There are further details out there for the Googling. Short version: J.R.R. Tolkien sold the film rights to Saul Zaentz (who is listed in the credits, and is the owner of Tolkien Enterprises) back in '69. Certain members of the family (namely Christopher) have been smarting about this pretty much ever since. This is why the family refused to "officially"** endorse the films: the estate didn't have creative control.
**Unofficially is a different story; Simon, Christopher's son, has been estranged from his father for years for saying that the estate should loosen up a little. Simon is also a fan of the films, and his son (whose name I've forgotten) has a bit part as one of the Riders of Rohan. Yes, I include Tolkien in my various geekdoms; books and movies. Why do you ask?;)
A remake of Evil Dead without Sam Raimi at the helm must be one of the Worst Ideas Ever. Either that, or one of the signs of an Impending Apocalypse. It was largely Raimi's bizarre sense of black humor that made the original so entertaining.
An ED movie without Sam directing would be like... well, S-Mart without Ash at the register.
The RIAA (during Ms. Rosen's stint as frontwoman) killed an indie musician - directly or not, and so a bunch of them got together and cursed Ms. Rosen with a soul? Obviously, her summer of "decompression" in Italy was the result of her having to work out all of the insanity and angst as the result.
All sarcasm aside; while it is a good thing that she seems to have changed her tune (so to speak), it does nothing to change the fact that the extended copyrights which she so recently championed have done a great deal of ill to the creative process. People have always looked to the wealth of created works that came before them to find inspiration. To look at it from a different angle: public domain is Jung's theory of the collective unconscious made manifest. Ideas are usually not original, but the ways in which they can be expressed are nearly limitless.
I am an artist; a great deal of the work that I do as a silversmith is inspired by the works of the past. I am a believer in copyrights; at the same time, I would love for someone to stumble across a piece of jewelry that I made, at some point in the future, and be inspired to create their own interpretaion of it, and not be hampered in this endeavor by restrictive and insanely long copyrights. Public domain is there for a reason, and by putting a chokehold on the process by which things enter the public domain, the work of future - not to mention current - artists, writers, and artisans is strangled.
The RIAA and its sister organizations represent a new - and pernecious - way of thinking about who gets to create what. Think about it: had the RIAA held the sort of power 50 years ago that it does now, Richie Valens could never have released his most famous song. "La Bamba" was a Mexican folk tune, but somebody wrote the words and music long before Mr. Valens gave it a rock-n-roll tempo. He interpreted what he heard, and brought the song to the ears of a far wider audience. Because of copyright extensions, however, nobody will have the opportunity to do the same thing with his interpretion of the same folk song without having to jump through an extensive number of legal hoops first.
To sum it up: fire bad. Tree pretty. Public domain necessary.
I've seen a few posts attacking Kerry for allegedly attempting to "curtail" and "deny" Sinclair Broadcasting Group Inc.'s freedom of speech. Let me just quote what the Bill of Rights has to say about that:
Amendment I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
While the "freedom of the press" could possibly be stretched to cover the situation, it's still a pretty big stretch. Congress is not doing a ruddy thing to silence a large media group. A corporation. Businesses are not people, and should not be viewed as individuals. There is no proviso securing the unhampered freedom of speech for a business; it's a right guaranteed only to human beings. Now, if Kerry were to use his position as a senator to enact punitive bitch-slap legislation that was aimed at Sinclair, then yes; there's a clear violation. However, as it stands, what we have here is a media conglomerate throwing its corporate weight around to promote a particular political viewpoint. Period.
[rant] Since "chuck everything out of the airlock" seems to be the favored solution, let's look at some of the problems involved. As has been pointed out multiple times, the gravitational pull in high earth orbit isn't enough solve the problem. Think about it: if the station isn't affected by the pull of Earth's gravity, something with far less mass isn't going to feel the tug. It would take serious thrust to move the debris out of into an unstable orbit. Possible, but not practical. Assuming, of course, that "chuck it out of the airlock (using lots of thrust)" becomes practiced out of necessity, it creates another problem. The more debris you have floating around, waiting for enough orbital decay to occur to enable atmospheric incineration, the more likely it is that one of those floating widgets is going to hit something. Every year, more satellites go up; and I for one am not about to tell the residents of Florida and the Bahamas that they really didn't need that fancy weather imaging apparatus.
This article does illustrate a problem largely glossed over by works of speculative fiction - namely waste management in a small space. Air and water have to be recycled, and something has to happen to all of the garbage that is produced in the day-to-day process of living. Sadly, we don't seem to have that issue licked, even in ther here-and-now; and we're working with a much larger area. Look at the landfills. Look at the trash on the sides of every highway in the US. When people throw things "away", they usually forget that away isn't. The stuff has to go somewhere. Let's not take our failing of "out of sight, out of mind" to the Final Frontier. [/rant]
(Seriously, I've been glued to the broadcast all morning. This is an exciting event, especially to someone like me who grew up in a house decorated with framed NASA mission patches, and photographs of Apollo rockets and the Earth as seen from space. The Right Stuff, indeed.)
