He is buying into the propaganda. I can't understand the likes of him. Saddam has a son (had a son I hope) that had a hobby. Here in the US we call that hobby RAPE. I don't know what one of the heirs to Saddam's throne called it. Saddam is being accused of genocide. Do you know what you have to do to get accused of genocide? Score a cool 1 million points that is what.
I have read a report of people being lowered into a plastic chipper feet first. Of little girls tortured in front of there mothers. Women being hung upside down from there feet during there menstrual cycle. People having there tongues cut out and allowed to bleed to death in the middle of town.
What do you think all of those Saddam posters are for? To remind you that Saddam is always watching.
The guy who wrote this anti-american post drives me nuts. None of this stuff bothers him at all. He thinks it is the bad luck of the Iraqi's to be born in Iraq. It is more important to him to hate America and George Bush.
I mean damn. This war WASN'T neccesary. Saddam would have been in a far different position if the French, Germans and Russians hadn't spent the last 12 years selling him black market arms.
You think Saddam would have stayed and founght if it wasn't for those three bozo's?
Yeah keep believing the BS put out by the Iraqi's. I have no trouble believing that the Iraqi government is killing it's own people and blaming it on the Americans. I mean schools and hospitals are no places for troops, artillery and tanks anyways.
I agree with one thing. If we were to forget about the citizens and decide to take the oil we would have done so by now. What is making this difficult is our soldiers are not required to fire on enemy troops that are hiding behind civilians.
Actually if you think about this. Saving the civilians from Saddams evil is job #1. Job #2 is showing them a way of life better then then dictatorship, this would be democracy and captialism.
In that respect it isn't evil at all.
Take Japan as an example. They were devestated from WWII (not that they didn't bring that on themselves... but that is a whore of a different color) and we brought them capitilism and democracy. 50 years later they are doing great.
I mean, what is the alternative you are suggesting? That planning waits until the fighting is over? That is just dumb. It takes time to figure this stuff out. Besides how are you gonna get the food, water and shelter in if you haven't planned that out? You are not suggesting the victor is in doubt, are you? Are you maybe suggesting that Communism or Socialism is a better way to go? How about we allow them to set up another totalitarian regime? We can come back and party again in another 20 years?
Or maybe you believe that you are somehow special and more deserving of basic human rights and freedom then the average Iraqi?
Seriously. Consult with the Britts and the Aussies. The three of us can decide what benefits us most and we go from there. No consideration need be made for Europe.
A McDonalds on every corner and beef at every dinner plate. That is my postwar plan for Iraq.
Possibly he got the idea from Cryptonomicon. In it a character writes code to flash the (I believe) caps-lock key in morse code.
I am not gonna say why he does this, but Neal Stephenson (who B da'man? Neal B da'man.) is an experienced coder and makes a good example in the book that it would work.
/. censoring mechanisms won't let me post this from my account, so I have to post this as AC:
Especially in times like these claiming a "politic free zone" is a very political statement.
From my experience people who claim to be unpolitical are just anti-democratic.
Damn that was mean. Thing is, people feel very, very strongly about this issue. They feel (myself included) that they are right, and the other people are wrong. And if those other people will just see it my way then the world will be a better place. And if that doesn't work, then when I am proven right then everyone else will look like a fool.
That is all fine and dandy. And it is all over the place. It is on the newsgroups and just about any forum you could find. You don't really have discussions with people, you just end up calling the other person stupid and quoting your own agenda over and over again.
There are lots and lots of places for that. It is nice having a place I can go to escape that.
I love Slashdot. And I feel very strongly about the war in Iraq. The thing is that for some time in the very near future there will be no shortage on the web for coverage of the war. The newsites are going to run with every damn rumor like it is fact. And I (along with many, many other people) am going to be firmly addicted to that.
It is nice to know that I can placate the geeky side of me in a politic free zone on Slashdot.
It almost seems ironic, but Slashdot offers a unique site this day in age. Slashdot can serve the slashdot community best right now by being what Slashdot is.
Maybe I didn't make that statement very well. I am just trying to say that Slashdot is the best site I know of for geeky news, and I love it. I also take great comfort that when I am all politicd out, wether it be the war on Iraq or whatever, I can go to Slashdot and enjoy it and my politics, or anyone elses don't matter. Your greatest service might be to stay a politic free zone.
As far as downloading things goes I see three completely different piles, software (warez), movies (SVCD and such), and MP3's. You simply cannot group those three things together. There are different reasons, and different obstacles for each pile. I won't talk about movies and music.
But I want to bring up software.
There is sooooooooo much buggy software today that you can waist quite a bit of money on software that simply doesn't work out of the box. Can you imagine if car manufactures (or any other manufacturer for that matter) had the low quality standards that software devolopers have? It would be awful.
