let me take you to right to the end game of the nihilist's position:
1. if nothing matters, kill yourself. or at least shut up and stop posting on slashdot. it doesn't matter, right? so why are you talking about it if it doesn't matter? 1. I don't claim to be a nihilist, but nice try.
2. okay, then it does matter. so keep talking. but stop saying statements that contradict your demonstrated desire to say something about the subject matter. namely "it doesn't matter" 2. Perhaps "it doesn't matter" is a valid point in the discussion. Resource A is being wasted on problem X. It may be worthwhile to discuss the validity of problem X in order to determine value lost of resource A. The entire discussion may, in fact, be irrelevant and by pointing that out I save those engaged in it a valuable resource, namely: time.
on any ideological issue, there is being for it, being against it, and not caring about it
not caring about an issue IS a valid position for you to take if you want. so prove you don't care. shut up and go away. otherwise, you do care. in which case, celebrate the death of the dolphin, or express your anger or sadness about it but coming into a topic of discussion and announcing that the topic doesn't matter is not a logically coherent position. if you talk about it, it matters to you. if you don't talk about it, it doesn't matter to you.
but talking about how something doesn't matter to you. what the hell is that point of view supposed to mean to anyone else? it's hypocrisy at best. no one is tying you down to a computer terminal, holding your eyes open with toothpicks, putting your fingers on a keyboard, pointing a gun at your head and forcing you to comment on slashdot. so prove it doesn't matter: shut up, and go away Or, I could seek to inform myself of other's opinions about the subject at hand with a question. "So what if they're extinct?" is actually a question. I'll note for the record that you didn't answer it, despite your implied love for our aquatic friends or, at least, the subject of debate in general. Excellent use of misdirection. Why don't you correct my spelling while you're at it?
I'm starting to fear that my libertarianism is becoming dangerous, but so what if they're extinct?
It's just like pandas, everyone wants them around because they're cute and cuddly, but all they want to do is loaf around and eat grass all day. What good are they? Are they keeping the bamboo population at bay?
In the US, like your country, bottled water is sold under considerably more lenient standards than tap water. Then again, most people here think "artesian" means "good".
...this would mean that after you make a movie, you sell it, to whoever wants to buy it, at its actual cost (several million dollars or whatever). The person who buys it can do what they want with it... Yes, perhaps many large corporations would form around this profitable business model. We could call them "movie studios". If only we could find a place, maybe out in sunny California, where these corporations and the talent they rely on could all be located in order to facilitate the process.
I know it's off-topic, and I know that proper English is frowned upon on teh 1nt3rn3t tub3z, but the word you want is "losing", with one 'o'. "Loose", when used as a verb, means to release, as in, "to loose the hounds". "Lose" with one 'o' means to misplace something or to be defeated, as in "I lose my car keys quite frequently" or "I will lose to the Germans despite the construction of hundreds of miles of fortified artillery emplacements on our shared border."
Please don't take this post as an insult. If I didn't find your post worth reading, I wouldn't have wasted my time correcting your grammar. You seem intelligent, I figure you'd want to know.
..the Internet allows easy indentification and polorisation of beliefs.
We need everyone in every society to be able to recognise and identify the central underlying behavioural cause of the problem. Only then can we finally have a world at peace. Science can show the way forward, but only when heretics are allowed to voice an opinion so we can test all ideas.
The internet is a much more effective tool for the heretics than it is for the alpha dogs. Information wants to be free, as they say, and a large and growing number of people around the world have the collected knowledge of humanity at their fingertips, in all its glory and its shame.
How does a police state thrive when the citizens can record brutality and tyranny on devices they carry in their pockets and broadcast it to *everyone*? We live in an unprecedented age when the noblest scientist and the lowliest 9-11 "truth" wacko have equal access to everyone's attention.
I understand the emotional grounds for your viewpoint, but I think you need to factor in how the money would be spent before you jump to conclusions.
