Actually, I think it would be difficut to list any civilizations at all that had anything even resembling "harmony with nature." The american indians had a harmonious relationship with nature because nature was kicking their ass, not giving them enough food, killing most of their children, and because their were a million buffalo to every indian - if the population of indians had been powers greater, they would have raped their environment dry the same way the white men did.
Other people have already rather poetically dismantled your eastern-philosophies view of pre-atomic Japan.
If we can't find the nozzle itself, just look for the rolled-up part, then work your way from that end to the tip. I always do that with toothpaste when it's dark.
well... what if someone, like you describe, instead of accusing someone of a straw man argument, actually constructs a straw man argument? We can call that a straw man argument, right? I mean, if P(flunked logic) then Q(writes "that's a strawman argument" on slashdot), and ~P(did not flunk logic), therefore ~Q(NOT writing "that's a strawman argument" on slashdot) - it sounds like someone is denying the antecedent. And we here at slashdot will not have our antecedents denied.
so, at what point do you phonetically distinguish between "whassup" and "what's up"? Because they lie at different points on a spectrum (literally) of sound. Is that single unaspirated "t" how you generally make decisions about things in life? Or is "what's up" also a sign that someone should be outgrouped? Do you prefer the enunciated "what is going on," with the full velar nasal at the end, or, do you reside in a land where people say "how do you do?"
Because I personally despise the "how-do-you-do"-ers - so many back vowels in a row makes one sound uneducated, and I fear it will bring the rest of society down - sounds do that, you know; sounds destroy society.
Further, it's like when costco has the same tvs and mattresses as other stores, but changes the SKU so those other stores don't have to price-match lower-priced competitors.
Ha ha rofl! Stop it, you're killing me! My mountain dew came right out of my nose when I saw your articulate protestations and well-cited hypertext links. Subtle, but appreciated.
And who gave you the right to decide how each country and culture should think? You might not agree with the Japanese view - tough luck, just don't choose to live there. But you have not got the right to tell others that they are wrong simply because it is not in accord with your own personal view or it isn't the view adopted by your own country.
Um.... nobody "gave him the right" to tell any country or culture "how to think". The parent is merely pointing out the unREALISTIC expectations of TFA. If I say, "Japan, your plan to give every citizen a Humvee made out of platinum and taffy is flawed," would I be accused of dictating what a country or culture should do? Would I be imposing my crazy ideas on another culture, another way of living, being a narrow-minded cultural hegemon? No. I would be pointing out that some perceivably-held belief of said culture was ridiculous. I'm sorry, but as the parent pointed out, if this open letter is representative of Japan, then Japan's expectation of privacy is too high. I mean, do they have such little faith in their fellow humans that they cringe at the thought of others seeing their clothes drying? This concept doesn't make any sense, and it makes it sound like the writer has a pretty dim view of human behavior when it isn't strictly monitored. And really - seeing cars parked in a driveway? That's nuts. I like how in TFA, they suggest that observing your surroundings would send you to the prefectural police station. Wow, OK. I guess this is just a polite letter, huh?
Anyway, I don't have any real argument for why that's so wrong - but I'll see if I can figure it out. Googling Japanese urban spaces and looking for people entering capsule hotels allows me to think...
...then, after getting your DLP TV, make sure that none of your games require you to look anywhere on the screen that isn't in one spot, so your eyes don't have to move around the screen, which would cause you to see an endless rainbow of red-green-blue stripes. Unless, like, you're ancient, or have eyesight equivalent to a really old person. Because those stripes are DAMN obvious. I've heard people say that some people can't see them, just like I can't see a screen-door effect on LCDs. But I think those people just already HAVE a DLP, so they're embarrassed to admit how it looks. Seriously - maybe my eyes are just good, or my saccades are faster than usual (sure, I've done some eye-tracking studies, I'm down with the terminology...), but it seems like for gaming purposes, the typical "gamer" would be more likely to have eyes that would easily see TexasInstrument's horrible DLP shortcomings, because they would have high visual acuity and fast responses and sensitivity - otherwise gaming would be less satisfying for them overall. But please, don't recommend DLP, even if it works for you - it's a technology that absolutely needs to die. Not everyone will see the rainbow, but for those who do - and it's not obvious in showrooms - it is a ruining experience. No more money should be put into DLP, its flaws are too significant when they do occur.
Down with DLP and their hall of mirrors!
