Our matter and energy have always existed and will exist after you and I both die. In the vast expanse of infinite time, that matter and energy has and will exist in infinite forms and configurations. Our body and conscience is just a product of how our matter and energy are currently configured right now. There is nothing more "special" about how it is right now than it will be 5 trillion years from now when it's dispersed across galaxies.. Your conscience only matters in the context of you and your relationship with other beings who happen to be in a similar state of existence at this particular point in time..
It's nothing more than ignorant human ego to think we or our conscience matter any more than a speck of dust floating somewhere in interstellar space.
I have a simple rule when it comes to kids questioning my judgment about their music, until you can play it better than I can, shut up..
I actually like some of the music out today, but the vast majority of it is crap. There are a few shining points of light, but mostly a sea of rotting feces.. It was the same way in the 90's, 80's, 70's, etc..
A little bit of exceptional stuff, and a lot of wasted space otherwise..
So I guess that's why he's saying the internet is killing music. Yes, it gives you a world-wide venue, but it makes it harder for people to find it.
I have a hard time swallowing this, as before the internet gave my band a relatively easy way to make our music readily available to the world, there would have been absolutely NO way for most people to find it. If the major labels didn't pick you up, the only people who would ever know about you are the neighbors you piss off while practicing, and maybe those who saw you at a gig. That's it.
We have people in England who have heard our music, that would never have happened if not for the internet.
The point he's making is that the internet isn't killing music. It's fostering it's creation and it's dissemination to the world.
It may wind up killing the species of "musician" who get unbelievably filthy rich off a couple of hits and then can sit around the rest of their life commenting on how technology is destroying the vehicle they rode to their destination. But that's a small price to pay for the swell of music now available at humanity's fingertips.
Well, I run a radio station from my site, but the only music I play is my own band's music. Let them come try to extort money from me for playing our own music.
Well, the goal is to make an environment that will run windows software, and DirectX is a part of windows last I checked, so they should absolutely be working to address it.
On top of that, the ONLY thing that keeps the windows ball and chain attached to me is games. I do everything else under Linux, but to play most of my favorite games I have to reboot into that travesty of an OS called windows.
I would prefer native games, but I'm a realist. I've been waiting 10 years for that to materialize, and it hasn't and it's likely going to be 10 more at least, if ever, before linux gains any real traction. I bought descent 3 from loki back in the day.. I wish the option was still there.
Because the moon orbits the Earth and therefore can't focus on a single point in space for long periods due to the Earth obscuring the view (a fault with the Hubble as well). The JWST can gather light from a single point, uninterrupted, for months if desired. There are other reasons as well, but this one alone is enough of a deal killer.
"car, turn up the air conditioning and close the windows."
ahh, but that is ambiguous. Does that mean turn up the temperature it is trying to maintain (increase from 70F to 75F)? Or does it mean decrease the temperature it is trying to maintain (70F to 65F)?
It's that kind of misinterpretation that will cause problems.
As a 35 year old geek who has been into computers, electronics, and general science since he was a small child, has a degree in Electronics Engineering, has been a fan of heavy metal since early adolescence, and who also plays bass in a heavy metal band, I can relate to these findings.
Your understanding of the GPL is flawed. That section only matters if you distribute the program. You can modify the code any way you want. You can link it with anything you want. But, if you distribute it then you're in violation, unless any modifications you made or modules you link are GPL.
If you never distribute the resulting product, the GPL in no way at all limits what you can do with, or to, the code.
Earthlink uses an SMTP server they developed in house because they felt the existing servers out there would not scale to the level they needed and were not secure enough.
The various conservation laws of physics all point in the opposite direction of your assertion. Nothing ever goes out of existence, but only changes form. Neither will you simply go out of existence when you die, but you will face the One who brought everything into existence
You're splitting hairs. The fact that the matter that makes up my body will continue to exist, as it has for all time as either matter or energy, in no way translates into my having a "soul". What you are (and I am) is a complex pattern of matter and energy. That matter and energy have always existed, and will continue to exist after we're dead. But, the patterns that make you "you" and me "me" will break down once we die. There's nothing of my conscience that will endure after that point. There is no "One" that we will stand before, because what we are will have been lost.
