Remains a Hong Kong affair. I prefer films/movies with subtitles, and when I used to buy or rent DVDs like crazy when I had more "discretionary" income, I bought or rented imports. They may not be 100% original, and may have even borrowed (even heavily) right from hollywood, but, you know what? There is a certain *something* felt when watching a decent foreign action or love story. And, when I watch them, I do so in subtitles. I never, almost never ever, watch any portion in the English audio track. The hokey, laughable English is unbearable, more often than not, and besides, I cannot bring myself to watch a foreign FILM of a non-English country in ENGLISH. It's not as if it is a documentary or news clip being translated for educational or news purposes.
I watched all 3 "Infernal Affairs", with Anthony Wong, Andy Lau, and a ton of other Asian stars. Each one had twists and turns that sometimes shocked the hell out of me. I have yet or in QUITE a long time been impressed or wowed by anything from LA. I am sick of the hero always winning, the bad guy dying, the male protagonist winning the girl after red herrings, and tired of anything that kow-tows to the audience expectation. Audiences MUST be SHOCKED in order for anything to feel new and refreshing.
I strongly suspect that if ANY "merkuns" who intend to see IA LA-style first see it Hong Kong original and pay attention to the subtitles and watch them 2 or 3 times will feel cheated if they watch ANY remakes. It's the nature of the beast. Just as bad movies often emerge from decent books, movie remakes of decent or great foreign films tend to emerge. As for Infernal Affairs, there's a whole range of history: mob, cultural, family, national, regional... so much going on that you have to see it at least 3 times to get the true tapestry. If IA is remade LA-style, the theaters won't want to lose the screening time to the running time, but if IA is chopped and butchered just to appeal to click-monkeys and time-pressed members of the potential audience, then why bother remaking it? IA remade needs to be made for home consumption where the audience can pause, discuss, and resume-- something you cannot nor are expected to do in a theater unless the days of the INTERMISSION return as a feature of "moviegoing".
Producing remakes, in my eyes, just signals of flagging ability to *CREATE* new, fresh, or seems-original product.
I feel that in order for films like Infernal Affairs, IA2 and IA3 to be well-received here as a remake, the remake might end up being either 100% remade and passed off as "based on a true story" so it gains credibility, and good reviews, or it would have to be re-dubbed into 100% English and presented in the light or praise that Shaolin Soccer and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were. I like Replacement Killers, with Chow Yun Fat and Mira Sorvino partly because of the actors and partly because of the cultural exposure on foreigners' associations *back home*, not just "my other in New York, or my cousin in Tempe" references.
What is interesting about some Hong Kong action (and other, non-action) flicks from the past decade and earlier, and in a number of cases even today, is that it is possible to put to screen in about 6 weeks (AND at a mere fraction of what hollywood investors throw at a production) what might take hollywood a YEAR or TWO. I find it grating to see trailers-- outtakes of the BEST of a hollywood movie-- that end with "In theaters Summer 2007" when it is January 2006. To see that many outtakes means it has probably wrapped principal photography, gotten a lot of the botched scenes cut or reshot if the actors have the availability to reshoot, and that the screening might even have been done, but some MORE retakes are being negotiated to wrangle out that last, teentsy-weentsiest bit of recoupable dollar based on critics commentary.
I've seen dozens of imports from Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taiwan, Korea... Some being Tube, JSA: Joint Security Area, Shaolin Soccer, Beast Cops, Zero Woman, Silmido, Shiri, Seoul, Ichi the
HEheHEheHE, I MIGHT have BEEN THEENking about Carl SAGAN, Iiiii.... supPOSE.... (or, but, not kirk...)...
From time to TYUM, I PONDER the VASTness and beauty of the Cosmos... I relfect I mean reFLECT upon the BEELIONS and BEELIONS of STARRSSS in the UINIverse....
(Actually, I kinda miss "Cosmos" and "In Search Of"...)
I guess they don't Israel sniffin' around US ports (vessels OR networking)... Wait, are we talkin' 'bout the same government that spends BEELIONS on Israel, AND sells them almost the latest in US aircraft? Well, hell, Israels electronics and their intelligence agencies are reputed to be THE best in the world...
Also, IF Snort's "underlying technology" IS open source, then opposing this transaction shows just how much the administration fails to "get" open source.
That's why Google and any other marketing/data aggregation firm will continue to collect records. Assuming they honestly "de-identify" or "anoymize" the end user from the samples of data and information, they will have BEELIONS of pieces of stuff to sell to other US-based companies vying and trying to gain insight into the mind of the average Chinese consumer, maybe to eventually turn them into PROsumers.
But, OTOH, if Google *were* to stop collecting or storing the search data, the US govt would get pissed and slap them with "aiding the demise of democracy".
BUTTT, I suppose Google could come up with a new irreversible meta tagging that reduces the end data to a meaningless pile of bit and bytes by using the queries only long enough to bring back a page and then automatically dump the initial strings that caused the query to be returned as a page to the user..
all they have to do is install packet sniffers at every demarc, or at every neighborhood uplink system. Can't be THAT hard. Google must've pulled a page from Sun Tzu, hehe.. Sure, we'll move the SEARCH data to the US you effing congressional NITWITS. But, did you EVER top to think China STILL WILL get those records, by keyboard, cpu, machine, user and neighborhood.
