That's because you are a tasteless midwestern cornholer gringo, and the gelatinous mass of blobs like you are the reason commercial restaurants are so damn bland. To satisfy people like you, they don't have anything spicier than ketchup and everything tastes like baked chicken. So next time you want to eat out, plz just take yourself a mayonnaise sandwich and shove it up your ass. Throw some pickles on it first, if you're feeling adventurous.
Not necessarily. My own motorola v710 has been hacked by some brillliant folks and it is now possible to make your own mp3's and use them as ringtones (not to mention put 512 mb of music on a transflash card). They even enhanced the quality of the pictures the phone takes! Which brings me to another point: people don't use cell phone cameras for anything at all (after the first week of owning one, when the novelty of a new toy wears off) because the picture quality is crap. My own 3 megapixel camera is just barely on the lowest end of acceptable for my own amateurish throwaway use, so who on earth is going to use 1 or 2 mp pix?
Actually, I did see a few headlines on Slashdot. So I looked a lot deeper into how patents were used in practice. Lo and behold, the "sensationalist headlines" were just the tip of the iceberg.
... but it sure seems to have helped Adelphia's market value!
For those that don't know, they stopped showing soft porn a while back for "moral" reasons. Recently they started peddling pay-per-view hardcore, and it seems to be a winning strategy.
I'd like to add that, in the 9 years since I've graduated high school, the first one of my classmates to become a self-made millionaire did it by making it easier for people to find porn online. Any comments?
Re:Reality says "hi, long time no see"
on
EZTree Shuts Down
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· Score: -1, Troll
That's what I told my second favorite house negro just the other day when he contemplated moving to one of the Yankee states. Fortunately he saw the light and agreed that it would be foolish and wrong to break the laws so thoughfully and selflessly enacted by the infallible geniuses who wholeheartedly represent the greater good of the people.
Then I gave him a good whuppin' and screwed his wife. Praise be to the righteous law of man and our noble lawgivers!
Re:Free thought is a challenge to authority!
on
EZTree Shuts Down
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· Score: -1, Offtopic
C'mon man, his english degree cost 100 grand (all that and no math classes, sweet!) and now he's the commie night manager at Burger King. Let the guy show his L334 MS word skillz for once in his non-academic life.
Exactly right. All the AI people of course assume that the mind is some kind of mechanism, but there are plenty of very smart people who think otherwise.
Kurt Godel in particular did. Roger Penrose says that "Godel's theorem," which shows that there is no mechanical procedure (or algorithm) which can answer all mathematical questions. Godel himself disagreed with this, and said that he believed minds were more than machines because he was a "rational optimist" who believed that for any question posed by reason, reason can find an answer. If we assume this, then since for every mechanical procedure (algorithm, machine, program)there are an infinite number of mathematical questions that it cannot answer, but a mind can answer them all (given infinite time) it follows that mind surpasses any machine.
Of course, Godel knew that this optimism wasn't shared by all people, so he looked for an incontrovertible way to show that mind surpassed all machines, but didn't succeed. He did show that either:
Mind surpasses all machines
OR
There exist absolutely undecidable mathematical propositions
(or both could be true, so there are 3 possibilities total)
What is interesting about this is that it shows that either no machine, no matter how complicated (such as a brain) is equivalent to a mind, or mathematics is not our own creation, it's not simply our creation but an objective reality of it's own (this is called platonism) that exists outsides the world of space and time, matter and mass. The gist of it is that the universe (all that exists) is not just made up of atoms but something else. Godel himself suggested we follow the idealism of Liebnitz as espoused in his monadology explore these concepts using Husserl's method of "reduction" wherin we, like Descartes, ignore every idea which we can possibly even consider doubting.
Foolish peon, little do you suspect that I plan to hire a few 'independent' folks recommended by my good friend Bill who will find the GPL unconstitutional, illegal, or unenforceable. Maybe all three, you pencil-necked bitches!
Yah, I thought this is what bluetooth was supposed to do. You know, so your GPS in your car could talk to your cell and use your ipod for mass storage and all get internet thru your cell? It will be pretty cool, what's the holdup?
