So would I but they have different objectives to anyone in the scenario painted by the grandparent poster. All the Iraqi insurgents need to do is keep the US bodycount ticking upwards and make it impossible for the US to effectively control areas of the country until the elections come around and they can take control of their country properly.
Any situation which threw the US into some kind of Civil war or The People VS The Administration would no doubt recruit sufficient sections of the military to their cause anyway in which case general gun ownership would make no difference or fail to recruit enough support in which case owning guns would be essentially irrelevant anyway as you would never achieve anything than more then nuisance value.
Once I load all those cool window manager things and that X so they work and then download all those XP themez and icons and crap I can hardly tell them apart, f#ckin' A it's so cool !
Maybe documentation is useful for everyone else but not, I suspect, for old Tidwell.
It shouldn't be that way but with companies quite happy to let you train younger, cheaper staff to do your job and then make you redundant then it makes sense to keep as much as you can to yourself - it maximises your market value.
Hmmm, this would indicate the possibility of some kind of conspiracy although personally I think we should not rule terrorism.
I think it's probable that a fundamentalist particle denier sect of Mormons secreted a suicide bomber on board the capsule, unfortunately the bomber appears to have stolen the explosive latch and taped it around his waist thus rendering the release mechanism inactive.
I think there is another story fairly similar to this one also written by Ray Bradbury. It involves another hunter who is hunting a Brontosauraus and congratulating himself on his power and bravery to be able to kill something so big. He does kill the animal and is turning to go home feeling very pleased with himself when the ( huge ) lice and parasites who used to live on the Brontosauraus leap on him and eat him to death. I cant remember the explanation given for him to be there hunting dinosaurs though.
I agree with you entirely about the problems of communicating with an Alien race, I think it will depend on the number of points of reference we both share. In that respect I suppose scientific learning / universal facts would provide some kind of framework for communication to occur but on an Alien to Human level I think communication would be, as you say, extremely difficult.
A lot of the communication with animals you talked about I personally think have more to do with trained responses than any genuine communication with our pets, one of the reasons that we seem to understand each other may well be that both us and animals share and understand much the same physical environment and the need to eat etc. Actually I do agree there can be a very basic level of communication which does undermine what I just said a little. Nevermind.
Personally I think clusters of sightings such as this are a result of the idea of "silent flying black triangles" spreading throughout people who are likely to spot these things; on the internet for instance there are an awful lot of hits for "silent flying black triangles".
What I am suggesting is that a lot of these sightings are by the same whackos who think they are abducted by aliens etc etc.
I can't remember who it was who first pointed this out but I think it does throw the whole communicating with aliens thing into perspective.
"People talk about how we could communicate with aliens but we haven't even managed to communicate with one single other of the thousands of species on this planet yet."
"Can you write a Perl script to generate music that captures the feeling of fear? Or lust? Or trepidation? Or loneliness?"
I would imagine you have an equal chance of doing that coding it in Perl as you would have writing a score for an Orchestra or plucking the strings of an electric guitar. All those are methods of making music but in the end it's only the music which counts.
Just because it's manufactured doesn't, automatically, mean it's BAD. The Sex Pistols were practically manufactured and they weren't bad.
However all the examples you have given are bad, Avril, Britney et al have no talent whatsoever and it shows in their music, which is rubbish.
I guess it's the difference between cheap rubbish cobbled together from the cheapest components to buying a quality product which is well designed and made properly ( or the difference between McDonalds and a good resteraunt for another example ).
The problem is the record industry is so hell bent on making money as their only motive that they operate more along the line of McDonalds.
Well I haven't seen all the originals, maybe they are printed on nice colorful paper and written in beautiful colours, but the motions I have read of SCO have been largely nonsensical and it has been very hard to see what point - if any - they are trying to make.
IANAL but IBM's motions appear to make some very clear points which are then exhaustively backed up throughout the document which is a striking counterpoint to SCO's ramblings.
I am not a bluetooth expert but here are my answers
Bluetooth can support encryption so it depends on whether or not you have bought ( or can find ) a device which implements it.
Your device should tell you about any other devices in the area it can exchange stuff with and you choose the one you want to talk to. This is usually password protected so unless you know the password you can't exchange anything.
Yes I think you can do this
And you can do this as well I believe
Don't know because I don't have a headset - maybe the password is uniquely set at manufacture time
About 20 minutes ago when I added a new contact to Evolution and it automatically, using Bluetooth, synched with my phone and added the contact to the phones address book.
The phone is in my coat pocket out in the hall and not having to mess about plugging in cables or lining up IR devices is great.
"Can I write '$RACIAL_EPIPHET GO HOME' in 6 foot letters on a minority person's house with sidewalk chalk? Water based paints"
If you can't see the difference between doing what you suggest and writing messages on the road in chalk then you are probably even thicker than you appear to be.
I can see nothing wrong as a one off protest in writing on the road in water based chalk, no one is getting hurt, no permanent damage is being done and any sensible police force would let that go as legitimate protesting.
You're right in the last paragraph, CEO's are not generally that stupid and do realize there will be communication problems. They just don't think these are important enough to stand in the way of cost cutting.
In fact is actual policy in many Call Centres to cause callers to hang up ( abandon the call ) rather than queue for a long time and speak to someone. This is because a lot of the time they are measured on the average queue time but not penalised for there abandoned rate ( because this is harder to measure accurately ).
Some call centres actually keep you at the back of the queue once you have been queuing for so long to encourage you to hang up and then ring back later so they have a chance of answering the call within their deadlines and improving their performance ratings. Evil I know but it does go on.
Slashdot Mirror
So would I but they have different objectives to anyone in the scenario painted by the grandparent poster. All the Iraqi insurgents need to do is keep the US bodycount ticking upwards and make it impossible for the US to effectively control areas of the country until the elections come around and they can take control of their country properly.