I imagine China will start biometric tagging of citizens who want to surf. No need tagging all 2 billion, just the ones who surf. But, how diff will that be from US in the good 'ole U.S. of A. being carnivored and mutually echeloned (yeh, I KNOW their public names changed....)?
(But, in the mean time, China needs to make sure they aren't ensnared in some bullshit war over oil.
Joke used to be if you were an expert fisherman, you were a master baiter.
Now, when these sharks get equipped with lasers and get really good at laser tag, who'll be the master baiter? The human that trained them, or the shark? Or, the generals strokin up and down the deep corridors of the pentuhgun?
I suppose if the shark has a friggin laser turret on its head and it gets hungry, we'll have to update the meaning of "fish fry"...
And, if the shark gets to THRASHIN' round and round while the beam's active, we could update the meaning of "fish n' chips"...
Now, if the FRENCH get in on this stupefying, hare-brained military idea, and THEIR shark tags your ass, you'd be "French Fried"...
But, the lameos in congress (the opposite of PROgress) will get an executive order signed to rename US laser kills as "Freedom Fries".
Well, when the sharks end up fighting each other cuz their FRIGGIN lazer beams keep fryin' up all the fish, then the sharks can REALLY get into Freedom Fries... fryin' each other.
AND, if these big fish do their thing in Catskills or Fishkill, it'll get even MORE interesting...
But, wait. Think of all those windoze boxes which keep dropping in price. Dell's markup and premium USED to be nice, in the old days, as it was for the stronger competitors and some of the mom and pop shops.
But, now that u can get a windoze box from Dell for say $450 (assuming you steadfastly DON'T let Dell upsell you...) when Dell would LIKE to get $950, then that sharp cut is also excising (removing) meat (money) Dell or others want or need.
Most-- no better not say "Most"-- SOME Linux users DO know Linux enough to not be a thorn in Dell's side.
If Dell WANTS to be neutral and just sell the Linux boxes, they could put up links pointing to LUGs in the zip or area codes or post codes of the intending consumer. mshaft will SURELY hate that, it would be all about strengthening sales, helping the consumer, offloading unrelated or undesired consumer problems to the LUGS, AND, helping Dell gain better respect it surely wants AND needs.
C'mon Dell, u can do better.
It won't mean Dell is "endorsing" the LUGS; it just tells the intending consumer to go see a LUG after purchases. But, ahh, it might also signal the customer to see the LUG BEFORE purchase, meaning the LUGS might steer the shopper to, say Emperor Linux, or those who sell Linux-ready laptops PROVEN to be stable running Linux STABLY. Since Dell and others are loath to publish their internal findings, the Emperors and other specialty shops then would get the uptake Dell obviously doesn't want them to have. So, maybe Dell IS just playing "lip service", hoping to sputter out the Linux desktop market to a controllable level, and maybe to keep those mshaft marketing dollars rolling in.
Ahhh, there you might have it: ms MARKETING subsidies keeping the hardware makers afloat. The money, like crack to an addict, is too important to just "come clean", I suppose...
An, probably, another problem is that Dell -- like any IT department-- and any company-- would have to retrain existing or hire NEW Linux-capable IT staff AND employees. That would just have baldmer hurling MORE chairs, probably at Michael and crew. I'm sure they don't want dents in their heads and their arms and legs broken...
I didn't hit all the bases, but these might be a few of them.
Besides, they've STILL got whatever echelon and carnivor morphed into. All this legislation is about posturing the issues to get the blind public to just HAND OVER to the "government" all kinds of power it neither needs nor deserves.
WE -- not the oligarchy/elites-- are supposed to set the standards for how we are governed. But, we've lost sight, and we'll pay oh so dearly for it. Unless our adoptive uncle bends over backwards to prove we're not descending into a draconian, state-security-ridden hell. Prove, Uncle, that we're not becoming the things you so much loath about China, Venezuela, Cuba, Old Russia, "Old Europe"... -- without politically imprisoning or "rubbing out" those who try to warn the public....
Why not? I periodically read air forces type magazines and check out the crashes section. I saw a pic of a Russian craft that crashed trying to making an emergency landing. It was in about 7 pieces, each section about only 4 or 5 feet apart. EVERYone aboard died. Why? Like it was sudden trauma to their spinal columns upon impact with the ground. Most likely, the trees it impacted with played a major role in deceleration and sudden breakup. I was mildly surprised that the fuselage was in a fairly straight line. It only looked like the plane was chopped like the ones in the Arizona/nearby deserts as part a disarmament/de-bomber treaty...
But, the typical seats in aircraft have NO meaningful crash survival value, to me at least. The best we're offered it lean forward, rest your head down, and (unspoken) hope the implied compressibility of the luggage compartment saves your ass.
Typically, in the Vietnam days, when a UH-1D or almost any helo crashed, the fuel tanks burst open, the seats crashed thru the broken flight deck, and the pax usually died. If not from burning and debris, then certainly from destroyed vertebrae. Honeycombing, self-sealing tanks (to protect from small caliber ground fire, but not necessarily from A-A fire), and "autogyration" (disengaging the engine clutch and letting freefall windmill the blades (if they were intact) slow the helo enough to soften the crash.
