It always strikes me as funny that a state that has no problem imprisoning, torturing and murdering people feels the ethical imperative to put a monkey in space first.
Unless, of course, it is given to you on the understanding that you're not supposed to give it out (ie. here's my phone number, but it isn't listed, so don't give it out). In which case you're in breach of contract if Facebook gets their hands on it.
Well, you certainly can't put it back in the box, but governments could always criminalize it with destructive fines so that if a company is discovered doing it, they have to pay, and pay big.
I'd like to start this post by saying "Fuck you you stupid ignorant half-witted nose-picking twat". But, if I did, I'd probably got modded down, so I'll cut to the chase.
So I'll start with your accusation of me being a fanboy. I'm not, I can't even watch Star Wars any more. The bad writing and poor acting makes it an unbearable experience. So I don't think I really sit in the category you claim I do.
I put it in the science fiction category because that's how it is framed. It has fantasy elements, to be sure, but not just fantasy elements, and the marketing and the plots by and large involve traditional science fiction elements.
Star Wars is mediocre sci-fi with mediocre fantasy elements.
There are different kinds of sci-fi. There are certainly substantial fantasy elements to Star Wars, but a lot of it boils down to super-ninjas with telekinesis and telepathy. I'll toss it in the science fiction category because it doesn't properly belong in the fantasy category.
I don't think anyone would describe Asimov's Foundation series as anything but science fiction, and yet you have the Mule who had mental powers that would probably have put Emperor Palpatine to shame.
In a lot of cases, where a genre belongs is as much about how it frames itself. Star Wars is framed as epic science fiction. I see no reason not to keep it in that categorization.
There have long been debates in the psychology and animal behavioral communities about whether true altruism exists. But the one thing that is clear from observing human societies and the societies of our closest relatives, that whatever the ultimate nature of altruism, it does exist, at least within a kin group. There's no doubt we can be selfish and greedy, but there are no lack of stories of people risking life and limb for other people, not to mention for peoples' pets (where, I think, you'll find that human capacity to make even non-humans members of the tribe) that the statement "We're all just greedy, even altruism is greed based upon delayed reward" does not explain human behavior.
But back to the point. A society based on greed would fail. I doubt even a bunch of smart people could make it work. At some point you have to trust that your neighbor isn't going to stab you in the back for his benefit, and he you. Without that, the whole fabric of society would collapse.
I meant to say "A parent does not rush into a burning building to save her child to feel good, she does it because there are basic urges far greater than how much you've got in the fucking bank."
I don't buy it. There's enough evidence for altrusim in our nearest relatives that I think it is a real phenomenon. A society is held together by more than greed, and it's just greed, then that society will fling itself apart. There ought to be a sense of community, and not just everyone looking to cut other people down for spurious benefits. Like I said, if it's pure greed, then it's just sociopathy, but clearly it is not. A parent does not rush into a burning building to save her child, she does it because there are basic urges far greater than how much you've got in the fucking bank.
I don't think it takes a degree to see people who were at least partially responsible for the meltdown getting their asses saved through government largess doing rather well, while the average person is worse off for it. We can debate a lot of things, but what we can't debate is that those who are most responsible are getting off rather easy; that's politicians and corporate leaders alike.
What's become pretty apparent to me is that while the protesters don't know shit about economics, neither, it appears, do those at the top of the food chain.
I do not think you can build a society purely on greed. That seems to me to invite little more than a sort of hedonism. At some point you have to demonstrate a little altruism, otherwise how are you not essentially a sociopath?
You must have some pretty bizarre documents. I find Word 2007/2010-generated docx documents are unreliable, but in general, the older 2000/XP/2003 docs work pretty well. I have seen some formatting issues, but nothing horrible.
As an example, I helped build a three hundred page document filled with tables and images, and did a chunk of mine in Libreoffice because I wasn't yet good enough in Word 2007 to do some of the formatting. One odd thing was that Word 2007 would get a little snaky around some of the bulleted lists, but when I opened the document in Writer, I could clean them up, and things worked fine in Word 2007. Actually the document was quite a hybrid. Parts of it were written in Word 2003, parts in Word 2007, and parts from LibreOffice. My boss did the final revisions in Word 2003 and then we saved it as a docx file.
And it's not like someone else wouldn't have come up with the theory of evolution, if Darwin hadn't, and yet Darwin is still lauded (or reviled, depending on your point of view). Ritchie laid some pretty important groundwork for computational engineering and science. C was lightweight, the compiler was relatively easy to port, it could do a lot of the low-level coding but could still compile very small, meaning you could write portable operating systems (like, y'know, Unix) without an overwhelming amount of effort. Doubtless someone else would have developed similar architectures, but they didn't, and Ritchie was directly involved in the development of one of the most influential languages ever developed and probably the most influential operating system in history.
