Your list was also missing IRC; I think that would probably go above IM and SMS
Your probably right on that one, though in its hey-day I would have put it with IM. This is mostly due to the increasing maturity of people left on IRC. Earlier it's signal-to-noise ration was almost as bad a AOL or Yahoo chat rooms, and still is in more bot heavy channels.
I think you have IM and SMS the wrong way round in that list, I (and many people I know) write out and even punctuate SMS messages, but will resort to acronyms in IM. When was the last time you used "brb" (for example) in a SMS? However if I get distracted whilst on IM I'll use it without thinking.
I think your an exception on that. I have seen far more "wat r u up 2" type language via mobile phones, than in IM, thanks to the painful little keyboards (if they have even that). It takes me 45 minutes to type my address on those things. I'm sure more business context, "smart phone" users generally exceed this low standard quite a bit, though. Age, education, and keyboards, seem to increase the content by a good degree, but on average it is more impoverished than IM.
I know I don't have to, but the medium naturally guides this type of communications, IMO. It isn't as good as email or snail-mail letters for long thoughtful communications, thus it is generally relegated to quick, burst-like, stream-of-thought communications.
I'm really becoming a fan of the McLuhan "the medium is the message" theory, as I get older. The structure of the medium itself generally guides most likely form that the thought communicated can take. The best example is SMS, which I avoid like the plague, can you picture saying anything of content (outside of quick updates) to someone through formats like this? IM protocols are slightly better, but still are rather "bursty", even if not limited by input methods to the extent of SMS (how many IM programs treat "enter" as a break by default?).
I'd say a quicky hierarchy of information transfer (from highest bandwidth to lowest) would be: Book/Essay Lecture Letter/Email In person conversation telephone conversation (lack of non-verbal context) IM and lowest being SMS
I know you CAN talk at length in IM, but it is generally not used that way, nor expected to be used that way, since other "instant" technologies do it better.
I noticed that most of my European (mostly British) college friends used MSN, while most of the kids from the States used AIM, minus some of the younger kids who used Yahoo. The brits told me that no one they knew back home used AIM much, while at the same time I knew maybe 3 people in the States who used MSN. I think it is largely regional.
Thank god for AdiumX, made life so much better. It's one of those programs I miss dearly now that I'm using Windows, along with the various Omni products, and Quicksilver. Yes, I know there is Pigdin, and Miranda (or as I like to call it, the land usability forgot), but it's so goddamn ugly, it takes up 40% of my desktop, expandable, and unintuitive.
I pretty much gave up on IM as a useful form of communications though, it forces you into brief little "blurbs", and limits your thoughts and expressions to single statements, which is not inductive to thoughtful communications. Better than cellphone text messages, but still sub-optimal. Also it's just another distraction, putting me at the command of other people's communication needs, which is a habit I'm trying to get out of as much as practically possible.
It's odd, all these copyright conversations are beginning to feel a little cliche, I think collectively we have probably attacked every solution, and problem in the debate many times over, copyright reform is a bit like waiting for Godot.
The "large portion of the potential customers" you refer to are people who don't want to pay market price, but are happy to pay practically nothing.
This is true, people like free. And while some/. folk might do it in protest, the average person probably doesn't care a bit. That said, I'm going to veer into some potentially unpopular handwaving, I think that copyright will exist, as an optional thing, there will be artists like Nine Inch Nails who will release things under some Creative Commons licenses, and then the other group will have to rely on cheap prices (cheaper than iTMS), and weak DRM.
We probably will disagree with above, but really the main gist is that the current situation is bad, for consumers, pirates, and artists. Notice I failed to include the middle man, there is no need for them in a digital economy, unless you really want to own a meatspace CD.
Actually most of the models of car you mention are often the ones I see in large accidents, and oddly enough the ones I see weaving through traffic at 30+ the speed limit. I'll grant 5 over, if it is the flow, is probably safer, but 20-30 over is reckless and stupid, no matter how much someone enjoys it. Oddly, these "people who like car's cars" are also the ones weaving back and forth, 30 over, without using blinkers, who don't pass in appropriate lanes, and leap through gore points to get their exit. Yes, I'm forming a stereotype, but oddly they exist because there is some truth in them. Also, oddly, your saying only people who can throw down a decent wad of cash on their car can be good drivers, which I don't find to be true, and, hypothetically could lead to an erroneous statistical sample (if this wasn't purely anecdotal), where 90% of the cars out there are NOT expensive performance vehicles, thus less of them logically crash.
Rhetorically, if you enjoy driving so much, what is the hurry to get there?
I'm sorry for misrepresenting myself, by enjoying the scenery I don't mean gocking at the nicely lit building to your left, instead of the road, which probably is as moronic and dangerous as text messaging, or filing your taxes while driving. I meant more "your in a car, there is a nice breeze, the sun is out, whats the damn hurry?".
Quoth my father (a professional, and life-long truck driver): "My number one complaint about drivers, is that everyone drives beyond their ability".
