Actually, for sarcasm, it was pretty badly done. Good sarcasm is easy to tell from idiocy/ignorance. The exaggerations are _too_ ridiculous, the points made are _too_ silly. The post I replied to was nothing like that. It was poorly written, plain and simple. The author really, truly sounded ignorant.
Also, I notice someone else at +5 with reply which was similar to mine in that it also took that post seriously. Whatever.
I mean, if NT were in any meaningful way based on a "separate" OS layer then he might have a case to make for changing the "separate" OS layer to something else. Of course, that's not the way things are, but then he's WRONG, not making a silly point.
First of all, does everyone reading this understand the concept of having layers of code without each layer being a complete OS (i.e. DOS)? If nothing else, go look up NT's Hardware Abstraction Layer on Google. It is entirely possible to rip out NT's VM, disk code, network code, etc. and replace them with the equivalent code from Linux even though the NT GUI is not running "on top of" DOS like in Windows 95. Yes, this would require some rewriting, but perhaps not as much as you might think.
MS could also port the NT Shell and API to Linux to make a system like Apple's OS X. The API has been more or less ported by Wine, and porting the Shell is the easy part. I suspect that this is what Cringely was thinking of. Even if Cringely wrongly thinks that NT/2000/XP is like Windows 95, this idea could still work.
Of course, I've just been talking about some of the technical aspects of Cringely's suggestion. There are major licensing issues. There are "political"/PR issues. Plus there's the question of how much Windows would change if such a suggestion were implemented. The second solution (port the API/Shell) in particular would be a massive change to NT.
Irregardless, Cringely's idea is technically possible, and that's the point. Whatever Cringely's level of technical knowledge, the suggestion he made was plausible, if unlikely. That's why it is worthwhile to discuss, and why his idea shouldn't be ignored just because he may not have as much technical knowledge as some of us.
I seriously doubt that ATI would try to keep the market inflated by purposefully dumbing down a high end card, this sort of thing doesn't happen in real life. It's not like Intel has ever used a pIII chip with the cache disabled/ripped out for celerons before.
Wow, that's wrong. That's may be award-winningly wrong.
Second, the original Celerons were PIIs with the cache ripped out -- or rather, without cache put on their PCB at all. I'm 100% certain about this one. Remember the Slot-1 266 and 300Mhz (not "a") Celerons? They were just PII cores on a PCB, sans cache (and missing that black plastic casing too, if I remember correctly.)
Third, for all I know the P4 Celeron may be just like the PIII Celeron. That's a whole lot of Celerons which were just regular cores with the cache disabled/ripped out.
"a disk operating system" is hiding there in Linux as well. He is trying to differentiate between Windows and Linux. Why would he cite a similarity to support Linux superiority?
He didn't. He cited this to point out that you could replace that there was still a separate "disk operating system" layer which could be removed and replaced with Linux. The point is that _despite_ the fact that there is no longer DOS under Windows, there's still a non-GUI layer.
Like many Americans, we scratch our heads when we hear about idiotic practices like killing endangered species such a rhino for its "horn" (actually hair-based protein), or a black bear for its gall bladder, aligators for skin, or, the classic case, elephants for ivory and the occasional foot wastepaper basket (see Gary Larson:).
Actually, I suspect that his point was that a large animal is killed to get a single part, and a relatively small one at that. That "Gristle stew" crack referred to the fact(?) that the rest of the shark is not used (being mostly cartilidge, if I recall correctly).
That's not a cultural issue... it's more of a point about efficiency. Killing sharks to get one little part wastes a whole lot of shark, not to mention the effect on the ocean's ecosystem.
So, can I have both? Buy two hyperthreaded chips and stick em int he same board, and get an even weirder inneficient speed increase. Or would writing a scheduler to handle it be too hard, virtual chips on top of two real chips, I imagine it could appear to look like 4 way smp when in reality its 2 way weird smp. I unno, I want one!
I'm guessing that this guy's spelling and grammar checkers are using 100% of his two CPUs right now. That's why he wants four:)
Technically speaking, the banana is a herb due to the fact it is part of the flower made by the female plant. Botanically speaking, it's a berry, due to the fact it's a fruit that developes from a plant ovary and has little seeds.
