First: as a "nanny state" liberal, I agree with you. Its your head, do what you want with it. I hate helmet and seat-belt laws. (Okay, I'm not a nanny state liberal, more of a liberal-socialist libertarian)
But the discussion here isn't about you, an adult, but about kids. On this I personally think that helmets shouldn't be mandated. But a parent can require that their child wear a helmet with no loss of liberty. Think seat belt laws: you should have the right to not wear a seat belt in a car, but you shouldn't have the right to keep your kid from wearing on. You might not hold your life in esteem, and that is fine, but you shouldn't be able to risk your kids life for your own mental pathologies (see also, the vaccine issue).
Again, I think we molly coddle our children too much, and mandatory helmet laws are moronic.
This would have been in the '70s, so I have no clue how common bike helmets were then, but the point still remains.
Growing up in the 80's, I would say that no one wore bike helmets, since no one wore them when I was growing up either. And, as for anecdotal stories go, I never knew a single person who died from not wearing one. Though once I ran, full speed, into an extended truck mirror, and chipped some teeth and ended up with a small (non-treated) concussion. Its a good thing that kids contain the magic property of healing. Though most of the people I ran with then (myself included) made some pretty good spills. The only head injury I'm aware of came from a skate board spill, so I'm confused at why we don't mandate skate-board helmets now.
But then again, I broke my arm (and my parents left it untreated for 2 weeks, thinking it was nothing more than a sprain) on an antique "kick-and-go" scooter, so I think we should mandate fully body armor for all recreational activities that involve wheels.
If you can only count the times you could have died as a kid on one hand, you had a sad, sad, boring childhood.
Sounds like you had some real issues going on if you're that defiant. Constant defiance without rationality is not normal.Sounds like you had some real issues going on if you're that defiant. Constant defiance without rationality is not normal.
Some people's parents wanted to raise their children to be individuals. Some people see a certain level of defiance as a positive thing. As a kid, who did get walloped from time to time, I was also encouraged to question my parents, and was allowed to disagree with them, as long as I could present a case. My parents had a very hard time putting many limits on me (outside of things that could be harmful to myself or others, of things that were antisocial, or made me seem a spoiled brat), since they both grew up in a rural area, and had almost unlimited freedom to get in trouble.
You didn't read a book?
When I was a kid? Talk about boring.
This makes me somewhat sad. When my parents grounded me, I would sit around reading old Tom Swift novels, and never even notice that I was grounded. But then again, I could also play with a fingernail clipping for hours, oblivious to the world at large ("holy cow, its a SPACE ship!")
I'm not a big fan of corporal punishment, though I can see its uses. My dad, from time to time reddened my butt when I was being a little terror, and while these aren't among my fondest childhood memories, I don't see then rising up in a couple years and causing me neurosis either. Sure, my childhood wasn't as rod ridden as my dad's, who managed to wear out a couple of his dad's belts, but then again my dad is also doing rather well mental health wise (a bit of a workaholic, but I attribute that to growing up very poor, and very Irish).
When I breed, I probably won't whoop my children, though. Not because of any humanistic, or "inner child scaring" reason, though, but because it isn't psychologically effective as a conditioning technique. Punishment must be linked to the dead punished both in time, and in method in order to stick in the brain. Most of the time spanking don't do this ("just wait until your father gets home!"), so it isn't effective most of the time. Also, often, corporal punishment goes over-board and serves more to vent the anger of the parents, than to correct the behavior of the child. A rap on the knuckles is just as strong a negative reinforcer than a large welt on the ass, but one is much more satisfying to an angry parent.
This being/., I'm not entirely sure whether your being sarcastic, or serious (sad isn't it).
If you are being sarcastic, you should know that there is very little actual science in child rearing practices. The science involved is much like the science involved in fad diets, they latch onto a small correlation, and turn it into a huge theory, with no actual empirical data or theory to back it up.
I don't think the OP lacks empathy. I was discussing this with my girlfriend who is getting her masters in education the other day, we're trading the short term happiness of our children for their long term viability as human beings. Think back to the stories you have from when you were a kid, or when your parents were kids, how much of it would be illegal, immoral, bad child rearing, etc.. now? Yet most of our parents are fine.
Hell, all of the things we discuss as being psychologically damaging to children were ubiquitous not 40 years ago, and yet somehow our species managed to exist, reproduce, and be productive members of whatever society we claim membership to. The goal of childhood is to become an adult, thats it. Yes, your kid should have fun and be safe, but there is a limit to that. You coddle them to much and they become gimped adults (or as it seems, they don't grow up ever).
