As a pollworker in Georgia, which was the first state to use electronic voting equipment statewide, I can say unequivocally that electronic voting machines have made our precinct's elections run more smoothly.
Translation: Look! Over there! It's shiny!
I can state unequivocally that frosted flakes get soggy in milk. Oh wait, is that off topic?
Couple that with the natural human tendency to get as much return on as little investment as possible, and it's almost as bad as setting up a dingo farm next to a day care center.
Ehhh....., just how bad is that exactly? Does it have anything to do with Superman?
if someone assures me that is has a @$^@$%&$ ending!
Well, I get the same dissatisfied feeling as you do sometimes, but when you think about it, real life doesn't have endings (other than when you die).
Why do we have to have this incredibly constraining, hollywood ending sort of conclusion to everything? I wonder if it is a cultural thing, or if it's an intrinsically human thing? In any case, Neal's books seem so *real* to me, that any sort of tidy little ending would seem out of place, I think. Plus, if there's no ending, there's nothing for you to hate.
The only other writer I've ever encountered whose worlds seem so real to me is James Clavell (whom I *highly* recommend if you like Neal, though it's all historical fiction, not SF). He built these incredibly rich worlds with very three dimensional characters just like Neal does.
Guess what? He never wrote an ending either.
I think it's just one of the things you have to put up with to get such a complex, involving narrative.
before I got my first programming job, to the tune of 7$ per hour. I made at least 10$ an hour at my waiter job, but I took a paycut to get my foot in the door and it was the best thing I ever did.
You'll probably be able to do better than that, but you will have to pay dues. There's no getting around it.
I get paid a reasonable salary now, and my pay has increased steadily over time (for the most part). The most important thing for you to do right now is make contacts. Make sure you get people's business cards and keep in touch with them when you leave a job. They are worth more than their weight in gold (the cards I mean. The people eat too much).
If you knew what's good for you, you'd stop badmouthing our commander-in-chief right now.
How was I badmouthing the CIC? All I said was that he had a chip installed in his brain by the head of the justice department. You're just a technophobe.
In order to create the equivalent of a novel in the form of interactive fiction, an author would have to create digital analogs of real people, able to interact with the audience in a manner that live actors would be able to do. This has never, to my knowledge, been tested even with human agents
Actually, it's been done rather well, take a look at Trinity (winner of the very first IF contest) for a good example.
Obviously a program cannot yet pass the Turing test, but within the limited realm of interactive fiction, an illusion of reader interaction with the characters can be done to very interesting (if not completely realistic) effect, and there's more that can be done than has been yet tried. As old as the genre is, there's yet great room and possibility for improvement.
In either case, as far as literature goes, there's no need to have people clicking around to get to the next part. That, to me, says "game". This can just as easily be accomplished in a book with a bit of narration.. it seems just an attempt to shift the style of narration.
Well, I think people tend to discount new ways of telling stories. I say there's a reason interactive fiction lives on: people are naturally drawn to a medium which allows them to feel they are in control of a story. This sounds like it's a new form of interactive fiction, and I for one am happy that this professor has pushed the boundaries just a little with respect to how we receive our fiction.
I love a good novel as much as the next person, but in this age of tech, the novel format is not the only way to present a storyline, and I enjoy being challenged every now and then with a new format for the art form I admire most. I think the interactive novel is the way of the future with respect to fiction.
There is a reason that interactive fiction lives on despite the lack of pretty graphics and bells and whistles and so forth. People like to be a part of the fictional worlds they enjoy, and fancy graphics can only tell so much of a story. In the end, there's no substitute for good writing.
Someday, interactive fiction may be the norm, with the old, passively read novel format becoming quaint and outdated. This work may be seen as a pioneering work, when that day comes.
When people think interactive fiction, they think games, but I think this space has not been explored in depth and I see great opportunities for the future. I for one applaud this man and wish him great success.
I've written a program that can convert machine code into well written, well documented c++ code. I've used it to decompile and recompile windows, giving me a much more efficient operating system which performs floating point operations before you even ask for them. If I wanted to, I could decompile it and recompile it again, and get even better code. Eventually if I do this enough times my computer will become sentient.
Sound too good to be true? Well, I've already gotten a contract from Microsoft to use it to improve Minesweeper.
