Something tells me that there are no chimp bullies. I can't imagine a crowd of chimps mercilessly prodding and laughing at a single scrawny chimp until he or she backs into the corner cowering and pouting.
links between science and the military are nothing new
I agree. Why, even as long ago as Kirk's day, a scientist on the Genesis project was heard to remark "scientists have always been pawns of the military"...
I've NEVER seen ANY piece of computer equipment say "Made in the USA" in the past few years. In fact, I can't even recall any that said "Assembled in the USA". Ditto for Canada (our 51st state, eh?).
Everything you buy seems to be made somewhere in Asia. Usually China, sometimes (for slightly higher-quality stuff) Taiwan, or (for the GOOD stuff) Japan. Occasionally Korea, Malaysia, etc.
Always has been. Always will be. Although at first, the TV was supposedly predicted to be a fantastic intellectual tool, bringing learning to the masses, in practice it has ALWAYS, by and large, been about Joe Beer. Period.
Joe Beer does not know what a "bitrate" is. Joe Beer does not know what "interlaced" means. Joe Beer probably doesn't even know what a "pixel" is.
Thus, what you want will probably never exist. At least, not officially. Some geeks might attempt to create such a resource, and may in fact get themselves sued by some very large corporations for doing so...
I mean, seriously. In the Star Trek canon, wasn't Scotty (as an old man) the last fat Starfleet officer? They probably invented some sort of inverse tachyon pulse to eliminate fat. Or maybe a thermionic quantum flux. Or a positronic iridium conduit. Or....
On a related note, while reading the ST:TNG graphic novel/comic book/whatever-you-call-it "Forgiveness", I was shocked to see a FAT Federation officer (at least, he was wearing a Federation uniform and sitting aboard a Federation starship, so I'm presuming he was indeed a Federation officer) in one frame.
"Women who are intelligent, strong, and powerful" typically look somewhat like Roseanne.
Picture your average tough-as-nails, smart-as-hell nerd grrl. What does she look like? Yeah, that's right, she's around as attractive as the average nerd guy.
Not exactly prime material for game characters.
I'm an RPG geek, but in the games I play, members of both genders are typically attractive. Look at Final Fantasy IX, for example. The male lead (Zidane) is a cute bishy boi, and the female lead (Garnet/Dagger) is a cute girl.
Now imagine Final Fantasy IX with a Zidane looking like the goatse guy and a Garnet/Dagger looking like Tubgirl...
And then, for a REAL shudder, imagine if all the Manthra^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMithra running around Vana'diel in Final Fantasy XI looked like their players...
It's entertainment, people. It's fantasy. It's not supposed to represent "average-looking" women-- OR MEN. The day Duke Nukem has a pot belly and is balding, the day Lara Croft has saggy boobs and wrinkles... well, that's the day the VG Cats people take over all the game studios, I guess...
But no, SOMETHING caused Columbine, and that something must be eliminated.
Correct. However, there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell of the Powers That Be moving to actually eliminate it.
What caused Columbine? Bullying. Columbine was the natural result of millions of jocks and other "cool kids" picking on millions of nerds, gamers, effeminate males and other "nerds" and "faggots", every day, year after year, generation after generation. Sooner or later, it was inevitable that at least one of those kids was going to crack, and start shooting at anything that even vaguely looks like a bully.
And that's what happened at Columbine.
Of course, America being America, instead of cracking down on the bullies who literally drove the Columbine killers to the breaking point, they cracked down on the "nerds" instead. It's a wonder we haven't had a "Columbine" every year.
This, of course, is in the fine American tradition of "blaming the victim". It's very much like how, if you harass or abuse someone in school, nothing usually happens to you, but God help you if you "tattle" (read: try to have those in power stop the abuse).
It's also similar to the classic "But Your Honor, dressed like that? She was ASKING to be raped."
This sort of "blame the victim" crap is endemic to America, and possibly other Western cultures as well (though I can only speak for my experiences, which happened in the bad ol' US of A).
Christ, I'm so fucking sick of people thinking any one-syllable technical term, or any technical term of five or fewer letters, is necessarily an acronym. "MAC" (by which people usually mean "Macintosh", not the networking term), "LINUX", etc.
Am I really the only one left who cares about getting these things right?
If your evil doer committed the murder in question, then that would be relavent.
If the evildoer committed the murder in question, but I was on trial, the judge would probably tell me "wait for after this trial".
