"which is why rollerblading on rough surfaces sucks so very very much"
The worst part is a transition from smooth to rough surfaces; I was once skating down a nice, smooth road, going quite fast.
The road surface suddenly transitioned to very rough... ouch.
Thing is, your wheels lose forward speed really fast but your upper body is still going at quite a pace and catching up can involve your upper body suddenly descending to the road surface...
"Personally what I look for in a movie is depth. Superficially weak dialog [re: 99% of TV shit] annoys the hell out of me, even if it's someone of super-star status like Keano, whoa."
Yeah like his terrible performance in the matrix series.
If they'd wanted to make the matrix into a decent movie they'd have cast someone with all the geeky meekness of Woody Allen in the role.
Now that would have been an amusing movie; with straight-faced, Mr Beautiful Keano everyones left wondering 'was that *meant* to be funny?'
Well actually.... I was thinking that the rest of the world could draw power from the kites and let the yanks have all the oil they want so long as they never leave their country again...
"And when you consider the limits to where these could be place (airspaces are out"
String them up all along the borders of the continental USA and it'd be a great bonus for homeland security. Keep those pesky terrorists out as well as those pesky tourists, heck its all 'stranger danger'!
"The key here is the quality level of the service and food at Le Bernadin surpasses (by a very wide margin) that of McDonalds, in food quality, preparation, presentation, service, atmosphere, etc. Again, there's only one Le Bernadin, but thousands (and thousands) of McDonald's"
This is a classic example of the old salesmans adage; "Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes".
I bet that the owners of McD's live at a higher level of luxury than those that own Le Bernadin; each one of those many thousands of McD's generates income and collectively they do so around the clock, 24/7, 365 days a year.
But theres only one Le Bernadins and it closes at night so that Mr Ripert can get some sleep.
"I was always under the impression that computers progressed from the network-based mainframe idea to the locally maintained system. Why should we want to go back?"
Well, for one thing because the locally maintained system was never intended to be in Joe Sixpacks lounge, maintained by Joe Sixpack.
It was intended for a place where it could be used by Jill Dataentry and maintained by Jimmy Bofh who was a professional.
This is why home computers these days usually become zombies.
If Joe Sixpack could use his 'computer' just as effectively as he does today (reading email, surfing the web, viewing pornography, playing computer games), but have it maintained for him by a professional who never has to come to his house and disturb his (perceived) privacy, the world would be a better place.
Less spam for one thing... less of a foothold for the script kiddies.
"People don't recognize 'intellectual property' people recognize tangible property."
Absolutely.
I think that theres, perhaps, a conflation between 'a property of something' as in 'a property of the sun is that it is bright' and property of something as in 'these trousers are my property'
So an idea, or a computer program has the intellectual property that it came out of someones head.
But that doesn't mean that its their property.
The above may or may not fly, its just a thought, but heres the killer of IP; if it isn't made out of atoms how can it be owned?
How can someone be said to be deprived of something just by someone else having the same idea? Theres nothing removed, nothing taken away, nothing that is in one place now which was in another place before.
Intellectual property is one of the great lies of our time.
People instinctively find it a flawed concept.
Except lawyers and politicians whose ability to reason seems limited to the debating club stlye of 'reasoning'
Then it'd have a triple purpose; seal off their borders, seal in their greenhouse gasses and it shouldn't be too hard to use the outside of the wall for a space elevator!
Ok, so on the one hand, who *does* use green lasers? If I recall correctly theres something about green lasers and water... and a touch of googling confirms this I think.
So, the perpetrator is someone who uses lasers underwater.
And on the other hand, I recall a book... one of the 'war against the cthor' series, where they had this high powered automatic weapon targetting laser hooked up to a headset. The laser and the headset would cycle through wavelengths in sync with one another (pseudorandom sequence starting from the same seed) so that it was impossible to locate the sniper by looking for his sighting laser.
The disadvantage was that the view through the goggles was truly surreal as they created false-color images of whatever you are looking at, in whatever portion of the spectrum the system is tuned to at that moment.
You see the sighting laser and the painted target but you also see your surroundings in... a different light.
"separation of experimental conditions from surrounding conditions was a really really good idea for discovering truth."
Its a good idea, in principle. But it has to be just that; a principle.
In practice, of course, every single bit of the universe is connected to every other bit and its practically impossible to seperate things completely.
