Actually, "ROC" doesn't stand for A Republic of China, but rather THE Republic of China.
Actually the official name, as it is written in the language used by the government in Taiwan, has neither an "A" nor a "THE". It is simply "Republic of China". Actually, though my ability in the language is limited, it seems to me that the name might be more literally translated "Chinese Republic" or even "Ethnic Chinese Republic".
Are any taxes being used to support the O****** G**** in L***** in 2***? And if so, will companies that are not sponsors get a tax break so they won't have to help pay for the O****** G****?
"For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)."
What is sad is that this bias could have been so easily fixed, and the point made even stronger, by adding "and many US Liberals are for abortion and against the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons too)."
It's sad that even Slashdot can't seem to avoid political bias in it's one-paragraph reports.
As a casual gamer, I didn't mind that people have better stuff; what bothered me was that I could play no role in determining what "better stuff" was. Everything interesting about the game - which combination of equipment, race, spells was best for a character - which combination of classes was best for a group - were already worked out. If I wanted to play a class I was expected to play it exactly the way someone else had figured out long ago.
I would like to see some effort put into making every character an individual. The best solution I've thought of is to provide some sort of "gift" once every few levels(in EQ the trainers would give them out). Your elf-ranger wouldn't get the same gift as every other elf-ranger, and those elf-rangers wouldn't have anyway to get that gift on their own. Some people might complain if they got a bad gift, but the sting would be reduced by the knowledge that a few levels later they might get a great gift.
When grouping with new people, you wouldn't just assume their role. You would need to talk to them, find out what abilities they have, and then decide who does what.
Early role playing games tried to introduce variety by rolling dice to get player attributes, but people would just start over with a new character if they didn't like their dice roll, so in games like EQ you get to assign the stats yourself (again, their are expectations of how you will assign them). With gifts being randomly given out every few levels, it would take long enough to get the gifts that it wouldn't make sense to keep going back and starting over.
China is a sovereign nation and has full rights to what goes on inside their borders. We in the US may not *like* it, but their laws are their laws. No such laws exist to _allow_ for free speech.
"Abuses of human rights and freedoms have never been and will never be solely internal affairs of any country. As someone who years ago experienced firsthand the arbitrary rule of a dictatorial regime but then lived to see better times -- to a large extent because of the international solidarity extended to us -- I appeal to all those who have the opportunity to act against such arbitrary acts to express their solidarity with people who to this day live in a state of 'unfreedom.'"
-- Vaclav Havel
I think President Havel, as a person formerly subject to similar laws, might disagree.
One of the major problems encountered with time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well adjusted family can't cope with. There is also no problem about changing the course of history - the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
This is another case of science fiction being well ahead of science.
A big part of the problem is that we don't really understand what emotion and consciousness are. We highly suspect that more than one brain cell is required, but do we really know for sure? Do we have any clue as to where the change from no-emotions and unconscious to counscious with emotions occurs?
Someone said that "And, even if we did, there is reason to believe that separated from an physical body, deprived of the normal developmental processes, etc. that its behavior still would not resemble consciousness". Are we sure the brain wouldn't have consciousness, or would it simply be mentally ill and full of agony? We just don't know.
Until we have a better idea of how much of a brain is required to make something we would think of as having human emotion or consciousness, we should leave the testing to animals brains, or at the very least put a very low upper limit on now many human brain cells can be grown together.
Am I the only one wondering how many of these brain cells will be needed to have a brain with feelings? Am I the only one concerned about the moral implications of these experiments? If embryos aren't human because they don't have a brain and can't have human emotions, then what do we say about something that consists of only a human brain and is capable of emotion, but has has no way of expressing to us what those emotions are?
The need for perfect balance could be reduced by making every player unique. In early RPGs this was done by generating random attributes for each avatar at the beginning. But predictably people kept generating new avatars until they got the stats they wanted. After that, people tend to learn what combinations of class-race-armour-weapons-skills work best and stick to them.
I would like to see some random variety introduced when it is too late to go back and start again. In EQ, you visited your guild masters every few levels. Suppose those masters gave you a random gift that made you different from every other member of your class. Maybe a ranger gets one spell that usually only enchanters have. Or he gets a weapon that only he, and no other ranger, can use. The gifts would be random, and given as you level up. Maybe your level 5 gift wasn't so good, but your level 15 gift rocks.
