The difference is, with <a href="www.goat.se">Wall Street Journal</a> when you mouse over the link, the real URL shows up at the bottom of your screen. Not so with shortened goatse links.
That's as presumptuous BS as the RIAA saying they lose 100 trillion to piracy.
Well, while $100T is patently absurd, they do lose money because of piracy -- not because of their work being pirated, but because of their competetion, the indies, being pirated.
The RIAA has radio, TV, and movies. They don't need P2P. Their competetion, the indies, rely on P2P and other forms of sharing -- "word of mouth" is all they have. If you spend twenty bucks on four indie CDs, that's twenty bucks you no longer have for that Metallica CD.
Anyone who says it's free PR is either deluding themselves or an idiot. Was some piracy good for their bottom line? Sure, probably. But they put the kibosh on it when it stopped being PR, and started cutting into ad sales.
Well, a lot of folks think Doctorow is an idiot, but he credits giving his work away for free on boingboing and encouraging fans to share it for the reason he's a best selling author. "Nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity."
If there was no such thing as radio, the RIAA would have embraced P2P. However, it helps the competetion, which they feel they must crush at all costs. Not unlike MS's hatred for Linux.
In order for copyright to work as the founding fathers intended, we require the same level of technology as the founding fathers had.
Not necessarily. Previous copyright laws said that to gain copyright, the work had to be "affixed to a tangible medium," like a piece of round plastic, pigment smeared on cloth, or ink stained into paper. Copyright still works IF it only applies to tangible media -- and bits on a hard drive are hardly "tangible", let alone electronic pulses going through a wire.
Before the Bono Act and the DMCA the idea of "intellectual property" didn't exist. Authors and publishers were aware that their monopoly was for a limited time.
Copyright would work if noncommercial copying were deemed legal. People like stuff to put on shelves, especially like books and music and other items that show that they aren't entirely stupid and may even be literate. Music should not be considered a thing for sale, it never was before. You never bought music, you bought an LP or a cassette, and it was perfectly legal and ethical to loan that physical copy to someone who would then copy the intangible music to another tangible medium.
You can't sell music, you can't sell a novel. Use your music to sell records (whether tape, LP, or CD) and use your novel to sell books. BTW, look for "mcgrew paxil diaries" on bittorrent. Lots of folks have enjoyed it, nobody's (yet) told me thay thought it sucked. I won't sue you, I put it there myself. When I get around to making printed copies, you can buy one.
Copying didn't just start with the invention of the computer. Hald the cassettes I (still) own I made from other peoples' LPs. Nobody thought it was evil or unethical, and in fact it was legal. I see no difference whatever between loaning you my Metallica CD and uploading "free speech for the dumb"; in either case, you have gained and nobody has lost. And if you'd never heard of Metallica and liked it, you'd go out and buy their albums.
And were copyright lengths 20 years rather than virtual eternity, it would have a lot more respect from everyone.
BTW, my parents are in their eighties. Steamboat Willie is older than either of them. Do not respect laws that are themselves disrespectable, and especially if logic tells you they are unconstitutional.
I hate them too, but am forced to use them on certain forums. The other users get frightened by URLs that are over 10 characters long, and I get cussed.
Why are you on morons.org? You're not one of them! Do you enjoy conversing with idiots? next time they curse you for a long URL, apologize and use a goo.gl link to goatse just to educate the retards as to why URL shorteners are an incredibly BAD idea and following them even worse.
Install the Firefox addon
Fuck that, I have too much crap installed already. Adblock and the like are bad enough.
Sorry if I sem a bit curt this afternoon, Windows pissed me off at lunch. I journaled about it in a text editor, now I'm getting a 503 trying to get to my journal to post the damned thing. Did somebody slashdot slashdot by linking to slashdot from slashdot? Gees, this place is going downhill fast...
Being a "vulture capitalist" who makes millions of dollars by ruining the lives of others, destroying viable companies as part of a firm whose mantra was "strip and sell", is not wholesome.
It also goes against everything Jesus taught.
Dodging taxes and exploiting loopholes is not wholesome.
"Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's" is what Jesus taught... i.e. "pay your damned taxes".
Supporting a party with racism as a key platform plank is not wholesome.
Nor Christian.
Supporting a party that wants to go to war with the world and waste lives is not wholesome.
