Only because you were using those tools on the wrong objects. The crowbar in HL is not for breaking up palettes but is for brutally bludgeoning scientists! Beating scientists dead was one of my favorite self-invented mini-games for the original HL.
As for the chainsaw, you won't find a single palette for cutting in Doom. Why? Because cutting wood is boring, but violently splattering bits of demon flesh is a most spectactular use of a chainsaw. Now, I lack demons to try this on, but given the simple ease with which my scoutmaster's chainsaw sliced his thigh right open (not even running BTW) I'd wager that a chainsaw will give you the desired results when applied to a rack of beef ribs for your next BBQ. Just don't expect there to be much left to grill.
Note: I'm an engineer, the tinkering cousin of the delicate scientist, I would hate to see them come to crowbar harm. I only endorse the violent beatings of digital scientists as they don't so much postulate and experiment as wander about, too stupid to evacuate a facility that is overrun with zombie alien things.;)
I agree with the other responder to your post. Don't believe the "OMFG did you hear about this old lady that poured coffee on herself and ripped off McDonalds?!?!?!" heresay from a friend or the internet. Go read the actual case facts. What it boils down to (pun not intended but enjoyed) is that the McDonalds in question was serving coffee at temps well above established standards and recommended industry guidelines. They had already received multiple complaints that their product was too hot, but had done nothing to change it. I believe the temp they were serving it at was 170 to 180 degrees, somewhere in that range, again, follow the other poster's link and read for yourself. This was 20 degrees above the norm for hot coffee from a restaurant. 20 degrees doesn't sound like much but the fact is that the risk of and severity of burns increases greatly at temps above 160 degrees. If they had served it at accepted industy temps then the woman may have only received minor burns and it would have likely been only a complaint instead of a suit. What happened was she received THIRD DEGREE SCALD BURNS. Hot coffee is expected to be hot. Hot coffee that causes third degree burns is too hot (3rd degree burns require skin grafts and cause permanent nerve damage). I think most people can accept that as a general rule of thumb, especially when you consider that your lips are one of the most sensistive places on your body by nerve density. This court decision was correct because the injury potential was high, McDonalds knew about the potential for harm and did nothing to alter their behavior, and there was sufficient industry evidence that altering their product to conform to accepted standards would not have significanly affected it's sale potential. Don't take our word for it, go read the court findings to validate this for yourself.
Oh, and as to the "now she's rich" part, that too is bogus. She initially asked for enough to recover her exact medical costs only. McDonalds refused so she sued for a larger amount. That amount was first granted, but then later was significanlty reduced. I forget what the final dollar value was but suffice to say it wasn't enough for her to go off and live a rich millionaire fantasy life.
I bought a mini just before they were discontinued, but my other friends have bought the 20 gig, 40 gig, and nano versions of the ipod. None of their purchases came with rubberized earbuds that form a seal in the ear, all of them are regular bud types with the slip-on foam covers. So what are these earbuds you're talking about? Are they even sold by Apple? Made by Apple? They don't seem to be the default option that comes with the product so I don't really see how a specific type of earbud that is not distributed with the ipod could be construed as "ipods cause hearing loss." In addition, as others have said, this suit has already come up in other forms, and since Apple complies with sound level regulations it looks like they've got a pretty clean case for no liability. Plus this is yet another lawsuit where the person harmed had a great deal of control over the company's product but they are somehow disavowing any personal responsibility for the damage caused. If you crank the volume on ANY sound reproduction device, and output that to sealed headphones of ANY type at maximum levels then it's a safe bet you're hurting your ears. That ringing you hear everytime you finish listening to your music? Yeah, that's your ears telling you to turn it down!
Personal responsiblity seems to be lost in this age, people need to own up to their own dumb-assery. Apple was not telling people it was ok to blast music at any volume you like with no ill effects, they are not directly responsible for some people's misuse of this particular product.
The worst possible outcome, of course, is that someone appears who is a raving fascist, but is a master showman who can appear to be a likeable man of the people. We all know how that turns out.
Thank you for the thoughtful and informative reply. I didn't have a hell of a lot of time to read up on this, I knew the timing was close to 9/11 at least.
So, a fall of the Soviet Government and the formation of a Russian govt. that doesn't consider the US an enemy (maybe not best freind either but...) isn't an extradinary event in your mind?
