We're not legally bound in castes these days - but our languages are much, much older than our legal constructs.
I'm seeing not much reduction in how much people swear.
You're not? How about the words "ass", "bitch" and "piss" There was a time these words were all considered pretty offensive, on par with "fuck" or "cunt." Today, most adults bandy them about without even thinking about it. It's not the use of the words that decreases with time, but the perceived offense associated with them.
Exactly. My inlaws are on Comcast. Their youngest daughter is currently in Thailand, teaching english. Because of the high cost of international calls, they've been using Skype to communicate. At my house (non-comcast) we can use Skype without issue. At my inlaws, they're lucky to get a minute and a half at a time without losing the connection.
In an anthropology class I took in college, the professor mentioned that in cultures without a caste system, there are no swear words. Swear words evolve in caste systems as a way for "higher" people to differentiate themselves from "lower" people. Up to that point, words are just words.
Is the right to bear arms really a key element to protest against excessive government control? Perhaps. To me, however, the 2nd amendment has more to do with the individual's right to self-defense. Without weapons, the responsibility for the safety and well-being of The People falls, de-facto, on the state. If confronted by an armed attacker (who you must admit, is not likely to care that the weapon he carries is banned) I would not want to be in a society which requires me to be protected by someone who may or may not be present.
With the right to bear arms, however, I as an individual have the right to provide for my own defense in the (admittedly exceptional) situations which may require it.
So what would you do about cases like my brother? He's a physics major and he has an IQ over 150, but he suffers from an anxiety disorder that makes his test performance terrible. Normal homework assignments on the other hand, he can usually do in his head. I understand what you're getting at, but I don't think that witch hunts are ever a solution.
Heh... My wife and I are currently in the beginning phases of doing just that. We decided to move to Australia (on a whim. Just sounded like fun). That didn't work out, but in the process we discovered that we don't need or want 90% of our junk. We've literally emptied out rooms full of possessions we thought we needed until we had to decide whether it was worth hauling it across an ocean. Suddenly, most *things* just didn't matter any more.
Glad to hear it's working out for you. Here's hoping we'll be joining the club sometime soon.
he'd have only bumped up a few of his grades, not given himself straight "A"s. Actually, I had some friends in high school who did just that. And, sure enough, they got away with it. It helped that they were already good students and so it wasn't major changes. Just a few bumps across the board to go from an B+ to an A.
The fun thing was when people would pick on them, they'd go and mark that person absent for several days through the semester. See, the grading program would automatically fail anyone with more than 6 absences in a class...
Yep. It's like being a magician. Once your audience knows the trick, it's not magic anymore. Once we understand a task well enough to teach a computer to do it... it's not magic anymore, so it's not AI. I, for one, don't really understand why we assume that if intelligence is possible for machines that it will act just like human intelligence. Our brains are structured in fundamentally different ways from computers. Why should machine intelligence act like biological intelligence?
I understand (and agree with) your frustration. The reason for this (WRT video game consoles, anyway) is that unlocked hardware is one of the things that contributed to the fall of Atari back in the early 80s. In particular, the Atari 2600 had no barriers preventing people from writing their own cartridges for it. At first, this was a good thing, as it increased the overall value of the 2600. Later in life, however, Atari had managed to piss off many of it's best developers, who then spun off to create Activision. At the same time, plenty of shovelware companies were dumping everything they could onto the market. The result: if you wanted good games, you bought Activision titles. If you wanted cheap games, you bought the shovelware. Atari's own games weren't moving and since the market for new *consoles* was already pretty well saturated (the current upgrade treadmill of console development hadn't been invented yet), the bottom fell out of Atari's profits.
Of course, shortly thereafter, the NES showed up - and one of it's main features was a hardware lock which prevented unauthorized software from running on it*. This has been the standard ever since.
*This is, incidentally why you get the annoying gray screen when you try to play dirty NES carts - the contacts aren't making a good enough connection to transmit the unlock code.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm pretty sure you're not the first to say "Holy Shit!" I mean, there's even an album. If you wanted to be truly the first to say, you should have tried something more like:
"Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers."
