I was actually quite shocked when the Economist site went free. Beats me why - those were high-quality articles I was willing to pay for. As in, pay to access the site.
Here's what's not cool though: bitching that Google is stealing from you, when you're not even following Google's suggestion on how to prevent Google from indexing your content. That's just pure whining and ass-hattery.
Circumstance only goes so far as a rationalization for bad behavior and there comes a point when the individual needs to be held accountable for his or her choices.
You're confusing rationalization and explanation. Furthermore, an explanation for a behavior is not the same as condoning it or as not holding someone accountable.
Where it is important is to determine what causes - or increases the likelihood of - said behavior. Abandonment? Parents who did the same thing? Genetics? Abuse? Even more important is tracking the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs. Does therapy work? Basic employment? Specific drugs?
Yes, I also know people who have gone through hell in their child-hood, and who are now upstanding citizens. I can also tell you that the fact that they didn't do that on their own. They had therapy, they had people who helped them work through their issues, and they had a support system. The fact that they are now upstanding citizens is not merely the result of them being accountable - it's the result of a lot of people around them doing the right thing.
Wouldn't you want to know what the right thing is to do in these circumstances, and what the wrong thing is? Just labeling these people as worthless and ignoring them won't tell you anything.
I'm still on my original Xbox360 (bought about 6 months after it came out). Does that mean that every other user with a dead Xbox is doing something weird or not covered by the TOS?
What's more, even the victims of gambling (friends and family who are abused to fund the gambling and the addicts themselves) are not helped by this bill. Why? Because gambling addiction is generally a psychological addiction or a bad coping mechanism, all of which will express themselves in other areas if the addict can't gamble.
All that this is the establishment of a monopoly to the benefit of a few existing operators, and a guaranteed income stream for the government establishing the monopoly. The funding promises are mere figleaves to make the law more palatable to everyone.
To the best of my knowledge newspapers in the United States are not regulated in the manner that you claim. Nor should they be if the 1st amendment is to mean anything.
No, I've made my bed on the side that says Government has no business regulating the manner or content of speech.
Speech is already regulated. You're again confusing commercial with political speech. And even political speech is not fully protected. If you don't believe me, post a blog article that you think that Obama should be killed at his next public appearance. If you don't get your terminology straight, you have no chance of making a reasonable argument.
The whole point of the Bill of Rights is to prevent the majority from stripping those rights away from the minority.
Nonsense and day-dreaming. Jim Crow laws were acceptable to the majority while they were in force. Slave ownership used to be acceptable. These things were acceptable because the majority - both numerical and of political, economical and legislative power - believed them to be acceptable. Any sufficient majority can strip the constitution of any protection it currently offers, and can even completely remove the constitution. You clearly have no historical perspective. What's more, your lack of historical perspective blinds you to the changes that are possible.
Oh goody indeed. I'm a Speakeasy customer. Have been for years. Why? Absolutely outstanding service and a product that generally matches my requirements. Notably, they were the first ones in my area to offer naked DSL. So why am I considering moving away from them and signing up with ATT or Comcast? Because ATT, which owns the lines that Speakeasy is leasing, is doing an absolutely shit-ass job of providing quality lines to Speakeasy. I can't get better than 768 kbit/sec download because my line is so noisy that they have to throttle the bandwidth to half what they promised. Since Speakeasy doesn't own the line, there is fuck-all they can do about it. And calling ATT just leads to me being told "You're not a customer with us."
So Speakeasy is actually a prime example of exactly the opposite of what you're claiming: namely, that the Telecom environment is nearly competition-free.
As for your sig - be careful what you wish for. Otherwise, you'd be sitting at -1 already.
No they can't. Their core duties are to advance their individual causes. That's done by engaging in the political process.
At that point, everything is part of the political process. Which means that the political process ceases to exist as a useful distinction from other processes involving people.
No, you are trying to muddle the waters by putting qualifications on the source of free speech.
Well, you got something partially right - I'm trying to put qualifications on the source of free speech. Not sure how that's muddying any waters...
