They are re-running season 1 on Space now. My wife and I watch it. She likes it more than any other "weird faces show" (her term for the TV SciFi shows), I think it's OK.
> It's the essence of the show. The Cylons are biological. They think and breath and live.
Which brings me to one of the show's most glaring flaws.
I'm a big fan of internal consistency. It helps me suspend my disbelief and immerse myself in the show for the 45 minutes that it is on. Screw that up, especially for something crucial, and I get this nagging feeling that something is not right.
So, on one hand we are shown Cylons that are (1) much stronger and have significantly better endurance than humans, (2) their spines glow red when having sex, and (3) they are adversely affected by radiation that does not bother humans.
while on the other hand, we are told that they are practically indistinguishable from humans and the only test was created by a "genius" and can only be operated by him.
Come on, they made a full post mortem on Leoben and didn't find fluorescent cells in his spinal column? No difference in the muscle tissue that would explain the ability of this model to break metal handcuffs?
The other thing that I don't care for is that this show takes itself so damn seriously. It shouts: "Hey, pay attention! This is a very serious show talking about very serious issues! And here they are...". It's not as bad as ST:Voyager (and if the couple of episodes that I watched are representative of the series, nothing can be as bad as ST:Voyager) but it still gets old after a short while.
Contrast it with Farscape that seems to say: "Chill, dude. This is just a silly show for your entertainment, but when you done watching this episode, maybe you'll want to reflect a bit about how the characters behaved and, perhaps, find something to think about. Or maybe not, we don't really care".
And the funny thing is, I did find myself thinking about the moral issues presented in Farscape more than those presented in BSG'05.
I also did not mind as much when they violated the laws of physics right and left in Farscape. Maybe because the "holes" did not detract from the overall plot (my favourite was Rigel telling off Sikozu in I shrink therefore I am).
So, in my opinion, BSG'05 is OK, better than most SciFi shows that I'm exposed to, but not the best of them.
Posted by Zonk on 24-12-05 2:10 > In an article from AnandTech, Purav Sanghani focuses on the most widely used flash media, > the 1GB CompactFlash cards [...]
The actual article says "One of the most common types of flash media is the CompactFlash digital media" (emphasis mine).
Lots of us run older "secondary" machines with salvaged components. The 9800 is not that old in that regard, between a couple of friends, we have 8500s, 7500s and 7200s in various machines.
Of course, these machines also have slower CPUs (P3, K6 and equivalents) and lower amounts of slower RAM.
I'd like to know what driver versions would be best for those configurations (I heard some recommendations for 4.12 and 4.3)
> Ati's naming scheme is this: major version number is the last years number (2004=4, > 2005=5, 2006=6 etc) and the minor version number is the month. On special occasions > the realese special versions, like this 5.13 at the end of the year.
> just in case you haven't noticed, Slashdot != the federal government. Why exactly > would the OP be obligated to release any details of his personal life to a private > entity such as yourself?
Just in case you haven't noticed, that was exactly the point of my post, specifically the last part.
However, I'll try to state it in more clear terms:
Governments (federal and otherwise) are comprised of people. the same goes for law enforcement, intelligence, "secret service" and other governmental agencies.
Individual people, in general, have their own agendas. They can be dishonest, deceitful, jealous, vengeful, prone to criminal activity or just under pressure to perform wrongful acts.
Therefore implicitly trusting a group of individuals that you have never met is not a very good idea.
And the logical conclusion is that implicitly trusting a government or its agencies is not a very good idea.
The question that you need to ask yourself is: is there a chance that my private information will be abused? Most of the SlashDot tinfoil-hat crowd fear governmental abuse but I believe that abuse by individuals is at least as likely.
Now, I can live with some loss of privacy, provided I trust the safeguards against abuse but, unfortunately, given the incidents of policemen planting evidence and getting off with "a note in their permanent record", I do not have this trust.
If the constitution (or the equivalent) of a country said something to the effect of "any person in a position of power or authority who is found guilty of abusing their power or authority shall have their genitals publicly mauled by a pack of rabid rats" and there were significant safeguards implemented to ensure that a large number of violators are caught, convicted, and punished accordingly, then I would be satisfied that the risk of abuse is low enough for me to trust a government.
The motto of the Spider-man movie was "with great power comes great responsibility". I believe in a different motto "with great power there should come a great fear". Because responsibility is just an empty word, easily brushed aside unless backed by a real fear of the consequences of abusing this responsibility. Until that day comes, I don't want their prying hands anywhere near my information.
Any private information that has the potential of being misused must remain private unless there is a *really* good cause for the government to peek at it, and then there should be a rigorous process of examining the cause, approving the *limited* invasion of privacy and safeguarding the data, with lots of people involved and each one *accountable* for their decisions and actions.
