I had to commute to college. I could either spend $200+ for a parking garage spot/quarter (those bastards!) or I could park on the street (i.e. parallel park most of the time). So I practiced for a week and never payed for the garage and just parallel parked every morning, no computers, no rear view cameras, just my head and my hands and feet (wow, what a concept!).
If someone so un-coordinated as me can do it, anyone can do it. So in the end after a week of practice and 5 years later I ended up with $200/quarter*3 quarters/year*5 years=$3000 profit.
Agree. There will have cars that will slow down or speed up to keep pace with the trafic. Then they will have cars that stay in their own lane automatically, cars that warn the driver if there is a person behind when backing up. All this means is that there will be more and more reliance on software to keep people's lives safe. And if companies will want to cut corners here and there and will just install Windows or Linux on the computer they won't stay business for long. Even Linux is not good enough (/ducks, waiting for/.-ers for through rocks or just really heavy heatsinks, or 80s hard drives). Granted software is already flying thousands of people over the Atlantic "pond" every day, and is flying stuff to Mars. But somehow I see the KIA executives saying "Hmm, we need good software, should we license INTEGRITY/178 or we could save money and just install Windows, heck we all know how to use Windows..."
This is like saying "The Lord of the Rings is the link that binds man to Gandalf."
So what. The quote was a simple example of Planck's own words talking about faith and his view of religion and science. Don't nit-pick that quote alone and say "aha, logical fallacy! -- See it doesn't mean he was religious, he was just talking about God in a different context etc etc." Don't rely on me finding quotes either (I can make them up, you know). The point is that Planck was religious, and other great scientist were also religious, there are sources were they talk and discuss these things in their own words.
He was "blinded" by his faith.
What is that supposed to mean. Was he lacking something? Did his faith impact or invalidate his work? Or he was "blinded" because he doesn't seem to conform to the idea of a scientist that someone, somewhere on some discussion forum called "Slashdot" has defined?
So it remains that either your statement that one cannot be a religous person and a scientist is wrong, or that all these scientists were not really good scientists at all, or that they lied about themselves being religious, and were actually avid atheists. The first case is probably true...
The way I view it, it is possible to be both a scientist and a religious person. In fact, I would claim that everyone is a religous person. Everybody "worships" something. Some worship God, some worship math, physics, biology, some worship money, political power, themsleves, some worship family, their country etc.
"No, you cant. Religion is the belief in in the supernatural.
Science only only [sic] concerns itself with demonstratable conjecture to describe a natural phenomenon."
-- Yes you can. Max Planck could, he was religious and was a great scientist (he said that "Religion is the link that binds man to God"). Other famous scientists have also been religous. So on the one hand there is this post on Slashdot by someone I have never heard of, claiming that one can't be religious and a good scientist, on the other hand there are all these example of clearly great scientists who have been religious. Hmm, let's see , a tough one righ here: Some slashdotter vs. Max Planck... -- Ok, I choose Planck, (i.e. approx 6.63x10^-35 (m^2*kg)/s;)
I got one for my wife last year, not sure if it is the exact same one, but it still work fine. She has been using at both as a jump drive and a music player. Mine is new and if it breaks in a year, I won't complain and will probably just get another one (or a newer model), for $30-50, it is not a big deal.
Well, there is good news then: many other non-Apple music player will function as a jump drive. So say you have your player with you, but for some reason there is 700Mb ISO CD image file that you want to copy and keep with you, well, you just delete the music folders and copy over the data. Yap, it's that easy, no need for iSomething software, or fancy special downloads, just plug in, drag-and-drop or just use the command line if it suits you better...
Most people I know that have iPods have them because they saw the comercials or they know someone that has them or they just heard the name "iPod" and think it is soooo cooool. Not one of them has compared and looked at the existing offerings of mp3 players out there when they bought the iPod.
Unless of course, you want a glorified USB mass storage device...
