This is what happens when you have socialized education, rather than a competitive market where parents are customers, rather than consumers of a limited good (consumer and customer are not the same social standing). If education were run more like a business, the schools would actually be afraid of overreaching against parental authority because the parents would be the ones writing the checks that keep the school afloat.
Uh...bullshit from someone who has obviously never dealt with private schools. They ignore an individual parent's opinion just as much, and for the same reason. The "socialist" school board thinks they need to restrict students speech because all the parents who don't think that type of speech should be allowed from a child are voters. The private school restricts them because all the parents who don't think that type of speech should be allowed from a child are customers.
The problem is a societal one. Our society seems to think that until you turn a certain age, your job is to sit down, shut up, and pay attention to what you're being told. Raising an objection to this while you're still a "child", even a 17-year-old one, means that you're a disruptive influence that needs to be quelled.
Of course, since parental authority is meaningless to the public schools aside from when it means parental responsibility (more specifically, culpability), they feel perfectly free to take the legal equivalent of a sledgehammer to their children and teens.
The schools aren't suing the children and teens. They're suspending / expelling them, which is exactly what private schools also do. The legal issues are raised when the kids and parents sue the schools.
they're all but a gauranteed failure due to their ridiculous name...it's up with "The Gimp" for 'worst name ever' award. It's hard to think of a worse name for a political party
For as long as a name has any significance AT ALL to people, instead of the issues the candidates stand for, representative governments are a failure.
If you try to cater to idiots by naming things "reform party" or "patriot party" or "blue skies and warm feelings party" you're just doing the same every other fucking party is doing: manipulating the voters. That makes you part of the problem. Do you want to make a difference? Teach people, especially kids, to be objective thinkers. When we change the way people approach candidates through education, then we'll have real change, and the name of a party won't matter.
For that matter, I hope you're not one of those idiots who don't use the GIMP because of the name. I don't use the GIMP because the interface sucks (I hear they're working to improve that lately), but the name has nothing to do with it.
They will rename themselves to Tyrell Corporation.
Why does this have a ominous tone? I know they are a business trying to diversify, etc.. but all that they are doing has the bad 'feel' to it.
I feel the exact opposite way. Every time Google enters a market, I get excited because they're the only company I know of that I don't feel are trying to screw me. Plus they force everyone else to step up.
Remember the days before gmail when webmail meant 10mb of storage and they'd delete all your mail if you didn't log on in the past 30 days? Everybody else now offers more storage space than you can do with it. And IMAP access. If you don't go the Google route, the competition they bring makes everyone's service better.
Each time you do something - anything - that resembles enjoyment, their feeling is that somebody - somewhere - should be getting money from you.
I'm going to enjoy some music from warner. Damn, I owe than money. Alright, I'll pay them.
I think many executives at warner enjoy the fact that I paid for their music. I think they owe me some money. And since my money made so many people happy, I think they should give me quite a bit more than I paid for the song.
you only pay the price when the exception is triggered...
That's why I said that the place to use it is when you don't expect the exception to be triggered often. However, I've seen plenty of people use exceptions as a state machine for what they're coding, and if you're doing that, return codes values are the way to go.
Fortunately, modern concepts like exceptions have eliminated the need for steps 2 through 5.
They have minimized the need for steps 2 through 5, not eliminated it. Exception handling is expensive, and you should only rely on catching exceptions for errors that are not supposed to happen often. If a pointer is not supposed to be null, you can rely on catching an exception. If the pointer could be null and you're supposed to create a new object in case it is, you check it.
Basically, if you're throwing an exception, it should be for something unexpected that shouldn't have happened, and now it requires you to ask the user "wtf did you do? I'm getting garbage in, so instead of giving you garbage out, here's the error." For anything that could be a normal state of the program, handle it yourself.
Well where I work, we did in fact throw a number of resumes out the window specifically because of hotmail and AOL email addresses.
But then again, I work in IT, those people SHOULD know better.
Heh. Sometime after gmail was launched aol bumped up their storage size in response AND started offering IMAP access. I switched to an aol address for that feature, until gmail started offering it too.
People who work in IT really should know better than singling out someone for their e-mail address for an older than 10-year old reason. It's not like you need to be an aol subscriber today (are they even still offering ISP services?) to have an aol address. There were actual features that caused me to have one, I really don't give a shit what the domain name is.
Right before the avatar hero fellow goes off to tame the big dragon thing, he says "I need them.... and they need me!*"
It's interesting to stop and ask why they in fact need him at all. There's an assumption that the indigenous population can't fend for themselves, and need to be "saved" by one of the outsiders
I'm not sure it's really a case of 'backward natives are incompetent and helpless'. I think it's more that the audience can relate better to the hero the closer he is to them. In fact, you picked up on that yourself when you followed it up with:
Try flipping the roles around in any movie where the sophisticated aliens are attacking humans, like say Independence Day... Does "our side" need a powerful alien figure to break ranks with the oppressors to lead our resistance? No, the general myth is that a "hero" rises from within to lead the struggle
There is a lot of that. I have a friend who is especially annoyed and critical of the fact that every sci-fi movie places humans as being somehow special. We always have a quality other aliens lack, even if it's just greater willpower, unwillingness to give up, etc. Kind of insulting to aliens:)
That said, it's not always the case. I haven't been following the new series, but the original V miniseries had many among the aliens disagreeing with their government and joining/helping the human resistance. If I stopped to think about it, I'm sure I could come up with more examples, although I will agree that it's not the majority. Usually humans are just badasses who can always prevail, no matter what.
