That's odd, I seem to recall seeing on the tee-vee some years ago that all Brits were required to call for a survey and search of their land before digging, because of just such occurances. They had said that people digging without checking resulted in 2 or 3 "discoveries" a year, sometimes of the explosive nature.
Does anyone know of this? Am I going senile, or is Gandalf up there due for a firm spanking from some cute British patrol officer?
"We're not gonna die. We can't die, Bendis. You know why? Because we are so very pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die."
Erm... and you guys want me to watch this show?
You're missing a little bit there... see, its' not just what he says, it's how he says it... Bendis is going nuts, convinced they're doomed, and Captain Tightpants says the above in such a way that is both humourous and uplifting... and on one hand, you believe in him and his warped little reasoning, but then you look around and see the carnage, and think that perhaps he's just comforting the damned.
Of course, then we get to see Bendis headshotted in the background as Mal watches waves of enemy ships start to land, and the look on his face conveys that yes, he did believe what he said, and no, maybe he doesn't any more.
I thought it was a great setup for the characters, a well done little 5-minute backstory... made double-plus-shiny by the fact that I didn't see the entire pilot (the proper pilot, not the Train Job) until just a few weeks ago... and it filled in a lot. Yes, they use very...."interesting"... dialogue on the show, but it works because of the way it's delivered. It falls flat when written out, in the same way that an opera would if you just read the lyrics.
The show appeals to me because of the little things... the long, unbroken through-the-ship shot of Mal at the beginning of the movie... I didn't sit there and think "boy, that dialogue is kind of lame", I thought "wow, that's a pretty shot, and hey, that's some shiny acting" as he had his interactions with the various crew members, the looks on their faces... that's what it was all about. Me typing out how Mal told Jayne not to take the grenades isn't that interesting... watching the two of them interact, hearing Zoe as the captain leaves ("Are those grenades?")...
I think I've had an epiphany. Firefly isn't about the dialogue. Firefly isn't about watching people say stuff. Firefly is about being part of it all, empathizing, connecting with the people in that little 'verse, and being part of it all. And it sounds hokey, and looks lame, until you're actually part of that 'verse... and then there ain't no gettin' back.
I'm also considering making a dupe of this post later in the conversation.
I could almost have saved you the bother with my reply, because I've also used the bathroom and had a nice meal today. However, it wouldn't quite be a dupe because I didn't install a new monitor. Instead, I did a load of laundry and ironing, and packed my suitcase for a trip tomorrow.
Thanks for telling us all about your day!
-Stephen
Sweet Christ on a Stick, Slashdot has finally turned into LiveJournal.
Now please excuse me, I feel some whiny emo angst coming on....
>>>You'd need a very well armed small country, only one appears to be a possibility... >>The Vatican? >Yeah, I'm sure they're chomping at the bit to host my porn.
You sick, sick fucker!! Why would you admit to having gigs and gigs of choirboy porn???
This is sad. I didn't RTFA. I didn't even really read the/. article blurbage.
All I had to see was "Xbox Modders Charged Under DMCA", and I KNEW that they'd loaded pirated games on a HD, and THAT was mostly what they were getting busted for.
That is both a sad comment on the community of profiteering xbox modders, and a sad commentary on the state of/. article summaries.
If you want to get this at the ol'.com.com (never understood why they did that)...
There was a time, once upon a time, where if you typed an incomplete or invalid address into the address bar on your browser, your browser would start cycling through the.com/.org/.net possibilities... so, say, you just typed "microsoft" into your browser bar, you'd end up at microsoft.com.
By buying the.com domain, and then registering aliases for popular sites, ".com" is ensuring that they get immediate, huge traffic if the real "news.com" ever lets their registration lapse, or if their site goes down... because they're hoping browsers will append a ".com" to it, and go to news.com.com
Now if the US hired Mengele do help develop national health care policy, that's a different story...
You know, that doesn't seem quite so unlikely. I mean, obviously, you guys already hired the commander of Army Group Centre to make your plans for Iraq.
