I was going to buy an iPhone 2 but my friend's mother's brother's cousin said that his kid knows someone who works for Apple and he said the iPhone 3 should be out by Christmas. So everyone buying the iPhone 2 is getting suckered.
I agree, "I wonder..." has always been a good enough reason in my opinion. Without it humanity would still be living in caves without fire. For all the flaws the human species possesses being insanely inquisitive is not one of them.
It's just such a shame that kids in school are considered "uncool" if they show this wonderful trait.
The way things look to a mathematician are probably different than the way things look to a physicist which are also probably different than the way things look to everyone else. I'm in the first group, so my opinions may be biased here =).
Firstly I don't think there are any absolutes, sometimes math and physics develop in tandem and other times there's a lag time with one or the other leading. I personally think math "leads" the way. Not because it wants to describe the physical world but because it's interesting. Just remember that the math you learn in high school is hundreds of years old, you don't get to the current stuff until grad school. Whereas a physicist uses math as his tool to achieve his goal and will only invent a new tool if his toolbox is insufficient, a mathematician creates new tools just because he wants to understand them. In other words the goal of a mathematician is to make to tools, the goal of a physicist is to apply the tools. That's personally why I think math is "leading" most of the time. I'd rather not get into naming specifics examples as there are millions and I don't believe anyone could win that argument.
As far as math being a subset of philosophy I'll have to disagree; I think they are inexorably linked but neither proper subsets. They share the same grammar, logic, but differ in their dictionaries.
Just to give sort of a visual representation of why Pluto and Charon should be considered binary let's assume for a second that we scale the mass of Pluto and Charon up so that Pluto is the size of Earth. Then Charon would be roughly the size of Mars. That's a REALLY big moon, don't you think?
Now of course defining a binary system in terms of mass is rather arbitrary, but the Barycenter really isn't. If they're orbiting a point that lies between both of them then they should by all rights be a binary system. That's what Rei was trying to get across.
I skimmed TFA and the release on the IAU's website. It looks as though they think Ceres is unique and so made the definition encompassing only trans-Neptunian dwarf planets. I'm not defending their reasoning, but that appears to be it.
The new definition of "planet" was quite good. Clear, straight to the point, and easy to apply to any object. Now, they add a new category that applies only to our solar system? You do realize that the 2006 IAU definition of a planet requires a body to orbit the sun to be considered a planet, right? There are only 8 planets in the universe according to the definition at this time. You can follow the references back to the IAU's site for confirmation if you want.
Not only that but the third requirement is NOT easy to apply to an object. Assuming for a minute that the IAU definition of a planet required it to orbit a star, not the sun, it would be near impossible to ascertain whether or not the third criterion has been satisfied for potential planets in other star systems.
While I'm on a bit of a rant, anyone notice that Ceres isn't included in this new definition? Ceres is the third dwarf planet (by the IAU definition) if you don't know, it's orbit is in the asteroid belt. So Ceres, Pluto, and Eris are all dwarf planets. However, Pluto and Eris get to be Plutoids for being beyond Neptune. Good for them. I'm not sure how it's useful to classify trans-Neptunian dwarf planets again just so they can exclude Ceres, but I'm sure there's a reason that's definitely not arbitrary!
Sorry to reply to myself, but the article actually does specify exoplanet multiple times. So the summary is slightly wrong. I hate being pedantic but the IAU forced me to do it! =)
It can't be a planet, by definition:
* is in orbit around the Sun,
* has sufficient mass so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and
* has "cleared the neighbourhood" around its orbit. Emphasis mine.
Point taken although that's not even close to what I was saying. I never said movies were a dead art form, in fact I said I enjoyed a number of recent films. The person I was replying to indicated that movies have improved over the last 50 years, so I thought that perhaps he hasn't seen many of the classics with which to compare to the soon-to-be classics of today. I mean it's just story telling, one story isn't inherently better than another.
Your post is, if anything, agreeing with what I'm saying. Things haven't really improved, the really good films will float to the top and people will enjoy them for a long time to come, the bad ones won't.
