I agree with this. If they want to place legal restrictions on us, it's fully reasonable for us to impose restrictions on them in return. When they complain about it, someone in power should point out that it's only fair, and they always have the option of asking for the DCMA to be repealed.
I'm not exactly sure if I agree... Personally, I figure copyright protection is extended to the works already. If they want to put their own use prevention schemes on them, then they should forfeit copyright protections. After all, obviously they don't think copyright's good enough for them. Let them fight it out on a case by case basis, and if anyone *does* manage to crack the protections, make sure they don't have a legal leg to stand on.
Loved the ending too. Don't care what everyone else thinks.
I heartily agree, except for one thing... I think the scene would've worked better under or after the credits. I think it really felt tacked on, and would've worked better as part of the credit roll.
'Fantasy' has no appeal for me, but I don't see that as being an 'unfortunately'. 'Fantasy' is departure from realism to satisfy the participants/viewers of a particular medium. Fantasy is designed solely for entertainment purposes, and is not very constructive.
"Unfortunately", here, has a subjective quality to it. What I find unfortunate I can entirely understand someone else not finding unfortunate. The grounding in reality that you speak of seems to me to result in a person who cannot appreciate art simply for art's sake. Art for art's sake is, objectively speaking, rarely constructive. I find, however, that letting my mind escape into the realm of the fantastical gives me a different outlook on things, and if nothing else, the mere entertainment value relaxes me. Therefore, while not classically constructive, it does have a positive effect on me.
Also, I should add, you refer to Star Trek as fantasy but not fantasy, since scientists were led by their ideas and reached similar conclusions. Before the scientists started their work and truly became interested, was it fantasy, or was it still on the not-fantasy fringe? If scientists hadn't reached those conclusions yet, would you still find them interesting?
Good fantasy, regardless of what fantastical element is employed, are self consistent. The better ones are far more self consistent than Star Trek, and in their own way have a sort of realism. Defining that line between what's an acceptable stretch of what we understand to be real and what's too far will always be a grey area, disagreed upon by anyone who cares to discuss it.
MySQL can execute very simple queries very quickly, but for complex database tasks - which need things like a proper SQL parser, stored procedures and triggers, check constraints, etc.
And just to add my $0.02, it also is in desparate need of subqueries. I can't do WHERE x IN ( SELECT y FROM foo WHERE x=z ) for example. Granted, that's a trivial case that can be reduced to a simple SQL statement, but the subselect functionality is of critical importance in some SQL queries, especially since you can't emulate them with an outer join if you're doing a DELETE.
The show humilates nerds, glorifies selling out, and all there good episods are ripoffs.
As far as good episodes being ripoffs, I'd say quite a few of them probably are, but on the other hand, they're frequently *intended* to be ripoffs. The fun part is if the characters recognise the ripoff. (Dracula, for example)
Humiliates nerds? I'd hardly say so. First, there's Willow who was a computer nerd since the beginning, and that only tapered off as she got into the whole wicca thing lately. Second, the guy who built his girlfriend, later the buffy bot, and tried to take over sunnydale. He was definitely a nerd, and hardly humiliated. He went out with quite the bang. Then there's Jonathan, the short nerd, who is a wimp, but obviously very bright. Not sure exactly how he's humiliated, even if he isn't a hero. Then there's the third one of the little nerd-trio, the taller one, who really is just a wannabe, probably not intelligent enough to actually be a nerd. There are a few episodes with nerds, one of them involving a demon who got into a computer, and those nerds certainly weren't humiliated in any way. I can't think of any more specific examples to cite, perhaps you have some counterexamples?
On the topic of "selling out", I'm really not sure what you mean... who ever sold out to the side of evil and didn't get their just desserts? Jonathan didn't sell out, he was just having some fun with friends and when it turned into something serious he got real nervous and tried to get out, but didn't have quite enough guts. He even redeemed himself in the last few episodes.
The whole point is that this, like everything else in Buffy-world, is caused by some really bad creature.
Must it must be a f'king dumb 'bad creature'. If I were a bad creature and could get people to do stupid shit, I'd have it so that Sarah Michelle Gellar rips her clothes off.
