I can't recall talking with anyone about what they use as an alarm clock. Is that really something you have conversations about or do you really sleep around a lot?
Maybe the consent argument is hypocritical, but it's not my reason anyway. Eating animals is just fine because they taste good and humans have evolved to be omnivores. Fucking animals is not because I find it disgusting. That is the great thing about moral superiority: it's all bullshit. Be a vegan if it makes you feel superior, it makes me feel superior to point out how pathetic you are.
You realize what cancer is don't you? Your cells (part of you) grow at an uncontrolled rate. It's pretty literally your body going crazy to the point where it can kill you.
Relax, it wasn't an insult or an attack. It was a word game. Enjoy.
The complete and proper reply to such a comment is as follows: Bullshit. I'm sure your genetic cap is thought the roof; genetic detrminists always have the best genes, funny how that works.. Seriously, read a sociology book or something.
Wow. The irony of such stereotyping in your post is great. Did I mention my genes or education? Are you saying people are capable of infinite intelligence? Over my life it's been very clear there are limits to my intelligence, and haven't had much success getting past some ideas. I say not everyone is of the same intelligence and you immediately jump to using race to determine intelligence? Feeling a bit sensitive?
and scientifically unfounded.
Right... because it's been proven everyone has the same IQ? or it's been proven that intelligence is based 100% on environment? I suggest you read some more. If you think genetics is only about race you need to broaden your mind quite a bit.
Because that is one fucked up ideology you've got,
Should the government spend $1 million patting the backs of those already more "valuable", or should it use that money to make those who are less "valuable" more "valuable"?
There is a genetic cap on how valuable an individual can become. Unfortunately that cap is very, very low on most people. We can train these genetically challenged people for jobs, but only those jobs that are going to be made obsolete anyway. I'd rather we skip training people for bad jobs and spend the money on furthering science and technology.
Throughout human history, those civilizations that have advanced have done so at times when their individual lives were unencumbered by a constant search for food and shelter.
Interesting opinion. Doesn't seem very historically sound, but I'll ignore that for now. Are you saying those people are unencumbered by a constant search for food their own food and shelter or anyone's? If the US were encumbered by a constant search for food for other countries I can see were that would impede advances.
So let's look at it from a purely economic standpoint: If we can get people healthy and sheltered enough to get them an education that's a few million more people to make your Nikes, to dig the minerals that go into the manufacture of spacecraft, and more people to sell luxury pharmaceuticals to. Hopefully that cold-hearted perspective fits into your worldview.
Sorry, I'm not much of a capitalist. I'd rather not exploit foreign countries. If a country can't produce enough food to feed it's people, they need to either 1) produce something to trade for food or 2) deplete their surplus population. Feeding a country that can't feed itself is in no one's best interest, the problem will persist until either 1 or 2 occurs.
Again, I'm all in favor of spending money on space research. And lots of it. But let's not bullshit around pretending that it helps all of humanity.
You didn't provide any better alternatives. Food handouts are clearly not the answer to bettering humanity, it hasn't worked up until now and there doesn't seem to be any indication that they will work. No research doesn't help everyone, but adding to the sum total of human knowledge does improve humanity.
Look at it this way: Is it better to give $5 to AIDS research or buy a homeless man a value meal? Your $5 for AIDS research probably isn't going to be the money that finally finds a cure; your $5 for the homeless man's lunch is going to end up shit under a bridge. I'd say the AIDS research is more worthwhile, because it has the potential to do more good for more people.
Space exploration and the research required have the potential to vastly improve the lives of everyone on the planet, maybe it won't but the potential is there; feeding a starving country temporarily reduces the suffering of those people, but there is essentially no further potential.
Agreed. If it makes you feel better, give all you want. It's a worth while activity, but let's not try to compare feeding a few people to bettering humanity.
Space exploration is a good thing. I'd put it in the top 10 ways to spend public money. But I also don't pretend that it's a great leap forward for all of humanity. It isn't.
