That's 2.3 centimeters per second. Forget global warming, it's the Earth axis that's moving and screwing everything. On Christmas day, snow was fucking MELTING over here and we're way up north. Melting snow used to be for the beginning of march.
Don't be ridiculous. We have humans now on the planet, AND the magnetic core is shifting. Coincidence? I think not.
If we plot C02 emissions alongside the rate of change of the magnetic north pole, even a 5th grade could see they're correlated.
I've never quite got my head around a tech site like Slashdot, where the demographic is almost certainly interested in new technology having such a negative response to technological advances in what our phones can do. You rarely [never?] hear this with other technology on this site:
'I wish Windows 7 had less features. All I want is the ability to write a letter'
I have a Droid, and while I love it (it's actually quite nice), it's a worse phone than my old flip phone. The dialpad isn't accessible, and the face recognition engine (which turns off the screen when an object is near it) means that I time out when going through tech support hell because while it's good at turning off the screen, it sucks at waking back up. I also had close to 20 speed dial settings on my flip phone. On the Droid, the closest you can do is set shortcuts to dial people, which means using up screen real estate, and/or having to flip to the left home screen where I keep all my shortcuts (less than 20, that's for sure) and risking accidentally dialing someone when it interprets a drag as a click. Which happened today, actually.
Long story short, mobile phones actually are better phones than smartphones. It just comes with the territory. I got a smartphone because I actually need one for my job (I run a small company, and am on the road all the time), not because I thought it's be a good phone.
As far as Windows 7, yeah I wish it had less features. If it had the XP UI (which you can't enable entirely, only some parts of it) on top of the Win7 internals, I'd buy it. As it is, I'm sticking with XP until something compels me out of it.
>>that one instance of a poorly managed implementation is not a cogent argument against the fundamental concept of socialism, that making sure everyone's basic needs are met increases fairness of opportunity, and that Socialism is not the same thing as Communism.
People indeed say that Socialism is not the same thing as communism, but they vary only by degrees of implementation of state control. Study what's going on in Venezuela some time.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
>>Indeed. It's the streisand effect of terrorism... 9/11 could have been at most a minor annoyance but instead it became the rallying cry for numerous restrictions on freedom with questionable results at best.
On the positive side, the people that claimed that "passengers won't beat the shit out of terrorists on their planes" have been proven wrong. Again. For the third time in a row.
I should dig up my history and find the people that tried to claim that, hmm...
The reasons America is targeted by the terrorists is solely because of some, less than ideal policies regarding regime change. No-one cares what the Canadians (for example) do, they're not targeted for destruction by Al Quaeda, but then they never went charging in places shouting loudly that the locals had to change their political ways, and buy more coca cola.
Precisely right, because 9/11 happened right after Bush announced his policy of regime change.
(Oh, what? It happened before? Shit, that means my nonsensical position doesn't make sense. No worries - this is Slashdot! You can always get away with blaming Bush!)
"A brand of communism drenched in atheism that believed there would be no end to turmoil until religion was extinct..."/me looks at Israel and Palestine, Iran and USA, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.
Yep. Seems that communists were right.
Which Afghanistan are we talking about? The current one or the one in which the USSR invaded a country to try to add it to their atheistic empire?
How about the Khmer Rouge who slaughtered a sizeable portion of their own population to follow a green atheist philosophy?
It's not good to lump all religions together - all of the religious conflicts in the world right now involve Islam against some other religion (Hindus, Christians, whatever).
>>That's quite the exception. I have trouble paying for health care, and I have a good job. I shudder to think what would happen to me if I had been less fortunate in the job market.
I'm in my mid 30s and pay a bit less than $3k a year for health care without any help from my job or group discounts or anything. And it is one of their better plans, that basically covers everything if I get sick. If I cared, I could set up an HSA and funnel the money through that, but it's not worth the hassle to me.
>>You do understand that it's so poorly managed because we have to hide the fact that the government pays for it, right? >>"You need to do another scan? Why? Because you make more money that way? Oh, okay, it's all going to help the economy anyhow!".
