People often just don't update Flash much. It's a little better for Adobe Reader from what I see; but just a little - automatic updates are treated more like a nuisance to hide, it seems.
Overall - good riddance. Simple & small PDF readers with scripting disabled are all almost anybody needs anyway. As for Flash - everybody here keeps whitelists of pages already, right? And perhaps those few whitelisted ones will feel the need to enable HTML5 video tag sooner.
Though lately iMacs had great screens for the price. If you wanted to get the same panel "stand alone", it ended up at around the same price as whole iMac, supposedly.
Well, Airbus slightly surpasses Boeing lately (when we're talking about passenger planes, all tthat matters here), but this doesn't seem to be blocking expansion of high-speed rail in Europe...
Points you list are valid only so far as worshipers of given religion are concerned. They are certainly not universal - how many people treat almost all religions as at most a curious mythology?
Also, what's with the whitewashing? Yes, good people will always do good stuff, bad people - bad stuff. "But for good people doing bad things - that requires religion". If it weren't like this, I would be living in a place with Slavic Paganism right now (preferable TBH, more or less; it would be at least more natural) It's almost funny, how religious folks never stop in their efforts to expand but at the same time, when faced with possibility of "unholy" association, backpedal; "oh, we've said we are integral part of history? Well, we are obviously not a part of that"
When you delegate gods to religions, preachers, you are also putting them in a box. Likewise when claiming they are simply above us - how could you know?
First, you are looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. If your perceptions were true, then few centuries ago we would had a paradise on Earth (because sentimental memories like yours are frequent throughout all of recorded history), which is obviously not true.
(as a sidenote - you should know that stats show your place hasn't really changed when it comes to main topic of this discussion. It can be even possible that religion is more prevalent in last two decades, with slight amount of certain groups moving towards extremism)
Secondly - yes, many societal factors are at play.
But at the same time - when really looking at whole picture, there is certainly quite strong correlation between organic lack of religions and positive societal factors; how "nice" it is to live in particular place. Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Japan, South Korea - they all lead in both afaik, all the more impressive for post-Soviet among those which had a lot of catch-up to do in just two decades (while religious post-Soviet states universally don't fare nearly so well - coincidence?). OTOH it is almost a rule throughout the world (again, when looking at whole picture!) that you wouldn't really want to live in deeply religious places.
That said, yes, I fully agree, just taking religions out of the world wouldn't make it better. It would result in quite a big mess; they are a very effective way of cementing society and suppressing destructive impulses towards other members of it (while doing that to much lesser degree when it comes to "Others", usefull too). Heck, that's mostly why they evolved in the first place, and why societies with them proved generally more successful in more barbaric times. Some societies don't really need that anymore, hence significant irreligion there arising organically. But many more would we even worse places to live if not for religions. It's just unfortunate that too many, IMHO, bright minds are caught into this; so much thought wasted. Though so far that price seems at least borderline worth it on the scale of the world.
Religious organizations being the quickest to respond is simply the most basic selection bias - majority of the world is religious so of course there will a lot of religious organizations present everywhere; all the more if you want to see them, or they want to be seen by you. Especially since that's one of their main modes of action - remember, only religions that worked out effective ways of collecting followers survived; and humanitarian efforts, apart from their disaster-mitigating value, are also good at making fabulous impression...
Also, about ending of you post - IMHO, the way you present conclusions of that debate, it just displayed rampant intellectual dishonesty; of the worst kind (doing what it claims to criticize)
Majority of places with large number of "unbelievers" are a very recent development. Those people were usually brought up to believe by their parents and society. The choice to be irreligious was their own, they proved that they can diametrically change their mind. OTOH vast majority of religious folks just remain with what shaped them in their youth. And if they want to see something, want to feel something - they will.
The parent is from Europe, it seems. Certainly at least large part of the continent, when visiting US, does get fingerprinted and required to fill out ridiculous forms.
* Photos: All electronic equipment must be switched off. I bet it's a digital camera?
I somehow doubt I would be allowed to use my old Zenit 35mm SLR camera... (no electronics apart from analogue TTL light sensor, it's easy to show that its batteries have been removed; also, you can very cheaply get older non-TTL models in which light sensor doesn't require batteries from what I remember). Or 8mm film camera with spring wound drive motor.
Heck, you should probably expect destruction of film stock before departure, only because it can't go through X-ray and you don't want to show what's inside...so obviously you're hiding something dangerous.
What are you talking about? "Dark energy" is just a broad term describing something that influences the Universe in a particular way. It's a placeholder after discovering something new (accelerating expansion) and awaiting for adequate explanation.
If you look at it in certain way. It's a testament to growing popularity of cellphones throughout the world.
In 2000 there were around 700 million subscribers globally. Now it's at 4.6 billion, and still growing rapidly. It's not about features, it's about phones that allow such numbers of connected people; this will be their most important impact on our civilization.
