Using the neoprene bags is a good idea, but for some reason I would prefer having a laptop bag that wasn't so damned absorbant in the first place.
I mean really... It's like a cloth coated sponge!
I set mine down on the floor in an office once and didn't realize there was a small puddle where someone had spilled water. Thankfully it didn't damage my computer, but some of my papers inside got a bit mushy.
It's been a few years since I logged out of Windows at home. Sure, I had dabbled with Linux before, but I was no better than any of the other wannabe's who dissmissively remarked, "Yeah, I tried Linux once. I installed Red Hat but couldn't see much use for it. Besides, Windows just works!"
My how times change... Today I rather dislike booting under Windows because Linux "just works"!
I do keep a single Windows install now... It's for my ATI AIW 7500. They never got the video capture working under Linux. At least not to my knowledge. Otherwise, it's not enough to really keep me away from using Linux as my primary OS. It's a duel boot, and always defaults to Linux.
Meanwhile my laptop, server, and other desktop are all Linux boxes, and I can't see any need for Windows... But then I'm not a gamer either.
Heh heh... Yeah, I suppose to a non-linux user it looks a little like some cryptic casting of runes, but unless you're using a self-inflicted bizarre system configuration, this one actually does work as advertised.
I could have just as easily made my Linux instructions read: "Download, install, and enjoy," but I rather like the nuance of the experience since it lacks the hijacking of your registry to make it the default player for virtually every media type out there, and of course the part where it makes you register your copy ("Please enter a valid E-mail address!"), the screen where you have to opt-in/out of solicitations, the reboot, the uncomfortably long wait while your anti-virus, firewall, anti-spyware, and who-know what else sniffs it over to see if it's got legs...
Yeah... It's instant gratification, and you deserve every moment of it!;-)
If you're running Linux and you haven't tried RealPlayer lately, I'd highly recommend giving them a second chance.
I'll go along with that statement. After I started having trouble with meeting all the various dependancy nightmares of the VLC player, I decided to just ditch it for a while and check out my other options.
At first I laughed at my own joke of installing Real Player... Now I'm still scratching my head in confusion because this isn't the pure concentrated evil I had experienced while using it under Windows.
It's easy too: To make it work under an RPM based distro (such as Fedora or Mandriva), Install Firefox if you haven't already. Download and install RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm (Yes, as root), then download RealPlayer10GOLD.bin into your home directory, make it executable (chmod 700 Rea[tab]) and run it (./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin) as user. Enter your newly created directory (cd RealPlay), and run (./realplay) once to initialize it. Close it, and Fire up Firefox and go try a site that uses Real media.
It works really well, and I kinda feel bad sometimes because I know that it's not nearly as positive an experience for Windows users, and they will continue to bash the format for the pure evil that they feel is embedded in the Windows application.
It's not like this is the first time that Microsoft has used a flaw in one product to sell another.
Actually, that's over half their business:
DOS 5.0 troubles you still? Move on up to DOS 6.22!
Windows 3.11 a hassle? Try Windows 95!
Win95 still too buggy? We got Windows 98!
Did your PC come with Windows ME preinstalled? Yeah, that's a damn shame, but you can upgrade to XP today and start endlessly downloading security updates!
Whether by initial design, or because they just stumbled upon it time and time again-- Microsoft cannot sell a new product unless it makes their old product look bad.
I do agree with you: Whether it's good or bad, Microsoft Charges For Software. That's just what they do. Live with it...
...or learn to live with using one of their competitors. I'm told OSX is nice and GNU/Linux has been a very enjoyable alternative for me.
- how noisy it was (I sort of thought it'd be silent; not sure why...)
This comment took me by surprise, because I alwasy thought they'd be pretty quiet. Exactly what kind of noise do they make? Is it a whining noise, a loud hum, or a grinding noise? We don't have any of these in my area, so it'll be a long time before I get the chance to see one.
The definition of a word and what is implied by a word is not necessarily the same. As I recall from something I read in a Reader's Digest, when the press refers to someone as "venerable" they usually mean, "should be dead but isn't".