I've been in elevators a LOT, and every time, I ponder the braking system. I wonder what would happen if from 20 floors I dropped uncontrollably. (Thanks to that damned Damien Omen II, especially, when Darian Harewood gets cut in two by the implausible cable...) I sometimes hoped that if I were in freefall, I could at the LAST second (if I could calculate that final few seconds) JUMP into the air, negating the acceleration and hoping the top of the elevator didn't break my neck when the bottom hit the shaft bottom.
Now, if gyros and retros are on helicopter and aircraft seats and in certain types of skyrise elevators, then this could make (at least aircraft) freefalls less fatal.
Butt, I mean, but, we also have a few more openings... one, under the butt, is addressed by the subWOOFer. It's meant to descale your intestines from all that popcorn and soda you consume in your home theater...
We have backs, too, so why not... oh hell, why not Gel-Maker 9.5? This baby will reduce your living ass to a living pile of goo right in your sofa. Stand by for REAL Audio Compression.. We'll RAC your real-rac'in good...
(Please sign the disclaimer after your purchase...)
Since the current cadge/cabal is stating this is about anti-porn legislation, then Google, Yahoo!, msn, and the others -- if they were smart-- shoulda just said, "OK, non-commie Sammie, this is about porn, right? OK, then the PORN search is ALL YOU'RE GONNA FUCKIN' GET! NOthing else, zip, zilch, nada, go FUCK yourself..."
How difficult is that? Or, they ought to move the servers off shore.
No, they don't give a rat about porn. The real agenda is about scrounging around in the dark to find metadata to help fight the war on ter'rism, a fucking war these blights in power brought on cuz most of us DON'T VOTE (well, cuz we lost faith in the system beyond the local government level, and don't even have much faith in THAT, beyond basic stuff like fire and medical response...)
Sheesh. Just stop pissing off foreigners who DON'T want our money, business, buildings, values... LEAVE'M **ALONE***! Let the current elders die off, and if it takes 50 years, SO BE IT. They kids, out of jealousy, eagerness, longing, whatever, will then get to make the decision. It is NOT the place of US DOD or Washington or the US corporate/elite to MAKE that decision. THAT'S ONE reason we got our asses fragged-- by radicals talking for others without the balls to tell us where to get off...
I guess I 'm gonna get MY ass fragged/bitten, huh?
After all, there are PLENTY of Japanese legitimately named "Osama", Usama, and variations. Now, if they attend school in an english-langage nation, will Yahoo! ban THEIR birth names, too?
This is a valid question, since if "All the Callahans" of the world can rejoice, then SO can all the Japanese Osamas rejoice, too.
C'mon Yahoo!, get it TOGETHER!!!!
Ever hear of "don't disparage peoples names"? This isn't a GAME. Just ban the expletives, if anything, and call it a day.
Have some backbone and stop being a corporate sensitivity case for the government. Or, are you gonna have a flexible backbone like in China? Or, is this the United States-of-Ban-like-China?
Osamas of Japan (and, the rest of the world) REJOICE!
It wont be long before they see a reason to ban LogARythm...if there is domestic war on porn... Oh, no, Congress and the prez will NEVVVUR pass war powers to fight a such war...
Previous image word was "hubris", kde blew upon me... maybe I'm being root-kitted? (Even the clipboard cache of my text for the post was lost...)
I beg to differ. They'd be better off with Lotus Approach if they're making adhoc databases. They don't need to become PROGRAMMERS, just to get WORK DONE. It's tragic that IBM/Lotus will continue to let Approach languish in maintenance mode. Apparently, Abscess 12 will have tabs atop the page, something Approach had from inception, and abscess lacked until this version. Abscess cribbed a number of "user enhancements" not just from ms' "study" of user habits, but from other apps that obviously kept improving in the interface.
Abscess is for PROGRAMMERS, not end-users who are just trying to WORK. In Approach, charting is much easier, (crosstabs suck, tho), and reporting is WYSIWYG, not some "band" crap that is counter intuitive. Making forms and dropping fields onto them, and importing/exporting data are a nap. What sucks in Approach, tho, is the limited (but very functional) table joins dialog. Aliasing table is great. But, the repeating panel (a Portal in FMP speak, and a detail table in Paradox speak...) is nice however limited in that there is no horizontal slider.
As for people using spreadsheets as databases... many of them need to be sent to reeducation camp. Spreadsheets should NEVER be used for "data repositories". They're GREAT for forecasting, calculating, and showing subsets of data from databases, but I recently was on a 3-week project to sift thru some 5,000+ records from Active Directory logins for tracking a migration that was to end soon (apparently, theres no AD tool or not at his disposal to manage and monitor and report on/chart all the logins for the domain under his duties...). I convinced my temporary manager to let me use my copy of Lotus Approach to get the work done. I took the hexedcell tables, exported them as.txt, imported them and then made charts, reports, crosstabs, detail tables on forms, and kept him up to date. He was trying to do it in Abscess, but it was demanding he go back thru all his SQL notes. I didn't have to write ONE LINE of SQL to give him what he needed.
Once in a while, when he'd come in and say, "I need to see how many of this, or blah...", I could whip it out in under 15 minutes. SOMEtimes, I'd jab him with, "How fast could you do this under Access?" He would smile sometimes, look tired other times, and concede.
Cubicle users NEED Approach. IT gurus can keep abscess. It's too damned powerful, demands programming for many rather simple tasks, and seems to me to be designed more for IT industry job security rather and making end-users independent.
