Bah. If it's such a wonderful investment, Alaska could just post a bond issue and pay it off with these abundant future revenues. Only problem is there won't be any, so the state won't do it. But if you can get it for effectively 1% of the real price (Alaska's share of fed taxes), why the hell not?
But if I were to take a program the size of OpenOffice and use a couple interesting chunks of code, I'm technically in the same situation.
So rewrite the interesting chunks; it's the implementation that's copyrighted, not the ideas. I'd think it would be necessary to recode most such chunks just to fit your structure/compiler/language/supported OSes, anyway. If you can code that big app, you can recode a few interesting ideas. And seriously, how often is a small chunk of code (and not the ideas in it) all that interesting?
Seriously, there are films like "Silence of the Lambs" and "Pulp Fiction" which involve extreme depictions of violence, and get Oscars. Violent sexual behavior? "The Accused" and "Rob Roy" come quickly to mind, and there's hordes of others. Are you saying anyone who willingly views any of this stuff is psychologically dangerous? How about the written word involving rape? Time to burn the Bible...
True, but I saw a Matrox G450 free after rebate with shipping the other day, so you can do yesterday's technology for much less than yesterday's prices.
that's really funny. Unfortunately nothing would really change, only the prices would go up to reflect the loss of revenue.
I remember paying $2000 for a new, mid-range computer. What has gone up because computers are cheaper now?
The cost of living doesn't go down, perhaps, but that's just because we get more. My parents didn't have central air until I was 14; I haven't lived in a place without it since. I remember my dad showing the power locks on his new car; can you buy a car without them now? Or, would you rather have a like-new '79 Rabbit, or a like-new Honda Fit? Homes are larger now with fewer people living in them. etc. etc.
I used to live in a house I shared with a bunch of people from the humanities. They always always always nibbled at my leftovers without asking permission.../I.
Humanities majors? They were probably just preparing for their life of poverty...
Riiiiiight. Do you know how big a country is? Do you know how satellites work? (Hint: they orbit, they do not hang over the same spot. Still pics only. "Patriot Games" was a MOVIE.) And it's not like we don't know where the satellites are, heck, you can run an app tracking them.
Google can't even get a half-decent pic of York, PA, and you think other countries have high-res movies of every U.S. soldier.
9/11 conspiracy theory is idiocy. You think a conspiracy could and would fake 9/11, yet they couldn't make a reasonably convincing garage-full of WMDs in occupied Iraq? Please.
There's a widespread misunderstanding of evolution, mostly on the part of creationists, but even some of those who believe in evolution make this mistake.
Understand this: evolution is not a linear process from "less-evolved" to "more-evolved."
That is, just because one species evolves from another, that does not mean the new species is in some absolute sense "better." What it means is that the new species is better suited to its current environment.
If a giant asteroid hit the earth tomorrow, or some massive radition burst hit the earth, it is possible that all human and mammalian life would be wiped out, and the earth left with little more than cockroaches and bacteria.
In that scenario, humanity would be a branch that died out because it could not evolve fast enough for its changed environment. Mass extinctions have happened a number of times before in the history of the earth, with a large percentage of species being wiped out. The trilobite has no known living descendants, for example.
Cockroaches would then evolve to be better suited to this new hellish world, though I doubt you would consider them more evolved. Their evolution would be dramatically different from how they would evolve without this cataclysmic event. In the eyes of evolution, neither evolutionary pattern is better in a general sense; each one was simply better suited for the environment in which it existed.
So as for your question about humans and apes; if the apes were better suited for a particular environment, but not for others, they might split into two groups, one in the old evolutionary niche, and the other in a different environment which triggered changes in that group that led to the evolution of humanity.
there comes a time in a debate when you realize that no matter how well you prove your point you have no hope of reaching your target. when you have hit this point you may as well stop arguing.
Just to be pedantic, the first spam was not the lawyers and their green card service, it was one for computer-related services long before law firms would even bother with computer networks. The infamous law firm crossposted on many, many USENET groups, paving the way for USENET to be bogged down in spam-type messages, but it wasn't email per se.
