Why don't you go to school with them that day and ask the RIAA shills...
The article said the curriculum would be presented by Junior Achievement volunteer teachers. Those folks are average everyday people who take time off from work, sometimes for multiple days, to come into class rooms to teach kids about business. The basic idea is that disadvantaged kids need to be exposed to how businesses work so that they have a better chance of improving their lives by joining the business world later in life. The J.A. curriculum has a very heavy emphasis on entreprenurism and running your own business.
The volunteer teachers do not create their own teaching plans, the curriculum is prepared and given to the volunteer teachers by Junior Achievement. This hardly makes the volunteers "RIAA shills".
Since Junior Achievement exists to educate kids about business, it doesn't surprise me at all that the RIAA is donating curriculum which pushes their anti-copying point of view.
The proper response to this is to have a company which uses copying (p2p or otherwise) as advertising to work with J.A. and modify these teaching plans to balance their business message ("yes Virginia, you can make even more money if everyone can freely download your song/book/movie"). That is the best way to keep the RIAA from dominating this particular conversation and make sure these kids aren't getting the erroneous "filesharing always bad" message.
Lets see, at ~$150 saved per PC without Windows, times about 2 Billion PC's...
Oh come on now. With those kind of numbers you know Balmer would cut their license fee by AT LEAST 5%. Sheesh!
Trading characters
on
Ask Neil Gaiman
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Neil,
You have worked with a number artists and authors over the years. Do you have any favorites? Anyone you haven't worked with that you would like to collaborate with on a story?
Bonus questions: If you could pick up someone elses character and do a story, who's would it be? What kind of story would you do?
Your observation about Gen. Yeager is an interesting contrast to what I know about Col. Stapp. Every person I've met who knew Col. Stapp was uniformly impressed with him, including me.
I got to meet Col. Stapp on a couple of occasions, including one meeting where he gave a rather lengthy project presentation (he ran a small foundation after he retired). He seemed like a great guy. He was a little hard of hearing (and who wouldn't be after what he had been through) and he had a tendancy to draw out his statements as older folks tend to do, but a great old guy none the less. I'm glad I had the chance to meet him.
It was a little more complicated than you suggested, but just as satisfying:
17:1 And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of Microsoft that sitteth upon many waters:
17:5 And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, MICROSOFT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
17:15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where Microsoft sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.
17:16 And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate Microsoft, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
17:17 For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto Microsoft, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.
17:18 And the woman which thou sawest is Windows, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.
18:2 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Microsoft is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful user.
18:3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her applications, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with Windows, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of Office for Windows.
18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of Windows, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her Viruses.
18:5 For Window's sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.
18:6 Reward Windows even as she rewarded you, and double unto Windows double according to her works: in the cup which Windows hath filled fill to her double.
18:7 How much Windows hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart A FATAL ERROR HAS OCCURED AT 002B:000069F8, PRESS ANY KEY TO REBOOT.
18:8 Therefore shall her Viruses come in one day, death, and mourning, and BSODs; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth Windows.
18:9 And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with Windows, shall bewail her, and lament for Office, when they shall see the smoke of Windows burning,
18:10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas Redmond, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.
18:11 And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over Microsoft; for no man buyeth their licenses any more:
18:15 The merchants of these things, which were made rich by Windows, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing
18:16 And saying, Alas, alas Redmond, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and Themes!
18:18 And cried when they saw the smoke of Microsoft burning, saying, What city is like unto Redmond!
18:19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas Redmond, wherein were made rich all that had Stock Options by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.
18:20 Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on Windows.
18:21 And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great Click-through License, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Redmond be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
18:22 And the voice of coders, and testers, and of tech support, and salesmen, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no software engineer, of whatsoever language he code, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of programming shall be heard no more at all in thee;
18:24 And in Windows was found the blood of entrepreneurs,
Err...fusion doesn't make ionizing radiation that would make a GM tube click. It makes neutrons, which are tough to detect. That's the whole reason it gets called "Safe" nuclear power.
