You are the one who enables the phone home code by cracking the software. That code is never run unless you enable it. I fail to see any problem with this.
You do realize that you have just compared talking about religion to being hit on by members of your own sex. Surely that is not a hang up of some kind about religion, is it?
That sounds like about the least offensive behavior that I have ever heard of on a MMORPG.
I have noticed, however, that there are a lot of people in whom any mention of God or other religious topics leads to an instant feeling of revulsion. As a fellow atheist, I blame it on our hard-wiring. It is something that is terribly important to overcome. It is easy to lose out on a lot of life that way.
On that note, Jesus was almost certainly not pronounced as we do today, nor are any of the names from Biblical times. In fact, Jesus is derived from Joshua which shows they were pronouncing it wrong even in the first century.
Christian writers have a long tradition of using both Yahweh and Jehovah. Do not worry about it so much, but understand who it is that you are going to offend. To observant Jews (and others), seeing it in print or hearing it pronounced is offensive in the same way that a pornographic picture would be. The prohibition against taking God's name in vain is taken seriously. That should not be laughed off. Faith is a scarce enough commodity in public discourse these days that a little respect for it is not going to hurt anybody.
Yeah, everybody knows that the Nazis are way more evil than the communists on account of killing so many more people. Nazis are the appropriate subject of war games.
Kidding aside, war is an especially brutal undertaking. Especially in the 20th century when modern warfare techniques began to involve far more civilians than combatants. I think that games should avoid glorifying war. Since they are art, they should still portray it but without the whitewashing.
I did not mean that statement to be derogatory. I tried to stick as close to the facts as I could. I have seen several studies, and I'm sure a google search would pick some out, that place the number of different sexual partners reported by homosexual males at about two orders of magnitude greater than what heterosexual males report. Homosexual males make up two thirds of the total homosexual population. That suggests to me a different pattern of behavior. (I know very little about lesbian patterns of behavior which I imagine are quite different.)
Now, as for adoption, I do not see why homosexuals will be more willing to adopt across racial lines than heterosexuals, and their numbers are not enough to make a difference anyway. I am uneasy about lesbian adoption, and imagine that there is little need for it, given their 'natural' options in the area of obtaining children. But I could never support homosexual males adopting. They are not suited for it. The first strike against them is simply being male (like me). The second is the high instability of their relationships. It would be like identifying the highest risk group in society, and saying "here, you adopt."
Your point about the social engineering aspects of this is certainly well taken. I do not dispute the good intentions of this arrangement. I only point out that once it exists, few homosexuals will take advantage of it, and it will wind up being used as a stick to beat the other 99% of the homosexual community that maintains the present social pattern.
I fully agree that the real damage to marriage has already been done, and compared to that, this is really a side debate. I would like to point out, however, that the status of women in Western societies has always been higher than that of contemporaries, and marriage has been stronger in the West than in other places. Because of that status, even. I think that much of the real damage done to the marriage arrangement has been the government subsidization of single-motherhood, mass government interference in divorce and custody disputes, and a inefficient mass public education system that delays the responsibilities of adulthood long past physical maturation. I do fear however, that if we lose the battle for even the concept of what marriage is, none of those other issues will ever be addressed.
She brought up homosexual marriage -- not me. I politely disagreed. You know, there is a debate on this thing still going on. Remove the flamebait moderation.
Detrimental consequences? More government involvement in the whole thing which is always bad. Rigid enforcement of anti-discrimination laws against those that might differentiate between heterosexual marriage and homosexual marriage, thereby hobbling natural social protections of marriage. More intolerence of homosexuals who simply are not going to be marrying in any significant numbers. Less male acceptance for an institution that will be defined as one of 'partnership' rather than one that accepts biological role differences between men and women. (Yes, they are biological, sorry about that messing up anybodys planned utopia.)
Aw, well, nothing on illegal immigration, one of the more important problems facing California.
I'll comment on this, though:
I've explained why gay marriage is superior to civil union (marriage promotes fidelity and family values, and it removes unfair tax advantages for people willing to file a couple forms ).
