I always secretly thought that in reality, the humans were not slaves, and not being used as batteries. It was all a big lie made up by Morpheus, or some "freedom fighter" many hundreds of years ago to justify the existance of humans outside of the Matrix.
In reality - the AI's had basically SAVED humanity from itself - either an intranicene war, or simple mismanagement of the environment, humanity had destroyed the earth and made it uninhabitable, so the machines were keeping them in the Matrix as a Zoo. If you think about it, absolutely NOTHING said by Agent Smith in the first movie conflicts with this idea. So maybe it's the case.
Perhaps the machines have been trying to tell the Freedom Fighters this truth for hundreds of years, but the Freedom Fighters do not believe them.
1) your engineers built a screwdriver, because someone in the organization thought it would be a great idea to build a screwdriver, and that screwdrivers would be highly in demand in the market. (Perhaps that was you?)
2) Your customers bought the screwdriver, and proceeded to use it as a hammer.
3) You went to your engineers and told them they needed to make their screwdriver more hammer-like, because that's what the users said they wanted.
4) They refused, stating that making it more hammer-like would ruin it's usefulness as a screwdriver.
5) But because you play golf with their manager, (or maybe because John Dvorak wrote an article espousing the virtues of hammers) you got your way, and the market ends up with a screwhammer anyway.
About two years ago, I stopped feeling guilty, and said; "FUCK THEM!"
I now block ad sites with hosts files, use popup-blocking Mozilla, and disable flash.
Fuck them.
I pay an ever-escalating fee for my connection. If a site can't make it without advertising, then fuck them. They can go out of business for all I care. I don't need it anymore. Slashdot, and Ars Technica, and probably xlr8yourmac are about the only sites I'd really miss. Other than that, the internet is all about P2P, and email for me now (and even email is starting to become "not worth the hassle"). All the other stuff just is not worth this advertising crap.
And don't beleive that if nobody had blocked ads that it wouldn't have eventually come to this anyway. Those sleazy advertisers will resort to ANYTHING. If you don't believe me, why don't you take a weekend trip to Las Vegas, and see with your own two eyes a culture of advertising scams run amok.
I looked into doing this, and frankly, it's still not a very good deal - because the best logicboard that's readily available is the Gigabit Ethernet board. That's about two years old compared to the latest power mac systems. And one of the main logic board and grey market parts suppliers just went out of business (Shreve systems - but Mac ResQ is still around).
If I could get a more up to date logic board, or even a cube motherboard, I'd feel more compelled to pursue this. Until then, I'm still squeezing every last cycle I can out of my trusty old upgraded Beige G3. . .
another "what if" scenario that points out the error in Apple's policy, what if I DO buy a superdrive-equipped mac, and the superdrive breaks. . . or, I later want to upgrade to a faster, third-party device, that iDVD would be capable of supporting technically, but is blocked by this restriction.
It's a bogus policy no matter how you look at it. Apple should have treated iDVD like any other piece of software, and for those of us who simply didn't want to buy a superdrive-equipped mac, they could have offered an unencumbered version for sale, for say - -, I'm guessing around $250 sounds pretty fair. The alternative being the "Pro" DVDSP for $999.
Filters all over your house?
on
DSL Rising
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Install ONE filter at your external connection point, on your second line.
All your outlets should be wired to your second line.
Your DSL modem is connected to your primary line. (or vice versa).
At least that's how I did it.
Then get a Linksys router and don't use the PPPOE software.
Do those things, and DSL is better than cable, AND most DSL companies aren't nearly as restrictive as far as ports and quotas and such. AND you're not sharing your connection with every other joker in your neighborhood, (and they're not sniffing your line, or hacking into your system).
All in all, DSL is way better than cable in every way.
okay, so porn itself is not evil. How do we all feel about hacking pay porn sites? Or blocking banners.
Re:Hard to defend a logical morality?
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 2
that's wrong.
People don't believe that without God, you cannot be a moral person. They believe that without God, there's *no reason* for an individual person to be moral. And that's absolutely correct.
