Then the generation of zombies came along and decided that "intellectual" should be a Bad Word.
That generation of "zombies" have been around much longer than the 1990's. The "anti-intellectual" crowd are mostly Boomers and older. The younger kids (born in the 90's) are just victims of bad education and parenting, and the rising societal focus on instant gratification and conformity.
That said, I have a very intellectual argument against intellectualism. Damn!
Either that or some people have a more nuanced view.
There is a point where abortion becomes nasty, since it is a fully developed child who could survive outside the mother. This is why parital birt abortion is nasty, and pretty much anyone, Democrat or not will agree.
When the debate gets silly is when people decide that 5-100 undifferentiated cells are somehow imbued with magic because of their subjective religious beleifs that not everyone is our society agrees with. When the only basis to your argument is subjective religion, then your argument holds no weight over people who don't accept that, and thus you really shouldn't be allowed to force those subjective views on others.
If you are a religious person of the stripe who thinks that undifferentiated cell masses are magical (and somehow more important than the person bearing them, in some cases), then don't terminate them. Its as simple as that. Yes, we do need some regulation when it comes to aborting fully developed fetus, which have developed nervous systems and can survive (albeit with technology) outside of the mother.
Further, it gets truly insane when people hold anti-abortion to the point where you aren't allowed to remove a dead fetus, to the risk of the mother. People who hold these beliefs are so blanketed in their own irrational dogma to the point where we don't really even have to listen to them anymore. That view makes no sense from the religious or rational views.
But... if your vote, and political identification is based purely on this (and generally a bit of hatred for "teh gays" thrown in for flavor), then you really don't have very well formed views. There are millions of other issues much more important for the whole of the American people than enforcing your religious dogma on others.
(as a point of clarity: I'm mostly against abortion, since, outside of health, carrying it to term and putting it up for adoption is ethically superior, at least to my ethical system. But I'm never in favor of legislating behaviors unless there is clear harm, since that path opens the door to tyranny and theocracy.)
As opposed to Republic voters (see what I did there?) who want to keep every single program but decided that lowering taxes on the rich are a panacea. (Spend more, make less!). Looking at G.W. Bush, Republic fiscal policiy isn't very sound either.
In truth, I'm very disillusioned with both parties. I would vote Libertarian, but they have far too much crazy as icing on their cake. I can't vote Republican because they are moral fascists, even if they have fiscal sense, and they generally hate everyone who doesn't make $300k a year. I really can't vote Democratic because they are about as bad as Republicans these days, care for the rich corporations, hate the poor (ala Obamacare).
None of them care one bit for the average American. All of them are either to wrapped in the interests of their uber-rich donors, or too wrapped in mindless, blind, ideology. The Republicans are a wee bit worse because they also want to force their religion on my, and millions of other Americans. They also seem to be competeing with the Libertarians for being the most crazy, and giving the most support to the lunatic fringe.
We haven't had a government (left or right) that was worth a damn since FDR.
I'm not convinced that native American Indians were ever really the environmentalists they're frequently made out to be in the modern day sense...
Agreed. There is evidence that the Anasazi (of Northern Arizona and the Four Corners region) caused some large ecological problems, including deforestation (of one of their major food trees) and other problems. There is some evidence of various Mesoamerican tribes also collapsing due to environmental degradation.
A large part of the the myth is because most tribes were relatively small, nomadic, and not at all technologically advanced, which generally precludes much impact. Evidence supports that once tribes lost these characteristics (such as in Mesoamerica the American Southwest, and bits of the Southeast) they had as much environmental problems as any other civilization with a like level of technology and population.
Other bits of the myth sprung from us clinging to the antiquated view of Indians as "nobel savages", and from various PR stunts (think the weeping Indian imagery). This is somewhat bolstered by current PR on behalf of some tribes, they do play up this idea as much as possible as seen in TFA. One of the tribes around where I lived built a giant casino/hotel complex, then tore it down, and built another one, then tore that one down to build another, larger, casino/hotel complex. All in the space of two years. Oddly the inside of this hotel is full of pastoral images and Southwestern mythology. This same tribe gives out 100 year leases to any industrial polluter that has cash and is willing to avoid city/county/state taxes and regulations.
Think of it as a nickname or alias, then. God's true name is YHVH "God" Elohim. Like Ricky "The Hammer" Johnson, "hammer" is a normal word, but is capitalized in this case, even if it isn't Mr. Johnson's real name.
The problem is that we're not supposed to know, or say, God's real name. So whatever name, in the interim, we attack to him would also be a proper noun, even if it is a generic term. In proper English you also capitalize terms like "father" and "mother" when your using them instead of proper names, so doing so for "god" also makes sense.
Less convincing theological argument: According to later bits of the Bible, especially in the New Testament, there are no other gods out there. The term "god" then (when referring to the Judeo-Christian one) could only map to one specific entity. Saying "god" would be meaningless then, since there is only one referent to that term, thus it would be proper by default. As a note, I'm not wholly convinced of this bit, but it makes for a fun (albeit offtopic) discussion.
If we were all writing German this wouldn't be an issue.
It's a position or title, not a name. It's like capitalizing "he", "she", "corporal", or "sergeant". When used in conjunction with the proper name, then it would be capitalized. Zeus would be capitalized, because it's his name. God would not be, as his name is simply never revealed. (note: I only capitalized it there because it began the sentence).
Your pedantry astounds me. You are, in this sense, completely correct, but only technically so. "God" as used in the Bible is, indeed, a title, and this your reasoning is sound. Sadly, in day to day life, God has become a normal proper noun. When normal, modern, people say such things as "God is my Copilot", they don't mean "Tetragrammaton is helping me fly my plane", or "YHVH is trying to get some extra flight hours"; they mean "A dude name 'God' is protecting me". Its like how "Christ" turned into Jesus' last name, and not just a common job description of the time (yes, a wee bit flippant, I apologize).
So in technical usage; you win. In common, I win.
Relax, I was only poking a bit of fun at capitalization of the Mammary Gland.
Point taken, and I apologize for jumping off the handle. Its hard to tell humor from misplaced righteous indigence these days. Especially with modern, shrill, atheism, where people have to constantly proclaim their lack of faith (which is just as annoying as those who constantly proclaim their faith). Also I read a bit of PZ Meyers blog today, which always puts me a bit on edge (I agree with 90% of what he says, but I fear for reasons other than intended. And his tone... oh lord...).
There is a bit of irony in fighting humor with an indignant rant against indignant rants, I suppose.
This god myth is something else. You can't see it, touch it, hear it, or in any way recognize that it exists other than a few irrational assumptions. There may be one or more, depending on which piece of classical fiction people believe in. Some believe it looks like a man, a woman, or even a plate of spaghetti.
