I wouldn't say it's xenophobic, necessarily. That's just how they are. They still have nationalistic pride I suppose, something Americans are sorely lacking.
Uhhh... Have you ever been to America? Or even heard of it? Most non-Americans consider Americans overy jingoistic.
The Japanese, and Europeans, are xenophobic. In Old World nations, you can be born there, live your entire life, die there, and yet always be considered an outsider. It's really sad. Where as New World nations were built on immigration. Don't get me wrong, there's always a "the previous batch of immigrants was okay, but THESE immigrants are different." In America, it was Irish, then the Germans, then the eastern europeans, then the asians, and now its hispanics. Eventually the new immigrants are assimilated and in a twist of irony, they end up talking about the threat of the other.
Back in 1999 or 2000, NPR ran a story about an international conference on world population. They pointed out that an unforseen development at the conference. The discussions turned to the fact that Europe and Japan have extensive and expensive social programs, yet have a shrinking population. This situation could lead to a economic meltdown -- similar to the US's potential Social Security crisis, only 10 times worse. The New World nations like the US, Canada, Australia and the like suggested increasing the population by encouraging immigration, and they were promptly shouted down. France is for the French! And French aren't muslim!" "Swiss aren't black!" "They can work the Netherlands, but they'll never be Dutch!" The New World nations provided their own histories as convincing counter evidence, but to no avail.
I like the new rcx. I like the new sensor selection, but I can help but wonder about the form factor of the sensors. The old sensors were basically a 2x4 brick with a 2x4 plate attached. These look huge. with no studs, just a few technic sides. I kind of wonder about that. I'd hate to have great rcx and these great sensors, but no way to integrate the sensors in an appealing way.
And I never said that phrase was, but to go on to say that there is no seperation is to fundamentally misunderstand the intent of the Constitution. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson -- then president -- wrote of a "wall of seperation between church and state." Madison also wrote, "Strongly guarded...is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States." When it comes down to it, "seperation of church and state" is merely a convient term for a deeply ingrained principle held by the vast majority of Americans and by the Constitution. The terms "fair trial" and "religious liberty" do not appear verbatam in the Constitution either, yet no one denys that these principles are in the Constitution.
I always find it interesting that the very people that argue against the seperation of church and state are always advocating that their narrow brand of evangelical Christianity be the prefered religion. The same people that argue for government sponsored prayer are the same ones that would cry out if someone would lead their children every day in a prayer that said "My thy vedic law propegate through out the world," or "I bear witness that Muhammed -- may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him -- is the Messenger of Allah." Hell, they'd even become upset with "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at hour of our death."
Their main goal is to coerce as many people to their own belief system as possible. Their actions show that their faith is weak, since truly strong faith and belief has no need for a government stamp of approval, and no need to for a government propagation. Their personal actions should be enough to spread their faith, yet for some reason they feel that they are not strong enough witness, and need the stong hand of the government for help. When I see them, I'm always reminded of Matthew 6:5-6, which says, "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you." Even as a child, I was struck by that passage and how it is a direct rebuke of their actions.
We're not Iran, or Saudi Arabia, nowhere near in fact, but the small "born again" ultra-conservative religious groups do have a disproportiate amount of influence at all level of government in the United States. This small group does not make any bones about what their overall objective is. The abolishment of the seperation of church and state and the creation of government based on their version of Christianity. You can hear it when they remark "There's not such thing as seperation of church and state," or "America was founded as a Christian nation with the Bible as the source of the Consitution." These are... well... lies.
We can see their influence in the funneling of tax dollars to religious purposes ("Faith-Based Intiatives"), the retargeting money away from condom distribution and family planning in international AIDS programs, even though all studies show that condoms and family planning must be used along with abstaince and "being faithful", because condoms "interfere with God's will." We public school boards attempting to teach Christian creationism. That's just two examples that came to head immediately, but there are many many more.
It may be more backhanded than say the Spanish Inquisition, but the goals and the movement are still there.
Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust",
Yes, the "In God We Trust" was placed on the money in the 50s to show how America was better than the "godless commies." It was a mistake, but one that will never be rectified, because no one wants to be painted as "voting against God."
how can a country be cosmopolite if there is a predominant religion
The same way every other civilized country does. Hate to tell you this, but most people believe in a god.
which I bet your constitution embraces.
