I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Defense Secretary/Iran-Contra indictee Caspar Weinberger was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?
Hell, I thought Clinton bad enough that I wanted Bush to win in 2000. Horrible mistake. I ever bought his lies about the war enough tat I tepidly supported it.
But by 2004, I was volunterring for Kerry.
Why? Mostly because of Ashcroft and Gauntanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Let me state that again: in 2000 I was disgusted with Clinton and happy to see a Republican President. Never again.
In the five years Bush has been in office, I've seen our Constitution shredded, Madison's checks-and-balances blown away, a disastrous war and obscene war profiteering, growth of the Police State eclipsed only by massive deficits and new entitlement programs and corporate welfare and corruption, the destruction of an American city while Bush literally strummed a guitar, and the dismantling of government-funded science in favor of corporations and religious nuts.
Maybe you still don't get it: I shared most of your so-called conservative values: I was for small government, against nation-building, for lower taxes (during the Clinton years I had a good job, you see), against Washington corruption. I saw Dubya as a breath of fresh air.
It's not me who has changed. It's the Republican Party. They control all three branches of government, and yes taxes are lower, but the deficit is now nine billion dollars, government's gotten bigger and more corrupt, and it's listening into phone calls without getting warrants.
Now I see Dubya and most of the rest of the Republican Party as a threat to the future of this country.
Damned right I thought Clinton and Reno were wrong. But your Dubya's a total and unmitigated disaster on all fronts. Now I'd welcome Clinton back in a heartbeat, and so would half of my conservative friends.
State run enterprise is bloated, inefficient, expensive and a political football.
So was the Manhattan Project.
But that was literally a matter of life and death. Had the Nazis gotten the Atomic Bomb first, imagine the consequences.
In the case of global warming, we're faced with a environmental collapse that reasonable scientists believe could threaten the very existence of all human civilization on the globe.
An "expensive, inefficient" solution to that is infinitely preferable to no solution.
Comrade Lysenko believes in Michurianism, and Michurin believes in Lamarckism! So don't try to fool us with Darwin, the People's Science teaches that acquired traits can be inherited. It is by this inheritance of acquired traits that the Proletariat will triumph over the Bourgeois Revanchist "science"!
From the first link: Lysenko called Mendelian genetics "reactionary and decadent" and Mendelians or Darwinists "enemies of the Soviet people". It wasn't until 1965 that soviets were allowed to even begin to catch up in biology.
And when the Jewish scientists fled Nazi Germany, many came to America to work on the atomic bomb -- a bomb originally intended for use against Germany.
So as the Bush Administration and the Kansas school board repress honest science in America in favor of ideology and religion, ask yourself where we'll be in five or ten or fifty years.
Will any great biologists come out of Kansas if they need, at best, several semesters of remedial training to disabuse them of the lies of "Intelligent Design"? Will the breakthroughs in stem-cell research -- breakthroughs that could cure numerous diseases and extend human life for decades -- happen here, under the Christian eyes of Dr. Frist, or in freer and more open lands like India and Korea?
Or will that not matter at all, as global warming and environmental collapse literally drown America for the profit of the oil companies?
For a hundred years or more, America has been at the forefront of scientific research and development. Scientific leadership has been a pillar supporting our country's wealth and power. Will you let that pillar be chopped down so a few plutocrats can profit while science-hating fundamentalists cheer?
In the next several elections, you'll be voting not just for Representatives or a President -- you'll be voting on the future, or the future decline, of your country. Will you emulate the courage of Dr. Hansen, or will you surrender to an American Lysenkoism of ignorance, ideologically-fettered science, and superstition?
I'd say it is highly likely that evolution has slowed down over the past couple of hundred years. As we learn to treat more and more genetic diseases, less pressure is placed on removing those genes.
Humans were not optimally adapted, by life on the African savannah, to controlling several tons of vehicle attaining speeds in excess of sixty miles an hour.
