Er, I expect the title will be, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Lost Biowarfare.
Other favourites include (but are not limited too):-
Indian Jones and the Raiders of the Pension Fund
Indian Jones and the Sanatogen of Doom
Indian Jones and the Lost Slippers
What is it with locks on baggage anyway? If someone wants to get in the locks aren't going to offer any serious deterrent or inconvenience anyway.
If I was a sticky fingered baggage handler, and as it happens I'm neither, I'd concentrate on the bags with locks anyway, as it would seem like a sign saying "Stuff worth nicking in here"!
I'm sorry, but the reality is that Linux pales in comparison to Windows with regards to user friendliness.
You hear a lot of people saying this and I just don't think it's true. I've recently acquired a laptop for my mother (that's a good swap - stop it!) and she has never used a computer of any sort. Well, Windows is the obvious choice as it's so intuitive and user friendly says I. This is a myth that is cleverly enforced by the whole Windows GUI "Style Guide" meaning that most Windows apps have a similar "look and feel". If you've used Windows before it is indeed intuitive and user friendly. For the new user, however, it simply isn't!
Why is it then that Windows "power users" (for want of a better term) used to use the short-cut keys to accomplish most tasks rather than using the mouse - this was of course back in the day when every command available to the mouse had an associated key, or set of keys, to perform the same function from the keyboard.
With a command line, you just need to know what command to issue whereas with a Windows interface you need to know the command (ie which button to click, which box to tick) but you also need to know where to go to issue the command.
When trying to show my mum how to use the PC she is making notes. Does she have to draw each stupid window with some means of signifying which bit she has to click on? It obviously doesn't help that she's scared of the thing, like most people of her generation - a teacher at school when "computers" first arrived used to teach us kids how it all worked, and he spent most of the lesson telling us to stop pressing buttons and trying things. He offered a similar course to the other teachers and he found it hard to get them to even touch the computers at all!
I, personally, hate windows. It frustrates me enormously that I can't just issue a command to achieve what I want. Many of the more esoteric, and therefore useful, features of windows are hidden away down through a myriad of different pull down menus, select item, advanced button, select from multiple tabs, another advanced button, more damn tabs, more buttons - it's a nightmare! Aaaaaarrrggghhhh!
But I still got her a windows machine! Perhaps that says it all!
The green-ness or white-ness of IE 7 won't be playing much of a role in my decision to go forward.
I think the problem here is that most internet users are not quite as savvy as you or I, or indeed as the average Slashdot reader, and they almost certainly will look upon GREEN as meaning Good, and not-GREEN as therefore BAD. This is likely to reduce sales to non-GREEN websites and that doesn't seem fair!
The other issue of MicroSnoop also seeing all the websites that are visited is a secondary, and perhaps equally important, issue from the privacy standpoint.
What I'd like to know is who voted for MicroSleuth to be the guardian of all that is right and good on the Internet, and isn't it rather odd that they, of all people, should be undertaking this role!
That's a good point, and we are at that stage with our exploration of the solar system now. We will need such trips to help assemble/test the Mars Orbital Platform (for example), because it's likely that it will require some hands on experience, though it would be great if most could be done remotely. But what we don't want is to continue to have to ferry all our goods in the one type of vehicle.
Now we move around the Earth in a vast array of different craft. Huge ocean going vessels ship containerloads of goods from continent to continent at relatively slow speeds. Airliners buzz back and forth with mostly people, but also time-sensetive goods.
Why not have large, slow, space ships that use gravity assist etc to take the most economically viable route to Mars, and smaller (safer!) ships to buzz back and forth with people and emergency provisions? We are also not in the same situation as those original explorers, in that we pretty much know what we want to do. We're not "exploring" so much as just travelling. We know what's there (in broad-brush terms), we just want to colonise!
The way I look at it is that this is presumably all a trial run for Mars. I'd suggest (and have suggested) that we should start with an orbital platform around Earth to allow specialist craft to ply their trade between the platform and Earth. It does make sense to then try out some habitats on the Moon before we go for Mars, but before we land on Mars we should build an orbital platform for Mars too. This would be a copy of the Earth platform, with whatever improvements have been discovered from the Earth version. This would then act as the first backup point for the Mars landing. The Mars orbit to ground craft might be similar to the Earth Orbit to ground craft, which would be another set of tried and tested machines. Earth to Mars would be a scaled up version of the Earth to Moon craft we've already used, and they would run back and forth suppling the Mars Orbital Platform with supplies to be ferried down to the surface as needed/convenient.