I am quite aware that my existance is finite. In the grand scheme of things, we are nothing. No more significant in time than the countless bacteria that just died when I cleaned my desk. I have come to peace with that fact. I am sad for all the people who can not come to peace with it. I live my life with a passion to know and experience all I can, because this is all I will ever have. The instant I die it will all be lost. I only need to consider the eternity that passed before I was born to know what I will face once I die. Nothing.
Does this make me sad? Well, to me, ceasing to exist is not a pleasant thought at all. But my drive to employ the mental abilities evolution has granted me requires me to acknowledge the logical and rational truth, no matter how cold and absolute it may be.
Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how come religion (specifically, christianism) is so powerful in such a developped country as the USA...
People are so desperate to avoid the reality of their existance coming to an end when they die that they will blindly cling to anything that offers an escape from that realization. Even in the face of overwhelming proof, they will ignore it in order to shelter themselves from that terrible truth.
As for the reason it's christianity in the US, well, that was the religion of the people that settled here from Europe.
I was never a big wearer of seat belts.. in fact, most of my life I never wore them. That was until one morning, while driving to work in the rain on the interstate, my truck hydroplaned off the road, down a hill, sideways into a bank of trees at 65 mph. Out of sheer luck I had put my seat belt on that morning. I walked away with nothing more than a few scratches from flying glass and a bruised shoulder from the seat belt.. I don't leave the driveway without the seat belt on anymore.
That being said, there shouldn't be a law requiring the use of them. If someone wants to not wear it and assume the increased risk involved that's their choice. Pass a law that bars all public expendatures on the medical bills of someone who was not wearing a seat belt in an accident and I'm all for it (as the government shouldn't be involved in that anyway)..
Let me correct your view on this. Simply put, doing any drug should not be illegal. Possession of those drugs should not be illegal. Committing an actual crime is what we should be locking people up for. I've done almost every drug you can think of that doesn't require a needle (I'm a wuss). I was never a thief, I was never a liar. I went to school, college, and work and in my off hours would hang out with friends, get high, and play video games or whatever. We never destroyed anyone's property. We never went out and mugged people. We got up and did our part being a cog in society's gears and otherwise were calm and peaceful people. At no point in time have I EVER done anything that would warrant my freedom being taken away; being thrown into a cell with who knows what kind of sicko, and having any chance of a prosperous future destroyed.
People who drive cars are more likely to drive down a sidewalk and mow down innocent people. Why don't we lock up people for owning a car. I mean, if they own a car they *might* run down our kids.
Sure, they might just stay on the road and follow all the traffic laws, but there is hard evidence that people who run over pedestrians tend to also be drivers. So let's lock up all the drivers whether they've done anything wrong or not.
I can't help but shake with rage when I read crap like this. THERE IS NO WORSE THING a person can do than to take an innocent person's life, an innocent person being a person who has not taken the life of someone who themself is not a murderer.
To kill a murderer is not murder. It is dishing out the only just retribution given the act they committed, on behalf of the person who has been murdered.
Every breath a murderer is allowed to take is an insult to everything the victim ever experienced, hoped, and dreamed. Any person who actively campaigns to allow a murderer to continue to live is insulting the victim's life with every act.
I am all for the bleeding hearts out there leaving a living will that absolves a murderer from being put to death for the deed, but that murderer should, in that event, spend the rest of his existence doing hard time. At no point should someone who commits cold blooded murder be introduced back into society.
In absence of such a proclamation then death should be the default punishment.
If someone kills me, I want them dead. Killed in the most painful and horrifying manner possible. Period, end of story.
The only magazines I still carry a subscription on are IEEE Spectrum (comes with the IEEE membership), IEEE Computer (the IEEE computer society magazine), and IEEE Micro (the IEEE computer society mag dedicated to microprocessors).. The rest just seem pointless. The IEEE publications are available online as well so even those are not necessary, but I like to read em while dropping off friends at the pool.
I used to have a subscription for sysadmin magazine, which I enjoyed, but I dropped it because whoever they had billing it was far too pushy for my taste.
As for drugs, non-violent drug use has victims too. The broken homes and families where someone becomes an addict and ruins their life. I'm quite happy to spend my tax dollars for prisons and cops.
