I don't listen to much music anymore. All the bullshit and RIAA and this is legal and blah blah blah, it's all killed music as an artform for me. I used to play guitar in bands, and love playing music. It's just dead to me now. White noise.
You just need to stop letting MTV tell you what to listen to. There is a ton of great music out nowadays - it just isn't on the radio.
I agree completely - staying with a lossless format is a no-brainer with the storage available today.
I think the only real question is, how soon until FLAC becomes pointless because you might as well stick with WAVs? I suppose there will always be benefits to wrapping WAVs inside of another format, which can store things like tags and other such metadata. Also, the coming of better-than-CD audio formats will only increase the want/need for lossless compression.
You know what'd be crazy? A new movie. Like with new ideas. That'd be crazy.
But, the comic-book genre hasn't been milked to depletion yet! The sheep are busy grazing on Daredevil and Elektra at the moment, and there are dollars that need to be extracted before any other marketing efforts can be coordinated... please try again later.
But, an atheist has no moral ground to accuse the preist of wrong doing outside of law, which from a society perspective is a deeper issue.
That is not true. One can determine that an adult using a position of power over someone of lesser age is immoral on a purely logical basis, just as it is logical that stealing or killing hurts society. You make it sound as though, without religious guidelines, it would be "anything goes" and complete anarchy - as if any sense of civilization would vanish. That is, frankly, silly. All the basic and important tenets of modern civilization can be determined on a purely logical basis, and they have existed in the past without the aid of Christianity.
Though keep in mind that if the people of the Catholic Church really believed and followed that Bible those preists (the ones not thrown in jail) would have no parishioners to speak to on Sunday. So is seems that any "Christian" that supports a preist like that would then be a party to their deeds.
In theory, sure, I agree with you. But in reality, these less-than-perfect Christians have a big affect on our society. To say that religion does not affect our society only because the general populous does not flawlessly follow the guidelines bestowed on them is crazy. Look at Bush supporters... if they were truly Christian, why would they vote for capital punishment and foreign wars? If Jesus' word were followed in any real manner, we would live in a utopia, probably resembling some sort of socialist ideal society. But we are a long way from that, and excusing any ill effects of religion on the basis that the people were simply not following it correctly only emphasizes my point.
Yes, perhaps it was loaded, but viewed strictly from the sense that Russia actively persecuted religion vs the US which has actively promoted it, from a religious stand point (and even for the athiest) it would be better to live in the US, purely on the basis of religious freedom. (And all the societal benefits that come from that freedom.)
Thats why it was a loaded question. If you want a fair comparison, you need to compare things that are otherwise similar except for the trait that you are testing. The two nations that you were comparing could not be more different, and hence your comparison is completely unfair and ultimately worthless. Maybe you should apply for a position at Fox News:)
The question arises then, what law or belief in atheism says murder is wrong?
The law of the land says that murder is wrong, and that is all you need.
but a violent anarchist, or other such forms of belief that support violence, has no moral restrictions and no other person of atheistic beliefs has a right, under their own chosen belief system, to tell another atheist that murder is wrong.
Again, the law of the land dictates that it is illegal to murder someone. Atheism may not "bestow" that fact in the same way that a religion may dictate it, but that is irrelevant. There are other, secular and logical sources of what is right and wrong in a society. I think one of the easiest to understand examples of this came from the comedian Robin Williams. It was during the recent church-pedophila scandals, and there was all this talk about whether the church would act and remove the priests from their duty. Williams joked that that was ridiculous, and said "remember, its not only a sin... its also a felony." There was no need to consult the church or take their input at all - we have the laws and the understanding, and the moral, correct choice of action can be administered purely from a legal standpoint.
So if you had to choose between living in Soviet Russia (an atheistic society) vs the USA (mainly Christian/Jewish society), which would you choose?
That is a loaded question, because there are many other factors that seperate the two... A better question would be an Athiest USA and a Christian USA.
