Now that said, I wish the voice acting for this review had been better. Or at least normal. The guy intentionally mispronounces everything. It was funny the first time but after a bit he just comes off as a one trick pony looking for a half million views on YouTube (well done, by the way). The pitch inflections actually recall me to a sort of idiot valley girl a la Alicia Silverstone. I think if the effort had been more serious he might have gotten a message out to Lucas and maybe even Hollywood but he needs to put his own humor on it so that's his choice.
People sometimes use the name 'Ireland' as a shorthand for the Irish Republic. It was the Republic that passed the defamation bill that had the blasphemy clause included. The reason for that was a constitutional technicality. More info.
I'm usually sceptical about/. summaries and their accuracy, so I looked a little deeper into this one before commenting.
From the parliamentary document:
124H Obligations to limit internet access
20 (1) The Secretary of State may at any time by order impose a technical obligation on internet service providers if the Secretary of State considers it appropriate in view of—
(a) an assessment carried out or steps taken by OFCOM under section 124G; or
25 (b) any other consideration.
The "any other consideration" part is what would concern me. Yup, this looks like the real deal. Gives the SoS a lot of power with little oversight.
...or we'll have a completely useless and repetitive discussion about how badly written the article is, and see nothing about the actual issue itself. I've waded all the way down the page in search of an actual insightful post and have so far been disappointed.
I mean, so TFS/TFA/whatever screwed up. OK! Enough already! I Fucking get it! Now can we move on?
Some people have brought up the fact that there are people who find the hiss and the imperfections soothing. Kinda reminds me of watching international sporting events in the 1980s. The commentators' voices were tinny and crackly, and you really had a sense of them being in a far away exotic land. Nowadays you can listen to the commentary of the World Cup or Tour de France and the commentators' voices (and the images) come through crystal clear as if they're in your own living room. The sense of distance, and the sense that they have gone to great lengths to get this experience to you, is gone. I find that it has kinda lost something.
Maybe there's something similar going on with music fans. I remember listening to LPs while reading the lyrics from the album cover. There was something about CDs that never quite made me want to do the same. It's like you had to take loving care of the physical media. Nowadays you just download the song, plug your iPod into your USB port, and carry on doing what you were doing (probably laundry). Music as an end in itself is gone, now it's something to keep your mind occupied while you do some mundane task.
It is possible, Deltour's team wrote, that it takes longer than 10 years for tumours caused by mobile phones to turn up, that the tumours are too rare in this group to show a useful trend, or that there are trends but in subgroups too small to be measured in the study.
It is just as possible that mobile phones do not cause brain tumours, they added.
If correlation != causation, then surely lack of correlation != lack of causation. Right?
I'm not fan of scientology, or any cult really - but a mainstream organization with illegal work camps? I just never expected that, at all. You'd think the lid would have come off something that extreme some time ago.
After the likes of the Ryan Report, nothing surprises me. Religion can be used as a cover for the most heinous of crimes against humanity.
"Oh yes, if a pirate boat came to me I'd blow them out of the water. And while I was at it I'd jump down onto their launch and finish them all off with my martial arts moves! I'd then fly back onto my ship, triumphant, my cape flying in the breeze, a beacon of truth, justice and the American way!"
Seriously folks, put yourself in the position of a merchant sailor. You're not a high wage worker, you're not a trained soldier, you're not a combat marine. You're a freaking cook/mechanic/laborer! You've never taken a life, you haven't been trained to do so, and if you did you'd be terrified for your life, you'd be thinking that if you started trying to use deadly force against the pirates then one thought and one thought only would be on your mind. "What if I try to kill them and I miss? They're going to make it through and they're going to kill me."
But hey, what would he know? He's only the guy in the most terrifying situation a man can face. Slashdotters are much better qualified to pontificate on what everyone else should do. Isn't it great to have so many experts in one place? So many people who know everything there is to know on any subject you can name? If slashdotters were a famous person, they'd be Joe the Plumber!
If a government feels threatened by small arms contained within a ship that wants to dock then that government is a lost cause. Please explain to me how a weapons locker aboard ship containing rifles, pistols and shotguns represents a threat. Nobody is suggesting arming merchant ships with 16" battleship guns. These pirates can be deterred (and if that fails, defeated) with small arms.
