I DO have a 100" projection screen in my apartment. And I have a HTPC with all digital I/O and 2TB of disk space for on-screen movie selection. And, yes, I do wonder why people buy LCD TVs for home theaters when my entire setup only cost about $2k.
If your first game was BF1942, that dates you as someone in his late teens. Teenagers are not allowed to possess the kind of wisdom demonstrated by your post. The sort of thread-ending insight embodied by that Adams quote should be off limits to people under 25. You should be bitching about "the system" and making sophomoric sex jokes. A kid possessing anything resembling wisdom is simply against the natural order of things.
This may be news to you, Mr. Coward, but Microsoft Windows is designed with more concern for backward compatibility than any other major operating system.
People who insist on using obsolete peripherals with new computers can always use digital-to-analog converters. These exist for usb->serial, digital video->analog video, etc. Or they can just keep using their obsolete computers with their obsolete periphs.
It's backward-looking thinking like yours that keeps the PC industry from achieving its full potential.
People who have used SPDIF fiber optic audio will all agree that analog audio is obsolete. Ever had a cellphone near analog speaker wire? That popping and clicking is a clear sign that the thin copper audio wire has no place in an era of cellphones.
When are we going to see motherboards which have NO serial ports, parallel ports, keyboard/mouse ports, floppy ports, IDE ports, analog audio output ports, analog video output ports, and all of that other legacy crutf?
All we need is SATA, USB2/Firewire, digital video, and fiber-optic audio. Such a board would be cheaper, faster, smaller, less power hungry, and less complex than today's boards. Once widely adopted, it would make troubleshooting much easier and make components less expensive to produce with better signals.
You want to play the statistics game? Here's one for you. The wealthier, more educated, or more intelligent (by IQ), a person is, the more likely he is to be an atheist. That kills your (wrong in the first place) statistics.
However, if you think morality is derived from christian values (as you define them--every christian has a different definition), then it is obvious that you have never studied even the tiniest little bit of philosophy. Put bluntly, you are too ignorant to even begin the discussion of what morality is, and what causes it. I suggest you start reading up on the topic of altruism in animals, evolutionary psychology, and moral philosophy in general. Until you educate yourself, you will continue displaying the unfortunate consequences of your extreme ignorance: bigotry, hate, and anti-social evil.
I hope, for your sake, you can learn and grow at some point in your life.
Mythbusters is not pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is when people misuse scientific terms to tick people into believing in some manner of BS.
Mythbusters uses their science terminology properly, is open to peer review, and doesn't try to trick anyone. They even go so far as retesting things if their viewers find holes in their methodologies. It may not be formal, academic science, but it IS real science.
Life is cheap in.ZA compared to the rest of the West. A huge portion of the population is dying of AIDS and the government doesn't care. In fact, they deliberately spread misinformation in order to increase the spread. They fired their only federal health administrator who was crazy enough to admit that AIDS is spread by unprotected sex. People live their lives in shanties made from scavenged scrap metal on squatted land. A fried of a friend of mine in.ZA was killed for the crime of having white skin.
Don't get me wrong. There are modern, western portions of the land and it's culture, but to the government and the majority of the population, life is cheap.
You know, a lot of people laugh at jokes about things like this without needing to "deal" with anything. A few humans dead in a military mistake? Far more terrible circumstances kill far more people every single day. I'm not the least bit emotionally affected by this.
But the jokes? I love jokes, regardless of the subject. Laughing makes the world a better place, and it certainly doesn't make these soldiers any less dead. Don't pretend callous humor is helping people "cope" with things like this. It's just harmless, callous humor that hurts no one and makes a few people laugh.
Kids play pranks on each other all the time. "SWATing" someone trumps the atomic-wedgie, the hand-in-warm-water-while-sleeping, the stick-in-the-spokes, and the frog-in-the-backpack pranks... combined. Kids are reckless, but they grow out of it.
If you think an extended stay in the drug, violence and rape-filled US prison system will make a better man of this smart-but-irresponsible kid, you must know something about prisons I am completely unaware of.
Sending them a tax bill seems a bit more sensible than arresting every janitor and secretary in the office. Is Brazil trying to frighten away foreign investment?
