Sure, we'd be using gigameters to measure stuff, and time would need to be completely resorted, but I'm sure it would work out well in the end...
One of my favorite authors likes to measure time in seconds. (He writes far-future science fiction.) His most recent book includes a cheat-sheet in the front mapping traditional units of time (hours, years, whatnot) to seconds. If I remember right, one kilosecond is about fifteen minutes, and one megasecond is just over 10 days. One year is a little more than 30 megaseconds.
I'll stick with days, weeks, and months, if you please.
How can several thousand tons of TNT not harm someone if he or she is hit?
I think geologists talk about energy in a different way than what you and I are accustomed to. I seem to remember reading somewhere-- it's too late to go searching now, sorry-- that the Hiroshima explosion released about the same amount of energy as a magnitude 6 earthquake. While a magnitude 6 quake is certainly not a small temblor, it's not a city-flattener, either.
I think the difference is that much of the energy from a bomb blast is released as heat, resulting in fires and whatnot; also, a bomb results in a very large air shock wave, which does quite a bit of physical damage.
An earthquake, on the other hand, releases its energy underground. Say you took the entire state of Wyoming and dropped it one centimeter: wham! The amount of energy involved would be astronomical, but the net result would be barely enough to rattle your good china.
"Fairly lengthy"? You mean the "Mousing Around" tutorial? The one with the fish bowl and the little piano keyboard? I'm not sure I'd describe it as "lengthy".
If memory serves me right, it was about five minutes or so, maybe even longer than that. For something which, twenty years later, we call "intuitive," that's pretty extensive training.
Okay, so you wrote a long skreed about how "intuitive" is a fundamentally meaningless term. Unfortunately, I think that's because you're confused about what "intuitive" means, as applied to technology and whatnot.
When I sat down at my first Mac in the summer of '84, I went through a fairly lengthy training program about how to use the mouse. It was the first thing that popped up when you turned on the computer, and it covered stuff like what "click" means, versus "click-and-hold," "click-and-drag," or "double-click." It pointed out the fact that you can pick up the mouse and move it to another place on the table without moving the pointer. These things weren't obvious. They had to be taught.
Years later, pretty much everybody in the 6-60 age bracket knows how to use a computer mouse. We think of computer mice as being "intuitive" because using them involves applying skills that we all acquired long ago.
But change some fundamental way that the mouse works. Say instead of using a button to click, you had to push the mouse forward slightly, then pull it back toward you. This would strike you as awkward and-- presto!-- unintuitive.
In this context, "unintuitive" means "differs from established custom in a significant and noticeable way."
It is obvious from the contents of the above post that the insurance industry's greed is to blame for the fact that in the high-tech decade of '00, our cars have seen few improvements over the mechanical controls that ran them in the 1960s.
And me without any mod points. Somebody please throw a +1, Funny or two at the parent of this post. I think it's hilarious.
I suggest you do some reading on the subject of morality and ethics. The existence of moral or ethical systems is predicated on the assumption that the actions of people are either right or wrong, just or unjust, virtue or vice. Moral systems attempt to provide a framework for deciding which actions are right and which are wrong. People can argue about the various pros and cons of the various moral systems if they want to, but frankly that kind of debate bores me. I have a set of values that I try to live by. If yours are different, that's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that my system is absolute for myself, just like yours is (should be!) absolute for yourself.
so there can be no "absolute" set of values.
What you're describing is what I was taught to call "moral relativism." And I believe it's fine in the abstract; if you're an anthropologist or a philosopher, it's important to put your own opinions and values aside in the process of studying your subject. But in practice, that is in actual interactions between people, I think "moral relativism" is dangerous and wrong.
to be a moral person, in my view, is to balance the good of society and fellow citizens with your family, and act to the better interest of all.
Fine. I have a different view. My view is basically, "I'll take care of mine. You take care of yours." If someone truly needs help, I believe the right thing to do is help them if you can. That's called charity, and it works on a person-to-person level. But I put absolutely zero stock in "the better interest of all."
You also cannot (legally) choose not to be taxed, it is an inforced bargain.
Oh, that's not literally true. I could choose to leave my city, county, state, or country. And I know people who have done that very thing (on the county, not national, level) over property taxes. Their opinion was different from mine, but I respect them for making a tough choice.
But in general, you're right. I can't opt out of paying my taxes in any direct way. The justification for this is that I am entitled to a voice in my government-- either simply through voting or through holding office myself-- that I can use to influence these policies. So while it's definitely not perfect, it's at least fair.
taking the distribution of wealth as a function, the amount of discontent is a function of it's gradient
I think you mean "slope," not "gradient." The slope of a function of one variable is the time rate change of that function over an interval.
"Gradient," on the other hand, is the idea of slope applied to multivariable calculus. A function of two variables defines a surface, and the gradient of the surface at a given point is represented by a vector. The magnitude of the vector corresponds to the greatest rate of change of the surface away from that point, and the direction of the vector is the direction of greatest change.
property laws and morals should benefit human beings, not the other way around.