I don't think I said anything to disagree with you there. You might say that I am getting caught up on a technicality, but I like arguments to be precise, and the common argument that "different religions kill each other" just seems to be missing half the picture.
I agree completely with what you said. I just think the distinction that I made is important as well.
On the whole, religion has killed more people than all forms of revolution and all wars over money, gold or resources.
I've always took issue with statements like this, but would really love to hear a good counter argument. It seems to me that, in actuality, wars are really about resources, be it land, money, power in the region, etc. Religion certainly plays a role in that it is an enabler - it is something that those in power can weild to control the masses, and not even have to give anything to them in the present for their troubles (at least in Christianity, eternal wealth and happiness will be delivered to you post mortem, apparently... go figure).
Has there ever really been a war that was truly about one religion fighting another? In order to answer "yes" to that question, that would mean that these two groups would still go to war even if they were on entirely seperate parts of the earth, and had absolutely no ties to each other (culturally, economically, etc).
One easy example of this is the current Israel-Palestine conflict. Would there still be conflict if the Jews were magically relocated to Alaska? How come Israel and/or the Palestinians are not interested in fighting the Chinese? In the end, doesn't it always come down to land and power in the region? I realize that religion is certainly playing an enabler role in this conflict - but it is not the source of it. I tend to think that close proximity, racism, and very unbalanced levels of wealth are the real reasons they are fighting.
Again, I am no expert and I would truly love to hear a good counter argument to this, but the notion that wars have been simply religions fighting each other always seemed simplistic to me. Now if you want to say that more people have been killed in the *name* of religion than in any other name, that is something I would not take issue with.
Im in NZ and our stamps no longer say "Merry Christmas" but instead say "Happy Holidays". Yeah we cant speak our mind hrer either.
That has absolutely nothing to do with you being able (or not being able) to speak your mind. That is not censorship. At worst, that is a case of political-correct-ness gone too far, and that is debatable.
Where can you speak your mind? Certainly not in the US.
Come now, that is a bit much. The U.S. has tons of problems, no doubt, but I wouldn't say that censorship is top of the list. You can speak your mind all you like... there certainly are areas of debate, such as the recent FCC clampdowns, but overall I don't think there is any truly evil censorship going on.
The way I see it, our problem (the current administration, the current direction and priorities of our country, etc) is something entirely else. Bush was voted in, after all... you want to find out why this happened, you need to look into why allegedly moral people are voting for plainly immoral things. But lets not pretend that all the great things about this country are completely dead.:)
All journalism is biased - no doubt. But Fox News really does take it to a whole new level, and is in a league of its own. I actually saw on Fox News' site onces an ad for a Fox Show and the caption "Winning the war of liberty over liberalism." Can you imagine something on CNN that shows one of their anchormen with the caption "Winning the war of liberty over Republicans"?
All of Murdoch's "news" services are, actually. Here in Boston, we have the Boston Globe (the "liberal" newspaper) and the Boston Herald, the Republican Murdoch paper. Guess which paper is more sensationalistic?
[Bold]This is my header[HR]
[HR]
[Italic]To be or not to be, that is the question[HR]
Reveal Codes in Word:
[x234akdsfjad43kjtskjdfasdlfkjads432kjdfs]This is my header[3.14ftlbs]
[asdkj3k453lksdjl34k5j3l45kj345k3j4l53j45k345klj 34l5kj34kl5j345l]To be or not to be, that is the question[3.14ftlbs]
Its a capybara - the largest type of rodent in the world. I suppose they put it on there for the same reasons that a lot of Florida websites have cartoon alligators.
Even if the US wasn't involved in the middle east at all, oil would continue to flow. After all, what else are the Iraqis, Saudis and others going to do with their oil except sell it?
Of course - no argument there.
In fact, the invasion of Iraq and sanctions have actually *increased* the price by reducing supply.
