Amen! I dread the day when my 22 " Sony CRT will die (it's coming, I can see the sings). Should have bought 2-3 monitors at the end to see me through the next 2 decades. After that I would be too old for gaming anyway.....I did such a preemptive purchase with the Seinheiser PX 100 head phones. Those are brilliant for their price range. No, they are better than many models that are twice as expensive. Fortunately Seihn kept them going, but there was a period when all stock was depleted....
Strange!/. always worked for me smooth as silk except very long threads can take some time to open. I am a lame Windows user and it worked just fine with XP+Firefox and now 7+Firefox.
BUT, on the phone (HTC desire) - tragedy!! Stock browser does not scale the text properly. Opera mini scales OK, but refuses to display more than the 250 comments. Nothing helps - open in new tab, open in new window, the same window - it just does not work. View more stories sometimes works sometimes not but never works from the first try. The Dolphin mini browser - almost impossible to log in and I have the feeling it is often because of the ads disable function - somehow the Dolphin does not like it so after log in I am back at the main page but not logged in. Even more strange - the issue is gone if I am on WiFi but on 3G it is back. It really sucks because I get quite some mod points and do take the responsibility seriously - I read ALL comments and try to pick the good posts that went under the radar. Since I spend 2 hours a day commuting with train, that was a golden opportunity to exercise the mod points. Alas, I tried once giving mod points via the phone and that also went bad.
I am not very good with computers and programming - am I missing something?
Yet again, it is not about nuclear power as such, but HOW we do it. Yet again, profit is ahead of everything. Yet again our bloody Ponzi scheme we call “world economy” is rearing its ugly head. I am literary physically sick from all this.
I am a fan of Japan. I really like this country and its people. But I am not a blind fan-boy. Before Fukushima I held two things against the Japanese - the invention and promotion of industrial fishing and their extreme xenophobic views. Now I have a third issue – the amazing cover-up, sweep under the carpet attitude of TEPCO and the government of Japan.
Somewhere in this thread/. –ter pointed a very informative text on the Chernobyl disaster (on the “green facts” website). Since so many years have passed, scientists are finally generating huge amounts of research and the picture of the disaster and its consequences is rather clear now. I was astounded by the quick response of the authorities to help local people (even though they withheld the truth from the rest of the world for a while). Emergency treatment in the first 30 hours after the blast lowered the contamination levels of the citizens 6 times! Remember this is western site and western report, moreover on “green” web page. These people can hardly be blamed for pro-communist propaganda! Facts like the one stating that for many years up to 20% of the national budget of Ukraine and Belarus was spent on helping the victims totally blew my mind. In total 7 million people were taken care of, compensations and special pensions are paid to this day. Even today a sizeable portion of the national budgets of Ukraine and Belarus (less in Russia since they are much bigger country) go to these people. 4-5 thousand cases of thyroid cancer in children! Other types of cancer did not show statistical correlation but even the above is enough to chill your spine.
Anyway, after reading this I send a small letter to my best friends, who happen to be Japanese family living in Europe. Here is the response I got (all names removed of course).
Quote:
Concerning Fukushima, oh baby make no mistake about it; we are extremely worried too. There are mainly two concerns for us.
1).’s parents live near Fukushima, approximately 130 km. These people are honest hard-working working-class people who have had no more than high school education. They are unfortunately in no way able to seek out, assimilate and analyze information -let alone distinguishing between convincingly sounding misinformation and pure scientific facts-. They do not feel any need to move out of the area permanently and . and I have given up on that. In stead, we call them every day to keep really stupid ideas out of their heads. Like, "My, what a lovely weather it is this morning. Let's hang all our bed sheets and towels in this fresh air outside!"
2) and I have decided to absolutely not visit Japan the coming period. In the long run we might have to explain to.’s parents why we do not want to visit their house. We expect they won't comprehend our motivation.
The almost total absence of information in the media is very easily explained. TEPCO is the largest shareholder of all; yes ALL, television stations, radio broadcasters, newspapers and Internet providers.
