One big difference though... You can train your taste buds to be more sensitive, or learn to discern more subtle differences than the untrained lay person. Whole industries depend on such "tasters", wine being one. Most distilleries, large coffee companies, ice cream companies, etc... depend on trained tasters. I rather doubt it is all a bunch of woo when several billion dollar industries depend on the advice of these people.
When I was in college I hung out with the hotel and restaurant management majors, and participated in their wine club. To pass their bar and bev requirement that had to do blind taste-tests, and be able to discern various vintages and regions by taste alone. And I managed to see them do this first hand in the club meeting, where I could barely tell various varieties apart.
Its about training. Your musician friends often hear music vary different than you do, and may be able to discern more nuance than you, just by experience and training. This has nothing to do with audiophile woo, but just normal experience and training.
Yes, often wine price points, and all the "we're wine insiders" stuff is idiotic and serves only to create an in group, or better marketting. At the same club, for the first year we told people all about what they were drinking, and then allowed them to rate the wine after the tasting. More expensive wines always won over cheap wines, foreign wines always won over domestic wines. The second no information was disclosed before tasting and rating. As a result the cheaper (9.99) wine tied with premium wines. My favorite was a 9.99 merlot tied with a $150 (wholesale) bottle of good vintage merlot. Generally the cheap stuff never beat the expensive stuff, but it often came very close.
That is hardly enough RAM to even run OS X, much less iTunes.
I had a 2006 (first Intel based) Mini. Over the years I stuck in 2GB, and upgraded its nasty little Core Solo 1.66 to a a Core 2 Duo 2.00ghz (the best you can get for the socket) and it still runs like a dog.
I've lost most of my faith in Apple. I loved their PPC offerings, but everything sucks since the Intel switch. They have tons of very common bugs that are well known but completely unacknowledged by Apple (like the disappearing bluetooth problem). You can tell that their computer division is completely secondary to their new role as a "portable device" company.
The Mini has been replaced by a $250 "Zbox" from Zotek (Atom d510, Nvidia ION chip, need your own RAM and HDD) running Ubuntu (though I've been pondering Mint). The Mini is going into the kitchen, the second I can find a decent 12"-15" (or smaller) LCD for it.
(this is on a Phenom II X4 965 with 4 gigs of RAM, btw).
Pretty much the same setup (same CPU, 6GB of RAM), and I haven't had an iTunes problem in some time, and it is generally running all day. Had a bit of wonky lag when I installed 10, but that seems to have passed. Other than that, I haven't had a huge amount of problems.
Yes, sometimes it forgets that a file on the drive, and gives me a big "!" (hasn't happened in awhile, and I think that is an iPod sync problem at root since it hasn't happened since I got a "new" used iPod). It does use an OBSCENE amount of resources for what its supposed to do (I take that back, its sitting at 64meg, which is less than Chrome is using right now, it did spike at 134meg when I upgraded to 10, though), but then again I have 6gb of ram, I don't care that much.
Right now, to steal a phrase from my father, its running slicker than owl shit. 67mb of ram (it jumped a bit), and.02% CPU utilization, no UI lag that I can see.
My premise is that my anecdotal evidence trumps yours, and thus proves the great value of anecdotal evidence. Also, after trying to find something that fills iTunes roll on a linux box has made me REALLY respect how good iTunes is. Even with its faults, it is leagues ahead of pretty much everything out there.
...but today it pales in comparison to the many media players available for Linux.
No. I'm currently building a small Atom based HTPC running Linux to replace an aging MacMini (throttled by nasty Intel graphics), the largest stumbling block I've hit is finding a nice, full featured, stable, music player. It has to meet these criteria to beat iTunes:
1: Easy to use. Other people will be using the music feature, so it can't be overly arcane and "linuxy". (Goodbye gmusicplayer, amarok, and most everything else) 2. Has a feature like "iTunes DJ" or party shuffle: a small queue of whats coming up on shuffle, that is editable. (Goodbye Rhythmbox) 3: Can handle a library of over 7000 songs without dying repeatedly or being unresponsive (goodbye Banshee, Listen) 4. Handles ratings well (Goodbye Listen, gmusicplayer) 5. Keeps my library organized by folder (goodbye everyone but Banshee) 6. Decent management without ever having to delve into a huge directory of files
So far nothing has really matched these criteria. Guayadeque comes the closest, even though its queue preferences are pretty much meaningless (can anyone explain how to have a constant shuffle pool of 16 songs?). It isn't perfect, but it seems better than the rest.
Linux music players, as a whole, have a very long ways to go. Most of them feel like using Winamp (XMMS) in the mid-90s, which is pretty cool until you realize that your music directory has become so cumbersome that you really don't want to bother with hand making play lists and having to dig through 1000's of folders to find what you want to listen to.
Most of all, when I listen to music I don't want to have to think about how to do it best, or what process I should... etc...
I'll give it a quick try, though it already has one thing going against it; a $45 price tag. It looks interesting though, like a cross between Boxee and iTunes (or Boxee that can actually handle music competently).
Currently I have around six music players installed on my Linux box. So far Guaydeque is winning, it handles ratings, doesn't take 5 minutes to load a 7000+ song library, has a decent shuffle-queue-type feature thing (even though the prefs for the latter are very opaque). Its lack of view options is a bit annoying. Gmusicplayer also isn't terrible, but its almost impossible to get set up in a usable way.
I'm guessing this is a proactive was to avoid potential bad publicity, or a silly way to get civilians to says "wow they care for the troops, we will give them tons of money now!".
I find it really odd that we send our children to go get shot at, and then think treating them like fragile little butterflies makes some kind of sense.
On the Mac, iTunes works well. Mash play/pause/FF/rewind, it does so when in the background. However, on Windows, the media keys don't work unless iTunes is present in the foreground. Even the Zune player is good in this regard.
I am currently trying the get a Linux based HTPC/Media box set up. The largest PiTA has been trying to get a decent music player. They all either lack things that I consider basic features, can't handle a decent sized media library, are slow/laggy/unstable, or are so arcane that my random non-geek friends will never be able to use it at parties. Songbird was my first choice, but its dead, and for some reason completely unstable (trying to get the.deb version I found to play nicely with last.fm is impossible). If there was a way to get Rhythmbox (which is the only one I would consider remotely stable) to do the party-shuffle/itunes DJ thing I would be happy. Or if there was a way to get Banshee to stop hanging every 10 minutes. Or if Listen made the slightest bit of sense. Or if... you get the point.
iTunes is very, very bad. But, sadly, it is the best thing out there.
iTunes 10 is ridiculous... its sitting at 157mb right now, which is around 200% higher than any other process.
