Well? You had parents that invested a lot of time and money in your upbringing. Instead of passing that investment along like every generation before you, you're keeping it for yourself. That is an inequity, is it not?
And I happen to believe that having children when you don't actually want them, but rather because you feel obligated, is the height of stupidity. All that produces is unhappy parents with unwanted children. Great idea.
Moreover, I can just as easily pass on this supposed "investment" of yours by helping my fellow man: by assisting my friends and their families when they need it, etc, rather than sinking all that wealth into my own offspring. In fact, from that perspective, it's *more* selfish to have your own kids: you're saying "my genes are more important, so I'm going to take this 'investment' and use it on them, and screw the rest of ya!"
Reproduction isn't a hobby like water skiing, it's integral to life, like eating and breathing. I suppose you may dismiss this as a religious viewpoint, but in fact reproduction is even more central to evolution.
And by that reasoning I should spend as much time as possible screwing random women and trying to have as many children as possible. The fact is, we're humans with higher brain functions, and as such, we aren't simply slave to our instincts and the drives instilled in us by millions of years of evolution.
It's just that when a man chooses to not have kids, society doesn't label him as selfish and a waste of breath,
Actually, speaking for myself, that's not true at all. My wife and I made the decision a long time ago that we don't want children, and since then, we've also discovered that it's best to just avoid the topic if it comes up, for the exact reasons you mention. I can't count the number of times people have said "Oh, you'll change your mind!", or accused us of being selfish, as if all those people out there having kids are doing it purely for altruistic reasons. The fact is, society as a whole has this image of the perfect future for everyone (married, big house, expensive car or two, successful career, 2 1/2 kids), and most people can't see past it.
Fortunately, I think there's a silent but growing number of people who realize that having children is not, in fact, the most important thing to them, and are able to make the decision not to have them, as opposed to "wanting it all", thus leaving the kids at home with a nanny while mommy and daddy try to keep up with the Jones'.
That would be thoughtcrime (or the actual newspeak work, crimethink)... at least, according to the Wikipedia entry on Newspeak. Yes, I am that bored...:)
No no, doublethink is doubleplusgood. ie, if he knew all this, yet convinced himself that he didn't, he'd be a good little citizen of Oceania. Someone needs to re-read 1984.:)
Agreed. Truly dark sky sites are very hard to come by these days. The real problem, IMHO, is that, because they're so hard to come by, very few people no what a truly dark sky looks like! Thus, like the grandparent, they think a field an hour from a major metropolitan area constitutes a dark sky site.
The secondary effect of this is that astronomers have a hell of a time convincing people that light pollution is a problem, because a) they don't understand *why* it's a problem, and b) they don't understand the sheer magnitude of the issue. The only bright side (no pun intended) is that the astronomers have economic forces in their corner (you can save money if you stop radiating half of your artificial light out into space).
Is it because today's bosses aren't as snowed by polished young Ivy grads as they were in the past? Or are today's Ivy League graduates simply so wealthy that they no longer feel the need to find stable, high-paying jobs at big companies?
Are you f**king kidding me?! Okay, I have no love for rich America, but this is getting friggin' ridiculous. These kind of comments do *not* belong in article summaries, period. Hell, if it was a comment, it'd be modded "-1 Troll" in no time. Christ, how the *hell* did this get past the editors? Oh, right because they don't actually do their job... *sigh*
Ditto here. The University of Alberta switched to Peoplesoft for it's course management and discovered a number of things. 1) It's unstable and unreliable, 2) it has a *horrible* interface, both on the phone and on the web, 3) it doesn't actually do everything they want... I've heard anecdotes that the new system is actually less useful, functionally speaking, than the old one, and 4) it's extremely expensive as the project inevitably overran and cost millions more to deploy than Peoplesoft originally claimed.
"the passing of a great company" indeed... *shakes head*
One thing I don't see mention much is the virtual zoom lens activity in the spaceFX shots. It really gives a greater sense of 3D and more more solid feel to the spacecraft than previous shows.
However, you don't really get an appreciation of just how slow and bloaty XML is until you see it used in real life a few times.
Good grief... what are you doing that you actually notice the time it takes to parse XML? On an average computer today, if XML parsing is consuming a noticeable amount of time, you're either 1) doing something wrong (e.g., using DOM parsing instead of SAX) or 2) you're doing something that requires such high performance on the data input side that you obviously shouldn't have chosen XML in the first place.
Sigh. No. In a communist/socialist system the state owns everything and just claims to do it in the name of the people.
No. Poor boy, you've been indoctrinated by American propaganda. In a true Communist state, as defined by Marx, the people own the code. Period. The states of Russia and China, which fit the model you describe, were never Communist. They were only "Communist"... ie, totalitarianism wrapped up with a prettier name.
