Most build for both OSX and Linux, so you can try before you leap;)
You actually were more helpful than you thought. You prodded me to finally actually install that Hardy disk sitting on my desk.
Ah... the time of the yearly Linux install, just to see if I can find something to keep me using it, instead of slowly moving back to OS X/Windows after 2 months due to familiarity.
I just wish that the Mac devs out there would work harder on porting things to other OSs. They have GUI down pretty well, and I know the average slashbot is going to scream at me for this, GUI matters to me. With Adium, I can make my contact list a small unobtrusive blurb off the menu bar, with Pidgin (and all other multi-clients I've found) they insist on being a very large chunk of real estate, in all their blocky goodness. For some reason Mac devs have also mastered expandability. Look at the amount of Adium plugins, compared to the the amount of Pidgin ones, then compare the sizes of the user-bases.
Sorry for the rant, its been one of those weeks. Thanks for the reply.:)
Adium and Quicksilver (and perhaps OmniOutliner) are the apps that are keeping me from ever fully migrating away from OS X. Which is a shame, since I really dislike the feel of the Intel macs, and don't want to switch to Leopard, while developers and Apple are trying to force it (wow, virtual desktops and versioning! What big NEW things!)
>i>"I'm not an anti-semite, I'm just anti-Israel" ranks up with "I'm not a racist, some of my best friends are (black, hispanic, asian, etc)" on the bullshit-o-meter, buddy.
First, never said I was 100% anti-anything. I disagree with some of Israels actions, and current ideologies. This doesn't even make me anti-Israel (much less antisemitic), I acknowledge that the Israeli state has the right to exist, and disaprove of ANY violence (from any side). Your argument is thus; "My child misbehaves, I dislike this, therefore I dislike my child", which is obviously silly.
Second, your argument doesn't make sense. Israel is a country, not the sum total of the Jewish experience. They are separate entities, I can like one of them, but not the other with no paradox. I also disapprove of many of the US's actions, but obviously don't dislike Americans (being one). The people ARE NOT the country.
This flaw in reasoning has tainted the whole middle eastern debate.
As for the rest - really, why is Wikipedia so worried about people trying to improve their articles with sourced information? Why are they so worried that systemic bias in the Israel-related articles might be (gasp!) removed?
As you stated, Wikipedia isn't the most... unbiased... of entities itself. This probably plays a role. Also, to be generous, this topic is MASSIVELY contested, therefore all edits should be suspect, and held to higher standards than on non-controversial topics. Everyone has an agenda, everyone thinks that is represents the truth. This may be what they are doing. I honestly have no idea.
For that matter, why is "Electronic Intifada" a source to be trusted in this regard? It's just as likely that there are already organized Muslim/anti-semitic groups on wikipedia messing with these pages; they used to operate openly (Wikiproject Islam: The Muslim Guild/The Sunni Guild/The Shia Guild/etc) until they decided they'd work better hiding their affiliation, and there are users to this day running around with pro-Hezbollah buttons prominent on their pages.
Why is any source to be trusted? Yes, it seems a flippant question, but the truth is that EVERYONE has an agenda on this issue. The only trusted source would be a pure, uninterested, 3rd party. I don't know if any of those exist anymore.
In fact, one of the users with a pro-Hezbollah button (User Tiamut) is one of the ones who was working so hard to get the complainant above banned from wikipedia. Think about it; since under real application of wikipedia policy their bias-pushing edits wouldn't hold, the next best thing is to try to get the opposition banned from wikipedia.
This is one of my largest complaints about how Wikipedia works. This happens all the time, and not just on this topic. Go read the talk pages on Ayn Rand for example. Wikipedia is too political (in the social sense, and the public sense) to be a valid reference on any issue that holds any psychological weight.
Reading TFA, I can't see anything about antisemitism. I can see a potential bias against Israel. I'm getting sick of this cliche, being against some of Israels actions does not make one an antisemite.
I'm against some of Israels actions, but have absolutely nothing against ethnic Jews or Judaism, am I an antisemite? The country is not the people.
That said, this could be evidence of bias, which supposedly in theory is a no-no for Wikipedia, or... as often in this case, it is a heated issue promoting a semantic flame war. I don't know enough about the issue at hand to know which.
Sure people would opt-in for ads. Tie it to some silly service, that you only get if you get the ads, call it "MySpace PRO!!!1one!" or some such. The user would get "exclusive" profile "bling", and receive ads for fre3 v1agra.
Hell, its MySpace, you could make selling their identity to Nigerians opt-in for something silly and superfluous, and a significant portion of users would. I don't think the typical MySpace user is know for their forethought and impulse control.
Nerds have no perspective on whats really important in life.
I generally agree. Though, I think this is part of a bigger problem (most things are). I would classify it as "keeping the rights of the consumer higher than the rights of corporations". By making something opt-out you are stomping on this, MySpace might be an innocuous example, but there are others who use opt-out for more deleterious purposes.
