>Perhaps the time where natural is best is coming to an end.
Also remember, rattlesnake poison and polio are natural. Natural doesn't mean good or bad really.
>The thought is scary that some day I may find myself left in the dust by a choline fed, geneticly altered, super human.
Without getting into the "what is smarts" questions, you can outperform many people if you put some work into it. The kid with the 140 IQ who is addicted to Everquest or thinks learning Klingon is a good way to spend his time will be crushed by the average kid who did his homework that night.
The genes that produced that tooth are just as, if not more so, mechanistic and mass-produced than the chip fabricator that made my USB keychain. Just because something is "natural" doesn't mean it falls outside the real of materialism and how genes produce objects like lungs, hearts, and teeth.
I suggest you read something like The Selfish Gene to understand why the shark's tooth is not really unique. Or a good biology text about how dna/rna produce real structures in a living organism.
Yeah, its fairly obvious you're some religious view.
>Filling your pockets with crap will not reduce the emptiness in your life.
What emptiness? Don't try to be play "everyone's shrink." Thanks.
Now, if I pull out a USB drive from my pocket and it has all my writings on it and my art then guess what - it is exquisitely unique. But from the ignorate macro level, to you, its just another gadget.
If I pull out a mass-produced camera full of data which when rendered are photos of all my loved ones then its unqiue and important to me. But to you, its just an consumerist addiction and I'm a gadget buying fool.
I seriously suggest you stop and think about what you're complaining about and realize that good things come in "Evil consumerist packages."
Finally, little grasshopper, what if my USB keychain had a photo of a cool shark's tooth I saw on the beach, but didn't want to take for my own moral reasons. I would think that someone who did that would be much more respectful of nature than your (as you define it) "craphound" sister.
> Is that how you want to live, with a disposable lifestyle?
Wait, so the only "real" "non-consumerist" you found was a credulous superstitious person who carries a lucky charm? Yeah, believing in fantasy, what a wondeful saving grace. Maybe next time you'll find someone with an "real piece of the original cross."
> Is that how you want to live, with a disposable lifestyle?
Nothing like an english speaking westerner with a computer and an internet connection telling us to go back to the woods. Its called hypocrisy. You happen to be using a large "disposable consumerist gadget" yourself.
>If you were stripped naked, you could replace all of it without difficulty, if you had some cash to buy new crap.
So if there was a fire in my apartment its good to know I can get back to my business, my lifestyle, etc with minimal effort. Heck, these evil "consumerist goods" are compatible with my off-site backups! Comrade you have truly awakened me!
>Even worse, do you want to live a craphound lifestyle, reveling in consumerist crap like Cory does?
Craphounds look for junk with no resale value like a clock found in the garbage that has a 1950's pinup girl painted on it. (its called ironic appreciation) Going to the local thriftsore or garbage-bin to collect 'crap' is the polar opposite of consumerism.
I goto war, err work and school, with just a couple of multi-purpose gadgets:
1. A t-mobile sidekick. Sure it has some duct-tape helping keep the screen in place but it does all my email and its an excellent browser. It also has AIM and an ssh client. I leave the computer at home where it belongs. No more lugging around a laptop and hurting my back.
2. Neuros MP3 player/recorder. The thing transmits to FM so I don't need any damn cables. It has a 20gig drive in case I need to move data and don't want to burn a CD. (it also records line/in and has a built in mic. It also tunes FM)
3. A small case of CDs. Lots of utils and knoppix when things get serious.
4. A 128 meg USB drive. Contains (among other things) putty, tightvnc viewer so I access my windows machine, lots of school docs, some work stuff, etc.
5. Watch? I don't need no stinkin' watches. (there's one on the phone)
>but re-relasing a new patch at a higher security classification ought to be applauded, not ridiculed.
You're new here aren't you?
This is just our Microsoft Two Minutes of Hate. When you see these posts you're supposed to seeth in rage and imagine Bill Gates.
Perhaps if we weren't such hypocrites we would be taken more seriously and more people would be running Linux for its merits and not for the hype or manufactured political reasons.
In fact the debacle in Florida showed us we WEREN'T getting it right and we needed a federal standard, like most western nations, but the states were sold on the 'digital voting' snake-oil and here we are. And make no mistake about it, they were sold on this knowing full well how easily these machines can be manipulated.
>Of course, the consumer shouldn't know about ANY OF THIS. >The FCC/FTC should have stepped in by now and put Viacom in their place.
