First, there was "Havoc Pennington". And now there is "Udi Manber". That sounds... I donno, it sounds kind of like the secret identity of a superhero from some funkadelic Blade Runner future...
Discounting the obvious fact that each and every one of us are traveling into the future at one second per second, time travel into the future is a proven fact-- if you define "time travel" the right way. That is, if you define "time travel" as "moving at some velocity significantly different from one second per second through time", rather than "instantly POOFing from one time to another", "time travel" forwards is as simple as traveling at high relativistic speeds.
Irrelevant. The prices of brand new, new release movies are still artificially high, and when DVDs first came out, the $5 (or even $1) bargain-bin DVDs you refer to (yes, I too have seen the bins full of TV episodes from the 1950s/1960s for $1) were not economically feasible in any way.
Ignore the bargain-bin stuff and look at new releases, and I think you'll find that retail prices have fallen a lot slower than production costs.
The stuff about VHS tapes being cheap now is a red herring. I'm talking about the price pattern of a given technology over its relevant lifetime, not the price pattern of an older technology offset by a newer one.
1) They'll claim that in time, the price to the consumer will come down. (See also: "The history of compact disc pricing").
2) It won't.
3) People will continue to buy them in droves anyways.
4) Profit!
It's a technological attempt to solve a problem not solvable through technological means.
Even if literally EVERY phone call was monitored (a nearly impossible feat), what's to stop "terrorists" from talking in code?
E.g.:
Terrorist_1: "How's the weather?" ("How's our plan going?")
Terrorist_2: "Fine." ("Fine.")
Terrorist_1: "That's good. Is it going to rain tomorrow? ("Are we ready to go with our attack tomorrow?")
Terrorist_2: "Yes, the weatherman says so." ("Yes, Osama gave me the go-ahead.")
Once terrorists start pulling tricks like this, then what would the wiretappers try? Arresting anyone who calls anyone in the Middle East and talks about innocent-sounding subjects?
(Disclaimer: I am politically "liberal", pro-gay-rights, pro-choice, etc.)
ATTENTION, MUSLIM PROTESTERS: This is the difference between Americans and yourselves. When Americans get mad, they yell and make lots of noise, and sometimes vote in new politicians. When Muslim fundamentalists get mad, they break shit and set things on fire.
Goodness knows I have no end of contempt for my countrymen, but the people protesting these cartoons could learn a thing or three from Joe Average American-- and that's sad, if not outright pathetic.
It's also, as many have pointed out, incredibly ironic that in response to a cartoon of Mohammed wearing a bomb for a turban, you have reacted with... well... violence!
I hereby extend an invitation to the Muslim world, from all Americans ("liberal", "conservative", and everything in between), to wake up, smell the coffee, and join the second millenium. Maybe even the third.
I'm a Jew. If Jewish groups were setting fire to things in response to cartoons making fun of the Holocaust, Jews worldwide would be jumping at the opportunity to distance themselves from the carnage and condemn the violence. Where's the outrage from Muslim world leaders?
"It said the Congressional computer network has been blocked from editing for brief periods on a number of occasions in the last six months due to the inappropriate contributions."
Why not block ALL of *.gov, permanently? Perhaps with exceptions for certain scientific sites (e.g. nasa.gov, any "national laboratories", etc.)
God dammit, there's a difference between languages EVOLVING and language DEVOLVING. Seeing as how we're rapidly being flung into a brave new world where "its" and "it's" are synonyms and "to" means the same thing as "too", I think it's obvious what is happening here. We are witnessing nothing less than the slow syntactic collapse of the English language into muddied pidgin jabber. In 50 years, people won't even be bothering with definite articles, and people will just talk (or write) like "How u? Me fine." This isn't the normal evolution of language, it's a giant leap backwards. "It's" and "its" are punctuated differently for a reason: THEY MEAN DIFFERENT THINGS. "To", "too" and "two" are not synonyms, no matter how much the apathetic youngsters your weasel words appease would argue otherwise. And apostrophes are utterly useless if they're used as random decorations. The new generations are taking useful linguistic constructs (homophones, punctuation, etc.) and destroying their usefulness, while adding nothing to replace them.
