My wife went back to school and graduated a few years back. In most of her classes, she absolutely was not allowed to use/cite Wikipedia as a source. In fact, she refused to look at Wikipedia at all because the instructors were telling her that most of the stuff on wikipedia was absolute bullshit. It took me awhile to sit her down and show her that many Wikipedia sources are indeed factual and cite a lot of actual sources. I wonder if a lot of Colleges have instructors like that.
Absolutely. Most kids would rather do something they perceive as "fun" rather than do homework. Maybe that fun thing to them is video games, maybe it is playing sports, maybe they want to watch a lot of TV. The result will be the same.
I should say almost the same. I have seen studies that indicate that kids involved in sports perform a little better in school than kids not involved in sports. The difference here is that time spent playing sports can be influenced by other factors....most notably the fact that you need other kids to play sports. Hopefully those kids have parents that reign them in. There is also the physical exhaustion factor. You can play video games for way more hours in a day simply because you aren't running around tiring yourself out. You can play video games by yourself or with people from all over the world. You don't need your local friends around.
Oh yeah, MY SOUND CARD doesn't work on Windows or Linux. I downloaded a bunch of random crap off the internet for both of them but nothing seems to work. Therefore, both Windows and Linux must be complete pieces of shit for not supporting my sound card.
It has nothing to do with the fact that I just cut a piece of circuit board out of a stereo and jammed it into the PCI slot. A REAL operating system would have detected it and FORCED it to play music.
Seriously. The number of "My sound card works in Windows and it wouldn't work in Linux" posts I have read followed up by "Oh yeah? My sound card works in Linux but not in Windows" posts I have read during my Slashdot browsing is absolutely staggering. Hardware and Device drivers can be a pain in the ass. I get it already.
There is a difference between doing a job poorly and not doing it at all. If a boss is saying "You will write SOME documentation or you are fired"...you are probably going to write some documentation.
That said, I just love doing a search for the "Windows has experienced a fatal error. The associated code is 45211", doing a search on that error, and finding a Microsoft web page that gives you helpful information like "This message means that Windows has experienced a fatal error." You think? Gee. Thanks guys.
That and there are two factors involved in finding answers on the web. The first, obviously, is using the right search terms. I am usually pretty skilled at getting the information that I need rather quickly on the internet, but when confronted with a new piece of software/operating system where I don't even know what the thing is called that I am having problems with, it is hard to start. I can't think of any concrete examples offhand because it has been awhile, but it is not unheard of.
Also, there are times when a search HAS been tried and extremely confusing or outright false information is provided. In the world where long command line strings or large text configuration files exist, missing a / or replacing it with a \ can render your search-results impotent. When you are just learning something and the top ten search results show answers that you are more confused by than your original question, more help may be needed.
I would THINK that logging into an IRC channel for help is more work than doing an actual search....so before automatically lambasting them for not UTFSE consider that there may be extraneous factors.
I think this may be a good time to mention determining WHY you are involved in the FOSS community. Do you think Linux/FOSS are an awesome set of tools that you just like to explore, use, and help write....or do you gain satisfaction from knowing that you wrote/helped write a tool that a lot of users find helpful? There isn't a correct answer to this question other than how you personally feel. If you don't give a damn about plebes and their idiot questions, don't drag yourself into a forum/channel just to give new users a lot of grief and make them feel afraid to ask questions.
As a scientist it is likely you work around other scientists. Scientists usually respond to reason.
The types of people who are really against vaccination do not respond to reason. You can show them a scientific paper in a major peer reviewed scientific/medical journal and they will say either "This isn't really a reliable source", "Scientists don't know everything", "Scientists are IN ON IT TOO", or "This video that my friend Matt, who is like so smart, gave me said that this isn't true so it is obviously not true" or "This is just a THEORY. See, it says hypothesis right here. Hypothesis means they are making crap up."
My Sister in law is a really awesome person. She is intelligent, awesome to converse with, and reasonable most of the time. However, she falls for all the "You'll die soon without organic foods", "Vaccines kill thousands", "Don't drink tap water, the government is trying to poison us", "we didn't REALLY land on the moon" or whatever the latest anti-establishment type thing is out there. She is a voice of reason in most discussions but when one of these topics comes up, all semblance of logic fails her. I know another guy with similar tendencies who won't speak to me for weeks if I bring any evidence against his theories.
This is what you are up against with your plan to use argument and reason. Although, I do agree with you that MANDATORY vaccines are a bad thing and could end up being a slippery slope (wildly fictional example: Look! We've found a vaccine to purge the homosexual gene! Put it on the mandatory vaccine list so we can purge this hideous disease from humanity!) At the end of the day I believe individuals SHOULD maintain the right to determine what goes into their bodies, even if they are making what appears to be a poor and misinformed decision.
