Good point, and I tend to agree as long as bloggers and other grassroot organizations are honest and specific about where their funding comes from. The inherent problem with the later-day MoveOn (it was originally a grassroots organization before Soros) and with SBWT or the Department of Education scandal is the confusion of political motivated funds with small-organizations. In other words, if you and your friends want to create a political blog on your own dime have fun, but if the RNC gives you, and hundreds like you, money to do the same thing then we have a problem. I'm not sure what the solution is, but giving political organizations that are subject to the FEC an end-run around these laws by using the Internet strikes me as dangerous.
You had me until you wrote this: This helps the Democrats more since the Moveon.org's [sic] of the world will continue to be powerhouses on the net, while TRUE grassroots organizations get f'd.
If Moveon.org isn't a sucessful grassroots organization then what is? Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? Actually, the law was problematic since it delinated the Internet from all other media, effectively allowing anything goes on the largest and widest media ever known. This was a bad bill and should have been killed. We want transparency, we want bloggers and other Internet media outlets to show where their funding comes from in order to separate honest viewpoints from propaganda.
The black/silver/blue glow is also sexier than an iPod, IMO, but that's just a matter of taste.
I can think of at least two things wrong with this sentence:
1. How does black and silver glow? Do you mean a silver and black case that has a blue LCD? Or does the Dell DJ come with a black-light?
2. If you think the Dell DJ is 'sexy' you seriously need a girlfriend (or boyfriend, whatever) but for fuck sake it's a hunk of plastic. One with a black-light apparently.
I can't think of why anyone would buy such an also-ran Mp3 player, if you don't want an iPod fine, but you've managed to find the C-student of Mp3 players.
Intelligent Design is a shuck-and-weave around Creationism. It posits, at its heart, the existence of a unknowable, untestable, theoritical designer who created all the heavens and earth for unknown purposes. It relies on some kind of unknowable event--someone earlier mentioned time-travel--or an omnipotent entity that intentionally created the world and mankind.
ID would be useful if it were merely a laundry-list of problems with evolution, but it states just by its very nomenclature that there exists an Intelligent Designer who has magically created the Earth and all its creatures. This is Genisis.
The minute ID becomes part of the scientific curriculum is the minute that I will demand the Aboriginal Dreamtime also be included as a theory of the creation of the world. Or maybe the story of Krishna? Take your pick.
Consequently, I don't think it will be a question of whether or not we will be using Vista but merely how Microsoft will have managed to improve upon the mostly unimproveable experience of Windows XP. If they compete with anything, it will be their own sucess.
There are three posibility explaining why you wrote this sentence:
You mispelled flawed.
Or, you spelled it right and are just really high. Really, really high.
Or, maybe....hey everybody it's Bill! Bill, this is Slashdot, Slashdot this is Bill Gates.
Your comment just proves your town sucks. According to you there are only two restuarants: McDonalds and the French place; and they're far apart, and the French place requires a suit and tie.
Near where I live there are at least 6 places with better burgers that are within the range of the nearest McDonalds, one place is ridiculously cheap, with a Big Mac equivalent for $1.00 and no 'special sauce.' Other places serve beer too, one of which brews its own in the building.
Point is, there's more than two choices and the alternatives are better than the common choice--but people choose McDonalds because either they haven't found the brewery yet or because they lack all sense of taste.
So, then nothing in history or science can be verified without a time machine? Okay. And, you can teach Intelligent Design in philosophy class if need be, but there's no science, no verifiable findings or testable ideas. In belongs in science class as much as Hindu mythology or Aboriginal Dreamtime. Science class should teach how the scientific method works and what has currently been discovered. Science classes could also teach how science has evolved from logicians to geneticists, which will give students the basis they need to accept or oppose scientific theories.
You want Intelligent Design and I want the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Maybe instead of Newton's gravity we could teach Intelligent Falling. Maybe instead of covalent bonding we could talk about Intelligent Bonding. The line needs to be drawn between science and theology, between physics and psychics, between truth and myth.
Hey, you could get an iPod and a solar charger and not have to sully the environment with all your used-up akalines. Or you could just charge the damned thing every night. Do you have a cell phone? How does that work?
Are you retarded? Except for the note about the iPod not harming a video format, which was just pedantic, how did the iPod inflate the price for the standard Mp3 player? And, people getting robbed because of a unique design indicates that the design is desired and therefore a good thing, even if this particular aspect is negative.
