I used to work at Macromedia, and I remember a big company meeting at Pajaro Dunes where they Specifically Announced Adobe as their Main Enemy, and then set about acquiring software to battle them point to point.
Then we all partied so Hearty that they called the cops on us.
Macromedia figured out that they would do better by leapfrogging Adobe, and jumping directly into webcentric software. To that end they basically killed off everything that wasn't web centric - xRes died a quick and merciful death, fontgrapher was shelved (and for this they earned incredibley bad karma, because fontLab is a fat POS with a crap UI - although it does rock for font output formats... it's just a world of pain for anyone trying to design anything...), and they killed off FreeHand a few years back and Director's got a tube up its nose.
They set about buying serverside stuff, like cold fusion, and developed various workflow systems for Dreamweaver, itself an acquisition, called FutureFlash.
I don't think this acquisition could have happened if MM had not killed off FreeHand and fontographer.
You can be QUITE certain that now that Adobe owns the codebase, FH and Fog are so completely dead as to be like, deader than dead.
This is a MAJOR acquisition. This is a MAJOR consolidation in the software market. It is not a time for rejoicing. Expect some very bad things.
Predictions:
Adobe will not sell FreeHand.
Adobe will not sell Fontographer.
Adobe will kill off Director within 3 years.
Adobe will "merge" GoLive and Dreamweaver, which will be good for GoLive and bad for Dreamweaver.
PDF will acquire flash-centric elements - this includes video...
Adobe will Rule The Roost in publishing (and don't give me any lip about GIMP - GIMP's UI sux ass and it's ability to handle CMYK or (x) plate printing is zero, and Adobe OWNZ that already - this will increase their hold on it.
Fireworks is TOAST. Dead within a year.
This is going to require people to completely re-think workflows and processes.
I for one DO NOT look forward to our Abobe Overlords.
Hate to break it to you, but I see the academy as more of a hobby than a career move.
I post on slashdot because it's fun and I don't have to work very much for a comfortable living, so I have the extra time. In fact I enjoy my work so much, that I have no intention of retiring or even wanting to retire.
As Maynard noted, it was because Social Text didn't vet the paper, had no idea about quantum physics (or even have a high school level education in the subject), it's not peer-reviewed, but it always spoke with a sense of authority.
The bones I pick with Post-Modernism are more theoretical and practical - theoretical in that I find the basic premises and notions of pomo to be flawed, it's politically reactionary (Habermas has a great paper on that from the early 1980s) and, to parphrase Sokal, "I don't see how any of this helps the working classes."
My practical irritation is that far too much pomo writing argues by assertion and does so using language that is, at best, obfuscatory, hence the amusement of the Pomo generator.
Now, if you want to do yourself a big fat favour, go here and read up on the sokal affair, before you stick your foot any farther down your throat.
Ummmm, I hate to spoil your day, Mr Poo, but you are completely wrong. I will now set about demonstrating to you what kind of a presumtuous and worthless troll you are...
You know, if you had any education,
I recently recieved my MFA, and am working on putting together ideas for a PhD. strike one
you would easily notice the difference between sentences like "The premise of predialectic materialism suggests that expression comes from the collective unconscious" and something written by a pomo-head. Both 'dialectical materialism' and 'collective unconcious' are clearly defined (although the latter doesn't seem to exist), and every "scholar" can see that the concepts can't be used like that.
I know that. I simply copy/pasted something the generator spat out. I didn't write it, nor have any of my students. strike two
The reason why you can't tell how many such essays you've had to read is, of course, that you've had to read exactly none, and it would totally spoil your joke if you told us.
Wrong. I've been forced to not only read and grade such tripe, I've sat through countless lectures, seminars, workshops and other such outlets for such mindnumbing drivel.
Strike three
So basically, you're being a pretentious fucktard by trying to fool people into believing you're smart enough to discover, all by your own hard work, that postmodernism is a bunch of meaningless pseudo-randomly generated junk.
No. I've known about the Pomo Generator for a number of years. Back in the late 70s and early 80s I was forced to read all that crap back when it was new. In my non-slashdot identity, I have written dozens of articles in cultural theory and creativity and have pilloried post-modernism continuously for being the reactionary sham that it is. I am presently writing a book on New Media, and I am extremely well versed in these subjects.
You are a pitiful troll.
Now, kindly go fuck yourself in whatever way a dickless weasel like you would.
they just don't like it. Sony's main problem is they are a content producer as well as a technology company.
Other tech companies that aren't creating content don't give a rats ass about Sony's video and music divisions. however, the people who run sony are composed of all these competing groups and their interests naturally conflict, because the hardware group has to compete against other tech companies that, as I noted, don't give a fat rats ass about Sony's special IP interests.
