Time permitting, I've been reading John Lukacs' A New Republic, and one of the points he brings up in the book is the change in the nature of being an historian. In more moderns times, as more and more information is recorded (e. g. a minute-by-minute record of what a particular US president does during a four-year term), the difficulty is not finding the information in and of itself, but sifting through all the information to find the things that are actually meaningful.
While Wikipedia may provide a good deal of information to anthropologists, there will always be a draw to archaeology to try to discern what it is we thought important enough to produce a hard, physical copy of. In that respect, archaeology will be important as a means of finding things to help anthropologists interpret what they see on Wikipedia, something of a Rosetta Stone to translate the plethora of heiroglyphics.
"Maybe it's because we've learned that Microsoft is pure evil and can never be trusted to do anything socially responsible without ulterior motives."
That still doesn't change the fact that Microsoft, not Google, is the one talking about making a moral decision. What part of "same standards" are you having difficulty with?
"With lifespan of 5 years, it will start showing its age in 2 or 3 years as HDTV become the norm."
HDTV was supposed to have become "the norm" in the lifespans of the previous batch of consoles.
As far as I can tell, The number of ATSC television sets in use will outnumber the number of NTSC sets at about the same time the world's first fusion power plant comes online.
So, while Norton and McAfee have little else to do than bitch about the kernel lock-down in Vista, the makers of that delightful little AV program F-Prot are out actually, you know, looking into security issues?
"A recent test found that 19 of these transmitters were unlicensed and another 221 exceeded their authorized power level, giving NPR an opening to press with an apparently sympathetic FCC."
NPR programming is carried by XM's competitor, Sirius (the same guys who also carry Howard Stern).
At any rate, I don't understand why NPR (or, more specifically, NPR member stations) would have an axe to grind against satellite radio, since the only real advantage satellite has over public radio is not having to change stations when you're on a road trip. I find myself wondering if NPR stations have had their listenership drop in the same way as commercial radio, so maybe we should look into that before we start declaring an NPR anti-technology bias.
Living as I do in the one Florida county that actually got its 2000 recount done on time, I'll be voting the same way I did last year and the year before, filling out bubbles on a piece of paper with a magic marker.
"(I wonder if they think Google's pockets might be deeper that the previous owners'.)"
Or maybe, just maybe, they didn't want to go running to the lawyers first thing to see if something amicable could be worked out? Of couse, if they did go reaching for the lawyers as soon as "youtube.com" was registered, they'd likely be decried around here as the next SCO.
But we like youtube, so any enemies of it must be ebil.
When Google decides to create a censored google.cn, Slashdotters bend over backwards to toe the line and support Google's claims that doing business in China is kinda sorta less evil than ignoring them. Now that we have Microsoft actually looking to leave China, stating it is for the reasons that make us unhappy that Google is in China, and every post I've seen so far is trying to find the "real" reason.
Maybe Microsoft is being two-faced, maybe they're not. Regardless, how about holding them to the same standards as Google, or vice versa, for once?
"for the SNES, GBA or GameCube on the Collector's Disc"
No Zelda games that appeared on a Game Boy platform were on the collector's disk, including LttP, since they were trying to sell that cartridge at the same time as the collector's disk.
Still, didn't everybody get that one if for no other reason than Four Swords?
"I bet Nintendo will release this in [North America] and Europe as well,"
Why? From where I sit, I can see six devices capable of playing DVD movies. With the current saturation, what would be the point in introducing such a feature beyond novelty? How have sales of the GameQ been compared to the vanilla GameCube?
"along with some other modest hardware improvements, such as a hard drive or maybe some more flash memory"
What you would suggest forks the platform and breaks the console model entirely. If shoppers need to read fine print on the game packaging to see if their particular hardware can play the game, there is zero benefit over PC gaming, for either consumers or game companies.
Besides, with consoles, unused features are removed with future iterations, not added on. No DV output on newer GameCubes. No HDD capability in newer PS2s. No serial link in the PSOne. No S-video in the SNES Jr. See the trend?
"I got burned with the DS Lite; wanna make sure that doesn't happen again."
What added functionality does the DS Lite have over the DS? You'd have a better case if you went back to the GBA/GBA SP example, and even then there are no games that require a GBA SP versus a GBA.
But whatever, it's your decision. You can sit in your smug satisfaction while I have some fun this Christmas.
"That being said, why wasn't this originally included? It makes perfect sense, given that they're trying to make it a family centerpiece with the channels and such."
Because everybody already has a DVD player. There is very little money to be made in selling people something they already have.
