This smacks of social conditioning. There's no real reason why this has to, or even ought to, be the case, it's merely the way that Western Christian society has developed.
So, asian women just spread their legs for the first good-looking unemployed underachiever who walks by? Fabulous! As a gaijin living in Japan, I can attest to this. I think what most Asian women are looking for, though, is simply men who aren't Asian.
Also, I believe that Toyota and Honda make their cars in the US now while the "American" brands make their cars in Mexico or some such place... If by make you mean assemble, then yes. I believe it was required by some of the trade agreements that Toyota open plants in America to sell cars on the American market. Many of the parts are still made elsewhere. Many American automakers assemble their vehicles in Detroit but manufacture many of their parts elsewhere. Remember, only 25% of a product needs to be manufactured in the USA to bear the "Made in the USA" label.
I guarantee the majority of the circuitry and electronics come from Taiwan, the upholstery is produced in Puerto Rico, and the simpler parts are made outside of the US by nearly every manufacturer.
From my experiences, some of them believe a god talks directly to them and tells them what to do, particularly when it's raining. They are neo-cons. The others think the government is out to get them. I'd say that makes them liberals.
I said I read PDFs on my laptop, full color and etc. I've even done a little bit of reading on my palm T|X, and I've been known to surf the web on my PSP, though I find that rather painful, frankly. What age is doing here is providing a huge collection of extremely pleasant book reading experiences that I am, frankly, loathe to walk away from. Sorry, I'm tired and must have missed that part. If you're looking for color, you're better off sticking with your laptop for a long time to come. It will be a while before readers can offer what you need, and I don't see color coming out for at least another 5 years.
I give you credit for your good eyes. I'm younger than you are and I still can't stand to read text on a monitor for more than about an hour. I have to get up, walk around, and stare at something in the distance. Supposedly it has something to do with flicker and refresh rates, and LCDs have improved this for me, but I can't bring myself to really read on a computer screen.
Give me an e-reader that can do what a book can - full color, allows me to keep my purchases in as secure a manner as possible, won't break if I drop it or is trivially replaceable (not at $400, sorry), and I think I'd wobble over towards the e-reader zone, as it were. I agree on the $400 price tag. I paid about $300 for my Sony Reader, but I wouldn't have bought it if I cared about color or the ability to read a lot of PDFs that weren't as easy to format correctly. I primarily read novels these days, and the reader provides a better experience than a paperback for me.
I'm not in the least unfamiliar with the territory. I just think ereaders are still a frontier, is all. And not one I care to be a path-breaker in. I'll watch you do it.:-) Thank you. I was quite obviously incorrect about your attitude and will proceed to reintroduce my foot to my mouth. I believe ereaders are a frontier primarily because a lot of people are still afraid of new technologies, especially those who profit from the old ones. I thought you were using the "too old to change" excuse.
Despite my feelings that Sony is an "evil DRM-crazy corporation", they have a pretty good policy on ebooks purchased through their story. Last I checked, I could authorize up to 7 devices on my account, and there was supposed to be a way to de-authorize a device if it was sold or broken. We'll see how it plays out when it's time for me to replace my reader, but I think things will improve for the consumer in the future.
I would consider purchasing one of these if it met two important criteria:
You can read it in the sunlight. 99% of most LCD screens can't be read for shit in the sunlight.
For $9.99, I better not have to have to pay for that fucker again, ever.
And even then, I would still wait a year, so that they don't pull an 'iPhone' on me. I can't promise the latter, but my sony reader works just fine in the sunlight. It's not an LCD, though, it's e-ink. This means I need a book light to read it in the dark.
I'm 51; to say that I am habituated to books - physical ones - is to understate the case rather severely.
At 21, were you used to communicating with people via the internet? What e-mail provider did you use? How often did you order products online?
Age is no barrier to change unless you wish to claim it as an excuse. I, too, grew up with paper books. I now have an e-reader and only buy the paper books when I can't purchase them online. I like being able to take my reader with me on trips... do you know what it's like to be able to bring 80 books with you on a long business trip? I do, and I love it.
Certainly many people will never bother with them, but, quite frankly, it's just like reading paper. If you're already used to reading things on your LCD and clicking a link to go to the next page, this shouldn't be a big leap for you. The only difference is that these devices have batteries that will last for weeks of regular reading and they have displays that don't cause eye strain.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're confusing causality regarding weight with health. If a person is overweight or obese because they don't get any exercise, they're going to have a piss-poor, plaque-laced cardiovascular system. If a person who is naturally overweight, or just eats a bit too much, exercises regularly they are going to be in better internal shape than a thin or normal-weight person who doesn't exercise. This is, of course, assuming equal diets between the two. An improper diet can also destroy your life expectancy.
