Besides, there is a long history of suppressing real science because of political, economic or religious belief.
You have that in europe too (at least the former two), but to a lesser degree. The latter is non-existant, luckily.
It's not real science if it is political, economic or religious belief. It's science when it's proven, demonstrated, controlled, repeated and mathematically demonstrable.
Most expert forums in the UK for example steer clear of unresolvable issues. So when Lovelock can show that his daisies won't grow because of the output of such dirty things as that gianormous chimney: Hawaii; or one of those lichen encrusted ones from a mill in the northern British Midlands, maybe other sensible groups will give him living space. Ditto for the one from the article.
I suppose it has not crossed the blinkered minds of those affected by that modern hypocritical religion; evolution, that these things have occurred in times past and that climate modelling isn't very good.
With the finest computers in the world and a host of interconnections with others, weather forecasters have great difficulty in going past 5 days. They can't get past this wednesday at the moment.
there will be a permanent tax going to these types of entities and we'll be stuck with them forever.
I can remember moaning about the price hikes to a chap I'd been at school with. He was working at a petrol station and there had been some terrific changes in the way petrol was sold.
I was paying something like a pound per gallon -roughly 4 dollars IIRC. (Our gallons are nearer 5 litres if that matters.) Anyway, he told me that the company were making 3 pence on my gallon. That's running the station and paying the staff.
All the rest was on fuel, transport and road tax. Today with BP and Shell making record profits, garages are now making 5 pence a gallon. And petrol costs 5 pounds a gallon.
That wouldn't be so bad if the tax -ostensibly extracted from us as "road tax" was actually spent on roads. It never, ever was.
It's not as if some of these one hit wonders were all musicians. Several bands just mime to their music which was recorded by session musicians.
So is stealing a CD no different from downloading it?
Apart from the packaging and the hardware ruining, software scrambling DRM, that is?
We might get a chance to find out, if the British musicians union gets there way and music sold in the UK that has been mimed to session musician's work is clearly marked as such work.
I could never understand why France accepted Disney, the world leader in US artistry. France was once the world leader of the real thing.
France once set up the whole nation with a national internet service IIRC. And in times past France was the centre of the mathematical universe.
So why should the home of radicals not do something so rad? The OP was right to respond to the idiot marked funny. The USA rang with silly jingoistic unfunniness until it's chimp had killed about 500 to 1000 US service men.
Gradually the white and the blue washed away just leaving the red turning black. Who was right then, then? Even some republican senators in Washington are beginning to see reason.
Now to get back to the story: France has a political history of not being cowed by unethical businesses. And rather than see its citizenry branded thieves by some right wing foreign subversive force, they are looking at the matter of file sharing rationally.
Well OK, it's politicians looking at it and they are French politicians, so forget the "rationally" bit. I can't see the chimp doing anything like that. Not for all the bananas in Wall Street.
I had a friend show me the contacts from the ignition of a Nissan his boss had had seviced at 90 odd thousand miles. They were worn to stubs. Absolutely mangled. The mechanic asked him when they were last changed.
"What do you mean changed? Its electronic."
My mate said it ran OK too right up to the moment they were changed.
OTOH I had a Datsun Violet that ate them. The engine on that sounded like a Swiss Watch. A real beauty. I think that was from the 70's too and it hardly touched the oil. And yes, I was aware that you were referring to crude.
BTW, the percentage of Arab crude that goes into engine oil is still about the same. So the ratio I used is still valid.
The record industry has already missed the boat. In the late 50's and the 60's record companies were signing up anyone they chose and deciding for themselves who wrote what and which records got pushed.
Nobody else got a look-in. Radio presenters were influential in the extreme. And top acts earned millions.
Now any pub singer can write his own song and put it out to the world for the cost of a computer. There is no need to sign anyone up, the artist chooses what he sings and how many songs he publishes and doesn't need to sign a contract.
Of course he'll earn next to nothing besides the kudos and the bookings he might get from it. But it means that the entertainment industry is as free as it was an hundred years ago. All the artist has to do is cotton on.
Had the music industry handled Napster better and had Napster managed its content and accounts professionally, they would be calling all the tunes right now. Sony wouldn't even be in the biz. (Wouldn't that have been nice?)
Oil is roughly 20 times more expensive today but efficiency has probably only increased by about a few fold at best.
In the 70's you had to change your oil every 6 months, 3 or 4 times a year if you used the car for a living. As a taxi driver or company rep it would have to be changed every couple of thousand miles or so. And all the other oil resevoirs would need a top up.
