2nd law of thermodynamics applys: Eventually, the cat will die and cease its efforts to land on its feet, and the toast will win. The sum of the energy generated by the spinning cat/toast dynamo will be miniscule compared the energy needed to feed and raise the cat plus the energy needed to sow/grow/harvest/mill/etc. the flour and other ingredients, bring them to the bakery, bake the bread, slice it into toaster-compatible cross-sections, bring the bits to the generating facility, monitor and transmit the power. You might be able to achieve some short-term benefit from feeding the cat during the power generation process, and you might be able to answer that age-old physics question "does Schrodinger's cat's foeces act more like a particle or a wave?" But again, the power expended in cleaning centripitally-accellerated cat poo off the walls will exceed any small gains.
Wasn't there a big stink a few months back about game mfrs getting all huffy about big-name retailers reselling games and discounting older titles? It wouldn't surprise me to see gaming distributers to insist on console-like game sales agreements with companies like BB and EBGames. When new titles come out, the retailers will be required to reduce and/or return stock (for credit, naturally) in order to keep premium-price sales up./Just call me Tinfoil Hattie.
It's Apr 15, 1837 You have 14 oxen Your water barrels are 12% full You have 2.3 days of rations You have $43 You have traveled 1349 miles (H)unt (T)rade (G)o (P)ay Taxes >G
It's Apr 16, 1837 You have 15 oxen Your water barrels are 8% full You have 1.3 days of rations You have $43 You have traveled 1378 miles There is a warrant out for your arrest for tax evasion. (H)unt (T)rade (G)o (P)ay Taxes >
I just have to ask- how's the Drizzt-to-Bilbo/Frodo ratio looking so far? In WOW, EQ2, and DAOC, the scale's are tipped pretty heavily on the side of Drizzt. But I've seen every intentially misspelling of all three names conceivable. My favorite was Afrodo (a black skinned hobbit).
If the process of breaking down this starch for hydrogen produces a large amount of solid waste, what will we do with it? Am I going to have to muck out my car's stall?
Also, everything I know about starches and sugars can be summed up in two words: They're sticky. Wouldn't any system that
employs really sticky substances need periodic swabbing out to prevent residual muck from jamming up the pipes?
A major ETL tool vendor (hint: The name is a latin phrase similar to ab ovo or in media res) once offered me a job. The non-compete stated that I would not take a position using their software for four years after termination of employment (regardless of reason), and that during that period I would notify them of any change of employment. One of the clauses was that I would acknowledge that I had a broad background and was able to find employment in other areas of expertiese (or words to that effect).
I understand why they had the restriction- there would be a huge temptation to work for them for two years then quit and earn upwards of $300/hr for high-level consulting using their software.
Warning bells, really really loud ones, should go off whenever you see a non-compete at this level. Something else has to be wrong with the company. You might never find out what it is even if you take the job. But anything that negatively affects your future employment, especially if you know about it ab initio, should always be considered very carefully. I turned down the job, by the way.
Since you have some experience, could you please recommend an F/OSS MIDI sequencer? I'd like to do some work on my Yamaha Clavinova, but I'm having a hard time finding a decent sequencer that works under Kubuntu (Edgy) and/or XP.
Let's say I already have a GPS navigation system in my car which records my progress. Does this mean that the police no longer need a warrant to seize the tracking information? Since I supposedly have no right to privacy regarding the path which I took, how can I have any right to privacy for an instrument that records it, regardless of whether the instrument belongs to me, the police, or some third party? Ergo, the police no longer need a warrant to obtain the tracking information from rental car agencies. No slippery slope here, folks. Just a small step down a well-lit path.
From the obvious files:
In heavily settled desert areas, such as Las Vegas and Phoenix, the relative humidity is much higher than the original climate. The is due to several factors, including landscaping, irrigation, water waste, and even simple respiration (we- and our pets- exhale pints of water daily). There is a "water vapor" bubble that covers such large urbanized desert areas, visible to capable sensors from space. A device which reclaimed this wasted water would reduce dependency on expensive river and ground water and reduce the water-vapor polution that surrounding desert areas experience.
