This is getting offtopic, but I gotta agree with you. The Konq shortcut ability fucking *rocks*. I secretly scoff at my friends who actually have to go to Google's or Wikipedia's main page in order to carry out a search now.
Cheaper drugs from Canada aren't the solution to this particular problem. Putting a leash on the drug companies in the USA is the solution to this particular problem.
Absolutely. I'm a Canadian, and while I sympathize with Americans who can't afford the medication they need, there's a part of me that just wants to yell "Clean up your own backyard!" The pharmaceutical companies are starting to put more pressure on the Canadian government now to raise drug prices domestically because so many Americans are taking advantage of our lower prices. I'd be happy to share what we have with our southern neighbours, but not if the price is the viability of our own health system.
Buying Canadian drugs is just a band-aid. It doesn't even begin to address the fundamental problem.
I really think that the only people who consistently make money off of spam are the people who sell the tools of the trade to the spammers -- ie the people who sell e-mail lists, rent proxies, etc.
But so-called "common sense" is what led people to think that the earth was flat, or that the sun circled the earth. Look up in the sky -- what does it look like?
What common sense tells you is often what needs to be the most rigorously questioned. This is true not only for science, but the humanities as well. Moreover, common sense *changes* over time -- it is historically determined and cannot be relied on.
Plan 9 has a distinct plot - well, several, of sorts, that don't actually mesh that well - but "Glen or Glenda?" doesn't seem to. It's one of those films that genuinely defies description
Absolutely. "Pull the string! PULL THE STRING!" I have no idea what Lugosi was supposed to be doing.
These people *do* wait for the cheques to clear. The problem is that a bank will try to clear a cheque as quickly as possible, usually within a few days. But it can take over a month for them to actually contact the foreign bank where the cheque came from, send over all the documents (almost none of this can be done electronically), and so on. So what happens is, a person deposits a cheque; a few days later the money shows up in their account, and they think "Great, it cleared!" when it actuality it hasn't yet; and then a month or more later the bank goes "Whoops!" and takes the amount of the cheque out of your account, leaving the victim to cover the difference.
If the Nigerian government actually prosecuted scammers, 419er would have no reason to exist. The Nigerian government is incredibly corrupt, and actual prosecutions under the 419 code are almost non-existant. If you report a scam, all that is likely to happen is that the the police will try to hit the scammers up for a cut.
No, actually, if you look at seperatist rhetoric, it is full of comments about "closer ties" to the US and the such. Also, historically, seperatist movements have been closely related to annexation movements.
"Postmodernism"? Get back to me in 30 years, meaningless otherwise.
The first, besides the straight-forward definition you give above, also has a pretty specific technical meaning in contemporary philosophy (which was defined by Derrida!). This latter meaning of the word was what I was referring to. Sorry if that wasn't obvious enough.
Your author-of-the-week may have different ideas, but if you have the purpose of using words to communicate
My point exactly. Thanks. Throwing terms around casually without thinking about what they actually mean (in the context they are being used!) dilutes the value of the word so that it becomes meaningless. That was what I was trying to point out to the original poster.
I always get a little confused by people calling others "pretentious twits" in situations like this. Since this is/., I'll assume you work with computers (if you don't, nothing really changes, just the details). "Memory" has specific connotations when you're talking about computers. If you hear someone talking about computer memory, would you attempt to correct them and tell them that they are using that word in a a non-traditional way? I'm pretty sure the etymology of the word doesn't have anything to do with RAM, after all. Would you call them pretentious twits for trying to "posture themselves" by using a technical jargon? No, that would be idiocy. Would you go up to a scientist and call them pretentious twits for using the word "charm" to describe a quantum property? I mean, stick with English, right?
On the other hand, if someone was talking about computers, and used "memory" to refer to hard-drive space, you might correct them. Because they would be using the word incorrectly for the context.
Anyways, whatever. The original poster used the word postmodern in a sense that was completely meaningless. That was all I was trying to point out.
Note that I didn't attempt to offer my own definition! I've read a fair amount on the subject, though (primarily Jameson and Lyotard, as well as other authors that many would consider to be postmodern themselves), and I still feel it's a word that must be used very cautiously. It just bugs me when people bandy it about as some sort of catch-all pseudo-intellectual buzzword. Ditto for "deconstruct." If I had a dime for every fool who throws that around without having read a word of Derrida I'd be a rich man...