The only thing worse is DLP projectors. Seriously. It is like watching a documentary about My Little Pony concentration camps. Or a Care Bears stag film. It's just... no.
Well, I agree with almost this whole post. But remember, this is slashdot. Imagine, if you will, the frightening world out there, inhabited by people who actually have no idea of the nature of the world of digital - who have no grasp of the part played by ones and zeros. I swear to god, when my mother hears how I play movies back, her eyes glaze - even my somewhat-technology-literate-hulu-viewing wife gets this weird look, like I'm doing some kind of voodoo that's not only illegal, but very possibly something that could, perhaps, strip actual portions of Sex and the City from her physical disks, rendering them useless to play in the future, and altering scenes and actors. This is not to say she's dumb, or couldn't learn about it if I explained it correctly (and if she cared) - but thinking like a technophile slashdotter won't help us understand the dark motivations of the people who participated in this survey, who very likely don't understand any of the terms, who are surely worried about the upcoming U.S. analog-to-digital conversion, and basically think that the DVDs they already own are functionally EQUIVALENT (not just analogous) to these new blu-ray thingies. I mean, they literally don't understand that there even IS a difference. I can't imagine the fun to be had when the non-physical stage of entertainment media arrives, when everything is subscription-based. That's when humanity will divide down two lines, like in The Time Machine; half of humanity will take their RAID setups and 1TB thumbdrives and turn blonde, the other half will go underground with their old physical media and rot away watching csi dvds in 4:3 aspect. Actually, I guess that's not right - the morlocks were the advanced ones, right? With the machines? Well, anyway, the hoarders like my mom, who refuses to take CDs out of their cases to store in a folder (in case it hurts the resale value) will live a very different life than the rest of us.
I mean, one of the questions on the survey is: "High-definition DVD players can be connected to your home network and the Internet. Does this sound like a feature that would interest you?" Just imagine a typical Walmart shopper even thinking something like that! Inconceivable! What does that even mean? If they recognize the words in that sentence, what average person thinks of setting up another machine on a home network as a feature, not a hassle? I mean, I know that WE enjoy adding NAS to our home networks, but most people - not so much.
That was an excellent post overall, and the last part is a concise argument against many of the anti-evolutionary linguists - or rather, the linguists who see no need to extrapolate the processes of language from the laws of natural selection.
The first part (language differences) is not necessarily true for your reasons - language change occurs super-rapidly, with even weird auto-segmental stuff like tones creeping into a sister language with separations of ~100 years due to how everything is all bunched-up inside the vocal tract.
Whatever I've claimed in the past on slashdot (nuclear phycisist, clown, organic chemist, girl's volleyball coach), I'm actually a linguist, and in my linguistic way, I don't trust A> Anthropologists or B) especially Paleoanthropologists. I think, without reading the study, that what they're trying to imply is not that speech suddenly ocurred, but that some of the variants we use today to distinguish phonemes were understandable by neanderthals, especially things like vowels. These types of sounds, in many of their modern variations, require often three overtones of the initial sound - without this third overtone (and the corresponding length of the hairs in the ears and the depth of the speaker's throat), we would notice no difference, for example, between an englishman saying "park" and an american saying it, when of course, for modern speakers, the difference in the vocalic "r" almost defines the behavior of the accents. So they seem to kind of imply that these early hominids were capable of the same inventory of phoneme recognition that we are. In agreement with your point - just because they lacked some inventory prior is only to say they could have used some other segments, suchs as gestures, to convey the same linguistic data as we convey today chiefly through sound (don't let the "tongue" in "linguistics" fool you). But for various other reasons, even if everything was exactly the same, there's no guarantee that we were speaking, if other brain-interior functions weren't also in place. It takes an anthropologist to extrapolate language from bones, whereas any linguist would happily claim agnosticism, and with excellent reason. I'm very thankful for anthropological research, but that was a classic anthropology headline. Those anthropology guys - man.
Dude... this service isn't promising that your pet will come back with the same memories or looks... or "soul" (sweet zombie jesus how much does a soul weigh again?)...
