Talking about the scale of populating space in terms of lifetimes is pretty useless. The New World took centuries to populate to a degree that had any meaning, and is still less densely populated than Europe or Asia. Does that make the hemisphere any less important? And please, you go from talking about the demise of humanity at less than 7 billion to postulating a future of 510 billion people? 5 trillion? On one planet? Talk about thinking two dimensionally.
Millionfold? Really, you're not letting hyperbole run away from you at all? Looking at the past century the term 'threefold' would be most realistic. Christ. How many fingers am I holding up? One million? And you want to insult my thought process?
Global warming. Pull the other one. Global temperature was higher two thousand years ago and higher than that again three and four thousand years ago. Of the last ten thousand years, the most recent thousand years has been the coldest. Beyond all that, it's glacial periods that are bad for life. Mass extinctions and the overall shrinking of plant and animal populations occur in glacial periods, not interglacial. Higher temperatures might be bad for some species, any environmental change is going to bad for something somewhere, but the net effect in the fossil record is positive. Oh well. (Oh and salinization from irrigation has been a problem since people started doing it in Neolithic Mesopotamia. Remember that hydroponics thing I mentioned? Solves that.)
Stability is relative. And how does that old saying go (Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law), "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." All the advancements made in the course of human evolution were (of course) previously 'yet-to-be-discovered'. Implying that the process is going to suddenly stop is as stupid as Malthus' having completely ignored it.
Your speaking of the demise of humanity as though it were a fact already in the past betrays your lack of realistic perspective. Thomas Malthus and all people of his ilk are idiots who don't take into account the increase of efficiency through technology. They panic about population growth as though no improvement has ever been made in the logistical handling of resources. The critical mass of human population and technology is such that great minds are no longer produced sparsely through history, one at a time in a generation, but rather thousands of 'one in a million' geniuses are produced now in each generation. This army of once-rare intellect is now networked together in real time with virtually the entirety of human knowledge besides. Consequently resource efficiency keeps going up, more food is produced more quickly in less space with less spoilage for instance decade after decade, and hydroponics is the only real ceiling on that and it hasn't even been touched yet. Just recently researchers are investigating means of producing meat directly from cell cultures instead of the more costly and inefficient care of animals.
All we need to do is get our lazy asses into space and humanity wins the game.
Winamp? What makes that proprietary software better than MS's proprietary software? (Not mention it has sucked since at least version 3.) Stick with VLC.
Why was this modded redundant? It's like modding an article that's been slashdotted redundant. It's quoted material from another page. It's not like that wasn't made clear.
Yeah, that's why Windows 3.x support ended only last year. It was being used in embedded applications for decades.
Besides which, the AC I was originally responding to seemed to be implying a long history of criticism, which only correlates to a long history of architecture changes. Do not confuse the topic of a thread with the topic of an article.
Very cute, but also wrong. Windows started out as just an interface, a window manager for MS-DOS, in versions 1 and 2. The Linux kernel was an OS from version 0.0.1 (even if it only ran on a few systems). Also I'm pretty sure that Linux 2.x has more in common with 1.x than Vista has with Windows 3.x.
It sounds like you just don't like conflicting opinions. Which is too bad because dialectical synthesis doesn't work without them.
Slashdot has always had an anti-Windows bias, but at least it's an intelligent one. MS has really slid since Vista, which is why all the indications of 'more of the same' with 7 just give that bias credence.
There is only one Linux kernel. The different distributions, to oversimplify, are like software bundles. Different window managers etc. And for telling the difference, there's always distrowatch. It even highlights beta components in red.
Well, although nobody in the UK has shot up a school since the Dublane Massacre, that doesn't mean that mass murders at schools in the UK have ceased. They just use otherweapons now (improvised flame thrower? I have to say I'm impressed). Just goes to prove that people are going to kill people no matter what tools they have to do it with.
