Erm... Thats sad... According to Google the average Blog only has 1 reader... I don't know if that one person is really worth all the work of getting.
Seriously though, I don't Apple really needs to worry about this, there are plenty of "non-official" Apple blogs out there, probably more for Apple than any other vender.
That's good for Nintendo because you have to strike while the iron is hot - meaning that right now people want to buy PS3s.
I might be misreading this, but you make it look like there is some odd causal relationship here. People are buying Wiis, therefore they want PS3s. This doesn't make any sense the way I'm reading it, people are buying Wiis because they want Wiis, and people are buying PS3s because they want PS3s, granted some people might be buying Wiis because there are no PS3s (not that a Wii is easy to get, mind, easier perhaps, but still a rare commodity), but most of the people who would want a PS3, I'd guess, are getting a 360 instead, since it is pretty much the same console, ideologically (i.e. graphics emphasis, "hardcore" mythos, etc). At least I got my Wii because I didn't want a PS3.
This early in the game its too hard to see what people actually want. The Wii could dominate, or the PS3, or the 360, I couldn't actually tell you which, or any, would, with any certainty. All prognostication, right now, is pure speculation. I put my bet on the numbers being the 360, followed by the Wii, and in very close 3rd the PS3, for the first year or so, with the PS3 eventually rising to ascendancy in a couple years thanks to price drops. But this is me talking out of my ass, like everyone else.
Actually, there was, and is. Bliz has always had a semi-rabid fan base, I have friends (who don't play WoW) who can discuss the timelines of Warcraft and Diablo almost as well as any geek discussing Star Wars. Warcraft has a largish out-of-game media canon, such as books and two table-top RPGs. Granted, I rather doubt that this is behind WoWs success, half the people I knew on WoW (when I played) never played a Warcraft game before, or only Warcraft3, and had no idea what was behind most of the contextual events.
I'm sad to say that a Firefly MMO with be a failure. It seems like a shoddy idea, and depends on two hard events, Whedon giving the okay, and helping with the design, universe, and FOX releasing the rights. I don't see neither of these happening. Also it seems the market is rather saturated, and you'd need something big to make people move on from WoW, or Eve, or whatever kids these days are playing. I see the small rabid core of the Firefly fan base trying it, with half of them moving on once they realize it isn't nearly as good as sliced bread (such as what happened to SW:G), and very few lay people being wowed enough to cough up however much a month to play it.
Thank you! The lava dungeon sucks, I feel like I'm marginally in control of a suicidal elf. I know it isn't TPs fault though, I never got used to 3d platformers, actually I never even wanted to see Zelda transition from 2d top-down, and thus missed the N64 ones on purpose, until WindWaker got me back into the fold. I'm sure if it was 1st person I would have no issue, thanks to years of experience. But I figure if I could get through the damn horse bit before the dungeon (still having thumb cramps), I can slough my way through the dungeon of dramatic fiery suicides. Outside of my own ineptitude, TP is the best Zelda, or adventure, game I have played to date, it might even beat out the original... but we'll find out, I just got a 20 buck VC card, and Zelda is the first game on my list.
Oddly I'd be doing better with the GC version, but thats mostly because I have to get used to the Wii-mote/nunchuck combo, I forget to move my hands, die, get pissed off, and go bowling on Wii Sports.
You have a damn good idea, why am I on/.? I should be jumping in lava and killing slugs.
Hmm... It seems you want to use taxes only as a hammer on the poor, strictly for political means. This isn't good, taxes should only be a means towards government operation, social services, and public infrastructure, and not to leverage people towards a particular agenda. I DO think that the poor should be taxed, but only because they do use infrastructure, and for the sake of fairness. Not that they should be heavily taxed, mind.
I don't think thats why people hate us, its that we put together a system that works, and then promptly stopped caring about anyone else in the world but ourselves and to some extent we think that people mired in systems that don't work (or in most cases, no systems at all) owe us homage for being so great, so we try to take what little they have, to keep America great. People see America as the greatest parasite ever. Look at our meddling in South America, we obviously don't want anyone else to have a "country that works", unless we get a cut.
