The only thing that prevents me from inserting a relevant joke at this point is that the sheer number of possibilities prevents my brain from choosing one.
Slashdotters: Please write your own joke and submit it to
Right. And I am not even whining about my submissions. They were rejected, someone submitted them with a better headline, so-and-so wants to give a UFIA to submitter's mom, whatever, I don't care.
All I was pointing out was that the fact that 800,000 people have signed up since me, and that I've been here 5 years; the fact that I've been contributing positively (I had 50 karma long long long before karma went to the bill-and-ted system), the fact that enough people respect my opinion that I have over 130 fans (of which I'm very proud and greatful; see my journal on making fans friends), the fact that I still have my complete A-Z archive of Geeks in Space, and that I listened to it from the very first one - I think all these things entitle me to at least ask these questions.
Blowing me off doesn't really make me feel like I mean anything to this community, that my contributions don't matter, and I'll be honest, Jamie... it stings a little.
The fact is, shameless as he is, Roland is actually a real journalist, who writes for "real" journalistic sources (quotation marks denote wired). And he's been a slashdot member for a long time.
So I let him slide. Plus all his greenlights aren't from the same ModMin.
**Beatles has accomplished in THREE MONTHS what Roland accomplished in THREE YEARS. And without ever once pretending like he gave a fuck about technology.
Now, hold on... I'm not suggesting that we jump ship.
All I'm asking for is Journalistic integrity.
I know digg exists. I deliberately come back to slashdot. The reason? I'm not here for the articles. I'm here for the discussion. I can get the information anywhere. I am at slashdot because I want to know what others think. There are some very smart and very connected people on Slashdot, and I value their opinion. I also find out about alternatives or other theories or random_x piece of software I didn't know existed from the comments. I consider it a great day when I see someone say "Well, if you like X, you'll love Y". That to me is slashdot's strength. And I try to contribute positively where I can.
All I am asking for is for the Admins to have a little integrity. Whatever happened to honesty? Whatever happened to shaking a man's hand, looking him in the eye, and telling the truth? I'm that kind of guy... so are many of my fellow Slashdot readers. And I have an almost irrational belief in the fundamental "goodness" of mankind.
If I had to nail down the problems of Slashdot these days, it's very simple:
1.) They don't hold their admins to the same level of integrity to which their readers hold themselves. 2.) They irrationally refuse to believe people like me exist; they refuse to believe that the strength of Slashdot is in the content provided by the readers.
But, one at a time. Let's get 1 working first, and then I think 2 will fall into place.
Preliminary reply, so that the moderators can go ahead and bitchslap (mod to -23829) this entire thread. I guess I have the karma to sacrifice for the sake of the arguement.
It's yet another post by * * Beatles Beatles, gone live via ScuttleMonkey.
Blah Blah BeatlesBeatles uses Slashdot's pagerank to get his stupid George Harrison page higher ranked in Google. We all know this, and we all know it's despicable. If you're curious, hover your mouse over his name - it goes to george-harrison.info - I'm not hot linking it, if you want to go there, cut and paste into a new browser window.
Anyway, the fact that the page is nothing but a link farm and that it has quite possibly the worst CSS stylesheet on the planet seems to overshadow the fact that this person's website has nothing to do with technology of any sort, which is why, admins, that we wonder what it's doing on the front page of slashdot day after day.
But, ALL THAT ASIDE, there's still something more disturbing.
I've been a member of the slashdot community for years now - I forget when I signed up, but it was either late 1999 or early 2000, so it's at least 5 years at this point. Over the years, I've submitted something like 10 or 15 links, and not yet had one posted. And I only submit things I actually find interesting, like AMD sues Intel. BeatlesBeatles has had 20 submissions greenlit in the past 3 months. That's about one a week. And they've all been posted by Scuttle Monkey.
