"We already have some schools switching to other operating systems. This new version of Windows will allow them to do that while still claiming to be 'Windows only.' "
This news actually makes me want to check out and hopefully switch to handbrake. I didn't know anything about it before, but now I know it is something that doesn't support obsolete "rough beast" formats, which aligns well with my values.
Cuz like... electronics can explode or something. Used to be you needed explosive materials to make a bomb, but they miniaturized and modernized and now you can do that with a chip.
This one time, my son opened up the VCR and I was SHOCKED to see that it was full of bombs! Just like in 24 or CSI or something. I called the police on him.
Anyway the bomb experts say no it wasn't bombs, it was just electronics. Still. Pretty scary.
One wonders about the reliability of such wanted pictures, when it seems they serial produce them, cutting and pasting from the same image...
... unless they were looking for very general-looking features, that display a recognizable trait. They don't need to be precise to be reliable. Consider how we can recognize caricatures of celebrities from very stylized cartoon drawings.
But that makes it even more disturbing that they'd use a real and recognizable person, without his knowledge. It's not that his features matched exactly what they want, it's that they feel he has some generally useful features that can be used in a variety of composites. They're taking a person and turning him into clip art. Callous.
You wouldn't use pictures of yourself to make composites of wanted terrorists. You wouldn't use family or friends, or probably even a citizen of your country. But if you don't give a rat's ass about other people in the world, you can do whatever you want with an image of one without feeling a shred of shame. Worse yet, if there are people you don't like but you can't attack them with legitimate arguments, why not try to associate them with bigger enemies? What better way to do that than to use their image to create pictures of terrorists? You could implicitly say "Here's you as a terrorist" while explicitly saying "The image was used randomly for its general features and is not meant to be identified with the original subject."
If he can demonstrate his ability to detect electromagnetic fields...
I call bullshit on your idea of "fair". You don't need to be able to detect something in order to be negatively affected by it. If so, you could have made Erin Brokovich into a nobody. "If the plaintiff could drink these 2 glasses of water and tell me which has toxic levels of hexavalent chromium, the court will consider this case."
Actually, I could probably prove that the average person could be subjected to lethal amounts of radiation without being able to detect it. That doesn't mean they don't have a case.
How about instead, if he proves that he is suffering demonstrable effects from the type and levels of radiation being emitted by his neighbor?
It's not coincidental. There is at least a logical connection. If you're building with "exaggerated pride or self-confidence" you are likely exceeding your means or relying on a source of funding that isn't reliable. If you're doing that, you may be creating risk that can turn a downturn into a crash. Likewise, a crash tends to happen after a period of prosperity, during which excessive spending and self-confidence in things like building construction is at its highest.
Tall buildings are not all built with the same degree of hubris, and not all builders are hit with a downturn of the same degree and timing. But the connection applies even at the level of individuals: If you're building a home, the more you exceed your means, the harder you'll fall.
Who here has put underhanded code in released products?
I admit to adding and concealing the flight cam easter egg in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Rebublic. It wasn't nearly as clever as the contest entries, and it would be impossible to claim innocence if I was caught, but I enabled the "debug" cam using a generic-sounding external variable, put the code inside an "#ifndef _DEBUG" block, added a comment to describe the code as some boring debug message thing (hardly worth looking at), and had a little loop to decode the "Punch it, Chewie!" message to that the string wouldn't show up in the executable.
You need to extend the blame a bit further, to citizens in general. The sad fact is "the voters" is just a small subset of the citizenry, and the apathy of those who don't vote is more to blame than the misguided ideals of those who do.
Why not extend a bit further, and include all citizens of the world. If they do not apply pressure on Canadians to try to get them to vote for the right person, then their apathy is just as much to blame as ours.
In fact, you could extend it to all of our ancestors, who sat idly by and let the world come to where it is now, instead of realizing what their action or inaction would mean for Canada in their future. They did nothing to steer the future of Canadian politics which was their responsibility.
ON THE OTHER HAND, you could consider the complete opposite, and instead of saying that citizens are accountable for the leaders they elect, how about if leaders are accountable to the citizens they represent (voters and other)? Placing blame in a way that suggests it's too late to do anything about it, especially suggesting that a citizen's participation in their government ends with voting, is itself a form of apathy. The real blame goes to anyone who is not actively living up to their own responsibility in their country, whether it's an elected leader creating official policy that is bad for the country, or a citizen (voter or not) who sees his leaders making bad decisions but does nothing about it.
That's okay, I'll drink tea. That's okay, I'll move inland. That's okay, I'll just eat less food. That's okay, I'll stay indoors during the summer. That's okay, I'll buy guns and fend them off. That's okay, I'll live underground. That's okay, I'll survive... just don't redistribute the wealth of America or I'll be just like the rest of the world, and then I'll have to stop saying "That's okay."