... and it took them 50 years to get to the point they're at now. And what point is that? For the most part movies today are unoriginal, over use special effects, neglect making the movie interesting, and really aren't that good. That's not to say there aren't some really good ones which have come out recently; I just don't see this magical improvement in movies you're referring to. Perhaps you've not seen many classics?
I wouldn't percieve this as a walk away, but rather a reconsideration of the risks involved in space exploration. We can't just blow nuclear bombs to push payload into space:| I definitely agree there. However, what I really would love to see is a deep space probe launched with this technology. Have the probe launched using conventional means to a safe distance from Earth before continuing on with the main stage. I realize that it would be extremely heavy to lift into orbit, but I just looked at the wiki article and they state a satellite orion would be ~300t. That's about 275,000kg, the International Space Station weighs around 245,000kg right now. Take this with a grain of salt of course, but perhaps they can launch it up in parts like they did with the ISS.
This is what NASA is around for, no company would be able to do this since there's no profit in it. This is a long term space goal. If you pointed the probe at Alpha Centuri then we might get data back in my lifetime, or my children's lifetime. It'd be a very expensive endeavor and the probe may fail at some point. But the rewards of observing another solar system up close are absolutely immense.
Exactly what I was thinking. It's as if an acquaintance shows up to your birthday party and he gives you a nice card and $20 and you just ask him, "Is this it?"
VIA wasn't obligated to do this for you, you aren't paying them, how about you say "thank you, we appreciate your help" and support their product. They may just help out the FOSS community more in the future. If you spit in their face then they won't do this sort of thing again.
No, it's completely arbitrary. Why must the planet classification be reserved for only a few satellites? Is it so first graders can memorize all the planets or is there a real reason to make this such an exclusive "club"? I agree with the post above me, there's no reason there shouldn't be hundreds if not thousands of planets.
Perhaps we should only consider elements up to Iron as atoms, everything else after Iron is just too big to be an atom. It doesn't change the fact that they're still there, but the "atom" classification should be an exclusive club. We can't have too many in there!
Not only that but this definition doesn't include any satellites orbiting other stars. And even if it wasn't heliocentric it would still be extremely difficult to ascertain whether or not an object satisfies the third criterion. 8 planets in the entire universe is enough though, don't you think?
Perhaps because of the recent legal blows they've received in court they're trying to hasten their tactic. Maybe if they make it look like piracy is sky rocketing all of a sudden the legislators will hastily pass some laws to help them out. The courts are onto them, so the legislators might wise up next. If that happens the RIAA may be screwed.
Okay, so by saying you are going to vote for the lesser of 2* evils you imply they're both evil, one is just a little less so. That would seem to me to indicate that things won't get better, in fact they'll get worse just a little slower than if you had voted for the 'greater' of 2 evils. So your solution to making things better makes absolutely no sense. You are assuring a third party candidate will fail by assuming he'll fail no matter what, thus giving him no chance for success. Not only that but by continually saying third parties have no chance you are in fact condemning us to this two-party system until we finally implode under our lesser but still evil government. Let me repeat that last part, our lesser but still evil government.
Time for my car analogy rebuttal. Say there are two giant car producers, between them they have 95% of the market. Now say their cars are quite damaging to the environment. The cars get 8mpg or so, spew out a lot of carbon dioxide, and are just generally bad. Every so often one will be less damaging than the other, but they're roughly equal. However, there are other car manufacturers, not nearly as big and hence their cars tend to cost more. Also, their cars are much more friendly to the environment, they get 40mpg, are powered by hydrogen**, etc... Let's say you still have that $5,000 and you can buy a car from the two big manufacturers for that much. The other smaller manufacturers sell their cars for $10,000. Does it make sense to buy the $5,000 car? For an individual it very much does. You can't afford the $10,000 and you need transportation. The problem is everyone thinks this, and by buying the cheaper car the smaller manufacturers can't grow larger and reduce costs and you end up, collectively, damning the planet***.