I could make the argument that you too are a huckster, since you repute them with no clear evidence of their logical phallacy.[emphasis mine]
Erm.... the word you're looking for is fallacy. I suppose your invented hybrid word might mean "mistake with a penis", as in "Bill Clinton commited lots of phallacies".
But then, you are an AC so maybe it was on porpoise.
Stop right there. That's not right. Judicial activism should not exist in any direction, even on viewpoints we agree on. Judicial activism is where a judge ignores the law and just rules based on how they wish the law was. That's wrong.
It depends on who you ask. Some people believe that the constitution is the supreme law of the land, and when congress passes a law that violates the constitution, the courts have the responsibility to overturn the law. This concept is known as judicial review. Often, this is also what is called "judicial activism".
What you perceive as judicial activism depends on which side of the political fence you are on. For instance, many conservatives consider the Mass. Supreme court decision overturning the ban on gay marriage to be judicial activism. On the other side of the coin, many consider the US Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore to be judicial activism.
Whichever side of the fence you fall on, you need to acknowledge that the courts have the right, and indeed the responsibility, to overturn laws which violate the constitution. If congress made a law which said that I could no longer say bad things about the president, such a law would be in clear violation of the first amendment to the Constitution.
Somehow, people have gotten it into their head that Congress can pass any old law it wants to, and if the courts overturn it, that's "activism". In reality, the judicial branch of the government is a necessary part of the checks and balances system which our forefathers worked so hard to create, and is not subservient to Congress.
You say that "It doesn't matter how extraordinary the claim is, there is no scientific 'raising of the bar' for one claim versus another claim. If there was, we probably couldn't get any science done because we would have to examine every hypothesis for its 'extraordinaryness' and set the bar accordingly." I say that this happens everyday. I say this happens everytime you read an article, understand its claims, and decide if you're convinced that that is the way the world actually works.
Perhaps you are correct, but if so it is only a proof of a sort of (necessary) scientific laziness, not a sign of virtue. A true skeptic would take any claim skeptically until enough statistics have proven it a valuable theory, even if it fit into their general frame of understanding.
In practice it is very hard to maintain this attitude; most scientists rely on credible sources and generally accept things which fit into their framework and reject those that do not.
In a way, this is good because it allows much faster advancement, freeing scientists to do their own research and not worry too much about their peers. In another way, it is bad because things which do not fit into the framework are rejected, as most scientists have devoted their life to learning the framework. Which brings us back to the good: once science has recognized a mistake, they will admit it and eventually move on. The key word is eventually.
Each generation believes it is the rational one, and the cycle is endlessly repeated. The cycle is continuing right now, I contend, in the field of physics.
Around 200 years ago, when many scientists believed the earth was the center of the universe, they actually had very complicated math that worked, to a point, to calculate the future relative planetary positions. In this day and age, one could probably develop a highly complex, internally consistent system that computed astronomy in this manner.
On the subject of God, you merely ignored my text and added magic to your previous analogy of unicorns.
Such an attitude trivializes the question, which is, "where did we come from?" Certainly you agree that it is a legitimate question? Would you not also agree that science is not equipped to answer that question? You sound as though you know basic science fairly well. You should know then, that science fundementally describes the universe, and does not explain it. It's why Darwin was correct even though he didn't provide a mechanism, as you so aptly pointed out.
To argue against God from a scientific framework is hubris, plain and simple. The ironic fact is that science treats any question it cannot answer as illegitimate. Sometimes I agree. However, I think the question "how did the universe come about?" is not only legitimate, it is the fundamental question human beings ask themselves and that drives us forward.
Science is no closer to answering that question than I am to becoming the King of England. Yet scientists use the same sort of ad-hoc reasoning as you did to discount the question itself and display as much condescension as you on those who claim to feel a spirit every now and then.
Religion is also a rigid framework, and it changes a lot less rapidly with the times. However, it probably wouldn't be so popular if it weren't for the attitudes of those people such as yourself who discount personal experience and shun what they can't explain. You can feel the world around you, if you try. People call it God.
When you have an answer for the basic question which humanity has struggled with since the dawn of time, one that is supported by solid scientific evidence, come back and play. Until then, perhaps you shouldn't ridicule what you don't understand and can't explain by comparing one answer to unicorns and magic.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof.
