Just noticed the bit about Word. Same thing as with the 'net access: there's been free access to it in my town for at least five years. All part of the "employment insurance" program: to get people into jobs, they gotta have access to the tools that'll get 'em hired.
We are *not* living in a democracy. If it was democratic, you'd have a voice in the matter. Did you hear anyone asking you if the DMCA is a good idea? Did you even have much of a foggiest notion that that P.O.S. legislation was coming down the pike?
Hell, no.
It's a republic: the most voice you get is to choose some lamer to "represent" your interests. Provided, of course, that your interests benefit him.
Pshaw. Canada's socialized medical system is less expensive to run (ie. it costs less to deliver equivalent services) than America's private for-profit system. And any corporate taxation used to run that system is ultimately passed on down to the consumer, who always bears the brunt of business costs.
Shrink the government, insist that it look after its public before it looks after businesses, and you'll have the world by the balls. Doesn't much matter if it's communist, libertarian, or capitalist in that case...
Hmmm. I guess my point boils down to this: a government that doesn't look after its people isn't a government worth having.
Dream on. The American government is owned and run by corporate interests. The time is rapidly coming when "in the best of public interests" is an antique notion.
At least Canada has a history of socialism, which makes it a bit more likely to look out for Joe Public. Not that it makes a *lot* of difference, what with the crooks in government.
As pointed out earlier in the threads, while information is not scarce, the *creation* of information is. There haven't been a lot of Mozarts, Guigans, or Teslas over the years.
If the creators of ideas are not given ownership of their ideas, they have no incentive to share them with us. Particularly those creators who depend on their idea-creation to keep them fed and sheltered.
The world needs (temporary) ownership of ideas, if its creative folk are going to continue to enrich our lives artistically, scientifically, and technically.
Regulation of a monopoly is the *best* answer. It's the best answer for all public utilities.
Now let me qualify that statement: *good* regulation is the best answer. The half-assed sort of regulation that your FCC does is the worst answer, because it harms the public far more than it helps them.
Regulation works when it focuses on balancing the needs of the public with the needs of the monopoly. Generally, the public needs are more complex than the monopoly needs.
The monopoly needs to make a reasonable profit. It doesn't need to make huge profits: one of the consequences of being allowed a legal monopoly is a low rate of return on investment. This is balanced by the quality of the investment: it's 100% guaranteed to profit.
The monopoly is guaranteed a profit because it's the only game in town, it's an essential public service, and the regulatory body ensures that it makes a profit.
In return for the guarantee of profit, the monopoly must provide certain things to the consumer.
These consumer needs include: fixed and reasonable costs, guaranteed coverage, guaranteed customer service, guaranteed quality of product, and so on.
The upshot is that in places where well-regulated monopolies are run, prices are lower than in the open market, service quality is greater, nearly everyone has access to the service, and the product is outstanding.
An example of an outstanding regulated monopoly is BC's "Insurance Corporation of BC." It provides mandatory, basic auto insurance. Its rates are based not on driver age, sex, or horsepower, but on (a) how long you've been a safe driver and (b) the costs of repairing your model of car.
As a result, automobile insurance costs *for safe drivers* in BC are lower than most anywhere in Canada and, I daresay, in the USA.
This is a fair and equitable monopoly, well-regulated and run in the interests of the public. If you're a safe driver -- young or old, male or female, driving a Civic or a Viper -- you get insurance at great rates. If you're an unsafe driver, your insurance premiums are going to reflect that -- and, again, without bias as to sex, car model, or age.
When the needs of the public are represented by a good regulatory body, monopoly services are a blessing to both the public and the monopoly.
An interesting discussion can be had as to whether one's spoken/written language affects your "productivity" for certain tasks (writing lyrics, novels, technical documents, etceteras).
Are there concepts that can be expressed in one (human) language, but not another?
You are undoubtedly already using some sort of indentation scheme already: if you're programming anything beyond a one-liner, it's almost imperative to impose some sort of visual order on your code, just to help segregate the code "chunks" into meta-levels.
In which case, you're already being a pretty-printer.
Get over it already. Python is using something that you're already doing: it's just formalized it.