Neat, huh? I love consistent moderation! Or perhaps we should ask what that says of/. mods of late?
Or perhaps, and I realize this is hard to wrap your head around, "the mods" are not an organized, solitary group; but are actually just an unrelated collection of thousands of people around the world, all with different opinions and backgrounds?
Contrary to the beliefs many young slashdot posters with fragile egos (I was among that group some nine years ago), getting downmodded is not a personal insult, and does not mean some collective "they" hates you or is out to get you. Also, getting in to the mod club and getting to post at +2 doesn't change your life in any way. You'll still be too shy to talk to the girl who smiles at you from across the bar, you'll still get routinely fragged by punk-ass 13-year-old, your parents will still give you shit for not attending church anymore, and you still need to get your oil changed every 3,000 miles. Slashdot moderation just isn't that big a deal.
Actually, all evidence suggests that social animals (such as humans, elephants, and other animals that live in groups), often act in their own best interest (evil-to-neutral behavior), but occasionally make sacrifices for others (altruistic, aka good behavior). Here's a great example from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_in_animals): "Vervet Monkeys give alarm calls to warn fellow monkeys of the presence of predators, even though in doing so they attract attention to themselves, increasing their personal chance of being attacked."
This behavior is explained by selfish gene theory--if sacrificing yourself causes a large number of your kin to survive and reproduce, each of your genes will (on average) replicate faster than if you had not sacrificed yourself.
My point is that humans and other social animals are, by their very nature, "good" to some extent.
Why does it have to have anything to do with "dealing with hardship?" An emotionally mature person should be able to appreciate humor in ANYTHING. As long as nobody with Alzheimer's overhears the jokes, no harm is done. If someone with Alzheimer's is reading the jokes, he/she won't remember anyway. (heh, sorry.)
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I DO have a 100" projection screen in my apartment. And I have a HTPC with all digital I/O and 2TB of disk space for on-screen movie selection. And, yes, I do wonder why people buy LCD TVs for home theaters when my entire setup only cost about $2k.
If your first game was BF1942, that dates you as someone in his late teens. Teenagers are not allowed to possess the kind of wisdom demonstrated by your post. The sort of thread-ending insight embodied by that Adams quote should be off limits to people under 25. You should be bitching about "the system" and making sophomoric sex jokes. A kid possessing anything resembling wisdom is simply against the natural order of things.
This may be news to you, Mr. Coward, but Microsoft Windows is designed with more concern for backward compatibility than any other major operating system.
People who insist on using obsolete peripherals with new computers can always use digital-to-analog converters. These exist for usb->serial, digital video->analog video, etc. Or they can just keep using their obsolete computers with their obsolete periphs.
It's backward-looking thinking like yours that keeps the PC industry from achieving its full potential.
People who have used SPDIF fiber optic audio will all agree that analog audio is obsolete. Ever had a cellphone near analog speaker wire? That popping and clicking is a clear sign that the thin copper audio wire has no place in an era of cellphones.
When are we going to see motherboards which have NO serial ports, parallel ports, keyboard/mouse ports, floppy ports, IDE ports, analog audio output ports, analog video output ports, and all of that other legacy crutf?
All we need is SATA, USB2/Firewire, digital video, and fiber-optic audio. Such a board would be cheaper, faster, smaller, less power hungry, and less complex than today's boards. Once widely adopted, it would make troubleshooting much easier and make components less expensive to produce with better signals.
You want to play the statistics game? Here's one for you. The wealthier, more educated, or more intelligent (by IQ), a person is, the more likely he is to be an atheist. That kills your (wrong in the first place) statistics.
However, if you think morality is derived from christian values (as you define them--every christian has a different definition), then it is obvious that you have never studied even the tiniest little bit of philosophy. Put bluntly, you are too ignorant to even begin the discussion of what morality is, and what causes it. I suggest you start reading up on the topic of altruism in animals, evolutionary psychology, and moral philosophy in general. Until you educate yourself, you will continue displaying the unfortunate consequences of your extreme ignorance: bigotry, hate, and anti-social evil.
I hope, for your sake, you can learn and grow at some point in your life.
Mythbusters is not pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is when people misuse scientific terms to tick people into believing in some manner of BS.