This is true, how many burgeoning, novice, race car drivers do you know, who have no real ability whatsoever except watching NASCAR and knowing how to powerslide in a parking lot. Everyone overestimates their ability, its a natural law almost. Just because YOU think your a good driver, doesn't mean you ACTUALLY are. Just because you think going 130 on the freeway is cool, doesn't mean you have the ability to do so. And how bad do you want to share the road with 600 wanna be Dale Earnharts eating bagels, drinking coffee, and text messaging?
I never really understood people who speed, or drive like arrogant morons, I like taking my time, and enjoying the scenery/skyline/weather/radio, and I think I'm better and safer for it. Like the 3 minutes you save by speeding really makes much of a difference.
99% of people downloading copyrighted stuff know its illegal, and also realize its wrong, and that they should be paying the content creators. The temptation of easy free stuff is just too great for some people.
Doubtful, I think there is a large minority here on/. who think it is their ethical obligation to NOT buy things from the RIAA, thus piracy is acceptable to them. Some people think of it as a peaceful protest, or act of civil disobedience in protest of a flawed, tyrannical, and oppressive business model. Granted they might know it is illegal, but not wrong.
Content producers SHOULD be paid, but the record labels try not to do it either. Other business models would work better, some think.
To be pedantic, you do realize that EVERYTHING is covered by copyright, including your comment, which I just downloaded, right?
People should be warned, and then we can go back to a normal, functioning market.
When a large portion of your potential customers are branded "illegal communist pirates", I would say that the market ISN'T functioning. When no one wants to be forced into your service, then YOU ARE WRONG, and your business model is wrong. When you need legislation to make you profitable, your dysfunctional.
I don't condemn or condone piracy, I see both sides of the issue. That said my previous paragraph stands, and I think that the *AA's are broken, and deserve to die.
I also noticed you totally avoided the menu issue. A person with no prior knowledge or experience with iPods wouldn't have a clue how to navigate it.
Maybe. Anecdotally, I didn't have a problem when I first got one, it seemed rather intuitive, which is, admittedly, completely subjective. I have a few gripes, some of the menus are buried in seemingly nonsensical places, the search feature on the newer ones is rather lame, and some features are just there as meaningless extras and don't add any values to its use as an MP3 player.
But then again all OSs are the same way, though there are learning curves, OS X is cake, Windows less easy but still simplistic, end user friendly distros come next (Ubuntu), CLI is dead last, but this isn't a good measure of the merit of the system, just what someone is familiar with. To me the iPod has the easiest GUI, but perhaps not the best, its at least better than the solid-state MP3 players I had before which only had back, forward, and pause/stop buttons.
All choice in interfaces is largely subjective, especially when the devices (operating systems, microwave ovens, whatnot) have almost the exact same functionality.
Thank you for that, its been so long since I even thought of HoL. Perhaps I should get a group together to terrorize the Denny's night staff like when I was young.
I took late classes, and tried for a M-Th schedule (or better), meaning M-Th was sleep from around 4am-10am (6 hours is my comfort zone, more than that and I'm groggy all day, less than that and I don't wake up), then F-Su was sleep at sunrise, and wake up whenever I felt like it, depending on booze intake. Most of my floor was the same, or worse.
I'm guessing most college students keep roughly the same schedule that I did, or at least that was my experience. Maybe not so extreme, but I didn't know a single person who would have been willing to be quiet by 10pm. Past ten were my most productive hours, classwork wise, that was the time I throw on some music, or pop a video on my other monitor and get busy with work.
Actually I'm still like that, I'm most productive at night, I do most of my projects from 10am-3am. Maybe there really is a distinction between day and night people.
The only hidden feature on an iPod I ever needed to look up was how to reset. I've had iPods for 4 years or so, and never needed to turn it off, they do it on their own after some period of idle time.
With all "different" technologies, you must use it in its own way, and now how you expect your previous technology to work. I don't use my OS X box like my Windows box, or either like my Linux box, they all are different, and I would have a hard time stating that any one of them is inferior on the surface level. Sure Windows might be the most "quirky" performance wise (though Linux would fall into that category for one unused to it), but it really does the same stuff as the OS X and Linux box, but in its own way. You just have to approach each on their own terms.
Coming back to the iPod, it doesn't have a noticeable off button because it doesn't need one. It isn't a design fault just because you come to it EXPECTING one.
I was heavily into D&D until high school, then a friend of mine got us all playing Vampire: the Masquerade. It was a much better system for role playing than any D&D source (though I still have fond memories of AD&D), because it was based on "story telling" and not just making the DM a "rule monger".
We had a couple DMs who took the rules as gospel, and made us roll to see if we tripped every time we ran. Which, needless to say, completely destroyed any narrative thread.
Though the White Wolf system handles combat badly (3 characters fighting 10 people can take a full session), it manages to keep the story going for the most part. I also like the idea of having one type of dice (this is before the d20 system, or WoTC consolidating 3d dice to be less schizo). The thing that VtM missed was the good stories that D&D had. I always loved Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance always seemed too cliche fantasy for me though. But then again for everything D&D got rigt story-wise, I can always point at Spelljammer, and giggle. But White Wolf's system was supposed to be more open ended, I suppose.