Maybe, in closing, that is why IBM is uninterested in OpenSourcing Approach. Less to do with licensing or eviscerating the non-IBM code. With all the money IBM has, the could pay off the greedsters from whom they licensed the Lotus code when they bought Lotus. IBM/Lotus could contribute that code which they DO own to FLOSS, and co-share some with Sun/OpenOffice.org and make the two products merge to KILL off any ms encroachment upon Open Source/Linux-based office suites.
As much as ms HATES OS, they'll probably let "slip out" a Linux-friendly Orifice suite not to be used, but to dissuade people from even bothering with Linux. So, IBM/Lotus/Sun/Oracle, please cast aside your goddamned gauntlets and axes and COOPERATE for a change. PLEASE? The best of AJAX, SmartSuite, OpenOffice, StarOffice, Trolltech, Mozilla, etc...Let's DO IT...
Wait, cows CAN use the iPod... Here's a commercial...
"Introducing the new "cowPoddie". Strap this around the neck of your cow, and plug in the accessory earplugs and let your cows moo to the myoosic.
Act now, and we'll include the matching drool cover. It comes in two cow-matching colors. Protect your investment with this.
But WAIT... Call in the next 3 minutes and you'll get a special RFID tag for your heifers and a new "servicing kit" that protects your arms and shoulder from blowback.
We need one that prohibits (and provides for the public execution of) government official and weaponeers providing, selling, or giving access to weapons to people to fight US proxy wars, which lead to changes in the political winds, which lead to the proxy fighters being discarded and left out to hang at the hands of the government which survived US meddling.
Yeh, we could save a LOT of lives, stand better on grounds of "ETHICS" if we concentrate on the ethics of NOT MAKING ENEMIES.
In other past news, the US backs China's bid for coveted status of Most Favored Nation...
Talk about ethics, hypocrisy and other schizoid conditions... all allowed in the name of "moneh"
Anyone remember reading how the US (via the CIA) planned and acted on some 47 (disclosed) hits/assassination attempts on Castro? Each and every one failed utterly miserably and embarrassingly. Some were harebrained ideas such as doping his water supply to make his hair fall out, to make him lose popularity with the people, this being on the assumption that his hair and beard where the charismatic things about him.
Anyone remember that before China's Zu Enlai became a "friend" of the US, the US (via CIA operatives), placed a bomb on one wing of the plane Enlai was to board? Well, at the LAST minute, another Asian nation was holding a summit, and asked him to attend. So, he took other conveyance. His own other plane meanwhile departed with 20 or more people. The wing shredded mid-air over the ocean and the plane crashed, with some survivors. Police from surrounding nations sent boats and investigators who then found wreckage and bomb parts. At the time, in the 1950's VERY FEW nations had the sophistication, expertise, and delivery apparatus to get that bomb onto the plane. The US, Russia and maybe Japan. But, of the three, who had a vested interest in trying the "decapitate the head of state of another nation"?
TOO DAMN FEW "Americans" know of these things, and, worse, too damned many don't care, or are so voluntarily flag-wrapped they can't see the picture of humanity 200 years from NOW, devoid of their own nationalistic, patriotic, whatever views.
Read: "Under Cover: Thirty-five Years of CIA Deception." I bought my copy around 1983 or so, but only actually started to READ it in 2004. I imagine had I read it before going to boot camp in 84, I might not have joined the Navy. (Actually, I'd purchased from K-mart and BDalton and other stores at least 10 or more books about KBG, Spetsznaz, GRU, FBI, and other operations, but that was just to supplement all the WWII and VN, and other books I'd read. But, "Undercover" would have derailed all that "gung ho" feeling I was swimming in...)
Only did 4 years, and thanks to politics in the ranks and backstabbing at the local level, at my second command, 4 years was plenty. I wanted to life: at age 15 or 16, my own plan was to:
"Die in a submarine battle with the Soviets 2000 feet underwater in the Pacific", which frightened civilians and gave boners to the recruiters.
Oh, I do miss the hardware and exercises, but I don't miss the politics. I joined to serve, and defend the country against outside attackers (if the step foot HERE) and to be around some kewl hardware, not to play petty politics of rat out people doing their jobs but who have personal lives that some in the service and government wanted to eradicate.
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Remains a Hong Kong affair. I prefer films/movies with subtitles, and when I used to buy or rent DVDs like crazy when I had more "discretionary" income, I bought or rented imports. They may not be 100% original, and may have even borrowed (even heavily) right from hollywood, but, you know what? There is a certain *something* felt when watching a decent foreign action or love story. And, when I watch them, I do so in subtitles. I never, almost never ever, watch any portion in the English audio track. The hokey, laughable English is unbearable, more often than not, and besides, I cannot bring myself to watch a foreign FILM of a non-English country in ENGLISH. It's not as if it is a documentary or news clip being translated for educational or news purposes.
I watched all 3 "Infernal Affairs", with Anthony Wong, Andy Lau, and a ton of other Asian stars. Each one had twists and turns that sometimes shocked the hell out of me. I have yet or in QUITE a long time been impressed or wowed by anything from LA. I am sick of the hero always winning, the bad guy dying, the male protagonist winning the girl after red herrings, and tired of anything that kow-tows to the audience expectation. Audiences MUST be SHOCKED in order for anything to feel new and refreshing.
