99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed!
I must be in that 1%, then.
I complain about SO/OO, Abiword, and every other OSS word processor because, quite simply, the spell checking sucks. I rely on it to catch a whole bunch of common spelling errors--and when writing very long documents, they come up.
I tried one of them recently (I think it was Open Office) and it opened the file just fine. But when I turned on "spell check on the fly", the darn thing drew a squiggly line under every ellipss (sp--it's late) and em-dash that I had. Show me a way to fix those (without coding) in a Win32 OOS word processor, and I'll switch and encourage everyone around me to switch.
The days of the intrepid dog fighting pilot have been over for some time anyway... I suppose this is just a natural extension of that.
Kindly name a country that can field a force capable of taking on either the Air Force or the Navy. heck, we can limit it to just one Navy carrier group.
(If that country's on the UN Security Council, put it down and try again.)
When we started using cruise missles, we were called cowards. When we started using tanks, we were called cowards. When we started using machine guns, regular guns, pike squares, and siege warfare, we were called cowards. When we started using arrows for war or just plain throwing sticks, we were called cowards.
"Coward" is a word that should be limited to people who refuse to take risk and fail--not those that refuse to take a risk they can find a way around, and win.
The only reason our enemies call us cowards is because, if we were to fight them on their own terf, they'd have slightly better than a snowball's chance in hell against us.
The christian god as outlined by modern religion is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, knows all things, sees all things, knows the past, the future and the present. An inconvenient fact in logic even if you take the bible itself as gospel with no regard whatsoever to the mortal laws of science which he have so far been able to find quite a degree of reliability in, is that in the above passage, god has regrets for his actions.
Omnipotent, omniscient, all knowing, all seeing creatures need never have regrets and need never make mistakes, this is in the earliest part of the bible, and already there are self-referencing logical inconsitencies
No part of God's description says "does not make mistakes." Every creative mind in the history of minds makes mistakes when creating. The fact that God didn't go back and start over (this time) doesn't dispute His ability to do so.
God does make mistakes. Sometimes, His not correcting them is a matter of preserving free will of His creations. Othertimes, it's a simple matter of not being worth the disruption to His Creation to fix the flaw.
You may also note that you refer to an assumed negative with disdain in your post, yet in the same fashion your entire religion is based upon a great many assumed positives
Not really. I first began to believe in God through the words of others--just like a student learns to believe that Newton's laws really are laws. Then I began to experience life for myself, and found that God's word really did make sense.
The difference between my religion and my scientific knowledge is that the latter is sure and proven, while the former is tenuous and requires either human faith or direct human experience.
Science is an empirical evaluation of the laws of the universe that we are presented with, to the best degree we are able to fathom. Religion is an organised form of spirituallity seeking to answer the most complex questions in existence with fables and bedtime stories.
In my experience, science is an attempt to deify the simple rules of existance, often at the unnecessary expense of religion. Religion, on the other hand, is an attempt to answer the most complex questions of existence ("why?") with wisdom and truth.
Of course, it doesn't help that there's no easy way to objectively proove a false religion false.
Science doesn't know everything, but then a true scientist never assumes to know everything, that is the entire point of science and why it is a Good Idea (tm). Everything that is observed in science is checked and peer reviewed with no small degree of skepticism and each and every theory has it's own empirically verifiable evidence, correlating usually as to how well that theory is accepted in the minds of the scientific.
I have yet to meet a "scientist" who didn't act as if they had all the answers. I will readilly admit this might be due to lack of experience, but from what I've seen as many new theories as not aren't subjected to the proper peer review--but then again, I must plead lack of experience.
Religion proposes all the answers, justifies none of it's position, and asks it's followers for fealty and ignorance. In exchange it promises the unverifiable and when resisted it does the same, except in a far less pleasant fashion.
My relationship with God is not quite like what you describe. Not all of the answeres are provided for me--just the basic ones. If I want to find out why, it's up to me to determine that.
In exchange for this, I am promised that displays of faith will be rewarded, abiet not in a manner that I can predict. So far, this has held true.
So, I'm scientifically in the same boat as the "theory" that the world will not be suddenly shattered by a meteorite. (I know, not a scientific theory...;) )
Don't misunderstand my meaning though, I did state that science does not have all the answers, there are things that at the moment we just don't know, and perhaps we'll never know them. The point is that it does not pretend to, only religion does.
The problem, though, is that science all too often forgets that it doesn't have all the answers, and tries to answer things that simply cannot be proven.
(To go out on a lark--the laws of evolution and the observed evolution of species does not refute the story of the garden of eden--it just explains where all those wives came from.)
Once, Christianity really did have this problem. We've since narrowed the spectrum of questions. (or, if you rather, increased the kind of questions that should be answered "go ask a specialist.")
Hmm.... and as for personalized spirituallity--it's great to an extent, but it's just too much when "do your own thing" is stretched into "it's bad to tell someone that they're bad.":(
2: The English translation of Leviticus 11 mistates a scientific fact.
Not being able to check the hebrew readilly, I'll just assume that the translation is accurate. Even ignoring that it's out of context, a lack of scientific accuracy in the kosher laws doesn't disrupt my religion one bit.
Heck, it actually helps hammer home some points to remember, like "The bible was written for the present-day people then, and allowances for passing time have to be made." or "man can and has advanced. Yay man."
In any case, the kosher laws were either (1) written by a Jew with limited scientific knowledge but permission to speak for God or (2) written by God Himself. If (1), his scientific ignorance is understandable and forgiveable. If (2), He probably did it to not confuse the Jews.
Ok, then. If that's our standard of evidence, prove that, oh, the United States of America rebelled from Great Brittain. First person evidence only, please.;)
Kindly name one--any one--and I'll tell you why I don't find it "inconvenient." Please limit your responses to "facts" that are proven positives, not assumed negatives like "there is no God."
The basic fact of religion is that God has stated many times that He doesn't want to be easily found--hence, no fact should be hard to accept for anyone of a religious mind.
I will agree that "scientific creationism" is bad science. It's much more logical to simply look for "How did God create the universe" or "why did God create the universe this way?" Of course, many religious authorities have historically countered "science"'s illogical refutation of religion with equally bad logic.
