I was elated to get my first (and only) 17" laptop not quite 2 years ago but was actually somewhat relieved when it expired shortly after the warranty did. I didn't even bother to get it repaired, because I already knew that I wanted to go back to a 15". Here are some of the reasons:
*A 17" is much heavier and a lot less portable than a 15" (although at least you don't usually have to pay a premium any longer for a bag that'll even hold a 17"). My job and my personal preferences mandate a highly portable solution.
*"Arms length" -- which, coincidentally, is almost exactly the same as the distance between the screen and my eyes -- is not highly variable (unless you're Reed Richards, I suppose). I've found that a 17" screen at that range is actually too large and that I constantly have to move my head to see the entire screen.
*15" is still plenty large enough for a fullsize keyboard plus numeric keypad (of which I make heavy use).
Some of us believe that the right to free speech is not something that a government can give you.
You are so wrong it is hilarious.
Um, no. Your misapprehension would be laughable if it weren't so tragically backwards.
Some governments protect the right of free speech (such as, at least in theory, that of the US). Others (such as China's), attempt to suppress it. To imply that this right is "granted" by a government is in essence to deny the existence of the right itself.
A false flag operation is one in which you try to make your forces look as though they belong to someone else. The term is naval in origin, stemming from your ships flying the flag of some other country.
I've been to China several times, and the worst harrassment I've had to endure on any of those trips was having my cigarette lighter confiscated at the Beijing airport and receiving a stern lecture about having "smuggled dangerous materials" aboard my flight from Stockholm, which I finally terminated with a cheery, "The security people at Arlanda saw it and didn't seem to have a problem with it; if you don't believe me, I'll be happy to wait while you ring them up and ask them about it yourself".
Other than at the airport, I never had any problems. I saw surprisingly few police on the streets, and the one or two of those who even seemed to notice me were traffic cops who merely smiled, nodded, and waved me on across the street or whatever.
Although you make a number of completely unwarranted assumptions about me and my beliefs, I'm still not sure that the Flamebait mod is truly deserved.
I didn't draw any comparison between North Korea and the US -- you did. However. now that you bring the US into it...
I find it ironic that I -- a born US citizen who carries a valid US passport, and who has never been convicted (or even accused) of any serious crime in the US or anyplace else -- can visit China with at least 10 times less hassle than I can visit my own relatives back in the States.
I am also not at all in agreement with (much less proud of) many of the USA's foreign policies and various military and especially covert actions of the last six or seven decades. Many of these things have been done for the benefit (and sometimes even at the behest) of US-based multinational corporations.
Nor am I overly fond of a domestic economy that tends to treat its own workers as something to be used up and then cast aside.
It's partly on account of these things that I prefer living overseas.
All of this being said, I fail to see what bearing it has on the fact that North Korea is indeed a "hellhole".
The Party/military leadership will reap the real profits, those doing the animation will get a few minor perks like decent clothes and enough to eat (mostly to keep up appearances before greedy/gullible outsiders like Eloesser), and the rest will remain... you guessed it... jobless and starving.
China might not be as free/open as some places, but comparing it to North Korea is a bit of a stretch.
China is authoritarian; some of the laws are strict by our standards, but if you obey them and mind your own business, you'll probably be left alone.
Westerners can visit China and go about on their own there without being chaperoned or harrassed. Chinese people can leave there if they want (and some do).
If you don't want to pay for the NDB software, you can get the OSS/GPL version.
If you want support for the NDB software, you're going to have to pay *somebody* for it, even if that somebody is just someone on your own payroll reading the Cluster mailing list/forum/blogs/docs and learning things the hard way.
Regardless to how much you just 'say' to the contrary, people know and are comfortable with Windows, Linux desktops don't act or feel the same and that costs a lot of man hours. Not for people like you who can transition to a new OS rather easy, but for all the low level grunts who don't 'know how to use computers', but 'remember the series of clicks' to get their job done.
Only if you ignore what's really going on and strain all the analogies you can. The Marxist interpretation is trapped in the 19th Century. Social classes of that time no longer make sense now.
Really? Ever hear of something called "the widening gap between rich and poor" which even my father, a lifelong Republican, has come to recognise?
Private ownership of capital has been proven time and time again to work.
Yes, it's been shown to work quite well... for those who own the capital.
There hasn't been a series of revolutions by the perpetually disaffected.
Are you sure about that? Revolutions aren't necessarily all of the Molotov-cocktails-and-barricades variety, you know.