Not that I necessarily, 100% agree, but this is how the world sees the US, and this view is somewhat justifiable, albeit simplistic.
That's nice. I can't dispute the accuracy of the claim. It, however, has absolutely nothing to do with the census's measurement of income levels.
I do see the GPs point, while Cleveland/Columbus have nothing to do with wealth, it does (if true) call to question the trustworthiness of census data. In the 2000 Census my mother was an enumerator in a predominantly Hispanic part of Phoenix, and I'd say less than 30% of people were willing to respond, she also covered some of the hot-spots for homelessness in the Valley, and the response rates were even lower. My point is that the disenfranchised and poor were less likely to respond to the census for various reasons (said disenfranchisement or fear of legal repercussions), meaning that the middle and upper classes were over represented, leading to skewed results. The margin of error on Census data is huge, it is a flawed representation of the general population.
When we move to world aggregate data, this problem becomes worse. If the US can't take a fair picture of its own population, imagine someplace in sub-Saharan Africa, or rural South America. I think both sides, judging from previous comments I've read here, are purely anecdotal, "Well, I make 200k, so this isn't true!", or "I'm poor, this is SOOOO true, look at the documentary I saw on Africa! Marx for life!".
Good point, I didn't really think about the repeatability of a sustained lunar presence. It makes me wonder if we really need a lunar presence though, could we use something like ISS as a hopping point, instead of the moon? It seems wasteful, unless we really can somehow squeeze fuel from regolith, which I hear is possible, but only if we actually can find water up there, which is at the moment only speculation. Perhaps launching cache's of chemical fuel up there, unmanned, to save money, and save the need from having to cart in your own fuel, and then use available chems as needed.
I'm not sure... Wouldn't a straight mars hop be easier? Mars is still the goal, no?
When has lower costs ever really benefited the customer proportionately? Never. If they costs are offset by 5% by taking sponsorships, then that 5% translates to pure profit, since your still going to pay $50 for it, and the actually code monkeys will still get underpaid for it. No one benefits but the ad company, and the CEO/stockholders. Welcome to the game.
Now in some game genres, like sports games, it makes sense for there to be ads in the stadiums and arenas, etc.
Actually it is odd playing a sports game without them. When I booted up the Wii Sports game, and played baseball, it was surreal, a sports stadium without ads. Its something you just don't see anymore, a stadium without ads completely fails on realism.
Not that I am a big fan of ads in stadiums, mind. Here in Phoenix, Chase Field is the best example of a whore that I have ever seen. Even the damn names have to be ads, a strike can't be called a strike, it has to be a Circle K "K", you can't have a homerun, it has to be a Folton Homes Home Run, or a Lexus double play. Which is annoying. But the topic isn't "ads are annoying" but "ads can be realism" which is true, its just sad that reality can suck to hard.
You've been hanging out in the local hardware shop //. too much, the average gamer has clearly stated that they don't want to play games on the PC, for understandable reasons. PC games didn't go into decline because the game developers decided to stop supporting them as much, but because the consumers decided to buy less games for them, and more on the consoles. Welcome to the market. Granted I did enjoy my PC as a gaming platform, and stuck with it through from the NES until about when Doom 3 came out, I don't think it is a good platform for many games anymore. With the 360 or PS3 I can just pop in Oblivion and play, with the PC I must make sure that all my hardware is up-to-date, fix my drivers, etc, then make sure I have enough HD space, free RAM, etc, then go through the long install process, and then play with a layer of bugs caused by odd software interactions. Granted, once it works, it works better than on a console, with better graphics, and IMHO, a better control scheme, but getting it to work is a pain. Personally I gave up my "hardcore" laurels about 2 years ago, I bought a Mac and a Gamecube, and let my PC moulder as a forgotten Linux box. I got sick of fixing things for the sake of gaming, to squeeze out that extra 1 fps, or be able to add a negligible poly to my count. The PC, popularly, also has an image problem, it is seen as geeky, and not some "cool" gaming box, granted this is/., so we don't see this.
