Indeed. Your lords and masters prefer it when you don't talk about anything freedom related; you're all slaves, you will never be free, why can't you accept that?
Nonsense. They could surprise us all by focusing their energies on the neglected markets of desktops, by suddenly shipping full towers with extensive, user-friendly options, rekindling interest among the common folk in owning 'a Porsche for less than a Ford.' Or they could continue to follow the pack, and make some loose change.
I mean, it's not like other manufacturers aren't also slowly pulling out of the desktop market, which with the diversion in resources could allow for an upset victory. And it's not like desktop components aren't massively less expensive to manufacture than laptop or tablet components. And it's not like there isn't a giant market out there filled with people who don't mind owning a desktop.
But yes, let's abandon the desktop market, and switch to the lower revenue and less useful tablet market. Let's pay more for 16 GBs of Flash than for a 1 TB hard drive. Let's pay more for a 7" screen than for a 23" LCD screen. So that our customers can carry it around with them, and drop it, breaking the screens, and driving up warranty insurance. It's like embracing an anti-market.
Someone had to bankroll / bootstrap those industries, and it certainly wasn't the skittish middle class. Look at early aviation history, it was filled with accidents and horrors of every kind. Now take a look at the modern space industry. Now bitch about how only the rich can afford it, and how they're "riding in luxury" to higher orbits; only, they're not. Someone has to pay the hideous price for some of these advances, with sometimes includes death.
But on another topic, there's a reason technology has stopped progressing in some areas (or at least, the gains are not as large). The same disease affecting the airline industry is affecting the auto-mobile industry, and possibly spreading to the technology industries themselves. Here's a hint -> when you convince an entire generation of people that despite mankind's ability to pilot aircraft in excess of 600 MPH, and a space shuttle in excess of Mach Ridiculous, that there is such a thing as 'going too fast while still being completely in control of the vehicle,' that it's not do to shoddy manufacturing processes that their vehicle starts shaking when it goes over 50 MPH, you create a barrier. It's simply not profitable to build a car that is safe to drive at 300 MPH, as there isn't anywhere to drive it; there still is a market, I grant you, for driving it on back-roads and racetracks, but again, why invest the money? As Aladdin said to the Ja'far genie, you want the power to set policy for things you can't comprehend, you get all of the trappings associated with it. You want to make things "safe" for everyone? In a few generations, we'll be driving cars that go 20 MPH, with giant rolls of styrofoam attached to every corner of the vehicle, and noisemakers going off continuously. And even then, there will be plans for a 10 MPH vehicle.
Technology, like love, has to be free. Chain it up, treat it like a b*tch, and we all suffer.
Indeed. Been there myself. Part of the problem is that coding is fine, it's swapping from coding to communicating and back again over 36 hours is incredibly tiring. Nothing killed my motivation like finding something not clearly explained, usually buried deep down in the requirements. At 3 AM, when you've been coding nonstop for hours, and no one else is awake, you're suddenly stuck with a major problem -> you can sleep 4 hours or so, until your boss / client wakes up, or you can stay up. In either case, your productivity is shot for the rest of the day.
Nonsense. The greatest threat to humanity is itself. Only need one fruitcake in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and even what little good is done these days quickly becomes undone.
*shrugs* The angels / demons have always been hinted at as being purely human with strange / evil ideas. So, switch out the word angels and the word demon, and see if human can end our civilization with that level of technology. A few variants have picked up on the idea, albeit for different reasons: the Amish would be a good example.
It all goes back to the king / royalty / highway-man / raiders motif, which is where the 'locusts' come into play; they may simply be the great hordes of mankind who are infantile in their wants and understandings, demanding food without lifting a finger to create it, and using force on those who do when their hunger is great enough; see, farmers do not need a king, but a king and his 'enforcers' need farmers, as they need food; the original 'agreement' was that king and friends would show up, take a portion of the harvest, then leave the farmers in peace; over time, it evolved into the governments you see today.
Again, if you check the various {holy} books for half a dozen religions, they are waiting on a worldwide famine to hopefully kill off, or otherwise unmask, the people they're going to kill. And as has been pointed out in history if not once, then more than a dozen times, some powerful people want this to happen. They want to create enough chaos that it will force the hand of their god, force him / her to come back, so they can shore up their faith with actual evidence. I mean, if 50% of the world's population is crying out to the Almighty, surely he'd be moved to answer them, right?
I know it will simply be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, and it might be, however, I will state it for the record: if not through malignancy, than through criminal incompetence, the world-wide food supply is going to be mismanaged.
