A couple of years ago, I was playing with a friend's kid and wanted to change the directional plane of what I was building, so I took a "plate" type piece (the 1/3 thickness ones, or skinny ones or whatever) and stuck it edgewise on the face of what I had already built. (I'm not sure that I've explained very well, but I'm sure most people used to do this). The kid was pretty excited to use this new trick, and started to incorporate it into what he was doing.
The kid never needed to figure out how to change the building plane because of all the L-brackets, hinges etc that exist in modern Lego. There is still plenty of creativity and problem-solving possible, for sure, but it's now rarer for a kid to have to figure out fundamental solutions with limited materials. IMO, that's what earlier Lego taught kids: fundamental problem solving. Mix that 'teaching' with a kid's creativity, and interesting creations are bound to happen. It's an important skill to be able to create something with the wrong tools, or no tools at all.
It reminds me of a bit in Zen In the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The main character wants to fix a loose throttle with a shim made from an aluminum can, and his friend wants to use factory shims, which would be basically the same thing, but not currently available and costly. There's no basic understanding of the problem, and the solution is to buy some product to correct it. IMO, too many 'ideal' Lego pieces promote the same mindset.
For the first several months of Vista, it seemed there were a lot of people justifying its poor uptake by suggesting most IT people would wait until SP1 before adoption. After all, everybody knows it takes a bit of time to work out the kinks in a new OS. I'm pretty sceptical, but it'll be interesting to see if the apologists were right.
I've agreed with virtually everything you said in this thread.
Howver, I think it was in Down and Out in Paris and London where Orwell said something like: "Christians, like communists, are generally the worst advertisements for their beliefs." Trying to disown Hitler's Christianity is trying to remove one of the sh*ttiest examples of a Christian, simply because he's a bad advertisement for Christians. But he was a Christian. Superstitious, sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of Christians feel a twang when they break a mirror, cross a black cat, or whatever. It doesn't indicate that they aren't Christian, just an inconsistent human. Same thing when somebody murders millions of people, it doesn't indicate they're not Christian, just an inconsistent human (and someone with an obscene tally of bodies, sure, but many people who history remembers were.).
You pointed out a logical fallacy. I think you're committing one yourself in your post. I think arguing that Hitler wasn't a Christian is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Just being kind of pedantic, but I think those could be called accidents. An accident can also mean an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, so getting tortured for writing a blog could be an accident if you didn't expect to, and didn't intend to, be tortured for writing it.
Not true. It depends on the province. In Manitoba it's driving: 16, voting/drinking: 18. I know Ontario has a drinking age of 19 (or at least did when I gave a shit about that kind of thing), but voting is 18 everywhere in Canada, AFAIK. I think it would be a Charter of Rights violation to vary that. I suspect some other provinces probably have 18 as drinking age (I'd put money on Quebec being 18, or even 17, but I'm too lazy to check). I also suspect 16 is pretty standard for driving. Oddly enough, the age of sexual consent is 14 (though I think it's still kiddie porn if the person is under 18).
You shifted the goalposts on that one. Being smug about stupidity-with-consequences or laughing at it, is an entirely different issue than what you responded to. I agree there is no reason to feel superior or gain a sense of schadenfreude (sp?). On the whole, stupidity is kind of sad, and we all behave stupidly sometimes. However, saying stupidity deserves its results is a tautology, to my mind. If stupidity didn't have harmful results, then I don't see how a behaviour could really be called stupidity. Cupidity, or individual difference, maybe, but not stupidity.
Luckily, scientist are busy working out other solutions, such as bio-sounds, and more efficient ears, so we don't waste as much music. At least all countries signed on to the Kyoto^WYoko Accord during some of the worst years of music consumption. This alone lowered the global Volume by 1.2dB, and gave us several extra years before Peak Music was reached.
A lot of people with ipods resent having itunes as their only option. I agree with the gist of your post entirely, but I'm wondering about this point.