Sheesh, it already sounds like a genetics experiment gone bad. And now they're going to sequence it and mess with its genes? What next, bananas which are tubers?
Just make it run around shooting stuff and saying things like "lol u camping fagot!!!!";)
On a related note, they're going to judge the contest by counting every time someone gets accused of being a "botter". If the emulator gets accused the most, it fails the test.:)
My vote would be just to stop worrying about what group does what (and that includes race), and focus on what individuals do or don't do.
But then, maybe I'm just crazy and believe that society really should be color and sex blind.
The problem with that theory is this. Sure, you and I might agree to make society color and sex blind. But will the neo-nazis? The gay bashers? The white-supremacists? If some parts of society refuse to be color- or gender-blind, then "society" as a whole is not. Even worse, all the people who are going around being color- or gender-blind might not notice the discrimination being inflicted by these extremists.
Thus, even if most people were perfect (definitely a stretch!) and could agree to be color/gender-blind all the time, there would still be reason to focus on race and gender: to present positive examples to all of those who still feel negatively towards people of certain races or genders or whatever. I suspect that people aren't perfect and thus that everyone falls into that category on occasion, but if nothing else, remember that we need to keep trying to educate the extremists by presenting positive examples. (Not to mention preventing people from becoming extremists. The KKK isn't going to stop recruiting just because you decided to be color-blind!)
Besides, who really wants a completely color/sex/religion/sexual orientation/whatever-blind society? I want people to be proud of their heritage! I want people to be proud of who they are and where they came from and what they believe in! I just wish that people didn't attach all these negative associations to people of other races/genders/etc. That is not the same as wanting society to be whatever-blind. Being whatever-blind really means being blind -- you don't see the bad or the good. I'd rather have a society which was actually good (none of those negative associations) than one which is simply blind.
From a forbes article [forbes.com]: The vast majority of the 234 U.S. billionaires whose education level is tracked by Forbes magazine through 1999 finished college; 100 have some form of advanced degree, but 41--that's 18%--never got their college diplomas and two never even finished high school.
The world's richest man(i don't have to stress here:-) ) is a dropout, India's richest men: Dhirubhai Ambani(Reliance founder), Azim Premji(Wipro) are all great examples. One IIMB professor told me that 10 of the richest people are dropouts or have basic education & the 11th(i believe ballmer) works for the 1st(bill). I haven't verified it though, so take it with a pinch of salt.
As an alternative explanation for those statistics, let me point out that people who started out rich are likely to remain rich. Before asking how many of those billionaires finished college, you should ask how many were born into this world as billionaires, or at least multi-millionaires:)
Also, by looking at billionaires, you are looking at an exceptional population. Aside from all the people in that group who were "born rich", you'll probably find many others whose success was in some way exceptional. For example, there are probably many computer industry billionaires because the market has exploded over the last twenty years. I suspect that relatively few of these went to college because, about 25-30 years ago, electronics was an area in which self-taught tinkerers could create revolutionary products. However, is a similar explosion likely to occur in any other self-taught field anytime soon, or was that a one-time thing? Do you think the next revolution in, say, genetic engineering or materials science is going to come out of some tinkerer's garage? Furthermore, when a college grad develops a revolutionary product, that inventor will probably be an employee of a large company or a researcher at a university, in which case they probably will not be able to set up their own company or profit from their product in the same manner that the computer billionaires were able to. In other words, computer billionaires like Gates and Ballmer are exceptional, and I suspect that many other billionaires are as well.
I suspect that if you took a sample of a larger group of "successful" individuals (e.g. all millionaires) I bet you'd find more college grads. The billionaires are an exceptional bunch in several ways.
On a related note, I seem to recall that something like 66% of Americans do not go to college. Your statistics suggest that among billionaires, 18% did not go to college. Your statistics seem to point to a fairly strong correlation between becoming a billionaire and going to college:) Not a causal relation, of course, but there does seem to be some connection. (However, see argument #1. People born rich are probably more likely to go to college, which may be the causal factor.)
To shift the topic of discussion slightly, I haven't seen a lot of support for going to college among the more highly moderated posts so far. Part of the problem may be that it's hard to argue in favor of college without sounding elitist. All the pro-college posts are probably at -1, Troll:) Still, I'd like to finish off by making one argument in favor of college. Developing the framework for the arguments which I just made took zero effort (fleshing them out took a little work, though:). I took a good class on statistics in my Freshman year. Since then, looking at simple statistical data such as this and seeing its implications comes almost automatically to me.
