My kyocera phone cost me $40CDN(about 25 Euros) with 40 dollars of talk time. It's got bluetooth. I'm quite happy about that, because right after I bought my phone, I bought a new Ford Focus, and it can link with my phone.
I stopped using contract cellular for various reasons, but I understood when I bought my first cellular (a contract phone) that I was paying for the phone by locking into the contract for so many months. How is AT&T supposed to make money giving away subsidized phones before they pay back the ones they've already subsidized?
At the risk of derailing the whole discussion, who cares about all these random facts, except as a curiosity?
What's the benefit to knowing history? Or really, anything outside of your comfy zone where you get paid and pay others to do things or give/take things?
I have one major problem with your idealistic assessment.
What is a fact?
Is the confession the cops got out of Tyrone by slamming his head against the desk admissable without a lawyer present?
How about the testimony of the little girl the police badgered into lying? She says Tyrone is part of a rapist-cult that has a bunch of tunnels under the school for abducting kids.
How about the testimony of the guy who thinks he saw something but doesn't know quite what?
Also, how do you deal with illegally acquired evidence? How do you deal with entrapment? How do you deal with obvious conflicts of interest?
It sounds great in theory that you'd just be able to throw some Phoenix Wright-style courts in there and solve everything, but the real world is uglier and less cut and dry. Besides, lawyers have an ethical obligation to their client to do everything they can to win the case, so there'll be games played under any system.
Where did I say I think I'm important? Hell, I live so far north you can drive all day and stop for breakfast, lunch, and supper before finally reaching the next city. To be less relevant to the living world, I'd have to be living in a vault(and not leave it to go on a quest to save the vault).
It doesn't matter. I wrote down what was on my mind because it felt good to do, and posted it on the internet in part to give it a sense of permanence, so I'm not just writing into a text file and deleting it right away. None of that requires a person to think they're particularly special.
It's a simple fact, no matter how hard 99.99999% of kids work, they'll never come close to accomplishing what this kid has done before his first kiss. In fact, even on Slashdot, this guy is so far beyond the level most of us are at, we'll never be able to catch up.
Would you rather he say that? "I am naturally superior to the vast majority of human beings. No amount of hard work will match even the simplest of my achievements because the clarity of my thought far surpasses even adults my age. Any dreams or ambitions you once had are trivial and petty compared to my greatness."
Actually, your idea of modesty is wrong. In this case, the definition of modesty is "the quality of being modest; freedom from vanity, boastfulness, etc.", or the opposite of bravado. This is not the same as forced equality. You can still be completely awesome. It doesn't mean you need to be a vain boastful dick about it.
Don't worry about the mix-up though. I just caught it because I'm smarter than you.
Don't be asinine. If the kid is smart enough to get a degree in astrophysics at 11, he's smart enough to know he's got to downplay his gifts to have any chance at a normal social life.
Why do you think you need to be important to have a blog?
I had a blog through college. It wasn't anything special, just my thoughts at various junctures.
If someone finds it and gets something out what I read, cool. If someone finds it and thinks it's a waste of space, also cool. If nobody finds it but me a ways down the road and I get to re-live my memories, cool. The only thing that would suck if nobody, including me, ever finds it again. That's unlikely. In a few years I'm certain to check it out again.
It would suddenly be in the school's best financial interest to reduce the grades of top students to prevent the pay-out of 500,000/yr.
This is something parents can do, but don't ask the school boards to pay for it, because it'll harm them. Do you know how many teachers $500,000 will buy?
I hate to say it, but I'm not going to continue this discussion. It's one thing to disagree with me. It's quite another to begin every argument with the accusation that I don't know anything about the source materials all while attacking my interpretation of the source materials.
You're being a dick. This could've been an interesting conversation. My mind could've been changed. Instead, you decided to say "come not unto me, for I am eruditier than thou". Enjoy your cave.
I don't have any proof of that though. Everything I've seen seems to be pointed at running apps off of the sd card, and you'd go broke buying enough HC cards to actually play Wii games off of it.
In my mind, I don't care about punishing criminals as much as I care about living in a place where crime isn't committed.
A lot of people think the two are synonymous. The American legal system proves they are not. Despite having the largest prison system in the world with some of the most brutal punishments in the free world(anal rape or the death penalty. Which would you choose?), crime is still a significant problem. I think a system based on crime reduction would look significantly different than anything I've ever seen.
In a nutshell, "Oh, but we came from there so they're important".
I assure you, I will NEVER bring up the greeks amber experiments while designing a control system, I don't care if electricity is named after amber.
It wasn't until the skeptics that the underlying principles were finally questioned. The field of epistemology thrived in greece, but beyond asking if there's truth, it's not until you question the very basic foundation of human existence that you start with a foundation for philosophy, and in particular, ethics.
