seems to be the drink of choice with my [cute] 18yo friends, replacing smirnoff ice in their affections. Although the cheapskates at my regular nightclub have replaced both with horrible tasting imitation versions (red square, red alert) for some reason. Do they not sell that in slashdotland (leaving aside the fact you have to be an old fogey to get into a nightclub in the USA).
Yup, in 1960s movies british billion = million million.
However, in 2002 newspapers, web sites, television programs, speech down pubs, a billion is 1000 million. In the last ten years I have only ever heard million million refered to as a billion on US websites like slashdot, or in black-and-white (or possibly scarey technicolour) movies.
I bet you think we use shillings and ha'penny bits too.
I would assume the Iraqi and Afghan references are from the "Gulf War"
The USA and UK have been bombing Iraq ever since the gulf war; sometimes people get hurt and sometimes they are civilians, so this was not all under Bush 1sts administration.
Also I understand that more British soldiers were killed by the Americans than by the Iraqis during the gulf war, so the systems for reducing "friendly fire" let alone "collateral damage" appear to be less than perfect.
Usually the difference between a combatant/soldier and a spy/criminal/non-combatant is a military uniform.
But the USA defines Al Quaeda killing US soldiers (by surprise) as "terrorism", and the USA killing iraqi/afghan/chinese/iranian (airline shot down) civilians as "military action" or "collateral damage".
So they don't agree with the traditional distinction.
What impressed me at the time of 386s was when the C64s emulator came out, and ran commodore 64 scrolling games at pretty much full speed. They were smooth scrolling away before I noticed any native PC games scrolling smoothly. And with proper graphics instead of Commander Keen's "programmer sprites". (Hey, I can't draw either. That's why they pay an artist). I wondered at the time how they could get a layer of emulation to blit things faster than native code (I think ModeX had something to do with it, so that may be VGA rather than EGA).
You are allowed to pee in your back yard (prying neighbours notwithstanding), as you are allowed to smoke in your house (landlord permitting).
Bathhouses and restaurants are both generally open to the public and often not govt. owned. I fail to see how you think a restaurant is more similar to a private dwelling than to a commercial establishment.
There are myriads of laws that commercial establishments have to follow that private dwellings don't (hence some people try tricks like not selling alcohol, but giving it away and selling memberships, to get around rules regarding fire escapes etc.)
Yes, first class tickets could help you with your selection of compartment mates. But I don't want to bring back third class tickets (open-top carriages) since I don't think they would be much fun on rainy days.
I go down to the street, cross the road to the station, catch the train, get off, catch the bus and get home within 15 minutes.
Or Murphy strikes and it takes 45 minutes:-(
Alternatively, if I had a driver's licence, I am one of the lucky two people allocated a car space. I drive to the next block. If I leave in rush hour (i.e. daylight) I wait 15 minutes in traffic to get to the block after that. I then crawl down the road for ten-thirty minutes to where the train transfers to the bus. Or take an aerial ride over speed-bumps that every residential street has. If I leave at 2am this would be about 10 minutes of course, but I still wouldn't get the chance to snooze, read my comics, flirt with the cuter passengers, etc.
As is, in the morning (on school days) I walk past all those drivers parked in their SUVs as they wait for each other to move, and think that I have the better deal. Your mileage may vary.
if the Thames froze over in winter like it did a few centuries ago. The rest of northern europe gets proper winters:-(
Yeah of course there would be problems with modern technology... I mean who was the bright person in Scotland who put the water pipes on the *outside* of the buildings? When it got to -25 celcius they encountered a few problems.
until I thought, what should be the punishment for those who inconsiderately make my hair and clothes stink and aggravate my asthma? Especially the ones who do not seem to have heard of dry-cleaning/washable clothes?
Perhaps a lingering and painful death? No, that would be too harsh. I don't even wish that on mass murderers or rapists. Perhaps spammers.
But then I thought hey, that's what they have chosen as a potential punishment for themselves without me even needing to do anything. So the anger has gone. I don't think that second-hand smoking will kill me, merely make my food in a restaurant taste horrible.
Of course I am sorry for those who lost relatives or friends due to smoking before the dangers were known.
As for your opposition to hygiene rules in public bathhouses, I come from a nanny state where press campaigning, neighbours complaints and local politicians would seize upon such an issue; I doubt it would be permitted de jure. If you ran a discreet private members club it might pass for a while de facto, as are many many other infringements of the law where I live. I understand San Francisco had to clean up the bathhouses a lot in the early 1980s when AIDS came to prominence, but I am not familiar with the current situation over there. I do not wear a yellow hankerchief myself, in either pocket.
If it's in the endowment, it's not in Bills personal account. It may well be that much of that remains invested in Microsoft, but it is separate.
