Yeah, that's a reasonable point of view; it's one I held myself for a long time. However, I eventually rejected it because there's no way I can distinguish the Universe of an absent God from a Universe that never had one in the first place.
In other words, since the universe apparently doesn't want me to know anything about my Creator, I'll just assume there was never a knowable Creator to begin with, at least until proven otherwise. There are no concrete questions I can ask about God, so it would be absurd to think that I already have any of the answers.
One thing I would never do is make arrogant statements about having "issues" with the potential discovery of other intelligent life forms. IMHO, to believe that no other intelligent life exists anywhere in the Universe, as the grandparent apparently does, takes more of a leap of faith than even a belief in God.
So you equate "targeting explosive ads at children" with "throwing dynamite at a kid" ?
Um, no, you did that. Read your own opst.
Study after study has demonstrated that violent games make children and teenagers less sensitive to violence...
Call me when one of those bogus "studies" actually uses the Scientific Method.
Hint #1: that means the conclusion comes at the end of the study, not the beginning. "Here's a grant, go find some evidence for effect XYZ" is not a valid study.
Hint #2: it also means using a meaningful control group. Find some kids who've just come in from a rough game of Cowboys And Indians, and compare their responses to the Doom 3 fans.
The Bible doesn't say anything at all about life forms on other planets. Intelligent life I might have issues with....
I'm an atheist. A few weeks ago, a Christian friend asked me, "When you look out at the night sky, across billions of light-years of interstellar space filled with billions of worlds we haven't even imagined yet, aren't you a little afraid that you might be wrong?"
Your idiotic post made me realize -- way too late, of course -- that I should've asked her the same question in reply.
So it doesn't bother you (or the idiots who modded you +4, Insightful) that throwing dynamite at a kid will actually harm them, while exposing him to violent videogame content will not?
How do you propose to tell the difference between a particular sample level that got that way as a result of dynamic-range compression, versus one at the same level that accurately reflects the recorded source?
That's what's meant by "losing information". When you compress the dynamic range of a signal, you reduce its precision. It cannot be restored.
The batteries themselves are fine for the most part. The trouble is, any commercial lithium pack you buy will have some VERY complicated built-in controller hardware. The controller hardware and its associated sensors (temperature, current, voltage) is generally buggy as all hell, and/or designed to perform ridiculously-conservatively by vendors who don't want to be blamed for battery fires.
What Carmack just discovered is that "fail safe" means one thing when you're designing a battery pack for a laptop, and another thing entirely when the application is a rocket control system.
In this case the controller saw a condition it didn't like, possibly a transient or spurious one, and opened the circuit at 16 amps instead of 40. Chances are, the battery itself was fine.
Why don't legislators ask for actual evidence of harm to children or society in general before chasing economically-productive companies out of their country?
Is it one of those "socialism" things, or what? Somebody help me out here.
Off-the-shelf GPS receivers and lithium battery packs are two things that do NOT belong in a mission-critical (or even money-critical) application.
Carmack is going way too far in the direction of "Use whatever seems to have the specs we need." He seems to be forgetting that if you have 100 components that are 99% reliable, your overall system is only 36% reliable.
I don't trust lithium batteries to meet their discharge specs on my iPod much less a rocket controller.
We need a better protection of our limited natural entitlement gun ownership that recognizes that it's more of a privilege, like a driver's license, than any kind of natural exercise of the human powers with which we are created.
Fine. I actually don't disagree with that basic premise, which is that too many guns are in the hands of unqualified people. Explicitly restricting ownership of weapons to people who can demonstrate that they are qualified to wield them really doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
The thing is, though, if you went back to 1790 with that argument, you'd be laughed out of town. The people who started this country were nothing like you, for better or worse. They would never have dreamed of questioning the self-defense rights borne by a citizen of a free state... and while my opinions on the subject are much closer to theirs than yours are, I doubt I'd have much more luck at getting a qualification clause added to the Second Amendment.
And, of course, the devil's in the details. I think I pointed out in another post that the KKK is really America's original gun-control advocacy group. If "qualified" ever comes to mean "not having a skin color, sexual orientation, or political opinion that I don't like," then the idea won't sound so great, will it?