Any situation which threw the US into some kind of Civil war or The People VS The Administration would no doubt recruit sufficient sections of the military to their cause anyway in which case general gun ownership would make no difference or fail to recruit enough support in which case owning guns would be essentially irrelevant anyway as you would never achieve anything than more then nuisance value.
Once I load all those cool window manager things and that X so they work and then download all those XP themez and icons and crap I can hardly tell them apart, f#ckin' A it's so cool !
Maybe documentation is useful for everyone else but not, I suspect, for old Tidwell.
It shouldn't be that way but with companies quite happy to let you train younger, cheaper staff to do your job and then make you redundant then it makes sense to keep as much as you can to yourself - it maximises your market value.
Maybe McDonalds should develop a fly burger for our Gallic cousins.
Hmmm, this would indicate the possibility of some kind of conspiracy although personally I think we should not rule terrorism.
I think it's probable that a fundamentalist particle denier sect of Mormons secreted a suicide bomber on board the capsule, unfortunately the bomber appears to have stolen the explosive latch and taped it around his waist thus rendering the release mechanism inactive.
I think there is another story fairly similar to this one also written by Ray Bradbury. It involves another hunter who is hunting a Brontosauraus and congratulating himself on his power and bravery to be able to kill something so big. He does kill the animal and is turning to go home feeling very pleased with himself when the ( huge ) lice and parasites who used to live on the Brontosauraus leap on him and eat him to death. I cant remember the explanation given for him to be there hunting dinosaurs though.
I agree with you entirely about the problems of communicating with an Alien race, I think it will depend on the number of points of reference we both share. In that respect I suppose scientific learning / universal facts would provide some kind of framework for communication to occur but on an Alien to Human level I think communication would be, as you say, extremely difficult.
A lot of the communication with animals you talked about I personally think have more to do with trained responses than any genuine communication with our pets, one of the reasons that we seem to understand each other may well be that both us and animals share and understand much the same physical environment and the need to eat etc. Actually I do agree there can be a very basic level of communication which does undermine what I just said a little. Nevermind.
Personally I think clusters of sightings such as this are a result of the idea of "silent flying black triangles" spreading throughout people who are likely to spot these things; on the internet for instance there are an awful lot of hits for "silent flying black triangles".
What I am suggesting is that a lot of these sightings are by the same whackos who think they are abducted by aliens etc etc.
I can't remember who it was who first pointed this out but I think it does throw the whole communicating with aliens thing into perspective.
"People talk about how we could communicate with aliens but we haven't even managed to communicate with one single other of the thousands of species on this planet yet."
Is that you ?
So you don't think any kind of electronic music is proper music ?
"Can you write a Perl script to generate music that captures the feeling of fear? Or lust? Or trepidation? Or loneliness?"
I would imagine you have an equal chance of doing that coding it in Perl as you would have writing a score for an Orchestra or plucking the strings of an electric guitar. All those are methods of making music but in the end it's only the music which counts.
"Ever seen an ugly *pop* star"
Have you ever seen Meatloaf ?
Just because it's manufactured doesn't, automatically, mean it's BAD. The Sex Pistols were practically manufactured and they weren't bad.
However all the examples you have given are bad, Avril, Britney et al have no talent whatsoever and it shows in their music, which is rubbish.
I guess it's the difference between cheap rubbish cobbled together from the cheapest components to buying a quality product which is well designed and made properly ( or the difference between McDonalds and a good resteraunt for another example ).
The problem is the record industry is so hell bent on making money as their only motive that they operate more along the line of McDonalds.
It depends how big the engines are on that particular asteroid, what evasive tactics it will employ etc.
The Firefox themes page ( http://update.mozilla.org/themes/ is a complete mess in Konqueror ( at least in 3.2 )
Does anyone else see that ?
"I am sure SCO's motions look pretty too"
Well I haven't seen all the originals, maybe they are printed on nice colorful paper and written in beautiful colours, but the motions I have read of SCO have been largely nonsensical and it has been very hard to see what point - if any - they are trying to make.
IANAL but IBM's motions appear to make some very clear points which are then exhaustively backed up throughout the document which is a striking counterpoint to SCO's ramblings.
I am not a bluetooth expert but here are my answers
About 20 minutes ago when I added a new contact to Evolution and it automatically, using Bluetooth, synched with my phone and added the contact to the phones address book.
The phone is in my coat pocket out in the hall and not having to mess about plugging in cables or lining up IR devices is great.
How on earth is this flamebait ?
Moderator explain thyself !
"Can I write '$RACIAL_EPIPHET GO HOME' in 6 foot letters on a minority person's house with sidewalk chalk? Water based paints"
If you can't see the difference between doing what you suggest and writing messages on the road in chalk then you are probably even thicker than you appear to be.
I can see nothing wrong as a one off protest in writing on the road in water based chalk, no one is getting hurt, no permanent damage is being done and any sensible police force would let that go as legitimate protesting.
Because every motorist follows messages scrawled onto the road in chalk don't they ?
Why would it be any easier to conduct a terrorist attack against a space elevator compared to against the Space Shuttle launch facility ?
You're right in the last paragraph, CEO's are not generally that stupid and do realize there will be communication problems. They just don't think these are important enough to stand in the way of cost cutting.
In fact is actual policy in many Call Centres to cause callers to hang up ( abandon the call ) rather than queue for a long time and speak to someone. This is because a lot of the time they are measured on the average queue time but not penalised for there abandoned rate ( because this is harder to measure accurately ).
Some call centres actually keep you at the back of the queue once you have been queuing for so long to encourage you to hang up and then ring back later so they have a chance of answering the call within their deadlines and improving their performance ratings. Evil I know but it does go on.