I still play my Super Nintendo over 10 years after I got it. Will Nintendo still be replacing Wii batteries 10 years from now (a Wii battery is guaranteed to die within 10 years, a Super Nintendo is clearly not)?
I don't have a Wii, so I don't know much about batteries in the remotes. I'm just curious because I think it would be a shame if 10 years from now, no one could play a Wii again because of batteries.
one without insurance and all are getting excellent treatment and aren't being financially ruined
How is your uninsured friend not being financially ruined? Did you forget to mention he's Bill Gates? I mean, I could understand if he had prostate cancer, where the average cost was found to be a little over $2,000 a month, but prostate cancer averages over $7,000 a month.
$2K/mo is half the per capita GDP in the US! $7K/mo puts you easiliy in the income level of the top 20% of households before taxes, and assuming 100% of income goes to health care expenses.
And the study I cited didn't even include drug costs in the prices I just quoted.
Argh, you got me! However, the Manual of Usage and Style does say both of my commas are correct (albeit discretionary):
Rule 1.18(a): "Use a comma before a conjunction (e.g., but) linking the independent clauses in a compound sentence" Rule 1.19(a): "Use a comma to set off introductory words, phrases, or dependent clauses."
I'm an editor of a journal, so I'm used to looking up those rules fast. I didn't spend more than 10 seconds pulling them up, so don't think I just spent a while trying to find justification for my commas. In any case, the other guy used four commas. I think one was permitted and the other three are just flat out wrong, but I don't care enough to look back at it. The cases are different.
But to be fair: you got me and I laughed at the situation. Yesterday I got caught with a typo when I was correcting someone's pretentious Latin, too. It just makes this all the more fun!
In case you didn't notice, it's the asset managers of the Foundation who were doing the bad things, not Bill. This is very different from his Microsoft actions, where he actively instructed people to have the bad things happen.
Outside of certain tech circles, a lot of people love Bill Gates.
Amen to that. I was working as a server in a restaurant, and when my brother let it leak that I was a computer geek, this one baker started calling me Bill Gates and the like (my last name, as you can tell from my email here, is Goetz).
He was genuinely shocked when I asked him not to call me that, and I proceeded to explain why I wasn't a fan of the man.
I will concede, however, that Bill's recent actions make me more of a fan.
You know, for someone who is trying so hard to sound pretentious, you might want to use the right word: de, not di, gustibus non disputandum est.;) I just, of course.
And I'm sure that, very well paid lawyers from TiVo and Apple will tell you that data DOESN'T include the keys, because, even without them, you CAN produce an executable ELF.
Heh. Not a single comma in that sentence was necessary. I don't know if anyone else will find that funny, but as a punctuation nerd, I sure did.
Same here. My extensive collection of Nerdcore, podcasts, and audiobooks keep me so busy I don't listen to the radio, buy music, nor download audio at all (except for aforementioned genres). Right now I'm enjoying The Hacker Crackdown in a podcasted (??) audiobook read by Cory Doctorow. I've read the book before, but it's always nice to revisit. And it's free and doesn't give money to the RIAA!
Not to mention the accusation in (6) that BitTorrent and DirectConnect (both libre, open source projects) were created to capitalize on piracy. I think the same goes for Gnutella, but I'm not really familiar with the system. I think there have been about a bajillion interviews over the years where Bram Cohen said he invented BitTorrent to help large file transfer, but not to help the "piracy" efforts (ARR MATEYS and all that).
If you remove the accusation in (6), you're left with a statement which condemns all of the internet (since the internet is one massive P2P system, after all). I'm sure the judges would die laughing if this accusation was put forth.
Also this guy has very poor writing skills. (7) was the first to really jump out at me as poorly written.
(8) I agree with your assertion that (8) is a logical fallacy.
(9) Let's all have a laugh at the word choice here as an example of poor writing: "[Infringers] . . . have the ability to maintain their anonymity to all but the [ISP] they use to supply them with access to the internet." Legal documents must be precise, and this sentence fails beautifully. It states that infringers supply internet access to ISPs.