Jack is the environment in a fictional series of books that showed up in Fight Club, that was written from the POV of a part of Jack's (or Jane's) anatomy. "I am Jack's kneecap." "I am Jane's nipple."
It's from Fight Club--but you allready knew that.:)
I don't think it's too hard to see what BMG brings to the table. The question is, what does Napster have that would make BMG want to pay them for it?
A name. Like it or not, Napster *still* has a strong trademark. Just like car companies can bring out the names of old car models & increase their market, BMG can label their new MP3 service "Napster" and get a bigger chunk of the market.
BMG, and the rest of RIAA, can sell something that no file-sharing app can get you. Legallity and legitimacy.
There is a price-point where people will pay to have a legal right to the song that's allready illegally on their computer. If BMG can figure out the right price point, they can make a profit selling nothing but legitimacy.
Personally, I'd give them my legal name, home address, and give them permission to track me until the day I die IF I can get a full legal title to the music I buy. I want to be able to get a "replacement media" discount on a new copy of my destroyed CD. I want to be able to download lossless song files to burn me a custom album, and have it be 100% legit.
I won't pay $50 a month to do this. I would pay $5 a year. Somewhere in between those two, I would have to reserve judgement until the offer's been made.
If BMG can provide what I want, I will buy from them.
That scene made the character lose a lot of credibility in my eyes, and I must say, I was always a fan of Yoda. I worry for the Jedi, because you just know that sooner or later, someone in that galaxy is going to discover actual lasers (you know, devices which emit energy that really travels at the speed of light!). I'd like to see Yoda parry that!
Actual lasers aren't really worth it as a weapon. They're great for targeting et al, but for the actual weapon they're sub-par.
The Star Wars blasters aren't "laser guns." They're "plasma blob guns." Instead of pushing out energy that has to reach the entire line between the weapon and the target at all times, they just generate a fad wad of rather-high-energy-matter-that's-still-matter and hurl it as fast as they can at the enemy.
I'm not sure what you deem as credible, or what you deem as quality, but the simple fact is that D&D books, including Salvatore's, have been around for years. And the popular ones, some of Salvatore's included, continue to be reprinted because people continue to read, and re-read them.
(I'm well versed in WotC corporate structure. They were recently bought by Hasbro, actually.)
I love books. I love fantasy books. I love good fantasy books that happen to take palce in a D&D setting.
But, really, TSR/WotC has printed some of the worst books ever to hit the market--and they were the ones that were tied to RPG releases, rather than standing on their own. Aside from the original Dragonlance series, *every time* a D&D game products has been made into a novel, it has sucked.
A good friend of mine (www.dragonlancebooks.com) gets review copies, and I've read some of the ones he won't. Trust me--they're bad.
WotC also doesn't publish anything BUT D&D books. Hence, they're a niche publisher.
Just a note on the verbose fight scenes in the book. The reviewer is clearly unfamiliar with Salvatore's writing style. In depth fight scenes are what made Drizzt a legend in the Forgotten Realms world and it's not suprise to see Salvatore sticking with what worked in the past.
Hey, I'm a big Salvatore fan, and well done fight scenes are a great thing in a fantasy book. But this is also the man who wrote Vector Prime, so I can't assume he did a good job here until I read it myself. (and that "rage rage rage" bit doesn't help matters.)
retarded people have, and should have, all the rights of a normal person, even if the average chawowow can outthink them on a good day
1: They don't. Retarded people, legally, are not "full people" any more than a child is. Legally incompetent people are denied some pretty basic rights (ability to petition for redress of grievances) for a pretty good reason.
2: Why should they have *any* rights? Any system needs to have its basic assumptions laid out, and followed as closely as possible. (I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I disagree with faulty legal reasoning.)
Heck, move back to your original point. Why should humans give nonhumans *any* rights? (Especially before we meet any of them.) Sapient nonhumans who arise from us can petition for rights. Sapient nonhunmans who arise from outside us (another plannet, spontaneously evolving fish) can communicate with us and work out a matter of civilized decorum when it happens.
Banning technologies and cowering behind our outdated religious myths does nothing to prepare us for these eventuality
I don't know what part of that offends me more. We don't *know* that nonhuman intelligence is possible. It could be that, beyond a certain point, you need to have a soul to be intelligent, and only humans have souls. (Note the "could be", please.)
Our religious mythology serves to support and inspire us--and it's a natural state of our being to have such mythology. If you want to create a new religion, go right ahead, but don't be surprised if you've got an uphil battle finding wisdom after throwing the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years away out of spite.
we will react in exactly the wrong way, with prejudice and ethno- or speciecentrism
Both of those two -isms are exactly the natural reaction, and are *only* wrong when they harm other -isms of the same catagory. The Native Americans sure as heck weren't thinking "maybe these Eurpeans really do get it" any more than the settlers, and it's only once we started abusing them that our ethnocentrism becamse a bad thing.
Diplomacy should be practiced when meeting any new intelligence, human or not. We don't need to kill our natural -isms to achieve diploamcy.
('intelligent computers have no soul' claim theologens, for example, or 'we created the creature, we are its god, it can never be our equal', both of which are appallingly unethical and quite probably false assumptions to be making, but appear to be our default stance on such things)
First off, let me start by stating that a real genuine intelligent computer probably would have a soul--at least, if it couldnt' be easily copied it would. (One of the defining characteristics of a soul is its uniqueness. Intelligent beings that have little variant throughout their species have a spirit, not a soul.)
As for creating the creature and always being lord and master--such ideas are the providence of science fiction nuts and the Church of Satan (read their website), not normal society. We've got a great system where people create new creatures that become better than them allready, and I suspect that we can successfully adapt it to new creatres as well.
On a theological note--any sin inherent in playing god is born by the creator, not the created.
I hope that when you mention Star Wars, though, you mean something more than the movies. I've only read a few Star Wars books, and so far I haven't seen anything that comes close to the level of obsessive-compulsive detail that Tolkein reached with The Silmarillion.
(Gotta remember to read the Silmarillion.)
Star Wars has quite a history of its own. If we simply limit ourselves to Lucas's work, he at least equals Tolkien's development of backstory.
Remember that the Silmarillion was published after LotR and, IIRC, posthumously as well. Once George Lucas Jr. follows Chris Tolkien's path and releases an annotated version of his daddy's work, I'm sure the depth will be there.
