Hi, can you point to the history page that shows this happening to one of your edits? Because I hear this story a lot, and have never actually had experience of it or seen it happen.
Nope, because I know I am a thing with a mental state and unified consciousness. Each of us knows this for certain about ourselves, and can easily extend this to others with similar structures and behaviour (i.e, other people with big brains). We do not know, or even have reason to think, that things at other levels--such as neurons or corporations--have unified internal experiences. This is basic individualism. It's an important philosophical idea, and one that most liberal societies are based on in one way or another.
As a side point, no philosophical argument sits on solid ground. All philosophy has to contend with even the most basic of assumptions being challenged. That's pretty much what philosophy is. Individualism ties pretty nicely together ethics, epistemology, ontology, and other areas, and even works out okay in real life too. That's why it's worth serious consideration, not because it's unchallengable.
Me too, my 2008 machine has a relatively cheap SSD in it, and I'm not going to need to upgrade until it breaks (despite doing computationally expensive stuff like motion graphics).
What's a long time ago to you? I'm talking 2001ish I guess. I had a G3 250mhz PowerBook with 64mb of RAM. Classic Mac OS sucked at swapping--that's my whole point: software improved along with hardware.
I'm finding your argument difficult to follow. My understanding of the situation was that too much of the production capacity was devoted to the production of arms and other heavy industry, so that it could not be used to produce consumer goods. People expected their standards of living to rise, but the system was inflexibly tied up with producing stuff nobody wanted, so the system collapsed. Is this wrong? Or are we talking about different things?
A fashionable opinion on Slashdot, no doubt, but go back and actually try out an older piece of hardware. I bet it will seem absolutely bog-slow. I remember the days not so long ago when I would shut down everything to fire up a browser (Netscape), and really think hard before opening a new window (no tabs, of course). Now I sit here with two browsers, each with dozens of tabs, mp3s playing in the background, bit-ticket software like Photoshop and Illustrator running, and a disk-scan going, without the slightest hint of a slowdown. Switching between them is mostly instantaneous. My hardware is not new or fancy (2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4gig of RAM), and yet it runs all the latest stuff without a hiccup.
There have been periods in the past where software required too much of many people's hardware setup (I experienced it with Adobe CS stuff towards the end of the PPC era), but I don't think this is nearly as much of an issue as the Sluddites would have you believe. Software is much more capable now, and we use a lot more of it, much more casually than we used to.
Women weren't participating in the work force at the time, so that was the reason they couldn't vote and it was not wrong, the moment they actually started owning businesses and paying taxes they also basically got their voting rights.
You are making a grave mistake in thinking that societies or governments are solely based on, and concerned with, monetary systems. There is more to life than money, and it is dangerous to think that the monetary systems correctly encompass all the things that go into making society tick.
Then what? Restore from last (good) backup, instead of propagating the corrupted file through the backup system until the good version is lost, surely?
Linux doesn't suck, I agree! It even has some killer features for ordinary folk. It's pretty lightweight (still), so can be used to breath new life into old machines. Ubuntu's software centre based on apt-get was absolutely killer, and was around well before any iOS , OS X or Windows had anything of the sort. I also think it's pretty usable.
Unfortunately, these don't seem to counterbalance the downsides for most people. I actually found his talk, while entertaining, not very convincing. Running stuff under Wine or a VM is a hack, with many little annoyances; and while you can argue it mitigates the problem of not running crucial software natively, it's not a selling point.
Yes, though to get the Mac truck market (oh man this analogy and it's puns!), Linux will need Adobe to port CS. Or have drop-in replacements for the whole suite, especially the hairy stuff like After Effects.
You jest, but it the hull is going to anything like the original shape, I suspect it will cost more than double that of a modern cruise ship. Modern ships are built in a modular manner, with many square bits with flat decks that are welded together. The Titanic was built old-styley, with continuously curved sides and decks. That's gonna cost some shamoolah.
