They have a great Get Smart with a terrorist cell that turns out to be comprised of CIA, FBI, Scottland Yard, etc. secret agents. The only real terrorist had been arrested or died years earlier but none of them knew the rest were all phonies until Smart broke up the cell.
Our current constitution really serves a very tiny power elite.
You are allowed to pick one from column A or column B.
Your choice of column A or B was chosen from a pool of people who sold out to corporations for money and agreed to work with the existing power structure.
We haven't had a real democracy since the 1960's.
But at least they don't torture to many of us even tho they do incarcerate us at a higher rate than any other country in the world.
Well-- out of seven of us, he was the only one that complained about it. Said the game felt jerky and choppy when the rest of us felt it was smooth. I guess my eyes were educated on movies. B) Who needs more than 24fps?
If your old religion for say, drug use, got under the wire- it's legal.
If you try to found ANY new religion that says you must use drugs- it's doomed.
So you really do have religious discrimination. We just pretend we don't. Really a lot of religions are implicitly judged by parameters established by the dominant religion in an area. If a new religion deviates too much, it's suppressed.
Same for libraries. Any thing like a library "but on the internet" is being killed at birth by these legal restrictions that they don't apply to established libraries.
As a side note: My friend no longer buys any DVD's since she checks all of them out from her library for free.
You are overloading faith when you use it that way.
If I hold a ball and let it go a thousand times and it always falls to the ground, then my belief it will fall on release again is not faith. But- it's still a theory- it COULD go up or sideways that 1001th time.
If I assert the existence of an imaginary ball that you can't see and can't falsify, that's faith.
If I know that a person subscribes to the scientific method and they perform an experiment and publish the data and other groups reperform the experiment and confirm it; I do not have to perform the experiments myself. I trust them (which is a form of faith but less irrational).
You are basically saying anything that I can't personally prove from first principles is faith. That's bullshit and fatuous. It's really a way to try to undercut the scientific method.
The theory of evolution is based on a large number of facts (this fossil was found 13' down in the orange layer of rock) (these genetic structures do show a rate of change that fits the overall theory) that correlate correctly. It's provable and falsifiable.
We have a huge number of facts in a wide variety of disciplines to back it up. It is as plausible to disbelieve evolution as it is to disbelieve in drug effects or electricity.
After 20 years of arguing this- I stopped. It usually resulted in the other side shouting "I'm not listening" while plugging their ears or relying on outright lies of the creationist movement to support their fantasies.
It really destroyed a lot of my respect for the christian religion that they would engage in such scummy and duplicitous behavior to support such a small part of their faith. They are supposed to be moral, honest and kind. Cardinal virtues of the religion. And they sacrifice all three to support this goofy creationist bullshit.
For "god's" sake, give it up and move on to the real parts of your faith.
Yea I know. There is a fundamental rule that parents can raise their kids to be suicidal murderous monsters if they want to (not joking- serious here). It's a fundamental problem with Iraq- the only way to really fix it would be to reeducate the kids to different values and get them out of the hands of their murderous parents.
Only if you cross certain arbitrary lines (feeding a kid too much food, keeping them in cages instead of beds, touching them in a way that is taken to be inappropriate) does society jump down your ass and take them away from you.
You can brainwash them and teach them any wierd world view (an entire generation of kids in the US is being brought up with very extreme values because of private schools) and that's okay.
Public schools were a great system for sanding off those extremes and giving you the agility to simultaneously believe your wacko beliefs but also let others have there own. The current generation is much more intolerant and since their way is the only way they have ever been exposed to they can't compromise on gay rights or abortion or other issues. They feel they MUST control other people's behavior because it is just a crime against the universe.
I have a friend who can see the difference between 60fps and 72fps in online games and 60fps bugs the crap out of him.
I can hear the difference if i put on a CD and listen to it side by side- but not otherwise. MP3's - regardless of how good sound a little "muddy" compared to a CD.
However you are probably right that 256kbps vs 512kbps are basically the same (both will have some muddiness compared to a pure cd but be similar to each other).
The mountains in south america are covered with trees.
I'm sure the plants will come (tho at a slower pace than the insects).
