I heard once that drowning was a horrible way to die, but my personal experience of it from what I was later on told was a near-drowning event when I was a kid was, dare I say, pleasant and much like a dream. I was seeing cartoon characters in the depth that were smiling for me till someone 'saved' me and I was 'woken up' to my parents' panic.
Maybe I wasn't drowning.
OpenOffice doesn't even have to be better than MS OFFICE. Remember, MS Office is a $multibilion, mature product that costs an arm and a leg to buy - openoffice is relatively just starting on a shoestring sponsorship and is given to everyone for free.
I don't think it's just a question of where he lives, but more importantly where you go and what you watch - "big special effects laden SciFi movies", I assume in a multiplex, that's bound to attract the kind of obnoxious crowd that you complain about. I personally go to watch arthouse movies, having given up on Hollywood and its multiplexes making anything good, and the arthouse crowd I find in the cinema are the coolest people in town.
"Eventually a global economic equilibrium is reached, where the price is the same everwhere."
I am sick of hearing this nonsense. This fairy tale idea that capitalism will bring its fruit to everyone and all will be equal. It will never happen; capitalism creates inequality, not equality. Just look at the US and how the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. It's no different on a global scale. As long as the rich are willing in their greed to screw up whole nations - as the US is doing right now and has been doing for a long time - there will be plenty of starving people who will work for pennies under sweatshop conditions.
I recall a summer that I commenced by indulging in bowls after bowls of pears that were sold cheaply at a nearby supermarket. Unknown to me at the time, till I read it later on in a book, my avid consumption of this fruit caused me to have a candidal infection that soon got so bad the skin on my scrotum was not only red, insanely itchy and painful but was also peeling off. Chocolate too had a similar effect, worsening the itch. I could hardly walk, and on some days I couldn't at all, with all I could do being just to apply some cream and lay in bed all afternoon and evening. Oh and the cream didn't work! Whatever creams I was given by doctors just didn't work for any longer than a few hours and then the itch would all return. I washed frequently, changed underwear twice or thrice a day with each application of the cream, and yet it didn't, despite trying different creams for weeks or months even. Eventually what did work was this one time the pharmacy ran out of the cream i was prescribed and they offered me the same medicine but instead of a cream as an ointment - an ointment is oil-based instead of water-based. Remarkably, this worked! Same medicine that didn't work as a cream, worked as an ointment!
So if you get a candidal infection in your scrotum, get an ointment, not a cream!
Also, I recently had a candidal infection on my side, due to a habit of having to cover myself with a duvet or a blanket otherwise I can't fall asleep. This was fine until this day I showered and then went to bed on a warm summer evening, covering myself with a winter duvet, and woke up with an itch that I know was a candidal infection. Tried the cream or powder, same thing, works for a few hours but then the itch returns, and eventually when I ran out of both I tried some vinegar from the kitchen on a cottonbud and applied to the sore skin. Two applications, and it completely killed the little beasts!
What's the longest slashdot thread ever? (don't mod me down please!) - A google search provided me with no answer, so, in case anyone knows, what's the longest slashdot thread ever?
I really *don't* think the terrorists are using "our own" politicans to accomplish "taking away our freedoms and civil liberties". If anyone is using an other, it is "our own" politicians - who in trueness aren't "our own" but are "owned" by their paymasters, and those aren't the taxpayers - who are using the terrorists to take away our freedoms and civil liberties.
I'm not one inclined to accept conspiracy theories, but things have gotten really, really *silly* lately, that one must be a complete idiot not to clearly see that some people's interests are being well served by terror and its continuity into the indefinite future.
And who told you writing a symphony doesn't require a high level of attainment regardless of talent? I personally would think it a *much* more mature and disciplined activity than passing an MCSE.
When it comes to terrorism the following saying couldn't have been more true: A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears!
- Michel de Montaigne.
If you let your life revolve around an instance of terror then you had made living in terror the rest your whole life.
Goddammit MOD PARENT UP!!! It's been a while since I read something as true and as insightful on slashdot. And modders beware particularly of those who disagree with him in long posts; writing too much does *not* equal being insightful - I say this because I have just seen a long post of someone who disagreed with him modded insightful though on reading it I had the certain feeling the modder either was an idiot or did *not* bother read that reply and examine its content for vailidity.