Nor Christian. I really can't understand conservative "Christians". Conservative means stingy. Christians are supposed to be generous; e.g. liberal.
an amoral, evil asshole who's wearing a Fred Rogers suit.
Never trust ANYONE who wears a suit and tie. Especially if the guy in the suit claims to be a Christian; the tie is Satan's leash, the symbol of wealth and power, the symbol of greed, the symbol of everything Jesus was against. If your preacher wears a tie, you're in the wrong church (unless you worship money, in which case you're fine).
the only way to get rid of these guys is to stop voting for them.
Not voting won't change anything. Unfortunately, voting won't, either. IMO none of the candidates (including the sitting President) deserve my vote.
We've been trying to get pot legalized since the late '60s. If you don't use it, some of your friends and family do. Why do you continue to vote for a man who wants to put your friends and loved ones in prison for an activity that harms no one?
The same goes for the bought and paid for copyright laws. Who voted against the Bono Act? Nobody. Who voted against the DMCA? Nobody. Who thinks these are good laws? Nobody, outside Washington DC and Hollywood.
What good is a vote when your government is a plutocracy?
Not only does nobody know everything, nobody CAN know everything. Youth seldom understands this.
We just have to work a little more at stepping back from our tiny cages and saying "So what does this really mean in the larger scheme of things?" and recognizing there is larger world beyond our narrowly-focused field of view.
I agree completely, but find it a bit strange that you would follow it with "Well, either that or we could just ask Jesus to tell us what to do." Science doesn't tell us how to live or act, that's religion's job. Religion doesn't tell us how the world works, that's science's job. The two ask and answer completely different questions. And if you believe that there's more to the world than meets the eye, how can you discount religion out of hand?
It's not that it's "weird" but that its bedrock goes directly against what the bible says. Revelations 18-19:
18: For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 19: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.
Joseph Smith, writing the Book of Mormon, made Mormonism anti-Christian. I can see where many Christians would be terrified of a Mormon President, considering how Christians fear the antichrist.
Actually, the AC was correct. Its is the possessive, it's is the contraction ('tis was the old contraction for "it is").
His beard. Her makeup. Its operating system. He's tall. She's short. It's just a machine.
Someone once told me (and I don't know if this is correct or not) that his and her had apostrophes at one time.
You are correct in your sarcasm; language does indeed evolve. But the literate shouldn't let the aliterate dictate changes to the way literature is written. If you don't read, you shouldn't write.
You could say the same for Rubens Oh wait, not only was he filthy rich, he also put his name on the work of his students, thus pirating his own students.
That's not pirating, that's plagarism. Plagiarism helps nobody but the plagiarist. Piracy helps the artist. Roger McGuinn's career died when the labels decided he was too old for rock and roll, and it was resurected with Napster, who he said brought his music to a whole new generation. Speaking of McGuinn and The Byrds, the lyrics to "Turn, Turn, Turn" are in the public domain -- they come straight from the King James bible.
Cory Doctorow came to the same conclusion as Mikael Hed a long time ago. As he says, nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity (Van Gogh comes to mind). He credits the fact that he publishes under a GPL license, gives his books away as ebooks on boingboing, and encourages sharing for his status as a New York Times best seller.
I credit the free public libraries for the fact that I have a couple dozen Asimov titles on my bookshelf; were I not to have been able to read him for free, I'd never have bought any of his books.
There are plenty of musicians today that are not rich. Some just like music more then they like money, just like some would never work for a specific company, no matter how much they like coding.
I know quite a few musicians, and none of them are rich. Most do it as a second job simply because, as you say, they love music and love playing. None of them would touch an RIAA contract with a ten foot pole.
There's probably too much pigeonholing. I'd say a story published in 1946 in Astounding Science Fiction is SF (here's the story). It is speculative and concerns sociology, and although it has to do with technology (it's the only pre-internet story I saw about the internet unless you count Asimov's Multivac), it's not scientific at all.
OTOH, LOTR which came out about the same time is certainly not SF!
As to "too popularized", what writer would say that? I would think any writer would want to be as popular as he possibly could! Could it have been a case of sour grapes?
