Yes, it seems to me that just because it's "free software" doesn't mean it should be immune to criticism. I think the author is a little too defensive-- if he thinks this guy is a "bully," then he's lived a sheltered life. Sure, the guy seems to be trying to get it to do things it wasn't designed to do, but it's not always obvious exactly what things are designed to do. The "bully" here had what he though was applicable data from his own experience and got inexplicable results, and seemed to be quite civil and knowledgeable in his postings.
Now I'm not an expert on the subject of the program, but I recall a situation once where I was musing about a computer program that I might write and entered into a conversation (a person-to-person one, not electronically) with someone who had no idea how difficult certain things were to do and made a lot of suggestions that were, if not impossible to implement at the time, were effectively so, and seemed to want to stick with conversing about such capabilities when I was trying to bring things down-to-earth towards something that I could actually implement. The ideas were good ones, though not particularly practical for me-- and I ultimately began to lose interest in where the conversation was going.
I think such an exchange would probably cause me to simply beef up the disclaimer as to how experimental the program was and/or what its limitations were, and how busy I was so noone would expect me to immediately respond with programming adjustments to every comment. I've seen lots of such disclaimers of that nature out there. You have to let such people know that you aren't chomping at the bit to figure out how to make this program the ultimate and/or go commercial with it and need a professional beta tester to abuse the crap out of it (unless that is what you are doing), else how are they to know?
Personally, I think it's a good thing that Apple has draconian policies regarding their faux-open device. Market pressure will force other phone and service providers to create truly open competition for the iPhone, devices that won't require iTunes or "secret" SDKs. It's only a matter of time.
In fact, if the iPhone was completely open, it would be much harder for the competition, including Google, as they wouldn't be able to compete with an even-more-open device-- face it, the iPhone isn't all that open, really-- until end-users can write their own toy apps for it, the term "open" doesn't really apply-- regardless of who actually wants to write for it. On the internet, anyone can provide content, and content includes custom and homebrew applications. Apple has left their flank wide open on this one and it's only a matter of time until an AT&T competitor or a Google or Microsoft will hammer them over it, at which point Mr. Jobs will get religion.
In fact, if Microsoft had a brain in Ballmer's head, they could use this opening to gain themselves some needed positives-- an "open" phone (even running proprietary MS software, but with the ability for anyone to freely produce apps for it), could give MS a few sorely needed brownie-points for openness, and MS has the clout to pressure the Verizons and Sprints of the world to allow themselves to be raw data providers and stop trying to micromanage, meter and profitize every last little mobilephone feature...
It's not part of the windows kernel itself. nonetheless , its an important part of windows, and should be kept as updated as possible (especially there still exist sites that work improperly in opera or firefox). Are there things it uses that are implementable at the kernel level? yes. Are they part of internet explorer? no
Um-- there are sites that work improperly in IE, and frankly, I'd rather support them over the IE-only sites. IE does not define the standard, as much as Mr. Bill would like it to.
Those who don't use it enough to justify upgrading to new hardware. My 82 year-old mom for example, who is using a 233MHZ P2 box with 64MB, and a friend of mine with similar hardware. They would sooner throw the whole thing away than buy a new one, web browsing and computer use is simply, an expendable luxury, not worth investing any further in (they paid quite a bit for those systems when they were new).
And frankly, they work. Both are using dialup and have never been pwned (possibly because the attack vector bandwith is too slow)...
If it ain't broke, no reason to fix it. And in this case, if it was broke they wouldn't bother to fix it.
In general, artists get paid well below other professions
Yep, and it's getting worse. But that's because the value of "content" is dropping like a rock for several reasons. Duplication and distribution are both now essentially free and 100% accurate, it's getting easier for just anyone to produce it, and content now never dies, so any new content must compete with all the old content. Get used to it, the law of supply and demand says that the value of content is trending seriously towards zero.
Won't work if the guy's implemented a dead man's switch that disables all passwords except his (which you just disabled yourself). Which sounds like what happened in this case...
Possibly the reason you're seeing evolution as, "a little too far fetched," may be because it's been presented to you as being completely random, or "pure chance," which it's not.