So you'd be OK with a cargo ship containing a Middle Eastern crew docking in Los Angeles or Oakland with lockers full of AK47s? Remember, we're talking about the USA here, the place where people are terrified of terrorist suspects in jumpsuits, handcuffs and chains being tried in New York in case they 'present a threat.'
I think the number of pirates would be reduced if the shipping vessels had small autocannons mounted on them. No jalopie fishing trawler can take a burst of 35mm AP shells for very long. Problem solved.
The merchant navy is not the navy. Merchant sailors are not trained military personnel. Their job is to run a ship and keep it moving, not to kill people.
There are times when I feel like a lawyer when some people get into a dispute with me. It becomes a battle of who can quote the rule that suits them best. There are so many rules that it has gotten out of hand, knowing the rules of Wikipedia is quickly becoming a full time job in itself. I even had one guy dispute one of my edits because I quoted a primary source and he insisted that the rules prefer secondary sources over primary. I knew the subject much better than he and I knew that the primary source was correct and his secondary source was bogus. But that wasn't good enough for the 'rules.' Nevertheless, I slapped a Dispute tag on the offending part of the article, took it to the Content Noticeboard, and that section of the article has remained in dispute ever since. I can't be bothered resolving it.
I forget where I saw it; but I once ran across a spoof of the COPS formula, where a besuited white-collar criminal is having is face smashed into the hood of a limo...
If they wanted to teach holocaust denial in history class then they'd be stopped, and rightly so. Creationism has to be stopped in its tracks too.
It's time America started fighting against this tide of ignorance in the name of a misguided 'freedom' to make the wrong choice. It's time that this worship of ignorance and superstition was exposed for the sham it really is. Look what happened the last time an idol of the anti-intellectual right was elected into power. The people of Iraq will be paying a very heavy price for years to come, American freedom or no American freedom.
Get rid of non-physical patents. Software, business models, etc, etc.
This just in: It's possible to do two or more things at once. If I see this "fix $my_pet_peeve first before you fix $latest_initiative_to_secure_funding" fallacy again I swear I'll punch my monitor.
The more power we give the government, the more they will take.
The more power the take, the less we will have.
At some point, we will realize that we are living in a tyranny and the only way to change things will be with guns.
I'd rather stop this now, when no guns are necessary.
All that you need to be free, is to be willing to have your neighbor be free as well.
Jesus wept! The state tries to regulate energy consumption and you're talking about a violent coup d'etat?
Come on people, what the fuck happened to perspective? It's not exactly Zimbabwe or Burma here, is it? It's Cali-fucking-fornia! "Oh big bad government is picking on me and oppressing me! Somebody call a waaaaambulance!" You know what? When the government stops counting your votes, imposes a dictator, imposes martial law, outlaws the opposition, beats the crap out of and assassinates anyone who questions them, maybe then you can start complaining. But in the meantime, complaining about oppression in America (of all places) is a bit like a spoiled brat in a restaurant complaining about the famine conditions he's living in just because his appetizer is a few minutes late coming from the kitchen.
What's it going to be next? Comparing your tax bill to the plight of the people of Darfur? Gimme a fucking break!
Slashdot Mirror
Now that said, I wish the voice acting for this review had been better. Or at least normal. The guy intentionally mispronounces everything. It was funny the first time but after a bit he just comes off as a one trick pony looking for a half million views on YouTube (well done, by the way). The pitch inflections actually recall me to a sort of idiot valley girl a la Alicia Silverstone. I think if the effort had been more serious he might have gotten a message out to Lucas and maybe even Hollywood but he needs to put his own humor on it so that's his choice.
Sense of humour failure, methinks.
I took a minute to knock up a more informative sales chart, a stacked graph by year.
I was in a rush so I skipped out the smaller sellers and a label for the Y axis.
People sometimes use the name 'Ireland' as a shorthand for the Irish Republic. It was the Republic that passed the defamation bill that had the blasphemy clause included. The reason for that was a constitutional technicality. More info.
I'm usually sceptical about /. summaries and their accuracy, so I looked a little deeper into this one before commenting.
