Whether I agree with you or not, your position smells like the often-used 'internet indignant' comment - a position of high moral authority...that just HAPPENS to agree with what you believe politically.
So for example, if people in Baghdad were signing a petition to allow girls to attend schools and get the same education boys get, would you also call them cowards for wanting their identities to be kept confidential?
...and while IMO the game was craptastic, I always was impressed with the beauty of the environments in Age of Conan.
What happens when this meticulously-detailed world dies? It would be a damn shame that all the artwork and effort that went into producing it were to end up as some 1's and 0's on a couple of DVDs in Funcom's basement archive.
It's really too bad that there isn't some sort of ur-format that worlds like this can be exported to, to allow them to be re-used somehow for other settings. I'm sure it's pure fantasy for me to hope that this world would ever be simply open-sourced for someone else to use, long after the AoC game is defunct and forgotten.:(
"I'm haemophilic - where am I supposed to get the cash for my treatment?"
Not to sound too brutal but: at what point in the conversation is it assumed that your haemophilia is everyone else's problem?
And I daresay I speak for most people when I say that hey, you get dealt a shitty card in life (haemophilia), I'm willing to pitch in to help you out. That's part of my definition of being human, helping each other.
But if you have haemophilia because your mom and dad are brother and sister? Is it automatically assumed that I still should pay? Still, that's not YOUR fault, so I might still be ok that far.
What if you need extra treatments because you take part in high-risk activities? What if you develop a chronic disease like AIDS because of YOUR lifestyle choices? What if you get congestive heart failure because you're a chainsmoker and love to eat big ass steaks even though you weigh 200kg? I strongly object to paying for ANY of your healthcare, particularly if I make the choices/sacrifices necessary to stay healthy myself. I'm essentially subsidizing your irresponsibility.
The debate seems to falter from the start, because some people seem to rationalize it thus: since this sort of detail would be staggeringly impossible, as well as morally problematic, to sort through, we should just have a comprehensive healthcare system that covers everyone, and accept that the benefit to all outweighs the cost of the free-riders.
Others rationalize it oppositely: since resources are finite, the goal is to not waste any. Accepting free-riders is unacceptable both morally and logically (since essentially by failing to punish, the system is encouraging this behavior), so better to have a flawed system where people are responsible for their own choices, and live with the consequences of their own decisions, accepting that there are some people who are going to fall through the cracks.
So which are you, gain-maximizing, or loss-minimizing?
Kathryn Schulz's book makes a great case for understanding why being wrong is so intrinsic to being human...unfortunately, and ironically, she's got it 180-degrees-wrong.
Where she fails is her conclusion: it's not that BEING WRONG is what makes us so successful, adaptive, and smart. It's the 'trying again to be right' bit.
Being wrong is easy. Being right is much, much harder, and probably requires trial and error. But if you're satisfied with being wrong, you don't keep trying. While the idea that 'being wrong is human' is all nice and friendly, ACCEPTING being wrong without any sense of negative consequence is staggeringly, blindingly stupid. Without gradations of consequence (ie more and more serious consequences for more and more serious failures), life doesn't even make sense.
"Schulz recommends that we respond to the mistakes (or putative mistakes) of those around us with empathy and generosity and demand that our business and political leaders acknowledge and redress their errors rather than ignoring or denying them. "
Sorry, but that's just stupid. This is the same sort of touchy-feely crap that's infected modern American public schools. "It's ok, little Timmy, you just keep trying to figure out what 2+2 is. You're still a valuable and precious little snowflake."
Why should Timmy ever bother to figure out 2+2 if he never NEEDS to get it right? Whether it's reward-based or something more simple like shame, there MUST be a disincentive to be wrong. Anything else is simply asinine.
So you send your husband out to get dinner; instead of buying food for your children, he spends the money on porn and beer. Ah well, you should respond with generosity and empathy, right?
Can you imagine if her methodology was followed? "It's ok BP, we all know that drilling for oil is hard work, and can "It's ok, Mr President. You just spent well over a $trillion on an ostensible economic rescue plan, but aside from simply not working, it pretty much all ended up in your friends' and political allies' pockets. We won't be angry, we won't even be annoyed. We'll respond with generosity and empathy. Perhaps you could take another $trillion from our kids' and grandkids' future and try again? Maybe this time you'll succeed?"