As a consequence, in order to placate the Music and Video divisions, the engineers had to come up with a way to allow people to move mp3s to their MP3 player while, at the same time, preventing people fro musing the Player as a transference device for sharing. If it's proprietary, all te better to placate the PHBs in hardware who never saw a proprietary system they disliked (viz Minidisk, beta, ATRAK, etc.)
The good thing about this is: Sony's gear will always be hobbled by having to drag the retards in the Music and Video divisions along, which allows other companies to come in and fill the void without having the 3,000 lb sony gorilla pooping all over the market.
The techspeak garbage generated at such conferences doesn't hold an ass candle to the utterly pathetic brain drool that is spewed on a daily basis and published in various art, literature, social theory, and cultural theory journals, magazines, and proceedings.
the stuff is such turgid crap, back in the 1990s some wonderful geniuses put together the "Pomo Generator" so you can automagically generate the same pseudo-intelligent twaddle leading "scholars" puke up all the time to cover their useless tenured butts.
here's the Generator
and here's and excerpt of a typical example of what it makes. Hysterically funny crap that reads a lot like the kind of contemptible garbage that passes for "scholarship" these days.
The submaterial paradigm of context and pretextual theoryQ. Rudolf Bailey
Department of Semiotics, University of Illinois
1. Discourses of failure
If one examines cultural nationalism, one is faced with a choice: either reject the submaterial paradigm of context or conclude that class has significance. Wilson[1] implies that the works of Fellini are an example of self-fulfilling objectivism. However, Debord suggests the use of pretextual theory to read sexuality.
In the works of Rushdie, a predominant concept is the concept of substructuralist art. If dialectic desituationism holds, we have to choose between precapitalist sublimation and material nationalism. Therefore, in Midnight's Children, Rushdie examines dialectic desituationism; in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, however, he deconstructs pretextual theory.
"Class is used in the service of colonialist perceptions of sexual identity," says Sartre. The primary theme of Sargeant's[2] critique of the submaterial paradigm of context is the common ground between society and class. But several appropriations concerning dialectic desituationism exist.
The submaterial paradigm of context holds that narrativity may be used to reinforce sexism. Thus, the paradigm, and eventually the collapse, of dialectic desituationism depicted in Rushdie's Satanic Verses is also evident in Midnight's Children, although in a more subdialectic sense.
An abundance of deconstructions concerning not discourse, but postdiscourse may be discovered. However, d'Erlette[3] implies that the works of Rushdie are postmodern.
The premise of predialectic materialism suggests that expression comes from the collective unconscious. Thus, Lacan uses the term 'pretextual theory' to denote a mythopoetical totality.
In The Moor's Last Sigh, Rushdie denies dialectic desituationism; in Satanic Verses, although, he reiterates the submaterial paradigm of context. However, semantic narrative implies that the Constitution is intrinsically meaningless, but only if sexuality is interchangeable with narrativity.
SNIP
I can't tell you how many essays I've had to read that read exactly like the above, only not funny, because these were written by people who actually believe that kind of nonsense.
IIRC, the earth's land configuration was dominated by one large continent at the time. Perhaps all the fish died because the ocean side was facing the event at the time?
It has to do with Legal Theory. Author's name: John Rawls. A law is considered a good law if it is Fair, Just and Reasonable. A bad law is one that is unfair, unjust and unreasonable.
Google on Rawls justice and find a wealth of information. After that crawl back under your rock you ignorant tard.
Because I do not feel one should have to register with the government to engage in personal political speech acts.
An organisation, such as a union or coporation is a "fictional" entity, who's entire existence is tightly wrapped up with the state. I am not a fictional entity. My existential fact as a human precedes whatever I do as a human being. A corporation or a union does not exist prior to what it does.
Therefore, it falls outside the circle of human consideration and can therefore be regulated as much as we choose. utterances by people, however, are quite different. If someone says something and is in the pay of a corporation or union, this has no bearing on their right to express their political view.
It's like the KKK - they can say "White People Rule" etc, but when they go advocating bodily harm etc., the ycross the line, both as an organisation and as private citizens.
What part of the first amendment do you not understand?
I live in SF and I write a blog. It's not very political, but when it is, it is a very liberal blog. And if you continue on this path supporting this foolishness, and if it actually passes, I will do everything in my power to make sure you, and any supervisor who votes for this INSANE idea, are not re-elected.
This is Simply Wrong.
Rawls: Unfair, unjust, and unreasonable. Look it up.
It is unfair, because it singles out a form of free expression as a form of speech that requires regulation. Pure Hate Speech and shouting fire in a theatre are regulated free expression. Blogs have no business being regulated like that.
