But one is cleaner. With the 2010 decade you don't have any sloppy 9-year decades (I suppose -1 BCE - 9 CE is valid, but still sloppy). I prefer 1-10, 11-20... 2001-2010, its neater, and fits the actual numbers better.
And as someone pointed out, if we take a decade to be ANY period of 10 years, then where is the person of the decade ending in 2008? We're talking of "millennial" decades, which would be ending next year, taking 2001 as the start of the 21st century. 2000, if we someone has discovered the year 0.
It's rather sad that you realise in the first half of your post that a direct PC/console comparison is stupid, and then continue to make the same stupid comparison further down.
You can't compare a console to a PC, but you can compare their ability to play games. A console is, by definition, nothing more than a gimped PC used for dedicated gaming, they are this, and nothing more.
The generic nature, the nature of the fact PCs can have an unlimited amount of addons is what cripples them in terms of gaming performance, the various generic buses capable of handling a plethora of different addons is what acts as a bottleneck in relation to buses dedicated to transferring game related data between game related hardware.
I've never actually seen this problem. Generally consoles have the advantage (performance wise) for about a year after their release, ignoring Nintendo's products, after that PC hardware catches up at the same price points. Oddly, this year is generally the same time when the consoles are selling the most under cost, since the price of hardware would bring them at, or above, the price of a similar speced PC. Right now I'm running a $500 Dell with an old video card ( ATI 4650; $50 at Fry's), and can run just about any game at max settings, and get a decent frame-rate. I don't see any performance degradation, obviously, since it performs better.
The only question involved is taste. Which do you prefer. The PC holds a slight edge (especially if we tack on a few extra bucks, and you have the technical skills to actually use it), but consoles also work fine as well. I really don't care what people want to waste their time on, I just don't like self-justifying arguments to back up their decision.
For instance, while I do think that my PC has higher gaming capabilities, I really want to drop money on a 360 (if only they weren't plagued by hardware issues) because of their exclusives. I also own a Wii, just for the drunken fun factor. All things are matters of preference.
so modern warfare 2's largest launch in the history of media/movies/music means nothing?
It probably does mean nothing, since I really doubt that Modern Warfare 2 actually had the largest launch in history. It might have, I suppose, but that sort of claim needs some proof outside of "well, man, I stood in line for it, it was awesome!"
Just to be clear: you are saying that I should be able to shell out $300 and get a decent gaming computer that will "easily last several years" ??
I hate this fallacy. Lets reverse this, to try to illustrate the absuridity: "So I can just shell out $300 for a console that supports 5x the resolution as my TV, is capable of running any software I can throw at it, has an input device with more than 6 buttons, and that can support a near infinite range of 3rd party add-ons? A console is a one time investment that has only one purpose (sometime with other functionality tacked on in a half-assed manner), a PC is an investment that does much much more than just playing video games. You already have a PC, right? How much did that PC cost you? For $300 tacked onto the price of the PC you already bought, you could have a rig that would put your current consoles running on outdated tech to shame.
Government is created to try and preserve the rights men were born with.
We're born with rights? I wasn't aware of any viable a priori or empirical proofs towards that conclusion. What the hell is a right, where the hell do they come from? Neither of these questions have been answered to any degree of certainty. Generally all they are is convenient slogans used to make an emotive argument towards their own agenda. Functionally they are nothing more than a social construct. All persuasive descriptions of rights are merely normative proscriptions (Kant's Categorical Imperative, the various social contracts, etc...), and not descriptive systems of actual innate rights.
Also who is to say who owns what? Do you own your land, the land that someone stole from the Native Americans?
s the idea of ownership is the most fundamental concept of a free man [certainly, a man must be allowed to own himself! another idea that is unique amongst world governments to the US constitution...]
Personally ownership/property would be secondary to the basics of survival, since the latter necessarily precludes the former. Looking at the history of society, the so-called "innate right" to personal property is a relative newcomer, with early communities being rather communistic (i.e. community property), and much of the time after the widespread advent of "private property" much of the population didn't actually have this right, being that all land/property was the Crowns. For an innate right, it springs up REALLY late in the game.
Also, how can we say that the US Constitution "allowed a man to own himself", and was "unique" in this? We were one of the last countries to realize that a large segment of the population WASN'T property. In half of our history I could claim ownership over you, based solely on your level of melanin. Hell, we didn't even realize that women had rights until rather late in the game, and they were over half the population.
The US was a backwards country based off of economic exploitation and not any conception of "rights". In some regards we still fall into this mold.
Intellectual Property is the basic realization that ideas are the most valuable things in human history, and that a man ought to be free to own his ideas -- just like he is when he's alone on an island.
