Actually, O typically naive and self-centered slashdotter, There are many reasons one might go for a USB3 flash drive; it isn't always an option to open a case, or to replace a machine, but a USB3 flash drive might be a good fit for any number of applications. Try to think outside your own little box. I know it's difficult, but... just try. It won't compromise your self-image. I promise.
So far, the only use I've seen for USB 3 is over-priced flash drives.
Those who consider higher speed drives over-priced place a low value on their own time. It is important to realize that for some of us, time is worth a great deal, which in turn raises the value of a higher speed (anything.) If my computer makes me wait less, I make more money, and/or I spend less time at work, freeing up time for family, etc. Adding a flash drive is a one-time cost, in return for which I get long term, continuous time savings. If I make more money this way, it won't take long to make up for the cost of the drive. This doesn't even take into account the emotional boost one gets from not having to sit and wait for the computer so much.
In the Oxford University library in England, I found books in the old books room that were published in the 1600s. The persistence of paper books is an enormous benefit to all humankind.
...and those things are delicate, difficult (and dangerous to the material) to copy, and only available to people local to the "old books room", presuming some scholar hasn't carried said book off to a climate controlled archive somewhere, probably never to be seen again outside a formal academic environment. Even books printed in the 1950s and 1960s, the so-called "pulps", are on high-acid paper, and those things are *fragile*; you can't copy them easily, and if you try to, you're almost certain to completely destroy the volume you're copying. Many books are ok in terms of the paper condition, but the bindings have failed. Writings on skins and papyrus are still with us too, but again, your average person has no access, and they are hugely fragile. This is not a good situation for your average reader.
Now consider: What if you want to hear music performed in the 1600s? Nothing doing. Recreations only, and good luck with that being done right, too. But ever since we've developed recording media - from wax cylinders and paper piano rolls onward - we've got performance records of increasing accuracy. Basically, from the early 1900's, we've got a *wonderful* record of music. We've even been able to go back and significantly reduce the noise in those early recordings. Today, with digital formats, the scope and depth of musical (and now too visual) performances in formats that are able to "forward" themselves easily and without error, the entire landscape has changed. I own recordings that were made in the 1970's (yeah, I have a turntable... I'm old) and I also own digital remasters of those recordings, and in most cases, the remasters are *far* better (unless some recording engineer got in there and compressed the living hell out of it, in which case it's definitely second string... current standard practice for compression is abominable.)
This is just beginning to happen for classic written material; the benefits to history and society are impossible to determine, but they will definitely be huge. 200 years from now, every book that makes it into electronic format will be available to anyone who wants to read them (again historians, mostly, the general citizens will probably be LOL'ing about most of our present social concerns and the ideas in present SF by then... but the point is, the works *will* be available to anyone.)
When you venerate paper books as historical objects, you have it exactly backwards. They suck. Digital is definitely the way to go. And DRM... DRM is a joke; don't even worry about it. Doesn't work; can't work. I'm not suggesting anyone steal or improperly distribute textual (or other) materials, but I *am* suggesting that it's worth your time to break the DRM the very first thing after purchase. Then the work is properly storable and recoverable, easily backed up, and now a family heirloom rather than an immoral corporate "lend", just as it should be. And later, it'll be a historical document. One of millions upon millions. That is the way to go.
Not quite: Atheism; (A) = a root meaning without, (Theism) = belief in a god or gods. Together, "Without belief in a god or gods."
Agnosticism deals with knowledge; issues of belief are not predicated on knowledge. Individuals are either atheist, that is, they don't hold any belief in a god or gods, or they are theist, and do hold a belief or beliefs in a god or gods.
Agnosticism is not, and never can be, a middle ground. It's simply an intellectual blind alley. By definition, for any proposition without any supporting evidence, there can be no knowledge on the side making the proposition, or on the side having the proposition made to them. IOW, both theists and atheists are completely without knowledge WRT any god or gods. Claims != knowledge. Knowledge is supported by facts, reproducibility, evidence... you know, data. The claim for a god or gods is exactly equivalent to the claim for the Easter bunny. You've never seen one/it; I've never seen one/it; if I claim there is an Easter bunny, and you fall back on the idea that this claim is extraordinary, so if you're going to accept this, you want evidence of an Easter bunny, we've just established a perfect analog for the theist / atheist polarization. I'm an Easter bunny theist, and you're an Easter bunny atheist. But you'll note that there is no third position: neither of us really knows if there is an Easter bunny or not, so in the case of the theist, the position requires discarding the need for actual evidence, and for the atheist, it requires fitting the claim into the working, established worldview.
However: What the atheist generally has going for them is the scientific method, and huge amounts of data that show that extraordinary claims tend not to be (ever) validated; this establishes the reason that one should, absent very convincing evidence, begin with and maintain the position that the claims are, in fact, exactly equivalent to claims for Easter Bunnies, Flying Pink Unicorns, and Little Grey Men.
On top of this we layer the fact that religion is demonstrably an incredibly effective tool for social control, consequently an almost endless source of power, treasure and social position, and we've both established a good reason why it exists and persists, and obviated the need for anything extraordinary at all. Follow money, position and the power, and you'll find the root of almost all of man's most ambitious undertakings, within which religion surely ranks quite highly.
Well not all what religion does is bad. Not all what religion does is good.