From the parliamentary document:
124H Obligations to limit internet access
20 (1) The Secretary of State may at any time by order impose a technical obligation on internet service providers if the Secretary of State considers it appropriate in view of—
(a) an assessment carried out or steps taken by OFCOM under section 124G; or
25 (b) any other consideration.
The "any other consideration" part is what would concern me. Yup, this looks like the real deal. Gives the SoS a lot of power with little oversight.
Ireland passed laws recently against uttering "blasphemy" and no one batted an eye...except on Twitter.
A lot of this is getting swept under the rug, and it both shocks and appalls me.
Nobody batted an eye? It was all over the news!
I got rid of my TV feed service years ago. .... We now have free, on demand movies with most cable services, we have Netflix, Hulu, ...
Not so fast, Bub. Hulu also suffers from this ear-splitting "crank up the volume for the commercials" problem. It's very annoying.
I didn't RTFA but I hope this bill will regulate commercials in TV shows distributed through services like Hulu too.
Regulation is bad. Period.
Why? Because Ronald Reagan said so? What do you think caused the current financial mess?
The loudness of advertising is none of the states business.
The state's business is whatever the voters say it is. If you don't like what they're regulating, go vote for someone else.
...or we'll have a completely useless and repetitive discussion about how badly written the article is, and see nothing about the actual issue itself. I've waded all the way down the page in search of an actual insightful post and have so far been disappointed.
I mean, so TFS/TFA/whatever screwed up. OK! Enough already! I Fucking get it! Now can we move on?
Jeez!
Some people have brought up the fact that there are people who find the hiss and the imperfections soothing. Kinda reminds me of watching international sporting events in the 1980s. The commentators' voices were tinny and crackly, and you really had a sense of them being in a far away exotic land. Nowadays you can listen to the commentary of the World Cup or Tour de France and the commentators' voices (and the images) come through crystal clear as if they're in your own living room. The sense of distance, and the sense that they have gone to great lengths to get this experience to you, is gone. I find that it has kinda lost something.
Maybe there's something similar going on with music fans. I remember listening to LPs while reading the lyrics from the album cover. There was something about CDs that never quite made me want to do the same. It's like you had to take loving care of the physical media. Nowadays you just download the song, plug your iPod into your USB port, and carry on doing what you were doing (probably laundry). Music as an end in itself is gone, now it's something to keep your mind occupied while you do some mundane task.
That's my theory anyway.
Yeah, I have a lot of theories.
It is possible, Deltour's team wrote, that it takes longer than 10 years for tumours caused by mobile phones to turn up, that the tumours are too rare in this group to show a useful trend, or that there are trends but in subgroups too small to be measured in the study.
It is just as possible that mobile phones do not cause brain tumours, they added.
If correlation != causation, then surely lack of correlation != lack of causation. Right?
From TFA: "the software was authorized by a previous administration"
I'm not fan of scientology, or any cult really - but a mainstream organization with illegal work camps? I just never expected that, at all. You'd think the lid would have come off something that extreme some time ago.
After the likes of the Ryan Report, nothing surprises me. Religion can be used as a cover for the most heinous of crimes against humanity.
No, he wants a trial to prove that America is a land of laws. It's the rule of law or back to the jungle.
"Oh yes, if a pirate boat came to me I'd blow them out of the water. And while I was at it I'd jump down onto their launch and finish them all off with my martial arts moves! I'd then fly back onto my ship, triumphant, my cape flying in the breeze, a beacon of truth, justice and the American way!"
Seriously folks, put yourself in the position of a merchant sailor. You're not a high wage worker, you're not a trained soldier, you're not a combat marine. You're a freaking cook/mechanic/laborer! You've never taken a life, you haven't been trained to do so, and if you did you'd be terrified for your life, you'd be thinking that if you started trying to use deadly force against the pirates then one thought and one thought only would be on your mind. "What if I try to kill them and I miss? They're going to make it through and they're going to kill me."
But hey, what would he know? He's only the guy in the most terrifying situation a man can face. Slashdotters are much better qualified to pontificate on what everyone else should do. Isn't it great to have so many experts in one place? So many people who know everything there is to know on any subject you can name? If slashdotters were a famous person, they'd be Joe the Plumber!