Just think, with all the unfair, terrible, and emotionally scarring practices of yesteryear, our society ticked on, and somehow America managed to become the world powerhouse of technology and science, our children could read and do basic math, they didn't have drastic amounts of depression, ADD, and autism (and other psuedo-diseases), they didn't run around and shoot their classmates, or end up at 30 sitting in their mothers basements huffing paint. They generally weren't morbidly obese and suffer from asthma and diabetes. They didn't have some idiotic sense of entitlement with no achievement (self-esteem). Actually, we were healthier and smarter before we started treating our children like fragile little butterflies. \\
Something isn't working. To claim that our practices are better is rather dumb, since there isn't any observable improvement over what we've done of course of history (pre-60's). Children need to learn, they can't learn in a bubble. And we forget that children are MUCH more resilient than us adults, again think of the things you, and your parents, survived and prospered from as children, that we won't allow our children to experience.
Don't forget that it threw in 300% more "edgy", and made Bond into a cheap action hero. They completely ditched the feel and spirit of the series. The only thing that made it a Bond film was the character names (and the fact it was loosely based on an Ian Flemming Bond novel).
The original Bond movies were fun, and fun is something that modern Hollywood cannot abide by. Same with Batman, they sucked all the fun out of them, and made them into straight action movies, and added around 500% more edgy.
I'm sick to death of edgy. I hate angst, I cannot stand dark brooding morons. I thought we moved beyond that since it was the trend du jour of the 90's. Also Hollywood forgot that you can make a violent action movie, and keep it fun.
My use of Facebook is about the same as yours (since they realized that "Bob D. Pseudonym" couldn't be my name), but you can't control your friends. I might not post pictures of me from college chugging beer and acting like an ass, by my friends do. Years later, pictures still crop up, tagged with my name, and not at all private.
You only get to (hypothetically) control some information about you, a lot of the time your at the mercy of your acquaintances.
Yes, you would, and you would be right. But this should never subtract from the enjoyment of utterly crappy camp movies. I have it on VHS, and sometimes, I'll still throw it on with some friends over, just for the hoot. When I was younger, we'd do a monthly Rocky Horror/Flesh Gordon night of binge drinking, good times.
But then again what do I know, I think Zardoz and Barbarella are still great cinema.
How about PKDs "three stigmata of palmer eldritch" or "ubik" turned into a mini series or movie? Brilliant books.
Don't say that. How many PKD adaptions didn't turn into absolute crap? Blade Runner (which had very little to do with the novella), and A Scanner Darkly are the only two movies based on his writing that wasn't "big media" Tom Cruise pap. I have some hope for the Radio Free Albemuth movie coming out, but its a small production, almost an art house movie. Owl in the Daylight might also turn out well (pure art house), but it really isn't based on much.
Though if they announced VALIS the movie, I would see it.
Dick is like Poe and Lovecraft, great ideas, decent writing, but doesn't translate to the big screen at all.
As far as Adthwart (or any of the other Chrome ad blockers) goes, they don't actually block ads, they only hide them, whereas Adblock+ in Firefox actually blocks them from loading, saving bandwidth. Chrome still has some distance to go before its extension system is as robust as Firefox's.
That said, I pretty much completely moved over to Chrome now (well, Chromium on Linux, and Chrome on Windows) after they put extensions in their beta channel. Hiding ads is good enough when coupled with the performance boost Chrome seems to have, but it isn't nearly as nice as Adblock+.
Perhaps Google/the Chrome dev team will release the API to actually allow extensions to block content.
It will never ask those questions because then the whole field itself is under danger..of dissolution.
I somewhat doubt that. For the last 30-40 years the chic trend in philosophy has been to announce its impending doom (Heidegger started the trend), but then again for the last 30-40 years the chic trend in about every humanistic discipline has been to announce its death, look at modern art history for example. Or even the contemporary brouhaha about the "death of books", which, ironically, people have written tons of books about. The funny bit, is that all of these philosophers talking about the death of philosophy are generally still doing what can be called philosophy to pronounce the death of philosophy.
Philosophy as an academic discipline is currently under threat (there were only 80 philosophy majors in my school of 15,000), half of which were using it to bolster their chances of entering seminary. This is in part because of the overall lack of literacy, and the shift in the role of academic institutions into glorified trade schools, and also because a lot of what was historically relevant to philosophy has moved on into its own adult disciplines (physics, math, psychology, etc...). But philosophy itself cannot ever die, it is too fundamental to the human condition to ask "why". Hell, everytime a physicist starts musing about "how can I know this", he puts on his philosopher hat, same goes for every other discipline.