The only problem I see with your Sport, Linux, and Politics examples is that they aren't within the same domain as religion in the traditional sense.
But you used these criteria to define atheism as a religion. I, in the silliest possible manner, showed that these criteria are a bit silly.
Black is a color despite the lack of light, Zero is a number despite the null quantity, and Atheism is a religion despite no faith in a god.
I don't see this. You run into the whole "not collecting stamps isn't a hobby" problem. You would be correct if I defined my world view by its contrast to religion. I don't. My day to day existence as an atheist doesn't ever refer to my own opposition to religion. It isn't a counter. It just is. I might not be expressing myself well here, but I hope you get the gist. My atheism is completely unconnected to religion.
Your, I think, defining atheism by its opposition to religion. My living atheism is completely apathetic towards religion. They are separate and unconnected classes. Its like saying Zero is a Color.
Here is a question; is it possible to NOT be religious? How would one be completely devoid of religion? If not holding a religion is a religion in-itself, then how can one ever not be religious?
Perhaps you are over generalizing. Not all atheists are connected to each other, there is no single group of atheists. Its like lumping all non-Republicans (or Democrats, or whatnot) into a single unified class. Yes, Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists and Greens all share a trait (not being Republican), but this trait alone is not enough to classify them into a unitary entity.
My apologies, this argument has stretched on for a bit, and the format of/. isn't friendly to long debates.
As I seem to remember, you were arguing against requiring a common language (i.e. Standard English), and I was arguing for. At some point I argued that having a common language didn't hurt the general body of languages. The argument, as far as I can tell, never really touched on whether having several languages is bad, only that having one "master" language is good or bad.
Well, I suppose it is more complicated than that, since there was also the whole "morality", and "utility" thing that started the whole mess.
Recap done, moving right along.
I could see the US developing differing regional common languages. Such as most business in the Southwest and perhaps far Southeast taking place in Spanish due to population shifts. This, too, would be a normal development. The one problem, though, is that the the Southwest is more Balkanized than it should be. There are enclaves of purely Spanish speakers that have very little to no interaction with English speakers (At least in Phoenix, and parts of Tucson, my experience is limted outside of this). This keeps us from ever really having a mixed population. Where I live now, I could probably go a weeks without ever having a meaningful encounter with someone who speaks Spanish (suburbs). At my last house, it was a bit more mixed, but there still was a large degree of segregation* (both intentional and non).
Our cultures really don't mix that well out here.
Yes, this is true of other waves of immigration, but there is a couple important differences. The wave of Mexican, and other Latin American groups has been huge compared to previous waves. And do to this size they manage to get fully functioning communities that don't require much from the outside dominant culture. There are parts of Phoenix (and every other Southwestern) city that could be considered a small annex of Mexico. This is far beyond the scope of various other China-towns, Italian towns, etc...
The only hope is breaking this communities open, and having them mix freely with the bigger culture. This probably won't happen.
* Sad story. I lived right next to a small, poor, and completely Mexican (actually, more Yaqui Indians...) (probably mostly illegal) apartment complex. Thanks to Phoenix' bizarre demographic crazy-quilt, it was completely surrounded by affluent houses and apartments for young, art-trade, professionals. It was about as out of place as you can imagine. One night they were have a HUGE festival, and me and my girlfriend were very curious about what they were celebrating. We wandered over to ask someone sitting on the outskirts of the party, and they all pretty much fled uncomfortably from us. It was pretty depressing.
We did finally find a very nice woman who told us. Through her we managed to get a small crowed of very helpful people. It was the Feast of Saint Francis. She invited us to the big Festival of Mary, but she was pretty rare since everyone else avoided us. We didn't go, since it would a bit odd for two atheist, English-speaking, gringos to wander around.
Atheists have been known to congregate, they mock other belief systems, they take any comments about their beliefs personally, and they like to preach their gospel (take the movie 'Invention of lying" for example or just google "magic man in the sky" ). Looks like a religion to me... hurts to find out that you're human and therefore like everybody else doesn't it?
Sports fans have been known to congregate, they mock other sports teams, they take comments about their sports team personally, the like to talk about the supremacy of their team to others. Looks like a religion to me.
Linux people have been known to congregate, they mock other operating systems, the take comments about Linux personally, they like to preach about OSS. Looks like a religion to me.
Members of a political party have been known to congregate, they mock other political parties, they take comments about their political party personally, they like to preach about their parties platform. Looks like a religion to me.
For the atheists out there that are tempted to comment that religion doesn't play any role in their lives, I hate to be the one to break it to you but atheism is just yet another form of religion.
A statement this bizarre needs some explanation. First, I am an atheist, I am not religious by definition. Second, I never would claim religion doesn't play a role in my life. I was raised Catholic, and most of my family still is, this influenced my upbringing, and thus who I currently am. Also I live in a religious country, thus religious people constantly meddle in my affairs and tell me what I should think or do by their standards. Religion either plays a cultural role, or a regrettable tyrannical role in my life, and the life of everyone else in America, atheist or not.
to risk building strawmen, if your going to say atheists are religious because they have faith in science then you still are wrong. Since faith in science has nothing to do with atheism, some atheists are materialists, but not all. I could draw a Venn diagram. I, personally, am very skeptical of science as well as religion. I am not a practitioner of "scientism". I don't see the religious bit there.
3) Angry atheists (as opposed to 'social' atheists) who also use the term "christian nation" sarcastically but not for any real political motivation but rather for their obsession to rebel against people who have faith in a higher power. They consider themselves intellectually superior to everyone else and reduce everybody else's faith into "imaginary man in the sky" religion. Even though they refuse to admit it, they not only actually believe in a higher power but also angry with it. They actively attack other individual's faith believing that this will ultimately hurt the higher power that they are fighting against.
I am an angry atheist, I stubbed my toe this morning on my way to making coffee. You really don't understand atheists, do you? I am not intellectually superior to anyone by default. Yes, I think the religious are deluded, and hold erroneous beliefs (they think the same of me, and of any other religious dogma that is not their own), this says nothing about their intelligence. I know some VERY smart religious people, and some very dumb atheists. Your choice of world view has nothing to do with innate intelligence. I have something against having subjective principles enforced upon me, though. Ruling from religion is a bad thing. Governance should be non-theistic. Why shouldn't we have a government that enforces Muslim principles, or Buddhist, or Janist, or Hindu, or whatnot? Would this be tyranny to the non-Muslim/Buddhist/etc... citizens? Forcing a certain sect of Christian values on people against their will is tyranny to all who don't share the common beliefs and justifications with the ruling sect. A Christian government is tyrannical to more people than it could ever benefit, even other, more moderate Christian sects. People who buy whatever restrictive beliefs have the choice to individually avoid whatever disturbs them. (aside, a core tenet of Christian morality is free will. We choose to avoid evil, that is the definition of virtue. But for some reason certain sects want to remove the "choice" factor, and thus abolish free will. Making virtue an enforced matter, and not one of choice. This destroys the very concept of virtue, and is against their own stated theology)
This is why I am against the idea of a "Christian nation", not because I am "smarter" than them.