It would be up to you, and you alone, to figure out how to best use the gifts. The effect of uber-classes would still be there, but it would be muddied somewhat by the players who make best use of their particular gifts.
I will need VHS as long as I have family movies, or until there is a good way for me to put family movies on some other medium. So far DVD technology doesn't provide that yet.
And that's the part that has always made me bitter. The fact us geeks will be there when these wild women are "ready to settle down." We won't be out there having the wild fun, partying, adventures with them, we'll be there when they're ready to end that and become more serious. They'll have all these memories and experiences, we'll have Saturday nights watching Star Trek reruns.
I recognized early that if a girl would rather spend her time at wild sexy parties with other guys instead of hanging out with me, she wasn't my type anyway. Let the girls go out and party. Don't expect me to still be interested when they stumble back. I'll be too busy with the girls who recognized quality early.
The secret of my success as a geek was to focus my geekiness on the puzzle of why women weren't attracted to me. I studied the guys they were attracted to to find out what they had in common. I read women's magazines to find out what women wanted to believe about themselves and men.
SlashChick's best comment is #4
4) Being a slave isn't attractive. If you make it clear that you'll do anything for a woman, and grovel for her affection, you're going to end up attracting the wrong type of woman. Any successful relationship is a two-way street. While there's nothing wrong with showing your love and affection, groveling only means you'll get taken advantage of and perhaps become bitter about (see #3.)
One of the best decisions I ever made was to recognize that any girl who liked some other guy better than me just wasn't smart enough to be my girlfriend.
given its current popularity among European and Canadian travellers,
I often wonder how it is possible to relax in a place like that knowing how little freedom the staff that waits on you has. Do you just ignore the injustice and order another margarita?
I would feel better if the state would pass http://blackbox.cs.fit.edu/blog/kaner/archives/000 124.htmlthis software customer bill of rights. I especially like #4 "User has right to see and approve all transfers of information from her computer. Before an application transmits any data from the user's computer, the user should have the ability to see what's being sent. If the message is encrypted, the user should be shown an unencrypted version. On seeing the message, the user should be able to refuse to send it. This may cause the application to cancel a transaction (such as a sale that depends on transmission of a valid credit card number), but transmission of data from the user's machine without the user's knowledge or in spite of the user's refusal should be prosecutable as computer tampering."
I hope they don't use the poor ratings of this show as an excuse not to do anymore Star Trek series. The name still has selling power, at least enough to get people to give a new show a try. But they should have learned from DS9 and Voyager that while the name can get people to watch a couple episodes, writing is what really keeps them watching week after week. If they need a more recent example of that they should look at Battlestar Galactica.
Once again someone has "discovered" the obvious and reported it as news. Well, I suppose it never hurts to have this sort of thing put into writing so managers will believe it. Perhaps we'll get lucky and someone will "discover" that cots in the break room will help those who need a quick nap but don't have time to drive all the way home and back.
"you haven't got a leg to stand on" "You play word games". All these accusations without a shred of reasoning to back them up. It sounds like you trust logic even less than I do.
Yes, working from logic we discover only that we can know nothing, and even that discovery is suspect.
----
Well, then I guess you'll be logging off, since we can't know anything about solid state electronics, this communication is impossible.
But you can't prove this communication is impossible unless you rely on logic, and as I just showed, we cannot prove logic is reliable without resorting to the fallacy of circular logic. So, logically, I don't have to log off.
I agree about the good results we usually get from logic. I use it myself. It seems to be the best mental tool we have. But, our belief in it is circular. You say people who predict things based on the Bible get egg on their face? Have you ever made a prediction based on logic and turned out to be wrong? I have. Most people I know have. So what do we do? We go back and examine the logic for the place were we made a mistake. We have so much faith in logic that no matter what it does to it we assume the logic is right and we ourselves are in error. We keep searching until we either give up (while keeping faith that the error is there somewhere) or we find something we can call an error. Of course, if we were mistaken before we could be mistaken again. But the point is, no matter what we believe in logic. Our mental processes simply won't accept that it could be wrong.
Our belief that logic is true is so instinctive to us that we disbelieve anything to the contrary. Is logic like the unfaithful husband and ourselves like the wife who keeps finding excuses for all evidence to the contrary simply because the husband is a good provider?