We're in the nascent stages of considering what's the next thing to investigate. Granted, we're a HUGE step away from being able to do anything with the data we find (like send a probe, etc.).
Nevertheless, if you think this ISN'T going to play out *precisely* the same way that the discovery/exploration/exploitation of the New World did (ie entirely based on greed + geopolitics), then I'd love to hear your assumptions about essential changes in human nature since the 16th century.
So let me see if I understand this accurately: CONGRESS (whose responsibility is actually allocating funds) is complaining that the PRESIDENT (whose role in budget matters is primarly negative) isn't talking about enough spending on a program that they have actually underfunded for 30+ years?
Let's see: - Vacuous, joyless, lifeless - ranges from 'frigid' to 'scalding-you-are-dead-now' hot with pretty much no transition - getting there is far more interesting and fun than being there. In fact, once you're there, there's pretty much nothing to do at all. - if you decide to "step outside" without MAJOR efforts at protecting yourself, you're dead. Period....sounds more like a wife to me.
So now are the protesters repainting their "BUSH: NO WAR FOR OIL!" to "OBAMA: NO WAR FOR LITHIUM!" signs? It just doesn't seem to have the same ring to it, in truth.
"The U.S. intelligence community's secret historical document reclassification program is a project to reclassify certain documents that have already been declassified and released to the public through the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The program was started under the Clinton administration in the fall of 1999 (Executive Order 13142). It sought to be covert for as long as possible, but was revealed by the National Security Archive in February 2006. By that point over 55,000 pages had already been reclassified, many dating back more than 50 years.
During the George W. Bush administration the scope of the program widened (Executive Order 13292), and was scheduled to end in March 2007. The program has been criticized by experts, journalists and authors for reclassifying documents that there is no reason to keep secret anymore[citation needed]."
Isn't it funny that it was only a heinous thing suddenly when BUSH was president? I'm sure that's just coincidence.
"It is true that people can draw ridiculous conclusions of relevance or irrelevance based on historical context, but they can draw equally ridiculous conclusions without any historical context."
However, the Constitution is not a 'dead' document, once written and never changed. It is changed and updated REGULARLY through a very clear process. Therefore it IS a current document, and says exactly what it means, or it would have been revised.
So please, feel free to find a quote from the Constitution that *must* be interpreted contextually/historically, that hasn't been later updated to make modern sense.
Ironic that you post anonymously. LOL. But I'll bite.
1) If one lives in Monaco, or Germany, or Serbia, traveling to another country is trivial; one might even point out that in some Euro countries, one CAN'T drive an hour in any single direction without traveling internationally. For most of the US, traveling internationally is major exercise. The distance comment doesn't explain Australia, but my answer there would be to ask a question that applies to both Australia and Europe: how much vacation time do you get?
2) Going to Canada (Montreal aside) is pretty much the same as most of the US (or parts), and frankly speaking the bulk of Mexico is a shathole I wouldn't WANT to visit (again, much like parts of the US). The regional variation within the US is fading, certainly, but the cultural differences between a New Englander, an Oklahoman, and a Californian used to be (language mostly notwithstanding) easily comparable in scope to that of Germans v. Dutch, or Swedes v. Danes. It might also have to do with Americans' lack of roots - I'd guess that most Americans have significantly changed their place of residence, moving more than 100 miles, at least once within the last 5-10 years. Not sure that's true for other cultures, and would directly speak to ones' inclination to 'see other places'.
And truth-in advertising: I speak 3 languages, have had a passport for 30 years, and have visited 49 states to one degree or another, as well as visiting every country in Western Europe save Portugal, a good handful of E European countries, Japan, Taiwan (only a day), and Singapore. I've worked for a European company now for nearly 18 years, with much of my job being the 'interpretation' of expectations between a Central European multinational and their US customers, despite both sides of the table speaking very fluent english. I think I can speak authoritatively on the characteristic differences between Americans (generally) and Europeans (generally) that I've observed.
Oh, and by the way, I appreciate your effort to correct my grammar, but I did indeed mean 'provincial' precisely as I used it: http://www.yourdictionary.com/provincial - provincial (pr vinshl, pr-), adjective 1. of or belonging to a province 2. having the ways, speech, attitudes, etc. of a certain province 3. of or like that of rural provinces; countrified; rustic 4. designating or of a style, esp. of 18th-cent. European furniture, that was characteristic of the provinces and was a simpler and plainer copy of the style characteristic of the capital and cultural centers 5. narrow; limited; unsophisticated: a provincial outlook
I might add another definition: 6. assuming that someone else's use of a word in a way one is not familiar with must be inherently wrong without bothering to look it up oneself; subsequently misinterpreting and extrapolating one's assumption, inflating it into a general condemnation of an entire other culture's use of language when it remains one's own failure....but that might in fact be parochial.
