Thank you. I always despise people who mindlessly repeat something without ever giving it some critical analysis first. If knowledge were power, then scientists and geniuses would be meeting at the Bilderberg, not just the bank/oil cartel boys (with their social information system lackey twits, of course).
I'm not really interested in hopping into a perfectly good argument here but I feel compelled to note that "knowledge is power" doesn't actually specify the KIND of knowledge. Knowing how to get two atoms to combine in a particularly useful fashion may, depending on your goals, not get you the kind of power you desire. If you're looking to control a country knowledge of political opposition's activities would be far more useful. If you're looking to cause massive amounts of devastation then the former would be quite a bit more useful in the form of a bomb.
Seriously, Jabber alone is one of the biggest OSS failures we've ever seen, behind maybe only Diaspora. It got a huge amount of hype and attention, but could never make anything of it. Sure, there are a small number of companies that use it internally, but it has never really progressed beyond that. It has never gone mainstream in any measurable way.
Have you seen this little thing called "Facebook Chat"?
I wouldn't call Google Talk a failure, either. Especially given that it is the default IM app on all Android phones (and, starting with 2.3.4, also the default voice/video chat app).
Quake Live uses XMPP for all network communication. It's quite a marvel, really, and that's just one rather-popular game. There's plenty of other uses of XMPP in the wild. Just because you close your eyes doesn't mean it's not there for you to see.
That would be part of the problem. The grandparent's perspective is not so much cynical as it's built on another basic philosophy, "you have to know when to cut your losses."
Is it possible to society in the US, at least as far as this particular problem is concerned? Maybe. When considering your own personal well-being and even the well-being of your family and friends would it be better to stay, slog it out, and most likely make little-to-no-headway in the problem or simply pack up, move somewhere else, and start reaping the benefits RIGHT NOW?
This is a personal decision but it's not overly cynical to say we're too far into the problem. Like Ptolemy and Copernicus there's a certain point of tweaking the old model where it just doesn't make sense anymore when you could just move to the new model and make life significantly simpler. Also consider the following: if every pissed off engineer left the country how fast do you think our social elite would bust their asses to change conditions to bring them back? Same end goal, different way to go about it, and in the meantime the engineers get all the benefits.
Personally I think it's too far to bother with saving. Not that I don't think it could be done but people with the power don't give a shit. If they start giving a shit I'll stop looking outside the country for work.
I can already do this with the 360 Slim, the regular 360 as well if you can get ahold of the shell used for the drives. I'm told you could do that with the PS3 but to be honest I don't use mine nearly often enough to both checking it.
Yes, they can. IANAL mind you, but generally anything found would be deemed that it was "open and available" and thus they obviously just happened to find it. This is part of the reason why you make sure they've got a warrant before letting the police or the feds into your home, your car, or otherwise. If they can "see" something illegal then it's deemed admissable.
Is it bullshit? You bet your probably-going-to-be-jailed-at-some-point-in-your-life ass.
I've actually been a fan of my Samsung hard drives. So far they've outlasted every other drive manufacturer I've tried. Now I know that technically they all usually have roughly similar failure rates, but at least from personal experience right about every Samsung product of any kind I've bought I've always gotten great service on and great reliability from, something important for me with hard drives.
Seagate? Not so much. Well, guess it doesn't matter now as like it or not that's who we're getting. Still, I can't imagine a shrinking consumer drive market is very good for the consumer.
Yes, forgiveness. Delightful concept, that. God will forgive me no matter how vindictive, petty, and unforgiving I am. All I have to do is make puppy dog eyes at Him and claim I am really, really sorry. Bonus points if I wait until the very moment before I die to ask for that forgiveness, right?
Yes, that would *indeed* be accurate according to them. Why would it be otherwise? Are you such a vengeful, spiteful person to think they should not be forgiven? What, "cause they didn't mean it?" Yeah, sure, I can't possibly imagine anything wrong with that.
The idea that you can sin as much as you like and just remember to say you're sorry fails to account for the fact that people procrastinate. Suppose you are this vindictive, petty, unforgiving person you claim to be and murder a kennel full of puppies. You get hit (and killed) by a vehicle outside before you can say you're sorry. Kinda screwed yourself, yeah?