"We have to make it gorgeous. We have to make it easy on the eye. We have to make it take your friend's breath away"
Linux geeks, FYI, your CLI and text editor of choice isn't gorgeous, no matter what you may think.
Personally, I like the fact that Ubuntu finds my 802.11g card, it's just a shame I can't set up WPA without opening up some conf file in a text editor and/or figuring out the chicken-and-egg problem of downloading packages to make my network connection work.
"Like it or not, a man with normal levels of testosterone will get into conflicts,"
But the kinds of conflicts you are talking about are happening more often (on a per capita basis) than they were in the past, even though there was more testosterone in the past.
"A case in point is NASA abandoning moon missions and all but stopping shuttle flights because of a single accident - an unavoidable occurrence for something inherently dangerous like space flights."
Life is cheap. Space shuttles are expensive. Shuttle flights didn't stop because they ran out of volunteers.
"but I would guess in the olden days most people met at work, because they were like working on the farm all the time."
A century ago the United States was more urban than today (no cars to commute from the suburbs, no "white flight," etc.). People were around a lot more people with a lot more opportunities for the "manly" conflicts you list off.
"Either that, or the society had arranged marriage and said fathers and brothers were most probably not looking for males with low testosterone levels."
We're talking about the United States here, not Japan. Women of a century ago lacked property rights and the like, but that doesn't mean they weren't independent and self-assertive enough to, say, fight for sufferage.
"And notice that a shotgun marriage doesn't stop you from having an offspring unlike birth control/abortion."
But the husband became "domesticated" by threat of death, expected to support the child rather than run off and father more with other women. And women at the time were less likely to put out until they got something substantial on their finger, at least nothing that could cause pregnancy; in many ways women are more pliant than they were a century ago.
What nets you some hours of community service and maybe some counseling today would have gotten you hard labor a century ago.
"if you ask someone out at work you are fired and sued,"
Before women had the ability to defend themselves from unwanted advances, they had these things called "fathers" and "brothers."
"if you are perceived to be an insensitive clod who wants to sit in a bar rather than wash dishes, you are unlikely to get married or have an offspring - thanks also to birth control/abortion."
Before birth control there were shotgun weddings (again, those fathers and brothers).
All of the behavior that you seem to believe is "manly" is far easier to get away with today than it ever was. And yet the crime rate has skyrocketted and our prisons are filled with young men that would have been swinging from the gallows a century ago, coinciding with this demonstrable drop in testosterone.
The problem isn't that it's harder to be a "man" today, it's easier. The problem is that the behavior you associate with being "manly" just plain isn't. What you're describing aren't symptoms of manly pride and confidence, but rather boyish insecurity, looking for something to prove.
"Being a man means being ready to set yourself in front of danger to others. Does not matter your physical shape..."
So that your infirm presence in harm's way can jeopardize other people?
"... or civility."
Often it is the lack of civility that causes the potential for harm to begin with.
At least among mammals, the males and the females of any particular species have different outlooks on fighting stemming from their different roles. When males fight, it is often with each other in an effort to impress a potential mate, and as such neither participant is all that willing to fight to the death ("He who fights and runs away lives to reproduce another day"). When one male has a clear advantage over another, the weaker one will usually concede defeat.
The females, on the other hand, when required to fight are more often fighting to protect their young, and will therefore fight with disproportionate force whenever possible, without mercy and to the death. In short, they don't have the "surrender instinct" that males have.
Even among humans, if you have conversations with police, bouncers, or anybody else that has had to work security for a meaningful amount of time, they'll generally tell you that they have more problems with women than men. Men tend to know that they're beaten once they're on the ground, tend not to pull guns when threatened with nothing more than fists, etc. And even in areas like international diplomacy, some have suggested that the Falkland Islands War wouldn't have happened if Margaret Thatcher had been a man (yes, I've heard the joke already).
So, your "always, at all costs, no matter what" attitude is actually more womanly than manly, and can be seen as a symptom of the reduction of testosterone in the US today.
A real man doens't always "step up to the plate," he knows when not to step up no matter how much he wants to.
"Take home message: You want to be a man, then act like one. Nothing wrong with civility, however America is training a nation of pussies."
So, instead of whining, bitching and moaning about how his coworkers and superiors have issues with his manners and attitude, OP should grow up, be a man about it and at least suck it up and deal with it? Yes, I couldn't agree more.
Manners and civility are what separate men from boys. There's acting like a man and there's being a man, and all too often the two are mutually exclusive. Every wonder why some people insist that an armed society (where everybody else has the potential to kill anybody else with little notice) is a polite society?
