All that "federal crime" means is that it's a law passed by Congress, not a single state, and as such is exactly the same everywhere. Federal felonies are no more severe by nature than state felonies. I'm not saying this is fair, but "federal felony" could mean ANYTHING set by Congress to be against the law. That doesn't make it any more severe.
>>Also, just about any language can be written in >>Roman characters. Take Chinese for example >> wo mei you wenti, ne kan ma?
Are you an idiot? A fool? I'll assume you're simply ignorant. Chinese words change meaning COMPLETELY depending on their inflection - that is, the enunciation. That's why Chinese cannot be transliterated. How do you know if a word is supposed to be spoken with the rising inflection, or another? You can't, without a wierd and inaccurate accenting system. Furthermore, transliteration always loses a lot, such as exact pronunciation and inflection. Ever tried to read from a Chinese restaurant menu and seen the waiter wince? More than that - Chinese is and will be a sort of special case. There are dozens of dialects of it, many of which are so diverse that they're almost different languages. What allows the country to hold together? The writing is always the same. Transliterations of Chinese render unreadable the text to everyone who didn't learn that dialect of Chinese. If you're actually outputting genuine Chinese characters, people who speak Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese (The only two dialects whose actual names I know) will have no trouble chatting over the Chinese equivilant of AOL. (Mao Online?)
Fine - the US was founded by Christians. Do you want to know what I see, as a modern agnostic geek? I have no problem with Christians as a rule. I happen to think it's a very stupid religion, but I have nothing against people if they want to believe in it. My problem is with die-hard religious-right Buchanan/Limbaugh followers who are bigoted, close-minded, and wrongminded. The kind of people who are actually against people immigrating to the US. The kind of people who don't see anything wrong with praying at a football game on loudspeakers - but say they'd protest a Muslim wanting to pray at that same football game. I will never, at this point, trust any politition who trades more than a little on his religious background - no matter WHAT religion it is. Religious people in politics - like Buchanan and Limbaugh - are wrecking this country, and I will NOT stand for the thrice-damned religious right telling ME what the hell to do in my private life.
No, I don't have what most people would call a lot of sexual experience.
Yes, I am a geek and nerd, though I've only recently actually used Linux, though I've been active in the politics of it all.
Of course, I'm also fifteen years old and don't feel like getting into a bullshit "relationship" like many of my peers. Many geeks and nerds get a LOT; I know many. One guy is an uber-geek (he's forgotten how Windows works; too used to GNOME and the slackware prompt). He's also the local expert in the contents of the Kama Sutra and has tried a HELL of a lot of the advice therein - leaving many, erm, satisfied customers, so to speak. Geeks can and do get sex, so stop this stereotyping.
Well, MY horror stories come from, guess what! Gen-u-ine, actual CANADIANS. Most of whom are relatively poor. In fact, I've never heard a really well-off Canuk whining so much as the less-wealthy ones the whole damn system is supposed to work for. Yes, you *could* have gotten expensive surgery in the US, thanks to insurance systems that aren't as bad as our home-grown newsmagazines make them out to be. Rush Limbaugh is a fucking idiot and a hypocritical racist sexist asshole, to be vulgar about it. I'm a bleeding-heart liberal by anyone's standards, and *I* see Canada as being fucked up. I've seen the exact wording of laws, and I've talked to Canadians. The general sentiment, both from my reactions to the laws and from speaking to people, is that Canada's socialism is a really great idea gone to hell. And while our *politicians* like to act like they're saving the world by bombing out nations, the vast majority of US citizens do NOT approve of our half-assed, badly-implemented bombing campaigns (this based on polls in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, and other news sources, not to mention lots of 'net polls). Now that I've ranted, let's cut this off, seeing as it's OT.
Well, if anyone's going to organize something like this, it might as well be/.tters. Bricks sounds a little... rude, not to mention not working as well, but a huge letter (standard issue mail, of course) campaign might have a nice hefty impact, especially if we all use one of a few formish letters so as to make sure we're all obviously in agreement.
Well, pardon me - were you snacking on caviar as you wrote this in your new Megacar (http://www.megacar.com)? To the vast majority of people living in the world at large, $400US is a rather hefty chunk of cash. Most of us can't "buy them, use them, throw them away. Buy a new box." Yes, they are rather inexpensive. But what if you can't afford to spend 500 or 700 bucks every few months? What if you want a better system to do more on? I don't know where you're coming from, but $400 dollar PCs are usually awfully built, nasty to try to upgrade, and generally not really worth the money. From personal experience, the sweet spot for getting your money's worth is in the $700-$1500 range. And then there's my original point: $400 is NOT a small amount of money. It's a significant sum to pretty much anyone, even upper-class snobs in the States. Try to think before you base all of your assumptions on nobody buying anything other than PCs.
I imagine that MS is chock-full of really good programmers. No, really! Consider this: Windoze has been only added on to, never restarted from scratch, and it's painfully bloated and inefficient... yet it holds together, most of the time. Besides, when you employ that many people, statistics dictate you've got to end up with a reasonable percentage of competant personell. End result? MS, if run by someone intelligent who was truly interested in furthuring the PC industry, could crank out amazing pieces of software that would make billions without monopolistic practices.
Yeah, but Futurama is set in the late 2990s and early 3000s. It may simply be a joke; I haven't seen 30th Century Fox anywhere else. This is the show that's displayed "From the makers of Futurama" and "Based on a true story" at the beginning.