Trials are MONODIRECTIONAL. If person A accuses person B of murder, but person A is the actual murderer, person B has to wait until the trial is done to accuse person A. At least, to have person A put "on trial".
For that matter, another horrific flaw in the American system is that trials are not bidirectional.
Let's say an evil villain accused you of killing someone. You turned around and said to the Judge, "But Your Honor, HE killed people! I didn't!" The Judge would say "We aren't here to discuss him. He's not the one on trial."
In the real world, this sort of thing happens all the time. Scummy individuals (or, more often, scummy companies) take innocent people (or companies) to court on BS charges, and at the end of it all-- after the "good guys" waste so much time and money fighting said BS charges-- the BEST they can hope for is essentially "Yeah, you're innocent. Bye now, you're free to go."
That's it. That's what the "good guys" get for their destroyed finances and personal lives.
Even a "loser pays" system wouldn't fix this (and, in fact, in practice a "loser pays" system would probably just end up benefiting the rich "bad guys" anyhow, as they could use it to bankrupt, say, single mothers whose kids allegedly warezed copies of popular music).
I know somone who was taken to court over trumped-up, rubbishy charges... charges of WRONGFUL DEATH at that. Meanwhile, it was her accuser, if anyone, who was responsible for the death. This case destroyed her social life, her health, and her finances. In the end, the bad guys won.
Were it not for IBM's presence (for the moment, at least) among the pantheon of "good guys" as far as this case goes, we wouldn't have a snowball's chance in Hell.
Is there any country whose justice system isn't completely corrupt and bureaucratic and slothful and wasteful and HORRIBLE like ours? This truly makes me sick.
This whole fucking mess won't make it to court until FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH, TWO THOUSAND SEVEN.
And people wonder why spammers and virus writers and spyware companies get away scot-free? This case hase been going on for, what, half a decade now (or it sure seems like it...), and it's not going to court until OVER A YEAR FROM NOW?
The wheels of justice in this country must turn at a speed that makes the Space Shuttle crawlers look like a Formula 1 car.
"...since the inception of video downloads on the iTMS, they'd sold nearly three million individual items...."
So what? Three million items at, what, 99 cents per? (I'm not familiar with the pricing scheme for their video downloads.) That's what the average MPAA member company makes in, what, around 5 days?
N.b.: I love Apple, but jeebus, it probably cost them more than the amount they made on those three million items just to set up the stinkin' video download system.
I remember when some people got REALLY sick in a Jack-in-the-box somewhere in Salt Lake City. This was like 12 years or so. I still remember it, and was leery of them for about 2 years, and still don't go there as often as I go to Wendy's. If the only choices between fast food were nasty crap for 50 cents and stuff that will not make you sick for 60 cents, people would pay the extra 10 cents.
Ah, but what if the choice is between nasty crap for 50 cents and... other nasty crap for 50 cents?
For instance, what are the "PCs" that are all 99% of Americans can afford? Dell PCs, which are cheap plastic crap, and HP/Compaq PCs, which are... cheap plastic crap.
Now take that concept and transpose it onto the world of food. Remove all restrictions, stir in some e.coli, and hey presto, recipe for disaster.
And yes, food has been getting steadily more sanitary, THANKS TO THINGS LIKE THE PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT. A.k.a. government regulation. Without regulation, companies would have no incentive whatsoever to not poison their customers if everyone else is doing the same (and companies move in "packs", sometimes even going so far as to literally conspire together to do so. Witness price fixing/collusion...)
Modern corporations have one goal and one goal only: To make a lot of money. If it would make the top 10 food conglomerates more money to make some of their customers sick, they would hold a secret meeting, decide en masse to suspend all quality/safety standards, and that would be that. There wouldn't be a readily available alternative within the same price bracket.
People don't learn when the only viable (read: "affordable") choices available to them are all identical or nearly so.
Look at how things were in the not-so-distant past. The ultra-rich could afford (relatively) pure food; everyone else had to deal with the sort of things made infamous by Silent Spring.
You capitalist religionist types seem to forget that the concept of "real choice" is a hopeless ideal. Here in the real world, consumer "choice" is usually the "choice" between six of one and half a dozen of the other. In any real-world unregulated economy, what you'd end up with is a small handful of gargantuan companies selling roughly equally shitty products at roughly equal, relatively low prices, and smaller "boutique" companies selling quality goods for much, much higher prices.