Believe it or not, I think when it comes to oil our goverment is thinking long term (this is almost unheard of in anything else it is involved in). The fact that oil prices temporarily rise during the actual conflict is not really significant. What is significant is that oil supplies are limited, the 2nd largest oil fields in the world were unavailable to us, and we are about to get a whole lot more competition for these oil supplies from rapidly growing countries like China (indeed, by all projections China will easily overtake the US). Call it a pre-emptive securement, if you will.
War is really bad way of securing access to resources...
Really? It has worked out rather well for conquering countries throughout history, if I am not mistaken. Of course, all empires eventually end, but surely you must admit that they take a lot while they are in the position to, no?
...it is far cheaper to simply purchase them in the free market.
Until you are eclipsed by larger, faster-growing countries and as total world supply grows ever smaller.
I agree - we must keep in mind that the True Cost (tm) of fossil fuels is much larger than most people think. This is because many of the drawbacks of fossil fuels are obfuscated, such as pollution and reliance on foreign and sometimes hostile nations. Also, much of the true cost of using oil is subsidized by the military. After all, we don't have a lot of oil here in the US, so going after world oil supplies has been a cornerstone of our foreign policy for quite some time. While it is true that, pound for pound, oil is the easiest way to harness energy given current technologies, the equation begins to shift when you factor in what we must do to secure that oil. In some ways, shouldn't the resources being spent fighting in Iraq be tacked-on to the "cost of using oil"? Unfortunately, that is a more abstract concept, and hence, people often do not consider such things... its not quite so easy to measure how much one of our soldier's lives is worth in dollars and cents.
Fossil fuels are *far* more expensive than the market price would indicate.
I do not doubt that many past texts also document elves, fairies and various other monsters. I'm not quite sure what that has to do with reality, however...
And I think the notion that people lived much longer 2000 years ago is, quite frankly, silly.
A site that willfully becomes a source of trojans, exploits, and malware deserves to have all it's packets blocked at a high level or black holed.
No way - that is a slippery slope. I don't wany any of the internet censored from me, thank you very much.
Even aside from that, it is a fairly complicated problem. Say SiteA is a source of trojans... what happens if they clean up their act and go legit? Is there a time limit that they are blacklisted for? Who decides what qualifies a site for blacklisting and eventual re-instatement? Would we need to create a goverment task force to enforce these rules? It's a complete nightmare...
A better solution: Use firefox, and surf with care. Personally, I like that the internet has a bit of a "wild west", uncontrolled darkside to it... If you want your Internet massaged and scrubbed, use AOL.
This is exactly correct... Make no mistake America - the heartland spoke with a clear, loud message last night: Bush is *definitely* the more gooder man for the job.
I can definitely see the problem you outlined, but can't say that I am convinced that this is a death blow for IRV, however. If your second choice gets eliminated in the first round, so be it. The party that scores the least amount of the people's #1 preference deserves to be eliminated, no?
Also, I can't say I buy into the notion that this aspect of IRV would lead us right back to current "defensive" voting strategies... no large party, of course, would be eliminated so early, so it is silly to think that people would be forced to make the Republican or Democratic party their first choice at all times.
That being said, if there are better systems of voting out there that retain the simplicity of IRV, bring it on. I am simply saying that your particular example doesn't really strike me as a fatal flaw of IRV.
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Wow, other people seem to hold a lot of sway over you, don't they? :) Ok, I will stop "constantly berating" you now. Cheers
I don't listen to much music anymore. All the bullshit and RIAA and this is legal and blah blah blah, it's all killed music as an artform for me. I used to play guitar in bands, and love playing music. It's just dead to me now. White noise.
You just need to stop letting MTV tell you what to listen to. There is a ton of great music out nowadays - it just isn't on the radio.
I agree completely - staying with a lossless format is a no-brainer with the storage available today.