I run a web server from home and can see all the referring logs from visitors. Back in the beginning I used to have some joke pictures such as "bigass.jpg" and "passedout.jpg" but as time went on I started to consider the IP laws that could affect me. Those images were removed nearly a year ago, but they still live on in deadlink thumbnails.
It originally started with Google, but I sent a message requesting they removed them, and I'll be damned if they didn't graciously comply! Now Google no longer had record of those images, but Yahoo must have taken a copy of their archives when those two severed ties, because I saw refernces from Yahoo for things like "bigass.jpg" and "passedout.jpg". Imagine my joy... I was getting 404's out the bigass.jpg, and Yahoo wouldn't listen to me to take me out of their image index... Now, after several more months (and several dirty tricks), I no longer am included in Yahoo's index.
Does it stop there? No. Someone, somewhere along the way got a copy of those image thumbs out to every two bit search engine wannabe. To this day I still field 404's for stuff that I know had only been searched and indexed by Google, but has since found it's way via 3rd party routes into corners of the web I cannot begin to fully comprehend. *sigh* It's like a gnat bussing around my head... It's not hurting anything, I guess... but it's still annoying.
These days, I put the content="NOARCHIVE" meta tag on every web page I serve. It's not that I don't want visitors. I could deny them with a robots.txt exclusion to that end. I just feel that search engines still lack the ability to capture the nuance of what it is I do... And these days, it has nothing to do with bigass.jpg or images of drunks passing out.
(Not that those aren't fun things...)
Re:Not a problem anymore
on
RT Linux Patches
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Actually, I am using version 7 right now. Got it as soon as it was available in fact. I'm also using alsa sound since I upgraded to Mandrake 10. The OSS was just dropping out completely on me under 9.1.
Most of the time I don't have too much trouble with it, but it doesn't synch up. Having seen a few of these files on someone else's computer, it's made it all the more obvious to me.
Someone above you mentioned that it was Macromedia's fault, and that may be. With each release, the player seems to get a little better (at least they are watchable on sites like Newgrounds and Atom Films now), but the audio and video still don't line up quite right.
Of course Judging from the mod slap I just got, I get the impression that RT Linux wouldn't be the right tool to solve audio synch problems in such cases...
Does RT == Better Synch?
on
RT Linux Patches
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· Score: 1, Interesting
Will Flash animation files finally have audio and video synchronized? Of course I'm actually starting to believe they are all probably out of synch for stylistic reasons... Anyone else get that way too?
XP never passed the smell test with me, so I never touched the stuff. My PC's guts get completely upgraded/replaced within a year's time, and I never got over the whole product activation creep-out. ("Whaddaya mean you're not going to re-activate me? My files! They do nothing!") Then the worms, malware, bloatware, and other creepy spyware started to rear it's ugly head essentially giving me more than ample motivation to make the leap to Linux.
These days when friends ask me whether or not to get "one of them Dell computers", I tell them flat out, "you'll get what you pay for, you'll eventually find out that their tech support will ultimately screw you, and if you're really serious about getting a computer-- BUY A MAC." At least then I don't have to worry so much about another worm knocking on my server late at night.
So yeah... I'd probably go out and actually *BUY* <gasp!> the OS and install it... I just hope it plays nice with Linux. It would be nice to be able to window shop for software in the brick and mortor stores again.
True. So long as you maintain an attachment to Earth, you must inevitably maintain some kind of friendly and submissive role to a government.
But let's face it- Maybe not today, tomorrow, next year, next decade... It may even take another century, (although I doubt that we're that far away) it will come to pass. Unless, of course, governments across the globe take a very hostile stance against it's civilians being able to "escape" from their grasp.
Those who have the resources to meet the final frontier will probably make it a priority to utililize the vast resources that just seem to float around out there. Asteroids, commits, and other planetary bodies can provide raw resources to enable their perpetual existence free from constraints of some authoritarian municipality.
I'm not saying it will happen overnight, but the can opener seems to be locked into place, and the gears are turning.
All it takes is the success of one idealist to free the world. And while they'll never publicly admit it that thought probably scares the shit out of a lot of people who like having power.
Without subordinates to piss on, they have no joy.
