Didn't it occur to anyone that the reason DARPA might be interested in this is the hundreds of vets with missing limbs who have a need for better prosthetics? CARL: I got Games & Theory.
CARMEN: Games & Theory? That's Military Intelligence... Oh, Carl!
JOHNNY: Whoa Way to go, boy-yo!
RECRUITING SERGEANT: Next time we meet, I'll probably have to salute you. What about you, son?
Funny, but let's be honest. It's a replica. It's not the real prop. It's a genuine fake! So you're at a flea market, and you see a slab of carbonite! Would you be disappointed if you go up close and instead of Han's face, you have the disproportionate mug of some random nerd?
It's a replica, not the original. [...] it's not like he's destroying something other people would want. An authentic life-size replica, molded from the original movie prop? I want that on my wall!
The problem with this line of conversation is the use of the term "Christian" when what's actually being discussed is Roman Catholicism. Those were not Catholics running the show in Salem...
It's not the brand name of religion that's the matter in these situation, it's that a handful of people gain absolute power over others by using religion to place themselves over the rest of humanity as the interpreters of the will of invisible beings who never, EVER act to contradict the authority of their representatives. And wherever, whenever the power of the state becomes indistinguishable from the power of the church (temple, synagogue, mosque, whatever the brand name is), the people with absolute power act in a predictable way. If you want your own, personal, Jesus, I'm fine with that. I'm happy for you, but only as long as you only try to show people that you church can make them happy by example. When you try to inject your dogma in the public sphere, when you taint the law with your scripture, then we have a problem, and it will inevitably lead to public executions unless we put a stop to it.
It should be noted that Galileo was a devout Christian.
It should be noted that he was a devout Christian in a society where the punishment for not publicly being a devout Christian was DEATH BY FIRE.
And more so, it should be noted that his scientific discoveries were denied on religious grounds and he was threatened with excommunication if he dared insist that empirical proof trumped biblical interpretation.
I will continue to believe in God, who loved me so much that he sacrificed himself so that he could rescue me. It provides much more hope than evolution, which says I live for a little bit, and then I die. [sarcasm]Wonderful.[/sarcasm]
Ok, think about this. Without God, nothing matters. It doesn't matter if you are terminally ill, or a terrorist. You are going to die, and that is the end of it. Life, then, is utterly meaningless. Nothing you do will make a difference. When you die, you wont even remember that you were here, and in a short time, no one else will remember you either. Life has no meaning, it never did, it doesn't now, and it never will. It is just time and death. Thats all. That's tough. Get used to it. It's called Absurd Nihilism, and it provides no hope. It make no promises of magical rewards that no one can ever see before they get them in secret, it makes no promises of cruel retribution for those who are bad.
It's just the world the way it is. No one to provide meaning for you, no all powerful father figure to tell you what to do, to tell you that it will all be fine in the end. You have what you have and you go with it. You want meaning? You make your own.
Some of us are strong enough to face life for what it is, others need to believe in fairy tales to dull the screaming horror in the back of their mind.
P.S. I had a look at the pile of circular logic you linked to, I found this bit particularly hilarious: "In fact, science began to flourish only when the biblical view of creation took root in Europe" lol! Tell it to Galileo and Aristotle! You do realize that this is representative of the entire website? Dishonesty, lies, half truths, misdirections, and illogical, unshakable belief.
I specifically see agnosticism as intellecutaly lazy/bankrupt, because if you think it through to its logical consequences it simply doesn't make sense. What practical relevance to your life do you derive from the statement, that we will never know if God exists or not? How does this "knowledge" guide your thoughts and actions? I see your brand of atheism as intellectually lazy and dishonest. You either believe in one god, or none? What makes the claims of this one god important enough to make you ignore the background of all the others?
Of the thousands and thousands of claimed gods, I do not know that each and everyone is made up. Maybe powerful immortals walked the Earth long ago, dispensing wisdom and wrath at their whims, and maybe they went away. Or maybe they just decided to blend in. I will not automatically deny the godliness of any claim I hear based on reverse faith in just one god, I'll examine each one on its own merits, thank you very much.
