Perhaps my language was a little ambiguous, but I was struggling to find *any* anime to like. I wasn't categorizing (or if I was, I apologize) and then taking the mean as a reason to put down the medium.
This is what I am struggling with:
I often hear that anime is sometimes a medium for adults, sometimes children, sometimes both. A lot of people in the subculture tend to believe that a lot of anime is somehow superior, not just in animation and sound, but in character development and story and portrayal of reality.
When I ask these people what shows or movies are good, I expect their general sentiment about the medium to pan out. So far what I've found, despite open mindedness and effort is that a lot of it is very much hype -- for example, character development and story in some anime that I am pointed to only live up to the hype when compared to childrens cartoons like he-man. They may talk about their feelings, make sexual advances, and develop as characters in a story -- but overall it's very juvenile stuff.
I'm not insulting the medium, I'm just saying that it doesn't live up to the hype -- at least in my experience so far. My confusion then might be not with anime, but the people recommending this stuff to me. That they are 20 or so (like me) and they find joy in entertainment potentially made for = 14 year olds.
That said, I'm not saying that I hate most of the anime I've encountered. I like some of the action movies. What triggered my original comment was people who believe Ghost in the Shell is so amazing, and who think that some shows are generally superior when they are pretty much parallel with television shows like "Saved by the Bell".
Yeah. I actually liked the ending. It was much better than the stupid love triangle plot and the incessant whining from Shinji and Asuka. It was a sort of dialectic that showed Shinji coming of age (I think).
I haven't actually seen the death, rebirth, and end episodes 'cause the aren't out here on DVD yet, but I'm pretty much satisfied with the original ending.
Well that's the thing: I've pretty much checked out what people say is good and the only anime I actually really liked was "Berserk".
Don't get me wrong here - I'm not saying all the previously mentioned stuff is crap, but stuff like Cowboy Bebop is just extremely good saturday morning cartoons. Evangelion had terrific voice acting and pretty good animation, but the story and the gobs of filler shows just made me puke; Lain.. Lain was OK, but it pretends to be philosophical without saying anything at all.
What I'm really trying to say is that anime isn't crap -- it just isn't what all the american fanboys and geeks like to say it is.
What's interesting though, is that a lot of older anime portrays sex roles like bond movies (especially older ones). I've noticed that newer anime is getting over it (besides the ever present jiggling tits and scant clothing) -- and one has to wonder if that says anything about change in japanese culture (yeah I know, thats like japanese people watching wwf and judging us).
Is it just me, or are both of these companies throwing around utter bull shit business speak like "smart, intelligent, collaborative, next-generation" when in fact besides better interoperable programming methodology, it is completely vapid and almost utterly disconnected from implementing an innovative web service?
Off the MS web page for example:
".NET is important to end users because it makes computers easier to use and far more functional."
Wow, where do i sign up!
"By allowing multiple secure data feeds to be merged into a single user interface--or even a programmable decision engine--the.NET architecture will free users from the limitations imposed by the data silos that populate the Web today"
SOAP and XML don't magically make applications speak to each other, like MS would like us all to believe.
What MS has is market dominance which allows them to leverage their reputation in creating new "standards" -- no matter how vapid and stupid their talk about their next generation of programming tools is.
"Still, you're probably wondering what we think of SOAP. So there is no confusion: We think it's great! We support it on the UDDI, on W3C XP working group, in the Java language, and in other products.
That said, we're cautious because we have concerns about what Microsoft is doing with SOAP. For example, Microsoft is pushing hooks that would allow it to create extensions to the SOAP framework that would require Microsoft technologies to access Web services. The only way those services can then be accessed in their richest form is via the Internet Explorer browser connected to a Microsoft Windows server. That's called lock-in. That means no choice. We think that's wrong.
Our experience is that Microsoft uses standards as second-class connections. They make them available where they must to communicate outward, but they lure customers into a proprietary lock-in.
Then again, your actions on the standards front don't surprise us. You give yourself away in your own questions. For example, "allow" our customers to interoperate? Everyone knows that no vendor can dictate terms to its customers. Except, of course, monopolies. "
Netlibrary has a bunch of free books on their site - 'though I think most of them are just from project gutenburg.
Forget free though: Anyone interested in cognitive science can get access to all the MIT press books in cognitive science* at netlibrary (in encrypted downloadable and web form) for just $120 (students) or $240 (everyone else) by going to cognet.mit.edu. It also includes access to the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences, and The New Cognitive Neurosciences 2nd Ed, and everything else they say they offer (the "community" aspect is non existent though - it basically consists of announcements {talks, seminars}, and interesting links.
*(includes hundreds of books in: neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, AI {genetic algorithms, computational intelligence, neural networks, etc}, linguistics, culture, evolutionary biology, and several other topics).
My cable modem range gets scanned daily by > 10 people. Don't assume it's one person. there are people scanning the internet all the time looking for unsecured boxes that they can attack from, hide behind, or upload 31337 warez to.
The concept of a reactive firewall is fine - though you're usually better off just doing rate limiting on protocols you must have (preferably by just ignoring all packets past a certain threshold - like 1000 SYN's per second or something), and blocking everything else.
However, the sheer amount of bandwidth involved in most of these attacks makes the firewall irrelevant.
Regarding neutralization:
1) illegal to "strike back"
2) servers that are DoS attacking are probably hacked so you aren't doing the attacker any damage by atacking their hacked shell
3) attacking back isn't going to neutralize anything; it will just distribute the bw a little better if you can do things like get an echo response back
4) Distributed DoS attacks are just that - thousands of ip addresses sending packets to site(s); try neutralizing 100, let alone 5000 ip addresses is impossible
5) on many DDoS attacks the packets are spoofed, so you will have no luck tracing them unless you had the cooperation of one or more backbones during the time of attack (which is basically impossible unless it was extremely high profile)
"When I was in high school, drugs were easy to obtain. They were as close as the guy in the next locker. Alcohol was much harder to get. You had to stand in front of the liquor store and ask people coming in to buy it for you."