The PC, too, is a generalist, meaning it is rather problematic to actually use for purpose, especially something as intensive as todays games. Consoles are purpose driven, they are just for games. You can see how unequal the fight is. Most PCs out there are also vanilla Dells or Gateways, which are not good gaming boxes, and the average user has no clue how to swap in a decent graphics card (or a clue what makes a card decent), or how to put in enough RAM to even handle Oblivion. There is too much tinkering, and not enough "just works" in the PC world, and while this is not a bad thing in itself, it does sort of harm the idea of PCs being the ascendant gaming boxes you'd like.
I like the idea of no fuss more and more, the older I get. I used to love sitting around, surrounded by piles of hardware, messing with internals, ini's, and reg hacking, but I find I don't have the time for it anymore. Sticking a disk in my GameCube (or now Wii), and just playing is much easier, quicker, and rewarding.
You'd still be capped by c, and you'd still be hit by acceleration. In a plain you still feel the Gs from take off and landing, as well as the effect of changing course, even with some form of "moving body" you'd still have the G problem that the parent mentioned. In any craft constant motion (in a line, sans acceleration) would be 0 Gs, of course, but acceleration would still always seem to have gravitation converse to the direction of acceleration, ala Special Relativity.
I wouldn't think that R&D costs would be nearly as high as during Apollo, I mean we already DID the R&D on Apollo, and thousands of other unmanned missions since. Sure we might not launch the technology that scifi writers are extolling, but do we really need a hydrogen pulse engine and solar sails to get to the moon? Probably not, we got there fine with massive amounts of explosives strapped to the back of a couple brave souls. We could do this again if it wasn't for NASA being a bunch of wusses. Back during Apollo they had cojones, now they seem to think that space should be risk free, and if not, no one can go. It's like Disney bought NASA.
Kuhn's book might be the most important modern philosophical text on the nature of science. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to debate the nature of science.
This spur of the debate opens up a can of epistemological worms, though. Which version of "truth" shall we pick, which version of "to know"? It seems to me that you picked a rather pragmatic approach, which is common in anglophone countries. Truth is a function of utility. I take a rather more coherent approach (in philosophical terms), that the truth is a coherent model of events. Notice the use of lower case in the term truth.
Al Gore comes across as a politician looking for the bandwagon of all bandwagons to jump on.
Actually this was his bandwagon before he became a household name. In the early '90's he wrote a book called "Earth in the Balance", which did (if I remember correctly) have a section warning about global warming. The environment was one of his biggest issues pre-vice-presidency, oddly he shut up about it under Clinton, and later on the campaign trail. this is just him returning to his old horse, nothing new.
The bullshit arguments on both sides result from the fact that the issue is (sadly) political capital, its the liberal's equivalent of the conservatives abortion, values, god, etc... It polarizes voters, and influences the swing vote. This means that both positions are enmeshed in pure partisan dogma, and incapable (or worse, unwilling) to critically analyze the issue at hand.
I'm still undecided on the issue, too. Though I do think that there is the phenomena called "global warming", and that it is happening (there seems to be enough empirical evidence to support this). I still don't think, though, that there is enough evidence to prove that it is man caused, as opposed to natural climate variation. Our understanding of long-term climate trends is minuscule, and we are living in an unusually cool period of time as far as long-term climatic history goes. It is fallacious to think that our current climate is (or should be) invariant.
Where we differ though is the fact that I think we are better safe than sorry. The long term consequences of man-caused global warming (if true) would far outweigh the short-term consequences of taking preventative measures (if not true). Fossil fuels have enough other bad environmental effects (which are scientifically proven) to warrant some direction of change, even without the threat of global warming.
Actually it would be an ad verecundiam, or appeal to authority. And ad hominem is "against the man", meaning "people against the prevention of burning fossil fuels are wrong because they are stupid", or such.
To wit, making the movie "An inconvenient truth" was worse than doing nothing. It riles up the activists - making the normal people less likely to believe them - and doesn't really bring any new information to the debate.