While I won't pretend to know what the Christians' God is thinking consider that in death there's seriously not much more punishment that can happen. Why *wouldn't* God forgive anything and everything even the moment before you die? Once you're dead it wouldn't really matter anymore.
In death, all debts are paid. While I disagree with Christians on many things I don't find much fault with forgiveness of grievances upon one's death. Losing one's life is, especially to most Atheists, the greatest of prices to be paid.
I've been scared by horror movies (especially more psychological stuff like The Shining, Session 9, etc.). I've even been scared by novels. But I've never once been scared by a videogame (aside from the cheap "jump a little by a surprise" variety). I've played a lot of games *promising* scares, but I just don't get it. I always feel that I'm in control, and am constantly reminded that it's a game, not real life. So I guess it just doesn't get to me the same way that a movie or novel can.
Everyone else keeps talking about scary games. Am I alone on this?
Not entirely. I experience a lot of fear with a good game (System Shock 2, Dead Space 1/2, so forth) but there's a few things to note about the game experience with very few exceptions:
Part of playing a game is playing the game. Naturally in many of these horror games we fear not being able to play, typically due to some mistake we cannot recover from. If the game does not instill a fear in you that you *could* realistically make a Big Mistake that would stop your play (perhaps you used up all your health kits prior to a very hard area) then you can feel free to just have at it until you run through the area.
Horror, suspense, and fright are all separate emotions. While typically linked they do not have to be. Read Lovecraft sometime for a good example of, "horrific but not particularly frightening." Dead Space 1 and 2 for instance differ in how 1 is a much scarier game since it gives a much higher chance for you to make the Big Mistake whereas 2 is a more horrifying game but not as scary since the chance of the Big Mistake is lower.
For games specifically almost all modern horror games have one weakness: tools. Dead Space, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil, System Shock, and countless others give you the tools you need to fight back the demons of the dark. Shotguns, plasma cutters, save points, and all sorts of other things depending on the game mean that while you can be afraid, you can be horrified by the situation your character is in, but the (virtual) weight of an effective tool in your hands is quite reassuring. Penumbra/Amnesia obviously are *almost* exempt from this (you have a save file, never underestimate the comfort that gives).
Anyway, these are just a few things to keep in mind. Personally I'm torn between Dead Space (1 & 2) and System Shock 2 for my favorite horror games but neither of them are *particularly* scary throughout (I've never felt like I had to put a controller down in my life for fear with any game). They are EXTREMELY horrifying though in how they warp a good and sane world into a psychopathic nightmare with plenty of denizens of the dark wishing to crush the life out of you.
"ARM envisages a time when the only computer you'll ever need is your smartphone."
I'll keep my keyboard and ginormous monitors, thanks. Maybe in a generation or two, when humankind fingers have evolved and are short and pointy... but not now,
Wait a minute, your keyboard is a computer? Your monitors are computers?
Oh I see, you just had no idea. I'll clear it up. Those things we all use and love? Those are *peripherals.* They're supposed to be plugged into, typically, a *computer.* And right now you can plug said peripherals into quite a few types of computer, including small ones that fit in your hand. That way you can make their displays really big and easy to input stuff with a keyboard.
Dunno about that last one but I strongly doubt you have any experience with bed bugs if you think the prior two have anything to do with them. You seriously cannot do a single google search for bed bug causes without pulling up several hundred citations but here's a few highlights:
Dirt does not cause bedbugs.
Age of mattress does not cause bedbugs
Dirty clothing does not cause bedbugs
An astonishing number of things DO NOT CAUSE BEDBUGS
As a corollary, some of the following ARE of interest relating to bed bugs:
Cluttered houses make them harder to get rid of, but do not cause them
You cannot leave traps for them as they feed on blood (unless you fill yourself with Clorox I suppose, though you'd have bigger problems)
They can survive for a good 14 months or so without feeding
They can survive extreme cold (think freezer) for days without issue
They can survive extreme heat almost without issue
Changing sheets/destroying mattresses/other have WORSE effects since you only end up spreading them
They're small enough to live in your freakin electrical outlets, computer case, under your desk at work
The only way to kill the bastards is a complex, multi-front, all-out ASSAULT involving quarantine, chemicals, and a shitload of other invasive stuff
Even after you *think* you've got it contained, they could just be resting for a few months or so (maybe a year, even) to start up all over again. God help you if you made the mistake of having carpet.