The FCC led by dyed-in-whool "deregulate everything right now! Big business knows best!" Republican Michael Powell? I'm not holding my breath. If anything the consumer should be *very* aware that his/her media is controlled by a handful of corporations and the government is very shy to step in and do anything for plethora of reasons, not limited to corruption, campaign donations, extreme ideologies, etc.
Right now and for a long time to come the watchdog has to be the consumer, hopefully stuff like this will pique the interest of a lot of people and few simple google searches will bring out the truth of the situation and enlighten people as to why media acts the way it does.
Lets see they take away adult swim, comedy central, mtv(s), etc. That leaves you with the various discovery channels, religious programming, and sports. I *wouldn't* buy that for a dollar.
I hope this leads into package buying that empowers the consumer such as buying the viacom package and HBO for a fair fee as opposed to the one size fits all method. Lets stop denying there are media monopolies and start buying what we want from them and have the middle man bill us and send us the signal.
This is something the various talking heads/media can't figure out. Its really simple: humans like to play games. Sure the game industry focuses on a certain demographic because its the demographic that pays out, but there really isn't anything strange about people of any age playing games. Do we faint when we see old men playing chess in the park?
If anything, the rise and fall of television was an aberration - a sort of growing pain. The fact that so many people see it as a norm shows us how far we have fallen from what I would call our roots. I think its natural to want to be entertained, but all day/all night TV watching is just too much. Its natural to play games and compete but being a pale gamer is taking it too far and getting into fistfights over your local sports team is just the same obsessive behavoir.
I guess this is just a reiteration of "take all things in moderation."
A wiper on the panels is like a spare wheel for a car with a bad transmission.
The dust will settle on the panels in x amount of time, but by then the batteries won't be able to recharge and there will be other mechanical problems.
I find these memes a little interesting. There's always something the 'eggheads forgot' according to the common man and its easy to believe. A related meme is how Einstein was a terrible math student when he was young. In reality, he did fine in math when he was young. I guess believing in this kind of stuff makes you feel better knowing that you're "better" than "smart people" and that life is very simple and requires simple solutions.
Then again, the conversion error from metric to imperial that caused another mars bound space-probe to fail fuels this fire, but is very much an exception and not the rule.
I see where you're going with this, but I don't know if its that clear cut. For instance, three weeks ago I was talking to one of our NOC guys at school and essentially they're going to phase out Novell because MS is giving them so much free software (upgrades to XP and server2003) they can finally shift to AD and drop Novell.
Now how is MS able to pay for this generosity?
1. They abused their monopoly and are arguably paying for this kind of thing with their ill gotten gains.
2. They're just a good company. *snicker*
I'm leaning towards 1. Novell has money and doesn't want to lose customers either, but they can't afford to supply an entire 20,000 person campus for 2 or 3 grand.
That's why they make you sign contracts. They can do anything they want and if you want to get out of the contract they'll happily take your $300 dollars and cut off your service. Same with DirecTV.
You don't need to deal with "customer service" when customer loyalty is created the second they sign that contract at Best Buy.
I guess someone could say that they need the contracts to help guarantee income, but if they're providing a good service then why would customers leave? In the end its legal vendor lock-in and should be illegal, or at the very least they shouldn't have the power to change your service while you are on a contract.
> WinAmp used to be a good player, too, but then it added video support.
The important difference here (real marketers take note) is that winamp does not automagically ruin my file associations nor does it pester me with pop-ups. And get this! If you goto winamp.com you can find the free version in a couple of simple clicks with no attempts to misdirect you.
>Now your kids can't go to college, you have to sell all of your posessions, no insurance company will cover you
Right now there's a big battle between doctors and trial lawyers in regards to putting caps on damages regardless of how grossly negligent the doctor was.
Simply put, they want you to pick a side and this website and rhetoric about 'poor doctors' is a ploy to win the caps battle. Personaly, I refuse to take sides as both sides are losing propositions. A real solution would require regulating both doctors and lawyers and neither party wants that because that means less profit, thus little war of attrition.
The doctors (AMA) want me to give up my essential rights to sue for damages because they supposedly can't afford insurance.
The lawyers still want to be able to collect 1/3rd of my damages.
I think this situation shows a larger problem: people getting the shaft from two well organized and powerful lobbies. I'd rather see lawyers unable to collect so much from me and see medicine socialized/single-payment/regulated so I can actually see a doctor now and again. In the meantime its the wealthy vs the wealthy at the expense of you and me.
>Everyone walks away richer (well except all of us who will have to throw away our current computers).
Dunno, afterall this is slashdot where every change in technology or even price drops get posted as articles and geeks salivate over future purchases. You're going to buy a new PC anyway, unless you're buying a mac or building your own. What do you think a PC in 2007 is going to look like?