At the end of the day, traditional ("paleo-liberal") gun-control legislation really does run counter to the intentions that were widely expressed by the authors of the Constitution. True, they mangled the phrasing of the Second Amendment almost beyond recognition, but we don't really have to look very far to understand what they meant.
If you want the Second Amendment changed so that it reflects your views, I'd encourage you to study the legal process for doing so, and to participate in that process. Given your other posts on the subject, I doubt I'd agree with the language you'd prefer to replace the current version of the Second Amendment with, but at least we could debate it on its merits at that point. You could finally stop trying to justify legislative and judicial end runs around the plainly-understood spirit of the Constitution.
Basically, it comes down to this. Either respect the document and the process that maintains it, or admit that you don't, and maybe find someplace better suited to your personal ideology.
Because even with all of these admirably-phallic guns the rest of us are supposedly toting, we won't shoot you for trying to leave.
Agreed... after Googling it, you're right, it does look like a pretty nice phone, and only about 50% heavier than the iPhone.
But it's a phone for phone geeks, not Joe Sixpack and Jane Boxwine. WTF are all those tiny hieroglyphic icons all over the screen?
And for that matter, what's up with the name? "HTC P4550 Kaiser"? Is that a cell phone, or something that requires State Department approval to export to non-NATO countries?
The comments that point out that the iPhone is more than the sum of its bullet points sound like excuse-making and back-pedalling, but they're not. They're 100% on target. If the Kaiser hardware were available with anything like the iPhone's OS, I'd probably be willing to pay $2000 for it. As it is, if I bought an HTC P4550 Kaiser, I'd just be buying one more gadget full of features I'll never remember how to use.
Today's "Conservatives" will sell any liberty for any illusion of "security".
Of course, arguing passionately for gun-control legislation doesn't fall into the category of selling liberty out for an illusion of security. Nooooo... that would be way too conservative of you.
Really, when it comes right down to it, you're just another part of the problem, aren't you?
Congratulations, you've gotten the Constitution and common sense so wrong that you've broken the country and helped kill millions of people.
Millions of people? I don't think so, friend. A well-armed populace isn't enough to accomplish such a feat. History demonstrates that you need a well-armed government for that.
(Oh, and if I manage to buy, build, or otherwise acquire my own personal nuclear arsenal, it'll be amusing to see you try to take it away under force of law, legitimately or otherwise.)
Some good points there. I do, however, stand by my accusation of illiteracy, because the framers could have saved us all so much trouble if they'd just killed a couple of blatantly-unnecessary commas.:)
Exactly, except that in your example, the KKK would be pro-gun control organization. (Look up the history of gun control and you'll see what I mean. It was intended to keep weapons out of the hands of former slaves.)
I'm fine with you owning a.50 cal browning, but I have an issue with mortars and heavy artillery.
Yeah, me, too. The government has proven itself incapable of handling those types of weapons responsibly, and should therefore be banned from possessing them.
True, I could join both organizations, but it just feels like I'm paying to bet on both sides in a dog fight. In the past, the NRA has endorsed socially-conservative positions that annoy me as much as the hyper-liberal Katrina "tribunal" lameness.
Also, and something that's not been adequately explained to me, but where is the line? M-16s OK? What about RPGs? AA Missiles? Nukes? There's either a line that most people can get behind, and shut your griping, or it's all in or all out. Make up your minds.
It's an interesting question. The Miller standard of juriprudence, resulting from the last time the Supreme Court considered the Second Amendment, restricted individuals from owning sawed-off shotguns. Their rationale was that such weapons would not be applicable in a militia-like setting, and thus weren't covered by the Second Amendment. That has the effect of answering the usual "b...b...but what about nukes?" objection, but it doesn't explain why anyone is allowed to own any type of non-military weapon such as a common shotgun.
It's a stupid-ass Amendment written by drooling illiterates, as far as you can tell by reading it. It ought to be rewritten to explicitly endorse a right to self-defense of an individual's life and property with weapons suited for use by individuals.
The ACLU's position, on the other hand, is that it was really meant to apply to the government anyway... which is both historically-ignorant and just plain nuts.
Translation: The Bush Administration is responsible for Hurricane Katrina, but we still need to give them a monopoly on firearms, because that way, we'll all be safer.
Personally, I believe in micro-evolution, aka adaptation, but macro-evolution, the changing of one species into another, is still up for serious critical debate
If you believe so, then I guess you know who's the moron.