Would these decadent billionaires be spending their money investing in infrastructure in developing nations? There's little to no return on their investment, so that's unlikely. Maybe a philanthropic few of them would send money for medical supplies or food, which will help temporarily alleviate the symptoms, but it won't cure the disease. That's assuming the money or supplies weren't simply stolen by warlords or funneled into the accounts of petty dictators. If the wealthy have those inclinations, they'll probably donate money as well as splurging on their own space vacation. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have donated a whole hell of a lot more money to charity than I ever could.
What happens when these people pay their megabucks to spend a couple days in space? It creates jobs, high paying jobs. It fosters interest in the commercialization of space, which creates more interest in science and math among students, if for no other reason than there are high paying jobs in those sectors. Advances in those areas pass into other technologies, and those technologies become commodities, and those commodities become necessities.
I won't deny that there are problems with the distribution of wealth in the developed world, or claim that I'm indifferent to the suffering of poorer nations, but in the long term these people throwing money away on decadent pleasures will do more for all of humanity than whatever meager charitable contributions you or I could make.
I enjoyed Doom 3. That's probably because I was expecting what it was-- a shallow, 10 hour shooter with lots of "Holy shit! Where did that thing come from?" moments that looked really good. I never needed or expected it to be Half-life.
That said, it *is* a shallow game with no real story, and I've never felt the need to go back and play it again.
I can't comment on Rage, except to say that if it's another Doom 3, I will be disappointed because this time I do want more.
I think this technology will spawn some really great games, though, even if Rage turns out to be terrible. Specifically for the reasons you mentioned. Doom gameplay just doesn't cut it anymore, and even if id doesn't get that, Carmack is still a genius, and this looks to the kind of technology that 3rd parties can really get behind. It seems to be the kind of thing that can really lower the cost of quality, cross-platform development, and that's good for everyone.
I won't tell you people should be allowed to drink and drive, because I don't believe that. I'm sorry you misinterpreted my comments as being favorable towards that behavior. I was merely pointing out that Americans expect to drive everywhere all the time, and I was trying to explain to the parent poster why the attitudes of most Americans differ from people in his country.
Stop thinking about getting the 360 and actually get it. It's great.
I bought the Wii first, and it's awesome, but it's main strength is in the multiplayer games. If you're ever bored on a weeknight the 360 is where it's at. IMHO, Live Arcade is WAY better than the virtual console (which isn't bad). You can download demos of any game you're on the fence about, and most of the games are worth paying for anyway.
BTW: For the record, I'm not in any way *condoning* drunk driving, I merely wanted to point out that there are societal differences which facilitate a more civilized and enlightened view on the subject than what may be present in my country.
Agreed. I'm currently building a *huge* international, multi-lingual web site for a very large corporation, who happen to host their own servers and mandate the use of the community version of MySQL. The project is more than large and complicated enough to convince me that if you *need* the enterprise version for whatever reason, you can most definitely afford it.
I've never heard evolution explained in the context of surviving the waking wrath of Great Cthulhu by seeing with your skin, but... uh... can I have some of what you're smoking?
The 10% aren't the people who write the prettiest code, they're the people who open other people's minds and create new paradigms.
I think most of us in the 90% know that most code (including ours) sucks at least a little bit.
Any competent programmer can write elegant and well commented code, but in the real world it rarely survives contact with ambitious deadlines and the whims of the client.
My code works, I get paid, and that's good enough for me.
As far as colonizing the stars goes, barring some way of FTL (or instant) travel and communication, I think we will never move beyond our own solar system in our current physical form. I think we will have figured out how to lose our bodies and move our consciousness into "the machine" before then. Once that happens, there will be no need for maintaining the human race in a biological form at all since "reproduction" can occur in solid-state. Once we've reached that stage, being effectively immortal, we might be willing to entertain the thought of physically traveling to other stars, but there will be no need to colonize them, they can be virtualized. But then again, we could virtualize the whole trip anyway.
Let's assume that our current knowledge of our universe's physical laws is reasonably adequate.
You only need FTL travel if you intend to come back. If you can achieve a significantly large fraction of C, time dilation would make the trip fairly reasonable if you knew where you were going. You could travel across the galaxy in less than a generation if you could get anywhere reasonably close.
