The idea of libertarian (small 'l') thought is simplicity itself. Consenting adults should be free to do whatever they please with their property and their own body and should be free to believe whatever they want. They should be able to exercise those freedoms whether or not someone else doesn't like it; anyone who doesn't like their actions is free to provide a counter-example in the form of how they deal with their own body, property, and beliefs.
Almost. I am a small "L" libertarian, or at least I self-label myself a "social libertarian", and find your definition correct but overly broad, and too close to capital "L" Libertarian dogma. Consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they please, but with the caveat, as long as it does no harm to anyone else, or infringes on the rights, freedoms or wellbeing of other people. This is why I am a "social libertarian" and not a Libertarian. The Libertarians do fine until they start ranting about free markets and Ayn Rand, which to me violates libertarianism as often they HATE the idea of any regulation, which opens up abuse of the rights and freedoms of others more often than not. Also small "l" libertarianism is not against government regulation, or governance in general, since it realizes the whole aspect of a "social contract" and not just blind egotism.
I'm being harsh. Let me rephrase that in a less trollish way; Small "L" libertarianism endorses complete individual freedom, as long as it does not violate the freedoms of others. The difference between different flavors of libertarianism lie in what lines there are, what rights you recognize as uninfringable, and what values you place on commerce and society (and which you put emphasis on).
I agree, asshats, in general, like to enforce their views on others. Libertarians are no different, their utopia sounds just as hellish to me as a theocracy, or the utopia of extreme liberals. For any group there are true believers who are so convinced of their individual truth that they would will it to be enforced on everyone. No ideology is free from this contingent.
Libertarians, it seems, have a higher contingent of true believers than most political ideology, or at least their true believers are louder and more dogmatic.
I agree with all of your points. I break with the NRA and extreme libertarian crowd when it comes to complete, unfettered, access to guns. Some people in this country think access to guns should be universal and ubiquitous (and interpret the US Constitution thusly), I have a hard time with this. Gun, I personally feel, should be more like motor vehicles, where the owner has to display some level of knowledge, restraint, and proficiency to own and operate them, and the privilege can be revoked at the slightest lapse in judgement.
I think the need for "protection" is both a symptom of America's deeper problems, and also a convenient bit of propaganda by the pro-gun lobby. Of all the people I know who own guns (which is quite a bit, living in the Southwest), only once has someone I know used them for self-defense, not counting law enforcement. I have never felt the need to carry a firearm for this reason, despite living in some nasty areas of my city. The only time I've felt it necessary is when I was in the wilderness where there are some odd, and erratic, characters (which is where the one case of gun self-defense I know of happened as well). We are a paranoid nation, as well as a violent one, we perceive our environment as much more violent than the statistics bear, generally.
My state passed a law where people can bring guns anywhere they like, regardless of the property owners wishes, lately. This includes bars. To me this is complete nonsense.
We can often veer into complete insanity when it comes to guns. I admit this. But you really can't just blame the guns. We LOVE violence here, a quick survey of our media proves this. We glorify it, and revel in it. We must change this to bring our crime levels in line with the rest of the civilized world. Look at places like our neighbors up north (Canada), where they have a huge amount of guns, and relatively unfettered access to them, but a low level of gun-crime.
If every gun in the US was used to shoot someone, there wouldn't be anyone left. This, in itself, is proof that not every gun is used for shooting people. In fact there are so many guns in the US, that if even a majority of them were used to kill someone, we would still be all dead. My mother owns three guns, and has NEVER pointed them at person or animal. Same with my father (excluding a couple rattlesnakes). If and when I convince my anti-gun Californian girlfriend that guns are not evil, I will probably never point it at an animal or person. Some people do, obviously, but many don't.
For the record, the US does have some crazy gun violence statistics, but I doubt that many of them are purely caused by the amount of guns. There is a deeper cultural problem here, as evident by out non-gun related violence crime levels. We are just violent. We would be a violent culture with or without a glut of guns.
Saying that having many guns cause gun violence is silly. I also have a full bar in my living room, and am not an alcoholic!
HFCS is generally used in everything here, thanks to corn subsidies. It actually costs more (pre-subsidy) to make HFCS than it does to use real sugar, but thanks to subsidies it is actually cheaper to use HFCS. As a result EVERYTHING has HFCS, and real sugar is vanishingly rare outside of niche products (organic labels, etc...) that cost around twice as much.
Judging from the Buzz surrounding Mexican and Passover Coke (which use cane sugar, instead of HFCS), I would say a large portion of the population, or at least a vocal population, prefer the real sugar variety over the HFCS variety. Though this might have something to do with age, since older people grew up with sugar sweetened beverages, while the younger generation (sometime in the mid-80s) grew up with the HFCS types.
I'm personally more annoyed with people adding sweeteners to EVERYTHING. I feel like I might be one of the few people in the world who lack a sweet tooth. I'm especially annoyed with them ruining tomatoes and sweet corn, both are now so sweet that they make my jaw hurt.
Americans have the palette of a two year old. The sweeter the better.
It does help explain why we are so damn fat, though.
None of the lefties I know swap the buttons, even if they use the mouse on the left side. I'm sure some do, but I'm guessing it is pretty rare.
But then again most of the lefties I know are perfectly capable of using a mouse on the right side of the keyboard with decent accuracy, as well. I'm a lefty, and on my home computer the mouse is on the left (with default buttons), but I keep the mouse on the right for pretty much every other computer I use. Unless I need a high degree of accuracy, which requires me to lift the mouse, move it to the left, and be done with it.