Luckily, some of the Fukushima plant designers, engineers and technicians have thrown away their career (and presumably a whole lot more) and giving interviews to underground environmental organizations. Organizations, which have been labeled as communist or extreme right wing, by the Japanese propaganda machine. These rebel alliances run their own illegal television broadcasts on Internet. The Japanese government, needless to say, is hunting down these illegal Internet streams but of course new sites keep popping up every time they succeed.
Since the quake, . and I have faithfully been watching these daily status updates, presentations and interviews. They
Well then, if I was in charge of the aliens I would do my research well and finding that both you and the person you respond to are right in certain sense I would announce myself by broadcasting over all available channels of communication - radio, TV, Internet. And I would do it in such way that my original message could not be tampered with by anyone. Being able to FLT (I believe space exploration is meaningless and impossible without FLT) this must be very easy to realize.
Exactly the epistemology suggest that the questions to which religion gives answers are meaningless and nothing will ever count as an answer except "I don't know and I should not care".
Infinite regress rings a bell? You CAN ask meaningless questions like "Why?" and "What caused this?" Those questions can be meaningless indeed when applied wrongly.
Because you can ask them forever. Sooner or later your knowledge and understanding will hit the boundaries of your Universe. So what's outside? What was before that? Why? Then you might even find some new facts (Multiverse?) but that puts the preceding question a little bit further out and little bit further back. And you can do this forever. Forever!!! Do you understand the concept of INFINITY?
What religion does is providing answers to meaningless questions and claiming that those are the right answers. And then making people kill each other to prove that their false answer is truer than the others people false answer.
To quote popular fictional character - "Questions don't have to make sense. But answers must."
The most, and I really mean the MOST you can say is represented by the deist view. Since in the observable universe we see that every effect has a cause we have two options:
1. The causality chain extends back into infinity. This is possible but does not provide any useful knoweledge. 2. There was a first cause. We call it god. (pay attention that the nature of the first cause is not specified. God might be an elementary particle of fluctuation of "nothingness" or whatever).
That's it. Anybody that really understands epistemology stops here. Period. And that is the most common "religion" you will find among scientist.
What we have in practice however are people claiming to know who god is, what does he (we even "know" that it is "he") what from us, what he likes and dislikes. And those who disagree will be burned at the stake.
And BTW, biology already provided us with moral norms. To cut it short start from this popular saying " If God tells you to kill your children but you don't, you are an atheist. If you do, you are a madman that needs to be locked."
Pink Floyd's music is not art? Terry Pratchett's books are not art?!? Picasso's paintings are not art?!? Stanley Kubrick's films are not art?!?
WTF?!?
I know (probably) what you mean, but among the trash entertainment there are the gems that still make big profits and are GREAT art. On the other hand, your rule will work 9 out of 10 times, so you are probably right. Oh well..
Until we fill all the galaxy. It's only a matter of time, you know.
And I always ask an never get answer - what if the aliens think the same way? Welcome to the new era of....well doing the same things again only bigger and louder On a positive note this time racism is not a problem. To quote the Discworld series - "black and white lived in perfect harmony united against the green".
No children. No car. Travels ones a year by plane. Rides bicycles in cities. Buys as much as possible local food. Doesn't throw anything that still works.
Where are my tax breaks? I see only families with kids having them. Why not me?
No amount of green activity comes even CLOSE to having no kids. Nothing that anybody can do outweighs bringing even one more consumer to the world.
Don't get me wrong. Me and my wife love kids and all our friends are so happy to come visit us with their little ones, because the kids love our attention, care, my movie collection and Star Wars toys. I heard last time one of those kids knowing that they will come on Sunday started pestering the parents already on Friday "let's go, let's go!"
The species must survive. People will breed. But we humans made a declaration approx. 15 000 years ago. We declared that our fate is in our own hands and we refuse to let the gods do their work. We declared to the Universe that the natural constrains are not for us; that we will overcome them. So we did.
Now we face the deadliest enemy yet - ourselves. I've said it many times - we have missed our chance to build truly affluent society. Our perverse Ponzi scheme is coming to an end. It served its purpose; to keep following it means certain death.