I know attacking grammar isn't going to win any court cases. I just wanted to point out what I meant when I said this guy can't really write. I think I'm writing better than him right now, and it's 3am where I am! Speaking of which, I need to go to bed now.
If that could've been properly documented I think there is federal protection for termination threats based upon political affiliation.
I think that this would not be viewed by the courts as a firing for political reasons, since "Microsoft needs to explain what patents Linux infringes upon" is not a political goal.
Instead, here's what I (as someone who spent a semester researching employee firings) think about this: There is a common law tradition of allowing an employer to fire an employee for
a good reason;
a bad reason; or
no reason at all.
Of course there are federal laws now for some of (2), namely civil rights legislation. However, (1) and (3) are still OK.
Now, in addition to the civil rights legislation (e.g., you can't fire someone because they're a woman), most states have a narrow exception to the general rule of allowing employers to fire employees for any reason. Typically what must happen is
the employee must be required by public policy as evidenced by an existing law (typically only legislative and Constitutional law pass muster) to do a certain action (i.e., employee must be caught between the rock of "get fired" and the hard place of "go to jail for breaking the law";
the employer must threaten employee with termination if the employee performs the act; and
the employee must perform and then be terminated.
All three of these must be present. Had he been terminated for this, there's no way he'd be protected under what I just discussed. There is no public policy evidenced by law stating a person must challenge a corporation's assertion of patent infringement or else suffer penalties himself. Thus, his case fails (1) and therefore fails the test to see if his termination would lead to a suit for wrongful termination.
Now, because I just finished up a course on Professional Responsibility at law school, let's see if I get this right: I am not a lawyer, and I am definitely not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I don't know what exactly qualifies as humanoid (two arms, two legs, head at top, butt at lower half of body facing the opposite direction that the eyes do, etc.), but under my definition, a T. Rex was humanoid-plus-tail. It stood on its two hind legs and its head was above the rest of its body.
What exactly constitutes "humanoid"? Does a tail disqualify? One leg?
Re: his Canadian relatives, they didn't say they were afraid to go to the U.S. because their health-care system was so bad, they said they'd be afraid to go to the U.S. without insurance, because the U.S. system is so expensive.
To me, if the system is (unreasonably) expensive, it is bad. I just assumed that everyone agreed with my belief.
True, everyone gets treatment, but many are unable to be treated in time or figure out their paperwork.
This is one of the things Moore reveals in this film as untrue. I know people in Canada and the UK. I lived in Japan. All have socialized medicine in a sense. I can tell you it is 100% true that health care in Japan is cheap, easy, and effective. From what I've heard from Canadians and Brits, their health care system is vastly better than how it is portrayed in the US.
In the film, Moore interviews people in the hospitals and clinics. In France, it turns out no one in a large table of expatriated Americans had to wait more than an hour. The same was true for Canadians.
There are definitely some over-the-top, sensationalist things in Sicko that I feel Moore should have left out. He has a tendency to make films that are very persuasive, and then fuck it all up by including some inflammatory stuff. In Sicko, he does an extremely good job of exposing how horrible the US health care system really is, and how inferior it is to systems in Canada, France, and the UK. I can definitely say from personal experience that it is inferior to that of Japan. My girlfriend, a med student, has had to do extensive research about health care policy in the US, and she's reported back to me how horribly screwed up our system is because of the health insurance companies.
The entire film, Moore was very on-point and convincing in his criticisms without being so inflammatory that it would turn a typical right-winger such as my uncle off of his film (contrast this with the ludicrously radical 9/11 and Columbine). I believe the first hour to hour-and-a-half could possibly convince some conservatives of the desirability of the French or Canadian system. But then he brings his Canadian relatives on. Guess what? They're afraid to go to the US because the health care system is so bad. That, I believe, is the moment at which he ruins any credibility he could have had with his opponents. If Sicko was a legitimate documentary, those scenes wouldn't have been there. I also think the Cuban scenes were counterproductive because he goes on about how great Cuba is, while at the very beginning of the movie, he reveals a chart that shows Cuba is ranked below the US in health care.