And your own holy Constitution craps on that idea. Governments exist for the good of society (a collective entity of individuals), and not for YOU, or any other person. Copyright, and IP in general, exists for the benefit of all members of society, and not just you. Thus the idea of a limited monopoly on your intellectual creation. The only reason you get this small monopoly is to sucker you into creating more stuff (using your greed for the benefit of the society as a whole), there is no high-falutin' "the effluvia that flows from your brain is sacrosanct" clause in the constitution. There is two reasons for this; the first being that there is no proof that the founding fathers were rugged individualists (in the sense we mean today, they probably would have giggled madly at Ayn Rand, and the modern libertarian party), and that it is incredibly naive to think that any individuals ideas came from a vacuum, you owe your great idea to great ideas before that. If all individual ideas were walled off, there would be no progress since without the old ideas, there are no new ideas.
Not "humanity, the pool of humans", but "humanity -- the essence of what a man is".
Featherless bipeds? There is no "essence", people are free to create their own essence. My idea of what I would probably piss you off, and visa versa. Human nature, is by nature, almost infinitely malleable. Personally I do think that IP is largely meaningless, outside of a way to blackmail creators into creating more. I can't smell, see, or measure IP, therefore it is no more real than any other mere idea. Ideas should always be subjugated by that which exists
The moderation system is awesome. It is the one thing I always notice the lack of when reading other blogs. It also is much better than the binary system on some blogs, and Reddit and Digg, which tends to lead to an even larger herd (hurd?) mentality than here. But there has to be more, Kuro5hin has a much more expansive and powerful (or at least arcane) mod system, and has collapsed under the weight of its own lack of relevance long ago.
The thing that probably lead/. to keeping its glory is the diversity of the crowd here. Most of the people here are geeky, many are educated, and every single one of us is opinionated and not scared of trying to fight for ideological supremacy (be it Democrat versus Republican, Socialist versus Libertarian, Vi versus Emacs, KDE versus Gnome, etc...). The fact that there is no 4chan-ian hive mind here helps a ton. Every time I come to this site, I can expect to nod my head in complete sycophantic agreement, and erupt flaming bile within the same discussion.
I just wish that the Politics section never hit, it seemed to have made EVERY damn discussion political (Bush uses BSD therefore BSD sucks... FreeBSD is socialist, therefore it sucks... etc...).
Probably because you used the word "fanboys" with a straight face. Its very hard to use that word, and actually have any content in your post.
Granted, the rest of your post was rather valid, and perhaps even deserving of an "insightful" mod. Though you seem to forget that people are largely creatures of habit, and will continue to use what they are using currently, no matter how good the alternatives are. How many people still cling to the rotting corpse of Yahoo just because it was the best engine of the 90's. How many people use crappy web browsers (IE, though the current one isn't bad) when basically picking any alternative randomly would be better? I admit, I mostly use Google just because I'm familiar with it (and think it still has a slight edge over Bing), and Bing isn't much better, or at least better enough to bother switching.
I also think that Google still has a slight moral/ethical advantage over Microsoft. Not saying either is a knight in shining armor, but one is a bit less evil than the other, much like American politics.
Okay, then, that means no product development discussion on Wave. Whatever.
Not now, and not Google's, yes. But remember that Wave is going to be an open protocol, meaning you can set one up behind a wall and use it freely once it becomes available. Wave is like Wiki, you'd be insane to discuss proprietary information on a publicly accessible wiki, but I'm sure some portion of companies have wikis set up internally which are perfectly secure (or at least as secure as their internal network).
The "cloud" is fundamentally stupid, though. Its good for some things, and terrible for others. Anything that requires security, or close control of information the cloud crashes and burns at.
Aren't toy stores explicitly aimed at kids? Don't adults tend to get their computer games elsewhere? Why are toy stores even selling Bio Shock or GTA?
Because with games costing $50-$60 adults generally buy these titles for their kids. Sometimes adults have enough faith in their children to know that they can handle the content of a game, so by barring the sale of these (to adults), the stores would be cutting out profit, and annoying potential customers.
If I had teenagers I would have no problem (depending on their personalities, obviously) with them playing most of these games, they aren't much more extreme than what I was playing as an early teen. Hell... D&D sessions could get VERY twisted and violent.
Appeal to authority is different than not acknowledging authority. If you tried to diagnose my health problems, but I decided to listen to my doctor instead, would this be a fallacy? Sure, you might be right and my doctor wrong, but the odds are against it.
To even get me to take you seriously, you would have to present a very strong logical and empirical case to convince me, a much stronger argument than an MD would have to have to convince me of the same thing.
On the other hand, assuming your an IT guy, I would much rather take IT-related advice from you, than my doctor, for the same reason.
Intellectual arrogance and blind faith in authority are also character flaws. Ignorance can lead to the fool pointing out the king has no clothes.
