The idea that consumers who already like watching such porn would be offended by seeing the flaws in all their glory seems a bit suspect.
There's a diffence between appreciating porn featuring non-models and liking porn that features dumpy acne-riddled women with cellulite.
Most people who like amateur porn probably like it for its "girl-next-door" feel. The myth of amateur porn is that they're completely genuine and are probably so horny that they would have let themselves be photographed for free, just to get off on the idea of men watching them. In a sense, professional models are both more powerful (as they are seen as being in control of their sexuality, as this is their full time career) and more objectified (they are appreciated only for their physical appearance, and not who they are as people). Amateur models are seen as less empowered (they are often depicted as being approached, unawares, by men with cameras who are able to "trick" them into being captured on film; although both models and amateurs are doing it for the money, the money becomes more apparent with the amateurs and is generally framed in language of "supporting" the amateur [often in her pursuit of a college degree]) and yet more personified (on many sites, the section where the amateur keeps a journal, diary, or an online forum is very popular).
So the difference between the two types of porn is more on personality than on physicality. I think the expectation would be that you still expect physcial perfection from both parties. And remember: there's plenty of people with "plump" fetishes. I don't think there's many people with "bad skin" fetishes.
what good is running Linux on a device if it doesn't support the linux desktop as well? Did I miss something in TFA?
Well, you'll probably generally be using the controller to control the system. The software applications are probably seen as a secondary thing.
I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before a linux version is available too. Just keep in mind, developing each client application takes a reasonable amount of time, so they're probably focusing on the largest markets first.
The point of developing the whole thing in Linux was the stability of the system, and (probably) not having to worry about software licensing issues. That's where you get the best possible return on your choices. Choosing to make a Linux client first, though, would be dumb, because it's going to only be a small sliver of their target market.
It's good that they tested it at a casino, beause that's one of the only business large enough to support such a device.
Actually, assuming you could get some kind of special deal for buying in bulk, this would make an excellent modern jukebox replacement in a hip, upscale restaurant. Diners choose the songs they want to hear and pay some sort of fee for the privelege, equivalent to what the cost might be for a jukebox. Let's say they get charged 25c a song, and you have at least 2 songs playing at any point between 12 pm and midnight. In a year, you've taken in around $2500. That more than covers the cost of a controller, 4 zone players, and 4 sets of decent min-computer speakers that you'd hook up to the device.
Now all you'd have to worry about was somehow keeping the controller safe from drinks and spaghetti sauce...
But if you just want a job, you may just want to lie and put down a bogus degree. What are they going to do? Beat you up if they find out?
Well, they'll probably fire you for dishonesty. After all, if you're willing to lie to just get a job, what's to stop you from stealing company secrets to get more money?
When they fire you, you'll be lucky to have any good references when you apply for your next job. You'll also have to explain why your last job ended, and they may call up your former company to confirm that information.
Of course, this is all assuming the next company you try to get a job at isn't McDonalds or something. Then you'll be just fine.
Incidentally, they don't ask about the degree because most of them have a college degree and they have a generally idea of what you had to go through to have one. The fact that you have one is enough. They're not going to ask about where you went to in your face, since it's possible you didn't go to Harvard because all your parents could afford was a state school.
Negative. This is not the same as guided education.
Yep, it's much better.
My best bet is that some people thrive under guided education, and some people don't.
I know that I really enjoy having a teacher help me along in my learning process. Unless your interests really are very specialized, there usually isn't a dearth of material on a subject, there's a surplus.
As a result, it's very difficult, not only to determine *what* you can learn (already a daunting task to someone like myself, who can be interested in anything) but ways to learn it.
A good professor takes time to find out what their students are really interested in learning, and figure out ways to balance the "must learn" subjects with the "want-to-learn" subjects.
A good professor can collect resources (books, articles, movies, etc.) which at their surface are unconnected and reveal their connections and how they shed further light on the subject being taught.
A good professor can take large complicated ideas which are generally in the realm of the specialist only, and distill them so they can be understood before requiring you to gain the additional knowledge required to understand the ideas fully. A perfect case in point was the "Quantum Physics for Poets"-type course I once took. It required only pre-Calculus math and did not delve as deeply into the nature of Quantum Physics as a traditional class might, but it still covered the subject in an interesting enough way that I feel I could, if I wanted to, delve more deeply into the subject without getting seriously confused.