Certainly some people might expect that (people willing to pay 100k+) - but more reasonable people (people who can afford 100k+) will realize it's just a way to get an animal with potentially the same temperament (NOT behavior) and possibly the same shedding patterns and fur-style (NOT the same-looking) back into their lives. We've all replaced pets with new pets - and let's be honest, sometimes this hasn't worked out. Sometimes it's hard to find the same breed, which is an indicator of temperament. Sometimes the "breed" is a mutt, a mixture we can't replicate because we don't know the parents. This would be a great way to get a pet that will fill some of the same niches that former-pet 1.0 filled. This isn't bringing a loved one back from the dead. It's ensuring the greatest odds that your new loved one will be as amenable to your likes and dislikes as your old loved one, within reason. I wouldn't suggest it for cloning wives - variety in wives is a plus. But in pets, it just makes sense. Bartender, I'll have the regular please.
And seriously, that "soul" stuff - even if you precede it with an ellipsis - maybe slashdot isn't what you're looking for.
At first I wanted to just post "the _pope_ is an affront to human dignity", but then I used the post above to do some simple calculations. I just took the 359 years figure for the Galileo apology, and subtracted it from present -1. I've decided that I will consider all the pope's comments relevant and meaningful, including his views on human dignity affronting, for the date - 358 years. So, for all events in 1650, I will view through the perspective that test-tube babies and human cloning are an undignified endeavor for humans. Any test tube babies or human clones in the year 1650 are abominations and must be burnt! After that date, it will become dignified. Thank you for your input, Pope! 1651 looks to be a great year for biotechnology!
I have two 7yo nephews. One has a mommy who believes everything they tell her on tv, the other not so much. One just got a wii this very christmas despite the perils of games that the people on fox news warned her about, the other has literally played gta games since they started getting good. The one who's played games (as well as had more exposure to tv and spicy foods and culture-at-large) is socially mal-adjusted, but is effective in social situations (he curses and is inappropriate, but he's confidant and people like him), and the sheltered momma's boy still cries when anyone gets a better score than him in wii bowling (it's not fair, it hurts my feelings when you beat me). Now don't get me wrong - I despise spending time with either one of them. But guess which one is going to be successful later in life?
Honestly? Too much common sense and well-placed concern isn't fair to kids. Not letting them play games until a certain age will have a direct correlation to what friends they can possibly have at school, and that will affect other things as well. Everything parents do has a ripple effect, and the ripple effect of letting them play games so they can interact with their poorly-parented peers is better than the ripple effect of being sheltered, media-suspect hippies. Even better? Letting them play games that push the limit of good taste, and then criticising said game, and explaining your reasons. This teaches that the media is the message, and the critical thinking required to interpret the message is far better for them than telling them to avoid anything challenging or different. Ex: Is that how we treat innocent bystanders? By spraying them in the face with spray-paint? No, no it isn't. Would you like that if someone did it to you? No you wouldn't. Be like Daddy, and use your ak-47, get up close, and you'll get a one-hit headshot. Then use a vehicle you've placed close-by to escape any uniformed police officers. Head for a safehouse.
sheesh, sure it's bad design, but it's simple for the user to protect their investment - whenever I sense that my 360 is too hot (spidey sense tingling, taste of copper etc.), I just open the dvd tray and blow in it until it's too late for me to play videogames anymore. It totally increases circulation. Also, after playing a dvd, I just open the tray and leave the machine on for a couple of hours, since the fans shutdown during dvd playback. I've had my release 360 running perfectly this way, with almost daily use. Granted, the ratio of halo multiplayer to me sitting on the floor blowing has been like 2.5:1, but still...
Allow me to rewrite that sentence with the proper punctuation: He was _hugely_ successful in college and in work and in swimming in money thanks to these drugs, ****but**** (dunh-dunh-dunh...) was he truly happy without poetry and music?
I think the proper punctuation really highlights what we in the business call "dirty hippy talk." Please - insightful?
I have never LOL'ed, but that ridiculous line made me LOL. Now I'm living with the shame. I hate to be so hateful, but the parent comment as well - "If you're incapable of depression, and you're always happy, how do you know if you really are happy?" - and others below have addressed this, but think about it: "If you're incapable of happiness, and you're always depressed, how do you know if you really are depressed?" Well duh...
It's so weird - I went to the Sony style store, at south coast in the oc yesterday, and they had the blu-ray demo playing on a rear-projection sxrd (heard those chips are good) - and I'll tell ya, someone needs to let them know that not only do they need a good source, but man, they need to calibrate their displays. The fifth element was NOTHING but orange and blue. I know guys who work in those kind of stores sometimes think they need to push all the settings up to eleven, but if they'd just subdue their colors a bit more, they'd have people bringing wheelbarrows in to buy their stupid new technology. Granted, a coupla losers were sitting there talking about getting the movie whenever it comes out (it played near ultraviolet - I think they thought it was the same), but jeez... A good HD display makes you stop, and say, "you know, maybe I DO need to buy 'Charlei's Angels'...