My understanding is that Krushchev effectively did say, "We will bury you", but meant it as "We will be present at your funeral," i.e. that socialism would replace capitalism.
Sheesh, I was in the Berkshires and didn't know it was Perseid time. I just did a bit of star gazing because I'm usually in areas of too much light pollution and wanted to see the Milky Way for the first time in ~30 years. I just saw two meteors, but was quite impressed with that.
I'm sick of people saying "oh, crime would go away if so-and-so was legalized"
Yes, those roving bands of alcoholics have been so bad we've started a War on Alcholics.
Look, crime isn't going to go away, but outlawing drugs pushes drug users towards the criminal element, provides lots of funds for criminal enterprises, and diverts police resources away from other crimes. And legalizing drugs would end drug dealing-based crime and the violence associated with it, just like ending Prohibition did.
It wouldn't make the world a wonderland, but I claim it would be better. And I hold up Prohibition (and its end) as an example.
*I'm* sick of people being willing to hold a gun to my head and telling me I can't do something -- even if it's something I personally don't want to do.
You're not born an Islamic militant. It's not a contagious or hereditary disease.
People turn to militant Islam in response to the world around them. Some of which we helped create. When the West overthrew Mossadegh in Iran and installed the Shah, the Shah then repressed all opposition. So people turned to a militant cleric living in exile, and when his people overthrew the government, they installed an Islamic Fundamentalist government.
This pattern repeats. As Israel bombs Lebanon, the Lebanese turn to the enemy of their enemy, even though they did not particularly support Hezbollah before.
You want to stop terrorism? Stop the forces that turn people to terrorism.
Witnesses say the whole starving thing was a sham, not surprising since food and medicine were specifically exempted:
Saddam's parades of dead babies are exposed as a cynical charade (Filed: 25/05/2003)
The "baby parades" were a staple of Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine for a decade. Convoys of taxis, with the tiny coffins of dead infants strapped to their roofs - allegedly killed by United Nations sanctions - were driven through the streets of Baghdad, past crowds of women screaming anti-Western slogans.
The moving scenes were often filmed by visiting television crews and provided valuable ammunition to anti-sanctions activists such as George Galloway, the Labour MP, who blamed Western governments for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.
But The Telegraph can reveal that it was all a cynical charade. Iraqi doctors say they were told to collect dead babies who had died prematurely or from natural causes and to store them in cardboard boxes in refrigerated morgues for up to four weeks - until they had sufficient corpses for a parade.
[...]
Dr Amer Abdul al-Jalil, the deputy resident at the hospital, said: "Sanctions did not kill these children - Saddam killed them. The internal sanctions by the Saddam regime were very effective. Those who died prematurely usually died because their mothers lived in impoverished areas neglected by the government.
"The mortality rate was higher in areas such as Saddam City because there was no sewerage system. Infectious diseases were rampant.
"Over the past 10 years, the government in Iraq poured money into the military and the construction of palaces for Saddam to the detriment of the health sector. Those babies or small children who died because they could not access the right drugs, died because Saddam's government failed to distribute the drugs. The poorer areas were most vulnerable."
He added: "We feel terrible that this happened, but we were living under a regime and we had to keep silent. What could we do?"
The idea of the mile high club is cool, but when that ideal meets the reality of a real airline bathroom; nevermind the fact that a zillion people are witing for you to finish your business so they can eject bodily fluids and solids there.
Private jet, man, private jet. Not recommended for the actual pilot, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah. If it's such a wonderful investment, Alaska could just post a bond issue and pay it off with these abundant future revenues. Only problem is there won't be any, so the state won't do it. But if you can get it for effectively 1% of the real price (Alaska's share of fed taxes), why the hell not?
But if I were to take a program the size of OpenOffice and use a couple interesting chunks of code, I'm technically in the same situation.