The consumer PC market is quite comfortable with getting their OS as attached to their new computer. Its like buying a car, after x amount of time the car simply isn't worth repairing so you might as well buy a new one with better MPG and safety equipment.
The comments here contains a lot of false outrage and have been modded pretty high. MS is designing an OS for 2007, maybe even 2008, do you really expect them to make it usable on the beater you're using today when technology changes so quickly? I mean look at how fast and cheap RAM is and 64bit computing for the home is right over the horizon.
Conversely, if MS wasn't planning ahead and released nothing more than XP with some tweaks there would be a whole lot of complaints from the same people complaining here that MS is just trying to make money by re-naming their existing product like they pretty much did with WindowsME.
There are some real things MS gets wrong, focusing on how much RAM is used on an alpha release and turning into some MS hatefest only helps to label all anti-MS people as nuts not worth listening to.
>So what's this about recharging on a daily basis again?
The zire is a toy, come back when you have something with a persistant connection to the internet, a larger screen, a keyboard, and a phone and we'll talk. 2.5G devices are everywhere and eat up power like you wouldn't believe.
> do you know many doctors that treat their patients with anger and frustration whenever they think that the patient is an idiot?
The real answer is TONS. Up until recently (when it was exposed by an AP reporter) many doctors and nurses routinely used some really nasty acronyms in patient records to describe patients they didn't like. I remember one being on par with "really ugly kid - RUK." That's not even funny, its one thing to mock someone for their actions and another to laugh at one's looks.
I tell people to always shut off activeX, block pop-ups, run Ad Aware, and install an ad-blocking hosts file. Anything less and you're probably compromised in at least one way.
Slashdot Mirror
>Perhaps the time where natural is best is coming to an end.
Also remember, rattlesnake poison and polio are natural. Natural doesn't mean good or bad really.
>The thought is scary that some day I may find myself left in the dust by a choline fed, geneticly altered, super human.
Without getting into the "what is smarts" questions, you can outperform many people if you put some work into it. The kid with the 140 IQ who is addicted to Everquest or thinks learning Klingon is a good way to spend his time will be crushed by the average kid who did his homework that night.
>Seems like it's become a custom around here to destroy small hobbyist sites.
/. effect is great weapon to use on these assholes.
In this case 'small hobbyist' turns out to be guerrilla/deceptive marketers and the
One more thing:
The genes that produced that tooth are just as, if not more so, mechanistic and mass-produced than the chip fabricator that made my USB keychain. Just because something is "natural" doesn't mean it falls outside the real of materialism and how genes produce objects like lungs, hearts, and teeth.
I suggest you read something like The Selfish Gene to understand why the shark's tooth is not really unique. Or a good biology text about how dna/rna produce real structures in a living organism.
> speaking as a multilingual buddhist
Yeah, its fairly obvious you're some religious view.
>Filling your pockets with crap will not reduce the emptiness in your life.
What emptiness? Don't try to be play "everyone's shrink." Thanks.
Now, if I pull out a USB drive from my pocket and it has all my writings on it and my art then guess what - it is exquisitely unique. But from the ignorate macro level, to you, its just another gadget.
If I pull out a mass-produced camera full of data which when rendered are photos of all my loved ones then its unqiue and important to me. But to you, its just an consumerist addiction and I'm a gadget buying fool.
I seriously suggest you stop and think about what you're complaining about and realize that good things come in "Evil consumerist packages."
Finally, little grasshopper, what if my USB keychain had a photo of a cool shark's tooth I saw on the beach, but didn't want to take for my own moral reasons. I would think that someone who did that would be much more respectful of nature than your (as you define it) "craphound" sister.
> Is that how you want to live, with a disposable lifestyle?
Wait, so the only "real" "non-consumerist" you found was a credulous superstitious person who carries a lucky charm? Yeah, believing in fantasy, what a wondeful saving grace. Maybe next time you'll find someone with an "real piece of the original cross."
> Is that how you want to live, with a disposable lifestyle?
Nothing like an english speaking westerner with a computer and an internet connection telling us to go back to the woods. Its called hypocrisy. You happen to be using a large "disposable consumerist gadget" yourself.
>If you were stripped naked, you could replace all of it without difficulty, if you had some cash to buy new crap.
So if there was a fire in my apartment its good to know I can get back to my business, my lifestyle, etc with minimal effort. Heck, these evil "consumerist goods" are compatible with my off-site backups! Comrade you have truly awakened me!
