As many have no doubt pointed out, there is not now and has never been anything that stops anyone from building their own TCP/IP-based network and only allowing trusted users/machines/sites to connect to that network. There is no inherent need to connect *anything* to the public Internet, much less an asset that contains confidential information.
The thing that bothers me most about this announcement is the clear implication that secret data *isn't* currently partitioned onto private networks at top-secret government agencies.
MonoDevelop is, as far as I can tell, as similar to Visual Studio as they can possibly make it, so if you don't like Visual Studio I'm not sure this is going to get you anywhere. But you don't have to use Visual Studio to develop for.NET, even if you're running Windows. You can use whatever text editor you want and then invoke the compiler (csc.exe) on the command line if that's what you're more comfortable doing.
Personally, I have found Visual Studio to be the single Microsoft product I actually like -- the 'inline' documentation is a major timesaver -- but to each his own...
Basically, some WoW servers allow PK and others do not. Players who are suspected of botting on a PK server are indeed subjected to an on-the-spot Turing test -- specifically, a test of their skill at PvP combat. Unfortunately, non-PK servers are more numerous and the only recourse there is to report the suspected botter to an admin, which may or may not result in anything actually happening. More creative solutions involving stealing the bot's kills, attempting to lead it off a cliff or into lava, and so on, are sometimes possible.
Yup. I was there, too, and I remember. They threatened, laughably enough, to sue the entire Internet... and they would have, too, if such a thing had been possible.
The core of what is wrong with 'fundamentalist' belief is the thought that goes like this: 'we are right, and therefore everything we do to further our cause is justified'.
...but I always was taught that a vacuum is what you have when you don't have anything. Given that, how the fsck do you store one, or for that matter retrieve it later?
"Now I pump the air back into the bell jar. Amazingly, the vacuum is gone! I have stored it in the ninth dimension of Zardoz, and can retrieve it when I pump the air back out again. Cower before my scientific prowess, fools!"
You're going to be dead for 10^120 years (not that you'll stop being dead when the universe dies of heat death, but there will no longer be anything to compare you to) and you think money is more important than your day-to-day happiness?
I didn't know anybody actually needed to be told this, but -- you can't take it with you. You have an infintesimally brief opportunity to experience happiness. Better use it.
Given that this was a private communication between Nina and Hans, what possible motivation could she have to lie? They both know what was said between them. Nina would be extremely unlikely to convince Hans that he said something that he knew he did not say, so why bother?
I have to say that this looks very bad for Mr. Reiser. That his estranged ex-wife should complain of his violent threats, a month before she disappears under suspicious circumstances, may not be proof in and of itself, but it is still strongly suggestive of his guilt.
Once again, American libertarian Slashdotters come out in droves to let us know that socialized medicine couldn't possibly work. I guess this is plausible enough, as long as you're suffering from some sort of epistemological disorder that prevents you from perceiving the universe outside the borders of the United States. Because in every other Western industrialized nation, some sort of socialized medicine has been the reality for decades, and, not coincidentally, they all provide a better standard of care to their citizens for less money than we do here in the USA. (Yes, even with the waiting lists.)
Argue, if you want, that health care shouldn't be universal on some sort of social Darwinist grounds ("The sick should die, because they are weak!"), but please stop trying to suggest that there's something inherently unworkable about government-provided health care. It's sort of like arguing that the Earth is flat or that water runs uphill: it's clearly contradicted by fact.
Indeed, Viagra itself was originally developed as a medication to treat high blood pressure and angina. It didn't do so well at treating either of those conditions, but the side effects proved to be very profitable!
Yeah, lemme tell you, high-quality cables (and cd-r's) make a big difference when you're streaming MP3s and other digital formats. Those ones? They're really ones, baby. And the zeros? Don't get me started on how zero-y they are. But when you use cheap cables? You're lucky if your ones are more than a.85.
