I do think that an action that deliberately provokes the target nation into formally declaring war is in itself the declaration. (Take it to its logical extreme; imagine a strike so decisive that the whole government was annihilated - there would be noone to declare war.) My point was that as soon as the sticks were pushed forwards, the USA was part of the same war that everyone else was part of, an accepted state of war between real nations, and known enemies, namely the Axis block. (I have no doubt the Japanese, and the Germans, considered the lend-leasing scheme to be more partisan than the USA claimed it to be, and in their eyes the USA was everything but an enemy force, but an enemy in every other way.)
TWAT can _never_ attain such a status as there are no nations involved - the "Axis of Evil" is simply political rhetoric use to stir up support from an underinformed and frightened populace. A war against Iraq should be called just that, but it would be the USA unilaterally declaring the war for no sane reason at all. I've seen one reason repeatedly given - "self defence", but that's patently absurd as Iraq is not threatening war against the USA.
"What's the procedure for renouncing US citizenship, anyone?"
This is something my g.f. has seriously considered. However, it's a dangerous procedure, as you could be left without any citizenship. The US insist that you renounce US citizenship before you adopt any other citizenship. Therefore there's a brief period where you're without citizenship, where 'brief' might be 6 months or longer, depnding on how efficient and stringent the destination country are. Getting permanent, or at least long-term (2 years, 5 years, even) residency in the destination country first is a good idea as at least you can stay there without citizenship while you're a resident.
Most country's citizenship requirements are quite stringent, and may would require e.g. fluency in the official language of the coutry. That reduces choices quite dramatically, alas.
They cannot be "acts of war", as you are not officially at war. The nomenclature "The War Against Terrorism" (or TWAT for short) is nothing more than political gesturing.
Nordic (folk/jazz) speciality, but they're broadening their ranges:
http://www.digelius.com/ Friendly service (really friendly, last time I went to their actual shop near the end of their working day I ended up in the pub with the proprietors!), fast and efficient (stuff shipped next day), cheap prices, and an amazing range of unusual stuff.
Metal & Progressive speciality, from all round the world:
http://www.recordheaven.net/ Last time I ordered >20 CDs with them, they waived the postage charge, which was nice. Amazing range of stuff, and you can subscribe to a mailing list with all their new acquisitions if you like (and I do).
Of course, MP3.com is international - you an find anything there, and they're about as cheap as I can find anywhere.
"You assert that anyone utilizing the DCC function of IRC is, by some default, a software "pirate". My assertion is that there are potential fair uses for DCC."
What, you mean it might be usable to set up a direct chat connection, or something? Doesn't seem likely to me, no, no, not at all.
Whatever it is, it'll only take 20 minutes to knock up in perl, won't it? Sure, it'll be 10 lines of line noise that no one can understand, but that doesn't matter.
Actually alt.sex.masturbation used to be one of usenet's best waste-of-time newsgroups, as everyone there had a warped sense of humor. Sick jokes, tasteless stories, and general irreverance. All you've got to do is remember to put aside any thought that the penis is in some way something shocking or offensive. Grow up a little, in other words.
I'll let you into a little secret - I was almost tempted to try it once, as it didn't seem to have done the regular posters any harm (well they claimed to masturbate, but we never know whether they really did or not, do we?).
However, quite what it's like now, I have no idea.
Please waste your time finding out what proportion of posts to the above fora are spam, and report back. It's pretty damn close to zero by the time it reaches my news server (which honours spam robocancels). None of the above are moderated. Kooks, yeah, there are plenty of those, but (a) they're trivial to killfile and (b) you get those on/. and everywhere else too.
Maybe if you didn't spend so much time in alt.sex.masturbation you'd realise that much of Usenet is still very useful.
Telstra get good money from spammers, it's big business. That's why almost every UDP either doesn't get past the threat stage, or is effective within 24 hours of its invokation - the ISPs are fully aware of the problem, and can solve it almost instantly, but while they can keep milking spammers they'll keep milking spammers. It's easy money until the Usenet Cabal points the finger.
If you look at the UDP FAQ you'll see the snivelling language that they use to thank the ISPs after cleaning up their act, but it's bullshit. That's like thanking the bully for stepping _off_ your foot.
Nah, but think of all the slingshot effects you could experience! You'd never know which direction's next!
