Of that he had given 6.5 billion to the foundation.
That's not even tithing.
Now don't get me wrong- its very generous of him and he is doing a lot of good with that 8% of his money.
So.. why should I had my $46 bucks to the rest of his pile of personal wealth? I'll give him the $4 for his charity since he probably can put it to better use than I can. The best I can do is send money for tsunami relief, work at the food bank, and help build houses for habitat for humanity.
And I imagine most slashdotters, being geeky, have read Donald Hick's (which I first got by bit-torrent in a collection of 137 other similar books on technique) outstanding work on the g-spot and other similar excellent books*.
One would hope more than average of them are pretty open-minded and have active fantasy lives too. Not so sure about the hygiene part tho.
--- * The top two books I got through BT in the last 3 years resulted in a mind-blowing multi-hour g-spot orgasm for her and the ability to multi-o for me. The second is a cute trick. You learn how to use your pc muscles (the ones you work with kegel excersizes) to turn off ejaculating until you want to do so. Once you have that down you can keep getting aroused all day long until you actually do allow your self release. Both are reasonably priced off of Amazon (like under $10 used). I think the second one has a title like "how to make love all night" and is written by a female sex therapist.
I know it is off-topic but Donald Hick's book is *amazing* stuff. It covers the emotional aspects as well as the physical aspects. A complete 10 step roadmap of what to do- what not to do- and what to look for before proceeding to the next step each time. For her it was clearly a deeply spiritual experience. I can only wonder what it's like from the outside myself.
Like Vin Diesel (big D&D guy), Sam is really a major geek who just happened to have a successful hollywood career as an actor. Sam was a huge star wars geek.
I'd put Michelle Mayrink as Jordon over
on
Top Ten Geek Girls
·
· Score: 1
... Paris Hilton or Daryl Hannah.
And agree with the other folks comments that there are plenty of female geeks who should qualify over fictional characters.
There was that girl with the big black glasses on ZDnet computer show back in 2000. Can't remember her name but had a great combo of computer smarts, personality, and hot but nerdy looks (probably chosen on purpose for the show but maybe her natural style).
And what about Kim Kommando with a nationally syndicated radio program?
Well, for what it is worth- I live in Texas-- the heart of the bible belt. From what I've heard, people on the east and west coasts (or in most of europe) don't face the constant pressure that I have.
I've had friends who never attended church get offended or turn cold when they discovered I didn't believe in their god- usually because they pressed me on the subject. Actually- like in "Contact" they were really more disturbed that I believed in *no* god. I got the impression, they'd have been more comfortable if I believed in a different god that said theirs was a false god than my simple non-belief.
On the good side, Once we have a completely transparent society of where everyone goes and what everyone does, perhaps it will be more difficult for a lot of fun behavior to be outlawed. In the past, everyone did stuff (adultery -- 50% of men AND women by the 7th year of marriage) but pretended it didn't happen and was a bad thing. In the new future, your life will be an open book.
If one religious person had done this, then it wouldn't have been an issue.
You and I *both* know that many religions feel it is there duty to convert people to their religion. I've been the target of scores of attempts over 30 years-- some subtle as an invitation to church and others as blatant as an ultimatum by people who were friends or very friendly until they discovered my lack of faith.
But- hey- no problem- I live in a country where they won't use a power drill on my head because I believe 99% the same as they do but I believe differently on the other 1%.
And I think you believe I'm anti-religion- I'm not. Or intolerant of religious people- also not true. Or maybe that I think *most* religious people are intolerant- again not true.
My issue with religion as a *general* topic, is that it empowers some people who are good and moral in most regards to do great evil without guilt. They are kind, moral, and good to people of their faith and sociopaths to everyone else. This includes *popes* of the early roman catholic church, priests of the modern church, members of scientology, members of islam, members of christianity, and many historical faiths that no longer exist.
In america, over the last two decades, they have been aggressively inserting religion into government and then pretending to be shocked when they are called on it. You know... "In God We Trust" wasn't put on the money by the founding fathers. It wasn't even put there in the first 100 years that america existed.