I'm a believer in universal health care from personal experience. The first hour-and-a-half of Sicko is great, and isn't propaganda in the bad sense (lie and doublespeak) so much as honestly-done research which happens to also be persuasive (good propaganda). Then Moore let me down.
The film was still good, and I am still waiting to hear a good argument against this: we have socialized the fire department. Why can't we socialize another facet of society that saves lives?
Whatever, it's 3am and I need to go to bed. I need to get up early to play with my Mac, write for a Crooksandliars.com, hang out with my Hollywood friends, go to a seminar on stopping global warming, and I need to go polish my Honda Insight./sarcasm
How is it a "strange" term? The phrase "wash my hands of this affair" and its related constructions stretches back to at least the era of Pontius Pilate 2000 years ago, and I'd be willing to bet he's not the first to have said it (or not the first to have been alleged to have said it, if you lean to that side of the religion debate).
I'd be willing to bet that most of us on/. are more interested in running other people's code that was written for x86, rather than writing our own code. See, e.g., any commercial game written in the past 10 years.
Find isn't instantaneous on a 1-2 TB computer, while Google Desktop Search is. GDS is instantaneous because it uses 600MB of space to index files. You can't expect instantaneity to be free of resource costs.
Or you can use the browser interface. For me, I have "gds [QUERY]" as an alias for "http://127.0.0.1:4664/search?flags=68&num=20&s=YH TvZxMhNMPwxHVQ8E7O4S5aFMc&q=[QUERY]" in Opera. For me, since my browser is always open, it's as easy as (1) ctrl-T, (2) gds [QUERY] to open a new tab and search for something.
I was thinking about getting Beagle set up in Linux, but it runs on C#/mono whatever, and over on Digg everyone was ripping on Beagle for not being very powerful, and for being very processor intensive. I'd like to know if/.ers have had this same poor experience with Beagle.
Streaming audio is not the same thing as a podcast. A podcast is meant to be downloaded and listened to. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people who think streaming audio and podcasts are the same thing.
There's a technology that already exists and has a name, but I'm going to invent a new word for it and think I'm on the cutting edge. E.g. "Streaming Audio" -> "Podcast"
Tell me about it! I mean, the nerve of people saying TV instead of television, movies instead of motion pictures, Slashdot instead of Slashperiod (the character on the keyboard is the punctuation mark known as a period, not a dot!). And the worst offender of all: "screen" instead of "front part of a vacuum tube"!!!
There are plenty of language cultures where "prolly" is the pronunciation of "probably." I've heard it pronounced that way since I was a child. It's no different than writing "isn't" instead of "is not." It's a contraction.
I think there is a reason for the usage of "wut" over "what"--I think that "wut" is pronounced shorter and choppier than "what," and is only used in a situation where people would have once typed "wtf" instead. The bloggotubes' language changes, OH NOES!!!!!eleventyone!
Speaking of which, I want to live to be 111 so I can give a speech thanking everyone for coming to my eleventyfirst birthday. How geeky and cool would that be?! (Apparently Slashdot doesn't allow an interrobang punctuation mark. So sad.)
Slashdot Mirror
I still play my Super Nintendo over 10 years after I got it. Will Nintendo still be replacing Wii batteries 10 years from now (a Wii battery is guaranteed to die within 10 years, a Super Nintendo is clearly not)?
I don't have a Wii, so I don't know much about batteries in the remotes. I'm just curious because I think it would be a shame if 10 years from now, no one could play a Wii again because of batteries.
DON'T ENCOURAGE THE DUPES!!!
$2K/mo is half the per capita GDP in the US! $7K/mo puts you easiliy in the income level of the top 20% of households before taxes, and assuming 100% of income goes to health care expenses.
And the study I cited didn't even include drug costs in the prices I just quoted.
Argh, you got me! However, the Manual of Usage and Style does say both of my commas are correct (albeit discretionary):
Rule 1.18(a): "Use a comma before a conjunction (e.g., but) linking the independent clauses in a compound sentence"
Rule 1.19(a): "Use a comma to set off introductory words, phrases, or dependent clauses."