PS- If any of you CEO's want to hire me to make a complete modular suite like this in a year, holla back.
That, my man, is what you call a "fig leaf" which pukes like Rumsfeld foist on the press when the troops are criticized for doing exactly as they are told. Their SOLDIERS, not lawyers, how the hell are they supposed to know what a lawful order is, when dozens of lawyers getting $400+/hour can't? Lets not be naive when discussing war and crime please.
Math is a natural science, and all us mathematicians do is prove stuff. Absolutely, apodictic truth is our goal, which I admit is not really possible with sciences based on empirical observation, but as my man Kurt Godel says, just this is the present situation doesn't mean science will be pursued in this manner in the future.
WTF do you know? Mortars and snipers are attached to the headquarters unit in every ranger battalion. I'll just add that since there was always top brass walking down the hallways, these soldiers were held to an even higher standard than those in the line companies.
I get your point tho, we also had cooks and clerks and intel guys attached to our company, who were definately not infantrymen, but I submit that they too were better infantry than your average airborne troop as well.
Furthermore, the guy with the most confirmed kills in the Somalia battle of Mogadishu was a cook with vengeance in his heart and a M249 SAW in his hands. A superior (and friend) of mine was in intel, he lost a testicle there. He also did hand to hand training with men who competed in the Ultimate Fighting Championship and won. Why don't you ask a line infantryman what they think of soldiers from the HQ company.
Hey you're right, there is no "Jewish Hell," just a bad place called Ghenna where bad folks go when they die for a couple of months. That's very fine! I've always thought that the silliest part of the Christian religion is the idea that an all-loving, all powerful, all knowing and good god would send people off to eternal torment, its and obvious contradiction to me, and contradictions are necessarily false. Except for the circumcision part, I may just convert!
Thanks, sorry about the misunderstanding. I assumed that the christians got hell from the Jews, since they got most of their ideas there. The more I look , the more it seems like they got their GOOD ideas from the hebrews, and the bad ones are mostly their own. I henceforth heartily approve of the Jewish religion!
But the post I replied to said that flexibility and smart troops were the cornerstone of US Military doctrine, and the reason I strongly disagreed was because, while I read similar things and believed them before joining the Army, it became overwhelmingly clear to me by empirical observation that stone cold discipline, not initiative or smarts or anything else, is the core characteristic that US doctrine requires of it's adherents. Pretty much like every army in the world since the beginning of time, I might add.
I've never heard of a sergeant or officer anywhere in the world who insisted on having smart troops. But all the good leaders are fanatic about arbitrarily-close-to-total discipline. I knew a guy who served under a sergeant major who had lead an infantry squad (6-12 men) in combat patrols in the jungles of Vietnam for 4 YEARS and never, EVER lost a SINGLE MAN. Dozens were wounded, himself 5 times, but every one of them was safer in his care in the midst of a savage close-quarters war than they were driving down the street of their hometown on a Friday night. He was reportedly totally nuts about having everything exactly as he ordered it, and it was, because he was know to check things (such as weapons, rations, shoelaces, or toilet paper) at odd times, like 2AM on wednesday morning or Christmas eve.
That's the kind of guy who makes the rules in the Army, and that's why I shined my cowhide boots daily and refrained from putting my hands in my pockets on a snowy night without complaining (much).
Yeah I forgot Robotech, that was an awesome game. Gladiator mechs rule, but they looked kind of fat, so I used Excaliburs.
Now to your post: the reason high scores on aptitude tests are required for elite units is not because they show that you're a smart person. Rather they show that you're not a total dumbass. The kind of dumbass who should never be trusted with large amounts of explosives in politically sensitive areas (eg. the catastrophe at Desert One, where a nameless dumbass ordered a well-disciplined soldier to fire a rocket at a fuel truck, thus turning a "top-secret nighttime desert rendezvous point" into a "bunch of dudes brightly illuminated by furious 200-foot flames visible for hundreds of miles in all directions" right before another dumbass flew his helicopter directly into the back of a parked transport plane, which destroyed our fighting reputation in the middle east for a decade but at least we got the 160th SOAR out of it)
And if you think that "Smart + Adaptable > absolute discipline" in the mind of any general, you're mad. Leaders wants troops who can be ordered to run headlong across an open field under machine gun and artillery fire without so much as a "Are you fucking nuts!?!" in reply. If you're telling a hundred guys (or maybe a thousand) how to do something more complex than any dozen football games and chess matches combined with the full knowledge of all parties that mistakes will cost lives (and maybe your plan itself even requires it), you don't want no backseat drivers or anyone second guessing or doubting or doing their own thing. Ever see a roomful of Ph.D's** trying to get something done?