Seriously, they're an unholy nightmare, plain and simple, and telling someone, "wash your goddamn sheets," is downright insulting to anyone that's actually had to deal with these bastards.
In the practical sense, I don't see why Android is considered more "open" than iOS.
Source code for the OS helps in this regard.
I realize more of the OS components for Android are fully open source. However, developers are still subject to the rules of the Android store.
Only if they wish to use the Android Market. Unlike iOS you are *not* beholden to the market in any way, shape, or form. That's a huge difference.
The phone manufacturers are carriers still have the final say on which features of the OS are actually shipped intact. Users still have to jailbreak Android phones to side-step these artificial limitations.
The user only has to do that if he chose to buy one that was locked down. Unlike the iPhone a user has a WIDE range of choices on right about every carrier. Want things super-open by default? By the Nexus S. Want a great deal? Get the Droid. Need something somewhere in between? Go and get one of the four standard Galaxy S types (not counting Nexus S obviously).
Love the iPhone but want something a little more open than the stock iPhone 4? Just go and get...oh, right, that doesn't exist. Sorry about that.
Maybe I'm missing some critical bit of information -- and if so, I'd love to be corrected -- but I don't see much of a difference between the "openness" of the two platforms when it comes to practical usage.
For practical usage I bought a phone that suited my budget and my aspirations (easy to mod, good price, on my current carrier). My wife bought a similar phone. I freely chop up and hack mine to my heart's content. She leaves hers pretty much stock, no "jailbreak" or "root." If she wants something not on the Market then she just ticks, "install from third party sources," and no more problem.
Show me where on iOS I can, without modification, install applications outside of the sanctioned store OR get a version of the phone that I can freely and easily flash alternative firmwares (and by easy I mean seriously click a button and it's done...'cause it was designed with that intention). No? That's the fundamental difference.
Only brainless jocks are perceived to have leader quality in the US, as long as you are tough and aggressive.
People think that fear is respect and thus think that the one instilling most fear has to be respected most.
I seem to remember Machiavelli wrote something along the lines of, "Men love at their own will but fear at the will of the Prince."
While actually implementing The Prince is of debatable morality you could make an argument that that's exactly what's happened.
It's like those game consoles that can take a hard drive upgrade, but only if they get to dip their hand into your wallet during the upgrade, selling you an "upgrade kit" that gets you past their clandestine restrictions on swapping of hardware.
Special side note, the Xbox 360 *used* to be like this but mercifully has changed. With the Slim you can now toss any laptop hard drive in the system freely (as I do myself). We always knew they were just SATA drives but now the 360 will let you do everything from export and import over standard USB to and from right about everything as well as use any drive you please (including removing restrictions on storing games and profiles on thumb sticks).
While it definitely kinda sucked that it was *ever* that way the new line of 360s and the current dashboard for *every* 360 is much, much more forgiving about your storage. This argument *may* apply to the PS3 but I've never had to change the drive on a PS3 whereas I've messed around with storage on three or four 360s over the years.
And NYC was once called New Amsterdam, which is derived from the name of a Dutch city in Holland, the Netherlands. QED.
(BTW, the Dutch people I know refer to their home country as Holland; calling it the Netherlands is more formal, while if you're talking about your homeland it's Holland.)
"'Imagine if Mozilla decided tomorrow to build an office suite. Imagine all those ideas. Imagine how brilliant that could be. Just imagine. Now imagine Firefox 4. Honestly, which one of those are you most excited by?"
With lines like that I can't help but think he's going to say, "now imagine a beowulf cluster of Firefoxes."
I always figured that when they found the theory to everything, they would find God. But since the don't believe in Him, they'll never find the theory to everything. At some point, science requires faith. On the religious side, God said the laws are irrevocable and He cannot break them - he knows the science and we are just trying to catch up. (In other words, science and religion/philosophy aren't necessarily at odds.)
I can't say my own views are too far off but there's a critical distinction that needs to be made. "Science" does not require faith (though the scientific COMMUNITY usually does...any non-physicists here test every law of thermodynamics lately?). "Science" is observation and experimentation. If you cannot experiment, you cannot demonstrably repeat it, it's usually not science. This isn't a Bad Thing because there are most likely some things we will never be able to classify under science.