To tell the truth, I think the constant barrage of scientific studies reported by the mainstream media is to blame. "Eggs are good for you, no wait...Eggs are bad for you, No wait...Eggs are good for you." The content in each of those studies may be COMPLETELY different, but the headlines show scientific studies contradicting each other quite often. This type of thing makes ALL science less credible in the eyes of many. "Bad" Scientists like the idiot who really started this whole vaccine/autism thing make things even worse....especially in regards to what "Peer Reviewed" means. Unfortunately I do not have a solution to this creeping distrust of science.
Maybe not rich, but some compensation in order to relieve the additional medical expenses (assuming they are there) of treating the autistic child would be in order. Every once in awhile, lawsuits on medications (example: I know a woman who got a settlement because she took "Fen-Phen" and ended up having open heart surgery as a side effect) pops up. IF vaccines did in fact cause autism, I don't see how they would be immune to such a thing.
Again, working under the assumption that there is a link between Vaccines and Autism, consider this. Eliminating a disease by requiring immunization in order to attend Public Schools is in the best interests of society as a whole. 99.99% of the population will benefit greatly by way of not being stricken with Polio or other hideous disease..01% of the population ends up possibly worse off than if there was no vaccine. Should we turn our backs to those unfortunate enough to be the losers in this exchange?
I repeat again though, this is IF there was a link between the two...which really doesn't appear to be the case.
George H.W. Bush "barely won" against Dukakis? That is a dubious statement at best. He tallied 8% more of the popular vote (over 7 Million votes), carried 40 states to Dukakis' 11 (with DC), and tallied 426 electoral votes to Dukakis' 111. Now, this wasn't a Reagan vs. Mondale class drubbing, but that is a pretty sound defeat. No president after him (5 elections) has reached his percentage of popular votes...although the Clinton elections are skewed by the Ross Perot numbers.
In the 4 elections I have been old enough for, I did note vote for a Republican President once. I am not trying to trump up George H.W. Bush. But seriously, lets not skew facts.
I wouldn't say that you would "End up without one" unless your game ended really quickly. Obviously you are trying to say you may not found one. When you think about it....did the Romans really "found" their religion or did they pretty much adopt their Religion from the Greeks, just as you would adopt Buddhism from the neighboring Isabella. Eventually, you can start a Crusade to take over Jerusalem...er....Madrid. The holy city of the Religion.
In a way, you can "Hijack" a Religion by building the Apostolic Palace. If you are the major practitioner of that religion, you are more likely to end up being the leader of that Religion. You don't get the benefit of the Shrine city, but you do gain some pretty nasty diplomatic benefits (Give me that city back or your people will be really pissed.)
And not to nitpick, but Civ IV actually had seven religions, not five. Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucionism, and Taoism.
I do however, like your idea of being able to start a Holy Crusade against a civ that followed a different Religion and gaining the benefit of less war wariness because of it. Something like that would make a lot of sense. Perhaps even let you burn that Religion out of cities and any city you conquer...or something like that.
I think in the end it did not have a major enough impact unless you were going for a cultural victory. Sure, shrine cities produced some nice income and it did have some effect on diplomacy...but just not enough. Some of the other suggestions you had seem cool but at that point it starts making the Religious aspect waaay too complicated for what may amount to minor gains in terms of actual effects on the game itself.
I guess it comes down to whatever feels the most "right" for an individual. For instance, I do not use the right shift key. Ever. Capital A? I shift my left hand over, hitting the left shift key with my pinkie and the A key with my ring finger. I've tried to correct that behavior but my hands just get really confused. Obviously this requires a lot more wrist movement (And therefore, is stupider) but I'm not really concerned about it.
I just did a typing test on typingtest.com. 105wpm, 99wpm corrected. Could I push that up 5 WPM or so by learning to use the right shift key? Maybe. Would that be worth it to me? No
That two-man family may be just like that man-woman family next door (mine, for example). I'm starting to get a little bit older and while at one time I was sure I wanted children, my wife and I are finding that it is quite possible that we will never have any. Maybe we will regret it, but in another 15-20 years when my wife hits menopause and becomes unable to bear children, what then is the difference between the gay couple and us? What if we tried to conceive and were unable to, ultimately discovering that I am shooting blanks? Our options at that point? probably about the same as the lesbians and technological insemination.
I guess we would have the option to adopt and would probably be more likely to be given a child because we aren't evil fags or lesbians who would no doubt raise their adopted child to become an evil fag or lesbian...but that is more of a societal deficiency than a genetic deficiency.
I have two friends who are both clearly heterosexual and they have been living with each other for about 14 years. Heck, when one of them got married, the other one came along and lived in the house with the wife and kid....kind of a bizarre arrangement and probably one reason the marriage didn't last long. These two clearly care for each other quite a bit.
The only difference between them and either a hetero or homosexual couple, the way I see it, is that they aren't fucking and (to the best of my knowledge) don't plan on the commencement of fucking in the near future. They have squabbles about the bills, they have squabbles about doing chores, they used to fight over the television (when they had only one television). They currently live in a house that they purchased together.
Now, they probably aren't too common of a case and I find the arrangement a little bizarre but to each his own. With how much life has changed socially (Homosexuality being out in the open, the ease of divorce and higher rates, friends living together in non-sexual relationships for long periods of time, more and more kids staying in college for 5+ years, etc.) I have to think that we really have to start looking at terms like "marriage" as it pertains to insurance and such and tweak our definitions.