It is interesting how in your post the ability of some mp3 players to also function as USB storage devices turns into being "worse" than using some proprietary iSomething software to connect to it. But I guess if someone can't figure out this "advanced" drag and drop thing, they probably should be palying $200+ for a music player and Apple should get their money after all.
Just got a 1Gb keychain mp3 player/fm radio/voice recorder/jump drive all in one. Pretty pleased with it. It was cheap (made by some Chinese no-name company) but it works great for me. If it breaks I'll just get another one for just as cheap or cheaper. It has not moving parts, so it can handle being dropped, already happened and still works.
I can also live with about 128 kbps mp3s or even 96 kbps for some songs and I can fit enough albums on this thing to keep me happy for weeks, then I change them around. If I need space to transfer files, I just delete the music folders and use it as a jump drive.
I think the people are buying iPods just because their friends have iPods and they don't know that there other such "toys" out there with a different set of features that might work better for them.
The way I view it, is that sexuality, food, and other "natural bodily needs" are good. Humans _are_ very sexual creatures. But the most important things that we as humans have and bonobos don't -- is a rational mind. And with it, we see that some of people cannot control their drives, they loose jobs and marriages because all they want to do is look at more and more pr0n online. Some cannot stop eating, the taste and ingestion of food acts so powerfully on the pleasure centers that one is becoming addicted to their own serotonin (or dopamine or whatever).
It is true that people have been having sex origies, masturbating, flirting and so on. But there is very good reason why that is not allowed in the workplace, there is very good reason why sex is not acceptable in public just like handshaking is (bonobos do great each other with a "quicky" though;-). We like many other generations before us, think that we have discovered sex -- "oh wow, BDSM is soooo coool", "midget sex teh best", "threesomes -- that's new and crazy, yey!". But as you said, people have always had sex, over the thousands and thousands of years they have explored and "played with it". But why did they stop? If it is perfectly compatible with the developent of a civilazation, a culture a society with a certain structure, then why stop? The truth is that it is not compatible. Image that tomorrow you go to to work and instead of a handshake you boss want to 'f' you. Then at home after you have a dispute with the neighbour about the property line you give each other blowjobs to make up. Do you see this kind of society being able to function for long. People always blame and bash Christianity and other religions for being so uptight and controlling, but has it ever occured to anyone that (regardless whether the basic premises of the religion are true or not) that it provided stability and control that helped shape the society and culture. (When you don't have to worry about your wife shaking up with your neighbour while you are at work, you sure can get a whole lot more accomplished that day;).
Are you getting morbidly obese? You can't get into you car anymore? Are your knees and hips failing because of your weight, but yet you can't stop munching on 'dem ding dongs? Well, then you have a problem, my friend, and you are in denial about it, along with good part of US population, especailly from the Southern states. So keep trying, set small goals, remember, bariatric surgery is only a final solution when other methods fail. Join weight watchers, that might help too. Good Luck.
DSM4 or not, if I there an obsession with something that impairs someone's life is a problem, it doesn't matter if it made into DSM4. The need to look at pr0n at work knowing there will be unconditional termination and knowing there is monitoring going on, but still doing it and getting fired - would probably be considered as having someone's life impaired. You can, as somone above did, just call these people "idiots" and move on, but I think there time for understanding and compassion too. There is also a need to know how to remedy the problem.
The difficulty is that sex and pr0n and other such things are still very much repressed in this country. If someone has a problem quiting smoking -- there are tons of patches, tons of commercials of new products, everyone brags in details how their method helped and what not. If someone cannot control their eating habbits they are just "lazy", "fatsos", "lardasses" and so on. How many times have you heard someone suggest to a co-worker who is overweight to "loose some weight, you shouldn't have that last doughnut etc", yet people have no qualms suggesting that "you should quit smoking, it's bad for you". It is just that some "addictions" are more openly discussed and talked than others and there is a stigma associated with some of them.