/Still can't remember if it's desert or dessert.
//Move we combine them into one word containing all three s's: desssert.
Exactly! Any series that dares to call itself "Battlestar Gallactica" and isn't comprised of Disco Egyptians fighting robots in space is a complete sham. I know someone who KILLED himself when the original BG series went out the air. Yes, literally. No joke. He jumped off a bridge wearing his official warrior's jacket made of real simu-leather with the 14K goldesque-plate multi-buckles and insignia and DIED. Anything that's called Battlestar Gallactica and isn't mindless cheesy fun is an insult to his memory.
Is there anything from my childhood that's safe? What's next? Buck Rodgers without a little robot going "beedeebeedeebeedee" and freaky disco-minuettes? He-man in Hawaiian-print hammer pants? A transformer movie where Optimus Prime isn't a firetruck? Oh wait- that last one- I think I saw a trailer... Sigh.
For that matter, witness how much they fsck'd up battlestar gallactica. I haven't seen their version of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files yet, but from the promos it looks like they decided to fsck up that too (I should probably withold judgement since I haven't seen it, though). Sci-fi channel didn't do it, but look at how Eragon was absolutely destroyed.
I always wondered how the visual medium could be so obviously run by a group of illiterates with no respect for authorship. It's intensely bizarre. What puzzles me even more are the large number of people who just seem to accept it as a usual practice. Even when their favorite character/scene/plotline/etc is missing or replaced by something entirely different - for no reason the bears any resemblance to a valid purpose- they don't seem to mind. A vapid "oh, well you shouldn't get upset- it's a different medium after all" is the closest you'll get from them to an acknowledgement of the change. Where's the rage, people?
There have been notable exceptions. The Princess Bride was the best adaptation of a novel as I've ever seen. The screenplay was written by the author of the novel, who had previous screenplay writing experience. That probably explains why it was so well done. The Disney version of A Wrinkle In Time came close too- but proved that some books aren't suited for movies no matter HOW good they are. I'm sure others can name many more.
We want to be optimistic. We love the written works so much that we long to see them come to life. Sci-fi fans are like Charlie Brown, earnestly hoping for someone in Hollywood to hold that football down just long enough for us to get a kickoff. And the studio execs are like Sally- teasing us endlessly with the possibility of something that won't suck shiat and pulling the ball away at the last moment.
/Sorry- done now.
//Goes to the meds closet to get a dose of Myranta.
I tend to give feedback to those who I think need it the most. Candidates who lack confidence are sometimes in the initial phases of their job search, so I sometimes offer a few hints on how to prep. I also like to give the "thanks but no thanks" talk immediately but in a very positive manner. At least once, there was some major miscommunication between the idiots in our HR department and the idiots in the warm-body-factory recruiting company they worked with. They screened and sent us a candidate who was an absolute non-fit for a position. I immediately told him "your resume is awesome, but the position has nothing to do with anything you have experience with." He was surprised because he had answered a req from our own carreers web page- so I sat down with him and figured out which posting it was and walked him over to the correct hiring manager and said "this guy drove all the way from Detroit- please give him the courtesy of an interview." He was hired and later went on to be a major player in the industry. So by giving feedback I saved the company some major ill will AND netted us a great candidate.
I also told one candidate that the next he goes for an interview, he should think about washing his hands after using the bathroom because the next person he puts his hand out to shake might be the person who noticed that he hadn't. Needless to say, he didn't get the job (or the handshake).
