"Oh my primordial nature God! Timmy's set fire to the outback!"
"Now kids - remember, when cooking animals, make sure they're dead *before* you set them on fire, or otherwise they might run away and set the entire continent on fire"
"Gee, thanks GI Aboriginal Tribesman!"
"Now you know - and knowing is half the battle! Now lets set that Dingo on fire."
The gov't is forcing you to buy software you don't otherwise use in order to use their services? So in that case, isn't it like having an additional tax to be able file electronically?
I really doubt they spent that much, unless it was to get FDA approval.
I remember reading about one of the Japanese instant ramen makers working on self-heating soup cups a while ago, maybe the mid-90s. I haven't heard of them since, so maybe these are unrelated, who knows. I can't find any references to them, so I imagine they didn't take off.
And MREs are not 'self-heating', they come with a heating pad that you place on a rock or something to heat the meal with. And you have to watch out for the hot hydrogen vapors that come out of it. These coffee cans come with water, and all you need to do is open a tab and wait. It even sounds like you could be holding it while it heats. Saying they're the same is like saying a desktop computer with a UPS does everything that an iPod can do - but I guess that's typical of Slashdot, where people don't understand that convienience is a quality unto itself.
I am a Japanese guy living in the US, and while I agree that the US media can be a bit of a panic-fest at times, I don't think this is something you can ignore.
I think it's kind of sad that you're used to mass murder, actually. I think it's more a sign of cynicsm than stoicness. I pity you that you think it's just "a fact of life" that bombs go off on the way to work.
Remembering the victims is not "whoring" as you describe. Japan will never forget its terrorist attacks on the subway, neither will the US forget 9-11 or Oklahoma City. Hopefully you won't forget this.
I don't support 'AOL', I support *any* ISP, university or network that provides Usenet access to do so without threats made against them based on the irresponsible actions of some on the network. If you want to stop copyright infringement, attack the pirates, not the network.
Your reasoning will lead to the MPAA/RIAA getting my ISP(and yours) shut down because a bunch of asshats decide to pirate movies over it.
Your analogy is flawed, because Wal-mart directly controls and procures everything in their stores. A better analogy is that of a toll bridge, over which some people conduct illegal business, like drug smuggling, but the majority of users are legitamite. Shutting down that bridge because you think it's not right for them to profit off some illegal users does not change the fact that they have no obligation to check every car that goes across.
Guess what, people should be held responsible for what they do on the networks, they should not be able to shift the blame to the networks themselves. "Waaah, my ISP made money off of it, blame them, blame them!"
I think you will find that Slashdot is not the place to bring your pro-censorship bullshit, troll.
Darth Vader: "I am pleased at your faith in the dark side, Beebos of Slashdot. You wish for more of the dark side? Take the special edition Dark Side(r) M&Ms(tm) to feed the inner darkness of your soul, and together we can rule the galaxy!"
Bart: "Don't worry, amigo. Here, have a crunchy, peanut-buttery Butterfinger(tm) bar to make you forget the pain of childhood memories selling out. Aye carumba!"
Leonardo: "Whoa, hang on a sec, duuude! Eveyone knows the best comfort food for a crime fightin' turtle is a hot slice of Domino's(tm) fresh baked pepperoni pizza! Just eat one up, and you'll be kickin' butt in no time! Cowabunga, dudes and dudettes!"
Oscar: "Just do what I do when I start to feel down and think my life is a miserable failure. Crawl into a big, comfy garbage can stuffed with newspapers for warmth and cuddle with a nice bottle of Stolichnaya(r) vodka and soon you'll forget that you're the laughingstock of Sesame Street and children beat you senseless with sticks everyday while laughing, always laughing... *sob* - *gulp* *gulp* Ahhhh, much better... Now come here, Elmo, let me show you some fun things you can do when you don't wear pants...."
Oh don't worry, we'll get these in the U.S. soon enough - except it'll most likely come from insurance companies, who'll give you a 'discount' to let them 'make sure you're driving safely'. Pretty soon, every car will come with one from the factory, and it'll be a crime to turn it off (after all, only criminals would want to be unmonitored, right?)
