I'm amused mostly by the fact that people assume police officers are read up on the law. They aren't, and are mostly concerned with the procedure of their particular agency of Sheriff's Office, which may or may not be in anyway in accordance with the law. This is why, usually when an incident like this comes up, it tends to turn up in a lot of other cases, because hey hey, someone told the troops that it was okay to do x, y, z. The fact that it isn't often comes as a shock to the beat cops on the ground, and leads to a subsequent new wave of moaning, forced re-training, and the inevitable looking over ones shoulder to make sure you're not violating the new rules.
Except that you're picking and choosing what you want to read in either the Quran or the Bible (both of whcih are full of ridiculous things).
And I'm tired of this sanctimonious bullshit that Western society, whatever the fuck that means, is based on Judeo-Christian values. The greatest bits of Western society that have come out in the past 300 or so years have come about due to a denial and rejection of faith, and an attempt to replace it with just about anything else. Your post is a perfect example of this kind of absurd attempt to have it both ways, to prop up the greatness of Western society, while it clearly rejects the supposed origins you claim it comes from. is asinine.
Except, it doesn't take being a Muslim to beat your wife. In fact, American men, whom demographically are not overwhelmingly Muslim, seem to be okay beating their wives to the tune of 22% of all women have been physically assaulted at some point in their lives.
This is not to suggest that Islamic countries, or the misogyny of Muslim men, should get a pass, but frankly I'm tired of this double standard passing around people in the West that we are a font of perfection. The Christopher Hitchen's of the world who hold up all that is liberal, open, and free when they're facing down the so called Islamic hordes, but then sponsor their own forms of back-water conservatism when they argue on their home turf. You can't have it both ways.
Except, oddly enough, that people do tune in. From looking at ratings charts, a large measure of the British public is tuning into BBC's channels to be entertained or informed at some point in the day or night. Does this mean that watching means automatic agreement, or a universal consensus of values? No, but it does mean that the Beeb, and hence the people who work for it, must be doing something right. You can't seriously believe that only fellow "elitists" are the ones watching the the BBC posts ratings of 9 or 10 million viewers? This kind of errant lobbing of "elitism" simply doesn't wash then.
This is not say that any institution doesn't have faults, and I have read some persuasive arguments about various problems with BBC News and its entertainment programming, many of which I agree with. But that does not mean, as you build up using straw men arguments, that the Beeb is some multi-headed, unwatched giant, unaccountable, and this is especially absurd, irrelevant to the British viewing public.
Lets start the dissection shall we?
"Left to their own devices in this warped, materialistic, money chasing society, given the power to do so, women will sit behind desks pushing papers around, suckle off the hard physical labour of men, giving men nothing that they value in return, and kill off their unborn children. How do we know? They've been doing it for decades right in front of your face. It's really a shame that it's true, but it is true, and if you can't look at it and talk about it, you're a coward."
First of all, I think you have serious paranoia issues. Second off, I'm sure the women who work in the rice/tomato/x produce fields would love to know that they are not contributing hard labor, nor the women in the sweatshops, or the women in the many other physically demanding jobs across the world (even in America!). I enjoy your attempt to cover up you're absurd suggestions with a finish of hard-nosed, steely eyed manly realism, but its not going to work. Factually incorrect statements are still factually incorrect even after adding machismo.
"
You can call me a misogynist all you like. If you think a world that expects young women to kill their unborn children and spend the most vital years of their lives stuck in universities being professed at by their elders, so they can get meaningless jobs and finally wake to what they've been missing when their plumbing is just about worn out, when they need a surgeon just to get pregnant, when they are too old and tired to play with their kids if they do actually have one, if you think that is friendly to women, or men, or children, or anyone at all, you're the one that needs to have their head examined."
