What do you consider a "darn good reason"? What if there were government installed cameras on every street corner and inside every home? The more they can see, the better they can prevent terrorism - and preventing terrorism is a "darn good reason" isnt it?
Well, no. Why not? Mainly because the ratio of terrorists to non-terrorists is so low that it would have a diminishing point of return. So it's not a "darn good reason."
Or what if the government required you to implant a GPS tracking device into all citizens? Then they could see who goes where, and find all those nasty escaped convicts and murder suspects? Isn't that a "darn good reason"?
Again, no, because it would make far more sense to just implant the tracking devices in those people who were murder suspects or convicts, so that the only people being monitored were those who actually posed a threat to society. Note that I'm not condoning this by any meansâ"I'm merely stating that you're taking it a step too far because there are far less drastic measures that the government could take, and at a far lower cost to themselves. But you already said something very much to that point.
I find this comment misguided. If you're lazy, you're going to have a hard time learning. Learning requires work and effort - and if you aren't willing to put in the effort, you aren't going to learn.
No. Learning requires the ability to learn. WORKING requires work. You can easily learn stuff just by sitting around and listening. It's applying that knowledge that takes the work and effort, not the actual learning. Just because you had to study for hours every night with a textbook doesn't mean that we all had to.
I dunno. I think it would be smart to redesign what we've got now. After all, in the thirty years since the shuttle was designed, our knowledge of physics and aerodynamics has increased so much. We should really make sure that we can design something that can withstand the worst beating possible, not something that can barely make it through re-entry without losing bits and pieces.
I fail to see how nine peoples who are so very physically different from each other couldn't be called different "races."
Tolkien, in addition, was using "race" as it was used in ancient times: It's obvious that the people of Middle Earth were not only very different, but similar enough--given that they're all bipedal humanoids with two ears, two eyes, and ten fingers, et cetera--that they assumed that they were related in some way, hence "nine races of man."
I fail to see how there's anything racist about that.
Let's not forget, also, that as far as I know there aren't any distinctions in the books of what skin color any of the characters is, with the possible exception of elves, who were described as fair-skinned, if I recall. So the real question you're bringing up is whether Peter Jackson is a racist.
Which I think he is not. But hey, opinions and assholes, right?
That was utter nonsense. Those are nine different sizes of white guys.
So you still use the term 'race' to define skin color? How gauche. Everybody knows that humans have less genetic difference between those of different color skin than they do between different people with the SAME skin color.
One does not need to have created art on the same level to be able to critique it. I may not have gotten any albums published lately, but I can definitely tell you what is bad music. And I can do it because you don't need to have studied art to know what is aesthetically pleasing to you. And you don't need to have written a script to know that the dialogue in a movie is trite and meaningless.
And besides, your theory is baseless anyway, because even though I haven't released any albums, I have studied singing, and I could easily tell you with a certain degree of accuracy whether somebody can sing or not. But you wouldn't listen to me because I haven't had a hit record.
Isn't your example a little bit extreme? I mean, we're not talking about taking away anybody's life here. If you really wanted it to fit, say that a $500 fine for jaywalking would be a deterrent. And it might be. In fact, I was once threatened with $124 for jaywalking because I made a comment to a cop that he didn't like (I wasn't being disrespectful to him or anything, but he didn't like the fact that I could think and speak for myself).
Anyway, implementing a $500 for jaywalking--or even better, killing them for jaywalking--is ridiculous for more reasons than for the obvious overkill (pardon the pun). Namely, the biggest reason is that jaywalking doesn't impinge on others' free time, privacy, and way of life, whereas telemarketing is sleazy at best and deviously insidious at its worst. Nobody should have to deal with a company that deliberately tries to get you to give away personal information so that it can be sold later on. That's just wrong.
That's the idea. If the fine adds up to a large amount when lots of people do it, it then acts as a deterrent. That's kind of the whole idea of fines. If it becomes dangerous for a business to keep paying fines of $500, then they need to stop their illegal behavior. It's that simple.
If you're in public and you're doing something, it's not a matter of privacy. It is by definition impossible to have privacy when everybody else is there, too.
So if the government wants to preempt the use of a surveillance camera to keep tabs on a public location, I see no problem with that.
