that there's very little pork involved, or the research is happening in a (D) state.:P
...except possibly as a political problem, caused by an American public which has been intimidated into losing confidence in its ability to create anything new.
That's one of the most astute observations I have read for quite some time. Thanks for that.
Seeing as how the price to Geosynchronous orbit will be measured in cents - the price of getting cargo to an equatorial base is negligible.
Storm are not problem either - because you do NOT build the thing and attach it to an island. You build it on a floating platform, and the platform is powered. When a storm comes, you simply drive the thing in the opposite direction. The platform can move a coupel of hundred miles to avoid bad weather. This has already been thought of - and the math/engineering works just fine.
We can overcome the environmental factors on Venus?
Yeah - we can - maybe - sometime after 3000AD when our craft don't melt.:P
I don't believe that demineralisation of bones is a straight line graph with 1G at one end and Zero G at the other. The rate at which bones lose strength must be proportional to the forces exerted upon them. In a space station, those forces remain essentially zero - except for the limited times when you are on the exercycle.
On a planetary surface (Mars), you'll be affected by gravity 100% of the time, and even if it's only slightly more than 1/3rd of a G, you still have to work against it. Suits will NOT be light - and there will be lots of manual work to be done too. So I would think that Martians won't lose all their bone mass in a year - nor will they be extra susceptible to broken bones in a short period. However, we simply do not know - and we need to find out - and the best way to find out is to send people there!
Rubbish - sending people to Mars is not terribly tricky.
It's getting them back that is hard/expensive.
That's why I don't think we should even be worried about getting them back.
Just start sending people, and worry about getting them back later - if ever. I mean, you'd have no shortage of people willing to leave Earth now, without any guarantee of ever getting back.
By the time you figured out how to get people back form Mars, it'd have a population of a couple of thousand people, and most probably be a self supporting colony by that time. ISRU will most likely allow a group of Terrans to live comfortably on Mars for quite some time without constant resupply from Earth.
The real big questions still need answering though: how about mineral wealth on Mars? Is it going to be easy to mine the planet? What minerals are there, and where are they? Handy to water?
Hey - guess what - we need to send men there to find out.
That's It! No Fuxoring Windows Vista for me then! I'll teach myself to do that stupid Lunix thing rather than sacrifice the Creative Thunder WAV sound from my old SB-Live! card.
That sound simply rocks - and it tells you if any of your speakers aren't working.
Plus, if I turn the PC on in the middle of the night (never!) or if Microsuck Autofuckdate reboots the PC all by itself (FUCK YOU BILL GATES!) - which happens a lot - then at least my neighbours will just think there's a storm coming!
No, that's not correct. Scientists have recently discovered bacteria which shit Hydrogen. From memory they eat rubbish too - so they are busy trying to genetically modify these little fuckers to shit more hydrogen, and faster.
Hell, with the right system, you'd pass your garbage through this system before taking it to a land fill, and the output would be fuel for fuel-cells - for Very Little Money (tm).
The other nice thing about the bacteria is that they could be used in small scale devices: at home, to reduce reliance on a national grid, and even to send power out of the house when usage is low. This would assist the decentralisation of power generation which is abolsutely necessary to get out from underneath the giant power and oil companies which rule western democracies.
Sorry, you can argue til the cows come home - but you do not understand: VHS was superior to Beta because you could record an entire FTA movie on a single E180 tape. Beta did not have a tape which would allow the recording of an entire movie. The reason it wasn't possible to get such a tape is because the idiots who pushed Beta did not want you to be able to tape from TV!
By the time they realised their mistake, and made 3 hour tapes available, the battle was already lost.
Simply: VHS was superior to Beta from a consumer point of view, and the rest is hostory. A "superior" product doesn't mean DICK to a consumer if it won't do what they want it to. Simple.
Re:Exotic Projects Capturing the Public's Imaginat
on
ISS Construction Resumes
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Exotic High Risk Projects?
Clearly you are NOT American, because it is very obvious to any outsider looking in that the USA will no tolerate any reasonable level of risk at all. Look at the stink when just 7 people die, and only a 2 Billion dollar shuttle is lost? Hell, 7 people is nothing - and Dubya it chucking a billion a week at Iraq - and ALL of those lives and dollars are completely wasted. I don't see anyone reviewing the Military budget (450 Billion) because people keep dying.