Vatican marketing released this statement shortly afterward:
"Only real Vatican Pope has that real Pope flavor! If you are purchasing Poap brand or generic pope products from other non-holy sees, you may be getting only as little as 60% actual pope -- The rest is filler. Don't be fooled by packaging that boasts 'Papalaty flavor". If it doesn't have the official Pope logo on it, it's not genuine Pope inside.
I hope it stays that way, in North America too. I played Indigo Prophecy, the American version of QD's Fahrenheit. For the American version, they took out "adult" things like sex.
There is a shower scene still in Indigo Prophecy, but the character is showering in her underwear! What an odd confusion of sex and nudity, where it's okay to walk in on someone showering, as long as they're doing it with clothes on! IMHO not a very "mature" way of handling nudity.
This is why I get angry when AGWers equate those that disbelieve in AGW with creationists; the principles behind evolution are much easier and more intuitive to understand than climate science is.
It doesn't matter how easy or hard it is to understand if you don't even try to. If you don't understand something, say so. Say "I don't know."
The principles behind gravity are hard to understand, but everyone believes in it because they can see the effects through individual observation. For AGW and evolution, you must rely on the observations of others. For both, a strong belief against the theories requires one to consciously disregard a lot of the evidence, and say "I don't accept those observations." No, the disbelievers you refer to are not people who say "I don't understand this", they are people who say "AGW is false", and they argue it vehemently. They are people who feel their own beliefs are stronger than evidence. In that way they are a lot like creationists.
Yes, it seems like a bad idea for both financial and legal reasons. But simply *talking* about it benefits both Murdoch and Microsoft. Murdoch calls attention to his issue and gets competitors behind him with the promise of sweet sweet cash. Microsoft gets publicity with all this talk of exclusive content on their search engine, whether or not that exclusive content ever happens. Better yet, they can talk about it all they want now, and never have to go through with a deal, so it's free.
I wouldn't doubt that Murdoch would gladly take cash from anywhere he can, in exchange for sabotaging an ailing company. But I don't think Microsoft would really want to pay as much as it will cost to buy real competitiveness with Google. I can foresee these 2 talking about a deal as much as they possibly can for the next little while, and then in the end saying that a deal is impossible for legal reasons (eg. antitrust). This allows them to threaten/advertise (threatvertise?) exclusive content on MS's search, without ever having to deliver.
I think a machine like that is better suited for Windows, because it can offer an improvement. Users found that it would only crash reliably about 79% as often as expected.
Actually, forget that. You might create a temporal causality loop if you do that. Instead: Buy a cheap CRT. Problem solved. http://www.pricewatch.com/monitors/
God: Hey Rube! Rube! Come check this out. I put this baguette here for a bird to take it and fly to that machinery over there and short circuit it and halt the activation of the LHC. You know, just to mess with them a bit.
Rube: Ten bucks says that won't work!
God: Go bird! Go bird! Drop that shit! Yes, yes! AWWWWWWW YAH! Pay up, beyotch!!!! -- Oh hey, watch me drop this pencil in Abe Lincoln's butt crack, heeheehee.
The LHC is now cursed with the hex of pessimistic human expectations. Whether those who believe the universe will foil it, those who don't believe but will watch closely for it, or those who think they see a pattern and assume future events will fit, too many people are now looking for signs of failure. Well, whether you look for the good or for the bad in something, you will find it. Now any minor set-back will be part of some huge conspiracy against the LHC.
"One of the thousands of scientists at the LHC was stuck in traffic today, delaying an experiment, proving once and for all that God hates the LHC" etc
He was involved in some illegal operations and they ended up shutting down the whole program. I heard they were calling for the death penalty but his execution was halted at the last minute.
Well... Microsoft's tactics over the past decade have been even better than that (or worse, depending on your perspective). They've stated that they were aiming for cheaper and cheaper hardware, with the cost of computers focusing more on software and support. So, let someone else worry about "giving away" the PCs. I think they've literally stated they were foreseeing a future where the hardware is free.
I guess they enjoy the effects of market competition when it comes to *hardware*.
Doctor: This next tragic case is a man who sustained full-body burns when he fell into a vat of boiling oil. He requires a high dose of morphine in order to endure the extreme amount of pain he is feeling across his entire body.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows 8 to Feature Fully Virtual Monopoly
"We already have some schools switching to other operating systems. This new version of Windows will allow them to do that while still claiming to be 'Windows only.' "
fully sarcastic blog entry here.
This news actually makes me want to check out and hopefully switch to handbrake. I didn't know anything about it before, but now I know it is something that doesn't support obsolete "rough beast" formats, which aligns well with my values.
All publicity is good publicity.