That's the kind of knowledge you develop in college, and it's very useful. You also learn how to write reasonably well. You have no idea how many times I've seen a post on SlashDot and said to myself "that person obviously hasn't been to college" exactly because they failed to understand some simple point of statistics or logic or they wrote a nearly incomprehensible argument. I know that I'm starting to sound elitist at this point, and I apologize for that. It just seems to me that when you go to college, you learn to think about many different fields in a more complex manner, and in a more automatic manner, and that this makes you more competent in general. Perhaps the phrase "Becoming well-rounded" applies here. The phrase "Becoming knowledgeable about more than just one field (e.g. computers)" may also apply.:)
Enough with the victimhood nonsense! Enough pretending like it is being inflicted on you!
Is this a sick joke? Everyone is a victim. Everyone is abused. Everyone is being held hostage by forces bigger than themselves. We are helpless! Ohh no! Panic!
GROW UP PEOPLE. It is only a video game. Play it, don't play it. Who cares.
Perhaps this site needs a new motto. SlashDot: There place where Libertarians (or whatever this idiot is) know more about addiction than Psychologists.
If you have some conclusive evidence that video game "addiction" is not real, then you should present it now. Otherwise, you'll just have to accept that perhaps video games can be addictive (the jury's still out on that: see the bottom of this page for a list of articles in academic journals on the topic).
Perhaps these people are talking about becoming addicted to video games, and perhaps their addictions are real. I don't think you can prove otherwise. In the overwhelmingly likely event that you cannot, then your blase attitude not only foolish, but perhaps downright harmful (Imagine what it would be like if people reacted like this to alcoholics!) So stop acting like you know more than everybody else, including the people who are actually studying this issue.
Embryonic stem cells are not taken from unborn babies, they are taken from embryos, preferably while still undifferentiated.
[snip]
Note, the whole point of embryonic, is so one can clone a patient and while the cloned cells are still in undifferentiated stage, use them for treatment to avoid rejection. This is far different from your implication of somehow extracting them from a baby.
It is important to note that one of the major victories of the pro-life faction (at least in the U.S.) is that everything that's not still "sperm" or "egg" is commonly referred to as a "baby". That includes embryos, blastocytes, and fetuses, whether they are in a womb, or test-tube, or elsewhere.
This common tendancy is useful when discussing issues related to abortion. As you pointed out, "stem cells harvested from a baby" is not the same as "stem cells harvseted from an embryo". People have a clear image of what a baby is (a "goo goo"-ing little person in a pink or blue fuzzy outfit) which is evoked every time a discussion relating to abortion comes up, whether or not it is actually applicable. In this case, it most certainly is not applicable. Like you said, you can only get embryonic stem cells from an embryo. But, even though it makes no sense to talk about "babies" in this contex, sure enough, someone brought them up. It's a clever use of the power of imagery to obscure the real issue.
I don't mean to flame folks here, but what if another company decided that their entire philosophy revolved around what their own CEO thought about things?
Isn't that what a CEO's job is?
What if this CEO was raised poorly, and without religion, and generally was a mean, racially prejucided man?
What makes you think they aren't? The fact that they're successful?
Also, why in the world do you think that those things are related? Plenty of religious people are prejudiced, for example (against other religions, if nothing else!)
Personally, I would legalise all kinds of drugs, however the advertising should remain limited.
And the purchase, presumably. I assume we don't want to see 10-year-olds smoking pot, though it's hard to see why a 21-year-old shouldn't (given that they have access to alcohol and cigarettes.)
You should be happy to pay a little extra per month for usenet over 1GB since you're obviously downloading warez, mp3s, and movies.
Actually, there are a few legit reasons for needing that much bandwidth. A few people have complained on the dslreports forum that they need the bandwidth to run local mirrors of some newsgroups. Some people seem to be running their own news servers. Others are archiving their favorite newsgroup for posterity. Either way, downloading all the posts in even one moderately busy group will put you over the 1Gb/month limit easily.