I agree that for small amounts of money an endowment is probably not worth the hassle; for non-millionaires such as most of us, simply choose some charities and set up standing orders (they appreciate the predicatability and lack of overheads of standing orders). Legacies are useful though (especially if you are on a 4 year*final salary life insurance package).
However, rich people usually do not get most of their income through taxable income, they get it via capital gains etc. so for them an endowment obviously makes sense, which is why they use them.
I do not want to strenuously defend bill gates (i.e. do any work in serious research!), except to say that he could behave much worse than he does.
As for vaccines, there are many older treatments that are out of patent. Leaving aside drugs-resistant strains, there is much more that could be done before the patents become the most pressing issue. For a start not bombing Sudan's (vet.) vaccine factory just because some white house intern was in the US newpapers.
Admittedly AZT only comes out in 2005 and other AIDS drugs after that. I understand that "condoms" are already out of patent, and when used correctly are more effective than AZT or other drugs in preventing death.
Obviously I disagree with the US patent office allowing anyone to patent random strings of DNA without even knowing what they do, as I disagree with them patenting obvious algorithms and business methods. I guess they don't know the difference between a "discovery" and an "invention". But the drug companies obviously spend a lot of money developing and especially testing drugs which is worthy of taking into account. I don't classify bottom-feeding lawyer companies as drugs companies (or computer companies). However, judging by the job adverts in New Scientist they don't spend it on individual researcher's salaries. I guess whether you consider an drugs company moral should depend on the individual company.
of Bill and Melissa with groups of happy newly immunised children in Africa? Remember that bill gates has given $24 billion just to the main one of his charities. Have you given that proportion of your net worth to charity?
I doubt whether RMS would consider MAME's licence to be free as in GPL.
"Not for commercial use". Does that mean not allowed to be on TV advertisements? Not allowed to be played at work? The dozens of authors probably each have differing ideas. The GPL, verbose as it is, at least has enough explanation (and unity) to be understandable (and hopefully stand up better in a court of law, which is not geared up for contracts that don't involve "consideration" (usually money)).
The audiophiles I know are exclusively vinyl-based, with turntables so solid (and finely balanced) that my bathwater goes down the plughole the other way round when they switch their kit on.
Slashdot Mirror
seems to be the drink of choice with my [cute] 18yo friends, replacing smirnoff ice in their affections. Although the cheapskates at my regular nightclub have replaced both with horrible tasting imitation versions (red square, red alert) for some reason. Do they not sell that in slashdotland (leaving aside the fact you have to be an old fogey to get into a nightclub in the USA).
Yup, in 1960s movies british billion = million million.
However, in 2002 newspapers, web sites, television programs, speech down pubs, a billion is 1000 million. In the last ten years I have only ever heard million million refered to as a billion on US websites like slashdot, or in black-and-white (or possibly scarey technicolour) movies.
I bet you think we use shillings and ha'penny bits too.
The chinese embassy in Belgrade.
I would assume the Iraqi and Afghan references are from the "Gulf War"
The USA and UK have been bombing Iraq ever since the gulf war; sometimes people get hurt and sometimes they are civilians, so this was not all under Bush 1sts administration.
Also I understand that more British soldiers were killed by the Americans than by the Iraqis during the gulf war, so the systems for reducing "friendly fire" let alone "collateral damage" appear to be less than perfect.
It's true, on your landing card you can state that either you are an american or an alien.
But the USA defines Al Quaeda killing US soldiers (by surprise) as "terrorism", and the USA killing iraqi/afghan/chinese/iranian (airline shot down) civilians as "military action" or "collateral damage".
So they don't agree with the traditional distinction.
I'm not saying I want to be forced to retire when I hit the big 32, but it would be nice to have the option.
Is that you Cameron? I know you have shares in that Canadian diamond mining company :-)
I have just been learning Z80 this last week, and damn it's a cool processor! And still for sale...
What impressed me at the time of 386s was when the C64s emulator came out, and ran commodore 64 scrolling games at pretty much full speed. They were smooth scrolling away before I noticed any native PC games scrolling smoothly. And with proper graphics instead of Commander Keen's "programmer sprites". (Hey, I can't draw either. That's why they pay an artist). I wondered at the time how they could get a layer of emulation to blit things faster than native code (I think ModeX had something to do with it, so that may be VGA rather than EGA).
Bathhouses and restaurants are both generally open to the public and often not govt. owned. I fail to see how you think a restaurant is more similar to a private dwelling than to a commercial establishment.
There are myriads of laws that commercial establishments have to follow that private dwellings don't (hence some people try tricks like not selling alcohol, but giving it away and selling memberships, to get around rules regarding fire escapes etc.)
someone has just given them a present of some chocolate flavoured edible underwear, and their first thought was to read slashdot to take advantage...
Yes, first class tickets could help you with your selection of compartment mates. But I don't want to bring back third class tickets (open-top carriages) since I don't think they would be much fun on rainy days.