I'm as much of an atheist as you; but I think your taking this a bit far. First, this has nothing to do with the issue at hand, it ads nothing to the discussion (nor does this reply, admittedly), you just posted it hoping to get some rise, or to show off your "New Atheist" credentials. Bully for you, but who cares? Your not going to (de)convert anyone, no one is going to change their capitalization just to make you, some random anonymous slob on the internet, happy.
Second, capitalizing "God" is actually completely appropriate, regardless of if you believe in him/her/it or not. "God" is a proper noun, and as a proper noun it is capitalized. This has nothing to do with the actual, or perceived, existence of the noun. You capitalize "Atticus Finch", even though it is obviously a fictional character. So even if God is purely a work of fiction, her/its/his name would still be capitalized.
I've never been to Narnia, but it still is a capitalized proper noun.
So, your comment isn't really about grammar or proper punctuation. Your comment is just you yelling "hey look at me, I'm an angry atheist!". To which I reply, "good for you, but who cares?"
During certain times of the day I hardly ever answer my phone, email, texts immediately. I pretty much impose "office hours" on myself, during the day I will answer the phone, reply to emails, etc... But once its time to relax, you can leave a message, and I'll get back to you when I damn well feel like it. Even during the day I use "information triage", so I might not get back to you until tomorrow, perhaps later if it isn't at all important and I have other things to do (which can include; finish this book, watch this show, clean my finger nails, take a nap, play with the cat, sit around staring at a wall for a bit).
Not everything in this world needs immediate attention, and often most things happening on the phone or in my various in-boxes aren't terribly important. I don't see why I need to interrupt my life for the immediate social needs of other people. I have no desire to be in constant contact with the rest of humanity, I actually consider it annoying and not-at-all positive, unlike the vast majority of people I know. Why should I be forced to accommodation their constant need for communication and recognition, when people don't appreciate my desire for peace, quiet, and quality communications (as opposed to the modern emphasis on quantity)?
I have no problem with this, and the more quality elements of my friends, family, acquaintances, and peers have learned to accept this. It might annoy them that I never respond to their unwanted pictures of fat people with silly captions, or their blurbs about shopping, or how "extra nasty" their commute was (or worse; tweets and updates about video-game achievements). People have gotten used to it. I get back to people, and generally reply by inviting them out to a pub, or dinner to talk about it.
Some people haven't. My father among them. He calls daily, often multiple times a day. If I miss one of his calls he sends a text and leaves a voice mail, if I don't reply to the text he'll send an email. If I don't reply to the email he calls. If this goes on long enough (over a day or so) he'll call my girlfriend. In extreme cases (when I was in college, didn't have a cellphone, and was in the midst of writing my capstone paper), he'll call the cops. As much as it annoys me (not to say my father does, just the need to be constantly communicating), I pretty much have no choice but to answer the phone. The guilt trip if I don't isn't worth it. He's an extreme case, but I have other friends like him who scream at me for missing Facebook updates, or not friending the appropriate mutual acquaintances, who act offended by the fact that I might only think about Facebook (much less check it) perhaps once a week, and only if Slashdot, or the rest of the Internet is being particularly boring, and I have no good books, and it is too nasty outside for a walk, or I have no actual work to do.
It is their business, if they don't want ass-hats acting impolite that is their choice. They have the right to choose who they want to serve, and how they want to serve them (within some legal boundaries, like ADA, and various equality laws). If you don't like it, you don't have to be there.
If you don't want to act according to the rules of polite society, don't expect people to give you the same accord as they would give polite, civil, people.
I wish every theater, restaurant, bookstore, and library had similar policies as the Drafthouse, or this sandwich shop.
I doubt that very much. iPhones are about as annoying as Android devices. They all feel gimped in comparison to what we expect of them, they all have some kludgey feeling features, they all have service and other extraneous annoyances. Hell, iPhones can't handle a vast swath of the internet still thanks to not supporting Flash (love it or hate it, it is an accepted "standard"). iPhones have as many problems as Android.
It, in the end, once again boils down to taste, and that taste is largely a subjective judgement about shiny UI elements and packaging aesthetics.
I picked an Android based phone because I like how it looks, and operates. I actually find it more aesthetically pleasing than an iOS product (agree or disagree, I think the Droid X is nice looking). I also like the fact that a single corporation doesn't dictate how I use my device, or try to tell me what I can't use for my own moral good. I like the fact that it pretty much integrates all my Google, and other online, services flawlessly.
Complimenting Android doesn't mean I'm disparaging Apple. It just works better for me. My father, who is completely technologically illiterate, played around with both iOS and Android based devices, before settling on an Android device.
Apple products aren't better than anyone else's. They're merely comparable. Ditto for Google, ditto for Microsoft, ditto for whatever else.
Also, none of my "non-tech" friends have any issues with Android (or previously Blackberry) phones. Its not like your using CLI to do stuff.
ZOMG how did people ever live without them?! Its a miracle that humans managed to survive tens (hundreds) of thousands of years without cell phones, much less travel from point A to point B without being eaten by bears!
My father is a trucker, he's traveled all over the country safely without a cellphone. Now he has one (and repeatedly states that he can't live without it), and his "emergency usage of it" is to have random banal conversations while driving (badly), and to cut off normal conversations for long periods of time whenever it makes a beeping sound, while veering madly all over the freeway.
Cellphones are great and all, but they aren't really that important. If my cellphone disappeared tomorrow, all I'd really miss is the ability to hit Wikipedia at a whim, and I suppose we'd have to break down and get a land line. I wouldn't really miss it. If everyone's cellphone suddenly dissolved, the world would tick on much as normal, civilization wouldn't break down, we all suddenly wouldn't get killed by wandering moose on the freeway, nothing terrible would happen. Hell, I wouldn't have to listen to annoying people shout about their sex lives, and shopping habits, in public, which would be a net gain. I might be able to go to a movie theater again, and sit in a better resturant without getting very angry. I might even feel safer on the freeway (angry moose outbreak aside) since morons wouldn't chatting about completely inconsequential things and thus risking my life.
That said, I have nothing against the technology, nor the people who have managed to learn to use them responsibly. I just can't stand the "can't live without it" bullshit. Its a mere gadget. It isn't terribly important in the scheme of things, no matter how much we invest in them. If someone doesn't want one, thats fine, its their choice. I don't see how people can jump on them and basically tell them THEY MUST HAVE IT, or one day they will be sorry, and/or die at the hands of errant moose.
Perhaps they'd be happier without? Isn't that all that matters?
You've got a huge ass used car dealership. they're so huge that they've put all the competition out of business. no other used car lots around. The government says "that's not fair, there is now no competition" and mandates that the car lot now allow other outside car salesmen to walk on to their lot and sell their cars. The outside salesmen can sell the cars for lower than the lot salesmen because the lot salesmen need to bump up their prices to account for property taxes, keeping auction-goers on staff (where do you think those cars come from), electricity, etc. etc.