I'm an editor of a journal, so I'm used to looking up those rules fast. I didn't spend more than 10 seconds pulling them up, so don't think I just spent a while trying to find justification for my commas. In any case, the other guy used four commas. I think one was permitted and the other three are just flat out wrong, but I don't care enough to look back at it. The cases are different.
But to be fair: you got me and I laughed at the situation. Yesterday I got caught with a typo when I was correcting someone's pretentious Latin, too. It just makes this all the more fun!
In case you didn't notice, it's the asset managers of the Foundation who were doing the bad things, not Bill. This is very different from his Microsoft actions, where he actively instructed people to have the bad things happen.
He was genuinely shocked when I asked him not to call me that, and I proceeded to explain why I wasn't a fan of the man.
I will concede, however, that Bill's recent actions make me more of a fan.
Same here. My extensive collection of Nerdcore, podcasts, and audiobooks keep me so busy I don't listen to the radio, buy music, nor download audio at all (except for aforementioned genres). Right now I'm enjoying The Hacker Crackdown in a podcasted (??) audiobook read by Cory Doctorow. I've read the book before, but it's always nice to revisit. And it's free and doesn't give money to the RIAA!
Not to mention the accusation in (6) that BitTorrent and DirectConnect (both libre, open source projects) were created to capitalize on piracy. I think the same goes for Gnutella, but I'm not really familiar with the system. I think there have been about a bajillion interviews over the years where Bram Cohen said he invented BitTorrent to help large file transfer, but not to help the "piracy" efforts (ARR MATEYS and all that).
If you remove the accusation in (6), you're left with a statement which condemns all of the internet (since the internet is one massive P2P system, after all). I'm sure the judges would die laughing if this accusation was put forth.
Also this guy has very poor writing skills. (7) was the first to really jump out at me as poorly written.
(8) I agree with your assertion that (8) is a logical fallacy.
(9) Let's all have a laugh at the word choice here as an example of poor writing: "[Infringers] . . . have the ability to maintain their anonymity to all but the [ISP] they use to supply them with access to the internet." Legal documents must be precise, and this sentence fails beautifully. It states that infringers supply internet access to ISPs.
I know attacking grammar isn't going to win any court cases. I just wanted to point out what I meant when I said this guy can't really write. I think I'm writing better than him right now, and it's 3am where I am! Speaking of which, I need to go to bed now.
Instead, here's what I (as someone who spent a semester researching employee firings) think about this:
There is a common law tradition of allowing an employer to fire an employee for
- a good reason;
- a bad reason; or
- no reason at all.
Of course there are federal laws now for some of (2), namely civil rights legislation. However, (1) and (3) are still OK.Now, in addition to the civil rights legislation (e.g., you can't fire someone because they're a woman), most states have a narrow exception to the general rule of allowing employers to fire employees for any reason. Typically what must happen is
All three of these must be present. Had he been terminated for this, there's no way he'd be protected under what I just discussed. There is no public policy evidenced by law stating a person must challenge a corporation's assertion of patent infringement or else suffer penalties himself. Thus, his case fails (1) and therefore fails the test to see if his termination would lead to a suit for wrongful termination.
Now, because I just finished up a course on Professional Responsibility at law school, let's see if I get this right: I am not a lawyer, and I am definitely not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I don't know what exactly qualifies as humanoid (two arms, two legs, head at top, butt at lower half of body facing the opposite direction that the eyes do, etc.), but under my definition, a T. Rex was humanoid-plus-tail. It stood on its two hind legs and its head was above the rest of its body.
What exactly constitutes "humanoid"? Does a tail disqualify? One leg?
In the film, Moore interviews people in the hospitals and clinics. In France, it turns out no one in a large table of expatriated Americans had to wait more than an hour. The same was true for Canadians.
