This is surprisingly true. About 6 years ago, when I was still in high school, my brother, father and I built a computer and saved a collosal amount of money for a gaming rig that lasted about four or five years. A few months ago, my computer was starting to go, so I looked into putting together a new machine, and much to my dismay, it was cheaper to buy the same parts all assembled from Alienware than to build it myself. I wish I had a time machine so I could see the look on Past Me's face when I tell him that someday buying it from the high end boutique-ey maker would be cheaper than building it. I'd also like to tell Past Me to ease up on the Hawaiian shirts, but that's another story...
If we really want to trot out a "Founding Fathers" thing, why bicker over the ideology vs. political expediency of slavery? Just cite the fact that they didn't allow women to vote.
Gay Zombie Turing would be fantastically impressed by the rights homosexuals have today, but he would sadly be the victim of much descrimination as a zombie, since prejudice against them is still wide-spread and well-rooted.
Just because it was developed in Japan for the disabled and for soldiers in America doesn't mean that you won't see it on Japanese soldiers or American disabled someday.
"Security Questions" can be, for lack of a better word, prefectly secure if you use them right. The simple solution is to give a non-sequiter answer to the question. Anyone trying to get through with publicly available information will be stopped dead in their tracks. The added benefit is you also don't forget the answer because it's so bizarre. Anyone who's serious about cracking your account won't let that stop them, but it's more secure than letting anyone who knows what high school you went to/ what car you drive/ who your first kiss was have access to your account.
Also consider that it's much easier to get your hands on a replica gun than a real gun. You can just order it on the internet rather than buying a traceable gun legally or taking the risk of buying one illegally.
Also, the following quote from Snatch. seems appropriate to the situation...
"The fact that you've got "Replica" written down the side of your guns and the fact that I've got "Desert Eagle point five O" written down the side of mine should precipitate your balls into shrinking, along with your presence. Now... Fuck off! "
The problem isn't with instant content, it's in the implementation. I'm 22, and I went through school just about the time computers became ubiquitis in them. The people that were teaching me had been raised on books, they had no problem with attention span. But they gave us kids (who just naturally have a shorter attention span which needs to be shaped and molded into something better) a tool that enabled us to change focus even faster. The problem isn't books vs. computers, it's teaching people to focus on whatever medium they're paying attention to and to think critically about it.
I've noticed that those that have grown up with guns in their households tend to have more respect for the power they posses and the safety precausions necessary for responsible use than those who don't. If you grow up in a house without guns, your only exposure to them is through the media, which rarely portrays their power accurately and rarely shows responsible use.
If the kid has been properly taught by his dad how to handle firearms respectfully and safely, there's no reason to expect that in 1 or 2 years, or even his lifetime, that he'll do damage to anyone's property or person. And if the dad is not 100% confident that his son will be responsible with it, it shouldn't be too hard for him to design some form of safety that only he could unlock like a barrel plug or other device.
Good idea in theory, but the idea of generally distracted driving is unclear, some things will get prosecuted as such but others won't for reasons as stupid as an over-zealous prosecuter who wants to look good in the papers. What is a real distraction? Is talking on your cell phone a distraction? Cell phones while driving are illegal in New Jersey but not Massachussetts. So are they distracting or not? If it is, then is talking to someone else in the car a distraction? Is changing the radio station? Turning on the air conditioning? Adjusting your seat? What if you drive standard and have to look down for a split second to remember which gear you're in so you don't shift and stall out in traffic?
"mob justice/vigilantism is a very democratic means of establishing order"
Let's say your neighbor Bob cheats on his wife. Everyone finds out and most people, including you, agree that it's between Bob and his wife and that's that. Your other neighbor, Tim, declares Bob an adulterer not fit to live in the community, and gets his shotgun to exact some frontier justice.
Still sound very democratic?
The reason mob and vigilante justice is discouraged and punished is because everyone has a different idea of what's right and wrong and an appropriate punishment for those transgressions. Remember that we're only about 60 or 70 years removed from a time when lynchings were common in the American South for something as trivial as a black man looking at a white woman wrong. While the law and the people who enforce it are rarely perfect, it does establish clear boundries as to what you can and can't be punished for no matter what people think of you.
Agreed, but I think this will turn out harder to prove than expected. Assuming the force of the crash doesn't completely disable the texter and they know they stand to get fifteen years for it, their first thought will be "Delete the text, holster the phone, blame the other guy." Drunk driving is easy to spot, because they don't sober up instantly after the crash and they show obvious signs for hours. Texting, on the other hand, is going to require a witness or a confession.