But I have found that if I hit usenet I can normally find many different pieces of software to achieve whatever it is I want to achieve. I download the warez, run it and if it is buggy I toss it out.
If it does what I want I buy it.
And I do buy it. I like to own my software. I want to be able to patch my software and add features. I don't want the fact that I have stolen it to get in the way. I just want something that works out of the box. Is that asking too much?
Okay so you bring up software with demos available. Well.... I recently got screwed by this. I was looking for a TV client for my new ATI All In Wonder card. Intervideo seems to make good products. I demoed WinDVR. There demo only allows the software to be active for 5 (or 10 I forget) minutes at a time. Seemed fair to me. I wanted to buy right away anyways. I checked the quality, it was what I wanted so I paid $50 for it.
Guess what? It has a problem that doesn't reel it's ugly head until after you have been using it for more then 10 minutes. I haven't been able to find a solution so far.
You know how hard it is gonna be to get a refund for this?
Here is something I just don't understand. Maybe someone can explain it to me like I am a 4 year old, that might make me understand.
What gets my goat about the Farscape cancelation isn't really the cancelation part. It is the insult to the fans of canceling a series in the middle of an end season cliff hanger. I respect Sci-Fi's perogative to decide that shows are underwatched and overbudgeted and need to go. At the end of the day it is a business and all that. But the fans that love Farscape, we are the same people that made the Sci-Fi channel what it is today.
Why can't the people at Sci-Fi just pull Jim Henson productions and the writers aside and say "We are canceling the series, it is done. No use arguing. However we are going to fund a 2 hour series finale for you. Tie up your loose ends in that.".
That is all I want, a series finale (hell it doesn't have to be 2 hours, it can be one hour) that takes care of this cliff hanger and ties up the loose ends of the series. That would be a nice gesture from Sci-Fi. I don't think they need to fund a 5th season.
In my own little misguided protest of Farscape and anything else I am pressently annoyed with (anti-american actors and such) I decided that I can have my cake and eat it too.
I downloaded the 5 disc SVCD set off of the newsgroups.
The quality of the SVCD is pretty good. There is this weird color dropout that happens once every disc that I don't understand. But if you ignore that the quality of the rip is very good.
But the show itself, wow. I am really engrossed. I remember being kind of dissapointed in the Dune miniseries in 2000. I came to the conclusion that while this is an outstanding series of books it just doesn't translate to film at all.
Well maybe that is true of Dune, but Children of Dune. Definetly worth your time. I am enjoying it immensley.
Also in response to #4. I like to buy legitimate copies of stuff I use. But I have been burned so many times over by buggy software. Lately I have been hitting the newsgroups and downloading warez copies of stuff I need. I give the warez a shot, if it is not buggy and does what I need then I buy a good copy of it. If not then I zap it from my system. Sometimes I give the app time and see if they fixed the problems.
My point is, warez and cracked stuff is not necessarily a bad idea. To some degree they might shoot themselves in the foot if they were to solve this problem through a patch system. I might be fooled into thinking the game is a bug laden pile of doggy doo.
FWIW: I think that Easy CD Creator 6 was put out needing to be patched on purpose. I noticed that you cannot work with AC3 files without patching it. I found it kind of unstable and blew it away.
Let me get this straight. They won't commit to a season 5 of Farscape. Hell, they won't even commit to a 2 hour series finale to wrap up all the loose ends. Us scapers just get left hanging with a part 1 of a 2 part episode that will never see the light of day.
But they are going to bring Battlestar Galatica back?
Look at the Farscape website, go there, they have plastered all over it how the critics say it is the best sci-fi on TV.
If you want the correct name just read the email. It is in the slashdot article.
FWIW: I had to run out of the house to get to work. So rather then double check everything I had written I just posted it and went out. So that we can get beyond my typo's and actually debate my point, which goes unchanged regardless of typo's, I will point a couple of them out to you.
1. I didn't realize the email was supposebly written by a chick till I got to the end. I assumed it was a male that had written. Hindsight being what it is, I should have known better. If I had taken the time to proof it I would have changed all my he's to she's. Wouldn't have changed a goddamn thing except adding a few extra 's' here and there.
2. I have no effing clue who most of these people are. What do I care who the 2nd most important trade partner with the US is? This is Slashdot for crying out loud. I know that anyone named 'Bill' is evil and conspiring to rule the world, a wristwatch can be converted to run Linux and any thread that is worth reading has a 'Beowolf cluster' joke or at least one 'goatse' link in it. What else do I need to know to post to this place?
None of that changes the point of my post. Which is that this email is potential Bullshit.
I read it and the entire time I am thinking, 'where is the proof that this is real?'.
Has any of the people quoted in that email come forward and admitted talking to this person? I mean, he name drops like crazy (that alone makes me suspicious) but the first I hear about it is on Slashdot?
And I read the whole thing. You know what it reads like to me.... a political agenda. A typical, America is evil, comunism is good, liberal agenda.