In the future, if this keeps up, we will be left to deduce half the meaning of any given "English" sentence purely from context. It will be worse than Hebrew, with its lack of vowels-- we'll be missing whole WORDS. Once they realize how useless they are rendering whole swaths of basic English vocabulary, they'll simply stop using those words. Once people realize that they're using "to", "too" and "two" interchangeably, they'll simply stop using the words altogether. ("I'm going store.") Actually, I must amend that: the apostrophe will disappear entirely when its use becomes so inconsistent as to make it a nuisance, so that would be "Im going store". And most AOL kiddies can't be bothered to capitalize things either, so I suppose it'd be "im going store".
THAT is the future of English if appeasers like you get your way. I will be GOD DAMNED if I stand idly by while whining little weasels like you spew apologetics for the literary vandals who are presently gutting the expressiveness and lyrical beauty of the English language.
Or perhaps I should translate into your soon-to-be-native tongue, the English of 2050 or 2100: "i b dising on u g". With no period, no capitalization, no comma, and no doubled consonant before the "-ing".
That sort of urban caveman-speak is what people like you will be babbling in 50 years if "language Nazis" like myself don't speak up, and LOUDLY.
For that matter, just where the fuck did the idea that the proper use of language is reserved solely for job interviews and schools come from?! I'm so sick of hearing things like "whatever... you're not my teacher" or "I'm not in school". Sure, I could write like a caveman too, but I prefer to have the basic dignity (probably the only dignity I ever display?;) ) not to do so.
I suppose that, since I'm not trying to impress anyone with my clothing, I could come in to work in cutoff jean shorts and a ripped, stained T-shirt. "Hey, man, it's work, not a fashion show."
That's around as [il]logical as this absurd notion that "since I'm not at school, I shouldn't bother writing properly."
If you get into the habit of writing correctly, you won't have to think about it or spend time proofreading your work (beyond a quick runthrough). It will become "second nature" to you.
Tell me about it. I made most of my fortune in the Cadia market, and the rest in the Bid market. I'm pondering branching out into the Pedia market as well.
In re: "from the free-as-a-bird dept."
on
Songbird Flies Today
·
· Score: 4, Funny
In re: 'from the free-as-a-bird dept."
Attn: Robert Commander Taco Malda, Jeff Hemos Bates
I represent the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, on retainer for Apple Corps d.b.a. Apple Records. Our clients hold international legal and commercial rights to the recording Free As A Bird.
Your unauthorized distribution of lyrics to this performance constitute, at a minimum, a violation of U.S.C. 666-69-3117 and of the provisions on distribution laid out in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). You are thus ordered to cease and desist the distribution of these and any other Apple Corps lyrics in your "dept" headings. Our firm has not ruled out further legal action to enforce our clients' Intellectual Property rights.
Signed,
Robert Cheatham, Esq.
Dewey, Cheatham and Howe
Yes, 'cuz that's what teenaged music fans want...
on
Songbird Flies Today
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Source code.
(Disclaimer: I'm pro-open-source. But, seriously, how many "music fans" (of the sorts who presently tote about iPods) would even know what source code is, much less give a crap about it? They Just Want It To Work(TM), man.
They'd call it a "typo" if the Q key was on a different planet from the G key. See, nowadays, typing like a retarded bonobo on crack is considered normal, and daring to point out repeated mistakes (most of which are obviously due to a failure to absorb basic lessons in grade school) is moderated (-1, Flamebait) and (-1, Troll).
I've had people tell me that using "it's" instead of "its" (e.g. "that's not one of it's better qualities") is a typo. Yeah. my finger just randomly slipped all the way to the other side of the keyboard between "t" and "s" to smack the apostrophe... And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Cue standard rant (stdrant.h?) about how the Slashdot "editors" don't.
Sad but true: Just like how students are vilified for "tattling" on bullies, but not for bullying, people nowadays are vilified for being "language nazis", but not for repeatedly making mistakes any third grader should be able to avoid. The problem is ignored, while pointing out the problem is practically heresy.
The entire point of the study is meaningless. It's like asking "how much does it cost to buy a house?" Well, some houses are $100,000, some are $1,000,000, some are $10,000,000... Asking "at what age does maturity set in" is the same.
We don't ask "how light does your skin have to be for you to be a genius", since everyone recognizes that prejudging intelligence by skin color is wrong. Why do we persist in asking "how many years old do you have to be for you to be treated as a mature human being"?
Slashdot Mirror
Vista to become the most popular download on gaming torrents sites... ;)
Yes. But stop it, you're making my head hurt. :>
Actually, it'd probably be noted as something with subscripts, like "seconds(environment) per second(observer) per second(observer)."