I DO agree that science/religion aren't at odds...but only because when done properly the two have nothing to do with each other. One's about the How of the world working and the other's about the Why.
It's important to understand the difference between Religion/Philosophy and Science. The communities and people may have issues (kinda like our "faith" in Open Source...I haven't personally inspected the Linux kernel, but I believe that others have and what they tell me about it. Until I test it for myself I can't claim I'm doing science with it) but they are very, very distinct.
No, I think you're still missing what the GP is talking about as it's all-encompassing with respect to your argument.
Yes, it's hard to do. Exactly when has that ever stopped us before? You seriously cannot look five feet from you and not see something that just a thousand years ago (and really short period of time) wasn't completely and totally impossible in every sense of the word. The only constant in our knowledge is that what we know today will someday be replaced by a greater understanding. To quote the oft-quoted line, "Imagine what you'll 'know' tomorrow."
As far as it being pointless to survive I not-so-humbly disagree. Part of the point OF being mortal is that we are supposed to survive. It's what we do. It's what we've done for centuries, millennium, and will continue to do until past the point where it would seem impossible to continue to (as we have before). We're wired that way and damned proud of it for better or for worse. The birthright of living things is to rage against the all-encompassing void. No creature and especially humans have ever achieved anything of value by sitting around and making ourselves comfortable and waiting for death. If you'd like to be the first I don't think anyone else will mind; we'll be too busy trying to make some sort of a difference for future generations, enjoy our current generation, and honor past generations.
But to summarize, yes, these things are hard. Moving off-world is a seemingly impossible task. But we were born to do impossible things. We have done impossible things. We like doing impossible things.
Yes, the photographer already was. To understand your argument properly I've modified your argument to fit the music industry:
What the hell are you smoking? The artist was already paid by the record label, you dope, at least in cases where the recording was made at a record company's site. The record label gets their return by having a short audio clip/radio play/online download/other advertisement of the song or album for people who want one and consider a purchase. How in the HELL does an internal database of these in ANY way impact that business?
The problem with this argument is that it makes the assumption that private, non-commercial use of a professional work (in this case the artwork or song clip...both of which ARE works made by professionals) is "okay," which it is not. If for some bizarre reason I made a database of all the clips on Amazon.com I'd *still* be sued because I didn't pay to use them. This is further complicated by the fact that the Police in most first-world countries are a PUBLIC organization, as in not private.
I think the claim is ridiculous but well-justified by the law. If the officers charged with upholding that law cannot abide by it how do you expect a lowly citizen to?
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you. I always despise people who mindlessly repeat something without ever giving it some critical analysis first. If knowledge were power, then scientists and geniuses would be meeting at the Bilderberg, not just the bank/oil cartel boys (with their social information system lackey twits, of course).
I'm not really interested in hopping into a perfectly good argument here but I feel compelled to note that "knowledge is power" doesn't actually specify the KIND of knowledge. Knowing how to get two atoms to combine in a particularly useful fashion may, depending on your goals, not get you the kind of power you desire. If you're looking to control a country knowledge of political opposition's activities would be far more useful. If you're looking to cause massive amounts of devastation then the former would be quite a bit more useful in the form of a bomb.
Seriously, Jabber alone is one of the biggest OSS failures we've ever seen, behind maybe only Diaspora. It got a huge amount of hype and attention, but could never make anything of it. Sure, there are a small number of companies that use it internally, but it has never really progressed beyond that. It has never gone mainstream in any measurable way.
Have you seen this little thing called "Facebook Chat"?
I wouldn't call Google Talk a failure, either. Especially given that it is the default IM app on all Android phones (and, starting with 2.3.4, also the default voice/video chat app).
Quake Live uses XMPP for all network communication. It's quite a marvel, really, and that's just one rather-popular game. There's plenty of other uses of XMPP in the wild. Just because you close your eyes doesn't mean it's not there for you to see.
As a recently graduated engineer [...]
That would be part of the problem. The grandparent's perspective is not so much cynical as it's built on another basic philosophy, "you have to know when to cut your losses."
