that if two people both lead the same 'good' life, one is a theist and one an atheist - the atheist is the better person.
The christian knows and glorifies God through respectful obedience.
The atheist glorifies himself through his own righteousness.
The real question is: what is the purpose of our existence? Who are we trying to impress? The christian and the atheist will have very different answers to that question.
Seriously, who visits the Pepsi web page? The vast majority of web content is boring and pointless, of no interest to anyone, it just exists for the sake of existing.
However historians have been patiently examining all the cool
spells and they all correlate to drop offs in human activity.
Oh come on now. I think everyone would agree that spells like Finger of Death, Meteor Swarm, and Power Word: Kill are cool spells and certainly cause a "drop off" in human activity. And the spell that enchanted Sleeping Beauty's castle likewise. But these are really small potatoes, and not really comparable in coolness to truly epic, world-shattering spells. When you look at those you find some discrepancies with the commonly-accepted historical opinion.
The spell that sank the continent of Alphatia resulted in the Immortals relocating the continent to the Hollow World, so very few people actually died. If anything they became more active as they quickly moved to dominate their new environment. Admittedly the spell was pretty darn cool and certainly would have caused a drop-off in human activity, had not those meddling Immortals interfered.
And for that matter, the Spell of Preservation that sustains the entire Hollow World is sort of cool, and only moderately hinders human activity. Especially after the Alphatians and Heldannic Knights got there, I have to ask whether the Spell of Preservation is even working anymore?
The Banestorm was a fairly cool spell but didn't do much to humans. But really it was only cool because it backfired, so I guess it doesn't count.
Of course the Invoked Devastation that destroyed the Baklunish empire was a seriously cool spell, but I think everyone would admit that the Rain of Colorless Fire that created the Sea of Dust was way cooler. Also both spells resulted in a catastrophic drop in human activity, mostly by killing everyone and ushering in a dark age. The awesome coolness of these two spells is probably what is responsible for the prevailing opinion.
Also I've gotta admit the 9th level Fireball: Nuclear Winter spell from Hackmaster is pretty awesome.
IIRC, that was from the article "The Great Space-Age Razor Race" and had a number of crazy cool ideas. There was a flamethrower razor, a crygogenic razor that froze hairs and snapped'em off, a plucking device, etc.
I hope that existing applications will be rapidly updated to Portland, regardless of what they were originally written for. Finally everything will be a native KDE or Gnome app (whichever you prefer).
Of course this means the desktop projects will have to work harder to maintain their popularity. Up until now they've had captive applications that required their widgets, but if I can switch all my apps instantly from one to the other, and one is clearly better...
I agree with much of your post (the morality part), but:...ENDING THE KINDS OF POVERTY AND INEQUALITIES THAT CREATE TERRORISTS....
Yes, let's give Osama Bin Laden all our military technology and budget. Then at last we'll be able to sleep peacefully at night!
Give me a break. It's not poverty that creates terrorism. We've had poverty for thousands of years and will continue to have it. Most of the impoverished people of this world are not turning into terrorists and trying to kill us. (Even though it makes so much sense: My life sucks, so let's make it better by annoying the powerful nation that buys my oil and provides liberal aid to poor countries!)
There are reasons for terrorism, but it's not poverty -- it's murderous hatred. What does terrorism accomplish? Nothing, except to spread war and horror. These people don't want peace or solutions, that's only an excuse to distract the bleeding hearts. No, they want to inflict as much pain and terror and death as they can. They want to incite war. They want to kill or be killed: in their minds "there can only be one."
Peace is a great concept, but let's just face it: people are evil. As long as people live and breathe on this planet they will kill each other out of nothing more than spite and hatred. War sucks, and it's a huge waste of resources, but military strength and readiness is simply not optional. You know as well as I do that space will turn into a battleground sooner or later, and it's only a fool that sees the handwriting on the wall and does nothing about it.
I may not like the militarization of space, and I don't want my sons to live through war or be drafted, but I most definitely support building our military readiness and superiority. As I said, terrorism will not end until only one of us is left standing. Realizing that we should have destroyed them quickly and moved on. That we did not shows both lack of resolve and inadequate military readiness. I say build, and build quickly.
And as to "no first use" that didn't protect us on 9/11 did it? We did not escalate the tension in the world, we responded to it. It sucks but what else are we gonna do?
Mike
We saw this on the news last night and there was additional information.
The guy sat there in the parking lot for something like 8+ hours a day using the internet. He had blankets over his windows so nobody could see into the car. The people from the coffee shop thought it was creepy, and did go out and talk to him but it made no difference. The deputies found he was reading "sex services" classifieds on Craigslist and arrested him, confiscated his laptop and towed his car.
It does sound suspicious and creepy, but whether a crime was committed I don't know.
I can personally vouche there are thousands of people between the ages of 15-18 that have the potential to create things like this
Potential is as common as dirt, and of no value in itself. Putting it to use... THAT has value. That's what sets you apart. The kid who did this will be moving on to bigger and better things, while all those "could have beens" will still be warming their couches and dreaming their dreams.