Humans have tried to do this artificially with terrible results so we are hesitant to introduce new species these days so it will probably have to happen naturally. But it will.
I doubt the spruce trees can adapt quickly enough.
Our Engineering college had two weedout courses. Typically about 33% finished the course. Typically no one passed them the first attempt. They were more ridiculous than Compsci until the accreditation thing came up and they resolved to drive about 70% of us from the program entirely.
It ran about $1200 a semester back then after fees, books, etc. Today, it's closer to $3,500 a semester now. Since things were so brutal, no one was able to get much above 12 hours a semester so it was really a 5 to 6 year degree program for a bachelors.
Few use women in the field as a criteria- but I think they really should looking back on things.
Close to six figures is nice. I only know one person with a masters degree who makes close to six figures. I'm high five myself (tho six with my investments). I made six figures as a consultant. It was nice. 120 was a very magical level- it felt like I always had enough money to do whatever I wanted. Anyway, most of my other friends who are seniors seem to make 60's to low 80's. The lowest level of actual management at my place seems to make right at six figures. That's where I will probably be in the next two years.
I've worked for both kinds and I agree with you. IT people should just not work for any non-technical company. You will always be treated like garbage or ignored while the business people are well treated. Typical example: Open bar bowling day for the business staff to "team build". Team meeting / Lunch at a chinese restaurant for the technical staff.
Also, they don't understand anything you do so you are so tied up and straight jacketed that you don't get to do fun stuff.
I was a consultant for six years. It is VERY hard to keep contracts going. Companies only want to deal with companies (tax issues) and vendor consultants ($150 an hour for IBM guys- but most of that goes to IBM). They want to actively force an ordinary people back down to employee status.
It was wonderful during the 80's and early 90's. Then they had a bunch of tax laws passed that made it more difficult to work as an independent or small contracting house. I do remember that period happily tho. But in 2000 it became clear I needed to land as a salaryman fast. A lot of my consultant buds didn't see that and got into real trouble in 2001/2002.
Actually, she came out very stepford like. It's a very effective program and uses a lot of cult-like techniques including complete isolation from even the parents until the kids acheive certain states.
And like 1984, it's not enough for the kids to say he is holding up four fingers when he is holding up one- the people running it are wise to that and the kids have to believe it before being allowed privileges.
You have religious people who actively believe in the big pink monster in the closet. You have atheists who actively believe there is not a big pink monster in the closet.*
And you have atheists who do not actively believe there is not a big pink monster in the closet. To them not believing in god is like not believe in Thor, or Zeus, or Tree Spirits, or that joe smith's gold tablets were really from god, or that we really are all god space aliens (scientology), or reincarnation.
Your average religious person probably shares some of this lack of belief. It's not "I don't believe in that", it's "Oh come on- that's just goofy".
* Active atheists are usually fairly young and have to actively believe in no god just to fight free of the universal irrational believe installed in them when they are 6 years old and can't defend themselves. They also are often surrounded by a lot of religious types and under constant pressure so they have to push back.
I saw it best put here: We are ALL atheists. I just believe in one less god than you do.
People in the world: 5 billion. Limited resources: Ski Runs. Old Growth Oak. Beach front property. Titanium, platinum, etc. that are used to make some vehicles work better than others. Really attractive people. Really smart people. Really nice people. Really nasty mean people. Winning horses in a race. Winners in the lottery. Island resorts Expert suit makers Expert hair cutters Expert brain surgeons Property with streams flowing through them. Really good topsoil. Good Cigars 30 year port. ---
So we have an expert hair cutter who can cut 8 cuts a day. 80 people want to get their hair cut by the expert hair cutter each day. 8 of them are willing to do more than the other 72 to get that haircut. It's impossible for all 80 to get that hair cut.
Capitalism is a way of negotiating that out.
You could also randomly assign 8 slots each day-- but what would happen unless you are very careful is that some of those eight would "sell" in some fashion their slots.
Or you could put the 80 people a day into a rotation so that each would basically get one hair cut in their life from that really good hair cutter and the rest from "so so " hair cutters.