And taking those addicts and throwing them in prison doesn't break those homes and families? Drug use is a "victimless crime". Putting people in jail for nothing more than doing something you personally don't like is a slap in the face of every person who ever died in the name of freedom. If someone gets addicted and robs someone to pay for their next fix, they can be prosecuted for the robbery. If they get sloppy drunk and beat their wife, they can be prosecuted for battery. If they spend their whole life coming home from work, smoking a joint, and watching cartoons THERE IS NO VICTIM and certainly no broken home.
The only truly just and free system is a reactive system. It should react to actual crimes against other people. When they cross the line and start arresting people for doing something because they MIGHT one day commit a crime we lose all grasp of what freedom means.
Let's arrest all people who go to a demonstration, because they might start a riot.
Let's arrest all people who drive, because they might speed.
Let's arrest all people who drink alcohol, because they might start a drunken brawl.
Let's arrest all people who program, because they might one day break into the government's computers.
I've known people who have lived their whole lives doing drugs and were perfectly well rounded and contributed to society. At any given time they could have had their lives destroyed, for nothing more than doing something someone else doesn't like.
There is only one crime committed when someone is jailed for possession, and it's not the person being put in jail who committed it.
I would just like to point out that every one of you who go and put money in Apple's pocket buying their tainted songs just puts that much more ammunition in the guns of the RIAA and their likes.
If you objectively look at the principles of communism, and then look at the policy that the democrats have pushed for the past 40-50 years, you will see a push toward communism. I'm not saying republicans are saints. They represent as much of a threat to freedom and liberty as the democrats do, only the republicans tend to lean toward theocracy.
The republicans mantra would be more, you're free to do what you want, as long as it's what we want you to do.
I never said the republican party was worth pissing on if it was on fire. But your interpretation of the democratic party is as off base as I've ever seen. You paint them like they're saints trying to save the world from evil republicans. They are not. They are just as corrupt and abusive as the republican party ever thought about being. The only real difference between the 2 parties is the path to ultimate destruction of freedom and liberty they represent.
Government IS the problem. That's been understood ever since the founding fathers created this country. They tried (and apparantly failed) to create a country where the government's powers to restrict liberty was curtailed at the foundation. I fear they never imagined how much mankind would excel at redefining words and creating such mammoth bureaucracy that liberty can be easily dismissed, lost in a mountain of red tape.
The mess we are in today is the fault of the Democrats just as much as it's the fault of the Republicans.
Slashdot Mirror
Our matter and energy have always existed and will exist after you and I both die. In the vast expanse of infinite time, that matter and energy has and will exist in infinite forms and configurations. Our body and conscience is just a product of how our matter and energy are currently configured right now. There is nothing more "special" about how it is right now than it will be 5 trillion years from now when it's dispersed across galaxies.. Your conscience only matters in the context of you and your relationship with other beings who happen to be in a similar state of existence at this particular point in time..
It's nothing more than ignorant human ego to think we or our conscience matter any more than a speck of dust floating somewhere in interstellar space.
I have a simple rule when it comes to kids questioning my judgment about their music, until you can play it better than I can, shut up..
I actually like some of the music out today, but the vast majority of it is crap. There are a few shining points of light, but mostly a sea of rotting feces.. It was the same way in the 90's, 80's, 70's, etc..
A little bit of exceptional stuff, and a lot of wasted space otherwise..
Bah.. victim .. That submit button is so close to the preview button!
Naa.. Then the rapist would sue the victom, and win..
I have a hard time swallowing this, as before the internet gave my band a relatively easy way to make our music readily available to the world, there would have been absolutely NO way for most people to find it. If the major labels didn't pick you up, the only people who would ever know about you are the neighbors you piss off while practicing, and maybe those who saw you at a gig. That's it.
We have people in England who have heard our music, that would never have happened if not for the internet.
The point he's making is that the internet isn't killing music. It's fostering it's creation and it's dissemination to the world.
It may wind up killing the species of "musician" who get unbelievably filthy rich off a couple of hits and then can sit around the rest of their life commenting on how technology is destroying the vehicle they rode to their destination. But that's a small price to pay for the swell of music now available at humanity's fingertips.
The internet is not killing music.
