Ah, the BBC... Listening to the program right now, and it makes me really, really, really want to read the books.
Not because I'm getting nostalgic for the stories or anything lovely like that, but because the radio programs are SOOOOOO bad. I need the written word to erase the utter horribleness of the BBC's enactments from my memory.
Ugh.
Some things just don't come across well in all formats. For instance, Monty Python is best when viewed. Listening to them is okay, and reading is just downright worthless. Tolkien and Adams are best when read and diminish in quality when brought to the screen or the spoken word. And so, my desire to completely stop up my ears and open the freaking books.
FOX news journalists have often used incorrect data when making points, which is just as bad as using forged documents. Fake data does not real news make.
The point is that all news organizations should strive for credible data and not make stuff up to prove a point. CBS made a mistake in that they didn't go far enough to authenticate their documents and they got burned for it. I don't believe they deliberately misled their viewers. I think they just weren't vigilant enough (and today they've apologized for not living up to a professional standard with this story, which is good. Hopefully it will help all news organizations take more responsibility in their reporting). There's a difference between that and the deliberate fact spinning you tend to see in the pundit programs like Crossfire, Hardball or The O'Relly Factor.
Then we should also call for Fox News journalists' heads on platters, because they are trying to influence the presidential election just as much, and probably moreso than Dan Rather.
The key is the search for truth, and no news organization I've seen has completely done that, which is sad, because that's what true journalism is.
The problem today is that people don't want to be given information. They want to be given answers, thus the large number of "editorial" news programs (instead of "fact" news programs). Once people hear the answer they want, they don't listen anymore, and it takes tragedy and calamitous events to wake people up.
Because of this, I believe our democracy is on a downward spiral, and I'm not sure what it's going to take to send it back up...
Actually, voting for Bush will definitely knock the U.S. down futher in world power. His blind devotion to military conflict as a means for peace just creates more enemies and less respect. If that's not loss of power, I don't know what is.
Kerry on the other hand, is closer to Colin Powell, in that he understands the power of respect and the opportunities it provides for the spread of American ideals.
Put it this way: Would you rather follow a country that stood up for human rights, sought for peaceful resolutions to conflict, listened to all sides of the conversation (not necessarily following any of them, but *actively* listening to them) and fought against the roots of terrorism (poverty, hunger, disease, raping of the environment, overpopulation, lack of focus on secular education) as well as the terrorists themselves, or a country that rejects human rights, uses military means to end conflict, doesn't care what others' ideas are and focuses only on fighting the terrorists rather than the things that made them terrorists? Democracy and peace will spread far faster in the first case than in the second and that's what a vote for the Democratic ticket will provide.
BTW, Bush didn't turn the recession around (nor was Clinton responsible for the boom of the 90's). Those things are far beyond the control of most government actions. Market forces are the mostly the cause for recessions and turnarounds. The effort by the Federal Reserve in its management of interest rates has also affected things (You mean a government regulatory body can do good things? Fancy that? I thought all government meddling in market affairs was socialist crap.)
Nor is he the cause for a lack of terrorist attacks. There actually have been numerous attempts at carrying out attacks on US soil, but they have been thwarted either by the immediate actions of vigilant people (the shoe-bomber, for instance) or by law-enforcement agencies that have finally taken their heads out of the asses due to the realization of their incompetence pre-9/11. None of these things have had anything to do with Bush.
The only thing that bugs me about the ctrl+tab functionality, is that it doesn't mirror the alt+tab functionality of windows, where if you do an alt+tab to move to another window, release the alt button, then do another alt+tab you'll be back at the window you started with, i.e. it puts recently viewed windows next in your traversal list.
In Mozilla/Firefox, you have to cycle through all your open tabs to get back to the start. Releasing the ctrl button doesn't put the previously visited tabs next in your list of traversal.
"I refuse that Linux exists," says SCO, "for Linux denies Copyrights, and without Copyrights I am nothing."
"But," says Torvalds, "Open Source copyrights are a dead giveaway, aren't they? They could not have evolved by chance. In Linux they exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says SCO, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Torvalds, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed at the next zebra crossing.
Most leading software developers claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, 'Well That About Wraps It Up for SCO.'
And why wouldn't everything about us be based on our genetic makeup and the environment we live in? Every thought and action we take comes from our brain, which is composed of billions of neurons that are made up of cells encoded with the genes we get from our ancestors. Every thought we have in our brains is based on those neurons and also what we've learned over the years through study, logical thought processes and learning by example.
