Re:Internal conflict is what I worry about...
on
In the Year 2020
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· Score: 1
Care to give an example of YOUR freedoms that are being continually eroded?
That's a pretty stupid thing to say. If I had lived in 1860 I probably couldn't give much example of limitations of my freedoms, but then, my skin isn't black.
Now, if you want to argue that no one's freedoms are being eroded, I invite you to go read the PATRIOT act.
Once word gets out that Macs aren't plagued with crapware, *everyone* will get one. When that happens, the Mac will suddenly become a lucrative platform for this sort of garbage.
I played a bit too much BF 1942. One day I was at a farm picking apples with the wife and kid. We had stopped to eat lunch, and we were headed for a picnic table. There were people milling all over, and as I made a beeline for the table, I momentarily pictured BF1942's overhead map where you see all the symbols indicating your teammates as you all swarm on a tank. Very disconcerting.
The difference in density isn't the point. The point is that there is a lot of ice in the Arctic which is not in the water and therefore doesn't displace water.
Actually, this is not correct: About 25% of the ice in the Arctic is above the surface and consists of freshwater ice from rain and snow. This ice is less dense than the seawater ice, and freezes at a higher temperature. Since Archimides theory deals with the volume displacement necessary to cause an object to float, that surface ice is not accounted for in your argument. As the surface ice melts, it will add to the oceans' volume. So melting the Arctic cap will have an effect, just not as great an effect as melting the Antarctic cap.
The icecube theory, which has been harped on a great deal by Rush Limbaugh, is wrong because icecubes are not comprised of two different layers of material, and tend to float just at the surface, rather than poking significantly above it.
Think of it like this: take a glass of water and put a rubber duck in it. The duck floats, yes? Now push the duck down so that it's top is even with the top of the water. What happens to the water? Same thing that will happen to our oceans when that freshwater melts.
OK, I can see giving him more time. He was trying to do something that could have had a very dangerous outcome if he succeeded.
Maybe. Then again, maybe he was just fooling around. In which case he should treated like a guy that ties a shopping cart to the back of his car and takes people for a ride.
Responding to this thread is like pissing in the ocean, but, here goes:
Circa 1980, the Radio Shack in Clare, MI put a new TRS-80 on display. During trips to the shopping center (Clare was too small to have a mall), the young Fletch asks his grandmother to drop him at said Radio Shack. There he spends his time copying BASIC programs from the display manual into the machine.
Sometimes I wish I could find the people that ran that Radio Shack and thank them for their patience with that ten-year-old kid that would sit there for hours making the machine print "fart" thousands of times.
ut that's not what the introduction is supposed to be for on Slashdot. It's supposed to tittilate and engage the reader, leap out and shout "this is for you!" whether it really is or not. It's marketing.
I know. I was being sarcastic.
For all those who think that the best games that came out this year were all sequels...
Strike this -- you can't know who this list is meant for.
Game Tunnel presents a different angle...
"Different angle" is a matter of opinion.
on things with their 2004 Independent Game of the Year awards. For those who believe that the best game this year was that badly named expansion pack that they have the nerve to call Halo 2...
Opinions have no place here.
check out the awards for a different side of gaming than you are used to.
How can the writer know what side of gaming I am used to?
Finally, my edited introduction:
Game Tunnel presents their 2004 Independent Game of the Year awards.
Wouldn't Slashdot be so much better like that? Then we wouldn't have to skim the comments of some boob nitpicking the editors for trying to produce non-cardboard prose.
Yes! For God's sake, people, can't we get some new stories, say, about a guy who built trampolines out of condoms or maybe some nut who ported Quake III onto a PDP-11? Some real news, damnit!
The 13 hours refers to how often the weights need to be reset. It has nothing to do with the accuracy of the clock. I used to own a bunch of cookoo clocks, and to keep them running you had to pull the weight back up each day or so.
This remark inadvertently reveals part of what is ridiculous about this whole issue. Addiction is a medical term with a specific meaning applying to chemicals that produce a change in the brain causing the user to require more of those chemicals. We're talking alcohol, nicotine, heroin. Not shopping, not porn, not TV.
Any activity can become habitual, but fools like these have simply hijacked the term addiction in order to drag all of the worst aspects of that clinical condition into an argument about a habit. If I were to start describing Republicans as a cancer, most people would understand that to be a metaphor; here we see a bunch of tumors in suits trying hard to reify their metaphors.
To which, I say, we should attack these idiots with giant macrophages.