I've only been on Windows and Mac systems to test browser compatibility in the last few years, so I don't know. Is iTunes really the only option for iPod owners on those systems? are their iPods useless without it? It seems unlikely, but I don't know. My iPod works quite fine using gtkPod and mp3s. Surely there are third party apps in Windows and maybe even OSX to fill this gap? If that's what the suit is about, then it's garbage.
But, from TFA it appears MS is complaining about the limitations Apple has placed on competition by their (sort of exclusive) support of their own proprietary format (which no doubt iTunes is the primary vehicle for). I don't agree with Apple on that, whatsoever, but I wonder if MS is really willing to open that can of worms. Somehow, I doubt they'll go anywhere with this. I think it could be good for the user if someone made life difficult for Apple over this, but if MS is stupid enough to push this legal point, they'll be hurting themselves. I doubt they're that stupid. Not supporting other people's formats has been one of the biggest money grabs by MS since they gained desktop dominance. The last thing they need is another anti-trust ruling (even against a competitor) which contradicts that philosophy.
I don't know if the EPCs would be encrypted, but I seriously doubt it. Anyone know? Because if they're not, I'd hardly consider that a hack. They were broadcasting their information unencrypted. Reading it is no more of a hack, in that situation, than turning on your radio. DIY, homebrew, sure. But not a hack. If the EPCs were encrypted, that's different, but it probably wouldn't make any sense to do so. Making your electronic barcodes secret strikes me as kind of silly.
On a side note, I have compiled a list of the most uncool hacks since 2003. Here is my list:
That strikes me as somewhat disingenuous. The Yen has always been more closely equated with the cent than the dollar, Looking at the history of the Euro, it's pretty clear the value of your dollar is not as strong as it was, at least in comparison to the Euro (ie, you're not as rich as you were). Actually, that site is kind of interesting. The behaviour of your dollar compared to the Japanese's is very strange compared to a fairly consistent trend in the currencies of Canada, Britain, Australia, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Russia, the EU, or India. All of whom are major trade partners and/or highly competitive with the US. It's cherry picking a bit, I'd agree, because there are some counter-examples like Mexico, but with such a similar devaluation of your dollar happening throughout all these other markets, I wonder what's up with Japan.
For some strange reason, this article also made me feel all nostalgic.
Eh Tee Dee Tee
Eh Tee Eff Oh
Eh Tee Ate Six Seven Five Three Oh Nine
[Limbers up whistling muscles]...hWooooooooooooooooooooooofhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooooooo. Good Evening Cowboy Neil, sending updates to the porn landscape of the Internet to your system. (Please Wait...)
Eh Tee Aitch Oh
[No Carrier]
Yup, I've still got it! (Actually, I don't remember modem codes at all, so I've undoubtedly got them wrong...)
Seriously, though, it's amazing what telephone technology has done in the last quarter century. I went from a party line (we were two long, one short) to dial phones that you could actually figure out some weird hacks by semi-intelligently flapping away at the hook (or more likely getting a call from a pissed off operator), to carrying something around that's smaller than a wallet which gives you the ability to create video and pictures, play games, do arithmetic, save or generate text, talk to almost anybody on the planet without explaining yourself to some telephone company employee, save an audio message, record an audio message, and a hundred other things. And not only that, it's not screwed to the wall. Really, the achievements in telephony have been pretty remarkable. I wonder what the modern Joybubbles is up to....
Joseph Stiglitz makes the same point regarding food in Globalization and Its Discontents. Western policies of what is basically dumping (painted up like charity) prevent those in nearby regions from stabilizing their own agricultural setups. The West ships food for free, undermining the market, so farmers throughout the continent or at least subcontinent have an artificially devalued market, preventing them from eventually owning enough, or creating enough savings, to weather famine conditions when they face them. Of course, the commodities are bought using usual markets in the West, avoiding any devaluation here, and probably causing slight increases in prices due to slightly greater demand. So the entire process makes it doubly likely that African farmers will have a hard time competing in a global market.
It makes me wonder if Bob Geldof has done the world more harm than good.