You're right. I should have taken time to read your whole post to see that you had re-defined atheism away from the traditional meaning. " a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity" (from www.m-w.com). It would have been easier to understand had you changed the definition at the beginning of your statement rather than at the end which I never reached, having given up after the apparant problems found early in the statement.
You say atheism is not a religion because "it is the denial, in fact, of any religious doctrine" and "Atheism is not a religion because it has no...articles of faith" Because there is no proof that all religions are wrong, it is an act of faith to assume that they are. So the statement that atheism denies all other religions and at the same time has no faith is contradictary.
I find evolutionary theory completely plausible. Some difficult problems remain in my mind, like why the number of chromosomes differs from species to species, but I see no reason that they can't be solved eventually. We see the concept of evolutionary processes demonstrated all around us everyday, and earth is old enough for a lot of evolution to have occurred. As a scientific explanation, evolution works.
However, as a source of all truth, science doesn't work. Science has a fundamental problem with a reliance on logic. Any arguments to prove logic are inherently circular and (by logic) cannot be trusted. Science further has a problem in that when it gathers evidence for one thing, it gathers evidence for many things. We don't use Occams Razor because there is reason to believe that simpler is more true, we use it for our own convenience. Perhaps most importantly, science assumes everything has a cause. When you look back at the creation of the universe and of time itself, you realize that causality must break down. Therefore there must be something or someone beyond science.
In my own life I have seen enough evidence to believe in God and in his son Jesus. As part of that, I believe I am called to believe in Adam, Eve, the garden of Eden, etc.. I do not believe, nor do I expect anyone else to believe, that these ideas are easily compatible with science or much of the evidence we have found of dinosaurs, neanderthals, etc..
However, evolution is only one explanation of the archaeological evidence. Another explanation is misleading clues placed by a god who puts a high value on faith. Another is that evolution was guided by god's hand until he created Adam and Eve.
In short, I don't have a problem with believing in both. When trying to understand the behavior of men and women, both the fall of man and the evolution of man present valuable lessons. Both explain how men and women will react to situations. Both explain the world as it is. And neither belief precludes the other.
As for what should be taught in school, no one can be well-educated in this day and age without understanding evolution. But the students also need to be told that when it comes to history, all science can do is show whether an explanation is plausible. It can never prove what really happened.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, "ROC" doesn't stand for A Republic of China, but rather THE Republic of China.
Actually the official name, as it is written in the language used by the government in Taiwan, has neither an "A" nor a "THE". It is simply "Republic of China". Actually, though my ability in the language is limited, it seems to me that the name might be more literally translated "Chinese Republic" or even "Ethnic Chinese Republic".
Are any taxes being used to support the O****** G**** in L***** in 2***? And if so, will companies that are not sponsors get a tax break so they won't have to help pay for the O****** G****?
"For example, many US Republicans are against abortion but in favour of the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons)."
What is sad is that this bias could have been so easily fixed, and the point made even stronger, by adding "and many US Liberals are for abortion and against the death penalty (no doubt they have their reasons too)."
It's sad that even Slashdot can't seem to avoid political bias in it's one-paragraph reports.
As a casual gamer, I didn't mind that people have better stuff; what bothered me was that I could play no role in determining what "better stuff" was. Everything interesting about the game - which combination of equipment, race, spells was best for a character - which combination of classes was best for a group - were already worked out. If I wanted to play a class I was expected to play it exactly the way someone else had figured out long ago.
I would like to see some effort put into making every character an individual. The best solution I've thought of is to provide some sort of "gift" once every few levels(in EQ the trainers would give them out). Your elf-ranger wouldn't get the same gift as every other elf-ranger, and those elf-rangers wouldn't have anyway to get that gift on their own. Some people might complain if they got a bad gift, but the sting would be reduced by the knowledge that a few levels later they might get a great gift.
When grouping with new people, you wouldn't just assume their role. You would need to talk to them, find out what abilities they have, and then decide who does what.
Early role playing games tried to introduce variety by rolling dice to get player attributes, but people would just start over with a new character if they didn't like their dice roll, so in games like EQ you get to assign the stats yourself (again, their are expectations of how you will assign them). With gifts being randomly given out every few levels, it would take long enough to get the gifts that it wouldn't make sense to keep going back and starting over.
China is a sovereign nation and has full rights to what goes on inside their borders. We in the US may not *like* it, but their laws are their laws. No such laws exist to _allow_ for free speech.