A few practicalities:
1. We can feed ourselves with traditional farming. The "GM will save the world" is blatant lie, highly dangerous BS. Again we have put profit in front of sanity and well being. 2. The industrial fishing is "omnicide" activity. Those practicing it should be stopped at all costs. Deadline - yesterday. 3. Education, education, education. The people should know what they are doing. I bet more than half the population is oblivious to what we have done to our planet and what is coming to us if we keep on doing it. 4. 10 kids because God says so? No way, Hose! Get off my planet!
As far as I understood, Apple having so much free money means they secure very good deals for high quality components and buy the production capacity for years ahead!!! Anyone else asking for the same components (say a very good screen) pays premium prices, thus their production costs increases.
For the moment this tactics will work splendidly as the manufacturing capacities are still catching up with demand.
I heard this from Apple fan, don't have links or anything...
The real defenders of a society are the people who are not afraid to stand against the ones that stain, lie, cheat and ultimately disgrace said society. Especially when their actions run against the will of the powerful or the law (which defends first and foremost the powerful).
Look into your own history - you greatest heroes were "terrorists". Jesus was terrorist too (to the Jewish priests). In the history of my people our greatest heroes were rebels and "terrorists". Hanged for treason and helping the enemy....
Nonsense. He is right. When authority feels threatened it responds with overwhelming force. Without mercy. Especially towards "our people". So that nobody ever thinks of repeating what this soldier did. It is not exactly news you know, just read a bit of history...
BTW, why realists in the western culture are called either cynical or paranoid?? Brainwashed much?
I say "throw-away society" is the only way to run that travesty of an economy we have. Sad but true. Changing the economy model from Ponzi scheme to sustainable would most likely mean the literal collapse of the “throw-away societies”.
It is said that US became affluent, modern society somewhere around the 30-ies. People woke up one day and saw they have all they need - house, education, health care, communication, transport, clothing and food. The economy was in panic. What to do, people would not buy stuff?! Enter PR stunts, marketing, advertisement, life-style... Check this out for details - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Is there anyone around (especially here, at/.) who believes a single word when businessman and politicians talk about efficiency? What efficiency? In this society, in this day and age?! Where shrimps are farmed in the North sea, shipped to Morocco for pealing and then shipped back to the markets of Northern Europe. The list of such lunacies is endless; in fact MOST products on the market are manufactured in this insane way. From potatoes to Toyota Prius.
Efficiency and sustainability means death of present day society....it means re-shuffle of power, it means nothing less than new world order. It means much more "redundant" people than we have today (already a lot, despite the throw-away culture). Who in their right mind and in position of power would promote such world order, one that is directly pitched AGAINST the existing status quo (where the people in power have found their niches)?
BTW, what do you think "the people" will do if they had more money? Would they continue to patron long-lasting, robust products or would they happily revert to throw-away the moment the crisis is gone? Yhea I though so too....
To summarize:
- The population can act as responsible and wise consumer only if there is a crisis/shortage. Give them back the money and the wise consumer is gone...The consumer mind set of our father's and grandfather's generations is gone forever. It is old-fashioned. It does not promote the economy. It destroys jobs and ruins societies. It is EVIL!!! - The people in power have absolutely no incentive to change in any way. - The Ponzi scheme encompasses the whole planet - every "civilized" society is a throw-away society, the inefficiency being reversely proportional to the wealth.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen! I dread the day when my 22 " Sony CRT will die (it's coming, I can see the sings). Should have bought 2-3 monitors at the end to see me through the next 2 decades. After that I would be too old for gaming anyway.....I did such a preemptive purchase with the Seinheiser PX 100 head phones. Those are brilliant for their price range. No, they are better than many models that are twice as expensive. Fortunately Seihn kept them going, but there was a period when all stock was depleted....
Strange! /. always worked for me smooth as silk except very long threads can take some time to open. I am a lame Windows user and it worked just fine with XP+Firefox and now 7+Firefox.