If the government can lower itself to make the very effective Do Not Call List, then why not do something about the internet? The internet is no longer a small network of nerds, its in pretty much every household, and pretty much everyone uses it in some capacity. How many users does MySpace even have these days?
The bigger problem is that your congressman or senator isn't going to give a flying "frack" about ANY thing you, a lowly constituent, says. Especially if your in a larger metropolitan district. A lot of politicians have taken the ideology that they're here to take care of us, since we are incapable of doing it ourselves. We're children. On top of that, they are basically opportunists, they want to shape the political world into some abstract image, and not have to deal with the dirty little "people problems" (which is our fault, since we continually vote them in, no matter what awful things they do, as long as they stand with us on our pet moral issues*).
If you write your congress critter, it is guaranteed that they will NEVER read it. They won't even know you wrote it. It will be tallied up by a bored aid, shredded, and have a stock reply in the mail. But no one will ever read it or care. The only chance we have to influence our officials is now the vote, outside of that, we don't exist or matter anymore.
The day to day quests are mainly of the "kill x of y so I can do z". Meaning shallow, and rather boring. But the actual world which your playing has very detailed stories for each faction (and the the NPC factions). Some times the quests do tap into these larger stories, and these are some of the better ones. Sadly they lose a lot since you know your going to have to do them 80000 times, and sadly they are only for high level characters (Blizzard hates lowbies)
I still remember completing the full Onyxia quest on the Alliance side, it was one of the more moving moments in the game. The procession to the palace was awesome, I actually had a grip of lowbies/bow me, and follow me to the big fight. But then again this was in the first year of the game, so it was novel.
I suppose the hard part is how to let players contribute to story arcs, when the story arcs can never actually change. MMOs are like some odd form of purgatory, you repeat the same actions forever, but nothing ever changes. I think I'm going to go roll a toon named Sisophys now.
The only groups that ever get to big things are the massive raiding guilds. Blizzard hates the casual gamer as much as they hate the lowbie.
Don't forget Gimli being mainly comic relief. This still bugs me. You could have removed Gimli from the movie completely, and it would have been like removing the monkey from Speed Racer, a better experience.
In the book he was useful, somewhat noble, and not terribly amusing.
It is largely a matter of taste, but I would rank things thus French>Italian>Spanish>California(Sonoma>Nappa)>Spanish>Australia>NZ>All of south America, especially Chilean wine. Though there are some REALLY good Califonian wines, and some decent Australian ones, this ranks the whole of these countries in my experience (not objectively).
My fathers old adage is "a cheap French wine is always better than an middling American wine". For the most part this is true.
Any nationally marketed New York wines you could recommend? Where do they even have viticulture up there, it seems an oddly un-meditarianian climate.
I don't, though, think that making a powerful OS precludes making an easy to use one. OS X comes close to this, with all of its shiny features (and most of its aesthetics at least started as functional) hiding a nice, albeit slightly gimped, BSD/Unix terminal underneath. I'm not saying the internals should be this obfuscated (my GF has been using a Mac all her life, and didn't know OS X even had a terminal).
I think that is inevitable. I think it is in the nature of the software ecosystem. I'd like to be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think if you want a 'user friendly' - to mom and pop users - user environment, someone is going to have to pay to build it, and to pay to maintain it.
You may be right. But the Mozilla Foundation, and Ubuntu does give me some hope. All it takes is a group of geeks to make it a pet project. I doubt that a majority of the community will care too much, outside of the point of pride issue.
Firefox would be a better example. How long was Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox in beta before its initial release? From Moz to the current firefox, I was at the point where I thought it would NEVER leave beta.
You are of course correct, but noon is an infinitely small target. 12.0000000000000000000001 is post meridian. Noon is a theoretical point, just like 12 midnight.
We agree around 50%. I don't think that this is necessarily a good thing, and think that it shows that the community is at cross purposes.
To a large degree Linux needs elitist geeks, their what makes it tick. But at the same time we speak of "The Year of the Linux Desktop", which leads me to believe that some subset of these elitist geeks want their pet OS to be adopted by the masses. Being elitist geeks is at good for Linux as a project, but bad for Linux as a pay OS alternative.
There needs to be some balance. I would be doubtful, but I have been wrong about these things before. I always thought that Linux devs couldn't make a good GUI to save their lives, but I'm slowly being proven wrong (not 100% yet, but 60% is better than 0%) by Ubuntu, and the KDE and Gnome teams.
If you want a user friendly operating system, and you don't have the skills to do it yourself, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates will be perfectly happy to take your money and sell you one. And that's perfectly OK, if that's what you want.
