And the differences are meaningful, and often important, but rarely worth the vitriol and venom that goes into articulating them.
Belief in a magical man in the sky, whatever flavor and variation that belief comes in, is one difference worth a great deal of vitriol and venom from atheists. This is especially clear given how actions by believers in support of their religion, often to the intentional detriment of non-believers, negatively affect people around the world physically, emotionally, and intellectually. And before the obvious rebuttal, no amount of good done by religious people absolves the institution of the ills done in its name.
Things we are deeply certain about generate very little in the way of zealotry
This might be true in the case of atheism if there wasn't a vast majority of people totally certain about the exact opposite, to the point where it interferes in the rationally thinking person's daily life. Until that is no longer the case, I hope people continue being as strong and vocal supporters of atheism as they can personally afford.
I think you meant the Declaration of Independence, a much more awesome document IMO.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
And yes, I'd like to think that applies to everyone.
But who payed for the routers? I agree that private companies own them, but did government money, in the form of either tax breaks or other gifts to telecommunications companies help to pay for them?
If so, this becomes a lot more murky, as are most libertarian issues where government is already involved. Most will agree that government shouldn't be involved, but what if they are already? How to you address the current situation?
Nice attempt to troll with the Thought Police statement on crimethink, though.
Someone, somewhere (likely) bought a copy. People are using a copy of their copy. This is not allowed by copyright law. This is no more an ethical problem than watching your friend's copy at their house, on their TV, is an ethical problem.
It is the size of the sharing of the media that starts to break the distribution system, not the sharing itself. If everyone shares just a few purchased copies, the current system breaks. This is the problem, not some ethical issue of fairness to artists or people "stealing" something that someone else had to pay money for - despite the fact that no one was deprived of the product by this "theft".
This is such a great issue for armchair ethicists to feel superior about. However, the technical issues of distribution and compensation are the real problems, problems I feel are being ignored in favor of endless, pointless arguments about ethics.
Most states do a "winner-take-all" system where the candidate with the most votes gets all of the electors for that state.
Individual votes from ordinary voters do make a difference... in fact a huge difference.
These statements appear to be contradictory. It seems to me, and you seem to agree in the first quote here, that everyone who voted for the less popular candidate(s) in most states will have their vote ignored in the electoral college system, as all the delegates will have voted for the majority-backed candidate. Please correct my logic if I'm in error - this topic really interests me and this seems to be a massive inequity in our (the United States') system.
You "die"? You lose your ship and have to return to the wreck if you want to get back about half of the items you had on you (rest are destroyed). Didn't have an up-to-date clone? (this costs money): you lose skill points for good and will have to wait real-world time to retrain them.
Full time, all the time PvP and one world for all players. Usually more than 20,000 accounts logged in, peeks much higher on weekends. Leave the "safer" zones protected by NPC cops and anyone can and will kill you, sometimes just for the LOLZ.
Sound harsh? It is. I play it and love it but sometimes you need something a little softer - like Warhammer Online, which I also play.
Doesn't this show that intense violent video games might very well have a desensitizing effect on kids? I'm not talking about stupid theories about turning kids into killers, I just mean that they might react less strongly, and possibly less negatively, to violence after playing Grand Theft Auto. Something to think about. Anyone have any studies based on this?
p.s. I'm a gamer and personally love GTA and many other other very violent games.
The problem is that all the articles become unnavigable messses of shit trivia and geek mastubatry nonsense.
Citation needed. The web-comics article deletion fiasco showed quite clearly how the administrators used the deletion policy when relating to entire articles, not just trivia added to other articles.
Low per capita GPD can also mean that they still have many, many people not working in a fully industrialized economy. You know, dirt poor people doing subsistence level farming.
Looking up some numbers from the CIA World Factbook, it looks like China is running 11.4% GDP real growth rate, where the US is at 2.2% (it says these are 2007 estimates). Also, China's current account balance, again 2007 est, is $360.7 billion where the US is listed as -$738.6 billion. Please correct me if these are not the correct figures, but based on this it appears that they are both "swimming in money" and have very strong economic growth. Also, -$737.6 billion? Ouch.