And our resounding success with medicare has convinced you that the government will do a better job with universal health care? Like they have in Oregon? Which is bankrupt?
>>Socialism, on the other hand, is about trying to make things as fair as possible.
It is this notion of "fair" (I used equitable) that I find laughable. The success of Bill Gates or Tiger Woods doesn't have anything to do with my success, so why should I give a fuck that Tiger Woods' income doubled in the last decade while mine went up by... well, hmm... actually by about 10x. I used to be poor, now I'm a nicely paid professional. Focusing on income disparity is one of the nonsensical benchmarks that socialists use. And, as I said, everyone living in mud together is nicely "fair" and equitable, with no "difference between the rich and the poor". In America, by contrast, the poor can and do make it good.
>>But really, you think the French are so bad off?
Yeah.
Re:a game that tells the truth about religion
on
Religion in Video Games
·
· Score: 1, Informative
>>There's an obvious difference here. The Christians persecute others to spread their religion. Atheists persecute others for other reasons. In this case, it was to spread political ideas rather than religious ones.
LOL. How many people have Christians persecuted since, say, 1800? Quite few, if any. How many Christians have atheists killed for their Christianity? Quite a bit.
But I'm sure it makes you feel better that atheists did it because they didn't want to "spread their religion". Even though I'm rather quite sure the USSR persecuted Christians in order to, you know, spread atheism.
>>This would teach kids way too much about how religion really works.
Sure you don't want to call it Church Tycoon?
But honestly, having worked with/on church councils, while you see a lot of the politics you see in, well, all social organizations, churches are actually filled with good people who are trying to make a difference in society. Perhaps your game could actually encompass some of that, instead of just focusing on monetary issues.
>>Purchasing power is higher, but we have to pay for health care and education out of pocket.
It doesn't actually matter if we pay for it out of pocket or if the government taxes us and then pays for it for us, except from an equity point of view.
>>Yet all around me people bitch about how public health care will be unaffordable
Perhaps it is because Medicare is fundamentally bankrupt, and runs itself like a Ponzi scheme, paying out much more money than it takes in, relying only on new signups to keep itself afloat?
We already have socialized medicine in America, as Michael Moore points out (about half of all medical payments in America is from the government), but nobody can claim it is a well run program with a straight face.
>>Americans work more hours than anywhere else in the developed world, and we have a huge wealth disparity.
Neither of which are bad, in and of itself. Socialists focus on wealth disparity, believing that keeping everyone in an equal, abject level of poverty is the ideal social state. I believe, however, that a system that allows everyone to make more money is much more ethically good than one that encourages poverty and starvation.
Working more hours is bad only when a person feels they're working too much (i.e. by impacting their family or social life). Everyone can decide for themselves how much they want to work, but there is a large cultural binding as to how many hours is appropriate. (And if you think Americans work a lot, you should visit Japan some time - a salaryman there rarely sees his wife.) And since you think that we're still working at Industrial Revolution rates, it's important to point out the number of hours American workers work has fallen almost in half since 1850. The low work hours in France is one of the reasons their economy is crap.
>>You should look things up before you say that we're 3rd in the world in per capita.
Aye, you should do your research first. Real purchasing power is more important than nominal income. Things are cheaper in America, which is why we're quite well off:
You'll notice on all those charts that we American's get our asses handed to us by northern Europe. House size is more an indicator of how much debt we're willing to take on (many people willing to pay over 50% of their income for a home now). Then factor in universal health care, minimum of 3-5 weeks vacation per year, and working condiditions that have actually improved since the early 1900s.
Which is why France's economy sucks, in case you were wondering.
On the housing issue, people didn't take out larger mortgages because they wanted bigger houses - they took out larger mortgages because housing prices bubbled. And it's still much cheaper to live in America than in Europe. Combine this with America having a larger per capita income than any European country other than Luxembourg and Norway means that Americans are better off overall, even with about 10% of Americans being (generally poor) immigrants.
>>We've come beyond populating the planet and the last thing we need is more little brats to over-righteous religious nuts such as yourself.
