If it wasn't for the US Govenment preventing Intel from practicing Natural Market Capitalism, AMD would have been bankrupt years ago. AMD Processors == Communism at its finest.
Regulated capitalism is not communism. And, likely against your intentions, you make a good point against unregulated capitalism.
I didn't use an invite and don't have a cell phone and I still got a working account. I remember joking with a friend, something along the lines of "Ha... I didn't need your stupid invite!". This, only months ago.
Although, shortly thereafter, I tried to sign somebody else up in the same fashion but couldn't figure out how I did it, so I just ended up sending an invite:/
If it was a big heavy book, you could probably do some damage by throwing it in engine's intake, or maybe by dropping it in front of a plane going fast - it might crack the windshield, anyway. Or it if was a large news-paper like book, it might block the windshield and the pilot would crash.
That was my first thought. Technically, even a small book is FOD.
The only desktop I could get to run with any speed on my Alphastation was AnotherLevel. Gnome was unusable, KDE was painfully slow and I couldn't get XFCE to work quite right. I never did put a true unix on it (just linux), and ended up using NT more often than not. I have a build of Win2k for it, but never installed it.
Better yet, usher the system in with better remakes of some classics:
Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit --> Ultimate Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit Archon --> Archon 3D (just make the battles 3rd person view) Lords of Conquest --> Lords of Conquest 2006 Mail Order Monsters --> Mail Order Monsters - Arena of Death!... and so forth.
I agree with both the parent and grandparent posters.
I found Solaris CDE to be kickass for usability, but fairly fugly. So why not just come up with a pretty CDE? I would think people to pick that any day over KDE, Gnome or XFCE/Fluxbox.
A piece of advice: Don't judge role-playing by the first group you stumble upon. Personally, I'm a bit picky and in my experience, at least 75% of all RPG groups turn out to be rather dull (hack & slash, unimaginative folks, etc).
Also, while your post specifies D&D, do try and consider RPGs that have less emphasis on pen-and-paper (more storytelling style), although I'm not familiar with good COTS RPGs of the sort.
Other than that, there are already some good posts that directly address your question.
Five years ago things got a little rougher, but there was still the 16/32 home OS' to make things fun, and one could pretend that Windows 2000 didn't exist.
There's no need to pretend Win2k doesn't exist. I use it at least 6 hours a day and after less than 8 months, it already has trouble staying up for more than 48 hours.
Doesn't sound right? That's because I'm talking about home use. Afterall, if can't keep from crashing at home, why would anyone want to run it as a server OS?
What upsets me more is that some of us actually give a shit about what the rest of the world thinks of us. The only reason our reputation with other countries matters is because it buys us political clout to get them to do what we want. Let the other countries think what they want. In the end, we're still the big dog on the block, and that's not going to change for the forseeable future, regardless of our reputation.
Just a thought... here's the first definition I found for Antisocial Personality Disorder: "Lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the local culture, marked inability to get along with others or abide by societal rules. Sometimes called psychopaths or sociopaths."
Your second sentence in particular is quite sociopathic.
On the flipside, try going to a pro-level Magic: the Gathering tournament some time. The player composition is pretty much always 99%+ male, which shows what happens when you weed out all but the truest of geeks.
Once more, you're missing the point that it can't be logically *proven*.
I get your point. It's hard to logically prove anything using formal logic. But I'm not using formal logic. Maybe there's some better terminology, but what I am basically trying to get across is something more along the lines of logically reasonable. Do realize that I'm obviously no professor or anything of the sort... just a relatively uneducated shmoe, so if you get me caught up in games of semantics, we get nowhere.
By formal logic, I may not be able to logically disprove the tooth fairy. But surely there is a basis in logic for rejecting that idea. It is that basis that I am trying to ground my ideas in. There is no logical/reasonable proof for God in that exact same vein. Is there a better term for all this then?
I am the antichrist. Do you believe me? (Please answer my question) Of course not, but it's not at all relevant, so it doesn't matter.