The economists in our survey favor Obama on 11 of the top 13 issues. But keep in mind that 48 percent are Democrats and only 17 percent are Republicans.
This was a comment on the number of people who thought Obama was the best on the 13 top issues. Thus, the number of people who said they were Democrats would matter. It isn't an excuse or some kind of dressing for the numbers.
The highest levels take tons of dedication and that should never be discounted. However, no amount of training, conditioning, and hard work is going to turn a tall person into an Olympic gymnast or a short person into a pro basketball player. A person born without enough fast twitch muscle in their legs isn't winning the fastest times (correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think this can be trained) and people with larger hearts and naturally better circulatory systems do massively better in endurance events than average people, given equal training (people like Lance Armstrong, who also trained like a madman).
I'm not sure how this relates to video games, though. I do wonder if there are things like vision acuity or reaction time that people would be genetically better positioned to use at the top levels, once training time and hardware are maximized.
Don't be too proud of this technological terror they've constructed. The ability to destroy an office chair is insignificant next to the power of the iForce. But maybe you're not frighted by Steve Jobs' sorcerous ways?
My Gmail account was fine on Monday, but down most of Friday (08/15/2008) with something they called a "502" error. I sent them an email (from another service) detailing the problem and got a response back about 4 hours later, and hour or so after my email was accessible again.
The Friday outage that hit me was only being reported by users in the Gmail support forums at http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Discussion. I didn't see any Google staff answering those posts. I also couldn't find any news sites (including Slashdot) carrying this story, even the ones that had Monday's outage front-paged.
People suggesting two leagues in sports, modified and unmodified have the right idea I think. But that doesn't show the long-term side effects of these drugs. Those who overdose on stuff to look like the Hunk won't been doing it for long, but they only need to make it through that one Olympic competition to get that medal.
Therefore, I propose another solution - seniority requirements for the top places in big athletic events. If you want to complete for a medal in the Olympics this time, you need to have completed in, say, 3 other Olympics in the same events, but in non-medal competitions.
People can watch young freaks of nature, stupidly drugged up, complete in non-medal events, and then never hear from them again because of the horrible side effects these drugs seem to have.
They can also watch people who've been doing their sport for more than a decade at the Olympic level and are really, really good at it -- just not at the super-human levels that could have been reached very briefly if they'd overdosed on the stuff in their youth.
There would be no testing need. If these drugs really are as bad as they are presented, older athletes that took drugs in their youth shouldn't stand a chance against more "clean" athletes at the same experience level. The rewards of an Olympic medal would only go to those who act intelligently and manage their health over the long-term.
Of course that doesn't mean they won't use these drugs. Maybe aided by intelligent use and long-term planning of currently suppressed drugs we could have athletes competing at this more experienced and balanced level well into their 60s or 70s. That seems like a good thing, something that might even lead to empirical evidence of positive uses for these drugs through competitive pressures, uses of which the general public could take advantage.
Wasn't there an article a few weeks back about how PR departments mostly cared about burying bad early reviews if the movie really stank? Otherwise, early reviews were countered by good word-of-mouth from people who saw the movie and good first-weekend reviews in papers.
Sounds like this really is a stinker if they are trying this hard. I'm trying to find this article now, I'll post if I find it...
The article doesn't say, but it seems logical that they would want the US military network to be able to handle both an attack like the one launched earlier this year against Georgia's internet infrastructure (likely by Russia) and the almost-certainly Russian-based one during actual armed conflict this week.
DoD has a budget of about $439.3 billion and DARPA gets $3.2 billion of that (according to Wikipedia). $4.4 million doesn't sound like that much out of that kind of budget, but I'd be interested in what they actually come up with. Doubt the general public will see anything created by this project for at least 10 years, though.
Slashdot Mirror
And the differences are meaningful, and often important, but rarely worth the vitriol and venom that goes into articulating them.
Belief in a magical man in the sky, whatever flavor and variation that belief comes in, is one difference worth a great deal of vitriol and venom from atheists. This is especially clear given how actions by believers in support of their religion, often to the intentional detriment of non-believers, negatively affect people around the world physically, emotionally, and intellectually. And before the obvious rebuttal, no amount of good done by religious people absolves the institution of the ills done in its name.