Better is an overloaded word however, even by your argument I think it still applies.
While the bacteria are not better at playing the piano, they are better in regard to their environment which now includes a toxic chemical that they can ignore and still reproduce.
They could be worse if developing this trait made it difficult for them to reproduce in the absence of the toxin (unless of course the toxin is now there 100% of the time- like oxygen once our o2 atmosphere developed).
And notice even in the darkest days of the 1950's in the US, folks didn't think it was that bad. The only people who saw problems were subversives and commies.
Thank god for the baby boom- at least it blew things loose for a little while but now I fear the aging baby boom is going to get really repressive.
My co-worker in the US did this to his daughter for 18 months when she started running away. There's a large facility with a capacity for 500 "students" in this city. They "reeducate" the kids. Sound familiar?
He paid a lot of money and she was basically brainwashed back to a safe mental state (honestly- she was headed down a self destructive bad road).
Parents have large amounts of freedom to brainwash their children until those children move out.
I'm betting that the tickets are issued from a central database and so the numbers on them are only valid after they are issued. Those numbers are probably only valid for a limited period of time too.
They might stupidly be using a sequential numbering system so you could theoretically rip off another customer by getting a ticket and then making another ticket with a slightly higher number.
But you probably would need to lug around a customized ticket printer- possibly with customized tickets- possibly with a special bar code format- and do that before the other customer cashed in their ticket.
Slashdot Mirror
They have a great Get Smart with a terrorist cell that turns out to be comprised of CIA, FBI, Scottland Yard, etc. secret agents. The only real terrorist had been arrested or died years earlier but none of them knew the rest were all phonies until Smart broke up the cell.
ironically it's easier to get mildly illicit drugs through security than deoderant these days.
Our current constitution really serves a very tiny power elite.
You are allowed to pick one from column A or column B.
Your choice of column A or B was chosen from a pool of people who sold out to corporations for money and agreed to work with the existing power structure.
We haven't had a real democracy since the 1960's.
But at least they don't torture to many of us even tho they do incarcerate us at a higher rate than any other country in the world.
Well-- out of seven of us, he was the only one that complained about it. Said the game felt jerky and choppy when the rest of us felt it was smooth. I guess my eyes were educated on movies. B) Who needs more than 24fps?
Actually, if you look at the chart, as soon as the computers caught up and showed how low the market had gone, folks started buying.
They were selling based on the false impression that the market was not down enough yet.
It's a lot like religion.
If your old religion for say, drug use, got under the wire- it's legal.
If you try to found ANY new religion that says you must use drugs- it's doomed.
So you really do have religious discrimination. We just pretend we don't. Really a lot of religions are implicitly judged by parameters established by the dominant religion in an area. If a new religion deviates too much, it's suppressed.
Same for libraries. Any thing like a library "but on the internet" is being killed at birth by these legal restrictions that they don't apply to established libraries.
As a side note: My friend no longer buys any DVD's since she checks all of them out from her library for free.
You are overloading faith when you use it that way.
If I hold a ball and let it go a thousand times and it always falls to the ground, then my belief it will fall on release again is not faith. But- it's still a theory- it COULD go up or sideways that 1001th time.
If I assert the existence of an imaginary ball that you can't see and can't falsify, that's faith.
If I know that a person subscribes to the scientific method and they perform an experiment and publish the data and other groups reperform the experiment and confirm it; I do not have to perform the experiments myself. I trust them (which is a form of faith but less irrational).
You are basically saying anything that I can't personally prove from first principles is faith. That's bullshit and fatuous. It's really a way to try to undercut the scientific method.
The theory of evolution is based on a large number of facts (this fossil was found 13' down in the orange layer of rock) (these genetic structures do show a rate of change that fits the overall theory) that correlate correctly. It's provable and falsifiable.
We have a huge number of facts in a wide variety of disciplines to back it up. It is as plausible to disbelieve evolution as it is to disbelieve in drug effects or electricity.
After 20 years of arguing this- I stopped. It usually resulted in the other side shouting "I'm not listening" while plugging their ears or relying on outright lies of the creationist movement to support their fantasies.
