Those are less "data points" than "unsubstantiated and vague anecdotes", in all fairness.
It's interesting that you're so specific with size & weight & age, & offer no details that would actually allow us to verify the stories. I won't even get into your slanted rhetoric.
And hell, I totally agree with your point. But if we're going to expect the other side to engage in a real debate, we better be paragons of the form ourselves.
For example, the device could be getting energy from somewhere via some mechanism we don't fully understand yet.
Eh? Is that an example?
Because it sounded an awful lot like the logic used by Certain People to "debunk" evolution. "Well, could be there's a red guy but he's also invisible because we can't see him--let's call him, oh, the Devil--and COULD be he PLANTED all those fossils there just to trick us!"
Come on, man! The argument ain't about how much we're willing to imagine. Every person on this website would orgasm simultaniously--probably even twice!--if this turned out to be true. But it's obviously not. And how do we figure this out? By looking at the claims & the methods without our vision clouded by our wet dreams. We ask, "What are they claiming?" A: Creation of energy. "How, exactly, do they do this truly remarkable thing?" A: They'll tell us later. "Why don't they tell us now." A: They feel like UNLIMITED CLEAN POWER MIGHT NOT MAKE THEM ENOUGH MONEY IF THEY DON'T DO A COUPLE PUBLIC DEMONSTRATIONS OF IT FIRST.
I'm being sort of a jerk, but for a reason. And also because I like it.
I too have wondered about this. I think, though, there are a few smart & ultimately pleasing ways for them to handle this. First, a redefinition of "Cylon"--obviously the final five are different than the regular ones, else the originals would know all about them. What I'm thinking here is that Cylon isn't something you're born, it's something you live (i.e. Tigh assumed a Cylon-nature as he aged, or at a certain point, etc.). This would salvage our memories of the Chief's & Boomer's relationship. Another idea that ties back into this is a return to the mysticism of the early episodes. I'm thinking the Tarot society from Pynchon's Against the Day.
Eh.
I've got my money on Apollo, mostly because of how the camera behaved after that silly "We're Cylons but we're soldiers!!" meeting at the end of the episode. Also, using Apollo as a Cylon gives the series a lot of license to get mystical, precisely because he has such a well fleshed-out past. All these other people, sure, we've never even heard about most of their parents, as uncomfortable as the fits may currently be. But if they were to successfully explain Apollo's Cylon-hood (thereby showing the Cylons to be something much more interesting than sleeper agents) the other four would seem very reasonable.
Sorry for the ramble! I just woke up & haven't yet had a coffee or a beer.
You want to do dope and cook your brain, go right ahead but do it in private.
& that's just the thing: we totally would. But even there you get in trouble. Like it or not, the internet is a fine way to start a political debate. Many of the usual routes are closed to concerned parties on this issue.
http://www.changetheclimate.org/campaigns/02_18_04 /pressrelease2.php
As a kid I believed in democracy: I 'saw no alternative'--teaching at The Big Place I ah put it in practice: we'd time for one long novel: to a vote-- Gone with the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No' and we sat down with War & Peace.
As a man I believed in democracy (nobody ever learns anything): only one lazy day my assistant, called James Dow, & I were chatting, in a failure of meeting of minds, and I said curious 'What are your real politics?' 'Oh, I'm a monarchist.'
Finishing his dissertation, in Political Science. I resign. The universal contempt for Mr Nixon, whom never I liked but who alert & gutsy served us years under a dope, since dynasty K swarmed in. Let's have a King maybe, before a few mindless votes.
-John Berryman
Notice the Nixon reference (& "dynasty K" = Kennedys), how it dates the poem, but also how topical the politics seem.
Our founding fathers were smart, yes, really effin' smart. But the total number of wildly-intelligent people has maybe increased since then (...if not the ratio)? Why do we keep trying to get ridiculous politicians to apply "fixes" to a system that, if you read your history, has so rarely worked well & sustainably (& if you look at its trajectory...)? Only out of laziness, or perhaps an eschatophilia.
The full text of your title (Do not go gentle...; a villanelle by Dylan Thomas) (italics added):
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
**** I only italicized from the second & third stanza, but really the entire poem is saying "Those who have 'effed up their lives can't deal with death". This is one of the more misused poems, along with Frost's "The Road Not Taken" (& also, for songs, "Born in the USA" which I've seen in a very patriotic Chevvy commercial).