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To be perfectly honest, I sometimes have to wonder how stupid "Joe Sixpack" really is (Or perhaps, just how terrible Internet Explorer really is!) Why? Because I have a confession to make that should probably force me to turn in my geek badge.
I run Windows and Linux about 50%/50% of the time (maybe 60/40 since Windows 7 came out). When on Windows, I don't use No Script, Adblock Plus, or Flashblocker. I browse the internet with reckless abandon, rarely examining links before I click on them. I hit up shady torrent sites (I really don't pirate very much stuff...usually just books I own or installs for software I/someone else owns a license for but no disc). I install random pieces of freeware/trialware without considering the validity of the source. From the standpoint of secure browsing, I am probably the worst Slashdotter who ever lived.
I do Virus and Malware scans once in awhile and very rarely do I come up with anything more than tracking cookies. Perhaps an occasional Trojan (I can't remember seeing one in the last two years that I was concerned about in the slightest when I looked it up before I cleaned it) but even those are rare.
The only thing I really do to protect myself is to run Firefox in Windows, and do online banking type stuff on my Linux machine. That is it. On the other hand, I CONSTANTLY see people who use their computers a tenth as often as I do with machines riddled with malware. Most of these people use IE, despite me always tossing Firefox on their desktop and telling them that if they use that they won't end up paying me $60 again in a month to clean their machines. Seriously? Is IE that bad or do I have to go to even shadier places than I already do?
dqatwood is spot on. I consider myself a "Libertarian" but I don't agree with all of their ideals. Nor do I agree with all Republican ideals. Nor do I agree with all Democratic Ideals. I have my own set of ideals that are based on the particular issue. I will not "toe the party line" on issues that I disagree with. I will not blindly vote Libertarian if I think there is a better candidate...which I will do frequently.
Libertarians are not the nut cases (although some certainly are). The nut cases are the people who vote a straight ticket each and every election no matter what. The nut cases are those who pound their chests about their party being totally awesome and the other party(ies) sucking. You are NOT doing yourself or this country a favor. You are doing a tremendous disservice. Educate yourself. Be an individual. If you thought Obama was the better candidate, you should have voted for him no matter what the others in your conservative church group said. If you thought Mccain was the better candidate, you should have voted for him no matter what the other hipster you hang with thought.
Was this always the case? Back about 8 years ago I did some tech work for a local branch of the Amvets. I had a full time job at the time but occasionally did some consulting at varying rates depending on the type of job....but usually at least $40 per hour. They told me they could only pay me about $15/hour.
The last guy that did their computer stuff really burned them badly and I wanted to help them out so I accepted. After I accepted the leader of the chapter told me that I could bill him my normal hourly rate and take the $15/hour in cash and the rest in a tax deduction. Note that I had already accepted so he wasn't trying to rope me into this. At the time, I had no reason to itemize my taxes so I didn't bother even looking into it, but this guy (as head of a Non-Profit) seemed pretty certain that this could be done.
I don't think I can agree with you there. Let's just say a large group of developers works at a large manufacturing firm and they write a whole bunch of code to help the organization run. The company turns out to be pretty cool and tells the development group that they can release the stuff they wrote as open source and even post updates as they make them. Unfortunately...nobody finds them useful as they have a very niche product with a very unique way of doing business. The company benefits greatly from their project, society benefits very little, if at all. Should they get a tax break?
Take another company that produces Open Source software (and does nothing but) and releases it free as in speech and beer. However, it is a very complex package and they sell very profitable service contracts. Sure! Society benefits from the open source projects but the company benefits as well.
Compare this to the model for some manufacturing companies...the one I work with is a good example. All of the cad drawings for our products are freely available, as are our installation manuals. Pretty much "Open Source". Someone could easily build our product from the information. We do not make much money from selling the product. We DO make money installing the product and servicing the units after the warranty period is up. Since the drawings are pretty much public, should the engineering have been tax free?
What if a company claims their developers have been working on things they would like to open source, but the projects keep failing. In the meantime, they are churning out successful closed source apps and spending a lot less time than they claim on these open source projects.
Mind you, I'm pro-open source and am generally anti-higher taxes...... Allowing open-source development to be tax free seems like an idea that could get out of hand as far as abuse of the system.
If society collapsed, the immediate rush would be to food, ammo, guns, medicine, alcohol, etc. After that, society would start to recover. The guy with the Food would want Ammo, the guy with the ammo would want guns, the guy with the guns would want medicine, and the guy with medicine would want food. Instead of figuring out some complex trade agreement between all of these parties, some currency would emerge. Gold being the most likely as random pieces of paper probably wouldn't be trusted in a post-disaster scenario.
Of course, some type of complete communism could emerge too, where people just give and take what they need, but I highly doubt that.
