This is a very important point.
Consider for a moment the ten plagues of Egypt. (And disregard the historical inaccuracy of the whole Exodus story.) So we have a pharaoh who keeps Jews as slaves and won’t let them go. What does JHWH do? He does not hurt the pharaoh; in fact, he “hardens his heart” so he would not budge, just so that he could unleash a bunch of evils on... well, on whom does he unleash the plagues? That’s right: the mostly innocent Egyptian people. It’s not the pharaoh who suffers the boils, the diseases, the famine and whatnot. No, it’s a fscking bunch of innocent people. JHWH is like a boy with a magnifying glass and an anthill.
And even if gods did exist, I would reject such a one for being wildly inconsistent. Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi, eh? If you’re the absolute source and creator of morality, perfect and ultimate, then you’d better abide by the same rules; otherwise you’re just a playground bully.
I don’t know if Goedel’s theorems can be applied to morality (it would be fun if they could), but really, I don’t care. Because even if it could, if said god were the absolute creator of everything, he’d be the one who’d made it so. So fsck that.
Our sense of morality is pre-programmed to a large degree; while there are certain cultural differences that are accounted for by cultural evolution rather than biological, the basis of morality is hard-wired. And so are the mechanisms of suppressing the sense of morality by transferring it to the authority in charge (hello, Dr. Milgram).
I don't see what people think is so great about Mac OS. I think the dock is stupid and annoying and the default theme looks like junk. KDE 4 is way ahead of Mac OS in terms of looks and usability.
I don’t see what’s so stupid and annoying about the dock, apart from the one stupid and annoying change in Lion: click-and-hold on an app icon will no longer present all its windows. Admittedly, the new replacement for Exposé takes a little getting used to, but it’s not all bad, even though it now ignores minimized windows. After all, if enough people complain, maybe they’ll fix it.
As for the default theme... well, true, the first thing I did after the upgrade was get my icon theme back. Other than that, there is not much in the way of customization that can be done, nor do I really care; OS X has some very sane defaults, a superbly consistent interface (back when I bought my Mac some four years ago, I was delighted to find that pressing Enter on a file in Finder won’t run it – that’s what Cmd+O is for, because it opens a file), and best of all, the interface doesn’t get in your way. Or at least, it doesn’t get into my way.
While I kind of like the way Ubuntu is taking with the new interface, I still prefer the new KDE to GTK-based interfaces. Then again, I prefer Enlightenment to both. (And it is a shame, because GTK has always looked better. It’s just that ever since Gnome 2 it hasn’t worked better.)
Oh, yeah. If you hate the OS X dock, I guess you hate the Windows 7 interface, too: it’s a combination of the Apple dock and KDE menu.
I haven’t tried the new keyboard extensively, though it didn’t seem bad. My MacBook Pro is four years old; it still has the old-style keys.
But even so, there is more to a keyboard than keys -- for instance, their placement and overall layout design. All of which I consider to be done superbly.
And yes, I am a touch typist. I’ve had a blank Model M-style keyboard since before Das Keyboard was invented.
My wired, USB keyboard cost $70. Plus shipping from the US to Europe, plus customs and tax, which pretty much doubled the price.
Indeed, it is a Model M-lookalike, with the same key mechanism, and I love it and hug it and call it George. And it wasn’t even made by Apple.
Good peripherals cost good money. They are very often worth it, too.
This holds true while you only consider the internals: the CPU, graphics chipset, RAM, etc.
As soon as you consider other factors, Apple turns out to be fairly priced.
For instance, four years ago, when I suddenly got enough money to buy a good laptop, I was considering a ThinkPad. T40p, if my memory serves me right. An excellent laptop at the time, with an excellent screen, a ThinkPad keyboard and all the other nifty details that made it worth the price difference over similarly specced, yet cheaper laptops. It turned out it was sold out, and I could only get a significantly more expensive Windows version of the machine, which I was not ready to pay for; I’d intended to make it a Linux machine.