I walked over to the Bang & Olufson, the only place they even try to make their displays look good. If calibrated right, hdtv gives you that "pop" of color. Any idiot can see it immediately. Wouldn't they want to showcase that in their little boutique? Their flagship of consumerism, so to speak? Instead of crap display settings showing discovery "hd" in an endless, bright-green jumbled loop?
200 million years is a long time. I'm guessing the statue of liberty, barring some perfect preservation disaster, will be an oblong mass of blue-ish powder, and the golden gate bridge will be a square-ish patch of whatever color its metal will corrode to. Most likely a zigzag shape, what with the earthquakes etc. over that period of time. Our (human) pyramids are only 6000 years old, and their outer surface is gone - another 100k years, they'll just be piles of rubble. Even with millions of years, fossilization is a rare occurance, and the materials of earth are destined to be reabsorbed - aliens of the future will find plastic powders where our landfills were, with little clue as to real shape or function. Makes ya wonder how many skyscrapers and pyramids the dinosaurs made 650 million years ago that have eroded away.
Whenever I get the netflix or rent, the fist thing I do is dump the dvd in the player, with the tv off etc. Get some snacks, set the lighting, drain the lizard. 20 minutes later or so, we turn on the tv and the amp. Works pretty well. Then after the movie the wife wants to see if there are any previews. At least we never see the crappy criminal accusation thingies. I always answer those in the affirmative - there's enough good movies already released that if hollywood shriveled right now, I'd be okay if all those gaffers and teamsters and the producers most of all lost their jobs. Really don't care about 'em - obnoxious adverts, really. If phillips does this, we just need a remote with a macro to turn off your amp and tv for 30 seconds. it'd be worth it.
I guess my response here will be pretty flame-baity as well, but in real-world gun-shooting, your accuracy is based on your aiming skills, not how accurately and quickly you can move a cursor across a 2-dimensional field to a specific point. It's great that pc gamers have such reflexes, but aiming is aligning two ends of a tube up such that the line intersects a point far in the distance, and doing that accurately is satisfying on the level of intuitively interpreting 3-dimensional space, not 2-d distances. The very uncertainty of the controller itself more effectively conveys the fickle nature of a lucky headshot or a frustrating near-miss, instead of merely rewarding the 12-year-old with the best mouse setup and youthful reflexes. Here comes the flame-bait: there's a difference between aiming in space and pointing on a grid, and one of them is what toddlers and small children do.
Someday an alien archeaologist will find this post and laugh, knowing that we slowly wasted away because our extended confinement in small spaces led to severe neurological problems associated with the high nitrogen content of aerosolized urine and feces(that last part was where I'd link to studies of how much urine precipitates on toothbrushes in an average washroom, but my inadvertant coprophagia has made me sluggish tonight).
Actually, the market for Kodak cameras are people who know slashdot readers (and other snobs). My wife and I got a Kodak for her sister. Her sister knows nothing, and thinks cell-phone cameras are Hawt. I scoff at the camera, an overpriced, poorly designed gadget that looks pretty. I won't buy a digital camera until I can afford a Hasselblad digital back. I play around with it, laugh at the lack of RAW, bitch about the poor choices for flash, the lousy autofocus, poor interface with cascading menus to nowhere, terrible self-timer, and the ridiculous extras (for the target market), like ISO settings. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So that's super fun. Snobs like nothing better than to mock inferior equipment that's overpriced. Then, the best part, her pictures come back horrible, with bad exposure, and blur, and red-eye, and the pictures I take look pretty great (in comparison). But she still can't tell the difference. That's still a picture of her nephew, and she took it - she doesn't even see the blur or the over-lit living room or how washed-out he looks. So we're both happy, hers a healthy but uninformed happy, and I'm all smug. Kodak really makes perfect cameras. They are truly built for nobody, but very different people can enjoy them. Sorry about your experience, but might I suggest regifting it?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I think it would be difficut to list any civilizations at all that had anything even resembling "harmony with nature." The american indians had a harmonious relationship with nature because nature was kicking their ass, not giving them enough food, killing most of their children, and because their were a million buffalo to every indian - if the population of indians had been powers greater, they would have raped their environment dry the same way the white men did.