Let's test your premise of exculpation: Not all what murderers and rapists do is bad. Not all what murderers and rapists do is good.
Does this somehow exonerate or excuse murder and/or rape? No... it really doesn't. It sounds good, but it doesn't actually work in practice. As it doesn't work for rape in today's society, it also doesn't work for religion, and for the same reason: its an extremely harmful influence on society, and regardless of the good done (architecture, art, tranquilizing influences on the gullible and misguided, charity), the harm remains and it is severe.
It is theism that caused those planes to be flown into the towers. It is theism that drives the thieves on their evangelistic shows. It is theism that drives the Texas school board to select for woo woo over science, and thereby affect the curriculum of just about every other state. It is theism that drives legislators and those in the pulpit to vilify sexuality. It is theism that created the entire swath of blue laws, an idiotic stab at the heart of reasoned governance we still have not recovered from. I could go on for quite a while, but I think I've made my point.
Whatever benefit accrue from theism - from architecture to art to comforting the misguided and mentally unstable using fairy stories about a totally evidence-free afterlife - it is my position these are neither worth the cost of the damage done by theism, nor irreplaceable by other means. And as for any "moral" behavior that theism might enforce on a society, far better that this would be derived from the benefit to one's fellow beings than out of a canned checklist developed by an 0th century society, or their earlier precursors, basically sheepherders and desert wanderers.
Religion is indeed a toxin today; we would be far better off on almost every possible level if we were able to divest ourselves of it. But it remains a powerful force because our educational system is unable to address the issue head-on. Science actually speaks quite strongly against the ideas pushed by religion (and all associated classes of woo woo), but instructors are firmly muzzled against saying so.
2) heretics are killed, expelled to the wilds to die of exposure, etc.
3) believers are, by definition, selected for by/2/
4) the devout and contributory receive better treatment
5) a milder additional form of selection at/4/
6) affinity for religion is selected as a survival trait over multiple generations
Even today, it's not really a great thing to be an atheist in most of the USA. It reduces the potential pool of mates, it causes you to be cast out of most social groupings, it prevents you from succeeding at running for office, and as President Bush put it, "I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic."
One hopes (well, if one is me) that the continuing closure of the scientific window will continue to squeeze the god of the gaps out of our persistent mythology until the religious belief systems are actually, for all intents and purposes, gone; but frankly, I doubt it. We still have citizens who believe in crystals, therapeutic touch, chiropractic, and a whole host of other mumbo jumbo, though science has weighed in rather heavily in favor of rousing debunkings.
Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods. It is not a belief in anything. Atheism does not impose, suggest, or even hint at any dogma, there is no book, there are no rules, there is no litany, there are no claims. There is simply no belief. Just as there is no belief in pink unicorns, or elfin princesses, or Darth Vader -- it's not a religious or belief based position, it's simply a position based on a complete lack of any kind of evidence.
When you try to assign "belief" to an atheist, it's as if you were trying to describe the color of the bald guy's hair. He has no hair. Your attempt is based on the very misguided presumption that everyone must have hair. Hence: "If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color." Get it now?
That's a bit unfair, don't you think? Aside from how rare this is...
No, I don't think it's unfair at all. What does "Google is down" mean to someone trying to use GMail? It can mean Google itself isn't responding, which happens from time to time. It can also mean that the path between Google and you is down, which also happens. Or it can mean that the path is so clogged with other material that using GMail isn't practical. Or it can mean that your local ISP or the company network is down or doing maintainance. In all of these are situations you can read and write email with a local client; with GMail, its not so simple. And then there are the substandard limits of GMail as compared to a full-featured client, of which there are plenty... and the problems with attachments, and the limits on storage. On your machine, these are either non-existent or under your direct control. So no. Not unfair. GMail is overrated. I'm quite familiar with GMail; I use it for one of my throwaway email addresses, and over a considerable period of time, I've run into all manner of issues that simply don't occur with a local client.
For that matter, if you're going to avoid executing software which has come to you through the Internet, you aren't going to be patching, which means you're likely to be executing other software which has come to you through the Internet.
No. You didn't read carefully enough. If a machine isn't connected, it's not at risk to/from the network, period; no one can get data off a machine via the net when that machine has no network connection, even if they somehow managed to infect it, which in my case, they won't be doing. OTOH, with a connected throw-away machine, limiting execution to html, css, standard forms and server side CGI resolves any local execution issues, as long as you aren't naive enough to download something and run it; popping a new OS on there every few days also tends to drop a large hammer on a lot of potential problems, but the main key is not to store your data on a machine that's connected to the net in the first place.
First, censorious behavior is kind of irrelevant. YouTube is one of many sites which deliver video this way; by not having Flash, you miss all of them which aren't already on HTML5 -- and by not having JavaScript, you miss those, too. It's a bit like boycotting paper because some newspapers censor their content.
So what? The number of informative videos I've seen that weren't a complete waste of my time I can count on one hand, and *all* of them were on commercial media - DVD, etc. And I don't agree that censorship is irrelevant. It is one of the critical pillars of almost every form of malign governance that ever existed, definitely including my government.
That's a bit like saying if you know the traffic statistics and you still get in a car accident, it's your fault for not driving a tank. Your solution does work, but it comes at a monetary cost (you need at least two machines) and a convenience cost -- kind of like a tank.