Is it possible to society in the US, at least as far as this particular problem is concerned? Maybe. When considering your own personal well-being and even the well-being of your family and friends would it be better to stay, slog it out, and most likely make little-to-no-headway in the problem or simply pack up, move somewhere else, and start reaping the benefits RIGHT NOW?
This is a personal decision but it's not overly cynical to say we're too far into the problem. Like Ptolemy and Copernicus there's a certain point of tweaking the old model where it just doesn't make sense anymore when you could just move to the new model and make life significantly simpler. Also consider the following: if every pissed off engineer left the country how fast do you think our social elite would bust their asses to change conditions to bring them back? Same end goal, different way to go about it, and in the meantime the engineers get all the benefits.
Personally I think it's too far to bother with saving. Not that I don't think it could be done but people with the power don't give a shit. If they start giving a shit I'll stop looking outside the country for work.
I can already do this with the 360 Slim, the regular 360 as well if you can get ahold of the shell used for the drives. I'm told you could do that with the PS3 but to be honest I don't use mine nearly often enough to both checking it.
Yes, they can. IANAL mind you, but generally anything found would be deemed that it was "open and available" and thus they obviously just happened to find it. This is part of the reason why you make sure they've got a warrant before letting the police or the feds into your home, your car, or otherwise. If they can "see" something illegal then it's deemed admissable.
Is it bullshit? You bet your probably-going-to-be-jailed-at-some-point-in-your-life ass.
I dunno, keeping people from killing each other sounds like a worthy pursuit to me.
Disclaimer: I'm not in any way affiliated with Palantir.
Palantir Mobile
My bet? It's to use more of this. Seriously seeing Palantir Mobile in action is bloody freakin awesome.
I've actually been a fan of my Samsung hard drives. So far they've outlasted every other drive manufacturer I've tried. Now I know that technically they all usually have roughly similar failure rates, but at least from personal experience right about every Samsung product of any kind I've bought I've always gotten great service on and great reliability from, something important for me with hard drives.
Seagate? Not so much. Well, guess it doesn't matter now as like it or not that's who we're getting. Still, I can't imagine a shrinking consumer drive market is very good for the consumer.
How can you secure an OS against users who click "yes"?
Easy, install Vista!
Yes, forgiveness. Delightful concept, that. God will forgive me no matter how vindictive, petty, and unforgiving I am. All I have to do is make puppy dog eyes at Him and claim I am really, really sorry. Bonus points if I wait until the very moment before I die to ask for that forgiveness, right?
Yes, that would *indeed* be accurate according to them. Why would it be otherwise? Are you such a vengeful, spiteful person to think they should not be forgiven? What, "cause they didn't mean it?" Yeah, sure, I can't possibly imagine anything wrong with that.
The idea that you can sin as much as you like and just remember to say you're sorry fails to account for the fact that people procrastinate. Suppose you are this vindictive, petty, unforgiving person you claim to be and murder a kennel full of puppies. You get hit (and killed) by a vehicle outside before you can say you're sorry. Kinda screwed yourself, yeah?
While I won't pretend to know what the Christians' God is thinking consider that in death there's seriously not much more punishment that can happen. Why *wouldn't* God forgive anything and everything even the moment before you die? Once you're dead it wouldn't really matter anymore.
In death, all debts are paid. While I disagree with Christians on many things I don't find much fault with forgiveness of grievances upon one's death. Losing one's life is, especially to most Atheists, the greatest of prices to be paid.
I've been scared by horror movies (especially more psychological stuff like The Shining, Session 9, etc.). I've even been scared by novels. But I've never once been scared by a videogame (aside from the cheap "jump a little by a surprise" variety). I've played a lot of games *promising* scares, but I just don't get it. I always feel that I'm in control, and am constantly reminded that it's a game, not real life. So I guess it just doesn't get to me the same way that a movie or novel can.
Everyone else keeps talking about scary games. Am I alone on this?
Not entirely. I experience a lot of fear with a good game (System Shock 2, Dead Space 1/2, so forth) but there's a few things to note about the game experience with very few exceptions:
Anyway, these are just a few things to keep in mind. Personally I'm torn between Dead Space (1 & 2) and System Shock 2 for my favorite horror games but neither of them are *particularly* scary throughout (I've never felt like I had to put a controller down in my life for fear with any game). They are EXTREMELY horrifying though in how they warp a good and sane world into a psychopathic nightmare with plenty of denizens of the dark wishing to crush the life out of you.
