The several times I used Uber, it was great too. They picked me up in luxury cars (Mercedes, BMWs) and had much nicer cars than the towncar services I tried. They used GPS and took me by the most direct route, while the towncar service took weird back roads that took a lot longer. The towncars were also older and in poor shape, whereas the Uber cars were rather new and clean.
Exactly. A decent bicycle is faster (Segways top out at 12mph), much cheaper, not hard to fix, and if I need to go up some stairs or over other terrain, it's not hard to just pick it up and carry it. How much do Segways weigh?
You're not too bright, are you? Congress has ultimate authority over NASA, and over everything in the entire government. They control funding for everything, and write laws to that effect.
If your boss at your company tells you to do something wasteful and unethical, then you either do it or find a new job.
It is terribly inconsistent, true, however it's also extremely adaptable, which is why it has a much larger vocabulary than any other language. Basically, English is the Borg of languages.
Spanish is crappy because it has a ridiculously low information density compared to just about every other language. It's horribly verbose and has too many syllables to say the simplest things.
Mexico and other Latin American countries are not exactly highly industrialized. If you want to get something made, you either go to Germany or Japan (if it's really high-dollar and needs extreme precision) or you go to China (if it's cheaper and you need huge volumes). Latin America is where you go if you just need some agricultural produce.
My understanding is that Portuguese is much closer to Latin than Spanish (Castilian) is. (Also, Galician is very close to Portuguese.) Basically, Spanish is a crappy derivative of Latin.
at this point we should be storming the Pentagon / White House / Senate en masse to demand and take real freedom. There is no terrorist threat that actually warrants this level of intrusion, our own police seem to be better at killing defenceless citizens than terrorists anyway over the last year.
The problem is that most Americans are perfectly happy with the police acting this way. Yes, there's a minority of Americans who are outraged, but most of them thing it's just fine. Just look at the online comments any time one of these incidents happens; most Americans think the victim got what he deserved.
Conservative Christians do indeed suck, but I can't think of any serious terrorist or even violent activity by Christians in a very long time, except for a couple cases of some lone wacko shooting an abortion doctor. Muslims, however, are infamous for organizing to do violent deeds. Advocating for various laws (which aren't very successful BTW, gay marriage is becoming more and more accepted in America now and is becoming legal all over; these days I think most ultraconservatives are more worried about illegal immigration, gun control, and various other issues than about gay marriage) is not similar to carrying out violent, terroristic acts.
Hey, I'm not a big fan of Judaism, but working to free your people from slavery does not make you a "warlord". Also, I don't remember anything in Exodus about Moses or his people resorting to violence; the story just has them fleeing the Egyptian army, and the Egyptians being swallowed by the Red Sea after they tried to follow the Jews through it. Of course, this story also claims the Red Sea was parted somehow so they could walk across, so it's highly questionable just how accurate this story is....
Also, I'm not sure how you give credit to Constantine for founding Christianity; I thought that honor went to Jesus, or perhaps Paul or even Peter.
Well yes, at the rate we're going now, we're probably never going to have rotating space stations. Instead, we're going to destroy ourselves before we figure out how to make those.
That doesn't prove anything. Rachel is the "latest and greatest", but how does she do in fights? We don't know, because she never gets in a fight in the movie, or does anything at all where her physical abilities are tested.
It's entirely possible that Deckard (and maybe Rachel too) is a different version which was designed to have human-like abilities, so that he would pass more easily as human; it's also likely they have a longer lifespan as a result: Tyrell told Roy that he was a "candle that burns twice as bright", meaning basically their greater physical abilities came at a cost: a short lifespan.
You've got to be kidding. Last Crusade was a pretty good movie, definitely much better than Temple of Doom. Crystal Skull was, by most accounts, indeed crap.