It may be possible to seperate things enough for a given purpose or a given experiment, but one should always be careful about placing too much faith in it. Its really just a matter of reducing the variables enough that you can ignore them -- for now.
I like scientific method, its useful. But it does have its limitations and this is one of them.
However, in the case of the USA, I think that a wall would be 'enough' so long as it were as high as humanly possible. With broken glass on top.
What makes you think that, in the absence of American influence and interference, anyone else in the world will have a problem with Islamists or the Chinese?
;)
Taiwan would just reunify with China, like they really want to anyway, and Korea was always just a province of Japan anyways.
"We also dont live in villages of huts made out of sticks and grass that are easily swept away."
I live in New Zealand, in an earthquake zone.
I try to make sure that the material of which my dwelling is constructed will not hurt too bad when it falls on top of me.
Sticks and grass may get swept away but at least it won't crush you or rend your flesh (too badly). Not like brickwork, reinforced concrete or other hard materials...
Slashdot Mirror
"using sewage as a feedstock."
I thought that the USA already had a shit-based economy?
"which is why rollerblading on rough surfaces sucks so very very much"
The worst part is a transition from smooth to rough surfaces; I was once skating down a nice, smooth road, going quite fast.
The road surface suddenly transitioned to very rough... ouch.
Thing is, your wheels lose forward speed really fast but your upper body is still going at quite a pace and catching up can involve your upper body suddenly descending to the road surface...
"Sarge is great. When it becomes the new Stable, I may just switch from Testing to Stable."
;)
/. article the other week "Top tech news stories you *won't* read in 2005"
Some time in 2006?
There was a
I thought "Sarge goes stable!" should have been on that list...
"Personally what I look for in a movie is depth. Superficially weak dialog [re: 99% of TV shit] annoys the hell out of me, even if it's someone of super-star status like Keano, whoa."
Yeah like his terrible performance in the matrix series.
If they'd wanted to make the matrix into a decent movie they'd have cast someone with all the geeky meekness of Woody Allen in the role.
Now that would have been an amusing movie; with straight-faced, Mr Beautiful Keano everyones left wondering 'was that *meant* to be funny?'
Well actually.... I was thinking that the rest of the world could draw power from the kites and let the yanks have all the oil they want so long as they never leave their country again...
;)
"Whatever the intentions, I think it's been demonstrated that Joe Sixpack (and Jane Winecooler) can maintain their own system"
You have to be kidding me, right?
Seriously?
"And when you consider the limits to where these could be place (airspaces are out"
String them up all along the borders of the continental USA and it'd be a great bonus for homeland security. Keep those pesky terrorists out as well as those pesky tourists, heck its all 'stranger danger'!
Kites to the rescue!
"In another, I paid a similar amounts for both a Unix System V licence and for Emacs."
You paid money for Emacs?
Do you know if RMS got any of that?
"The key here is the quality level of the service and food at Le Bernadin surpasses (by a very wide margin) that of McDonalds, in food quality, preparation, presentation, service, atmosphere, etc. Again, there's only one Le Bernadin, but thousands (and thousands) of McDonald's"
This is a classic example of the old salesmans adage; "Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes".
I bet that the owners of McD's live at a higher level of luxury than those that own Le Bernadin; each one of those many thousands of McD's generates income and collectively they do so around the clock, 24/7, 365 days a year.
But theres only one Le Bernadins and it closes at night so that Mr Ripert can get some sleep.
"I was always under the impression that computers progressed from the network-based mainframe idea to the locally maintained system. Why should we want to go back?"
Well, for one thing because the locally maintained system was never intended to be in Joe Sixpacks lounge, maintained by Joe Sixpack.
It was intended for a place where it could be used by Jill Dataentry and maintained by Jimmy Bofh who was a professional.
This is why home computers these days usually become zombies.
If Joe Sixpack could use his 'computer' just as effectively as he does today (reading email, surfing the web, viewing pornography, playing computer games), but have it maintained for him by a professional who never has to come to his house and disturb his (perceived) privacy, the world would be a better place.
Less spam for one thing... less of a foothold for the script kiddies.
"People don't recognize 'intellectual property' people recognize tangible property."
Absolutely.
I think that theres, perhaps, a conflation between 'a property of something' as in 'a property of the sun is that it is bright' and property of something as in 'these trousers are my property'
So an idea, or a computer program has the intellectual property that it came out of someones head.