The Consititution of the United States doesn't. It doesn't mention gods at all. It specifically provides for freedom of religion and forbids the establishment of one. It was written by deists, agnostics, and athiests. And back in the 18th century it was evangelicals who were pushing for seperate of church and state since they were afraid that episcopalians would force their religion on them. Ironic isn't it?
You don't know what you're talking about here. You should get your facts straight, and then make a more coherent argument than "It sucks." Because you look fool.
I even tend to agree with your general argument, but you're making all athiests look bad. So do us all a favor, and shut up.
They spoke some english. They were ESL students. Whenever you talked with them, you ended up having to slow way down, and simplify your speech.
Nice girls. Very cute. One said she was an electrical engineering student and the other said she was majoring in "eng-eh-er-ish." (She said it with four syllables.) I'm not entirely sure the "english" major understood the question, but then again someone has to go back and provide the world with engrish.
Everyone thinks it's cool to hit on girls that don't speak english. I've done it, only with Japanese ESL students. This is what I learned: It's hard to be witty when you have to repeat yourself three times. (So very cute, and so very frustrating.)
WTF?/. didn't interview Peter Jacks nor Jeff Bezos. If you looked at the stories rather than just copying and pasting results from a search, you would have seen that. Wired interviewed Jeff Bezos. Newsweek interviewed Peter Jackson.
Because ID isn't a theory. It isn't science. There is no contraversy. Just religous zealots trying to force their false world view on others. They, and ID, is completely illegitmate.
This comment reminds of this Electrical Engineering girl I knew once. She one time said, "Sometimes I wish everyone would stop trying to hit on me." She was right. Everyone was trying to hit on her.
This proposal illustrates the exact opposite. It shows the need for effective regulation. What is being proposed is to cripple the internet, and then charge you extra for an uncrippled version. Do you think being charged three times as much for DSL if you want port 80 open crazy? Do you like cable companies when they throw hissy fits and block a bunch of channels you're paying for with blue screens that say, "MEDIA PRODUCER is keeping you from watching your show. CABLE company has absolutely nothing to do with this screen. They broke in a put the screen up all by themselves and we were powerless to stop them."
Yet these two tiered systems can, overnight, become a mess if Congress decides to set rules and restrictions and requirements. Instead of promoting more bandwidth between same-network customers, regulations will push less bandwidth for different-network customers.
I fail to see the distinction. In both cases the companies have created an artificial scarcity of bandwidth. Deregulation in a semi-competitive market inevitiably leads to these inefficiencies. That's one reason why -- contrary to what you've been told -- regulated markets work, and work well. The deregulation movement is always promoted by those that stand to make the most of a deregulated market, the very largest market entities. The smallest companies are always squeezed out. Deregulation inevitably leads to consolidation, which in turn leads to lower service.
A great example of recent deregulation is the manufactured California power crisis, and Enron. Enron wrote the deregulatory statute, and then proceeded to illegally manipulate the market. This story has been repeated many many times, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale.
As for the [D]ARPA comment, the Internet grew quite well between 1969 and 1990 think you very much. It didn't achieve explosive growth until about 1994-1995, after the creation of the WWW and NCSA Mosaic. So you see, government regulation (or the lack there of) had absolutely nothing to do with it, but rather the expense of computers (Pretty much all PCs computer cost 2000-4000 dollars prior to 1995.) and the lack of compelling applications and therefore the corresponding lack of demand held back the growth of the Internet.
That's just dumb. The interesection of these two markets is pretty much empty. While some women play games, they don't play the same games as the rest of market. Sure 18-35 year old males also play The Sims, but there's no way to sell to both markets simultaneously.
You may, however, cancel Cheat! and get rid of that annoying hostess all together. Please also get rid of all of your stupid car shows. I don't need to watch some guy named "Big C" with a bunch of fake bling showing photos of the occasional car between long takes of mostly naked asian chicks. You can put that on your sister-network -- MTV/MTV2.
You're disin' semi-naked asian chicks? That's like the only reason to watch whatever-the-hell that show is. I never understood "Formula D". I get racing. I like racing. It's something about sliding around, but for the life of me, I don't understand what they're trying to do, or can figure out who wins. Well spinning apparently make you lose, but that's not the same thing.
On semi-related note what's up with cable channels getting out of their "core competencies"? AMC is now running an original tv series, instead of a movies and things about movies. Cartoon Network (CARTOON NETWORK!) is now running live action movies. I like "Goonies", it's just not what I expect to see on CARTOON network.