Of course I meant social as opposed to angry, and this type of atheist don't agree with the dogma promoted by organized religion and tend to believe in scientific facts. They are respectful of others, but don't mind sharing their beliefs when asked.
Wait, most atheists fall that first category. Your second catagory is silly. "Good" atheists keep their mouths shut unless spoken too (this sounds frighteningly familiar, I think you can replace "atheist" in that statement with various
This might be why Europe is a socialist nanny state. All the exposure to female breasts had lead to the desire to suckle at the teats of Big Guberment. This is why America is a pristine free-market utopia, the lack of early exposure to breasts.
It was almost impossible to go about my morning grooming with out viewing pornography. I lived a life of sin, until plastic surgery allowed me to be a virtuous Christian/Muslim/Other, and live life the way the good lord meant. If god wanted us to see nipples he would have given us all nipples.
In short, I want the religious right to leave me alone, and be respectful of my desire to watch what I want to watch. But I think there's a flipside to that coin. I think it's also reasonable for us to accomodate people who don't want their kids (or themselves) exposed to such things. They have a resonable (if prudish) expectation that Janet's nipple not be shown during what is considered a gathering event for all of America. You respect my rights to what I want, and I'll respect your rights to what you want.
I disagree. We shouldn't go out of our way to offend them. But we shouldn't regulate on the standards of the most restrictive minority, either. Why stop at most prude and restrictive of Christian sects, when we should be trying our hardest to accommodated the morals of extreme Islam, we wouldn't want them to be offended either. Freedom should be the default, people should self-regulate by their tastes. If youy find something offensive, change the channel, walk the other way, avert your eyes, etc... It isn't my responsibility to make sure your restrictive sensibilities are respected. It sure as hell isn't the government's job.
Respecting others, and regulation from on high are very different things, or at least they should be.
Oh, so the epidemics of all kinds of nasty diseases like Syphilis never really existed?
STDs alone are hardly a good reason to outlaw prostitution completely. If they were, we would have laws against casual sex. Actually, we might have to ban all sex, since herpes exists in a very large portion of the population.
Not to say prostitution isn't a bit morally ambiguous. On one hand, consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want (as long as it isn't harmful to a 3rd party), for money or for free. On the other hand, prostitution is generally exploitive of woman (not in the "zomg, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition is exploitive to women!!1one!"), and often doesn't really involve a strong element of free choice for the prostitute. It is a job of desperation, not a decent career choice taken willfully. Not many young girls say "I want to grow up to be a whore" (AFAIK, time do change). Generally people end up there because of addiction or being forced into it against their will.
If prostitution was to be legal it would have to be heavily regulated to keep such lopsided relationships from existing. Either that or there should be a prostitute's union.
I'm not disagreeing with the base premise; that American prudishness is stupid. You wrong about breasts though, they do have some sexual function, they (or at least the nipples) are considered to be erogenous zones. I would have included a link to Wikipedia, but Chrome has for some reason decided that I should not be allowed to use the paste function anymore.
Granted this doesn't subtract from your point, since some consider the ear lobes to be such zones as well.
I got severely reprimanded when I was going to community college for publicly saying the word "nipple". I said it about a statue that was on campus, which was a female torso with breasts, but completely lacking nipples. Someone overheard this, and told security that I was being lewd. Security supported the random prude, and threatened disciplinary action.
Of course, war is different for children, especially boys. There is a big difference between seeing soldiers fight one another and seeing senseless crime and atrocities. You can claim there isn't, but that doesn't make it so, and for millennia, civilizations have understood the difference between glorifying the warrior ethos and senseless violence. The former, is not inherently harmful to children, and is actually good for a society that wants its boys to grow up to be **men** and not overgrown boys who act like pansies in the face of a violent world.
**checks pants**
Last I checked, I am a man, and I find mindless nationalism and international chest-bumping to be completely, and totally, irrational and idiotic. Especially nationalism, nationalism is one of the dumbest social constructs we can train our children to uphold (outside of, maybe, various flavors of extreme religious dogma). Training our young men to go kill other young men because their flag is different, and they might speak a different language, is stupid, not "manly". As history shows, having a glut of young men glorifying war leads to war. If all you have is a war hammer, everything starts looking like a war nail, etc... I, personally, would rather we have a glut of young men (and women) glorifying something interesting, like reason.
I read your comment in the voice of R. Lee Ermey, by the way, it didn't help make your point.
War should be seen as a terrible necessity of last resort, not as some glorious brojuajua. We like war too much, in my opinion, hence our two largely unjustified and wasteful (both in money and human life) wars of the moment. How much glory is there in Iraq or Afghanistan? Everyone I know who has been involved in either didn't find it very glorious. Same with all the Vietnam and WWII veterans I know. My grandfather was one of the first US troops to hit Auschwitz, and he never talked about it, ever. I very much doubt he found any glory in that experience. Or at least he found as much glory in war as all of the hordes of suicidal and PTSD suffering current "glorious warriors".
Most war is nothing but senseless violence. America hasn't been in a justifiable war since WWII, the rest has been nothing but moronic slaughter for political ends. How glorious! How manly! How idiotic. Being there is no glory in being a disposable tool for your government.
This is exactly what I was trying to point you to. The reasons for us having such a limited linguistic culture, is because we have such a limited linguistic input.
Do we? You pointed out the huge amount of Spanish being spoken in New Mexican (And Arizonan, and Texan, and Californian) homes. We also have signifigant minority groups who imported their culture and languages over here. Last night I ate at an Indian restaurant, all of the staff, and half of the customers were chatting in some Indian dialect. My old neighborhood was largely Hispanic, and it was rare to hear English spoken, even in shops. There also was a signifigant (but dwindling) Korean population, their shops and restaurants had predominantly Korean signs, and you mostly heard Korean in their shops. In the 90's we received an influx of Bosnian (and other war-torn Eastern European groups), whp generally had a higher level of English competency, but mostly spoke their own languages at home, and in their restaurants and shops. And this is in a city not known for its non-Hispanic mutliculturalism (unlike cities like San Fransisco, New York, etc...).
