and the resulting explosion when he drills into the fuel tank
As far as I know, cars aren't usually assembled with fuel in the gas tank. Even if they were, gasoline does not explode in liquid form, it merely burns--you would have to aerosolize it first in order to get an explosion.
A good portion of the most repetative assembly line jobs have already moved overseas.
So what? Can't the overseas people doing those repetetive tasks still use this technology?
Everytime they make something idiot proof, nature has shown the amzing ability to come up with a better idiot.
So? We should just stop trying to make things better, instead?
I guess your amazing psychic powers weren't able to tell you that technology like this has already been in use for several years, so if you're so smart, why don't you invent a time machine and go back and post this when it might have been useful?
Yup. That's what "off the record" means. Journalists respect it. Well, except me, anyway.
You're saying that every single journalist in the U.S. always respects off-the-record statements? That not a single one (except, apparently, you; that is, if you really are a journalist) would report a story of this magnitude, simply because the family asked them to?
And if you really are a journalist, as you claim, and don't care about "off the record," as you claim, then why hasn't your news organization reported this? Why is this the first time it ever came up on Slashdot, a year and a half later? How about you give me a link to, or tell me where I can find a story about this event, written by you, with your byline on it?
Heh. Try a few hundred, at most.
A few hundred what, exactly? People who the Reagan family alerted to the fact that Ronald died, and then asked them not to report it? Why would they even do that in the first place?
Okay. Then why are you posting about it?
Debate practice with the insane is useful, especially when I'm engaging in useful debates.
Everybody who has gone looking for it has seen it. Go look for yourself.
Once again, this is a completely unsupported claim. Just cause you say it's true, doesn't make it true. Lacking other evidence, it's not worth my time to go driving a hundred miles. Arguing on Slashdot is, thankfully, a lot easier.
"It cannot be true because if it were, I would have heard of it."
Foolish mortal! You fell right into my trap. *You* were the one that said that nobody reported about it, and there's no mention of it ANYWHERE on the internet. My position is, therefore, why should I believe you when you say it's true?
If you would bother to tell me who you are, and which news source you work for (after all, you said you're a journalist), then I'd probably begin to consider your story credible. Until then, it's basically your anonymous, cowardly logic against mine. I mean, don't take it too seriously; I KNOW you're a troll and are just making this up, and pretending to get all offended when I challenge you, but playing pretend is fun!
It's called professional courtesy. Happens all the time.
Now I *know* you're lying. Courtesy? In today's media? And you really think that *every* media outlet would respect those wishes? Several million people, and none of them would leak this info? Right. You're a complete troll, but I'll batter down each of your points anyway.
Look it up; you'll find I'm telling you the hand-to-God honest truth.
Look it up *how* exactly? You keep saying nobody's reported on it. And Santa Barbara county won't release death certificates to anyone except family, estate executors, funeral directors, etc. The Social Security Death Index has no record of any Ronald Reagan born in 1911 and dying in 2001.
Get in your car. Drive to Santa Barbara. That's where the hard evidence is. Big ol' slab o' granite, I think it was.
The problem is, your claim is so beyond incredulous that it would be a complete waste of time. Let's see YOU provide some real evidence (like a photo) before I waste a day driving to Santa Barbara.
If you're looking on that there Internet thingy, you're not going to find it. Because nobody wrote about it.
Right. Millions of people on the internet, most of whom are *not* professional journalists, and not a single one has ever heard of this, seen the gravestone, written about it, or taken a photo of it... except you, apparently.
But that still leaves a question: if I learned about violence from my environment, how did I also learn to be peaceful, how did that choice happen if it was a choice?
Your parents and your community taught you. You learned, somewhere in the distant past, that killing and violence were wrong and not the proper solution to your problems. Kids with no moral guidance often turn out badly, but if we have to ban violent video games because SOME parents can't manage to teach their kids how to function in society without killing people, then we also have to ban every TV show, movie, and book that contains violence (and that includes the Bible).
Once again, the problem isn't the content; the problem is the parenting. What's the solution? Nobody knows so far. I propose requiring a license to have a child.:)
So, in the year and a half since then, *nobody* in the media has heard of this? Nobody's come across or looked up his death certificate?