For those who are clue challenged please allow me to point things out... It opens strong: 'With apologies for the group email... I thought this was interesting enough to pass along. These are the notes from a friend of a friend who writes for Newsday.'
How many of us have gotten emails from long lost relatives and business associates in Nigeria that started out like that. Seriously though. You/.'rs are pretty smart. If some twit sent you an email that started out like that (replace Newsday with, oh Cisco') and then went on to say that you needed to take all your money out of the bank because there are problems with ATM's that no one wants to admit to, how seriously would you take him? Well this is worse. Cause I don't know this twit.
Lets move along....
Now dude spends a bunch of paragraphs talking up this place in the Swiss Alps like he is trying to sell me a time share. This follows formula to a 'T' for reeling in the suckers. He is getting downright personal with the recipent of this email. Makes us feel all comfy and gushy inside. Got a question for ya.
Why hasn't he asked the reciepent (gotta learn how to spell that damn word) any personal questions? Where is the 'How are your kids?' or 'I am bringning you and your wife back some kids' or even 'Isn't it weird how your wife and I both came down with the Clap at the same time? Are you sure you are not infected?'. Oh because he edited that stuff out. Fair enough.
This email doesn't read like it has been edited. Most forwarded emails that I read that have been edited read like they have been edited.....
Which sets us up nicely for his political agenda. The following information in the email cannot be proven or disproven. The only exception to this is if people like Bill Clinton, the queen of Africa (what is her name, Latifa?) or Bill 'Money' Gates came forward and either denied or confirmed this stuff. Bear this in mind too.... the odds of any of those people confirming they talked to this twerp are nonexistent. And if someone did come forward and deny it, well, that would be twisted around the person as an admittal. As in 'Why do you find it neccasary to lie about....' sort of thing. It is a no win scenerio for these people. And to be frank with you I am sure all of them, with the possible exception of Bill (no not that Bill, the other Bill, the one obsessed with world domination) have better things to do with there time then get caught up in this controversy.
And this next paragraph (near the end) is just too much. To be quite frank with you I am not sure where to begin. Read it:
Finally, who are these guys? I actually enjoyed a lot of my conversations, and found many of the leaders and rich quite charming and remarkably candid. Some dressed elegantly, no matter how bitter cold and snowy it was, but most seemed quite happy in ski clothes or casual attire. Women wearing pants was perfectly acceptable, and the elite is sufficiently Multicultural that even the suit and tie lacks a sense of dominance. Watching Bill Clinton address the conference while sitting in the hotel room of the President of Mozambique -- we were viewing it on closed circuit TV -- I got juicy blow-by=blow analysis of US foreign policy from a remarkably candid head of state. A day spent with Bill Gates turned out to be fascinating and fun. I found the CEO of Heinekin hilarious, and George Soros proved quite earnest about confronting AIDS. Vicente Fox -- who I had breakfast with -- proved sexy and smart like a --- well, a fox. David Stern (Chair of the NBA) ran up and gave me a hug.
---
Let me get this straight. These people are all paranoid about assasination attempts (he says that farther up in the email) and he is spending the day with Bill gates, hanging out in the hotel room of the King of god only knows where, making passes at some dude from Fox and (this is my favorite line) 'David Stern (Chair of the NBA) ran up and gave me a hug.'
Granted this is a chick writing this, so the hug thing isn't too far fetched. Still though, you know damn well that people in positions like where these people are didn't get there by being stupid. They know better then to hang too close to reporters and paparazzi.
Anyways that is my take on this. Just calling 'em like I see 'em.
Never thought I would see the day when someone got all high and mighty on music and then professed a love for pop and that classical was only so-so.
I said in a previous post that they were 'quantifying taste' and that, that was evil. What is really, truly evil is that music by definition is quantifiable. The poster is correct in that assumption. And if you extend the concept just a bit then taste is quantifiable too. This poster is a good example of that. This guy likes things that follows rules. I would imagine a program could be written that would predict with some accuracy what this dude would like or not. Problem is, this guy is forgetting about the rest of the population.
I am no musician. I play the stereo. But I can understand a certain concept. Tone, beat, melody, crap like that. I get it. If you take different styles of music, rap, metal, speed metal (remember that... about time for a comback of that dontchathink?), country western, jazz, classical.. you name it, all of these styles can be explained mathmatecaly by looking at how they adhere to the rules this guy mentioned. Rap is a good example. Got beat. Not much else though. That in itself is a set of rules that need followed. Like binary. On, off, off, off... it isn't so far fetched. And that is what this dude is missing.
What really scares the hell out of me about this program is that when I close my eyes I can completly grasp the concept. There is nothing far fetched about it. We are a mere step away from a computer writing the music (the hard part) and some pansy adding words.
Even if you made the assumption that the V-2 could carry the nuclear weapon, which it couldn't, you are still left with a couple insurmountable problems.