I think the only real question is, how soon until FLAC becomes pointless because you might as well stick with WAVs? I suppose there will always be benefits to wrapping WAVs inside of another format, which can store things like tags and other such metadata. Also, the coming of better-than-CD audio formats will only increase the want/need for lossless compression.
If you just need the absolute purest audio you can get from a CD, then WAV (or some other uncompressed format) is the way to go.
:) You can always decode back to WAV from FLAC.
Except that WAV is no more "pure" than FLAC - that's the beauty of a lossless format
You know what'd be crazy? A new movie. Like with new ideas. That'd be crazy.
But, the comic-book genre hasn't been milked to depletion yet! The sheep are busy grazing on Daredevil and Elektra at the moment, and there are dollars that need to be extracted before any other marketing efforts can be coordinated... please try again later.
But, an atheist has no moral ground to accuse the preist of wrong doing outside of law, which from a society perspective is a deeper issue.
:)
That is not true. One can determine that an adult using a position of power over someone of lesser age is immoral on a purely logical basis, just as it is logical that stealing or killing hurts society. You make it sound as though, without religious guidelines, it would be "anything goes" and complete anarchy - as if any sense of civilization would vanish. That is, frankly, silly. All the basic and important tenets of modern civilization can be determined on a purely logical basis, and they have existed in the past without the aid of Christianity.
Though keep in mind that if the people of the Catholic Church really believed and followed that Bible those preists (the ones not thrown in jail) would have no parishioners to speak to on Sunday. So is seems that any "Christian" that supports a preist like that would then be a party to their deeds.
In theory, sure, I agree with you. But in reality, these less-than-perfect Christians have a big affect on our society. To say that religion does not affect our society only because the general populous does not flawlessly follow the guidelines bestowed on them is crazy. Look at Bush supporters... if they were truly Christian, why would they vote for capital punishment and foreign wars? If Jesus' word were followed in any real manner, we would live in a utopia, probably resembling some sort of socialist ideal society. But we are a long way from that, and excusing any ill effects of religion on the basis that the people were simply not following it correctly only emphasizes my point.
Yes, perhaps it was loaded, but viewed strictly from the sense that Russia actively persecuted religion vs the US which has actively promoted it, from a religious stand point (and even for the athiest) it would be better to live in the US, purely on the basis of religious freedom. (And all the societal benefits that come from that freedom.)
Thats why it was a loaded question. If you want a fair comparison, you need to compare things that are otherwise similar except for the trait that you are testing. The two nations that you were comparing could not be more different, and hence your comparison is completely unfair and ultimately worthless. Maybe you should apply for a position at Fox News
The question arises then, what law or belief in atheism says murder is wrong?
The law of the land says that murder is wrong, and that is all you need.
but a violent anarchist, or other such forms of belief that support violence, has no moral restrictions and no other person of atheistic beliefs has a right, under their own chosen belief system, to tell another atheist that murder is wrong.
Again, the law of the land dictates that it is illegal to murder someone. Atheism may not "bestow" that fact in the same way that a religion may dictate it, but that is irrelevant. There are other, secular and logical sources of what is right and wrong in a society. I think one of the easiest to understand examples of this came from the comedian Robin Williams. It was during the recent church-pedophila scandals, and there was all this talk about whether the church would act and remove the priests from their duty. Williams joked that that was ridiculous, and said "remember, its not only a sin... its also a felony." There was no need to consult the church or take their input at all - we have the laws and the understanding, and the moral, correct choice of action can be administered purely from a legal standpoint.
So if you had to choose between living in Soviet Russia (an atheistic society) vs the USA (mainly Christian/Jewish society), which would you choose?
That is a loaded question, because there are many other factors that seperate the two... A better question would be an Athiest USA and a Christian USA.
I don't think I said anything to disagree with you there. You might say that I am getting caught up on a technicality, but I like arguments to be precise, and the common argument that "different religions kill each other" just seems to be missing half the picture.