Interesting point, btw. I'm not sure if I agree, but I do see the validity in it. I see the movie as opening up debate, and putting the issue back in the media, and possibly reframing the issue away from the more conservative side. But you do have a point, I've noticed this about most of the protests I've witnessed, that they are generally hurting their cause more than helping it. The public is less likely to grant credibility to a bunch of masked morons waving silly signs and burning Bush effigies, as they are to people with the skills to actually present a convincing argument. Half of credibility is the presentation.
Actually this isn't such a bad idea, except for the reporting people part. This would bread suspicion, and thus a less than optimal environment. Purely positive enforcement (psychologically) would be the best, basing rewards purely on merit. Though in the work context penalties for bad output is also fair.
People who love Nintendo games, a child-friendly console at a lower cost will choose the Wii.
I'm getting sick of this "kid friendly" thing. Sure, there are some Nintendo games that are going to be for kids, as there will be on the 360, and PS3. There will also be some "hardcore" gorefest games on the Wii, though in a lower proportion than to the other consoles (RE4 on GC?). But then again the only games that make the PS2 worthwhile to me happen to be the more kid friendly ones, like katamari, where the emphasis is more on fun than how many polys you can render gibs in. Most violent games are not actually for adults, they are for the 16-30 crowd, mature players realize that they were drawn to gaming for fun, pure and simple, and not pure violence.
The AZ proposition went further, it outlawed common law (marriage) rights too. Hatred goes far, thank god that it was not passed. marriage is broken, so let everyone revel in it. Maybe the gays can do better than us heterosexual folk.
generally treat the government as a form of "bad luck insurance"
No one has yet to tell me why this is a bad thing. Why shouldn't people take care of the less fortunate? It seems to work for the northern European countries (read the "Sustainable Developments" section in the Nov 2006 issue of Scientific American for example). Poopooing the poor does not seem an ethically viable solution to anything. The rich should WANT to help people, if they don't it is the will of the people that they should be FORCED to, this makes sense, since there is more poor than rich, and under the tenets of democracy. Sure, the rich should have a choice in what they support, but they have proven time and time again that they would rather pocket all of the profits they reap (and exploit) from the lower and middle classes, I see no problem in the government enforcing this.
Money is a stupid illusionary artifact, people and suffering is REAL. What does welfare hurt? Yes, in some of the ways it has been implemented, and has been proposed it has missed the fair mark. People EARN their money, and deserve it, but there is a certain point where this becomes absurd. There is no excuse for greed.
There are gay Republicans only because the Libertarian Party has no power
Thank god for that. Do we really need THREE parties absolutely divorced from the real world? The democrats really don't understand the social situation in the world (and want to inflict their's on it). The republicans don't understand the real ideological situations in the world (and want to inflict it on others). The libertarians don't understand the economic situations in the world (and want to inflict it on others). The greens, while a half assed party, aren't much better, they seem to also to completely ignorant of economic factors (the exact opposite of libertarians, indeed), and want to inflict it on others.
Bah to every party. People should all register as independents, eschew all parties and idiot ideologies, and learn to think for themselves.
Though I must admit, personally and only personally, that the Dems and the original republicans (pre-Goldwater, pre-Reagan) were closest to the people's wishes.The libertarians and greens are so far in left-field to be irrelevant to most people.
I think government has nothing, nor should have anything to do with people's private life, as long as it doesn't infringe on the lives and rights of others. Last time I checked gay's really had no influence on me, or anyone else. How is this involved in politics? Is God's opinion relevant to the vast majority of people? I doubt it. Live and let live is the law of the day, the rest is media hype, and listening to the loudest minorities.
Linux does work wonders on broken hardware. I have an old iBook that had terminal (to OS X) HD failure, but it runs Ubuntu perfectly (sans driver issues from running it on an iBook), but cannot support any version of OS X or OS9.
Punchline, Linux is more durable to hardware failures, not that any OS is more intensive. I've had windows 95/98/2k and XP running on 5 years before installation release hardware for years (XP was a bitch, but mostly because of my remainder hardware to give to my parents). The only real problem I've run into is disk space.