Things we are deeply certain about generate very little in the way of zealotry
This might be true in the case of atheism if there wasn't a vast majority of people totally certain about the exact opposite, to the point where it interferes in the rationally thinking person's daily life. Until that is no longer the case, I hope people continue being as strong and vocal supporters of atheism as they can personally afford.
I read it and went, "kdawson accidentally the $100 Linux Wall-Mart!"
Also, it would need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.
I think you meant the Declaration of Independence, a much more awesome document IMO.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
And yes, I'd like to think that applies to everyone.
The US economy to fall far enough that China has more expensive labor than the US?
But who payed for the routers? I agree that private companies own them, but did government money, in the form of either tax breaks or other gifts to telecommunications companies help to pay for them?
If so, this becomes a lot more murky, as are most libertarian issues where government is already involved. Most will agree that government shouldn't be involved, but what if they are already? How to you address the current situation?
Nice attempt to troll with the Thought Police statement on crimethink, though.
Someone, somewhere (likely) bought a copy. People are using a copy of their copy. This is not allowed by copyright law. This is no more an ethical problem than watching your friend's copy at their house, on their TV, is an ethical problem.
It is the size of the sharing of the media that starts to break the distribution system, not the sharing itself. If everyone shares just a few purchased copies, the current system breaks. This is the problem, not some ethical issue of fairness to artists or people "stealing" something that someone else had to pay money for - despite the fact that no one was deprived of the product by this "theft".
This is such a great issue for armchair ethicists to feel superior about. However, the technical issues of distribution and compensation are the real problems, problems I feel are being ignored in favor of endless, pointless arguments about ethics.
Just don't leave your computer watching hulu.com all day - it'll rot its brain.
Now I'm sorry I asked...
Of course we have to tell you: no one here reads the comments, summary, or article.
What you are saying seems inconsistent.
Most states do a "winner-take-all" system where the candidate with the most votes gets all of the electors for that state.
Individual votes from ordinary voters do make a difference... in fact a huge difference.
These statements appear to be contradictory. It seems to me, and you seem to agree in the first quote here, that everyone who voted for the less popular candidate(s) in most states will have their vote ignored in the electoral college system, as all the delegates will have voted for the majority-backed candidate. Please correct my logic if I'm in error - this topic really interests me and this seems to be a massive inequity in our (the United States') system.
Want that kind of challenge? Play Eve Online: http://eve-online.com/
You "die"? You lose your ship and have to return to the wreck if you want to get back about half of the items you had on you (rest are destroyed). Didn't have an up-to-date clone? (this costs money): you lose skill points for good and will have to wait real-world time to retrain them.
Full time, all the time PvP and one world for all players. Usually more than 20,000 accounts logged in, peeks much higher on weekends. Leave the "safer" zones protected by NPC cops and anyone can and will kill you, sometimes just for the LOLZ.
Sound harsh? It is. I play it and love it but sometimes you need something a little softer - like Warhammer Online, which I also play.
Doesn't this show that intense violent video games might very well have a desensitizing effect on kids? I'm not talking about stupid theories about turning kids into killers, I just mean that they might react less strongly, and possibly less negatively, to violence after playing Grand Theft Auto. Something to think about. Anyone have any studies based on this?
p.s.
I'm a gamer and personally love GTA and many other other very violent games.
The problem is that all the articles become unnavigable messses of shit trivia and geek mastubatry nonsense.
Citation needed. The web-comics article deletion fiasco showed quite clearly how the administrators used the deletion policy when relating to entire articles, not just trivia added to other articles.
Low per capita GPD can also mean that they still have many, many people not working in a fully industrialized economy. You know, dirt poor people doing subsistence level farming.
Looking up some numbers from the CIA World Factbook, it looks like China is running 11.4% GDP real growth rate, where the US is at 2.2% (it says these are 2007 estimates). Also, China's current account balance, again 2007 est, is $360.7 billion where the US is listed as -$738.6 billion. Please correct me if these are not the correct figures, but based on this it appears that they are both "swimming in money" and have very strong economic growth. Also, -$737.6 billion? Ouch.