It is unjust, because it would treat all blogs the same. IF the blogger says "Bush is the Spawn of Satan", or "Liberals are the rotting core of Evil in the Universe" or "Go out and vote - it's important" it's all the same: political statements. This would clearly be an injustice.
and it is unreasonable, as a blog can be about a million things, and often are. Politics is often a central theme, but it is not the only. Therefore, it is unreasonable to paint semi-political yet popular blogs the same as some fire breathing partisan blog.
This legislation is also completely and utterly STUPID. Why? Because someone might live somewhere, but the blog could be hosted in FINLAND. Now: try and regulate political speech in Finland from San Francisco. Guess what: It Isn't Going To Happen. Ever.
The internet is international. Get used to it.
Worse, you have single handedly made San Francisco an international laughing stock, and more over: They Are Laughing At You.
Smooth move Maxwell.
I've always known you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this latest embarrassment is really over the top.
I will not register. Furthermore, I will cheerfully join a class action lawsuit to fight this, right to the Supreme Court, if necessary. If that fails, then me and my family will take our leave of this city. We moved here many years ago, because it was a city of free spirits. Then the dotcom idiots did their dead level best to ruin the place, and now incompetent politicians such as yourself are putting the final touches on it final implosion.
There was a company called Rosen Motors (not to be confused with http://www.rosenmotors.com/ ) that had flywheel augmented Mercedes Benzes.
The problem with flywheels is very simple: they tend to fly apart.
We're still a ways off in materials science to make strong enough flywheels to be of use. IIRC, that's what killed off the Rosen Motors car - under actual driving conditions the flywheel shattered, and you get something spinning at many many Revs per second, to come apart - the results are scary....
But I do agree: I think flywheels are cool. I could see something like this:
A tiny bio-diesel engine recharges you o nthe fly. The battery gets you going and the brakes charge the flywheel. In an "off the line" acceleration, the flywheel does most ofthe heavy lifting (it's Pure Torque), which then goes to the battery. The battery keeps you going and is periodically recharged by the brakes and flywheel. If that isn't enough the bio-diesel kicks in and everybody's happy.
Actually, gettting 180mpg by using utility juice is actually very very smart. In some states, one can specifically contract that all your electricity is bought from Green sources (windmills, whatever) so even the electricity you're using isn't fossil fuel based.
I find this "hacking" of the Prius really exciting, and a good protent for the future. If anything, toyota should spin this into a sales pitch:
"Buy a Prius and get 60mpg right out of the gate. But if you would like to save even more on gas, get the Prius Extension Kit for $49.95 and draw electricity form your home to your Prius, doubling the car's mileage."
"But wait - there's MORE! with the Prius Pro Developers Kit, you can swap out the batteries for other even more powerful batteries, and not just doubling your mileage, but TRIPLLING your mileage!"
"Why WAIT? Call Now! Operators Are Standing By!"
Seriously: just like ever punk ass kid can dope up his Honda Civic lifback into a firebreathing psych machine, you should be able to totally juice the crap out of a Prius.
this is the kind of technology that was envisioned years ago by the Rocky Mountian Institute's notions of a hypercar.
A lot of people, such as myself, who work in a totally electronic realm don't "ROCK". At all. We sit behind a laptop. Playing live is a boring exercise in futility. As far as the audience is concerned, I might as well be playing tetris or minesweeper. I make sure I grimace as much as I can when I hit the spacebar.
That said, I do agree with you and think that there will be a general trend toward live performance. As usual, China is a model: musicians there don't make shit from their CDs - they're instantly pirated. They make their living from constant grueling tour schedules.
That's fine when you're in your 20s and you want to "rock", but it really sucks for people who are older or have family obligations.
I think he crux of the matter is one of raising consciousness among consumers.
Sure: go and trade your mp3s on P2P, but: if there is something you like and you listen to it more than a few times, GET OFF YOUR ASS AND BUY IT, YOU CHEAP ASS MOTHER FUCKER.
And if you can buy it directly from the musician(s), all the better. Go for it. By doing so you support the people who made the stuff and deserve your money. They have to pay rent too.
What if, deep down, it's just completely arbitrary?
I haven't seen any compelling proof that the cosmos IS mathematical. I've seen math able to model things to a great degree of precision, but it never seems "perfect", and there always seems to be someone coming along every so often and spins everything upside down.
I have more sense than to think this is an opening for metaphysics - on the contrary - that said, I do frequently wonder what will happen in a post-mathematical phase of human understanding ofthe cosmos.
I'm so wrapped up in and surrounded by the mathematical model, that it seems irrefutable. But a look at history provides a proud narrative of ingenious folly.