And the questions of ethics will never die. Nor will aesthetics. These have been human topics for as long as there has been humans with forebrains large enough to support complex thought.
As for the regression of "why"s, philosophers are VERY good at this. This might even be one of the discipline's hypothetical coffin nails. Philosophy has shifted to an almost complete meta-discipline, spending most of its time asking questions only about itself.
note that pi is found in many celebrated works of art. a lot of artists in history used it knowingly in their masterpieces. such pieces of art are known to appeal to human's liking more. liking, appreciation, all subjective concepts. human psyche is something we havent been able to approach with any tangible, usable definite method up to this date.
now we find this ration in quantum mechanics.
this is practically the first solid link in between something that is numeric, defined and clear cut and human psyche.
Which brings me to the point of all this - How come only a very few scientists ever ask 'Why is this so?'.
A lot of them do, but that question isn't science, it falls into the realm of philosophy or religion. As of yet, science can't answer why, and won't be able to until "why" is reduced to a measurable property. I'm very happy that scientists aren't shoving religion or philosophy down my throat. Science is the art of observing and recording, and after a long string of this, throwing out a theory that tries to connect all the previous observations and recordings into a coherent mesh.
Philosophy gets to ask "why is this so?", and religion gets to say "I know! I know!".
Read a bit more on the philosophy of science, or read the more personal books by mathematicians and physicists, you'll find that a lot of sleep has been lost over the "why?" question.
One of my professors was days away from presenting his doctoral thesis, realized that not enough people were asking the "why?" question, dropped everything and went back to school for philosophy (getting his PhD in that instead). Probably one of the best professors I've ever had, too.
I'm sitting in an Aeron chair in front of a brand spankin' new iMac...
Why is the brand name of your office chair important enough to mention? Should I be impressed, should your (or rather your boss') choice in chairs woo me, and convince me that your point is correct? Should it elevate you above me, and my poor butt planted in my inferior office chair whose brand isn't memorable, which came from the downtrodden aisles of Costco? Obviously your exquisite taste in office chairs elevates far behind hoi-polloi. To fully realize this American Psycho moment, perhaps we should comment on each others wardrobe and buisness cards too (mine is an elegant copperplate silk screened on heavy-weight ivory paper).
Snarky commentary aside: I don't get the cult-of-apple idea. Apple hardware is the same as PC hardware, the only real difference is the not-BIOS (EFI), and the case styling. The only difference is the software (which is artificially locked to the hardware), which is rather nice, but no longer vastly superior to the alternatives. The fact that you can pay for Parallels to virtualize other OSs isn't really a selling point, since virtualization has existed before. Nor is Boot Camp innovative, since I've been dual-booting computers long before Apple decided it was innovative (same with Spaces, Time Machine, and a lot of other Apple "innovations"). Over time, I've been less and less impressed with Apple's computers and hardware, especially since the Intel switch. Most of their work goes to gadgets, and it seems their computers suffer. (My Mac Mini crashes more than my Windows 7 box, offered as a pointless anecdote).
I have nothing against Apple, or people who prefer Apple hardware. I don't understand the loyalty though (academically I do, it is nothing but a flavor of post-hoc rationalization/cognitive dissonance). All software platforms are pretty much the same, usability-wise, these days. Most PC (yes, Apple is now a PC too) hardware is the same, coming from the same vendors. OS X, various Linux flavors, BSD, and Windows have pretty much the same functionality, and features.
Currently I have a Mac, and a Windows 7 PC running, and am typing this on a laptop with Ubuntu, Vista, and Snow Leopard on it (Hackintosh).
It probably wasn't. A few years ago I got a deal from Dell, $800 for a 2.66 Core 2 Duo, with 6GB of DDR2, and a 24" monitor. It had a crappy 300w PSU as well, it was standard ATX, and quite easy to replace, barring the fact that their cases are a pain in the ass to work in. The PSU only had 2 bunches of cable though, and no old 4-pin connectors, the cables had no slack whatsoever, so even hooking up an extra HDD was a pain in the ass.
Thankfully Fry's had a 550w on sale, so sticking in a video card was doable (though the PCI-e slot is about 1cm away from the normal PCI slots, this is about norm for mini-ATX, meh). The case, though, still sucks.
Dell isn't too bad, if you find a deal. I was messing around with their build-your-own calculator, and they generally turned out to be almost as cheap as building your own.