Also, looking at the alt.binary groups briefly, it seems like some of them may have legit (non-copyrighted) material. For example, it kind of looks like the alt.binaries.3d groups are where people post their own creations for others to critique. Likewise with the demoscene groups. The band Phish has a binary group. Perhaps people post bootlegged songs there (Phish actually encourages taping their shows, so this is still legit), or stuff like photos or videos they took of the band. All this stuff is perfectly legal, but can use up over 1Gb/month.
They mention having a "fanless" Celeron-based version, so I betcha that the heat isn't that bad.
They probably use laptop parts for the most part (SODIMM memory, etc), and as far as I've seen, only laptops with very hot-running CPUs need fans. Even then, the fans are mainly to cool the CPU. So the amount of heat is probably related to the CPU only, and there are ways of dealing with that (e.g. heat pipes).
Then why did you post another reply where you addressed my concerns? This certainly suggests that there was some actual content to my post. Not only did I counter your link to the main dslreports.com page with a more informative link to their leader board, but I also pointed out several potential problems with your complaints about SpeakEasy. "Ungrounded?" Hardly.
As for the egocentrism issue, you posted several complaints in this thread, and every one described your experiences specifically. Based on that, I don't apologize for thinking that you're acting egocentric. Although I did mention my own experiences briefly, I spent the majority of my post on other arguments. I think that qualifies as "less egocentric".
If you have the right to "warn consumers", then I have the right to inform consumers as well. If that involves pointing out that you've said little more than what your own experiences were, then so be it.
Did you read the link [dslreports.com] you posted? On the first page there were several horror stories similar to what I described: overcharged, underprovisioned, horrible speeds and/or latency, rude/lying/unresponsive customer service, etc. etc. Their advertising promulgates an image of them as being a place that caters to geeks by providing a low-fluff connection and great service for a premium, which is 100% A-OK, but as I and other people have observed, they're not very good about living up to their advertising. Sure, there are a bunch of 5 star reviews, but there are also a bunch of 1 star reviews.
And how does that differ from every other broadband provider?
So you had a bad experience with SpeakEasy. Guess what? Lots of people have had good experiences with them. Look at the leader board at dslreports.com . Speakeasy is near the top of its class (the National ISP class). That means they've had far more good reviews than bad ones.
See, every provider has its horror stories, and every provider has success stories. Every provider can get positive testimonials, and every provider has dissatisfied customers. The trick to comparing providers, therefore, is to look at the success rate. Assuming that everyone else had the same experience with them as yourself is not only inaccurate, but also terribly egocentric.
In case you're wondering, I or my family have had SpeakEasy DSL lines at three different addresses, and we've been happy with every one. That explains why I tend to disagree with you:)
Honestly I as a paying customer shouldn't have to care about that though. I was paying for 1500/768, getting more like 300/200, and that with 300-500 msec pings to grace.speakeasy.net (their shell server) or any of the servers where I work (an ad firm/programming shop here in Austin).
This is better -- at least these are specific complaints. Then again, you might also want to explain why didn't you cancel in the first month (aka the trial period) and why you don't downgrade to 768/384 so that you're paying less (that should be free if you're really just getting 300/200). Have you tried any other DSL ISPs? _Can_ you get better than what you've got, or is that the best you'll get from anyone (perhaps you're really far from your Central Office?) If you're going to complain, at least tell the full story.
The only reason they're doing it is because it's in California (home base of American liberalism), and if they don't, they'll be totally demonized by militant environmentalists and human rights activists playing on your emotions rather than hard, scientific data.
*sigh* When you argue that other people are playing on your emotions rather than using hard, scientific data, would you please back up your remarks with hard, scientific data rather than a play on peoples' emotions (i.e. "those dang liberals!")
If you don't, the irony police are going to eat you alive:)
Slashdot Mirror
Someone needs a sarcasm/humour detector.
Actually, for sarcasm, it was pretty badly done. Good sarcasm is easy to tell from idiocy/ignorance. The exaggerations are _too_ ridiculous, the points made are _too_ silly. The post I replied to was nothing like that. It was poorly written, plain and simple. The author really, truly sounded ignorant.
Also, I notice someone else at +5 with reply which was similar to mine in that it also took that post seriously. Whatever.
