The one sitting behind my desk can. It's not something fancy or expensive, either. It's a Fellowes PS70-2 that probably didn't cost much more than a hundred bucks. I use it for platic cards and CDs all the time.
I work for a non-profit that has a student computer lab. I'm the one that's gotta check out the donated machines. You're absolutely right. It's kinda like that old joke of waiting till a bank teller's not looking and dropping a handful of change into their drawer; you'll cause them hours of repeated fun-filled recounts just by giving them thirty eight cents.
Didn't know about the prefetch thing, thanks. I thought Google was essentially proxying cookies at me (I never had a clear idea of how I believed it was being done, but frankly, it didn't seem unreasonable to me that they could do that if they chose to), and it seemed really sleazy. Now that I know Mozilla is doing it, I still find it just as sleazy. Cookies initiated "fairly" at least get a duration-of-session acceptance. Those set "unfairly" get a lifetime block.
So, by your definition, a prude is someone who doesn't want to hear words like "fuck", "cunt" etc while out to dinner at Pizza Hunt with family, shouted down the road by teenagers?
Leaving aside the finer points of set theory, yes. That is an indicator of prudishness.
Tell me, what *exactly* are you doing to "disarm" these words?
You're soaking in it.
At any time, a word is either offensive or not, according to the current taboos. Being subject to those taboos does not warrant the self-important garbage you've been spouting.
Heh. I'm from the culture that gave us the word 'taboo.' Not claiming that gives me any special insight (nor am I claiming it doesn't), but it does amuse me.
About a hundred years ago the sight a woman's ankles was as scandalous as the sight of her nipples would be today. Do you support the enactment of legislation to criminalize the sight of female ankles? Or do you feel that particular taboo was merely Elizabethan puritanism run amok? If the former, I stand by my careless use of the word 'taliban' in an earlier post; if the latter, I would then ask if you agree that the prohibition against baring of the nipple is just as ludicrous? Or, how about explaining why men can reveal their nipples but women can't. I have a sneaking suspicion you'll tell me it's because the female nipple is a sexual organ, even though, unless I've been doing it very horribly wrong all these years, it isn't. These are ridiculous, arbitrary bits of various traditions that modern mainstream society worships at the feet of without critically examining. Right up there with throwing salt over your shoulder, only with the force of civil law to back it up.
In my worldview, you can view nudity as natural and of little consequence (aside from questions of temperature, etc.), or you can demand that everybody wear burkas at all times. Anything in between is simply arbitrary contradictions. I use the example of nudity here because it's more illustrative (heh), but the logic applies to language as well in this instance.
If we all voted every year on which phonemes we as a society wanted banished, would it seem any less ridiculous? In other words, please give me a single, coherent non-tautological reason that the word 'fuck' should not be uttered in public. Just one reason that isn't something along the lines of "It offends me because I was taught as a child that I should be offended by it" or some other rubbish. I wanna know why "fuck" warps a child's mind but "duck" doesn't.
Sorry, that usage may have been in appropriate in this case. It refers to the habit many of us anti-prudes have of referring to people of a certain mindset within our own country as the American Taliban. However, your use of the term "high street" made me assume you to be a Brit, so I dropped 'American' from the term.
But that possible error aside, I stand by my angry sentiment: the history of western civilization shows quite clearly A) the effect that prudishness and its bedfellows has on society, and 2) that proponents of prudishness and its bedfellows play right into the hands of those who turn out almost 100% of the time to be merely accumulating power without regard to the propriety they preach at the masses (i.e. Jim Bakker in his hotel room, the Sept. 11th highjackers in strip clubs the night of Sept. 10th, etc.).
In short, no, I don't think you personally are advocating the return of the Dark Ages and government issued Burkas for all. But you are parrotting the mindset and doing the bidding of those who do advocate such things, whether you realize it or not. That is your right, of course. Doesn't make it right, though. Look back through history; which side of that issue do you see yourself on?
Yes. Those cheerleading for a New Dark Ages do kinda rub me the wrong way. If all you prudes with your Pavlovian conviction that "bad words" == "anti-family" get your way, then the Taliban will have won. Now if you'll pardon me, I'm gonna go find my girlfriend a nice burka. Maybe something crotchless.
I've given up on advancing society. These days I'd settle for us not losing any more ground to the theocrats and their repressed supporters.
I suppose on your homeworld if people learn of the existence of some arbitrary phoneme that rhymes with "luck" then they turn into axe murderers?
I assume you realize that going around whining about how offensive FUCK is gives it the power to offend, right? That while people like me are trying to drain the word (and any other random phoneme) of its power to offend, people like YOU are countering our efforts, and trying to keep FUCK (and certain other random phonemes) as powerful as possible, and even, if possible, MORE powerful, right?