And yes, Linux could run on any of these boxes fine, HD space also being a limiting factor.
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Blu-Ray and HD-DVD will be like the Laserdisc; niche market.
Not trolling, just asking: Why? What do you base these suppositions on?
Erm... Thats sad... According to Google the average Blog only has 1 reader... I don't know if that one person is really worth all the work of getting.
Seriously though, I don't Apple really needs to worry about this, there are plenty of "non-official" Apple blogs out there, probably more for Apple than any other vender.
That's good for Nintendo because you have to strike while the iron is hot - meaning that right now people want to buy PS3s.
I might be misreading this, but you make it look like there is some odd causal relationship here. People are buying Wiis, therefore they want PS3s. This doesn't make any sense the way I'm reading it, people are buying Wiis because they want Wiis, and people are buying PS3s because they want PS3s, granted some people might be buying Wiis because there are no PS3s (not that a Wii is easy to get, mind, easier perhaps, but still a rare commodity), but most of the people who would want a PS3, I'd guess, are getting a 360 instead, since it is pretty much the same console, ideologically (i.e. graphics emphasis, "hardcore" mythos, etc). At least I got my Wii because I didn't want a PS3.
This early in the game its too hard to see what people actually want. The Wii could dominate, or the PS3, or the 360, I couldn't actually tell you which, or any, would, with any certainty. All prognostication, right now, is pure speculation. I put my bet on the numbers being the 360, followed by the Wii, and in very close 3rd the PS3, for the first year or so, with the PS3 eventually rising to ascendancy in a couple years thanks to price drops. But this is me talking out of my ass, like everyone else.
Actually, there was, and is. Bliz has always had a semi-rabid fan base, I have friends (who don't play WoW) who can discuss the timelines of Warcraft and Diablo almost as well as any geek discussing Star Wars. Warcraft has a largish out-of-game media canon, such as books and two table-top RPGs. Granted, I rather doubt that this is behind WoWs success, half the people I knew on WoW (when I played) never played a Warcraft game before, or only Warcraft3, and had no idea what was behind most of the contextual events.
I'm sad to say that a Firefly MMO with be a failure. It seems like a shoddy idea, and depends on two hard events, Whedon giving the okay, and helping with the design, universe, and FOX releasing the rights. I don't see neither of these happening. Also it seems the market is rather saturated, and you'd need something big to make people move on from WoW, or Eve, or whatever kids these days are playing. I see the small rabid core of the Firefly fan base trying it, with half of them moving on once they realize it isn't nearly as good as sliced bread (such as what happened to SW:G), and very few lay people being wowed enough to cough up however much a month to play it.
Actually it does support 480i too... Not too much a difference, but it still makes one...
Thank you! The lava dungeon sucks, I feel like I'm marginally in control of a suicidal elf. I know it isn't TPs fault though, I never got used to 3d platformers, actually I never even wanted to see Zelda transition from 2d top-down, and thus missed the N64 ones on purpose, until WindWaker got me back into the fold. I'm sure if it was 1st person I would have no issue, thanks to years of experience. But I figure if I could get through the damn horse bit before the dungeon (still having thumb cramps), I can slough my way through the dungeon of dramatic fiery suicides. Outside of my own ineptitude, TP is the best Zelda, or adventure, game I have played to date, it might even beat out the original... but we'll find out, I just got a 20 buck VC card, and Zelda is the first game on my list.
/.? I should be jumping in lava and killing slugs.
Oddly I'd be doing better with the GC version, but thats mostly because I have to get used to the Wii-mote/nunchuck combo, I forget to move my hands, die, get pissed off, and go bowling on Wii Sports.
You have a damn good idea, why am I on
Hmm... It seems you want to use taxes only as a hammer on the poor, strictly for political means. This isn't good, taxes should only be a means towards government operation, social services, and public infrastructure, and not to leverage people towards a particular agenda. I DO think that the poor should be taxed, but only because they do use infrastructure, and for the sake of fairness. Not that they should be heavily taxed, mind.