But that's not right at all. Morality is assumed to be an absolute system that dictates what people should and shouldn't do. Different moral systems are based on different fundamental assumptions-- rules handed down by a deity, or something else entirely-- but they're all considered to be absolute.
Basically you're taking the opposite position from mine. You're trying to say that economic systems should be rational, based on such-and-such criteria. I'm saying that a perfectly rational system with a flawed moral foundation-- communism-- can't work, and should not be implemented. Any benefits gained from that system would be "poisoned."
In your post you implied-- although you didn't say, so I may be reading you wrong-- that wealth should be a reward for productivity: "that's what wrong with your assumption: you own what you produce + what father produced, hence the 'equity lords' don't need to produce anything, they'll still get richer." Therefore-- again, I'm inferring here-- you believe that the wealthiest individuals should be the most productive individuals.
That's where pure rationalism breaks down. If my father had left me one billion dollars when he died, then I would have inherited that one billion dollars and become very wealthy having produced nothing. According to your evaluation, that would be bad.
So your answer is taxation: the government should take from my inheritance to reduce the degree to which I gain wealth without being productive.
Whenever anybody says a sentence of the form, "The government should do X," I replace "the government" with "Joe Smith." If what's being proposed would be morally or ethically wrong for a person-- Joe Smith-- then it's wrong for the government.
So let's try that: "So your answer is taxation: Joe Smith should take from my inheritance to reduce the degree to which I gain wealth without being productive."
Taking something that rightfully belongs to me is tantamount, in my mind, to stealing from me. So that's wrong.
(Before you get all excited, the same argument doesn't apply to taxation in general. In that sense, the government [Joe Smith] is providing me with certain services in return for my money. That's a morally sound transaction. But I don't get anything in return for paying inheritance taxes. So that's morally unsound.)
Why don't you start a crusade to stamp out the word "television" instead of wasting your time on a mild (and admittedly not-very-funny) joke.
Because-- and I thought I made this perfectly clear-- "virii" was used in this context as a serious plural, with no sense of irony implied. That's not a joke. That's an error.
Like I pointed out in my previous post, "boxen" as the plural of "box," like "VAXen" as the plural of "VAX," derives its certain humor from the irony of the English language itself. If itself, "boxen" is a sort of joke about English. There's no good reason why one ox plus one ox is oxen but one box plus one box is boxes. It's just one of those irregularities. In other words, if a person honestly didn't know the plural of "box" and guessed "boxen," it wouldn't be a dumb mistake.
My circle of friends had a similar little joke in college: one deer plus one deer is two deer. Likewise, one beer plus one beer should be two beer. How many beer have you had tonight? I've had four beer. It was silly, but entertaining. Especially after four beer.
"Virii," on the other hand, comes apparently from nowhere. There's no rational system of pluralization-- or even a decent precedent in irregular pluralization-- that would lead someone from "virus" to "virii." If you want you can say "viri," although that's confusing ("vir" was "man" in Latin, and "viri" was "men"). Or you can say "virora," in parallel with "corpus" and "corpora," but scholars think that's probably wrong, and besides it's really hard to pronounce correctly. (The accent would be on the first syllable: "VYE-ror-uh," like "COR-por-uh.")
The bottom line is that "virii" is a made-up word. If you're going to play games with words, play by the rules. I don't care which set of rules you use, but play by some rules. There is no set of language rules-- from English, Greek, or Latin-- that would lead one to believe "virii" to be the plural of "virus."
So using "virii" in any sense, ironic or otherwise, just makes you sound ignorant. Even worse, it makes you sound like you're an ignorant person who thinks they sound like an educated person.
Communists? Who cares? Yes, communism ultimatly failed, but, in a perfect world without corruption and greed, it would make for a perfect system. [...] Communism was one answer (opinion: it was a step in the right direction, but the step was much to large).
I don't usually like responding to ACs, especially ones who are so very wrong, but what the heck.
I used to hold that same opinion. Then, over a span of a dozen years or so, my opinion changed. I started thinking about the moral case of communism versus capitalism, and that put things in an entirely different light.
The practical case for communism is clear: improve the quality of life for all through collective ownership of the means of production. If it worked without flaws, I think it probably would, in fact, reduce things like poverty and inequity. From this, it makes a sort of sense that communism should be tried.
But the moral case is very different. Put simply, and as I understand it, capitalism is based on the assumption that you own what you produce. Communism is based on the assumption that you do not own what you produce. In other words, in a capitalist world, if I plant a field and grow corn, it's mine to do with as I will: eat it, hoard it, sell it, or let it rot in the fields. In a communist world, that corn rightfully belongs to the state as a whole-- not in the sense of state as government, but in the sense of the group of all people who live in my community/county/world/whatever. Government is just a necessary evil to enact the will of the people as a whole.