My World of Warcraft guild uses Teamspeak for raids, and it's a valuable tool, both for the raid leader to give instructions, and for keeping everyone apprised of the tactical situation. It does reveal which players are not the same gender as their toon, but I never jump to conclusions about the player based on the online character, so it doesn't really matter. WoW is a game, not a dating site. What matters is your skill in playing your class, not your real-life situation. That being said, twelve-year old players tend to act like twelve-year olds, in the game as in real life. They usually give themselves away by being overly reckless in game and by not making proper preparations before trying to do something hard. We don't take members under 18, mostly for this reason.
I never think that very many of the entries really count as bad writing. Consider this year's entry: it's funny as hell! It's entertaining, which bad writing never is. Bad writing is, well, bad: boring, tedious, incoherent. Judging a truly bad writing contest would be a monumental chore. I think the B-L contest is really a "silly writing contest".
I am what is usually described in the United States as a 'liberal' or 'progressive'. As such, I share most, if not almost all of your party's ideals and goals.
Nevertheless, neither I nor anyone I know who shares my political views plan to vote for you in November. While your positions on the issues may match my own more closely than any other candidate, I believe I have a better chance of seeing at least some of my positions enacted as public policy if I vote for John Kerry.
With all due respect, Mr. Cobb, you are not going to win the election this year. To a certainty, the winner will be either John Kerry or George Bush. If George Bush is the winner, then he will continue to govern according to his extreme right-wing beliefs. Most, if not all progressive causes that you and I support will suffer significant setbacks. As President Bush will most likely be able to nominate one or more Supreme Court judges during a second term, those setbacks would long outlive his administration.
If, on the other hand, John Kerry is elected, he will govern according to the political preferences of the Democratic party. While Kerry and the Democrats are, in general, quite a bit more conservative than I am, the simple fact is that the progressive causes I support would fare far better under Kerry than they would under Bush. I am sure that a President Kerry would do things that I strongly disagree with, but I am also sure that his goals and mine are not fundamentally incompatible. In short, I am certain that I can live with Kerry, just as I am certain that I cannot live with George Bush.
According to the polls, this election is going to be extremely close. If John Kerry is to win, he needs every vote he can get. I do not have the luxury of knowing that whoever ultimately wins the election will be at least somethat acceptable to me. Bush must be defeated or the ideals I stand for will be in serious jeopardy.
Thus, my question to you is: How is voting for you, as opposed to Kerry, make it more likely that the ideals I support will be reflected in public policy? Is there a *pragmatic* reason why I and other progressives should vote for you?
Will, do you have some sort of Perl script constantly grepping the content of popular web forums for references to you? 'Cause you have this uncanny knack of showing up in any discussion, here and elsewhere in Internet land, as soon as your name is mentioned. Just curious...
I couldn't agree more with your analysis of The Sims' gameplay. Apparently we are in the minority, though, since The Sims was a huge commercial success. Apparently, the mass market loves really boring games -- look at the runaway success of the screensaver-esque Deer Hunter and its thousand clones and sequels.
I play computer games because they aren't reality... if I feel like cleaning my house, taking a bath, and socializing with my friends, I'll do that instead of playing a game. A game needs to immerse me in another world, or I have no interest in it. Half-Life, Deus Ex, the old Ultima series, Baldur's Gate... the games I like the best are the ones that create a living, breathing, different world. I don't need a computer simulation of the one that's already around me.
Bioware did not write Planescape: Torment, though it uses the Infinity Engine developed by Bioware. Torment (which is a ROCKING game) was created by Black Isle Studios, the division of Interplay which publishes Bioware's games.
Did Mr. Black not sell the Post, as well as most of the rest of his Canadian newspaper holdings, a few months ago? Unfortunately, the rather extreme right-wing, anti-Chretien slant of the paper seems unchanged. It's a sad day, indeed, when the Globe and Mail is the most liberal-leaning daily in Canada.