Yeah, but consider smokes. Outside of any high school there are tons of kids smoking. Even when it is legislated that anyone selling to minors is a criminal offence it still happens -- the kids just get poor fake ID's and the shop keepers look the other way and have an easy way out.
How would legalization of pot be different than this? If you made it harder for them to get it there, they would just get it elsewhere (i.e., from a friend or the designated drug dealer).
As for the unavailability of alcohol, I never really experienced that. At parties it's just there - and if we needed any someone a couple of years older would definitely provide.
Given, it's a lot more convenient to just get pot from a friend at school, but there's not much difference if kids have stores right across the street selling pot (which I assume would be the case, as they sell the current legalized drugs at several - in a particular case, 3 stores within several hundred yards).
"You must also consider human nature: We always want what we cannot have"
Well, I'd generally assumed it was more peer pressure than rebellion. Anyway, I found this while doing some web browsing:
"In 1976, the Dutch decriminalized marijuana consumption, although possession and small sales technically remained illegal. The level of use actually declined after decriminalization. Indeed marijuana use in the Netherlands is substantially lower than in countries waging a "war on drugs," including the United States and, at least until recently, Germany. Among Dutch youths aged 17--18, only 17.7% used marijuana at least once in their lifetimes, as opposed to 43.7% of Americans. Only 4.6% of the Dutch had used marijuana at least once in the past month, as opposed to 16.7% of the Americans. While indicating clearly that prohibitionist laws do not prevent the use of drugs, these statistics also tend to show that legalizing now-prohibited drugs, at least marijuana, does not inevitably cause an increase in use"
Obviously this quote is in favor of your argument. Of course this web page gave no sample size or methodology, so I have no idea how accurate this information is.
"I think that the government needs to learn that you cannot legislate morality [..]"
Um, partial slip up - I know this is out of context of what you're trying to say - but say what? The whole point of our legislative and judicial system is to uphold a moral standard. This goes all the way back to the smallest hunter gatherer societies.
But yes, back in context, I agree that victimless crimes don't deserve their current penalties - especially for relatively harmless drugs like marijuana.
However, I'm not so sure I agree when it comes to harder drugs. Teenagers are apt to do stupid things despite all their claims that they are just small adults; Legalized crack/cocaine is IMO readily available crack/cocaine. Further, the end of the war on drugs would mean increased domestic availability. Would funds diverted to drug education really help? In many problem areas they can't even teach how to properly read or write, let alone help kids understand the affects of drugs.
"It would also help if people were more informed about the true nature of these drugs. There is a lot of misinformation out there."
Agreed.
"Yet all I hear from our gov't. is that pot makes one slothful and stupid. I think this is bunk"
Well used in moderation I'm sure that pot can add to your well being. Unfortunately if you smoked up every day you would start running into problems. I've had weed several times, and while I could maintain my composure, everything was funny - and I certainly could not do anything intellectual.
Anyway, I made a point of excluding pot out of the argument in my original post. Can you make the same arguments for crack or lsd?
"There is a certain portion of the population that is just going to make stupid decisions and there is nothing anyone can do about it"
I'm still not sure I agree with this. Evincing helplessness makes it seem so black and white. According to the statistics I posted, not even half of students could (at least easily) get ahold of harder drugs. I believe that in that case it is a victory - even if the ultimate objective before enlightened assesment of reality was that it isn't possible.
That isn't to say that there aren't more effective methods that are morally acceptable to you.
"Overall, 10% of Federal prison inmates in 1991,
17% of State prison inmates in 1991, and 13% of
convicted jail inmates in 1989 said they committed
their offense to obtain money for drugs. Twenty
percent of Hispanic State prison inmates said they
committed their offense to get money for drugs,
compared to 15% of white inmates and 17% of black
inmates. Twenty-four percent of female inmates
said they committed their offense to get money to
buy drugs, compared to 16% of male inmates.
Inmates incarcerated for robbery, burglary,
larceny, and drug trafficking most often committed
their crime to obtain money for drugs. Inmates
who committed homicide, sexual assault, assault,
and public-order offenses were least likely to
commit their offense to obtain money for drugs."
Another USDOJ survey says this:
1993 High school seniors reporting they could
obtain drugs fairly easily or very easily
Will legalization increase the proportion of people to whom drugs are available? (yes)
Is the decrease in drug related violent crimes worth the increase in citizens doing stupid things to themselves? (normative - you the viewers at home get to answer)
Would the legalization of said drugs decrease their stigma and increase use? (yes)
What effects would increased positive drug meme's have on the american cultural locus? (normative)
Is liquor a good example of potential effects of cocaine/crack, etc? (no idea)
Since the United States is not a world unto itself, does anybody have any studies on the effects of legalization of any of these drugs on their respective nations - whether social or economic?
Does anyone really care or do they just view it as a sort of cultural selection akin to natural selection except it isn't about genes - more about class and social interactions. In other words - if someone wants to be a druggie and ruin their life on crack/cocaine we should just let them smear themselves out?
You're probably talking primarily about weed use - and I don't see it as that bad - but what about other drugs? Although, even weed, E, and some of our legalized drugs are just easy ways out and can and will still ruin lives.
See I'd like to make a decision one way or another, but I don't find the evidence thus far convincing either way.
Well philosophers these days just determine the "significance" of the work that specialists do in fields such as chemistry, physics, computer science, cognitive science, and mathematicians.
I'd rather read something like "principles of neuroscience" than some wack like "the epistimology and significance of intelligence". If I want to learn about evolutionary biology I will go to an evolutionary biologist by way of text, paper, or book. If I want to learn about ethics I will iterate through information distilled down to the current lowest level of knowledge - whether that be psychology or (in my case somewhat simplified or introductory) neuroscience. If I was studying ethics I might wonder if I was studying fatherly advice or testable hypotheses.
Sociology, political science etc just give you patterns of human behavior and intuitive implications and course of action. That's good enough in many cases. But i'd much rather understand why. How did said behavioral pattern evolve? What other animals share this behavior? What is it about the structure of our their brains that makes them similar or different; etc.