While your point is a good one, it's not what Bush has in mind, no doubt. Likely the American people will never get a straight answer, just as we haven't from this administration for any number of borderline or flagrantly illegal or stupid acts. My guess is that the "extraordinary act" that Bush would be most likely to cite is a combination of 9/11 and "rogue states with WMDs" even though it's pretty clear that neither of these would really apply to this treaty. The major reason for this is probably to allow the Bush camp to pursue their true dream of authorizing the use of so-called "tactical nukes". I must admit I don't know much about the ABM Treaty, but I'm willing to bet it has some more of those pesky international statutes that get in the way of Bush authorizing low-grade nuke strikes against anyone he pleases. Remeber, the department of DEFENSE has been in the business of OFFENSE for decades. Don't look to the defensive reasons (possibly functional missle shield) for these changes in policy, look to the offensive reasons (better war toys). There you will find the true motivations.
Just my gut feeling from the way everything else has been spun and twisted by this administration. As the grandparent post said, please correct me if I'm wrong.
"searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment--subject only to a few specially established and well-delineated exceptions."
THANK YOU! I can't even count the number of times just this week that I have seen or heard people refer to the NSA wiretapping as "warranted" because we're in a "state of war". (Amazing how we can be in a state of war w/o having declared such, the authorization of the use of force being completely different legally, although lametably it seems in practice it's being treated the same.) People act as if there is no precedent to any of this when in fact the laws are well defined, have been tested and upheld, and clearly show that there are prescribed methods for legally performing these searches. Ignoring them because they are inconvenient or counter to an agenda is not an acceptable reason, and clandestinely informing certain members of congress that you're breaking the law does not, I repeat NOT, excuse you from breaking the law!
It's perfectly fine to say "IF it has always happened this way" then this is how things played out. The problem arises when you flatly refuse to listen to, and try to belittle anyone who says that the tub was filled beforehand.
Yes but you're creating a logical fallacy. In the scenario of filling the tub with water, there is a KNOWN AND PROVEN method bey which the tub could have been filled beforehand by someone opening the faucet all the way. Whereas with mutation and evolution there is NO KNOWN OR PROVEN method which could have "filled the tub" of the original steps to create an organism. I'm assuming that in your post you're arguing for the idea that god created creatures at some level of completeness and since that time they have evolved slowly. Except that there is absolutely no provable evidence that this is what occurred. All of the fossil records, carbon dating, DNA sequencing, etc point to the slow and steady progress of species. There is, however, no evidence that demonstrates that some unknown super-being created lifeforms wholly from nothing. What evidence have we found that has no other plausible explanation than "god did it"? In your false analogy with the filling of a tub the scientist - if he's worth his salt - would not in fact be fooled into thinking the tub was filled over a long time by the slow drip. he would postulate that could have happened but also recognize that the other mechanism of using hte faucet is available and the tub could have been partially filled to begin with. However this is the real world, occams razor applies in this case. Is it more likely that evolutionary changes through mutation and adaptation and selection occurring over hundreds of millions of years got us to where we are, or is there an invisible all-knowing super-being that can create life in a complete and finished form through sheer will? We know that adaptation and natural selection occur, examples of these have been found. The one I know off the top of my head is the moths in Britain that adapted to pollution by the ones with dark colorings that blended in to smog-stained buildings survived, while the white moths were eaten by predators because they stood out. Except for (heavily altered over time) ancient writings that come from a time when people understood little more than how to shape rocks and smelt simple soft metals, there has been no evidence that some invisble super-being is guiding or created life on this planet. To those who say that god is at work all the time but we cannot recognize his influence, I say how does that explain, predict, or prove anything? I could also tell you that objects are held to the earth by tiny invisible strings which are woven by gnomes. The gnomes however are very fast and very tiny, so we can never see them. You can't prove that statement wrong because by definition I have made it impossible to discern this influence. In the exact same way, the argument that some un-discernible diety has kick-started life on this planet or is currently invisibly altering the flow of events are unprovable by definition and could be replaced by any similar argument, hence the premise behind the creation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Therefore we see that the premise that 'god did it' is at best not able to be narrowed down to what that god is, as it could have been any entity that meets the definitions of being all-powerful and undetectible. This doesn't advance human knowledge, or give us insight into how anything works. It does not allow predictions and cannot be falsified. In other words, it is NOT science. Because scientific theories undergo rigorous testing by many people according to accepted and proven methods to try to discern facts that provide a framework that provides us with useful and appliable knowledge. In your analogy with the bathtub only your one scientist makes the wrong assumption, but rigorous study of the problem by others would bring to light the fact that the tub being pre-filled could have been a possibility. In the case of evolution, rigorous study by th
Trip, I find it absolutely hilarious that you're concerned with people taking offense over your use of text smilies, yet your every post has the most elaborate signature I've seen on/. The irony is, as they say, delicious.