True story: An Indian telemarketer called my brother one day and gave his name as "Abraham Lincoln." Apparently, they had been instructed to use Western names...
True story: An Indian telemarketer called my brother one day and gave his name as "Abraham Lincoln." Apparently, they had been instructed to use Western names...
Take one common cause of genetic problems - inbreeding. I get your point, but this is, in fact, false. Genetic traits are inherited from one's parents. Being inbred simply increases the likelihood of receiving the same bad recessive gene from both parents. It also increases the likelihood of receiving the same beneficial gene from both parents. The odds are roughly the same, but because harmful genetic traits are typically more obvious than beneficial ones, they get all the press.
Pro tip: Even though this post implies you're just as likely to get superman as not, sleeping with your sister is typically frowned upon and may be considered a major social faux pas!
So, a few years back, I noticed some of my (less than genius) co-workers were playing with - and solving - the Rubik's Cube! I'd had a cube since I was a kid, but had never learned to solve it, but I figured if these guys could do it, I could do it. Over the next month I spent literally every free moment messing with the cube until I finally taught myself how to solve the damn thing. I was so proud.
As a reward, I went out and bought a new cube, like the ones my co-workers had. I got it home, opened my new cube... and discovered that they come with instructions now.
My first computer was a 286 running DOS, so I'm not in quite as much trouble WRT finding machinery to read my old code. That being said though, I've been religiously bringing my old data forward as different storage formats have become obsolete. My 5.25" disks got copied to single-sided 3.5", then dual sided 3.5", then CDs (briefly) Zip Disks and now I'm in the process of moving my archives to DVD. I'll be amazed if any of this crap is ever of interest to anyone but me, but I find it fun to go back from time to time and revisit some of my old favorite games and (terrible) code I wrote as a kid.
On lighting: I agree wholeheartedly. I think DooM3 would have been made infinitely more enjoyable if the lights had come up after awhile. I feel the darkness was best used early on to set mood, but after awhile, just got irritating.
If they had gone that route, after the lights came back up (in most areas) and we've established that all Hell has broken loose on Mars, a transition into more open arenas with lots of hell minions would have been more entertaining (and arguably scarier due to variation) than the constant "haunted house" gameplay we got instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Mnemonics. It's easier to remember. That is a particularly bizarre construction they've come up with, though.
I'm seeing not much reduction in how much people swear.
You're not? How about the words "ass", "bitch" and "piss" There was a time these words were all considered pretty offensive, on par with "fuck" or "cunt." Today, most adults bandy them about without even thinking about it. It's not the use of the words that decreases with time, but the perceived offense associated with them.
Blaspheme!!!11!!1
..Okay, uh, Zeus sucks?
Exactly. My inlaws are on Comcast. Their youngest daughter is currently in Thailand, teaching english. Because of the high cost of international calls, they've been using Skype to communicate. At my house (non-comcast) we can use Skype without issue. At my inlaws, they're lucky to get a minute and a half at a time without losing the connection.
In an anthropology class I took in college, the professor mentioned that in cultures without a caste system, there are no swear words. Swear words evolve in caste systems as a way for "higher" people to differentiate themselves from "lower" people. Up to that point, words are just words.
With the right to bear arms, however, I as an individual have the right to provide for my own defense in the (admittedly exceptional) situations which may require it.
So what would you do about cases like my brother? He's a physics major and he has an IQ over 150, but he suffers from an anxiety disorder that makes his test performance terrible. Normal homework assignments on the other hand, he can usually do in his head. I understand what you're getting at, but I don't think that witch hunts are ever a solution.
Heh... My wife and I are currently in the beginning phases of doing just that. We decided to move to Australia (on a whim. Just sounded like fun). That didn't work out, but in the process we discovered that we don't need or want 90% of our junk. We've literally emptied out rooms full of possessions we thought we needed until we had to decide whether it was worth hauling it across an ocean. Suddenly, most *things* just didn't matter any more.
