Complying with an officer's requests, even if they are unbacked by law, is personally prudent. They don't see you as an uppity citizen, and rather as a compliant sheep. It's best if your immediate personal safety and convenience are a priority.
I care a fair bit about liberty and stuff, but at the same time it would be incredibly harmful to my family if I were detained, arrested, possibly lost my job for not showing up, lost my employer's trust because now I have an arrest on my record, etc (even if not a conviction - people are quick to judge). I'm quite happy to delete a picture, especially now that I know I can just recover it later, if it means I can (usually) skip all of that.
Can you elaborate on why I should not take Roy seriously? I've never heard of him before, and thus do not have an initial disregard for his thoughts the way I would for, say, Darl McBride.
you could just guess at all the intermediate results of halfway through a long sequence of operations, and execute from there, but discard the information if it's wrong.
How would you know that the calculations were wrong?
He was like a lot of New Age types, who just crib together their own half-assed belief systems out of the spare parts of real cultures and civilizations, with little interest in the actual myths and rituals themselves.
What does "new age" mean? I've seen the phrase bandied about from time to time and... I don't get it. It seems to be nearly always associated with "being a kook", as someone put it earlier in this thread, but there are some other undertones that I don't quite grok. Can you explain it? Can you give examples of cribbed-together belief systems like the ones you allude to? I'm genuinely curious, because Wikipedia's page on "New Age" seems to nebulous, and I'd rather not delve into wiki-hell if I can get a concise explanation here.:D
That was some really interesting stuff, and evidence of some effort on your part. I regret that I can't shovel karma in your direction by modding your posts upwards (well, if they weren't already maxed).:D
If X treats Y as chattel, or as the target of abuse, one might argue that the relationship is no longer one of love and respect; all that remains is the legal aspects of marriage, rather than the moral ones. I agree that it's better to end that too before starting anew, but most humans tend not to do that.
I have three children, 14, 10, and 1. If I want to stay home and play WoW, drink beer, watch PBS, sleep, whatever, and my kid is safely supervised by a capable adult at their Saturday morning soccer game, what's the problem again?
The problem is that you are not parenting your child -- you are merely subsidizing their existence. You're not giving them the full battery of emotional support that they deserve. If you don't make it a priority to be there to cheer them on at soccer, or console them after losses, or give them a hug and an orange when they linp off the field after a bad tackle, they will notice. Who do you think they will look to as an authority figure, or as an advisory figure, when they start facing more interesting life issues? Things like, "my friend wanted to give me some cigarettes", or "should I hang out with this girl, who is totally cute but mean to everyone else", or "how does sex work?" It likely won't be you, if they don't feel you're invested in their wellbeing. If all you do is fund their funtimes and set boundaries on their behavior, you will be seen as a warden, not as a parent.
The more time you spend with your children, the more they will treat you as a role model. They'll behave the way you do to other people, they'll drive the way you do (well, maybe), they'll lie or cheat the way you do (if you do). They'll eat junk food if you do, etc. If you want to be a role model for your children, you have to actually be there to interact with them. If you don't want to be a role model for your children, why are you a parent?
Of course I don't mean to imply that you need to be at EVERY event... but you should be at as many as you can.
Now, I play WoW also. I enjoy it (and many other games) a great deal. I think I can safely say that I play them too much, in fact. Raiding can be fun, after all. However, when my son is awake, I am focused on him -- I don't play until he is in bed. I take him with me when I go to the store, or get the mail, and I go outside with him in the backyard when he wants to run around. Yes, it's very tiring, and yes I often think "god, I can't wait until he's asleep so I can play!", but it's worth it when he brings me books and asks me to read them (!), or talks to me about what he saw or did today. As he gets older, I hope we'll play games together. My point is... my priority in life is my son, not WoW. Wow is fun, but I would drop it in a heartbeat if I were forced to choose between them.
As I re-read your post, I think I reacted too harshly -- two of your kids are halfway grown up, so they likely don't care as much about you being there as a younger kid might be. Still, though, the early teens are very formative years: they're beginning to notice the opposite sex in a different way, they're thinking more about what it will mean to be able to drive themselves around, and so forth. I guess that as long as you or your wife are at most of their things, that's probably fine -- I don't know how I'd keep up with three kids, as one's tiring enough, heh. I do think, though, that you risk your kids seeing other people (scoutmasters, soccer coaches, teachers) as role models more than you, if they aren't hanging out with you in their non-school time. Because teenagers want to hang out with their parents...? I guess not.:D Sorry for jumping down your throat. I'm leaving the other stuff there, as I think it's still valid, just probably not specifically directed at you.