I found your statement to be amusingly ironic. Only on/. would it be rated 'insightful'.
First, please understand that Americans are generally staggeringly provincial; most Americans don't (and never will) own a passport. Most will never leave the US, because they don't have to. Most do not speak a foreign language. Contrary to the view of 'world citizens' like many Euros (as well as a significant number of patronizing, elitist Americans), this isn't because the bulk of Americans are stupid hicks, they simply don't need these things. Everything they can do, need to do, and want to do, all can take place within the comfortably-broad confines of US borders. If they're feeling slightly adventurous, they can go to Canada (barely another country) or even Mexico (where most vacation destinations are less hispanic than Laredo, TX anyway).
So to your point, regarding Americans' 'inability to imagine a non-American English speaker', of course they don't generally assume that, it wouldn't make any sense for them to do so in context.
Secondly, what other countries seem to interpret as arrogance appears to be some sort of reverse projected narcissism: "OMG you are so self-centered, you never notice me!"...and if you don't get the irony in that statement, well, then you're hopelessly humorless.
To suggest that lack of regard equals arrogance is naive, presumptuous, and ultimately self-defeating. To then use THAT as a motivation to generically HATE someone, based on nothing more than their country of origin? I'd call that a self-justifying conceit - dare I call it arrogance? - itself.
Get over yourself - nobody automagically is entitled to that level of importance; not Americans individually, and certainly not you.
I know everyone seems to be popping wood over the treasure trove of 'secrets' expected, but honestly: the point of Obama's efforts is that far, far too much material was going into 'classified' status that just wasn't justified. As I recall it had also been a stated goal of Bush II and Clinton, to reduce the amount of overclassification going on. Futher, this isn't some sort of swath of automatically-declassified docs, I think we can all be sure that this pile has been thoroughly sorted through and culled for anything that should, in fact, be justified in remaining classified.
This would suggest to me that the tremendous bulk of material being declassified isn't worth being classified, and thus no more interesting generally than someone's grocery list.
Believe me, a number of people are wishing there was a mod: -1, criticizing cause celebe
He's got Asperger's, and he's a computer nerd with responsibility and boundary issues. We have only to find out that he lives in his Mom's basement and is a chronic masturbator and you pretty much have an iconic/.er. It's really no wonder that he finds sympathy here.
Sometimes, almost by accident, I see how amazingly differently people see things than I do.
The genuine irony in this situation is that I'd guess if we sat down and had a beer together, we'd find some very reasonable common ground on many issues (despite certainly many philosophical disagreements in principle). Our politicians, who should be doing this as a living, can't seem to manage it.
...when (no matter which party is in power) they'll just massage the data to say what they want anyway? Why not just skip a step and let them craft it from the beginning?
Good comments. I'm aware (from hard experience, sadly) about the horrifically inconsistent PSU performance. It's the one thing (now) that I'll NEVER "use over" from an older system...the consequences are just too catastrophic.
I've taken to (frankly) almost grossly overpowering systems, on the premise that if I need 600W, even a sketchy PSU should be safe if it's rated at 1000W. (Of course there's a heat consequence, but I can cope with that...generally...)
Current newest system has an Antec CP1000, unfortunately the case I got was the Antec 900...(call me stupid) that has the PSU mount at the BOTTOM of the case, which must make sense to someone, but it sure seems to me like it's going to just heat everything above it.:\
It's ironic that Obama is cast as an example of decentralized governance, as both his own rhetoric and his party represent the direct growth and empowerment of centralized, Federal power.
The original precepts of the Republican party used to be about the DEcentralization of governance and local control as much as possible. Sadly, the Bush II administration (and the Republican-controlled congressional fellow-travelers) proved that was no longer true, and that the Right is now just about feeding DIFFERENT pigs from the same Federal trough as the Left.
I wish we had a real conservative party, not just liberals colored with evangelical colors.:|
Not sure if you're perhaps not an American, or simply an American that's poorly informed, but that's why there's the thing called the US Constitution.