As for forcing the single button mouse, wtf? Macs have been able to use multi-button mice for years, there was no forcing. You could say that in some loppy logic it was true if only single-button mice worked. Furthermore, you could just reverse the idea and demand that Microsoft stop making people use two-button mice. It was a design decision, one many disagreed with, but nonetheless it was an idea that multi-button mice were a kludge created by bad-UI design.
The No Fly Zone were a US imposition that was sanctioned by the UN and was there to protect the Kurds from Saddam's meager, but dangerous Air Force. Although in many cases it was ineffective, Saddam simply used helicopters, which were allowed, it did allow the Kurds to establish a northern-zone that was very good for them. And the No Fly Zone related to military aircraft, which still doesn't excuse the numerous times that Iraqi forces tried to engage US planes. You can say invaders, although you must recognize that Iraq had just lost a war of aggression and was subject to the terms of the peace-agreement, much as Germany and Japan were after World War II. So, shooting at the invaders, was at best a fruitless and deadly endevour for the Iraqi troops, but very good for the millions of Kurds in the north.
As for your comment about WMDs, Saddam was playing a very strange game with both the US and the UN. I think he wanted the rest of the Arab world to believe he had that capability, but he didn't. In his WMD bluff he managed to pretend he had real systems in place, and thus made it impossible to believe he didn't. It would have been kafkaesque for anyone involved.
After which the US shook his hand...
Yep, that was dumb and immoral. But, Germany, France, Russia, and Britian all shook his hand too, and even sold him some more systems to kill and maim his own people. No one country of any influence doesn't have some blood on their hands on this one. In fact any country of influence has a lot of blood on their hands.
This bill allows parents to decide what games they want in their homes. If mom and day say ok, then that's the end of the debate.
Parents in California needed a bill to state this? I'm at a loss here.
You should try Napster. Despite what all the Apple apologists are saying about how how much it would cost Apple to let you do this (meanwhile, Apple lets you download 30MB movie trailers for free all day long), this is exactly how Napster works. You log in, click "sync" and it downloads everything you've ever bought to that particular machine.
So long as you don't mind paying the piper for eternity or the day Napster folds.
Apple could do this and it would be a nice extra, but Napster is all the things that suck about iTMS with the benefit of paying rent on all your music.
Damn Napster apologist. See I can do it too!
The acting was stale, especially the anti-protagonist
You mean the antagonist? I have to disagree with you, I thought the Operator was a very interesting character. His monologue about a 'good death' was equally creepy and gentle.
The romance came at awkward times..
It worked, it fit within the context and it had a funny line to boot, but okay.
Alien costumes...I must have been reaching for popcorn, but I don't remember a single alien. Reavers weren't aliens, you got that right?
In the absence of Star Wars and Star Trek movies I had hopes for Serenity, but the reality is they took a cancelled low-budget tv-show and made a two hour episode.
And that part of your post is just rife with irony considering Star Trek, the twice-cancelled schlock-fest that rewrote one of its own episodes for material. Serenity acted as the end (or maybe a continuation?) for a series by wrapping up issues from the series and exploring characters we had already been introduced to, although they did have some short-hand around to lead in new viewers. Yes, it acted as a two hour episode, and I'm glad they did that way.
Orson Scott Card is batshit, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn.
The problem isn't just the inability to protect yourself, but the almost kafka-esque problems in trying to repair your indentity. There needs to be a better system within the credit agencies to fix your credit, that's what makes the sword so sharp.
We don't live in an artificial communist age, peoplec [sic] an [sic] earn what they earn, you can't just come in and take it because you think they have enough already.
No. We live in a democratic society that has decided that some taxation is required in order to fund the public good. We can argue about what constitutes this public good, but we have agreed as a society that you can indeed require that all citizens pay a certain amount to a central authority. If you disagree with this, write your congress-critter, move somewhere else, or be prepared to be indicted. However, I don't think it's bitter to consider "giant space toys" a more significant use of our money than funding another failing airline, bailing out investors from a criminal corporation, or giving tax-breaks to gas companies after they've posted record profits.
No, you have to show that it matters before you disrupt the capitalistic process
The poster was suggesting that the long-term 'investment' of space-exploration would reap great future benefits and would therefore be in line with the 'capitalistic' process. It's an investment stupid, a large-scale R&D project funded by the government because no corporation would be able or willing to fund such an endeavor. And why? Because companies can be short-sighted, stock-happy idiots who can't see beyond the next five quarters, much less the next five years.
