Modern tanks cannot drive on roads. Well they can, but only once or twice. A tank brigade would complete destroy a modern freeway. I know this from personal experience.
You'd completely destroy a freeway, too, if you had a cannon that size. No personal experience at this end, but seriously: the roads and on/off ramps were designed for military use. I used to live near Ft. Devens and the trucks they carried equipment with took 1/4 of the US to do a U-turn they were so big.;P
Right near Palm Beach International there are curves that look like indy;P
LOL!
Exaggerating for effect, of course. You should see how fast those people drive. It's near...Belvedere Ave? I haven't lived there for years, but you should see the bend and grade they put in I-95. The on ramps are just as bad, up and over I-95 like something out of the Jetsons...their regular streets are like three lane highways(?) here in MA, so they go like 85 zipping around in these little neighborhoods, then once they get on the freeway(?) they're bumper to bumper up near 100mph. It's insane. They follow so close, one time while commuting I tapped my brakes and the guy behind me flew off the road! And they do all this with no enforced insurance laws or real inspection system.
The Interstate Highway system was designed for moving defense equipment, including tanks. The plan for it was part of postwar paranoia. Take a look at a map of it, and then look at where all the old military bases were 50 years ago. There's no reason to run I-95 all the way up to Maine unless you need access to the (now closed) Pease AFB.
The original designs were 75mph, but as time moved on and people used the things more and more, they pushed the top speed up. When I lived down in South Florida, all I-95 construction was being designed for cars to go 120mph! Right near Palm Beach International there are curves that look like indy;P
More and more SPAM services are hooking themselves up as an ISP and getting in straight through the backbone. It makes it tougher for us, because it used to be you get spam, trace it, ask them to stop, ask their ISP, then ask their ISP, etc. up the chain. Now I have to go straight to the top to get these "SPAM Service Providers" shut down, and believe me, they don't wanna hear about it.
We're in the wrong environment. They paid for the early internet highways, but these days the social benefit principles that built the old highways are a little scarce in the legislative branch. They're building internet 2 stuff, but it's not really for public use. Any future projects of this type by the government would involve unacceptable amounts of monitoring in the name of national security and protecting IP, so I think it may be better if we leave it in the hands of companies who will cut corners (read: not pay for monitoring) to save a few bucks.
Incidentally, grandparents may really be a font of wisdom after all: mine says the old highways were a giant jobs project in the name of rapid movement of defense equipment, note that all major thoroughfares and offramps are large/strong enough for tanks to drive on at full speed, certain three-lane strips are extra wide and flat for use as emergency airfields, etc. The suburban sprawl part was what the automobile industry would call a "happy accident." I thought all he knew was baseball.
Absolutely right, but whether it's a whole tape or per-song, it's the habit of having an archive that hooks them. Then later, ownership of the actual product becomes a badge of success, as well as (for me) a way to support the bands you like (most of mine aren't major label).
I bet you don't get quite as insulting about things...
I do when I get crossed by some random asshole. Your original shot had nothing to do with the argument I was having with the other guy, who called Crichton a literary giant.
I deal with Win, Linux, Solaris, and MacOS. None of which are losing support from their parent companies. How's yours?
Yeah, but if you need the money, and all these companies colluded to keep the signing amounts down, which they do...
Fish of Death is a little indie record label. I don't work for them or anything. I bought the best CD (Jude's 430 N Harper Ave) off them two years ago. Seriously, it was a great record. It was $9.68 including shipping. Looks like it's up to $11.25 now.
He got signed to a major label, for which he re-recorded his first album and then they released it for $16. It was awful.
Remember how insane the movie companies went when VHS rental places became popular in the early '80s? "How will we sell tapes if people can just rent them?" Morons.
There IS a pattern to this copyright-infringement behavior: usually it's younger kids who like something, but can't pay for it. So they make copies off their friends. Then they grow up and pay for the things they still like.
I did this with anime in HS, and now I'm upgrading my collection to commercial DVDs. If I hadn't been able to have my little bootleg VHS archive over the years, I may never have spent a dime on it at all.
