"We know as much as we're going to"? That, my friend is a logical fallacy. With any sort of scientific investigation, there is no convienient last page to tell you that you've reached the end. Now, granted, we certainly are looking at diminishing returns; I doubt that there are revolutionary breakthroughs in our understanding of ancient Eqypt waiting behind that door. The _important_ discoveries have _probably_ already been made. But we don't know for sure.
Now I will grant that there is a fine line between grave robbery and exploration. But ask yourself: do you object to grave robbery because it's vandalism and theft, do you object becasue it's disrespectful of the dead, or do you object on religious grounds? If it's the first reason, then really any expediton mounted for scientific gain doesn't merit objection. If you think it's disrespectful, bear in mind that these tombs are _ancient_. You have to draw the line somewhere, and these dead are long forgotton. If it's a religious objection then thats another matter, but not everyone will agree with you on this one.
Anyway which is worse: letting ancient Egypt be forgotton, or studying what remains of it? I'm sure that we wouldn't mind our graveyards being studied by future generations in three thousand years time, in fact we'd probably want to be remembered.
>Also I do not agree with your view of geeks being against popular things. We just don't like things just because they are popular or limit ourselves just because it is unpopular. >A true geek does not really care what others think. This should work both ways. Not care that others disapprove or approve. That is a geek.
I agree. See my other reply in this thread, so I don't re-post it all here.
However you're talking the ideal versus the reality. Many geeks _do_ buy into angsty counterculture. Many geeks are conforming nonconformists. Most of us aren't, but the problem cannot be dismissed. Yes, real individualism is a state of mind, no question.
My point was that there is this undercurrent of intellectual snobbery in geek culture. You see it in our slang. How often have you seen the word "sheeple" or something similar on/.? You see it in our universal hatred of prefabricated popular media. We don't just dislike and ignore boy bands/Britney et all, we HATE them with an almost religious fervor. Why? Because it makes us feel superior.
If I say that I am an individualist, and that I find pop muzak tolerable, am I contradicting myself? No. Real indivualism _must_ include the idea of "live and let live". Mere nonconformity is all to often simple intellectual snobbery masquerading as "culture". That is what I was reffering too in my post.
Of course it is equally possible we could both be wrong; anecdotal evidence is a bad way to judge. As for regional difference, I'm in Canada and the older tech guys I know frequently have families to support and are consequently willing to settle for a steady paycheck. The younger tech guys are more employment-flexible (they'll settle for McJobs) and believe the tech job market will improve. Also, here as in most places the doctrine of "last hired, first fired" still holds (though not as much for high tech and not as much as it used to). So seniority does equal some security, and older people are less likely to change jobs (thus lower turnover).
...is that the low turnover rate indicates seniority positions that survived the crash. More recent tech graduates are likely flipping burgers (or worse), whereas most of the older technical guys I know are still gainfully employed. All the young 'uns got burned in the startup business, whereas the geezers are mostly in much more stable tech environments, thus the turnover is low (since in this business "old" is still well before retirement age). Of course, this is just MHO, I could be missing something obvious.
Imagine... a/. story where beowulf clusters are on topic! Imagine a cluser of cluster computing stories! Imagine... wait, what do you mean "recursive loo[NO CARRIER]
No, seriously, new technology is frequently propelled forward by its capacity for smut. Show of hands: How many/.ers got broadband or upgraded their modems in order to meet more women named.jpeg or her lovely sisters.mpeg? As far as that goes it's an often overlooked fact that porno movies go back to the beginning of film. The "hype circle" is just another way of saying "lookit that, no nipple pixels!":-)
(And yes I realized how it's ironic to ask for a show of hands WRT porn. At least I didn't ask you to show both hands.)
Well, for the record I've never been to Japan and had only second hand information. However I think you misconstued my point; I wasn't saying that mainstream = bad, I was saying that that is the typical perception among geeks. While I concede that this is somewhat true, my point, for clarification, was that the parent post viewed the mainstreaming of Anime as being a good thing. Were Anime to beome more popular, geeks would undoubtably move away from it to a degree and people like the parent poster would lament "the good old days" where Anime was a niche genre. Basically I meant "be careful what you wish for".
As for Star Wars, I never said it wasn't popular, read my post, I said geeks are more fixated on it than the moviegoing public (and, note: we lament the demise of Star Wars now that the "mainstream" comercialized previews/sprecial editions are out). Of course this is just MHO, I could be wrong.