The moral case for capitalism just makes more sense to me: the corn (or whatever) wouldn't exist without me, so I own it. If you want corn, grow your own. The fact that communism is based on an opposite idea means that, to me, it's tantamount to stealing my corn. That pretty much ruins the moral case in my eyes.
Yes, capitalism leads fairly directly to bad things, like poverty and such, but that's not the point. Are you familiar with the idea of fruit from a poisoned tree? It's a legal doctrine; you can probably learn more by googling "Felix Frankfurter." No, seriously. Stop laughing.
The doctrine of fruit from a poisoned tree simply says that anything you gain through improper means is itself improper. The legal use of this doctrine applies to rules of evidence, but it's also useful for considering moral issues. Basically, the idea is the opposite of the old saw, "The ends justify the means."
So, given that communism springs from a fundamentally wrong moral position (this is ultimately a judgment call, of course) that's our poisoned tree. The benefits we might reap from it-- like reducing poverty and inequity and all that-- are the fruit. When I thought of it in those terms, that pretty much decided it for me.
Like I said though, this is fundamentally a judgment call. It's just unfortunate that the ideals of communism enacted through a few powerful men have turned out to be so very dangerous. I'm almost to the point where I'm willing to say that the ideas themselves are dangerous, due to their potential for abuse and horror.
At the back of this "DOMAIN EXPIRATION NOTICE", there was a block of tiny little print that gave the scam away.
Just out of curiosity, what did the tiny little print say? Was it "THIS IS A SCAM" or something?
(On an entirely different subject, "Slow down, Cowboy" is really getting on by nerves. I don't have a better suggestion, but Slashcode seems to take particular pleasure from punishing those of us who know what we wanna say and type fast. Of course, it's even worse when I post from the office (gasp!) with IE on Windows. Once you hit the "submit" button, your post is gone, gone, gone. If you get a "slow down cowboy" or other error, the "back" button is suicide. Okay, that killed about enough time I suppose.)
For example: the large, national "Dick's Sporting Goods" is *not* at "dicks.com", it's at "dickssportinggoods.com".
Pretty unpleasant mistake to make, that.
It reminds me of a story I heard from a good friend. Back in the early 90's his mother was just getting into this "Internet" thing. She had some kind of business related to selling kids' toys. There's a brand of kids' toys called "Little Tykes," and she wanted to find their web site.
What did she do? She went to altavista.digital.com (remember that?) and typed "little tykes." She was unpleasantly surprised at the results.
Of course, this was in the days BG-- before Google. Right now, Google returns several pages of kid-related material when given the phrase "little tykes," and not a bit of kiddie porn.
Let's see, this is talking about RealNames' largest investor and how companies like RealNames hurt the industry, and it's marked Offtopic? Mods on crack...
Actually, it seems to me that it's a moderator's rejection of the late trend that everything on Slashdot is about how bad Microsoft is.
I tried to find a recent article that had no comments above 0 about how Microsoft is bad, but I came up with nothing.
The tapes are rather big, and a little sticker on the insertion slot show a yellow triangle, an hand reaching into the slot, and a line through it.
I guess this is a little off-topic, but the topic is lame anyway so who cares?
My all-time favorite warning label can be seen on the inside of Ampex DST 812 tape libraries. (Maybe others in that series, too, but mine was a DST 812.)
These things are pretty big-- about eight feet across and four feet deep, with a pair of large doors on the back for access to the tape robotics.
This is a little tough to describe, but try to picture it. The tape drives are in a stack on the left side of the library (viewed from the front). The middle of the library is tape storage, and the right is power supplies and robotics and stuff. There is a big beam that runs down the center of the library, and the robot arm moves left and right along that beam. The arm itself is a big piece of steel with the manipulator and optics mounted on it.
This library has some serious motors in it. When the robot arm needs to go from the left extreme to the right extreme-- a distance of about six feet, I guess-- it makes the trip in about a tenth of a second. Whoom! So fast the whole 2,500 pound chassis shakes a little from absorbing the momentum of the arm when it stops.
Obviously, you're only supposed to have the access doors open when the power is off. There are lots of circuit switches built into the doors to ensure that the power gets cut if the doors are opened. Nevertheless, there's a warning label.
The label, bright yellow, depicts one of those stick-figure people all labels have. He's leaning forward with his head in the back of the machine. The robot arm is coming at him, and the red lightning bolts coming from the place where the arm meets his black-dot head indicate impact, agony, and grievous injury.
All in all, it's pretty darned explicit for a warning label.
The Seattle SGI (now mostly defunct) office workers would toss in $800,000 Origin servers into their little-beat-up-imports.
I don't mean to be rude, but either you're exaggerating like crazy or you don't know what you're talking about. I used to work on $800,000 worth of SGI equipment (more or less), and the only import it could be hauled in was a 15' truck. It was about four racks, each of 'em six feet tall, absolutely filled with gear.
