I get a chuckle out of these newfangled words like "digital immigrant".
That one isn't as bad as "blog" (and I've been blogging since before the word was coined). I spell it "blagh". "The name's Blagh. Ralph Blagh". The word "Blog" to me sounds like the god of the hangover you pray at the porcelain alter to.
The latest one that annoys me is "information wants to be free". Totally meaningless. You could as easily say "information wants to be paid for". Too bad people have no imaginations, what's wrong with "when information isn't free, neither are you"?
McCain has completely backed down on his criticisms of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell
I haven't. But then again I'm not a Republican. Robertson and Falwell (and Bush) are the wolves in sheep's clothing that were warned about in the Christian bible.
Never trust a preacher who wears a $5,000 suit and a $500 tie. In fact, I never trust anybody wearing a tie, period.
Yeah, that's me. If you liked the "Paxil Diaries" the slashdot journals are more or less kinda the same. Only I get laid once in a while in these. Some of the cartoon characters in these wind up in the newspaper, see Dork Side of the Moon (that one was imo almost as good as I used to be, I wrote better when I was on Paxil).
Rather than swallow the line I went to his church's web site a long time ago, when Obama was running for US Senate. I made up my mind then and there. His site was a hate filled site that truly turned my stomach.
Of course, I wouldn't have been voting for Obama even if he'd never been to that church; I'm voting either Green or Libertarian, haven't decided yet.
No, but I read it. It didn't matter; I wrote Obama off long ago. I've been to his preacher's web site and it is as hate filled as any White Power Nazi trash site. I can't see how the man can cal lhimself a Christian, let alone a minister.
It shows a lack of judgement and common sense, let alone decency. I wouldn't go to a church with a racist preacher, and I'm not even a politician or a celebrity. I wouldn't go to a church that was an "unabashedly white church" like his is an "unabashedly black church". Race isn't supposed to matter to a Christian.
I don't fault him for knowing a racist, I fault him for going to a church THAT LONG with a racist preacher.
Honestly, I don't care if the Obamas don't like white people in their core, and crack "cracker jokes" over family outings, so long as they run the country well when they are in there
When I vote, I want to vote for someone who represents ME. How can you represent someone you hate?
Cd is passe in a car. Having a 80 gig usb hard drive in the glove box that the stereo can play from is where it's at.
Back in the stone age when I was young it was all about high fidelity - making it sound as much like there was a real live musician playing a real instrument. The eight track was the exception.
Watch, in another ten or fifteen years it will go full circle when storage density gets to what we now would consider insane, again fidelity will matter.
There were only a handful of LPs I could crank and be fooled into thinking there was a band in the living room (Van Halen 1 comes to mind). I have yet to hear a single CD that would fool me, let alone an MP3. I suspect that if you raised the sampling rate by a power of ten, and doubled the bitrate, you might have some fairly high fidelity.
That's why they hate the idea of P2P- if you find out it's crap you won't buy it. So in a sense I guess it does cost them a sale; or rather, costs them the proceeds they would get from stealing from you.
Back in the stone age when I was a teenager I learned to never buy an LP unless it was live, a "best of", a "greatest hits", or had heard it at a friend's house (or later if they played the whole thing on KSHE).
If I heard an album at a friend's and the whole thing rocked (Are You Experienced?) I'd buy more of that artist's stuff. Hendrix never got air play. The Yardbirds never got airplay. None of the bands that the locals covered ever got air play. Even back then, before the internet, they tried to shove dreck down our throats and failed miserably at it.
The RIAA labels have always shot themselves in the foot. Once as a teenager I was in a record store and there was some awesome music playing. "Wow, that's a great song!" I thought. Then the next song came on... just as good. And another and another. I asked the clerk "Wow, who's that? I want that album!"
"Led Zeppelin!" Led Zeppelin I had just come out that day. The critics panned it and none of the radio stations played it until KSHE came on the air.
"Diopters" is, iinm, the refractive index of a lens. It is the measurement of the needed correction. The "x/y" is your sight compared to the norm. 20/20 is that you can see at 20 feet (or meters or yards or any measured distance) what the "normal" person can see at 20n. So 20/400 would be being able to read a character at 20n (where the unit of measurement n is unimportant, could be feet or meters) what a normally sighted person could see at 400n.
Diopters would be meaningless to someone with no correction needed, whereas 20/16 (my distance vision in the eye with the implant when it's not full of blood) means I can see at 20n what a normally sighted person would have to be closer to see.
See this eye chart for a better idea. The needed diopter depends on the length of the eyeball and the refractive index of its focusing lens and its cornea.
I have a rack of indie CDs and never paid more than $10. IIRC I bought a Little Feat CD at their rained-out show at the Illinois Stae Fair (a double CD) for fifteen. And they were big name before Lowell George died.