I never stated that either of them are virtues either. You should question authority, if you have valid grounds (i.e. nothing to do with how you feel about what they said, only the factual matters count). Arrogance is bad, but so is not acknowledging our own ignorance, and the fact that a lot of people are much more capable of forming solutions than we are.
When somebody living in an intellectual bubble proposes changes that have a material impact on the livelihood of "average morons," they should expect resistance and have answers to bigger picture questions.
We're not talking about policy, we're talking about science. If me finding that asbestos causes cancer and lung disease effects you because you live in a house with asbestos, this does not give you the ability to question my conclusion. If I decide to demolish your house because their is asbestos in it, then you should have a say.
I beg to differ, Just because you got a PhD doesnt give a person intelligence. Having spent a majority of my life with academics I can attest to the fact that sometimes a PhD in physics can give a PhD in biology some interesting insights. Even as a well respected and highly educated IT Engineer I can get insights from a HS dropout on various subjects. Hubris is an enemy of science. When we start chuckling at those 'below' us we start putting more stock in ourselves than the facts.
I admit, I overstated. This "science is arrogant because they don't agree with my ignorant opinion" debate gets me a bit steamed up. No, you don't need a PhD to contribute, but you still need a rigorous, logical, and empirically based argument to be taken seriously. Also, the bar for entry into the debate is much higher for people who don't have relevant credentials in regards to the topic (this is, and should be true of scientists, and lay people alike).
If your an IT Engineer, and your grandma gives you advice on a problem, her argument would have to be much stronger than ones of your peers, in order to be taken seriously.
Why let some nuance get in the way of a perfectly good sensational statement?
Your average blue-collar idiot is also smart enough to see a conflict of interest... such as it not being in Jiffy Lube's best interest to tell you that your car doesn't need an oil change. What do climatologist do for a living other than telling us the sky is falling? Do they study the changes in the Earth's climate over billions of years? No, geologists do that. When geologists start telling me its time to panic, I'll panic.
Everyone has a conflict of interest. Everyone can see everyone else's conflict of interest, but intelligence comes to play when we can see our own.
The anti-global warming crowd has just as large a conflict of interest as the pro-warming crowd. Thus the "conflict of interest" argument is mute. On one hand you have a handful of academics making money by working in the field, and a couple startups hoping to bank on the green trend. On the other hand you have big oil, some of the richest companies and governments in the world, and the average Joe who really doesn't want to change his life.
Just because you have a financial incentive in something, doesn't invalidate the science. The pro's are making money, the cons are making TONS of money.
Also, if a academic climate scientists found that there wasn't global warming, they wouldn't be out of a job. Climate science preexists the global warming brouhaha, as do the grants they received.
such as it not being in Jiffy Lube's best interest to tell you that your car doesn't need an oil change.
But in this debate we're saying you don't need an oil change, just because Jiffy Lube told you that you did. Which is pretty bad logic, if you ask me.
All too often in the debates about GCC someone who is a climate researcher will go "Well I'm a climate researcher so I'm right and the people that don't agree with me are idiots." Yea, not the best way to approach people
They have every right to say this; when the people arguing against them are not climate scientists, or in scientific fields related. If I tell someone with a PhD in climate science that they are wrong, they have every right to chuckle at me, since I really don't know what I'm talking about. This is not a problem.
The problem is some idea that science should be "fair and balanced", and that every view, from any source, is valid, or at least should be debated or considered. Scientists should tell MORE people to STFU, if you ask me.
I think it stems from being walled up in Universities and not having to work for a living.
I'm also getting sick of this sentiment. Being a undereducated working stiff DOES NOT make you the paragon of virtue, or some special font of insight. It makes you an average moron, thats it, nothing more. Having to "work for a living" (which, last I checked, most evil academics do as well) doesn't mean that you get the right to weigh authoritatively on topics you know nothing about.
These morally dubious (sarcasm there) ivory tower types earned their "arrogance", I use irony quotes there because someone "admitting to know more than a NASCAR watching moron" has become arrogant. If someone spent 8 years of their life trying to be proficient in a feild, I'd say they know more than some blue collar worker, and earned having a preferred opinion on that topic.
And no, I'm not an academic, though I pride myself as trying to be as intellectual as I possibly can. I see being intellectually average, or ignorant as a character flaw, and not something to work toward (or revel in), but something to work to remedy.
If we continue the "playing recorded media is a performance" analogy though, we reach the absurd conclusion that "artists" should be paid every time you play a song by them.
I personally think that recorded music is just a commodity like any other, and shouldn't get special privileges. Yes, I do think that people should pay for albums/songs (once), but I think that after that sale the artists, their goon-squad, and the government shouldn't have any influence on how I use the song.
. If you get a copy of the sound recording that I worked hard to produce without either paying me for it or me giving it to you than you have stolen it from me.