Fascism has to do with totalitarianism and suppression of rights, not with property. The canonical fascist country (Nazi Germany) was capitalist.
Not quite. As per the Wikipedia article on the topic, Fascism typically engages in Corporatism, where the state and corporations work together to minimize the power of the working class. Thus, by that definition, the corporation and the state own your code.
The book isn't about privacy, at least not directly. It documents the way a state could manipulate it's citizens in order to maintain power over them, with the ultimate goal being to control the very way people think.
Remember, technology was only one of the ways the state controlled it's people: it also pitted citizens against one another, encouraging people to rat out their own family if they expressed any dissenting views. Not to mention out-and-out state spies. And the ultimate point of all this was to make it unacceptable to even *consider* dissenting thoughts, let alone voice them, lest the state or one of their spies, or even your own child, realize what you're thinking and have you arrested.
Of course, there are many other components to the strategy. Using nationalism to encourage people to back the state, for example. And of course there's Newspeak, the ultimate goal of which was to make it impossible to even *express* dissenting thoughts.
Thus, the scary part is that, in the end, the state succeeds in not only controlling the populace, but doing so in such an absolute way that they are unable to even *think* about moving against the leadership.
Re:Listen to your body to stay healthy
on
Sleep Less, Eat More?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Err, actually, eating six smaller meals a day is far better for you than eating three big ones. It's certainly far easier on your pancreas, as it helps to maintain a steady blood sugar level throughout the day, meaning your insulin levels don't spike and crash through the day.
Fat?!? Dude, you really need to rethink your choice of beer if you're getting a significant portion of your beer calories from fat. The calories in beer come from two things: sugars extracted from the mash, and the alcohol itself (which, has a very high caloric density, second only to fat).
The whole *point* of IP multicasting is to allow the network to perform data replication, etc, so that an individual can send data to n receivers without having to transmit n copies of the stream. Too bad, much like IPv6, no one seems to want to support it.
Yet, the instructions are in there, and then they become law. Ever try to change a law that was implemented by God?
As if this is unique to Islam? Shit, the Jews have the Torah, and there's a fundamentalist movement in Israel which believes the nation should live by it, stonings and all. Not to mention all those that defend the death penalty in the US based on the famous "an eye for an eye" phrase in the Bible.
Seperation of Church and state is a really really good idea.
It's just a damn shame that even the US seems to have forgotten that lesson.
Again, what here is so unique about Islam?
Of course, you know very simple and obvious fact. Yet you try to mislead people.
Err, no, you just missed the point, which was: blaming the religion for the acts of a violent, self-righteous minority is simply unfair, whether it's in the Middle East or Central America. ie, blaming Catholicism for the Cocaine trade is as stupid as blaming Islam for the various acts of terrorism carried out in it's name.
Excuse me? But did you just say someone SHOULD be killed for insulting a religon?
Wow, nice deflection. The actual point, which you appear to have missed, is that only one religious leader called for the death of Salman Rushdie, and no other country agreed. Yes, believe it or not, the Ayatollah does not, in fact, speak for all of Islam. Shocking, I know. Much like all those terrorists don't, in fact, represent the vast majority of adherrants to Islam.
Crap, make up your mind. Before, it was Starbuck's fault, and now it's the sheeple. You really need to get your story straight. Then again, I suppose it's easier to rail against the evil Starbucks than it is to face the fact that not everyone values those precious coffeeshops as much as you.
So, rather than blaming the patrons who abandoned your beloved coffeeshops, you blame Starbucks? Consider, maybe no one else gave a crap about this "coffeeshop culture" you speak of and really just wanted a cheap cup of coffee.
I just find it strange that people like to bash the US so much when it is the sole source of freedom on the planet.
Holy shit. I had *no idea* people in the US were so deluded by their own nationalism. I can only assume you're referring to the actions of the US in the two world wars, since I can think of no other example where the US acted as a "source of freedom". Well, you know what, we appreciate that the US of the early 20th century helped in WWI, even though it took forever for you to finally join in. And we appreciate the assistance of the US of the 40s in WWII, as well, though it was also a bit late in the game. But, guess what, that was 50 years ago. The US is a vastly different place today, and while it could have turned into a paragon of freedom and morality, it instead turned into a morass of selfishness and greed, where politicians are bought and sold by massive corporations, and foreign policy is dictated by the almighty dollar. Thus, I would hardly refer to modern America as a "source of freedom"...
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Well? You had parents that invested a lot of time and money in your upbringing. Instead of passing that investment along like every generation before you, you're keeping it for yourself. That is an inequity, is it not?
And I happen to believe that having children when you don't actually want them, but rather because you feel obligated, is the height of stupidity. All that produces is unhappy parents with unwanted children. Great idea.