My only issue with using things on the right side, is it becomes painful after awhile. But this probably has nothing to do with being a lefty, it probably has to do with a broken wrist that never quite healed properly.
I tried switching the buttons for a while, but it was more annoying than it was worth. Using the mouse on the left, with the default button scheme seemed easier, and required less muscle memory retraining. I'm sure my left-middle finger is every bit as strong and... ahem... dexterous as my left-index finger now, after however many decades of practice.
At least I've never actually ran into any problems using my left middle finger as the "left click" finger (being that the leftmost mouse button is still the left-most, irregardless of which side of the keyboard your using it on).
On every public computer in the world I use the mouse on the right side without problems. On my own personal computer the mouse is on the left. I don't understand why I would want to intentionally gimp myself when I don't have to. Also, in gaming, it keeps me from using the annoying WSAD keys, so I can use the arrow keys, which I find superior to WSAD.
As for using "righty" ergonomic mice, I would rather not. I don't like them, even in right/left/whatever flavors, they are generally too bulky, and apparently I hold my hands oddly while mousing regardless of left or right (generally I navigate with very high sensitivity, and only use two fingers to push the mouse about) I like my ambidextrous Razor Copperhead, and my 4 button ambidextrous Logitech on their own merits, and not just that they are right/left agnostic.
Also, directed to the GP, what the hell is up with this whole "if you don't do it like me; your dumb" bullshit? By using that line of reasoning, it makes me really, really, doubt that you are some paragon of intellect.
Oh dear, a random Slashdot person thinks I'm stupid!
More to the point, I think PC gaming has some strengths over console gaming (and visa versa, obviously).
First, you get better graphics, and generally much better hardware than consoles (often cheaper, too). You also get better a better mod scene thanks to PCs not being completely locked down. While things like the XBOX arcade are nice, you have a much larger variety of small (often free) games on a PC thanks to having the whole internet as your oyster. Your games aren't tied to one piece of proprietary hardware, I have games I bought in the early 90s installed on my gaming rig, which have been on around 10 separate computers over time, in that same space many consoles broke, and are annoying to find, so I can't play the games from them anymore. To me, at least, a keyboard and mouse and necessary for most types of games, like RTSs and FPSs (the first time I played HALO, I felt like a complete retard, even though I generally dominated on PC FPSs). Consoles tie you down to only developers that the console manufacture likes, PC games don't do this, they are developer agnostic. etc...
It boils down to choice and preference, and neither choice is mutually exclusive. I personally prefer my gaming rig over buying a "hardcore" console like the PS3 or XBOX 360, but I do own a Wii for party games and bowling. When I was contemplating buying a 360, I noticed that all the games I would have gotten for it are for a PC as well, so I didn't get it. Since I already own a PC, and have better hardware than the 360. That, and, on games like Dragon Age, the PC version gets consistently higher reviews than the console versions thanks to having better graphics and better controls.
I haven't had a driver problem since the early days of Vista, and never had this DRM BSD problem you speak of.
I recently replaced an aging Mac Mini with a Zotoc and "Zbox", which has a Atom D510 (Dual core, 1.66Ghz) and an NVIDIA ION chip. I threw Ubuntu on it (after testing Mint, which was too Windows-y for me), it worked perfectly except for getting HDMI sound, and there is a bit of tearing on video.
I did EVERYTHING I found online, including the painful and annoying alsa upgrade, and nothing worked. It has the same problem as the dying mini, I need to run the audio via the headphone jack through my old receiver. Not a killer, but annoying as hell.
By everything, I do mean everything. I changed the inputs via alsa, and via the sound config in Ubuntu. I updated the NVIDEA drivers. I messed with the BIOS. I waved religious artifacts from every religion I could think of at it. I swore liberally at it (scaring my cat and girlfriend in the process). And finally gave up. It got to the point where I was just going to stick an old copy of XP on it, and call it done.
Apparently it works fine with various Myth distros. But it fails completely in 10.4.
The sad thing is that I was within milimeters of convincing my girlfriend that Linux was awesome, and worth installing on her upcoming netbook.
It made me realize, that for all the progress Linux has made over the years, it still has a bit to go before it can really compete with Windows or OS X.
If anyone has the same hardware, and managed to make HMDI audio work outside of a Myth install (don't care for/need the DVR stuff), please let me know how.
... he discusses the story of Christopher Langan, a man who ended up working on a horse farm in rural Missouri despite having an IQ of 195 (Einstein's was 150).[2] Gladwell points out that Langan has not reached a high level of success because of the environment he grew up in.
I don't see the point. Perhaps the guy enjoyed working at a horse farm? A high IQ doesn't mean you WANT to be an-Einstein-type person. Hell, I have a high IQ, and my dream job has nothing to do with being a physicist, corporate brain, or academic. I'd actually rather be a forest ranger than a theoretical physicist.
Also, IQ isn't as important as people make it out to be. I know several people with high IQs who are pretty much idiots working at menial jobs who haven't made anything of their lives, and I know many people with lower IQs (sub-100) who are happy, and very intelligent. I'm not saying that IQ is meaningless, it just has less meaning than people would like it have. In broad strokes we can say that yes, someone with a 150 IQ is brighter than someone with an IQ of 90, but it really doesn't mean to much beyond that. We don't even know what the hell IQ tests measure.