Discipline is the most reliable predictor of mission accomplishment. Smarts are better than dumb, but the ability to stick unswervingly to the plan, even at the cost of your life, is paramount, no question. There's plenty of great soldiers who can hardly read, but there's no such thing as a good soldier who thinks his own personal judgement can ever outweigh his orders. That's why it's a plausible defense for soldiers who participate in massacres and torture to say that they were just following orders.
I sure did. What I meant was, if the valiant Sons of Moses are confronted by a Swedish-made anti-Muslim bacon-and-egg-sandwich minefield, they will be forced to retreat in disarray, since if they accidentally eat any ham then the benevolent, all knowing and merciful Lord will transmit them into lakes of burning brimstone for all eternity, where they will be tormented by demons with pointy sticks.
Goat-sandwiches are cool with God tho, since goats chew the "cud" (whatever the hell that is.)
Interestingly, I see that eating whalemeat will earn you a one-way ticket to eternal flaming hotness since whales are mammals that don't chew the cud. I bet a bunch of folks a few hundred years ago showed up real surprised at the gates of hell and said "WTF do you mean whales are mammals? I thought it was a fish!"
That's the same crap that apple users have been saying for years. I'm sure it's the reason my Jobs first had itunes only for Macs, cuz that's one big consumer group with excess cash and little interest in how much things actually cost and why. So now you have to pay $8 for a decent mouse driver for your macs. 'Gratz to you, but for in-incurious people who like Linux and aren't rich and don't know why they should pay for something that's costs nothing to make it's just a bunch of crap some marketing consultant probably thought up.
Yeah, all those rock stars and rappers and gangsters and poets and physicists are a real bunch of sheep alright, especially compared to a Ford-truck drivin' mesh-hat wearin' Budweiser-drinkin' rugged individualist such as yourself.
What the hell do you know, you clown? Some crap you read in a 1987 issue of TIME magazine about why US soldiers are superior to those of the downtrodden zombie-like communist horde?
I don't have much to contribute to this site in the critique obscure code, but I did play D&D, AD&D, Gamma World, GURPS, and cyberpunk 2020. Furthermore I spent 2 years in the Headquarters company of the 2/75th Airborne Ranger regiment in Ft. Lewis WA as a mortar gunner.
All military doctrine is built on absolute discipline, and the better the unit the more severe the discipline. Do you think truck drivers are subjected to the same discipline as SEALS? No, because 1) they would die 2) their jobs don't require it. Good combat units have as much or more rigorous discipline than bootcamp, and the only flexibility allowed is in the 2 minute warmup prior to an 8 mile run. If somebody has a neat new idea, here's the procedure: you mention it to your immediate superior, get laughed at and/or disciplined, and then proceed in doing things the tried and tested way. For the love of god, I tell you these guys still spend half an hour every day polishing their non-waterproof boots because the officers don't trust any footwear that's seen less than 30 years of war.
I was gonna add: if the Israeli army doesn't want weirdos who have a skewed sense of reality in their ranks, then they probably shouldn't accept fundamentalist religious types who believe the earth is 6000 years old or that god will send you to hell for all eternity for eating a goat, what with cloven hooves being unclean and all.
Slashdot Mirror
That's because you are a tasteless midwestern cornholer gringo, and the gelatinous mass of blobs like you are the reason commercial restaurants are so damn bland. To satisfy people like you, they don't have anything spicier than ketchup and everything tastes like baked chicken. So next time you want to eat out, plz just take yourself a mayonnaise sandwich and shove it up your ass. Throw some pickles on it first, if you're feeling adventurous.