Moreover, I can just as easily pass on this supposed "investment" of yours by helping my fellow man: by assisting my friends and their families when they need it, etc, rather than sinking all that wealth into my own offspring. In fact, from that perspective, it's *more* selfish to have your own kids: you're saying "my genes are more important, so I'm going to take this 'investment' and use it on them, and screw the rest of ya!"
Reproduction isn't a hobby like water skiing, it's integral to life, like eating and breathing. I suppose you may dismiss this as a religious viewpoint, but in fact reproduction is even more central to evolution.
And by that reasoning I should spend as much time as possible screwing random women and trying to have as many children as possible. The fact is, we're humans with higher brain functions, and as such, we aren't simply slave to our instincts and the drives instilled in us by millions of years of evolution.
It's just that when a man chooses to not have kids, society doesn't label him as selfish and a waste of breath,
Actually, speaking for myself, that's not true at all. My wife and I made the decision a long time ago that we don't want children, and since then, we've also discovered that it's best to just avoid the topic if it comes up, for the exact reasons you mention. I can't count the number of times people have said "Oh, you'll change your mind!", or accused us of being selfish, as if all those people out there having kids are doing it purely for altruistic reasons. The fact is, society as a whole has this image of the perfect future for everyone (married, big house, expensive car or two, successful career, 2 1/2 kids), and most people can't see past it.
Fortunately, I think there's a silent but growing number of people who realize that having children is not, in fact, the most important thing to them, and are able to make the decision not to have them, as opposed to "wanting it all", thus leaving the kids at home with a nanny while mommy and daddy try to keep up with the Jones'.
That would be thoughtcrime (or the actual newspeak work, crimethink)... at least, according to the Wikipedia entry on Newspeak. Yes, I am that bored... :)
No no, doublethink is doubleplusgood. ie, if he knew all this, yet convinced himself that he didn't, he'd be a good little citizen of Oceania. Someone needs to re-read 1984. :)
Agreed. Truly dark sky sites are very hard to come by these days. The real problem, IMHO, is that, because they're so hard to come by, very few people no what a truly dark sky looks like! Thus, like the grandparent, they think a field an hour from a major metropolitan area constitutes a dark sky site.
The secondary effect of this is that astronomers have a hell of a time convincing people that light pollution is a problem, because a) they don't understand *why* it's a problem, and b) they don't understand the sheer magnitude of the issue. The only bright side (no pun intended) is that the astronomers have economic forces in their corner (you can save money if you stop radiating half of your artificial light out into space).
Who kept claiming me as a dependent on their tax returns every year to get the extra deduction, thus killing my chances of ever getting financial aid.
Sounds like you should blame your parents...
Is it because today's bosses aren't as snowed by polished young Ivy grads as they were in the past? Or are today's Ivy League graduates simply so wealthy that they no longer feel the need to find stable, high-paying jobs at big companies?
Are you f**king kidding me?! Okay, I have no love for rich America, but this is getting friggin' ridiculous. These kind of comments do *not* belong in article summaries, period. Hell, if it was a comment, it'd be modded "-1 Troll" in no time. Christ, how the *hell* did this get past the editors? Oh, right because they don't actually do their job... *sigh*
Ditto here. The University of Alberta switched to Peoplesoft for it's course management and discovered a number of things. 1) It's unstable and unreliable, 2) it has a *horrible* interface, both on the phone and on the web, 3) it doesn't actually do everything they want... I've heard anecdotes that the new system is actually less useful, functionally speaking, than the old one, and 4) it's extremely expensive as the project inevitably overran and cost millions more to deploy than Peoplesoft originally claimed.
"the passing of a great company" indeed... *shakes head*
One thing I don't see mention much is the virtual zoom lens activity in the spaceFX shots. It really gives a greater sense of 3D and more more solid feel to the spacecraft than previous shows.
:)
Of course, it was also ripped from Firefly.
However, you don't really get an appreciation of just how slow and bloaty XML is until you see it used in real life a few times.
Good grief... what are you doing that you actually notice the time it takes to parse XML? On an average computer today, if XML parsing is consuming a noticeable amount of time, you're either 1) doing something wrong (e.g., using DOM parsing instead of SAX) or 2) you're doing something that requires such high performance on the data input side that you obviously shouldn't have chosen XML in the first place.
Then don't use XML! Jeebus... at what point did the concept of "the right tool for the job" vanish?
Sigh. No. In a communist/socialist system the state owns everything and just claims to do it in the name of the people.
No. Poor boy, you've been indoctrinated by American propaganda. In a true Communist state, as defined by Marx, the people own the code. Period. The states of Russia and China, which fit the model you describe, were never Communist. They were only "Communist"... ie, totalitarianism wrapped up with a prettier name.