Re the bit about voting for third parties. It's pretty useless as things stand right now, I think a large majority of Americans literally do not know there are more than just the two major parties, really, it's a scary concept but I've run into folks who stare at me like I blurted gibberish when I mention the words "green party". Personally in the last election I voted green, but not even because I totally agreed with their stance (although to be fair I agreed with more with them than with dems or repubs). I voted for a 3rd party, any 3rd would do since our screwed up system requires a party to capture so much of the popular vote to be automatically included in the national process, such as the debates. Understandably the bar has to be set somewhere, it would be chaos if every person who wanted to run for pres got equal time, but what's amazing is how hard it is to get just the minimum required number to be nationally recognized.
Bit off my topic there, anyway, I'm in Massachusetts, so we're a blue stae through and through. I didn't expect it to go any other way and I wasn't let down. Unfortunately my vote really didn't matter, yet again, because not only did MA still go blue (as anticipated) but there weren't even enough 3rd party votes to get them recognized. Most of the people I talked to about this revealed that they (like me) voted for whatever party for one or two very particular reasons, to the exclusion of all others. As long as one of the two major parties have an opinion that matches the key issues for a particular voter they seem satisfied. One person voted republican because it meant lower taxes for them, but they were completely ambivalent to my points that the republicans were going to continue the war, were already besmirching America in international politics, and were very likely going to devalue the dollar further by continuing massive deficits. The person didn't even argue for or against these points, they just didn't matter. He cared that republicans were for lowering his taxes, so that's all he needed to know. Others reasons fell along the same lines. People pick what's important to them and vote on that, very few seem to do their homework and find out what other party opinions and policies they will be voting for along with that one key interest for them. An informed voting public i think would quickly find that national major-party politicians do not match with a majority of a person's opinions. And that is why the parent stressed the idea of localizing political opinions and building from there. It's much easier to congregate a community of like-minded individuals and generate politicians to represent them from that smaller base than it is to expect a national candidate put up by the national party to have any sort of relation to the needs of a particular community. Just my two cents.
Despite the warnings of the parent post to not immediately trust those who agree with your opinions I've added you as a friend. You raise some excellent points about the SS system and it's likely imminent collapse which I happen to agree with. Also you're well spoken and your grammar doesn't make me want to vomit.:)
As a psychologist, I need to have a name. Citation is more important. His name means nothing to me (I've read a fair bit of psychology-related research, too), so I am going to need some information.
Being a psychologist you should be familiar with the concept of RESEARCH. Given that you might have tried - oh hell, I dunno, let me come up with something crazy - maybe clicking on the link to the PDF that the original poster gave? From that you would have very quickly discovered the author's name is Carl Pacifico.
I would therefore appreciate some more information about how these conclusions were reached and what the research supporting them is like.
I know this might sound foreign but I bet real money if you read the linked document it might just answer those exact questions, or maybe a google search on the author. Holy god, who could have thought of that? It would take someone with a degree in brain science... perhaps a psychologist even?
Google execs make an attempt to not look evil, one that costs them nothing, and the editors eat it up.
Granted, they are making boatloads of money, but the POINT is that their "salaries" are determined by company performance. So if in fact they started doing evil and the market punished them for it by selling off google, then guess what? Their incomes are directly affected. The main difference is that most company execs make a disproportionately huge salary AND get as many stock options as these guys do. How many CEOs lately have been tanking the company while reaping huge salaries and then taking off in a golden parachute deal after everything goes to hell? Without a guaranteed $XX million per year shielding them from company troubles they are much more inclined to run the company well. The only reason that these dollar figures are so outrageously large is not because they're evil and robbing the company blind, it's because google stock is through the roof. If google were priced closer to others in its sector we'd be talking about maybe 200 million in income instead of over a billion.
Also, getting stock is no guarantee of salary, I'm not sure the details of their contracts but if it's in the form of options then they must be purchased and vest first, plus you can't just dump every sahre you own at once or that action itself will kill the share price (when we're talking about millions of shares). They started a company that has grown to practically represent the internet for some folks and certainly have redefined search and web business models for most others, I think a handy billion profit from a company they created that's doing so well is ok in a capitalist economy. Read about what some other CEOs are doing right now, especially at companies cutting pensions, I think you'll find that the guys at google are far from evil with their current pay deals.
Spend five minutes in a Cingular wireless store and you will see what the average person thinks
when they aren't able to transfer previously purchased ringtones or games to their new phones.