1. The V-2's were as likely as not to explode on the launch pad.... 2. They had no real guidance system. You pointed them towards London, took a good guess on how much fuel it needed and let it go. They were as likely to land in the countryside or in the English Channel as anywhere in London.
No way could have the Germans had many bombs. Why waste the few you have on such an unreliable system?
With the Challenger disaster engineers were trying to stop the launch before it happened. They had read weather reports and were actively protesting the launch.
Columbia on the other hand. The damage was not forseen. It happened during liftoff. I don't have the slightest idea what the time frame between when the foam fell off the tank and when someone took notice to it, but I seriously doubt it was in time for the shuttle to abort the launch.
Once the shuttle passed that point of no return and achieved orbit those astronauts were already dead. NASA has no way to inspect or to repair tiles once the Shuttle is in orbit.
Challenger was preventable. At the exact moment (and in all fairness this could change, you never know with this stuff) Columbia was the definition of an accident, unpreventable.
Someone help me out here. I join the network and accept incoming data to be backed up on my machine. For the sake of argument lets just say that I never take advantage of backing up any of my data over the network, I am just allowing my machine to act as a backup server cause I am some sort of a green- tree-hugging-long-haired-hippy type.
I do this for 6 months and I have an always on, steady reliable connection. My machine is constantly and heavily used.
Then one day I decide to format all of my hard drives.
Exactly how f*!ked are all the users that had data on my machine?
Everyone seems so suprised and worried about names like 'Apple', 'Micro$oft' and 'Intel' on this list. I'm not surprised at all. As others have said this is about the difference between government mandated digital copyright protection and digital copyright protection coming out of the private sector.
Consider that the DMCA says that you can't backwards engineer any copyprotection code for any reason or risk jail time. If this is the law, then what is the incentive for stronger encryption and better code? All this stuff filters down. Look at the contests to do things like break encryption. Remember when they said we would never break 128 bit encryption? Where would we be if it was illegal to try?
If the government mandates copy protection and passes laws then we end up in that end-game. However if we let capitalism and the private sector do the work then we end up somewhere just a little bit more fun. We walk away with new technology, new ideas, a new bread of hackers pressing technology to its limits. That is what got us to where we are today.
And besides if we let the private sector take charge then we are still left with a choice. We will be able to choose not to purchase Palidium enabled hardware/software.
What is going to happen the first time a motherboard manufacturer has a non-palidium board outsell a Palidium enabled board?
These are all scenerios that cannot happen if we allow the government to mandate this stuff.
I know it is like bad medicine, but I support Micro$oft, Intel and Apple and anyone else that opposes the government in this.
Heck, with the point of view that copy protection is here to say, I say bring on Palidium. At least it is a known evil.
I want to upgrade my system, I really do. I have submitted all the necessary paperwork. But I am still awaiting a decision by both Micro$oft and the RIAA about wether my choices in components are approved of. Wouldn't want to get sued you know.
Boy, I remember the days when you could upgrade your system and put any damn thing you wanted inside that beige box. I remember them like it was yesterday. They were good days, full of blue skies, warm mornings and good sex.
If a fast burner counts double then does a slow burner count at half? How slow should I burn my music so the RIAA officially doesn't mind?
Maybe we are just not understanding the RIAA. I think they should post on there website acceptable burning speeds. Then we could all get along.
Re:Over the Hill? ... An Opinion
on
Taken?
·
· Score: 1
I am tired of everyone dissing A.I.
A.I. got burned by the marketing department. Speilberg had the dumb luck to make a movie that had a 2 letter abbreviation as a title that revolved around a little kid.
The marketing folks said "Hey I bet if people thought they were going to see ET2 we could make a killing?"
Why Speilberg allowed such an obvious and costly blunder to happen can only be understood by Speilberg.
If there is one thing A.I. is not it is E.T.2. If you are expecting E.T.2 then go and rent E.T. and stay the hell away from A.I. If on the other hand you are in the mood for a very Kuberic sorta movie with just a dash of Speilberg charm thrown in then see A.I. and leave your mind open.
This movie is a wonderful ride for those who see it with an open mind.
Remember, 2001 didn't make money at the box office either. Everyone thought that was crap too. Some things need time to grow on you.
Slashdot Mirror
He is buying into the propaganda.
I can't understand the likes of him.
Saddam has a son (had a son I hope) that had a hobby. Here in the US we call that hobby RAPE. I don't know what one of the heirs to Saddam's throne called it.
Saddam is being accused of genocide.
Do you know what you have to do to get accused of genocide?
Score a cool 1 million points that is what.
I have read a report of people being lowered into a plastic chipper feet first.
Of little girls tortured in front of there mothers.
Women being hung upside down from there feet during there menstrual cycle.
People having there tongues cut out and allowed to bleed to death in the middle of town.