First, there was "Havoc Pennington". And now there is "Udi Manber". That sounds... I donno, it sounds kind of like the secret identity of a superhero from some funkadelic Blade Runner future...
Discounting the obvious fact that each and every one of us are traveling into the future at one second per second, time travel into the future is a proven fact-- if you define "time travel" the right way. That is, if you define "time travel" as "moving at some velocity significantly different from one second per second through time", rather than "instantly POOFing from one time to another", "time travel" forwards is as simple as traveling at high relativistic speeds.
Irrelevant. The prices of brand new, new release movies are still artificially high, and when DVDs first came out, the $5 (or even $1) bargain-bin DVDs you refer to (yes, I too have seen the bins full of TV episodes from the 1950s/1960s for $1) were not economically feasible in any way.
Ignore the bargain-bin stuff and look at new releases, and I think you'll find that retail prices have fallen a lot slower than production costs.
The stuff about VHS tapes being cheap now is a red herring. I'm talking about the price pattern of a given technology over its relevant lifetime, not the price pattern of an older technology offset by a newer one.
1) They'll claim that in time, the price to the consumer will come down. (See also: "The history of compact disc pricing").
2) It won't.
3) People will continue to buy them in droves anyways.
4) Profit!
It's a technological attempt to solve a problem not solvable through technological means.
Even if literally EVERY phone call was monitored (a nearly impossible feat), what's to stop "terrorists" from talking in code?
E.g.:
Terrorist_1: "How's the weather?" ("How's our plan going?")
Terrorist_2: "Fine." ("Fine.")
Terrorist_1: "That's good. Is it going to rain tomorrow? ("Are we ready to go with our attack tomorrow?")
Terrorist_2: "Yes, the weatherman says so." ("Yes, Osama gave me the go-ahead.")
Once terrorists start pulling tricks like this, then what would the wiretappers try? Arresting anyone who calls anyone in the Middle East and talks about innocent-sounding subjects?
...a system for wasting the time of large companies (and putting small ones out of business).
Hey, maybe I should patent that!
(Disclaimer: I am politically "liberal", pro-gay-rights, pro-choice, etc.)
ATTENTION, MUSLIM PROTESTERS: This is the difference between Americans and yourselves. When Americans get mad, they yell and make lots of noise, and sometimes vote in new politicians. When Muslim fundamentalists get mad, they break shit and set things on fire.
Goodness knows I have no end of contempt for my countrymen, but the people protesting these cartoons could learn a thing or three from Joe Average American-- and that's sad, if not outright pathetic.
It's also, as many have pointed out, incredibly ironic that in response to a cartoon of Mohammed wearing a bomb for a turban, you have reacted with... well... violence!
I hereby extend an invitation to the Muslim world, from all Americans ("liberal", "conservative", and everything in between), to wake up, smell the coffee, and join the second millenium. Maybe even the third.
I'm a Jew. If Jewish groups were setting fire to things in response to cartoons making fun of the Holocaust, Jews worldwide would be jumping at the opportunity to distance themselves from the carnage and condemn the violence. Where's the outrage from Muslim world leaders?
I was providing an example of INCORRECT usage, not CORRECT usage.
Why not block ALL of *.gov, permanently? Perhaps with exceptions for certain scientific sites (e.g. nasa.gov, any "national laboratories", etc.)
God dammit, there's a difference between languages EVOLVING and language DEVOLVING. Seeing as how we're rapidly being flung into a brave new world where "its" and "it's" are synonyms and "to" means the same thing as "too", I think it's obvious what is happening here. We are witnessing nothing less than the slow syntactic collapse of the English language into muddied pidgin jabber. In 50 years, people won't even be bothering with definite articles, and people will just talk (or write) like "How u? Me fine." This isn't the normal evolution of language, it's a giant leap backwards. "It's" and "its" are punctuated differently for a reason: THEY MEAN DIFFERENT THINGS. "To", "too" and "two" are not synonyms, no matter how much the apathetic youngsters your weasel words appease would argue otherwise. And apostrophes are utterly useless if they're used as random decorations. The new generations are taking useful linguistic constructs (homophones, punctuation, etc.) and destroying their usefulness, while adding nothing to replace them.