If you own a Land Rover or a Hummer or something else big, and you try really hard, you might be able to spend $500,000 on SGI systems to fill it. But that's paying list price for everything and buying lots and lots of SGI RAM.
If you were just exaggerating to be funny, then never mind.
Although you are right on about the pornography thing, though. There was a while there in the mid 90s when SGI Challenge servers served up an awful lot of porn, judging by the data centers I used to work in.
At least look it up first. "Storey" is a fairly common, albeit somewhat old-fashioned, spelling for the word that means a level of a building. This is as distinct from "story," meaning a tale. "Storeys" is an accepted word, found almost exclusively in the UK, for what us Americans would most likely call "floors."
The worst kind of nitpicker is a mistaken nitpicker.
It couldn't have been a land-line either, as the phone system in the US won't give you a dial tone if the other party hangs up. [...] Obviously whoever wrote that scene hasn't used a phone for about ten years. Or maybe just never got hung up on.
Friend, this is not a new observation. There are certain conceits that we use in making movies and TV shows that are not realistic in the strictest sense. We use them because they make for a better movie, or because the audience is used to seeing or hearing them.
For example, find any movie from the past forty years or so that features a scene of two people driving as seen from the hood of the car. Chances are good that the car has no rear-view mirror. In some instances, you can even see the spot on the windshield where the mirror used to be mounted. Chances are also pretty good that you never noticed. That's because some directors feel-- rightly or wrongly-- that the presence of the mirror right in the middle of the screen, between the two characters, is distracting or unappealing to the audience. So it goes. This is not an error. It's a very deliberate choice to deviate from strict realism in an effort to more effectively tell the story.
Same basic thing with the dial tone anomaly you mentioned. In movies, when the character on the other end hangs up, you hear a dial tone immediately. Not because that's what you would hear in real life, but because the movie or TV show works better that way. It's kind of like a little clue to the audience: hey, so-n-so just hung up. You, sitting in the theater, get the point immediately, and the story moves on.
That's the thing with movies and such. If it advances the story, it's okay. Movies exist to entertain, and they don't lose points for inaccuracy.
So basically what are commonly referred to as movie mistakes break down into three broad categories: plot holes, continuity errors, and deliberate decisions to differ from the strictly realistic.
You don't get any geek points for finding moments in movies where the director-- or sound man, or whatever-- deliberately chose to break with reality. That's part of what making movies is all about.
Nobody cares about continuity, either; hell, Kubrick even used continuity breaks as a stylistic conceit. Remember the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange? There are continuity breaks all through that scene; they were deliberate, intended to make the scene more frenetic and disorienting to the audience. More recently, Spielberg did the same thing in a couple of scenes in Schindler's List. But in general, if you go looking for accidental continuity breaks, you will find them. There's nothing exciting or cool about them.
As for plot holes, we can talk about those if you want. Sometimes people cite plot holes that aren't holes at all, like the fact that nobody guesses that Clark Kent is Superman despite the fact that they look exactly alike. That's not a plot hole, it's a plot feature. Other plot holes arise as a result of the movie-making process: the fifth replicant in Blade Runner that later got ret-conned into being Deckard himself. Other plot holes are legitimate, but they ultimately are like that one loose thread on your sweater. You could pull it, but the whole sleeve may unravel. So you just leave it alone, and keep on wearing your warm, comfy sweater.
"Movie mistakes" are, in my opinion, just not all that interesting.
So what you're saying is that the person who was correcting the sales drone's mistakes and lies shouldn't do that because it isn't polite?
No, he's saying that attempting to make someone or something (say, a movie) sound dumb by pointing out lots of irrelevant errors or seeming errors actually backfires; you end up making yourself sound dumb by revealing the fact that you've completely missed the point.
I'm on a crusade. I intend to post a comment like this one whenever I see anybody use "virii." Please don't interpret this comment as either endorsement of or disagreement with the parent post. Moderators: with your help, we can wipe out "virii" in our lifetime!
The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."
Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.
The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.
For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:
virus, viri (neuter)
(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)
The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)
So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.
Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."
Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.
It's "Black Hawk," not "Blackhawk." If you had only done it once, I would have assumed it was a typo. Apparently it wasn't.
Have some respect.
Whether or not Black Hawk Down was a good movie-- it wasn't, especially-- has nothing to do with respect, or lack thereof. If anything, I think the movie did a dishonor to the men who fought in that battle, because it left audiences with the impression that they were just anonymous soldiers, instead of real people.
Slashdot Mirror
Um... yeah. Or you could just go with the "magnetic field" interpretation and have done with it.
Sure, we'd be using gigameters to measure stuff, and time would need to be completely resorted, but I'm sure it would work out well in the end...