Think of it this way-- take complete randomness, then filter it with something. Anything. In the case of evolution, randomness is filtered by natural selection, i.e., survival. Randomness filtered with pretty much anything will result in something less random, i.e., something other than pure chance. Consequently, the characterization of evolution as being "by pure chance" is quite a misrepresentation. Perhaps some of the other things that have been said about evolution from that same source may also be less than accurate? Could be worth a look.
Well, lets see. It seems to me we have multiple possible explanations we're considering here:
1- a) individual decides to enter priesthood for the normally accepted reasons once coming of age (at 18?) and b) over time, given imposed celebacy and the resultant build-up of sexual frustration and c) has availability of victims and d) has role of authority that provides some unique abilities to take advantage of the victim pool.
2- a) 18 year old is deciding on a vocation, b) realizes he's sexually attracted to children, c) recognizes the priesthood as a particularly good opportunity to act out on that attraction and d) chooses to enter the priesthood based on all that.
Or I suppose, there might even be:
3 - a) Older individual in an unrelated vocation realizes he's sexually attracted to children, b) recognizes the priesthood as a particularly good opportunity to act out on that attraction and c) chooses to change his vocation to the priesthood based on all that.
It seems to me not impossible to do further research on the likelihood of these. The level of sophistication of an 18 year old might enter into it, or the age which priests typically enter the priesthood-- possibly restricted to just those who have been convicted of pederasty.
At the moment, I personally find #2 the least plausible, as it means that at a relatively early age a young person not only clearly realizes they are unusually attracted to children (barely being beyond this themself), AND that the priesthood would provide the best opportunity to act out on it, and would therefore choose a vocation based on that. But maybe that's just me.
At any rate, it seems quite possible that more research could shed more light on it.
If that's true, it's relatively new-- Google had taken over the old Deja News archive and had included it in its groups search-- and some of my first posts from around 1983 had been in there whenever I checked. Now the earliest I can find of any postings of mine are from about 1996--- guess Google's runnin' a little short of disk space. On the other hand, I can't imagine that the 1983-1996 Usenet archive is nearly as big as, say 2000's was, so I'm not sure what's up with it. I search for "Rich Rosen," one of the largest posters in the early days and got only one hit... It's a real crime, I tell ya, what is this world comin' to. The Ministry of Truth is alive and well I guess...
I seemed to recall some Usenet messages eons ago from a guy who seemed to really be a tinfoil hat paranoid, and that's where I first became familiar with the idea. I don't think the guy referred to his use of tinfoil as a "hat" though, but he did talk about wrapping tinfoil around his head to ward off some kind of thought-control beams being directed at him by nefarious government agencies. So, I Googled for tinfoil head in the advanced groups search so that I could restrict to only older messages, and ended up with NO HITS AT ALL. Using the default date range of 1981-present, there were 16K some hits, or at least were, at one point. But I just tried that again and got 4 hits. "tinfoil hat" is pulling up only 9 hits from 1981-present. Looks like a coverup is in the works here people...
Who complained to the justice department over the yahoo/google deal?
Apparently, someone who didn't consider the fact that if it worked against a Yahoo/Google merger, it would likely work against a Yahoo/Microsoft merger as well...
On the other hand, I suppose they may have realized that it wouldn't actually work, but the thought that it might would add useful pressure on Yahoo...
Even if it wouldn't have worked against a Yahoo/Google merger, I suppose there's still hope that it might work against a Yahoo/Microsoft merger-- that's a thought that warms the cockles of my heart...
I mean, yahoo just plain sucks. People call it an open source company yet it has yet to release an update to its messenger client for linux. their search feature is as good as webcrawler back in 1995 (which wasn't good). their mail service is worse than aol's free mail service. their music service is dead. Besides, for many people who have made it a habit to goto google the minute they open their web browser, its easier/habitual to type blackle.com/google.com than typing yahoo.com.
Uh-- Yahoo's mail service is better than *Hotmail*, and MSN Groups doesn't even *have* search capability for their forums, unlike Yahoo or Google groups (unbelievably lame of Microsoft). The point is not whether or not Yahoo's stuff is better than Google's or AOL's, but that it's better than Microsoft's (which I agree, doesn't take much).