Every time someone points this out, our fearless trolleader Jamie comes out in support of ScuttleMonkey and BeatlesBeatles saying there's nothing funny going on, it's just journalism. Well, Admins: This is what gets us riled up - Here's a clue. YOUR READERS ARE NOT DUMB. IF THEY READ SLASHDOT REGULARLY, THEY'RE NOT STUPID.
Looking at the facts, most of us draw the obvious conclusion. 1.) I've been a member of slashdot for a LONG TIME. My userid is 112121. 2.) Beatles-Beatles has been a member of slashdot for about 3 months. His UID is 909211. 3.) Beatles-Beatles has had 20 greenlit submissions, most of which regurgitate an article, offering no origional insight, and read like press releases. 4.) I have had no greenlit submissions, and I consider mine to have been at least moderately clever. 5.) Beatles-Beatles is profiting in a very tangible, dollars-in-the-pocket way from having his site linked from Slashdot. 6.) All of Beatles-Beatles submissions have been greenlit by ScuttleMonkey.
To look at these facts and not come to the same conclusion as the rest of us is ignorance. Furthermore, to dismiss these facts as pure coincidence is simply implying that your readers are stupid.
This is why we bitch. All we want is for someone to admit it. "ScuttleMonkey and Beatles-Beatles are friends - when BB submits a story, he sends an IM to ScuttleMonkey, and if it's moderately interesting, SM posts it to help a friend out". That's all we're looking for.
But, this thread will be bitchslapped, and I'll probably lose my (Meta)mod privs. Oh well. Maybe some day we'll get an honest answer out of the admins.
Part of the reason people weren't too upset about buying new DVD's of old movies they already owned was because the VHS tapes wear out with repeated viewings. Your 15 year old vhs tape of big bird goes to japan is probably worn out from being watched 3 times a day x 4 kids, but on DVD, the medium doesn't wear out. Not to mention, you get added features, commentary tracks, etc.
The current stuff doesn't offer anything new, just more of it. It's like when they came out with SVHS - everyone jumped on a magnetic tape medium which promised superiour results, right?? Not. I'll wait for my holographic star trek stuff before I replace my DVD player.
Disclaimer: I love futurama - probably my favorite cartoon, when taken as a series.
The problem with Futurama is that it's soooo hit and miss. Family Guy isn't intellectual, but it's almost always funny, if you like the dick-and-fart jokes. Futurama, when it's on, is funny and intellectual, more than anything else on TV. But, when it's bad, it's fucking terrible.
Seriously, take a look at season 5 of Futurama: Jurassic Bark (best episode of the series) Devil's hands The Why of Fry The Sting... These are all EXCELLENT TV. Jurassic Bark is probably the most poingient thing I've ever seen on a Television screen.
But, look at the rest: Kif gets Knocked up a Notch Less than Hero Spanish Fry and the big one... Bend Her These episodes are unwatchable.
That's why I don't even juxtapose FG and Futurama. It can't be done. When you put an episode like "Time keeps on slippin'" next to a Family Guy episode, Family Guy looks retarted. When you put "Bend Her" next to FG, you wonder how the Futurama episode got on the air.
Right, but in the same token, disasters don't always happen convieniently near an airfield.
Seriously, though.... if this plan works, I'm simply amazed by it. It's getting off the ground now, and if it works, i can see it revolutionize the shipping industry.
The advantages over planes are less clear. Probably greater endurance and shorter runways for the same cargo capacity.
As I have seen elsewhere in this discussion, the cargo area is around 90,000 cubic feet. A C5 Galaxy's cargo area is about 37,000 cubic feet. So, while it's slower than a commercial jet, it takes less trips back and forth to carry the same ammount of cargo, and presumably uses less fuel even for one trip (due to the "only slightly heavier than air" design). So, while a C-5 is much faster, it will take 3 trips back and forth to carry the cargo load of this blimplane, and thus this thing can do it faster, cheaper, and can be built with cheaper materials.
The questions I have are simply: How often do you need to transport 90,000 cubic feet of cargo? And how much cheaper is it than hiring a fleet of trucks? At 140mph, the trucks will take longer, i guess, and you'd need a lot of 'em...