There are many people who find they learn subjects perfectly well on their own. I'm dead certain that this is the case. There are no doubt many experts in specialized subjects who taught themselves the subject almost entirely on their own.
There are other people who welcome guidance and support. I'm one of them. And I don't feel that I'm any worse for being that way. I can learn just fine on my own -- once I've determined what I want to learn and how -- but if I don't have those two questions answered fully, a teacher is invaluable.
I guess my take is that sometimes, especially when starting out in a subject, hand holding can be very useful. A good teacher will no when they are guiding, and when they are forcing.
I think it's pretty clear that this depends on the school you go to rather than the state of colleges in general.
I'd also blame society at large, that is pressuring schools to become more efficient "worker factories". Specialization is becoming more prevalent.
Well-roundedness is exactly what is needed to keep colleges relevant.
It also depends on the degree. This is not to bash EE or any similar type of school, but this sort of subject area doesn't lend itself well to exploratory thinking. Basically, you need to be able to solve problems and remember data and equations (forgive me if I have oversimplified somewhat). These are all things that a computer could theoretically do once sufficient memory and processing power existed. So it's no wonder that the students coming out of a program like that would be more like machines.
Someone who goes to college because they want to explore learning in general is probably not going to cheat.
Programmers become obsessed with special cases, as in "What would happen if there was a ginormous snow storm during the most busy travel season of the year?"
Interesting, but it's much more important to have a system that deals with mosts cases efficiently and correctly.
It's possible when this program was first written the hardware it was written for would have had difficulty with 64 bit integers. Maybe the additional memory space would have been a problem. I don't know. In any case, the system worked pretty well for a long time. Special cases can trip up even the best software.
Also, 32,000 changes in a single month is a *lot* of changes. The fact that this problem only happened once is an indication that the existing system was working fine.
I'll never forget a definition of legacy systems once -- "Systems that *work*"
It's possible that the system that will be used to replace the old one will be less stable and crash more on the order of once per year or month rather than once per software lifetime.
If you brush your hand over your keyboard or mousepad and close your eyes can you not construct an image?
Do you really think such an ability is only the relm of the sighted?
Certainly they with no sight will have a different image, but will it be any less nuanced?
You're using the terminology of the seeing. I'm not blind; I have no idea what goes on in their minds. But, I imagine if they've never seen with their eyes, then they wouldn't have a "picture" of the keyboard, they would have a mental map. And it would be different than how we comprehend our own mental "images" of things.
Let's think about things that you never actually see. For instance, what is your image of what a headache looks like? Assuming you've never seen a picture of it, what does a stomach look like? After all, you have one in your body, and you've certainly felt it at times in your life.
Here's a slightly more risque one: if you're a guy, ever been inside a lady? Would you be able to draw what the inside of *that* lady looked like just by how it felt? I doubt it. But I'm sure you have a mental map of it.
Or more banal: ever stuck a q-tip in your ear canal? Would you be able to draw what it looks like? Possibly not, even though you've traced its contours with the q-tip. And yes, I know no one should ever stick a q-tip in there, but everyone does it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't a lot of distributions have multi-language offerings built in? That is, you just choose your language at the start of installation, and from that point on, everything is in your language of choice?
I don't see what makes this distribution better than any other. The screenshots make it seem same old, same old.
Okay, this sounds very trollish. But I wonder where the line is between "Hey, check out this neat project that I personally like" and "This is actually something relevant to other people".
Re:You are uninformed.
on
The Media in 2014
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Hmmm...if I want to know what digital camera I should buy, probably the last person I'd consult would be a digital camera expert. They're most likely going to deluge with overly specific information, technical jargon within the digital camera field. If you simply ask them, "Look, I've got $200. Which camera should I buy?" They won't be able to give you a 1 paragraph answer.
That's where journalists come in. They have a more marginal understand of the field (it's usually always worse than the experts, but that's expected), but they're good at translating it into information that can be understood by, let's say, a layman.
This is, ultimately, the advantage of journalists. No one wants to read a 10 page dissertation on the origins or dynamics of this or that conflict. They want 4-5 paragraphs telling them who did what, when, where, how, and why.
If you want to get deeper into that information, then you consult the expert.