An interesting idea, but with the ubiquity of computers in the home, by the time most kids get to grade school they've already learned how to use computers. The first required computer class I had in HS was in 9th grade, and I spent it smugly surfing the Internet while the teacher explained programs I'd been fluent in ten years earlier. Years later when I was required to take a computer literacy class in college, the professor told me point blank that because I knew what Linux was, I was way beyond anything that class could teach me and I didn't need to be there.
Also remember that the curriculum will have to be built and updated for each major advance in technology, and most public schools (in the US, at least) don't update themselves all that quickly. When I was in 8th grade in 2000, the maps in my history text book still had the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
It would serve the purpose of creating a government office that would employ people, hire contractors, etc and it would also work to keep improve Internet safety.
That's bullshit, of course, but it's another way they can spin it.
Have each recipient use the laptop like normal, but replace any sensetive information with bogus information, then wait. If the laptops are bugged, one of two things will happen. If whoever bugged them tries to benefit overtly from using the bogus information, it'll identify them. If whoever bugged them tries to benefit covertly, they'll be using bogus information that's no good to them anyway. Either way (assuming it's actually malicious and not just an ordering snafu or prank) whoever's behind this won't get anything out of it, and they might even get caught.
If you've got a six year old son and you've been playing violent games since Doom, it's fair to assume that you already had a well-developed concept of right vs wrong and appropriate behavior when you started playing. Six-year-olds don't have that, their world is so small that anything you add to it will affect their idea of "normal." Any movie or game you expose them to that has identifiably human characters will affect what they think normal human behavior should be. If they see aggressive video game characters, they'll emulate that. I started playing violent games long before age six (my second-earliest memory of childhood is beating the demo of Wolfenstein 3d), but my parents always made sure to re-inforce a clear distinction between entertainment and reality. I don't mean to call you an incompetent parent, (infact I strongly support taking the violent games away and standing by that through tantrums, it sounds like it worked out in the end) I've seen the "it didn't affect me, why should it affect my kid?" idea blind-side a lot of people. I know nothing about your parenting style, but you might consider using the violent games as a reward for good behavior, ie "Show me you can behave well and then you can play this game. Misbehave, and I'll take it away."
Whether you watch a fake trailer on YouTube or an official one, it's all footage from the same movie. If you're extrapolating to judge a two hour movie from a two minute trailer, what difference does it make who cut it? You're getting such a small fraction of the film that it's impossible to render a decision. Basically, you're refusing a steak dinner because you didn't like the salad. I can't agree with it, but if it works for you, keep it up. There will be more seats in the theatre for me.
I can see a trailer for any fucking movie ever and instantly know whether or not it's shit.
Avatar is shit.
I haven't been wrong yet.
Bull.
If you haven't seen it, you can't know. YouTube is full of recut movie trailers that prove in the hands of the right editor, a movie can be made to look like anything.
Home Alone recut to look like a horror movie. The Shining recut to look like a warm family comedy. Rain Man recut to look like a thriller. Silence of the Lambs recut to look like a love story. Etc, etc...
If you've decided whether a movie is shit by merely watching the trailer, you've closed yourself off to great cinema and I pity you.
"We judge movies by their trailers. Directors and producers want us to. It's the trailer that gets people to buy the ticket."
It's the trailer that gets people to buy the ticket, but it's humanly impossible to judge a movie by its trailer. Trailers are made to be as generic as possible to appeal to the broadest possible audience and sell the most tickets. All trailers are made up of the same basic elements to make as many people want to see the movie as possible. There's the vet in a wheel-chair to appeal to the fans of the overcoming-adversity genre. There is the sci-fi aspects of the film to hook the sci-fi fans. There were the adrenaline-spewing fight sequenses to draw in the action movie fans. And finally there were the hints of romance so that fanboys who drag their reluctant girlfriends along can point and say "But look, there's also a love story in it!"
Also, I think it's fair to say that most directors would rather you judge their movies based on the entirety of the movie that they put so much time and effort into, not the two-and-a-half minute commercial that got cut together out of their work by the marketing department.
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This is surprisingly true. About 6 years ago, when I was still in high school, my brother, father and I built a computer and saved a collosal amount of money for a gaming rig that lasted about four or five years. A few months ago, my computer was starting to go, so I looked into putting together a new machine, and much to my dismay, it was cheaper to buy the same parts all assembled from Alienware than to build it myself. I wish I had a time machine so I could see the look on Past Me's face when I tell him that someday buying it from the high end boutique-ey maker would be cheaper than building it. I'd also like to tell Past Me to ease up on the Hawaiian shirts, but that's another story...