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All that "federal crime" means is that it's a law passed by Congress, not a single state, and as such is exactly the same everywhere. Federal felonies are no more severe by nature than state felonies. I'm not saying this is fair, but "federal felony" could mean ANYTHING set by Congress to be against the law. That doesn't make it any more severe.
>>Also, just about any language can be written in >>Roman characters. Take Chinese for example >> wo mei you wenti, ne kan ma?
Are you an idiot? A fool? I'll assume you're simply ignorant. Chinese words change meaning COMPLETELY depending on their inflection - that is, the enunciation. That's why Chinese cannot be transliterated. How do you know if a word is supposed to be spoken with the rising inflection, or another? You can't, without a wierd and inaccurate accenting system. Furthermore, transliteration always loses a lot, such as exact pronunciation and inflection. Ever tried to read from a Chinese restaurant menu and seen the waiter wince? More than that - Chinese is and will be a sort of special case. There are dozens of dialects of it, many of which are so diverse that they're almost different languages. What allows the country to hold together? The writing is always the same. Transliterations of Chinese render unreadable the text to everyone who didn't learn that dialect of Chinese. If you're actually outputting genuine Chinese characters, people who speak Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese (The only two dialects whose actual names I know) will have no trouble chatting over the Chinese equivilant of AOL. (Mao Online?)
Fine - the US was founded by Christians. Do you want to know what I see, as a modern agnostic geek? I have no problem with Christians as a rule. I happen to think it's a very stupid religion, but I have nothing against people if they want to believe in it. My problem is with die-hard religious-right Buchanan/Limbaugh followers who are bigoted, close-minded, and wrongminded. The kind of people who are actually against people immigrating to the US. The kind of people who don't see anything wrong with praying at a football game on loudspeakers - but say they'd protest a Muslim wanting to pray at that same football game. I will never, at this point, trust any politition who trades more than a little on his religious background - no matter WHAT religion it is. Religious people in politics - like Buchanan and Limbaugh - are wrecking this country, and I will NOT stand for the thrice-damned religious right telling ME what the hell to do in my private life.
No, democracy does NOT equal liberty. But it gives liberty a fighting chance.
Yes, I'm a virgin.
No, I don't have what most people would call a lot of sexual experience.
Yes, I am a geek and nerd, though I've only recently actually used Linux, though I've been active in the politics of it all.
Of course, I'm also fifteen years old and don't feel like getting into a bullshit "relationship" like many of my peers. Many geeks and nerds get a LOT; I know many. One guy is an uber-geek (he's forgotten how Windows works; too used to GNOME and the slackware prompt). He's also the local expert in the contents of the Kama Sutra and has tried a HELL of a lot of the advice therein - leaving many, erm, satisfied customers, so to speak. Geeks can and do get sex, so stop this stereotyping.
Well, MY horror stories come from, guess what! Gen-u-ine, actual CANADIANS. Most of whom are relatively poor. In fact, I've never heard a really well-off Canuk whining so much as the less-wealthy ones the whole damn system is supposed to work for. Yes, you *could* have gotten expensive surgery in the US, thanks to insurance systems that aren't as bad as our home-grown newsmagazines make them out to be. Rush Limbaugh is a fucking idiot and a hypocritical racist sexist asshole, to be vulgar about it. I'm a bleeding-heart liberal by anyone's standards, and *I* see Canada as being fucked up. I've seen the exact wording of laws, and I've talked to Canadians. The general sentiment, both from my reactions to the laws and from speaking to people, is that Canada's socialism is a really great idea gone to hell. And while our *politicians* like to act like they're saving the world by bombing out nations, the vast majority of US citizens do NOT approve of our half-assed, badly-implemented bombing campaigns (this based on polls in Time, Newsweek, the New York Times, and other news sources, not to mention lots of 'net polls). Now that I've ranted, let's cut this off, seeing as it's OT.
Well, if anyone's going to organize something like this, it might as well be /.tters. Bricks sounds a little... rude, not to mention not working as well, but a huge letter (standard issue mail, of course) campaign might have a nice hefty impact, especially if we all use one of a few formish letters so as to make sure we're all obviously in agreement.
Well, pardon me - were you snacking on caviar as you wrote this in your new Megacar (http://www.megacar.com)? To the vast majority of people living in the world at large, $400US is a rather hefty chunk of cash. Most of us can't "buy them, use them, throw them away. Buy a new box." Yes, they are rather inexpensive. But what if you can't afford to spend 500 or 700 bucks every few months? What if you want a better system to do more on? I don't know where you're coming from, but $400 dollar PCs are usually awfully built, nasty to try to upgrade, and generally not really worth the money. From personal experience, the sweet spot for getting your money's worth is in the $700-$1500 range. And then there's my original point: $400 is NOT a small amount of money. It's a significant sum to pretty much anyone, even upper-class snobs in the States. Try to think before you base all of your assumptions on nobody buying anything other than PCs.
(All prices in US dollars, of course.)
I imagine that MS is chock-full of really good programmers. No, really! Consider this: Windoze has been only added on to, never restarted from scratch, and it's painfully bloated and inefficient... yet it holds together, most of the time. Besides, when you employ that many people, statistics dictate you've got to end up with a reasonable percentage of competant personell. End result? MS, if run by someone intelligent who was truly interested in furthuring the PC industry, could crank out amazing pieces of software that would make billions without monopolistic practices.
Yeah, but Futurama is set in the late 2990s and early 3000s. It may simply be a joke; I haven't seen 30th Century Fox anywhere else. This is the show that's displayed "From the makers of Futurama" and "Based on a true story" at the beginning.