So what does the AV software vendor do when it encounters the "signature" for a trojan that has been set up by some government? If AV vendors weren't already pretty darn screwed by the fact that their methodology is seriously flawed, this would push them over the edge by itself, I would think...
What do you suppose would happen if a congresscritter was just as brutally honest about it and put up his vote on some measure for sale on eBay? Nothin' like the unequal application of justice here, eh?
And I suppose he could use the same old standard congressional disclaimer-- "I'm not really selling my vote, I'm asking for donations but will ask the winning donor how he'd vote just for reference. The outcome won't influence my vote at all (wink, wink, nod, nod)..."
In fact it makes one wonder what would happen if someone did that on eBay-- didn't actually overtly sell his vote, but ask for a "donation" where only by implication is the suggestion it may influcence his actual vote-- but such that it couldn't be proven one way or another. I think that's a far smarter way to handle this-- anyone with the guts to try it? Might send a pretty interesting message to congress, if it got any press coverage (unlikely beyond SlashDot though, I suppose).
I bought the recently restored version which is far better quality than what was available before, and saw that one locally as well when they came to town to talk about the restoration-- but I'll no doubt be buying a new longer restored version as well when it comes out. Incredibly great movie, and the new restoration provided a far higher quality picture than I'd ever seen. There are so many memorable scenes in the movie it's hard to say what's my favorite, but what first comes to mind is robot-Maria's dance where the eyes are superimposed...
That said, the first time I saw it was at the old Fox Venice theater in the 1970s, and the soundtrack it had was a very interesting Jazz score that I really liked-- the beginning portion where the workers are entering the elevators like lemmings had this piano part that alternated between two low notes and was very stark-- matched the film perfectly I thought. Since then I've always been looking for a copy of it with that soundtrack, but to no avail-- I bought a couple of VHS copies when they were first available, and all were poor quality picture with either an ancient classical track or something else-- when the Giorgio Moroder version came out in the '80s, that's all you could find anywhere, so it really dashed my hopes of finding the obscure jazz version I first saw... Oh well, that's the breaks-- someone obviously spent some time on the version I first remember, but I guess I'll never know who now, and of course it wouldn't match the new lengths of the film since then anyhow...
The only hope the RIAA has for salvaging their business model is for them to rely on the sympathy of their customers. For it is the customers who must decide that giving their entire collection of mp3 files to their neighbors is undesirable out of sympathy for the record industry.
However, passing draconian laws and promoting mass arrests of college kids for MP3 trading is not a good way to engender that sympathy.
If they were smart, they'd realize that a business model contingent on customer sympathy is a tenuous one at best. But they're in denial about that fact and are now in the process of running off cliffs just like lemmings...
The industry has two options. It can try to get law enforcement to go after a huge number of its customers until the enforcement is a deterrent to the law breaking. Or it can try to make it harder for people to break the law.
Rock, meet hard place. People share their books, their records, their movies. They always have and they always will. Making it more illegal will not keep one kid from giving their neighbor kid all the mp3 files in their collection.
You may not like that they are doing terrible things to try to stop people from breaking the law, but their business model is not the problem.
Fantasy, meet reality. When a business model is incompatible with reality, it's the business model's problem, not reality's
I hate stinkin' tabs-- on Windows they're redundant. Don't want 'em, don't need 'em, they annoy the hell out of me, get 'em outta here NOW!
FYI-- I use Firefox, and generally like it, but the Tabs option of "New Pages Should be Opened In" does not always work-- now and then a tab opening seems to sneak in. If anyone knows the HTML that does that, I'll screen it in my proxy filter, currently by the time I spot a tab that got opened it's pages later when I try to close and it "warns" me that there's a tab open that I didn't notice. By then whatever did it came and gone, drive-by tab openings, BAH!