From the images that Google image search turns up (such as this one), it appears to be a symmetrical mouse, which should work just fine for using left-handed or ambidextrously. (My Razer is the same way, and I love it.) The buttons are surely reconfigurable in the driver software, also.
May I suggest using the [blockquote]... [/blockquote] construct? (Using normal HTML angled brackets, that is.) It makes recognizing what you're quoting (as separate from YOUR message) much easier for a reader. Slashcode automatically indents it and changes text color to a lighter grey.
Consider asking if they can do the design with a narrow-point Sharpie (permanent marker) first. Viola, you have something vaguely tattoo-like that will last you long enough to be Potentially Inconvenient, long enough for you to explain to random people (or find ways to cover), etc. I imagine henna might work, too.
The best advice I read in this thread was, when you get the "I should get an ____ tattoo", let it stew for a year. If, a year from now it's still meaningful? Sounds like you really do want it.
My mother doesn't permit me to drink beer because it's against her freaking religion, and I have to do whatever my mother says (even though I'm in my late 30's! Please kill me.)
I originally moderated you up, but I think it's important to say: Move out! Get a job (I know, not always easy, especially now), and move out on your own. Your personal wellbeing and self esteem will likely be much improved. You don't need to go out and live a life of debauchery, but you can sit there a few times a year and say, "you know, I think I'll have beer|scotch|brownies".
The exception would be if you're living the life of Bertie Wooster, and have to behave in order to get a massive inheritance. In that case... who knows. =) I'm genuinely curious why you feel you have to follow your mother's restrictive lifestyle. Part of being a mature adult is respecting that not everyone feels the same way you do.
On the flip side, if you've never had booze or been to a bar, you may find that you don't enjoy them when you DO try it. There's no harm in that -- but then you'll avoid them by choice, not because you feel you are kept from them by someone else.
If you're not courageous enough to put a sign on your lawn, or a bumper sticker, or wear a T-shirt supporting an idea, it's cowardly to sign a petition and expect that to remain private.
The problem here is that few people (maybe you have, and if so, awesome) actually go to a bookstore and read a *whole* book before they decide to buy it. Where do you draw the line there?
"Wow, the butler didn't do it. That sucks. No sale."
Most people might read the back cover, maybe the first chapter, read a few reviews online, and decide. Especially if they've read other works by that author. But the whole book?
Most people won't, but the stores generally still do nothing to prevent it. There are archipelagos of comfy chairs scattered around my local Barnes and Noble, as well as a coffee shop in-store, where I could (in theory) sit down for an hour each day and read another chapter or two.
If I spent my lunch hour doing that, instead of browsing the web, I could read a couple dozen books a year, without paying B&N anything. Now, they might ask me not to, and could kick me out, but I've never heard of anyone doing so. I realize also that you might say "that's what a library is for!" -- and it's true. However, most major bookstores are still quite OK with you sitting and reading for an extended time.
... Streaming media over WiFi and USB, playing DVDs, running apps So I have to ask...why do you want the Wii to do that?
The Wii is a small computer with built-in Wi-fi capability which already sits on my network and yet is also connected to my TV. If it has the hardware to support doing those things, why not use it for that? Watching it stream Netflix has made me super-happy, and I'd love to pretty much have my entire video collection on a server on my network for the Wii to stream.
Does it really offend people so much that developers, engineers, artists, etc, benefit from their work?
Nope, doesn't offend me at all. However, I have several games for an older system which I can't play on my Wii now, and I would really like to be able to run it (via software others have written and given away for free) on my Wii, or on ${CONSOLE}, rather than praying that Square Enix re-releases something Yet Again for the new console, for example. (The Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls game package is exceptional, by the way... but I'd love to be able to play it on my next portable console, or on a larger screen since my GBA is busted. I don't love it enough to bother modding my Wii and looking for an emulator, though.)