Exactly. You're not going to make productive human beings out of your children by locking them up, and a virtual prison is no different. You have to teach them about the world and how to process and interpret it. Better that they learn about 'bad' things through the lens of their parents than from whatever immature/incomplete/irresponsible opinion their peers have, or worse, not learn at all and end up a gullible, naive putz that anybody can take advantage of.
I swear one of these days I'm going to go on a crusade to show kids how an OS-complete bootable live CD can free them from all the censorship outside of hosts blocked by the network.
Do you really want to expose a person who is still in the "girls are icky" phase to an S&M site involving tying up and whipping someone
I for one never had that phase, maybe because I'm a bisexual male? That would be an interesting study. Anyway, I don't see the correlation. Are you afraid that the S&M will somehow artificially reinforce the immature irrational aversion to females?
or how about the highly illegal sites involving bestiality?
That illegal status varies very highly from state to state and nation to nation. You claim toward the end of your post to have been brought up progressive, but your approach implies more similitude with the type who thinks that the world is homogeneous to where you are right now.
In particular without a parent there to explain that while there may not (depending on your personal world views) be anything wrong with someone enjoying a little pain with their pleasure, it's not something that everyone is into?
It's funny that you're advocating teaching the very thing at the same time that you're attempting to advocate not teaching.
Do you really want more people to have the idea that it's okay to do harm to others, but only if you really love them?
It's important for people to stop confusing love and sex. It's moralistic baggage from the era of 'no sex before marriage' that people are still trying to integrate into their otherwise sexually emancipated lives. However that's a much larger topic, the real issue here is simple consent. If person A says to person B 'I like it rough, and I want you to do X to me' then it's pretty clear. Love need not enter the equation at all.
Because, tell me, have you ever seen, read, or heard an "accepted" explanation about reproduction that didn't start out "When two people really love each other and want to have a baby..."
Just shows that the accepted process is just another artifact of the 'no sex before marriage' era. People need to find new modes of addressing the situation to kids instead of unrealistic anachronisms which have led to insanely high divorce rates.
I'm going to invalidate all my moderations on this topic because I have to address some issues in here.
My parents were the sort who thought that children should be insulated from any kind of sexual awareness. Not to be seen, not be spoken of, not to be thought about. Now to a kid with any kind of backbone what that translates to is 'HOLY FUCK I REALLY HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT THIS SHIT!'
Consequently, when I stumbled upon porn as was inevitable, I obsessed about it. I obsessed about sexuality and even read sexual self help books in the library when I was eleven. I knew more about sexuality before puberty than was probably healthy, and the catalyst for all of it was people telling me 'you can/should not know that.'
If my parents had approached sexuality as some normal, boring (which it is for most people if they really look at it objectively), and trivial (pregnancy aside) activity between consenting adults instead of some hidden, fascinating, powerful mystical right of some kind that must be kept secret at all costs I probably would not have become hyperaware at such a young age. I probably would have been mentally healthier.
What's worse is that while my problem was overexposure, that's because I was headstrong and my response to forbidden knowledge is 'fuck you,' but other kids get conditioned to the idea of forbidden knowledge or bad knowledge and turn it into a learning problem. Their curiosity is diminished and their ability to learn is crippled because they become afraid to ask questions that they think will get them 'in trouble' and eventually they don't even think about thinking to ask questions. It's a type of conditioning, and then when they become adults and are finally released from the mental prison imposed on them by their parents and society at large, the conditioning stays with them. They've effectively internalized that prison, and very few ever really wake up and ask why it was so important for them to be handled the way that they were as children.
Slashdot Mirror
Talking about the scale of populating space in terms of lifetimes is pretty useless. The New World took centuries to populate to a degree that had any meaning, and is still less densely populated than Europe or Asia. Does that make the hemisphere any less important? And please, you go from talking about the demise of humanity at less than 7 billion to postulating a future of 510 billion people? 5 trillion? On one planet? Talk about thinking two dimensionally.
Millionfold? Really, you're not letting hyperbole run away from you at all? Looking at the past century the term 'threefold' would be most realistic. Christ. How many fingers am I holding up? One million? And you want to insult my thought process?