---
As for "pushing my secular view on them". Maybe. They certainly feel free to push their religious views on me so turnabout is fair play. But that wasn't my point. My point was, that societies where one religion has great power (especially if it is the state religion) tend to treat people of other faiths very poorly. That power corrupts the good things about their religion. The best way to keep the followers of a religion "good" is to prevent them from having very much power.
Stalin (an atheist) killed tens of millions of people. (tho i could argue he was treating atheism as a religion and it wasn't why he killed those millions).
Azure- we have a situation in the US where a diverse group of people from *opposite* religions are able to live together peacefully.
I believe that is because the law of the land is secular and because religion is viewed as a *private* matter- even embarassing to talk about with strangers very much. The common slang is "don't discuss religion, sex, or politics" (in that order).
I think you are mistaken when you think my belief is simple backwards religious bigotry. Religion makes it too easy to dehumanize other people. When religion gains control of the state, terrible things almost always follow shortly afterwards. The religious persecution which flourished in Europe (in many countries that are ironically almost without religion today) led many to flee to america. It's a historical fact- just like the huguenots and the catholics in france. The jews just about anywhere in the world. The baha'is in Iran. Etc.
My belief is based on historical events in many countries all around the world. It is my belief that when a religion gains complete power in an area, its members (and leaders) will engage in evil activities with regard to members of other religions. And they will even believe they are doing *GOOD* and feel no guilt. That's pretty sick.
I think any sexual act between informed consenting adults is not a problem.
I think some folks are gay- but really most are bi. They force themselves into one mold or another.
I think religion is *good* for society *and* I think religion is *bad* for society.
We should teach every child to fear invisible demons until they are about 15 and then ruthlessly disabuse them of that notion so at a concious level they are ethical because of logic and at an *emotional* level, they should just *know* certain things (murder, stealing) is wrong.
Polyamoury? All for it.
Dumping your kids and starting a new life- Nope- YOU screwed someone and had kids- it's YOUR responsibility. You are on the hook for expenses to raise the kids for the next 18 years.
SMALL government? FOR IT. LOW Taxes? FOR THEM. Freedom to dope myself, commit suicide, eat anything I want, have sex with 50 people on one night on a whim- for them.
Universal Health Care of about $5,000 in benefits per year for all americans-- for them. Universal Health Care without those limits? Against it.
Benefits for people that lose their jobs? For them.
--- It's NOT that simple.
The republican party has built an unholy alliance of big government fascists, business, the military industrial complex, and the anti-abortion, anti gay marriage crowd. It's FINALLY starting to crack apart. *Independents* like O'Reilly (who I *completely agree with you is a *conservative* independent) can't be easily boxed.
But conservative and liberal independents are just that. If the democrats swung just a little to the right- they pick up large numbers of them.
I havn't voted for a republican myself since Reagan. They are not bloody CONSERVATIVES. They lower taxes on the rich, put in religious controls that never existed before (Our founding fathers were DEISTS - not bloody CHRISTIANS). I would vote for *REAL* conservatives in a heartbeat. You know- the ones that lower taxes *AND* shrink government *AND* let me be free and leave me alone.
I just don't see many of them around.
Left with those options I vote democratic for the social freedoms at least (since both parties are now "big government", "owned by big business") or 3rd party.
As much as I consider him a straight-shooter on many issues, you are unfortunately correct except I'm not sure he considered the republicans "his" party for most of the last year.
No cell phones (invented in my 20's- below "brick" size in my 30's). No walkmen (invented in my 20's). No COLOR TV until I was in my Teens. No cable TV (came around in my 20's). SIX Stations. ONE station after midnight.
So Bill was in his 30's before any of these things came along.
OTH.
I recently cracked a joke from "Airplane" with a fellow gamer. They didn't get it. They'd never seen "Airplane." BARELY heard of it. I know a bit about what's going on with folks down to about 30 and have no clue before that age. Stuff like Youtube and Myspace just blows up out of nowhere to me.
And I do a reasonable amount of spidering out from references here on slashdot and other boards to stay culturally aware. All I have to do is spot one Blockbuster video (now almost defunct) before it gets going and I can retire rich in under five years (BBV gave a 131 to 1 return on investment-- $1,000 -> $131,000 in under 5 years). That and it lets me relate to my daughter.