Though F3 went too far; not only dropping features, but making one essential hardly bearable - it has horrible, horrible UI (mostly due to its screen, working more or less like 7-segment calculator screens)
Nokia 1100 and its ilk (1110, 1200, 1208, 1202, 1280, 1616...) are much better in that (and actually pioneered the concept; one to which Nokia seems to be sticking). Also much more sturdy; and flashlight is quite handy.
EU is a continent? Since when? It's simply a single market; in those categories just as well as a single country.
But hey, make yourself feel better if you really need it; for example by pointing out that it doesn't really matter due to population (while ignoring, say, that large part of it was just recently admitted into EU, and their post-soviet countries are still quite a bit wrecked by half a century of occupation)
Re:Lower G = Weaker Lifeforms and another thing...
on
The Science of Avatar
·
· Score: 1
Lasers powerful enough to inflict damage are neither invisible or, probably, silent. First, a pulse short and powerful enough to exploit their other strengths would be visible in the atmosphere (even if not in the visible spectrum). Also, energy source compact, reliable and powerful enough to power it might end up not much quieter than a small explosion - it might even be just that, with chemical energy explosively converted to electricity. In case of world in Avatar, that would be actually hugely preferable, with areas of the planet messing with electronics.
As for resupply - you can't tell if powerpacks for lasers wouldn't have similar limitations. But ammo for ballistic weapons is quite compact in itself and the machinery to manufacture it quite simple, and not requiring any exotic resources (and also compact, when taking the size of interstellar ship into account)
You measure progress, advancement, etc. by the actions of hominids from each planet. While that is indeed quite adequate in case of homo sapiens (though - our own version of planetary neural system also changes those dynamics a bit, gradually), it doesn't appear to be the case with Na'vi - they are not at the "top" of intelligence pyramid.
What you're thinking about is still proving that something DOES happen - demise of rats in your example. Or failure of that particular experiment.
Re:Lower G = Weaker Lifeforms and another thing...
on
The Science of Avatar
·
· Score: 1
Uhm, lasers have most of those problems too. They are even worse at revealing position.
Adding to what parent said - energy source compact enough to power a laser will be essentially equivalent, energy density-wise, to a powerful explosive. So why not use that property more directly?
Slashdot Mirror
I would be very surprised if licensing deals with Sony Ericsson, Motorola, etc. don't include some amount of cross-licensing.
In which case demanding the same from Apple is exactly the Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory thing.
Nokia has also half of smartphone market share. Seems their offering is more compelling than...pretty much any other.
Hey, Apple does ship printed materials with their products and there are rumors about they getting into e-book business ;)
People often just don't update Flash much. It's a little better for Adobe Reader from what I see; but just a little - automatic updates are treated more like a nuisance to hide, it seems.
Overall - good riddance. Simple & small PDF readers with scripting disabled are all almost anybody needs anyway. As for Flash - everybody here keeps whitelists of pages already, right? And perhaps those few whitelisted ones will feel the need to enable HTML5 video tag sooner.
Though lately iMacs had great screens for the price. If you wanted to get the same panel "stand alone", it ended up at around the same price as whole iMac, supposedly.
Now when anybody in the UK contemplates pirating from the Big Ones, he'll know they are already reimbursed for it.
Well, Airbus slightly surpasses Boeing lately (when we're talking about passenger planes, all tthat matters here), but this doesn't seem to be blocking expansion of high-speed rail in Europe...
Though average speed is more about the track. I guess it's not inconceivable to have less curves and longer distances between stations in China.
Really, why did everybody forget about A-4 rocket? (aka V-2)
http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html
Points you list are valid only so far as worshipers of given religion are concerned. They are certainly not universal - how many people treat almost all religions as at most a curious mythology?
Also, what's with the whitewashing? Yes, good people will always do good stuff, bad people - bad stuff. "But for good people doing bad things - that requires religion". If it weren't like this, I would be living in a place with Slavic Paganism right now (preferable TBH, more or less; it would be at least more natural)
It's almost funny, how religious folks never stop in their efforts to expand but at the same time, when faced with possibility of "unholy" association, backpedal; "oh, we've said we are integral part of history? Well, we are obviously not a part of that"
Not in case of A3000, which would be likely equivalent. Or A2000 with upgraded CPU.
Actually, Amiga would have been also a very valid choice back then, at least in Europe. I wonder if Linus ever said why he went with a PC.
When you delegate gods to religions, preachers, you are also putting them in a box. Likewise when claiming they are simply above us - how could you know?
First, you are looking at the past through rose-colored glasses. If your perceptions were true, then few centuries ago we would had a paradise on Earth (because sentimental memories like yours are frequent throughout all of recorded history), which is obviously not true.
(as a sidenote - you should know that stats show your place hasn't really changed when it comes to main topic of this discussion. It can be even possible that religion is more prevalent in last two decades, with slight amount of certain groups moving towards extremism)
Secondly - yes, many societal factors are at play.