I strongly suspect that if ANY "merkuns" who intend to see IA LA-style first see it Hong Kong original and pay attention to the subtitles and watch them 2 or 3 times will feel cheated if they watch ANY remakes. It's the nature of the beast. Just as bad movies often emerge from decent books, movie remakes of decent or great foreign films tend to emerge. As for Infernal Affairs, there's a whole range of history: mob, cultural, family, national, regional... so much going on that you have to see it at least 3 times to get the true tapestry. If IA is remade LA-style, the theaters won't want to lose the screening time to the running time, but if IA is chopped and butchered just to appeal to click-monkeys and time-pressed members of the potential audience, then why bother remaking it? IA remade needs to be made for home consumption where the audience can pause, discuss, and resume-- something you cannot nor are expected to do in a theater unless the days of the INTERMISSION return as a feature of "moviegoing".
Producing remakes, in my eyes, just signals of flagging ability to *CREATE* new, fresh, or seems-original product.
I feel that in order for films like Infernal Affairs, IA2 and IA3 to be well-received here as a remake, the remake might end up being either 100% remade and passed off as "based on a true story" so it gains credibility, and good reviews, or it would have to be re-dubbed into 100% English and presented in the light or praise that Shaolin Soccer and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon were. I like Replacement Killers, with Chow Yun Fat and Mira Sorvino partly because of the actors and partly because of the cultural exposure on foreigners' associations *back home*, not just "my other in New York, or my cousin in Tempe" references.
What is interesting about some Hong Kong action (and other, non-action) flicks from the past decade and earlier, and in a number of cases even today, is that it is possible to put to screen in about 6 weeks (AND at a mere fraction of what hollywood investors throw at a production) what might take hollywood a YEAR or TWO. I find it grating to see trailers-- outtakes of the BEST of a hollywood movie-- that end with "In theaters Summer 2007" when it is January 2006. To see that many outtakes means it has probably wrapped principal photography, gotten a lot of the botched scenes cut or reshot if the actors have the availability to reshoot, and that the screening might even have been done, but some MORE retakes are being negotiated to wrangle out that last, teentsy-weentsiest bit of recoupable dollar based on critics commentary.
I've seen dozens of imports from Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taiwan, Korea... Some being Tube, JSA: Joint Security Area, Shaolin Soccer, Beast Cops, Zero Woman, Silmido, Shiri, Seoul, Ichi the
HEheHEheHE, I MIGHT have BEEN THEENking about Carl SAGAN, Iiiii.... supPOSE.... (or, but, not kirk...)...
From time to TYUM, I PONDER the VASTness and beauty of the Cosmos... I relfect I mean reFLECT upon the BEELIONS and BEELIONS of STARRSSS in the UINIverse....
(Actually, I kinda miss "Cosmos" and "In Search Of"...)
Port SNIFFERS...
I guess they don't Israel sniffin' around US ports (vessels OR networking)... Wait, are we talkin' 'bout the same government that spends BEELIONS on Israel, AND sells them almost the latest in US aircraft? Well, hell, Israels electronics and their intelligence agencies are reputed to be THE best in the world...
Also, IF Snort's "underlying technology" IS open source, then opposing this transaction shows just how much the administration fails to "get" open source.
That's why Google and any other marketing/data aggregation firm will continue to collect records. Assuming they honestly "de-identify" or "anoymize" the end user from the samples of data and information, they will have BEELIONS of pieces of stuff to sell to other US-based companies vying and trying to gain insight into the mind of the average Chinese consumer, maybe to eventually turn them into PROsumers.
But, OTOH, if Google *were* to stop collecting or storing the search data, the US govt would get pissed and slap them with "aiding the demise of democracy".
BUTTT, I suppose Google could come up with a new irreversible meta tagging that reduces the end data to a meaningless pile of bit and bytes by using the queries only long enough to bring back a page and then automatically dump the initial strings that caused the query to be returned as a page to the user..
all they have to do is install packet sniffers at every demarc, or at every neighborhood uplink system. Can't be THAT hard. Google must've pulled a page from Sun Tzu, hehe.. Sure, we'll move the SEARCH data to the US you effing congressional NITWITS. But, did you EVER top to think China STILL WILL get those records, by keyboard, cpu, machine, user and neighborhood.
b rowse_frm/thread/b676a1ccffcbba/f8bad2cf57790dea?l nk=st&q=Does+democracy+contribute+to+stability%3F& rnum=1#f8bad2cf57790dea
e _frm/thread/bd2532046d91308c/5083b3ad03cac598#5083 b3ad03cac598
I imagine China will start biometric tagging of citizens who want to surf. No need tagging all 2 billion, just the ones who surf. But, how diff will that be from US in the good 'ole U.S. of A. being carnivored and mutually echeloned (yeh, I KNOW their public names changed....)?
(But, in the mean time, China needs to make sure they aren't ensnared in some bullshit war over oil.
Does Democracy Contribute to Stability?:
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.china/
And Iran and Europe need to watch their backs, too:
Why bush Is Demonizing Iran:
http://groups.google.com/group/europa.union/brows
Peace...)
Joke used to be if you were an expert fisherman, you were a master baiter.