Haven't looked at population growth rates in developed countries recently, have you?
All of the world's population growth is now coming from Third World countries. All the developed countries are losing people (not counting immigration).
So yes, we actually do need more babies in America.
>>Most of the countries in western Europe are socialist, and they have a much higher quality of life.
Do they? In America, the average home size is now 2330 sqft, up from 1400 30 years ago (another example of real gains for the middle class). In France, it's around half that. Mock that as much as you want, but I'd go nuts living in the cramped quarters of Paris.
I've traveled around the world, and work with some of the poorest people in America. I don't think that, qualitatively, Americans are worse off than Europeans, even factoring in immigration. Quantitatively, America is fine as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index...if you can trust Quality of Life indicators, which are rather hand-wavy.
>>'Irregardless' is a double negative and is thusly illogical by construction and would only be understandable to people born in the U.S. since 1970, and those less literate in the U.S. prior to that.
Indeed. I'm hoping we can soon see a grammatical return to normalcy by people who think different, like good grammarists should.
>>So what you're saying is that we're not getting poorer, just that the rate at which our increase in wealth is negative in terms of the overall wealth of the country? Seriously, you posted a link which shows that the wealthy are becoming super-wealthy, and the middle class have not improved significantly in wealth since 1979.
Pfft. The point is, all the "classes" have improved. Just because the rich have done well in the last 30 years doesn't mean there haven't been real gains across the board, though socialists like Pope Ratzo would try to frame it that way.
>>Another thing is that coders aren't usually that good at expressing themself, so it may not be obvious who is being more productive than others.
Protip: There's no shortcut or hard metric for managing programmers. You have to get to know your staff, see what they're all doing, and figure out how good each person is individually.
What's really odd is that there are so few blacks who are Republicans. It seems to me on most core issues gun rights, abortion, death penalty, school of choice, taxation, gay marriages, and many others most blacks lean more to the conservative side. Is it historical? Is it patronage(in the form of social programs)? Is it the race peddlers Jackson/Sharpton/others?
Historically, black people voted Republican. Democrats were the party for discrimination, Jim Crow, etc., whereas Republicans got the right for black people to vote, join congress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Rhodes_Revels) and sent the army into the south to protect black rights.
All this got flipped around during the Great Depression, when FDR courted them actively (they were hit harder by the depression, proportionately speaking) and got them to abandon the Republican party in favor of the Democrats, whom they've been voting for ever since.
The real irony is that Democrats still were in favor of Jim Crow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace), even through the 60s, whereas Republicans passed the various Civil Rights Acts over Democrat filibusters, including a 14 hour long speech by Robert C. Byrd, KKK member and current (2009) ranking Democrat senator. Republicans still believe in equal rights for black people, and this includes eliminating Affirmative Action (which gives special privileges to certain races) and similar unequal policies.
The entire notion that Republicans are racists is completely illogical, un-historical, and really the product of the fevered imaginations of lunatics like Jon Stewart, who beats on that idiot line like it's a congo drum.
Guess why I got a Droid? First fucking Verizon phone that actually lets you use the phone's GPS for, you know, GPS, without paying them thirty bucks a month.
Even if 95% of lawyers are evil people (which is a bit on the high side, methinks), 5% of the million-plus lawyers in America is still a lot of good guys.
And it doesn't even require a true community, in the sense of Firefox development. A few lawyers in each state should suffice for the common forms, and hell, they might even get some business out of it from putting their names out there. Lord knows there's enough competition with one out of 300 Americans being lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
That's 2.3 centimeters per second. Forget global warming, it's the Earth axis that's moving and screwing everything. On Christmas day, snow was fucking MELTING over here and we're way up north. Melting snow used to be for the beginning of march.
Don't be ridiculous. We have humans now on the planet, AND the magnetic core is shifting. Coincidence? I think not.
If we plot C02 emissions alongside the rate of change of the magnetic north pole, even a 5th grade could see they're correlated.
Humans are to blame for magnetic drift.
QED.
