There have been centuries of theological debate as to what exactly the tree meant and honestly, I doubt I'll be adding a great deal to the subject. ^_^ Nonetheless, I'll speak because I'm egotistical enough to think I'll add something. To me, the tree essentially represented free will. It probably wasn't a real tree, but it represented the knowledge of good and evil. Once Adam and kin realized that there were such a thing as good and evil and that they could choose which action to take, they started being held responsible for their actions. As human beings, we are inherently imperfect and prone to some evil in our lives, so ultimately none of us are suitable for Heaven. Therefore, God has given us the opportunity to be forgiven of our sins if we are truly sorry and have shown proper repentence. As to why anyone would go to Hell, the only scenario that ever made sense to me, All-loving God and all, were people who, after receiving all the truth on the matter and fully understanding their decision, still rejected God and his offer of salvation. That's not to say that sinning carries no penalties. Good Catholic that I am, I believe in a purgatory where we'll have to wash our souls clean, but the culmination of free will IMO is for us to ultimately have a final choice based upon the total truth.
^_^ Mentioning Shakespeare is in interesting, as he had a tendency to invent words and phrases for his plays. There is a place for evolution in language, even in IM. *shrug* That said, some of the modifications smack of laziness (no capitalization or punctuation, abbreviations like "4eva") or just being cute (133t-speak, "y2k+1"). I developed my language skills by virtue of parents who constantly corrected my grammar and proofread my papers typed up on the computer. When I started chatting online, it never occurred to me to deviate from the standard laws of grammar and spelling. *grin* Besides which, I got a kick out of people always guessing my age too high. It's a heady feeling for a 9-year-old to be treated as an adult.
As for computers reducing learning... *sigh* I could definitely see it, at least to some degree. At one time, my leisure activity was reading, everything from biographies to trashy science fiction. Now, a lot of my spare time is spent playing computer games or chatting online. My youngest brother barely reads at all, having grown up with the computer and TV (Yes, I had a TV growing up, but my parents didn't believe in us watching more than an hour a day). It may be valid to argue as to whether reading really gives that much more benefit than computer games, but in my opinion it does.
The catch here is that you have to actually read the line about "wide variety of questions" in there. Some questions were more contentious than others. Honestly, the summary was pretty misleading, as it basically said that overall, views averaged out, then gave a summary bit at the end saying that one question hit one extreme and another hit the opposite extreme.
The prize involved in these contests is a small fraction of the costs involved. The X-Prize participants, the DARPA autonomous vehicle people, etc, are putting more money into their projects than they will ever get back in prize money. So long as you have an exciting and sexy subject, people will still pour their own money in. And yes, these people have still made amazing advances for what they've put in, but they're doing so because it's their money. Give them government funding, and I suspect that their efficiency would drop sharply.
If you wish, discount my opinion. I guess I'm still somewhat sore from when someone in HR came in to work and commented on the cheapness of hiring new graduates versus training old ones. The key point was that the company doesn't have to pay for the education of these new college graduates, whereas sending their current employees to college would cost the company money.
The big catch to me there is that I have had several situations where I wound up pulling up a little too far, either because I misjudged where the line ended (Especially difficult during rainy times when the glare of headlights against the road surface turns it into a near uniform white to me [astigmastism has left me seeing halos around lights]) or my brakes not stopping me in time. Almost every time, the fellow behind me has immediately pulled right up to my bumper, leaving me no chance to back up. Myself, I always try to leave a little wiggle room for people in such a situation.
The other Catch-22 is some traffic sensors only detect you if you're slightly overlapped, at least here in Newark, OH. I have seen people (usually elderly people) stuck at a left-turn lane for close to a half hour before they finally pulled up enough to trigger the signal. (They usually get "subtly pressured" By the people behind them tailgating them)
Re:abortions due to medical reasons.
This reports differently, that many abortions can be traced back to financial problems
Insensitive clod! Don't you realize that the dire financial straits and stress of being a parent constitute a health problem?