(Heck, if we're just going to measure depth by detail, don't forget that The Silmarillion was just a book, and that Lucas's got storyboards, several novels, and some diagrams to boot.;) )
Whose work represents more the "progress of useful Arts", mentioned in the Constitution: your own new musical creation, or the job of some drummer who applied his skill, style, and craft to play a sound which can be used indifferently in a great number of musical styles?
Better question: Who has the authority to decide who is more deserving of protection?
"Craft" has a real meaning in a creative sense. A composer "crafts" their work. A novelist "crafts" an outline. Both of these also "craft" styles, which give real value to their works that copyright allows them to collect on.
A performer also adds value to the music that they are given, and deserves protection of each specific performance. If the performer simply charges a fee that's too high, the interested party can simply hire a drummer of their own.
Oh, and about that "cannot afford" bit. Artists have no right to funds to create new art. They have to either save and self-finance, or convince others to support them. Shakesphere had to pay for his pens and his theature. Piccasso had to pay for his paint. A composer who does doesn't want to pay for a drummer can either learn to play the drums himself, convince a band that they can make money perofrming it, or apply to the government and convince them that he deserves funding.
The composer has no more right to steal the effort of a drummer than Microsoft has to steal Linus Torvald's coding efforts, or that Lucas has to steal the work of other special effect houses in Hollywood.
Tad William's Dragonbone Chair is... words abandon me. The whole trilogy, is excellent. There are things I'm sure I never did pick up on, it had many levels of subtley.
I read it. "Subtltey" it may have but, IMO, that's all it's got. I'm not sure if it's good enough to buy (borrowed it from a friend), but I'm pretty sure that it won't go on my list of 10-best books of all time.
And the books... if the same plot had been set in any other setting, it would have flopped. The first time I tried to read them they felt cliched. Then pushed myself to read the book before the movie, and I was able to read the entire darn thing. Fellowship was great. The Two Towers was respectable. But Return of the King...
The story ended halfway through the book, in a manner that was anticlimatic even counting for all of the derivites I've read, and then was expanded to fill the other half of the book with a rather vapous homecoming story that rested far too heavily on the literary grip the other books placed upon the reader--and then ended abruptly, to boot.
I think it's fair to say that the poor quality of most fantasy trilogies can be blamed on Tolkien.
As for inventing worlds with complex histories--Tolkien's not the only one. Weis & Hickman's Dragonlance, Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, Lucas's Star Wars, and others that I haven't had the pleasure of reading also have complex and rich histories. J.R.R.T. was the first, but he's hardly unique in the simple act of doing it. All that he's got is precedence.
As for the movie adaptation--If you've ever liked a movie, go see it. Or better yet, wait for the expanded DVD collection coming out later this year. (If you don't want to buy it, e-mail me a time this fall when you'll be in Albany NY.)
The movie takes some liberties with the script, but the changes all serve to better show the world and the characters than an unimaginitive translation would.
I think, and don't take this as gospel, Salvatore wrote down the synopsis of all his D&D games that he (aged 9 or so) played with his cocker spaniel puppy because no one else would play with him. Then, stretching all those notes into 400 page long manuscripts, he somehow blackmailed a publisher into turning them into real books. I mean, goddamn, I didn't expect it to be the the Dragonbon Chair or anything like that, but this was absolutely unreadable. It was, and still is, the only good excuse for illiteracy. *BARF* Should have let those memories remain repressed.
Wow, a fan of the Dragonborn Chair, critizing Dragonlance. (You probably think that LotR ended perfectly, too.)
Salvatore (& most of the other TSR authors) were in-house people who pitched books when the company started up their literary publishing arm. Considering that their chances of being "literary fiction" were next to nill, they mostly just focused on fun stories that, yes, probably would have made find D&D campaigns.
Pick up the books out of the trash, and look at their binding. They're published by either TSR or Wizards of the Coast--not a publishing house of any credulity, but rather a niche publisher that does an amazing job catering to the low-brow fantasy market.
You know, the part that still knows how to have fun and doesn't worry about "complexity" in their fantasies.
How, on fucking earth, did they manage to let him novelize this?
He wrote Vector Prime, and has recieved hate mail for following Lucas's orders. Margaret Weis was offered the project, but turned it down because of how controlling Lucas was.
AFAIK, there aren't any "first rate" authors doing Star Wars books. And the reason, quite simply, is because they aren't given enough control to make it artistically a good run. They're not writing their own story in Star Wars--they're writing yet another story that Lucas's book department wants written.
Another distortion of the basic idea came when they started granting copyrights to people who performed the works. Actors are not authors, singers are not authors. They are just doing a job, and should be paid - just once - for doing it, like all other workers. Why should Britney Spears or any other singer be paid millions for singing a song that someone else, probably a 9-to-5 office worker, wrote?
Because there's quite a lot of effort that goes into crafting a style--easily as much effort goes into RECORDING a song as does WRITING it. Plus, a performer's copyright only applies to their performance. Remember: the constitution was written before timeshifting music was possible at all.
If the intent of the Constitution were to be applied, only people who wrote something, be it books, plays, screen scripts, music, watever, would be entitled to own copyrights.
No, that'd be the letter. The Constitution's copyright / patent powers are there so Congress can protect the right of "creative people" to their work for a "limited time." The fact that both of these definitions has been extended to a much longer period of time is neither unexpected (we live longer, and people are creating new ways to create things) nor, in itself, a problem.
(The problem, btw, lies in distorting the IP rules to apply to something else [copyrighting what should be patented, patenting what should be trademarked] and continually pressing the "limited time" part of copyright.)
Any named political idea that is implemented by one group is flavored by that group.
Personally, I think that Communism just needs a slight alteration to encourage greater productivity and it'd work--but that's not going to happen, mostly because command economies are horribly inefficient.
;) And I don't think you're a communist. Just a/. poster.:) (I'm not one either. I'm a novelist, and commies have about as much political weight to them now as, oh, the KKK.)
1: It's an important part of any fictional setting to change. It's a principle that, without which, Spider-Man would never have met Mary Jane, Star Trek would still a campy western in space, and most of Shakesphere's play been rather dull.
