They say a parrot has the brain capacity of an 8-year old human.
Now, assuming the parrot isn't already dead or pining, and you kill it, is that the same as killing an 8-year-old human? Of course not! many would snort. Some would snort otherwise, must most would agree it's "not really the same thing".
So what exactly is the issue at stake then, if intelligence itself doesn't determine the morality/legality of killing another organism? I'm not saying wanton parrot popping is acceptable behaviour, but it certainly doesn't carry the weight of condemnation as, say, caging a toddler with nothing but a seed-bell to peck on for years on end.
Where and how do we draw the line between "hey asshole you killed my parrot" and "omg you killed me, you psychotic murderer I hope you get life in prison. Ack." ?
We generally place more importance on human life, above other forms of life, but on what basis? Well, probably because we are one and we can. I mean to say it has no objective basis, nobody tells us it is so, except other human beings, who are arguably biased on the matter. It is certainly not a position supported by nature - since when has an earthquake or cyclone saved more people than parrots? Does that make parrots favoured in the eyes of an all-mighty? It's completely arbitrary, and humans rail against the unholy Arbitrariness Of It All by making up stories as to why we're so damned important and everything bad that happens is for a reason which has our ultimate best interest at heart.
The problem is not in saying, "religion is important," it's the habit of placing greater importance on one religion/race/interest than another. "Mine is better than yours" is the default approach and this speaks of humanity's great immaturity. We haven't yet learned to give equal consideration to all, and how to manage that if we did.
Given this behaviour, our history; are we actually qualified to make judgements about the importance of life? I say we're not, and would add we don't have the wisdom or capacity to even begin to determine such things. Human behaviour is still based around survival and very, very limited collective interest.
The willingness to accept or impose some kind of external moralising factor on our lives, simply implies that, deep down, we fear we are fundamentally less important than parrots.
Since Bioshock played a lot like Doom 3 (ie. I was bored after an hour), I image the movie will be a lot like it's counterpart as well. And they sincerely wring their hands about dropping attendance at theatres and pirated movies? They actually want us to pay for this rubbish?
Iron man is a case in point. Interesting for the first hour, then repetitive (in the sense of "I've seen this movie before") for the second hour.
I'd like to see people complain about movies and try to get their money back. That will perhaps encourage a little effort on the part of studios, who are getting very very, lazy these days.
I've been using Textpad for many years, not just for HTML, but for ASP/PHP too. Like any decent tool, if you know how to use it, it's fast and efficient - except with TexPad, I never have to battle to make it accept something it doesn't like about my code. I even prefer TP over UltraEdit. It's macro capabilities are second to none, and that's what makes code fly from your fingers. You just have to set it up in an efficient way.
Exploring classes and methods is fun, but that's for.NET stuff. HTML/ASP isn't so complicated you need auto-complete, and usually you already have your own personal library of code that you know well and use time and again. So there again, setting up useful macros really helps. TextPad forever!
The thing I find most disturbing about this law is the incredibly lack of reasoning displayed by some people - mostly those in favour of it. It reminds me - obscurely - of the new tax here in Australia on "alcopops" (premixed alcoholic drinks). This will, of course, help prevent binge drinking. Makes perfect sense.
Banning is usually the best way to make a subject more intriguing to just the wrong sort of people. Banning child porn is good, since among other things it's the industry you're trying to destroy. But does it stop paedophiles? Seems we haven't got around to that bit yet. Seriously helping people not to become paedophiles is too hard, so let's stick with enforcing a ban so it always looks like we're working hard to protect the public. Excellent.
It's this sort of maimed ability to think about the hard stuff and implement socially responsible policies that is unfortunately the hallmark of everything bad in our society and politics.
Here in Aus, we have only recently started safe hot-lines for men (and women) who commit domestic violence. Great idea, well promoted, you almost feel sorry for them watching the ads. And why not feel sorry for them? Don't they need help? Why do we so rarely offer any help at all to those people who really need it, *before* they completely go off the rails? Why can't we invest money in effective preventative schemes instead of more and more laws and regulation?
Of course that's too hard to think about, so people blame anything and everything else for how someone turns out - if it's not porn, it's computer games, violent movies, Goth culture, Dungeons and Dragons... As long as we, as a society, don't have to take responsibility for it.
I'm surprised they didn't just introduce a Violent Porn Tax. That way most voters will be kept happy and pollies can as usual appear to be doing something, which is what everyone really seems to want.
Dawkins.. god, don't get me started. Perhaps someone should refer him to the *sciences* of psychology, history and anthropology, where he would get a perspective on how religion evolved and how intrinsic it is to human nature. His blanket religion-bashing is puerile and worse than pointless. Nowadays, everyone from physicists (sorry, Cosmologists) to economists think they have their finger on the pulse of humanity. It's almost the pot calling out the kettle. It's silly. Sagan knew that religion has its place in the grand scheme of things. Dawkins is not so insightful. It's not Faith we should be worried about, but intolerance.
