I agree with you. I recently had the fortune to see Robbie Stamp (producer) in person at a presentation he did at Valhalla Cinema in Sydney, Australia, and I left feeling very confident about this film (I haven't seen it yet).
Robbie was a personal friend of Douglas and knows full well that his reputation is invested in this movie. They have tried to give fans of the previous works their dues whilst also incorporating new stuff, which fits in with Douglas Adams' view that the HHGG was a constantly evolving work in progress. The amount of care and attention to unseen details was amazing and I for one believe that it will be a huge success.
Robbie also explained why Zaphod's second head was done the way it was (MIB2 "stole" the idea from the original series so they wanted to remain fresh by doing it in a new way) and many other details that the true fans will appreciate.
Give the movie a chance guys and don't succumb to one shitty review.
I run a tiny computer sales company (compared to Dell) here in Sydney, Australia, and we try to ship with as many free/OSS apps as possible. This includes OOo, Firefox and Thunderbird, and many others.
Benefit to us - free software which we don't have to get licencing agreements for.
Benefit to end users - Best of breed, secure software which will never lock them into one vendor.
Sure, we don't sell many computers compared to Dell, but if bottom tier vendors like ourselves all do the same, it could be the death of a thousand paper cuts for Microsoft Office.
It's not a myth. Or is it that you can't bring yourself to question your worldview that perhaps the US government isn't as benevolent as you'd hoped? As it stands today, the US is unable to support itself with domestic oil alone. That means that in order to support its war machine, it needs foreign oil and gas to keep functioning. Do you think it's coincidence that Pakistan enjoys impunity over its KNOWN nuclear black market while Iran is vilified for even ATTEMPTING to gain nuclear know how?
Wake up and realise you no longer live in a nation built on free and fair values, but rather on global hegemony designed to ensure its supply of resources to maintain living standards at present levels at the expense of everyone else. Democracy and freedom don't factor into the equation. They are merely platitudes to keep the populace uneducated. Why not read a few other sites for a different viewpoint:
I've tried to use Knoppix to recover Windows files in the past and could never figure out why it wouldn't recognise the USB Key. Now I know to insert it BEFORE booting.
You are quite correct and I wish more people today would realise it, especially those living in Western style cultures who can't seem to grasp this basic insight.
Here's a small enhancement I made for Firefox to make broken security sites more obvious (take out space in URL as Mozillazine blocks direct links from Slashdot):
The New South Wales Police went one better recently, and actually sent child pornography images to thousands of state schools.
The irony and sad thing here is that it's illegal to have child porn on your computer, yet the police can obviously have it and they sent it out to others as well. Imagine inadvertently getting it in your email and then getting busted by the cops for it. Imagine now if a teacher gets charged for child porn. It just goes to show that merely having the images should not be a crime, since it is all too easy to maliciously plant them on someone's computer in order to frame them.
"....we can wheel these robots in and take out those suckers without risking harm to our soldiers."
And thus negating the most important check and balance against perpetual war.
It is necessary for soldiers to die in a war, because their death reminds us that war has a price. If you can operate a completely robotic army/navy/air force, you lose that human connection, and create a killing force that can operate without any moral conscience whatsoever.
That makes for a generation of politicians who will decide that because there is no human cost to their side, they may as well just send in the robots and exterminate the opposition.
You are already seeing this process in action with such edicts as not being allowed to show coffins returning from Iraq. If you don't see the cost of war you are more likely to support it, and robot killing machines are the ultimate expression of that lack of human cost to war.
Continuing down that path will have only one outcome, and it won't be pretty.
I've been using OOo and Firefox for a while now, but the one advantage Firefox seems to have is that due to its open nature, people such as Moox and mmoy have been building CPU optimised versions which boot in half the time and are generally much more responsive (I'm on Windows BTW).
The splash screen on OOo seems to be mostly there because it takes so long to load (relatively speaking of course) from scratch.