So rewrite the interesting chunks; it's the implementation that's copyrighted, not the ideas. I'd think it would be necessary to recode most such chunks just to fit your structure/compiler/language/supported OSes, anyway. If you can code that big app, you can recode a few interesting ideas. And seriously, how often is a small chunk of code (and not the ideas in it) all that interesting?
So sociopaths are only affected by viewing violent imagery when there's nudity involved?
Seems to me there's plenty of violent, sociopathic behavior in "Passion of the Christ." Outlaw it?
How about I buy FLACs (or whatever) off of allofmp3 and then send the artists some cash?
That's not a link
Right-click->Open selected URL in new tab
Looks like a link to me. Perhaps you need to upgrade your browser.
You're the reason we have those 100 line disclaimers at the bottom of everything.
Why?
Seriously, there are films like "Silence of the Lambs" and "Pulp Fiction" which involve extreme depictions of violence, and get Oscars. Violent sexual behavior? "The Accused" and "Rob Roy" come quickly to mind, and there's hordes of others. Are you saying anyone who willingly views any of this stuff is psychologically dangerous? How about the written word involving rape? Time to burn the Bible...
The EPA is its own entity.
No it isn't, its administrator was appointed by Bush (Stephen L. Johnson at the moment), and its administrator is generally given cabinet rank.
True, but I saw a Matrox G450 free after rebate with shipping the other day, so you can do yesterday's technology for much less than yesterday's prices.
I paid $2K for an Apple IIe: 1 MHz 6502, 64K of RAM, twin 140K floppy drives.
that's really funny. Unfortunately nothing would really change, only the prices would go up to reflect the loss of revenue.
I remember paying $2000 for a new, mid-range computer. What has gone up because computers are cheaper now?
The cost of living doesn't go down, perhaps, but that's just because we get more. My parents didn't have central air until I was 14; I haven't lived in a place without it since. I remember my dad showing the power locks on his new car; can you buy a car without them now? Or, would you rather have a like-new '79 Rabbit, or a like-new Honda Fit? Homes are larger now with fewer people living in them. etc. etc.
Do these dimmable bulbs work in ceiling fans? I have several on dimmers. I could live with the aesthetics of the twisty bulbs.
I used to live in a house I shared with a bunch of people from the humanities. They always always always nibbled at my leftovers without asking permission.../I.
Humanities majors? They were probably just preparing for their life of poverty...
Riiiiiight. Do you know how big a country is? Do you know how satellites work? (Hint: they orbit, they do not hang over the same spot. Still pics only. "Patriot Games" was a MOVIE.) And it's not like we don't know where the satellites are, heck, you can run an app tracking them.
Google can't even get a half-decent pic of York, PA, and you think other countries have high-res movies of every U.S. soldier.
9/11 conspiracy theory is idiocy. You think a conspiracy could and would fake 9/11, yet they couldn't make a reasonably convincing garage-full of WMDs in occupied Iraq? Please.
There's a widespread misunderstanding of evolution, mostly on the part of creationists, but even some of those who believe in evolution make this mistake.
Understand this: evolution is not a linear process from "less-evolved" to "more-evolved."
That is, just because one species evolves from another, that does not mean the new species is in some absolute sense "better." What it means is that the new species is better suited to its current environment.
If a giant asteroid hit the earth tomorrow, or some massive radition burst hit the earth, it is possible that all human and mammalian life would be wiped out, and the earth left with little more than cockroaches and bacteria.
In that scenario, humanity would be a branch that died out because it could not evolve fast enough for its changed environment. Mass extinctions have happened a number of times before in the history of the earth, with a large percentage of species being wiped out. The trilobite has no known living descendants, for example.
Cockroaches would then evolve to be better suited to this new hellish world, though I doubt you would consider them more evolved. Their evolution would be dramatically different from how they would evolve without this cataclysmic event. In the eyes of evolution, neither evolutionary pattern is better in a general sense; each one was simply better suited for the environment in which it existed.