Before the internet was the way to trade things, we used to copy games (in the C64 days) and music (album to tape, then tape to tape, then CD to tape, then CD to CD...). Dire Straits, 10000 Maniacs, the first Beastie Boys, all dubbed onto tape (the first two by my father!), then once I had a job and money I replaced them with commercial copies of each. Same with the games.
I'm not defending people copying things that aren't theirs, but I'm telling you these napster kids are going to grow up to be collectors. The habit of being able to have an archive of anything you like is addictive, and if I was a record company exec I'd look at it as a great "first one's free, kid" heroin-dealer trick.
Without those first few pirated albums/games of my own, would I have bought 500+ CDs, 50+ PC Games, 50+ PS Games, and 50+ DVDs since I graduated from college?
They may also have to replace certain components (like winmodems, DVD players)
Yeah, that old 770 soundcard/modem was a real pain in the ass. All of their new stuff is linux-compatible, though. The install on the new 240 and 600x was a breeze.
We're the kind of place they were aiming at when they said "scientists," we already run a dozen thinkpads w/linux here. I don't know why they picked Caldera, though. "Scientists" prefer other distros (SuSE here, RedHat at one of MIT's labs, I think.)
face time n. [common] Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as opposed to via electronic links).
That's quite a wit you've got, there, sparky. When do we get to see the other half of it? Dealing with people face-to-face would be how I make my living, but you wouldn't know much about dealing with people, would you? I mean, seeing how you spend your time in your little hobbit-hole, coding for a dying OS and all...
Yeah, there was big story about them reversing it when all the farmers started making swords from their plowshares. These companies will find a way to do it later on, anyway. It's really no different than M$ wanting to own all the networking standards. I'm still trying to figure out when we started letting them get away with this...
just always a flamefest between wxWindows and Java
As irritating as java can be, I have seen some good, portable clients made with it. I think as long as you're not trying anything hardcore with the client display, java should do just fine, plus it's pretty close to c, so your current programmers can probably pick it up in no time.
Call me a schmuk but I like Clancy, Crichton and Grisham.
For some reason, I was once asked not to use that word. I don't even know what it means, frankly.
And yes they are literary giants... of our times.
No, they are not. You're thinking of Toni Morrison (Beloved) and David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest, highly recommended, if you don't have anything else to do with the rest of the month). The three writers I taunted earlier are the Robert W. Chambers of their time: populist hacks who'll be lucky if one of their more obscure books is credited by a truly worthy later author as an influence. (The King In Yellowis sort of neat, in an "expanded from Poe" kind of way.)
If you really think BE is a good book, you can read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land for some insight into Hubbard's career.;)
Yeah, but look at the argument it started. I keep score, you know.
Everyone should stop using them. (Irony intended.)
Classless cliche. It loses its punch if you need to point it out. Do you explain all your jokes?
...why yours are so much better
I have none. It's better to face the situation you're in on its own merits.
I have mentally done a list of what I consider the major factors in something being considered a religion and came up some interesting personal results.
...and your qualifications are...?...and the basis for these rules is...?
1. Many people believe in something effectively intangible and difficult to comprehend.
That's true. Many people believe in dumb stuff but belief isn't a qualification for religion. My grandmother, for example, waves her hand in front of the microwave door after she opens it to ward off "x-rays." On the other hand, the microwave does not ask for donations.
It's the belief itself that isn't tangible. The quantum stuff seems to have some evidence, they don't build those new copper-path microchips for their health, you know.
2. There are intangible forces that are capable of helping or harming you.
You didn't come up with this by analyzing religions, but by looking at religion and science and figuring how they were similar. That's why theology has been losing ground for hundreds of years. You start where you want to end up and try to think your way to nothing. Of course, with religion, that's where you started, anyway.
Again, the third option (radiation) does not qualify as intangible to the same degree the first two do, as it has a measurable effect.
3. The beliefs explain a particular viewpoint on how the world works and gives people a frame of reference to life.
Philosophy's the answer, here. Your example of it is just repeating the question, though, so I guess you already knew that.