Not really true. If you bring up a Gnome file dialog and just start typing a file name Gnome will open a text box and allow you to enter the file name with tab completion. It's a very slick example of what Gnome needs to do more of. Gnome has focused its efforts on simplifing the interface for the masses. They've made good progress but the masses seem unimpressed.
It's time to think about finding elegant ways to put that power back in while keeping it transparent to the masses.
Wrong. It's completely hidden functionality that's actually less functional that the previous incarnation. There's no way to know that Shift-DoubleBuckey-CokeBottle pops up the "Go" window or an indication of what the subwindow does. Most importantly, typing a path doesn't actually open the file, but rather simply changes you to the directory, so you still have to hunt and click.
It goes against 30 years of GUI development, and it's broken by design.
Havoc Pennington can suck my cock, but I imagine he'd find that too complicated too.
well actually it's neither, since it's unfertilized, and therefore nothing. Not even the "life begins at fertilization" crowd believes an unfertilized egg is anything. But then again maybe some do, and therefore believe all menstrating women are serial murderers .
I'm not critical of the PRC economically They're doing exactly what anyone would be doing in their position. I am critical of totalitarian regimes, as any freedom loving person should be. What I'm really critical of, and was the main source of my criticism, is the idea that a capitalistic economy inevitably leads to democracy. I think think it's a self-serving and specious argument.
There's no contemporary evidence, nor historical evidence to support that reasoning. A rising standard of living makes people happy. Their lives have improved. Why would they want to rock the boat by changing the government? I know. It's a supposed to be a gradual change, not a revolution. But there's no evidence that a happy populace pays that much attention to politics. In fact that there's plenty of evidence, across history and culture, that economically propsperous societies are largely disinterested in government and politics, assuming of course there's no radical change in governmental behavior. In other words, happy people like the status quo.
So the question now is who is promoting this idea, and why? The idea was initially proposed and promoted by those that stood to financialy gain from increased economic ties with totalitarian regimes. The public by and large, didn't want to trade with totalitarian regimes, since economic isolation has been the policy for decades. It's a policy with a track record of success. (e.g. The USSR, which collapsed because of the inefficiencies in a communist economy. Trading with them, and moving them to a more capitalistic economy would have only perpetuated the the undemocratic regime.)
Now we're supposed to believe that everything we've been doing is wrong. That seems suspect. Especially since the argument for "economic engagement" (or whatever moniker it's currently known by) was originally based on us selling goods to them, and through extension exporting our culture of democracy. Of course, we don't actually make anything, and what we do make, they can't afford. Instead we've got lazzie-faire capitalism that, surpise surpise, which disproportionaly benefits the very people that postulated "economic engagement." Furthermore, the very target government that was supposed be getting friendlier is actually becoming more nationalistic and more aggressive. It's a policy, in 10+ years that has made no progress in any of its social goals, but has achieved pretty much everything that was economically predicted.
That's what I'm critical of. It's not the Chinese people I have a beef with. They're making out like bandits, and behaving like wealthy (comparatively speaking) apathetic people the world over. It's the fallacy that a growing quasi-capitalistic economy leads to democracy.
I'm personal friends with several Chinese. Zhongwen wo xue zai da xue, keshi wo liang nian mei xue le. I've been in their houses. I've drank their beer. I've eaten their hamhocks. I've watched in disbelief as they've fought over who would get to eat chicken gristle ("soft bone"). I've met one person that was critical of the current regime, and she was from a small village in rural sichuan. Most are from the much more prosperous east, including Beijing and Shanghai. I've even met an honset to god communist. But the vast majority don't care. They've got Xiang Xiang singing about pigs on their iPod, "kentucky" in their belly, and money in their wallet. They don't care about what we want them to care about, like democracy and freedom of expression ("yeah. Someday, but not now. It's too difficult." is the common refrain.) They don't care about things the regime want them to care about, like Taiwan. ("They're not a country, but they are.")
If you think that a full stomach and an iPod is going lead to democracy, you're sadly mistaken. If you talk to any sub-30-year-old Chinese, as I have, you'll find that they don't actually care about democracy at all. They don't care about reform. They don't care about the government. As long as they have their cheap goods, they're happy. In fact, most of them agree with the government. The Tiananmen Square protestors were traitors. Government control of the media is required for a happy society. People shouldn't be able to say certain things.
You say that the old guard will die off and then the younger folk will take power and not fear an open society. That's not going to happen, because the younger generation doesn't support an open society. They support capitalism, but not democracy. The younger folk don't care that they live in a totalitarian society. If no one cares, then there is no impetus for change. Futhermore, a totalitaran regime is maintains itself by promoting true-believers, and there are always true-believers.