2: I have no idea what they were thinking, or why they decided to pull it off like that. It was a confusing scene, and seems as much to be suicide as anything else. *sigh*
AFAIK, Lucas said "kills this character this way," and Salvatore did his best. I know that Margaret Weis was actually offered the chance to write that book, and she turned it down halfway through a draft because they were so controlling.
They're based on story outlines written by George Lucas, each of which is probably no more than 10 pages when written down.
After these quick pitches, a screenplay is written by a team of writers. Then re-writen. And then interpreted by the Producer and the Director.
And THEN, once the movie's done, the novelization is written.
I believe that the current buzz is that Eps. 7-9 are a myth. There is a wide selection of Star Wars novels (and graphic novels, which share the same continuity) written after Ep. 6. Each of these novels is written by lucasfilm, and continuity is, I believe, rather stricly controlled.
R.A. Salvatore, btw, probably got this book deal for doing the dirty deed and killing off a major character in the novels. (No, I'm not going to say who. Read Vector Prime and find out.)
If and only if I choose to go into the realm of violence, yes. But that's not what communism is about.
Tell that to Stalin. It doesn't matter how good your economic theory is--when the proponents of it loudly proclaim the need for a worldwide revolt (not a revolution, which can be peaceful, but an armed revolt) you set everyone else on edge against you.
If the USSR had decided to wage war in the economic sense, it might have had a chance. But, rather than letting their system succeed on its own merits, they (the communists) decided to try and force it, thus tainting any moderate implementation.
(Oh, and it was a crime for a great many years to be a homosexual. Just like it is a crime now to be a bigamist or commit bestiality. When Mormons take over the government or dogs learn to talk, expect those laws to change.)
A Christian Fundamentalist government would be a nightmare to anyone coming to the realization that they're gay.
Sorry, I reject catagorically any idea that I am my genetics, and not my person. I like to write because I chose to be a wrtier, not because of my genetics. I *choose* to be straight (I'm married, actually) but I could very easily "decide" that I'm gay and go through with it.
The only reason we treat homosexuality as a "nature" thing that "can't be changed" is because they've got a great PR arm. We expect pedophilles, polygamists, and most sadists to all constrain their sexual urges; there's no theoretical reason that we *couldn't* do the same to homosexuals, or all people. (total in vitro society.)
(Before you flame me, let me say this: I have *NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER* with people who choose to be gay. Assuming that it's consentual, I have no moral problem with just about any sexual relationship. I'll advocate monogamy for a whole bunch of other reasons, but these apply to non-sexist (M/M & F/F in addition to M/F) marriages as well as traditional ones.)
A hippie anarchist society (hell, even an idealist libertarian society) would fall prey to opportunism and collapse into chaos.
An idea hippie anarchist society would be agrarian, with primarilly self-sufficent farms and informal barter as the only meaningful economic factor. It begins as ineffective chaos, and there isn't a lot that "opportunism" can do--especially when all baser needs ("want sex" "want stuff") are allowed to be indulged in.
(remember: the conditions specified assume *no* conflict of any kind, from any external competition and several generations since any other society has functioned.)
I really don't understand your point
Then allow me to restate it.
I was responding to your assertation that "Ideals have the problem that people agree with them in part, but if implemented they'd be a disaster."
My nipicky, in others words, was "No, Ideals--any ideals--can work, but only once you get past the transition to where the ideal is EVERYONE's reality."
The ideals of socialism could work just fine, but only if they were implemented on a universal scale. Same with the ideals of free love, capitalism, monogamy, democracy, or Free Software.
My last paragraph was what qualifies my post as a "nitpick" and not a "rebuttal." I agree with much of the rest of your post, including your observation that Stallman's Free Software ideals (Open Source is a slightly different concept) would not work in certain markets. (For GNUworld to be installed, those markets would have to be deleted.)
It's not just transitions; your last paragraph I think outweighs everything else you said. What it comes down to is this: there will never be a functional pure ideological society, at least one that isn't subject to stagnation.
True. The only way for any such sociey to exist would be on a universal scale (or cut off totally and eternally from the outside), and it would take a literal act of God to get them into place. (Something like the big man showing up, complete with Angels who have and use the power to level cities and kill millions of specific targets without collateral damage, and telling us how to live)
People are different. Better to tolerate each others' differences (whether you respect them or not) than to take a hard line on something and never deviate.
This is something that I really do disagree with, conorbd. Tolerence is not a good in and of itself; it's a means to an end that's best described as "ignoring a small wrong in the hope of a larger right."
We don't tolerate racists because we want to; we tolerate them because doing so preserves Free Speech. We don't tolerate people of different relgions because we think that they might be right; we do so because we want the chance to convince them that we're right, and not have them someday outnumber us and outlaw our religion.
And there are some things that simply are not tolerated. A short list: Bombing my house. Raping my wife. Assaulting a child. Murdering an innocent. Even more to the point, there are things that we SHOULD take a hard line on, and never waver: Freedom of Speech. Justice. Rule of law. Sanctity of Marriage. Due Process. Equal Rights.
Stallman's just out so far on the fringe because he's taking a hardline stance on something, and not tactically re-evaluating his stance to compensate for the sincere faults that others find in it.
religious fundamentalism being the biggest example of that point
Any idea, once fully implemented, is fine and dandy.
It's the difficult periods of transition that fuck everything up. And this applies to government (see France's five subsequent revolutions post 1776), medicine ("wash hands?" "trans-plant?"), and a lot of hard sciences too ("ooh, nuklear eNergy!" "Why's Kyle dead?").
If hard-line Islamics, hippie anarchists, regular people, or man-hating lesbian feminazis ruled the world, the world would get along just fine--but since there's opposition between all these groups, there's stress and problem.
Now, I do agree with you. It's nice to dream about changing the world, but until you can you need to know how to live in the one you've got. Failing to accept this (like Christ, Ghandi, and Linus have) leads to much suffering, and distracting the person between what's really important. (And in order, that'd be "telling people to be cool," "telling people to be cool," and "coding Linux.")
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99% of the people who complain about SO/OOo and Word documents are complaining because they have the wrong fonts installed!
I must be in that 1%, then.
I complain about SO/OO, Abiword, and every other OSS word processor because, quite simply, the spell checking sucks. I rely on it to catch a whole bunch of common spelling errors--and when writing very long documents, they come up.