Hell, servicing Hubble - arguably the most successful space craft ever - was cancelled because people might die. I bet if you asked ANY rated astronaut if they're prepared to take the risk of servicing Hubble you'd get a 100% affirmative "We'll go!" answer.
No - the USA has turned its back on the pioneering spirit - and the whole "Earth, Moon, Mars and beyond" thing is a joke. It's going to be a debacle of the greatest kind: even worse than the ISS. Jebus, it's no even clear how to build a BDB (Big Dumb Booster) any more. The "Stick" so eloquently argued for is a multibillion dollar development, and not even remotely "using existing hardware" as advertised.
Don't get me wrong, I love the ISS, and if it costs 2 Billion dollars a shot to get my pretty 2560 x 1024 wallpaper - then that's a cost I'm willing for US tax payers to pay! Even if the ISS ends up costing 100 billion Euros, the experience of actually having worked together in space (and yes, many contries HAVE contributed) and the knowledge gained by assembling the thing probably almost justify the expense.
See the thing most of you have forgotten, is that you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes: and NASA has had plenty of failures in recent years. The problem is that NASA isn't being driven by an agenda which requires those lessons to be turned into conventional wisdom, and success!
Hell, it might cost a Trillion US dollars before there's any conventional wisdom about getting to LEO, and how to do things beyond LEO - and if it costs a trillion - or two trillion - or a hundred trillion dollars, then that's the price it costs to buy our way into this galaxy. No one is standing by, watching us, and they don't have a "Key To The Galaxy" waiting for us when we set foot on Mars. Escaping the doomed Earth, and populating the Solar System is going to be the most expensive venture ever undertaken by man. The effort may well cripple the Earth for a long time.
One thing is clear: whatever the cost, we need to know how to get off the planet reliably and cheaply.
Personally, I think sitting atop a million kilos of rocket fuel is the dumbest idea ever!
The future isn't rocket powered: it's laser powered: http://lightcrafttechnologies.com/ or its via space elevators. It most certainly does not make sense to burn 95% (or 99%!) of your payload just toget into orbit! If you're gonna burn fuel, the burn it on the ground.
Yep, and I have a special message for those God-Botherers/Bible Bashers/Weirdos/Jehovah's Wahtsits who arrive at my door:
"Gee, I'm really sorry, I don't have any time for you right now - but if you give me your home address, I'll pop over later on when I have some spare time."
Invariably they tell me they aren't allowed to give out their home address, to which I reply:
"I guess that's because you don't want complete strangers bugging the shit out of you in your private home."
I then close the door, and hope the message sinks in.
Thanks to Jerry Seinfeld here, for the only funny thing he ever did.
Personally, I find "mind reading" to be utterly falacious. As others have pointed out, evolution would have heavily favoured even a very slight ability in this regard.
Also, the question needs to be asked: what physical property of the universe would allow the miniscule electrical signals in human brains to be able to be receieved and understood by persons disconnected in space? Even if only by a few millimetres? To me (at least) it seems unlikely there is this unknown quality of the universe. It seems likely we would have discovered it by mistake already.
Of more concern to me is what I call "cultural experience" or "group consciousness" and it has nothing to do with mind reading or telepathy as it is normally thought of.
Briefly, it is the ability of humans to easily achieve something which people have tried for a long time to do. For example" the backflip on a wind surfer or a bicycle. Many people tried for a very long time to achieve this, without success, and yet, as soon as one person, somewhere manages to do it, there seems to be (independently! And without prior knowledge) a sudden surge in people doing it.
It's almost like there is some ethereal pool of human knowledge, where the knowledge of the ABILITY to perform some "trick", is stored, allowing other people's attempts to be successful also.
To me, this certainly seems to be more than "It's amazing how much you can do when you haven't been told what you can't do". It's like "If someone else has done it, but you don't know they've done it, you will find it much easier to do for yourself."
Then again - it might all just be sheer coincidence, and I don't need to try and explain some concept of "gaia" or similar weird "ether" that exists in our universe yet is totally undetectable by science to date.
I have GIMP installed, but only to save PSDs!
on
Beginning GIMP
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· Score: 1
I have GIMP installed, but only because Photoshop 5 can't open PSDs made with Photoshop 7.
That, to my mind, is still the dumbest thing EVER - and I'll never buy Photoshop again.
Because I spent so much time learning Photoshop though, I take the time to open all incoming PSDs is The GIMP, then save them, just so I can open them in Photoshop 5 and work with them.