Actually, marriage does not promote fidelity and family values. It is a government acknowledgment of a system of fidelity and family values which has existed in the Western world for thousands of years before Christianity. Homosexuals simply do not display the same pattern of behavior. Right now, homosexual marriage is being suggested as a social engineering project -- to make the gays act like everybody else. That is a bad and intolerant idea. There are detrimental consequences for homosexuals who will not conform to heterosexual type unions in any great numbers -- and there are detrimental consequences for the vast number of people engaged in heterosexual marriage which the government will treat differently when the legal status is extended.
My impression of the MMOs is that gameplay is rarely the strong point. EverQuest has little gameplay-wise to distinguish itself from Statbuilder. I do not know why that has to be. Multi-Player FPS gameplay is awesome. But it has yet to translate to online RPG-style games. So if that is true, story and plot seem to be the kind of things that make playing these games fun. They provide all of the variation. So why the hell does he say this in the interview:
You know, that's one of the things that's been an interesting balancing act. The missions were never intended to be rich and complex and deep. The whole point of them was, "Hey, I've got an hour to play. I want to jump in. Give me something to do now." So they're intended to only take a little while, not be incredibly complex. But, of course, players have found them to be a great way of making money. Literally, 80% of the money in the game is made out of missions. That's a huge number. We'd really rather people...you know, the NPC's have quests! And they're like multi-leg things.
What exactly is the point of money in a game that is no fun to play? Would the ability to become a millionare have made Dai-Katana more fun? (Yes, because anything would have made that piece of shit more fun, but that's not my point.) There is innovation going into these games in some areas; but it is not going into the right areas.
If having your website in your sig is cause for editor moderation slapdowns, it would kind of be nice to have that information in a FAQ somewhere on the site. Or maybe you could email me about it. And "Overrated" is getting tiresome. Could you throw some "Troll" and "Flamebait" in there to spice things up?
If they don't know what a patch is, then they're in more danger of a virus attacking their computer anyway. So "the divide between the tech-aware and tech-unaware" shrinks exponentially, as viruses become far less likely. The very rare case of a WU breaking something will have little impact in comparison.
Most people are in far more danger of their computer being destroyed by a virus than they are of it being damaged by an automatic update.
If you think this is a bad idea, then you don't realize just how stupid the great mass of computer users are. I'm sure Microsoft will make this in a way that will allow anyone who knows what they are doing to turn this feature off. But it will kill viruses and worms that exploit windows holes, that's for sure. I can't recall one that's come out in years where the patch hadn't already existed, but that users were too stupid to download.
Besides, I'm sure that recent power outages spooked Microsoft for at least a few moments. They thought: Could this have been a computer problem? Not even Microsoft has that kind of money were it to be found liable.
Actually, if you take a look at the first amendment, you'll notice that it only applies to Congress. Our view of the freedoms stated in the bill of rights have expanded from the time when they were first written. (Also note that while Congress is supposed to make no law respecting the establishment of religion, it also restricts Congress from prohibiting any free exercise of religion.)
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
What is it that shall not be infringed in the above? "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms." Why? "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State."
As for your tactical nukes statement, another harm that the ACLU perpetuates is the idea that the amendments should be taken to extremes. Individuals should not have access to tactical nukes any more than child pornographers should be protected by the first amendment.
I know exactly what they say. And my point still stands. The ACLU has quite an expansive view of personal liberty, including some views that take a great deal of effort to read into the constitution (like abortion). Why is it that they back off on personal liberty in this one issue, and call it a matter of state's rights? It doesn't seem consistent, does it?
The organization has an obvious slant
on
Joining the ACLU?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
The ACLU believes that the first amendment protects the rights of child pornographers but that the second amendment has nothing to do with the right to bear arms.
