I don't know when people started taking the stance that all opinions and all sources should be given equal time and weight, but it has led to a massively uninformed populace.
It was probably some idiot who favored freedom of speech and was against censorship.
Saying that people should not listen to nonsense is one thing; you are saying that you should decide what people get to hear in the first place. That's not the same thing.
You think the web is safe from controls? You think nobody wans to shut down the message and the messengers? Just because there is some paranoia in the message, you think it's not a legitimate paranoia?
Do you think the web is safe?
Basically, yes. I think that by the time the government is able to shut down the internet against our will, that action will be the least of our worries.
"Nearby" is a relative term. Your statement would seem to indicate that developing our space travel capabilities is not just a good idea, but ultimately necessary.
We didn't unilaterally invade, oh no, it was purely a defensive action because Iraq had weapons that they were planning to use on us. That's a lie, and the government has never admitted it, even though they got caught.
Oh no, we are not torturing people, but when the government got caught waterboarding people they refused to admit it, and even tried to redefine torture rather than admit the lie. Guantanamo Bay is still open and operating, in fact.
I was an early adopter in the mp3 player scene and I don't think it's at all an exaggeration to say that iPod revolutionized the market. I owned a Rio PMP 300 and later upgraded to a Creative Nomad Jukebox, but it wasn't until I got one of the earlier iPod models that I thought mp3 players had really arrived. The others were first, yes, and they did work, but very few people were all that interested until the iPod combined a small form factor and a large capacity. The interface was pretty cool at the time, too. Shame they were so expensive, but it didn't keep them from changing the way most people (and some manufacturers) thought about portable music.
Again, you're right that smartphones do not owe their existence to the iPhone, but when the iPhone released there was nothing else quite like it; now virtually the entire market resembles the Apple product. You need a special sort of denial to say that the device wasn't highly influential. Smartphones as they exist today very obviously owe a great deal to the iPhone. Android in particular seems unlikely ever to have been designed had the iPhone not been released and been such a market success.
You assume that the U.S. military would be used by the government to put down any significant rebellion, but I do not think this is very certain; it may seem counter-intuituve, but the U.S. military culture has a strong streak of distrust of high authority. There is a lot of thought and language devoted to classifying orders as lawful and unlawful. Some few will no doubt go along with any order, but as a whole I think it's hard to say where they would come down in the long run.
You're right, but the alternative is to be reasonable in the face of unreasonable arguments; this usually does not work at all. Witness Obama's entire administration so far: he tries to be reasonable while his opponents are rabid, and as a result his opponents have won virtually every debate. If the conversation is moved into black-and-white, i.e., if the initial statement is that "unions suck," your only real viable options are very often to reply in kind (e.g., "unions are awesome") or just to walk away. Either way, it is virtually guaranteed that nothing will be accomplished. Someone willing to make a blanket statement to start with is presenting an unthinking position, and probably not interested in being educated or reasonable, so your call for discourse is laudable but ultimately misguided in a political sense.
The incentive to create embryos for research also goes up in the furnace. You might not feel squeamish about me paying women to have abortions at my clinic and then reselling those embryos to research centers, but apparently there's a lot of people who do.
But that would be slow and inefficient, and possibly expensive. Surely if research went forward we would try to figure out a better way to grow the cells needed; if they're nearly as useful as projected we will need to manufacture them on industrial scales, and once they could be replicated quickly and/or cheaply, your natural fetuses would be worthless again. I'm not really a believer in the market as a universal panacea, but it seems like it would address this problem relatively quickly.
To be fair, there have been multiple studies done that suggest most of us would have done well in Nazi Germany. The truly horrifying thing about that is that most of the people were just regular folks. There is no Nazi gene; we're all capable of such things, regardless of what we tell ourselves. Sometimes I think the relentless vilification of Nazi Germany has robbed us of an important lesson.
It was the fact that the entire interface was accessed via an obvious analogue for triangle, instead of having I for inventory, C for character, M for map, etc. This wouldn't have been so bad but there was also no mechanism to bind the keys yourself! I thought Oblivion, properly modded, was an excellent game, but that UI was just awful.
Exactly right. You can complain that the entire game was voiced by a handful of actors, but to claim that the NPCs don't talk doesn't match my experience at all. I wonder if he turned voices off somehow and forgot he did it.
Their being on Unemployment probably doesn't cost the taxpayers anything; it's insurance. They paid into it. They money they're getting now is their own money coming back to them. The payout is scaled to their old pay but has a low cap, so they most likely won't get back what they've already put in. Unemployment, unless you haven't been working very long, isn't an entitlement program.
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Perhaps there should be a .mmm TLD for left handed people.
I don't know when people started taking the stance that all opinions and all sources should be given equal time and weight, but it has led to a massively uninformed populace.
It was probably some idiot who favored freedom of speech and was against censorship.
Saying that people should not listen to nonsense is one thing; you are saying that you should decide what people get to hear in the first place. That's not the same thing.
You think the web is safe from controls? You think nobody wans to shut down the message and the messengers? Just because there is some paranoia in the message, you think it's not a legitimate paranoia?
Do you think the web is safe?
Basically, yes. I think that by the time the government is able to shut down the internet against our will, that action will be the least of our worries.