It's only killing corporate dominance of music.
Well, I run a radio station from my site, but the only music I play is my own band's music. Let them come try to extort money from me for playing our own music.
Well, the goal is to make an environment that will run windows software, and DirectX is a part of windows last I checked, so they should absolutely be working to address it.
On top of that, the ONLY thing that keeps the windows ball and chain attached to me is games. I do everything else under Linux, but to play most of my favorite games I have to reboot into that travesty of an OS called windows.
I would prefer native games, but I'm a realist. I've been waiting 10 years for that to materialize, and it hasn't and it's likely going to be 10 more at least, if ever, before linux gains any real traction. I bought descent 3 from loki back in the day.. I wish the option was still there.
Because the moon orbits the Earth and therefore can't focus on a single point in space for long periods due to the Earth obscuring the view (a fault with the Hubble as well). The JWST can gather light from a single point, uninterrupted, for months if desired. There are other reasons as well, but this one alone is enough of a deal killer.
ahh, but that is ambiguous. Does that mean turn up the temperature it is trying to maintain (increase from 70F to 75F)? Or does it mean decrease the temperature it is trying to maintain (70F to 65F)?
It's that kind of misinterpretation that will cause problems.
As a 35 year old geek who has been into computers, electronics, and general science since he was a small child, has a degree in Electronics Engineering, has been a fan of heavy metal since early adolescence, and who also plays bass in a heavy metal band, I can relate to these findings.
Your understanding of the GPL is flawed. That section only matters if you distribute the program. You can modify the code any way you want. You can link it with anything you want. But, if you distribute it then you're in violation, unless any modifications you made or modules you link are GPL.
If you never distribute the resulting product, the GPL in no way at all limits what you can do with, or to, the code.
Just a correction. The older black and white TV's would display NTSC color just fine.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntsc#History
They made backwards compatibility a requirement during the process of creating the spec.
Earthlink uses an SMTP server they developed in house because they felt the existing servers out there would not scale to the level they needed and were not secure enough.
I used to work there back in the day.
You're splitting hairs. The fact that the matter that makes up my body will continue to exist, as it has for all time as either matter or energy, in no way translates into my having a "soul". What you are (and I am) is a complex pattern of matter and energy. That matter and energy have always existed, and will continue to exist after we're dead. But, the patterns that make you "you" and me "me" will break down once we die. There's nothing of my conscience that will endure after that point. There is no "One" that we will stand before, because what we are will have been lost.
I am quite aware that my existance is finite. In the grand scheme of things, we are nothing. No more significant in time than the countless bacteria that just died when I cleaned my desk. I have come to peace with that fact. I am sad for all the people who can not come to peace with it. I live my life with a passion to know and experience all I can, because this is all I will ever have. The instant I die it will all be lost. I only need to consider the eternity that passed before I was born to know what I will face once I die. Nothing.
Does this make me sad? Well, to me, ceasing to exist is not a pleasant thought at all. But my drive to employ the mental abilities evolution has granted me requires me to acknowledge the logical and rational truth, no matter how cold and absolute it may be.
People are so desperate to avoid the reality of their existance coming to an end when they die that they will blindly cling to anything that offers an escape from that realization. Even in the face of overwhelming proof, they will ignore it in order to shelter themselves from that terrible truth.
As for the reason it's christianity in the US, well, that was the religion of the people that settled here from Europe.
I was never a big wearer of seat belts.. in fact, most of my life I never wore them. That was until one morning, while driving to work in the rain on the interstate, my truck hydroplaned off the road, down a hill, sideways into a bank of trees at 65 mph. Out of sheer luck I had put my seat belt on that morning. I walked away with nothing more than a few scratches from flying glass and a bruised shoulder from the seat belt.. I don't leave the driveway without the seat belt on anymore.
That being said, there shouldn't be a law requiring the use of them. If someone wants to not wear it and assume the increased risk involved that's their choice. Pass a law that bars all public expendatures on the medical bills of someone who was not wearing a seat belt in an accident and I'm all for it (as the government shouldn't be involved in that anyway)..