True story: The database company Informix (which later got bought-out by IBM) had a product suite they needed a name for. At the time, they were trying to become "The Internet Company" so lots of their products started with lowercase "i" followed by a capitalized word (e.g. iSpy for a monitoring package). They announced a company-wide contest to name the new product. Any employee could submit a name for consideration, the top-ten would be voted on and the winner would be the name. I submitted the following: "iSoar" purely as a joke. It didn't make the top-ten, but it was on a list of "honorable mentions." I was never quite sure whether that meant that they got the joke or didn't.
(oh, and if it's hard to see why it's funny in print, it's because the pronunciation is "eyesore," which probably isn't a very good product name)
I don't have a DMS of my own, but the one at work is pretty cool. If you don't hit it in time, it nukes our entire biohazard research lab. The thing is, it's at the top of this freakishly long elevator shaft that's guarded by lasers. It's sort of a drag when the elevators are out and you have to climb the whole shaft while trying to avoid being fried. Still, I wouldn't trade the job for anything- we get free UV tanning sessions every time we come to work!!! Is that great or what?
All you folks making jokes about brake-checks, ball bearings, spotlights, etc. as ways to deter tailgaters: Don't. The vast majority of you are joking about it, I hope. It's the small fraction who aren't who worry me. Doing ANYTHING to intentionally distract another driver is assault. Depending on the state, it can be FELONY assault (or a crime with essentially the same elements but a different name). So maybe you're tempted to tap the brakes and let the jerk know he's too close. If he slams on his brakes in a panic, spins out and wrecks himself and four other cars, killing a car full of people whose only fault was to be nearby your mutually idiotic behavior, you're the one who is going to jail for vehicular manslaughter, or worse.
Sorry - didn't mean to go into a diatribe, but this is one recurring topic where I see people letting their imaginations get ahead of their common sense.
Please be careful when doing your job search. As soon as you post your resume to a foreign job site, you will be a target for a upfront fee arrangement scam. If you're asked to provide funding for things like "visa application fees" or "filing fees" or "process fees," warning bells should start to go off. If you're not sure of the process or who/when/what/howmuch you should expect to pay or even if you're expected to pay anything at all, you should contact the country's embassey, or do some web investigation to find their government labour web site. A simple google "[country name] jobs" should suffice.
Crit Bug: cake.eat() - foods.count.minus(1) !!!!!
on
When Stallman is Attacked
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Oh No!!!!
Big companies want to have their cake and eat it too. Well too bad for them. The Whinery tour is over. Either honor the license or don't use the software. Nobody cares which choice you make. It's a choice. As far as I know, RMS isn't going into corporations with a bazooka and forcing anyone to use GPL'd software. There's always MS Vista and expensive proprietary OS's out there.
Apparently, it's perfectly OK to say "If you don't like the DRM don't buy the music," but somehow "If you don't like the GPL(v whatever) don't download the distro" is evil. Maybe it's because the latter is a perceived obstacle to profiting from the generousity of others???
I never heard of RAC before this. If it's a viral marketing campaign, it at least reached a single member of its target audience.
If it's not a viral marketing campaign, it's one of the more amusing Engrish flame wars I've perused. My only regret is that I did not get to view it in real time, as I would have popped me some O.Redenbacher and piped in the fight music from Star Trek: dah di da da da da DA DI DI da da oooooweeeep! oooooweeeeeep!
You know what I hate about microscopic objects? It's so hard to find them when you forget where you left them. I can't find the damn remote for my DVD player. How the heck am I supposed to find a tiny pair of microscopic hands in the effin couch cushions?
/I'm worried that I might have a disease that makes me deny being a hypochondriac.
All this shows is those kids weren't smart enough to get away with it.
If they had been smart enough, they could have made the web page humorous, made it a parody of the mannerisms of the principal, phrased the whole sexual orientation thing in vague phraseology, etc. then possibly they could have saved themselves from what really amounts to a frivilous lawsuit.
Personally, I think that if you're going to be a teacher or principal in a school system (public, private, parochial, whatever) you have to understand that you're in for a lot of ridicule and learn to shake it off. Seriously, is this moron going to sue the next time someone tapes a rude crayon drawing of her on the cafeteria wall? Sure, suspend the little reprobates. But sue? Seems a bit extreme for a stupid prank.