Family and friends are gathered around the 52 inch LCD screen they bought at Fry's for $199 last Xmas. It's cheap because the assembly job was outsourced to trained penguins who, as we all know, come from the Antarctic, not the zoo. But I digress.
They are watching the Super bowl. The announcer is former QB Tom Brady, now somewhat late middle aged. He occassionally pops up in 2.5 D transparent windows that seem to float just in front of the screen. This glitzy spectacular is brought to you by:
MICROSOFT"We're here to fuck ya little buddy!"
and AMD"Keeping what's left of the American middle class Fat, Dumb, and Happy."
and the TMZ Zinc Bushing Corporation / USgov"If you push something hard enough - It Will Fall Over!"
They all settle in to what promises to be yet another route of the New Jersey Proles by the seemingly invincible Las Vegas Patriots, which is fine by this bunch - ever since they got their RFID tatoos, they see it as UNAMERICAN to support any other team BUT the Las Vegas Patriots!
When a morbidly obese Britney Spears waddles out to sing the national anthem, their hearts leap with joy. The game proceeds uneventfully. The Patriots are destroying the Proles all through the first half. Fatalities are high - the Proles lost their QB in the first five minutes. Half time was glorious. A rousing and glittering tribute to the American troops who were killed in the invasion of Brazil earlier that year. This group had hardly a dry eye, as they all remembered Uncle Dick's last letter:
Dear Loved Ones,
Killing these idiots for their resources has gotten kind of stale and boring. Wish I was home watching televised sports like a good citizen. Still, if President Jenna Bush decides I have to walk across a mine field for the sake of Microsoft shareholders and Wall Street speculators, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Love you all-
Your Stupid Uncle Dick
In the third period, things get a little lively - the Proles come back and start pounding the Patriots. They are on the edge of their seats. Multiple 2.5 D windows are bursting all over - every angle is covered as the Proles go into the 4th quarter tied. There's a brief time out to hose the blood off the field, but soon, it's right back to the action!
They're tied all through the 4th quarter, and it's down to the last few seconds of the game! The Proles are on the goal line of the Patriots! Spirits are running high - people all over the country are screaming at their screens! They set up for the final play.
"Hut One! Romeo Tango Foxtrot Mike! HIKE!"
The Proletarian QB takes the ball, takes a half step back, crouches and LEAPS INTO THE AIR! A Patriotic defender does the same! They're going to collide at the goal line - but will the ball cross the plane of the goal? all of the floating windows are covering his every move in excruciating detail! In mid air, he turns and
Sorry. This device has performed an illegal opera
BSOD...
The screen turns bright blue. The group assembled grab the LCD Screen and heave it out the window as the entire country roars with anger at their blue screens of death.
The grand children of Bill Gates are eaten in public.
All Microsoft employees (a solid 7% of India) are given safe passage to nations of their choice.
The penguins cry, because no-one knows who won the game...
It was all virtualised.
RS
Perhaps COMDEX should simply be retired
on
COMDEX Cancelled Again
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
and ignored. With other huge mega-events like CES, NAB, NAMM, Siggraph, etc. etc., there's really no purpose to Comdex existing.
Idea:
Unless, of course, (shamelss plug for all things/.) they re-align the show to be the Premier Expo of all things FOSS. But given the capitalisation of FOSS, it'll take a lot of bake sales to scare up the scratch to rent something like the Moscone Center for a weekend. And trying to organise such a show would be monstrous - getting FOSS people together is like herding cats.
But it would give Comdex a raison d'etre, seeing as how it presently has zero purpose to exist.
I'll probably get modded to troll for this one, but this is the scoop here:
The AI singularity? Ain't. Gonna. Happen.
Why?
Because it doesn't have to.
People will simply move the line of "intelligence" down to some esoteric nonsense about "data compression" and "natural language" or some other load of obscure drivel, and the result will be the astounding discovery that the MacOS has been AWARE since got knows when it figured out how to spit out a blank floppy at start up, or a DVD player boots out a DVD when the movie is over or some other idiotic bit of trivial nonsense.
This is all cooked up by a bunch of AI geeks under the spell of Kurzweil, who should have stuck to making synthesizers.
The future doesn't belong to robots. It belongs to homo futuris.
I cannot understand why Apple is sodding around with Motorola on this.
Guilt for dumping their sorry ass when they couldn't meet milestones on the G4 / G5 / G6 roadmap?
I agree. Motorola was the leading chip technology on Apple for a very long time, but hasn't been for a good while now. It's kind of funny if you think about it:
I prefer to wake up gently and kindly. I have a CD player alarm clock and I burned a custom CD that wakes me up gently and kindly with music of my choice.