Chuck sucked the last season. I probably won't be watching the next.
It turned into some stupid cliche drama-romance crap, and had all the geekish humor sucked from it. I'm sick of romantic tension, it is nothing but a cover for bad writing, and more often then not is the only thing that drives most modern television shows. Often it seems you reach for the overbearing romantic tension card when you have long run out of plot ideas. Its the jumping the shark for the 21st century.
Sure, a little romantic tension can be a nice thing, but when your whole "hook" is "will he get the hot girl who obviously has feelings for him" you pretty much failed. I stopped caring at some point. "Will Chuck finally get the girl?" stopped mattering, the only reason I watched past that point was for the potential of hot Scott Bacula action, and Casey. Sadly the "will he get the girl" thing is the ONLY thing they've done last season.
Though for some reason I don't mind it as much in Castle, though after 4 seasons this might be different.
Evolution doesn't care about the human race, or how smart it is. It only cares about those who breed the most. If being intelligent isn't adaptive and gives a survival boost, or increasing the odds of reproduction, or the survivability of the resulting children, then it will not be selected for. If being a promiscuous moron is best fit for the environment, then being a promiscuous moron is indeed good for humanity (in a sense).
Which one? Your pet theory versus facts, or everyone else's versus yours?
Thats the thing I love about creationism, I'm guessing that the "teach the controversy" people would get really mad about teaching EVERY creation myth from every large culture throughout history.
"Well Billy, the nasty scientists say something about natural selection, but in truth we actually came from a big space egg."
I wouldn't see they have room to complain though, since there is just as much factual evidence for the origin of man via giant space egg, as there is from the Judeo-Christian sky man.
If I say Frankenstein (to use a literary example) is about the conflict of man versus science, and you say it is about family relations, we both may or may not be correct. If you say it is about a giant, glowing, purple duck, then you are 100% wrong. No "dissent doubleplusungood crimething" involved. For everything there is a limited amount of correct avenues of interpretation, and an infinite area outside of it that is just plain wrong.
If I say Sartre's Being and Nothingness is about smurfs, I am wrong, and deserve all the ridicule I get.
I don't understand the birth of this new flavor of relativism and anti-elitism. How the hell did EVERY lunatic opinion become worthy of debate, especially if it comes from someone completely uninformed, since, obviously, people who have devoted their lives to a field MUST be wrong. Damn elitists! They should realize that your average NASCAR and Fox news watching high school graduate is far more capable of grasping academic aspects of reality than someone who spent time mastering it.
I do understand, actually. All the idiots want to be right, since their golden little opinions must be right, or else they wouldn't have faith^W^Wbelieve in them.
Yes, by Stanford, and its called the Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Its been around of a longish period of time, I used it in college when I was working on my Philosophy degree. Both it and the paper Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy were invaluable sources of find good starting points for papers and discussions.
Also; regular old print encyclopedias have been using extensive peer review for (hundreds of) years. I don't think bringing an standard practice online is really that big of a deal. The Stanford reference is just a normal encyclopedia of philosophy, but in HTML rather than boring ink and pulp, so it isn't a very surprising development.
Like the recent wikileaks attack, we will soon have a few rounds of "news" stories about how The Pirate Bay supports terrorism and child pornography and how the principle people behind The Pirate Bay and The Pirate Party are really horrible people, probably rapists or child molesters.
Huh? Did I miss something? When and how was Wikileaks attacked?
I suppose I also missed the advent of a unified world government, last I checked the governments of the world were still functioning like a severely autistic bowling team with bits of their brains removed at random. People who believe in some form of "new world order" have much more faith in humanity than I, I have a hard time even beleiving that 10 people can pull something off without a maximum degree of incompetence, and the potential level of incompetence goes up exponentially with every added member. By my reckoning, if you got every government in the world together, they couldn't even make toast without razing a rain-forest, starting a small nuclear war, and eventually burning the toast.
First, who is "we"? Ubuntu is nice, and it has done some very good thing for Linux distros as a whole, such as pushing some degree of usability and uniformity, which was terribly lacking previously. As a result I've actually managed to use Linux for a decent amount of my needs, where previously I went through hundreds of month long trials of hundreds of distos before settling back on Windows or a Mac OS flavor ("I have to hand write my own damn drivers and config files just to get an industry standard x to work? Screw this!")
That said, I really don't care if Ubuntu, or any other flavor of Linux becomes ubiquitous. Being popular isn't what drives me to an OS (unless that popularity gets wide 3rd party support, then...). I don't care if my grandmother, if she were living, uses Ubuntu, and currently I would recommended against it. I'm even pondering whether recommending Ubuntu Netbook remix for my girlfriend was a good idea. She mocks my previous Ubuntu cheerleading after seeing what a futile pain it was to set up my HTPC with a Nvidea ION chip (failed getting sound over HDMI repeatedly, even after rebuilding basically everything). She also mocks the fact that I still, despite over a week of work haven't got it doing a job as music box as well as a Mac, out of the box.
Another example, you can't edit the configs of your damn screensavers without installing xscreensavers, which does strange thing to power managament while co--installed with the default Gnome savers.