There's other problems with the idea of a sequel: the original was made in the early 1980s, and the visual style while still great does show some aging, especially if you look at the vehicles, which look basically like souped-up 80s cars. Modern cars have far more curves and complex surfaces thanks to modern technology (look at the headlights in particular). Finally, the beginning of the movie explicitly states it takes place in 2017 (IIRC), which is only a couple years away, and obviously the present doesn't look that much like BR, not yet at least. Like a lot of sci-fi, it was overly optimistic with the dates, and they should have added 50 years or so to the dates. The same goes for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which should have been named 2100 instead. We don't have antigravity tech yet (pictured in BR with the flying cars), and are unlikely to get it anytime soon since our understanding of physics doesn't allow it.
Deckard was a replicant. Ridley Scott himself said so, and it's fairly obvious from the movie too. At the end, Gaff leaves one of his origami creations at Deckard's apartment--a unicorn. Deckard had dreams about unicorns. This was a message from Gaff to Deckard that he knew what he was.
Sounds pretty accurate. I'm just curious, with these people you know who think Obama is going to declare martial law, how do you handle that? Get in an argument? Stay off the topic? Say "ok" and change the subject?
Honestly, I don't remember this much nuttiness 10-20 years ago.
Well that's why I use the word "eventually"; it may take a generation.
However, for this anti-vax stuff, this movement did not exist before about 10 or 15 years ago or so. Anyone who's 40+ should well remember a time when there was no such concern about vaccines, and it was entirely routine for everyone to get their vaccines (except a few religious nuts). So it doesn't seem quite right to me to ascribe this to the phenomenon you mention, since many (most?) anti-vax people actually grew up in a time before this hysteria erupted.
In fact, there's a lot of hysteria going on these days which largely older people are buying into, which was not such a big concern years ago: illegal immigration, the idea that Obama is going to declare martial law and make himself dictator, etc.
I think you're misunderstanding. His car does not have any volume or tuning knobs, it's just a touchscreen. That's how all Ford cars with "MyFordTouch" systems are now. He was complaining about this, because his old car had regular knobs which as you point out can be operated almost instinctively without looking at them. So I was asking him why he bought the car when it has such a horrible mis-feature.
Personally, I will not buy a Ford, or any other car, which is like this. I don't care how good the rest of the car is, this makes it completely unusable and downright dangerous to operate in fact. I think they should even be banned as road hazards.
The problem here isn't the "new kids", it's the company for buying into crappy "solutions" which are proprietary and keep the IT department stuck supporting them for years or decades. For instance, look at Rational ClearCase. It's a complete piece of shit compared to modern DVCS systems like git or mercurial; it's slow as hell, requires full-time administrators to keep it running, and is a PITA to use, and lacks all kinds of modern features such as atomic commits. Maybe in 1989 it was pretty cool, but so were patent leather jackets. So why do companies still keep paying millions of dollars for this POS? Because management is stupid and believes the marketing BS from IBM/Rational, and also probably because they've based all their development on it and are afraid of change (even though CC is so shitty it's costing them dearly in development time because it's such a PITA to use).
If companies worked harder to keep themselves independent and not reliant on proprietary products that only aim to lock them in, they wouldn't have this problem so much.
With political things, yes, that's definitely true. However with scientific things it's not; there's real science (which is falsifiable and evidence-based), and there's bullshit and pseudoscience and religion. Of course, it's possible to BS people with "science" by presenting false evidence, covering up key evidence, etc., but if you teach people the scientific method (instead of teaching them to believe in BS like homeopathy for instance, or in Creationism which isn't science) eventually the truth will come out and people will believe the correct things once the evidence is presented and understood.
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The several times I used Uber, it was great too. They picked me up in luxury cars (Mercedes, BMWs) and had much nicer cars than the towncar services I tried. They used GPS and took me by the most direct route, while the towncar service took weird back roads that took a lot longer. The towncars were also older and in poor shape, whereas the Uber cars were rather new and clean.
Exactly. A decent bicycle is faster (Segways top out at 12mph), much cheaper, not hard to fix, and if I need to go up some stairs or over other terrain, it's not hard to just pick it up and carry it. How much do Segways weigh?