When I asked around for a good laptop in the same price range, the very first suggestion was a MacBook Pro. Roughly the same price, roughly the same specs, and I haven’t regretted it. Actually, I’m typing this on the very same laptop. I plan to replace it sometime next year, and I’ll buy an Apple machine again. You really do get what you pay for, though I admit not everyone is willing to pay extra for good design, a superb keyboard, quiet cooling system, and other things not shown in the specs list.
Apple does not do low-end devices. Thus it is wrong to compare their devices with their low-end competitors.
Compare them like for like, and Apple won’t seem so expensive. (Note, I’m talking about computers. I have no clue about mobile phones.)
[i]If you would call an interface that's not cluttered with Mafia Wars and Farmville updates "boring", then I suppose it's boring. But I prefer it over FB's.[/i]
Then just click on the 'x' in the corner of the offending post, and select 'Hide all posts by [app name]'. Voila, no more posts from that app. Simples.
Sure.
Unless you have people subscribing to some autoposting website that spams your feed with FarmVille news by posting as your friend instead of, you know, actually employing an app you can block or at least hide.
Funnily enough, Chinese and English are very much alike: rather isolative, most words consist of one or two syllables, and most grammar is pure syntax.
The only factor with a good predictive value regarding success in learning Chinese, at least where I study Chinese, is mastery of English.
Wait. Americans start the first foreign language in 7th grade? Thats ridiculous. I think 10y should be the latest point to start, after that language is more or less hardwired.
No. It is not.
Despite what Chomskyan linguistics may teach, the LAD doesn’t really exist, and it doesn’t stop working in puberty.
Even so, there are benefits to an early start in SLA. IIRC the age of nine or ten is the optimum exclusively from the time invested/proficiency gained POV, since at that age language acquisition is fastest. This is most probably due to cognitive development factors: the ability to comprehend grammatical rules on one hand, and the undeveloped language ego that would inhibit language acquisition on the other.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye is such an obvious joke that I really, really feel bad for the author. Someone replaced his sense of humor with Folgers and he still hasn’t noticed.
I don’t really fear death. Once you’re dead, you’re dead.
But losing your mind slowly, losing yourself, trying to make sense of the increasingly stranger world as you put names and identities of a distant past to present faces, with but brief moments of lucidity when you can see the ruin you’ve become... now that is a nightmare.
So I don’t fear death. Once you’re dead, that’s it. Game over.
I have seen people with Alzheimer’s waste away. I have seen (and partially felt) the pain they inflicted on their families. I have seen them living in happy memories, when they had some, and I have seen rude awakenings in the moments of lucidity.
I do not wish that on myself or anyone close to me. Should I go down that road, it won’t be me anyway. Not anymore.
So yes, Alzheimer’s is way higher on my personal list of nightmares as well. So are blindness and different forms of dependence on others.
Death is easy. Dying slowly is a nightmare. Dying slowly, lost in your own head, is a terrible one.
So goodbye, Sir Terry. Whenever the actual goodbye might come.
And as Death might say, IT IS ALWAYS TOO SOON.
Granted, I expect laws to change in due time. But if they do not, and I get diagnosed with something like that, I’m writing a note to myself. “If you don’t know what this piece of paper is doing in your pocket, it is time to jump off a bridge or a tall building.”
And even if voice-based lie detection did work, who would stop people from recording their responses to questions such as “Are you broke?” and replaying them as answers to the ATM?
Slashdot Mirror
This is a very important point.
Consider for a moment the ten plagues of Egypt. (And disregard the historical inaccuracy of the whole Exodus story.) So we have a pharaoh who keeps Jews as slaves and won’t let them go. What does JHWH do? He does not hurt the pharaoh; in fact, he “hardens his heart” so he would not budge, just so that he could unleash a bunch of evils on... well, on whom does he unleash the plagues? That’s right: the mostly innocent Egyptian people. It’s not the pharaoh who suffers the boils, the diseases, the famine and whatnot. No, it’s a fscking bunch of innocent people. JHWH is like a boy with a magnifying glass and an anthill.