The US Constitution was intended, as far as I can tell, to be a basic set of principles that the states in the union agreed to in principle. If a state is part of the union, its constitution in turn MUST adhere at a minimum to the boundaries set forth by the federal document.
Therefore, in your example, as the nation as a whole has clearly found that people must be treated identically regardless of their skin color, I'd say that the USC 14th Amendment addresses segregation and would apply: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." I am not however a constitutional scholar.
The point is that the USC is a fence limiting the power of government. Every state within the union can set up fences on their own governments' powers tighter, but not looser.
Beyond that, yes, states are free to adopt policies that many would find abhorrent - state funded abortion, for example. Others could go the other way, and stop ALL funding to any family planning clinic that provided any such services (I'm not sure constitutionally if they could be banned today, precedent-wise, but go with the example). It wouldn't take many years to see the results of such policies on the people of those various states, and to recognize whether said policies benefit, harm, or have no net effect on the general population.
Sadly, the overarching power of the Fed has wiped out the essence of states' ability to plot their own course (within clear bounds) that was the key to the 'experiment' of these United States.
Firstly, I've been building PC's since perhaps 1984. (I wouldn't include the early computers that I built from kits in 80-81.) So we're talking over a long, long span of time.
I learned early on that you get what you pay for - shit components=shit performance. Thus PRECISELY the point I was making: when sinking a lot into individual components because you're not buying cheap crap, it's useful to be able to purchase incrementally.
Now, I'll answer all the other commenters: first, recognize that this is over 25 years. I've built dozens of systems for other people and their systems run far more reliably than mine BECAUSE I personally live in an extremely challenging computer environment: a 110 yr old farmhouse, in a rural community, without a/c, in MN - even with a window unit, the ambient temps in summer in my computer room can reach a humid 90+ F (32C). Even with a good UPS/line scrubber, we seem to still get power spikes, browns, drops, and very 'dirty' power, to the point that I've even considered lobbying to be the first local tester for an in-home fuel cell system.
But all this is peripheral to my main point that putting multi functions to me on a single die seems to simply be adding points of failure. Only one comment to this point even responded to THAT.
But let's analyze your comments, shall we? "I was written a ticket by a detective one morning." OK Fact. "It was for 4mph over the limit." OK fact "There was no traffic on the 5 lane road..." Meaningless "...and I was in a business suit." Meaningless "...he had written the ticket to me, but was for a Ford Mustang. I drive a Dodge Charger." clearly a clerical error, not making any real difference to the actual fact of whether you were speeding or not. "...DA comes over and asks if I want to plead it down to an equipment violation." Sounds like they were willing to negotiate for your effort physically coming into court "I tell him that wouldn't be legal as I didn't have any equipment violations and the detective wrote the ticket to the wrong type of vehicle." You've shown him that you are looking to play the nit-picking game. "The DA walks over to the detective and proceeds to have him write me a new ticket, making the change to the type of vehicle to reflect what I was driving. This was after the DA looked up my DMV records to find the correct type of vehicle." Clerical error of obvious fact corrected. I genuinely don't know - is there some legal clause somewhere that says that you can't correct factual errors on a ticket later? You weren't - from your statements - arguing that it wasn't in fact you or your car. "I ask him if he used a radar gun to clock me, which he didn't. I asked him if he was qualified to write tickets based on "pacing". He wasn't." Absolutely relevant - on what basis did he write your ticket? "I asked him if he knew how far down the road in either direction the speed limits changed. He didn't. This was relevant because I had just entered a 45 mph area from a 55 mph area." Vaguely relevant.
Nowhere in here did you state whether you were, in fact, speeding.
I'm curious about this because it seems like our legal system is now built around 'what you can get away with' instead of what you actually did. If, after all this, you were in FACT speeding, then they were right in citing you regardless of the sloppiness of the resolution.
The judge got tired of me reaming the detective and says "I really don't care what evidence you have, you're paying for the ticket. Dismissed." That was the end of that. Traffic court is a joke.
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Whether I agree with you or not, your position smells like the often-used 'internet indignant' comment - a position of high moral authority...that just HAPPENS to agree with what you believe politically.
So for example, if people in Baghdad were signing a petition to allow girls to attend schools and get the same education boys get, would you also call them cowards for wanting their identities to be kept confidential?
...and while IMO the game was craptastic, I always was impressed with the beauty of the environments in Age of Conan.