This is where the expression, "even a broken clock is right twice a day" comes into play. Just because someone had some other ideas that were bad doesn't mean all their ideas are bad.
You assume much, young Jedi. And you know what they say about "assume"...
Everyone looks at Soviet Russia and says, "See? PROOF that Communism is bad!" when in fact the USSR was never a Marxist country. Lenin and crew used Marxist-sounding buzzwords to justify establishing a police state, which was certainly a dictatorship but by no stretch of the imagination could it be thought of as a dictatorship of the proletariat (which Marx himself said was only a temporary state). They also completely ignored Marx' teachings regarding the historical and economic processes by which Socialism and Communism might come about, attempting to force Russia to follow a model that it was (according to Marx) not yet ready for.
Likewise Mao's China.
Meanwhile, the socioeconomic evolution of the US is progressing in almost exactly the fashion predicted by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, which you should really take the time to read and understand (along with some history) before spouting any more nonsense.
Meanwhile, in several European countries where the rights of the workers were actually taken seriously, and where pseudo-Marxist rhetoric was not merely employed as an excuse to make a grab for power for its own sake by some band of megalomaniacs, Socialism is actually alive and doing pretty well, thanks very much.
Summary: Marx and Engels were very largely correct, and their characterisation of history as a history of class division and class struggle has largely been bourne out. And anyone who can't look at the world (and especially the USA) today and see that this class division between bourgeoisie and proletariat continues very much as they described is a fool.
Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, on the other hand, were basically self-serving bastards using Marxist rhetoric to justify their lust for control and prediliction for mass murder. Not to mention the lasting disservice they did the world by polluting the namespace for any serious discussion of the issues raised by Marx and Engels.
..."marriage" is a sacred institution, meaning it is of religious value only.
Hello there -- ever actually been married? You really should try it sometime. You might learn something.
"Religious value" has very little to do with it -- a marriage is a contract, with legally binding economic and other consequences, such as:
-You agree to share your home and property/assets, and you may (depending on the jurisdiction) become liable for any debts your spouse incurs.
-You agree that any children born or adopted into your household are your joint responsibility.
-Your spouse gains the right to make medical and other decisions on your behalf, should you become incapacitated.
-Your spouse gains the right to inherit your benefits, such as pensions and insurance payouts.
-And so on.
(In many places, you don't necessarily have to participate in a ceremony, and it might be called something like "common-law marriage", "cohabitation", "de facto relationship", etc. In Sweden, it's called samboförhållande or "sambo" for short -- which has absolutely nothing to do with race, but is rather a contraction of samboende, meaning "same dwelling". But in all such cases, the intent and effects are generally the same as with "marriage".)
These are the sorts of practical issues that gays and others prohibited from marrying are complaining about: social and legal recognition as a unit.
Such a unit is sometimes referred to in the vernacular as a family.
This has absolutely nothing to do with an (in)ability to conform to the dicta of some Imaginary Dude Upstairs.
All Jews possess the following features:... shitty taste in dental hygiene.
(Shouldn't rise to the bait, but...)
Right, this *totally* explains my Jewish dentist redoing all my upper teeth last year so that I could actually start smiling instead of cringing -- at a 40% discount off his listed fees -- because I'd obviously needed the work done quite badly for years.
Telstra used to have the same requirement. IIRC, you couldn't get online at all except by using their crappy connect-ware on a Windows box (and cloning the MAC address to your router didn't work).
I was sooo glad when I moved into an area where I could get service from Internode -- "If it speaks TCP/IP and it works for you, it works for us, too." Heaven.
Slashdot Mirror
I was elated to get my first (and only) 17" laptop not quite 2 years ago but was actually somewhat relieved when it expired shortly after the warranty did. I didn't even bother to get it repaired, because I already knew that I wanted to go back to a 15". Here are some of the reasons:
*A 17" is much heavier and a lot less portable than a 15" (although at least you don't usually have to pay a premium any longer for a bag that'll even hold a 17"). My job and my personal preferences mandate a highly portable solution.
*"Arms length" -- which, coincidentally, is almost exactly the same as the distance between the screen and my eyes -- is not highly variable (unless you're Reed Richards, I suppose). I've found that a 17" screen at that range is actually too large and that I constantly have to move my head to see the entire screen.
*15" is still plenty large enough for a fullsize keyboard plus numeric keypad (of which I make heavy use).
... and who you associate with is a pretty clear indicator of who you are...
You don't always get to choose your "associates".