This is where we're going to disagree. I always saw Linux and the OSS community as somewhat an ethical stance as well. The MS and Apple's of the world are not good for OS development, and are guilty of some ethically wonkey actions. To combat this Linux must be viable enough to change their practices (i.e. a threat).
I would like to do with Linux what I did with Firefox, give it to all my novice friends for their own good, safety, and enjoyment. This point is somewhat in the future still, in part because of the communities ethos. I sometimes have a bad taste in my mouth recommending people switch to OS X, to escape Windows problems. I'd rather hand them a nice Ubuntu disk.
I see your point, and don't mean to troll; but I think this is one reason Linux doesn't get as much use as it would. There is no real helpful Linux community. Linux nerds are a bunch of DIY guys, who expect everyone else to be so too. But the novice doesn't have the wherewithall (or knowledge) to hit up man pages, and start digging through arcane forums littered with snippets of code.
Of all three of the OSs I use, Linux has the least helpful community. This isn't saying that the Mac and Windows communities are perfect, but there are people out there who genuinely want to help users. I'm sure there are some Linux folk out there with this mindset, but not nearly enough.
The most common phrase of help offered in Linux forums is: "write it yourself". Which is completely not helpful to anyone outside of someone who can actually write their own device driver (who thus wouldn't be asking).
Linux's community works very well for the Linux community, but if Linux ever truly becomes popular, this is going to work against it. Not everyone, then, would be a developer, or other flavor of code monkey. In this sense, I still doubt that the much fabled Year of the Linux Desktop is actually ready to come. Most Linux people seem to absolutely HATE novices. They ask stupid questions. Which is a valid complaint, until you realize that stupid in a Linux forum means "hasn't been using it since 1843", or "can't code".
Don't take this as an attack on you personally, or on Linux in general. As I said, this community ethic works very well, and has contributed to Linux being as robust as it is, since it is actively aimed at developing Linux further, but it just neglects helping users of Linux who are not aimed at developing Linux. I don't know how to rectify this. Linux, not being generally for-profit, doesn't have the customer support incentive of the other venders, and being that it was an operating system of misanthropic geeks for so long, misanthropic geeks are the totality of the community.
Hmm... So there is a bit of sampling error here. Who uses PCPit stop, what demographic? I'm guessing these numbers are based on a rather limited demographic.
Like scanning/. and finding that 50% of computer users run linux, and use firefox. It isn't generalizable to the general population.
If they could scan a truly random sample of computer users I would be impressed. And frightened.
I don't get it. Associate.torrent with uTorrent in your browser. Okay, thats one click. Bookmark PirateBay... Okay, one click. Search... Click link... automagically download whatnot...
Its not bloody hard. Its nothing like having to manually dial and search pirate BBSs or anything, or ssh to the super-secret hidden warez repository located in some strange directory on your uni's server.
Is your generation just lazy, or just stupid? I'm not talking about you, but...
What a coincidence, my school didn't do DC++ either, and we didn't have permission from IT to do so as long as it was limited to invitation only. Said non-existent IT staff also didn't promise to give advance warning to the imaginary users of said non-existent DC++ network if the RIAA came whining about imaginary violations.
This non-existent network only got threatened with non-existent death when some imaginary asshole decided kiddy porn was cool. This hypothetical school, though, let the non-existent members of this non-existent network purge the imaginary bad bits, and keep running their mythical network.
No, that's not necessarily or even likely true -- more likely, we just don't understand the processes that govern events we currently model as "probabilistic".
I don't currently have access to my old notebooks, but I remember that there was an experiment with the probabilistic nature of electron spin, that proved (pretty) much that the probability was an innate part of the system, that could not be explained by missing data (the theory is "complete"). I think it was the EPR experiment, though. Google at will.
Your probably right on the symmetry not interfering with looking back.
yet they end up meaning something to people too, and still inform our popularly accepted epistemology
I don't think this is important. Though I do agree that it might help some people inform their actions, but since it is lacking in truth value (at the moment, or forever), this is all pretty secondary, and amounts to a statement of faith. It will happen, though. And has.
There are scant few Cartesian dualists left, and those who are pigheaded enough to hold onto it certainly can adapt these findings to their system. But we can be just as "certain" of determinism or free will as we are of gravity, magnetism, or conservation of energy. Certainly, any of those things could be falsified -- tomorrow, perhaps, gravity will cease to function, and life as we know it will end. Seems unlikely, though, doesn't it? (Even though we certainly can't measure that probability).
I can't understand the last of Cartesians... I would have though the "bridge" problem to be insurmountable. Though I suppose the belief in an discorporeal soul would help things along a bit. Though I have noticed that Cartesian dualism is still endemic in much of our language and literature (even academic), so I guess it still is accepted on some level by many people.