"Nearby" is a relative term. Your statement would seem to indicate that developing our space travel capabilities is not just a good idea, but ultimately necessary.
It's someone who was a griefer but them some asshole stole their 'e' for the laughs.
And yet this thread shows that at least some of us buy into our own government's lies without much reflection. So maybe it works anyway.
We didn't unilaterally invade, oh no, it was purely a defensive action because Iraq had weapons that they were planning to use on us. That's a lie, and the government has never admitted it, even though they got caught.
Oh no, we are not torturing people, but when the government got caught waterboarding people they refused to admit it, and even tried to redefine torture rather than admit the lie. Guantanamo Bay is still open and operating, in fact.
I do not see the huge difference here.
But surely you only need to save face in unusual circumstances; if it were the norm, your honor would not be in danger.
You are right; I should have said that Android as it exists today would never have happened. Thanks for the correction.
The best satire leaves you wondering whether it is.
SWAT teams are well equipped, but still a very long way from Apaches and Hellfire missiles.
I was an early adopter in the mp3 player scene and I don't think it's at all an exaggeration to say that iPod revolutionized the market. I owned a Rio PMP 300 and later upgraded to a Creative Nomad Jukebox, but it wasn't until I got one of the earlier iPod models that I thought mp3 players had really arrived. The others were first, yes, and they did work, but very few people were all that interested until the iPod combined a small form factor and a large capacity. The interface was pretty cool at the time, too. Shame they were so expensive, but it didn't keep them from changing the way most people (and some manufacturers) thought about portable music.
Again, you're right that smartphones do not owe their existence to the iPhone, but when the iPhone released there was nothing else quite like it; now virtually the entire market resembles the Apple product. You need a special sort of denial to say that the device wasn't highly influential. Smartphones as they exist today very obviously owe a great deal to the iPhone. Android in particular seems unlikely ever to have been designed had the iPhone not been released and been such a market success.
You assume that the U.S. military would be used by the government to put down any significant rebellion, but I do not think this is very certain; it may seem counter-intuituve, but the U.S. military culture has a strong streak of distrust of high authority. There is a lot of thought and language devoted to classifying orders as lawful and unlawful. Some few will no doubt go along with any order, but as a whole I think it's hard to say where they would come down in the long run.
That's easy to believe. Many, many things are rarer than diamonds.
Yeah, except with the terror threat we pray to the military-industrial complex and, much to our dismay, our prayers get answered.
You're right, but the alternative is to be reasonable in the face of unreasonable arguments; this usually does not work at all. Witness Obama's entire administration so far: he tries to be reasonable while his opponents are rabid, and as a result his opponents have won virtually every debate. If the conversation is moved into black-and-white, i.e., if the initial statement is that "unions suck," your only real viable options are very often to reply in kind (e.g., "unions are awesome") or just to walk away. Either way, it is virtually guaranteed that nothing will be accomplished. Someone willing to make a blanket statement to start with is presenting an unthinking position, and probably not interested in being educated or reasonable, so your call for discourse is laudable but ultimately misguided in a political sense.
The incentive to create embryos for research also goes up in the furnace. You might not feel squeamish about me paying women to have abortions at my clinic and then reselling those embryos to research centers, but apparently there's a lot of people who do.
But that would be slow and inefficient, and possibly expensive. Surely if research went forward we would try to figure out a better way to grow the cells needed; if they're nearly as useful as projected we will need to manufacture them on industrial scales, and once they could be replicated quickly and/or cheaply, your natural fetuses would be worthless again. I'm not really a believer in the market as a universal panacea, but it seems like it would address this problem relatively quickly.
To be fair, there have been multiple studies done that suggest most of us would have done well in Nazi Germany. The truly horrifying thing about that is that most of the people were just regular folks. There is no Nazi gene; we're all capable of such things, regardless of what we tell ourselves. Sometimes I think the relentless vilification of Nazi Germany has robbed us of an important lesson.
Your choice of the word implies that the alternative is not unlikely; it's not trolling to point out that this is flawed.
Let's not forget Ctrl+= and Ctrl+-, which apparently no one knows resize the pages in every web browser and mail client.
CTRL-mouse wheel does the same thing in most browsers. I've never tried it in e-mail clients, though.
Windows+E is a good tip; I've always just kept it pinned to the task bar, didn't know about that one. Thanks.
The nuclear arsenal would seem to belie this theory.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
It was the fact that the entire interface was accessed via an obvious analogue for triangle, instead of having I for inventory, C for character, M for map, etc. This wouldn't have been so bad but there was also no mechanism to bind the keys yourself! I thought Oblivion, properly modded, was an excellent game, but that UI was just awful.
Exactly right. You can complain that the entire game was voiced by a handful of actors, but to claim that the NPCs don't talk doesn't match my experience at all. I wonder if he turned voices off somehow and forgot he did it.
Their being on Unemployment probably doesn't cost the taxpayers anything; it's insurance. They paid into it. They money they're getting now is their own money coming back to them. The payout is scaled to their old pay but has a low cap, so they most likely won't get back what they've already put in. Unemployment, unless you haven't been working very long, isn't an entitlement program.