Yep. Pretty much. The person who doesn't even see the flaw (namely, selection pressure due to competition for resources) in his own model. Your argument marks you as a scientifically-illiterate idiot of the first magnitude.
(Oh, and if every robot has to have an identical progenitor, who built the first 'God' robot?)
Ah, now there's a content-filled post. Oh, wait, it contained absolutely zero additional content beyond random bluster and bloviation.
Ahhh... only on Slashdot do we see an insolent reply demanding data, and then when data is provided
What "data"? Posting the name of a journal doesn't even rise to the level of "anecdote," much less "data."
The fuck I am. I was trained as a scientist; I base my decisions on conclusions what the underlying data support, not on what will provide me the childish satisfaction of pissing off groups with which I might harbor a grudge.
Then why are you so reluctant to cite the data in question?
But if 8-year-old Billy or 8-year-old Jenny is exposed to graphic, overt sexual content (violent pornography, adults attempting to sexualize them), I do care, because the last time I checked the data, the consensus was that said exposure could be traumatizing.
There is no such 'consensus,' because there is no such 'data.' You're making stuff up again.
(Or are you one of those types for whom Ted Bundy's "Teh pr0n made me do it!" excuse holds water? If so, I have to warn you, my neighbor's dog has been making some very interesting points lately.)
Slashdot Mirror
If she's wrong, it doesn't matter...
Unless, of course, it turns out that Zeus is the HMFIC.
If so, then all that grovelling to Jesus is going to turn out to be a career-limiting move, to say the least.
Yeah, that's a reasonable point of view; it's one I held myself for a long time. However, I eventually rejected it because there's no way I can distinguish the Universe of an absent God from a Universe that never had one in the first place.
In other words, since the universe apparently doesn't want me to know anything about my Creator, I'll just assume there was never a knowable Creator to begin with, at least until proven otherwise. There are no concrete questions I can ask about God, so it would be absurd to think that I already have any of the answers.
One thing I would never do is make arrogant statements about having "issues" with the potential discovery of other intelligent life forms. IMHO, to believe that no other intelligent life exists anywhere in the Universe, as the grandparent apparently does, takes more of a leap of faith than even a belief in God.
So you equate "targeting explosive ads at children" with "throwing dynamite at a kid" ?
Um, no, you did that. Read your own opst.
Study after study has demonstrated that violent games make children and teenagers less sensitive to violence...
Call me when one of those bogus "studies" actually uses the Scientific Method.
Hint #1: that means the conclusion comes at the end of the study, not the beginning. "Here's a grant, go find some evidence for effect XYZ" is not a valid study.
Hint #2: it also means using a meaningful control group. Find some kids who've just come in from a rough game of Cowboys And Indians, and compare their responses to the Doom 3 fans.
The Bible doesn't say anything at all about life forms on other planets. Intelligent life I might have issues with....
I'm an atheist. A few weeks ago, a Christian friend asked me, "When you look out at the night sky, across billions of light-years of interstellar space filled with billions of worlds we haven't even imagined yet, aren't you a little afraid that you might be wrong?"
Your idiotic post made me realize -- way too late, of course -- that I should've asked her the same question in reply.
So it doesn't bother you (or the idiots who modded you +4, Insightful) that throwing dynamite at a kid will actually harm them, while exposing him to violent videogame content will not?
Other than that, yeah, good argument. Dumbass.
Wow, some real rocket scientists here.
How do you propose to tell the difference between a particular sample level that got that way as a result of dynamic-range compression, versus one at the same level that accurately reflects the recorded source?
That's what's meant by "losing information". When you compress the dynamic range of a signal, you reduce its precision. It cannot be restored.
Information theory. It's what's for breakfast.
The batteries themselves are fine for the most part. The trouble is, any commercial lithium pack you buy will have some VERY complicated built-in controller hardware. The controller hardware and its associated sensors (temperature, current, voltage) is generally buggy as all hell, and/or designed to perform ridiculously-conservatively by vendors who don't want to be blamed for battery fires.
What Carmack just discovered is that "fail safe" means one thing when you're designing a battery pack for a laptop, and another thing entirely when the application is a rocket control system.