Other people have already rather poetically dismantled your eastern-philosophies view of pre-atomic Japan.
If we can't find the nozzle itself, just look for the rolled-up part, then work your way from that end to the tip. I always do that with toothpaste when it's dark.
well... what if someone, like you describe, instead of accusing someone of a straw man argument, actually constructs a straw man argument? We can call that a straw man argument, right? I mean, if P(flunked logic) then Q(writes "that's a strawman argument" on slashdot), and ~P(did not flunk logic), therefore ~Q(NOT writing "that's a strawman argument" on slashdot) - it sounds like someone is denying the antecedent. And we here at slashdot will not have our antecedents denied.
so, at what point do you phonetically distinguish between "whassup" and "what's up"? Because they lie at different points on a spectrum (literally) of sound. Is that single unaspirated "t" how you generally make decisions about things in life? Or is "what's up" also a sign that someone should be outgrouped? Do you prefer the enunciated "what is going on," with the full velar nasal at the end, or, do you reside in a land where people say "how do you do?"
Because I personally despise the "how-do-you-do"-ers - so many back vowels in a row makes one sound uneducated, and I fear it will bring the rest of society down - sounds do that, you know; sounds destroy society.
Further, it's like when costco has the same tvs and mattresses as other stores, but changes the SKU so those other stores don't have to price-match lower-priced competitors.
Ha ha rofl! Stop it, you're killing me! My mountain dew came right out of my nose when I saw your articulate protestations and well-cited hypertext links. Subtle, but appreciated.
Good lord, he's right. What's next, people? Our Diet Coke and Mentos?
And who gave you the right to decide how each country and culture should think? You might not agree with the Japanese view - tough luck, just don't choose to live there. But you have not got the right to tell others that they are wrong simply because it is not in accord with your own personal view or it isn't the view adopted by your own country.
Um.... nobody "gave him the right" to tell any country or culture "how to think". The parent is merely pointing out the unREALISTIC expectations of TFA. If I say, "Japan, your plan to give every citizen a Humvee made out of platinum and taffy is flawed," would I be accused of dictating what a country or culture should do? Would I be imposing my crazy ideas on another culture, another way of living, being a narrow-minded cultural hegemon? No. I would be pointing out that some perceivably-held belief of said culture was ridiculous. I'm sorry, but as the parent pointed out, if this open letter is representative of Japan, then Japan's expectation of privacy is too high. I mean, do they have such little faith in their fellow humans that they cringe at the thought of others seeing their clothes drying? This concept doesn't make any sense, and it makes it sound like the writer has a pretty dim view of human behavior when it isn't strictly monitored. And really - seeing cars parked in a driveway? That's nuts. I like how in TFA, they suggest that observing your surroundings would send you to the prefectural police station. Wow, OK. I guess this is just a polite letter, huh?
Anyway, I don't have any real argument for why that's so wrong - but I'll see if I can figure it out. Googling Japanese urban spaces and looking for people entering capsule hotels allows me to think...
...then, after getting your DLP TV, make sure that none of your games require you to look anywhere on the screen that isn't in one spot, so your eyes don't have to move around the screen, which would cause you to see an endless rainbow of red-green-blue stripes. Unless, like, you're ancient, or have eyesight equivalent to a really old person. Because those stripes are DAMN obvious. I've heard people say that some people can't see them, just like I can't see a screen-door effect on LCDs. But I think those people just already HAVE a DLP, so they're embarrassed to admit how it looks. Seriously - maybe my eyes are just good, or my saccades are faster than usual (sure, I've done some eye-tracking studies, I'm down with the terminology...), but it seems like for gaming purposes, the typical "gamer" would be more likely to have eyes that would easily see TexasInstrument's horrible DLP shortcomings, because they would have high visual acuity and fast responses and sensitivity - otherwise gaming would be less satisfying for them overall. But please, don't recommend DLP, even if it works for you - it's a technology that absolutely needs to die. Not everyone will see the rainbow, but for those who do - and it's not obvious in showrooms - it is a ruining experience. No more money should be put into DLP, its flaws are too significant when they do occur.
Down with DLP and their hall of mirrors!