When I was slogging through my 250 page PhD dissertation, I came across an article about disserations of such famous people as Schroedinger and other physicists of the 1920's - whose entire dissertations were about as long as Section 1.1 of my introduction.
Don't make excuses for yourself: Schroedinger's dissertation was of infinite length until observed.
In reasonable religions, yes. Try telling that to a southern baptist fundamentalist sometime. Their claim (and that of most fundamentalist christians) is that the bible is the inspired, infallable word of god, and though it was written by a man, the man was guided by god. Specifically, KJVonlyism really gets to me.
Of course, then you point out the fact that it has changed languages several times, and that there were probably errors in translation, and that scripts from different locations say different things, and that the idea of virgin birth and the trinity both are only a thousand or 1500 years old...
It doesn't matter to these people. I have heard people say that the translators of the KJV were inspired by god and made no mistakes, and hence that version is perfect - that it's the word of god, literally, and any previous mistakes were corrected by god's influence in that translation. I then point out - does that mean, the only true version of the bible is in English? And one sunday school teacher told me "yes". Unbelievable, especially considering I studied Ancient and New Testament Greek in college, and I know that for starters, there are some concepts that can't be translated into English, and furthermore, some mistranslations.
In my defense, my claim of "the scientific method is my religion" is only accurate in that, in a broad sense, people are looking for answers. I choose to look to science, while many choose to look to religion. Your conclusion about how the answers are reached being different in science versus religion is why I choose science.
I'm not trying to put a religion on my athiesm, though.
Because Science is based on understanding of facts; science does not get "reworked" when new facts surface, it simply incorporates the new material and new conclusions are drawn which take into account the new information.
Religion requires strict adherence to the laws of said religion, because in a monotheistic religious atmosphere, almost always the god in question is perceived as wholly good and perfect, with no evil, and at the same time is the source of the religious laws. If there's a flaw in the doctrine of the religion, it would disprove or contradict god, and if that happens, then god is not perfect. It throws the entire system off. Religion cannot deal with change in human understanding of any subject where the church has previously stated something as fact - there's no mechanism to account for it.
Hence why I'm an athiest. Or, if you want to get philosophical about it, my god is the scietific method. I see no need to explain things via the supernatural; to me everything falls into "things we understand" and "things we don't understand yet". I do not believe that there is anything at all in the entire universe that science could not explain given all the facts.
Also, an interesting thought occured to me when I was studying for my Classics minor - we wouldn't have a lot of the modern religious hangups if we still had a polytheistic religious society, a. la. Ancient Greece. That type of system has gods who make mistakes, reneg on their word, and screw up all the time. If that were the case here, we wouldn't have all the hangups.
~Will
**note I'd capitalize Greece long before god. The world needs more athiests. Stand up and be counted.
I was going to point out that on that 70's show, I think Red says "put my foot up your ass" or something using "up", and not "in". I don't watch the show often, but I think that's right. Anyway, in America, there's a subtle distinction between them - "up" implies an upward motion of the foot towards the ass, while "in" sounds disturbed - as if he were to stiffen up his toes and aim for squiggling them into the anus.
I'd imagine there are all sorts of subtle distinctions like this. I watch Iron Chef, and I rather like the dubbing job they do, in which they take many liberties "Fukui-san? Go ahead, big fella" is probably not word-for-word translated from Japanese, but it puts Americans at ease, rather than "Fukui-san, I beg your attention. Yes. Ohta, inform us". I've noticed that even then, they almost always translate "hai" as "yes", when it's really more of just an acknowledgement, as in, it's polite to say "hai" after someone asks you a question to show your understanding and acknowledgement. It also means yes, though.
Yeah, arrogance was the first thing I thought of - "We must not enter into political arrangements with countries ill-prepared to adequately protect our greatest economic assets."
Dear United States and RIAA: Fuck you, we're still trying to feed and shelter our people and curb mob violence and create jobs to fight unemployment. We respect your copyrights; it's just that we have a lot more shit going down that we need to address at the moment.