I change the CD every few months. Right now the play list is:
1. 2/2 by Brian Eno from Music for Airports
2. Aguirre by Popul Vuh
3. Ode to Hats, by yours truly
4. Autumn by Wendy Carlos from Sonic Seasonings
by that time, I'm up and out of bed, grumbling about the day, and getting my daughter fed and dressed while she watches Clifford The Big Red Dog and eats breakfast and I make her lunch.
I can access and set up email accounts in my Yahoo Mail from my mother in law's WebTV (if necessary) or from my old but still working Apple G3 / 350 Yosemite running IE5 in OS9.2.
Last time I checked, you couldn't do that in GoogleMail.
So, I stick with YahooMail for now. It's legacy gear, but it's secure...
Slashdot Mirror
Then we all partied so Hearty that they called the cops on us.
Macromedia figured out that they would do better by leapfrogging Adobe, and jumping directly into webcentric software. To that end they basically killed off everything that wasn't web centric - xRes died a quick and merciful death, fontgrapher was shelved (and for this they earned incredibley bad karma, because fontLab is a fat POS with a crap UI - although it does rock for font output formats... it's just a world of pain for anyone trying to design anything...), and they killed off FreeHand a few years back and Director's got a tube up its nose.
They set about buying serverside stuff, like cold fusion, and developed various workflow systems for Dreamweaver, itself an acquisition, called FutureFlash.
I don't think this acquisition could have happened if MM had not killed off FreeHand and fontographer.
You can be QUITE certain that now that Adobe owns the codebase, FH and Fog are so completely dead as to be like, deader than dead.
This is a MAJOR acquisition. This is a MAJOR consolidation in the software market. It is not a time for rejoicing. Expect some very bad things.
Predictions:
Adobe will not sell FreeHand.
Adobe will not sell Fontographer.
Adobe will kill off Director within 3 years.
Adobe will "merge" GoLive and Dreamweaver, which will be good for GoLive and bad for Dreamweaver.
PDF will acquire flash-centric elements - this includes video...
Adobe will Rule The Roost in publishing (and don't give me any lip about GIMP - GIMP's UI sux ass and it's ability to handle CMYK or (x) plate printing is zero, and Adobe OWNZ that already - this will increase their hold on it.
Fireworks is TOAST. Dead within a year.
This is going to require people to completely re-think workflows and processes.
I for one DO NOT look forward to our Abobe Overlords.
RS
Hate to break it to you, but I see the academy as more of a hobby than a career move.
I post on slashdot because it's fun and I don't have to work very much for a comfortable living, so I have the extra time. In fact I enjoy my work so much, that I have no intention of retiring or even wanting to retire.
So, kindly, go fuck yourself.
RS
The bones I pick with Post-Modernism are more theoretical and practical - theoretical in that I find the basic premises and notions of pomo to be flawed, it's politically reactionary (Habermas has a great paper on that from the early 1980s) and, to parphrase Sokal, "I don't see how any of this helps the working classes."
My practical irritation is that far too much pomo writing argues by assertion and does so using language that is, at best, obfuscatory, hence the amusement of the Pomo generator.
Now, if you want to do yourself a big fat favour, go here and read up on the sokal affair, before you stick your foot any farther down your throat.
You know, if you had any education,
I recently recieved my MFA, and am working on putting together ideas for a PhD. strike one
you would easily notice the difference between sentences like "The premise of predialectic materialism suggests that expression comes from the collective unconscious" and something written by a pomo-head. Both 'dialectical materialism' and 'collective unconcious' are clearly defined (although the latter doesn't seem to exist), and every "scholar" can see that the concepts can't be used like that.
I know that. I simply copy/pasted something the generator spat out. I didn't write it, nor have any of my students. strike two
The reason why you can't tell how many such essays you've had to read is, of course, that you've had to read exactly none, and it would totally spoil your joke if you told us.
Wrong. I've been forced to not only read and grade such tripe, I've sat through countless lectures, seminars, workshops and other such outlets for such mindnumbing drivel.Strike three
So basically, you're being a pretentious fucktard by trying to fool people into believing you're smart enough to discover, all by your own hard work, that postmodernism is a bunch of meaningless pseudo-randomly generated junk.
No. I've known about the Pomo Generator for a number of years. Back in the late 70s and early 80s I was forced to read all that crap back when it was new. In my non-slashdot identity, I have written dozens of articles in cultural theory and creativity and have pilloried post-modernism continuously for being the reactionary sham that it is. I am presently writing a book on New Media, and I am extremely well versed in these subjects.
You are a pitiful troll.
Now, kindly go fuck yourself in whatever way a dickless weasel like you would.
