From the wording in the summary, this speaks to the mentality of the congresscritter. I mean, some right-wingers have this idea stuck in their head that the pr0n on the internet is there for the children, that people are trying to lure kids to the porn sites for some reason which I (nor they) cannot imagine. What benefit is there in that for anybody? It's not as if the kids have any purchasing power! Hell, it's not even as if webmasters can capture some parents income with porn!
"Daddy, will you buy me a membership to this website! It's only $2.99 for three days!"
Valacosa to congress: children are not the "target audience" for pornography!
"I owe you $8, hm? Well, will you give me a $10 if I give you the $2 change?"
This worked on me...four days ago. In my defense, I was really tired and not paying attention at the time. And hey, at least I got an awesome photo of my friends laughing at me.
I don't trust telcos, and have taken to recording my phone conversations with them. If they can record phone calls for "quality assurance purposes", so can I.
Even when I was a little kid I had a low-tech method for copying fingerprints - I noticed that partially cooled hot glue was not that painful to stick my thumb into, and it retained most of the detail from my thumbprint. I never got around for developing a method for copying my thumbprint again so as to have a properly oriented image, but I wasn't that bent on committing a crime, either.
I predict security overall will actually get worse as time goes on, as guards rely blindly more and more on flawed technology and get less discerning because of it.
The Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA) releases the newest revision to the RS232 standard; RS-232-C... Ah wait that was 1969!!
What's your house made out of? Wood? Brick? Pfft - I see you're still using "neanderthal" construction materials. Me, I live in a house made with carbon nanotubes. Sure, it gets cold in here in the winter, but nanotubes are new, dammit.
...mice dont us (sic) rs232 commonly any more.
True, but scads and scads of equipment in factories and laboratories use it - and personally, I'm thankful for it. Better that all this equipment use an old and widely-supported interface standard than go with something new for the sake of being new.
The other standard that comes to mind for this purpose is GPIB, but getting a GPIB card for your computer is a little more expensive than a frickin' serial port. Why add unnecessary cost?
I'll bet the code got re-written from scratch because it's more fun and sexy to write new code than to fix problems in old code - and this time, dammit, it'll get written right!
(I can't take credit for the thought. JWZ says it somewhere on his site, though I don't have the time to find it.)
You're right. I don't really care who you claim to be a "good" psychic. Since your specific examples have already been refuted, I'll address the sentiment of your post.
You're just chest-pounding on the superiority of your belief system vs. those who allow for something more.
Does your belief system allow for the second coming of Christ? What about Moses? Does it allow for a green homunculus living in your head, making all your decisions for you? Just because a belief system "allows" for something, does not make that system superior, as you imply with your tone.
My belief system is based on science. To be true, things have to be demonstratably true. Theories must have predictive power. Conclusions falsifiable, all that jazz. Science is the art of getting at the actual, unbiased truth - and when examined by science, the psychics have failed every time.
I'll leave you with this thought: in the past hundreds of years, science has given us cheap energy, life-saving drugs, and the ability to get a little bit closer to the stars. The psychics have given nothing but false hope and (perhaps) amusement.
"allow for something more"... "bullshit" is "something more", allright. Let me know when you're posting your replies with a computer powered by your friends' psychic energies.
Dude...that's like saying,
"How many people can build their own birdfeeder? Build their own House?"
Fixing a TV requires replacement of high-voltage electronics. Good diagnostics require at least a multimeter, and preferably an oscilliscope...and if you do it wrong the high voltage could kill you.
Okay, you got me.
In my defense, though...
I'm used to having that stuff lying around anyway (yes, even the oscilloscope)
One can get pretty far with electronics just replacing fuses, finicky switches, and clearly damaged discrete components
I was typing really fast, trying to wrap my post up before my lunch break finished
But in the end, you are more right than I. I wouldn't recommend anyone who doesn't know a capacitor when they see one to try and fix a TV.:P
Or even if I want to install a copy of Win98 or Win95 or Win3.1, no longer sold.
...funny thing about that. I still have DOS 6.22 and Win3.1 kicking around, so I put them on a partition on my new computer (as of last fall). DOS works, but Win3.1 will crash with a general protection fault unless I run it in DosBox. I have even older copies of Windows which don't work at all!