It is misogynistic, and all the other stuff is a bunch of ridiculous straw arguments that you've assigned to my position. In fact, I have said none of the above that you ascribe to me, and I am not a big supporter of brain-dead yuppie corporate driven lifestyles. But I am also not absurd enough to suggest that going back to some ridiculous baby-factory model will all of a sudden bring joy, happiness, and mirth into the world. Frankly, its not my decision to make for anyone else whether to have children or not. And thats the way it should remain. If that scares the shit out of you, I suggest you go take a cold shower and realize people aren't going to do what you want them to do.
All your other nonsense about being ripped off, etc etc, seem to give you the sheen of being rebellious, but fails in the face of your wanting to turn women into harvesting fields for your own ends (ostensibly to provide enough steely eyed men and enough future breeders).
"The way it is now, the women fantasize about virile, politically incorrect black goons like 50c, who actually behave as though they had a set of balls, and the white men fantasize about Asian women, who actually behave as though they didn't have a set of balls."
Hilarious. Considering inter-racial marriage and dating are still fairly low (and only exist in countries where such demographic mixing occurs), I would have to say, again, that you're wrong, and two, that the vicious stereotypes you've just run off have made you seem even more ridiculously crackpot than you were before. It's as if you just line up the rhetorical tee balls for other people to hit and blow you out of the water with.
The question is, did they have to force it down peoples throats? And the answer is no. The UNFPA (the UN's population control agency) has found resounding success in offering voluntary contraceptives services in just about every country they've gone to. The thing holding them back is not the demand for it, or acceptance from people on the ground, but supply/infrastructure and the willingness of governments (whom often, from religious to the ridiculous, view female reproductive choices with horror).
I'm not even sure whats more bat-shit insane; the blatant misogyny or the absurd fear of a population crisis (of boom or bust I'm not exactly sure). And talk about entitlement? You're the one talking about women in the workforce as if you deserve their position. It reminds me of one of the more absurd criticisms lodged at de Beauvoire: "Every female doctor, lawyer, or scientist takes a job away from me" (Anonymous Parisian Male Graduate).
I am reminded of that poem about a urn sitting in the desert, surrounded by nothing, with an inscription from some long-forgotten king exhorting people to look upon all he has built, which of course has all turned to dust now. Entropy is the law of the universe, and attempting to outlive its final call is often useless and fraught with more trouble than its worth.
I feel sad to a certain extent for the people who pin their hopes on some sort of grand meaning, be it religious or secular, because it indicates so very badly the poverty of their own everyday lives.
Paraphrasing Simone De Beauvoir, why is it that when men speak of themselves they always put forth the brightest examples of their gender and associate themselves with them, and when it comes to women they always put forth the lowest common denominator and associate the whole gender with it?
"Every woman who becomes a doctor, a lawyer or other professional takes a job opportunity away from me"
(Anonymous Male Parisian Graduate)
I believe if it is a parody of the work itself you don't have to pay royalties but if you merely use the work as a basis for satirizing something else than I believe you have to. The idea being that you could write a song using, for instance, the chords of Yesterday as long as it made fun of the original lyrical concept (that of falling out of love) but , not if you used it as a basis for say a political satire. In theory its supposed to stop people from claiming "parody" when they take a work and use it as a jumping off point for something completely different.
Putting your fingers in your ears and saying "la la la la la la la..." doesn't mean that you've won the debate.
50 years on, rejecting Holocaust deniers is not sticking your fingers in your ears. It's common sense. Holocaust deniers have existed since the first discovery of camps, through the Nuremberg trials, onwards to today. They are repeating the same theories, bankrupt statistics, and goofy explanations they had 50 years ago, and repeating them over and over does not mean you get a fresh take everytime you say the same damn thing. Same thing with any other theory or position; if you are not dealing with rebuttals that are on the table, and continue to simply ignore criticisms for your own benefit, guess what, people are going to stop listening to you. And that's what happened to Holocaust deniers, and other crackpot theories ranging from eugenics to various miracle cures; criticisms weren't answered and the proponents merely kept blithely continuing as if no one has challenged them.