Also, it's very possible that the expert won't be as good at putting his knowledge in the larger picture. At times like this, a shallow understanding of the subject is often more useful than a deep one.
Well, there are a few crappy journalists out there but in general most journalists a) are better informed about the news they're gathering than the general populace and b) more experienced at how to extract the key information from that news.
That doesn't mean that there isn't still a trend towards sensationalism and superficiality in news.
And besides, to have even one news source (let alone "multiple news sources"), you need journalists. The happenings of the world can not be covered by blogs alone.
But often, JavaScript is so useful. It makes sense to keep it enabled, and then have proper security measures in place.
After all, the Internet creates an insecure environment. But the Internet is so useful that it's worth it, and then you work on making it more secure and dependable.
I write websites, about 99% of the pages and forms are JavaScript-free. But there are a few times when it's necessary, or makes a function n times faster or easier than if I had to make all of the interaction server-based.
Perhaps the best way of describing this is: "Morality can be an expression of religion"
In other words some people's morals are directly shaped by their religion.
The other statement, that religion derives from morality, is incorrect. Religions were generally set up to help people understand the world, or to come to terms with an understanding of a "higher being"(or higher beings) that control and/or created the world. That's where religion originally comes from. Most people's religions now reflect how that person was raised -- most people retain the religion they were brought up in or were first exposed to. Whether they are moral or not depends on the underlying morals of the religion they follow and/or what code of morals they have chosen for themselves.
In regards to the Amish, I think it's important to note that some "fundamentalists" have a large circle of influence than others. I'm guessing if you were yourself born in an Amish community but felt at odds with their beliefs and practices, life would be very difficult for you. The Amish people's circle of influence is fairly small, and in addition part of their beliefs specifically focuses on being conscious about how their behavior affects the rest of the world. They haven't rejected cars because they hate modern technology -- some of them are perfectly willing to use computers -- they have rejected cars because they've determined that the use of this technology is harmful to themselves and the world. I'm guessing that they would similarly feel distasteful about pushing their beliefs on other people -- much of their philosophy circles on their relatively isolated nature. Unless I'm mistaken, they have made no efferts to convert others.
This can not be said for either your traditional Fundamentalist Christian or Fundamentalist Muslim.
I would say that fundamentalism, *except* in a willfully isolated population is negative, because the fundamentalist believes first and foremost that their beliefs are the only true ones, and feel threatened unless those beliefs are reflected in the society at large that they live in. Thus, they are in a cultural war with secularism and all of the "wrong" religions.
I'm more moderately religious, so I have a kind of "live and let live" attitude towards everyone else's beliefs. So long as another person has no desire to control what I can think, do, or say, they can believe whatever they want.
Some of the most moral people I know have no religion. In contrast, I can point to *plenty* of people who are notoriously religious but whose morality can definitely be questioned. *COUGH* BUSH *cough*
I think Buddhism and Taoism might also be good examples which may have some elements of the "supernatural", but (IIRC) there aren't any deities (though I suppose we can also discuss the definition of "deity" or "god").
Uh, you've obviously never been to China. Go into any temple there, look at the giant statues of various Buddha and many other prominent figures from each of the religions and how they are treated. They're gods, basically.
I think that there's this perception of Eastern religions (which I shared before visiting China) that they are very different than our Western religions. In reality, they're pretty much just as into externalizing (i.e., there is some entity out there that can save me) as Western religions are.
The only difference is they don't believe that these "gods" created the world, a standard belief in Western religions. Their gods more closely resemble the Greek and Roman gods, where each is responsible for certain aspects of life -- for instance, one god might protect your health, while another is responsible for financial health.
You know, all of you people who think that this is a bad idea are going to feel really dumb if it turns out to be the greatest invention in the 21st century.
I mean, you don't know. That guy, last century, he thought he had mold, but really, he had penecillin, which is used to kill bad germs and save lives And now people are saying he's really great, just because he found mold. And mold is everywhere.
Now, this phone tv is better than mold. So just imagine how important this could be.
Also, this could be used to make very cool, short movies. You know how you're always saying, "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a movie where x happened?" And usually x is something like "a bunch of bunnies rip a CEO to pieces"?