No, I copied it. You were not deprived of anything, therefore it isn't theft. The copying might be illegal, or immoral, but it still isn't theft. The closest we get to theft with copying is the potential deprivation of profit. If I copied your song, then smashed the masters, it would be closer to theft since I actually denied you use.
I personally think copying music without compensating the artist is wrong. I also have nothing against using P2P as a "try before you buy" medium, I have nothing against pirating thing from musicians who don't actually derive profit from sales (anyone who is dead, or don't own their own rights), I have nothing against pirating things over a certain age (lets say 30 years). I have nothing against pirating music released to be intentionally broken (DRM), or that is released in the spirit of limited scarcity. I have nothing against pirating music that I have already bought, albeit in a different form, whether or whether not I actually own the media.
Though, honestly, I really don't care anyone. Artists, and their backers, have been trying to screw their customers over for years, so I see nothing wrong with playing the same game and screwing them over. This is especially true of RIAA labels and artists, I would generally never even CONSIDER buying their music, no matter how much I like them (if I like them, I will see them in concert and buy a damn shirt... though even that experience is getting a biut customer hostile with bigger shows). I am not your guaranteed revenue stream, and if you screw with me (even a little), your not getting a damn cent from me.
Musicians are NOT special people who deserve special rights and protections. If you don't play music, someone else will. If you only play for money, then you aren't really worth much in my eyes. If you find having a day job to onerous, then tough shit. If you aren't successful enough to do music 100% of the time, and live off of it, then you should have a job just like the rest of us.
I would love to see Windows adopt an Apple-like schedule of smaller, cheaper updates released on an approximately eightethien month schedule
I would hate it. The quick Apple release cycle helped me quit using their products, and move back to Windows and Linux. Half the time I couldn't find an actual reason to cough up the money for a meaningless upgrade which did nothing but add functionality that third parties already supplied (dashboard, spaces, time machine). Often they would make a minor change to their API which third party programmers would pick up, forcing me to upgrade if I want to use updated software. The whole cycle smelled like a scam to me, I could spend $200 (or not) every two-three years, or spend 70*3 for Apple upgrades in the same time span. I would rather budget the the larger hit than small ones erratically. Also, a lot of software made for Windows7 can run on XP still, this isn't true for OS X.
I like large, monolithic releases. I can forget about upgrade cycles for a long period of time, which is nice.
You don't like any kind of religion, so you fail to discern the differences in your attempt at lumping them all together as worthless and meaningless.
A bit of a strawman there; I never said or implied that I didn't like religion. I think religion, like all human endeavors, is capable of wonderful things, and terrible things alike. My own faith, or lack thereof, doesn't play into this.
If Scientology isn't a religion, then what is it? This is a simple question. If you claim it is a cult, not a religion, then we run into the problem that there isn't really a good definition for either that excludes the other. If we claim it is a "for profit scam" we still have to include some very popular Christian sects in America (think TV evangelism, and mega churches), not to mention the pre-reformation Catholic church.
Scientology is a religion. This doesn't say that all religions are bad, or that your particular brand of religion is bad, it just says (barring further evidence) that SOME religions can be bad. This shouldn't be shocking to anyone.
Scientology is a religion in the same way as Dunkin Donuts is a restaurant
Not to sound like a troll, but what is the difference between Scientology and the class of entities called "religion", to me this sounds like the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. You don't like Scientology, but you like your religion of choice, therefore Scientology is not a religion, in spite of sharing many similar characteristics.
Being familiar with music from hotties like Timberlake and Daughtry makes you popular with the ladies. Saying, "Those guys are crap" is only going to get you dumped
By "ladies" you of course mean: girls under 18, or fat old women who wear Betty Boop/Disney pajamas and form Twilight fan clubs.
Me and my girlfriend spent many a night bonding over Slayer and Mike Patton, which suited me just fine. I'd actually be very frightened if she listened to Justin Timberlake (and whoever "Daughtery" is), since there is something very strange about a 30 year old listening to 2000's teeny-bopper music. People shouldn't be frightened of growing up.
The name "political correctness" implies the two bad attributes of the phenomenon: That it's political and that it claims to be correct (without justification and in a field with many differing perspectives).
I've never interpreted it this way; i always took it as "something correct in the political sense", using the broader definition of "political".
If the people of the CIA broke international law...
I'm not saying the CIA broke international law, or did not brake it. Nor am I arguing about the text of international law, I'm just saying that the "just following orders" defense is historically flawed. I was also, mostly, arguing in moral terms, deferring blame does not leave you blameless, and not legal terms.
They may well have not broke the letter of international law (the spirit perhaps).
Never said that. I do not condone either Google or China. I was just questioning whether the act violated human rights. If there are innate human rights then everything that violates them is bad, and not everything that doesn't violate them is good. I could draw a Venn Diagram for ya.
