If tomorrow it suddenly became physically impossible to listen to music without paying for it, would these friends of yours all sit in silence for the rest of their lives? No. They'd buy some music. Not nearly as much as they're willing to take for free, but some.
If the options for poor folk are "listen to the same tracks over and over" or "listen to no music" I think "listen to no music" wins out. "Listen to the same tracks over and over" is insanity-producing.
So in 5 or 10 years when we pull up out of this point we will all have electrical cars pulling power from desert and off shore wind farms over long lines.
In 5 or 10 years, _maybe_ 10% of the population will have hybrids. Less than 5% will have electric. People are still buying gas cars, some of them with 10 year warranties. In 10 years, I plan on still driving my brilliant red barchetta, from a better, vanished time.
They are talking about 4th Edition, so none of this really concerns me.
No, they are talking about OD&D, 1e, 2e, 3.xe, MSH, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, etc. Any and all WotC/TSR PDF products. If you were interested in any of these, you can't buy them now.
Are you kidding? They killed it with 3.0 & 3.5. They stopped selling products and started licensing to third parties (eg ravenloft), then broke contract when the third parties started making too much money. They're finally following this model with their old PDFs.
"You can imagine if you work in an office and you've got this outsider like Dwight Schrute who walks in and a lot of his ideas resonate with you. Your fellow in-group members are hearing this and thinking, 'Wait, you agree with Dwight?' That can be really uncomfortable and socially threatening."
Socially threatening because Dwight Schrute is a sociopathic cat killer who delights in blocking fire exits and pulling the alarm. A better choice could have been chosen. Michael, for instance.
But it was spreading via autorun.inf on removable media too, and that was something MS didn't "fix" for WinXP until very recently (if one was only installing the auto-updates). Even then, protection requires non-automatic changes from a user/admin.
Is it? I remember Arthur C Clarke saying that Sci Fi is something that could happen, while fantasy is something that could never happen.
It always baffled me how the two genres (at least in my mind they're quite different) were always lumped together in bookstores. I was always a sci fi fan but wasn't much into the dungeons, dragons, wizards and trolls thing.
Except, that given the right science, a lot of the dungeons, dragons, wizards and trolls things could happen.
Sci-fi is fantasy because it is fiction that is neither historical or feasibly possible (so much of sci-fi is magical in that there is no solid explanation for the fantastic).
A portal is just an opening or a doorway. A portal as a connection between to two points that are not contiguous in normal space is a concept exclusive to science fiction.
Portal = Door or Window. The science fiction pseudo-wormhole you describe is called a portal because it resembles a doorway or window. Etymology is fun!
Man detained, threatened and abused by TSA for flying with $4700 in cash
Here's a recording of Steve Bierfeldt, a US citizen who tried to board a domestic airplane while carrying $4700 in cash, and was detained by the TSA and subjected to abusive language and threats [...] The TSA agents threatened to turn him over to the DEA. He was returning from a Ron Paul event in St Louis, MO, and worked for the campaign. The cash on his person arose from sales of t-shirts and stickers at the event.
If he was sure there was going to be an earthquake, then he'd put out the warning, get arrested, and be vindicated when the earthquake hit as he predicted.
Depends on how earthquake-safe he thought the jail was.
... if a ridiculously large amount of money shows up unexpectedly in your bank account, rushing out to spend it wildly before the mistake can be caught is not actually the smartest of the available options. The authorities look disapprovingly on such activities.
Forget the authorities; the Russian mobsters who put it temporarily in your bank account look disapprovingly on such activities.
In the UK, and a few other countries, if you have cash in a bank account and don't touch it for 15 years, the government will seize it and give it away to charity.
That's so fucking ridiculous you made me curse. It's also probably not true.
Dirty IT job No. 7: Disconnect/reconnect specialist
Wanted: Able-bodied individuals with affinity for adapters, plugs, prongs, and dongles; willing to crawl under desks and squeeze into tight spaces that have never seen daylight. Strong stomach required.
Disconnect machines from one site, reconnect them at another. It sounded so simple Garth Callaghan couldn't quite believe someone would pay his company, 127tech, to do it. Now he employs three full-time employees and 30 contractors, who spend half their time unplugging and replugging machines for commercial movers in Richmond, Va.
Doesn't sound difficult, until you've got someone with a B.S. in Computer and Information Technology who reattaches the cables running down the front of the desk (why are there holes in the back?), thinking it's a job well done.
I really feel for the average citizen living there. They can't even fucking leave. They're practically living in the nightware world that Orwell described decades ago.
Why would they want to leave? They're told that the rest of the world is even worse.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed. Totally unusable on iPhone safari.
If tomorrow it suddenly became physically impossible to listen to music without paying for it, would these friends of yours all sit in silence for the rest of their lives? No. They'd buy some music. Not nearly as much as they're willing to take for free, but some.
If the options for poor folk are "listen to the same tracks over and over" or "listen to no music" I think "listen to no music" wins out. "Listen to the same tracks over and over" is insanity-producing.
I'm glad Gary didn't see D&D 4e. I'm glad Dave didn't see Hasbro's future attempts to kill Blackmoor (you know they will).
Please mr. ISP, tell me again how you aren't a simpering moron?
Because we make more money than Speakeasy by pandering to the real simpering morons.
So in 5 or 10 years when we pull up out of this point we will all have electrical cars pulling power from desert and off shore wind farms over long lines.