True, but I can't think of a better alternative. Giving food and shelter to starving countries doesn't help humanity either. The advancement of science and technology clearly has the potential to help all of humanity; I don't see nearly the same potential in handing out bags of grain to third world countries.
I'm not a fan of human suffering, but let's not kid ourselves about it: keeping a few million uneducated people from starving is only beneficial to those few million uneducated starving people.
I suspect that the original humans had no notion of religion - not that everyone was an atheist, but that every human on earth had no notion of a higher being, one way or the other.
I've wondered about that as well. I suspect that the "believe your parents" bit is partially the origin of religion. My reason is partially the fact my daugher (3.5 years) wants an explanation for everything. "Just because" does not satisfy her, but she isn't quite ready for the real explanation for a lot of things. I'm sure I could get to quit asking "Why?" with enough references to god. Humans seem to want to understand but frequently don't have the capacity or knowledge required, so left to them selves they abstract the problem away another step. ie. Saying god causes the rain isn't a explanation of how or why god would want rain, but it answers the immediate question of why it's raining.
I really don't want to read "The God Delusion" as you suggest. Why are you pushing your religion on me?;-) That's my point!
Just to be pedantic I did say, "if you read." I mentioned it more as a citation for an idea that wasn't really mine. But in reality I do believe the world would be a better place if religion would go away.
like with e.g. British English vs. American English there is that impossible-to-kill meme that the Brits 'invented' English, so what they speak must be the 'original' English, etc... etc... ad nauseam
I think that's a more of a semantic issue: England essentially defines English. Languages branch/merge/change constantly which is just peachy, but there comes a point when 1 language is split far enough that it doesn't make sense to keep 1 name for that religion. Arabic and Hebrew for instance; 1 language that has branched far enough for 2 names. I don't think English/American are split far enough to demand different names, but when/if that split does happen I vote for England keeping the name English for their language. America's language should be American or maybe Newspeak.
So, in short, the name English is tied to the country England; the language is a completely different thing.
Societies may have "invented" the notion of religion because religion led to ethics, which led to less killing of their neighbors. All of the sudden, it's survival of the fittest, as non-ethical tribes tended to be killed off, while religious tribes thrived.
That's a wild-ass guess. There are many alternatives that I find far more convincing, if you read "The God Delusion" there's a chapter devoted to a few alternatives.
One very simple alternative is that children are genetically disposed to believing their elders for obvious survival reasons, as a side-effect if you get a child to believe in your tribal religious system during their formative years for the rest of their life they are more likely to act in the best interest of your tribe. Seems to match history far better in the sense that religious groups have always been eager to be highly immoral in their dealings with outsiders.
So my question is: Even if there is no God, and you are an atheist, is it possible that a world containing religious people is actually a "better" society than a world full of atheists?
Well, we've never had a world based on reason to compare with but it seems clear that a religious world has produced a very small minded us against the world mindset. Read the Old Testament; personally I can't imagine living in that kind of brutality. Rape, murder, theft and slavery are all perfectly fine as long as they're directed at Them, not Us.
It costs Microsoft nothing at all to issue an XP license.
The post I responded to specifically mentioned exchanging CDs. It does cost to create CDs and distribute them. Neither the box, manual, CD's or distribution are free. Everytime MS sends someone XP install media it costs them, disposing of the returned Vista media would cost as well. I couldn't begin to guess how much, but it's pretty obvious an exchange program would cost Microsoft.
as long as any materials I received (eg disk, manual, etc) are in good condition MS loses nothing by swapping my Vista licence for an XP one and exchanging the disks.
No, there's just about nothing MS can do you with your old copies. They can't be sold to consumers. I don't think MS even exchanges physically defective CDs directly.
I'll agree a car analogy is generally not the best way to go, but in this case car's lose 20% being driven off the lot; Windows CDs lose 100%.
A lot of people in snowy and/or sandy climates very much do not appreciate ABS. The problem with ABS is that it detects slippage when breaking in sand so won't lock. Any human can figure out to go ahead and lock anyway, but most ABS system's practically disable your breaks on sand.