What do you think all of those Saddam posters are for?
To remind you that Saddam is always watching.
The guy who wrote this anti-american post drives me nuts.
None of this stuff bothers him at all. He thinks it is the bad luck of the Iraqi's to be born in Iraq. It is more important to him to hate America and George Bush.
I mean damn. This war WASN'T neccesary. Saddam would have been in a far different position if the French, Germans and Russians hadn't spent the last 12 years selling him black market arms.
You think Saddam would have stayed and founght if it wasn't for those three bozo's?
Yeah keep believing the BS put out by the Iraqi's.
I have no trouble believing that the Iraqi government is killing it's own people and blaming it on the Americans.
I mean schools and hospitals are no places for troops, artillery and tanks anyways.
I agree with one thing. If we were to forget about the citizens and decide to take the oil we would have done so by now.
What is making this difficult is our soldiers are not required to fire on enemy troops that are hiding behind civilians.
Actually if you think about this.
Saving the civilians from Saddams evil is job #1.
Job #2 is showing them a way of life better then then dictatorship, this would be democracy and captialism.
In that respect it isn't evil at all.
Take Japan as an example. They were devestated from WWII (not that they didn't bring that on themselves... but that is a whore of a different color) and we brought them capitilism and democracy.
50 years later they are doing great.
I mean, what is the alternative you are suggesting?
That planning waits until the fighting is over?
That is just dumb. It takes time to figure this stuff out. Besides how are you gonna get the food, water and shelter in if you haven't planned that out?
You are not suggesting the victor is in doubt, are you?
Are you maybe suggesting that Communism or Socialism is a better way to go?
How about we allow them to set up another totalitarian regime? We can come back and party again in another 20 years?
Or maybe you believe that you are somehow special and more deserving of basic human rights and freedom then the average Iraqi?
Seriously.
Consult with the Britts and the Aussies. The three of us can decide what benefits us most and we go from there.
No consideration need be made for Europe.
A McDonalds on every corner and beef at every dinner plate. That is my postwar plan for Iraq.
Possibly he got the idea from Cryptonomicon.
In it a character writes code to flash the (I believe) caps-lock key in morse code.
I am not gonna say why he does this, but Neal Stephenson (who B da'man? Neal B da'man.) is an experienced coder and makes a good example in the book that it would work.
/. censoring mechanisms won't let me post this from my account, so I have to post this as AC:
Especially in times like these claiming a "politic free zone" is a very political statement.
From my experience people who claim to be unpolitical are just anti-democratic.
Damn that was mean.
Thing is, people feel very, very strongly about this issue. They feel (myself included) that they are right, and the other people are wrong. And if those other people will just see it my way then the world will be a better place. And if that doesn't work, then when I am proven right then everyone else will look like a fool.
That is all fine and dandy. And it is all over the place. It is on the newsgroups and just about any forum you could find. You don't really have discussions with people, you just end up calling the other person stupid and quoting your own agenda over and over again.
There are lots and lots of places for that. It is nice having a place I can go to escape that.
That Slashdot not cover the war in Iraq.
Seriously.
I love Slashdot. And I feel very strongly about the war in Iraq. The thing is that for some time in the very near future there will be no shortage on the web for coverage of the war. The newsites are going to run with every damn rumor like it is fact. And I (along with many, many other people) am going to be firmly addicted to that.
It is nice to know that I can placate the geeky side of me in a politic free zone on Slashdot.
It almost seems ironic, but Slashdot offers a unique site this day in age. Slashdot can serve the slashdot community best right now by being what Slashdot is.
Maybe I didn't make that statement very well. I am just trying to say that Slashdot is the best site I know of for geeky news, and I love it.
I also take great comfort that when I am all politicd out, wether it be the war on Iraq or whatever, I can go to Slashdot and enjoy it and my politics, or anyone elses don't matter.
Your greatest service might be to stay a politic free zone.
Thanks for listening.
Is there any possibilty that it is someone from a cable company posting these things on eBay?
Consider....
I have an SBLive Platinum.
I just allow XP to load up whatever drivers it wants and I don't screw with it past that.
By doing that I have no annoying Creative splash screens or anything else bothering me.
Any reason you can't just slap the Audigy in and allow XP to handle the drivers?
You can flame me if you dissagree, fine.
As far as downloading things goes I see three completely different piles, software (warez), movies (SVCD and such), and MP3's.
You simply cannot group those three things together. There are different reasons, and different obstacles for each pile.
I won't talk about movies and music.
But I want to bring up software.
There is sooooooooo much buggy software today that you can waist quite a bit of money on software that simply doesn't work out of the box.
Can you imagine if car manufactures (or any other manufacturer for that matter) had the low quality standards that software devolopers have?
It would be awful.
But I have found that if I hit usenet I can normally find many different pieces of software to achieve whatever it is I want to achieve.