Your idea about computer proofs is mistaken. First, your point about even and odd numbers can not be solved by a computer, and would not be a good example of using a computer to aid you in a proof. You then speak about "a range of inputs." To extend your example, imagine the case (as often occurs) that you have a proof that covers all x from 101 to infinity. At that point using a computer to cover x from 1 to 100 is quite a good way to solve the problem, and it is even possible that no simpler proof exists. There is no guarantee that a simple proof will always exist to make a computer unnecessary -- in fact I suspect the opposite.
It is quite disingenuous to state that Hispanic immigration is the same as Italian or Irish immigration. There are the cultural factors that I have already mentioned, as well as the simple fact that neither Italians nor Irish came in numbers large enough to become a majority in the country. This is a new thing. What makes you so hopeful that American freedom can survive the replacement of the current culture? This sort of great migration is unique in our history.
Further, your holistic statements about culture are quite beautiful, but they apply equally to the world community as they do to the U.S. They provide no actual content since you do not take the time to describe limits.
I agree that I do not expect a scholarly level of discourse here. So next time, if you do not understand a common term, just ask. It is no trouble for me to explain.
I don't think that you know what you're talking about. Those are trivial results that are apparent long before you pull out a heavy gun like Noether's theorem.
I don't know too much about her, but I do have a page and a half biography of her in my copy of Hassani's "Mathematical Physics." On pg. 997, he writes "She was particularly influential in the work of B. L. van der Waerden, who continued to promote her ideas after her death and to indicate the many concepts for which he was indebted to her." That seems to indicate to me that she was dead when van der Waerden was writing his "classic treatise," though it's too classic for me to have heard of, I'll admit. Now Hassani has a list of her accomplishments as well, but I don't notice anything of "greatness." The only place that I've ever come across Noether's theorem is chapter 30 of his Hassani's book, actually, where he shows the proof and gives some of its applications for field theory.
I did not coin the term "the West." If I had been forced to make up my own word, you can be sure that I would not have picked a compass direction. I am sure that you have heard of Samuel Huntington, whose book "The Clash of Civilizations" has been rather popular in foreign policy discussion for the past couple of years. He discusses the civilizations as cultural entities in the second chapter of his book, and after reviewing the historical lists of modern civilizations, he formulates this one: Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Latin American, the West, and African (which he qualifies with 'possibly'). If you would like to argue that a better term than "the West" should be used by scholars, be warned that I already agree. If you wish to argue that "the West" is ill-defined, then I might fear that your reading on the subject is seriously deficient.
I fail to see how your term "subculture" adds anything to this discussion. How exactly do you define it? And how would our discussion be changed were we to use your term and talk about the gaps between "subcultures" rather than the gaps between cultures? How would it invalidate any of my previous points about the U.S. taking on the characteristics of Hispanic civilization as it becomes majority Hispanic?
Slashdot Mirror
You are the one who enables the phone home code by cracking the software. That code is never run unless you enable it. I fail to see any problem with this.
You do realize that you have just compared talking about religion to being hit on by members of your own sex. Surely that is not a hang up of some kind about religion, is it?
I take it that you never talk about your denial of religion around others?
A quick Google search shows me that my name becomes 'Yoel' or 'Yowel'. Heh. I'll have to get you to tell me which.
That sounds like about the least offensive behavior that I have ever heard of on a MMORPG.
I have noticed, however, that there are a lot of people in whom any mention of God or other religious topics leads to an instant feeling of revulsion. As a fellow atheist, I blame it on our hard-wiring. It is something that is terribly important to overcome. It is easy to lose out on a lot of life that way.
On that note, Jesus was almost certainly not pronounced as we do today, nor are any of the names from Biblical times. In fact, Jesus is derived from Joshua which shows they were pronouncing it wrong even in the first century.
Christian writers have a long tradition of using both Yahweh and Jehovah. Do not worry about it so much, but understand who it is that you are going to offend. To observant Jews (and others), seeing it in print or hearing it pronounced is offensive in the same way that a pornographic picture would be. The prohibition against taking God's name in vain is taken seriously. That should not be laughed off. Faith is a scarce enough commodity in public discourse these days that a little respect for it is not going to hurt anybody.