I think the geek stereotype exists because it has some true points. I know a lot of clean, orderly geeks, but I also know my share of Mt. Dew swilling slobs. The former blend in to the general population and thus aren't as noticeable, while the latter, when they venture from their basement are noticeable.
I think this comes from the fact that us geeks aren't very social BY NATURE, we sit about all day (no matter the cleanliness of the individual) and work on little boxes than no one really quite understands. We generally don't socially interact as much as other people, making our interactions more awkward. Most of us have been geeks during the years of social formation (roughly high school), and thus missed out to some degree on the social graces that non-geeks have.
Geeks, also, are more solitary and self-sustained than the average individual. Society really is suspicious of people who aren't "people persons". Geeks also are smarter, as a whole, than the average person, which doesn't help our communication skills.
That said, its a branch of the military, NEVER EVER trust your recruiter, the ad that got you to enlist, or anyone else AT all. About half of my friends when into the military, and none of them ended up doing what they were promised.
This is actually interesting to me. I had no religious upbringing whatsoever, neither for nor against. I'm mixed on the effects, on one hand it is VERY hard to empathize with people with strong spiritual beliefs, and on the other hand I am glad I got to find my own idea of meaning.
I can see what your saying though, since religiousness would be a part of you, your household, and your value system, and thus, even if not actively, it would be passed along. And with other people voluntarily entrusting their kids to you, it is for the very same reason.
I don't have kids at the moment (planning on them someday, but...), so I really can't say. But I can imagine, all the parents I know bumble on as best they can, and somehow do rather well. I do agree though, my parents took great care on teaching me the non-religious things that they hold valuable.
Not to sound insulting, but that latter bit of your post made me picture the movie Jesus Camp, and it gave me the heeby-jeebies, I see it is otherwise though.
I was going to open my statement as "I agree, and disagree", but that is a habit I'm trying to give up. And to be honest I might of slightly misread your comment, and refuted the version wholly in my head.
The way you phrased it made them look co-equal within the same tasks, equating both as valid systems. To this I disagree, they are good at their own things, and not each others. I also think, to a point, rationality should be held higher, since it serves as a good check on religion (while I suppose things like religion can be a good check on how we use the fruits of our rationality).
That said, I completely agree with your aside. I think a secular, and rational, government is the greatest boon to the history of politics. I can't, and won't force you to my belief system (technically agnostic, but atheistic in theory), but nor should you hold me to your values. If only the world was this simple.
The philosophical zombie argument has always struck me as rather pointless.
A) It has no soul, but does not differ in experience from us "ensouled" or natural humans. B) It has a soul, but this is not provable from the above reason (identical experience, and unfalsifiable)
Thus either case REQUIRES something higher than mankind to judge the truth value, since they are identical. So the conclusion we can reach is "humans may have a soul, we'll never know". All that philosophical hand waving for what? The lack of a conclusion. It isn't even useful to the last two remaining philosophical dualists in the world (if any).
Yes, I went to school for philosophy, so I understand that this amount of handwaving isn't too bad, some philosophers spend their whole careers trying to get to an even lesser point.
I agree, somewhat. Evolution is a bad word, it has two meanings, and these meanings are used at cross purposes by its detractors (and even supporters). Evolution, as in the basic "survival of the fit" bit, is a fact, and is observable in the short term. Evolution as a grand theory of diversity, is a theory (a word that ALSO has many meanings, which are misused). The Theory of Evolution might be viewed pragmatically, but we still can't ignore the fact that we can SEE it.
As an aside, philosophy is another one of those damnable words with two meanings, a colloquial one, and a academic one, just like theory.
Now for the trolling part: why not let the kids decide what is useful to them (atheism/agnosticism, or your brand of religion) when they are old enough to make informed choices? This always bugged me.
I had a big point to express, but life got active again... it was something to the point of making evolution attractive to parents, to lure children into a nice life of skepticism. The last two paragraphs are not meant as an attack, by the way, sorry if it came off that way. Brief !- terse.
And if you include humans in that tree and assert that there were billions of years of pre-human life that later formed humans, it again diminishes God's direct role as our immediate creator, and relegates Him to an indirect force that set things in motion a long time ago.
So basically we get back to the Deism of the 18th century? Got is the guy who keeps the celestial clockwork working in order. Sounds good to me, the Deists brought some the the nicer things to modern life, like modern science and (secular) government.
But, to be an ass, you did highlight the problem. Theologists WANT it to be so, this is magical thought. What I WANT, and what exists are very separate categories, granted science goes into this too, with String theory, the Higgs, and dark matter (to a much lesser extent on the two latter), but it still is basically clapping our hands and wishing for faeries. Scientists, for the most part, and enlightened religious folk realize that your truths must be based on reality.
The late Pope, a majority of Europe, and a large segment of modern Judaism, fall into this nice niche of good epistemology. A large segment of Americans apparently missed the bus.
Quoth your Parents: "If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?"
I look at the diversity, and universality, of religion as proof of A) its arbitrariness; and B) that it, itself, is bestowed upon us by evolution.
With A, the plurality of god's and beliefs, it makes it impossible to say "this is THE god", since basically your saying your "righter" than the vast majority of humanity present and throughout time, all of which would offer the SAME claim, with the SAME amount of fuzzy proof.