I wouldn't say that non-English languages are that much threatened. Nor is there too much tyranny about it (these days, we have done our fair share of despicable things in the past, obviously).
Hell, go sit in your local court house (if you still live in the Southwest), the interpretors are the busiest people there.
If we were aiming of a linguistic mono-culture it isn't working, at least in this region.
Taking a longer view, having multiple (unrelated) languages in one culture is probably a very temporary affair, as in one or two generations. People move or get conquered, form ethnic enclaves, and finally their children or grandchildren become fully assimilated. I don't think this is fully a forceful thing, though at times it can be.
Fully assimilated isn't quite right. They generally maintain some characteristics of their origin culture, but these defuse out into the larger population and become a regional difference (see the Cajuns, for example).
I agree. But then again I'm one of the only people in the world that REALLY missed the non-Directors-Cut (theatrical release) of Blade Runner, which was completely unavailable for 15 years, so unavailable that it might as well have not existed in the first place.
Upon getting the "ultra-giant-super-Riddley-Scott-needs-more-cocaine edition" release, I realized that it was largely nostalgia talking. Though it still may hold a slight edge over the directors cut. That was my one fear with the Star Wars re-releases, that the original would completely disappear (as it did for 15 years, sans VHS and LaserDisk). This also highlights a new annoying business model:
1. Make a kick ass movie. 2. Release a heavily edited "directors cut" that is almost completely dissimular from the theatrical release. 3. Sell only the remake. 4. wait.. 5. (no "???") Release the actual movie 15 years later, when it is a classic and you can demand more money for it. 6. Profit.
But what of Star Wars vs. Star Trek? I like to think of Star Wars as Metallica and Star Trek as Megadeth. Metallica were more talented until they whored themselves out and went pop. Megadeth were not as talented, but were much more consistent and I can listen to them without becoming angry at their violating my childhood with their bed-wetting, infantile trash.
Regardless of the troll mod, there is an uncomfortable level of truth in this statement.
Though I liked Episode 3, and came to realize that the original trilogy isn't actually much better than Ep 1-2 when stripped of the patina of nostalgia. A quick qualification: Eps 4-5 have a better story, but the acting and dialog suck as bad as 1-2. Episodes 1-2 and 4-5 match each other nicely for cheese value, as well, once we forget the whole nostalgia thing. I exclude episode 6 because it easily is the worst of the series. Ewoks are nothing but the proto-JarJar, and are included only to sell Happy Meals to children, and to keep the action figures rolling off the shelves. I kept Ep3 out, because of all of them it is probably the best.
As for Star Trek, it suffers from volume. With 1000x times more content than Star Wars, there also is 999x more suck. Some individual episodes and story arcs slaughter Star Wars in quality, but this is matched by Enterprise and Voyager, which were generally worse than anything Lucas vomits up (though there was occasional gems even in these). TNG was generally better than the rest of the Treks.
And Firefly and Babylon 5 kicked all of their asses (followed, maybe, by Far Scape).
Most of it is hack work covered up by nostalgia though. Picture yourself now, as a jaded adult, going to see the original Star Wars movies, would they have the same impact as they had when you were a kid? Same for Star Trek. How much of the more modern "Treks" were based only on the sense of nostalgia we had for TOS and TNG (depending on your age)?
This maps back to Metallica and Megadeth. If you heard them now, at their perspective bests, for the first time now, would you care? Probably not.
My grade school decided I was suicidal, threatening counseling etc, because I climbed up on the roof one day and was having a grand time taunting my friends from the edges. No one beleived me when I claimed I wasn't up there to kill myself, and that I really doubted a single story fall would do the job properly.
I think some kid in my "homeroom" class offed himself a couple weeks previous, so I can see, I suppose, their concern. I got in trouble for questioning the validity of his "accidental" hanging to his parents.
Closer to the topic, my high school had me and a freind upgrade all of their old AT&T boxes (with glorious Hercules graphics) to more modern boxes running Windows 3.11. Well they had a firm do it, but for some reason we got the task of ripping out all the old hardware, and somehow ended up being the unpaid gophers for the actual network team. Out of this we ended up with the all the network passwords for the school and lab (not District, we were the first school to get the modern treatment), and limited access to the server room. I think this was punishment for running a very small piracy ring on the network (1$ and you get a Space Invaders Clone, 2$ for something else, etc...), and using the computer lab guys teacher to print out our "underground" paper (which half the staff clandestinely distributed for us), and to print out copies of the old Anarchist Cookbook text file to sell for 5$ a pop (ah... to be pre-Columbine).
This is the best idea of punishment, if kids get in trouble for being "too bright", punish them by making them do something productive with it.
As for the actual topic at hand... I don't see how teaching kids to be terrorists is at all useful. Teach them the point of view of the people who turn into terrorists, perhaps, but not how to actually do it. In Jr. High I had a teacher make us read Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Harrison Bergeon (I think Walden 2 as well, but that might be a bad memory) and then design our own utopia. Probably one of the only class related things I remember from any schooling that wasn't college.
I thought the goal was to give it the ability, eventually, to print its own circuits too. Its been a long time since I browsed their page though, so I might be wrong. Off all the bits it can't do now, the wood bits is the only thing a sufficiently advanced 3D printer would not be able to do. Not that the RepRap (gah, the name is dumb) is even near to being that advanced.
Eventually, though, I can see a device that can build its own structural components, and print its own boards. Making its own motors is a bit of a stretch (even in mythical "world of tomorrow"), but I can see it as being kind of possible, maybe.
The main thing that people like about it is the idealism. Its an open-source, and potentially cheaply available, tool that may, in the future, put 3D printing in the hands of anyone who wants it. As opposed to spending god knows how much on rapid prototyping now. Lowering the costs to basement inventors and tinkerers is a good thing, that may have some benefit to society at large.
Its a nice idea.
Notice how liberally I sprinkled hedge words throughout the above paragraphs, I really doubt anything will ever come of it, but I suppose that that isn't the point. Its like the GNU HURD, a really awesome idea that may or may not ever actually exist. The principles are more exciting the the actual implementation. It also might spawn some neat technology that will get picked up and used in actual, practical, applications.
Slashdot Mirror
One big difference though... You can train your taste buds to be more sensitive, or learn to discern more subtle differences than the untrained lay person. Whole industries depend on such "tasters", wine being one. Most distilleries, large coffee companies, ice cream companies, etc... depend on trained tasters. I rather doubt it is all a bunch of woo when several billion dollar industries depend on the advice of these people.