And for anyone who thinks the US is a free market I'd say you're deluded! You need to read the book "protecting capitalism from capitalists" to understand the concept of "incumbency" and how big business and the rich in the US use their influence upon government to keep things in their favor and oppose the freedom of the market. http://www.savingcapitalism.com/
Hi. Thanks for the thoughtful response. Whatever concerns the US had about Chavez' idea of democracy their sponsored coup was atrociously undemocratic and it fits with much of what they did many times to topple legitimiately-elected leaders and replace them with despotic regimes.
As for Ghandi and Mandela, and particularly the latter, sorry Sir, they both are grossly-glamourised media darlings and whatever they did or said had little to do as a direct effect upon the British leaving India or the Apartheid ending in South Africa. I have respect for Ghandi for his Leo Tolstoy scholarship and think he had good influences to derive his writings from and things to say, but that's about it - The British leaving India has primarily Hitler to thank for weaking Britain too much to continue acting as a leading empire and then the rising of the US and Soviets superpowers as reflected in post-world war II world order. Look up the "Atlantic Charter"; it was Roosevelt who forced Churchill to effectively dismantle the British empire as a condition of US assistance to Britain in the early years of WWII - Churchill had tried to resist and nothing he had heard from Ghandi apparently persuaded him before, and it was none other than the fear of facing Germany without the Americans that made him sign the agreement that suited the US imperial abmitions.
I think Al-Qaeda are tactical bombers. I don't think they would bomb unless they had a specific purpose where the ends justified the means. That's why they bombed in Madrid before the elections but not at any other time - though they could've easily done so. That's why they have not bombed Germany or France though those were equally "infidel" nations. That's why they have not bombed Britain before the elections or at any other time. Now why did they - if it's them - bomb now? is it the G8 summit that's taking place right now in the UK? Is it because Bush right here in the UK?
" It depends on who you think cast the first stone. Based on bin Laden's fatwa, I'd say that his greviances are genuine and meritable, but the action taken was not in proportion to the damage done." - Indeed, America caused the death of literally more than a million Arabs leading up to 9/11. Definitely not in proportion. http://www.commondreams.org/views/090600-105.htm
They're not retaliating for the success of the West, they're retaliating for the inconsiderate interference of the West in their own development, and they have a point of truth in that the US foreign policy in the Middle East has been far from kind. There's a reason why those bombs didn't go in Germany's industrial states, or in Paris' entertainment clubs. Heck, it's hard not to empathise with them at times seeing that the US has not abandoned its shenanigans - Tenet criticised Chavez of Venezuela a couple of years ago or so by saying that "he does not have the interest of the US at heart" - why should an elected person of an indepdent nation have the interest of the US in his heart and not that of his citizens?! Next thing you had was the US orchestrating a kleptocratic coup against Chavez that almost succeeded, and a US-registered plane to kidnap him out of the country, just like they did with Aristide in Haiti where they arranged a coup to topple him as an elected president and send him to Africa - watch the documentary film "the Revolution will not be televized" by Irish documentarians to see how they did this.
Ever since the US's CIA arranged a coup in Iran in 1953 to remove an elected prime minister the Iranians have resented the US foreign policy, and the US has sought to do the same and sponsor despots around the world. Of the $15 Billion the US claims in aid to the developing nations a third actually goes to Israel, Egypt and Columbia - Israel's aid, despite it being one of the highest per capita countries in the world, is mostly military aid that invariably gets used to suppress the Palestians who get pennies to help them with the results of the US aid to Israel. The US aid to Egypt sustains a despot regime and is a reason for Al Qaeda's hatred for the US, given that Al Qaeda's Al Zawahiri - second in command and main ideaologue - was one of many who suffered from its human rights abuses. Equally was Qutub and most of the Egyptian ideologues and later members of Al Qaeda. The Columbian government too is equally abusive and has sought to interfer in Venezuela. And let's not forget the support of the US for despotic oil fortunes and royal families in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Gulf region countries in which many of Al Qaeda leadership grew up such as Bin Laden.