No. A tank is beyond almost anyone's means, and furthermore, there's nowhere you can drive it. Whereas a brand new nettop can be had for $400, it can go *anywhere* because its 100% isolated from anything important, and $400 is less than most people spend on beer, cigarettes, and etc. in a fairly short period of time. If they choose beer over security, that's their right and their lookout, but it isn't an actual financial problem. It's a very small investment to bring 100% security to your personal information, something this country's founders absolutely intended its citizens to have, and which the current government no longer respects -- so the citizens are well advised to handle it themselves.
Ordering online... If so, where from? Your nettop isn't supposed to have anything imp
Phrenologically speaking, your entire post is really lumpy. From a cooking standpoint, your pot is cracked. And scientifically speaking... well, why bring science into it now?
Spoiled? I consider you deprived. I run six monitors, big ones, too.
The app I'm working on (DSLR photo processor) can take two (easily) with the image window on one monitor, and the tool palette and library windows on another. Then I have the source code / IDE on another, the Instruments suite of monitoring tools on another, the dev docs open on another and on the last, a web browser for hitting stack overflow or other online resources. In the space corners, I have CPU monitors, network monitors, chat windows open to the other team members, the system console log... My only regret is that I didn't pony up for the fourth display card so I could have eight monitors.:)
I read it on monitor #6 (of 6); because that's the only one on the system that's in portrait mode, and I like reading slashdot in portrait.:)
Monitors are like a lot of things; it depends on your style, what you're comfortable with. I like a lot of 'em, and I work efficiently that way. Someone else doesn't want to work that way, so what, doesn't affect me in the least.
lolita was not written so people could jack off to child sexual abuse... it was written to point out the horror of it. story of o --- has nothing to do with children Exit to Eden -- has nothing to do with children Belinda --- has nothing to do with children
You're completely missing the point. I intended to lay out a broad swath of erotic fiction. I wasn't conflating them with child porn, because none of it is child porn. It's fiction. There is no act of any kind involving children, direct or indirect; there is no victim; there is no perpetrator, there is no harm, any more than there is a perpetrator or harm when a story describes or illustrates a beating, a murder, an explosion, a hijacking, an assassination, a mugging. These are stories. Fiction. Imaginary events.
There is absolutely no justification for you, or anyone else, to say that such fiction cannot be written, sold or read, or to prejudge these works by how much, or why, you imagine the reader(s) would enjoy the reading experience. Parents serve, as always, as the conduit of permission(s) as to what constitutes acceptable fiction for their own children; but others have no legitimate role in serving as said conduit for any adult, or for that matter, for anyone else's children. Despite the occasional misguided law to the contrary; despite your deep distaste for the subject at hand, whatever events the story might describe - eating meat, murder, sexuality, slavery, mythology, republican legislative plans, or perhaps ideas, concepts or events even more horrible than those.
Anyone who conflates fiction with reality is an idiot. Anyone who tries to enact anti-fiction legislation or actual censorship (meaning, restricts adult readers or minor readers with parental permission from said fiction) is a meddling idiot. Anyone who succeeds is an enemy of society, the arts, and freedom in general. And very much unlike issues of writing, selling and reading fiction, that is a situation where society, if it were even slightly in it's collective right mind, should exact severe punishment.
If a fictional book is created, sold and read, illustrated or not, about a bank heist, no one is stealing; nothing has been stolen; it is fiction. A work of imagination. For entertainment purposes.
The same applies to interactions such as those found in Lolita, Yaoi titles, the Story of O, Exit to Eden, Belinda, and so on for quite a long list written over an impressive span of time (erotica is hardly unique to the 20th and 21st centuries.)
That said, there is no question that as a venue for selling products, the seller has the right to choose what products they will sell; all that remains is for the customers to decide if those choices make them more or less likely to shop there.
Finally, an interesting reality of our society is summed up by the phrase "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." If you wish to apply legitimate pressure encouraging Amazon to carry all titles without making content-based cullings, simply contact them, tell them so, and indicate that your future purchasing plans will vary depending on Amazon's behavior here. And then follow through.
I would suggest that this is worth doing; today, it's something you probably don't care if you ever see. Tomorrow, it may be something you do care about. Ideally, a venue for buying e-books would, as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has claimed is their goal, carry every book, no matter what content.
Let's hope those insightful users are also insightful enough to actually have backups.
Yes, let's. Of course, on the other hand, you have to hope Google hasn't lost your email or isn't down when you need it, don't you? As opposed to your trusty email program, which is right there all the time. And lets you do things like automatically assign identities to your replies, or delete your attachments, or view your email in non-prop fonts... and doesn't surf your email for keywords... and doesn't have employees that snoop on your email... and doesn't limit the amount of storage you have... all things that are decidedly unlike Google.
And it's not possible to avoid both of these, sorry. In fact, it's not possible to avoid the latter at all.
You can certainly avoid doing it over channels like the Internet, though, which is the point that you're trying to disregard. Nice try.
The bad news is that any local application has at least as much access as these web apps do.
The good news is you can have control over them, because they're not Internet apps, and further, can be kept off the net with tools like Little Snitch, virtual machines, simply not connecting the host hardware to the Internet at all, et al. Again, nice try, no cigar. Your data can't be emailed or otherwise snatched by malware if the machine that carries it isn't on the net. My main machine has no Internet connection at all; no one, including the USG, can steal my data without physical access. I surf on a nettop that has absolutely zero of interest on it. You could completely compromise it *or* my main machine via some installed program and you'd *still* have nothing. The one has no data of any use (and in fact often has a different OS, installed from scratch, on it from day to day... that's how ephemeral that thing's software and data environment is); the other has no network connection. So you see, it's a matter of managing your resources; there is no inevitability to data exposure. If your data is exposed, and you understand how things actually work -- it's your fault. Period.