One of my favorite authors likes to measure time in seconds. (He writes far-future science fiction.) His most recent book includes a cheat-sheet in the front mapping traditional units of time (hours, years, whatnot) to seconds. If I remember right, one kilosecond is about fifteen minutes, and one megasecond is just over 10 days. One year is a little more than 30 megaseconds.
I'll stick with days, weeks, and months, if you please.
How can several thousand tons of TNT not harm someone if he or she is hit?
I think geologists talk about energy in a different way than what you and I are accustomed to. I seem to remember reading somewhere-- it's too late to go searching now, sorry-- that the Hiroshima explosion released about the same amount of energy as a magnitude 6 earthquake. While a magnitude 6 quake is certainly not a small temblor, it's not a city-flattener, either.
I think the difference is that much of the energy from a bomb blast is released as heat, resulting in fires and whatnot; also, a bomb results in a very large air shock wave, which does quite a bit of physical damage.
An earthquake, on the other hand, releases its energy underground. Say you took the entire state of Wyoming and dropped it one centimeter: wham! The amount of energy involved would be astronomical, but the net result would be barely enough to rattle your good china.
It's not very scientific, but a search on Google for 'unexplained explosion' comes up with over 14,000 items...
;-)
Yes, but a search on Google for "unexplained fish" comes up with over 23,000 items. What's your point?
"Fairly lengthy"? You mean the "Mousing Around" tutorial? The one with the fish bowl and the little piano keyboard? I'm not sure I'd describe it as "lengthy".
If memory serves me right, it was about five minutes or so, maybe even longer than that. For something which, twenty years later, we call "intuitive," that's pretty extensive training.
Okay, so you wrote a long skreed about how "intuitive" is a fundamentally meaningless term. Unfortunately, I think that's because you're confused about what "intuitive" means, as applied to technology and whatnot.
When I sat down at my first Mac in the summer of '84, I went through a fairly lengthy training program about how to use the mouse. It was the first thing that popped up when you turned on the computer, and it covered stuff like what "click" means, versus "click-and-hold," "click-and-drag," or "double-click." It pointed out the fact that you can pick up the mouse and move it to another place on the table without moving the pointer. These things weren't obvious. They had to be taught.
Years later, pretty much everybody in the 6-60 age bracket knows how to use a computer mouse. We think of computer mice as being "intuitive" because using them involves applying skills that we all acquired long ago.
But change some fundamental way that the mouse works. Say instead of using a button to click, you had to push the mouse forward slightly, then pull it back toward you. This would strike you as awkward and-- presto!-- unintuitive.
In this context, "unintuitive" means "differs from established custom in a significant and noticeable way."
It is obvious from the contents of the above post that the insurance industry's greed is to blame for the fact that in the high-tech decade of '00, our cars have seen few improvements over the mechanical controls that ran them in the 1960s.
And me without any mod points. Somebody please throw a +1, Funny or two at the parent of this post. I think it's hilarious.
assumed (absolute) by who ?
I suggest you do some reading on the subject of morality and ethics. The existence of moral or ethical systems is predicated on the assumption that the actions of people are either right or wrong, just or unjust, virtue or vice. Moral systems attempt to provide a framework for deciding which actions are right and which are wrong. People can argue about the various pros and cons of the various moral systems if they want to, but frankly that kind of debate bores me. I have a set of values that I try to live by. If yours are different, that's fine, but it doesn't change the fact that my system is absolute for myself, just like yours is (should be!) absolute for yourself.
so there can be no "absolute" set of values.
What you're describing is what I was taught to call "moral relativism." And I believe it's fine in the abstract; if you're an anthropologist or a philosopher, it's important to put your own opinions and values aside in the process of studying your subject. But in practice, that is in actual interactions between people, I think "moral relativism" is dangerous and wrong.
to be a moral person, in my view, is to balance the good of society and fellow citizens with your family, and act to the better interest of all.
Fine. I have a different view. My view is basically, "I'll take care of mine. You take care of yours." If someone truly needs help, I believe the right thing to do is help them if you can. That's called charity, and it works on a person-to-person level. But I put absolutely zero stock in "the better interest of all."
You also cannot (legally) choose not to be taxed, it is an inforced bargain.
Oh, that's not literally true. I could choose to leave my city, county, state, or country. And I know people who have done that very thing (on the county, not national, level) over property taxes. Their opinion was different from mine, but I respect them for making a tough choice.
But in general, you're right. I can't opt out of paying my taxes in any direct way. The justification for this is that I am entitled to a voice in my government-- either simply through voting or through holding office myself-- that I can use to influence these policies. So while it's definitely not perfect, it's at least fair.
taking the distribution of wealth as a function, the amount of discontent is a function of it's gradient
I think you mean "slope," not "gradient." The slope of a function of one variable is the time rate change of that function over an interval.
"Gradient," on the other hand, is the idea of slope applied to multivariable calculus. A function of two variables defines a surface, and the gradient of the surface at a given point is represented by a vector. The magnitude of the vector corresponds to the greatest rate of change of the surface away from that point, and the direction of the vector is the direction of greatest change.
property laws and morals should benefit human beings, not the other way around.