I have a Droid, and while I love it (it's actually quite nice), it's a worse phone than my old flip phone. The dialpad isn't accessible, and the face recognition engine (which turns off the screen when an object is near it) means that I time out when going through tech support hell because while it's good at turning off the screen, it sucks at waking back up. I also had close to 20 speed dial settings on my flip phone. On the Droid, the closest you can do is set shortcuts to dial people, which means using up screen real estate, and/or having to flip to the left home screen where I keep all my shortcuts (less than 20, that's for sure) and risking accidentally dialing someone when it interprets a drag as a click. Which happened today, actually.
Long story short, mobile phones actually are better phones than smartphones. It just comes with the territory. I got a smartphone because I actually need one for my job (I run a small company, and am on the road all the time), not because I thought it's be a good phone.
As far as Windows 7, yeah I wish it had less features. If it had the XP UI (which you can't enable entirely, only some parts of it) on top of the Win7 internals, I'd buy it. As it is, I'm sticking with XP until something compels me out of it.
>>That we make less per hour than anywhere in the developed world (even when adjusted for cost of living)
Heh, I don't see how you can be more wrong.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_hour_worked
>>that one instance of a poorly managed implementation is not a cogent argument against the fundamental concept of socialism, that making sure everyone's basic needs are met increases fairness of opportunity, and that Socialism is not the same thing as Communism.
People indeed say that Socialism is not the same thing as communism, but they vary only by degrees of implementation of state control. Study what's going on in Venezuela some time.
I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
>>Indeed. It's the streisand effect of terrorism... 9/11 could have been at most a minor annoyance but instead it became the rallying cry for numerous restrictions on freedom with questionable results at best.
On the positive side, the people that claimed that "passengers won't beat the shit out of terrorists on their planes" have been proven wrong. Again. For the third time in a row.
I should dig up my history and find the people that tried to claim that, hmm...
The reasons America is targeted by the terrorists is solely because of some, less than ideal policies regarding regime change. No-one cares what the Canadians (for example) do, they're not targeted for destruction by Al Quaeda, but then they never went charging in places shouting loudly that the locals had to change their political ways, and buy more coca cola.
Precisely right, because 9/11 happened right after Bush announced his policy of regime change.
(Oh, what? It happened before? Shit, that means my nonsensical position doesn't make sense. No worries - this is Slashdot! You can always get away with blaming Bush!)
Fucking moron.
>>They were not atheists. In fact, they probably believed nothing, thinking that men are worse than animals.
Bzzt, wrong.
>>What I don't see is atheist fundamentals destroying churches and/or killing people in the name of non-God.
Wrong again -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dechristianization_of_France_during_the_French_Revolution
>>And Christian vs. Christian (Ireland, anyone?), Christian vs. gays (see Uganda), etc.
Ireland has calmed down. I don't think there is a religious conflict, as such, going on right now in Uganda.
What points?
"A brand of communism drenched in atheism that believed there would be no end to turmoil until religion was extinct..." /me looks at Israel and Palestine, Iran and USA, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.
Yep. Seems that communists were right.
Which Afghanistan are we talking about? The current one or the one in which the USSR invaded a country to try to add it to their atheistic empire?
How about the Khmer Rouge who slaughtered a sizeable portion of their own population to follow a green atheist philosophy?
It's not good to lump all religions together - all of the religious conflicts in the world right now involve Islam against some other religion (Hindus, Christians, whatever).
>>That's quite the exception. I have trouble paying for health care, and I have a good job. I shudder to think what would happen to me if I had been less fortunate in the job market.
I'm in my mid 30s and pay a bit less than $3k a year for health care without any help from my job or group discounts or anything. And it is one of their better plans, that basically covers everything if I get sick. If I cared, I could set up an HSA and funnel the money through that, but it's not worth the hassle to me.
>>You do understand that it's so poorly managed because we have to hide the fact that the government pays for it, right?
>>"You need to do another scan? Why? Because you make more money that way? Oh, okay, it's all going to help the economy anyhow!".
And our resounding success with medicare has convinced you that the government will do a better job with universal health care? Like they have in Oregon? Which is bankrupt?