I tried one of them recently (I think it was Open Office) and it opened the file just fine. But when I turned on "spell check on the fly", the darn thing drew a squiggly line under every ellipss (sp--it's late) and em-dash that I had. Show me a way to fix those (without coding) in a Win32 OOS word processor, and I'll switch and encourage everyone around me to switch.
The days of the intrepid dog fighting pilot have been over for some time anyway... I suppose this is just a natural extension of that.
Kindly name a country that can field a force capable of taking on either the Air Force or the Navy. heck, we can limit it to just one Navy carrier group.
(If that country's on the UN Security Council, put it down and try again.)
When we started using cruise missles, we were called cowards. When we started using tanks, we were called cowards. When we started using machine guns, regular guns, pike squares, and siege warfare, we were called cowards. When we started using arrows for war or just plain throwing sticks, we were called cowards.
"Coward" is a word that should be limited to people who refuse to take risk and fail--not those that refuse to take a risk they can find a way around, and win.
The only reason our enemies call us cowards is because, if we were to fight them on their own terf, they'd have slightly better than a snowball's chance in hell against us.
The christian god as outlined by modern religion is supposedly omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, knows all things, sees all things, knows the past, the future and the present. An inconvenient fact in logic even if you take the bible itself as gospel with no regard whatsoever to the mortal laws of science which he have so far been able to find quite a degree of reliability in, is that in the above passage, god has regrets for his actions.
;) )
:(
Omnipotent, omniscient, all knowing, all seeing creatures need never have regrets and need never make mistakes, this is in the earliest part of the bible, and already there are self-referencing logical inconsitencies
No part of God's description says "does not make mistakes." Every creative mind in the history of minds makes mistakes when creating. The fact that God didn't go back and start over (this time) doesn't dispute His ability to do so.
God does make mistakes. Sometimes, His not correcting them is a matter of preserving free will of His creations. Othertimes, it's a simple matter of not being worth the disruption to His Creation to fix the flaw.
You may also note that you refer to an assumed negative with disdain in your post, yet in the same fashion your entire religion is based upon a great many assumed positives
Not really. I first began to believe in God through the words of others--just like a student learns to believe that Newton's laws really are laws. Then I began to experience life for myself, and found that God's word really did make sense.
The difference between my religion and my scientific knowledge is that the latter is sure and proven, while the former is tenuous and requires either human faith or direct human experience.
Science is an empirical evaluation of the laws of the universe that we are presented with, to the best degree we are able to fathom. Religion is an organised form of spirituallity seeking to answer the most complex questions in existence with fables and bedtime stories.
In my experience, science is an attempt to deify the simple rules of existance, often at the unnecessary expense of religion. Religion, on the other hand, is an attempt to answer the most complex questions of existence ("why?") with wisdom and truth.
Of course, it doesn't help that there's no easy way to objectively proove a false religion false.
Science doesn't know everything, but then a true scientist never assumes to know everything, that is the entire point of science and why it is a Good Idea (tm). Everything that is observed in science is checked and peer reviewed with no small degree of skepticism and each and every theory has it's own empirically verifiable evidence, correlating usually as to how well that theory is accepted in the minds of the scientific.
I have yet to meet a "scientist" who didn't act as if they had all the answers. I will readilly admit this might be due to lack of experience, but from what I've seen as many new theories as not aren't subjected to the proper peer review--but then again, I must plead lack of experience.
Religion proposes all the answers, justifies none of it's position, and asks it's followers for fealty and ignorance. In exchange it promises the unverifiable and when resisted it does the same, except in a far less pleasant fashion.
My relationship with God is not quite like what you describe. Not all of the answeres are provided for me--just the basic ones. If I want to find out why, it's up to me to determine that.
In exchange for this, I am promised that displays of faith will be rewarded, abiet not in a manner that I can predict. So far, this has held true.
So, I'm scientifically in the same boat as the "theory" that the world will not be suddenly shattered by a meteorite. (I know, not a scientific theory...
Don't misunderstand my meaning though, I did state that science does not have all the answers, there are things that at the moment we just don't know, and perhaps we'll never know them. The point is that it does not pretend to, only religion does.
The problem, though, is that science all too often forgets that it doesn't have all the answers, and tries to answer things that simply cannot be proven.
(To go out on a lark--the laws of evolution and the observed evolution of species does not refute the story of the garden of eden--it just explains where all those wives came from.)
Once, Christianity really did have this problem. We've since narrowed the spectrum of questions. (or, if you rather, increased the kind of questions that should be answered "go ask a specialist.")
Hmm.... and as for personalized spirituallity--it's great to an extent, but it's just too much when "do your own thing" is stretched into "it's bad to tell someone that they're bad."
I was referring to the logical scientific courses that believers should take, nattt.
As for there being no proof of God--there's plenty of evidence there. It's not scientifically conclusive proof, but there *is* evidence for God.
Off the top of my head, the fact that life exists )
Your fact is twofold:
1: Hares are not kosher. (not inconvenient.)
2: The English translation of Leviticus 11 mistates a scientific fact.
Not being able to check the hebrew readilly, I'll just assume that the translation is accurate. Even ignoring that it's out of context, a lack of scientific accuracy in the kosher laws doesn't disrupt my religion one bit.
Heck, it actually helps hammer home some points to remember, like "The bible was written for the present-day people then, and allowances for passing time have to be made." or "man can and has advanced. Yay man."
In any case, the kosher laws were either (1) written by a Jew with limited scientific knowledge but permission to speak for God or (2) written by God Himself. If (1), his scientific ignorance is understandable and forgiveable. If (2), He probably did it to not confuse the Jews.
What did the flood accomplish?
It proved, to man, that no single grand event can correct the evils of man.
Ok, then. If that's our standard of evidence, prove that, oh, the United States of America rebelled from Great Brittain. First person evidence only, please. ;)
In religion, there are many inconvenient facts.
Kindly name one--any one--and I'll tell you why I don't find it "inconvenient." Please limit your responses to "facts" that are proven positives, not assumed negatives like "there is no God."
The basic fact of religion is that God has stated many times that He doesn't want to be easily found--hence, no fact should be hard to accept for anyone of a religious mind.
I will agree that "scientific creationism" is bad science. It's much more logical to simply look for "How did God create the universe" or "why did God create the universe this way?" Of course, many religious authorities have historically countered "science"'s illogical refutation of religion with equally bad logic.