When I was in college I hung out with the hotel and restaurant management majors, and participated in their wine club. To pass their bar and bev requirement that had to do blind taste-tests, and be able to discern various vintages and regions by taste alone. And I managed to see them do this first hand in the club meeting, where I could barely tell various varieties apart.
Its about training. Your musician friends often hear music vary different than you do, and may be able to discern more nuance than you, just by experience and training. This has nothing to do with audiophile woo, but just normal experience and training.
Yes, often wine price points, and all the "we're wine insiders" stuff is idiotic and serves only to create an in group, or better marketting. At the same club, for the first year we told people all about what they were drinking, and then allowed them to rate the wine after the tasting. More expensive wines always won over cheap wines, foreign wines always won over domestic wines. The second no information was disclosed before tasting and rating. As a result the cheaper (9.99) wine tied with premium wines. My favorite was a 9.99 merlot tied with a $150 (wholesale) bottle of good vintage merlot. Generally the cheap stuff never beat the expensive stuff, but it often came very close.
That is hardly enough RAM to even run OS X, much less iTunes.
I had a 2006 (first Intel based) Mini. Over the years I stuck in 2GB, and upgraded its nasty little Core Solo 1.66 to a a Core 2 Duo 2.00ghz (the best you can get for the socket) and it still runs like a dog.
I've lost most of my faith in Apple. I loved their PPC offerings, but everything sucks since the Intel switch. They have tons of very common bugs that are well known but completely unacknowledged by Apple (like the disappearing bluetooth problem). You can tell that their computer division is completely secondary to their new role as a "portable device" company.
The Mini has been replaced by a $250 "Zbox" from Zotek (Atom d510, Nvidia ION chip, need your own RAM and HDD) running Ubuntu (though I've been pondering Mint). The Mini is going into the kitchen, the second I can find a decent 12"-15" (or smaller) LCD for it.
(this is on a Phenom II X4 965 with 4 gigs of RAM, btw).
Pretty much the same setup (same CPU, 6GB of RAM), and I haven't had an iTunes problem in some time, and it is generally running all day. Had a bit of wonky lag when I installed 10, but that seems to have passed. Other than that, I haven't had a huge amount of problems.
Yes, sometimes it forgets that a file on the drive, and gives me a big "!" (hasn't happened in awhile, and I think that is an iPod sync problem at root since it hasn't happened since I got a "new" used iPod). It does use an OBSCENE amount of resources for what its supposed to do (I take that back, its sitting at 64meg, which is less than Chrome is using right now, it did spike at 134meg when I upgraded to 10, though), but then again I have 6gb of ram, I don't care that much.
Right now, to steal a phrase from my father, its running slicker than owl shit. 67mb of ram (it jumped a bit), and .02% CPU utilization, no UI lag that I can see.
My premise is that my anecdotal evidence trumps yours, and thus proves the great value of anecdotal evidence. Also, after trying to find something that fills iTunes roll on a linux box has made me REALLY respect how good iTunes is. Even with its faults, it is leagues ahead of pretty much everything out there.
Macs just work. I've learned that Apple puts the emphasis on "work", where I generally, after the initial love affair, put it on the "just".
...but today it pales in comparison to the many media players available for Linux.
No. I'm currently building a small Atom based HTPC running Linux to replace an aging MacMini (throttled by nasty Intel graphics), the largest stumbling block I've hit is finding a nice, full featured, stable, music player. It has to meet these criteria to beat iTunes:
1: Easy to use. Other people will be using the music feature, so it can't be overly arcane and "linuxy". (Goodbye gmusicplayer, amarok, and most everything else)
2. Has a feature like "iTunes DJ" or party shuffle: a small queue of whats coming up on shuffle, that is editable. (Goodbye Rhythmbox)
3: Can handle a library of over 7000 songs without dying repeatedly or being unresponsive (goodbye Banshee, Listen)
4. Handles ratings well (Goodbye Listen, gmusicplayer)
5. Keeps my library organized by folder (goodbye everyone but Banshee)
6. Decent management without ever having to delve into a huge directory of files
So far nothing has really matched these criteria. Guayadeque comes the closest, even though its queue preferences are pretty much meaningless (can anyone explain how to have a constant shuffle pool of 16 songs?). It isn't perfect, but it seems better than the rest.
Linux music players, as a whole, have a very long ways to go. Most of them feel like using Winamp (XMMS) in the mid-90s, which is pretty cool until you realize that your music directory has become so cumbersome that you really don't want to bother with hand making play lists and having to dig through 1000's of folders to find what you want to listen to.
Most of all, when I listen to music I don't want to have to think about how to do it best, or what process I should... etc...
I'll give it a quick try, though it already has one thing going against it; a $45 price tag. It looks interesting though, like a cross between Boxee and iTunes (or Boxee that can actually handle music competently).
Currently I have around six music players installed on my Linux box. So far Guaydeque is winning, it handles ratings, doesn't take 5 minutes to load a 7000+ song library, has a decent shuffle-queue-type feature thing (even though the prefs for the latter are very opaque). Its lack of view options is a bit annoying. Gmusicplayer also isn't terrible, but its almost impossible to get set up in a usable way.
I'll give Quid Libet another look, as well.
RTFA. It isn't out yet, so condition 1 is false.
I'm guessing this is a proactive was to avoid potential bad publicity, or a silly way to get civilians to says "wow they care for the troops, we will give them tons of money now!".
I find it really odd that we send our children to go get shot at, and then think treating them like fragile little butterflies makes some kind of sense.
On the Mac, iTunes works well. Mash play/pause/FF/rewind, it does so when in the background. However, on Windows, the media keys don't work unless iTunes is present in the foreground. Even the Zune player is good in this regard.
Easily fixable with a quick download.
I am currently trying the get a Linux based HTPC/Media box set up. The largest PiTA has been trying to get a decent music player. They all either lack things that I consider basic features, can't handle a decent sized media library, are slow/laggy/unstable, or are so arcane that my random non-geek friends will never be able to use it at parties. Songbird was my first choice, but its dead, and for some reason completely unstable (trying to get the .deb version I found to play nicely with last.fm is impossible). If there was a way to get Rhythmbox (which is the only one I would consider remotely stable) to do the party-shuffle/itunes DJ thing I would be happy. Or if there was a way to get Banshee to stop hanging every 10 minutes. Or if Listen made the slightest bit of sense. Or if... you get the point.
iTunes is very, very bad. But, sadly, it is the best thing out there.
iTunes 10 is ridiculous... its sitting at 157mb right now, which is around 200% higher than any other process.