>Even worse, do you want to live a craphound lifestyle, reveling in consumerist crap like Cory does?
Craphounds look for junk with no resale value like a clock found in the garbage that has a 1950's pinup girl painted on it. (its called ironic appreciation) Going to the local thriftsore or garbage-bin to collect 'crap' is the polar opposite of consumerism.
I goto war, err work and school, with just a couple of multi-purpose gadgets:
1. A t-mobile sidekick. Sure it has some duct-tape helping keep the screen in place but it does all my email and its an excellent browser. It also has AIM and an ssh client. I leave the computer at home where it belongs. No more lugging around a laptop and hurting my back.
2. Neuros MP3 player/recorder. The thing transmits to FM so I don't need any damn cables. It has a 20gig drive in case I need to move data and don't want to burn a CD. (it also records line/in and has a built in mic. It also tunes FM)
3. A small case of CDs. Lots of utils and knoppix when things get serious.
4. A 128 meg USB drive. Contains (among other things) putty, tightvnc viewer so I access my windows machine, lots of school docs, some work stuff, etc.
5. Watch? I don't need no stinkin' watches. (there's one on the phone)
Cory's site is boingboing.net and this article is hosted at Gizmodo. If you've never heard of Gizmodo you have no right to post to slashdot.
>but re-relasing a new patch at a higher security classification ought to be applauded, not ridiculed.
You're new here aren't you?
This is just our Microsoft Two Minutes of Hate. When you see these posts you're supposed to seeth in rage and imagine Bill Gates.
Perhaps if we weren't such hypocrites we would be taken more seriously and more people would be running Linux for its merits and not for the hype or manufactured political reasons.
Might as well complain about the root problem instead of the symptoms.
>Thanks, ACLU
This is bullshit. The ACLU and NAACP wanted shorter lines and a felon list that included only, you know, felons.
In fact the debacle in Florida showed us we WEREN'T getting it right and we needed a federal standard, like most western nations, but the states were sold on the 'digital voting' snake-oil and here we are. And make no mistake about it, they were sold on this knowing full well how easily these machines can be manipulated.
'Tis politics as usual.
>Of course, the consumer shouldn't know about ANY OF THIS.
>The FCC/FTC should have stepped in by now and put Viacom in their place.
The FCC led by dyed-in-whool "deregulate everything right now! Big business knows best!" Republican Michael Powell? I'm not holding my breath. If anything the consumer should be *very* aware that his/her media is controlled by a handful of corporations and the government is very shy to step in and do anything for plethora of reasons, not limited to corruption, campaign donations, extreme ideologies, etc.
Right now and for a long time to come the watchdog has to be the consumer, hopefully stuff like this will pique the interest of a lot of people and few simple google searches will bring out the truth of the situation and enlighten people as to why media acts the way it does.
Lets see they take away adult swim, comedy central, mtv(s), etc. That leaves you with the various discovery channels, religious programming, and sports. I *wouldn't* buy that for a dollar.
I hope this leads into package buying that empowers the consumer such as buying the viacom package and HBO for a fair fee as opposed to the one size fits all method. Lets stop denying there are media monopolies and start buying what we want from them and have the middle man bill us and send us the signal.
This is something the various talking heads/media can't figure out. Its really simple: humans like to play games. Sure the game industry focuses on a certain demographic because its the demographic that pays out, but there really isn't anything strange about people of any age playing games. Do we faint when we see old men playing chess in the park?
If anything, the rise and fall of television was an aberration - a sort of growing pain. The fact that so many people see it as a norm shows us how far we have fallen from what I would call our roots. I think its natural to want to be entertained, but all day/all night TV watching is just too much. Its natural to play games and compete but being a pale gamer is taking it too far and getting into fistfights over your local sports team is just the same obsessive behavoir.
I guess this is just a reiteration of "take all things in moderation."
Add this to your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 ads.osdn.com
>they decided to waste 370 million
The beagle2 cost about $60 million.
Opportunity and Spirit cost $820 million dollars.
>We also spent over twice as much as they did.
Nope, about 12 to 14x what the US spent.
A wiper on the panels is like a spare wheel for a car with a bad transmission.
The dust will settle on the panels in x amount of time, but by then the batteries won't be able to recharge and there will be other mechanical problems.
I find these memes a little interesting. There's always something the 'eggheads forgot' according to the common man and its easy to believe. A related meme is how Einstein was a terrible math student when he was young. In reality, he did fine in math when he was young. I guess believing in this kind of stuff makes you feel better knowing that you're "better" than "smart people" and that life is very simple and requires simple solutions.