Freedom is not when the people fear the government, it's the other way around.
Well, sir, if privacy is just a luxury we can do without, would you mind sharing with use your real name, date of birth, full address, phone number, SSN (or whatever ID is used in the country of your residence), bank account numbers, a few choice passwords, etc.?
No?
Hmmm. How about the name, address, phone number and an accurate physical description of your current "significant other" and, while you're at it, please tell us how he or she is in bed, in as much elaborate detail as you can recall.
Also no?
Fine, Just take some digital pictures of your adorable children (or other pre-teen family members) in the shower and put them on a publicly accessible web page along with their names and the address of the school they go to.
Still no?
You know what, forget it. I'll just contact the establishments that have your personal info and ask them for it. Maybe install a tap on your phone line and a key logger on your computer as well and, just to be thorough, ask your cell phone company for some triangulation data.
What? I can't?
Bummer.
Hey, not a problem. There's this individual, Joe something-or-other, who's desperate to get a date with my cousin. She says he's not very bright but still sort of fun to see him go out of his way to impress her. Lately he's been telling her about his job in some law enforcement agency and how they're tracking suspected terrorists and that they can do all those things I talked about without needing a warrant or "probable cause" or anything because, let's face it, those pesky accountability issues just made their job harder so they got a couple of laws passed to get rid of them.
Anyway, I spoke to cuz and she believes Joe will do it if she's nice to him and pretends to be really interested in his boring stories. So you see, chum, not a problem!
> The Register article saying that Wikipedia was filled with errors was itself filled > with errors. At one point they actually called MMORPG's "shoot em up games." The real > definition is right in the acronym, I mean how hard is it to figure it out.
Or the following on the first page (emphasis mine): "Seigenthaler, a former Robert Kennedy aide and newspaper editor wrote about his anguish a fortnight ago, describing how an edit to his Wikipedia biography implicated in him in the Kennedy assassination."
How about supporting useful standards?
on
Gmail Gets RSS
·
· Score: 1
> "No, really. Please pick yourself up off the floor and stop laughing. Yes, there are good books > on developing Windows software in a secure fashion." With snippets like that starting off an > article, you start to see why people have trouble taking Slashdot seriously. This is getting > ridiclous, almost FOXNEWSesque.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way of getting a submission that does not mention Google past the editors.
> if western society thinks it can stop other countries from using existing ideas > to build new ideas, we're crazy.
No, they're not. That portion of western society that actively tries to restrict ideas just wants to raise the entry barriers everywhere. They understand perfectly well that once the rules change, they will be at a severe disadvantage and they are doing everything in their power to prevent it.
> At some point the 'powers' are going to have to realise that ideas are not the > same as physical property, [...]
the 'powers' know it perfectly well and have known it from the beginning. Do you think that politicians, for example, actually believe the lies that they tell the public?
> [...] and can not be treated the same.
Treating ideas as physical property is a very useful tool for restricting ideas and knowledge (or, at least, the ability to put said knowledge into use). It allows for keeping the separation beween the haves and the have nots even in the information age.
> So why [...] we are working hard at creating artificial barriers to > impede progress?
Because abstract progress does not give the proverbial 'me' enough short-term benefits and temporary advantage over 'them'.
>> It would be useful if they actually provided some simple notification of >> updates to the services they provide, possibly just some small blurb on >> search result pages or something. > > You could always join the Google Friends newsletter: > http://www.google.com/contact/newsletter.html
Or you could just check SlashDot. Every time Sergey Brin flatulates, you can read about it on the front page.
With the elections looming, it is time to call your Member of Parliament and let them know that your current and future voting decisions will be heavily influenced by their stance on the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
> They had female guards?
Of course!
They are re-running season 1 on Space now. My wife and I watch it. She likes it more than any other "weird faces show" (her term for the TV SciFi shows), I think it's OK.
> It's the essence of the show. The Cylons are biological. They think and breath and live.
Which brings me to one of the show's most glaring flaws.
I'm a big fan of internal consistency. It helps me suspend my disbelief and immerse myself in the show for the 45 minutes that it is on. Screw that up, especially for something crucial, and I get this nagging feeling that something is not right.
So, on one hand we are shown Cylons that are
(1) much stronger and have significantly better endurance than humans,
(2) their spines glow red when having sex, and
(3) they are adversely affected by radiation that does not bother humans.
while on the other hand, we are told that they are practically indistinguishable from humans and the only test was created by a "genius" and can only be operated by him.
Come on, they made a full post mortem on Leoben and didn't find fluorescent cells in his spinal column? No difference in the muscle tissue that would explain the ability of this model to break metal handcuffs?
The other thing that I don't care for is that this show takes itself so damn seriously.