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But one is cleaner. With the 2010 decade you don't have any sloppy 9-year decades (I suppose -1 BCE - 9 CE is valid, but still sloppy). I prefer 1-10, 11-20 ... 2001-2010, its neater, and fits the actual numbers better.
And as someone pointed out, if we take a decade to be ANY period of 10 years, then where is the person of the decade ending in 2008? We're talking of "millennial" decades, which would be ending next year, taking 2001 as the start of the 21st century. 2000, if we someone has discovered the year 0.
It's rather sad that you realise in the first half of your post that a direct PC/console comparison is stupid, and then continue to make the same stupid comparison further down.
You can't compare a console to a PC, but you can compare their ability to play games. A console is, by definition, nothing more than a gimped PC used for dedicated gaming, they are this, and nothing more.
The generic nature, the nature of the fact PCs can have an unlimited amount of addons is what cripples them in terms of gaming performance, the various generic buses capable of handling a plethora of different addons is what acts as a bottleneck in relation to buses dedicated to transferring game related data between game related hardware.
I've never actually seen this problem. Generally consoles have the advantage (performance wise) for about a year after their release, ignoring Nintendo's products, after that PC hardware catches up at the same price points. Oddly, this year is generally the same time when the consoles are selling the most under cost, since the price of hardware would bring them at, or above, the price of a similar speced PC. Right now I'm running a $500 Dell with an old video card ( ATI 4650; $50 at Fry's), and can run just about any game at max settings, and get a decent frame-rate. I don't see any performance degradation, obviously, since it performs better.
The only question involved is taste. Which do you prefer. The PC holds a slight edge (especially if we tack on a few extra bucks, and you have the technical skills to actually use it), but consoles also work fine as well. I really don't care what people want to waste their time on, I just don't like self-justifying arguments to back up their decision.
For instance, while I do think that my PC has higher gaming capabilities, I really want to drop money on a 360 (if only they weren't plagued by hardware issues) because of their exclusives. I also own a Wii, just for the drunken fun factor. All things are matters of preference.
so modern warfare 2's largest launch in the history of media/movies/music means nothing?
It probably does mean nothing, since I really doubt that Modern Warfare 2 actually had the largest launch in history. It might have, I suppose, but that sort of claim needs some proof outside of "well, man, I stood in line for it, it was awesome!"
Just to be clear: you are saying that I should be able to shell out $300 and get a decent gaming computer that will "easily last several years" ??
I hate this fallacy. Lets reverse this, to try to illustrate the absuridity: "So I can just shell out $300 for a console that supports 5x the resolution as my TV, is capable of running any software I can throw at it, has an input device with more than 6 buttons, and that can support a near infinite range of 3rd party add-ons? A console is a one time investment that has only one purpose (sometime with other functionality tacked on in a half-assed manner), a PC is an investment that does much much more than just playing video games. You already have a PC, right? How much did that PC cost you? For $300 tacked onto the price of the PC you already bought, you could have a rig that would put your current consoles running on outdated tech to shame.
Government is created to try and preserve the rights men were born with.
We're born with rights? I wasn't aware of any viable a priori or empirical proofs towards that conclusion. What the hell is a right, where the hell do they come from? Neither of these questions have been answered to any degree of certainty. Generally all they are is convenient slogans used to make an emotive argument towards their own agenda. Functionally they are nothing more than a social construct. All persuasive descriptions of rights are merely normative proscriptions (Kant's Categorical Imperative, the various social contracts, etc...), and not descriptive systems of actual innate rights.
Also who is to say who owns what? Do you own your land, the land that someone stole from the Native Americans?
s the idea of ownership is the most fundamental concept of a free man [certainly, a man must be allowed to own himself! another idea that is unique amongst world governments to the US constitution...]
Personally ownership/property would be secondary to the basics of survival, since the latter necessarily precludes the former. Looking at the history of society, the so-called "innate right" to personal property is a relative newcomer, with early communities being rather communistic (i.e. community property), and much of the time after the widespread advent of "private property" much of the population didn't actually have this right, being that all land/property was the Crowns. For an innate right, it springs up REALLY late in the game.
Also, how can we say that the US Constitution "allowed a man to own himself", and was "unique" in this? We were one of the last countries to realize that a large segment of the population WASN'T property. In half of our history I could claim ownership over you, based solely on your level of melanin. Hell, we didn't even realize that women had rights until rather late in the game, and they were over half the population.
The US was a backwards country based off of economic exploitation and not any conception of "rights". In some regards we still fall into this mold.
Intellectual Property is the basic realization that ideas are the most valuable things in human history, and that a man ought to be free to own his ideas -- just like he is when he's alone on an island.