It is definitely staff dependent. Myself and about 9 other kids were pretty interested in learning how to program in high school. They had "Basic" and "Advanced Basic" classes. We went through those and started creating larger programs on our own. They announced that they would have a Pascal class the next year! How exciting.
I remember one of the first classes. The Teacher said "Who can tell me what a parameter is?" One kid raised his hand and gave a pretty decent definition. The teacher didn't reply. The kid unsure of himself now said "Am I right?" More blank stare from the teacher, who finally responded "I don't know what a parameter is. I was actually asking so I could find out."
Yeah, I don't know what the parent want thinking suggesting you need a crimper that costs a couple of hundred dollars. That is completely insane. Unless your job is to run different types of cabling very quickly all day long your typical $10 pair of crimpers will do fine. Heck, I'd be willing to argue that the skill/determination/obsession of the person putting the ends on is more of a factor. I've known people who have improvised with a pair of scissors and a standard pair of pliers and made cables more quickly and of higher quality than I could do with a fancy crimper.
I have a similar experience back in 1995. This was with the original Civ. It was my freshman year of college and my roommate just couldn't hack it. He wasn't really social, was from a warm weather climate (I was at UW-Madison) and failed out within the first month. At one point in time he started playing Civ at 9 PM. I went to sleep around midnight, woke up. He was still playing civ. Went to class, did my stuff. He is still playing Civ. Went to sleep at 1 AM, got up at about 7 AM....he was still playing CIV. I guess he crashed at about 9 AM.
All told, he played for 36 hours straight. He stood up twice. Once to use the bathroom, once because I wanted to move the computer desk (Luckily for him, his pizza was arriving just at that moment). That was the first time I realized how addicting computer games can be.
Vince, if you are out there reading......I recommend staying away from Civ V! And stay away from Mounds Bars (Inside joke).
I agree. I probably would have been tracked to end up in college early, and I can't even manage the level of insanity that would have ensued. I gained a great deal of emotional maturity (not to mention I feel my brain "kicked it up a notch" when I hit 18 as far as academics/problem solving/intelligence goes). Oddly enough, I think I could have gotten way more out of college if I had DELAYED it until I was 20 instead of going at age 18. Maybe I was just immature? Not really. I assure you that out of the top students, I was the most emotionally mature by a long shot.
Instead, I got to stay in high school where I had some very good teachers that were willing to put in the time to craft extra special classes for me and some of the other top students. I had three years of Biology, Three years of Chemistry, and two and a half years of Physics at my school. Most schools have one year. Good schools have the AP/IB second year classes. They went above it. In these "Third year" science classes, I was given a lot of freedom but some structure was still there for me.
To me, this entire plan is the High School System finally throwing in the towel and saying "We aren't catering to those who are on on the high end of academics." Someone like me comes around and instead of taking the time to help nurture my talents, they'll shove me out the door into a world I'm grossly unprepared for....mostly because it is just easier for the school that way.
I have to agree. Early Versions of Paint Shop Pro were great for people who know that they aren't Graphic Designers (And for people who think they are graphics Designers but really aren't.) I used to use it back when i was in college (late 90's). I'm pretty sure it was one of those pieces of software that would say "You are on day 74387 of your 90 day trial period. Please Register!" I would probably have registered but then I would not have been able to purchase beer.
The comments about the GP sacrificing his privacy for entertainment conveinience got me thinking a little bit....even making this sacrifices what is the best way to go about them? Is it better to give a few companies access to a whole lot of information or is it better to give a bunch of companies little pieces of your information?
For instance, you can have AT&T Uverse TV, AT&T Internet, AT&T Home Phone, AT&T Wireless Internet, and AT&T Cellular Service. From there you can use Google Search, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Mail, Google Buzz, Google Finance, Google Health, and Google Wave. (If you are concerned about your privacy, you probably aren't using things like Google health, but you get the idea). Combined, AT&T and Google will know just about everything about your life. Alternatively, you can use DirectTV, Time Warner cable internet, AT&T Home phone, Verizon Wireless internet, and US Cellular phone service. From there you can use Bing Search, Google Docs, Mapquest, Facebook, and Quickbooks. Each of these companies knows a little slice about your life.
By limiting the number of companies with information about yourself, you are taking away several possible breaches/misuse of your data. If one of those two ARE breached/misuse your information.....it is going to be really big. On the other hand, by diversifying you increase the risk that your data will be misused, but any single instance is going to be less severe than if they had ALL of your data.
A good "Real Life" parallel is how you interact with your friends. Do you have 1 or 2 people that are your closest confidants that know just about every dirty little secret of your life, or do you have the friend you tell sexual secrets about, the friend you discuss your finances with, the friend you confide your insecurities and weaknesses in, the friend that you talk to about your health problems, and the friend that you express your concerns about all of your other friends to?
It looks kind of interesting, but I was a bit confused. Is this the "Facebook OS" or is it "Windows 7"? A lot of what is showed in that video revolved around Facebook. As someone who does not use Facebook all that often, I would have liked to see some other examples of what is done with the UI.