Except the city mandated originally that there can only be one car dealership within city limits, and then fronted a huge share of the cost, and some of the property to the owner of the mandated singular dealership. Said dealership for years, then, only sold older model cars at a huge markup because of the mandated lack of competition, and eventually got so arrogant to sell beat-up, non-running, cars as new models without having to tell the customer (where else can the customer go?).
Eventually someone realized that this wasn't good for the customers at all, and mandated that the monolithic monopoly lot had to rent out some of its space for competition for the sake of the customers. The other want-to-be dealers can't open their own lots because of the huge cost (the monolithic monopoly has all of the available real-estate for dealerships, and the cost of opening a new one is impossible to front).
This situation is MORE anti-capitalist than the alternative of forcing giant dealers to open their lots at cost. The state granted (both artificial and naturally bounded) monopoly is far more harmful than forcing monopolies to open up. This situation is also why we have some of the worst internet of the developed world.
I'm pissy because I realized I'm paying Cox for 15 megabits, and getting, on average, 6, which lately has been actually 3 (rendering Netflix unusable). Yes, it is "up to 15", but in turth I've never seen it even hit 10. And we can't switch to the only competition (Qwest) since they have burned us before when we lived in an apartment that only allowed Qwest (we were paying for 5mbits, and got 157kps, with around 50% downtime.)
If you support those who also support evil, you are evil. Maybe you simply have been mislead by taking what others say as fact without doing any of your own research... To ignore, excuse, or say nothing in the face of evil (such as making committing genocide against an entire culture, religion, and people a central, non-negotiable goal) is to be evil.
I don't support ANY evil, regardless of who is committing it. It is very hard to "research evil", since the term itself is vague, and often misused as a mere pejorative against any idea, culture, or person who we do not like, or whose values conflict with our own. Often time when we bandy the term about, we ignore the fact that we, too, can commit evil. We are blinded by our own proximity to it. Take the U.S. for example, we LOVE to use that term on our enemies, but we ignore the fact that we have been very capable of it ourselves (since we ourselves are obviously right and virtuous to a fault, we must be at the price of severe cognitive dissonance), this is equally true of many vocal Islamist governments and militant groups, screaming that the U.S. is evil, while blowing up civilians and innocents (which would be "evil" in my dictionary). (some of) Israel isn't immune from evil either, no matter how evil (some of) their enemy is, it doesn't clear them. Evil isn't negated by other evils. If you have a "big evil" fighting a "little evil", the actions of both remain evil.
As you stated, there is no middle ground.
Anti-Jewish/Israeli bigotry & hatred has been around for centuries. The current anti-Jewish hatred & bigotry in the Middle East is the very same hatred & bigotry, revived, that drove the horrors of Germany in WW2 and others before and since.
No argument there. Antisemitism is harmful, and somewhat scary. Any form of xenophobia, bigotry, or mass hatred is likewise scary, frightful, and act as fuel for atrocities and evil. I'm not arguing that "Jews are evil", or that "Israel is evil". I have nothing against Jews or most Israelis, so painting me as antisemitic, or a skinhead, is ridiculous, and, to be honest, somewhat idiotic. I have nothing against the religion (in fact I have more respect for it than its other monotheistic siblings), ethnic group, or even the country. I just question some of the countries actions. To me this is legitimate, I also question my own countries actions, but don't hate the people that are contained within that country, nor even the country itself.
Many current Islamic clerics speak openly and with great enthusiasm and nostalgia for Hitler and the days of the Holocaust, and wish the job finished. They carry clerics spewing such screeds regularly on Al-Jazeera. Just because Hitler and Germany were defeated doesn't mean that the anti-Semitic hatred went away, particularly in the Arab/Islamic world.
This IS frightful and abhorrent.
Whenever Israel suffers a rocket attack, another suicide bomber, or a family including infants and children brutally murdered in their beds, the Palestinians dance, sing, and hand out treats in the streets all across the Territories. Where are the widespread celebrations on the streets of Tel Aviv when a Palestinian civilian/child/infant is killed? Does it make a difference to you that a majority of Palestinians think Hitler was a great guy and had the right idea?
Some of them do. And some Israelis are very happy when Israel kills civilians as well, I'm sure. So happy that they give their government free rein to attack and target civilians, and to oppress the "Israeli Palestinians" internally, they refuse to do their part to END the goddamn circus, so are perpetuating it as well. Failure to condemn evil actions are like the actions themselves. Celebrating ANYONE'S death is disgusting, no matter how you feel about them. Killing innocents and civilians is disgusting universally, no matter how much we agree with the greater "cause
If you can't see any moral difference, then you'd have been okie-dokie with the Final Solution and the Holocaust. At least you aren't alone. There are a lot of "skinheads" that believe just as you and the Palestinians do.
Quite a strawman there... I don't agree with irrational, baseless, violence from anyone, for any reason. Nazis and the Holocaust were atocities and tragedies. Skinheads are bigoted morons. Jews can be biggotted morons, as well as Arabs. I don't care how sypathetic you are, if you start performing violence against innocents, no matter how nice sounding your rational, your no longer in the right.
Furthermore, I find Zionism to be about as patently ridiculous as Manifest Destiny was in America, or whatever any ethnic group finds as a nice term to sum up the repression of any other ethnic group. I also find the sects of Palestinians who want to exterminate the Jews, or deny Israel completely to be absurd and abhorent. All of these groups hold a mere ideology above people, and all of these groups made up pretty rhetoric to cover banal intolerance and xenophobia.
Again, and I'm sure this point will still be missed completely by you, I don't hold much sympathy for the violent fringes of the various Palestinian movements. I hold the same amount of sympathy for them as I do the extreme sects of Zionist Isrealis. None. Defending yourself is fine, and as such Israel has some right to violence (as would the Palestinians), but once this right crosses over to harm caused to civilians... You lose moral high ground.
How is raising apartment blocks full of innocents to kill possibly one "terrorist", or killing kids for throwing rocks different than Palestinains firing on Jewish settlements, or morons strapping bombs on themselves and blowing up innocents at clubs and stores? Both are outside the realm that any civilized society should accept.
But then again, you have proven that there is no arguing with you... Since I disagree with you I must be a crypto-nazi, who is a closeted skinhead. This is obvious, since you hold the only opinion worth considering, and everyone else loves Hitler.
Someday people will be able to have a rational, and constructive, discussion on the affairs of the Middle East. But that day is not yet here.
Yes I know they are not the same quality or speed but joe cardboard does not know that.
Actually the $999 MacBook is roughly comparable to a $500 "normal" laptop, component-wise. Since switching to Intel, Macs have been no different than PCs, using much the same generic, commodity, hardware and components.
About 3-4 years back my girlfriend got a $1200 MacBook Pro for Christmas, and I bought a $600 HP laptop. My laptop had more ram, a slightly beefier processor of the same type, and a larger HDD and a marginally larger screen screen. The only difference was the MacBook had a better GPU, and the screen was a wee bit better. The only real difference was that her PC had OS X, and mine had Vista (ech... quickly replaced with various Linux flavors).