Note who paid for this study: AOL, Microsoft, and Sony. The results are very much in line with what those sponsors want to hear, which is that the 'net is good for you.
Note also that this study did not attempt to measure any objective indicators at all -- it asked people if THEY thought the Internet was isolating or dehumanizing them, and they didn't. But people are notoriously poor at objectively evaluating their own lifestyles & circumstances. Ask some smokers if they think that smoking is having a negative impact on their health: they'll tell you it isn't, and they'll be wrong.
I don't personally believe that the Internet contributes to social isolation, but I don't think this study is very good evidence in support of this position. It looks to me like an attempt by MS, AOL, and the other big boys, to generate some nice factoids for their PR departments.
Sagan sounds like a fairly exceptional case. By and large, the avid pot smokers I've known, and I've known more than a few, have been a fairly unmotivated, apathetic, and unambitious lot. Certainly there were exceptions, but this was the general trend.
There is medical evidence to back this up. THC stays in the body a long time. Studies have shown that it impairs alertness and reaction times for 24 hours or longer after use. Its half-life in the body is approximately seven days, meaning that if you smoke once a week or more, you always have THC and its byproducts in your body, and are therefore never entirely sober.
I'm not advocating the continued criminalization of the stuff, and I'm certainly not advising that you drink alcohol instead. But I don't smoke dope, and if you were to ask for my advice, I'd say you shouldn't either. That Carl Sagan was able to use the stuff without apparent harm does not make it harmless.
No one's yet mentioned this one, but it's one of my favourites -- a beautiful film, although it may have lacked the grandeur of 2001 or the apocalyptic subject matter of Dr. Strangelove.
*lifts morning coffee cup* Here's to you, Mr. Kubrick. Ya did good.
Slashdot Mirror
I won't believe it's a Firefly sim until there's a placable River Tam block. Get on it, sir.
As many have no doubt pointed out, there is not now and has never been anything that stops anyone from building their own TCP/IP-based network and only allowing trusted users/machines/sites to connect to that network. There is no inherent need to connect *anything* to the public Internet, much less an asset that contains confidential information.
The thing that bothers me most about this announcement is the clear implication that secret data *isn't* currently partitioned onto private networks at top-secret government agencies.
Somehow, I manage not to have sex, without the benefit of this amazing technology you describe...
MonoDevelop is, as far as I can tell, as similar to Visual Studio as they can possibly make it, so if you don't like Visual Studio I'm not sure this is going to get you anywhere. But you don't have to use Visual Studio to develop for .NET, even if you're running Windows. You can use whatever text editor you want and then invoke the compiler (csc.exe) on the command line if that's what you're more comfortable doing.
Personally, I have found Visual Studio to be the single Microsoft product I actually like -- the 'inline' documentation is a major timesaver -- but to each his own...
Basically, some WoW servers allow PK and others do not. Players who are suspected of botting on a PK server are indeed subjected to an on-the-spot Turing test -- specifically, a test of their skill at PvP combat. Unfortunately, non-PK servers are more numerous and the only recourse there is to report the suspected botter to an admin, which may or may not result in anything actually happening. More creative solutions involving stealing the bot's kills, attempting to lead it off a cliff or into lava, and so on, are sometimes possible.
Yup. I was there, too, and I remember. They threatened, laughably enough, to sue the entire Internet... and they would have, too, if such a thing had been possible.
The core of what is wrong with 'fundamentalist' belief is the thought that goes like this: 'we are right, and therefore everything we do to further our cause is justified'.
...but I always was taught that a vacuum is what you have when you don't have anything. Given that, how the fsck do you store one, or for that matter retrieve it later?
"Now I pump the air back into the bell jar. Amazingly, the vacuum is gone! I have stored it in the ninth dimension of Zardoz, and can retrieve it when I pump the air back out again. Cower before my scientific prowess, fools!"