I can't believe all the people ragging on this guy as if he were a dolt for trying to take something to its silly extreme. Despite anything he might have said to the contrary, it was clearly done in jest. About the only serious test he did was the "reset" to see if he could get IE back to its original state (which seemed to me to be an afterthought).
I say Way to go, Mr. Clicks "Yes Install" on Anything Guy. Pop yourself a cold Bud Light and go surf the Peeps Autopsy and Fur Disection web sites on the 1/2 square inch of browser page you have left.
...is when I'll buy one of these. In fact, I believe that when the $5 video tape bin at WalMart emptied was the exact point at which I decided to get a DVD player. I still call them "tapes," and probably will for the rest of my life. Shiny round flat tapes. I can't wait until the next generation of shiny round flat tapes comes out. I'll buy one when the bin of current-generation shiny round flat tapes gets empty.
/now where was I? Oh yeah. Big Babomb level on SuperMario 64. Nintendo rocks!
In no particular order (except that #1 is the one thing I hate the most):
1. Posthumous "collaborations." I make a very small exception for Chrisopher Tolkein's scholarly works. Otherwise, it's just crap they think they can sell. Sadly, there are enough idiots buying the crap that they continue to make it.
2. "collaborations" with elderly authors. Yah, maybe Andre Norton or Marrion Zimmer Bradley wrote part of that book. Maybe all she did was nod off during plot discussions. Honestly, it's hard to tell. Seems there are a few authors who are so crappy that they can't come up with ideas on their own.
3. Trade paperbacks. I'd mind less if they would get together and decide on a single standard size! As an owner of thousands of books, I have a real need to keep size to a minimum. If I have to adjust my shelves to buy your book, I'm not buying your book. My "oversize" storage has gone from four or five shelves to a whole stack, and it's really pissing me off.
4. Cover blurbs comparing every fantasy novel to Lord of the Rings. If I wanted to read another Lord of the Rings, I'd read Lord of the Rings again. Ditto for every Harry-Potter wannabe ripoff with cover blurbs claiming it's just like Harry Potter. Frankly, if I saw a book with a cover blurb that went "nothing like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Interview with the Vampire or any other commercially viable work," I'd have that thing at the register in ten seconds.
5. Cover blurbs from authors who are too old to wipe their own asses. Maybe that drooling nod meant "Most promising young author since Harry Potter!" Or maybe it just meant "I've soiled myself and you have to take care of it." Either way, it's a crappy recommendation.
6. Listing authors "other works" but leaving out works done with another publisher and/or distributor.
7. Massive series based on popular movies. Just because you can hire 10,000 monkeys to write Star Wars "novels" (and I use the term with much more generosity than they are due) doesn't mean it's right to do so. When an entire 1/3 of the book store's sci-fi shelving is wasted on this kind of crap, it makes me wonder how many good new authors could have their works on that 300 linear feet of retail space.
8. Collections of short stories, in which one is set in a universe from one of the author's popular series, marketed as a part of that series. If you're such a great author, your short stories won't need the prop. If you're not, don't bother writing them. Moron.
9. Collections of short stories, in which one is written by the author and set in a universe from one of the author's popular series, and in which the rest are written by other (sometimes wannabe) authors. If you can't find the time to write your own stories, don't make some talentless schlob do it for you.
10. Direct-from-publisher "signed" editions. Do they really think we're that stupid? Those signatures are about as original as a painting from the Thomas Kinkaid "gallery" next to Sears. I'm not going to pay you $10 extra so that Skippy the Intern and his sidekick Amazing Pantograph Bob can crank out ten of these at a time. Especially when you sell it in size-of-the-month-club trade paperback form.