Ed Zantolak! Is that you!!! Hey, I got some top notch colombian shit for new years. I know you have a nose like a vacuum cleaner, so come on over. There's gonna be some male strippers too... remember that time in San Francisco? AIDS ruined everything man. Ain't you heard, Zed's dead. (I guess, since he's is no longer with us, I'm the riding crop guy.... sigh... fsck Internet privacy)... Columbian, you say???
Oh, that's just the generic version, it's also available in other fancy versions, including Predictable Results Or Feasible Expectancies Soundly Stomped In Our New And Lauded System.
It's definitely recommended over the Bet Anyone Swears It's Crap version.
That's about 15,000 pounds of extra wheat. Even at today's prices ("prices soar to $10 per bushel"... , that's about $150,000 dollars worth of extra wheat today so assume similar purchasing power back then. No, at today's prices of $10/bu, 239 bushels equal $2390. Today's prices aren't what existed then, anyways, so $10 is way off. Right now, wheat is priced like nothing I can recall growing up. Depending on grade, protein, year etc, $1.75 - $4.50 is generally what I recall. I'm pretty sure I saw it as high as $7 at a couple of points before I left home. The point is, $10 is a current aberration in the history of the market (if you had sold it last spring, instead of this fall, I think it was $6-something), and it's $2390, not $150,000. And that's at today's prices. I'm not going to bother looking up the prices back then, but I'd bet they were well under $2/bu. Granted $500 beyond a normal crop year would have been huge, but farming requires those kind of years to offset the $0 years.
He must have had a weird year, though... Planted 23 acres, and harvested 40bu/acre from 12... half his crop would have been a stunning bumper crop back then and the other half wiped out. That seems strange, though possible. I agree with you, though, it is a miniscule amount. I doubt most people have any idea how miniscule that is. When I was a kid, I could have shovelled that into a truck in under an hour, easily. When I left the farm, we had an augur that would have 130bu in it when loaded. Small U-Haul cube vans could pretty well hold that amount, although it wouldn't be legal, I'm sure.
As far as the livestock angle, no farmer would ever feed cattle on grain alone for a year, unless it's some bizarre specialty market, like veal or something. The 720 cow-days would exclusively happen in the winter, and even then, hay would be the primary sustenance. More than likely, it would have been fifteen to thirty head of cattle (I don't know, we got rid of cattle when I was pretty young), getting half a bushel every two or three days, only when they weren't grazing. Plus chicken feed (???), seed for next year (2-3bu/acre: ie 50-75bu), and (possibly) some milled for personal use (???5-15bu, I have no idea how much flour a bushel makes).
Anyhow...I grew up on a farm, and that's my take...
interaction by web browser? what utter rot. I would say "whatever next, a fridge with a built in web browser?" but I remember talk of such stuff a few years ago... Unfortunately, that dark day is basically here. We can be a pretty absurd species, that's for sure. What we really need are Bluetooth enabled underwear, then they could let our cellphones know when we sh*t ourselves. Or maybe scissors with routers, that would also be nice.
it's not like this means Google owns the billboards and television commercials. That's true, it doesn't help to control the whole advertising market, but the online advertising market is a market all on its own. I (shudder) think I can see MS's point on this. Google has, essentially, a monopoly on online searches. We should all be concerned --not just MS-- that they may use that search monopoly to co-opt other markets, whether they're online advertising, online gambling, or whatever. Their monopoly market gives them the ability to do this fairly trivially. Sure MS are hypocrites, but come on, this probably should be explored in a lot more depth.
I think a good term for that would be capital laundering. The basis of any corporation is capital. AA behaved criminally. Just as some random drug lord's property can be seized by the state, it should, in fairness, work the same way for a corporation. If a corporation is deserving of rights, then its investors deserve to be punished for wrong-doing as well (not just a convenient figurehead or lieutenant). That should be done by the state, the same as it is for individuals. All shares seized, people in the active positions held criminally liable, with the state now owners of the capital.