Interfaces have everything to do with it, and if you think Firefox and IE have the same interface, then you are the dummy. For the vast majority of the public, the interface is the computer -- not the hard drive, not the RAM, not the installer that they have to download and run in order to use Firefox. Until someone invents a computer that allows people to simply ask it, in English, whether there is any way they could be more secure, you can't expect non-computer people to break the metaphor and start tinkering with the internals.
You talk as though browsers and cars are analagous, but to most people the computer is analagous to the car. There is no "browser," and you can't expect people to change something that only exists as the technical underpinning behind what they deal with. To most people. the Internet is that little blue E on their screen.
If you take your car to the mechanic and he tells you you need new axle boots, you say fine, do it. You don't have to know what axle boots are -- that's his job. Similarly, if you take your computer to a technician and he tells you you need a new browser, you say fine, do it. However, changing an axle boot doesn't mean you now have to start the car with a button, or that the windshield wiper controls have been moved to the floor in front of the driver's seat.
Changing the browser does entail these sorts of changes, and moreover, people certainly don't drive their computers into a technician's shop. People aren't stupid -- the machines are. People simply want a machine that works without having to swap out pieces they don't understand for abstract reasons at apparently arbitrary intervals.
You think you're so vastly superior to everyone else, maybe you should be out there fixing the machines instead of complaining about how stupid people are.
Bottom line: refusing to learn to do simple things that can greatly simplify or improve your life is stupid.
Wasting all your time learning a never-ending stream of technologies is pretty goddamn stupid too.
Look, unless you are an IT professional, it shouldn't be necessary to keep learning software interfaces. There's nothing life-simplifying about having to constantly change the way you check your email simply because a bunch of companies can't make simple, consistent interfaces.
Let's say you are a lawyer. You're pretty busy keeping up with the law. You've learned a procedure for using the Internet. Maybe it isn't perfect, but it works. Now are you stupid not to put in the effort to learn how to use Firefox because some guy tells you IE is not secure? Most people haven't had the experience of knowing what insecure software even means, so why should they take their valuable time to respond to such an abstract threat?
Until Microsoft starts putting Firefox on the desktop, this isn't going to change. People seek the path of least resistance not because they are stupid, but because they have priorities.
The US population is divided 51/49, yet one party controls all three branches of government, and pretending like they have a huge mandate. All we have representing the minority is a vastly smaller minority of Senators and Congressmen, who, by virtue of a group of immoral parliamentarians, have almost no power.
it me or does anyone else find it hard to believe that all of the so called voting irregularities suddenly started in 2000?
Sorry, you are disqualified for asking a historically uninformed question.
Of course it didn't start in 2000. 2000 just brought it to light because it was so close. The history of American politics is, first of all, rife with political machines, the Democratic version of which probably brought Kennedy victory in 1960. And then there were the back-room deals like the one that gave us Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878. And of course there is a long history of denying non-whites the vote through various mechanisms (which continue today). No, it ain't the first time, but it's not too often that people notice, because elections usually aren't that close.
I hereby state my belief that this one won't be nearly as close as everyone thinks it will be.
My local affiliates do hourlong nightly news and spend about ten minutes on sports, and this is Boston -- four major sports franchises. The major broadcasters' evening news doesn't cover sports at all. So what, exactly, are you talking about?
Furthermore, there are far more news channels than there are sports channels, so there. Fact is, there is plenty of pretty much everything. Complaining that there's too much sports coverage is like saying there are too many jellyfish in the ocean.
Besides which, if you know so much about what matters, why don't you go get a job as a news director? What you are ticked about is they don't take enough time to discuss stuff that matters to you. Television news is a stop-off point for people that don't care much about news. People tune in for a quick rundown of the day's events -- not a forty minute discussion of the impact of nanotechnology on the Middle East peace process. You don't like that? Fine. Turn on the Lehrer News Hour, or better yet, pick up a newspaper.
Why is the guy that tells me about war, genocide, castastrphes and murders spending as much time, if not more, making small talk with the weather guy and discussing how many balls one group of men threw yesterday and if that was more than one other bunch of ball-obsessed men?
Smalltalk I agree. But your apparent assertion that sports is not news is erroneous. Sports is part of our culture, whether you like it or not. Go look at some old newspapers -- nothing has changed when it comes to ball-obsessed guys. Every news organization in the world takes a moment to cover sports. Witness the BBC's extensive coverage of soccer and cricket. As an American, I could care less about these subjects, but I'm not going to deny the BBC's right to cover them.
As for entertainment, I would say the same thing -- it is a part of a culture, and what happens in entertainment is news. The problem is when news becomes a shill for a station's entertainment -- when that particular entertainment is automatically news even when nothing has really happened.
Slashdot Mirror
Care to give an example of YOUR freedoms that are being continually eroded?
