If, like me, you have a two-way tinfoil hat and hesitated to believe Memory Hole without proof, have a look at this PDF. It's a "teacher-aid" document from the Times (some sort of coursework on actuality based on Times article), and it mentions the "disappearing article".
Not only is the Times playing at Big Brother, they are not even competent when doing this... A simple Google search restricted to the times website found that in 2 sec.
It doesn't scale well. The population of Canada is about an order of magitude smaller than the population of the US. The Election officials and staffers in the US are already overworked as it is, even with the votes counted electronically. That system is also extremely labor intensive, which is why the US started switching to mechanical voting years ago.
It does scale well. France uses a comparable system (where you are given a card per candidate, and you have to put one in an envelop). Votes are hand-counted by volunteers (four persons per "team" to prevent cheating), with representatives of parties checking. Being part of the vote-counting is a right of any elector.
On presidential election night, the official results for all but some oversea provinces are in in two hours. And that's a vote with something like 40 millions electors - bigger than the Californian recall. For all but the closest races, we know the result from after-election polls as soon as the voting stations are officially closed.
It works, it's fast, and it's secure. And the results comes in in hours.
It's even more ironic than you think. Take this headline from their website:
Can a dead cat bounce?
For everyone but its fanatical users, Napster has been an endless series of headaches. First it was the recording industry, whose five major labels - BMG, Sony, the Universal Music Group, EMI, and the Warner Music Group - cried copyright infringement and forced Napster to shutter its music file-swapping service in 2001.
Looks like they are trying to go back three years ago;-)
Japan and ROK are both WTO members, and China really wants to be. It's unlikely they're going to contravene those rules without good reason. Besides, if it's open source, the question goes away.
Actually, Chiana was admitted in the WTO recently. However I somehow doubt that for a country to be in the WTO guaranties that it will respect its rules;-)
If you know the name, its easy, it goes: first letter of surname + familly name attached @europarl.eu.int
Hence, the MEP Jean-Louis BOURLANGES has for email jbourlanges at europarl.eu.int
You can also try looking them up on their french political party's page - I got the list (with emails) of UDF MEPs of their website without problems.
He was human incarnate, not human. Why couldn't he have been "Ugly bug-eyed monster from Proxima Centauri incarnate" or "Betazed incarnate"?
You can be absolutely certain that if intelligent life were discovered tomorrow, on Earth or anywhere else the scriptures of most of the major religions would prove flexible enough to accomodate it.
I have no doubt that at least some churches would adapt, but it would be far more difficult than what you say. For a start, any alien life would be most likely very different from our own ; not only physically, but in terms of psychology, values, organization, beliefs... simply "transposing" the Bible to their civilization and thus making them "human equivalents" would most likely be totally impossible.
Even supposing that they look and behave enough like human for such a transposition to be possible (or more likely, that not enough is known about them to disprove it and that the churches chooses to believe it is the case), you are still left with some big, big problems. For a start, Humanity is no longer the sole "summit of creation", as claimed by the Bible. We are no longer "created to God's image". And even with your idea of a "Christ-incarnate" in the different alien races which solves the problem of having multiple sons of God, that still means that the Crucifixion and the Resurrection were not unique - they happened a number of time in different alien worlds.
I suppose Religions, including Christian one, would adapt, but definite proof of the existence of Alien civilizations would require massive updating of the Churches' beliefs.
But with NASA supporting the search for ET life, the government has implicitly thumbed its nose at the Creationists.
Not the US government - NASA, which as a scientific organization is much more likely to be "pro-evolutionist" than "pro-creationist". I doubt this was conceived by high-level officials from the Bush administration as a show of support for the ToE...
sorry - repost. Forgot some tags in my other post making it unreadable. Should have used that "preview" button;-)
EU is becoming a dictatorship, with the bureaucrats making more and more laws
You will find that while the European Commission, whose members are choosen by the States and not elected, propose many of the EU laws, they have to be approved by the European Parliament to become law. They also have to be approved by the European Council, made up of the ministers of the relevent domain (ie financial ministers, agricultural ministers, trade ministers depending on the law proposal) from the 15 states.
It's a complex system, but not undemocratic: all the actors involved are either directly elected (MEPs), members of elected national governements (The ministers) or choosen by national governements (members of the EU commission). Hardly a dictatorship.
And the citizens don't even have any chance to proclaim their opinions, i.e. there are no EU-wide elections
Excuse me, but I thought EU citizens voted every four years for their MEPs, who go on voting on EU law poposals? Does that not count as an EU-wide election?
