I can't believe anyone would imply Jay Leno is an arrogant, overrated network whore whose pedestrian humor wasn't even funny 30 years ago, and who would climb over his mother's dead body for another overinflated paycheck with which to buy another hedonistic toy to add to his vast collection of self-indulgent excess. I just can't believe that.
"Attack of the Show," "X-play" and all the other last lingering remnants of the TechTV glory days are probably going to be replaced with old "Cheers" reruns. They've already started rerunning "Lost" and "Heroes" on G4. Pretty soon the G will stand for "generic."
This is a problem with OSS in general. Go over to SourceForge sometime and count the pages that *don't* consist entirely of a list of bug fixes. If you're lucky, the opening page might have a brief description of what the software is and does, but often even that basic piece of info is often missing. Too much OSS is written by coders who think they don't need technical writers and UI designers on their project (why OSS is plagued with terrible GUI's too). And that's fine if you're writing for other coders and geeks. It's not so great if you expect anyone outside that tiny clique to ever use your software.
Did you know that Walmart pays most of its employees little more than minimum wage and doesn't provide them with healthcare? We must act now to restore all those mom-and-pop stores which paid their stock boys $60,000 a year and gave them princely health insurance policies!
In the U.S., most prosecutors would simply issue something like a "decline to prosecute" letter (i.e. "We think you did something, but we are declining to prosecute"), which wouldn't set any precedent or really help anyone else.
I'd have a lot more sympathy from the guy if this were at least folding@home. The SETI project is, to put it bluntly, a complete waste of time and resources. The odds of finding a coincidental, intelligent, and perceptible alien civilization that happens to be in the narrow technological window of using radio waves for communication, at any communicative distance from earth, is all but nil. This guy wasted way more human resources (resources that weren't even his own) than this project will ever be worth.
When asked; my blood type is Gemini, my sign is type O, my religion is Republican, my political party is Presbyterian, my sex is Ford, and the kind of car I drive is male.
You don't count being held in a compound surrounded by razor wire and forced to work 16-24 hours a day at age 8 as "involuntary servitude"? Wow, you must have had a much rougher childhood than me.
They probably collected it, along with a ton of security cam footage/phone logs/witness testimony/etc., as part of the 9-11 investigation. The real news to me is that the telco's were keeping such extensive logs of all their pager messages and that they were willing to turn it all over without telling the public about it (which would no doubt had been a pretty uncontroversial action if they had just been upfront about it). It points to a pattern of secrecy behind telco/government interaction that's way more disturbing than the information that has probably actually been shared.
It's like the secret rooms that the NSA has been installing at telco hubs. I think that people would have accepted that if the government had simply told the public upfront they were doing it and said "And here are some of the rules we're following to make sure innocent people aren't specifically targeted" (and knowing the CYA aspect of government, I'd bet they do actually have such rules). As for the argument that this would have somehow tipped off the terrorists, does the NSA honestly think that terrorists (at least the smart ones, who are the real threat anyway) don't ALREADY realize their calls are being monitored?
No, you're not being cynical. People who think that *is* being cynical are the masses who allow these Machiavellian scumbags to rise to power in the first place. To paraphrase what a political science prof. of mine once said: "Of course a politician cares about more than getting elected. He also cares about getting reelected too."
When they develop an actual scientific test for this "disease" (a test that involves something a little more objective than some psychologists willing to say "He has Asperger's"), then I might buy it. Otherwise it sounds like just another cheap excuse for some loser to avoid prison.
Slashdot Mirror
You had a history teacher when you were in Vietnam?
That's very similar to the story of how I was chosen to become a futuristic super-soldier fighting off an alien invasion.
I can't believe anyone would imply Jay Leno is an arrogant, overrated network whore whose pedestrian humor wasn't even funny 30 years ago, and who would climb over his mother's dead body for another overinflated paycheck with which to buy another hedonistic toy to add to his vast collection of self-indulgent excess. I just can't believe that.