I can see why people don't build their own computers as much now, too. There isn't and decent brick and mortar shops for components any more, and Fry's electronics makes every build a GIANT PitA (how many mother boards must I buy before I find one that isn't bricked?) Shopping online is better, but still lacks the satisfaction of actually poking around shelves of parts (and buying cases online just sucks).
If I didn't find a hot deal of a PhenomII x4 965, I would have gone through Dell again for my next computer.
In theory this is true, but even if somewhere in the world the perfect country (whatever that means, there are as many hypothetical perfect countries as people in the world) which acknowledged free speech there still would be a need for anonymous speech. There never has been a perfect country that has stayed perfect for very long, and there are still forces hostile to openness (corporations, foreign governments, radical groups (ala the Mohammed cartoon fiasco), etc... Within 50 years your perfect country will stop being perfect, as corruption, greed, and idealism eats it from the inside.
Really the goal should be to raise people up to the point where governments don't need to exist, and we all can get a long. This, though, will never happen.
Or, instead of "disguising" your laziness by telling someone else to do the research, you could do it yourself...
Or, instead of presuming that people will trust your words/opinions as much as you do, or decide that your as great an authority as you think you are, supply evidence to back up your claims.
What you think and say mean nothing if you can't back it with facts. If your too lazy to do so, you really can't complain when someone disregards what you say as meaningless, because, in essence, it is.
But this price would be a fraction of a cent per card for most cards. How much money does it cost to maintain a database with millions of numbers? A large percentage of this cost would be normal operating costs which is included in the price of the service/card.
This generally isn't about the price of upkeep for one number in millions, this is about trying to grab excess money to pad the bottom line. This might be good or bad, but lets be honest about it.
I used to be a customer at Chase Bank, I had a checking account with $5 in it, which they grabbed for me because the account was inactive for 6 months. This policy was somewhere in the fine print, I assume, but no where did they warn me or make it explicit that they could basically steal my money after a certain period of time. Not that I'm surprised, since they are probably the worst bank I've ever delt with as far as legal, but exceedingly crooked, practices are concerned. To me this was theft, even if I didn't touch the account for however long. The whole name of the game was them getting money for free. If it was upkeep, they would charge a small upkeep fee, or announce that they would charge a percentage for untouched balances.
You conveniently forget that without these necessary DRM restrictions, nobody will be bothered to actually write articles and books in the first place. The same points you make were also claimed when DRM was applied to music - thankfully the technology has succeeded in this industry and put a stop to the years of silence and dull parties that previous generations had to endure.
Odd, people have been writing for a VERY long time, much longer than DRM existed, and much longer than even the idea of copyright existed. A large part of the great literature of our species was written, read, and profited from long before copyright was so strictly enforced, or even conceived.
People copying books (music, movies, etc...) won't kill books (music, movies, etc...), to say so is baseless and mindlessly alarmist. Hell, I do art, some of it has been copied (and profited from) without my permission, yet I still do art. Why? Because profit or exclusivity was never the goal, I just like to do it. Same with music, look at the history of Blues and Jazz, early on it was basically a game of who could do the best cover, and those genre's of music flourished, and lead to 90% of the music we listen to now, regardless of their shameless copying and borrowing. I have a ton of musician friends who would continue to perform without profit, even if others copied their music. Why? They can't help but to make music, being musicians and all.
Sure, a lot of people won't get filthy rich, be able to write (paint, make music) full time, and retire on their works willing obscene amounts of perpetual copyrighted works on their talentless children who did nothing (or more truthfully, giant mega-corporations). I won't cry over this. A full time job works for 99% of us, so I don't see why the "creative types" should be immune.
Can you really say that Steve Jobs, himself, was directly responsible for Apple's success? What about all the people whose companies were bought out for the features that apple wanted to implement? What about the thousands of designers and coders doing the actual work? Etc...
Steve Jobs is probably the best PR guy of the decade, but Apple stands on a whole horde of creative people, just like Google does.
But.. sigh... a nine year decade doesn't make sense. And by counting 2000 to 2010 as a decade you get stuck with a 9 year decade somewhere in your counting. A nine year decade is a logical contradiction, it makes no bloody sense. Therefore your "makes more sense" version makes much much less sense. Unless we redefine "decade" to mean "any period of time which I want to count, of arbitrary number of years". Or we all go back and decide that -1BCE was actually year 0, to make a nice 10 year decade (deca meaning 10, obviously).