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My wife went back to school and graduated a few years back. In most of her classes, she absolutely was not allowed to use/cite Wikipedia as a source. In fact, she refused to look at Wikipedia at all because the instructors were telling her that most of the stuff on wikipedia was absolute bullshit. It took me awhile to sit her down and show her that many Wikipedia sources are indeed factual and cite a lot of actual sources. I wonder if a lot of Colleges have instructors like that.
Absolutely. Most kids would rather do something they perceive as "fun" rather than do homework. Maybe that fun thing to them is video games, maybe it is playing sports, maybe they want to watch a lot of TV. The result will be the same.
I should say almost the same. I have seen studies that indicate that kids involved in sports perform a little better in school than kids not involved in sports. The difference here is that time spent playing sports can be influenced by other factors....most notably the fact that you need other kids to play sports. Hopefully those kids have parents that reign them in. There is also the physical exhaustion factor. You can play video games for way more hours in a day simply because you aren't running around tiring yourself out. You can play video games by yourself or with people from all over the world. You don't need your local friends around.
Oh yeah, MY SOUND CARD doesn't work on Windows or Linux. I downloaded a bunch of random crap off the internet for both of them but nothing seems to work. Therefore, both Windows and Linux must be complete pieces of shit for not supporting my sound card.
It has nothing to do with the fact that I just cut a piece of circuit board out of a stereo and jammed it into the PCI slot. A REAL operating system would have detected it and FORCED it to play music.
Seriously. The number of "My sound card works in Windows and it wouldn't work in Linux" posts I have read followed up by "Oh yeah? My sound card works in Linux but not in Windows" posts I have read during my Slashdot browsing is absolutely staggering. Hardware and Device drivers can be a pain in the ass. I get it already.
There is a difference between doing a job poorly and not doing it at all. If a boss is saying "You will write SOME documentation or you are fired"...you are probably going to write some documentation.
That said, I just love doing a search for the "Windows has experienced a fatal error. The associated code is 45211", doing a search on that error, and finding a Microsoft web page that gives you helpful information like "This message means that Windows has experienced a fatal error." You think? Gee. Thanks guys.
That and there are two factors involved in finding answers on the web. The first, obviously, is using the right search terms. I am usually pretty skilled at getting the information that I need rather quickly on the internet, but when confronted with a new piece of software/operating system where I don't even know what the thing is called that I am having problems with, it is hard to start. I can't think of any concrete examples offhand because it has been awhile, but it is not unheard of.
Also, there are times when a search HAS been tried and extremely confusing or outright false information is provided. In the world where long command line strings or large text configuration files exist, missing a / or replacing it with a \ can render your search-results impotent. When you are just learning something and the top ten search results show answers that you are more confused by than your original question, more help may be needed.
I would THINK that logging into an IRC channel for help is more work than doing an actual search....so before automatically lambasting them for not UTFSE consider that there may be extraneous factors.
I think this may be a good time to mention determining WHY you are involved in the FOSS community. Do you think Linux/FOSS are an awesome set of tools that you just like to explore, use, and help write....or do you gain satisfaction from knowing that you wrote/helped write a tool that a lot of users find helpful? There isn't a correct answer to this question other than how you personally feel. If you don't give a damn about plebes and their idiot questions, don't drag yourself into a forum/channel just to give new users a lot of grief and make them feel afraid to ask questions.
I hate to resort to text speak but all I can say is "LOL", because unlike most uses of LOL I actually laughed out loud after reading your post.
As a scientist it is likely you work around other scientists. Scientists usually respond to reason.
The types of people who are really against vaccination do not respond to reason. You can show them a scientific paper in a major peer reviewed scientific/medical journal and they will say either "This isn't really a reliable source", "Scientists don't know everything", "Scientists are IN ON IT TOO", or "This video that my friend Matt, who is like so smart, gave me said that this isn't true so it is obviously not true" or "This is just a THEORY. See, it says hypothesis right here. Hypothesis means they are making crap up."
My Sister in law is a really awesome person. She is intelligent, awesome to converse with, and reasonable most of the time. However, she falls for all the "You'll die soon without organic foods", "Vaccines kill thousands", "Don't drink tap water, the government is trying to poison us", "we didn't REALLY land on the moon" or whatever the latest anti-establishment type thing is out there. She is a voice of reason in most discussions but when one of these topics comes up, all semblance of logic fails her. I know another guy with similar tendencies who won't speak to me for weeks if I bring any evidence against his theories.
This is what you are up against with your plan to use argument and reason. Although, I do agree with you that MANDATORY vaccines are a bad thing and could end up being a slippery slope (wildly fictional example: Look! We've found a vaccine to purge the homosexual gene! Put it on the mandatory vaccine list so we can purge this hideous disease from humanity!) At the end of the day I believe individuals SHOULD maintain the right to determine what goes into their bodies, even if they are making what appears to be a poor and misinformed decision.