Being drunk affects your brain. It's a chemical reaction. There's nothing mysterious about that. If a chemical reaction affects your brain, it can affect your thinking processes and can make you do dumb things. Therefore, you can attribute some of your actions to the alcohol in your brain. What's so "quacky" about that? Sounds pretty straightforward to me.
Kids who come from families who sit on their asses all day are not as likely to develop a good work ethic as those who grow up having paper routes, trash/dishes/dog walking duties and the like. The environment we live in shapes us as human beings. If you take the kid out of the lazy family eary enough and put him/her in the working family, there will be a difference.
Drugs do have effects on behaviour. There are drugs that reduce the chemical dependency of drug addicts and alcoholics. There are drugs that decrease aggresiveness and short attention spans in children.
Psychological counseling also has a well documented history of helping countless people come to grips with past histories that have affected them in detrimental ways and allowed them to create better lives for themselves.
This stuff is not happening because of our culture. It's happening because that's who we are. We are made up of a bunch of chemical and electrical impulses that oftentimes come into serious conflict. That fact that most of us come out pretty much intact just goes to show how resilient human beings are to this conflict going on inside.
But we are not perfect, and sometimes things go poorly. And that is why it is necessary to explore all these possibilities of what makes us act and think the way we do.
It's not quack science. The only quackiness is from those who think that we are not affected by anything and are purely logical beings. It's just not true.
Sorry, bud, but your statement assumes feeling and thinking are mutually exclusive, which is one of the major problems with people today: the "either-or" attitude. Why can't people realize that the world is not black or white? It's a whole lot of gray. Guess what? People can be both conservative AND liberal.
That's why great leaders are the ones who can navigate the nuances of the world effectively and make informed decisions based on a whole wide range of vewpoints and facts, rather than making decisions based on what they want to hear.
Who in their right mind would want to hack into the democratic convention? The only ones I can think of are Republicans, and we all know they never do anything illegal like that...
Sorry, I have to speak up, because my wife is on Broadway... in a musical... a very cheesy musical, but also a very fun musical that brings lots of joy and entertainment to people looking for a good night out.
I can totally understand when someone says they don't like Broadway. There are definitely many parts of it that aren't "good." My wife actually dislikes parts of it too, mostly the parts related to the "disney-ification" of the musical genre and the corporate mentality of profit before quality, as well as the slowly eroding support of the actors and actresses by the big production companies (Disney, Clear Channel, etc.). But she has to live with both the bad and the good, otherwise she wouldn't be able to make a living.
However, that doesn't mean there aren't some real gems to find, including original, thought-provoking musicals that really do a good job of intertwining powerful music with good stories. Not everyone can make those kinds of musicals and plays, but they do happen.
So, I guess my question is, what is it that causes you to hate Broadway? I'm not asking because it hurts my feelings, because it doesn't. I'm just curious, because it was a pretty broad statement. It's similar to "I hate Linux" or "I hate Windows." There must be something specific you hate? Do you hate live theatre? Do you hate big musicals, big plays? Do you hate the cheese?
Now, that all being said, I will tell you that I met a guy a few weeks ago that is in this new musical and was also part of the auditioning process so he saw many of the people trying out for it. He's also a Python fan himself. He's not just some actor/comedian who's doing this for a paycheck. He's part of it because he loves the whole Python experience. And he said that most of the other people involved are also big Python fans. So, basically, this musical may be pretty good because it's being done by people who care. It's basically a bunch of Python geeks putting on a musical, with some original Python members involved in the direction. What true Python geek wouldn't be excited by this? Anyway, I'm looking forward to it. It may totally crash and burn, but I have my hopes...
Actually, I believe the NYT learned long ago to beef up their servers, since about 50% of slashdot stories link to them. I guess that just goes to show that the NYT actually has lots of stories that are of interest to geeks.
A resident of Tibet by the name of Dug lah-sa Dams was reported to have screamed "Oh no, not again!" before being accidentally run over by a bus load of tourists. The driver of the bus, one Arthur Dent, originally from England, is being held for questioning.
This test is called the Pompous Bastard Test (PBT, for short) and it goes something like this:
First, count how many commas, semicolons or colons a writer uses in his sentences. Second, use the chart below to determine the writer's Pompous Bastard Quotient (PBQ):
x <= 1: Dubyass 1 < x <= 3: Normal 3 < x <= 6: Somewhat Cocky 6 < x: Pompous Bastard
Let's take a few examples from the above mentioned text:
"The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England."
3 commas. Seems pretty Normal so far.
"THE subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual."
