I agree with your sentiment overall, but don't you worry that some quieter traditions will die out if they're not protected? Certain memes are insidiously catchy, but not necessarily beneficial.
In other words, how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
The problem with game peripherals is that the sell through rate is so low that not enough people buy them to make it worthwhile to create games that fully exploit the hardware.
So even if the game is just a pair of cheap glasses with leds on them it might not sell just because of that little extra expense.
Someone should figure out a way to make a game that uses this without buying any extra hardware - you might have a winner. Ummm... ever hear of Guitar Hero?
What would a longer lifespan do to the crime rate, the economy, war, and practically anything else you can think off? If you're saying that a longer lifespan would increase the world population, you're right. However, starting at 40 would essentially halve the reproduction rate (assuming a currently starting age of 20). Even if families averaged the same number of children, it would be like compounding interest bi-annually instead of annually.
It seems to me that increasing average lifespan would reduce crime since old people are less violent in general. For the economy to remain in balance, retirement age needs to increase in proportion to life expectancy. As for war, I have no idea.
It might be interesting to compare Japan's society 20 years ago with today since the average age is rapidly increasing there.
...stop thinking they are automatically the greatest nation on Earth just because they are America, and realise that the rest of the world...
You should talk, you can't even spell!
U-S-A! U-S-A!
You've implied a false choice, namely, that either 1) We stop Iran from going nuclear or 2) We get nuked. Nine nations have acquired nuclear weapons and yet they haven't been used since WWII. To claim that Iran will use their nukes against the US (or its allies) is to assume that they are collectively suicidal. This assumption seems rather far-fetched to me, and a lousy basis for a foreign policy.
I'd like to know which factors have allowed (forced?) the disk storage industry to continue to advance at such a steady pace. I am well aware of Moore's Law and Kryder's Law, but these are just observations, not explanations.
Why haven't we seen similar improvements in fuel efficiency or internet bandwidth (in the US at least)?
About a year ago I was modifying a document typed by a European student and I kept noticing that he had used single spaces between all his sentences. When I mentioned it to him, he said that's the way he was taught. Upon looking into the matter, I read that double spacing between sentences was actually a temporary measure for use on typewriters and never as standard as I thought.
A year later, I'm fully acclimated to the single space. Old dog, new tricks...
The CA30 has a microphone. I just bought my second one (thinking I had lost the first). They're about $20 and run for years off of a watch battery. I'm sure there are better tuners (I've read good things about $200 strobe tuners) but for the money, it's quite a value.
I'm a guitar player with solid callouses and I can tell you that bass and mandolin are both rough on my fingers. The callouses for each must be different in some way. After playing mandolin for a week my fingers adjusted and I could play mandolin and guitar just fine. I haven't played bass enough to get bass callouses.
1: Yes, it is. In fact, it's a classic acronym, written C.D. for the truly pendantic. (D.V.D.'s are the same way.) Acronyms are a subset of abbreviation, that tosses the absolute maximum out. My understanding is that an acronym is an abbreviation(*) that is spoken as a word (e.g. RADAR, NASA, AIDS, etc.). If you say the letters (USA, NAACP, etc.), it's an abbreviation.
* - Or, a concatenation of word chunks (International Police -> INTERPOL)
I'm not for a second going to defend the decision to invade Iraq or excuse the lack of planning. It was almost certain to go badly and their inability to recognize this fact shows an unfathomably deep level of incompetence. I'm not, however, sure that it shows malice. Recklessness and callousness, almost certainly.
Isn't it simpler to assume that their positive thinking got the best of them than that they actually wanted to get us into a situation like this? I know what 1994 Cheney said, but keep in mind that he was defending the decision, made years earlier, not to invade Baghdad. It's possible that he had wanted to invade in 1991 and was showing public solidarity with his boss' decision.
The point of my blathering is that there's a real lesson here if we can extract it. The decision-making process can be quickly co-opted by groupthink if we only listen to people with the same ideology as ourselves. This applies to people with any political inclination, from the offices of power to the lowly message boards online.
Allow me to play devil's advocate by arguing that the 8+ years of sanctions between 1994 and 2003 may have changed the situation in Iraq. Saddam would had been weakened, and there had come into being an opposition group (the Iraqi National Congress) that could have been viewed as a viable candidate to fill the void.