Or Murphy strikes and it takes 45 minutes :-(
Alternatively, if I had a driver's licence, I am one of the lucky two people allocated a car space. I drive to the next block. If I leave in rush hour (i.e. daylight) I wait 15 minutes in traffic to get to the block after that. I then crawl down the road for ten-thirty minutes to where the train transfers to the bus. Or take an aerial ride over speed-bumps that every residential street has. If I leave at 2am this would be about 10 minutes of course, but I still wouldn't get the chance to snooze, read my comics, flirt with the cuter passengers, etc.
As is, in the morning (on school days) I walk past all those drivers parked in their SUVs as they wait for each other to move, and think that I have the better deal. Your mileage may vary.
Yeah of course there would be problems with modern technology... I mean who was the bright person in Scotland who put the water pipes on the *outside* of the buildings? When it got to -25 celcius they encountered a few problems.
until I thought, what should be the punishment for those who inconsiderately make my hair and clothes stink and aggravate my asthma? Especially the ones who do not seem to have heard of dry-cleaning/washable clothes?
Perhaps a lingering and painful death? No, that would be too harsh. I don't even wish that on mass murderers or rapists. Perhaps spammers.
But then I thought hey, that's what they have chosen as a potential punishment for themselves without me even needing to do anything. So the anger has gone. I don't think that second-hand smoking will kill me, merely make my food in a restaurant taste horrible.
Of course I am sorry for those who lost relatives or friends due to smoking before the dangers were known.
As for your opposition to hygiene rules in public bathhouses, I come from a nanny state where press campaigning, neighbours complaints and local politicians would seize upon such an issue; I doubt it would be permitted de jure. If you ran a discreet private members club it might pass for a while de facto, as are many many other infringements of the law where I live. I understand San Francisco had to clean up the bathhouses a lot in the early 1980s when AIDS came to prominence, but I am not familiar with the current situation over there. I do not wear a yellow hankerchief myself, in either pocket.
If it's in the endowment, it's not in Bills personal account. It may well be that much of that remains invested in Microsoft, but it is separate.
I agree that for small amounts of money an endowment is probably not worth the hassle; for non-millionaires such as most of us, simply choose some charities and set up standing orders (they appreciate the predicatability and lack of overheads of standing orders). Legacies are useful though (especially if you are on a 4 year*final salary life insurance package).
However, rich people usually do not get most of their income through taxable income, they get it via capital gains etc. so for them an endowment obviously makes sense, which is why they use them.
I do not want to strenuously defend bill gates (i.e. do any work in serious research!), except to say that he could behave much worse than he does.
As for vaccines, there are many older treatments that are out of patent. Leaving aside drugs-resistant strains, there is much more that could be done before the patents become the most pressing issue. For a start not bombing Sudan's (vet.) vaccine factory just because some white house intern was in the US newpapers.
Admittedly AZT only comes out in 2005 and other AIDS drugs after that. I understand that "condoms" are already out of patent, and when used correctly are more effective than AZT or other drugs in preventing death.
Obviously I disagree with the US patent office allowing anyone to patent random strings of DNA without even knowing what they do, as I disagree with them patenting obvious algorithms and business methods. I guess they don't know the difference between a "discovery" and an "invention". But the drug companies obviously spend a lot of money developing and especially testing drugs which is worthy of taking into account. I don't classify bottom-feeding lawyer companies as drugs companies (or computer companies). However, judging by the job adverts in New Scientist they don't spend it on individual researcher's salaries. I guess whether you consider an drugs company moral should depend on the individual company.
of Bill and Melissa with groups of happy newly immunised children in Africa? Remember that bill gates has given $24 billion just to the main one of his charities. Have you given that proportion of your net worth to charity?
Might want to ask Gough Whitlam about what happens if an Aussie PM does something the US doesn't like.
The last (known) time the CIA kicked out the democratically elected government in Australia for annoying the USA.
So by your definition, Internet Explorer is free software?
Apparently, you can have sex with them, but only if they are good-looking and a camera is rolling. According to a friend who knows these things.
</cheapjibe>
"Not for commercial use". Does that mean not allowed to be on TV advertisements? Not allowed to be played at work? The dozens of authors probably each have differing ideas. The GPL, verbose as it is, at least has enough explanation (and unity) to be understandable (and hopefully stand up better in a court of law, which is not geared up for contracts that don't involve "consideration" (usually money)).
Has no-one noticed that we've run out of fish in many areas of the world, so it might not be a good idea to train up more fishermen?!?
Perhaps a more sustainable metaphor is required.
The audiophiles I know are exclusively vinyl-based, with turntables so solid (and finely balanced) that my bathwater goes down the plughole the other way round when they switch their kit on.
I guess that idea is a bit strange to the USA.