They were, but lifeboats were seen as ferries from on ship to another. The atlantic shipping lanes were busy enough that it seemed very unlikely that a sinking ship would be too far from other ships for this to be an option.
Actually, the atlantic shipping lanes were quite busy (even in the 1880s), which may have been part of the problem. They saw lifeboats as ferries from one ship to another, which was expected to arrive in short order.
I think you have a point, but I think the biggest problem is that most people just don't see the advantages. Their question will be 'what will Linux let me do that I can't do on Windows/Mac?'--and there isn't a clear answer to that. There will be things they can't do to do: run many popular games and applications, but the benefits are nebulous.
Answer that question satisfactorily, and I think you'd see some people switch.
You are totally incorrect in your assumptions about what I want. I have a multi-monitor setup (as do most people that run graphics software professionally). Multi-window is fine, but it needs to not look like complete arse. This "everyone's just used to Photoshop" is a red herring. The GIMP's just ugly.
No, it really isn't. I want a piece of software with a simpler interface that Photoshop. Not much more complex and a hell of a lot more ugly. Do better than Photoshop, that's what the people want.
Oh good fucking god that is an ugly interface. Look, it's become clear that everyone in the GIMP project just just doesn't care or understand, but the vast majority of people who work with imagery seriously will not use such an ugly piece of software. They just won't. Fork the GIMP someone, and put a non-vomitous interface on it, please!
I never said that christianity was limited to belief in supernatural things (why do you think I did?), it's just that is the part atheists object to. 'Faith' is an odd term, which I believe is actually a complex of emotions, involving both hope and acceptance of things as they are--contradictory in a way, like many of the more powerful emotions. I do not think you need to believe a bunch of hocus-pocus to experience something like that.
I know that people identifying as christian have a huge variety of beliefs, ranging from "it's all metaphor" to "everything in the Bible is literally true", but for the vast majority, christianity involves some sort of belief in the supernatural. Your statement that you are christian translates to most people as "I believe in supernatural things", probably specifically about the divinity of some middle-eastern guy about 2000 years ago, and that it is an important part of your identity.
I have never seen an argument that gets you close to personal-god christianity being a reasonable set of beliefs (even the arguments for the weakest forms of deism are really poor). So, from an atheist perspective, people dropping into conversation that they hold such beliefs is a provocative affirmation of the absurd. Personally, I don't jump at people for saying they are Christian, but I do feel like it would be intellectually dishonest to pretend that I think it makes any sense at all (metaphorical brands aside). If it is used as any part of an argument, then it just sticks out as a huge false premise.
So, I guess my point is that you feel you get derided for simply holding a differing belief, but I think you are making an assumption that atheists will see your beliefs as equivilant in some way. Most atheists don't see it that way, they see religious beliefs as not even having made the first few baby steps toward being a plausible set of ideas, and see little to no chance of that changing. To many atheists, there really isn't an intellectual debate of any substance to be had -- all that is left is derision.
Just to set the tone of this, I don't mean it to be an attack, but an attempt to honestly lay out what I see as the atheist position, and something of an explanation for why they act like they do. (Of course, some atheists are just dicks, no denying that.)
Arg! It annoys me enough when people write "100$", but at least that is how you say it ("one hundred dollars"). But "percent two hundred"? Ouch, my brain!
When I lived in Toronto most people pronounced it something like that. I think it's closer to "abewt" though. Kinda annoying that people can't seem to help themselves from making stupid jokes about this stuff (France gets it worse with all the stupid "surrendering" bullshit). It's tiresome.
Wow, you're all over the place, aren't you? While you have the germs of some coherent ideas in in your last couple of posts, they are largely a mish-mash of barely-related talking points. Concentrate.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi, can you point to the history page that shows this happening to one of your edits? Because I hear this story a lot, and have never actually had experience of it or seen it happen.
I still don't follow you. Where are you getting this from?