Mythbusters uses their science terminology properly, is open to peer review, and doesn't try to trick anyone. They even go so far as retesting things if their viewers find holes in their methodologies. It may not be formal, academic science, but it IS real science.
You just called all non-christians immoral--how delightfully evil of you! May the mods have mercy on your soul.
No! The Win9x line is dead. 2000, XP, 2003, and Vista are the Windows NT line.
Life is cheap in .ZA compared to the rest of the West. A huge portion of the population is dying of AIDS and the government doesn't care. In fact, they deliberately spread misinformation in order to increase the spread. They fired their only federal health administrator who was crazy enough to admit that AIDS is spread by unprotected sex. People live their lives in shanties made from scavenged scrap metal on squatted land. A fried of a friend of mine in .ZA was killed for the crime of having white skin.
Don't get me wrong. There are modern, western portions of the land and it's culture, but to the government and the majority of the population, life is cheap.
You know, a lot of people laugh at jokes about things like this without needing to "deal" with anything. A few humans dead in a military mistake? Far more terrible circumstances kill far more people every single day. I'm not the least bit emotionally affected by this.
But the jokes? I love jokes, regardless of the subject. Laughing makes the world a better place, and it certainly doesn't make these soldiers any less dead. Don't pretend callous humor is helping people "cope" with things like this. It's just harmless, callous humor that hurts no one and makes a few people laugh.
XP? The reason your story wasn't approved is because you forgot to lay the blame on Windows Vista. Try harder next time.
Who said he wanted to see someone killed?
I guess English is not your primary language? The expression "14-year-old-kid in me" was key, and you seemed to have misunderstood it... ya square.
Clearly, the kid in you is dead.
Kids play pranks on each other all the time. "SWATing" someone trumps the atomic-wedgie, the hand-in-warm-water-while-sleeping, the stick-in-the-spokes, and the frog-in-the-backpack pranks... combined. Kids are reckless, but they grow out of it.
If you think an extended stay in the drug, violence and rape-filled US prison system will make a better man of this smart-but-irresponsible kid, you must know something about prisons I am completely unaware of.
The responsible adult in my thinks this is a terrible, anti-social prank, but the 14-year-old kid in me thinks this is awesome.
Well, when I am judging the relative value of a culture, one of the primary attributes I look for is laugh latency.
The USA is a sovereign nation, and it does everything it can to attract foreign investment. Same thing for pretty much every other wealthy country.
Sending them a tax bill seems a bit more sensible than arresting every janitor and secretary in the office. Is Brazil trying to frighten away foreign investment?
Contrary to the beliefs many young slashdot posters with fragile egos (I was among that group some nine years ago), getting downmodded is not a personal insult, and does not mean some collective "they" hates you or is out to get you. Also, getting in to the mod club and getting to post at +2 doesn't change your life in any way. You'll still be too shy to talk to the girl who smiles at you from across the bar, you'll still get routinely fragged by punk-ass 13-year-old, your parents will still give you shit for not attending church anymore, and you still need to get your oil changed every 3,000 miles. Slashdot moderation just isn't that big a deal.
Thank you, sir. You made my day.
Actually, all evidence suggests that social animals (such as humans, elephants, and other animals that live in groups), often act in their own best interest (evil-to-neutral behavior), but occasionally make sacrifices for others (altruistic, aka good behavior). Here's a great example from wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism_in_animals):
"Vervet Monkeys give alarm calls to warn fellow monkeys of the presence of predators, even though in doing so they attract attention to themselves, increasing their personal chance of being attacked."
This behavior is explained by selfish gene theory--if sacrificing yourself causes a large number of your kin to survive and reproduce, each of your genes will (on average) replicate faster than if you had not sacrificed yourself.
My point is that humans and other social animals are, by their very nature, "good" to some extent.
If any part of your body excretes liquid methane, congratulations, you're about to die!
Why does it have to have anything to do with "dealing with hardship?" An emotionally mature person should be able to appreciate humor in ANYTHING. As long as nobody with Alzheimer's overhears the jokes, no harm is done. If someone with Alzheimer's is reading the jokes, he/she won't remember anyway. (heh, sorry.)