Because it's 'politically correct' to try cover up the existence of any Islamic threat --- which is probably also the motivation behind the British government here. I don't think they're trying to prevent incitement to violence, I think they're trying to keep the public from realizing that Islam poses a threat.
Actually that isn't really true after demographic normalization. That's a euphemistic way of saying the less politically correct 'stick to the mostly-white cities and you'll be fine'. (I'll probably get modded down, but anyone interested can easily do an analysis of demographic breakdown vs per-capita homicide rates, the data is all there and easy to obtain. Mostly white cities in the US are as safe as Europe.)
There are still movie theaters? I stopped going long ago. From all the people talking on their cellphones and talking to one another during the movie, to sticky floors and sitting on someone's old dirty popcorn etc., I'd much rather watch at home, I have a decent screen and sound system, I can pause whenever I want, watch whenever I want, I can rewind if I accidentally missed something or stopped concentrating, and I don't even have to get my ass out my chair and get dressed and sit in traffic etc. Not to mention the prices, and the overpriced snacks and limited snack choices. Perhaps if I cared about being more social and wasn't basically a hermit it would be a different story.
I beg to differ; the vast majority of political differences can really be ascribed to 'my parents held these views so I blindly follow them!' or 'my peers hold these views so I blindly follow them!' and not any rational thought process at all. There actually is such a thing as rational morality; this is a field of philosophy, but even most of the most thoughtful people I know don't bother to spend the time and effort to think about these things, let alone Joe Public.
Endings are seldom as satisfying as the build-up (no sex puns intended). There is a reason for this, and it's not because so many endings actually suck, it's just human psychology; it's because one of the primary bases of human entertainment *is* the mystery and anticipation; the sense that there is something beyond our imaginations holding us in awe - the mystery seems to hold boundless potential, potentially beyond our own imaginations even, or so we perceive. We wait for something big, something interesting, something amazing --- but when we reach the ending, the mystery and anticipation has to be removed, and in its place is something that can pretty much *only* be more mundane than the sensation of wonder we had before, because the moment it is realized, it becomes real, so to speak. What holds us to a show is a series of small mysteries and usually one or two bigger mysteries. Remove the mystery, and a normal human response is, "hmm, is that it? is that all?".
The same principle is more clearly evident in horror movies, and is why I've always found them anti-climactic. The initial 'horror' is not of something scary in the movie that we are presented with, but of something scary we aren't presented with, and it's this mystery that taps into our deeper more primitive sense of fear of the unknown --- it's scary *because* we don't know what it is, which means it could be anything, even something beyond our ability to imagine it. But the moment they reveal what the 'monster' or 'killer' or whatever is, it's projected out of the bounds of the unknown and into something real and imaginable and therefore more mundane than we'd imagined. Oh it's just a serial killer or oh it's just a monster or whatever. More successful horror movies only recover from this by distracting you at this 'revelation' point with suspense in place of horror (lots of chases and close shaves etc.). But once you see the same pattern, almost all horror movies seem like basic variations of the same formula.
Ironically, since I stopped expecting endings to be 'amazing', I enjoy shows more, I just take it for what it is. Something some human writers wrote to entertain, not something incredible that's going to blow my mind.
I was enjoying watching Caprica, but I actually 'discovered' BSG (believe it or not) through Caprica. So I didn't "know the ending", or any of that, it was all just new to me.
If only there were some kind of systematic method to uncover problems like this before putting a system in the real world. I suggest it could be called "testing".
Something tells me the most brilliant cops didn't get that way because someone dragged them to an art museum one day, but because of their own internal drive, motivation and breadth of interest.
The rest don't need to be 'brilliant' intellectual masters of diverse knowledge, they just need to be good at catching bad guys and filing reports.
Let's face it, this is little more than a glorified day off. If there's any value in it, it's that they're getting a paid break.
But hey, if this precinct suddenly churns out a large percentage of brilliant cops in a few years time, I'll be willing to admit I was wrong. Something tells me neither of us will be holding our breaths for that.
"The argument that money is wasted on art or music education"
If only money was infinite. In real life you have to make choices and prioritize spending, and I'm guessing there were better ways to spend this money. Now you might say it's a small thing, but that's the problem, we have a flood of millions of such 'small things'.
I've been here a while and people have been calling for this for, what, probably over ten years now, so I wouldn't hold my breath. In 2020 we'll have this discussion again.
Who says it's cold? Do you think that just because the gas giants in our solar system are cold, every gas giant in the universe is? Ours are cold because of their distance from our sun. Read the summary.