BUT, on the phone (HTC desire) - tragedy!! Stock browser does not scale the text properly. Opera mini scales OK, but refuses to display more than the 250 comments. Nothing helps - open in new tab, open in new window, the same window - it just does not work. View more stories sometimes works sometimes not but never works from the first try. The Dolphin mini browser - almost impossible to log in and I have the feeling it is often because of the ads disable function - somehow the Dolphin does not like it so after log in I am back at the main page but not logged in. Even more strange - the issue is gone if I am on WiFi but on 3G it is back. It really sucks because I get quite some mod points and do take the responsibility seriously - I read ALL comments and try to pick the good posts that went under the radar. Since I spend 2 hours a day commuting with train, that was a golden opportunity to exercise the mod points. Alas, I tried once giving mod points via the phone and that also went bad.
I am not very good with computers and programming - am I missing something?
Probably half went for the license of the music on the radio stations
Yet again, it is not about nuclear power as such, but HOW we do it. Yet again, profit is ahead of everything. Yet again our bloody Ponzi scheme we call “world economy” is rearing its ugly head. I am literary physically sick from all this.
I am a fan of Japan. I really like this country and its people. But I am not a blind fan-boy. Before Fukushima I held two things against the Japanese - the invention and promotion of industrial fishing and their extreme xenophobic views. Now I have a third issue – the amazing cover-up, sweep under the carpet attitude of TEPCO and the government of Japan.
Somewhere in this thread /. –ter pointed a very informative text on the Chernobyl disaster (on the “green facts” website). Since so many years have passed, scientists are finally generating huge amounts of research and the picture of the disaster and its consequences is rather clear now. I was astounded by the quick response of the authorities to help local people (even though they withheld the truth from the rest of the world for a while). Emergency treatment in the first 30 hours after the blast lowered the contamination levels of the citizens 6 times! Remember this is western site and western report, moreover on “green” web page. These people can hardly be blamed for pro-communist propaganda! Facts like the one stating that for many years up to 20% of the national budget of Ukraine and Belarus was spent on helping the victims totally blew my mind. In total 7 million people were taken care of, compensations and special pensions are paid to this day. Even today a sizeable portion of the national budgets of Ukraine and Belarus (less in Russia since they are much bigger country) go to these people. 4-5 thousand cases of thyroid cancer in children! Other types of cancer did not show statistical correlation but even the above is enough to chill your spine.
Anyway, after reading this I send a small letter to my best friends, who happen to be Japanese family living in Europe. Here is the response I got (all names removed of course).
Quote:
Concerning Fukushima, oh baby make no mistake about it; we are extremely worried too. There are mainly two concerns for us.
1) .’s parents live near Fukushima, approximately 130 km. These people are honest hard-working working-class people who have had no more than high school education. They are unfortunately in no way able to seek out, assimilate and analyze information -let alone distinguishing between convincingly sounding misinformation and pure scientific facts-. They do not feel any need to move out of the area permanently and . and I have given up on that. In stead, we call them every day to keep really stupid ideas out of their heads. Like, "My, what a lovely weather it is this morning. Let's hang all our bed sheets and towels in this fresh air outside!"
2) and I have decided to absolutely not visit Japan the coming period. In the long run we might have to explain to .’s parents why we do not want to visit their house. We expect they won't comprehend our motivation.
The almost total absence of information in the media is very easily explained. TEPCO is the largest shareholder of all; yes ALL, television stations, radio broadcasters, newspapers and Internet providers.
Luckily, some of the Fukushima plant designers, engineers and technicians have thrown away their career (and presumably a whole lot more) and giving interviews to underground environmental organizations. Organizations, which have been labeled as communist or extreme right wing, by the Japanese propaganda machine. These rebel alliances run their own illegal television broadcasts on Internet. The Japanese government, needless to say, is hunting down these illegal Internet streams but of course new sites keep popping up every time they succeed.
Since the quake, . and I have faithfully been watching these daily status updates, presentations and interviews. They
Well then, if I was in charge of the aliens I would do my research well and finding that both you and the person you respond to are right in certain sense I would announce myself by broadcasting over all available channels of communication - radio, TV, Internet. And I would do it in such way that my original message could not be tampered with by anyone. Being able to FLT (I believe space exploration is meaningless and impossible without FLT) this must be very easy to realize.