I will also point out that in the case of Avatar, I do believe they needed Sully. He knew their enemy better than they did. He knew their technology, he knew their methods...he was part of them. Knowledge is power.
I saw this movie with my little cousins, and asked them if this story was imaginary or had any elements of truth.
Way to go, man. It's good to see people still teaching kids to think. Every fictional story carries a message, and you can get more out of it if you understand it, whether you agree with it or not.
If you scroll around a bit through that gallery, you'll see plenty more war and carnage, but then check out picture #24 to see what most people have been paying attention instead. The bigger problem isn't as much with the environment as it is with the media... If we had better media that prioritized things that were actually important (with not just stories of atrocity but also examples of positively engaged communities) then it would be much easier to go on and solve environmental and social problems...
I agree that the media needs to be criticized for a whole lot of things, but the problem you mentioned goes even deeper. The media is after ratings, and that's what people want to see. They find the news of war "depressing" and celebrities entertaining. They're not willing to do much about the "depressing" news, other than change the channel, and that's what the media corps are trying to prevent.
I'm not saying the media is blameless. When they do show information we need to hear, it's more often than not poorly researched and incredibly biased. I'm not sure if you're in the US or not, since you mentioned seeing Avatar in French, but you might have seen people commenting on slashdot on how the Daily Show is our best news program. It's sometimes true, but that's not so much a compliment to Jon Stewart as it is disparaging to actual news programs. The Daily Show is also biased, incomplete, sometimes with information that is not thoroughly researched, but it's ok because it's a comedy show. They shouldn't even be in the running for best news program, and yet they often bring attention to things nobody else does.
just a thought- -jj
Interesting thoughts, good comments, it was nice chatting with ya.
I always read it as another "white people suck" movie, but this time, "white people suck in space", which is equally weird, because Cameron is about as white as they come.
It's a "people who try to take things from others by force suck" movie. As are the other movies in the same category you are referring to. The fact that the people who did this to Native Americans happened to be white is completely irrelevant, and your comment not only implies that all whites think they have the right to take from others by force, but it also implies that Cameron somehow should be bound to also think that, because he happens to be white.
Basically, don't make things about race when they're not. Besides, I personally saw it more as anti-corporate (in the same way as Alien) then anti-technology.
There are people who can't afford to purchase extended warranties for their devices. Therefore, they deserve to have the extended warranties given to them. To do that we will tax the better extended warranties 40%, and will also penalize people who choose not to purchase them.
Heh...Are you aware of the large body of customer protection laws dealing with manufacturer warranties? Extended warranties are just that...extended. Above and beyond what everybody already gets.
I don't think the people you are arguing against would have a problem with the laws ensuring they all get health care coverage, but allowing for people to buy supplemental insurance for additional benefits. That's would be the proper analogy for extended warranties.
Communism is not compatible with individual liberty and freedom. Communism implies the subordination of the individual to the state.
Government implies the subordination of the individual to the state. Government enforced laws are the only thing that removes your rights to, for example, kill your neighbor and take his property. We've decided, as a society, that we're better off agreeing on a set of laws and handing over the enforcement of these laws to a large and powerful body, than we are to take the risks that someone is going to just kills us and take our property. I think that's a pretty good deal.
The actual type of government, democracy or dictatorship, simply is a choice of just how much control we're handing over to the government and which of our rights we value most. You value your right to property more than your ability to take from those who are weaker than you. You probably don't agree with every law in the books, but we've decided that (assuming you're in the US), the best way of deciding on laws is based on voting for representatives, who will then vote on which laws to create and potentially will overwrite your individual preferences. A dictatorship would leave those decisions to a single individual, which has the potential to override the preferences of most of members of that society. Capitalism still implies that the government will be there to enforce certain rules, such as contract law. That enforcement costs money, and government takes that from you in the form of taxes. Communism exchanges additional securities at a greater cost, at least in theory.
If you want to argue that capitalism has proven to be more robust, and is better able to achieve its stated goals than communism, I will certainly not argue. But it is not inherently less free. If the members a society values that additional safety net more than they value the ability to become uber-rich, that's a choice they should be able to make. It's no different than choosing to work for someone instead of creating your own business under a capitalist society. You're exchanging potential rewards for security.
On the other hand, a society that does not allow its members to move to another society more of their liking, or work to change the system if it turns out it's not working as they expected, that's a less free society. Typically, communist nations have had that mindset, but that's not inherent in communism. That's the reason why I consider the right to migrate one of the most important rights we should defend.
Actually, Occam's Razor says: "Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate" or "Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora".
If you want to render that in English, some subjective interpretation is necessary.