As of now the free-will debate doesn't fall into the same category as gravity. I can test gravity, I know it exists, even if the explanations vary. Gravity is a fact. Right now I don't know an unequivocal, or definitive, way of proving determinacy. Right now it is largely nothing more than a logical proposition based on the acceptance of earlier, and more accepted, propositions. This isn't to dismiss the argument, just to cast it in a different light than gravity, or the old "transference of forces" argument that bothered philosophers in the enlightenment.
This is what undergraduate degrees in philosophy are all about =P -- sweeping questions that seem deep, but in fact aren't.
LOL! I do think I built a fallacy into that statement. I forgot my coherence theory of epistemology for a moment, that and the term "science" is about as broad as the term "philosophy". I guess the question is more one posed as one of general epistemology in general, rather than one of science. Sometimes I just wonder if we're just eating our own tail, my undergrad in philosophy did nothing to really fix this suspicion, just to make me ponder it in more amusing ways... that an it gave me the urge to scream "DAMN YOU WITTGENSTEIN!" in the middle of silly debates.
In my readings of the history of philosophy, they always point to the fact that logical positivism is dead. I still sit around wondering if we really replaced it (much less killed it). Finding Kuhn's small book was one of those life-changing moments, especially since I was studying Foucault at the same time.
I do agree that science is the best thing we have right now... We just lose scope of the fact that it is a LONG process, and not immediate. Often I think its moving more and more towards classical metaphysics (ala the Monadology). I even read a string theorist, who mentioned something along the lines of "we don't need empirical or experimental evidence, and we will probably never have it, but this doesn't matter towards the validity of the theory"... I think it was Leonard Susskind, or such.
Very nice debating with you, btw. Since leaving college its been harder and harder to find people with philosophical interests. Very pleasurable, and relaxing.
Good point. I agree that care should be taken, but I still contend that if a great gene-hopping scourge were probable, it probably would have occurred naturally in the last few millions of years. I don't think that there are any mass plant extinctions where the likely culprit was a hopping piece of evil genetic code - but I concede that it is possible.
I agree. I doubt that the planets corn supply will be decimated by a GMO scourge. But when we're dealing with the food supply, even a short-term, localized, problem can have some rather severe consequences. Even if the offspring of GMO/Traditional corn is sterile, just once reproductive cycle can lead to a largish chain-reaction.
This is better, though, than no reprodutive controls, I agree with you there. But the potential harm (financial and human) warrants further study and care.
As for pedantry, I think there are some diseases that have been traced to ancient dormant genes, not saying that I think this will happen in the current scenario, just being pedantic.
It's absolutely true. We do in fact need regulation or people will do bad things. I'm not saying that GMO's shouldn't be regulated - just that profit is an EXCELLENT reason for a company to develop them, and that profit is the best driver of innovation. As with pharmaceuticals, I think that universities and governments can and should fill the gaps not served by capitalism.
Shh... regulation is a bad word in these parts. I agree though, but as to the extent of the regulation, thats where the argument will take place. I'd extend the sentiment though, governments should also address the shortcomings of a pure profit motive. Pure profit makes people reckless and short sighted, two traits that are generally bad for long term health and viability.
Monsanto is not the only game in town - just the biggest. Some of their actions are indeed questionable and I think point to places where the law is not currently sufficiently developed. Everything is complicated by the whole global nature of this stuff.
The law though, is insufficient because, in a large part, Monsanto. As long as politics works like they always have, Monsanto will be part of the process, and has no interest in behaving themselves if it cuts into their bottom line. This is a problem in which none of us have solution, I suspect. This isn't just because of lobbying, but also because government has to (or at least) confer with the experts in an industry to make decision about that industry.
I agree... It would be impossible, and foolish to completely get rid of GMO. the cat is out of the bag, and the cat is incredibly useful. We just need to spay it, not put it down.
Benefit, though, isn't an objective measure. It can be purely subjective, as in most marketing campaigns. Coke isn't any different than Pepsi. If studies show that GM crops aren't much better than traditional crops, then what benefit is there.
I think many people are against the freemarket is god philosophy because it has no ethical accountability. It completely ignores long term needs, scorched earth capitalism is FAR more profitable than healthy stewardship. Sadly we need more of the latter, while the former tried to keep this at bay since it would hurt the bottom line.
Free markets are ethically ambivalent, and thus do evil as much as they do good. Some of us think that we should try to remove the latter as much as possible.
But then again I'm one of the few/.ers who think people are more important than profit.
Slashdot Mirror
Most build for both OSX and Linux, so you can try before you leap ;)
:)
You actually were more helpful than you thought. You prodded me to finally actually install that Hardy disk sitting on my desk.
Ah... the time of the yearly Linux install, just to see if I can find something to keep me using it, instead of slowly moving back to OS X/Windows after 2 months due to familiarity.