These people are still missing the point though - because that logic implies that God and Morals exist for a reason, to keep our behavior in check so we can survive as a species. That's just plain silly. Their cart is pulling their horse. Their problem is, they believe Morality is more important that God which ironically gives them the same justification for moral behavior as any atheist.
Re:Alcohol and Cigarettes and harmful
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 2
ok, in of itself, porn isn't the worst thing of all - but you must agree that there is danger for the "weak" in having free, open, unrestricted access to porn of every kind, including bestiality and kiddy porn.
People can and do ruin their lives. Adults are supposed to have self-control, but what about kids?
I'm all for porn, and I'm smart enough to know that there's no way to restrict access without violating privacy, which is paramount to most porn conneseurs. It's one of those nasty catch-22's.
I'm not advocating control or censorship - in any way. But I do think that the attitude that it's just harmless fun for everyone is wrong.
I don't know if you've ever been to Phoenix (specifically Scottsdale) but there's an ordinance against outdoor lighting at night there.
Driving through some of the densest areas of tract housing in the US, all you see is black silhouettes of saguaros against the desert sky. It's kind of eerie.
And of course, skywatching in Phoenix is GREAT!
It's about the only thing I actually like about that town.
Yeah, I signed up for Earthlink DSL about two years ago. About two weeks later, after I had not heard word one from them, I signed up for PacBell DSL. About 6 weeks later, I got an email from Earthlink saying that they were still checking to see if DSL was available in my area.
I still get an email from them every 6-8 weeks telling me that they're still checking.
They sure haven't convinved me that they're actively competing for my business.
Better still, another local provider was also offering DSL for TWICE what PacBell was offering it for. Very comparable ancilliary services (which I don't use, by the way).
So, anyway, if there are any marketing geniuses at PacBell, (or Earthlink for that matter) reading this, take it at face value.
I'm going to move to Japan, Canada, Australia, or Korea, where broadband is cheap and plentiful, competition is brisk, and the companies are somehow miraculously staying in business.
Well, the right-wingers out there will say it's because we're teaching evolution in the schools instead of the ten commandments.
But maybe - just maybe, we need to revisit ethics and critical thinking as requirements for grade school kids in America. It seems as if there's a whole generation of people, Lawyers, Doctors (ie. Drug pushers for the pharmaceutical industry), Business execs (Enron), Recording execs, politicians, priests (come here little altar boy, I've got a prayer ritual for you. ..), Televangelists (I have flaws, but I'm forgiven, you'll be damned and go to hell if you don't tithe...) and now, scientists, are all becoming known for their ethical shortcomings.
Ten commandments are fine and dandy, but try to put "don't covet thy neighbor's ass" into the context of "don't buy a politician, so you can get rich", and it apparently misses something.
But heterosexuals don't have sex with a "preferred" partner. They have sex to procreate. Are you crazy? Sex is yucky, and sinful. You're not supposed to prefer anything about it.
Your points about admonishments in scripture regarding hypocrisy are not lost on me, they're just lost on about 99% of other Christians out there. . .
The point is; After the "big evil corp" is done exploiting 3rd world workers, they go and exploit 1st world consumers by delivering a shoddy product with a high markup.
The social evils of exploiting 3rd world labor is definately a valid subject, but you can exploit 3rd world labor and still deliver a well-designed quality product. Which has NOTHING to do with this article.
This article has to do with the exploitation of us poor 1st world consumers - who are supposedly rich and supposedly have a higher standard of living. But when we spend 1st world prices on crap, our standard of living has effectively declined.
That's right, you heard it here first folks! Globalization, deregulation, free markets, have REDUCED the American standard of living.
That's the way it was SUPPOSED to work, after all. The CEOs can still afford the high-end stuff.
Prior to Sputnik, Americans felt secure about the Soviets having nukes simply because we had antiaircraft missiles (shrike, thor, etc.), and good pilots and interceptors.