A job is a way of life, a lifestyle. If you don't want that lifestyle don't accept that job...
You must be great fun at par--...
Oh, nevermind.
"Good artists borrow; great artists steal."
--P. Picasso
Some of us believe that the right to free speech is not something that a government can give you.
You are so wrong it is hilarious.
Um, no. Your misapprehension would be laughable if it weren't so tragically backwards.
Some governments protect the right of free speech (such as, at least in theory, that of the US). Others (such as China's), attempt to suppress it. To imply that this right is "granted" by a government is in essence to deny the existence of the right itself.
That's called a false flag, I believe.
That's not what "false flag" means.
A false flag operation is one in which you try to make your forces look as though they belong to someone else. The term is naval in origin, stemming from your ships flying the flag of some other country.
For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag.
That particular Grammarnazification is patented, as you can see from my sig.
Don't forget to pay your $699 licence fee on your way off my lawn. :)
I've been to China several times, and the worst harrassment I've had to endure on any of those trips was having my cigarette lighter confiscated at the Beijing airport and receiving a stern lecture about having "smuggled dangerous materials" aboard my flight from Stockholm, which I finally terminated with a cheery, "The security people at Arlanda saw it and didn't seem to have a problem with it; if you don't believe me, I'll be happy to wait while you ring them up and ask them about it yourself".
Other than at the airport, I never had any problems. I saw surprisingly few police on the streets, and the one or two of those who even seemed to notice me were traffic cops who merely smiled, nodded, and waved me on across the street or whatever.
Hello FuckingNickName,
Although you make a number of completely unwarranted assumptions about me and my beliefs, I'm still not sure that the Flamebait mod is truly deserved.
I didn't draw any comparison between North Korea and the US -- you did. However. now that you bring the US into it...
I find it ironic that I -- a born US citizen who carries a valid US passport, and who has never been convicted (or even accused) of any serious crime in the US or anyplace else -- can visit China with at least 10 times less hassle than I can visit my own relatives back in the States.
I am also not at all in agreement with (much less proud of) many of the USA's foreign policies and various military and especially covert actions of the last six or seven decades. Many of these things have been done for the benefit (and sometimes even at the behest) of US-based multinational corporations.
Nor am I overly fond of a domestic economy that tends to treat its own workers as something to be used up and then cast aside.
It's partly on account of these things that I prefer living overseas.
All of this being said, I fail to see what bearing it has on the fact that North Korea is indeed a "hellhole".
The Party/military leadership will reap the real profits, those doing the animation will get a few minor perks like decent clothes and enough to eat (mostly to keep up appearances before greedy/gullible outsiders like Eloesser), and the rest will remain... you guessed it... jobless and starving.
You were saying...?
China might not be as free/open as some places, but comparing it to North Korea is a bit of a stretch.
China is authoritarian; some of the laws are strict by our standards, but if you obey them and mind your own business, you'll probably be left alone.
Westerners can visit China and go about on their own there without being chaperoned or harrassed. Chinese people can leave there if they want (and some do).
North Korea, on the other hand, is totalitarian -- it's basically a giant prison camp, almost impossible to get into or out of without making very special arrangements, and where you can be executed for making an overseas telephone call.
If you don't want to pay for the NDB software, you can get the OSS/GPL version.
If you want support for the NDB software, you're going to have to pay *somebody* for it, even if that somebody is just someone on your own payroll reading the Cluster mailing list/forum/blogs/docs and learning things the hard way.
Does the "10% extra" for DB2 include support?
Ahem, it's "Danger, WIll Robinson!"
...SCO won a moral victoryeven as they lost on the detailed legal technicalties of the case.
Not unlike the manner in which Hitler won a moral victory at Stalingrad?
(Hey, it's not /. if somebody doesn't Godwin the thread, right?)
Please do not cite anything said by the Heritage Foundation as if it came from a reliable source.
This has nothing to do with "enjoyment" or "levels".
It does have quite a lot to do with saying what you actuially mean, and not expecting the reader to second-guess you.
I contend that the style of writing is at a higher level and more important than fine points of grammar.
Having made my living for most of the last 20 years as a journalist, author, and editor, I contend that you should leave such matters to the pros.
Regardless to how much you just 'say' to the contrary, people know and are comfortable with Windows, Linux desktops don't act or feel the same and that costs a lot of man hours. Not for people like you who can transition to a new OS rather easy, but for all the low level grunts who don't 'know how to use computers', but 'remember the series of clicks' to get their job done.