With B, this does not bestow any special property on religion, or imbue it with any aura of validity. Just because something was useful at one time, does not mean it is useful now, nor, actually, does it mean it was useful at ANY time, actually. It just says that the mental machinery that exists in our head that lets us tie things into a "higher" ideology was not HARMFUL enough to keep us from passing it on, at some point in time.
Yes, I do agree that the current wave of "scientism" is getting rather obnoxious, though. I don't think that science, as a largely mathematical system, can provide all of the answers to reality, and it especially cannot bestow meaning (which is existentially important). For this though, I turn to another, and oft neglected, universal of human history, aesthetics, and not religion which often has messy consequences due to its delusions of objectivity. When was the last war fought between artistic movements? Was the the Expressionist/Dada war of 1920?
I agree that economics do play a large roll in cultural viability, and happiness. But summing culture by a purely economic standard also blurs the lines a bit. A culture is also a artistic, ritualistic, linguistic, and moral continuity, beyond its particular economic scheme. I know you realize this, so I'm just picking nits, but I think it is important to make this clear as well. The above qualities can enrich ALL of our lives in a non-material sense, which in some cases is just as, or more important than a purely economic sense.
The same idiots were screaming ice age in the late 70's to early 80's.
We had aether, and then we got this silly space-time/relativity thing, therefore relativity MUST be wrong. How can someone actually complain about science being self-correcting? The previous theory was right in some aspects, but wrong in others. Another theory comes about that fits the observations and theories better, and this the old one is invalidated. Now a bunch of people with irrational emotional responses hop out of the wood work and claim that the new (and more fit) theory is wrong because of the VERY nature of science itself.
As for these scientists being idiots, I doubt somehow your an apt climatologist, thus I question your judgment. Actually your probably as apt at climatology as I am at nuclear physics. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Further they are using it to proposed government initiatives at a global level. Good bye freedoms and even the pittance of accountability we have now have once the UN (majority tyrants) get control. This is junk science at its worst.
If climate change is indeed a real issue, then perhaps the only solutions CAN be at a larger level. Taking things at face value, if climate change CAN kill hundreds of millions of people all over the world, but the sources of these changes are also decentralized, how would you propose fixing it that does not take place on the international level? Libertarian ideals aside, a corporation would not cease to exist of its own free will, even if in the public, or global (in this case) interest. They want money, and don't care about consequences by their very nature, corporate constructs are sociopaths. Thus there may come a time when we are FORCED to stop them, for our own good.
Again, accepting things at face value, we can compare the petroleum companies to the RIAA, obstinate and harmful vanguards and protectors of a failed business model.
If global warming is real, then these companies are harming us, and thus we (as in the people) have the right to stop them. We should not be tied to a national construct when we deal with global effects, since it effects people in Uganda as much as it effects us, and thus they should have a say as well. If true, the use of petroleum is infringing on the sovereignty of others.
That said, I always wondered why this is such an EMOTIONAL debate. People for and against it sometimes seem to not even bother with facts, but attack it by visceral emotional means (such as you calling the scientists involved "idiots"). Really, the whole global climate debate sounds just like the Abortion/Stem-Cell debate with slightly different noun choice.
The second point is that neither side is 100% sure (that being the nature of the scientific beast), but this opens up something akin to Pascal's Wager:
If global warming doesn't exist & we do nothing: nothing happens (=0) If global warming doesn't exist & we do something: nothing happens (=0) If global warming exists & we do nothing: huge cost in human life and property (=bad) If global warming exists & we do something: tragedy averted, life goes on. (=good)
from this it seems to me that we are better off doing something, even if it turns out we are wrong, since the effects of inaction are higher than the costs of action. In things of this scale I would say we are better safe than sorry, since we are dealing with potentially irreversible global problems, versus a mere short term loss of money and profitability in certain sectors (which may be recouped in emerging technology). I would rather do something, in this case, and be wrong, than do nothing and be wrong.
We find this self evident with business models, but cultures evoke silly emotional reactions.
Easy enough to answer this one: business models are fictions constructed for individual gain, and completely arbitrary. If your business model fails, you move on, come up with another one, or give up and realize that money isn't the be-all-end all.
Culture, on the other hand, is a long stretching tradition of values and customs that shapes the very identity of those individuals brought up in it. Culture has something to do with identity, and has a MUCH larger impact on individuals (and society) than a mere business model.
Culture is also worth protecting, since it highlights the diversity of mankind as a whole. Every culture has important aspects that we can learn from, and being that cultures are comprised of individuals (who in turn are in a large part derived from their culture of origin), we have no right to destroy this. Sure, we all think that OUR culture (the one that puts emphasis on business over humanity, empathy, and reality) is superior, but there is no objective manner to decide this. It is superior to US, just as the Inuit culture is superior to them.
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Your list was also missing IRC; I think that would probably go above IM and SMS
Your probably right on that one, though in its hey-day I would have put it with IM. This is mostly due to the increasing maturity of people left on IRC. Earlier it's signal-to-noise ration was almost as bad a AOL or Yahoo chat rooms, and still is in more bot heavy channels.