... you get her to start mousing left handed. This aint rocket surgery!
Buy a symmetrical 5-button mouse (like the excellent MS "Intellimouse Optical") and put it on the left side of her desk, with a cloth-topped neoprene mouse pad.
Sure, she'll bitch and moan. She'll say she can't do anything left-handed, but within a week she will be at 75%, and after a month she'll be at 95% of her right hand's abilities.
I had the same issue, and tried a bunch of different setups before finally admitting I simply had to give the right hand and arm a rest, and accepted that I would simply have to mouse left handed.
Most importantly, do NOT switch the mouse button functions around: it is far better to learn to mouse left-handed with a mouse which is set up for right handers! This may sound dumb - but of course, left handers do NOT switch their buttons around, because when they use someone elses PC, the buttons are "normal" - and if they were used to "lefty buttons" then they'd be right-clicking all the time.
So, the left-handed user should learn to Left Click with their middle finger, and right click with their index finger.
I particularly did not want to learn to mouse left handed as I have a destroyed left elbow with only about 5 degrees of rotation through the Radial Head. I resisted until my right hand would go into spasms for periods of 5 minutes or so. Finally I relented and taught myself left-hand mousing.
Hey, and guess what? It's actually bloody easy, and this from a guy who couldn't even kick a soccer ball with his left foot.
This because Americans have the most diabolical pronunciation of English. If they get their greedy, Americentric hands on spellings of English (not American, please note!) words, then they won't be spelled phonetically at all: they'll be absolutely particular to US usage (and then, WHICH US usage is the question!) and therefore other English speaking peoples will only be able to have a stab in the dark at the "korekt" spelling unless they know how "Amereekans" pronounce it.
No, this is as dumb as the Imperial System of weights and measures.
Oh - and I love the fact Americans use the Imperial System. It seems to be rubbing off on you...
Oh, And While I'm At It: Why The Fuck Do Americans Stupidly Capitalise The First Letter Of Every Word When Writing Headings And Shit? It Makes It Hard To Read. Sweet Baby Jebus.
Note: English is a language which not only "borrows" words from other languages, it will chase them down dark alleys, knock them over the head, and then go through their pockets, to see what they've got.
Look, the reason your relative might be having trouble is because he may be bloody useless - have you ever considered that? Bad actors have a hard time getting work too - but they don't blame it on movie piracy.
In answer to your thing about him not getting any jobs, it's primarily due to the fact that the combined forces of the RIAA produce approximately 40% less music than they did 6 years ago. This is NOT due to priacy, but because they want bigger margins. So they produce less music, and pimp the stuff they do produce even harder - to raise the margins.
"Marginal" music with low profit simply "isn't worth making" according to stupid RIAA and recording studio executives.
So, I very seriously doubt whether ANYONE in the music industry is GENUINELY affected by copyright violation on a domestic (i.e. individual person) level. They MAY be affected by professional pirates who sell tens of thousands of ripped CDs in 3rd world countries - but here again, I would argue that the people who bought those bootleg albums would not have bought ANY music if it were not pirated. At least they're getting listened to.
Anyway - that's not my point - my point is that by turning 40% of Americans into felons, you have a very serious impact on the entire country. Given that I could steal a CD from a stroe and get slapped on the wrist for it - sharing music online is stupidly unbalanced: $250,000 per song? PUH_LEASE - that's insanely stupid.
So, here's the thing: Music has ALWAYS been free. Free to listen to. Free to share. Free to create. Free to record. FREE. Get it? Like FREE as in BEER.
The fact the general population does not have any respect for copyright law is that copyright law is only acceptable to the population PROVIDED IT DOES NOT APPLY TO THEM. It boggles my mind that successive American generations have allowed congress to behave so flagrantly against the wishes of the voters. Stunning. But not surprising. Hell, you voted for Dubya twice. (And even that is doubtful).
So, Little Johnny who shares music, and downloads music from the 'net doesn;t think he is a criminal, and nor do the majority of Americans. But the LAW thinks Lil' Johnny is a criminal, and a bad one. So, this brings about a situation where almost ANYONE in the country can be found guilty of a felony. This permits huge police powers over these "guilty" people.
And because the public generally reject these laws out of hand, you systematically destroy respect for the law, and the rule of law. Pretty soon, those same peopel start to think that other laws (which do make some sense!) don;t apply to them either - and pretty quickly you have a simply amazing amount of genuine (harmful and dangerous) felonies being committed because the rule of law has broken down.