In the year of 2012, in order to combat the growing number of mergers resulting in astronomical losses to shareholders and terrible customer service, the US Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision declaring and breaking up Ma Bell. In a matter of weeks, the super-corporation had reconstituted itself, marking its enemies for death, and dealing ruthlessly with those who had imprisoned it.
The aftermath, of course, is that all telephone companies are now Bell, and service, which costs $20 / month, is now mandatory.
From the Russian's standpoint, they've given communism and capitalism a go, and neither has made them better off. From a purely academic standpoint, both implementations were so hopelessly banjaxxed that neither 'really counts' as an implementation of either ideology. Now, the younger generation, having heard stories from the older generation about how things were 'better' under the older regime, are falling back into a dictatorship (meet the old boss, same as the new boss). 'Tis Politics 101 -> actual change requires a vast amount of resources, while the appearance of change can be had for a whistle and some bubble-gum, and is often times seen as 'just as effective.'
I imagine what they really want is for the people who've been holding power to 'disappear.' The absolute saddest part of it all is that by the time that happens, an entire new generation will have been corrupted; and thus, this is how this virus continues throughout space and time. Killing it requires a simultaneous attack from everywhere, all at once.
Lol. I, on the other hand, got a dose of religion in at least two of my English classes (ah, the entire year of Puritans, how I will never forget thee), as well as the religions class (which I actually didn't mind, as it wasn't acting all cloak and daggery), and chapel a few times a week (which I borderline did not mind, save when I was hungry, which was often). However, the senior year religious surprise on my way out I will never forget: I had already read the Inferno, thank you very much, but an additional thank you for thinking I am so high on the totem pole of English standards that I have no interest in reading any books of common interest outside the classroom, even before you recommend them in your little seminar on religion cleverly disguised as English. I will remember, for an eternity, this little tampering of yours.
For the love of {Deity}, I just wanted to have some English classes about anything that did not have the dryness of a three-week old stale cracker. And for the record, reading the same books that a fair percentage of other high-school students read is an act of conformity. You're not teaching culture, you're killing it. "The Red Wheelbarrow' was a terrible poem! It's entire claim to fame is that its prose is arranged in the form of a wheelbarrow! It's like showing up to Geometry class, and talking about how you like triangles drawn in blue chalk more than ones drawn in red chalk! Gah! Does no one understanding my suffering?!?
Sorry, just had to get that last part out. Going to a funeral Saturday, to be held everywhere, for English literature.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Religions have evolved (lol) to thrive on persecution; as such, it is difficult for some to know when they are being persecuted, and when they are simply not getting what they want.
At any rate, they gain nothing if they do not claim persecution, and possibly gain something if they do. Which is the art of all power grabs -> this should be mine, I'm taking it. Or in this case: "I know my religion says that it is voluntary, but making it somewhat involuntary has such better results. Why is everyone suddenly turning on me?"
I agree with much of this thinking. I also understand the concept of power plays, which is what I imagine, at the higher levels of politics & religion, creates a lot of these unfortunate scenarios. The religious think that these scientific theories are another kind of religion, albeit a state-sponsored one. The politicians just want to please everyone, while taking advantage of it. The scientists think that religions are welcome in the classroom provided they offer some falsifiable evidence. In many cases, the religious want things taught during science class, which is wholly devoted to science.
Furthermore, there is the problem of deciding to which religions students would be exposed; about an hour after a law is passed that would allow religion to be taught in the classroom, heated arguments would break out about parents and religious leaders about how prominently their religion would be displayed, or how many class sessions they would receive to indoctrinate the youth, or about permission slips from parents to skip classes that a religion they did not approve of. As for the students who are attending the classes, there would an open question why they have this stuff during the week, yet are expected to show up (on their days off, usually) at a religious building for even more teaching.
Again, from a religious-political standpoint, 'holy men' like to fill pews / spaces / etc. Indoctrinating them while they're young lessens the likelihood of them 'straying' when they're older; it's also an excellent way of making sure those coffers remain filled. It becomes simply about power. Not the power of their gods, who have repeatedly said, in so many words, that their power is not determined by the number of worshippers, but the power of the very real, very human, very material captains of the cheer-leading squads.
We could, of course, go into an extended dialogue about just any number of social practises that reinforce the problems we are encountering today (many of them non-religious), but I'd risk alienating people more than I already have with my above comments; it would simply be more talking, less communicating, more splitting of hairs until my hands are thrown up in the air, resolving nothing.