I see this kind of modding on posts that say bad things about islam or christianity.
They like to use "redundant" -- I guess somehow it must be like when the italians would kill each other after leaving their mistress on the way to confession so they would die in mortal sin. (It being okay to repeatedly commit adultery as long as you confess each time). They must think redundant will make it more invisable or cost me more mod points.
I'm pegged at max, and it's pretty easy to get pegged at max. But it does make me focus my moderating on "0" posts. I've modded up a few.
I once spoke to cowboy neal about the modding here. I said, "Cowboy neal- all the "good" modes that I see in metamoderate are always correct. About 90% of the "bad" mods are incorrect. I think the site would benefit by focusing the metamoderating on the "bad" mods which are likely to be incorrect." He said, "I don't the benefit to that." And I said, "Because the good ones are correct- it's wasted time. and the bad ones are often wrong- so that focuses the metamoderating on the problem". He said, "I don't the benefit to that or any reason to discuss this further."
Typing for work 10 hours a day and then raiding "Fear" for 39 hours over the holiday-- well actually it was tradeskilling that killed me and most people.
You load the three virtual hides, and knife into the skinning kit (10 clicks so far) and click it and about 35% of the time you get a "finished scrap of leather" which you put away into inventory (3 more clicks) and *maybe* got a skillup. Repeat this about 3,000 times and you are a "master tailor".
I was a master brewer, jewelry maker, and blacksmith in EQ. Still am I guess but mostly I play only about 5 hours a week (more and the hands start to go).
So if they get a direct implant so you don't have to mouse or keyboard- virtual reality becomes very appealing.
Hmm. Think about being 70 and being "old, hurting, and barely able to walk around the block" or... by direct brain stimulation "young, vibrant, able to run-- hell fly- live the life of movie stars, go to fantastic parties- dance the night away" all while sitting in some old folk's home. Since your tongue nerves are gone at that age too- a virtual implant would let you *taste* food again like when you were in your 20's. That alone would be worth it to gourmands.
A bit of a blow hard but fairly reasonable when it comes to treatment of his guests except for a couple of his hot points (then he talks over them instead of giving them the last word- and it's obvious he's being a bit irrational at those times).
He's criticized the left... AND the right for years. He has a point of view that doesn't fit perfectly with either party.
Hmmm. Sounds like an *independent* to me. Other than abortion where he is hard "right" (and catholic), he's not that far right on many issues.
I think you know a hell of a lot less about your faith than you think you do.
Having been buzz-sawed by various friendly christian types over the years, I'm pretty familiar with the extremes as well as the middle ground.
It's okay- most christians believe what they *want* to believe. It's a faith, not a scientific proof. It doesn't have to make logical sense.
Of course my parent post probably got modded down by the O'Reilly haters because I said he was pretty darn straight shooting and independent and also got modded down by the religious types who prefer to suppress discussions of christianity's wackier aspects.
Religious people are not half-baked simpletons. Some religious people are brilliant. But before they could even begin to think logically, stories about imaginary beings were presented to them as if they were real. In many cases, everyone around them believes those imaginary beings are real.
So they have some very cockeyed basic views about reality which quite frankly don't match any hard evidence we've been able to collect. It leads them to *deny* and even *destroy* hard evidence that contradicts their fantasy that they call reality.
---
And as a side note- Gotta love the chickenshit modding on my parent post. No need to read opposing views you don't agree with- just mod them down. But hey- it's Slashdot. Many of my comments about Islam or Christianity have gotten the same treatment (so far none by buddists, mormans, wiccan's-- either they are not on slashdot or they are not so uncomfortable with views that differ from their view of "reality".)
He is reasonably independent and straight talking.
As a catholic, he's got his position on abortion of course.
The right is finally starting to disintegrate a bit and break back into it's pieces.
There are fiscal conservatives (quasi-libertarian), social conservatives (o'reilly), war-hawks, corporatists, and not a few fascists among them.
