Along the lines of what you say, I'm surprised more people don't doubt history more often. How do we know what really happened a thousand years ago? No one is still alive from then, all we have are the words people have left behind. How do we know it is true (and not faked for that matter)? Seems like a lot of things can fall into this category.
*wry grin* Heck, how can you be certain there is a past? It could be that the universe just came into an existence a moment ago and your "memories" are the electronic impulses that were in your head at the moment of existence.
But yeah, it's actually a pretty important point. There've been plenty of wannabe historical revisionists (Everything from the Holocaust not happening to Japan not mentioning the Rape of Nanjing in their history textbooks) and in some cases, we can't be certain what was intended to be fiction. What will people of the future think of our era if the only reference they find is a Tom Clancy book? And when you get to the common unconscious, the gap gets even wider. How many people model their view of the Civil War era off of Gone with the Wind?
Generally, some of it comes down to Occam's Razor, choosing history that "makes sense." Evidence for viability of a historical document is generally based upon the existence of supporting documents and variations of the original text. And, in some cases, it's pretty much blind faith. Why do people use Beowulf as an example of what people wore back in the era when we've never found a complete copy of the poem? Why do people insist that nothing in the Bible can be believed when we have surviving copies from centuries back that show that the text really has not changed? It's an interesting question, and almost enough to make you start believing fossil records really were put into the earth to fool us.
I wouldn't mind paying $2 for an episode of a show that I want to see. I don't know how much these stations make on advertising revenue, but I would think that a million people paying $2 for an episode of a show would more than recoup the cost of making the episode (sets, actors, doughnuts).
Yeah, but the advertising is more reliable. Under a "buy per episode" setup, you never know for sure how many people will be buying episodes. Using advertising, you've already received your money in a lump sum when the season starts. Same reason most people work for a salary instead of doing consulting work.
Well, I don't have an exact number offhand on how many have been published, but I know our library carries a good twenty or so. Most of them are actually fairly well written. I suspect they appeal to fans of the wrestlers who want to know more about their real life as well as their wrestling history, to people looking for inspirational tales as it took hard work for most of them to reach the position they did, and to people interested in the technical side of it. Supposedly Mick Foley writes his own books after getting disgusted with what the ghostwriter came up with for him. I suspect that, like wrestling, the books are an even mix of fact and fiction. Heh, but then again you could say that about almost any biography included most autobiographies.
"God does not play dice with the universe. It's more like a poker game played with one hand for infinite stakes with blank cards in a pitch-dark room and where the dealer keeps smiling." From Good Omens IIRC.
To some degree the whole Ender thing was a game, merely a deadly serious one with high stakes.
Nobody else, by definition, can write an "autobiography" of "your own life".
Sure and they can. How do you think all of those wrestler autobiographies were written?
Now all I need is a way to screen out the 5-6 machine generated political calls I get each day in the week before election day... but yeah, overall, it's been a pretty decent setup. Beats the hell out of some of the answering machine credit card announcements which featured a breathless message of "This is Jim Smirethers of A1 Bank and I need to talk with you immediately about your account" or the like. Borderline fraud, those were.
This is why i believe Ender's Shodow would make the better film. A very good job is done in that book of hiding what's happening.
Moreover, Bean is less violent than Ender. Ender kills his bully. Bean psychologically tortures his bully into confessing to murder and getting expelled. The fact that Achilles goes on to murder many people makes for a good debate over the effectiveness of capital punishment in preventing further crimes... Heh, and since Bean's basically a shrimp throughout the books and never acts like a kid, they can probably use the same actor throughout.
OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised if the genetic engineering and the gang upbringing seem even more unpalatable to the producers than Ender's violent nature.
That's a general Hollywood strategy, not restricted to Uwe, as many other reasons as we have to hate him. Apparently the loophole has been closed, though, so they'll have to find other crooked ways to make their money. It is amazing, though, isn't it? Tomb Raider was paid for before they even released it in theaters, so all ticket revenues and rental sales were pure profit. Nice work if you can get it.
Americans I've known had trouble going without the undies. They just need something tight to squish the package no matter the weather.
I think it's a cultural thing. Then again, boxers are becoming more popular with current generations. Personally, I like having something extra for the sake of cleanliness. Easier to wash 7 sets of underwear and one set of jeans each week than 7 sets of jeans. I toy with the no underwear bit when in my kilt, but one has to be careful there so as not to give unintentional previews of the wares. *wry grin* Not to mention that a choice breeze when there's kids around could result in me being charged as a registered sex offender...