What?
Exactly the epistemology suggest that the questions to which religion gives answers are meaningless and nothing will ever count as an answer except "I don't know and I should not care".
Infinite regress rings a bell? You CAN ask meaningless questions like "Why?" and "What caused this?" Those questions can be meaningless indeed when applied wrongly.
Because you can ask them forever. Sooner or later your knowledge and understanding will hit the boundaries of your Universe. So what's outside? What was before that? Why? Then you might even find some new facts (Multiverse?) but that puts the preceding question a little bit further out and little bit further back. And you can do this forever. Forever!!! Do you understand the concept of INFINITY?
What religion does is providing answers to meaningless questions and claiming that those are the right answers. And then making people kill each other to prove that their false answer is truer than the others people false answer.
To quote popular fictional character - "Questions don't have to make sense. But answers must."
The most, and I really mean the MOST you can say is represented by the deist view. Since in the observable universe we see that every effect has a cause we have two options:
1. The causality chain extends back into infinity. This is possible but does not provide any useful knoweledge.
2. There was a first cause. We call it god. (pay attention that the nature of the first cause is not specified. God might be an elementary particle of fluctuation of "nothingness" or whatever).
That's it. Anybody that really understands epistemology stops here. Period. And that is the most common "religion" you will find among scientist.
What we have in practice however are people claiming to know who god is, what does he (we even "know" that it is "he") what from us, what he likes and dislikes. And those who disagree will be burned at the stake.
And BTW, biology already provided us with moral norms. To cut it short start from this popular saying " If God tells you to kill your children but you don't, you are an atheist. If you do, you are a madman that needs to be locked."
Eh?!?
Pink Floyd's music is not art? Terry Pratchett's books are not art?!? Picasso's paintings are not art?!? Stanley Kubrick's films are not art?!?
WTF?!?
I know (probably) what you mean, but among the trash entertainment there are the gems that still make big profits and are GREAT art. On the other hand, your rule will work 9 out of 10 times, so you are probably right. Oh well..
Leonard from Quirm appears in a kind of comic book. "The last hero" by Prattchet, I mean.
Now that's an engineer. Too bad Terry did not include bloody stupid Johnson in this story.
How about " Faith is required to believe in the absurd. If it is not absurd you don't need to believe because you know. Faith is a faculty."
....and they tell me my jokes are bad!
Excellent! So they can drop all attempts to regulate the bandwidth. After all we just got 30% wider pipe, did we not?
For those oh so bandwidth hungry mobile devices......
Until we fill all the galaxy. It's only a matter of time, you know.
And I always ask an never get answer - what if the aliens think the same way? Welcome to the new era of....well doing the same things again only bigger and louder On a positive note this time racism is not a problem. To quote the Discworld series - "black and white lived in perfect harmony united against the green".
No children. No car. Travels ones a year by plane. Rides bicycles in cities. Buys as much as possible local food. Doesn't throw anything that still works.
Where are my tax breaks? I see only families with kids having them. Why not me?
No amount of green activity comes even CLOSE to having no kids. Nothing that anybody can do outweighs bringing even one more consumer to the world.
Don't get me wrong. Me and my wife love kids and all our friends are so happy to come visit us with their little ones, because the kids love our attention, care, my movie collection and Star Wars toys. I heard last time one of those kids knowing that they will come on Sunday started pestering the parents already on Friday "let's go, let's go!"
The species must survive. People will breed. But we humans made a declaration approx. 15 000 years ago. We declared that our fate is in our own hands and we refuse to let the gods do their work. We declared to the Universe that the natural constrains are not for us; that we will overcome them. So we did.
Now we face the deadliest enemy yet - ourselves. I've said it many times - we have missed our chance to build truly affluent society. Our perverse Ponzi scheme is coming to an end. It served its purpose; to keep following it means certain death.
A few practicalities:
1. We can feed ourselves with traditional farming. The "GM will save the world" is blatant lie, highly dangerous BS. Again we have put profit in front of sanity and well being.