I'm a scientist myself, and I'm taking devil's advocate here, but don't take that to mean that I'm not being sincere in what I say.
First of all, extraordinary claims DO NOT demand extraordinary proof, and it annoys me every time I read that. Extraordinary claims demand ordinary proof, just like everything else. Many claims which we now consider proven (leaving aside the epistemological claim that nothing can ever be proven) were once considered extraordinary. According to the scientific method of empirical research, after enough tests come out positive, a hypothesis becomes a working theory. Period. It doesn't matter how extraordinary the claim is, there is no scientific "raising of the bar" for one claim versus another claim. If there was, we probably couldn't get any science done because we would have to examine every hypothesis for its "extraordinaryness" and set the bar accordingly.
Secondly, science tends to be dismissive of "faith" in favor of "science", but sometimes the things which are believed in "science" are uncomfortably close to "faith". For instance, let's take Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
The GTOR works remarkably well on the scale of the solar system, so well, in fact, that we can predict the position of a planet 100 years from now within spitting distance of where it will actually be.
However, it's long been (what I would characterize as) an article of *faith* among physicists that the GTOR applied equally well throughout the universe, and indeed for a long time it was believed despite evidence to the contrary. Nowadays, we know that there's not near enough visible matter in the universe to make Einstein's equations work in our own galaxy, much less the universe. So what's the answer? Dark matter baby!
Well, to make matters (no pun intended) worse, we now know that the galaxies are moving away from each other at an *accelerating* rate. Now this cannot be accounted for at all, even with dark matter! Even if we're right about dark matter, the galaxies should not accelerate away from each other. So what is the answer? Dark energy baby!
Now, to an outside observer such as myself (I am not a physicist), it might seem that scientists were clinging to their old beliefs and trying to shape the universe to fit them, rather than admitting that they're wrong. In other words, they're taking the GTOR on faith, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
A physicist can say that the GTOR is evidence for "dark matter", and "dark energy", despite having absolutely no direct evidence for either one, only the indirect evidence that GTOR won't work without it. In the same way, someone who believes in God can do so because, well, we exist, and we had to come from somewhere. Science doesn't even attempt to answer the question of how the universe came about (if you reply with the big bang, please explain where the infinitely dense infinitely small point came from), so really, it's comical when a scientist ridicules a believer in God.
Do you see what I'm saying? Most scientists would admit that the question of the origin of the universe is one that science could never answer. Why then do they try so hard to discredit the belief in God? Science has no business even getting into the argument, at least until they come up with a reasonable explanation themselves.
Wait a minute. Pure? As is what sense? Pure is a thoroughly human contrivance. Humans are part of the Earth's ecosystem; we evolved here. Therefore, in order for the Earth's ecosystem to be "impurified" it would have to be contaminated by something outside the ecosystem. That's not us, nor is it anything we could possibly do. Do we shame a dog for crapping on the grass? After all, it's destroying the ecosystem through its greed for food.
So let's take this to its logical conclusion and see if you really believe it. Nothing's really "pure", so why not just cover the whole planet with tar? That's natural, we are part of the ecosystem, we decided to tar the earth, it's not ruining anything.
Okay, let's see, what was your point again?
How about this: I'm going to go to your house and cover it (and your lawn) in elephant crap. Your house will still be there. I haven't ruined it, because the house is still there, and the elephant crap is now a part of it.
Furthermore, the earth's history does contain a record of a certain organism that ruined its own ecosystem -- by polluting it with oxygen. Eventually the organism was wiped from the face of the earth. (But it was pretty convenient for us, wasn't it?)
Perhaps you are just being deliberately obtuse for the sake of being obtuse, and you realize that in the real world, maybe we can't "ruin" the ecosystem by the strict definition of the word, but we can *absolutely* make it inhospitable for all kinds of life, even our own, and that that would be a bad thing to do.
Or maybe you're just another idiot who's a fan of industry supported "science". Either way, I'd say you can be fairly safely disregarded and ignored.
You could use this same technology (analog boxes) to offer a la carte service, but it wouldn't make much sense - if you're going to require everyone get a box, might as well be a digital box (small cost increment, and a lot of benefits (Video on Demand, lots more channels possible, etc.).