Knowing my old boss, I wouldn't have put it past him to have 'seeded' the macine with an old style radium-dial watch or somesuch just to get the effect he wanted for the joke. I do know he built the machine, because he described it to me in detail and I confirmed it with a couple of his former co-workers.
I don't doubt it is real. The fact that his machine only can generate 4 neutrons/minute above background makes it kind of wimpy fusor.
I had a boss once who built a Farnesworth-style fusor from scrounged parts sometime back in the late 60's or early 70's. He told me he kept it behind his desk for years.
At the time he ran the Nuclear Effects - Solar Thermal Test Facility at White Sands Missile Range (basically a BIG concentrating mirror for simulating the intense heat of a nuclear blast and its effect on materials). Frequently they would get VIP visitors dropping in from the Pentagon, major universities, etc. He would always take the visitors on a walking tour of the facility. He would flip the machine on ahead of time and turn on a geiger counter he kept next to his desk. At the end of the tour he would take the visitors to his office. Usually the visitors would notice the clicking sound after a few minutes of chit-chat and ask "what's making that sound?" He would then dead-pan "oh that's nothing, that's just the radiation from my fusion reactor" and wave the geiger counter back and forth across the machine, generating lots of above background clicking.
The fusor was completely safe and the neutron radiation from it was well within safe limits, but frequently the visitors would require a bit of calming down after his little joke.
I think at least one general thought he had created a fusion power source and wanted to classify the whole deal and immediately fund development. Don't imagine he was too happy when he found out it used alot of energy and produced only a few neutrons.
1) What's with all the paper in that petition picture?
It was for populist 'spin'. In this case, the spin is 'we represent the people's interests, not some unaccountable corporate-loving bureaucrats' [the irony of this coming from Trent Lott (R-Disney) should be lost on no one at/.]. I have seen pictures like this one several times come out of Washington from Congress, the White House, AND federal agencies numerous times in the last 30 years. Think of it as standard component of U.S. political "vocabulary".
Besides, its not THAT much paper. Heck I've worked in offices where 5 people would generate that much or more documents in a day (hint: phased-array radar & telemetry data dumps).
2)...I actually see mention about the "every 10 years Texas redistricting", but no mention about how it actually hurts democracy more when it favors Democrats more than Republicans this time around...
Redistricting every 10 years doesn't hurt democracy. In fact, fair representation depends on fair districting. One of the reasons the U.S. Constitution mandates a national census every 10 years is to provide accurate data for use in congressional districting. Unfortunately, political parties have used gerrymandering to gain a vote advantage over their opponent parties since the beginning of the U.S. (and probably before).
I don't know what you read on moveon.org, but the current issue of Democratic state legislators from Texas fleeing to other states to prevent redistricting is an interesting political situation. The Texas legislature did its constitutional duty and redistricted the state in its 2001 session. However Republican leaders at the national level, particularly House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) wanted to again redistrict the state in order to apportion more U.S. House of Representatives seats to the Republicans. This would provide a clearer Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and provide a buffer against anticipated 2004 electoral 'backlash' against the Republicans. It would also provide a clearer Republican legislative majority in the House(hard to push your agenda when you have to rely on 'enemy' swing votes).
At Delay's and Gov. Rick Perry's prompting, the Republican leadership in the Texas State Legislature in its 2003 session changed the administrative rules governing redistricting. This allowed them attempt to vote to redistrict the state again, but this time according to Republican majority guidelines and oversight. It was thwarted when several Democratic legislators bolted across the border to Ardmore, Oklahoma to prevent a legislative quorum and "run out the clock" on the legislative session. Gov. Perry sent several Texas State Troopers across the border (illegally) to retrieve the legislators. They failed and the legislative session ended. This effectively blocked the redistricting attempt.