Yeah, everybody knows that the Nazis are way more evil than the communists on account of killing so many more people. Nazis are the appropriate subject of war games.
Kidding aside, war is an especially brutal undertaking. Especially in the 20th century when modern warfare techniques began to involve far more civilians than combatants. I think that games should avoid glorifying war. Since they are art, they should still portray it but without the whitewashing.
I did not mean that statement to be derogatory. I tried to stick as close to the facts as I could. I have seen several studies, and I'm sure a google search would pick some out, that place the number of different sexual partners reported by homosexual males at about two orders of magnitude greater than what heterosexual males report. Homosexual males make up two thirds of the total homosexual population. That suggests to me a different pattern of behavior. (I know very little about lesbian patterns of behavior which I imagine are quite different.)
Now, as for adoption, I do not see why homosexuals will be more willing to adopt across racial lines than heterosexuals, and their numbers are not enough to make a difference anyway. I am uneasy about lesbian adoption, and imagine that there is little need for it, given their 'natural' options in the area of obtaining children. But I could never support homosexual males adopting. They are not suited for it. The first strike against them is simply being male (like me). The second is the high instability of their relationships. It would be like identifying the highest risk group in society, and saying "here, you adopt."
Your point about the social engineering aspects of this is certainly well taken. I do not dispute the good intentions of this arrangement. I only point out that once it exists, few homosexuals will take advantage of it, and it will wind up being used as a stick to beat the other 99% of the homosexual community that maintains the present social pattern.
I fully agree that the real damage to marriage has already been done, and compared to that, this is really a side debate. I would like to point out, however, that the status of women in Western societies has always been higher than that of contemporaries, and marriage has been stronger in the West than in other places. Because of that status, even. I think that much of the real damage done to the marriage arrangement has been the government subsidization of single-motherhood, mass government interference in divorce and custody disputes, and a inefficient mass public education system that delays the responsibilities of adulthood long past physical maturation. I do fear however, that if we lose the battle for even the concept of what marriage is, none of those other issues will ever be addressed.
She brought up homosexual marriage -- not me. I politely disagreed. You know, there is a debate on this thing still going on. Remove the flamebait moderation.
Detrimental consequences? More government involvement in the whole thing which is always bad. Rigid enforcement of anti-discrimination laws against those that might differentiate between heterosexual marriage and homosexual marriage, thereby hobbling natural social protections of marriage. More intolerence of homosexuals who simply are not going to be marrying in any significant numbers. Less male acceptance for an institution that will be defined as one of 'partnership' rather than one that accepts biological role differences between men and women. (Yes, they are biological, sorry about that messing up anybodys planned utopia.)
I'll comment on this, though: Actually, marriage does not promote fidelity and family values. It is a government acknowledgment of a system of fidelity and family values which has existed in the Western world for thousands of years before Christianity. Homosexuals simply do not display the same pattern of behavior. Right now, homosexual marriage is being suggested as a social engineering project -- to make the gays act like everybody else. That is a bad and intolerant idea. There are detrimental consequences for homosexuals who will not conform to heterosexual type unions in any great numbers -- and there are detrimental consequences for the vast number of people engaged in heterosexual marriage which the government will treat differently when the legal status is extended.
If having your website in your sig is cause for editor moderation slapdowns, it would kind of be nice to have that information in a FAQ somewhere on the site. Or maybe you could email me about it. And "Overrated" is getting tiresome. Could you throw some "Troll" and "Flamebait" in there to spice things up?
More important than a Ph.D. is excellent karma on slashdot.
If they don't know what a patch is, then they're in more danger of a virus attacking their computer anyway. So "the divide between the tech-aware and tech-unaware" shrinks exponentially, as viruses become far less likely. The very rare case of a WU breaking something will have little impact in comparison.
Most people are in far more danger of their computer being destroyed by a virus than they are of it being damaged by an automatic update.
