The idea would be that you could scan a barcode on an advertisements or articles to get more information on a product. The problem is that you need a special piece of hardware to do what a URL written down on the page could do.
The basic idea isn't without merit, however. In Japan, they use barcode-like codes to encode extra information with advertisements. You could see a product that interests you, use your cell phone camera to take a picture of the code, and then have your phone load up the web site based on the code. The difference here is its more convenient instead of less.
I used an internet cafe in Japan, and had my passport copied as well. For what its worth, its not necessarily that the government is trying to keep tabs on you.
Its not like the parent poster was advocating any of those things. Pointing out someone else's flaws does not diminish your own, and you're a tool for suggesting otherwise.
How about showing a link that he did? I mean actual proof, not just an "everyone knows" message board or wiki posting. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim, and so far I haven't anyone produce one scrap of evidence backing this claim. In absence of evidence, Bill Gates' words are all we have to go on.
Let's start with children, by teaching them that religion is a problem, instead of a solution. Let's treat religion as a mental disease like schizophrenia. Let's go ahead and remove the first amendment "freedom of religion" clause and actually make religion illegal and dangerous.
Right, because that's very inclusive and not at all a "assimilate or be forced to assimilate" attitude? The "one of US, or one of THEM" is a human trait. Look at nationalism, or political parties, or racism, or any other of the vast, vast list of ways in which humans break themselves into groups.
I used to be religious. I'm not anymore. Having been on both sides of the fence, I'd say that atheists don't really have much room to talk about theists' shortcomings. We're all human.
Elitism is bad. People who consider themselves members of the ruling class are elitists (among other things). A ruling class is bad because people should not be "ruled", rather they should be free. (The original post connected intelligence and elitism. I did not. There is a connection: elitists consider themselves intelligent. Note this does not imply that intelligent people are elitists, nor that elitists are necessarily correct in their self-assessment.)
Elitists are bad, but people can be elite without being elitist. People who are good at things are elite. But they aren't elitist if they don't hold the belief that they should be making decisions for me. That's the difference between elite and elitist.
People should not be elitist, but we should value people who are elite. Not just in intelligence, but in charity, ethic, and other areas of life.
If "weight" is a euphemism for ruling, then no. Experts should not be given "weight". Appeals to expertise are a common tactic to justify ruling people. I thank experts for their knowledge and guidance. I may be able to use it to make my own choices in my own life. Experts are not needed to make my choices for me.
Weight means that if an expert says something is true we should probably at least take a serious look at that statement. When an expert says one thing and an every-man says another, sure consider the every-man's point but give serious consideration to what the expert is saying. As it is now, the expert is written off as being an intellectual elitist, more often than not. I'm sure you could come up with plenty examples yourself.
Desirable, yes. Many things are desirable. But I would rather have a stupid President who wanted people to be free than a genius who decided he deserved to be my king.
No argument there. The problem is that nearly all politicians believe that they know whats best for us. I'm not sure of your political bent, but I don't think that the republicans are any less elitist than the democrats. The difference is that the republicans try to appear to be by saying, "Hey this guy is average, just like you!" But look at Bush's policies, and what the republican party has been doing, and then tell me that they don't dream of being my king.
Saying that we should value experts and people who are intelligent is not the same thing as saying we should just follow them like sheep. Acknowledging that someone is smarter than you is not the same as saying that they are better than you. An expert saying that we should do something is not equivalent to them trying to run our lives. For example, if my doctor told me that I should eat healthier, is that an example of him trying to run my life? Should I ignore him for being elitist? Or should I maybe give his advice some consideration and modify my behavior accordingly?
Ah yes. I remember in the third grade when I got bored of doing simple addition and subtraction, and started looking into multiplication. This, of course, upset the teacher. Not because I was doing bad, mind you, but because I wasn't paying attention to her. She tried to convince my parents that it would be best for my education to drug me (Ritalin or the like) because I wasn't paying attention in class.
I'm not seeing the condescension, nor am I seeing the connection in the context of the post. Its pretty clear to me, at least, that the Republican party has been saying that intelligence is bad because intelligent people are elitist, and pointing that out isn't condescending. Nor is it condescending to say that we should probably give some weight to people who are experts in their field of expertise. When it comes to the president, being intelligent should be a very desirable trait. Whether or not I could have a beer with the candidate and have a friendly chat ranks barely above what he eats for breakfast in the morning.
"Reason" isn't a boolean value. All living human beings, atheists and theists included, have certain areas of their life where their thoughts and beliefs are rational, and other areas where they are irrational.