I just wish that the Mac devs out there would work harder on porting things to other OSs. They have GUI down pretty well, and I know the average slashbot is going to scream at me for this, GUI matters to me. With Adium, I can make my contact list a small unobtrusive blurb off the menu bar, with Pidgin (and all other multi-clients I've found) they insist on being a very large chunk of real estate, in all their blocky goodness. For some reason Mac devs have also mastered expandability. Look at the amount of Adium plugins, compared to the the amount of Pidgin ones, then compare the sizes of the user-bases.
Sorry for the rant, its been one of those weeks. Thanks for the reply.
Adium and Quicksilver (and perhaps OmniOutliner) are the apps that are keeping me from ever fully migrating away from OS X. Which is a shame, since I really dislike the feel of the Intel macs, and don't want to switch to Leopard, while developers and Apple are trying to force it (wow, virtual desktops and versioning! What big NEW things!)
>i>"I'm not an anti-semite, I'm just anti-Israel" ranks up with "I'm not a racist, some of my best friends are (black, hispanic, asian, etc)" on the bullshit-o-meter, buddy.
First, never said I was 100% anti-anything. I disagree with some of Israels actions, and current ideologies. This doesn't even make me anti-Israel (much less antisemitic), I acknowledge that the Israeli state has the right to exist, and disaprove of ANY violence (from any side). Your argument is thus; "My child misbehaves, I dislike this, therefore I dislike my child", which is obviously silly.
Second, your argument doesn't make sense. Israel is a country, not the sum total of the Jewish experience. They are separate entities, I can like one of them, but not the other with no paradox. I also disapprove of many of the US's actions, but obviously don't dislike Americans (being one). The people ARE NOT the country.
This flaw in reasoning has tainted the whole middle eastern debate.
As for the rest - really, why is Wikipedia so worried about people trying to improve their articles with sourced information? Why are they so worried that systemic bias in the Israel-related articles might be (gasp!) removed?
As you stated, Wikipedia isn't the most... unbiased... of entities itself. This probably plays a role. Also, to be generous, this topic is MASSIVELY contested, therefore all edits should be suspect, and held to higher standards than on non-controversial topics. Everyone has an agenda, everyone thinks that is represents the truth. This may be what they are doing. I honestly have no idea.
For that matter, why is "Electronic Intifada" a source to be trusted in this regard? It's just as likely that there are already organized Muslim/anti-semitic groups on wikipedia messing with these pages; they used to operate openly (Wikiproject Islam: The Muslim Guild/The Sunni Guild/The Shia Guild/etc) until they decided they'd work better hiding their affiliation, and there are users to this day running around with pro-Hezbollah buttons prominent on their pages.
Why is any source to be trusted? Yes, it seems a flippant question, but the truth is that EVERYONE has an agenda on this issue. The only trusted source would be a pure, uninterested, 3rd party. I don't know if any of those exist anymore.
In fact, one of the users with a pro-Hezbollah button (User Tiamut) is one of the ones who was working so hard to get the complainant above banned from wikipedia. Think about it; since under real application of wikipedia policy their bias-pushing edits wouldn't hold, the next best thing is to try to get the opposition banned from wikipedia.
This is one of my largest complaints about how Wikipedia works. This happens all the time, and not just on this topic. Go read the talk pages on Ayn Rand for example. Wikipedia is too political (in the social sense, and the public sense) to be a valid reference on any issue that holds any psychological weight.
Reading TFA, I can't see anything about antisemitism. I can see a potential bias against Israel. I'm getting sick of this cliche, being against some of Israels actions does not make one an antisemite.
I'm against some of Israels actions, but have absolutely nothing against ethnic Jews or Judaism, am I an antisemite? The country is not the people.
That said, this could be evidence of bias, which supposedly in theory is a no-no for Wikipedia, or... as often in this case, it is a heated issue promoting a semantic flame war. I don't know enough about the issue at hand to know which.
Sure people would opt-in for ads. Tie it to some silly service, that you only get if you get the ads, call it "MySpace PRO!!!1one!" or some such. The user would get "exclusive" profile "bling", and receive ads for fre3 v1agra.
Hell, its MySpace, you could make selling their identity to Nigerians opt-in for something silly and superfluous, and a significant portion of users would. I don't think the typical MySpace user is know for their forethought and impulse control.
Nerds have no perspective on whats really important in life.
I generally agree. Though, I think this is part of a bigger problem (most things are). I would classify it as "keeping the rights of the consumer higher than the rights of corporations". By making something opt-out you are stomping on this, MySpace might be an innocuous example, but there are others who use opt-out for more deleterious purposes.
If the government can lower itself to make the very effective Do Not Call List, then why not do something about the internet? The internet is no longer a small network of nerds, its in pretty much every household, and pretty much everyone uses it in some capacity. How many users does MySpace even have these days?