Either which way, it's pretty clear you've made your bed on the side of complete deregulation. I really don't see any benefits coming from it... and yes, everything is a cost/benefit analysis. Rights aren't god given or natural, they're an agreement by the population on what works and what doesn't.
I hope you'll enjoy the ads from CNOOC endorsing a candidate. I wonder if a corporation could potentially run for president now?
And yet the article says nothing about the intention being to start a war between China and India. Making things up is indeed fun. As for the CIA supporting the Dalai Lama... heck, in this case I'm all for it.
I honestly don't understand the argument that a collection of individuals (i.e: a corporation) is entitled to less freedom of speech than individuals.
Because corporations are offered protections that aren't offered to individuals. Look up the concept of the corporate veil. Because some people in corporations can exert undue influence on other people in the same corporation. Because corporations are about jobs, money, products and services, not politics. Because some people who are in the corporation might not want to support the political goals of their superiors. Really, is that so hard to understand?
Why do supporters of the old law believe that the New York Times is more worthy of participation in the political process than the Sierra Club or NRA?
Because news organizations and opinion pieces are already regulated. Furthermore, you can't have news coverage without covering politics. The NRA and the Sierra Club can perform their core duties without directly entering into the political process and commentary. Really, is that so hard to understand?
You're also confusing commercial and political speech. Not sure if that's willful or not.
Do you realize that under the old law advocacy organizations such as the Sierra Club were prohibited from running advertisements on behalf of or in opposition to political candidates?
What's your point? If the issue is fostering debate, then let's have a debate on the merits of the various positions. There's absolutely no need to directly advertise for a particular politician - and it doesn't matter if it's the Sierra Club or the We-kill-kittens Club. Yes, it's only a thin veneer that differentiates one from the other, but it means these organizations have to work at their propaganda.
Lastly, your free speech and peacable assembly points are laughable. An organization is not a person, hence laws referring to persons do not apply to them. Furthermore, people can assemble and talk about whatever they want. The old laws just made sure that they couldn't influence a political debate with means other than participation in the debate.
You really would support a system that says the Sierra Club can't produce literature condemning a candidate who wants to open up National Parks for energy drilling?
Yes. Because the alternative is that I have CNOOC running advertisements for Palin in the next presidential election.
Ok. Let's assume you're correct. Corporations can't donate to parties, and they can only buy advertisements.
Do you know what the vast majority of the money in a campaign is spent on? That's right, advertisements. There are expenses for employing staffers, traveling, polling and feeding people, but the biggest chunk is advertisements.
So where is the difference between the letter of the law, and what people are talking about? There really isn't much. And the difference becomes even less if corporations are allowed to sponsor events and conduct their own political events.
There's a difference between making up new words and pronouncing old ones in a different way, and making up new words because your vocabulary sucks (anybody who says "defensed", I'm looking at you). One is evolution, the other is ignorance. Yes, both will always occur, but that doesn't mean we have to embrace both.
There's value in having a consistent way of referring to things: people will actually be able to understand each other. This discussion is a nice example of how diverging meanings can hurt understanding.
As for your example of the proper pronunciation of knight, do you mean to imply that we all should speak German?;)
The video illustrates a very specific issue with certain anti-war arguments: if you know that an area holds people who have shot at you before and will do it again, how do you react to a crowd that might consist at least partially of people like that? Just not shooting is frequently not an option - see Bosnia, for example.
Then you have the huge masses of idiots on both sides of the issue, yelling and screaming and throwing feces at each other. Maybe you consider that to be productive debate, but I certainly don't.
True. 20% of the comments are pure flamebait, 50% are pretty useless statements of opinion, 20% engage in debate because they want to know more, and about 10% have actually something useful to say (numbers made up on the fly, YMMV). But what's the alternative? I look at it as the equivalent of Jimmy Wales' experience with Wikipedia - it only took off and became a world-wide tool for knowledge collection once he took off the gates and allowed general feces-flinging.
If you have a better option than hashing it out in public, feces-flinging and all, I'm all ears.
In a nation where the vast majority of the population has never served, and where most people have never even held a weapon, it simply makes no sense. If your goal is propaganda, then sure, it works great. Otherwise it's completely pointless.