I realize that some people are unethical and want to play games for free. Many others want to play games they've already paid for either in a more convenient way (load from a library of ripped images) or on The Next Console which doesn't have (official) backwards compatibility. The latter group are not at all opposed to developers getting paid: they got paid when we bought the game.
Thanks! That was very informative. If I had more than a couple games, I'd want to use that. Does modding my Wii like that remove my ability to use the Wii online store (e.g., for buying Tetris)? I fear it may, and that'd be a no-go.
If I had mod points, I'd have modded you up. The only thing I can see from this is that it will be hard to market DVDs or the like as a "product", won't it?
Perhaps the lifecycle of a film (or music album) can go like this. (I'm mainly talking about videos. Music's timeline would be in a different order, I expect.)
- Sign artists - Pay money to create the film/music/book. Artists get paid here for producing awesome stuff. - Show film in theaters, or do live music performances. Artists and studios make money from ticket sales. - DVDs/CDs released at Some Cost. Perhaps people will still buy them for $15 or $30 each... but a $5 price point makes it hard to skip. - A month or two after that, unlock it in the online [RIAA|MPAA]-Tunes store. Downloads are cheap ($2-5), can be re-downloaded in the future anytime, and have options for high-def versions in an open container+codec (so we can transcode), as well as ready-to-go downloads for your mp3 player or ipod or phone. - Artists/etc get paid based on downloads, so that "cult hits" are profitable in the long term.
This way, cheapskates like me (who nearly never buy DVDs, and rarely make time to see more than 2 films a year in a theater) will buy movies from them online for convenience purposes. (I love my Netflix disc for Wii.)
I said Cheap and DRM-free media is not going to happen if you guys keep pirating. Speaking out against DRM in this thread is idiocy.
The implied meaning of this is that you believe that, were people to stop "pirating", we would then get cheap and DRM-free media. That assertion does not bear up to history. The media companies put DRM in place to ensure that, rather than being able to exercise fair use exceptions to copyright, we are forced (by technical means) to buy the same information every time format shifts (vinyl, 8-track, tape, CD, vinyl, laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray, online... and whatever is next).
In order to exercise our fair use rights, which do not involve distribution to others, we're forced to break the laws against cracking DRM, because the studios will never release it in a free and openly convertable format.
If they were to give me high-definition digital copies, with watermarks to show that it's mine, and no technical or legal restrictions on whether I can transcode it for my phone, my watch, my TV, my computer, my toaster, or my car's video player, I'd buy it. Again, though, I will expect monkeys to fly out of unexpected places before I expect to see that happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me rephrase what he was saying.
Complying with an officer's requests, even if they are unbacked by law, is personally prudent. They don't see you as an uppity citizen, and rather as a compliant sheep. It's best if your immediate personal safety and convenience are a priority.
I care a fair bit about liberty and stuff, but at the same time it would be incredibly harmful to my family if I were detained, arrested, possibly lost my job for not showing up, lost my employer's trust because now I have an arrest on my record, etc (even if not a conviction - people are quick to judge). I'm quite happy to delete a picture, especially now that I know I can just recover it later, if it means I can (usually) skip all of that.
Can you elaborate on why I should not take Roy seriously? I've never heard of him before, and thus do not have an initial disregard for his thoughts the way I would for, say, Darl McBride.
Even if it were taxed, it's more than double what I make. Now if only kid would do something funny while I have a camera rolling. :)
How would you know that the calculations were wrong?
"limitations of TeX"? That's un-possible! :)
What does "new age" mean? I've seen the phrase bandied about from time to time and ... I don't get it. It seems to be nearly always associated with "being a kook", as someone put it earlier in this thread, but there are some other undertones that I don't quite grok. Can you explain it? Can you give examples of cribbed-together belief systems like the ones you allude to? I'm genuinely curious, because Wikipedia's page on "New Age" seems to nebulous, and I'd rather not delve into wiki-hell if I can get a concise explanation here. :D
That was some really interesting stuff, and evidence of some effort on your part. I regret that I can't shovel karma in your direction by modding your posts upwards (well, if they weren't already maxed). :D
If X treats Y as chattel, or as the target of abuse, one might argue that the relationship is no longer one of love and respect; all that remains is the legal aspects of marriage, rather than the moral ones. I agree that it's better to end that too before starting anew, but most humans tend not to do that.
