I do have the first half of season 1 of Cowboy Bebop too and in fact started watching it this week. Firefly most definitely pays a lot of homage to Outlaw Star, though yeah I guess it draws from other sources too. But even so it's quite unique in its own way:)
As for your last point, that's the problem isn't it? No conclusive proof either way really, just what we can infer from our surroundings. The difficult part would be if we were just required to have faith without getting any conclusive evidence. Some people say that it isn't really faith if there's evidence anyway. I don't know what to believe. I don't know if I already said earlier, but Nietzche's philosophy sounded pretty sensible to me until I read a part about razing churches and releasing snakes onto the site. Seemed a tad extreme, and the sort of thing that makes me not even want to listen to someone's ideas sadly enough. I have a friend who I've been speaking to who says the same thing. He spent a few months travelling the world, and wasn't actually going to church when I met him, even though he's a Christian (similar situation with my gf, I started her going to church again because if you're a Christian you are meant to be spending time with other Christians according to the bible..). When I talked about trying to find meaning in life outside of being a Christian he says he's happy he took that time away from church because it helped him to do something similar. He also points out how throughout history, countries have been better off as a result of Christianity, and that can't really be denied (in my opinion), as a whole Christianity does a lot of good, though personally I don't think it's done me any good as an individual. My friend really reckons that I'm not "well placed" at my own church, probably because the denomination is quite fundamentalist in some ways and is a rather boring place to worship sometimes (no instruments to be used during worship - sometimes the acapella singing can be quite beautiful when people are singing the harmonies, but sometimes it can just be dull and repetetive).
I can't really help thinking of things from a 'Christian' viewpoint most of the time, though I find the idea that there could be something else to life pretty exhilirating. It almost gives me the same feeling I used to get while SCUBA diving in the open ocean, just a feeling of vastness and the unknown or something:p I wish I could just be confident enough to say "I won't worship a god that would be so unreasonable as to do [x]". Still have a lot of research to do into history and such though, some of the things that philosophers have come up with over the years is pretty interesting. Again and again I come back to the basics in my own head that I shouldn't even exist. How can either a god or the universe just have always existed? It's such a head trip for a being that has come from nothing, and will most likely end up as nothing -.-
I don't really mind stuff being on a public forum, in a lot of ways I feel a lot more able to talk here than to anyone I know irl, since most of them would be disappointed to hear that I'm having such doubts, as it will reflect badly on their own beliefs. I know that all Christians have doubts though, that's just a fact. Anyone who doesn't probably just isn't thinking about their faith as much as they should be, and it will be rather weak as a result.. even the bible encourages people to "always have an answer" for why they believe in Jesus, it doesn't say just to believe and that's that. There are so many good things that Christianity stands for, just a shame it can be so frustrating too and that people have to hate it so much. You don't usually see people that take much issue with buddhism or even Islam outside of Christian circles. Maybe that's just because people are scared of it, or of being accused of hate speech, so they don't vocalise their opposition so much? The fact that people hate the church always seemed to me to be pretty good evidence that it was real, though by that reckoning I suppose that would mean that the Nazis and Scientologists of this world have something pretty good going on with their little clubs, which I can't say is something I will ever believe...
Costs to install the windows, costs when the glass damages your eyes and skin, costs for all the bits of glass left in your carpet that damage you even more, or damage your hoover or your pets, costs for extra heating while there is a draft, costs for the time you spend organising to get the window repaired.. yada yada yada. I'd probably put a bullet/rock-proof window behind the first one so that they just had to keep paying me but I didn't have to deal with the broken glass. Nice little earner I guess, as far as stupid analogies go.
it's a pretty bad species that preys on its own. Pfft.. name one species where the members wouldn't try to get away with something if they thought they could. Dogs always trying to get up on the sofa, for example. Most species would probably get all cannon-ballistic on their dead relatives as well. Some mothers even eat their live young. Meh. Sure some species have a pretty evolved social structure, but that won't mean they all stop trying to get ahead in that structure even if it means pushing someone else out of the way. The only thing that would stop them is fear. We to demonstrate to the spammers fear retribution for what they are doing. If only capital punishment and bounties on spammers were legal the world over, things would be different...:p
If you can't change something, it's not important? I would have thought more if it made no difference to yourself then it's not important, rather than your ability to do anything about it.
Plus I'm sure if he were really driven he could probably take Myspace out for a while with a co-ordinated physical explosion near their servers, and if he was good enough he could take out their backups too. Likewise several spammers have become well known, so he could try to assassinate one. Not very practical, but he could probably do something if he were bothered enough. Or maybe I've just played too many violent computer games.