According to the fellows you're talking about, much of Asimov's fiction wasn't SF. The Elijia Baily trilogy, for example, are simply murder mysteries set in a dystopian future; pure sociology. And R. Daneel Olivaw's "positronic brain" (as well as Asimov's other robots, and Star Trek's Data) certainly isn't any more "science" than Star Wars' "mitichlorians" or Bilbo's magic ring.
Why are the guys who run big companies so out of touch with ther real world? iTunes has nothing to do with the entrprise. Enterprise wants to know how to let employees use their iPhones and iPads for work... which to me shows both their and their employees lack of sanity.
I'm not a mechanic or carpenter who's expected to use his own tools at work. My employer supplies the tools. If he thinks I need a tablet he can buy me one. If hethinks I need to be contacted 24/7 he can kiss my hairy white ass.
Apple has never been able to get a foot in business' door except for a few niches, despite having every schoolkid in the US using Apples in the 80s and 90s. Why all the wishful thinking that history has shown to be dead wrong?
IMO every one of the Republican nominees are pretty damned creepy, especially Gingrinch (apologies to Tom Tomorrow).
I think the "uncanny valley" characteristic here is pretty damned far fetched. If Romney looks creepy, what makes Obama look any less creepy? Or any holywood movie star, for that matter?
I just saw today that Romney's superpac is mostly made up of Wall Street investors. Maybe someone should Occupy him?
At any rate, we have no good choices. I'll probably vote Green or Libbie anyway, just because I find it incredibly stupid to vote for anyone who wants to put you, some of your friends, or members of your family in prison. You may not smoke pot, but someone you love does. And we're spending billions we can't afford arresting, trying, and imprisoning THOSE YOU LOVE. How rational is that?
I've never seen that he wrote in code to keep competitors from stealing his ideas and discoveries, and in fact have seen many sketches and drawings of devices he'd dreamed up. There are quite a few in wikipedia. If he was afraid of other scientists, why draw the ideas?
What I'd read was that he wrote his famous predictions in code to keep the Pope from killing him.
My memory erred in the Apollo fire, it was indeed Apollo 1. Any time you have a 100% oxygen atmosphere and a fire, I'd call it an explosion. Ever see what a match will do to a pile of sugar mixed with saltpeter?
I use the newer phone a lot more than the old analog phone. Plus, it had a very small (about 1 cm x 4 cm) screen that only displayed numbers, while the new one has a color video screen and backlit keys; the backlighting takes juice, too. I use the newer phone for a lot more than talking; often I'll read the newspaper on it or look something up on google. Despite spending far less time on standby and it's being actively used far more, it lasts 3 times as long.
I don't know if it's average or median, but 20/20 is considered "normal". Most folks wearing contacts or glasses have better than 20/20 when wearing the lenses, and baseball players with 20/20 get LASIK surgery to make their vision better.
You need reading glasses because as the eye ages, the focusing lens (not the cornea, the lens behind the iris) hardens. That's what they replaced in my eye, the artificial lens sits on struts inside the lens capsule, allowing the focusing muscles to move it back and forth (the natural lens doesn't move, it stretches).
After the surgery I had to do exercises on those muscles, because when the lens gets too hard to focus, the muscles atrophy.
But even with a good keyboard it sort of sucked. Everything had to go through BASIC, if you wanted to do any sort of assembler you had to jump through hurdles to get past BASIC, and if you wanted to do any I/O you had to get BASIC to do it for you.
Not true; or actually almost not true. I wrote a two player battle tanks game for it in assembly because BASIC was way too slow. The only BASIC lines in were REM, which held the actual code, and the line that called that code. Additionaly, you didn't even have to give it a RUN command, because I made it so as soon as it loaded from tape it ran automatically.
Assembling the machine language by hand was actually harder than writing the program, and a whole lot less fun.
When I was in the Air Force they cannibalized eqipment all the time. Planes, trucks, flightline generators and other equipment. You have two grounded planes because they're waiting for parts, they simply took the good part from one plane and installed it on the other. When the parts came the second one was again in service.
The installation, calibration, etc. is already paid for; the mechanics all get paid whether they have planes to fix or not.
Apollo 13's near disaster was caused by an engineering screwup:
The heater and protection thermostat were originally designed for the command module's 28-volt DC bus. The specifications for the heater and thermostat were later changed to allow a 65-volt ground supply, in order to pressurize the tanks more rapidly. Beechcraft, the tank subcontractor, did not upgrade the thermostat to handle the higher voltage. The temperature sensor could not read above the highest operational temperature of the heater, which was approximately 100 ÂF (38 ÂC). This was not normally a problem because the thermostat was designed to open at 80 ÂF (27 ÂC).