In the event of a problem on Mars, safety would only be in orbit rather than having to get all the way back to Earth. The various craft would be specifically built for a single job rather than having to be capable of everything. All the parts would be tested closer to Earth before we need to rely on them for Mars. I'd probably put a bunch of GPS and Comms satalites around Mars first too - after all, we're actually pretty good at them now!
I'm curious to learn how a performance of this material could be prevented.
... and I'm curious to know how that has any relevance to the legality of performing it? Indeed, coming at this from the other end, if it were possible to prevent "things" from happening there'd be no need to make it illegal in the first place!
But then you'd have to take a break from your complaining, I suppose.
Point taken. The problem I have is that I don't like messing about with msconfig 'cos I really don't know what I'm doing. In much the same way as I don't like opening my PC and messing about inside. [OK... Geek card revoked!]
As it happens I have spent some time, on a number of occasions, trying to stop Quicktime from pre-loading and I couldn't find which of the myriad of menus and pop ups and pull downs had the option aluded to in other replies, so I emailed Apple and got no response. I even removed it using msconfig once, then it got re-loaded and there were two entries in msconfig. Aaaargh! Why should it assume I want stuff pre-loaded. Most people are NOT going to want stuff pre-loaded. If they are clever enough to know what it means and be able to make a reasoned choice of which apps they want pre-loaded then they can set it up themselves, otherwise leave it alone!
Luckily, my Dell needs XP re-installed on a regular basis so I get to clean it up every few months.
You must have over ten programs starting up when you log in.
That's what chaffs my crack! Stuff like Apple Quicktime that eventually you have to instal to watch something and from then on, ever after, you have to wait whilst the thing starts up at boot time and leaves it's icon in the RH menu bar tray. You can go to the registry and uninstall it, sure, but you can't tell it not to start up at boot! Why can't it just start up when it's needed? It should be my choice what apps I have running from the get-go because I want them to start quickly because it is important to me. I emailed the Apple Quicktime people to ask them how to have the app installed so I can use it periodically, but not to have it pre-load (or whatever the operation is called). No response! Actually, I had a better opinion of Apple before that. In truth, it sucks. Apple should know better!
If there's anyone out there from Apple reading this, here's your opportunity to get it sorted out!
FYI: My Dell starts up (to login screen) pretty quickly - 15 secs or so - but my Sony laptop takes an absolute age because I haven't had to reinstall XP twice in the last 6 month on my laptop! I am so disenchanted with Dell, I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it!
I don't know how you can easily close that loophole, but this is essentially a denial-of-service attack, and the courts should never tolerate being used as a weapon. They are there to judge on matters of law, they are not there as a cheap alternative to hiring a hitman.)
I've been seeing the litigation society building up momentum in the UK now (TV adverts "Have you had an accident") for quite a while, but I'd not thought about it in those terms. Quite an eye opener, for which, many thanks.
Maybe the courts should be able to decide that the plaintiff was using the court case specifically to punish the defendant, knowing (or having a reasonable idea) that the defendant would not be found guilty, and therefore be allowed to charge for its services as "punishor". This money could be split between the (innocent) defendant and the court to cover court costs.
Someone told me that running a court (in the UK) costs £1000 an hour (google didn't confirm this though!) and that is the tax payer's money, so why should people be able to use the courts as their pet school-yard bully!
No Worries. It was actually a mate of mine who put me onto it, and as you can see from my sig he's one of the artists. It was actually quite difficult to post the link without making a direct reference to him and his account, though I did leave my sig as is! Extra prize for working out which of his "believers" is me!
If you like well crafted songs with bits of violin/cello and a couple of backing vocalists, do check Daniel Ward-Murphy out - he's about No 6 in the top ten at the moment, or use the link in my sig.
The notion that a double negative is a positive belongs to logic, not English.
I sort of get what you are trying to say, but I'm not sure you can make the distinction, as the meaning is pretty clear.
If nobody gets no dollars it is both logic, and the clear English in which it is written, that dictates that everyone must get some dollars.
True. But if it's a tall building it is going to piss fewer people off to have (ugly) solar panels or even a windmill, and with more people to chip in with the initial costs it perhaps makes it more affordable for the community.