The only problem I see with your Sport, Linux, and Politics examples is that they aren't within the same domain as religion in the traditional sense.
But you used these criteria to define atheism as a religion. I, in the silliest possible manner, showed that these criteria are a bit silly.
Black is a color despite the lack of light, Zero is a number despite the null quantity, and Atheism is a religion despite no faith in a god.
I don't see this. You run into the whole "not collecting stamps isn't a hobby" problem. You would be correct if I defined my world view by its contrast to religion. I don't. My day to day existence as an atheist doesn't ever refer to my own opposition to religion. It isn't a counter. It just is. I might not be expressing myself well here, but I hope you get the gist. My atheism is completely unconnected to religion.
Your, I think, defining atheism by its opposition to religion. My living atheism is completely apathetic towards religion. They are separate and unconnected classes. Its like saying Zero is a Color.
Here is a question; is it possible to NOT be religious? How would one be completely devoid of religion? If not holding a religion is a religion in-itself, then how can one ever not be religious?
Perhaps you are over generalizing. Not all atheists are connected to each other, there is no single group of atheists. Its like lumping all non-Republicans (or Democrats, or whatnot) into a single unified class. Yes, Democrats, Libertarians, Socialists and Greens all share a trait (not being Republican), but this trait alone is not enough to classify them into a unitary entity.
My apologies, this argument has stretched on for a bit, and the format of /. isn't friendly to long debates.
As I seem to remember, you were arguing against requiring a common language (i.e. Standard English), and I was arguing for. At some point I argued that having a common language didn't hurt the general body of languages. The argument, as far as I can tell, never really touched on whether having several languages is bad, only that having one "master" language is good or bad.
Well, I suppose it is more complicated than that, since there was also the whole "morality", and "utility" thing that started the whole mess.
Recap done, moving right along.
I could see the US developing differing regional common languages. Such as most business in the Southwest and perhaps far Southeast taking place in Spanish due to population shifts. This, too, would be a normal development. The one problem, though, is that the the Southwest is more Balkanized than it should be. There are enclaves of purely Spanish speakers that have very little to no interaction with English speakers (At least in Phoenix, and parts of Tucson, my experience is limted outside of this). This keeps us from ever really having a mixed population. Where I live now, I could probably go a weeks without ever having a meaningful encounter with someone who speaks Spanish (suburbs). At my last house, it was a bit more mixed, but there still was a large degree of segregation* (both intentional and non).
Our cultures really don't mix that well out here.
Yes, this is true of other waves of immigration, but there is a couple important differences. The wave of Mexican, and other Latin American groups has been huge compared to previous waves. And do to this size they manage to get fully functioning communities that don't require much from the outside dominant culture. There are parts of Phoenix (and every other Southwestern) city that could be considered a small annex of Mexico. This is far beyond the scope of various other China-towns, Italian towns, etc...
The only hope is breaking this communities open, and having them mix freely with the bigger culture. This probably won't happen.
* Sad story. I lived right next to a small, poor, and completely Mexican (actually, more Yaqui Indians...) (probably mostly illegal) apartment complex. Thanks to Phoenix' bizarre demographic crazy-quilt, it was completely surrounded by affluent houses and apartments for young, art-trade, professionals. It was about as out of place as you can imagine. One night they were have a HUGE festival, and me and my girlfriend were very curious about what they were celebrating. We wandered over to ask someone sitting on the outskirts of the party, and they all pretty much fled uncomfortably from us. It was pretty depressing.
We did finally find a very nice woman who told us. Through her we managed to get a small crowed of very helpful people. It was the Feast of Saint Francis. She invited us to the big Festival of Mary, but she was pretty rare since everyone else avoided us. We didn't go, since it would a bit odd for two atheist, English-speaking, gringos to wander around.
Atheists have been known to congregate, they mock other belief systems, they take any comments about their beliefs personally, and they like to preach their gospel (take the movie 'Invention of lying" for example or just google "magic man in the sky" ). Looks like a religion to me... hurts to find out that you're human and therefore like everybody else doesn't it?
Sports fans have been known to congregate, they mock other sports teams, they take comments about their sports team personally, the like to talk about the supremacy of their team to others. Looks like a religion to me.
Linux people have been known to congregate, they mock other operating systems, the take comments about Linux personally, they like to preach about OSS. Looks like a religion to me.
Members of a political party have been known to congregate, they mock other political parties, they take comments about their political party personally, they like to preach about their parties platform. Looks like a religion to me.
Should I go on?
For the atheists out there that are tempted to comment that religion doesn't play any role in their lives, I hate to be the one to break it to you but atheism is just yet another form of religion.
A statement this bizarre needs some explanation. First, I am an atheist, I am not religious by definition. Second, I never would claim religion doesn't play a role in my life. I was raised Catholic, and most of my family still is, this influenced my upbringing, and thus who I currently am. Also I live in a religious country, thus religious people constantly meddle in my affairs and tell me what I should think or do by their standards. Religion either plays a cultural role, or a regrettable tyrannical role in my life, and the life of everyone else in America, atheist or not.
to risk building strawmen, if your going to say atheists are religious because they have faith in science then you still are wrong. Since faith in science has nothing to do with atheism, some atheists are materialists, but not all. I could draw a Venn diagram. I, personally, am very skeptical of science as well as religion. I am not a practitioner of "scientism". I don't see the religious bit there.
3) Angry atheists (as opposed to 'social' atheists) who also use the term "christian nation" sarcastically but not for any real political motivation but rather for their obsession to rebel against people who have faith in a higher power. They consider themselves intellectually superior to everyone else and reduce everybody else's faith into "imaginary man in the sky" religion. Even though they refuse to admit it, they not only actually believe in a higher power but also angry with it. They actively attack other individual's faith believing that this will ultimately hurt the higher power that they are fighting against.
I am an angry atheist, I stubbed my toe this morning on my way to making coffee. You really don't understand atheists, do you? I am not intellectually superior to anyone by default. Yes, I think the religious are deluded, and hold erroneous beliefs (they think the same of me, and of any other religious dogma that is not their own), this says nothing about their intelligence. I know some VERY smart religious people, and some very dumb atheists. Your choice of world view has nothing to do with innate intelligence. I have something against having subjective principles enforced upon me, though. Ruling from religion is a bad thing. Governance should be non-theistic. Why shouldn't we have a government that enforces Muslim principles, or Buddhist, or Janist, or Hindu, or whatnot? Would this be tyranny to the non-Muslim/Buddhist/etc... citizens? Forcing a certain sect of Christian values on people against their will is tyranny to all who don't share the common beliefs and justifications with the ruling sect. A Christian government is tyrannical to more people than it could ever benefit, even other, more moderate Christian sects. People who buy whatever restrictive beliefs have the choice to individually avoid whatever disturbs them. (aside, a core tenet of Christian morality is free will. We choose to avoid evil, that is the definition of virtue. But for some reason certain sects want to remove the "choice" factor, and thus abolish free will. Making virtue an enforced matter, and not one of choice. This destroys the very concept of virtue, and is against their own stated theology)
This is why I am against the idea of a "Christian nation", not because I am "smarter" than them.