Well, they intended it to be big, but the designers got the signs for feet and inches mixed up.
If we really want to trot out a "Founding Fathers" thing, why bicker over the ideology vs. political expediency of slavery? Just cite the fact that they didn't allow women to vote.
"Paramedics/Doctors: Do not write me off as dead. Try to resuscitate"
The correct phrasing is, "I'm not dead yet!"
Microsoft is the new Tupperware?
Tupperware: Hard to open and full of food that was new a long time ago.
Windows: Slow to open and full of stuff that was new a long time ago (on Macs).
So pretty much true, exept without the freshness.
It's funny that you consider rats to be a lower life form. They think the same of you. =^_^=
No, that's the white mice.
Gay Zombie Turing would be fantastically impressed by the rights homosexuals have today, but he would sadly be the victim of much descrimination as a zombie, since prejudice against them is still wide-spread and well-rooted.
Just because it was developed in Japan for the disabled and for soldiers in America doesn't mean that you won't see it on Japanese soldiers or American disabled someday.
"Security Questions" can be, for lack of a better word, prefectly secure if you use them right. The simple solution is to give a non-sequiter answer to the question. Anyone trying to get through with publicly available information will be stopped dead in their tracks. The added benefit is you also don't forget the answer because it's so bizarre. Anyone who's serious about cracking your account won't let that stop them, but it's more secure than letting anyone who knows what high school you went to/ what car you drive/ who your first kiss was have access to your account.
Also consider that it's much easier to get your hands on a replica gun than a real gun. You can just order it on the internet rather than buying a traceable gun legally or taking the risk of buying one illegally.
Also, the following quote from Snatch. seems appropriate to the situation...
"The fact that you've got "Replica" written down the side of your guns and the fact that I've got "Desert Eagle point five O" written down the side of mine should precipitate your balls into shrinking, along with your presence. Now... Fuck off! "
The problem isn't with instant content, it's in the implementation. I'm 22, and I went through school just about the time computers became ubiquitis in them. The people that were teaching me had been raised on books, they had no problem with attention span. But they gave us kids (who just naturally have a shorter attention span which needs to be shaped and molded into something better) a tool that enabled us to change focus even faster. The problem isn't books vs. computers, it's teaching people to focus on whatever medium they're paying attention to and to think critically about it.
I've noticed that those that have grown up with guns in their households tend to have more respect for the power they posses and the safety precausions necessary for responsible use than those who don't. If you grow up in a house without guns, your only exposure to them is through the media, which rarely portrays their power accurately and rarely shows responsible use.
If the kid has been properly taught by his dad how to handle firearms respectfully and safely, there's no reason to expect that in 1 or 2 years, or even his lifetime, that he'll do damage to anyone's property or person. And if the dad is not 100% confident that his son will be responsible with it, it shouldn't be too hard for him to design some form of safety that only he could unlock like a barrel plug or other device.
"But still, imagine a cluster of these things."
You don't have to imagine it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_battery
"[News Corp] are the evilness that Microsoft only aspires to."
And Microsoft's is the market share that News Corp only aspires to.
Good idea in theory, but the idea of generally distracted driving is unclear, some things will get prosecuted as such but others won't for reasons as stupid as an over-zealous prosecuter who wants to look good in the papers. What is a real distraction? Is talking on your cell phone a distraction? Cell phones while driving are illegal in New Jersey but not Massachussetts. So are they distracting or not? If it is, then is talking to someone else in the car a distraction? Is changing the radio station? Turning on the air conditioning? Adjusting your seat? What if you drive standard and have to look down for a split second to remember which gear you're in so you don't shift and stall out in traffic?
"mob justice/vigilantism is a very democratic means of establishing order"
Let's say your neighbor Bob cheats on his wife. Everyone finds out and most people, including you, agree that it's between Bob and his wife and that's that. Your other neighbor, Tim, declares Bob an adulterer not fit to live in the community, and gets his shotgun to exact some frontier justice.
Still sound very democratic?
The reason mob and vigilante justice is discouraged and punished is because everyone has a different idea of what's right and wrong and an appropriate punishment for those transgressions. Remember that we're only about 60 or 70 years removed from a time when lynchings were common in the American South for something as trivial as a black man looking at a white woman wrong. While the law and the people who enforce it are rarely perfect, it does establish clear boundries as to what you can and can't be punished for no matter what people think of you.