Root can do anything. If you don't want people to have write access to your perl script, then don't give them root access! Think about it. Even if you used something like perl2exe, root could simply delete your script, and replace it with something that did something nasty. Do you really want that? No.
Well then I ask what's the point? All you've succeeded in doing is shoving the math of calculating the relative time from the timezone system to the people. You're not gaining anything. In fact you've made the system more complicated. Compare:
People go to sleep at 12am. It's 10pm here, and they are 3 timezones east, so it's 1am there. Therefore, they are asleep.
to:
I go to sleep at 12 am. It is 10pm here, and they are 45 degrees east of me, which means they get up 3 hours before I do*. If I got up at at 7am, then they got up at 4 am. If people stay up 16 hours, then they go to sleep 16 hours after 4am, which is 8pm. Therefore, they are asleep.
[*] This convolution is required because you want people to still go about their daylight day as normal, but don't want to call relative time a "timezone".
The timezone system maps roughtly to the daylight hours, and makes it easy to coordinate across vast distances. The elimination of the timezone system would undo 140 years of progress, for nothing. I think there's problems with the timezone system as implimented (i.e. 30 minute timezones), but it does work, and works well.
Why not just forget about time zones, day light savings and create a new universal global time.
Because that would be incredibly dumb.
First, the vast majority of people the world during daylight hours (only 20% work during night in industrialized countries, and no one works at night in pre-industrial nations.), so your "outgrowing" observation is wrong.
The problem with the literal interpretation school of thought is that it assumes that the writers of Bible had no concept of symbolism or even the ability to explain via examples. For the vast majority of history people were illiterate. So if you wanted to teach a moral, you told an easily rememberable story that illustrated that moral. Aesop's fables have lasted 2600 years. Does it matter if there was a lying shepard boy? No. What does matter is moral that if you keep lying, no one will believe you when you tell the truth. This isn't a heretical idea, since the Gospels themselves state that Jesus spoke in parabels. Does it matter if there some guy got mugged on his way to Jerhico, and a Samartain helped him? No. Of course not. The moral of being compassionate is what matters.
Being concerned about the minuet is to miss the greater truths. The most obvious case is the Jesus throwing the money changers out of the Temple. The different books of the Bible has the event occuring at different times. Who cares when it happened. What matters is that places of worship should not be defiled by buisness.
If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs.
I'm sorry, but if you have that much problem in learning the morality of Bible, then you have not been taught Christianity, and should find a new church pronto.
Given that the Bible has been translated and retranslated for thousands of years there have been plenty of times. Sometimes for mundane reasons like, to have a translation in another language, other times for political purposes (e.g. the King James Version). Honestly, how many modern English translations do we need? (New International? New American? Why do Americans need their own translation, what was wrong with the old version anyway?) A new translation comes out every couple of years. Each new translation targeted at niche audiences. It makes you wonder how many are motivated by faith, and ho many by money. Many times in protestant churches, differenent members of the congregation have different translations, which were chosen for purely personal reasons.
St. Athanasius pretty much dictated what would be in the New Testament and what would not be. He ordered all other non-canon material destroyed, yet the Gospel of Thomas survived by being placed in a jar. Even the compilation of the New Testament, controversy reigned. Many, including Martin Luther, suggested that Revelations should not be included since it was too likely to be manipulated due to its alegorical nature. Martin Luther moved certain books of the New Testament to basically an appendix. It was a political decision.
Make-a-Degree programs are for underwater basket weaving. Computational linguistics is an advanced topic. You won't touch it, nor should you, until a graduate program. You don't know enough about computer science to do anything advanced yet. Get yourself a CS degree and take some linguistic, anthropology, and psychology electives, then apply to a graduate program and do CL as your thesis. Read some CL papers and apply to the schools that publish in the CL journals. University of Washington has a program in CL consider applying there, or at least read their prereqs.
*sigh* My comment describing the objective of a race is modded as "informative." Damn. Apparently the mod has never seen a race, or perhaps he's seen a race and said, "What's the objective?"
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I wouldn't say it's xenophobic, necessarily. That's just how they are. They still have nationalistic pride I suppose, something Americans are sorely lacking.
Uhhh... Have you ever been to America? Or even heard of it? Most non-Americans consider Americans overy jingoistic.