Assuming there's an objective truth, what assumptions am I making that can be somehow shown to be part of that objective truth?
Millennia later the answer finally came about: We can't prove any of our assumptions regarding human existence are objective axioms. That's where things finally get interesting. After showing it in a logical, clinical manner, you end up with folks like the existentialists finally building the foundation we needed all along: In a nutshell, "We can logically prove we exist, and we're reasonably sure we're human, but beyond that, all axioms spring from our humanity".
That's a key point, because you're then forced to immediately cast off a lot of the humanity in the universe because humanity isn't a universal value. Kicking away the arbitrary values of humanity, the universe stops being a place where Aristotle's prime mover can exist -- the world becomes a place where it's understood that the concept exists only in Aristotle's mind, as a by-product of how he thinks as a human.
For this reason, even though the greeks are of some historical significance for their work, they're not actually significant because no matter how many solid principles they created, it was still walls hovering above the ground. Until you scrape away the muskeg, your beautiful house will disappear. Electricity is useless when it's just amber and fur.
This is particularly important in ethics, because many axioms are based on our humanity and our current spot in history. The greeks and the christians wouldn't get along well, given the opposing characteristics they valued for ages, each considering their values axiomatic.
If you imitate violence a little, there's no problem, the most likely consequence being some crying. The line between punching and murder is pretty darn thick.
By contrast, the moment kids start emulating the sex acts they saw on TV, you have a problem.
In Civilization 4, I had the Koreans surrounded with my troops and influential cities and they were no threat to me whatsoever, but I sent in my troops and destroyed their civilization anyway just to get them off the continent. By your logic, I'm a xenophobe who should be locked up for genocidal aspirations.
You don't need to agree with a certain expression to believe expression ought to be protected when it can't be shown to be harmful. I don't agree with your assertion that slashdot is filled with rapists, but I'd certainly defend your right to say it.
Slashdot Mirror
Your post has made me madder than that time Jesus told me off!
(Wait, we had a clip for that, didn't we? No clip? Ok then.)
It would cause an infinite loop and crash.
My kyocera phone cost me $40CDN(about 25 Euros) with 40 dollars of talk time. It's got bluetooth. I'm quite happy about that, because right after I bought my phone, I bought a new Ford Focus, and it can link with my phone.
I was thinking the same sort of thing.
I stopped using contract cellular for various reasons, but I understood when I bought my first cellular (a contract phone) that I was paying for the phone by locking into the contract for so many months. How is AT&T supposed to make money giving away subsidized phones before they pay back the ones they've already subsidized?
At the risk of derailing the whole discussion, who cares about all these random facts, except as a curiosity?
What's the benefit to knowing history? Or really, anything outside of your comfy zone where you get paid and pay others to do things or give/take things?
String theory is a joke by some hipster somewhere.
"Ok, so it's beautiful and complicated, but we can't test it because it doesn't actually predict anything."
It's like a deconstruction of science, and reconstruction into the exact thing it isn't.
I have one major problem with your idealistic assessment.
What is a fact?
Is the confession the cops got out of Tyrone by slamming his head against the desk admissable without a lawyer present?
How about the testimony of the little girl the police badgered into lying? She says Tyrone is part of a rapist-cult that has a bunch of tunnels under the school for abducting kids.
How about the testimony of the guy who thinks he saw something but doesn't know quite what?
Also, how do you deal with illegally acquired evidence? How do you deal with entrapment? How do you deal with obvious conflicts of interest?
It sounds great in theory that you'd just be able to throw some Phoenix Wright-style courts in there and solve everything, but the real world is uglier and less cut and dry. Besides, lawyers have an ethical obligation to their client to do everything they can to win the case, so there'll be games played under any system.
Where did I say I think I'm important? Hell, I live so far north you can drive all day and stop for breakfast, lunch, and supper before finally reaching the next city. To be less relevant to the living world, I'd have to be living in a vault(and not leave it to go on a quest to save the vault).
It doesn't matter. I wrote down what was on my mind because it felt good to do, and posted it on the internet in part to give it a sense of permanence, so I'm not just writing into a text file and deleting it right away. None of that requires a person to think they're particularly special.
I'm so great, I'm ignoring BOTH of you.
It's a simple fact, no matter how hard 99.99999% of kids work, they'll never come close to accomplishing what this kid has done before his first kiss. In fact, even on Slashdot, this guy is so far beyond the level most of us are at, we'll never be able to catch up.
Would you rather he say that? "I am naturally superior to the vast majority of human beings. No amount of hard work will match even the simplest of my achievements because the clarity of my thought far surpasses even adults my age. Any dreams or ambitions you once had are trivial and petty compared to my greatness."