This is especially the case in global warming/climate change. While many so called "global warming dissidents" portray themselves as victims of some sort of scientific cabal, the reality is it is them who are unable to respond to the ever changing scientific literature. Many of the "Complaints" lodged against global warming are criticisms of literature sometimes a decade old, and subsequently revised and improved. The criticisms, however, have stayed the same because they can't deal with the changes and improvements in the proponents side. Bending the same old saw will get you ignored.
There are some topic that are just off limits for political reasons. Look at the debate over the Bell Curve or Holocaust revisionism. It doesn't matter that the proponents are ultimately wrong, what's important is that they aren't even allowed to publicly state their positions.
Horseshit. People who talk about holocaust denial and the bell curve have gotten and continue to get their 15 minutes in the spotlight for their views. The fact that no one gives a damn about them, cares, or generally believes them doesn't mean they aren't allowed to "publically state their positions". It just means they LOST the debate. People don't invite holocaust "revisionism experts" to college campus, and people don't stock their books, because for the most part, as a society we've decided that this is a dumb idea.
Climatology is a field in which you will get less money if you say that everything's ok. No one gives a damn if the world is fine. People donate huge sums of money to save the world.
Are you serious? Do I even have to mention the great number of astroturf projects various oil companies have put forth? The amount of money Exxon Mobil has spent in PR and "research" going against global warming makes most government grants look like pocket change. This latest ridiculous idea that people who say the sky is falling get more money is laughable at best, dangerous at worst, because it paints anyone who is trying to change anything as opportunistic or alarmist, whereas the people who are defending the status quo are sensible and reasonable, ignoring of course,that there are also people with big money bags wanting to support the status quo.
Are you serious? Do you even know the numbers and the details of the agreement between SAG and the studios? Because if you did you wouldn't be accusing the unions of "demanding more money" when its not the union, but INDIVIDUAL ACTORS, who make demands above and beyond the SAG minimum wage. The SAG contracts merely stipulate a minimum amount of pay and a minimum precentage of royalty payments depending on the role played, screen time, and number of days worked. While it is true that the minimum rate for an actor who plays a leading part in a 30 minute TV show (and this doesn't even mean a big time show on a major network) is roughly about 2300 bucks a day plus a pretty good chunk of royalties for the show if it goes into syndication, the chances of you getting that part as a working actor is pretty damn slim. More than likely most of your career will consist of stage and commercial work, with MAYBE the occasional day job on a TV show or movie, which are far smaller in pay than an actual main part. Most actors may not be starving day laborers but they also aren't all loaded to the gills with cash.
Also, SAG HAS worked with independent film producers, crafting special agreements to help out lower budget films while retaining the protection actors deserve even when they are not Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts. But at the end of the day actors can demand what they want and if you don't want to pay them that, well, you can find someone else.
"When that happens, it won't just take us, it'll take Marilyn Monroe, and Lao-tsu, Einstein, Maruputo, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes - all of this. All of this was for nothing, unless we go to the stars."
No it's not. Something isn't for nothing just because it doesn't last forever and live on eternally. I have to wonder about people who subscribe to such a perspective and how much they must fear death and the void that comes with it. Does it scare you (universal you) so much that you have to cling to the possibility of being written down in history books and the gaining of fame? People fear death, myself included, but it does not make me want to strive to "leave a mark" on an arbitrary and capricious record that people themselves have written to pat themselves on the back.
I've never quite understood the obsession with "continuing" the human race. While I am certainly concerned with the long-term impacts of what humans do,thus a concern for environmental impacts, population control, and the conditions under which my fellow people exist under, I one could care less if humanity survived for a million more years or not. I'm not going to be there, and I have little concern about whether or not our "civilization" still exists. It's this ridiculous sentimental attachment to a non-existant overarching concept, in whatever forms it takes (racial prejudice, nationalism, religious fervor) that leads to the stupid wars and completely preventable human created disasters. As far the ones outside of our control, well, sitting around worrying about a meteorite striking seems like a lot of paranoia.