RS
Other tech companies that aren't creating content don't give a rats ass about Sony's video and music divisions. however, the people who run sony are composed of all these competing groups and their interests naturally conflict, because the hardware group has to compete against other tech companies that, as I noted, don't give a fat rats ass about Sony's special IP interests.
As a consequence, in order to placate the Music and Video divisions, the engineers had to come up with a way to allow people to move mp3s to their MP3 player while, at the same time, preventing people fro musing the Player as a transference device for sharing. If it's proprietary, all te better to placate the PHBs in hardware who never saw a proprietary system they disliked (viz Minidisk, beta, ATRAK, etc.)
The good thing about this is: Sony's gear will always be hobbled by having to drag the retards in the Music and Video divisions along, which allows other companies to come in and fill the void without having the 3,000 lb sony gorilla pooping all over the market.
RS
Go HERE
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern
RS
the stuff is such turgid crap, back in the 1990s some wonderful geniuses put together the "Pomo Generator" so you can automagically generate the same pseudo-intelligent twaddle leading "scholars" puke up all the time to cover their useless tenured butts.
here's the Generator
and here's and excerpt of a typical example of what it makes. Hysterically funny crap that reads a lot like the kind of contemptible garbage that passes for "scholarship" these days.
The submaterial paradigm of context and pretextual theory Q. Rudolf Bailey
Department of Semiotics, University of Illinois
1. Discourses of failure
If one examines cultural nationalism, one is faced with a choice: either reject the submaterial paradigm of context or conclude that class has significance. Wilson[1] implies that the works of Fellini are an example of self-fulfilling objectivism. However, Debord suggests the use of pretextual theory to read sexuality.
In the works of Rushdie, a predominant concept is the concept of substructuralist art. If dialectic desituationism holds, we have to choose between precapitalist sublimation and material nationalism. Therefore, in Midnight's Children, Rushdie examines dialectic desituationism; in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, however, he deconstructs pretextual theory.
"Class is used in the service of colonialist perceptions of sexual identity," says Sartre. The primary theme of Sargeant's[2] critique of the submaterial paradigm of context is the common ground between society and class. But several appropriations concerning dialectic desituationism exist.
The submaterial paradigm of context holds that narrativity may be used to reinforce sexism. Thus, the paradigm, and eventually the collapse, of dialectic desituationism depicted in Rushdie's Satanic Verses is also evident in Midnight's Children, although in a more subdialectic sense.
An abundance of deconstructions concerning not discourse, but postdiscourse may be discovered. However, d'Erlette[3] implies that the works of Rushdie are postmodern.
The premise of predialectic materialism suggests that expression comes from the collective unconscious. Thus, Lacan uses the term 'pretextual theory' to denote a mythopoetical totality.
In The Moor's Last Sigh, Rushdie denies dialectic desituationism; in Satanic Verses, although, he reiterates the submaterial paradigm of context. However, semantic narrative implies that the Constitution is intrinsically meaningless, but only if sexuality is interchangeable with narrativity.
SNIP
I can't tell you how many essays I've had to read that read exactly like the above, only not funny, because these were written by people who actually believe that kind of nonsense.
RS
I'm not sure - I'm just guessing...
RS
It has to do with Legal Theory. Author's name: John Rawls. A law is considered a good law if it is Fair, Just and Reasonable. A bad law is one that is unfair, unjust and unreasonable.
Google on Rawls justice and find a wealth of information. After that crawl back under your rock you ignorant tard.
RS
Because I do not feel one should have to register with the government to engage in personal political speech acts.
An organisation, such as a union or coporation is a "fictional" entity, who's entire existence is tightly wrapped up with the state. I am not a fictional entity. My existential fact as a human precedes whatever I do as a human being. A corporation or a union does not exist prior to what it does.
Therefore, it falls outside the circle of human consideration and can therefore be regulated as much as we choose. utterances by people, however, are quite different. If someone says something and is in the pay of a corporation or union, this has no bearing on their right to express their political view.
It's like the KKK - they can say "White People Rule" etc, but when they go advocating bodily harm etc., the ycross the line, both as an organisation and as private citizens.
Free Speech matters.
RS
I live in SF and I write a blog. It's not very political, but when it is, it is a very liberal blog. And if you continue on this path supporting this foolishness, and if it actually passes, I will do everything in my power to make sure you, and any supervisor who votes for this INSANE idea, are not re-elected.
This is Simply Wrong.
Rawls: Unfair, unjust, and unreasonable. Look it up.
It is unfair, because it singles out a form of free expression as a form of speech that requires regulation. Pure Hate Speech and shouting fire in a theatre are regulated free expression. Blogs have no business being regulated like that.