To tell the truth, I think the constant barrage of scientific studies reported by the mainstream media is to blame. "Eggs are good for you, no wait...Eggs are bad for you, No wait...Eggs are good for you." The content in each of those studies may be COMPLETELY different, but the headlines show scientific studies contradicting each other quite often. This type of thing makes ALL science less credible in the eyes of many. "Bad" Scientists like the idiot who really started this whole vaccine/autism thing make things even worse....especially in regards to what "Peer Reviewed" means. Unfortunately I do not have a solution to this creeping distrust of science.
Maybe not rich, but some compensation in order to relieve the additional medical expenses (assuming they are there) of treating the autistic child would be in order. Every once in awhile, lawsuits on medications (example: I know a woman who got a settlement because she took "Fen-Phen" and ended up having open heart surgery as a side effect) pops up. IF vaccines did in fact cause autism, I don't see how they would be immune to such a thing.
Again, working under the assumption that there is a link between Vaccines and Autism, consider this. Eliminating a disease by requiring immunization in order to attend Public Schools is in the best interests of society as a whole. 99.99% of the population will benefit greatly by way of not being stricken with Polio or other hideous disease. .01% of the population ends up possibly worse off than if there was no vaccine. Should we turn our backs to those unfortunate enough to be the losers in this exchange?
I repeat again though, this is IF there was a link between the two...which really doesn't appear to be the case.
George H.W. Bush "barely won" against Dukakis? That is a dubious statement at best. He tallied 8% more of the popular vote (over 7 Million votes), carried 40 states to Dukakis' 11 (with DC), and tallied 426 electoral votes to Dukakis' 111. Now, this wasn't a Reagan vs. Mondale class drubbing, but that is a pretty sound defeat. No president after him (5 elections) has reached his percentage of popular votes...although the Clinton elections are skewed by the Ross Perot numbers.
In the 4 elections I have been old enough for, I did note vote for a Republican President once. I am not trying to trump up George H.W. Bush. But seriously, lets not skew facts.
I wouldn't say that you would "End up without one" unless your game ended really quickly. Obviously you are trying to say you may not found one. When you think about it....did the Romans really "found" their religion or did they pretty much adopt their Religion from the Greeks, just as you would adopt Buddhism from the neighboring Isabella. Eventually, you can start a Crusade to take over Jerusalem...er....Madrid. The holy city of the Religion.
In a way, you can "Hijack" a Religion by building the Apostolic Palace. If you are the major practitioner of that religion, you are more likely to end up being the leader of that Religion. You don't get the benefit of the Shrine city, but you do gain some pretty nasty diplomatic benefits (Give me that city back or your people will be really pissed.)
And not to nitpick, but Civ IV actually had seven religions, not five. Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucionism, and Taoism.
I do however, like your idea of being able to start a Holy Crusade against a civ that followed a different Religion and gaining the benefit of less war wariness because of it. Something like that would make a lot of sense. Perhaps even let you burn that Religion out of cities and any city you conquer...or something like that.
I think in the end it did not have a major enough impact unless you were going for a cultural victory. Sure, shrine cities produced some nice income and it did have some effect on diplomacy...but just not enough. Some of the other suggestions you had seem cool but at that point it starts making the Religious aspect waaay too complicated for what may amount to minor gains in terms of actual effects on the game itself.
I guess it comes down to whatever feels the most "right" for an individual. For instance, I do not use the right shift key. Ever. Capital A? I shift my left hand over, hitting the left shift key with my pinkie and the A key with my ring finger. I've tried to correct that behavior but my hands just get really confused. Obviously this requires a lot more wrist movement (And therefore, is stupider) but I'm not really concerned about it.
I just did a typing test on typingtest.com. 105wpm, 99wpm corrected. Could I push that up 5 WPM or so by learning to use the right shift key? Maybe. Would that be worth it to me? No
That two-man family may be just like that man-woman family next door (mine, for example). I'm starting to get a little bit older and while at one time I was sure I wanted children, my wife and I are finding that it is quite possible that we will never have any. Maybe we will regret it, but in another 15-20 years when my wife hits menopause and becomes unable to bear children, what then is the difference between the gay couple and us? What if we tried to conceive and were unable to, ultimately discovering that I am shooting blanks? Our options at that point? probably about the same as the lesbians and technological insemination.
I guess we would have the option to adopt and would probably be more likely to be given a child because we aren't evil fags or lesbians who would no doubt raise their adopted child to become an evil fag or lesbian...but that is more of a societal deficiency than a genetic deficiency.
I have two friends who are both clearly heterosexual and they have been living with each other for about 14 years. Heck, when one of them got married, the other one came along and lived in the house with the wife and kid....kind of a bizarre arrangement and probably one reason the marriage didn't last long. These two clearly care for each other quite a bit.
The only difference between them and either a hetero or homosexual couple, the way I see it, is that they aren't fucking and (to the best of my knowledge) don't plan on the commencement of fucking in the near future. They have squabbles about the bills, they have squabbles about doing chores, they used to fight over the television (when they had only one television). They currently live in a house that they purchased together.