But all that's for shit when your enemy can put an object into orbit, and then decide to drop it on you at will.
Then it became a sheer pissing contest of how many thousands of pounds worth of warheads each could loft. In the 80's we sure were terrified of nuclear incineration - but being able to nuke every Russian and American town with a population over 1000 wasn't enough. We had to be able to withstand a first strike and still have leftover launch capability. We had to be able to launch from submarines to ensure an effective crippling first strike. We had to be able to launch cruise missiles and B1 to penetrate air defenses to supplement our ballistic effort.
In the end, we both had the capability to annihilate the world several times over, and it STILL didn't make us feel much safer. Now we're going to build a missile defense system. And in the end - we're still not going to feel any safer. Because there's really only one way to accomplish that:
A single world-power must disarm every other power, to ensure nobody will ever use nukes for extortion or war again. But then, how do we trust the single world power.
The genie is out of the bottle. At least, in the process of developing the means to destroy the world, we also developed a very primative means to escape it.
Oh, go ahead and dis them. I'm bitter. Veritas is Latin for "Trust" - so no wonder people want to use it to name their business.
To be fair, the Veritas side of the business is fairly engineering-oriented, and is actually a really good company. But one of their major purchases was a very marketing-oriented (Windows) company. 3 guesses which one it was and the first two don't count. So you get the bad with the good, I guess.
With the dot-com bust, I'm just awaiting the inevitable divestiture with shadenfreude. . .
Slashdot Mirror
Because the machines ALREADY tried that. The humans couldn't stand it, because they thrived on suffering. Entire crops were lost - etc.
I just loved that statement, because it's so true.
Not that humans need to suffer. They need to have OTHERS suffer.
Um, God made Adam and Eve in His image, so they were already "like" Him, weren't they?
I always secretly thought that in reality, the humans were not slaves, and not being used as batteries. It was all a big lie made up by Morpheus, or some "freedom fighter" many hundreds of years ago to justify the existance of humans outside of the Matrix.
In reality - the AI's had basically SAVED humanity from itself - either an intranicene war, or simple mismanagement of the environment, humanity had destroyed the earth and made it uninhabitable, so the machines were keeping them in the Matrix as a Zoo. If you think about it, absolutely NOTHING said by Agent Smith in the first movie conflicts with this idea. So maybe it's the case.
Perhaps the machines have been trying to tell the Freedom Fighters this truth for hundreds of years, but the Freedom Fighters do not believe them.
What you mean is:
1) your engineers built a screwdriver, because someone in the organization thought it would be a great idea to build a screwdriver, and that screwdrivers would be highly in demand in the market. (Perhaps that was you?)
2) Your customers bought the screwdriver, and proceeded to use it as a hammer.
3) You went to your engineers and told them they needed to make their screwdriver more hammer-like, because that's what the users said they wanted.
4) They refused, stating that making it more hammer-like would ruin it's usefulness as a screwdriver.
5) But because you play golf with their manager, (or maybe because John Dvorak wrote an article espousing the virtues of hammers) you got your way, and the market ends up with a screwhammer anyway.
And everybody wonders why software sucks today?
"(sic) blah blah blah. . .
Therefore, DirectX is the obvious choice."
ooooh, Shiny! I agree!
if the guy was being paid by the RIAA to make such a claim.
I'd believe it then.
Just like I believe that Marijuana makes you go insane.
About two years ago, I stopped feeling guilty, and said; "FUCK THEM!"
I now block ad sites with hosts files, use popup-blocking Mozilla, and disable flash.
Fuck them.
I pay an ever-escalating fee for my connection.
If a site can't make it without advertising, then fuck them. They can go out of business for all I care. I don't need it anymore. Slashdot, and Ars Technica, and probably xlr8yourmac are about the only sites I'd really miss. Other than that, the internet is all about P2P, and email for me now (and even email is starting to become "not worth the hassle"). All the other stuff just is not worth this advertising crap.