And even if gods did exist, I would reject such a one for being wildly inconsistent. Quod licet Iovi non licet bovi, eh? If you’re the absolute source and creator of morality, perfect and ultimate, then you’d better abide by the same rules; otherwise you’re just a playground bully.
I don’t know if Goedel’s theorems can be applied to morality (it would be fun if they could), but really, I don’t care. Because even if it could, if said god were the absolute creator of everything, he’d be the one who’d made it so. So fsck that.
Our sense of morality is pre-programmed to a large degree; while there are certain cultural differences that are accounted for by cultural evolution rather than biological, the basis of morality is hard-wired. And so are the mechanisms of suppressing the sense of morality by transferring it to the authority in charge (hello, Dr. Milgram).
I put on my robe and pirate hat.
Indeed. Five gods forbid someone actually made a joke about it all.
I don't see what people think is so great about Mac OS. I think the dock is stupid and annoying and the default theme looks like junk. KDE 4 is way ahead of Mac OS in terms of looks and usability.
I don’t see what’s so stupid and annoying about the dock, apart from the one stupid and annoying change in Lion: click-and-hold on an app icon will no longer present all its windows. Admittedly, the new replacement for Exposé takes a little getting used to, but it’s not all bad, even though it now ignores minimized windows. After all, if enough people complain, maybe they’ll fix it.
As for the default theme... well, true, the first thing I did after the upgrade was get my icon theme back. Other than that, there is not much in the way of customization that can be done, nor do I really care; OS X has some very sane defaults, a superbly consistent interface (back when I bought my Mac some four years ago, I was delighted to find that pressing Enter on a file in Finder won’t run it – that’s what Cmd+O is for, because it opens a file), and best of all, the interface doesn’t get in your way. Or at least, it doesn’t get into my way.
While I kind of like the way Ubuntu is taking with the new interface, I still prefer the new KDE to GTK-based interfaces. Then again, I prefer Enlightenment to both. (And it is a shame, because GTK has always looked better. It’s just that ever since Gnome 2 it hasn’t worked better.)
Oh, yeah. If you hate the OS X dock, I guess you hate the Windows 7 interface, too: it’s a combination of the Apple dock and KDE menu.
You mean, miner point and summery writer.
I haven’t tried the new keyboard extensively, though it didn’t seem bad. My MacBook Pro is four years old; it still has the old-style keys.
But even so, there is more to a keyboard than keys -- for instance, their placement and overall layout design. All of which I consider to be done superbly.
And yes, I am a touch typist. I’ve had a blank Model M-style keyboard since before Das Keyboard was invented.
My wired, USB keyboard cost $70. Plus shipping from the US to Europe, plus customs and tax, which pretty much doubled the price.
Indeed, it is a Model M-lookalike, with the same key mechanism, and I love it and hug it and call it George. And it wasn’t even made by Apple.
Good peripherals cost good money. They are very often worth it, too.
This holds true while you only consider the internals: the CPU, graphics chipset, RAM, etc.
As soon as you consider other factors, Apple turns out to be fairly priced.
For instance, four years ago, when I suddenly got enough money to buy a good laptop, I was considering a ThinkPad. T40p, if my memory serves me right. An excellent laptop at the time, with an excellent screen, a ThinkPad keyboard and all the other nifty details that made it worth the price difference over similarly specced, yet cheaper laptops. It turned out it was sold out, and I could only get a significantly more expensive Windows version of the machine, which I was not ready to pay for; I’d intended to make it a Linux machine.
When I asked around for a good laptop in the same price range, the very first suggestion was a MacBook Pro. Roughly the same price, roughly the same specs, and I haven’t regretted it. Actually, I’m typing this on the very same laptop. I plan to replace it sometime next year, and I’ll buy an Apple machine again. You really do get what you pay for, though I admit not everyone is willing to pay extra for good design, a superb keyboard, quiet cooling system, and other things not shown in the specs list.