Does anyone know if there are CPU optimised versions out there like the optimised Firefox versions? That would certainly cut down on the need for a splash screen in the first place.
That said, I don't mind a splash screen as long as there is an option in Preferences NOT to use it.
This article made me think of a good movie, based on one of Philip K Dick's books, called Screamers, where they initially build underground burrowing attackbots to defend the place, but then the bots evolve to mimic human form. That's when the real trouble starts....
Well, I have started a political party here in Australia, and although my ideals are fairly different to yours on some issues, I salute you for putting yourself out there.
I've tried to model our party along open source lines, but let me tell you, the biggest hurdle is that without the means to get your voice out there (ie. $$$) it doesn't matter whether or not you are right, left or in between - no one will even know you exist, nor will the media take you seriously.
Anyway, have a look at my party site below, and grab any and all materials you need (I've open sourced the party's documentation to make it easier for the next group that wants to start a political party).
One of my goals was to make a party structure that could be carried over in materials and ideals across the world. Imagine having a party with certain ideals that is not just in one country, but lots of countries! With local sensitivities and laws of course, but still carrying forth the same set of principles and grounded in open politics with no hidden dealings. A pipe dream? Maybe, but at least I can say I tried.
Best of luck if you do decide to go further - the world knows America needs political change to pull itself out of its descent into Fascism.
1. Al Qaeda didn't attack Australia (trust me, I live here). I presume you're indirectly referring to the Bali bombing (in Indonesia) in which Australians died (among many other nationalities). There is no evidence that it was an Al Qaeda plot, although much like the Iraq-9/11 connection, it's been inferred so many times that it has become "truth" in the eyes of the uneducated. The supposed perpetrators (Jamah Islamiah [sp?]) claimed they were trying to kill Americans, not Australians (we look the same I guess, both nations being predominantly white caucasian in nature).
2. "Congratulations to our law enforcement and intelligence organizations for keeping the homeland safe."
Are you familiar with the protective rock analogy (see Simpsons for good example in the Bear Patrol episode)? It goes something like this:
Lisa - This rock in my hand keeps tigers away. Homer - But there aren't any tigers! Lisa - Exactly. Homer - I wish to buy your rock.
Do you see why your analogy that Homeland Security must have prevented an attack is flawed? Absence of an event does not prove your prevention is working, because there may not have been any event planned in the first place. This is the "logic" used to hoodwink the American populace into believing you are somehow "winning" a war on terror that cannot be won, because terrorism is a technique, not an enemy state that can be defeated.
Al Qaeda (a group essentially made real by the US in the first place) has won hugely by the election of Bush - now they are assured that the US will continue to attack defenceless countries for oil, which will give Al Qaeda much greater recruiting numbers than they ever could have hoped for. They have gone from lucky criminals to a legitimate rebel group in the eyes of large percentages of the Muslim world, precisely as Osama has intended. He's much smarter than people have given him credit for, and even if he was captured or killed tomorrow, will have forged a force to be reckoned with in the coming years. No, Al Qaeda didn't lose by a long shot.
You should be able to find region free firmware for just about all DVD drives there.
If you list your set-top player model I'm sure someone will be able to help you. I have an LG DV7711P and hacking it to region free is as easy as pi - literally! You go into a special menu and enter 314159, then restart. Look here for more solutions:
...expect to see CERN generate the world's first localised, contained black hole in 2007.
If this occurs, and the US has continued down the path it's on now, you can pretty safely say that John Titor was indeed a real time traveller, and that the US is headed for nuclear destruction around 2015.
If those two major events don't occur, then Titor could reasonably be surmised to be a fake.
It was my understanding that Motoko Kusanagi was in fact a robot, and that Batou is the cyborg. Watch scenes like her dive, and the end when she's in the new temporary body, to realise that her mind was the entity in the first place (a program which has evolved by merging with another program).