Undaunted, the Republicans tried again. Gov. Rick Perry called a special legislative session specifically for redistricting. A different group of Democratic legislators took off, this time to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It worked until one of the Democrats got tired of the mess and came back to Texas. The remaining Democratic legislators have since returned to Texas, and are currently going through a court case concerning their failure to report for legislative duty.
They did block the second redistricting attempt this time, but Gov. Perry has vowed he will keep calling Special Sessions until they successfully get to redistrict the state, no matter the cost.
I'm an Independant because I don't like anyone's party politics, particularly the Democrats and Republicans. However after the 2000 Presidential fiasco and the obvious autocratic stunts like the recent Texas redistricting attempts, I REALLY dislike the Republicans.
This "keep counting the votes/changing the rules until we get the result we wa
CVT is standard on the Prius. I test drove one a couple of years ago. I liked the handling and the feel of the CVT. I even liked the 'grabby' brakes (an important consideration for someone who had two vehicles hit and totalled by idiots in 18 months).
I would have bought it on the spot, but there was a 6 month waiting list at the time and I needed a vehicle quickly.
And isn't it interesting that the bulk of their profits come from the top 10 selling albums and that sales of those albums has declined from 60 million units in 2000 to 34 million units last year. That is a 43% drop in their main profit line in 2 years.
It really doesn't matter whether this loss of sales is due to file sharing, or crappy music, or the close approach of Mars. The only way those numbers will go up is:
a) they diversify their profit line (>>>10 albums/year)
b) they quit alienating their biggest customers (teens/young adults) by over-charging them and threatening them.
If they want to guarantee that the loss trend continues, then they will do what they are doing now: producing plastic pop music that has gotten so bad that even the kids have stopped listening and continue to harass their customers by calling them thieves and suing them.
I haven't known that many people with perfect pitch, but the ones I have known have generally had good relative pitch. The one I gave as an example had decent relative pitch, but his intonation was a bit too mechanical and precise for my tastes.
He came by his perfect pitch via early exposure to piano. His intonation was frequently much like his piano playing: technically very precise and beautiful, but lacking deeper emotion.
The others I've known with perfect pitch (about 3-4), ranged from average to awesome in intonation. Of course there was a 'filtering' process going on here. I met these folks in very high end choral groups, so people with poor intonation never made it in.
And I say to them Welcome to the Age of Disruptive Personal Technologies - Time to change your business model.
But Robert Heinlein said it better in LIFE-LINE:
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit.
And unfortunately, I think of this quote all to often these days when I read the news.
I just went to the sco.com and dropped down into their ftp site and found something interesting. Apparently they posted the file Legal_Notice at 3:29pm on 8/8/03 (today) which is odd since its only 11:40am in Utah now(server is in a different time zone?).
Regardless, they are apparently trying to plug the still-distributing-GPLed code issue by posting this legally dubious notice up front:
NOTICE: SCO has suspended new sales and distribution of SCO Linux until
the intellectual property issues surrounding Linux are resolved. SCO will,
however, continue to support existing SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux
customers consistent with existing contractual obligations. SCO offers at
no extra charge to its existing Linux customers a SCO UNIX IP license for
their use of prior SCO or Caldera distributions of Linux in binary
format. The license also covers binary use of support updates distributed
to them by SCO. This SCO license balances SCO's need to enforce its
intellectual property rights against the practical needs of existing
customers in the marketplace.
The Linux rpms available on SCO's ftp site are offered for download to
existing customers of SCO Linux, Caldera OpenLinux or SCO UnixWare with
LKP, in order to honor SCO's support obligations to such customers.
I don't think you can invalidate a licence bound with the source material by posting a "gee we are violating this licence because we have to support our customers" notice up front.
I haven't ever seen such a bunch of blatantly amoral weasels in my life. I hope IBM, Red Hat, and any other big guns that jump in to rip these guys apart. With any luck the SEC and the US Attorney General will bring these guys up on criminal charges as well.
Star Wars Galaxies has gone some way to remedy this with experience granted for other skill use but in doing this they've neglected the section of their playerbase who want to fight hordes of creatures.