As for lack of underwear in the military, my understanding from talking to people in the field is that a lack of underwear is pretty standard, especially in the field. Urine does a good job of reducing the chafing too. Of course, it was a marine who was espousing those benefits...
*shrug* Honestly, it's been about as effective for me as the Do-Not-Call list. You still have people claiming exemptions and people who just plain ignore the rules, but my amount of spam has decreased. Right now, the only spam I get is either companies who did business with two years ago who're still sending me commercial literature and recently I've been getting a spate of classic Nigerian scam letters.
Sometimes I really wonder about people. I clearly marked it as tongue-in-cheek humor. Meh.
Although, really, I have my doubts about ever finding a "cure for cancer" short of developing nanobots that rebuild cells to conform to set specifications. Cancer is too random and, well, as I said before, it's pretty much built into our systems. Specific strains can sometimes be combatted, but it's generally a matter of killing all of the tissue in the area whether it's by biopsy, chemotherapy, radiation, or other drugs. We'd might as well be searching for prime numbers.
All things considered, this is like a tale by Asimov (one about a mining robot in Mercury IIRC)....
I can't remember the title offhand, but the fundamental conflict involved trying to get an absolute solution from a problem with varying paramaters. The robot needed to fetch the mercury so as to obey rule 2, to obey human orders. As it approached the mercury, a previously unknown substance was corroding it, thereby partially triggering rule 3, to prevent self-harm, and verging on rule 1, preventing harm to human beings, in that with sufficient corrosion, it would be unable to fetch the mercury for the humans. So it would move towards the mercury until rule 1 overrode rule 2, then move out until rule 2 balanced rule 1, etc. They finally had to break it away by changing its priorities, putting a human in more immediate danger so that the robot had to come to them. It's actually a fairly relevant story for people programming in threaded environments with variable levels of event importance.
There is no way a bomb circuit could withstand that radiation it melted plastic I'm sure your circuit board would become a puddle of radio active goo. Not to mention you would need multiple robots to assemble and place said bomb unless you can build a bomb and place it in less than 30 seconds.
There are more ways to set off bombs than by electronic circuits. Heck, you could make it a water-clock based bomb if you were so inclined. As for assembly, lead-lined carrying cases are your friends.
I gave up on Poser because I didn't fully understand how to use it, and I didn't want to bother learning. If I had a friend who was already using it, I'm sure I would have asked lots of questions, and stuck with it. That's a freakin' powerful program. I can't even suggest that they simpify it, because if they did, they'd need to remove functionality. It wasn't really something I needed, and not really something I'd use a lot anyways. For what I do, GIMP is fine.:)
Indeed, a wonderful program and a good example of a program which was priced low to sell in quantity. (And also so they can get fees for professional artists selling their models) *wry grin* Admittedly, that's in the "low-priced for professionals" category, so the hundred dollars or so is still beyond the amateur dabbler. It was also a reasonably intuitive interface once you got past those glitchy bits like the feet starting out cemented to the ground and the difficulty of undoing changes. The first three, at least, came with a fairly good instruction manual, but I can understand that that didn't make it into the pirated version.
On the off chance you aren't just cracking a joke over alternate meanings, "spare" can also mean "healthily lean" or "not liberal or profuse", both of which would fit for Google's site.
Personally, I looked at that line, and thought they misspelled "sparse" at first although in retrospect, the adjective would be modifying the wrong noun.
I'm always tired of the "well, this research is nice but I'd rather they searched for a cure for cancer instead".
Besides which, cancer is part of life. Any living organism that survives to the late years is going to contract some form or degree of cancer. Really, we brought it upon ourselves by extending the longevity of the human race...
Above text is to read with tongue firmly in cheek. Any offense generated by reading in any other mode is entirely the fault of the user.
One of my programmer friends is a transsexual, and she was wondering aloud to me the other day if some of her position and esteem as a programmer are leftover benefits from having been male. (In which case, she ought exploit them for all they're worth.)
Somehow I can't rid my head of the scenario of someone with incompatible cables walking in and asking for a gender-bender and your co-worker's head snapping up...
Horribly non-PC, I know.