My point is, the old Windows interfaces (Win3.1 is not an OS) were doing some really non-standard things behind the scenes, there's no guarantee they'd work even in emulation.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Microsoft VM didn't let you run anything older than Win2K, seeing as support for Win98 just ended...
When will "professionals" realize that Word is not meant for all documents?...This has nothing to do with bashing MSFT and everything to do with bashing the "one size fits all" mentality.
I agree fully.
I'm currently working in an office environment. Personally, I haven't used MS Word here yet - for every document I've created I've either used LaTeX (great for citations, macros, and breaking things into chapters) or Pagemaker (great when you want to do layout by hand.)
Everyone else in this building, however, uses MS Word as their Blunt Instrument to do whatever task they have to get done. They use Word primarily because it's what they know, it works (albeit poorly) and in the end, they're uncomfortable with computers. To a lot of the general population, even an office population, computers are still magic black boxes. I'm not sure if there's a way to combat that fear. How many people can change their own oil? Fix their own TV?
We're geeks. We learn the most efficient way to do things because that is in our nature. Most people won't bother. They just want to get the damn job done, even if they end up wasting more time in the long run.
Funny, I re-installed Win98 on a computer two days ago. I needed it for software to communicate with Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC's). The software didn't seem to work on my WinXP box and it states in the help files it won't work under emulation (So no linux).
Really, rather than an a whole new file system, I'd rather have native support for EXT3.
Yeah, I know about ext2ifs. But I'd really rather install windows on an EXT3 partition, rather than being stuck with NTFS or a FAT32 partition arbitrarily limited to 32 GB. All this makes multibooting a PITA.
(Or they can open up the NTFS spec so I can read/write in linux, but we all know it'll be a cold day in hell before that happens.)
One question I found myself asking (upon seeing the map) was, "Is the `piracy hurts OSS' argument true?" There don't seem to be many ticks where wholesale software piracy is rampant. (i.e. China, India, Russia, etc.)
Now, as so many people pointed out, the map shows vendors, not developers, so the map doesn't actually do much to answer that question. Can anyone offer some insight?
The next logical step: implant the carbon nanotubes into a rat embryo and let it develop into an adult rat. Think of the applications! We could know what rats are thinking at all times!
"Mmmm...cheese."
Then it's just a quick leap to remote controlled rats. That would be fun.
"...this was the 70's - yes, I was organizing orgies when I was 12 and yes, there was sucking and fucking."
But where did you learn such vile behaviour? That was in the time before video games!
*ducks*
(3) The game, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.
But then again, I don't play games for those reasons and likely, neither does anyone else.
There are potentially violent games with serious artistic and political merit. Deus Ex comes to mind. If you go through it and read all the books and newspapers lying around in game, it becomes clear that the game is actually a statement about things like fascism...which I guess is kind of ironic considering laws like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: I am in Canada.
From the wording in the summary, this speaks to the mentality of the congresscritter. I mean, some right-wingers have this idea stuck in their head that the pr0n on the internet is there for the children, that people are trying to lure kids to the porn sites for some reason which I (nor they) cannot imagine. What benefit is there in that for anybody? It's not as if the kids have any purchasing power! Hell, it's not even as if webmasters can capture some parents income with porn!
"Daddy, will you buy me a membership to this website! It's only $2.99 for three days!"
Valacosa to congress: children are not the "target audience" for pornography!
"I owe you $8, hm? Well, will you give me a $10 if I give you the $2 change?"
This worked on me...four days ago. In my defense, I was really tired and not paying attention at the time. And hey, at least I got an awesome photo of my friends laughing at me.
I don't trust telcos, and have taken to recording my phone conversations with them. If they can record phone calls for "quality assurance purposes", so can I.
I would probably call the experiment touchy or finnicky rather than subjective.
Rigged American^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Elections?
Even when I was a little kid I had a low-tech method for copying fingerprints - I noticed that partially cooled hot glue was not that painful to stick my thumb into, and it retained most of the detail from my thumbprint. I never got around for developing a method for copying my thumbprint again so as to have a properly oriented image, but I wasn't that bent on committing a crime, either.
I predict security overall will actually get worse as time goes on, as guards rely blindly more and more on flawed technology and get less discerning because of it.