It's possible that 1994 Cheney believed what he was saying and, though some series of events, came to believe the claims made by 2003 Cheney. On March 16th, 2003, Cheney said the following on Meet the Press:
...I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators. I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with various groups and individuals, people who've devoted their lives from the outside to try and change things inside of Iraq.
The read we get on the people of Iraq is there's no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
So maybe Cheney was convinced by Ahmed Chalabi and the other Iraqi exiles that, once Saddam was gone, they'd be there to come in and run things. What a seductive idea: replace Saddam with their own little puppet. Of course, Chalabi was feeding them a stream of lies, but they were the right lies.
Your basic claim (lifted straight from Jon Stewart, I might add;), is that they chose to go into Iraq, knowing it would go like it has. One could instead side with Hanlon and conclude they were sincere, just stupid. I'm not sure which is the better alternative, but there you have it.
I'm not sure if you're really looking for answers, but I'll assume you are.
First, there was a great cosmic event that created the universe out of nothing...? The Big Bang Theory doesn't claim that there was nothing before the bang, just that there was one. There may have been a big, slow, gravitational collapse beforehand, but no one really knows. It's impossible to know.
Then along comes a clap of thunder and a bolt of lighting and POOF! there is life (from nothing again)...? There are many hypotheses as to how life on Earth began. The only place I've seen the one you mentioned is in Genesis.
That simple one celled being morphed into all living creatures past and present! No one claims that a one-celled organism morphed into all living creatures. The claim is that the one-celled organism created offspring that created offspring that... that were a little different from the ones before. When you run this process for hundreds of millions of years, you get a huge family tree with lots of branches.
If you're actually interested in what the theory of evolution actually claims, you should read about it. If you still think it's bogus, fine, but you should at least know what it really says.
Re:Put your soul where your mouth is...
on
Why Myths Persist
·
· Score: 1
I actually tried that once. My wording, in fact, was nearly identical. I, like Luke before me, found myself standing in the rain, talking to myself.
It all depends on where you live. I agree that flying cars will still be absent, as will rocket packs and household robots who will rub your feet while you complain about your boss. However, if you live in Africa and now carry a cell phone, it's not just an untethered version of what you had in the 90's, it's your first phone. If you live in Iraq, your life is very different from a decade ago.
In the next decade, we may actually make a real shift away from fossil fuels. We will probably see plug-in electric cars that don't burn any gas at all. We may see electronic surveillance become so prevalent that anything that happens will be recorded and made available online. This might seem trivial, but it's not. Imagine a digital camera with satellite uplink capabilities put into the hands of people in conflict regions like Darfur. Pictures make it real and undeniable. That would change the world.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with your sentiment overall, but don't you worry that some quieter traditions will die out if they're not protected? Certain memes are insidiously catchy, but not necessarily beneficial.
In other words, how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
It seems to me that increasing average lifespan would reduce crime since old people are less violent in general. For the economy to remain in balance, retirement age needs to increase in proportion to life expectancy. As for war, I have no idea.
It might be interesting to compare Japan's society 20 years ago with today since the average age is rapidly increasing there.
No, it's a magic dance move, and it's the only shot we have to save the community center.
...stop thinking they are automatically the greatest nation on Earth just because they are America, and realise that the rest of the world...You should talk, you can't even spell!
U-S-A! U-S-A!
You've implied a false choice, namely, that either 1) We stop Iran from going nuclear or 2) We get nuked. Nine nations have acquired nuclear weapons and yet they haven't been used since WWII. To claim that Iran will use their nukes against the US (or its allies) is to assume that they are collectively suicidal. This assumption seems rather far-fetched to me, and a lousy basis for a foreign policy.
I'd like to know which factors have allowed (forced?) the disk storage industry to continue to advance at such a steady pace. I am well aware of Moore's Law and Kryder's Law, but these are just observations, not explanations.
Why haven't we seen similar improvements in fuel efficiency or internet bandwidth (in the US at least)?
You sir, have hit the nail directly on the head.
About a year ago I was modifying a document typed by a European student and I kept noticing that he had used single spaces between all his sentences. When I mentioned it to him, he said that's the way he was taught. Upon looking into the matter, I read that double spacing between sentences was actually a temporary measure for use on typewriters and never as standard as I thought.