Either way, the RIAA doesn't lose. It only loses if artists start seeing the RIAA as not the only way to distribute their stuff and earn a living (I gotta get signed man!)
It's getting to the point that less and less new artists are at that point where they "gotta get signed to a major label". Look at what's out there now - with the exception of rap, there's not a lot of bands who were big before they were signed. Most of the rock bands that have been popular in the last, oh, 5 years or so released their "debut" album on a major label. That's unheard-of - their first album released with millions and millions of backing, posters in Best Buy and Times Square, commercials on VH1, street teams, music videos...
It has happened because 1.) the major labels have figured out what sells and they replicate the same cookie cutter stuff over and over again - forming bands with the intention of selling records, or 2.) someone's brother's cousin gets a favor done for them, and a previously unheard band with 2 months of practice and no songs gets signed because they look good.
Well, real bands are more and more moving away from that. There was a rash of bands that went from indie to major labels a few years back (AFI, New Found Glory), but lately from what I see hardly anyone is interested. Bands don't want the attention of the people that MTV brings, and would rather keep their dedicated fanbase. Not to mention - lots of bands who have signed with a major have found themselves abandoned by both fans and label - Less Than Jake, for instance. The label owns distribution rights on anything they put out, and they don't match the current music climate (R&B, collegemetal). Same for Thrice, and others.
The RIAA and, moreso, the big 3, have not figured out that this is a try-before-you-buy society now. They push crap, and they charge whatever they want for it. Plus, tales like this and this are finally getting heard. They're scared, now, becuase we've all had a chance to hear it before we buy it, and it sucks. And as per usual, they're going to be late catching up on the next big thing, but the next big thing doesn't want any of it. They're giving their music away, before people can steal it. And you know what? It's working:
Hey, everyone. We've gotten quite a bit of flack from a lot of friends, family members, other bands and oddly enough several religious denominations on how we run things in Bomb The Music Industry!... no "merchandise", having everything available for free, making shirts and burning CDs and asking for donations if people would like us to continue to do stuff this way.
Well, we broke even. Again. That's the second time.
And yes, we didn't get FOOD every now and then. And sure we had to get drunk on our own money. But we did it pretty much.
So, they're just going to go ahead doing what they do, sueing their audience, and slowly, the major label is going to become obsolete - cause, really - what's the advantage of a record label? Distribution and Loans - that's all they do. Well, the internet is the new distribution, and the equipment to record worldclass music is getting cheaper by the day.
At my school, University of Virginia, being a rich frat boy and having a future in investment banking or law gets you a lot further status-wise even though you may not necessarily be paid more.
Come on down to Virginia Tech for grad school, we don't have any of that bullshit down here. Just plenty of chicks, 17 bars within 3 blocks of campus, and a football team that isn't coached by someone who every year consistantly squanders the best recruiting class in the nation on a 3-4 defense. Plus, a lot of respect for CS and engineering students, and a small measure of contempt for people who major in finance, business management, economics, etc. And we have no delusions that our competition is Ivy League. We'll take care of you.
*sing-along* The UVA Guys are so trendy To games they wear shirts and ties... but they'll NEVER GET DRUNK AND THEY'LL NEVER GET LAID 'Till they transfer to Old V-P-I.
Huh. I never knew that. I had the little card from nintendo which had each of the 20 levels on it with reccomended area, armor, weapon, and what spell you got. I didn't even know they went higher than 20.
Slashdot Mirror
The only thing that prevents me from inserting a relevant joke at this point is that the sheer number of possibilities prevents my brain from choosing one.
Slashdotters: Please write your own joke and submit it to
Slashdot "Readership IQ" Jokes
c/o OSTG
46939 Bayside Parkway
Fremont, CA 94538
Seriously. Most of the people who read slashdot aren't morans.
~W
Right. And I am not even whining about my submissions. They were rejected, someone submitted them with a better headline, so-and-so wants to give a UFIA to submitter's mom, whatever, I don't care.