You're not too bright, are you? Congress has ultimate authority over NASA, and over everything in the entire government. They control funding for everything, and write laws to that effect.
If your boss at your company tells you to do something wasteful and unethical, then you either do it or find a new job.
It is terribly inconsistent, true, however it's also extremely adaptable, which is why it has a much larger vocabulary than any other language. Basically, English is the Borg of languages.
Spanish is crappy because it has a ridiculously low information density compared to just about every other language. It's horribly verbose and has too many syllables to say the simplest things.
Mexico and other Latin American countries are not exactly highly industrialized. If you want to get something made, you either go to Germany or Japan (if it's really high-dollar and needs extreme precision) or you go to China (if it's cheaper and you need huge volumes). Latin America is where you go if you just need some agricultural produce.
So basically, if you want to talk to educated people who actually make things work in the world, don't waste your time learning Spanish.
My understanding is that Portuguese is much closer to Latin than Spanish (Castilian) is. (Also, Galician is very close to Portuguese.) Basically, Spanish is a crappy derivative of Latin.
If Deckard is a replicant, then Roy's final act of saving Deckard, and his beautiful value of life speech means nothing.
I don't how this is, unless you think the replicants are less than human (which the movie, as you point out, is showing us is not true).
Also, Roy had no way of knowing whether Deckard was a replicant or not. Roy was obviously operating on the assumption that Deckard was a normal human.
No, the Nazi leadership were big believers in Germanic paganism and the occult actually.
at this point we should be storming the Pentagon / White House / Senate en masse to demand and take real freedom. There is no terrorist threat that actually warrants this level of intrusion, our own police seem to be better at killing defenceless citizens than terrorists anyway over the last year.
The problem is that most Americans are perfectly happy with the police acting this way. Yes, there's a minority of Americans who are outraged, but most of them thing it's just fine. Just look at the online comments any time one of these incidents happens; most Americans think the victim got what he deserved.
If you don't live in the Middle East, then it's not so much of a problem for you.
Conservative Christians do indeed suck, but I can't think of any serious terrorist or even violent activity by Christians in a very long time, except for a couple cases of some lone wacko shooting an abortion doctor. Muslims, however, are infamous for organizing to do violent deeds. Advocating for various laws (which aren't very successful BTW, gay marriage is becoming more and more accepted in America now and is becoming legal all over; these days I think most ultraconservatives are more worried about illegal immigration, gun control, and various other issues than about gay marriage) is not similar to carrying out violent, terroristic acts.
Hey, I'm not a big fan of Judaism, but working to free your people from slavery does not make you a "warlord". Also, I don't remember anything in Exodus about Moses or his people resorting to violence; the story just has them fleeing the Egyptian army, and the Egyptians being swallowed by the Red Sea after they tried to follow the Jews through it. Of course, this story also claims the Red Sea was parted somehow so they could walk across, so it's highly questionable just how accurate this story is....
Also, I'm not sure how you give credit to Constantine for founding Christianity; I thought that honor went to Jesus, or perhaps Paul or even Peter.
Well yes, at the rate we're going now, we're probably never going to have rotating space stations. Instead, we're going to destroy ourselves before we figure out how to make those.
She picks up a gun and shoots him in the head while he isn't paying attention. Anyone can do that.
That doesn't prove anything. Rachel is the "latest and greatest", but how does she do in fights? We don't know, because she never gets in a fight in the movie, or does anything at all where her physical abilities are tested.
It's entirely possible that Deckard (and maybe Rachel too) is a different version which was designed to have human-like abilities, so that he would pass more easily as human; it's also likely they have a longer lifespan as a result: Tyrell told Roy that he was a "candle that burns twice as bright", meaning basically their greater physical abilities came at a cost: a short lifespan.
You've got to be kidding. Last Crusade was a pretty good movie, definitely much better than Temple of Doom. Crystal Skull was, by most accounts, indeed crap.