So you're saying that you could get ten million people to invest ten dollars, sight unseen, into a movie, for the eventual hope that they'll possibly like it? Do you think a business model like that would genuinely fly? We have enough trouble just getting people to donate money to people who really need it, let alone to people who just want to create entertainment/art/whatever. The entire idea is completely against human nature.
Musical artists put up some songs and if you like them you can buy "parts" in their next album. Once $50000 is reached (and one band has reached it and another is half way there) the money it used to record the album with a good producer in a good studio. Seems to be working fine!
There isn't a "Sellafilm" yet, but it's the same model! A named director with a short description of the story, perhaps named actors and proposed budget. Might work a treat!
I think you'll find that if nobody gets no dollars then everyone must get some dollars. Either that or English teachers have been lying through their teeth for generations!
I'm not a mathetician, but as, in general, any number divided by itself is one (eg 1/1=1, 1234/1234=1, 0.5/0.5=1, etc) it would seem far more sensible if zero divided by zero was also 1.
... it's stupid as far as, for example, people in a high-rise apartment block are concerned.
Living in a high rise apartment block (AKA a block of flats over here in the UK) they are presumably paying some service charge to run the building. Why not put some solar cells, maybe a windmill, on the roof and have it generate electricity to put back in the grid and hence earn some money towards the service charge?
Maybe use that money to help install broadband for all the apartments and offset the cost? There's always something that can usefully be done.
Nobody batted an eyelid when I checked in or boarded.
I'm laughing about this, but I'm crying inside! If enough "terrorists" just tried to scam their way onto flights _some_ of them would make it regardless of what Security Theatre measures were in place, which just makes the whole exercise a waste of time and money!
... and why have we been saddled with all these illusions of security? Because we (the public) think the Government ought to "do something about it", and the Gov, with one eye on getting re-elected, are more than happy to oblige, especially as it allows them to increase their powers over us.
So the saddest thing of all is that we asked them to do it!
But seriously, if a terrorist wanted to blow up an airport, do you honestly think he would spend the hundreds of dollars building a bomb, and then balk at the $80 for a plane ticket? Hell, he could even steal a boarding pass from someone else. Seriously, requiring boarding passes to get into the gate area only serves to give people a false sense of security. It would not be an obstacle for anyone who wants to actually do harm.
As with most of the security changes imposed on air travel it is all mostly illusion, or as some other Slashdot poster called it "Security Theatre". If you make life difficult for the average travelor they will assume it makes life equally difficult for terrorists. Unfortunately, this just isn't true!
What I don't understand is if Osama and his cohorts are so dead set against us (ie The West) and he has armies of suicide jockeys all raring to go, then why aren't there 'planes falling out of the sky all around us. Why are shopping centres (malls) not blowing up? Trains, buses, garages, boats, ships. They could be instilling real terror on a daily basis but they're not! Hell, even failed attempts to blow up stuff would instil terror as it would confirm that they are still trying! It doesn't make any sense, unless they're simply not as powerful as we are being led to believe, in which case why are the politicians still trying to take away our freedoms?
If we are no longer America we are no longer on the right side of the struggle.
er... what? I suspect that part of the reason that "some people" around the world have become, shall we say, unhappy with America is because of the widely held belief around the world that Americans really think that way!
I suspect (hope!) that you didn't mean it the way it was written, or at least the way I read it. America is not blameless in this respect, and whilst America's aims for their Foreign Policy may have been noble the methods may not have been!
I'm not suggesting that America (or "The West") deserved or deserves the attacks because that would be a ludicrous position, but America should wake up, or wise up, or maybe just grow up. Just because you're the biggest kid in the playground doesn't automatically mean that everything you do is right, and it's generally OK to make mistakes if you are big enough, mature enough even, to admit to them and try to put them right.
Slashdot Mirror
Other favourites include (but are not limited too) :-
Indian Jones and the Raiders of the Pension Fund
Indian Jones and the Sanatogen of Doom
Indian Jones and the Lost Slippers
I take it you don't live in the UK then. More likely they got counselling and a nice holiday somewhere warm!
If I was a sticky fingered baggage handler, and as it happens I'm neither, I'd concentrate on the bags with locks anyway, as it would seem like a sign saying "Stuff worth nicking in here"!