It shouts: "Hey, pay attention! This is a very serious show talking about very serious issues! And here they are...". It's not as bad as ST:Voyager (and if the couple of episodes that I watched are representative of the series, nothing can be as bad as ST:Voyager) but it still gets old after a short while.
Contrast it with Farscape that seems to say: "Chill, dude. This is just a silly show for your entertainment, but when you done watching this episode, maybe you'll want to reflect a bit about how the characters behaved and, perhaps, find something to think about. Or maybe not, we don't really care".
And the funny thing is, I did find myself thinking about the moral issues presented in Farscape more than those presented in BSG'05.
I also did not mind as much when they violated the laws of physics right and left in Farscape. Maybe because the "holes" did not detract from the overall plot (my favourite was Rigel telling off Sikozu in I shrink therefore I am).
So, in my opinion, BSG'05 is OK, better than most SciFi shows that I'm exposed to, but not the best of them.
Posted by Zonk on 24-12-05 2:10
> In an article from AnandTech, Purav Sanghani focuses on the most widely used flash media,
> the 1GB CompactFlash cards [...]
The actual article says "One of the most common types of flash media is the CompactFlash digital media" (emphasis mine).
The most widely used is SD.
Way to go, Zonk!
> Geez - I'm a woman!
No, you're not.
You're an Anonymous Coward.
Lots of us run older "secondary" machines with salvaged components.
The 9800 is not that old in that regard, between a couple of friends, we have 8500s, 7500s and 7200s in various machines.
Of course, these machines also have slower CPUs (P3, K6 and equivalents) and lower amounts of slower RAM.
I'd like to know what driver versions would be best for those configurations (I heard some recommendations for 4.12 and 4.3)
The older driver versions are available here.
> Ati's naming scheme is this: major version number is the last years number (2004=4,
> 2005=5, 2006=6 etc) and the minor version number is the month. On special occasions
> the realese special versions, like this 5.13 at the end of the year.
So, for example, 4.3 is actually older than 4.12.
> Why can't I find posts like this when I have modpoints?
Karma.
> just in case you haven't noticed, Slashdot != the federal government. Why exactly
> would the OP be obligated to release any details of his personal life to a private
> entity such as yourself?
Just in case you haven't noticed, that was exactly the point of my post, specifically the last part.
However, I'll try to state it in more clear terms:
Governments (federal and otherwise) are comprised of people. the same goes for law enforcement, intelligence, "secret service" and other governmental agencies.
Individual people, in general, have their own agendas. They can be dishonest, deceitful, jealous, vengeful, prone to criminal activity or just under pressure to perform wrongful acts.
Therefore implicitly trusting a group of individuals that you have never met is not a very good idea.
And the logical conclusion is that implicitly trusting a government or its agencies is not a very good idea.
The question that you need to ask yourself is: is there a chance that my private information will be abused?
Most of the SlashDot tinfoil-hat crowd fear governmental abuse but I believe that abuse by individuals is at least as likely.
Now, I can live with some loss of privacy, provided I trust the safeguards against abuse but, unfortunately, given the incidents of policemen planting evidence and getting off with "a note in their permanent record", I do not have this trust.
If the constitution (or the equivalent) of a country said something to the effect of "any person in a position of power or authority who is found guilty of abusing their power or authority shall have their genitals publicly mauled by a pack of rabid rats" and there were significant safeguards implemented to ensure that a large number of violators are caught, convicted, and punished accordingly, then I would be satisfied that the risk of abuse is low enough for me to trust a government.
The motto of the Spider-man movie was "with great power comes great responsibility". I believe in a different motto "with great power there should come a great fear". Because responsibility is just an empty word, easily brushed aside unless backed by a real fear of the consequences of abusing this responsibility.
Until that day comes, I don't want their prying hands anywhere near my information.
Any private information that has the potential of being misused must remain private unless there is a *really* good cause for the government to peek at it, and then there should be a rigorous process of examining the cause, approving the *limited* invasion of privacy and safeguarding the data, with lots of people involved and each one *accountable* for their decisions and actions.
Freedom is not when the people fear the government, it's the other way around.
> Humans, by contrast, take a couple years before they comprehend the simplest words and actions.
Au contraire.
My 1yo understands perfectly well that "No!" means "stop whatever you are doing and don't do it again until you make sure daddy is no longer looking".
Well, sir, if privacy is just a luxury we can do without, would you mind sharing with use your real name, date of birth, full address, phone number, SSN (or whatever ID is used in the country of your residence), bank account numbers, a few choice passwords, etc.?
No?
Hmmm. How about the name, address, phone number and an accurate physical description of your current "significant other" and, while you're at it, please tell us how he or she is in bed, in as much elaborate detail as you can recall.