Allowing the market to revalue the stock, and then "clean" the capital by purchasing and re-branding doesn't strike me as particularly just. Once property of the state, I could see reselling, but without that, it's allowing the capital to escape legal culpability via market forces. Next time someone pushes the idea of corporate rights, I should find out how I can achieve the same legal immunity, other than working in Hollywood.
Thanks to the razor thin minority government that exists here right now, they cannot be arrogant and a few thousand determined people actually can make a difference. The problem with this, I think, is it isn't going to matter if it's the Tories or Liberals in power (or the Bloc or the NDP, for that matter). There's enough money and corporate influence peddling in this that it'll probably happen eventually, just like it's happened in the States. They only have to win one battle, but we have to win them all. Unless they're outlandishly detrimental, laws rarely seem to get changed, once bought.
Wow, this is almost as good news to Canada as Global Warming is! To Hell with that! Where am I supposed to live once my igloo melts, huh? Global warming is effing with our housing markets here, gawdamit.
On a side note, I was curious: I ran ' "igloo for sale" ' in Google and got 910 results. ' "Igloos for sale" ' got 1970. Granted, no actual igloos are for sale AFAICT, but still... Who. in reality, ever has a need to say those phrases? It reminds me of George Carlin's thoughts on shoving a red hot poker up your ass (I'm too lazy to link).
Slashdot Mirror
A couple of years ago, I was playing with a friend's kid and wanted to change the directional plane of what I was building, so I took a "plate" type piece (the 1/3 thickness ones, or skinny ones or whatever) and stuck it edgewise on the face of what I had already built. (I'm not sure that I've explained very well, but I'm sure most people used to do this). The kid was pretty excited to use this new trick, and started to incorporate it into what he was doing.
The kid never needed to figure out how to change the building plane because of all the L-brackets, hinges etc that exist in modern Lego. There is still plenty of creativity and problem-solving possible, for sure, but it's now rarer for a kid to have to figure out fundamental solutions with limited materials. IMO, that's what earlier Lego taught kids: fundamental problem solving. Mix that 'teaching' with a kid's creativity, and interesting creations are bound to happen. It's an important skill to be able to create something with the wrong tools, or no tools at all.
It reminds me of a bit in Zen In the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The main character wants to fix a loose throttle with a shim made from an aluminum can, and his friend wants to use factory shims, which would be basically the same thing, but not currently available and costly. There's no basic understanding of the problem, and the solution is to buy some product to correct it. IMO, too many 'ideal' Lego pieces promote the same mindset.
For the first several months of Vista, it seemed there were a lot of people justifying its poor uptake by suggesting most IT people would wait until SP1 before adoption. After all, everybody knows it takes a bit of time to work out the kinks in a new OS. I'm pretty sceptical, but it'll be interesting to see if the apologists were right.
I've agreed with virtually everything you said in this thread.
Howver, I think it was in Down and Out in Paris and London where Orwell said something like: "Christians, like communists, are generally the worst advertisements for their beliefs." Trying to disown Hitler's Christianity is trying to remove one of the sh*ttiest examples of a Christian, simply because he's a bad advertisement for Christians. But he was a Christian. Superstitious, sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if plenty of Christians feel a twang when they break a mirror, cross a black cat, or whatever. It doesn't indicate that they aren't Christian, just an inconsistent human. Same thing when somebody murders millions of people, it doesn't indicate they're not Christian, just an inconsistent human (and someone with an obscene tally of bodies, sure, but many people who history remembers were.).
You pointed out a logical fallacy. I think you're committing one yourself in your post. I think arguing that Hitler wasn't a Christian is an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.
Just being kind of pedantic, but I think those could be called accidents. An accident can also mean an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, so getting tortured for writing a blog could be an accident if you didn't expect to, and didn't intend to, be tortured for writing it.
So, from this we can deduce a proof for Jesus, and that is 24 proof. In vino veritas.