Numerous studies have already shown that regular exercise does more for your health than simply losing or gaining a little fat. Obviously, there are still studies to be done, but I think this reason, combined with the flaws in BMI, explains the results fairly well. I still haven't read the actual text of this study, so it's possible that they took these into account, but I seriously doubt they did. It seems like they analyzed larger NIH studies instead of taking their own data.
Another factor to consider is social pressure. People don't want to be fat, and will spend billions to try to avoid it. And, despite popular beliefs, many of them work very hard at it and are still unable to change their weight/appearance. Being fat means you are automatically considered lazy, dumb, stupid, and any number of other negative stereotypes. I don't have any data to back this up, but I'm willing to bet that fat/overweight Americans are actually more likely to work out regularly. Since regular exercise does more for your health than a moderate layer of fat hurts it, this would, in an odd way, actually mean that being overweight indirectly leads to better health.
BMI is, of course, heavily flawed. It doesn't measure resting heart rates or take body fat into account. Every body builder I've ever met is obese according to BMI. Brad Pitt is overweight. This means that a society composed entirely of body builders would have 90%+ obesity rates using BMI. BMI is still a decent statistical tool if you use it properly and consider trends in society that can effect the body composition of a significant portion of the population.
BMI should never be used to evaluate individual health. I, for example, would need to have less than 5% body fat to be in the "normal" BMI range. If a doctor wants a good excuse to stop practicing medicine, they can start advising people like me that we need to reach that "normal" weight.
But seriously, to sum it all up, "It's ok to be a little overweight. No matter how much you weigh, exercise regularly if you want to live a longer life. Severe/morbid/chronic obesity is bad for your health."
If I had time I'd dig up some links for you, but the RIAA has made multiple attempts/statements to that effect. They basically tried to argue that ripping a CD wasn't fair use because it was producing a copy that didn't qualify as a backup or conversion of format. So, in their crazy eyes, when you "share" a CD, what you're actually doing is making one unauthorized copy on your computer, sending unauthorized copies to other people, and then enabling them to burn and make more unauthorized copies. Under this thinking, even if you were to rip a CD, destroy the original, email the MP3s to a friend and then delete them, you would be violating their copyrights.
Carbon nanotubes are *expensive* to manufacture. If the resources spent outfitting the entire infantry with these were instead spent on preventing unnecessary wars, the military would have a better way of delaying dying. 1) Boy armor isn't just for "the entire infantry" 2) War is inevitable. It is the military's job to survive the war, defeat the enemy, and come home to their families/jobs/communities 3) It's nice to have stuff that will save your life when war happens
Hell, a better way to save the lives of infantrymen would be to take the money spent on nanotube armor and instead spend it on twice as many troops. Sure, that sounds like a great idea. While we're at it, let's just sell their current body armor so we can quadruple the number of troops. And maybe if we take away the rest of their equipment, we can have tens of millions of troops! That worked well for other countries in the past, right?
The only people who really benefit from this sort of thing are the contractors who fiddle with it. Not the people who survive getting shot or having an IED explode outside of their armored vehicle.
If this stuff does become widespread the main impact on the world scene will be an upswing in business for Kalashnikov, as everyone replaces their aging AK's with the new higher-caliber models capable of penetrating American armor. Congratulations, you appear to have learned something about the history of military weapons and countermeasures.
And to respond to your entire post, you are exactly the kind of person I was talking about. You have no idea what you're talking about, and want to turn a technical discussion into a political one. The whole point of America's military system is that increased communication, technology, equipment, and training reduce the number of soldiers you need to accomplish an objective. This lowers the financial and political costs in the long run. Nearly every service member deployed to a combat zone SHOULD have body armor regardless of whether or not you think they should be in the combat zone. Every service member who COULD deploy to a combat zone should have a full set of body armor and IPE sitting somewhere with his name on it. Otherwise you end up with the situation where only soldiers who can afford to buy their own get to take body armor to war.
So if you want to drop the political garbage, appeals to emotion, and nonsense, let's talk about the merit of nanotube armor. Surely if this armor was only slightly more expensive than the current materials, it would be worth it. If it cost $20m a set, it wouldn't be. Of course, we don't have any of that information because this article is really a "hey, cool new tech coming eventually" article. In other words, it's not worth getting your panties ruffled over, and certainly not worth making a fool of yourself over.