But at the same time - when really looking at whole picture, there is certainly quite strong correlation between organic lack of religions and positive societal factors; how "nice" it is to live in particular place. Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Japan, South Korea - they all lead in both afaik, all the more impressive for post-Soviet among those which had a lot of catch-up to do in just two decades (while religious post-Soviet states universally don't fare nearly so well - coincidence?). OTOH it is almost a rule throughout the world (again, when looking at whole picture!) that you wouldn't really want to live in deeply religious places.
That said, yes, I fully agree, just taking religions out of the world wouldn't make it better. It would result in quite a big mess; they are a very effective way of cementing society and suppressing destructive impulses towards other members of it (while doing that to much lesser degree when it comes to "Others", usefull too). Heck, that's mostly why they evolved in the first place, and why societies with them proved generally more successful in more barbaric times. Some societies don't really need that anymore, hence significant irreligion there arising organically. But many more would we even worse places to live if not for religions. It's just unfortunate that too many, IMHO, bright minds are caught into this; so much thought wasted. Though so far that price seems at least borderline worth it on the scale of the world.
Religious organizations being the quickest to respond is simply the most basic selection bias - majority of the world is religious so of course there will a lot of religious organizations present everywhere; all the more if you want to see them, or they want to be seen by you. Especially since that's one of their main modes of action - remember, only religions that worked out effective ways of collecting followers survived; and humanitarian efforts, apart from their disaster-mitigating value, are also good at making fabulous impression...
Also, about ending of you post - IMHO, the way you present conclusions of that debate, it just displayed rampant intellectual dishonesty; of the worst kind (doing what it claims to criticize)
Majority of places with large number of "unbelievers" are a very recent development. Those people were usually brought up to believe by their parents and society. The choice to be irreligious was their own, they proved that they can diametrically change their mind. OTOH vast majority of religious folks just remain with what shaped them in their youth. And if they want to see something, want to feel something - they will.
...prolonged period of night when the gas giant was between it and Alpha Centauri?
Do we have moon eclipse every month?
The parent is from Europe, it seems. Certainly at least large part of the continent, when visiting US, does get fingerprinted and required to fill out ridiculous forms.
* Photos: All electronic equipment must be switched off. I bet it's a digital camera?
I somehow doubt I would be allowed to use my old Zenit 35mm SLR camera... (no electronics apart from analogue TTL light sensor, it's easy to show that its batteries have been removed; also, you can very cheaply get older non-TTL models in which light sensor doesn't require batteries from what I remember). Or 8mm film camera with spring wound drive motor.
Heck, you should probably expect destruction of film stock before departure, only because it can't go through X-ray and you don't want to show what's inside...so obviously you're hiding something dangerous.
What are you talking about? "Dark energy" is just a broad term describing something that influences the Universe in a particular way. It's a placeholder after discovering something new (accelerating expansion) and awaiting for adequate explanation.
If you look at it in certain way. It's a testament to growing popularity of cellphones throughout the world.
In 2000 there were around 700 million subscribers globally. Now it's at 4.6 billion, and still growing rapidly. It's not about features, it's about phones that allow such numbers of connected people; this will be their most important impact on our civilization.
Though F3 went too far; not only dropping features, but making one essential hardly bearable - it has horrible, horrible UI (mostly due to its screen, working more or less like 7-segment calculator screens)
Nokia 1100 and its ilk (1110, 1200, 1208, 1202, 1280, 1616...) are much better in that (and actually pioneered the concept; one to which Nokia seems to be sticking). Also much more sturdy; and flashlight is quite handy.
EU is a continent? Since when? It's simply a single market; in those categories just as well as a single country.
But hey, make yourself feel better if you really need it; for example by pointing out that it doesn't really matter due to population (while ignoring, say, that large part of it was just recently admitted into EU, and their post-soviet countries are still quite a bit wrecked by half a century of occupation)
Lasers powerful enough to inflict damage are neither invisible or, probably, silent. First, a pulse short and powerful enough to exploit their other strengths would be visible in the atmosphere (even if not in the visible spectrum). Also, energy source compact, reliable and powerful enough to power it might end up not much quieter than a small explosion - it might even be just that, with chemical energy explosively converted to electricity. In case of world in Avatar, that would be actually hugely preferable, with areas of the planet messing with electronics.
As for resupply - you can't tell if powerpacks for lasers wouldn't have similar limitations. But ammo for ballistic weapons is quite compact in itself and the machinery to manufacture it quite simple, and not requiring any exotic resources (and also compact, when taking the size of interstellar ship into account)
You measure progress, advancement, etc. by the actions of hominids from each planet. While that is indeed quite adequate in case of homo sapiens (though - our own version of planetary neural system also changes those dynamics a bit, gradually), it doesn't appear to be the case with Na'vi - they are not at the "top" of intelligence pyramid.
What you're thinking about is still proving that something DOES happen - demise of rats in your example. Or failure of that particular experiment.
Uhm, lasers have most of those problems too. They are even worse at revealing position.
Adding to what parent said - energy source compact enough to power a laser will be essentially equivalent, energy density-wise, to a powerful explosive. So why not use that property more directly?