On the contrary. The biggest danger in a nation where the population has never served is that War becomes idealized: either as a clean, simple affair, or as a cruel campaign that is never appropriate. Both are clearly wrong. Videos like these are necessary because they epitomize the daily struggle that soldiers have in a battlefield. Just watch the discussion: were there or were there not weapons in the crowd? Could the cameraman be positively identified as presenting no-risk? Heck, even the van rescuing wounded civilians is not a clear-cut situation. Only through a vigorous discussion centered around videos like these can people gain a better understanding of what it means to be in a war zone.
Similarly, videos of surgeries gone wrong and of massive crash pile-ups are regularly shown, and both with the same goal: to demonstrate what happens in certain situations. Surgeries gone wrong less frequently, but I got my drivers license after a course that included the dangers of driving - and you ain't seen nothing yet if you haven't seen the results of cars going at 150 mph into an embankment.
Finally, on the subject of context: if you think it is missing, feel free to provide it. I've seen a number of posts by people in either active service or who have retired, and they provided great context. Where's yours?
The simplest propaganda is to shut down discussion and label it propaganda. Then you can say whatever you want and no one can challenge it.
Absolutely can they mislead. This is why you can't just "trust" a story or the one who is telling it.
But I think you're missing the point about what part of the story is truth, and what is fiction. Let's take The Iliad and The Odyssey. There are mounds of paper written about whether everything happened as it is described in the books. Some of it did, some of it didn't. But its truth - the reason that it is a classis, and that it is still read today - is in the human conditions and mind-sets that they talk about.
Here's the most obvious example: the king comes home from a siege that lasted years and took his best friends, and from an odyssey that lasted as long and took even more friends. He fought for what was right, for his family, and for his people. He fought just to get back home. And what does he find? His wife has taken up with someone else, his son doesn't know him, his house is filled with unworthy strangers. Only his dog recognizes him (and, I believe, his oldest servant).
How many times has happened? Today's soldiers face the same problems. Heck, today's consultants face the same problems. You can read The Iliad and The Odyssey, and you can see that what seems like a modern problem is actually a problem of the human condition.
The truth of the classics isn't in the facts told. It is in the human souls that they describe.
Then why do you talk about it? Here's why people tell you that they pity you when you them that: because they really do pity you. You have absolutely no idea what role stories play in human development. It's a sad state to be in, doubly so because you have no idea what you're missing.
Here's a quick introduction to why fiction is important, and why classics are classics: they allow you to share experiences that you could have never possibly had. From that, you get to build yourself a more complete image of the world, and you get to bond with those who have had those experiences, or who are telling and listening to the story. Sometimes, those stories are short, as in the many fables. Sometimes, they're long, as in the many creation myths (or Ulysses).
If you don't understand the value in that.... I'll have to agree with another poster: most people don't have Asperger's. You can either deal with that, or continue to live in your own world. Your choice.
This. This is the part that is always missing from certain sections of anti-war protestors and war-supporters alike.
War is messy. War sucks. Sometimes you shoot your own people. Sometimes you miss the enemy and hit some goat farmer in the middle of nowhere; sometimes, you shoot him directly. Sometimes you shoot the goat-farmer because you thought he had a weapon, sometimes you shoot him just because.
War is never clean, can never be clean. Even the old standards of a bunch of guys meeting up in a field to club each other over the head had collateral - how do you think they fed their army on months-long campaigns?
War is not heroic, it's not glorious, and it doesn't solve anything. It just is the standard political discourse, carried on through bullets and bombs. Sometimes, there's a need for that. Sometimes, there isn't.
I like videos like these, because they drive home the point about how messy war exactly is. They start the discussion of "Is our goal worth this cost?" Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But when you get into a war, be ready for these situations. Because they cannot be avoided.
Pretty much. The article could also have been entitled "People suck - reviews prove it again."
That said, I always find these articles entertaining - and a useful reminder of how petty, small-minded and stupid some people can be. There is no need for everyone to like every classic out there, but people should have at least the cognitive capacity to understand why classics are classics. Sadly, that cognitive capacity is exactly what's missing in these dismissive reviews.