They aren't useless by any means, but I think there is a reason why there aren't many rich philosophers anymore. The current philosophical idealogy most people have now is that events are relative to the observer - and that came out of physics not philosophy.
Ok, so basic set theory came from a couple of philosophers cum mathematicians. The material they churned out that was categorized as primarily philosophy isn't much more than intuitive fatherly advice though.
Let's look at this diminishing returns argument. That as the crux of his/her argument is IMO, utterly irrelevant. After food, a secure place to sleep is a diminishing return. Heck, using a toilet is a diminishing return when compared to the return of throwing your waste out onto a street and possibly into a sewer.
So her argument is something like 'there can be no more gigantic leaps in quality of life as compared to the jump of hunger to food and nowhere to sleep to secure person and house, so we are at the end of history. To be a more fulfilled person living in an increasingly homogenous society is the end of history.
"eat normal meals made in cookers and kept in fridges [...]"
prepared food - fridge is this generation of advancement, the next is genetically engineered food
"work doing much the same sort of jobs (although on a macroscopic scale there may be some new industries) [...]",
true, but it ignores the shift to service jobs where education is needed. In the 40's and 50's you could get a job with little skill out of high school and be almost guaranteed employment. In the future people will almost certainly need some kind of post secondary education to fill any job that isn't simple assembly line or simple service.
"go and watch films, sporting events, etc etc"
Well yeah. Sports have existed for thousands of years, various dice, card whatever games etc. If you categorize all entertainment as the same thing and say it won't change for sure. Are interactive video games different from other types of entertainment? I'd say yes. Yeah, we've pretty much explored all different types of passive and interactive entertainment, but I doubt they will stay in a static state. But based on your argument something like dice and tekken tag tournament arent much different. Entertainment is entertainment. It doesn't matter if it's more life like or engrossing or is better at telling stories.
"What will a history book in 100 years say about the 1990's"
What do history books say about countless decades in the past millenia? Evolution can be punctuated. Science is punctuated (i.e., one discovery can trigger a string of discoveries that results in it being called a period of enlightenment etc). One thing's for sure though - scientific discoveries in the past century grew exponentially because we have a lot of scientists in academia and corporations who are there because they have resources because of capitalism which is because of the industrial revolution. Is 1990 - 2000 really that bad? It only brought biotechnology and bio engineering companies, Microsoft, a refined personal computer, internet to the masses, tons of new consumer electronics, the end of communism, the birth of the wto, probably tons of medical advances I can't think of at this moment etc.
"but nothing as radical as the telephone - diminishing returns again"
I think you're mistaken. The telephone allowed for the large chain and then the multinational company - but email has really changed corporations. No more stupid memos whatever and you can reply at your leisure and both communicators dont have to be communicating to each other at the same time. Even if it was a diminishing return, it's not like it is insignificant.
Um, people becoming culturally and socially homogenous does not equal the end of history. I do not know how one logically follows from the other. Furthermore you could make a similar argument that within the british and roman empires it was the end of history because people were becoming socially and culturally homogenous - like it is a bad thing. Becoming socially and culturally homogenous does not mean the end of intelligent though and it does not mean the end of history.
"not just in the physical sense, but also the conflict of ideas and ideaologies"
I disagree. In the united states specifically people are divided politically. Its culture also breeds a type of individualism that causes one to question idealogy and authority. Compare it to (not sure if this is changing) japan for example where the social payoff comes from avoiding 'no' answers and shoving things under the rug and just shrugging off government corruption. The 80's and 90's by the way brought a shift in employment where people have much more mobility - which of course also brings insecurity and easy termination. It arguably created a population with more anxiety than the two previous generations.
"Scots were very different to what they are now"
Yeah, but compare canadians 100 years ago to scotts. I'd guess not that much difference. I dont know scottish history but Im guessing they were just getting into the industrial revolution like everyone else. If not, maybe they stayed in pre-industiral revolution a little longer than their english counter-parts or whatever. But so what? I still dont see how people becoming more homogenous, specialized, etc as equated as "the end of history". I think the opposite is the truth: higher quality of life, more mobility - as in you get to choose what you do given an education, etc
"Scotland is rapidly, in the cultural sense, becoming a place just like any other."
So is everywhere else. First the english took over half the world, then america became a world superpower. The language of business is english. If they are being replaced it is because said cultures are inferior - at least in a business sense. Instead of war and the spread of religion we have business and mass media and entertainment. As an aside, I also dont buy the argument that it dumbs down the population. Access to material that will result in intellectual enlightenment is more readily available than it was in the past. There are some compelling anti-consumerism / anti-advertising propaganda arguments, but either way I don't think there is any doubt that this is superior to previous methods.
In conclusion, "the end of history", in my opinion, is doublespeak which means you do not like the *change* that is happening which results in homogenous culture. Globalization is a force of change which has many negative and positive side effects. The next decades will see us ironing them out. Potholes in the road are IMO, definite.
"The invention of the wheel revolutionised the world a lot more than the invention of the transistor ever will."
So? Why are you limiting your argument to a 1:1 comparison? The invention of the wheel, though a pre-requisite for future technologies is dwarfed by the aggregate technological development in the past 2 centuries.
I don't even see a specific objective or subjective qualitative or quantitative argument made here. What does impact mean? Lives saved? Standard of living increased? What? Modern medicine saved more lives -- but of course relied on the closer world the invention of the wheel gave us - but please -- it's like arguing that "after we evolved the ability of language everything else after is nothing".
" bet the same would not have been true, or as true, 100 years ago"
We are all human. Besides specific language or dialect, customs and prejudices, we are arguably not that much different. The fact that these barriers are being broken has nothing to do with the end of history. What the hell is end defined as anyway? Less war? Less exploration? That's what history books are filled with. Monarchy lasted for thousands of years. The corporate republic may last just as long. But wtf is with equating that with the end of history? Oh no, less conflict, peace means the end of history. Even then I think said people are talking a little prematurely - after all the last world war was only 55 years ago.