Granted, even that technology is beyond our reach, but not "impossible" in the strictest sense. If we don't destroy ourselves, why couldn't we be swarming around the galaxy like flies in a few hundred thousand years? We would exist in isolated pockets, never able to communicate with one another because we would all be separated by trillions of miles and millions of years, but so what? That would fine if you could travel with your family, a few thousand of your closest friends, and the collected knowledge of humanity.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not a physicist, nor do I play one on TV.
IAANAD (I am also not a designer), in fact, I'm a developer, so designers are both my life's blood and my mortal enemies (oh, what tragedy!).
Is it possible to explain what is so offensive about arial other than it being common and Microsoftish? I can spot the difference, and I like helvetica, but it's just honestly not that big of a deal for me.
This strikes me as one of those "menus belong on the top-left of the screen!" type of arguments, where the person making the argument claims that it's an objective statement of fact, and one can make an equally logical argument against it. Indeed, merely being able to say, "I prefer Y" makes a statement of "X is objectively better" somewhat dubious.
I'm really interested in hearing, specifically, what makes arial an unacceptable substitute. In your post, you don't actually give any single reason why arial is so offensive other than it being inexpensive, which, IMHO, is not valid in and of itself unless you're a snob attempting to appeal to other snobs.
I don't meant to imply that you're a snob. I'm sure you have good reasons for making that statement, and I would genuinely like to hear them.
I use PNGs quite frequently. I'd them for all my images if it weren't for the fact that JPEG is quite simply a better format for almost any time you don't need robust alpha-channel support.
The marginally reduced quality is more than made up for in greatly reduced file size.
Slashdot Mirror
1. if nothing matters, kill yourself. or at least shut up and stop posting on slashdot. it doesn't matter, right? so why are you talking about it if it doesn't matter?
1. I don't claim to be a nihilist, but nice try. 2. okay, then it does matter. so keep talking. but stop saying statements that contradict your demonstrated desire to say something about the subject matter. namely "it doesn't matter" 2. Perhaps "it doesn't matter" is a valid point in the discussion. Resource A is being wasted on problem X. It may be worthwhile to discuss the validity of problem X in order to determine value lost of resource A. The entire discussion may, in fact, be irrelevant and by pointing that out I save those engaged in it a valuable resource, namely: time.
on any ideological issue, there is being for it, being against it, and not caring about it
not caring about an issue IS a valid position for you to take if you want. so prove you don't care. shut up and go away. otherwise, you do care. in which case, celebrate the death of the dolphin, or express your anger or sadness about it
but coming into a topic of discussion and announcing that the topic doesn't matter is not a logically coherent position. if you talk about it, it matters to you. if you don't talk about it, it doesn't matter to you.
but talking about how something doesn't matter to you. what the hell is that point of view supposed to mean to anyone else? it's hypocrisy at best. no one is tying you down to a computer terminal, holding your eyes open with toothpicks, putting your fingers on a keyboard, pointing a gun at your head and forcing you to comment on slashdot. so prove it doesn't matter: shut up, and go away
Or, I could seek to inform myself of other's opinions about the subject at hand with a question. "So what if they're extinct?" is actually a question. I'll note for the record that you didn't answer it, despite your implied love for our aquatic friends or, at least, the subject of debate in general. Excellent use of misdirection. Why don't you correct my spelling while you're at it?
I'm starting to fear that my libertarianism is becoming dangerous, but so what if they're extinct? It's just like pandas, everyone wants them around because they're cute and cuddly, but all they want to do is loaf around and eat grass all day. What good are they? Are they keeping the bamboo population at bay?
In the US, like your country, bottled water is sold under considerably more lenient standards than tap water. Then again, most people here think "artesian" means "good".