Oops. Luckily, NASA's engineers kept the crew alive with several very impressive hacks and kludges, detailed in Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 written by Comander James A. Lovell, Jr., and Apollo 13, the movie that was based on it. (I liked the movie better, but the book was good too.)
Just a few years ago an important instrument crashed from space because a part was installed backwards. And a Mars probe was lost because somebody mixed up metric with American units.
I see you've seen Surrogates. I wonder why that movie didn't do well? It was a good movie! I think, though, you'd be surprised at how many here agree with you about manned space, including me. I am, however, excited about space tourism and hope I live long enough to be able to afford a trip to at least LEO, if not the moon. Maybe. The Wright brothers took off when my grandmother was six months old and she flew on commercial airlines. I was 6 when the Russians launched Sputnik, so maybe...
In my experience, once somebody finds out how easy it is to get stuff for free, they never pay again.
That's not been my experience. We were copying LPs onto cassettes way back when, and the RIAA screamed bloody murder about it, even though it was legal. But just because you could record your buddy's LP didn't keep anyone from buying LPs.
I will pay for music, software, and DVDs out of principle
See? There's one more in my experience. Also, studies have shown that your sample of one is faulty, that music pirates spend much more on music than non-pirates.
Now, if you're trying to sell something that used to be free, like music, you're going to have a rough sell. Music was always free; it was the container that costs. You didn't buy a song, you bought a 45. A piece of round plastic with grooves on it with a cardboard or paper container to keep it safe. You didn't buy the 1812 overture, you bought an LP. If you wanted free music you could record it off the radio. I recorded tons of stuff off the radio, KSHE's been playing full albums every week for over 40 years.
I beat you to it, but I wasn't joking. You will be assimilated. Not only is resistance futile, there will be no resistance. You will beg to become one of us. Blind or cyborg? Wheelchair or cyborg? Your choice... a futile choice.
I know quite a few cyborgs. You can't even tell us from normal, unenhanced humans.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is, with <a href="www.goat.se">Wall Street Journal</a> when you mouse over the link, the real URL shows up at the bottom of your screen. Not so with shortened goatse links.
That's as presumptuous BS as the RIAA saying they lose 100 trillion to piracy.
Well, while $100T is patently absurd, they do lose money because of piracy -- not because of their work being pirated, but because of their competetion, the indies, being pirated.
The RIAA has radio, TV, and movies. They don't need P2P. Their competetion, the indies, rely on P2P and other forms of sharing -- "word of mouth" is all they have. If you spend twenty bucks on four indie CDs, that's twenty bucks you no longer have for that Metallica CD.
Anyone who says it's free PR is either deluding themselves or an idiot. Was some piracy good for their bottom line? Sure, probably. But they put the kibosh on it when it stopped being PR, and started cutting into ad sales.
Well, a lot of folks think Doctorow is an idiot, but he credits giving his work away for free on boingboing and encouraging fans to share it for the reason he's a best selling author. "Nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity."
If there was no such thing as radio, the RIAA would have embraced P2P. However, it helps the competetion, which they feel they must crush at all costs. Not unlike MS's hatred for Linux.
In order for copyright to work as the founding fathers intended, we require the same level of technology as the founding fathers had.
Not necessarily. Previous copyright laws said that to gain copyright, the work had to be "affixed to a tangible medium," like a piece of round plastic, pigment smeared on cloth, or ink stained into paper. Copyright still works IF it only applies to tangible media -- and bits on a hard drive are hardly "tangible", let alone electronic pulses going through a wire.
Before the Bono Act and the DMCA the idea of "intellectual property" didn't exist. Authors and publishers were aware that their monopoly was for a limited time.
Copyright would work if noncommercial copying were deemed legal. People like stuff to put on shelves, especially like books and music and other items that show that they aren't entirely stupid and may even be literate. Music should not be considered a thing for sale, it never was before. You never bought music, you bought an LP or a cassette, and it was perfectly legal and ethical to loan that physical copy to someone who would then copy the intangible music to another tangible medium.