China https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html
USA: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
Oh, I'm sorry, this Internet is for abuse. You want Internet 12A, just along the corridor.
The economists in our survey favor Obama on 11 of the top 13 issues. But keep in mind that 48 percent are Democrats and only 17 percent are Republicans.
This was a comment on the number of people who thought Obama was the best on the 13 top issues. Thus, the number of people who said they were Democrats would matter. It isn't an excuse or some kind of dressing for the numbers.
You can use "that other company's" name. I mean, we are talking about Microsoft here not Lord Voldemort, right?
The highest levels take tons of dedication and that should never be discounted. However, no amount of training, conditioning, and hard work is going to turn a tall person into an Olympic gymnast or a short person into a pro basketball player. A person born without enough fast twitch muscle in their legs isn't winning the fastest times (correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think this can be trained) and people with larger hearts and naturally better circulatory systems do massively better in endurance events than average people, given equal training (people like Lance Armstrong, who also trained like a madman).
I'm not sure how this relates to video games, though. I do wonder if there are things like vision acuity or reaction time that people would be genetically better positioned to use at the top levels, once training time and hardware are maximized.
Don't be too proud of this technological terror they've constructed. The ability to destroy an office chair is insignificant next to the power of the iForce. But maybe you're not frighted by Steve Jobs' sorcerous ways?
My Gmail account was fine on Monday, but down most of Friday (08/15/2008) with something they called a "502" error. I sent them an email (from another service) detailing the problem and got a response back about 4 hours later, and hour or so after my email was accessible again.
The Friday outage that hit me was only being reported by users in the Gmail support forums at http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Discussion. I didn't see any Google staff answering those posts. I also couldn't find any news sites (including Slashdot) carrying this story, even the ones that had Monday's outage front-paged.
People suggesting two leagues in sports, modified and unmodified have the right idea I think. But that doesn't show the long-term side effects of these drugs. Those who overdose on stuff to look like the Hunk won't been doing it for long, but they only need to make it through that one Olympic competition to get that medal.
Therefore, I propose another solution - seniority requirements for the top places in big athletic events. If you want to complete for a medal in the Olympics this time, you need to have completed in, say, 3 other Olympics in the same events, but in non-medal competitions.
People can watch young freaks of nature, stupidly drugged up, complete in non-medal events, and then never hear from them again because of the horrible side effects these drugs seem to have.
They can also watch people who've been doing their sport for more than a decade at the Olympic level and are really, really good at it -- just not at the super-human levels that could have been reached very briefly if they'd overdosed on the stuff in their youth.
There would be no testing need. If these drugs really are as bad as they are presented, older athletes that took drugs in their youth shouldn't stand a chance against more "clean" athletes at the same experience level. The rewards of an Olympic medal would only go to those who act intelligently and manage their health over the long-term.
Of course that doesn't mean they won't use these drugs. Maybe aided by intelligent use and long-term planning of currently suppressed drugs we could have athletes competing at this more experienced and balanced level well into their 60s or 70s. That seems like a good thing, something that might even lead to empirical evidence of positive uses for these drugs through competitive pressures, uses of which the general public could take advantage.
Wasn't there an article a few weeks back about how PR departments mostly cared about burying bad early reviews if the movie really stank? Otherwise, early reviews were countered by good word-of-mouth from people who saw the movie and good first-weekend reviews in papers.
Sounds like this really is a stinker if they are trying this hard. I'm trying to find this article now, I'll post if I find it...
The article doesn't say, but it seems logical that they would want the US military network to be able to handle both an attack like the one launched earlier this year against Georgia's internet infrastructure (likely by Russia) and the almost-certainly Russian-based one during actual armed conflict this week.
DoD has a budget of about $439.3 billion and DARPA gets $3.2 billion of that (according to Wikipedia). $4.4 million doesn't sound like that much out of that kind of budget, but I'd be interested in what they actually come up with. Doubt the general public will see anything created by this project for at least 10 years, though.