Thus "protecting" yourself from YouTube, FreeFillableForms (the only way to file US taxes online that I know of), etc.
Yes, precisely. You don't have to deal with Youtube's censorious behavior, invasive ads, or the incredible low resolution mass of 99.99% drivel they call content. A win all around. As for taxes, no need to do those online, and not a good idea, either. See, you've been conditioned to think it's ok to put your financial information online. It's not. It never was. It never will be. That information should be between you and the other legitimate parties to the transaction(s), and no one else. Sending your tax information over the network... just plain careless and hugely risky. Your choice, though, of course. No one is stopping you from doing the wrong thing. Just keep pretending SSL protects you. That's exactly what they (corporations and the USG) want you to think.
Thus "protecting" yourself from things like Gmail,
Yes, exactly. Try Thunderbird instead. You'd be amazed at the power of a real email system. And you have the source code; if you want to ensure it's safe to run, you can. And all those problems I listed WRT Google? Not a problem with Thunderbird at all.
Google Instant Search
Yes, life was utterly horrifying and pointless and it was impossible to better yourself without that, wasn't it? lol
Do I really need to spell it out?
Your spelling isn't at question here -- it's your failure to understand security and your submission to conditioning that is at issue.
For which we have more specific approaches, like Adblock.
How about you get hold of something that lets you whitelist which sites are allowed to use Flash and Javascript...? That way your computer will still be able to do something useful.
If your computer can't do anything useful without flash and javascript, then frankly... well, never mind.
If you allow a site to operate those technologies in your execution space, you are allowing third -- and fourth, and 5th, and etc. -- parties access to your hardware. Not a good idea. Your "trusted" site will likely sell some ad space to Malware Inc., and sooner rather than later. Directly or indirectly. Then your data will be gone, while you're stuck being mad and adding the site to your blacklist (or taking it off your whitelist.) But your data is AWOL; this isn't something you can fix after the fact. Even if there were a decent legal remedy -- which there isn't, at present. Or a just legal system to pursue it in -- which there also isn't at present.
The right answer is not to let others execute programs on your computer. Just as simple as that. The current trend is going exactly the wrong way. If you want to be one of the horde with a chunk bitten out of their metaphorical rear, then that's your choice -- at least you've considered the issue, which is more than most people can say. So for you, there's no need for sympathy. For granny, who doesn't get it, some compassion is in order, not to mention some kicking against the traces in her stead.
...is part of a serious cultural error being made: an impetus by hopeful marketers towards applications that run in/on the browser rather than in the user's machine. Both putting data "in the cloud" and running apps "from the cloud" are fraught with pitfalls; insightful users (a minority, as always) will resist this trend with traditional in-machine applications and fully local storage of data. The rest will suffer as corporations (continue to) misuse their data.
The key issue is: Putting your data in the hands of those you don't know is a uniformly bad idea. So is giving control of your computer's execution to those you don't know. There is no remedy for this kind of error, either -- once you hand your data over, you have lost control of it, and in turn, you have lost control over the consequences of random third parties misusing your information.
The good news is that we have a broad set of extremely powerful applications available to us that run well in the local environment. Word processors, spreadsheets, sound, image and video editors, music and video library engines, educational software and a whole host more are all very well populated with traditional applications, so for the thinking user, there is no need to "go to the cloud" for classic compute tasks. Instead, the net can be used for communications, both as its heritage dictates and as the most sensible domain fit, while personal data and execution permissions remain secure in and at the local environment.
To help protect yourself, I suggest beginning by disabling flash, scripting and use only CSS/HTML in the web-facing interface. As a side benefit, surfing is much more pleasant without pop-overs, flash ads, and many other corporate infections of the network.
Neither Google or any other corporation has your best interests in mind. Start from that understanding, and the world will make considerably more sense.
Find me an app that strains it. I am not able to think of one at this time... I played PvZ until it got boring.
Then you didn't play it far enough. In endless wave mode, at about level 40, the game lags quite seriously on the original iPad.
The web browser strains it too; it's *very* slow, even if it is the fastest one out there on a tablet. Until web pages "snap" up, more horsepower will always be welcome in my hands.
That said, they really did drop the ball on this one. Perhaps we'll see some of the more obvious upgrades next time around. An IR emitter. Environmental sensors (temperature, barometer.) Radio and television tuners (or better yet, built-in SDR.) Actual HD resolution. Memory card slots. USB. Wireless charging. Wireless (and automatic!) syncing. File management. Widgets and Gizmos for the home screen(s.) Hey, maybe they'll even fix the app store so it won't forget where I was in the catalog and send me back to page one every time I go to look at an app. You know, as if I were looking for something to purchase. Idiots.
You seriously think they can ship a 2048x1536 tablet with 10 hours of battery life?
I'd be perfectly happy with a 2048x1536 iPad with a 2 and a half hour battery life, frankly, but I don't think you really understand how these things work.