Why don't you believe me? Because of a lack of credible evidence? No reasonable basis?
It's not completely irrelevant. I'm trying to draw a parallel of some sort here. The reasons you don't believe I'm the antichrist are the same reasons I don't believe in God. There is nothing whatsoever compelling me to believe and there is plenty of absurdity compelling me not to do so.
That's not indisputable evidence. How do you know the right bits didn't rot on the server that just happened to form that message? It's got about the same likelihood as evolution.
The odds of a server accidentally generating said message are practically impossible. Not only is the time frame narrow, but the cohesion and appropriateness of the message data pretty much seals it (right down to your noticing my grammar-mistake-from-after-editing).
But you can't logically prove it. It's not physically possible to logically prove that he exists.
Sure. I suppose I can't logically prove Linus exists, since I could go fly and shake his hand and there's always the possibility that I'm just in a computer simulation or that he's a facsimile. But such claims are more unlikely than him simply existing.
I'm looking at a chair right now. Do you believe me? God exists. Do you believe me?
Of course not. And I wasn't looking at a chair.
I am the antichrist. Do you believe me? (Please answer my question)
Logically prove that I exist. Can't be done, can it?
You posted the your message.
Better yet, logically prove that Linus Torvalds exists. Since you can't, you must (according to you) assume he doesn't.
I have no reason to assume he doesn't. He could be... an actor, pretending to be Linus, but it seems fairly reasonable to me that he does in fact exist.
Therefore Linux must have evolved naturally out of a C compiler.
That statement is nonsense.
"God exists" is a basic statement that cannot be proven any more than you can prove to me that you see a chair.
I'm looking at a chair right now. Do you believe me?
It seems you don't understand deductive logic. The premises are taken as given.
But it's not a given. No more than the tooth fairy.
The bible never attempts to prove that God exists. He is, and all else is dependent on him.
The statement "He is" has no basis. You have to realize that there is no reasonable evidence to "His" existence, therefore your arguments amount to nonsense.
Go through the many articles on the Answers in Genesis website, for a start.
All I see on the site is gobbledygook that relies on the Bible.
Biblical creationists assume that God exists and that the bible contains his word to us. This word is reliable because it is given by God
That's one of the things people like me have a problem with. The original assumption is completely irrational.
There is no proof that the Bible was given by God. I could write a book about Santa Claus proclaiming him to be real and say the same thing: "The Santa Bible is reliable, because it is given by Santa. It says so in the book, afterall." On the front page I could have "This paper is blue" written in red ink on a white paper, but that doesn't mean it's blue, no matter how many people say it is. And on top of that, I could write in the Santa Bible that Elvis witnessed all the events (using primarily historical events to tell the story). The existence of Elvis does not validate the text, nor does the coinciding of real events with fictional events.
in particular it is certified to us by Jesus whose own reliability is attested by his having been raised from the dead
This is basing an assertion on something unproven. It's like saying x is true because y is true and x=y, but y hasn't been proven. And so all such claims that follow from these assertions that are yet unproven, basing all facts on non-fact.
From my point of view, the conflicting worldview seems to be logic vs rejection of logic. For some real insight on how "materialists" view creationists, think about your feelings on astrology. It has many of the same building blocks as religion: a large user base, some pseudo-historical basis, mystical answers to questions not suitably relatable to said users, social indoctrination, etc. Yet, to any intelligent individual, it is utterly ridiculous because its basis is illogical.
It is indeed old news... I think this documentary covered it. I'm pretty sure it was something from digital distractions and that's the only one on the plague I'm seeing.
From the sound of it, you had some motivation and I did write: "And the web is not going to help them all that much there."
Sure, there's plenty to learn from the net and it sounds like you have the aptitude and motivation to harness that. But, not everyone is like that. The few folks on my street that actually own computers are averse to bothering with them beyond IM and online shopping.