And your own holy Constitution craps on that idea. Governments exist for the good of society (a collective entity of individuals), and not for YOU, or any other person. Copyright, and IP in general, exists for the benefit of all members of society, and not just you. Thus the idea of a limited monopoly on your intellectual creation. The only reason you get this small monopoly is to sucker you into creating more stuff (using your greed for the benefit of the society as a whole), there is no high-falutin' "the effluvia that flows from your brain is sacrosanct" clause in the constitution. There is two reasons for this; the first being that there is no proof that the founding fathers were rugged individualists (in the sense we mean today, they probably would have giggled madly at Ayn Rand, and the modern libertarian party), and that it is incredibly naive to think that any individuals ideas came from a vacuum, you owe your great idea to great ideas before that. If all individual ideas were walled off, there would be no progress since without the old ideas, there are no new ideas.
Not "humanity, the pool of humans", but "humanity -- the essence of what a man is".
Featherless bipeds? There is no "essence", people are free to create their own essence. My idea of what I would probably piss you off, and visa versa. Human nature, is by nature, almost infinitely malleable. Personally I do think that IP is largely meaningless, outside of a way to blackmail creators into creating more. I can't smell, see, or measure IP, therefore it is no more real than any other mere idea. Ideas should always be subjugated by that which exists
The moderation system is awesome. It is the one thing I always notice the lack of when reading other blogs. It also is much better than the binary system on some blogs, and Reddit and Digg, which tends to lead to an even larger herd (hurd?) mentality than here. But there has to be more, Kuro5hin has a much more expansive and powerful (or at least arcane) mod system, and has collapsed under the weight of its own lack of relevance long ago.
The thing that probably lead /. to keeping its glory is the diversity of the crowd here. Most of the people here are geeky, many are educated, and every single one of us is opinionated and not scared of trying to fight for ideological supremacy (be it Democrat versus Republican, Socialist versus Libertarian, Vi versus Emacs, KDE versus Gnome, etc...). The fact that there is no 4chan-ian hive mind here helps a ton. Every time I come to this site, I can expect to nod my head in complete sycophantic agreement, and erupt flaming bile within the same discussion.
I just wish that the Politics section never hit, it seemed to have made EVERY damn discussion political (Bush uses BSD therefore BSD sucks... FreeBSD is socialist, therefore it sucks... etc...).
Probably because you used the word "fanboys" with a straight face. Its very hard to use that word, and actually have any content in your post.
Granted, the rest of your post was rather valid, and perhaps even deserving of an "insightful" mod. Though you seem to forget that people are largely creatures of habit, and will continue to use what they are using currently, no matter how good the alternatives are. How many people still cling to the rotting corpse of Yahoo just because it was the best engine of the 90's. How many people use crappy web browsers (IE, though the current one isn't bad) when basically picking any alternative randomly would be better? I admit, I mostly use Google just because I'm familiar with it (and think it still has a slight edge over Bing), and Bing isn't much better, or at least better enough to bother switching.
I also think that Google still has a slight moral/ethical advantage over Microsoft. Not saying either is a knight in shining armor, but one is a bit less evil than the other, much like American politics.
Okay, then, that means no product development discussion on Wave. Whatever.
Not now, and not Google's, yes. But remember that Wave is going to be an open protocol, meaning you can set one up behind a wall and use it freely once it becomes available. Wave is like Wiki, you'd be insane to discuss proprietary information on a publicly accessible wiki, but I'm sure some portion of companies have wikis set up internally which are perfectly secure (or at least as secure as their internal network).
The "cloud" is fundamentally stupid, though. Its good for some things, and terrible for others. Anything that requires security, or close control of information the cloud crashes and burns at.
Aren't toy stores explicitly aimed at kids? Don't adults tend to get their computer games elsewhere? Why are toy stores even selling Bio Shock or GTA?
Because with games costing $50-$60 adults generally buy these titles for their kids. Sometimes adults have enough faith in their children to know that they can handle the content of a game, so by barring the sale of these (to adults), the stores would be cutting out profit, and annoying potential customers.
If I had teenagers I would have no problem (depending on their personalities, obviously) with them playing most of these games, they aren't much more extreme than what I was playing as an early teen. Hell... D&D sessions could get VERY twisted and violent.
Why should a scientist care one bit whether or whether not you like them?
Appeal to authority is different than not acknowledging authority. If you tried to diagnose my health problems, but I decided to listen to my doctor instead, would this be a fallacy? Sure, you might be right and my doctor wrong, but the odds are against it.
To even get me to take you seriously, you would have to present a very strong logical and empirical case to convince me, a much stronger argument than an MD would have to have to convince me of the same thing.
On the other hand, assuming your an IT guy, I would much rather take IT-related advice from you, than my doctor, for the same reason.
Intellectual arrogance and blind faith in authority are also character flaws. Ignorance can lead to the fool pointing out the king has no clothes.
I never stated that either of them are virtues either. You should question authority, if you have valid grounds (i.e. nothing to do with how you feel about what they said, only the factual matters count). Arrogance is bad, but so is not acknowledging our own ignorance, and the fact that a lot of people are much more capable of forming solutions than we are.