*sigh* And I wish I were more joking when I say that... The definition of "medical risk" when it comes to abortions ranges from ectopic pregnancies to weight gain.
Given the massive piles of unlabeled VHS tapes I see in peoples' houses where VCRs are still in use, I'd say there's a substantial amount of VHS tapes in use are popular media too. The only real difference I see is that in general, to make a VCR tape copy, you have to have been in possession of either an original tape or be able to secure use of its broadcast. And even then, you might be making a copy of a copy.
I think the major difference really lies in the fidelity of copies. No one worries about you recording movies on TV because the tape wears out and the verison you're getting is often crippled with commercials, pan-and-scan cutting, formatted-to-fit-available-time cuts, broadcast logos... and if you're making copies of copies (essentially what Kazaa winds up being), you're losing a bit of quality each time. Look at the fansub community and their talks of "first-generation" and "second-generation" copies. In fact, it's one of the bones of contention in that community, as regards digital fansubbing, as the old tape method ensured that the fansubs had a limitted lifespan and that if/when an official version came out, the average fan would jump at the chance to get a full and valid copy.
That said, Kazaa sort of has this... while there are occasionally full movies, games, and such, in general, the movies have glitches, bad compression rates, advertisements by the people who ripped the movie. The games are often missing music, sound, and movie resources or, again, have lossy compression used for resource files. Meh... Six of one and half a dozen of the other, perhaps.
{nods} That makes sense. I've dealt with intuitives in the past. Extremely frustrating, both for you and them, as they often genuinely can't explain where they get their inspiration. Some of them are still close enough to the traditional model that they can learn the rules and use them. As for your friend... those cases are like first kisses. You enjoy them for what they are in the moment, but you know that ultimately, the performance will not be repeated and any recording will lose some subtlety of it. I withdraw my comment about educating your friend. I guess I just deal with so many people who see music as something mystical. The strong natural singers who refuse training in vocal techniques and wind up burning out, either mentally or physically... *sigh* Meh, anyhow, treasure your friend, for all her ephemerality.
She'll then promptly forget this piece because she could never afford schooling and doesn't even know how to write down music using standard notation.
Musical notation really isn't all that difficult. Heck, with a piano, it's practically a direct transcription. Or if you play on a MIDI keyboard, you can have the music directly exported. Of course, I really don't know the circumstances here, but in my opinion, learning to translate piano music to sheet form is fairly trivial, basically corresponding each key to a specific place on the staff.
I'd disagree there. He opposes condoms, but he does support abstinence until marriage and fidelity afterwards. Which approach do you think has resulted in fewer cases of AIDS? Not his fault people won't listen to good sense...
Admittedly, this was more of a Win9X problem, but I've seen it once or twice in XP. You have a disk inserted, then later remove it and suddenly you're up at a blue screen (not the Blue Screen, but blue) stating that volume such-and-such was removed. Please re-insert it, or cancel. I've seen this with floppies, CDs, and USB drives.
Once conception has taken place, it is inevitable that birth will take place.
First, on a technical level, after conception, the egg has to go through implantation. Due to semantic juggling, that's why "contraceptives" like the Pill don't do anything to conception. Rather, they prevent implantation.
Secondly, there's a variety of things that can happen after conception that prevent birth from spontaneous abortions (the body absorbs everything back) to miscarriages and other in-womb deaths. Although, arguably, the baby is still "born" in the latter two cases, just not alive.
Think about it, if this were in fact true (which it is not) then homosexuality would eventually become extinct through natural selection. (over billions and billions of years, of course) Unless you assume that this is a common occuring mutation that occurs regularly.
Not quite true. I think it was in The Selfish Gene where they pointed out that traits that may not benefit an individual may still help propagate the gene itself if it profits relatives. If one could argue, say, that a homosexual male would be better at acting as a caretaker for children (And no, I don't have any argument in that area), then having an individual like that pop up periodically would mean that relatives of his (nephews, nieces, etc) would be more likely to survive, quite possibly carrying large amounts of his genetic code due to the common ancestry.