(a) seeing the universe laid out for real is awe-inspiring and more than a little humbling. I think that if more people were to see the real night sky more often, there'd be a significant attitude change. When you realize just how insignificant and impermanent we humans are, the bullshit in life isn't so important any more.
(b) street lights actually increase crime rates. No one wants to wander the streets in the dark, it's a bugger to break into a house when you can't see what you're doing, and it's difficult to be unseen when your flashlight turns out to be the brightest thing in the neighbourhood.
(c) if you really want to be impressed, take up backpacking and head into the mountains. There are some remote areas that make the normal "real" view from out-of-town look about as cheesy as the out-of-town view makes the in-town view look!
(d) in particular, aim to be in the mountains during a meteor shower. Ye godz!
FWIW, within a week you'll learn to love whitespace. Yes, it imposes a visual "order" to your code. You'll soon appreciate the consistency: you can look at other code and immediately make sense of it, without having to mentally adjust for the other programmer's weird habits.
Re:Men are the targets of these witchhunts.
on
Roasting Sacred Cows
·
· Score: 2
And note, too, that we got put over the barrel with that stupid g.d. CDR surtax. Here I am, paying a fair fucking chunk of money to benefit Celine Dion, when all my CDRs are used for backing up my hard drive.
Yes, there was a fairly sizable community protest against this stupid surtax. Tens of thousands of computer users wrote in saying that they use CDs for data, and that they weren't happy to get screwed over with a surtax.
But the government implemented it anyway. Because, you know, the consumer simply *must* finance big business. God knows Celine needs my money.
Because it seems to me that, once the mice shit the things out, the nanotubules are pretty much "released into the wild."
I'm not sure this is a desirable thing, particularly as the tubes were tuned to "prefer" bacteria -- which, to my reading, means that they'll happily go about puncturing other things as well.
It's best if these things have a reasonable half-life, perhaps a day or two. Inject 'em, let 'em savage the bacteria, let 'em get processed into mouse poop, and then have them decompose.
What's your conclusion, then? If the repulsive and disgusting are the "dominant thoughts," then what does that say about the human psyche, or normal human behaviour?
Can they truly be eccentricities or fetishes, if they're the dominant, most popular search terms?
It's an interesting, if frightening, line of thought. My own conclusion is that the human race has always been hell-bent on self-destruction, but somehow continues to manage to dodge the bullet of evolution...
One of these days I'm going to snap and end up subscribing every email address listed in one of those fookin' chainletter hoaxes to some nasty porn.
I will then make sure to let everyone know that the sole reason they're receiving the porn is because some dumb twat passed on a chainletter with their address. And I'll be revealing exactly who that dumb twat was...
It'll be my one small contribution to ridding the world of another moron. Said dumb twat, if not killed outright by his now-hostile "friends" will certainly never repeat his mistake...
They also need to feather the rotors at precisely the right moment, to generate lift that will keep them from smoking into the ground.
If you fail to feather soon enough, you impact the ground... very hard.
If you feather too soon, you actually gain altitude, then lose the ability to autorotate, and plummet to the ground... very hard.
If you do it just right, you generate just enough lift to achieve no velocity just at the moment the helicopter touches down. Or, more likely, almost no velocity, so that you impact the ground gently.
Anne Geddes shite *is* porn. It's degrading to its subjects, it's appallingly tasteless, and any self-respecting adult wouldn't dare be caught admiring it.
OS/9 is a thoroughly kick-ass operating system. Linux kernel programmers could learn a *lot* from it.
It's a fully re-entrant, ROM-able, multitasking OS that can, in its minimal form, fit into 16K -- that's kilobytes, not megabytes -- of memory.
It has a device-independent driver system that completely obviates any need for programs to know anything about the device they are reading or writing to. The drivers are hot-loadable.
Slashdot Mirror
Just noticed the bit about Word. Same thing as with the 'net access: there's been free access to it in my town for at least five years. All part of the "employment insurance" program: to get people into jobs, they gotta have access to the tools that'll get 'em hired.
My local library has been offering free Internet access for a couple years now. Before that, you could get free access from a few government agencies.