You can't sell music, you can't sell a novel. Use your music to sell records (whether tape, LP, or CD) and use your novel to sell books. BTW, look for "mcgrew paxil diaries" on bittorrent. Lots of folks have enjoyed it, nobody's (yet) told me thay thought it sucked. I won't sue you, I put it there myself. When I get around to making printed copies, you can buy one.
Copying didn't just start with the invention of the computer. Hald the cassettes I (still) own I made from other peoples' LPs. Nobody thought it was evil or unethical, and in fact it was legal. I see no difference whatever between loaning you my Metallica CD and uploading "free speech for the dumb"; in either case, you have gained and nobody has lost. And if you'd never heard of Metallica and liked it, you'd go out and buy their albums.
And were copyright lengths 20 years rather than virtual eternity, it would have a lot more respect from everyone.
BTW, my parents are in their eighties. Steamboat Willie is older than either of them. Do not respect laws that are themselves disrespectable, and especially if logic tells you they are unconstitutional.
I hate them too, but am forced to use them on certain forums. The other users get frightened by URLs that are over 10 characters long, and I get cussed.
Why are you on morons.org? You're not one of them! Do you enjoy conversing with idiots? next time they curse you for a long URL, apologize and use a goo.gl link to goatse just to educate the retards as to why URL shorteners are an incredibly BAD idea and following them even worse.
Install the Firefox addon
Fuck that, I have too much crap installed already. Adblock and the like are bad enough.
Sorry if I sem a bit curt this afternoon, Windows pissed me off at lunch. I journaled about it in a text editor, now I'm getting a 503 trying to get to my journal to post the damned thing. Did somebody slashdot slashdot by linking to slashdot from slashdot? Gees, this place is going downhill fast...
Being a "vulture capitalist" who makes millions of dollars by ruining the lives of others, destroying viable companies as part of a firm whose mantra was "strip and sell", is not wholesome.
It also goes against everything Jesus taught.
Dodging taxes and exploiting loopholes is not wholesome.
"Render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasar's" is what Jesus taught... i.e. "pay your damned taxes".
Supporting a party with racism as a key platform plank is not wholesome.
Nor Christian.
Supporting a party that wants to go to war with the world and waste lives is not wholesome.
Nor Christian. I really can't understand conservative "Christians". Conservative means stingy. Christians are supposed to be generous; e.g. liberal.
an amoral, evil asshole who's wearing a Fred Rogers suit.
Never trust ANYONE who wears a suit and tie. Especially if the guy in the suit claims to be a Christian; the tie is Satan's leash, the symbol of wealth and power, the symbol of greed, the symbol of everything Jesus was against. If your preacher wears a tie, you're in the wrong church (unless you worship money, in which case you're fine).
the only way to get rid of these guys is to stop voting for them.
Not voting won't change anything. Unfortunately, voting won't, either. IMO none of the candidates (including the sitting President) deserve my vote.
We've been trying to get pot legalized since the late '60s. If you don't use it, some of your friends and family do. Why do you continue to vote for a man who wants to put your friends and loved ones in prison for an activity that harms no one?
The same goes for the bought and paid for copyright laws. Who voted against the Bono Act? Nobody. Who voted against the DMCA? Nobody. Who thinks these are good laws? Nobody, outside Washington DC and Hollywood.
What good is a vote when your government is a plutocracy?
is there any good reason to use domain name shorteners when posting links in forums / blogs?
I can think of a few.
To the GP, TFS makes me think of Roger Rabbit.
Bullet 1: "Which way did he go?"
Bullet 2: "He went that away!"
Detective: "Sheesh -- dumdums."
Not only does nobody know everything, nobody CAN know everything. Youth seldom understands this.
We just have to work a little more at stepping back from our tiny cages and saying "So what does this really mean in the larger scheme of things?" and recognizing there is larger world beyond our narrowly-focused field of view.
I agree completely, but find it a bit strange that you would follow it with "Well, either that or we could just ask Jesus to tell us what to do." Science doesn't tell us how to live or act, that's religion's job. Religion doesn't tell us how the world works, that's science's job. The two ask and answer completely different questions. And if you believe that there's more to the world than meets the eye, how can you discount religion out of hand?