Perhaps a more practical example might be the argument that homosexuality occurs as population control. (Supposedly, studies have shown that homosexual behavior in animals increases as a population starts to outgrow its space. Perhaps related, it's been shown that the later a child is in birth succession, the more statistically likely it is for them to be homosexual) By reducing the chance of population overgrowth in the area, the gay person increases the chances of survival for their relatives.
The biggest catch I've found with remembering what people say is that, short of keeping a tape recorder, the person is apt to say, "No, I didn't say anything like that" and utterly believe it. There was a marvelous science-fiction story I remember reading as a kid involving a fellow who essentially had a perfect memory. It was a curse for him. When he'd correct people as to what they said, they'd insist that he was wrong. He got beat up repeatedly for settling bar bets by reciting statistics. And lastly, and probably the most incisive point the author introduced, he had the hardest time figuring out when to acknowledge meeting people. His memory meant that almost every person he passed on the street, he could remember having interacted with them in some way, but remembering how usually took him a few moments, by which time he'd either confused a complete stranger by greeting them by name, or offended someone by apparently socially cutting them. (And at that, the "unkindest cut," acknowledging their existence, then ignoring their identity)
My main objection to these electronic voting systems is that it seems like they're forcing poorly built solutions on a problem which doesn't really exist, when there are already functioning mechanical systems that work. While I believe that eventually electronic voting systems will be viable, I don't want them deployed until they are 100% sure that they're as good as the mechanical systems that have been working for decades. Sure, there were a few people who had trouble with punching cards or pushing levers. All of those systems have people onhand to help you with the physical aspects. Or heck, build a type-two lever into the punchcarding so that your 80-year-old grandmother can exert a fraction of an ounce of force on one end to punch her holes. The mechanical systems currently work better than the electronic ones and, well, they're already there, so you don't have to pay to install them.
In my opinion, it's all about the politics, people saying that the voting machines are "antiquated" and that we "should enter the 21st century." Bah... I bet it has more to do with some of these legislators having a relative in the voting machine business.
I'd be worried if they were firing "canon" too...
on
TV Piracy is Next
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· Score: 1
Personally, my favorite was in Chobits. One of the pirate versions changed fansubs for the last two episodes, resulting in some truly egregious translations. The funniest part was that one of the episodes was reminiscing on prior events, which meant you could see the contrasting dialogue. My favorite mistranslation was translating a shouted "hentai!" into "metamorphist!" for the final episode rather than "pervert" as in the original episode.
I think that it's a similar situation to how people who have quit smoking tend to be a bit on the annoying side. It's that evangelist air which has frequently led to bizarre segues. "I notice your hands have a biker's glove tan. I haven't driven in years because it's so bad for the environment." That said, I have nothing against most tree huggers. I see them as being similar to members of the NRA in that they're typically represented by the lunatic fringe, something I can relate to, being Pro-Life.
Admittedly, it's geared towards anime, but check out The Pirate Anime FAQ. They've got a lot of nice little tips such as areas to watch for false logos, not to mention some common-sense rules of thumb such as episode to disc ratios (As they state, a typical ratio is 2-3 episodes per disc. If you're getting Seasons 1-7 and they list only 14 DVDs, it's probably pirated and there's a good chance that you're getting a lower-quality product.
While a great deal of the older movies are getting a cheap conversion (Extremely basic menu, no subtitles, usually 2-3 movies crammed on one disc) to DVDs and being sold for $3 at Walmart, not all titles have been converted and others are hard to come by. I seem to remember there was a big controversey when Blockbuster started dumping their VHS stock. Apparently some of their films, such as a rare version of Freaks, were not available on DVD. Some fans decided to "rescue" the tapes from dumpsters and subsequently it became Blockbuster policy to crush the tapes before disposing of them.
Personally, I still own a VCR because I still have VHS tapes and the library still rents them. Although I'm thinking of getting rid of the TV and routing the VCR output to my computer monitor...