*sigh*
Jack is the environment in a fictional series of books that showed up in Fight Club, that was written from the POV of a part of Jack's (or Jane's) anatomy. "I am Jack's kneecap." "I am Jane's nipple."
:)
It's from Fight Club--but you allready knew that.
I don't think it's too hard to see what BMG brings to the table. The question is, what does Napster have that would make BMG want to pay them for it?
A name. Like it or not, Napster *still* has a strong trademark. Just like car companies can bring out the names of old car models & increase their market, BMG can label their new MP3 service "Napster" and get a bigger chunk of the market.
BMG, and the rest of RIAA, can sell something that no file-sharing app can get you. Legallity and legitimacy.
There is a price-point where people will pay to have a legal right to the song that's allready illegally on their computer. If BMG can figure out the right price point, they can make a profit selling nothing but legitimacy.
Personally, I'd give them my legal name, home address, and give them permission to track me until the day I die IF I can get a full legal title to the music I buy. I want to be able to get a "replacement media" discount on a new copy of my destroyed CD. I want to be able to download lossless song files to burn me a custom album, and have it be 100% legit.
I won't pay $50 a month to do this. I would pay $5 a year. Somewhere in between those two, I would have to reserve judgement until the offer's been made.
If BMG can provide what I want, I will buy from them.
That scene made the character lose a lot of credibility in my eyes, and I must say, I was always a fan of Yoda. I worry for the Jedi, because you just know that sooner or later, someone in that galaxy is going to discover actual lasers (you know, devices which emit energy that really travels at the speed of light!). I'd like to see Yoda parry that!
Actual lasers aren't really worth it as a weapon. They're great for targeting et al, but for the actual weapon they're sub-par.
The Star Wars blasters aren't "laser guns." They're "plasma blob guns." Instead of pushing out energy that has to reach the entire line between the weapon and the target at all times, they just generate a fad wad of rather-high-energy-matter-that's-still-matter and hurl it as fast as they can at the enemy.
They're closer to bullets than guns.
I'm not sure what you deem as credible, or what you deem as quality, but the simple fact is that D&D books, including Salvatore's, have been around for years. And the popular ones, some of Salvatore's included, continue to be reprinted because people continue to read, and re-read them.
(I'm well versed in WotC corporate structure. They were recently bought by Hasbro, actually.)
I love books. I love fantasy books. I love good fantasy books that happen to take palce in a D&D setting.
But, really, TSR/WotC has printed some of the worst books ever to hit the market--and they were the ones that were tied to RPG releases, rather than standing on their own. Aside from the original Dragonlance series, *every time* a D&D game products has been made into a novel, it has sucked.
A good friend of mine (www.dragonlancebooks.com) gets review copies, and I've read some of the ones he won't. Trust me--they're bad.
WotC also doesn't publish anything BUT D&D books. Hence, they're a niche publisher.
Just a note on the verbose fight scenes in the book. The reviewer is clearly unfamiliar with Salvatore's writing style. In depth fight scenes are what made Drizzt a legend in the Forgotten Realms world and it's not suprise to see Salvatore sticking with what worked in the past.
Hey, I'm a big Salvatore fan, and well done fight scenes are a great thing in a fantasy book. But this is also the man who wrote Vector Prime, so I can't assume he did a good job here until I read it myself. (and that "rage rage rage" bit doesn't help matters.)
retarded people have, and should have, all the rights of a normal person, even if the average chawowow can outthink them on a good day
1: They don't. Retarded people, legally, are not "full people" any more than a child is. Legally incompetent people are denied some pretty basic rights (ability to petition for redress of grievances) for a pretty good reason.
2: Why should they have *any* rights? Any system needs to have its basic assumptions laid out, and followed as closely as possible. (I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I disagree with faulty legal reasoning.)
Heck, move back to your original point. Why should humans give nonhumans *any* rights? (Especially before we meet any of them.) Sapient nonhumans who arise from us can petition for rights. Sapient nonhunmans who arise from outside us (another plannet, spontaneously evolving fish) can communicate with us and work out a matter of civilized decorum when it happens.
Banning technologies and cowering behind our outdated religious myths does nothing to prepare us for these eventuality
I don't know what part of that offends me more. We don't *know* that nonhuman intelligence is possible. It could be that, beyond a certain point, you need to have a soul to be intelligent, and only humans have souls. (Note the "could be", please.)
Our religious mythology serves to support and inspire us--and it's a natural state of our being to have such mythology. If you want to create a new religion, go right ahead, but don't be surprised if you've got an uphil battle finding wisdom after throwing the accumulated wisdom of thousands of years away out of spite.
we will react in exactly the wrong way, with prejudice and ethno- or speciecentrism
Both of those two -isms are exactly the natural reaction, and are *only* wrong when they harm other -isms of the same catagory. The Native Americans sure as heck weren't thinking "maybe these Eurpeans really do get it" any more than the settlers, and it's only once we started abusing them that our ethnocentrism becamse a bad thing.
Diplomacy should be practiced when meeting any new intelligence, human or not. We don't need to kill our natural -isms to achieve diploamcy.
('intelligent computers have no soul' claim theologens, for example, or 'we created the creature, we are its god, it can never be our equal', both of which are appallingly unethical and quite probably false assumptions to be making, but appear to be our default stance on such things)
First off, let me start by stating that a real genuine intelligent computer probably would have a soul--at least, if it couldnt' be easily copied it would. (One of the defining characteristics of a soul is its uniqueness. Intelligent beings that have little variant throughout their species have a spirit, not a soul.)
As for creating the creature and always being lord and master--such ideas are the providence of science fiction nuts and the Church of Satan (read their website), not normal society. We've got a great system where people create new creatures that become better than them allready, and I suspect that we can successfully adapt it to new creatres as well.
On a theological note--any sin inherent in playing god is born by the creator, not the created.
I hope that when you mention Star Wars, though, you mean something more than the movies. I've only read a few Star Wars books, and so far I haven't seen anything that comes close to the level of obsessive-compulsive detail that Tolkein reached with The Silmarillion.
;) )
(Gotta remember to read the Silmarillion.)
Star Wars has quite a history of its own. If we simply limit ourselves to Lucas's work, he at least equals Tolkien's development of backstory.