Some people live in a 2D life for so long they can't fathom the notion that there is an awsome amount of volume in space. Sure... Let them have a happy little regulation parade down the middle of Washington DC, but one day... one day-- People will be able to actually live extra-terrestrial lives, and governments as we know them today will no longer have any authority.
How can you enforce laws upon those you cannot possibly contain?
Well, yes, I kind of figured you were hinting along those lines, but where as GNU/Linux is GPL'ed, MS is not, and their code is tightly wrapped up in copyrights and licenses that prohibit unauthorised use/modification/distribution of their code.
Yes, I know that the same could be said of the GPL, but you actually have to specifically get permission from MS in order to use their stuff in that manner in your 3rd party applications.
Now you can argue that something written in VB and is distributed doesn't necessarily have MS's blessing, but it will either use MS's DLLs or it won't. They cannot modify an MS DLL and redistribute it without MS's explicit consent. You can do that under the GPL, so the same argument cannot apply, and if you read your License agreements, then you are very well aware of the difference.
So, is Linus going to put out an advisory that there may be some random explit in the Gimp...
OK, let's get a few things straight: You start with Linux as the kernal, and Linus wrote that... Then other people (like RMS) came along and started bundling it with an OS, and we call them GNU/Linux, then still more people customized those things into distros with additional software written by completely separate entities (such as "The Gimp"), so to make a long story short: Linus is not responsible for programs like "The Gimp" ever!
It's not like Microsoft. The various distros contain software written by litterally thousands of contributors, and Linus is just one of them. He really can't even stop people from releasing modified versions of his own code so long as they follow the guidelines of the GPL.
It's a shame that no one moderating seemed to get the joke. The reviewer cited Mornington Crescent within their article, and even had a convenient link to its explaination. Sometimes I get the feeling that this is exactly how the conversation works here on Slashdot... Your comment deserved better consideration. Perhaps you'll fair better with the metamods.
You know, I actually bought the LFS book, but thus far have been a little shy of actually going through with it. (It can be hard to find the time these days.)
I'm happy with Mandrake, and currently have it on all of my machines, but I've got this sneaking suspicion that it's getting close to the time I need to be moving on to more "independent" forms of Linux... You know... GNU/Linux base, whichever X server is hated less at the time, a nice shiney KDE install, with whipped cream and cherry on top.
How does LFS stack up against Gentoo? Which would be a better long term choice for an otherwise confirmed Mandrake user?
Keep in mind, I'm not giving up Mandrake... 15-30 minute total install times with all hardware being detected are priceless!
Someone needs to mod this one up. It's non-destructive to the electronic components, and does indeed destroy odors.
Just remember to seal off the area during the process, and ventilate it well before re-entering as pure ozone can be just as deadly as carbon monoxide.
Grab an article out of a "real" encyclopedia, and compare it to the Wikipedia article. Do they factually match?
Sometimes they do... Sometimes they don't. Sometimes the Wikipedia has more in-depth material, sometimes it has bogus material, and sometimes it has no entry at all. It's just like comparing two different sets of encyclopedias from different publishers. World Book vs. Britainica. Do all of their facts match? Usually, perhaps... But there are always going to be discrepancies.
Bogus entries in a wiki are hardly surprising, but unless there has been a massive hacker attack, they are usually few and far between because the people who contribute really do want to make that online resource a better place.
And I agree with you that having the wiki updated in real time of events makes it a very attractive resource.
The lesson to be learned is that if it really, really matters, check with additional sources before trusting any one source. This applies to more than just the Wikipedia.
Using the electronic voting system would eleviate the problem...
And this is why spelling is so important... At first I read that as a mispelling of elevate. I think the word you were straining to use was alleviate. If it had been the former, I would have agreed with you. But so far technology has yet to actually show any affect towards alleviating the symptoms associated with stupidity.
Ah, after you mock me for the whole slippery slope argument, you invoke it on the other side. cute.
When you start arresting people over petty issues, it's downhill either way.
Sure, but I can't exactly force you to listen to talk radio-- but by scrawling stuff on public land you can force me to look at it.
Well of course you can't, but my boss wants his "news, traffic, and weather together" reports over his loud speaker radio. Even with earplugs I can't block out that obnoxious noise, and years from now he'll still be listening to that thing. You can close your eyes, look away, or walk along a different path until after this election blows over. Street cleaners and rain will most likely take care of it during their usual routine.