The original poster's attitude of "people who don't agree with me are wrong and don't deserve to be treated with respect" is indistinguishable from the theist version, and is equally as terrifying to me. His claim that eliminating religion would somehow greatly increase the value of intelligence is laughable.
There's a difference between being intelligent and being condescending. You, like so many other people, are assuming that one necessitates the other, and that's at least part of the problem. And that issue is partly because our culture gets offended when its pointed out that some people are better than others in certain areas.
The 3G iPhones go for $200. I bought my first-gen iPhone for $400. It doesn't drop calls or have service interruptions either. My coworkers with 3G's don't have these problems either. That was the entire point of the GP: just because a handful of people whine about it in a forum doesn't mean that the problems are actually widespread.
Your twenty dollar Nokia doesn't drop calls, but someone with a defective version of the same phone, or who lives in an area with poor reception, might.
As long as the representatives were politicians. And we left them there. I support this idea 100%!
Re:Where's the lego minitiature
on
Beijing 2008 In Lego
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Yeah, from where I'm sitting you're both over-nationalistic douchebags.
The whole "Your government does bad things so you have no right to criticize my government," has never held ground here. We're individuals, not our government. Both the Chinese government and the American government does fucked up things. Its a colossal waste of time to cry about who is worse when the more important thing is working to improve things.
But then again, I find crybaby nationalists who can't stand a little criticism of their country to be annoying. Maybe if more people actually considered criticism and held their leaders accountable instead of going "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU WE'RE SO PERFECT AND AWESOME" the world wouldn't be in such a shitty state.
What about a candidate that opposes war, and then an enemy nation starts an invasion of your homeland? I may have voted for a candidate because he opposed war, but this is one of those situations where war is necessary and I'd want him to "change his mind."
What I'm saying is, a politician changing their mind on something can be a good or bad thing. What makes it good or bad is the reasoning behind changing their mind. The question is, can Obama justify changing his position?
To expand upon this, I feel like the large corporations who fucked up copyright have ruined it for the rest of the creators who just want to make a living. People no longer view the copyright issue as a moral one, and a pure legal one. Its not the large corps that are going to suffer. Its the hobby game developers, independent photographers, small bands, and other people that copyright was made to promote.
I'd argue that the growth of piracy is not only due to the increased ease, thanks to computers and the internet, but also due to the perceived fairness. After all, copyright is supposed to be a social contract where we allow the creator to profit from their creations so that we can enrich our own culture. But its been so lopsided towards the creators these days. Pretty much all of our modern culture is locked out from you unless you are willing to pay the price.
A large problem is that most people just don't feel copyright infringement is immoral anymore. How much of that is because the creator's aren't keeping their end of the bargain? If you had free access to 10-year old games, books, and music, wouldn't that lower the incentive to commit infringement on the current-day stuff?
The only drug tests I've had to undergo in the US were for financial institutions. Usually these places put a fair bit more scrutiny on new hires than normal. I can't really speak about how common it is in general.
Hrm, I have never had a problem with Blizzard's servers, or lack thereof. A casual listing of the server list would indicate most are low to medium population. Its just that people keep trying to pile onto the high-pop servers until they melt down.
Plenty of people do games in C++ on the Wii, Playstation 3, and XBox 360. So if you want to go the route of prototyping and pimping your game to companies, code it in C++, run it on Windows, and then sell your prototype.
If you want to have a hobbyist game, then pick a platform that supports that and use the language they want you to use.
You can always do something like target it towards Linux on the PS3. Yes thats going to seriously limit the kind of graphics you can put out, but it might be a good prototyping platform.
You're going to have to make some compromises. You can't just walk up to Sony and get a dev-kit for the Playstation 3. You either have to prototype your game on one platform and sell it to a company that can get you onto the platforms you want, OR you can find a platform that will let you scratch your itch and then use their language/environment.
If you make something really solid, and you get the opportunity to port it, then I think you'll find the effort put into porting it (even cross-language) will be significantly less than the effort to develop from scratch. There is much that goes into game development that doesn't involve pounding out code.
Slashdot Mirror
The idea would be that you could scan a barcode on an advertisements or articles to get more information on a product. The problem is that you need a special piece of hardware to do what a URL written down on the page could do.
The basic idea isn't without merit, however. In Japan, they use barcode-like codes to encode extra information with advertisements. You could see a product that interests you, use your cell phone camera to take a picture of the code, and then have your phone load up the web site based on the code. The difference here is its more convenient instead of less.