Oh, and I'm not sure that the popular = bad phenominon has to do with corporate media in the 'States. I've seen the perception that obscure niche = good pretty much everywhere among the geek/artistic/academic/intellectual crowd. Partly I think this is grounded in the reality of popularity (for something to be popular it must appeal to a lower common denomiator), but mostly I think that this attitude is symptomatic of a certain degree of intellectual snobbery. We too often try to make ourselves look better than the rest (the "sheep" as some real snobs call the public) by immersing ourselves in obscure media. This is a classic example of conformity through non-conformity; real indivduality is a state of mind, not a facade of forced non-conformity. Anime is pretty good, but some of it's geek cred is the kind of indier than thou attitude that we sometimes stoop to.
And it's Sturgeons Law BTW: 90% of everything is crud (crud is often changed to crap).
Not to troll, but do you honestly spend a couple hundred US$ more just to get OSX and "less than 2" thick/doesn't look like a pile of shit"? If you want to pimp macs for style and appearance, go for it, even as a PC user I can't argue. If you want to focus on ease of use, I'm with you too. But price? My locally made custom clone PC that I bought new over a year ago has more horsepower than the specs you've listed, and I payed less than 900 CDN$ (about ~600 US$ at the current excange). Moreover, I've had the same monitor for the last three computers; modular design is your friend. I actually like macs, but price keeps me away (that and games, or rather lack thereof). If your needs differ thats fine, but you cheapness argument doesn't hold water.
On the other hand, geeks are remarkably fickle about anything percieved as mainstream. I'm not saying that we automatically dismiss anything that is popular, but there is a strong preference for the exotic and unusual. Even when something is both normal and loved by geeks, we tend to take it to the next level (ala Star Wars/Star Trek and the flamewars fought over which is better).
For Amine, I really can't see the genre maintaining it's geek cred as it becomes widely accepted and influential (note: I'm reffering to the west here, not Japan where Anime is obviously percieved quite differently). Ask youself: if this was Pokemon specifically, would it be featured on/.? I don't know if we can overcome this attitude that popular = bad, and unfortunately I'm not sure that this perception isn't justified in many cases; obscurity _is_ frequently good for artistic integrity. You might regret it if the genre becomes mainstream.
The problem is that the thieves who are _not_ opportunists are the dangerous ones. Generally an opportunistic thief is neither thourough nor armed. That being said a determined bugular would have to be fairly stupid to rob a fscking DORM room (although you never know).
Dilbert: What are you doing with my spreadsheet program?
Dogbert: I've decided to take over the world, but I can't decide whether to amass an army or found a religion. I'm calculating which would involve the least loss of life.
Dilbert: (looks at the monitor) Why are you counting law students as only three tenths of a person?
Dogbert: It doesn't drop to zero until they pass the bar.
It's not a problem. Most slashdotters have a "personality firewall" that shields them from infection. This revolutionary technology can prevent malware bearing toolbars from intalling on the user's front end port by "creeping" the infected host.
For those wishing to adopt the personality firewall, it's public domain freeware that can be aquired either intentionally from other geeks, or indavertantly by reading too much/. Bugs may include inability to network effectively with other users' wetware.
Note to lightsaber bearing mods: Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Off topic: I think what the parent poster meant was that evolution was arrived at through scientific method and observation (via Darwin/Wallace). Even if some people mindlessly accept evolution as "gospel" in spite of not understanding it, the science behind it is still falsifiable (and therefor valid). Creationism requires a prior bias of religion; if I'm not christian then I cannot accept that the bible is a god-given factual account of the world's creation. Thus creationism is not science per se, and nor should it be treated as such.
On topic: since the question of consiousness has not yet been fully, or even partly, answered by science, there is little point in debating what implications teleportation would have for consiousness. Moreover this kind of quantum teleportation wouldn't work that way (that gets you into problems with quantum physics and conservation of matter and energy).
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, according to Babelfish you just said:
:-)
-old man wire pute
-Vas to screw your mother, large naze
-Vielle face of rat, t'es qu'un large puant asshole full with shit.
Was something lost in translation, or is your French a little rusty?
(Oh, right you don't call it Babelfish anymore, now it's "Freedomfish")
Actually it's a quote, although I don't know where it's from. Besides kinky and perverted doesn't sound as funny.
The parent post has been broght to you by the Grammer Nazi Association of America (GNAA).
Are you Pedantic?
Are you an Asshole?
Are you a Pendatic Asshole?
Then you should join the GNAA (Grammer Nazi Association of America)!