And there are so many similarities between science and religion. They are both based around a set of accepted "proofs". We say that science doesn't choose its truth, but it does. The current dogma is accepted until proven otherwise. Some scientists rail against their faith - Einstein hated the dice-throwing Quantum theorists, and likely would still be working to "resolve" it today. Similarly, people live their religions differently, choosing how to integrate it into their life and world view. Neither science nor religion *force* us to believe anything - only a culture has that kind of power.
Why do some people of faith believe homosexuality is a sin, or sex outside marriage, while others of the same faith do not? There are various standards of dress, levels of tolerance for others, some attend church, some do not. Someone should conduct a study to measure people's strength in their faith, the happiness and peace it brings, set against the various levels of religious literalism or fervour. I suspect, across the board, those who follow a hard line are by and large less content.
I believe it all comes down to human nature - that is something we cannot ignore. It is very human to have faith, and it is very human to use our brains to solve puzzles - and by doing both or either, so make sense of the world.
It is also very human to make personal choices, and this is the MOST important point of all: We can choose to believe that God made hard rules, and made some people sinful to keep the rest of us on our toes. Or we can choose to believe that God speaks in riddles (hence the constant contradictions in all major religious texts) and gave each of us the ability to work out the difference between Good and Evil for ourselves. Either way it's a test - either way is a valid interpretation of any faith. Which test a person chooses to take - for that is the real choice here - says the most about them, and defines what they will do with their faith.
Same goes for science - some people cannot see past the dogma, others keep an open mind.
Another basic human truth is that people love a good argument, and so we go on.
I prefer 'real world' proofs of mathematical proofs, especially probability. A simple bit of code will simulate an actual game like this, as follows:
imax = 1000 ' number of times to conduct the game. iwinstay = 0 ' count of wins if I stay. iwinswitch = 0 ' count of wins in I switch. Randomize for i = 1 to imax icar = fix(rnd * 3) + 1 ' Door with car behind it (1-3) ichoose = fix(rnd * 3) + 1 ' Door I initially choose (1-3) if icar = ichoose then iwinstay = iwinstay + 1 ' I win by staying put. ' Monty chooses a door which is NOT the car and NOT what I chose: do igoat = fix(rnd * 3) + 1 ' monty's choice loop until igoat <> icar and igoat <> ichoose ' Now I switch to the door which is NOT monty's choice and NOT my initial choice. do iswitch = fix(rnd * 3) + 1 ' switch choice loop until iswitch <> igoat and iswitch <> ichoose if icar = iswitch then iwinswitch = iwinswitch + 1 ' I win by switching. next ' Show the results as numerators of a third: Response.Write iwinstay / imax * 3 & "," & iwinswitch / imax * 3 ' yep this is an ASP page.
As you'd expect, iwinstay (times won by staying with initial choice) hovered around 1. That is, it won the car a third of the time. As in the proof, iwinswitch (times won by switching) hovered around 2. It won the car 2 thirds of the time. Not 50% of the time, which was also my first impression.:)
(Note I use fix() not int() with the random numbers, as fix() doesn't do any decimal rounding which would distort the results of the rnd() function which is supposed to output 0 <= rnd() < 1.)
Saving plastic carry bags will have no impact at all on anything, not on energy, landfill nor litter. This is basically because everything you might otherwise put into a plastic bag is itself a piece of plastic. Every box of cereal or frozen dinner has a plastic bag inside. Every bottle of juice, milk, cordial, water, etc. is plastic. Then there are the little rolls of plastic bags used for buying your fresh vegetables.
Personally I only try to use cloth bags made in China under inhuman conditions because it makes me feel superior at the supermarket, might impress a girl or two, stops me having more plastic bags at home than I can use as bin liners, and will hopefully sustain awareness at the political level that people care about such things.
But I certainly don't believe that avoiding use of plastic shopping bags directly helps "save the earth" or impact on our global use of plastic in the slightest. It's a political message more than anything. Apart from impressing girls, that's the only reason to do it.
I have a big problem with this whole "sue for damages" culture we got going on. If Blizzard is able to sue because someone is cheating in their game (omfg1!!!11) then why not let the Indian Gold Mining Centre workers sue for loss of income, or Blizzard get class-actioned by all the addicted gamers for loss of life. Loss of income because of cheating? How ridiculous. So yeah it'll probably work.
It occurs to me that "The Power of Social Networking" becomes rather diluted once people split into what will be a plethora of different social networking sites. Even now it's like, "I'm on Facebook, what are you doing on MySpace?" Unless the *accounts* are all linked, there's no great advantage I see to just making the apps available to any such site. Great for the advertisers that run the apps, sure, more coverage to them. But it won't improve the social-networking scene in any way for users. It'll just split them up more.