While hateful, both of these problems show Linux' strength, as well as its weaknesses. Linux is a tinkerer OS, its for those of us who still, for whatever strange reason, want complete control over our system. To increase in popularity "we" would have to sacrifice this aggravating and empowering identity. But, once Ubuntu, or any other Linux flavor, becomes popular to the masses, it would have to alienate its core. And in the case of OSS software, once you piss of the geeks, you piss off your developers, the very people who make your software. Also, if Ubuntu turns into Windows 2 or OS X 2, it isn't competing anymore. If I had to choose for a silly, locked down OS, would I choose the unsupported, kudgy one, or the one backed by millions of dollars of development and a huge amount of hours of testing? Outside of the ideological bits of open source, the answer is pretty clear.
Most people don't care about GPL, or open source, or whatnot.
The other nice thing about Ubuntu is that it is Linux for noobs, it drives people into open source, and into alternative operating systems. It keeps the hobby alive, and forestalls the inevitable hell that will be computers as pure appliance.
Ideally Ubuntu would take Linux to where OS X (or NeXT) was supposed to take BSD. A very, very powerful core, on beneath of a very well designed gui. OS X started to fail when they decided locking things down, and copying 3rd party developers (to roll in their products as OS bloat, and advertising features) too precident over keeping things flexible. iOS moves this further towards the nasty walled-garden approach, and iOS is probably the future of all mainstream OSs, sadly.
Copying other OSs isn't going to be one of Linux strong points, if viewed from any other perspective than merely the size of the user base. Sure it makes ease of transition fine, but what is going to keep the people there? Hell, do away with buttons for all I care, rewrite GUI conventions completely. Make it as different as possible from OS X and Windows.
Make an OS based completely off of Gnome-do and the upcoming Gnome Shell, at that point windows widgets become completely superfluous.
Sorry for the rant, AC, had a bit too much coffee this morning.
The US only entered WWII after Pearl Harbor, it was forced into the war and it's all speculation what would have happened otherwise but it is far from certain the US would have come to our rescue.
To our credit we were supplying weapons and such to the British before we actually hopped in as a military power. Also, a lot of Americans were fighting along side the Canadians before the US decided to actually hop in, as well.
I agree though, presenting us as the "great white hope" is a bit much. When I was in high school I learned the the US bravely fought in WWII to defend the Jewish people from the Nazis. It was a nice thought, but sadly far far from the truth. Most Americans identified with the Nazis, and even held views similar (though maybe not as extreme) as their about racial an eugenic purity. The Japanese were an easier enemy to fight.
(Not to mention the fact that we gallantly fought in the Civil War to free slaves)
Music can be free (IP wise), and you can charge for it. Music can be free (as in gratis), and you can charge for live content and merchandise.
Or better, copyright can make the slightest shred of sense, and actually be geared towards the good of those "We the People" blokes, and not giant multinational corporations.
I think you can blame the law. When a law works against human nature, the law is flawed. After all, it is much easier to change a law than to rewrite human nature.
Thinking that editing a gconf value or changing a desktop theme is as simple as turning a paper upside down to the average Joe PC user.
but we're talking Gnome, on Ubuntu, which is a flavor of Linux. None of these terms encapsulate "average Joe PC user". The expectations are a bit higher.
Outside of this, it is far easier to switch your buttons/theme on Gnome (or KDE, or XFCE, or whatever windows manager you like) then it is to switch them in Windows or OS X. In neither of these can you really muck with the GUI outside of using 3rd party tools.
If you use Ubuntu daily, and you complain about where the buttons are, then I have very little sympathy for you. Ubuntu is far more customizable than any of the mainstream OSs. You actually have a choice on where you want your buttons.
If you don't like it, and are too lazy to spend 10 second on Googling the simple solution, then download a different distro that puts the buttons where you want them on install.
The goal for anyone drinking wine, beer or liquor should be to get drunk.
Huh? Why?
I often drink wine with dinner because some wines and foods compliment each other. I often sit back and drink a nice trappist ale, because I love the flavor. Often before bed I will sip a nice bourbon on the rocks on the patio while reading a decent book, just to wind down for bed.
But then again I have been known to eat for pleasure and not mere sustenance.
In other words:
The goal for anyone eating food should be to get fat.
Actually there are people who can tell these differences. As I said earlier in this discussion, I hung out with the HRM kids in college, and was in their wine club. Early we disclosed the price of wines before tasting and ranking, expensive wines always one. When we decided to keep them secret (from everyone but the organizer, meaning the servers didn't know either) the expensive wines still won, almost always, but cheaper wines tied more often and ranked generally higher. These kids had to pass a blind test where they determined the variety, the region, the alcohol content, and a vintage of random wines. Blind. I met, not long ago, the cheif taster for Starbucks, she could determine the difference between different regions of origin for beans, and different roast levels. Its amazing the information your body receives but you don't recognize for lack of training and practice.
I've also met experienced chefs who can discern amazing things, like minute amounts of certain ingredients, and in roughly what proportion they were used.
I think the "all wines are the same, only deluded snobs say they can tell the difference" is a symptom of the silly American low-brow pride thing, the disease that keeps them from actually enjoying real beer, and from enjoying food other than McDonalds processed crap. We want to be average and simple. We seem very hateful^Wdistrustful of anyone with any taste. Its just like our abiding hatred of anyone smarter than a NASCAR watching 6th grade dropout.
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The idea of libertarian (small 'l') thought is simplicity itself. Consenting adults should be free to do whatever they please with their property and their own body and should be free to believe whatever they want. They should be able to exercise those freedoms whether or not someone else doesn't like it; anyone who doesn't like their actions is free to provide a counter-example in the form of how they deal with their own body, property, and beliefs.