Thanks, it's always nice to see that slashdot hasn't become entirely filled with idiots. This topic has nothing to do with any individual war or political problem the trolls/idiots are pissed off about. It is only about giving military and law enforcement a better way to delay dying, and I'm all for that. Anybody who has ever worn the current Class IV monstrosities knows exactly why we need something better and lighter.
for the record, i own one of these, and i absolutely love it. my only real gripe is the lack of backlighting, but i think i might be able to hack something up to make a frontlight that wont send a glare back at me. I own one as well and can't find anything bad to say about it. Backlighting is currently technically impossible. Since it's e-paper, trying to put a backlight in is like trying to put a backlight on a book. You want to/have to light it up from the front. I use a normal book light for mine.
One thing I want to point out here is that Sony isn't lying about the battery life. One charge lasts me about 10,000 page turns. I've used my reader nearly continuously for ~2 weeks without needing to recharge it. It is a LiON battery, though, so you will need to recharge it occasionally even if it's not in use. I use mine daily and recharge it about once a month.
Anyways, "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color" says it best here.
So what's an agnostic's hair like? Strong agnosticism: "I don't know whether or not I have hair, and neither do you." Mild agnosticism: "I can't see if there's hair on top of my head." Militant agnosticism: "I can't see if there's hair on top of my head, and neither can you." Apathetic agnosticism: "I don't know if I have hair or not, but why would it matter?" Model agnosticism: "I don't know about this whole hair thing, but perhaps we could find a way to figure it out?" Agnostic theism: "I don't really know, but I think I have hair." Agnostic atheism: "I don't know for sure, but I don't think I have hair." Ignosticism: "We need to figure out what hair is or might be before that question can be answered."
What evidence would you accept as true? What evidence have you looked at? I would accept any concrete evidence. I've read more books on the subject than I can list, including the KJV and ESV, and have not found a shred of evidence produced in any argument by the best religious scholars.
It doesn't depend on evidence, but on your WILL, whether you want to believe or not. No amount of "evidence" can ever get anyone to believe if they don't WANT to. I have to disagree to an extent. If somebody walked up to me on the street and punched me in the face, I wouldn't want to believe it happened or that somebody would be that cruel, but watching them do it and feeling the blood dripping down my skin would force me to believe it. Conversely, I would love to have a happy place to go after I die where I could be with my loved ones, but I am unable to believe it due to a lack of evidence, or any real logic in the argument. Even if I could force myself to believe it, I'd know I was only doing it to make myself feel better. On top of that, my believing it wouldn't make it true.
It is instructive that Jesus told His enemies that they would not believe, even if someone came back from the dead. Certainly if I actually saw somebody come back from the dead I would believe, but the accounts of a poorly-translated, politically re-edited, ~2000 year old book will never convince me. Perhaps if a 2000 year old man was still walking the earth, I would have good evidence. If, instead of talking to me from the sky, God started [directly] healing amputees, or performed some other undeniable miracle, I would have very good reason to believe. As it stands, I don't have any good evidence and I'm not comfortable with trying to convince myself to believe things I don't simply to make myself feel better about life and death.
This only makes atheists more comfortable when theists realize that non-believers, the most hated group in America, are not members of a religion or cult.
Nope, sorry.
When you ask a Jew or a Christian or a Wiccan what an Atheist is, they won't say "someone who doesn't believe." They will say "someone who believes God doesn't exist." It's a fundamental difference.
And if you ask a Christian how old the earth is, he might say "6000 years", but this does not make him correct. There is, of course, an argument over the definition of atheism. It seems clear to me that atheism should mean a lack of belief, rather than an active disbelief, but we can use the more exact terms of strong and weak atheist.
Science can neither prove nor disprove the Christian God, nor any tenable modern deity. This means that the default answer is "I don't know", not "that's a fairy tale!" (snip)
I'm glad we agree. You can't disprove the existence of anything, but it is quite easy to prove the existence of most things. Unicorns, leprechauns, and Big Foot are great examples of things that probably don't exist but can't be disproved. And the default answer, assuming no evidence in either direction, is, indeed "I don't know". Every supernatural "theory" must be evaluated and weighed against the evidence to establish some sort of probability. My evaluation, having read several versions of the Christian bible, is that it is extremely unlikely that the Christian god exists. I started out by saying "I don't know, but I'll look into it." Given the lack of any evidence that should be quite bountiful if their evidence were true, and the inherent logical contradictions involved, I estimate the probably of the Christian God's existence at less than 1%. As such, I'm about 99% certain that that god does not exist. This makes me more certain than Richard Dawkins, but I still admit that I could be wrong, and I would happily re-evaluate the situation if I ever saw new evidence.