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First: as a "nanny state" liberal, I agree with you. Its your head, do what you want with it. I hate helmet and seat-belt laws. (Okay, I'm not a nanny state liberal, more of a liberal-socialist libertarian)
But the discussion here isn't about you, an adult, but about kids. On this I personally think that helmets shouldn't be mandated. But a parent can require that their child wear a helmet with no loss of liberty. Think seat belt laws: you should have the right to not wear a seat belt in a car, but you shouldn't have the right to keep your kid from wearing on. You might not hold your life in esteem, and that is fine, but you shouldn't be able to risk your kids life for your own mental pathologies (see also, the vaccine issue).
Again, I think we molly coddle our children too much, and mandatory helmet laws are moronic.
This would have been in the '70s, so I have no clue how common bike helmets were then, but the point still remains.
Growing up in the 80's, I would say that no one wore bike helmets, since no one wore them when I was growing up either. And, as for anecdotal stories go, I never knew a single person who died from not wearing one. Though once I ran, full speed, into an extended truck mirror, and chipped some teeth and ended up with a small (non-treated) concussion. Its a good thing that kids contain the magic property of healing. Though most of the people I ran with then (myself included) made some pretty good spills. The only head injury I'm aware of came from a skate board spill, so I'm confused at why we don't mandate skate-board helmets now.
But then again, I broke my arm (and my parents left it untreated for 2 weeks, thinking it was nothing more than a sprain) on an antique "kick-and-go" scooter, so I think we should mandate fully body armor for all recreational activities that involve wheels.
If you can only count the times you could have died as a kid on one hand, you had a sad, sad, boring childhood.
Sounds like you had some real issues going on if you're that defiant. Constant defiance without rationality is not normal.Sounds like you had some real issues going on if you're that defiant. Constant defiance without rationality is not normal.
Some people's parents wanted to raise their children to be individuals. Some people see a certain level of defiance as a positive thing. As a kid, who did get walloped from time to time, I was also encouraged to question my parents, and was allowed to disagree with them, as long as I could present a case. My parents had a very hard time putting many limits on me (outside of things that could be harmful to myself or others, of things that were antisocial, or made me seem a spoiled brat), since they both grew up in a rural area, and had almost unlimited freedom to get in trouble.
You didn't read a book?
When I was a kid? Talk about boring.
This makes me somewhat sad. When my parents grounded me, I would sit around reading old Tom Swift novels, and never even notice that I was grounded. But then again, I could also play with a fingernail clipping for hours, oblivious to the world at large ("holy cow, its a SPACE ship!")
I'm not a big fan of corporal punishment, though I can see its uses. My dad, from time to time reddened my butt when I was being a little terror, and while these aren't among my fondest childhood memories, I don't see then rising up in a couple years and causing me neurosis either. Sure, my childhood wasn't as rod ridden as my dad's, who managed to wear out a couple of his dad's belts, but then again my dad is also doing rather well mental health wise (a bit of a workaholic, but I attribute that to growing up very poor, and very Irish).
When I breed, I probably won't whoop my children, though. Not because of any humanistic, or "inner child scaring" reason, though, but because it isn't psychologically effective as a conditioning technique. Punishment must be linked to the dead punished both in time, and in method in order to stick in the brain. Most of the time spanking don't do this ("just wait until your father gets home!"), so it isn't effective most of the time. Also, often, corporal punishment goes over-board and serves more to vent the anger of the parents, than to correct the behavior of the child. A rap on the knuckles is just as strong a negative reinforcer than a large welt on the ass, but one is much more satisfying to an angry parent.
This being /., I'm not entirely sure whether your being sarcastic, or serious (sad isn't it).
If you are being sarcastic, you should know that there is very little actual science in child rearing practices. The science involved is much like the science involved in fad diets, they latch onto a small correlation, and turn it into a huge theory, with no actual empirical data or theory to back it up.
If you're being serious; you might be a jerk.
I don't think the OP lacks empathy. I was discussing this with my girlfriend who is getting her masters in education the other day, we're trading the short term happiness of our children for their long term viability as human beings. Think back to the stories you have from when you were a kid, or when your parents were kids, how much of it would be illegal, immoral, bad child rearing, etc.. now? Yet most of our parents are fine.
Hell, all of the things we discuss as being psychologically damaging to children were ubiquitous not 40 years ago, and yet somehow our species managed to exist, reproduce, and be productive members of whatever society we claim membership to. The goal of childhood is to become an adult, thats it. Yes, your kid should have fun and be safe, but there is a limit to that. You coddle them to much and they become gimped adults (or as it seems, they don't grow up ever).