Apple does not do low-end devices. Thus it is wrong to compare their devices with their low-end competitors.
Compare them like for like, and Apple won’t seem so expensive. (Note, I’m talking about computers. I have no clue about mobile phones.)
It’s Britain. It’s always cloudy there. And it rains very often. On everyone’s parade, too.
I’d hate to guess where you plug it in.
[i]If you would call an interface that's not cluttered with Mafia Wars and Farmville updates "boring", then I suppose it's boring. But I prefer it over FB's.[/i]
Then just click on the 'x' in the corner of the offending post, and select 'Hide all posts by [app name]'. Voila, no more posts from that app. Simples.
Sure.
Unless you have people subscribing to some autoposting website that spams your feed with FarmVille news by posting as your friend instead of, you know, actually employing an app you can block or at least hide.
Funnily enough, Chinese and English are very much alike: rather isolative, most words consist of one or two syllables, and most grammar is pure syntax.
The only factor with a good predictive value regarding success in learning Chinese, at least where I study Chinese, is mastery of English.
Wait. Americans start the first foreign language in 7th grade? Thats ridiculous. I think 10y should be the latest point to start, after that language is more or less hardwired.
No. It is not.
Despite what Chomskyan linguistics may teach, the LAD doesn’t really exist, and it doesn’t stop working in puberty.
Even so, there are benefits to an early start in SLA. IIRC the age of nine or ten is the optimum exclusively from the time invested/proficiency gained POV, since at that age language acquisition is fastest. This is most probably due to cognitive development factors: the ability to comprehend grammatical rules on one hand, and the undeveloped language ego that would inhibit language acquisition on the other.
In Firefox 7 nightly builds the link works just fine as it is.
Quite so.
Well, I’m looking forward to playing with it sometime I get an invite.
From what I’ve seen in the tour, one person cannot belong to more than one circle. Which is... strangely limiting.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye is such an obvious joke that I really, really feel bad for the author. Someone replaced his sense of humor with Folgers and he still hasn’t noticed.
Yes, I'd like to erase the memory of what I saw when I clicked on that goatse link.
That would be trolls’ paradise.
They could hit you again and again. Sure, you’d erase it afterwards, so it would be like trolling a goldfish.
Easy peasy. They proclaim them.
I don’t really fear death. Once you’re dead, you’re dead.
But losing your mind slowly, losing yourself, trying to make sense of the increasingly stranger world as you put names and identities of a distant past to present faces, with but brief moments of lucidity when you can see the ruin you’ve become... now that is a nightmare.
So I don’t fear death. Once you’re dead, that’s it. Game over.
I have seen people with Alzheimer’s waste away. I have seen (and partially felt) the pain they inflicted on their families. I have seen them living in happy memories, when they had some, and I have seen rude awakenings in the moments of lucidity.
I do not wish that on myself or anyone close to me. Should I go down that road, it won’t be me anyway. Not anymore.
So yes, Alzheimer’s is way higher on my personal list of nightmares as well. So are blindness and different forms of dependence on others.
Death is easy. Dying slowly is a nightmare. Dying slowly, lost in your own head, is a terrible one.
So goodbye, Sir Terry. Whenever the actual goodbye might come.
And as Death might say, IT IS ALWAYS TOO SOON.
Oh. You mean like half the USA is doing? Not to mention the Catholic Church.
Granted, I expect laws to change in due time. But if they do not, and I get diagnosed with something like that, I’m writing a note to myself. “If you don’t know what this piece of paper is doing in your pocket, it is time to jump off a bridge or a tall building.”
Godwin. Euthanasia wins.
And even if voice-based lie detection did work, who would stop people from recording their responses to questions such as “Are you broke?” and replaying them as answers to the ATM?
TextEdit is actually a WordPad equivalent. There is no program as moronic as Notepad in OS X.
Or anywhere else.