I'm a computer geek... I hate paper... I automate everything I can get my hands on. But why, why, why, would you take a system that works, with checks and balances, and replace it with one full of holes?
Paper ballots just plain work... I can see who I've voted for. I put it in a box, under the watchful eye of at least 2 independant people. Even more independant people watch as that box is opened and all the ballots counted and recounted... and then recounted again if the margin is close. Then that number is phoned in to the central office, again under the watchful eye of people who know the total. On the other end, yet more groups of independant people add all these numbers up... and poof, we have a new Prime Minister. (please note that "independant group" and "individuals from several different parties" are pretty much the same in my books, as far as the "Keeping it honest" factor)
Or, we could have a computer ballot... tap the screen, hope that it records who you REALLY voted for.Hope that the card wasn't preloaded with hundreds of votes. Then the magic box magically talks to another magic box... hope that it tells it the right stuff... or that no one intercepts and feeds a fake number.... or no-one knows how to dial in and override results... or that no-one messed with the voting box itself to delete all votes and reset them.... Then we trust the big magic box to tell us the right number... and if it doesn't, how would we know? In several states, a 2-3% swing of the vote is enough to change who is President... and who's going to know? A piece of paper in your hand saying "You voted for X" is useless, because even if that piece of paper has a unique ID that matches up with the magic box database... well, just because it says "Vote#465213 was for Candidate A" doesn't mean that's what it told the big magic box at the end of the line.
There's no outstanding reason to switch to computers... yes, they reduce required manpower, but (at least up here) many election folks are volunteers, so the cost is minimal. And frankly, I'd rather have dozens of independant eyes watching my vote, and watching who counts my vote, rather than trusting democracy to the magic boxes made by people who publicly promised Ohio to Bush.
Good point. (which was, for those not seeing the parent, that to land on an asteroid, you have to be going as fast, and in the same direction as, the asteroid, so there's no point)
I have a query though... wouldn't there still be an advantage to landing on an asteroid? One would think that the much higher mass of the asteroid would help immunize the spacecraft from the effects of minor gravitational anomalies... basically, the big heavy rock is much less likely to get tugged off course than a tiny little spacecraft... also one would think it would be less affected by the boundary layer leading to true "outer space".
IANARS, but those would seem like advantages to me.
Plus, maybe you're lucky enough to score an asteroid with material on it you can use for power generation... how cool would it be to have a spacecraft that can last for decades and transmit with REAL power, and not the watch-battery-powered emissions of, say, Voyager 1/2.
Don't get me wrong, I support you wholeheartedly. It's just that, personally, I'd be worried about different things.:) Make a site, but make it anonymous... go through an offshore web host that you can trust, use secure connections for all your file transfers, and don't say anything that could help them narrow down what area you're in. But don't let fear of their heavyhanded methods make you not do it... nothing good comes without risk.
My wife and me, her being a conservation biologist, me just your regular treehugger, were planning on making a site here ins Costa Rica...There are a bunch of local and foreign companies making serious damage...that news piece made us think about how many companies would want to sue our asses if we get noticed.... so not we are re-thinking our strategy...
Frankly, if you're in Costa Rica, I'd be less concerned about evil corporations sueing you, and more concerned about unscrupulous companies having you and your family shot in the middle of the night.
Slap a web server on it and you've got "POOOORRN FROOOOOM SPAAAAAAAAAAACE!"
No no no.
What we're all thinking is: Porn from space... where the girls get a big gizmo in their little hooha and all they can do is scream KHHHHHHAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!!!!!!
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered astronomy community when slashdot confirmed that Copernicus, in fact, is dead.
You don't have to be a Galileo to predict astronomy's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Astronomy faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for astronomy because Astronomy is Dying.
Astronomers are the most endangered of them all, with over 90% of all great astronomers dead. There can no longer be any doubt: Astronomy is Dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
He's right folks. Netcraft confirms Astronomy is dying.