Yours is the lazy approach, you have a ready made explanation for every supernatural event, just as your anti-faithful have a ready made explanation for every natural event.
Any ad that tends to blink, scroll, move, clash, interrupt the content, etc. is burdensome. Google text ads are the answer to this. They are worse than burdensome if you have attention deficit disorder, they make it virtually impossible to read the page (off course, you can always put your hand over the offending portions of the screen).
If someone has epilepsy, then they're far worse, they're an actual health hazard! AdBlock is a necessity for some.
one can explain away any gap in Star Trek's continuity with reality by creating a technological explanation regardless of plausibility. We just make some shit up!
Perhaps learning should be entertaining, but the reverse does not apply. Not all entertainment needs to be educational.
It is therefore bizarre to expect entertainment to be factually accurate.
Well, if they can stop using realism as a selling point, then we'll stop decrying their lack of realism.
Deep Impact's hyper machine was all over the science news programs back then, bragging about how much their physics was t3h awesome. The movie mentions that the comet will enter Earth's atmo at many times the speed of sound.... when the comet enters, it makes a thunderous noise, which prompts people to turn around and look at it coming.
That's one of the million things to hate about that movie, but this one stuck with me, because it's so. damn. obviously stupid.
The Core (2003) http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0298814/ was both educational and fun. Atleast reading the movie physics review on it. http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/core.html Quotes such as "It's the worst physics movie...ever...." and "...the movie's heroes are at least 335 bombs short...." just make me laugh everytime I read it It's the same writer as Transformers... which probably explains why there's sentences like "It's a global blackout, we've lost all communications!" all over that stupid movie.
How can you know an event is global if you have no communications?
Here, universities have decided it's a smart idea to narrow down your field of eduation. So if you choose your path crafty, you can circumvent all those math-heavy hardware related courses and go software-only. You think that's bad? I have a visual arts degree, and we were not allowed to take photography classes. Too close to our core subject, those were for the "broaden your horizon" classes only, we were told "you should have taken them in high school!" ('cause high school kids can accurately predict what they'll be banned from taking in college, of course).
Allowing someone to narrow their focus too much is one thing, but banning people from the classes in their focus because you feel they should broaden their horizon makes no more sense.
it's to stop the existing sales to foreign networks collapsing to nothing when people can get the programs off the internet. Yes, because that's not a boogey man and you can prove it?
DRM is snake oil. It can't stop anything: It's cracked, it's circumvented, it's preempted. The only thing this folly of the BBC accomplishes is that it makes it a crime to view otherwise free BBC content on a machine not running Windows.
Many people in the UK want the DRM, so the BBC can make money selling their programs abroad. Many people in the UK are idiots then. That snake oil will only cost the BBC money, it will not magically boost export sales.
seriously, BBC.. unless the government is twisting your arm to offer your programs online while saying that only UKians should be able to view it for free and the populace complaining that the player won't work on their operating systems and companies telling you to pony up for the bandwidth costs... why don't you just tell them all "screw it, then"; and not offer it at all. There. Everybody happy. Do it wrong or don't do it at all!
Thanks for removing all doubts.
on
Manhattan 1984
·
· Score: 1
The bottom line is that you disagree with society's decision that law enforcement should be able to collect from toll violators. "It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool than to open ones mouth and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain
Don't like toll plazas taking photos of your car? Use the subway. Don't like the library keeping track of which of its books you've taken from them? Buy them. The subway tracks me. The bookstores track me.
Fools like you don't realize that each baby step takes society in the same direction.
Traffic is for all intents and purposes, a crawl during the day.
This is why anti-conjestion schemes such as this won't work. If traffic is already so horrible, anyone is has an easy option to avoid the area is already doing it. Adding an $8 charge will provide only a little additional motivation. Many people have no choice; they are in that part of town and they need their car or truck for a good reason. The rest have already decided that the cost of sitting in traffic (and probably parking) is still worth it. $8 isn't going to change many of their minds. It's effectively going to reduce the number of poor people driving jalopies in Manhattan.