> you ever NOT get the reciept you requested at the ATM??
In answer to your question, yes; it just so happens that when I try to use a particularly busy ATM, my odds are about 50/50 that I wont get a reciept. Either:
a) I will be told that I can't have a reciept because that ATM can't print them at that moment, or
b) I'll be informed that the ATM can't process any transactions whatsoever (for reasons unknown.)
ATMs run out of paper and ink all of the time. So do older POS (that's point-of-sale, not the other acronym) credit card printers. And no, I'm not astroturfing, and I don't believe that the GP poster was, either.
Any voting machine technology - hypothetical or otherwise - needs to be poked, prodded, peered at, discussed, and debated. The very fact that there isn't more coverage by CNN and other major media outlets on the problems with the various voting machines should be worrisome. No matter who we elect, we're going to be stuck with whatever result the Diebold boxes spit out. No matter which side of the political fence you're on, that ought to be cause for concern. It's government by, of, and for the People, but only if the People are actually allowed their say in the matter.
Having sat on a jury, I'm pretty certain that you're underestimating the intelligence of the potential juror.
Anyone who has an e-mail address gets spam. It's an ugly fact of life in the modern age. Figure that, out of a pool of - say - 100 potentials, at least 10 of them have kids. Spammers are notorious about not checking the ages of the people who own the addresses that they spam - and they work very hard on ways to get around filters. Leaving the parents aside for the moment, everyone in the hypothetical jury pool gets flooded with this crap, because everyone with an e-mail account does. Period. Plus, I've observed that the less tech-savvy a person is, the angrier they get about spam, because they don't know how to stem the tide. Now, imagine a spammer going up against even 12 of the most sane, rational, mentally well-balanced of his vict^H^H^H^Hpeers. True, a lot of people don't quite understand the tech stuff; but break it down into dollars and sense ("misspelling" intended), and you'll see lightbulbs going off overhead all through the jury box.
And that goes triple for the conservative old man. A guilty plea would be much safer, all around.
Excellent points, all; and may I say how nice it is to see someone else on/. with a reasonably good grasp of history. Christianity certainly didn't invent the idea of religious tolerance; in fact, it was one of the planks in the platform of the Pax Romana. After all, what did a few new statues in the Pantheon matter if their presence kept the barba^H^H^H^H^Hnewly-minted Roman citizens happy? Part of the reason for the separation of church and state in this country was the rotten track record that the various early-arriving Christian factions had in playing nicely with each other. The Baptists and Anabaptists hated each other, the Anglicans and Lutherans despised one another, the Puritans didn't get along with anybody, and the Quakers kept getting booted out of every colony except Rhode Island. Somebody had to step in and say "No, no, no! Nobody gets to have more of a say than everybody else," and the only entity which could do so effectively was a secular government. (Of course, the fact that many of the Founding Fathers were Deists had something to do with this, too.) So yes; the idea of Christianity as a religion of tolerance is inaccurate, to say the least. Even to this day, Christians of different factions the world over will gleefully turn on one another - unless presented wtih a common focus for their ire.
You, sir, have just been added to my friends list. Thank you for your delightful post.
Interesting article, but it's not anything that I hadn't already figured out - a long time ago.
Once upon a time, I worked for the Company Formerly Known as USWorst. That experience left me with more knowledge of both their database and their employee benefits program than I ever wanted to know. The stress of that position also left me with carpal tunnel syndrome, the beginnings of a whopping good ulcer, and stress-related dissociative attacks. (Literally, my brain was going on mini-vacations, and neglecting to take me along with it.) Now, I own my own business. The pay isn't as regular, but my schedule is my own, and the unreasonable request list is pretty minimal. The carpal tunnel still flares up form time to time, but it's in remission without surgery. (Since I use my hands a lot, this is a critical point.) The other problems started to heal as soon as I escaped the toxic work environment. I'm not spending as much time sitting in a doctor's office, and nowhere near as much money on things like Pepto and pain relief nostrums.
So, yeah; not exactly news, but it's nice to see that somebody has quantified the impact that work-related stress has on people's lives.
Nothing on the 'Net shocks me anymore.
on
Internet Babylon
·
· Score: 1
Amuses, all the time; occasionally disgusts, but shocks? I can't remember the last time I saw something that shocked me. Maybe it's just because I've been a student of human nature for too long; no interest is too perverse or scatological for at least one person out there. And thanks to FrontPage, that one person can make a website about his interest, broadcast it to the world, and perhaps find a like-minded soul, or two, or 500.
Yeah, it's the study of human nature that renders me mostly immune to shock. Either that, or all of the bizarre requests that come via ICQ...
Well said, young sir. You acknowledge the problem (unlike some of the folks here), address the solution, but don't lose sight of the fact that it could be far worse. And, given that you're a part of the age group in question, you do so with admirable objectivity and level-headedness.
Personally, I'd like to know what's with the ad hominem attack pattern. Accusations that he will flame (with no evidence that he is prone to do so), calling him "kid", discounting his DBA experience as "work-as-student", et cetera.