Micro changes in air density, my ass.
Cuz like... electronics can explode or something. Used to be you needed explosive materials to make a bomb, but they miniaturized and modernized and now you can do that with a chip.
This one time, my son opened up the VCR and I was SHOCKED to see that it was full of bombs! Just like in 24 or CSI or something. I called the police on him.
Anyway the bomb experts say no it wasn't bombs, it was just electronics. Still. Pretty scary.
One wonders about the reliability of such wanted pictures, when it seems they serial produce them, cutting and pasting from the same image...
... unless they were looking for very general-looking features, that display a recognizable trait. They don't need to be precise to be reliable. Consider how we can recognize caricatures of celebrities from very stylized cartoon drawings.
But that makes it even more disturbing that they'd use a real and recognizable person, without his knowledge. It's not that his features matched exactly what they want, it's that they feel he has some generally useful features that can be used in a variety of composites. They're taking a person and turning him into clip art. Callous.
You wouldn't use pictures of yourself to make composites of wanted terrorists. You wouldn't use family or friends, or probably even a citizen of your country. But if you don't give a rat's ass about other people in the world, you can do whatever you want with an image of one without feeling a shred of shame. Worse yet, if there are people you don't like but you can't attack them with legitimate arguments, why not try to associate them with bigger enemies? What better way to do that than to use their image to create pictures of terrorists? You could implicitly say "Here's you as a terrorist" while explicitly saying "The image was used randomly for its general features and is not meant to be identified with the original subject."
It's outrageous, egregious, preposterous.
If he can demonstrate his ability to detect electromagnetic fields...
I call bullshit on your idea of "fair". You don't need to be able to detect something in order to be negatively affected by it. If so, you could have made Erin Brokovich into a nobody. "If the plaintiff could drink these 2 glasses of water and tell me which has toxic levels of hexavalent chromium, the court will consider this case."
Actually, I could probably prove that the average person could be subjected to lethal amounts of radiation without being able to detect it. That doesn't mean they don't have a case.
How about instead, if he proves that he is suffering demonstrable effects from the type and levels of radiation being emitted by his neighbor?
It's the constitution, it's Mabo, it's justice, it's law, it's the vibe, and... uh...
No, that's it. It's the vibe.
Is the Ryugyong Hotel also evidence?
It's not coincidental. There is at least a logical connection. If you're building with "exaggerated pride or self-confidence" you are likely exceeding your means or relying on a source of funding that isn't reliable. If you're doing that, you may be creating risk that can turn a downturn into a crash. Likewise, a crash tends to happen after a period of prosperity, during which excessive spending and self-confidence in things like building construction is at its highest.
Tall buildings are not all built with the same degree of hubris, and not all builders are hit with a downturn of the same degree and timing. But the connection applies even at the level of individuals: If you're building a home, the more you exceed your means, the harder you'll fall.
Who here has put underhanded code in released products?
I admit to adding and concealing the flight cam easter egg in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Rebublic. It wasn't nearly as clever as the contest entries, and it would be impossible to claim innocence if I was caught, but I enabled the "debug" cam using a generic-sounding external variable, put the code inside an "#ifndef _DEBUG" block, added a comment to describe the code as some boring debug message thing (hardly worth looking at), and had a little loop to decode the "Punch it, Chewie!" message to that the string wouldn't show up in the executable.
You need to extend the blame a bit further, to citizens in general. The sad fact is "the voters" is just a small subset of the citizenry, and the apathy of those who don't vote is more to blame than the misguided ideals of those who do.
Why not extend a bit further, and include all citizens of the world. If they do not apply pressure on Canadians to try to get them to vote for the right person, then their apathy is just as much to blame as ours.
In fact, you could extend it to all of our ancestors, who sat idly by and let the world come to where it is now, instead of realizing what their action or inaction would mean for Canada in their future. They did nothing to steer the future of Canadian politics which was their responsibility.
ON THE OTHER HAND, you could consider the complete opposite, and instead of saying that citizens are accountable for the leaders they elect, how about if leaders are accountable to the citizens they represent (voters and other)? Placing blame in a way that suggests it's too late to do anything about it, especially suggesting that a citizen's participation in their government ends with voting, is itself a form of apathy. The real blame goes to anyone who is not actively living up to their own responsibility in their country, whether it's an elected leader creating official policy that is bad for the country, or a citizen (voter or not) who sees his leaders making bad decisions but does nothing about it.
> "Global scary thing that affects everything you do and you need to give us money to protect you from it."
There is nothing to fear except the fear of giving money.
Eat drink use or otherwise care about. You can go ahead and scratch "Other people" off that list.
That's okay, I'll drink tea.
That's okay, I'll move inland.
That's okay, I'll just eat less food.