First, not every translation requires subjective interpretation. That latin sentence is actually incredibly straight-forward, and I can read it based purely on my knowledge of Portuguese. "Never assume pluralities without necessity." That's as objective as it gets, I didn't even have to switch the order of the words.
Second, that's why I gave the Newton's Laws vs. Relativity example. We're not taking Occam's words as sacred law here, you've got to understand it. There's absolutely no reason the simplest explanations would be more correct. For that to happen there would need to be some sort of force or planning, or something to always make things simple. That's definitely not the case, and sometimes the only theories that give you correct predictions are very, very complex. That's what the whole "without necessity" is about. If you need to get more complex interactions in order to get your correct predictions, then that's what you need to do. If a simpler theory does the job, then use it. Note that the sentence has no word which means "correctness."
Here's another example. I'm given a program that takes a number and outputs a number. I'm supposed to figure out what it does based on the input and output. I notice that for every number I type, the output is that number + 2. That's a very simple pattern, and I'm going to write down, "the program takes the input and adds 2." However, I have absolutely no way of knowing if the program doesn't actually first add 5 then subtract 3 from the observations. That could very well be what's actually going on, but since both theories give the exact same prediction, it's easier to work with the version that just adds 2. That's all Occam's Razor says.
You know that Occam is cutting himself in his grave right now, don't you? Along the wrists.
Yeah, but not for the reason you think. Pet peeve of mine, I've corrected many people who got their knowledge of Occam's Razor from watching Contact. Occam's Razor does not say that the simplest explanation is the most likely to be the correct one. It says that, all things being equal, if two theories both make predictions which match observations, there's no sense in using the more complex one. If the theory with less variables get you the same result, you should use it, even if the more complex theory is the one that actually matches the true mechanism you're attempting to model. The moment you find some way to differentiate the theories with observations, then you use that to make your choice.
After all, Newton's laws of motion are way simpler than Einstein's theories of relativity. Without observations in situations where the relativistic effects are significant, they give the same results. Occam's Razor tells you to keep using Newton's laws until you have observations for which relativity's predictions are better (and we have those, obviously).
In your case, without actual evidence that the government was or was not involved, Occam is completely irrelevant. That's without even touching on the fact that it's extremely debatable to which theory is 'simpler.' I personally think random dude with cheap equipment recording unencrypted RF traffic to get stock tips is the theory with less variables, but I can see the government doing it too.
Ubuntu One looks like it uses other Ubuntu One users to store up to 2GB of data (hopefully securely) in a cloud-like state, e.g. with redundancy so that one failure doesn't cause you to lose those backups.
I've seen this argument about a thousand times on slashdot. I'll cut to the end:
The moisture on your skin would evaporate due to the lack of atmosphere. This in turn would quickly cool your skin. In addition, your lungs would be completely depleted of all oxygen. Most likely, you would suffocate before being able to freeze, but freezing would come soon after.
The moisture on your skin would evaporate, and it would cool your body down. The question is by how much. People have been minimally exposed to vacuums before, and freezing didn't seem to be an issue (and apparently you'd feel the moisture on your tongue boiling more than the moisture in the rest of your skin).
This is all I could find on the subject with a quick google search, and I don't claim it's sufficiently authoritative to settle the question, but I'll leave it up to you to support your position with better sources if you care to: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html
Personally, I'd be more preoccupied with trying to breathe and not instantly freeze to death.
You wouldn't really instantly freeze, that's a misconception. Without being in direct contact with something, like an atmosphere, there's no heat transfer via conduction or convection. In a vacuum you only lose heat via radiation, and you know that's pretty slow, since Vacuum flasks can keep things hot for a really long time.
We could assess my bona fides but if you assume I am insincere then I don't imagine any evidence will suffice.
Your sincerity was never in question. I merely suggested your definition for prude and "religious nutjob" didn't quite mesh with that of most who complain about such people.
his point seemed... hyperbolic -- i.e. oooh, the religious right taking legal action against teachers who have their students read Starship Troopers or Ringworld or the Lensman for the rampent sex scenes. Surely there are men with less straw in them. Does he really think religious conservatives are so prudish or did a better example (e.g. Ian Banks, Guy Gavriel Kay, Tannith Lee or other authors of the grimly dark or erotic) just not spring to mind?
That goes back to your point about applying labels to people, I suppose. "Religious conservatives" really fall in a spectrum, and there are those that would take issue with Heinlein. After all, we had certain church groups out burning Harry Potter books a few years ago. You want to include yourself in the category of people Lumpy's complaining about, but from what you've told me, I don't think you are. I think his mistake was saying that "most parents freak out." It's not really most parents, but a small vocal minority of idiots tends to win against the apathetic bunch. All it takes are a few unreasonable people.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I find that how people are judged often depends on the order of presented evidence. Were I to have led off my response by talking about (e.g.) the type of language, media, activities I allow in my house... well, I wonder if you'd say the same.
It's your house, so yes, I would say the same. I'm extremely socially liberal, but I don't object to you, or family, or anybody else being as conservative as you'd like. I simply don't believe I have any more right to do that than you have a right to interfere with how I run things in my house. In the example I gave, I wouldn't even have objected to the concerned parent removing the kid from our club. My problem was lobbying to have the entire club shut down.