There's another ugly meme on Slashdot that I'd like to see dispatched with a +5 vorpal blade of reality: to wit, that anyone who expresses an opinion on software - or anything else, for that matter - differing from yours is therefore a) younger than you, b) horribly inexperienced / naive, and c) in dire need of a condescending retort in which you Reveal To Them the Error Of Their Ways from the Lofty Mountaintop Of Your Experience and Wisdom. In many ways, tech is like a pair of jeans: one size does not fit all, or even most. Some things just can't be done at all in Product X, therefore Package Y has to be brought into use. Some things can be done with one utility more easily or faster than another, in which the difference comes down to user preference. Personally, when it comes to keeping track of my data, I would rather have someone who knows MySQL backwards, forwards, inside, and out than someone who limps along in PostgreSQL (or one of the others), even one of the other DBMSs is the "preferred product".
Assuming that most other things are equivalent, it isn't the DBMS that makes the difference. It's the knowledge and capability of the person using it. You had no reason to disparage the grandparent poster's abilities and knowledge, other than a difference in opinion. And that, sir, is offensive.
This is going to be waaaay too late to be noticed, I'm sure, but I've gotta chime in. Why in the hell would the BSA pick a ferret (not a weasel, although that might be more appropriate) as their new mascot? Anyone who has ever spent any time around ferrets (such as myself as a long-time ferret-mom) knows that ferrets are the last creatures on Earth who would make good representatives for an IP watchdog group. The subspecies designation of their scientific name, Mustela putorius furo comes from the Latin furonem, meaning "thief". And they are fuzzy little thieves: shoes, socks (bonus points if you manage to steal it off of a human's foot!), toys, CD jewel cases, loaves of bread, wallets, car keys, ("Quick, while Mom's not lookin' - shopping spree at PetCo!"), jewelry - if it's not nailed down, they'll make off with it, chuckling the whole time. In short: ferret (n.), a free-spirited, furry little animal with a joyous disregard for individual property rights. Not exactly the best ambassador for the Software Goon Squad.
What the hell were they smoki^H^H^H^H^Hdrinki^H^H^H^H^H^H thinking?
Thanks to you, I have a new desktop background. Muchas gracias, vielen dänk, and et cetera for the link! /goes off to gloat over newest photo acquisition...
Well, damn. I finally heard of something that makes me wish that I didn't have: such a good firewall / spyware killer / Mozilla / et cetera.
Now if only there were some way to legally drive spyware / malware companies out of business. That would be an effort that I could endorse 100%. The problem with this is, well, it's still a DDoS, even if it is against a company that's pretty thoroughly reviled. I doubt that the owners of the participating computers agreed to help with the project. Plus, there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who still haven't figured out that the big blue "e" isn't the Internet. Their day got totally hosed by web pages that refused to load, "server not found" issues, and assorted other garbage. They got hit by the "shrapnel", but were innocent bystanders. And no, using IE doesn't mean that "they got what they deserved." (We tend to be rather elitest here on/., but it's likely that the number of late-bloomer techies far outnumbers the ranks of the lifelong geeks. Not everybody discovers their inner geek at the same point in life - but that's another rant.) Aunt Claire, who just wants to upload new photos to the family webpage, doesn't deserve to be pop-upped and spywared to tears, but neither does she - or anyone else - deserve to get caught in the middle of an online piss war. Poetic justice or not, this event is a Bad Thing.
Still, it does warm the cockles of my black little heart, thinking of DoubleClick getting served a heaping helping of the kind of crap that they've dished out over the years.
BSD mascot and babe, Ceren, has filed for a permanent restraining order against an unnamed Slashdotter, citing her experiences at DefCon involving the anonymous fanboy. Incidents included multiple attempts to initiate conversations with the young woman, all of which failed as he stammered incoherantly, stared at her chest, and drooled. One episode ended abruptly with him losing consciousness and collapsing at her feet, prompting a moment of nervous laughter from Ceren's fellow convention attendees. "When he first gave me that little stuffed troll, and blurted out that he thought I was 'really hot', I suppose I thought he was sweet," she said. "Kind of a geek, but around here, who isn't? Then, every time I turned around, he was standing there staring at me. It got creepy very quickly. I'm not really that angry with him," she added, "but I do wish that he'd find someone else to obsess over. The webpage with 'Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Ceren' written over about 200 copies of the same picture of me - that was the last straw."
Police refuse to comment on the candlelit shrine supposedly found in her stalker's bedroom, with a photograph of Ceren, superimposed onto the body of Princess Leia in her slave costume, as the central image.
Oh, for the want of a mod point. I hope that someone else sees this and marks you up accordingly.