These days things like axles and diffs are sealed for life. A car might go trough a couple of owners before it gets an oil change and the engine will outlast the car quite easily.
Most cars were knackered at 50 thousand miles in the 70's and there was a marked difference in the marque of a vehicle capable of going around the clock -if it had a careful owner.
But you are right, oils have only improved a few fold. What is the mark-up on modern oils compared to crude? Is it still a barrel from the Arabs costs as much as a gallon from the garage?
Re:I thought this article was about movie stars
on
Most Stars Are Single
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· Score: 0
I have no idea but it sure sounds like a place that would appeal to people with a penchant for interesting shapes of glass beads and an history of being left out in the cold.
The annual independent film festival put on by Robert Redford's Sundance Institute continues to expand its Web offerings. This year, 50 of the 73 filmmakers chosen to compete with short films have agreed let their creations stream on the festival's site.
How about the Simpsons. The early stuff was crap but when the writer realised the way to go he had it bang on.
I think friewnds was just an abreaction to soaps generally. Why do people watch depressing stuff; never mind writing the crap?
And why must the BBC run shabby sets on their typically low budget crud? Surely if it is good enough to get past the first series it is worth making properly.
But with all the free scripts landing on their desks every day, why bother making badly made not very good stuff in the first place?
One of life's conundrums. (Or is it a tenet of the Bahai faith?)
If you are big enough you can take a little dent now and then. It is still a horrible thing they did:
The international watchdog organization said recently translated court papers revealed that Yahoo Holdings in Hong Kong provided Chinese investigators with detailed information that helped them link Shi's personal e-mail account and a specific message containing the "state secret" to the IP address of his computer.
The state secret was a message to Shi's newspaper warning journalists of the dangers associated with dissidents returning to mark the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, according to the group. Shi admitted sending the e-mail but disputed whether it was a secret document.
"We already knew that Yahoo collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well," Reporters Without Borders said in its statement.
Bookmarked thanks. It's going in my sig every time Yahoo rears its ugly head. How do I get rid of it from Opera?
(In my area, I can't even get Channel 5, let alone anything on FreeView... Not that I'm bitter, you understand.)
Wait till they switch off analogue and you have to use digital. You'll be bitter then I assure you. People in the boondocks in the Americas will be feeling sorry just for you.
Anyway. Having seen it, I agree with the comments about the intrusive laughter track. But I it's no worse than we've been used to for decades; it's just that many of the more recent comedies have been brave enough to do without one, so its presence is more obvious now.
Did you ever see a programme called Open All Hours in your youth? Madness. Utter, imbecilic, useless, stupidity.
Then there was Friends. I thought I was missing something because of the foreign accents but it was just the laughter getting in the way.
As I understand it very few British sitcoms use a "canned laughter" track, preferring either to film most of the scenes in front of a live audience or at the very least to play the finished episode on monitors in front of a real audience.
You may have more understanding than I do but the BBC sucks trousers at edited laughter. They have maybe two or three shows (though I can only think of one) that are actually funny. And they are ruined by canned laughter.
A modern studio is at best linked to a live audience. But the editors are so out of touch with the real world they use the same cans for all their clips.
Stuff that isn't funny gets X decibels, stuff that is remotely amusing gets 2X, then something that might have been funny if the clips had been cut together professionally get 3X and so on until they run out of useful decibels.
Then there is the canned applause like you get on Big Brother. (No I have never watched it but sometimes you can't help hitting the remote at the wrong moment.) They suck sweat-pants.
"We are always upset that they aren't paying us for our products, but we're not going to pick up and go home," Mr Gates said.
So he's making all the idiots who pay full price for the software subsidize this oppressive government! OUCH! One more big reason to move to F/OSS.
How does piracy in a country that would not buy his wares due to their price being too high for the average Chinese wage packet affect other countries?
Whatever the reason the Chinese are not buying Windows, the cost to you and me is no different. Or are you saying that if the Indian and Chinese markets suddenly grew honest, Microsoft would reduce it's prices in the rest of the world?
Why would they do that? They don't even need the money now do they? They would still be stinking rich if they just put a 100% markup on the disks they sold.
And getting richer.
Or has the costs of producing a Windows CD suddenly risen to something stupid?
All publicly traded corporations are a democracy. They are reponsible to their shareholders
That makes them plutocracies, not democracies.
Name a democracy that isn't a plutocracy.
Or a communist one. In fact name any national government that isn't ruled by a select minority that represents the rich and powerful.
Of course with a democracy it is the quality of the opposition that makes a difference. Pity they too can't get elected if they are poor.