Quite, the law was recently changed in the UK to allow the police to use the motoway ANPR system to track any suspect. Before the change they could only use it to track "terrorists". frog soup
Are there murderous, extremist Muslims out there? Sure. And there's murderous, extremist people in every religion. Sure, but have you ever heard of anyone blowing up anything in the name of Buddha?
I've got to say here that I agree with your sentiments about Islam and Muslims. While I have nothing against these people personally, I don't like their religion and the societies it creates. It IS oppressive. I think that "Western" civilization is better. Sure, not perfect, with room for improvement. Still, it's better. We have more freedoms, we have more wealth, and we have a better morality. Most people in Western culture believe in freedom and equality, and want the citizens of our society to also believe in these values. The difference is not between Islam and Christianity, the difference is that western countries are letting go of superstitions.
"circular use of space is highly inefficent. ever tried to stack a pile of balls? there's a lot of wasted space there."
Completely incorrect, circular use of space is the most efficient use possible. Nobody is talking about living in a pile of homes here.......this is about a single ball. Some of us live in cities.
Once you graduate you might be qualified to know, but until then it's just an unproven opinion. And I _am_ qualified to know that, given that I work at a University. Buckminster Fuller was sent to Milton Academy, in Massachusetts. Afterwards, he began studying at Harvard but was expelled from the university twice: first, for entertaining an entire dance troupe; and second, for his "irresponsibility and lack of interest." By his own appraisal, he was a non-conforming misfit in the fraternity environment.
How this information is any different from going through other toll plazas or border crossings is beyond me. The difference between crossing an international border and driving within a city is beyond you, got it.
Attempting to attribute some lingering fear to the fact that you're visible to others in public is paranoid. Visible != logged & tracked;
You also don't understand that it's not the fact that we aren't invisible that annoys us, but the fact that we are being logged, tagged, tracked. Who holds this information, who buys it? When you're fired from your job, will your boss tell you it's because he bought traffic data that tells him you often go in the gay part of town? This stuff is creepy, if you have enough brains to think about the implications.
But for those who think that their masters are benevolent, or for those who find the distinction between border crossing and intra-city drives beyond them, there's always your ostrich approach.
Slashdot Mirror
CARMEN: Games & Theory? That's Military Intelligence... Oh, Carl!
JOHNNY: Whoa Way to go, boy-yo!
RECRUITING SERGEANT: Next time we meet, I'll probably have to salute you. What about you, son?
JOHNNY: Infantry, sir.
RECRUITING SERGEANT: Well, good for you. The Mobile Infantry made me the man I am today.
I'll grab my torch, you get your pitchforks, let's go have a word with our attention whoring friend...
It's not the brand name of religion that's the matter in these situation, it's that a handful of people gain absolute power over others by using religion to place themselves over the rest of humanity as the interpreters of the will of invisible beings who never, EVER act to contradict the authority of their representatives. And wherever, whenever the power of the state becomes indistinguishable from the power of the church (temple, synagogue, mosque, whatever the brand name is), the people with absolute power act in a predictable way.
If you want your own, personal, Jesus, I'm fine with that. I'm happy for you, but only as long as you only try to show people that you church can make them happy by example. When you try to inject your dogma in the public sphere, when you taint the law with your scripture, then we have a problem, and it will inevitably lead to public executions unless we put a stop to it.
It should be noted that he was a devout Christian in a society where the punishment for not publicly being a devout Christian was DEATH BY FIRE.It should be noted that Galileo was a devout Christian.
And more so, it should be noted that his scientific discoveries were denied on religious grounds and he was threatened with excommunication if he dared insist that empirical proof trumped biblical interpretation.
Ok, think about this. Without God, nothing matters. It doesn't matter if you are terminally ill, or a terrorist. You are going to die, and that is the end of it. Life, then, is utterly meaningless. Nothing you do will make a difference. When you die, you wont even remember that you were here, and in a short time, no one else will remember you either. Life has no meaning, it never did, it doesn't now, and it never will. It is just time and death. Thats all. That's tough. Get used to it. It's called Absurd Nihilism, and it provides no hope. It make no promises of magical rewards that no one can ever see before they get them in secret, it makes no promises of cruel retribution for those who are bad.