If he'd died and they'd simply not told anyone, that's one thing; but if he has a gravestone with his name on it, that he is actually buried in, then what good would it have done to not report it to the media?
The conclusion is that you're lying. I'd like to see some hard evidence.
I've never met a woman drawn to a man's intellectual abilities.
Judging from the rest of your post, it sounds like you're not looking for women who would be drawn to your intellectual abilities, so it stands to reason that you're not going to places where you'd run into them. (Or, possibly, this is a bit of hyperbole, and you're exaggerating for dramatic effect.)
For my part, my wife married me because she thinks I'm a good person. It isn't all about hormones or calculated greed.
I don't want to live in your society, where I could be deprived of fundamental liberties like freedom of speech, or religion, or the right to life itself if enough other people thought it was a good idea to revoke them from me!
You know, I don't know why it didn't occur to me before, but you already live in that society. If enough people decided it was a good idea, the laws of your government (I kind of assume you live in the USA) could be changed to a point where you no longer have those liberties.
Some rights are inalienable. They are absolutes, because there is an absolute standard of right and wrong.
There is? Odd that so few people seem able to agree on what exactly that absolute standard is, or what it should entail in our modern world.
At any rate, even if we agree on what those rights are... If by "inalienable" you mean "Not to be separated, given away, or taken away," then the only truly inalienable right is the right to be subject to the laws of physics. After all, that is the only aspect of your existence that I cannot change. But to say that you have an "inalienable" right to (for example) life, liberty, and the purfuit of happineff, is to say that it's impossible for me to kill you, enslave you, or prevent you from obtaining the aforementioned happineff. As this is clearly not the case (witness all the murders and enslavement that still occur), I'm not sure what you intend to say by claiming that everyone factually possesses these fundamental rights.
The point is that, in a practical sense, the only reason you have any rights at all is that you and your fellow citizens have agreed that you should all have those rights. It's certainly reasonable to claim that a given set of rights promotes a stable, happy society; but to claim that there is anything "fundamental" about those rights is absurd. I liken it to the claim that the right to life is a "natural law" of some kind. The only natural laws are the laws of physics: all other laws are social constructs.
The _only_ thing to do in a MMORPG is to run around beating rats with a stick (or goblins with a sword, or whatever), to hopefully level up in the next 6 months. Lather, rinse, repeat ad nauseam. Only the next level-up will require even more hours of beating bigger rats with a bigger stick.
Unless you decide to play a medic. Or a dancer or musician. Or an image designer (you can change peoples' appearance). Or a weaponsmith or armorsmith. Or a droid engineer. Or a merchant. Or an architect. Or a bio-engineer. Or a chef. Or a tailor. Any of the non-combat professions. These are all things you can do in SWG.
Since you apparently know nothing about SWG, how about learning a little more about the game before blathering in public?
How many popular bands do you hear on the radio that actually started in a garage, playing for proms and birthdays? Not too many.
Pretty much all of them -- mostly because I don't listen to Top 40 stations. The station I listen to most is KROQ in Los Angeles, and the majority of the bands they play are either called "alternative" or just "rock." Here's a list of some of the bands getting lots of play on KROQ recently:
Jane's Addiction, White Stripes, Hot Hot Heat, Linkin Park, Queens Of The Stone Age, Ataris, Thrice, Audioslave, Trapt, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sum 41, Velvet Revolver, Radiohead, Deftones, Less Than Jake, Foo Fighters, Metallica, AFI, Used, Coldplay, Godsmack, Staind, Evanescence, Chevelle
(I think you can thank the fact that KROQ isn't owned by Clear Channel.)
Most of the crap out there is reprocessed garbage, and they know it. I think that's why they don't people buying one song at a time.
Just FYI, but this has *always* been true of *every* popular art form.
Hopefully you learned better by reading the rest of the comments on this article, but PNG also supports transparent backgrounds and renders properly in IE. 1-bit transparency (i.e. "color X is transparent, all other colors are not") works fine for PNGs in IE, just the same as GIFs. The only feature of PNGs that doesn't work in IE is alpha channels, which allow for 8-bit transparency.