Meantime, is it possible for whichever ruling party to pass a law that forces Maffiosi to use Windows? (That's Microsoft Windows of course not the high diving platforms they are more usually associated with.)
Tell us more about this 'female' thing you mentioned.
They are a total wate of time. They can't hold their drink for one thing and spend an incredible amount of time in the toilet ostensibly fixing it or something in there, often missing the whole football match.
They are quite good in the kitchen but tend to be skinny and even to look mal nourished. They can't lift worth a damn. And try and get them to stack bricks in the rain... forget it!
I wouldn't hire one, they don't even have the faintest idea of what constitutes decent shoes but can set about buying impressive stocks of them and end up with none that have steel toe caps.
Actually what it is a perfect example of is bad management. Covering your head and shitting straight down is key these days. If you do innovative stuff you could be seen as a failure -or competition if left unspiked.
Personally if I were the OP I'd be looking for another job. He/she (feck this political correctitude) is obviously being asked in as a stop gap by a company so accident prone they bought a Windows server, promoted the wrong guy, let him leave and expect a woman to multitask with the firms jewels.
If they didn't promote her in the first place because of her sex, either the firm is going to go broke sooner or later or she wasn't good enough in the second place and will get no help from her superiors before she burns out and the firm crashes with her.
If she doesn't leave before it stuffs up big time, she will have an hell of a job getting another job when it all falls apart. In the meantime she'll be working alone with no back up and no time to cover her arse.
And if the managing director should just happen to be passing when it breaks down big time and he just happens to ask what happened this time, she'd better make sure she knows what happens to people who don't know what happened.
Slashdot Mirror
One said 'Owdy... ... and that caused all this trouble.
Besides, there is a long history of suppressing real science because of political, economic or religious belief.
You have that in europe too (at least the former two), but to a lesser degree. The latter is non-existant, luckily.
It's not real science if it is political, economic or religious belief. It's science when it's proven, demonstrated, controlled, repeated and mathematically demonstrable.
Most expert forums in the UK for example steer clear of unresolvable issues. So when Lovelock can show that his daisies won't grow because of the output of such dirty things as that gianormous chimney: Hawaii; or one of those lichen encrusted ones from a mill in the northern British Midlands, maybe other sensible groups will give him living space. Ditto for the one from the article.
I suppose it has not crossed the blinkered minds of those affected by that modern hypocritical religion; evolution, that these things have occurred in times past and that climate modelling isn't very good.
With the finest computers in the world and a host of interconnections with others, weather forecasters have great difficulty in going past 5 days. They can't get past this wednesday at the moment.
And any long term stuff needs careful moderation.
Why does skepticism only run one way. It's ratchet effect is strangling scientific enquiry.
As regards NASA. They don't stop people holding their own opinions off site. But thankfully they have sensible moderation for the official sites.
Having said that. Wasn't the Challenger disaster caused by mismanagement?
It's difficult to know where to draw the line sometimes.
there will be a permanent tax going to these types of entities and we'll be stuck with them forever.
I can remember moaning about the price hikes to a chap I'd been at school with. He was working at a petrol station and there had been some terrific changes in the way petrol was sold.
I was paying something like a pound per gallon -roughly 4 dollars IIRC. (Our gallons are nearer 5 litres if that matters.) Anyway, he told me that the company were making 3 pence on my gallon. That's running the station and paying the staff.
All the rest was on fuel, transport and road tax. Today with BP and Shell making record profits, garages are now making 5 pence a gallon. And petrol costs 5 pounds a gallon.
That wouldn't be so bad if the tax -ostensibly extracted from us as "road tax" was actually spent on roads. It never, ever was.
It's not as if some of these one hit wonders were all musicians. Several bands just mime to their music which was recorded by session musicians.
So is stealing a CD no different from downloading it?
Apart from the packaging and the hardware ruining, software scrambling DRM, that is?
We might get a chance to find out, if the British musicians union gets there way and music sold in the UK that has been mimed to session musician's work is clearly marked as such work.
I could never understand why France accepted Disney, the world leader in US artistry. France was once the world leader of the real thing.
France once set up the whole nation with a national internet service IIRC. And in times past France was the centre of the mathematical universe.
So why should the home of radicals not do something so rad? The OP was right to respond to the idiot marked funny. The USA rang with silly jingoistic unfunniness until it's chimp had killed about 500 to 1000 US service men.
Gradually the white and the blue washed away just leaving the red turning black. Who was right then, then? Even some republican senators in Washington are beginning to see reason.