The Japanese, and Europeans, are xenophobic. In Old World nations, you can be born there, live your entire life, die there, and yet always be considered an outsider. It's really sad. Where as New World nations were built on immigration. Don't get me wrong, there's always a "the previous batch of immigrants was okay, but THESE immigrants are different." In America, it was Irish, then the Germans, then the eastern europeans, then the asians, and now its hispanics. Eventually the new immigrants are assimilated and in a twist of irony, they end up talking about the threat of the other.
Back in 1999 or 2000, NPR ran a story about an international conference on world population. They pointed out that an unforseen development at the conference. The discussions turned to the fact that Europe and Japan have extensive and expensive social programs, yet have a shrinking population. This situation could lead to a economic meltdown -- similar to the US's potential Social Security crisis, only 10 times worse. The New World nations like the US, Canada, Australia and the like suggested increasing the population by encouraging immigration, and they were promptly shouted down. France is for the French! And French aren't muslim!" "Swiss aren't black!" "They can work the Netherlands, but they'll never be Dutch!" The New World nations provided their own histories as convincing counter evidence, but to no avail.
I like the new rcx. I like the new sensor selection, but I can help but wonder about the form factor of the sensors. The old sensors were basically a 2x4 brick with a 2x4 plate attached. These look huge. with no studs, just a few technic sides. I kind of wonder about that. I'd hate to have great rcx and these great sensors, but no way to integrate the sensors in an appealing way.
And I never said that phrase was, but to go on to say that there is no seperation is to fundamentally misunderstand the intent of the Constitution. In 1802, Thomas Jefferson -- then president -- wrote of a "wall of seperation between church and state." Madison also wrote, "Strongly guarded...is the separation between religion and government in the Constitution of the United States." When it comes down to it, "seperation of church and state" is merely a convient term for a deeply ingrained principle held by the vast majority of Americans and by the Constitution. The terms "fair trial" and "religious liberty" do not appear verbatam in the Constitution either, yet no one denys that these principles are in the Constitution.
I always find it interesting that the very people that argue against the seperation of church and state are always advocating that their narrow brand of evangelical Christianity be the prefered religion. The same people that argue for government sponsored prayer are the same ones that would cry out if someone would lead their children every day in a prayer that said "My thy vedic law propegate through out the world," or "I bear witness that Muhammed -- may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him -- is the Messenger of Allah." Hell, they'd even become upset with "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at hour of our death."
Their main goal is to coerce as many people to their own belief system as possible. Their actions show that their faith is weak, since truly strong faith and belief has no need for a government stamp of approval, and no need to for a government propagation. Their personal actions should be enough to spread their faith, yet for some reason they feel that they are not strong enough witness, and need the stong hand of the government for help. When I see them, I'm always reminded of Matthew 6:5-6, which says, "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you." Even as a child, I was struck by that passage and how it is a direct rebuke of their actions.
We're not Iran, or Saudi Arabia, nowhere near in fact, but the small "born again" ultra-conservative religious groups do have a disproportiate amount of influence at all level of government in the United States. This small group does not make any bones about what their overall objective is. The abolishment of the seperation of church and state and the creation of government based on their version of Christianity. You can hear it when they remark "There's not such thing as seperation of church and state," or "America was founded as a Christian nation with the Bible as the source of the Consitution." These are... well... lies.
We can see their influence in the funneling of tax dollars to religious purposes ("Faith-Based Intiatives"), the retargeting money away from condom distribution and family planning in international AIDS programs, even though all studies show that condoms and family planning must be used along with abstaince and "being faithful", because condoms "interfere with God's will." We public school boards attempting to teach Christian creationism. That's just two examples that came to head immediately, but there are many many more.
It may be more backhanded than say the Spanish Inquisition, but the goals and the movement are still there.
Take a look at your dollar bills "In god we thrust",
Yes, the "In God We Trust" was placed on the money in the 50s to show how America was better than the "godless commies." It was a mistake, but one that will never be rectified, because no one wants to be painted as "voting against God."
how can a country be cosmopolite if there is a predominant religion
The same way every other civilized country does. Hate to tell you this, but most people believe in a god.
which I bet your constitution embraces.
The Consititution of the United States doesn't. It doesn't mention gods at all. It specifically provides for freedom of religion and forbids the establishment of one. It was written by deists, agnostics, and athiests. And back in the 18th century it was evangelicals who were pushing for seperate of church and state since they were afraid that episcopalians would force their religion on them. Ironic isn't it?