Well, I'll defend the $0.99 price-point because I don't trust the labels to institute a variable-pricing model that is fair. Rather than getting most songs at $0.99 with old and obscure titles at $0.33 and new and popular at $1.50, I expect the labels will try to hold everything at the higher-price. The labels are making $10.00 per album, they are making good money for their business and they don't have to pay the same infrastructure costs as they used to. They're making more money, Apple is too, we are getting something we want.
Apple is being controlling, but they have a vested interest in keeping song costs low to keep selling iPods, thus they are more aligned with my interests--low and consistent song prices--and therefore have my vote. The market is strong, but it's because of Apple and their consistent model.
Now, on hardware, the day that all parties can agree on a standard not controlled by one party--say Mr. Softy--but by a consortium similar to Mp3 or the Bluetooth SIG. Otherwise, at least AAC with Fairplay can work on both Macs and PCs. WMA should never be the defining standard.
I think you should reread the comment you replied to, rather than paranoid rambling, the person made a good point that our government by protecting one place while limiting our basic freedoms, simply show terrorists where not to focus their attacks. Subways and airlines won't be the targets, but now coffee shops and buses will be. Protect coffee shops and buses and terrorists shift their attacks to malls and cruise ships. We can't win the 'war on terror' by limiting freedoms.
We can win the war on terror by limiting our involvement in the internal struggles within countries that breed terrorists, we cut their funding--buy less oil and diamonds, and maybe figure out how to keep Afghanis from selling opium and going back to farming--and we most certainly don't rely on local warlords to capture terrorist leaders. We have to fight the war, we have to use intelligence, small nimble military forces, and the great weight of our economy to break the back of those who sponsor terrorism.
We have no room for bumbling fools who don't understand their jobs, we don't have the luxury of waiting for our government, waiting for our leaders, and waiting for our police and soldiers to figure out their responsibilities. The time is now, stop defending these idiots and start training them.
Let's see major wars fought without significant space presence...all of them.
According to my history books not a single major war has been fought with a significant space presence. Unless you're from the future, in which case you're only half wrong.
sandal-wearing, coffee-drinking, left wing trendies...Dell is wise in not aiming for a loud-mouthed minority but instead the silent majority
Nixon? But, I thought you were dead--or at least a head in a jar.
I can't keep track of all these non-descriptive ipod names.
Right, because names like 'zen' and 'ditty' tell you everything you need to know about a Mp3 player.
Personally, I find Sony's system of names like NW-HD05 to be really descriptive.
And just because the 'silent majority' likes something doesn't mean it's any good, in fact it usually means it sucks. How else do you explain the popularity of the minivan, McDonalds, Independence Day, and Britney Spears' career?
Apple might have a hard time keeping second place, but Apple should remain relevant even in a heavy Linux environ. Linux offers complexity of options, while the Mac offers simplicity and elegance. The two should be complimentary.
As for Bush, he is very smart. It is all an act of being dumb...Bush decided to win the presidency, he needed to win the south. So he became more like them.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this statement, if being is pretending to be dumb to win the south that doesn't that say something terrible about the south and about Bush's character that he would pretend to be something he's not.
Well, he dad was alumni and a powerful one at that.
As for the rest of your post, I think your brain may have blown a spring or something, because it made absolutely no sense.
The Bible is wrong, it was the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Miracles=Noodly Appendage
Mother Theresa=Marinara Sauce of His Holy Writ
Modern Medicine says a person will die...a priest comes and the person wakes up?=Person was sleeping, annoying priest woke him up?
It uses the standard 'dock' connector that the iPod Mini and iPod use, thus it can be connected via either firewire or USB 2.0. You will, however, need to buy the firewire cable as an extra.
Slashdot Mirror
Good point, and I tend to agree as long as bloggers and other grassroot organizations are honest and specific about where their funding comes from. The inherent problem with the later-day MoveOn (it was originally a grassroots organization before Soros) and with SBWT or the Department of Education scandal is the confusion of political motivated funds with small-organizations. In other words, if you and your friends want to create a political blog on your own dime have fun, but if the RNC gives you, and hundreds like you, money to do the same thing then we have a problem. I'm not sure what the solution is, but giving political organizations that are subject to the FEC an end-run around these laws by using the Internet strikes me as dangerous.