"Abuses of human rights and freedoms have never been and will never be solely internal affairs of any country. As someone who years ago experienced firsthand the arbitrary rule of a dictatorial regime but then lived to see better times -- to a large extent because of the international solidarity extended to us -- I appeal to all those who have the opportunity to act against such arbitrary acts to express their solidarity with people who to this day live in a state of 'unfreedom.'" -- Vaclav Havel
I think President Havel, as a person formerly subject to similar laws, might disagree.
One of the major problems encountered with time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well adjusted family can't cope with. There is also no problem about changing the course of history - the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.
Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
This is another case of science fiction being well ahead of science.
A big part of the problem is that we don't really understand what emotion and consciousness are. We highly suspect that more than one brain cell is required, but do we really know for sure? Do we have any clue as to where the change from no-emotions and unconscious to counscious with emotions occurs?
Someone said that "And, even if we did, there is reason to believe that separated from an physical body, deprived of the normal developmental processes, etc. that its behavior still would not resemble consciousness". Are we sure the brain wouldn't have consciousness, or would it simply be mentally ill and full of agony? We just don't know.
Until we have a better idea of how much of a brain is required to make something we would think of as having human emotion or consciousness, we should leave the testing to animals brains, or at the very least put a very low upper limit on now many human brain cells can be grown together.
Am I the only one wondering how many of these brain cells will be needed to have a brain with feelings? Am I the only one concerned about the moral implications of these experiments? If embryos aren't human because they don't have a brain and can't have human emotions, then what do we say about something that consists of only a human brain and is capable of emotion, but has has no way of expressing to us what those emotions are?
The need for perfect balance could be reduced by making every player unique. In early RPGs this was done by generating random attributes for each avatar at the beginning. But predictably people kept generating new avatars until they got the stats they wanted. After that, people tend to learn what combinations of class-race-armour-weapons-skills work best and stick to them.
I would like to see some random variety introduced when it is too late to go back and start again. In EQ, you visited your guild masters every few levels. Suppose those masters gave you a random gift that made you different from every other member of your class. Maybe a ranger gets one spell that usually only enchanters have. Or he gets a weapon that only he, and no other ranger, can use. The gifts would be random, and given as you level up. Maybe your level 5 gift wasn't so good, but your level 15 gift rocks.
It would be up to you, and you alone, to figure out how to best use the gifts. The effect of uber-classes would still be there, but it would be muddied somewhat by the players who make best use of their particular gifts.
I will need VHS as long as I have family movies, or until there is a good way for me to put family movies on some other medium. So far DVD technology doesn't provide that yet.
I for one welcome our new Kobold overlords! (That gets me a free mod up, doesn't it?)
And that's the part that has always made me bitter. The fact us geeks will be there when these wild women are "ready to settle down." We won't be out there having the wild fun, partying, adventures with them, we'll be there when they're ready to end that and become more serious. They'll have all these memories and experiences, we'll have Saturday nights watching Star Trek reruns.
I recognized early that if a girl would rather spend her time at wild sexy parties with other guys instead of hanging out with me, she wasn't my type anyway. Let the girls go out and party. Don't expect me to still be interested when they stumble back. I'll be too busy with the girls who recognized quality early.
SlashChick's best comment is #4
One of the best decisions I ever made was to recognize that any girl who liked some other guy better than me just wasn't smart enough to be my girlfriend.
given its current popularity among European and Canadian travellers,
I often wonder how it is possible to relax in a place like that knowing how little freedom the staff that waits on you has. Do you just ignore the injustice and order another margarita?
I would feel better if the state would pass http://blackbox.cs.fit.edu/blog/kaner/archives/000 124.htmlthis software customer bill of rights. I especially like #4 "User has right to see and approve all transfers of information from her computer. Before an application transmits any data from the user's computer, the user should have the ability to see what's being sent. If the message is encrypted, the user should be shown an unencrypted version. On seeing the message, the user should be able to refuse to send it. This may cause the application to cancel a transaction (such as a sale that depends on transmission of a valid credit card number), but transmission of data from the user's machine without the user's knowledge or in spite of the user's refusal should be prosecutable as computer tampering."
I hope they don't use the poor ratings of this show as an excuse not to do anymore Star Trek series. The name still has selling power, at least enough to get people to give a new show a try. But they should have learned from DS9 and Voyager that while the name can get people to watch a couple episodes, writing is what really keeps them watching week after week. If they need a more recent example of that they should look at Battlestar Galactica.