If they're about as far from their sun as the giant, they get about as much solar radiation per square meter, and should thus be about as warm (or cold). In other words, if the gas giant is really really cold, so will the moon be.
Exactly. So? Where did anything I say contradict that? Read the summary. He's saying that if this planet is close enough to be warm, so will the moons be warm.
And we aren't talking about colonizing moons, we are talking about life evolving in one. So double fail on your part.
Uh, nope, quote the SUMMARY: "the location of the big planet opens up the intriguing idea of the realization of some of science fiction's famously habitable moons". Not that there's any difference anyway; the point is whether or not it can meaningfully support life.
Read that sentence you quoted again, he's talking about the moons of the gas giants, not the gas giants themselves. If you want to colonize the moon, does it matter if the main planet is a gas giant or not? It just has to exist as something for the moon to orbit around.
I wanted to write a lengthy rebuttal here explaining how computers work, but my computer is busy with a seriously *intense* copy right now so I don't want to chance it.
Corporations can't raise their prices arbitrarily. If Google had to pay more taxes, the first thing they'd have to do is immediately cut their staff and lay off thousands. The second effect would be that they would become less competitive to foreign competitors, especially as they raised their costs. In the longer term, they would either slowly move overseas - taking jobs with them - or, they would just die as a foreign competitor that could operate more efficiently elsewhere took over the market.
People talk about textbooks, teachers, roads to be paved etc. when defending taxation --- however the problem is not these 'basics', the sheer amounts of waste into burueacracy for bureaucracy's sake is the problem. Tax us for the basics and actually deliver them, don't tax us so that millions of people can push paper around all day. We're all working and working and feel like we're getting nowhere because we give our money to the state, they pay someone to push paper around, and that person buys the house next door to you and buys HDTV's etc. and nice cars with ultimately taxpayer money. You want to see where the money's going, look around, it's state employees who *aren't* actually delivering value for the money paid to them.
Which doesn't actually detract from the point of the article; even if they were being paid less, they're still mostly basically being paid to do little more useful than dig holes and fill them in again all day. Modernity should have made governments far more lean and effective than those of 50 years ago; instead, they've just multiplied the amount of pointless red tape by a factor of 100 to do 'faux busywork'.
It's scary because firstly it goes against our intuitive sense that what we say in a noisy crowd will be drowned out and gone forever (we have perceived anonymity), and because the majority of people are more likely to speak differently and accidentally say things when perceiving they have anonymity that they don't want the world to hear.
This isn't especially hard to understand, is it? It's just human nature. It's scary because it's now easy to accidentally incriminate yourself so badly it could even ruin your life. For example, say you might usually do something like occasionally make a racist joke to your friend next to you without thinking. With this system, next thing you know it'll be broadcast on national television, potentially adversely affecting your career etc. Many people just naturally make comments, serious or otherwise, that if they get out could cause them a lot of harm, to careers, to relationships etc. It's not "bad", it's just how humans are. Saying "well don't make such comments then" is a bit simplistic.
Seriously? Visual Studio 2010 is the most horrible, broken, bloated, sluggish trainwreck of an IDE that MS have ever produced, bar none. I used to love Visual Studio - VS6 was an excellent product - but I've watched with sadness as every release since 2003 has gotten progressively worse.
I think the reasoning error is based on the thinking "computers, iPhones and cellphones are advanced, we want our kids to be advanced, therefore we should throw these things at our kids". It's obviously flawed reasoning if you really think about it, but then I wonder if it isn't more about the money and this is just a premise... arguing for ever bigger budgets to 'throw at the problem', without any real strategy for performance improvement (in fact, actual performance improvement would mean there would no longer be a problem the following year based on which to ask for ever more money again). There is no substitute for hard work and discipline, and for a meritocratic teaching system.
The only things that can get done in Washington these days are the most trivial things.
So how do you suppose that 'little' healthcare thing managed to get passed at all? Agree with it or not, it proves that if you really want to get something done, you will get it done. I suppose you were going for the '+5 cynical' mod.
That said, I'm skeptical of IT companies saying, basically, "hey look general public, if the US government bought our products they could save so much". It might or might not be true, but you have to keep in mind these guys are selling something, I'd look at the claims with a brick of salt or so.
Slashdot Mirror
Because it's 'politically correct' to try cover up the existence of any Islamic threat --- which is probably also the motivation behind the British government here. I don't think they're trying to prevent incitement to violence, I think they're trying to keep the public from realizing that Islam poses a threat.