So as for your question about humans and apes; if the apes were better suited for a particular environment, but not for others, they might split into two groups, one in the old evolutionary niche, and the other in a different environment which triggered changes in that group that led to the evolution of humanity.
there comes a time in a debate when you realize that no matter how well you prove your point you have no hope of reaching your target.
when you have hit this point you may as well stop arguing.
You must be married.
Just to be pedantic, the first spam was not the lawyers and their green card service, it was one for computer-related services long before law firms would even bother with computer networks. The infamous law firm crossposted on many, many USENET groups, paving the way for USENET to be bogged down in spam-type messages, but it wasn't email per se.
My understanding is that Krushchev effectively did say, "We will bury you", but meant it as "We will be present at your funeral," i.e. that socialism would replace capitalism.
Sheesh, I was in the Berkshires and didn't know it was Perseid time. I just did a bit of star gazing because I'm usually in areas of too much light pollution and wanted to see the Milky Way for the first time in ~30 years. I just saw two meteors, but was quite impressed with that.
I'm sick of people saying "oh, crime would go away if so-and-so was legalized"
Yes, those roving bands of alcoholics have been so bad we've started a War on Alcholics.
Look, crime isn't going to go away, but outlawing drugs pushes drug users towards the criminal element, provides lots of funds for criminal enterprises, and diverts police resources away from other crimes. And legalizing drugs would end drug dealing-based crime and the violence associated with it, just like ending Prohibition did.
It wouldn't make the world a wonderland, but I claim it would be better. And I hold up Prohibition (and its end) as an example.
*I'm* sick of people being willing to hold a gun to my head and telling me I can't do something -- even if it's something I personally don't want to do.
You're not born an Islamic militant. It's not a contagious or hereditary disease.
People turn to militant Islam in response to the world around them. Some of which we helped create. When the West overthrew Mossadegh in Iran and installed the Shah, the Shah then repressed all opposition. So people turned to a militant cleric living in exile, and when his people overthrew the government, they installed an Islamic Fundamentalist government.
This pattern repeats. As Israel bombs Lebanon, the Lebanese turn to the enemy of their enemy, even though they did not particularly support Hezbollah before.
You want to stop terrorism? Stop the forces that turn people to terrorism.
Witnesses say the whole starving thing was a sham, not surprising since food and medicine were specifically exempted:
e ws/2003/05/25/wirq25.xml
Saddam's parades of dead babies are exposed as a cynical charade
(Filed: 25/05/2003)
The "baby parades" were a staple of Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine for a decade. Convoys of taxis, with the tiny coffins of dead infants strapped to their roofs - allegedly killed by United Nations sanctions - were driven through the streets of Baghdad, past crowds of women screaming anti-Western slogans.
The moving scenes were often filmed by visiting television crews and provided valuable ammunition to anti-sanctions activists such as George Galloway, the Labour MP, who blamed Western governments for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children.
But The Telegraph can reveal that it was all a cynical charade. Iraqi doctors say they were told to collect dead babies who had died prematurely or from natural causes and to store them in cardboard boxes in refrigerated morgues for up to four weeks - until they had sufficient corpses for a parade.
[...]
Dr Amer Abdul al-Jalil, the deputy resident at the hospital, said: "Sanctions did not kill these children - Saddam killed them. The internal sanctions by the Saddam regime were very effective. Those who died prematurely usually died because their mothers lived in impoverished areas neglected by the government.
"The mortality rate was higher in areas such as Saddam City because there was no sewerage system. Infectious diseases were rampant.
"Over the past 10 years, the government in Iraq poured money into the military and the construction of palaces for Saddam to the detriment of the health sector. Those babies or small children who died because they could not access the right drugs, died because Saddam's government failed to distribute the drugs. The poorer areas were most vulnerable."
He added: "We feel terrible that this happened, but we were living under a regime and we had to keep silent. What could we do?"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/n
The idea of the mile high club is cool, but when that ideal meets the reality of a real airline bathroom; nevermind the fact that a zillion people are witing for you to finish your business so they can eject bodily fluids and solids there.
Private jet, man, private jet. Not recommended for the actual pilot, though.