In terms of opportunity cost, you'll likely spend that same $2-5k making a custom solution.
I would bet a whole lot more. In fact I got a whole lot more when I designed a POS for a retail chain:) It was a diskless Linux setup with a whole bunch of credit card processing and signature capture drivers. Quite fun to design. Worked my ass of for at least 6 months on that.
He did specifically say "there are A LOT of guys that smelled worse than her", so assuming that means "that they knew of" as opposed to "in theory" then your counter argument really doesn't make any sense.
I didn't really intend that to be a counter argument, so much as an alternate point. Although now that you mention it, there is a definate tendency for a lot of people to notice the sexist dislike of stinky women and not notice the dislike of stinky men.
x and y are male. z is female. If x, y, and z stink but you only make fun of z then that's sexist. If you made fun of x and y but not z, that would also be sexist.
I'm thinking of the case where W is also female. W takes offense when I make fun of Z because Z is female, but completely misses the fact I make fun of X and Y as well because it doesn't bother her. I'm not convinced the parent post really happens often, it doesn't in my circle. What's more annoying on a personal level is that while I simply avoid X,Y and Z; I only hear about how unfairly Z is being treated. As far as I'm concerned X Y and Z are all a bit defective.
Example in point: The guys at my college would tease this one girl beind her back because she smelled poorly. Now, there are A LOT of guys that smelled worse than her, but to them, she was "stinky girl". They didn't call anyone else "stinky boy" or anything like that. They targetted her, for failing to sustain the essential fundamental stereotype of women in our culture... that they need to be fashion oriented, pretty, and smell wonderfully.
And there's an example of my complaint. I discriminate against anyone with poor personal hygiene; I get labeled sexist when the stinky person happens to be a female. Makes it really hard to take sexism accusations seriously. You won't see me complaining about males or females being stinky though, because I have enough say over my life to avoid both.
Because a lot of the info iTunes requires is stored in XML files which is not safe for concurrent use. If I'm using iTunes on my Windows machine and my wife is using iTunes on a Mac both pointed to the same share they conflict. Like songs being listed several times or not at all. If I rip a CD my wife won't see the songs. There are countless examples problems doing this. Try it sometime, or check with google if you don't believe me.
So tell iTunes to store the library there. How does that prevent Windows or Solaris from using it? Alternatively, if you're super picky about folder structure, tell iTunes to use the files located there but not enforce its own organization.
Multiple itunes can't use the same share at the same time. Yes, Solaris can read the files just fine using XMMS. That's part of my point. XMMS/Winamp don't organize the files they just read what's there and they always work.
I was responding to a post saying people don't need to organize their files and they should just let iTunes do it, now you're telling me to not let itunes organize things. Thanks for the tip.
It sounds to me you just don't know how to use iTunes.
It sounds to me like you're an arrogant prick. I have three machines i routinely use iTunes on. I know how to make iTunes not oganize my music. Have you tried to make multiple iTunes to use a common share for music? I'm guessing not. So try it, then try setting up a share for use by xmms and winamp.
Manual control of the library was great, when it was actually needed back in the 90s. What on Earth do people honestly believe they still need manual control for?
Well, I have around 40GB of music and would like it to be accessible for my wife and I whether we're using Windows, Mac or Solaris. Letting iTunes organize things makes that impossible. An NFS/Samba share containing all the music is much more easily managed.
I've never quite understood the tech luddites on/. it's like they learn *one* way to do something and will fight until they die to only do it that way because it most obviously has to be the best.
It's even sadder when their one way of doing something just happens to be the one way Apple told them.
Teens with "needs" are going to fulfill those needs for each other, not just individually.
Yeah, but every sperm that hits the keyboard is one that doesn't make a baby. So, isn't a porn filter likely to increase teen pregnancy? Assuming of course that the aforementioned sperm will go somewhere. Any other ideas where the sperm might go?
I can't imagine buying a movie in any form. I love Tivo/Unbox for rental (wish they had a better selection), but it just feels weird to talk about buying either a DVD or a download. Do you actually rewatch movies?