Very few atheists actually go so far as to say "I know that there certainly are no gods", they simply think it's more likely that there's a community of underwear gnomes and a demon that feeds off of socks in the dryer. I would like to see some sources saying that even a sizable minority of believers admit that they don't actually know.
It's only those few anti-believers that most everyone hates -- "theists" because they're so obnoxious about it, and "not-knowers" because they make them look bad.
(If you believe that God doesn't exist -- not that it's beyond knowledge, or that you simply don't believe -- then you're a capital-A Atheist, and you have a religion.)
What angers strong atheists is that theists attempt to discredit or simply deny any evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Why should we leave the Intelligent Design "Theory" alone when they try to discredit or replace our evidence and theories simply because they don't like the direction the evidence points?
I used to be an apathetic agnostic. The whole argument seemed absurd and like a waste of time to me. Then I got into an argument with somebody, and she asked me whether I specifically believed that the Christian God didn't exist. I said "Oh, I highly doubt that one exists." It was at this point that I realized that I was both an atheist and an agnostic.
Admitting that I was an atheist and couldn't simply ignore the argument because it was stupid forced me to start really weighing the evidence (and lack thereof) and making up my mind. I have come to the conclusion that the Judeo-Christian god is about as likely leprechauns, but less likely than extraterrestrials visiting earth. Genesis is most certainly a myth, but it's possible that there is some truth in the bible. I don't know whether the Buddha was a higher form of human, or if he was just a glorified philosopher.
yes, but some (NOT ALL!) atheists seem to be making a religion out of not believing in religion and push their beliefs at least as vigorously as your average fundamentalist. Yes, I know what you mean. It's not the Atheists with their Arrogant Bibles that concern me, though. Right now I'm most concerned with the Round-Earth Cult.
You do realize, don't you, that there's a fundamental difference between shouting "THE SKY IS BLUE!" or "WE DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD, THIS IS WHY YOUR ARGUMENTS ARE WRONG, NOW LEAVE US ALONE!" and shouting things like "If the evidence contradicts my beliefs, the evidence is wrong"? (I know, bad grammar, but I'm too tired to mess with it)
Anyways, "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color" says it best here. Atheists may have banded together in vocal groups that act in a similar manner (denouncing the gods of others, etc.), but this does not make them religious. Helium has a pretty good little article on this.
Your fantasy owuld be funny were it not just part the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world has been mostly religion/cult on religion/cult.
This only makes atheists more comfortable when theists realize that non-believers, the most hated group in America, are not members of a religion or cult.
How else would they get patents/control over new (inevitable) technologies and ensure that they continue to control the energy market?
How else? Are you kidding? Considering most major energy companies are investing in alternative energy, and alternative energy is the way we will have to go in the future, it makes sense for them to spend money researching alternative energy sources and to attempt to either monopolize or oligopolize that market, too. Sure, they'll also try to buy out promising alternative energy companies, but they have no qualms about using alternative energy. They reap profits either way, and they know they'll reap more profits if they can stop sending billions to OPEC, Venezuela, and Russia.
If you could still read, you'd be able to see that he only received $26,800, and he received even less in 1996. Also, Bill Clinton only received $165,730 in his 1992 campaign, compared to George Bush's $738,815.
Knowing this, do you still think it's more likely that this is an evil big oil puppeteer's show or that we elected some stupid politicians?
Oh, and just to be nice, here's an argument on your behalf. O'Leary did work for Northern States Power Company prior to becoming Secretary of Energy, and she was quite probably corrupt. But I would say that Kerry was the lead man on shutting down the IFR.
Fusion is just ten years away. Always has been, always will be.
All non-fossil fuel is always going to be the "fuel of the future" as long as it's the Oil Companies who are making the decisions.
Maybe you can suggest some other reason that there has been no serious research into non-fossil fuel since the first Oil Crisis back in the 70's.
As long as Big Oil is pulling all the strings, there will be no alternatives to Big Oil. Sorry to ruin your conventional wisdom parade, but the evil "Big Oil" companies are behind quite a bit of the alternative energy research. How else would they get patents/control over new (inevitable) technologies and ensure that they continue to control the energy market? That's not 'evil', it's called 'for-profit'.