1/3? That's incredibly high! I'm paying twenty bucks a month to my union, and with its collective bargaining power I'm making far more than I would without it. It's twenty bucks well spent; not even spent, but invested.
Of course, if I was only working a few hours a month and earning sixty bucks, I'd be looking for a different place to work, union or no union.
The electronics and detonation systems used in nuclear bombs are very advanced, and very difficult to get right
When they say "fuse" are they referring to a piece of solder or lead designed to melt when subjected to an overcurrent, or (as you imply) is it something more dangerous and sinister?
I'm looking forward to finally having a smart president again.
I'm not. We had one. The man had a degree in physics, and his Presidency was a disaster; I regretted voting for the asshat. I never thought I'd ever see a worse President, but the current MBA Oil man Traitor In Chief* proved me wrong.
-mcgrew
* gasoline was less than 1/3 the cost it is now when the two oil barons took residence at the White House. I firmly believe that the Iraq war was to destabilise the region to drive up the price of oil so that oil men Bush and Cheney could get richer at the expense of their country and countrymen.
I, for one, would like a democratic republic. It would have the exact same form of government as now, except that
After the President signs a bill, it is sent to the polls once a year to be voted on by the people. Any bill not recieving 50% of the popular vote will not become law.
All laws expire ten years after enactment, but can be reenacted if resubmitted and voted on by Congress, signed by the President, and voted up by the people.
We have way too many laws.
The idea of using Facebook, MySpace, and Digg as instruments of government is, in some ways, breathtakingly foolish
In some ways?
The anonymity of the Internet, combined with the speed of activity on the Web, seems to lead in many cases to an amplification of our baser instincts
What do you mean "our?" There always have been idiots, always will be. What about the anonymity of the ballot?
Do we want our political leaders receiving input from commercial Web sites, with no means of identifying who or what is promoting certain causes?
Do we want our political leaders receiving input from foreign and domestically owned commercial corporations, with no meaningful input from the citizenry? That's what we have now.
Debates on sites such as Daily Kos revert on a daily base to name calling, ad hominen attacks, and sheer bloody-mindedness
Sounds like Congress.
And you mention diaries? How about journals? Am I the guy you're warning me about?
Hear, here! Is he opposed to the legalization of my two favorite pastimes, hookers and reefer? No? Then I'll vote against him. A vote for a man who would have you in prison is a stupid, stupid, stupid vote.
I should move to Holland. Maybe I will when I retire (and it ain't that long from now)
"spear-chuckers"? You do realise, don't you, that the term "spear-chucker" is about as offensively and insultingly racist as you can get? You might as well quote the GNAA troll!
The political realm is still well in the hands of the digital immigrants
What, pray tell, is a "digital immigrant?" Ok, never mind, I know how to use wikipedia, although unfortunately the term "digital immigrant" is slashdotted (504 gateway timeout). No matter, Google works too.
The term is bullshit. I didn't grow up with computers, computers grew up with me. YOU are the immigrant. I've been around computers since before you were born. I used to get my electric bill on a hollerith card.
Your "digital natives" call me up asking for help with their computers!
I know all about young people. I used to be one. I was conceitedly naive, too, just like every young person who ever lived was.
My initial thought (however cynical it may come across?) is: Is this really just another plea of "Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!" ?
That would be a particularly dumb thing to do! Geezers show up to the polls in droves, whippersnappers stay home. If you're young (unfortunately for me I'm not) you can change that fact.
I agree, it sure looks to me like McCain is going to be our next president. Obama's preacher is a racist, a white person voting for him would be like a black person voting for a white man whose preacher is a Klansman.
Hillary is just plain unlilkeable, taking votes away, even Democrat votes. Most Republicans hate her (because of her husband, who IMO was a good President esp. in comparison to our present Oil Baron Traitor in Chief) and won't vote for her, and I for one don't like her because her husband gave her the job of instituting national health care like the civilized world has and she botched it.
Myself, I'll be voting either Green or Libertarian, depending on who's on the ballot in Illinois. Mine will be a protest vote against our Corporate-owned government. We, the people, have been left out of the loop for far too long.
That said, there are a lot of seventy two year olds who ARE computer literate; I've met some. I gather there are a few on slashdot with low UIDs. I don't know about McCain but judging someone's computer literacy by their age is pretty ignorant.
Slashdot Mirror
I get a chuckle out of these newfangled words like "digital immigrant".
That one isn't as bad as "blog" (and I've been blogging since before the word was coined). I spell it "blagh". "The name's Blagh. Ralph Blagh". The word "Blog" to me sounds like the god of the hangover you pray at the porcelain alter to.
The latest one that annoys me is "information wants to be free". Totally meaningless. You could as easily say "information wants to be paid for". Too bad people have no imaginations, what's wrong with "when information isn't free, neither are you"?