See, you could not make a movie like that that lasted for 90 minutes. People just wouldn't sit and watch a CEO being ripped apart by bunnies for that long. The funny thing is, though, I bet it would take those bunnies 90 minutes -- maybe more -- to rip that CEO apart with their bunny teeth.
But the point is people wouldn't watch that long, so a minute is an ideal amount of time for a movie about bunnies ripping a CEO apart with their bunny teeth, although you'd definitely have to cut out a lot of the time in it. And you'd probably want to actually cut out the screaming sounds, because if someone else heard your phone they might think you were somehow using your mental powers to kill the person on the other end of the phone, because they wouldn't know you were watching a movie on your phone because it's so new.
Also, I think it might be fun to take a Simpsons episode and break it down into one minute chunks, and you'd get one minute per day. That sure would heighten the excitement!
Or you could do a miniseries. The only problem is you would have to spend, like, the first 30 seconds reminding people what had happened in the previous episodes, so you'd only have 30 seconds for new material. So, a 6 hour miniseries would take 720 days, or 2 years.
I think if a friend has one of the phones without a TV on it, a good practical joke might be to glue a photo on the front of it and tell your friend, "Hey, I didn't know your phone had a TV feature on it" and then when they take a closer look you say, "Ha, ha -- I tricked you! Your phone doesn't have a video screen at all, cuz you suck."
Also, this device might save hundreds of lives. Like, you could be on a plane, and this terrorist is going to hold up the plane, and then you show him a video on your cellphone, and he laughs and drops his gun, and you pick it up and point it at him and say, "Yeah, who's tough now, you jerk!"
Oh wait, scratch that. I forgot that you can't turn on cellphones inside of airplanes.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea that consumers who already like watching such porn would be offended by seeing the flaws in all their glory seems a bit suspect.
There's a diffence between appreciating porn featuring non-models and liking porn that features dumpy acne-riddled women with cellulite.
Most people who like amateur porn probably like it for its "girl-next-door" feel. The myth of amateur porn is that they're completely genuine and are probably so horny that they would have let themselves be photographed for free, just to get off on the idea of men watching them. In a sense, professional models are both more powerful (as they are seen as being in control of their sexuality, as this is their full time career) and more objectified (they are appreciated only for their physical appearance, and not who they are as people). Amateur models are seen as less empowered (they are often depicted as being approached, unawares, by men with cameras who are able to "trick" them into being captured on film; although both models and amateurs are doing it for the money, the money becomes more apparent with the amateurs and is generally framed in language of "supporting" the amateur [often in her pursuit of a college degree]) and yet more personified (on many sites, the section where the amateur keeps a journal, diary, or an online forum is very popular).
So the difference between the two types of porn is more on personality than on physicality. I think the expectation would be that you still expect physcial perfection from both parties. And remember: there's plenty of people with "plump" fetishes. I don't think there's many people with "bad skin" fetishes.
Ugh. Nevermind
what good is running Linux on a device if it doesn't support the linux desktop as well? Did I miss something in TFA?
Well, you'll probably generally be using the controller to control the system. The software applications are probably seen as a secondary thing.
I'm guessing it's only a matter of time before a linux version is available too. Just keep in mind, developing each client application takes a reasonable amount of time, so they're probably focusing on the largest markets first.
The point of developing the whole thing in Linux was the stability of the system, and (probably) not having to worry about software licensing issues. That's where you get the best possible return on your choices. Choosing to make a Linux client first, though, would be dumb, because it's going to only be a small sliver of their target market.
It's good that they tested it at a casino, beause that's one of the only business large enough to support such a device.
Actually, assuming you could get some kind of special deal for buying in bulk, this would make an excellent modern jukebox replacement in a hip, upscale restaurant. Diners choose the songs they want to hear and pay some sort of fee for the privelege, equivalent to what the cost might be for a jukebox. Let's say they get charged 25c a song, and you have at least 2 songs playing at any point between 12 pm and midnight. In a year, you've taken in around $2500. That more than covers the cost of a controller, 4 zone players, and 4 sets of decent min-computer speakers that you'd hook up to the device.
Now all you'd have to worry about was somehow keeping the controller safe from drinks and spaghetti sauce...
According to the website pdatoday.com, Sonos Digital Music System was on Popular Science Magazine's '2004 Best of What's New'. This news tidbit was posted November 10, 2004. So, while this is still a relatively new item, it must have been available for review at least for a few months.