The upshot is that the only thing GIFs can do in IE that PNGs cannot is animate.
Copyright infringement may be as morally bad as theft (which is debatable), but acting as if they're literally identical is completely wrong. If you steal a CD from a Blockbuster, and I sue you for copyright infringement, it'll get thrown out of court -- because it's not CI. If you make copies of Harry Potter novels without J.K. Rowling's permission, and the state tries to prosecute you for larceny (aka theft), it will similarly get thrown out.
Just because you feel like morally equating copyright infringement with theft does not mean that A) they're the same in any meaningful sense, or B) that you're right.
Maybe this is going to signal a change in the way record companies think about file sharing?
Not bloody likely. The record companies haven't changed their business model, and the odds of Rosen being replaced with someone who doesn't believe the exact same things she does (or, at least, is getting paid to believe them) are essentially nil.
What difference is there between using software to edit a dvd in real time for play at home and the networks doing the editing before showing a flick on broadcast tv? Oh, because the film is being underwrited by commericals it's ok to edit it for show on tv but someone who buys the film on dvd can't?
The difference is that when the film is shown edited on TV, that edit was approved by contract by the studio. The copyright owner of the film gave their explicit permission for it to be edited and rebroadcast in that way.
I think we agree in that the DVD-home-editing thing is fine; after all, I bought it, I should be able to do what I want with it. (Clean Flicks is another story; they were editing and then reselling copies of the movies without permission, which pretty clearly violates copyright law. Whether it should violate copyright law is yet another story.) But I did want to point out that there is a quite important difference between Joe Home User editing it before he watches it (or even while he's watching it), and a major network rebroadcasting an edited version.
Thanks for completely missing the fact that the bulk of that post was me explaining what the main anti-GM argument is. I wasn't saying it was my view; I was saying that it's the only argument on that side that carries much weight.
My personal view is that I don't really know what the deal is. One side says, "GM is fine!" and the other shouts, "GM is evil and wrong!" with very few people taking anything remotely close to a balanced approach. My actual view is that I'm beginning to think that, like most technologies, we can proceed (but should proceed cautiously). Nowhere in there did I state that I think GM shouldn't occur.
Now you assume that introducing GM fish would reduce biodiversity. ?!?!
What are you smoking? I said (quote): "Introducing a gene to an organism that it might never have evolved if left alone (such as giving glowing genes to fish that would not have evolved them) can, conceivably, cause problems." Note the last four words: can, conceivably, cause problems. I never said it would reduce biodiversity. Don't jump to conclusions, and don't put words in my mouth.
Not so long ago we ate loads of fried food, fat and sugar, we smoked woodbines, we drank beer and whisky all the time and we didn't die!
Except for all the people who ate fried foods, fat, sugar, smoked, and drank, and are now dead. Unless you're trying to claim that people who consume those things become immortal...
When you boil away the hysteria, the remaining valid argument against the kind of direct genetic modification that's being done is this:
In nature, evolution happens, but it's at a slow enough pace that disruptive changes are rare. "Disruptive" in this case means a change that causes mass extinctions, change in climate, or other severe factors. Natural, slow evolution changes things a tiny bit at a time, allowing the ecosystem to adapt, so that there's no wild swings.
Direct GM, like we're doing, has the potential to make vast, sweeping changes is very short periods of time. Introducing a gene to an organism that it might never have evolved if left alone (such as giving glowing genes to fish that would not have evolved them) can, conceivably, cause problems. God knows there's enough examples of human "interference" with ecosystems wreaking havoc -- witness the rabbits in Australia. (And that was simply transplanting an organism from one area to another, not even messing with the genes.)
Where the problem comes in is that biodiversity is a good thing, for a variety of reasons I needn't go into here. Introducing potentially disruptive elements (like genetically-modified fish) can, in some cases, cause problems.
Why is it different from, say, regular breeding? Well, even regular breeding is orders of magnitude slower than genetic engineering, giving ecosystems more time to adapt. It's the rapid changes that GM can introduce that its detractors see as a problem.