Almost. I am a small "L" libertarian, or at least I self-label myself a "social libertarian", and find your definition correct but overly broad, and too close to capital "L" Libertarian dogma. Consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they please, but with the caveat, as long as it does no harm to anyone else, or infringes on the rights, freedoms or wellbeing of other people. This is why I am a "social libertarian" and not a Libertarian. The Libertarians do fine until they start ranting about free markets and Ayn Rand, which to me violates libertarianism as often they HATE the idea of any regulation, which opens up abuse of the rights and freedoms of others more often than not. Also small "l" libertarianism is not against government regulation, or governance in general, since it realizes the whole aspect of a "social contract" and not just blind egotism.
I'm being harsh. Let me rephrase that in a less trollish way; Small "L" libertarianism endorses complete individual freedom, as long as it does not violate the freedoms of others. The difference between different flavors of libertarianism lie in what lines there are, what rights you recognize as uninfringable, and what values you place on commerce and society (and which you put emphasis on).
I agree, asshats, in general, like to enforce their views on others. Libertarians are no different, their utopia sounds just as hellish to me as a theocracy, or the utopia of extreme liberals. For any group there are true believers who are so convinced of their individual truth that they would will it to be enforced on everyone. No ideology is free from this contingent.
Libertarians, it seems, have a higher contingent of true believers than most political ideology, or at least their true believers are louder and more dogmatic.
I agree with all of your points. I break with the NRA and extreme libertarian crowd when it comes to complete, unfettered, access to guns. Some people in this country think access to guns should be universal and ubiquitous (and interpret the US Constitution thusly), I have a hard time with this. Gun, I personally feel, should be more like motor vehicles, where the owner has to display some level of knowledge, restraint, and proficiency to own and operate them, and the privilege can be revoked at the slightest lapse in judgement.
I think the need for "protection" is both a symptom of America's deeper problems, and also a convenient bit of propaganda by the pro-gun lobby. Of all the people I know who own guns (which is quite a bit, living in the Southwest), only once has someone I know used them for self-defense, not counting law enforcement. I have never felt the need to carry a firearm for this reason, despite living in some nasty areas of my city. The only time I've felt it necessary is when I was in the wilderness where there are some odd, and erratic, characters (which is where the one case of gun self-defense I know of happened as well). We are a paranoid nation, as well as a violent one, we perceive our environment as much more violent than the statistics bear, generally.
My state passed a law where people can bring guns anywhere they like, regardless of the property owners wishes, lately. This includes bars. To me this is complete nonsense.
We can often veer into complete insanity when it comes to guns. I admit this. But you really can't just blame the guns. We LOVE violence here, a quick survey of our media proves this. We glorify it, and revel in it. We must change this to bring our crime levels in line with the rest of the civilized world. Look at places like our neighbors up north (Canada), where they have a huge amount of guns, and relatively unfettered access to them, but a low level of gun-crime.
If every gun in the US was used to shoot someone, there wouldn't be anyone left. This, in itself, is proof that not every gun is used for shooting people. In fact there are so many guns in the US, that if even a majority of them were used to kill someone, we would still be all dead. My mother owns three guns, and has NEVER pointed them at person or animal. Same with my father (excluding a couple rattlesnakes). If and when I convince my anti-gun Californian girlfriend that guns are not evil, I will probably never point it at an animal or person. Some people do, obviously, but many don't.
For the record, the US does have some crazy gun violence statistics, but I doubt that many of them are purely caused by the amount of guns. There is a deeper cultural problem here, as evident by out non-gun related violence crime levels. We are just violent. We would be a violent culture with or without a glut of guns.
Saying that having many guns cause gun violence is silly. I also have a full bar in my living room, and am not an alcoholic!
HFCS is generally used in everything here, thanks to corn subsidies. It actually costs more (pre-subsidy) to make HFCS than it does to use real sugar, but thanks to subsidies it is actually cheaper to use HFCS. As a result EVERYTHING has HFCS, and real sugar is vanishingly rare outside of niche products (organic labels, etc...) that cost around twice as much.
Judging from the Buzz surrounding Mexican and Passover Coke (which use cane sugar, instead of HFCS), I would say a large portion of the population, or at least a vocal population, prefer the real sugar variety over the HFCS variety. Though this might have something to do with age, since older people grew up with sugar sweetened beverages, while the younger generation (sometime in the mid-80s) grew up with the HFCS types.
I'm personally more annoyed with people adding sweeteners to EVERYTHING. I feel like I might be one of the few people in the world who lack a sweet tooth. I'm especially annoyed with them ruining tomatoes and sweet corn, both are now so sweet that they make my jaw hurt.
Americans have the palette of a two year old. The sweeter the better.
It does help explain why we are so damn fat, though.
None of the lefties I know swap the buttons, even if they use the mouse on the left side. I'm sure some do, but I'm guessing it is pretty rare.
But then again most of the lefties I know are perfectly capable of using a mouse on the right side of the keyboard with decent accuracy, as well. I'm a lefty, and on my home computer the mouse is on the left (with default buttons), but I keep the mouse on the right for pretty much every other computer I use. Unless I need a high degree of accuracy, which requires me to lift the mouse, move it to the left, and be done with it.
My only issue with using things on the right side, is it becomes painful after awhile. But this probably has nothing to do with being a lefty, it probably has to do with a broken wrist that never quite healed properly.