So it is possible then. Just scramble all the channels and let the analog boxes sort them out. I noticed that for the short time I had an analog box, most of the channels aren't digital anyway. And the small cost increment, for me, took the total cost from "bad" to "absolutely not". This is because they charge more for the digital service, not just the box. It came out to about $20 more for me, making my roadrunner + cable bill = over $120.
That's ridiculous and I'd rather not have tv than to pay that much. I'm so annoyed that I'm also considering DSL to get TWC out of my life altogether.
If companies sell shit you don't want -- don't buy it.
When I last changed apartments, the cable company told me I could no longer get HBO on analog, and that I had been grandfathered in at my old place. They said it would be an extra $20, but I would get 12 HBO channels for the price of one. I said, if it's an extra $20, then it's 12 HBO channels for an extra $20, not 12 for the price of one.
I can live without all the other channels, though there are a few I would like to have. HBO is really important to me, but I told them to stuff it. With roadrunner, the total cost would have been about $120 (including fees and taxes). That's WAY too much for tv, considering that I hardly watch the thing. So now my ReplayTV is gathering dust.
I'm hoping I'm not the only one and that TWC will get the message that their prices are too high. I don't have a lot of hope for that though.
This a-la-carte thing would be a godsend for me. Local stations, Comedy Central, Sci-Fi, FX, Cartoon network, HBO. That's all I care about. I could live with just local stations and HBO, but just to get HBO I have to get their 500 channel package of a bunch of crap I don't want. They can go to hell.
While we'd all like a la carte pricing of cable, it's a nightmare from a technical point of view. The only possible way to do it would be to require everyone to have a digital box - trying to do this in analog simply wouldn't be feasible (i.e. try filtering 100-106Mhz out, allowing 106-112Mhz, filtering out 112-124Mhz, allowing 124-130Mhz, etc. - each cable tap would have dozens of filters, and each would push the limits of what passive filters can actually do).
I don't know enough about it so I'm not going to argue with you, but I would point out that the cable company had no problem filtering out HBO, Cinemax, TMC, Showtime, Playboy, and all the other premium channels with analog. Why can't they do it with the non-premiums?
Putting punctuation inside of quotation marks is an American convention, but the British put them outside. I use a combination of the two styles, depending on the circumstances. If I quoting something directly, I will put the punctuation on the inside. Sometimes the American way of punctuating doesn't make any sense. For instance, take the following sentence:
Did she say "That woman is ugly"?
It doesn't make sense to put the punctuation inside of the quote, because the quotation was not itself a question.
Granted, I should probably try to stick to one style or the other for consistency's sake, but it's really correct either way.
If you're so smart, why isn't your username "cardsharp2001"?
Shark is a poker term, which is the opposite of fish. E.G. - "I sat down at a table with about 8 fish and only one shark".
I am familiar with your "sharp" term, but I assure you, no one uses that term these days. If you called yourself a "sharp", the "sharks" might assume you were a "fish". Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, depending on your strategy.
I see nothing but praise for this new look of google's in this discussion. I think it looks ugly compared to the tabbed look I was accustomed to. It's not like the page was busy before, at all. It was bare bones, but it looked nice. Now it looks like some hackers threw it together because they didn't wanna hire any HTML designers.
Plus, now they are breaking a cardinal rule, they are using links as buttons. Not such a big deal, but annoying to web design type people.
If you're so smart, how come you don't know the difference between a contraction and a possessive pronoun?
It's "if they're so smart". This corresponds to "if they are so smart". What you said was more like "if the smart which belongs to them is so, how come they forgot to use the all so critical flash intro page?"
Slashdot Mirror
Translation: Look! Over there! It's shiny!
I can state unequivocally that frosted flakes get soggy in milk. Oh wait, is that off topic?
Ehhh....., just how bad is that exactly? Does it have anything to do with Superman?
Well, I get the same dissatisfied feeling as you do sometimes, but when you think about it, real life doesn't have endings (other than when you die).
Why do we have to have this incredibly constraining, hollywood ending sort of conclusion to everything? I wonder if it is a cultural thing, or if it's an intrinsically human thing? In any case, Neal's books seem so *real* to me, that any sort of tidy little ending would seem out of place, I think. Plus, if there's no ending, there's nothing for you to hate.
The only other writer I've ever encountered whose worlds seem so real to me is James Clavell (whom I *highly* recommend if you like Neal, though it's all historical fiction, not SF). He built these incredibly rich worlds with very three dimensional characters just like Neal does.