Ultimately, I don't have enough information to really decide whether or to what degree GM is a good idea. I've read numerous arguments on both sides, but unfortunately, thanks to the short-sightedness of most humans, the majority of the arguments boil down to dogma.
Whatever happened to the WWW simplifying things?:/
Whoever said the web was supposed to simplify anything? It was designed as an information sharing and browsing resource. It wasn't supposed to "simplify" anything.
I think the idea is, all else being equal, use open source instead of proprietary.
What "all else" constitutes is the real question. Presumably it constitutes everything that open and closed source have in common: actual effectiveness at the task, purchase/ongoing maintenance costs. So when those are equal, go with OS instead of proprietary (presumably because the openness is a benefit).
Slashdot Mirror
I guess your amazing psychic powers weren't able to tell you that technology like this has already been in use for several years, so if you're so smart, why don't you invent a time machine and go back and post this when it might have been useful?
So, wait, the method to keep people away from something that will kill them is to kill them? What am I missing?
And if you really are a journalist, as you claim, and don't care about "off the record," as you claim, then why hasn't your news organization reported this? Why is this the first time it ever came up on Slashdot, a year and a half later? How about you give me a link to, or tell me where I can find a story about this event, written by you, with your byline on it?
A few hundred what, exactly? People who the Reagan family alerted to the fact that Ronald died, and then asked them not to report it? Why would they even do that in the first place? Debate practice with the insane is useful, especially when I'm engaging in useful debates. Once again, this is a completely unsupported claim. Just cause you say it's true, doesn't make it true. Lacking other evidence, it's not worth my time to go driving a hundred miles. Arguing on Slashdot is, thankfully, a lot easier. Foolish mortal! You fell right into my trap. *You* were the one that said that nobody reported about it, and there's no mention of it ANYWHERE on the internet. My position is, therefore, why should I believe you when you say it's true?If you would bother to tell me who you are, and which news source you work for (after all, you said you're a journalist), then I'd probably begin to consider your story credible. Until then, it's basically your anonymous, cowardly logic against mine. I mean, don't take it too seriously; I KNOW you're a troll and are just making this up, and pretending to get all offended when I challenge you, but playing pretend is fun!
Once again, the problem isn't the content; the problem is the parenting. What's the solution? Nobody knows so far. I propose requiring a license to have a child. :)
So, in the year and a half since then, *nobody* in the media has heard of this? Nobody's come across or looked up his death certificate?
If he'd died and they'd simply not told anyone, that's one thing; but if he has a gravestone with his name on it, that he is actually buried in, then what good would it have done to not report it to the media?
The conclusion is that you're lying. I'd like to see some hard evidence.
For my part, my wife married me because she thinks I'm a good person. It isn't all about hormones or calculated greed.
Incredibly stupid people, however, believe that all liberals believe the same things.
At any rate, even if we agree on what those rights are... If by "inalienable" you mean "Not to be separated, given away, or taken away," then the only truly inalienable right is the right to be subject to the laws of physics. After all, that is the only aspect of your existence that I cannot change. But to say that you have an "inalienable" right to (for example) life, liberty, and the purfuit of happineff, is to say that it's impossible for me to kill you, enslave you, or prevent you from obtaining the aforementioned happineff. As this is clearly not the case (witness all the murders and enslavement that still occur), I'm not sure what you intend to say by claiming that everyone factually possesses these fundamental rights.
The point is that, in a practical sense, the only reason you have any rights at all is that you and your fellow citizens have agreed that you should all have those rights. It's certainly reasonable to claim that a given set of rights promotes a stable, happy society; but to claim that there is anything "fundamental" about those rights is absurd. I liken it to the claim that the right to life is a "natural law" of some kind. The only natural laws are the laws of physics: all other laws are social constructs.
Since you apparently know nothing about SWG, how about learning a little more about the game before blathering in public?
Jane's Addiction, White Stripes, Hot Hot Heat, Linkin Park, Queens Of The Stone Age, Ataris, Thrice, Audioslave, Trapt, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Sum 41, Velvet Revolver, Radiohead, Deftones, Less Than Jake, Foo Fighters, Metallica, AFI, Used, Coldplay, Godsmack, Staind, Evanescence, Chevelle
(I think you can thank the fact that KROQ isn't owned by Clear Channel.)