It's not that it's "weird" but that its bedrock goes directly against what the bible says. Revelations 18-19:
Joseph Smith, writing the Book of Mormon, made Mormonism anti-Christian. I can see where many Christians would be terrified of a Mormon President, considering how Christians fear the antichrist.
Actually, the AC was correct. Its is the possessive, it's is the contraction ('tis was the old contraction for "it is").
His beard. Her makeup. Its operating system.
He's tall. She's short. It's just a machine.
Someone once told me (and I don't know if this is correct or not) that his and her had apostrophes at one time.
You are correct in your sarcasm; language does indeed evolve. But the literate shouldn't let the aliterate dictate changes to the way literature is written. If you don't read, you shouldn't write.
You could say the same for Rubens Oh wait, not only was he filthy rich, he also put his name on the work of his students, thus pirating his own students.
That's not pirating, that's plagarism. Plagiarism helps nobody but the plagiarist. Piracy helps the artist. Roger McGuinn's career died when the labels decided he was too old for rock and roll, and it was resurected with Napster, who he said brought his music to a whole new generation. Speaking of McGuinn and The Byrds, the lyrics to "Turn, Turn, Turn" are in the public domain -- they come straight from the King James bible.
Cory Doctorow came to the same conclusion as Mikael Hed a long time ago. As he says, nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved from obscurity (Van Gogh comes to mind). He credits the fact that he publishes under a GPL license, gives his books away as ebooks on boingboing, and encourages sharing for his status as a New York Times best seller.
I credit the free public libraries for the fact that I have a couple dozen Asimov titles on my bookshelf; were I not to have been able to read him for free, I'd never have bought any of his books.
There are plenty of musicians today that are not rich. Some just like music more then they like money, just like some would never work for a specific company, no matter how much they like coding.
I know quite a few musicians, and none of them are rich. Most do it as a second job simply because, as you say, they love music and love playing. None of them would touch an RIAA contract with a ten foot pole.
There's probably too much pigeonholing. I'd say a story published in 1946 in Astounding Science Fiction is SF (here's the story). It is speculative and concerns sociology, and although it has to do with technology (it's the only pre-internet story I saw about the internet unless you count Asimov's Multivac), it's not scientific at all.
OTOH, LOTR which came out about the same time is certainly not SF!
As to "too popularized", what writer would say that? I would think any writer would want to be as popular as he possibly could! Could it have been a case of sour grapes?
According to the fellows you're talking about, much of Asimov's fiction wasn't SF. The Elijia Baily trilogy, for example, are simply murder mysteries set in a dystopian future; pure sociology. And R. Daneel Olivaw's "positronic brain" (as well as Asimov's other robots, and Star Trek's Data) certainly isn't any more "science" than Star Wars' "mitichlorians" or Bilbo's magic ring.
Why are the guys who run big companies so out of touch with ther real world? iTunes has nothing to do with the entrprise. Enterprise wants to know how to let employees use their iPhones and iPads for work... which to me shows both their and their employees lack of sanity.
I'm not a mechanic or carpenter who's expected to use his own tools at work. My employer supplies the tools. If he thinks I need a tablet he can buy me one. If hethinks I need to be contacted 24/7 he can kiss my hairy white ass.
Apple has never been able to get a foot in business' door except for a few niches, despite having every schoolkid in the US using Apples in the 80s and 90s. Why all the wishful thinking that history has shown to be dead wrong?
Soylent Fy? Soylant fy isn't people!
The creepiness factor is huge
IMO every one of the Republican nominees are pretty damned creepy, especially Gingrinch (apologies to Tom Tomorrow).
I think the "uncanny valley" characteristic here is pretty damned far fetched. If Romney looks creepy, what makes Obama look any less creepy? Or any holywood movie star, for that matter?
I just saw today that Romney's superpac is mostly made up of Wall Street investors. Maybe someone should Occupy him?
At any rate, we have no good choices. I'll probably vote Green or Libbie anyway, just because I find it incredibly stupid to vote for anyone who wants to put you, some of your friends, or members of your family in prison. You may not smoke pot, but someone you love does. And we're spending billions we can't afford arresting, trying, and imprisoning THOSE YOU LOVE. How rational is that?
I've never seen that he wrote in code to keep competitors from stealing his ideas and discoveries, and in fact have seen many sketches and drawings of devices he'd dreamed up. There are quite a few in wikipedia. If he was afraid of other scientists, why draw the ideas?