I download the warez, run it and if it is buggy I toss it out.
If it does what I want I buy it.
And I do buy it. I like to own my software. I want to be able to patch my software and add features. I don't want the fact that I have stolen it to get in the way.
I just want something that works out of the box.
Is that asking too much?
Okay so you bring up software with demos available.
Well.... I recently got screwed by this. I was looking for a TV client for my new ATI All In Wonder card. Intervideo seems to make good products. I demoed WinDVR. There demo only allows the software to be active for 5 (or 10 I forget) minutes at a time.
Seemed fair to me. I wanted to buy right away anyways.
I checked the quality, it was what I wanted so I paid $50 for it.
Guess what?
It has a problem that doesn't reel it's ugly head until after you have been using it for more then 10 minutes.
I haven't been able to find a solution so far.
You know how hard it is gonna be to get a refund for this?
I should have Warezed it and then bought it.
Lesson learned.
YOU LISTENING SOFTWARE DEVOLOPERS?
Here is something I just don't understand.
Maybe someone can explain it to me like I am a 4 year old, that might make me understand.
What gets my goat about the Farscape cancelation isn't really the cancelation part. It is the insult to the fans of canceling a series in the middle of an end season cliff hanger.
I respect Sci-Fi's perogative to decide that shows are underwatched and overbudgeted and need to go. At the end of the day it is a business and all that.
But the fans that love Farscape, we are the same people that made the Sci-Fi channel what it is today.
Why can't the people at Sci-Fi just pull Jim Henson productions and the writers aside and say "We are canceling the series, it is done. No use arguing. However we are going to fund a 2 hour series finale for you. Tie up your loose ends in that.".
That is all I want, a series finale (hell it doesn't have to be 2 hours, it can be one hour) that takes care of this cliff hanger and ties up the loose ends of the series.
That would be a nice gesture from Sci-Fi. I don't think they need to fund a 5th season.
In my own little misguided protest of Farscape and anything else I am pressently annoyed with (anti-american actors and such) I decided that I can have my cake and eat it too.
I downloaded the 5 disc SVCD set off of the newsgroups.
The quality of the SVCD is pretty good. There is this weird color dropout that happens once every disc that I don't understand. But if you ignore that the quality of the rip is very good.
But the show itself, wow. I am really engrossed. I remember being kind of dissapointed in the Dune miniseries in 2000. I came to the conclusion that while this is an outstanding series of books it just doesn't translate to film at all.
Well maybe that is true of Dune, but Children of Dune.
Definetly worth your time. I am enjoying it immensley.
Next stop, I need to learn to spell immensly.
Also in response to #4.
I like to buy legitimate copies of stuff I use.
But I have been burned so many times over by buggy software.
Lately I have been hitting the newsgroups and downloading warez copies of stuff I need. I give the warez a shot, if it is not buggy and does what I need then I buy a good copy of it.
If not then I zap it from my system.
Sometimes I give the app time and see if they fixed the problems.
My point is, warez and cracked stuff is not necessarily a bad idea. To some degree they might shoot themselves in the foot if they were to solve this problem through a patch system.
I might be fooled into thinking the game is a bug laden pile of doggy doo.
FWIW: I think that Easy CD Creator 6 was put out needing to be patched on purpose.
I noticed that you cannot work with AC3 files without patching it. I found it kind of unstable and blew it away.
Let me get this straight.
They won't commit to a season 5 of Farscape. Hell, they won't even commit to a 2 hour series finale to wrap up all the loose ends.
Us scapers just get left hanging with a part 1 of a 2 part episode that will never see the light of day.
But they are going to bring Battlestar Galatica back?
Look at the Farscape website, go there, they have plastered all over it how the critics say it is the best sci-fi on TV.
That is salt in the wound.
If you want the correct name just read the email. It is in the slashdot article.
FWIW: I had to run out of the house to get to work. So rather then double check everything I had written I just posted it and went out.
So that we can get beyond my typo's and actually debate my point, which goes unchanged regardless of typo's, I will point a couple of them out to you.
1. I didn't realize the email was supposebly written by a chick till I got to the end. I assumed it was a male that had written. Hindsight being what it is, I should have known better. If I had taken the time to proof it I would have changed all my he's to she's. Wouldn't have changed a goddamn thing except adding a few extra 's' here and there.
2. I have no effing clue who most of these people are. What do I care who the 2nd most important trade partner with the US is?
This is Slashdot for crying out loud. I know that anyone named 'Bill' is evil and conspiring to rule the world, a wristwatch can be converted to run Linux and any thread that is worth reading has a 'Beowolf cluster' joke or at least one 'goatse' link in it. What else do I need to know to post to this place?
None of that changes the point of my post. Which is that this email is potential Bullshit.
I read it and the entire time I am thinking, 'where is the proof that this is real?'.