Um.. I'm not a Mac person-- I use Linux and Windows and other Unices. I don't own a Mac, but I don't live in a vacuum, I do know quite a bit about them and have used friends Macs, have helped them with them, and have a pretty good sense of their operation. I also know a little bit about how Steve Jobs rides his staff to make sure the interface is perfect-- that is one of their big selling points after all, and how they differentiate themselves from Windows. I do think the Mac UI, for a commercial product, is consistent and reliable and far better designed than Windows. I've been using Windows UI for years, and frankly their standards of excellence and consistency in that regard are nearly nonexistent-- their design is total kludged-together crap and I wouldn't use it if it weren't for the applications that I use happen to run under it (and it's cheaper than a Mac, which would also run most of those apps). Linux GUI would be good I suppose, but don't use the GUI because none of the serious commercial apps I use run under it-- when I'm using Linux I use the command line with SVGA consoles and that works fine for me for what I use it for (such as script automation as you describe). In fact however, the Mac has a Unix shell command line as well, and can automate pretty much anything you can automate with Linux and pretty much the exact same way-- but the reason I don't use it over Linux is cost (free as in beer, not free as in freedom, though I do appreciate that as well).
A lot of people choose a computer not even knowing much about what GUI is better, but because one is cheaper than the other or one is the same that is used at work, so the fact that Windows is the "most popular" doesn't impress me. If all else was the same-- cost and compatibility, I doubt very seriously that Windows could compete their way out of a paper bag. I use Windows because 1) it's cheaper than Mac but compatible with important commercial apps, 2) I use it at work, 3) it runs on modular commodity hardware that can be incrementally upgraded and 4) it's cheaper than a Mac solution because it's bundled with commodity hardware. But you get what you pay for, the design is pure crap, and IMHO it's mostly because of the way MS engineers are treated by management. At MS, fear motivates productivity, but it is an anathema to quality. At Apple there may be some fear as well, but pride is far more important and it shows. Linux has the problem of too many cooks which stymies the commercial marketplace-- what GUI should one develop for? Linux is a constantly moving target which is tough for commercial developers who need some stability. Linux developers may get over themselves and eventually provide a platform that will be of interest for serious commercial packages, but open-source/Linux was never intended nor expected to completely replace all software with freedomware, as much as we might all wish it will. The intent behind open-source/Linux is largely to keep large commercial interests from forcing us into a compatibility corner and then taking advantage of that monopoly to manipulate our wallets-- but I think it is unlikely and probably undesirable for it to completely eliminate all proprietary computer products. An operating system is like the public roads, you need one to get somewhere and collaborating together on one makes sense-- but you still have public transportation and personal vehicles that you utilize on that open resource.
I agree that this doesn't really sound like Gates so I suspect it is a forgery. That said however, what Gates has NEEDED to do for the past several decades is EXACTLY THIS but he hasn't been doing it enough if at all. Mac usability is what it is BECAUSE Steve Jobs spends a huge amount of his time browbeating his staff over just such sorts of details (though since he doesn't wait years between doing it he's usually nitpicking over more trivial things by this point). Usability has to be forced into a product by someone who has the power to keep it from shipping until the developers get it right. The designers are too close to the problem and don't see it from a users point of view who doesn't understand the internal workings. If Gates had spent more time doing this and Balmer less time intimidating employees into rushing things out, Vista could have been a popular product that people would clamor to install instead of avoiding it like the plague.
TFA is hilarious, or would be if it really was from Gates and not just someone venting via a forgery...
Why do you oppose McCain if Barr is your alternative? They seem fairly similar, especially on the things that a Democratic supporter (especially a left-of-the-party) would oppose.
I was just using Barr as an example, as someone else mentioned him. Any independent is better than Tweedledum or Tweedledee in my book...
Not only that, the Dems have their own set of agenda items that are often very damaging, particularly to the economy. They don't call them "tax and spend" without reason for example. While it may be true they wouldn't have invaded Iraq, it's perfectly in character for them to have bungled things in a major albeit different way.
Slashdot Mirror
Can they design into the fundamental technology some factor that will only work with Windows?