Impromptu markings and advertisements on public thoroughfares are already major nusiances in public areas in major cities.
Major cities attract a lot of major nuisances. It's the nature of the beast. It's why we have suburbs and rural districts. It's always a trade-off: Boring or annoying.
I'd rather not have to enumerate each and every way the markings can be made in the laws.
And that brings me back to my point. It's almost impossible to over-estimate the unimportance of most things. Placing the guy under arrest in this case was just in poor taste. He would have just faded into the past like so many other goof-balls that never get so much as a footnote in history books. This guy did nothing evil.
Wow, I guess you didn't watch the video clip.
I don't watch much TV either. TKG already called me on that one. Sorry. My bad. It still doesn't sway my opinion.
I have landscapers working in my yard right now, and they're using the exact same stuff to mark things..
Must be nice.
they've hosed down my yard a couple times since they put the last marks in, it's been a week or so, and I still can see the chalk..
Have you tried switching to decaf?
I assume it's even worse at coming off concrete than it is on permeable dirt.
Well, you've stumped me there... You've gotta be careful about making these assumptions on Slashdot. Did you ask your husband? He probably knows more about it than I do.
Oh. I stand corrected. The written texts mentioned "street" so many times, and nowhere did it ever say he was writing on the "sidewalk", and it is my understanding that people are not to be riding bikes on sidewalks anyway. Hmmm... That's what I get for RTFA instead of LATFP.
*shrug* Poor you. I'm in poor shape lately, but I can go 15MPH for a long time
Thanks for the sympathy, but I really have no need nor desire to ride a bike. I've been struck twice by careless drivers, and fortunately avoided any serious injury both times... (Although the bikes were pretty bent up afterwards.) It's pretty rare that I would be found riding a bike these days.
The neat thing is, we already have applicable laws and ordnances; so we can go ahead and enforce things now if we choose.
Oh, I'm sure we have applicable laws. We have so many laws, even you might not be safe from arrest if we choose.
If you really care, craft an explicit exemption for children in residential neighborhoods--
Actually, not to be heartless, but I don't care. And these days, "crafted" laws usually come with amendments that usually carry unrelated and unwanted partisan side effects. We have enough laws as it is, and you'll never see a law pass granting special permissions without severely inflicting some kind of draconian restrictions in some way.
but right now common sense in enforcement seems to be working just fine.
Oh...? Well, it could be a lot worse, but I personally wouldn't characterise it as "just fine". Everyone has their own perspective on this. Perhaps it's just your charming personality that grants you preferred treatment when faced with potential scrutiny?
It's not legal for you to stick political stickers on public property--
No argument here; that's reasonable. Stickers can be difficult to remove, and could easily damage the surface when you remove them.
so why should you be able to draw political statements on the sidewalk?
Well, in this case, it melts away when it rains, it's not on the sidewalk, and it's on the street where people aren't likely to be all that interested to stand and stare anyway, and most likely everyone will just forget about it once it's all over and done with. Or rather, they would have...
Is this really so bad?
Yes. Yes it is.
Please don't get me wrong. I think the guy's message and method of delivery kind of sucks. It can be annoying, but so can listening to talk radio. It's just that by incarcerating a geek on a chalk spraying bike, you're setting a bad precident by making a criminal case over something that is really quite insignificant. If this form of message writing became more common, then, and only then, would I feel it would be justified to classify this nuisance worthy of prosecution.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean really... It's like a cloth coated sponge!
I set mine down on the floor in an office once and didn't realize there was a small puddle where someone had spilled water. Thankfully it didn't damage my computer, but some of my papers inside got a bit mushy.
My how times change... Today I rather dislike booting under Windows because Linux "just works"!
I do keep a single Windows install now... It's for my ATI AIW 7500. They never got the video capture working under Linux. At least not to my knowledge. Otherwise, it's not enough to really keep me away from using Linux as my primary OS. It's a duel boot, and always defaults to Linux.
Meanwhile my laptop, server, and other desktop are all Linux boxes, and I can't see any need for Windows... But then I'm not a gamer either.