It may not be worthess, but it sure as hell ain't worth $400 per freakin' reinstall!
Hell, the EULA fiasco is making me switch back from XP to 2000. I don't need Microsoft getting any bright ideas about using WPA and WGA to retroactively enforce the Vista license on XP ("But, gee, that's what the EULA always meant, we just clarified it"). So if Linux gives me similar functionality to 2000 without putting up with end-of-life problems, I'll be satisfied.
"that community has every right to deny you any and all benefits of membership in the community, including the right to title to land, the right to trade with members of the community, and the right to use community property like roads."
From where does this community obtain these "rights?"
In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest, they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto, the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him from his work, and every different want call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune would be death, for though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.
This necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessing of which, would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen, that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other; and this remissness, will point out the necessity, of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.
Some convenient tree will afford them a State-House, under the branches of which, the whole colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of REGULATIONS, and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man, by natural right, will have a seat.
But as the colony increases, the public concerns will increase likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present. If the colony continues increasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of the representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number; and that the elected might never form to themselves an interest separate from the electors, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often; because as the elected might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the electors in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflexion of not making a rod for themselves. And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this (not on the unmeaning name of king) depends the strength of government, and the happiness of the gove
"Meaning, we do not create ourselves, our personality, it is created by the world, by other people that influence us."
Either you're engaging in circular logic or you're refuting the idea of free will. Which one?
"For instance, I could raise a bunch of my kids to be serial killers if I wanted to."
Not in your worldview. You'd have to isolate those children from others who might convince them what they are doing is wrong, which you more or less believe to be an impossibility.
"Should society have a say in the way someone raises their kids, say, to prevent people from raising a whole brood of deranged maniacs? I say so."
And what if the society is the one raising deranged maniacs? National Socialism, anyone?
"Don't like it? Don't live in that community."
Rigorous application of your "no man is an island" statement means there is no other community to move into. Everybody influences everybody else, period.
"I get a little worried when I see a "Heavy Mithril Breastplate" jiggling when my character runs."
Considering your handle is "Lord Slepnir" as opposed to "Lady Slepnir," I'm left with the impression that you probably wouldn't be playing as her if it didn't jiggle.
Slashdot Mirror
Time permitting, I've been reading John Lukacs' A New Republic, and one of the points he brings up in the book is the change in the nature of being an historian. In more moderns times, as more and more information is recorded (e. g. a minute-by-minute record of what a particular US president does during a four-year term), the difficulty is not finding the information in and of itself, but sifting through all the information to find the things that are actually meaningful.
While Wikipedia may provide a good deal of information to anthropologists, there will always be a draw to archaeology to try to discern what it is we thought important enough to produce a hard, physical copy of. In that respect, archaeology will be important as a means of finding things to help anthropologists interpret what they see on Wikipedia, something of a Rosetta Stone to translate the plethora of heiroglyphics.
"Maybe it's because we've learned that Microsoft is pure evil and can never be trusted to do anything socially responsible without ulterior motives."
That still doesn't change the fact that Microsoft, not Google, is the one talking about making a moral decision. What part of "same standards" are you having difficulty with?
"With lifespan of 5 years, it will start showing its age in 2 or 3 years as HDTV become the norm."
HDTV was supposed to have become "the norm" in the lifespans of the previous batch of consoles.
As far as I can tell, The number of ATSC television sets in use will outnumber the number of NTSC sets at about the same time the world's first fusion power plant comes online.
"leaving the kids wandering the streets in the light and stealing a lot of the magic of the celebration"
Would that be the "kids in the dark getting run over by cars" kind of magic, or the "kids using cover of darkness to egg my front door" kind?
So, while Norton and McAfee have little else to do than bitch about the kernel lock-down in Vista, the makers of that delightful little AV program F-Prot are out actually, you know, looking into security issues?
Rich!
"A recent test found that 19 of these transmitters were unlicensed and another 221 exceeded their authorized power level, giving NPR an opening to press with an apparently sympathetic FCC."
NPR programming is carried by XM's competitor, Sirius (the same guys who also carry Howard Stern).
At any rate, I don't understand why NPR (or, more specifically, NPR member stations) would have an axe to grind against satellite radio, since the only real advantage satellite has over public radio is not having to change stations when you're on a road trip. I find myself wondering if NPR stations have had their listenership drop in the same way as commercial radio, so maybe we should look into that before we start declaring an NPR anti-technology bias.
Living as I do in the one Florida county that actually got its 2000 recount done on time, I'll be voting the same way I did last year and the year before, filling out bubbles on a piece of paper with a magic marker.