But I've also heard that most lottery winners end up unhappy (and often broke). The problem is a problem of moderation. In my eyes, there's nothing wrong with having extra money. The problem is when people know you have extra money and want to pester you about it, or when you're too stupid to manage it properly. Many lottery winners do end up broke or bankrupt because they immediately buy a lot of fancy things and gifts and waste a good portion of their money on crap that costs money to maintain. Expensive cars, big houses with large water/electricity bills, etc. If they wisely invested 3/4 of the money and put another 1/8 in savings, they'd do fine. Unfortunately, most of them waste it. Of course, people who would follow my advice would probably lose a lot of their supposed friends, but I don't see that as a large loss.
This Google Answer about Lottery Winners gives a lot of good information on the subject. In summary, about 1/3 of lottery winners end up bankrupt, and there's conflicting information about happiness. If what's making you unhappy is simply not being able to afford things like sending your kids to school or air conditioning, a financial windfall will probably make you happier.
My apologies for the slow reply; I'm afraid I've run out of wit. You have earned my respect for teaching me something new, in addition to decoding my sig. My goal was, of course, to combine candor and alliteration. Frankly, the growing trend of abridging our parlance and excommunicating our most useful words perturbs me. I enjoy subtly poking them with my sig because I know they'll never understand it.
In the same spirit, I have a dislike for machiaphobiacs, who are as likely to understand the term as they are to avoid an argument over my jabs.
I hope this answers your questions, but I tend to be incomprehensible when I'm sleepy. I look forward to talking to you again soon.
Unfortunately, in the U.S., it's quite common for stores to force you to show a receipt before they'll let you leave.
"Force" and "let" aren't quite correct, IMHO. Many electronics stores, here in the South Bay at any rate, do try this. Fry's Electronics is one of the worst offenders -- they always have one or two people stationed at the exit with pink highlighters who ask to see your recept and want to scribble something on it. (I always wondered : are these the Fry's employees who aren't good enough to work a cash register? Sad.) This pisses me off to no end. I just paid them my good money for something and now they're treating me like a suspected shoplifter!?.../quote> Funny, it always pissed me off too, until some pimple-faced highlighter hero told me about a rebate I didn't know about for a hard drive I had bought. Saved me a good $50. Of course this was years ago. That was the first time I ever respected those guys, and probably will be the last. I hope that kid's out there working a good job, now. I was half tempted to offer him one myself.
Just remember though, you can't sign away your rights with a contract. Tell that to all the contracts you've probably signed agreeing that you give up your right to all known civil law and will do whatever the good mediator tells you to. You may know more than me, but I haven't seen too many cases where this was successfully challenged.
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I guarantee the majority of the circuitry and electronics come from Taiwan, the upholstery is produced in Puerto Rico, and the simpler parts are made outside of the US by nearly every manufacturer.
From my experiences, some of them believe a god talks directly to them and tells them what to do, particularly when it's raining. They are neo-cons. The others think the government is out to get them. I'd say that makes them liberals.
I give you credit for your good eyes. I'm younger than you are and I still can't stand to read text on a monitor for more than about an hour. I have to get up, walk around, and stare at something in the distance. Supposedly it has something to do with flicker and refresh rates, and LCDs have improved this for me, but I can't bring myself to really read on a computer screen. Give me an e-reader that can do what a book can - full color, allows me to keep my purchases in as secure a manner as possible, won't break if I drop it or is trivially replaceable (not at $400, sorry), and I think I'd wobble over towards the e-reader zone, as it were. I agree on the $400 price tag. I paid about $300 for my Sony Reader, but I wouldn't have bought it if I cared about color or the ability to read a lot of PDFs that weren't as easy to format correctly. I primarily read novels these days, and the reader provides a better experience than a paperback for me. I'm not in the least unfamiliar with the territory. I just think ereaders are still a frontier, is all. And not one I care to be a path-breaker in. I'll watch you do it.
Despite my feelings that Sony is an "evil DRM-crazy corporation", they have a pretty good policy on ebooks purchased through their story. Last I checked, I could authorize up to 7 devices on my account, and there was supposed to be a way to de-authorize a device if it was sold or broken. We'll see how it plays out when it's time for me to replace my reader, but I think things will improve for the consumer in the future.