Ooooh, 4 commas (2 commas, 1 semicolon, 1 colon). Getting a little cocky here.
"It is so far from being new, that, in a certain sense, it has divided mankind, almost from the remotest ages, but in the stage of progress into which the more civilized portions of the species have now entered, it presents itself under new conditions, and requires a different and more fundamental treatment."
7 commas. Pompous Bastard. Could be a fluke.
"First, by obtaining a recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights, which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe, and which, if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion, was held to be justifiable."
8 Freaking Commas. Wow, he really is a Pompous Bastard.
BTW, I'm not commenting on the content of the writer's work, just on his Pompousness; and whew, this guy, whether he knows it or not, is a real, God-damn, Pompous Bastard.
...what Google needs? A "Was this result helpful in your search?" button for each link returned, so that the search itself also influences page ranks. Maybe that will help get rid of this Google bombing mess.
Not really. Even if you're first to market, if you don't have the backing to cover the market, then any two-bit competitor *with* backing can take your idea and beat you over the head with it, grabbing up market share by producing in volume and killing you on the price point. You need patents to protect you from this type of scenario so that when they go and sell your idea at a better price than you, you still get something out of it.
Many lanes of cars all traveling at a pretty good clip with about 2-3 feet of distance between them. Painted lines exist, but no one cares about them. Why take up one lane when you can take up two? Random pedestrians. Cabs that suddenly stop right in front of you from a speed of 40mph after seeing someone hailing them.
Thank God I play video games, or I'd have been dead years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, the BBC... Listening to the program right now, and it makes me really, really, really want to read the books.
Not because I'm getting nostalgic for the stories or anything lovely like that, but because the radio programs are SOOOOOO bad. I need the written word to erase the utter horribleness of the BBC's enactments from my memory.
Ugh.
Some things just don't come across well in all formats. For instance, Monty Python is best when viewed. Listening to them is okay, and reading is just downright worthless. Tolkien and Adams are best when read and diminish in quality when brought to the screen or the spoken word. And so, my desire to completely stop up my ears and open the freaking books.
FOX news journalists have often used incorrect data when making points, which is just as bad as using forged documents. Fake data does not real news make.
The point is that all news organizations should strive for credible data and not make stuff up to prove a point. CBS made a mistake in that they didn't go far enough to authenticate their documents and they got burned for it. I don't believe they deliberately misled their viewers. I think they just weren't vigilant enough (and today they've apologized for not living up to a professional standard with this story, which is good. Hopefully it will help all news organizations take more responsibility in their reporting). There's a difference between that and the deliberate fact spinning you tend to see in the pundit programs like Crossfire, Hardball or The O'Relly Factor.
Then we should also call for Fox News journalists' heads on platters, because they are trying to influence the presidential election just as much, and probably moreso than Dan Rather.
The key is the search for truth, and no news organization I've seen has completely done that, which is sad, because that's what true journalism is.
The problem today is that people don't want to be given information. They want to be given answers, thus the large number of "editorial" news programs (instead of "fact" news programs). Once people hear the answer they want, they don't listen anymore, and it takes tragedy and calamitous events to wake people up.
Because of this, I believe our democracy is on a downward spiral, and I'm not sure what it's going to take to send it back up...
Actually, voting for Bush will definitely knock the U.S. down futher in world power. His blind devotion to military conflict as a means for peace just creates more enemies and less respect. If that's not loss of power, I don't know what is.
Kerry on the other hand, is closer to Colin Powell, in that he understands the power of respect and the opportunities it provides for the spread of American ideals.
Put it this way: Would you rather follow a country that stood up for human rights, sought for peaceful resolutions to conflict, listened to all sides of the conversation (not necessarily following any of them, but *actively* listening to them) and fought against the roots of terrorism (poverty, hunger, disease, raping of the environment, overpopulation, lack of focus on secular education) as well as the terrorists themselves, or a country that rejects human rights, uses military means to end conflict, doesn't care what others' ideas are and focuses only on fighting the terrorists rather than the things that made them terrorists? Democracy and peace will spread far faster in the first case than in the second and that's what a vote for the Democratic ticket will provide.
BTW, Bush didn't turn the recession around (nor was Clinton responsible for the boom of the 90's). Those things are far beyond the control of most government actions. Market forces are the mostly the cause for recessions and turnarounds. The effort by the Federal Reserve in its management of interest rates has also affected things (You mean a government regulatory body can do good things? Fancy that? I thought all government meddling in market affairs was socialist crap.)
