this basically looks like a couple of boobs on your desktop. it may have some great pr0n applications, but most of us don't have the practice necessary to correctly operate such a contraption.
frat boys, on the other hand, may soon become 1337...
Look on the bright side. SCO may suck ass, but after all, they did extort a decent sum of money out of Microsoft, which is more than most of us can say for ourselves.
anyone who can put even a small dent in the Microsoft wallet and make them look foolish gets a gold star in my book.
they ought to just call it "The Internet". there's so many clueless Joe Blow's out there that don't know the difference between the net and a browser as it is; they could totally confuse the hell out of them.
oh wait, i suppose Al Gore would file suit that they stole the name of his invention. oh well.
It may be LOGICAL, but it wasn't necessarily PREDICTABLE. would you really have forseen it if you hadn't seen the movie? we have a human bias against killing, meaning you probably wouldn't even identify "kill the crew" as a potential outcome. obviously the people who gave HAL his instructions didn't predict his reaction.
the biggest thing that makes it unpredictable is that HAL could have taken other courses of action to resolve the conflict. for example, it could have deleted the true purpose of the mission from its databanks, so that it wouldn't be lying about something it honestly didn't know the answer to. or it could have implemented a security model to simply block access to certain data by certain crew members. or it could have stopped talking altogether.
the point is that many courses of action were possible, but the computer is in charge of picking the ultimate solution. that means it may be difficult or impossible to predict exactly what the computer will choose, even if that choice is perfectly logical.
okay, it's clear that wrong information sucks, and can be really difficult to erase. but i think the reason for the change is probably to make information sharing easier between branches of gov't. this way, if the FBI gets some info from the NSA, they can pursue the lead right away instead of having to double-check all the data first.
ultimately i think this is well-intentioned (assuming you agree with info-sharing, which many people don't), but with some potential big pitfalls. instead of voiding the requirement, maybe they ought to amend it to still require the accuracy audit, but allow it to happen later in the process. better late than never.
I certainly can't refute the apparent hypocrisy of many American policies. but let's face it, we're really not doing anything all that different than we always have. doesn't make it right, of course, but at least it follows precedent. it's just that this administration is less diplomatically persuasive and more "rough around the edges". Dubya is widely perceived as a six-shootin' cowboy, and while that's probably a pretty accurate description, it doesn't necessarily mean that he's going off half-cocked this time.
This administration has some of finest strategic minds in country. Bush may be unreliable, but Colin Powell's integrity is unquestioned. even as a general, he was extremely conservative and patient. he refused to make hasty decisions on unreliable or unconfirmed information, and I can't imagine that his nature has changed since then. I think we have to have some amount of faith that the US is in possession of still-classified information that Saddam definitely has something up his sleeve.
we already know for a fact that Hussein offers large cash rewards to the families of Palestinians that act as suicide bombers in Israel. that crime alone damns the Iraqi government nearly as much as the Taliban. we demolished Afghanistan simply because they let terrorists set up training camps. if Saddam places a bounty on Israeli casualties, that's almost as bad. so that right there is a pretty strong reason to attack, and one which Bush doesn't seem to have placed enough emphasis on.
does that mean our intentions are entirely honorable? no, not at all. I'm sure Bush would love to drive oil prices back down ( and for my part, I hope he does it quickly; filling up my SUV every 2 weeks with $1.65/gal gasoline isn't cheap ). and protecting Israel always helps grease the wheels when it comes time to solicit campaign contributions. cleaning up dad's mess is a nice bonus, too. I'm sure all those factors weigh in to the equation. but even in post-9/11 america, the system still has enough checks and balances to prevent a war based SOLELY on those reasons.
let's talk about democracy's role in all this. is ignoring war protests tantamount to ignoring democracy? no, i say, democracy is still winning. current polls place opposition to the war at around 30%, maybe 40% at most. that means the majority of Americans still support getting rid of Saddam. Congress voted overwhelmingly to give Bush the power to invoke military action. that same Congress received a significant message from the people who elected a Republican majority just a few short months ago. all that adds up to representative democracy, folks.
right now it seems like we're pissing off a lot of the world, and yes, we probably are. the muslim terrorist groups are going to be especially irate, and they're going to come back swinging. very true, but frankly, they would have attacked us anyways sooner or later. unless we suddenly pulled all of our forces out of the Middle East, AND dissolved the Israeli state, Muslim fanatics are always going to hate us. the question is, do we want them to hate us with the support of a chemical- and biological-weapon producing madman, or without him? I'd say, "without him", definitely.