I might disagree with your take on quite a lot of things, but as long as you're not trying to affect me with your beliefs, then you're just doing what you believe is right for your family, and that makes you a good parent in my book. You most certainly have a right to do things I disagree with, and my own personal beliefs about the optimal environment for raising kids are just that: my own personal beliefs. I don't believe I'm more "right" than you are, I'll simply raise my kids differently than you.
That said, if you're in Spanish class, you should be learning Spanish, not watching Scrubs. I'm not sure how this is a "conservative" vs. "liberal" view. I would certainly have objected myself, and as I've said, I'm extremely liberal.
Oh well. I guess my point, assuming I have one, is that once you apply a pejorative label to a person, they become varelse and it becomes impossible to grok them.
In the end, you're right that pejorative labels are counter-productive, and once you place someone in a category, you cease listening to what they're trying to say and automatically assume they're wrong. That said, if you take a look at the list of challenged books for 2007-2008, you'd find that objections were raised for novels significantly milder than anything Lumpy mentioned, so you shouldn't ignore his point merely because you feel the term "moronic prude" includes people who may not necessarily be deserving of the title.
Out of curiosity, are there any novels / any type of content that you would try to ban from the sci-fi literature class? Assuming, of course, that critical analysis and discussion is being performed on the novel, and they're not just being tested on whether or not they've read it.
You have me scratching my head here. I'll play the prude parent here for a moment (because I am one in Real Life), but if you are reading these authors for their sex scenes then you missed the boat.
You might be a parent in Real Life, but that right there already tells me you're no prude. A prude would object to the fact that the books contain sex scenes and deal with sexuality at all. If you're willing to accept that your child is exposed to these topics because the overall work says something important that causes the reader to think, then you're not a prude.
E.g., when I complained about my high school daughter watching Scrubs and Casino Royal in school, it wasn't about the material per se but because she was watching them in English (no subtitles, nothing) in Spanish class. You see, they took two weeks off because the teacher couldn't bring herself to put together a lesson plan. I'm sure I'll go down in the school history as just another local religious nut job though.
I have no idea why you think that is. Maybe it's because you've been lucky enough not to witness actual local religious nut-jobs. When I was in High School, I joined the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Club. Basically, we met after school, exchanged books, played dungeons and dragons, talked about video games. No, not exactly the type of extra-curricular activity that was going to get universities interested in your application, but it was after-school (not taking up class time), and we could do worse. This lasted for 3 months, until the parent of one of the members got wind that we were going to be playing dungeons and dragons, and decided to get the club shut down due to "satanic activity" (bear in mind, this wasn't the 70's, it was the mid-90's). No, it wasn't enough to pull the kid out of the club, the religious nutjob had to ruin it for the rest of us.
So I don't think you're a prude or religious nutjob for taking an interest in your daughters' education. I think that makes you a good parent. Doesn't mean that the real prudes and nutjobs don't exist.
Well, they sort of do... in order to use it with a portable music player you have to buy an iPod.
It's not the same thing. That would be like me telling you that you can have an awesome recliner for free and then wanting to "charge" you for it by placing a limitation that you can only sit in that recliner while watching my brand of TV's. Then when you complain that the recliner won't recline if it doesn't get a bluetooth authentication signal from my brand of TV's, I tell you, "well, I spent all that money building that recliner, I gotta profit somehow."
That doesn't work. Once the recliner is in your house, I don't have any more rights over it. Once iTunes is in my computer, Apple loses all rights over it (except for copyright, trademark, and any patents). At least that's the way it should be.
Or maybe Palm is faking the ID so that its owners can use the iTunes software that Apple spends significant money developing, rather than develop its own software. Apple is preventing that despicable behavior.
First let me say that I'm glad Palm got reprimanded for faking the vendor ID. If suddenly that was allowed, there would be utter chaos as multiple devices pretend to be other devices and mess up proper loading of drivers and other important features.
That said, if Apple wants money back for the software development they put in iTunes, they need to charge for it. Once the software is installed on my computer it's no longer their software, it's mine. I should have the right to use to sync with whatever device I want to sync with, and anybody should have the right to make their hardware talk with whatever software is available on the user's computers.
And finally, I don't even understand why Palm wants that feature. The real problem is that I need to sync my iphone with that piece of crap software, not that I can't sync other stuff with itunes. God, how I wish I never had to open that horrible software, could just mount the iphone like a usb drive, and dump music files there, as with any other mp3 mplayer.
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This is what happens when you have socialized education, rather than a competitive market where parents are customers, rather than consumers of a limited good (consumer and customer are not the same social standing). If education were run more like a business, the schools would actually be afraid of overreaching against parental authority because the parents would be the ones writing the checks that keep the school afloat.
Uh...bullshit from someone who has obviously never dealt with private schools. They ignore an individual parent's opinion just as much, and for the same reason. The "socialist" school board thinks they need to restrict students speech because all the parents who don't think that type of speech should be allowed from a child are voters. The private school restricts them because all the parents who don't think that type of speech should be allowed from a child are customers.