Anyway, back to "culture" change. Did scotts really live that much differently than canadians 100 or 200 years ago? I don't think so. Before the industrial revolution the paradigm was agriculture and the traditional economy. After it was mass manufacturing at efficient economies of scale, capitalism, consumerism, and the corporate republic. of course, you're right. What it means to be human doesn't change all that much with technology and social advancement. Quality of life does though.
"The thing is, we have now solved all the major problems that we face as a species - food, shelter, warmth, health"
Yeah, tell that to all the people in third world countries.
Secondly, just because the average person has inched up on maslows hierarchy doesn't mean "the end of science" or the "end of technology". Civilizations fall and time doesn't stand still. New problems, and reincarnations of old problems will come to be.
"But how will it affect me? Not at all, I'll wager"
Um, the cure to cancers, aids, technologies to lengthen life? Hey, they might not affect you because you'll be either dead before said technology comes to exist, or the opposite, already born so you would not be eligible for DNA re-engineering. Future generations however, will not witness the end of science or the end of technology.
Hello, in 1900 some people believed there was nothing left to discover in physics.
Anyone who thinks something similar about any technology obviously is so disconnected from said fields that they have no idea what they are talking about. Take cognitive science for example. 20,000 neuroscientists are busy today unlocking the secrets of the brain. In 20 years the domain specific knowledge in cognitive science today will seem pathetic. Coupled with other advances we will have exponential growth in knowledge and capability.
500mhz is utterly pathetic for many of the problems we wish to solve.
Well I already knew divx was supported. Where would I find info about the asf (ms mpeg4 v3?). And is "quicktime" Sorenson quicktime codec?
I also have this vague memory that I picked up somewhere that the previously stated codecs were only supported because of some dll model that ms is moving away from?
Yes. I know several people who say they "don't know" why they are constantly being looked at and made fun of when they have a shaved head, wear anti-nazi clothing, have words shaved in their heads, and big ear rings right through teh center of their nose.
"It only happens to, you know, that kind of person"
No.
"Well, don't go out after dark alone [...]"
No. And you're distorting what I wrote. I was talking about making friends with people, not rape and violence. In the implied case people will choose not to be friends with you - that isn't a crime or a violation of space or person.
"Oh, it doesn't matter, the logic is the same: it must have been the victim's fault, right?"
No. The logic isn't the same. Thanks for playing.
"If only someone had told them earlier that their depression was the cause of the scorn of their peers, I'm sure they would have stopped immediately"
Read the last sentence I wrote. Second, depression and scorn of peers doesn't logically follow. Depression (i.e., in my case) resulted in less social interaction, though peers thought I was weird because I did not socially interact with them and was always making negative bitter comments.
Lastly, who said I was playing psychiatrist? I was only describing potential situations (with limited external validation of a 100 sample size). Did I imply in saying that depression is self destructive that not being depressed is a solution? I didn't think so.
The realization that the cause of said depression was not valid in relative magnitude - in my case - ended it. When I stopped being a vitriolic asshole every time I opened my mouth people actually wanted to be my friend too.
"Umm...I don't think we are talking about the same 'Non-popular music'. There's a lot of 'Non-popular music' out there...what I'm thinking of isn't 'angst ridden'...and how can you say all 'Non-popular music' is 'personally boring'? Whatever"
Sorry, I was specifically talking about the type of music this Clinton person in the interview was talking about.
"My point was that while some people form their entire personality based on pop music, which is bad, taking some of your personality from music is not bad"
Well if you mean personality as in general mood, whatever, yeah sure. I listen and enjoy lots of different types of music like techno/trance, classical, older rock, whatever. If I'm in my car or doing some particularly boring work music can be uplifting and enjoyable.
My POINT though was that it is pathetic to actually think that there is a profound message in a certain genre of music - especially if its nonsense like punk music.
OK, so some of your personality may be dictated by some of the music you listen to and vice versa, partially through the people you associate with with the same interest in music - but please elucidate how music profoundly affects how you live. I'd like to hear.
Yes, it is somewhat of a paradox to have these people pressuring each other to be different when in fact they are pressuring each other to be like said subculture. Some will appropriate anyone who they don't like or has become too popular as not being a real .
It is doublespeak. However most of these subcultures were born of the rejection from the popular and so being different is redefined as being unlike any "normals". The most likely reason why they all dress alike is because they feel a need to fit in with their new peer group - just like any other normal human. You don't stop being a kid once you associate the term goth, punk, candy kid, heavy metal rocker, etc with self.
"There are plenty of songs I can think of which have given me insights"
While this may be true, I'm not convinced that any three minute song can communicate any really profound ideas. The level of information in literature, textbooks and field specific finding/position books makes the so called profound messages in music seem pathetic.
That said, a good song or movie don't have to be chock full of profound messages. One strong communicated message can make you learn something that results in you reconfiguring your world view.
I thorougly enjoy music and movies as art and appreciate their respective mediums ability to convey emotion and perhaps a little positive and negative life pattern recognition (I admit, I even cry when viewing formulaic movies).
But profound insight - not really. Non-popular Music specifically is mostly angst ridden and personally boring. I'd rather listen to something like the latest radiohead which really doesn't have a specific message - or classical music just for the enjoyment of listening to musical sound.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps my language was a little ambiguous, but I was struggling to find *any* anime to like. I wasn't categorizing (or if I was, I apologize) and then taking the mean as a reason to put down the medium.
This is what I am struggling with:
I often hear that anime is sometimes a medium for adults, sometimes children, sometimes both. A lot of people in the subculture tend to believe that a lot of anime is somehow superior, not just in animation and sound, but in character development and story and portrayal of reality.
When I ask these people what shows or movies are good, I expect their general sentiment about the medium to pan out. So far what I've found, despite open mindedness and effort is that a lot of it is very much hype -- for example, character development and story in some anime that I am pointed to only live up to the hype when compared to childrens cartoons like he-man. They may talk about their feelings, make sexual advances, and develop as characters in a story -- but overall it's very juvenile stuff.