...this would mean that after you make a movie, you sell it, to whoever wants to buy it, at its actual cost (several million dollars or whatever). The person who buys it can do what they want with it... Yes, perhaps many large corporations would form around this profitable business model. We could call them "movie studios". If only we could find a place, maybe out in sunny California, where these corporations and the talent they rely on could all be located in order to facilitate the process.I know it's off-topic, and I know that proper English is frowned upon on teh 1nt3rn3t tub3z, but the word you want is "losing", with one 'o'. "Loose", when used as a verb, means to release, as in, "to loose the hounds". "Lose" with one 'o' means to misplace something or to be defeated, as in "I lose my car keys quite frequently" or "I will lose to the Germans despite the construction of hundreds of miles of fortified artillery emplacements on our shared border."
Please don't take this post as an insult. If I didn't find your post worth reading, I wouldn't have wasted my time correcting your grammar. You seem intelligent, I figure you'd want to know.
..the Internet allows easy indentification and polorisation of beliefs.We need everyone in every society to be able to recognise and identify the central underlying behavioural cause of the problem. Only then can we finally have a world at peace. Science can show the way forward, but only when heretics are allowed to voice an opinion so we can test all ideas.
The internet is a much more effective tool for the heretics than it is for the alpha dogs. Information wants to be free, as they say, and a large and growing number of people around the world have the collected knowledge of humanity at their fingertips, in all its glory and its shame.
How does a police state thrive when the citizens can record brutality and tyranny on devices they carry in their pockets and broadcast it to *everyone*? We live in an unprecedented age when the noblest scientist and the lowliest 9-11 "truth" wacko have equal access to everyone's attention.
I think it's beautiful. Humans are great.
I understand the emotional grounds for your viewpoint, but I think you need to factor in how the money would be spent before you jump to conclusions.
Would these decadent billionaires be spending their money investing in infrastructure in developing nations? There's little to no return on their investment, so that's unlikely. Maybe a philanthropic few of them would send money for medical supplies or food, which will help temporarily alleviate the symptoms, but it won't cure the disease. That's assuming the money or supplies weren't simply stolen by warlords or funneled into the accounts of petty dictators. If the wealthy have those inclinations, they'll probably donate money as well as splurging on their own space vacation. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have donated a whole hell of a lot more money to charity than I ever could.
What happens when these people pay their megabucks to spend a couple days in space? It creates jobs, high paying jobs. It fosters interest in the commercialization of space, which creates more interest in science and math among students, if for no other reason than there are high paying jobs in those sectors. Advances in those areas pass into other technologies, and those technologies become commodities, and those commodities become necessities.
I won't deny that there are problems with the distribution of wealth in the developed world, or claim that I'm indifferent to the suffering of poorer nations, but in the long term these people throwing money away on decadent pleasures will do more for all of humanity than whatever meager charitable contributions you or I could make.
Why was this post "insightful"? I thought it was "funny".
That said, it *is* a shallow game with no real story, and I've never felt the need to go back and play it again.
I can't comment on Rage, except to say that if it's another Doom 3, I will be disappointed because this time I do want more.
I think this technology will spawn some really great games, though, even if Rage turns out to be terrible. Specifically for the reasons you mentioned. Doom gameplay just doesn't cut it anymore, and even if id doesn't get that, Carmack is still a genius, and this looks to the kind of technology that 3rd parties can really get behind. It seems to be the kind of thing that can really lower the cost of quality, cross-platform development, and that's good for everyone.
I won't tell you people should be allowed to drink and drive, because I don't believe that. I'm sorry you misinterpreted my comments as being favorable towards that behavior. I was merely pointing out that Americans expect to drive everywhere all the time, and I was trying to explain to the parent poster why the attitudes of most Americans differ from people in his country.
I bought the Wii first, and it's awesome, but it's main strength is in the multiplayer games. If you're ever bored on a weeknight the 360 is where it's at. IMHO, Live Arcade is WAY better than the virtual console (which isn't bad). You can download demos of any game you're on the fence about, and most of the games are worth paying for anyway.
BTW: For the record, I'm not in any way *condoning* drunk driving, I merely wanted to point out that there are societal differences which facilitate a more civilized and enlightened view on the subject than what may be present in my country.