You don't know what you're talking about here. You should get your facts straight, and then make a more coherent argument than "It sucks." Because you look fool.
I even tend to agree with your general argument, but you're making all athiests look bad. So do us all a favor, and shut up.
They spoke some english. They were ESL students. Whenever you talked with them, you ended up having to slow way down, and simplify your speech.
Nice girls. Very cute. One said she was an electrical engineering student and the other said she was majoring in "eng-eh-er-ish." (She said it with four syllables.) I'm not entirely sure the "english" major understood the question, but then again someone has to go back and provide the world with engrish.
Everyone thinks it's cool to hit on girls that don't speak english. I've done it, only with Japanese ESL students. This is what I learned: It's hard to be witty when you have to repeat yourself three times. (So very cute, and so very frustrating.)
WTF? /. didn't interview Peter Jacks nor Jeff Bezos. If you looked at the stories rather than just copying and pasting results from a search, you would have seen that. Wired interviewed Jeff Bezos. Newsweek interviewed Peter Jackson.
Because ID isn't a theory. It isn't science. There is no contraversy. Just religous zealots trying to force their false world view on others. They, and ID, is completely illegitmate.
This comment reminds of this Electrical Engineering girl I knew once. She one time said, "Sometimes I wish everyone would stop trying to hit on me." She was right. Everyone was trying to hit on her.
This proposal illustrates the exact opposite. It shows the need for effective regulation. What is being proposed is to cripple the internet, and then charge you extra for an uncrippled version. Do you think being charged three times as much for DSL if you want port 80 open crazy? Do you like cable companies when they throw hissy fits and block a bunch of channels you're paying for with blue screens that say, "MEDIA PRODUCER is keeping you from watching your show. CABLE company has absolutely nothing to do with this screen. They broke in a put the screen up all by themselves and we were powerless to stop them."
Yet these two tiered systems can, overnight, become a mess if Congress decides to set rules and restrictions and requirements. Instead of promoting more bandwidth between same-network customers, regulations will push less bandwidth for different-network customers.
I fail to see the distinction. In both cases the companies have created an artificial scarcity of bandwidth. Deregulation in a semi-competitive market inevitiably leads to these inefficiencies. That's one reason why -- contrary to what you've been told -- regulated markets work, and work well. The deregulation movement is always promoted by those that stand to make the most of a deregulated market, the very largest market entities. The smallest companies are always squeezed out. Deregulation inevitably leads to consolidation, which in turn leads to lower service.
A great example of recent deregulation is the manufactured California power crisis, and Enron. Enron wrote the deregulatory statute, and then proceeded to illegally manipulate the market. This story has been repeated many many times, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale.
As for the [D]ARPA comment, the Internet grew quite well between 1969 and 1990 think you very much. It didn't achieve explosive growth until about 1994-1995, after the creation of the WWW and NCSA Mosaic. So you see, government regulation (or the lack there of) had absolutely nothing to do with it, but rather the expense of computers (Pretty much all PCs computer cost 2000-4000 dollars prior to 1995.) and the lack of compelling applications and therefore the corresponding lack of demand held back the growth of the Internet.
Women make up at best 40% or market, with women over 40 being the largest segment. Women tend to play solitare, The Sims, and some "online" games. Are you seriously arguing that G4 simultaneously target very lucrative 18-35 year old males market AND the 40+ year old women market? What would this be? "G-Phoria is brought to you by Boniva."?
That's just dumb. The interesection of these two markets is pretty much empty. While some women play games, they don't play the same games as the rest of market. Sure 18-35 year old males also play The Sims, but there's no way to sell to both markets simultaneously.
You may, however, cancel Cheat! and get rid of that annoying hostess all together. Please also get rid of all of your stupid car shows. I don't need to watch some guy named "Big C" with a bunch of fake bling showing photos of the occasional car between long takes of mostly naked asian chicks. You can put that on your sister-network -- MTV/MTV2.
You're disin' semi-naked asian chicks? That's like the only reason to watch whatever-the-hell that show is. I never understood "Formula D". I get racing. I like racing. It's something about sliding around, but for the life of me, I don't understand what they're trying to do, or can figure out who wins. Well spinning apparently make you lose, but that's not the same thing.
On semi-related note what's up with cable channels getting out of their "core competencies"? AMC is now running an original tv series, instead of a movies and things about movies. Cartoon Network (CARTOON NETWORK!) is now running live action movies. I like "Goonies", it's just not what I expect to see on CARTOON network.