Slashdot Mirror
2nd law of thermodynamics applys: Eventually, the cat will die and cease its efforts to land on its feet, and the toast will win. The sum of the energy generated by the spinning cat/toast dynamo will be miniscule compared the energy needed to feed and raise the cat plus the energy needed to sow/grow/harvest/mill/etc. the flour and other ingredients, bring them to the bakery, bake the bread, slice it into toaster-compatible cross-sections, bring the bits to the generating facility, monitor and transmit the power. You might be able to achieve some short-term benefit from feeding the cat during the power generation process, and you might be able to answer that age-old physics question "does Schrodinger's cat's foeces act more like a particle or a wave?" But again, the power expended in cleaning centripitally-accellerated cat poo off the walls will exceed any small gains.
I would love to see the patent application for that.
I wonder if you could get more juice from a patent on "A system for generating electricity from massive budget overruns," though.
Wasn't there a big stink a few months back about game mfrs getting all huffy about big-name retailers reselling games and discounting older titles? It wouldn't surprise me to see gaming distributers to insist on console-like game sales agreements with companies like BB and EBGames. When new titles come out, the retailers will be required to reduce and/or return stock (for credit, naturally) in order to keep premium-price sales up. /Just call me Tinfoil Hattie.
It's Apr 15, 1837
You have 14 oxen
Your water barrels are 12% full
You have 2.3 days of rations
You have $43
You have traveled 1349 miles
(H)unt (T)rade (G)o (P)ay Taxes
>G
It's Apr 16, 1837
You have 15 oxen
Your water barrels are 8% full
You have 1.3 days of rations
You have $43
You have traveled 1378 miles
There is a warrant out for your arrest for tax evasion.
(H)unt (T)rade (G)o (P)ay Taxes
>
I just have to ask- how's the Drizzt-to-Bilbo/Frodo ratio looking so far? In WOW, EQ2, and DAOC, the scale's are tipped pretty heavily on the side of Drizzt. But I've seen every intentially misspelling of all three names conceivable. My favorite was Afrodo (a black skinned hobbit).
If the process of breaking down this starch for hydrogen produces a large amount of solid waste, what will we do with it? Am I going to have to muck out my car's stall? Also, everything I know about starches and sugars can be summed up in two words: They're sticky. Wouldn't any system that employs really sticky substances need periodic swabbing out to prevent residual muck from jamming up the pipes?
A major ETL tool vendor (hint: The name is a latin phrase similar to ab ovo or in media res) once offered me a job. The non-compete stated that I would not take a position using their software for four years after termination of employment (regardless of reason), and that during that period I would notify them of any change of employment. One of the clauses was that I would acknowledge that I had a broad background and was able to find employment in other areas of expertiese (or words to that effect).
I understand why they had the restriction- there would be a huge temptation to work for them for two years then quit and earn upwards of $300/hr for high-level consulting using their software.
Warning bells, really really loud ones, should go off whenever you see a non-compete at this level. Something else has to be wrong with the company. You might never find out what it is even if you take the job. But anything that negatively affects your future employment, especially if you know about it ab initio, should always be considered very carefully. I turned down the job, by the way.
Since you have some experience, could you please recommend an F/OSS MIDI sequencer? I'd like to do some work on my Yamaha Clavinova, but I'm having a hard time finding a decent sequencer that works under Kubuntu (Edgy) and/or XP.
Let's say I already have a GPS navigation system in my car which records my progress. Does this mean that the police no longer need a warrant to seize the tracking information? Since I supposedly have no right to privacy regarding the path which I took, how can I have any right to privacy for an instrument that records it, regardless of whether the instrument belongs to me, the police, or some third party? Ergo, the police no longer need a warrant to obtain the tracking information from rental car agencies. No slippery slope here, folks. Just a small step down a well-lit path.
From the obvious files:
/Still can't remember if it's desert or dessert.
//Move we combine them into one word containing all three s's: desssert.