Now, they probably aren't too common of a case and I find the arrangement a little bizarre but to each his own. With how much life has changed socially (Homosexuality being out in the open, the ease of divorce and higher rates, friends living together in non-sexual relationships for long periods of time, more and more kids staying in college for 5+ years, etc.) I have to think that we really have to start looking at terms like "marriage" as it pertains to insurance and such and tweak our definitions.
To be perfectly honest, I sometimes have to wonder how stupid "Joe Sixpack" really is (Or perhaps, just how terrible Internet Explorer really is!) Why? Because I have a confession to make that should probably force me to turn in my geek badge.
I run Windows and Linux about 50%/50% of the time (maybe 60/40 since Windows 7 came out). When on Windows, I don't use No Script, Adblock Plus, or Flashblocker. I browse the internet with reckless abandon, rarely examining links before I click on them. I hit up shady torrent sites (I really don't pirate very much stuff...usually just books I own or installs for software I/someone else owns a license for but no disc). I install random pieces of freeware/trialware without considering the validity of the source. From the standpoint of secure browsing, I am probably the worst Slashdotter who ever lived.
I do Virus and Malware scans once in awhile and very rarely do I come up with anything more than tracking cookies. Perhaps an occasional Trojan (I can't remember seeing one in the last two years that I was concerned about in the slightest when I looked it up before I cleaned it) but even those are rare.
The only thing I really do to protect myself is to run Firefox in Windows, and do online banking type stuff on my Linux machine. That is it. On the other hand, I CONSTANTLY see people who use their computers a tenth as often as I do with machines riddled with malware. Most of these people use IE, despite me always tossing Firefox on their desktop and telling them that if they use that they won't end up paying me $60 again in a month to clean their machines. Seriously? Is IE that bad or do I have to go to even shadier places than I already do?
dqatwood is spot on. I consider myself a "Libertarian" but I don't agree with all of their ideals. Nor do I agree with all Republican ideals. Nor do I agree with all Democratic Ideals. I have my own set of ideals that are based on the particular issue. I will not "toe the party line" on issues that I disagree with. I will not blindly vote Libertarian if I think there is a better candidate...which I will do frequently.
Libertarians are not the nut cases (although some certainly are). The nut cases are the people who vote a straight ticket each and every election no matter what. The nut cases are those who pound their chests about their party being totally awesome and the other party(ies) sucking. You are NOT doing yourself or this country a favor. You are doing a tremendous disservice. Educate yourself. Be an individual. If you thought Obama was the better candidate, you should have voted for him no matter what the others in your conservative church group said. If you thought Mccain was the better candidate, you should have voted for him no matter what the other hipster you hang with thought.
Was this always the case? Back about 8 years ago I did some tech work for a local branch of the Amvets. I had a full time job at the time but occasionally did some consulting at varying rates depending on the type of job....but usually at least $40 per hour. They told me they could only pay me about $15/hour.
The last guy that did their computer stuff really burned them badly and I wanted to help them out so I accepted. After I accepted the leader of the chapter told me that I could bill him my normal hourly rate and take the $15/hour in cash and the rest in a tax deduction. Note that I had already accepted so he wasn't trying to rope me into this. At the time, I had no reason to itemize my taxes so I didn't bother even looking into it, but this guy (as head of a Non-Profit) seemed pretty certain that this could be done.
I don't think I can agree with you there. Let's just say a large group of developers works at a large manufacturing firm and they write a whole bunch of code to help the organization run. The company turns out to be pretty cool and tells the development group that they can release the stuff they wrote as open source and even post updates as they make them. Unfortunately...nobody finds them useful as they have a very niche product with a very unique way of doing business. The company benefits greatly from their project, society benefits very little, if at all. Should they get a tax break?
Take another company that produces Open Source software (and does nothing but) and releases it free as in speech and beer. However, it is a very complex package and they sell very profitable service contracts. Sure! Society benefits from the open source projects but the company benefits as well.
Compare this to the model for some manufacturing companies...the one I work with is a good example. All of the cad drawings for our products are freely available, as are our installation manuals. Pretty much "Open Source". Someone could easily build our product from the information. We do not make much money from selling the product. We DO make money installing the product and servicing the units after the warranty period is up. Since the drawings are pretty much public, should the engineering have been tax free?
What if a company claims their developers have been working on things they would like to open source, but the projects keep failing. In the meantime, they are churning out successful closed source apps and spending a lot less time than they claim on these open source projects.
Mind you, I'm pro-open source and am generally anti-higher taxes...... Allowing open-source development to be tax free seems like an idea that could get out of hand as far as abuse of the system.
If society collapsed, the immediate rush would be to food, ammo, guns, medicine, alcohol, etc. After that, society would start to recover. The guy with the Food would want Ammo, the guy with the ammo would want guns, the guy with the guns would want medicine, and the guy with medicine would want food. Instead of figuring out some complex trade agreement between all of these parties, some currency would emerge. Gold being the most likely as random pieces of paper probably wouldn't be trusted in a post-disaster scenario.
Of course, some type of complete communism could emerge too, where people just give and take what they need, but I highly doubt that.