The problem is a societal one. Our society seems to think that until you turn a certain age, your job is to sit down, shut up, and pay attention to what you're being told. Raising an objection to this while you're still a "child", even a 17-year-old one, means that you're a disruptive influence that needs to be quelled.
Of course, since parental authority is meaningless to the public schools aside from when it means parental responsibility (more specifically, culpability), they feel perfectly free to take the legal equivalent of a sledgehammer to their children and teens.
The schools aren't suing the children and teens. They're suspending / expelling them, which is exactly what private schools also do. The legal issues are raised when the kids and parents sue the schools.
they're all but a gauranteed failure due to their ridiculous name...it's up with "The Gimp" for 'worst name ever' award. It's hard to think of a worse name for a political party
For as long as a name has any significance AT ALL to people, instead of the issues the candidates stand for, representative governments are a failure.
If you try to cater to idiots by naming things "reform party" or "patriot party" or "blue skies and warm feelings party" you're just doing the same every other fucking party is doing: manipulating the voters. That makes you part of the problem. Do you want to make a difference? Teach people, especially kids, to be objective thinkers. When we change the way people approach candidates through education, then we'll have real change, and the name of a party won't matter.
For that matter, I hope you're not one of those idiots who don't use the GIMP because of the name. I don't use the GIMP because the interface sucks (I hear they're working to improve that lately), but the name has nothing to do with it.
They will rename themselves to Tyrell Corporation.
Why does this have a ominous tone? I know they are a business trying to diversify, etc.. but all that they are doing has the bad 'feel' to it.
I feel the exact opposite way. Every time Google enters a market, I get excited because they're the only company I know of that I don't feel are trying to screw me. Plus they force everyone else to step up.
Remember the days before gmail when webmail meant 10mb of storage and they'd delete all your mail if you didn't log on in the past 30 days? Everybody else now offers more storage space than you can do with it. And IMAP access. If you don't go the Google route, the competition they bring makes everyone's service better.
Each time you do something - anything - that resembles enjoyment, their feeling is that somebody - somewhere - should be getting money from you.
I'm going to enjoy some music from warner. Damn, I owe than money. Alright, I'll pay them.
I think many executives at warner enjoy the fact that I paid for their music. I think they owe me some money. And since my money made so many people happy, I think they should give me quite a bit more than I paid for the song.
I've always though it strange that Highlander went from 1 to 3,4,5.
You almost got it right. There's no 5. There could never be a 5. I'm pretty sure they'd never find a source of inspiration for a fifth.
you only pay the price when the exception is triggered...
That's why I said that the place to use it is when you don't expect the exception to be triggered often. However, I've seen plenty of people use exceptions as a state machine for what they're coding, and if you're doing that, return codes values are the way to go.
Fortunately, modern concepts like exceptions have eliminated the need for steps 2 through 5.
They have minimized the need for steps 2 through 5, not eliminated it. Exception handling is expensive, and you should only rely on catching exceptions for errors that are not supposed to happen often. If a pointer is not supposed to be null, you can rely on catching an exception. If the pointer could be null and you're supposed to create a new object in case it is, you check it.
Basically, if you're throwing an exception, it should be for something unexpected that shouldn't have happened, and now it requires you to ask the user "wtf did you do? I'm getting garbage in, so instead of giving you garbage out, here's the error." For anything that could be a normal state of the program, handle it yourself.
Try being married for 27 years to a serial adulteress. That's REAL pain.
I'm working on 10 here.
Gotta ask...why?
Well where I work, we did in fact throw a number of resumes out the window specifically because of hotmail and AOL email addresses.
But then again, I work in IT, those people SHOULD know better.
Heh. Sometime after gmail was launched aol bumped up their storage size in response AND started offering IMAP access. I switched to an aol address for that feature, until gmail started offering it too.
People who work in IT really should know better than singling out someone for their e-mail address for an older than 10-year old reason. It's not like you need to be an aol subscriber today (are they even still offering ISP services?) to have an aol address. There were actual features that caused me to have one, I really don't give a shit what the domain name is.
The missing pieces (Workflow Foundation and Presentation Foundation) are not part of our plan.
Why not?
Right before the avatar hero fellow goes off to tame the big dragon thing, he says "I need them.... and they need me!*"
It's interesting to stop and ask why they in fact need him at all. There's an assumption that the indigenous population can't fend for themselves, and need to be "saved" by one of the outsiders
I'm not sure it's really a case of 'backward natives are incompetent and helpless'. I think it's more that the audience can relate better to the hero the closer he is to them. In fact, you picked up on that yourself when you followed it up with:
Try flipping the roles around in any movie where the sophisticated aliens are attacking humans, like say Independence Day... Does "our side" need a powerful alien figure to break ranks with the oppressors to lead our resistance? No, the general myth is that a "hero" rises from within to lead the struggle
There is a lot of that. I have a friend who is especially annoyed and critical of the fact that every sci-fi movie places humans as being somehow special. We always have a quality other aliens lack, even if it's just greater willpower, unwillingness to give up, etc. Kind of insulting to aliens :)
That said, it's not always the case. I haven't been following the new series, but the original V miniseries had many among the aliens disagreeing with their government and joining/helping the human resistance. If I stopped to think about it, I'm sure I could come up with more examples, although I will agree that it's not the majority. Usually humans are just badasses who can always prevail, no matter what.