America-with its traditions of individual liberty-cannot import Switzerland's culture of social control.
You know where I got that quote from? www.guncite.com, a pro-gun site. It was from an excellent post discussing not only a few statistics, but also a good number of external laws, history, and social mores. I suggest you take notes from it on how to make a sound argument for gun control.
Any comparison about Swiss vs US gun laws that does not also include a cultural discussion is either ignorant, or willfully misleading.
I'd love to talk facts with you; sadly, your post contained none. And you can quit the condescension, as it weakens your point. It's a weak attempt at a flame, and an even weaker attempt at being educational.
I don't see gun-control advocates trying to seriously address such patterns.
One country is not a freaking pattern.
That makes it obvious to me that they have an inferior worldview, and it frankly makes me suspicious of their motives.
Yes, this kind of attitude makes me really want to look further into the views of people who want to legalize guns. Your statistics are off, your inferences are not born out by the people in the area (ask the Swiss what they think about US gun laws) and you come across like someone who has absolutely no clue what he's talking about.
It's a shame, really, because guns are here to stay in the US. It's just a question of how to go about it. But sadly, it's impossible to have a civilized discussion with gun-advocates on the topic.
Ideally hard and you go right through the obstacle, feeling nothing
Only if the obstacle is made of marshmallow fluff. If it is made of a similar material, the collision energy is dissipated by the squishiest object involved in the collision - the human.
Lighter = less momentum, sure, but it also means less control.
Clearly the Lotus Elise is the apotheosis of the ungainly clunker, unable to turn any corner at more than 20 mph.
Better handling is subjective, and I vastly prefer the feel of a heavier vehicle.
You clearly have never driven a light car, or suffer from terminal confirmation bias. Better handling can be defined by at least one absolute number (lateral g-force it can hold) and one relative number (exit speed from a corner).
Finally, stability is related to where the center of gravity is located, not with absolute weight. And most heavy cars on the road today are SUVs, which are terminally top-heavy.
Sheesh. I expect that any moment now you're going to tell me that 4-wheel drive helps in stopping distance.
See figure 5 of the patent application. Not sure what this means for the whole thing. Did someone at Apple just throw together a few ideas, and patent them all? The language and the "art" seems vague enough for it. Unfortunately, I'm not a lawyer, so I have no clue whether something like this means that the entire patent application can be tossed out, or whether vague language means it can't be enforced.
Either which way, this is about as lame as patent applications come. It really sounds like someone looked around at existing platforms and said "let's patent them all."
I think the problem with the Android app market is that you have no idea what you're missing in your searches. There are categories, sure. But do I really want to browse 5000 apps in entertainment to make sure that that's not where the video players are hiding? Or when I search for a battery management app, do I search for battery management? Battery? Battery saver? And if I scroll down more, what do I get? Do I get results that are less relevant? Less used? Older? Combination thereof?
In short, I have no idea how the Android app market works, and the search results are haphazard enough that I don't trust it. And as you pointed out, I can't even organize the search results. No sorting by downloads, by popularity, by ratings, or by developer.
The Android App store is right now my biggest gripe of the entire Android ecosystem. Google and others have produced some outstanding apps, but I have no idea if they're there, or what it is that I should search for.
Here are a couple of suggestions that would drastically improve the user experience: - have a web interface available. Seriously, that's a no-brainer. - let me order the results by ratings, downloads, date, publisher and name. Another complete no-brainer. - Allow me to recommend apps to friends and contacts. Or allow me to set my download privacy so that friends and contacts can see what I installed. - Provide a staff pick
3 out of 4 of those are brain dead to implement, and don't even require much computational complexity. Considering that the app store is part of what makes the iPhone the iPhone, I don't understand what's keeping Google from actually offering a usable experience.
And yet, you post the same drivel multiple times in each story. Is your life so empty that you cannot stop reading Slashdot, even if you find it so dumb as to inflict physical pain on you?
Slashdot Mirror
I was actually quite shocked when the Economist site went free. Beats me why - those were high-quality articles I was willing to pay for. As in, pay to access the site.