When somebody living in an intellectual bubble proposes changes that have a material impact on the livelihood of "average morons," they should expect resistance and have answers to bigger picture questions.
We're not talking about policy, we're talking about science. If me finding that asbestos causes cancer and lung disease effects you because you live in a house with asbestos, this does not give you the ability to question my conclusion. If I decide to demolish your house because their is asbestos in it, then you should have a say.
I beg to differ, Just because you got a PhD doesnt give a person intelligence. Having spent a majority of my life with academics I can attest to the fact that sometimes a PhD in physics can give a PhD in biology some interesting insights. Even as a well respected and highly educated IT Engineer I can get insights from a HS dropout on various subjects. Hubris is an enemy of science. When we start chuckling at those 'below' us we start putting more stock in ourselves than the facts.
I admit, I overstated. This "science is arrogant because they don't agree with my ignorant opinion" debate gets me a bit steamed up. No, you don't need a PhD to contribute, but you still need a rigorous, logical, and empirically based argument to be taken seriously. Also, the bar for entry into the debate is much higher for people who don't have relevant credentials in regards to the topic (this is, and should be true of scientists, and lay people alike).
If your an IT Engineer, and your grandma gives you advice on a problem, her argument would have to be much stronger than ones of your peers, in order to be taken seriously.
Why let some nuance get in the way of a perfectly good sensational statement?
Your average blue-collar idiot is also smart enough to see a conflict of interest... such as it not being in Jiffy Lube's best interest to tell you that your car doesn't need an oil change. What do climatologist do for a living other than telling us the sky is falling? Do they study the changes in the Earth's climate over billions of years? No, geologists do that. When geologists start telling me its time to panic, I'll panic.
Everyone has a conflict of interest. Everyone can see everyone else's conflict of interest, but intelligence comes to play when we can see our own.
The anti-global warming crowd has just as large a conflict of interest as the pro-warming crowd. Thus the "conflict of interest" argument is mute. On one hand you have a handful of academics making money by working in the field, and a couple startups hoping to bank on the green trend. On the other hand you have big oil, some of the richest companies and governments in the world, and the average Joe who really doesn't want to change his life.
Just because you have a financial incentive in something, doesn't invalidate the science. The pro's are making money, the cons are making TONS of money.
Also, if a academic climate scientists found that there wasn't global warming, they wouldn't be out of a job. Climate science preexists the global warming brouhaha, as do the grants they received.
such as it not being in Jiffy Lube's best interest to tell you that your car doesn't need an oil change.
But in this debate we're saying you don't need an oil change, just because Jiffy Lube told you that you did. Which is pretty bad logic, if you ask me.
All too often in the debates about GCC someone who is a climate researcher will go "Well I'm a climate researcher so I'm right and the people that don't agree with me are idiots." Yea, not the best way to approach people
They have every right to say this; when the people arguing against them are not climate scientists, or in scientific fields related. If I tell someone with a PhD in climate science that they are wrong, they have every right to chuckle at me, since I really don't know what I'm talking about. This is not a problem.
The problem is some idea that science should be "fair and balanced", and that every view, from any source, is valid, or at least should be debated or considered. Scientists should tell MORE people to STFU, if you ask me.
I think it stems from being walled up in Universities and not having to work for a living.
I'm also getting sick of this sentiment. Being a undereducated working stiff DOES NOT make you the paragon of virtue, or some special font of insight. It makes you an average moron, thats it, nothing more. Having to "work for a living" (which, last I checked, most evil academics do as well) doesn't mean that you get the right to weigh authoritatively on topics you know nothing about.
These morally dubious (sarcasm there) ivory tower types earned their "arrogance", I use irony quotes there because someone "admitting to know more than a NASCAR watching moron" has become arrogant. If someone spent 8 years of their life trying to be proficient in a feild, I'd say they know more than some blue collar worker, and earned having a preferred opinion on that topic.
And no, I'm not an academic, though I pride myself as trying to be as intellectual as I possibly can. I see being intellectually average, or ignorant as a character flaw, and not something to work toward (or revel in), but something to work to remedy.
If we continue the "playing recorded media is a performance" analogy though, we reach the absurd conclusion that "artists" should be paid every time you play a song by them.
I personally think that recorded music is just a commodity like any other, and shouldn't get special privileges. Yes, I do think that people should pay for albums/songs (once), but I think that after that sale the artists, their goon-squad, and the government shouldn't have any influence on how I use the song.
. If you get a copy of the sound recording that I worked hard to produce without either paying me for it or me giving it to you than you have stolen it from me.
No, I copied it. You were not deprived of anything, therefore it isn't theft. The copying might be illegal, or immoral, but it still isn't theft. The closest we get to theft with copying is the potential deprivation of profit. If I copied your song, then smashed the masters, it would be closer to theft since I actually denied you use.