I don't think thats why people hate us, its that we put together a system that works, and then promptly stopped caring about anyone else in the world but ourselves and to some extent we think that people mired in systems that don't work (or in most cases, no systems at all) owe us homage for being so great, so we try to take what little they have, to keep America great. People see America as the greatest parasite ever. Look at our meddling in South America, we obviously don't want anyone else to have a "country that works", unless we get a cut.
Not that I necessarily, 100% agree, but this is how the world sees the US, and this view is somewhat justifiable, albeit simplistic.
That's nice. I can't dispute the accuracy of the claim. It, however, has absolutely nothing to do with the census's measurement of income levels.
I do see the GPs point, while Cleveland/Columbus have nothing to do with wealth, it does (if true) call to question the trustworthiness of census data. In the 2000 Census my mother was an enumerator in a predominantly Hispanic part of Phoenix, and I'd say less than 30% of people were willing to respond, she also covered some of the hot-spots for homelessness in the Valley, and the response rates were even lower. My point is that the disenfranchised and poor were less likely to respond to the census for various reasons (said disenfranchisement or fear of legal repercussions), meaning that the middle and upper classes were over represented, leading to skewed results. The margin of error on Census data is huge, it is a flawed representation of the general population.
When we move to world aggregate data, this problem becomes worse. If the US can't take a fair picture of its own population, imagine someplace in sub-Saharan Africa, or rural South America. I think both sides, judging from previous comments I've read here, are purely anecdotal, "Well, I make 200k, so this isn't true!", or "I'm poor, this is SOOOO true, look at the documentary I saw on Africa! Marx for life!".
Good point, I didn't really think about the repeatability of a sustained lunar presence. It makes me wonder if we really need a lunar presence though, could we use something like ISS as a hopping point, instead of the moon? It seems wasteful, unless we really can somehow squeeze fuel from regolith, which I hear is possible, but only if we actually can find water up there, which is at the moment only speculation. Perhaps launching cache's of chemical fuel up there, unmanned, to save money, and save the need from having to cart in your own fuel, and then use available chems as needed.
I'm not sure... Wouldn't a straight mars hop be easier? Mars is still the goal, no?
When has lower costs ever really benefited the customer proportionately? Never. If they costs are offset by 5% by taking sponsorships, then that 5% translates to pure profit, since your still going to pay $50 for it, and the actually code monkeys will still get underpaid for it. No one benefits but the ad company, and the CEO/stockholders. Welcome to the game.
Actually it is odd playing a sports game without them. When I booted up the Wii Sports game, and played baseball, it was surreal, a sports stadium without ads. Its something you just don't see anymore, a stadium without ads completely fails on realism.
Not that I am a big fan of ads in stadiums, mind. Here in Phoenix, Chase Field is the best example of a whore that I have ever seen. Even the damn names have to be ads, a strike can't be called a strike, it has to be a Circle K "K", you can't have a homerun, it has to be a Folton Homes Home Run, or a Lexus double play. Which is annoying. But the topic isn't "ads are annoying" but "ads can be realism" which is true, its just sad that reality can suck to hard.
You've been hanging out in the local hardware shop / /. too much, the average gamer has clearly stated that they don't want to play games on the PC, for understandable reasons. PC games didn't go into decline because the game developers decided to stop supporting them as much, but because the consumers decided to buy less games for them, and more on the consoles. Welcome to the market. Granted I did enjoy my PC as a gaming platform, and stuck with it through from the NES until about when Doom 3 came out, I don't think it is a good platform for many games anymore. With the 360 or PS3 I can just pop in Oblivion and play, with the PC I must make sure that all my hardware is up-to-date, fix my drivers, etc, then make sure I have enough HD space, free RAM, etc, then go through the long install process, and then play with a layer of bugs caused by odd software interactions. Granted, once it works, it works better than on a console, with better graphics, and IMHO, a better control scheme, but getting it to work is a pain. Personally I gave up my "hardcore" laurels about 2 years ago, I bought a Mac and a Gamecube, and let my PC moulder as a forgotten Linux box. I got sick of fixing things for the sake of gaming, to squeeze out that extra 1 fps, or be able to add a negligible poly to my count. The PC, popularly, also has an image problem, it is seen as geeky, and not some "cool" gaming box, granted this is /., so we don't see this.