/.'rs are pretty smart. If some twit sent you an email that started out like that (replace Newsday with, oh Cisco') and then went on to say that you needed to take all your money out of the bank because there are problems with ATM's that no one wants to admit to, how seriously would you take him?
Has any of the people quoted in that email come forward and admitted talking to this person?
I mean, he name drops like crazy (that alone makes me suspicious) but the first I hear about it is on Slashdot?
And I read the whole thing. You know what it reads like to me.... a political agenda.
A typical, America is evil, comunism is good, liberal agenda.
For those who are clue challenged please allow me to point things out...
It opens strong:
'With apologies for the group email... I thought this was interesting enough
to pass along. These are the notes from a friend of a friend who writes for
Newsday.'
How many of us have gotten emails from long lost relatives and business associates in Nigeria that started out like that.
Seriously though. You
Well this is worse. Cause I don't know this twit.
Lets move along....
Now dude spends a bunch of paragraphs talking up this place in the Swiss Alps like he is trying to sell me a time share.
This follows formula to a 'T' for reeling in the suckers. He is getting downright personal with the recipent of this email.
Makes us feel all comfy and gushy inside.
Got a question for ya.
Why hasn't he asked the reciepent (gotta learn how to spell that damn word) any personal questions? Where is the 'How are your kids?' or 'I am bringning you and your wife back some kids' or even 'Isn't it weird how your wife and I both came down with the Clap at the same time? Are you sure you are not infected?'.
Oh because he edited that stuff out.
Fair enough.
This email doesn't read like it has been edited. Most forwarded emails that I read that have been edited read like they have been edited.....
Which sets us up nicely for his political agenda.
The following information in the email cannot be proven or disproven. The only exception to this is if people like Bill Clinton, the queen of Africa (what is her name, Latifa?) or Bill 'Money' Gates came forward and either denied or confirmed this stuff. Bear this in mind too....
the odds of any of those people confirming they talked to this twerp are nonexistent. And if someone did come forward and deny it, well, that would be twisted around the person as an admittal. As in 'Why do you find it neccasary to lie about....' sort of thing. It is a no win scenerio for these people. And to be frank with you I am sure all of them, with the possible exception of Bill (no not that Bill, the other Bill, the one obsessed with world domination) have better things to do with there time then get caught up in this controversy.
And this next paragraph (near the end) is just too much. To be quite frank with you I am not sure where to begin. Read it:
Finally, who are these guys? I actually enjoyed a lot of my
conversations, and found many of the leaders and rich quite charming and
remarkably candid. Some dressed elegantly, no matter how bitter cold and
snowy it was, but most seemed quite happy in ski clothes or casual
attire. Women wearing pants was perfectly acceptable, and the elite is
sufficiently
Multicultural that even the suit and tie lacks a sense of dominance.
Watching Bill Clinton address the conference while sitting in the hotel
room of the President of Mozambique -- we were viewing it on closed
circuit TV -- I got juicy blow-by=blow analysis of US foreign policy
from a remarkably candid head of state. A day spent with Bill Gates
turned out to be fascinating and fun. I found the CEO of Heinekin
hilarious, and George Soros proved quite earnest about confronting AIDS.
Vicente Fox -- who I had breakfast with -- proved sexy and smart like a
--- well, a fox. David Stern (Chair of the NBA) ran up and gave me a
hug.
---
Let me get this straight.
These people are all paranoid about assasination attempts (he says that farther up in the email) and he is spending the day with Bill gates, hanging out in the hotel room of the King of god only knows where, making passes at some dude from Fox and (this is my favorite line)
'David Stern (Chair of the NBA) ran up and gave me a
hug.'
Granted this is a chick writing this, so the hug thing isn't too far fetched.
Still though, you know damn well that people in positions like where these people are didn't get there by being stupid.
They know better then to hang too close to reporters and paparazzi.
Anyways that is my take on this.
Just calling 'em like I see 'em.
Never thought I would see the day when someone got all high and mighty on music and then professed a love for pop and that classical was only so-so.
I said in a previous post that they were 'quantifying taste' and that, that was evil.
What is really, truly evil is that music by definition is quantifiable. The poster is correct in that assumption.
And if you extend the concept just a bit then taste is quantifiable too. This poster is a good example of that. This guy likes things that follows rules. I would imagine a program could be written that would predict with some accuracy what this dude would like or not.
Problem is, this guy is forgetting about the rest of the population.
I am no musician. I play the stereo. But I can understand a certain concept. Tone, beat, melody, crap like that. I get it. If you take different styles of music, rap, metal, speed metal (remember that... about time for a comback of that dontchathink?), country western, jazz, classical.. you name it, all of these styles can be explained mathmatecaly by looking at how they adhere to the rules this guy mentioned.
Rap is a good example. Got beat. Not much else though.