Also note, homosexuality until not that long ago was listed as one of the mental illnesses in the DSM manual. It was probably called something like "sexual inversion" and such, but that just goes to show that DSM version X,Y or Z is not necessarily true, it just relfects best available knowledge on the subject of mental health.
This is just from some news I've heard a while ago. I am not trying to persuade anyone here, just providing my side of the story. I could go Google hunting for data and provide a full list of references but again, this is just a Slashdot post and I am at work and can't afford to research sources for evidence of increased female sexual addiction in the last 4-5 years...
From what I know those people were average guys like anyone you meet on the street. There were not total idiots because some of them had pretty good jobs. They were also not some kind of delusional crazy lunatics, someone you can see from a mile away and say "this guy need therapy". These individuals though, were pretty ordinary, except that they had this obsession with pr0n. Of course you can also say that anyone who drinks is an idiot, anyone who gets addicted to heroin is an idiot, but I think just by calling people "idiots" it is not going to help anyone or solve anything.
Good point, there should be less violence. If we don't allow kids to see a couple have sex on the screen why are we allowing them to see people's brains blown out? Isn't the later a lot more dangerous and "evil" than normal, healthy and ordinary act of sex.
Last year or so ago I saw that March of The Penguins movie in the theatre. There was a family with a young daughter (probably 6 or 7) next to us. There is a point in the movie when they show a penguin "couple" have sex, the producers even made it look gentle and loving, were no explicit shots of the gentials or anything of that sort. Yet, one of parents grabbed the daughter and walked out with her during that scene. The child didn't understand why her parents are reacting in that angry way, to the little kid it probably seemed that something "wrong" was going on. Growing up like that, thinking that sex is evil and wrong, yet seeing the adults sneeker and make jokes about it, is probably really confusing.
I personally grew up in an Orthodox Christian family. Yet, my parents, especially my mom, were willing to talk and discuss about anything I wanted to know about girls, relationships, sex, babies etc. My parents bought appropriate books for my age that I could read if I felt like it was too embarassing for me to ask. The main point that I was taught and stuck with me for life is that sex is basically a good thing, it is pleasurable and it is to be enjoyed. It is not evil, it is not "un-natural" or anything like that. Of course because it is so enjoyable and it does produce powerfull emotions, it is subject to abuse, just like alcohol, food and other useful and enjoyable things.
There is a higher and higher rate of women who get addicted to teh online pr0n. At least there has been an increased number of them (proportionately to men and to previous years) who seek counseling.
This one lady, who's husband got into p0rn and which led eventually to divorce, wanted to check out and see what her ex husband saw in pr0n and sure enough, she also gets addicted to it, loses her job and eventually ends up in counseling. Arguably, pr0n is probably not the cause of her (and probably her husband's) problem but rather a symptom of some other deeper issues...
In college I took Human Sexuality as a free elective during my senior year. The professor, as well as the author of the textbook we used, were very adamant about telling us that sexual addiction is not real. It is not scientific, it is used by those crazy conservative christians (aliteration pun intended...) to scare everyone and control them.
But somehow I don't believe him, I have heard of people who have ruined their marriage by becoming addicted to pr0n, some have been fired for looking at pr0n while at work. If that is not the behavior of an addict then I don't know what is. One definition of addiction states: "compulsion or overpowering urge to use a substance, regardless of potential or actual harm", most of the definitions imply that there has to be a substance involved, but in the case of pr0n the substances are the neurotransmitters in the brain.
In fact any activity that involves a powerfull release of certain neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamin) into the pleasure centers of the brain can become "an addiction" -- it can be food, it can playing games, gambling etc.
Take your pistol, shoot it down and wait and see who will come after you to you arrest you for shooting down their drone.
Even better! Build you own drones to fight the drones that stalk you or build a EMP emmiting device and watch these suckers drop from the skies like frozen turkeys.