Additionally, most of the rest of the US aid, more than 90% of it, is actually subsidies to US contractors, many of which are in the military industrial complex - which inevitably causes suffering to the poor of the world. This contrasts with Europe that, not only that it gives more than 3 times as much aid as the US does, at $49 Billion, but far more of that is actually "real aid". http://www.actionaid.org.uk/1674/press_release.htm l
Though the US claims to spread democracy around the world, the evidence is that it's a heinous offender when it comes to the real evidence. Even after 9/11 - in Haiti, Venezuela, and other examples the US has not ceased from screwing up the development of the poor to serve the interests of its "special" industries.
It's hard not to empathise with the terrorists given how heinous the US foreign policy has been - in fact, I won't hesitate in saying that I respect Bin Laden for his principled stance for the poor than I care for racketeering Cheney who was responsible for killing literally more than a million of Muslims and Arabs in Iraq and elsewhere in illegal wars and war crimes that you can google for if you had been living under a table for many years. http://www.commondreams.org/views/090600-105.htm
I find this strange. If I'm hungry I'll eat the soil for all I care. In fact, one man in the news lately who was lost or stuck in a cave formation did just that, ate the soil, for a long time, I think more than 40 days, till he was found and rescued. I find it unlikely that the neanderthal man would not have stumbled upon eating vegetables, grasses and fruit. At least he could've seen animals do it and wondered if it's worth a bite.
No, God, Please, NOT familiarity! One of the things that I dislike about KDE is that it tries to be too much like windows - so no, people are only going to get familiar with something just once, but will continue to use it time and again many, many times more. So usability - please abandon familiarity with windows and its problems and focus on usability. We need something *new* - NOT familiar.
Slashdot Mirror
I heard once that drowning was a horrible way to die, but my personal experience of it from what I was later on told was a near-drowning event when I was a kid was, dare I say, pleasant and much like a dream. I was seeing cartoon characters in the depth that were smiling for me till someone 'saved' me and I was 'woken up' to my parents' panic. Maybe I wasn't drowning.
It speaks volume about how Apple is far ahead of Microsoft.
If you've never seen a mad cow before this is how they behave http://www.totallytom.com/MadCow.html
OpenOffice doesn't even have to be better than MS OFFICE. Remember, MS Office is a $multibilion, mature product that costs an arm and a leg to buy - openoffice is relatively just starting on a shoestring sponsorship and is given to everyone for free.
If we can have patents for software lets have patents for food recipes!
I don't think it's just a question of where he lives, but more importantly where you go and what you watch - "big special effects laden SciFi movies", I assume in a multiplex, that's bound to attract the kind of obnoxious crowd that you complain about. I personally go to watch arthouse movies, having given up on Hollywood and its multiplexes making anything good, and the arthouse crowd I find in the cinema are the coolest people in town.
"Eventually a global economic equilibrium is reached, where the price is the same everwhere."
I am sick of hearing this nonsense. This fairy tale idea that capitalism will bring its fruit to everyone and all will be equal. It will never happen; capitalism creates inequality, not equality. Just look at the US and how the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. It's no different on a global scale. As long as the rich are willing in their greed to screw up whole nations - as the US is doing right now and has been doing for a long time - there will be plenty of starving people who will work for pennies under sweatshop conditions.
I recall a summer that I commenced by indulging in bowls after bowls of pears that were sold cheaply at a nearby supermarket. Unknown to me at the time, till I read it later on in a book, my avid consumption of this fruit caused me to have a candidal infection that soon got so bad the skin on my scrotum was not only red, insanely itchy and painful but was also peeling off. Chocolate too had a similar effect, worsening the itch. I could hardly walk, and on some days I couldn't at all, with all I could do being just to apply some cream and lay in bed all afternoon and evening. Oh and the cream didn't work! Whatever creams I was given by doctors just didn't work for any longer than a few hours and then the itch would all return. I washed frequently, changed underwear twice or thrice a day with each application of the cream, and yet it didn't, despite trying different creams for weeks or months even. Eventually what did work was this one time the pharmacy ran out of the cream i was prescribed and they offered me the same medicine but instead of a cream as an ointment - an ointment is oil-based instead of water-based. Remarkably, this worked! Same medicine that didn't work as a cream, worked as an ointment!