Manually harvesting bull semen... in a wheelchair... with no working arms... at 5$ a bucket... commision... hmmm, in Soviet Russia maybe?
Or get crushed by giant rolling balls in the proccess of trying.
(Hey, at least they aren't gaint bouncing balls)!
"We know as much as we're going to"? That, my friend is a logical fallacy. With any sort of scientific investigation, there is no convienient last page to tell you that you've reached the end. Now, granted, we certainly are looking at diminishing returns; I doubt that there are revolutionary breakthroughs in our understanding of ancient Eqypt waiting behind that door. The _important_ discoveries have _probably_ already been made. But we don't know for sure.
Now I will grant that there is a fine line between grave robbery and exploration. But ask yourself: do you object to grave robbery because it's vandalism and theft, do you object becasue it's disrespectful of the dead, or do you object on religious grounds? If it's the first reason, then really any expediton mounted for scientific gain doesn't merit objection. If you think it's disrespectful, bear in mind that these tombs are _ancient_. You have to draw the line somewhere, and these dead are long forgotton. If it's a religious objection then thats another matter, but not everyone will agree with you on this one.
Anyway which is worse: letting ancient Egypt be forgotton, or studying what remains of it? I'm sure that we wouldn't mind our graveyards being studied by future generations in three thousand years time, in fact we'd probably want to be remembered.
>Also I do not agree with your view of geeks being against popular things. We just don't like things just because they are popular or limit ourselves just because it is unpopular.
/.? You see it in our universal hatred of prefabricated popular media. We don't just dislike and ignore boy bands/Britney et all, we HATE them with an almost religious fervor. Why? Because it makes us feel superior.
>A true geek does not really care what others think. This should work both ways. Not care that others disapprove or approve. That is a geek.
I agree. See my other reply in this thread, so I don't re-post it all here.
However you're talking the ideal versus the reality. Many geeks _do_ buy into angsty counterculture. Many geeks are conforming nonconformists. Most of us aren't, but the problem cannot be dismissed. Yes, real individualism is a state of mind, no question.
My point was that there is this undercurrent of intellectual snobbery in geek culture. You see it in our slang. How often have you seen the word "sheeple" or something similar on
If I say that I am an individualist, and that I find pop muzak tolerable, am I contradicting myself? No. Real indivualism _must_ include the idea of "live and let live". Mere nonconformity is all to often simple intellectual snobbery masquerading as "culture". That is what I was reffering too in my post.
Of course it is equally possible we could both be wrong; anecdotal evidence is a bad way to judge. As for regional difference, I'm in Canada and the older tech guys I know frequently have families to support and are consequently willing to settle for a steady paycheck. The younger tech guys are more employment-flexible (they'll settle for McJobs) and believe the tech job market will improve. Also, here as in most places the doctrine of "last hired, first fired" still holds (though not as much for high tech and not as much as it used to). So seniority does equal some security, and older people are less likely to change jobs (thus lower turnover).
...is that the low turnover rate indicates seniority positions that survived the crash. More recent tech graduates are likely flipping burgers (or worse), whereas most of the older technical guys I know are still gainfully employed. All the young 'uns got burned in the startup business, whereas the geezers are mostly in much more stable tech environments, thus the turnover is low (since in this business "old" is still well before retirement age). Of course, this is just MHO, I could be missing something obvious.
No "four of parts" makes perfect sense in binary. Wait, you aren't still thinking in wetware language are you? ;-)
Imagine... a /. story where beowulf clusters are on topic! Imagine a cluser of cluster computing stories! Imagine... wait, what do you mean "recursive loo[NO CARRIER]
But will it run on my Phantom? :-P
Porn
/.ers got broadband or upgraded their modems in order to meet more women named .jpeg or her lovely sisters .mpeg? As far as that goes it's an often overlooked fact that porno movies go back to the beginning of film. The "hype circle" is just another way of saying "lookit that, no nipple pixels!" :-)
No, seriously, new technology is frequently propelled forward by its capacity for smut. Show of hands: How many
(And yes I realized how it's ironic to ask for a show of hands WRT porn. At least I didn't ask you to show both hands.)
Well, for the record I've never been to Japan and had only second hand information. However I think you misconstued my point; I wasn't saying that mainstream = bad, I was saying that that is the typical perception among geeks. While I concede that this is somewhat true, my point, for clarification, was that the parent post viewed the mainstreaming of Anime as being a good thing. Were Anime to beome more popular, geeks would undoubtably move away from it to a degree and people like the parent poster would lament "the good old days" where Anime was a niche genre. Basically I meant "be careful what you wish for".