Her computer, before completely dying, was in the shop several times. I've never had a failure on my laptop.
She grew up in an "Apple Household" (she's from Palo Alto originally), and only owned various Apple products since I've known her. The MacBook was the last straw, she's now using a modified Dell (all my old components go there when I upgrade), and using Windows 7. For a 4-5 year stretch in the mid 2000's (can we call them the "naughties" yet?) I dropped my expensive home built computer habit and swapped to a PPC powered Apple laptop. I loved it. It was simple, I didn't have to worry about it, it was great for college when I just wanted to serve media and write papers. After college I continued the trend, grabbing an Intel powered Mac Mini (the very first gen, about a week from release). That only lasted a year, before I gave up and decided that building my own computers was cheaper and easier, especially since there was no difference between them anymore.
Lately I've been underwhelmed with Apple's actual computers. Especially with Lion pushing things towards iOS (which I find absolutely abhorant, and the exact opposite of where computer should be going). It isn't going to be installed on my heavily modified and upgraded Mini (new processor, new GPU). And once my Mini dies, or Apple's introduction to minor API changes that drive all devs from supporting anything running an OS X version older than one iteration; it will be dissected and hung on my garage wall with all my other obsolete boxes, and replaced with a nice Atom nettop, like my Windows 7 HTPC.
Not the AC, but I'll give it a try. Without touching on the political or philosophical premises, one can simply say that Rand couldn't write decent prose to save her life. She was of the "why write three words, when you can write 300 to say the same thing" school of literature. She also let her ideologies get in the way of a perfectly good narrative. So unless your reading it for the philosophy, there really isn't a point.
Also her characters were caricatures. Ill written, two dimensional, and for the most part completely unsympathetic. Reading Atlas Shrugged all I could think of any of the characters was, "who cares?". I personally wouldn't care if her dreaded undermensch bugbear came and ate them all up, which isn't really a good thing for a book whose primary purpose is to proselytize her pet philosophy; give me a reason to care!
Her pet philosophy is another matter, but that doesn't really matter in this context. Whether I agree with her, or not, doesn't change the fact that she was one of the weakest narrative authors of her time. Her actual straight nonfiction essays and rants were written much better than her fiction.
I agree. I have a Phenom II x4 965, and it mostly goes to waste, when I used to game more it was nice, but that habit has been flagging lately. It comes in handy when I process large batches of RAW images, or transcode, but I don't really do those as often as I could (or would like). Most of the time I might get two cores up to around 20%. My old Core 2 Duo (2.4Ghz ish) laptop works just fine for pretty much everything, its little crappy Intel GMA GPU is the main bottleneck I ever experience. My new-ish Radeon is similarly wasted most of the time (5700 series). Basically the only resource I come close to maxing out is RAM, you can never really have enough.
Monitors are always good. For some reason he has no problem with his crappy old LCD, while his computer needs to be in the top 10% of commercial desktops. His monitor is hideous, with pretty much no color accuracy, its tiny, its slow, its... Ugh. I play this up a bit too, since I want it to mount on the inside of a kitchen cabinet,, its damn hard to find small monitors these days.
There is a large segment that now really do us their computer as nothing but an internet terminal.
This would be both of my parents, if you put it as "internet terminal and magic solitaire box". But... In my father's case, he would NEVER buy a browser-computer (as another person here put it "webtop"). He basically uses his computer for email and light browsing, and the occasional foray into tax software (and downloading malware). His old computer (from 2002) was getting long in the tooth, so he went out to buy a new one, asking my geekly advice. I told him get something light and cheap, probably some flavor of low end Intel (like a cheap i5), with a couple Gb of RAM and some flavor of integrated video, basically go for cheap since his needs aren't very high. My real advice was for him to get a Mac (goodbye literally daily free tech support!) or a laptop, but both of these were dismissed without any thought. Preferably something with a cheap bundled monitor to replace his 12" (square), ten year old flatscreen.
He came home with a quad core Phenom II (3.1Ghz or so, forgot the name) with 6Gb of DDR3, and some mid-range NVidea card. The idea of power was much more important to him than something he could actually use. His new computer is almost up to par with my decent gaming rig, and he will never load a game, edit/transcode video, compile code, or do anything that really taxes his computer.
Why would he ever want a computer that isn't one of the most powerful available at a retail shop?
He was breifly going to get a laptop (so he could do his bills on it, and not his desktop, someone on the radio said it was "more secure", who am I to argue?), but complained about how big and expensive they were, so I told him to get a small, cheap, netbook. He scoffed, pointing to some giant 18" laptop with a harcore desktop CPU and a pretty good GPU, asking why I would recommend such an under-powered computer to him!
This is how a lot of people are. You must get the absolute best *whatever* that money can buy, even if you'll never use 10% of it. Like buying a performance car just so you can sit in rush hour traffic averaging 5-10mph, while your speedometer goes up to 250.
To be honest though, there's a part of me that wishes Frontline waited until they could actually talk to Mannings.
Perhaps thats the root of the problem. His father, who was the closest we got to inside information on Manning, wasn't very sympathetic to me. He rubbed me a bit the wrong way. Assange is never terribly sympathetic, and the actual interviewer seemed to be completely focused on the sensational (gay narrative), and not Manning as a person. And Adrian Lamo might be one of the least believable, likable, or even sympathetic men in recent history.
The "falling in with hackers " bit made me almost fall out of my chair, though.
Pretty much the whole thing just told me that there was a lot more going on underneath, and that none of us will probably ever actually know the full story, much less the truly interesting bits.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming it was a "hit piece" or part of some US Government conspiracy, I just think was a fairly flawed, and weak, peice of journalism. Bellow Frontline's generally decent standards.
Assange is a hero and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying, pure and simple.
No, he's a dick that had a nice idea. He's still and asshole though. If anyone is a hero in the whole story it would be Manning.
Though, I agree, the Frontline special was a bit moronic. I really doubt that Manning turned leaker only because he was a "troubled gay" like they portrayed. I find it amusing that neither Frontline or Assange actually tried to discus any plausible motive that he had to leak that information.
I'm not sure what your other beef with PBS is... It is leagues better than the networks for quality reporting. Not perfect, but media never has been. .
Perhaps so. but I don't see any rational way of assigning moral superiority to either the Palestinians or the Isrealis.
I will do as I generally do, and sympathise for the silent majority of Isrealis and Palestinians who don't really care about the blind idealistic dogma that drives either side of the conflict, and just want to be left in peace.
Slashdot Mirror
Then the generation of zombies came along and decided that "intellectual" should be a Bad Word.
That generation of "zombies" have been around much longer than the 1990's. The "anti-intellectual" crowd are mostly Boomers and older. The younger kids (born in the 90's) are just victims of bad education and parenting, and the rising societal focus on instant gratification and conformity.