Nor is he the cause for a lack of terrorist attacks. There actually have been numerous attempts at carrying out attacks on US soil, but they have been thwarted either by the immediate actions of vigilant people (the shoe-bomber, for instance) or by law-enforcement agencies that have finally taken their heads out of the asses due to the realization of their incompetence pre-9/11. None of these things have had anything to do with Bush.
The only thing that bugs me about the ctrl+tab functionality, is that it doesn't mirror the alt+tab functionality of windows, where if you do an alt+tab to move to another window, release the alt button, then do another alt+tab you'll be back at the window you started with, i.e. it puts recently viewed windows next in your traversal list.
In Mozilla/Firefox, you have to cycle through all your open tabs to get back to the start. Releasing the ctrl button doesn't put the previously visited tabs next in your list of traversal.
Can... not... resist... Must... corrupt... HHGTTG quote...
"I refuse that Linux exists," says SCO, "for Linux denies Copyrights, and without Copyrights I am nothing."
"But," says Torvalds, "Open Source copyrights are a dead giveaway, aren't they? They could not have evolved by chance. In Linux they exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says SCO, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Torvalds, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed at the next zebra crossing.
Most leading software developers claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his best-selling book, 'Well That About Wraps It Up for SCO.'
And why wouldn't everything about us be based on our genetic makeup and the environment we live in? Every thought and action we take comes from our brain, which is composed of billions of neurons that are made up of cells encoded with the genes we get from our ancestors. Every thought we have in our brains is based on those neurons and also what we've learned over the years through study, logical thought processes and learning by example.
Being drunk affects your brain. It's a chemical reaction. There's nothing mysterious about that. If a chemical reaction affects your brain, it can affect your thinking processes and can make you do dumb things. Therefore, you can attribute some of your actions to the alcohol in your brain. What's so "quacky" about that? Sounds pretty straightforward to me.
Kids who come from families who sit on their asses all day are not as likely to develop a good work ethic as those who grow up having paper routes, trash/dishes/dog walking duties and the like. The environment we live in shapes us as human beings. If you take the kid out of the lazy family eary enough and put him/her in the working family, there will be a difference.
Drugs do have effects on behaviour. There are drugs that reduce the chemical dependency of drug addicts and alcoholics. There are drugs that decrease aggresiveness and short attention spans in children.
Psychological counseling also has a well documented history of helping countless people come to grips with past histories that have affected them in detrimental ways and allowed them to create better lives for themselves.
This stuff is not happening because of our culture. It's happening because that's who we are. We are made up of a bunch of chemical and electrical impulses that oftentimes come into serious conflict. That fact that most of us come out pretty much intact just goes to show how resilient human beings are to this conflict going on inside.
But we are not perfect, and sometimes things go poorly. And that is why it is necessary to explore all these possibilities of what makes us act and think the way we do.
It's not quack science. The only quackiness is from those who think that we are not affected by anything and are purely logical beings. It's just not true.
Sorry, bud, but your statement assumes feeling and thinking are mutually exclusive, which is one of the major problems with people today: the "either-or" attitude. Why can't people realize that the world is not black or white? It's a whole lot of gray. Guess what? People can be both conservative AND liberal.
That's why great leaders are the ones who can navigate the nuances of the world effectively and make informed decisions based on a whole wide range of vewpoints and facts, rather than making decisions based on what they want to hear.
No, please. I do not care to see any geek "muscle" of any sort, thank you very much.
...ahem...
I think there'd be a large surge in initial hits to the site, but they would quickly die off as visitors stopped "clicking their mice"
Worst. Site. Ever.
This must be someone's inside joke, right? Star Wars ROTS?
Oh, and rearrange the letters of "Sith" and see what you get. My sentiments exactly.
"Revenge of the SH***"
Who in their right mind would want to hack into the democratic convention? The only ones I can think of are Republicans, and we all know they never do anything illegal like that...
...by going to the bank and making a "withdrawal" for "1 MILL-ion Dollars" (in my best Dr. Evil voice)
"Starbucks of Topeka, Kansas? Starbucks #2046 of Topeka, Kansas?
"Err... Yes"
"You're a jerk, Starbucks. A real kneebiter."
Sorry, I have to speak up, because my wife is on Broadway... in a musical... a very cheesy musical, but also a very fun musical that brings lots of joy and entertainment to people looking for a good night out.