You hear a lot of people saying this and I just don't think it's true. I've recently acquired a laptop for my mother (that's a good swap - stop it!) and she has never used a computer of any sort. Well, Windows is the obvious choice as it's so intuitive and user friendly says I. This is a myth that is cleverly enforced by the whole Windows GUI "Style Guide" meaning that most Windows apps have a similar "look and feel". If you've used Windows before it is indeed intuitive and user friendly. For the new user, however, it simply isn't!
Why is it then that Windows "power users" (for want of a better term) used to use the short-cut keys to accomplish most tasks rather than using the mouse - this was of course back in the day when every command available to the mouse had an associated key, or set of keys, to perform the same function from the keyboard.
With a command line, you just need to know what command to issue whereas with a Windows interface you need to know the command (ie which button to click, which box to tick) but you also need to know where to go to issue the command.
When trying to show my mum how to use the PC she is making notes. Does she have to draw each stupid window with some means of signifying which bit she has to click on? It obviously doesn't help that she's scared of the thing, like most people of her generation - a teacher at school when "computers" first arrived used to teach us kids how it all worked, and he spent most of the lesson telling us to stop pressing buttons and trying things. He offered a similar course to the other teachers and he found it hard to get them to even touch the computers at all!
I, personally, hate windows. It frustrates me enormously that I can't just issue a command to achieve what I want. Many of the more esoteric, and therefore useful, features of windows are hidden away down through a myriad of different pull down menus, select item, advanced button, select from multiple tabs, another advanced button, more damn tabs, more buttons - it's a nightmare! Aaaaaarrrggghhhh!
But I still got her a windows machine! Perhaps that says it all!
I had to think about that one quite caerphilly.
I think the problem here is that most internet users are not quite as savvy as you or I, or indeed as the average Slashdot reader, and they almost certainly will look upon GREEN as meaning Good, and not-GREEN as therefore BAD. This is likely to reduce sales to non-GREEN websites and that doesn't seem fair!
The other issue of MicroSnoop also seeing all the websites that are visited is a secondary, and perhaps equally important, issue from the privacy standpoint.
What I'd like to know is who voted for MicroSleuth to be the guardian of all that is right and good on the Internet, and isn't it rather odd that they, of all people, should be undertaking this role!
Now we move around the Earth in a vast array of different craft. Huge ocean going vessels ship containerloads of goods from continent to continent at relatively slow speeds. Airliners buzz back and forth with mostly people, but also time-sensetive goods.
Why not have large, slow, space ships that use gravity assist etc to take the most economically viable route to Mars, and smaller (safer!) ships to buzz back and forth with people and emergency provisions? We are also not in the same situation as those original explorers, in that we pretty much know what we want to do. We're not "exploring" so much as just travelling. We know what's there (in broad-brush terms), we just want to colonise!
In the event of a problem on Mars, safety would only be in orbit rather than having to get all the way back to Earth. The various craft would be specifically built for a single job rather than having to be capable of everything. All the parts would be tested closer to Earth before we need to rely on them for Mars. I'd probably put a bunch of GPS and Comms satalites around Mars first too - after all, we're actually pretty good at them now!
Point taken. The problem I have is that I don't like messing about with msconfig 'cos I really don't know what I'm doing. In much the same way as I don't like opening my PC and messing about inside. [OK ... Geek card revoked!]
As it happens I have spent some time, on a number of occasions, trying to stop Quicktime from pre-loading and I couldn't find which of the myriad of menus and pop ups and pull downs had the option aluded to in other replies, so I emailed Apple and got no response. I even removed it using msconfig once, then it got re-loaded and there were two entries in msconfig. Aaaargh! Why should it assume I want stuff pre-loaded. Most people are NOT going to want stuff pre-loaded. If they are clever enough to know what it means and be able to make a reasoned choice of which apps they want pre-loaded then they can set it up themselves, otherwise leave it alone!
Luckily, my Dell needs XP re-installed on a regular basis so I get to clean it up every few months.
Man, I really hate PCs!
That's what chaffs my crack! Stuff like Apple Quicktime that eventually you have to instal to watch something and from then on, ever after, you have to wait whilst the thing starts up at boot time and leaves it's icon in the RH menu bar tray. You can go to the registry and uninstall it, sure, but you can't tell it not to start up at boot! Why can't it just start up when it's needed? It should be my choice what apps I have running from the get-go because I want them to start quickly because it is important to me. I emailed the Apple Quicktime people to ask them how to have the app installed so I can use it periodically, but not to have it pre-load (or whatever the operation is called). No response! Actually, I had a better opinion of Apple before that. In truth, it sucks. Apple should know better!