The question I want to know is will these cats also be lacking URD, be prone to UTI's, herpes, etc. I presume they have an experienced cat breeder or two on their staff on top of the scientists to inform them of all the things you have to do RIGHT so that the cat doesn't come out WRONG. All the allerg-freeness in the world won't matter if the cats aren't well socialized and kept in a fairly disease free environment (which is surprisingly harder than one might think... even experienced breeders occasionally get something into their cattery despite all the precautions they take).
Personally I don't see this being a big seller. As others have pointed out, other cat breeds have similar qualities and those breeds are already well represented by cat breeders who are established. When someone purchases a 4000 dollar cat they usually do it through word of mouth about the breeder, their genetics and pedigree as certified, and their standing in the local Cat Fanciers Association. It's not a world easily cracked into by some random group of people. Then again they might have mitigated all this already by bringing a well known cat breeder to be their sales person etc.
Actually you can, given the same components and a copy of Windows. A Mac,however, as a platform (which is hardware and software combined) cannot be made without breaking a EULA or Trusted Computing thing somewhere. Note I'm not saying I APPROVE of this (I think Apple's whole Trusted Computing-esque business is terrible, and they only get away with it because its Apple) but it still stands that it is not LEGALLY possible to construct a Mac.
Macs are now using bog-standard Intel CPUs, graphics subsystems, and can even run Windows.
So? That's exactly what I said. They may use component parts that other OEM's use but the combination thereof is still proprietary, even if its mostly by legal fiat and not technical exclusivity. Therefore Mac's aren't an "open standard". No one can just put a bunch of parts together and get a functioning Macintosh, even on non-Apple PPC hardware (barring ofcourse the clones officially made) without breaking the EULA of Mac OS.
Sony, in no way, is providing an "open standard" that other manufacturers can leverage. Hmmm, sounds like that would be proprietary by definition. The PC platform has a "standard" that everyone has to walk lockstep on, courtesy of the Microsoft DirectX APIs. Older equipment can't support the new APIs and is not supported. Of course, with Microsoft as the sole provider of the APIs, well... that's a standard only in the sense that Microsoft is a 900 lbs. gorilla making the standard.
I didn't say they were, and neither was the parent post. What Sony is selling is of course proprietary. Direct X, as a closed source set of API's, is of course a prorietary standard, but its not the only one for the PC (OpenGL and SDL do exist, albeit less widely used).
That said, it'd be nice from a developer's standpoint, but keep this in mind -- game developers are extremely resilient and seem to handle the differentiation on the PC platform well. And when they don't, the gaming community seems to spend the $$$ to upgrade and build new systems to run the games.
Actually, PC game developers are not "extremely resilient", as indicated by the increase number of ports to console platforms, side by side development, and the increasingly thin margins for all but the million selling computer games. The fact that increasingly more and more games are ported or developed simultaneously for multiple platforms indicate that the PC gaming industry is not big enough to rake in the dollars necessary to recoup costs alone for increasingly larger development budgets.
No it's not. A Mac is a proprietary piece of hardware connected to a proprietary OS (albeit built with standardized and component parts in both) that is made exclusively by Apple (barring the clone years). What the parent is suggesting is an open standard like the MSX, which was a Japanese computer standard that various hardware manufacturers could produce (and software developers could develop for). An American example would be the Multimedia PC standard, which with varing degrees of success, was attempted in the early 90's. Various console manufacturers have also tried to do quasi-similar schemes like this, notably the 3D0, which was produced by Panasonic, Sanyo, Goldstar, and Creative in seperate models, as well as the Sega Saturn, which was also produced by Hitachi and JVC in models ranging from plain knockoffs to ones with preinstalled VCD cards or customized for GPS use.