The only thing worse is DLP projectors. Seriously. It is like watching a documentary about My Little Pony concentration camps. Or a Care Bears stag film. It's just... no.
Well, I agree with almost this whole post. But remember, this is slashdot. Imagine, if you will, the frightening world out there, inhabited by people who actually have no idea of the nature of the world of digital - who have no grasp of the part played by ones and zeros. I swear to god, when my mother hears how I play movies back, her eyes glaze - even my somewhat-technology-literate-hulu-viewing wife gets this weird look, like I'm doing some kind of voodoo that's not only illegal, but very possibly something that could, perhaps, strip actual portions of Sex and the City from her physical disks, rendering them useless to play in the future, and altering scenes and actors. This is not to say she's dumb, or couldn't learn about it if I explained it correctly (and if she cared) - but thinking like a technophile slashdotter won't help us understand the dark motivations of the people who participated in this survey, who very likely don't understand any of the terms, who are surely worried about the upcoming U.S. analog-to-digital conversion, and basically think that the DVDs they already own are functionally EQUIVALENT (not just analogous) to these new blu-ray thingies. I mean, they literally don't understand that there even IS a difference. I can't imagine the fun to be had when the non-physical stage of entertainment media arrives, when everything is subscription-based. That's when humanity will divide down two lines, like in The Time Machine; half of humanity will take their RAID setups and 1TB thumbdrives and turn blonde, the other half will go underground with their old physical media and rot away watching csi dvds in 4:3 aspect. Actually, I guess that's not right - the morlocks were the advanced ones, right? With the machines? Well, anyway, the hoarders like my mom, who refuses to take CDs out of their cases to store in a folder (in case it hurts the resale value) will live a very different life than the rest of us.
I mean, one of the questions on the survey is: "High-definition DVD players can be connected to your home network and the Internet. Does this sound like a feature that would interest you?" Just imagine a typical Walmart shopper even thinking something like that! Inconceivable! What does that even mean? If they recognize the words in that sentence, what average person thinks of setting up another machine on a home network as a feature, not a hassle? I mean, I know that WE enjoy adding NAS to our home networks, but most people - not so much.
That was an excellent post overall, and the last part is a concise argument against many of the anti-evolutionary linguists - or rather, the linguists who see no need to extrapolate the processes of language from the laws of natural selection.
The first part (language differences) is not necessarily true for your reasons - language change occurs super-rapidly, with even weird auto-segmental stuff like tones creeping into a sister language with separations of ~100 years due to how everything is all bunched-up inside the vocal tract.
Whatever I've claimed in the past on slashdot (nuclear phycisist, clown, organic chemist, girl's volleyball coach), I'm actually a linguist, and in my linguistic way, I don't trust A> Anthropologists or B) especially Paleoanthropologists. I think, without reading the study, that what they're trying to imply is not that speech suddenly ocurred, but that some of the variants we use today to distinguish phonemes were understandable by neanderthals, especially things like vowels. These types of sounds, in many of their modern variations, require often three overtones of the initial sound - without this third overtone (and the corresponding length of the hairs in the ears and the depth of the speaker's throat), we would notice no difference, for example, between an englishman saying "park" and an american saying it, when of course, for modern speakers, the difference in the vocalic "r" almost defines the behavior of the accents. So they seem to kind of imply that these early hominids were capable of the same inventory of phoneme recognition that we are. In agreement with your point - just because they lacked some inventory prior is only to say they could have used some other segments, suchs as gestures, to convey the same linguistic data as we convey today chiefly through sound (don't let the "tongue" in "linguistics" fool you). But for various other reasons, even if everything was exactly the same, there's no guarantee that we were speaking, if other brain-interior functions weren't also in place. It takes an anthropologist to extrapolate language from bones, whereas any linguist would happily claim agnosticism, and with excellent reason. I'm very thankful for anthropological research, but that was a classic anthropology headline. Those anthropology guys - man.