"ARM envisages a time when the only computer you'll ever need is your smartphone." I'll keep my keyboard and ginormous monitors, thanks. Maybe in a generation or two, when humankind fingers have evolved and are short and pointy ... but not now,
Wait a minute, your keyboard is a computer? Your monitors are computers?
Oh I see, you just had no idea. I'll clear it up. Those things we all use and love? Those are *peripherals.* They're supposed to be plugged into, typically, a *computer.* And right now you can plug said peripherals into quite a few types of computer, including small ones that fit in your hand. That way you can make their displays really big and easy to input stuff with a keyboard.
Technology's just amazing isn't it?
Skype, for one. Google for some of their apps like Earth. VLC. You know, quite a few things, really.
What about a bed that eats bed bugs?
Already "invented", it's called washing your goddamn sheets / replacing your 20 year old mattress / NOT making your bed right after getting up
Dunno about that last one but I strongly doubt you have any experience with bed bugs if you think the prior two have anything to do with them. You seriously cannot do a single google search for bed bug causes without pulling up several hundred citations but here's a few highlights:
As a corollary, some of the following ARE of interest relating to bed bugs:
Seriously, they're an unholy nightmare, plain and simple, and telling someone, "wash your goddamn sheets," is downright insulting to anyone that's actually had to deal with these bastards.
In the practical sense, I don't see why Android is considered more "open" than iOS.
Source code for the OS helps in this regard.
I realize more of the OS components for Android are fully open source. However, developers are still subject to the rules of the Android store.
Only if they wish to use the Android Market. Unlike iOS you are *not* beholden to the market in any way, shape, or form. That's a huge difference.
The phone manufacturers are carriers still have the final say on which features of the OS are actually shipped intact. Users still have to jailbreak Android phones to side-step these artificial limitations.
The user only has to do that if he chose to buy one that was locked down. Unlike the iPhone a user has a WIDE range of choices on right about every carrier. Want things super-open by default? By the Nexus S. Want a great deal? Get the Droid. Need something somewhere in between? Go and get one of the four standard Galaxy S types (not counting Nexus S obviously).
Love the iPhone but want something a little more open than the stock iPhone 4? Just go and get...oh, right, that doesn't exist. Sorry about that.
Maybe I'm missing some critical bit of information -- and if so, I'd love to be corrected -- but I don't see much of a difference between the "openness" of the two platforms when it comes to practical usage.
For practical usage I bought a phone that suited my budget and my aspirations (easy to mod, good price, on my current carrier). My wife bought a similar phone. I freely chop up and hack mine to my heart's content. She leaves hers pretty much stock, no "jailbreak" or "root." If she wants something not on the Market then she just ticks, "install from third party sources," and no more problem.
Show me where on iOS I can, without modification, install applications outside of the sanctioned store OR get a version of the phone that I can freely and easily flash alternative firmwares (and by easy I mean seriously click a button and it's done...'cause it was designed with that intention). No? That's the fundamental difference.
Only brainless jocks are perceived to have leader quality in the US, as long as you are tough and aggressive. People think that fear is respect and thus think that the one instilling most fear has to be respected most.
I seem to remember Machiavelli wrote something along the lines of, "Men love at their own will but fear at the will of the Prince."
While actually implementing The Prince is of debatable morality you could make an argument that that's exactly what's happened.
Is there no steel left in the American soul?
Thanks to numerous typos on the Internet we have, "steal," not steel. That's probably where the problem comes from.
It's like those game consoles that can take a hard drive upgrade, but only if they get to dip their hand into your wallet during the upgrade, selling you an "upgrade kit" that gets you past their clandestine restrictions on swapping of hardware.
Special side note, the Xbox 360 *used* to be like this but mercifully has changed. With the Slim you can now toss any laptop hard drive in the system freely (as I do myself). We always knew they were just SATA drives but now the 360 will let you do everything from export and import over standard USB to and from right about everything as well as use any drive you please (including removing restrictions on storing games and profiles on thumb sticks).