And even then, I would still wait a year, so that they don't pull an 'iPhone' on me. I can't promise the latter, but my sony reader works just fine in the sunlight. It's not an LCD, though, it's e-ink. This means I need a book light to read it in the dark.
Ok, one question then: How old are you?
At 21, were you used to communicating with people via the internet? What e-mail provider did you use? How often did you order products online?I'm 51; to say that I am habituated to books - physical ones - is to understate the case rather severely.
Age is no barrier to change unless you wish to claim it as an excuse. I, too, grew up with paper books. I now have an e-reader and only buy the paper books when I can't purchase them online. I like being able to take my reader with me on trips... do you know what it's like to be able to bring 80 books with you on a long business trip? I do, and I love it.
Certainly many people will never bother with them, but, quite frankly, it's just like reading paper. If you're already used to reading things on your LCD and clicking a link to go to the next page, this shouldn't be a big leap for you. The only difference is that these devices have batteries that will last for weeks of regular reading and they have displays that don't cause eye strain.
In that case, I'm glad we agree entirely. Now if only we could get the message to the rest of society...
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, you're confusing causality regarding weight with health. If a person is overweight or obese because they don't get any exercise, they're going to have a piss-poor, plaque-laced cardiovascular system. If a person who is naturally overweight, or just eats a bit too much, exercises regularly they are going to be in better internal shape than a thin or normal-weight person who doesn't exercise. This is, of course, assuming equal diets between the two. An improper diet can also destroy your life expectancy.
Numerous studies have already shown that regular exercise does more for your health than simply losing or gaining a little fat. Obviously, there are still studies to be done, but I think this reason, combined with the flaws in BMI, explains the results fairly well. I still haven't read the actual text of this study, so it's possible that they took these into account, but I seriously doubt they did. It seems like they analyzed larger NIH studies instead of taking their own data.
Another factor to consider is social pressure. People don't want to be fat, and will spend billions to try to avoid it. And, despite popular beliefs, many of them work very hard at it and are still unable to change their weight/appearance. Being fat means you are automatically considered lazy, dumb, stupid, and any number of other negative stereotypes. I don't have any data to back this up, but I'm willing to bet that fat/overweight Americans are actually more likely to work out regularly. Since regular exercise does more for your health than a moderate layer of fat hurts it, this would, in an odd way, actually mean that being overweight indirectly leads to better health.
BMI is, of course, heavily flawed. It doesn't measure resting heart rates or take body fat into account. Every body builder I've ever met is obese according to BMI. Brad Pitt is overweight. This means that a society composed entirely of body builders would have 90%+ obesity rates using BMI. BMI is still a decent statistical tool if you use it properly and consider trends in society that can effect the body composition of a significant portion of the population.
BMI should never be used to evaluate individual health. I, for example, would need to have less than 5% body fat to be in the "normal" BMI range. If a doctor wants a good excuse to stop practicing medicine, they can start advising people like me that we need to reach that "normal" weight.
But seriously, to sum it all up, "It's ok to be a little overweight. No matter how much you weigh, exercise regularly if you want to live a longer life. Severe/morbid/chronic obesity is bad for your health."
If I had time I'd dig up some links for you, but the RIAA has made multiple attempts/statements to that effect. They basically tried to argue that ripping a CD wasn't fair use because it was producing a copy that didn't qualify as a backup or conversion of format. So, in their crazy eyes, when you "share" a CD, what you're actually doing is making one unauthorized copy on your computer, sending unauthorized copies to other people, and then enabling them to burn and make more unauthorized copies. Under this thinking, even if you were to rip a CD, destroy the original, email the MP3s to a friend and then delete them, you would be violating their copyrights.
2) War is inevitable. It is the military's job to survive the war, defeat the enemy, and come home to their families/jobs/communities
3) It's nice to have stuff that will save your life when war happens Hell, a better way to save the lives of infantrymen would be to take the money spent on nanotube armor and instead spend it on twice as many troops. Sure, that sounds like a great idea. While we're at it, let's just sell their current body armor so we can quadruple the number of troops. And maybe if we take away the rest of their equipment, we can have tens of millions of troops! That worked well for other countries in the past, right? The only people who really benefit from this sort of thing are the contractors who fiddle with it. Not the people who survive getting shot or having an IED explode outside of their armored vehicle. If this stuff does become widespread the main impact on the world scene will be an upswing in business for Kalashnikov, as everyone replaces their aging AK's with the new higher-caliber models capable of penetrating American armor. Congratulations, you appear to have learned something about the history of military weapons and countermeasures.
