Empathy IM is worth mentioning. It's pretty basic right now, but it's been incorporated into the Gnome project and is developing rapidly. Check it out.
Just thought I'd mention---I just installed the linux build. My system has 1.25GB ram.... of which 90% was in use by firefox 3 beta 1 by the time it finished rendering this page.
Everyone (except you, maybe) rightly decries the fact that Bush can now legally point to anyone he wants and make them disappear without a trace.
I'm obviously missing something, but how can he do this? Patriot II never saw the law of day, and, reading over the text of the act as passed, there is no provision for the revocation of citizenship, or for the trial of anything but alien unlawful combatants by military tribunal, the key word being "alien". I haven't yet read the entire text of the act, so I may be missing something, but under what law can Bush currently "disappear" people?
I'm not saying that I in any way support this legislation (it scares the holy hell out of me), but I really need someone to lay out exactly how it is that I, as an American citizen, born on American soil, am subject to it. Because if I am, it's time for me to leave the country.
How about you change your society because that's what's fair? Because,
as has been emphatically stated above, it isn't "just fine" as is. As long as
gay "unions" are in a different legal category from straight "unions",
they will continue to be unequal (this country's recent history proves
that 'separate but equal' treatment doesn't work). If "civil union" is
fine for gay people, then it's fine for straight people as
well. If it's unacceptable to straight people, then you can't claim that
it's acceptable for us gays.
Personally, I think that marriage, as such, shouldn't be a legal status
at all. If it is such a sacred thing, then leave it to the religious
institutions to decide on its meaning. Frankly, I don't *want* something
like that being legislated; the concept of marriage is so steeped in
religion that it seems inappropriate for what is supposed to be a secular
government to play any part. Assign the legal benefits that currently come
specifically with marriage to some new, more neutral category, and the whole
controversy is solved.
I see a parallel to the term "dependent" here. One refers to one's
sons and daughters as "dependents" (rather than children) on one's taxes,
because that term describes one's *legal* relationship to them. The term
is also general enough to include others which share a similar role.
It's a sterile, precise phrase which describes a particular legal standing,
which in turn encompasses certain rights, benefits, and responsibilities---
nothing more. For instance, nobody (to my knowledge) complains that the term lumps adopted
children in with genetic children (even though some religions prohibit adoption)
because "dependent" implies nothing about the nature of parenthood itself; it's
just a simple way of stating that certain rights and responsibilties will
apply to both adoptive and genetic parents. It's a category into which both
genetic and adoptive children fall.
So, why not have a similar term for the legal status associated with marriage?
This seems like a simple way of resolving the marriage dispute for good. If
your problem lies in the desire to preserve the notion of the institution of
marriage you grew up with*, why not seperate it from the state entirely (thus
seperating religion and politics further, which is all to the good) and leave
that decision in the capable hands of your church? Meanwhile,
us gay folks will at last get the legal equality we've been fighting for for
years. We'll be able to share medical insurance, see our loved ones in the
hospital, and raise our own children in the unthinkable event that our partner
dies. We'll be able to stop worrying that whatever legal status we have might
be suddenly and callously kicked out from under us (as happened in San Fransisco).
And, if our faith allows it (and many don't---in any case, I'm an atheist, and
obviously wouldn't qualify) we can have our newfound legal status sanctified
in some form as well (as is already possible in many churches).
*Sorry if I'm setting up a straw man here; I'm just following the general drift
of this thread
Um, chill out, dude. To my knowledge, the admins aren't censoring squat. As far as I can tell, all that's happening is that people are figuring out how to use the negation operator. If you're allowed to tag things 'gay', I can't imagine how you'd have a problem with others tagging them '!gay'. It's a free country.
OK, good point. I posted quickly, and without thinking. I guess what I meant to suggest is that religion tends to have the effect of short-circuiting reason. That is, it specifies certain rules, and then states that they are beyond question (in the case of a good chunk of Christianity, "because it says so in the Bible" is the last word in many an argument). The effect of this is to make large numbers of people think along the same lines.
This can certainly be a positive thing---you describe religion as a civilizing force, and, at times, it has been such. Some of the rules that most religions specify---"don't kill/steal/whatever"---are just good rules (though for more important reasons than "because God says so"). However, a religion can just as easily be a source of violence and hatred, and it has been that as well (many, many times). Rules against the inclusion or full equality of various social (and, in fact, religious) groups are just as common in many modern religions as rules that actually serve to protect society. The overarching theme here is that religion allows people to stop thinking for themselves---to stop thinking at all. In this sense, it can be both an opiate and "psycho fodder".