What Apple fanatics? Just about every single person on here going on about how doesn't fit the "brand image" of Apple, people who in the past talk about why offering cheaper Mac's risks brand dilution (and than held up the Mac mini when it came out as a "entry" computer), and the schizophrenia over whether an increase in Mac OS X users would somehow let the riff raff in. Some of the responses on here have been deliciously absurd.
I'm sure that open source is an ideal to you, but to most people it is not. It is software, and it is a business model to me and many others. It isn't inherently political to use it, and it's annoying when people try to drag the rest of us into their political battles.
No one's dragging you into anything. I'm tired of everytime someone states their support for the ideals of OSS and the general concept of copyleft, DRM-less, etc etc styled licensing, that everyone starts getting their panties in a bunch that someone else is dragging them into some sort of political battle. No one's holding a gun to your head and making you donate to the FSF or the Xiph Foundation.
What the parent says is true, however. The ideals are political things even if the software, in and of itself, isn't, or its potential uses (Linux can be used to host pirate movie servers just as easily as a Naval computer for missle targetting) are all over the map. The concepts Debian as a distro expounds upon are distinctly in favor of those said political ideas, and most people who choose Debian as a distro also share it.
Personally, as much as I use and love some open source software, I think that it is a good thing that developers have the freedom to release their software under whatever licensing they want, including a closed source one. I don't even think it would be a good thing if all software was open source. I think that closed source development is an important business model for many people.
The parent is not suggesting that at all, and you're setting up a straw man argument, not unlike whats his name who sued the FSF, that OSS is somehow out to artificially rig the game by forcing all software to be free/open source/or under some sort of GNU public license.
Well I take back the statements that were incorrect, but the other points still stand. Steve Jobs did not invent or even look over the company for a good 10 years of its lifespan, most of which featured technologies that the grandparent associates with him, much to the detriment to the real designers, programmers, and individuals behind those ideas. Even today, most of the great "Job's ideas" are done by people underneath him.
The term "gamer" has gained a new meaning that must make Windows game developers wet themselves; it apparently now means a person who has access to every new game available on Windows, and obtains it. Even if you log 15 hours a day at Nethack or even World of Warcraft, you are no gamer. Not only that, but you are no gamer if you don't have the absolute best hardware available this year, or even this season. Doesn't matter if you thought the x800 xt you bought for your G5 was pretty spiffy, you're just kidding yourself; you're no gamer.
I too loathe the new "definition" of "gamer". I own many pieces of esoteric computer and gaming hardware, some of it bought at rather high prices, mostly because I wanted to play certain games in their truest form with the true hardware (joysticks etc) involved. I also own a considerable number of imported games, ancient hard to find DOS games, etc etc. But yet because I haven't played Halo 2 at some Xbox party I am not considered a "gamer". Most everyone I've met who has some tricked out "gaming rig" has played maybe 20 or 30 games at BEST, and all usually from the same genre (FPS). While I don't expect EA or large publishers to cater to my esoteric tastes, I'm tired of people putting this un-earned title on themselves as if their hardcore cause they have see through cases and water cooling. And ow I'm going to go and play some adventures games using Scumm VM (support your local homebrew apps!).
I can't imagine that Apple wouldn't at least consider the market if one of their staff had a concept for a games system.
I don't think they would, because the capital necessary would be huge (people forget Microsoft spent 200 million alone on the intial marketing launch of the Xbox)., the market is already saturated with great games and good systems, and the developer base is already torn enough as it is between the PC, Xbox, Wii, PS3, and handheld consoles. Without a significant outlay for hardware development, fabrication, game SDK development, etc, the idea that Apple would enter the console gaming market is ludicrous.
Re:Apple has always been about Jobs
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It's No Game At Apple
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
Because Steve Jobs likes to own the whole system, Apple users are locked into their hardware.
Because Steve Jobs needed his company NeXT bailed out, Mac OS X was adopted and the company bought out.
Also, I'm tired of people crediting Steve Jobs for everything Apple has ever done. Guess what? Steve was gone by the time QuickDraw and QuickTime were developed and he was ass-halfway out the door by the time AppleTalk was put in in 1984. OpenTransport was developed he came back on board, as was the Apple Quadra line. ADB was developed by Wonziak, not Jobs.