But that's not right at all. Morality is assumed to be an absolute system that dictates what people should and shouldn't do. Different moral systems are based on different fundamental assumptions-- rules handed down by a deity, or something else entirely-- but they're all considered to be absolute.
Basically you're taking the opposite position from mine. You're trying to say that economic systems should be rational, based on such-and-such criteria. I'm saying that a perfectly rational system with a flawed moral foundation-- communism-- can't work, and should not be implemented. Any benefits gained from that system would be "poisoned."
In your post you implied-- although you didn't say, so I may be reading you wrong-- that wealth should be a reward for productivity: "that's what wrong with your assumption: you own what you produce + what father produced, hence the 'equity lords' don't need to produce anything, they'll still get richer." Therefore-- again, I'm inferring here-- you believe that the wealthiest individuals should be the most productive individuals.
That's where pure rationalism breaks down. If my father had left me one billion dollars when he died, then I would have inherited that one billion dollars and become very wealthy having produced nothing. According to your evaluation, that would be bad.
So your answer is taxation: the government should take from my inheritance to reduce the degree to which I gain wealth without being productive.
Whenever anybody says a sentence of the form, "The government should do X," I replace "the government" with "Joe Smith." If what's being proposed would be morally or ethically wrong for a person-- Joe Smith-- then it's wrong for the government.
So let's try that: "So your answer is taxation: Joe Smith should take from my inheritance to reduce the degree to which I gain wealth without being productive."
Taking something that rightfully belongs to me is tantamount, in my mind, to stealing from me. So that's wrong.
(Before you get all excited, the same argument doesn't apply to taxation in general. In that sense, the government [Joe Smith] is providing me with certain services in return for my money. That's a morally sound transaction. But I don't get anything in return for paying inheritance taxes. So that's morally unsound.)
Why don't you start a crusade to stamp out the word "television" instead of wasting your time on a mild (and admittedly not-very-funny) joke.
Because-- and I thought I made this perfectly clear-- "virii" was used in this context as a serious plural, with no sense of irony implied. That's not a joke. That's an error.
Like I pointed out in my previous post, "boxen" as the plural of "box," like "VAXen" as the plural of "VAX," derives its certain humor from the irony of the English language itself. If itself, "boxen" is a sort of joke about English. There's no good reason why one ox plus one ox is oxen but one box plus one box is boxes. It's just one of those irregularities. In other words, if a person honestly didn't know the plural of "box" and guessed "boxen," it wouldn't be a dumb mistake.
My circle of friends had a similar little joke in college: one deer plus one deer is two deer. Likewise, one beer plus one beer should be two beer. How many beer have you had tonight? I've had four beer. It was silly, but entertaining. Especially after four beer.
"Virii," on the other hand, comes apparently from nowhere. There's no rational system of pluralization-- or even a decent precedent in irregular pluralization-- that would lead someone from "virus" to "virii." If you want you can say "viri," although that's confusing ("vir" was "man" in Latin, and "viri" was "men"). Or you can say "virora," in parallel with "corpus" and "corpora," but scholars think that's probably wrong, and besides it's really hard to pronounce correctly. (The accent would be on the first syllable: "VYE-ror-uh," like "COR-por-uh.")
The bottom line is that "virii" is a made-up word. If you're going to play games with words, play by the rules. I don't care which set of rules you use, but play by some rules. There is no set of language rules-- from English, Greek, or Latin-- that would lead one to believe "virii" to be the plural of "virus."
So using "virii" in any sense, ironic or otherwise, just makes you sound ignorant. Even worse, it makes you sound like you're an ignorant person who thinks they sound like an educated person.
Communists? Who cares? Yes, communism ultimatly failed, but, in a perfect world without corruption and greed, it would make for a perfect system. [...] Communism was one answer (opinion: it was a step in the right direction, but the step was much to large).
I don't usually like responding to ACs, especially ones who are so very wrong, but what the heck.
I used to hold that same opinion. Then, over a span of a dozen years or so, my opinion changed. I started thinking about the moral case of communism versus capitalism, and that put things in an entirely different light.
The practical case for communism is clear: improve the quality of life for all through collective ownership of the means of production. If it worked without flaws, I think it probably would, in fact, reduce things like poverty and inequity. From this, it makes a sort of sense that communism should be tried.
But the moral case is very different. Put simply, and as I understand it, capitalism is based on the assumption that you own what you produce. Communism is based on the assumption that you do not own what you produce. In other words, in a capitalist world, if I plant a field and grow corn, it's mine to do with as I will: eat it, hoard it, sell it, or let it rot in the fields. In a communist world, that corn rightfully belongs to the state as a whole-- not in the sense of state as government, but in the sense of the group of all people who live in my community/county/world/whatever. Government is just a necessary evil to enact the will of the people as a whole.