If Einstein had not developed Relativity, someone else would have, so I guess we can just sort of ignore or make light his contributions to physics on/. to make ourselves look kewl.
Bullshit. Much more than Steve Jobs Ritchie was one of the key figures in the development of modern computing. C and Unix are among the major touchpoints in computer history, both to soon become dominant players in application development and operating systems.
This is like saying "Someone else would have laid the groundwork of modern computing, so while Alan Turing was a real smart and influential guy..."
Yup. I wouldn't touch their low-end consumer printers. Expensive garbage. But we've got quite a few $300 and up Laserjets, and other than the NIC in one of the three year old units a few months ago (it's now sitting at home on my boss's computer hooked up via USB), they've been rock solid. I have an old 4P and 4000, and replacement parts are readily available, and those two units, well, they don't have any bells and whistles, but damn if they don't just blood well work.
Well, I don't care what anyone says, the mid-range and high-end HP printers are still among the best. As much as I think HP seems poised to jump into a deep dark chasm, I hesitate to imagine what will happen if it actually does. I'm not terribly interested in their PCs and was stung by two of their notebooks, and their low-end printers are just as shitty as Lexmark's or Canon's, but if you're looking at mid-range color printers or at high end stuff, HP is tough to beat.
I was the network guy for a small ISP when Verisign introduced Site Finder. Believe me, at that point my boss and I decided it couldn't be worse if Satan was running those TLDs, and we weren't quite sure if it wasn't Satan running them.
If ICANN wouldn't tear those TLDs out of Verisign's hands despite the fact that they basically broke DNS (and a bunch of other things, most infamously a lot of SMTP anti-spam measures) with their "Site Finder" service, I doubt very much that there's anything Verisign could do right now that would compel ICANN to go after them again.
Mod +10 insightful. That's exactly what will come next, or some sort of Verisign Domain Deactivation Insurance Fee. Why, after all ill deeds of this company ICANN still allowed them within a thousand miles of being primary root/registrar for the two most important TLDs is beyond me. VeriSign has shown sufficient avarice, maliciousness and incompetence on a sufficient number of occasions that it just baffles my mind that they didn't have it yanked years ago.
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It always strikes me as funny that a state that has no problem imprisoning, torturing and murdering people feels the ethical imperative to put a monkey in space first.
But it may have something to do with the state of their religion.
Unless, of course, it is given to you on the understanding that you're not supposed to give it out (ie. here's my phone number, but it isn't listed, so don't give it out). In which case you're in breach of contract if Facebook gets their hands on it.
Well, you certainly can't put it back in the box, but governments could always criminalize it with destructive fines so that if a company is discovered doing it, they have to pay, and pay big.
I've backed it up twice, asshole. What are you, ten years old? Too fucking stupid to even get a proper account.
I'd like to start this post by saying "Fuck you you stupid ignorant half-witted nose-picking twat". But, if I did, I'd probably got modded down, so I'll cut to the chase.
So I'll start with your accusation of me being a fanboy. I'm not, I can't even watch Star Wars any more. The bad writing and poor acting makes it an unbearable experience. So I don't think I really sit in the category you claim I do.
I put it in the science fiction category because that's how it is framed. It has fantasy elements, to be sure, but not just fantasy elements, and the marketing and the plots by and large involve traditional science fiction elements.
Star Wars is mediocre sci-fi with mediocre fantasy elements.
Like Vermont?
There are different kinds of sci-fi. There are certainly substantial fantasy elements to Star Wars, but a lot of it boils down to super-ninjas with telekinesis and telepathy. I'll toss it in the science fiction category because it doesn't properly belong in the fantasy category.
I don't think anyone would describe Asimov's Foundation series as anything but science fiction, and yet you have the Mule who had mental powers that would probably have put Emperor Palpatine to shame.
In a lot of cases, where a genre belongs is as much about how it frames itself. Star Wars is framed as epic science fiction. I see no reason not to keep it in that categorization.
All of that research into Turing's contemporaries just so you can justify your homophobic biases.
He's shown his chops enough times now to convince me he's pretty good. He was very good in The Aviator and pretty impressive in Revolutionary Road.
There have long been debates in the psychology and animal behavioral communities about whether true altruism exists. But the one thing that is clear from observing human societies and the societies of our closest relatives, that whatever the ultimate nature of altruism, it does exist, at least within a kin group. There's no doubt we can be selfish and greedy, but there are no lack of stories of people risking life and limb for other people, not to mention for peoples' pets (where, I think, you'll find that human capacity to make even non-humans members of the tribe) that the statement "We're all just greedy, even altruism is greed based upon delayed reward" does not explain human behavior.
But back to the point. A society based on greed would fail. I doubt even a bunch of smart people could make it work. At some point you have to trust that your neighbor isn't going to stab you in the back for his benefit, and he you. Without that, the whole fabric of society would collapse.