Lawrence Lessig says something similar in his FREE online PDF called FREE CULTURE. Well worth a read. Download it today!
So, by making stupid laws about copyright infringement (Government OF the lawyers, BY the lawyers and FOR the lawyers - fuck the people, it's lawyers who count!) you create, quite quickly, a culture where very few laws are observed, and everyone is a criminal.
Good luck with that by the way. Here in New Zealand we take a more pragmatic view of things, and don't pass stupid laws about things like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops Sorry!
<div class="spacer" style="width:Xpx; height:Ypx;"></div>
The disaster that was "s.gif" (or "trans.gif" in some circles) used as a layout tool was horribly over-used - and the 'net is a worse place because of it. In most projects now, I seek to replace all instances with a "compatible" approach.
.spacer{
I create a class:
line-height:0;
font-size:0;
}
Then I replace all those hundreds (and sometimes THOUSANDS) of references to s.gif with the following:
I use a span sometimes, as required - if the DIVs alone cause layout issues.
Say hello to faster web pages instantly!
http://www.lightcrafttechnologies.com/
:P
Disclaimer: I am a fan of Space Elevators. A BIG fan. Some very very serious problems have yet to be solved though.
I keep pimping the lightcraft thing because it is so logical and so beautiful: (short version)
1) 100% of launch mass reaches orbit. (Ok, 1% may ablate during the ascent)
2) Gigawatt class Lasers are 100% COOL.
3) Cents per kilo to LEO
4) Can you say "Anti Ballistic Missile Defence System that **SHOCK HORROR** actually works"
5) Entirely new industry created.
6) Laser can be reflected back from space to slag enemy locations. Surgical Strike weapon "par excellence".
7) Lasers can be defocused on orbit and used as Search And Rescue illumination at night time
8) Lasers can be defocused and used to illuminate work environments on the Luna surface at night.
9) Lasers will launch light-sail craft to relativistic velocities inside our own solar system for trans-solar robotic exploration.
10) Nothing says "Inbound Bug Eyed Alien Tamer" like 50 x Gigawatt class Lasers focused on a single point.
11) Lasers can be focused on inbound NEOs or asteroids to deflect them from striking the Earth. A change of only 2cm/s is required to prevent a collision. Light pressure rocks!
12) Interstellar laser-based messaging system, with Gigabyte/second class bandwidth.
13) Megatons of payload into LEO every year.
14) system operates 24/7 in any one of the above jobs.
Simply put, there are no technical hurdles to this system. There are already lasers in the 50 megawatt range - all we need to do is develop pulsed lasers at an order of magnitude more powerful. That should be no problem at all.
As to the defensive (In the USA read as "Offensive") capabilities of this system, well, I've had numerous emails with Liek Miyabo about this, and he refuses to discuss these options. To me, this indicates interest by the US military. Hell, if I were Bush (which, thank God, I'm not!) then I'd be all over this technology. I guess the erason there hasn't been a coupel of billion thrown at it, is that there's very little pork involved, or the research is happening in a (D) state.
Seeing as how the price to Geosynchronous orbit will be measured in cents - the price of getting cargo to an equatorial base is negligible.
Storm are not problem either - because you do NOT build the thing and attach it to an island. You build it on a floating platform, and the platform is powered. When a storm comes, you simply drive the thing in the opposite direction. The platform can move a coupel of hundred miles to avoid bad weather. This has already been thought of - and the math/engineering works just fine.
We can overcome the environmental factors on Venus?
:P
Yeah - we can - maybe - sometime after 3000AD when our craft don't melt.
I don't believe that demineralisation of bones is a straight line graph with 1G at one end and Zero G at the other. The rate at which bones lose strength must be proportional to the forces exerted upon them. In a space station, those forces remain essentially zero - except for the limited times when you are on the exercycle.
On a planetary surface (Mars), you'll be affected by gravity 100% of the time, and even if it's only slightly more than 1/3rd of a G, you still have to work against it. Suits will NOT be light - and there will be lots of manual work to be done too. So I would think that Martians won't lose all their bone mass in a year - nor will they be extra susceptible to broken bones in a short period. However, we simply do not know - and we need to find out - and the best way to find out is to send people there!
Rubbish - sending people to Mars is not terribly tricky.
It's getting them back that is hard/expensive.