That in itself is a set of rules that need followed. Like binary. On, off, off, off... it isn't so far fetched.
And that is what this dude is missing.
What really scares the hell out of me about this program is that when I close my eyes I can completly grasp the concept. There is nothing far fetched about it.
We are a mere step away from a computer writing the music (the hard part) and some pansy adding words.
I am the reason the music industry is dying.
It couldn't possibly be the crap quotient that has gone up enormously over the last decade.
It seems like more then ever the music industry just sticks with whatever sells, experimenting with new sounds, who wants to take that risk?
Wow this thing will generate more of the same.
Quantifying tastes in music.
Evil.
Oh yeah, the problem with the music industry.
My bad.
Even if you made the assumption that the V-2 could carry the nuclear weapon, which it couldn't, you are still left with a couple insurmountable problems.
1. The V-2's were as likely as not to explode on the launch pad....
2. They had no real guidance system. You pointed them towards London, took a good guess on how much fuel it needed and let it go.
They were as likely to land in the countryside or in the English Channel as anywhere in London.
No way could have the Germans had many bombs. Why waste the few you have on such an unreliable system?
With the Challenger disaster engineers were trying to stop the launch before it happened. They had read weather reports and were actively protesting the launch.
Columbia on the other hand. The damage was not forseen. It happened during liftoff. I don't have the slightest idea what the time frame between when the foam fell off the tank and when someone took notice to it, but I seriously doubt it was in time for the shuttle to abort the launch.
Once the shuttle passed that point of no return and achieved orbit those astronauts were already dead.
NASA has no way to inspect or to repair tiles once the Shuttle is in orbit.
Challenger was preventable.
At the exact moment (and in all fairness this could change, you never know with this stuff) Columbia was the definition of an accident, unpreventable.
Someone help me out here.
I join the network and accept incoming data to be backed up on my machine. For the sake of argument lets just say that I never take advantage of backing up any of my data over the network, I am just allowing my machine to act as a backup server cause I am some sort of a green- tree-hugging-long-haired-hippy type.
I do this for 6 months and I have an always on, steady reliable connection. My machine is constantly and heavily used.
Then one day I decide to format all of my hard drives.
Exactly how f*!ked are all the users that had data on my machine?
Everyone seems so suprised and worried about names like 'Apple', 'Micro$oft' and 'Intel' on this list.
I'm not surprised at all. As others have said this is about the difference between government mandated digital copyright protection and digital copyright protection coming out of the private sector.
Consider that the DMCA says that you can't backwards engineer any copyprotection code for any reason or risk jail time. If this is the law, then what is the incentive for stronger encryption and better code?
All this stuff filters down. Look at the contests to do things like break encryption. Remember when they said we would never break 128 bit encryption?
Where would we be if it was illegal to try?
If the government mandates copy protection and passes laws then we end up in that end-game.
However if we let capitalism and the private sector do the work then we end up somewhere just a little bit more fun. We walk away with new technology, new ideas, a new bread of hackers pressing technology to its limits.
That is what got us to where we are today.
And besides if we let the private sector take charge then we are still left with a choice. We will be able to choose not to purchase Palidium enabled hardware/software.
What is going to happen the first time a motherboard manufacturer has a non-palidium board outsell a Palidium enabled board?
These are all scenerios that cannot happen if we allow the government to mandate this stuff.
I know it is like bad medicine, but I support Micro$oft, Intel and Apple and anyone else that opposes the government in this.
Heck, with the point of view that copy protection is here to say, I say bring on Palidium. At least it is a known evil.
I want to upgrade my system, I really do.
I have submitted all the necessary paperwork.
But I am still awaiting a decision by both Micro$oft and the RIAA about wether my choices in components are approved of.
Wouldn't want to get sued you know.
Boy, I remember the days when you could upgrade your system and put any damn thing you wanted inside that beige box. I remember them like it was yesterday. They were good days, full of blue skies, warm mornings and good sex.
Yep them were the days.
If a fast burner counts double then does a slow burner count at half?
How slow should I burn my music so the RIAA officially doesn't mind?
Maybe we are just not understanding the RIAA. I think they should post on there website acceptable burning speeds. Then we could all get along.
The marketing folks said "Hey I bet if people thought they were going to see ET2 we could make a killing?"
Why Speilberg allowed such an obvious and costly blunder to happen can only be understood by Speilberg.
If there is one thing A.I. is not it is E.T.2. If you are expecting E.T.2 then go and rent E.T. and stay the hell away from A.I. If on the other hand you are in the mood for a very Kuberic sorta movie with just a dash of Speilberg charm thrown in then see A.I. and leave your mind open.
This movie is a wonderful ride for those who see it with an open mind.
Remember, 2001 didn't make money at the box office either. Everyone thought that was crap too. Some things need time to grow on you.
On the contrary.
The smell of my ass is the one thing I don't mind them having.