Of course, that does not prevent industry lobbyists from pushing hard for the passage of laws in their interest, but sadly this is a practice all too frequent in the world. Without the EU, it would simply take place at a national level in much the same way.
EU is becoming a dictatorship, with the bureaucrats making more and more laws
You will find that while the European Commission, whose members are choosen by the States and not elected, propose many of the EU laws, they have to be approved by the European Parliament to become law. They also have to be approved by the European Council, made up of the ministers of the relevent domain (ie financial ministers, agricultural ministers, trade ministers depending on the law proposal) from the 15 states.
It's a complex system, but not undemocratic: all the actors involved are either directly elected (MEPs), members of elected national governements (The ministers) or choosen by national governements (members of the EU commission). Hardly a dictatorship.
And the citizens don't even have any chance to proclaim their opinions, i.e. there are no EU-wide elections
Excuse me, but I thought EU citizens voted every four years for their MEPs, who go on voting on EU law poposals? Does that not count as an EU-wide election?
Of course, that does not prevent industry lobbyists from pushing hard for the passage of laws in their interest, but sadly this is a practice all too frequent in the world. Without the EU, it would simply take place at a national level in much the same way.
Not to mention that the proposal comes not from the European Union (EU), but from the Council of Europe (CoE), a separate organisation (which has the same flag as the EU to keep things simple;-) ) The CoE includes 45 countries (nearly the whole of Europe, including Russia) versus 15 (25 next years) for the EU, and is much, much looser organisation - certainly not a "quasi-governmental body" as claimed by C/Net. Merely a talking-shop and a diplomatic forum.
Further: Imagine if everyone who makes a negative comment about, say, the Church of Scientology, was forced to publish the megaton of CoS rebuttal that would surely follow. And an easy trick for preventing any future negative comments would be to simply make the rebuttal so large that it used up all your allowed webspace.
I don't know about the proposed law, but at least in the French laws on "right of reply" for newspaper it is stated that the accued party has the right to an "equivalent" reply to the article he objects to. Ie, if he feels attacked by a ten-liners on page 25 of the newspaper, he does not get 20 pages starting with the cover in reply. I assume this principle could be easly extended to stop that problem.
(And imagine the bandwidth bills after CoS drones were then instructed to slashdot your site.)
What does the CoE's proposal has to do with a slashdotting by CoS drones?
Concerning performances, one thing which struck me out as difficult to believe is the claim of an x2-x2.5 speed increase for Altivec apps... According to ArsTechnica's report, Altivec implemantation in the 970 is supposed to be rather worse than in the G4 ; while Altivec apps will still gain from higher clock speed and faster memory increases, the claimed increase here seems rather unbelievable. Not that I wouldnt like to believe it, but mac rumor websites have been known to post unverified rumors to get hits;-)
Well, what would be realy interesting is to know if the UK is drifting toward Europe or away from it. Lots of people on the continent would be interested in the answer;-)
...everything is invested in helping a destitute royal from Nigeria.
As soon as I get the millions promised in the email, I will invest in your project.
Can't believe a theory explaining that some zones of Mars have an average temperature of 15C has been moded +5 Interesting:P It should be +5 funny, and the moderators who modded this up should go fast to the nearest library and borrow a good book on our solar system;-)
Why so many different standards?
on
Cashless Society
·
· Score: 5, Informative
As a french pro-european, I'll amazed at the short-sightedness of the various european govs in supporting those cards. As pointed out in numerous posts, cards like this exist all over Europe... and yet, AFAIK, none are compatible. Think about it: with the Euro, I can go in any of the 12 participating countries and pay with the same money, without any problem. With this great cool new gadget, I'm limited to a few shops in my own country. Oh, and I kinda like the euro coins, it's fun to see some from 12 different countries mixing in my pocket. This thing is just a bit of plastic. And it's expensive too. Needless to say, I'm not getting one before I can use it all over the EU. And before it gets cheaper, as well.
ClearChannel fighting the RIAA... how ironic
on
Instant Concert CDs?
·
· Score: 1
These guys and their monopoly on radio broadcasting in the US has turned radio there in a 100% commercial, TOP-10-hits-only desert. I know I will not be buying anything from them in the forseable future.
I'm sure 400 years from now people will be using spooky action at a distance to teleport to their flying cars so they can head out to stores to finally buy a shrinkwrapped copy of Duke Nukem Forever.
Wait... are you telling me you expect people to buy games in a world with 0.0 lag, near-infinite bandwidth internet connections?