I used an internet cafe in Japan, and had my passport copied as well. For what its worth, its not necessarily that the government is trying to keep tabs on you.
Two words:
So what?
Its not like the parent poster was advocating any of those things. Pointing out someone else's flaws does not diminish your own, and you're a tool for suggesting otherwise.
How about showing a link that he did? I mean actual proof, not just an "everyone knows" message board or wiki posting. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim, and so far I haven't anyone produce one scrap of evidence backing this claim. In absence of evidence, Bill Gates' words are all we have to go on.
Which is different from what the OP said, right?
Let's start with children, by teaching them that religion is a problem, instead of a solution. Let's treat religion as a mental disease like schizophrenia. Let's go ahead and remove the first amendment "freedom of religion" clause and actually make religion illegal and dangerous.
Right, because that's very inclusive and not at all a "assimilate or be forced to assimilate" attitude? The "one of US, or one of THEM" is a human trait. Look at nationalism, or political parties, or racism, or any other of the vast, vast list of ways in which humans break themselves into groups.
I used to be religious. I'm not anymore. Having been on both sides of the fence, I'd say that atheists don't really have much room to talk about theists' shortcomings. We're all human.
Elitism is bad. People who consider themselves members of the ruling class are elitists (among other things). A ruling class is bad because people should not be "ruled", rather they should be free. (The original post connected intelligence and elitism. I did not. There is a connection: elitists consider themselves intelligent. Note this does not imply that intelligent people are elitists, nor that elitists are necessarily correct in their self-assessment.)
Elitists are bad, but people can be elite without being elitist. People who are good at things are elite. But they aren't elitist if they don't hold the belief that they should be making decisions for me. That's the difference between elite and elitist.
People should not be elitist, but we should value people who are elite. Not just in intelligence, but in charity, ethic, and other areas of life.
If "weight" is a euphemism for ruling, then no. Experts should not be given "weight". Appeals to expertise are a common tactic to justify ruling people. I thank experts for their knowledge and guidance. I may be able to use it to make my own choices in my own life. Experts are not needed to make my choices for me.
Weight means that if an expert says something is true we should probably at least take a serious look at that statement. When an expert says one thing and an every-man says another, sure consider the every-man's point but give serious consideration to what the expert is saying. As it is now, the expert is written off as being an intellectual elitist, more often than not. I'm sure you could come up with plenty examples yourself.
Desirable, yes. Many things are desirable. But I would rather have a stupid President who wanted people to be free than a genius who decided he deserved to be my king.
No argument there. The problem is that nearly all politicians believe that they know whats best for us. I'm not sure of your political bent, but I don't think that the republicans are any less elitist than the democrats. The difference is that the republicans try to appear to be by saying, "Hey this guy is average, just like you!" But look at Bush's policies, and what the republican party has been doing, and then tell me that they don't dream of being my king.
Saying that we should value experts and people who are intelligent is not the same thing as saying we should just follow them like sheep. Acknowledging that someone is smarter than you is not the same as saying that they are better than you. An expert saying that we should do something is not equivalent to them trying to run our lives. For example, if my doctor told me that I should eat healthier, is that an example of him trying to run my life? Should I ignore him for being elitist? Or should I maybe give his advice some consideration and modify my behavior accordingly?
Ah yes. I remember in the third grade when I got bored of doing simple addition and subtraction, and started looking into multiplication. This, of course, upset the teacher. Not because I was doing bad, mind you, but because I wasn't paying attention to her. She tried to convince my parents that it would be best for my education to drug me (Ritalin or the like) because I wasn't paying attention in class.
I'd say you did your kid a great service. Kudos.
I'm not seeing the condescension, nor am I seeing the connection in the context of the post. Its pretty clear to me, at least, that the Republican party has been saying that intelligence is bad because intelligent people are elitist, and pointing that out isn't condescending. Nor is it condescending to say that we should probably give some weight to people who are experts in their field of expertise. When it comes to the president, being intelligent should be a very desirable trait. Whether or not I could have a beer with the candidate and have a friendly chat ranks barely above what he eats for breakfast in the morning.
"Reason" isn't a boolean value. All living human beings, atheists and theists included, have certain areas of their life where their thoughts and beliefs are rational, and other areas where they are irrational.
The original poster's attitude of "people who don't agree with me are wrong and don't deserve to be treated with respect" is indistinguishable from the theist version, and is equally as terrifying to me. His claim that eliminating religion would somehow greatly increase the value of intelligence is laughable.