In any event, all I meant to say was that, to paraphrase another post in this discussion, an addiction to Jesus can be just as damaging as any other addiction. Inventing an "infinite God" to fill the "infinite hole" can be just as damaging as filling it with one of the things you consider destructive, since both involve creating a fiction to get around a real problem.
Porn is a trap - it feeds the pleasure centers of the brain, devalues the humanity of the person being used for that pleasure, and damages people's ability to relate to one another in a healthy way. Real relationships are not self-focused, but must have a significant component of other-focus or they don't survive.
I agree, and I speak from experience.
My parents got an internet connection when I was 13, and, in the eight years since, I have spent a frighteningly large percentage of my time looking at porn. From time to time, I'll swear it off for a week, a month, even a year...but, eventually, I always go back. When I do, everything important in my life suffers; my friendships, my schoolwork, my work as a TA, my health, etc. all take a second seat. In the end, I've wasted collectively, perhaps, two or three years out of my life.
This is not to say that porn itself is responsible for this behavior; as someone commented earlier, porn is just a particularly easy (if destructive) way of filling a gap that sensible folks learn to fill constructively. I alone am responsible for my behavior over the last several years, and the most frustrating thing about it is that it seems so pointless and ridiculous in retrospect. However, to a kid like I was---one to whom simple human interaction and empathy came late and only with much effort, and someone whose sexuality only began to resolve itself quite late (I'm gay)---pornography offered a welcome (though dangerous) release from the huge effort of social contact. It didn't matter that it inevitably left me feeling dead inside.
Now, it's a pattern I'm having a hell of a time unlearning; every time something unpleasant happens, my first response is porn, which only makes things worse. In fact, I almost dropped out of school because of it a few years ago. To me, at least, porn has been a trap, which has separated me from reality, and stunted my growth as a sexual and emotional being (I still have yet to be in a real relationship of any kind). I don't like myself, and that's sad, because I'm smart and talented and capable of better than this. On more than one occasion, I've taken out this frustration with myself on the people that I care about. I wish I hadn't.
I'm currently attempting for the umpteenth time to go cold turkey. It'll be interesting to see how long this lasts. While I recognize that this is my problem and nobody else's, I do wish that my folks had been more careful about policing my internet usage way back when. Yes, I should have known better, but I just wasn't ready to deal with internet porn when I first found it. There's a reason there's so much fuss about keeping kids away from porn, and the effect of porn on society in general. Pornography encourages a way of thinking which is almost entirely destructive.
You know where I've always heard almost exactly as you've written here? In church. In fact, one Christian pop song has the stanza, "There's a God-shaped hole in all of us / And the restless soul is searching / There's a God-shaped hole in all of us / And it's a void only He can fill."
Who was it who said "Religion is the opiate of the masses?"
(And no fair bringing up the crazies. There are a few psychos in every crowd.)
I wouldn't, but since you mention them, I'll just say that the "crazies" in this case are often the ones who take religion the most seriously.
I always see this pointed out when talking about hydrogen, but never when talking about solar power, wind power, wave power, fossil fuel, etc. Why? All those forms of power only carry energy from elsewhere too, yet hydrogen is the only one that is ever singled out as not a "real" energy source.
My guess would be because in the case of fossil fuels, wind power, wave power, etc. the "elsewhere" is outside of our system, whereas with hydrogen, it is not. While solar, wind, and fossil fuels are transferring energy from another source (nuclear fusion -> "solar power" -> wind power, fossil fuels, etc.), the origin of said power (the sun) is outside of our system and beyond our control. We get these, essentially, for "free"--we don't handle the energy transfer. The reason that people rag on hydrogen as a fuel "source" is that it must be tacked--by us--onto the end of this chain of fuel sources. It isn't a new source of energy; it's a new way of getting energy from our power plants to our vehicles. As such, saying that a vehicle is "powered" by hydrogen is rather like saying that a vehicle is "powered" by electricity.
That said, you are right in that the only actual sources of power that we have are nuclear and solar--the rest are essentially stored solar energy.
Speaking as a vegetarian of eight years (and a vegan of three), I would love to see this technology actively pursued. I abhor the practice of raising and killing other animals for their meat, and hate the fact that we continue to do it. However, realistically, the only way that said practice will be ended is if a suitable replacement is found. People (Buddhists aside) are just not going to give up meat in large numbers--it's already too deeply ingrained in us, and in our culture. If it was possible to separate the production of meat from the cruelty of farming, then not only would this dilemma be ended, but an enormous waste of food energy might be eliminated as we remove the need to feed livestock (rule of 10% and all that). I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and I wish the folks at NASA well.
isn't it really weird to have to aim for a small title bar to move the window? Like having to grab the top end of a paper on your desk to move it.