That's why I don't think we should even be worried about getting them back.
Just start sending people, and worry about getting them back later - if ever. I mean, you'd have no shortage of people willing to leave Earth now, without any guarantee of ever getting back.
By the time you figured out how to get people back form Mars, it'd have a population of a couple of thousand people, and most probably be a self supporting colony by that time. ISRU will most likely allow a group of Terrans to live comfortably on Mars for quite some time without constant resupply from Earth.
The real big questions still need answering though: how about mineral wealth on Mars? Is it going to be easy to mine the planet? What minerals are there, and where are they? Handy to water?
Hey - guess what - we need to send men there to find out.
So let's start freaking well sending them!
NOW!
Why would you want to re-populate the Earth if it blew up?
That's It! No Fuxoring Windows Vista for me then! I'll teach myself to do that stupid Lunix thing rather than sacrifice the Creative Thunder WAV sound from my old SB-Live! card.
That sound simply rocks - and it tells you if any of your speakers aren't working.
Plus, if I turn the PC on in the middle of the night (never!) or if Microsuck Autofuckdate reboots the PC all by itself (FUCK YOU BILL GATES!) - which happens a lot - then at least my neighbours will just think there's a storm coming!
There are ethical issues about raising an animal as food?
Jesus Christ on a Pony, who knew???
..... I'm getting guard Ants.
No, that's not correct. Scientists have recently discovered bacteria which shit Hydrogen. From memory they eat rubbish too - so they are busy trying to genetically modify these little fuckers to shit more hydrogen, and faster.
Hell, with the right system, you'd pass your garbage through this system before taking it to a land fill, and the output would be fuel for fuel-cells - for Very Little Money (tm).
The other nice thing about the bacteria is that they could be used in small scale devices: at home, to reduce reliance on a national grid, and even to send power out of the house when usage is low. This would assist the decentralisation of power generation which is abolsutely necessary to get out from underneath the giant power and oil companies which rule western democracies.
*sigh*
Dreams are free I suppose.
You should have studied harder at school. But I take it you left at age 11, so maybe you just should have STAYED at school. :P
Categorically NO IT WAS NOT!
Sorry, you can argue til the cows come home - but you do not understand: VHS was superior to Beta because you could record an entire FTA movie on a single E180 tape. Beta did not have a tape which would allow the recording of an entire movie. The reason it wasn't possible to get such a tape is because the idiots who pushed Beta did not want you to be able to tape from TV!
By the time they realised their mistake, and made 3 hour tapes available, the battle was already lost.
Simply: VHS was superior to Beta from a consumer point of view, and the rest is hostory. A "superior" product doesn't mean DICK to a consumer if it won't do what they want it to. Simple.
Exotic High Risk Projects?
Clearly you are NOT American, because it is very obvious to any outsider looking in that the USA will no tolerate any reasonable level of risk at all. Look at the stink when just 7 people die, and only a 2 Billion dollar shuttle is lost? Hell, 7 people is nothing - and Dubya it chucking a billion a week at Iraq - and ALL of those lives and dollars are completely wasted. I don't see anyone reviewing the Military budget (450 Billion) because people keep dying.
Hell, servicing Hubble - arguably the most successful space craft ever - was cancelled because people might die. I bet if you asked ANY rated astronaut if they're prepared to take the risk of servicing Hubble you'd get a 100% affirmative "We'll go!" answer.
No - the USA has turned its back on the pioneering spirit - and the whole "Earth, Moon, Mars and beyond" thing is a joke. It's going to be a debacle of the greatest kind: even worse than the ISS. Jebus, it's no even clear how to build a BDB (Big Dumb Booster) any more. The "Stick" so eloquently argued for is a multibillion dollar development, and not even remotely "using existing hardware" as advertised.
Don't get me wrong, I love the ISS, and if it costs 2 Billion dollars a shot to get my pretty 2560 x 1024 wallpaper - then that's a cost I'm willing for US tax payers to pay! Even if the ISS ends up costing 100 billion Euros, the experience of actually having worked together in space (and yes, many contries HAVE contributed) and the knowledge gained by assembling the thing probably almost justify the expense.
See the thing most of you have forgotten, is that you learn more from your failures than you do from your successes: and NASA has had plenty of failures in recent years. The problem is that NASA isn't being driven by an agenda which requires those lessons to be turned into conventional wisdom, and success!