What I'd read was that he wrote his famous predictions in code to keep the Pope from killing him.
My memory erred in the Apollo fire, it was indeed Apollo 1. Any time you have a 100% oxygen atmosphere and a fire, I'd call it an explosion. Ever see what a match will do to a pile of sugar mixed with saltpeter?
I use the newer phone a lot more than the old analog phone. Plus, it had a very small (about 1 cm x 4 cm) screen that only displayed numbers, while the new one has a color video screen and backlit keys; the backlighting takes juice, too. I use the newer phone for a lot more than talking; often I'll read the newspaper on it or look something up on google. Despite spending far less time on standby and it's being actively used far more, it lasts 3 times as long.
I don't know if it's average or median, but 20/20 is considered "normal". Most folks wearing contacts or glasses have better than 20/20 when wearing the lenses, and baseball players with 20/20 get LASIK surgery to make their vision better.
You need reading glasses because as the eye ages, the focusing lens (not the cornea, the lens behind the iris) hardens. That's what they replaced in my eye, the artificial lens sits on struts inside the lens capsule, allowing the focusing muscles to move it back and forth (the natural lens doesn't move, it stretches).
After the surgery I had to do exercises on those muscles, because when the lens gets too hard to focus, the muscles atrophy.
But even with a good keyboard it sort of sucked. Everything had to go through BASIC, if you wanted to do any sort of assembler you had to jump through hurdles to get past BASIC, and if you wanted to do any I/O you had to get BASIC to do it for you.
Not true; or actually almost not true. I wrote a two player battle tanks game for it in assembly because BASIC was way too slow. The only BASIC lines in were REM, which held the actual code, and the line that called that code. Additionaly, you didn't even have to give it a RUN command, because I made it so as soon as it loaded from tape it ran automatically.
Assembling the machine language by hand was actually harder than writing the program, and a whole lot less fun.
There is no warranty.
When I was in the Air Force they cannibalized eqipment all the time. Planes, trucks, flightline generators and other equipment. You have two grounded planes because they're waiting for parts, they simply took the good part from one plane and installed it on the other. When the parts came the second one was again in service.
The installation, calibration, etc. is already paid for; the mechanics all get paid whether they have planes to fix or not.
Apollo 13's near disaster was caused by an engineering screwup:
Oops. Luckily, NASA's engineers kept the crew alive with several very impressive hacks and kludges, detailed in Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 written by Comander James A. Lovell, Jr., and Apollo 13, the movie that was based on it. (I liked the movie better, but the book was good too.)
Just a few years ago an important instrument crashed from space because a part was installed backwards. And a Mars probe was lost because somebody mixed up metric with American units.
I see you've seen Surrogates. I wonder why that movie didn't do well? It was a good movie! I think, though, you'd be surprised at how many here agree with you about manned space, including me. I am, however, excited about space tourism and hope I live long enough to be able to afford a trip to at least LEO, if not the moon. Maybe. The Wright brothers took off when my grandmother was six months old and she flew on commercial airlines. I was 6 when the Russians launched Sputnik, so maybe...
In my experience, once somebody finds out how easy it is to get stuff for free, they never pay again.
That's not been my experience. We were copying LPs onto cassettes way back when, and the RIAA screamed bloody murder about it, even though it was legal. But just because you could record your buddy's LP didn't keep anyone from buying LPs.
I will pay for music, software, and DVDs out of principle
See? There's one more in my experience. Also, studies have shown that your sample of one is faulty, that music pirates spend much more on music than non-pirates.
Now, if you're trying to sell something that used to be free, like music, you're going to have a rough sell. Music was always free; it was the container that costs. You didn't buy a song, you bought a 45. A piece of round plastic with grooves on it with a cardboard or paper container to keep it safe. You didn't buy the 1812 overture, you bought an LP. If you wanted free music you could record it off the radio. I recorded tons of stuff off the radio, KSHE's been playing full albums every week for over 40 years.
I beat you to it, but I wasn't joking. You will be assimilated. Not only is resistance futile, there will be no resistance. You will beg to become one of us. Blind or cyborg? Wheelchair or cyborg? Your choice... a futile choice.
I know quite a few cyborgs. You can't even tell us from normal, unenhanced humans.