Not true. It depends on the province. In Manitoba it's driving: 16, voting/drinking: 18. I know Ontario has a drinking age of 19 (or at least did when I gave a shit about that kind of thing), but voting is 18 everywhere in Canada, AFAIK. I think it would be a Charter of Rights violation to vary that. I suspect some other provinces probably have 18 as drinking age (I'd put money on Quebec being 18, or even 17, but I'm too lazy to check). I also suspect 16 is pretty standard for driving. Oddly enough, the age of sexual consent is 14 (though I think it's still kiddie porn if the person is under 18).
I took the advice of your SIG.
You shifted the goalposts on that one. Being smug about stupidity-with-consequences or laughing at it, is an entirely different issue than what you responded to. I agree there is no reason to feel superior or gain a sense of schadenfreude (sp?). On the whole, stupidity is kind of sad, and we all behave stupidly sometimes. However, saying stupidity deserves its results is a tautology, to my mind. If stupidity didn't have harmful results, then I don't see how a behaviour could really be called stupidity. Cupidity, or individual difference, maybe, but not stupidity.
That's my two cents, at least.
Luckily, scientist are busy working out other solutions, such as bio-sounds, and more efficient ears, so we don't waste as much music. At least all countries signed on to the Kyoto^WYoko Accord during some of the worst years of music consumption. This alone lowered the global Volume by 1.2dB, and gave us several extra years before Peak Music was reached.
I've only been on Windows and Mac systems to test browser compatibility in the last few years, so I don't know. Is iTunes really the only option for iPod owners on those systems? are their iPods useless without it? It seems unlikely, but I don't know. My iPod works quite fine using gtkPod and mp3s. Surely there are third party apps in Windows and maybe even OSX to fill this gap? If that's what the suit is about, then it's garbage.
But, from TFA it appears MS is complaining about the limitations Apple has placed on competition by their (sort of exclusive) support of their own proprietary format (which no doubt iTunes is the primary vehicle for). I don't agree with Apple on that, whatsoever, but I wonder if MS is really willing to open that can of worms. Somehow, I doubt they'll go anywhere with this. I think it could be good for the user if someone made life difficult for Apple over this, but if MS is stupid enough to push this legal point, they'll be hurting themselves. I doubt they're that stupid. Not supporting other people's formats has been one of the biggest money grabs by MS since they gained desktop dominance. The last thing they need is another anti-trust ruling (even against a competitor) which contradicts that philosophy.
I don't know if the EPCs would be encrypted, but I seriously doubt it. Anyone know? Because if they're not, I'd hardly consider that a hack. They were broadcasting their information unencrypted. Reading it is no more of a hack, in that situation, than turning on your radio. DIY, homebrew, sure. But not a hack. If the EPCs were encrypted, that's different, but it probably wouldn't make any sense to do so. Making your electronic barcodes secret strikes me as kind of silly.
On a side note, I have compiled a list of the most uncool hacks since 2003. Here is my list:
1. Nickelback.
That strikes me as somewhat disingenuous. The Yen has always been more closely equated with the cent than the dollar, Looking at the history of the Euro, it's pretty clear the value of your dollar is not as strong as it was, at least in comparison to the Euro (ie, you're not as rich as you were). Actually, that site is kind of interesting. The behaviour of your dollar compared to the Japanese's is very strange compared to a fairly consistent trend in the currencies of Canada, Britain, Australia, Malaysia, South Korea, China, Russia, the EU, or India. All of whom are major trade partners and/or highly competitive with the US. It's cherry picking a bit, I'd agree, because there are some counter-examples like Mexico, but with such a similar devaluation of your dollar happening throughout all these other markets, I wonder what's up with Japan.
For some strange reason, this article also made me feel all nostalgic.
Eh Tee Dee Tee
Eh Tee Eff Oh
Eh Tee Ate Six Seven Five Three Oh Nine
[Limbers up whistling muscles]...hWooooooooooooooooooooooofhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooooooo.
Good Evening Cowboy Neil, sending updates to the porn landscape of the Internet to your system. (Please Wait...)
Eh Tee Aitch Oh
[No Carrier]
Yup, I've still got it! (Actually, I don't remember modem codes at all, so I've undoubtedly got them wrong...)
