Re:Makes me wonder about casual aquaintences
on
Guilty By Association
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Online or friends you hang with at the local pub. One of your buddies commits a kidnapping or something, yeah, investigators just may come asking questions. Thats what they do, you see, investigate.
Making the jump to "guilty by association" is illogical.
However, civil forfeiture is the DEA's main means of funding these days... In economic terms, it's sort of like a >100% tax on drugs for those they catch, since they take everything, whether paid for with clean money or not.
Much of our economy is kept alive by "illegal" acts, from paying a kid 20 bucks a week under the table to mow your lawn, to illicit firearms sales. Hell, as far as the feds are concerned, any monetary transaction that isnt taxed is an illegal one.
If I reiterate some dude's thoughts on birth control in my blog, you slashbots point your fingers and go "stealing! stealing! you thief!"
But if you download copyrighted music off of kazaa, you're all oh-so-quick to point out "it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement!"
Anyhow, what HP didn't mention: people with boring enough lives devoted to online diaries, are all likely to come up with the same stupid ideas. Its not so much stealing as in they're all equally boring.
I bet you think you're the only one who thought to wipe his ass with a washcloth to save the trees. Well you're not!
My wife is in love with ikea. She's bought these little end tables, the veneer has peeled off of both. The dresser, and the drawers are falling apart two months later.
There was this one coffee table, which became a tv stand, and has actually held up. It's made of wood, not mdf and veneer. Its ugly as hell (which is why it became a tv stand in the (w)rec(k) room.)
I did buy some track lighting there not too long ago, for about half the price of what the nearly identical product costs at Home Depot. The 12v transformer, though, just feels like a wimpy piece of crap, and I'll probably be replacing it. I wouldnt put it in an old Compaq, I sure dont want it hardwired in a position to burn down my home.
Meh, maybe its the stupid names they tag on everything. Guugelflof and Lakwoz and all that. Its supposed to sound hipper than "fiberboard box with plastic casters on it" but doesnt. And the instructions made up of little cartoons of what you're supposed to do and what you need to do it.
It's acceptable dormroom furniture, I suppose. Not exactly what you buy to show up the neighbours.
No, I seriously want to know if it's some cultural thing in sweden to make stuff with the lowest possible build quality/lifespan.
I wasnt joking or trolling, I want some swedish dude to tell me what the deal is. Is it the lack of lumber and mining or something? Is there no wood or steel to make stuff out of?
IIRC, laminate flooring was a swedish invention too. And despite what Pergo says, the stuff does not last. One puddle of puppy piss and the wear layer starts to peel up, I know from experience... Pay the extra 2 bucks a sq. foot for hardwood.
I dont know if "nordic tracks" are swedish, or some other nordic country, but if they are, throw them on the pile of stuff thats built to last (a half hour).
People bitch at Americans for being the wasteful throwaway society, but it seems all our advances in disposable technology comes from the swedes.
I mean theres this, and everything from Ikea, which is essentially disposable. I bought a dresser there that lasted about a month before the drawers fell apart.
Is it just ikea and this, or is it some cultural thing?
Oblig Futurama reference: "Enjoy yer afferdabel svedish crap"
The industry's great fear is that high-quality digital broadcasts would be scooped up by techno-geeks with digital television cards wedged in to the back of their PCs.
And it will be. You don't think "techno-geeks" will be able to tweak the firmware on the capture cards to ignore the flag?
The only thing this does is take away consumers rights to timeshift this digital content. I should be able to capture the 6'Oclock movie and watch it at midnight - not in some lossy second rate format, but exactly how it originally aired. Did the courts not already decide this?
If they dont want me watching this material, why the fuck are they broadcasting it? The push medium, the your-life-revolves-around-our-schedule school of thought within the cult of TV is ending. With all the PVRs out there, on demand programming from the cable company, etc, people are watching what they want and when they want.
The silver lining? This will probably bite them in the ass. Less people will see flagged movies/shows, which means less ratings, which means less advertising dollars, which makes the movies/shows worth less.
I bet you'll see the flag off by default almost all the time. Except guaranteed captive audiences, like live sports events.
"The music industry are greedy jerks! Buy your songs from iTunes!"
I hope RIAA members come up with an offer of a free six pack of coke for each CD purchased, or something. And air a commercial saying "We aren't going to drink that swill, whether you like it or not!"
Aviel Rubin, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who helped author a report critical of the machines' security, said external security measures wouldn't matter if malicious code had already been inserted by a programmer.
Rubin, who worked Tuesday as an elections judge in Baltimore County, said he expected most voters would have a positive experience with the machines. "The machines are pretty and easy to use, but voters may be less happy if they find out someone got in and changed their votes," Rubin said.