All I was pointing out was that the fact that 800,000 people have signed up since me, and that I've been here 5 years; the fact that I've been contributing positively (I had 50 karma long long long before karma went to the bill-and-ted system), the fact that enough people respect my opinion that I have over 130 fans (of which I'm very proud and greatful; see my journal on making fans friends), the fact that I still have my complete A-Z archive of Geeks in Space, and that I listened to it from the very first one - I think all these things entitle me to at least ask these questions.
Blowing me off doesn't really make me feel like I mean anything to this community, that my contributions don't matter, and I'll be honest, Jamie... it stings a little.
~Will
Yeah, I've seen those about Roland.
The fact is, shameless as he is, Roland is actually a real journalist, who writes for "real" journalistic sources (quotation marks denote wired). And he's been a slashdot member for a long time.
So I let him slide. Plus all his greenlights aren't from the same ModMin.
**Beatles has accomplished in THREE MONTHS what Roland accomplished in THREE YEARS. And without ever once pretending like he gave a fuck about technology.
~Will
see my comment here in this thread.
I'm not asking much. I don't even know if Taco knows this is going on. All I want is integrity.
Digg is looking better all the time.
Now, hold on... I'm not suggesting that we jump ship.
All I'm asking for is Journalistic integrity.
I know digg exists. I deliberately come back to slashdot. The reason? I'm not here for the articles. I'm here for the discussion. I can get the information anywhere. I am at slashdot because I want to know what others think. There are some very smart and very connected people on Slashdot, and I value their opinion. I also find out about alternatives or other theories or random_x piece of software I didn't know existed from the comments. I consider it a great day when I see someone say "Well, if you like X, you'll love Y". That to me is slashdot's strength. And I try to contribute positively where I can.
All I am asking for is for the Admins to have a little integrity. Whatever happened to honesty? Whatever happened to shaking a man's hand, looking him in the eye, and telling the truth? I'm that kind of guy... so are many of my fellow Slashdot readers. And I have an almost irrational belief in the fundamental "goodness" of mankind.
If I had to nail down the problems of Slashdot these days, it's very simple:
1.) They don't hold their admins to the same level of integrity to which their readers hold themselves.
2.) They irrationally refuse to believe people like me exist; they refuse to believe that the strength of Slashdot is in the content provided by the readers.
But, one at a time. Let's get 1 working first, and then I think 2 will fall into place.
~Will
Preliminary reply, so that the moderators can go ahead and bitchslap (mod to -23829) this entire thread. I guess I have the karma to sacrifice for the sake of the arguement.
It's yet another post by * * Beatles Beatles, gone live via ScuttleMonkey.
Blah Blah BeatlesBeatles uses Slashdot's pagerank to get his stupid George Harrison page higher ranked in Google. We all know this, and we all know it's despicable. If you're curious, hover your mouse over his name - it goes to george-harrison.info - I'm not hot linking it, if you want to go there, cut and paste into a new browser window.
Anyway, the fact that the page is nothing but a link farm and that it has quite possibly the worst CSS stylesheet on the planet seems to overshadow the fact that this person's website has nothing to do with technology of any sort, which is why, admins, that we wonder what it's doing on the front page of slashdot day after day.
But, ALL THAT ASIDE, there's still something more disturbing.
I've been a member of the slashdot community for years now - I forget when I signed up, but it was either late 1999 or early 2000, so it's at least 5 years at this point. Over the years, I've submitted something like 10 or 15 links, and not yet had one posted. And I only submit things I actually find interesting, like AMD sues Intel. BeatlesBeatles has had 20 submissions greenlit in the past 3 months. That's about one a week. And they've all been posted by Scuttle Monkey.
Every time someone points this out, our fearless trolleader Jamie comes out in support of ScuttleMonkey and BeatlesBeatles saying there's nothing funny going on, it's just journalism. Well, Admins: This is what gets us riled up - Here's a clue. YOUR READERS ARE NOT DUMB. IF THEY READ SLASHDOT REGULARLY, THEY'RE NOT STUPID.