Is there any significant difference between Coke and Pepsi? McDonald's and Burger King? Wal*Mart and K-Mart? Dell and Compaq/HP? Intel and AMD? They're all "close enough for government work". Is this "choice"?
In an unregulated world, we'd have the same lack of real "choice", plus the cheapest (read: most common, by far) products in any given field would be many, many times less safe/wholesome/reliable/durable/quality.
You're operating under the persistent delusion that real "choice" will be present in any economy dominated by a few gigantic, faceless, largely indistinguishable conglomerates.
It's not deregulation per se that helps the little guy, it's competition.
Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
99% of the time, the most popular option will be the cheapest readily available option. Period. No questions asked.
Let's imagine life in your little capitalist dream-world where companies aren't regulated at all.
Burgers from McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Carl's Jr. would cost from 39 to 49 cents, but every 10,000 burgers, someone would hurl their guts out from e. coli infection.
Chicken sandwiches from Chik-Fil-A would cost $4.95, since they'd be made from one of the few remaining companies still producing chickens safe to eat. However, to buy one, you'd have to show your voter registration card reading 'Republican' or 'Libertarian' and profess your faith in Jesus Christ. (Chik-Fil-A is owned by Christian fundamentalists.)
Cracker Barrel wouldn't serve black people.
Cars would cost a few thousand dollars less, but they'd be made out of inferior plastics and metals and would collapse like a cardboard box at the slightest crash. A safe car would cost so much that only a CEO could afford it.
Food would regularly contain insects, parts of rodents, and human body parts.
Competition wouldn't solve ANY of these problems, since-- as noted-- people go with the cheapest (not necessarily the safest) option.
TAKE OFF EVERY 'ZIGBEE'
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DOING
MOVE 'ZIGBEE'
FOR GREAT JUSTICE
...Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Suspendisse mi. Donec iaculis laoreet nibh. In lorem odio, bibendum nec, fermentum non, tempor et, metus. Maecenas vel arcu...
Slashdot Mirror
Did anyone else notice that?
I I wonder how they they keep letting things things like repeated repeated words words pass pass unnoticed unnoticed.
Something tells me that there are no chimp bullies. I can't imagine a crowd of chimps mercilessly prodding and laughing at a single scrawny chimp until he or she backs into the corner cowering and pouting.
I'm surprised we were even #1!
I've NEVER seen ANY piece of computer equipment say "Made in the USA" in the past few years. In fact, I can't even recall any that said "Assembled in the USA". Ditto for Canada (our 51st state, eh?).
Everything you buy seems to be made somewhere in Asia. Usually China, sometimes (for slightly higher-quality stuff) Taiwan, or (for the GOOD stuff) Japan. Occasionally Korea, Malaysia, etc.
Always has been. Always will be. Although at first, the TV was supposedly predicted to be a fantastic intellectual tool, bringing learning to the masses, in practice it has ALWAYS, by and large, been about Joe Beer. Period.
Joe Beer does not know what a "bitrate" is. Joe Beer does not know what "interlaced" means. Joe Beer probably doesn't even know what a "pixel" is.
Thus, what you want will probably never exist. At least, not officially. Some geeks might attempt to create such a resource, and may in fact get themselves sued by some very large corporations for doing so...
I mean, seriously. In the Star Trek canon, wasn't Scotty (as an old man) the last fat Starfleet officer? They probably invented some sort of inverse tachyon pulse to eliminate fat. Or maybe a thermionic quantum flux. Or a positronic iridium conduit. Or....
On a related note, while reading the ST:TNG graphic novel/comic book/whatever-you-call-it "Forgiveness", I was shocked to see a FAT Federation officer (at least, he was wearing a Federation uniform and sitting aboard a Federation starship, so I'm presuming he was indeed a Federation officer) in one frame.
Maybe the artist drew himself in or something...
"Women who are intelligent, strong, and powerful" typically look somewhat like Roseanne.
Picture your average tough-as-nails, smart-as-hell nerd grrl. What does she look like? Yeah, that's right, she's around as attractive as the average nerd guy.
Not exactly prime material for game characters.
I'm an RPG geek, but in the games I play, members of both genders are typically attractive. Look at Final Fantasy IX, for example. The male lead (Zidane) is a cute bishy boi, and the female lead (Garnet/Dagger) is a cute girl.
Now imagine Final Fantasy IX with a Zidane looking like the goatse guy and a Garnet/Dagger looking like Tubgirl...