3 "The 2003 CAN-SPAM Act allows MySpace to collect $100 per violation". Doesn't sound like MySpace have much incentive to make things more secure either, does it?:s
The thing is that kids are usually just better with technology because they don't have the notion "I won't understand how it works so I won't even try" or whatever. A button saying 'fast forward' shouldn't be very hard for your average kid to figure out. The concept must have been around for about 40-50 years by now anyway, so even older people should be aware of it (and obviously are if the summary is correct:p )
I would. Only if it was for a desktop though, I'm quite happy with the quality of Apple's laptops for everything I use it for, even with their apparently poor thermal paste application.. if I was going to do any more serious gaming on this laptop I'd probably be better off taking it apart and sorting the cooling out.
I don't even remember the ad it's for, apart from it being vaguely shampoo or makeup related. I often don't remember what product was being advertised either, even (or maybe especially) if I found the ad entertaining.
I wouldn't say I have a bad memory, but it's just something I don't find interesting so I tend to just let the ads wash over me, or I use the time to do something more productive. If you're desperate for the toilet but don't want to miss the show (and you don't have a DVR), then an ad break can be a great thing!:P
Why?/. often has interesting articles that expand your knowledge or can provide a bit of inspiration for something to do, whereas if you're always skipping everything because you consider it's not worthy of your time, you'll end up doing nothing anyway.
I would have thought the tenants of council houses would be more likely to go with Freeview? I suppose satellite dishes are rather common these days, but I still see would link them more to affluence than poverty..
Apart from the odd SAGA/stairlift ad on afternoon telly, what was the last oldie advert you saw? What do these old people use the Simple API for Grid Applications for?
Would you buy something you never saw an ad for? Yes, if I'm browsing for something I need in a hardware store or supermarket for example. If it seems to meet the requirements for the job I wanted to do with it (fix my car/eat), I'll get it. Of course you still have to go by what it says on the packaging, but at least there are laws which mean that the description has to conform vaguely to the truth of what the product does or contains.
Advertised brands do engender a sort of trust, but only if you've had previous good experience with that brand, or know from word of mouth (which could be influenced by people who are stupid enough to believe everything they see in advertising of course) that it is good.
I get your point, though personally I probably pay much more attention to music than average, since I drum and play guitar. I'm always tapping my feet or hands or bobbing my head along to music (sometimes when the music isn't even switched on and it's just playing in my head). That's while I'm working too, so it may not be my primary focus, but it definitely is nothing to me like the paint on the walls, it's more like the padding on the chair I'm sitting on, or the amount of power I have in my car's engine if you want a bad car analogy:)
12 a week does sound more sensible. Your body can only process so much at once, the rest is just thrown back out into the world, unless perhaps you're a bodybuilder and your body really needs all the extra protein and whatnot:P My mum totally goes in for all that stuff she reads in magazines though, it's depressing. I expect that friendly bacteria stuff could aid in digestion, but as you say we can survive without any of that stuff. We just might not be in as good a mood as we would otherwise have been. I know that the days after I go to for example Burger King for tea I do tend to feel a bit run down, and when I have stuff like fish and chips (the deep fat fried stuff, very common in Scotland but I hardly ever eat it) I can almost feel myself slowing down as if I'm getting clogged up by all the grease and starch, but that's more just my gullet I guess:P
My point is that nutrileum is just pulled out of their ass, it doesn't have anything to do with the chemical structure, and is even named to suggest that it has nutritional properties, when it most probably doesn't (seeing as it's used on a shampoo advert, why would dead hair need nourished?), which is misleading.
Good thing too, because I couldn't be bothered to scroll down past it, so I'd have ended up reading the whole thing!
GP has a strange idea of the amount of hassle involved pressing a button, and the amount of hassle of sitting there for 2 minutes while your caffeine addled body is screaming "I'M BORED!". At least that's what I've been thinking whenever ads come on (I stopped watching TV for a few years, but at the moment I rather enjoy watching reruns of Top Gear and QI on 'Dave':) )
Last time I read about it, they detected ads via the rate at which the scenes were switching (which wouldn't be that difficult to detect by itself, unless maybe there was a lot of movement like people walking directly in front of the camera, which could seem like a scene transition to an algorithm looking out for stuff like that, but you would then get back into view the stuff you had before and the algorithm could compare it to stuff that it's seen in the last few seconds, etc), though that method won't be infallible as scenes in TV shows could end up with a similar style to adverts. Perhaps they could train the DVRs to recognise the types of tone progressions used in "friendly but condescending market speak".
Doesn't the colours thing make a bit of sense because having a larger variety gives you more chance of getting the different vitamin groups and all that crap?