I think you have IM and SMS the wrong way round in that list, I (and many people I know) write out and even punctuate SMS messages, but will resort to acronyms in IM. When was the last time you used "brb" (for example) in a SMS? However if I get distracted whilst on IM I'll use it without thinking.
I think your an exception on that. I have seen far more "wat r u up 2" type language via mobile phones, than in IM, thanks to the painful little keyboards (if they have even that). It takes me 45 minutes to type my address on those things. I'm sure more business context, "smart phone" users generally exceed this low standard quite a bit, though. Age, education, and keyboards, seem to increase the content by a good degree, but on average it is more impoverished than IM.
I know I don't have to, but the medium naturally guides this type of communications, IMO. It isn't as good as email or snail-mail letters for long thoughtful communications, thus it is generally relegated to quick, burst-like, stream-of-thought communications.
I'm really becoming a fan of the McLuhan "the medium is the message" theory, as I get older. The structure of the medium itself generally guides most likely form that the thought communicated can take. The best example is SMS, which I avoid like the plague, can you picture saying anything of content (outside of quick updates) to someone through formats like this? IM protocols are slightly better, but still are rather "bursty", even if not limited by input methods to the extent of SMS (how many IM programs treat "enter" as a break by default?).
I'd say a quicky hierarchy of information transfer (from highest bandwidth to lowest) would be:
Book/Essay
Lecture
Letter/Email
In person conversation
telephone conversation (lack of non-verbal context)
IM
and lowest being SMS
I know you CAN talk at length in IM, but it is generally not used that way, nor expected to be used that way, since other "instant" technologies do it better.
One man's jerk, is another man's favorite AM radio host.
I noticed that most of my European (mostly British) college friends used MSN, while most of the kids from the States used AIM, minus some of the younger kids who used Yahoo. The brits told me that no one they knew back home used AIM much, while at the same time I knew maybe 3 people in the States who used MSN. I think it is largely regional.
Thank god for AdiumX, made life so much better. It's one of those programs I miss dearly now that I'm using Windows, along with the various Omni products, and Quicksilver. Yes, I know there is Pigdin, and Miranda (or as I like to call it, the land usability forgot), but it's so goddamn ugly, it takes up 40% of my desktop, expandable, and unintuitive.
I pretty much gave up on IM as a useful form of communications though, it forces you into brief little "blurbs", and limits your thoughts and expressions to single statements, which is not inductive to thoughtful communications. Better than cellphone text messages, but still sub-optimal. Also it's just another distraction, putting me at the command of other people's communication needs, which is a habit I'm trying to get out of as much as practically possible.
Clever troll.
/.er is going to fall for something like this anymore?
Don't click, its a goat.cz link... Do any of these trolls REALLY think that the average
Unless this actually is OT, in some strange, vaguely DaDa way.
Or SINS... for SINS Is Not Scrabble...
Wait... something like this has been done before... crap.
It's odd, all these copyright conversations are beginning to feel a little cliche, I think collectively we have probably attacked every solution, and problem in the debate many times over, copyright reform is a bit like waiting for Godot.
/. folk might do it in protest, the average person probably doesn't care a bit. That said, I'm going to veer into some potentially unpopular handwaving, I think that copyright will exist, as an optional thing, there will be artists like Nine Inch Nails who will release things under some Creative Commons licenses, and then the other group will have to rely on cheap prices (cheaper than iTMS), and weak DRM.
The "large portion of the potential customers" you refer to are people who don't want to pay market price, but are happy to pay practically nothing.
This is true, people like free. And while some
We probably will disagree with above, but really the main gist is that the current situation is bad, for consumers, pirates, and artists. Notice I failed to include the middle man, there is no need for them in a digital economy, unless you really want to own a meatspace CD.
Actually most of the models of car you mention are often the ones I see in large accidents, and oddly enough the ones I see weaving through traffic at 30+ the speed limit. I'll grant 5 over, if it is the flow, is probably safer, but 20-30 over is reckless and stupid, no matter how much someone enjoys it. Oddly, these "people who like car's cars" are also the ones weaving back and forth, 30 over, without using blinkers, who don't pass in appropriate lanes, and leap through gore points to get their exit. Yes, I'm forming a stereotype, but oddly they exist because there is some truth in them. Also, oddly, your saying only people who can throw down a decent wad of cash on their car can be good drivers, which I don't find to be true, and, hypothetically could lead to an erroneous statistical sample (if this wasn't purely anecdotal), where 90% of the cars out there are NOT expensive performance vehicles, thus less of them logically crash.
Rhetorically, if you enjoy driving so much, what is the hurry to get there?
I'm sorry for misrepresenting myself, by enjoying the scenery I don't mean gocking at the nicely lit building to your left, instead of the road, which probably is as moronic and dangerous as text messaging, or filing your taxes while driving. I meant more "your in a car, there is a nice breeze, the sun is out, whats the damn hurry?".
Quoth my father (a professional, and life-long truck driver): "My number one complaint about drivers, is that everyone drives beyond their ability".