Not only that, but it sounds like you caught things early and, on top of that, location is a factor. Here in Spokane, there seems to currently be some sort of IT job blight. A friend of mine came up here and tried and tried to get an IT job for about 6 months, but he ended up going back to California because he couldn't find any job remotely IT. He left last year and is already teaching classes at some school and he's pulling in clients for a side business as well (service-on-site & web design).
But again, this guy is motivated. In fact, far more than I, and he's one intelligent bastard, too. So, if he couldn't get a job here, I don't see handing out free internet access as too useful. Keep in mind, my commentary is locale based... which makes mine a narrow view, but I believe it's applicable to the discussion, nonetheless.
If you want people to gain skills so they can get a job, why not integrate trades more into high school? I don't know about other cities, but here in Spokane, there's always construction going on. You could teach plumbing, roofing, etc. These jobs aren't rocket science. You don't need a degree. A couple classes should do. I'm guessing the same goes for plenty of other jobs.
And a computer is a tool, much like a school textbook. If you give a kid a school textbook and say do what you want with it, chances are, the kid is going to ignore it and go play. Without the context somewhat forced on them by the public school system, they don't care. They have poor impulse control... as do a lot of the poor folks around me, evidenced by the markedly high rate of substance abuse.
I switched because GNU/Linux was the only stable OS I could run. I got sick of Win95 crashing, Win98 crashing, and WinNT crashing, and being a new computer user, figured *something* better had to be out there.
Well. Just so you know: Windows doesn't crash as much as it used to. I'm running Windows 2000 and my last reinstall having been over 6 months ago, it's only crashed like, 5 times this week. And unlike Win 95, a clean install lasts for well over a year... almost a year and a half under daily rigorous use.
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If it wasn't for the US Govenment preventing Intel from practicing Natural Market Capitalism, AMD would have been bankrupt years ago. AMD Processors == Communism at its finest.
Regulated capitalism is not communism. And, likely against your intentions, you make a good point against unregulated capitalism.
Fair enough, turns out you need a cell phone:
:/
I didn't use an invite and don't have a cell phone and I still got a working account. I remember joking with a friend, something along the lines of "Ha... I didn't need your stupid invite!". This, only months ago.
Although, shortly thereafter, I tried to sign somebody else up in the same fashion but couldn't figure out how I did it, so I just ended up sending an invite
Mininova's good, but bitenova is better.
"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas." -- Joseph Stalin
If it was a big heavy book, you could probably do some damage by throwing it in engine's intake, or maybe by dropping it in front of a plane going fast - it might crack the windshield, anyway. Or it if was a large news-paper like book, it might block the windshield and the pilot would crash.
That was my first thought. Technically, even a small book is FOD.
Sorry to break this to you, but Lex Luthor is a fictional character.
That can't be true. Who does that leave as Superman's arch-nemesis, then?
The only desktop I could get to run with any speed on my Alphastation was AnotherLevel. Gnome was unusable, KDE was painfully slow and I couldn't get XFCE to work quite right. I never did put a true unix on it (just linux), and ended up using NT more often than not. I have a build of Win2k for it, but never installed it.
Better yet, usher the system in with better remakes of some classics:
... and so forth.
Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit --> Ultimate Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit
Archon --> Archon 3D (just make the battles 3rd person view)
Lords of Conquest --> Lords of Conquest 2006
Mail Order Monsters --> Mail Order Monsters - Arena of Death!
I agree with both the parent and grandparent posters.
I found Solaris CDE to be kickass for usability, but fairly fugly. So why not just come up with a pretty CDE? I would think people to pick that any day over KDE, Gnome or XFCE/Fluxbox.
A piece of advice: Don't judge role-playing by the first group you stumble upon. Personally, I'm a bit picky and in my experience, at least 75% of all RPG groups turn out to be rather dull (hack & slash, unimaginative folks, etc).
Also, while your post specifies D&D, do try and consider RPGs that have less emphasis on pen-and-paper (more storytelling style), although I'm not familiar with good COTS RPGs of the sort.