Yes, it seems to me that just because it's "free software" doesn't mean it should be immune to criticism. I think the author is a little too defensive-- if he thinks this guy is a "bully," then he's lived a sheltered life. Sure, the guy seems to be trying to get it to do things it wasn't designed to do, but it's not always obvious exactly what things are designed to do. The "bully" here had what he though was applicable data from his own experience and got inexplicable results, and seemed to be quite civil and knowledgeable in his postings.
Now I'm not an expert on the subject of the program, but I recall a situation once where I was musing about a computer program that I might write and entered into a conversation (a person-to-person one, not electronically) with someone who had no idea how difficult certain things were to do and made a lot of suggestions that were, if not impossible to implement at the time, were effectively so, and seemed to want to stick with conversing about such capabilities when I was trying to bring things down-to-earth towards something that I could actually implement. The ideas were good ones, though not particularly practical for me-- and I ultimately began to lose interest in where the conversation was going.
I think such an exchange would probably cause me to simply beef up the disclaimer as to how experimental the program was and/or what its limitations were, and how busy I was so noone would expect me to immediately respond with programming adjustments to every comment. I've seen lots of such disclaimers of that nature out there. You have to let such people know that you aren't chomping at the bit to figure out how to make this program the ultimate and/or go commercial with it and need a professional beta tester to abuse the crap out of it (unless that is what you are doing), else how are they to know?
Personally, I think it's a good thing that Apple has draconian policies regarding their faux-open device. Market pressure will force other phone and service providers to create truly open competition for the iPhone, devices that won't require iTunes or "secret" SDKs. It's only a matter of time.
In fact, if the iPhone was completely open, it would be much harder for the competition, including Google, as they wouldn't be able to compete with an even-more-open device-- face it, the iPhone isn't all that open, really-- until end-users can write their own toy apps for it, the term "open" doesn't really apply-- regardless of who actually wants to write for it. On the internet, anyone can provide content, and content includes custom and homebrew applications. Apple has left their flank wide open on this one and it's only a matter of time until an AT&T competitor or a Google or Microsoft will hammer them over it, at which point Mr. Jobs will get religion.
In fact, if Microsoft had a brain in Ballmer's head, they could use this opening to gain themselves some needed positives-- an "open" phone (even running proprietary MS software, but with the ability for anyone to freely produce apps for it), could give MS a few sorely needed brownie-points for openness, and MS has the clout to pressure the Verizons and Sprints of the world to allow themselves to be raw data providers and stop trying to micromanage, meter and profitize every last little mobilephone feature...
It's not part of the windows kernel itself. nonetheless , its an important part of windows, and should be kept as updated as possible (especially there still exist sites that work improperly in opera or firefox). Are there things it uses that are implementable at the kernel level? yes. Are they part of internet explorer? no
Um-- there are sites that work improperly in IE, and frankly, I'd rather support them over the IE-only sites. IE does not define the standard, as much as Mr. Bill would like it to.
Those who don't use it enough to justify upgrading to new hardware. My 82 year-old mom for example, who is using a 233MHZ P2 box with 64MB, and a friend of mine with similar hardware. They would sooner throw the whole thing away than buy a new one, web browsing and computer use is simply, an expendable luxury, not worth investing any further in (they paid quite a bit for those systems when they were new).
And frankly, they work. Both are using dialup and have never been pwned (possibly because the attack vector bandwith is too slow)...
If it ain't broke, no reason to fix it. And in this case, if it was broke they wouldn't bother to fix it.
In general, artists get paid well below other professions
Yep, and it's getting worse. But that's because the value of "content" is dropping like a rock for several reasons. Duplication and distribution are both now essentially free and 100% accurate, it's getting easier for just anyone to produce it, and content now never dies, so any new content must compete with all the old content. Get used to it, the law of supply and demand says that the value of content is trending seriously towards zero.
Won't work if the guy's implemented a dead man's switch that disables all passwords except his (which you just disabled yourself). Which sounds like what happened in this case...
Possibly the reason you're seeing evolution as, "a little too far fetched," may be because it's been presented to you as being completely random, or "pure chance," which it's not.