In heavily settled desert areas, such as Las Vegas and Phoenix, the relative humidity is much higher than the original climate. The is due to several factors, including landscaping, irrigation, water waste, and even simple respiration (we- and our pets- exhale pints of water daily). There is a "water vapor" bubble that covers such large urbanized desert areas, visible to capable sensors from space. A device which reclaimed this wasted water would reduce dependency on expensive river and ground water and reduce the water-vapor polution that surrounding desert areas experience.
Exactly! Any series that dares to call itself "Battlestar Gallactica" and isn't comprised of Disco Egyptians fighting robots in space is a complete sham. I know someone who KILLED himself when the original BG series went out the air. Yes, literally. No joke. He jumped off a bridge wearing his official warrior's jacket made of real simu-leather with the 14K goldesque-plate multi-buckles and insignia and DIED. Anything that's called Battlestar Gallactica and isn't mindless cheesy fun is an insult to his memory.
Is there anything from my childhood that's safe? What's next? Buck Rodgers without a little robot going "beedeebeedeebeedee" and freaky disco-minuettes? He-man in Hawaiian-print hammer pants? A transformer movie where Optimus Prime isn't a firetruck? Oh wait- that last one- I think I saw a trailer... Sigh.
For that matter, witness how much they fsck'd up battlestar gallactica. I haven't seen their version of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files yet, but from the promos it looks like they decided to fsck up that too (I should probably withold judgement since I haven't seen it, though). Sci-fi channel didn't do it, but look at how Eragon was absolutely destroyed.
I always wondered how the visual medium could be so obviously run by a group of illiterates with no respect for authorship. It's intensely bizarre. What puzzles me even more are the large number of people who just seem to accept it as a usual practice. Even when their favorite character/scene/plotline/etc is missing or replaced by something entirely different - for no reason the bears any resemblance to a valid purpose- they don't seem to mind. A vapid "oh, well you shouldn't get upset- it's a different medium after all" is the closest you'll get from them to an acknowledgement of the change. Where's the rage, people?
There have been notable exceptions. The Princess Bride was the best adaptation of a novel as I've ever seen. The screenplay was written by the author of the novel, who had previous screenplay writing experience. That probably explains why it was so well done. The Disney version of A Wrinkle In Time came close too- but proved that some books aren't suited for movies no matter HOW good they are. I'm sure others can name many more.
We want to be optimistic. We love the written works so much that we long to see them come to life. Sci-fi fans are like Charlie Brown, earnestly hoping for someone in Hollywood to hold that football down just long enough for us to get a kickoff. And the studio execs are like Sally- teasing us endlessly with the possibility of something that won't suck shiat and pulling the ball away at the last moment.
/Sorry- done now.
//Goes to the meds closet to get a dose of Myranta.
I tend to give feedback to those who I think need it the most. Candidates who lack confidence are sometimes in the initial phases of their job search, so I sometimes offer a few hints on how to prep. I also like to give the "thanks but no thanks" talk immediately but in a very positive manner. At least once, there was some major miscommunication between the idiots in our HR department and the idiots in the warm-body-factory recruiting company they worked with. They screened and sent us a candidate who was an absolute non-fit for a position. I immediately told him "your resume is awesome, but the position has nothing to do with anything you have experience with." He was surprised because he had answered a req from our own carreers web page- so I sat down with him and figured out which posting it was and walked him over to the correct hiring manager and said "this guy drove all the way from Detroit- please give him the courtesy of an interview." He was hired and later went on to be a major player in the industry. So by giving feedback I saved the company some major ill will AND netted us a great candidate.
I also told one candidate that the next he goes for an interview, he should think about washing his hands after using the bathroom because the next person he puts his hand out to shake might be the person who noticed that he hadn't. Needless to say, he didn't get the job (or the handshake).