I will also point out that in the case of Avatar, I do believe they needed Sully. He knew their enemy better than they did. He knew their technology, he knew their methods...he was part of them. Knowledge is power.
I saw this movie with my little cousins, and asked them if this story was imaginary or had any elements of truth.
Way to go, man. It's good to see people still teaching kids to think. Every fictional story carries a message, and you can get more out of it if you understand it, whether you agree with it or not.
If you scroll around a bit through that gallery, you'll see plenty more war and carnage, but then check out picture #24 to see what most people have been paying attention instead. The bigger problem isn't as much with the environment as it is with the media... If we had better media that prioritized things that were actually important (with not just stories of atrocity but also examples of positively engaged communities) then it would be much easier to go on and solve environmental and social problems...
I agree that the media needs to be criticized for a whole lot of things, but the problem you mentioned goes even deeper. The media is after ratings, and that's what people want to see. They find the news of war "depressing" and celebrities entertaining. They're not willing to do much about the "depressing" news, other than change the channel, and that's what the media corps are trying to prevent.
I'm not saying the media is blameless. When they do show information we need to hear, it's more often than not poorly researched and incredibly biased. I'm not sure if you're in the US or not, since you mentioned seeing Avatar in French, but you might have seen people commenting on slashdot on how the Daily Show is our best news program. It's sometimes true, but that's not so much a compliment to Jon Stewart as it is disparaging to actual news programs. The Daily Show is also biased, incomplete, sometimes with information that is not thoroughly researched, but it's ok because it's a comedy show. They shouldn't even be in the running for best news program, and yet they often bring attention to things nobody else does.
just a thought- -jj
Interesting thoughts, good comments, it was nice chatting with ya.
I always read it as another "white people suck" movie, but this time, "white people suck in space", which is equally weird, because Cameron is about as white as they come.
It's a "people who try to take things from others by force suck" movie. As are the other movies in the same category you are referring to. The fact that the people who did this to Native Americans happened to be white is completely irrelevant, and your comment not only implies that all whites think they have the right to take from others by force, but it also implies that Cameron somehow should be bound to also think that, because he happens to be white.
Basically, don't make things about race when they're not. Besides, I personally saw it more as anti-corporate (in the same way as Alien) then anti-technology.
Exactly.
There are people who can't afford to purchase extended warranties for their devices. Therefore, they deserve to have the extended warranties given to them. To do that we will tax the better extended warranties 40%, and will also penalize people who choose not to purchase them.
Heh...Are you aware of the large body of customer protection laws dealing with manufacturer warranties? Extended warranties are just that...extended. Above and beyond what everybody already gets.
I don't think the people you are arguing against would have a problem with the laws ensuring they all get health care coverage, but allowing for people to buy supplemental insurance for additional benefits. That's would be the proper analogy for extended warranties.
Communism is not compatible with individual liberty and freedom. Communism implies the subordination of the individual to the state.
Government implies the subordination of the individual to the state. Government enforced laws are the only thing that removes your rights to, for example, kill your neighbor and take his property. We've decided, as a society, that we're better off agreeing on a set of laws and handing over the enforcement of these laws to a large and powerful body, than we are to take the risks that someone is going to just kills us and take our property. I think that's a pretty good deal.
The actual type of government, democracy or dictatorship, simply is a choice of just how much control we're handing over to the government and which of our rights we value most. You value your right to property more than your ability to take from those who are weaker than you. You probably don't agree with every law in the books, but we've decided that (assuming you're in the US), the best way of deciding on laws is based on voting for representatives, who will then vote on which laws to create and potentially will overwrite your individual preferences. A dictatorship would leave those decisions to a single individual, which has the potential to override the preferences of most of members of that society. Capitalism still implies that the government will be there to enforce certain rules, such as contract law. That enforcement costs money, and government takes that from you in the form of taxes. Communism exchanges additional securities at a greater cost, at least in theory.
If you want to argue that capitalism has proven to be more robust, and is better able to achieve its stated goals than communism, I will certainly not argue. But it is not inherently less free. If the members a society values that additional safety net more than they value the ability to become uber-rich, that's a choice they should be able to make. It's no different than choosing to work for someone instead of creating your own business under a capitalist society. You're exchanging potential rewards for security.
On the other hand, a society that does not allow its members to move to another society more of their liking, or work to change the system if it turns out it's not working as they expected, that's a less free society. Typically, communist nations have had that mindset, but that's not inherent in communism. That's the reason why I consider the right to migrate one of the most important rights we should defend.
Actually, Occam's Razor says: "Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate" or "Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora".
If you want to render that in English, some subjective interpretation is necessary.
First, not every translation requires subjective interpretation. That latin sentence is actually incredibly straight-forward, and I can read it based purely on my knowledge of Portuguese. "Never assume pluralities without necessity." That's as objective as it gets, I didn't even have to switch the order of the words.