Not really true. If you bring up a Gnome file dialog and just start typing a file name Gnome will open a text box and allow you to enter the file name with tab completion.
It's a very slick example of what Gnome needs to do more of. Gnome has focused its efforts on simplifing the interface for the masses. They've made good progress but the masses seem unimpressed.
It's time to think about finding elegant ways to put that power back in while keeping it transparent to the masses.
Wrong. It's completely hidden functionality that's actually less functional that the previous incarnation. There's no way to know that Shift-DoubleBuckey-CokeBottle pops up the "Go" window or an indication of what the subwindow does. Most importantly, typing a path doesn't actually open the file, but rather simply changes you to the directory, so you still have to hunt and click.
It goes against 30 years of GUI development, and it's broken by design.
Havoc Pennington can suck my cock, but I imagine he'd find that too complicated too.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136541
(And yes, I am a UI expert.)
Bull-fucking-shit. 1.5 is very unstable, and has many rendering issues.
I take that back. It is better than IE, in the same since that a gunshot to head is better than being vivisectioned to death..
well actually it's neither, since it's unfertilized, and therefore nothing. Not even the "life begins at fertilization" crowd believes an unfertilized egg is anything. But then again maybe some do, and therefore believe all menstrating women are serial murderers
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You do this stuff at home, don't ya.? :)
I'm not critical of the PRC economically They're doing exactly what anyone would be doing in their position. I am critical of totalitarian regimes, as any freedom loving person should be. What I'm really critical of, and was the main source of my criticism, is the idea that a capitalistic economy inevitably leads to democracy. I think think it's a self-serving and specious argument.
There's no contemporary evidence, nor historical evidence to support that reasoning. A rising standard of living makes people happy. Their lives have improved. Why would they want to rock the boat by changing the government? I know. It's a supposed to be a gradual change, not a revolution. But there's no evidence that a happy populace pays that much attention to politics. In fact that there's plenty of evidence, across history and culture, that economically propsperous societies are largely disinterested in government and politics, assuming of course there's no radical change in governmental behavior. In other words, happy people like the status quo.
So the question now is who is promoting this idea, and why? The idea was initially proposed and promoted by those that stood to financialy gain from increased economic ties with totalitarian regimes. The public by and large, didn't want to trade with totalitarian regimes, since economic isolation has been the policy for decades. It's a policy with a track record of success. (e.g. The USSR, which collapsed because of the inefficiencies in a communist economy. Trading with them, and moving them to a more capitalistic economy would have only perpetuated the the undemocratic regime.)
Now we're supposed to believe that everything we've been doing is wrong. That seems suspect. Especially since the argument for "economic engagement" (or whatever moniker it's currently known by) was originally based on us selling goods to them, and through extension exporting our culture of democracy. Of course, we don't actually make anything, and what we do make, they can't afford. Instead we've got lazzie-faire capitalism that, surpise surpise, which disproportionaly benefits the very people that postulated "economic engagement." Furthermore, the very target government that was supposed be getting friendlier is actually becoming more nationalistic and more aggressive. It's a policy, in 10+ years that has made no progress in any of its social goals, but has achieved pretty much everything that was economically predicted.
That's what I'm critical of. It's not the Chinese people I have a beef with. They're making out like bandits, and behaving like wealthy (comparatively speaking) apathetic people the world over. It's the fallacy that a growing quasi-capitalistic economy leads to democracy.
I'm personal friends with several Chinese. Zhongwen wo xue zai da xue, keshi wo liang nian mei xue le. I've been in their houses. I've drank their beer. I've eaten their hamhocks. I've watched in disbelief as they've fought over who would get to eat chicken gristle ("soft bone"). I've met one person that was critical of the current regime, and she was from a small village in rural sichuan. Most are from the much more prosperous east, including Beijing and Shanghai. I've even met an honset to god communist. But the vast majority don't care. They've got Xiang Xiang singing about pigs on their iPod, "kentucky" in their belly, and money in their wallet. They don't care about what we want them to care about, like democracy and freedom of expression ("yeah. Someday, but not now. It's too difficult." is the common refrain.) They don't care about things the regime want them to care about, like Taiwan. ("They're not a country, but they are.")
If you think that a full stomach and an iPod is going lead to democracy, you're sadly mistaken. If you talk to any sub-30-year-old Chinese, as I have, you'll find that they don't actually care about democracy at all. They don't care about reform. They don't care about the government. As long as they have their cheap goods, they're happy. In fact, most of them agree with the government. The Tiananmen Square protestors were traitors. Government control of the media is required for a happy society. People shouldn't be able to say certain things.