The bigger problem is that your congressman or senator isn't going to give a flying "frack" about ANY thing you, a lowly constituent, says. Especially if your in a larger metropolitan district. A lot of politicians have taken the ideology that they're here to take care of us, since we are incapable of doing it ourselves. We're children. On top of that, they are basically opportunists, they want to shape the political world into some abstract image, and not have to deal with the dirty little "people problems" (which is our fault, since we continually vote them in, no matter what awful things they do, as long as they stand with us on our pet moral issues*).
If you write your congress critter, it is guaranteed that they will NEVER read it. They won't even know you wrote it. It will be tallied up by a bored aid, shredded, and have a stock reply in the mail. But no one will ever read it or care. The only chance we have to influence our officials is now the vote, outside of that, we don't exist or matter anymore.
Ouch... Sorry for the rant.
Got the torrent in 45 min, @250kb/s average. God bless the 3700 seeders.
Kids today are screwed
Which explains the continuation of the species...
Thank you for the clarification.
I agree, but a correction:
/bow me, and follow me to the big fight. But then again this was in the first year of the game, so it was novel.
The day to day quests are mainly of the "kill x of y so I can do z". Meaning shallow, and rather boring. But the actual world which your playing has very detailed stories for each faction (and the the NPC factions). Some times the quests do tap into these larger stories, and these are some of the better ones. Sadly they lose a lot since you know your going to have to do them 80000 times, and sadly they are only for high level characters (Blizzard hates lowbies)
I still remember completing the full Onyxia quest on the Alliance side, it was one of the more moving moments in the game. The procession to the palace was awesome, I actually had a grip of lowbies
I suppose the hard part is how to let players contribute to story arcs, when the story arcs can never actually change. MMOs are like some odd form of purgatory, you repeat the same actions forever, but nothing ever changes. I think I'm going to go roll a toon named Sisophys now.
The only groups that ever get to big things are the massive raiding guilds. Blizzard hates the casual gamer as much as they hate the lowbie.
Don't forget Gimli being mainly comic relief. This still bugs me. You could have removed Gimli from the movie completely, and it would have been like removing the monkey from Speed Racer, a better experience.
In the book he was useful, somewhat noble, and not terribly amusing.
That wasn't a Haiku, by either western definition, and most assuredly not by eastern standards.
/. trolls, they really just wanted to be poets, but couldn't quite make it?
It's either blank verse, or a VERY bad attempt at using slant rhymes.
Does this explain
They mistook the "T.S." in "T.S. Eliot" as an imperative. "Troll Slashdot, Eliot!"
Please let me give you the +5 Pedant mod... Best brazen display of pedantry I've seen in a good long while.
It is largely a matter of taste, but I would rank things thus French>Italian>Spanish>California(Sonoma>Nappa)>Spanish>Australia>NZ>All of south America, especially Chilean wine. Though there are some REALLY good Califonian wines, and some decent Australian ones, this ranks the whole of these countries in my experience (not objectively).
My fathers old adage is "a cheap French wine is always better than an middling American wine". For the most part this is true.
Any nationally marketed New York wines you could recommend? Where do they even have viticulture up there, it seems an oddly un-meditarianian climate.
I agree with you.
I don't, though, think that making a powerful OS precludes making an easy to use one. OS X comes close to this, with all of its shiny features (and most of its aesthetics at least started as functional) hiding a nice, albeit slightly gimped, BSD/Unix terminal underneath. I'm not saying the internals should be this obfuscated (my GF has been using a Mac all her life, and didn't know OS X even had a terminal).
I think that is inevitable. I think it is in the nature of the software ecosystem. I'd like to be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think if you want a 'user friendly' - to mom and pop users - user environment, someone is going to have to pay to build it, and to pay to maintain it.
You may be right. But the Mozilla Foundation, and Ubuntu does give me some hope. All it takes is a group of geeks to make it a pet project. I doubt that a majority of the community will care too much, outside of the point of pride issue.
Toogle?
I will make sure to faceboogle your idea of a boontoggle toogle.
Firefox would be a better example. How long was Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox in beta before its initial release? From Moz to the current firefox, I was at the point where I thought it would NEVER leave beta.
Firing up pedantic engine...
You are of course correct, but noon is an infinitely small target. 12.0000000000000000000001 is post meridian. Noon is a theoretical point, just like 12 midnight.
We agree around 50%. I don't think that this is necessarily a good thing, and think that it shows that the community is at cross purposes.
To a large degree Linux needs elitist geeks, their what makes it tick. But at the same time we speak of "The Year of the Linux Desktop", which leads me to believe that some subset of these elitist geeks want their pet OS to be adopted by the masses. Being elitist geeks is at good for Linux as a project, but bad for Linux as a pay OS alternative.
There needs to be some balance. I would be doubtful, but I have been wrong about these things before. I always thought that Linux devs couldn't make a good GUI to save their lives, but I'm slowly being proven wrong (not 100% yet, but 60% is better than 0%) by Ubuntu, and the KDE and Gnome teams.