I've read a lot of the comments here, and it's great, lots of well balanced argument and things out of context being put back in context. Sadly however, I don't believe any amount of discussion my us (non-Muslims) will help in the slightest. The onus is on the "high priests" of the Islamic faith to be outraged at the actions of their brothers taking up arms against civilians or otherwise declaring war for no good reason.
Those who preach violence must simply be excommunicated from the faith. The reason why mainstream Islam is being poked and ridiculed is because of our collective anger and frustration at not hearing enough condemnation from Muslims and Islam in general against that kind of violent, evil behaviour.
*I* don't believe in good and evil, but they do, so those acts of terrorism and barbarity should be declared EVIL and the WORK OF SATAN by those who preach mainstream Islam. That's the only thing that will make us feel safer and more at peach with Muslims in our midst, and deter young people from joining the club. But I just don't hear it! It leaves people wondering, "do they care? do they agree?"
Muslims themselves complain about discrimination and getting queer looks - well, what do they expect, given such a resounding silence? If some branch of Christianity was going off on another Crusade, and the Bishops and clergy weren't riled up and ranting about what a corruption of the Bible it was and being as vocal as possible about it, they shouldn't be surprised if non-Christians think they're a bunch of ignorant savages.
The PR department of Islam just isn't stepping up to help. On one hand Islam is being belligerent and nasty, and on the other they're not saying much about it. Things won't get better until that changes. It's THEIR faith, they need to throw out those who subvert and corrupt it, and do something to fix the damage in people's minds.
PC vs Console? No problem. All I see is convergence.
Imagine a Sony VIAO with a PS3 docking station attached. Instant console on your laptop. This means 3 things: 1) PS3 games made for this unit can utilise your mouse and keyboard. Instant revolution in console games. 2) Opens up console games for MODDING. Another revolution in console games. Just create/download the mod, put it in a special game folder on your HD, or maybe the PS3 DS has its own RAM or HD area for user content. Lastly 3) You don't have to boot into Windows to use you PS3 DS. Flip the console-only switch and when you turn the lappy on it's merely a PS3 - with mouse and keyboard if you want. You don't even need to open the lid, just plug in your controllers and turn it on.
But in Windows, you can play PS3 games and also use the games' Construction Sets or whatever to create your MODS and test them.
Best of both worlds, it seems to me. What this ALSO means, is that game companies won't need to "dumb-down" game interfaces in things like Oblivion (remember the hoo-ha about the "console" look). Real RPG adventures on your PS3 at last.
MS should do the same with their XBox. This would also give Wii's position a bit of a kick. Merging PCs and Consoles would, as far as I can see, be a huge benefit the gaming industry and players in so many ways, I don't know why it's not happening right now. The only losers would be NVidia and ATI, because less and less ppl would need their cards. Just get your gaming docking station and you're away with both PC and console games and all the benefits of both.
In that sense, PC-only games will be a thing of the past. It'll just be console stuff, with some titles made to utilise keyboard & mouse, allow modding, etc. That will be cool to see.
His whole argument rests on the assumption that better 3D = better games. Everyone knows that's essentially untrue. UT3 is a case in point. Is it more fun to play that UT2004 simply because the gfx are way better? WoW is another case. Of course it would look nicer with better gfx, but would it be more fun or more popular because of it? Doubt it.
One of my fav games was Beyond Good and Evil. I *liked* the stylised, cartoonish characterisations. Anyone who loves Anime feels some trepidation at the rise of completely 3D-rendered visuals. They have their place, but better 3D doesn't make a better movie or a better game.
I with they'd put more effort into AI and character movement. What we really need for *immersion* (and better 3D is not equivalent to better immersion either) is dynamic character movement and AI. Sod all this 3D stuff, it's just serving the hardware industry and in the meantime real innovation is being sidelined.
From TFA: "When anyone visited the upload.sytes.net site, the FBI recorded the Internet Protocol address of the remote computer. There's no evidence the referring site was recorded as well, meaning the FBI couldn't tell if the visitor found the links through Ranchi or another source such as an e-mail message."
"Ranchi" is the name of the forum where the undercover agent posted the link to the "upload.sytes.net site" where the false illegal content was. So basically, they don't know if someone got that link *from the actual sting operation itself* or from somewhere else - like a news page or search engine or prefetch (as discussed already) or whatever!
If they only jumped on those ppl who were on that "suspicious" forum already (taking their word for it that Ranchi is where CP viewers hang out) then OK, there's more evidence to back it up. But clicking on it from ANYWHERE?
Whatever happened to skipping the small fish to get to the big fish? Whatever happened to "don't drive it further underground?" Have they learned nothing from the pointless drug war? Did they end up prosecuting anyone who actually made or even distributed this material? No! From that perspective alone, this action useless, outrageous and morally offensive.