Of course I meant social as opposed to angry, and this type of atheist don't agree with the dogma promoted by organized religion and tend to believe in scientific facts. They are respectful of others, but don't mind sharing their beliefs when asked.
Wait, most atheists fall that first category. Your second catagory is silly. "Good" atheists keep their mouths shut unless spoken too (this sounds frighteningly familiar, I think you can replace "atheist" in that statement with various
NOTE: This is sarcasm.
This might be why Europe is a socialist nanny state. All the exposure to female breasts had lead to the desire to suckle at the teats of Big Guberment. This is why America is a pristine free-market utopia, the lack of early exposure to breasts.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Which is why I had mine surgically removed.
It was almost impossible to go about my morning grooming with out viewing pornography. I lived a life of sin, until plastic surgery allowed me to be a virtuous Christian/Muslim/Other, and live life the way the good lord meant. If god wanted us to see nipples he would have given us all nipples.
So thats why I can't say "fork" on national television!
In short, I want the religious right to leave me alone, and be respectful of my desire to watch what I want to watch. But I think there's a flipside to that coin. I think it's also reasonable for us to accomodate people who don't want their kids (or themselves) exposed to such things. They have a resonable (if prudish) expectation that Janet's nipple not be shown during what is considered a gathering event for all of America. You respect my rights to what I want, and I'll respect your rights to what you want.
I disagree. We shouldn't go out of our way to offend them. But we shouldn't regulate on the standards of the most restrictive minority, either. Why stop at most prude and restrictive of Christian sects, when we should be trying our hardest to accommodated the morals of extreme Islam, we wouldn't want them to be offended either. Freedom should be the default, people should self-regulate by their tastes. If youy find something offensive, change the channel, walk the other way, avert your eyes, etc... It isn't my responsibility to make sure your restrictive sensibilities are respected. It sure as hell isn't the government's job.
Respecting others, and regulation from on high are very different things, or at least they should be.
Most gay folks were also squeezed out of a vagina at some point in time!
The horror, the horror.
(I realize you are, probably, being facetious)
Oh, so the epidemics of all kinds of nasty diseases like Syphilis never really existed?
STDs alone are hardly a good reason to outlaw prostitution completely. If they were, we would have laws against casual sex. Actually, we might have to ban all sex, since herpes exists in a very large portion of the population.
Not to say prostitution isn't a bit morally ambiguous. On one hand, consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want (as long as it isn't harmful to a 3rd party), for money or for free. On the other hand, prostitution is generally exploitive of woman (not in the "zomg, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition is exploitive to women!!1one!"), and often doesn't really involve a strong element of free choice for the prostitute. It is a job of desperation, not a decent career choice taken willfully. Not many young girls say "I want to grow up to be a whore" (AFAIK, time do change). Generally people end up there because of addiction or being forced into it against their will.
If prostitution was to be legal it would have to be heavily regulated to keep such lopsided relationships from existing. Either that or there should be a prostitute's union.
I'm not disagreeing with the base premise; that American prudishness is stupid. You wrong about breasts though, they do have some sexual function, they (or at least the nipples) are considered to be erogenous zones. I would have included a link to Wikipedia, but Chrome has for some reason decided that I should not be allowed to use the paste function anymore.
Granted this doesn't subtract from your point, since some consider the ear lobes to be such zones as well.
I got severely reprimanded when I was going to community college for publicly saying the word "nipple". I said it about a statue that was on campus, which was a female torso with breasts, but completely lacking nipples. Someone overheard this, and told security that I was being lewd. Security supported the random prude, and threatened disciplinary action.
Of course, war is different for children, especially boys. There is a big difference between seeing soldiers fight one another and seeing senseless crime and atrocities. You can claim there isn't, but that doesn't make it so, and for millennia, civilizations have understood the difference between glorifying the warrior ethos and senseless violence. The former, is not inherently harmful to children, and is actually good for a society that wants its boys to grow up to be **men** and not overgrown boys who act like pansies in the face of a violent world.
**checks pants**
Last I checked, I am a man, and I find mindless nationalism and international chest-bumping to be completely, and totally, irrational and idiotic. Especially nationalism, nationalism is one of the dumbest social constructs we can train our children to uphold (outside of, maybe, various flavors of extreme religious dogma). Training our young men to go kill other young men because their flag is different, and they might speak a different language, is stupid, not "manly". As history shows, having a glut of young men glorifying war leads to war. If all you have is a war hammer, everything starts looking like a war nail, etc... I, personally, would rather we have a glut of young men (and women) glorifying something interesting, like reason.
I read your comment in the voice of R. Lee Ermey, by the way, it didn't help make your point.
War should be seen as a terrible necessity of last resort, not as some glorious brojuajua. We like war too much, in my opinion, hence our two largely unjustified and wasteful (both in money and human life) wars of the moment. How much glory is there in Iraq or Afghanistan? Everyone I know who has been involved in either didn't find it very glorious. Same with all the Vietnam and WWII veterans I know. My grandfather was one of the first US troops to hit Auschwitz, and he never talked about it, ever. I very much doubt he found any glory in that experience. Or at least he found as much glory in war as all of the hordes of suicidal and PTSD suffering current "glorious warriors".
Most war is nothing but senseless violence. America hasn't been in a justifiable war since WWII, the rest has been nothing but moronic slaughter for political ends. How glorious! How manly! How idiotic. Being there is no glory in being a disposable tool for your government.
This is exactly what I was trying to point you to. The reasons for us having such a limited linguistic culture, is because we have such a limited linguistic input.
