Parent is modded as funny, but perhaps it should be insightful. Considering Britain does not have a concept of innocent until proven guilty, it doesn't seem that unlikely that they would mount remote controlled weapons on or nearby their cameras. I doubt they would have much of a moral problem going from ordering people to stop doing X and then shooting them for refusing to obey. They hopefully wouldn't do this out of fear that their citizens may revolt, but if this was implemented they now have plenty of guns to mow down revolting civilians. I am sure some sort of method to remotely punish violators of the cameras orders is being considered.
Ugh, this almost makes me feel better about the Patriot Act.
I knew thought I should write this, but people need to be better to do math in their heads.
Why does the average person need to be good at mental math? What function does being good at mental math serve? Everyone I know has a cellphone with a calculator that can do basic arithmetic. Technology has allowed for an increased level of abstraction so people can focus on the important things.
For example: How does the average person benefit from knowing how to make soap by hand? They don't, the same way the average person doesn't benefit by being proficient at mental math.
Perhaps if there is trully free will this means that there must exist something supernatural (the identity of which remains unknown).
If free will exists, then there must be something which is NOT governed by the physical universe (hence, not deterministic), but which itself CAN influence or govern the physical universe (ie. the brain). This seems to fit the definition of supernatural -- or outside nature.
If there is some sort of supernatural being that which influences our decisions, how is that in any way free will? I didn't know supernatural determinism is the equivelant of freewill... Really, all this does is move the problem back a level. How does the supernatural being have freewill?
Furthermore, you are implicating that the universe is an open system, in that there exists a supernatural being outside of the universe who can influence it. Supernatural interference implies that it can manipulate the universe, but the universe can not manipulate it, for if they universe could also manipulate it, then it would be a natural being/object like my dog. The implication of an open universe is that energy/matter can seemingly be created from nothing, something that science has failed to observe.
It seems, however, that if you think logic exists, then you are admitting to free will. For without free will nothing could be proven true or false. Ever.
This is a completely nonsensical statement. Logic is an internally consistent system of axioms that can be used to describe or analyze our world. This is a lot like math. In fact, formal logic is type of math known as predicate calculus. So do a little subsitution here and see if your proposition still makes sense.
It seems, however, that if you think math exists, then you are admitting to free will. For without free will nothing could be proven true or false. Ever.
Furthermore, the claim that if someone believes that logic exists then they believe that free will exists, doesn't make sense. I think that logic exists, but I don't think that free will exists. So either I am lying or your statement is false.
Imagine you've just had all your knowledge of religion removed, but you retain all of your other memories. You are in a room with all the religious texts of every religion ever conceived present, from whatever is the first to modern day religions such as Christianity, Scientology and zenBuddhism. You need to make some decision about religion before you can leave this room. Which one would you choose? Or would you declare them all to be balderdash?
The 98th parabale in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "The Father's kingdom is like a person who wanted to kill someone powerful. While still at home he drew his sword and thrust it into the wall to find out whether his hand would go in. Then he killed the powerful one." Although the Gospel of Thomas is non-canical, it should be considered as legitimate as the New Testament. The only reason the Gospel of Thomas isn't included in "The Bible" is because gnostics were a sect that was literally killed off by the "True Christians" for being heretical who decided what should be in "The Bible". Basically, there were a lot of sects of Christianity with different views on Jesus, God etc. and they all fought. So what you have now is the winner's bible.
"Now if copyright infringers aren't actually punished when they are caught, and most importantly, the severity of the punishment is sufficient to minimize the incentives to do so in a straightforward risk/gain analysis, the chance of a repeat infraction after the penalty has been paid is minimized."
Not really. That assumes criminals are thinking rationally, something very few due. For example, most drug sellers make close to or less than minimium wage. High risk + illegal + poor pay is worse than flipping burgers.
Cellphones are expensive, leave a substantial paper trail, and are going to be the first thing blocked if anyone figured that's what you were up to. You want a cheap, unjammable, untraceable remote bomb detonator? photovoltaic cell and a laser pointer.
Why can't you jam a laser by jamming lightwaves? I mean pratically speaking it would probably be bad if people couldn't see accurately because lightwaves were being jammed, but is there any theoretical reason why a laser pointer can't be jammed?
Sure it's annoying, but blocking signals would essentially mean that anyone who was on call (aka doctors) couldn't see movies at that location. Although movie theaters can not actively jam signals, they are allowed to design their architecture in such a way that signals do not get through.
Besides, it's not as though we didn't want this to come about before they announced this. I wouldn't consider them any kind of leading authority on the importance of privacy. Sure, they're influential, but that's because they have lots of cash.