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I can't recall talking with anyone about what they use as an alarm clock. Is that really something you have conversations about or do you really sleep around a lot?
Maybe the consent argument is hypocritical, but it's not my reason anyway. Eating animals is just fine because they taste good and humans have evolved to be omnivores. Fucking animals is not because I find it disgusting. That is the great thing about moral superiority: it's all bullshit. Be a vegan if it makes you feel superior, it makes me feel superior to point out how pathetic you are.
You realize what cancer is don't you? Your cells (part of you) grow at an uncontrolled rate. It's pretty literally your body going crazy to the point where it can kill you.
Relax, it wasn't an insult or an attack. It was a word game. Enjoy.
Do you drive a stick-shift
Yes. Why?
Wow. The irony of such stereotyping in your post is great. Did I mention my genes or education? Are you saying people are capable of infinite intelligence? Over my life it's been very clear there are limits to my intelligence, and haven't had much success getting past some ideas. I say not everyone is of the same intelligence and you immediately jump to using race to determine intelligence? Feeling a bit sensitive?
and scientifically unfounded.
Right... because it's been proven everyone has the same IQ? or it's been proven that intelligence is based 100% on environment? I suggest you read some more. If you think genetics is only about race you need to broaden your mind quite a bit.
Because that is one fucked up ideology you've got,
Do you have any idea what ideology I've got?
There is a genetic cap on how valuable an individual can become. Unfortunately that cap is very, very low on most people. We can train these genetically challenged people for jobs, but only those jobs that are going to be made obsolete anyway. I'd rather we skip training people for bad jobs and spend the money on furthering science and technology.
Throughout human history, those civilizations that have advanced have done so at times when their individual lives were unencumbered by a constant search for food and shelter.
Interesting opinion. Doesn't seem very historically sound, but I'll ignore that for now. Are you saying those people are unencumbered by a constant search for food their own food and shelter or anyone's? If the US were encumbered by a constant search for food for other countries I can see were that would impede advances.
So let's look at it from a purely economic standpoint: If we can get people healthy and sheltered enough to get them an education that's a few million more people to make your Nikes, to dig the minerals that go into the manufacture of spacecraft, and more people to sell luxury pharmaceuticals to. Hopefully that cold-hearted perspective fits into your worldview.
Sorry, I'm not much of a capitalist. I'd rather not exploit foreign countries. If a country can't produce enough food to feed it's people, they need to either 1) produce something to trade for food or 2) deplete their surplus population. Feeding a country that can't feed itself is in no one's best interest, the problem will persist until either 1 or 2 occurs.
Again, I'm all in favor of spending money on space research. And lots of it. But let's not bullshit around pretending that it helps all of humanity.
You didn't provide any better alternatives. Food handouts are clearly not the answer to bettering humanity, it hasn't worked up until now and there doesn't seem to be any indication that they will work. No research doesn't help everyone, but adding to the sum total of human knowledge does improve humanity.
Look at it this way: Is it better to give $5 to AIDS research or buy a homeless man a value meal? Your $5 for AIDS research probably isn't going to be the money that finally finds a cure; your $5 for the homeless man's lunch is going to end up shit under a bridge. I'd say the AIDS research is more worthwhile, because it has the potential to do more good for more people.
Space exploration and the research required have the potential to vastly improve the lives of everyone on the planet, maybe it won't but the potential is there; feeding a starving country temporarily reduces the suffering of those people, but there is essentially no further potential.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it though.
Agreed. If it makes you feel better, give all you want. It's a worth while activity, but let's not try to compare feeding a few people to bettering humanity.
Space exploration is a good thing. I'd put it in the top 10 ways to spend public money. But I also don't pretend that it's a great leap forward for all of humanity. It isn't.
True, but I can't think of a better alternative. Giving food and shelter to starving countries doesn't help humanity either. The advancement of science and technology clearly has the potential to help all of humanity; I don't see nearly the same potential in handing out bags of grain to third world countries.
