They should also disable the Adobe Download Manager (Adobe DLM). For any of you that have downloaded Adobe Reader 9 (with Firefox) recently, you would have noticed that they make you install a Firefox add-on instead of just linking you to the binary.
It's proprietary and full of ads! Just what I wanted, an extension that checks for updates of my Adobe Reader software. Uninstalled. The Firefox team should send a message. Firefox add-ons are not yours to take over like the Windows startup.
Your argument only works if we concede and use your definition of "planet". The majority of English speakers don't though.
What scientists decide to consider planets or not is of a categorical nature; it has no bearing on the facts themselves but only on how they can be expressed.
Whether Pluto is a planet is a categorical claim, not to be confused with facts (unless you're just using "facts" very loosely). If you ignore this distinction, you will end up doing metaphysics/mysticism.
Maybe, but you're ignoring the value you would get out of your original investment. That's three years you've had a good computer vs. three years with a subpar one. Besides, laptops aren't really what we're talking about, since they cannot fit a decent graphics card.
I've heard the bang-for-your-buck argument in favor of Phenom II, but I don't think it holds up when you consider that an i7 (920) setup is only $300-$400 more, will last much longer than a Phenom II, and presently blows it out of the water in CPU-intensive tasks (especially when OC'd). When you spread that money over two or three years, in the long run its a better deal to just upgrade to the X58 chipset.
I don't really see the point of using the term 'analytic' to describe a historical tradition if it's not going to mark a distinction of some kind. Virtually every contemporary philosopher claims to be 'analytic', even if their methods vary wildly. When people start calling Plantinga an analytic philosopher, you know the term has lost most of its meaning. What I'm talking about is the tradition that focuses on analysis, which would include Frege, the Vienna philosophers, Quine, and others. However, my claims may be a bit biased since my department is a top school in history of philosophy and philosophy of religion and only has 3 or 4 professors (out of 25) that are trained to teach 'analytic' topics.
Why resort to a method of getting your cardio up that beats the crap out of your joints when you can get the same exact effect another way?
To be exact, you're not getting the same effect. High-impact exercises build bone density. Astronauts who exercise in space lose bone density no matter how much they exercise, and the same is true of people on earth as they get older.
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but academia is still tied up with traditional philosophical issues. There are only a few departments in the US that I know of that are mostly analytic. This includes UMich, Pittsburgh, MIT, and Rutgers. I'm sure there are others. The problem is that most people get into philosophy because the "old questions" interest them.
Most of the interesting issues in philosophy of science, logic, and language are just not that interesting to people. Most people want to focus on metaphysics, ethics, and other questionable areas.
Even that might be a stretch. In my experience methodological differences divide philosophers as much as they unite them via syllogistic reasoning. The philosopher that rejects metaphysics will reason much differently than those that don't. He will focus on linguistic analysis rather than the study of objects and properties. This is a pretty divisive methodological difference IMHO.
The real problem is the use of a superlative in defining the 'best' government. As with the 'best' anything, you can't really answer without specifying 'best at what'. A statement about value is never objective. It needs to be related to some purposes/ends if it's to make sense, and even then you can debate about whether or not something is really the best.
You can reasonably debate whether democracy is the best for so-and-so, but you can't debate whether its simply the best. That's just rhetoric.
I am not an anthropologist, but I thought the dominant theory was that the New World was populated from various Asian populations in several waves. No one believes that it was just one group, or that it was just one wave. This finding further supports that thesis, along with other findings such as
Kennewick Man in 1996.
Anyone acts strongly against the interests of [insert country's name here] is usually called a 'terrorist'. It's a relational thing. Terrorists for Americans might be called a 'militia' in Iran, or vice-versa.
So casting a meaningless ballot is better than not voting. But it can't just be better. It has to better for someone or some kind of purpose. You've argued that it is better for sending some kind of political message. Okay, So when the independent party candidate looks at the ballot counts for my state, they will notice 76462 did not vote for main party candidates instead of 76461.
It's not better for my purposes though. I have Scooby Doo re-runs to watch during the day, and I'll be damned if I will waste my time on a statistically remote chance to swing the state election by 1 vote. (I don't have TiVO)
Unless you can convince me I don't know what my own interests are, I don't see how it makes a substantial difference for me to vote. If I had control of several thousand votes that would be a different story.
Well you can introduce a game theory scenario, but the difference is that I'm not thinking about other voters, only myself. I only care whether or how they vote insofar as it affects my odds of my single vote swinging the state election. To that end, I can look at the most recent poll data (not really accurate enough) and previous elections. I can also look at voter turnout in my state to run some probabilities. No matter what though, the odds are incredibly low.
Look, I agree with you that the parent poster has presented both candidates' parties naively. Reducing the choices to 'fascism' and 'socialism' is a misunderstanding of the terms, if anything else.