Agreed, this is one of the most common cases of DRM woes that Joe Public is just now starting to come to grips with. In a case like this it's especially easy to see how DRM is there for the company's benefit and not yours, and on top of that it's hard to make the case that this is somehow stopping piracy. Now if every user could transfer files between anyone's phones then there might be a piracy issue, but you can't so there isn't. And there's nothing stopping a cellular provider from having a proprietary application in the store that would give them and only them the ability to transfer your legally purchased ringtones/wallpapers/what-have-you from your old phone to your new one. This is how they handle number portability (store-access-only app to perform task), there's really no reason they can't do the same with phone files. It's telling then that they DON'T offer this service. The argument can be made that they simply haven't caught up to their own technological demands yet, i.e. it's a new problem for them and they will fix it soon, but I'm willing to bet that this won't be the case.
We will continue to see more and more instances of companies using DRM to force the consumer to repurchase the same products over and over again, it's a huge cash cow for them and your average user just doesn't know any better. All it takes is a slight change in format from one release of a phone to the next and voila! Everything old is new again, as in you automagically don't own any of those songs you "bought". Well, you still have them, just don't expect to ever use them on another device, and good luck if your current device dies.
I think one of the fair-use rights that needs to be examined and codified in detail when all this comes up in the courts, as it surely will soon, is some legal definition for media transactions. Are you licensing the media? Getting a license only for that specific device/format? Are you purchasing it outright without distribution rights? This needs to be strictly defined and mandated across the board. Right now the terms of the sale are completely to the corporations' advantage because they switch between the above options depending on what you are buying and from whom, and it's never very clear anyway. How many people would actually continue to purchase digital media if there were large clear labels on their purchase that told them 'This media can only be used on the device for which it was purchased and may never be copied, backed up, transferred to another device, or format, ever.'? As it stands right now people think 'hey I paid money for it, I own it.' and expect the rights that come along with physcially owning something. they are in fact receiving something very different. Personally I feel it's a bait-and-switch by the companies; including a 50 line legalease licensing agreement in 4 pt text at the end of a 12 page user contract (or shrinkwrap EULA) is full disclosure in name only.
Ok, usually I stay out of the viruses vs virii arguments but no one called you on it and you abused the hell out of it in your post. Case in point check out this line:
They can only find known virii. Maybe being 'protected' from tens of thousands of viruses comforts you
You used both spellings within 10 words of each other, that's what prompted me to action. Sorry. Look, virii is NOT A WORD. the correct plural is VIRUSES, please take note for the future. Thanks!:)
Oh I am indeed a cowboy bebop fan, I just find the mess of space junk a much more reasonable scenario than a huge chunk of the moon blowing off and littering our orbit. Granted, humanity is great at cataclysmic mistakes but I think we're still a ways off on blowing out a chunk of moon, perhaps when we build the ultimate particle accelerator complex on the moon.;)
In any case I am aware than space is really unbelievably big, I mean really big, I mean like badly paraphrasing Douglas Adams mind-bogglingly big, and not just in general, but even the amount of room around the earth at orbit level is, well, it's a sphere so surface area is what, 4/3 pi*r^3 or is that volume? Either way, it's massive. The problem, as someone else pointed out, is we're interested in using very specific bands at very specific distances from the earth. So perhaps we're not going to pollute the whole sphere of orbits but we may get enough accumulated junk to guarantee collisions in, say, the band where our GPS satellites sit now. The other problem is that some of this stuff won't go away, it will just keep orbiting and as it collides with other bits in the cloud or decays in orbit slightly it will become such a shifting mess that we can't accurately predict where it will all be at any given time. Although long term this wouldn't spell planet-grounding for us, it certainly would wreak havoc on current systems which rely on those satellites. The idea someone else posted of terrorists or (more likely) a rogue state launching a payload of ballbearings & explosives into GPS orbit seems entirely plausible. Gotta figure that's a relatively cheap and easy way to level the playing field a bit if you know you're going to be engaging the US military. Will it cripple us? Definitely not, but it will make a lot of our fancy hyper-accurate guided missles almost useless. (I know, we have lots of other systems like target lasing still.) Of course it all sounds a lot easier on paper then it would be in practice, still I expect this is a problem that humanity will have to face at some point as we continue to populate our skies.
One of the many shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot-with-tech scenarios that I have always been afraid of is the one in which through some, possibly minor at first, event in orbit our hundreds of satellites are smashed by debris and fan out smashing more in a chain reaction. The end result being that the earth is surrounded by a junk field that prevents any access to space because the probability of a fatal collision with junk is almost 1. Now, I'm sure there are a bunch of orbital physics geeks who can share their field knowledge and explain why that is unlikely or impossible (given different orbital heights and paths and decay of orbits into the atmosphere) currently, but I think it is still a wholly plausible future scenario when we have way more stuff in orbit than we do currently.