That said, I have a very intellectual argument against intellectualism. Damn!
“If you voted for Obama in 2008 to prove you're not a racist, you'll have to vote for someone else in 2012 to prove you're not an idiot"
Who?
Looking at the whole field, I don't see anyone worthy of my "anti-idiot" vote yet.
To his credit; poker on a hand level is largely a game of chance, where on a larger game level it is mostly a game of skill.
You have no control whatsoever on a single hand, but in the long term it becomes a game of bluffs and knowing probabilities.
Either that or some people have a more nuanced view.
There is a point where abortion becomes nasty, since it is a fully developed child who could survive outside the mother. This is why parital birt abortion is nasty, and pretty much anyone, Democrat or not will agree.
When the debate gets silly is when people decide that 5-100 undifferentiated cells are somehow imbued with magic because of their subjective religious beleifs that not everyone is our society agrees with. When the only basis to your argument is subjective religion, then your argument holds no weight over people who don't accept that, and thus you really shouldn't be allowed to force those subjective views on others.
If you are a religious person of the stripe who thinks that undifferentiated cell masses are magical (and somehow more important than the person bearing them, in some cases), then don't terminate them. Its as simple as that. Yes, we do need some regulation when it comes to aborting fully developed fetus, which have developed nervous systems and can survive (albeit with technology) outside of the mother.
Further, it gets truly insane when people hold anti-abortion to the point where you aren't allowed to remove a dead fetus, to the risk of the mother. People who hold these beliefs are so blanketed in their own irrational dogma to the point where we don't really even have to listen to them anymore. That view makes no sense from the religious or rational views.
But... if your vote, and political identification is based purely on this (and generally a bit of hatred for "teh gays" thrown in for flavor), then you really don't have very well formed views. There are millions of other issues much more important for the whole of the American people than enforcing your religious dogma on others.
(as a point of clarity: I'm mostly against abortion, since, outside of health, carrying it to term and putting it up for adoption is ethically superior, at least to my ethical system. But I'm never in favor of legislating behaviors unless there is clear harm, since that path opens the door to tyranny and theocracy.)
As opposed to Republic voters (see what I did there?) who want to keep every single program but decided that lowering taxes on the rich are a panacea. (Spend more, make less!). Looking at G.W. Bush, Republic fiscal policiy isn't very sound either.
In truth, I'm very disillusioned with both parties. I would vote Libertarian, but they have far too much crazy as icing on their cake. I can't vote Republican because they are moral fascists, even if they have fiscal sense, and they generally hate everyone who doesn't make $300k a year. I really can't vote Democratic because they are about as bad as Republicans these days, care for the rich corporations, hate the poor (ala Obamacare).
None of them care one bit for the average American. All of them are either to wrapped in the interests of their uber-rich donors, or too wrapped in mindless, blind, ideology. The Republicans are a wee bit worse because they also want to force their religion on my, and millions of other Americans. They also seem to be competeing with the Libertarians for being the most crazy, and giving the most support to the lunatic fringe.
We haven't had a government (left or right) that was worth a damn since FDR.
A quantum leap.
So even smaller?
I'm not convinced that native American Indians were ever really the environmentalists they're frequently made out to be in the modern day sense...
Agreed. There is evidence that the Anasazi (of Northern Arizona and the Four Corners region) caused some large ecological problems, including deforestation (of one of their major food trees) and other problems. There is some evidence of various Mesoamerican tribes also collapsing due to environmental degradation.
A large part of the the myth is because most tribes were relatively small, nomadic, and not at all technologically advanced, which generally precludes much impact. Evidence supports that once tribes lost these characteristics (such as in Mesoamerica the American Southwest, and bits of the Southeast) they had as much environmental problems as any other civilization with a like level of technology and population.
Other bits of the myth sprung from us clinging to the antiquated view of Indians as "nobel savages", and from various PR stunts (think the weeping Indian imagery). This is somewhat bolstered by current PR on behalf of some tribes, they do play up this idea as much as possible as seen in TFA. One of the tribes around where I lived built a giant casino/hotel complex, then tore it down, and built another one, then tore that one down to build another, larger, casino/hotel complex. All in the space of two years. Oddly the inside of this hotel is full of pastoral images and Southwestern mythology. This same tribe gives out 100 year leases to any industrial polluter that has cash and is willing to avoid city/county/state taxes and regulations.
Think of it as a nickname or alias, then. God's true name is YHVH "God" Elohim. Like Ricky "The Hammer" Johnson, "hammer" is a normal word, but is capitalized in this case, even if it isn't Mr. Johnson's real name.
The problem is that we're not supposed to know, or say, God's real name. So whatever name, in the interim, we attack to him would also be a proper noun, even if it is a generic term. In proper English you also capitalize terms like "father" and "mother" when your using them instead of proper names, so doing so for "god" also makes sense.
Less convincing theological argument: According to later bits of the Bible, especially in the New Testament, there are no other gods out there. The term "god" then (when referring to the Judeo-Christian one) could only map to one specific entity. Saying "god" would be meaningless then, since there is only one referent to that term, thus it would be proper by default. As a note, I'm not wholly convinced of this bit, but it makes for a fun (albeit offtopic) discussion.
If we were all writing German this wouldn't be an issue.
It's a position or title, not a name. It's like capitalizing "he", "she", "corporal", or "sergeant". When used in conjunction with the proper name, then it would be capitalized. Zeus would be capitalized, because it's his name. God would not be, as his name is simply never revealed. (note: I only capitalized it there because it began the sentence).
Your pedantry astounds me. You are, in this sense, completely correct, but only technically so. "God" as used in the Bible is, indeed, a title, and this your reasoning is sound. Sadly, in day to day life, God has become a normal proper noun. When normal, modern, people say such things as "God is my Copilot", they don't mean "Tetragrammaton is helping me fly my plane", or "YHVH is trying to get some extra flight hours"; they mean "A dude name 'God' is protecting me". Its like how "Christ" turned into Jesus' last name, and not just a common job description of the time (yes, a wee bit flippant, I apologize).
So in technical usage; you win. In common, I win.
Relax, I was only poking a bit of fun at capitalization of the Mammary Gland.
Point taken, and I apologize for jumping off the handle. Its hard to tell humor from misplaced righteous indigence these days. Especially with modern, shrill, atheism, where people have to constantly proclaim their lack of faith (which is just as annoying as those who constantly proclaim their faith). Also I read a bit of PZ Meyers blog today, which always puts me a bit on edge (I agree with 90% of what he says, but I fear for reasons other than intended. And his tone... oh lord...).
There is a bit of irony in fighting humor with an indignant rant against indignant rants, I suppose.
This god myth is something else. You can't see it, touch it, hear it, or in any way recognize that it exists other than a few irrational assumptions. There may be one or more, depending on which piece of classical fiction people believe in. Some believe it looks like a man, a woman, or even a plate of spaghetti.