Now, when these sharks get equipped with lasers and get really good at laser tag, who'll be the master baiter? The human that trained them, or the shark? Or, the generals strokin up and down the deep corridors of the pentuhgun?
I suppose if the shark has a friggin laser turret on its head and it gets hungry, we'll have to update the meaning of "fish fry"...
And, if the shark gets to THRASHIN' round and round while the beam's active, we could update the meaning of "fish n' chips"...
Now, if the FRENCH get in on this stupefying, hare-brained military idea, and THEIR shark tags your ass, you'd be "French Fried"...
But, the lameos in congress (the opposite of PROgress) will get an executive order signed to rename US laser kills as "Freedom Fries".
Well, when the sharks end up fighting each other cuz their FRIGGIN lazer beams keep fryin' up all the fish, then the sharks can REALLY get into Freedom Fries... fryin' each other.
AND, if these big fish do their thing in Catskills or Fishkill, it'll get even MORE interesting...
OK, I'm fried...
Hehehe... image word: dreaded
Sheesh...
I meant to put that under DogDudes' "Support" post. I guess, like Dell, I posted it in a manner that would obfuscate it's availability...
But, wait. Think of all those windoze boxes which keep dropping in price. Dell's markup and premium USED to be nice, in the old days, as it was for the stronger competitors and some of the mom and pop shops.
But, now that u can get a windoze box from Dell for say $450 (assuming you steadfastly DON'T let Dell upsell you...) when Dell would LIKE to get $950, then that sharp cut is also excising (removing) meat (money) Dell or others want or need.
Most-- no better not say "Most"-- SOME Linux users DO know Linux enough to not be a thorn in Dell's side.
If Dell WANTS to be neutral and just sell the Linux boxes, they could put up links pointing to LUGs in the zip or area codes or post codes of the intending consumer. mshaft will SURELY hate that, it would be all about strengthening sales, helping the consumer, offloading unrelated or undesired consumer problems to the LUGS, AND, helping Dell gain better respect it surely wants AND needs.
C'mon Dell, u can do better.
It won't mean Dell is "endorsing" the LUGS; it just tells the intending consumer to go see a LUG after purchases. But, ahh, it might also signal the customer to see the LUG BEFORE purchase, meaning the LUGS might steer the shopper to, say Emperor Linux, or those who sell Linux-ready laptops PROVEN to be stable running Linux STABLY. Since Dell and others are loath to publish their internal findings, the Emperors and other specialty shops then would get the uptake Dell obviously doesn't want them to have. So, maybe Dell IS just playing "lip service", hoping to sputter out the Linux desktop market to a controllable level, and maybe to keep those mshaft marketing dollars rolling in.
Ahhh, there you might have it: ms MARKETING subsidies keeping the hardware makers afloat. The money, like crack to an addict, is too important to just "come clean", I suppose...
An, probably, another problem is that Dell -- like any IT department-- and any company-- would have to retrain existing or hire NEW Linux-capable IT staff AND employees. That would just have baldmer hurling MORE chairs, probably at Michael and crew. I'm sure they don't want dents in their heads and their arms and legs broken...
I didn't hit all the bases, but these might be a few of them.
""Khaaaaaaaaaahhhhhnnnnnnn!" "Khaaaaaaaaaahhhhhnnnnnnn!" "Khaaaaaaaaaahhhhhnnnnnnn!""?
eeps-kali-kammmm?
Followup:
Besides, they've STILL got whatever echelon and carnivor morphed into. All this legislation is about posturing the issues to get the blind public to just HAND OVER to the "government" all kinds of power it neither needs nor deserves.
WE -- not the oligarchy/elites-- are supposed to set the standards for how we are governed. But, we've lost sight, and we'll pay oh so dearly for it. Unless our adoptive uncle bends over backwards to prove we're not descending into a draconian, state-security-ridden hell. Prove, Uncle, that we're not becoming the things you so much loath about China, Venezuela, Cuba, Old Russia, "Old Europe"... -- without politically imprisoning or "rubbing out" those who try to warn the public....
I thought so....
Why in a helicopter?
Why not? I periodically read air forces type magazines and check out the crashes section. I saw a pic of a Russian craft that crashed trying to making an emergency landing. It was in about 7 pieces, each section about only 4 or 5 feet apart. EVERYone aboard died. Why? Like it was sudden trauma to their spinal columns upon impact with the ground. Most likely, the trees it impacted with played a major role in deceleration and sudden breakup. I was mildly surprised that the fuselage was in a fairly straight line. It only looked like the plane was chopped like the ones in the Arizona/nearby deserts as part a disarmament/de-bomber treaty...
But, the typical seats in aircraft have NO meaningful crash survival value, to me at least. The best we're offered it lean forward, rest your head down, and (unspoken) hope the implied compressibility of the luggage compartment saves your ass.
Typically, in the Vietnam days, when a UH-1D or almost any helo crashed, the fuel tanks burst open, the seats crashed thru the broken flight deck, and the pax usually died. If not from burning and debris, then certainly from destroyed vertebrae. Honeycombing, self-sealing tanks (to protect from small caliber ground fire, but not necessarily from A-A fire), and "autogyration" (disengaging the engine clutch and letting freefall windmill the blades (if they were intact) slow the helo enough to soften the crash.