One of the big problems that I've always had with CAPPS marks I & II is not "invasion of privacy." My privacy gets invaded to some extent every time the phone rings. I invite a potential invasion of privacy with every business card I hand out. But both of those are reasonably controlled instances. It's simply impossible to live in a vacuum, no matter how hard you try. However, you, as an individual, do and should have the ability to say how personal information gets used. Say you apply for a mortgage through one of the online services. Someone looks you up, uses your credit rating to get a loan for himself, then leaves you holding the bag (as well as denying your mortgage appication.) You, as the consumer, can turn around and sue that person, and possibly the loan company as well, into next week. Someone steals your credit card? The bank will go after them on your behalf. Identity theft is still a problem, but legal recourses are finally starting to catch up with said problem. It might be difficult, bt it's do-able - so long as there's accountability somewhere along the line. CAPPS is incredibly secretive with its database. As has been said previously in this thread, if there's a error, there's no way to get it corrected, because technically it doesn't exist. "Error? There's no error in the database, sir. And even if there were, there wouldn't be, if you catch my meaning. No more questions." There is no accountability as to how this information is used, there's no way to review it, and if it a TSA employee did decide to misuse your data, there would be no way to hold that person responsible for his / her crime.
In short: information really doesn't want anything. But I ferdamnsure want to say how information about me is used.
Black turtleneck - check; got one, but it's too blasted hot to wear it today. Clove cigarette - check; nostalgic reminder of my early youth in a coffeehouse. (Plus I never developed a taste for any regular tobacco brand except Silk Cut, which isn't available in the US anymore.) iPod - working on it. Sorry; what was the point again? Oh yeah; the "Effete Ignorant Snob" stereotype.
Anyway, I don't know what the original poster has against "Broadway". I do know that some people hear the word and have an instant mental vision of flashy, bubbly, sugary musicals with lots of tinsel and feathers. (And just barely enough of a storyline to hold the music together.) If such fare isn't their thing, it's probably quite easy for them to dismiss "Broadway" as a whole and ignore the many other works which have graced that street: Equus, 'Night, Mother, Angels in America, Wit - to name but a few. It might be more accurate for the OP to say that he has a low tolerance for schmaltz. Quite understandable, and defendable, as there are many circa 30s and 40s musicals out there which are sugary enough to cause acute diabetes. And let's face it, Sturgeon's Law is applicable to many areas besides science fiction, even if the 90% of everything that is crap can be rather subjective. (Brain candy movies and books are the examples that spring to mind; I enjoy a good potboiler now and then. They're fun.) One person's crap is another person's proudly displayed black velvet Elvis painting.
All that aside, I've got high hopes for this production. David Hyde Pierce's facial expressions alone ought to be worth the ticket price. Throwing Tim Curry into the mix just improves the chances that the Monty Python troupe will be very proud of their legacy.
And I know that orgasm in general leaves a person weak in the knees, and reduces your overall strength and stamina (nobody wants to move after even halfway-decent sex) - whether you intend to work out within the next 24 hours or not. IANAG(uy), so I can't test the ejaculation portion of the hypothesis. However, nobody with whom I've ever been involved seems to have had any problem with their regular workout the next morning, and I certainly don't notice any. Doing without coffee is more likely to cause me problems than having sex (with or without a partner.)
Methinks the phenomenon may be limited to you and you alone. Sort of a reverse "placebo effect", as 'twere.
...and I'm quite certain that I'm going to be flamed for saying so, especially since I'm female and pro-choice. ("You unnatural woman, you! Why do you hate babies?")
Answer: I don't hate babies, even when they spit up. (Or have incredibly stinky diapers.) But we're not talking about babies here. We're not even talking about human fetuses (which despite all of the rhetoric to the contrary, do fit all of the same criteria as other parasitic organisms. The only difference is that the female of other parasitic organisms generally doesn't end up acting as a host to more of the same species.) We're talking about a mass of undiffentiated cells. It could become a fetus, which in turn could become an infant. But at the moment, it's a blob in a petri dish with nothing to distinguish it visually from a similar blob of cells coming from a cat, a horse, or a wolverine. It can't survive outside of that petri dish, and it certainly isn't a human being. It has no brain, no heartbeat, no feelings, and no sensory apparatus. It's nothing but a little blob of potential something, and if that little blob happens to have occurred in the process of IVF, it's most likely to become wasted potential.
Think of all of the people out there suffering from things like diabetes, or Parkinson's. They could benefit immensely from stem-cell research, if couples who have had IVF (or the fertility clinics) had the option to donate these cell masses for the research, but they don't have that option. Thanks to short-sighted, religiously biased legislation, it's illegal. Some people oppose using zygotes for research on the grounds that it is somehow "disrespectful". So, how is thawing them and pouring them down the sink drain more "repectful"? Yet, most "pro-lifers" who are vocal on abortion say nary a word about frozen embryos -- other than to oppose research that has the potential to save the lives of many currently born, living, breathing people. That, IMNSHO, is the real tragedy; that the fate of so many is held hostage to hysterical concern for a little clump of cells that stands a good chance of not turning into a person into the first place.
Oh, and BTW, here's an interesting set of statistics on miscarriage (spontaneous abortion). Even the most ardent pro-lifer would have to admit that, from these numbers, "God's will" is more dangerous to a fetus than all of the Planned Parenthood clinics put together.
