Just why are those Sunnis and Shi'a killing one another in such a focused fashion?
For one, they have incompatible interpretations of Islam and do not believe it is possible to peacefully coexist in the same country. Europe went through the same pattern of warfare during the Reformation. Another reason is political manipulation: the Shi'a are backed by Iran, which wants to expand its sphere of influence--it cannot do so in a democratic Iraq that holds friendly relations with the United States or with the Sunni states. Mundane politics, under a religious or ideological facade--surely that's never happened in the West!
And in what other religions do such great numbers of suicide bombers occur?
Largely by historical accident, the Muslims are in a position where (a) no better tactic is open to them and (b) people are just crazy enough to go along with it. It's essentially no different than the suicide pilots (you might remember them as kamikazes) of imperial Japan. Like the Muslims, the Japanese only resorted to suicide tactics out of tactical desparation. Also like the Muslims, the Japanese had a culture that highly valued individual martyrdom.
I actually started to watch it, but after spending five minutes mentally cataloguing all the emotional manipulations and other propaganda techniques the film employed, I decided the endeavor was no longer worth my time and effort.
OK, how many of us went to Catholic school? Religious indoctrination at a young age is powerful, but being taught something "religious in nature" at "a very young age" doesn't turn vast numbers of people into fanatics immune to human nature. It's in the interests of some to paint radical Islam as some sort of all-powerful threat and to dehumanize Muslims, but it's not in the interest of reason, nor is it in the public interest, to believe that propaganda.
I think showing off is an important purpose of space exploration. I'm not saying not to use robots. But there's too much perceived need to justify things like this before they happen. It is just as worthy to accomplish great tasks because they are great, and because by accomplishing them we leave monuments to our own ability to accomplish. We still remember the Egyptians because they built gigantic pyramids to bury their dead kings. We marvel and we wonder at how they accomplished that feat. Landing men on Mars might have little practical purpose, but it's one of the greatest accomplishments possible to our civilization.
That only works if the fertile male in question has your genes. In other words, if he's your brother. And yes, we are adapted to help our kin survive and reproduce, although I don't see how buggery assists in that endeavor.
All of a sudden we need a reason to go land a crew of humans on the planet Mars? The way I see it, going and landing on Mars is a matter of getting all the best engineers together and doing something just as an exercise in doing something. We'll invent some sort of research mission on the way, because by god, that's how they did the Apollo program!
Oh, that's easy. In your class declaration you just put:
friend foo (bar)
where "foo" is a function that's outside of the class in question. Of course, the friend can't call you, because it's a friend of the class, not any of its methods.
Obesity is far worse for your health than smoking.
Smoking tends to lead to weight loss (as nicotine is a stimulant). And obesity became an epidemic in the US only recently, around the same time that smoking became demonized and smokers were increasingly restricted and penalized by smoking bans. Coincidence?
Bullshit. Natural selection doesn't favor the group--it favors individual genes. Homosexuality would never be an evolutionary adaptation for one simple reason--the "gay gene" doesn't reproduce itself. Where resources are scarce and overpopulation occurs, natural selection itself happens at a higher rate: organisms better adapted to collecting those scarce resources survive and reproduce, organisms worse adapted die.
So you have an anti-Rand signature, you obsessively post about this issue on Slashdot, you obsessively edit about this issue on Wikipedia, but you aren't obsessed with Ayn Rand?
There's a lot of cases (cults, Scientology, Ayn Rand) where the critics are as fanatical--if not more fanatical--than the supporters. In the case of Ayn Rand, I find this amusing. (Why not cults and Scientology? Because Ayn Rand doesn't ruin lives to nearly the extent that they do.)
Actually, I don't own shit, and tend to agree with you that most people buy useless crap. I also agree with you that producers tend to encourage higher consumption. That doesn't mean capitalism favors overconsumption--even if some capitalists do--because the capitalist system means that if you overconsume, you go broke. It's ironic, in a way--here you are saying capitalism favors overconsumption. This is perhaps the only useful criticism left of capitalism in our era of abundance, as the criticism used to be that capitalism kept an underpaid working class from being able to afford everything they need. You can't have it both ways. You can't say "capitalism encourages people to overspend" while at the same time saying "capitalism prevents poor people and retired grandmothers from being able to afford doctor visits and prescription drugs".
As for your question, many people are deeply in debt because they own things like homes and vehicles that are sometimes worth borrowing money to purchase. I'm deeply in debt because I'm a college student--but I don't waste money and I have every intention of getting out of debt as soon as I can. Debt in itself is not always a bad thing. Too much debt, however, and the repo man (capitalism's check on overconsumption) takes everything you own away.