What Americans won't give up for the sake of safety, they will give up for the sake of saving money...
Ellison had been fighting print pirates for years - this was just the war on a new front. He won and AOL lost. How many people have the guts to bring a suit and risk losing and paying a massive attorney's fee award to AOL? Check the pleadings. There is a fee petition in there and the Court denied it...but it could have bankrupted Ellison had the decision gone the other way. Fee petitions are decided by judges - not juries.
And this is why people hate lawyers. You completely ignore the fact that AOL was in the right and Ellison and his lawyers were wrong to target them as if they were a pirate publisher, instead of as a common carrier such as a phone company.
It's because of crap like this that the internet is starting to look like a shopping mall in a police state. Do you seriously want your ISP to be trying to monitor everything?
Ellison had a legitimate, hard fought, lawsuit for copyright violation. Companies were reprinting his work and selling it without paying any royalty and Ellison had every right to fight for his property rights.
That is about as much bad spin as you'd likely find in a SCO press release. Do you work for them, per chance, gvien that your nick seems to be a rip on "groklaw"?
Hell, even your links show you're wrong - basically, people on Usenet were pirating Mr. Ellison's work, and instead of going after them he went after AOL.
For providing Usenet access.
Apparently he cannot distinguish between a company publishing something and providing open access to a network. He seems to think AOL is responsible for all the content you can access through it, like a television network. Even under the DMCA this was questionable. I am definitely no friend of AOL, but it's too bad they settled this out of court instead of kicking Harlan's ass.
Oh come on, that's completely bogus. Obviously there is as much piracy of anime in Japan as there is in the states, if not a lot more so, and that doesn't seem to stop anime companies from bringing out their products over there...
Yeah, but remember how much of a pain in the ass it was when you had to have a floppy either IBM-formatteed or Mac-formatted?
This was the era before thmbdrives or cheap networking, so moving files could be a pain. I remember there were a few third-party apps just to move files between PCs and Macs. To be fair, the blame can be placed on MS as much as Apple for that one.
Thanks for the link, that took me back a few years. I still have the first issue of PC Gamer, with the Bioforge cover and the Theme Park demo disk. That's the issue that also had the article on shareware Doom, and reviews of Sim City 2000, Myst, and other classic games...
For those who didn't follow the link, Coconut Monkey was the mascot of the magazine PC Gamer, and he regularly appeared in the demo disks that were supplied with the issues. The running joke was that he "would help you, but I have no hands". Another was that he was a game develoer who was working on an long-overdue game called GravyTrader, which would be revolutionary when it is released, but it never seemed to get finished....
Dude, have you ever known any 'activist chicks'? The ones I've known have been fairly intelligent and more likely to be a engineer or businessperson than most girls. Do not confuse proactive, activist types with the stoner chicks...
Although, knowing how to play guitar will get you more of both kinds of girls than being a rich programmer.
Meh. The U.S. definitely has its conservative parts, but I would not say out of hand that it's the "most right wing societies in the west". It just happens to have the most right wing foreign policies of the western world. It's still a pretty liberal place to live in, even in some of the conservative parts. The problem is that there's a large disconnect between American ideals and American foreign policy.
It sounds like you've never even been here, so you should not judge its society so harshly. And yes, there is a left wing here, it's just that it's different from Europe's left.
I have an 4-th gen iPod. I think the interface is mostly great, but they did go a bit too far in the minimalist aesthetic and compromised usability a bit.
The main problem is that the scroll wheel is used to access everything in the menus, while it also serves as a volume control in the current song screen. It means that you cannot adjust the volume while navigating the menus, for example while trying to add a song to the playlist. When you're browsing around in the songs screen and you want to change the volume, you have to go up the menu 2 or 3 steps and select the 'now playing' option.
This is not really a problem in players that have a dedicated volume control, I don't know why Apple didn't choose to go that route. I really like the wheel for menu navigation and fast forward/rewind, but volume control does not need to use a scroll wheel, the buttons they have on other players work fine.