And if you'd watched any of the shows, and particularly all of that show, you'd have noticed that firstly, most creatures have a limited sphere of influence (i.e., they can only do X), and this one's sphere of influence was song and dance. Secondly, the episode was completely in character with the sole exception that the people were singing and dancing, the effects of the creature. Third, the creature wasn't actually "bad", it was called, it answered, and the person who called it got what they asked for. If it actually got what it asked for, that might've been bad, but not evil, just bad. All in all, I found the creature to be a pretty cool, rather amusing demon.
In some subsets of fantasy or science fiction, a common theme is the existence of nonhuman intelligent creatures and/or paranormal phenomena. A smaller subset of that set is where those creatures or phenomena are normal and taken seriously. The problem with this is that there seem to be very few people with the right sort of imagination to take that world and be satisfied with a story set there. Buffy is set in the "real world", ostensibly, but it is really set in a world where demons and vampires exist and are taken seriously, at least by each other and some humans. Most humans go about ignorant of their existence, so the setting is actually very much a fantasy world, with a gloss of reality. Unfortunately, many people don't have this sort of imagination, and when confronted with this it all just seems silly, and they can't get into the story because their attempt at keeping the world within a preconceived worldview fails and suspension of disbelief cannot occur.
Ya, that one wasn't too bad, but I must say that season 6 as a whole was just too "Soap Operay" for me and everyone else I know that is a fan.
I'd have to generally agree. The first 5 seasons were good, Once More With Feeling was a hilarious and awesome episode, as Buffy goes, but the entire rest of the season was garbage. To the point where my wife, who's a huge, avid fan, actually began forgetting to tape episodes near the end. (Though we did get the whole OMWF on video.) (yeah, I know, I don't own a PVR. bad geek. bad. bad geek.) Oh, and as far as the "wicca crap" as you mention it goes... I was cheering by the time she started... well... ok, if I say anything more it'll be spoilers to the people who never got around to seeing the last couple episodes, but regardless, I personally think black-eyed Willow rocks.:)
Does one need to get licensed and permits from the FAA for flying? Or does that only apply to planes and not rockets, slingshots, or trebuchets?
Yes, a permit is needed for that altitude. Of course, if you can get a trebuchet to launch a projectile high enough for it to need a permit, can I grovel before you?
With rockets weighing over 3.3 pounds or 4.4oz of propellantyou must notify the FAA prior to your the flight. You will also need an area as wide and deep as your maximum altitude will be. Because of these requirements, most mid-high power flyers join local clubs who have the proper insurance, FAA clearance, and permission of property owners to use the land.
Survival of your self, your family, your genetic lineage, by any means necessary is not human nature, because those traits are very common in the animal world. It is Mammalian Nature of which you speak. {snipped}...
What differentiates us from animals is our human nature. The ability to live with a code of ethics... {snipped}...
Acting like a true human is hard. Living by any code of conduct... {snipped}
You sum up why "human nature" has nothing to do with codes of conduct or ethics in your last paragraph. Acting like a true human is hard. Acting with a sense of the greater good is not part of "human nature" simply because one has to pay attention and think about it to do it. Just because the attributes of surviving and propogating at all costs are found in mammals doesn't mean we don't at some level share them. The majority of our nature is derived from the desire to propogate and live, anything beyond that is an added bonus.
It is important to distinguish between morals, ethics, and nature. If nature were good enough, we wouldn't need to devise a set of morals and ethics that would enable society to function well. It is these morals and ethics that we put first in our mind that prevent us from doing something that furthers our own goals to the detriment of society as a whole. This learned behavior is hardly something I'd cal natural.
I recall reading a study in one of my psychology courses in college, a rather famous study, which involved a subject causing pain to another individual. While my memory is a little fuzzy, and I'm moving so my books are all packed away, I'll describe the jist of it. Subject A is seated at a desk with a button, subject B is in an adjacent, windowless room. Subject A is given a list of questions to ask subject B, and if B gets an answer wrong, A is to press the button, which will shock B. Each time the button is pressed, the shock increases. Now, the button wasn't actually attached to B, B was a volunteer who would cry out every time the button was pressed (the button lit a light or something). What the study found was that a very high percentage of the people (can't cite, book's packed) were reticent at first, but quickly grew used to shocking B, even though B cried out every time they did. There were even several people who pressed the button so many times that B got as loud as they could and then went completely silent, as if unconscious, and there were few inquiries as to if B was ok.
That's an example of human nature. A respected, blind study of the behavior of a wide range of people under similar circumstances. Oh, and the payout for this? A pittance, I believe less than $100.