What happens when this meticulously-detailed world dies? It would be a damn shame that all the artwork and effort that went into producing it were to end up as some 1's and 0's on a couple of DVDs in Funcom's basement archive.
It's really too bad that there isn't some sort of ur-format that worlds like this can be exported to, to allow them to be re-used somehow for other settings. I'm sure it's pure fantasy for me to hope that this world would ever be simply open-sourced for someone else to use, long after the AoC game is defunct and forgotten. :(
"I'm haemophilic - where am I supposed to get the cash for my treatment?"
Not to sound too brutal but: at what point in the conversation is it assumed that your haemophilia is everyone else's problem?
And I daresay I speak for most people when I say that hey, you get dealt a shitty card in life (haemophilia), I'm willing to pitch in to help you out. That's part of my definition of being human, helping each other.
But if you have haemophilia because your mom and dad are brother and sister? Is it automatically assumed that I still should pay? Still, that's not YOUR fault, so I might still be ok that far.
What if you need extra treatments because you take part in high-risk activities? What if you develop a chronic disease like AIDS because of YOUR lifestyle choices? What if you get congestive heart failure because you're a chainsmoker and love to eat big ass steaks even though you weigh 200kg? I strongly object to paying for ANY of your healthcare, particularly if I make the choices/sacrifices necessary to stay healthy myself. I'm essentially subsidizing your irresponsibility.
The debate seems to falter from the start, because some people seem to rationalize it thus: since this sort of detail would be staggeringly impossible, as well as morally problematic, to sort through, we should just have a comprehensive healthcare system that covers everyone, and accept that the benefit to all outweighs the cost of the free-riders.
Others rationalize it oppositely: since resources are finite, the goal is to not waste any. Accepting free-riders is unacceptable both morally and logically (since essentially by failing to punish, the system is encouraging this behavior), so better to have a flawed system where people are responsible for their own choices, and live with the consequences of their own decisions, accepting that there are some people who are going to fall through the cracks.
So which are you, gain-maximizing, or loss-minimizing?
Kathryn Schulz's book makes a great case for understanding why being wrong is so intrinsic to being human...unfortunately, and ironically, she's got it 180-degrees-wrong.
Where she fails is her conclusion: it's not that BEING WRONG is what makes us so successful, adaptive, and smart. It's the 'trying again to be right' bit.
Being wrong is easy. Being right is much, much harder, and probably requires trial and error. But if you're satisfied with being wrong, you don't keep trying. While the idea that 'being wrong is human' is all nice and friendly, ACCEPTING being wrong without any sense of negative consequence is staggeringly, blindingly stupid. Without gradations of consequence (ie more and more serious consequences for more and more serious failures), life doesn't even make sense.
"Schulz recommends that we respond to the mistakes (or putative mistakes) of those around us with empathy and generosity and demand that our business and political leaders acknowledge and redress their errors rather than ignoring or denying them. "
Sorry, but that's just stupid. This is the same sort of touchy-feely crap that's infected modern American public schools. "It's ok, little Timmy, you just keep trying to figure out what 2+2 is. You're still a valuable and precious little snowflake."
Why should Timmy ever bother to figure out 2+2 if he never NEEDS to get it right? Whether it's reward-based or something more simple like shame, there MUST be a disincentive to be wrong. Anything else is simply asinine.
So you send your husband out to get dinner; instead of buying food for your children, he spends the money on porn and beer. Ah well, you should respond with generosity and empathy, right?
Can you imagine if her methodology was followed? "It's ok BP, we all know that drilling for oil is hard work, and can "It's ok, Mr President. You just spent well over a $trillion on an ostensible economic rescue plan, but aside from simply not working, it pretty much all ended up in your friends' and political allies' pockets. We won't be angry, we won't even be annoyed. We'll respond with generosity and empathy. Perhaps you could take another $trillion from our kids' and grandkids' future and try again? Maybe this time you'll succeed?"
I thought the Japanese weren't planning to go to the moon until 2025? You're saying they were already there?
MUCH of this porn is being made by pretty good looking women with utterly no self respect and clearly no standards insofar as that goes.
My question is then: why don't I *ever* sit next to them on the plane/bus/park bench?
We're in the nascent stages of considering what's the next thing to investigate. Granted, we're a HUGE step away from being able to do anything with the data we find (like send a probe, etc.).