I'm not insulting the medium, I'm just saying that it doesn't live up to the hype -- at least in my experience so far. My confusion then might be not with anime, but the people recommending this stuff to me. That they are 20 or so (like me) and they find joy in entertainment potentially made for = 14 year olds.
That said, I'm not saying that I hate most of the anime I've encountered. I like some of the action movies. What triggered my original comment was people who believe Ghost in the Shell is so amazing, and who think that some shows are generally superior when they are pretty much parallel with television shows like "Saved by the Bell".
Yes, I know it's just entertainment.
*spoilers*
Yeah. I actually liked the ending. It was much better than the stupid love triangle plot and the incessant whining from Shinji and Asuka. It was a sort of dialectic that showed Shinji coming of age (I think).
I haven't actually seen the death, rebirth, and end episodes 'cause the aren't out here on DVD yet, but I'm pretty much satisfied with the original ending.
Well that's the thing: I've pretty much checked out what people say is good and the only anime I actually really liked was "Berserk".
Don't get me wrong here - I'm not saying all the previously mentioned stuff is crap, but stuff like Cowboy Bebop is just extremely good saturday morning cartoons. Evangelion had terrific voice acting and pretty good animation, but the story and the gobs of filler shows just made me puke; Lain.. Lain was OK, but it pretends to be philosophical without saying anything at all.
What I'm really trying to say is that anime isn't crap -- it just isn't what all the american fanboys and geeks like to say it is.
What's interesting though, is that a lot of older anime portrays sex roles like bond movies (especially older ones). I've noticed that newer anime is getting over it (besides the ever present jiggling tits and scant clothing) -- and one has to wonder if that says anything about change in japanese culture (yeah I know, thats like japanese people watching wwf and judging us).
Is it just me, or are both of these companies throwing around utter bull shit business speak like "smart, intelligent, collaborative, next-generation" when in fact besides better interoperable programming methodology, it is completely vapid and almost utterly disconnected from implementing an innovative web service?
.NET architecture will free users from the limitations imposed by the data silos that populate the Web today"
Off the MS web page for example:
".NET is important to end users because it makes computers easier to use and far more functional."
Wow, where do i sign up!
"By allowing multiple secure data feeds to be merged into a single user interface--or even a programmable decision engine--the
SOAP and XML don't magically make applications speak to each other, like MS would like us all to believe.
What MS has is market dominance which allows them to leverage their reputation in creating new "standards" -- no matter how vapid and stupid their talk about their next generation of programming tools is.
"Still, you're probably wondering what we think of SOAP. So there is no confusion: We think it's great! We support it on the UDDI, on W3C XP working group, in the Java language, and in other products.
That said, we're cautious because we have concerns about what Microsoft is doing with SOAP. For example, Microsoft is pushing hooks that would allow it to create extensions to the SOAP framework that would require Microsoft technologies to access Web services. The only way those services can then be accessed in their richest form is via the Internet Explorer browser connected to a Microsoft Windows server. That's called lock-in. That means no choice. We think that's wrong.
Our experience is that Microsoft uses standards as second-class connections. They make them available where they must to communicate outward, but they lure customers into a proprietary lock-in.
Then again, your actions on the standards front don't surprise us. You give yourself away in your own questions. For example, "allow" our customers to interoperate? Everyone knows that no vendor can dictate terms to its customers. Except, of course, monopolies. "
"Light and Matter Physics" High School/Community college level.
"Handbook Of Applied Cryptography"
"Numerical Recipes in {c, fortran}"
"The Scientist & Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing"
"Using Z"
"The Red Book"
etc. I'm sure there are a ton of others.
Netlibrary has a bunch of free books on their site - 'though I think most of them are just from project gutenburg.
Forget free though: Anyone interested in cognitive science can get access to all the MIT press books in cognitive science* at netlibrary (in encrypted downloadable and web form) for just $120 (students) or $240 (everyone else) by going to cognet.mit.edu. It also includes access to the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences, and The New Cognitive Neurosciences 2nd Ed, and everything else they say they offer (the "community" aspect is non existent though - it basically consists of announcements {talks, seminars}, and interesting links.
*(includes hundreds of books in: neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, AI {genetic algorithms, computational intelligence, neural networks, etc}, linguistics, culture, evolutionary biology, and several other topics).
My cable modem range gets scanned daily by > 10 people. Don't assume it's one person. there are people scanning the internet all the time looking for unsecured boxes that they can attack from, hide behind, or upload 31337 warez to.
Regarding defense:
The concept of a reactive firewall is fine - though you're usually better off just doing rate limiting on protocols you must have (preferably by just ignoring all packets past a certain threshold - like 1000 SYN's per second or something), and blocking everything else.
However, the sheer amount of bandwidth involved in most of these attacks makes the firewall irrelevant.
Regarding neutralization:
1) illegal to "strike back"
2) servers that are DoS attacking are probably hacked so you aren't doing the attacker any damage by atacking their hacked shell
3) attacking back isn't going to neutralize anything; it will just distribute the bw a little better if you can do things like get an echo response back
4) Distributed DoS attacks are just that - thousands of ip addresses sending packets to site(s); try neutralizing 100, let alone 5000 ip addresses is impossible
5) on many DDoS attacks the packets are spoofed, so you will have no luck tracing them unless you had the cooperation of one or more backbones during the time of attack (which is basically impossible unless it was extremely high profile)
Last question: What the hell do druggies mean when they say LSD or other drug "opens their mind"?
:-).
Doesn't LSD just give you sudden changes in mood/emotion and fucked up perception? I've never taken LSD so please tell
"When I was in high school, drugs were easy to obtain. They were as close as the guy in the next locker. Alcohol was much harder to get. You had to stand in front of the liquor store and ask people coming in to buy it for you."
Yeah, but consider smokes. Outside of any high school there are tons of kids smoking. Even when it is legislated that anyone selling to minors is a criminal offence it still happens -- the kids just get poor fake ID's and the shop keepers look the other way and have an easy way out.