McCain has completely backed down on his criticisms of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell
I haven't. But then again I'm not a Republican. Robertson and Falwell (and Bush) are the wolves in sheep's clothing that were warned about in the Christian bible.
Never trust a preacher who wears a $5,000 suit and a $500 tie. In fact, I never trust anybody wearing a tie, period.
Yeah, that's me. If you liked the "Paxil Diaries" the slashdot journals are more or less kinda the same. Only I get laid once in a while in these. Some of the cartoon characters in these wind up in the newspaper, see Dork Side of the Moon (that one was imo almost as good as I used to be, I wrote better when I was on Paxil).
Rather than swallow the line I went to his church's web site a long time ago, when Obama was running for US Senate. I made up my mind then and there. His site was a hate filled site that truly turned my stomach.
Of course, I wouldn't have been voting for Obama even if he'd never been to that church; I'm voting either Green or Libertarian, haven't decided yet.
My Springfield's funnier. Plus it's in 3D!
Or anyone that listened to more than one of his sermons. Why didn't Obama set him straight?
Did you not listen to his speech on the matter?
No, but I read it. It didn't matter; I wrote Obama off long ago. I've been to his preacher's web site and it is as hate filled as any White Power Nazi trash site. I can't see how the man can cal lhimself a Christian, let alone a minister.
It shows a lack of judgement and common sense, let alone decency. I wouldn't go to a church with a racist preacher, and I'm not even a politician or a celebrity. I wouldn't go to a church that was an "unabashedly white church" like his is an "unabashedly black church". Race isn't supposed to matter to a Christian.
I don't fault him for knowing a racist, I fault him for going to a church THAT LONG with a racist preacher.
Honestly, I don't care if the Obamas don't like white people in their core, and crack "cracker jokes" over family outings, so long as they run the country well when they are in there
When I vote, I want to vote for someone who represents ME. How can you represent someone you hate?
Cd is passe in a car. Having a 80 gig usb hard drive in the glove box that the stereo can play from is where it's at.
Back in the stone age when I was young it was all about high fidelity - making it sound as much like there was a real live musician playing a real instrument. The eight track was the exception.
Watch, in another ten or fifteen years it will go full circle when storage density gets to what we now would consider insane, again fidelity will matter.
There were only a handful of LPs I could crank and be fooled into thinking there was a band in the living room (Van Halen 1 comes to mind). I have yet to hear a single CD that would fool me, let alone an MP3. I suspect that if you raised the sampling rate by a power of ten, and doubled the bitrate, you might have some fairly high fidelity.
I hated it. I'm glad I didn't buy it or rent it.
That's why they hate the idea of P2P- if you find out it's crap you won't buy it. So in a sense I guess it does cost them a sale; or rather, costs them the proceeds they would get from stealing from you.
Back in the stone age when I was a teenager I learned to never buy an LP unless it was live, a "best of", a "greatest hits", or had heard it at a friend's house (or later if they played the whole thing on KSHE).
If I heard an album at a friend's and the whole thing rocked (Are You Experienced?) I'd buy more of that artist's stuff. Hendrix never got air play. The Yardbirds never got airplay. None of the bands that the locals covered ever got air play. Even back then, before the internet, they tried to shove dreck down our throats and failed miserably at it.
The RIAA labels have always shot themselves in the foot. Once as a teenager I was in a record store and there was some awesome music playing. "Wow, that's a great song!" I thought. Then the next song came on... just as good. And another and another. I asked the clerk "Wow, who's that? I want that album!"
"Led Zeppelin!" Led Zeppelin I had just come out that day. The critics panned it and none of the radio stations played it until KSHE came on the air.
And they call US thieves!
-mcgrew
So essentially you'll be voting for McCain then?
No, I'll be voting third party. I like reefer and hookers, and to vote for someone that wants you in jail is insane.
Illinois, the one that's more a cartoon than the 2D Springfield on TV!
"Diopters" is, iinm, the refractive index of a lens. It is the measurement of the needed correction. The "x/y" is your sight compared to the norm. 20/20 is that you can see at 20 feet (or meters or yards or any measured distance) what the "normal" person can see at 20n. So 20/400 would be being able to read a character at 20n (where the unit of measurement n is unimportant, could be feet or meters) what a normally sighted person could see at 400n.
Diopters would be meaningless to someone with no correction needed, whereas 20/16 (my distance vision in the eye with the implant when it's not full of blood) means I can see at 20n what a normally sighted person would have to be closer to see.
See this eye chart for a better idea. The needed diopter depends on the length of the eyeball and the refractive index of its focusing lens and its cornea.
We can't ask firms to not try to make a profit... that's communism!
No, communism is when the state owns the means of production.
Other than that I agree with your post.