If Moveon.org isn't a sucessful grassroots organization then what is? Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? Actually, the law was problematic since it delinated the Internet from all other media, effectively allowing anything goes on the largest and widest media ever known. This was a bad bill and should have been killed. We want transparency, we want bloggers and other Internet media outlets to show where their funding comes from in order to separate honest viewpoints from propaganda.
I can think of at least two things wrong with this sentence:
1. How does black and silver glow? Do you mean a silver and black case that has a blue LCD? Or does the Dell DJ come with a black-light?
2. If you think the Dell DJ is 'sexy' you seriously need a girlfriend (or boyfriend, whatever) but for fuck sake it's a hunk of plastic. One with a black-light apparently.
I can't think of why anyone would buy such an also-ran Mp3 player, if you don't want an iPod fine, but you've managed to find the C-student of Mp3 players.
Intelligent Design is a shuck-and-weave around Creationism. It posits, at its heart, the existence of a unknowable, untestable, theoritical designer who created all the heavens and earth for unknown purposes. It relies on some kind of unknowable event--someone earlier mentioned time-travel--or an omnipotent entity that intentionally created the world and mankind.
ID would be useful if it were merely a laundry-list of problems with evolution, but it states just by its very nomenclature that there exists an Intelligent Designer who has magically created the Earth and all its creatures. This is Genisis.
The minute ID becomes part of the scientific curriculum is the minute that I will demand the Aboriginal Dreamtime also be included as a theory of the creation of the world. Or maybe the story of Krishna? Take your pick.
There are three posibility explaining why you wrote this sentence:
You mispelled flawed.
Or, you spelled it right and are just really high. Really, really high.
Or, maybe....hey everybody it's Bill! Bill, this is Slashdot, Slashdot this is Bill Gates.
Now shut up.
Your comment just proves your town sucks. According to you there are only two restuarants: McDonalds and the French place; and they're far apart, and the French place requires a suit and tie.
Near where I live there are at least 6 places with better burgers that are within the range of the nearest McDonalds, one place is ridiculously cheap, with a Big Mac equivalent for $1.00 and no 'special sauce.' Other places serve beer too, one of which brews its own in the building.
Point is, there's more than two choices and the alternatives are better than the common choice--but people choose McDonalds because either they haven't found the brewery yet or because they lack all sense of taste.
You want Intelligent Design and I want the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Maybe instead of Newton's gravity we could teach Intelligent Falling. Maybe instead of covalent bonding we could talk about Intelligent Bonding. The line needs to be drawn between science and theology, between physics and psychics, between truth and myth.
Hey, you could get an iPod and a solar charger and not have to sully the environment with all your used-up akalines. Or you could just charge the damned thing every night. Do you have a cell phone? How does that work?
As for forcing the single button mouse, wtf? Macs have been able to use multi-button mice for years, there was no forcing. You could say that in some loppy logic it was true if only single-button mice worked. Furthermore, you could just reverse the idea and demand that Microsoft stop making people use two-button mice. It was a design decision, one many disagreed with, but nonetheless it was an idea that multi-button mice were a kludge created by bad-UI design.
As for your comment about WMDs, Saddam was playing a very strange game with both the US and the UN. I think he wanted the rest of the Arab world to believe he had that capability, but he didn't. In his WMD bluff he managed to pretend he had real systems in place, and thus made it impossible to believe he didn't. It would have been kafkaesque for anyone involved.
After which the US shook his hand...
Yep, that was dumb and immoral. But, Germany, France, Russia, and Britian all shook his hand too, and even sold him some more systems to kill and maim his own people. No one country of any influence doesn't have some blood on their hands on this one. In fact any country of influence has a lot of blood on their hands.
This bill allows parents to decide what games they want in their homes. If mom and day say ok, then that's the end of the debate. Parents in California needed a bill to state this? I'm at a loss here.
So long as you don't mind paying the piper for eternity or the day Napster folds. Apple could do this and it would be a nice extra, but Napster is all the things that suck about iTMS with the benefit of paying rent on all your music. Damn Napster apologist. See I can do it too!
You mean the antagonist? I have to disagree with you, I thought the Operator was a very interesting character. His monologue about a 'good death' was equally creepy and gentle.
The romance came at awkward times.. It worked, it fit within the context and it had a funny line to boot, but okay.
Alien costumes...I must have been reaching for popcorn, but I don't remember a single alien. Reavers weren't aliens, you got that right?