Looking at the facts, most of us draw the obvious conclusion.
1.) I've been a member of slashdot for a LONG TIME. My userid is 112121.
2.) Beatles-Beatles has been a member of slashdot for about 3 months. His UID is 909211.
3.) Beatles-Beatles has had 20 greenlit submissions, most of which regurgitate an article, offering no origional insight, and read like press releases.
4.) I have had no greenlit submissions, and I consider mine to have been at least moderately clever.
5.) Beatles-Beatles is profiting in a very tangible, dollars-in-the-pocket way from having his site linked from Slashdot.
6.) All of Beatles-Beatles submissions have been greenlit by ScuttleMonkey.
To look at these facts and not come to the same conclusion as the rest of us is ignorance. Furthermore, to dismiss these facts as pure coincidence is simply implying that your readers are stupid.
This is why we bitch. All we want is for someone to admit it. "ScuttleMonkey and Beatles-Beatles are friends - when BB submits a story, he sends an IM to ScuttleMonkey, and if it's moderately interesting, SM posts it to help a friend out". That's all we're looking for.
But, this thread will be bitchslapped, and I'll probably lose my (Meta)mod privs. Oh well. Maybe some day we'll get an honest answer out of the admins.
Here's hoping.
~Will
Part of the reason people weren't too upset about buying new DVD's of old movies they already owned was because the VHS tapes wear out with repeated viewings. Your 15 year old vhs tape of big bird goes to japan is probably worn out from being watched 3 times a day x 4 kids, but on DVD, the medium doesn't wear out. Not to mention, you get added features, commentary tracks, etc.
The current stuff doesn't offer anything new, just more of it. It's like when they came out with SVHS - everyone jumped on a magnetic tape medium which promised superiour results, right?? Not. I'll wait for my holographic star trek stuff before I replace my DVD player.
~Will
Disclaimer: I love futurama - probably my favorite cartoon, when taken as a series.
The problem with Futurama is that it's soooo hit and miss. Family Guy isn't intellectual, but it's almost always funny, if you like the dick-and-fart jokes. Futurama, when it's on, is funny and intellectual, more than anything else on TV. But, when it's bad, it's fucking terrible.
Seriously, take a look at season 5 of Futurama:
Jurassic Bark (best episode of the series)
Devil's hands
The Why of Fry
The Sting
But, look at the rest:
Kif gets Knocked up a Notch
Less than Hero
Spanish Fry
and the big one... Bend Her
These episodes are unwatchable.
That's why I don't even juxtapose FG and Futurama. It can't be done. When you put an episode like "Time keeps on slippin'" next to a Family Guy episode, Family Guy looks retarted. When you put "Bend Her" next to FG, you wonder how the Futurama episode got on the air.
~Will
And the last line of Family Guy (pre-reserection) was:
Peter: "I'm going to go microwave a bagel... and have sex with it".
Quagmire: "Butter's in the fridge!"
They left that one open to having a comeback didn't they?
What's your daughter doing with a shiny metal ass?
Anything she wants...
Right, but in the same token, disasters don't always happen convieniently near an airfield.
Seriously, though.... if this plan works, I'm simply amazed by it. It's getting off the ground now, and if it works, i can see it revolutionize the shipping industry.
~Will
The advantages over planes are less clear. Probably greater endurance and shorter runways for the same cargo capacity.
As I have seen elsewhere in this discussion, the cargo area is around 90,000 cubic feet. A C5 Galaxy's cargo area is about 37,000 cubic feet. So, while it's slower than a commercial jet, it takes less trips back and forth to carry the same ammount of cargo, and presumably uses less fuel even for one trip (due to the "only slightly heavier than air" design). So, while a C-5 is much faster, it will take 3 trips back and forth to carry the cargo load of this blimplane, and thus this thing can do it faster, cheaper, and can be built with cheaper materials.