It really destroyed a lot of my respect for the christian religion that they would engage in such scummy and duplicitous behavior to support such a small part of their faith. They are supposed to be moral, honest and kind. Cardinal virtues of the religion. And they sacrifice all three to support this goofy creationist bullshit.
For "god's" sake, give it up and move on to the real parts of your faith.
Yea I know. There is a fundamental rule that parents can raise their kids to be suicidal murderous monsters if they want to (not joking- serious here). It's a fundamental problem with Iraq- the only way to really fix it would be to reeducate the kids to different values and get them out of the hands of their murderous parents.
Only if you cross certain arbitrary lines (feeding a kid too much food, keeping them in cages instead of beds, touching them in a way that is taken to be inappropriate) does society jump down your ass and take them away from you.
You can brainwash them and teach them any wierd world view (an entire generation of kids in the US is being brought up with very extreme values because of private schools) and that's okay.
Public schools were a great system for sanding off those extremes and giving you the agility to simultaneously believe your wacko beliefs but also let others have there own. The current generation is much more intolerant and since their way is the only way they have ever been exposed to they can't compromise on gay rights or abortion or other issues. They feel they MUST control other people's behavior because it is just a crime against the universe.
Some people can.
I have a friend who can see the difference between 60fps and 72fps in online games and 60fps bugs the crap out of him.
I can hear the difference if i put on a CD and listen to it side by side- but not otherwise. MP3's - regardless of how good sound a little "muddy" compared to a CD.
However you are probably right that 256kbps vs 512kbps are basically the same (both will have some muddiness compared to a pure cd but be similar to each other).
There is nothing magical about a library. They started as private citizens- not as government entities.
Hell, I could offer up my collection of PDF's as a library if you want.
This is about a fundamental extension of copyright law that would have prevented libraries if it had been present when they started.
The mountains in south america are covered with trees.
I'm sure the plants will come (tho at a slower pace than the insects).
Humans have tried to do this artificially with terrible results so we are hesitant to introduce new species these days so it will probably have to happen naturally. But it will.
I doubt the spruce trees can adapt quickly enough.
Yea - kind of frightening.
And it's the best and the brightest that get lobotomized like this becuase they are unhappiest with the powers that be.
However, once you relax and once the pressure stops, you can really fall into a state of "lack of belief" as opposed to "belief in something".
I don't believe some particular god exists or not.
It gives me the peace to give wiccan gifts to my pagan friends and christian gifts to my christian friends.
I believe in them and want them to be happy even if I don't believe in either of their particular dieties.
--
I do not have faith and believe that no gods exist.
However, I lack belief in any gods.
I got out of UH with a comp sci degree in 93.
Our Engineering college had two weedout courses. Typically about 33% finished the course. Typically no one passed them the first attempt. They were more ridiculous than Compsci until the accreditation thing came up and they resolved to drive about 70% of us from the program entirely.
It ran about $1200 a semester back then after fees, books, etc. Today, it's closer to $3,500 a semester now. Since things were so brutal, no one was able to get much above 12 hours a semester so it was really a 5 to 6 year degree program for a bachelors.
Few use women in the field as a criteria- but I think they really should looking back on things.
Close to six figures is nice. I only know one person with a masters degree who makes close to six figures. I'm high five myself (tho six with my investments). I made six figures as a consultant. It was nice. 120 was a very magical level- it felt like I always had enough money to do whatever I wanted. Anyway, most of my other friends who are seniors seem to make 60's to low 80's. The lowest level of actual management at my place seems to make right at six figures. That's where I will probably be in the next two years.
I've worked for both kinds and I agree with you. IT people should just not work for any non-technical company. You will always be treated like garbage or ignored while the business people are well treated. Typical example: Open bar bowling day for the business staff to "team build". Team meeting / Lunch at a chinese restaurant for the technical staff.
Also, they don't understand anything you do so you are so tied up and straight jacketed that you don't get to do fun stuff.
I was a consultant for six years. It is VERY hard to keep contracts going. Companies only want to deal with companies (tax issues) and vendor consultants ($150 an hour for IBM guys- but most of that goes to IBM). They want to actively force an ordinary people back down to employee status.