That's what I say. I would rather throw some Salmon on my George Forman to get the omega-3 than buy pork meat from some genetic lab. I like pork but as I am getting older it is time to start eating healthy -- better later than never...
You send your 100GB of data over a 56K modem line.... After a couple of weeks your data will get there, then it will finish running super fffffast, (no, really!), and in about another couple of weeks you'll get it back.
I think they should just add a service where people could deliver or snail mail dual layer dvds or tapes with data, with a set of new dvds or tapes for results. One can overnight it with Fedex. Then, they run the program on the grid, load up the result on another set of dvds or tapes and overnight them back to you.
I am not sure about hard drives but with flash, each bit has a limited # of times it can be read/written. So if you have an ext2 file system that writes the access time back to the disk every time the file is read, then there will be certain a certain set of bits that will be disproportionately accessed and thus would be the first to fail. I had Zaurus Linux handheld computer and when I made sure to add the noatime option when mounting the partitions. But of course, if the limit can be fairly high, then it won't be a problem....
Heart monitoring systems I think are more mission critical than "a little";) space station project. The station falls from the sky: 0 to 3 people die. Heart monitoring devices fail : everybody's grandmas, grandpas, baby sisters in the hospital kick the bucket.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone so un-coordinated as me can do it, anyone can do it. So in the end after a week of practice and 5 years later I ended up with $200/quarter*3 quarters/year*5 years=$3000 profit.
Agree. There will have cars that will slow down or speed up to keep pace with the trafic. Then they will have cars that stay in their own lane automatically, cars that warn the driver if there is a person behind when backing up. All this means is that there will be more and more reliance on software to keep people's lives safe. And if companies will want to cut corners here and there and will just install Windows or Linux on the computer they won't stay business for long. Even Linux is not good enough (/ducks, waiting for /.-ers for through rocks or just really heavy heatsinks, or 80s hard drives). Granted software is already flying thousands of people over the Atlantic "pond" every day, and is flying stuff to Mars. But somehow I see the KIA executives saying "Hmm, we need good software, should we license INTEGRITY/178 or we could save money and just install Windows, heck we all know how to use Windows..."
So what. The quote was a simple example of Planck's own words talking about faith and his view of religion and science. Don't nit-pick that quote alone and say "aha, logical fallacy! -- See it doesn't mean he was religious, he was just talking about God in a different context etc etc." Don't rely on me finding quotes either (I can make them up, you know). The point is that Planck was religious, and other great scientist were also religious, there are sources were they talk and discuss these things in their own words.
He was "blinded" by his faith.
What is that supposed to mean. Was he lacking something? Did his faith impact or invalidate his work? Or he was "blinded" because he doesn't seem to conform to the idea of a scientist that someone, somewhere on some discussion forum called "Slashdot" has defined?
So it remains that either your statement that one cannot be a religous person and a scientist is wrong, or that all these scientists were not really good scientists at all, or that they lied about themselves being religious, and were actually avid atheists. The first case is probably true...
The way I view it, it is possible to be both a scientist and a religious person. In fact, I would claim that everyone is a religous person. Everybody "worships" something. Some worship God, some worship math, physics, biology, some worship money, political power, themsleves, some worship family, their country etc.
-- Yes you can. Max Planck could, he was religious and was a great scientist (he said that "Religion is the link that binds man to God"). Other famous scientists have also been religous. So on the one hand there is this post on Slashdot by someone I have never heard of, claiming that one can't be religious and a good scientist, on the other hand there are all these example of clearly great scientists who have been religious. Hmm, let's see , a tough one righ here: Some slashdotter vs. Max Planck... -- Ok, I choose Planck, (i.e. approx 6.63x10^-35 (m^2*kg)/s ;)
I got one for my wife last year, not sure if it is the exact same one, but it still work fine. She has been using at both as a jump drive and a music player. Mine is new and if it breaks in a year, I won't complain and will probably just get another one (or a newer model), for $30-50, it is not a big deal.