Dude... this service isn't promising that your pet will come back with the same memories or looks... or "soul" (sweet zombie jesus how much does a soul weigh again?)... Certainly some people might expect that (people willing to pay 100k+) - but more reasonable people (people who can afford 100k+) will realize it's just a way to get an animal with potentially the same temperament (NOT behavior) and possibly the same shedding patterns and fur-style (NOT the same-looking) back into their lives. We've all replaced pets with new pets - and let's be honest, sometimes this hasn't worked out. Sometimes it's hard to find the same breed, which is an indicator of temperament. Sometimes the "breed" is a mutt, a mixture we can't replicate because we don't know the parents. This would be a great way to get a pet that will fill some of the same niches that former-pet 1.0 filled. This isn't bringing a loved one back from the dead. It's ensuring the greatest odds that your new loved one will be as amenable to your likes and dislikes as your old loved one, within reason. I wouldn't suggest it for cloning wives - variety in wives is a plus. But in pets, it just makes sense. Bartender, I'll have the regular please. And seriously, that "soul" stuff - even if you precede it with an ellipsis - maybe slashdot isn't what you're looking for.
At first I wanted to just post "the _pope_ is an affront to human dignity", but then I used the post above to do some simple calculations. I just took the 359 years figure for the Galileo apology, and subtracted it from present -1. I've decided that I will consider all the pope's comments relevant and meaningful, including his views on human dignity affronting, for the date - 358 years. So, for all events in 1650, I will view through the perspective that test-tube babies and human cloning are an undignified endeavor for humans. Any test tube babies or human clones in the year 1650 are abominations and must be burnt! After that date, it will become dignified. Thank you for your input, Pope! 1651 looks to be a great year for biotechnology!
I have two 7yo nephews. One has a mommy who believes everything they tell her on tv, the other not so much. One just got a wii this very christmas despite the perils of games that the people on fox news warned her about, the other has literally played gta games since they started getting good. The one who's played games (as well as had more exposure to tv and spicy foods and culture-at-large) is socially mal-adjusted, but is effective in social situations (he curses and is inappropriate, but he's confidant and people like him), and the sheltered momma's boy still cries when anyone gets a better score than him in wii bowling (it's not fair, it hurts my feelings when you beat me). Now don't get me wrong - I despise spending time with either one of them. But guess which one is going to be successful later in life?
Honestly? Too much common sense and well-placed concern isn't fair to kids. Not letting them play games until a certain age will have a direct correlation to what friends they can possibly have at school, and that will affect other things as well. Everything parents do has a ripple effect, and the ripple effect of letting them play games so they can interact with their poorly-parented peers is better than the ripple effect of being sheltered, media-suspect hippies. Even better? Letting them play games that push the limit of good taste, and then criticising said game, and explaining your reasons. This teaches that the media is the message, and the critical thinking required to interpret the message is far better for them than telling them to avoid anything challenging or different. Ex: Is that how we treat innocent bystanders? By spraying them in the face with spray-paint? No, no it isn't. Would you like that if someone did it to you? No you wouldn't. Be like Daddy, and use your ak-47, get up close, and you'll get a one-hit headshot. Then use a vehicle you've placed close-by to escape any uniformed police officers. Head for a safehouse.
sheesh, sure it's bad design, but it's simple for the user to protect their investment - whenever I sense that my 360 is too hot (spidey sense tingling, taste of copper etc.), I just open the dvd tray and blow in it until it's too late for me to play videogames anymore. It totally increases circulation. Also, after playing a dvd, I just open the tray and leave the machine on for a couple of hours, since the fans shutdown during dvd playback. I've had my release 360 running perfectly this way, with almost daily use. Granted, the ratio of halo multiplayer to me sitting on the floor blowing has been like 2.5:1, but still...
Allow me to rewrite that sentence with the proper punctuation: He was _hugely_ successful in college and in work and in swimming in money thanks to these drugs, ****but**** (dunh-dunh-dunh...) was he truly happy without poetry and music? I think the proper punctuation really highlights what we in the business call "dirty hippy talk." Please - insightful? I have never LOL'ed, but that ridiculous line made me LOL. Now I'm living with the shame. I hate to be so hateful, but the parent comment as well - "If you're incapable of depression, and you're always happy, how do you know if you really are happy?" - and others below have addressed this, but think about it: "If you're incapable of happiness, and you're always depressed, how do you know if you really are depressed?" Well duh...