Hell, it might cost a Trillion US dollars before there's any conventional wisdom about getting to LEO, and how to do things beyond LEO - and if it costs a trillion - or two trillion - or a hundred trillion dollars, then that's the price it costs to buy our way into this galaxy. No one is standing by, watching us, and they don't have a "Key To The Galaxy" waiting for us when we set foot on Mars. Escaping the doomed Earth, and populating the Solar System is going to be the most expensive venture ever undertaken by man. The effort may well cripple the Earth for a long time.
One thing is clear: whatever the cost, we need to know how to get off the planet reliably and cheaply.
Personally, I think sitting atop a million kilos of rocket fuel is the dumbest idea ever!
The future isn't rocket powered: it's laser powered: http://lightcrafttechnologies.com/ or its via space elevators. It most certainly does not make sense to burn 95% (or 99%!) of your payload just toget into orbit! If you're gonna burn fuel, the burn it on the ground.
For the vast majority of people who do not know, and by "vast" I mean 99.9% of the population. Scientists included:
www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/HowScien.pdf
Please read.
Yep, and I have a special message for those God-Botherers/Bible Bashers/Weirdos/Jehovah's Wahtsits who arrive at my door:
"Gee, I'm really sorry, I don't have any time for you right now - but if you give me your home address, I'll pop over later on when I have some spare time."
Invariably they tell me they aren't allowed to give out their home address, to which I reply:
"I guess that's because you don't want complete strangers bugging the shit out of you in your private home."
I then close the door, and hope the message sinks in.
Thanks to Jerry Seinfeld here, for the only funny thing he ever did.
Coincidentally, it's only Americans who say this ugly twaddle.
Nothing is based off of anything, ever.
Things are "based on".
Bloody hell, how you base something OFF? You base a house OFF a foundation? Shit yeah, I'd love to see you try! Your house is BASED ON its foundation.
Dear Sweet Baby Jebus.
Personally, I find "mind reading" to be utterly falacious. As others have pointed out, evolution would have heavily favoured even a very slight ability in this regard.
Also, the question needs to be asked: what physical property of the universe would allow the miniscule electrical signals in human brains to be able to be receieved and understood by persons disconnected in space? Even if only by a few millimetres? To me (at least) it seems unlikely there is this unknown quality of the universe. It seems likely we would have discovered it by mistake already.
Of more concern to me is what I call "cultural experience" or "group consciousness" and it has nothing to do with mind reading or telepathy as it is normally thought of.
Briefly, it is the ability of humans to easily achieve something which people have tried for a long time to do. For example" the backflip on a wind surfer or a bicycle. Many people tried for a very long time to achieve this, without success, and yet, as soon as one person, somewhere manages to do it, there seems to be (independently! And without prior knowledge) a sudden surge in people doing it.
It's almost like there is some ethereal pool of human knowledge, where the knowledge of the ABILITY to perform some "trick", is stored, allowing other people's attempts to be successful also.
To me, this certainly seems to be more than "It's amazing how much you can do when you haven't been told what you can't do". It's like "If someone else has done it, but you don't know they've done it, you will find it much easier to do for yourself."
Then again - it might all just be sheer coincidence, and I don't need to try and explain some concept of "gaia" or similar weird "ether" that exists in our universe yet is totally undetectable by science to date.
I have GIMP installed, but only because Photoshop 5 can't open PSDs made with Photoshop 7.
That, to my mind, is still the dumbest thing EVER - and I'll never buy Photoshop again.
Because I spent so much time learning Photoshop though, I take the time to open all incoming PSDs is The GIMP, then save them, just so I can open them in Photoshop 5 and work with them.
... you get her to start mousing left handed. This aint rocket surgery!
Buy a symmetrical 5-button mouse (like the excellent MS "Intellimouse Optical") and put it on the left side of her desk, with a cloth-topped neoprene mouse pad.
Sure, she'll bitch and moan. She'll say she can't do anything left-handed, but within a week she will be at 75%, and after a month she'll be at 95% of her right hand's abilities.
I had the same issue, and tried a bunch of different setups before finally admitting I simply had to give the right hand and arm a rest, and accepted that I would simply have to mouse left handed.
Most importantly, do NOT switch the mouse button functions around: it is far better to learn to mouse left-handed with a mouse which is set up for right handers! This may sound dumb - but of course, left handers do NOT switch their buttons around, because when they use someone elses PC, the buttons are "normal" - and if they were used to "lefty buttons" then they'd be right-clicking all the time.