If there's anyone out there from Apple reading this, here's your opportunity to get it sorted out!
FYI: My Dell starts up (to login screen) pretty quickly - 15 secs or so - but my Sony laptop takes an absolute age because I haven't had to reinstall XP twice in the last 6 month on my laptop! I am so disenchanted with Dell, I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it!
I've been seeing the litigation society building up momentum in the UK now (TV adverts "Have you had an accident") for quite a while, but I'd not thought about it in those terms. Quite an eye opener, for which, many thanks.
Maybe the courts should be able to decide that the plaintiff was using the court case specifically to punish the defendant, knowing (or having a reasonable idea) that the defendant would not be found guilty, and therefore be allowed to charge for its services as "punishor". This money could be split between the (innocent) defendant and the court to cover court costs.
Someone told me that running a court (in the UK) costs £1000 an hour (google didn't confirm this though!) and that is the tax payer's money, so why should people be able to use the courts as their pet school-yard bully!
If you like well crafted songs with bits of violin/cello and a couple of backing vocalists, do check Daniel Ward-Murphy out - he's about No 6 in the top ten at the moment, or use the link in my sig.
I sort of get what you are trying to say, but I'm not sure you can make the distinction, as the meaning is pretty clear.
If nobody gets no dollars it is both logic, and the clear English in which it is written, that dictates that everyone must get some dollars.
*cough* Sellaband *cough*
Musical artists put up some songs and if you like them you can buy "parts" in their next album. Once $50000 is reached (and one band has reached it and another is half way there) the money it used to record the album with a good producer in a good studio. Seems to be working fine!
There isn't a "Sellafilm" yet, but it's the same model! A named director with a short description of the story, perhaps named actors and proposed budget. Might work a treat!
I think you'll find that if nobody gets no dollars then everyone must get some dollars. Either that or English teachers have been lying through their teeth for generations!
Living in a high rise apartment block (AKA a block of flats over here in the UK) they are presumably paying some service charge to run the building. Why not put some solar cells, maybe a windmill, on the roof and have it generate electricity to put back in the grid and hence earn some money towards the service charge?
Maybe use that money to help install broadband for all the apartments and offset the cost? There's always something that can usefully be done.
I, for one, welcome our new foul mouthed, swearing like a wounded pirate, robot overlords ... er ... or something?
Actually, I suspect that a ladybird needs a levitator like a fish needs an aqualung, but I get your drift.
I'm laughing about this, but I'm crying inside! If enough "terrorists" just tried to scam their way onto flights _some_ of them would make it regardless of what Security Theatre measures were in place, which just makes the whole exercise a waste of time and money!
So the saddest thing of all is that we asked them to do it!
As with most of the security changes imposed on air travel it is all mostly illusion, or as some other Slashdot poster called it "Security Theatre". If you make life difficult for the average travelor they will assume it makes life equally difficult for terrorists. Unfortunately, this just isn't true!
What I don't understand is if Osama and his cohorts are so dead set against us (ie The West) and he has armies of suicide jockeys all raring to go, then why aren't there 'planes falling out of the sky all around us. Why are shopping centres (malls) not blowing up? Trains, buses, garages, boats, ships. They could be instilling real terror on a daily basis but they're not! Hell, even failed attempts to blow up stuff would instil terror as it would confirm that they are still trying! It doesn't make any sense, unless they're simply not as powerful as we are being led to believe, in which case why are the politicians still trying to take away our freedoms?
er ... what? I suspect that part of the reason that "some people" around the world have become, shall we say, unhappy with America is because of the widely held belief around the world that Americans really think that way!
I suspect (hope!) that you didn't mean it the way it was written, or at least the way I read it. America is not blameless in this respect, and whilst America's aims for their Foreign Policy may have been noble the methods may not have been!
I'm not suggesting that America (or "The West") deserved or deserves the attacks because that would be a ludicrous position, but America should wake up, or wise up, or maybe just grow up. Just because you're the biggest kid in the playground doesn't automatically mean that everything you do is right, and it's generally OK to make mistakes if you are big enough, mature enough even, to admit to them and try to put them right.
Hmmm. Raises unbreakable glass substitute.