And to respond to your entire post, you are exactly the kind of person I was talking about. You have no idea what you're talking about, and want to turn a technical discussion into a political one. The whole point of America's military system is that increased communication, technology, equipment, and training reduce the number of soldiers you need to accomplish an objective. This lowers the financial and political costs in the long run. Nearly every service member deployed to a combat zone SHOULD have body armor regardless of whether or not you think they should be in the combat zone. Every service member who COULD deploy to a combat zone should have a full set of body armor and IPE sitting somewhere with his name on it. Otherwise you end up with the situation where only soldiers who can afford to buy their own get to take body armor to war.
So if you want to drop the political garbage, appeals to emotion, and nonsense, let's talk about the merit of nanotube armor. Surely if this armor was only slightly more expensive than the current materials, it would be worth it. If it cost $20m a set, it wouldn't be. Of course, we don't have any of that information because this article is really a "hey, cool new tech coming eventually" article. In other words, it's not worth getting your panties ruffled over, and certainly not worth making a fool of yourself over.
Thanks, it's always nice to see that slashdot hasn't become entirely filled with idiots. This topic has nothing to do with any individual war or political problem the trolls/idiots are pissed off about. It is only about giving military and law enforcement a better way to delay dying, and I'm all for that. Anybody who has ever worn the current Class IV monstrosities knows exactly why we need something better and lighter.
One thing I want to point out here is that Sony isn't lying about the battery life. One charge lasts me about 10,000 page turns. I've used my reader nearly continuously for ~2 weeks without needing to recharge it. It is a LiON battery, though, so you will need to recharge it occasionally even if it's not in use. I use mine daily and recharge it about once a month.
So what's an agnostic's hair like? Strong agnosticism: "I don't know whether or not I have hair, and neither do you."
Mild agnosticism: "I can't see if there's hair on top of my head."
Militant agnosticism: "I can't see if there's hair on top of my head, and neither can you."
Apathetic agnosticism: "I don't know if I have hair or not, but why would it matter?"
Model agnosticism: "I don't know about this whole hair thing, but perhaps we could find a way to figure it out?"
Agnostic theism: "I don't really know, but I think I have hair."
Agnostic atheism: "I don't know for sure, but I don't think I have hair."
Ignosticism: "We need to figure out what hair is or might be before that question can be answered."
This only makes atheists more comfortable when theists realize that non-believers, the most hated group in America, are not members of a religion or cult.
Nope, sorry.
When you ask a Jew or a Christian or a Wiccan what an Atheist is, they won't say "someone who doesn't believe." They will say "someone who believes God doesn't exist." It's a fundamental difference.
And if you ask a Christian how old the earth is, he might say "6000 years", but this does not make him correct. There is, of course, an argument over the definition of atheism. It seems clear to me that atheism should mean a lack of belief, rather than an active disbelief, but we can use the more exact terms of strong and weak atheist.
Science can neither prove nor disprove the Christian God, nor any tenable modern deity. This means that the default answer is "I don't know", not "that's a fairy tale!" (snip)
I'm glad we agree. You can't disprove the existence of anything, but it is quite easy to prove the existence of most things. Unicorns, leprechauns, and Big Foot are great examples of things that probably don't exist but can't be disproved. And the default answer, assuming no evidence in either direction, is, indeed "I don't know". Every supernatural "theory" must be evaluated and weighed against the evidence to establish some sort of probability. My evaluation, having read several versions of the Christian bible, is that it is extremely unlikely that the Christian god exists. I started out by saying "I don't know, but I'll look into it." Given the lack of any evidence that should be quite bountiful if their evidence were true, and the inherent logical contradictions involved, I estimate the probably of the Christian God's existence at less than 1%. As such, I'm about 99% certain that that god does not exist. This makes me more certain than Richard Dawkins, but I still admit that I could be wrong, and I would happily re-evaluate the situation if I ever saw new evidence.
Very few atheists actually go so far as to say "I know that there certainly are no gods", they simply think it's more likely that there's a community of underwear gnomes and a demon that feeds off of socks in the dryer. I would like to see some sources saying that even a sizable minority of believers admit that they don't actually know.
It's only those few anti-believers that most everyone hates -- "theists" because they're so obnoxious about it, and "not-knowers" because they make them look bad.
(If you believe that God doesn't exist -- not that it's beyond knowledge, or that you simply don't believe -- then you're a capital-A Atheist, and you have a religion.)