"The Cell has about 20x the processing power as a Core Duo with a high-end graphics card combined."
So it can render Toy Story 2 in real-time?
"(I wonder if they think Google's pockets might be deeper that the previous owners'.)"
Or maybe, just maybe, they didn't want to go running to the lawyers first thing to see if something amicable could be worked out? Of couse, if they did go reaching for the lawyers as soon as "youtube.com" was registered, they'd likely be decried around here as the next SCO.
But we like youtube, so any enemies of it must be ebil.
When Google decides to create a censored google.cn, Slashdotters bend over backwards to toe the line and support Google's claims that doing business in China is kinda sorta less evil than ignoring them. Now that we have Microsoft actually looking to leave China, stating it is for the reasons that make us unhappy that Google is in China, and every post I've seen so far is trying to find the "real" reason.
Maybe Microsoft is being two-faced, maybe they're not. Regardless, how about holding them to the same standards as Google, or vice versa, for once?
"urban camping"
I don't know about where you're from, but around here we call it "vagrancy."
"for the SNES, GBA or GameCube on the Collector's Disc"
No Zelda games that appeared on a Game Boy platform were on the collector's disk, including LttP, since they were trying to sell that cartridge at the same time as the collector's disk.
Still, didn't everybody get that one if for no other reason than Four Swords?
"I bet Nintendo will release this in [North America] and Europe as well,"
Why? From where I sit, I can see six devices capable of playing DVD movies. With the current saturation, what would be the point in introducing such a feature beyond novelty? How have sales of the GameQ been compared to the vanilla GameCube?
"along with some other modest hardware improvements, such as a hard drive or maybe some more flash memory"
What you would suggest forks the platform and breaks the console model entirely. If shoppers need to read fine print on the game packaging to see if their particular hardware can play the game, there is zero benefit over PC gaming, for either consumers or game companies.
Besides, with consoles, unused features are removed with future iterations, not added on. No DV output on newer GameCubes. No HDD capability in newer PS2s. No serial link in the PSOne. No S-video in the SNES Jr. See the trend?
"I got burned with the DS Lite; wanna make sure that doesn't happen again."
What added functionality does the DS Lite have over the DS? You'd have a better case if you went back to the GBA/GBA SP example, and even then there are no games that require a GBA SP versus a GBA.
But whatever, it's your decision. You can sit in your smug satisfaction while I have some fun this Christmas.
"That being said, why wasn't this originally included? It makes perfect sense, given that they're trying to make it a family centerpiece with the channels and such."
Because everybody already has a DVD player. There is very little money to be made in selling people something they already have.
"We have to make it gorgeous. We have to make it easy on the eye. We have to make it take your friend's breath away"
Linux geeks, FYI, your CLI and text editor of choice isn't gorgeous, no matter what you may think.
Personally, I like the fact that Ubuntu finds my 802.11g card, it's just a shame I can't set up WPA without opening up some conf file in a text editor and/or figuring out the chicken-and-egg problem of downloading packages to make my network connection work.
"Like it or not, a man with normal levels of testosterone will get into conflicts,"
But the kinds of conflicts you are talking about are happening more often (on a per capita basis) than they were in the past, even though there was more testosterone in the past.
"A case in point is NASA abandoning moon missions and all but stopping shuttle flights because of a single accident - an unavoidable occurrence for something inherently dangerous like space flights."
Life is cheap. Space shuttles are expensive. Shuttle flights didn't stop because they ran out of volunteers.
"but I would guess in the olden days most people met at work, because they were like working on the farm all the time."
A century ago the United States was more urban than today (no cars to commute from the suburbs, no "white flight," etc.). People were around a lot more people with a lot more opportunities for the "manly" conflicts you list off.
"Either that, or the society had arranged marriage and said fathers and brothers were most probably not looking for males with low testosterone levels."
We're talking about the United States here, not Japan. Women of a century ago lacked property rights and the like, but that doesn't mean they weren't independent and self-assertive enough to, say, fight for sufferage.
"And notice that a shotgun marriage doesn't stop you from having an offspring unlike birth control/abortion."
But the husband became "domesticated" by threat of death, expected to support the child rather than run off and father more with other women. And women at the time were less likely to put out until they got something substantial on their finger, at least nothing that could cause pregnancy; in many ways women are more pliant than they were a century ago.
"If you fight you are put in jail,"
What nets you some hours of community service and maybe some counseling today would have gotten you hard labor a century ago.
"if you ask someone out at work you are fired and sued,"
Before women had the ability to defend themselves from unwanted advances, they had these things called "fathers" and "brothers."