Guess what? He never wrote an ending either.
I think it's just one of the things you have to put up with to get such a complex, involving narrative.
You'll probably be able to do better than that, but you will have to pay dues. There's no getting around it.
I get paid a reasonable salary now, and my pay has increased steadily over time (for the most part). The most important thing for you to do right now is make contacts. Make sure you get people's business cards and keep in touch with them when you leave a job. They are worth more than their weight in gold (the cards I mean. The people eat too much).
to probe Einstein, even if you're a necro, and that's just gross.
I had to reply to this, because my .sig forced me to.
How was I badmouthing the CIC? All I said was that he had a chip installed in his brain by the head of the justice department. You're just a technophobe.
I'd mouth off to John Ashcroft. That's how Bush got his.
Actually, it's been done rather well, take a look at Trinity (winner of the very first IF contest) for a good example.
Obviously a program cannot yet pass the Turing test, but within the limited realm of interactive fiction, an illusion of reader interaction with the characters can be done to very interesting (if not completely realistic) effect, and there's more that can be done than has been yet tried. As old as the genre is, there's yet great room and possibility for improvement.
Well, I think people tend to discount new ways of telling stories. I say there's a reason interactive fiction lives on: people are naturally drawn to a medium which allows them to feel they are in control of a story. This sounds like it's a new form of interactive fiction, and I for one am happy that this professor has pushed the boundaries just a little with respect to how we receive our fiction.
I love a good novel as much as the next person, but in this age of tech, the novel format is not the only way to present a storyline, and I enjoy being challenged every now and then with a new format for the art form I admire most. I think the interactive novel is the way of the future with respect to fiction.
There is a reason that interactive fiction lives on despite the lack of pretty graphics and bells and whistles and so forth. People like to be a part of the fictional worlds they enjoy, and fancy graphics can only tell so much of a story. In the end, there's no substitute for good writing.
Someday, interactive fiction may be the norm, with the old, passively read novel format becoming quaint and outdated. This work may be seen as a pioneering work, when that day comes.
When people think interactive fiction, they think games, but I think this space has not been explored in depth and I see great opportunities for the future. I for one applaud this man and wish him great success.
Sound too good to be true? Well, I've already gotten a contract from Microsoft to use it to improve Minesweeper.
Erm.... the word you're looking for is fallacy. I suppose your invented hybrid word might mean "mistake with a penis", as in "Bill Clinton commited lots of phallacies".
But then, you are an AC so maybe it was on porpoise.
It depends on who you ask. Some people believe that the constitution is the supreme law of the land, and when congress passes a law that violates the constitution, the courts have the responsibility to overturn the law. This concept is known as judicial review. Often, this is also what is called "judicial activism".
What you perceive as judicial activism depends on which side of the political fence you are on. For instance, many conservatives consider the Mass. Supreme court decision overturning the ban on gay marriage to be judicial activism. On the other side of the coin, many consider the US Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore to be judicial activism.
Whichever side of the fence you fall on, you need to acknowledge that the courts have the right, and indeed the responsibility, to overturn laws which violate the constitution. If congress made a law which said that I could no longer say bad things about the president, such a law would be in clear violation of the first amendment to the Constitution.
Somehow, people have gotten it into their head that Congress can pass any old law it wants to, and if the courts overturn it, that's "activism". In reality, the judicial branch of the government is a necessary part of the checks and balances system which our forefathers worked so hard to create, and is not subservient to Congress.
As far as I know, Joss ended Buffy because he felt it had run its course. The network didn't cancel it. Am I wrong?
You say that "It doesn't matter how extraordinary the claim is, there is no scientific 'raising of the bar' for one claim versus another claim. If there was, we probably couldn't get any science done because we would have to examine every hypothesis for its 'extraordinaryness' and set the bar accordingly." I say that this happens everyday. I say this happens everytime you read an article, understand its claims, and decide if you're convinced that that is the way the world actually works.
Perhaps you are correct, but if so it is only a proof of a sort of (necessary) scientific laziness, not a sign of virtue. A true skeptic would take any claim skeptically until enough statistics have proven it a valuable theory, even if it fit into their general frame of understanding.
In practice it is very hard to maintain this attitude; most scientists rely on credible sources and generally accept things which fit into their framework and reject those that do not.