And then, for a REAL shudder, imagine if all the Manthra^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMithra running around Vana'diel in Final Fantasy XI looked like their players...
It's entertainment, people. It's fantasy. It's not supposed to represent "average-looking" women-- OR MEN. The day Duke Nukem has a pot belly and is balding, the day Lara Croft has saggy boobs and wrinkles... well, that's the day the VG Cats people take over all the game studios, I guess...
What is a lifehack? Lifehack is a doubleplus ungood word. The person who invented it must have ownlife. Lifehack wordmaker not bellyfeel ingsoc.
Correct. However, there isn't a snowball's chance in Hell of the Powers That Be moving to actually eliminate it.
What caused Columbine? Bullying. Columbine was the natural result of millions of jocks and other "cool kids" picking on millions of nerds, gamers, effeminate males and other "nerds" and "faggots", every day, year after year, generation after generation. Sooner or later, it was inevitable that at least one of those kids was going to crack, and start shooting at anything that even vaguely looks like a bully.
And that's what happened at Columbine.
Of course, America being America, instead of cracking down on the bullies who literally drove the Columbine killers to the breaking point, they cracked down on the "nerds" instead. It's a wonder we haven't had a "Columbine" every year.
This, of course, is in the fine American tradition of "blaming the victim". It's very much like how, if you harass or abuse someone in school, nothing usually happens to you, but God help you if you "tattle" (read: try to have those in power stop the abuse).
It's also similar to the classic "But Your Honor, dressed like that? She was ASKING to be raped."
This sort of "blame the victim" crap is endemic to America, and possibly other Western cultures as well (though I can only speak for my experiences, which happened in the bad ol' US of A).
"Flash" is not an acronym.
Christ, I'm so fucking sick of people thinking any one-syllable technical term, or any technical term of five or fewer letters, is necessarily an acronym. "MAC" (by which people usually mean "Macintosh", not the networking term), "LINUX", etc.
Am I really the only one left who cares about getting these things right?
Trials are MONODIRECTIONAL. If person A accuses person B of murder, but person A is the actual murderer, person B has to wait until the trial is done to accuse person A. At least, to have person A put "on trial".
For that matter, another horrific flaw in the American system is that trials are not bidirectional.
Let's say an evil villain accused you of killing someone. You turned around and said to the Judge, "But Your Honor, HE killed people! I didn't!" The Judge would say "We aren't here to discuss him. He's not the one on trial."
In the real world, this sort of thing happens all the time. Scummy individuals (or, more often, scummy companies) take innocent people (or companies) to court on BS charges, and at the end of it all-- after the "good guys" waste so much time and money fighting said BS charges-- the BEST they can hope for is essentially "Yeah, you're innocent. Bye now, you're free to go."
That's it. That's what the "good guys" get for their destroyed finances and personal lives.
Even a "loser pays" system wouldn't fix this (and, in fact, in practice a "loser pays" system would probably just end up benefiting the rich "bad guys" anyhow, as they could use it to bankrupt, say, single mothers whose kids allegedly warezed copies of popular music).
I know somone who was taken to court over trumped-up, rubbishy charges... charges of WRONGFUL DEATH at that. Meanwhile, it was her accuser, if anyone, who was responsible for the death. This case destroyed her social life, her health, and her finances. In the end, the bad guys won.
Were it not for IBM's presence (for the moment, at least) among the pantheon of "good guys" as far as this case goes, we wouldn't have a snowball's chance in Hell.
Is there any country whose justice system isn't completely corrupt and bureaucratic and slothful and wasteful and HORRIBLE like ours? This truly makes me sick.
Yes, you read that right.
This whole fucking mess won't make it to court until FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH, TWO THOUSAND SEVEN .
And people wonder why spammers and virus writers and spyware companies get away scot-free? This case hase been going on for, what, half a decade now (or it sure seems like it...), and it's not going to court until OVER A YEAR FROM NOW?
The wheels of justice in this country must turn at a speed that makes the Space Shuttle crawlers look like a Formula 1 car.
So what? Three million items at, what, 99 cents per? (I'm not familiar with the pricing scheme for their video downloads.) That's what the average MPAA member company makes in, what, around 5 days?
N.b.: I love Apple, but jeebus, it probably cost them more than the amount they made on those three million items just to set up the stinkin' video download system.
Actually, I didn't know that. Since when? When I think "software development incubators", I think California, New York, and... *sigh* India.