* I assume you mean McCain, Clinton, and Obama for your "3 lesser evils" statement since you don't appear to support third parties in any way. **Let's just assume we can get hydrogen easily from solar and wind power or something. ***This was just a hypothetical car analogy, no discussion about global warming please.
The idea that physical forces don't control us is silly. You're correct, we are bits of matter and energy glued together by the physical laws of the universe. To think that the physical laws of the universe apply everywhere except inside our brain is dualism, not what I was suggesting. Free will is a macroscopic concept. The idea that I can macroscopically choose between rocky road ice cream and mint chocolate chip ice cream. At a microscopic level there's no such thing as ice cream, just bits of matter and energy interacting with each other. The only "choice" is at the quantum level, and I'm not sure you can actually define that as a choice since you don't actually choose anything.
If the universe is ordered, that is there are a set of physical laws which govern the outcome of particle and energy interactions, then wouldn't free will as currently defined be impossible? Perhaps our actions are chaotic in the mathematical sense but still deterministic. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
How is this insightful? Funny maybe, but certainly not insightful.
I sure as heck wasn't aware that being a 'nerd' precluded me from playing video games and discussing them. Nor was I aware that I had to be doing 'math and science' every waking moment of my life. Considering I willingly buy and enjoy reading graduate level math books as well as playing video games I take offense to your ridiculously broad generalization.
How does this keep getting modded up? Seriously, are the mods on crack or from another country?
Traffic laws in the United States are largely uniform. There are oddities of course, but you make it sound as if a green light means go in one state and stop in another. An upside down red trimmed triangle always means yield, a red octagon with white outlining always means stop, a green light always means go, you always yield to the person on the right if two people arrive at a stop sign at the same time, everyone drives on the right, a yellow light means it's about to change to red, etc... So in reality for 99.999% of the time the roads work the same in the United States. There are oddities like some states allow a right turn on red, others don't, but last I checked you watch for oncoming traffic when making a right on red, the worst that would probably happen is getting a ticket.
There is no reason why individual cities should be able to set the length of the amber light AT ALL. I live in a state which is larger than the United Kingdom. I don't think you realize just how vast our country is. We take up 40% of a continent for crying out loud. Yet you think some Congress critter should create a law to determine the length of a yellow light which applies to every intersection in the country? Keep in mind that this law would, according to you, be for the safety of every person using the roadways in the country. Since that's the case you *must* take care of every possible edge case in this law. You have to deal with all factors to determine the yellow light time such as but not limited to amount of traffic (dependent upon time of day and season), amount of pedestrian traffic (also dependent upon time of day and season), size of intersection (number of lanes and width of lanes), how level the road is, the speed limit, what type of traffic (mostly 18-wheelers, commuters from a suburb, what?), weather conditions (is it icy a lot? how about fog? rain?), etc... And heaven forbid if a study comes out saying that in such and such edge case it'd be better to have such and such time for a yellow light. I personally think it's easier to have the city adjust the light timings as they see fit to reduce the number of accidents (not generate revenue through red light cameras). I don't know what you have against cities doing this, it's not as if it'd make yellow light times at all predictable since it would necessarily depend on so many variables. That is unless you were implying we should just abandon state, county, and city governments and just let Uncle Sam take care of us with Feel Good Laws(TM).
The real problem with traveling to other states (and even within your own state) is you're not always familiar with the roads. Trying to get somewhere in unknown territory is a lot more dangerous than a traffic law oddity like "keep right except to pass".
Not to belittle your midget shemale porn that you watched at age 15, but let's not forget goatse, tubgirl, lemonparty, etc...... No wait, we should forget those! shudders
I believe the definition of introvert from wikipedia is a better one than "someone who is shy". I know I am very introverted. It's not that I can't go out and talk to people, in fact I'm quite comfortable with mingling at parties and such, I just find more value in having a lot of "me time" and that's usually what I do. Going out to parties, constantly being in contact with people, and all that stuff wears me down. Before getting a girlfriend I was perfectly content with not having any substantial human contact for weeks on end, then going out to a concert or party with some close friends.