Nevertheless, if you think this ISN'T going to play out *precisely* the same way that the discovery/exploration/exploitation of the New World did (ie entirely based on greed + geopolitics), then I'd love to hear your assumptions about essential changes in human nature since the 16th century.
Couple this with:
http://www.physorg.com/news156423566.html "Physicists build new anti-mosquito laser"
I think our house will soon be wasp-free. And maybe we'll all be blinded, but dammit we won't have to worry about wasps.
So let me see if I understand this accurately: CONGRESS (whose responsibility is actually allocating funds) is complaining that the PRESIDENT (whose role in budget matters is primarly negative) isn't talking about enough spending on a program that they have actually underfunded for 30+ years?
"The moon, you see, is a harsh mistress"
Let's see: ...sounds more like a wife to me.
- Vacuous, joyless, lifeless
- ranges from 'frigid' to 'scalding-you-are-dead-now' hot with pretty much no transition
- getting there is far more interesting and fun than being there. In fact, once you're there, there's pretty much nothing to do at all.
- if you decide to "step outside" without MAJOR efforts at protecting yourself, you're dead. Period.
So now are the protesters repainting their "BUSH: NO WAR FOR OIL!" to "OBAMA: NO WAR FOR LITHIUM!" signs?
It just doesn't seem to have the same ring to it, in truth.
You might want to check your facts before sparking the Lefty nerdrage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._reclassification_program
"The U.S. intelligence community's secret historical document reclassification program is a project to reclassify certain documents that have already been declassified and released to the public through the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The program was started under the Clinton administration in the fall of 1999 (Executive Order 13142). It sought to be covert for as long as possible, but was revealed by the National Security Archive in February 2006. By that point over 55,000 pages had already been reclassified, many dating back more than 50 years.
During the George W. Bush administration the scope of the program widened (Executive Order 13292), and was scheduled to end in March 2007. The program has been criticized by experts, journalists and authors for reclassifying documents that there is no reason to keep secret anymore[citation needed]."
Isn't it funny that it was only a heinous thing suddenly when BUSH was president? I'm sure that's just coincidence.
"It is true that people can draw ridiculous conclusions of relevance or irrelevance based on historical context, but they can draw equally ridiculous conclusions without any historical context."
However, the Constitution is not a 'dead' document, once written and never changed. It is changed and updated REGULARLY through a very clear process.
Therefore it IS a current document, and says exactly what it means, or it would have been revised.
So please, feel free to find a quote from the Constitution that *must* be interpreted contextually/historically, that hasn't been later updated to make modern sense.
Ironic that you post anonymously. LOL.
But I'll bite.
1) If one lives in Monaco, or Germany, or Serbia, traveling to another country is trivial; one might even point out that in some Euro countries, one CAN'T drive an hour in any single direction without traveling internationally. For most of the US, traveling internationally is major exercise. The distance comment doesn't explain Australia, but my answer there would be to ask a question that applies to both Australia and Europe: how much vacation time do you get?
2) Going to Canada (Montreal aside) is pretty much the same as most of the US (or parts), and frankly speaking the bulk of Mexico is a shathole I wouldn't WANT to visit (again, much like parts of the US). The regional variation within the US is fading, certainly, but the cultural differences between a New Englander, an Oklahoman, and a Californian used to be (language mostly notwithstanding) easily comparable in scope to that of Germans v. Dutch, or Swedes v. Danes. It might also have to do with Americans' lack of roots - I'd guess that most Americans have significantly changed their place of residence, moving more than 100 miles, at least once within the last 5-10 years. Not sure that's true for other cultures, and would directly speak to ones' inclination to 'see other places'.
And truth-in advertising: I speak 3 languages, have had a passport for 30 years, and have visited 49 states to one degree or another, as well as visiting every country in Western Europe save Portugal, a good handful of E European countries, Japan, Taiwan (only a day), and Singapore. I've worked for a European company now for nearly 18 years, with much of my job being the 'interpretation' of expectations between a Central European multinational and their US customers, despite both sides of the table speaking very fluent english. I think I can speak authoritatively on the characteristic differences between Americans (generally) and Europeans (generally) that I've observed.