I'm as much of an atheist as you; but I think your taking this a bit far. First, this has nothing to do with the issue at hand, it ads nothing to the discussion (nor does this reply, admittedly), you just posted it hoping to get some rise, or to show off your "New Atheist" credentials. Bully for you, but who cares? Your not going to (de)convert anyone, no one is going to change their capitalization just to make you, some random anonymous slob on the internet, happy.
Second, capitalizing "God" is actually completely appropriate, regardless of if you believe in him/her/it or not. "God" is a proper noun, and as a proper noun it is capitalized. This has nothing to do with the actual, or perceived, existence of the noun. You capitalize "Atticus Finch", even though it is obviously a fictional character. So even if God is purely a work of fiction, her/its/his name would still be capitalized.
I've never been to Narnia, but it still is a capitalized proper noun.
So, your comment isn't really about grammar or proper punctuation. Your comment is just you yelling "hey look at me, I'm an angry atheist!". To which I reply, "good for you, but who cares?"
Step 1: Don't answer the phone
One problem...
During certain times of the day I hardly ever answer my phone, email, texts immediately. I pretty much impose "office hours" on myself, during the day I will answer the phone, reply to emails, etc... But once its time to relax, you can leave a message, and I'll get back to you when I damn well feel like it. Even during the day I use "information triage", so I might not get back to you until tomorrow, perhaps later if it isn't at all important and I have other things to do (which can include; finish this book, watch this show, clean my finger nails, take a nap, play with the cat, sit around staring at a wall for a bit).
Not everything in this world needs immediate attention, and often most things happening on the phone or in my various in-boxes aren't terribly important. I don't see why I need to interrupt my life for the immediate social needs of other people. I have no desire to be in constant contact with the rest of humanity, I actually consider it annoying and not-at-all positive, unlike the vast majority of people I know. Why should I be forced to accommodation their constant need for communication and recognition, when people don't appreciate my desire for peace, quiet, and quality communications (as opposed to the modern emphasis on quantity)?
I have no problem with this, and the more quality elements of my friends, family, acquaintances, and peers have learned to accept this. It might annoy them that I never respond to their unwanted pictures of fat people with silly captions, or their blurbs about shopping, or how "extra nasty" their commute was (or worse; tweets and updates about video-game achievements). People have gotten used to it. I get back to people, and generally reply by inviting them out to a pub, or dinner to talk about it.
Some people haven't. My father among them. He calls daily, often multiple times a day. If I miss one of his calls he sends a text and leaves a voice mail, if I don't reply to the text he'll send an email. If I don't reply to the email he calls. If this goes on long enough (over a day or so) he'll call my girlfriend. In extreme cases (when I was in college, didn't have a cellphone, and was in the midst of writing my capstone paper), he'll call the cops. As much as it annoys me (not to say my father does, just the need to be constantly communicating), I pretty much have no choice but to answer the phone. The guilt trip if I don't isn't worth it. He's an extreme case, but I have other friends like him who scream at me for missing Facebook updates, or not friending the appropriate mutual acquaintances, who act offended by the fact that I might only think about Facebook (much less check it) perhaps once a week, and only if Slashdot, or the rest of the Internet is being particularly boring, and I have no good books, and it is too nasty outside for a walk, or I have no actual work to do.
It is their business, if they don't want ass-hats acting impolite that is their choice. They have the right to choose who they want to serve, and how they want to serve them (within some legal boundaries, like ADA, and various equality laws). If you don't like it, you don't have to be there.
If you don't want to act according to the rules of polite society, don't expect people to give you the same accord as they would give polite, civil, people.
I wish every theater, restaurant, bookstore, and library had similar policies as the Drafthouse, or this sandwich shop.
Which for 95% of all customers would be an iPhone
I doubt that very much. iPhones are about as annoying as Android devices. They all feel gimped in comparison to what we expect of them, they all have some kludgey feeling features, they all have service and other extraneous annoyances. Hell, iPhones can't handle a vast swath of the internet still thanks to not supporting Flash (love it or hate it, it is an accepted "standard"). iPhones have as many problems as Android.
It, in the end, once again boils down to taste, and that taste is largely a subjective judgement about shiny UI elements and packaging aesthetics.
I picked an Android based phone because I like how it looks, and operates. I actually find it more aesthetically pleasing than an iOS product (agree or disagree, I think the Droid X is nice looking). I also like the fact that a single corporation doesn't dictate how I use my device, or try to tell me what I can't use for my own moral good. I like the fact that it pretty much integrates all my Google, and other online, services flawlessly.
Complimenting Android doesn't mean I'm disparaging Apple. It just works better for me. My father, who is completely technologically illiterate, played around with both iOS and Android based devices, before settling on an Android device.
Apple products aren't better than anyone else's. They're merely comparable. Ditto for Google, ditto for Microsoft, ditto for whatever else.
Also, none of my "non-tech" friends have any issues with Android (or previously Blackberry) phones. Its not like your using CLI to do stuff.
ZOMG how did people ever live without them?! Its a miracle that humans managed to survive tens (hundreds) of thousands of years without cell phones, much less travel from point A to point B without being eaten by bears!
My father is a trucker, he's traveled all over the country safely without a cellphone. Now he has one (and repeatedly states that he can't live without it), and his "emergency usage of it" is to have random banal conversations while driving (badly), and to cut off normal conversations for long periods of time whenever it makes a beeping sound, while veering madly all over the freeway.
Cellphones are great and all, but they aren't really that important. If my cellphone disappeared tomorrow, all I'd really miss is the ability to hit Wikipedia at a whim, and I suppose we'd have to break down and get a land line. I wouldn't really miss it. If everyone's cellphone suddenly dissolved, the world would tick on much as normal, civilization wouldn't break down, we all suddenly wouldn't get killed by wandering moose on the freeway, nothing terrible would happen. Hell, I wouldn't have to listen to annoying people shout about their sex lives, and shopping habits, in public, which would be a net gain. I might be able to go to a movie theater again, and sit in a better resturant without getting very angry. I might even feel safer on the freeway (angry moose outbreak aside) since morons wouldn't chatting about completely inconsequential things and thus risking my life.
That said, I have nothing against the technology, nor the people who have managed to learn to use them responsibly. I just can't stand the "can't live without it" bullshit. Its a mere gadget. It isn't terribly important in the scheme of things, no matter how much we invest in them. If someone doesn't want one, thats fine, its their choice. I don't see how people can jump on them and basically tell them THEY MUST HAVE IT, or one day they will be sorry, and/or die at the hands of errant moose.
Perhaps they'd be happier without? Isn't that all that matters?
You've got a huge ass used car dealership. they're so huge that they've put all the competition out of business. no other used car lots around. The government says "that's not fair, there is now no competition" and mandates that the car lot now allow other outside car salesmen to walk on to their lot and sell their cars. The outside salesmen can sell the cars for lower than the lot salesmen because the lot salesmen need to bump up their prices to account for property taxes, keeping auction-goers on staff (where do you think those cars come from), electricity, etc. etc.