In a way, this is good because it allows much faster advancement, freeing scientists to do their own research and not worry too much about their peers. In another way, it is bad because things which do not fit into the framework are rejected, as most scientists have devoted their life to learning the framework. Which brings us back to the good: once science has recognized a mistake, they will admit it and eventually move on. The key word is eventually.
Each generation believes it is the rational one, and the cycle is endlessly repeated. The cycle is continuing right now, I contend, in the field of physics.
Around 200 years ago, when many scientists believed the earth was the center of the universe, they actually had very complicated math that worked, to a point, to calculate the future relative planetary positions. In this day and age, one could probably develop a highly complex, internally consistent system that computed astronomy in this manner.
On the subject of God, you merely ignored my text and added magic to your previous analogy of unicorns.
Such an attitude trivializes the question, which is, "where did we come from?" Certainly you agree that it is a legitimate question? Would you not also agree that science is not equipped to answer that question? You sound as though you know basic science fairly well. You should know then, that science fundementally describes the universe, and does not explain it. It's why Darwin was correct even though he didn't provide a mechanism, as you so aptly pointed out.
To argue against God from a scientific framework is hubris, plain and simple. The ironic fact is that science treats any question it cannot answer as illegitimate. Sometimes I agree. However, I think the question "how did the universe come about?" is not only legitimate, it is the fundamental question human beings ask themselves and that drives us forward.
Science is no closer to answering that question than I am to becoming the King of England. Yet scientists use the same sort of ad-hoc reasoning as you did to discount the question itself and display as much condescension as you on those who claim to feel a spirit every now and then.
Religion is also a rigid framework, and it changes a lot less rapidly with the times. However, it probably wouldn't be so popular if it weren't for the attitudes of those people such as yourself who discount personal experience and shun what they can't explain. You can feel the world around you, if you try. People call it God.
When you have an answer for the basic question which humanity has struggled with since the dawn of time, one that is supported by solid scientific evidence, come back and play. Until then, perhaps you shouldn't ridicule what you don't understand and can't explain by comparing one answer to unicorns and magic.
I'm a scientist myself, and I'm taking devil's advocate here, but don't take that to mean that I'm not being sincere in what I say.
First of all, extraordinary claims DO NOT demand extraordinary proof, and it annoys me every time I read that. Extraordinary claims demand ordinary proof, just like everything else. Many claims which we now consider proven (leaving aside the epistemological claim that nothing can ever be proven) were once considered extraordinary. According to the scientific method of empirical research, after enough tests come out positive, a hypothesis becomes a working theory. Period. It doesn't matter how extraordinary the claim is, there is no scientific "raising of the bar" for one claim versus another claim. If there was, we probably couldn't get any science done because we would have to examine every hypothesis for its "extraordinaryness" and set the bar accordingly.
Secondly, science tends to be dismissive of "faith" in favor of "science", but sometimes the things which are believed in "science" are uncomfortably close to "faith". For instance, let's take Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.
The GTOR works remarkably well on the scale of the solar system, so well, in fact, that we can predict the position of a planet 100 years from now within spitting distance of where it will actually be.
However, it's long been (what I would characterize as) an article of *faith* among physicists that the GTOR applied equally well throughout the universe, and indeed for a long time it was believed despite evidence to the contrary. Nowadays, we know that there's not near enough visible matter in the universe to make Einstein's equations work in our own galaxy, much less the universe. So what's the answer? Dark matter baby!
Well, to make matters (no pun intended) worse, we now know that the galaxies are moving away from each other at an *accelerating* rate. Now this cannot be accounted for at all, even with dark matter! Even if we're right about dark matter, the galaxies should not accelerate away from each other. So what is the answer? Dark energy baby!
Now, to an outside observer such as myself (I am not a physicist), it might seem that scientists were clinging to their old beliefs and trying to shape the universe to fit them, rather than admitting that they're wrong. In other words, they're taking the GTOR on faith, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
A physicist can say that the GTOR is evidence for "dark matter", and "dark energy", despite having absolutely no direct evidence for either one, only the indirect evidence that GTOR won't work without it. In the same way, someone who believes in God can do so because, well, we exist, and we had to come from somewhere. Science doesn't even attempt to answer the question of how the universe came about (if you reply with the big bang, please explain where the infinitely dense infinitely small point came from), so really, it's comical when a scientist ridicules a believer in God.