4. There is a linchpin belief or set of beliefs that all others are based upon.
This is the test for a philosophy, not a religion. It's metaphysics-leads-to-ethics, so make example two better, and you have a winner.
Hmm. By my short list of requirements, general philosophies and science are religions.
Don't get smug with me, pal. What you did was present a list of unreasonable satements based on a priori logic. Trying to separate philosophy and science (the latter is, in fact, based on the former), you used Anselm's long-refuted reductio ad absurdum game, which quite literally never proved anything.
By your generalisation, they must both be businesses!
And by your ineptitude, sir, you seem to have stumbled across the Chewbacca Defense. Don't pat yourself on the back for smiting another heathen with your great wit, yet...
You might want to keep in mind that religions have been both helping and harming people for generations uncounted.
Yep, and it's high time we started acting like grown ups and faced reality without a filter. We're too advanced technologically, and too much a threat to ourselves, to being abstracting our moral decisions via Aesop's Fables. I like fantasy novels, too, but you won't catch me reading them on my knees.
For every tribe that threw people into a volcano to appease their God, there was another where their shaman was also their doctor.
Make no mistake. Every tribe, including ours, sacrifices people to appease its God. Only by accepting that the ultimate justice comes, if at all, within our mortal lifetimes, can we mature as a civilization and leave this sort of behavior behind.
You nver(sic) know, those preachers might just be right about a thing or two.
Alright, that's enough. Like everyone on this board, I've got no shortage of IQ, OK? Actually, one or two people have even called me "smart". However, I must admit that outside of work and sleep it takes me every waking second to figure out the difference between right and wrong in situations where I have to make a decision.
Between their preaching and your chiding, I must be missing something. You all must be intellectual giants, I mean, IQs off the fucking scale to have your shit figured out so well you can tell me what to think and do. I mean, if you're that good, why should I even think at all, right?
I should just give all my money to whoever comes along with hellfire and damnation and forget their long history of taking advantage of mere idiots like me, right? These assholes are running a fucking shell game with people too lazy or ignorant to know any better and you're telling me I shouldn't take the time to point it out?
If you really believe religion is anything more than a business, I've got a secure, reliable OS to sell you.
Yeah. And Harry Potter rulez, too. Clancy and Crichton and Grisham, they're artistes, man, literary giants. And don't get me started with directors, I mean: De Bont? Shumacher? Blessed by the gods, I say. Right up there with Ed Wood.
You know, they DO have lit classes at WPI. A good sci-fi one, too, I hear.
Keep It Simple, Stupid! Feature-creep, bloat, complex code, etc, are all ways to create slow, unmaintainable, unusable, buggy code. If that's what you want, fine, but if you want something you can use, keep things simple.
Yeah, definitely. Split the new application into two parts: a core open source project and then the extended functions. The basic stuff (accounting, mail, whatever your application does, defined broadly) may be of use to everyone, and they'll appreciate it. But if you're an oil company, releasing a bunch of ultra-specific sub-apps to calculate profit potential per barrel may be unnecessary. An additional benefit of this way of thinking is to protect any methods your company uses that could give others a competitive edge.
That shouldn't stop you from releasing the basic part, whatever it is. Open source accounting with a well documented plug-in dev method would be great, for example. We sure could use one here in nonprofitville.
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Modern tanks cannot drive on roads. Well they can, but only once or twice. A tank brigade would complete destroy a modern freeway. I know this from personal experience.
;P
;P
You'd completely destroy a freeway, too, if you had a cannon that size. No personal experience at this end, but seriously: the roads and on/off ramps were designed for military use. I used to live near Ft. Devens and the trucks they carried equipment with took 1/4 of the US to do a U-turn they were so big.
Right near Palm Beach International there are curves that look like indy
LOL!
Exaggerating for effect, of course. You should see how fast those people drive. It's near...Belvedere Ave? I haven't lived there for years, but you should see the bend and grade they put in I-95. The on ramps are just as bad, up and over I-95 like something out of the Jetsons...their regular streets are like three lane highways(?) here in MA, so they go like 85 zipping around in these little neighborhoods, then once they get on the freeway(?) they're bumper to bumper up near 100mph. It's insane. They follow so close, one time while commuting I tapped my brakes and the guy behind me flew off the road! And they do all this with no enforced insurance laws or real inspection system.