There's a difference between being intelligent and being condescending. You, like so many other people, are assuming that one necessitates the other, and that's at least part of the problem. And that issue is partly because our culture gets offended when its pointed out that some people are better than others in certain areas.
The 3G iPhones go for $200. I bought my first-gen iPhone for $400. It doesn't drop calls or have service interruptions either. My coworkers with 3G's don't have these problems either. That was the entire point of the GP: just because a handful of people whine about it in a forum doesn't mean that the problems are actually widespread.
Your twenty dollar Nokia doesn't drop calls, but someone with a defective version of the same phone, or who lives in an area with poor reception, might.
As long as the representatives were politicians. And we left them there. I support this idea 100%!
Yeah, from where I'm sitting you're both over-nationalistic douchebags.
The whole "Your government does bad things so you have no right to criticize my government," has never held ground here. We're individuals, not our government. Both the Chinese government and the American government does fucked up things. Its a colossal waste of time to cry about who is worse when the more important thing is working to improve things.
But then again, I find crybaby nationalists who can't stand a little criticism of their country to be annoying. Maybe if more people actually considered criticism and held their leaders accountable instead of going "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU WE'RE SO PERFECT AND AWESOME" the world wouldn't be in such a shitty state.
What about a candidate that opposes war, and then an enemy nation starts an invasion of your homeland? I may have voted for a candidate because he opposed war, but this is one of those situations where war is necessary and I'd want him to "change his mind."
What I'm saying is, a politician changing their mind on something can be a good or bad thing. What makes it good or bad is the reasoning behind changing their mind. The question is, can Obama justify changing his position?
Given what you put in your journal, I wouldn't peg you as someone wanting to get into a monogamous relationship. Off-topic, I know.
You're right. What I meant was this: when we the public feel that copyright is no longer a fair trade, then we correct the situation.
I frequently ponder whether or not piracy would be so common if we had 5-10 year copyright limits.
To expand upon this, I feel like the large corporations who fucked up copyright have ruined it for the rest of the creators who just want to make a living. People no longer view the copyright issue as a moral one, and a pure legal one. Its not the large corps that are going to suffer. Its the hobby game developers, independent photographers, small bands, and other people that copyright was made to promote.
I'd argue that the growth of piracy is not only due to the increased ease, thanks to computers and the internet, but also due to the perceived fairness. After all, copyright is supposed to be a social contract where we allow the creator to profit from their creations so that we can enrich our own culture. But its been so lopsided towards the creators these days. Pretty much all of our modern culture is locked out from you unless you are willing to pay the price.
A large problem is that most people just don't feel copyright infringement is immoral anymore. How much of that is because the creator's aren't keeping their end of the bargain? If you had free access to 10-year old games, books, and music, wouldn't that lower the incentive to commit infringement on the current-day stuff?
Except the cake is a lie. I vote for deadly neurotoxin.
The only drug tests I've had to undergo in the US were for financial institutions. Usually these places put a fair bit more scrutiny on new hires than normal. I can't really speak about how common it is in general.
"Two degrees Kelvin" is actually improper terminology. Kelvin does not use the degree simple. You simply say "Two Kelvin."
On another hope, I really hope you weren't joking with that. If so, then I just got whooshed!
How about Cobol .Net?
Hrm, I have never had a problem with Blizzard's servers, or lack thereof. A casual listing of the server list would indicate most are low to medium population. Its just that people keep trying to pile onto the high-pop servers until they melt down.
It was an OR not an AND.
Plenty of people do games in C++ on the Wii, Playstation 3, and XBox 360. So if you want to go the route of prototyping and pimping your game to companies, code it in C++, run it on Windows, and then sell your prototype.
If you want to have a hobbyist game, then pick a platform that supports that and use the language they want you to use.
You can always do something like target it towards Linux on the PS3. Yes thats going to seriously limit the kind of graphics you can put out, but it might be a good prototyping platform.
You're going to have to make some compromises. You can't just walk up to Sony and get a dev-kit for the Playstation 3. You either have to prototype your game on one platform and sell it to a company that can get you onto the platforms you want, OR you can find a platform that will let you scratch your itch and then use their language/environment.
If you make something really solid, and you get the opportunity to port it, then I think you'll find the effort put into porting it (even cross-language) will be significantly less than the effort to develop from scratch. There is much that goes into game development that doesn't involve pounding out code.
Off topic but I'm curious. How did you go about getting into contracting? How did you find gigs? And did you set up an LLC or anything like that?