Well, there is good news then: many other non-Apple music player will function as a jump drive. So say you have your player with you, but for some reason there is 700Mb ISO CD image file that you want to copy and keep with you, well, you just delete the music folders and copy over the data. Yap, it's that easy, no need for iSomething software, or fancy special downloads, just plug in, drag-and-drop or just use the command line if it suits you better...
Most people I know that have iPods have them because they saw the comercials or they know someone that has them or they just heard the name "iPod" and think it is soooo cooool. Not one of them has compared and looked at the existing offerings of mp3 players out there when they bought the iPod.
It is interesting how in your post the ability of some mp3 players to also function as USB storage devices turns into being "worse" than using some proprietary iSomething software to connect to it. But I guess if someone can't figure out this "advanced" drag and drop thing, they probably should be palying $200+ for a music player and Apple should get their money after all.
I can also live with about 128 kbps mp3s or even 96 kbps for some songs and I can fit enough albums on this thing to keep me happy for weeks, then I change them around. If I need space to transfer files, I just delete the music folders and use it as a jump drive.
I think the people are buying iPods just because their friends have iPods and they don't know that there other such "toys" out there with a different set of features that might work better for them.
It is true that people have been having sex origies, masturbating, flirting and so on. But there is very good reason why that is not allowed in the workplace, there is very good reason why sex is not acceptable in public just like handshaking is (bonobos do great each other with a "quicky" though ;-). We like many other generations before us, think that we have discovered sex -- "oh wow, BDSM is soooo coool", "midget sex teh best", "threesomes -- that's new and crazy, yey!". But as you said, people have always had sex, over the thousands and thousands of years they have explored and "played with it". But why did they stop? If it is perfectly compatible with the developent of a civilazation, a culture a society with a certain structure, then why stop? The truth is that it is not compatible. Image that tomorrow you go to to work and instead of a handshake you boss want to 'f' you. Then at home after you have a dispute with the neighbour about the property line you give each other blowjobs to make up. Do you see this kind of society being able to function for long. People always blame and bash Christianity and other religions for being so uptight and controlling, but has it ever occured to anyone that (regardless whether the basic premises of the religion are true or not) that it provided stability and control that helped shape the society and culture. (When you don't have to worry about your wife shaking up with your neighbour while you are at work, you sure can get a whole lot more accomplished that day ;).
Are you getting morbidly obese? You can't get into you car anymore? Are your knees and hips failing because of your weight, but yet you can't stop munching on 'dem ding dongs? Well, then you have a problem, my friend, and you are in denial about it, along with good part of US population, especailly from the Southern states. So keep trying, set small goals, remember, bariatric surgery is only a final solution when other methods fail. Join weight watchers, that might help too. Good Luck.
The difficulty is that sex and pr0n and other such things are still very much repressed in this country. If someone has a problem quiting smoking -- there are tons of patches, tons of commercials of new products, everyone brags in details how their method helped and what not. If someone cannot control their eating habbits they are just "lazy", "fatsos", "lardasses" and so on. How many times have you heard someone suggest to a co-worker who is overweight to "loose some weight, you shouldn't have that last doughnut etc", yet people have no qualms suggesting that "you should quit smoking, it's bad for you". It is just that some "addictions" are more openly discussed and talked than others and there is a stigma associated with some of them.
Also note, homosexuality until not that long ago was listed as one of the mental illnesses in the DSM manual. It was probably called something like "sexual inversion" and such, but that just goes to show that DSM version X,Y or Z is not necessarily true, it just relfects best available knowledge on the subject of mental health.
This is just from some news I've heard a while ago. I am not trying to persuade anyone here, just providing my side of the story. I could go Google hunting for data and provide a full list of references but again, this is just a Slashdot post and I am at work and can't afford to research sources for evidence of increased female sexual addiction in the last 4-5 years...