-jpowers
The Interstate Highway system was designed for moving defense equipment, including tanks. The plan for it was part of postwar paranoia. Take a look at a map of it, and then look at where all the old military bases were 50 years ago. There's no reason to run I-95 all the way up to Maine unless you need access to the (now closed) Pease AFB.
;P
The original designs were 75mph, but as time moved on and people used the things more and more, they pushed the top speed up. When I lived down in South Florida, all I-95 construction was being designed for cars to go 120mph! Right near Palm Beach International there are curves that look like indy
-jpowers
More and more SPAM services are hooking themselves up as an ISP and getting in straight through the backbone. It makes it tougher for us, because it used to be you get spam, trace it, ask them to stop, ask their ISP, then ask their ISP, etc. up the chain. Now I have to go straight to the top to get these "SPAM Service Providers" shut down, and believe me, they don't wanna hear about it.
-jpowers
We're in the wrong environment. They paid for the early internet highways, but these days the social benefit principles that built the old highways are a little scarce in the legislative branch. They're building internet 2 stuff, but it's not really for public use. Any future projects of this type by the government would involve unacceptable amounts of monitoring in the name of national security and protecting IP, so I think it may be better if we leave it in the hands of companies who will cut corners (read: not pay for monitoring) to save a few bucks.
Incidentally, grandparents may really be a font of wisdom after all: mine says the old highways were a giant jobs project in the name of rapid movement of defense equipment, note that all major thoroughfares and offramps are large/strong enough for tanks to drive on at full speed, certain three-lane strips are extra wide and flat for use as emergency airfields, etc. The suburban sprawl part was what the automobile industry would call a "happy accident." I thought all he knew was baseball.
-jpowers
Absolutely right, but whether it's a whole tape or per-song, it's the habit of having an archive that hooks them. Then later, ownership of the actual product becomes a badge of success, as well as (for me) a way to support the bands you like (most of mine aren't major label).
-jpowers
I bet you don't get quite as insulting about things...
I do when I get crossed by some random asshole. Your original shot had nothing to do with the argument I was having with the other guy, who called Crichton a literary giant.
I deal with Win, Linux, Solaris, and MacOS. None of which are losing support from their parent companies. How's yours?
-jpowers
No one will enter a field where they don't have a chance of making a good living?
What he should've said was: "no one with a choice."
What about ditch diggers? What about sewer workers?
Clearly you've never seen how much these two professions make.
-jpowers
Yeah, but if you need the money, and all these companies colluded to keep the signing amounts down, which they do...
Fish of Death is a little indie record label. I don't work for them or anything. I bought the best CD (Jude's 430 N Harper Ave) off them two years ago. Seriously, it was a great record. It was $9.68 including shipping. Looks like it's up to $11.25 now.
He got signed to a major label, for which he re-recorded his first album and then they released it for $16. It was awful.
-jpowers
Remember how insane the movie companies went when VHS rental places became popular in the early '80s? "How will we sell tapes if people can just rent them?" Morons.
-jpowers
There IS a pattern to this copyright-infringement behavior: usually it's younger kids who like something, but can't pay for it. So they make copies off their friends. Then they grow up and pay for the things they still like.
I did this with anime in HS, and now I'm upgrading my collection to commercial DVDs. If I hadn't been able to have my little bootleg VHS archive over the years, I may never have spent a dime on it at all.
Before the internet was the way to trade things, we used to copy games (in the C64 days) and music (album to tape, then tape to tape, then CD to tape, then CD to CD...). Dire Straits, 10000 Maniacs, the first Beastie Boys, all dubbed onto tape (the first two by my father!), then once I had a job and money I replaced them with commercial copies of each. Same with the games.