I mean, if NT were in any meaningful way based on a "separate" OS layer then he might have a case to make for changing the "separate" OS layer to something else. Of course, that's not the way things are, but then he's WRONG, not making a silly point.
First of all, does everyone reading this understand the concept of having layers of code without each layer being a complete OS (i.e. DOS)? If nothing else, go look up NT's Hardware Abstraction Layer on Google. It is entirely possible to rip out NT's VM, disk code, network code, etc. and replace them with the equivalent code from Linux even though the NT GUI is not running "on top of" DOS like in Windows 95. Yes, this would require some rewriting, but perhaps not as much as you might think.
MS could also port the NT Shell and API to Linux to make a system like Apple's OS X. The API has been more or less ported by Wine, and porting the Shell is the easy part. I suspect that this is what Cringely was thinking of. Even if Cringely wrongly thinks that NT/2000/XP is like Windows 95, this idea could still work.
Of course, I've just been talking about some of the technical aspects of Cringely's suggestion. There are major licensing issues. There are "political"/PR issues. Plus there's the question of how much Windows would change if such a suggestion were implemented. The second solution (port the API/Shell) in particular would be a massive change to NT.
Irregardless, Cringely's idea is technically possible, and that's the point. Whatever Cringely's level of technical knowledge, the suggestion he made was plausible, if unlikely. That's why it is worthwhile to discuss, and why his idea shouldn't be ignored just because he may not have as much technical knowledge as some of us.
I seriously doubt that ATI would try to keep the market inflated by purposefully dumbing down a high end card, this sort of thing doesn't happen in real life. It's not like Intel has ever used a pIII chip with the cache disabled/ripped out for celerons before.
Wow, that's wrong. That's may be award-winningly wrong.
First, wasn't the PIII Celeron basically just a PIII with half of its cache disabled, exactly like what you've just described?
Second, the original Celerons were PIIs with the cache ripped out -- or rather, without cache put on their PCB at all. I'm 100% certain about this one. Remember the Slot-1 266 and 300Mhz (not "a") Celerons? They were just PII cores on a PCB, sans cache (and missing that black plastic casing too, if I remember correctly.)
Third, for all I know the P4 Celeron may be just like the PIII Celeron. That's a whole lot of Celerons which were just regular cores with the cache disabled/ripped out.
"a disk operating system" is hiding there in Linux as well. He is trying to differentiate between Windows and Linux. Why would he cite a similarity to support Linux superiority?
He didn't. He cited this to point out that you could replace that there was still a separate "disk operating system" layer which could be removed and replaced with Linux. The point is that _despite_ the fact that there is no longer DOS under Windows, there's still a non-GUI layer.
Like many Americans, we scratch our heads when we hear about idiotic practices like killing endangered species such a rhino for its "horn" (actually hair-based protein), or a black bear for its gall bladder, aligators for skin, or, the classic case, elephants for ivory and the occasional foot wastepaper basket (see Gary Larson :).
Actually, I suspect that his point was that a large animal is killed to get a single part, and a relatively small one at that. That "Gristle stew" crack referred to the fact(?) that the rest of the shark is not used (being mostly cartilidge, if I recall correctly).
That's not a cultural issue... it's more of a point about efficiency. Killing sharks to get one little part wastes a whole lot of shark, not to mention the effect on the ocean's ecosystem.
So, can I have both? Buy two hyperthreaded chips and stick em int he same board, and get an even weirder inneficient speed increase. Or would writing a scheduler to handle it be too hard, virtual chips on top of two real chips, I imagine it could appear to look like 4 way smp when in reality its 2 way weird smp. I unno, I want one!
:)
I'm guessing that this guy's spelling and grammar checkers are using 100% of his two CPUs right now. That's why he wants four
Technically speaking, the banana is a herb due to the fact it is part of the flower made by the female plant. Botanically speaking, it's a berry, due to the fact it's a fruit that developes from a plant ovary and has little seeds.
Sheesh, it already sounds like a genetics experiment gone bad. And now they're going to sequence it and mess with its genes? What next, bananas which are tubers?
Just make it run around shooting stuff and saying things like "lol u camping fagot!!!!" ;)
:)
On a related note, they're going to judge the contest by counting every time someone gets accused of being a "botter". If the emulator gets accused the most, it fails the test.
I don't think it's about the money, but the attitude.