In the absence of Star Wars and Star Trek movies I had hopes for Serenity, but the reality is they took a cancelled low-budget tv-show and made a two hour episode.
And that part of your post is just rife with irony considering Star Trek, the twice-cancelled schlock-fest that rewrote one of its own episodes for material. Serenity acted as the end (or maybe a continuation?) for a series by wrapping up issues from the series and exploring characters we had already been introduced to, although they did have some short-hand around to lead in new viewers. Yes, it acted as a two hour episode, and I'm glad they did that way.
Orson Scott Card is batshit, but even a blind squirrel finds an acorn.
The problem isn't just the inability to protect yourself, but the almost kafka-esque problems in trying to repair your indentity. There needs to be a better system within the credit agencies to fix your credit, that's what makes the sword so sharp.
No. We live in a democratic society that has decided that some taxation is required in order to fund the public good. We can argue about what constitutes this public good, but we have agreed as a society that you can indeed require that all citizens pay a certain amount to a central authority. If you disagree with this, write your congress-critter, move somewhere else, or be prepared to be indicted. However, I don't think it's bitter to consider "giant space toys" a more significant use of our money than funding another failing airline, bailing out investors from a criminal corporation, or giving tax-breaks to gas companies after they've posted record profits.
No, you have to show that it matters before you disrupt the capitalistic process
The poster was suggesting that the long-term 'investment' of space-exploration would reap great future benefits and would therefore be in line with the 'capitalistic' process. It's an investment stupid, a large-scale R&D project funded by the government because no corporation would be able or willing to fund such an endeavor. And why? Because companies can be short-sighted, stock-happy idiots who can't see beyond the next five quarters, much less the next five years.
Apple is being controlling, but they have a vested interest in keeping song costs low to keep selling iPods, thus they are more aligned with my interests--low and consistent song prices--and therefore have my vote. The market is strong, but it's because of Apple and their consistent model.
Now, on hardware, the day that all parties can agree on a standard not controlled by one party--say Mr. Softy--but by a consortium similar to Mp3 or the Bluetooth SIG. Otherwise, at least AAC with Fairplay can work on both Macs and PCs. WMA should never be the defining standard.
We can win the war on terror by limiting our involvement in the internal struggles within countries that breed terrorists, we cut their funding--buy less oil and diamonds, and maybe figure out how to keep Afghanis from selling opium and going back to farming--and we most certainly don't rely on local warlords to capture terrorist leaders. We have to fight the war, we have to use intelligence, small nimble military forces, and the great weight of our economy to break the back of those who sponsor terrorism.
We have no room for bumbling fools who don't understand their jobs, we don't have the luxury of waiting for our government, waiting for our leaders, and waiting for our police and soldiers to figure out their responsibilities. The time is now, stop defending these idiots and start training them.
By the way, nice use of language to show your own bias: 'liberal...mob'.
Both groups over-simplify very difficult choices and turn life-and-death into political theater.
Let's see major wars fought without significant space presence...all of them. According to my history books not a single major war has been fought with a significant space presence. Unless you're from the future, in which case you're only half wrong.
Nixon? But, I thought you were dead--or at least a head in a jar.
I can't keep track of all these non-descriptive ipod names.
Right, because names like 'zen' and 'ditty' tell you everything you need to know about a Mp3 player. Personally, I find Sony's system of names like NW-HD05 to be really descriptive.
And just because the 'silent majority' likes something doesn't mean it's any good, in fact it usually means it sucks. How else do you explain the popularity of the minivan, McDonalds, Independence Day, and Britney Spears' career?
Apple might have a hard time keeping second place, but Apple should remain relevant even in a heavy Linux environ. Linux offers complexity of options, while the Mac offers simplicity and elegance. The two should be complimentary.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this statement, if being is pretending to be dumb to win the south that doesn't that say something terrible about the south and about Bush's character that he would pretend to be something he's not.
Well, he dad was alumni and a powerful one at that.
As for the rest of your post, I think your brain may have blown a spring or something, because it made absolutely no sense.
Miracles=Noodly Appendage
Mother Theresa=Marinara Sauce of His Holy Writ
Modern Medicine says a person will die...a priest comes and the person wakes up?=Person was sleeping, annoying priest woke him up?
It uses the standard 'dock' connector that the iPod Mini and iPod use, thus it can be connected via either firewire or USB 2.0. You will, however, need to buy the firewire cable as an extra.