A year later, I'm fully acclimated to the single space. Old dog, new tricks...
The CA30 has a microphone. I just bought my second one (thinking I had lost the first). They're about $20 and run for years off of a watch battery. I'm sure there are better tuners (I've read good things about $200 strobe tuners) but for the money, it's quite a value.
I have no affiliation with Korg.
I'm a guitar player with solid callouses and I can tell you that bass and mandolin are both rough on my fingers. The callouses for each must be different in some way. After playing mandolin for a week my fingers adjusted and I could play mandolin and guitar just fine. I haven't played bass enough to get bass callouses.
That's pretty close to the way the Line6 Variax guitars work.
This guitar actually has servos that turn the tuning pegs. That's not anything like a line6.
* - Or, a concatenation of word chunks (International Police -> INTERPOL)
I'm not for a second going to defend the decision to invade Iraq or excuse the lack of planning. It was almost certain to go badly and their inability to recognize this fact shows an unfathomably deep level of incompetence. I'm not, however, sure that it shows malice. Recklessness and callousness, almost certainly.
Isn't it simpler to assume that their positive thinking got the best of them than that they actually wanted to get us into a situation like this? I know what 1994 Cheney said, but keep in mind that he was defending the decision, made years earlier, not to invade Baghdad. It's possible that he had wanted to invade in 1991 and was showing public solidarity with his boss' decision.
The point of my blathering is that there's a real lesson here if we can extract it. The decision-making process can be quickly co-opted by groupthink if we only listen to people with the same ideology as ourselves. This applies to people with any political inclination, from the offices of power to the lowly message boards online.
It's possible that 1994 Cheney believed what he was saying and, though some series of events, came to believe the claims made by 2003 Cheney. On March 16th, 2003, Cheney said the following on Meet the Press:
...I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators. I've talked with a lot of Iraqis in the last several months myself, had them to the White House. The president and I have met with various groups and individuals, people who've devoted their lives from the outside to try and change things inside of Iraq. The read we get on the people of Iraq is there's no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.So maybe Cheney was convinced by Ahmed Chalabi and the other Iraqi exiles that, once Saddam was gone, they'd be there to come in and run things. What a seductive idea: replace Saddam with their own little puppet. Of course, Chalabi was feeding them a stream of lies, but they were the right lies.
Your basic claim (lifted straight from Jon Stewart, I might add
Dammit, how about a spoiler alert! Not everyone's a speed reader.
This, written within seconds of the story going live.
First, there was a great cosmic event that created the universe out of nothing...? The Big Bang Theory doesn't claim that there was nothing before the bang, just that there was one. There may have been a big, slow, gravitational collapse beforehand, but no one really knows. It's impossible to know.
Then along comes a clap of thunder and a bolt of lighting and POOF! there is life (from nothing again)...? There are many hypotheses as to how life on Earth began. The only place I've seen the one you mentioned is in Genesis.
That simple one celled being morphed into all living creatures past and present! No one claims that a one-celled organism morphed into all living creatures. The claim is that the one-celled organism created offspring that created offspring that
If you're actually interested in what the theory of evolution actually claims, you should read about it. If you still think it's bogus, fine, but you should at least know what it really says.
I actually tried that once. My wording, in fact, was nearly identical. I, like Luke before me, found myself standing in the rain, talking to myself.
It all depends on where you live. I agree that flying cars will still be absent, as will rocket packs and household robots who will rub your feet while you complain about your boss. However, if you live in Africa and now carry a cell phone, it's not just an untethered version of what you had in the 90's, it's your first phone. If you live in Iraq, your life is very different from a decade ago.
In the next decade, we may actually make a real shift away from fossil fuels. We will probably see plug-in electric cars that don't burn any gas at all. We may see electronic surveillance become so prevalent that anything that happens will be recorded and made available online. This might seem trivial, but it's not. Imagine a digital camera with satellite uplink capabilities put into the hands of people in conflict regions like Darfur. Pictures make it real and undeniable. That would change the world.
Yeah, I realized right after posting that I was thinking 20 years. You're right - I sure could stand to wake up.
Hmmm... how about the WWW? I hear it's all the rage.
Nope.
:)