So? The validity of a statement is independent of the quality of the person that said it. Simplified form: Even a blind squirrel finds a few nuts.
It doesn't matter that you dislike microsoft, the idea is a good one and microsoft is a powerful company that has the finicial resources to promote political change.
Add multiple restraining straps that can only be removed by a key, fingerprint, iris scan combo. Voila you can now recieve defense funding. With that funding find a way to insert it in a person and control them remotely through satellite broadcasts no matter where they are. Then add a self-discruct/kill this person NOW command. Now market this as an upper and get lots of people to implant it in themselves. Bam world-domination!
Choose the most hard, unforgiving language possible, as that will discourage bad habits. I reccomend brainfuck. If you can learn to program with that, you can program with anything.
You fucking kidding me? Running for office is not a choice for the average person, much less a nerd on slashdot. 3rd person parties have no chance in hell of getting someone elected to the house or senate unless they all move to a state with a low population.
You're the one who needs a dictionary to "illumine yourself on the difference"
Straight from merriam-webster:
Main Entry: republic
Function: noun
1 : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president; also : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
2 : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law; also : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
Apple is by far a marketing genius. I have talked to people who have told me that the shuffle not having a screen is a feature! That's right less is more. It's not like having a screen would make it unnecessarily complicated either as people seem to have no problem dealing with Apple's other ipods.
Also Apple has turned their ipods from mp3 players into fashion accesaryies. Even though there are other mp3 players that either have higher sound quality, better support for more filetypes, better music store selection, more storage (HD) for comparable price, a significantly longer battery life, simply cheaper and/or a combination of the previous apple's ipod consistently sells more than any other brand. Furthermore I've never heard of a celeb having a diamond studded Rio Karma although they have done that to ipods reinforcing it's use as a fashion statement.
Also stupid school districts are encouraging it's use in foreign language classes and in some cases are requiring it (though it may be provided by the school). The use of the ipod in this way is that the students record on it and play it back to themselves/the teacher to improve their pronounceation. WTF?! That can be done on a simple tape recorder which is a lot cheaper than $200.
Now before I get lots of flames, I'm not saying the ipod is a bad product, because it is not. However it's popularity is in now way a reflection of it's quality.
"Even the one that are quiet are guilty according to me. Even if they are not getting paid their worth or their share, they are getting enough to buy and maintain a lavish lifestyle"
Oh right because capitalism is so bad? I honestly don't see how you can claim musicians are guilty by association with the RIAA when their aren't any other major recording companies that musicians can go to.
The UN doesn't matter. If they specifically forbade us to do something (for hypothetical example: invade saudi arabia) we'd ignore them and the UN wouldn't/couldn't do more than protest and complain because the UN has no executive power.
"this also assumes you shell out $500 for the SUPER DELUXE version of the 360, that includes the hard drive, so you actually have a place to save the things you've downloaded (and a communicator, which doesn't come standard with the cheaper system., but can be purchased at additional cost)"
Nope it's $400 for the standard version. There is no "SUPER DELUXE version". There is standard version with hard drive and the stripped down piece of shit, buy that parts seperately for more than the $100 that you saved version. I agree it's expensive and that's partly why I don't plan to get one (at least at release), but get your facts right.
"Inflated reviews? Metacritic.com lists the average rating by the gaming media for this title as 82/100, which is pretty damn close to Zonk's 8/10. If this score is inflated, so are pretty much everyone else's."
Yeah they are all inflated. If I rated women the way they rated games 75% of all women I see would be 10s. The way it should be:
0-abysmal roughly comparable to Superman64
5- average, nothing wrong with it but nothing great either.
6- a step or 2 above average but has some flaws.
7- Pretty damn good.
8- Better than pretty damn good
9- Almost perfect
10- Perfect
Seroisuly how many games do you play that are perfect and have no room for improvement? I've never met one therefore the absolute best a game should get would be a 9. I'm going to use Halo 2 as an example of an over rated game. Almost everyone gave it a 10 or something very close to it. Realistically it should be around a 6 to a 7 which is still a good rating but not anywhere near perfect.
Furthermore graphics, sound etc. should NOT be averaged with gameplay. Gameplay is core and what counts the most. Therefore a reviewer should give it a number based on how enjoyable it is and then subtract or add points if the sound/graphics are very poor or very good. More than 1 pt should never be subtracted or added because of this. Furthermore because this is not a linear progression up the scale awesome graphics and sound should not bump an 8 to a 10 at best it shold bring it up to a 9.
I would mod everyone talking about evolution in school and tax dollars off topic. Serioulusly this article is about a new heart repair surgery inspired by Leonardo. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Evolution v. Intillegent design debate.