But if you just want a job, you may just want to lie and put down a bogus degree. What are they going to do? Beat you up if they find out?
Well, they'll probably fire you for dishonesty. After all, if you're willing to lie to just get a job, what's to stop you from stealing company secrets to get more money?
When they fire you, you'll be lucky to have any good references when you apply for your next job. You'll also have to explain why your last job ended, and they may call up your former company to confirm that information.
Of course, this is all assuming the next company you try to get a job at isn't McDonalds or something. Then you'll be just fine.
Incidentally, they don't ask about the degree because most of them have a college degree and they have a generally idea of what you had to go through to have one. The fact that you have one is enough. They're not going to ask about where you went to in your face, since it's possible you didn't go to Harvard because all your parents could afford was a state school.
Yes, it is a bad school, but it is very easy to graduate there.
That's sort of like saying, "Yes, Suzy *is* a diseased skank, but it's very easy to get into bed with her."
QED, IMO.
Negative. This is not the same as guided education.
Yep, it's much better.
My best bet is that some people thrive under guided education, and some people don't.
I know that I really enjoy having a teacher help me along in my learning process. Unless your interests really are very specialized, there usually isn't a dearth of material on a subject, there's a surplus.
As a result, it's very difficult, not only to determine *what* you can learn (already a daunting task to someone like myself, who can be interested in anything) but ways to learn it.
A good professor takes time to find out what their students are really interested in learning, and figure out ways to balance the "must learn" subjects with the "want-to-learn" subjects.
A good professor can collect resources (books, articles, movies, etc.) which at their surface are unconnected and reveal their connections and how they shed further light on the subject being taught.
A good professor can take large complicated ideas which are generally in the realm of the specialist only, and distill them so they can be understood before requiring you to gain the additional knowledge required to understand the ideas fully. A perfect case in point was the "Quantum Physics for Poets"-type course I once took. It required only pre-Calculus math and did not delve as deeply into the nature of Quantum Physics as a traditional class might, but it still covered the subject in an interesting enough way that I feel I could, if I wanted to, delve more deeply into the subject without getting seriously confused.
There are many people who find they learn subjects perfectly well on their own. I'm dead certain that this is the case. There are no doubt many experts in specialized subjects who taught themselves the subject almost entirely on their own.
There are other people who welcome guidance and support. I'm one of them. And I don't feel that I'm any worse for being that way. I can learn just fine on my own -- once I've determined what I want to learn and how -- but if I don't have those two questions answered fully, a teacher is invaluable.
I guess my take is that sometimes, especially when starting out in a subject, hand holding can be very useful. A good teacher will no when they are guiding, and when they are forcing.
I think it's pretty clear that this depends on the school you go to rather than the state of colleges in general.
I'd also blame society at large, that is pressuring schools to become more efficient "worker factories". Specialization is becoming more prevalent.
Well-roundedness is exactly what is needed to keep colleges relevant.
It also depends on the degree. This is not to bash EE or any similar type of school, but this sort of subject area doesn't lend itself well to exploratory thinking. Basically, you need to be able to solve problems and remember data and equations (forgive me if I have oversimplified somewhat). These are all things that a computer could theoretically do once sufficient memory and processing power existed. So it's no wonder that the students coming out of a program like that would be more like machines.
Someone who goes to college because they want to explore learning in general is probably not going to cheat.
My contact lenses somewhere around here left them did I.
Could it be that he's making other revisions under an "anonymous" screenname to cover himself, or something?
Besides, if he's for elitism, it may be that he thinks he's not qualified to edit other articles.
Just giving him the benefit of the doubt...
Programmers become obsessed with special cases, as in "What would happen if there was a ginormous snow storm during the most busy travel season of the year?"
Interesting, but it's much more important to have a system that deals with mosts cases efficiently and correctly.
It's possible when this program was first written the hardware it was written for would have had difficulty with 64 bit integers. Maybe the additional memory space would have been a problem. I don't know. In any case, the system worked pretty well for a long time. Special cases can trip up even the best software.
Also, 32,000 changes in a single month is a *lot* of changes. The fact that this problem only happened once is an indication that the existing system was working fine.