You say that the old guard will die off and then the younger folk will take power and not fear an open society. That's not going to happen, because the younger generation doesn't support an open society. They support capitalism, but not democracy. The younger folk don't care that they live in a totalitarian society. If no one cares, then there is no impetus for change. Futhermore, a totalitaran regime is maintains itself by promoting true-believers, and there are always true-believers.
Root can do anything. If you don't want people to have write access to your perl script, then don't give them root access! Think about it. Even if you used something like perl2exe, root could simply delete your script, and replace it with something that did something nasty. Do you really want that? No.
to:
The timezone system maps roughtly to the daylight hours, and makes it easy to coordinate across vast distances. The elimination of the timezone system would undo 140 years of progress, for nothing. I think there's problems with the timezone system as implimented (i.e. 30 minute timezones), but it does work, and works well.
Why not just forget about time zones, day light savings and create a new universal global time.
Because that would be incredibly dumb.
First, the vast majority of people the world during daylight hours (only 20% work during night in industrialized countries, and no one works at night in pre-industrial nations.), so your "outgrowing" observation is wrong.
Second, you're talking about arbitrarily making half the world's population nocturnal. In case you haven't noticed, but humans are not nocturnal creatures. Human circadian rhythms are linked to the length of daylight. Humans become depressed when not exposed to sunlight. Humans require sunlight to manufacture vitamin D in the skin. Humans like to be able to see, and we can't see too well at night. (That's why we have a primeval fear of the dark.)
There are no doubt many other biological reasons. These are just the ones off the top of my head.
The problem with the literal interpretation school of thought is that it assumes that the writers of Bible had no concept of symbolism or even the ability to explain via examples. For the vast majority of history people were illiterate. So if you wanted to teach a moral, you told an easily rememberable story that illustrated that moral. Aesop's fables have lasted 2600 years. Does it matter if there was a lying shepard boy? No. What does matter is moral that if you keep lying, no one will believe you when you tell the truth. This isn't a heretical idea, since the Gospels themselves state that Jesus spoke in parabels. Does it matter if there some guy got mugged on his way to Jerhico, and a Samartain helped him? No. Of course not. The moral of being compassionate is what matters.
Being concerned about the minuet is to miss the greater truths. The most obvious case is the Jesus throwing the money changers out of the Temple. The different books of the Bible has the event occuring at different times. Who cares when it happened. What matters is that places of worship should not be defiled by buisness.
If we say that it is open to interpretation because it only has some nice stories, then what parts do we follow and what parts are just there as example? This leaves a wide door open for man's imperfect interjection of man's own beliefs.
I'm sorry, but if you have that much problem in learning the morality of Bible, then you have not been taught Christianity, and should find a new church pronto.
Given that the Bible has been translated and retranslated for thousands of years there have been plenty of times. Sometimes for mundane reasons like, to have a translation in another language, other times for political purposes (e.g. the King James Version). Honestly, how many modern English translations do we need? (New International? New American? Why do Americans need their own translation, what was wrong with the old version anyway?) A new translation comes out every couple of years. Each new translation targeted at niche audiences. It makes you wonder how many are motivated by faith, and ho many by money. Many times in protestant churches, differenent members of the congregation have different translations, which were chosen for purely personal reasons.
St. Athanasius pretty much dictated what would be in the New Testament and what would not be. He ordered all other non-canon material destroyed, yet the Gospel of Thomas survived by being placed in a jar. Even the compilation of the New Testament, controversy reigned. Many, including Martin Luther, suggested that Revelations should not be included since it was too likely to be manipulated due to its alegorical nature. Martin Luther moved certain books of the New Testament to basically an appendix. It was a political decision.
Make-a-Degree programs are for underwater basket weaving. Computational linguistics is an advanced topic. You won't touch it, nor should you, until a graduate program. You don't know enough about computer science to do anything advanced yet. Get yourself a CS degree and take some linguistic, anthropology, and psychology electives, then apply to a graduate program and do CL as your thesis. Read some CL papers and apply to the schools that publish in the CL journals. University of Washington has a program in CL consider applying there, or at least read their prereqs.
*sigh* My comment describing the objective of a race is modded as "informative." Damn. Apparently the mod has never seen a race, or perhaps he's seen a race and said, "What's the objective?"