Your country also has, most likely, effective public transportation in its major metropolitan areas and outlying suburbs. Ever been to Milwaukee?
Agreed. I'm currently building a *huge* international, multi-lingual web site for a very large corporation, who happen to host their own servers and mandate the use of the community version of MySQL. The project is more than large and complicated enough to convince me that if you *need* the enterprise version for whatever reason, you can most definitely afford it.
You keep your filthy hands off my wafer belt!
Wow... I mean, seriously man, wow.
I've never heard evolution explained in the context of surviving the waking wrath of Great Cthulhu by seeing with your skin, but... uh... can I have some of what you're smoking?
No, no, no. You're thinking of Windows.
The 10% aren't the people who write the prettiest code, they're the people who open other people's minds and create new paradigms.
I think most of us in the 90% know that most code (including ours) sucks at least a little bit.
Any competent programmer can write elegant and well commented code, but in the real world it rarely survives contact with ambitious deadlines and the whims of the client.
My code works, I get paid, and that's good enough for me.
As far as colonizing the stars goes, barring some way of FTL (or instant) travel and communication, I think we will never move beyond our own solar system in our current physical form. I think we will have figured out how to lose our bodies and move our consciousness into "the machine" before then. Once that happens, there will be no need for maintaining the human race in a biological form at all since "reproduction" can occur in solid-state. Once we've reached that stage, being effectively immortal, we might be willing to entertain the thought of physically traveling to other stars, but there will be no need to colonize them, they can be virtualized. But then again, we could virtualize the whole trip anyway.
Let's assume that our current knowledge of our universe's physical laws is reasonably adequate.
You only need FTL travel if you intend to come back. If you can achieve a significantly large fraction of C, time dilation would make the trip fairly reasonable if you knew where you were going. You could travel across the galaxy in less than a generation if you could get anywhere reasonably close.
Granted, even that technology is beyond our reach, but not "impossible" in the strictest sense. If we don't destroy ourselves, why couldn't we be swarming around the galaxy like flies in a few hundred thousand years? We would exist in isolated pockets, never able to communicate with one another because we would all be separated by trillions of miles and millions of years, but so what? That would fine if you could travel with your family, a few thousand of your closest friends, and the collected knowledge of humanity.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not a physicist, nor do I play one on TV.
I'm inclined to agree with you, but why should that stop a good debate?
Perhaps a race would master space and time specifically to exterminate or assimilate other races, with no need at all for our resources.
Duh... the Time Lords keep the infinite temporal flux free from profiteers. It's Daleks you really need to worry about.
Fair enough. I'm satisfied.
Yes. As I've said before, both OSes are terrible in their own way.
IAANAD (I am also not a designer), in fact, I'm a developer, so designers are both my life's blood and my mortal enemies (oh, what tragedy!).
Is it possible to explain what is so offensive about arial other than it being common and Microsoftish? I can spot the difference, and I like helvetica, but it's just honestly not that big of a deal for me.
This strikes me as one of those "menus belong on the top-left of the screen!" type of arguments, where the person making the argument claims that it's an objective statement of fact, and one can make an equally logical argument against it. Indeed, merely being able to say, "I prefer Y" makes a statement of "X is objectively better" somewhat dubious.
I'm really interested in hearing, specifically, what makes arial an unacceptable substitute. In your post, you don't actually give any single reason why arial is so offensive other than it being inexpensive, which, IMHO, is not valid in and of itself unless you're a snob attempting to appeal to other snobs.
I don't meant to imply that you're a snob. I'm sure you have good reasons for making that statement, and I would genuinely like to hear them.
I use PNGs quite frequently. I'd them for all my images if it weren't for the fact that JPEG is quite simply a better format for almost any time you don't need robust alpha-channel support.
The marginally reduced quality is more than made up for in greatly reduced file size.
There are perfectly functional methods for implementing PNG alpha channel support in IE6.
It's a shame that we have to use them, but they're there, and with IE's support for conditional comments, they don't hurt real browsers at all.