Second, that's why I gave the Newton's Laws vs. Relativity example. We're not taking Occam's words as sacred law here, you've got to understand it. There's absolutely no reason the simplest explanations would be more correct. For that to happen there would need to be some sort of force or planning, or something to always make things simple. That's definitely not the case, and sometimes the only theories that give you correct predictions are very, very complex. That's what the whole "without necessity" is about. If you need to get more complex interactions in order to get your correct predictions, then that's what you need to do. If a simpler theory does the job, then use it. Note that the sentence has no word which means "correctness."
Here's another example. I'm given a program that takes a number and outputs a number. I'm supposed to figure out what it does based on the input and output. I notice that for every number I type, the output is that number + 2. That's a very simple pattern, and I'm going to write down, "the program takes the input and adds 2." However, I have absolutely no way of knowing if the program doesn't actually first add 5 then subtract 3 from the observations. That could very well be what's actually going on, but since both theories give the exact same prediction, it's easier to work with the version that just adds 2. That's all Occam's Razor says.
You know that Occam is cutting himself in his grave right now, don't you? Along the wrists.
Yeah, but not for the reason you think. Pet peeve of mine, I've corrected many people who got their knowledge of Occam's Razor from watching Contact. Occam's Razor does not say that the simplest explanation is the most likely to be the correct one. It says that, all things being equal, if two theories both make predictions which match observations, there's no sense in using the more complex one. If the theory with less variables get you the same result, you should use it, even if the more complex theory is the one that actually matches the true mechanism you're attempting to model. The moment you find some way to differentiate the theories with observations, then you use that to make your choice.
After all, Newton's laws of motion are way simpler than Einstein's theories of relativity. Without observations in situations where the relativistic effects are significant, they give the same results. Occam's Razor tells you to keep using Newton's laws until you have observations for which relativity's predictions are better (and we have those, obviously).
In your case, without actual evidence that the government was or was not involved, Occam is completely irrelevant. That's without even touching on the fact that it's extremely debatable to which theory is 'simpler.' I personally think random dude with cheap equipment recording unencrypted RF traffic to get stock tips is the theory with less variables, but I can see the government doing it too.
Ubuntu One looks like it uses other Ubuntu One users to store up to 2GB of data (hopefully securely) in a cloud-like state, e.g. with redundancy so that one failure doesn't cause you to lose those backups.
Nope. Apparently the data is stored on Amazon's S3 servers, according to the wiki here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne#"Storage"
I've seen this argument about a thousand times on slashdot. I'll cut to the end:
The moisture on your skin would evaporate due to the lack of atmosphere. This in turn would quickly cool your skin. In addition, your lungs would be completely depleted of all oxygen. Most likely, you would suffocate before being able to freeze, but freezing would come soon after.
The moisture on your skin would evaporate, and it would cool your body down. The question is by how much. People have been minimally exposed to vacuums before, and freezing didn't seem to be an issue (and apparently you'd feel the moisture on your tongue boiling more than the moisture in the rest of your skin).
This is all I could find on the subject with a quick google search, and I don't claim it's sufficiently authoritative to settle the question, but I'll leave it up to you to support your position with better sources if you care to: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html
Personally, I'd be more preoccupied with trying to breathe and not instantly freeze to death.
You wouldn't really instantly freeze, that's a misconception.
So yeah, breathing would be your concern.
Arthur, being an expert I had hoped you'd at least make a passing reference to thumbs or towels... I guess that explains your "late"ness. ;-)
Well, I didn't think what happened to me would make me an expert. It was very, very improbable :)
I know, but I posted it anyway to see how long it'd take for someone to correct me. ;)
And it took me a full 17 minutes! I gotta work on that, I'm sure I can shave it down to less 5. :)
Personally, I'd be more preoccupied with trying to breathe and not instantly freeze to death.
You wouldn't really instantly freeze, that's a misconception. Without being in direct contact with something, like an atmosphere, there's no heat transfer via conduction or convection. In a vacuum you only lose heat via radiation, and you know that's pretty slow, since Vacuum flasks can keep things hot for a really long time.
So yeah, breathing would be your concern.
We could assess my bona fides but if you assume I am insincere then I don't imagine any evidence will suffice.
Your sincerity was never in question. I merely suggested your definition for prude and "religious nutjob" didn't quite mesh with that of most who complain about such people.
his point seemed ... hyperbolic -- i.e. oooh, the religious right taking legal action against teachers who have their students read Starship Troopers or Ringworld or the Lensman for the rampent sex scenes. Surely there are men with less straw in them. Does he really think religious conservatives are so prudish or did a better example (e.g. Ian Banks, Guy Gavriel Kay, Tannith Lee or other authors of the grimly dark or erotic) just not spring to mind?
That goes back to your point about applying labels to people, I suppose. "Religious conservatives" really fall in a spectrum, and there are those that would take issue with Heinlein. After all, we had certain church groups out burning Harry Potter books a few years ago. You want to include yourself in the category of people Lumpy's complaining about, but from what you've told me, I don't think you are. I think his mistake was saying that "most parents freak out." It's not really most parents, but a small vocal minority of idiots tends to win against the apathetic bunch. All it takes are a few unreasonable people.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I find that how people are judged often depends on the order of presented evidence. Were I to have led off my response by talking about (e.g.) the type of language, media, activities I allow in my house ... well, I wonder if you'd say the same.