You're going to be dead for 10^120 years (not that you'll stop being dead when the universe dies of heat death, but there will no longer be anything to compare you to) and you think money is more important than your day-to-day happiness?
I didn't know anybody actually needed to be told this, but -- you can't take it with you. You have an infintesimally brief opportunity to experience happiness. Better use it.
Given that this was a private communication between Nina and Hans, what possible motivation could she have to lie? They both know what was said between them. Nina would be extremely unlikely to convince Hans that he said something that he knew he did not say, so why bother?
I have to say that this looks very bad for Mr. Reiser. That his estranged ex-wife should complain of his violent threats, a month before she disappears under suspicious circumstances, may not be proof in and of itself, but it is still strongly suggestive of his guilt.
Once again, American libertarian Slashdotters come out in droves to let us know that socialized medicine couldn't possibly work. I guess this is plausible enough, as long as you're suffering from some sort of epistemological disorder that prevents you from perceiving the universe outside the borders of the United States. Because in every other Western industrialized nation, some sort of socialized medicine has been the reality for decades, and, not coincidentally, they all provide a better standard of care to their citizens for less money than we do here in the USA. (Yes, even with the waiting lists.)
Argue, if you want, that health care shouldn't be universal on some sort of social Darwinist grounds ("The sick should die, because they are weak!"), but please stop trying to suggest that there's something inherently unworkable about government-provided health care. It's sort of like arguing that the Earth is flat or that water runs uphill: it's clearly contradicted by fact.
Indeed, Viagra itself was originally developed as a medication to treat high blood pressure and angina. It didn't do so well at treating either of those conditions, but the side effects proved to be very profitable!
Yeah, lemme tell you, high-quality cables (and cd-r's) make a big difference when you're streaming MP3s and other digital formats. Those ones? They're really ones, baby. And the zeros? Don't get me started on how zero-y they are. But when you use cheap cables? You're lucky if your ones are more than a .85.
My World of Warcraft guild uses Teamspeak for raids, and it's a valuable tool, both for the raid leader to give instructions, and for keeping everyone apprised of the tactical situation. It does reveal which players are not the same gender as their toon, but I never jump to conclusions about the player based on the online character, so it doesn't really matter. WoW is a game, not a dating site. What matters is your skill in playing your class, not your real-life situation. That being said, twelve-year old players tend to act like twelve-year olds, in the game as in real life. They usually give themselves away by being overly reckless in game and by not making proper preparations before trying to do something hard. We don't take members under 18, mostly for this reason.
With a really, really, really big heat sink.
Some of those knicknacks may have been mildly amusing, but nothing in that article compared to the wonder and majesty that is the USB turd.
I never think that very many of the entries really count as bad writing. Consider this year's entry: it's funny as hell! It's entertaining, which bad writing never is. Bad writing is, well, bad: boring, tedious, incoherent. Judging a truly bad writing contest would be a monumental chore. I think the B-L contest is really a "silly writing contest".
That's like saying it wasn't assault because you were careful not to hit me that hard.
Mr. Cobb:
I am what is usually described in the United States as a 'liberal' or 'progressive'. As such, I share most, if not almost all of your party's ideals and goals.
Nevertheless, neither I nor anyone I know who shares my political views plan to vote for you in November. While your positions on the issues may match my own more closely than any other candidate, I believe I have a better chance of seeing at least some of my positions enacted as public policy if I vote for John Kerry.
With all due respect, Mr. Cobb, you are not going to win the election this year. To a certainty, the winner will be either John Kerry or George Bush. If George Bush is the winner, then he will continue to govern according to his extreme right-wing beliefs. Most, if not all progressive causes that you and I support will suffer significant setbacks. As President Bush will most likely be able to nominate one or more Supreme Court judges during a second term, those setbacks would long outlive his administration.