I guess my point: your reference paints your comment, "I know there will be the crowd that says - but we were designed to die. That is bunk!" in a rather ironic light.
Nah, what you are is victim of some Eastern-European emotion. "Litost" from the Czech comes to mind, but only as an influence.
I don't mean the following as a rebuke or even as advice, but rahter something I thought of while reading your thread. Sometimes what we think is one thing--we say, "that is (in terms of essence) this!"--is actually something very different--"that is this! (or so I believe [because I am this...])"; basically, we fail to take into account our own perspective. You might consider, have you world enough and time, what your relationship was with your friend before you did this, and which friends, family members, or random acquaintences you would also turn in. Also worth consideration is how you mark this "successful"... would it still be worthy of posting online if your friend had not been called into account, if your mother had disagreed with your actions, if the register-monkey had lookt at you in disgust?
What I'm saying: be careful with grand declarations of moral superiority. They often bely something of a very different nature.
Here's a poem by Ezra Pound. It's out of a series of poems he called The Cantos and it is numbered XIII. Kung is Confucius.
Kung walked
by the dynastic temple and into the cedar grove,
and then out by the lower river, And with him Khieu Tchi
and Tian the low speaking And "we are unknown," said Kung, "You will take up charioteering?
"Then you will become known, "Or perhaps I should take up charioterring, or archery? "Or the practice of public speaking?" And Tseu-lou said, "I would put the defences in order," And Khieu said, "If I were lord of a province "I would put it in better order than this is." And Tchi said, "I would prefer a small mountain temple, "With order in the observances,
with a suitable performance of the ritual," And Tian said, with his hand on the strings of his lute The low sounds continuing
after his hand left the strings, And the sound went up like smoke, under the leaves, And he looked after the sound:
"The old swimming hole, "And the boys flopping off the planks, "Or sitting in the underbrush playing mandolins."
And Kung smiled upon all of them equally. And Thseng-sie desired to know:
"Which had answered correctly?" And Kung said, "They have all answered correctly, "That is to say, each in his nature." And Kung raised his cane against Yuan Jang,
Yuan Jang being his elder,
or Yuan Jang sat by the roadside pretending to
be receiving wisdom. And Kung said
"You old fool, come out of it, "Get up and do something useful."
And Kung said "Respect a child's faculties "From the moment it inhales the clear air, "But a man of fifty who knows nothing
Is worthy of no respect." And "When the prince has gathered about him "All the savants and artists, his riches will be fully employed." And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves:
If a man have not order within him He can not spread order about him; And if a man have not order within him His family will not act with due order;
And if the prince have not order within him He can not put order in his dominions. And Kung gave the words "order" and "brotherly deference" And said nothing of the "life after death." And he said
"Anyone can run to excesses, "It is easy to shoot past the mark, "It is hard to stand firm in the middle."
And they said: If a man commit murder
Should his father protect him
This whole "Let's Get All the Usual Jokes Out of the Way" post is becoming nearly as cliche as what it lampoons.
Really, I'd rather listen to someone spout non-sequiturs, a la Aqua Teen Hunger Force or GTA3 talk radio stations than even reference these tired old things. I mean, you didn't include "I, for one, welcome our new..." or "In Soviet Russia," but you're still not adding anything.
How about, "As a single mother, and a fireman, I feel that if you rearrange the letters in 'Darl' you get 'Lard', and anyways, my code isn't protected by any sort of liscence and you still haven't stolen it... aren't you attracted to me anymore?"
It doesn't showcase your superiority over the rest of the slashdot crowd, but it's a good deal more fun to read.
(-1, Completely Offtopic. I won't blame you, mod)
Re:And no one complained about the OP's gramemener
on
The Escapist
·
· Score: 2, Funny
For Christ's sake.
Could we please (and by "we", I mostly mean "you") stop complaining about grammar until we are innocent ourselves?
I seriously do not care, but:
"Antihero" in your sentence is missing an article; add an "an". "Scooby Doo" is a proper noun and thus requires capitalization. You use the wrong form of "sight".