Better yet, for a little irony: what if the person at the other end of the button was Jack Valenti, George Bush, Osama bin Laden? Would your views be different then?
How about commenting on the cross promotion prevelant. In this month's Popular science is an article about that Lexus that Mr.
Anderton drives around in. How about commenting on that: advertising disguised as news?
Popular Science is news? I don't often read it, but I've looked at articles in there going back to the 60's (my grandfather got it back then and saved all of them, there's a cool article about ramjets in one of the really old ones). I've never seen Popular Science as anything more than a fluff magazine with product placement. Its a pretty cool magazine, and does a good job with what it has, as long as it placed some decent products in that issue.
It depends on how they are billed for the bandwidth. The data center I have my servers co-loc'd in charges me about $4/gb for transfers, for example.
It doesn't matter how they're billed for bandwidth, as far as I'm concerned. They supply a 1mbit connection to your house and charge $45/month, and don't at this time say you can't use all of it all the time. Thus, their uncapping is roughly equivalent to buying 9 more subscriptions and using all of them all the time.
Personally I'd rather the cable company went with a tiered usage based bandwidth cap. Use over 1/4 of your available bandwidth for the past 2 days (on an hourly rolling 48 hour aggregate) and have your cap dropped by half. If the user continues to user 1/4 of the available bandwidth after another 48 hours, repeat... until the user is down to 128kbit. A user pegging 128kbit for a month will still not exceed what you're taking in for bandwidth costs.
I should note I miscalculated... there were 19 warrants, of which 13 were served. That places the $250,000 number at 29 months, not 48. Or a 5 month (which is probably what they can prove) at $38,475.
So this is not the case of "they cost us the 1/4 million in revenue they should have had to pay for this" but an actual " they cost us the 1/4 million we had to pay our upstream for the bandwidth they used, when they only paid us $30/mo"
I'd also dispute that they could have cost $250,000 in bandwidth fees, as well. I don't know of any cable modem which has better than a 10mbit ethernet connection. Buckeye cable limits downloads to 1mbit, and charges $45/mo for service. 13 people were charged. Ok, lets say all 13 uncapped their service. They're now receiving 10mbit service, which is 10 times their original service, or $450 worth of service per month. For 13 people, that's $5850/month in charges, minus the $45 they're already paying, comes to $5265/month. At that rate, they'd have to steal service for 4 years to hit $250,000 in damages. As far as I'm aware, the cable company can only prove this as far back as Feb, when they became aware of it. That's 5 months, or about $26,000. I'd say they seriously need to get slapped down. Exceeding allotted bandwidth may be a breach of service, but it isn't worth what they say it is.
Personally, I smear Clear Channel for playing a certain subset of their playlist across all of their channels. Lately, Elton John and U2 have been playing even on the Oldies station. Sorry, but I don't think that qualifies for Oldies status. In fact, it wasn't until the CC buyout that the Oldies stations started playing anything past the late 60's. Then there's the "country crossover" crap that I have to listen to. If I want country, I'll listen to a station with a country format, I don't want to hear it on my rock station. Of course, there isn't really a rock station left, since the format of that station got pretty much dumbed down. And then there's the issue of song repeats. Its really annoying to listen to the same song every hour, which is why I don't bother bringing a radio into work. What about the payola system, too? I have issues with accepting bribes, especially when those bribes affect an album's ratings, which ends up meaning that a band just has to have enough money to pay for their next album to have high ratings. I also expect the U2 and Elton John thing is due to payola. There's also the one-size-fits-all schedule. Every morning on the way to work I now have a choice between at least 3 different annoying crews of people that I can hear yammering about some inane nonsense. There used to be at least one station that would play music of a format I enjoy (and that's a pretty wide spectrum). So now I leave the radio off, since there's nothing worth listening to. At least on the drive home I spend less than 20 minutes in the car, so I don't have much chance of hearing the same song twice.
In short, when I flip to the "rock" station, that's what I want to hear. Other stations, same deal. Put something that isn't "rock" on there and you might attract a couple more viewers, but you've diluted your base to a point where any targeted advertisement has no effect, since its missing its mark. Same goes for any other channel. Let some idiots yammer on about nonsense for the morning commute and I'll just turn off the radio, if I wanted to listen to an idiot talk I'd switch to a talk radio station. The morning shows doesn't have any disc jockeys anyways. How can you be a DJ if you don't spin a disc?