The questions I have are simply: How often do you need to transport 90,000 cubic feet of cargo? And how much cheaper is it than hiring a fleet of trucks? At 140mph, the trucks will take longer, i guess, and you'd need a lot of 'em...
~Will
While Hawking is well-known (he'd probably be less famous if he wasn't in a wheelchair)
The wheelchair and speaking device is the tradeoff for sacrificing all that DEX and CHA for the high INT.
When I was slogging through my 250 page PhD dissertation, I came across an article about disserations of such famous people as Schroedinger and other physicists of the 1920's - whose entire dissertations were about as long as Section 1.1 of my introduction.
Don't make excuses for yourself: Schroedinger's dissertation was of infinite length until observed.
~Will
In reasonable religions, yes. Try telling that to a southern baptist fundamentalist sometime. Their claim (and that of most fundamentalist christians) is that the bible is the inspired, infallable word of god, and though it was written by a man, the man was guided by god. Specifically, KJVonlyism really gets to me.
Of course, then you point out the fact that it has changed languages several times, and that there were probably errors in translation, and that scripts from different locations say different things, and that the idea of virgin birth and the trinity both are only a thousand or 1500 years old...
It doesn't matter to these people. I have heard people say that the translators of the KJV were inspired by god and made no mistakes, and hence that version is perfect - that it's the word of god, literally, and any previous mistakes were corrected by god's influence in that translation. I then point out - does that mean, the only true version of the bible is in English? And one sunday school teacher told me "yes". Unbelievable, especially considering I studied Ancient and New Testament Greek in college, and I know that for starters, there are some concepts that can't be translated into English, and furthermore, some mistranslations.
~Will
In my defense, my claim of "the scientific method is my religion" is only accurate in that, in a broad sense, people are looking for answers. I choose to look to science, while many choose to look to religion. Your conclusion about how the answers are reached being different in science versus religion is why I choose science.
I'm not trying to put a religion on my athiesm, though.
Because Science is based on understanding of facts; science does not get "reworked" when new facts surface, it simply incorporates the new material and new conclusions are drawn which take into account the new information.
Religion requires strict adherence to the laws of said religion, because in a monotheistic religious atmosphere, almost always the god in question is perceived as wholly good and perfect, with no evil, and at the same time is the source of the religious laws. If there's a flaw in the doctrine of the religion, it would disprove or contradict god, and if that happens, then god is not perfect. It throws the entire system off. Religion cannot deal with change in human understanding of any subject where the church has previously stated something as fact - there's no mechanism to account for it.
Hence why I'm an athiest. Or, if you want to get philosophical about it, my god is the scietific method. I see no need to explain things via the supernatural; to me everything falls into "things we understand" and "things we don't understand yet". I do not believe that there is anything at all in the entire universe that science could not explain given all the facts.
Also, an interesting thought occured to me when I was studying for my Classics minor - we wouldn't have a lot of the modern religious hangups if we still had a polytheistic religious society, a. la. Ancient Greece. That type of system has gods who make mistakes, reneg on their word, and screw up all the time. If that were the case here, we wouldn't have all the hangups.
~Will
**note I'd capitalize Greece long before god. The world needs more athiests. Stand up and be counted.
I was going to point out that on that 70's show, I think Red says "put my foot up your ass" or something using "up", and not "in". I don't watch the show often, but I think that's right. Anyway, in America, there's a subtle distinction between them - "up" implies an upward motion of the foot towards the ass, while "in" sounds disturbed - as if he were to stiffen up his toes and aim for squiggling them into the anus.
I'd imagine there are all sorts of subtle distinctions like this. I watch Iron Chef, and I rather like the dubbing job they do, in which they take many liberties "Fukui-san? Go ahead, big fella" is probably not word-for-word translated from Japanese, but it puts Americans at ease, rather than "Fukui-san, I beg your attention. Yes. Ohta, inform us". I've noticed that even then, they almost always translate "hai" as "yes", when it's really more of just an acknowledgement, as in, it's polite to say "hai" after someone asks you a question to show your understanding and acknowledgement. It also means yes, though.