They haven't gotten it right for the non-combat professions either. In fact, the leveling treadmill is far worse for the advanced artisan professions (Architect, Chef, Droid Engineer, Tailor, etc) than for the combat professions. Basically to level in these professions, your game play consists of sitting down next to a crafting station for seemingly endless hours making the same things over and over and over.
What makes it more frustrating is that it is almost impossible to make credits selling your items at that skill level. So not only do you have to do mindless crafting for untold hours, but now you get to run around doing unnecessarily lengthy 'delivery' missions to make the money needed to feed your resource harvesters. You don't dare do the marginally more interesting 'combat' missions, because as a wimpy artisan-type you will be quickly killed.
What SWG needs is consignment missions which award both XP and credits for making and delivering items of a certain quality. This would aleviate some of the boredom of artisan leveling in SWG.
Unfortunately, the leveling treadmill is what is going to limit the popularity of all these games. Even the 'skinner box' repetition-reward system can only go so far to keep people engaged. I haven't played a single MMORPG yet where the leveling treadmill didn't bore me into quiting after a couple of months. The fundamental playability problem for any MMORPG is: the begining is fun because you are learning and gaining skills rapidly, but it gets more tedious the more you try to advance to higher levels.
The core of the leveling treadmill problem is that in these games is: change = fun. The challenge is to create an environment where EVERY player feels like an active, important participant of the game world no matter what their level or skill. As long as the designers create static worlds and rely on character advancement through formulaic experience gains, every MMORPG will have the fun-killing leveling treadmill problem.
Well, I thought it was well-settled that objects do not have determined positions or speeds, because quantum mechanics say that position and momentum are conjugate variables...
Same here. IANAP, but I always understood the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to be "you can either know the position pretty well, or the movement pretty well, but not both at the same time". Maybe its just my skewed perspective, but to me talking about momentum has always meant talking about time. Momentum is mass-motion. Motion is distance-time. So momentum is mass-distance-time. If you know the position then you don't know the mass-time very well. Assuming we are talking about a 'known' lump of stuff, then the mass is (relatively) constant, so its the time that goes fuzzy. (of course the time could be constant and the mass goes fuzzy, but that's for another discussion). This is the way I understood the whole Uncertainty mess from my earliest pop-sci readings.
Einstein basically said that space and time are linked. If that is true then Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle MUST mean that time is not discrete.
So to me, it just looks like this guy is pointing out something that was implicit in the theories already, but that the physicists had failed to really notice yet.
Its a classic case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.
"And in other news today, the United States today invaded the rogue state of New Mexico. President Bush, in a press conference this morning stated that New Mexico's vigorous pusuit of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) could no longer be tolerated.
'We have been in contact with the U.N. for months about their abuses and terror mongering. Every day their researchers at Sandia and Los Alamos create deadly nooculer and biological weapons. Heck, they have even tested a nooculer weapon. We could stand for it no longer.'
After an 8 hour 'shock and awe' air campaign over population centers of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, the Allied forces swept into New Mexcio from their staging area in Amarillo, Texas. They quickly disabled several major airbases, including Kirkland Air Force Base and the sinister site of New Mexico's first nuclear weapons test: White Sands Missile Range.
Earlier in the day as Operation 'Enduring Sunshine' began, New Mexico's rogue leader 'Governor' Bill Richardson and accused U.S. spy 'Senator' Pete Dominici held a joint press conference in Santa Fe.
'What the heck does Bush think he's doing? We are a part of the United States, for crying out loud. How many times do we have to tell these yahoos, we're Americans. STOP SHOOTING.' Governor Bill Richardson is quoted as saying.
Later in that same press conference, Senator Dominici, reputidly a New Mexico spy operating at the highest levels of U.S. government, broke down and kept muttering over and over 'one of our fifty is missing, one of our fifty is missing...'.
In business news, Haliburton and Archer-Daniels-Midland lead a 200 point rally...."