Then again, we risk the possibility that there will be haves and have nots.
I don't think this is a possibility, but the reality. The poor of the planet don't even have access to clean drinking water -- if we can't even guarantee that, what are the chances bleeding edge tech like this will *ever* be available to everyone? Until something as basic as this changes, I don't see any way that the corporations that develop this technology will use nanotech in an egalitarian manner. Class will not only be marked by wealth and power, but by the body itself.
I think that's one of the main points of the ECHELON as it is set up -- they don't need warrants. Each participating country spies on the citizens of the other participating countries, along with lots of winks and nudges.
I just recently switched full-time to OOo -- about three months ago, when I switched to Linux. Compatability with MS Word did scare me, because though I'm not a professional, I am a grad student in humanities who needs to share plenty of.docs with professors and other students. But so far I haven't had *any* problems at all. The other day I wrote up a file in OOo, saved it as a.doc, and sent it to a prof. He edited it in Word and sent it back to me -- all of his edits were correctly colour coded, striken out, etc. I was overjoyed.
So, happy birthday, OOo! Many more! You've helped make the fabled "Linux on the Desktop" a realistic option for this non-technical user!
...crap like this would help companies realize how messed up the patent situation in the US is right now. Unfortunately, it will probably only increase their zeal for patents and patent-related lawsuits, so that while they might lose a confrontation like this from time to time, they'll also be able to win some.
...and governments as we know them today will no longer have any authority.
Sure, as long as these people who are living a "3D" life are completely economically and materially self-reliant from Earth. It will be a long time yet before real space worthy vessels require anything less than massive amounts of capital to produce. This capital can only be amassed by governments or large private organizations -- *that's* how the Earth will contain people. Not to mention food and energy -- until a spacefaring class is able to be completely self-sufficient for consumbles such as these, they will be at the mercy of Earth governments and organizations.
I mean, isn't it kind of a *good* idea to have some regulatory oversight whenever giant rockets and both private and public safety is involved? Would you *really* want the government to not regulate, say, aircraft and cars at all?
Sometimes this "when will the gubbmint get off our backs!" mentality just strikes me as being too dogmatic, not too mention simplistic. Besides, oversight like this can be a *good* thing for the companies involved. Establishing trusted, industry-wide standards for safety can go a long way towards legitimizing a new industry in the eyes of the public.
Oh, that's not really fair. Have you read his "Get a Life"? Contempt is the last word I would use to describe his feelings towards his fans. (The book title is mocking his (in)famous joke on SNL, btw.)
Slashdot Mirror
This is getting offtopic, but I gotta agree with you. The Konq shortcut ability fucking *rocks*. I secretly scoff at my friends who actually have to go to Google's or Wikipedia's main page in order to carry out a search now.
Absolutely. I'm a Canadian, and while I sympathize with Americans who can't afford the medication they need, there's a part of me that just wants to yell "Clean up your own backyard!" The pharmaceutical companies are starting to put more pressure on the Canadian government now to raise drug prices domestically because so many Americans are taking advantage of our lower prices. I'd be happy to share what we have with our southern neighbours, but not if the price is the viability of our own health system.
Buying Canadian drugs is just a band-aid. It doesn't even begin to address the fundamental problem.
Where do you think buzzwords go to die?
I really think that the only people who consistently make money off of spam are the people who sell the tools of the trade to the spammers -- ie the people who sell e-mail lists, rent proxies, etc.
But where does that leave people who use WebTV?
But so-called "common sense" is what led people to think that the earth was flat, or that the sun circled the earth. Look up in the sky -- what does it look like?
What common sense tells you is often what needs to be the most rigorously questioned. This is true not only for science, but the humanities as well. Moreover, common sense *changes* over time -- it is historically determined and cannot be relied on.
Absolutely. "Pull the string! PULL THE STRING!" I have no idea what Lugosi was supposed to be doing.
These people *do* wait for the cheques to clear. The problem is that a bank will try to clear a cheque as quickly as possible, usually within a few days. But it can take over a month for them to actually contact the foreign bank where the cheque came from, send over all the documents (almost none of this can be done electronically), and so on. So what happens is, a person deposits a cheque; a few days later the money shows up in their account, and they think "Great, it cleared!" when it actuality it hasn't yet; and then a month or more later the bank goes "Whoops!" and takes the amount of the cheque out of your account, leaving the victim to cover the difference.