As for Star Wars, I never said it wasn't popular, read my post, I said geeks are more fixated on it than the moviegoing public (and, note: we lament the demise of Star Wars now that the "mainstream" comercialized previews/sprecial editions are out). Of course this is just MHO, I could be wrong.
Oh, and I'm not sure that the popular = bad phenominon has to do with corporate media in the 'States. I've seen the perception that obscure niche = good pretty much everywhere among the geek/artistic/academic/intellectual crowd. Partly I think this is grounded in the reality of popularity (for something to be popular it must appeal to a lower common denomiator), but mostly I think that this attitude is symptomatic of a certain degree of intellectual snobbery. We too often try to make ourselves look better than the rest (the "sheep" as some real snobs call the public) by immersing ourselves in obscure media. This is a classic example of conformity through non-conformity; real indivduality is a state of mind, not a facade of forced non-conformity. Anime is pretty good, but some of it's geek cred is the kind of indier than thou attitude that we sometimes stoop to.
And it's Sturgeons Law BTW: 90% of everything is crud (crud is often changed to crap).
Not to troll, but do you honestly spend a couple hundred US$ more just to get OSX and "less than 2" thick/doesn't look like a pile of shit"? If you want to pimp macs for style and appearance, go for it, even as a PC user I can't argue. If you want to focus on ease of use, I'm with you too. But price?
My locally made custom clone PC that I bought new over a year ago has more horsepower than the specs you've listed, and I payed less than 900 CDN$ (about ~600 US$ at the current excange). Moreover, I've had the same monitor for the last three computers; modular design is your friend.
I actually like macs, but price keeps me away (that and games, or rather lack thereof). If your needs differ thats fine, but you cheapness argument doesn't hold water.
On the other hand, geeks are remarkably fickle about anything percieved as mainstream. I'm not saying that we automatically dismiss anything that is popular, but there is a strong preference for the exotic and unusual. Even when something is both normal and loved by geeks, we tend to take it to the next level (ala Star Wars/Star Trek and the flamewars fought over which is better).
/.? I don't know if we can overcome this attitude that popular = bad, and unfortunately I'm not sure that this perception isn't justified in many cases; obscurity _is_ frequently good for artistic integrity. You might regret it if the genre becomes mainstream.
For Amine, I really can't see the genre maintaining it's geek cred as it becomes widely accepted and influential (note: I'm reffering to the west here, not Japan where Anime is obviously percieved quite differently). Ask youself: if this was Pokemon specifically, would it be featured on
As opposed to, say, the midgets of anime? Now _that_ I would go to!
The problem is that the thieves who are _not_ opportunists are the dangerous ones. Generally an opportunistic thief is neither thourough nor armed. That being said a determined bugular would have to be fairly stupid to rob a fscking DORM room (although you never know).
Dilbert: What are you doing with my spreadsheet program?
Dogbert: I've decided to take over the world, but I can't decide whether to amass an army or found a religion. I'm calculating which would involve the least loss of life.
Dilbert: (looks at the monitor) Why are you counting law students as only three tenths of a person?
Dogbert: It doesn't drop to zero until they pass the bar.
It's not a problem. Most slashdotters have a "personality firewall" that shields them from infection. This revolutionary technology can prevent malware bearing toolbars from intalling on the user's front end port by "creeping" the infected host.
/. Bugs may include inability to network effectively with other users' wetware.
For those wishing to adopt the personality firewall, it's public domain freeware that can be aquired either intentionally from other geeks, or indavertantly by reading too much
Note to lightsaber bearing mods: Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Ah but, don't you see? You changed the content of those e-mails by reading them!
Off topic: I think what the parent poster meant was that evolution was arrived at through scientific method and observation (via Darwin/Wallace). Even if some people mindlessly accept evolution as "gospel" in spite of not understanding it, the science behind it is still falsifiable (and therefor valid). Creationism requires a prior bias of religion; if I'm not christian then I cannot accept that the bible is a god-given factual account of the world's creation. Thus creationism is not science per se, and nor should it be treated as such.
On topic: since the question of consiousness has not yet been fully, or even partly, answered by science, there is little point in debating what implications teleportation would have for consiousness. Moreover this kind of quantum teleportation wouldn't work that way (that gets you into problems with quantum physics and conservation of matter and energy).
And don't ask yourself for your own opinion; you'll change your state of mind by observing it!