Just think, with all the unfair, terrible, and emotionally scarring practices of yesteryear, our society ticked on, and somehow America managed to become the world powerhouse of technology and science, our children could read and do basic math, they didn't have drastic amounts of depression, ADD, and autism (and other psuedo-diseases), they didn't run around and shoot their classmates, or end up at 30 sitting in their mothers basements huffing paint. They generally weren't morbidly obese and suffer from asthma and diabetes. They didn't have some idiotic sense of entitlement with no achievement (self-esteem). Actually, we were healthier and smarter before we started treating our children like fragile little butterflies. \\
Something isn't working. To claim that our practices are better is rather dumb, since there isn't any observable improvement over what we've done of course of history (pre-60's). Children need to learn, they can't learn in a bubble. And we forget that children are MUCH more resilient than us adults, again think of the things you, and your parents, survived and prospered from as children, that we won't allow our children to experience.
Don't forget that it threw in 300% more "edgy", and made Bond into a cheap action hero. They completely ditched the feel and spirit of the series. The only thing that made it a Bond film was the character names (and the fact it was loosely based on an Ian Flemming Bond novel).
The original Bond movies were fun, and fun is something that modern Hollywood cannot abide by. Same with Batman, they sucked all the fun out of them, and made them into straight action movies, and added around 500% more edgy.
I'm sick to death of edgy. I hate angst, I cannot stand dark brooding morons. I thought we moved beyond that since it was the trend du jour of the 90's. Also Hollywood forgot that you can make a violent action movie, and keep it fun.
Perhaps you should get those friends out of the closet, its rather cramped and uncomforable in there.
My use of Facebook is about the same as yours (since they realized that "Bob D. Pseudonym" couldn't be my name), but you can't control your friends. I might not post pictures of me from college chugging beer and acting like an ass, by my friends do. Years later, pictures still crop up, tagged with my name, and not at all private.
You only get to (hypothetically) control some information about you, a lot of the time your at the mercy of your acquaintances.
Jane Fonda. :)
Raquel Welch's early cheese is definitely up there, though.
if I saw it today I might think it was stupid.
Yes, you would, and you would be right. But this should never subtract from the enjoyment of utterly crappy camp movies. I have it on VHS, and sometimes, I'll still throw it on with some friends over, just for the hoot. When I was younger, we'd do a monthly Rocky Horror/Flesh Gordon night of binge drinking, good times.
But then again what do I know, I think Zardoz and Barbarella are still great cinema.
How about PKDs "three stigmata of palmer eldritch" or "ubik" turned into a mini series or movie? Brilliant books.
Don't say that. How many PKD adaptions didn't turn into absolute crap? Blade Runner (which had very little to do with the novella), and A Scanner Darkly are the only two movies based on his writing that wasn't "big media" Tom Cruise pap. I have some hope for the Radio Free Albemuth movie coming out, but its a small production, almost an art house movie. Owl in the Daylight might also turn out well (pure art house), but it really isn't based on much.
Though if they announced VALIS the movie, I would see it.
Dick is like Poe and Lovecraft, great ideas, decent writing, but doesn't translate to the big screen at all.
As far as Adthwart (or any of the other Chrome ad blockers) goes, they don't actually block ads, they only hide them, whereas Adblock+ in Firefox actually blocks them from loading, saving bandwidth. Chrome still has some distance to go before its extension system is as robust as Firefox's.
That said, I pretty much completely moved over to Chrome now (well, Chromium on Linux, and Chrome on Windows) after they put extensions in their beta channel. Hiding ads is good enough when coupled with the performance boost Chrome seems to have, but it isn't nearly as nice as Adblock+.
Perhaps Google/the Chrome dev team will release the API to actually allow extensions to block content.
It will never ask those questions because then the whole field itself is under danger..of dissolution.
I somewhat doubt that. For the last 30-40 years the chic trend in philosophy has been to announce its impending doom (Heidegger started the trend), but then again for the last 30-40 years the chic trend in about every humanistic discipline has been to announce its death, look at modern art history for example. Or even the contemporary brouhaha about the "death of books", which, ironically, people have written tons of books about. The funny bit, is that all of these philosophers talking about the death of philosophy are generally still doing what can be called philosophy to pronounce the death of philosophy.
Philosophy as an academic discipline is currently under threat (there were only 80 philosophy majors in my school of 15,000), half of which were using it to bolster their chances of entering seminary. This is in part because of the overall lack of literacy, and the shift in the role of academic institutions into glorified trade schools, and also because a lot of what was historically relevant to philosophy has moved on into its own adult disciplines (physics, math, psychology, etc...). But philosophy itself cannot ever die, it is too fundamental to the human condition to ask "why". Hell, everytime a physicist starts musing about "how can I know this", he puts on his philosopher hat, same goes for every other discipline.