While not all motor vehicle accidents can be avoided by the victim, it seems likely that genes for reaction time, eyesight, and especially risk-taking vs. risk avoidance may play some role in determining differential likelihoods of being involved in a fatal motor vehicle accident.
So I would expect that evolution continues to work.
"a huge, mysterious old house with lots of long halls, secret bookcases, dark closets and creaky doors that, when you peer behind them, reveal wonderful secrets."
Yeah, they perfectly emulate Microsoft Excel charts: you get to click around with the mouse, hoping you'll hit the magic spot to get the context menu for the attribute you want. "Ok, X-axis. Last time it I clicked here and then here. I mean here, wait over here." There's not even a damned menu that shows all the options.
Whereas, with gnuplot I get no GUI but reproducible results from a simple text file. With gnuplot, I can set the colors, I can set the output size, I can specify the output format. No magic, no "secret bookcases." And I can pipe the data from other processes.
What I want to know is why Slashdot is posting unsubstatiated rants from leftist sites, instead of news for nerds.
Senator McCarthy, the only answer can be, Slashdot's been infiltrated by Communists, I mean, terrorists. Only America-haters believe in free discussion.
Military commanders are worried about troop morale, and will intervene to keep whatever they consider disruptive away.
You mean like Rumsfeld, who dismisses requests for adequate body armor by telling the troops, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want?"
1. By all companies that rent server space moving out of New Jersey. 2. By all websites that allow users to post putting "Persons located in New Jersey are not permitted to comment, because your state's legislators are fools. By hitting submit, I affirm I am not currently located in the State of New Jersey" beside every submit button.
MR. JUSTICE Hugo Black, writing for the Supreme Court of the United States in Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960), declaring unconstitutional a California ordinance requiring that handbills and pamphlets be signed:
Anonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind. Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all. The obnoxious press licensing law of England, which was also enforced on the Colonies was due in part to the knowledge that exposure of the names of printers, writers and distributors would lessen the circulation of literature critical of the government. The old seditious libel cases in England show the lengths to which government had to go to find out who was responsible for books that were obnoxious [362 U.S. 60, 65] to the rulers. John Lilburne was whipped, pilloried and fined for refusing to answer questions designed to get evidence to convict him or someone else for the secret distribution of books in England. Two Puritan Ministers, John Penry and John Udal, were sentenced to death on charges that they were responsible for writing, printing or publishing books. 6 Before the Revolutionary War colonial patriots frequently had to conceal their authorship or distribution of literature that easily could have brought down on them prosecutions by English-controlled courts. Along about that time the Letters of Junius were written and the identity of their author is unknown to this day. Even the Federalist Papers, written in favor of the adoption of our Constitution, were published under fictitious names. It is plain that anonymity has sometimes been assumed for the most constructive purposes.
We have recently had occasion to hold in two cases that there are times and circumstances when States may not compel members of groups engaged in the dissemination of ideas to be publicly identified. Bates v. Little Rock, 361 U.S. 516 ; N. A. A. C. P. v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462 . The reason for those holdings was that identification and fear of reprisal might deter perfectly peaceful discussions of public matters of importance. This broad Los Angeles ordinance is subject to the same infirmity. We hold that it, like the Griffin, Georgia, ordinance, is void on its face. [362 U.S. 60, 66]
Of course, the Court's membership isn't the same as it was in 1960. The President can appoint who he wants to the Supreme Court. So, who'd you vote for, for president, in 2004?
I simply could not abide the prospect of skinning even one more level-10 boar.
But, but...
It was for the boar-skinning that I signed up!
Nothing beats sitting in the comfort of my mom's basement, skinning virtual boar! Every day, I thank God that I live in an age when the delights of boar-skinning can be achieved so readily.
I'm betting they were monitoring the library computers for anything that might pop a red flag.
By random shoulder surfing???