But even ignorant people can do whatever they want. They aren't bound under transcendental duty to vote who is best for them. You can have a perfectly valid argument with a conclusion deductively inferred from a series of premises, but it doesn't much matter if your premises are moral judgments or prescriptions. These aren't the kinds of sentences (states of affairs, propositions, whatever) that can be true or false.
Moral relativism has repeatedly proven false.
Well, all moral theories are equally nonsensical. I don't know where people are getting their moral facts, but I would love to know where.
There are such things as morals.
Existential statements ("there are such and such") strike me as a misuse of language if nothing else.
I'm not advocating any widespread moral theory of voting, least of all utilitarianism. I'm saying that for most individuals, it is worth considering not to vote since it most likely won't make a difference either way.
I see your side too. It might be worth it for some people to give up your spare time to vote, but for many people (if they knew their odds) would probably opt out of it. Ultimately though, what value you, I, or anyone takes in voting is a purely subjective matter. Even if there were less than a thousand eligible voters in my state, I could still decide that the odds aren't favorable enough. I'm trying to represent the side that should be attractive to many people, but for some reason isn't, and I don't think the general population's dismissiveness toward non-voting is warranted.
Whether or not your vote makes a difference depends on voter turnout for your state and the closeness of the election. 99.9999% of the time your individual vote will not make a difference. It's much better to pull a Cindy Sheehan if you want to make a difference as an individual.
If you're generating votes by helping a campaign pander to the masses, I suppose that's a different story.
Each state has a number of votes in the electoral college, which decides which candidate is elected. The only factor that matters for an individual voter is the closeness of the election in their state, not the whole US.
Yeah, it always gets me that voter turnout is interpreted as the-more-the-better. If voter turnout was sufficiently low to make my vote swing a state election, that would be much better (for me anyway, but probably for everyone else too) than where it is today.
It took me a while to weed through your Rock The Vote rhetoric, but from what I can tell you're proposing that casting meaningless ballots is better (for whom/what purpose?) than not voting. I honestly don't get your argument at all.
You can't really offer a counterargument against someone abstaining because they don't like the choices. They are just stating what they think is in their interests. What are you going to do, tell them they're wrong?
"I like potatoes."
"NO YOU DON'T!!"
Besides, if you're going to appeal to moral duty in an argument, you should know that any argument can fly. If you stick to the kinds of premises that have a chance of being true or false you will be less likely to err on the side of logic.
Slashdot Mirror
It's proprietary and full of ads! Just what I wanted, an extension that checks for updates of my Adobe Reader software. Uninstalled. The Firefox team should send a message. Firefox add-ons are not yours to take over like the Windows startup.
Until metaphysics and prescriptive ethics are generally rejected, I think there are more than enough perils in academic philosophy already.
Your argument only works if we concede and use your definition of "planet". The majority of English speakers don't though.
What scientists decide to consider planets or not is of a categorical nature; it has no bearing on the facts themselves but only on how they can be expressed.
Whether Pluto is a planet is a categorical claim, not to be confused with facts (unless you're just using "facts" very loosely). If you ignore this distinction, you will end up doing metaphysics/mysticism.
You DO understand that GPUs, not the CPUs are the bottleneck, but I guess you've never actually shipped any games.
Depends completely on CPU/GPU setup. Try putting a HD 4870 card in an old X2 3800+ box, see how that goes. But I guess you've never shipped any games.
*If you play video games.
Maybe, but you're ignoring the value you would get out of your original investment. That's three years you've had a good computer vs. three years with a subpar one. Besides, laptops aren't really what we're talking about, since they cannot fit a decent graphics card.
Missing: ability to play any recent games at more than 30 fps. The Phenom II destroys Athlon 64 X2, and i7 destroys Phenom II. Think about that.
I've heard the bang-for-your-buck argument in favor of Phenom II, but I don't think it holds up when you consider that an i7 (920) setup is only $300-$400 more, will last much longer than a Phenom II, and presently blows it out of the water in CPU-intensive tasks (especially when OC'd). When you spread that money over two or three years, in the long run its a better deal to just upgrade to the X58 chipset.
I don't really see the point of using the term 'analytic' to describe a historical tradition if it's not going to mark a distinction of some kind. Virtually every contemporary philosopher claims to be 'analytic', even if their methods vary wildly. When people start calling Plantinga an analytic philosopher, you know the term has lost most of its meaning. What I'm talking about is the tradition that focuses on analysis, which would include Frege, the Vienna philosophers, Quine, and others. However, my claims may be a bit biased since my department is a top school in history of philosophy and philosophy of religion and only has 3 or 4 professors (out of 25) that are trained to teach 'analytic' topics.
Why resort to a method of getting your cardio up that beats the crap out of your joints when you can get the same exact effect another way?
To be exact, you're not getting the same effect. High-impact exercises build bone density. Astronauts who exercise in space lose bone density no matter how much they exercise, and the same is true of people on earth as they get older.