I agree completely with what you said. I just think the distinction that I made is important as well.
On the whole, religion has killed more people than all forms of revolution and all wars over money, gold or resources.
I've always took issue with statements like this, but would really love to hear a good counter argument. It seems to me that, in actuality, wars are really about resources, be it land, money, power in the region, etc. Religion certainly plays a role in that it is an enabler - it is something that those in power can weild to control the masses, and not even have to give anything to them in the present for their troubles (at least in Christianity, eternal wealth and happiness will be delivered to you post mortem, apparently... go figure).
Has there ever really been a war that was truly about one religion fighting another? In order to answer "yes" to that question, that would mean that these two groups would still go to war even if they were on entirely seperate parts of the earth, and had absolutely no ties to each other (culturally, economically, etc).
One easy example of this is the current Israel-Palestine conflict. Would there still be conflict if the Jews were magically relocated to Alaska? How come Israel and/or the Palestinians are not interested in fighting the Chinese? In the end, doesn't it always come down to land and power in the region? I realize that religion is certainly playing an enabler role in this conflict - but it is not the source of it. I tend to think that close proximity, racism, and very unbalanced levels of wealth are the real reasons they are fighting.
Again, I am no expert and I would truly love to hear a good counter argument to this, but the notion that wars have been simply religions fighting each other always seemed simplistic to me. Now if you want to say that more people have been killed in the *name* of religion than in any other name, that is something I would not take issue with.
Seriously guys, relax. Though this trick might have gone over better in early April, its not worth getting worked up over.
:)
That being said... Alek, you suck.
Im in NZ and our stamps no longer say "Merry Christmas" but instead say "Happy Holidays". Yeah we cant speak our mind hrer either.
That has absolutely nothing to do with you being able (or not being able) to speak your mind. That is not censorship. At worst, that is a case of political-correct-ness gone too far, and that is debatable.
Where can you speak your mind? Certainly not in the US.
:)
Come now, that is a bit much. The U.S. has tons of problems, no doubt, but I wouldn't say that censorship is top of the list. You can speak your mind all you like... there certainly are areas of debate, such as the recent FCC clampdowns, but overall I don't think there is any truly evil censorship going on.
The way I see it, our problem (the current administration, the current direction and priorities of our country, etc) is something entirely else. Bush was voted in, after all... you want to find out why this happened, you need to look into why allegedly moral people are voting for plainly immoral things. But lets not pretend that all the great things about this country are completely dead.
Also check out The Corporation... it has a nice chapter on the incident you are referring to.
All journalism is biased - no doubt. But Fox News really does take it to a whole new level, and is in a league of its own. I actually saw on Fox News' site onces an ad for a Fox Show and the caption "Winning the war of liberty over liberalism." Can you imagine something on CNN that shows one of their anchormen with the caption "Winning the war of liberty over Republicans"?
All of Murdoch's "news" services are, actually. Here in Boston, we have the Boston Globe (the "liberal" newspaper) and the Boston Herald, the Republican Murdoch paper. Guess which paper is more sensationalistic?
Reveal Codes in WordPerfect:
j 34l5kj34kl5j345l]To be or not to be, that is the question[3.14ftlbs]
[Bold]This is my header[HR]
[HR]
[Italic]To be or not to be, that is the question[HR]
Reveal Codes in Word:
[x234akdsfjad43kjtskjdfasdlfkjads432kjdfs]This is my header[3.14ftlbs]
[asdkj3k453lksdjl34k5j3l45kj345k3j4l53j45k345kl
Its a capybara - the largest type of rodent in the world. I suppose they put it on there for the same reasons that a lot of Florida websites have cartoon alligators.
Even if the US wasn't involved in the middle east at all, oil would continue to flow. After all, what else are the Iraqis, Saudis and others going to do with their oil except sell it?
...it is far cheaper to simply purchase them in the free market.
Of course - no argument there.