Not necessarily. My own motorola v710 has been hacked by some brillliant folks and it is now possible to make your own mp3's and use them as ringtones (not to mention put 512 mb of music on a transflash card). They even enhanced the quality of the pictures the phone takes! Which brings me to another point: people don't use cell phone cameras for anything at all (after the first week of owning one, when the novelty of a new toy wears off) because the picture quality is crap. My own 3 megapixel camera is just barely on the lowest end of acceptable for my own amateurish throwaway use, so who on earth is going to use 1 or 2 mp pix?
After all, you can't really say he has an understanding of it if he thinks it will end. So will it be renamed once he's proven wrong?
Probably not.
Actually, I did see a few headlines on Slashdot. So I looked a lot deeper into how patents were used in practice. Lo and behold, the "sensationalist headlines" were just the tip of the iceberg.
... but it sure seems to have helped Adelphia's market value!
For those that don't know, they stopped showing soft porn a while back for "moral" reasons. Recently they started peddling pay-per-view hardcore, and it seems to be a winning strategy.
I'd like to add that, in the 9 years since I've graduated high school, the first one of my classmates to become a self-made millionaire did it by making it easier for people to find porn online. Any comments?
That's what I told my second favorite house negro just the other day when he contemplated moving to one of the Yankee states. Fortunately he saw the light and agreed that it would be foolish and wrong to break the laws so thoughfully and selflessly enacted by the infallible geniuses who wholeheartedly represent the greater good of the people.
Then I gave him a good whuppin' and screwed his wife. Praise be to the righteous law of man and our noble lawgivers!
C'mon man, his english degree cost 100 grand (all that and no math classes, sweet!) and now he's the commie night manager at Burger King. Let the guy show his L334 MS word skillz for once in his non-academic life.
Exactly right. All the AI people of course assume that the mind is some kind of mechanism, but there are plenty of very smart people who think otherwise.
Kurt Godel in particular did. Roger Penrose says that "Godel's theorem," which shows that there is no mechanical procedure (or algorithm) which can answer all mathematical questions. Godel himself disagreed with this, and said that he believed minds were more than machines because he was a "rational optimist" who believed that for any question posed by reason, reason can find an answer. If we assume this, then since for every mechanical procedure (algorithm, machine, program)there are an infinite number of mathematical questions that it cannot answer, but a mind can answer them all (given infinite time) it follows that mind surpasses any machine.
Of course, Godel knew that this optimism wasn't shared by all people, so he looked for an incontrovertible way to show that mind surpassed all machines, but didn't succeed. He did show that either:
Mind surpasses all machines
OR
There exist absolutely undecidable mathematical propositions
(or both could be true, so there are 3 possibilities total)
What is interesting about this is that it shows that either no machine, no matter how complicated (such as a brain) is equivalent to a mind, or mathematics is not our own creation, it's not simply our creation but an objective reality of it's own (this is called platonism) that exists outsides the world of space and time, matter and mass. The gist of it is that the universe (all that exists) is not just made up of atoms but something else. Godel himself suggested we follow the idealism of Liebnitz as espoused in his monadology explore these concepts using Husserl's method of "reduction" wherin we, like Descartes, ignore every idea which we can possibly even consider doubting.
"You're free to do whatever you want. But you'll have to pay the price."
Courtesy of Drill Sergeant Bertrand, 1-50 Infantry, Sand Hill, Fort Benning, Georgia.
I suspect they will use the same high-tech temperature control systems used in, for instance, my '89 honda civic, the efficient, elegant, 4-60 system.
That's four windows down, at sixty miles an hour.
I had the exact same problems. Try MandrakeLinux 10.1 and you'll be amazed at how windows-easy linux can be. I sure was.
Bwaa ha haaaaaa!
Foolish peon, little do you suspect that I plan to hire a few 'independent' folks recommended by my good friend Bill who will find the GPL unconstitutional, illegal, or unenforceable. Maybe all three, you pencil-necked bitches!
Yah, I thought this is what bluetooth was supposed to do. You know, so your GPS in your car could talk to your cell and use your ipod for mass storage and all get internet thru your cell? It will be pretty cool, what's the holdup?