Nope, because I know I am a thing with a mental state and unified consciousness. Each of us knows this for certain about ourselves, and can easily extend this to others with similar structures and behaviour (i.e, other people with big brains). We do not know, or even have reason to think, that things at other levels--such as neurons or corporations--have unified internal experiences. This is basic individualism. It's an important philosophical idea, and one that most liberal societies are based on in one way or another.
As a side point, no philosophical argument sits on solid ground. All philosophy has to contend with even the most basic of assumptions being challenged. That's pretty much what philosophy is. Individualism ties pretty nicely together ethics, epistemology, ontology, and other areas, and even works out okay in real life too. That's why it's worth serious consideration, not because it's unchallengable.
Me too, my 2008 machine has a relatively cheap SSD in it, and I'm not going to need to upgrade until it breaks (despite doing computationally expensive stuff like motion graphics).
What's a long time ago to you? I'm talking 2001ish I guess. I had a G3 250mhz PowerBook with 64mb of RAM. Classic Mac OS sucked at swapping--that's my whole point: software improved along with hardware.
I'm finding your argument difficult to follow. My understanding of the situation was that too much of the production capacity was devoted to the production of arms and other heavy industry, so that it could not be used to produce consumer goods. People expected their standards of living to rise, but the system was inflexibly tied up with producing stuff nobody wanted, so the system collapsed. Is this wrong? Or are we talking about different things?
A fashionable opinion on Slashdot, no doubt, but go back and actually try out an older piece of hardware. I bet it will seem absolutely bog-slow. I remember the days not so long ago when I would shut down everything to fire up a browser (Netscape), and really think hard before opening a new window (no tabs, of course). Now I sit here with two browsers, each with dozens of tabs, mp3s playing in the background, bit-ticket software like Photoshop and Illustrator running, and a disk-scan going, without the slightest hint of a slowdown. Switching between them is mostly instantaneous. My hardware is not new or fancy (2.8Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4gig of RAM), and yet it runs all the latest stuff without a hiccup.
There have been periods in the past where software required too much of many people's hardware setup (I experienced it with Adobe CS stuff towards the end of the PPC era), but I don't think this is nearly as much of an issue as the Sluddites would have you believe. Software is much more capable now, and we use a lot more of it, much more casually than we used to.
Women weren't participating in the work force at the time, so that was the reason they couldn't vote and it was not wrong, the moment they actually started owning businesses and paying taxes they also basically got their voting rights.
You are making a grave mistake in thinking that societies or governments are solely based on, and concerned with, monetary systems. There is more to life than money, and it is dangerous to think that the monetary systems correctly encompass all the things that go into making society tick.
Then what? Restore from last (good) backup, instead of propagating the corrupted file through the backup system until the good version is lost, surely?
Linux doesn't suck, I agree! It even has some killer features for ordinary folk. It's pretty lightweight (still), so can be used to breath new life into old machines. Ubuntu's software centre based on apt-get was absolutely killer, and was around well before any iOS , OS X or Windows had anything of the sort. I also think it's pretty usable.
Unfortunately, these don't seem to counterbalance the downsides for most people. I actually found his talk, while entertaining, not very convincing. Running stuff under Wine or a VM is a hack, with many little annoyances; and while you can argue it mitigates the problem of not running crucial software natively, it's not a selling point.
Yes, though to get the Mac truck market (oh man this analogy and it's puns!), Linux will need Adobe to port CS. Or have drop-in replacements for the whole suite, especially the hairy stuff like After Effects.
You jest, but it the hull is going to anything like the original shape, I suspect it will cost more than double that of a modern cruise ship. Modern ships are built in a modular manner, with many square bits with flat decks that are welded together. The Titanic was built old-styley, with continuously curved sides and decks. That's gonna cost some shamoolah.
They were, but lifeboats were seen as ferries from on ship to another. The atlantic shipping lanes were busy enough that it seemed very unlikely that a sinking ship would be too far from other ships for this to be an option.