If it was, then Gates would have donated the money anonymously, and he wouldn't be going out of his way to publicize it. I'm not saying that this is only about publicity, but you can't deny that it's an important consideration.
Yeah, how selfish of him to publicly associate his famous name with this cause, and get hundreds of news stories and long message-board threads like this going. What a selfish bastard he is, using the power of his name to get us all talking about this. Cuz, yanno, we all would be if the story was "Anonymous contributer gives unspecified amount to malaria fight"
You, Sir, should take some of that money that you've so proudly not given to EvilBill, and start putting it towards some GOOD crack, because the CHEAP ASS CRACK you're smoking now is starting to show.
Seriously, what shit ARE you smoking? Dessicant packets from hardware shipments or something? Jesus Titty-sucking Christ! "Maybe that extra money would've let some brilliant but poor student not drop out of medical school"??? Since when does a few hundred in license cost make someone drop out of school? And if he's so fsking brilliant, why doesn't he use free software? Or make some "friends" who can give him "free" software?
Here's a fsking newsflash... millions of people DON'T give their money for software, and that money RARELY makes it to any kind of charity. The vast majority of people in the world would rather buy beer or DVDs or intarweb pron rather than give it to some starving kid. Concentrating that money in one place and then dishing it out in a method not dependant on "Future Profit Expectations" and "Market Forecast" is EXACTLY the way to get it where it's needed. Otherwise you have hundreds of millions going to "poor" people in Louisiana, and hundreds of hundreds going to REAL charities fighting REAL problems like world hunger, potable water, and diseases that AREN'T likely to kill CEOs and senators anytime soon.
And I'll remind you that there are tens of thousands (or perhaps hundreds of thousands) of charities in the Americas alone, and that is your "Open Source Charity" that ensures that equal amounts are spent on both condom distribution and "Condoms are Evil" billboards in Africa.
Slashdot Mirror
Referring to Earth's Moon that way is an artifact to having dated a Wiccan years ago.
Didn't she mind when you cut her open to count her rings?
Maybe that's why you're using the past tense...
That's odd, I seem to recall seeing on the tee-vee some years ago that all Brits were required to call for a survey and search of their land before digging, because of just such occurances. They had said that people digging without checking resulted in 2 or 3 "discoveries" a year, sometimes of the explosive nature.
Does anyone know of this? Am I going senile, or is Gandalf up there due for a firm spanking from some cute British patrol officer?
"We're not gonna die. We can't die, Bendis. You know why? Because we are so very pretty. We are just too pretty for God to let us die."
Erm... and you guys want me to watch this show?
You're missing a little bit there... see, its' not just what he says, it's how he says it... Bendis is going nuts, convinced they're doomed, and Captain Tightpants says the above in such a way that is both humourous and uplifting... and on one hand, you believe in him and his warped little reasoning, but then you look around and see the carnage, and think that perhaps he's just comforting the damned.
Of course, then we get to see Bendis headshotted in the background as Mal watches waves of enemy ships start to land, and the look on his face conveys that yes, he did believe what he said, and no, maybe he doesn't any more.
I thought it was a great setup for the characters, a well done little 5-minute backstory... made double-plus-shiny by the fact that I didn't see the entire pilot (the proper pilot, not the Train Job) until just a few weeks ago... and it filled in a lot. Yes, they use very...."interesting"... dialogue on the show, but it works because of the way it's delivered. It falls flat when written out, in the same way that an opera would if you just read the lyrics.
The show appeals to me because of the little things... the long, unbroken through-the-ship shot of Mal at the beginning of the movie... I didn't sit there and think "boy, that dialogue is kind of lame", I thought "wow, that's a pretty shot, and hey, that's some shiny acting" as he had his interactions with the various crew members, the looks on their faces... that's what it was all about. Me typing out how Mal told Jayne not to take the grenades isn't that interesting... watching the two of them interact, hearing Zoe as the captain leaves ("Are those grenades?")...