Other than that, there are already some good posts that directly address your question.
Five years ago things got a little rougher, but there was still the 16/32 home OS' to make things fun, and one could pretend that Windows 2000 didn't exist.
There's no need to pretend Win2k doesn't exist. I use it at least 6 hours a day and after less than 8 months, it already has trouble staying up for more than 48 hours.
Doesn't sound right? That's because I'm talking about home use. Afterall, if can't keep from crashing at home, why would anyone want to run it as a server OS?
What upsets me more is that some of us actually give a shit about what the rest of the world thinks of us. The only reason our reputation with other countries matters is because it buys us political clout to get them to do what we want. Let the other countries think what they want. In the end, we're still the big dog on the block, and that's not going to change for the forseeable future, regardless of our reputation.
Just a thought... here's the first definition I found for Antisocial Personality Disorder: "Lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the local culture, marked inability to get along with others or abide by societal rules. Sometimes called psychopaths or sociopaths."
Your second sentence in particular is quite sociopathic.
Fair enough.
On the flipside, try going to a pro-level Magic: the Gathering tournament some time. The player composition is pretty much always 99%+ male, which shows what happens when you weed out all but the truest of geeks.
Once more, you're missing the point that it can't be logically *proven*.
I get your point. It's hard to logically prove anything using formal logic. But I'm not using formal logic. Maybe there's some better terminology, but what I am basically trying to get across is something more along the lines of logically reasonable. Do realize that I'm obviously no professor or anything of the sort... just a relatively uneducated shmoe, so if you get me caught up in games of semantics, we get nowhere.
By formal logic, I may not be able to logically disprove the tooth fairy. But surely there is a basis in logic for rejecting that idea. It is that basis that I am trying to ground my ideas in. There is no logical/reasonable proof for God in that exact same vein. Is there a better term for all this then?
I am the antichrist. Do you believe me? (Please answer my question)
Of course not, but it's not at all relevant, so it doesn't matter.
Why don't you believe me? Because of a lack of credible evidence? No reasonable basis?
It's not completely irrelevant. I'm trying to draw a parallel of some sort here. The reasons you don't believe I'm the antichrist are the same reasons I don't believe in God. There is nothing whatsoever compelling me to believe and there is plenty of absurdity compelling me not to do so.
That's not indisputable evidence. How do you know the right bits didn't rot on the server that just happened to form that message? It's got about the same likelihood as evolution.
The odds of a server accidentally generating said message are practically impossible. Not only is the time frame narrow, but the cohesion and appropriateness of the message data pretty much seals it (right down to your noticing my grammar-mistake-from-after-editing).
But you can't logically prove it. It's not physically possible to logically prove that he exists.
Sure. I suppose I can't logically prove Linus exists, since I could go fly and shake his hand and there's always the possibility that I'm just in a computer simulation or that he's a facsimile. But such claims are more unlikely than him simply existing.
I'm looking at a chair right now. Do you believe me?
God exists. Do you believe me?
Of course not. And I wasn't looking at a chair.
I am the antichrist. Do you believe me? (Please answer my question)
Logically prove that I exist. Can't be done, can it?
You posted the your message.
Better yet, logically prove that Linus Torvalds exists. Since you can't, you must (according to you) assume he doesn't.
I have no reason to assume he doesn't. He could be... an actor, pretending to be Linus, but it seems fairly reasonable to me that he does in fact exist.
Therefore Linux must have evolved naturally out of a C compiler.
That statement is nonsense.
"God exists" is a basic statement that cannot be proven any more than you can prove to me that you see a chair.
I'm looking at a chair right now. Do you believe me?
It seems you don't understand deductive logic. The premises are taken as given.
But it's not a given. No more than the tooth fairy.
The bible never attempts to prove that God exists. He is, and all else is dependent on him.
The statement "He is" has no basis. You have to realize that there is no reasonable evidence to "His" existence, therefore your arguments amount to nonsense.
it is simply that you do not accept the premises of my logic
That's just it. There is no logical premise upon which you are basing your logic.