"The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain
Created by Finish college student Linus Torvalds,
Finish? Isn't he Finnish?
A recent survey of 800 companies in North America and Western Europe found that some 40 percent said they were either using or testing Linux, according to the research firm IDC. With some 27 percent of the market, Linux is now the second most popular operating system for servers, supplanting the decades-old operating system UNIX; Microsoft holds the top spot. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.)
And this somehow indicates a failure?
But Linux has hardly made a dent in the desktop and home user markets. At PC conventions like this one, Microsoft's Windows operating system still rules -- with some 94 percent of the operating system market for desktops and laptop PCs, according to IDC. Despite its growing popularity among computer professionals, it's still not completely "user friendly."
How many years did it take for MS-Windows to completely eliminate MS-DOS? And that was with many years of massive marketing. I'd say the desktop penetration linux enjoys with so little desktop marketing and such an immature set of desktop tools is amazing in its own right.
Until recently, interacting with Linux was almost entirely text-driven -- much like Windows' precursor, DOS. So converting meant learning an arcane vocabulary of computerese to give the PC even the simplest commands.
X11 has been on linux almost from the beginning. I recall installing from a stack of floppies onto my old 386 when my 386 had just been superceded by a 486, and X was an option. I tried installing and using X, but found that my hard disk was inadequate. At the time, hard disk space was expensive. Now, that's not to say that the gui was friendly, but its been there for a good long while.
Linux is still coming of age. It seems to be spending its childhood in servers, but in the coming years it will probably enjoy a somewhat larger share of the desktop market as the desktop evolves. It may never eclipse Microsoft, but then again, not being the biggest doesn't equate to being a failure.
My question is 'why is ebay doing this?' I mean it's not like they really give a damn about anyone but themselves. So the thing is what's in it for them? Obviously offering benefits is a pain, but they still are choosing to do it. I wonder why....
I don't know, could it be, ohh, perhaps.. maybe... PROFIT MOTIVE.
There's a pretty simple profit motive here, too. Being known as the biggest and best doesn't mean you're done. Being the biggest and best is a hard spot to keep in most fields, and a move like this increases the incentive to sell on eBay, particularly when other companies like Yahoo! are trying to get a sizable percentage of the online auction market.
So the motive is: In order to attract sales, one must attract sellers.
Note the second link's page doesn't actually say that the contractor must be debarred (prevented from providing services), but only that they may be debarred for a period of up to 3 years. I expect that someone would have to bring this up in a council meeting of some sort to actually have the action taken.
Ill try pushing record - because right now we just use composit video in to the VCR and turn the VCR to channel 00 and voila. The only problem we have is that the picture is pretty shitty and changes brightness... a lot!
The brightness change you're seeing is due to macrovision.
His characterization of "geeks" may be insulting, but I've found that any good sysadmin, for any platform, is almost invariably a "geek". The thing is, the term geek is rapidly evolving. Ten years ago, a geek was a guy with a graying beard, long hair, pasty skin from never seeing the sun, and no social skills. He sat in the computer labs and did nothing but work on the computer. Today, though, with so many of us having been exposed to computers from childhood, those same skills that made the bearded older guy a geek are inherent in a wider set of the population.
Personally, I am fluent in at least 4 programming languages, and can get by in another half dozen or so. I am fluent in at least 3 styles of OS, and within those at least half a dozen subsets of those OS's (such as the various incarnations of windows, unicies, etc). I code for fun, and can code just as well in my sleep as many can fully awake. My typing speed is over 90wpm. I have 3 machines at home, 2 running linux and one running windows. Yes, I am a geek, and I'm perfectly happy with that.
On the other hand, last weekend I took a six mile hike in a couple of hours over hilly (unless you're from the midwest, then read this as mountainous) terrain on poorly kept trails without breaking much of a sweat. I own a sailboat, and will be putting my car up on jackstands and rotating its tires and checking its brakes this weekend. Usually I change my own oil & perform my own tuneups, unless I have a long workweek and don't have time when I need to. I'm making a set of arrows for archery, and go dancing every thursday.
I'm today's geek. I have a life, but I'm stuffed with a knowledge of how to use computers much like an expert on any other subject.
With the exception of the first job I got out of college, I've gotten every job I wanted, with one interview. (And turned down a company after its first interview that wanted me to bend over for them.) I'm entirely marketable, and I can perform quite serviceably in a wide range of positions in the computing field, including sysadmin.