I'm not a fan of human suffering, but let's not kid ourselves about it: keeping a few million uneducated people from starving is only beneficial to those few million uneducated starving people.
I've wondered about that as well. I suspect that the "believe your parents" bit is partially the origin of religion. My reason is partially the fact my daugher (3.5 years) wants an explanation for everything. "Just because" does not satisfy her, but she isn't quite ready for the real explanation for a lot of things. I'm sure I could get to quit asking "Why?" with enough references to god. Humans seem to want to understand but frequently don't have the capacity or knowledge required, so left to them selves they abstract the problem away another step. ie. Saying god causes the rain isn't a explanation of how or why god would want rain, but it answers the immediate question of why it's raining.
I really don't want to read "The God Delusion" as you suggest. Why are you pushing your religion on me?
Just to be pedantic I did say, "if you read." I mentioned it more as a citation for an idea that wasn't really mine.
But in reality I do believe the world would be a better place if religion would go away.
like with e.g. British English vs. American English there is that impossible-to-kill meme that the Brits 'invented' English, so what they speak must be the 'original' English, etc... etc... ad nauseam
I think that's a more of a semantic issue: England essentially defines English. Languages branch/merge/change constantly which is just peachy, but there comes a point when 1 language is split far enough that it doesn't make sense to keep 1 name for that religion. Arabic and Hebrew for instance; 1 language that has branched far enough for 2 names. I don't think English/American are split far enough to demand different names, but when/if that split does happen I vote for England keeping the name English for their language. America's language should be American or maybe Newspeak.
So, in short, the name English is tied to the country England; the language is a completely different thing.
That's a wild-ass guess. There are many alternatives that I find far more convincing, if you read "The God Delusion" there's a chapter devoted to a few alternatives.
One very simple alternative is that children are genetically disposed to believing their elders for obvious survival reasons, as a side-effect if you get a child to believe in your tribal religious system during their formative years for the rest of their life they are more likely to act in the best interest of your tribe. Seems to match history far better in the sense that religious groups have always been eager to be highly immoral in their dealings with outsiders.
So my question is: Even if there is no God, and you are an atheist, is it possible that a world containing religious people is actually a "better" society than a world full of atheists?
Well, we've never had a world based on reason to compare with but it seems clear that a religious world has produced a very small minded us against the world mindset. Read the Old Testament; personally I can't imagine living in that kind of brutality. Rape, murder, theft and slavery are all perfectly fine as long as they're directed at Them, not Us.
It costs Microsoft nothing at all to issue an XP license.
The post I responded to specifically mentioned exchanging CDs. It does cost to create CDs and distribute them. Neither the box, manual, CD's or distribution are free. Everytime MS sends someone XP install media it costs them, disposing of the returned Vista media would cost as well. I couldn't begin to guess how much, but it's pretty obvious an exchange program would cost Microsoft.
as long as any materials I received (eg disk, manual, etc) are in good condition MS loses nothing by swapping my Vista licence for an XP one and exchanging the disks.
No, there's just about nothing MS can do you with your old copies. They can't be sold to consumers. I don't think MS even exchanges physically defective CDs directly.
I'll agree a car analogy is generally not the best way to go, but in this case car's lose 20% being driven off the lot; Windows CDs lose 100%.
I appreciate ABS, you don't?
A lot of people in snowy and/or sandy climates very much do not appreciate ABS. The problem with ABS is that it detects slippage when breaking in sand so won't lock. Any human can figure out to go ahead and lock anyway, but most ABS system's practically disable your breaks on sand.
I can't draw a map, but that's fine. All the fun is in the search anyway.
In terms of opportunity cost, you'll likely spend that same $2-5k making a custom solution.
:) It was a diskless Linux setup with a whole bunch of credit card processing and signature capture drivers. Quite fun to design. Worked my ass of for at least 6 months on that.
I would bet a whole lot more. In fact I got a whole lot more when I designed a POS for a retail chain
He did specifically say "there are A LOT of guys that smelled worse than her", so assuming that means "that they knew of" as opposed to "in theory" then your counter argument really doesn't make any sense.