I found the bit on generating electricity interesting.
Imagine flags that generate electricity just by flapping in the wind. Every electric car could have a few, same with ships. Wind farms would be fields of flags instead of propellers, much more space-efficient. Sounds wonderful.
There are a LOT of things that are very similar, between science and religion. Maybe that's why there's so much contention between the two. It's a Bizarre Love Triangle - there's Science and Religion, both fawning over Universe. Jealous siblings fighting over who is the favourite child, who will inherit the farm.
It is just as impossible to "fight" the presence of religion, as to dissuade the scientific community that the Earth is 1 AU from the Sun.:) Seriously, I'm not religious in any way, but even I can see that people seem to "fall in love" with their Faith. I don't mean that in a dismissive way at all, just the contrary. Perhaps faith is Love Plus One. We all make emotional decisions about our lives and faith is a very emotional thing. That's very powerful and essentially human. Do we want to dismiss it, curtail it, or understand it?
That's the crux of the matter. Faith is *part* of the human condition, from which "religion", as a practice, stems. We have to concede that and accept it will always be with us - and that it's NOT a bad thing. Unless you think we'd be better off without our most profound experiences; be it Faith, epiphany, love, the "eureka moment", what have you. If you say that people often believe "foolish" things when they're in love, just think of every scientist that fell in love with a theory and spent their lives going against the grain for the sake of it. That's faith, too. Powerful, isn't it?
I don't think many non-religious people (myself included) realise what faith demands of a person. There is something there you have to respect, because it is the *same thing* that has driven much of scientific history - the willingness to accept and try to understand a universe which is much bigger than you are. It's easy to think "having religion" is like watching TV; it's all there laid out for you to mindlessly consume. Not so. Faith is a *process* inside, as much as loving someone is a process, with all the contradictions, confusion and emotional challenges therein.
We all need it, perhaps we just express it in different ways. What happens when a person loses their faith in life? In love? In their fellow human beings? From a child, we all carry around the faith that people are generally "good", that we are "safe", that we are "important". These things, necessary to a healthy inner human life, are the basic things most religions encourage us to feel. Protected, loved, safe, important.
Perhaps that's why cold, hard science is so hard for those of faith to understand. I think, in a way, they feel sorry for us. I probably would too, in that position. But what both science and religion need to understand of each other, is that they are both essentially in love with the same thing; Creation, the Universe. It doesn't matter that the stories are different. The human mind *knows* how to deal with conflicting realities, otherwise we wouldn't have religious scientists, or persons of faith who accept the things that science has created. There is a middle way.
I don't like religious extremists, nor do I like scientific extremists (looking at you, Dawkins). They want to create a world of separateness, of duality. Life, at least for us humans, isn't quite that simple. Science is not a blasphemy, and religion is not a delusion. They are both about looking up to the heavens and seeking answers, they are both about faith and love, and both are essential aspects of human nature.
So let's try to spread *that* word and enter an age where the sense of wonder and awe at the universe, and of ourselves, is the presiding philosophy, and know we all share the same feelings of respect for, and faith in, this Creation.
I finally realise now, why MS went so far out of their way (and ours as users) to re-invent the Office interface - and, for that matter, Windows' in Vista. Differentiation! I see now that MS's competitors are using MS-like interfaces, and that gives the impression (to end users) that they're just as good as MS.
Hence the major UI re-think in MS Windows and Office. Otherwise I doubt they would have bothered; at least not to the extent of creating an entirely new paradigm, which also has its disadvantages (users don't want to re-learn their s/ware all over again). It staggered me that MS would do that to their marketplace, but now I see why! Differentiation from the competition.
I'll always agree that IE was the first browser to really make us web devs happy with all its cool DOM functionality. IE introduced ScrollTop etc., brilliant! And guess what, it's not a W3C standard but FF adopted it anyway because a good idea is a good idea. But MS ignored basic standards for too long (though many ppl, myself included, prefer IE's box model over W3C's) and ended up turning their allies into grumblers through sheer neglect.
When MS or any company gets complacent, they deserve all the competition they get. IE was left stagnating and now it has to catch up to others that shot straight past IE from a coder's point of view. It's saying a lot, that there's almost as much chance of seeing sites that don't work well with IE as ones that don't work well with say Firefox.
Just a thought, but I think it will be quite some time, decades, before we see significant change in China in terms of the Party's dealings with corruption, their own people, and the outside world.
This chance will only come about by pressure from within, not without, and it takes a few generations for this to happen. At the moment, most people in China are battling for their livelihood. Barring an actual civil uprising, people are too preoccupied to enact any change.
Then there's the growing middle class, which - in its infancy, as we've seen in our own experience - begins to concentrate far too much on wealth creation to risk rocking their boats now filled with commodity items. It will be a couple of generations before the middle class becomes relaxed enough to think outside their boxes.