~Will
Yeah, arrogance was the first thing I thought of - "We must not enter into political arrangements with countries ill-prepared to adequately protect our greatest economic assets."
Dear United States and RIAA: Fuck you, we're still trying to feed and shelter our people and curb mob violence and create jobs to fight unemployment. We respect your copyrights; it's just that we have a lot more shit going down that we need to address at the moment.
Either way, the RIAA doesn't lose. It only loses if artists start seeing the RIAA as not the only way to distribute their stuff and earn a living (I gotta get signed man!)
It's getting to the point that less and less new artists are at that point where they "gotta get signed to a major label". Look at what's out there now - with the exception of rap, there's not a lot of bands who were big before they were signed. Most of the rock bands that have been popular in the last, oh, 5 years or so released their "debut" album on a major label. That's unheard-of - their first album released with millions and millions of backing, posters in Best Buy and Times Square, commercials on VH1, street teams, music videos...
It has happened because 1.) the major labels have figured out what sells and they replicate the same cookie cutter stuff over and over again - forming bands with the intention of selling records, or 2.) someone's brother's cousin gets a favor done for them, and a previously unheard band with 2 months of practice and no songs gets signed because they look good.
Well, real bands are more and more moving away from that. There was a rash of bands that went from indie to major labels a few years back (AFI, New Found Glory), but lately from what I see hardly anyone is interested. Bands don't want the attention of the people that MTV brings, and would rather keep their dedicated fanbase. Not to mention - lots of bands who have signed with a major have found themselves abandoned by both fans and label - Less Than Jake, for instance. The label owns distribution rights on anything they put out, and they don't match the current music climate (R&B, collegemetal). Same for Thrice, and others.
The RIAA and, moreso, the big 3, have not figured out that this is a try-before-you-buy society now. They push crap, and they charge whatever they want for it. Plus, tales like this and this are finally getting heard. They're scared, now, becuase we've all had a chance to hear it before we buy it, and it sucks. And as per usual, they're going to be late catching up on the next big thing, but the next big thing doesn't want any of it. They're giving their music away, before people can steal it. And you know what? It's working:
So, they're just going to go ahead doing what they do, sueing their audience, and slowly, the major label is going to become obsolete - cause, really - what's the advantage of a record label? Distribution and Loans - that's all they do. Well, the internet is the new distribution, and the equipment to record worldclass music is getting cheaper by the day.
~Will
Dude.
1 to 30. Not 5 to 150. How are you going to make it in CS if you can't reduce your fractions!?!
At my school, University of Virginia, being a rich frat boy and having a future in investment banking or law gets you a lot further status-wise even though you may not necessarily be paid more.
Come on down to Virginia Tech for grad school, we don't have any of that bullshit down here. Just plenty of chicks, 17 bars within 3 blocks of campus, and a football team that isn't coached by someone who every year consistantly squanders the best recruiting class in the nation on a 3-4 defense. Plus, a lot of respect for CS and engineering students, and a small measure of contempt for people who major in finance, business management, economics, etc. And we have no delusions that our competition is Ivy League. We'll take care of you.
*sing-along*
The UVA Guys are so trendy
To games they wear shirts and ties...
but they'll
NEVER GET DRUNK AND THEY'LL NEVER GET LAID
'Till they transfer to Old V-P-I.
Huh. I never knew that. I had the little card from nintendo which had each of the 20 levels on it with reccomended area, armor, weapon, and what spell you got. I didn't even know they went higher than 20.
~W
I was just going to reply... You've described my life plan!
Currently:
Married
18 month old kid
SysAdmin at Virginia Tech.
Wife:
Applying (fingers crossed) to Vet School at VT.
When wife gets out of vet school:
Vacation
Be Mr. Mom
Maybe go part time after we pay off the student loans
Maybe go to Cullinary School
~Will
Hey!
I'm not 35!