True story: The database company Informix (which later got bought-out by IBM) had a product suite they needed a name for. At the time, they were trying to become "The Internet Company" so lots of their products started with lowercase "i" followed by a capitalized word (e.g. iSpy for a monitoring package). They announced a company-wide contest to name the new product. Any employee could submit a name for consideration, the top-ten would be voted on and the winner would be the name. I submitted the following: "iSoar" purely as a joke. It didn't make the top-ten, but it was on a list of "honorable mentions." I was never quite sure whether that meant that they got the joke or didn't.
(oh, and if it's hard to see why it's funny in print, it's because the pronunciation is "eyesore," which probably isn't a very good product name)
I don't have a DMS of my own, but the one at work is pretty cool. If you don't hit it in time, it nukes our entire biohazard research lab. The thing is, it's at the top of this freakishly long elevator shaft that's guarded by lasers. It's sort of a drag when the elevators are out and you have to climb the whole shaft while trying to avoid being fried. Still, I wouldn't trade the job for anything- we get free UV tanning sessions every time we come to work!!! Is that great or what?
All you folks making jokes about brake-checks, ball bearings, spotlights, etc. as ways to deter tailgaters: Don't. The vast majority of you are joking about it, I hope. It's the small fraction who aren't who worry me. Doing ANYTHING to intentionally distract another driver is assault. Depending on the state, it can be FELONY assault (or a crime with essentially the same elements but a different name). So maybe you're tempted to tap the brakes and let the jerk know he's too close. If he slams on his brakes in a panic, spins out and wrecks himself and four other cars, killing a car full of people whose only fault was to be nearby your mutually idiotic behavior, you're the one who is going to jail for vehicular manslaughter, or worse. Sorry - didn't mean to go into a diatribe, but this is one recurring topic where I see people letting their imaginations get ahead of their common sense.
That guy is such an arfhole. I wish they hadn't been able to recover his data. Would have served him right.
Please be careful when doing your job search. As soon as you post your resume to a foreign job site, you will be a target for a upfront fee arrangement scam. If you're asked to provide funding for things like "visa application fees" or "filing fees" or "process fees," warning bells should start to go off. If you're not sure of the process or who/when/what/howmuch you should expect to pay or even if you're expected to pay anything at all, you should contact the country's embassey, or do some web investigation to find their government labour web site. A simple google "[country name] jobs" should suffice.
Oh No!!!! Big companies want to have their cake and eat it too. Well too bad for them. The Whinery tour is over. Either honor the license or don't use the software. Nobody cares which choice you make. It's a choice. As far as I know, RMS isn't going into corporations with a bazooka and forcing anyone to use GPL'd software. There's always MS Vista and expensive proprietary OS's out there. Apparently, it's perfectly OK to say "If you don't like the DRM don't buy the music," but somehow "If you don't like the GPL(v whatever) don't download the distro" is evil. Maybe it's because the latter is a perceived obstacle to profiting from the generousity of others???
I never heard of RAC before this. If it's a viral marketing campaign, it at least reached a single member of its target audience.
If it's not a viral marketing campaign, it's one of the more amusing Engrish flame wars I've perused. My only regret is that I did not get to view it in real time, as I would have popped me some O.Redenbacher and piped in the fight music from Star Trek: dah di da da da da DA DI DI da da oooooweeeep! oooooweeeeeep!
You know what I hate about microscopic objects? It's so hard to find them when you forget where you left them. I can't find the damn remote for my DVD player. How the heck am I supposed to find a tiny pair of microscopic hands in the effin couch cushions?
/I'm worried that I might have a disease that makes me deny being a hypochondriac.
All this shows is those kids weren't smart enough to get away with it. If they had been smart enough, they could have made the web page humorous, made it a parody of the mannerisms of the principal, phrased the whole sexual orientation thing in vague phraseology, etc. then possibly they could have saved themselves from what really amounts to a frivilous lawsuit. Personally, I think that if you're going to be a teacher or principal in a school system (public, private, parochial, whatever) you have to understand that you're in for a lot of ridicule and learn to shake it off. Seriously, is this moron going to sue the next time someone tapes a rude crayon drawing of her on the cafeteria wall? Sure, suspend the little reprobates. But sue? Seems a bit extreme for a stupid prank.