But if he adds a nice background picture, starts xsnow by default, and perhaps includes some nice xmas song as startup music (if there is something free to use, of course), then I'd say it's a nice idea.
^_^ All of those modifications make sense if you perhaps rig them to only happen for a few times (difficult with a LiveCD, I'd wager) or only for the holiday season, at least if you're hoping to convert people. Sure, the first few times, right after Christmas, having your computer sing Jingle Bells to you is cute, but could you imagine it still doing that in July?
Both of the expansions changed play up a bit. Opposing Force, you had teammates to back you up (although the AI generally guarenteed you never had teammates for long... they had a tendency to charge). In Blue Shift, you don't have an HEV suit, so you have to armor yourself from the helmets and vests of store rooms and fallen guards. Neither of them were revolutionary, but they were somewhat evolutionary, at least from the first one.
IMO Blue Shift was way too short, too short for full retail price, but YMMV and I give them credit for not having a bizarre boss battle at the end where you basically had to find the trick to the boss and follow the same pattern over and over to win. Additionally, you might consider getting Blue Shift if you can find it at a low price, simply because it added a high-definition graphics pack.
Good point, but at least this way the false witnesses hopefully got in trouble too...
Not really. More than anything, it just shows more evidence that eyewitnesses are not reliable witnesses. Seeing is not believing and our minds can trick us into seeing or not seeing things as we believe. It's been seen in actual cases and it's been shown in lab tests. People see what they expect to see or what they want to see. It gets even worse if you give them a chance to discuss their stories with one another.
^_^ Yeah, I remember that book. In that story, they took a few wrong turns in the desert and cannabilized their car for materials after it broke down. Fun stuff.
Somehow that reminds me of the Buck Cake storyline of Ghastly's Ghastly Webcomic. Long story short, one of the main characters receives an accidental (perhaps) gift of a bukkake video from his brother who (supposedly) thought it was a cooking video.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been centuries of theological debate as to what exactly the tree meant and honestly, I doubt I'll be adding a great deal to the subject. ^_^ Nonetheless, I'll speak because I'm egotistical enough to think I'll add something. To me, the tree essentially represented free will. It probably wasn't a real tree, but it represented the knowledge of good and evil. Once Adam and kin realized that there were such a thing as good and evil and that they could choose which action to take, they started being held responsible for their actions. As human beings, we are inherently imperfect and prone to some evil in our lives, so ultimately none of us are suitable for Heaven. Therefore, God has given us the opportunity to be forgiven of our sins if we are truly sorry and have shown proper repentence. As to why anyone would go to Hell, the only scenario that ever made sense to me, All-loving God and all, were people who, after receiving all the truth on the matter and fully understanding their decision, still rejected God and his offer of salvation. That's not to say that sinning carries no penalties. Good Catholic that I am, I believe in a purgatory where we'll have to wash our souls clean, but the culmination of free will IMO is for us to ultimately have a final choice based upon the total truth.
As for computers reducing learning... *sigh* I could definitely see it, at least to some degree. At one time, my leisure activity was reading, everything from biographies to trashy science fiction. Now, a lot of my spare time is spent playing computer games or chatting online. My youngest brother barely reads at all, having grown up with the computer and TV (Yes, I had a TV growing up, but my parents didn't believe in us watching more than an hour a day). It may be valid to argue as to whether reading really gives that much more benefit than computer games, but in my opinion it does.
If you wish, discount my opinion. I guess I'm still somewhat sore from when someone in HR came in to work and commented on the cheapness of hiring new graduates versus training old ones. The key point was that the company doesn't have to pay for the education of these new college graduates, whereas sending their current employees to college would cost the company money.
The other Catch-22 is some traffic sensors only detect you if you're slightly overlapped, at least here in Newark, OH. I have seen people (usually elderly people) stuck at a left-turn lane for close to a half hour before they finally pulled up enough to trigger the signal. (They usually get "subtly pressured" By the people behind them tailgating them)
This reports differently, that many abortions can be traced back to financial problems
Insensitive clod! Don't you realize that the dire financial straits and stress of being a parent constitute a health problem?