2. The industrial fishing is "omnicide" activity. Those practicing it should be stopped at all costs. Deadline - yesterday.
3. Education, education, education. The people should know what they are doing. I bet more than half the population is oblivious to what we have done to our planet and what is coming to us if we keep on doing it.
4. 10 kids because God says so? No way, Hose! Get off my planet!
Unpopular?!
In heavy Texas accent - "Those cheese-eating surrender monkeys fired the first shot!"
I can see why :)
is what I call real geek!
Respect, meneer Huub!
So they are against drugs. Isn't this a good thing?!
Yhea, worms!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms_(series)
I like to see this one on my Android phone!
Why personify nature? I realise we all do it to some extent. We have a thing called "luck" (thou master Kenobi disagrees). But let's not overdo it.
As far as I understood, Apple having so much free money means they secure very good deals for high quality components and buy the production capacity for years ahead!!! Anyone else asking for the same components (say a very good screen) pays premium prices, thus their production costs increases.
For the moment this tactics will work splendidly as the manufacturing capacities are still catching up with demand.
I heard this from Apple fan, don't have links or anything...
Butt-licking is even uglier, coward....
The real defenders of a society are the people who are not afraid to stand against the ones that stain, lie, cheat and ultimately disgrace said society. Especially when their actions run against the will of the powerful or the law (which defends first and foremost the powerful).
Look into your own history - you greatest heroes were "terrorists". Jesus was terrorist too (to the Jewish priests). In the history of my people our greatest heroes were rebels and "terrorists". Hanged for treason and helping the enemy....
Nonsense. He is right. When authority feels threatened it responds with overwhelming force. Without mercy. Especially towards "our people". So that nobody ever thinks of repeating what this soldier did. It is not exactly news you know, just read a bit of history...
BTW, why realists in the western culture are called either cynical or paranoid?? Brainwashed much?
And, BTW, which scientific calculator do they mean?
https://market.android.com/search?q=scientific+calculator&c=apps
If there are more than one app with the same name, tell us from which developer are the bad ones. As far as I see the app is still there!
Do they really expect it or know it for sure?
I say "throw-away society" is the only way to run that travesty of an economy we have. Sad but true. Changing the economy model from Ponzi scheme to sustainable would most likely mean the literal collapse of the “throw-away societies”.
It is said that US became affluent, modern society somewhere around the 30-ies. People woke up one day and saw they have all they need - house, education, health care, communication, transport, clothing and food. The economy was in panic. What to do, people would not buy stuff?! Enter PR stunts, marketing, advertisement, life-style... Check this out for details - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Is there anyone around (especially here, at /.) who believes a single word when businessman and politicians talk about efficiency? What efficiency? In this society, in this day and age?! Where shrimps are farmed in the North sea, shipped to Morocco for pealing and then shipped back to the markets of Northern Europe.
The list of such lunacies is endless; in fact MOST products on the market are manufactured in this insane way. From potatoes to Toyota Prius.
Efficiency and sustainability means death of present day society....it means re-shuffle of power, it means nothing less than new world order. It means much more "redundant" people than we have today (already a lot, despite the throw-away culture). Who in their right mind and in position of power would promote such world order, one that is directly pitched AGAINST the existing status quo (where the people in power have found their niches)?
BTW, what do you think "the people" will do if they had more money? Would they continue to patron long-lasting, robust products or would they happily revert to throw-away the moment the crisis is gone? Yhea I though so too....
To summarize:
- The population can act as responsible and wise consumer only if there is a crisis/shortage. Give them back the money and the wise consumer is gone...The consumer mind set of our father's and grandfather's generations is gone forever. It is old-fashioned. It does not promote the economy. It destroys jobs and ruins societies. It is EVIL!!!
- The people in power have absolutely no incentive to change in any way.
- The Ponzi scheme encompasses the whole planet - every "civilized" society is a throw-away society, the inefficiency being reversely proportional to the wealth.
Solution? NONE!
Wipe them out! ALL of them!