While it definitely kinda sucked that it was *ever* that way the new line of 360s and the current dashboard for *every* 360 is much, much more forgiving about your storage. This argument *may* apply to the PS3 but I've never had to change the drive on a PS3 whereas I've messed around with storage on three or four 360s over the years.
And NYC was once called New Amsterdam, which is derived from the name of a Dutch city in Holland, the Netherlands. QED.
(BTW, the Dutch people I know refer to their home country as Holland; calling it the Netherlands is more formal, while if you're talking about your homeland it's Holland.)
Seriously I think my head just exploded.
"'Imagine if Mozilla decided tomorrow to build an office suite. Imagine all those ideas. Imagine how brilliant that could be. Just imagine. Now imagine Firefox 4. Honestly, which one of those are you most excited by?"
With lines like that I can't help but think he's going to say, "now imagine a beowulf cluster of Firefoxes."
Beats the hell out of their Hamm's Hippopotamus release.
I was still holding out for Narcoleptic Nightingale.
I take it you went down the road of 'screw appearances' :)
Dude, it's CIA. I severely doubt they're worried about appearances. :P
I always figured that when they found the theory to everything, they would find God. But since the don't believe in Him, they'll never find the theory to everything. At some point, science requires faith. On the religious side, God said the laws are irrevocable and He cannot break them - he knows the science and we are just trying to catch up. (In other words, science and religion/philosophy aren't necessarily at odds.)
I can't say my own views are too far off but there's a critical distinction that needs to be made. "Science" does not require faith (though the scientific COMMUNITY usually does...any non-physicists here test every law of thermodynamics lately?). "Science" is observation and experimentation. If you cannot experiment, you cannot demonstrably repeat it, it's usually not science. This isn't a Bad Thing because there are most likely some things we will never be able to classify under science.
I DO agree that science/religion aren't at odds...but only because when done properly the two have nothing to do with each other. One's about the How of the world working and the other's about the Why.
It's important to understand the difference between Religion/Philosophy and Science. The communities and people may have issues (kinda like our "faith" in Open Source...I haven't personally inspected the Linux kernel, but I believe that others have and what they tell me about it. Until I test it for myself I can't claim I'm doing science with it) but they are very, very distinct.
No, I think you're still missing what the GP is talking about as it's all-encompassing with respect to your argument.
Yes, it's hard to do. Exactly when has that ever stopped us before? You seriously cannot look five feet from you and not see something that just a thousand years ago (and really short period of time) wasn't completely and totally impossible in every sense of the word. The only constant in our knowledge is that what we know today will someday be replaced by a greater understanding. To quote the oft-quoted line, "Imagine what you'll 'know' tomorrow."
As far as it being pointless to survive I not-so-humbly disagree. Part of the point OF being mortal is that we are supposed to survive. It's what we do. It's what we've done for centuries, millennium, and will continue to do until past the point where it would seem impossible to continue to (as we have before). We're wired that way and damned proud of it for better or for worse. The birthright of living things is to rage against the all-encompassing void. No creature and especially humans have ever achieved anything of value by sitting around and making ourselves comfortable and waiting for death. If you'd like to be the first I don't think anyone else will mind; we'll be too busy trying to make some sort of a difference for future generations, enjoy our current generation, and honor past generations.
But to summarize, yes, these things are hard. Moving off-world is a seemingly impossible task. But we were born to do impossible things. We have done impossible things. We like doing impossible things.
What the hell are you smoking? The artist was already paid by the record label, you dope, at least in cases where the recording was made at a record company's site. The record label gets their return by having a short audio clip/radio play/online download/other advertisement of the song or album for people who want one and consider a purchase. How in the HELL does an internal database of these in ANY way impact that business?
The problem with this argument is that it makes the assumption that private, non-commercial use of a professional work (in this case the artwork or song clip...both of which ARE works made by professionals) is "okay," which it is not. If for some bizarre reason I made a database of all the clips on Amazon.com I'd *still* be sued because I didn't pay to use them. This is further complicated by the fact that the Police in most first-world countries are a PUBLIC organization, as in not private.
I think the claim is ridiculous but well-justified by the law. If the officers charged with upholding that law cannot abide by it how do you expect a lowly citizen to?