Next, "Tragic Hero" is also missing an article. The article following the parentheses should not be capitalized. The word "villanious" really wants to be the word "villainous". Finally, "justify" does not agree with its third-person subject, "the end"; it should be "justifies".
I am a graduate student of English and I mispell words, too, whether through haste, substance abuse, distraction, whatever. Sometimes I use the incorrect words. Generally, though, when I try to lord my knowledge over someone, I try to be as correct as possible.
As an English Graduate Student, I feel compelled to mark-up your comment. My corrections are in brackets.
Um[,] as an English Major[,] I must warn you [that the] Gutenberg [project] sucks.
It has massive[,] massive editing errors[,] and it really needs a certain level of accountability, not to mention the messages at the beginnning make it really sucky [(w/c)] to read on a palm pilot. [(This is a run-on sentence. Please revise.)]
They used some bizzare formatting system which breaks it [(This "it" is very ambiguously placed, as the subject of the sentence is "They". Please revise.)] on most pocket devices, they decided not to use rtf or anything else with support for graphics (Corectly assuming that those were usually patented but still) the list just goes on and on.[(I'm not even going to start on the end of this "sentence". You're missing, at least, a couple periods and a few commas.)]
It could have been an excellent service but it falls just short.
It's [(This is a contraction of "it is"; you mean to use the possessive, "its".)] catalogue falls far short.
This is what happens, Deliveranc3, when you wait until the last minute to start your Slashdot comments...
Farley wrote to point out that his[sic] neither a Harvard post-doctoral fellow nor a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, writing "I am not and never have been either. (I am a tenured professor elsewhere and have been for several years.)
FTA:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Harvard professor Jonathan Farley is an award-winning scholar, but he wouldn't mind being known as a Hollywood mathematician.
So I thought to myself, couldn't he just come out & say he's a Harvard prof., not a grad student? But then, I googled, & lo & behold:
Senator Feingold (D-WI, for those to lazy to follow the link) was the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act. He took some heat for this, yes, but eventually even many republicans who dislike Feingold's fiscal ideas decided to vote for him. Winning a senate seat by 11 points is no small feat, especially in a "battleground" state.
My point? Not everyone is spineless. Yes, Feingold did, apparently, vote for the Iraqi spending bill with the Real-ID stuff, but next time he has a townhall meeting I'll ask him about it.
Look, I agree with your final analysis of the situation. I don't think this is a big deal, & I'm not sure why people are upset (or if people are upset; I haven't seen too much outrage on/.). However, your "facts surrounding the situation" section is of dubious value. I think you presented it in a rather intimidating way so that people might not question the obviousness, the pointlessness, or the guesswork behind what that section says.
Fact: Wiley was asked not to publish the book. Mmmm, good start, but I'm not sure why this absolves Apple of any blame. Say wiley doesn't like a computer Apple makes--"Please don't make that computer." You see the ridiculousness of giving Apple credit for something that is none of their business. You might make the case that a book on Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs' business, & I'd accept that. But it's not Apple's business.
Fact: The biography was unauthorized, which is legal, but not really that morally okay, especially when the biography is about someone who's still alive. Okay, look up "fact" & then cross-reference it with "moral". Can you find a "moral fact"? Not unless you believe in God, really, or some other objective truth. Fact: People sometimes use words incorrectly.
Fact: Jobs could not have made Apple stop selling Wiley's products without support from a majority of the Board. No, Fact: You are guessing that Jobs could not have made Apple stop selling Wiley's products... There are plenty of ways that a CEO could do something like this without any oversight, & this makes perfect sense: the board does not want to be consulted on every little decision that goes into probably one of the least profitable sections of Apple.
Fact: Apple is not preventing the publishing of the book, they are expressing objection to it by not selling the publisher's materials in their stores. Um. Golly. I'm glad I made it halfway down the comments page without reading any of the above posts, or even the little article blurb (much less, TFA).
Fact: A corporation has the right to choose what it wants to sell, and whom to obtain their products from. Well, yes, that statement of "Fact" is mostly true. Corporations can't, say, obtain products yet from Cuba, but I get what you're saying.