Actually, your idea of modesty is wrong. In this case, the definition of modesty is "the quality of being modest; freedom from vanity, boastfulness, etc.", or the opposite of bravado. This is not the same as forced equality. You can still be completely awesome. It doesn't mean you need to be a vain boastful dick about it.
Don't worry about the mix-up though. I just caught it because I'm smarter than you.
You'd be going for precision, not accuracy. Subtle but important difference.
Gaddagaddagamigamshalook, right?
Don't be asinine. If the kid is smart enough to get a degree in astrophysics at 11, he's smart enough to know he's got to downplay his gifts to have any chance at a normal social life.
What to you suggest? Harsher penalties? California-style '3 strikes' laws? Judge Dredd style enforcers?
Why do you think you need to be important to have a blog?
I had a blog through college. It wasn't anything special, just my thoughts at various junctures.
If someone finds it and gets something out what I read, cool.
If someone finds it and thinks it's a waste of space, also cool.
If nobody finds it but me a ways down the road and I get to re-live my memories, cool.
The only thing that would suck if nobody, including me, ever finds it again. That's unlikely. In a few years I'm certain to check it out again.
Here's the problem I see with this.
The school I went to had 1000 students.
Assume this works great and grades go up.
It would suddenly be in the school's best financial interest to reduce the grades of top students to prevent the pay-out of 500,000/yr.
This is something parents can do, but don't ask the school boards to pay for it, because it'll harm them. Do you know how many teachers $500,000 will buy?
Yes, you do. 13 year olds aren't ready for sex. It's serious business with potentially life-altering implications.
I hate to say it, but I'm not going to continue this discussion. It's one thing to disagree with me. It's quite another to begin every argument with the accusation that I don't know anything about the source materials all while attacking my interpretation of the source materials.
You're being a dick. This could've been an interesting conversation. My mind could've been changed. Instead, you decided to say "come not unto me, for I am eruditier than thou". Enjoy your cave.
I don't have any proof of that though. Everything I've seen seems to be pointed at running apps off of the sd card, and you'd go broke buying enough HC cards to actually play Wii games off of it.
In my mind, I don't care about punishing criminals as much as I care about living in a place where crime isn't committed.
A lot of people think the two are synonymous. The American legal system proves they are not. Despite having the largest prison system in the world with some of the most brutal punishments in the free world(anal rape or the death penalty. Which would you choose?), crime is still a significant problem. I think a system based on crime reduction would look significantly different than anything I've ever seen.
In a nutshell, "Oh, but we came from there so they're important".
I assure you, I will NEVER bring up the greeks amber experiments while designing a control system, I don't care if electricity is named after amber.
It wasn't until the skeptics that the underlying principles were finally questioned. The field of epistemology thrived in greece, but beyond asking if there's truth, it's not until you question the very basic foundation of human existence that you start with a foundation for philosophy, and in particular, ethics.
Assuming there's an objective truth, what assumptions am I making that can be somehow shown to be part of that objective truth?
Millennia later the answer finally came about: We can't prove any of our assumptions regarding human existence are objective axioms. That's where things finally get interesting. After showing it in a logical, clinical manner, you end up with folks like the existentialists finally building the foundation we needed all along: In a nutshell, "We can logically prove we exist, and we're reasonably sure we're human, but beyond that, all axioms spring from our humanity".
That's a key point, because you're then forced to immediately cast off a lot of the humanity in the universe because humanity isn't a universal value. Kicking away the arbitrary values of humanity, the universe stops being a place where Aristotle's prime mover can exist -- the world becomes a place where it's understood that the concept exists only in Aristotle's mind, as a by-product of how he thinks as a human.
For this reason, even though the greeks are of some historical significance for their work, they're not actually significant because no matter how many solid principles they created, it was still walls hovering above the ground. Until you scrape away the muskeg, your beautiful house will disappear. Electricity is useless when it's just amber and fur.
This is particularly important in ethics, because many axioms are based on our humanity and our current spot in history. The greeks and the christians wouldn't get along well, given the opposing characteristics they valued for ages, each considering their values axiomatic.
In a FPS one does not get off sexually by committing murder.
The moment you said that, I immediately thought of bloodrayne. Murder has never been so sexy.
If you imitate violence a little, there's no problem, the most likely consequence being some crying. The line between punching and murder is pretty darn thick.
By contrast, the moment kids start emulating the sex acts they saw on TV, you have a problem.
In Civilization 4, I had the Koreans surrounded with my troops and influential cities and they were no threat to me whatsoever, but I sent in my troops and destroyed their civilization anyway just to get them off the continent. By your logic, I'm a xenophobe who should be locked up for genocidal aspirations.
You don't need to agree with a certain expression to believe expression ought to be protected when it can't be shown to be harmful. I don't agree with your assertion that slashdot is filled with rapists, but I'd certainly defend your right to say it.