:)
I think you're right that attitude is a big factor. Still, a multi-million-dollar inheritance will make you rich quicker than a good attitude will.
... when the BSA raids the RIAA to look for pirated software while the RIAA is raiding the BSA to look for illegally downloaded mp3s.
My vote would be just to stop worrying about what group does what (and that includes race), and focus on what individuals do or don't do.
But then, maybe I'm just crazy and believe that society really should be color and sex blind.
The problem with that theory is this. Sure, you and I might agree to make society color and sex blind. But will the neo-nazis? The gay bashers? The white-supremacists? If some parts of society refuse to be color- or gender-blind, then "society" as a whole is not. Even worse, all the people who are going around being color- or gender-blind might not notice the discrimination being inflicted by these extremists.
Thus, even if most people were perfect (definitely a stretch!) and could agree to be color/gender-blind all the time, there would still be reason to focus on race and gender: to present positive examples to all of those who still feel negatively towards people of certain races or genders or whatever. I suspect that people aren't perfect and thus that everyone falls into that category on occasion, but if nothing else, remember that we need to keep trying to educate the extremists by presenting positive examples. (Not to mention preventing people from becoming extremists. The KKK isn't going to stop recruiting just because you decided to be color-blind!)
Besides, who really wants a completely color/sex/religion/sexual orientation/whatever-blind society? I want people to be proud of their heritage! I want people to be proud of who they are and where they came from and what they believe in! I just wish that people didn't attach all these negative associations to people of other races/genders/etc. That is not the same as wanting society to be whatever-blind. Being whatever-blind really means being blind -- you don't see the bad or the good. I'd rather have a society which was actually good (none of those negative associations) than one which is simply blind.
From a forbes article [forbes.com]: The vast majority of the 234 U.S. billionaires whose education level is tracked by Forbes magazine through 1999 finished college; 100 have some form of advanced degree, but 41--that's 18%--never got their college diplomas and two never even finished high school.
:-) ) is a dropout, India's richest men: Dhirubhai Ambani(Reliance founder), Azim Premji(Wipro) are all great examples. One IIMB professor told me that 10 of the richest people are dropouts or have basic education & the 11th(i believe ballmer) works for the 1st(bill). I haven't verified it though, so take it with a pinch of salt.
:)
:) Not a causal relation, of course, but there does seem to be some connection. (However, see argument #1. People born rich are probably more likely to go to college, which may be the causal factor.)
:) Still, I'd like to finish off by making one argument in favor of college. Developing the framework for the arguments which I just made took zero effort (fleshing them out took a little work, though :). I took a good class on statistics in my Freshman year. Since then, looking at simple statistical data such as this and seeing its implications comes almost automatically to me.
:)
The world's richest man(i don't have to stress here
As an alternative explanation for those statistics, let me point out that people who started out rich are likely to remain rich. Before asking how many of those billionaires finished college, you should ask how many were born into this world as billionaires, or at least multi-millionaires
Also, by looking at billionaires, you are looking at an exceptional population. Aside from all the people in that group who were "born rich", you'll probably find many others whose success was in some way exceptional. For example, there are probably many computer industry billionaires because the market has exploded over the last twenty years. I suspect that relatively few of these went to college because, about 25-30 years ago, electronics was an area in which self-taught tinkerers could create revolutionary products. However, is a similar explosion likely to occur in any other self-taught field anytime soon, or was that a one-time thing? Do you think the next revolution in, say, genetic engineering or materials science is going to come out of some tinkerer's garage? Furthermore, when a college grad develops a revolutionary product, that inventor will probably be an employee of a large company or a researcher at a university, in which case they probably will not be able to set up their own company or profit from their product in the same manner that the computer billionaires were able to. In other words, computer billionaires like Gates and Ballmer are exceptional, and I suspect that many other billionaires are as well.
I suspect that if you took a sample of a larger group of "successful" individuals (e.g. all millionaires) I bet you'd find more college grads. The billionaires are an exceptional bunch in several ways.