This is true, how many burgeoning, novice, race car drivers do you know, who have no real ability whatsoever except watching NASCAR and knowing how to powerslide in a parking lot. Everyone overestimates their ability, its a natural law almost. Just because YOU think your a good driver, doesn't mean you ACTUALLY are. Just because you think going 130 on the freeway is cool, doesn't mean you have the ability to do so. And how bad do you want to share the road with 600 wanna be Dale Earnharts eating bagels, drinking coffee, and text messaging?
I never really understood people who speed, or drive like arrogant morons, I like taking my time, and enjoying the scenery/skyline/weather/radio, and I think I'm better and safer for it. Like the 3 minutes you save by speeding really makes much of a difference.
Don't usually respond to ACs, so feel lucky:
/. who think it is their ethical obligation to NOT buy things from the RIAA, thus piracy is acceptable to them. Some people think of it as a peaceful protest, or act of civil disobedience in protest of a flawed, tyrannical, and oppressive business model. Granted they might know it is illegal, but not wrong.
99% of people downloading copyrighted stuff know its illegal, and also realize its wrong, and that they should be paying the content creators. The temptation of easy free stuff is just too great for some people.
Doubtful, I think there is a large minority here on
Content producers SHOULD be paid, but the record labels try not to do it either. Other business models would work better, some think.
To be pedantic, you do realize that EVERYTHING is covered by copyright, including your comment, which I just downloaded, right?
People should be warned, and then we can go back to a normal, functioning market.
When a large portion of your potential customers are branded "illegal communist pirates", I would say that the market ISN'T functioning. When no one wants to be forced into your service, then YOU ARE WRONG, and your business model is wrong. When you need legislation to make you profitable, your dysfunctional.
I don't condemn or condone piracy, I see both sides of the issue. That said my previous paragraph stands, and I think that the *AA's are broken, and deserve to die.
I also noticed you totally avoided the menu issue. A person with no prior knowledge or experience with iPods wouldn't have a clue how to navigate it.
Maybe. Anecdotally, I didn't have a problem when I first got one, it seemed rather intuitive, which is, admittedly, completely subjective. I have a few gripes, some of the menus are buried in seemingly nonsensical places, the search feature on the newer ones is rather lame, and some features are just there as meaningless extras and don't add any values to its use as an MP3 player.
But then again all OSs are the same way, though there are learning curves, OS X is cake, Windows less easy but still simplistic, end user friendly distros come next (Ubuntu), CLI is dead last, but this isn't a good measure of the merit of the system, just what someone is familiar with. To me the iPod has the easiest GUI, but perhaps not the best, its at least better than the solid-state MP3 players I had before which only had back, forward, and pause/stop buttons.
All choice in interfaces is largely subjective, especially when the devices (operating systems, microwave ovens, whatnot) have almost the exact same functionality.
Thank you for that, its been so long since I even thought of HoL. Perhaps I should get a group together to terrorize the Denny's night staff like when I was young.
Must remember to bring Twinkies to LARP Wast'ems.
Your not in a dorm, are you?
I took late classes, and tried for a M-Th schedule (or better), meaning M-Th was sleep from around 4am-10am (6 hours is my comfort zone, more than that and I'm groggy all day, less than that and I don't wake up), then F-Su was sleep at sunrise, and wake up whenever I felt like it, depending on booze intake. Most of my floor was the same, or worse.
I'm guessing most college students keep roughly the same schedule that I did, or at least that was my experience. Maybe not so extreme, but I didn't know a single person who would have been willing to be quiet by 10pm. Past ten were my most productive hours, classwork wise, that was the time I throw on some music, or pop a video on my other monitor and get busy with work.
Actually I'm still like that, I'm most productive at night, I do most of my projects from 10am-3am. Maybe there really is a distinction between day and night people.
The only hidden feature on an iPod I ever needed to look up was how to reset. I've had iPods for 4 years or so, and never needed to turn it off, they do it on their own after some period of idle time.
With all "different" technologies, you must use it in its own way, and now how you expect your previous technology to work. I don't use my OS X box like my Windows box, or either like my Linux box, they all are different, and I would have a hard time stating that any one of them is inferior on the surface level. Sure Windows might be the most "quirky" performance wise (though Linux would fall into that category for one unused to it), but it really does the same stuff as the OS X and Linux box, but in its own way. You just have to approach each on their own terms.
Coming back to the iPod, it doesn't have a noticeable off button because it doesn't need one. It isn't a design fault just because you come to it EXPECTING one.
I was heavily into D&D until high school, then a friend of mine got us all playing Vampire: the Masquerade. It was a much better system for role playing than any D&D source (though I still have fond memories of AD&D), because it was based on "story telling" and not just making the DM a "rule monger".
We had a couple DMs who took the rules as gospel, and made us roll to see if we tripped every time we ran. Which, needless to say, completely destroyed any narrative thread.
Though the White Wolf system handles combat badly (3 characters fighting 10 people can take a full session), it manages to keep the story going for the most part. I also like the idea of having one type of dice (this is before the d20 system, or WoTC consolidating 3d dice to be less schizo). The thing that VtM missed was the good stories that D&D had. I always loved Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance always seemed too cliche fantasy for me though. But then again for everything D&D got rigt story-wise, I can always point at Spelljammer, and giggle. But White Wolf's system was supposed to be more open ended, I suppose.