It was wonderful during the 80's and early 90's. Then they had a bunch of tax laws passed that made it more difficult to work as an independent or small contracting house. I do remember that period happily tho. But in 2000 it became clear I needed to land as a salaryman fast. A lot of my consultant buds didn't see that and got into real trouble in 2001/2002.
Actually, she came out very stepford like. It's a very effective program and uses a lot of cult-like techniques including complete isolation from even the parents until the kids acheive certain states.
And like 1984, it's not enough for the kids to say he is holding up four fingers when he is holding up one- the people running it are wise to that and the kids have to believe it before being allowed privileges.
Jeez- some people don't get jokes.
It was a joke mr. stupid moderator.
There is a key point tho.
You have religious people who actively believe in the big pink monster in the closet.
You have atheists who actively believe there is not a big pink monster in the closet.*
And you have atheists who do not actively believe there is not a big pink monster in the closet. To them not believing in god is like not believe in Thor, or Zeus, or Tree Spirits, or that joe smith's gold tablets were really from god, or that we really are all god space aliens (scientology), or reincarnation.
Your average religious person probably shares some of this lack of belief. It's not "I don't believe in that", it's "Oh come on- that's just goofy".
* Active atheists are usually fairly young and have to actively believe in no god just to fight free of the universal irrational believe installed in them when they are 6 years old and can't defend themselves. They also are often surrounded by a lot of religious types and under constant pressure so they have to push back.
I saw it best put here:
We are ALL atheists. I just believe in one less god than you do.
Insightful-- pfft.
People in the world:
5 billion.
Limited resources:
Ski Runs.
Old Growth Oak.
Beach front property.
Titanium, platinum, etc. that are used to make some vehicles work better than others.
Really attractive people.
Really smart people.
Really nice people.
Really nasty mean people.
Winning horses in a race.
Winners in the lottery.
Island resorts
Expert suit makers
Expert hair cutters
Expert brain surgeons
Property with streams flowing through them.
Really good topsoil.
Good Cigars
30 year port.
---
So we have an expert hair cutter who can cut 8 cuts a day. 80 people want to get their hair cut by the expert hair cutter each day. 8 of them are willing to do more than the other 72 to get that haircut. It's impossible for all 80 to get that hair cut.
Capitalism is a way of negotiating that out.
You could also randomly assign 8 slots each day-- but what would happen unless you are very careful is that some of those eight would "sell" in some fashion their slots.
Or you could put the 80 people a day into a rotation so that each would basically get one hair cut in their life from that really good hair cutter and the rest from "so so " hair cutters.
That both browsers are mature enough to share.
Better is an overloaded word however, even by your argument I think it still applies.
While the bacteria are not better at playing the piano, they are better in regard to their environment which now includes a toxic chemical that they can ignore and still reproduce.
They could be worse if developing this trait made it difficult for them to reproduce in the absence of the toxin (unless of course the toxin is now there 100% of the time- like oxygen once our o2 atmosphere developed).
I see the problem to but it's two late to loose your temper over some thing tervial like that.
And notice even in the darkest days of the 1950's in the US, folks didn't think it was that bad. The only people who saw problems were subversives and commies.
Thank god for the baby boom- at least it blew things loose for a little while but now I fear the aging baby boom is going to get really repressive.
Don't kid yourself.
My co-worker in the US did this to his daughter for 18 months when she started running away. There's a large facility with a capacity for 500 "students" in this city. They "reeducate" the kids. Sound familiar?
He paid a lot of money and she was basically brainwashed back to a safe mental state (honestly- she was headed down a self destructive bad road).
Parents have large amounts of freedom to brainwash their children until those children move out.
I'm betting that the tickets are issued from a central database and so the numbers on them are only valid after they are issued. Those numbers are probably only valid for a limited period of time too.
They might stupidly be using a sequential numbering system so you could theoretically rip off another customer by getting a ticket and then making another ticket with a slightly higher number.
But you probably would need to lug around a customized ticket printer- possibly with customized tickets- possibly with a special bar code format- and do that before the other customer cashed in their ticket.
LOL!
Very droll.