He's probably right about reality- but you know-- reality can SUCK pretty harshly for a lot of folks. For $12.99 a month, they can sink into a reality where they are rich and powerful. If they could just add decent sex to the mix (via a direct brain implant) i'd probably hook up as well.
I can't play mmorg's like i used to- the hands just hurt too much.
Now the irony...
Bill O'Reilly and Millions of conservatives are in their OWN made up reality. It's called christianity and it has it's own rules and mythos. The lore is pretty good but the graphics suck except when they make a big epic movie about them. Lots of people playing christianity 3.2 a) believe they will live after death (even tho their own rules can be interpreted to say that only personality less "soul" (i.e. NOT THEM- just some kinda godfuel) will survive). b) believe evil forces literally possess people and influence *reality*. c) believe in magical powers that can't be observed or proven to exist in anyway. d) make themselves miserable following the "made up" rules about morality and secretly breaking them (swaggert, haggerd, the local deacon who was having a 10 year long affair)
--- Reality is Sex is fun and with fertile people who don't take protection, it makes babies. There is not enough good stuff to go around for everyone. It's great to love and be loved back. If you want to get rich, you have got to be lucky, a law-breaker (and lucky), or work *EXTREMELY* hard. Abortion makes sense under some circumstances. There will always be more humans. Being evil is probably not good for your society (but sometimes it is). Being immoral is not good if everyone does it- but it works out fine as long as only a few are. Either we let folks live their own lives- or we get out the sharp knives and start killing each other. A *SECULAR* society is required or religious people *will* start killing people sooner or later. etc. etc.
Bill O'Reilly doesn't live in reality any more than gamers do. He just is a member of a *very* popular game and so he thinks that is reality when- it's really not.
I have had several microsoft documents over the last six years that I could *not* open with microsoft until I first opened them with openoffice and saved them as word documents. Something was wrong with them and word couldn't partially read them.
I also use open office to shrink word documents- on average about 2 MEGABYTES each (wtf?). Merely by opening and saving them.
I have two word documents that OO can't open which open correctly in microsoft. Each is about 10 megabytes and has roughly 150 graphics in each (two 150 page books I've created). It opens them mangled and then crashes while editing. In OO 1.0.3 it couldn't even open them- so progress is being made.
I've bugged OO for it's inability to cut and paste rectangular sections for about 2 YEARS now and it's still not fixed. This is a feature I still use word and textpad for.
Word has no new features that I need- much less that I need and will pay $495 for. OTH, I get a corporate deal-- current version of word for $20. At $20, it's not a bad deal.
However, with the DRM crap they are starting to put into it- and the possibility that Vista may belly up on me and lock all my data- I'll be moving to linux (ubuntu) as of Vista for all my important documents.
Actually, the more detailed your laws get, the more open they are to abuse.
When you have a general law, then you can argue that a reasonable person should know better. This is where we were through about 1900.
When you have an incredibly detailed law, you can argue that the specifics of the law were not broken so the bad guy gets away. This is where we are since then.
The side effect of all these detailed laws is that you are always breaking one of them-- and the government can selectively enforce them against people it doesn't like.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone having guns only works in certain cultures.
Counter-example: Iraq.
Granted that's a lot of money to us.
But how much of his money is it?
In 1999 his estimated wealth was 75 billion.
Of that he had given 6.5 billion to the foundation.
That's not even tithing.
Now don't get me wrong- its very generous of him and he is doing a lot of good with that 8% of his money.
So.. why should I had my $46 bucks to the rest of his pile of personal wealth? I'll give him the $4 for his charity since he probably can put it to better use than I can. The best I can do is send money for tsunami relief, work at the food bank, and help build houses for habitat for humanity.
Well... as the old saying goes,
Even bad sex is pretty good.
And I imagine most slashdotters, being geeky, have read Donald Hick's (which I first got by bit-torrent in a collection of 137 other similar books on technique) outstanding work on the g-spot and other similar excellent books*.
One would hope more than average of them are pretty open-minded and have active fantasy lives too.
Not so sure about the hygiene part tho.