Haha hahaha heehee hahaaaa...
Oh! Sorry, I was momentarily distracted. You were saying...?
Don't you realize that they made billions of dollars on that software that you just take for granted?
TFTFY.
Only if you ignore what's really going on and strain all the analogies you can. The Marxist interpretation is trapped in the 19th Century. Social classes of that time no longer make sense now.
Really? Ever hear of something called "the widening gap between rich and poor" which even my father, a lifelong Republican, has come to recognise?
Private ownership of capital has been proven time and time again to work.
Yes, it's been shown to work quite well... for those who own the capital.
There hasn't been a series of revolutions by the perpetually disaffected.
Are you sure about that? Revolutions aren't necessarily all of the Molotov-cocktails-and-barricades variety, you know.
This is where the expression, "even a broken clock is right twice a day" comes into play. Just because someone had some other ideas that were bad doesn't mean all their ideas are bad.
You assume much, young Jedi. And you know what they say about "assume"...
Everyone looks at Soviet Russia and says, "See? PROOF that Communism is bad!" when in fact the USSR was never a Marxist country. Lenin and crew used Marxist-sounding buzzwords to justify establishing a police state, which was certainly a dictatorship but by no stretch of the imagination could it be thought of as a dictatorship of the proletariat (which Marx himself said was only a temporary state). They also completely ignored Marx' teachings regarding the historical and economic processes by which Socialism and Communism might come about, attempting to force Russia to follow a model that it was (according to Marx) not yet ready for.
Likewise Mao's China.
Meanwhile, the socioeconomic evolution of the US is progressing in almost exactly the fashion predicted by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, which you should really take the time to read and understand (along with some history) before spouting any more nonsense.
Meanwhile, in several European countries where the rights of the workers were actually taken seriously, and where pseudo-Marxist rhetoric was not merely employed as an excuse to make a grab for power for its own sake by some band of megalomaniacs, Socialism is actually alive and doing pretty well, thanks very much.
Summary: Marx and Engels were very largely correct, and their characterisation of history as a history of class division and class struggle has largely been bourne out. And anyone who can't look at the world (and especially the USA) today and see that this class division between bourgeoisie and proletariat continues very much as they described is a fool.
Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, on the other hand, were basically self-serving bastards using Marxist rhetoric to justify their lust for control and prediliction for mass murder. Not to mention the lasting disservice they did the world by polluting the namespace for any serious discussion of the issues raised by Marx and Engels.
..."marriage" is a sacred institution, meaning it is of religious value only.
Hello there -- ever actually been married? You really should try it sometime. You might learn something.
"Religious value" has very little to do with it -- a marriage is a contract, with legally binding economic and other consequences, such as:
-You agree to share your home and property/assets, and you may (depending on the jurisdiction) become liable for any debts your spouse incurs.
-You agree that any children born or adopted into your household are your joint responsibility.
-Your spouse gains the right to make medical and other decisions on your behalf, should you become incapacitated.
-Your spouse gains the right to inherit your benefits, such as pensions and insurance payouts.
-And so on.
(In many places, you don't necessarily have to participate in a ceremony, and it might be called something like "common-law marriage", "cohabitation", "de facto relationship", etc. In Sweden, it's called samboförhållande or "sambo" for short -- which has absolutely nothing to do with race, but is rather a contraction of samboende, meaning "same dwelling". But in all such cases, the intent and effects are generally the same as with "marriage".)
These are the sorts of practical issues that gays and others prohibited from marrying are complaining about: social and legal recognition as a unit.
Such a unit is sometimes referred to in the vernacular as a family.
This has absolutely nothing to do with an (in)ability to conform to the dicta of some Imaginary Dude Upstairs.
All Jews possess the following features: ... shitty taste in dental hygiene.
(Shouldn't rise to the bait, but...)
Right, this *totally* explains my Jewish dentist redoing all my upper teeth last year so that I could actually start smiling instead of cringing -- at a 40% discount off his listed fees -- because I'd obviously needed the work done quite badly for years.
Oh, did I mention that he's an *Iraqi* Jew?
Thanks for sorting that out for me, AC!
Telstra used to have the same requirement. IIRC, you couldn't get online at all except by using their crappy connect-ware on a Windows box (and cloning the MAC address to your router didn't work).
I was sooo glad when I moved into an area where I could get service from Internode -- "If it speaks TCP/IP and it works for you, it works for us, too." Heaven.
So, yes, this is news.
Bingo. Here's your gold star.