Fact: Again, you can walk into Borders or Barnes and Noble or whatever, or search Amazon.com, and still get Wiley's books, including the unauthorized biography of Jobs. For someone who was worried about the moral ramifications of writing books earlier... Just because there are alternatives doesn't make Apple morally just in this instance.
Look, guy, sorry for being a dick. But for anyone who considers himself a "high-karma" slashdot user & "not an idiot", a little criticism won't be so bad.
Question: Have you seen any follow-up on the disparities between voting trends in DieBold counties compared to other counties? I never got a satisfactory explanation for that, nor, for that matter, the machines in the first place. Did everyone randomly lose interest, or have there been follow-ups clearing that suspiciously-right-wing company of wrongdoing?
To those who cherish freedom, he has been a pillar of hope in an age when DRM (Digital Rights Management) threatens to overtake mainstream media.
Okay, this is bad.
Have we degenerated to the level of the government that we must use overblown rhetoric, that we don't question such rhetoric?
This is classic Loyalty Oath type stuff--"You Love Freedom, Yes?" "Um.. yeah..." "Then You Love Senator McCarthy."
I have the highest respect for those whom I can view as "pillars of hope", but I also have the highest respect for our language, and shit like this is, at best, abuse, at worst, propoganda.
Of course, WeatherBug et al is already doing that for a large amount of internet users. Why not just leave everything checkmarked next time you install AIM ask WeatherBug for a report?
Good points from a sociological standpoint, but if you mean them to apply to the legal nature of the question then you would have to take a rather large pen to the Constitution. I would support a movement that seeks to change the sociatal expectations/ norms/ morees of our culture(s) to something a bit more reasonable, or at least to something that places higher value on intellect, but suggesting that the government should have any part in this is rather ridiculous, at least considering the original intent of (what I assume to be) our country.
Essentially, the girls may be exploited in the literal sense, but our government has no basis to force them to de-exploit themselves.
There is quite a lot to be said for personal responsibility, but the fact remains that people will get left behind in every sphere of life. The ones that work through it, avoid it, whatever, on their own or by their own initiative are the ones that we want to enjoy the benefits of having worked through it.
c) "what about the children viewing the porn?" Yes indeed. And what about the other offensive things they view, like adult porn, or bestiality, or planes flying into tall buildings, or.... where is the line drawn?
I hope I'm not getting too philosophical here, but that's a good point: What about the children viewing the porn? Now, I understand that minors are not supposed to be looking at any porn, and I understand that quite a lot of the child porn out there is a result of gross exploitation of children, but I'll relate an anecdote: My brother was 12 or 13 when I first started noticing his porn trails on the computer. I was distressed to find that some of the porn he was looking at was of girls around his age. Now none of these were hardcore images; most looked like webcam shots. Now, I couldn't tell him that it was "wrong" for him to be interested in girls of his own age, & I couldn't make the claim that these girls were being exploited (anymore than regular porn actresses/models/whatever are being exploited)--can you make the argument that these girls were exploiting themselves?
What it came down to was, "look guy, I sympathize, I do, but if these are found on the computer, me & dad are going to be in a world of hurt. Here, he's a couple good regular porn sites..."
I suppose my question is, with such malleable morals (as morals are today) how can we legislate on morality? (Note: Legislating to protect minors is a GREAT idea) Or rather, what is the difference between legislating protection and legislating morality?
Slashdot Mirror
Those are less "data points" than "unsubstantiated and vague anecdotes", in all fairness.
It's interesting that you're so specific with size & weight & age, & offer no details that would actually allow us to verify the stories. I won't even get into your slanted rhetoric.
And hell, I totally agree with your point. But if we're going to expect the other side to engage in a real debate, we better be paragons of the form ourselves.
For example, the device could be getting energy from somewhere via some mechanism we don't fully understand yet.
Eh? Is that an example?
Because it sounded an awful lot like the logic used by Certain People to "debunk" evolution. "Well, could be there's a red guy but he's also invisible because we can't see him--let's call him, oh, the Devil--and COULD be he PLANTED all those fossils there just to trick us!"
Come on, man! The argument ain't about how much we're willing to imagine. Every person on this website would orgasm simultaniously--probably even twice!--if this turned out to be true. But it's obviously not. And how do we figure this out? By looking at the claims & the methods without our vision clouded by our wet dreams.