So if you get a candidal infection in your scrotum, get an ointment, not a cream!
Also, I recently had a candidal infection on my side, due to a habit of having to cover myself with a duvet or a blanket otherwise I can't fall asleep. This was fine until this day I showered and then went to bed on a warm summer evening, covering myself with a winter duvet, and woke up with an itch that I know was a candidal infection. Tried the cream or powder, same thing, works for a few hours but then the itch returns, and eventually when I ran out of both I tried some vinegar from the kitchen on a cottonbud and applied to the sore skin. Two applications, and it completely killed the little beasts!
What's the longest slashdot thread ever? (don't mod me down please!) - A google search provided me with no answer, so, in case anyone knows, what's the longest slashdot thread ever?
What the fuck is singularity? I've been hearing this word way too much.
A headline with the word "penetration" is just bound to be the "butt" of jokes.
No no no, it's not "bound", it's "begging" to be the butt of jokes!
I really *don't* think the terrorists are using "our own" politicans to accomplish "taking away our freedoms and civil liberties". If anyone is using an other, it is "our own" politicians - who in trueness aren't "our own" but are "owned" by their paymasters, and those aren't the taxpayers - who are using the terrorists to take away our freedoms and civil liberties.
I'm not one inclined to accept conspiracy theories, but things have gotten really, really *silly* lately, that one must be a complete idiot not to clearly see that some people's interests are being well served by terror and its continuity into the indefinite future.
Hilarious! Nothing else needs to be said in this thread.
And who told you writing a symphony doesn't require a high level of attainment regardless of talent? I personally would think it a *much* more mature and disciplined activity than passing an MCSE.
When it comes to terrorism the following saying couldn't have been more true: A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears! - Michel de Montaigne.
If you let your life revolve around an instance of terror then you had made living in terror the rest your whole life.
Goddammit MOD PARENT UP!!! It's been a while since I read something as true and as insightful on slashdot. And modders beware particularly of those who disagree with him in long posts; writing too much does *not* equal being insightful - I say this because I have just seen a long post of someone who disagreed with him modded insightful though on reading it I had the certain feeling the modder either was an idiot or did *not* bother read that reply and examine its content for vailidity.
And for anyone who thinks the US is a free market I'd say you're deluded! You need to read the book "protecting capitalism from capitalists" to understand the concept of "incumbency" and how big business and the rich in the US use their influence upon government to keep things in their favor and oppose the freedom of the market. http://www.savingcapitalism.com/
This whole thing is an exercise in publicity and marketting.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Hi. Thanks for the thoughtful response. Whatever concerns the US had about Chavez' idea of democracy their sponsored coup was atrociously undemocratic and it fits with much of what they did many times to topple legitimiately-elected leaders and replace them with despotic regimes.
As for Ghandi and Mandela, and particularly the latter, sorry Sir, they both are grossly-glamourised media darlings and whatever they did or said had little to do as a direct effect upon the British leaving India or the Apartheid ending in South Africa. I have respect for Ghandi for his Leo Tolstoy scholarship and think he had good influences to derive his writings from and things to say, but that's about it - The British leaving India has primarily Hitler to thank for weaking Britain too much to continue acting as a leading empire and then the rising of the US and Soviets superpowers as reflected in post-world war II world order. Look up the "Atlantic Charter"; it was Roosevelt who forced Churchill to effectively dismantle the British empire as a condition of US assistance to Britain in the early years of WWII - Churchill had tried to resist and nothing he had heard from Ghandi apparently persuaded him before, and it was none other than the fear of facing Germany without the Americans that made him sign the agreement that suited the US imperial abmitions.
"Oh please, then what triggered 9/11?"
STFU you ape. How about a million Arabs killed by the actions of your government in Iraq alone before 9/11? http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0707-31.htm
As
I think Al-Qaeda are tactical bombers. I don't think they would bomb unless they had a specific purpose where the ends justified the means. That's why they bombed in Madrid before the elections but not at any other time - though they could've easily done so. That's why they have not bombed Germany or France though those were equally "infidel" nations. That's why they have not bombed Britain before the elections or at any other time. Now why did they - if it's them - bomb now? is it the G8 summit that's taking place right now in the UK? Is it because Bush right here in the UK?