If the Nigerian government actually prosecuted scammers, 419er would have no reason to exist. The Nigerian government is incredibly corrupt, and actual prosecutions under the 419 code are almost non-existant. If you report a scam, all that is likely to happen is that the the police will try to hit the scammers up for a cut.
I know, I know, it makes no fucking sense at all.
"Postmodernism"? Get back to me in 30 years, meaningless otherwise.
The first, besides the straight-forward definition you give above, also has a pretty specific technical meaning in contemporary philosophy (which was defined by Derrida!). This latter meaning of the word was what I was referring to. Sorry if that wasn't obvious enough.
Your author-of-the-week may have different ideas, but if you have the purpose of using words to communicate
My point exactly. Thanks. Throwing terms around casually without thinking about what they actually mean (in the context they are being used!) dilutes the value of the word so that it becomes meaningless. That was what I was trying to point out to the original poster.
I always get a little confused by people calling others "pretentious twits" in situations like this. Since this is /., I'll assume you work with computers (if you don't, nothing really changes, just the details). "Memory" has specific connotations when you're talking about computers. If you hear someone talking about computer memory, would you attempt to correct them and tell them that they are using that word in a a non-traditional way? I'm pretty sure the etymology of the word doesn't have anything to do with RAM, after all. Would you call them pretentious twits for trying to "posture themselves" by using a technical jargon? No, that would be idiocy. Would you go up to a scientist and call them pretentious twits for using the word "charm" to describe a quantum property? I mean, stick with English, right?
On the other hand, if someone was talking about computers, and used "memory" to refer to hard-drive space, you might correct them. Because they would be using the word incorrectly for the context.
Anyways, whatever. The original poster used the word postmodern in a sense that was completely meaningless. That was all I was trying to point out.
Note that I didn't attempt to offer my own definition! I've read a fair amount on the subject, though (primarily Jameson and Lyotard, as well as other authors that many would consider to be postmodern themselves), and I still feel it's a word that must be used very cautiously. It just bugs me when people bandy it about as some sort of catch-all pseudo-intellectual buzzword. Ditto for "deconstruct." If I had a dime for every fool who throws that around without having read a word of Derrida I'd be a rich man...
I don't think you have any idea what the word "post-modern" means.
I don't think this is a possibility, but the reality. The poor of the planet don't even have access to clean drinking water -- if we can't even guarantee that, what are the chances bleeding edge tech like this will *ever* be available to everyone? Until something as basic as this changes, I don't see any way that the corporations that develop this technology will use nanotech in an egalitarian manner. Class will not only be marked by wealth and power, but by the body itself.
I think that's one of the main points of the ECHELON as it is set up -- they don't need warrants. Each participating country spies on the citizens of the other participating countries, along with lots of winks and nudges.
Gates: "We're big believers in interoperability."
I think "fiefdom" is a more appropriate word.
So, happy birthday, OOo! Many more! You've helped make the fabled "Linux on the Desktop" a realistic option for this non-technical user!
...hmm, I think I see your point, though YMMV.
...crap like this would help companies realize how messed up the patent situation in the US is right now. Unfortunately, it will probably only increase their zeal for patents and patent-related lawsuits, so that while they might lose a confrontation like this from time to time, they'll also be able to win some.
Sure, as long as these people who are living a "3D" life are completely economically and materially self-reliant from Earth. It will be a long time yet before real space worthy vessels require anything less than massive amounts of capital to produce. This capital can only be amassed by governments or large private organizations -- *that's* how the Earth will contain people. Not to mention food and energy -- until a spacefaring class is able to be completely self-sufficient for consumbles such as these, they will be at the mercy of Earth governments and organizations.
Sometimes this "when will the gubbmint get off our backs!" mentality just strikes me as being too dogmatic, not too mention simplistic. Besides, oversight like this can be a *good* thing for the companies involved. Establishing trusted, industry-wide standards for safety can go a long way towards legitimizing a new industry in the eyes of the public.
One small step at a time...
Easy to say when it's not your country that was invaded. Easy to say when it's thousands of non-American civilians that are paying the price.
Oh, that's not really fair. Have you read his "Get a Life"? Contempt is the last word I would use to describe his feelings towards his fans. (The book title is mocking his (in)famous joke on SNL, btw.)