I'm not defending people copying things that aren't theirs, but I'm telling you these napster kids are going to grow up to be collectors. The habit of being able to have an archive of anything you like is addictive, and if I was a record company exec I'd look at it as a great "first one's free, kid" heroin-dealer trick.
Without those first few pirated albums/games of my own, would I have bought 500+ CDs, 50+ PC Games, 50+ PS Games, and 50+ DVDs since I graduated from college?
-jpowers
They may also have to replace certain components (like winmodems, DVD players)
Yeah, that old 770 soundcard/modem was a real pain in the ass. All of their new stuff is linux-compatible, though. The install on the new 240 and 600x was a breeze.
We're the kind of place they were aiming at when they said "scientists," we already run a dozen thinkpads w/linux here. I don't know why they picked Caldera, though. "Scientists" prefer other distros (SuSE here, RedHat at one of MIT's labs, I think.)
-jpowers
face time n. [common] Time spent interacting with somebody face-to-face (as opposed to via electronic links).
That's quite a wit you've got, there, sparky. When do we get to see the other half of it? Dealing with people face-to-face would be how I make my living, but you wouldn't know much about dealing with people, would you? I mean, seeing how you spend your time in your little hobbit-hole, coding for a dying OS and all...
-jpowers
Yeah, there was big story about them reversing it when all the farmers started making swords from their plowshares. These companies will find a way to do it later on, anyway. It's really no different than M$ wanting to own all the networking standards. I'm still trying to figure out when we started letting them get away with this...
-jpowers
Bring on a future where...
...and...
Terminator seeds are the norm
Smartbombs carry SmartPlagues, like (kill all!=white)
All fruits and vegetables taste the same
Every tree in a forest shares the same genetic makeup so we can mow them all down with a bunch of the same beetle
I'll take 3 Christina Aguileras and a Natalie Portman
-jpowers
Basic? I think they're trying to sell this...
-jpowers
just always a flamefest between wxWindows and Java
As irritating as java can be, I have seen some good, portable clients made with it. I think as long as you're not trying anything hardcore with the client display, java should do just fine, plus it's pretty close to c, so your current programmers can probably pick it up in no time.
-jpowers
I wouldn't call Ranma any kind of great work.
I'd put it in the same class as Mad Magazine. That would be the class that doesn't suck. HAND.
-jpowers
Call me a schmuk but I like Clancy, Crichton and Grisham.
;)
For some reason, I was once asked not to use that word. I don't even know what it means, frankly.
And yes they are literary giants... of our times.
No, they are not. You're thinking of Toni Morrison (Beloved) and David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest, highly recommended, if you don't have anything else to do with the rest of the month). The three writers I taunted earlier are the Robert W. Chambers of their time: populist hacks who'll be lucky if one of their more obscure books is credited by a truly worthy later author as an influence. (The King In Yellow is sort of neat, in an "expanded from Poe" kind of way.)
If you really think BE is a good book, you can read Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land for some insight into Hubbard's career.
-jpowers
I've still been known to pick up a MAD magazine now a then because I want to be entertained.
MAD is art. So's Battlefield Earth, both the book and the film. Two happen to be art that sucks. You do the math.
-jpowers
Hey, look! Flamebait!!!
...why yours are so much better
...and your qualifications are...? ...and the basis for these rules is...?
Yeah, but look at the argument it started. I keep score, you know.
Everyone should stop using them. (Irony intended.)
Classless cliche. It loses its punch if you need to point it out. Do you explain all your jokes?
I have none. It's better to face the situation you're in on its own merits.
I have mentally done a list of what I consider the major factors in something being considered a religion and came up some interesting personal results.
1. Many people believe in something effectively intangible and difficult to comprehend.
That's true. Many people believe in dumb stuff but belief isn't a qualification for religion. My grandmother, for example, waves her hand in front of the microwave door after she opens it to ward off "x-rays." On the other hand, the microwave does not ask for donations.
It's the belief itself that isn't tangible. The quantum stuff seems to have some evidence, they don't build those new copper-path microchips for their health, you know.