We ask, "What are they claiming?"
A: Creation of energy.
"How, exactly, do they do this truly remarkable thing?"
A: They'll tell us later.
"Why don't they tell us now."
A: They feel like UNLIMITED CLEAN POWER MIGHT NOT MAKE THEM ENOUGH MONEY IF THEY DON'T DO A COUPLE PUBLIC DEMONSTRATIONS OF IT FIRST.
I'm being sort of a jerk, but for a reason. And also because I like it.
I too have wondered about this. I think, though, there are a few smart & ultimately pleasing ways for them to handle this. First, a redefinition of "Cylon"--obviously the final five are different than the regular ones, else the originals would know all about them. What I'm thinking here is that Cylon isn't something you're born, it's something you live (i.e. Tigh assumed a Cylon-nature as he aged, or at a certain point, etc.). This would salvage our memories of the Chief's & Boomer's relationship. Another idea that ties back into this is a return to the mysticism of the early episodes. I'm thinking the Tarot society from Pynchon's Against the Day.
Eh.
I've got my money on Apollo, mostly because of how the camera behaved after that silly "We're Cylons but we're soldiers!!" meeting at the end of the episode. Also, using Apollo as a Cylon gives the series a lot of license to get mystical, precisely because he has such a well fleshed-out past. All these other people, sure, we've never even heard about most of their parents, as uncomfortable as the fits may currently be. But if they were to successfully explain Apollo's Cylon-hood (thereby showing the Cylons to be something much more interesting than sleeper agents) the other four would seem very reasonable.
Sorry for the ramble! I just woke up & haven't yet had a coffee or a beer.
What on earth does the internet owe to you?
4 /pressrelease2.php
You want to do dope and cook your brain, go right ahead but do it in private.
& that's just the thing: we totally would. But even there you get in trouble. Like it or not, the internet is a fine way to start a political debate. Many of the usual routes are closed to concerned parties on this issue. http://www.changetheclimate.org/campaigns/02_18_0
There's a poem you made me think of:
Dream Song 105
As a kid I believed in democracy: I
'saw no alternative'--teaching at The Big Place I ah
put it in practice:
we'd time for one long novel: to a vote--
Gone with the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No'
and we sat down with War & Peace.
As a man I believed in democracy (nobody
ever learns anything): only one lazy day
my assistant, called James Dow,
& I were chatting, in a failure of meeting of minds,
and I said curious 'What are your real politics?'
'Oh, I'm a monarchist.'
Finishing his dissertation, in Political Science.
I resign. The universal contempt for Mr Nixon,
whom never I liked but who
alert & gutsy served us years under a dope,
since dynasty K swarmed in. Let's have a King
maybe, before a few mindless votes.
-John Berryman
Notice the Nixon reference (& "dynasty K" = Kennedys), how it dates the poem, but also how topical the politics seem.
Our founding fathers were smart, yes, really effin' smart. But the total number of wildly-intelligent people has maybe increased since then (...if not the ratio)? Why do we keep trying to get ridiculous politicians to apply "fixes" to a system that, if you read your history, has so rarely worked well & sustainably (& if you look at its trajectory...)? Only out of laziness, or perhaps an eschatophilia.
[Off-topic but maybe interesting, O mods?]
The full text of your title (Do not go gentle...; a villanelle by Dylan Thomas) (italics added):
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
****
I only italicized from the second & third stanza, but really the entire poem is saying "Those who have 'effed up their lives can't deal with death". This is one of the more misused poems, along with Frost's "The Road Not Taken" (& also, for songs, "Born in the USA" which I've seen in a very patriotic Chevvy commercial).
I guess my point: your reference paints your comment, "I know there will be the crowd that says - but we were designed to die. That is bunk!" in a rather ironic light.
Nah, what you are is victim of some Eastern-European emotion. "Litost" from the Czech comes to mind, but only as an influence.