Here's what's not cool though: bitching that Google is stealing from you, when you're not even following Google's suggestion on how to prevent Google from indexing your content. That's just pure whining and ass-hattery.
Circumstance only goes so far as a rationalization for bad behavior and there comes
a point when the individual needs to be held accountable for his or her choices.
You're confusing rationalization and explanation. Furthermore, an explanation for a behavior is not the same as condoning it or as not holding someone accountable.
Where it is important is to determine what causes - or increases the likelihood of - said behavior. Abandonment? Parents who did the same thing? Genetics? Abuse? Even more important is tracking the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs. Does therapy work? Basic employment? Specific drugs?
Yes, I also know people who have gone through hell in their child-hood, and who are now upstanding citizens. I can also tell you that the fact that they didn't do that on their own. They had therapy, they had people who helped them work through their issues, and they had a support system. The fact that they are now upstanding citizens is not merely the result of them being accountable - it's the result of a lot of people around them doing the right thing.
Wouldn't you want to know what the right thing is to do in these circumstances, and what the wrong thing is? Just labeling these people as worthless and ignoring them won't tell you anything.
I'm still on my original Xbox360 (bought about 6 months after it came out). Does that mean that every other user with a dead Xbox is doing something weird or not covered by the TOS?
Hint: an anecdote is not data.
What's more, even the victims of gambling (friends and family who are abused to fund the gambling and the addicts themselves) are not helped by this bill. Why? Because gambling addiction is generally a psychological addiction or a bad coping mechanism, all of which will express themselves in other areas if the addict can't gamble.
All that this is the establishment of a monopoly to the benefit of a few existing operators, and a guaranteed income stream for the government establishing the monopoly. The funding promises are mere figleaves to make the law more palatable to everyone.
To the best of my knowledge newspapers in the United States are not regulated in the manner that you claim. Nor should they be if the 1st amendment is to mean anything.
Here's one. There are others. Education is an attitude, not a document.
No, I've made my bed on the side that says Government has no business regulating the manner or content of speech.
Speech is already regulated. You're again confusing commercial with political speech. And even political speech is not fully protected. If you don't believe me, post a blog article that you think that Obama should be killed at his next public appearance. If you don't get your terminology straight, you have no chance of making a reasonable argument.
The whole point of the Bill of Rights is to prevent the majority from stripping those rights away from the minority.
Nonsense and day-dreaming. Jim Crow laws were acceptable to the majority while they were in force. Slave ownership used to be acceptable. These things were acceptable because the majority - both numerical and of political, economical and legislative power - believed them to be acceptable. Any sufficient majority can strip the constitution of any protection it currently offers, and can even completely remove the constitution. You clearly have no historical perspective. What's more, your lack of historical perspective blinds you to the changes that are possible.
Oh goody indeed. I'm a Speakeasy customer. Have been for years. Why? Absolutely outstanding service and a product that generally matches my requirements. Notably, they were the first ones in my area to offer naked DSL. So why am I considering moving away from them and signing up with ATT or Comcast? Because ATT, which owns the lines that Speakeasy is leasing, is doing an absolutely shit-ass job of providing quality lines to Speakeasy. I can't get better than 768 kbit/sec download because my line is so noisy that they have to throttle the bandwidth to half what they promised. Since Speakeasy doesn't own the line, there is fuck-all they can do about it. And calling ATT just leads to me being told "You're not a customer with us."
So Speakeasy is actually a prime example of exactly the opposite of what you're claiming: namely, that the Telecom environment is nearly competition-free.
As for your sig - be careful what you wish for. Otherwise, you'd be sitting at -1 already.
No they can't. Their core duties are to advance their individual causes. That's done by engaging in the political process.
At that point, everything is part of the political process. Which means that the political process ceases to exist as a useful distinction from other processes involving people.
What? Regulated in what manner? Citation needed.
You can use Google, yes?
No, you are trying to muddle the waters by putting qualifications on the source of free speech.
Well, you got something partially right - I'm trying to put qualifications on the source of free speech. Not sure how that's muddying any waters...