First of all, you wouldn't say "no va" in spanish, you'd say "no machina", "no functiona" or "no trabaja" (doesnt work). "Don't go" is slang from ignorant english folks, it doesn't translate. Apologies for my bad spanish.
Secondly, it's like saying an english speaker wouldn't buy a dinette set under the brand name "Notable" because it says "no table". The legend insinuates that the spanish are somehow stupider than we are. (Like the myth of africans being shocked to see baby food on store shelves because they cant read and just look at the pictures and assume thats what's in the jar)
Thirdly, the punchline of the story is that Chevy changed the name to "Caribe" and sales took off. But, Volkswagon already sold a "Caribe" in Mexico - it was the Golf here. The name "Nova" was never changed in mexico.
Lastly, there's a brand of gasoline in Mexico called "Nova". It sells fine.
Basically it's just a subtly racist urban legend. "Dem wetbacks is so stupid they tink Nova means No Go!"
Look at how much more polished and usable Windows XP is than any OSS desktop.
Or OS/X. They took an OSS platform and layed a slick, highly integrated and very stylish UI on top of it. In about a quarter of the time that various linux desktop projects have been around. What's the difference?
Legions of grunts whos daily bread relied on toeing the company line, testing what they were told to test, documenting what they were told to document.
I wish this project all success, but I'm skeptical. Contributing programming or artistic skills for free makes sense. After all, programmers like programming, artists like drawing.
But noone likes doing gruntwork. Noone really dances on their way to work at McDonalds. We'll see in the end.
An aunt of mine was as veterinarian, she ran a small animal hospital. She'd have two or three high school girls apply to volunteer there each week, girls are goofy at the idea of hugging puppies.
They wouldn't show up again after the first time they had to do the actual work, say, clean up after a Great Dane with a case of diarreah.
What was that open source code auditting thing that DARPA set up, but noone showed up to do the gruntwork?
Sounds like KDE is looking for folks to come along and do all the thankless, boring shit. Spellchecking help files, testing obscure check boxes, applying different themes. Of course, all the cool design work and programming, and artistry, etc, will be done by the core team - who will, of course, accept all the credit.
Noone wants to do the monkey work. I don't want to test constantly, read bug reports, track down insignificant bugs in code thats unused 99.9% of the time. I only do so because it's my job.
Which is a shame for open source in general, because it's that QA step, all the thankless hours of gruntwork, that make the final product what it is.
Re:Russians and the Smell of 1976!
on
Meet the Nasalnaut
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The linked article says they found a fuel line leaking into the air recirculation equipment. Which would be a pretty good reason to pack it up and go home, in my books.
Re:Eh, what's this 90 minute nonsense?
on
Meet the Nasalnaut
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Light on surfaces (esp paint, ink) causes them to outgas. UV light wreaks havoc on plastics and other resins.
And while the crew cabins are likely temperature controlled, much of the craft wouldnt be, like the parts that recirculate air.
Sixteen healthy subjects volunteered to eat pinto beans and insert small plastic collection tubes into their anuses.... After each "episode of flatulence," Levitt syringed the gas into a discrete container, rigorously maintaining fart integrity
A fart in a jar?! I didn't know that was actually possible.
We truly called the guy Cat Fucker, that was his name. In fact, I can't for the life of me think of his real name, I'm thinking Craig, but I dunno. He was a spaz, you know, not a retard, but definately touched in the head.
He may or may not have fucked a cat. But he sure looked and acted like a cat fucker.
Also, in the same graduating class, were Fingerella, Shit-Dick and King of the Kikes.
Why all the hooplah about all these "me-too" online music downloading businesses?
I mean, I know you all are stiff for Apple, so anything they do just has to be covered as innovative and cool. But Napster is not napster anymore, the name was merely bought.
Big fricking deal.
I just dont care that the new Napster is going to start a big marketing push. That's what businesses do, duh.
If the polar lander didn't go tits up we'd know for sure.
From nature.com:
It is now clear that the ice caps are composed largely of 'dry ice' -- solidified carbon dioxide, which 'sublimates' straight from solid to gas into the thin Martian atmosphere when the ice caps shrink Spring Thaw of the Martian South Polar Cap. Image (C) NASA.
Slashdot Mirror
Online or friends you hang with at the local pub. One of your buddies commits a kidnapping or something, yeah, investigators just may come asking questions. Thats what they do, you see, investigate.
Making the jump to "guilty by association" is illogical.
Not out loud, at least.
However, civil forfeiture is the DEA's main means of funding these days... In economic terms, it's sort of like a >100% tax on drugs for those they catch, since they take everything, whether paid for with clean money or not.
Much of our economy is kept alive by "illegal" acts, from paying a kid 20 bucks a week under the table to mow your lawn, to illicit firearms sales. Hell, as far as the feds are concerned, any monetary transaction that isnt taxed is an illegal one.