Eve is not a pve game and there are no training wheels. Please don't complain about how there aren't any massive dungeons etc. because that's not the focus of the it. If you want to do massive raids go play WoW or EQ(2).
First of all eve does not require massive time investment to become competitive. You don't need 20+million skill points to have a chance only 2million. Player skill is much more important than character skill. Furthermore 2 1million characters > 1 20 million if the 1mils know what they're doing.
If you want to be truly good at eve you have to think, you can't grind to "max level" and expect to pwn people because skill bonuses are relatively small (2-5% increase in dmg, speed etc. per level) and there's so many nasty things someone can trip you up with if you aren't expecting it or don't know what you're doing. It has a very flexible "class" system which encourages creativity. Because of this a you need to know what you're doing and the limitations of your "class" if you don't want to get rolled.
Slashdot Mirror
Ugh, this almost makes me feel better about the Patriot Act.
Why does the average person need to be good at mental math? What function does being good at mental math serve? Everyone I know has a cellphone with a calculator that can do basic arithmetic. Technology has allowed for an increased level of abstraction so people can focus on the important things.
For example: How does the average person benefit from knowing how to make soap by hand? They don't, the same way the average person doesn't benefit by being proficient at mental math.
If there is some sort of supernatural being that which influences our decisions, how is that in any way free will? I didn't know supernatural determinism is the equivelant of freewill... Really, all this does is move the problem back a level. How does the supernatural being have freewill?
Furthermore, you are implicating that the universe is an open system, in that there exists a supernatural being outside of the universe who can influence it. Supernatural interference implies that it can manipulate the universe, but the universe can not manipulate it, for if they universe could also manipulate it, then it would be a natural being/object like my dog. The implication of an open universe is that energy/matter can seemingly be created from nothing, something that science has failed to observe.
This is a completely nonsensical statement. Logic is an internally consistent system of axioms that can be used to describe or analyze our world. This is a lot like math. In fact, formal logic is type of math known as predicate calculus. So do a little subsitution here and see if your proposition still makes sense.
Furthermore, the claim that if someone believes that logic exists then they believe that free will exists, doesn't make sense. I think that logic exists, but I don't think that free will exists. So either I am lying or your statement is false.
People don't have the time or money to preform a "perfect" study that turns a hypothesis into definite conclusions.
Imagine you've just had all your knowledge of religion removed, but you retain all of your other memories. You are in a room with all the religious texts of every religion ever conceived present, from whatever is the first to modern day religions such as Christianity, Scientology and zenBuddhism. You need to make some decision about religion before you can leave this room. Which one would you choose? Or would you declare them all to be balderdash?
The 98th parabale in the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus said, "The Father's kingdom is like a person who wanted to kill someone powerful. While still at home he drew his sword and thrust it into the wall to find out whether his hand would go in. Then he killed the powerful one." Although the Gospel of Thomas is non-canical, it should be considered as legitimate as the New Testament. The only reason the Gospel of Thomas isn't included in "The Bible" is because gnostics were a sect that was literally killed off by the "True Christians" for being heretical who decided what should be in "The Bible". Basically, there were a lot of sects of Christianity with different views on Jesus, God etc. and they all fought. So what you have now is the winner's bible.
Not really. That assumes criminals are thinking rationally, something very few due. For example, most drug sellers make close to or less than minimium wage. High risk + illegal + poor pay is worse than flipping burgers.
There's actually a language called D that is related to C++ and is supposed to fixe a lot of C++'s problems, and annoying syntax. Features.
Why can't you jam a laser by jamming lightwaves? I mean pratically speaking it would probably be bad if people couldn't see accurately because lightwaves were being jammed, but is there any theoretical reason why a laser pointer can't be jammed?
Sure it's annoying, but blocking signals would essentially mean that anyone who was on call (aka doctors) couldn't see movies at that location. Although movie theaters can not actively jam signals, they are allowed to design their architecture in such a way that signals do not get through.
If they spent less money on OMG CUTTING 3DGe "REALISTIC" GRAPHICS!22112! then this wouldn't be a problem.
Is with a whip. One lash for each bug.
Because it's the media. How often is it that you find an article about a significant topic that doesn't use hyperbole?
So? The validity of a statement is independent of the quality of the person that said it. Simplified form: Even a blind squirrel finds a few nuts.
It doesn't matter that you dislike microsoft, the idea is a good one and microsoft is a powerful company that has the finicial resources to promote political change.