For example, the EU is now setting up it's own system of GPS satellites. How long until global politics force other countries like China, India, Korea, Japan, etc to put their own systems in place to ensure GPS access during troubled times? Plus communications continue to evolve towards satellite based systems for various reasons and as more countries reach 1st-class tech status they will want their own resources. The idea is that eventually without a specific system in place to mitigate risk humanity could doom itself to staying planetside for generations while we wait for junk to reenter the atmo, or be collected by robots or something.
Maybe now is the time to come up with some plans for the future to do more than just track space junk, and in fact move on to collecting, dispersing, or destroying it.
Can't help myself responding to ACs sometimes. I said 'someone feel free to prove me right or wrong', I did not in fact dictate that, it was a request for backup or rebuttal from someone who had the time or actual knowledge relating to my comments.
For the record, I was right and you're still an incorrect AC, way to uphold the stereotype. Here's the wikipedia article on Common Carriers. It states that ISPs - as in Information Service Providers - are considered (surprise surprise) information services and NOT common carriers and thus are handled under a different set of regulations (Title I instead of Title II) of the Communications Act.
I don't have time to find the relevant links, but I don't think ISPs actually have Common Carrier Status in the US. I appreciate your sentiment, but unfortunately you can't hold them hostage over a status they don't have. Someone feel free to prove me right or wrong.
You may be an AC but bravo for hitting the nail on the head. If you don't read LewRockwell.com then you will find it an excellent daily source of detailed analysis and examples of the types of mega-government abuses you outlined.
Just wanted to say thanks for being the first person to correctly defend this false assertion by Bush and Co that Clinton did the exact same thing, when in fact there were stark legal differences. the biggest difference in this case of course being that there are legal provisions set up by FISA that explicitly apply to what Bush has done and he simply chose to ignore them for no [realistic] reason. His excuse that the 2001 congressional authorization of the use of force gives him this power is complete bunk. Yes, it does imply that along with the use of force he may gain all relevent military intel that he needs, but he still has to do so within the law, nothing about the declaration said he could collect such intel without using the prescribed procedures and channels.
Also, thanks for replying to your detractors with sources, I understand their skepticism at facts presented blindly on/. and it's always a plus when a poster is diligent enough to back up his opinion with sources. I'm adding you as a friend since your post demonstrates a level of integrity mostly lacking here.:)
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Only because you were using those tools on the wrong objects. The crowbar in HL is not for breaking up palettes but is for brutally bludgeoning scientists! Beating scientists dead was one of my favorite self-invented mini-games for the original HL.
As for the chainsaw, you won't find a single palette for cutting in Doom. Why? Because cutting wood is boring, but violently splattering bits of demon flesh is a most spectactular use of a chainsaw. Now, I lack demons to try this on, but given the simple ease with which my scoutmaster's chainsaw sliced his thigh right open (not even running BTW) I'd wager that a chainsaw will give you the desired results when applied to a rack of beef ribs for your next BBQ. Just don't expect there to be much left to grill.
Note: I'm an engineer, the tinkering cousin of the delicate scientist, I would hate to see them come to crowbar harm. I only endorse the violent beatings of digital scientists as they don't so much postulate and experiment as wander about, too stupid to evacuate a facility that is overrun with zombie alien things. ;)
Oh, and as to the "now she's rich" part, that too is bogus. She initially asked for enough to recover her exact medical costs only. McDonalds refused so she sued for a larger amount. That amount was first granted, but then later was significanlty reduced. I forget what the final dollar value was but suffice to say it wasn't enough for her to go off and live a rich millionaire fantasy life.
I bought a mini just before they were discontinued, but my other friends have bought the 20 gig, 40 gig, and nano versions of the ipod. None of their purchases came with rubberized earbuds that form a seal in the ear, all of them are regular bud types with the slip-on foam covers. So what are these earbuds you're talking about? Are they even sold by Apple? Made by Apple? They don't seem to be the default option that comes with the product so I don't really see how a specific type of earbud that is not distributed with the ipod could be construed as "ipods cause hearing loss." In addition, as others have said, this suit has already come up in other forms, and since Apple complies with sound level regulations it looks like they've got a pretty clean case for no liability. Plus this is yet another lawsuit where the person harmed had a great deal of control over the company's product but they are somehow disavowing any personal responsibility for the damage caused. If you crank the volume on ANY sound reproduction device, and output that to sealed headphones of ANY type at maximum levels then it's a safe bet you're hurting your ears. That ringing you hear everytime you finish listening to your music? Yeah, that's your ears telling you to turn it down!
Personal responsiblity seems to be lost in this age, people need to own up to their own dumb-assery. Apple was not telling people it was ok to blast music at any volume you like with no ill effects, they are not directly responsible for some people's misuse of this particular product.