If you're going be a Mac fanboy atleast get your history right.
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I'm amused mostly by the fact that people assume police officers are read up on the law. They aren't, and are mostly concerned with the procedure of their particular agency of Sheriff's Office, which may or may not be in anyway in accordance with the law. This is why, usually when an incident like this comes up, it tends to turn up in a lot of other cases, because hey hey, someone told the troops that it was okay to do x, y, z. The fact that it isn't often comes as a shock to the beat cops on the ground, and leads to a subsequent new wave of moaning, forced re-training, and the inevitable looking over ones shoulder to make sure you're not violating the new rules.
Except that you're picking and choosing what you want to read in either the Quran or the Bible (both of whcih are full of ridiculous things).
And I'm tired of this sanctimonious bullshit that Western society, whatever the fuck that means, is based on Judeo-Christian values. The greatest bits of Western society that have come out in the past 300 or so years have come about due to a denial and rejection of faith, and an attempt to replace it with just about anything else. Your post is a perfect example of this kind of absurd attempt to have it both ways, to prop up the greatness of Western society, while it clearly rejects the supposed origins you claim it comes from. is asinine.
Except, it doesn't take being a Muslim to beat your wife. In fact, American men, whom demographically are not overwhelmingly Muslim, seem to be okay beating their wives to the tune of 22% of all women have been physically assaulted at some point in their lives.
This is not to suggest that Islamic countries, or the misogyny of Muslim men, should get a pass, but frankly I'm tired of this double standard passing around people in the West that we are a font of perfection. The Christopher Hitchen's of the world who hold up all that is liberal, open, and free when they're facing down the so called Islamic hordes, but then sponsor their own forms of back-water conservatism when they argue on their home turf. You can't have it both ways.
Except, oddly enough, that people do tune in. From looking at ratings charts, a large measure of the British public is tuning into BBC's channels to be entertained or informed at some point in the day or night. Does this mean that watching means automatic agreement, or a universal consensus of values? No, but it does mean that the Beeb, and hence the people who work for it, must be doing something right. You can't seriously believe that only fellow "elitists" are the ones watching the the BBC posts ratings of 9 or 10 million viewers? This kind of errant lobbing of "elitism" simply doesn't wash then.
This is not say that any institution doesn't have faults, and I have read some persuasive arguments about various problems with BBC News and its entertainment programming, many of which I agree with. But that does not mean, as you build up using straw men arguments, that the Beeb is some multi-headed, unwatched giant, unaccountable, and this is especially absurd, irrelevant to the British viewing public.
Lets start the dissection shall we? "Left to their own devices in this warped, materialistic, money chasing society, given the power to do so, women will sit behind desks pushing papers around, suckle off the hard physical labour of men, giving men nothing that they value in return, and kill off their unborn children. How do we know? They've been doing it for decades right in front of your face. It's really a shame that it's true, but it is true, and if you can't look at it and talk about it, you're a coward." First of all, I think you have serious paranoia issues. Second off, I'm sure the women who work in the rice/tomato/x produce fields would love to know that they are not contributing hard labor, nor the women in the sweatshops, or the women in the many other physically demanding jobs across the world (even in America!). I enjoy your attempt to cover up you're absurd suggestions with a finish of hard-nosed, steely eyed manly realism, but its not going to work. Factually incorrect statements are still factually incorrect even after adding machismo. " You can call me a misogynist all you like. If you think a world that expects young women to kill their unborn children and spend the most vital years of their lives stuck in universities being professed at by their elders, so they can get meaningless jobs and finally wake to what they've been missing when their plumbing is just about worn out, when they need a surgeon just to get pregnant, when they are too old and tired to play with their kids if they do actually have one, if you think that is friendly to women, or men, or children, or anyone at all, you're the one that needs to have their head examined." It is misogynistic, and all the other stuff is a bunch of ridiculous straw arguments that you've assigned to my