Now, if the government turned one of those cameras toward my bedroom window, I might get a little miffed.
As compared to the higher quality content of cassettes and 8 tracks from the 60's and seventies.
No, you're right, CDs are much higher quality than cassettes or eight-tracks, but you're forgetting about LPs. LPs, on the right equipment, can be so much higher fidelity than any CD you've heard. Ever.
And, in fact, cassettes, in the right tape player and at the right tape speed (the faster the tape speed, the higher the fidelity and thus the higher the quality) can be quite professional quality as well.
Eight-tracks are right out.
However, I hadn't been referring to the quality of the recording medium, but rather the quality of the engineering going onto that medium.
Given the right sound equipment and a discerning ear, you can tell the difference quite easily.
Of course, that also means that you've spent thousands of dollars on your sound system and you really care about the quality of the music being played on your stereo.
But it doesn't really much matter anyway, what with the quality of engineering that's being done these days. Since most albums are being WAY overclipped (that is, mixed higher than -0dB) and are distorting anyway, and so much digital compression is being done that you'd be able to hear digital noise just from the vocal effects and equalization used, it doesn't really matter what kind of stereo you're listening on anyway.
I think the appropriate thing would be, rather than getting in a huff about the quality of downloads, we should get in a huff about the quality of the MUSIC, or at least the quality of the production on the album. After that's taken care of, we can worry a little more about the fact that compressed and lossy files are being distributed.
One thing's for certain, though: The general public is getting more and more used to crappy-sounding recordings. The larger amount of shoddy stereos and low-quality file formats is contributing a big amount to that.
OS X has native multi button support, including scroll wheel and 3rd button, and in classic most companies make an extension for their mouse that lets you add multi button functionality to the finder
I should have mentioned this. Yes, OSX does indeed have multi-button support built-in (it was based on Unix; why wouldn't, it, right?). But unfortunately when I was in college and working with a multi-button mouse on our school newspaper, we couldn't use that third-party utility in OS9 (couldn't use OSX because our publishing software didn't support it) because it crashed our system. Why Apple couldn't have written support for multiple buttons into its system directly, though, I have no idea, especially because the signals sent from a mouse are standardized and thus easy to work with from a coding perspective.
Even when I use a Mac, I find that having a single button was a hindrance. I'm a guy who's big on shortcuts, so consequently I did a lot of my navigation in Mac OS by using nothing more than keyboard commands (I loved being able to type the name of a folder or file and get it selected, then to expand all trees by hitting Shift-Command-Right Arrow, or collapse). But I always wanted that same kind of ease-of-use with the mouse as well. I always felt that you should be able to navigate solely by using the mouse or keyboard alone.
The idea of context menus was something I was very happy with when I started using PCs. I was very glad when Apple decided to include context menus in OS9, but I was angry that you couldn't use a two-button mouse to accomplish that. What's the point of having context menus if you have to hit Command-Click to use them?
What does a scroll wheel accomplish that holding down the third mouse button and dragging does not, apart from the fact that a wheel doesn't operate horizontally as well?
Well, considering that I have the middle button mapped to double-click rather than AutoScroll, I find that scrolling with the wheel is far better.
And especially since using the middle button to scroll doesn't work in Mozilla or any other non-Windows based browser, I can think of a lot of people who would have a problem without a scroll wheel.
The main problem with most spammers, and the same thing that makes it illegal for them to spam, is that they get their email addresses through illegal means. Either they do this by harvesting them from web pages--which is illegal because there was no opt-in involved--or they buy lists from people who obtained them through illegal means (either by harvesting or buying them from somebody else).
It's a vicious cycle of illegal means, and it's sort of like money laundering, but it should be easy to prove that something is illegally obtained: Simply ask a spammer if they received each of the email addresses they sent to specifically opted into their email list. Any other means of obtaining an email address should be considered illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you consider a "darn good reason"? What if there were government installed cameras on every street corner and inside every home? The more they can see, the better they can prevent terrorism - and preventing terrorism is a "darn good reason" isnt it?
Well, no. Why not? Mainly because the ratio of terrorists to non-terrorists is so low that it would have a diminishing point of return. So it's not a "darn good reason."