PS- If any of you CEO's want to hire me to make a complete modular suite like this in a year, holla back.
Next we're gonna see boobies (and weeners, for you San Fran tech types) links on here.
Hopefully they'll be to usenet or something.
That, my man, is what you call a "fig leaf" which pukes like Rumsfeld foist on the press when the troops are criticized for doing exactly as they are told. Their SOLDIERS, not lawyers, how the hell are they supposed to know what a lawful order is, when dozens of lawyers getting $400+/hour can't? Lets not be naive when discussing war and crime please.
Math is a natural science, and all us mathematicians do is prove stuff. Absolutely, apodictic truth is our goal, which I admit is not really possible with sciences based on empirical observation, but as my man Kurt Godel says, just this is the present situation doesn't mean science will be pursued in this manner in the future.
WTF do you know? Mortars and snipers are attached to the headquarters unit in every ranger battalion. I'll just add that since there was always top brass walking down the hallways, these soldiers were held to an even higher standard than those in the line companies.
I get your point tho, we also had cooks and clerks and intel guys attached to our company, who were definately not infantrymen, but I submit that they too were better infantry than your average airborne troop as well.
Furthermore, the guy with the most confirmed kills in the Somalia battle of Mogadishu was a cook with vengeance in his heart and a M249 SAW in his hands. A superior (and friend) of mine was in intel, he lost a testicle there. He also did hand to hand training with men who competed in the Ultimate Fighting Championship and won. Why don't you ask a line infantryman what they think of soldiers from the HQ company.
Hey you're right, there is no "Jewish Hell," just a bad place called Ghenna where bad folks go when they die for a couple of months. That's very fine! I've always thought that the silliest part of the Christian religion is the idea that an all-loving, all powerful, all knowing and good god would send people off to eternal torment, its and obvious contradiction to me, and contradictions are necessarily false. Except for the circumcision part, I may just convert!
Thanks, sorry about the misunderstanding. I assumed that the christians got hell from the Jews, since they got most of their ideas there. The more I look , the more it seems like they got their GOOD ideas from the hebrews, and the bad ones are mostly their own. I henceforth heartily approve of the Jewish religion!
I agree with you %100.
But the post I replied to said that flexibility and smart troops were the cornerstone of US Military doctrine, and the reason I strongly disagreed was because, while I read similar things and believed them before joining the Army, it became overwhelmingly clear to me by empirical observation that stone cold discipline, not initiative or smarts or anything else, is the core characteristic that US doctrine requires of it's adherents. Pretty much like every army in the world since the beginning of time, I might add.
I've never heard of a sergeant or officer anywhere in the world who insisted on having smart troops. But all the good leaders are fanatic about arbitrarily-close-to-total discipline. I knew a guy who served under a sergeant major who had lead an infantry squad (6-12 men) in combat patrols in the jungles of Vietnam for 4 YEARS and never, EVER lost a SINGLE MAN. Dozens were wounded, himself 5 times, but every one of them was safer in his care in the midst of a savage close-quarters war than they were driving down the street of their hometown on a Friday night. He was reportedly totally nuts about having everything exactly as he ordered it, and it was, because he was know to check things (such as weapons, rations, shoelaces, or toilet paper) at odd times, like 2AM on wednesday morning or Christmas eve.
That's the kind of guy who makes the rules in the Army, and that's why I shined my cowhide boots daily and refrained from putting my hands in my pockets on a snowy night without complaining (much).
Yeah I forgot Robotech, that was an awesome game. Gladiator mechs rule, but they looked kind of fat, so I used Excaliburs.