The Daily Show is probably the most honest "news" program out there.
That is because good comedy is about looking at the truth from a different point of view.
The Daily Show tends to use the old standard comedy viewpoint: "the patients are running the nuthouse". Given the state of the world and politics at any given moment, its probably the best way to pierce the veil of spin and BS associated with most 'news'.
Since it is nominally a comedy program (a "Fake News Show" as John Stewart sometimes calls it), it allows their guests to relax and frequently say what they actually believe, as opposed to the "real news" spin version. That plus the fact that Stewart will jovially push his guests on topics they really don't want to talk about ("hey we're not a real news show after all", "you can tell us, its just me and the three home viewers", etc), he often gets the truth to peek out from the clouds.
That plus the show's eagerness to mock all sides equally makes for one of the most balanced news/interview programs around.
Unfortunately, they are starting to do more of the gross-joke and "mock the rube" type special feature stories and are spending less time on the core "here are the headlines" pieces. Even so, it still beats any "real" news program I've seen in years.
I think it is the best general news program on US TV, bar none. It is the only one I watch regularly. It is the only one that is truly fair to all sides of an issue, because they mock everyone for their stupidity equally...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know, but I bet he plays First Base.
The article said the curriculum would be presented by Junior Achievement volunteer teachers. Those folks are average everyday people who take time off from work, sometimes for multiple days, to come into class rooms to teach kids about business. The basic idea is that disadvantaged kids need to be exposed to how businesses work so that they have a better chance of improving their lives by joining the business world later in life. The J.A. curriculum has a very heavy emphasis on entreprenurism and running your own business.
The volunteer teachers do not create their own teaching plans, the curriculum is prepared and given to the volunteer teachers by Junior Achievement. This hardly makes the volunteers "RIAA shills".
Since Junior Achievement exists to educate kids about business, it doesn't surprise me at all that the RIAA is donating curriculum which pushes their anti-copying point of view.
The proper response to this is to have a company which uses copying (p2p or otherwise) as advertising to work with J.A. and modify these teaching plans to balance their business message ("yes Virginia, you can make even more money if everyone can freely download your song/book/movie"). That is the best way to keep the RIAA from dominating this particular conversation and make sure these kids aren't getting the erroneous "filesharing always bad" message.
Oh come on now. With those kind of numbers you know Balmer would cut their license fee by AT LEAST 5%. Sheesh!
Neil,
You have worked with a number artists and authors over the years. Do you have any favorites? Anyone you haven't worked with that you would like to collaborate with on a story?
Bonus questions: If you could pick up someone elses character and do a story, who's would it be? What kind of story would you do?
Your observation about Gen. Yeager is an interesting contrast to what I know about Col. Stapp. Every person I've met who knew Col. Stapp was uniformly impressed with him, including me.
I got to meet Col. Stapp on a couple of occasions, including one meeting where he gave a rather lengthy project presentation (he ran a small foundation after he retired). He seemed like a great guy. He was a little hard of hearing (and who wouldn't be after what he had been through) and he had a tendancy to draw out his statements as older folks tend to do, but a great old guy none the less. I'm glad I had the chance to meet him.
Well at least one person disputes it:
I.V.
I absolutely agree. The flip cover on my 300 is one of its very best features.
I just wish mine would make the Star Trek communicator sound when I flip the cover up.
For a earlier story which featured e-ink type electronic paper and books see Ben Bova's novel Cyberbooks (Tor Books, 1989).
It is particularly good for its insights into the publishing industry.
I'd be more worried in what happens when teenagers spray paint these things, as they tend to do.
Three words: Cheap Plastic Cover
Err...fusion doesn't make ionizing radiation that would make a GM tube click. It makes neutrons, which are tough to detect. That's the whole reason it gets called "Safe" nuclear power.
Knowing my old boss, I wouldn't have put it past him to have 'seeded' the macine with an old style radium-dial watch or somesuch just to get the effect he wanted for the joke. I do know he built the machine, because he described it to me in detail and I confirmed it with a couple of his former co-workers.