Then again, the conversion error from metric to imperial that caused another mars bound space-probe to fail fuels this fire, but is very much an exception and not the rule.
> That has nothing to do with being a monopoly.
I see where you're going with this, but I don't know if its that clear cut. For instance, three weeks ago I was talking to one of our NOC guys at school and essentially they're going to phase out Novell because MS is giving them so much free software (upgrades to XP and server2003) they can finally shift to AD and drop Novell.
Now how is MS able to pay for this generosity?
1. They abused their monopoly and are arguably paying for this kind of thing with their ill gotten gains.
2. They're just a good company. *snicker*
I'm leaning towards 1. Novell has money and doesn't want to lose customers either, but they can't afford to supply an entire 20,000 person campus for 2 or 3 grand.
>being a service to their customers
That's why they make you sign contracts. They can do anything they want and if you want to get out of the contract they'll happily take your $300 dollars and cut off your service. Same with DirecTV.
You don't need to deal with "customer service" when customer loyalty is created the second they sign that contract at Best Buy.
I guess someone could say that they need the contracts to help guarantee income, but if they're providing a good service then why would customers leave? In the end its legal vendor lock-in and should be illegal, or at the very least they shouldn't have the power to change your service while you are on a contract.
> WinAmp used to be a good player, too, but then it added video support.
The important difference here (real marketers take note) is that winamp does not automagically ruin my file associations nor does it pester me with pop-ups. And get this! If you goto winamp.com you can find the free version in a couple of simple clicks with no attempts to misdirect you.
>Now your kids can't go to college, you have to sell all of your posessions, no insurance company will cover you
Right now there's a big battle between doctors and trial lawyers in regards to putting caps on damages regardless of how grossly negligent the doctor was.
Simply put, they want you to pick a side and this website and rhetoric about 'poor doctors' is a ploy to win the caps battle. Personaly, I refuse to take sides as both sides are losing propositions. A real solution would require regulating both doctors and lawyers and neither party wants that because that means less profit, thus little war of attrition.
The doctors (AMA) want me to give up my essential rights to sue for damages because they supposedly can't afford insurance.
The lawyers still want to be able to collect 1/3rd of my damages.
I think this situation shows a larger problem: people getting the shaft from two well organized and powerful lobbies. I'd rather see lawyers unable to collect so much from me and see medicine socialized/single-payment/regulated so I can actually see a doctor now and again. In the meantime its the wealthy vs the wealthy at the expense of you and me.
>Everyone walks away richer (well except all of us who will have to throw away our current computers).
Dunno, afterall this is slashdot where every change in technology or even price drops get posted as articles and geeks salivate over future purchases. You're going to buy a new PC anyway, unless you're buying a mac or building your own. What do you think a PC in 2007 is going to look like?
The consumer PC market is quite comfortable with getting their OS as attached to their new computer. Its like buying a car, after x amount of time the car simply isn't worth repairing so you might as well buy a new one with better MPG and safety equipment.
The comments here contains a lot of false outrage and have been modded pretty high. MS is designing an OS for 2007, maybe even 2008, do you really expect them to make it usable on the beater you're using today when technology changes so quickly? I mean look at how fast and cheap RAM is and 64bit computing for the home is right over the horizon.
Conversely, if MS wasn't planning ahead and released nothing more than XP with some tweaks there would be a whole lot of complaints from the same people complaining here that MS is just trying to make money by re-naming their existing product like they pretty much did with WindowsME.
There are some real things MS gets wrong, focusing on how much RAM is used on an alpha release and turning into some MS hatefest only helps to label all anti-MS people as nuts not worth listening to.
>So what's this about recharging on a daily basis again?
The zire is a toy, come back when you have something with a persistant connection to the internet, a larger screen, a keyboard, and a phone and we'll talk. 2.5G devices are everywhere and eat up power like you wouldn't believe.
> do you know many doctors that treat their patients with anger and frustration whenever they think that the patient is an idiot?
The real answer is TONS. Up until recently (when it was exposed by an AP reporter) many doctors and nurses routinely used some really nasty acronyms in patient records to describe patients they didn't like. I remember one being on par with "really ugly kid - RUK." That's not even funny, its one thing to mock someone for their actions and another to laugh at one's looks.
I tell people to always shut off activeX, block pop-ups, run Ad Aware, and install an ad-blocking hosts file. Anything less and you're probably compromised in at least one way.
>Why are the popular bloggers popular if other bloggers are thinking these ideas up first?
Successful memes don't care if you're a popular blogger or not.