This could also be solved by having a button that will let you jump between the current song screen and the menu screen you were in.
Not to say that other players are nessecarily better - my mom got a Creative player, I think the Zen Xtra. It feels totally bulky and awkward. The controls are not very ergonomic, though I have not used it enough to get a good feel for it.
You jest, but it's possible something like Wikipedia or (shudder) everything2 will be on some future historian's list of sources.
So historians in 2100 will have to wade through various trolls and defacement attemps to try to get what people thought about in 2005 - but at least they'll know not to click on Goatse links.
Okay, technically not a movie, but B5 had some really nice effects for a low-budget TV show.
I loved how the human's PPG (Phased Plasma Gun) pistols on the show would make the air distort around the shots creating a lens effect, presumably from the heat. This was most noticable in the earlier seasons, the effect became less in later seasons, probobly because of the rendering time required.
Also, the Shadow vessel's beam absolutely *looked* evil, just as much the ships themselves. The beam is a purplish, sickening color with streaks, it looks like chaos personified. Whoever designed the ships in the series really got it right, unlike many sci fi movies with gereric ships.
Slashdot Mirror
Did he end the conversation with, I'm wearing boots of escaping! I'm wearing boots of escaping!??
Smokey the Marsupial says: "Only you can prevent outback fi-" *wham* *wham* *sizzle*
Pyro the Aboriginie says: "Mmm, marsupial tasty over fire. More burnt marsupials good. Burn! Burn!"
*sets outback on fire*
"Oh my primordial nature God! Timmy's set fire to the outback!"
"Now kids - remember, when cooking animals, make sure they're dead *before* you set them on fire, or otherwise they might run away and set the entire continent on fire"
"Gee, thanks GI Aboriginal Tribesman!"
"Now you know - and knowing is half the battle! Now lets set that Dingo on fire."
Ooh! Ooh! I'm looking for a job! Where do I apply, and do I have to be as... flexible... as your mascot?
The gov't is forcing you to buy software you don't otherwise use in order to use their services? So in that case, isn't it like having an additional tax to be able file electronically?
I really doubt they spent that much, unless it was to get FDA approval.
I remember reading about one of the Japanese instant ramen makers working on self-heating soup cups a while ago, maybe the mid-90s. I haven't heard of them since, so maybe these are unrelated, who knows. I can't find any references to them, so I imagine they didn't take off.
Oh look, one of the first search results I found is to a previous Slashdot story about self-heating cans, dated 2002. Oh, and there's posters there saying they already have self-heating cans of coffee in Europe, circa 2002. Supposedly, they use hydrogen peroxide.
And MREs are not 'self-heating', they come with a heating pad that you place on a rock or something to heat the meal with. And you have to watch out for the hot hydrogen vapors that come out of it. These coffee cans come with water, and all you need to do is open a tab and wait. It even sounds like you could be holding it while it heats. Saying they're the same is like saying a desktop computer with a UPS does everything that an iPod can do - but I guess that's typical of Slashdot, where people don't understand that convienience is a quality unto itself.
I am a Japanese guy living in the US, and while I agree that the US media can be a bit of a panic-fest at times, I don't think this is something you can ignore.
I think it's kind of sad that you're used to mass murder, actually. I think it's more a sign of cynicsm than stoicness. I pity you that you think it's just "a fact of life" that bombs go off on the way to work.
Remembering the victims is not "whoring" as you describe. Japan will never forget its terrorist attacks on the subway, neither will the US forget 9-11 or Oklahoma City. Hopefully you won't forget this.
I don't support 'AOL', I support *any* ISP, university or network that provides Usenet access to do so without threats made against them based on the irresponsible actions of some on the network. If you want to stop copyright infringement, attack the pirates, not the network.
Your reasoning will lead to the MPAA/RIAA getting my ISP(and yours) shut down because a bunch of asshats decide to pirate movies over it.