I tried switching the buttons for a while, but it was more annoying than it was worth. Using the mouse on the left, with the default button scheme seemed easier, and required less muscle memory retraining. I'm sure my left-middle finger is every bit as strong and... ahem... dexterous as my left-index finger now, after however many decades of practice.
At least I've never actually ran into any problems using my left middle finger as the "left click" finger (being that the leftmost mouse button is still the left-most, irregardless of which side of the keyboard your using it on).
On every public computer in the world I use the mouse on the right side without problems. On my own personal computer the mouse is on the left. I don't understand why I would want to intentionally gimp myself when I don't have to. Also, in gaming, it keeps me from using the annoying WSAD keys, so I can use the arrow keys, which I find superior to WSAD.
As for using "righty" ergonomic mice, I would rather not. I don't like them, even in right/left/whatever flavors, they are generally too bulky, and apparently I hold my hands oddly while mousing regardless of left or right (generally I navigate with very high sensitivity, and only use two fingers to push the mouse about) I like my ambidextrous Razor Copperhead, and my 4 button ambidextrous Logitech on their own merits, and not just that they are right/left agnostic.
Also, directed to the GP, what the hell is up with this whole "if you don't do it like me; your dumb" bullshit? By using that line of reasoning, it makes me really, really, doubt that you are some paragon of intellect.
Oh dear, a random Slashdot person thinks I'm stupid!
More to the point, I think PC gaming has some strengths over console gaming (and visa versa, obviously).
First, you get better graphics, and generally much better hardware than consoles (often cheaper, too). You also get better a better mod scene thanks to PCs not being completely locked down. While things like the XBOX arcade are nice, you have a much larger variety of small (often free) games on a PC thanks to having the whole internet as your oyster. Your games aren't tied to one piece of proprietary hardware, I have games I bought in the early 90s installed on my gaming rig, which have been on around 10 separate computers over time, in that same space many consoles broke, and are annoying to find, so I can't play the games from them anymore. To me, at least, a keyboard and mouse and necessary for most types of games, like RTSs and FPSs (the first time I played HALO, I felt like a complete retard, even though I generally dominated on PC FPSs). Consoles tie you down to only developers that the console manufacture likes, PC games don't do this, they are developer agnostic. etc...
It boils down to choice and preference, and neither choice is mutually exclusive. I personally prefer my gaming rig over buying a "hardcore" console like the PS3 or XBOX 360, but I do own a Wii for party games and bowling. When I was contemplating buying a 360, I noticed that all the games I would have gotten for it are for a PC as well, so I didn't get it. Since I already own a PC, and have better hardware than the 360. That, and, on games like Dragon Age, the PC version gets consistently higher reviews than the console versions thanks to having better graphics and better controls.
I haven't had a driver problem since the early days of Vista, and never had this DRM BSD problem you speak of.
I think your lucky.
I recently replaced an aging Mac Mini with a Zotoc and "Zbox", which has a Atom D510 (Dual core, 1.66Ghz) and an NVIDIA ION chip. I threw Ubuntu on it (after testing Mint, which was too Windows-y for me), it worked perfectly except for getting HDMI sound, and there is a bit of tearing on video.
I did EVERYTHING I found online, including the painful and annoying alsa upgrade, and nothing worked. It has the same problem as the dying mini, I need to run the audio via the headphone jack through my old receiver. Not a killer, but annoying as hell.
By everything, I do mean everything. I changed the inputs via alsa, and via the sound config in Ubuntu. I updated the NVIDEA drivers. I messed with the BIOS. I waved religious artifacts from every religion I could think of at it. I swore liberally at it (scaring my cat and girlfriend in the process). And finally gave up. It got to the point where I was just going to stick an old copy of XP on it, and call it done.
Apparently it works fine with various Myth distros. But it fails completely in 10.4.
The sad thing is that I was within milimeters of convincing my girlfriend that Linux was awesome, and worth installing on her upcoming netbook.
It made me realize, that for all the progress Linux has made over the years, it still has a bit to go before it can really compete with Windows or OS X.
If anyone has the same hardware, and managed to make HMDI audio work outside of a Myth install (don't care for/need the DVR stuff), please let me know how.
... he discusses the story of Christopher Langan, a man who ended up working on a horse farm in rural Missouri despite having an IQ of 195 (Einstein's was 150).[2] Gladwell points out that Langan has not reached a high level of success because of the environment he grew up in.
I don't see the point. Perhaps the guy enjoyed working at a horse farm? A high IQ doesn't mean you WANT to be an-Einstein-type person. Hell, I have a high IQ, and my dream job has nothing to do with being a physicist, corporate brain, or academic. I'd actually rather be a forest ranger than a theoretical physicist.
Also, IQ isn't as important as people make it out to be. I know several people with high IQs who are pretty much idiots working at menial jobs who haven't made anything of their lives, and I know many people with lower IQs (sub-100) who are happy, and very intelligent. I'm not saying that IQ is meaningless, it just has less meaning than people would like it have. In broad strokes we can say that yes, someone with a 150 IQ is brighter than someone with an IQ of 90, but it really doesn't mean to much beyond that. We don't even know what the hell IQ tests measure.
Viggo... Definitely Viggo Mortenson.
That seems to be his type-cast role of late, some sort of bleak guy wandering around bleak things, and being generally bleak.