Fascism has to do with totalitarianism and suppression of rights, not with property. The canonical fascist country (Nazi Germany) was capitalist.
Not quite. As per the Wikipedia article on the topic, Fascism typically engages in Corporatism, where the state and corporations work together to minimize the power of the working class. Thus, by that definition, the corporation and the state own your code.
The book isn't about privacy, at least not directly. It documents the way a state could manipulate it's citizens in order to maintain power over them, with the ultimate goal being to control the very way people think.
Remember, technology was only one of the ways the state controlled it's people: it also pitted citizens against one another, encouraging people to rat out their own family if they expressed any dissenting views. Not to mention out-and-out state spies. And the ultimate point of all this was to make it unacceptable to even *consider* dissenting thoughts, let alone voice them, lest the state or one of their spies, or even your own child, realize what you're thinking and have you arrested.
Of course, there are many other components to the strategy. Using nationalism to encourage people to back the state, for example. And of course there's Newspeak, the ultimate goal of which was to make it impossible to even *express* dissenting thoughts.
Thus, the scary part is that, in the end, the state succeeds in not only controlling the populace, but doing so in such an absolute way that they are unable to even *think* about moving against the leadership.
Err, actually, eating six smaller meals a day is far better for you than eating three big ones. It's certainly far easier on your pancreas, as it helps to maintain a steady blood sugar level throughout the day, meaning your insulin levels don't spike and crash through the day.
Beer is full of fat and carbs
Fat?!? Dude, you really need to rethink your choice of beer if you're getting a significant portion of your beer calories from fat. The calories in beer come from two things: sugars extracted from the mash, and the alcohol itself (which, has a very high caloric density, second only to fat).
Wow... now "socialist" is derogatory?
Well, Onion Routing is a step in the right direction...
The whole *point* of IP multicasting is to allow the network to perform data replication, etc, so that an individual can send data to n receivers without having to transmit n copies of the stream. Too bad, much like IPv6, no one seems to want to support it.
Hey, Xeno, I didn't know you posted on Slashdot!
Yet, the instructions are in there, and then they become law. Ever try to change a law that was implemented by God?
As if this is unique to Islam? Shit, the Jews have the Torah, and there's a fundamentalist movement in Israel which believes the nation should live by it, stonings and all. Not to mention all those that defend the death penalty in the US based on the famous "an eye for an eye" phrase in the Bible.
Seperation of Church and state is a really really good idea.
It's just a damn shame that even the US seems to have forgotten that lesson.
Again, what here is so unique about Islam?
Of course, you know very simple and obvious fact. Yet you try to mislead people.
Err, no, you just missed the point, which was: blaming the religion for the acts of a violent, self-righteous minority is simply unfair, whether it's in the Middle East or Central America. ie, blaming Catholicism for the Cocaine trade is as stupid as blaming Islam for the various acts of terrorism carried out in it's name.
Excuse me? But did you just say someone SHOULD be killed for insulting a religon?
Wow, nice deflection. The actual point, which you appear to have missed, is that only one religious leader called for the death of Salman Rushdie, and no other country agreed. Yes, believe it or not, the Ayatollah does not, in fact, speak for all of Islam. Shocking, I know. Much like all those terrorists don't, in fact, represent the vast majority of adherrants to Islam.
Crap, make up your mind. Before, it was Starbuck's fault, and now it's the sheeple. You really need to get your story straight. Then again, I suppose it's easier to rail against the evil Starbucks than it is to face the fact that not everyone values those precious coffeeshops as much as you.
Dude, don't bother. You can't argue with religion.
So, rather than blaming the patrons who abandoned your beloved coffeeshops, you blame Starbucks? Consider, maybe no one else gave a crap about this "coffeeshop culture" you speak of and really just wanted a cheap cup of coffee.
Well, according to the SEDS Entry on the Ring Nebula, recent research has confirmed that it is in fact toroidal, rather than spherical, in shape.
I just find it strange that people like to bash the US so much when it is the sole source of freedom on the planet.
Holy shit. I had *no idea* people in the US were so deluded by their own nationalism. I can only assume you're referring to the actions of the US in the two world wars, since I can think of no other example where the US acted as a "source of freedom". Well, you know what, we appreciate that the US of the early 20th century helped in WWI, even though it took forever for you to finally join in. And we appreciate the assistance of the US of the 40s in WWII, as well, though it was also a bit late in the game. But, guess what, that was 50 years ago. The US is a vastly different place today, and while it could have turned into a paragon of freedom and morality, it instead turned into a morass of selfishness and greed, where politicians are bought and sold by massive corporations, and foreign policy is dictated by the almighty dollar. Thus, I would hardly refer to modern America as a "source of freedom"...