Most of the energy for this is spent literally in the backlight. Given that the display size doesn't change (resolution doubles, pixel count quadruples, yet display size stays the same), then neither does the backlight. Energy driving the electronics isn't all that much of an issue when the update rate is as slow as an LCD is. It's not about power. It's about fabrication and how many panels are lost at those resolutions, that's all. And they'll fix that.
As for processing power, 4x the pixels requires 4x the compute power; and they just upped the GPU speed by 9x. Nine. So that's not a problem either. As for capacity, 2048x1536 of RGB is barely ten megabytes of ram for a display buffer; breaking it into four zones keeps the memory bandwidth the same. This isn't even difficult.
I just rest the iPad on my chest while reading and keep the water level low enough so it never hits the device. Nothing to it. Never got it wet or had any problems at all.
Totally. I love these iconoclastic posts -- "gonna crush it with a bucketloader!" Sure you are, basement-dweller. If you even own one.
If Amazon resists Apple, and Apple somehow makes my Kindle app not work any more, I'll just buy (another) Kindle. I won't be hounded into buying books through Apple, but I also won't be foolish enough to toss out all the cool stuff I can do with the iPad, which ranges *far* beyond just reading books.
If Amazon capitulates, I probably won't even notice.
Slashdot Mirror
My machine has six monitors; four widescreen landscape, one portrait, and one 4:3. The idea of just two monitors makes be feel claustrophobic.
widescreen turned for portrait is awesome. :)
Actually, O typically naive and self-centered slashdotter, There are many reasons one might go for a USB3 flash drive; it isn't always an option to open a case, or to replace a machine, but a USB3 flash drive might be a good fit for any number of applications. Try to think outside your own little box. I know it's difficult, but... just try. It won't compromise your self-image. I promise.
Those who consider higher speed drives over-priced place a low value on their own time. It is important to realize that for some of us, time is worth a great deal, which in turn raises the value of a higher speed (anything.) If my computer makes me wait less, I make more money, and/or I spend less time at work, freeing up time for family, etc. Adding a flash drive is a one-time cost, in return for which I get long term, continuous time savings. If I make more money this way, it won't take long to make up for the cost of the drive. This doesn't even take into account the emotional boost one gets from not having to sit and wait for the computer so much.
Now consider: What if you want to hear music performed in the 1600s? Nothing doing. Recreations only, and good luck with that being done right, too. But ever since we've developed recording media - from wax cylinders and paper piano rolls onward - we've got performance records of increasing accuracy. Basically, from the early 1900's, we've got a *wonderful* record of music. We've even been able to go back and significantly reduce the noise in those early recordings. Today, with digital formats, the scope and depth of musical (and now too visual) performances in formats that are able to "forward" themselves easily and without error, the entire landscape has changed. I own recordings that were made in the 1970's (yeah, I have a turntable... I'm old) and I also own digital remasters of those recordings, and in most cases, the remasters are *far* better (unless some recording engineer got in there and compressed the living hell out of it, in which case it's definitely second string... current standard practice for compression is abominable.)
This is just beginning to happen for classic written material; the benefits to history and society are impossible to determine, but they will definitely be huge. 200 years from now, every book that makes it into electronic format will be available to anyone who wants to read them (again historians, mostly, the general citizens will probably be LOL'ing about most of our present social concerns and the ideas in present SF by then... but the point is, the works *will* be available to anyone.)
When you venerate paper books as historical objects, you have it exactly backwards. They suck. Digital is definitely the way to go. And DRM... DRM is a joke; don't even worry about it. Doesn't work; can't work. I'm not suggesting anyone steal or improperly distribute textual (or other) materials, but I *am* suggesting that it's worth your time to break the DRM the very first thing after purchase. Then the work is properly storable and recoverable, easily backed up, and now a family heirloom rather than an immoral corporate "lend", just as it should be. And later, it'll be a historical document. One of millions upon millions. That is the way to go.
Not quite: Atheism; (A) = a root meaning without, (Theism) = belief in a god or gods. Together, "Without belief in a god or gods."
Agnosticism deals with knowledge; issues of belief are not predicated on knowledge. Individuals are either atheist, that is, they don't hold any belief in a god or gods, or they are theist, and do hold a belief or beliefs in a god or gods.
Agnosticism is not, and never can be, a middle ground. It's simply an intellectual blind alley. By definition, for any proposition without any supporting evidence, there can be no knowledge on the side making the proposition, or on the side having the proposition made to them. IOW, both theists and atheists are completely without knowledge WRT any god or gods. Claims != knowledge. Knowledge is supported by facts, reproducibility, evidence... you know, data. The claim for a god or gods is exactly equivalent to the claim for the Easter bunny. You've never seen one/it; I've never seen one/it; if I claim there is an Easter bunny, and you fall back on the idea that this claim is extraordinary, so if you're going to accept this, you want evidence of an Easter bunny, we've just established a perfect analog for the theist / atheist polarization. I'm an Easter bunny theist, and you're an Easter bunny atheist. But you'll note that there is no third position: neither of us really knows if there is an Easter bunny or not, so in the case of the theist, the position requires discarding the need for actual evidence, and for the atheist, it requires fitting the claim into the working, established worldview.
However: What the atheist generally has going for them is the scientific method, and huge amounts of data that show that extraordinary claims tend not to be (ever) validated; this establishes the reason that one should, absent very convincing evidence, begin with and maintain the position that the claims are, in fact, exactly equivalent to claims for Easter Bunnies, Flying Pink Unicorns, and Little Grey Men.