I could have just as easily made my Linux instructions read: "Download, install, and enjoy," but I rather like the nuance of the experience since it lacks the hijacking of your registry to make it the default player for virtually every media type out there, and of course the part where it makes you register your copy ("Please enter a valid E-mail address!"), the screen where you have to opt-in/out of solicitations, the reboot, the uncomfortably long wait while your anti-virus, firewall, anti-spyware, and who-know what else sniffs it over to see if it's got legs...
Yeah... It's instant gratification, and you deserve every moment of it! ;-)
I'll go along with that statement. After I started having trouble with meeting all the various dependancy nightmares of the VLC player, I decided to just ditch it for a while and check out my other options.
At first I laughed at my own joke of installing Real Player... Now I'm still scratching my head in confusion because this isn't the pure concentrated evil I had experienced while using it under Windows.
It's easy too: To make it work under an RPM based distro (such as Fedora or Mandriva), Install Firefox if you haven't already. Download and install RealPlayer10GOLD.rpm (Yes, as root), then download RealPlayer10GOLD.bin into your home directory, make it executable (chmod 700 Rea[tab]) and run it (./RealPlayer10GOLD.bin) as user. Enter your newly created directory (cd RealPlay), and run (./realplay) once to initialize it. Close it, and Fire up Firefox and go try a site that uses Real media.
It works really well, and I kinda feel bad sometimes because I know that it's not nearly as positive an experience for Windows users, and they will continue to bash the format for the pure evil that they feel is embedded in the Windows application.
Actually, that's over half their business:
DOS 5.0 troubles you still? Move on up to DOS 6.22!
Windows 3.11 a hassle? Try Windows 95!
Win95 still too buggy? We got Windows 98!
Did your PC come with Windows ME preinstalled? Yeah, that's a damn shame, but you can upgrade to XP today and start endlessly downloading security updates!
Whether by initial design, or because they just stumbled upon it time and time again-- Microsoft cannot sell a new product unless it makes their old product look bad.
I do agree with you: Whether it's good or bad, Microsoft Charges For Software. That's just what they do. Live with it...
Currently you only publish your comics on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Have you ever considered publishing a daily strip?
This comment took me by surprise, because I alwasy thought they'd be pretty quiet. Exactly what kind of noise do they make? Is it a whining noise, a loud hum, or a grinding noise? We don't have any of these in my area, so it'll be a long time before I get the chance to see one.
The definition of a word and what is implied by a word is not necessarily the same. As I recall from something I read in a Reader's Digest, when the press refers to someone as "venerable" they usually mean, "should be dead but isn't".
It originally started with Google, but I sent a message requesting they removed them, and I'll be damned if they didn't graciously comply! Now Google no longer had record of those images, but Yahoo must have taken a copy of their archives when those two severed ties, because I saw refernces from Yahoo for things like "bigass.jpg" and "passedout.jpg". Imagine my joy... I was getting 404's out the bigass.jpg, and Yahoo wouldn't listen to me to take me out of their image index... Now, after several more months (and several dirty tricks), I no longer am included in Yahoo's index.
Does it stop there? No. Someone, somewhere along the way got a copy of those image thumbs out to every two bit search engine wannabe. To this day I still field 404's for stuff that I know had only been searched and indexed by Google, but has since found it's way via 3rd party routes into corners of the web I cannot begin to fully comprehend. *sigh* It's like a gnat bussing around my head... It's not hurting anything, I guess... but it's still annoying.
These days, I put the content="NOARCHIVE" meta tag on every web page I serve. It's not that I don't want visitors. I could deny them with a robots.txt exclusion to that end. I just feel that search engines still lack the ability to capture the nuance of what it is I do... And these days, it has nothing to do with bigass.jpg or images of drunks passing out.
(Not that those aren't fun things...)
Most of the time I don't have too much trouble with it, but it doesn't synch up. Having seen a few of these files on someone else's computer, it's made it all the more obvious to me.
Someone above you mentioned that it was Macromedia's fault, and that may be. With each release, the player seems to get a little better (at least they are watchable on sites like Newgrounds and Atom Films now), but the audio and video still don't line up quite right.
Of course Judging from the mod slap I just got, I get the impression that RT Linux wouldn't be the right tool to solve audio synch problems in such cases...