(Yeah, yeah, they'd probably be centuries apart, and quite weak, I know, but I've seen the screensaver, and I want a ride!)
YAW
Re:Shot in the dark
on
The Big Rip
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Probably true within the bounds of the situations the experiments were testing, yes, probably. That's _interpolation_ and is pretty safe for most physics.
However, making prediction what happens outside those bounds is _extrapolation_, and almost all extrapolation is wrong.
Newtonian laws of motion? Extrapolate to high velocities, and you incorrectly predict the orbit of mercury. (Add SR to fix.)
Classical models of black body radiation? Extrapolate to very short wavelengths, and you get the ultraviolet catastrophe. (Add Planck to fix).
However, all these fixes still have _their_ bounds, and you can't use NM+SR to predict behaviour of particles small-enough to have wavelike behaviour.
Extrapolation is what you do when you desperately need more funding...
YAW.
The Joy of Extrapolation
on
The Big Rip
·
· Score: 4, Funny
"A physicist, Simon Caldwell, has taken this to inevitable conclusion and suggested the expansion will eventually reach a point where the expansion rate is so high that any surviving people will ripped apart"
What did Master Caldwell think when he first started getting his first erection?
Quoting "The WinNT kernel and its derivatives contain all the code to draw buttons, scrollbars, and other gui widgets",
you said "Ya wanna back that up with some cold hard facts".
Well spotted for noticing that he didn't say "NT4.0 and its derivatives" of course you're right - NT3.5 didn't have the GUI in ring 0, and the change only occured in NT4.0. And bonus points for knowing that "the kernel" and "Ring 0" are different concepts.
Pat yourself on the back for being soooo right.
Or instead you could educate yourself and do a fucking google search for something like
NT 3.5 video "ring 0" and then go somewhere quiet to kill yourself to save us the effort.
Google for "Spelling reform" and "Noah Webster" (no his first name wasn't Merriam!). In short, he came up with about 7 broad-brush rules for simplification of the language, most of them to do with making the language look more like how it sounds, typically by getting rid of unpronounced letters, and doing simple substitutions (-ise => -ize). Most were sensible enough to be adopted swiftly.
I'm from the UK, I ought to abhor US spelling, but deep down Noah's changes made sense. Sue me, fellow Brits - but you're going to have to find me first!
Well spotted. I too thought that on return to the original window the target highlighting should disappear as, in simple terms, there ain't no bleedin' target as you ain't doin' nuffin!
The other one that I thought he overstated was the fact that his mailer was cool because it had one scroll bar for the whole message composition window rather than the admittedly disgustingly ugly multiple-region setup of the thing he was comparing it to. This is no different from what old text mode (console-based) mailers have done since the beginning of time. (e.g. Pine, which I still use). So the reason the Mac app was so great was because they had't broken an already working paradigm.
I prefer to simply look at the interfaces from hell and laugh/cry than to have a presentation of supposed good ones where sycophants fawn over them barf-inducingly.
I don't believe the author of the mistake _has_ knowningly heard the word - after all the mistake is indicative that a _visual_ fuck-up that's been made. I'd have made a similar comment if he'd have used 'segway', which would imply that the author had heard the word but not seen it.
Either is an attempt to attrificially inflate your active vocabulary, but as such is nothing more than sophistry.
Slashdot Mirror
I do think that an action that deliberately provokes the target nation into formally declaring war is in itself the declaration.
(Take it to its logical extreme; imagine a strike so decisive that the whole government was annihilated - there would be noone to declare war.)
My point was that as soon as the sticks were pushed forwards, the USA was part of the same war that everyone else was part of, an accepted state of war between real nations, and known enemies, namely the Axis block. (I have no doubt the Japanese, and the Germans, considered the lend-leasing scheme to be more partisan than the USA claimed it to be, and in their eyes the USA was everything but an enemy force, but an enemy in every other way.)
TWAT can _never_ attain such a status as there are no nations involved - the "Axis of Evil" is simply political rhetoric use to stir up support from an underinformed and frightened populace.
A war against Iraq should be called just that, but it would be the USA unilaterally declaring the war for no sane reason at all. I've seen one reason repeatedly given - "self defence", but that's patently absurd as Iraq is not threatening war against the USA.