Look, even if you support this Big Brotherism, how in hell do you think looking over the shoulder of patrons is going to find "the terrorist" looking at a bomb-making page?
It's not efficient, there aren't enough Homeland Security officers to look over every shoulder, so unless you think they can just shadow brown people in turbans -- and Tim McVeigh was neither brown nor a turban wearer, was he? -- this just wouldn't work.
Not to mention that any semi-bright terrorist isn't going to be googling "How to Build a Bomb" in a library.
This has nothing to do with "Homeland Security". (And can we please get rid of that Nazi-esque phrase? Since when have we referred to the U.S. as our "Homeland"?)
This is all about social control, about conditioning free American citizens to shut up and do what they're told when any clown in a Homeland security cap tells them what no do, no matter how ridiculous the order.
It's this training us to be docile Russians fearful of our own KGB that is destroying this country, far far far more effectively than the terrorists. the terrorists can only kill 3000 Americans at a time. This crap takes the freedom of 300 million Americans at a single blow.
WAKE UP AMERICA! Your fear is being used to enslave you. Did George Washington let any fool in a Homeland security cap tell him to take off his shoes to prove they weren't bombs? Did Sam Houston? Did Robert E. Lee? Did Teddy Roosevelt?
Wake the fuck up: out of fear of "terrorism" you've given up your rights and your balls and you act like a bunch of scared little girls.
Savio's "crime" was, ironically, leading the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. We'd do well to remember today 0Savio's words then:
There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even tacitly take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears, and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus. And you've got to make it stop.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm just glad Ballmer isn't competing with Jonas Salk -- his kids would never get vacinated against polio.
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - Defense Secretary/Iran-Contra indictee Caspar Weinberger was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
One has to wonder what the context of such an odd "video" would be...
Lotta reefer, coke, and disco back in the '70s, maaaaaan. Not that I can remember any of it, anymore.
It's been done before, and by no less than Leonard "Spock" Nimoy and a chorus of overly-wholesome '70s fly-girls
But honestly, how many people griping about Bush/Ashcroft today thought that Clinton/Reno were A-OK?
Hell, I thought Clinton bad enough that I wanted Bush to win in 2000. Horrible mistake. I ever bought his lies about the war enough tat I tepidly supported it.
But by 2004, I was volunterring for Kerry.
Why? Mostly because of Ashcroft and Gauntanamo and Abu Ghraib.
Let me state that again: in 2000 I was disgusted with Clinton and happy to see a Republican President. Never again.
In the five years Bush has been in office, I've seen our Constitution shredded, Madison's checks-and-balances blown away, a disastrous war and obscene war profiteering, growth of the Police State eclipsed only by massive deficits and new entitlement programs and corporate welfare and corruption, the destruction of an American city while Bush literally strummed a guitar, and the dismantling of government-funded science in favor of corporations and religious nuts.
Maybe you still don't get it: I shared most of your so-called conservative values: I was for small government, against nation-building, for lower taxes (during the Clinton years I had a good job, you see), against Washington corruption. I saw Dubya as a breath of fresh air.
It's not me who has changed. It's the Republican Party. They control all three branches of government, and yes taxes are lower, but the deficit is now nine billion dollars, government's gotten bigger and more corrupt, and it's listening into phone calls without getting warrants.
Now I see Dubya and most of the rest of the Republican Party as a threat to the future of this country.
Damned right I thought Clinton and Reno were wrong. But your Dubya's a total and unmitigated disaster on all fronts. Now I'd welcome Clinton back in a heartbeat, and so would half of my conservative friends.
State run enterprise is bloated, inefficient, expensive and a political football.
So was the Manhattan Project.
But that was literally a matter of life and death. Had the Nazis gotten the Atomic Bomb first, imagine the consequences.
In the case of global warming, we're faced with a environmental collapse that reasonable scientists believe could threaten the very existence of all human civilization on the globe.
An "expensive, inefficient" solution to that is infinitely preferable to no solution.