I think I've had an epiphany. Firefly isn't about the dialogue. Firefly isn't about watching people say stuff. Firefly is about being part of it all, empathizing, connecting with the people in that little 'verse, and being part of it all. And it sounds hokey, and looks lame, until you're actually part of that 'verse... and then there ain't no gettin' back.
I'm also considering making a dupe of this post later in the conversation.
I could almost have saved you the bother with my reply, because I've also used the bathroom and had a nice meal today. However, it wouldn't quite be a dupe because I didn't install a new monitor. Instead, I did a load of laundry and ironing, and packed my suitcase for a trip tomorrow.
Thanks for telling us all about your day!
-Stephen
Sweet Christ on a Stick, Slashdot has finally turned into LiveJournal.
Now please excuse me, I feel some whiny emo angst coming on....
>>>You'd need a very well armed small country, only one appears to be a possibility...
>>The Vatican?
>Yeah, I'm sure they're chomping at the bit to host my porn.
You sick, sick fucker!! Why would you admit to having gigs and gigs of choirboy porn???
This is sad. I didn't RTFA. I didn't even really read the /. article blurbage.
/. article summaries.
All I had to see was "Xbox Modders Charged Under DMCA", and I KNEW that they'd loaded pirated games on a HD, and THAT was mostly what they were getting busted for.
That is both a sad comment on the community of profiteering xbox modders, and a sad commentary on the state of
There was a time, once upon a time, where if you typed an incomplete or invalid address into the address bar on your browser, your browser would start cycling through the
By buying the
Yeah, right! If it isn't Linux vs. Windows, how would I possibly know which side to pick?
I would recommend the side that is doing the pissing, and not the side receiving.
You know, that doesn't seem quite so unlikely. I mean, obviously, you guys already hired the commander of Army Group Centre to make your plans for Iraq.
How's that attack on Moscow going, by the way?
I'm a computer geek... I hate paper... I automate everything I can get my hands on. But why, why, why, would you take a system that works, with checks and balances, and replace it with one full of holes?
Paper ballots just plain work... I can see who I've voted for. I put it in a box, under the watchful eye of at least 2 independant people. Even more independant people watch as that box is opened and all the ballots counted and recounted... and then recounted again if the margin is close. Then that number is phoned in to the central office, again under the watchful eye of people who know the total. On the other end, yet more groups of independant people add all these numbers up... and poof, we have a new Prime Minister.
(please note that "independant group" and "individuals from several different parties" are pretty much the same in my books, as far as the "Keeping it honest" factor)
Or, we could have a computer ballot... tap the screen, hope that it records who you REALLY voted for.Hope that the card wasn't preloaded with hundreds of votes. Then the magic box magically talks to another magic box... hope that it tells it the right stuff... or that no one intercepts and feeds a fake number.... or no-one knows how to dial in and override results... or that no-one messed with the voting box itself to delete all votes and reset them.... Then we trust the big magic box to tell us the right number... and if it doesn't, how would we know? In several states, a 2-3% swing of the vote is enough to change who is President... and who's going to know? A piece of paper in your hand saying "You voted for X" is useless, because even if that piece of paper has a unique ID that matches up with the magic box database... well, just because it says "Vote#465213 was for Candidate A" doesn't mean that's what it told the big magic box at the end of the line.
There's no outstanding reason to switch to computers... yes, they reduce required manpower, but (at least up here) many election folks are volunteers, so the cost is minimal. And frankly, I'd rather have dozens of independant eyes watching my vote, and watching who counts my vote, rather than trusting democracy to the magic boxes made by people who publicly promised Ohio to Bush.
Good point.
(which was, for those not seeing the parent, that to land on an asteroid, you have to be going as fast, and in the same direction as, the asteroid, so there's no point)
I have a query though... wouldn't there still be an advantage to landing on an asteroid? One would think that the much higher mass of the asteroid would help immunize the spacecraft from the effects of minor gravitational anomalies... basically, the big heavy rock is much less likely to get tugged off course than a tiny little spacecraft... also one would think it would be less affected by the boundary layer leading to true "outer space".
IANARS, but those would seem like advantages to me.