Unfortunately, in general, as long as China is managed in such a heavy-handed way, people will be too scared - or too complicit - to demand anything change, not until the middle class becomes more powerful and - most importantly - more confident. I think that time is still quite far away. A boom time is no time for revolutions.
The problem with that idea, is that's not how commerce works and advertisers will not be interested. You can only achieve maximum profit through a certain amount of consumer ignorance. A retailer's worst nightmare is an informed consumer.
Slashdot Mirror
They say a parrot has the brain capacity of an 8-year old human.
Now, assuming the parrot isn't already dead or pining, and you kill it, is that the same as killing an 8-year-old human? Of course not! many would snort. Some would snort otherwise, must most would agree it's "not really the same thing".
So what exactly is the issue at stake then, if intelligence itself doesn't determine the morality/legality of killing another organism? I'm not saying wanton parrot popping is acceptable behaviour, but it certainly doesn't carry the weight of condemnation as, say, caging a toddler with nothing but a seed-bell to peck on for years on end.
Where and how do we draw the line between "hey asshole you killed my parrot" and "omg you killed me, you psychotic murderer I hope you get life in prison. Ack." ?
We generally place more importance on human life, above other forms of life, but on what basis? Well, probably because we are one and we can. I mean to say it has no objective basis, nobody tells us it is so, except other human beings, who are arguably biased on the matter. It is certainly not a position supported by nature - since when has an earthquake or cyclone saved more people than parrots? Does that make parrots favoured in the eyes of an all-mighty? It's completely arbitrary, and humans rail against the unholy Arbitrariness Of It All by making up stories as to why we're so damned important and everything bad that happens is for a reason which has our ultimate best interest at heart.
The problem is not in saying, "religion is important," it's the habit of placing greater importance on one religion/race/interest than another. "Mine is better than yours" is the default approach and this speaks of humanity's great immaturity. We haven't yet learned to give equal consideration to all, and how to manage that if we did.
Given this behaviour, our history; are we actually qualified to make judgements about the importance of life? I say we're not, and would add we don't have the wisdom or capacity to even begin to determine such things. Human behaviour is still based around survival and very, very limited collective interest.
The willingness to accept or impose some kind of external moralising factor on our lives, simply implies that, deep down, we fear we are fundamentally less important than parrots.
So.. yeah, will this finally fix tables so they work the same on all browsers?
Sometimes new tech should take a back seat to making existing stuff work properly.
The world is a perfect example.
Let me guess - you joined the military to boss people around?
Some join up for the guns, others for education.. guess it takes all kinds.
Since Bioshock played a lot like Doom 3 (ie. I was bored after an hour), I image the movie will be a lot like it's counterpart as well. And they sincerely wring their hands about dropping attendance at theatres and pirated movies? They actually want us to pay for this rubbish?
Iron man is a case in point. Interesting for the first hour, then repetitive (in the sense of "I've seen this movie before") for the second hour.
I'd like to see people complain about movies and try to get their money back. That will perhaps encourage a little effort on the part of studios, who are getting very very, lazy these days.
Come on, the mere ascent to the moon is hardly "man"'s greatest achievement.
Claims made through copyright law are simply astronomical.
I've been using Textpad for many years, not just for HTML, but for ASP/PHP too. Like any decent tool, if you know how to use it, it's fast and efficient - except with TexPad, I never have to battle to make it accept something it doesn't like about my code. I even prefer TP over UltraEdit. It's macro capabilities are second to none, and that's what makes code fly from your fingers. You just have to set it up in an efficient way.
.NET stuff. HTML/ASP isn't so complicated you need auto-complete, and usually you already have your own personal library of code that you know well and use time and again. So there again, setting up useful macros really helps. TextPad forever!
Exploring classes and methods is fun, but that's for
The thing I find most disturbing about this law is the incredibly lack of reasoning displayed by some people - mostly those in favour of it. It reminds me - obscurely - of the new tax here in Australia on "alcopops" (premixed alcoholic drinks). This will, of course, help prevent binge drinking. Makes perfect sense.
Banning is usually the best way to make a subject more intriguing to just the wrong sort of people. Banning child porn is good, since among other things it's the industry you're trying to destroy. But does it stop paedophiles? Seems we haven't got around to that bit yet. Seriously helping people not to become paedophiles is too hard, so let's stick with enforcing a ban so it always looks like we're working hard to protect the public. Excellent.
It's this sort of maimed ability to think about the hard stuff and implement socially responsible policies that is unfortunately the hallmark of everything bad in our society and politics.
Here in Aus, we have only recently started safe hot-lines for men (and women) who commit domestic violence. Great idea, well promoted, you almost feel sorry for them watching the ads. And why not feel sorry for them? Don't they need help? Why do we so rarely offer any help at all to those people who really need it, *before* they completely go off the rails? Why can't we invest money in effective preventative schemes instead of more and more laws and regulation?