That's a pretty stupid thing to say. If I had lived in 1860 I probably couldn't give much example of limitations of my freedoms, but then, my skin isn't black.
Now, if you want to argue that no one's freedoms are being eroded, I invite you to go read the PATRIOT act.
My comment was made half in jest. I firmly believe that OS X's UNIX underpinnings are inherently more secure than Windows.
Once word gets out that Macs aren't plagued with crapware, *everyone* will get one. When that happens, the Mac will suddenly become a lucrative platform for this sort of garbage.
I played a bit too much BF 1942. One day I was at a farm picking apples with the wife and kid. We had stopped to eat lunch, and we were headed for a picnic table. There were people milling all over, and as I made a beeline for the table, I momentarily pictured BF1942's overhead map where you see all the symbols indicating your teammates as you all swarm on a tank. Very disconcerting.
The difference in density isn't the point. The point is that there is a lot of ice in the Arctic which is not in the water and therefore doesn't displace water.
Actually, this is not correct: About 25% of the ice in the Arctic is above the surface and consists of freshwater ice from rain and snow. This ice is less dense than the seawater ice, and freezes at a higher temperature. Since Archimides theory deals with the volume displacement necessary to cause an object to float, that surface ice is not accounted for in your argument. As the surface ice melts, it will add to the oceans' volume. So melting the Arctic cap will have an effect, just not as great an effect as melting the Antarctic cap.
The icecube theory, which has been harped on a great deal by Rush Limbaugh, is wrong because icecubes are not comprised of two different layers of material, and tend to float just at the surface, rather than poking significantly above it.
Think of it like this: take a glass of water and put a rubber duck in it. The duck floats, yes? Now push the duck down so that it's top is even with the top of the water. What happens to the water? Same thing that will happen to our oceans when that freshwater melts.
OK, I can see giving him more time. He was trying to do something that could have had a very dangerous outcome if he succeeded.
Maybe. Then again, maybe he was just fooling around. In which case he should treated like a guy that ties a shopping cart to the back of his car and takes people for a ride.
Intent is a factor.
Responding to this thread is like pissing in the ocean, but, here goes: Circa 1980, the Radio Shack in Clare, MI put a new TRS-80 on display. During trips to the shopping center (Clare was too small to have a mall), the young Fletch asks his grandmother to drop him at said Radio Shack. There he spends his time copying BASIC programs from the display manual into the machine. Sometimes I wish I could find the people that ran that Radio Shack and thank them for their patience with that ten-year-old kid that would sit there for hours making the machine print "fart" thousands of times.
I was being sarcastic.
Yes, actually. I was kidding.
ut that's not what the introduction is supposed to be for on Slashdot. It's supposed to tittilate and engage the reader, leap out and shout "this is for you!" whether it really is or not. It's marketing. I know. I was being sarcastic.
For all those who think that the best games that came out this year were all sequels...
Strike this -- you can't know who this list is meant for.Game Tunnel presents a different angle...
"Different angle" is a matter of opinion.on things with their 2004 Independent Game of the Year awards. For those who believe that the best game this year was that badly named expansion pack that they have the nerve to call Halo 2...
Opinions have no place here.check out the awards for a different side of gaming than you are used to.
How can the writer know what side of gaming I am used to?Finally, my edited introduction:
Game Tunnel presents their 2004 Independent Game of the Year awards.
Wouldn't Slashdot be so much better like that? Then we wouldn't have to skim the comments of some boob nitpicking the editors for trying to produce non-cardboard prose.Yes! For God's sake, people, can't we get some new stories, say, about a guy who built trampolines out of condoms or maybe some nut who ported Quake III onto a PDP-11? Some real news, damnit!
The 13 hours refers to how often the weights need to be reset. It has nothing to do with the accuracy of the clock. I used to own a bunch of cookoo clocks, and to keep them running you had to pull the weight back up each day or so.
Some people are addicted to books.
This remark inadvertently reveals part of what is ridiculous about this whole issue. Addiction is a medical term with a specific meaning applying to chemicals that produce a change in the brain causing the user to require more of those chemicals. We're talking alcohol, nicotine, heroin. Not shopping, not porn, not TV.
Any activity can become habitual, but fools like these have simply hijacked the term addiction in order to drag all of the worst aspects of that clinical condition into an argument about a habit. If I were to start describing Republicans as a cancer, most people would understand that to be a metaphor; here we see a bunch of tumors in suits trying hard to reify their metaphors.
To which, I say, we should attack these idiots with giant macrophages.