Um, turns out to be a lot like 2000 through 2008?
Thank you for the thoughtful and informative reply. I didn't have a hell of a lot of time to read up on this, I knew the timing was close to 9/11 at least.
And there go my nipples again....
While your point is a good one, it's not what Bush has in mind, no doubt. Likely the American people will never get a straight answer, just as we haven't from this administration for any number of borderline or flagrantly illegal or stupid acts. My guess is that the "extraordinary act" that Bush would be most likely to cite is a combination of 9/11 and "rogue states with WMDs" even though it's pretty clear that neither of these would really apply to this treaty. The major reason for this is probably to allow the Bush camp to pursue their true dream of authorizing the use of so-called "tactical nukes". I must admit I don't know much about the ABM Treaty, but I'm willing to bet it has some more of those pesky international statutes that get in the way of Bush authorizing low-grade nuke strikes against anyone he pleases. Remeber, the department of DEFENSE has been in the business of OFFENSE for decades. Don't look to the defensive reasons (possibly functional missle shield) for these changes in policy, look to the offensive reasons (better war toys). There you will find the true motivations.
Just my gut feeling from the way everything else has been spun and twisted by this administration. As the grandparent post said, please correct me if I'm wrong.
THANK YOU! I can't even count the number of times just this week that I have seen or heard people refer to the NSA wiretapping as "warranted" because we're in a "state of war". (Amazing how we can be in a state of war w/o having declared such, the authorization of the use of force being completely different legally, although lametably it seems in practice it's being treated the same.) People act as if there is no precedent to any of this when in fact the laws are well defined, have been tested and upheld, and clearly show that there are prescribed methods for legally performing these searches. Ignoring them because they are inconvenient or counter to an agenda is not an acceptable reason, and clandestinely informing certain members of congress that you're breaking the law does not, I repeat NOT, excuse you from breaking the law!
Please continue to spread the truth good sir!
Yes but you're creating a logical fallacy. In the scenario of filling the tub with water, there is a KNOWN AND PROVEN method bey which the tub could have been filled beforehand by someone opening the faucet all the way. Whereas with mutation and evolution there is NO KNOWN OR PROVEN method which could have "filled the tub" of the original steps to create an organism. I'm assuming that in your post you're arguing for the idea that god created creatures at some level of completeness and since that time they have evolved slowly. Except that there is absolutely no provable evidence that this is what occurred. All of the fossil records, carbon dating, DNA sequencing, etc point to the slow and steady progress of species. There is, however, no evidence that demonstrates that some unknown super-being created lifeforms wholly from nothing. What evidence have we found that has no other plausible explanation than "god did it"? In your false analogy with the filling of a tub the scientist - if he's worth his salt - would not in fact be fooled into thinking the tub was filled over a long time by the slow drip. he would postulate that could have happened but also recognize that the other mechanism of using hte faucet is available and the tub could have been partially filled to begin with. However this is the real world, occams razor applies in this case. Is it more likely that evolutionary changes through mutation and adaptation and selection occurring over hundreds of millions of years got us to where we are, or is there an invisible all-knowing super-being that can create life in a complete and finished form through sheer will? We know that adaptation and natural selection occur, examples of these have been found. The one I know off the top of my head is the moths in Britain that adapted to pollution by the ones with dark colorings that blended in to smog-stained buildings survived, while the white moths were eaten by predators because they stood out. Except for (heavily altered over time) ancient writings that come from a time when people understood little more than how to shape rocks and smelt simple soft metals, there has been no evidence that some invisble super-being is guiding or created life on this planet. To those who say that god is at work all the time but we cannot recognize his influence, I say how does that explain, predict, or prove anything? I could also tell you that objects are held to the earth by tiny invisible strings which are woven by gnomes. The gnomes however are very fast and very tiny, so we can never see them. You can't prove that statement wrong because by definition I have made it impossible to discern this influence. In the exact same way, the argument that some un-discernible diety has kick-started life on this planet or is currently invisibly altering the flow of events are unprovable by definition and could be replaced by any similar argument, hence the premise behind the creation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Therefore we see that the premise that 'god did it' is at best not able to be narrowed down to what that god is, as it could have been any entity that meets the definitions of being all-powerful and undetectible. This doesn't advance human knowledge, or give us insight into how anything works. It does not allow predictions and cannot be falsified. In other words, it is NOT science. Because scientific theories undergo rigorous testing by many people according to accepted and proven methods to try to discern facts that provide a framework that provides us with useful and appliable knowledge. In your analogy with the bathtub only your one scientist makes the wrong assumption, but rigorous study of the problem by others would bring to light the fact that the tub being pre-filled could have been a possibility. In the case of evolution, rigorous study by th