Comrade Lysenko believes in Michurianism, and Michurin believes in Lamarckism! So don't try to fool us with Darwin, the People's Science teaches that acquired traits can be inherited. It is by this inheritance of acquired traits that the Proletariat will triumph over the Bourgeois Revanchist "science"!
We will win with out half-human, half-ape battalions! (Seriously, the Soviets really did try to breed human-ape crosses for "super-soldiers".)
From the first link: Lysenko called Mendelian genetics "reactionary and decadent" and Mendelians or Darwinists "enemies of the Soviet people". It wasn't until 1965 that soviets were allowed to even begin to catch up in biology.
The Nazis proposed their own "German Science" in reaction to what they called the "Jewish Science" of, among others, Albert Einstein and (the ironically non-Jewish) Werner Heisenberg. The "Jewish Science" was nothing other than modern physics, of course.
And when the Jewish scientists fled Nazi Germany, many came to America to work on the atomic bomb -- a bomb originally intended for use against Germany.
So as the Bush Administration and the Kansas school board repress honest science in America in favor of ideology and religion, ask yourself where we'll be in five or ten or fifty years.
Will any great biologists come out of Kansas if they need, at best, several semesters of remedial training to disabuse them of the lies of "Intelligent Design"? Will the breakthroughs in stem-cell research -- breakthroughs that could cure numerous diseases and extend human life for decades -- happen here, under the Christian eyes of Dr. Frist, or in freer and more open lands like India and Korea?
Or will that not matter at all, as global warming and environmental collapse literally drown America for the profit of the oil companies?
For a hundred years or more, America has been at the forefront of scientific research and development. Scientific leadership has been a pillar supporting our country's wealth and power. Will you let that pillar be chopped down so a few plutocrats can profit while science-hating fundamentalists cheer?
In the next several elections, you'll be voting not just for Representatives or a President -- you'll be voting on the future, or the future decline, of your country. Will you emulate the courage of Dr. Hansen, or will you surrender to an American Lysenkoism of ignorance, ideologically-fettered science, and superstition?
I'd say it is highly likely that evolution has slowed down over the past couple of hundred years. As we learn to treat more and more genetic diseases, less pressure is placed on removing those genes.
On those genes, maybe.
In 2002, there were 845.3 deaths per 100,000 people.
14.94 of those were fatalities due to motor vehicle crashes.
Humans were not optimally adapted, by life on the African savannah, to controlling several tons of vehicle attaining speeds in excess of sixty miles an hour.
While not all motor vehicle accidents can be avoided by the victim, it seems likely that genes for reaction time, eyesight, and especially risk-taking vs. risk avoidance may play some role in determining differential likelihoods of being involved in a fatal motor vehicle accident.
So I would expect that evolution continues to work.
you get to click around with the mouse, hoping you'll hit the magic spot
Like Stan searching for the clitoris in the South Park movie.
"a huge, mysterious old house with lots of long halls, secret bookcases, dark closets and creaky doors that, when you peer behind them, reveal wonderful secrets."
Yeah, they perfectly emulate Microsoft Excel charts: you get to click around with the mouse, hoping you'll hit the magic spot to get the context menu for the attribute you want. "Ok, X-axis. Last time it I clicked here and then here. I mean here, wait over here." There's not even a damned menu that shows all the options.
Whereas, with gnuplot I get no GUI but reproducible results from a simple text file. With gnuplot, I can set the colors, I can set the output size, I can specify the output format. No magic, no "secret bookcases." And I can pipe the data from other processes.
gnuplot wins for anything serious.
What I want to know is why Slashdot is posting unsubstatiated rants from leftist sites, instead of news for nerds.
Senator McCarthy, the only answer can be, Slashdot's been infiltrated by Communists, I mean, terrorists. Only America-haters believe in free discussion.
Military commanders are worried about troop morale, and will intervene to keep whatever they consider disruptive away.