How would legalization of pot be different than this? If you made it harder for them to get it there, they would just get it elsewhere (i.e., from a friend or the designated drug dealer).
As for the unavailability of alcohol, I never really experienced that. At parties it's just there - and if we needed any someone a couple of years older would definitely provide.
Given, it's a lot more convenient to just get pot from a friend at school, but there's not much difference if kids have stores right across the street selling pot (which I assume would be the case, as they sell the current legalized drugs at several - in a particular case, 3 stores within several hundred yards).
"You must also consider human nature: We always want what we cannot have"
Well, I'd generally assumed it was more peer pressure than rebellion. Anyway, I found this while doing some web browsing:
"In 1976, the Dutch decriminalized marijuana consumption, although possession and small sales technically remained illegal. The level of use actually declined after decriminalization. Indeed marijuana use in the Netherlands is substantially lower than in countries waging a "war on drugs," including the United States and, at least until recently, Germany. Among Dutch youths aged 17--18, only 17.7% used marijuana at least once in their lifetimes, as opposed to 43.7% of Americans. Only 4.6% of the Dutch had used marijuana at least once in the past month, as opposed to 16.7% of the Americans. While indicating clearly that prohibitionist laws do not prevent the use of drugs, these statistics also tend to show that legalizing now-prohibited drugs, at least marijuana, does not inevitably cause an increase in use"
Obviously this quote is in favor of your argument. Of course this web page gave no sample size or methodology, so I have no idea how accurate this information is.
"I think that the government needs to learn that you cannot legislate morality [..]"
Um, partial slip up - I know this is out of context of what you're trying to say - but say what? The whole point of our legislative and judicial system is to uphold a moral standard. This goes all the way back to the smallest hunter gatherer societies.
But yes, back in context, I agree that victimless crimes don't deserve their current penalties - especially for relatively harmless drugs like marijuana.
However, I'm not so sure I agree when it comes to harder drugs. Teenagers are apt to do stupid things despite all their claims that they are just small adults; Legalized crack/cocaine is IMO readily available crack/cocaine. Further, the end of the war on drugs would mean increased domestic availability. Would funds diverted to drug education really help? In many problem areas they can't even teach how to properly read or write, let alone help kids understand the affects of drugs.
"It would also help if people were more informed about the true nature of these drugs. There is a lot of misinformation out there."
Agreed.
"Yet all I hear from our gov't. is that pot makes one slothful and stupid. I think this is bunk"
Well used in moderation I'm sure that pot can add to your well being. Unfortunately if you smoked up every day you would start running into problems. I've had weed several times, and while I could maintain my composure, everything was funny - and I certainly could not do anything intellectual.
Anyway, I made a point of excluding pot out of the argument in my original post. Can you make the same arguments for crack or lsd?
"There is a certain portion of the population that is just going to make stupid decisions and there is nothing anyone can do about it"
I'm still not sure I agree with this. Evincing helplessness makes it seem so black and white. According to the statistics I posted, not even half of students could (at least easily) get ahold of harder drugs. I believe that in that case it is a victory - even if the ultimate objective before enlightened assesment of reality was that it isn't possible.
That isn't to say that there aren't more effective methods that are morally acceptable to you.
USDOJ drug and crime facts 94 says this:
"Overall, 10% of Federal prison inmates in 1991,
17% of State prison inmates in 1991, and 13% of
convicted jail inmates in 1989 said they committed
their offense to obtain money for drugs. Twenty
percent of Hispanic State prison inmates said they
committed their offense to get money for drugs,
compared to 15% of white inmates and 17% of black
inmates. Twenty-four percent of female inmates
said they committed their offense to get money to
buy drugs, compared to 16% of male inmates.
Inmates incarcerated for robbery, burglary,
larceny, and drug trafficking most often committed
their crime to obtain money for drugs. Inmates
who committed homicide, sexual assault, assault,
and public-order offenses were least likely to
commit their offense to obtain money for drugs."
Another USDOJ survey says this:
1993 High school seniors reporting they could
obtain drugs fairly easily or very easily
Marijuana 83.0%
Amphetamines 61.5
LSD 49.2
Cocaine powder 45.4
Barbiturates 44.5
Crack 43.6
Tranquilizers 41.1
Heroin 33.7
PCP 31.7
Crystal metham-
phetamine (ice) 26.6
Amyl and butyl
nitrates 25.9
--
So some questions are:
Will legalization increase the proportion of people to whom drugs are available? (yes)
Is the decrease in drug related violent crimes worth the increase in citizens doing stupid things to themselves? (normative - you the viewers at home get to answer)
Would the legalization of said drugs decrease their stigma and increase use? (yes)
What effects would increased positive drug meme's have on the american cultural locus? (normative)
Is liquor a good example of potential effects of cocaine/crack, etc? (no idea)
Since the United States is not a world unto itself, does anybody have any studies on the effects of legalization of any of these drugs on their respective nations - whether social or economic?
Does anyone really care or do they just view it as a sort of cultural selection akin to natural selection except it isn't about genes - more about class and social interactions. In other words - if someone wants to be a druggie and ruin their life on crack/cocaine we should just let them smear themselves out?
You're probably talking primarily about weed use - and I don't see it as that bad - but what about other drugs? Although, even weed, E, and some of our legalized drugs are just easy ways out and can and will still ruin lives.
See I'd like to make a decision one way or another, but I don't find the evidence thus far convincing either way.
Because fansubbing is illegal and making a big thing out of it would result in companies coming down hard on fansubbers.
Web warez like on the elite-fansub site is already getting a little out there.
Well philosophers these days just determine the "significance" of the work that specialists do in fields such as chemistry, physics, computer science, cognitive science, and mathematicians.