Will Flash animation files finally have audio and video synchronized? Of course I'm actually starting to believe they are all probably out of synch for stylistic reasons... Anyone else get that way too?
These days when friends ask me whether or not to get "one of them Dell computers", I tell them flat out, "you'll get what you pay for, you'll eventually find out that their tech support will ultimately screw you, and if you're really serious about getting a computer-- BUY A MAC." At least then I don't have to worry so much about another worm knocking on my server late at night.
So yeah... I'd probably go out and actually *BUY* <gasp!> the OS and install it... I just hope it plays nice with Linux. It would be nice to be able to window shop for software in the brick and mortor stores again.
But let's face it- Maybe not today, tomorrow, next year, next decade... It may even take another century, (although I doubt that we're that far away) it will come to pass. Unless, of course, governments across the globe take a very hostile stance against it's civilians being able to "escape" from their grasp.
Those who have the resources to meet the final frontier will probably make it a priority to utililize the vast resources that just seem to float around out there. Asteroids, commits, and other planetary bodies can provide raw resources to enable their perpetual existence free from constraints of some authoritarian municipality.
I'm not saying it will happen overnight, but the can opener seems to be locked into place, and the gears are turning.
All it takes is the success of one idealist to free the world. And while they'll never publicly admit it that thought probably scares the shit out of a lot of people who like having power.
Without subordinates to piss on, they have no joy.
Some people live in a 2D life for so long they can't fathom the notion that there is an awsome amount of volume in space. Sure... Let them have a happy little regulation parade down the middle of Washington DC, but one day... one day-- People will be able to actually live extra-terrestrial lives, and governments as we know them today will no longer have any authority.
How can you enforce laws upon those you cannot possibly contain?
Yes, I know that the same could be said of the GPL, but you actually have to specifically get permission from MS in order to use their stuff in that manner in your 3rd party applications.
Now you can argue that something written in VB and is distributed doesn't necessarily have MS's blessing, but it will either use MS's DLLs or it won't. They cannot modify an MS DLL and redistribute it without MS's explicit consent. You can do that under the GPL, so the same argument cannot apply, and if you read your License agreements, then you are very well aware of the difference.
OK, let's get a few things straight: You start with Linux as the kernal, and Linus wrote that... Then other people (like RMS) came along and started bundling it with an OS, and we call them GNU/Linux, then still more people customized those things into distros with additional software written by completely separate entities (such as "The Gimp"), so to make a long story short: Linus is not responsible for programs like "The Gimp" ever!
It's not like Microsoft. The various distros contain software written by litterally thousands of contributors, and Linus is just one of them. He really can't even stop people from releasing modified versions of his own code so long as they follow the guidelines of the GPL.
(Score:0, Flamebait)
It's a shame that no one moderating seemed to get the joke. The reviewer cited Mornington Crescent within their article, and even had a convenient link to its explaination. Sometimes I get the feeling that this is exactly how the conversation works here on Slashdot... Your comment deserved better consideration. Perhaps you'll fair better with the metamods.
Helloooooo! It's MicroSoft. It's what they've been doing since they started releasing "Windows".
Suffice to say it's a painfully dreadful idea, but they can call it whatever they like. I'll still call mine "home built" and "running Linux".
I'm happy with Mandrake, and currently have it on all of my machines, but I've got this sneaking suspicion that it's getting close to the time I need to be moving on to more "independent" forms of Linux... You know... GNU/Linux base, whichever X server is hated less at the time, a nice shiney KDE install, with whipped cream and cherry on top.
How does LFS stack up against Gentoo? Which would be a better long term choice for an otherwise confirmed Mandrake user?
Keep in mind, I'm not giving up Mandrake... 15-30 minute total install times with all hardware being detected are priceless!
Just remember to seal off the area during the process, and ventilate it well before re-entering as pure ozone can be just as deadly as carbon monoxide.
Sometimes they do... Sometimes they don't. Sometimes the Wikipedia has more in-depth material, sometimes it has bogus material, and sometimes it has no entry at all. It's just like comparing two different sets of encyclopedias from different publishers. World Book vs. Britainica. Do all of their facts match? Usually, perhaps... But there are always going to be discrepancies.