YAW.
I don't _buy_ facts, I learn them.
Japan formally joined The Axis in September 27, 1940 with its signing of the Tripartite Pact.
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
So Japan had been an enemy at war for over a year before Pearl Harbor.
YAW.
"What's the procedure for renouncing US citizenship, anyone?"
This is something my g.f. has seriously considered. However, it's a dangerous procedure, as you could be left without any citizenship.
The US insist that you renounce US citizenship before you adopt any other citizenship. Therefore there's a brief period where you're without citizenship, where 'brief' might be 6 months or longer, depnding on how efficient and stringent the destination country are. Getting permanent, or at least long-term (2 years, 5 years, even) residency in the destination country first is a good idea as at least you can stay there without citizenship while you're a resident.
Most country's citizenship requirements are quite stringent, and may would require e.g. fluency in the official language of the coutry. That reduces choices quite dramatically, alas.
YAW.
They cannot be "acts of war", as you are not officially at war.
The nomenclature "The War Against Terrorism" (or TWAT for short) is nothing more than political gesturing.
YAW.
Nordic (folk/jazz) speciality, but they're broadening their ranges:
http://www.digelius.com/
Friendly service (really friendly, last time I went to their actual shop near the end of their working day I ended up in the pub with the proprietors!), fast and efficient (stuff shipped next day), cheap prices, and an amazing range of unusual stuff.
Metal & Progressive speciality, from all round the world:
http://www.recordheaven.net/
Last time I ordered >20 CDs with them, they waived the postage charge, which was nice. Amazing range of stuff, and you can subscribe to a mailing list with all their new acquisitions if you like (and I do).
Of course, MP3.com is international - you an find anything there, and they're about as cheap as I can find anywhere.
YAW.
In particular, for (3) and (4), I'd simply like to know how many copies of ISBN: 0-13-637331-3 were sold prior to the alleged offence.
I believe your "thousands" could be scaled up much further!
YAW.
"you have to opt out of the extra point manually each time"
There is a setting to make it the default. I find it a handy laziness aid, as I never self-up-moderate.
Go to your "Preferences", and then select "Comments" - 3 settings from the bottom is a "No Karma Bonus" tickbox.
YAW.
He was never a Dijkstra, but then again few, if any, are.
Maybe he's just a 'guru', not a 'god'?
YAW.
"Is 'fred' even a name in the US?"
Ask Mr. Flintstone.
Phil
"
./someprogram $i | mail -s "results from run $i" me@wherever.com ; done
by looking at her "sent-mail" folder
"
$ for i in 1 2 3 4 5 ; do
What's a "sent-mail" folder?
"Yeah. I live in the United States since before I was two years old. I am twenty four now."
You speking English very good for somewun who speke it only for whole ficking life.
YAW
"You assert that anyone utilizing the DCC function of IRC is, by some default, a software "pirate". My assertion is that there are potential fair uses for DCC."
What, you mean it might be usable to set up a direct chat connection, or something? Doesn't seem likely to me, no, no, not at all.
YAW.
Whatever it is, it'll only take 20 minutes to knock up in perl,
won't it? Sure, it'll be 10 lines of line noise that no one can
understand, but that doesn't matter.
YAW.
Sheesh, don't be so predictable!
Actually alt.sex.masturbation used to be one of usenet's best waste-of-time newsgroups, as everyone there had a warped sense of humor. Sick jokes, tasteless stories, and general irreverance. All you've got to do is remember to put aside any thought that the penis is in some way something shocking or offensive. Grow up a little, in other words.
I'll let you into a little secret - I was almost tempted to try it once, as it didn't seem to have done the regular posters any harm (well they claimed to masturbate, but we never know whether they really did or not, do we?).
However, quite what it's like now, I have no idea.
YAW.
Maths question? - sci.math
/. and everywhere else too.
Crypto question? - sci.crypt
Compression question? - comp.compression
Language question? - alt.usage.english
Linguistics question - sci.lang
Asm programming? - alt.lang.asm
Please waste your time finding out what proportion of posts to the above fora are spam, and report back. It's pretty damn close to zero by the time it reaches my news server (which honours spam robocancels). None of the above are moderated. Kooks, yeah, there are plenty of those, but (a) they're trivial to killfile and (b) you get those on
Maybe if you didn't spend so much time in alt.sex.masturbation you'd realise that much of Usenet is still very useful.