Ah, but what if the choice is between nasty crap for 50 cents and
For instance, what are the "PCs" that are all 99% of Americans can afford? Dell PCs, which are cheap plastic crap, and HP/Compaq PCs, which are
Now take that concept and transpose it onto the world of food. Remove all restrictions, stir in some e.coli, and hey presto, recipe for disaster.
And yes, food has been getting steadily more sanitary, THANKS TO THINGS LIKE THE PURE FOOD AND DRUG ACT. A.k.a. government regulation. Without regulation, companies would have no incentive whatsoever to not poison their customers if everyone else is doing the same (and companies move in "packs", sometimes even going so far as to literally conspire together to do so. Witness price fixing/collusion...)
Modern corporations have one goal and one goal only: To make a lot of money. If it would make the top 10 food conglomerates more money to make some of their customers sick, they would hold a secret meeting, decide en masse to suspend all quality/safety standards, and that would be that. There wouldn't be a readily available alternative within the same price bracket.
People don't learn when the only viable (read: "affordable") choices available to them are all identical or nearly so.
Look at how things were in the not-so-distant past. The ultra-rich could afford (relatively) pure food; everyone else had to deal with the sort of things made infamous by Silent Spring.
You capitalist religionist types seem to forget that the concept of "real choice" is a hopeless ideal. Here in the real world, consumer "choice" is usually the "choice" between six of one and half a dozen of the other. In any real-world unregulated economy, what you'd end up with is a small handful of gargantuan companies selling roughly equally shitty products at roughly equal, relatively low prices, and smaller "boutique" companies selling quality goods for much, much higher prices.
Is there any significant difference between Coke and Pepsi? McDonald's and Burger King? Wal*Mart and K-Mart? Dell and Compaq/HP? Intel and AMD? They're all "close enough for government work". Is this "choice"?
In an unregulated world, we'd have the same lack of real "choice", plus the cheapest (read: most common, by far) products in any given field would be many, many times less safe/wholesome/reliable/durable/quality.
You're operating under the persistent delusion that real "choice" will be present in any economy dominated by a few gigantic, faceless, largely indistinguishable conglomerates.
Argh. I'm tired of people assuming any technical term of 5 or fewer letters just has to be an acronym.
It's "Win". Short for "Windows". It's not "WIN".
Likewise, if you're talking about Macintosh computers, it's "Mac". Short for "Macintosh". It's not "MAC".
I've also seen people write "Linux" in all caps (i.e. "LINUX"). This is incredibly annoying.
99% of the time, the most popular option will be the cheapest readily available option. Period. No questions asked.
Let's imagine life in your little capitalist dream-world where companies aren't regulated at all.
Burgers from McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's and Carl's Jr. would cost from 39 to 49 cents, but every 10,000 burgers, someone would hurl their guts out from e. coli infection.
Chicken sandwiches from Chik-Fil-A would cost $4.95, since they'd be made from one of the few remaining companies still producing chickens safe to eat. However, to buy one, you'd have to show your voter registration card reading 'Republican' or 'Libertarian' and profess your faith in Jesus Christ. (Chik-Fil-A is owned by Christian fundamentalists.)
Cracker Barrel wouldn't serve black people.
Cars would cost a few thousand dollars less, but they'd be made out of inferior plastics and metals and would collapse like a cardboard box at the slightest crash. A safe car would cost so much that only a CEO could afford it.
Food would regularly contain insects, parts of rodents, and human body parts.
Competition wouldn't solve ANY of these problems, since-- as noted-- people go with the cheapest (not necessarily the safest) option.
TAKE OFF EVERY 'ZIGBEE'
...Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Suspendisse mi. Donec iaculis laoreet nibh. In lorem odio, bibendum nec, fermentum non, tempor et, metus. Maecenas vel arcu...
YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DOING
MOVE 'ZIGBEE'
FOR GREAT JUSTICE
It's "Mac OS X", made by "Apple".
See also: My current signature.
Why can nobody ever get this right? It's like the mental midgets who say their computer runs "XP OS" and talk about others running "Linux OS".
...when every Mac has only one key on the keyboard, a "DWIM" key.
Wait, scratch that. End users are afraid of keyboards. Make it a mouse with a "DWIM" button.
Hang on, scratch that. It'd be simpler if they didn't even have to press the button...
Did I miss something? When did they get their own University?
Or is this kind of like "TD Waterhouse Center" or "Verizon Stadium", where a big company sponsors something and thus gets naming rights?