Once again someone has "discovered" the obvious and reported it as news. Well, I suppose it never hurts to have this sort of thing put into writing so managers will believe it. Perhaps we'll get lucky and someone will "discover" that cots in the break room will help those who need a quick nap but don't have time to drive all the way home and back.
"you haven't got a leg to stand on" "You play word games". All these accusations without a shred of reasoning to back them up. It sounds like you trust logic even less than I do.
Yes, working from logic we discover only that we can know nothing, and even that discovery is suspect.
----
Well, then I guess you'll be logging off, since we can't know anything about solid state electronics, this communication is impossible. But you can't prove this communication is impossible unless you rely on logic, and as I just showed, we cannot prove logic is reliable without resorting to the fallacy of circular logic. So, logically, I don't have to log off.
I agree about the good results we usually get from logic. I use it myself. It seems to be the best mental tool we have. But, our belief in it is circular. You say people who predict things based on the Bible get egg on their face? Have you ever made a prediction based on logic and turned out to be wrong? I have. Most people I know have. So what do we do? We go back and examine the logic for the place were we made a mistake. We have so much faith in logic that no matter what it does to it we assume the logic is right and we ourselves are in error. We keep searching until we either give up (while keeping faith that the error is there somewhere) or we find something we can call an error. Of course, if we were mistaken before we could be mistaken again. But the point is, no matter what we believe in logic. Our mental processes simply won't accept that it could be wrong.
Our belief that logic is true is so instinctive to us that we disbelieve anything to the contrary. Is logic like the unfaithful husband and ourselves like the wife who keeps finding excuses for all evidence to the contrary simply because the husband is a good provider?
How scientific is it to base your beliefs on a popularity contest?
How do you know this god did't create the universe five minutes ago, with fake memories of a lifetime implanted in our brains?
I don't. As I said, there are many explanations consistent with what we know.
I see no way to know anything, from your viewpoint. Everything is suspect, unbelieveable.
Yes, working from logic we discover only that we can know nothing, and even that discovery is suspect.
You're right. I should have taken time to read your whole post to see that you had re-defined atheism away from the traditional meaning. " a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity" (from www.m-w.com). It would have been easier to understand had you changed the definition at the beginning of your statement rather than at the end which I never reached, having given up after the apparant problems found early in the statement.
You say atheism is not a religion because "it is the denial, in fact, of any religious doctrine" and "Atheism is not a religion because it has no...articles of faith" Because there is no proof that all religions are wrong, it is an act of faith to assume that they are. So the statement that atheism denies all other religions and at the same time has no faith is contradictary.
I find evolutionary theory completely plausible. Some difficult problems remain in my mind, like why the number of chromosomes differs from species to species, but I see no reason that they can't be solved eventually. We see the concept of evolutionary processes demonstrated all around us everyday, and earth is old enough for a lot of evolution to have occurred. As a scientific explanation, evolution works.
However, as a source of all truth, science doesn't work. Science has a fundamental problem with a reliance on logic. Any arguments to prove logic are inherently circular and (by logic) cannot be trusted. Science further has a problem in that when it gathers evidence for one thing, it gathers evidence for many things. We don't use Occams Razor because there is reason to believe that simpler is more true, we use it for our own convenience. Perhaps most importantly, science assumes everything has a cause. When you look back at the creation of the universe and of time itself, you realize that causality must break down. Therefore there must be something or someone beyond science.
In my own life I have seen enough evidence to believe in God and in his son Jesus. As part of that, I believe I am called to believe in Adam, Eve, the garden of Eden, etc.. I do not believe, nor do I expect anyone else to believe, that these ideas are easily compatible with science or much of the evidence we have found of dinosaurs, neanderthals, etc..
However, evolution is only one explanation of the archaeological evidence. Another explanation is misleading clues placed by a god who puts a high value on faith. Another is that evolution was guided by god's hand until he created Adam and Eve.
In short, I don't have a problem with believing in both. When trying to understand the behavior of men and women, both the fall of man and the evolution of man present valuable lessons. Both explain how men and women will react to situations. Both explain the world as it is. And neither belief precludes the other.
As for what should be taught in school, no one can be well-educated in this day and age without understanding evolution. But the students also need to be told that when it comes to history, all science can do is show whether an explanation is plausible. It can never prove what really happened.