Have you ever considered that perhaps the Wikipedia articles are neutral, and you're the biased one? Incidentally, people who are obsessed with denouncing Ayn Rand always strike me as funnier than the actual Randians--it's one thing to be obsessed with Ayn Rand if you think she's the greatest philosopher in world history, but it's quite another thing to be obsessed with Ayn Rand when you think she's just a loony.
By saying "kidnapping is not allowed", you are restricting one specific freedom: namely, the freedom to kidnap. However, you are also protecting what we would all recognize as a far more important freedom: the freedom not to be kidnapped.
In big business, the data should be secure. Period. You lose your password, you lose your information - it's that simple.
That's a perfect strategy for security if you completely disregard human behavior. If you set the stakes so high for forgetting your password, you end up with people either using ridiculously simple passwords (so they remember) or writing their passwords on post-it notes underneath their keyboard. Congratulations, now your system is less secure.
Nice deranged rant. While I won't dispute the incentive for producers to increase consumption, the capitalist system also requires and enforces moderation. Consistently consuming above one's means leads to bankruptcy. This is true for everyone, unlike socialist systems where consumption is largely checked only by political power. "Consume only what you need" is vague, and those with pull always end up "needing" more than those without. On the other hand, "consume only what you can afford from your income" keeps economic activity in check--if one overconsumes, with the help of abundant credit, then one soon loses their credit, wealth, assets, and purchasing ability when the repo man comes to take their property away and Best Buy cuts up their credit cards. (If you genuinely need more than you can afford from your income and you can't anticipate any increase in your income to justify borrowing now and paying later, as students do when they borrow to pay for university expenses, then there is perhaps a flaw in pure capitalism for your situation. Most capitalist economies have systems, public and private, to care for these people.)
If your target market is 20 individuals whom you all know by name, isn't it standard to do something like have your salesmen get in touch with them for a face-to-face discussion?
Admittedly, the personal letters are a step in this direction, but the main effect of advertising--on anyone--is simply to remind them the product exists. Convincing them to buy it falls more heavily on other forms of sales and marketing. Then again, sometimes experimental marketing produces unexpected results.
Slashdot Mirror
For one, they have incompatible interpretations of Islam and do not believe it is possible to peacefully coexist in the same country. Europe went through the same pattern of warfare during the Reformation. Another reason is political manipulation: the Shi'a are backed by Iran, which wants to expand its sphere of influence--it cannot do so in a democratic Iraq that holds friendly relations with the United States or with the Sunni states. Mundane politics, under a religious or ideological facade--surely that's never happened in the West!
Largely by historical accident, the Muslims are in a position where (a) no better tactic is open to them and (b) people are just crazy enough to go along with it. It's essentially no different than the suicide pilots (you might remember them as kamikazes) of imperial Japan. Like the Muslims, the Japanese only resorted to suicide tactics out of tactical desparation. Also like the Muslims, the Japanese had a culture that highly valued individual martyrdom.
I actually started to watch it, but after spending five minutes mentally cataloguing all the emotional manipulations and other propaganda techniques the film employed, I decided the endeavor was no longer worth my time and effort.
OK, how many of us went to Catholic school? Religious indoctrination at a young age is powerful, but being taught something "religious in nature" at "a very young age" doesn't turn vast numbers of people into fanatics immune to human nature. It's in the interests of some to paint radical Islam as some sort of all-powerful threat and to dehumanize Muslims, but it's not in the interest of reason, nor is it in the public interest, to believe that propaganda.
No. Safari's memory leaks are in the C++ code (which is, in turn, a fork of the KHTML code). The only Objective-C in Safari is the Cocoa wrapper.
I think showing off is an important purpose of space exploration. I'm not saying not to use robots. But there's too much perceived need to justify things like this before they happen. It is just as worthy to accomplish great tasks because they are great, and because by accomplishing them we leave monuments to our own ability to accomplish. We still remember the Egyptians because they built gigantic pyramids to bury their dead kings. We marvel and we wonder at how they accomplished that feat. Landing men on Mars might have little practical purpose, but it's one of the greatest accomplishments possible to our civilization.
That only works if the fertile male in question has your genes. In other words, if he's your brother. And yes, we are adapted to help our kin survive and reproduce, although I don't see how buggery assists in that endeavor.
All of a sudden we need a reason to go land a crew of humans on the planet Mars? The way I see it, going and landing on Mars is a matter of getting all the best engineers together and doing something just as an exercise in doing something. We'll invent some sort of research mission on the way, because by god, that's how they did the Apollo program!