position. In fact, I have said none of the above that you ascribe to me, and I am not a big supporter of brain-dead yuppie corporate driven lifestyles. But I am also not absurd enough to suggest that going back to some ridiculous baby-factory model will all of a sudden bring joy, happiness, and mirth into the world. Frankly, its not my decision to make for anyone else whether to have children or not. And thats the way it should remain. If that scares the shit out of you, I suggest you go take a cold shower and realize people aren't going to do what you want them to do. All your other nonsense about being ripped off, etc etc, seem to give you the sheen of being rebellious, but fails in the face of your wanting to turn women into harvesting fields for your own ends (ostensibly to provide enough steely eyed men and enough future breeders). "The way it is now, the women fantasize about virile, politically incorrect black goons like 50c, who actually behave as though they had a set of balls, and the white men fantasize about Asian women, who actually behave as though they didn't have a set of balls." Hilarious. Considering inter-racial marriage and dating are still fairly low (and only exist in countries where such demographic mixing occurs), I would have to say, again, that you're wrong, and two, that the vicious stereotypes you've just run off have made you seem even more ridiculously crackpot than you were before. It's as if you just line up the rhetorical tee balls for other people to hit and blow you out of the water with.
The question is, did they have to force it down peoples throats? And the answer is no. The UNFPA (the UN's population control agency) has found resounding success in offering voluntary contraceptives services in just about every country they've gone to. The thing holding them back is not the demand for it, or acceptance from people on the ground, but supply/infrastructure and the willingness of governments (whom often, from religious to the ridiculous, view female reproductive choices with horror).
I'm not even sure whats more bat-shit insane; the blatant misogyny or the absurd fear of a population crisis (of boom or bust I'm not exactly sure). And talk about entitlement? You're the one talking about women in the workforce as if you deserve their position. It reminds me of one of the more absurd criticisms lodged at de Beauvoire: "Every female doctor, lawyer, or scientist takes a job away from me" (Anonymous Parisian Male Graduate).
I am reminded of that poem about a urn sitting in the desert, surrounded by nothing, with an inscription from some long-forgotten king exhorting people to look upon all he has built, which of course has all turned to dust now. Entropy is the law of the universe, and attempting to outlive its final call is often useless and fraught with more trouble than its worth. I feel sad to a certain extent for the people who pin their hopes on some sort of grand meaning, be it religious or secular, because it indicates so very badly the poverty of their own everyday lives.
Paraphrasing Simone De Beauvoir, why is it that when men speak of themselves they always put forth the brightest examples of their gender and associate themselves with them, and when it comes to women they always put forth the lowest common denominator and associate the whole gender with it? "Every woman who becomes a doctor, a lawyer or other professional takes a job opportunity away from me" (Anonymous Male Parisian Graduate)
I believe if it is a parody of the work itself you don't have to pay royalties but if you merely use the work as a basis for satirizing something else than I believe you have to. The idea being that you could write a song using, for instance, the chords of Yesterday as long as it made fun of the original lyrical concept (that of falling out of love) but , not if you used it as a basis for say a political satire. In theory its supposed to stop people from claiming "parody" when they take a work and use it as a jumping off point for something completely different.
This is especially the case in global warming/climate change. While many so called "global warming dissidents" portray themselves as victims of some sort of scientific cabal, the reality is it is them who are unable to respond to the ever changing scientific literature. Many of the "Complaints" lodged against global warming are criticisms of literature sometimes a decade old, and subsequently revised and improved. The criticisms, however, have stayed the same because they can't deal with the changes and improvements in the proponents side. Bending the same old saw will get you ignored.
Also, SAG HAS worked with independent film producers, crafting special agreements to help out lower budget films while retaining the protection actors deserve even when they are not Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts. But at the end of the day actors can demand what they want and if you don't want to pay them that, well, you can find someone else.