Do we? You pointed out the huge amount of Spanish being spoken in New Mexican (And Arizonan, and Texan, and Californian) homes. We also have signifigant minority groups who imported their culture and languages over here. Last night I ate at an Indian restaurant, all of the staff, and half of the customers were chatting in some Indian dialect. My old neighborhood was largely Hispanic, and it was rare to hear English spoken, even in shops. There also was a signifigant (but dwindling) Korean population, their shops and restaurants had predominantly Korean signs, and you mostly heard Korean in their shops. In the 90's we received an influx of Bosnian (and other war-torn Eastern European groups), whp generally had a higher level of English competency, but mostly spoke their own languages at home, and in their restaurants and shops. And this is in a city not known for its non-Hispanic mutliculturalism (unlike cities like San Fransisco, New York, etc...).
I wouldn't say that non-English languages are that much threatened. Nor is there too much tyranny about it (these days, we have done our fair share of despicable things in the past, obviously).
Hell, go sit in your local court house (if you still live in the Southwest), the interpretors are the busiest people there.
If we were aiming of a linguistic mono-culture it isn't working, at least in this region.
Taking a longer view, having multiple (unrelated) languages in one culture is probably a very temporary affair, as in one or two generations. People move or get conquered, form ethnic enclaves, and finally their children or grandchildren become fully assimilated. I don't think this is fully a forceful thing, though at times it can be.
Fully assimilated isn't quite right. They generally maintain some characteristics of their origin culture, but these defuse out into the larger population and become a regional difference (see the Cajuns, for example).
I agree. But then again I'm one of the only people in the world that REALLY missed the non-Directors-Cut (theatrical release) of Blade Runner, which was completely unavailable for 15 years, so unavailable that it might as well have not existed in the first place.
Upon getting the "ultra-giant-super-Riddley-Scott-needs-more-cocaine edition" release, I realized that it was largely nostalgia talking. Though it still may hold a slight edge over the directors cut. That was my one fear with the Star Wars re-releases, that the original would completely disappear (as it did for 15 years, sans VHS and LaserDisk). This also highlights a new annoying business model:
1. Make a kick ass movie.
2. Release a heavily edited "directors cut" that is almost completely dissimular from the theatrical release.
3. Sell only the remake.
4. wait..
5. (no "???") Release the actual movie 15 years later, when it is a classic and you can demand more money for it.
6. Profit.
But what of Star Wars vs. Star Trek? I like to think of Star Wars as Metallica and Star Trek as Megadeth. Metallica were more talented until they whored themselves out and went pop. Megadeth were not as talented, but were much more consistent and I can listen to them without becoming angry at their violating my childhood with their bed-wetting, infantile trash.
Regardless of the troll mod, there is an uncomfortable level of truth in this statement.
Though I liked Episode 3, and came to realize that the original trilogy isn't actually much better than Ep 1-2 when stripped of the patina of nostalgia. A quick qualification: Eps 4-5 have a better story, but the acting and dialog suck as bad as 1-2. Episodes 1-2 and 4-5 match each other nicely for cheese value, as well, once we forget the whole nostalgia thing. I exclude episode 6 because it easily is the worst of the series. Ewoks are nothing but the proto-JarJar, and are included only to sell Happy Meals to children, and to keep the action figures rolling off the shelves. I kept Ep3 out, because of all of them it is probably the best.
As for Star Trek, it suffers from volume. With 1000x times more content than Star Wars, there also is 999x more suck. Some individual episodes and story arcs slaughter Star Wars in quality, but this is matched by Enterprise and Voyager, which were generally worse than anything Lucas vomits up (though there was occasional gems even in these). TNG was generally better than the rest of the Treks.
And Firefly and Babylon 5 kicked all of their asses (followed, maybe, by Far Scape).
Most of it is hack work covered up by nostalgia though. Picture yourself now, as a jaded adult, going to see the original Star Wars movies, would they have the same impact as they had when you were a kid? Same for Star Trek. How much of the more modern "Treks" were based only on the sense of nostalgia we had for TOS and TNG (depending on your age)?
This maps back to Metallica and Megadeth. If you heard them now, at their perspective bests, for the first time now, would you care? Probably not.
My grade school decided I was suicidal, threatening counseling etc, because I climbed up on the roof one day and was having a grand time taunting my friends from the edges. No one beleived me when I claimed I wasn't up there to kill myself, and that I really doubted a single story fall would do the job properly.
I think some kid in my "homeroom" class offed himself a couple weeks previous, so I can see, I suppose, their concern. I got in trouble for questioning the validity of his "accidental" hanging to his parents.
Closer to the topic, my high school had me and a freind upgrade all of their old AT&T boxes (with glorious Hercules graphics) to more modern boxes running Windows 3.11. Well they had a firm do it, but for some reason we got the task of ripping out all the old hardware, and somehow ended up being the unpaid gophers for the actual network team. Out of this we ended up with the all the network passwords for the school and lab (not District, we were the first school to get the modern treatment), and limited access to the server room. I think this was punishment for running a very small piracy ring on the network (1$ and you get a Space Invaders Clone, 2$ for something else, etc...), and using the computer lab guys teacher to print out our "underground" paper (which half the staff clandestinely distributed for us), and to print out copies of the old Anarchist Cookbook text file to sell for 5$ a pop (ah... to be pre-Columbine).
This is the best idea of punishment, if kids get in trouble for being "too bright", punish them by making them do something productive with it.
As for the actual topic at hand... I don't see how teaching kids to be terrorists is at all useful. Teach them the point of view of the people who turn into terrorists, perhaps, but not how to actually do it. In Jr. High I had a teacher make us read Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and Harrison Bergeon (I think Walden 2 as well, but that might be a bad memory) and then design our own utopia. Probably one of the only class related things I remember from any schooling that wasn't college.
I thought the goal was to give it the ability, eventually, to print its own circuits too. Its been a long time since I browsed their page though, so I might be wrong. Off all the bits it can't do now, the wood bits is the only thing a sufficiently advanced 3D printer would not be able to do. Not that the RepRap (gah, the name is dumb) is even near to being that advanced.
Eventually, though, I can see a device that can build its own structural components, and print its own boards. Making its own motors is a bit of a stretch (even in mythical "world of tomorrow"), but I can see it as being kind of possible, maybe.
The main thing that people like about it is the idealism. Its an open-source, and potentially cheaply available, tool that may, in the future, put 3D printing in the hands of anyone who wants it. As opposed to spending god knows how much on rapid prototyping now. Lowering the costs to basement inventors and tinkerers is a good thing, that may have some benefit to society at large.
Its a nice idea.
Notice how liberally I sprinkled hedge words throughout the above paragraphs, I really doubt anything will ever come of it, but I suppose that that isn't the point. Its like the GNU HURD, a really awesome idea that may or may not ever actually exist. The principles are more exciting the the actual implementation. It also might spawn some neat technology that will get picked up and used in actual, practical, applications.