I've never had a problem with IM. It's an easy way to communicate with friends who don't live around me anymore. I fail to see how it's a "fully new communications media" though as I've been using instant messengers for at least a decade now. Twitter is new, but I honestly don't see the point in it. I don't even see the point in blogs, of which I've only enjoyed reading two extremely esoteric ones. I'd use either if I saw some benefit, but as far as I can tell they're a complete waste of time. In the past two months I've had one notable thing happen which I would "tweet" if I were into that, and that was when I got hit by a car walking to class. Sure that dinner I had while I was in Georgia was really good, but not "tell everyone" good. I also find things like facebook and myspace to be a waste of time. I already know my friends' cell phone numbers, house phone numbers (if they have one), IM handle, e-mail address, mail address, and physical house address, do I *really* need another way to contact them?
I don't have a problem with people, I have a problem with being in constant contact with everyone I have ever known every day of every month of every year. Not only that but now I have a written account of what they had to eat July 16th, 2005, who they got together with in August, and when they broke up a month later. Hell, pretty soon the government won't have to spy on you and tap your phone lines, they'll just let you survey yourself.
...that an Xbox 360 pro (HDMI, hard disk, wireless controller) only costs $350 USD and already includes everything you need to play games. Your $200 card, $300 CPU will also need a case, mobo, RAM, keyboard, mouse, and now you're at $800 or so to "trounce" whatever the consoles can provide.
Hey, let's be fair now. That Xbox 360 doesn't include everything you need to play games, you still need a TV. And you may as well go for an HDTV. Those aren't exactly cheap. And before you say people already have TVs I'll respond by saying I already have a computer case, power supply, mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers, etc... Granted I replace my mouse and keyboard a little more often than I replace my computer case, monitor, and speakers (once every 5-10 years) but those console controllers of yours have about the same durability, and they're not cheap.
So if we're going to be fair either you calculate the cost of the TV with the console, or you leave all of my rarely replaced components alone. I'll freely admit that PC gaming is more expensive, but people tend to exaggerate by how much; just like the summary author did.
Henry David Thoreau said that people will get exactly the kind of government they deserve, and that is indeed what the U.S. citizens have received.
I believe the next generation is getting exactly what their parents deserve. There seems to be about a generation of lag time between fuckup and consequence. Perhaps that's why we're losing our freedoms, we have no reason to care as it'll be our kids' problem. We certainly are a greedy species.
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I was going to buy an iPhone 2 but my friend's mother's brother's cousin said that his kid knows someone who works for Apple and he said the iPhone 3 should be out by Christmas. So everyone buying the iPhone 2 is getting suckered.
I agree, "I wonder..." has always been a good enough reason in my opinion. Without it humanity would still be living in caves without fire. For all the flaws the human species possesses being insanely inquisitive is not one of them.
It's just such a shame that kids in school are considered "uncool" if they show this wonderful trait.
The way things look to a mathematician are probably different than the way things look to a physicist which are also probably different than the way things look to everyone else. I'm in the first group, so my opinions may be biased here =).
Firstly I don't think there are any absolutes, sometimes math and physics develop in tandem and other times there's a lag time with one or the other leading. I personally think math "leads" the way. Not because it wants to describe the physical world but because it's interesting. Just remember that the math you learn in high school is hundreds of years old, you don't get to the current stuff until grad school. Whereas a physicist uses math as his tool to achieve his goal and will only invent a new tool if his toolbox is insufficient, a mathematician creates new tools just because he wants to understand them. In other words the goal of a mathematician is to make to tools, the goal of a physicist is to apply the tools. That's personally why I think math is "leading" most of the time. I'd rather not get into naming specifics examples as there are millions and I don't believe anyone could win that argument.
As far as math being a subset of philosophy I'll have to disagree; I think they are inexorably linked but neither proper subsets. They share the same grammar, logic, but differ in their dictionaries.
Those are just my thoughts on the matter though.
Just to give sort of a visual representation of why Pluto and Charon should be considered binary let's assume for a second that we scale the mass of Pluto and Charon up so that Pluto is the size of Earth. Then Charon would be roughly the size of Mars. That's a REALLY big moon, don't you think?