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but academia is still tied up with traditional philosophical issues. There are only a few departments in the US that I know of that are mostly analytic. This includes UMich, Pittsburgh, MIT, and Rutgers. I'm sure there are others. The problem is that most people get into philosophy because the "old questions" interest them. Most of the interesting issues in philosophy of science, logic, and language are just not that interesting to people. Most people want to focus on metaphysics, ethics, and other questionable areas.
that is only unified by its tools and methods.
Even that might be a stretch. In my experience methodological differences divide philosophers as much as they unite them via syllogistic reasoning. The philosopher that rejects metaphysics will reason much differently than those that don't. He will focus on linguistic analysis rather than the study of objects and properties. This is a pretty divisive methodological difference IMHO.
The real problem is the use of a superlative in defining the 'best' government. As with the 'best' anything, you can't really answer without specifying 'best at what'. A statement about value is never objective. It needs to be related to some purposes/ends if it's to make sense, and even then you can debate about whether or not something is really the best.
You can reasonably debate whether democracy is the best for so-and-so, but you can't debate whether its simply the best. That's just rhetoric.
I am not an anthropologist, but I thought the dominant theory was that the New World was populated from various Asian populations in several waves. No one believes that it was just one group, or that it was just one wave. This finding further supports that thesis, along with other findings such as Kennewick Man in 1996.
Anyone acts strongly against the interests of [insert country's name here] is usually called a 'terrorist'. It's a relational thing. Terrorists for Americans might be called a 'militia' in Iran, or vice-versa.
So casting a meaningless ballot is better than not voting. But it can't just be better. It has to better for someone or some kind of purpose. You've argued that it is better for sending some kind of political message. Okay, So when the independent party candidate looks at the ballot counts for my state, they will notice 76462 did not vote for main party candidates instead of 76461.
It's not better for my purposes though. I have Scooby Doo re-runs to watch during the day, and I'll be damned if I will waste my time on a statistically remote chance to swing the state election by 1 vote. (I don't have TiVO)
Unless you can convince me I don't know what my own interests are, I don't see how it makes a substantial difference for me to vote. If I had control of several thousand votes that would be a different story.
Well you can introduce a game theory scenario, but the difference is that I'm not thinking about other voters, only myself. I only care whether or how they vote insofar as it affects my odds of my single vote swinging the state election. To that end, I can look at the most recent poll data (not really accurate enough) and previous elections. I can also look at voter turnout in my state to run some probabilities. No matter what though, the odds are incredibly low.
Look, I agree with you that the parent poster has presented both candidates' parties naively. Reducing the choices to 'fascism' and 'socialism' is a misunderstanding of the terms, if anything else.
But even ignorant people can do whatever they want. They aren't bound under transcendental duty to vote who is best for them. You can have a perfectly valid argument with a conclusion deductively inferred from a series of premises, but it doesn't much matter if your premises are moral judgments or prescriptions. These aren't the kinds of sentences (states of affairs, propositions, whatever) that can be true or false.
Moral relativism has repeatedly proven false.
Well, all moral theories are equally nonsensical. I don't know where people are getting their moral facts, but I would love to know where.
There are such things as morals.
Existential statements ("there are such and such") strike me as a misuse of language if nothing else.
I'm not advocating any widespread moral theory of voting, least of all utilitarianism. I'm saying that for most individuals, it is worth considering not to vote since it most likely won't make a difference either way.
I see your side too. It might be worth it for some people to give up your spare time to vote, but for many people (if they knew their odds) would probably opt out of it. Ultimately though, what value you, I, or anyone takes in voting is a purely subjective matter. Even if there were less than a thousand eligible voters in my state, I could still decide that the odds aren't favorable enough. I'm trying to represent the side that should be attractive to many people, but for some reason isn't, and I don't think the general population's dismissiveness toward non-voting is warranted.
Whether or not your vote makes a difference depends on voter turnout for your state and the closeness of the election. 99.9999% of the time your individual vote will not make a difference. It's much better to pull a Cindy Sheehan if you want to make a difference as an individual.
If you're generating votes by helping a campaign pander to the masses, I suppose that's a different story.
Each state has a number of votes in the electoral college, which decides which candidate is elected. The only factor that matters for an individual voter is the closeness of the election in their state, not the whole US.
Yeah, it always gets me that voter turnout is interpreted as the-more-the-better. If voter turnout was sufficiently low to make my vote swing a state election, that would be much better (for me anyway, but probably for everyone else too) than where it is today.
It took me a while to weed through your Rock The Vote rhetoric, but from what I can tell you're proposing that casting meaningless ballots is better (for whom/what purpose?) than not voting. I honestly don't get your argument at all.
You can't really offer a counterargument against someone abstaining because they don't like the choices. They are just stating what they think is in their interests. What are you going to do, tell them they're wrong?
"I like potatoes."
"NO YOU DON'T!!"
Besides, if you're going to appeal to moral duty in an argument, you should know that any argument can fly. If you stick to the kinds of premises that have a chance of being true or false you will be less likely to err on the side of logic.