In this case the controller saw a condition it didn't like, possibly a transient or spurious one, and opened the circuit at 16 amps instead of 40. Chances are, the battery itself was fine.
Why don't legislators ask for actual evidence of harm to children or society in general before chasing economically-productive companies out of their country?
Is it one of those "socialism" things, or what? Somebody help me out here.
Off-the-shelf GPS receivers and lithium battery packs are two things that do NOT belong in a mission-critical (or even money-critical) application.
Carmack is going way too far in the direction of "Use whatever seems to have the specs we need." He seems to be forgetting that if you have 100 components that are 99% reliable, your overall system is only 36% reliable.
I don't trust lithium batteries to meet their discharge specs on my iPod much less a rocket controller.
We need a better protection of our limited natural entitlement gun ownership that recognizes that it's more of a privilege, like a driver's license, than any kind of natural exercise of the human powers with which we are created.
Fine. I actually don't disagree with that basic premise, which is that too many guns are in the hands of unqualified people. Explicitly restricting ownership of weapons to people who can demonstrate that they are qualified to wield them really doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
The thing is, though, if you went back to 1790 with that argument, you'd be laughed out of town. The people who started this country were nothing like you, for better or worse. They would never have dreamed of questioning the self-defense rights borne by a citizen of a free state... and while my opinions on the subject are much closer to theirs than yours are, I doubt I'd have much more luck at getting a qualification clause added to the Second Amendment.
And, of course, the devil's in the details. I think I pointed out in another post that the KKK is really America's original gun-control advocacy group. If "qualified" ever comes to mean "not having a skin color, sexual orientation, or political opinion that I don't like," then the idea won't sound so great, will it?
At the end of the day, traditional ("paleo-liberal") gun-control legislation really does run counter to the intentions that were widely expressed by the authors of the Constitution. True, they mangled the phrasing of the Second Amendment almost beyond recognition, but we don't really have to look very far to understand what they meant.
If you want the Second Amendment changed so that it reflects your views, I'd encourage you to study the legal process for doing so, and to participate in that process. Given your other posts on the subject, I doubt I'd agree with the language you'd prefer to replace the current version of the Second Amendment with, but at least we could debate it on its merits at that point. You could finally stop trying to justify legislative and judicial end runs around the plainly-understood spirit of the Constitution.
Basically, it comes down to this. Either respect the document and the process that maintains it, or admit that you don't, and maybe find someplace better suited to your personal ideology.
Because even with all of these admirably-phallic guns the rest of us are supposedly toting, we won't shoot you for trying to leave.
Hundreds of millions of Americans owning guns hasn't made us more secure. It's made us less secure.
Gee, I don't believe that the post was about security. I believe it was about freedom.
May your chains set lightly upon you, yadda, yadda, yadda.
From his post, the only size-related thing is its flash vs. the hard drive of the iPhone. That would make it SMALLER.
Kangaroos don't have dorsal fins, Chevrolets don't run on kerosene, and iPhones don't have hard drives. Other than that, yeah, I see your point.
iPhone weight: 140 grams
Kaiser weight: 192 grams
iPhone volume: 94185 mm^3 (115x63x13 mm)
Kaiser volume: 114840 mm^3 (110x58x18 mm)
Agreed... after Googling it, you're right, it does look like a pretty nice phone, and only about 50% heavier than the iPhone.
But it's a phone for phone geeks, not Joe Sixpack and Jane Boxwine. WTF are all those tiny hieroglyphic icons all over the screen?
And for that matter, what's up with the name? "HTC P4550 Kaiser"? Is that a cell phone, or something that requires State Department approval to export to non-NATO countries?
The comments that point out that the iPhone is more than the sum of its bullet points sound like excuse-making and back-pedalling, but they're not. They're 100% on target. If the Kaiser hardware were available with anything like the iPhone's OS, I'd probably be willing to pay $2000 for it. As it is, if I bought an HTC P4550 Kaiser, I'd just be buying one more gadget full of features I'll never remember how to use.
Jeezly crow. How big is this thing?
I'm sure my tailor could sew a pocket into my pants that's big enough to hold my Dell D420 laptop, too, but that doesn't make it a good idea.
Today's "Conservatives" will sell any liberty for any illusion of "security".