Just FYI, but this has *always* been true of *every* popular art form.Hopefully you learned better by reading the rest of the comments on this article, but PNG also supports transparent backgrounds and renders properly in IE. 1-bit transparency (i.e. "color X is transparent, all other colors are not") works fine for PNGs in IE, just the same as GIFs. The only feature of PNGs that doesn't work in IE is alpha channels, which allow for 8-bit transparency.
The upshot is that the only thing GIFs can do in IE that PNGs cannot is animate.
Copyright infringement may be as morally bad as theft (which is debatable), but acting as if they're literally identical is completely wrong. If you steal a CD from a Blockbuster, and I sue you for copyright infringement, it'll get thrown out of court -- because it's not CI. If you make copies of Harry Potter novels without J.K. Rowling's permission, and the state tries to prosecute you for larceny (aka theft), it will similarly get thrown out.
Just because you feel like morally equating copyright infringement with theft does not mean that A) they're the same in any meaningful sense, or B) that you're right.
I think we agree in that the DVD-home-editing thing is fine; after all, I bought it, I should be able to do what I want with it. (Clean Flicks is another story; they were editing and then reselling copies of the movies without permission, which pretty clearly violates copyright law. Whether it should violate copyright law is yet another story.) But I did want to point out that there is a quite important difference between Joe Home User editing it before he watches it (or even while he's watching it), and a major network rebroadcasting an edited version.
My personal view is that I don't really know what the deal is. One side says, "GM is fine!" and the other shouts, "GM is evil and wrong!" with very few people taking anything remotely close to a balanced approach. My actual view is that I'm beginning to think that, like most technologies, we can proceed (but should proceed cautiously). Nowhere in there did I state that I think GM shouldn't occur.
What are you smoking? I said (quote): "Introducing a gene to an organism that it might never have evolved if left alone (such as giving glowing genes to fish that would not have evolved them) can, conceivably, cause problems." Note the last four words: can, conceivably, cause problems. I never said it would reduce biodiversity. Don't jump to conclusions, and don't put words in my mouth.When you boil away the hysteria, the remaining valid argument against the kind of direct genetic modification that's being done is this:
In nature, evolution happens, but it's at a slow enough pace that disruptive changes are rare. "Disruptive" in this case means a change that causes mass extinctions, change in climate, or other severe factors. Natural, slow evolution changes things a tiny bit at a time, allowing the ecosystem to adapt, so that there's no wild swings.
Direct GM, like we're doing, has the potential to make vast, sweeping changes is very short periods of time. Introducing a gene to an organism that it might never have evolved if left alone (such as giving glowing genes to fish that would not have evolved them) can, conceivably, cause problems. God knows there's enough examples of human "interference" with ecosystems wreaking havoc -- witness the rabbits in Australia. (And that was simply transplanting an organism from one area to another, not even messing with the genes.)
Where the problem comes in is that biodiversity is a good thing, for a variety of reasons I needn't go into here. Introducing potentially disruptive elements (like genetically-modified fish) can, in some cases, cause problems.
Why is it different from, say, regular breeding? Well, even regular breeding is orders of magnitude slower than genetic engineering, giving ecosystems more time to adapt. It's the rapid changes that GM can introduce that its detractors see as a problem.
Ultimately, I don't have enough information to really decide whether or to what degree GM is a good idea. I've read numerous arguments on both sides, but unfortunately, thanks to the short-sightedness of most humans, the majority of the arguments boil down to dogma.
Can I ask what your sig refers to ("Blizzard didn't invent the word, its a real religion.")? Just curious.
I think the idea is, all else being equal, use open source instead of proprietary.
What "all else" constitutes is the real question. Presumably it constitutes everything that open and closed source have in common: actual effectiveness at the task, purchase/ongoing maintenance costs. So when those are equal, go with OS instead of proprietary (presumably because the openness is a benefit).
I've had 2.4.18-17.7.x running for 202 days now. Is that "modern" enough for you?