I, therefore, resent the statement that being a "geek" means I'm not presentable or able to interact with the client and give the client good vibes about what I do. I'd much rather be talking to a computer, and I won't be lying to the client like marketing probably wants me to, but the client can also see that from my demeanor, and is frequently appreciative of that. They can tell that when I tell them X will be ready on Y date, it will. And if I tell them that X will probably not be ready on Y date, and here's why, they nearly always know that I'm simply being forthright, and can deal with that. I've never had a major issue with a client, though I don't have to deal with them often.
So in short, get with the times. Today's geek is a very capable person, though we usually don't bother lying or glossing over for marketing, the clients don't hate us for that. If anything, they trust the results of the project more because they know that once they got past marketing, they talked to the person who's really working on the project and got a straight answer.
In most places in the US you can get an unlimited local calls plan. In some places you can't. Living in central, middle-of-nowhere Illinois (LeRoy) a couple years ago I had to pay for every local call I dialed. Of course, I didn't often make local calls because the nearest large town (they thought it was a city) was a whole 12 miles away. If it wasn't in the same local exchange it was not a local call. Real PITA. I'm used to being able to dial a good 15-20 miles away before having to worry about whether it was a local call or not.
1. It's two citizens. One of whom hasn't lived here since he was a small child (child of Saudi nationals who happened to be born while parents were in the US. Yes, he's a citizen, but I bet he never thought of himself as an American until he found out that he could use that detail to get himself out of the pokey). The other sounds like he meets even an idiot's definition of traitor.
I absolutely agree on both counts. I don't want them released, I want them locked up. But before we can lock them up and throw away the key, it needs to be proven in a court of law.
The indefinite imprisonment of someone without trial is a slippery slope, and I don't want to ever be the one who gets trapped by this constitutional violation. Let's say for a moment that carnivore gets installed and "accidentally" traps data that indicates I researched Al Qaeda, bomb making, and airline rates all in the same day. The government makes some leap of logic and decides that anyone doing all that must have terrorist intent, and locks me up for the rest of my life without trial. Yes, I know its reductio ad absurdim, but the ramifications of eliminating the right to a trial are staggering.
Where in the law does holding citizenship bar you from being treated as an enemy combatant?
Where in the law does saying you're an "enemy combatant" supercede your right to a grand jury and a speedy trial? Giving someone a new label doesn't mean the constitution no longer applies.
Apparently you learned nothing from the World Wars. If nothing else, you have learned incorrectly that Americas isolationism caused World War II.
Let's just lay it out for everyone: the most relevant, effervescent, and overwhelming cause of World War II was World War I.
Actually, he didn't claim that WWII was caused by American isolationism. He claimed that isolationism doesn't prevent our involvement in world affairs. Even though we were isolationist, we still were attacked, as the isolationism was seen as a sign of weakness. I agree that WWII was caused by WWI, but I also note that America did everything it could to pretend it didn't have any involvement in the rest of the world, and it didn't help.
Qmail seems to be the way to go today. Most bigger mail sites do use Qmail. But there are still distros going out the door with Sendmail enabled. That's the problem.
Qmail is at the moment, as far as I can tell, the best MTA I can put on port 25. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the functionality I want. I can POP my mail from it but I can't IMAP it without other programs. At the moment, I run Qmail at home to receive mail, and Courier-IMAP (not the whole Courier package, just the Courier-IMAP one, which is stable). Qmail got wonderfully stable, but then the owner locked down the code to keep it that way. Now its not keeping up with the Joneses. Look at its webpage sometime and see all of the various add-ons that are practically a requirement in today's systems. Things like smtp-auth (authenticate to the smtp server before you can send mail not to the local host with it) that are practically a requirement for roaming users these days. (POP-b4-SMTP is less reliable than authenticating the current connection)
Personally, I'm watching the Courier MTA to see when I feel its stable and secure enough to use. It has the functionality I want across the board.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not exactly sure if I agree... Personally, I figure copyright protection is extended to the works already. If they want to put their own use prevention schemes on them, then they should forfeit copyright protections. After all, obviously they don't think copyright's good enough for them. Let them fight it out on a case by case basis, and if anyone *does* manage to crack the protections, make sure they don't have a legal leg to stand on.
I heartily agree, except for one thing... I think the scene would've worked better under or after the credits. I think it really felt tacked on, and would've worked better as part of the credit roll.