I meant to say "A parent does not rush into a burning building to save her child to feel good, she does it because there are basic urges far greater than how much you've got in the fucking bank."
I don't buy it. There's enough evidence for altrusim in our nearest relatives that I think it is a real phenomenon. A society is held together by more than greed, and it's just greed, then that society will fling itself apart. There ought to be a sense of community, and not just everyone looking to cut other people down for spurious benefits. Like I said, if it's pure greed, then it's just sociopathy, but clearly it is not. A parent does not rush into a burning building to save her child, she does it because there are basic urges far greater than how much you've got in the fucking bank.
I don't think it takes a degree to see people who were at least partially responsible for the meltdown getting their asses saved through government largess doing rather well, while the average person is worse off for it. We can debate a lot of things, but what we can't debate is that those who are most responsible are getting off rather easy; that's politicians and corporate leaders alike.
What's become pretty apparent to me is that while the protesters don't know shit about economics, neither, it appears, do those at the top of the food chain.
I do not think you can build a society purely on greed. That seems to me to invite little more than a sort of hedonism. At some point you have to demonstrate a little altruism, otherwise how are you not essentially a sociopath?
You must have some pretty bizarre documents. I find Word 2007/2010-generated docx documents are unreliable, but in general, the older 2000/XP/2003 docs work pretty well. I have seen some formatting issues, but nothing horrible.
As an example, I helped build a three hundred page document filled with tables and images, and did a chunk of mine in Libreoffice because I wasn't yet good enough in Word 2007 to do some of the formatting. One odd thing was that Word 2007 would get a little snaky around some of the bulleted lists, but when I opened the document in Writer, I could clean them up, and things worked fine in Word 2007. Actually the document was quite a hybrid. Parts of it were written in Word 2003, parts in Word 2007, and parts from LibreOffice. My boss did the final revisions in Word 2003 and then we saved it as a docx file.
The one thing Congress can still do is starve the Executive of money.
And it's not like someone else wouldn't have come up with the theory of evolution, if Darwin hadn't, and yet Darwin is still lauded (or reviled, depending on your point of view). Ritchie laid some pretty important groundwork for computational engineering and science. C was lightweight, the compiler was relatively easy to port, it could do a lot of the low-level coding but could still compile very small, meaning you could write portable operating systems (like, y'know, Unix) without an overwhelming amount of effort. Doubtless someone else would have developed similar architectures, but they didn't, and Ritchie was directly involved in the development of one of the most influential languages ever developed and probably the most influential operating system in history.
If Einstein had not developed Relativity, someone else would have, so I guess we can just sort of ignore or make light his contributions to physics on /. to make ourselves look kewl.
Bullshit. Much more than Steve Jobs Ritchie was one of the key figures in the development of modern computing. C and Unix are among the major touchpoints in computer history, both to soon become dominant players in application development and operating systems.
This is like saying "Someone else would have laid the groundwork of modern computing, so while Alan Turing was a real smart and influential guy..."
Yup. I wouldn't touch their low-end consumer printers. Expensive garbage. But we've got quite a few $300 and up Laserjets, and other than the NIC in one of the three year old units a few months ago (it's now sitting at home on my boss's computer hooked up via USB), they've been rock solid. I have an old 4P and 4000, and replacement parts are readily available, and those two units, well, they don't have any bells and whistles, but damn if they don't just blood well work.
Well, I don't care what anyone says, the mid-range and high-end HP printers are still among the best. As much as I think HP seems poised to jump into a deep dark chasm, I hesitate to imagine what will happen if it actually does. I'm not terribly interested in their PCs and was stung by two of their notebooks, and their low-end printers are just as shitty as Lexmark's or Canon's, but if you're looking at mid-range color printers or at high end stuff, HP is tough to beat.
I was the network guy for a small ISP when Verisign introduced Site Finder. Believe me, at that point my boss and I decided it couldn't be worse if Satan was running those TLDs, and we weren't quite sure if it wasn't Satan running them.
If ICANN wouldn't tear those TLDs out of Verisign's hands despite the fact that they basically broke DNS (and a bunch of other things, most infamously a lot of SMTP anti-spam measures) with their "Site Finder" service, I doubt very much that there's anything Verisign could do right now that would compel ICANN to go after them again.
Mod +10 insightful. That's exactly what will come next, or some sort of Verisign Domain Deactivation Insurance Fee. Why, after all ill deeds of this company ICANN still allowed them within a thousand miles of being primary root/registrar for the two most important TLDs is beyond me. VeriSign has shown sufficient avarice, maliciousness and incompetence on a sufficient number of occasions that it just baffles my mind that they didn't have it yanked years ago.
Evil bastards sue evil bastards. News at 11.