I'll never forget a definition of legacy systems once -- "Systems that *work*"
It's possible that the system that will be used to replace the old one will be less stable and crash more on the order of once per year or month rather than once per software lifetime.
Otherwise, first message on turning on the PDA:
"How are you gentlemen."
If you brush your hand over your keyboard or mousepad and close your eyes can you not construct an image?
Do you really think such an ability is only the relm of the sighted?
Certainly they with no sight will have a different image, but will it be any less nuanced?
You're using the terminology of the seeing. I'm not blind; I have no idea what goes on in their minds. But, I imagine if they've never seen with their eyes, then they wouldn't have a "picture" of the keyboard, they would have a mental map. And it would be different than how we comprehend our own mental "images" of things.
Let's think about things that you never actually see. For instance, what is your image of what a headache looks like? Assuming you've never seen a picture of it, what does a stomach look like? After all, you have one in your body, and you've certainly felt it at times in your life.
Here's a slightly more risque one: if you're a guy, ever been inside a lady? Would you be able to draw what the inside of *that* lady looked like just by how it felt? I doubt it. But I'm sure you have a mental map of it.
Or more banal: ever stuck a q-tip in your ear canal? Would you be able to draw what it looks like? Possibly not, even though you've traced its contours with the q-tip. And yes, I know no one should ever stick a q-tip in there, but everyone does it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't a lot of distributions have multi-language offerings built in? That is, you just choose your language at the start of installation, and from that point on, everything is in your language of choice?
I don't see what makes this distribution better than any other. The screenshots make it seem same old, same old.
Okay, this sounds very trollish. But I wonder where the line is between "Hey, check out this neat project that I personally like" and "This is actually something relevant to other people".
Hmmm...if I want to know what digital camera I should buy, probably the last person I'd consult would be a digital camera expert. They're most likely going to deluge with overly specific information, technical jargon within the digital camera field. If you simply ask them, "Look, I've got $200. Which camera should I buy?" They won't be able to give you a 1 paragraph answer.
That's where journalists come in. They have a more marginal understand of the field (it's usually always worse than the experts, but that's expected), but they're good at translating it into information that can be understood by, let's say, a layman.
This is, ultimately, the advantage of journalists. No one wants to read a 10 page dissertation on the origins or dynamics of this or that conflict. They want 4-5 paragraphs telling them who did what, when, where, how, and why.
If you want to get deeper into that information, then you consult the expert.
Also, it's very possible that the expert won't be as good at putting his knowledge in the larger picture. At times like this, a shallow understanding of the subject is often more useful than a deep one.
Well, there are a few crappy journalists out there but in general most journalists a) are better informed about the news they're gathering than the general populace and b) more experienced at how to extract the key information from that news.
That doesn't mean that there isn't still a trend towards sensationalism and superficiality in news.
And besides, to have even one news source (let alone "multiple news sources"), you need journalists. The happenings of the world can not be covered by blogs alone.
But often, JavaScript is so useful. It makes sense to keep it enabled, and then have proper security measures in place.
After all, the Internet creates an insecure environment. But the Internet is so useful that it's worth it, and then you work on making it more secure and dependable.
I write websites, about 99% of the pages and forms are JavaScript-free. But there are a few times when it's necessary, or makes a function n times faster or easier than if I had to make all of the interaction server-based.
Duh, the space pen.
Now we can all write upside down.
Perhaps the best way of describing this is:
"Morality can be an expression of religion"
In other words some people's morals are directly shaped by their religion.
The other statement, that religion derives from morality, is incorrect. Religions were generally set up to help people understand the world, or to come to terms with an understanding of a "higher being"(or higher beings) that control and/or created the world. That's where religion originally comes from. Most people's religions now
reflect how that person was raised -- most people retain the religion they were brought up in or were first exposed to. Whether they are moral or not depends on the underlying morals of the religion they follow and/or what code of morals they have chosen for themselves.
In regards to the Amish, I think it's important to note that some "fundamentalists" have a large circle of influence than others. I'm guessing if you were yourself born in an Amish community but felt at odds with their beliefs and practices, life would be very difficult for you. The Amish people's circle of influence is fairly small, and in addition part of their beliefs specifically focuses on being conscious about how their behavior affects the rest of the world. They haven't rejected cars because they hate modern technology -- some of them are perfectly willing to use computers -- they have rejected cars because they've determined that the use of this technology is harmful to themselves and the world. I'm guessing that they would similarly feel distasteful about pushing their beliefs on other people -- much of their philosophy circles on their relatively isolated nature. Unless I'm mistaken, they have made no efferts to convert others.