So, the left-handed user should learn to Left Click with their middle finger, and right click with their index finger.
I particularly did not want to learn to mouse left handed as I have a destroyed left elbow with only about 5 degrees of rotation through the Radial Head. I resisted until my right hand would go into spasms for periods of 5 minutes or so. Finally I relented and taught myself left-hand mousing.
Hey, and guess what? It's actually bloody easy, and this from a guy who couldn't even kick a soccer ball with his left foot.
Oh Please god no.
This because Americans have the most diabolical pronunciation of English. If they get their greedy, Americentric hands on spellings of English (not American, please note!) words, then they won't be spelled phonetically at all: they'll be absolutely particular to US usage (and then, WHICH US usage is the question!) and therefore other English speaking peoples will only be able to have a stab in the dark at the "korekt" spelling unless they know how "Amereekans" pronounce it.
No, this is as dumb as the Imperial System of weights and measures.
Oh - and I love the fact Americans use the Imperial System. It seems to be rubbing off on you...
Oh, And While I'm At It: Why The Fuck Do Americans Stupidly Capitalise The First Letter Of Every Word When Writing Headings And Shit? It Makes It Hard To Read. Sweet Baby Jebus.
Note: English is a language which not only "borrows" words from other languages, it will chase them down dark alleys, knock them over the head, and then go through their pockets, to see what they've got.
Fascinating. No Really.
No != know.
Aint Never = double negative = is not never = will occur.
Congratulations on your $8 an hour life.
I'm sure you'll be very happy together.
Look, the reason your relative might be having trouble is because he may be bloody useless - have you ever considered that? Bad actors have a hard time getting work too - but they don't blame it on movie piracy.
In answer to your thing about him not getting any jobs, it's primarily due to the fact that the combined forces of the RIAA produce approximately 40% less music than they did 6 years ago. This is NOT due to priacy, but because they want bigger margins. So they produce less music, and pimp the stuff they do produce even harder - to raise the margins.
"Marginal" music with low profit simply "isn't worth making" according to stupid RIAA and recording studio executives.
So, I very seriously doubt whether ANYONE in the music industry is GENUINELY affected by copyright violation on a domestic (i.e. individual person) level. They MAY be affected by professional pirates who sell tens of thousands of ripped CDs in 3rd world countries - but here again, I would argue that the people who bought those bootleg albums would not have bought ANY music if it were not pirated. At least they're getting listened to.
Anyway - that's not my point - my point is that by turning 40% of Americans into felons, you have a very serious impact on the entire country. Given that I could steal a CD from a stroe and get slapped on the wrist for it - sharing music online is stupidly unbalanced: $250,000 per song? PUH_LEASE - that's insanely stupid.
So, here's the thing: Music has ALWAYS been free. Free to listen to. Free to share. Free to create. Free to record. FREE. Get it? Like FREE as in BEER.
The fact the general population does not have any respect for copyright law is that copyright law is only acceptable to the population PROVIDED IT DOES NOT APPLY TO THEM. It boggles my mind that successive American generations have allowed congress to behave so flagrantly against the wishes of the voters. Stunning. But not surprising. Hell, you voted for Dubya twice. (And even that is doubtful).
So, Little Johnny who shares music, and downloads music from the 'net doesn;t think he is a criminal, and nor do the majority of Americans. But the LAW thinks Lil' Johnny is a criminal, and a bad one. So, this brings about a situation where almost ANYONE in the country can be found guilty of a felony. This permits huge police powers over these "guilty" people.
And because the public generally reject these laws out of hand, you systematically destroy respect for the law, and the rule of law. Pretty soon, those same peopel start to think that other laws (which do make some sense!) don;t apply to them either - and pretty quickly you have a simply amazing amount of genuine (harmful and dangerous) felonies being committed because the rule of law has broken down.
Lawrence Lessig says something similar in his FREE online PDF called FREE CULTURE. Well worth a read. Download it today!
So, by making stupid laws about copyright infringement (Government OF the lawyers, BY the lawyers and FOR the lawyers - fuck the people, it's lawyers who count!) you create, quite quickly, a culture where very few laws are observed, and everyone is a criminal.
Good luck with that by the way. Here in New Zealand we take a more pragmatic view of things, and don't pass stupid laws about things like this.
Nope. Theft deprives the owner of the item in question.
Copyright infringement != theft.
Idiot.