Chuck sucked the last season. I probably won't be watching the next.
It turned into some stupid cliche drama-romance crap, and had all the geekish humor sucked from it. I'm sick of romantic tension, it is nothing but a cover for bad writing, and more often then not is the only thing that drives most modern television shows. Often it seems you reach for the overbearing romantic tension card when you have long run out of plot ideas. Its the jumping the shark for the 21st century.
Sure, a little romantic tension can be a nice thing, but when your whole "hook" is "will he get the hot girl who obviously has feelings for him" you pretty much failed. I stopped caring at some point. "Will Chuck finally get the girl?" stopped mattering, the only reason I watched past that point was for the potential of hot Scott Bacula action, and Casey. Sadly the "will he get the girl" thing is the ONLY thing they've done last season.
Though for some reason I don't mind it as much in Castle, though after 4 seasons this might be different.
Evolution doesn't care about the human race, or how smart it is. It only cares about those who breed the most. If being intelligent isn't adaptive and gives a survival boost, or increasing the odds of reproduction, or the survivability of the resulting children, then it will not be selected for. If being a promiscuous moron is best fit for the environment, then being a promiscuous moron is indeed good for humanity (in a sense).
Evolution doesn't give a rats ass.
Which one? Your pet theory versus facts, or everyone else's versus yours?
Thats the thing I love about creationism, I'm guessing that the "teach the controversy" people would get really mad about teaching EVERY creation myth from every large culture throughout history.
"Well Billy, the nasty scientists say something about natural selection, but in truth we actually came from a big space egg."
I wouldn't see they have room to complain though, since there is just as much factual evidence for the origin of man via giant space egg, as there is from the Judeo-Christian sky man.
No.
If I say Frankenstein (to use a literary example) is about the conflict of man versus science, and you say it is about family relations, we both may or may not be correct. If you say it is about a giant, glowing, purple duck, then you are 100% wrong. No "dissent doubleplusungood crimething" involved. For everything there is a limited amount of correct avenues of interpretation, and an infinite area outside of it that is just plain wrong.
If I say Sartre's Being and Nothingness is about smurfs, I am wrong, and deserve all the ridicule I get.
I don't understand the birth of this new flavor of relativism and anti-elitism. How the hell did EVERY lunatic opinion become worthy of debate, especially if it comes from someone completely uninformed, since, obviously, people who have devoted their lives to a field MUST be wrong. Damn elitists! They should realize that your average NASCAR and Fox news watching high school graduate is far more capable of grasping academic aspects of reality than someone who spent time mastering it.
I do understand, actually. All the idiots want to be right, since their golden little opinions must be right, or else they wouldn't have faith^W^Wbelieve in them.
I already replied to you, but left out something interesting...
This has been around LONGER than Wikipedia, by around six years.
this has already been attempted.
Yes, by Stanford, and its called the Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Its been around of a longish period of time, I used it in college when I was working on my Philosophy degree. Both it and the paper Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy were invaluable sources of find good starting points for papers and discussions.
Also; regular old print encyclopedias have been using extensive peer review for (hundreds of) years. I don't think bringing an standard practice online is really that big of a deal. The Stanford reference is just a normal encyclopedia of philosophy, but in HTML rather than boring ink and pulp, so it isn't a very surprising development.
In other words; how is this news?
Like the recent wikileaks attack, we will soon have a few rounds of "news" stories about how The Pirate Bay supports terrorism and child pornography and how the principle people behind The Pirate Bay and The Pirate Party are really horrible people, probably rapists or child molesters.
Huh? Did I miss something? When and how was Wikileaks attacked?
I suppose I also missed the advent of a unified world government, last I checked the governments of the world were still functioning like a severely autistic bowling team with bits of their brains removed at random. People who believe in some form of "new world order" have much more faith in humanity than I, I have a hard time even beleiving that 10 people can pull something off without a maximum degree of incompetence, and the potential level of incompetence goes up exponentially with every added member. By my reckoning, if you got every government in the world together, they couldn't even make toast without razing a rain-forest, starting a small nuclear war, and eventually burning the toast.
First, who is "we"? Ubuntu is nice, and it has done some very good thing for Linux distros as a whole, such as pushing some degree of usability and uniformity, which was terribly lacking previously. As a result I've actually managed to use Linux for a decent amount of my needs, where previously I went through hundreds of month long trials of hundreds of distos before settling back on Windows or a Mac OS flavor ("I have to hand write my own damn drivers and config files just to get an industry standard x to work? Screw this!")
That said, I really don't care if Ubuntu, or any other flavor of Linux becomes ubiquitous. Being popular isn't what drives me to an OS (unless that popularity gets wide 3rd party support, then...). I don't care if my grandmother, if she were living, uses Ubuntu, and currently I would recommended against it. I'm even pondering whether recommending Ubuntu Netbook remix for my girlfriend was a good idea. She mocks my previous Ubuntu cheerleading after seeing what a futile pain it was to set up my HTPC with a Nvidea ION chip (failed getting sound over HDMI repeatedly, even after rebuilding basically everything). She also mocks the fact that I still, despite over a week of work haven't got it doing a job as music box as well as a Mac, out of the box.
Another example, you can't edit the configs of your damn screensavers without installing xscreensavers, which does strange thing to power managament while co--installed with the default Gnome savers.