Cheers. :-D
Bit off my topic there, anyway, I'm in Massachusetts, so we're a blue stae through and through. I didn't expect it to go any other way and I wasn't let down. Unfortunately my vote really didn't matter, yet again, because not only did MA still go blue (as anticipated) but there weren't even enough 3rd party votes to get them recognized. Most of the people I talked to about this revealed that they (like me) voted for whatever party for one or two very particular reasons, to the exclusion of all others. As long as one of the two major parties have an opinion that matches the key issues for a particular voter they seem satisfied. One person voted republican because it meant lower taxes for them, but they were completely ambivalent to my points that the republicans were going to continue the war, were already besmirching America in international politics, and were very likely going to devalue the dollar further by continuing massive deficits. The person didn't even argue for or against these points, they just didn't matter. He cared that republicans were for lowering his taxes, so that's all he needed to know. Others reasons fell along the same lines. People pick what's important to them and vote on that, very few seem to do their homework and find out what other party opinions and policies they will be voting for along with that one key interest for them. An informed voting public i think would quickly find that national major-party politicians do not match with a majority of a person's opinions. And that is why the parent stressed the idea of localizing political opinions and building from there. It's much easier to congregate a community of like-minded individuals and generate politicians to represent them from that smaller base than it is to expect a national candidate put up by the national party to have any sort of relation to the needs of a particular community. Just my two cents.
Despite the warnings of the parent post to not immediately trust those who agree with your opinions I've added you as a friend. You raise some excellent points about the SS system and it's likely imminent collapse which I happen to agree with. Also you're well spoken and your grammar doesn't make me want to vomit. :)
Whoa! I hope you meant 'killed at the polls' and not killed as in shot dead? Cuz otherwise, damn, Dutch politics are very exciting!
Being a psychologist you should be familiar with the concept of RESEARCH. Given that you might have tried - oh hell, I dunno, let me come up with something crazy - maybe clicking on the link to the PDF that the original poster gave? From that you would have very quickly discovered the author's name is Carl Pacifico.
I would therefore appreciate some more information about how these conclusions were reached and what the research supporting them is like.
I know this might sound foreign but I bet real money if you read the linked document it might just answer those exact questions, or maybe a google search on the author. Holy god, who could have thought of that? It would take someone with a degree in brain science... perhaps a psychologist even?
What? Too far?
Not too far, just too soon. That version of Sony DRM will be coming out with Blue Ray. ;)
Granted, they are making boatloads of money, but the POINT is that their "salaries" are determined by company performance. So if in fact they started doing evil and the market punished them for it by selling off google, then guess what? Their incomes are directly affected. The main difference is that most company execs make a disproportionately huge salary AND get as many stock options as these guys do. How many CEOs lately have been tanking the company while reaping huge salaries and then taking off in a golden parachute deal after everything goes to hell? Without a guaranteed $XX million per year shielding them from company troubles they are much more inclined to run the company well. The only reason that these dollar figures are so outrageously large is not because they're evil and robbing the company blind, it's because google stock is through the roof. If google were priced closer to others in its sector we'd be talking about maybe 200 million in income instead of over a billion.
Also, getting stock is no guarantee of salary, I'm not sure the details of their contracts but if it's in the form of options then they must be purchased and vest first, plus you can't just dump every sahre you own at once or that action itself will kill the share price (when we're talking about millions of shares). They started a company that has grown to practically represent the internet for some folks and certainly have redefined search and web business models for most others, I think a handy billion profit from a company they created that's doing so well is ok in a capitalist economy. Read about what some other CEOs are doing right now, especially at companies cutting pensions, I think you'll find that the guys at google are far from evil with their current pay deals.
Agreed, this is one of the most common cases of DRM woes that Joe Public is just now starting to come to grips with. In a case like this it's especially easy to see how DRM is there for the company's benefit and not yours, and on top of that it's hard to make the case that this is somehow stopping piracy. Now if every user could transfer files between anyone's phones then there might be a piracy issue, but you can't so there isn't. And there's nothing stopping a cellular provider from having a proprietary application in the store that would give them and only them the ability to transfer your legally purchased ringtones/wallpapers/what-have-you from your old phone to your new one. This is how they handle number portability (store-access-only app to perform task), there's really no reason they can't do the same with phone files. It's telling then that they DON'T offer this service. The argument can be made that they simply haven't caught up to their own technological demands yet, i.e. it's a new problem for them and they will fix it soon, but I'm willing to bet that this won't be the case.