Actually, I'm having trouble understanding why it is so difficult for some people to understand the theory of evolution. And that appears to be the core of the problem surrounding evolution -> misquotes and misunderstandings.
Ask yourself, how many times have you heard the "if I came from a monkey, why are there still monkeys?" For people who are otherwise capable of reading / writing as well as performing various maths, I think we are seeing the outcome of some absolutely terrible teaching here. I'm sorry, I know it's not what the teachers want to hear, but it does lend some circumstantial evidence that somewhere out there, there are a group of teachers who themselves do not understand the theory of evolution, and thus are doing a terrible job explaining it to their students.
Who cares? New users will get a temporary discount until enough people are using it, such that it seems 'normal', after which it will be mandatory; when it has become mandatory, rates will slowly creep back up, with the bonus that everyone will be paying the same rates or higher & their data will be collected.
But I fully expect the "I am a good driver (never had so much as a parking ticket), and deserve a discount, not like those other people" short-term thinkers to rush in mass to sign up for a temporary discount; they're exactly the type that would do anything for a free t-shirt, and are expected to be the linchpin behind the entire program's approval.
Enjoy the temporary discount, cattle. I'll be leaving the States before they get around to offering a 'discount' for a breathalyser to turn on your car (gotta prove you aren't drinking and driving), as well as a 'discount' for an embedded LEO remote car disabler (because it's safer for our skittish police to turn off your engine with a remote control). Anything in the name of safety and security, right?
Indeed. When I first read about the resolution, I was relatively happy to hear about the bump; but as I read about all the hardware missing that is needed to really support a screen at that resolution, I can't help picturing a pick-up truck with a jet engine lassoed to the top of it.
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Indeed. Your lords and masters prefer it when you don't talk about anything freedom related; you're all slaves, you will never be free, why can't you accept that?
Nonsense. They could surprise us all by focusing their energies on the neglected markets of desktops, by suddenly shipping full towers with extensive, user-friendly options, rekindling interest among the common folk in owning 'a Porsche for less than a Ford.' Or they could continue to follow the pack, and make some loose change.
I mean, it's not like other manufacturers aren't also slowly pulling out of the desktop market, which with the diversion in resources could allow for an upset victory. And it's not like desktop components aren't massively less expensive to manufacture than laptop or tablet components. And it's not like there isn't a giant market out there filled with people who don't mind owning a desktop.
But yes, let's abandon the desktop market, and switch to the lower revenue and less useful tablet market. Let's pay more for 16 GBs of Flash than for a 1 TB hard drive. Let's pay more for a 7" screen than for a 23" LCD screen. So that our customers can carry it around with them, and drop it, breaking the screens, and driving up warranty insurance. It's like embracing an anti-market.
Someone had to bankroll / bootstrap those industries, and it certainly wasn't the skittish middle class. Look at early aviation history, it was filled with accidents and horrors of every kind. Now take a look at the modern space industry. Now bitch about how only the rich can afford it, and how they're "riding in luxury" to higher orbits; only, they're not. Someone has to pay the hideous price for some of these advances, with sometimes includes death.
Me thinks companies did not cook up the TSA.
But on another topic, there's a reason technology has stopped progressing in some areas (or at least, the gains are not as large). The same disease affecting the airline industry is affecting the auto-mobile industry, and possibly spreading to the technology industries themselves. Here's a hint -> when you convince an entire generation of people that despite mankind's ability to pilot aircraft in excess of 600 MPH, and a space shuttle in excess of Mach Ridiculous, that there is such a thing as 'going too fast while still being completely in control of the vehicle,' that it's not do to shoddy manufacturing processes that their vehicle starts shaking when it goes over 50 MPH, you create a barrier. It's simply not profitable to build a car that is safe to drive at 300 MPH, as there isn't anywhere to drive it; there still is a market, I grant you, for driving it on back-roads and racetracks, but again, why invest the money? As Aladdin said to the Ja'far genie, you want the power to set policy for things you can't comprehend, you get all of the trappings associated with it. You want to make things "safe" for everyone? In a few generations, we'll be driving cars that go 20 MPH, with giant rolls of styrofoam attached to every corner of the vehicle, and noisemakers going off continuously. And even then, there will be plans for a 10 MPH vehicle.
Technology, like love, has to be free. Chain it up, treat it like a b*tch, and we all suffer.