Think of it this way-- take complete randomness, then filter it with something. Anything. In the case of evolution, randomness is filtered by natural selection, i.e., survival. Randomness filtered with pretty much anything will result in something less random, i.e., something other than pure chance. Consequently, the characterization of evolution as being "by pure chance" is quite a misrepresentation. Perhaps some of the other things that have been said about evolution from that same source may also be less than accurate? Could be worth a look.
Well, lets see. It seems to me we have multiple possible explanations we're considering here:
1- a) individual decides to enter priesthood for the normally accepted reasons once coming of age (at 18?) and b) over time, given imposed celebacy and the resultant build-up of sexual frustration and c) has availability of victims and d) has role of authority that provides some unique abilities to take advantage of the victim pool.
2- a) 18 year old is deciding on a vocation, b) realizes he's sexually attracted to children, c) recognizes the priesthood as a particularly good opportunity to act out on that attraction and d) chooses to enter the priesthood based on all that.
Or I suppose, there might even be:
3 - a) Older individual in an unrelated vocation realizes he's sexually attracted to children, b) recognizes the priesthood as a particularly good opportunity to act out on that attraction and c) chooses to change his vocation to the priesthood based on all that.
It seems to me not impossible to do further research on the likelihood of these. The level of sophistication of an 18 year old might enter into it, or the age which priests typically enter the priesthood-- possibly restricted to just those who have been convicted of pederasty.
At the moment, I personally find #2 the least plausible, as it means that at a relatively early age a young person not only clearly realizes they are unusually attracted to children (barely being beyond this themself), AND that the priesthood would provide the best opportunity to act out on it, and would therefore choose a vocation based on that. But maybe that's just me.
At any rate, it seems quite possible that more research could shed more light on it.
If that's true, it's relatively new-- Google had taken over the old Deja News archive and had included it in its groups search-- and some of my first posts from around 1983 had been in there whenever I checked. Now the earliest I can find of any postings of mine are from about 1996--- guess Google's runnin' a little short of disk space. On the other hand, I can't imagine that the 1983-1996 Usenet archive is nearly as big as, say 2000's was, so I'm not sure what's up with it. I search for "Rich Rosen," one of the largest posters in the early days and got only one hit... It's a real crime, I tell ya, what is this world comin' to. The Ministry of Truth is alive and well I guess...
You darn kids get off my lawn...
I seemed to recall some Usenet messages eons ago from a guy who seemed to really be a tinfoil hat paranoid, and that's where I first became familiar with the idea. I don't think the guy referred to his use of tinfoil as a "hat" though, but he did talk about wrapping tinfoil around his head to ward off some kind of thought-control beams being directed at him by nefarious government agencies. So, I Googled for tinfoil head in the advanced groups search so that I could restrict to only older messages, and ended up with NO HITS AT ALL. Using the default date range of 1981-present, there were 16K some hits, or at least were, at one point. But I just tried that again and got 4 hits. "tinfoil hat" is pulling up only 9 hits from 1981-present. Looks like a coverup is in the works here people...
Who complained to the justice department over the yahoo/google deal?
Apparently, someone who didn't consider the fact that if it worked against a Yahoo/Google merger, it would likely work against a Yahoo/Microsoft merger as well...
On the other hand, I suppose they may have realized that it wouldn't actually work, but the thought that it might would add useful pressure on Yahoo...
Even if it wouldn't have worked against a Yahoo/Google merger, I suppose there's still hope that it might work against a Yahoo/Microsoft merger-- that's a thought that warms the cockles of my heart...
I mean, yahoo just plain sucks. People call it an open source company yet it has yet to release an update to its messenger client for linux. their search feature is as good as webcrawler back in 1995 (which wasn't good). their mail service is worse than aol's free mail service. their music service is dead. Besides, for many people who have made it a habit to goto google the minute they open their web browser, its easier/habitual to type blackle.com/google.com than typing yahoo.com.
Uh-- Yahoo's mail service is better than *Hotmail*, and MSN Groups doesn't even *have* search capability for their forums, unlike Yahoo or Google groups (unbelievably lame of Microsoft). The point is not whether or not Yahoo's stuff is better than Google's or AOL's, but that it's better than Microsoft's (which I agree, doesn't take much).