On top of this we layer the fact that religion is demonstrably an incredibly effective tool for social control, consequently an almost endless source of power, treasure and social position, and we've both established a good reason why it exists and persists, and obviated the need for anything extraordinary at all. Follow money, position and the power, and you'll find the root of almost all of man's most ambitious undertakings, within which religion surely ranks quite highly.
Let's test your premise of exculpation: Not all what murderers and rapists do is bad. Not all what murderers and rapists do is good.
Does this somehow exonerate or excuse murder and/or rape? No... it really doesn't. It sounds good, but it doesn't actually work in practice. As it doesn't work for rape in today's society, it also doesn't work for religion, and for the same reason: its an extremely harmful influence on society, and regardless of the good done (architecture, art, tranquilizing influences on the gullible and misguided, charity), the harm remains and it is severe.
It is theism that caused those planes to be flown into the towers. It is theism that drives the thieves on their evangelistic shows. It is theism that drives the Texas school board to select for woo woo over science, and thereby affect the curriculum of just about every other state. It is theism that drives legislators and those in the pulpit to vilify sexuality. It is theism that created the entire swath of blue laws, an idiotic stab at the heart of reasoned governance we still have not recovered from. I could go on for quite a while, but I think I've made my point.
Whatever benefit accrue from theism - from architecture to art to comforting the misguided and mentally unstable using fairy stories about a totally evidence-free afterlife - it is my position these are neither worth the cost of the damage done by theism, nor irreplaceable by other means. And as for any "moral" behavior that theism might enforce on a society, far better that this would be derived from the benefit to one's fellow beings than out of a canned checklist developed by an 0th century society, or their earlier precursors, basically sheepherders and desert wanderers.
Religion is indeed a toxin today; we would be far better off on almost every possible level if we were able to divest ourselves of it. But it remains a powerful force because our educational system is unable to address the issue head-on. Science actually speaks quite strongly against the ideas pushed by religion (and all associated classes of woo woo), but instructors are firmly muzzled against saying so.
1) religiots achive power
2) heretics are killed, expelled to the wilds to die of exposure, etc.
3) believers are, by definition, selected for by /2/
4) the devout and contributory receive better treatment
5) a milder additional form of selection at /4/
6) affinity for religion is selected as a survival trait over multiple generations
Even today, it's not really a great thing to be an atheist in most of the USA. It reduces the potential pool of mates, it causes you to be cast out of most social groupings, it prevents you from succeeding at running for office, and as President Bush put it, "I don't know that atheists should be regarded as citizens, nor should they be regarded as patriotic."
One hopes (well, if one is me) that the continuing closure of the scientific window will continue to squeeze the god of the gaps out of our persistent mythology until the religious belief systems are actually, for all intents and purposes, gone; but frankly, I doubt it. We still have citizens who believe in crystals, therapeutic touch, chiropractic, and a whole host of other mumbo jumbo, though science has weighed in rather heavily in favor of rousing debunkings.
Atheism is the lack of belief in a god or gods. It is not a belief in anything. Atheism does not impose, suggest, or even hint at any dogma, there is no book, there are no rules, there is no litany, there are no claims. There is simply no belief. Just as there is no belief in pink unicorns, or elfin princesses, or Darth Vader -- it's not a religious or belief based position, it's simply a position based on a complete lack of any kind of evidence.
When you try to assign "belief" to an atheist, it's as if you were trying to describe the color of the bald guy's hair. He has no hair. Your attempt is based on the very misguided presumption that everyone must have hair. Hence: "If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair color." Get it now?
No, I don't think it's unfair at all. What does "Google is down" mean to someone trying to use GMail? It can mean Google itself isn't responding, which happens from time to time. It can also mean that the path between Google and you is down, which also happens. Or it can mean that the path is so clogged with other material that using GMail isn't practical. Or it can mean that your local ISP or the company network is down or doing maintainance. In all of these are situations you can read and write email with a local client; with GMail, its not so simple. And then there are the substandard limits of GMail as compared to a full-featured client, of which there are plenty... and the problems with attachments, and the limits on storage. On your machine, these are either non-existent or under your direct control. So no. Not unfair. GMail is overrated. I'm quite familiar with GMail; I use it for one of my throwaway email addresses, and over a considerable period of time, I've run into all manner of issues that simply don't occur with a local client.
No. You didn't read carefully enough. If a machine isn't connected, it's not at risk to/from the network, period; no one can get data off a machine via the net when that machine has no network connection, even if they somehow managed to infect it, which in my case, they won't be doing. OTOH, with a connected throw-away machine, limiting execution to html, css, standard forms and server side CGI resolves any local execution issues, as long as you aren't naive enough to download something and run it; popping a new OS on there every few days also tends to drop a large hammer on a lot of potential problems, but the main key is not to store your data on a machine that's connected to the net in the first place.
So what? The number of informative videos I've seen that weren't a complete waste of my time I can count on one hand, and *all* of them were on commercial media - DVD, etc. And I don't agree that censorship is irrelevant. It is one of the critical pillars of almost every form of malign governance that ever existed, definitely including my government.