And don't beleive that if nobody had blocked ads that it wouldn't have eventually come to this anyway. Those sleazy advertisers will resort to ANYTHING.
If you don't believe me, why don't you take a weekend trip to Las Vegas, and see with your own two eyes a culture of advertising scams run amok.
I refuse to do business with them anymore.
I looked into doing this, and frankly, it's still not a very good deal - because the best logicboard that's readily available is the Gigabit Ethernet board. That's about two years old compared to the latest power mac systems. And one of the main logic board and grey market parts suppliers just went out of business (Shreve systems - but Mac ResQ is still around).
If I could get a more up to date logic board, or even a cube motherboard, I'd feel more compelled to pursue this. Until then, I'm still squeezing every last cycle I can out of my trusty old upgraded Beige G3. . .
another "what if" scenario that points out the error in Apple's policy, what if I DO buy a superdrive-equipped mac, and the superdrive breaks. . . or, I later want to upgrade to a faster, third-party device, that iDVD would be capable of supporting technically, but is blocked by this restriction.
It's a bogus policy no matter how you look at it. Apple should have treated iDVD like any other piece of software, and for those of us who simply didn't want to buy a superdrive-equipped mac, they could have offered an unencumbered version for sale, for say - -, I'm guessing around $250 sounds pretty fair. The alternative being the "Pro" DVDSP for $999.
Install ONE filter at your external connection point, on your second line.
All your outlets should be wired to your second line.
Your DSL modem is connected to your primary line.
(or vice versa).
At least that's how I did it.
Then get a Linksys router and don't use the PPPOE software.
Do those things, and DSL is better than cable, AND most DSL companies aren't nearly as restrictive as far as ports and quotas and such. AND you're not sharing your connection with every other joker in your neighborhood, (and they're not sniffing your line, or hacking into your system).
All in all, DSL is way better than cable in every way.
okay, so porn itself is not evil.
How do we all feel about hacking pay porn sites? Or blocking banners.
that's wrong.
People don't believe that without God, you cannot be a moral person.
They believe that without God, there's *no reason* for an individual person to be moral. And that's absolutely correct.
These people are still missing the point though - because that logic implies that God and Morals exist for a reason, to keep our behavior in check so we can survive as a species. That's just plain silly. Their cart is pulling their horse. Their problem is, they believe Morality is more important that God which ironically gives them the same justification for moral behavior as any atheist.
ok, in of itself, porn isn't the worst thing of all - but you must agree that there is danger for the "weak" in having free, open, unrestricted access to porn of every kind, including bestiality and kiddy porn.
People can and do ruin their lives. Adults are supposed to have self-control, but what about kids?
I'm all for porn, and I'm smart enough to know that there's no way to restrict access without violating privacy, which is paramount to most porn conneseurs. It's one of those nasty catch-22's.
I'm not advocating control or censorship - in any way. But I do think that the attitude that it's just harmless fun for everyone is wrong.
I don't know if you've ever been to Phoenix (specifically Scottsdale) but there's an ordinance against outdoor lighting at night there.
Driving through some of the densest areas of tract housing in the US, all you see is black silhouettes of saguaros against the desert sky. It's kind of eerie.
And of course, skywatching in Phoenix is GREAT!
It's about the only thing I actually like about that town.
Yeah, I signed up for Earthlink DSL about two years ago. About two weeks later, after I had not heard word one from them, I signed up for PacBell DSL. About 6 weeks later, I got an email from Earthlink saying that they were still checking to see if DSL was available in my area.
I still get an email from them every 6-8 weeks telling me that they're still checking.
They sure haven't convinved me that they're actively competing for my business.
Better still, another local provider was also offering DSL for TWICE what PacBell was offering it for. Very comparable ancilliary services (which I don't use, by the way).
So, anyway, if there are any marketing geniuses at PacBell, (or Earthlink for that matter) reading this, take it at face value.
hm. I've got an idea.