Your analogy is flawed, because Wal-mart directly controls and procures everything in their stores. A better analogy is that of a toll bridge, over which some people conduct illegal business, like drug smuggling, but the majority of users are legitamite. Shutting down that bridge because you think it's not right for them to profit off some illegal users does not change the fact that they have no obligation to check every car that goes across.
Guess what, people should be held responsible for what they do on the networks, they should not be able to shift the blame to the networks themselves. "Waaah, my ISP made money off of it, blame them, blame them!"
I think you will find that Slashdot is not the place to bring your pro-censorship bullshit, troll.
Darth Vader: "I am pleased at your faith in the dark side, Beebos of Slashdot. You wish for more of the dark side? Take the special edition Dark Side(r) M&Ms(tm) to feed the inner darkness of your soul, and together we can rule the galaxy!"
Bart: "Don't worry, amigo. Here, have a crunchy, peanut-buttery Butterfinger(tm) bar to make you forget the pain of childhood memories selling out. Aye carumba!"
Leonardo: "Whoa, hang on a sec, duuude! Eveyone knows the best comfort food for a crime fightin' turtle is a hot slice of Domino's(tm) fresh baked pepperoni pizza! Just eat one up, and you'll be kickin' butt in no time! Cowabunga, dudes and dudettes!"
Oscar: "Just do what I do when I start to feel down and think my life is a miserable failure. Crawl into a big, comfy garbage can stuffed with newspapers for warmth and cuddle with a nice bottle of Stolichnaya(r) vodka and soon you'll forget that you're the laughingstock of Sesame Street and children beat you senseless with sticks everyday while laughing, always laughing... *sob* - *gulp* *gulp* Ahhhh, much better... Now come here, Elmo, let me show you some fun things you can do when you don't wear pants...."
Oh don't worry, we'll get these in the U.S. soon enough - except it'll most likely come from insurance companies, who'll give you a 'discount' to let them 'make sure you're driving safely'. Pretty soon, every car will come with one from the factory, and it'll be a crime to turn it off (after all, only criminals would want to be unmonitored, right?)
What Americans won't give up for the sake of safety, they will give up for the sake of saving money...
Ellison had been fighting print pirates for years - this was just the war on a new front. He won and AOL lost. How many people have the guts to bring a suit and risk losing and paying a massive attorney's fee award to AOL? Check the pleadings. There is a fee petition in there and the Court denied it...but it could have bankrupted Ellison had the decision gone the other way. Fee petitions are decided by judges - not juries.
And this is why people hate lawyers. You completely ignore the fact that AOL was in the right and Ellison and his lawyers were wrong to target them as if they were a pirate publisher, instead of as a common carrier such as a phone company.
It's because of crap like this that the internet is starting to look like a shopping mall in a police state. Do you seriously want your ISP to be trying to monitor everything?
For all intents and purposes, it might as well be Ulaan Bator than Frankfurt-am-Main, which is in the middle of nowhere.
I know we all hate Europe here, but we should not refer to it as 'nowhere'.
Please try to maintain a NPOV.
Ellison had a legitimate, hard fought, lawsuit for copyright violation. Companies were reprinting his work and selling it without paying any royalty and Ellison had every right to fight for his property rights.
That is about as much bad spin as you'd likely find in a SCO press release. Do you work for them, per chance, gvien that your nick seems to be a rip on "groklaw"?
Hell, even your links show you're wrong - basically, people on Usenet were pirating Mr. Ellison's work, and instead of going after them he went after AOL.
For providing Usenet access.
Apparently he cannot distinguish between a company publishing something and providing open access to a network. He seems to think AOL is responsible for all the content you can access through it, like a television network. Even under the DMCA this was questionable. I am definitely no friend of AOL, but it's too bad they settled this out of court instead of kicking Harlan's ass.
I think you mean to say, "Who guards the guarders?"
Maybe it was "Who protects the protectors?"
Or "Who surveils the surveilance?"
Or "Who overlords the robot overlords?"
Or something...
But my cat is still here!