Interfaces have everything to do with it, and if you think Firefox and IE have the same interface, then you are the dummy. For the vast majority of the public, the interface is the computer -- not the hard drive, not the RAM, not the installer that they have to download and run in order to use Firefox. Until someone invents a computer that allows people to simply ask it, in English, whether there is any way they could be more secure, you can't expect non-computer people to break the metaphor and start tinkering with the internals.
You talk as though browsers and cars are analagous, but to most people the computer is analagous to the car. There is no "browser," and you can't expect people to change something that only exists as the technical underpinning behind what they deal with. To most people. the Internet is that little blue E on their screen.
If you take your car to the mechanic and he tells you you need new axle boots, you say fine, do it. You don't have to know what axle boots are -- that's his job. Similarly, if you take your computer to a technician and he tells you you need a new browser, you say fine, do it. However, changing an axle boot doesn't mean you now have to start the car with a button, or that the windshield wiper controls have been moved to the floor in front of the driver's seat.
Changing the browser does entail these sorts of changes, and moreover, people certainly don't drive their computers into a technician's shop. People aren't stupid -- the machines are. People simply want a machine that works without having to swap out pieces they don't understand for abstract reasons at apparently arbitrary intervals.
You think you're so vastly superior to everyone else, maybe you should be out there fixing the machines instead of complaining about how stupid people are.
Bottom line: refusing to learn to do simple things that can greatly simplify or improve your life is stupid.
Wasting all your time learning a never-ending stream of technologies is pretty goddamn stupid too.
Look, unless you are an IT professional, it shouldn't be necessary to keep learning software interfaces. There's nothing life-simplifying about having to constantly change the way you check your email simply because a bunch of companies can't make simple, consistent interfaces.
Let's say you are a lawyer. You're pretty busy keeping up with the law. You've learned a procedure for using the Internet. Maybe it isn't perfect, but it works. Now are you stupid not to put in the effort to learn how to use Firefox because some guy tells you IE is not secure? Most people haven't had the experience of knowing what insecure software even means, so why should they take their valuable time to respond to such an abstract threat?
Until Microsoft starts putting Firefox on the desktop, this isn't going to change. People seek the path of least resistance not because they are stupid, but because they have priorities.
The US population is divided 51/49, yet one party controls all three branches of government, and pretending like they have a huge mandate. All we have representing the minority is a vastly smaller minority of Senators and Congressmen, who, by virtue of a group of immoral parliamentarians, have almost no power.
I believe the term is "tyranny of the majority."
The ignorance displayed in this statement is simply staggering. This is like looking at Pearl Harbor and concluding that the Japanese won WWII.
Could you give us some sources? I did a little search and came up with completely different ratios.
How long until we see bikinis made out of this stuff?
Sorry, you are disqualified for asking a historically uninformed question.
Of course it didn't start in 2000. 2000 just brought it to light because it was so close. The history of American politics is, first of all, rife with political machines, the Democratic version of which probably brought Kennedy victory in 1960. And then there were the back-room deals like the one that gave us Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878. And of course there is a long history of denying non-whites the vote through various mechanisms (which continue today). No, it ain't the first time, but it's not too often that people notice, because elections usually aren't that close.
I hereby state my belief that this one won't be nearly as close as everyone thinks it will be.
My local affiliates do hourlong nightly news and spend about ten minutes on sports, and this is Boston -- four major sports franchises. The major broadcasters' evening news doesn't cover sports at all. So what, exactly, are you talking about?
Furthermore, there are far more news channels than there are sports channels, so there. Fact is, there is plenty of pretty much everything. Complaining that there's too much sports coverage is like saying there are too many jellyfish in the ocean.
Besides which, if you know so much about what matters, why don't you go get a job as a news director? What you are ticked about is they don't take enough time to discuss stuff that matters to you. Television news is a stop-off point for people that don't care much about news. People tune in for a quick rundown of the day's events -- not a forty minute discussion of the impact of nanotechnology on the Middle East peace process. You don't like that? Fine. Turn on the Lehrer News Hour, or better yet, pick up a newspaper.
Oh, what a magnificent point that is. Let's toss out art and music while we're at it.
Smalltalk I agree. But your apparent assertion that sports is not news is erroneous. Sports is part of our culture, whether you like it or not. Go look at some old newspapers -- nothing has changed when it comes to ball-obsessed guys. Every news organization in the world takes a moment to cover sports. Witness the BBC's extensive coverage of soccer and cricket. As an American, I could care less about these subjects, but I'm not going to deny the BBC's right to cover them.
As for entertainment, I would say the same thing -- it is a part of a culture, and what happens in entertainment is news. The problem is when news becomes a shill for a station's entertainment -- when that particular entertainment is automatically news even when nothing has really happened.