You should be modded up to a +5. You've written one of the most cogent responses Slashdot has seen in eons.
We are *not* living in a democracy. If it was democratic, you'd have a voice in the matter. Did you hear anyone asking you if the DMCA is a good idea? Did you even have much of a foggiest notion that that P.O.S. legislation was coming down the pike?
Hell, no.
It's a republic: the most voice you get is to choose some lamer to "represent" your interests. Provided, of course, that your interests benefit him.
Pshaw. Canada's socialized medical system is less expensive to run (ie. it costs less to deliver equivalent services) than America's private for-profit system. And any corporate taxation used to run that system is ultimately passed on down to the consumer, who always bears the brunt of business costs.
Shrink the government, insist that it look after its public before it looks after businesses, and you'll have the world by the balls. Doesn't much matter if it's communist, libertarian, or capitalist in that case...
Hmmm. I guess my point boils down to this: a government that doesn't look after its people isn't a government worth having.
Dream on. The American government is owned and run by corporate interests. The time is rapidly coming when "in the best of public interests" is an antique notion.
At least Canada has a history of socialism, which makes it a bit more likely to look out for Joe Public. Not that it makes a *lot* of difference, what with the crooks in government.
Hmmm.
That's pretty crafty.
I suppose that would make it a cunning Ling OS...
RE: your last paragraph.
As pointed out earlier in the threads, while information is not scarce, the *creation* of information is. There haven't been a lot of Mozarts, Guigans, or Teslas over the years.
If the creators of ideas are not given ownership of their ideas, they have no incentive to share them with us. Particularly those creators who depend on their idea-creation to keep them fed and sheltered.
The world needs (temporary) ownership of ideas, if its creative folk are going to continue to enrich our lives artistically, scientifically, and technically.
Regulation of a monopoly is the *best* answer. It's the best answer for all public utilities.
Now let me qualify that statement: *good* regulation is the best answer. The half-assed sort of regulation that your FCC does is the worst answer, because it harms the public far more than it helps them.
Regulation works when it focuses on balancing the needs of the public with the needs of the monopoly. Generally, the public needs are more complex than the monopoly needs.
The monopoly needs to make a reasonable profit. It doesn't need to make huge profits: one of the consequences of being allowed a legal monopoly is a low rate of return on investment. This is balanced by the quality of the investment: it's 100% guaranteed to profit.
The monopoly is guaranteed a profit because it's the only game in town, it's an essential public service, and the regulatory body ensures that it makes a profit.
In return for the guarantee of profit, the monopoly must provide certain things to the consumer.
These consumer needs include: fixed and reasonable costs, guaranteed coverage, guaranteed customer service, guaranteed quality of product, and so on.
The upshot is that in places where well-regulated monopolies are run, prices are lower than in the open market, service quality is greater, nearly everyone has access to the service, and the product is outstanding.
An example of an outstanding regulated monopoly is BC's "Insurance Corporation of BC." It provides mandatory, basic auto insurance. Its rates are based not on driver age, sex, or horsepower, but on (a) how long you've been a safe driver and (b) the costs of repairing your model of car.
As a result, automobile insurance costs *for safe drivers* in BC are lower than most anywhere in Canada and, I daresay, in the USA.
This is a fair and equitable monopoly, well-regulated and run in the interests of the public. If you're a safe driver -- young or old, male or female, driving a Civic or a Viper -- you get insurance at great rates. If you're an unsafe driver, your insurance premiums are going to reflect that -- and, again, without bias as to sex, car model, or age.
When the needs of the public are represented by a good regulatory body, monopoly services are a blessing to both the public and the monopoly.
An interesting discussion can be had as to whether one's spoken/written language affects your "productivity" for certain tasks (writing lyrics, novels, technical documents, etceteras).
Are there concepts that can be expressed in one (human) language, but not another?
You are undoubtedly already using some sort of indentation scheme already: if you're programming anything beyond a one-liner, it's almost imperative to impose some sort of visual order on your code, just to help segregate the code "chunks" into meta-levels.
In which case, you're already being a pretty-printer.
Get over it already. Python is using something that you're already doing: it's just formalized it.