Actually, the atlantic shipping lanes were quite busy (even in the 1880s), which may have been part of the problem. They saw lifeboats as ferries from one ship to another, which was expected to arrive in short order.
Correct! Except I don't think there will be a mouse in the long run. Possibly not even a keyboard*. Just a big(ger) touch screen.
* People are growing up with soft keyboards now--they might not like physical ones.
I think you have a point, but I think the biggest problem is that most people just don't see the advantages. Their question will be 'what will Linux let me do that I can't do on Windows/Mac?'--and there isn't a clear answer to that. There will be things they can't do to do: run many popular games and applications, but the benefits are nebulous.
Answer that question satisfactorily, and I think you'd see some people switch.
You are totally incorrect in your assumptions about what I want. I have a multi-monitor setup (as do most people that run graphics software professionally). Multi-window is fine, but it needs to not look like complete arse. This "everyone's just used to Photoshop" is a red herring. The GIMP's just ugly.
No, it really isn't. I want a piece of software with a simpler interface that Photoshop. Not much more complex and a hell of a lot more ugly. Do better than Photoshop, that's what the people want.
Oh good fucking god that is an ugly interface. Look, it's become clear that everyone in the GIMP project just just doesn't care or understand, but the vast majority of people who work with imagery seriously will not use such an ugly piece of software. They just won't. Fork the GIMP someone, and put a non-vomitous interface on it, please!
I never said that christianity was limited to belief in supernatural things (why do you think I did?), it's just that is the part atheists object to. 'Faith' is an odd term, which I believe is actually a complex of emotions, involving both hope and acceptance of things as they are--contradictory in a way, like many of the more powerful emotions. I do not think you need to believe a bunch of hocus-pocus to experience something like that.
I know that people identifying as christian have a huge variety of beliefs, ranging from "it's all metaphor" to "everything in the Bible is literally true", but for the vast majority, christianity involves some sort of belief in the supernatural. Your statement that you are christian translates to most people as "I believe in supernatural things", probably specifically about the divinity of some middle-eastern guy about 2000 years ago, and that it is an important part of your identity.
I have never seen an argument that gets you close to personal-god christianity being a reasonable set of beliefs (even the arguments for the weakest forms of deism are really poor). So, from an atheist perspective, people dropping into conversation that they hold such beliefs is a provocative affirmation of the absurd. Personally, I don't jump at people for saying they are Christian, but I do feel like it would be intellectually dishonest to pretend that I think it makes any sense at all (metaphorical brands aside). If it is used as any part of an argument, then it just sticks out as a huge false premise.
So, I guess my point is that you feel you get derided for simply holding a differing belief, but I think you are making an assumption that atheists will see your beliefs as equivilant in some way. Most atheists don't see it that way, they see religious beliefs as not even having made the first few baby steps toward being a plausible set of ideas, and see little to no chance of that changing. To many atheists, there really isn't an intellectual debate of any substance to be had -- all that is left is derision.
Just to set the tone of this, I don't mean it to be an attack, but an attempt to honestly lay out what I see as the atheist position, and something of an explanation for why they act like they do. (Of course, some atheists are just dicks, no denying that.)
[...] %200 [...]
Arg! It annoys me enough when people write "100$", but at least that is how you say it ("one hundred dollars"). But "percent two hundred"? Ouch, my brain!
When I lived in Toronto most people pronounced it something like that. I think it's closer to "abewt" though. Kinda annoying that people can't seem to help themselves from making stupid jokes about this stuff (France gets it worse with all the stupid "surrendering" bullshit). It's tiresome.
Correlation (if it is real), does imply causation, it just doesn't tell you the source or direction of the cause.
Wow, you're all over the place, aren't you? While you have the germs of some coherent ideas in in your last couple of posts, they are largely a mish-mash of barely-related talking points. Concentrate.