Thanks for the info though. I will remember that.
I don't doubt it is real. The fact that his machine only can generate 4 neutrons/minute above background makes it kind of wimpy fusor.
I had a boss once who built a Farnesworth-style fusor from scrounged parts sometime back in the late 60's or early 70's. He told me he kept it behind his desk for years.
At the time he ran the Nuclear Effects - Solar Thermal Test Facility at White Sands Missile Range (basically a BIG concentrating mirror for simulating the intense heat of a nuclear blast and its effect on materials). Frequently they would get VIP visitors dropping in from the Pentagon, major universities, etc. He would always take the visitors on a walking tour of the facility. He would flip the machine on ahead of time and turn on a geiger counter he kept next to his desk. At the end of the tour he would take the visitors to his office. Usually the visitors would notice the clicking sound after a few minutes of chit-chat and ask "what's making that sound?" He would then dead-pan "oh that's nothing, that's just the radiation from my fusion reactor" and wave the geiger counter back and forth across the machine, generating lots of above background clicking.
The fusor was completely safe and the neutron radiation from it was well within safe limits, but frequently the visitors would require a bit of calming down after his little joke.
I think at least one general thought he had created a fusion power source and wanted to classify the whole deal and immediately fund development. Don't imagine he was too happy when he found out it used alot of energy and produced only a few neutrons.
It was for populist 'spin'. In this case, the spin is 'we represent the people's interests, not some unaccountable corporate-loving bureaucrats' [the irony of this coming from Trent Lott (R-Disney) should be lost on no one at /.]. I have seen pictures like this one several times come out of Washington from Congress, the White House, AND federal agencies numerous times in the last 30 years. Think of it as standard component of U.S. political "vocabulary".
Besides, its not THAT much paper. Heck I've worked in offices where 5 people would generate that much or more documents in a day (hint: phased-array radar & telemetry data dumps).
Redistricting every 10 years doesn't hurt democracy. In fact, fair representation depends on fair districting. One of the reasons the U.S. Constitution mandates a national census every 10 years is to provide accurate data for use in congressional districting. Unfortunately, political parties have used gerrymandering to gain a vote advantage over their opponent parties since the beginning of the U.S. (and probably before).
I don't know what you read on moveon.org, but the current issue of Democratic state legislators from Texas fleeing to other states to prevent redistricting is an interesting political situation. The Texas legislature did its constitutional duty and redistricted the state in its 2001 session. However Republican leaders at the national level, particularly House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) wanted to again redistrict the state in order to apportion more U.S. House of Representatives seats to the Republicans. This would provide a clearer Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and provide a buffer against anticipated 2004 electoral 'backlash' against the Republicans. It would also provide a clearer Republican legislative majority in the House(hard to push your agenda when you have to rely on 'enemy' swing votes).
At Delay's and Gov. Rick Perry's prompting, the Republican leadership in the Texas State Legislature in its 2003 session changed the administrative rules governing redistricting. This allowed them attempt to vote to redistrict the state again, but this time according to Republican majority guidelines and oversight. It was thwarted when several Democratic legislators bolted across the border to Ardmore, Oklahoma to prevent a legislative quorum and "run out the clock" on the legislative session. Gov. Perry sent several Texas State Troopers across the border (illegally) to retrieve the legislators. They failed and the legislative session ended. This effectively blocked the redistricting attempt.
Undaunted, the Republicans tried again. Gov. Rick Perry called a special legislative session specifically for redistricting. A different group of Democratic legislators took off, this time to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It worked until one of the Democrats got tired of the mess and came back to Texas. The remaining Democratic legislators have since returned to Texas, and are currently going through a court case concerning their failure to report for legislative duty.
They did block the second redistricting attempt this time, but Gov. Perry has vowed he will keep calling Special Sessions until they successfully get to redistrict the state, no matter the cost.