But that doesn't mean that its their property.
The above may or may not fly, its just a thought, but heres the killer of IP; if it isn't made out of atoms how can it be owned?
How can someone be said to be deprived of something just by someone else having the same idea? Theres nothing removed, nothing taken away, nothing that is in one place now which was in another place before.
Intellectual property is one of the great lies of our time.
People instinctively find it a flawed concept.
Except lawyers and politicians whose ability to reason seems limited to the debating club stlye of 'reasoning'
"That's absurd, noone can read Cisco source code."
Do you mean;
"noone has the opportunity to look at and read cisco sourcecode" (because its so secret)
or;
"even if you had the opportunity to look at cisco sourcecode you wouldn't be able to read it" (because its so badly written)
Well... if we made the wall high enough.
Then it'd have a triple purpose; seal off their borders, seal in their greenhouse gasses and it shouldn't be too hard to use the outside of the wall for a space elevator!
Ok, so on the one hand, who *does* use green lasers? If I recall correctly theres something about green lasers and water... and a touch of googling confirms this I think.
So, the perpetrator is someone who uses lasers underwater.
And on the other hand, I recall a book... one of the 'war against the cthor' series, where they had this high powered automatic weapon targetting laser hooked up to a headset. The laser and the headset would cycle through wavelengths in sync with one another (pseudorandom sequence starting from the same seed) so that it was impossible to locate the sniper by looking for his sighting laser.
The disadvantage was that the view through the goggles was truly surreal as they created false-color images of whatever you are looking at, in whatever portion of the spectrum the system is tuned to at that moment.
You see the sighting laser and the painted target but you also see your surroundings in... a different light.
"separation of experimental conditions from surrounding conditions was a really really good idea for discovering truth."
;)
Its a good idea, in principle. But it has to be just that; a principle.
In practice, of course, every single bit of the universe is connected to every other bit and its practically impossible to seperate things completely.
It may be possible to seperate things enough for a given purpose or a given experiment, but one should always be careful about placing too much faith in it. Its really just a matter of reducing the variables enough that you can ignore them -- for now.
I like scientific method, its useful. But it does have its limitations and this is one of them.
However, in the case of the USA, I think that a wall would be 'enough' so long as it were as high as humanly possible. With broken glass on top.
What makes you think that, in the absence of American influence and interference, anyone else in the world will have a problem with Islamists or the Chinese?
;)
:-P
Taiwan would just reunify with China, like they really want to anyway, and Korea was always just a province of Japan anyways.
"Totally seal the borders"
This is the part that I totally agree with; as a non-American I think that the USA *should* immediately seal all of its borders.
Anyone currently in the USA should not be allowed to leave, and noone should be permitted to enter.
Al internet connections, phone lines and satellite communications with the USA should be shut down.
A wall should be built, as high as humanly possible.
Best for everyone involved.
I think that the 'green dot' would have to be from a laser which was up there with the airliner.
If there were much distance between the laser and the cockpit it wouldn't be much of a 'dot' and besides the tracking problem would be huge.
No; this laser must be from another aircraft, probably military.
The question is, what sort of lasers do the military use for painting targets? Green?
Or maybe its just bullshit to start with.
dude, I would hate being a sysadmin for a server farm you set up...
Yeah something like...
"Piiiigsssss iiiiinnnnn Spaaaaace!!!!!!"
(it just reminded me of that Muppets show...)
and leave out all the ere's
Wow! This would have to be the least boring version yet!
Why is it that despite having unchecked LoTR stories in my preferences, I *still* see LoTR stories on the front page??
"We also dont live in villages of huts made out of sticks and grass that are easily swept away."
I live in New Zealand, in an earthquake zone.
I try to make sure that the material of which my dwelling is constructed will not hurt too bad when it falls on top of me.
Sticks and grass may get swept away but at least it won't crush you or rend your flesh (too badly). Not like brickwork, reinforced concrete or other hard materials...
Thats only because most people don't survive their own death...
like the Buddha said, there is nothing that you cannot turn to your advantage; not even your own death.
From the article;
"A potato-sized rock got caught in Spirits's right rear wheel on sol 339"
Come *on* NASA. Potatos vary so wildly in size that comparisons like this are totally useless!