"if you are perceived to be an insensitive clod who wants to sit in a bar rather than wash dishes, you are unlikely to get married or have an offspring - thanks also to birth control/abortion."
Before birth control there were shotgun weddings (again, those fathers and brothers).
All of the behavior that you seem to believe is "manly" is far easier to get away with today than it ever was. And yet the crime rate has skyrocketted and our prisons are filled with young men that would have been swinging from the gallows a century ago, coinciding with this demonstrable drop in testosterone.
The problem isn't that it's harder to be a "man" today, it's easier. The problem is that the behavior you associate with being "manly" just plain isn't. What you're describing aren't symptoms of manly pride and confidence, but rather boyish insecurity, looking for something to prove.
"Being a man means being ready to set yourself in front of danger to others. Does not matter your physical shape..."
So that your infirm presence in harm's way can jeopardize other people?
"... or civility."
Often it is the lack of civility that causes the potential for harm to begin with.
At least among mammals, the males and the females of any particular species have different outlooks on fighting stemming from their different roles. When males fight, it is often with each other in an effort to impress a potential mate, and as such neither participant is all that willing to fight to the death ("He who fights and runs away lives to reproduce another day"). When one male has a clear advantage over another, the weaker one will usually concede defeat.
The females, on the other hand, when required to fight are more often fighting to protect their young, and will therefore fight with disproportionate force whenever possible, without mercy and to the death. In short, they don't have the "surrender instinct" that males have.
Even among humans, if you have conversations with police, bouncers, or anybody else that has had to work security for a meaningful amount of time, they'll generally tell you that they have more problems with women than men. Men tend to know that they're beaten once they're on the ground, tend not to pull guns when threatened with nothing more than fists, etc. And even in areas like international diplomacy, some have suggested that the Falkland Islands War wouldn't have happened if Margaret Thatcher had been a man (yes, I've heard the joke already).
So, your "always, at all costs, no matter what" attitude is actually more womanly than manly, and can be seen as a symptom of the reduction of testosterone in the US today.
A real man doens't always "step up to the plate," he knows when not to step up no matter how much he wants to.
"Take home message: You want to be a man, then act like one. Nothing wrong with civility, however America is training a nation of pussies."
So, instead of whining, bitching and moaning about how his coworkers and superiors have issues with his manners and attitude, OP should grow up, be a man about it and at least suck it up and deal with it? Yes, I couldn't agree more.
Manners and civility are what separate men from boys. There's acting like a man and there's being a man, and all too often the two are mutually exclusive. Every wonder why some people insist that an armed society (where everybody else has the potential to kill anybody else with little notice) is a polite society?
"Are you going to say "no, stop doing this"? Or are you going to say "woohoo! Keep up the good work, government"?"
The voters, as always, will say "We're not really happy with what you're doing, but I still want more pork so I'll vote for you again."
If you use that phrase in a sentence talking about anything other than video games, it's time to move from CS to an MBA.
"Linux is only free if your time is worthless"
It may not be worthess, but it sure as hell ain't worth $400 per freakin' reinstall!
Hell, the EULA fiasco is making me switch back from XP to 2000. I don't need Microsoft getting any bright ideas about using WPA and WGA to retroactively enforce the Vista license on XP ("But, gee, that's what the EULA always meant, we just clarified it"). So if Linux gives me similar functionality to 2000 without putting up with end-of-life problems, I'll be satisfied.
From where does this community obtain these "rights?"
"Meaning, we do not create ourselves, our personality, it is created by the world, by other people that influence us."
Either you're engaging in circular logic or you're refuting the idea of free will. Which one?
"For instance, I could raise a bunch of my kids to be serial killers if I wanted to."
Not in your worldview. You'd have to isolate those children from others who might convince them what they are doing is wrong, which you more or less believe to be an impossibility.
"Should society have a say in the way someone raises their kids, say, to prevent people from raising a whole brood of deranged maniacs? I say so."
And what if the society is the one raising deranged maniacs? National Socialism, anyone?
"Don't like it? Don't live in that community."
Rigorous application of your "no man is an island" statement means there is no other community to move into. Everybody influences everybody else, period.
"I get a little worried when I see a "Heavy Mithril Breastplate" jiggling when my character runs."
Considering your handle is "Lord Slepnir" as opposed to "Lady Slepnir," I'm left with the impression that you probably wouldn't be playing as her if it didn't jiggle.
Paper ballots, electronic ballots... half the eligible voters in the US don't vote anyway.
A guy I know at work was showing off his newly-won naturalization document today. Even he's not voting.