I'm looking forward to GITS 2 because I really enjoyed the thinking required in the first one to get your head around the fact that she was a sentient robot, and what that meant when she was asking what it was to be human.
There is one silver lining to the new super- duper- special- editions coming out on DVD:
It is only a matter of time before an enterprising team of audiovisual specialists takes the DVD content and edits it to re-insert the original footage (as was done with Episode I to get rid of Jar Jar). There are thousands of people with the skills and technology to do this, and given the historical importance of the originals (they won Oscars!) deserve nothing less.
Alternatively, I wonder how much of a donations fund could be set up somewhere, with the full proceeds going to the first Lucasfilm employee (who would then be an ex-Lucasfilm employee) who uploads the cleaned up, ORIGINAL DVD masters to the internet for people to convert to DVD. It might be interesting to see how much money could be raised to do such a thing.
So, if any Lucasfilm employee wants to become an instant millionaire, here's your chance to nominate a price at which you will upload the cleaned up, original trilogy (which are dead according to Lucas) for the world to turn into proper, ORIGINAL TRILOGY DVDs.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you. I recently had the fortune to see Robbie Stamp (producer) in person at a presentation he did at Valhalla Cinema in Sydney, Australia, and I left feeling very confident about this film (I haven't seen it yet).
Robbie was a personal friend of Douglas and knows full well that his reputation is invested in this movie. They have tried to give fans of the previous works their dues whilst also incorporating new stuff, which fits in with Douglas Adams' view that the HHGG was a constantly evolving work in progress. The amount of care and attention to unseen details was amazing and I for one believe that it will be a huge success.
Robbie also explained why Zaphod's second head was done the way it was (MIB2 "stole" the idea from the original series so they wanted to remain fresh by doing it in a new way) and many other details that the true fans will appreciate.
Give the movie a chance guys and don't succumb to one shitty review.
Have a look here:
http://castlecops.com/postt79253.html
Proxomitron the APP isn't being developed, but that's because the author died a couple of years ago. There are moves to remake it in open source:
http://proximodo.sourceforge.net/
However, none of that is the point.
Think of Proxomitron as an underlying technology which doesn't alter.
What alters is the filtersets, and those are bang up to date and constantly being refined.
So download Proxomitron, install a current filterset, and enjoy the web without all the crud from here on in.
I run a tiny computer sales company (compared to Dell) here in Sydney, Australia, and we try to ship with as many free/OSS apps as possible. This includes OOo, Firefox and Thunderbird, and many others.
Benefit to us - free software which we don't have to get licencing agreements for.
Benefit to end users - Best of breed, secure software which will never lock them into one vendor.
Sure, we don't sell many computers compared to Dell, but if bottom tier vendors like ourselves all do the same, it could be the death of a thousand paper cuts for Microsoft Office.
Shameless plug if you need a computer in Sydney:
http://www.altitudepc.com.au
It's not a myth. Or is it that you can't bring yourself to question your worldview that perhaps the US government isn't as benevolent as you'd hoped? As it stands today, the US is unable to support itself with domestic oil alone. That means that in order to support its war machine, it needs foreign oil and gas to keep functioning. Do you think it's coincidence that Pakistan enjoys impunity over its KNOWN nuclear black market while Iran is vilified for even ATTEMPTING to gain nuclear know how?
Wake up and realise you no longer live in a nation built on free and fair values, but rather on global hegemony designed to ensure its supply of resources to maintain living standards at present levels at the expense of everyone else. Democracy and freedom don't factor into the equation. They are merely platitudes to keep the populace uneducated. Why not read a few other sites for a different viewpoint:
Counterpunch
Truthout
Information Clearing House
Cryptome
Tetra Vaal Industries Police Robot. (16.3MB Quicktime movie)
Slashfix is the answer to your woes.
I've tried to use Knoppix to recover Windows files in the past and could never figure out why it wouldn't recognise the USB Key. Now I know to insert it BEFORE booting.