I can totally understand when someone says they don't like Broadway. There are definitely many parts of it that aren't "good." My wife actually dislikes parts of it too, mostly the parts related to the "disney-ification" of the musical genre and the corporate mentality of profit before quality, as well as the slowly eroding support of the actors and actresses by the big production companies (Disney, Clear Channel, etc.). But she has to live with both the bad and the good, otherwise she wouldn't be able to make a living.
However, that doesn't mean there aren't some real gems to find, including original, thought-provoking musicals that really do a good job of intertwining powerful music with good stories. Not everyone can make those kinds of musicals and plays, but they do happen.
So, I guess my question is, what is it that causes you to hate Broadway? I'm not asking because it hurts my feelings, because it doesn't. I'm just curious, because it was a pretty broad statement. It's similar to "I hate Linux" or "I hate Windows." There must be something specific you hate? Do you hate live theatre? Do you hate big musicals, big plays? Do you hate the cheese?
Now, that all being said, I will tell you that I met a guy a few weeks ago that is in this new musical and was also part of the auditioning process so he saw many of the people trying out for it. He's also a Python fan himself. He's not just some actor/comedian who's doing this for a paycheck. He's part of it because he loves the whole Python experience. And he said that most of the other people involved are also big Python fans. So, basically, this musical may be pretty good because it's being done by people who care. It's basically a bunch of Python geeks putting on a musical, with some original Python members involved in the direction. What true Python geek wouldn't be excited by this? Anyway, I'm looking forward to it. It may totally crash and burn, but I have my hopes...
Actually, I believe the NYT learned long ago to beef up their servers, since about 50% of slashdot stories link to them. I guess that just goes to show that the NYT actually has lots of stories that are of interest to geeks.
In related news...
A resident of Tibet by the name of Dug lah-sa Dams was reported to have screamed "Oh no, not again!" before being accidentally run over by a bus load of tourists. The driver of the bus, one Arthur Dent, originally from England, is being held for questioning.
This test is called the Pompous Bastard Test (PBT, for short) and it goes something like this:
First, count how many commas, semicolons or colons a writer uses in his sentences. Second, use the chart below to determine the writer's Pompous Bastard Quotient (PBQ):
x <= 1: Dubyass
1 < x <= 3: Normal
3 < x <= 6: Somewhat Cocky
6 < x: Pompous Bastard
Let's take a few examples from the above mentioned text:
"The struggle between Liberty and Authority is the most conspicuous feature in the portions of history with which we are earliest familiar, particularly in that of Greece, Rome, and England."
3 commas. Seems pretty Normal so far.
"THE subject of this Essay is not the so-called Liberty of the Will, so unfortunately opposed to the misnamed doctrine of Philosophical Necessity; but Civil, or Social Liberty: the nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual."
Ooooh, 4 commas (2 commas, 1 semicolon, 1 colon). Getting a little cocky here.
"It is so far from being new, that, in a certain sense, it has divided mankind, almost from the remotest ages, but in the stage of progress into which the more civilized portions of the species have now entered, it presents itself under new conditions, and requires a different and more fundamental treatment."
7 commas. Pompous Bastard. Could be a fluke.
"First, by obtaining a recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights, which it was to be regarded as a breach of duty in the ruler to infringe, and which, if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion, was held to be justifiable."
8 Freaking Commas. Wow, he really is a Pompous Bastard.
BTW, I'm not commenting on the content of the writer's work, just on his Pompousness; and whew, this guy, whether he knows it or not, is a real, God-damn, Pompous Bastard.
ooops.
...what Google needs? A "Was this result helpful in your search?" button for each link returned, so that the search itself also influences page ranks. Maybe that will help get rid of this Google bombing mess.
Yes, it is. Actually, let me clarify, it's what half of the U.S. stands for...
...route all traffic to www.slashdot.org and slash the dot.
Not really. Even if you're first to market, if you don't have the backing to cover the market, then any two-bit competitor *with* backing can take your idea and beat you over the head with it, grabbing up market share by producing in volume and killing you on the price point. You need patents to protect you from this type of scenario so that when they go and sell your idea at a better price than you, you still get something out of it.
...the correct response is:
"These are not the documents you're looking for. Move along."
Hey, that's nothing compared to Manhattan.
Many lanes of cars all traveling at a pretty good clip with about 2-3 feet of distance between them.
Painted lines exist, but no one cares about them. Why take up one lane when you can take up two?
Random pedestrians.
Cabs that suddenly stop right in front of you from a speed of 40mph after seeing someone hailing them.
Thank God I play video games, or I'd have been dead years ago.
...which is currently being done by carbon based lifeforms.
Ah, carbon based lifeforms. You are the weakest link. Goodbye!