I was using "Once upon a time" in the semi-ironic sense, as I remember all of the things you mentioned Including the original context of "Starbuck's". (Especially that context. *overheated fangirl moment*)
Unless you usually apply "youngun" to the 30- to 40-something crowd. In which case; guilty as charged.;)
This is nothing new for Starbucks. Once upon a time, coffee shops sold coffee, tea, hot cocoa, and other drinkables. A few added various sweet pastries, like croissants, but that was about it. Then along comes the post-expansion Sign O' the Mermaid (it was once a little independent coffee shop, too). Suddenly, to keep up with the Seattle Menace, coffee shops must now sell all of the above as well as sandwiches, soup, coffee mugs, branded coffee makers, candy, books, gift cards... you get the idea. A small coffee shop that just wants to focus on the core product -- namely, coffee -- has to work hard to establish a niche in the neighborhood or close its doors. Most of them don't want to be multi-specialty retailers, and they shouldn't have to be. Starbucks now sells so many things that coffee is almost an afterthought. Think that won't affect the quality of the product? Do a taste-test with Starbucks versus one of the other chains out there. (Personal favorite: Diedrich's.) Even the lightest of Starbucks' roasts (most are pretty dark) comes off tasting acidic and rather burnt.
So yeah: make room, if you want, alongside the logo-emblazoned travel mugs and Starbucks brand press-pots for "Mermaid Music Vols. 1" through infinity. I'll walk up the street to my local indie coffee shop and get cuppa joe that doesn't taste like muddy battery acid.
Slashdot Mirror
There are further details out there for the Googling. Short version: J.R.R. Tolkien sold the film rights to Saul Zaentz (who is listed in the credits, and is the owner of Tolkien Enterprises) back in '69. Certain members of the family (namely Christopher) have been smarting about this pretty much ever since. This is why the family refused to "officially"** endorse the films: the estate didn't have creative control.
**Unofficially is a different story; Simon, Christopher's son, has been estranged from his father for years for saying that the estate should loosen up a little. Simon is also a fan of the films, and his son (whose name I've forgotten) has a bit part as one of the Riders of Rohan. Yes, I include Tolkien in my various geekdoms; books and movies. Why do you ask? ;)
In Army of Darkness, it goes a little differently. ;)
An ED movie without Sam directing would be like... well, S-Mart without Ash at the register.
"Clatto Verata Nicto", baby. ;)
All sarcasm aside; while it is a good thing that she seems to have changed her tune (so to speak), it does nothing to change the fact that the extended copyrights which she so recently championed have done a great deal of ill to the creative process. People have always looked to the wealth of created works that came before them to find inspiration. To look at it from a different angle: public domain is Jung's theory of the collective unconscious made manifest. Ideas are usually not original, but the ways in which they can be expressed are nearly limitless.
I am an artist; a great deal of the work that I do as a silversmith is inspired by the works of the past. I am a believer in copyrights; at the same time, I would love for someone to stumble across a piece of jewelry that I made, at some point in the future, and be inspired to create their own interpretaion of it, and not be hampered in this endeavor by restrictive and insanely long copyrights. Public domain is there for a reason, and by putting a chokehold on the process by which things enter the public domain, the work of future - not to mention current - artists, writers, and artisans is strangled.
The RIAA and its sister organizations represent a new - and pernecious - way of thinking about who gets to create what. Think about it: had the RIAA held the sort of power 50 years ago that it does now, Richie Valens could never have released his most famous song. "La Bamba" was a Mexican folk tune, but somebody wrote the words and music long before Mr. Valens gave it a rock-n-roll tempo. He interpreted what he heard, and brought the song to the ears of a far wider audience. Because of copyright extensions, however, nobody will have the opportunity to do the same thing with his interpretion of the same folk song without having to jump through an extensive number of legal hoops first.
To sum it up: fire bad. Tree pretty. Public domain necessary.
- Amendment I
While the "freedom of the press" could possibly be stretched to cover the situation, it's still a pretty big stretch. Congress is not doing a ruddy thing to silence a large media group. A corporation. Businesses are not people, and should not be viewed as individuals. There is no proviso securing the unhampered freedom of speech for a business; it's a right guaranteed only to human beings.Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Now, if Kerry were to use his position as a senator to enact punitive bitch-slap legislation that was aimed at Sinclair, then yes; there's a clear violation. However, as it stands, what we have here is a media conglomerate throwing its corporate weight around to promote a particular political viewpoint. Period.
So much for the "Liberal Media" meme.
As has been pointed out multiple times, the gravitational pull in high earth orbit isn't enough solve the problem. Think about it: if the station isn't affected by the pull of Earth's gravity, something with far less mass isn't going to feel the tug. It would take serious thrust to move the debris out of into an unstable orbit. Possible, but not practical.