That's okay, I'll stay indoors during the summer.
That's okay, I'll buy guns and fend them off.
That's okay, I'll live underground.
That's okay, I'll survive... just don't redistribute the wealth of America or I'll be just like the rest of the world, and then I'll have to stop saying "That's okay."
Vatican marketing released this statement shortly afterward:
"Only real Vatican Pope has that real Pope flavor! If you are purchasing Poap brand or generic pope products from other non-holy sees, you may be getting only as little as 60% actual pope -- The rest is filler. Don't be fooled by packaging that boasts 'Papalaty flavor". If it doesn't have the official Pope logo on it, it's not genuine Pope inside.
Choose Vatican Pope for all your papal needs."
I hope it stays that way, in North America too. I played Indigo Prophecy, the American version of QD's Fahrenheit. For the American version, they took out "adult" things like sex.
There is a shower scene still in Indigo Prophecy, but the character is showering in her underwear! What an odd confusion of sex and nudity, where it's okay to walk in on someone showering, as long as they're doing it with clothes on! IMHO not a very "mature" way of handling nudity.
(inb4 European vs. American acceptance of nudity)
This is why I get angry when AGWers equate those that disbelieve in AGW with creationists; the principles behind evolution are much easier and more intuitive to understand than climate science is.
It doesn't matter how easy or hard it is to understand if you don't even try to. If you don't understand something, say so. Say "I don't know."
The principles behind gravity are hard to understand, but everyone believes in it because they can see the effects through individual observation. For AGW and evolution, you must rely on the observations of others. For both, a strong belief against the theories requires one to consciously disregard a lot of the evidence, and say "I don't accept those observations." No, the disbelievers you refer to are not people who say "I don't understand this", they are people who say "AGW is false", and they argue it vehemently. They are people who feel their own beliefs are stronger than evidence. In that way they are a lot like creationists.
Yes, it seems like a bad idea for both financial and legal reasons. But simply *talking* about it benefits both Murdoch and Microsoft. Murdoch calls attention to his issue and gets competitors behind him with the promise of sweet sweet cash. Microsoft gets publicity with all this talk of exclusive content on their search engine, whether or not that exclusive content ever happens. Better yet, they can talk about it all they want now, and never have to go through with a deal, so it's free.
I wouldn't doubt that Murdoch would gladly take cash from anywhere he can, in exchange for sabotaging an ailing company. But I don't think Microsoft would really want to pay as much as it will cost to buy real competitiveness with Google. I can foresee these 2 talking about a deal as much as they possibly can for the next little while, and then in the end saying that a deal is impossible for legal reasons (eg. antitrust). This allows them to threaten/advertise (threatvertise?) exclusive content on MS's search, without ever having to deliver.
tl;dr: It works as a publicity stunt.
I think a machine like that is better suited for Windows, because it can offer an improvement. Users found that it would only crash reliably about 79% as often as expected.
Actually, forget that. You might create a temporal causality loop if you do that. Instead: Buy a cheap CRT. Problem solved. http://www.pricewatch.com/monitors/
God: Hey Rube! Rube! Come check this out. I put this baguette here for a bird to take it and fly to that machinery over there and short circuit it and halt the activation of the LHC. You know, just to mess with them a bit.
Rube: Ten bucks says that won't work!
God: Go bird! Go bird! Drop that shit! Yes, yes! AWWWWWWW YAH! Pay up, beyotch!!!! -- Oh hey, watch me drop this pencil in Abe Lincoln's butt crack, heeheehee.
The LHC is now cursed with the hex of pessimistic human expectations. Whether those who believe the universe will foil it, those who don't believe but will watch closely for it, or those who think they see a pattern and assume future events will fit, too many people are now looking for signs of failure. Well, whether you look for the good or for the bad in something, you will find it. Now any minor set-back will be part of some huge conspiracy against the LHC.
"One of the thousands of scientists at the LHC was stuck in traffic today, delaying an experiment, proving once and for all that God hates the LHC" etc
He was involved in some illegal operations and they ended up shutting down the whole program. I heard they were calling for the death penalty but his execution was halted at the last minute.
Well... Microsoft's tactics over the past decade have been even better than that (or worse, depending on your perspective). They've stated that they were aiming for cheaper and cheaper hardware, with the cost of computers focusing more on software and support. So, let someone else worry about "giving away" the PCs. I think they've literally stated they were foreseeing a future where the hardware is free.
I guess they enjoy the effects of market competition when it comes to *hardware*.
I too refuse to work for any company that wouldn't hire me.
Doctor: This next tragic case is a man who sustained full-body burns when he fell into a vat of boiling oil. He requires a high dose of morphine in order to endure the extreme amount of pain he is feeling across his entire body.
Med student: He looks so... crispy!
(licks lips)