Do you see what I'm saying? Most scientists would admit that the question of the origin of the universe is one that science could never answer. Why then do they try so hard to discredit the belief in God? Science has no business even getting into the argument, at least until they come up with a reasonable explanation themselves.
So let's take this to its logical conclusion and see if you really believe it. Nothing's really "pure", so why not just cover the whole planet with tar? That's natural, we are part of the ecosystem, we decided to tar the earth, it's not ruining anything.
Okay, let's see, what was your point again?
How about this: I'm going to go to your house and cover it (and your lawn) in elephant crap. Your house will still be there. I haven't ruined it, because the house is still there, and the elephant crap is now a part of it.
Furthermore, the earth's history does contain a record of a certain organism that ruined its own ecosystem -- by polluting it with oxygen. Eventually the organism was wiped from the face of the earth. (But it was pretty convenient for us, wasn't it?)
Perhaps you are just being deliberately obtuse for the sake of being obtuse, and you realize that in the real world, maybe we can't "ruin" the ecosystem by the strict definition of the word, but we can *absolutely* make it inhospitable for all kinds of life, even our own, and that that would be a bad thing to do.
Or maybe you're just another idiot who's a fan of industry supported "science". Either way, I'd say you can be fairly safely disregarded and ignored.
So it is possible then. Just scramble all the channels and let the analog boxes sort them out.
I noticed that for the short time I had an analog box, most of the channels aren't digital anyway. And the small cost increment, for me, took the total cost from "bad" to "absolutely not". This is because they charge more for the digital service, not just the box. It came out to about $20 more for me, making my roadrunner + cable bill = over $120.
That's ridiculous and I'd rather not have tv than to pay that much. I'm so annoyed that I'm also considering DSL to get TWC out of my life altogether.
When I last changed apartments, the cable company told me I could no longer get HBO on analog, and that I had been grandfathered in at my old place. They said it would be an extra $20, but I would get 12 HBO channels for the price of one. I said, if it's an extra $20, then it's 12 HBO channels for an extra $20, not 12 for the price of one.
I can live without all the other channels, though there are a few I would like to have. HBO is really important to me, but I told them to stuff it. With roadrunner, the total cost would have been about $120 (including fees and taxes). That's WAY too much for tv, considering that I hardly watch the thing. So now my ReplayTV is gathering dust.
I'm hoping I'm not the only one and that TWC will get the message that their prices are too high. I don't have a lot of hope for that though.
This a-la-carte thing would be a godsend for me. Local stations, Comedy Central, Sci-Fi, FX, Cartoon network, HBO. That's all I care about. I could live with just local stations and HBO, but just to get HBO I have to get their 500 channel package of a bunch of crap I don't want. They can go to hell.
I don't know enough about it so I'm not going to argue with you, but I would point out that the cable company had no problem filtering out HBO, Cinemax, TMC, Showtime, Playboy, and all the other premium channels with analog. Why can't they do it with the non-premiums?
Look here.
Putting punctuation inside of quotation marks is an American convention, but the British put them outside. I use a combination of the two styles, depending on the circumstances. If I quoting something directly, I will put the punctuation on the inside. Sometimes the American way of punctuating doesn't make any sense. For instance, take the following sentence:
Did she say "That woman is ugly"?
It doesn't make sense to put the punctuation inside of the quote, because the quotation was not itself a question.
Granted, I should probably try to stick to one style or the other for consistency's sake, but it's really correct either way.
Shark is a poker term, which is the opposite of fish. E.G. - "I sat down at a table with about 8 fish and only one shark".
I am familiar with your "sharp" term, but I assure you, no one uses that term these days. If you called yourself a "sharp", the "sharks" might assume you were a "fish". Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, depending on your strategy.
Plus, now they are breaking a cardinal rule, they are using links as buttons. Not such a big deal, but annoying to web design type people.
If you're so smart, how come you don't know the difference between a contraction and a possessive pronoun?
It's "if they're so smart". This corresponds to "if they are so smart". What you said was more like "if the smart which belongs to them is so, how come they forgot to use the all so critical flash intro page?"
Now really, how hard is it to remember that?
Oh yeah, and you can only play one song at a time.