If I reiterate some dude's thoughts on birth control in my blog, you slashbots point your fingers and go "stealing! stealing! you thief!"
But if you download copyrighted music off of kazaa, you're all oh-so-quick to point out "it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement!"
Anyhow, what HP didn't mention: people with boring enough lives devoted to online diaries, are all likely to come up with the same stupid ideas. Its not so much stealing as in they're all equally boring.
I bet you think you're the only one who thought to wipe his ass with a washcloth to save the trees. Well you're not!
My wife is in love with ikea. She's bought these little end tables, the veneer has peeled off of both. The dresser, and the drawers are falling apart two months later.
There was this one coffee table, which became a tv stand, and has actually held up. It's made of wood, not mdf and veneer. Its ugly as hell (which is why it became a tv stand in the (w)rec(k) room.)
I did buy some track lighting there not too long ago, for about half the price of what the nearly identical product costs at Home Depot. The 12v transformer, though, just feels like a wimpy piece of crap, and I'll probably be replacing it. I wouldnt put it in an old Compaq, I sure dont want it hardwired in a position to burn down my home.
Meh, maybe its the stupid names they tag on everything. Guugelflof and Lakwoz and all that. Its supposed to sound hipper than "fiberboard box with plastic casters on it" but doesnt. And the instructions made up of little cartoons of what you're supposed to do and what you need to do it.
It's acceptable dormroom furniture, I suppose. Not exactly what you buy to show up the neighbours.
No, I seriously want to know if it's some cultural thing in sweden to make stuff with the lowest possible build quality/lifespan.
I wasnt joking or trolling, I want some swedish dude to tell me what the deal is. Is it the lack of lumber and mining or something? Is there no wood or steel to make stuff out of?
IIRC, laminate flooring was a swedish invention too. And despite what Pergo says, the stuff does not last. One puddle of puppy piss and the wear layer starts to peel up, I know from experience... Pay the extra 2 bucks a sq. foot for hardwood.
I dont know if "nordic tracks" are swedish, or some other nordic country, but if they are, throw them on the pile of stuff thats built to last (a half hour).
People bitch at Americans for being the wasteful throwaway society, but it seems all our advances in disposable technology comes from the swedes.
I mean theres this, and everything from Ikea, which is essentially disposable. I bought a dresser there that lasted about a month before the drawers fell apart.
Is it just ikea and this, or is it some cultural thing?
Oblig Futurama reference: "Enjoy yer afferdabel svedish crap"
Good news! The doctor said he can cut it down to any length I want!!!!
This isn't interesting, this is stupid. Everyone who's browsed a copy of "MS Office for Dummies" knows about the metadata feature.
Thanks. Now go ahead and waste your points modding me as troll or flamebait.
I don't think you know what ironic means.
And no, I don't find it *anything*. Here in the real world, people use Word.
The industry's great fear is that high-quality digital broadcasts would be scooped up by techno-geeks with digital television cards wedged in to the back of their PCs.
And it will be. You don't think "techno-geeks" will be able to tweak the firmware on the capture cards to ignore the flag?
The only thing this does is take away consumers rights to timeshift this digital content. I should be able to capture the 6'Oclock movie and watch it at midnight - not in some lossy second rate format, but exactly how it originally aired. Did the courts not already decide this?
If they dont want me watching this material, why the fuck are they broadcasting it? The push medium, the your-life-revolves-around-our-schedule school of thought within the cult of TV is ending. With all the PVRs out there, on demand programming from the cable company, etc, people are watching what they want and when they want.
The silver lining? This will probably bite them in the ass. Less people will see flagged movies/shows, which means less ratings, which means less advertising dollars, which makes the movies/shows worth less.
I bet you'll see the flag off by default almost all the time. Except guaranteed captive audiences, like live sports events.
Is there some sort of new development?
Or is this just space filler/excuse to whine?
They really don't have any skills.
The "viruses", more appropriately called trojans or worms, are just simple visual basic scripts which spread by way of clueless users running them.
Their skills are limited to, at best, an intermediate understanding of Visual Basic.
Why are there no linux worms? bash, perl, python, et al are all too hard for them.
Pepsi are sure some a-holes.
"The music industry are greedy jerks! Buy your songs from iTunes!"
I hope RIAA members come up with an offer of a free six pack of coke for each CD purchased, or something. And air a commercial saying "We aren't going to drink that swill, whether you like it or not!"
From your link..
Aviel Rubin, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who helped author a report critical of the machines' security, said external security measures wouldn't matter if malicious code had already been inserted by a programmer.
Rubin, who worked Tuesday as an elections judge in Baltimore County, said he expected most voters would have a positive experience with the machines. "The machines are pretty and easy to use, but voters may be less happy if they find out someone got in and changed their votes," Rubin said.