So thankyou for a great guide!
You are quite correct and I wish more people today would realise it, especially those living in Western style cultures who can't seem to grasp this basic insight.
Here's a small enhancement I made for Firefox to make broken security sites more obvious (take out space in URL as Mozillazine blocks direct links from Slashdot):
2 88 49
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1
If you use Firefox, why not try it out and make an already secure browser even more secure?
Try this little doozie to help you find your old passwords:
http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mailpv.html
It'll do Outlook Express, Thunderbird (though not necessary as it is built in) and others.
The New South Wales Police went one better recently, and actually sent child pornography images to thousands of state schools.
The irony and sad thing here is that it's illegal to have child porn on your computer, yet the police can obviously have it and they sent it out to others as well. Imagine inadvertently getting it in your email and then getting busted by the cops for it. Imagine now if a teacher gets charged for child porn. It just goes to show that merely having the images should not be a crime, since it is all too easy to maliciously plant them on someone's computer in order to frame them.
"....we can wheel these robots in and take out those suckers without risking harm to our soldiers."
And thus negating the most important check and balance against perpetual war.
It is necessary for soldiers to die in a war, because their death reminds us that war has a price. If you can operate a completely robotic army/navy/air force, you lose that human connection, and create a killing force that can operate without any moral conscience whatsoever.
That makes for a generation of politicians who will decide that because there is no human cost to their side, they may as well just send in the robots and exterminate the opposition.
You are already seeing this process in action with such edicts as not being allowed to show coffins returning from Iraq. If you don't see the cost of war you are more likely to support it, and robot killing machines are the ultimate expression of that lack of human cost to war.
Continuing down that path will have only one outcome, and it won't be pretty.
I've been using OOo and Firefox for a while now, but the one advantage Firefox seems to have is that due to its open nature, people such as Moox and mmoy have been building CPU optimised versions which boot in half the time and are generally much more responsive (I'm on Windows BTW).
The splash screen on OOo seems to be mostly there because it takes so long to load (relatively speaking of course) from scratch.
Does anyone know if there are CPU optimised versions out there like the optimised Firefox versions? That would certainly cut down on the need for a splash screen in the first place.
That said, I don't mind a splash screen as long as there is an option in Preferences NOT to use it.
There are other carrier types around which can support large fighter aircraft. Whilst the US has the most, they are not the only ones.
Slashfix Extension
This article made me think of a good movie, based on one of Philip K Dick's books, called Screamers, where they initially build underground burrowing attackbots to defend the place, but then the bots evolve to mimic human form. That's when the real trouble starts....
Here's a link to the IMDB entry:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114367/
With thanks to escaflo:
Moox Firefox 1.0 M1 (MMX) Torrent
Moox Firefox 1.0 M2 (SSE) Torrent
Moox Firefox 1.0 M3 (SSE2) Torrent
Use the torrents and save his bandwidth.
Well, I have started a political party here in Australia, and although my ideals are fairly different to yours on some issues, I salute you for putting yourself out there.
I've tried to model our party along open source lines, but let me tell you, the biggest hurdle is that without the means to get your voice out there (ie. $$$) it doesn't matter whether or not you are right, left or in between - no one will even know you exist, nor will the media take you seriously.
Anyway, have a look at my party site below, and grab any and all materials you need (I've open sourced the party's documentation to make it easier for the next group that wants to start a political party).
One of my goals was to make a party structure that could be carried over in materials and ideals across the world. Imagine having a party with certain ideals that is not just in one country, but lots of countries! With local sensitivities and laws of course, but still carrying forth the same set of principles and grounded in open politics with no hidden dealings. A pipe dream? Maybe, but at least I can say I tried.
Best of luck if you do decide to go further - the world knows America needs political change to pull itself out of its descent into Fascism.
You have nothing to fear. As others have said, it would only increase your exposure and leave them with egg on their faces.