There's other problems with the idea of a sequel: the original was made in the early 1980s, and the visual style while still great does show some aging, especially if you look at the vehicles, which look basically like souped-up 80s cars. Modern cars have far more curves and complex surfaces thanks to modern technology (look at the headlights in particular). Finally, the beginning of the movie explicitly states it takes place in 2017 (IIRC), which is only a couple years away, and obviously the present doesn't look that much like BR, not yet at least. Like a lot of sci-fi, it was overly optimistic with the dates, and they should have added 50 years or so to the dates. The same goes for 2001: A Space Odyssey, which should have been named 2100 instead. We don't have antigravity tech yet (pictured in BR with the flying cars), and are unlikely to get it anytime soon since our understanding of physics doesn't allow it.
Deckard was a replicant. Ridley Scott himself said so, and it's fairly obvious from the movie too. At the end, Gaff leaves one of his origami creations at Deckard's apartment--a unicorn. Deckard had dreams about unicorns. This was a message from Gaff to Deckard that he knew what he was.
The moral is that I will never, ever trust that company again. It's a shame, since they used to be (mid-90s) the best in the industry, imho
That's funny; back around 1990 I knew some people who ran a huge BBS (a whopping 2GB online!!), and they absolutely hated Seagates.
It seems like many of these companies go through phases.
Sounds pretty accurate. I'm just curious, with these people you know who think Obama is going to declare martial law, how do you handle that? Get in an argument? Stay off the topic? Say "ok" and change the subject?
Honestly, I don't remember this much nuttiness 10-20 years ago.
Well that's why I use the word "eventually"; it may take a generation.
However, for this anti-vax stuff, this movement did not exist before about 10 or 15 years ago or so. Anyone who's 40+ should well remember a time when there was no such concern about vaccines, and it was entirely routine for everyone to get their vaccines (except a few religious nuts). So it doesn't seem quite right to me to ascribe this to the phenomenon you mention, since many (most?) anti-vax people actually grew up in a time before this hysteria erupted.
In fact, there's a lot of hysteria going on these days which largely older people are buying into, which was not such a big concern years ago: illegal immigration, the idea that Obama is going to declare martial law and make himself dictator, etc.
I think you're misunderstanding. His car does not have any volume or tuning knobs, it's just a touchscreen. That's how all Ford cars with "MyFordTouch" systems are now. He was complaining about this, because his old car had regular knobs which as you point out can be operated almost instinctively without looking at them. So I was asking him why he bought the car when it has such a horrible mis-feature.
Personally, I will not buy a Ford, or any other car, which is like this. I don't care how good the rest of the car is, this makes it completely unusable and downright dangerous to operate in fact. I think they should even be banned as road hazards.
The problem here isn't the "new kids", it's the company for buying into crappy "solutions" which are proprietary and keep the IT department stuck supporting them for years or decades. For instance, look at Rational ClearCase. It's a complete piece of shit compared to modern DVCS systems like git or mercurial; it's slow as hell, requires full-time administrators to keep it running, and is a PITA to use, and lacks all kinds of modern features such as atomic commits. Maybe in 1989 it was pretty cool, but so were patent leather jackets. So why do companies still keep paying millions of dollars for this POS? Because management is stupid and believes the marketing BS from IBM/Rational, and also probably because they've based all their development on it and are afraid of change (even though CC is so shitty it's costing them dearly in development time because it's such a PITA to use).
If companies worked harder to keep themselves independent and not reliant on proprietary products that only aim to lock them in, they wouldn't have this problem so much.
With political things, yes, that's definitely true. However with scientific things it's not; there's real science (which is falsifiable and evidence-based), and there's bullshit and pseudoscience and religion. Of course, it's possible to BS people with "science" by presenting false evidence, covering up key evidence, etc., but if you teach people the scientific method (instead of teaching them to believe in BS like homeopathy for instance, or in Creationism which isn't science) eventually the truth will come out and people will believe the correct things once the evidence is presented and understood.