If you want a user friendly operating system, and you don't have the skills to do it yourself, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates will be perfectly happy to take your money and sell you one. And that's perfectly OK, if that's what you want.
This is where we're going to disagree. I always saw Linux and the OSS community as somewhat an ethical stance as well. The MS and Apple's of the world are not good for OS development, and are guilty of some ethically wonkey actions. To combat this Linux must be viable enough to change their practices (i.e. a threat).
I would like to do with Linux what I did with Firefox, give it to all my novice friends for their own good, safety, and enjoyment. This point is somewhat in the future still, in part because of the communities ethos. I sometimes have a bad taste in my mouth recommending people switch to OS X, to escape Windows problems. I'd rather hand them a nice Ubuntu disk.
I see your point, and don't mean to troll; but I think this is one reason Linux doesn't get as much use as it would. There is no real helpful Linux community. Linux nerds are a bunch of DIY guys, who expect everyone else to be so too. But the novice doesn't have the wherewithall (or knowledge) to hit up man pages, and start digging through arcane forums littered with snippets of code.
Of all three of the OSs I use, Linux has the least helpful community. This isn't saying that the Mac and Windows communities are perfect, but there are people out there who genuinely want to help users. I'm sure there are some Linux folk out there with this mindset, but not nearly enough.
The most common phrase of help offered in Linux forums is: "write it yourself". Which is completely not helpful to anyone outside of someone who can actually write their own device driver (who thus wouldn't be asking).
Linux's community works very well for the Linux community, but if Linux ever truly becomes popular, this is going to work against it. Not everyone, then, would be a developer, or other flavor of code monkey. In this sense, I still doubt that the much fabled Year of the Linux Desktop is actually ready to come. Most Linux people seem to absolutely HATE novices. They ask stupid questions. Which is a valid complaint, until you realize that stupid in a Linux forum means "hasn't been using it since 1843", or "can't code".
Don't take this as an attack on you personally, or on Linux in general. As I said, this community ethic works very well, and has contributed to Linux being as robust as it is, since it is actively aimed at developing Linux further, but it just neglects helping users of Linux who are not aimed at developing Linux. I don't know how to rectify this. Linux, not being generally for-profit, doesn't have the customer support incentive of the other venders, and being that it was an operating system of misanthropic geeks for so long, misanthropic geeks are the totality of the community.
Hmm... So there is a bit of sampling error here. Who uses PCPit stop, what demographic? I'm guessing these numbers are based on a rather limited demographic.
/. and finding that 50% of computer users run linux, and use firefox. It isn't generalizable to the general population.
Like scanning
If they could scan a truly random sample of computer users I would be impressed. And frightened.
I don't get it. Associate .torrent with uTorrent in your browser. Okay, thats one click. Bookmark PirateBay... Okay, one click. Search... Click link... automagically download whatnot...
Its not bloody hard. Its nothing like having to manually dial and search pirate BBSs or anything, or ssh to the super-secret hidden warez repository located in some strange directory on your uni's server.
Is your generation just lazy, or just stupid? I'm not talking about you, but...
er... get off my lawn.
What a coincidence, my school didn't do DC++ either, and we didn't have permission from IT to do so as long as it was limited to invitation only. Said non-existent IT staff also didn't promise to give advance warning to the imaginary users of said non-existent DC++ network if the RIAA came whining about imaginary violations.
This non-existent network only got threatened with non-existent death when some imaginary asshole decided kiddy porn was cool. This hypothetical school, though, let the non-existent members of this non-existent network purge the imaginary bad bits, and keep running their mythical network.
I love imaginary liberal arts schools.
No, that's not necessarily or even likely true -- more likely, we just don't understand the processes that govern events we currently model as "probabilistic".
I don't currently have access to my old notebooks, but I remember that there was an experiment with the probabilistic nature of electron spin, that proved (pretty) much that the probability was an innate part of the system, that could not be explained by missing data (the theory is "complete"). I think it was the EPR experiment, though. Google at will.
Your probably right on the symmetry not interfering with looking back.
yet they end up meaning something to people too, and still inform our popularly accepted epistemology
I don't think this is important. Though I do agree that it might help some people inform their actions, but since it is lacking in truth value (at the moment, or forever), this is all pretty secondary, and amounts to a statement of faith. It will happen, though. And has.
There are scant few Cartesian dualists left, and those who are pigheaded enough to hold onto it certainly can adapt these findings to their system. But we can be just as "certain" of determinism or free will as we are of gravity, magnetism, or conservation of energy. Certainly, any of those things could be falsified -- tomorrow, perhaps, gravity will cease to function, and life as we know it will end. Seems unlikely, though, doesn't it? (Even though we certainly can't measure that probability).