Slashdot Mirror
If, like me, you have a two-way tinfoil hat and hesitated to believe Memory Hole without proof, have a look at this PDF. It's a "teacher-aid" document from the Times (some sort of coursework on actuality based on Times article), and it mentions the "disappearing article".
Not only is the Times playing at Big Brother, they are not even competent when doing this... A simple Google search restricted to the times website found that in 2 sec.
It does scale well. France uses a comparable system (where you are given a card per candidate, and you have to put one in an envelop). Votes are hand-counted by volunteers (four persons per "team" to prevent cheating), with representatives of parties checking. Being part of the vote-counting is a right of any elector.
On presidential election night, the official results for all but some oversea provinces are in in two hours. And that's a vote with something like 40 millions electors - bigger than the Californian recall. For all but the closest races, we know the result from after-election polls as soon as the voting stations are officially closed.
It works, it's fast, and it's secure. And the results comes in in hours.
It's been available online for half an hour. http://www.apple.com/itunes/
Ask a lawyer if you can sue someone for something?
;-)
I would have thought the answer given would be obvious
It's even more ironic than you think. Take this headline from their website:
;-)
Can a dead cat bounce?
For everyone but its fanatical users, Napster has been an endless series of headaches. First it was the recording industry, whose five major labels - BMG, Sony, the Universal Music Group, EMI, and the Warner Music Group - cried copyright infringement and forced Napster to shutter its music file-swapping service in 2001.
Looks like they are trying to go back three years ago
I just have a an automatic rule doing the same. OK, a false-postive might slip in, but they are rare and I'm not paranoiac.
Japan and ROK are both WTO members, and China really wants to be. It's unlikely they're going to contravene those rules without good reason. Besides, if it's open source, the question goes away.
;-)
Actually, Chiana was admitted in the WTO recently. However I somehow doubt that for a country to be in the WTO guaranties that it will respect its rules
If you know the name, its easy, it goes: first letter of surname + familly name attached @europarl.eu.int Hence, the MEP Jean-Louis BOURLANGES has for email jbourlanges at europarl.eu.int You can also try looking them up on their french political party's page - I got the list (with emails) of UDF MEPs of their website without problems.
...this guy is implying that people learn from virus attacks?
lol!
He was human incarnate, not human. Why couldn't he have been "Ugly bug-eyed monster from Proxima Centauri incarnate" or "Betazed incarnate"?
You can be absolutely certain that if intelligent life were discovered tomorrow, on Earth or anywhere else the scriptures of most of the major religions would prove flexible enough to accomodate it.
I have no doubt that at least some churches would adapt, but it would be far more difficult than what you say. For a start, any alien life would be most likely very different from our own ; not only physically, but in terms of psychology, values, organization, beliefs... simply "transposing" the Bible to their civilization and thus making them "human equivalents" would most likely be totally impossible.
Even supposing that they look and behave enough like human for such a transposition to be possible (or more likely, that not enough is known about them to disprove it and that the churches chooses to believe it is the case), you are still left with some big, big problems. For a start, Humanity is no longer the sole "summit of creation", as claimed by the Bible. We are no longer "created to God's image". And even with your idea of a "Christ-incarnate" in the different alien races which solves the problem of having multiple sons of God, that still means that the Crucifixion and the Resurrection were not unique - they happened a number of time in different alien worlds.
I suppose Religions, including Christian one, would adapt, but definite proof of the existence of Alien civilizations would require massive updating of the Churches' beliefs.
But with NASA supporting the search for ET life, the government has implicitly thumbed its nose at the Creationists.
Not the US government - NASA, which as a scientific organization is much more likely to be "pro-evolutionist" than "pro-creationist". I doubt this was conceived by high-level officials from the Bush administration as a show of support for the ToE...
nt
sorry - repost. Forgot some tags in my other post making it unreadable. Should have used that "preview" button ;-)
EU is becoming a dictatorship, with the bureaucrats making more and more laws
You will find that while the European Commission, whose members are choosen by the States and not elected, propose many of the EU laws, they have to be approved by the European Parliament to become law. They also have to be approved by the European Council, made up of the ministers of the relevent domain (ie financial ministers, agricultural ministers, trade ministers depending on the law proposal) from the 15 states.
It's a complex system, but not undemocratic: all the actors involved are either directly elected (MEPs), members of elected national governements (The ministers) or choosen by national governements (members of the EU commission). Hardly a dictatorship.
And the citizens don't even have any chance to proclaim their opinions, i.e. there are no EU-wide elections
Excuse me, but I thought EU citizens voted every four years for their MEPs, who go on voting on EU law poposals? Does that not count as an EU-wide election?