The PC, too, is a generalist, meaning it is rather problematic to actually use for purpose, especially something as intensive as todays games. Consoles are purpose driven, they are just for games. You can see how unequal the fight is. Most PCs out there are also vanilla Dells or Gateways, which are not good gaming boxes, and the average user has no clue how to swap in a decent graphics card (or a clue what makes a card decent), or how to put in enough RAM to even handle Oblivion. There is too much tinkering, and not enough "just works" in the PC world, and while this is not a bad thing in itself, it does sort of harm the idea of PCs being the ascendant gaming boxes you'd like.
I like the idea of no fuss more and more, the older I get. I used to love sitting around, surrounded by piles of hardware, messing with internals, ini's, and reg hacking, but I find I don't have the time for it anymore. Sticking a disk in my GameCube (or now Wii), and just playing is much easier, quicker, and rewarding.
You'd still be capped by c, and you'd still be hit by acceleration. In a plain you still feel the Gs from take off and landing, as well as the effect of changing course, even with some form of "moving body" you'd still have the G problem that the parent mentioned. In any craft constant motion (in a line, sans acceleration) would be 0 Gs, of course, but acceleration would still always seem to have gravitation converse to the direction of acceleration, ala Special Relativity.
I wouldn't think that R&D costs would be nearly as high as during Apollo, I mean we already DID the R&D on Apollo, and thousands of other unmanned missions since. Sure we might not launch the technology that scifi writers are extolling, but do we really need a hydrogen pulse engine and solar sails to get to the moon? Probably not, we got there fine with massive amounts of explosives strapped to the back of a couple brave souls. We could do this again if it wasn't for NASA being a bunch of wusses. Back during Apollo they had cojones, now they seem to think that space should be risk free, and if not, no one can go. It's like Disney bought NASA.
If I had mod points still, you would have them.
Kuhn's book might be the most important modern philosophical text on the nature of science. It should be required reading for anyone who wants to debate the nature of science.
This spur of the debate opens up a can of epistemological worms, though. Which version of "truth" shall we pick, which version of "to know"? It seems to me that you picked a rather pragmatic approach, which is common in anglophone countries. Truth is a function of utility. I take a rather more coherent approach (in philosophical terms), that the truth is a coherent model of events. Notice the use of lower case in the term truth.
Actually this was his bandwagon before he became a household name. In the early '90's he wrote a book called "Earth in the Balance", which did (if I remember correctly) have a section warning about global warming. The environment was one of his biggest issues pre-vice-presidency, oddly he shut up about it under Clinton, and later on the campaign trail. this is just him returning to his old horse, nothing new.
The bullshit arguments on both sides result from the fact that the issue is (sadly) political capital, its the liberal's equivalent of the conservatives abortion, values, god, etc... It polarizes voters, and influences the swing vote. This means that both positions are enmeshed in pure partisan dogma, and incapable (or worse, unwilling) to critically analyze the issue at hand.
I'm still undecided on the issue, too. Though I do think that there is the phenomena called "global warming", and that it is happening (there seems to be enough empirical evidence to support this). I still don't think, though, that there is enough evidence to prove that it is man caused, as opposed to natural climate variation. Our understanding of long-term climate trends is minuscule, and we are living in an unusually cool period of time as far as long-term climatic history goes. It is fallacious to think that our current climate is (or should be) invariant.
Where we differ though is the fact that I think we are better safe than sorry. The long term consequences of man-caused global warming (if true) would far outweigh the short-term consequences of taking preventative measures (if not true). Fossil fuels have enough other bad environmental effects (which are scientifically proven) to warrant some direction of change, even without the threat of global warming.
Actually it would be an ad verecundiam, or appeal to authority. And ad hominem is "against the man", meaning "people against the prevention of burning fossil fuels are wrong because they are stupid", or such.