I'm commenting specifically on your second point:
1. Al Qaeda didn't attack Australia (trust me, I live here). I presume you're indirectly referring to the Bali bombing (in Indonesia) in which Australians died (among many other nationalities). There is no evidence that it was an Al Qaeda plot, although much like the Iraq-9/11 connection, it's been inferred so many times that it has become "truth" in the eyes of the uneducated. The supposed perpetrators (Jamah Islamiah [sp?]) claimed they were trying to kill Americans, not Australians (we look the same I guess, both nations being predominantly white caucasian in nature).
2. "Congratulations to our law enforcement and intelligence organizations for keeping the homeland safe."
Are you familiar with the protective rock analogy (see Simpsons for good example in the Bear Patrol episode)? It goes something like this:
Lisa - This rock in my hand keeps tigers away.
Homer - But there aren't any tigers!
Lisa - Exactly.
Homer - I wish to buy your rock.
Do you see why your analogy that Homeland Security must have prevented an attack is flawed? Absence of an event does not prove your prevention is working, because there may not have been any event planned in the first place. This is the "logic" used to hoodwink the American populace into believing you are somehow "winning" a war on terror that cannot be won, because terrorism is a technique, not an enemy state that can be defeated.
Al Qaeda (a group essentially made real by the US in the first place) has won hugely by the election of Bush - now they are assured that the US will continue to attack defenceless countries for oil, which will give Al Qaeda much greater recruiting numbers than they ever could have hoped for. They have gone from lucky criminals to a legitimate rebel group in the eyes of large percentages of the Muslim world, precisely as Osama has intended. He's much smarter than people have given him credit for, and even if he was captured or killed tomorrow, will have forged a force to be reckoned with in the coming years. No, Al Qaeda didn't lose by a long shot.
http://www.firmware-flash.com/
You should be able to find region free firmware for just about all DVD drives there.
If you list your set-top player model I'm sure someone will be able to help you. I have an LG DV7711P and hacking it to region free is as easy as pi - literally! You go into a special menu and enter 314159, then restart. Look here for more solutions:
http://www.dvdrhelp.com/
Hope this helps some!
...expect to see CERN generate the world's first localised, contained black hole in 2007.
If this occurs, and the US has continued down the path it's on now, you can pretty safely say that John Titor was indeed a real time traveller, and that the US is headed for nuclear destruction around 2015.
If those two major events don't occur, then Titor could reasonably be surmised to be a fake.
Anyway, keep your mind open and read some more:
http://johntitor.strategicbrains.com/
Here you go:
"If corporations are allowed to make decisions based on economics not morals, so am I."
It was my understanding that Motoko Kusanagi was in fact a robot, and that Batou is the cyborg. Watch scenes like her dive, and the end when she's in the new temporary body, to realise that her mind was the entity in the first place (a program which has evolved by merging with another program).
I'm looking forward to GITS 2 because I really enjoyed the thinking required in the first one to get your head around the fact that she was a sentient robot, and what that meant when she was asking what it was to be human.
There is one silver lining to the new super- duper- special- editions coming out on DVD:
It is only a matter of time before an enterprising team of audiovisual specialists takes the DVD content and edits it to re-insert the original footage (as was done with Episode I to get rid of Jar Jar). There are thousands of people with the skills and technology to do this, and given the historical importance of the originals (they won Oscars!) deserve nothing less.
Alternatively, I wonder how much of a donations fund could be set up somewhere, with the full proceeds going to the first Lucasfilm employee (who would then be an ex-Lucasfilm employee) who uploads the cleaned up, ORIGINAL DVD masters to the internet for people to convert to DVD. It might be interesting to see how much money could be raised to do such a thing.
So, if any Lucasfilm employee wants to become an instant millionaire, here's your chance to nominate a price at which you will upload the cleaned up, original trilogy (which are dead according to Lucas) for the world to turn into proper, ORIGINAL TRILOGY DVDs.