If, on the other hand, John Kerry is elected, he will govern according to the political preferences of the Democratic party. While Kerry and the Democrats are, in general, quite a bit more conservative than I am, the simple fact is that the progressive causes I support would fare far better under Kerry than they would under Bush. I am sure that a President Kerry would do things that I strongly disagree with, but I am also sure that his goals and mine are not fundamentally incompatible. In short, I am certain that I can live with Kerry, just as I am certain that I cannot live with George Bush.
According to the polls, this election is going to be extremely close. If John Kerry is to win, he needs every vote he can get. I do not have the luxury of knowing that whoever ultimately wins the election will be at least somethat acceptable to me. Bush must be defeated or the ideals I stand for will be in serious jeopardy.
Thus, my question to you is: How is voting for you, as opposed to Kerry, make it more likely that the ideals I support will be reflected in public policy? Is there a *pragmatic* reason why I and other progressives should vote for you?
Will, do you have some sort of Perl script constantly grepping the content of popular web forums for references to you? 'Cause you have this uncanny knack of showing up in any discussion, here and elsewhere in Internet land, as soon as your name is mentioned. Just curious...
I couldn't agree more with your analysis of The Sims' gameplay. Apparently we are in the minority, though, since The Sims was a huge commercial success. Apparently, the mass market loves really boring games -- look at the runaway success of the screensaver-esque Deer Hunter and its thousand clones and sequels.
I play computer games because they aren't reality... if I feel like cleaning my house, taking a bath, and socializing with my friends, I'll do that instead of playing a game. A game needs to immerse me in another world, or I have no interest in it. Half-Life, Deus Ex, the old Ultima series, Baldur's Gate... the games I like the best are the ones that create a living, breathing, different world. I don't need a computer simulation of the one that's already around me.
Bioware did not write Planescape: Torment, though it uses the Infinity Engine developed by Bioware. Torment (which is a ROCKING game) was created by Black Isle Studios, the division of Interplay which publishes Bioware's games.
Raymond Prach, Bioware QA
Did Mr. Black not sell the Post, as well as most of the rest of his Canadian newspaper holdings, a few months ago? Unfortunately, the rather extreme right-wing, anti-Chretien slant of the paper seems unchanged. It's a sad day, indeed, when the Globe and Mail is the most liberal-leaning daily in Canada.
Note who paid for this study: AOL, Microsoft, and Sony. The results are very much in line with what those sponsors want to hear, which is that the 'net is good for you.
Note also that this study did not attempt to measure any objective indicators at all -- it asked people if THEY thought the Internet was isolating or dehumanizing them, and they didn't. But people are notoriously poor at objectively evaluating their own lifestyles & circumstances. Ask some smokers if they think that smoking is having a negative impact on their health: they'll tell you it isn't, and they'll be wrong.
I don't personally believe that the Internet contributes to social isolation, but I don't think this study is very good evidence in support of this position. It looks to me like an attempt by MS, AOL, and the other big boys, to generate some nice factoids for their PR departments.
Sagan sounds like a fairly exceptional case. By and large, the avid pot smokers I've known, and I've known more than a few, have been a fairly unmotivated, apathetic, and unambitious lot. Certainly there were exceptions, but this was the general trend.
There is medical evidence to back this up. THC stays in the body a long time. Studies have shown that it impairs alertness and reaction times for 24 hours or longer after use. Its half-life in the body is approximately seven days, meaning that if you smoke once a week or more, you always have THC and its byproducts in your body, and are therefore never entirely sober.
I'm not advocating the continued criminalization of the stuff, and I'm certainly not advising that you drink alcohol instead. But I don't smoke dope, and if you were to ask for my advice, I'd say you shouldn't either. That Carl Sagan was able to use the stuff without apparent harm does not make it harmless.
eataTREE, ex-pothead
No one's yet mentioned this one, but it's one of my favourites -- a beautiful film, although it may have lacked the grandeur of 2001 or the apocalyptic subject matter of Dr. Strangelove.
*lifts morning coffee cup* Here's to you, Mr. Kubrick. Ya did good.