Now to your post: the reason high scores on aptitude tests are required for elite units is not because they show that you're a smart person. Rather they show that you're not a total dumbass. The kind of dumbass who should never be trusted with large amounts of explosives in politically sensitive areas (eg. the catastrophe at Desert One, where a nameless dumbass ordered a well-disciplined soldier to fire a rocket at a fuel truck, thus turning a "top-secret nighttime desert rendezvous point" into a "bunch of dudes brightly illuminated by furious 200-foot flames visible for hundreds of miles in all directions" right before another dumbass flew his helicopter directly into the back of a parked transport plane, which destroyed our fighting reputation in the middle east for a decade but at least we got the 160th SOAR out of it)
And if you think that "Smart + Adaptable > absolute discipline" in the mind of any general, you're mad. Leaders wants troops who can be ordered to run headlong across an open field under machine gun and artillery fire without so much as a "Are you fucking nuts!?!" in reply. If you're telling a hundred guys (or maybe a thousand) how to do something more complex than any dozen football games and chess matches combined with the full knowledge of all parties that mistakes will cost lives (and maybe your plan itself even requires it), you don't want no backseat drivers or anyone second guessing or doubting or doing their own thing. Ever see a roomful of Ph.D's** trying to get something done?
Discipline is the most reliable predictor of mission accomplishment. Smarts are better than dumb, but the ability to stick unswervingly to the plan, even at the cost of your life, is paramount, no question. There's plenty of great soldiers who can hardly read, but there's no such thing as a good soldier who thinks his own personal judgement can ever outweigh his orders. That's why it's a plausible defense for soldiers who participate in massacres and torture to say that they were just following orders.
**-without a rigorous pecking order
I sure did. What I meant was, if the valiant Sons of Moses are confronted by a Swedish-made anti-Muslim bacon-and-egg-sandwich minefield, they will be forced to retreat in disarray, since if they accidentally eat any ham then the benevolent, all knowing and merciful Lord will transmit them into lakes of burning brimstone for all eternity, where they will be tormented by demons with pointy sticks.
Goat-sandwiches are cool with God tho, since goats chew the "cud" (whatever the hell that is.)
Interestingly, I see that eating whalemeat will earn you a one-way ticket to eternal flaming hotness since whales are mammals that don't chew the cud. I bet a bunch of folks a few hundred years ago showed up real surprised at the gates of hell and said "WTF do you mean whales are mammals? I thought it was a fish!"
That's the same crap that apple users have been saying for years. I'm sure it's the reason my Jobs first had itunes only for Macs, cuz that's one big consumer group with excess cash and little interest in how much things actually cost and why. So now you have to pay $8 for a decent mouse driver for your macs. 'Gratz to you, but for in-incurious people who like Linux and aren't rich and don't know why they should pay for something that's costs nothing to make it's just a bunch of crap some marketing consultant probably thought up.
PS I think you're a shill.
I forgot to add:
...slashdot-postin'...
Yeah, all those rock stars and rappers and gangsters and poets and physicists are a real bunch of sheep alright, especially compared to a Ford-truck drivin' mesh-hat wearin' Budweiser-drinkin' rugged individualist such as yourself.
Or are you just so stupid that you don't know it?
What the hell do you know, you clown? Some crap you read in a 1987 issue of TIME magazine about why US soldiers are superior to those of the downtrodden zombie-like communist horde?
I don't have much to contribute to this site in the critique obscure code, but I did play D&D, AD&D, Gamma World, GURPS, and cyberpunk 2020. Furthermore I spent 2 years in the Headquarters company of the 2/75th Airborne Ranger regiment in Ft. Lewis WA as a mortar gunner.
All military doctrine is built on absolute discipline, and the better the unit the more severe the discipline. Do you think truck drivers are subjected to the same discipline as SEALS? No, because 1) they would die 2) their jobs don't require it. Good combat units have as much or more rigorous discipline than bootcamp, and the only flexibility allowed is in the 2 minute warmup prior to an 8 mile run. If somebody has a neat new idea, here's the procedure: you mention it to your immediate superior, get laughed at and/or disciplined, and then proceed in doing things the tried and tested way. For the love of god, I tell you these guys still spend half an hour every day polishing their non-waterproof boots because the officers don't trust any footwear that's seen less than 30 years of war.
I was gonna add: if the Israeli army doesn't want weirdos who have a skewed sense of reality in their ranks, then they probably shouldn't accept fundamentalist religious types who believe the earth is 6000 years old or that god will send you to hell for all eternity for eating a goat, what with cloven hooves being unclean and all.