It is unjust, because it would treat all blogs the same. IF the blogger says "Bush is the Spawn of Satan", or "Liberals are the rotting core of Evil in the Universe" or "Go out and vote - it's important" it's all the same: political statements. This would clearly be an injustice.
and it is unreasonable, as a blog can be about a million things, and often are. Politics is often a central theme, but it is not the only. Therefore, it is unreasonable to paint semi-political yet popular blogs the same as some fire breathing partisan blog.
This legislation is also completely and utterly STUPID. Why? Because someone might live somewhere, but the blog could be hosted in FINLAND. Now: try and regulate political speech in Finland from San Francisco. Guess what: It Isn't Going To Happen. Ever.
The internet is international. Get used to it.
Worse, you have single handedly made San Francisco an international laughing stock, and more over: They Are Laughing At You.
Smooth move Maxwell.
I've always known you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but this latest embarrassment is really over the top.
I will not register. Furthermore, I will cheerfully join a class action lawsuit to fight this, right to the Supreme Court, if necessary. If that fails, then me and my family will take our leave of this city. We moved here many years ago, because it was a city of free spirits. Then the dotcom idiots did their dead level best to ruin the place, and now incompetent politicians such as yourself are putting the final touches on it final implosion.
I hope you're proud.
RS
JoeMerchant (803320)
HW
The problem with flywheels is very simple: they tend to fly apart.
We're still a ways off in materials science to make strong enough flywheels to be of use. IIRC, that's what killed off the Rosen Motors car - under actual driving conditions the flywheel shattered, and you get something spinning at many many Revs per second, to come apart - the results are scary....
But I do agree: I think flywheels are cool. I could see something like this:
A tiny bio-diesel engine recharges you o nthe fly. The battery gets you going and the brakes charge the flywheel. In an "off the line" acceleration, the flywheel does most ofthe heavy lifting (it's Pure Torque), which then goes to the battery. The battery keeps you going and is periodically recharged by the brakes and flywheel. If that isn't enough the bio-diesel kicks in and everybody's happy.
RS
I find this "hacking" of the Prius really exciting, and a good protent for the future. If anything, toyota should spin this into a sales pitch:
"Buy a Prius and get 60mpg right out of the gate. But if you would like to save even more on gas, get the Prius Extension Kit for $49.95 and draw electricity form your home to your Prius, doubling the car's mileage."
"But wait - there's MORE! with the Prius Pro Developers Kit, you can swap out the batteries for other even more powerful batteries, and not just doubling your mileage, but TRIPLLING your mileage!"
"Why WAIT? Call Now! Operators Are Standing By!"
Seriously: just like ever punk ass kid can dope up his Honda Civic lifback into a firebreathing psych machine, you should be able to totally juice the crap out of a Prius.
this is the kind of technology that was envisioned years ago by the Rocky Mountian Institute's notions of a hypercar.
I want one of those...
RS
So even the laziest can get my music.
RS
That said, I do agree with you and think that there will be a general trend toward live performance. As usual, China is a model: musicians there don't make shit from their CDs - they're instantly pirated. They make their living from constant grueling tour schedules.
That's fine when you're in your 20s and you want to "rock", but it really sucks for people who are older or have family obligations.
I think he crux of the matter is one of raising consciousness among consumers.
Sure: go and trade your mp3s on P2P, but: if there is something you like and you listen to it more than a few times, GET OFF YOUR ASS AND BUY IT, YOU CHEAP ASS MOTHER FUCKER.
And if you can buy it directly from the musician(s), all the better. Go for it. By doing so you support the people who made the stuff and deserve your money. They have to pay rent too.
RS
e^(i pi) + 1 = 0
RS
What if, deep down, it's just completely arbitrary?
I haven't seen any compelling proof that the cosmos IS mathematical. I've seen math able to model things to a great degree of precision, but it never seems "perfect", and there always seems to be someone coming along every so often and spins everything upside down.
I have more sense than to think this is an opening for metaphysics - on the contrary - that said, I do frequently wonder what will happen in a post-mathematical phase of human understanding ofthe cosmos.
I'm so wrapped up in and surrounded by the mathematical model, that it seems irrefutable. But a look at history provides a proud narrative of ingenious folly.
It's an interesting question....
RS
They are watching the Super bowl. The announcer is former QB Tom Brady, now somewhat late middle aged. He occassionally pops up in 2.5 D transparent windows that seem to float just in front of the screen. This glitzy spectacular is brought to you by:
MICROSOFT "We're here to fuck ya little buddy!"
and AMD "Keeping what's left of the American middle class Fat, Dumb, and Happy."
and the TMZ Zinc Bushing Corporation / USgov "If you push something hard enough - It Will Fall Over!"