If you think this is a bad idea, then you don't realize just how stupid the great mass of computer users are. I'm sure Microsoft will make this in a way that will allow anyone who knows what they are doing to turn this feature off. But it will kill viruses and worms that exploit windows holes, that's for sure. I can't recall one that's come out in years where the patch hadn't already existed, but that users were too stupid to download.
Besides, I'm sure that recent power outages spooked Microsoft for at least a few moments. They thought: Could this have been a computer problem? Not even Microsoft has that kind of money were it to be found liable.
No, actually they point out that doing something that will make them money is the alternative to doing a Linux port.
As for your tactical nukes statement, another harm that the ACLU perpetuates is the idea that the amendments should be taken to extremes. Individuals should not have access to tactical nukes any more than child pornographers should be protected by the first amendment.
I know exactly what they say. And my point still stands. The ACLU has quite an expansive view of personal liberty, including some views that take a great deal of effort to read into the constitution (like abortion). Why is it that they back off on personal liberty in this one issue, and call it a matter of state's rights? It doesn't seem consistent, does it?
The ACLU believes that the first amendment protects the rights of child pornographers but that the second amendment has nothing to do with the right to bear arms.
Your idea about computer proofs is mistaken. First, your point about even and odd numbers can not be solved by a computer, and would not be a good example of using a computer to aid you in a proof. You then speak about "a range of inputs." To extend your example, imagine the case (as often occurs) that you have a proof that covers all x from 101 to infinity. At that point using a computer to cover x from 1 to 100 is quite a good way to solve the problem, and it is even possible that no simpler proof exists. There is no guarantee that a simple proof will always exist to make a computer unnecessary -- in fact I suspect the opposite.
It is quite disingenuous to state that Hispanic immigration is the same as Italian or Irish immigration. There are the cultural factors that I have already mentioned, as well as the simple fact that neither Italians nor Irish came in numbers large enough to become a majority in the country. This is a new thing. What makes you so hopeful that American freedom can survive the replacement of the current culture? This sort of great migration is unique in our history.
Further, your holistic statements about culture are quite beautiful, but they apply equally to the world community as they do to the U.S. They provide no actual content since you do not take the time to describe limits.
I agree that I do not expect a scholarly level of discourse here. So next time, if you do not understand a common term, just ask. It is no trouble for me to explain.
I don't think that you know what you're talking about. Those are trivial results that are apparent long before you pull out a heavy gun like Noether's theorem.
I don't know too much about her, but I do have a page and a half biography of her in my copy of Hassani's "Mathematical Physics." On pg. 997, he writes "She was particularly influential in the work of B. L. van der Waerden, who continued to promote her ideas after her death and to indicate the many concepts for which he was indebted to her." That seems to indicate to me that she was dead when van der Waerden was writing his "classic treatise," though it's too classic for me to have heard of, I'll admit. Now Hassani has a list of her accomplishments as well, but I don't notice anything of "greatness." The only place that I've ever come across Noether's theorem is chapter 30 of his Hassani's book, actually, where he shows the proof and gives some of its applications for field theory.
I did not coin the term "the West." If I had been forced to make up my own word, you can be sure that I would not have picked a compass direction. I am sure that you have heard of Samuel Huntington, whose book "The Clash of Civilizations" has been rather popular in foreign policy discussion for the past couple of years. He discusses the civilizations as cultural entities in the second chapter of his book, and after reviewing the historical lists of modern civilizations, he formulates this one: Sinic, Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Latin American, the West, and African (which he qualifies with 'possibly'). If you would like to argue that a better term than "the West" should be used by scholars, be warned that I already agree. If you wish to argue that "the West" is ill-defined, then I might fear that your reading on the subject is seriously deficient.
I fail to see how your term "subculture" adds anything to this discussion. How exactly do you define it? And how would our discussion be changed were we to use your term and talk about the gaps between "subcultures" rather than the gaps between cultures? How would it invalidate any of my previous points about the U.S. taking on the characteristics of Hispanic civilization as it becomes majority Hispanic?