Glad to hear it's working out for you. Here's hoping we'll be joining the club sometime soon.
The fun thing was when people would pick on them, they'd go and mark that person absent for several days through the semester. See, the grading program would automatically fail anyone with more than 6 absences in a class...
Yep. It's like being a magician. Once your audience knows the trick, it's not magic anymore.
Once we understand a task well enough to teach a computer to do it... it's not magic anymore, so it's not AI.
I, for one, don't really understand why we assume that if intelligence is possible for machines that it will act just like human intelligence. Our brains are structured in fundamentally different ways from computers. Why should machine intelligence act like biological intelligence?
I understand (and agree with) your frustration. The reason for this (WRT video game consoles, anyway) is that unlocked hardware is one of the things that contributed to the fall of Atari back in the early 80s. In particular, the Atari 2600 had no barriers preventing people from writing their own cartridges for it. At first, this was a good thing, as it increased the overall value of the 2600. Later in life, however, Atari had managed to piss off many of it's best developers, who then spun off to create Activision. At the same time, plenty of shovelware companies were dumping everything they could onto the market. The result: if you wanted good games, you bought Activision titles. If you wanted cheap games, you bought the shovelware. Atari's own games weren't moving and since the market for new *consoles* was already pretty well saturated (the current upgrade treadmill of console development hadn't been invented yet), the bottom fell out of Atari's profits.
Of course, shortly thereafter, the NES showed up - and one of it's main features was a hardware lock which prevented unauthorized software from running on it*. This has been the standard ever since.
*This is, incidentally why you get the annoying gray screen when you try to play dirty NES carts - the contacts aren't making a good enough connection to transmit the unlock code.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm pretty sure you're not the first to say "Holy Shit!" I mean, there's even an album.
If you wanted to be truly the first to say, you should have tried something more like: "Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter, or friendly milk will countermand my trousers."
reference
True story: An Indian telemarketer called my brother one day and gave his name as "Abraham Lincoln." Apparently, they had been instructed to use Western names...
Errr... This comment was intended as a reply to a different post. Please disregard.
True story: An Indian telemarketer called my brother one day and gave his name as "Abraham Lincoln." Apparently, they had been instructed to use Western names...
Pro tip: Even though this post implies you're just as likely to get superman as not, sleeping with your sister is typically frowned upon and may be considered a major social faux pas!
...I am disturbed to my very core that someone felt it necessary to mod this Informative.
My kkeyboard is ffed uup, you inseensitive cllod!
And a -1 Pun-ishment
So, a few years back, I noticed some of my (less than genius) co-workers were playing with - and solving - the Rubik's Cube! I'd had a cube since I was a kid, but had never learned to solve it, but I figured if these guys could do it, I could do it. Over the next month I spent literally every free moment messing with the cube until I finally taught myself how to solve the damn thing. I was so proud.
As a reward, I went out and bought a new cube, like the ones my co-workers had. I got it home, opened my new cube... and discovered that they come with instructions now.
Marvin is that you?
My first computer was a 286 running DOS, so I'm not in quite as much trouble WRT finding machinery to read my old code. That being said though, I've been religiously bringing my old data forward as different storage formats have become obsolete. My 5.25" disks got copied to single-sided 3.5", then dual sided 3.5", then CDs (briefly) Zip Disks and now I'm in the process of moving my archives to DVD. I'll be amazed if any of this crap is ever of interest to anyone but me, but I find it fun to go back from time to time and revisit some of my old favorite games and (terrible) code I wrote as a kid.
On lighting: I agree wholeheartedly. I think DooM3 would have been made infinitely more enjoyable if the lights had come up after awhile. I feel the darkness was best used early on to set mood, but after awhile, just got irritating.
If they had gone that route, after the lights came back up (in most areas) and we've established that all Hell has broken loose on Mars, a transition into more open arenas with lots of hell minions would have been more entertaining (and arguably scarier due to variation) than the constant "haunted house" gameplay we got instead.