---
* The top two books I got through BT in the last 3 years resulted in a mind-blowing multi-hour g-spot orgasm for her and the ability to multi-o for me. The second is a cute trick. You learn how to use your pc muscles (the ones you work with kegel excersizes) to turn off ejaculating until you want to do so. Once you have that down you can keep getting aroused all day long until you actually do allow your self release. Both are reasonably priced off of Amazon (like under $10 used). I think the second one has a title like "how to make love all night" and is written by a female sex therapist.
I know it is off-topic but Donald Hick's book is *amazing* stuff. It covers the emotional aspects as well as the physical aspects. A complete 10 step roadmap of what to do- what not to do- and what to look for before proceeding to the next step each time. For her it was clearly a deeply spiritual experience. I can only wonder what it's like from the outside myself.
Apologies for gushing. B)
Of course we need choices.
Just like a rachet set has every size from 1/8" to 2", every situation in life is different and requires a different size tool.
Why should we have choices in clothing sizes? It would be so much better if all shoes were size 12 and all clothes had 38" waists.
And we only have *two* software choices apparently? Microsoft and Open source? There are a LOT more choices than that.
So... reading between the lines... Emmy shot him down!
Actually,
Like Vin Diesel (big D&D guy), Sam is really a major geek who just happened to have a successful hollywood career as an actor. Sam was a huge star wars geek.
... Paris Hilton or Daryl Hannah.
And agree with the other folks comments that there are plenty of female geeks who should qualify over fictional characters.
There was that girl with the big black glasses on ZDnet computer show back in 2000. Can't remember her name but had a great combo of computer smarts, personality, and hot but nerdy looks (probably chosen on purpose for the show but maybe her natural style).
And what about Kim Kommando with a nationally syndicated radio program?
Well, for what it is worth- I live in Texas-- the heart of the bible belt. From what I've heard, people on the east and west coasts (or in most of europe) don't face the constant pressure that I have.
I've had friends who never attended church get offended or turn cold when they discovered I didn't believe in their god- usually because they pressed me on the subject. Actually- like in "Contact" they were really more disturbed that I believed in *no* god. I got the impression, they'd have been more comfortable if I believed in a different god that said theirs was a false god than my simple non-belief.
On the good side,
Once we have a completely transparent society of where everyone goes and what everyone does, perhaps it will be more difficult for a lot of fun behavior to be outlawed.
In the past, everyone did stuff (adultery -- 50% of men AND women by the 7th year of marriage) but pretended it didn't happen and was a bad thing.
In the new future, your life will be an open book.
Since I *despise* the HTML editor here, it's how I emphasize words. The other alternative would be all caps.
Borrowing from Chandler...
Can it be so simple?
Can it *be* so simple?
Can it be so *simple*?
And William Shatner
*Can* *it* *be* *so* *simple*?
I'd say more defensive than offended.
If one religious person had done this, then it wouldn't have been an issue.
You and I *both* know that many religions feel it is there duty to convert people to their religion. I've been the target of scores of attempts over 30 years-- some subtle as an invitation to church and others as blatant as an ultimatum by people who were friends or very friendly until they discovered my lack of faith.
But- hey- no problem- I live in a country where they won't use a power drill on my head because I believe 99% the same as they do but I believe differently on the other 1%.
And I think you believe I'm anti-religion- I'm not. Or intolerant of religious people- also not true. Or maybe that I think *most* religious people are intolerant- again not true.
My issue with religion as a *general* topic, is that it empowers some people who are good and moral in most regards to do great evil without guilt. They are kind, moral, and good to people of their faith and sociopaths to everyone else. This includes *popes* of the early roman catholic church, priests of the modern church, members of scientology, members of islam, members of christianity, and many historical faiths that no longer exist.
In america, over the last two decades, they have been aggressively inserting religion into government and then pretending to be shocked when they are called on it. You know... "In God We Trust" wasn't put on the money by the founding fathers. It wasn't even put there in the first 100 years that america existed.
---
As for "pushing my secular view on them". Maybe. They certainly feel free to push their religious views on me so turnabout is fair play. But that wasn't my point. My point was, that societies where one religion has great power (especially if it is the state religion) tend to treat people of other faiths very poorly. That power corrupts the good things about their religion. The best way to keep the followers of a religion "good" is to prevent them from having very much power.