Actually that isn't really true after demographic normalization. That's a euphemistic way of saying the less politically correct 'stick to the mostly-white cities and you'll be fine'. (I'll probably get modded down, but anyone interested can easily do an analysis of demographic breakdown vs per-capita homicide rates, the data is all there and easy to obtain. Mostly white cities in the US are as safe as Europe.)
I've seen security at an Alamo Drafthouse franchise remove cellphone yappers quite quickly.
Seriously? That's awesome, I would almost patronize a cinema just for that - that's unheard of round my part of the world.
There are still movie theaters? I stopped going long ago. From all the people talking on their cellphones and talking to one another during the movie, to sticky floors and sitting on someone's old dirty popcorn etc., I'd much rather watch at home, I have a decent screen and sound system, I can pause whenever I want, watch whenever I want, I can rewind if I accidentally missed something or stopped concentrating, and I don't even have to get my ass out my chair and get dressed and sit in traffic etc. Not to mention the prices, and the overpriced snacks and limited snack choices. Perhaps if I cared about being more social and wasn't basically a hermit it would be a different story.
I beg to differ; the vast majority of political differences can really be ascribed to 'my parents held these views so I blindly follow them!' or 'my peers hold these views so I blindly follow them!' and not any rational thought process at all. There actually is such a thing as rational morality; this is a field of philosophy, but even most of the most thoughtful people I know don't bother to spend the time and effort to think about these things, let alone Joe Public.
Stanley Kubrick (whom I love, but who clearly draws certain scenes on way too long).
Heh, try watch Gerry by Gus van Sant.
Yeah, I forgot most the plotline by the time it started again.
Endings are seldom as satisfying as the build-up (no sex puns intended). There is a reason for this, and it's not because so many endings actually suck, it's just human psychology; it's because one of the primary bases of human entertainment *is* the mystery and anticipation; the sense that there is something beyond our imaginations holding us in awe - the mystery seems to hold boundless potential, potentially beyond our own imaginations even, or so we perceive. We wait for something big, something interesting, something amazing --- but when we reach the ending, the mystery and anticipation has to be removed, and in its place is something that can pretty much *only* be more mundane than the sensation of wonder we had before, because the moment it is realized, it becomes real, so to speak. What holds us to a show is a series of small mysteries and usually one or two bigger mysteries. Remove the mystery, and a normal human response is, "hmm, is that it? is that all?".
The same principle is more clearly evident in horror movies, and is why I've always found them anti-climactic. The initial 'horror' is not of something scary in the movie that we are presented with, but of something scary we aren't presented with, and it's this mystery that taps into our deeper more primitive sense of fear of the unknown --- it's scary *because* we don't know what it is, which means it could be anything, even something beyond our ability to imagine it. But the moment they reveal what the 'monster' or 'killer' or whatever is, it's projected out of the bounds of the unknown and into something real and imaginable and therefore more mundane than we'd imagined. Oh it's just a serial killer or oh it's just a monster or whatever. More successful horror movies only recover from this by distracting you at this 'revelation' point with suspense in place of horror (lots of chases and close shaves etc.). But once you see the same pattern, almost all horror movies seem like basic variations of the same formula.
Ironically, since I stopped expecting endings to be 'amazing', I enjoy shows more, I just take it for what it is. Something some human writers wrote to entertain, not something incredible that's going to blow my mind.
I was enjoying watching Caprica, but I actually 'discovered' BSG (believe it or not) through Caprica. So I didn't "know the ending", or any of that, it was all just new to me.
If only there were some kind of systematic method to uncover problems like this before putting a system in the real world. I suggest it could be called "testing".
Something tells me the most brilliant cops didn't get that way because someone dragged them to an art museum one day, but because of their own internal drive, motivation and breadth of interest.
The rest don't need to be 'brilliant' intellectual masters of diverse knowledge, they just need to be good at catching bad guys and filing reports.
Let's face it, this is little more than a glorified day off. If there's any value in it, it's that they're getting a paid break.
But hey, if this precinct suddenly churns out a large percentage of brilliant cops in a few years time, I'll be willing to admit I was wrong. Something tells me neither of us will be holding our breaths for that.
"The argument that money is wasted on art or music education"
If only money was infinite. In real life you have to make choices and prioritize spending, and I'm guessing there were better ways to spend this money. Now you might say it's a small thing, but that's the problem, we have a flood of millions of such 'small things'.
"Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence..."
And this is true because? People repeat it a lot?
I've been here a while and people have been calling for this for, what, probably over ten years now, so I wouldn't hold my breath. In 2020 we'll have this discussion again.
Maybe it's about taxpayers' rights not to have their money wasted on crap like this?