The moral case for capitalism just makes more sense to me: the corn (or whatever) wouldn't exist without me, so I own it. If you want corn, grow your own. The fact that communism is based on an opposite idea means that, to me, it's tantamount to stealing my corn. That pretty much ruins the moral case in my eyes.
Yes, capitalism leads fairly directly to bad things, like poverty and such, but that's not the point. Are you familiar with the idea of fruit from a poisoned tree? It's a legal doctrine; you can probably learn more by googling "Felix Frankfurter." No, seriously. Stop laughing.
The doctrine of fruit from a poisoned tree simply says that anything you gain through improper means is itself improper. The legal use of this doctrine applies to rules of evidence, but it's also useful for considering moral issues. Basically, the idea is the opposite of the old saw, "The ends justify the means."
So, given that communism springs from a fundamentally wrong moral position (this is ultimately a judgment call, of course) that's our poisoned tree. The benefits we might reap from it-- like reducing poverty and inequity and all that-- are the fruit. When I thought of it in those terms, that pretty much decided it for me.
Like I said though, this is fundamentally a judgment call. It's just unfortunate that the ideals of communism enacted through a few powerful men have turned out to be so very dangerous. I'm almost to the point where I'm willing to say that the ideas themselves are dangerous, due to their potential for abuse and horror.
At the back of this "DOMAIN EXPIRATION NOTICE", there was a block of tiny little print that gave the scam away.
Just out of curiosity, what did the tiny little print say? Was it "THIS IS A SCAM" or something?
(On an entirely different subject, "Slow down, Cowboy" is really getting on by nerves. I don't have a better suggestion, but Slashcode seems to take particular pleasure from punishing those of us who know what we wanna say and type fast. Of course, it's even worse when I post from the office (gasp!) with IE on Windows. Once you hit the "submit" button, your post is gone, gone, gone. If you get a "slow down cowboy" or other error, the "back" button is suicide. Okay, that killed about enough time I suppose.)
For example: the large, national "Dick's Sporting Goods" is *not* at "dicks.com", it's at "dickssportinggoods.com".
Pretty unpleasant mistake to make, that.
It reminds me of a story I heard from a good friend. Back in the early 90's his mother was just getting into this "Internet" thing. She had some kind of business related to selling kids' toys. There's a brand of kids' toys called "Little Tykes," and she wanted to find their web site.
What did she do? She went to altavista.digital.com (remember that?) and typed "little tykes." She was unpleasantly surprised at the results.
Of course, this was in the days BG-- before Google. Right now, Google returns several pages of kid-related material when given the phrase "little tykes," and not a bit of kiddie porn.
Sort of a bittersweet moment, actually.
Let's see, this is talking about RealNames' largest investor and how companies like RealNames hurt the industry, and it's marked Offtopic? Mods on crack...
Actually, it seems to me that it's a moderator's rejection of the late trend that everything on Slashdot is about how bad Microsoft is.
I tried to find a recent article that had no comments above 0 about how Microsoft is bad, but I came up with nothing.
The tapes are rather big, and a little sticker on the insertion slot show a yellow triangle, an hand reaching into the slot, and a line through it.
I guess this is a little off-topic, but the topic is lame anyway so who cares?
My all-time favorite warning label can be seen on the inside of Ampex DST 812 tape libraries. (Maybe others in that series, too, but mine was a DST 812.)
These things are pretty big-- about eight feet across and four feet deep, with a pair of large doors on the back for access to the tape robotics.
This is a little tough to describe, but try to picture it. The tape drives are in a stack on the left side of the library (viewed from the front). The middle of the library is tape storage, and the right is power supplies and robotics and stuff. There is a big beam that runs down the center of the library, and the robot arm moves left and right along that beam. The arm itself is a big piece of steel with the manipulator and optics mounted on it.
This library has some serious motors in it. When the robot arm needs to go from the left extreme to the right extreme-- a distance of about six feet, I guess-- it makes the trip in about a tenth of a second. Whoom! So fast the whole 2,500 pound chassis shakes a little from absorbing the momentum of the arm when it stops.
Obviously, you're only supposed to have the access doors open when the power is off. There are lots of circuit switches built into the doors to ensure that the power gets cut if the doors are opened. Nevertheless, there's a warning label.
The label, bright yellow, depicts one of those stick-figure people all labels have. He's leaning forward with his head in the back of the machine. The robot arm is coming at him, and the red lightning bolts coming from the place where the arm meets his black-dot head indicate impact, agony, and grievous injury.
All in all, it's pretty darned explicit for a warning label.
The Seattle SGI (now mostly defunct) office workers would toss in $800,000 Origin servers into their little-beat-up-imports.
I don't mean to be rude, but either you're exaggerating like crazy or you don't know what you're talking about. I used to work on $800,000 worth of SGI equipment (more or less), and the only import it could be hauled in was a 15' truck. It was about four racks, each of 'em six feet tall, absolutely filled with gear.