The other standard that comes to mind for this purpose is GPIB, but getting a GPIB card for your computer is a little more expensive than a frickin' serial port. Why add unnecessary cost?
How would you have done it?
Somehow, I think Scott Adams knows the difference between "lose" and "loose".
Remember: when you spell incorrectly you lose respect - and I will loose my dogs upon you.
I'll bet the code got re-written from scratch because it's more fun and sexy to write new code than to fix problems in old code - and this time, dammit, it'll get written right!
(I can't take credit for the thought. JWZ says it somewhere on his site, though I don't have the time to find it.)
My belief system is based on science. To be true, things have to be demonstratably true. Theories must have predictive power. Conclusions falsifiable, all that jazz. Science is the art of getting at the actual, unbiased truth - and when examined by science, the psychics have failed every time.
I'll leave you with this thought: in the past hundreds of years, science has given us cheap energy, life-saving drugs, and the ability to get a little bit closer to the stars. The psychics have given nothing but false hope and (perhaps) amusement.
"allow for something more"
Oh yeah, I know this is pointless. I myself am a big fan of James Randi. Really, I just wanted to see what he came up with.
Show me a good psychic. I want names. I want solid, verifiable evidence. Who has made a statisticly significant number of non-vague true predictions?
CAPTCHA: "conjure". Yeah, I bet.
In my defense, though...
- I'm used to having that stuff lying around anyway (yes, even the oscilloscope)
- One can get pretty far with electronics just replacing fuses, finicky switches, and clearly damaged discrete components
- I was typing really fast, trying to wrap my post up before my lunch break finished
But in the end, you are more right than I. I wouldn't recommend anyone who doesn't know a capacitor when they see one to try and fix a TV.My point is, the old Windows interfaces (Win3.1 is not an OS) were doing some really non-standard things behind the scenes, there's no guarantee they'd work even in emulation.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the Microsoft VM didn't let you run anything older than Win2K, seeing as support for Win98 just ended...
I'm currently working in an office environment. Personally, I haven't used MS Word here yet - for every document I've created I've either used LaTeX (great for citations, macros, and breaking things into chapters) or Pagemaker (great when you want to do layout by hand.)
Everyone else in this building, however, uses MS Word as their Blunt Instrument to do whatever task they have to get done. They use Word primarily because it's what they know, it works (albeit poorly) and in the end, they're uncomfortable with computers. To a lot of the general population, even an office population, computers are still magic black boxes. I'm not sure if there's a way to combat that fear. How many people can change their own oil? Fix their own TV?
We're geeks. We learn the most efficient way to do things because that is in our nature. Most people won't bother. They just want to get the damn job done, even if they end up wasting more time in the long run.
Funny, I re-installed Win98 on a computer two days ago. I needed it for software to communicate with Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC's). The software didn't seem to work on my WinXP box and it states in the help files it won't work under emulation (So no linux).
Win98 though, did the trick.
Really, rather than an a whole new file system, I'd rather have native support for EXT3.
Yeah, I know about ext2ifs. But I'd really rather install windows on an EXT3 partition, rather than being stuck with NTFS or a FAT32 partition arbitrarily limited to 32 GB. All this makes multibooting a PITA.
(Or they can open up the NTFS spec so I can read/write in linux, but we all know it'll be a cold day in hell before that happens.)
One question I found myself asking (upon seeing the map) was, "Is the `piracy hurts OSS' argument true?" There don't seem to be many ticks where wholesale software piracy is rampant. (i.e. China, India, Russia, etc.)
Now, as so many people pointed out, the map shows vendors, not developers, so the map doesn't actually do much to answer that question. Can anyone offer some insight?
Bravo, sir.
The next logical step: implant the carbon nanotubes into a rat embryo and let it develop into an adult rat. Think of the applications! We could know what rats are thinking at all times!
"Mmmm...cheese."
Then it's just a quick leap to remote controlled rats. That would be fun.
Nice summary. Thanks!
"...this was the 70's - yes, I was organizing orgies when I was 12 and yes, there was sucking and fucking." But where did you learn such vile behaviour? That was in the time before video games! *ducks*
Please explain for us non-Americans what H1-B is.