Global warming. Pull the other one. Global temperature was higher two thousand years ago and higher than that again three and four thousand years ago. Of the last ten thousand years, the most recent thousand years has been the coldest. Beyond all that, it's glacial periods that are bad for life. Mass extinctions and the overall shrinking of plant and animal populations occur in glacial periods, not interglacial. Higher temperatures might be bad for some species, any environmental change is going to bad for something somewhere, but the net effect in the fossil record is positive. Oh well. (Oh and salinization from irrigation has been a problem since people started doing it in Neolithic Mesopotamia. Remember that hydroponics thing I mentioned? Solves that.)
Stability is relative. And how does that old saying go (Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law), "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." All the advancements made in the course of human evolution were (of course) previously 'yet-to-be-discovered'. Implying that the process is going to suddenly stop is as stupid as Malthus' having completely ignored it.
Your speaking of the demise of humanity as though it were a fact already in the past betrays your lack of realistic perspective. Thomas Malthus and all people of his ilk are idiots who don't take into account the increase of efficiency through technology. They panic about population growth as though no improvement has ever been made in the logistical handling of resources. The critical mass of human population and technology is such that great minds are no longer produced sparsely through history, one at a time in a generation, but rather thousands of 'one in a million' geniuses are produced now in each generation. This army of once-rare intellect is now networked together in real time with virtually the entirety of human knowledge besides. Consequently resource efficiency keeps going up, more food is produced more quickly in less space with less spoilage for instance decade after decade, and hydroponics is the only real ceiling on that and it hasn't even been touched yet. Just recently researchers are investigating means of producing meat directly from cell cultures instead of the more costly and inefficient care of animals.
All we need to do is get our lazy asses into space and humanity wins the game.
I think my VTEC just kicked in... (Gah now I've got Japan Break Industries stuck in my head.)
I wish I had mod points for you.
Why was this moderated Troll?
Winamp? What makes that proprietary software better than MS's proprietary software? (Not mention it has sucked since at least version 3.) Stick with VLC.
Your sarcasm is redundant, you couldn't RTFA?
Why was this modded redundant? It's like modding an article that's been slashdotted redundant. It's quoted material from another page. It's not like that wasn't made clear.
Yeah, that's why Windows 3.x support ended only last year. It was being used in embedded applications for decades.
Besides which, the AC I was originally responding to seemed to be implying a long history of criticism, which only correlates to a long history of architecture changes. Do not confuse the topic of a thread with the topic of an article.
Very cute, but also wrong. Windows started out as just an interface, a window manager for MS-DOS, in versions 1 and 2. The Linux kernel was an OS from version 0.0.1 (even if it only ran on a few systems). Also I'm pretty sure that Linux 2.x has more in common with 1.x than Vista has with Windows 3.x.
It sounds like you just don't like conflicting opinions. Which is too bad because dialectical synthesis doesn't work without them.
Slashdot has always had an anti-Windows bias, but at least it's an intelligent one. MS has really slid since Vista, which is why all the indications of 'more of the same' with 7 just give that bias credence.
Depends, do you have 32 or 64 bit architecture?
Ballmer is going to run MS into the ground. I suppose at this point that would be just as well.
(I once had a dream that he was plotting world domination from a war room hidden the basement of an antique store in Ballard.)
The very thought of Mac OS being a server makes me ill. X is based on BSD, why not just use BSD?
There is only one Linux kernel. The different distributions, to oversimplify, are like software bundles. Different window managers etc. And for telling the difference, there's always distrowatch. It even highlights beta components in red.
Don't you remember, that's how the Cetacean probe was destroying the Earth in Star Trek IV!
But seriously, water vapor? Without water vapor in the atmosphere there would be drought.
Well, although nobody in the UK has shot up a school since the Dublane Massacre, that doesn't mean that mass murders at schools in the UK have ceased. They just use other weapons now (improvised flame thrower? I have to say I'm impressed). Just goes to prove that people are going to kill people no matter what tools they have to do it with.