Bogus entries in a wiki are hardly surprising, but unless there has been a massive hacker attack, they are usually few and far between because the people who contribute really do want to make that online resource a better place.
And I agree with you that having the wiki updated in real time of events makes it a very attractive resource.
The lesson to be learned is that if it really, really matters, check with additional sources before trusting any one source. This applies to more than just the Wikipedia.
And this is why spelling is so important... At first I read that as a mispelling of elevate. I think the word you were straining to use was alleviate. If it had been the former, I would have agreed with you. But so far technology has yet to actually show any affect towards alleviating the symptoms associated with stupidity.
When you start arresting people over petty issues, it's downhill either way.
Sure, but I can't exactly force you to listen to talk radio-- but by scrawling stuff on public land you can force me to look at it.
Well of course you can't, but my boss wants his "news, traffic, and weather together" reports over his loud speaker radio. Even with earplugs I can't block out that obnoxious noise, and years from now he'll still be listening to that thing. You can close your eyes, look away, or walk along a different path until after this election blows over. Street cleaners and rain will most likely take care of it during their usual routine.
Impromptu markings and advertisements on public thoroughfares are already major nusiances in public areas in major cities.
Major cities attract a lot of major nuisances. It's the nature of the beast. It's why we have suburbs and rural districts. It's always a trade-off: Boring or annoying.
I'd rather not have to enumerate each and every way the markings can be made in the laws.
And that brings me back to my point. It's almost impossible to over-estimate the unimportance of most things. Placing the guy under arrest in this case was just in poor taste. He would have just faded into the past like so many other goof-balls that never get so much as a footnote in history books. This guy did nothing evil.
Wow, I guess you didn't watch the video clip.
I don't watch much TV either. TKG already called me on that one. Sorry. My bad. It still doesn't sway my opinion.
I have landscapers working in my yard right now, and they're using the exact same stuff to mark things..
Must be nice.
they've hosed down my yard a couple times since they put the last marks in, it's been a week or so, and I still can see the chalk..
Have you tried switching to decaf?
I assume it's even worse at coming off concrete than it is on permeable dirt.
Well, you've stumped me there... You've gotta be careful about making these assumptions on Slashdot. Did you ask your husband? He probably knows more about it than I do.
Thanks for the sympathy, but I really have no need nor desire to ride a bike. I've been struck twice by careless drivers, and fortunately avoided any serious injury both times... (Although the bikes were pretty bent up afterwards.) It's pretty rare that I would be found riding a bike these days.
The neat thing is, we already have applicable laws and ordnances; so we can go ahead and enforce things now if we choose.
Oh, I'm sure we have applicable laws. We have so many laws, even you might not be safe from arrest if we choose.
If you really care, craft an explicit exemption for children in residential neighborhoods--
Actually, not to be heartless, but I don't care. And these days, "crafted" laws usually come with amendments that usually carry unrelated and unwanted partisan side effects. We have enough laws as it is, and you'll never see a law pass granting special permissions without severely inflicting some kind of draconian restrictions in some way.
but right now common sense in enforcement seems to be working just fine.
Oh...? Well, it could be a lot worse, but I personally wouldn't characterise it as "just fine". Everyone has their own perspective on this. Perhaps it's just your charming personality that grants you preferred treatment when faced with potential scrutiny?
It's not legal for you to stick political stickers on public property--
No argument here; that's reasonable. Stickers can be difficult to remove, and could easily damage the surface when you remove them.
so why should you be able to draw political statements on the sidewalk?
Well, in this case, it melts away when it rains, it's not on the sidewalk, and it's on the street where people aren't likely to be all that interested to stand and stare anyway, and most likely everyone will just forget about it once it's all over and done with. Or rather, they would have...
Is this really so bad?
Yes. Yes it is.
Please don't get me wrong. I think the guy's message and method of delivery kind of sucks. It can be annoying, but so can listening to talk radio. It's just that by incarcerating a geek on a chalk spraying bike, you're setting a bad precident by making a criminal case over something that is really quite insignificant. If this form of message writing became more common, then, and only then, would I feel it would be justified to classify this nuisance worthy of prosecution.