Oh, and by the way, I appreciate your effort to correct my grammar, but I did indeed mean 'provincial' precisely as I used it: http://www.yourdictionary.com/provincial - provincial (pr vinshl, pr-), adjective
1. of or belonging to a province
2. having the ways, speech, attitudes, etc. of a certain province
3. of or like that of rural provinces; countrified; rustic
4. designating or of a style, esp. of 18th-cent. European furniture, that was characteristic of the provinces and was a simpler and plainer copy of the style characteristic of the capital and cultural centers
5. narrow; limited; unsophisticated: a provincial outlook
I might add another definition: 6. assuming that someone else's use of a word in a way one is not familiar with must be inherently wrong without bothering to look it up oneself; subsequently misinterpreting and extrapolating one's assumption, inflating it into a general condemnation of an entire other culture's use of language when it remains one's own failure. ...but that might in fact be parochial.
...and Clinton was too busy getting blowjobs to care.
Neither point is actually relevant, but one of us is so seething with hatred for Bush II that it just HAS to be said, right?
I found your statement to be amusingly ironic. Only on /. would it be rated 'insightful'.
First, please understand that Americans are generally staggeringly provincial; most Americans don't (and never will) own a passport. Most will never leave the US, because they don't have to. Most do not speak a foreign language. Contrary to the view of 'world citizens' like many Euros (as well as a significant number of patronizing, elitist Americans), this isn't because the bulk of Americans are stupid hicks, they simply don't need these things. Everything they can do, need to do, and want to do, all can take place within the comfortably-broad confines of US borders. If they're feeling slightly adventurous, they can go to Canada (barely another country) or even Mexico (where most vacation destinations are less hispanic than Laredo, TX anyway).
So to your point, regarding Americans' 'inability to imagine a non-American English speaker', of course they don't generally assume that, it wouldn't make any sense for them to do so in context.
Secondly, what other countries seem to interpret as arrogance appears to be some sort of reverse projected narcissism: "OMG you are so self-centered, you never notice me!"...and if you don't get the irony in that statement, well, then you're hopelessly humorless.
To suggest that lack of regard equals arrogance is naive, presumptuous, and ultimately self-defeating. To then use THAT as a motivation to generically HATE someone, based on nothing more than their country of origin? I'd call that a self-justifying conceit - dare I call it arrogance? - itself.
Get over yourself - nobody automagically is entitled to that level of importance; not Americans individually, and certainly not you.
I know everyone seems to be popping wood over the treasure trove of 'secrets' expected, but honestly: the point of Obama's efforts is that far, far too much material was going into 'classified' status that just wasn't justified. As I recall it had also been a stated goal of Bush II and Clinton, to reduce the amount of overclassification going on. Futher, this isn't some sort of swath of automatically-declassified docs, I think we can all be sure that this pile has been thoroughly sorted through and culled for anything that should, in fact, be justified in remaining classified.
This would suggest to me that the tremendous bulk of material being declassified isn't worth being classified, and thus no more interesting generally than someone's grocery list.
Believe me, a number of people are wishing there was a mod: -1, criticizing cause celebe
He's got Asperger's, and he's a computer nerd with responsibility and boundary issues. We have only to find out that he lives in his Mom's basement and is a chronic masturbator and you pretty much have an iconic /.er. It's really no wonder that he finds sympathy here.
Sometimes, almost by accident, I see how amazingly differently people see things than I do.
The genuine irony in this situation is that I'd guess if we sat down and had a beer together, we'd find some very reasonable common ground on many issues (despite certainly many philosophical disagreements in principle). Our politicians, who should be doing this as a living, can't seem to manage it.
Cheers.
...when (no matter which party is in power) they'll just massage the data to say what they want anyway? Why not just skip a step and let them craft it from the beginning?
Good comments.
I'm aware (from hard experience, sadly) about the horrifically inconsistent PSU performance.
It's the one thing (now) that I'll NEVER "use over" from an older system...the consequences are just too catastrophic.
I've taken to (frankly) almost grossly overpowering systems, on the premise that if I need 600W, even a sketchy PSU should be safe if it's rated at 1000W. (Of course there's a heat consequence, but I can cope with that...generally...)
Current newest system has an Antec CP1000, unfortunately the case I got was the Antec 900...(call me stupid) that has the PSU mount at the BOTTOM of the case, which must make sense to someone, but it sure seems to me like it's going to just heat everything above it. :\
So far so good, though.
It's ironic that Obama is cast as an example of decentralized governance, as both his own rhetoric and his party represent the direct growth and empowerment of centralized, Federal power.