Oh, that's easy. In your class declaration you just put:
where "foo" is a function that's outside of the class in question. Of course, the friend can't call you, because it's a friend of the class, not any of its methods.
Smoking tends to lead to weight loss (as nicotine is a stimulant). And obesity became an epidemic in the US only recently, around the same time that smoking became demonized and smokers were increasingly restricted and penalized by smoking bans. Coincidence?
Bullshit. Natural selection doesn't favor the group--it favors individual genes. Homosexuality would never be an evolutionary adaptation for one simple reason--the "gay gene" doesn't reproduce itself. Where resources are scarce and overpopulation occurs, natural selection itself happens at a higher rate: organisms better adapted to collecting those scarce resources survive and reproduce, organisms worse adapted die.
So you have an anti-Rand signature, you obsessively post about this issue on Slashdot, you obsessively edit about this issue on Wikipedia, but you aren't obsessed with Ayn Rand?
There's a lot of cases (cults, Scientology, Ayn Rand) where the critics are as fanatical--if not more fanatical--than the supporters. In the case of Ayn Rand, I find this amusing. (Why not cults and Scientology? Because Ayn Rand doesn't ruin lives to nearly the extent that they do.)
Actually, I don't own shit, and tend to agree with you that most people buy useless crap. I also agree with you that producers tend to encourage higher consumption. That doesn't mean capitalism favors overconsumption--even if some capitalists do--because the capitalist system means that if you overconsume, you go broke. It's ironic, in a way--here you are saying capitalism favors overconsumption. This is perhaps the only useful criticism left of capitalism in our era of abundance, as the criticism used to be that capitalism kept an underpaid working class from being able to afford everything they need. You can't have it both ways. You can't say "capitalism encourages people to overspend" while at the same time saying "capitalism prevents poor people and retired grandmothers from being able to afford doctor visits and prescription drugs".
As for your question, many people are deeply in debt because they own things like homes and vehicles that are sometimes worth borrowing money to purchase. I'm deeply in debt because I'm a college student--but I don't waste money and I have every intention of getting out of debt as soon as I can. Debt in itself is not always a bad thing. Too much debt, however, and the repo man (capitalism's check on overconsumption) takes everything you own away.
Persuasion is slavery?
Have you ever considered that perhaps the Wikipedia articles are neutral, and you're the biased one? Incidentally, people who are obsessed with denouncing Ayn Rand always strike me as funnier than the actual Randians--it's one thing to be obsessed with Ayn Rand if you think she's the greatest philosopher in world history, but it's quite another thing to be obsessed with Ayn Rand when you think she's just a loony.
The video might have been alright if it wasn't half some-guy-driving-around-Miami.
By saying "kidnapping is not allowed", you are restricting one specific freedom: namely, the freedom to kidnap. However, you are also protecting what we would all recognize as a far more important freedom: the freedom not to be kidnapped.
That's a perfect strategy for security if you completely disregard human behavior. If you set the stakes so high for forgetting your password, you end up with people either using ridiculously simple passwords (so they remember) or writing their passwords on post-it notes underneath their keyboard. Congratulations, now your system is less secure.
Nice deranged rant. While I won't dispute the incentive for producers to increase consumption, the capitalist system also requires and enforces moderation. Consistently consuming above one's means leads to bankruptcy. This is true for everyone, unlike socialist systems where consumption is largely checked only by political power. "Consume only what you need" is vague, and those with pull always end up "needing" more than those without. On the other hand, "consume only what you can afford from your income" keeps economic activity in check--if one overconsumes, with the help of abundant credit, then one soon loses their credit, wealth, assets, and purchasing ability when the repo man comes to take their property away and Best Buy cuts up their credit cards. (If you genuinely need more than you can afford from your income and you can't anticipate any increase in your income to justify borrowing now and paying later, as students do when they borrow to pay for university expenses, then there is perhaps a flaw in pure capitalism for your situation. Most capitalist economies have systems, public and private, to care for these people.)
If you have to argue about whether your joke is funny, it's not funny.
If your target market is 20 individuals whom you all know by name, isn't it standard to do something like have your salesmen get in touch with them for a face-to-face discussion?
Admittedly, the personal letters are a step in this direction, but the main effect of advertising--on anyone--is simply to remind them the product exists. Convincing them to buy it falls more heavily on other forms of sales and marketing. Then again, sometimes experimental marketing produces unexpected results.
You're supposed to snort the coke up your nose!
Leetspeak stopped being funny in 2004.
No, the process looks like this:
The number of people who use iTunes Store but have no iPod is probably very small.
The space elevator might be the next flying car, or it might be the next aeroplane. Either way, we'll find out in the nest 10-20 years.