Except the city mandated originally that there can only be one car dealership within city limits, and then fronted a huge share of the cost, and some of the property to the owner of the mandated singular dealership. Said dealership for years, then, only sold older model cars at a huge markup because of the mandated lack of competition, and eventually got so arrogant to sell beat-up, non-running, cars as new models without having to tell the customer (where else can the customer go?).
Eventually someone realized that this wasn't good for the customers at all, and mandated that the monolithic monopoly lot had to rent out some of its space for competition for the sake of the customers. The other want-to-be dealers can't open their own lots because of the huge cost (the monolithic monopoly has all of the available real-estate for dealerships, and the cost of opening a new one is impossible to front).
This situation is MORE anti-capitalist than the alternative of forcing giant dealers to open their lots at cost. The state granted (both artificial and naturally bounded) monopoly is far more harmful than forcing monopolies to open up. This situation is also why we have some of the worst internet of the developed world.
I'm pissy because I realized I'm paying Cox for 15 megabits, and getting, on average, 6, which lately has been actually 3 (rendering Netflix unusable). Yes, it is "up to 15", but in turth I've never seen it even hit 10. And we can't switch to the only competition (Qwest) since they have burned us before when we lived in an apartment that only allowed Qwest (we were paying for 5mbits, and got 157kps, with around 50% downtime.)
If you support those who also support evil, you are evil. Maybe you simply have been mislead by taking what others say as fact without doing any of your own research... To ignore, excuse, or say nothing in the face of evil (such as making committing genocide against an entire culture, religion, and people a central, non-negotiable goal) is to be evil.
I don't support ANY evil, regardless of who is committing it. It is very hard to "research evil", since the term itself is vague, and often misused as a mere pejorative against any idea, culture, or person who we do not like, or whose values conflict with our own. Often time when we bandy the term about, we ignore the fact that we, too, can commit evil. We are blinded by our own proximity to it. Take the U.S. for example, we LOVE to use that term on our enemies, but we ignore the fact that we have been very capable of it ourselves (since we ourselves are obviously right and virtuous to a fault, we must be at the price of severe cognitive dissonance), this is equally true of many vocal Islamist governments and militant groups, screaming that the U.S. is evil, while blowing up civilians and innocents (which would be "evil" in my dictionary). (some of) Israel isn't immune from evil either, no matter how evil (some of) their enemy is, it doesn't clear them. Evil isn't negated by other evils. If you have a "big evil" fighting a "little evil", the actions of both remain evil.
As you stated, there is no middle ground.
Anti-Jewish/Israeli bigotry & hatred has been around for centuries. The current anti-Jewish hatred & bigotry in the Middle East is the very same hatred & bigotry, revived, that drove the horrors of Germany in WW2 and others before and since.
No argument there. Antisemitism is harmful, and somewhat scary. Any form of xenophobia, bigotry, or mass hatred is likewise scary, frightful, and act as fuel for atrocities and evil. I'm not arguing that "Jews are evil", or that "Israel is evil". I have nothing against Jews or most Israelis, so painting me as antisemitic, or a skinhead, is ridiculous, and, to be honest, somewhat idiotic. I have nothing against the religion (in fact I have more respect for it than its other monotheistic siblings), ethnic group, or even the country. I just question some of the countries actions. To me this is legitimate, I also question my own countries actions, but don't hate the people that are contained within that country, nor even the country itself.
Many current Islamic clerics speak openly and with great enthusiasm and nostalgia for Hitler and the days of the Holocaust, and wish the job finished. They carry clerics spewing such screeds regularly on Al-Jazeera. Just because Hitler and Germany were defeated doesn't mean that the anti-Semitic hatred went away, particularly in the Arab/Islamic world.
This IS frightful and abhorrent.
Whenever Israel suffers a rocket attack, another suicide bomber, or a family including infants and children brutally murdered in their beds, the Palestinians dance, sing, and hand out treats in the streets all across the Territories. Where are the widespread celebrations on the streets of Tel Aviv when a Palestinian civilian/child/infant is killed? Does it make a difference to you that a majority of Palestinians think Hitler was a great guy and had the right idea?
Some of them do. And some Israelis are very happy when Israel kills civilians as well, I'm sure. So happy that they give their government free rein to attack and target civilians, and to oppress the "Israeli Palestinians" internally, they refuse to do their part to END the goddamn circus, so are perpetuating it as well. Failure to condemn evil actions are like the actions themselves. Celebrating ANYONE'S death is disgusting, no matter how you feel about them. Killing innocents and civilians is disgusting universally, no matter how much we agree with the greater "cause
If you can't see any moral difference, then you'd have been okie-dokie with the Final Solution and the Holocaust. At least you aren't alone. There are a lot of "skinheads" that believe just as you and the Palestinians do.
Quite a strawman there... I don't agree with irrational, baseless, violence from anyone, for any reason. Nazis and the Holocaust were atocities and tragedies. Skinheads are bigoted morons. Jews can be biggotted morons, as well as Arabs. I don't care how sypathetic you are, if you start performing violence against innocents, no matter how nice sounding your rational, your no longer in the right.
Furthermore, I find Zionism to be about as patently ridiculous as Manifest Destiny was in America, or whatever any ethnic group finds as a nice term to sum up the repression of any other ethnic group. I also find the sects of Palestinians who want to exterminate the Jews, or deny Israel completely to be absurd and abhorent. All of these groups hold a mere ideology above people, and all of these groups made up pretty rhetoric to cover banal intolerance and xenophobia.
Again, and I'm sure this point will still be missed completely by you, I don't hold much sympathy for the violent fringes of the various Palestinian movements. I hold the same amount of sympathy for them as I do the extreme sects of Zionist Isrealis. None. Defending yourself is fine, and as such Israel has some right to violence (as would the Palestinians), but once this right crosses over to harm caused to civilians... You lose moral high ground.
How is raising apartment blocks full of innocents to kill possibly one "terrorist", or killing kids for throwing rocks different than Palestinains firing on Jewish settlements, or morons strapping bombs on themselves and blowing up innocents at clubs and stores? Both are outside the realm that any civilized society should accept.
But then again, you have proven that there is no arguing with you... Since I disagree with you I must be a crypto-nazi, who is a closeted skinhead. This is obvious, since you hold the only opinion worth considering, and everyone else loves Hitler.
Someday people will be able to have a rational, and constructive, discussion on the affairs of the Middle East. But that day is not yet here.
Yes I know they are not the same quality or speed but joe cardboard does not know that.
Actually the $999 MacBook is roughly comparable to a $500 "normal" laptop, component-wise. Since switching to Intel, Macs have been no different than PCs, using much the same generic, commodity, hardware and components.