I honestly don't remember any real bias against the females in our CS classes, although it probably helped that almost every one of them was extremely attractive, so they never lacked for people wanting to help. *sigh* Now Short Christy ran into troubles, but that was due to her standing about 5 foot and having the general appearance of a vapid 14-year-old at first glance. Once she got people listening, they took her seriously, but it took some work getting them to listen.
*nod* And his "God is Dead" quote is also not fully quoted most of the time IIRC (It's been a while since Philosophy 101). He basically said God is dead and the Christians have killed him by worshipping ritual and not him.
I personally like the "That which does not kill me only makes me stranger" line from Ozy and Millie.
You know, shortly after making that post, I did a Google search and it all came up. It sounds about right. Gosh, but that brings me back... rebelling against family values by listening to country music. (I was born and raised in Ashland, Kentucky. My family pretty much universally despised country music because so many people in Ashland wanted to be country but weren't, so we were surrounded by badly faked twang, $300 designer cowboy boots, and spotless Nissan pickup trucks) I'll definitely have to acquire that one, if but for old time's sake. But again, the title's been used by a large number of country singers and the words even more often.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems easier to just type: "song name lyrics" or "artist name lyrics" to find the lyrics in the first place.
Depending on where Google is drawing their information, it may help for obscure lyrics, particularly ones where the same song title has been used over and over again, or the name of the song is also a common phrase. For instance, there's a song I heard when I was a child which had a chorus along the lines of "Oh-oh-oh I'm crying. Criedy Criedy to make me full better, put it all down in a tear-stained letter" (obviously a Country song...) that I've never been able to locate due to not knowing how to spell the "Criedy" part and the fact that "tear stained letter" matches a large number of country lyrics. *wry grin* And I had a good example of one where I knew the title, but not the artist, and where the title had recently been reused for a pop song and therefore I had trouble finding the original lyrics, but my mind's blank.
50% insightful, 50% troll: sure wish the moderators weren't so incontinent.
Incontinent? You mean they have a tendency to wet themselves? I guess it is possible, but I think the word you're looking for in "inconsistent." I don't mean to mock you; I just worry that you think you used the right word and you might embarrass yourself at something more important.
Do I ever say that a little madness is a bad thing? To quote Jung, "Show me a sane man and I will cure him." I'm tempted to quote from "They're Coming To Take Me Away (Ha-Ha)" but I fear the MPAA would be after me. Nice quote, though.
Well, I'm a bit overweight, not pregnant, and no idea if I have genetic predisposition and been a programmer for over 20 years and I still do not have it. But my knees hurt a little.
From my personal experience in acquiring raises through *cough* favors for my superior, I highly suggest kneepads. What good is it if you make Senior VP in two years if you suffer from bursitis?
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*wry grin* Heck, how can you be certain there is a past? It could be that the universe just came into an existence a moment ago and your "memories" are the electronic impulses that were in your head at the moment of existence.
But yeah, it's actually a pretty important point. There've been plenty of wannabe historical revisionists (Everything from the Holocaust not happening to Japan not mentioning the Rape of Nanjing in their history textbooks) and in some cases, we can't be certain what was intended to be fiction. What will people of the future think of our era if the only reference they find is a Tom Clancy book? And when you get to the common unconscious, the gap gets even wider. How many people model their view of the Civil War era off of Gone with the Wind?
Generally, some of it comes down to Occam's Razor, choosing history that "makes sense." Evidence for viability of a historical document is generally based upon the existence of supporting documents and variations of the original text. And, in some cases, it's pretty much blind faith. Why do people use Beowulf as an example of what people wore back in the era when we've never found a complete copy of the poem? Why do people insist that nothing in the Bible can be believed when we have surviving copies from centuries back that show that the text really has not changed? It's an interesting question, and almost enough to make you start believing fossil records really were put into the earth to fool us.
I wouldn't mind paying $2 for an episode of a show that I want to see. I don't know how much these stations make on advertising revenue, but I would think that a million people paying $2 for an episode of a show would more than recoup the cost of making the episode (sets, actors, doughnuts).
Yeah, but the advertising is more reliable. Under a "buy per episode" setup, you never know for sure how many people will be buying episodes. Using advertising, you've already received your money in a lump sum when the season starts. Same reason most people work for a salary instead of doing consulting work.