I've been in elevators a LOT, and every time, I ponder the braking system. I wonder what would happen if from 20 floors I dropped uncontrollably. (Thanks to that damned Damien Omen II, especially, when Darian Harewood gets cut in two by the implausible cable...) I sometimes hoped that if I were in freefall, I could at the LAST second (if I could calculate that final few seconds) JUMP into the air, negating the acceleration and hoping the top of the elevator didn't break my neck when the bottom hit the shaft bottom.
Now, if gyros and retros are on helicopter and aircraft seats and in certain types of skyrise elevators, then this could make (at least aircraft) freefalls less fatal.
Butt, I mean, but, we also have a few more openings... one, under the butt, is addressed by the subWOOFer. It's meant to descale your intestines from all that popcorn and soda you consume in your home theater...
... oh hell, why not Gel-Maker 9.5? This baby will reduce your living ass to a living pile of goo right in your sofa. Stand by for REAL Audio Compression.. We'll RAC your real-rac'in good...
We have backs, too, so why not
(Please sign the disclaimer after your purchase...)
Since the current cadge/cabal is stating this is about anti-porn legislation, then Google, Yahoo!, msn, and the others -- if they were smart-- shoulda just said, "OK, non-commie Sammie, this is about porn, right? OK, then the PORN search is ALL YOU'RE GONNA FUCKIN' GET! NOthing else, zip, zilch, nada, go FUCK yourself..."
How difficult is that? Or, they ought to move the servers off shore.
No, they don't give a rat about porn. The real agenda is about scrounging around in the dark to find metadata to help fight the war on ter'rism, a fucking war these blights in power brought on cuz most of us DON'T VOTE (well, cuz we lost faith in the system beyond the local government level, and don't even have much faith in THAT, beyond basic stuff like fire and medical response...)
Sheesh. Just stop pissing off foreigners who DON'T want our money, business, buildings, values... LEAVE'M **ALONE***! Let the current elders die off, and if it takes 50 years, SO BE IT. They kids, out of jealousy, eagerness, longing, whatever, will then get to make the decision. It is NOT the place of US DOD or Washington or the US corporate/elite to MAKE that decision. THAT'S ONE reason we got our asses fragged-- by radicals talking for others without the balls to tell us where to get off...
I guess I 'm gonna get MY ass fragged/bitten, huh?
it in Japanese/Japan, too...
After all, there are PLENTY of Japanese legitimately named "Osama", Usama, and variations. Now, if they attend school in an english-langage nation, will Yahoo! ban THEIR birth names, too?
This is a valid question, since if "All the Callahans" of the world can rejoice, then SO can all the Japanese Osamas rejoice, too.
C'mon Yahoo!, get it TOGETHER!!!!
Ever hear of "don't disparage peoples names"? This isn't a GAME. Just ban the expletives, if anything, and call it a day.
Have some backbone and stop being a corporate sensitivity case for the government. Or, are you gonna have a flexible backbone like in China? Or, is this the United States-of-Ban-like-China?
Osamas of Japan (and, the rest of the world) REJOICE!
HOOYA!!! Any US Marines out there named "Allah"?
HOOYA
A(o)Hlla-ten-HUT!!!
Imagine if Scatman Crothers (is he still alive?) wanted to get an account at yahoo.
Or, Scatter-brain, or "backscatter", heheh
Or, if Flip Wilson (is he still alive) wanted one.
Imagine someone wanting "BatmanDoesCatWoman" (scat)
or,
BatmanIsCatwoman
or
It wont be long before they see a reason to ban LogARythm...if there is domestic war on porn... Oh, no, Congress and the prez will NEVVVUR pass war powers to fight a such war...
Previous image word was "hubris", kde blew upon me... maybe I'm being root-kitted? (Even the clipboard cache of my text for the post was lost...)
I beg to differ. They'd be better off with Lotus Approach if they're making adhoc databases. They don't need to become PROGRAMMERS, just to get WORK DONE. It's tragic that IBM/Lotus will continue to let Approach languish in maintenance mode. Apparently, Abscess 12 will have tabs atop the page, something Approach had from inception, and abscess lacked until this version. Abscess cribbed a number of "user enhancements" not just from ms' "study" of user habits, but from other apps that obviously kept improving in the interface.
.txt, imported them and then made charts, reports, crosstabs, detail tables on forms, and kept him up to date. He was trying to do it in Abscess, but it was demanding he go back thru all his SQL notes. I didn't have to write ONE LINE of SQL to give him what he needed.
Abscess is for PROGRAMMERS, not end-users who are just trying to WORK. In Approach, charting is much easier, (crosstabs suck, tho), and reporting is WYSIWYG, not some "band" crap that is counter intuitive. Making forms and dropping fields onto them, and importing/exporting data are a nap. What sucks in Approach, tho, is the limited (but very functional) table joins dialog. Aliasing table is great. But, the repeating panel (a Portal in FMP speak, and a detail table in Paradox speak...) is nice however limited in that there is no horizontal slider.
As for people using spreadsheets as databases... many of them need to be sent to reeducation camp. Spreadsheets should NEVER be used for "data repositories". They're GREAT for forecasting, calculating, and showing subsets of data from databases, but I recently was on a 3-week project to sift thru some 5,000+ records from Active Directory logins for tracking a migration that was to end soon (apparently, theres no AD tool or not at his disposal to manage and monitor and report on/chart all the logins for the domain under his duties...). I convinced my temporary manager to let me use my copy of Lotus Approach to get the work done. I took the hexedcell tables, exported them as
Once in a while, when he'd come in and say, "I need to see how many of this, or blah...", I could whip it out in under 15 minutes. SOMEtimes, I'd jab him with, "How fast could you do this under Access?" He would smile sometimes, look tired other times, and concede.