On a related note, I seem to recall that something like 66% of Americans do not go to college. Your statistics suggest that among billionaires, 18% did not go to college. Your statistics seem to point to a fairly strong correlation between becoming a billionaire and going to college
To shift the topic of discussion slightly, I haven't seen a lot of support for going to college among the more highly moderated posts so far. Part of the problem may be that it's hard to argue in favor of college without sounding elitist. All the pro-college posts are probably at -1, Troll
That's the kind of knowledge you develop in college, and it's very useful. You also learn how to write reasonably well. You have no idea how many times I've seen a post on SlashDot and said to myself "that person obviously hasn't been to college" exactly because they failed to understand some simple point of statistics or logic or they wrote a nearly incomprehensible argument. I know that I'm starting to sound elitist at this point, and I apologize for that. It just seems to me that when you go to college, you learn to think about many different fields in a more complex manner, and in a more automatic manner, and that this makes you more competent in general. Perhaps the phrase "Becoming well-rounded" applies here. The phrase "Becoming knowledgeable about more than just one field (e.g. computers)" may also apply.
Enough with the victimhood nonsense! Enough pretending like it is being inflicted on you!
Is this a sick joke? Everyone is a victim. Everyone is abused. Everyone is being held hostage by forces bigger than themselves. We are helpless! Ohh no! Panic!
GROW UP PEOPLE. It is only a video game. Play it, don't play it. Who cares.
Perhaps this site needs a new motto. SlashDot: There place where Libertarians (or whatever this idiot is) know more about addiction than Psychologists.
If you have some conclusive evidence that video game "addiction" is not real, then you should present it now. Otherwise, you'll just have to accept that perhaps video games can be addictive (the jury's still out on that: see the bottom of this page for a list of articles in academic journals on the topic).
Perhaps these people are talking about becoming addicted to video games, and perhaps their addictions are real. I don't think you can prove otherwise. In the overwhelmingly likely event that you cannot, then your blase attitude not only foolish, but perhaps downright harmful (Imagine what it would be like if people reacted like this to alcoholics!) So stop acting like you know more than everybody else, including the people who are actually studying this issue.
Embryonic stem cells are not taken from unborn babies, they are taken from embryos, preferably while still undifferentiated.
[snip]
Note, the whole point of embryonic, is so one can clone a patient and while the cloned cells are still in undifferentiated stage, use them for treatment to avoid rejection. This is far different from your implication of somehow extracting them from a baby.
It is important to note that one of the major victories of the pro-life faction (at least in the U.S.) is that everything that's not still "sperm" or "egg" is commonly referred to as a "baby". That includes embryos, blastocytes, and fetuses, whether they are in a womb, or test-tube, or elsewhere.
This common tendancy is useful when discussing issues related to abortion. As you pointed out, "stem cells harvested from a baby" is not the same as "stem cells harvseted from an embryo". People have a clear image of what a baby is (a "goo goo"-ing little person in a pink or blue fuzzy outfit) which is evoked every time a discussion relating to abortion comes up, whether or not it is actually applicable. In this case, it most certainly is not applicable. Like you said, you can only get embryonic stem cells from an embryo. But, even though it makes no sense to talk about "babies" in this contex, sure enough, someone brought them up. It's a clever use of the power of imagery to obscure the real issue.
I don't mean to flame folks here, but what if another company decided that their entire philosophy revolved around what their own CEO thought about things?
Isn't that what a CEO's job is?
What if this CEO was raised poorly, and without religion, and generally was a mean, racially prejucided man?
What makes you think they aren't? The fact that they're successful?
Also, why in the world do you think that those things are related? Plenty of religious people are prejudiced, for example (against other religions, if nothing else!)
Personally, I would legalise all kinds of drugs, however the advertising should remain limited.
And the purchase, presumably. I assume we don't want to see 10-year-olds smoking pot, though it's hard to see why a 21-year-old shouldn't (given that they have access to alcohol and cigarettes.)
And here I was happy with my Borg Cube Christmas ornament! "We are the Borg, Enjoy your hollidays, Resistance is Futile!"
That's not a Borg Cube, it's a fruitcake. The rest still applies, though.
You should be happy to pay a little extra per month for usenet over 1GB since you're obviously downloading warez, mp3s, and movies.
Actually, there are a few legit reasons for needing that much bandwidth. A few people have complained on the dslreports forum that they need the bandwidth to run local mirrors of some newsgroups. Some people seem to be running their own news servers. Others are archiving their favorite newsgroup for posterity. Either way, downloading all the posts in even one moderately busy group will put you over the 1Gb/month limit easily.