Now to get back to the story: France has a political history of not being cowed by unethical businesses. And rather than see its citizenry branded thieves by some right wing foreign subversive force, they are looking at the matter of file sharing rationally.
Well OK, it's politicians looking at it and they are French politicians, so forget the "rationally" bit. I can't see the chimp doing anything like that. Not for all the bananas in Wall Street.
Can you?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !
What are you laughing at?
Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho !
What is it?
This green thing.
What?
Someone has run a something right through the other thing. Hee hee hee hee !
I had a friend show me the contacts from the ignition of a Nissan his boss had had seviced at 90 odd thousand miles. They were worn to stubs. Absolutely mangled. The mechanic asked him when they were last changed.
"What do you mean changed? Its electronic."
My mate said it ran OK too right up to the moment they were changed.
OTOH I had a Datsun Violet that ate them. The engine on that sounded like a Swiss Watch. A real beauty. I think that was from the 70's too and it hardly touched the oil. And yes, I was aware that you were referring to crude.
BTW, the percentage of Arab crude that goes into engine oil is still about the same. So the ratio I used is still valid.
The record industry has already missed the boat. In the late 50's and the 60's record companies were signing up anyone they chose and deciding for themselves who wrote what and which records got pushed.
Nobody else got a look-in. Radio presenters were influential in the extreme. And top acts earned millions.
Now any pub singer can write his own song and put it out to the world for the cost of a computer. There is no need to sign anyone up, the artist chooses what he sings and how many songs he publishes and doesn't need to sign a contract.
Of course he'll earn next to nothing besides the kudos and the bookings he might get from it. But it means that the entertainment industry is as free as it was an hundred years ago. All the artist has to do is cotton on.
Had the music industry handled Napster better and had Napster managed its content and accounts professionally, they would be calling all the tunes right now. Sony wouldn't even be in the biz. (Wouldn't that have been nice?)
Oil is roughly 20 times more expensive today but efficiency has probably only increased by about a few fold at best.
In the 70's you had to change your oil every 6 months, 3 or 4 times a year if you used the car for a living. As a taxi driver or company rep it would have to be changed every couple of thousand miles or so. And all the other oil resevoirs would need a top up.
These days things like axles and diffs are sealed for life. A car might go trough a couple of owners before it gets an oil change and the engine will outlast the car quite easily.
Most cars were knackered at 50 thousand miles in the 70's and there was a marked difference in the marque of a vehicle capable of going around the clock -if it had a careful owner.
But you are right, oils have only improved a few fold. What is the mark-up on modern oils compared to crude? Is it still a barrel from the Arabs costs as much as a gallon from the garage?
I have no idea but it sure sounds like a place that would appeal to people with a penchant for interesting shapes of glass beads and an history of being left out in the cold.
You think perhaps Robert Redford porned his soul?
The annual independent film festival put on by Robert Redford's Sundance Institute continues to expand its Web offerings. This year, 50 of the 73 filmmakers chosen to compete with short films have agreed let their creations stream on the festival's site.
y +for+filmmakers/2100-1026_3-6030181.html?tag=nl
http://news.com.com/Sundance+online+poses+quandar
No, someone's jamming his transmitter.
Of course if there is nylon in his suits it might just be static off his fur.
How about the Simpsons. The early stuff was crap but when the writer realised the way to go he had it bang on.
I think friewnds was just an abreaction to soaps generally. Why do people watch depressing stuff; never mind writing the crap?
And why must the BBC run shabby sets on their typically low budget crud? Surely if it is good enough to get past the first series it is worth making properly.
But with all the free scripts landing on their desks every day, why bother making badly made not very good stuff in the first place?
One of life's conundrums. (Or is it a tenet of the Bahai faith?)
If you are big enough you can take a little dent now and then. It is still a horrible thing they did:
The international watchdog organization said recently translated court papers revealed that Yahoo Holdings in Hong Kong provided Chinese investigators with detailed information that helped them link Shi's personal e-mail account and a specific message containing the "state secret" to the IP address of his computer.
The state secret was a message to Shi's newspaper warning journalists of the dangers associated with dissidents returning to mark the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, according to the group. Shi admitted sending the e-mail but disputed whether it was a secret document.
"We already knew that Yahoo collaborates enthusiastically with the Chinese regime in questions of censorship, and now we know it is a Chinese police informant as well," Reporters Without Borders said in its statement.
Bookmarked thanks. It's going in my sig every time Yahoo rears its ugly head. How do I get rid of it from Opera?