From what I know those people were average guys like anyone you meet on the street. There were not total idiots because some of them had pretty good jobs. They were also not some kind of delusional crazy lunatics, someone you can see from a mile away and say "this guy need therapy". These individuals though, were pretty ordinary, except that they had this obsession with pr0n. Of course you can also say that anyone who drinks is an idiot, anyone who gets addicted to heroin is an idiot, but I think just by calling people "idiots" it is not going to help anyone or solve anything.
Last year or so ago I saw that March of The Penguins movie in the theatre. There was a family with a young daughter (probably 6 or 7) next to us. There is a point in the movie when they show a penguin "couple" have sex, the producers even made it look gentle and loving, were no explicit shots of the gentials or anything of that sort. Yet, one of parents grabbed the daughter and walked out with her during that scene. The child didn't understand why her parents are reacting in that angry way, to the little kid it probably seemed that something "wrong" was going on. Growing up like that, thinking that sex is evil and wrong, yet seeing the adults sneeker and make jokes about it, is probably really confusing.
I personally grew up in an Orthodox Christian family. Yet, my parents, especially my mom, were willing to talk and discuss about anything I wanted to know about girls, relationships, sex, babies etc. My parents bought appropriate books for my age that I could read if I felt like it was too embarassing for me to ask. The main point that I was taught and stuck with me for life is that sex is basically a good thing, it is pleasurable and it is to be enjoyed. It is not evil, it is not "un-natural" or anything like that. Of course because it is so enjoyable and it does produce powerfull emotions, it is subject to abuse, just like alcohol, food and other useful and enjoyable things.
This one lady, who's husband got into p0rn and which led eventually to divorce, wanted to check out and see what her ex husband saw in pr0n and sure enough, she also gets addicted to it, loses her job and eventually ends up in counseling. Arguably, pr0n is probably not the cause of her (and probably her husband's) problem but rather a symptom of some other deeper issues...
But somehow I don't believe him, I have heard of people who have ruined their marriage by becoming addicted to pr0n, some have been fired for looking at pr0n while at work. If that is not the behavior of an addict then I don't know what is. One definition of addiction states: "compulsion or overpowering urge to use a substance, regardless of potential or actual harm", most of the definitions imply that there has to be a substance involved, but in the case of pr0n the substances are the neurotransmitters in the brain.
In fact any activity that involves a powerfull release of certain neurotransmitters (serotonin, dopamin) into the pleasure centers of the brain can become "an addiction" -- it can be food, it can playing games, gambling etc.
Even better! Build you own drones to fight the drones that stalk you or build a EMP emmiting device and watch these suckers drop from the skies like frozen turkeys.
That's what I say. I would rather throw some Salmon on my George Forman to get the omega-3 than buy pork meat from some genetic lab. I like pork but as I am getting older it is time to start eating healthy -- better later than never...
Nothing new under the Sun (pun intended) I guess...
I think they should just add a service where people could deliver or snail mail dual layer dvds or tapes with data, with a set of new dvds or tapes for results. One can overnight it with Fedex. Then, they run the program on the grid, load up the result on another set of dvds or tapes and overnight them back to you.
I am not sure about hard drives but with flash, each bit has a limited # of times it can be read/written. So if you have an ext2 file system that writes the access time back to the disk every time the file is read, then there will be certain a certain set of bits that will be disproportionately accessed and thus would be the first to fail. I had Zaurus Linux handheld computer and when I made sure to add the noatime option when mounting the partitions. But of course, if the limit can be fairly high, then it won't be a problem....
Let me ask you this then: "Would you get on a plane if you knew that Debian was flying it?". I don't think I would...
Heart monitoring systems I think are more mission critical than "a little" ;) space station project. The station falls from the sky: 0 to 3 people die. Heart monitoring devices fail : everybody's grandmas, grandpas, baby sisters in the hospital kick the bucket.
And the fighter planes don't need operating systems... right...