Plus, maybe you're lucky enough to score an asteroid with material on it you can use for power generation... how cool would it be to have a spacecraft that can last for decades and transmit with REAL power, and not the watch-battery-powered emissions of, say, Voyager 1/2.
Don't get me wrong, I support you wholeheartedly. It's just that, personally, I'd be worried about different things. :)
Make a site, but make it anonymous... go through an offshore web host that you can trust, use secure connections for all your file transfers, and don't say anything that could help them narrow down what area you're in.
But don't let fear of their heavyhanded methods make you not do it... nothing good comes without risk.
Fine, you have the freedom to do so. You just don't have the freedom to not do so. :)
You're an American, aren't you?
Frankly, if you're in Costa Rica, I'd be less concerned about evil corporations sueing you, and more concerned about unscrupulous companies having you and your family shot in the middle of the night.
No no no. What we're all thinking is: Porn from space... where the girls get a big gizmo in their little hooha and all they can do is scream KHHHHHHAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!!!!!!
"Can't stop the signal."
Oh, wait a minute...
Yes, I seem to recall hearing about those signs that basically say "If this is an emergency we must treat you".
I also recall hearing about gunshot victims turned away, told to go to another hospital, dying around the corner.
Signs are only as good as the enforcement behind them.
You don't have to be a Galileo to predict astronomy's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Astronomy faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for astronomy because Astronomy is Dying.
Astronomers are the most endangered of them all, with over 90% of all great astronomers dead. There can no longer be any doubt: Astronomy is Dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
He's right folks. Netcraft confirms Astronomy is dying.
IANATE (I am not a Telescope Expert), but I think I see a small problem with this plan...
If it was, then Gates would have donated the money anonymously, and he wouldn't be going out of his way to publicize it. I'm not saying that this is only about publicity, but you can't deny that it's an important consideration.
Yeah, how selfish of him to publicly associate his famous name with this cause, and get hundreds of news stories and long message-board threads like this going. What a selfish bastard he is, using the power of his name to get us all talking about this. Cuz, yanno, we all would be if the story was "Anonymous contributer gives unspecified amount to malaria fight"
You, Sir, should take some of that money that you've so proudly not given to EvilBill, and start putting it towards some GOOD crack, because the CHEAP ASS CRACK you're smoking now is starting to show.
Seriously, what shit ARE you smoking? Dessicant packets from hardware shipments or something? Jesus Titty-sucking Christ! "Maybe that extra money would've let some brilliant but poor student not drop out of medical school"??? Since when does a few hundred in license cost make someone drop out of school? And if he's so fsking brilliant, why doesn't he use free software? Or make some "friends" who can give him "free" software?
Here's a fsking newsflash... millions of people DON'T give their money for software, and that money RARELY makes it to any kind of charity. The vast majority of people in the world would rather buy beer or DVDs or intarweb pron rather than give it to some starving kid. Concentrating that money in one place and then dishing it out in a method not dependant on "Future Profit Expectations" and "Market Forecast" is EXACTLY the way to get it where it's needed. Otherwise you have hundreds of millions going to "poor" people in Louisiana, and hundreds of hundreds going to REAL charities fighting REAL problems like world hunger, potable water, and diseases that AREN'T likely to kill CEOs and senators anytime soon.
And I'll remind you that there are tens of thousands (or perhaps hundreds of thousands) of charities in the Americas alone, and that is your "Open Source Charity" that ensures that equal amounts are spent on both condom distribution and "Condoms are Evil" billboards in Africa.
Sheesh.
Oh, come on mods, kick up the two posts above this as +1 "Teh Funnay"!
You might have had more success if your email hadn't referenced Beowulf clusters so extensively.
Although the pix of Natalie Portman and hot grits that you attached probably got passed around a bit.
Great. If you hadn't suggested it, we'd be fine, but now they're rewriting the min-spec on the packaging as we speak.
Thank you very much, you bastard.
Hang on a second here....
You guys actually PAY for Photoshop?