some people may be troubled by the way the US is so blatantly calling for a regime change in Iraq. it seems really wrong to hear that kind of talk out of an administration that won its own power in a very dubious manner. but of course the big difference is we know that our tyrant will be held accountable by the voting public in 2 years; Hussein will not. and the fact is, we've forced regime changes before. sometimes covertly with the CIA, sometimes very obviously, like the capture of Manuel Noriega in Panama. that one was just as economically motivated as this: you really think anyone wanted a madman in control of something as vital as the Panama Canal? Saddam Hussein is probably a convenient boogeyman now that Bin Laden has disappeared. but don't kid yourself, Hussein DOES deserve to b
sometimes, though, the deleted scenes were very well done and perfectly acted; but just didn't fit the flow of the movie. good scenes with insightful commentary ( esp. those by M Night Shyamalan -- 6th Sense, Unbreakable ) can give you an interesting deeper perspective into certain characters, that may have been trimmed from the original release simply because of time constraints.
the government DOES have the power and authority to regulate how telemarketers do business; it falls under the interstate commerce clause of the constitution.
But it's not a VOTE, it's a request for comments. Insightful comments could come from anyone, not just Americans. So filtering by location wouldn't really serve any purpose anyway; they're looking for interesting points of view, not just a tally of popular sentiment.
... otherwise we'd see a new Terminator model, the T-32F/0C, going back in time to kill John Conner's great-great grandmother by transforming into an iceberg and destroying the "unsinkable" cruise ship on which she is a passenger.
heh heh, change the story so that Celine Dion is the victim, and it might actually be worth seeing.
hmmm, i guess no one remembers that Wayne's World quote. sorry, folks.
an example we can all understand
on
One of Many
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· Score: 5, Funny
to understand this theory, all you have to do is visit your favorite pr0n site using IE. you see the way your screen fills with an endless swarm of pop-up windows, each with their own content? think of those as little universes, each separate from the others, but united in their love of barely legal asian teens.
Baby universes?
on
One of Many
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Dr. Lee Smolin... has speculated that the universe can reproduce itself through black holes... giving birth to baby universes
"Did you ever see that episode of the Twilight Zone where this guy signed a contract, and they cut out his tongue and put it in a jar, but it wouldn't die, it just grew and pulsated and gave birth to baby tongues? Pretty cool."
i write software at a financial services company, and 9 out of our 10 QA Testers are female. hopefully it's just coincidence that they're also not very bright. one woman in particular leaves me completely breathless -- not because she's hot, but because she's just a waste of oxygen that it creates a vacuum around her.
fortunately for us, they're all pretty good testers because they think of things that any normal programmer would never due to their own software, like putting in all kinds of nonsense input and whatnot. then again, sometimes they report "bugs" like, "the setup program leaves temp files if the PC is powered off during installation." ay caramba....
Slashdot Mirror
good point... they say he lives at the North Pole, but they never said of which planet....
Yeah... don't forget to include the new cover sheet on those TPS reports. Did you get that memo?
Yeah, but nothing stopped OJ from looking for the "real" killer.
All i can figure is that the chunk of foam must have hired Johnny Cochran as its lawyer....
frat boys, on the other hand, may soon become 1337...
anyone who can put even a small dent in the Microsoft wallet and make them look foolish gets a gold star in my book.
So I guess all chimp cages should now come equipped with the famous Eric Estrada "You're a Homo" poster...
oh wait, i suppose Al Gore would file suit that they stole the name of his invention. oh well.
the biggest thing that makes it unpredictable is that HAL could have taken other courses of action to resolve the conflict. for example, it could have deleted the true purpose of the mission from its databanks, so that it wouldn't be lying about something it honestly didn't know the answer to. or it could have implemented a security model to simply block access to certain data by certain crew members. or it could have stopped talking altogether.
the point is that many courses of action were possible, but the computer is in charge of picking the ultimate solution. that means it may be difficult or impossible to predict exactly what the computer will choose, even if that choice is perfectly logical.
ultimately i think this is well-intentioned (assuming you agree with info-sharing, which many people don't), but with some potential big pitfalls. instead of voiding the requirement, maybe they ought to amend it to still require the accuracy audit, but allow it to happen later in the process. better late than never.
for even more effective control of incoming messages, i've instituted a set of five questions:
This administration has some of finest strategic minds in country. Bush may be unreliable, but Colin Powell's integrity is unquestioned. even as a general, he was extremely conservative and patient. he refused to make hasty decisions on unreliable or unconfirmed information, and I can't imagine that his nature has changed since then. I think we have to have some amount of faith that the US is in possession of still-classified information that Saddam definitely has something up his sleeve.