Of course that's too hard to think about, so people blame anything and everything else for how someone turns out - if it's not porn, it's computer games, violent movies, Goth culture, Dungeons and Dragons... As long as we, as a society, don't have to take responsibility for it.
I'm surprised they didn't just introduce a Violent Porn Tax. That way most voters will be kept happy and pollies can as usual appear to be doing something, which is what everyone really seems to want.
Dawkins.. god, don't get me started. Perhaps someone should refer him to the *sciences* of psychology, history and anthropology, where he would get a perspective on how religion evolved and how intrinsic it is to human nature. His blanket religion-bashing is puerile and worse than pointless. Nowadays, everyone from physicists (sorry, Cosmologists) to economists think they have their finger on the pulse of humanity. It's almost the pot calling out the kettle. It's silly. Sagan knew that religion has its place in the grand scheme of things. Dawkins is not so insightful. It's not Faith we should be worried about, but intolerance.
And there are so many similarities between science and religion. They are both based around a set of accepted "proofs". We say that science doesn't choose its truth, but it does. The current dogma is accepted until proven otherwise. Some scientists rail against their faith - Einstein hated the dice-throwing Quantum theorists, and likely would still be working to "resolve" it today. Similarly, people live their religions differently, choosing how to integrate it into their life and world view. Neither science nor religion *force* us to believe anything - only a culture has that kind of power.
Why do some people of faith believe homosexuality is a sin, or sex outside marriage, while others of the same faith do not? There are various standards of dress, levels of tolerance for others, some attend church, some do not. Someone should conduct a study to measure people's strength in their faith, the happiness and peace it brings, set against the various levels of religious literalism or fervour. I suspect, across the board, those who follow a hard line are by and large less content.
I believe it all comes down to human nature - that is something we cannot ignore. It is very human to have faith, and it is very human to use our brains to solve puzzles - and by doing both or either, so make sense of the world.
It is also very human to make personal choices, and this is the MOST important point of all: We can choose to believe that God made hard rules, and made some people sinful to keep the rest of us on our toes. Or we can choose to believe that God speaks in riddles (hence the constant contradictions in all major religious texts) and gave each of us the ability to work out the difference between Good and Evil for ourselves. Either way it's a test - either way is a valid interpretation of any faith. Which test a person chooses to take - for that is the real choice here - says the most about them, and defines what they will do with their faith.
Same goes for science - some people cannot see past the dogma, others keep an open mind.
Another basic human truth is that people love a good argument, and so we go on.
(Note I use fix() not int() with the random numbers, as fix() doesn't do any decimal rounding which would distort the results of the rnd() function which is supposed to output 0 <= rnd() < 1.)
Saving plastic carry bags will have no impact at all on anything, not on energy, landfill nor litter. This is basically because everything you might otherwise put into a plastic bag is itself a piece of plastic. Every box of cereal or frozen dinner has a plastic bag inside. Every bottle of juice, milk, cordial, water, etc. is plastic. Then there are the little rolls of plastic bags used for buying your fresh vegetables.
Personally I only try to use cloth bags made in China under inhuman conditions because it makes me feel superior at the supermarket, might impress a girl or two, stops me having more plastic bags at home than I can use as bin liners, and will hopefully sustain awareness at the political level that people care about such things.
But I certainly don't believe that avoiding use of plastic shopping bags directly helps "save the earth" or impact on our global use of plastic in the slightest. It's a political message more than anything. Apart from impressing girls, that's the only reason to do it.
I have a big problem with this whole "sue for damages" culture we got going on. If Blizzard is able to sue because someone is cheating in their game (omfg1!!!11) then why not let the Indian Gold Mining Centre workers sue for loss of income, or Blizzard get class-actioned by all the addicted gamers for loss of life. Loss of income because of cheating? How ridiculous. So yeah it'll probably work.
When are we going to free Uighurstan?
It occurs to me that "The Power of Social Networking" becomes rather diluted once people split into what will be a plethora of different social networking sites. Even now it's like, "I'm on Facebook, what are you doing on MySpace?" Unless the *accounts* are all linked, there's no great advantage I see to just making the apps available to any such site. Great for the advertisers that run the apps, sure, more coverage to them. But it won't improve the social-networking scene in any way for users. It'll just split them up more.
I've read a lot of the comments here, and it's great, lots of well balanced argument and things out of context being put back in context. Sadly however, I don't believe any amount of discussion my us (non-Muslims) will help in the slightest. The onus is on the "high priests" of the Islamic faith to be outraged at the actions of their brothers taking up arms against civilians or otherwise declaring war for no good reason.
Those who preach violence must simply be excommunicated from the faith. The reason why mainstream Islam is being poked and ridiculed is because of our collective anger and frustration at not hearing enough condemnation from Muslims and Islam in general against that kind of violent, evil behaviour.