Assuming, of course, that "chuck it out of the airlock (using lots of thrust)" becomes practiced out of necessity, it creates another problem. The more debris you have floating around, waiting for enough orbital decay to occur to enable atmospheric incineration, the more likely it is that one of those floating widgets is going to hit something. Every year, more satellites go up; and I for one am not about to tell the residents of Florida and the Bahamas that they really didn't need that fancy weather imaging apparatus.
This article does illustrate a problem largely glossed over by works of speculative fiction - namely waste management in a small space. Air and water have to be recycled, and something has to happen to all of the garbage that is produced in the day-to-day process of living.
Sadly, we don't seem to have that issue licked, even in ther here-and-now; and we're working with a much larger area. Look at the landfills. Look at the trash on the sides of every highway in the US. When people throw things "away", they usually forget that away isn't. The stuff has to go somewhere. Let's not take our failing of "out of sight, out of mind" to the Final Frontier. [/rant]
WOO HOO!!!!
(Seriously, I've been glued to the broadcast all morning. This is an exciting event, especially to someone like me who grew up in a house decorated with framed NASA mission patches, and photographs of Apollo rockets and the Earth as seen from space. The Right Stuff, indeed.)
In answer to your question, yes; it just so happens that when I try to use a particularly busy ATM, my odds are about 50/50 that I wont get a reciept. Either:
b) I'll be informed that the ATM can't process any transactions whatsoever (for reasons unknown.)
ATMs run out of paper and ink all of the time. So do older POS (that's point-of-sale, not the other acronym) credit card printers. And no, I'm not astroturfing, and I don't believe that the GP poster was, either.
Any voting machine technology - hypothetical or otherwise - needs to be poked, prodded, peered at, discussed, and debated. The very fact that there isn't more coverage by CNN and other major media outlets on the problems with the various voting machines should be worrisome. No matter who we elect, we're going to be stuck with whatever result the Diebold boxes spit out. No matter which side of the political fence you're on, that ought to be cause for concern. It's government by, of, and for the People , but only if the People are actually allowed their say in the matter.
Anyone who has an e-mail address gets spam. It's an ugly fact of life in the modern age. Figure that, out of a pool of - say - 100 potentials, at least 10 of them have kids. Spammers are notorious about not checking the ages of the people who own the addresses that they spam - and they work very hard on ways to get around filters.
Leaving the parents aside for the moment, everyone in the hypothetical jury pool gets flooded with this crap, because everyone with an e-mail account does. Period. Plus, I've observed that the less tech-savvy a person is, the angrier they get about spam, because they don't know how to stem the tide. Now, imagine a spammer going up against even 12 of the most sane, rational, mentally well-balanced of his vict^H^H^H^Hpeers. True, a lot of people don't quite understand the tech stuff; but break it down into dollars and sense ("misspelling" intended), and you'll see lightbulbs going off overhead all through the jury box.
And that goes triple for the conservative old man. A guilty plea would be much safer, all around.
Christianity certainly didn't invent the idea of religious tolerance; in fact, it was one of the planks in the platform of the Pax Romana. After all, what did a few new statues in the Pantheon matter if their presence kept the barba^H^H^H^H^Hnewly-minted Roman citizens happy?
Part of the reason for the separation of church and state in this country was the rotten track record that the various early-arriving Christian factions had in playing nicely with each other. The Baptists and Anabaptists hated each other, the Anglicans and Lutherans despised one another, the Puritans didn't get along with anybody, and the Quakers kept getting booted out of every colony except Rhode Island. Somebody had to step in and say "No, no, no! Nobody gets to have more of a say than everybody else," and the only entity which could do so effectively was a secular government. (Of course, the fact that many of the Founding Fathers were Deists had something to do with this, too.) So yes; the idea of Christianity as a religion of tolerance is inaccurate, to say the least. Even to this day, Christians of different factions the world over will gleefully turn on one another - unless presented wtih a common focus for their ire.
You, sir, have just been added to my friends list. Thank you for your delightful post.
Once upon a time, I worked for the Company Formerly Known as USWorst. That experience left me with more knowledge of both their database and their employee benefits program than I ever wanted to know. The stress of that position also left me with carpal tunnel syndrome, the beginnings of a whopping good ulcer, and stress-related dissociative attacks. (Literally, my brain was going on mini-vacations, and neglecting to take me along with it.)
Now, I own my own business. The pay isn't as regular, but my schedule is my own, and the unreasonable request list is pretty minimal. The carpal tunnel still flares up form time to time, but it's in remission without surgery. (Since I use my hands a lot, this is a critical point.) The other problems started to heal as soon as I escaped the toxic work environment. I'm not spending as much time sitting in a doctor's office, and nowhere near as much money on things like Pepto and pain relief nostrums.
So, yeah; not exactly news, but it's nice to see that somebody has quantified the impact that work-related stress has on people's lives.
Yeah, it's the study of human nature that renders me mostly immune to shock. Either that, or all of the bizarre requests that come via ICQ...
Kudos.