Add multiple restraining straps that can only be removed by a key, fingerprint, iris scan combo. Voila you can now recieve defense funding. With that funding find a way to insert it in a person and control them remotely through satellite broadcasts no matter where they are. Then add a self-discruct/kill this person NOW command. Now market this as an upper and get lots of people to implant it in themselves. Bam world-domination!
Choose the most hard, unforgiving language possible, as that will discourage bad habits. I reccomend brainfuck. If you can learn to program with that, you can program with anything.
You fucking kidding me? Running for office is not a choice for the average person, much less a nerd on slashdot. 3rd person parties have no chance in hell of getting someone elected to the house or senate unless they all move to a state with a low population.
Straight from merriam-webster:
Main Entry: republic Function: noun
1 : a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president; also : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
2 : a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law; also : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government
Now go read these wikipedia articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic#Concepts_of_ democracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_(varieties) #Indirect_democracy
?Comprendes?
Also Apple has turned their ipods from mp3 players into fashion accesaryies. Even though there are other mp3 players that either have higher sound quality, better support for more filetypes, better music store selection, more storage (HD) for comparable price, a significantly longer battery life, simply cheaper and/or a combination of the previous apple's ipod consistently sells more than any other brand. Furthermore I've never heard of a celeb having a diamond studded Rio Karma although they have done that to ipods reinforcing it's use as a fashion statement.
Also stupid school districts are encouraging it's use in foreign language classes and in some cases are requiring it (though it may be provided by the school). The use of the ipod in this way is that the students record on it and play it back to themselves/the teacher to improve their pronounceation. WTF?! That can be done on a simple tape recorder which is a lot cheaper than $200.
Now before I get lots of flames, I'm not saying the ipod is a bad product, because it is not. However it's popularity is in now way a reflection of it's quality.
Oh right because capitalism is so bad? I honestly don't see how you can claim musicians are guilty by association with the RIAA when their aren't any other major recording companies that musicians can go to.
The UN doesn't matter. If they specifically forbade us to do something (for hypothetical example: invade saudi arabia) we'd ignore them and the UN wouldn't/couldn't do more than protest and complain because the UN has no executive power.
"this also assumes you shell out $500 for the SUPER DELUXE version of the 360, that includes the hard drive, so you actually have a place to save the things you've downloaded (and a communicator, which doesn't come standard with the cheaper system., but can be purchased at additional cost)"
Nope it's $400 for the standard version. There is no "SUPER DELUXE version". There is standard version with hard drive and the stripped down piece of shit, buy that parts seperately for more than the $100 that you saved version. I agree it's expensive and that's partly why I don't plan to get one (at least at release), but get your facts right.
Yeah they are all inflated. If I rated women the way they rated games 75% of all women I see would be 10s. The way it should be:
0-abysmal roughly comparable to Superman64
5- average, nothing wrong with it but nothing great either.
6- a step or 2 above average but has some flaws.
7- Pretty damn good.
8- Better than pretty damn good
9- Almost perfect
10- Perfect
Seroisuly how many games do you play that are perfect and have no room for improvement? I've never met one therefore the absolute best a game should get would be a 9. I'm going to use Halo 2 as an example of an over rated game. Almost everyone gave it a 10 or something very close to it. Realistically it should be around a 6 to a 7 which is still a good rating but not anywhere near perfect.
Furthermore graphics, sound etc. should NOT be averaged with gameplay. Gameplay is core and what counts the most. Therefore a reviewer should give it a number based on how enjoyable it is and then subtract or add points if the sound/graphics are very poor or very good. More than 1 pt should never be subtracted or added because of this. Furthermore because this is not a linear progression up the scale awesome graphics and sound should not bump an 8 to a 10 at best it shold bring it up to a 9.
I would mod everyone talking about evolution in school and tax dollars off topic. Serioulusly this article is about a new heart repair surgery inspired by Leonardo. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Evolution v. Intillegent design debate.
Eve is not a pve game and there are no training wheels. Please don't complain about how there aren't any massive dungeons etc. because that's not the focus of the it. If you want to do massive raids go play WoW or EQ(2).
First of all eve does not require massive time investment to become competitive. You don't need 20+million skill points to have a chance only 2million. Player skill is much more important than character skill. Furthermore 2 1million characters > 1 20 million if the 1mils know what they're doing.
If you want to be truly good at eve you have to think, you can't grind to "max level" and expect to pwn people because skill bonuses are relatively small (2-5% increase in dmg, speed etc. per level) and there's so many nasty things someone can trip you up with if you aren't expecting it or don't know what you're doing. It has a very flexible "class" system which encourages creativity. Because of this a you need to know what you're doing and the limitations of your "class" if you don't want to get rolled.