Indeed. Been there myself. Part of the problem is that coding is fine, it's swapping from coding to communicating and back again over 36 hours is incredibly tiring. Nothing killed my motivation like finding something not clearly explained, usually buried deep down in the requirements. At 3 AM, when you've been coding nonstop for hours, and no one else is awake, you're suddenly stuck with a major problem -> you can sleep 4 hours or so, until your boss / client wakes up, or you can stay up. In either case, your productivity is shot for the rest of the day.
If you have questions following the meeting, you're going to need to ask them at some point. You may not be the only one, just the first one.
Don't do it man, it's a trap!
Babe, they've both been bought and paid for. The average politician knows as much about the internet as their "friends" are willing to tell them.
Can any of you see a politician locking down a Cisco firewall? How about IP Subnetting? No? Well, they think things like that don't matter.
They are both for freedom on the internet, and the right of communications interests to profit from a lack of it.
"Why can't we make a compromise here, and have both?" - Average politician.
Precisely. It's smells of a bad excuse for some money under the table.
Nonsense. The greatest threat to humanity is itself. Only need one fruitcake in the wrong place, at the wrong time, and even what little good is done these days quickly becomes undone.
*shrugs* The angels / demons have always been hinted at as being purely human with strange / evil ideas. So, switch out the word angels and the word demon, and see if human can end our civilization with that level of technology. A few variants have picked up on the idea, albeit for different reasons: the Amish would be a good example.
It all goes back to the king / royalty / highway-man / raiders motif, which is where the 'locusts' come into play; they may simply be the great hordes of mankind who are infantile in their wants and understandings, demanding food without lifting a finger to create it, and using force on those who do when their hunger is great enough; see, farmers do not need a king, but a king and his 'enforcers' need farmers, as they need food; the original 'agreement' was that king and friends would show up, take a portion of the harvest, then leave the farmers in peace; over time, it evolved into the governments you see today.
Again, if you check the various {holy} books for half a dozen religions, they are waiting on a worldwide famine to hopefully kill off, or otherwise unmask, the people they're going to kill. And as has been pointed out in history if not once, then more than a dozen times, some powerful people want this to happen. They want to create enough chaos that it will force the hand of their god, force him / her to come back, so they can shore up their faith with actual evidence. I mean, if 50% of the world's population is crying out to the Almighty, surely he'd be moved to answer them, right?
I know it will simply be dismissed as a conspiracy theory, and it might be, however, I will state it for the record: if not through malignancy, than through criminal incompetence, the world-wide food supply is going to be mismanaged.
Well, when you do the nuclear equivalent of sticking your ass out a car window...I don't think that's a design flaw of the car.
I...I think I second this.
"And we told them it was a license good for their lifetime! Lol!"
In the year of 2012, in order to combat the growing number of mergers resulting in astronomical losses to shareholders and terrible customer service, the US Supreme Court reversed an earlier decision declaring and breaking up Ma Bell. In a matter of weeks, the super-corporation had reconstituted itself, marking its enemies for death, and dealing ruthlessly with those who had imprisoned it.
The aftermath, of course, is that all telephone companies are now Bell, and service, which costs $20 / month, is now mandatory.
Yeah, no, they'll just end up being acquired by Zynga, and releasing something abominable, like SimFarmMaddenVille.
Nope.
From the Russian's standpoint, they've given communism and capitalism a go, and neither has made them better off. From a purely academic standpoint, both implementations were so hopelessly banjaxxed that neither 'really counts' as an implementation of either ideology. Now, the younger generation, having heard stories from the older generation about how things were 'better' under the older regime, are falling back into a dictatorship (meet the old boss, same as the new boss). 'Tis Politics 101 -> actual change requires a vast amount of resources, while the appearance of change can be had for a whistle and some bubble-gum, and is often times seen as 'just as effective.'
I imagine what they really want is for the people who've been holding power to 'disappear.' The absolute saddest part of it all is that by the time that happens, an entire new generation will have been corrupted; and thus, this is how this virus continues throughout space and time. Killing it requires a simultaneous attack from everywhere, all at once.
Lol. I, on the other hand, got a dose of religion in at least two of my English classes (ah, the entire year of Puritans, how I will never forget thee), as well as the religions class (which I actually didn't mind, as it wasn't acting all cloak and daggery), and chapel a few times a week (which I borderline did not mind, save when I was hungry, which was often). However, the senior year religious surprise on my way out I will never forget: I had already read the Inferno, thank you very much, but an additional thank you for thinking I am so high on the totem pole of English standards that I have no interest in reading any books of common interest outside the classroom, even before you recommend them in your little seminar on religion cleverly disguised as English. I will remember, for an eternity, this little tampering of yours.