Of course, arguing passionately for gun-control legislation doesn't fall into the category of selling liberty out for an illusion of security. Nooooo... that would be way too conservative of you.
Really, when it comes right down to it, you're just another part of the problem, aren't you?
Congratulations, you've gotten the Constitution and common sense so wrong that you've broken the country and helped kill millions of people.
Millions of people? I don't think so, friend. A well-armed populace isn't enough to accomplish such a feat. History demonstrates that you need a well-armed government for that.
(Oh, and if I manage to buy, build, or otherwise acquire my own personal nuclear arsenal, it'll be amusing to see you try to take it away under force of law, legitimately or otherwise.)
Some good points there. I do, however, stand by my accusation of illiteracy, because the framers could have saved us all so much trouble if they'd just killed a couple of blatantly-unnecessary commas. :)
Exactly, except that in your example, the KKK would be pro-gun control organization. (Look up the history of gun control and you'll see what I mean. It was intended to keep weapons out of the hands of former slaves.)
I'm fine with you owning a .50 cal browning, but I have an issue with mortars and heavy artillery.
Yeah, me, too. The government has proven itself incapable of handling those types of weapons responsibly, and should therefore be banned from possessing them.
True, I could join both organizations, but it just feels like I'm paying to bet on both sides in a dog fight. In the past, the NRA has endorsed socially-conservative positions that annoy me as much as the hyper-liberal Katrina "tribunal" lameness.
Also, and something that's not been adequately explained to me, but where is the line? M-16s OK? What about RPGs? AA Missiles? Nukes? There's either a line that most people can get behind, and shut your griping, or it's all in or all out. Make up your minds.
It's an interesting question. The Miller standard of juriprudence, resulting from the last time the Supreme Court considered the Second Amendment, restricted individuals from owning sawed-off shotguns. Their rationale was that such weapons would not be applicable in a militia-like setting, and thus weren't covered by the Second Amendment. That has the effect of answering the usual "b...b...but what about nukes?" objection, but it doesn't explain why anyone is allowed to own any type of non-military weapon such as a common shotgun.
It's a stupid-ass Amendment written by drooling illiterates, as far as you can tell by reading it. It ought to be rewritten to explicitly endorse a right to self-defense of an individual's life and property with weapons suited for use by individuals.
The ACLU's position, on the other hand, is that it was really meant to apply to the government anyway... which is both historically-ignorant and just plain nuts.
... but every time I get ready to write a check, I read about them doing something barking-mad like this:
International 'Tribunal' on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
Second Amendment a 'Collective' right
Translation: The Bush Administration is responsible for Hurricane Katrina, but we still need to give them a monopoly on firearms, because that way, we'll all be safer.
Or something.
Personally, I believe in micro-evolution, aka adaptation, but macro-evolution, the changing of one species into another, is still up for serious critical debate
No, it isn't.
and I've yet to see any sort of proof
That's because you haven't looked.
(Oh, and why don't your religious compatriots demand such stringent "proof" from the Bible?)
If you believe so, then I guess you know who's the moron.
Yep. Pretty much. The person who doesn't even see the flaw (namely, selection pressure due to competition for resources) in his own model. Your argument marks you as a scientifically-illiterate idiot of the first magnitude.
(Oh, and if every robot has to have an identical progenitor, who built the first 'God' robot?)
Ah, now there's a content-filled post. Oh, wait, it contained absolutely zero additional content beyond random bluster and bloviation.
Ahhh... only on Slashdot do we see an insolent reply demanding data, and then when data is provided
What "data"? Posting the name of a journal doesn't even rise to the level of "anecdote," much less "data."
The fuck I am. I was trained as a scientist; I base my decisions on conclusions what the underlying data support, not on what will provide me the childish satisfaction of pissing off groups with which I might harbor a grudge.
Then why are you so reluctant to cite the data in question?
But if 8-year-old Billy or 8-year-old Jenny is exposed to graphic, overt sexual content (violent pornography, adults attempting to sexualize them), I do care, because the last time I checked the data, the consensus was that said exposure could be traumatizing.
There is no such 'consensus,' because there is no such 'data.' You're making stuff up again.
(Or are you one of those types for whom Ted Bundy's "Teh pr0n made me do it!" excuse holds water? If so, I have to warn you, my neighbor's dog has been making some very interesting points lately.)