"Unfortunately", here, has a subjective quality to it. What I find unfortunate I can entirely understand someone else not finding unfortunate. The grounding in reality that you speak of seems to me to result in a person who cannot appreciate art simply for art's sake. Art for art's sake is, objectively speaking, rarely constructive. I find, however, that letting my mind escape into the realm of the fantastical gives me a different outlook on things, and if nothing else, the mere entertainment value relaxes me. Therefore, while not classically constructive, it does have a positive effect on me.
Also, I should add, you refer to Star Trek as fantasy but not fantasy, since scientists were led by their ideas and reached similar conclusions. Before the scientists started their work and truly became interested, was it fantasy, or was it still on the not-fantasy fringe? If scientists hadn't reached those conclusions yet, would you still find them interesting?
Good fantasy, regardless of what fantastical element is employed, are self consistent. The better ones are far more self consistent than Star Trek, and in their own way have a sort of realism. Defining that line between what's an acceptable stretch of what we understand to be real and what's too far will always be a grey area, disagreed upon by anyone who cares to discuss it.
And just to add my $0.02, it also is in desparate need of subqueries. I can't do WHERE x IN ( SELECT y FROM foo WHERE x=z ) for example. Granted, that's a trivial case that can be reduced to a simple SQL statement, but the subselect functionality is of critical importance in some SQL queries, especially since you can't emulate them with an outer join if you're doing a DELETE.
As far as good episodes being ripoffs, I'd say quite a few of them probably are, but on the other hand, they're frequently *intended* to be ripoffs. The fun part is if the characters recognise the ripoff. (Dracula, for example)
Humiliates nerds? I'd hardly say so. First, there's Willow who was a computer nerd since the beginning, and that only tapered off as she got into the whole wicca thing lately. Second, the guy who built his girlfriend, later the buffy bot, and tried to take over sunnydale. He was definitely a nerd, and hardly humiliated. He went out with quite the bang. Then there's Jonathan, the short nerd, who is a wimp, but obviously very bright. Not sure exactly how he's humiliated, even if he isn't a hero. Then there's the third one of the little nerd-trio, the taller one, who really is just a wannabe, probably not intelligent enough to actually be a nerd. There are a few episodes with nerds, one of them involving a demon who got into a computer, and those nerds certainly weren't humiliated in any way. I can't think of any more specific examples to cite, perhaps you have some counterexamples?
On the topic of "selling out", I'm really not sure what you mean... who ever sold out to the side of evil and didn't get their just desserts? Jonathan didn't sell out, he was just having some fun with friends and when it turned into something serious he got real nervous and tried to get out, but didn't have quite enough guts. He even redeemed himself in the last few episodes.
And if you'd watched any of the shows, and particularly all of that show, you'd have noticed that firstly, most creatures have a limited sphere of influence (i.e., they can only do X), and this one's sphere of influence was song and dance. Secondly, the episode was completely in character with the sole exception that the people were singing and dancing, the effects of the creature. Third, the creature wasn't actually "bad", it was called, it answered, and the person who called it got what they asked for. If it actually got what it asked for, that might've been bad, but not evil, just bad. All in all, I found the creature to be a pretty cool, rather amusing demon.
In some subsets of fantasy or science fiction, a common theme is the existence of nonhuman intelligent creatures and/or paranormal phenomena. A smaller subset of that set is where those creatures or phenomena are normal and taken seriously. The problem with this is that there seem to be very few people with the right sort of imagination to take that world and be satisfied with a story set there. Buffy is set in the "real world", ostensibly, but it is really set in a world where demons and vampires exist and are taken seriously, at least by each other and some humans. Most humans go about ignorant of their existence, so the setting is actually very much a fantasy world, with a gloss of reality. Unfortunately, many people don't have this sort of imagination, and when confronted with this it all just seems silly, and they can't get into the story because their attempt at keeping the world within a preconceived worldview fails and suspension of disbelief cannot occur.
I'd have to generally agree. The first 5 seasons were good, Once More With Feeling was a hilarious and awesome episode, as Buffy goes, but the entire rest of the season was garbage. To the point where my wife, who's a huge, avid fan, actually began forgetting to tape episodes near the end. (Though we did get the whole OMWF on video.) (yeah, I know, I don't own a PVR. bad geek. bad. bad geek.) Oh, and as far as the "wicca crap" as you mention it goes... I was cheering by the time she started... well... ok, if I say anything more it'll be spoilers to the people who never got around to seeing the last couple episodes, but regardless, I personally think black-eyed Willow rocks. :)
Yes, a permit is needed for that altitude. Of course, if you can get a trebuchet to launch a projectile high enough for it to need a permit, can I grovel before you?