*I* don't believe in good and evil, but they do, so those acts of terrorism and barbarity should be declared EVIL and the WORK OF SATAN by those who preach mainstream Islam. That's the only thing that will make us feel safer and more at peach with Muslims in our midst, and deter young people from joining the club. But I just don't hear it! It leaves people wondering, "do they care? do they agree?"
Muslims themselves complain about discrimination and getting queer looks - well, what do they expect, given such a resounding silence? If some branch of Christianity was going off on another Crusade, and the Bishops and clergy weren't riled up and ranting about what a corruption of the Bible it was and being as vocal as possible about it, they shouldn't be surprised if non-Christians think they're a bunch of ignorant savages.
The PR department of Islam just isn't stepping up to help. On one hand Islam is being belligerent and nasty, and on the other they're not saying much about it. Things won't get better until that changes. It's THEIR faith, they need to throw out those who subvert and corrupt it, and do something to fix the damage in people's minds.
PC vs Console? No problem. All I see is convergence.
Imagine a Sony VIAO with a PS3 docking station attached. Instant console on your laptop. This means 3 things: 1) PS3 games made for this unit can utilise your mouse and keyboard. Instant revolution in console games. 2) Opens up console games for MODDING. Another revolution in console games. Just create/download the mod, put it in a special game folder on your HD, or maybe the PS3 DS has its own RAM or HD area for user content. Lastly 3) You don't have to boot into Windows to use you PS3 DS. Flip the console-only switch and when you turn the lappy on it's merely a PS3 - with mouse and keyboard if you want. You don't even need to open the lid, just plug in your controllers and turn it on.
But in Windows, you can play PS3 games and also use the games' Construction Sets or whatever to create your MODS and test them.
Best of both worlds, it seems to me. What this ALSO means, is that game companies won't need to "dumb-down" game interfaces in things like Oblivion (remember the hoo-ha about the "console" look). Real RPG adventures on your PS3 at last.
MS should do the same with their XBox. This would also give Wii's position a bit of a kick. Merging PCs and Consoles would, as far as I can see, be a huge benefit the gaming industry and players in so many ways, I don't know why it's not happening right now. The only losers would be NVidia and ATI, because less and less ppl would need their cards. Just get your gaming docking station and you're away with both PC and console games and all the benefits of both.
In that sense, PC-only games will be a thing of the past. It'll just be console stuff, with some titles made to utilise keyboard & mouse, allow modding, etc. That will be cool to see.
His whole argument rests on the assumption that better 3D = better games. Everyone knows that's essentially untrue. UT3 is a case in point. Is it more fun to play that UT2004 simply because the gfx are way better? WoW is another case. Of course it would look nicer with better gfx, but would it be more fun or more popular because of it? Doubt it.
One of my fav games was Beyond Good and Evil. I *liked* the stylised, cartoonish characterisations. Anyone who loves Anime feels some trepidation at the rise of completely 3D-rendered visuals. They have their place, but better 3D doesn't make a better movie or a better game.
I with they'd put more effort into AI and character movement. What we really need for *immersion* (and better 3D is not equivalent to better immersion either) is dynamic character movement and AI. Sod all this 3D stuff, it's just serving the hardware industry and in the meantime real innovation is being sidelined.
From TFA:
"When anyone visited the upload.sytes.net site, the FBI recorded the Internet Protocol address of the remote computer. There's no evidence the referring site was recorded as well, meaning the FBI couldn't tell if the visitor found the links through Ranchi or another source such as an e-mail message."
"Ranchi" is the name of the forum where the undercover agent posted the link to the "upload.sytes.net site" where the false illegal content was. So basically, they don't know if someone got that link *from the actual sting operation itself* or from somewhere else - like a news page or search engine or prefetch (as discussed already) or whatever!
If they only jumped on those ppl who were on that "suspicious" forum already (taking their word for it that Ranchi is where CP viewers hang out) then OK, there's more evidence to back it up. But clicking on it from ANYWHERE?
Whatever happened to skipping the small fish to get to the big fish? Whatever happened to "don't drive it further underground?" Have they learned nothing from the pointless drug war? Did they end up prosecuting anyone who actually made or even distributed this material? No! From that perspective alone, this action useless, outrageous and morally offensive.
I found the bit on generating electricity interesting.
Imagine flags that generate electricity just by flapping in the wind. Every electric car could have a few, same with ships. Wind farms would be fields of flags instead of propellers, much more space-efficient. Sounds wonderful.
There are a LOT of things that are very similar, between science and religion. Maybe that's why there's so much contention between the two. It's a Bizarre Love Triangle - there's Science and Religion, both fawning over Universe. Jealous siblings fighting over who is the favourite child, who will inherit the farm.