Yea-- saw he was baiting me with a joke but was in a serious mood at the time.
So double penalty for me (-2).
I guess if he was a better baiter, I might have gone for it.
You are correct of course.
Stalin (an atheist) killed tens of millions of people. (tho i could argue he was treating atheism as a religion and it wasn't why he killed those millions).
Azure- we have a situation in the US where a diverse group of people from *opposite* religions are able to live together peacefully.
I believe that is because the law of the land is secular and because religion is viewed as a *private* matter- even embarassing to talk about with strangers very much. The common slang is "don't discuss religion, sex, or politics" (in that order).
I think you are mistaken when you think my belief is simple backwards religious bigotry. Religion makes it too easy to dehumanize other people. When religion gains control of the state, terrible things almost always follow shortly afterwards. The religious persecution which flourished in Europe (in many countries that are ironically almost without religion today) led many to flee to america. It's a historical fact- just like the huguenots and the catholics in france. The jews just about anywhere in the world. The baha'is in Iran. Etc.
My belief is based on historical events in many countries all around the world. It is my belief that when a religion gains complete power in an area, its members (and leaders) will engage in evil activities with regard to members of other religions. And they will even believe they are doing *GOOD* and feel no guilt. That's pretty sick.
It's more complicated than that.
I'm not a moderate.
I'm not a conservative.
I'm not a liberal.
I think pot should be legal.
I think heroin shouldn't- except in hospitals.
I think any sexual act between informed consenting adults is not a problem.
I think some folks are gay- but really most are bi. They force themselves into one mold or another.
I think religion is *good* for society *and* I think religion is *bad* for society.
We should teach every child to fear invisible demons until they are about 15 and then ruthlessly disabuse them of that notion so at a concious level they are ethical because of logic and at an *emotional* level, they should just *know* certain things (murder, stealing) is wrong.
Polyamoury? All for it.
Dumping your kids and starting a new life- Nope- YOU screwed someone and had kids- it's YOUR responsibility. You are on the hook for expenses to raise the kids for the next 18 years.
SMALL government? FOR IT.
LOW Taxes? FOR THEM.
Freedom to dope myself, commit suicide, eat anything I want, have sex with 50 people on one night on a whim- for them.
Universal Health Care of about $5,000 in benefits per year for all americans-- for them.
Universal Health Care without those limits? Against it.
Benefits for people that lose their jobs? For them.
---
It's NOT that simple.
The republican party has built an unholy alliance of big government fascists, business, the military industrial complex, and the anti-abortion, anti gay marriage crowd. It's FINALLY starting to crack apart. *Independents* like O'Reilly (who I *completely agree with you is a *conservative* independent) can't be easily boxed.
But conservative and liberal independents are just that. If the democrats swung just a little to the right- they pick up large numbers of them.
I havn't voted for a republican myself since Reagan. They are not bloody CONSERVATIVES. They lower taxes on the rich, put in religious controls that never existed before (Our founding fathers were DEISTS - not bloody CHRISTIANS). I would vote for *REAL* conservatives in a heartbeat. You know- the ones that lower taxes *AND* shrink government *AND* let me be free and leave me alone.
I just don't see many of them around.
Left with those options I vote democratic for the social freedoms at least (since both parties are now "big government", "owned by big business") or 3rd party.
As much as I consider him a straight-shooter on many issues, you are unfortunately correct except I'm not sure he considered the republicans "his" party for most of the last year.
O'Reilly is a good 10 years older than I am.
When I was growing up....
No cell phones (invented in my 20's- below "brick" size in my 30's).
No walkmen (invented in my 20's).
No COLOR TV until I was in my Teens.
No cable TV (came around in my 20's).
SIX Stations. ONE station after midnight.
So Bill was in his 30's before any of these things came along.
OTH.
I recently cracked a joke from "Airplane" with a fellow gamer. They didn't get it. They'd never seen "Airplane." BARELY heard of it.