I've never quite understood the obsession with "continuing" the human race. While I am certainly concerned with the long-term impacts of what humans do,thus a concern for environmental impacts, population control, and the conditions under which my fellow people exist under, I one could care less if humanity survived for a million more years or not. I'm not going to be there, and I have little concern about whether or not our "civilization" still exists. It's this ridiculous sentimental attachment to a non-existant overarching concept, in whatever forms it takes (racial prejudice, nationalism, religious fervor) that leads to the stupid wars and completely preventable human created disasters. As far the ones outside of our control, well, sitting around worrying about a meteorite striking seems like a lot of paranoia.
Personally I don't see this being a big seller. As others have pointed out, other cat breeds have similar qualities and those breeds are already well represented by cat breeders who are established. When someone purchases a 4000 dollar cat they usually do it through word of mouth about the breeder, their genetics and pedigree as certified, and their standing in the local Cat Fanciers Association. It's not a world easily cracked into by some random group of people. Then again they might have mitigated all this already by bringing a well known cat breeder to be their sales person etc.
Actually you can, given the same components and a copy of Windows. A Mac,however, as a platform (which is hardware and software combined) cannot be made without breaking a EULA or Trusted Computing thing somewhere. Note I'm not saying I APPROVE of this (I think Apple's whole Trusted Computing-esque business is terrible, and they only get away with it because its Apple) but it still stands that it is not LEGALLY possible to construct a Mac.
No it's not. A Mac is a proprietary piece of hardware connected to a proprietary OS (albeit built with standardized and component parts in both) that is made exclusively by Apple (barring the clone years). What the parent is suggesting is an open standard like the MSX, which was a Japanese computer standard that various hardware manufacturers could produce (and software developers could develop for). An American example would be the Multimedia PC standard, which with varing degrees of success, was attempted in the early 90's. Various console manufacturers have also tried to do quasi-similar schemes like this, notably the 3D0, which was produced by Panasonic, Sanyo, Goldstar, and Creative in seperate models, as well as the Sega Saturn, which was also produced by Hitachi and JVC in models ranging from plain knockoffs to ones with preinstalled VCD cards or customized for GPS use.
What Apple fanatics? Just about every single person on here going on about how doesn't fit the "brand image" of Apple, people who in the past talk about why offering cheaper Mac's risks brand dilution (and than held up the Mac mini when it came out as a "entry" computer), and the schizophrenia over whether an increase in Mac OS X users would somehow let the riff raff in. Some of the responses on here have been deliciously absurd.
What the parent says is true, however. The ideals are political things even if the software, in and of itself, isn't, or its potential uses (Linux can be used to host pirate movie servers just as easily as a Naval computer for missle targetting) are all over the map. The concepts Debian as a distro expounds upon are distinctly in favor of those said political ideas, and most people who choose Debian as a distro also share it. The parent is not suggesting that at all, and you're setting up a straw man argument, not unlike whats his name who sued the FSF, that OSS is somehow out to artificially rig the game by forcing all software to be free/open source/or under some sort of GNU public license.
Well I take back the statements that were incorrect, but the other points still stand. Steve Jobs did not invent or even look over the company for a good 10 years of its lifespan, most of which featured technologies that the grandparent associates with him, much to the detriment to the real designers, programmers, and individuals behind those ideas. Even today, most of the great "Job's ideas" are done by people underneath him.
Because Steve Jobs likes to own the whole system, Apple users are locked into their hardware. Because Steve Jobs needed his company NeXT bailed out, Mac OS X was adopted and the company bought out. Also, I'm tired of people crediting Steve Jobs for everything Apple has ever done. Guess what? Steve was gone by the time QuickDraw and QuickTime were developed and he was ass-halfway out the door by the time AppleTalk was put in in 1984. OpenTransport was developed he came back on board, as was the Apple Quadra line. ADB was developed by Wonziak, not Jobs. If you're going be a Mac fanboy atleast get your history right.