From wildhobbies
You sum up why "human nature" has nothing to do with codes of conduct or ethics in your last paragraph. Acting like a true human is hard. Acting with a sense of the greater good is not part of "human nature" simply because one has to pay attention and think about it to do it. Just because the attributes of surviving and propogating at all costs are found in mammals doesn't mean we don't at some level share them. The majority of our nature is derived from the desire to propogate and live, anything beyond that is an added bonus.
It is important to distinguish between morals, ethics, and nature. If nature were good enough, we wouldn't need to devise a set of morals and ethics that would enable society to function well. It is these morals and ethics that we put first in our mind that prevent us from doing something that furthers our own goals to the detriment of society as a whole. This learned behavior is hardly something I'd cal natural.
I recall reading a study in one of my psychology courses in college, a rather famous study, which involved a subject causing pain to another individual. While my memory is a little fuzzy, and I'm moving so my books are all packed away, I'll describe the jist of it. Subject A is seated at a desk with a button, subject B is in an adjacent, windowless room. Subject A is given a list of questions to ask subject B, and if B gets an answer wrong, A is to press the button, which will shock B. Each time the button is pressed, the shock increases. Now, the button wasn't actually attached to B, B was a volunteer who would cry out every time the button was pressed (the button lit a light or something). What the study found was that a very high percentage of the people (can't cite, book's packed) were reticent at first, but quickly grew used to shocking B, even though B cried out every time they did. There were even several people who pressed the button so many times that B got as loud as they could and then went completely silent, as if unconscious, and there were few inquiries as to if B was ok.
That's an example of human nature. A respected, blind study of the behavior of a wide range of people under similar circumstances. Oh, and the payout for this? A pittance, I believe less than $100.
Ooh, I sense a slashdot poll coming on...
Popular Science is news? I don't often read it, but I've looked at articles in there going back to the 60's (my grandfather got it back then and saved all of them, there's a cool article about ramjets in one of the really old ones). I've never seen Popular Science as anything more than a fluff magazine with product placement. Its a pretty cool magazine, and does a good job with what it has, as long as it placed some decent products in that issue.
Personally I'd rather the cable company went with a tiered usage based bandwidth cap. Use over 1/4 of your available bandwidth for the past 2 days (on an hourly rolling 48 hour aggregate) and have your cap dropped by half. If the user continues to user 1/4 of the available bandwidth after another 48 hours, repeat... until the user is down to 128kbit. A user pegging 128kbit for a month will still not exceed what you're taking in for bandwidth costs.
I should note I miscalculated... there were 19 warrants, of which 13 were served. That places the $250,000 number at 29 months, not 48. Or a 5 month (which is probably what they can prove) at $38,475.
In short, when I flip to the "rock" station, that's what I want to hear. Other stations, same deal. Put something that isn't "rock" on there and you might attract a couple more viewers, but you've diluted your base to a point where any targeted advertisement has no effect, since its missing its mark. Same goes for any other channel. Let some idiots yammer on about nonsense for the morning commute and I'll just turn off the radio, if I wanted to listen to an idiot talk I'd switch to a talk radio station. The morning shows doesn't have any disc jockeys anyways. How can you be a DJ if you don't spin a disc?
Finish? Isn't he Finnish?
And this somehow indicates a failure?
How many years did it take for MS-Windows to completely eliminate MS-DOS? And that was with many years of massive marketing. I'd say the desktop penetration linux enjoys with so little desktop marketing and such an immature set of desktop tools is amazing in its own right.
X11 has been on linux almost from the beginning. I recall installing from a stack of floppies onto my old 386 when my 386 had just been superceded by a 486, and X was an option. I tried installing and using X, but found that my hard disk was inadequate. At the time, hard disk space was expensive. Now, that's not to say that the gui was friendly, but its been there for a good long while.
Linux is still coming of age. It seems to be spending its childhood in servers, but in the coming years it will probably enjoy a somewhat larger share of the desktop market as the desktop evolves. It may never eclipse Microsoft, but then again, not being the biggest doesn't equate to being a failure.