Or what if the government required you to implant a GPS tracking device into all citizens? Then they could see who goes where, and find all those nasty escaped convicts and murder suspects? Isn't that a "darn good reason"?
Again, no, because it would make far more sense to just implant the tracking devices in those people who were murder suspects or convicts, so that the only people being monitored were those who actually posed a threat to society. Note that I'm not condoning this by any meansâ"I'm merely stating that you're taking it a step too far because there are far less drastic measures that the government could take, and at a far lower cost to themselves. But you already said something very much to that point.
I find this comment misguided. If you're lazy, you're going to have a hard time learning. Learning requires work and effort - and if you aren't willing to put in the effort, you aren't going to learn.
No. Learning requires the ability to learn. WORKING requires work. You can easily learn stuff just by sitting around and listening. It's applying that knowledge that takes the work and effort, not the actual learning. Just because you had to study for hours every night with a textbook doesn't mean that we all had to.
implements a functional AI system using, I dunno, Lisp or something
Personally, I'd prefer my partners speak without impediments of any kind.
Wouldn't that be misrepresentation, then, and thus null and void in a legal proceeding? Or even better, leave them open for a lawsuit?
I dunno. I think it would be smart to redesign what we've got now. After all, in the thirty years since the shuttle was designed, our knowledge of physics and aerodynamics has increased so much. We should really make sure that we can design something that can withstand the worst beating possible, not something that can barely make it through re-entry without losing bits and pieces.
I fail to see how nine peoples who are so very physically different from each other couldn't be called different "races."
Tolkien, in addition, was using "race" as it was used in ancient times: It's obvious that the people of Middle Earth were not only very different, but similar enough--given that they're all bipedal humanoids with two ears, two eyes, and ten fingers, et cetera--that they assumed that they were related in some way, hence "nine races of man."
I fail to see how there's anything racist about that.
Let's not forget, also, that as far as I know there aren't any distinctions in the books of what skin color any of the characters is, with the possible exception of elves, who were described as fair-skinned, if I recall. So the real question you're bringing up is whether Peter Jackson is a racist.
Which I think he is not. But hey, opinions and assholes, right?
That was utter nonsense. Those are nine different sizes of white guys.
So you still use the term 'race' to define skin color? How gauche. Everybody knows that humans have less genetic difference between those of different color skin than they do between different people with the SAME skin color.
Well aren't you just the eloquent man.
One does not need to have created art on the same level to be able to critique it. I may not have gotten any albums published lately, but I can definitely tell you what is bad music. And I can do it because you don't need to have studied art to know what is aesthetically pleasing to you. And you don't need to have written a script to know that the dialogue in a movie is trite and meaningless.
And besides, your theory is baseless anyway, because even though I haven't released any albums, I have studied singing, and I could easily tell you with a certain degree of accuracy whether somebody can sing or not. But you wouldn't listen to me because I haven't had a hit record.
So maybe you're just trolling.
Hilary Rosen of the MPAA
Uh... Riiiight.
Isn't your example a little bit extreme? I mean, we're not talking about taking away anybody's life here. If you really wanted it to fit, say that a $500 fine for jaywalking would be a deterrent. And it might be. In fact, I was once threatened with $124 for jaywalking because I made a comment to a cop that he didn't like (I wasn't being disrespectful to him or anything, but he didn't like the fact that I could think and speak for myself).
Anyway, implementing a $500 for jaywalking--or even better, killing them for jaywalking--is ridiculous for more reasons than for the obvious overkill (pardon the pun). Namely, the biggest reason is that jaywalking doesn't impinge on others' free time, privacy, and way of life, whereas telemarketing is sleazy at best and deviously insidious at its worst. Nobody should have to deal with a company that deliberately tries to get you to give away personal information so that it can be sold later on. That's just wrong.
That's the idea. If the fine adds up to a large amount when lots of people do it, it then acts as a deterrent. That's kind of the whole idea of fines. If it becomes dangerous for a business to keep paying fines of $500, then they need to stop their illegal behavior. It's that simple.
If you're in public and you're doing something, it's not a matter of privacy. It is by definition impossible to have privacy when everybody else is there, too.