I'm an Independant because I don't like anyone's party politics, particularly the Democrats and Republicans. However after the 2000 Presidential fiasco and the obvious autocratic stunts like the recent Texas redistricting attempts, I REALLY dislike the Republicans.
This "keep counting the votes/changing the rules until we get the result we wa
CVT is standard on the Prius. I test drove one a couple of years ago. I liked the handling and the feel of the CVT. I even liked the 'grabby' brakes (an important consideration for someone who had two vehicles hit and totalled by idiots in 18 months).
I would have bought it on the spot, but there was a 6 month waiting list at the time and I needed a vehicle quickly.
I.V.
And isn't it interesting that the bulk of their profits come from the top 10 selling albums and that sales of those albums has declined from 60 million units in 2000 to 34 million units last year. That is a 43% drop in their main profit line in 2 years.
It really doesn't matter whether this loss of sales is due to file sharing, or crappy music, or the close approach of Mars. The only way those numbers will go up is:
a) they diversify their profit line (>>>10 albums/year)
b) they quit alienating their biggest customers (teens/young adults) by over-charging them and threatening them.
If they want to guarantee that the loss trend continues, then they will do what they are doing now: producing plastic pop music that has gotten so bad that even the kids have stopped listening and continue to harass their customers by calling them thieves and suing them.
I.V.
I haven't known that many people with perfect pitch, but the ones I have known have generally had good relative pitch. The one I gave as an example had decent relative pitch, but his intonation was a bit too mechanical and precise for my tastes.
He came by his perfect pitch via early exposure to piano. His intonation was frequently much like his piano playing: technically very precise and beautiful, but lacking deeper emotion.
The others I've known with perfect pitch (about 3-4), ranged from average to awesome in intonation. Of course there was a 'filtering' process going on here. I met these folks in very high end choral groups, so people with poor intonation never made it in.
Correct. "Singing in tune" is the ability to pitch and shape sound correctly. The musical term for it is Intonation.
I knew a guy once that had Perfect Pitch, but only average (for a singer) intonation. Pitch isn't everything when it comes to vocalizing.
Cheers,
I.V.
How about from TRON:
"I'm going to have to put you on the GameGrid."
I.V.
But Robert Heinlein said it better in LIFE-LINE:
And unfortunately, I think of this quote all to often these days when I read the news.
I.V.
Regardless, they are apparently trying to plug the still-distributing-GPLed code issue by posting this legally dubious notice up front:
I don't think you can invalidate a licence bound with the source material by posting a "gee we are violating this licence because we have to support our customers" notice up front.
I haven't ever seen such a bunch of blatantly amoral weasels in my life. I hope IBM, Red Hat, and any other big guns that jump in to rip these guys apart. With any luck the SEC and the US Attorney General will bring these guys up on criminal charges as well.
I.V.
They haven't gotten it right for the non-combat professions either. In fact, the leveling treadmill is far worse for the advanced artisan professions (Architect, Chef, Droid Engineer, Tailor, etc) than for the combat professions. Basically to level in these professions, your game play consists of sitting down next to a crafting station for seemingly endless hours making the same things over and over and over.
What makes it more frustrating is that it is almost impossible to make credits selling your items at that skill level. So not only do you have to do mindless crafting for untold hours, but now you get to run around doing unnecessarily lengthy 'delivery' missions to make the money needed to feed your resource harvesters. You don't dare do the marginally more interesting 'combat' missions, because as a wimpy artisan-type you will be quickly killed.
What SWG needs is consignment missions which award both XP and credits for making and delivering items of a certain quality. This would aleviate some of the boredom of artisan leveling in SWG.
Unfortunately, the leveling treadmill is what is going to limit the popularity of all these games. Even the 'skinner box' repetition-reward system can only go so far to keep people engaged. I haven't played a single MMORPG yet where the leveling treadmill didn't bore me into quiting after a couple of months. The fundamental playability problem for any MMORPG is: the begining is fun because you are learning and gaining skills rapidly, but it gets more tedious the more you try to advance to higher levels.