It is definitely staff dependent. Myself and about 9 other kids were pretty interested in learning how to program in high school. They had "Basic" and "Advanced Basic" classes. We went through those and started creating larger programs on our own. They announced that they would have a Pascal class the next year! How exciting.
I remember one of the first classes. The Teacher said "Who can tell me what a parameter is?" One kid raised his hand and gave a pretty decent definition. The teacher didn't reply. The kid unsure of himself now said "Am I right?" More blank stare from the teacher, who finally responded "I don't know what a parameter is. I was actually asking so I could find out."
Yeah, I don't know what the parent want thinking suggesting you need a crimper that costs a couple of hundred dollars. That is completely insane. Unless your job is to run different types of cabling very quickly all day long your typical $10 pair of crimpers will do fine. Heck, I'd be willing to argue that the skill/determination/obsession of the person putting the ends on is more of a factor. I've known people who have improvised with a pair of scissors and a standard pair of pliers and made cables more quickly and of higher quality than I could do with a fancy crimper.
I have a similar experience back in 1995. This was with the original Civ. It was my freshman year of college and my roommate just couldn't hack it. He wasn't really social, was from a warm weather climate (I was at UW-Madison) and failed out within the first month. At one point in time he started playing Civ at 9 PM. I went to sleep around midnight, woke up. He was still playing civ. Went to class, did my stuff. He is still playing Civ. Went to sleep at 1 AM, got up at about 7 AM....he was still playing CIV. I guess he crashed at about 9 AM.
All told, he played for 36 hours straight. He stood up twice. Once to use the bathroom, once because I wanted to move the computer desk (Luckily for him, his pizza was arriving just at that moment). That was the first time I realized how addicting computer games can be.
Vince, if you are out there reading......I recommend staying away from Civ V! And stay away from Mounds Bars (Inside joke).
I agree. I probably would have been tracked to end up in college early, and I can't even manage the level of insanity that would have ensued. I gained a great deal of emotional maturity (not to mention I feel my brain "kicked it up a notch" when I hit 18 as far as academics/problem solving/intelligence goes). Oddly enough, I think I could have gotten way more out of college if I had DELAYED it until I was 20 instead of going at age 18. Maybe I was just immature? Not really. I assure you that out of the top students, I was the most emotionally mature by a long shot.
Instead, I got to stay in high school where I had some very good teachers that were willing to put in the time to craft extra special classes for me and some of the other top students. I had three years of Biology, Three years of Chemistry, and two and a half years of Physics at my school. Most schools have one year. Good schools have the AP/IB second year classes. They went above it. In these "Third year" science classes, I was given a lot of freedom but some structure was still there for me.
To me, this entire plan is the High School System finally throwing in the towel and saying "We aren't catering to those who are on on the high end of academics." Someone like me comes around and instead of taking the time to help nurture my talents, they'll shove me out the door into a world I'm grossly unprepared for....mostly because it is just easier for the school that way.
I have to agree. Early Versions of Paint Shop Pro were great for people who know that they aren't Graphic Designers (And for people who think they are graphics Designers but really aren't.) I used to use it back when i was in college (late 90's). I'm pretty sure it was one of those pieces of software that would say "You are on day 74387 of your 90 day trial period. Please Register!" I would probably have registered but then I would not have been able to purchase beer.
The comments about the GP sacrificing his privacy for entertainment conveinience got me thinking a little bit....even making this sacrifices what is the best way to go about them? Is it better to give a few companies access to a whole lot of information or is it better to give a bunch of companies little pieces of your information?
For instance, you can have AT&T Uverse TV, AT&T Internet, AT&T Home Phone, AT&T Wireless Internet, and AT&T Cellular Service. From there you can use Google Search, Google Docs, Google Maps, Google Mail, Google Buzz, Google Finance, Google Health, and Google Wave. (If you are concerned about your privacy, you probably aren't using things like Google health, but you get the idea). Combined, AT&T and Google will know just about everything about your life. Alternatively, you can use DirectTV, Time Warner cable internet, AT&T Home phone, Verizon Wireless internet, and US Cellular phone service. From there you can use Bing Search, Google Docs, Mapquest, Facebook, and Quickbooks. Each of these companies knows a little slice about your life.
By limiting the number of companies with information about yourself, you are taking away several possible breaches/misuse of your data. If one of those two ARE breached/misuse your information.....it is going to be really big. On the other hand, by diversifying you increase the risk that your data will be misused, but any single instance is going to be less severe than if they had ALL of your data.
A good "Real Life" parallel is how you interact with your friends. Do you have 1 or 2 people that are your closest confidants that know just about every dirty little secret of your life, or do you have the friend you tell sexual secrets about, the friend you discuss your finances with, the friend you confide your insecurities and weaknesses in, the friend that you talk to about your health problems, and the friend that you express your concerns about all of your other friends to?
It looks kind of interesting, but I was a bit confused. Is this the "Facebook OS" or is it "Windows 7"? A lot of what is showed in that video revolved around Facebook. As someone who does not use Facebook all that often, I would have liked to see some other examples of what is done with the UI.