I don't mean the following as a rebuke or even as advice, but rahter something I thought of while reading your thread. Sometimes what we think is one thing--we say, "that is (in terms of essence) this!"--is actually something very different--"that is this! (or so I believe [because I am this...])"; basically, we fail to take into account our own perspective. You might consider, have you world enough and time, what your relationship was with your friend before you did this, and which friends, family members, or random acquaintences you would also turn in. Also worth consideration is how you mark this "successful"... would it still be worthy of posting online if your friend had not been called into account, if your mother had disagreed with your actions, if the register-monkey had lookt at you in disgust?
What I'm saying: be careful with grand declarations of moral superiority. They often bely something of a very different nature.
Here's a poem by Ezra Pound. It's out of a series of poems he called The Cantos and it is numbered XIII. Kung is Confucius.
Kung walked
by the dynastic temple
and into the cedar grove,
and then out by the lower river,
And with him Khieu Tchi
and Tian the low speaking
And "we are unknown," said Kung,
"You will take up charioteering?
"Then you will become known,
"Or perhaps I should take up charioterring, or archery?
"Or the practice of public speaking?"
And Tseu-lou said, "I would put the defences in order,"
And Khieu said, "If I were lord of a province
"I would put it in better order than this is."
And Tchi said, "I would prefer a small mountain temple,
"With order in the observances,
with a suitable performance of the ritual,"
And Tian said, with his hand on the strings of his lute
The low sounds continuing
after his hand left the strings,
And the sound went up like smoke, under the leaves,
And he looked after the sound:
"The old swimming hole,
"And the boys flopping off the planks,
"Or sitting in the underbrush playing mandolins."
And Kung smiled upon all of them equally.
And Thseng-sie desired to know:
"Which had answered correctly?"
And Kung said, "They have all answered correctly,
"That is to say, each in his nature."
And Kung raised his cane against Yuan Jang,
Yuan Jang being his elder,
or Yuan Jang sat by the roadside pretending to
be receiving wisdom.
And Kung said
"You old fool, come out of it,
"Get up and do something useful."
And Kung said
"Respect a child's faculties
"From the moment it inhales the clear air,
"But a man of fifty who knows nothing
Is worthy of no respect."
And "When the prince has gathered about him
"All the savants and artists, his riches will be fully employed."
And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves:
If a man have not order within him
He can not spread order about him;
And if a man have not order within him
His family will not act with due order;
And if the prince have not order within him
He can not put order in his dominions.
And Kung gave the words "order"
and "brotherly deference"
And said nothing of the "life after death."
And he said
"Anyone can run to excesses,
"It is easy to shoot past the mark,
"It is hard to stand firm in the middle."
And they said: If a man commit murder
Should his father protect him
This whole "Let's Get All the Usual Jokes Out of the Way" post is becoming nearly as cliche as what it lampoons.
Really, I'd rather listen to someone spout non-sequiturs, a la Aqua Teen Hunger Force or GTA3 talk radio stations than even reference these tired old things. I mean, you didn't include "I, for one, welcome our new..." or "In Soviet Russia," but you're still not adding anything.
How about, "As a single mother, and a fireman, I feel that if you rearrange the letters in 'Darl' you get 'Lard', and anyways, my code isn't protected by any sort of liscence and you still haven't stolen it... aren't you attracted to me anymore?"
It doesn't showcase your superiority over the rest of the slashdot crowd, but it's a good deal more fun to read.
(-1, Completely Offtopic. I won't blame you, mod)
For Christ's sake.
Could we please (and by "we", I mostly mean "you") stop complaining about grammar until we are innocent ourselves?
I seriously do not care, but:
"Antihero" in your sentence is missing an article; add an "an". "Scooby Doo" is a proper noun and thus requires capitalization. You use the wrong form of "sight".
Next, "Tragic Hero" is also missing an article. The article following the parentheses should not be capitalized. The word "villanious" really wants to be the word "villainous". Finally, "justify" does not agree with its third-person subject, "the end"; it should be "justifies".
I am a graduate student of English and I mispell words, too, whether through haste, substance abuse, distraction, whatever. Sometimes I use the incorrect words. Generally, though, when I try to lord my knowledge over someone, I try to be as correct as possible.
My point? Let he who is without blame...
As an English Graduate Student, I feel compelled to mark-up your comment. My corrections are in brackets.
Um[,] as an English Major[,] I must warn you [that the] Gutenberg [project] sucks.