Of course, that does not prevent industry lobbyists from pushing hard for the passage of laws in their interest, but sadly this is a practice all too frequent in the world. Without the EU, it would simply take place at a national level in much the same way.
EU is becoming a dictatorship, with the bureaucrats making more and more laws You will find that while the European Commission, whose members are choosen by the States and not elected, propose many of the EU laws, they have to be approved by the European Parliament to become law. They also have to be approved by the European Council, made up of the ministers of the relevent domain (ie financial ministers, agricultural ministers, trade ministers depending on the law proposal) from the 15 states. It's a complex system, but not undemocratic: all the actors involved are either directly elected (MEPs), members of elected national governements (The ministers) or choosen by national governements (members of the EU commission). Hardly a dictatorship. And the citizens don't even have any chance to proclaim their opinions, i.e. there are no EU-wide elections Excuse me, but I thought EU citizens voted every four years for their MEPs, who go on voting on EU law poposals? Does that not count as an EU-wide election? Of course, that does not prevent industry lobbyists from pushing hard for the passage of laws in their interest, but sadly this is a practice all too frequent in the world. Without the EU, it would simply take place at a national level in much the same way.
Come on, what more did you expect from such a belaguered computer maker?
Not to mention that the proposal comes not from the European Union (EU), but from the Council of Europe (CoE), a separate organisation (which has the same flag as the EU to keep things simple ;-) )
The CoE includes 45 countries
(nearly the whole of Europe, including Russia) versus 15 (25 next years) for the EU, and is much, much looser organisation - certainly not a "quasi-governmental body" as claimed by C/Net. Merely a talking-shop and a diplomatic forum.
Further: Imagine if everyone who makes a negative comment about, say, the Church of Scientology, was forced to publish the megaton of CoS rebuttal that would surely follow. And an easy trick for preventing any future negative comments would be to simply make the rebuttal so large that it used up all your allowed webspace.
I don't know about the proposed law, but at least in the French laws on "right of reply" for newspaper it is stated that the accued party has the right to an "equivalent" reply to the article he objects to. Ie, if he feels attacked by a ten-liners on page 25 of the newspaper, he does not get 20 pages starting with the cover in reply. I assume this principle could be easly extended to stop that problem.
(And imagine the bandwidth bills after CoS drones were then instructed to slashdot your site.)
What does the CoE's proposal has to do with a slashdotting by CoS drones?
Concerning performances, one thing which struck me out as difficult to believe is the claim of an x2-x2.5 speed increase for Altivec apps... According to ArsTechnica's report, Altivec implemantation in the 970 is supposed to be rather worse than in the G4 ; while Altivec apps will still gain from higher clock speed and faster memory increases, the claimed increase here seems rather unbelievable. Not that I wouldnt like to believe it, but mac rumor websites have been known to post unverified rumors to get hits ;-)
Well, what would be realy interesting is to know if the UK is drifting toward Europe or away from it. Lots of people on the continent would be interested in the answer ;-)
Actualy, that sounds pretty much like "In Capitalist Russia" to me...
...everything is invested in helping a destitute royal from Nigeria. As soon as I get the millions promised in the email, I will invest in your project.
Can't believe a theory explaining that some zones of Mars have an average temperature of 15C has been moded +5 Interesting :P ;-)
It should be +5 funny, and the moderators who modded this up should go fast to the nearest library and borrow a good book on our solar system
As a french pro-european, I'll amazed at the short-sightedness of the various european govs in supporting those cards.
As pointed out in numerous posts, cards like this exist all over Europe... and yet, AFAIK, none are compatible.
Think about it: with the Euro, I can go in any of the 12 participating countries and pay with the same money, without any problem. With this great cool new gadget, I'm limited to a few shops in my own country. Oh, and I kinda like the euro coins, it's fun to see some from 12 different countries mixing in my pocket. This thing is just a bit of plastic. And it's expensive too.
Needless to say, I'm not getting one before I can use it all over the EU. And before it gets cheaper, as well.
These guys and their monopoly on radio broadcasting in the US has turned radio there in a 100% commercial, TOP-10-hits-only desert. I know I will not be buying anything from them in the forseable future.
I'm sure 400 years from now people will be using spooky action at a distance to teleport to their flying cars so they can head out to stores to finally buy a shrinkwrapped copy of Duke Nukem Forever.
Wait... are you telling me you expect people to buy games in a world with 0.0 lag, near-infinite bandwidth internet connections?