The core of the leveling treadmill problem is that in these games is: change = fun. The challenge is to create an environment where EVERY player feels like an active, important participant of the game world no matter what their level or skill. As long as the designers create static worlds and rely on character advancement through formulaic experience gains, every MMORPG will have the fun-killing leveling treadmill problem.
I.V.
SCO: My name is not SCO. Its.... Mud.
Same here. IANAP, but I always understood the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to be "you can either know the position pretty well, or the movement pretty well, but not both at the same time". Maybe its just my skewed perspective, but to me talking about momentum has always meant talking about time. Momentum is mass-motion. Motion is distance-time. So momentum is mass-distance-time. If you know the position then you don't know the mass-time very well. Assuming we are talking about a 'known' lump of stuff, then the mass is (relatively) constant, so its the time that goes fuzzy. (of course the time could be constant and the mass goes fuzzy, but that's for another discussion). This is the way I understood the whole Uncertainty mess from my earliest pop-sci readings.
Einstein basically said that space and time are linked. If that is true then Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle MUST mean that time is not discrete.
So to me, it just looks like this guy is pointing out something that was implicit in the theories already, but that the physicists had failed to really notice yet.
Its a classic case of not being able to see the forest for the trees.
I.V.
"And in other news today, the United States today invaded the rogue state of New Mexico. President Bush, in a press conference this morning stated that New Mexico's vigorous pusuit of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) could no longer be tolerated.
'We have been in contact with the U.N. for months about their abuses and terror mongering. Every day their researchers at Sandia and Los Alamos create deadly nooculer and biological weapons. Heck, they have even tested a nooculer weapon. We could stand for it no longer.'
After an 8 hour 'shock and awe' air campaign over population centers of Albuquerque and Santa Fe, the Allied forces swept into New Mexcio from their staging area in Amarillo, Texas. They quickly disabled several major airbases, including Kirkland Air Force Base and the sinister site of New Mexico's first nuclear weapons test: White Sands Missile Range.
Earlier in the day as Operation 'Enduring Sunshine' began, New Mexico's rogue leader 'Governor' Bill Richardson and accused U.S. spy 'Senator' Pete Dominici held a joint press conference in Santa Fe.
'What the heck does Bush think he's doing? We are a part of the United States, for crying out loud. How many times do we have to tell these yahoos, we're Americans. STOP SHOOTING.' Governor Bill Richardson is quoted as saying.
Later in that same press conference, Senator Dominici, reputidly a New Mexico spy operating at the highest levels of U.S. government, broke down and kept muttering over and over 'one of our fifty is missing, one of our fifty is missing...'.
In business news, Haliburton and Archer-Daniels-Midland lead a 200 point rally...."
That is because good comedy is about looking at the truth from a different point of view.
The Daily Show tends to use the old standard comedy viewpoint: "the patients are running the nuthouse". Given the state of the world and politics at any given moment, its probably the best way to pierce the veil of spin and BS associated with most 'news'.
Since it is nominally a comedy program (a "Fake News Show" as John Stewart sometimes calls it), it allows their guests to relax and frequently say what they actually believe, as opposed to the "real news" spin version. That plus the fact that Stewart will jovially push his guests on topics they really don't want to talk about ("hey we're not a real news show after all", "you can tell us, its just me and the three home viewers", etc), he often gets the truth to peek out from the clouds. That plus the show's eagerness to mock all sides equally makes for one of the most balanced news/interview programs around.
Unfortunately, they are starting to do more of the gross-joke and "mock the rube" type special feature stories and are spending less time on the core "here are the headlines" pieces. Even so, it still beats any "real" news program I've seen in years.
I think it is the best general news program on US TV, bar none. It is the only one I watch regularly. It is the only one that is truly fair to all sides of an issue, because they mock everyone for their stupidity equally...
And sometimes its even funny.
Cheers,
"And now, for your moment of zen..."
I.V.