So yeah, keep whining about your kids being exposed to whatever random arbitrary phoneme, all the while bending over backwards to make sure it always has the maximum possible power to offend, simply because you drill it into their heads that they should be offended by it. Brilliant.
Are there any other ways in which you try to advance human society? Maybe you contribute heavily to the campaigns of legislators trying to force infants to be blindfolded while their mothers feed them so they see as little nipple as is humanly possible, and thus avoid a life of licentious abandon and a blatant disregard for the frigid modesty that your god quite obviously intended his pets to adhere to?
Or had you never truly considered these things, and merely spend your time parroting what your parents indoctrinated you with, with reverence only for the cycle of thoughtless recitation of inanity?
Microsoft could possibly claim they invented every innovation of the next 10 years just by making outlandish claims ahead of time, waiting for Apple/Google to come up with a similar idea, and then saying "well we were going to do that anyway".
Damn lawyers, coming here just to show off their vast knowledge of the patent system!
Doubtful. The Windows/Mac ratio is what, about 17:1 or some such? With XP, Microsoft couldn't even get half the installed base upgraded within a year. And considering the percentage of users who have hardware that meets Longhorn's requirements, I'm gonna make a bold statement and say that half of all Windows users will NOT upgrade within the first week of release. So 1,000X+ comes down to something more like 8x, and I think even that is wildly optimistic. I predict it's gonna take a few months for Longhorn to achieve the market penetration of OS X. Of course it will surpass it, the much larger installed base guarantees that. But uptake of new releases is yet another area where Microsoft has lost a whole damn lot of momentum in recent years.
[no envelopes were harmed (or even discolored) in the making of these wild ass guesses]
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The one sitting behind my desk can. It's not something fancy or expensive, either. It's a Fellowes PS70-2 that probably didn't cost much more than a hundred bucks. I use it for platic cards and CDs all the time.
You forgot Poland!
Err, I meant Apple.
And how do Google count something as a "blog"?
If it's made of wood?
Methodists don't do the born-again thing.
And they tend to be low-key enough not to have those who advocate unprovoked violence against political opponents acting as apologists for them.
But as usual, once everything you actually said has been stripped away as just plain wrong, the remainder of your post is right on!
I work for a non-profit that has a student computer lab. I'm the one that's gotta check out the donated machines. You're absolutely right. It's kinda like that old joke of waiting till a bank teller's not looking and dropping a handful of change into their drawer; you'll cause them hours of repeated fun-filled recounts just by giving them thirty eight cents.
it smacks of fascism. Or is that communism?
I vote neither. How about Authoritarianism or Totalitarianism?
Didn't know about the prefetch thing, thanks. I thought Google was essentially proxying cookies at me (I never had a clear idea of how I believed it was being done, but frankly, it didn't seem unreasonable to me that they could do that if they chose to), and it seemed really sleazy. Now that I know Mozilla is doing it, I still find it just as sleazy. Cookies initiated "fairly" at least get a duration-of-session acceptance. Those set "unfairly" get a lifetime block.
So, by your definition, a prude is someone who doesn't want to hear words like "fuck", "cunt" etc while out to dinner at Pizza Hunt with family, shouted down the road by teenagers?
Leaving aside the finer points of set theory, yes. That is an indicator of prudishness.
Tell me, what *exactly* are you doing to "disarm" these words?
You're soaking in it.
At any time, a word is either offensive or not, according to the current taboos. Being subject to those taboos does not warrant the self-important garbage you've been spouting.
Heh. I'm from the culture that gave us the word 'taboo.' Not claiming that gives me any special insight (nor am I claiming it doesn't), but it does amuse me.
About a hundred years ago the sight a woman's ankles was as scandalous as the sight of her nipples would be today. Do you support the enactment of legislation to criminalize the sight of female ankles? Or do you feel that particular taboo was merely Elizabethan puritanism run amok? If the former, I stand by my careless use of the word 'taliban' in an earlier post; if the latter, I would then ask if you agree that the prohibition against baring of the nipple is just as ludicrous? Or, how about explaining why men can reveal their nipples but women can't. I have a sneaking suspicion you'll tell me it's because the female nipple is a sexual organ, even though, unless I've been doing it very horribly wrong all these years, it isn't. These are ridiculous, arbitrary bits of various traditions that modern mainstream society worships at the feet of without critically examining. Right up there with throwing salt over your shoulder, only with the force of civil law to back it up.