You mean like Rumsfeld, who dismisses requests for adequate body armor by telling the troops, "You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you want?"
Now that's a morale-booster.
You see, what you fail to understand is that some sacrifices must be made in defense of our freedom. Sacrifices of our freedom.
Yeah, like in Vietnam, where we had to destroy villages in order to save them.
The Bush Administration is gonna protect freedom just like it protected New Orleans.
And this will be enforced... how?
1. By all companies that rent server space moving out of New Jersey.
2. By all websites that allow users to post putting "Persons located in New Jersey are not permitted to comment, because your state's legislators are fools. By hitting submit, I affirm I am not currently located in the State of New Jersey" beside every submit button.
Of course, the Court's membership isn't the same as it was in 1960. The President can appoint who he wants to the Supreme Court. So, who'd you vote for, for president, in 2004?
I simply could not abide the prospect of skinning even one more level-10 boar.
But, but...
It was for the boar-skinning that I signed up!
Nothing beats sitting in the comfort of my mom's basement, skinning virtual boar! Every day, I thank God that I live in an age when the delights of boar-skinning can be achieved so readily.
Actually, I've found you can verbalize what's wrong with IE quite easily:
works pretty effectively.
Also effective:
And the closer:
So how much of a premium will I pay to buy one on eBay?
I'm betting they were monitoring the library computers for anything that might pop a red flag.
By random shoulder surfing???
Look, even if you support this Big Brotherism, how in hell do you think looking over the shoulder of patrons is going to find "the terrorist" looking at a bomb-making page?
It's not efficient, there aren't enough Homeland Security officers to look over every shoulder, so unless you think they can just shadow brown people in turbans -- and Tim McVeigh was neither brown nor a turban wearer, was he? -- this just wouldn't work.
Not to mention that any semi-bright terrorist isn't going to be googling "How to Build a Bomb" in a library.
This has nothing to do with "Homeland Security". (And can we please get rid of that Nazi-esque phrase? Since when have we referred to the U.S. as our "Homeland"?)
This is all about social control, about conditioning free American citizens to shut up and do what they're told when any clown in a Homeland security cap tells them what no do, no matter how ridiculous the order.
It's this training us to be docile Russians fearful of our own KGB that is destroying this country, far far far more effectively than the terrorists. the terrorists can only kill 3000 Americans at a time. This crap takes the freedom of 300 million Americans at a single blow.
WAKE UP AMERICA! Your fear is being used to enslave you. Did George Washington let any fool in a Homeland security cap tell him to take off his shoes to prove they weren't bombs? Did Sam Houston? Did Robert E. Lee? Did Teddy Roosevelt?
Wake the fuck up: out of fear of "terrorism" you've given up your rights and your balls and you act like a bunch of scared little girls.
AMERICANS, YOU'VE BECOME GIANT PUSSIES.
MMORPGs generally don't have a win condition either.
Not true!
First player to stop playing MMORGs, successfully escape his mother's basement, and get a real girlfriend wins.
Unfortunately, the winners are very few....
Bonus points if you hit the lawyer :)
"Fuck yourself," said the man who is a heartbeat from the presidency.
If you browse smartly, you won't be hit, even when you use IE.
Yeah, let's bet on smart in a country where GDubya won a majority of the vote.
Negative yet again. Damn I might as well stop and start downloading some mp3s...
Or organizing a protest against Diebold voting machines or George W. Bush.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!
No, but it'll sure help keep the lid on political dissent, won't it?
Portions of this have already begun: the data mining only extends prior government watching of the web for "terrorists" like the ACLU. But not for political speech, of course. Never that.
So shut your mouth and shut down your blog and stop commenting here if you don't want to end up on a list of people to be "neutralized" -- like Mario Savio, hounded for ten years despite never breaking a law.
Savio's "crime" was, ironically, leading the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. We'd do well to remember today 0Savio's words then:
Any nasty hobbitses?