In the future, if this keeps up, we will be left to deduce half the meaning of any given "English" sentence purely from context. It will be worse than Hebrew, with its lack of vowels-- we'll be missing whole WORDS. Once they realize how useless they are rendering whole swaths of basic English vocabulary, they'll simply stop using those words. Once people realize that they're using "to", "too" and "two" interchangeably, they'll simply stop using the words altogether. ("I'm going store.") Actually, I must amend that: the apostrophe will disappear entirely when its use becomes so inconsistent as to make it a nuisance, so that would be "Im going store". And most AOL kiddies can't be bothered to capitalize things either, so I suppose it'd be "im going store".
THAT is the future of English if appeasers like you get your way. I will be GOD DAMNED if I stand idly by while whining little weasels like you spew apologetics for the literary vandals who are presently gutting the expressiveness and lyrical beauty of the English language.
Or perhaps I should translate into your soon-to-be-native tongue, the English of 2050 or 2100: "i b dising on u g". With no period, no capitalization, no comma, and no doubled consonant before the "-ing".
That sort of urban caveman-speak is what people like you will be babbling in 50 years if "language Nazis" like myself don't speak up, and LOUDLY.
o/~ LBJ took the IRT down to 4th Street USA. When he got there, what did he see? The youth of America on L...S...D! o/~
For that matter, just where the fuck did the idea that the proper use of language is reserved solely for job interviews and schools come from?! I'm so sick of hearing things like "whatever... you're not my teacher" or "I'm not in school". Sure, I could write like a caveman too, but I prefer to have the basic dignity (probably the only dignity I ever display? ;) ) not to do so.
I suppose that, since I'm not trying to impress anyone with my clothing, I could come in to work in cutoff jean shorts and a ripped, stained T-shirt. "Hey, man, it's work, not a fashion show."
That's around as [il]logical as this absurd notion that "since I'm not at school, I shouldn't bother writing properly."
If you get into the habit of writing correctly, you won't have to think about it or spend time proofreading your work (beyond a quick runthrough). It will become "second nature" to you.
In re: 'from the free-as-a-bird dept."
Attn: Robert Commander Taco Malda, Jeff Hemos Bates
I represent the law firm of Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, on retainer for Apple Corps d.b.a. Apple Records. Our clients hold international legal and commercial rights to the recording Free As A Bird.
Your unauthorized distribution of lyrics to this performance constitute, at a minimum, a violation of U.S.C. 666-69-3117 and of the provisions on distribution laid out in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). You are thus ordered to cease and desist the distribution of these and any other Apple Corps lyrics in your "dept" headings. Our firm has not ruled out further legal action to enforce our clients' Intellectual Property rights.
Signed,
Robert Cheatham, Esq.
Dewey, Cheatham and Howe
Source code.
(Disclaimer: I'm pro-open-source. But, seriously, how many "music fans" (of the sorts who presently tote about iPods) would even know what source code is, much less give a crap about it? They Just Want It To Work(TM), man.
They'd call it a "typo" if the Q key was on a different planet from the G key. See, nowadays, typing like a retarded bonobo on crack is considered normal, and daring to point out repeated mistakes (most of which are obviously due to a failure to absorb basic lessons in grade school) is moderated (-1, Flamebait) and (-1, Troll).
I've had people tell me that using "it's" instead of "its" (e.g. "that's not one of it's better qualities") is a typo. Yeah. my finger just randomly slipped all the way to the other side of the keyboard between "t" and "s" to smack the apostrophe... And if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Cue standard rant (stdrant.h?) about how the Slashdot "editors" don't.
Sad but true: Just like how students are vilified for "tattling" on bullies, but not for bullying, people nowadays are vilified for being "language nazis", but not for repeatedly making mistakes any third grader should be able to avoid. The problem is ignored, while pointing out the problem is practically heresy.
That name sounds hot.
Hmmmm. You go first. :)
The entire point of the study is meaningless. It's like asking "how much does it cost to buy a house?" Well, some houses are $100,000, some are $1,000,000, some are $10,000,000... Asking "at what age does maturity set in" is the same.
We don't ask "how light does your skin have to be for you to be a genius", since everyone recognizes that prejudging intelligence by skin color is wrong. Why do we persist in asking "how many years old do you have to be for you to be treated as a mature human being"?
Nothing like waking up in the morning and reading someone comparing you to mold. :)
Christ, they even have those new TVs on the ISS? I still have an old CRT model...
He's on Slashdot now?
Dude, I MUST find this Noone guy, I've been hearing his name EVERYWHERE.