It's your house, so yes, I would say the same. I'm extremely socially liberal, but I don't object to you, or family, or anybody else being as conservative as you'd like. I simply don't believe I have any more right to do that than you have a right to interfere with how I run things in my house. In the example I gave, I wouldn't even have objected to the concerned parent removing the kid from our club. My problem was lobbying to have the entire club shut down.
I might disagree with your take on quite a lot of things, but as long as you're not trying to affect me with your beliefs, then you're just doing what you believe is right for your family, and that makes you a good parent in my book. You most certainly have a right to do things I disagree with, and my own personal beliefs about the optimal environment for raising kids are just that: my own personal beliefs. I don't believe I'm more "right" than you are, I'll simply raise my kids differently than you.
That said, if you're in Spanish class, you should be learning Spanish, not watching Scrubs. I'm not sure how this is a "conservative" vs. "liberal" view. I would certainly have objected myself, and as I've said, I'm extremely liberal.
Oh well. I guess my point, assuming I have one, is that once you apply a pejorative label to a person, they become varelse and it becomes impossible to grok them.
In the end, you're right that pejorative labels are counter-productive, and once you place someone in a category, you cease listening to what they're trying to say and automatically assume they're wrong. That said, if you take a look at the list of challenged books for 2007-2008, you'd find that objections were raised for novels significantly milder than anything Lumpy mentioned, so you shouldn't ignore his point merely because you feel the term "moronic prude" includes people who may not necessarily be deserving of the title.
Out of curiosity, are there any novels / any type of content that you would try to ban from the sci-fi literature class? Assuming, of course, that critical analysis and discussion is being performed on the novel, and they're not just being tested on whether or not they've read it.
You have me scratching my head here. I'll play the prude parent here for a moment (because I am one in Real Life), but if you are reading these authors for their sex scenes then you missed the boat.
You might be a parent in Real Life, but that right there already tells me you're no prude. A prude would object to the fact that the books contain sex scenes and deal with sexuality at all. If you're willing to accept that your child is exposed to these topics because the overall work says something important that causes the reader to think, then you're not a prude.
E.g., when I complained about my high school daughter watching Scrubs and Casino Royal in school, it wasn't about the material per se but because she was watching them in English (no subtitles, nothing) in Spanish class. You see, they took two weeks off because the teacher couldn't bring herself to put together a lesson plan. I'm sure I'll go down in the school history as just another local religious nut job though.
I have no idea why you think that is. Maybe it's because you've been lucky enough not to witness actual local religious nut-jobs. When I was in High School, I joined the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Club. Basically, we met after school, exchanged books, played dungeons and dragons, talked about video games. No, not exactly the type of extra-curricular activity that was going to get universities interested in your application, but it was after-school (not taking up class time), and we could do worse. This lasted for 3 months, until the parent of one of the members got wind that we were going to be playing dungeons and dragons, and decided to get the club shut down due to "satanic activity" (bear in mind, this wasn't the 70's, it was the mid-90's). No, it wasn't enough to pull the kid out of the club, the religious nutjob had to ruin it for the rest of us.
So I don't think you're a prude or religious nutjob for taking an interest in your daughters' education. I think that makes you a good parent. Doesn't mean that the real prudes and nutjobs don't exist.
Well, they sort of do... in order to use it with a portable music player you have to buy an iPod.
It's not the same thing. That would be like me telling you that you can have an awesome recliner for free and then wanting to "charge" you for it by placing a limitation that you can only sit in that recliner while watching my brand of TV's. Then when you complain that the recliner won't recline if it doesn't get a bluetooth authentication signal from my brand of TV's, I tell you, "well, I spent all that money building that recliner, I gotta profit somehow."
That doesn't work. Once the recliner is in your house, I don't have any more rights over it. Once iTunes is in my computer, Apple loses all rights over it (except for copyright, trademark, and any patents). At least that's the way it should be.
Or maybe Palm is faking the ID so that its owners can use the iTunes software that Apple spends significant money developing, rather than develop its own software. Apple is preventing that despicable behavior.
First let me say that I'm glad Palm got reprimanded for faking the vendor ID. If suddenly that was allowed, there would be utter chaos as multiple devices pretend to be other devices and mess up proper loading of drivers and other important features.
That said, if Apple wants money back for the software development they put in iTunes, they need to charge for it. Once the software is installed on my computer it's no longer their software, it's mine. I should have the right to use to sync with whatever device I want to sync with, and anybody should have the right to make their hardware talk with whatever software is available on the user's computers.
And finally, I don't even understand why Palm wants that feature. The real problem is that I need to sync my iphone with that piece of crap software, not that I can't sync other stuff with itunes. God, how I wish I never had to open that horrible software, could just mount the iphone like a usb drive, and dump music files there, as with any other mp3 mplayer.