I personally think copying music without compensating the artist is wrong. I also have nothing against using P2P as a "try before you buy" medium, I have nothing against pirating thing from musicians who don't actually derive profit from sales (anyone who is dead, or don't own their own rights), I have nothing against pirating things over a certain age (lets say 30 years). I have nothing against pirating music released to be intentionally broken (DRM), or that is released in the spirit of limited scarcity. I have nothing against pirating music that I have already bought, albeit in a different form, whether or whether not I actually own the media.
Though, honestly, I really don't care anyone. Artists, and their backers, have been trying to screw their customers over for years, so I see nothing wrong with playing the same game and screwing them over. This is especially true of RIAA labels and artists, I would generally never even CONSIDER buying their music, no matter how much I like them (if I like them, I will see them in concert and buy a damn shirt... though even that experience is getting a biut customer hostile with bigger shows). I am not your guaranteed revenue stream, and if you screw with me (even a little), your not getting a damn cent from me.
Musicians are NOT special people who deserve special rights and protections. If you don't play music, someone else will. If you only play for money, then you aren't really worth much in my eyes. If you find having a day job to onerous, then tough shit. If you aren't successful enough to do music 100% of the time, and live off of it, then you should have a job just like the rest of us.
Except, of course, when the roots of the problem can be traced back further than the year he's been in office.
I would love to see Windows adopt an Apple-like schedule of smaller, cheaper updates released on an approximately eightethien month schedule
I would hate it. The quick Apple release cycle helped me quit using their products, and move back to Windows and Linux. Half the time I couldn't find an actual reason to cough up the money for a meaningless upgrade which did nothing but add functionality that third parties already supplied (dashboard, spaces, time machine). Often they would make a minor change to their API which third party programmers would pick up, forcing me to upgrade if I want to use updated software. The whole cycle smelled like a scam to me, I could spend $200 (or not) every two-three years, or spend 70*3 for Apple upgrades in the same time span. I would rather budget the the larger hit than small ones erratically. Also, a lot of software made for Windows7 can run on XP still, this isn't true for OS X.
I like large, monolithic releases. I can forget about upgrade cycles for a long period of time, which is nice.
You don't like any kind of religion, so you fail to discern the differences in your attempt at lumping them all together as worthless and meaningless.
A bit of a strawman there; I never said or implied that I didn't like religion. I think religion, like all human endeavors, is capable of wonderful things, and terrible things alike. My own faith, or lack thereof, doesn't play into this.
If Scientology isn't a religion, then what is it? This is a simple question. If you claim it is a cult, not a religion, then we run into the problem that there isn't really a good definition for either that excludes the other. If we claim it is a "for profit scam" we still have to include some very popular Christian sects in America (think TV evangelism, and mega churches), not to mention the pre-reformation Catholic church.
Scientology is a religion. This doesn't say that all religions are bad, or that your particular brand of religion is bad, it just says (barring further evidence) that SOME religions can be bad. This shouldn't be shocking to anyone.
Scientology is a religion in the same way as Dunkin Donuts is a restaurant
Not to sound like a troll, but what is the difference between Scientology and the class of entities called "religion", to me this sounds like the "no true Scotsman" fallacy. You don't like Scientology, but you like your religion of choice, therefore Scientology is not a religion, in spite of sharing many similar characteristics.
Being familiar with music from hotties like Timberlake and Daughtry makes you popular with the ladies. Saying, "Those guys are crap" is only going to get you dumped
By "ladies" you of course mean: girls under 18, or fat old women who wear Betty Boop/Disney pajamas and form Twilight fan clubs.
Me and my girlfriend spent many a night bonding over Slayer and Mike Patton, which suited me just fine. I'd actually be very frightened if she listened to Justin Timberlake (and whoever "Daughtery" is), since there is something very strange about a 30 year old listening to 2000's teeny-bopper music. People shouldn't be frightened of growing up.
The name "political correctness" implies the two bad attributes of the phenomenon: That it's political and that it claims to be correct (without justification and in a field with many differing perspectives).
I've never interpreted it this way; i always took it as "something correct in the political sense", using the broader definition of "political".
What international law?
If the people of the CIA broke international law...
I'm not saying the CIA broke international law, or did not brake it. Nor am I arguing about the text of international law, I'm just saying that the "just following orders" defense is historically flawed. I was also, mostly, arguing in moral terms, deferring blame does not leave you blameless, and not legal terms.
They may well have not broke the letter of international law (the spirit perhaps).
Never said that. I do not condone either Google or China. I was just questioning whether the act violated human rights. If there are innate human rights then everything that violates them is bad, and not everything that doesn't violate them is good. I could draw a Venn Diagram for ya.
Hey, AC, do you actually know what fascism is?