It's just the world the way it is. No one to provide meaning for you, no all powerful father figure to tell you what to do, to tell you that it will all be fine in the end. You have what you have and you go with it. You want meaning? You make your own.
Some of us are strong enough to face life for what it is, others need to believe in fairy tales to dull the screaming horror in the back of their mind.
P.S. I had a look at the pile of circular logic you linked to, I found this bit particularly hilarious: "In fact, science began to flourish only when the biblical view of creation took root in Europe" lol! Tell it to Galileo and Aristotle! You do realize that this is representative of the entire website? Dishonesty, lies, half truths, misdirections, and illogical, unshakable belief.
Of the thousands and thousands of claimed gods, I do not know that each and everyone is made up.
Maybe powerful immortals walked the Earth long ago, dispensing wisdom and wrath at their whims, and maybe they went away. Or maybe they just decided to blend in.
I will not automatically deny the godliness of any claim I hear based on reverse faith in just one god, I'll examine each one on its own merits, thank you very much.
Yours is the lazy approach, you have a ready made explanation for every supernatural event, just as your anti-faithful have a ready made explanation for every natural event.
If someone has epilepsy, then they're far worse, they're an actual health hazard!
AdBlock is a necessity for some.
It is therefore bizarre to expect entertainment to be factually accurate.
Well, if they can stop using realism as a selling point, then we'll stop decrying their lack of realism.Deep Impact's hyper machine was all over the science news programs back then, bragging about how much their physics was t3h awesome. The movie mentions that the comet will enter Earth's atmo at many times the speed of sound.... when the comet enters, it makes a thunderous noise, which prompts people to turn around and look at it coming.
That's one of the million things to hate about that movie, but this one stuck with me, because it's so. damn. obviously stupid.
Atleast reading the movie physics review on it. http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/core.html
Quotes such as "It's the worst physics movie...ever...." and "...the movie's heroes are at least 335 bombs short...." just make me laugh everytime I read it It's the same writer as Transformers... which probably explains why there's sentences like "It's a global blackout, we've lost all communications!" all over that stupid movie.
How can you know an event is global if you have no communications?
Too close to our core subject, those were for the "broaden your horizon" classes only, we were told "you should have taken them in high school!" ('cause high school kids can accurately predict what they'll be banned from taking in college, of course).
Allowing someone to narrow their focus too much is one thing, but banning people from the classes in their focus because you feel they should broaden their horizon makes no more sense.
DRM is snake oil. It can't stop anything: It's cracked, it's circumvented, it's preempted. The only thing this folly of the BBC accomplishes is that it makes it a crime to view otherwise free BBC content on a machine not running Windows.
The bookstores track me.
Fools like you don't realize that each baby step takes society in the same direction.
This is why anti-conjestion schemes such as this won't work. If traffic is already so horrible, anyone is has an easy option to avoid the area is already doing it. Adding an $8 charge will provide only a little additional motivation. Many people have no choice; they are in that part of town and they need their car or truck for a good reason. The rest have already decided that the cost of sitting in traffic (and probably parking) is still worth it. $8 isn't going to change many of their minds. It's effectively going to reduce the number of poor people driving jalopies in Manhattan.
Laicity FTW!
Completely incorrect, circular use of space is the most efficient use possible. Nobody is talking about living in a pile of homes here
You're qualified to learn.
Once you graduate you might be qualified to know, but until then it's just an unproven opinion.
And I _am_ qualified to know that, given that I work at a University. Buckminster Fuller was sent to Milton Academy, in Massachusetts. Afterwards, he began studying at Harvard but was expelled from the university twice: first, for entertaining an entire dance troupe; and second, for his "irresponsibility and lack of interest." By his own appraisal, he was a non-conforming misfit in the fraternity environment.
You also don't understand that it's not the fact that we aren't invisible that annoys us, but the fact that we are being logged, tagged, tracked. Who holds this information, who buys it?
When you're fired from your job, will your boss tell you it's because he bought traffic data that tells him you often go in the gay part of town? This stuff is creepy, if you have enough brains to think about the implications.
But for those who think that their masters are benevolent, or for those who find the distinction between border crossing and intra-city drives beyond them, there's always your ostrich approach.