Well, not really...more like grabbing the handle of a suitcase--or the edge of a piece of paper. The thing is, moving an object in the real world typically involves manipulating it from the outside--which stands to reason, given that nothing inside that object is being changed. Interfaces that force you to move windows from the inside are, therefor, visually confusing. Moreover, key+mouse button combinations are hard to remember and somewhat dangerous--after all, if another application uses the same key-button combo, one of its two functions will stop working. This is a bad thing. If the only way we had of picking up a suitcase involved grabbing it by its sides, what would happen if some brilliant suitcase designer decided to put wheels or slippery runners on one of those sides?
Now, I am all for trimming down these flashy, annoying interfaces that have propogated in recent years. However, I think the goal of interface design should be to maximize useability/functionality--a quality that can be adversely affected not only by excess flash but also by oversimplification. As in all things, a balance must be found.
Oh, and flux/black/openbox kicks ass.:^)
Re:New Phoenix/Firebird builds too
on
Mozilla 1.4b Loosed
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Is Phoenix the same thing as Firebird?
Yes. They renamed Phoenix to Firebird due to some trademark dispute.
What about Thunderbird?
Thunderbird is a new email client which is (I believe) being written to accompany Firebird.
What's the difference between them and SeaMonkey?
Seamonkey is what Joe User would know as "mozilla". It's (I believe) the codename of the current mozilla app suite, which is based on XPFE. These new projects (Firebird and Thunderbird) are designed using new, faster toolkits (and are themselves much smaller and more streamlined) but they still make use of Mozilla's gecko rendering engine. These two projects are slated to replace seamonkey in mozilla 1.5 and all subsequent releases. They are, however, currently available as standalone programs (though, from what I've heard, Thunderbird is still a bit not quite there).
Yep. As a matter of fact, there has yet to be a 1.4 release. That little b on the end of the version number (1.4b) stands for beta. 1.4a, by the same token, was (at least nominally) an alpha. The actual release is still a ways off.
So, what I want to know is why anyone is still talking about fusion as a source of power. It's dangerous, has the potential to produce radioactive waste (as mentioned in earlier comments on this article), and produces an end-product which really does qualify as exhaust (helium). Why is it that anyone is working on this, given the recent progress in the domain of fuel cells? Given that there exists in fuel cells what seems a much more practical, safe and clean means of producing power from hydrogen, this strikes me as a bit odd.
(for those who don't know, these are devices by means of which electricity is generated from hydrogen at reasonable temperatures with the only exhaust being water and heat).
Slashdot Mirror
Empathy IM is worth mentioning. It's pretty basic right now, but it's been incorporated into the Gnome project and is developing rapidly. Check it out.
Just thought I'd mention---I just installed the linux build. My system has 1.25GB ram.... of which 90% was in use by firefox 3 beta 1 by the time it finished rendering this page.
Light. The light of day.
Sorry for replying to myself...
I'm obviously missing something, but how can he do this? Patriot II never saw the law of day, and, reading over the text of the act as passed, there is no provision for the revocation of citizenship, or for the trial of anything but alien unlawful combatants by military tribunal, the key word being "alien". I haven't yet read the entire text of the act, so I may be missing something, but under what law can Bush currently "disappear" people?
I'm not saying that I in any way support this legislation (it scares the holy hell out of me), but I really need someone to lay out exactly how it is that I, as an American citizen, born on American soil, am subject to it. Because if I am, it's time for me to leave the country.
How about you change your society because that's what's fair? Because, as has been emphatically stated above, it isn't "just fine" as is. As long as gay "unions" are in a different legal category from straight "unions", they will continue to be unequal (this country's recent history proves that 'separate but equal' treatment doesn't work). If "civil union" is fine for gay people, then it's fine for straight people as well. If it's unacceptable to straight people, then you can't claim that it's acceptable for us gays.
Personally, I think that marriage, as such, shouldn't be a legal status at all. If it is such a sacred thing, then leave it to the religious institutions to decide on its meaning. Frankly, I don't *want* something like that being legislated; the concept of marriage is so steeped in religion that it seems inappropriate for what is supposed to be a secular government to play any part. Assign the legal benefits that currently come specifically with marriage to some new, more neutral category, and the whole controversy is solved.