Remember that the Silmarillion was published after LotR and, IIRC, posthumously as well. Once George Lucas Jr. follows Chris Tolkien's path and releases an annotated version of his daddy's work, I'm sure the depth will be there.
(Heck, if we're just going to measure depth by detail, don't forget that The Silmarillion was just a book, and that Lucas's got storyboards, several novels, and some diagrams to boot.
Whose work represents more the "progress of useful Arts", mentioned in the Constitution: your own new musical creation, or the job of some drummer who applied his skill, style, and craft to play a sound which can be used indifferently in a great number of musical styles?
Better question: Who has the authority to decide who is more deserving of protection?
"Craft" has a real meaning in a creative sense. A composer "crafts" their work. A novelist "crafts" an outline. Both of these also "craft" styles, which give real value to their works that copyright allows them to collect on.
A performer also adds value to the music that they are given, and deserves protection of each specific performance. If the performer simply charges a fee that's too high, the interested party can simply hire a drummer of their own.
Oh, and about that "cannot afford" bit. Artists have no right to funds to create new art. They have to either save and self-finance, or convince others to support them. Shakesphere had to pay for his pens and his theature. Piccasso had to pay for his paint. A composer who does doesn't want to pay for a drummer can either learn to play the drums himself, convince a band that they can make money perofrming it, or apply to the government and convince them that he deserves funding.
The composer has no more right to steal the effort of a drummer than Microsoft has to steal Linus Torvald's coding efforts, or that Lucas has to steal the work of other special effect houses in Hollywood.
Tad William's Dragonbone Chair is... words abandon me. The whole trilogy, is excellent. There are things I'm sure I never did pick up on, it had many levels of subtley.
I read it. "Subtltey" it may have but, IMO, that's all it's got. I'm not sure if it's good enough to buy (borrowed it from a friend), but I'm pretty sure that it won't go on my list of 10-best books of all time.
And the books... if the same plot had been set in any other setting, it would have flopped. The first time I tried to read them they felt cliched. Then pushed myself to read the book before the movie, and I was able to read the entire darn thing. Fellowship was great. The Two Towers was respectable. But Return of the King...
The story ended halfway through the book, in a manner that was anticlimatic even counting for all of the derivites I've read, and then was expanded to fill the other half of the book with a rather vapous homecoming story that rested far too heavily on the literary grip the other books placed upon the reader--and then ended abruptly, to boot.
I think it's fair to say that the poor quality of most fantasy trilogies can be blamed on Tolkien.
As for inventing worlds with complex histories--Tolkien's not the only one. Weis & Hickman's Dragonlance, Ed Greenwood's Forgotten Realms, Lucas's Star Wars, and others that I haven't had the pleasure of reading also have complex and rich histories. J.R.R.T. was the first, but he's hardly unique in the simple act of doing it. All that he's got is precedence.
As for the movie adaptation--If you've ever liked a movie, go see it. Or better yet, wait for the expanded DVD collection coming out later this year. (If you don't want to buy it, e-mail me a time this fall when you'll be in Albany NY.)
The movie takes some liberties with the script, but the changes all serve to better show the world and the characters than an unimaginitive translation would.
I think, and don't take this as gospel, Salvatore wrote down the synopsis of all his D&D games that he (aged 9 or so) played with his cocker spaniel puppy because no one else would play with him. Then, stretching all those notes into 400 page long manuscripts, he somehow blackmailed a publisher into turning them into real books. I mean, goddamn, I didn't expect it to be the the Dragonbon Chair or anything like that, but this was absolutely unreadable. It was, and still is, the only good excuse for illiteracy. *BARF* Should have let those memories remain repressed.
Wow, a fan of the Dragonborn Chair, critizing Dragonlance. (You probably think that LotR ended perfectly, too.)
Salvatore (& most of the other TSR authors) were in-house people who pitched books when the company started up their literary publishing arm. Considering that their chances of being "literary fiction" were next to nill, they mostly just focused on fun stories that, yes, probably would have made find D&D campaigns.
Pick up the books out of the trash, and look at their binding. They're published by either TSR or Wizards of the Coast--not a publishing house of any credulity, but rather a niche publisher that does an amazing job catering to the low-brow fantasy market.
You know, the part that still knows how to have fun and doesn't worry about "complexity" in their fantasies.
How, on fucking earth, did they manage to let him novelize this?
He wrote Vector Prime, and has recieved hate mail for following Lucas's orders. Margaret Weis was offered the project, but turned it down because of how controlling Lucas was.
AFAIK, there aren't any "first rate" authors doing Star Wars books. And the reason, quite simply, is because they aren't given enough control to make it artistically a good run. They're not writing their own story in Star Wars--they're writing yet another story that Lucas's book department wants written.
Another distortion of the basic idea came when they started granting copyrights to people who performed the works. Actors are not authors, singers are not authors. They are just doing a job, and should be paid - just once - for doing it, like all other workers. Why should Britney Spears or any other singer be paid millions for singing a song that someone else, probably a 9-to-5 office worker, wrote?
Because there's quite a lot of effort that goes into crafting a style--easily as much effort goes into RECORDING a song as does WRITING it. Plus, a performer's copyright only applies to their performance. Remember: the constitution was written before timeshifting music was possible at all.
If the intent of the Constitution were to be applied, only people who wrote something, be it books, plays, screen scripts, music, watever, would be entitled to own copyrights.
No, that'd be the letter. The Constitution's copyright / patent powers are there so Congress can protect the right of "creative people" to their work for a "limited time." The fact that both of these definitions has been extended to a much longer period of time is neither unexpected (we live longer, and people are creating new ways to create things) nor, in itself, a problem.
(The problem, btw, lies in distorting the IP rules to apply to something else [copyrighting what should be patented, patenting what should be trademarked] and continually pressing the "limited time" part of copyright.)
Any named political idea that is implemented by one group is flavored by that group.
/. poster. :) (I'm not one either. I'm a novelist, and commies have about as much political weight to them now as, oh, the KKK.)
Personally, I think that Communism just needs a slight alteration to encourage greater productivity and it'd work--but that's not going to happen, mostly because command economies are horribly inefficient.
;) And I don't think you're a communist. Just a
Got a two part answer for you.