What angers strong atheists is that theists attempt to discredit or simply deny any evidence that contradicts their beliefs. Why should we leave the Intelligent Design "Theory" alone when they try to discredit or replace our evidence and theories simply because they don't like the direction the evidence points?
I used to be an apathetic agnostic. The whole argument seemed absurd and like a waste of time to me. Then I got into an argument with somebody, and she asked me whether I specifically believed that the Christian God didn't exist. I said "Oh, I highly doubt that one exists." It was at this point that I realized that I was both an atheist and an agnostic.
Admitting that I was an atheist and couldn't simply ignore the argument because it was stupid forced me to start really weighing the evidence (and lack thereof) and making up my mind. I have come to the conclusion that the Judeo-Christian god is about as likely leprechauns, but less likely than extraterrestrials visiting earth. Genesis is most certainly a myth, but it's possible that there is some truth in the bible. I don't know whether the Buddha was a higher form of human, or if he was just a glorified philosopher.
In short, I t
You do realize, don't you, that there's a fundamental difference between shouting "THE SKY IS BLUE!" or "WE DON'T BELIEVE IN GOD, THIS IS WHY YOUR ARGUMENTS ARE WRONG, NOW LEAVE US ALONE!" and shouting things like "If the evidence contradicts my beliefs, the evidence is wrong"? (I know, bad grammar, but I'm too tired to mess with it)
Anyways, "atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color" says it best here. Atheists may have banded together in vocal groups that act in a similar manner (denouncing the gods of others, etc.), but this does not make them religious. Helium has a pretty good little article on this.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the cause of so much mayhem and misery in this world has been mostly religion/cult on religion/cult.
This only makes atheists more comfortable when theists realize that non-believers, the most hated group in America, are not members of a religion or cult.That's an old maid's tale. How Stuff Works has a decent article on sneezing. So does Snopes.
If you could still read, you'd be able to see that he only received $26,800, and he received even less in 1996. Also, Bill Clinton only received $165,730 in his 1992 campaign, compared to George Bush's $738,815.
Knowing this, do you still think it's more likely that this is an evil big oil puppeteer's show or that we elected some stupid politicians?
Oh, and just to be nice, here's an argument on your behalf. O'Leary did work for Northern States Power Company prior to becoming Secretary of Energy, and she was quite probably corrupt. But I would say that Kerry was the lead man on shutting down the IFR.
Maybe you can suggest some other reason that there has been no serious research into non-fossil fuel since the first Oil Crisis back in the 70's.
As long as Big Oil is pulling all the strings, there will be no alternatives to Big Oil. Sorry to ruin your conventional wisdom parade, but the evil "Big Oil" companies are behind quite a bit of the alternative energy research. How else would they get patents/control over new (inevitable) technologies and ensure that they continue to control the energy market? That's not 'evil', it's called 'for-profit'.
Here's one fairly objective article. I challenge you to find and read more.
This Google Answer about Lottery Winners gives a lot of good information on the subject. In summary, about 1/3 of lottery winners end up bankrupt, and there's conflicting information about happiness. If what's making you unhappy is simply not being able to afford things like sending your kids to school or air conditioning, a financial windfall will probably make you happier.
My apologies for the slow reply; I'm afraid I've run out of wit. You have earned my respect for teaching me something new, in addition to decoding my sig. My goal was, of course, to combine candor and alliteration. Frankly, the growing trend of abridging our parlance and excommunicating our most useful words perturbs me. I enjoy subtly poking them with my sig because I know they'll never understand it.
In the same spirit, I have a dislike for machiaphobiacs, who are as likely to understand the term as they are to avoid an argument over my jabs.
I hope this answers your questions, but I tend to be incomprehensible when I'm sleepy. I look forward to talking to you again soon.
"Force" and "let" aren't quite correct, IMHO. Many electronics stores, here in the South Bay at any rate, do try this. Fry's Electronics is one of the worst offenders -- they always have one or two people stationed at the exit with pink highlighters who ask to see your recept and want to scribble something on it. (I always wondered : are these the Fry's employees who aren't good enough to work a cash register? Sad.) This pisses me off to no end. I just paid them my good money for something and now they're treating me like a suspected shoplifter!?
Funny, it always pissed me off too, until some pimple-faced highlighter hero told me about a rebate I didn't know about for a hard drive I had bought. Saved me a good $50. Of course this was years ago. That was the first time I ever respected those guys, and probably will be the last. I hope that kid's out there working a good job, now. I was half tempted to offer him one myself.