:) Seriously, I'm not religious in any way, but even I can see that people seem to "fall in love" with their Faith. I don't mean that in a dismissive way at all, just the contrary. Perhaps faith is Love Plus One. We all make emotional decisions about our lives and faith is a very emotional thing. That's very powerful and essentially human. Do we want to dismiss it, curtail it, or understand it?
It is just as impossible to "fight" the presence of religion, as to dissuade the scientific community that the Earth is 1 AU from the Sun.
That's the crux of the matter. Faith is *part* of the human condition, from which "religion", as a practice, stems. We have to concede that and accept it will always be with us - and that it's NOT a bad thing. Unless you think we'd be better off without our most profound experiences; be it Faith, epiphany, love, the "eureka moment", what have you. If you say that people often believe "foolish" things when they're in love, just think of every scientist that fell in love with a theory and spent their lives going against the grain for the sake of it. That's faith, too. Powerful, isn't it?
I don't think many non-religious people (myself included) realise what faith demands of a person. There is something there you have to respect, because it is the *same thing* that has driven much of scientific history - the willingness to accept and try to understand a universe which is much bigger than you are. It's easy to think "having religion" is like watching TV; it's all there laid out for you to mindlessly consume. Not so. Faith is a *process* inside, as much as loving someone is a process, with all the contradictions, confusion and emotional challenges therein.
We all need it, perhaps we just express it in different ways. What happens when a person loses their faith in life? In love? In their fellow human beings? From a child, we all carry around the faith that people are generally "good", that we are "safe", that we are "important". These things, necessary to a healthy inner human life, are the basic things most religions encourage us to feel. Protected, loved, safe, important.
Perhaps that's why cold, hard science is so hard for those of faith to understand. I think, in a way, they feel sorry for us. I probably would too, in that position. But what both science and religion need to understand of each other, is that they are both essentially in love with the same thing; Creation, the Universe. It doesn't matter that the stories are different. The human mind *knows* how to deal with conflicting realities, otherwise we wouldn't have religious scientists, or persons of faith who accept the things that science has created. There is a middle way.
I don't like religious extremists, nor do I like scientific extremists (looking at you, Dawkins). They want to create a world of separateness, of duality. Life, at least for us humans, isn't quite that simple. Science is not a blasphemy, and religion is not a delusion. They are both about looking up to the heavens and seeking answers, they are both about faith and love, and both are essential aspects of human nature.
So let's try to spread *that* word and enter an age where the sense of wonder and awe at the universe, and of ourselves, is the presiding philosophy, and know we all share the same feelings of respect for, and faith in, this Creation.
I finally realise now, why MS went so far out of their way (and ours as users) to re-invent the Office interface - and, for that matter, Windows' in Vista. Differentiation! I see now that MS's competitors are using MS-like interfaces, and that gives the impression (to end users) that they're just as good as MS.
Hence the major UI re-think in MS Windows and Office. Otherwise I doubt they would have bothered; at least not to the extent of creating an entirely new paradigm, which also has its disadvantages (users don't want to re-learn their s/ware all over again). It staggered me that MS would do that to their marketplace, but now I see why! Differentiation from the competition.
I'll always agree that IE was the first browser to really make us web devs happy with all its cool DOM functionality. IE introduced ScrollTop etc., brilliant! And guess what, it's not a W3C standard but FF adopted it anyway because a good idea is a good idea. But MS ignored basic standards for too long (though many ppl, myself included, prefer IE's box model over W3C's) and ended up turning their allies into grumblers through sheer neglect.
When MS or any company gets complacent, they deserve all the competition they get. IE was left stagnating and now it has to catch up to others that shot straight past IE from a coder's point of view. It's saying a lot, that there's almost as much chance of seeing sites that don't work well with IE as ones that don't work well with say Firefox.
Just a thought, but I think it will be quite some time, decades, before we see significant change in China in terms of the Party's dealings with corruption, their own people, and the outside world.
This chance will only come about by pressure from within, not without, and it takes a few generations for this to happen. At the moment, most people in China are battling for their livelihood. Barring an actual civil uprising, people are too preoccupied to enact any change.
Then there's the growing middle class, which - in its infancy, as we've seen in our own experience - begins to concentrate far too much on wealth creation to risk rocking their boats now filled with commodity items. It will be a couple of generations before the middle class becomes relaxed enough to think outside their boxes.
Unfortunately, in general, as long as China is managed in such a heavy-handed way, people will be too scared - or too complicit - to demand anything change, not until the middle class becomes more powerful and - most importantly - more confident. I think that time is still quite far away. A boom time is no time for revolutions.
It was a joke. Obscure I guess.. utilities.. stuff shifting.. poo.
A poo joke that stunk.
I can name a couple of basic utilities where things are constantly shifting.
The problem with that idea, is that's not how commerce works and advertisers will not be interested. You can only achieve maximum profit through a certain amount of consumer ignorance. A retailer's worst nightmare is an informed consumer.