If only that point didn't move.
Who says it's cold? Do you think that just because the gas giants in our solar system are cold, every gas giant in the universe is? Ours are cold because of their distance from our sun. Read the summary.
If they're about as far from their sun as the giant, they get about as much solar radiation per square meter, and should thus be about as warm (or cold). In other words, if the gas giant is really really cold, so will the moon be.
Exactly. So? Where did anything I say contradict that? Read the summary. He's saying that if this planet is close enough to be warm, so will the moons be warm.
And we aren't talking about colonizing moons, we are talking about life evolving in one. So double fail on your part.
Uh, nope, quote the SUMMARY: "the location of the big planet opens up the intriguing idea of the realization of some of science fiction's famously habitable moons". Not that there's any difference anyway; the point is whether or not it can meaningfully support life.
Read that sentence you quoted again, he's talking about the moons of the gas giants, not the gas giants themselves. If you want to colonize the moon, does it matter if the main planet is a gas giant or not? It just has to exist as something for the moon to orbit around.
I wanted to write a lengthy rebuttal here explaining how computers work, but my computer is busy with a seriously *intense* copy right now so I don't want to chance it.
Corporations can't raise their prices arbitrarily. If Google had to pay more taxes, the first thing they'd have to do is immediately cut their staff and lay off thousands. The second effect would be that they would become less competitive to foreign competitors, especially as they raised their costs. In the longer term, they would either slowly move overseas - taking jobs with them - or, they would just die as a foreign competitor that could operate more efficiently elsewhere took over the market.
People talk about textbooks, teachers, roads to be paved etc. when defending taxation --- however the problem is not these 'basics', the sheer amounts of waste into burueacracy for bureaucracy's sake is the problem. Tax us for the basics and actually deliver them, don't tax us so that millions of people can push paper around all day. We're all working and working and feel like we're getting nowhere because we give our money to the state, they pay someone to push paper around, and that person buys the house next door to you and buys HDTV's etc. and nice cars with ultimately taxpayer money. You want to see where the money's going, look around, it's state employees who *aren't* actually delivering value for the money paid to them.
Which doesn't actually detract from the point of the article; even if they were being paid less, they're still mostly basically being paid to do little more useful than dig holes and fill them in again all day. Modernity should have made governments far more lean and effective than those of 50 years ago; instead, they've just multiplied the amount of pointless red tape by a factor of 100 to do 'faux busywork'.
It's scary because firstly it goes against our intuitive sense that what we say in a noisy crowd will be drowned out and gone forever (we have perceived anonymity), and because the majority of people are more likely to speak differently and accidentally say things when perceiving they have anonymity that they don't want the world to hear.
This isn't especially hard to understand, is it? It's just human nature. It's scary because it's now easy to accidentally incriminate yourself so badly it could even ruin your life. For example, say you might usually do something like occasionally make a racist joke to your friend next to you without thinking. With this system, next thing you know it'll be broadcast on national television, potentially adversely affecting your career etc. Many people just naturally make comments, serious or otherwise, that if they get out could cause them a lot of harm, to careers, to relationships etc. It's not "bad", it's just how humans are. Saying "well don't make such comments then" is a bit simplistic.
C#, Visual Studio
Seriously? Visual Studio 2010 is the most horrible, broken, bloated, sluggish trainwreck of an IDE that MS have ever produced, bar none. I used to love Visual Studio - VS6 was an excellent product - but I've watched with sadness as every release since 2003 has gotten progressively worse.
I think the reasoning error is based on the thinking "computers, iPhones and cellphones are advanced, we want our kids to be advanced, therefore we should throw these things at our kids". It's obviously flawed reasoning if you really think about it, but then I wonder if it isn't more about the money and this is just a premise ... arguing for ever bigger budgets to 'throw at the problem', without any real strategy for performance improvement (in fact, actual performance improvement would mean there would no longer be a problem the following year based on which to ask for ever more money again). There is no substitute for hard work and discipline, and for a meritocratic teaching system.
Shouldn't the US or anyone else in that situation just say "thanks, but no thanks" instead of starting these cloak and dagger games?
And that pays your salary how?
The only things that can get done in Washington these days are the most trivial things.
So how do you suppose that 'little' healthcare thing managed to get passed at all? Agree with it or not, it proves that if you really want to get something done, you will get it done. I suppose you were going for the '+5 cynical' mod.
That said, I'm skeptical of IT companies saying, basically, "hey look general public, if the US government bought our products they could save so much". It might or might not be true, but you have to keep in mind these guys are selling something, I'd look at the claims with a brick of salt or so.