This can not be said for either your traditional Fundamentalist Christian or Fundamentalist Muslim.
I would say that fundamentalism, *except* in a willfully isolated population is negative, because the fundamentalist believes first and foremost that their beliefs are the only true ones, and feel threatened unless those beliefs are reflected in the society at large that they live in. Thus, they are in a cultural war with secularism and all of the "wrong" religions.
I'm more moderately religious, so I have a kind of "live and let live" attitude towards everyone else's beliefs. So long as another person has no desire to control what I can think, do, or say, they can believe whatever they want.
Some of the most moral people I know have no religion. In contrast, I can point to *plenty* of people who are notoriously religious but whose morality can definitely be questioned. *COUGH* BUSH *cough*
I think Buddhism and Taoism might also be good examples which may have some elements of the "supernatural", but (IIRC) there aren't any deities (though I suppose we can also discuss the definition of "deity" or "god").
Uh, you've obviously never been to China. Go into any temple there, look at the giant statues of various Buddha and many other prominent figures from each of the religions and how they are treated. They're gods, basically.
I think that there's this perception of Eastern religions (which I shared before visiting China) that they are very different than our Western religions. In reality, they're pretty much just as into externalizing (i.e., there is some entity out there that can save me) as Western religions are.
The only difference is they don't believe that these "gods" created the world, a standard belief in Western religions. Their gods more closely resemble the Greek and Roman gods, where each is responsible for certain aspects of life -- for instance, one god might protect your health, while another is responsible for financial health.
homo smartus
While the members of the football team will continue to call them "homos".
I give you, LEGO Video Games.
Problem solved: buy LEGO tubs through ebay. Cheap and varied.
Man, I guess I have to stop writing satire at 3AM.
I thought it was frikken hilarious, but no one else seemed to get it.
You know, all of you people who think that this is a bad idea are going to feel really dumb if it turns out to be the greatest invention in the 21st century.
I mean, you don't know. That guy, last century, he thought he had mold, but really, he had penecillin, which is used to kill bad germs and save lives And now people are saying he's really great, just because he found mold. And mold is everywhere.
Now, this phone tv is better than mold. So just imagine how important this could be.
Also, this could be used to make very cool, short movies. You know how you're always saying, "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a movie where x happened?" And usually x is something like "a bunch of bunnies rip a CEO to pieces"?
See, you could not make a movie like that that lasted for 90 minutes. People just wouldn't sit and watch a CEO being ripped apart by bunnies for that long. The funny thing is, though, I bet it would take those bunnies 90 minutes -- maybe more -- to rip that CEO apart with their bunny teeth.
But the point is people wouldn't watch that long, so a minute is an ideal amount of time for a movie about bunnies ripping a CEO apart with their bunny teeth, although you'd definitely have to cut out a lot of the time in it. And you'd probably want to actually cut out the screaming sounds, because if someone else heard your phone they might think you were somehow using your mental powers to kill the person on the other end of the phone, because they wouldn't know you were watching a movie on your phone because it's so new.
Also, I think it might be fun to take a Simpsons episode and break it down into one minute chunks, and you'd get one minute per day. That sure would heighten the excitement!
Or you could do a miniseries. The only problem is you would have to spend, like, the first 30 seconds reminding people what had happened in the previous episodes, so you'd only have 30 seconds for new material. So, a 6 hour miniseries would take 720 days, or 2 years.
I think if a friend has one of the phones without a TV on it, a good practical joke might be to glue a photo on the front of it and tell your friend, "Hey, I didn't know your phone had a TV feature on it" and then when they take a closer look you say, "Ha, ha -- I tricked you! Your phone doesn't have a video screen at all, cuz you suck."
Also, this device might save hundreds of lives. Like, you could be on a plane, and this terrorist is going to hold up the plane, and then you show him a video on your cellphone, and he laughs and drops his gun, and you pick it up and point it at him and say, "Yeah, who's tough now, you jerk!"
Oh wait, scratch that. I forgot that you can't turn on cellphones inside of airplanes.