Seriously, though, it's amazing what telephone technology has done in the last quarter century. I went from a party line (we were two long, one short) to dial phones that you could actually figure out some weird hacks by semi-intelligently flapping away at the hook (or more likely getting a call from a pissed off operator), to carrying something around that's smaller than a wallet which gives you the ability to create video and pictures, play games, do arithmetic, save or generate text, talk to almost anybody on the planet without explaining yourself to some telephone company employee, save an audio message, record an audio message, and a hundred other things. And not only that, it's not screwed to the wall. Really, the achievements in telephony have been pretty remarkable. I wonder what the modern Joybubbles is up to....
Joseph Stiglitz makes the same point regarding food in Globalization and Its Discontents. Western policies of what is basically dumping (painted up like charity) prevent those in nearby regions from stabilizing their own agricultural setups. The West ships food for free, undermining the market, so farmers throughout the continent or at least subcontinent have an artificially devalued market, preventing them from eventually owning enough, or creating enough savings, to weather famine conditions when they face them. Of course, the commodities are bought using usual markets in the West, avoiding any devaluation here, and probably causing slight increases in prices due to slightly greater demand. So the entire process makes it doubly likely that African farmers will have a hard time competing in a global market.
It makes me wonder if Bob Geldof has done the world more harm than good.
Oh, that's just the generic version, it's also available in other fancy versions, including Predictable Results Or Feasible Expectancies Soundly Stomped In Our New And Lauded System.
It's definitely recommended over the Bet Anyone Swears It's Crap version.
[sorry, I tried....]
He must have had a weird year, though... Planted 23 acres, and harvested 40bu/acre from 12... half his crop would have been a stunning bumper crop back then and the other half wiped out. That seems strange, though possible. I agree with you, though, it is a miniscule amount. I doubt most people have any idea how miniscule that is. When I was a kid, I could have shovelled that into a truck in under an hour, easily. When I left the farm, we had an augur that would have 130bu in it when loaded. Small U-Haul cube vans could pretty well hold that amount, although it wouldn't be legal, I'm sure.
As far as the livestock angle, no farmer would ever feed cattle on grain alone for a year, unless it's some bizarre specialty market, like veal or something. The 720 cow-days would exclusively happen in the winter, and even then, hay would be the primary sustenance. More than likely, it would have been fifteen to thirty head of cattle (I don't know, we got rid of cattle when I was pretty young), getting half a bushel every two or three days, only when they weren't grazing. Plus chicken feed (???), seed for next year (2-3bu/acre: ie 50-75bu), and (possibly) some milled for personal use (???5-15bu, I have no idea how much flour a bushel makes).
Anyhow...I grew up on a farm, and that's my take...
I think a good term for that would be capital laundering. The basis of any corporation is capital. AA behaved criminally. Just as some random drug lord's property can be seized by the state, it should, in fairness, work the same way for a corporation. If a corporation is deserving of rights, then its investors deserve to be punished for wrong-doing as well (not just a convenient figurehead or lieutenant). That should be done by the state, the same as it is for individuals. All shares seized, people in the active positions held criminally liable, with the state now owners of the capital.
Allowing the market to revalue the stock, and then "clean" the capital by purchasing and re-branding doesn't strike me as particularly just. Once property of the state, I could see reselling, but without that, it's allowing the capital to escape legal culpability via market forces. Next time someone pushes the idea of corporate rights, I should find out how I can achieve the same legal immunity, other than working in Hollywood.
I think you are fudging your numbers. Clearly, you are BIOSed.
Finally, we have it!!!!!
2. ???^WZombiesaurs
On a side note, I was curious: I ran ' "igloo for sale" ' in Google and got 910 results. ' "Igloos for sale" ' got 1970. Granted, no actual igloos are for sale AFAICT, but still... Who. in reality, ever has a need to say those phrases? It reminds me of George Carlin's thoughts on shoving a red hot poker up your ass (I'm too lazy to link).