I see a parallel to the term "dependent" here. One refers to one's sons and daughters as "dependents" (rather than children) on one's taxes, because that term describes one's *legal* relationship to them. The term is also general enough to include others which share a similar role. It's a sterile, precise phrase which describes a particular legal standing, which in turn encompasses certain rights, benefits, and responsibilities--- nothing more. For instance, nobody (to my knowledge) complains that the term lumps adopted children in with genetic children (even though some religions prohibit adoption) because "dependent" implies nothing about the nature of parenthood itself; it's just a simple way of stating that certain rights and responsibilties will apply to both adoptive and genetic parents. It's a category into which both genetic and adoptive children fall.
So, why not have a similar term for the legal status associated with marriage? This seems like a simple way of resolving the marriage dispute for good. If your problem lies in the desire to preserve the notion of the institution of marriage you grew up with*, why not seperate it from the state entirely (thus seperating religion and politics further, which is all to the good) and leave that decision in the capable hands of your church? Meanwhile, us gay folks will at last get the legal equality we've been fighting for for years. We'll be able to share medical insurance, see our loved ones in the hospital, and raise our own children in the unthinkable event that our partner dies. We'll be able to stop worrying that whatever legal status we have might be suddenly and callously kicked out from under us (as happened in San Fransisco). And, if our faith allows it (and many don't---in any case, I'm an atheist, and obviously wouldn't qualify) we can have our newfound legal status sanctified in some form as well (as is already possible in many churches).
*Sorry if I'm setting up a straw man here; I'm just following the general drift of this thread
Um, chill out, dude. To my knowledge, the admins aren't censoring squat. As far as I can tell, all that's happening is that people are figuring out how to use the negation operator. If you're allowed to tag things 'gay', I can't imagine how you'd have a problem with others tagging them '!gay'. It's a free country.
OK, good point. I posted quickly, and without thinking. I guess what I meant to suggest is that religion tends to have the effect of short-circuiting reason. That is, it specifies certain rules, and then states that they are beyond question (in the case of a good chunk of Christianity, "because it says so in the Bible" is the last word in many an argument). The effect of this is to make large numbers of people think along the same lines.
This can certainly be a positive thing---you describe religion as a civilizing force, and, at times, it has been such. Some of the rules that most religions specify---"don't kill/steal/whatever"---are just good rules (though for more important reasons than "because God says so"). However, a religion can just as easily be a source of violence and hatred, and it has been that as well (many, many times). Rules against the inclusion or full equality of various social (and, in fact, religious) groups are just as common in many modern religions as rules that actually serve to protect society. The overarching theme here is that religion allows people to stop thinking for themselves---to stop thinking at all. In this sense, it can be both an opiate and "psycho fodder".
In any event, all I meant to say was that, to paraphrase another post in this discussion, an addiction to Jesus can be just as damaging as any other addiction. Inventing an "infinite God" to fill the "infinite hole" can be just as damaging as filling it with one of the things you consider destructive, since both involve creating a fiction to get around a real problem.
I agree, and I speak from experience.
My parents got an internet connection when I was 13, and, in the eight years since, I have spent a frighteningly large percentage of my time looking at porn. From time to time, I'll swear it off for a week, a month, even a year...but, eventually, I always go back. When I do, everything important in my life suffers; my friendships, my schoolwork, my work as a TA, my health, etc. all take a second seat. In the end, I've wasted collectively, perhaps, two or three years out of my life.
This is not to say that porn itself is responsible for this behavior; as someone commented earlier, porn is just a particularly easy (if destructive) way of filling a gap that sensible folks learn to fill constructively. I alone am responsible for my behavior over the last several years, and the most frustrating thing about it is that it seems so pointless and ridiculous in retrospect. However, to a kid like I was---one to whom simple human interaction and empathy came late and only with much effort, and someone whose sexuality only began to resolve itself quite late (I'm gay)---pornography offered a welcome (though dangerous) release from the huge effort of social contact. It didn't matter that it inevitably left me feeling dead inside.
Now, it's a pattern I'm having a hell of a time unlearning; every time something unpleasant happens, my first response is porn, which only makes things worse. In fact, I almost dropped out of school because of it a few years ago. To me, at least, porn has been a trap, which has separated me from reality, and stunted my growth as a sexual and emotional being (I still have yet to be in a real relationship of any kind). I don't like myself, and that's sad, because I'm smart and talented and capable of better than this. On more than one occasion, I've taken out this frustration with myself on the people that I care about. I wish I hadn't.