The problem is that you are not parenting your child -- you are merely subsidizing their existence. You're not giving them the full battery of emotional support that they deserve. If you don't make it a priority to be there to cheer them on at soccer, or console them after losses, or give them a hug and an orange when they linp off the field after a bad tackle, they will notice. Who do you think they will look to as an authority figure, or as an advisory figure, when they start facing more interesting life issues? Things like, "my friend wanted to give me some cigarettes", or "should I hang out with this girl, who is totally cute but mean to everyone else", or "how does sex work?" It likely won't be you, if they don't feel you're invested in their wellbeing. If all you do is fund their funtimes and set boundaries on their behavior, you will be seen as a warden, not as a parent.
The more time you spend with your children, the more they will treat you as a role model. They'll behave the way you do to other people, they'll drive the way you do (well, maybe), they'll lie or cheat the way you do (if you do). They'll eat junk food if you do, etc. If you want to be a role model for your children, you have to actually be there to interact with them. If you don't want to be a role model for your children, why are you a parent?
Of course I don't mean to imply that you need to be at EVERY event ... but you should be at as many as you can.
Now, I play WoW also. I enjoy it (and many other games) a great deal. I think I can safely say that I play them too much, in fact. Raiding can be fun, after all. However, when my son is awake, I am focused on him -- I don't play until he is in bed. I take him with me when I go to the store, or get the mail, and I go outside with him in the backyard when he wants to run around. Yes, it's very tiring, and yes I often think "god, I can't wait until he's asleep so I can play!", but it's worth it when he brings me books and asks me to read them (!), or talks to me about what he saw or did today. As he gets older, I hope we'll play games together. My point is ... my priority in life is my son, not WoW. Wow is fun, but I would drop it in a heartbeat if I were forced to choose between them.
As I re-read your post, I think I reacted too harshly -- two of your kids are halfway grown up, so they likely don't care as much about you being there as a younger kid might be. Still, though, the early teens are very formative years: they're beginning to notice the opposite sex in a different way, they're thinking more about what it will mean to be able to drive themselves around, and so forth. I guess that as long as you or your wife are at most of their things, that's probably fine -- I don't know how I'd keep up with three kids, as one's tiring enough, heh. I do think, though, that you risk your kids seeing other people (scoutmasters, soccer coaches, teachers) as role models more than you, if they aren't hanging out with you in their non-school time. Because teenagers want to hang out with their parents ...? I guess not. :D Sorry for jumping down your throat. I'm leaving the other stuff there, as I think it's still valid, just probably not specifically directed at you.
From the images that Google image search turns up (such as this one), it appears to be a symmetrical mouse, which should work just fine for using left-handed or ambidextrously. (My Razer is the same way, and I love it.) The buttons are surely reconfigurable in the driver software, also.
That reminds me, I bet one could configure it for use in Emacs! :D
(Yes, I realize that's basically counter to all of the design goals of both products.)
If you'd seen Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, you'd know that Plato and Socrates were real. Sheesh. :)
May I suggest using the [blockquote] ... [/blockquote] construct? (Using normal HTML angled brackets, that is.) It makes recognizing what you're quoting (as separate from YOUR message) much easier for a reader. Slashcode automatically indents it and changes text color to a lighter grey.
Consider asking if they can do the design with a narrow-point Sharpie (permanent marker) first. Viola, you have something vaguely tattoo-like that will last you long enough to be Potentially Inconvenient, long enough for you to explain to random people (or find ways to cover), etc. I imagine henna might work, too.
The best advice I read in this thread was, when you get the "I should get an ____ tattoo", let it stew for a year. If, a year from now it's still meaningful? Sounds like you really do want it.
I originally moderated you up, but I think it's important to say: Move out! Get a job (I know, not always easy, especially now), and move out on your own. Your personal wellbeing and self esteem will likely be much improved. You don't need to go out and live a life of debauchery, but you can sit there a few times a year and say, "you know, I think I'll have beer|scotch|brownies".
The exception would be if you're living the life of Bertie Wooster, and have to behave in order to get a massive inheritance. In that case... who knows. =) I'm genuinely curious why you feel you have to follow your mother's restrictive lifestyle. Part of being a mature adult is respecting that not everyone feels the same way you do.
On the flip side, if you've never had booze or been to a bar, you may find that you don't enjoy them when you DO try it. There's no harm in that -- but then you'll avoid them by choice, not because you feel you are kept from them by someone else.