No. A tank is beyond almost anyone's means, and furthermore, there's nowhere you can drive it. Whereas a brand new nettop can be had for $400, it can go *anywhere* because its 100% isolated from anything important, and $400 is less than most people spend on beer, cigarettes, and etc. in a fairly short period of time. If they choose beer over security, that's their right and their lookout, but it isn't an actual financial problem. It's a very small investment to bring 100% security to your personal information, something this country's founders absolutely intended its citizens to have, and which the current government no longer respects -- so the citizens are well advised to handle it themselves.
Phrenologically speaking, your entire post is really lumpy. From a cooking standpoint, your pot is cracked. And scientifically speaking... well, why bring science into it now?
Spoiled? I consider you deprived. I run six monitors, big ones, too.
The app I'm working on (DSLR photo processor) can take two (easily) with the image window on one monitor, and the tool palette and library windows on another. Then I have the source code / IDE on another, the Instruments suite of monitoring tools on another, the dev docs open on another and on the last, a web browser for hitting stack overflow or other online resources. In the space corners, I have CPU monitors, network monitors, chat windows open to the other team members, the system console log... My only regret is that I didn't pony up for the fourth display card so I could have eight monitors. :)
I read it on monitor #6 (of 6); because that's the only one on the system that's in portrait mode, and I like reading slashdot in portrait. :)
Monitors are like a lot of things; it depends on your style, what you're comfortable with. I like a lot of 'em, and I work efficiently that way. Someone else doesn't want to work that way, so what, doesn't affect me in the least.
You're completely missing the point. I intended to lay out a broad swath of erotic fiction. I wasn't conflating them with child porn, because none of it is child porn. It's fiction. There is no act of any kind involving children, direct or indirect; there is no victim; there is no perpetrator, there is no harm, any more than there is a perpetrator or harm when a story describes or illustrates a beating, a murder, an explosion, a hijacking, an assassination, a mugging. These are stories. Fiction. Imaginary events.
There is absolutely no justification for you, or anyone else, to say that such fiction cannot be written, sold or read, or to prejudge these works by how much, or why, you imagine the reader(s) would enjoy the reading experience. Parents serve, as always, as the conduit of permission(s) as to what constitutes acceptable fiction for their own children; but others have no legitimate role in serving as said conduit for any adult, or for that matter, for anyone else's children. Despite the occasional misguided law to the contrary; despite your deep distaste for the subject at hand, whatever events the story might describe - eating meat, murder, sexuality, slavery, mythology, republican legislative plans, or perhaps ideas, concepts or events even more horrible than those.
Anyone who conflates fiction with reality is an idiot. Anyone who tries to enact anti-fiction legislation or actual censorship (meaning, restricts adult readers or minor readers with parental permission from said fiction) is a meddling idiot. Anyone who succeeds is an enemy of society, the arts, and freedom in general. And very much unlike issues of writing, selling and reading fiction, that is a situation where society, if it were even slightly in it's collective right mind, should exact severe punishment.
If a fictional book is created, sold and read, illustrated or not, about a bank heist, no one is stealing; nothing has been stolen; it is fiction. A work of imagination. For entertainment purposes.
The same applies to interactions such as those found in Lolita, Yaoi titles, the Story of O, Exit to Eden, Belinda, and so on for quite a long list written over an impressive span of time (erotica is hardly unique to the 20th and 21st centuries.)
That said, there is no question that as a venue for selling products, the seller has the right to choose what products they will sell; all that remains is for the customers to decide if those choices make them more or less likely to shop there.
Finally, an interesting reality of our society is summed up by the phrase "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." If you wish to apply legitimate pressure encouraging Amazon to carry all titles without making content-based cullings, simply contact them, tell them so, and indicate that your future purchasing plans will vary depending on Amazon's behavior here. And then follow through.
I would suggest that this is worth doing; today, it's something you probably don't care if you ever see. Tomorrow, it may be something you do care about. Ideally, a venue for buying e-books would, as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has claimed is their goal, carry every book, no matter what content.
Yes, let's. Of course, on the other hand, you have to hope Google hasn't lost your email or isn't down when you need it, don't you? As opposed to your trusty email program, which is right there all the time. And lets you do things like automatically assign identities to your replies, or delete your attachments, or view your email in non-prop fonts... and doesn't surf your email for keywords... and doesn't have employees that snoop on your email... and doesn't limit the amount of storage you have... all things that are decidedly unlike Google.
You can certainly avoid doing it over channels like the Internet, though, which is the point that you're trying to disregard. Nice try.
The good news is you can have control over them, because they're not Internet apps, and further, can be kept off the net with tools like Little Snitch, virtual machines, simply not connecting the host hardware to the Internet at all, et al. Again, nice try, no cigar. Your data can't be emailed or otherwise snatched by malware if the machine that carries it isn't on the net. My main machine has no Internet connection at all; no one, including the USG, can steal my data without physical access. I surf on a nettop that has absolutely zero of interest on it. You could completely compromise it *or* my main machine via some installed program and you'd *still* have nothing. The one has no data of any use (and in fact often has a different OS, installed from scratch, on it from day to day... that's how ephemeral that thing's software and data environment is); the other has no network connection. So you see, it's a matter of managing your resources; there is no inevitability to data exposure. If your data is exposed, and you understand how things actually work -- it's your fault. Period.