Now of course defining a binary system in terms of mass is rather arbitrary, but the Barycenter really isn't. If they're orbiting a point that lies between both of them then they should by all rights be a binary system. That's what Rei was trying to get across.
I skimmed TFA and the release on the IAU's website. It looks as though they think Ceres is unique and so made the definition encompassing only trans-Neptunian dwarf planets. I'm not defending their reasoning, but that appears to be it.
Not only that but the third requirement is NOT easy to apply to an object. Assuming for a minute that the IAU definition of a planet required it to orbit a star, not the sun, it would be near impossible to ascertain whether or not the third criterion has been satisfied for potential planets in other star systems.
While I'm on a bit of a rant, anyone notice that Ceres isn't included in this new definition? Ceres is the third dwarf planet (by the IAU definition) if you don't know, it's orbit is in the asteroid belt. So Ceres, Pluto, and Eris are all dwarf planets. However, Pluto and Eris get to be Plutoids for being beyond Neptune. Good for them. I'm not sure how it's useful to classify trans-Neptunian dwarf planets again just so they can exclude Ceres, but I'm sure there's a reason that's definitely not arbitrary!
Sorry to reply to myself, but the article actually does specify exoplanet multiple times. So the summary is slightly wrong. I hate being pedantic but the IAU forced me to do it! =)
* is in orbit around the Sun,
* has sufficient mass so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and
* has "cleared the neighbourhood" around its orbit. Emphasis mine.
Point taken although that's not even close to what I was saying. I never said movies were a dead art form, in fact I said I enjoyed a number of recent films. The person I was replying to indicated that movies have improved over the last 50 years, so I thought that perhaps he hasn't seen many of the classics with which to compare to the soon-to-be classics of today. I mean it's just story telling, one story isn't inherently better than another.
Your post is, if anything, agreeing with what I'm saying. Things haven't really improved, the really good films will float to the top and people will enjoy them for a long time to come, the bad ones won't.
... and it took them 50 years to get to the point they're at now. And what point is that? For the most part movies today are unoriginal, over use special effects, neglect making the movie interesting, and really aren't that good. That's not to say there aren't some really good ones which have come out recently; I just don't see this magical improvement in movies you're referring to. Perhaps you've not seen many classics?This is what NASA is around for, no company would be able to do this since there's no profit in it. This is a long term space goal. If you pointed the probe at Alpha Centuri then we might get data back in my lifetime, or my children's lifetime. It'd be a very expensive endeavor and the probe may fail at some point. But the rewards of observing another solar system up close are absolutely immense.
Oh well, it's a nice dream in either case.
Exactly what I was thinking. It's as if an acquaintance shows up to your birthday party and he gives you a nice card and $20 and you just ask him, "Is this it?"
VIA wasn't obligated to do this for you, you aren't paying them, how about you say "thank you, we appreciate your help" and support their product. They may just help out the FOSS community more in the future. If you spit in their face then they won't do this sort of thing again.
Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
Same here for when I played WoW. The powerbook ran bloody hot but it still worked just fine except in places like IronForge.
No, it's completely arbitrary. Why must the planet classification be reserved for only a few satellites? Is it so first graders can memorize all the planets or is there a real reason to make this such an exclusive "club"? I agree with the post above me, there's no reason there shouldn't be hundreds if not thousands of planets.
Perhaps we should only consider elements up to Iron as atoms, everything else after Iron is just too big to be an atom. It doesn't change the fact that they're still there, but the "atom" classification should be an exclusive club. We can't have too many in there!
Not only that but this definition doesn't include any satellites orbiting other stars. And even if it wasn't heliocentric it would still be extremely difficult to ascertain whether or not an object satisfies the third criterion. 8 planets in the entire universe is enough though, don't you think?
Perhaps because of the recent legal blows they've received in court they're trying to hasten their tactic. Maybe if they make it look like piracy is sky rocketing all of a sudden the legislators will hastily pass some laws to help them out. The courts are onto them, so the legislators might wise up next. If that happens the RIAA may be screwed.