Agreed, but I think this will turn out harder to prove than expected. Assuming the force of the crash doesn't completely disable the texter and they know they stand to get fifteen years for it, their first thought will be "Delete the text, holster the phone, blame the other guy." Drunk driving is easy to spot, because they don't sober up instantly after the crash and they show obvious signs for hours. Texting, on the other hand, is going to require a witness or a confession.
An interesting idea, but with the ubiquity of computers in the home, by the time most kids get to grade school they've already learned how to use computers. The first required computer class I had in HS was in 9th grade, and I spent it smugly surfing the Internet while the teacher explained programs I'd been fluent in ten years earlier. Years later when I was required to take a computer literacy class in college, the professor told me point blank that because I knew what Linux was, I was way beyond anything that class could teach me and I didn't need to be there.
Also remember that the curriculum will have to be built and updated for each major advance in technology, and most public schools (in the US, at least) don't update themselves all that quickly. When I was in 8th grade in 2000, the maps in my history text book still had the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
"It would serve no useful purpose"
It would serve the purpose of creating a government office that would employ people, hire contractors, etc and it would also work to keep improve Internet safety.
That's bullshit, of course, but it's another way they can spin it.
Have each recipient use the laptop like normal, but replace any sensetive information with bogus information, then wait. If the laptops are bugged, one of two things will happen. If whoever bugged them tries to benefit overtly from using the bogus information, it'll identify them. If whoever bugged them tries to benefit covertly, they'll be using bogus information that's no good to them anyway. Either way (assuming it's actually malicious and not just an ordering snafu or prank) whoever's behind this won't get anything out of it, and they might even get caught.
A devious plot and a haiku!
If you've got a six year old son and you've been playing violent games since Doom, it's fair to assume that you already had a well-developed concept of right vs wrong and appropriate behavior when you started playing. Six-year-olds don't have that, their world is so small that anything you add to it will affect their idea of "normal." Any movie or game you expose them to that has identifiably human characters will affect what they think normal human behavior should be. If they see aggressive video game characters, they'll emulate that. I started playing violent games long before age six (my second-earliest memory of childhood is beating the demo of Wolfenstein 3d), but my parents always made sure to re-inforce a clear distinction between entertainment and reality. I don't mean to call you an incompetent parent, (infact I strongly support taking the violent games away and standing by that through tantrums, it sounds like it worked out in the end) I've seen the "it didn't affect me, why should it affect my kid?" idea blind-side a lot of people. I know nothing about your parenting style, but you might consider using the violent games as a reward for good behavior, ie "Show me you can behave well and then you can play this game. Misbehave, and I'll take it away."
Whether you watch a fake trailer on YouTube or an official one, it's all footage from the same movie. If you're extrapolating to judge a two hour movie from a two minute trailer, what difference does it make who cut it? You're getting such a small fraction of the film that it's impossible to render a decision. Basically, you're refusing a steak dinner because you didn't like the salad. I can't agree with it, but if it works for you, keep it up. There will be more seats in the theatre for me.
I can see a trailer for any fucking movie ever and instantly know whether or not it's shit.
Avatar is shit.
I haven't been wrong yet.
Bull.
If you haven't seen it, you can't know. YouTube is full of recut movie trailers that prove in the hands of the right editor, a movie can be made to look like anything.
Home Alone recut to look like a horror movie.
The Shining recut to look like a warm family comedy.
Rain Man recut to look like a thriller.
Silence of the Lambs recut to look like a love story.
Etc, etc...
If you've decided whether a movie is shit by merely watching the trailer, you've closed yourself off to great cinema and I pity you.
"We judge movies by their trailers. Directors and producers want us to. It's the trailer that gets people to buy the ticket."
It's the trailer that gets people to buy the ticket, but it's humanly impossible to judge a movie by its trailer. Trailers are made to be as generic as possible to appeal to the broadest possible audience and sell the most tickets. All trailers are made up of the same basic elements to make as many people want to see the movie as possible. There's the vet in a wheel-chair to appeal to the fans of the overcoming-adversity genre. There is the sci-fi aspects of the film to hook the sci-fi fans. There were the adrenaline-spewing fight sequenses to draw in the action movie fans. And finally there were the hints of romance so that fanboys who drag their reluctant girlfriends along can point and say "But look, there's also a love story in it!"
Also, I think it's fair to say that most directors would rather you judge their movies based on the entirety of the movie that they put so much time and effort into, not the two-and-a-half minute commercial that got cut together out of their work by the marketing department.