Either which way, it's pretty clear you've made your bed on the side of complete deregulation. I really don't see any benefits coming from it... and yes, everything is a cost/benefit analysis. Rights aren't god given or natural, they're an agreement by the population on what works and what doesn't.
I hope you'll enjoy the ads from CNOOC endorsing a candidate. I wonder if a corporation could potentially run for president now?
And yet the article says nothing about the intention being to start a war between China and India. Making things up is indeed fun. As for the CIA supporting the Dalai Lama... heck, in this case I'm all for it.
I honestly don't understand the argument that a collection of individuals (i.e: a corporation) is entitled to less freedom of speech than individuals.
Because corporations are offered protections that aren't offered to individuals. Look up the concept of the corporate veil. Because some people in corporations can exert undue influence on other people in the same corporation. Because corporations are about jobs, money, products and services, not politics. Because some people who are in the corporation might not want to support the political goals of their superiors. Really, is that so hard to understand?
Why do supporters of the old law believe that the New York Times is more worthy of participation in the political process than the Sierra Club or NRA?
Because news organizations and opinion pieces are already regulated. Furthermore, you can't have news coverage without covering politics. The NRA and the Sierra Club can perform their core duties without directly entering into the political process and commentary. Really, is that so hard to understand?
You're also confusing commercial and political speech. Not sure if that's willful or not.
Do you realize that under the old law advocacy organizations such as the Sierra Club were prohibited from running advertisements on behalf of or in opposition to political candidates?
What's your point? If the issue is fostering debate, then let's have a debate on the merits of the various positions. There's absolutely no need to directly advertise for a particular politician - and it doesn't matter if it's the Sierra Club or the We-kill-kittens Club. Yes, it's only a thin veneer that differentiates one from the other, but it means these organizations have to work at their propaganda.
Lastly, your free speech and peacable assembly points are laughable. An organization is not a person, hence laws referring to persons do not apply to them. Furthermore, people can assemble and talk about whatever they want. The old laws just made sure that they couldn't influence a political debate with means other than participation in the debate.
You really would support a system that says the Sierra Club can't produce literature condemning a candidate who wants to open up National Parks for energy drilling?
Yes. Because the alternative is that I have CNOOC running advertisements for Palin in the next presidential election.
Ok. Let's assume you're correct. Corporations can't donate to parties, and they can only buy advertisements.
Do you know what the vast majority of the money in a campaign is spent on? That's right, advertisements. There are expenses for employing staffers, traveling, polling and feeding people, but the biggest chunk is advertisements.
So where is the difference between the letter of the law, and what people are talking about? There really isn't much. And the difference becomes even less if corporations are allowed to sponsor events and conduct their own political events.
There's a difference between making up new words and pronouncing old ones in a different way, and making up new words because your vocabulary sucks (anybody who says "defensed", I'm looking at you). One is evolution, the other is ignorance. Yes, both will always occur, but that doesn't mean we have to embrace both.
There's value in having a consistent way of referring to things: people will actually be able to understand each other. This discussion is a nice example of how diverging meanings can hurt understanding.
As for your example of the proper pronunciation of knight, do you mean to imply that we all should speak German? ;)
How is this missing from anti-war protesters?
The video illustrates a very specific issue with certain anti-war arguments: if you know that an area holds people who have shot at you before and will do it again, how do you react to a crowd that might consist at least partially of people like that? Just not shooting is frequently not an option - see Bosnia, for example.
Then you have the huge masses of idiots on both sides of the issue, yelling and screaming and throwing feces at each other. Maybe you consider that to be productive debate, but I certainly don't.
True. 20% of the comments are pure flamebait, 50% are pretty useless statements of opinion, 20% engage in debate because they want to know more, and about 10% have actually something useful to say (numbers made up on the fly, YMMV). But what's the alternative? I look at it as the equivalent of Jimmy Wales' experience with Wikipedia - it only took off and became a world-wide tool for knowledge collection once he took off the gates and allowed general feces-flinging.
If you have a better option than hashing it out in public, feces-flinging and all, I'm all ears.