"Meow, meow, meooooowr" (please spare this human, he gives good backrubs)
Oh come on, that's completely bogus. Obviously there is as much piracy of anime in Japan as there is in the states, if not a lot more so, and that doesn't seem to stop anime companies from bringing out their products over there...
Yeah, but remember how much of a pain in the ass it was when you had to have a floppy either IBM-formatteed or Mac-formatted?
This was the era before thmbdrives or cheap networking, so moving files could be a pain. I remember there were a few third-party apps just to move files between PCs and Macs. To be fair, the blame can be placed on MS as much as Apple for that one.
Thanks for the link, that took me back a few years. I still have the first issue of PC Gamer, with the Bioforge cover and the Theme Park demo disk. That's the issue that also had the article on shareware Doom, and reviews of Sim City 2000, Myst, and other classic games...
For those who didn't follow the link, Coconut Monkey was the mascot of the magazine PC Gamer, and he regularly appeared in the demo disks that were supplied with the issues. The running joke was that he "would help you, but I have no hands". Another was that he was a game develoer who was working on an long-overdue game called GravyTrader, which would be revolutionary when it is released, but it never seemed to get finished....
I like that quote, "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Luke 4:12".
It seems to imply that, just like I am temped by cute girls, God is tempted to kill idiots.
I can just picture him up in heaven, stroking his beard, going, "Hmmm, I shouldn't... but I want to..."
Dude, have you ever known any 'activist chicks'? The ones I've known have been fairly intelligent and more likely to be a engineer or businessperson than most girls. Do not confuse proactive, activist types with the stoner chicks...
Although, knowing how to play guitar will get you more of both kinds of girls than being a rich programmer.
Meh. The U.S. definitely has its conservative parts, but I would not say out of hand that it's the "most right wing societies in the west". It just happens to have the most right wing foreign policies of the western world. It's still a pretty liberal place to live in, even in some of the conservative parts. The problem is that there's a large disconnect between American ideals and American foreign policy.
It sounds like you've never even been here, so you should not judge its society so harshly. And yes, there is a left wing here, it's just that it's different from Europe's left.
I have an 4-th gen iPod. I think the interface is mostly great, but they did go a bit too far in the minimalist aesthetic and compromised usability a bit.
The main problem is that the scroll wheel is used to access everything in the menus, while it also serves as a volume control in the current song screen. It means that you cannot adjust the volume while navigating the menus, for example while trying to add a song to the playlist. When you're browsing around in the songs screen and you want to change the volume, you have to go up the menu 2 or 3 steps and select the 'now playing' option.
This is not really a problem in players that have a dedicated volume control, I don't know why Apple didn't choose to go that route. I really like the wheel for menu navigation and fast forward/rewind, but volume control does not need to use a scroll wheel, the buttons they have on other players work fine.
This could also be solved by having a button that will let you jump between the current song screen and the menu screen you were in.
Not to say that other players are nessecarily better - my mom got a Creative player, I think the Zen Xtra. It feels totally bulky and awkward. The controls are not very ergonomic, though I have not used it enough to get a good feel for it.
You jest, but it's possible something like Wikipedia or (shudder) everything2 will be on some future historian's list of sources.
So historians in 2100 will have to wade through various trolls and defacement attemps to try to get what people thought about in 2005 - but at least they'll know not to click on Goatse links.
Okay, technically not a movie, but B5 had some really nice effects for a low-budget TV show.
I loved how the human's PPG (Phased Plasma Gun) pistols on the show would make the air distort around the shots creating a lens effect, presumably from the heat. This was most noticable in the earlier seasons, the effect became less in later seasons, probobly because of the rendering time required.
Also, the Shadow vessel's beam absolutely *looked* evil, just as much the ships themselves. The beam is a purplish, sickening color with streaks, it looks like chaos personified. Whoever designed the ships in the series really got it right, unlike many sci fi movies with gereric ships.
But where will his mom live if they kick her out of her son's basement's upstairs?
And can they take people's broadband and give it to me for private use?