It has massive[,] massive editing errors[,] and it really needs a certain level of accountability, not to mention the messages at the beginnning make it really sucky [(w/c)] to read on a palm pilot. [(This is a run-on sentence. Please revise.)]
They used some bizzare formatting system which breaks it [(This "it" is very ambiguously placed, as the subject of the sentence is "They". Please revise.)] on most pocket devices, they decided not to use rtf or anything else with support for graphics (Corectly assuming that those were usually patented but still) the list just goes on and on.[(I'm not even going to start on the end of this "sentence". You're missing, at least, a couple periods and a few commas.)]
It could have been an excellent service but it falls just short.
It's [(This is a contraction of "it is"; you mean to use the possessive, "its".)] catalogue falls far short.
This is what happens, Deliveranc3, when you wait until the last minute to start your Slashdot comments...
Okay, I do not get this at all...
From the post:
Farley wrote to point out that his[sic] neither a Harvard post-doctoral fellow nor a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, writing "I am not and never have been either. (I am a tenured professor elsewhere and have been for several years.)
FTA:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Harvard professor Jonathan Farley is an award-winning scholar, but he wouldn't mind being known as a Hollywood mathematician.
So I thought to myself, couldn't he just come out & say he's a Harvard prof., not a grad student? But then, I googled, & lo & behold:
http://math.mit.edu/people/faculty/farley.html
Is he the male equivalent to prime-time Alias? A doppelganger? An elaborate hoax?
Well, hey, it worked for my senator...
0 4/wi/
1 234.shtml?tid=153&tid=219
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/elections/20
Senator Feingold (D-WI, for those to lazy to follow the link) was the only senator to vote against the PATRIOT Act. He took some heat for this, yes, but eventually even many republicans who dislike Feingold's fiscal ideas decided to vote for him. Winning a senate seat by 11 points is no small feat, especially in a "battleground" state.
My point? Not everyone is spineless. Yes, Feingold did, apparently, vote for the Iraqi spending bill with the Real-ID stuff, but next time he has a townhall meeting I'll ask him about it.
Which brings me to another point. Small groups of people CAN get heard. For instance: http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/04/12/06/23
Have you even emailed your senator?
Not flaimbait, but yeah, confrontational.
/.). However, your "facts surrounding the situation" section is of dubious value. I think you presented it in a rather intimidating way so that people might not question the obviousness, the pointlessness, or the guesswork behind what that section says.
Look, I agree with your final analysis of the situation. I don't think this is a big deal, & I'm not sure why people are upset (or if people are upset; I haven't seen too much outrage on
Fact: Wiley was asked not to publish the book.
Mmmm, good start, but I'm not sure why this absolves Apple of any blame. Say wiley doesn't like a computer Apple makes--"Please don't make that computer." You see the ridiculousness of giving Apple credit for something that is none of their business.
You might make the case that a book on Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs' business, & I'd accept that. But it's not Apple's business.
Fact: The biography was unauthorized, which is legal, but not really that morally okay, especially when the biography is about someone who's still alive.
Okay, look up "fact" & then cross-reference it with "moral". Can you find a "moral fact"? Not unless you believe in God, really, or some other objective truth. Fact: People sometimes use words incorrectly.
Fact: Jobs could not have made Apple stop selling Wiley's products without support from a majority of the Board.
No, Fact: You are guessing that Jobs could not have made Apple stop selling Wiley's products...
There are plenty of ways that a CEO could do something like this without any oversight, & this makes perfect sense: the board does not want to be consulted on every little decision that goes into probably one of the least profitable sections of Apple.
Fact: Apple is not preventing the publishing of the book, they are expressing objection to it by not selling the publisher's materials in their stores.
Um. Golly. I'm glad I made it halfway down the comments page without reading any of the above posts, or even the little article blurb (much less, TFA).
Fact: A corporation has the right to choose what it wants to sell, and whom to obtain their products from.
Well, yes, that statement of "Fact" is mostly true. Corporations can't, say, obtain products yet from Cuba, but I get what you're saying.
Fact: Again, you can walk into Borders or Barnes and Noble or whatever, or search Amazon.com, and still get Wiley's books, including the unauthorized biography of Jobs.