There's another ugly meme on Slashdot that I'd like to see dispatched with a +5 vorpal blade of reality: to wit, that anyone who expresses an opinion on software - or anything else, for that matter - differing from yours is therefore a) younger than you, b) horribly inexperienced / naive, and c) in dire need of a condescending retort in which you Reveal To Them the Error Of Their Ways from the Lofty Mountaintop Of Your Experience and Wisdom.
In many ways, tech is like a pair of jeans: one size does not fit all, or even most. Some things just can't be done at all in Product X, therefore Package Y has to be brought into use. Some things can be done with one utility more easily or faster than another, in which the difference comes down to user preference. Personally, when it comes to keeping track of my data, I would rather have someone who knows MySQL backwards, forwards, inside, and out than someone who limps along in PostgreSQL (or one of the others), even one of the other DBMSs is the "preferred product".
Assuming that most other things are equivalent, it isn't the DBMS that makes the difference. It's the knowledge and capability of the person using it. You had no reason to disparage the grandparent poster's abilities and knowledge, other than a difference in opinion. And that, sir, is offensive.
Anyone who has ever spent any time around ferrets (such as myself as a long-time ferret-mom) knows that ferrets are the last creatures on Earth who would make good representatives for an IP watchdog group. The subspecies designation of their scientific name, Mustela putorius furo comes from the Latin furonem, meaning "thief". And they are fuzzy little thieves: shoes, socks (bonus points if you manage to steal it off of a human's foot!), toys, CD jewel cases, loaves of bread, wallets, car keys, ("Quick, while Mom's not lookin' - shopping spree at PetCo!"), jewelry - if it's not nailed down, they'll make off with it, chuckling the whole time.
In short: ferret (n.), a free-spirited, furry little animal with a joyous disregard for individual property rights. Not exactly the best ambassador for the Software Goon Squad.
What the hell were they smoki^H^H^H^H^Hdrinki^H^H^H^H^H^H thinking?
It's "when pigs fly." Different species, even. ;)
Thanks to you, I have a new desktop background. Muchas gracias, vielen dänk, and et cetera for the link!
/goes off to gloat over newest photo acquisition...
Now if only there were some way to legally drive spyware / malware companies out of business. That would be an effort that I could endorse 100%. The problem with this is, well, it's still a DDoS, even if it is against a company that's pretty thoroughly reviled. I doubt that the owners of the participating computers agreed to help with the project. /., but it's likely that the number of late-bloomer techies far outnumbers the ranks of the lifelong geeks. Not everybody discovers their inner geek at the same point in life - but that's another rant.) Aunt Claire, who just wants to upload new photos to the family webpage, doesn't deserve to be pop-upped and spywared to tears, but neither does she - or anyone else - deserve to get caught in the middle of an online piss war. Poetic justice or not, this event is a Bad Thing.
Plus, there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who still haven't figured out that the big blue "e" isn't the Internet. Their day got totally hosed by web pages that refused to load, "server not found" issues, and assorted other garbage. They got hit by the "shrapnel", but were innocent bystanders. And no, using IE doesn't mean that "they got what they deserved." (We tend to be rather elitest here on
Still, it does warm the cockles of my black little heart, thinking of DoubleClick getting served a heaping helping of the kind of crap that they've dished out over the years.
"When he first gave me that little stuffed troll, and blurted out that he thought I was 'really hot', I suppose I thought he was sweet," she said. "Kind of a geek, but around here, who isn't? Then, every time I turned around, he was standing there staring at me. It got creepy very quickly. I'm not really that angry with him," she added, "but I do wish that he'd find someone else to obsess over. The webpage with 'Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of Ceren' written over about 200 copies of the same picture of me - that was the last straw."
Police refuse to comment on the candlelit shrine supposedly found in her stalker's bedroom, with a photograph of Ceren, superimposed onto the body of Princess Leia in her slave costume, as the central image.
One of the big problems that I've always had with CAPPS marks I & II is not "invasion of privacy." My privacy gets invaded to some extent every time the phone rings. I invite a potential invasion of privacy with every business card I hand out. But both of those are reasonably controlled instances. It's simply impossible to live in a vacuum, no matter how hard you try. However, you, as an individual, do and should have the ability to say how personal information gets used.
Say you apply for a mortgage through one of the online services. Someone looks you up, uses your credit rating to get a loan for himself, then leaves you holding the bag (as well as denying your mortgage appication.) You, as the consumer, can turn around and sue that person, and possibly the loan company as well, into next week. Someone steals your credit card? The bank will go after them on your behalf. Identity theft is still a problem, but legal recourses are finally starting to catch up with said problem. It might be difficult, bt it's do-able - so long as there's accountability somewhere along the line.
CAPPS is incredibly secretive with its database. As has been said previously in this thread, if there's a error, there's no way to get it corrected, because technically it doesn't exist. "Error? There's no error in the database, sir. And even if there were, there wouldn't be, if you catch my meaning. No more questions." There is no accountability as to how this information is used, there's no way to review it, and if it a TSA employee did decide to misuse your data, there would be no way to hold that person responsible for his / her crime.
In short: information really doesn't want anything. But I ferdamnsure want to say how information about me is used.