In fact, the invasion of Iraq and sanctions have actually *increased* the price by reducing supply.
Believe it or not, I think when it comes to oil our goverment is thinking long term (this is almost unheard of in anything else it is involved in). The fact that oil prices temporarily rise during the actual conflict is not really significant. What is significant is that oil supplies are limited, the 2nd largest oil fields in the world were unavailable to us, and we are about to get a whole lot more competition for these oil supplies from rapidly growing countries like China (indeed, by all projections China will easily overtake the US). Call it a pre-emptive securement, if you will.
War is really bad way of securing access to resources...
Really? It has worked out rather well for conquering countries throughout history, if I am not mistaken. Of course, all empires eventually end, but surely you must admit that they take a lot while they are in the position to, no?
Until you are eclipsed by larger, faster-growing countries and as total world supply grows ever smaller.
I agree - we must keep in mind that the True Cost (tm) of fossil fuels is much larger than most people think. This is because many of the drawbacks of fossil fuels are obfuscated, such as pollution and reliance on foreign and sometimes hostile nations. Also, much of the true cost of using oil is subsidized by the military. After all, we don't have a lot of oil here in the US, so going after world oil supplies has been a cornerstone of our foreign policy for quite some time. While it is true that, pound for pound, oil is the easiest way to harness energy given current technologies, the equation begins to shift when you factor in what we must do to secure that oil. In some ways, shouldn't the resources being spent fighting in Iraq be tacked-on to the "cost of using oil"? Unfortunately, that is a more abstract concept, and hence, people often do not consider such things... its not quite so easy to measure how much one of our soldier's lives is worth in dollars and cents.
Fossil fuels are *far* more expensive than the market price would indicate.
I do not doubt that many past texts also document elves, fairies and various other monsters. I'm not quite sure what that has to do with reality, however...
And I think the notion that people lived much longer 2000 years ago is, quite frankly, silly.
A site that willfully becomes a source of trojans, exploits, and malware deserves to have all it's packets blocked at a high level or black holed.
No way - that is a slippery slope. I don't wany any of the internet censored from me, thank you very much.
Even aside from that, it is a fairly complicated problem. Say SiteA is a source of trojans... what happens if they clean up their act and go legit? Is there a time limit that they are blacklisted for? Who decides what qualifies a site for blacklisting and eventual re-instatement? Would we need to create a goverment task force to enforce these rules? It's a complete nightmare...
A better solution: Use firefox, and surf with care. Personally, I like that the internet has a bit of a "wild west", uncontrolled darkside to it... If you want your Internet massaged and scrubbed, use AOL.
Any child, or anyone who saw the director's cut of Aliens and dreamed of owning one of those automated sentries.
... kidding. Actually, if memory serves, the only reason the sentries "failed" was because they ran out of ammo.
Yeah, because they worked out really well in the films...
This is exactly correct... Make no mistake America - the heartland spoke with a clear, loud message last night: Bush is *definitely* the more gooder man for the job.
I can definitely see the problem you outlined, but can't say that I am convinced that this is a death blow for IRV, however. If your second choice gets eliminated in the first round, so be it. The party that scores the least amount of the people's #1 preference deserves to be eliminated, no?
Also, I can't say I buy into the notion that this aspect of IRV would lead us right back to current "defensive" voting strategies... no large party, of course, would be eliminated so early, so it is silly to think that people would be forced to make the Republican or Democratic party their first choice at all times.
That being said, if there are better systems of voting out there that retain the simplicity of IRV, bring it on. I am simply saying that your particular example doesn't really strike me as a fatal flaw of IRV.
1. Is there sufficient DNA material at any of the dig sites to allow us to clone a hobbit?
I don't know, but Michael Jackson wants to find out.
Microsoft, Apple and the RIAA would love for us all to think that MP3s are going out but we're smarter than that, we're Slashdot readers.
Stop.... you had me at "RIAA".