While hateful, both of these problems show Linux' strength, as well as its weaknesses. Linux is a tinkerer OS, its for those of us who still, for whatever strange reason, want complete control over our system. To increase in popularity "we" would have to sacrifice this aggravating and empowering identity. But, once Ubuntu, or any other Linux flavor, becomes popular to the masses, it would have to alienate its core. And in the case of OSS software, once you piss of the geeks, you piss off your developers, the very people who make your software. Also, if Ubuntu turns into Windows 2 or OS X 2, it isn't competing anymore. If I had to choose for a silly, locked down OS, would I choose the unsupported, kudgy one, or the one backed by millions of dollars of development and a huge amount of hours of testing? Outside of the ideological bits of open source, the answer is pretty clear.
Most people don't care about GPL, or open source, or whatnot.
The other nice thing about Ubuntu is that it is Linux for noobs, it drives people into open source, and into alternative operating systems. It keeps the hobby alive, and forestalls the inevitable hell that will be computers as pure appliance.
Ideally Ubuntu would take Linux to where OS X (or NeXT) was supposed to take BSD. A very, very powerful core, on beneath of a very well designed gui. OS X started to fail when they decided locking things down, and copying 3rd party developers (to roll in their products as OS bloat, and advertising features) too precident over keeping things flexible. iOS moves this further towards the nasty walled-garden approach, and iOS is probably the future of all mainstream OSs, sadly.
Copying other OSs isn't going to be one of Linux strong points, if viewed from any other perspective than merely the size of the user base. Sure it makes ease of transition fine, but what is going to keep the people there? Hell, do away with buttons for all I care, rewrite GUI conventions completely. Make it as different as possible from OS X and Windows.
Make an OS based completely off of Gnome-do and the upcoming Gnome Shell, at that point windows widgets become completely superfluous.
Sorry for the rant, AC, had a bit too much coffee this morning.
The US only entered WWII after Pearl Harbor, it was forced into the war and it's all speculation what would have happened otherwise but it is far from certain the US would have come to our rescue.
To our credit we were supplying weapons and such to the British before we actually hopped in as a military power. Also, a lot of Americans were fighting along side the Canadians before the US decided to actually hop in, as well.
I agree though, presenting us as the "great white hope" is a bit much. When I was in high school I learned the the US bravely fought in WWII to defend the Jewish people from the Nazis. It was a nice thought, but sadly far far from the truth. Most Americans identified with the Nazis, and even held views similar (though maybe not as extreme) as their about racial an eugenic purity. The Japanese were an easier enemy to fight.
(Not to mention the fact that we gallantly fought in the Civil War to free slaves)
Copyright is an item proved by the government for a common good.
Thanks for playing!
False dichotomy.
Music can be free (IP wise), and you can charge for it.
Music can be free (as in gratis), and you can charge for live content and merchandise.
Or better, copyright can make the slightest shred of sense, and actually be geared towards the good of those "We the People" blokes, and not giant multinational corporations.
I think you can blame the law. When a law works against human nature, the law is flawed. After all, it is much easier to change a law than to rewrite human nature.
Thinking that editing a gconf value or changing a desktop theme is as simple as turning a paper upside down to the average Joe PC user.
but we're talking Gnome, on Ubuntu, which is a flavor of Linux. None of these terms encapsulate "average Joe PC user". The expectations are a bit higher.
Outside of this, it is far easier to switch your buttons/theme on Gnome (or KDE, or XFCE, or whatever windows manager you like) then it is to switch them in Windows or OS X. In neither of these can you really muck with the GUI outside of using 3rd party tools.
If you use Ubuntu daily, and you complain about where the buttons are, then I have very little sympathy for you. Ubuntu is far more customizable than any of the mainstream OSs. You actually have a choice on where you want your buttons.
If you don't like it, and are too lazy to spend 10 second on Googling the simple solution, then download a different distro that puts the buttons where you want them on install.
The goal for anyone drinking wine, beer or liquor should be to get drunk.
Huh? Why?
I often drink wine with dinner because some wines and foods compliment each other. I often sit back and drink a nice trappist ale, because I love the flavor. Often before bed I will sip a nice bourbon on the rocks on the patio while reading a decent book, just to wind down for bed.
But then again I have been known to eat for pleasure and not mere sustenance.
In other words:
The goal for anyone eating food should be to get fat.
Actually there are people who can tell these differences. As I said earlier in this discussion, I hung out with the HRM kids in college, and was in their wine club. Early we disclosed the price of wines before tasting and ranking, expensive wines always one. When we decided to keep them secret (from everyone but the organizer, meaning the servers didn't know either) the expensive wines still won, almost always, but cheaper wines tied more often and ranked generally higher. These kids had to pass a blind test where they determined the variety, the region, the alcohol content, and a vintage of random wines. Blind. I met, not long ago, the cheif taster for Starbucks, she could determine the difference between different regions of origin for beans, and different roast levels. Its amazing the information your body receives but you don't recognize for lack of training and practice.
I've also met experienced chefs who can discern amazing things, like minute amounts of certain ingredients, and in roughly what proportion they were used.
I think the "all wines are the same, only deluded snobs say they can tell the difference" is a symptom of the silly American low-brow pride thing, the disease that keeps them from actually enjoying real beer, and from enjoying food other than McDonalds processed crap. We want to be average and simple. We seem very hateful^Wdistrustful of anyone with any taste. Its just like our abiding hatred of anyone smarter than a NASCAR watching 6th grade dropout.