In 5 or 10 years, _maybe_ 10% of the population will have hybrids. Less than 5% will have electric. People are still buying gas cars, some of them with 10 year warranties. In 10 years, I plan on still driving my brilliant red barchetta, from a better, vanished time.
like playing your starters against their backups.
Could you change that into a car analogy? Thanks!
It's like playing your things that you turn the key in that makes your engine go vroom!vroom! against their things that go Beeeeep Beeeeeep Beeeeep.
Yeah... hung, something you think we'd have given up a loong time ago.
Unless you're Iraqi, it doesn't matter what your country gave up. The Iraqi legal system passed sentence on him.
Robert E. Lee? Now we're going to get a ton of "South will rise again" jokes.
Sir, this is Slashdot. The only way you'll get any rise in the south is with hot grits.
They are talking about 4th Edition, so none of this really concerns me.
No, they are talking about OD&D, 1e, 2e, 3.xe, MSH, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, etc. Any and all WotC/TSR PDF products. If you were interested in any of these, you can't buy them now.
An asthmatic cyborg Ewok-thing
I knew General Grievous was evil, but he was an Ewok too? Wow, that blows my mind.
Are you kidding? They killed it with 3.0 & 3.5. They stopped selling products and started licensing to third parties (eg ravenloft), then broke contract when the third parties started making too much money. They're finally following this model with their old PDFs.
That can't be the Label's bullying poor defenceless Apple.
Actually, it can be. Just the same way that Microsoft charges more for Windows to OEMs which sell Linux-based products.
"You can imagine if you work in an office and you've got this outsider like Dwight Schrute who walks in and a lot of his ideas resonate with you. Your fellow in-group members are hearing this and thinking, 'Wait, you agree with Dwight?' That can be really uncomfortable and socially threatening."
Socially threatening because Dwight Schrute is a sociopathic cat killer who delights in blocking fire exits and pulling the alarm. A better choice could have been chosen. Michael, for instance.
I'm bad at math, but isn't that just one hour of drive time?
But it was spreading via autorun.inf on removable media too, and that was something MS didn't "fix" for WinXP until very recently (if one was only installing the auto-updates). Even then, protection requires non-automatic changes from a user/admin.
(Solar cars are still electric, it applies dammit!)
Obviously you've never seen a steam powered solar focusing array on wheels. Not everything is photovoltaics.
Science Fiction is just a subset of Fantasy.
Is it? I remember Arthur C Clarke saying that Sci Fi is something that could happen, while fantasy is something that could never happen.
It always baffled me how the two genres (at least in my mind they're quite different) were always lumped together in bookstores. I was always a sci fi fan but wasn't much into the dungeons, dragons, wizards and trolls thing.
Except, that given the right science, a lot of the dungeons, dragons, wizards and trolls things could happen.
Sci-fi is fantasy because it is fiction that is neither historical or feasibly possible (so much of sci-fi is magical in that there is no solid explanation for the fantastic).
A portal is just an opening or a doorway. A portal as a connection between to two points that are not contiguous in normal space is a concept exclusive to science fiction.
Portal = Door or Window. The science fiction pseudo-wormhole you describe is called a portal because it resembles a doorway or window. Etymology is fun!
He also said that money was a sign of poverty (The State of the Art).
Nope, it's a sign of TERRORISM!
Man detained, threatened and abused by TSA for flying with $4700 in cash
Here's a recording of Steve Bierfeldt, a US citizen who tried to board a domestic airplane while carrying $4700 in cash, and was detained by the TSA and subjected to abusive language and threats [...] The TSA agents threatened to turn him over to the DEA. He was returning from a Ron Paul event in St Louis, MO, and worked for the campaign. The cash on his person arose from sales of t-shirts and stickers at the event.
If he was sure there was going to be an earthquake, then he'd put out the warning, get arrested, and be vindicated when the earthquake hit as he predicted.
Depends on how earthquake-safe he thought the jail was.
... if a ridiculously large amount of money shows up unexpectedly in your bank account, rushing out to spend it wildly before the mistake can be caught is not actually the smartest of the available options. The authorities look disapprovingly on such activities.
Forget the authorities; the Russian mobsters who put it temporarily in your bank account look disapprovingly on such activities.
In the UK, and a few other countries, if you have cash in a bank account and don't touch it for 15 years, the government will seize it and give it away to charity.
That's so fucking ridiculous you made me curse. It's also probably not true.
Dirty IT job No. 7: Disconnect/reconnect specialist Wanted: Able-bodied individuals with affinity for adapters, plugs, prongs, and dongles; willing to crawl under desks and squeeze into tight spaces that have never seen daylight. Strong stomach required. Disconnect machines from one site, reconnect them at another. It sounded so simple Garth Callaghan couldn't quite believe someone would pay his company, 127tech, to do it. Now he employs three full-time employees and 30 contractors, who spend half their time unplugging and replugging machines for commercial movers in Richmond, Va.
Doesn't sound difficult, until you've got someone with a B.S. in Computer and Information Technology who reattaches the cables running down the front of the desk (why are there holes in the back?), thinking it's a job well done.
I really feel for the average citizen living there. They can't even fucking leave. They're practically living in the nightware world that Orwell described decades ago.
Why would they want to leave? They're told that the rest of the world is even worse.
Not being able to see the laser beam from NK
A beam that powerful wouldn't make the missile glow, or ionize the air, or glow on water vapor, etc?