*sigh* And I wish I were more joking when I say that... The definition of "medical risk" when it comes to abortions ranges from ectopic pregnancies to weight gain.
I think the major difference really lies in the fidelity of copies. No one worries about you recording movies on TV because the tape wears out and the verison you're getting is often crippled with commercials, pan-and-scan cutting, formatted-to-fit-available-time cuts, broadcast logos... and if you're making copies of copies (essentially what Kazaa winds up being), you're losing a bit of quality each time. Look at the fansub community and their talks of "first-generation" and "second-generation" copies. In fact, it's one of the bones of contention in that community, as regards digital fansubbing, as the old tape method ensured that the fansubs had a limitted lifespan and that if/when an official version came out, the average fan would jump at the chance to get a full and valid copy.
That said, Kazaa sort of has this... while there are occasionally full movies, games, and such, in general, the movies have glitches, bad compression rates, advertisements by the people who ripped the movie. The games are often missing music, sound, and movie resources or, again, have lossy compression used for resource files. Meh... Six of one and half a dozen of the other, perhaps.
{nods} That makes sense. I've dealt with intuitives in the past. Extremely frustrating, both for you and them, as they often genuinely can't explain where they get their inspiration. Some of them are still close enough to the traditional model that they can learn the rules and use them. As for your friend... those cases are like first kisses. You enjoy them for what they are in the moment, but you know that ultimately, the performance will not be repeated and any recording will lose some subtlety of it. I withdraw my comment about educating your friend. I guess I just deal with so many people who see music as something mystical. The strong natural singers who refuse training in vocal techniques and wind up burning out, either mentally or physically... *sigh* Meh, anyhow, treasure your friend, for all her ephemerality.
She'll then promptly forget this piece because she could never afford schooling and doesn't even know how to write down music using standard notation.
Musical notation really isn't all that difficult. Heck, with a piano, it's practically a direct transcription. Or if you play on a MIDI keyboard, you can have the music directly exported. Of course, I really don't know the circumstances here, but in my opinion, learning to translate piano music to sheet form is fairly trivial, basically corresponding each key to a specific place on the staff.
I'd disagree there. He opposes condoms, but he does support abstinence until marriage and fidelity afterwards. Which approach do you think has resulted in fewer cases of AIDS? Not his fault people won't listen to good sense...
Admittedly, this was more of a Win9X problem, but I've seen it once or twice in XP. You have a disk inserted, then later remove it and suddenly you're up at a blue screen (not the Blue Screen, but blue) stating that volume such-and-such was removed. Please re-insert it, or cancel. I've seen this with floppies, CDs, and USB drives.
First, on a technical level, after conception, the egg has to go through implantation. Due to semantic juggling, that's why "contraceptives" like the Pill don't do anything to conception. Rather, they prevent implantation.
Secondly, there's a variety of things that can happen after conception that prevent birth from spontaneous abortions (the body absorbs everything back) to miscarriages and other in-womb deaths. Although, arguably, the baby is still "born" in the latter two cases, just not alive.
With embryonic stem cells there is no sperm involved.
Er... where do embryos come from in your world?
Not quite true. I think it was in The Selfish Gene where they pointed out that traits that may not benefit an individual may still help propagate the gene itself if it profits relatives. If one could argue, say, that a homosexual male would be better at acting as a caretaker for children (And no, I don't have any argument in that area), then having an individual like that pop up periodically would mean that relatives of his (nephews, nieces, etc) would be more likely to survive, quite possibly carrying large amounts of his genetic code due to the common ancestry.
Perhaps a more practical example might be the argument that homosexuality occurs as population control. (Supposedly, studies have shown that homosexual behavior in animals increases as a population starts to outgrow its space. Perhaps related, it's been shown that the later a child is in birth succession, the more statistically likely it is for them to be homosexual) By reducing the chance of population overgrowth in the area, the gay person increases the chances of survival for their relatives.