If you own a Land Rover or a Hummer or something else big, and you try really hard, you might be able to spend $500,000 on SGI systems to fill it. But that's paying list price for everything and buying lots and lots of SGI RAM.
If you were just exaggerating to be funny, then never mind.
Although you are right on about the pornography thing, though. There was a while there in the mid 90s when SGI Challenge servers served up an awful lot of porn, judging by the data centers I used to work in.
(warning: make sure your midgets are strong.)
Jeez, would you guys cool it already? My fortune file is big enough as it is!
The plural usage is "Stories"
At least look it up first. "Storey" is a fairly common, albeit somewhat old-fashioned, spelling for the word that means a level of a building. This is as distinct from "story," meaning a tale. "Storeys" is an accepted word, found almost exclusively in the UK, for what us Americans would most likely call "floors."
The worst kind of nitpicker is a mistaken nitpicker.
It couldn't have been a land-line either, as the phone system in the US won't give you a dial tone if the other party hangs up. [...] Obviously whoever wrote that scene hasn't used a phone for about ten years. Or maybe just never got hung up on.
Friend, this is not a new observation. There are certain conceits that we use in making movies and TV shows that are not realistic in the strictest sense. We use them because they make for a better movie, or because the audience is used to seeing or hearing them.
For example, find any movie from the past forty years or so that features a scene of two people driving as seen from the hood of the car. Chances are good that the car has no rear-view mirror. In some instances, you can even see the spot on the windshield where the mirror used to be mounted. Chances are also pretty good that you never noticed. That's because some directors feel-- rightly or wrongly-- that the presence of the mirror right in the middle of the screen, between the two characters, is distracting or unappealing to the audience. So it goes. This is not an error. It's a very deliberate choice to deviate from strict realism in an effort to more effectively tell the story.
Same basic thing with the dial tone anomaly you mentioned. In movies, when the character on the other end hangs up, you hear a dial tone immediately. Not because that's what you would hear in real life, but because the movie or TV show works better that way. It's kind of like a little clue to the audience: hey, so-n-so just hung up. You, sitting in the theater, get the point immediately, and the story moves on.
That's the thing with movies and such. If it advances the story, it's okay. Movies exist to entertain, and they don't lose points for inaccuracy.
So basically what are commonly referred to as movie mistakes break down into three broad categories: plot holes, continuity errors, and deliberate decisions to differ from the strictly realistic.
You don't get any geek points for finding moments in movies where the director-- or sound man, or whatever-- deliberately chose to break with reality. That's part of what making movies is all about.
Nobody cares about continuity, either; hell, Kubrick even used continuity breaks as a stylistic conceit. Remember the rape scene in A Clockwork Orange? There are continuity breaks all through that scene; they were deliberate, intended to make the scene more frenetic and disorienting to the audience. More recently, Spielberg did the same thing in a couple of scenes in Schindler's List. But in general, if you go looking for accidental continuity breaks, you will find them. There's nothing exciting or cool about them.
As for plot holes, we can talk about those if you want. Sometimes people cite plot holes that aren't holes at all, like the fact that nobody guesses that Clark Kent is Superman despite the fact that they look exactly alike. That's not a plot hole, it's a plot feature. Other plot holes arise as a result of the movie-making process: the fifth replicant in Blade Runner that later got ret-conned into being Deckard himself. Other plot holes are legitimate, but they ultimately are like that one loose thread on your sweater. You could pull it, but the whole sleeve may unravel. So you just leave it alone, and keep on wearing your warm, comfy sweater.
"Movie mistakes" are, in my opinion, just not all that interesting.
If you can ever get away with beating an idiot with a newspaper, do it; otherwise, you may regret it for the rest of your life.
Fortune file, here we come.
So what you're saying is that the person who was correcting the sales drone's mistakes and lies shouldn't do that because it isn't polite?
No, he's saying that attempting to make someone or something (say, a movie) sound dumb by pointing out lots of irrelevant errors or seeming errors actually backfires; you end up making yourself sound dumb by revealing the fact that you've completely missed the point.
Oh god, why am I feeding the troll??
Maybe I should ask myself that.
That's funny. When I post to Slashdot, I get client-side spell-checking right there in the text box.
Of course, I'm using the best web browser on the best platform, so your mileage my vary.
As these are monopolies...
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."
Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.
More plural-of-virus resources:
perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
The alt.comp.virus FAQ
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.
Blackhawk Down
It's "Black Hawk," not "Blackhawk." If you had only done it once, I would have assumed it was a typo. Apparently it wasn't.
Have some respect.
Whether or not Black Hawk Down was a good movie-- it wasn't, especially-- has nothing to do with respect, or lack thereof. If anything, I think the movie did a dishonor to the men who fought in that battle, because it left audiences with the impression that they were just anonymous soldiers, instead of real people.