Or perhaps I'm reading too far into this, meh.
Okay, so by saying you are going to vote for the lesser of 2* evils you imply they're both evil, one is just a little less so. That would seem to me to indicate that things won't get better, in fact they'll get worse just a little slower than if you had voted for the 'greater' of 2 evils. So your solution to making things better makes absolutely no sense. You are assuring a third party candidate will fail by assuming he'll fail no matter what, thus giving him no chance for success. Not only that but by continually saying third parties have no chance you are in fact condemning us to this two-party system until we finally implode under our lesser but still evil government. Let me repeat that last part, our lesser but still evil government.
Time for my car analogy rebuttal. Say there are two giant car producers, between them they have 95% of the market. Now say their cars are quite damaging to the environment. The cars get 8mpg or so, spew out a lot of carbon dioxide, and are just generally bad. Every so often one will be less damaging than the other, but they're roughly equal. However, there are other car manufacturers, not nearly as big and hence their cars tend to cost more. Also, their cars are much more friendly to the environment, they get 40mpg, are powered by hydrogen**, etc... Let's say you still have that $5,000 and you can buy a car from the two big manufacturers for that much. The other smaller manufacturers sell their cars for $10,000. Does it make sense to buy the $5,000 car? For an individual it very much does. You can't afford the $10,000 and you need transportation. The problem is everyone thinks this, and by buying the cheaper car the smaller manufacturers can't grow larger and reduce costs and you end up, collectively, damning the planet***.
* I assume you mean McCain, Clinton, and Obama for your "3 lesser evils" statement since you don't appear to support third parties in any way.
**Let's just assume we can get hydrogen easily from solar and wind power or something.
***This was just a hypothetical car analogy, no discussion about global warming please.
The idea that physical forces don't control us is silly. You're correct, we are bits of matter and energy glued together by the physical laws of the universe. To think that the physical laws of the universe apply everywhere except inside our brain is dualism, not what I was suggesting. Free will is a macroscopic concept. The idea that I can macroscopically choose between rocky road ice cream and mint chocolate chip ice cream. At a microscopic level there's no such thing as ice cream, just bits of matter and energy interacting with each other. The only "choice" is at the quantum level, and I'm not sure you can actually define that as a choice since you don't actually choose anything.
If the universe is ordered, that is there are a set of physical laws which govern the outcome of particle and energy interactions, then wouldn't free will as currently defined be impossible? Perhaps our actions are chaotic in the mathematical sense but still deterministic. Anyone else have any thoughts on this?
How is this insightful? Funny maybe, but certainly not insightful.
I sure as heck wasn't aware that being a 'nerd' precluded me from playing video games and discussing them. Nor was I aware that I had to be doing 'math and science' every waking moment of my life. Considering I willingly buy and enjoy reading graduate level math books as well as playing video games I take offense to your ridiculously broad generalization.
Traffic laws in the United States are largely uniform. There are oddities of course, but you make it sound as if a green light means go in one state and stop in another. An upside down red trimmed triangle always means yield, a red octagon with white outlining always means stop, a green light always means go, you always yield to the person on the right if two people arrive at a stop sign at the same time, everyone drives on the right, a yellow light means it's about to change to red, etc... So in reality for 99.999% of the time the roads work the same in the United States. There are oddities like some states allow a right turn on red, others don't, but last I checked you watch for oncoming traffic when making a right on red, the worst that would probably happen is getting a ticket.