If they want my dongle, they're going to have to pry it out of my stiff dead hands! Er... that doesn't sound quite right...
Well, I don't have an exact number offhand on how many have been published, but I know our library carries a good twenty or so. Most of them are actually fairly well written. I suspect they appeal to fans of the wrestlers who want to know more about their real life as well as their wrestling history, to people looking for inspirational tales as it took hard work for most of them to reach the position they did, and to people interested in the technical side of it. Supposedly Mick Foley writes his own books after getting disgusted with what the ghostwriter came up with for him. I suspect that, like wrestling, the books are an even mix of fact and fiction. Heh, but then again you could say that about almost any biography included most autobiographies.
To some degree the whole Ender thing was a game, merely a deadly serious one with high stakes.
Nobody else, by definition, can write an "autobiography" of "your own life".
Sure and they can. How do you think all of those wrestler autobiographies were written?
Now all I need is a way to screen out the 5-6 machine generated political calls I get each day in the week before election day... but yeah, overall, it's been a pretty decent setup. Beats the hell out of some of the answering machine credit card announcements which featured a breathless message of "This is Jim Smirethers of A1 Bank and I need to talk with you immediately about your account" or the like. Borderline fraud, those were.
Moreover, Bean is less violent than Ender. Ender kills his bully. Bean psychologically tortures his bully into confessing to murder and getting expelled. The fact that Achilles goes on to murder many people makes for a good debate over the effectiveness of capital punishment in preventing further crimes... Heh, and since Bean's basically a shrimp throughout the books and never acts like a kid, they can probably use the same actor throughout.
OTOH, I wouldn't be surprised if the genetic engineering and the gang upbringing seem even more unpalatable to the producers than Ender's violent nature.
That's a general Hollywood strategy, not restricted to Uwe, as many other reasons as we have to hate him. Apparently the loophole has been closed, though, so they'll have to find other crooked ways to make their money. It is amazing, though, isn't it? Tomb Raider was paid for before they even released it in theaters, so all ticket revenues and rental sales were pure profit. Nice work if you can get it.
I think it's a cultural thing. Then again, boxers are becoming more popular with current generations. Personally, I like having something extra for the sake of cleanliness. Easier to wash 7 sets of underwear and one set of jeans each week than 7 sets of jeans. I toy with the no underwear bit when in my kilt, but one has to be careful there so as not to give unintentional previews of the wares. *wry grin* Not to mention that a choice breeze when there's kids around could result in me being charged as a registered sex offender...
As for lack of underwear in the military, my understanding from talking to people in the field is that a lack of underwear is pretty standard, especially in the field. Urine does a good job of reducing the chafing too. Of course, it was a marine who was espousing those benefits...
*shrug* Honestly, it's been about as effective for me as the Do-Not-Call list. You still have people claiming exemptions and people who just plain ignore the rules, but my amount of spam has decreased. Right now, the only spam I get is either companies who did business with two years ago who're still sending me commercial literature and recently I've been getting a spate of classic Nigerian scam letters.
Although, really, I have my doubts about ever finding a "cure for cancer" short of developing nanobots that rebuild cells to conform to set specifications. Cancer is too random and, well, as I said before, it's pretty much built into our systems. Specific strains can sometimes be combatted, but it's generally a matter of killing all of the tissue in the area whether it's by biopsy, chemotherapy, radiation, or other drugs. We'd might as well be searching for prime numbers.
All things considered, this is like a tale by Asimov (one about a mining robot in Mercury IIRC). ...
I can't remember the title offhand, but the fundamental conflict involved trying to get an absolute solution from a problem with varying paramaters. The robot needed to fetch the mercury so as to obey rule 2, to obey human orders. As it approached the mercury, a previously unknown substance was corroding it, thereby partially triggering rule 3, to prevent self-harm, and verging on rule 1, preventing harm to human beings, in that with sufficient corrosion, it would be unable to fetch the mercury for the humans. So it would move towards the mercury until rule 1 overrode rule 2, then move out until rule 2 balanced rule 1, etc. They finally had to break it away by changing its priorities, putting a human in more immediate danger so that the robot had to come to them. It's actually a fairly relevant story for people programming in threaded environments with variable levels of event importance.