My favourite chemical name recently has been "nutrileum". They didn't make that one up, did they? *rolls eyes*
Hold your horses there! The value of music even if you are doing something else is very high to some people, me for instance. I like listening to music while coding or playing computer games (which often have their own music). You can change an atmosphere a lot with music. And the music playing *does* matter, for example listening to some thumped up base superhappytechno or whatever its called would piss me right off, whereas listening to some decent rock or derivative, won't. Putting on a decent song can totally change your mood, for example when 1979 comes on the radio when I'm playing GTA IV:)
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The problem being that the windchill permanently damaged his balls, so that scuppers that plan!
Okay, okay, so I'm just kidding - I know not the actual condition of his balls.
I do have the first half of season 1 of Cowboy Bebop too and in fact started watching it this week. Firefly most definitely pays a lot of homage to Outlaw Star, though yeah I guess it draws from other sources too. But even so it's quite unique in its own way :)
:p I wish I could just be confident enough to say "I won't worship a god that would be so unreasonable as to do [x]". Still have a lot of research to do into history and such though, some of the things that philosophers have come up with over the years is pretty interesting. Again and again I come back to the basics in my own head that I shouldn't even exist. How can either a god or the universe just have always existed? It's such a head trip for a being that has come from nothing, and will most likely end up as nothing -.-
As for your last point, that's the problem isn't it? No conclusive proof either way really, just what we can infer from our surroundings. The difficult part would be if we were just required to have faith without getting any conclusive evidence. Some people say that it isn't really faith if there's evidence anyway. I don't know what to believe. I don't know if I already said earlier, but Nietzche's philosophy sounded pretty sensible to me until I read a part about razing churches and releasing snakes onto the site. Seemed a tad extreme, and the sort of thing that makes me not even want to listen to someone's ideas sadly enough. I have a friend who I've been speaking to who says the same thing. He spent a few months travelling the world, and wasn't actually going to church when I met him, even though he's a Christian (similar situation with my gf, I started her going to church again because if you're a Christian you are meant to be spending time with other Christians according to the bible..). When I talked about trying to find meaning in life outside of being a Christian he says he's happy he took that time away from church because it helped him to do something similar. He also points out how throughout history, countries have been better off as a result of Christianity, and that can't really be denied (in my opinion), as a whole Christianity does a lot of good, though personally I don't think it's done me any good as an individual. My friend really reckons that I'm not "well placed" at my own church, probably because the denomination is quite fundamentalist in some ways and is a rather boring place to worship sometimes (no instruments to be used during worship - sometimes the acapella singing can be quite beautiful when people are singing the harmonies, but sometimes it can just be dull and repetetive).
I can't really help thinking of things from a 'Christian' viewpoint most of the time, though I find the idea that there could be something else to life pretty exhilirating. It almost gives me the same feeling I used to get while SCUBA diving in the open ocean, just a feeling of vastness and the unknown or something
I don't really mind stuff being on a public forum, in a lot of ways I feel a lot more able to talk here than to anyone I know irl, since most of them would be disappointed to hear that I'm having such doubts, as it will reflect badly on their own beliefs. I know that all Christians have doubts though, that's just a fact. Anyone who doesn't probably just isn't thinking about their faith as much as they should be, and it will be rather weak as a result.. even the bible encourages people to "always have an answer" for why they believe in Jesus, it doesn't say just to believe and that's that. There are so many good things that Christianity stands for, just a shame it can be so frustrating too and that people have to hate it so much. You don't usually see people that take much issue with buddhism or even Islam outside of Christian circles. Maybe that's just because people are scared of it, or of being accused of hate speech, so they don't vocalise their opposition so much? The fact that people hate the church always seemed to me to be pretty good evidence that it was real, though by that reckoning I suppose that would mean that the Nazis and Scientologists of this world have something pretty good going on with their little clubs, which I can't say is something I will ever believe...
Ah, I didn't pick up on your original sarcasm :p
Costs to install the windows, costs when the glass damages your eyes and skin, costs for all the bits of glass left in your carpet that damage you even more, or damage your hoover or your pets, costs for extra heating while there is a draft, costs for the time you spend organising to get the window repaired.. yada yada yada. I'd probably put a bullet/rock-proof window behind the first one so that they just had to keep paying me but I didn't have to deal with the broken glass. Nice little earner I guess, as far as stupid analogies go.
If you can't change something, it's not important? I would have thought more if it made no difference to yourself then it's not important, rather than your ability to do anything about it.
Plus I'm sure if he were really driven he could probably take Myspace out for a while with a co-ordinated physical explosion near their servers, and if he was good enough he could take out their backups too. Likewise several spammers have become well known, so he could try to assassinate one. Not very practical, but he could probably do something if he were bothered enough. Or maybe I've just played too many violent computer games.