There's a pretty simple profit motive here, too. Being known as the biggest and best doesn't mean you're done. Being the biggest and best is a hard spot to keep in most fields, and a move like this increases the incentive to sell on eBay, particularly when other companies like Yahoo! are trying to get a sizable percentage of the online auction market.
So the motive is: In order to attract sales, one must attract sellers.
Even top dog needs to work to stay that way.
Note the second link's page doesn't actually say that the contractor must be debarred (prevented from providing services), but only that they may be debarred for a period of up to 3 years. I expect that someone would have to bring this up in a council meeting of some sort to actually have the action taken.
The brightness change you're seeing is due to macrovision.
Personally, I am fluent in at least 4 programming languages, and can get by in another half dozen or so. I am fluent in at least 3 styles of OS, and within those at least half a dozen subsets of those OS's (such as the various incarnations of windows, unicies, etc). I code for fun, and can code just as well in my sleep as many can fully awake. My typing speed is over 90wpm. I have 3 machines at home, 2 running linux and one running windows. Yes, I am a geek, and I'm perfectly happy with that.
On the other hand, last weekend I took a six mile hike in a couple of hours over hilly (unless you're from the midwest, then read this as mountainous) terrain on poorly kept trails without breaking much of a sweat. I own a sailboat, and will be putting my car up on jackstands and rotating its tires and checking its brakes this weekend. Usually I change my own oil & perform my own tuneups, unless I have a long workweek and don't have time when I need to. I'm making a set of arrows for archery, and go dancing every thursday.
I'm today's geek. I have a life, but I'm stuffed with a knowledge of how to use computers much like an expert on any other subject.
With the exception of the first job I got out of college, I've gotten every job I wanted, with one interview. (And turned down a company after its first interview that wanted me to bend over for them.) I'm entirely marketable, and I can perform quite serviceably in a wide range of positions in the computing field, including sysadmin.
I, therefore, resent the statement that being a "geek" means I'm not presentable or able to interact with the client and give the client good vibes about what I do. I'd much rather be talking to a computer, and I won't be lying to the client like marketing probably wants me to, but the client can also see that from my demeanor, and is frequently appreciative of that. They can tell that when I tell them X will be ready on Y date, it will. And if I tell them that X will probably not be ready on Y date, and here's why, they nearly always know that I'm simply being forthright, and can deal with that. I've never had a major issue with a client, though I don't have to deal with them often.
So in short, get with the times. Today's geek is a very capable person, though we usually don't bother lying or glossing over for marketing, the clients don't hate us for that. If anything, they trust the results of the project more because they know that once they got past marketing, they talked to the person who's really working on the project and got a straight answer.
In most places in the US you can get an unlimited local calls plan. In some places you can't. Living in central, middle-of-nowhere Illinois (LeRoy) a couple years ago I had to pay for every local call I dialed. Of course, I didn't often make local calls because the nearest large town (they thought it was a city) was a whole 12 miles away. If it wasn't in the same local exchange it was not a local call. Real PITA. I'm used to being able to dial a good 15-20 miles away before having to worry about whether it was a local call or not.
I absolutely agree on both counts. I don't want them released, I want them locked up. But before we can lock them up and throw away the key, it needs to be proven in a court of law.
The indefinite imprisonment of someone without trial is a slippery slope, and I don't want to ever be the one who gets trapped by this constitutional violation. Let's say for a moment that carnivore gets installed and "accidentally" traps data that indicates I researched Al Qaeda, bomb making, and airline rates all in the same day. The government makes some leap of logic and decides that anyone doing all that must have terrorist intent, and locks me up for the rest of my life without trial. Yes, I know its reductio ad absurdim, but the ramifications of eliminating the right to a trial are staggering.
Where in the law does saying you're an "enemy combatant" supercede your right to a grand jury and a speedy trial? Giving someone a new label doesn't mean the constitution no longer applies.
Actually, he didn't claim that WWII was caused by American isolationism. He claimed that isolationism doesn't prevent our involvement in world affairs. Even though we were isolationist, we still were attacked, as the isolationism was seen as a sign of weakness. I agree that WWII was caused by WWI, but I also note that America did everything it could to pretend it didn't have any involvement in the rest of the world, and it didn't help.
Personally, I'm watching the Courier MTA to see when I feel its stable and secure enough to use. It has the functionality I want across the board.