I'd rather read something like "principles of neuroscience" than some wack like "the epistimology and significance of intelligence". If I want to learn about evolutionary biology I will go to an evolutionary biologist by way of text, paper, or book. If I want to learn about ethics I will iterate through information distilled down to the current lowest level of knowledge - whether that be psychology or (in my case somewhat simplified or introductory) neuroscience. If I was studying ethics I might wonder if I was studying fatherly advice or testable hypotheses.
Sociology, political science etc just give you patterns of human behavior and intuitive implications and course of action. That's good enough in many cases. But i'd much rather understand why. How did said behavioral pattern evolve? What other animals share this behavior? What is it about the structure of our their brains that makes them similar or different; etc.
They aren't useless by any means, but I think there is a reason why there aren't many rich philosophers anymore. The current philosophical idealogy most people have now is that events are relative to the observer - and that came out of physics not philosophy.
Ok, so basic set theory came from a couple of philosophers cum mathematicians. The material they churned out that was categorized as primarily philosophy isn't much more than intuitive fatherly advice though.
Let's look at this diminishing returns argument. That as the crux of his/her argument is IMO, utterly irrelevant. After food, a secure place to sleep is a diminishing return. Heck, using a toilet is a diminishing return when compared to the return of throwing your waste out onto a street and possibly into a sewer.
So her argument is something like 'there can be no more gigantic leaps in quality of life as compared to the jump of hunger to food and nowhere to sleep to secure person and house, so we are at the end of history. To be a more fulfilled person living in an increasingly homogenous society is the end of history.
"They will still drive cars about [...]",
walk, horse, car -- transportation
"eat normal meals made in cookers and kept in fridges [...]"
prepared food - fridge is this generation of advancement, the next is genetically engineered food
"work doing much the same sort of jobs (although on a macroscopic scale there may be some new industries) [...]",
true, but it ignores the shift to service jobs where education is needed. In the 40's and 50's you could get a job with little skill out of high school and be almost guaranteed employment. In the future people will almost certainly need some kind of post secondary education to fill any job that isn't simple assembly line or simple service.
"go and watch films, sporting events, etc etc"
Well yeah. Sports have existed for thousands of years, various dice, card whatever games etc. If you categorize all entertainment as the same thing and say it won't change for sure. Are interactive video games different from other types of entertainment? I'd say yes. Yeah, we've pretty much explored all different types of passive and interactive entertainment, but I doubt they will stay in a static state. But based on your argument something like dice and tekken tag tournament arent much different. Entertainment is entertainment. It doesn't matter if it's more life like or engrossing or is better at telling stories.
"What will a history book in 100 years say about the 1990's"
What do history books say about countless decades in the past millenia? Evolution can be punctuated. Science is punctuated (i.e., one discovery can trigger a string of discoveries that results in it being called a period of enlightenment etc). One thing's for sure though - scientific discoveries in the past century grew exponentially because we have a lot of scientists in academia and corporations who are there because they have resources because of capitalism which is because of the industrial revolution. Is 1990 - 2000 really that bad? It only brought biotechnology and bio engineering companies, Microsoft, a refined personal computer, internet to the masses, tons of new consumer electronics, the end of communism, the birth of the wto, probably tons of medical advances I can't think of at this moment etc.
"but nothing as radical as the telephone - diminishing returns again"
I think you're mistaken. The telephone allowed for the large chain and then the multinational company - but email has really changed corporations. No more stupid memos whatever and you can reply at your leisure and both communicators dont have to be communicating to each other at the same time. Even if it was a diminishing return, it's not like it is insignificant.
Um, people becoming culturally and socially homogenous does not equal the end of history. I do not know how one logically follows from the other. Furthermore you could make a similar argument that within the british and roman empires it was the end of history because people were becoming socially and culturally homogenous - like it is a bad thing. Becoming socially and culturally homogenous does not mean the end of intelligent though and it does not mean the end of history.
"not just in the physical sense, but also the conflict of ideas and ideaologies"
I disagree. In the united states specifically people are divided politically. Its culture also breeds a type of individualism that causes one to question idealogy and authority. Compare it to (not sure if this is changing) japan for example where the social payoff comes from avoiding 'no' answers and shoving things under the rug and just shrugging off government corruption. The 80's and 90's by the way brought a shift in employment where people have much more mobility - which of course also brings insecurity and easy termination. It arguably created a population with more anxiety than the two previous generations.
"Scots were very different to what they are now"
Yeah, but compare canadians 100 years ago to scotts. I'd guess not that much difference. I dont know scottish history but Im guessing they were just getting into the industrial revolution like everyone else. If not, maybe they stayed in pre-industiral revolution a little longer than their english counter-parts or whatever. But so what? I still dont see how people becoming more homogenous, specialized, etc as equated as "the end of history". I think the opposite is the truth: higher quality of life, more mobility - as in you get to choose what you do given an education, etc
"Scotland is rapidly, in the cultural sense, becoming a place just like any other."
So is everywhere else. First the english took over half the world, then america became a world superpower. The language of business is english. If they are being replaced it is because said cultures are inferior - at least in a business sense. Instead of war and the spread of religion we have business and mass media and entertainment. As an aside, I also dont buy the argument that it dumbs down the population. Access to material that will result in intellectual enlightenment is more readily available than it was in the past. There are some compelling anti-consumerism / anti-advertising propaganda arguments, but either way I don't think there is any doubt that this is superior to previous methods.
In conclusion, "the end of history", in my opinion, is doublespeak which means you do not like the *change* that is happening which results in homogenous culture. Globalization is a force of change which has many negative and positive side effects. The next decades will see us ironing them out. Potholes in the road are IMO, definite.
"The invention of the wheel revolutionised the world a lot more than the invention of the transistor ever will."
So? Why are you limiting your argument to a 1:1 comparison? The invention of the wheel, though a pre-requisite for future technologies is dwarfed by the aggregate technological development in the past 2 centuries.
I don't even see a specific objective or subjective qualitative or quantitative argument made here. What does impact mean? Lives saved? Standard of living increased? What? Modern medicine saved more lives -- but of course relied on the closer world the invention of the wheel gave us - but please -- it's like arguing that "after we evolved the ability of language everything else after is nothing".