I'm going to move to Japan, Canada, Australia, or Korea, where broadband is cheap and plentiful, competition is brisk, and the companies are somehow miraculously staying in business.
Well, the right-wingers out there will say it's because we're teaching evolution in the schools instead of the ten commandments.
.), Televangelists (I have flaws, but I'm forgiven, you'll be damned and go to hell if you don't tithe...) and now, scientists, are all becoming known for their ethical shortcomings.
But maybe - just maybe, we need to revisit ethics and critical thinking as requirements for grade school kids in America. It seems as if there's a whole generation of people, Lawyers, Doctors (ie. Drug pushers for the pharmaceutical industry), Business execs (Enron), Recording execs, politicians, priests (come here little altar boy, I've got a prayer ritual for you. .
Ten commandments are fine and dandy, but try to put "don't covet thy neighbor's ass" into the context of "don't buy a politician, so you can get rich", and it apparently misses something.
heh - I wouldn't kick Mick Jagger out of bed for eating crackers. . .
But heterosexuals don't have sex with a "preferred" partner. They have sex to procreate. Are you crazy? Sex is yucky, and sinful. You're not supposed to prefer anything about it.
Your points about admonishments in scripture regarding hypocrisy are not lost on me, they're just lost on about 99% of other Christians out there. . .
An uncontrolled free market ALWAYS leads to a monopoly. And pretty much everybody agrees that monopolies are a bad thing (except monopolists).
So, there always has to be SOME control over the market, which is the whole point of government in the first place.
Where people disagree is the exact degree of control required to create a market that's "free enough" without being "too free".
You're missing the point!
The point is;
After the "big evil corp" is done exploiting 3rd world workers, they go and exploit 1st world consumers by delivering a shoddy product with a high markup.
The social evils of exploiting 3rd world labor is definately a valid subject, but you can exploit 3rd world labor and still deliver a well-designed quality product. Which has NOTHING to do with this article.
This article has to do with the exploitation of us poor 1st world consumers - who are supposedly rich and supposedly have a higher standard of living. But when we spend 1st world prices on crap, our standard of living has effectively declined.
That's right, you heard it here first folks!
Globalization, deregulation, free markets, have REDUCED the American standard of living.
That's the way it was SUPPOSED to work, after all. The CEOs can still afford the high-end stuff.
Prior to Sputnik, Americans felt secure about the Soviets having nukes simply because we had antiaircraft missiles (shrike, thor, etc.), and good pilots and interceptors.
But all that's for shit when your enemy can put an object into orbit, and then decide to drop it on you at will.
Then it became a sheer pissing contest of how many thousands of pounds worth of warheads each could loft. In the 80's we sure were terrified of nuclear incineration - but being able to nuke every Russian and American town with a population over 1000 wasn't enough. We had to be able to withstand a first strike and still have leftover launch capability. We had to be able to launch from submarines to ensure an effective crippling first strike. We had to be able to launch cruise missiles and B1 to penetrate air defenses to supplement our ballistic effort.
In the end, we both had the capability to annihilate the world several times over, and it STILL didn't make us feel much safer.
Now we're going to build a missile defense system.
And in the end - we're still not going to feel any safer. Because there's really only one way to accomplish that:
A single world-power must disarm every other power, to ensure nobody will ever use nukes for extortion or war again. But then, how do we trust the single world power.
The genie is out of the bottle. At least, in the process of developing the means to destroy the world, we also developed a very primative means to escape it.
I think they're more worried about the *political* fallout. . .
Oh, go ahead and dis them. I'm bitter.
Veritas is Latin for "Trust" - so no wonder people want to use it to name their business.
To be fair, the Veritas side of the business is fairly engineering-oriented, and is actually a really good company.
But one of their major purchases was a very marketing-oriented (Windows) company. 3 guesses which one it was and the first two don't count. So you get the bad with the good, I guess.
With the dot-com bust, I'm just awaiting the inevitable divestiture with shadenfreude. . .
heh, my fav was:
"the number of suckers born each minute doubles every 18 months"