I can't understand the last of Cartesians... I would have though the "bridge" problem to be insurmountable. Though I suppose the belief in an discorporeal soul would help things along a bit. Though I have noticed that Cartesian dualism is still endemic in much of our language and literature (even academic), so I guess it still is accepted on some level by many people.
As of now the free-will debate doesn't fall into the same category as gravity. I can test gravity, I know it exists, even if the explanations vary. Gravity is a fact. Right now I don't know an unequivocal, or definitive, way of proving determinacy. Right now it is largely nothing more than a logical proposition based on the acceptance of earlier, and more accepted, propositions. This isn't to dismiss the argument, just to cast it in a different light than gravity, or the old "transference of forces" argument that bothered philosophers in the enlightenment.
This is what undergraduate degrees in philosophy are all about =P -- sweeping questions that seem deep, but in fact aren't.
LOL! I do think I built a fallacy into that statement. I forgot my coherence theory of epistemology for a moment, that and the term "science" is about as broad as the term "philosophy". I guess the question is more one posed as one of general epistemology in general, rather than one of science. Sometimes I just wonder if we're just eating our own tail, my undergrad in philosophy did nothing to really fix this suspicion, just to make me ponder it in more amusing ways... that an it gave me the urge to scream "DAMN YOU WITTGENSTEIN!" in the middle of silly debates.
In my readings of the history of philosophy, they always point to the fact that logical positivism is dead. I still sit around wondering if we really replaced it (much less killed it). Finding Kuhn's small book was one of those life-changing moments, especially since I was studying Foucault at the same time.
I do agree that science is the best thing we have right now... We just lose scope of the fact that it is a LONG process, and not immediate. Often I think its moving more and more towards classical metaphysics (ala the Monadology). I even read a string theorist, who mentioned something along the lines of "we don't need empirical or experimental evidence, and we will probably never have it, but this doesn't matter towards the validity of the theory"... I think it was Leonard Susskind, or such.
Very nice debating with you, btw. Since leaving college its been harder and harder to find people with philosophical interests. Very pleasurable, and relaxing.
Good point. I agree that care should be taken, but I still contend that if a great gene-hopping scourge were probable, it probably would have occurred naturally in the last few millions of years. I don't think that there are any mass plant extinctions where the likely culprit was a hopping piece of evil genetic code - but I concede that it is possible.
I agree. I doubt that the planets corn supply will be decimated by a GMO scourge. But when we're dealing with the food supply, even a short-term, localized, problem can have some rather severe consequences. Even if the offspring of GMO/Traditional corn is sterile, just once reproductive cycle can lead to a largish chain-reaction.
This is better, though, than no reprodutive controls, I agree with you there. But the potential harm (financial and human) warrants further study and care.
As for pedantry, I think there are some diseases that have been traced to ancient dormant genes, not saying that I think this will happen in the current scenario, just being pedantic.
It's absolutely true. We do in fact need regulation or people will do bad things. I'm not saying that GMO's shouldn't be regulated - just that profit is an EXCELLENT reason for a company to develop them, and that profit is the best driver of innovation. As with pharmaceuticals, I think that universities and governments can and should fill the gaps not served by capitalism.
Shh... regulation is a bad word in these parts. I agree though, but as to the extent of the regulation, thats where the argument will take place. I'd extend the sentiment though, governments should also address the shortcomings of a pure profit motive. Pure profit makes people reckless and short sighted, two traits that are generally bad for long term health and viability.
Monsanto is not the only game in town - just the biggest. Some of their actions are indeed questionable and I think point to places where the law is not currently sufficiently developed. Everything is complicated by the whole global nature of this stuff.
The law though, is insufficient because, in a large part, Monsanto. As long as politics works like they always have, Monsanto will be part of the process, and has no interest in behaving themselves if it cuts into their bottom line. This is a problem in which none of us have solution, I suspect. This isn't just because of lobbying, but also because government has to (or at least) confer with the experts in an industry to make decision about that industry.
I agree... It would be impossible, and foolish to completely get rid of GMO. the cat is out of the bag, and the cat is incredibly useful. We just need to spay it, not put it down.
Good pun...
/.ers who think people are more important than profit.
Benefit, though, isn't an objective measure. It can be purely subjective, as in most marketing campaigns. Coke isn't any different than Pepsi. If studies show that GM crops aren't much better than traditional crops, then what benefit is there.
I think many people are against the freemarket is god philosophy because it has no ethical accountability. It completely ignores long term needs, scorched earth capitalism is FAR more profitable than healthy stewardship. Sadly we need more of the latter, while the former tried to keep this at bay since it would hurt the bottom line.
Free markets are ethically ambivalent, and thus do evil as much as they do good. Some of us think that we should try to remove the latter as much as possible.
But then again I'm one of the few