Let me correct your view on this. Simply put, doing any drug should not be illegal. Possession of those drugs should not be illegal. Committing an actual crime is what we should be locking people up for. I've done almost every drug you can think of that doesn't require a needle (I'm a wuss). I was never a thief, I was never a liar. I went to school, college, and work and in my off hours would hang out with friends, get high, and play video games or whatever. We never destroyed anyone's property. We never went out and mugged people. We got up and did our part being a cog in society's gears and otherwise were calm and peaceful people. At no point in time have I EVER done anything that would warrant my freedom being taken away; being thrown into a cell with who knows what kind of sicko, and having any chance of a prosperous future destroyed.
People who drive cars are more likely to drive down a sidewalk and mow down innocent people. Why don't we lock up people for owning a car. I mean, if they own a car they *might* run down our kids.
Sure, they might just stay on the road and follow all the traffic laws, but there is hard evidence that people who run over pedestrians tend to also be drivers. So let's lock up all the drivers whether they've done anything wrong or not.
The enemies of freedom are all around us.
I can't help but shake with rage when I read crap like this. THERE IS NO WORSE THING a person can do than to take an innocent person's life, an innocent person being a person who has not taken the life of someone who themself is not a murderer.
To kill a murderer is not murder. It is dishing out the only just retribution given the act they committed, on behalf of the person who has been murdered.
Every breath a murderer is allowed to take is an insult to everything the victim ever experienced, hoped, and dreamed. Any person who actively campaigns to allow a murderer to continue to live is insulting the victim's life with every act.
I am all for the bleeding hearts out there leaving a living will that absolves a murderer from being put to death for the deed, but that murderer should, in that event, spend the rest of his existence doing hard time. At no point should someone who commits cold blooded murder be introduced back into society.
In absence of such a proclamation then death should be the default punishment.
If someone kills me, I want them dead. Killed in the most painful and horrifying manner possible. Period, end of story.
The only magazines I still carry a subscription on are IEEE Spectrum (comes with the IEEE membership), IEEE Computer (the IEEE computer society magazine), and IEEE Micro (the IEEE computer society mag dedicated to microprocessors).. The rest just seem pointless. The IEEE publications are available online as well so even those are not necessary, but I like to read em while dropping off friends at the pool.
I used to have a subscription for sysadmin magazine, which I enjoyed, but I dropped it because whoever they had billing it was far too pushy for my taste.
The only truly just and free system is a reactive system. It should react to actual crimes against other people. When they cross the line and start arresting people for doing something because they MIGHT one day commit a crime we lose all grasp of what freedom means.
Let's arrest all people who go to a demonstration, because they might start a riot.
Let's arrest all people who drive, because they might speed.
Let's arrest all people who drink alcohol, because they might start a drunken brawl.
Let's arrest all people who program, because they might one day break into the government's computers.
I've known people who have lived their whole lives doing drugs and were perfectly well rounded and contributed to society. At any given time they could have had their lives destroyed, for nothing more than doing something someone else doesn't like.
There is only one crime committed when someone is jailed for possession, and it's not the person being put in jail who committed it.
I would just like to point out that every one of you who go and put money in Apple's pocket buying their tainted songs just puts that much more ammunition in the guns of the RIAA and their likes.
If you objectively look at the principles of communism, and then look at the policy that the democrats have pushed for the past 40-50 years, you will see a push toward communism. I'm not saying republicans are saints. They represent as much of a threat to freedom and liberty as the democrats do, only the republicans tend to lean toward theocracy.
The republicans mantra would be more, you're free to do what you want, as long as it's what we want you to do.
I never said the republican party was worth pissing on if it was on fire. But your interpretation of the democratic party is as off base as I've ever seen. You paint them like they're saints trying to save the world from evil republicans. They are not. They are just as corrupt and abusive as the republican party ever thought about being. The only real difference between the 2 parties is the path to ultimate destruction of freedom and liberty they represent.
Government IS the problem. That's been understood ever since the founding fathers created this country. They tried (and apparantly failed) to create a country where the government's powers to restrict liberty was curtailed at the foundation. I fear they never imagined how much mankind would excel at redefining words and creating such mammoth bureaucracy that liberty can be easily dismissed, lost in a mountain of red tape.
The mess we are in today is the fault of the Democrats just as much as it's the fault of the Republicans.