" It depends on who you think cast the first stone. Based on bin Laden's fatwa, I'd say that his greviances are genuine and meritable, but the action taken was not in proportion to the damage done." - Indeed, America caused the death of literally more than a million Arabs leading up to 9/11. Definitely not in proportion. http://www.commondreams.org/views/090600-105.htm
They're not retaliating for the success of the West, they're retaliating for the inconsiderate interference of the West in their own development, and they have a point of truth in that the US foreign policy in the Middle East has been far from kind. There's a reason why those bombs didn't go in Germany's industrial states, or in Paris' entertainment clubs. Heck, it's hard not to empathise with them at times seeing that the US has not abandoned its shenanigans - Tenet criticised Chavez of Venezuela a couple of years ago or so by saying that "he does not have the interest of the US at heart" - why should an elected person of an indepdent nation have the interest of the US in his heart and not that of his citizens?! Next thing you had was the US orchestrating a kleptocratic coup against Chavez that almost succeeded, and a US-registered plane to kidnap him out of the country, just like they did with Aristide in Haiti where they arranged a coup to topple him as an elected president and send him to Africa - watch the documentary film "the Revolution will not be televized" by Irish documentarians to see how they did this.
Ever since the US's CIA arranged a coup in Iran in 1953 to remove an elected prime minister the Iranians have resented the US foreign policy, and the US has sought to do the same and sponsor despots around the world. Of the $15 Billion the US claims in aid to the developing nations a third actually goes to Israel, Egypt and Columbia - Israel's aid, despite it being one of the highest per capita countries in the world, is mostly military aid that invariably gets used to suppress the Palestians who get pennies to help them with the results of the US aid to Israel. The US aid to Egypt sustains a despot regime and is a reason for Al Qaeda's hatred for the US, given that Al Qaeda's Al Zawahiri - second in command and main ideaologue - was one of many who suffered from its human rights abuses. Equally was Qutub and most of the Egyptian ideologues and later members of Al Qaeda. The Columbian government too is equally abusive and has sought to interfer in Venezuela. And let's not forget the support of the US for despotic oil fortunes and royal families in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Gulf region countries in which many of Al Qaeda leadership grew up such as Bin Laden.
Additionally, most of the rest of the US aid, more than 90% of it, is actually subsidies to US contractors, many of which are in the military industrial complex - which inevitably causes suffering to the poor of the world. This contrasts with Europe that, not only that it gives more than 3 times as much aid as the US does, at $49 Billion, but far more of that is actually "real aid". http://www.actionaid.org.uk/1674/press_release.ht
Though the US claims to spread democracy around the world, the evidence is that it's a heinous offender when it comes to the real evidence. Even after 9/11 - in Haiti, Venezuela, and other examples the US has not ceased from screwing up the development of the poor to serve the interests of its "special" industries.
It's hard not to empathise with the terrorists given how heinous the US foreign policy has been - in fact, I won't hesitate in saying that I respect Bin Laden for his principled stance for the poor than I care for racketeering Cheney who was responsible for killing literally more than a million of Muslims and Arabs in Iraq and elsewhere in illegal wars and war crimes that you can google for if you had been living under a table for many years. http://www.commondreams.org/views/090600-105.htm
I find this strange. If I'm hungry I'll eat the soil for all I care. In fact, one man in the news lately who was lost or stuck in a cave formation did just that, ate the soil, for a long time, I think more than 40 days, till he was found and rescued. I find it unlikely that the neanderthal man would not have stumbled upon eating vegetables, grasses and fruit. At least he could've seen animals do it and wondered if it's worth a bite.
That's because 'oh, you know, Word' usually means pr0n!
No, God, Please, NOT familiarity!
One of the things that I dislike about KDE is that it tries to be too much like windows - so no, people are only going to get familiar with something just once, but will continue to use it time and again many, many times more. So usability - please abandon familiarity with windows and its problems and focus on usability. We need something *new* - NOT familiar.