In a nation where the vast majority of the population has never served, and where most people have never even held a weapon, it simply makes no sense. If your goal is propaganda, then sure, it works great. Otherwise it's completely pointless.
On the contrary. The biggest danger in a nation where the population has never served is that War becomes idealized: either as a clean, simple affair, or as a cruel campaign that is never appropriate. Both are clearly wrong. Videos like these are necessary because they epitomize the daily struggle that soldiers have in a battlefield. Just watch the discussion: were there or were there not weapons in the crowd? Could the cameraman be positively identified as presenting no-risk? Heck, even the van rescuing wounded civilians is not a clear-cut situation. Only through a vigorous discussion centered around videos like these can people gain a better understanding of what it means to be in a war zone.
Similarly, videos of surgeries gone wrong and of massive crash pile-ups are regularly shown, and both with the same goal: to demonstrate what happens in certain situations. Surgeries gone wrong less frequently, but I got my drivers license after a course that included the dangers of driving - and you ain't seen nothing yet if you haven't seen the results of cars going at 150 mph into an embankment.
Finally, on the subject of context: if you think it is missing, feel free to provide it. I've seen a number of posts by people in either active service or who have retired, and they provided great context. Where's yours?
The simplest propaganda is to shut down discussion and label it propaganda. Then you can say whatever you want and no one can challenge it.
Absolutely can they mislead. This is why you can't just "trust" a story or the one who is telling it.
But I think you're missing the point about what part of the story is truth, and what is fiction. Let's take The Iliad and The Odyssey. There are mounds of paper written about whether everything happened as it is described in the books. Some of it did, some of it didn't. But its truth - the reason that it is a classis, and that it is still read today - is in the human conditions and mind-sets that they talk about.
Here's the most obvious example: the king comes home from a siege that lasted years and took his best friends, and from an odyssey that lasted as long and took even more friends. He fought for what was right, for his family, and for his people. He fought just to get back home. And what does he find? His wife has taken up with someone else, his son doesn't know him, his house is filled with unworthy strangers. Only his dog recognizes him (and, I believe, his oldest servant).
How many times has happened? Today's soldiers face the same problems. Heck, today's consultants face the same problems. You can read The Iliad and The Odyssey, and you can see that what seems like a modern problem is actually a problem of the human condition.
The truth of the classics isn't in the facts told. It is in the human souls that they describe.
I'll say it. I don't get fiction.
Then why do you talk about it? Here's why people tell you that they pity you when you them that: because they really do pity you. You have absolutely no idea what role stories play in human development. It's a sad state to be in, doubly so because you have no idea what you're missing.
Here's a quick introduction to why fiction is important, and why classics are classics: they allow you to share experiences that you could have never possibly had. From that, you get to build yourself a more complete image of the world, and you get to bond with those who have had those experiences, or who are telling and listening to the story. Sometimes, those stories are short, as in the many fables. Sometimes, they're long, as in the many creation myths (or Ulysses).
If you don't understand the value in that.... I'll have to agree with another poster: most people don't have Asperger's. You can either deal with that, or continue to live in your own world. Your choice.
This is what happens in war
This. This is the part that is always missing from certain sections of anti-war protestors and war-supporters alike.
War is messy. War sucks. Sometimes you shoot your own people. Sometimes you miss the enemy and hit some goat farmer in the middle of nowhere; sometimes, you shoot him directly. Sometimes you shoot the goat-farmer because you thought he had a weapon, sometimes you shoot him just because.
War is never clean, can never be clean. Even the old standards of a bunch of guys meeting up in a field to club each other over the head had collateral - how do you think they fed their army on months-long campaigns?
War is not heroic, it's not glorious, and it doesn't solve anything. It just is the standard political discourse, carried on through bullets and bombs. Sometimes, there's a need for that. Sometimes, there isn't.
I like videos like these, because they drive home the point about how messy war exactly is. They start the discussion of "Is our goal worth this cost?" Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. But when you get into a war, be ready for these situations. Because they cannot be avoided.
Pretty much. The article could also have been entitled "People suck - reviews prove it again."