>>Socialism, on the other hand, is about trying to make things as fair as possible.
It is this notion of "fair" (I used equitable) that I find laughable. The success of Bill Gates or Tiger Woods doesn't have anything to do with my success, so why should I give a fuck that Tiger Woods' income doubled in the last decade while mine went up by... well, hmm... actually by about 10x. I used to be poor, now I'm a nicely paid professional. Focusing on income disparity is one of the nonsensical benchmarks that socialists use. And, as I said, everyone living in mud together is nicely "fair" and equitable, with no "difference between the rich and the poor". In America, by contrast, the poor can and do make it good.
>>But really, you think the French are so bad off?
Yeah.
>>There's an obvious difference here. The Christians persecute others to spread their religion. Atheists persecute others for other reasons. In this case, it was to spread political ideas rather than religious ones.
LOL. How many people have Christians persecuted since, say, 1800? Quite few, if any. How many Christians have atheists killed for their Christianity? Quite a bit.
But I'm sure it makes you feel better that atheists did it because they didn't want to "spread their religion". Even though I'm rather quite sure the USSR persecuted Christians in order to, you know, spread atheism.
>>This would teach kids way too much about how religion really works.
Sure you don't want to call it Church Tycoon?
But honestly, having worked with/on church councils, while you see a lot of the politics you see in, well, all social organizations, churches are actually filled with good people who are trying to make a difference in society. Perhaps your game could actually encompass some of that, instead of just focusing on monetary issues.
>>Purchasing power is higher, but we have to pay for health care and education out of pocket.
It doesn't actually matter if we pay for it out of pocket or if the government taxes us and then pays for it for us, except from an equity point of view.
>>Yet all around me people bitch about how public health care will be unaffordable
Perhaps it is because Medicare is fundamentally bankrupt, and runs itself like a Ponzi scheme, paying out much more money than it takes in, relying only on new signups to keep itself afloat?
We already have socialized medicine in America, as Michael Moore points out (about half of all medical payments in America is from the government), but nobody can claim it is a well run program with a straight face.
>>Americans work more hours than anywhere else in the developed world, and we have a huge wealth disparity.
Neither of which are bad, in and of itself. Socialists focus on wealth disparity, believing that keeping everyone in an equal, abject level of poverty is the ideal social state. I believe, however, that a system that allows everyone to make more money is much more ethically good than one that encourages poverty and starvation.
Working more hours is bad only when a person feels they're working too much (i.e. by impacting their family or social life). Everyone can decide for themselves how much they want to work, but there is a large cultural binding as to how many hours is appropriate. (And if you think Americans work a lot, you should visit Japan some time - a salaryman there rarely sees his wife.) And since you think that we're still working at Industrial Revolution rates, it's important to point out the number of hours American workers work has fallen almost in half since 1850. The low work hours in France is one of the reasons their economy is crap.
>>You should look things up before you say that we're 3rd in the world in per capita.
Aye, you should do your research first. Real purchasing power is more important than nominal income. Things are cheaper in America, which is why we're quite well off:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita
You'll notice on all those charts that we American's get our asses handed to us by northern Europe. House size is more an indicator of how much debt we're willing to take on (many people willing to pay over 50% of their income for a home now). Then factor in universal health care, minimum of 3-5 weeks vacation per year, and working condiditions that have actually improved since the early 1900s.
Which is why France's economy sucks, in case you were wondering.
On the housing issue, people didn't take out larger mortgages because they wanted bigger houses - they took out larger mortgages because housing prices bubbled. And it's still much cheaper to live in America than in Europe. Combine this with America having a larger per capita income than any European country other than Luxembourg and Norway means that Americans are better off overall, even with about 10% of Americans being (generally poor) immigrants.
>>We've come beyond populating the planet and the last thing we need is more little brats to over-righteous religious nuts such as yourself.
Haven't looked at population growth rates in developed countries recently, have you?
All of the world's population growth is now coming from Third World countries. All the developed countries are losing people (not counting immigration).
So yes, we actually do need more babies in America.