There are definitely some over-the-top, sensationalist things in Sicko that I feel Moore should have left out. He has a tendency to make films that are very persuasive, and then fuck it all up by including some inflammatory stuff. In Sicko, he does an extremely good job of exposing how horrible the US health care system really is, and how inferior it is to systems in Canada, France, and the UK. I can definitely say from personal experience that it is inferior to that of Japan. My girlfriend, a med student, has had to do extensive research about health care policy in the US, and she's reported back to me how horribly screwed up our system is because of the health insurance companies.
The entire film, Moore was very on-point and convincing in his criticisms without being so inflammatory that it would turn a typical right-winger such as my uncle off of his film (contrast this with the ludicrously radical 9/11 and Columbine). I believe the first hour to hour-and-a-half could possibly convince some conservatives of the desirability of the French or Canadian system. But then he brings his Canadian relatives on. Guess what? They're afraid to go to the US because the health care system is so bad. That, I believe, is the moment at which he ruins any credibility he could have had with his opponents. If Sicko was a legitimate documentary, those scenes wouldn't have been there. I also think the Cuban scenes were counterproductive because he goes on about how great Cuba is, while at the very beginning of the movie, he reveals a chart that shows Cuba is ranked below the US in health care.
I'm a believer in universal health care from personal experience. The first hour-and-a-half of Sicko is great, and isn't propaganda in the bad sense (lie and doublespeak) so much as honestly-done research which happens to also be persuasive (good propaganda). Then Moore let me down.
The film was still good, and I am still waiting to hear a good argument against this: we have socialized the fire department. Why can't we socialize another facet of society that saves lives?
Whatever, it's 3am and I need to go to bed. I need to get up early to play with my Mac, write for a Crooksandliars.com, hang out with my Hollywood friends, go to a seminar on stopping global warming, and I need to go polish my Honda Insight.
How is it a "strange" term? The phrase "wash my hands of this affair" and its related constructions stretches back to at least the era of Pontius Pilate 2000 years ago, and I'd be willing to bet he's not the first to have said it (or not the first to have been alleged to have said it, if you lean to that side of the religion debate).
I'd be willing to bet that most of us on /. are more interested in running other people's code that was written for x86, rather than writing our own code. See, e.g., any commercial game written in the past 10 years.
Find isn't instantaneous on a 1-2 TB computer, while Google Desktop Search is. GDS is instantaneous because it uses 600MB of space to index files. You can't expect instantaneity to be free of resource costs.
Or you can use the browser interface. For me, I have "gds [QUERY]" as an alias for "http://127.0.0.1:4664/search?flags=68&num=20&s=YH TvZxMhNMPwxHVQ8E7O4S5aFMc&q=[QUERY]" in Opera. For me, since my browser is always open, it's as easy as (1) ctrl-T, (2) gds [QUERY] to open a new tab and search for something.
/.ers have had this same poor experience with Beagle.
I was thinking about getting Beagle set up in Linux, but it runs on C#/mono whatever, and over on Digg everyone was ripping on Beagle for not being very powerful, and for being very processor intensive. I'd like to know if
My copy of Google Desktop on XP doesn't talk to the internet at all. I've turned those settings off, and I ran a packet sniffer to verify.
Streaming audio is not the same thing as a podcast. A podcast is meant to be downloaded and listened to. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people who think streaming audio and podcasts are the same thing.
There are plenty of language cultures where "prolly" is the pronunciation of "probably." I've heard it pronounced that way since I was a child. It's no different than writing "isn't" instead of "is not." It's a contraction.
I think there is a reason for the usage of "wut" over "what"--I think that "wut" is pronounced shorter and choppier than "what," and is only used in a situation where people would have once typed "wtf" instead. The bloggotubes' language changes, OH NOES!!!!!eleventyone!
Speaking of which, I want to live to be 111 so I can give a speech thanking everyone for coming to my eleventyfirst birthday. How geeky and cool would that be?! (Apparently Slashdot doesn't allow an interrobang punctuation mark. So sad.)
Who said that it stands for Video On Demand podCAST? I always thought it stood for Video pODCAST (which it is).