A couple of points:
(a) seeing the universe laid out for real is awe-inspiring and more than a little humbling. I think that if more people were to see the real night sky more often, there'd be a significant attitude change. When you realize just how insignificant and impermanent we humans are, the bullshit in life isn't so important any more.
(b) street lights actually increase crime rates. No one wants to wander the streets in the dark, it's a bugger to break into a house when you can't see what you're doing, and it's difficult to be unseen when your flashlight turns out to be the brightest thing in the neighbourhood.
(c) if you really want to be impressed, take up backpacking and head into the mountains. There are some remote areas that make the normal "real" view from out-of-town look about as cheesy as the out-of-town view makes the in-town view look!
(d) in particular, aim to be in the mountains during a meteor shower. Ye godz!
FWIW, within a week you'll learn to love whitespace. Yes, it imposes a visual "order" to your code. You'll soon appreciate the consistency: you can look at other code and immediately make sense of it, without having to mentally adjust for the other programmer's weird habits.
What site?
Just take the phone and *pretend* to be talking to someone. No one will ever know the difference.
And note, too, that we got put over the barrel with that stupid g.d. CDR surtax. Here I am, paying a fair fucking chunk of money to benefit Celine Dion, when all my CDRs are used for backing up my hard drive.
Yes, there was a fairly sizable community protest against this stupid surtax. Tens of thousands of computer users wrote in saying that they use CDs for data, and that they weren't happy to get screwed over with a surtax.
But the government implemented it anyway. Because, you know, the consumer simply *must* finance big business. God knows Celine needs my money.
--
My question:
How long do the nanotubules last?
Because it seems to me that, once the mice shit the things out, the nanotubules are pretty much "released into the wild."
I'm not sure this is a desirable thing, particularly as the tubes were tuned to "prefer" bacteria -- which, to my reading, means that they'll happily go about puncturing other things as well.
It's best if these things have a reasonable half-life, perhaps a day or two. Inject 'em, let 'em savage the bacteria, let 'em get processed into mouse poop, and then have them decompose.
--
Interesting point you raise.
What's your conclusion, then? If the repulsive and disgusting are the "dominant thoughts," then what does that say about the human psyche, or normal human behaviour?
Can they truly be eccentricities or fetishes, if they're the dominant, most popular search terms?
It's an interesting, if frightening, line of thought. My own conclusion is that the human race has always been hell-bent on self-destruction, but somehow continues to manage to dodge the bullet of evolution...
--
I will then make sure to let everyone know that the sole reason they're receiving the porn is because some dumb twat passed on a chainletter with their address. And I'll be revealing exactly who that dumb twat was...
It'll be my one small contribution to ridding the world of another moron. Said dumb twat, if not killed outright by his now-hostile "friends" will certainly never repeat his mistake...
--
FWIW, there's an SP2 available for Win2K.
--
They also need to feather the rotors at precisely the right moment, to generate lift that will keep them from smoking into the ground.
If you fail to feather soon enough, you impact the ground... very hard.
If you feather too soon, you actually gain altitude, then lose the ability to autorotate, and plummet to the ground... very hard.
If you do it just right, you generate just enough lift to achieve no velocity just at the moment the helicopter touches down. Or, more likely, almost no velocity, so that you impact the ground gently.
(I think it's "feathering." Something like that.)
--
Anne Geddes shite *is* porn. It's degrading to its subjects, it's appallingly tasteless, and any self-respecting adult wouldn't dare be caught admiring it.
--
...I wonder what the punishment should be, then, for the US, for having inflicted itself with Bush as its chief mouthpiece...
Hmmm.
Maybe having Bush is punishment enough. Even if the rest of us do have to suffer his ugly mug in the news...
--
Yes, but "virii" is a far more fun way of saying it.
--
OS/9 is a thoroughly kick-ass operating system. Linux kernel programmers could learn a *lot* from it.
It's a fully re-entrant, ROM-able, multitasking OS that can, in its minimal form, fit into 16K -- that's kilobytes, not megabytes -- of memory.
It has a device-independent driver system that completely obviates any need for programs to know anything about the device they are reading or writing to. The drivers are hot-loadable.
It's a helluva system. Well worth investigating.
--