I've got one for you: what's your view on scientology?
Go through the many articles on the Answers in Genesis website, for a start.
All I see on the site is gobbledygook that relies on the Bible.
Biblical creationists assume that God exists and that the bible contains his word to us. This word is reliable because it is given by God
That's one of the things people like me have a problem with. The original assumption is completely irrational.
There is no proof that the Bible was given by God. I could write a book about Santa Claus proclaiming him to be real and say the same thing: "The Santa Bible is reliable, because it is given by Santa. It says so in the book, afterall." On the front page I could have "This paper is blue" written in red ink on a white paper, but that doesn't mean it's blue, no matter how many people say it is. And on top of that, I could write in the Santa Bible that Elvis witnessed all the events (using primarily historical events to tell the story). The existence of Elvis does not validate the text, nor does the coinciding of real events with fictional events.
in particular it is certified to us by Jesus whose own reliability is attested by his having been raised from the dead
This is basing an assertion on something unproven. It's like saying x is true because y is true and x=y, but y hasn't been proven. And so all such claims that follow from these assertions that are yet unproven, basing all facts on non-fact.
From my point of view, the conflicting worldview seems to be logic vs rejection of logic. For some real insight on how "materialists" view creationists, think about your feelings on astrology. It has many of the same building blocks as religion: a large user base, some pseudo-historical basis, mystical answers to questions not suitably relatable to said users, social indoctrination, etc. Yet, to any intelligent individual, it is utterly ridiculous because its basis is illogical.
Finally, there is a huge amount of supporting evidence for creationism.
Such as?
It is indeed old news... I think this documentary covered it. I'm pretty sure it was something from digital distractions and that's the only one on the plague I'm seeing.
From the sound of it, you had some motivation and I did write: "And the web is not going to help them all that much there."
Sure, there's plenty to learn from the net and it sounds like you have the aptitude and motivation to harness that. But, not everyone is like that. The few folks on my street that actually own computers are averse to bothering with them beyond IM and online shopping.
Not only that, but it sounds like you caught things early and, on top of that, location is a factor. Here in Spokane, there seems to currently be some sort of IT job blight. A friend of mine came up here and tried and tried to get an IT job for about 6 months, but he ended up going back to California because he couldn't find any job remotely IT. He left last year and is already teaching classes at some school and he's pulling in clients for a side business as well (service-on-site & web design).
But again, this guy is motivated. In fact, far more than I, and he's one intelligent bastard, too. So, if he couldn't get a job here, I don't see handing out free internet access as too useful. Keep in mind, my commentary is locale based... which makes mine a narrow view, but I believe it's applicable to the discussion, nonetheless.
If you want people to gain skills so they can get a job, why not integrate trades more into high school? I don't know about other cities, but here in Spokane, there's always construction going on. You could teach plumbing, roofing, etc. These jobs aren't rocket science. You don't need a degree. A couple classes should do. I'm guessing the same goes for plenty of other jobs.
And a computer is a tool, much like a school textbook. If you give a kid a school textbook and say do what you want with it, chances are, the kid is going to ignore it and go play. Without the context somewhat forced on them by the public school system, they don't care. They have poor impulse control... as do a lot of the poor folks around me, evidenced by the markedly high rate of substance abuse.
Microsoft has so much bad PR now that they may ass well just release "Windows Virus Edition" and just get it all over with!
Isn't that basically what ME was?
I switched because GNU/Linux was the only stable OS I could run. I got sick of Win95 crashing, Win98 crashing, and WinNT crashing, and being a new computer user, figured *something* better had to be out there.
Well. Just so you know: Windows doesn't crash as much as it used to. I'm running Windows 2000 and my last reinstall having been over 6 months ago, it's only crashed like, 5 times this week. And unlike Win 95, a clean install lasts for well over a year... almost a year and a half under daily rigorous use.