I know a bit about what's going on with folks down to about 30 and have no clue before that age.
Stuff like Youtube and Myspace just blows up out of nowhere to me.
And I do a reasonable amount of spidering out from references here on slashdot and other boards to stay culturally aware. All I have to do is spot one Blockbuster video (now almost defunct) before it gets going and I can retire rich in under five years (BBV gave a 131 to 1 return on investment-- $1,000 -> $131,000 in under 5 years). That and it lets me relate to my daughter.
I see this kind of modding on posts that say bad things about islam or christianity.
They like to use "redundant" -- I guess somehow it must be like when the italians would kill each other after leaving their mistress on the way to confession so they would die in mortal sin. (It being okay to repeatedly commit adultery as long as you confess each time). They must think redundant will make it more invisable or cost me more mod points.
I'm pegged at max, and it's pretty easy to get pegged at max. But it does make me focus my moderating on "0" posts. I've modded up a few.
I once spoke to cowboy neal about the modding here. I said, "Cowboy neal- all the "good" modes that I see in metamoderate are always correct. About 90% of the "bad" mods are incorrect. I think the site would benefit by focusing the metamoderating on the "bad" mods which are likely to be incorrect." He said, "I don't the benefit to that." And I said, "Because the good ones are correct- it's wasted time. and the bad ones are often wrong- so that focuses the metamoderating on the problem". He said, "I don't the benefit to that or any reason to discuss this further."
So I dropped it.
Carpal tunnel.
Typing for work 10 hours a day and then raiding "Fear" for 39 hours over the holiday-- well actually it was tradeskilling that killed me and most people.
You load the three virtual hides, and knife into the skinning kit (10 clicks so far) and click it and about 35% of the time you get a "finished scrap of leather" which you put away into inventory (3 more clicks) and *maybe* got a skillup. Repeat this about 3,000 times and you are a "master tailor".
I was a master brewer, jewelry maker, and blacksmith in EQ. Still am I guess but mostly I play only about 5 hours a week (more and the hands start to go).
So if they get a direct implant so you don't have to mouse or keyboard- virtual reality becomes very appealing.
Hmm. Think about being 70 and being "old, hurting, and barely able to walk around the block" or... by direct brain stimulation "young, vibrant, able to run-- hell fly- live the life of movie stars, go to fantastic parties- dance the night away" all while sitting in some old folk's home. Since your tongue nerves are gone at that age too- a virtual implant would let you *taste* food again like when you were in your 20's. That alone would be worth it to gourmands.
He's a reasonably irish catholic christian.
A bit of a blow hard but fairly reasonable when it comes to treatment of his guests except for a couple of his hot points (then he talks over them instead of giving them the last word- and it's obvious he's being a bit irrational at those times).
He's criticized the left... AND the right for years. He has a point of view that doesn't fit perfectly with either party.
Hmmm. Sounds like an *independent* to me. Other than abortion where he is hard "right" (and catholic), he's not that far right on many issues.
I think you know a hell of a lot less about your faith than you think you do.
Having been buzz-sawed by various friendly christian types over the years, I'm pretty familiar with the extremes as well as the middle ground.
It's okay- most christians believe what they *want* to believe. It's a faith, not a scientific proof. It doesn't have to make logical sense.
Of course my parent post probably got modded down by the O'Reilly haters because I said he was pretty darn straight shooting and independent and also got modded down by the religious types who prefer to suppress discussions of christianity's wackier aspects.
There is *NO* god but Allah.
Spanish Inquisition.
Crusades.
ETC.
Religious people are not half-baked simpletons. Some religious people are brilliant. But before they could even begin to think logically, stories about imaginary beings were presented to them as if they were real. In many cases, everyone around them believes those imaginary beings are real.
So they have some very cockeyed basic views about reality which quite frankly don't match any hard evidence we've been able to collect. It leads them to *deny* and even *destroy* hard evidence that contradicts their fantasy that they call reality.
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And as a side note- Gotta love the chickenshit modding on my parent post. No need to read opposing views you don't agree with- just mod them down. But hey- it's Slashdot. Many of my comments about Islam or Christianity have gotten the same treatment (so far none by buddists, mormans, wiccan's-- either they are not on slashdot or they are not so uncomfortable with views that differ from their view of "reality".)