And the questions of ethics will never die. Nor will aesthetics. These have been human topics for as long as there has been humans with forebrains large enough to support complex thought.
As for the regression of "why"s, philosophers are VERY good at this. This might even be one of the discipline's hypothetical coffin nails. Philosophy has shifted to an almost complete meta-discipline, spending most of its time asking questions only about itself.
note that pi is found in many celebrated works of art. a lot of artists in history used it knowingly in their masterpieces. such pieces of art are known to appeal to human's liking more. liking, appreciation, all subjective concepts. human psyche is something we havent been able to approach with any tangible, usable definite method up to this date.
now we find this ration in quantum mechanics.
this is practically the first solid link in between something that is numeric, defined and clear cut and human psyche.
FTFY.
Which brings me to the point of all this - How come only a very few scientists ever ask 'Why is this so?'.
A lot of them do, but that question isn't science, it falls into the realm of philosophy or religion. As of yet, science can't answer why, and won't be able to until "why" is reduced to a measurable property. I'm very happy that scientists aren't shoving religion or philosophy down my throat. Science is the art of observing and recording, and after a long string of this, throwing out a theory that tries to connect all the previous observations and recordings into a coherent mesh.
Philosophy gets to ask "why is this so?", and religion gets to say "I know! I know!".
Read a bit more on the philosophy of science, or read the more personal books by mathematicians and physicists, you'll find that a lot of sleep has been lost over the "why?" question.
One of my professors was days away from presenting his doctoral thesis, realized that not enough people were asking the "why?" question, dropped everything and went back to school for philosophy (getting his PhD in that instead). Probably one of the best professors I've ever had, too.
I'm sitting in an Aeron chair in front of a brand spankin' new iMac...
Why is the brand name of your office chair important enough to mention? Should I be impressed, should your (or rather your boss') choice in chairs woo me, and convince me that your point is correct? Should it elevate you above me, and my poor butt planted in my inferior office chair whose brand isn't memorable, which came from the downtrodden aisles of Costco? Obviously your exquisite taste in office chairs elevates far behind hoi-polloi. To fully realize this American Psycho moment, perhaps we should comment on each others wardrobe and buisness cards too (mine is an elegant copperplate silk screened on heavy-weight ivory paper).
Snarky commentary aside: I don't get the cult-of-apple idea. Apple hardware is the same as PC hardware, the only real difference is the not-BIOS (EFI), and the case styling. The only difference is the software (which is artificially locked to the hardware), which is rather nice, but no longer vastly superior to the alternatives. The fact that you can pay for Parallels to virtualize other OSs isn't really a selling point, since virtualization has existed before. Nor is Boot Camp innovative, since I've been dual-booting computers long before Apple decided it was innovative (same with Spaces, Time Machine, and a lot of other Apple "innovations"). Over time, I've been less and less impressed with Apple's computers and hardware, especially since the Intel switch. Most of their work goes to gadgets, and it seems their computers suffer. (My Mac Mini crashes more than my Windows 7 box, offered as a pointless anecdote).
I have nothing against Apple, or people who prefer Apple hardware. I don't understand the loyalty though (academically I do, it is nothing but a flavor of post-hoc rationalization/cognitive dissonance). All software platforms are pretty much the same, usability-wise, these days. Most PC (yes, Apple is now a PC too) hardware is the same, coming from the same vendors. OS X, various Linux flavors, BSD, and Windows have pretty much the same functionality, and features.
Currently I have a Mac, and a Windows 7 PC running, and am typing this on a laptop with Ubuntu, Vista, and Snow Leopard on it (Hackintosh).
It probably wasn't. A few years ago I got a deal from Dell, $800 for a 2.66 Core 2 Duo, with 6GB of DDR2, and a 24" monitor. It had a crappy 300w PSU as well, it was standard ATX, and quite easy to replace, barring the fact that their cases are a pain in the ass to work in. The PSU only had 2 bunches of cable though, and no old 4-pin connectors, the cables had no slack whatsoever, so even hooking up an extra HDD was a pain in the ass.
Thankfully Fry's had a 550w on sale, so sticking in a video card was doable (though the PCI-e slot is about 1cm away from the normal PCI slots, this is about norm for mini-ATX, meh). The case, though, still sucks.
Dell isn't too bad, if you find a deal. I was messing around with their build-your-own calculator, and they generally turned out to be almost as cheap as building your own.