Are there any credits on the soundtrack? I'd sure like to know who did it, and which VHS release you found it on...
So what does the AV software vendor do when it encounters the "signature" for a trojan that has been set up by some government? If AV vendors weren't already pretty darn screwed by the fact that their methodology is seriously flawed, this would push them over the edge by itself, I would think...
What do you suppose would happen if a congresscritter was just as brutally honest about it and put up his vote on some measure for sale on eBay? Nothin' like the unequal application of justice here, eh?
And I suppose he could use the same old standard congressional disclaimer-- "I'm not really selling my vote, I'm asking for donations but will ask the winning donor how he'd vote just for reference. The outcome won't influence my vote at all (wink, wink, nod, nod)..."
In fact it makes one wonder what would happen if someone did that on eBay-- didn't actually overtly sell his vote, but ask for a "donation" where only by implication is the suggestion it may influcence his actual vote-- but such that it couldn't be proven one way or another. I think that's a far smarter way to handle this-- anyone with the guts to try it? Might send a pretty interesting message to congress, if it got any press coverage (unlikely beyond SlashDot though, I suppose).
I bought the recently restored version which is far better quality than what was available before, and saw that one locally as well when they came to town to talk about the restoration-- but I'll no doubt be buying a new longer restored version as well when it comes out. Incredibly great movie, and the new restoration provided a far higher quality picture than I'd ever seen. There are so many memorable scenes in the movie it's hard to say what's my favorite, but what first comes to mind is robot-Maria's dance where the eyes are superimposed...
That said, the first time I saw it was at the old Fox Venice theater in the 1970s, and the soundtrack it had was a very interesting Jazz score that I really liked-- the beginning portion where the workers are entering the elevators like lemmings had this piano part that alternated between two low notes and was very stark-- matched the film perfectly I thought. Since then I've always been looking for a copy of it with that soundtrack, but to no avail-- I bought a couple of VHS copies when they were first available, and all were poor quality picture with either an ancient classical track or something else-- when the Giorgio Moroder version came out in the '80s, that's all you could find anywhere, so it really dashed my hopes of finding the obscure jazz version I first saw... Oh well, that's the breaks-- someone obviously spent some time on the version I first remember, but I guess I'll never know who now, and of course it wouldn't match the new lengths of the film since then anyhow...
The only hope the RIAA has for salvaging their business model is for them to rely on the sympathy of their customers. For it is the customers who must decide that giving their entire collection of mp3 files to their neighbors is undesirable out of sympathy for the record industry.
However, passing draconian laws and promoting mass arrests of college kids for MP3 trading is not a good way to engender that sympathy.
If they were smart, they'd realize that a business model contingent on customer sympathy is a tenuous one at best. But they're in denial about that fact and are now in the process of running off cliffs just like lemmings...
The industry has two options. It can try to get law enforcement to go after a huge number of its customers until the enforcement is a deterrent to the law breaking. Or it can try to make it harder for people to break the law.
Rock, meet hard place. People share their books, their records, their movies. They always have and they always will. Making it more illegal will not keep one kid from giving their neighbor kid all the mp3 files in their collection.
You may not like that they are doing terrible things to try to stop people from breaking the law, but their business model is not the problem.
Fantasy, meet reality. When a business model is incompatible with reality, it's the business model's problem, not reality's
search engines sucking up valuable bandwidth in order to support closed encoding schemes...
Absolutely, can't-get-there-from-here, won't-open-a-page-on-a-tab-if-your-life-depends-on-it.
I hate stinkin' tabs-- on Windows they're redundant. Don't want 'em, don't need 'em, they annoy the hell out of me, get 'em outta here NOW!
FYI-- I use Firefox, and generally like it, but the Tabs option of "New Pages Should be Opened In" does not always work-- now and then a tab opening seems to sneak in. If anyone knows the HTML that does that, I'll screen it in my proxy filter, currently by the time I spot a tab that got opened it's pages later when I try to close and it "warns" me that there's a tab open that I didn't notice. By then whatever did it came and gone, drive-by tab openings, BAH!