The original precepts of the Republican party used to be about the DEcentralization of governance and local control as much as possible. Sadly, the Bush II administration (and the Republican-controlled congressional fellow-travelers) proved that was no longer true, and that the Right is now just about feeding DIFFERENT pigs from the same Federal trough as the Left.
I wish we had a real conservative party, not just liberals colored with evangelical colors. :|
Not sure if you're perhaps not an American, or simply an American that's poorly informed, but that's why there's the thing called the US Constitution.
The US Constitution was intended, as far as I can tell, to be a basic set of principles that the states in the union agreed to in principle. If a state is part of the union, its constitution in turn MUST adhere at a minimum to the boundaries set forth by the federal document.
Therefore, in your example, as the nation as a whole has clearly found that people must be treated identically regardless of their skin color, I'd say that the USC 14th Amendment addresses segregation and would apply: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
I am not however a constitutional scholar.
The point is that the USC is a fence limiting the power of government. Every state within the union can set up fences on their own governments' powers tighter, but not looser.
Beyond that, yes, states are free to adopt policies that many would find abhorrent - state funded abortion, for example. Others could go the other way, and stop ALL funding to any family planning clinic that provided any such services (I'm not sure constitutionally if they could be banned today, precedent-wise, but go with the example). It wouldn't take many years to see the results of such policies on the people of those various states, and to recognize whether said policies benefit, harm, or have no net effect on the general population.
Sadly, the overarching power of the Fed has wiped out the essence of states' ability to plot their own course (within clear bounds) that was the key to the 'experiment' of these United States.
Then you'd be wrong.
Firstly, I've been building PC's since perhaps 1984. (I wouldn't include the early computers that I built from kits in 80-81.) So we're talking over a long, long span of time.
I learned early on that you get what you pay for - shit components=shit performance.
Thus PRECISELY the point I was making: when sinking a lot into individual components because you're not buying cheap crap, it's useful to be able to purchase incrementally.
Now, I'll answer all the other commenters: first, recognize that this is over 25 years. I've built dozens of systems for other people and their systems run far more reliably than mine BECAUSE I personally live in an extremely challenging computer environment: a 110 yr old farmhouse, in a rural community, without a/c, in MN - even with a window unit, the ambient temps in summer in my computer room can reach a humid 90+ F (32C). Even with a good UPS/line scrubber, we seem to still get power spikes, browns, drops, and very 'dirty' power, to the point that I've even considered lobbying to be the first local tester for an in-home fuel cell system.
But all this is peripheral to my main point that putting multi functions to me on a single die seems to simply be adding points of failure. Only one comment to this point even responded to THAT.
But let's analyze your comments, shall we?
"I was written a ticket by a detective one morning." OK Fact.
"It was for 4mph over the limit." OK fact
"There was no traffic on the 5 lane road..." Meaningless
"...and I was in a business suit." Meaningless
"...he had written the ticket to me, but was for a Ford Mustang. I drive a Dodge Charger." clearly a clerical error, not making any real difference to the actual fact of whether you were speeding or not.
"...DA comes over and asks if I want to plead it down to an equipment violation." Sounds like they were willing to negotiate for your effort physically coming into court
"I tell him that wouldn't be legal as I didn't have any equipment violations and the detective wrote the ticket to the wrong type of vehicle." You've shown him that you are looking to play the nit-picking game.
"The DA walks over to the detective and proceeds to have him write me a new ticket, making the change to the type of vehicle to reflect what I was driving. This was after the DA looked up my DMV records to find the correct type of vehicle." Clerical error of obvious fact corrected. I genuinely don't know - is there some legal clause somewhere that says that you can't correct factual errors on a ticket later? You weren't - from your statements - arguing that it wasn't in fact you or your car.
"I ask him if he used a radar gun to clock me, which he didn't. I asked him if he was qualified to write tickets based on "pacing". He wasn't." Absolutely relevant - on what basis did he write your ticket?
"I asked him if he knew how far down the road in either direction the speed limits changed. He didn't. This was relevant because I had just entered a 45 mph area from a 55 mph area." Vaguely relevant.
Nowhere in here did you state whether you were, in fact, speeding.
I'm curious about this because it seems like our legal system is now built around 'what you can get away with' instead of what you actually did. If, after all this, you were in FACT speeding, then they were right in citing you regardless of the sloppiness of the resolution.
The judge got tired of me reaming the detective and says "I really don't care what evidence you have, you're paying for the ticket. Dismissed." That was the end of that. Traffic court is a joke.