Remember what happened with the American car "nova" or "no go" in Spanish?
A myth, an urban legend.
To summarize the snopes entry..
First of all, you wouldn't say "no va" in spanish, you'd say "no machina", "no functiona" or "no trabaja" (doesnt work). "Don't go" is slang from ignorant english folks, it doesn't translate. Apologies for my bad spanish.
Secondly, it's like saying an english speaker wouldn't buy a dinette set under the brand name "Notable" because it says "no table". The legend insinuates that the spanish are somehow stupider than we are. (Like the myth of africans being shocked to see baby food on store shelves because they cant read and just look at the pictures and assume thats what's in the jar)
Thirdly, the punchline of the story is that Chevy changed the name to "Caribe" and sales took off. But, Volkswagon already sold a "Caribe" in Mexico - it was the Golf here. The name "Nova" was never changed in mexico.
Lastly, there's a brand of gasoline in Mexico called "Nova". It sells fine.
Basically it's just a subtly racist urban legend. "Dem wetbacks is so stupid they tink Nova means No Go!"
Disembodied Location-specific Conversational Agents.
ELIZA + text to speech + speaker and microphone = "ghost".
They can spaz up the website with promises of artificially sentient beings with real emotions and the ability to learn, but of course thats horseshit.
Look at how much more polished and usable Windows XP is than any OSS desktop.
Or OS/X. They took an OSS platform and layed a slick, highly integrated and very stylish UI on top of it. In about a quarter of the time that various linux desktop projects have been around. What's the difference?
Legions of grunts whos daily bread relied on toeing the company line, testing what they were told to test, documenting what they were told to document.
I wish this project all success, but I'm skeptical. Contributing programming or artistic skills for free makes sense. After all, programmers like programming, artists like drawing.
But noone likes doing gruntwork. Noone really dances on their way to work at McDonalds. We'll see in the end.
An aunt of mine was as veterinarian, she ran a small animal hospital. She'd have two or three high school girls apply to volunteer there each week, girls are goofy at the idea of hugging puppies.
They wouldn't show up again after the first time they had to do the actual work, say, clean up after a Great Dane with a case of diarreah.
What was that open source code auditting thing that DARPA set up, but noone showed up to do the gruntwork?
Sounds like KDE is looking for folks to come along and do all the thankless, boring shit. Spellchecking help files, testing obscure check boxes, applying different themes. Of course, all the cool design work and programming, and artistry, etc, will be done by the core team - who will, of course, accept all the credit.
Noone wants to do the monkey work. I don't want to test constantly, read bug reports, track down insignificant bugs in code thats unused 99.9% of the time. I only do so because it's my job.
Which is a shame for open source in general, because it's that QA step, all the thankless hours of gruntwork, that make the final product what it is.
The linked article says they found a fuel line leaking into the air recirculation equipment. Which would be a pretty good reason to pack it up and go home, in my books.
Light on surfaces (esp paint, ink) causes them to outgas. UV light wreaks havoc on plastics and other resins.
And while the crew cabins are likely temperature controlled, much of the craft wouldnt be, like the parts that recirculate air.
Sixteen healthy subjects volunteered to eat pinto beans and insert small plastic collection tubes into their anuses .... After each "episode of flatulence," Levitt syringed the gas into a discrete container, rigorously maintaining fart integrity
A fart in a jar?! I didn't know that was actually possible.
We truly called the guy Cat Fucker, that was his name. In fact, I can't for the life of me think of his real name, I'm thinking Craig, but I dunno. He was a spaz, you know, not a retard, but definately touched in the head.
He may or may not have fucked a cat. But he sure looked and acted like a cat fucker.
Also, in the same graduating class, were Fingerella, Shit-Dick and King of the Kikes.
Why all the hooplah about all these "me-too" online music downloading businesses?
I mean, I know you all are stiff for Apple, so anything they do just has to be covered as innovative and cool. But Napster is not napster anymore, the name was merely bought.
Big fricking deal.
I just dont care that the new Napster is going to start a big marketing push. That's what businesses do, duh.
If the polar lander didn't go tits up we'd know for sure.
From nature.com:
It is now clear that the ice caps are composed largely of 'dry ice' -- solidified carbon dioxide, which 'sublimates' straight from solid to gas into the thin Martian atmosphere when the ice caps shrink
Spring Thaw of the Martian South Polar Cap. Image (C) NASA.
"We've been able to read the tell-tale clues the water left behind, giving us confidence in that conclusion."
They're pretty positive water was there, they just have no way to know for how long, whether the water was there before the rocks or not.
Maybe a comet crashed, melted, and that spot was wet for a hundred thousand years or so. Or maybe mars was once much like earth.