Yes, precisely. You don't have to deal with Youtube's censorious behavior, invasive ads, or the incredible low resolution mass of 99.99% drivel they call content. A win all around. As for taxes, no need to do those online, and not a good idea, either. See, you've been conditioned to think it's ok to put your financial information online. It's not. It never was. It never will be. That information should be between you and the other legitimate parties to the transaction(s), and no one else. Sending your tax information over the network... just plain careless and hugely risky. Your choice, though, of course. No one is stopping you from doing the wrong thing. Just keep pretending SSL protects you. That's exactly what they (corporations and the USG) want you to think.
Yes, exactly. Try Thunderbird instead. You'd be amazed at the power of a real email system. And you have the source code; if you want to ensure it's safe to run, you can. And all those problems I listed WRT Google? Not a problem with Thunderbird at all.
Yes, life was utterly horrifying and pointless and it was impossible to better yourself without that, wasn't it? lol
Your spelling isn't at question here -- it's your failure to understand security and your submission to conditioning that is at issue.
That's ju
If your computer can't do anything useful without flash and javascript, then frankly... well, never mind.
If you allow a site to operate those technologies in your execution space, you are allowing third -- and fourth, and 5th, and etc. -- parties access to your hardware. Not a good idea. Your "trusted" site will likely sell some ad space to Malware Inc., and sooner rather than later. Directly or indirectly. Then your data will be gone, while you're stuck being mad and adding the site to your blacklist (or taking it off your whitelist.) But your data is AWOL; this isn't something you can fix after the fact. Even if there were a decent legal remedy -- which there isn't, at present. Or a just legal system to pursue it in -- which there also isn't at present.
The right answer is not to let others execute programs on your computer. Just as simple as that. The current trend is going exactly the wrong way. If you want to be one of the horde with a chunk bitten out of their metaphorical rear, then that's your choice -- at least you've considered the issue, which is more than most people can say. So for you, there's no need for sympathy. For granny, who doesn't get it, some compassion is in order, not to mention some kicking against the traces in her stead.
The key issue is: Putting your data in the hands of those you don't know is a uniformly bad idea. So is giving control of your computer's execution to those you don't know. There is no remedy for this kind of error, either -- once you hand your data over, you have lost control of it, and in turn, you have lost control over the consequences of random third parties misusing your information.
The good news is that we have a broad set of extremely powerful applications available to us that run well in the local environment. Word processors, spreadsheets, sound, image and video editors, music and video library engines, educational software and a whole host more are all very well populated with traditional applications, so for the thinking user, there is no need to "go to the cloud" for classic compute tasks. Instead, the net can be used for communications, both as its heritage dictates and as the most sensible domain fit, while personal data and execution permissions remain secure in and at the local environment.
To help protect yourself, I suggest beginning by disabling flash, scripting and use only CSS/HTML in the web-facing interface. As a side benefit, surfing is much more pleasant without pop-overs, flash ads, and many other corporate infections of the network.
Neither Google or any other corporation has your best interests in mind. Start from that understanding, and the world will make considerably more sense.
Elephants? Global warming is bringing elephants?
No wifi signal on earth can get through an elephant.
Now I see the problem.
Then you didn't play it far enough. In endless wave mode, at about level 40, the game lags quite seriously on the original iPad.
The web browser strains it too; it's *very* slow, even if it is the fastest one out there on a tablet. Until web pages "snap" up, more horsepower will always be welcome in my hands.
That said, they really did drop the ball on this one. Perhaps we'll see some of the more obvious upgrades next time around. An IR emitter. Environmental sensors (temperature, barometer.) Radio and television tuners (or better yet, built-in SDR.) Actual HD resolution. Memory card slots. USB. Wireless charging. Wireless (and automatic!) syncing. File management. Widgets and Gizmos for the home screen(s.) Hey, maybe they'll even fix the app store so it won't forget where I was in the catalog and send me back to page one every time I go to look at an app. You know, as if I were looking for something to purchase. Idiots.
I'd be perfectly happy with a 2048x1536 iPad with a 2 and a half hour battery life, frankly, but I don't think you really understand how these things work.
Most of the energy for this is spent literally in the backlight. Given that the display size doesn't change (resolution doubles, pixel count quadruples, yet display size stays the same), then neither does the backlight. Energy driving the electronics isn't all that much of an issue when the update rate is as slow as an LCD is. It's not about power. It's about fabrication and how many panels are lost at those resolutions, that's all. And they'll fix that.
As for processing power, 4x the pixels requires 4x the compute power; and they just upped the GPU speed by 9x. Nine. So that's not a problem either. As for capacity, 2048x1536 of RGB is barely ten megabytes of ram for a display buffer; breaking it into four zones keeps the memory bandwidth the same. This isn't even difficult.
No, not the only ones. Our co-op does too.
That's good, man, because my alpaca has cold feet. It's cruel, is what it is.
I just rest the iPad on my chest while reading and keep the water level low enough so it never hits the device. Nothing to it. Never got it wet or had any problems at all.
Totally. I love these iconoclastic posts -- "gonna crush it with a bucketloader!" Sure you are, basement-dweller. If you even own one.
If Amazon resists Apple, and Apple somehow makes my Kindle app not work any more, I'll just buy (another) Kindle. I won't be hounded into buying books through Apple, but I also won't be foolish enough to toss out all the cool stuff I can do with the iPad, which ranges *far* beyond just reading books.
If Amazon capitulates, I probably won't even notice.