3 "The 2003 CAN-SPAM Act allows MySpace to collect $100 per violation". Doesn't sound like MySpace have much incentive to make things more secure either, does it? :s
The thing is that kids are usually just better with technology because they don't have the notion "I won't understand how it works so I won't even try" or whatever. A button saying 'fast forward' shouldn't be very hard for your average kid to figure out. The concept must have been around for about 40-50 years by now anyway, so even older people should be aware of it (and obviously are if the summary is correct :p )
Wow, the latest members don't even read the summary titles, and only read every second word in the comments! Very efficient
Not if you put an apple sticker on your PC!
I would. Only if it was for a desktop though, I'm quite happy with the quality of Apple's laptops for everything I use it for, even with their apparently poor thermal paste application.. if I was going to do any more serious gaming on this laptop I'd probably be better off taking it apart and sorting the cooling out.
I don't even remember the ad it's for, apart from it being vaguely shampoo or makeup related. I often don't remember what product was being advertised either, even (or maybe especially) if I found the ad entertaining.
:P
I wouldn't say I have a bad memory, but it's just something I don't find interesting so I tend to just let the ads wash over me, or I use the time to do something more productive. If you're desperate for the toilet but don't want to miss the show (and you don't have a DVR), then an ad break can be a great thing!
Why? /. often has interesting articles that expand your knowledge or can provide a bit of inspiration for something to do, whereas if you're always skipping everything because you consider it's not worthy of your time, you'll end up doing nothing anyway.
I would have thought the tenants of council houses would be more likely to go with Freeview? I suppose satellite dishes are rather common these days, but I still see would link them more to affluence than poverty..
Advertised brands do engender a sort of trust, but only if you've had previous good experience with that brand, or know from word of mouth (which could be influenced by people who are stupid enough to believe everything they see in advertising of course) that it is good.
I get your point, though personally I probably pay much more attention to music than average, since I drum and play guitar. I'm always tapping my feet or hands or bobbing my head along to music (sometimes when the music isn't even switched on and it's just playing in my head). That's while I'm working too, so it may not be my primary focus, but it definitely is nothing to me like the paint on the walls, it's more like the padding on the chair I'm sitting on, or the amount of power I have in my car's engine if you want a bad car analogy :)
12 a week does sound more sensible. Your body can only process so much at once, the rest is just thrown back out into the world, unless perhaps you're a bodybuilder and your body really needs all the extra protein and whatnot :P My mum totally goes in for all that stuff she reads in magazines though, it's depressing. I expect that friendly bacteria stuff could aid in digestion, but as you say we can survive without any of that stuff. We just might not be in as good a mood as we would otherwise have been. I know that the days after I go to for example Burger King for tea I do tend to feel a bit run down, and when I have stuff like fish and chips (the deep fat fried stuff, very common in Scotland but I hardly ever eat it) I can almost feel myself slowing down as if I'm getting clogged up by all the grease and starch, but that's more just my gullet I guess :P
My point is that nutrileum is just pulled out of their ass, it doesn't have anything to do with the chemical structure, and is even named to suggest that it has nutritional properties, when it most probably doesn't (seeing as it's used on a shampoo advert, why would dead hair need nourished?), which is misleading.
Good thing too, because I couldn't be bothered to scroll down past it, so I'd have ended up reading the whole thing!
:) )
GP has a strange idea of the amount of hassle involved pressing a button, and the amount of hassle of sitting there for 2 minutes while your caffeine addled body is screaming "I'M BORED!". At least that's what I've been thinking whenever ads come on (I stopped watching TV for a few years, but at the moment I rather enjoy watching reruns of Top Gear and QI on 'Dave'
Last time I read about it, they detected ads via the rate at which the scenes were switching (which wouldn't be that difficult to detect by itself, unless maybe there was a lot of movement like people walking directly in front of the camera, which could seem like a scene transition to an algorithm looking out for stuff like that, but you would then get back into view the stuff you had before and the algorithm could compare it to stuff that it's seen in the last few seconds, etc), though that method won't be infallible as scenes in TV shows could end up with a similar style to adverts. Perhaps they could train the DVRs to recognise the types of tone progressions used in "friendly but condescending market speak".
Doesn't the colours thing make a bit of sense because having a larger variety gives you more chance of getting the different vitamin groups and all that crap?
My favourite chemical name recently has been "nutrileum". They didn't make that one up, did they? *rolls eyes*
Hold your horses there! The value of music even if you are doing something else is very high to some people, me for instance. I like listening to music while coding or playing computer games (which often have their own music). You can change an atmosphere a lot with music. And the music playing *does* matter, for example listening to some thumped up base superhappytechno or whatever its called would piss me right off, whereas listening to some decent rock or derivative, won't. Putting on a decent song can totally change your mood, for example when 1979 comes on the radio when I'm playing GTA IV :)
I just fast forward at x120 speed, gets rid of those things pretty quick :)
Sounds like it would be an interesting product concept for the Pisswasser guys to think about :) They really know how to make a catchy advert jingle.