About 3-4 years back my girlfriend got a $1200 MacBook Pro for Christmas, and I bought a $600 HP laptop. My laptop had more ram, a slightly beefier processor of the same type, and a larger HDD and a marginally larger screen screen. The only difference was the MacBook had a better GPU, and the screen was a wee bit better. The only real difference was that her PC had OS X, and mine had Vista (ech... quickly replaced with various Linux flavors).
Her computer, before completely dying, was in the shop several times. I've never had a failure on my laptop.
She grew up in an "Apple Household" (she's from Palo Alto originally), and only owned various Apple products since I've known her. The MacBook was the last straw, she's now using a modified Dell (all my old components go there when I upgrade), and using Windows 7. For a 4-5 year stretch in the mid 2000's (can we call them the "naughties" yet?) I dropped my expensive home built computer habit and swapped to a PPC powered Apple laptop. I loved it. It was simple, I didn't have to worry about it, it was great for college when I just wanted to serve media and write papers. After college I continued the trend, grabbing an Intel powered Mac Mini (the very first gen, about a week from release). That only lasted a year, before I gave up and decided that building my own computers was cheaper and easier, especially since there was no difference between them anymore.
Lately I've been underwhelmed with Apple's actual computers. Especially with Lion pushing things towards iOS (which I find absolutely abhorant, and the exact opposite of where computer should be going). It isn't going to be installed on my heavily modified and upgraded Mini (new processor, new GPU). And once my Mini dies, or Apple's introduction to minor API changes that drive all devs from supporting anything running an OS X version older than one iteration; it will be dissected and hung on my garage wall with all my other obsolete boxes, and replaced with a nice Atom nettop, like my Windows 7 HTPC.
Not the AC, but I'll give it a try. Without touching on the political or philosophical premises, one can simply say that Rand couldn't write decent prose to save her life. She was of the "why write three words, when you can write 300 to say the same thing" school of literature. She also let her ideologies get in the way of a perfectly good narrative. So unless your reading it for the philosophy, there really isn't a point.
Also her characters were caricatures. Ill written, two dimensional, and for the most part completely unsympathetic. Reading Atlas Shrugged all I could think of any of the characters was, "who cares?". I personally wouldn't care if her dreaded undermensch bugbear came and ate them all up, which isn't really a good thing for a book whose primary purpose is to proselytize her pet philosophy; give me a reason to care!
Her pet philosophy is another matter, but that doesn't really matter in this context. Whether I agree with her, or not, doesn't change the fact that she was one of the weakest narrative authors of her time. Her actual straight nonfiction essays and rants were written much better than her fiction.
Slashdot: fighting shallow 2D stereotypes with other shallow 2D stereotypes since 1997.
I agree. I have a Phenom II x4 965, and it mostly goes to waste, when I used to game more it was nice, but that habit has been flagging lately. It comes in handy when I process large batches of RAW images, or transcode, but I don't really do those as often as I could (or would like). Most of the time I might get two cores up to around 20%. My old Core 2 Duo (2.4Ghz ish) laptop works just fine for pretty much everything, its little crappy Intel GMA GPU is the main bottleneck I ever experience. My new-ish Radeon is similarly wasted most of the time (5700 series). Basically the only resource I come close to maxing out is RAM, you can never really have enough.
Monitors are always good. For some reason he has no problem with his crappy old LCD, while his computer needs to be in the top 10% of commercial desktops. His monitor is hideous, with pretty much no color accuracy, its tiny, its slow, its... Ugh. I play this up a bit too, since I want it to mount on the inside of a kitchen cabinet,, its damn hard to find small monitors these days.
There is a large segment that now really do us their computer as nothing but an internet terminal.
This would be both of my parents, if you put it as "internet terminal and magic solitaire box". But... In my father's case, he would NEVER buy a browser-computer (as another person here put it "webtop"). He basically uses his computer for email and light browsing, and the occasional foray into tax software (and downloading malware). His old computer (from 2002) was getting long in the tooth, so he went out to buy a new one, asking my geekly advice. I told him get something light and cheap, probably some flavor of low end Intel (like a cheap i5), with a couple Gb of RAM and some flavor of integrated video, basically go for cheap since his needs aren't very high. My real advice was for him to get a Mac (goodbye literally daily free tech support!) or a laptop, but both of these were dismissed without any thought. Preferably something with a cheap bundled monitor to replace his 12" (square), ten year old flatscreen.
He came home with a quad core Phenom II (3.1Ghz or so, forgot the name) with 6Gb of DDR3, and some mid-range NVidea card. The idea of power was much more important to him than something he could actually use. His new computer is almost up to par with my decent gaming rig, and he will never load a game, edit/transcode video, compile code, or do anything that really taxes his computer.
Why would he ever want a computer that isn't one of the most powerful available at a retail shop?
He was breifly going to get a laptop (so he could do his bills on it, and not his desktop, someone on the radio said it was "more secure", who am I to argue?), but complained about how big and expensive they were, so I told him to get a small, cheap, netbook. He scoffed, pointing to some giant 18" laptop with a harcore desktop CPU and a pretty good GPU, asking why I would recommend such an under-powered computer to him!
This is how a lot of people are. You must get the absolute best *whatever* that money can buy, even if you'll never use 10% of it. Like buying a performance car just so you can sit in rush hour traffic averaging 5-10mph, while your speedometer goes up to 250.
To be honest though, there's a part of me that wishes Frontline waited until they could actually talk to Mannings.
Perhaps thats the root of the problem. His father, who was the closest we got to inside information on Manning, wasn't very sympathetic to me. He rubbed me a bit the wrong way. Assange is never terribly sympathetic, and the actual interviewer seemed to be completely focused on the sensational (gay narrative), and not Manning as a person. And Adrian Lamo might be one of the least believable, likable, or even sympathetic men in recent history.
The "falling in with hackers " bit made me almost fall out of my chair, though.
Pretty much the whole thing just told me that there was a lot more going on underneath, and that none of us will probably ever actually know the full story, much less the truly interesting bits.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not claiming it was a "hit piece" or part of some US Government conspiracy, I just think was a fairly flawed, and weak, peice of journalism. Bellow Frontline's generally decent standards.
Assange is a hero and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying, pure and simple.
No, he's a dick that had a nice idea. He's still and asshole though. If anyone is a hero in the whole story it would be Manning.
Though, I agree, the Frontline special was a bit moronic. I really doubt that Manning turned leaker only because he was a "troubled gay" like they portrayed. I find it amusing that neither Frontline or Assange actually tried to discus any plausible motive that he had to leak that information.
I'm not sure what your other beef with PBS is... It is leagues better than the networks for quality reporting. Not perfect, but media never has been.
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The road to hell is paved with moral equivalency.
Perhaps so. but I don't see any rational way of assigning moral superiority to either the Palestinians or the Isrealis.
I will do as I generally do, and sympathise for the silent majority of Isrealis and Palestinians who don't really care about the blind idealistic dogma that drives either side of the conflict, and just want to be left in peace.