I have a rack of indie CDs and never paid more than $10. IIRC I bought a Little Feat CD at their rained-out show at the Illinois Stae Fair (a double CD) for fifteen. And they were big name before Lowell George died.
Some friends of mine had theirs professionally recorded and pressed, IINM they got 2k copies for about $2.5k.
1/3? That's incredibly high! I'm paying twenty bucks a month to my union, and with its collective bargaining power I'm making far more than I would without it. It's twenty bucks well spent; not even spent, but invested.
Of course, if I was only working a few hours a month and earning sixty bucks, I'd be looking for a different place to work, union or no union.
The electronics and detonation systems used in nuclear bombs are very advanced, and very difficult to get right
When they say "fuse" are they referring to a piece of solder or lead designed to melt when subjected to an overcurrent, or (as you imply) is it something more dangerous and sinister?
I'm looking forward to finally having a smart president again.
I'm not. We had one. The man had a degree in physics, and his Presidency was a disaster; I regretted voting for the asshat. I never thought I'd ever see a worse President, but the current MBA Oil man Traitor In Chief* proved me wrong.
-mcgrew
* gasoline was less than 1/3 the cost it is now when the two oil barons took residence at the White House. I firmly believe that the Iraq war was to destabilise the region to drive up the price of oil so that oil men Bush and Cheney could get richer at the expense of their country and countrymen.
- After the President signs a bill, it is sent to the polls once a year to be voted on by the people. Any bill not recieving 50% of the popular vote will not become law.
- All laws expire ten years after enactment, but can be reenacted if resubmitted and voted on by Congress, signed by the President, and voted up by the people.
We have way too many laws.The idea of using Facebook, MySpace, and Digg as instruments of government is, in some ways, breathtakingly foolish
In some ways?
The anonymity of the Internet, combined with the speed of activity on the Web, seems to lead in many cases to an amplification of our baser instincts
What do you mean "our?" There always have been idiots, always will be. What about the anonymity of the ballot?
Do we want our political leaders receiving input from commercial Web sites, with no means of identifying who or what is promoting certain causes?
Do we want our political leaders receiving input from foreign and domestically owned commercial corporations, with no meaningful input from the citizenry? That's what we have now.
Debates on sites such as Daily Kos revert on a daily base to name calling, ad hominen attacks, and sheer bloody-mindedness
Sounds like Congress.
And you mention diaries? How about journals? Am I the guy you're warning me about?
-mcgrew
I am not interested in a nanny state.
Hear, here! Is he opposed to the legalization of my two favorite pastimes, hookers and reefer? No? Then I'll vote against him. A vote for a man who would have you in prison is a stupid, stupid, stupid vote.
I should move to Holland. Maybe I will when I retire (and it ain't that long from now)
In soviet Russia, digital executive overlords branch YOU!
Will that do? Or do you need a beowolf cluster of Natalie Portmans running Linux as well?
"spear-chuckers"? You do realise, don't you, that the term "spear-chucker" is about as offensively and insultingly racist as you can get? You might as well quote the GNAA troll!
The political realm is still well in the hands of the digital immigrants
What, pray tell, is a "digital immigrant?" Ok, never mind, I know how to use wikipedia, although unfortunately the term "digital immigrant" is slashdotted (504 gateway timeout). No matter, Google works too.
The term is bullshit. I didn't grow up with computers, computers grew up with me. YOU are the immigrant. I've been around computers since before you were born. I used to get my electric bill on a hollerith card.
Your "digital natives" call me up asking for help with their computers!
I know all about young people. I used to be one. I was conceitedly naive, too, just like every young person who ever lived was.
My initial thought (however cynical it may come across?) is: Is this really just another plea of "Hey general public, I'm Obama and unlike the other candidates, I'm hip and in-touch with the current generation! Vote for me!" ?
That would be a particularly dumb thing to do! Geezers show up to the polls in droves, whippersnappers stay home. If you're young (unfortunately for me I'm not) you can change that fact.
I agree, it sure looks to me like McCain is going to be our next president. Obama's preacher is a racist, a white person voting for him would be like a black person voting for a white man whose preacher is a Klansman.
Hillary is just plain unlilkeable, taking votes away, even Democrat votes. Most Republicans hate her (because of her husband, who IMO was a good President esp. in comparison to our present Oil Baron Traitor in Chief) and won't vote for her, and I for one don't like her because her husband gave her the job of instituting national health care like the civilized world has and she botched it.
Myself, I'll be voting either Green or Libertarian, depending on who's on the ballot in Illinois. Mine will be a protest vote against our Corporate-owned government. We, the people, have been left out of the loop for far too long.
That said, there are a lot of seventy two year olds who ARE computer literate; I've met some. I gather there are a few on slashdot with low UIDs. I don't know about McCain but judging someone's computer literacy by their age is pretty ignorant.
BTW, I turn 56 next week.
-mcgrew