I can't believe all the people ragging on this guy as if he were a dolt for trying to take something to its silly extreme. Despite anything he might have said to the contrary, it was clearly done in jest. About the only serious test he did was the "reset" to see if he could get IE back to its original state (which seemed to me to be an afterthought). I say Way to go, Mr. Clicks "Yes Install" on Anything Guy. Pop yourself a cold Bud Light and go surf the Peeps Autopsy and Fur Disection web sites on the 1/2 square inch of browser page you have left.
...is when I'll buy one of these. In fact, I believe that when the $5 video tape bin at WalMart emptied was the exact point at which I decided to get a DVD player. I still call them "tapes," and probably will for the rest of my life. Shiny round flat tapes. I can't wait until the next generation of shiny round flat tapes comes out. I'll buy one when the bin of current-generation shiny round flat tapes gets empty.
/now where was I? Oh yeah. Big Babomb level on SuperMario 64. Nintendo rocks!
In no particular order (except that #1 is the one thing I hate the most):
1. Posthumous "collaborations." I make a very small exception for Chrisopher Tolkein's scholarly works. Otherwise, it's just crap they think they can sell. Sadly, there are enough idiots buying the crap that they continue to make it.
2. "collaborations" with elderly authors. Yah, maybe Andre Norton or Marrion Zimmer Bradley wrote part of that book. Maybe all she did was nod off during plot discussions. Honestly, it's hard to tell. Seems there are a few authors who are so crappy that they can't come up with ideas on their own.
3. Trade paperbacks. I'd mind less if they would get together and decide on a single standard size! As an owner of thousands of books, I have a real need to keep size to a minimum. If I have to adjust my shelves to buy your book, I'm not buying your book. My "oversize" storage has gone from four or five shelves to a whole stack, and it's really pissing me off.
4. Cover blurbs comparing every fantasy novel to Lord of the Rings. If I wanted to read another Lord of the Rings, I'd read Lord of the Rings again. Ditto for every Harry-Potter wannabe ripoff with cover blurbs claiming it's just like Harry Potter. Frankly, if I saw a book with a cover blurb that went "nothing like Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Interview with the Vampire or any other commercially viable work," I'd have that thing at the register in ten seconds.
5. Cover blurbs from authors who are too old to wipe their own asses. Maybe that drooling nod meant "Most promising young author since Harry Potter!" Or maybe it just meant "I've soiled myself and you have to take care of it." Either way, it's a crappy recommendation.
6. Listing authors "other works" but leaving out works done with another publisher and/or distributor.
7. Massive series based on popular movies. Just because you can hire 10,000 monkeys to write Star Wars "novels" (and I use the term with much more generosity than they are due) doesn't mean it's right to do so. When an entire 1/3 of the book store's sci-fi shelving is wasted on this kind of crap, it makes me wonder how many good new authors could have their works on that 300 linear feet of retail space.
8. Collections of short stories, in which one is set in a universe from one of the author's popular series, marketed as a part of that series. If you're such a great author, your short stories won't need the prop. If you're not, don't bother writing them. Moron.
9. Collections of short stories, in which one is written by the author and set in a universe from one of the author's popular series, and in which the rest are written by other (sometimes wannabe) authors. If you can't find the time to write your own stories, don't make some talentless schlob do it for you.
10. Direct-from-publisher "signed" editions. Do they really think we're that stupid? Those signatures are about as original as a painting from the Thomas Kinkaid "gallery" next to Sears. I'm not going to pay you $10 extra so that Skippy the Intern and his sidekick Amazing Pantograph Bob can crank out ten of these at a time. Especially when you sell it in size-of-the-month-club trade paperback form.