I can see why people don't build their own computers as much now, too. There isn't and decent brick and mortar shops for components any more, and Fry's electronics makes every build a GIANT PitA (how many mother boards must I buy before I find one that isn't bricked?) Shopping online is better, but still lacks the satisfaction of actually poking around shelves of parts (and buying cases online just sucks).
If I didn't find a hot deal of a PhenomII x4 965, I would have gone through Dell again for my next computer.
In theory this is true, but even if somewhere in the world the perfect country (whatever that means, there are as many hypothetical perfect countries as people in the world) which acknowledged free speech there still would be a need for anonymous speech. There never has been a perfect country that has stayed perfect for very long, and there are still forces hostile to openness (corporations, foreign governments, radical groups (ala the Mohammed cartoon fiasco), etc... Within 50 years your perfect country will stop being perfect, as corruption, greed, and idealism eats it from the inside.
Really the goal should be to raise people up to the point where governments don't need to exist, and we all can get a long. This, though, will never happen.
Or, instead of "disguising" your laziness by telling someone else to do the research, you could do it yourself...
Or, instead of presuming that people will trust your words/opinions as much as you do, or decide that your as great an authority as you think you are, supply evidence to back up your claims.
What you think and say mean nothing if you can't back it with facts. If your too lazy to do so, you really can't complain when someone disregards what you say as meaningless, because, in essence, it is.
But this price would be a fraction of a cent per card for most cards. How much money does it cost to maintain a database with millions of numbers? A large percentage of this cost would be normal operating costs which is included in the price of the service/card.
This generally isn't about the price of upkeep for one number in millions, this is about trying to grab excess money to pad the bottom line. This might be good or bad, but lets be honest about it.
I used to be a customer at Chase Bank, I had a checking account with $5 in it, which they grabbed for me because the account was inactive for 6 months. This policy was somewhere in the fine print, I assume, but no where did they warn me or make it explicit that they could basically steal my money after a certain period of time. Not that I'm surprised, since they are probably the worst bank I've ever delt with as far as legal, but exceedingly crooked, practices are concerned. To me this was theft, even if I didn't touch the account for however long. The whole name of the game was them getting money for free. If it was upkeep, they would charge a small upkeep fee, or announce that they would charge a percentage for untouched balances.
You conveniently forget that without these necessary DRM restrictions, nobody will be bothered to actually write articles and books in the first place. The same points you make were also claimed when DRM was applied to music - thankfully the technology has succeeded in this industry and put a stop to the years of silence and dull parties that previous generations had to endure.
Odd, people have been writing for a VERY long time, much longer than DRM existed, and much longer than even the idea of copyright existed. A large part of the great literature of our species was written, read, and profited from long before copyright was so strictly enforced, or even conceived.
People copying books (music, movies, etc...) won't kill books (music, movies, etc...), to say so is baseless and mindlessly alarmist. Hell, I do art, some of it has been copied (and profited from) without my permission, yet I still do art. Why? Because profit or exclusivity was never the goal, I just like to do it. Same with music, look at the history of Blues and Jazz, early on it was basically a game of who could do the best cover, and those genre's of music flourished, and lead to 90% of the music we listen to now, regardless of their shameless copying and borrowing. I have a ton of musician friends who would continue to perform without profit, even if others copied their music. Why? They can't help but to make music, being musicians and all.
Sure, a lot of people won't get filthy rich, be able to write (paint, make music) full time, and retire on their works willing obscene amounts of perpetual copyrighted works on their talentless children who did nothing (or more truthfully, giant mega-corporations). I won't cry over this. A full time job works for 99% of us, so I don't see why the "creative types" should be immune.
Can you really say that Steve Jobs, himself, was directly responsible for Apple's success? What about all the people whose companies were bought out for the features that apple wanted to implement? What about the thousands of designers and coders doing the actual work? Etc...
Steve Jobs is probably the best PR guy of the decade, but Apple stands on a whole horde of creative people, just like Google does.
But.. sigh... a nine year decade doesn't make sense. And by counting 2000 to 2010 as a decade you get stuck with a 9 year decade somewhere in your counting. A nine year decade is a logical contradiction, it makes no bloody sense. Therefore your "makes more sense" version makes much much less sense. Unless we redefine "decade" to mean "any period of time which I want to count, of arbitrary number of years". Or we all go back and decide that -1BCE was actually year 0, to make a nice 10 year decade (deca meaning 10, obviously).
But then you end up with a nine year "decade", which is rather stupid.