Evolutionary theory implies the opposite, and is very relevant to the real world: Despite the appearance of skillful design in biological life, no skill was actually involved, only time.
A big dusty stack of unlabeled 5.25" floppies in the garage. Data on such crude media probably has a half-life of 900 years, which is good because it'll be at least that long before I get around to ever looking at them again.
Lately I've upgraded my technology. Now I have several hard drives with hundreds of GB, whenever I have code I create a new directory for it and then forget where I put it. Occasionally when I accidentally find a stash of old code or something, I copy it to a new directory and forget where that is too. In this way I accumulate dozens of copies of everything on my system, across multiple drives. If one ever fails it won't matter 'cause I haven't a clue what is on it.
Sometimes I back up a random directory on a CD, which I forget to label before tossing onto a stack of hundreds of identical looking CDs. It takes hours of searching, popping CDs in and out of the drive before I finally give up and re-invent the wheel for the sixth time.
Where I work 1600x1200 seems to be the de facto standard, and a fair number of people have a larger virtual screen using multiple displays. However we also all have laptops at 1024x768 or 1400x1024.
But we only employ 16,000 people at my site so take that with a grain of salt.
You're the only one jumping to conclusions.
The whole point of the story is that the name was previously unknown, certainly uncommon, which cast doubt on the story.
Nobody said anything about it being THE Goliath.
He probably thought of it as a way to increase efficiency and ultimately reduce our workload.
I suspect he had no such grandiose visions. A man who is skilled in and passionate about his work will change his world without meaning to, though rarely will the ripples be so large.
Probably he was seriously geeking out over the coolness of it, wondering how to sell it to his new pointy-haired boss and avoid getting assigned to a crap job, yet mindful that this STILL wouldn't impress any chicks...
Java is seen as uncool precisely because it protects you from your own mistakes...
You're absolutely right about the ego trip, but the idea that C doesn't protect you from you own mistakes is an excuse, not a reason, and a false one at that.
C does protect you from your own mistakes and does make programming approachable to the masses--that is why tens of thousands of programmers use C instead of assembly language. (And even assembler provides a layer of ease and safety over raw machine language.)
Slashdot Mirror
That seems valid to me. I was not thinking of the conscience aspect.
that if two people both lead the same 'good' life, one is a theist and one an atheist - the atheist is the better person.
The christian knows and glorifies God through respectful obedience.
The atheist glorifies himself through his own righteousness.
The real question is: what is the purpose of our existence? Who are we trying to impress? The christian and the atheist will have very different answers to that question.
Everyone knows that energy is blue if you're a jedi, red if you're a sith lord, and green if you're a muppet.
And the other 99% is largely ignored.
Seriously, who visits the Pepsi web page? The vast majority of web content is boring and pointless, of no interest to anyone, it just exists for the sake of existing.
However historians have been patiently examining all the cool spells and they all correlate to drop offs in human activity.
Oh come on now. I think everyone would agree that spells like Finger of Death, Meteor Swarm, and Power Word: Kill are cool spells and certainly cause a "drop off" in human activity. And the spell that enchanted Sleeping Beauty's castle likewise. But these are really small potatoes, and not really comparable in coolness to truly epic, world-shattering spells. When you look at those you find some discrepancies with the commonly-accepted historical opinion.
The spell that sank the continent of Alphatia resulted in the Immortals relocating the continent to the Hollow World, so very few people actually died. If anything they became more active as they quickly moved to dominate their new environment. Admittedly the spell was pretty darn cool and certainly would have caused a drop-off in human activity, had not those meddling Immortals interfered.
And for that matter, the Spell of Preservation that sustains the entire Hollow World is sort of cool, and only moderately hinders human activity. Especially after the Alphatians and Heldannic Knights got there, I have to ask whether the Spell of Preservation is even working anymore?
The Banestorm was a fairly cool spell but didn't do much to humans. But really it was only cool because it backfired, so I guess it doesn't count.
Of course the Invoked Devastation that destroyed the Baklunish empire was a seriously cool spell, but I think everyone would admit that the Rain of Colorless Fire that created the Sea of Dust was way cooler. Also both spells resulted in a catastrophic drop in human activity, mostly by killing everyone and ushering in a dark age. The awesome coolness of these two spells is probably what is responsible for the prevailing opinion.
Also I've gotta admit the 9th level Fireball: Nuclear Winter spell from Hackmaster is pretty awesome.
two dollars!
IIRC, that was from the article "The Great Space-Age Razor Race" and had a number of crazy cool ideas. There was a flamethrower razor, a crygogenic razor that froze hairs and snapped'em off, a plucking device, etc.
I've always shaved in the shower, except I don't use a mirror... just close my eyes and do it by touch, preferably with water running over my face.
Funny, I did read it and completely missed the point. :-(
I hope that existing applications will be rapidly updated to Portland, regardless of what they were originally written for. Finally everything will be a native KDE or Gnome app (whichever you prefer).