There is no reason why individual cities should be able to set the length of the amber light AT ALL. I live in a state which is larger than the United Kingdom. I don't think you realize just how vast our country is. We take up 40% of a continent for crying out loud. Yet you think some Congress critter should create a law to determine the length of a yellow light which applies to every intersection in the country? Keep in mind that this law would, according to you, be for the safety of every person using the roadways in the country. Since that's the case you *must* take care of every possible edge case in this law. You have to deal with all factors to determine the yellow light time such as but not limited to amount of traffic (dependent upon time of day and season), amount of pedestrian traffic (also dependent upon time of day and season), size of intersection (number of lanes and width of lanes), how level the road is, the speed limit, what type of traffic (mostly 18-wheelers, commuters from a suburb, what?), weather conditions (is it icy a lot? how about fog? rain?), etc... And heaven forbid if a study comes out saying that in such and such edge case it'd be better to have such and such time for a yellow light. I personally think it's easier to have the city adjust the light timings as they see fit to reduce the number of accidents (not generate revenue through red light cameras). I don't know what you have against cities doing this, it's not as if it'd make yellow light times at all predictable since it would necessarily depend on so many variables. That is unless you were implying we should just abandon state, county, and city governments and just let Uncle Sam take care of us with Feel Good Laws(TM).
The real problem with traveling to other states (and even within your own state) is you're not always familiar with the roads. Trying to get somewhere in unknown territory is a lot more dangerous than a traffic law oddity like "keep right except to pass".
Seriously, stop modding this up.
Not to belittle your midget shemale porn that you watched at age 15, but let's not forget goatse, tubgirl, lemonparty, etc... ... No wait, we should forget those! shudders
I believe the definition of introvert from wikipedia is a better one than "someone who is shy". I know I am very introverted. It's not that I can't go out and talk to people, in fact I'm quite comfortable with mingling at parties and such, I just find more value in having a lot of "me time" and that's usually what I do. Going out to parties, constantly being in contact with people, and all that stuff wears me down. Before getting a girlfriend I was perfectly content with not having any substantial human contact for weeks on end, then going out to a concert or party with some close friends.
I've never had a problem with IM. It's an easy way to communicate with friends who don't live around me anymore. I fail to see how it's a "fully new communications media" though as I've been using instant messengers for at least a decade now. Twitter is new, but I honestly don't see the point in it. I don't even see the point in blogs, of which I've only enjoyed reading two extremely esoteric ones. I'd use either if I saw some benefit, but as far as I can tell they're a complete waste of time. In the past two months I've had one notable thing happen which I would "tweet" if I were into that, and that was when I got hit by a car walking to class. Sure that dinner I had while I was in Georgia was really good, but not "tell everyone" good. I also find things like facebook and myspace to be a waste of time. I already know my friends' cell phone numbers, house phone numbers (if they have one), IM handle, e-mail address, mail address, and physical house address, do I *really* need another way to contact them?
I don't have a problem with people, I have a problem with being in constant contact with everyone I have ever known every day of every month of every year. Not only that but now I have a written account of what they had to eat July 16th, 2005, who they got together with in August, and when they broke up a month later. Hell, pretty soon the government won't have to spy on you and tap your phone lines, they'll just let you survey yourself.
You forgot Ceti Alpha V.
...that an Xbox 360 pro (HDMI, hard disk, wireless controller) only costs $350 USD and already includes everything you need to play games. Your $200 card, $300 CPU will also need a case, mobo, RAM, keyboard, mouse, and now you're at $800 or so to "trounce" whatever the consoles can provide.
Hey, let's be fair now. That Xbox 360 doesn't include everything you need to play games, you still need a TV. And you may as well go for an HDTV. Those aren't exactly cheap. And before you say people already have TVs I'll respond by saying I already have a computer case, power supply, mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers, etc... Granted I replace my mouse and keyboard a little more often than I replace my computer case, monitor, and speakers (once every 5-10 years) but those console controllers of yours have about the same durability, and they're not cheap.
So if we're going to be fair either you calculate the cost of the TV with the console, or you leave all of my rarely replaced components alone. I'll freely admit that PC gaming is more expensive, but people tend to exaggerate by how much; just like the summary author did.
Henry David Thoreau said that people will get exactly the kind of government they deserve, and that is indeed what the U.S. citizens have received.
I believe the next generation is getting exactly what their parents deserve. There seems to be about a generation of lag time between fuckup and consequence. Perhaps that's why we're losing our freedoms, we have no reason to care as it'll be our kids' problem. We certainly are a greedy species.