(In my area, I can't even get Channel 5, let alone anything on FreeView... Not that I'm bitter, you understand.)
Wait till they switch off analogue and you have to use digital. You'll be bitter then I assure you. People in the boondocks in the Americas will be feeling sorry just for you.
Anyway. Having seen it, I agree with the comments about the intrusive laughter track. But I it's no worse than we've been used to for decades; it's just that many of the more recent comedies have been brave enough to do without one, so its presence is more obvious now.
Did you ever see a programme called Open All Hours in your youth? Madness. Utter, imbecilic, useless, stupidity.
Then there was Friends. I thought I was missing something because of the foreign accents but it was just the laughter getting in the way.
As I understand it very few British sitcoms use a "canned laughter" track, preferring either to film most of the scenes in front of a live audience or at the very least to play the finished episode on monitors in front of a real audience.
You may have more understanding than I do but the BBC sucks trousers at edited laughter. They have maybe two or three shows (though I can only think of one) that are actually funny. And they are ruined by canned laughter.
A modern studio is at best linked to a live audience. But the editors are so out of touch with the real world they use the same cans for all their clips.
Stuff that isn't funny gets X decibels, stuff that is remotely amusing gets 2X, then something that might have been funny if the clips had been cut together professionally get 3X and so on until they run out of useful decibels.
Then there is the canned applause like you get on Big Brother. (No I have never watched it but sometimes you can't help hitting the remote at the wrong moment.) They suck sweat-pants.
That's probably the way that Yahoo see Chinamen.
(Have we had any "In Yahoo the searchers come to yoo!" type humour yet?)
Bleh?
Tory BLiar do you mean?
He is hardly a county. Part of one perhaps. He certainly sounds like part of a country.
"We are always upset that they aren't paying us for our products, but we're not going to pick up and go home," Mr Gates said.
So he's making all the idiots who pay full price for the software subsidize this oppressive government! OUCH! One more big reason to move to F/OSS.
How does piracy in a country that would not buy his wares due to their price being too high for the average Chinese wage packet affect other countries?
Whatever the reason the Chinese are not buying Windows, the cost to you and me is no different. Or are you saying that if the Indian and Chinese markets suddenly grew honest, Microsoft would reduce it's prices in the rest of the world?
Why would they do that? They don't even need the money now do they? They would still be stinking rich if they just put a 100% markup on the disks they sold.
And getting richer.
Or has the costs of producing a Windows CD suddenly risen to something stupid?
All publicly traded corporations are a democracy. They are reponsible to their shareholders
That makes them plutocracies, not democracies.
Name a democracy that isn't a plutocracy.
Or a communist one. In fact name any national government that isn't ruled by a select minority that represents the rich and powerful.
Of course with a democracy it is the quality of the opposition that makes a difference. Pity they too can't get elected if they are poor.
Meantime, is it possible for whichever ruling party to pass a law that forces Maffiosi to use Windows? (That's Microsoft Windows of course not the high diving platforms they are more usually associated with.)
Tell us more about this 'female' thing you mentioned.
They are a total wate of time. They can't hold their drink for one thing and spend an incredible amount of time in the toilet ostensibly fixing it or something in there, often missing the whole football match.
They are quite good in the kitchen but tend to be skinny and even to look mal nourished. They can't lift worth a damn. And try and get them to stack bricks in the rain... forget it!
I wouldn't hire one, they don't even have the faintest idea of what constitutes decent shoes but can set about buying impressive stocks of them and end up with none that have steel toe caps.
Quite frankly I just don't see the point of them!
Actually what it is a perfect example of is bad management. Covering your head and shitting straight down is key these days. If you do innovative stuff you could be seen as a failure -or competition if left unspiked.
Personally if I were the OP I'd be looking for another job. He/she (feck this political correctitude) is obviously being asked in as a stop gap by a company so accident prone they bought a Windows server, promoted the wrong guy, let him leave and expect a woman to multitask with the firms jewels.
If they didn't promote her in the first place because of her sex, either the firm is going to go broke sooner or later or she wasn't good enough in the second place and will get no help from her superiors before she burns out and the firm crashes with her.
If she doesn't leave before it stuffs up big time, she will have an hell of a job getting another job when it all falls apart. In the meantime she'll be working alone with no back up and no time to cover her arse.
And if the managing director should just happen to be passing when it breaks down big time and he just happens to ask what happened this time, she'd better make sure she knows what happens to people who don't know what happened.
Someone clevver tell me if a abacus issa fractal renderer by default?
The first line looks suspiciously like the next one and that looks like the next... etc... etc... to me.