For the love of {Deity}, I just wanted to have some English classes about anything that did not have the dryness of a three-week old stale cracker. And for the record, reading the same books that a fair percentage of other high-school students read is an act of conformity. You're not teaching culture, you're killing it. "The Red Wheelbarrow' was a terrible poem! It's entire claim to fame is that its prose is arranged in the form of a wheelbarrow! It's like showing up to Geometry class, and talking about how you like triangles drawn in blue chalk more than ones drawn in red chalk! Gah! Does no one understanding my suffering?!?
Sorry, just had to get that last part out. Going to a funeral Saturday, to be held everywhere, for English literature.
In for a penny, in for a pound. Religions have evolved (lol) to thrive on persecution; as such, it is difficult for some to know when they are being persecuted, and when they are simply not getting what they want.
At any rate, they gain nothing if they do not claim persecution, and possibly gain something if they do. Which is the art of all power grabs -> this should be mine, I'm taking it. Or in this case: "I know my religion says that it is voluntary, but making it somewhat involuntary has such better results. Why is everyone suddenly turning on me?"
And we suddenly have a source of gainful employment for all of those out of work philosophers.
I agree with much of this thinking. I also understand the concept of power plays, which is what I imagine, at the higher levels of politics & religion, creates a lot of these unfortunate scenarios. The religious think that these scientific theories are another kind of religion, albeit a state-sponsored one. The politicians just want to please everyone, while taking advantage of it. The scientists think that religions are welcome in the classroom provided they offer some falsifiable evidence. In many cases, the religious want things taught during science class, which is wholly devoted to science.
Furthermore, there is the problem of deciding to which religions students would be exposed; about an hour after a law is passed that would allow religion to be taught in the classroom, heated arguments would break out about parents and religious leaders about how prominently their religion would be displayed, or how many class sessions they would receive to indoctrinate the youth, or about permission slips from parents to skip classes that a religion they did not approve of. As for the students who are attending the classes, there would an open question why they have this stuff during the week, yet are expected to show up (on their days off, usually) at a religious building for even more teaching.
Again, from a religious-political standpoint, 'holy men' like to fill pews / spaces / etc. Indoctrinating them while they're young lessens the likelihood of them 'straying' when they're older; it's also an excellent way of making sure those coffers remain filled. It becomes simply about power. Not the power of their gods, who have repeatedly said, in so many words, that their power is not determined by the number of worshippers, but the power of the very real, very human, very material captains of the cheer-leading squads.
We could, of course, go into an extended dialogue about just any number of social practises that reinforce the problems we are encountering today (many of them non-religious), but I'd risk alienating people more than I already have with my above comments; it would simply be more talking, less communicating, more splitting of hairs until my hands are thrown up in the air, resolving nothing.
Actually, I'm having trouble understanding why it is so difficult for some people to understand the theory of evolution. And that appears to be the core of the problem surrounding evolution -> misquotes and misunderstandings.
Ask yourself, how many times have you heard the "if I came from a monkey, why are there still monkeys?" For people who are otherwise capable of reading / writing as well as performing various maths, I think we are seeing the outcome of some absolutely terrible teaching here. I'm sorry, I know it's not what the teachers want to hear, but it does lend some circumstantial evidence that somewhere out there, there are a group of teachers who themselves do not understand the theory of evolution, and thus are doing a terrible job explaining it to their students.
Who cares? New users will get a temporary discount until enough people are using it, such that it seems 'normal', after which it will be mandatory; when it has become mandatory, rates will slowly creep back up, with the bonus that everyone will be paying the same rates or higher & their data will be collected.
But I fully expect the "I am a good driver (never had so much as a parking ticket), and deserve a discount, not like those other people" short-term thinkers to rush in mass to sign up for a temporary discount; they're exactly the type that would do anything for a free t-shirt, and are expected to be the linchpin behind the entire program's approval.
Enjoy the temporary discount, cattle. I'll be leaving the States before they get around to offering a 'discount' for a breathalyser to turn on your car (gotta prove you aren't drinking and driving), as well as a 'discount' for an embedded LEO remote car disabler (because it's safer for our skittish police to turn off your engine with a remote control). Anything in the name of safety and security, right?
Indeed. When I first read about the resolution, I was relatively happy to hear about the bump; but as I read about all the hardware missing that is needed to really support a screen at that resolution, I can't help picturing a pick-up truck with a jet engine lassoed to the top of it.