I don't get it. What does a sound have anything to do with a sarcasm detection device? I would expect such a device to be silent, anyways.
They should use Google Earth or something and tag each plot with GPS coordinates as well as who's in it.
If you're not courageous enough to put a sign on your lawn, or a bumper sticker, or wear a T-shirt supporting an idea, it's cowardly to sign a petition and expect that to remain private.
Most people won't, but the stores generally still do nothing to prevent it. There are archipelagos of comfy chairs scattered around my local Barnes and Noble, as well as a coffee shop in-store, where I could (in theory) sit down for an hour each day and read another chapter or two.
If I spent my lunch hour doing that, instead of browsing the web, I could read a couple dozen books a year, without paying B&N anything. Now, they might ask me not to, and could kick me out, but I've never heard of anyone doing so. I realize also that you might say "that's what a library is for!" -- and it's true. However, most major bookstores are still quite OK with you sitting and reading for an extended time.
The Wii is a small computer with built-in Wi-fi capability which already sits on my network and yet is also connected to my TV. If it has the hardware to support doing those things, why not use it for that? Watching it stream Netflix has made me super-happy, and I'd love to pretty much have my entire video collection on a server on my network for the Wii to stream.
Nope, doesn't offend me at all. However, I have several games for an older system which I can't play on my Wii now, and I would really like to be able to run it (via software others have written and given away for free) on my Wii, or on ${CONSOLE}, rather than praying that Square Enix re-releases something Yet Again for the new console, for example. (The Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls game package is exceptional, by the way ... but I'd love to be able to play it on my next portable console, or on a larger screen since my GBA is busted. I don't love it enough to bother modding my Wii and looking for an emulator, though.)
I realize that some people are unethical and want to play games for free. Many others want to play games they've already paid for either in a more convenient way (load from a library of ripped images) or on The Next Console which doesn't have (official) backwards compatibility. The latter group are not at all opposed to developers getting paid: they got paid when we bought the game.
Thanks! That was very informative. If I had more than a couple games, I'd want to use that. Does modding my Wii like that remove my ability to use the Wii online store (e.g., for buying Tetris)? I fear it may, and that'd be a no-go.
If I had mod points, I'd have modded you up. The only thing I can see from this is that it will be hard to market DVDs or the like as a "product", won't it?
Perhaps the lifecycle of a film (or music album) can go like this. (I'm mainly talking about videos. Music's timeline would be in a different order, I expect.)
- Sign artists
- Pay money to create the film/music/book. Artists get paid here for producing awesome stuff.
- Show film in theaters, or do live music performances. Artists and studios make money from ticket sales.
- DVDs/CDs released at Some Cost. Perhaps people will still buy them for $15 or $30 each... but a $5 price point makes it hard to skip.
- A month or two after that, unlock it in the online [RIAA|MPAA]-Tunes store. Downloads are cheap ($2-5), can be re-downloaded in the future anytime, and have options for high-def versions in an open container+codec (so we can transcode), as well as ready-to-go downloads for your mp3 player or ipod or phone.
- Artists/etc get paid based on downloads, so that "cult hits" are profitable in the long term.
This way, cheapskates like me (who nearly never buy DVDs, and rarely make time to see more than 2 films a year in a theater) will buy movies from them online for convenience purposes. (I love my Netflix disc for Wii.)
The implied meaning of this is that you believe that, were people to stop "pirating", we would then get cheap and DRM-free media. That assertion does not bear up to history. The media companies put DRM in place to ensure that, rather than being able to exercise fair use exceptions to copyright, we are forced (by technical means) to buy the same information every time format shifts (vinyl, 8-track, tape, CD, vinyl, laserdisc, DVD, Blu-ray, online... and whatever is next).
In order to exercise our fair use rights, which do not involve distribution to others, we're forced to break the laws against cracking DRM, because the studios will never release it in a free and openly convertable format.
If they were to give me high-definition digital copies, with watermarks to show that it's mine, and no technical or legal restrictions on whether I can transcode it for my phone, my watch, my TV, my computer, my toaster, or my car's video player, I'd buy it. Again, though, I will expect monkeys to fly out of unexpected places before I expect to see that happen.
Yeah, they list your eye color in nanometers.