Cubicle users NEED Approach. IT gurus can keep abscess. It's too damned powerful, demands programming for many rather simple tasks, and seems to me to be designed more for IT industry job security rather and making end-users independent.
Maybe, in closing, that is why IBM is uninterested in OpenSourcing Approach. Less to do with licensing or eviscerating the non-IBM code. With all the money IBM has, the could pay off the greedsters from whom they licensed the Lotus code when they bought Lotus. IBM/Lotus could contribute that code which they DO own to FLOSS, and co-share some with Sun/OpenOffice.org and make the two products merge to KILL off any ms encroachment upon Open Source/Linux-based office suites.
As much as ms HATES OS, they'll probably let "slip out" a Linux-friendly Orifice suite not to be used, but to dissuade people from even bothering with Linux. So, IBM/Lotus/Sun/Oracle, please cast aside your goddamned gauntlets and axes and COOPERATE for a change. PLEASE? The best of AJAX, SmartSuite, OpenOffice, StarOffice, Trolltech, Mozilla, etc...Let's DO IT...
Apple: Apple to 'Switch' to Windows?
/ 1826257
http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/16
WOW!
Maybe Jon Bon Jour-VII?
Wait, cows CAN use the iPod... Here's a commercial...
"Introducing the new "cowPoddie". Strap this around the neck of your cow, and plug in the accessory earplugs and let your cows moo to the myoosic.
Act now, and we'll include the matching drool cover. It comes in two cow-matching colors. Protect your investment with this.
But WAIT... Call in the next 3 minutes and you'll get a special RFID tag for your heifers and a new "servicing kit" that protects your arms and shoulder from blowback.
Free monkey, pump and instructions included..."
Ahh, moderators acting in FUTILITY. Even if it is flamebait, the guy STILL had the word "Enterprise" in there.
Sheed... WELL PUT, SIR!
Somebody mod this guy up to 5+.
It's posts like these that the Slash rating should once in a blue moon peak up to 8+
His points were DAMN WELL SAID! Concise, precise, and nice.
We need one that prohibits (and provides for the public execution of) government official and weaponeers providing, selling, or giving access to weapons to people to fight US proxy wars, which lead to changes in the political winds, which lead to the proxy fighters being discarded and left out to hang at the hands of the government which survived US meddling.
Yeh, we could save a LOT of lives, stand better on grounds of "ETHICS" if we concentrate on the ethics of NOT MAKING ENEMIES.
In other past news, the US backs China's bid for coveted status of Most Favored Nation...
Talk about ethics, hypocrisy and other schizoid conditions... all allowed in the name of "moneh"
Anyone remember reading how the US (via the CIA) planned and acted on some 47 (disclosed) hits/assassination attempts on Castro? Each and every one failed utterly miserably and embarrassingly. Some were harebrained ideas such as doping his water supply to make his hair fall out, to make him lose popularity with the people, this being on the assumption that his hair and beard where the charismatic things about him.
Anyone remember that before China's Zu Enlai became a "friend" of the US, the US (via CIA operatives), placed a bomb on one wing of the plane Enlai was to board? Well, at the LAST minute, another Asian nation was holding a summit, and asked him to attend. So, he took other conveyance. His own other plane meanwhile departed with 20 or more people. The wing shredded mid-air over the ocean and the plane crashed, with some survivors. Police from surrounding nations sent boats and investigators who then found wreckage and bomb parts. At the time, in the 1950's VERY FEW nations had the sophistication, expertise, and delivery apparatus to get that bomb onto the plane. The US, Russia and maybe Japan. But, of the three, who had a vested interest in trying the "decapitate the head of state of another nation"?
TOO DAMN FEW "Americans" know of these things, and, worse, too damned many don't care, or are so voluntarily flag-wrapped they can't see the picture of humanity 200 years from NOW, devoid of their own nationalistic, patriotic, whatever views.
Read: "Under Cover: Thirty-five Years of CIA Deception." I bought my copy around 1983 or so, but only actually started to READ it in 2004. I imagine had I read it before going to boot camp in 84, I might not have joined the Navy. (Actually, I'd purchased from K-mart and BDalton and other stores at least 10 or more books about KBG, Spetsznaz, GRU, FBI, and other operations, but that was just to supplement all the WWII and VN, and other books I'd read. But, "Undercover" would have derailed all that "gung ho" feeling I was swimming in...)
Only did 4 years, and thanks to politics in the ranks and backstabbing at the local level, at my second command, 4 years was plenty. I wanted to life: at age 15 or 16, my own plan was to:
"Die in a submarine battle with the Soviets 2000 feet underwater in the Pacific", which frightened civilians and gave boners to the recruiters.
Oh, I do miss the hardware and exercises, but I don't miss the politics. I joined to serve, and defend the country against outside attackers (if the step foot HERE) and to be around some kewl hardware, not to play petty politics of rat out people doing their jobs but who have personal lives that some in the service and government wanted to eradicate.