So if the government wants to preempt the use of a surveillance camera to keep tabs on a public location, I see no problem with that.
Now, if the government turned one of those cameras toward my bedroom window, I might get a little miffed.
As compared to the higher quality content of cassettes and 8 tracks from the 60's and seventies.
No, you're right, CDs are much higher quality than cassettes or eight-tracks, but you're forgetting about LPs. LPs, on the right equipment, can be so much higher fidelity than any CD you've heard. Ever.
And, in fact, cassettes, in the right tape player and at the right tape speed (the faster the tape speed, the higher the fidelity and thus the higher the quality) can be quite professional quality as well.
Eight-tracks are right out.
However, I hadn't been referring to the quality of the recording medium, but rather the quality of the engineering going onto that medium.
Given the right sound equipment and a discerning ear, you can tell the difference quite easily.
Of course, that also means that you've spent thousands of dollars on your sound system and you really care about the quality of the music being played on your stereo.
But it doesn't really much matter anyway, what with the quality of engineering that's being done these days. Since most albums are being WAY overclipped (that is, mixed higher than -0dB) and are distorting anyway, and so much digital compression is being done that you'd be able to hear digital noise just from the vocal effects and equalization used, it doesn't really matter what kind of stereo you're listening on anyway.
I think the appropriate thing would be, rather than getting in a huff about the quality of downloads, we should get in a huff about the quality of the MUSIC, or at least the quality of the production on the album. After that's taken care of, we can worry a little more about the fact that compressed and lossy files are being distributed.
One thing's for certain, though: The general public is getting more and more used to crappy-sounding recordings. The larger amount of shoddy stereos and low-quality file formats is contributing a big amount to that.
I was going to wait until it reached a later release, but I suppose maybe it's a good idea to look into it.
Oh, and I love your sig. Those are good poems, as is the show that was based on them (IMHO).
OS X has native multi button support, including scroll wheel and 3rd button, and in classic most companies make an extension for their mouse that lets you add multi button functionality to the finder
I should have mentioned this. Yes, OSX does indeed have multi-button support built-in (it was based on Unix; why wouldn't, it, right?). But unfortunately when I was in college and working with a multi-button mouse on our school newspaper, we couldn't use that third-party utility in OS9 (couldn't use OSX because our publishing software didn't support it) because it crashed our system. Why Apple couldn't have written support for multiple buttons into its system directly, though, I have no idea, especially because the signals sent from a mouse are standardized and thus easy to work with from a coding perspective.
Even when I use a Mac, I find that having a single button was a hindrance. I'm a guy who's big on shortcuts, so consequently I did a lot of my navigation in Mac OS by using nothing more than keyboard commands (I loved being able to type the name of a folder or file and get it selected, then to expand all trees by hitting Shift-Command-Right Arrow, or collapse). But I always wanted that same kind of ease-of-use with the mouse as well. I always felt that you should be able to navigate solely by using the mouse or keyboard alone.
The idea of context menus was something I was very happy with when I started using PCs. I was very glad when Apple decided to include context menus in OS9, but I was angry that you couldn't use a two-button mouse to accomplish that. What's the point of having context menus if you have to hit Command-Click to use them?
What does a scroll wheel accomplish that holding down the third mouse button and dragging does not, apart from the fact that a wheel doesn't operate horizontally as well?
Well, considering that I have the middle button mapped to double-click rather than AutoScroll, I find that scrolling with the wheel is far better.
And especially since using the middle button to scroll doesn't work in Mozilla or any other non-Windows based browser, I can think of a lot of people who would have a problem without a scroll wheel.
The main problem with most spammers, and the same thing that makes it illegal for them to spam, is that they get their email addresses through illegal means. Either they do this by harvesting them from web pages--which is illegal because there was no opt-in involved--or they buy lists from people who obtained them through illegal means (either by harvesting or buying them from somebody else).
It's a vicious cycle of illegal means, and it's sort of like money laundering, but it should be easy to prove that something is illegally obtained: Simply ask a spammer if they received each of the email addresses they sent to specifically opted into their email list. Any other means of obtaining an email address should be considered illegal.