Also, looking at the alt.binary groups briefly, it seems like some of them may have legit (non-copyrighted) material. For example, it kind of looks like the alt.binaries.3d groups are where people post their own creations for others to critique. Likewise with the demoscene groups. The band Phish has a binary group. Perhaps people post bootlegged songs there (Phish actually encourages taping their shows, so this is still legit), or stuff like photos or videos they took of the band. All this stuff is perfectly legal, but can use up over 1Gb/month.
You should sell your database on eBay!
Maybe it should be a Dutch auction. Can you sell an unlimited number of copies in a Dutch auction?
I'd have one of the following:
I want the rarest iPod in the world: the one signed by Bill Gates.
I hear he was drunk at the time.
heat!
They mention having a "fanless" Celeron-based version, so I betcha that the heat isn't that bad.
They probably use laptop parts for the most part (SODIMM memory, etc), and as far as I've seen, only laptops with very hot-running CPUs need fans. Even then, the fans are mainly to cool the CPU. So the amount of heat is probably related to the CPU only, and there are ways of dealing with that (e.g. heat pipes).
"essentially ungrounded"
Then why did you post another reply where you addressed my concerns? This certainly suggests that there was some actual content to my post. Not only did I counter your link to the main dslreports.com page with a more informative link to their leader board, but I also pointed out several potential problems with your complaints about SpeakEasy. "Ungrounded?" Hardly.
As for the egocentrism issue, you posted several complaints in this thread, and every one described your experiences specifically. Based on that, I don't apologize for thinking that you're acting egocentric. Although I did mention my own experiences briefly, I spent the majority of my post on other arguments. I think that qualifies as "less egocentric".
If you have the right to "warn consumers", then I have the right to inform consumers as well. If that involves pointing out that you've said little more than what your own experiences were, then so be it.
Or
;)
maybe they just
have funky
formating for
IE?
What makes you think that anyone on SlashDot cares about this?
Did you read the link [dslreports.com] you posted? On the first page there were several horror stories similar to what I described: overcharged, underprovisioned, horrible speeds and/or latency, rude/lying/unresponsive customer service, etc. etc. Their advertising promulgates an image of them as being a place that caters to geeks by providing a low-fluff connection and great service for a premium, which is 100% A-OK, but as I and other people have observed, they're not very good about living up to their advertising. Sure, there are a bunch of 5 star reviews, but there are also a bunch of 1 star reviews.
:)
And how does that differ from every other broadband provider?
So you had a bad experience with SpeakEasy. Guess what? Lots of people have had good experiences with them. Look at the leader board at dslreports.com . Speakeasy is near the top of its class (the National ISP class). That means they've had far more good reviews than bad ones.
See, every provider has its horror stories, and every provider has success stories. Every provider can get positive testimonials, and every provider has dissatisfied customers. The trick to comparing providers, therefore, is to look at the success rate. Assuming that everyone else had the same experience with them as yourself is not only inaccurate, but also terribly egocentric.
In case you're wondering, I or my family have had SpeakEasy DSL lines at three different addresses, and we've been happy with every one. That explains why I tend to disagree with you
Honestly I as a paying customer shouldn't have to care about that though. I was paying for 1500/768, getting more like 300/200, and that with 300-500 msec pings to grace.speakeasy.net (their shell server) or any of the servers where I work (an ad firm/programming shop here in Austin).
This is better -- at least these are specific complaints. Then again, you might also want to explain why didn't you cancel in the first month (aka the trial period) and why you don't downgrade to 768/384 so that you're paying less (that should be free if you're really just getting 300/200). Have you tried any other DSL ISPs? _Can_ you get better than what you've got, or is that the best you'll get from anyone (perhaps you're really far from your Central Office?) If you're going to complain, at least tell the full story.
The only reason they're doing it is because it's in California (home base of American liberalism), and if they don't, they'll be totally demonized by militant environmentalists and human rights activists playing on your emotions rather than hard, scientific data.
:)
*sigh* When you argue that other people are playing on your emotions rather than using hard, scientific data, would you please back up your remarks with hard, scientific data rather than a play on peoples' emotions (i.e. "those dang liberals!")
If you don't, the irony police are going to eat you alive