For someone who was worried about the moral ramifications of writing books earlier... Just because there are alternatives doesn't make Apple morally just in this instance.
Look, guy, sorry for being a dick. But for anyone who considers himself a "high-karma" slashdot user & "not an idiot", a little criticism won't be so bad.
*nodnod* My first thought was for the air filters.
Oh wouldn't it be nice?
Question: Have you seen any follow-up on the disparities between voting trends in DieBold counties compared to other counties? I never got a satisfactory explanation for that, nor, for that matter, the machines in the first place. Did everyone randomly lose interest, or have there been follow-ups clearing that suspiciously-right-wing company of wrongdoing?
Please, post links if you've got 'em.
To those who cherish freedom, he has been a pillar of hope in an age when DRM (Digital Rights Management) threatens to overtake mainstream media.
Okay, this is bad.
Have we degenerated to the level of the government that we must use overblown rhetoric, that we don't question such rhetoric?
This is classic Loyalty Oath type stuff--"You Love Freedom, Yes?" "Um.. yeah..." "Then You Love Senator McCarthy."
I have the highest respect for those whom I can view as "pillars of hope", but I also have the highest respect for our language, and shit like this is, at best, abuse, at worst, propoganda.
Well, I am minister of the Born Again Church of the Foundation Crusade, and truly I tell you: I'm a total sexually-repressed hypocrite.
;p
And then I'll quantum-borrow the cop's glock and quantum-unload a clip into the box.
I quantum-love science!
Quantum computing doesn't make threats.
It makes promises.
I'm not just gunna break yo' face, i'm going to quantum break yo' face, foo'!
Will the tinfoil hat crowd shy away from this?
Hahahaha!
Oh wait, you're seriously asking?
Of course, WeatherBug et al is already doing that for a large amount of internet users. Why not just leave everything checkmarked next time you install AIM ask WeatherBug for a report?
Really, it's an argument not only for adaptability, but versatility as well.
Not that dropping out of college hasn't been a good move for some people, but there is something to be said for having a well-rounded education.
I'm a member of both the LP and the ACLU--my tinfoil hat is oiled-up, rarin' to go, on a hip holster, etc.
But come on.
Come on.
Come on... rtfa...
Bill Haneman (85 votes) - Sun Microsystems
And he was a few places removed from the winners.
Good points from a sociological standpoint, but if you mean them to apply to the legal nature of the question then you would have to take a rather large pen to the Constitution. I would support a movement that seeks to change the sociatal expectations/ norms/ morees of our culture(s) to something a bit more reasonable, or at least to something that places higher value on intellect, but suggesting that the government should have any part in this is rather ridiculous, at least considering the original intent of (what I assume to be) our country.
Essentially, the girls may be exploited in the literal sense, but our government has no basis to force them to de-exploit themselves.
There is quite a lot to be said for personal responsibility, but the fact remains that people will get left behind in every sphere of life. The ones that work through it, avoid it, whatever, on their own or by their own initiative are the ones that we want to enjoy the benefits of having worked through it.
c) "what about the children viewing the porn?" Yes indeed. And what about the other offensive things they view, like adult porn, or bestiality, or planes flying into tall buildings, or.... where is the line drawn?
I hope I'm not getting too philosophical here, but that's a good point: What about the children viewing the porn? Now, I understand that minors are not supposed to be looking at any porn, and I understand that quite a lot of the child porn out there is a result of gross exploitation of children, but I'll relate an anecdote: My brother was 12 or 13 when I first started noticing his porn trails on the computer. I was distressed to find that some of the porn he was looking at was of girls around his age. Now none of these were hardcore images; most looked like webcam shots. Now, I couldn't tell him that it was "wrong" for him to be interested in girls of his own age, & I couldn't make the claim that these girls were being exploited (anymore than regular porn actresses/models/whatever are being exploited)--can you make the argument that these girls were exploiting themselves?
What it came down to was, "look guy, I sympathize, I do, but if these are found on the computer, me & dad are going to be in a world of hurt. Here, he's a couple good regular porn sites..."
I suppose my question is, with such malleable morals (as morals are today) how can we legislate on morality? (Note: Legislating to protect minors is a GREAT idea) Or rather, what is the difference between legislating protection and legislating morality?