It's so weird - I went to the Sony style store, at south coast in the oc yesterday, and they had the blu-ray demo playing on a rear-projection sxrd (heard those chips are good) - and I'll tell ya, someone needs to let them know that not only do they need a good source, but man, they need to calibrate their displays. The fifth element was NOTHING but orange and blue. I know guys who work in those kind of stores sometimes think they need to push all the settings up to eleven, but if they'd just subdue their colors a bit more, they'd have people bringing wheelbarrows in to buy their stupid new technology. Granted, a coupla losers were sitting there talking about getting the movie whenever it comes out (it played near ultraviolet - I think they thought it was the same), but jeez... A good HD display makes you stop, and say, "you know, maybe I DO need to buy 'Charlei's Angels'... I walked over to the Bang & Olufson, the only place they even try to make their displays look good. If calibrated right, hdtv gives you that "pop" of color. Any idiot can see it immediately. Wouldn't they want to showcase that in their little boutique? Their flagship of consumerism, so to speak? Instead of crap display settings showing discovery "hd" in an endless, bright-green jumbled loop?
200 million years is a long time. I'm guessing the statue of liberty, barring some perfect preservation disaster, will be an oblong mass of blue-ish powder, and the golden gate bridge will be a square-ish patch of whatever color its metal will corrode to. Most likely a zigzag shape, what with the earthquakes etc. over that period of time. Our (human) pyramids are only 6000 years old, and their outer surface is gone - another 100k years, they'll just be piles of rubble. Even with millions of years, fossilization is a rare occurance, and the materials of earth are destined to be reabsorbed - aliens of the future will find plastic powders where our landfills were, with little clue as to real shape or function. Makes ya wonder how many skyscrapers and pyramids the dinosaurs made 650 million years ago that have eroded away.
Whenever I get the netflix or rent, the fist thing I do is dump the dvd in the player, with the tv off etc. Get some snacks, set the lighting, drain the lizard. 20 minutes later or so, we turn on the tv and the amp. Works pretty well. Then after the movie the wife wants to see if there are any previews. At least we never see the crappy criminal accusation thingies. I always answer those in the affirmative - there's enough good movies already released that if hollywood shriveled right now, I'd be okay if all those gaffers and teamsters and the producers most of all lost their jobs. Really don't care about 'em - obnoxious adverts, really. If phillips does this, we just need a remote with a macro to turn off your amp and tv for 30 seconds. it'd be worth it.
I guess my response here will be pretty flame-baity as well, but in real-world gun-shooting, your accuracy is based on your aiming skills, not how accurately and quickly you can move a cursor across a 2-dimensional field to a specific point. It's great that pc gamers have such reflexes, but aiming is aligning two ends of a tube up such that the line intersects a point far in the distance, and doing that accurately is satisfying on the level of intuitively interpreting 3-dimensional space, not 2-d distances. The very uncertainty of the controller itself more effectively conveys the fickle nature of a lucky headshot or a frustrating near-miss, instead of merely rewarding the 12-year-old with the best mouse setup and youthful reflexes. Here comes the flame-bait: there's a difference between aiming in space and pointing on a grid, and one of them is what toddlers and small children do.
the eternally young, highly-trained soldier of the future. Regarding said, I, for one, welcome them.
Someday an alien archeaologist will find this post and laugh, knowing that we slowly wasted away because our extended confinement in small spaces led to severe neurological problems associated with the high nitrogen content of aerosolized urine and feces(that last part was where I'd link to studies of how much urine precipitates on toothbrushes in an average washroom, but my inadvertant coprophagia has made me sluggish tonight).
Actually, the market for Kodak cameras are people who know slashdot readers (and other snobs). My wife and I got a Kodak for her sister. Her sister knows nothing, and thinks cell-phone cameras are Hawt. I scoff at the camera, an overpriced, poorly designed gadget that looks pretty. I won't buy a digital camera until I can afford a Hasselblad digital back. I play around with it, laugh at the lack of RAW, bitch about the poor choices for flash, the lousy autofocus, poor interface with cascading menus to nowhere, terrible self-timer, and the ridiculous extras (for the target market), like ISO settings. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So that's super fun. Snobs like nothing better than to mock inferior equipment that's overpriced. Then, the best part, her pictures come back horrible, with bad exposure, and blur, and red-eye, and the pictures I take look pretty great (in comparison). But she still can't tell the difference. That's still a picture of her nephew, and she took it - she doesn't even see the blur or the over-lit living room or how washed-out he looks. So we're both happy, hers a healthy but uninformed happy, and I'm all smug. Kodak really makes perfect cameras. They are truly built for nobody, but very different people can enjoy them. Sorry about your experience, but might I suggest regifting it?
My God, please don't go. You can't spell "Dresden" _or_ a common curse-word. The Germans will hate us even more with representatives such as yourself.