-- Curmudgeon
Testy here, aren't we.
Um.. I'm not a Mac person-- I use Linux and Windows and other Unices. I don't own a Mac, but I don't live in a vacuum, I do know quite a bit about them and have used friends Macs, have helped them with them, and have a pretty good sense of their operation. I also know a little bit about how Steve Jobs rides his staff to make sure the interface is perfect-- that is one of their big selling points after all, and how they differentiate themselves from Windows. I do think the Mac UI, for a commercial product, is consistent and reliable and far better designed than Windows. I've been using Windows UI for years, and frankly their standards of excellence and consistency in that regard are nearly nonexistent-- their design is total kludged-together crap and I wouldn't use it if it weren't for the applications that I use happen to run under it (and it's cheaper than a Mac, which would also run most of those apps). Linux GUI would be good I suppose, but don't use the GUI because none of the serious commercial apps I use run under it-- when I'm using Linux I use the command line with SVGA consoles and that works fine for me for what I use it for (such as script automation as you describe). In fact however, the Mac has a Unix shell command line as well, and can automate pretty much anything you can automate with Linux and pretty much the exact same way-- but the reason I don't use it over Linux is cost (free as in beer, not free as in freedom, though I do appreciate that as well).
A lot of people choose a computer not even knowing much about what GUI is better, but because one is cheaper than the other or one is the same that is used at work, so the fact that Windows is the "most popular" doesn't impress me. If all else was the same-- cost and compatibility, I doubt very seriously that Windows could compete their way out of a paper bag. I use Windows because 1) it's cheaper than Mac but compatible with important commercial apps, 2) I use it at work, 3) it runs on modular commodity hardware that can be incrementally upgraded and 4) it's cheaper than a Mac solution because it's bundled with commodity hardware. But you get what you pay for, the design is pure crap, and IMHO it's mostly because of the way MS engineers are treated by management. At MS, fear motivates productivity, but it is an anathema to quality. At Apple there may be some fear as well, but pride is far more important and it shows. Linux has the problem of too many cooks which stymies the commercial marketplace-- what GUI should one develop for? Linux is a constantly moving target which is tough for commercial developers who need some stability. Linux developers may get over themselves and eventually provide a platform that will be of interest for serious commercial packages, but open-source/Linux was never intended nor expected to completely replace all software with freedomware, as much as we might all wish it will. The intent behind open-source/Linux is largely to keep large commercial interests from forcing us into a compatibility corner and then taking advantage of that monopoly to manipulate our wallets-- but I think it is unlikely and probably undesirable for it to completely eliminate all proprietary computer products. An operating system is like the public roads, you need one to get somewhere and collaborating together on one makes sense-- but you still have public transportation and personal vehicles that you utilize on that open resource.
I agree that this doesn't really sound like Gates so I suspect it is a forgery. That said however, what Gates has NEEDED to do for the past several decades is EXACTLY THIS but he hasn't been doing it enough if at all. Mac usability is what it is BECAUSE Steve Jobs spends a huge amount of his time browbeating his staff over just such sorts of details (though since he doesn't wait years between doing it he's usually nitpicking over more trivial things by this point). Usability has to be forced into a product by someone who has the power to keep it from shipping until the developers get it right. The designers are too close to the problem and don't see it from a users point of view who doesn't understand the internal workings. If Gates had spent more time doing this and Balmer less time intimidating employees into rushing things out, Vista could have been a popular product that people would clamor to install instead of avoiding it like the plague.
TFA is hilarious, or would be if it really was from Gates and not just someone venting via a forgery...
Why do you oppose McCain if Barr is your alternative? They seem fairly similar, especially on the things that a Democratic supporter (especially a left-of-the-party) would oppose.
I was just using Barr as an example, as someone else mentioned him. Any independent is better than Tweedledum or Tweedledee in my book...
Not only that, the Dems have their own set of agenda items that are often very damaging, particularly to the economy. They don't call them "tax and spend" without reason for example. While it may be true they wouldn't have invaded Iraq, it's perfectly in character for them to have bungled things in a major albeit different way.