we already know for a fact that Hussein offers large cash rewards to the families of Palestinians that act as suicide bombers in Israel. that crime alone damns the Iraqi government nearly as much as the Taliban. we demolished Afghanistan simply because they let terrorists set up training camps. if Saddam places a bounty on Israeli casualties, that's almost as bad. so that right there is a pretty strong reason to attack, and one which Bush doesn't seem to have placed enough emphasis on.
does that mean our intentions are entirely honorable? no, not at all. I'm sure Bush would love to drive oil prices back down ( and for my part, I hope he does it quickly; filling up my SUV every 2 weeks with $1.65/gal gasoline isn't cheap ). and protecting Israel always helps grease the wheels when it comes time to solicit campaign contributions. cleaning up dad's mess is a nice bonus, too. I'm sure all those factors weigh in to the equation. but even in post-9/11 america, the system still has enough checks and balances to prevent a war based SOLELY on those reasons.
let's talk about democracy's role in all this. is ignoring war protests tantamount to ignoring democracy? no, i say, democracy is still winning. current polls place opposition to the war at around 30%, maybe 40% at most. that means the majority of Americans still support getting rid of Saddam. Congress voted overwhelmingly to give Bush the power to invoke military action. that same Congress received a significant message from the people who elected a Republican majority just a few short months ago. all that adds up to representative democracy, folks.
right now it seems like we're pissing off a lot of the world, and yes, we probably are. the muslim terrorist groups are going to be especially irate, and they're going to come back swinging. very true, but frankly, they would have attacked us anyways sooner or later. unless we suddenly pulled all of our forces out of the Middle East, AND dissolved the Israeli state, Muslim fanatics are always going to hate us. the question is, do we want them to hate us with the support of a chemical- and biological-weapon producing madman, or without him? I'd say, "without him", definitely.
some people may be troubled by the way the US is so blatantly calling for a regime change in Iraq. it seems really wrong to hear that kind of talk out of an administration that won its own power in a very dubious manner. but of course the big difference is we know that our tyrant will be held accountable by the voting public in 2 years; Hussein will not. and the fact is, we've forced regime changes before. sometimes covertly with the CIA, sometimes very obviously, like the capture of Manuel Noriega in Panama. that one was just as economically motivated as this: you really think anyone wanted a madman in control of something as vital as the Panama Canal? Saddam Hussein is probably a convenient boogeyman now that Bin Laden has disappeared. but don't kid yourself, Hussein DOES deserve to b
sometimes, though, the deleted scenes were very well done and perfectly acted; but just didn't fit the flow of the movie. good scenes with insightful commentary ( esp. those by M Night Shyamalan -- 6th Sense, Unbreakable ) can give you an interesting deeper perspective into certain characters, that may have been trimmed from the original release simply because of time constraints.
"Windows? No, thanks, I'll just take one. I don't need to multitask."
the government DOES have the power and authority to regulate how telemarketers do business; it falls under the interstate commerce clause of the constitution.
But it's not a VOTE, it's a request for comments. Insightful comments could come from anyone, not just Americans. So filtering by location wouldn't really serve any purpose anyway; they're looking for interesting points of view, not just a tally of popular sentiment.
heh heh, change the story so that Celine Dion is the victim, and it might actually be worth seeing.
can't you just picture Bubba Hick reeling one of these beauties in?
"Holy shit, Darryl, it's one of them bionic fish!! Run for the hills!!!"
It has yet to be determined whether the discovery of a "back door" in these interfaces makes them more or less desirable...
hmmm, i guess no one remembers that Wayne's World quote. sorry, folks.
to understand this theory, all you have to do is visit your favorite pr0n site using IE. you see the way your screen fills with an endless swarm of pop-up windows, each with their own content? think of those as little universes, each separate from the others, but united in their love of barely legal asian teens.
"Did you ever see that episode of the Twilight Zone where this guy signed a contract, and they cut out his tongue and put it in a jar, but it wouldn't die, it just grew and pulsated and gave birth to baby tongues? Pretty cool."
Into the big sleep
I want to hear
I want to hear
The scream of the butterfly...."
--Jim Morrison
"is that better?"
"well, it's one better, now isn't it?"
"why didn't you just make 10 better, and call it 10?"
"..... this ISP goes to 11."
after downloading their brains, we'll be able to answer the two most difficult questions of the last decade:
i write software at a financial services company, and 9 out of our 10 QA Testers are female. hopefully it's just coincidence that they're also not very bright. one woman in particular leaves me completely breathless -- not because she's hot, but because she's just a waste of oxygen that it creates a vacuum around her. fortunately for us, they're all pretty good testers because they think of things that any normal programmer would never due to their own software, like putting in all kinds of nonsense input and whatnot. then again, sometimes they report "bugs" like, "the setup program leaves temp files if the PC is powered off during installation." ay caramba....