2. There are intangible forces that are capable of helping or harming you.
You didn't come up with this by analyzing religions, but by looking at religion and science and figuring how they were similar. That's why theology has been losing ground for hundreds of years. You start where you want to end up and try to think your way to nothing. Of course, with religion, that's where you started, anyway.
Again, the third option (radiation) does not qualify as intangible to the same degree the first two do, as it has a measurable effect.
3. The beliefs explain a particular viewpoint on how the world works and gives people a frame of reference to life.
Philosophy's the answer, here. Your example of it is just repeating the question, though, so I guess you already knew that.
4. There is a linchpin belief or set of beliefs that all others are based upon.
This is the test for a philosophy, not a religion. It's metaphysics-leads-to-ethics, so make example two better, and you have a winner.
Hmm. By my short list of requirements, general philosophies and science are religions.
Don't get smug with me, pal. What you did was present a list of unreasonable satements based on a priori logic. Trying to separate philosophy and science (the latter is, in fact, based on the former), you used Anselm's long-refuted reductio ad absurdum game, which quite literally never proved anything.
By your generalisation, they must both be businesses!
And by your ineptitude, sir, you seem to have stumbled across the Chewbacca Defense. Don't pat yourself on the back for smiting another heathen with your great wit, yet...
You might want to keep in mind that religions have been both helping and harming people for generations uncounted.
Yep, and it's high time we started acting like grown ups and faced reality without a filter. We're too advanced technologically, and too much a threat to ourselves, to being abstracting our moral decisions via Aesop's Fables. I like fantasy novels, too, but you won't catch me reading them on my knees.
For every tribe that threw people into a volcano to appease their God, there was another where their shaman was also their doctor.
Make no mistake. Every tribe, including ours, sacrifices people to appease its God. Only by accepting that the ultimate justice comes, if at all, within our mortal lifetimes, can we mature as a civilization and leave this sort of behavior behind.
You nver(sic) know, those preachers might just be right about a thing or two.
Alright, that's enough. Like everyone on this board, I've got no shortage of IQ, OK? Actually, one or two people have even called me "smart". However, I must admit that outside of work and sleep it takes me every waking second to figure out the difference between right and wrong in situations where I have to make a decision.
Between their preaching and your chiding, I must be missing something. You all must be intellectual giants, I mean, IQs off the fucking scale to have your shit figured out so well you can tell me what to think and do. I mean, if you're that good, why should I even think at all, right?
I should just give all my money to whoever comes along with hellfire and damnation and forget their long history of taking advantage of mere idiots like me, right? These assholes are running a fucking shell game with people too lazy or ignorant to know any better and you're telling me I shouldn't take the time to point it out?
If you really believe religion is anything more than a business, I've got a secure, reliable OS to sell you.
-jpowers
Ouch, that was painful. Don't link to that anymore, okay? My head hurts now.
-jpowers
Yeah. And Harry Potter rulez, too. Clancy and Crichton and Grisham, they're artistes, man, literary giants. And don't get me started with directors, I mean: De Bont? Shumacher? Blessed by the gods, I say. Right up there with Ed Wood.
You know, they DO have lit classes at WPI. A good sci-fi one, too, I hear.
-jpowers
They're all businesses. They just traffick in infinite commodities: human fear and stupidity.
-jpowers
Keep It Simple, Stupid! Feature-creep, bloat, complex code, etc, are all ways to create slow, unmaintainable, unusable, buggy code. If that's what you want, fine, but if you want something you can use, keep things simple.
Yeah, definitely. Split the new application into two parts: a core open source project and then the extended functions. The basic stuff (accounting, mail, whatever your application does, defined broadly) may be of use to everyone, and they'll appreciate it. But if you're an oil company, releasing a bunch of ultra-specific sub-apps to calculate profit potential per barrel may be unnecessary. An additional benefit of this way of thinking is to protect any methods your company uses that could give others a competitive edge.
That shouldn't stop you from releasing the basic part, whatever it is. Open source accounting with a well documented plug-in dev method would be great, for example. We sure could use one here in nonprofitville.
-jpowers
That's a real shame. The sega game was fun.
-jpowers