That said, I always find these articles entertaining - and a useful reminder of how petty, small-minded and stupid some people can be. There is no need for everyone to like every classic out there, but people should have at least the cognitive capacity to understand why classics are classics. Sadly, that cognitive capacity is exactly what's missing in these dismissive reviews.
America-with its traditions of individual liberty-cannot import Switzerland's culture of social control.
You know where I got that quote from? www.guncite.com, a pro-gun site. It was from an excellent post discussing not only a few statistics, but also a good number of external laws, history, and social mores. I suggest you take notes from it on how to make a sound argument for gun control.
Any comparison about Swiss vs US gun laws that does not also include a cultural discussion is either ignorant, or willfully misleading.
I'd love to talk facts with you; sadly, your post contained none. And you can quit the condescension, as it weakens your point. It's a weak attempt at a flame, and an even weaker attempt at being educational.
I don't see gun-control advocates trying to seriously address such patterns.
One country is not a freaking pattern.
That makes it obvious to me that they have an inferior worldview, and it frankly makes me suspicious of their motives.
Yes, this kind of attitude makes me really want to look further into the views of people who want to legalize guns. Your statistics are off, your inferences are not born out by the people in the area (ask the Swiss what they think about US gun laws) and you come across like someone who has absolutely no clue what he's talking about.
It's a shame, really, because guns are here to stay in the US. It's just a question of how to go about it. But sadly, it's impossible to have a civilized discussion with gun-advocates on the topic.
Ideally hard and you go right through the obstacle, feeling nothing
Only if the obstacle is made of marshmallow fluff. If it is made of a similar material, the collision energy is dissipated by the squishiest object involved in the collision - the human.
Lighter = less momentum, sure, but it also means less control.
Clearly the Lotus Elise is the apotheosis of the ungainly clunker, unable to turn any corner at more than 20 mph.
Better handling is subjective, and I vastly prefer the feel of a heavier vehicle.
You clearly have never driven a light car, or suffer from terminal confirmation bias. Better handling can be defined by at least one absolute number (lateral g-force it can hold) and one relative number (exit speed from a corner).
Finally, stability is related to where the center of gravity is located, not with absolute weight. And most heavy cars on the road today are SUVs, which are terminally top-heavy.
Sheesh. I expect that any moment now you're going to tell me that 4-wheel drive helps in stopping distance.
See figure 5 of the patent application. Not sure what this means for the whole thing. Did someone at Apple just throw together a few ideas, and patent them all? The language and the "art" seems vague enough for it. Unfortunately, I'm not a lawyer, so I have no clue whether something like this means that the entire patent application can be tossed out, or whether vague language means it can't be enforced.
Either which way, this is about as lame as patent applications come. It really sounds like someone looked around at existing platforms and said "let's patent them all."
I think the problem with the Android app market is that you have no idea what you're missing in your searches. There are categories, sure. But do I really want to browse 5000 apps in entertainment to make sure that that's not where the video players are hiding? Or when I search for a battery management app, do I search for battery management? Battery? Battery saver? And if I scroll down more, what do I get? Do I get results that are less relevant? Less used? Older? Combination thereof?
In short, I have no idea how the Android app market works, and the search results are haphazard enough that I don't trust it. And as you pointed out, I can't even organize the search results. No sorting by downloads, by popularity, by ratings, or by developer.
The Android App store is right now my biggest gripe of the entire Android ecosystem. Google and others have produced some outstanding apps, but I have no idea if they're there, or what it is that I should search for.
Here are a couple of suggestions that would drastically improve the user experience:
- have a web interface available. Seriously, that's a no-brainer.
- let me order the results by ratings, downloads, date, publisher and name. Another complete no-brainer.
- Allow me to recommend apps to friends and contacts. Or allow me to set my download privacy so that friends and contacts can see what I installed.
- Provide a staff pick
3 out of 4 of those are brain dead to implement, and don't even require much computational complexity. Considering that the app store is part of what makes the iPhone the iPhone, I don't understand what's keeping Google from actually offering a usable experience.
And yet, you post the same drivel multiple times in each story. Is your life so empty that you cannot stop reading Slashdot, even if you find it so dumb as to inflict physical pain on you?