There is no way a bomb circuit could withstand that radiation it melted plastic I'm sure your circuit board would become a puddle of radio active goo. Not to mention you would need multiple robots to assemble and place said bomb unless you can build a bomb and place it in less than 30 seconds.
There are more ways to set off bombs than by electronic circuits. Heck, you could make it a water-clock based bomb if you were so inclined. As for assembly, lead-lined carrying cases are your friends.
I gave up on Poser because I didn't fully understand how to use it, and I didn't want to bother learning. If I had a friend who was already using it, I'm sure I would have asked lots of questions, and stuck with it. That's a freakin' powerful program. I can't even suggest that they simpify it, because if they did, they'd need to remove functionality. It wasn't really something I needed, and not really something I'd use a lot anyways. For what I do, GIMP is fine. :)
Indeed, a wonderful program and a good example of a program which was priced low to sell in quantity. (And also so they can get fees for professional artists selling their models) *wry grin* Admittedly, that's in the "low-priced for professionals" category, so the hundred dollars or so is still beyond the amateur dabbler. It was also a reasonably intuitive interface once you got past those glitchy bits like the feet starting out cemented to the ground and the difficulty of undoing changes. The first three, at least, came with a fairly good instruction manual, but I can understand that that didn't make it into the pirated version.
Personally, I looked at that line, and thought they misspelled "sparse" at first although in retrospect, the adjective would be modifying the wrong noun.
Besides which, cancer is part of life. Any living organism that survives to the late years is going to contract some form or degree of cancer. Really, we brought it upon ourselves by extending the longevity of the human race...
Somehow I can't rid my head of the scenario of someone with incompatible cables walking in and asking for a gender-bender and your co-worker's head snapping up...
Horribly non-PC, I know.
I honestly don't remember any real bias against the females in our CS classes, although it probably helped that almost every one of them was extremely attractive, so they never lacked for people wanting to help. *sigh* Now Short Christy ran into troubles, but that was due to her standing about 5 foot and having the general appearance of a vapid 14-year-old at first glance. Once she got people listening, they took her seriously, but it took some work getting them to listen.
He didn't know where he got all the stuff he was hiding - all his stealing was completely subconcious.
Oh, so he was a Kender?
I personally like the "That which does not kill me only makes me stranger" line from Ozy and Millie.
You know, shortly after making that post, I did a Google search and it all came up. It sounds about right. Gosh, but that brings me back... rebelling against family values by listening to country music. (I was born and raised in Ashland, Kentucky. My family pretty much universally despised country music because so many people in Ashland wanted to be country but weren't, so we were surrounded by badly faked twang, $300 designer cowboy boots, and spotless Nissan pickup trucks) I'll definitely have to acquire that one, if but for old time's sake. But again, the title's been used by a large number of country singers and the words even more often.
Maybe it's just me, but it seems easier to just type: "song name lyrics" or "artist name lyrics" to find the lyrics in the first place.
Depending on where Google is drawing their information, it may help for obscure lyrics, particularly ones where the same song title has been used over and over again, or the name of the song is also a common phrase. For instance, there's a song I heard when I was a child which had a chorus along the lines of "Oh-oh-oh I'm crying. Criedy Criedy to make me full better, put it all down in a tear-stained letter" (obviously a Country song...) that I've never been able to locate due to not knowing how to spell the "Criedy" part and the fact that "tear stained letter" matches a large number of country lyrics. *wry grin* And I had a good example of one where I knew the title, but not the artist, and where the title had recently been reused for a pop song and therefore I had trouble finding the original lyrics, but my mind's blank.
50% insightful, 50% troll: sure wish the moderators weren't so incontinent.
Incontinent? You mean they have a tendency to wet themselves? I guess it is possible, but I think the word you're looking for in "inconsistent." I don't mean to mock you; I just worry that you think you used the right word and you might embarrass yourself at something more important.
Do I ever say that a little madness is a bad thing? To quote Jung, "Show me a sane man and I will cure him." I'm tempted to quote from "They're Coming To Take Me Away (Ha-Ha)" but I fear the MPAA would be after me. Nice quote, though.
Well, I'm a bit overweight, not pregnant, and no idea if I have genetic predisposition and been a programmer for over 20 years and I still do not have it. But my knees hurt a little.
From my personal experience in acquiring raises through *cough* favors for my superior, I highly suggest kneepads. What good is it if you make Senior VP in two years if you suffer from bursitis?