Interesting point, btw. I'm not sure if I agree, but I do see the validity in it. I see the movie as opening up debate, and putting the issue back in the media, and possibly reframing the issue away from the more conservative side. But you do have a point, I've noticed this about most of the protests I've witnessed, that they are generally hurting their cause more than helping it. The public is less likely to grant credibility to a bunch of masked morons waving silly signs and burning Bush effigies, as they are to people with the skills to actually present a convincing argument. Half of credibility is the presentation.
Actually this isn't such a bad idea, except for the reporting people part. This would bread suspicion, and thus a less than optimal environment. Purely positive enforcement (psychologically) would be the best, basing rewards purely on merit. Though in the work context penalties for bad output is also fair.
I'm getting sick of this "kid friendly" thing. Sure, there are some Nintendo games that are going to be for kids, as there will be on the 360, and PS3. There will also be some "hardcore" gorefest games on the Wii, though in a lower proportion than to the other consoles (RE4 on GC?). But then again the only games that make the PS2 worthwhile to me happen to be the more kid friendly ones, like katamari, where the emphasis is more on fun than how many polys you can render gibs in. Most violent games are not actually for adults, they are for the 16-30 crowd, mature players realize that they were drawn to gaming for fun, pure and simple, and not pure violence.
The AZ proposition went further, it outlawed common law (marriage) rights too. Hatred goes far, thank god that it was not passed. marriage is broken, so let everyone revel in it. Maybe the gays can do better than us heterosexual folk.
Thank you.
I will wait with you for a single example of where these taxes effect anyone but the very VERY rich.
No one has yet to tell me why this is a bad thing. Why shouldn't people take care of the less fortunate? It seems to work for the northern European countries (read the "Sustainable Developments" section in the Nov 2006 issue of Scientific American for example). Poopooing the poor does not seem an ethically viable solution to anything. The rich should WANT to help people, if they don't it is the will of the people that they should be FORCED to, this makes sense, since there is more poor than rich, and under the tenets of democracy. Sure, the rich should have a choice in what they support, but they have proven time and time again that they would rather pocket all of the profits they reap (and exploit) from the lower and middle classes, I see no problem in the government enforcing this.
Money is a stupid illusionary artifact, people and suffering is REAL. What does welfare hurt? Yes, in some of the ways it has been implemented, and has been proposed it has missed the fair mark. People EARN their money, and deserve it, but there is a certain point where this becomes absurd. There is no excuse for greed.
Thank god for that. Do we really need THREE parties absolutely divorced from the real world? The democrats really don't understand the social situation in the world (and want to inflict their's on it). The republicans don't understand the real ideological situations in the world (and want to inflict it on others). The libertarians don't understand the economic situations in the world (and want to inflict it on others). The greens, while a half assed party, aren't much better, they seem to also to completely ignorant of economic factors (the exact opposite of libertarians, indeed), and want to inflict it on others.
Bah to every party. People should all register as independents, eschew all parties and idiot ideologies, and learn to think for themselves.
Though I must admit, personally and only personally, that the Dems and the original republicans (pre-Goldwater, pre-Reagan) were closest to the people's wishes.The libertarians and greens are so far in left-field to be irrelevant to most people.
I think government has nothing, nor should have anything to do with people's private life, as long as it doesn't infringe on the lives and rights of others. Last time I checked gay's really had no influence on me, or anyone else. How is this involved in politics? Is God's opinion relevant to the vast majority of people? I doubt it. Live and let live is the law of the day, the rest is media hype, and listening to the loudest minorities.
Linux does work wonders on broken hardware. I have an old iBook that had terminal (to OS X) HD failure, but it runs Ubuntu perfectly (sans driver issues from running it on an iBook), but cannot support any version of OS X or OS9.
Punchline, Linux is more durable to hardware failures, not that any OS is more intensive. I've had windows 95/98/2k and XP running on 5 years before installation release hardware for years (XP was a bitch, but mostly because of my remainder hardware to give to my parents). The only real problem I've run into is disk space.
And yes, Linux could run on any of these boxes fine, HD space also being a limiting factor.