It's not that they are *vague* that makes them abusable.
In this case the law *was* specific and it was still abused.
Either the people and the government are ethical or they are not.
If the government is corrupt and wants to destroy you then they will.
We have tons of laws *on the books* that the government is ignoring.
The Bush administration just by *fiat* declared that water torture wasn't torture so it wasn't covered by torture statutes.
You can't have detailed enough laws if the government is corrupt.
Russia and China circa 1950's had great constitutions that meant nothing.
He is reasonably independent and straight talking.
As a catholic, he's got his position on abortion of course.
The right is finally starting to disintegrate a bit and break back into it's pieces.
There are fiscal conservatives (quasi-libertarian), social conservatives (o'reilly), war-hawks, corporatists, and not a few fascists among them.
He's probably right about reality- but you know-- reality can SUCK pretty harshly for a lot of folks. For $12.99 a month, they can sink into a reality where they are rich and powerful. If they could just add decent sex to the mix (via a direct brain implant) i'd probably hook up as well.
I can't play mmorg's like i used to- the hands just hurt too much.
Now the irony...
Bill O'Reilly and Millions of conservatives are in their OWN made up reality. It's called christianity and it has it's own rules and mythos. The lore is pretty good but the graphics suck except when they make a big epic movie about them. Lots of people playing christianity 3.2
a) believe they will live after death (even tho their own rules can be interpreted to say that only personality less "soul" (i.e. NOT THEM- just some kinda godfuel) will survive).
b) believe evil forces literally possess people and influence *reality*.
c) believe in magical powers that can't be observed or proven to exist in anyway.
d) make themselves miserable following the "made up" rules about morality and secretly breaking them (swaggert, haggerd, the local deacon who was having a 10 year long affair)
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Reality is
Sex is fun and with fertile people who don't take protection, it makes babies.
There is not enough good stuff to go around for everyone.
It's great to love and be loved back.
If you want to get rich, you have got to be lucky, a law-breaker (and lucky), or work *EXTREMELY* hard.
Abortion makes sense under some circumstances.
There will always be more humans.
Being evil is probably not good for your society (but sometimes it is).
Being immoral is not good if everyone does it- but it works out fine as long as only a few are.
Either we let folks live their own lives- or we get out the sharp knives and start killing each other.
A *SECULAR* society is required or religious people *will* start killing people sooner or later.
etc.
etc.
Bill O'Reilly doesn't live in reality any more than gamers do. He just is a member of a *very* popular game and so he thinks that is reality when- it's really not.
I'm not a microsoft advocate.
I have had several microsoft documents over the last six years that I could *not* open with microsoft until I first opened them with openoffice and saved them as word documents. Something was wrong with them and word couldn't partially read them.
I also use open office to shrink word documents- on average about 2 MEGABYTES each (wtf?). Merely by opening and saving them.
I have two word documents that OO can't open which open correctly in microsoft. Each is about 10 megabytes and has roughly 150 graphics in each (two 150 page books I've created). It opens them mangled and then crashes while editing. In OO 1.0.3 it couldn't even open them- so progress is being made.
I've bugged OO for it's inability to cut and paste rectangular sections for about 2 YEARS now and it's still not fixed. This is a feature I still use word and textpad for.
Word has no new features that I need- much less that I need and will pay $495 for. OTH, I get a corporate deal-- current version of word for $20. At $20, it's not a bad deal.
However, with the DRM crap they are starting to put into it- and the possibility that Vista may belly up on me and lock all my data- I'll be moving to linux (ubuntu) as of Vista for all my important documents.
Actually, the more detailed your laws get, the more open they are to abuse.
When you have a general law, then you can argue that a reasonable person should know better. This is where we were through about 1900.
When you have an incredibly detailed law, you can argue that the specifics of the law were not broken so the bad guy gets away. This is where we are since then.
The side effect of all these detailed laws is that you are always breaking one of them-- and the government can selectively enforce them against people it doesn't like.