Clove cigarette - check; nostalgic reminder of my early youth in a coffeehouse. (Plus I never developed a taste for any regular tobacco brand except Silk Cut, which isn't available in the US anymore.)
iPod - working on it.
Sorry; what was the point again? Oh yeah; the "Effete Ignorant Snob" stereotype.
Anyway, I don't know what the original poster has against "Broadway". I do know that some people hear the word and have an instant mental vision of flashy, bubbly, sugary musicals with lots of tinsel and feathers. (And just barely enough of a storyline to hold the music together.) If such fare isn't their thing, it's probably quite easy for them to dismiss "Broadway" as a whole and ignore the many other works which have graced that street: Equus, 'Night, Mother, Angels in America, Wit - to name but a few.
It might be more accurate for the OP to say that he has a low tolerance for schmaltz. Quite understandable, and defendable, as there are many circa 30s and 40s musicals out there which are sugary enough to cause acute diabetes. And let's face it, Sturgeon's Law is applicable to many areas besides science fiction, even if the 90% of everything that is crap can be rather subjective. (Brain candy movies and books are the examples that spring to mind; I enjoy a good potboiler now and then. They're fun.) One person's crap is another person's proudly displayed black velvet Elvis painting.
All that aside, I've got high hopes for this production. David Hyde Pierce's facial expressions alone ought to be worth the ticket price. Throwing Tim Curry into the mix just improves the chances that the Monty Python troupe will be very proud of their legacy.
/me starts looking for cheap airfare to NYC...
IANAG(uy), so I can't test the ejaculation portion of the hypothesis. However, nobody with whom I've ever been involved seems to have had any problem with their regular workout the next morning, and I certainly don't notice any. Doing without coffee is more likely to cause me problems than having sex (with or without a partner.)
Methinks the phenomenon may be limited to you and you alone. Sort of a reverse "placebo effect", as 'twere.
Answer: I don't hate babies, even when they spit up. (Or have incredibly stinky diapers.) But we're not talking about babies here. We're not even talking about human fetuses (which despite all of the rhetoric to the contrary, do fit all of the same criteria as other parasitic organisms. The only difference is that the female of other parasitic organisms generally doesn't end up acting as a host to more of the same species.) We're talking about a mass of undiffentiated cells.
It could become a fetus, which in turn could become an infant. But at the moment, it's a blob in a petri dish with nothing to distinguish it visually from a similar blob of cells coming from a cat, a horse, or a wolverine. It can't survive outside of that petri dish, and it certainly isn't a human being. It has no brain, no heartbeat, no feelings, and no sensory apparatus. It's nothing but a little blob of potential something, and if that little blob happens to have occurred in the process of IVF, it's most likely to become wasted potential.
Think of all of the people out there suffering from things like diabetes, or Parkinson's. They could benefit immensely from stem-cell research, if couples who have had IVF (or the fertility clinics) had the option to donate these cell masses for the research, but they don't have that option. Thanks to short-sighted, religiously biased legislation, it's illegal. Some people oppose using zygotes for research on the grounds that it is somehow "disrespectful". So, how is thawing them and pouring them down the sink drain more "repectful"? Yet, most "pro-lifers" who are vocal on abortion say nary a word about frozen embryos -- other than to oppose research that has the potential to save the lives of many currently born, living, breathing people. That, IMNSHO, is the real tragedy; that the fate of so many is held hostage to hysterical concern for a little clump of cells that stands a good chance of not turning into a person into the first place.
Oh, and BTW, here's an interesting set of statistics on miscarriage (spontaneous abortion). Even the most ardent pro-lifer would have to admit that, from these numbers, "God's will" is more dangerous to a fetus than all of the Planned Parenthood clinics put together.
Unless you usually apply "youngun" to the 30- to 40-something crowd. In which case; guilty as charged. ;)
Once upon a time, coffee shops sold coffee, tea, hot cocoa, and other drinkables. A few added various sweet pastries, like croissants, but that was about it. Then along comes the post-expansion Sign O' the Mermaid (it was once a little independent coffee shop, too).
Suddenly, to keep up with the Seattle Menace, coffee shops must now sell all of the above as well as sandwiches, soup, coffee mugs, branded coffee makers, candy, books, gift cards... you get the idea. A small coffee shop that just wants to focus on the core product -- namely, coffee -- has to work hard to establish a niche in the neighborhood or close its doors. Most of them don't want to be multi-specialty retailers, and they shouldn't have to be.
Starbucks now sells so many things that coffee is almost an afterthought. Think that won't affect the quality of the product? Do a taste-test with Starbucks versus one of the other chains out there. (Personal favorite: Diedrich's.) Even the lightest of Starbucks' roasts (most are pretty dark) comes off tasting acidic and rather burnt.
So yeah: make room, if you want, alongside the logo-emblazoned travel mugs and Starbucks brand press-pots for "Mermaid Music Vols. 1" through infinity. I'll walk up the street to my local indie coffee shop and get cuppa joe that doesn't taste like muddy battery acid.