YAW.
Telstra get good money from spammers, it's big business.
That's why almost every UDP either doesn't get past the threat stage, or is effective within 24 hours of its invokation - the ISPs are fully aware of the problem, and can solve it almost instantly, but while they can keep milking spammers they'll keep milking spammers.
It's easy money until the Usenet Cabal points the finger.
If you look at the UDP FAQ you'll see the snivelling language that they use to thank the ISPs after cleaning up their act, but it's bullshit. That's like thanking the bully for stepping _off_ your foot.
YAW.
Nah, but think of all the slingshot effects you could experience! You'd never know which direction's next!
(Yeah, yeah, they'd probably be centuries apart, and quite weak, I know, but I've seen the screensaver, and I want a ride!)
YAW
Probably true within the bounds of the situations the experiments were testing, yes, probably. That's _interpolation_ and is pretty safe for most physics.
However, making prediction what happens outside those bounds is _extrapolation_, and almost all extrapolation is wrong.
Newtonian laws of motion? Extrapolate to high velocities, and you incorrectly predict the orbit of mercury. (Add SR to fix.)
Classical models of black body radiation? Extrapolate to very short wavelengths, and you get the ultraviolet catastrophe. (Add Planck to fix).
However, all these fixes still have _their_ bounds, and you can't use NM+SR to predict behaviour of particles small-enough to have wavelike behaviour.
Extrapolation is what you do when you desperately need more funding...
YAW.
"A physicist, Simon Caldwell, has taken this to inevitable conclusion and suggested the expansion will eventually reach a point where the expansion rate is so high that any surviving people will ripped apart"
What did Master Caldwell think when he first started getting his first erection?
Sorry for being crude,
YAW.
Wrong. His point _was_ that they run in ring 0 (thus at the same permission levels as the actual "kernel") but you were too pedantic to see that.
YAW
"The kernel level rendering was a guess on my part"
You're right. He's wrong. Make him a foe, rate foes' messages at -1, and raise your threshold for reading.
YAW.
Quoting "The WinNT kernel and its derivatives contain all the code to draw buttons, scrollbars, and other gui widgets",
you said "Ya wanna back that up with some cold hard facts".
Well spotted for noticing that he didn't say "NT4.0 and its derivatives" of course you're right - NT3.5 didn't have the GUI in ring 0, and the change only occured in NT4.0. And bonus points for knowing that "the kernel" and "Ring 0" are different concepts.
Pat yourself on the back for being soooo right.
Or instead you could educate yourself and do a fucking google search for something like
NT 3.5 video "ring 0"
and then go somewhere quiet to kill yourself to save us the effort.
YAW.
Google for "Spelling reform" and "Noah Webster" (no his first name wasn't Merriam!). In short, he came up with about 7 broad-brush rules for simplification of the language, most of them to do with making the language look more like how it sounds, typically by getting rid of unpronounced letters, and doing simple substitutions (-ise => -ize). Most were sensible enough to be adopted swiftly.
I'm from the UK, I ought to abhor US spelling, but deep down Noah's changes made sense. Sue me, fellow Brits - but you're going to have to find me first!
YAW.
Well spotted. I too thought that on return to the original window the target highlighting should disappear as, in simple terms, there ain't no bleedin' target as you ain't doin' nuffin!
The other one that I thought he overstated was the fact that his mailer was cool because it had one scroll bar for the whole message composition window rather than the admittedly disgustingly ugly multiple-region setup of the thing he was comparing it to. This is no different from what old text mode (console-based) mailers have done since the beginning of time. (e.g. Pine, which I still use). So the reason the Mac app was so great was because they had't broken an already working paradigm.
I prefer to simply look at the interfaces from hell and laugh/cry than to have a presentation of supposed good ones where sycophants fawn over them barf-inducingly.
YAW.
I don't believe the author of the mistake _has_ knowningly heard the word - after all the mistake is indicative that a _visual_ fuck-up that's been made. I'd have made a similar comment if he'd have used 'segway', which would imply that the author had heard the word but not seen it.
Either is an attempt to attrificially inflate your active vocabulary, but as such is nothing more than sophistry.
YAW.