We will continue to see more and more instances of companies using DRM to force the consumer to repurchase the same products over and over again, it's a huge cash cow for them and your average user just doesn't know any better. All it takes is a slight change in format from one release of a phone to the next and voila! Everything old is new again, as in you automagically don't own any of those songs you "bought". Well, you still have them, just don't expect to ever use them on another device, and good luck if your current device dies.
I think one of the fair-use rights that needs to be examined and codified in detail when all this comes up in the courts, as it surely will soon, is some legal definition for media transactions. Are you licensing the media? Getting a license only for that specific device/format? Are you purchasing it outright without distribution rights? This needs to be strictly defined and mandated across the board. Right now the terms of the sale are completely to the corporations' advantage because they switch between the above options depending on what you are buying and from whom, and it's never very clear anyway. How many people would actually continue to purchase digital media if there were large clear labels on their purchase that told them 'This media can only be used on the device for which it was purchased and may never be copied, backed up, transferred to another device, or format, ever.'? As it stands right now people think 'hey I paid money for it, I own it.' and expect the rights that come along with physcially owning something. they are in fact receiving something very different. Personally I feel it's a bait-and-switch by the companies; including a 50 line legalease licensing agreement in 4 pt text at the end of a 12 page user contract (or shrinkwrap EULA) is full disclosure in name only.
They can only find known virii. Maybe being 'protected' from tens of thousands of viruses comforts you
You used both spellings within 10 words of each other, that's what prompted me to action. Sorry. Look, virii is NOT A WORD. the correct plural is VIRUSES, please take note for the future. Thanks! :)
In any case I am aware than space is really unbelievably big, I mean really big, I mean like badly paraphrasing Douglas Adams mind-bogglingly big, and not just in general, but even the amount of room around the earth at orbit level is, well, it's a sphere so surface area is what, 4/3 pi*r^3 or is that volume? Either way, it's massive. The problem, as someone else pointed out, is we're interested in using very specific bands at very specific distances from the earth. So perhaps we're not going to pollute the whole sphere of orbits but we may get enough accumulated junk to guarantee collisions in, say, the band where our GPS satellites sit now. The other problem is that some of this stuff won't go away, it will just keep orbiting and as it collides with other bits in the cloud or decays in orbit slightly it will become such a shifting mess that we can't accurately predict where it will all be at any given time. Although long term this wouldn't spell planet-grounding for us, it certainly would wreak havoc on current systems which rely on those satellites. The idea someone else posted of terrorists or (more likely) a rogue state launching a payload of ballbearings & explosives into GPS orbit seems entirely plausible. Gotta figure that's a relatively cheap and easy way to level the playing field a bit if you know you're going to be engaging the US military. Will it cripple us? Definitely not, but it will make a lot of our fancy hyper-accurate guided missles almost useless. (I know, we have lots of other systems like target lasing still.) Of course it all sounds a lot easier on paper then it would be in practice, still I expect this is a problem that humanity will have to face at some point as we continue to populate our skies.
For example, the EU is now setting up it's own system of GPS satellites. How long until global politics force other countries like China, India, Korea, Japan, etc to put their own systems in place to ensure GPS access during troubled times? Plus communications continue to evolve towards satellite based systems for various reasons and as more countries reach 1st-class tech status they will want their own resources. The idea is that eventually without a specific system in place to mitigate risk humanity could doom itself to staying planetside for generations while we wait for junk to reenter the atmo, or be collected by robots or something.
Maybe now is the time to come up with some plans for the future to do more than just track space junk, and in fact move on to collecting, dispersing, or destroying it.
Can't help myself responding to ACs sometimes. I said 'someone feel free to prove me right or wrong', I did not in fact dictate that, it was a request for backup or rebuttal from someone who had the time or actual knowledge relating to my comments.
For the record, I was right and you're still an incorrect AC, way to uphold the stereotype. Here's the wikipedia article on Common Carriers. It states that ISPs - as in Information Service Providers - are considered (surprise surprise) information services and NOT common carriers and thus are handled under a different set of regulations (Title I instead of Title II) of the Communications Act.
I don't have time to find the relevant links, but I don't think ISPs actually have Common Carrier Status in the US. I appreciate your sentiment, but unfortunately you can't hold them hostage over a status they don't have. Someone feel free to prove me right or wrong.
Trust me man, that will screw your parsing routine all to hell. ;)
You may be an AC but bravo for hitting the nail on the head. If you don't read LewRockwell.com then you will find it an excellent daily source of detailed analysis and examples of the types of mega-government abuses you outlined.
Also, thanks for replying to your detractors with sources, I understand their skepticism at facts presented blindly on /. and it's always a plus when a poster is diligent enough to back up his opinion with sources. I'm adding you as a friend since your post demonstrates a level of integrity mostly lacking here. :)