Of course this means the desktop projects will have to work harder to maintain their popularity. Up until now they've had captive applications that required their widgets, but if I can switch all my apps instantly from one to the other, and one is clearly better...
I agree with much of your post (the morality part), but: ...ENDING THE KINDS OF POVERTY AND INEQUALITIES THAT CREATE TERRORISTS....
Yes, let's give Osama Bin Laden all our military technology and budget. Then at last we'll be able to sleep peacefully at night!
Give me a break. It's not poverty that creates terrorism. We've had poverty for thousands of years and will continue to have it. Most of the impoverished people of this world are not turning into terrorists and trying to kill us. (Even though it makes so much sense: My life sucks, so let's make it better by annoying the powerful nation that buys my oil and provides liberal aid to poor countries!)
There are reasons for terrorism, but it's not poverty -- it's murderous hatred. What does terrorism accomplish? Nothing, except to spread war and horror. These people don't want peace or solutions, that's only an excuse to distract the bleeding hearts. No, they want to inflict as much pain and terror and death as they can. They want to incite war. They want to kill or be killed: in their minds "there can only be one."
Peace is a great concept, but let's just face it: people are evil. As long as people live and breathe on this planet they will kill each other out of nothing more than spite and hatred. War sucks, and it's a huge waste of resources, but military strength and readiness is simply not optional. You know as well as I do that space will turn into a battleground sooner or later, and it's only a fool that sees the handwriting on the wall and does nothing about it.
I may not like the militarization of space, and I don't want my sons to live through war or be drafted, but I most definitely support building our military readiness and superiority. As I said, terrorism will not end until only one of us is left standing. Realizing that we should have destroyed them quickly and moved on. That we did not shows both lack of resolve and inadequate military readiness. I say build, and build quickly.
And as to "no first use" that didn't protect us on 9/11 did it? We did not escalate the tension in the world, we responded to it. It sucks but what else are we gonna do?
Mike
We saw this on the news last night and there was additional information.
The guy sat there in the parking lot for something like 8+ hours a day using the internet. He had blankets over his windows so nobody could see into the car. The people from the coffee shop thought it was creepy, and did go out and talk to him but it made no difference. The deputies found he was reading "sex services" classifieds on Craigslist and arrested him, confiscated his laptop and towed his car.
It does sound suspicious and creepy, but whether a crime was committed I don't know.
I can personally vouche there are thousands of people between the ages of 15-18 that have the potential to create things like this Potential is as common as dirt, and of no value in itself. Putting it to use... THAT has value. That's what sets you apart. The kid who did this will be moving on to bigger and better things, while all those "could have beens" will still be warming their couches and dreaming their dreams.
Evolutionary theory implies the opposite, and is very relevant to the real world: Despite the appearance of skillful design in biological life, no skill was actually involved, only time.
A big dusty stack of unlabeled 5.25" floppies in the garage. Data on such crude media probably has a half-life of 900 years, which is good because it'll be at least that long before I get around to ever looking at them again.
Lately I've upgraded my technology. Now I have several hard drives with hundreds of GB, whenever I have code I create a new directory for it and then forget where I put it. Occasionally when I accidentally find a stash of old code or something, I copy it to a new directory and forget where that is too. In this way I accumulate dozens of copies of everything on my system, across multiple drives. If one ever fails it won't matter 'cause I haven't a clue what is on it.
Sometimes I back up a random directory on a CD, which I forget to label before tossing onto a stack of hundreds of identical looking CDs. It takes hours of searching, popping CDs in and out of the drive before I finally give up and re-invent the wheel for the sixth time.
(WORN = Write Once, Read Never)
Where I work 1600x1200 seems to be the de facto standard, and a fair number of people have a larger virtual screen using multiple displays. However we also all have laptops at 1024x768 or 1400x1024. But we only employ 16,000 people at my site so take that with a grain of salt.
You're the only one jumping to conclusions. The whole point of the story is that the name was previously unknown, certainly uncommon, which cast doubt on the story. Nobody said anything about it being THE Goliath.
I thought you were talking about Ludwig von Hendriks, the Black Eagle. If you don't know what I'm talking about, come down to Karameikos sometime. :-)
int vote(int a, int b, int c) { return (a & b) | (a & c) | (b & c); }
Not just Intel, everyone is putting DRM into their chips. Not supporting Trusted Computing is corporate suicide.
He probably thought of it as a way to increase efficiency and ultimately reduce our workload. I suspect he had no such grandiose visions. A man who is skilled in and passionate about his work will change his world without meaning to, though rarely will the ripples be so large. Probably he was seriously geeking out over the coolness of it, wondering how to sell it to his new pointy-haired boss and avoid getting assigned to a crap job, yet mindful that this STILL wouldn't impress any chicks...
Java is seen as uncool precisely because it protects you from your own mistakes... You're absolutely right about the ego trip, but the idea that C doesn't protect you from you own mistakes is an excuse, not a reason, and a false one at that. C does protect you from your own mistakes and does make programming approachable to the masses--that is why tens of thousands of programmers use C instead of assembly language. (And even assembler provides a layer of ease and safety over raw machine language.)