"Attack of the Show," "X-play" and all the other last lingering remnants of the TechTV glory days are probably going to be replaced with old "Cheers" reruns. They've already started rerunning "Lost" and "Heroes" on G4. Pretty soon the G will stand for "generic."
How about a nice game of chess?
See if your shower still works?
The more appropriate question is "How do you win, but still lose?"
This is a problem with OSS in general. Go over to SourceForge sometime and count the pages that *don't* consist entirely of a list of bug fixes. If you're lucky, the opening page might have a brief description of what the software is and does, but often even that basic piece of info is often missing. Too much OSS is written by coders who think they don't need technical writers and UI designers on their project (why OSS is plagued with terrible GUI's too). And that's fine if you're writing for other coders and geeks. It's not so great if you expect anyone outside that tiny clique to ever use your software.
Did you know that Walmart pays most of its employees little more than minimum wage and doesn't provide them with healthcare? We must act now to restore all those mom-and-pop stores which paid their stock boys $60,000 a year and gave them princely health insurance policies!
Exactly his point.
In the U.S., most prosecutors would simply issue something like a "decline to prosecute" letter (i.e. "We think you did something, but we are declining to prosecute"), which wouldn't set any precedent or really help anyone else.
I'd have a lot more sympathy from the guy if this were at least folding@home. The SETI project is, to put it bluntly, a complete waste of time and resources. The odds of finding a coincidental, intelligent, and perceptible alien civilization that happens to be in the narrow technological window of using radio waves for communication, at any communicative distance from earth, is all but nil. This guy wasted way more human resources (resources that weren't even his own) than this project will ever be worth.
One universe down, an infinite number to go!
Lucky bastard. You got the glory assignment, while all *I* got was the mission to go back to 1967 and stop disco from happening.
Well, I'm off. Time for the brothers Gibb to have a little "Tragedy" at sea.
When asked; my blood type is Gemini, my sign is type O, my religion is Republican, my political party is Presbyterian, my sex is Ford, and the kind of car I drive is male.
Well, in that case, they made it more like real-world sports, didn't they?
You don't count being held in a compound surrounded by razor wire and forced to work 16-24 hours a day at age 8 as "involuntary servitude"? Wow, you must have had a much rougher childhood than me.
I have it on good authority that the Amish are running a dog fighting ring.
Silly fool, working for $50 a week. Lord Xenu pays *his* slaves $100 a week.
Yeah, I don't get it. As a time traveler from the year 1994, I think 100Mhz is just amazing!
Anyone who thinks they can rely on online stored data, with no offline physical backup or physical access, is living on Cloud 9.
You forgot one:
Have God make the nurses, doctors, and secretaries as computer savvy as the programmers THINK they are.
They probably collected it, along with a ton of security cam footage/phone logs/witness testimony/etc., as part of the 9-11 investigation. The real news to me is that the telco's were keeping such extensive logs of all their pager messages and that they were willing to turn it all over without telling the public about it (which would no doubt had been a pretty uncontroversial action if they had just been upfront about it). It points to a pattern of secrecy behind telco/government interaction that's way more disturbing than the information that has probably actually been shared.
It's like the secret rooms that the NSA has been installing at telco hubs. I think that people would have accepted that if the government had simply told the public upfront they were doing it and said "And here are some of the rules we're following to make sure innocent people aren't specifically targeted" (and knowing the CYA aspect of government, I'd bet they do actually have such rules). As for the argument that this would have somehow tipped off the terrorists, does the NSA honestly think that terrorists (at least the smart ones, who are the real threat anyway) don't ALREADY realize their calls are being monitored?
No, you're not being cynical. People who think that *is* being cynical are the masses who allow these Machiavellian scumbags to rise to power in the first place. To paraphrase what a political science prof. of mine once said: "Of course a politician cares about more than getting elected. He also cares about getting reelected too."
When they develop an actual scientific test for this "disease" (a test that involves something a little more objective than some psychologists willing to say "He has Asperger's"), then I might buy it. Otherwise it sounds like just another cheap excuse for some loser to avoid prison.