If a government feels threatened by small arms contained within a ship that wants to dock then that government is a lost cause. Please explain to me how a weapons locker aboard ship containing rifles, pistols and shotguns represents a threat. Nobody is suggesting arming merchant ships with 16" battleship guns. These pirates can be deterred (and if that fails, defeated) with small arms.
So you'd be OK with a cargo ship containing a Middle Eastern crew docking in Los Angeles or Oakland with lockers full of AK47s? Remember, we're talking about the USA here, the place where people are terrified of terrorist suspects in jumpsuits, handcuffs and chains being tried in New York in case they 'present a threat.'
I think the number of pirates would be reduced if the shipping vessels had small autocannons mounted on them. No jalopie fishing trawler can take a burst of 35mm AP shells for very long. Problem solved.
The merchant navy is not the navy. Merchant sailors are not trained military personnel. Their job is to run a ship and keep it moving, not to kill people.
There are times when I feel like a lawyer when some people get into a dispute with me. It becomes a battle of who can quote the rule that suits them best. There are so many rules that it has gotten out of hand, knowing the rules of Wikipedia is quickly becoming a full time job in itself. I even had one guy dispute one of my edits because I quoted a primary source and he insisted that the rules prefer secondary sources over primary. I knew the subject much better than he and I knew that the primary source was correct and his secondary source was bogus. But that wasn't good enough for the 'rules.' Nevertheless, I slapped a Dispute tag on the offending part of the article, took it to the Content Noticeboard, and that section of the article has remained in dispute ever since. I can't be bothered resolving it.
I forget where I saw it; but I once ran across a spoof of the COPS formula, where a besuited white-collar criminal is having is face smashed into the hood of a limo...
Michael Moore's TV show.
If Kansas wants to teach creationism, let them.
No. Don't let them.
If they wanted to teach holocaust denial in history class then they'd be stopped, and rightly so. Creationism has to be stopped in its tracks too.
It's time America started fighting against this tide of ignorance in the name of a misguided 'freedom' to make the wrong choice. It's time that this worship of ignorance and superstition was exposed for the sham it really is. Look what happened the last time an idol of the anti-intellectual right was elected into power. The people of Iraq will be paying a very heavy price for years to come, American freedom or no American freedom.
Get rid of non-physical patents. Software, business models, etc, etc.
This just in: It's possible to do two or more things at once. If I see this "fix $my_pet_peeve first before you fix $latest_initiative_to_secure_funding" fallacy again I swear I'll punch my monitor.
Parents, parents, parents.
They are in the best position (or should be!) to motivate their kids. If they can't, no billion dollar program will either.
Let's just give up then.
an alien civilazation on Alpha Centauri would need an impractically large dish to intercept even a trickle of photons.
How did you calculate what is practical or impractical for an alien civilisation to build?
You'd prefer that I wait to complain until complaining gets me killed? No thanks. Seriously, did you read your post before you hit submit?
The state regulating energy consumption is not going to get you killed. Stop being such a drama queen and get over yourself.
It is a question of freedom.
The more power we give the government, the more they will take.
The more power the take, the less we will have.
At some point, we will realize that we are living in a tyranny and the only way to change things will be with guns.
I'd rather stop this now, when no guns are necessary.
All that you need to be free, is to be willing to have your neighbor be free as well.
Jesus wept! The state tries to regulate energy consumption and you're talking about a violent coup d'etat?
Come on people, what the fuck happened to perspective? It's not exactly Zimbabwe or Burma here, is it? It's Cali-fucking-fornia! "Oh big bad government is picking on me and oppressing me! Somebody call a waaaaambulance!" You know what? When the government stops counting your votes, imposes a dictator, imposes martial law, outlaws the opposition, beats the crap out of and assassinates anyone who questions them, maybe then you can start complaining. But in the meantime, complaining about oppression in America (of all places) is a bit like a spoiled brat in a restaurant complaining about the famine conditions he's living in just because his appetizer is a few minutes late coming from the kitchen.
What's it going to be next? Comparing your tax bill to the plight of the people of Darfur? Gimme a fucking break!
Idiotic waste of resources? We aren't the only people on the planet building out our UAV fleet. This sounds like a great anti-UAV weapon.
Should we build a million of these things? Probably not, but having them available just in case is just plain prudent.
We can shoot down UAVs without silly and expensive toys like this.