I'll bet I could make FreeDOS work if I really tried. Not that it would be useful.
I prefer DSL on business card CDs.
I know it's kind of offtopic, but parent is fucking informative.
Exactly. You're not going to make productive human beings out of your children by locking them up, and a virtual prison is no different. You have to teach them about the world and how to process and interpret it. Better that they learn about 'bad' things through the lens of their parents than from whatever immature/incomplete/irresponsible opinion their peers have, or worse, not learn at all and end up a gullible, naive putz that anybody can take advantage of.
I swear one of these days I'm going to go on a crusade to show kids how an OS-complete bootable live CD can free them from all the censorship outside of hosts blocked by the network.
Do you really want to expose a person who is still in the "girls are icky" phase to an S&M site involving tying up and whipping someone
I for one never had that phase, maybe because I'm a bisexual male? That would be an interesting study. Anyway, I don't see the correlation. Are you afraid that the S&M will somehow artificially reinforce the immature irrational aversion to females?
or how about the highly illegal sites involving bestiality?
That illegal status varies very highly from state to state and nation to nation. You claim toward the end of your post to have been brought up progressive, but your approach implies more similitude with the type who thinks that the world is homogeneous to where you are right now.
In particular without a parent there to explain that while there may not (depending on your personal world views) be anything wrong with someone enjoying a little pain with their pleasure, it's not something that everyone is into?
It's funny that you're advocating teaching the very thing at the same time that you're attempting to advocate not teaching.
Do you really want more people to have the idea that it's okay to do harm to others, but only if you really love them?
It's important for people to stop confusing love and sex. It's moralistic baggage from the era of 'no sex before marriage' that people are still trying to integrate into their otherwise sexually emancipated lives. However that's a much larger topic, the real issue here is simple consent. If person A says to person B 'I like it rough, and I want you to do X to me' then it's pretty clear. Love need not enter the equation at all.
Because, tell me, have you ever seen, read, or heard an "accepted" explanation about reproduction that didn't start out "When two people really love each other and want to have a baby..."
Just shows that the accepted process is just another artifact of the 'no sex before marriage' era. People need to find new modes of addressing the situation to kids instead of unrealistic anachronisms which have led to insanely high divorce rates.
I'm going to invalidate all my moderations on this topic because I have to address some issues in here.
My parents were the sort who thought that children should be insulated from any kind of sexual awareness. Not to be seen, not be spoken of, not to be thought about. Now to a kid with any kind of backbone what that translates to is 'HOLY FUCK I REALLY HAVE TO LEARN ABOUT THIS SHIT!'
Consequently, when I stumbled upon porn as was inevitable, I obsessed about it. I obsessed about sexuality and even read sexual self help books in the library when I was eleven. I knew more about sexuality before puberty than was probably healthy, and the catalyst for all of it was people telling me 'you can/should not know that.'
If my parents had approached sexuality as some normal, boring (which it is for most people if they really look at it objectively), and trivial (pregnancy aside) activity between consenting adults instead of some hidden, fascinating, powerful mystical right of some kind that must be kept secret at all costs I probably would not have become hyperaware at such a young age. I probably would have been mentally healthier.
What's worse is that while my problem was overexposure, that's because I was headstrong and my response to forbidden knowledge is 'fuck you,' but other kids get conditioned to the idea of forbidden knowledge or bad knowledge and turn it into a learning problem. Their curiosity is diminished and their ability to learn is crippled because they become afraid to ask questions that they think will get them 'in trouble' and eventually they don't even think about thinking to ask questions. It's a type of conditioning, and then when they become adults and are finally released from the mental prison imposed on them by their parents and society at large, the conditioning stays with them. They've effectively internalized that prison, and very few ever really wake up and ask why it was so important for them to be handled the way that they were as children.
All the time, you just have to have FTP running first.
Aw snap! Mod parent up!