" bet the same would not have been true, or as true, 100 years ago"
We are all human. Besides specific language or dialect, customs and prejudices, we are arguably not that much different. The fact that these barriers are being broken has nothing to do with the end of history. What the hell is end defined as anyway? Less war? Less exploration? That's what history books are filled with. Monarchy lasted for thousands of years. The corporate republic may last just as long. But wtf is with equating that with the end of history? Oh no, less conflict, peace means the end of history. Even then I think said people are talking a little prematurely - after all the last world war was only 55 years ago.
Anyway, back to "culture" change. Did scotts really live that much differently than canadians 100 or 200 years ago? I don't think so. Before the industrial revolution the paradigm was agriculture and the traditional economy. After it was mass manufacturing at efficient economies of scale, capitalism, consumerism, and the corporate republic. of course, you're right. What it means to be human doesn't change all that much with technology and social advancement. Quality of life does though.
I'm rambling now, but hey.
"The thing is, we have now solved all the major problems that we face as a species - food, shelter, warmth, health"
Yeah, tell that to all the people in third world countries.
Secondly, just because the average person has inched up on maslows hierarchy doesn't mean "the end of science" or the "end of technology". Civilizations fall and time doesn't stand still. New problems, and reincarnations of old problems will come to be.
"But how will it affect me? Not at all, I'll wager"
Um, the cure to cancers, aids, technologies to lengthen life? Hey, they might not affect you because you'll be either dead before said technology comes to exist, or the opposite, already born so you would not be eligible for DNA re-engineering. Future generations however, will not witness the end of science or the end of technology.
Hello, in 1900 some people believed there was nothing left to discover in physics.
Anyone who thinks something similar about any technology obviously is so disconnected from said fields that they have no idea what they are talking about. Take cognitive science for example. 20,000 neuroscientists are busy today unlocking the secrets of the brain. In 20 years the domain specific knowledge in cognitive science today will seem pathetic. Coupled with other advances we will have exponential growth in knowledge and capability.
500mhz is utterly pathetic for many of the problems we wish to solve.
Well I already knew divx was supported. Where would I find info about the asf (ms mpeg4 v3?). And is "quicktime" Sorenson quicktime codec?
I also have this vague memory that I picked up somewhere that the previously stated codecs were only supported because of some dll model that ms is moving away from?
When am I going to be able to flawlessly run windows media player and quicktime?
Once that happens im switching. But before then no way.
Hoping that someone jumps in and corrects me and says either of them works...
"They bring it on themselves"
Yes. I know several people who say they "don't know" why they are constantly being looked at and made fun of when they have a shaved head, wear anti-nazi clothing, have words shaved in their heads, and big ear rings right through teh center of their nose.
"It only happens to, you know, that kind of person"
No.
"Well, don't go out after dark alone [...]"
No. And you're distorting what I wrote. I was talking about making friends with people, not rape and violence. In the implied case people will choose not to be friends with you - that isn't a crime or a violation of space or person.
"Oh, it doesn't matter, the logic is the same: it must have been the victim's fault, right?"
No. The logic isn't the same. Thanks for playing.
"If only someone had told them earlier that their depression was the cause of the scorn of their peers, I'm sure they would have stopped immediately"
Read the last sentence I wrote. Second, depression and scorn of peers doesn't logically follow. Depression (i.e., in my case) resulted in less social interaction, though peers thought I was weird because I did not socially interact with them and was always making negative bitter comments.
Lastly, who said I was playing psychiatrist? I was only describing potential situations (with limited external validation of a 100 sample size). Did I imply in saying that depression is self destructive that not being depressed is a solution? I didn't think so.
The realization that the cause of said depression was not valid in relative magnitude - in my case - ended it. When I stopped being a vitriolic asshole every time I opened my mouth people actually wanted to be my friend too.
"Umm...I don't think we are talking about the same 'Non-popular music'. There's a lot of 'Non-popular music' out there...what I'm thinking of isn't 'angst ridden'...and how can you say all 'Non-popular music' is 'personally boring'? Whatever"
Sorry, I was specifically talking about the type of music this Clinton person in the interview was talking about.
"My point was that while some people form their entire personality based on pop music, which is bad, taking some of your personality from music is not bad"
Well if you mean personality as in general mood, whatever, yeah sure. I listen and enjoy lots of different types of music like techno/trance, classical, older rock, whatever. If I'm in my car or doing some particularly boring work music can be uplifting and enjoyable.
My POINT though was that it is pathetic to actually think that there is a profound message in a certain genre of music - especially if its nonsense like punk music.
OK, so some of your personality may be dictated by some of the music you listen to and vice versa, partially through the people you associate with with the same interest in music - but please elucidate how music profoundly affects how you live. I'd like to hear.
Yes, it is somewhat of a paradox to have these people pressuring each other to be different when in fact they are pressuring each other to be like said subculture. Some will appropriate anyone who they don't like or has become too popular as not being a real .
It is doublespeak. However most of these subcultures were born of the rejection from the popular and so being different is redefined as being unlike any "normals". The most likely reason why they all dress alike is because they feel a need to fit in with their new peer group - just like any other normal human. You don't stop being a kid once you associate the term goth, punk, candy kid, heavy metal rocker, etc with self.
"There are plenty of songs I can think of which have given me insights"
While this may be true, I'm not convinced that any three minute song can communicate any really profound ideas. The level of information in literature, textbooks and field specific finding/position books makes the so called profound messages in music seem pathetic.
That said, a good song or movie don't have to be chock full of profound messages. One strong communicated message can make you learn something that results in you reconfiguring your world view.
I thorougly enjoy music and movies as art and appreciate their respective mediums ability to convey emotion and perhaps a little positive and negative life pattern recognition (I admit, I even cry when viewing formulaic movies).
But profound insight - not really. Non-popular Music specifically is mostly angst ridden and personally boring. I'd rather listen to something like the latest radiohead which really doesn't have a specific message - or classical music just for the enjoyment of listening to musical sound.