1: It's an important part of any fictional setting to change. It's a principle that, without which, Spider-Man would never have met Mary Jane, Star Trek would still a campy western in space, and most of Shakesphere's play been rather dull.
2: I have no idea what they were thinking, or why they decided to pull it off like that. It was a confusing scene, and seems as much to be suicide as anything else. *sigh*
AFAIK, Lucas said "kills this character this way," and Salvatore did his best. I know that Margaret Weis was actually offered the chance to write that book, and she turned it down halfway through a draft because they were so controlling.
(Speaking of writers who change their worlds...)
They're based on story outlines written by George Lucas, each of which is probably no more than 10 pages when written down.
After these quick pitches, a screenplay is written by a team of writers. Then re-writen. And then interpreted by the Producer and the Director.
And THEN, once the movie's done, the novelization is written.
I believe that the current buzz is that Eps. 7-9 are a myth. There is a wide selection of Star Wars novels (and graphic novels, which share the same continuity) written after Ep. 6. Each of these novels is written by lucasfilm, and continuity is, I believe, rather stricly controlled.
R.A. Salvatore, btw, probably got this book deal for doing the dirty deed and killing off a major character in the novels. (No, I'm not going to say who. Read Vector Prime and find out.)
If and only if I choose to go into the realm of violence, yes. But that's not what communism is about.
Tell that to Stalin. It doesn't matter how good your economic theory is--when the proponents of it loudly proclaim the need for a worldwide revolt (not a revolution, which can be peaceful, but an armed revolt) you set everyone else on edge against you.
If the USSR had decided to wage war in the economic sense, it might have had a chance. But, rather than letting their system succeed on its own merits, they (the communists) decided to try and force it, thus tainting any moderate implementation.
(Oh, and it was a crime for a great many years to be a homosexual. Just like it is a crime now to be a bigamist or commit bestiality. When Mormons take over the government or dogs learn to talk, expect those laws to change.)
A Christian Fundamentalist government would be a nightmare to anyone coming to the realization that they're gay.
Sorry, I reject catagorically any idea that I am my genetics, and not my person. I like to write because I chose to be a wrtier, not because of my genetics. I *choose* to be straight (I'm married, actually) but I could very easily "decide" that I'm gay and go through with it.
The only reason we treat homosexuality as a "nature" thing that "can't be changed" is because they've got a great PR arm. We expect pedophilles, polygamists, and most sadists to all constrain their sexual urges; there's no theoretical reason that we *couldn't* do the same to homosexuals, or all people. (total in vitro society.)
(Before you flame me, let me say this: I have *NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER* with people who choose to be gay. Assuming that it's consentual, I have no moral problem with just about any sexual relationship. I'll advocate monogamy for a whole bunch of other reasons, but these apply to non-sexist (M/M & F/F in addition to M/F) marriages as well as traditional ones.)
A hippie anarchist society (hell, even an idealist libertarian society) would fall prey to opportunism and collapse into chaos.
An idea hippie anarchist society would be agrarian, with primarilly self-sufficent farms and informal barter as the only meaningful economic factor. It begins as ineffective chaos, and there isn't a lot that "opportunism" can do--especially when all baser needs ("want sex" "want stuff") are allowed to be indulged in.
(remember: the conditions specified assume *no* conflict of any kind, from any external competition and several generations since any other society has functioned.)
I really don't understand your point
Then allow me to restate it.
I was responding to your assertation that "Ideals have the problem that people agree with them in part, but if implemented they'd be a disaster."
My nipicky, in others words, was "No, Ideals--any ideals--can work, but only once you get past the transition to where the ideal is EVERYONE's reality."
The ideals of socialism could work just fine, but only if they were implemented on a universal scale. Same with the ideals of free love, capitalism, monogamy, democracy, or Free Software.
My last paragraph was what qualifies my post as a "nitpick" and not a "rebuttal." I agree with much of the rest of your post, including your observation that Stallman's Free Software ideals (Open Source is a slightly different concept) would not work in certain markets. (For GNUworld to be installed, those markets would have to be deleted.)
It's not just transitions; your last paragraph I think outweighs everything else you said. What it comes down to is this: there will never be a functional pure ideological society, at least one that isn't subject to stagnation.
True. The only way for any such sociey to exist would be on a universal scale (or cut off totally and eternally from the outside), and it would take a literal act of God to get them into place. (Something like the big man showing up, complete with Angels who have and use the power to level cities and kill millions of specific targets without collateral damage, and telling us how to live)
People are different. Better to tolerate each others' differences (whether you respect them or not) than to take a hard line on something and never deviate.
This is something that I really do disagree with, conorbd. Tolerence is not a good in and of itself; it's a means to an end that's best described as "ignoring a small wrong in the hope of a larger right."
We don't tolerate racists because we want to; we tolerate them because doing so preserves Free Speech. We don't tolerate people of different relgions because we think that they might be right; we do so because we want the chance to convince them that we're right, and not have them someday outnumber us and outlaw our religion.
And there are some things that simply are not tolerated. A short list: Bombing my house. Raping my wife. Assaulting a child. Murdering an innocent. Even more to the point, there are things that we SHOULD take a hard line on, and never waver: Freedom of Speech. Justice. Rule of law. Sanctity of Marriage. Due Process. Equal Rights.
Stallman's just out so far on the fringe because he's taking a hardline stance on something, and not tactically re-evaluating his stance to compensate for the sincere faults that others find in it.
religious fundamentalism being the biggest example of that point
Any idea, once fully implemented, is fine and dandy.
It's the difficult periods of transition that fuck everything up. And this applies to government (see France's five subsequent revolutions post 1776), medicine ("wash hands?" "trans-plant?"), and a lot of hard sciences too ("ooh, nuklear eNergy!" "Why's Kyle dead?").
If hard-line Islamics, hippie anarchists, regular people, or man-hating lesbian feminazis ruled the world, the world would get along just fine--but since there's opposition between all these groups, there's stress and problem.
Now, I do agree with you. It's nice to dream about changing the world, but until you can you need to know how to live in the one you've got. Failing to accept this (like Christ, Ghandi, and Linus have) leads to much suffering, and distracting the person between what's really important. (And in order, that'd be "telling people to be cool," "telling people to be cool," and "coding Linux.")