The biggest catch I've found with remembering what people say is that, short of keeping a tape recorder, the person is apt to say, "No, I didn't say anything like that" and utterly believe it. There was a marvelous science-fiction story I remember reading as a kid involving a fellow who essentially had a perfect memory. It was a curse for him. When he'd correct people as to what they said, they'd insist that he was wrong. He got beat up repeatedly for settling bar bets by reciting statistics. And lastly, and probably the most incisive point the author introduced, he had the hardest time figuring out when to acknowledge meeting people. His memory meant that almost every person he passed on the street, he could remember having interacted with them in some way, but remembering how usually took him a few moments, by which time he'd either confused a complete stranger by greeting them by name, or offended someone by apparently socially cutting them. (And at that, the "unkindest cut," acknowledging their existence, then ignoring their identity)
In my opinion, it's all about the politics, people saying that the voting machines are "antiquated" and that we "should enter the 21st century." Bah... I bet it has more to do with some of these legislators having a relative in the voting machine business.
Personally, my favorite was in Chobits. One of the pirate versions changed fansubs for the last two episodes, resulting in some truly egregious translations. The funniest part was that one of the episodes was reminiscing on prior events, which meant you could see the contrasting dialogue. My favorite mistranslation was translating a shouted "hentai!" into "metamorphist!" for the final episode rather than "pervert" as in the original episode.
I think that it's a similar situation to how people who have quit smoking tend to be a bit on the annoying side. It's that evangelist air which has frequently led to bizarre segues. "I notice your hands have a biker's glove tan. I haven't driven in years because it's so bad for the environment." That said, I have nothing against most tree huggers. I see them as being similar to members of the NRA in that they're typically represented by the lunatic fringe, something I can relate to, being Pro-Life.
Admittedly, it's geared towards anime, but check out The Pirate Anime FAQ. They've got a lot of nice little tips such as areas to watch for false logos, not to mention some common-sense rules of thumb such as episode to disc ratios (As they state, a typical ratio is 2-3 episodes per disc. If you're getting Seasons 1-7 and they list only 14 DVDs, it's probably pirated and there's a good chance that you're getting a lower-quality product.
Personally, I still own a VCR because I still have VHS tapes and the library still rents them. Although I'm thinking of getting rid of the TV and routing the VCR output to my computer monitor...
But if he adds a nice background picture, starts xsnow by default, and perhaps includes some nice xmas song as startup music (if there is something free to use, of course), then I'd say it's a nice idea.
^_^ All of those modifications make sense if you perhaps rig them to only happen for a few times (difficult with a LiveCD, I'd wager) or only for the holiday season, at least if you're hoping to convert people. Sure, the first few times, right after Christmas, having your computer sing Jingle Bells to you is cute, but could you imagine it still doing that in July?
IMO Blue Shift was way too short, too short for full retail price, but YMMV and I give them credit for not having a bizarre boss battle at the end where you basically had to find the trick to the boss and follow the same pattern over and over to win. Additionally, you might consider getting Blue Shift if you can find it at a low price, simply because it added a high-definition graphics pack.
Good point, but at least this way the false witnesses hopefully got in trouble too...
Not really. More than anything, it just shows more evidence that eyewitnesses are not reliable witnesses. Seeing is not believing and our minds can trick us into seeing or not seeing things as we believe. It's been seen in actual cases and it's been shown in lab tests. People see what they expect to see or what they want to see. It gets even worse if you give them a chance to discuss their stories with one another.
^_^ Yeah, I remember that book. In that story, they took a few wrong turns in the desert and cannabilized their car for materials after it broke down. Fun stuff.
Somehow that reminds me of the Buck Cake storyline of Ghastly's Ghastly Webcomic. Long story short, one of the main characters receives an accidental (perhaps) gift of a bukkake video from his brother who (supposedly) thought it was a cooking video.