They all settle in to what promises to be yet another route of the New Jersey Proles by the seemingly invincible Las Vegas Patriots, which is fine by this bunch - ever since they got their RFID tatoos, they see it as UNAMERICAN to support any other team BUT the Las Vegas Patriots!
When a morbidly obese Britney Spears waddles out to sing the national anthem, their hearts leap with joy. The game proceeds uneventfully. The Patriots are destroying the Proles all through the first half. Fatalities are high - the Proles lost their QB in the first five minutes. Half time was glorious. A rousing and glittering tribute to the American troops who were killed in the invasion of Brazil earlier that year. This group had hardly a dry eye, as they all remembered Uncle Dick's last letter:
Dear Loved Ones,
Killing these idiots for their resources has gotten kind of stale and boring. Wish I was home watching televised sports like a good citizen. Still, if President Jenna Bush decides I have to walk across a mine field for the sake of Microsoft shareholders and Wall Street speculators, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Love you all-
Your Stupid Uncle Dick
In the third period, things get a little lively - the Proles come back and start pounding the Patriots. They are on the edge of their seats. Multiple 2.5 D windows are bursting all over - every angle is covered as the Proles go into the 4th quarter tied. There's a brief time out to hose the blood off the field, but soon, it's right back to the action!
They're tied all through the 4th quarter, and it's down to the last few seconds of the game! The Proles are on the goal line of the Patriots! Spirits are running high - people all over the country are screaming at their screens! They set up for the final play.
"Hut One! Romeo Tango Foxtrot Mike! HIKE!"
The Proletarian QB takes the ball, takes a half step back, crouches and LEAPS INTO THE AIR! A Patriotic defender does the same! They're going to collide at the goal line - but will the ball cross the plane of the goal? all of the floating windows are covering his every move in excruciating detail! In mid air, he turns and
Sorry. This device has performed an illegal opera
BSOD...
The screen turns bright blue. The group assembled grab the LCD Screen and heave it out the window as the entire country roars with anger at their blue screens of death.
The grand children of Bill Gates are eaten in public.
All Microsoft employees (a solid 7% of India) are given safe passage to nations of their choice.
The penguins cry, because no-one knows who won the game...
It was all virtualised.
RS
Idea: /.) they re-align the show to be the Premier Expo of all things FOSS. But given the capitalisation of FOSS, it'll take a lot of bake sales to scare up the scratch to rent something like the Moscone Center for a weekend. And trying to organise such a show would be monstrous - getting FOSS people together is like herding cats.
Unless, of course, (shamelss plug for all things
But it would give Comdex a raison d'etre, seeing as how it presently has zero purpose to exist.
RS
The AI singularity? Ain't. Gonna. Happen.
Why?
Because it doesn't have to.
People will simply move the line of "intelligence" down to some esoteric nonsense about "data compression" and "natural language" or some other load of obscure drivel, and the result will be the astounding discovery that the MacOS has been AWARE since got knows when it figured out how to spit out a blank floppy at start up, or a DVD player boots out a DVD when the movie is over or some other idiotic bit of trivial nonsense.
This is all cooked up by a bunch of AI geeks under the spell of Kurzweil, who should have stuck to making synthesizers.
The future doesn't belong to robots. It belongs to homo futuris.
RS
Guilt for dumping their sorry ass when they couldn't meet milestones on the G4 / G5 / G6 roadmap?
I agree. Motorola was the leading chip technology on Apple for a very long time, but hasn't been for a good while now. It's kind of funny if you think about it:
headline:
MOTOROLA BLOWS ANOTHER DEADLINE FOR APPLE
Just like old times, innit?
RS
I prefer to wake up gently and kindly. I have a CD player alarm clock and I burned a custom CD that wakes me up gently and kindly with music of my choice.
I change the CD every few months. Right now the play list is:
1. 2/2 by Brian Eno from Music for Airports
2. Aguirre by Popul Vuh
3. Ode to Hats, by yours truly
4. Autumn by Wendy Carlos from Sonic Seasonings
by that time, I'm up and out of bed, grumbling about the day, and getting my daughter fed and dressed while she watches Clifford The Big Red Dog and eats breakfast and I make her lunch.
Life - don't talk to me about life....
RS
Last time I checked, you couldn't do that in GoogleMail.
So, I stick with YahooMail for now. It's legacy gear, but it's secure...
RS
Am I missing something or is this Utah law really as idiotic as it seems at face value?
I'm sure all the Russian and Finnish ISPs are just all shaky in their boots and peeing themselves in terror at the might of the Utah State Gummint.
FUCK! What a bunch of retards.
RS