I didn't really intend that to be a counter argument, so much as an alternate point. Although now that you mention it, there is a definate tendency for a lot of people to notice the sexist dislike of stinky women and not notice the dislike of stinky men.
x and y are male. z is female. If x, y, and z stink but you only make fun of z then that's sexist. If you made fun of x and y but not z, that would also be sexist.
I'm thinking of the case where W is also female. W takes offense when I make fun of Z because Z is female, but completely misses the fact I make fun of X and Y as well because it doesn't bother her. I'm not convinced the parent post really happens often, it doesn't in my circle.
What's more annoying on a personal level is that while I simply avoid X,Y and Z; I only hear about how unfairly Z is being treated. As far as I'm concerned X Y and Z are all a bit defective.
Example in point: The guys at my college would tease this one girl beind her back because she smelled poorly. Now, there are A LOT of guys that smelled worse than her, but to them, she was "stinky girl". They didn't call anyone else "stinky boy" or anything like that. They targetted her, for failing to sustain the essential fundamental stereotype of women in our culture... that they need to be fashion oriented, pretty, and smell wonderfully.
And there's an example of my complaint. I discriminate against anyone with poor personal hygiene; I get labeled sexist when the stinky person happens to be a female. Makes it really hard to take sexism accusations seriously.
You won't see me complaining about males or females being stinky though, because I have enough say over my life to avoid both.
I'm honestly curious what data shows no population growth? Have any links?
CIA Factbook highlights:
14.16 births/1,000 population (2007 est.)
8.26 deaths/1,000 population (2007 est.)
2.09 children born/woman (2007 est.)
How so?
Because a lot of the info iTunes requires is stored in XML files which is not safe for concurrent use. If I'm using iTunes on my Windows machine and my wife is using iTunes on a Mac both pointed to the same share they conflict. Like songs being listed several times or not at all. If I rip a CD my wife won't see the songs. There are countless examples problems doing this. Try it sometime, or check with google if you don't believe me.
So tell iTunes to store the library there. How does that prevent Windows or Solaris from using it? Alternatively, if you're super picky about folder structure, tell iTunes to use the files located there but not enforce its own organization.
Multiple itunes can't use the same share at the same time. Yes, Solaris can read the files just fine using XMMS. That's part of my point. XMMS/Winamp don't organize the files they just read what's there and they always work.
I was responding to a post saying people don't need to organize their files and they should just let iTunes do it, now you're telling me to not let itunes organize things. Thanks for the tip.
It sounds to me you just don't know how to use iTunes.
It sounds to me like you're an arrogant prick. I have three machines i routinely use iTunes on. I know how to make iTunes not oganize my music. Have you tried to make multiple iTunes to use a common share for music? I'm guessing not. So try it, then try setting up a share for use by xmms and winamp.
Manual control of the library was great, when it was actually needed back in the 90s. What on Earth do people honestly believe they still need manual control for?
/. it's like they learn *one* way to do something and will fight until they die to only do it that way because it most obviously has to be the best.
Well, I have around 40GB of music and would like it to be accessible for my wife and I whether we're using Windows, Mac or Solaris. Letting iTunes organize things makes that impossible. An NFS/Samba share containing all the music is much more easily managed.
I've never quite understood the tech luddites on
It's even sadder when their one way of doing something just happens to be the one way Apple told them.
Teens with "needs" are going to fulfill those needs for each other, not just individually.
Yeah, but every sperm that hits the keyboard is one that doesn't make a baby. So, isn't a porn filter likely to increase teen pregnancy? Assuming of course that the aforementioned sperm will go somewhere. Any other ideas where the sperm might go?
I can't imagine buying a movie in any form. I love Tivo/Unbox for rental (wish they had a better selection), but it just feels weird to talk about buying either a DVD or a download. Do you actually rewatch movies?
What have you bought hundreds of that aren't working?
Slashdot posts. Duh.