Also no?
Fine, Just take some digital pictures of your adorable children (or other pre-teen family members) in the shower and put them on a publicly accessible web page along with their names and the address of the school they go to.
Still no?
You know what, forget it. I'll just contact the establishments that have your personal info and ask them for it. Maybe install a tap on your phone line and a key logger on your computer as well and, just to be thorough, ask your cell phone company for some triangulation data.
What? I can't?
Bummer.
Hey, not a problem. There's this individual, Joe something-or-other, who's desperate to get a date with my cousin. She says he's not very bright but still sort of fun to see him go out of his way to impress her. Lately he's been telling her about his job in some law enforcement agency and how they're tracking suspected terrorists and that they can do all those things I talked about without needing a warrant or "probable cause" or anything because, let's face it, those pesky accountability issues just made their job harder so they got a couple of laws passed to get rid of them.
Anyway, I spoke to cuz and she believes Joe will do it if she's nice to him and pretends to be really interested in his boring stories. So you see, chum, not a problem!
> New Object Found at Edge of Solar System
That just proves it.
Our garbage collection engine sucks.
> This is a nice contraption, kudos to the guy.
He didn't even save the lid for white balance...
Because nothing quite compares to playing Nethack in High Definition.
> Atleast Sony only puts root kits on their customers computers, which can cause
> them to be infested with spyware and who-knows-what-else.
Do not confuse Sony Computer Entertainment with Sony BMG Music Entertainment (which, by the way, is only 50% owned by Sony).
This will be even more ludicrous than blaming Microsoft Research for the latest IE exploit.
> The Register article saying that Wikipedia was filled with errors was itself filled
> with errors. At one point they actually called MMORPG's "shoot em up games." The real
> definition is right in the acronym, I mean how hard is it to figure it out.
Or the following on the first page (emphasis mine):
"Seigenthaler, a former Robert Kennedy aide and newspaper editor wrote about his anguish a fortnight ago, describing how an edit to his Wikipedia biography implicated in him in the Kennedy assassination."
You know, there's a little thing called IMAP.
> Of course, I actually think he was just making a joke anyay.
He was, but a good joke often has some insight carefully hidden in it.
> The solution, obviously, is to make lawyers work for free.
Which outlines the greastest problem with the Western legal system:
Justice should not cost money!
Let me repeat that:
Justice should be free!
> "No, really. Please pick yourself up off the floor and stop laughing. Yes, there are good books
> on developing Windows software in a secure fashion." With snippets like that starting off an
> article, you start to see why people have trouble taking Slashdot seriously. This is getting
> ridiclous, almost FOXNEWSesque.
Unfortunately, this seems to be the only way of getting a submission that does not mention Google past the editors.
> if western society thinks it can stop other countries from using existing ideas
> to build new ideas, we're crazy.
No, they're not. That portion of western society that actively tries to restrict ideas just wants to raise the entry barriers everywhere. They understand perfectly well that once the rules change, they will be at a severe disadvantage and they are doing everything in their power to prevent it.
> At some point the 'powers' are going to have to realise that ideas are not the
> same as physical property, [...]
the 'powers' know it perfectly well and have known it from the beginning. Do you think that politicians, for example, actually believe the lies that they tell the public?
> [...] and can not be treated the same.
Treating ideas as physical property is a very useful tool for restricting ideas and knowledge (or, at least, the ability to put said knowledge into use). It allows for keeping the separation beween the haves and the have nots even in the information age.
> So why [...] we are working hard at creating artificial barriers to
> impede progress?
Because abstract progress does not give the proverbial 'me' enough short-term benefits and temporary advantage over 'them'.
> Posting is not permitted for the promotion of products such as drug
> cleansing shakes and urine test additives
urine test additives... Dammit, I suspected that I forgot to add something to the urine test.
Now I know why it tasted like piss.
>> It would be useful if they actually provided some simple notification of
>> updates to the services they provide, possibly just some small blurb on
>> search result pages or something.
>
> You could always join the Google Friends newsletter:
> http://www.google.com/contact/newsletter.html
Or you could just check SlashDot.
Every time Sergey Brin flatulates, you can read about it on the front page.
With the elections looming, it is time to call your Member of Parliament and let them know that your current and future voting decisions will be heavily influenced by their stance on the issue.
> We didn't win the revolution without France's help, and you moose-fuckers
> didn't sack D.C. without the mighty pommies.
You, sir, are out of line!
I'd like you to know that We would never copulate with moose, at they are ugly, smelly and foul-tempered creatures.
Elk, on the other hand,
> [...] large heads will require proportionately broad hips at least, else
> the species will run into severe difficulties reproducing itself.
Not necessarily.
Perhaps their heads swelled only after they got their law degrees?