>>Most of the countries in western Europe are socialist, and they have a much higher quality of life.
Do they? In America, the average home size is now 2330 sqft, up from 1400 30 years ago (another example of real gains for the middle class). In France, it's around half that. Mock that as much as you want, but I'd go nuts living in the cramped quarters of Paris.
I've traveled around the world, and work with some of the poorest people in America. I don't think that, qualitatively, Americans are worse off than Europeans, even factoring in immigration. Quantitatively, America is fine as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index ...if you can trust Quality of Life indicators, which are rather hand-wavy.
>>'Irregardless' is a double negative and is thusly illogical by construction and would only be understandable to people born in the U.S. since 1970, and those less literate in the U.S. prior to that.
Indeed. I'm hoping we can soon see a grammatical return to normalcy by people who think different, like good grammarists should.
>>So what you're saying is that we're not getting poorer, just that the rate at which our increase in wealth is negative in terms of the overall wealth of the country? Seriously, you posted a link which shows that the wealthy are becoming super-wealthy, and the middle class have not improved significantly in wealth since 1979.
Pfft. The point is, all the "classes" have improved. Just because the rich have done well in the last 30 years doesn't mean there haven't been real gains across the board, though socialists like Pope Ratzo would try to frame it that way.
>>Another thing is that coders aren't usually that good at expressing themself, so it may not be obvious who is being more productive than others.
Protip: There's no shortcut or hard metric for managing programmers. You have to get to know your staff, see what they're all doing, and figure out how good each person is individually.
>>Over the last 15-20 years, middle-class Americans have become poorer in real terms year on year, and there's no sign of that trend stopping
Sheesh, I know. I used to be able to afford five new 3.0 GHz 4xSLI gaming boxes a year, and now I'm only down to one. Damn outsourcing!
And, besides, you're wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_gains.jpg
>>Oh wait, you meant some other company? I seem to recall a few that continue working on their games for years afterwords, such as Blizzard and Valve.
And a few, like 3D Realms, continue working on their games for over a decade even before releasing them.
What's really odd is that there are so few blacks who are Republicans. It seems to me on most core issues gun rights, abortion, death penalty, school of choice, taxation, gay marriages, and many others most blacks lean more to the conservative side. Is it historical? Is it patronage(in the form of social programs)? Is it the race peddlers Jackson/Sharpton/others?
Historically, black people voted Republican. Democrats were the party for discrimination, Jim Crow, etc., whereas Republicans got the right for black people to vote, join congress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Rhodes_Revels) and sent the army into the south to protect black rights.
All this got flipped around during the Great Depression, when FDR courted them actively (they were hit harder by the depression, proportionately speaking) and got them to abandon the Republican party in favor of the Democrats, whom they've been voting for ever since.
The real irony is that Democrats still were in favor of Jim Crow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace), even through the 60s, whereas Republicans passed the various Civil Rights Acts over Democrat filibusters, including a 14 hour long speech by Robert C. Byrd, KKK member and current (2009) ranking Democrat senator. Republicans still believe in equal rights for black people, and this includes eliminating Affirmative Action (which gives special privileges to certain races) and similar unequal policies.
The entire notion that Republicans are racists is completely illogical, un-historical, and really the product of the fevered imaginations of lunatics like Jon Stewart, who beats on that idiot line like it's a congo drum.
Guess why I got a Droid? First fucking Verizon phone that actually lets you use the phone's GPS for, you know, GPS, without paying them thirty bucks a month.
Even if 95% of lawyers are evil people (which is a bit on the high side, methinks), 5% of the million-plus lawyers in America is still a lot of good guys.
And it doesn't even require a true community, in the sense of Firefox development. A few lawyers in each state should suffice for the common forms, and hell, they might even get some business out of it from putting their names out there. Lord knows there's enough competition with one out of 300 Americans being lawyers.
>>It's a question of, what happens if this isn't done by a lawyer?
Who said it couldn't be done by a lawyer?
>>The law isn't something that a "community" can safely practice.
Are there no community of lawyers?