I'm currently attempting for the umpteenth time to go cold turkey. It'll be interesting to see how long this lasts. While I recognize that this is my problem and nobody else's, I do wish that my folks had been more careful about policing my internet usage way back when. Yes, I should have known better, but I just wasn't ready to deal with internet porn when I first found it. There's a reason there's so much fuss about keeping kids away from porn, and the effect of porn on society in general. Pornography encourages a way of thinking which is almost entirely destructive.
Who was it who said "Religion is the opiate of the masses?"
I wouldn't, but since you mention them, I'll just say that the "crazies" in this case are often the ones who take religion the most seriously.
It's been theorized? Awesome! I've been waiting for one of these that could play Ogg...
My guess would be because in the case of fossil fuels, wind power, wave power, etc. the "elsewhere" is outside of our system, whereas with hydrogen, it is not. While solar, wind, and fossil fuels are transferring energy from another source (nuclear fusion -> "solar power" -> wind power, fossil fuels, etc.), the origin of said power (the sun) is outside of our system and beyond our control. We get these, essentially, for "free"--we don't handle the energy transfer. The reason that people rag on hydrogen as a fuel "source" is that it must be tacked--by us--onto the end of this chain of fuel sources. It isn't a new source of energy; it's a new way of getting energy from our power plants to our vehicles. As such, saying that a vehicle is "powered" by hydrogen is rather like saying that a vehicle is "powered" by electricity.
That said, you are right in that the only actual sources of power that we have are nuclear and solar--the rest are essentially stored solar energy.
Speaking as a vegetarian of eight years (and a vegan of three), I would love to see this technology actively pursued. I abhor the practice of raising and killing other animals for their meat, and hate the fact that we continue to do it. However, realistically, the only way that said practice will be ended is if a suitable replacement is found. People (Buddhists aside) are just not going to give up meat in large numbers--it's already too deeply ingrained in us, and in our culture. If it was possible to separate the production of meat from the cruelty of farming, then not only would this dilemma be ended, but an enormous waste of food energy might be eliminated as we remove the need to feed livestock (rule of 10% and all that). I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and I wish the folks at NASA well.
PTR
I, for one, strongly support grass internationalization.
isn't it really weird to have to aim for a small title bar to move the window? Like having to grab the top end of a paper on your desk to move it.
:^)
Well, not really...more like grabbing the handle of a suitcase--or the edge of a piece of paper. The thing is, moving an object in the real world typically involves manipulating it from the outside--which stands to reason, given that nothing inside that object is being changed. Interfaces that force you to move windows from the inside are, therefor, visually confusing. Moreover, key+mouse button combinations are hard to remember and somewhat dangerous--after all, if another application uses the same key-button combo, one of its two functions will stop working. This is a bad thing. If the only way we had of picking up a suitcase involved grabbing it by its sides, what would happen if some brilliant suitcase designer decided to put wheels or slippery runners on one of those sides?
Now, I am all for trimming down these flashy, annoying interfaces that have propogated in recent years. However, I think the goal of interface design should be to maximize useability/functionality--a quality that can be adversely affected not only by excess flash but also by oversimplification. As in all things, a balance must be found.
Oh, and flux/black/openbox kicks ass.
Is Phoenix the same thing as Firebird?
Yes. They renamed Phoenix to Firebird due to some trademark dispute.
What about Thunderbird?
Thunderbird is a new email client which is (I believe) being written to accompany Firebird.
What's the difference between them and SeaMonkey?
Seamonkey is what Joe User would know as "mozilla". It's (I believe) the codename of the current mozilla app suite, which is based on XPFE. These new projects (Firebird and Thunderbird) are designed using new, faster toolkits (and are themselves much smaller and more streamlined) but they still make use of Mozilla's gecko rendering engine. These two projects are slated to replace seamonkey in mozilla 1.5 and all subsequent releases. They are, however, currently available as standalone programs (though, from what I've heard, Thunderbird is still a bit not quite there).
Yep. As a matter of fact, there has yet to be a 1.4 release. That little b on the end of the version number (1.4b) stands for beta. 1.4a, by the same token, was (at least nominally) an alpha. The actual release is still a ways off.
So, what I want to know is why anyone is still talking about fusion as a source of power. It's dangerous, has the potential to produce radioactive waste (as mentioned in earlier comments on this article), and produces an end-product which really does qualify as exhaust (helium). Why is it that anyone is working on this, given the recent progress in the domain of fuel cells? Given that there exists in fuel cells what seems a much more practical, safe and clean means of producing power from hydrogen, this strikes me as a bit odd.
(for those who don't know, these are devices by means of which electricity is generated from hydrogen at reasonable temperatures with the only exhaust being water and heat).