I think the geek stereotype exists because it has some true points. I know a lot of clean, orderly geeks, but I also know my share of Mt. Dew swilling slobs. The former blend in to the general population and thus aren't as noticeable, while the latter, when they venture from their basement are noticeable.
I think this comes from the fact that us geeks aren't very social BY NATURE, we sit about all day (no matter the cleanliness of the individual) and work on little boxes than no one really quite understands. We generally don't socially interact as much as other people, making our interactions more awkward. Most of us have been geeks during the years of social formation (roughly high school), and thus missed out to some degree on the social graces that non-geeks have.
Geeks, also, are more solitary and self-sustained than the average individual. Society really is suspicious of people who aren't "people persons". Geeks also are smarter, as a whole, than the average person, which doesn't help our communication skills.
That said, its a branch of the military, NEVER EVER trust your recruiter, the ad that got you to enlist, or anyone else AT all. About half of my friends when into the military, and none of them ended up doing what they were promised.
This is actually interesting to me. I had no religious upbringing whatsoever, neither for nor against. I'm mixed on the effects, on one hand it is VERY hard to empathize with people with strong spiritual beliefs, and on the other hand I am glad I got to find my own idea of meaning.
I can see what your saying though, since religiousness would be a part of you, your household, and your value system, and thus, even if not actively, it would be passed along. And with other people voluntarily entrusting their kids to you, it is for the very same reason.
I don't have kids at the moment (planning on them someday, but...), so I really can't say. But I can imagine, all the parents I know bumble on as best they can, and somehow do rather well. I do agree though, my parents took great care on teaching me the non-religious things that they hold valuable.
Not to sound insulting, but that latter bit of your post made me picture the movie Jesus Camp, and it gave me the heeby-jeebies, I see it is otherwise though.
I was going to open my statement as "I agree, and disagree", but that is a habit I'm trying to give up. And to be honest I might of slightly misread your comment, and refuted the version wholly in my head.
The way you phrased it made them look co-equal within the same tasks, equating both as valid systems. To this I disagree, they are good at their own things, and not each others. I also think, to a point, rationality should be held higher, since it serves as a good check on religion (while I suppose things like religion can be a good check on how we use the fruits of our rationality).
That said, I completely agree with your aside. I think a secular, and rational, government is the greatest boon to the history of politics. I can't, and won't force you to my belief system (technically agnostic, but atheistic in theory), but nor should you hold me to your values. If only the world was this simple.
The philosophical zombie argument has always struck me as rather pointless.
A) It has no soul, but does not differ in experience from us "ensouled" or natural humans.
B) It has a soul, but this is not provable from the above reason (identical experience, and unfalsifiable)
Thus either case REQUIRES something higher than mankind to judge the truth value, since they are identical. So the conclusion we can reach is "humans may have a soul, we'll never know". All that philosophical hand waving for what? The lack of a conclusion. It isn't even useful to the last two remaining philosophical dualists in the world (if any).
Yes, I went to school for philosophy, so I understand that this amount of handwaving isn't too bad, some philosophers spend their whole careers trying to get to an even lesser point.
Philosophy seeks "truth" - science seeks understanding.
I agree, somewhat. Evolution is a bad word, it has two meanings, and these meanings are used at cross purposes by its detractors (and even supporters). Evolution, as in the basic "survival of the fit" bit, is a fact, and is observable in the short term. Evolution as a grand theory of diversity, is a theory (a word that ALSO has many meanings, which are misused). The Theory of Evolution might be viewed pragmatically, but we still can't ignore the fact that we can SEE it.
As an aside, philosophy is another one of those damnable words with two meanings, a colloquial one, and a academic one, just like theory.
Now for the trolling part: why not let the kids decide what is useful to them (atheism/agnosticism, or your brand of religion) when they are old enough to make informed choices? This always bugged me.
I had a big point to express, but life got active again... it was something to the point of making evolution attractive to parents, to lure children into a nice life of skepticism. The last two paragraphs are not meant as an attack, by the way, sorry if it came off that way. Brief !- terse.
And if you include humans in that tree and assert that there were billions of years of pre-human life that later formed humans, it again diminishes God's direct role as our immediate creator, and relegates Him to an indirect force that set things in motion a long time ago.
So basically we get back to the Deism of the 18th century? Got is the guy who keeps the celestial clockwork working in order. Sounds good to me, the Deists brought some the the nicer things to modern life, like modern science and (secular) government.
But, to be an ass, you did highlight the problem. Theologists WANT it to be so, this is magical thought. What I WANT, and what exists are very separate categories, granted science goes into this too, with String theory, the Higgs, and dark matter (to a much lesser extent on the two latter), but it still is basically clapping our hands and wishing for faeries. Scientists, for the most part, and enlightened religious folk realize that your truths must be based on reality.
The late Pope, a majority of Europe, and a large segment of modern Judaism, fall into this nice niche of good epistemology. A large segment of Americans apparently missed the bus.
Quoth your Parents: "If everyone jumped off a cliff, would you?"