In my worldview, you can view nudity as natural and of little consequence (aside from questions of temperature, etc.), or you can demand that everybody wear burkas at all times. Anything in between is simply arbitrary contradictions. I use the example of nudity here because it's more illustrative (heh), but the logic applies to language as well in this instance.
If we all voted every year on which phonemes we as a society wanted banished, would it seem any less ridiculous? In other words, please give me a single, coherent non-tautological reason that the word 'fuck' should not be uttered in public. Just one reason that isn't something along the lines of "It offends me because I was taught as a child that I should be offended by it" or some other rubbish. I wanna know why "fuck" warps a child's mind but "duck" doesn't.
Sorry, that usage may have been in appropriate in this case. It refers to the habit many of us anti-prudes have of referring to people of a certain mindset within our own country as the American Taliban. However, your use of the term "high street" made me assume you to be a Brit, so I dropped 'American' from the term.
But that possible error aside, I stand by my angry sentiment: the history of western civilization shows quite clearly A) the effect that prudishness and its bedfellows has on society, and 2) that proponents of prudishness and its bedfellows play right into the hands of those who turn out almost 100% of the time to be merely accumulating power without regard to the propriety they preach at the masses (i.e. Jim Bakker in his hotel room, the Sept. 11th highjackers in strip clubs the night of Sept. 10th, etc.).
In short, no, I don't think you personally are advocating the return of the Dark Ages and government issued Burkas for all. But you are parrotting the mindset and doing the bidding of those who do advocate such things, whether you realize it or not. That is your right, of course. Doesn't make it right, though. Look back through history; which side of that issue do you see yourself on?
Yes. Those cheerleading for a New Dark Ages do kinda rub me the wrong way. If all you prudes with your Pavlovian conviction that "bad words" == "anti-family" get your way, then the Taliban will have won. Now if you'll pardon me, I'm gonna go find my girlfriend a nice burka. Maybe something crotchless.
I've given up on advancing society. These days I'd settle for us not losing any more ground to the theocrats and their repressed supporters.
I suppose on your homeworld if people learn of the existence of some arbitrary phoneme that rhymes with "luck" then they turn into axe murderers?
I assume you realize that going around whining about how offensive FUCK is gives it the power to offend, right? That while people like me are trying to drain the word (and any other random phoneme) of its power to offend, people like YOU are countering our efforts, and trying to keep FUCK (and certain other random phonemes) as powerful as possible, and even, if possible, MORE powerful, right?
So yeah, keep whining about your kids being exposed to whatever random arbitrary phoneme, all the while bending over backwards to make sure it always has the maximum possible power to offend, simply because you drill it into their heads that they should be offended by it. Brilliant.
Are there any other ways in which you try to advance human society? Maybe you contribute heavily to the campaigns of legislators trying to force infants to be blindfolded while their mothers feed them so they see as little nipple as is humanly possible, and thus avoid a life of licentious abandon and a blatant disregard for the frigid modesty that your god quite obviously intended his pets to adhere to?
Or had you never truly considered these things, and merely spend your time parroting what your parents indoctrinated you with, with reverence only for the cycle of thoughtless recitation of inanity?
About $14/ton last time I was there.
Nor does Trusted Computing TRUST YOU!
Microsoft could possibly claim they invented every innovation of the next 10 years just by making outlandish claims ahead of time, waiting for Apple/Google to come up with a similar idea, and then saying "well we were going to do that anyway".
Damn lawyers, coming here just to show off their vast knowledge of the patent system!
Are we talking marketshare or installed base? Makes a huge difference when comparing two products with vastly different lifespans.
Doubtful. The Windows/Mac ratio is what, about 17:1 or some such? With XP, Microsoft couldn't even get half the installed base upgraded within a year. And considering the percentage of users who have hardware that meets Longhorn's requirements, I'm gonna make a bold statement and say that half of all Windows users will NOT upgrade within the first week of release. So 1,000X+ comes down to something more like 8x, and I think even that is wildly optimistic. I predict it's gonna take a few months for Longhorn to achieve the market penetration of OS X. Of course it will surpass it, the much larger installed base guarantees that. But uptake of new releases is yet another area where Microsoft has lost a whole damn lot of momentum in recent years.
[no envelopes were harmed (or even discolored) in the making of these wild ass guesses]
...but I swear I've scene you elsewhere.
unlike Business 2.0's "make a second internet and provide free access for some reason!" theory
That's not a theory. It's a hypothesis.
Marklar!
Here ya go.
Then this oughta give you the creeps.
Does it run Lin--, err, Mac OS X?
Do you mean Transmogrifying?
Did you mean Transmogrifying?
Charleston is in SC, not NC. Although if the Tinfoil Haberdashers are correct...