I look at the diversity, and universality, of religion as proof of A) its arbitrariness; and B) that it, itself, is bestowed upon us by evolution.
With A, the plurality of god's and beliefs, it makes it impossible to say "this is THE god", since basically your saying your "righter" than the vast majority of humanity present and throughout time, all of which would offer the SAME claim, with the SAME amount of fuzzy proof.
With B, this does not bestow any special property on religion, or imbue it with any aura of validity. Just because something was useful at one time, does not mean it is useful now, nor, actually, does it mean it was useful at ANY time, actually. It just says that the mental machinery that exists in our head that lets us tie things into a "higher" ideology was not HARMFUL enough to keep us from passing it on, at some point in time.
Yes, I do agree that the current wave of "scientism" is getting rather obnoxious, though. I don't think that science, as a largely mathematical system, can provide all of the answers to reality, and it especially cannot bestow meaning (which is existentially important). For this though, I turn to another, and oft neglected, universal of human history, aesthetics, and not religion which often has messy consequences due to its delusions of objectivity. When was the last war fought between artistic movements? Was the the Expressionist/Dada war of 1920?
I agree that economics do play a large roll in cultural viability, and happiness. But summing culture by a purely economic standard also blurs the lines a bit. A culture is also a artistic, ritualistic, linguistic, and moral continuity, beyond its particular economic scheme. I know you realize this, so I'm just picking nits, but I think it is important to make this clear as well. The above qualities can enrich ALL of our lives in a non-material sense, which in some cases is just as, or more important than a purely economic sense.
The same idiots were screaming ice age in the late 70's to early 80's.
We had aether, and then we got this silly space-time/relativity thing, therefore relativity MUST be wrong. How can someone actually complain about science being self-correcting? The previous theory was right in some aspects, but wrong in others. Another theory comes about that fits the observations and theories better, and this the old one is invalidated. Now a bunch of people with irrational emotional responses hop out of the wood work and claim that the new (and more fit) theory is wrong because of the VERY nature of science itself.
As for these scientists being idiots, I doubt somehow your an apt climatologist, thus I question your judgment. Actually your probably as apt at climatology as I am at nuclear physics. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Further they are using it to proposed government initiatives at a global level. Good bye freedoms and even the pittance of accountability we have now have once the UN (majority tyrants) get control. This is junk science at its worst.
If climate change is indeed a real issue, then perhaps the only solutions CAN be at a larger level. Taking things at face value, if climate change CAN kill hundreds of millions of people all over the world, but the sources of these changes are also decentralized, how would you propose fixing it that does not take place on the international level? Libertarian ideals aside, a corporation would not cease to exist of its own free will, even if in the public, or global (in this case) interest. They want money, and don't care about consequences by their very nature, corporate constructs are sociopaths. Thus there may come a time when we are FORCED to stop them, for our own good.
Again, accepting things at face value, we can compare the petroleum companies to the RIAA, obstinate and harmful vanguards and protectors of a failed business model.
If global warming is real, then these companies are harming us, and thus we (as in the people) have the right to stop them. We should not be tied to a national construct when we deal with global effects, since it effects people in Uganda as much as it effects us, and thus they should have a say as well. If true, the use of petroleum is infringing on the sovereignty of others.
That said, I always wondered why this is such an EMOTIONAL debate. People for and against it sometimes seem to not even bother with facts, but attack it by visceral emotional means (such as you calling the scientists involved "idiots"). Really, the whole global climate debate sounds just like the Abortion/Stem-Cell debate with slightly different noun choice.
The second point is that neither side is 100% sure (that being the nature of the scientific beast), but this opens up something akin to Pascal's Wager:
If global warming doesn't exist & we do nothing: nothing happens (=0)
If global warming doesn't exist & we do something: nothing happens (=0)
If global warming exists & we do nothing: huge cost in human life and property (=bad)
If global warming exists & we do something: tragedy averted, life goes on. (=good)
from this it seems to me that we are better off doing something, even if it turns out we are wrong, since the effects of inaction are higher than the costs of action. In things of this scale I would say we are better safe than sorry, since we are dealing with potentially irreversible global problems, versus a mere short term loss of money and profitability in certain sectors (which may be recouped in emerging technology). I would rather do something, in this case, and be wrong, than do nothing and be wrong.
We find this self evident with business models, but cultures evoke silly emotional reactions.
Easy enough to answer this one: business models are fictions constructed for individual gain, and completely arbitrary. If your business model fails, you move on, come up with another one, or give up and realize that money isn't the be-all-end all.
Culture, on the other hand, is a long stretching tradition of values and customs that shapes the very identity of those individuals brought up in it. Culture has something to do with identity, and has a MUCH larger impact on individuals (and society) than a mere business model.
Culture is also worth protecting, since it highlights the diversity of mankind as a whole. Every culture has important aspects that we can learn from, and being that cultures are comprised of individuals (who in turn are in a large part derived from their culture of origin), we have no right to destroy this. Sure, we all think that OUR culture (the one that puts emphasis on business over humanity, empathy, and reality) is superior, but there is no objective manner to decide this. It is superior to US, just as the Inuit culture is superior to them.