I firmly believe that promiscuity and homosexuality both constitute being 'truly sick'.
I would be astonished to discover that you believe this for any reason other than that you are scared of sex and sexuality, or have perhaps been fed these beliefs without analyzing them critically or empirically.
Modern society is learning the hard way that you can't encourage perversion and expect people to act morally. When we all grasp this basic truth, the world will be a lot better off.
This is thankfully a meaningless bit of bluster backed up by nothing. My wife and I live in West Hollywood, the gayest place in Southern California, and almost without exception, every gay person I've met has been friendly, outgoing, and, contrary to your unhelpful generalization, quite moral.
Homosexuals don't get to choose who they're attracted to any more than heterosexuals do. My advice to you is to go find a gay or lesbian group, get to know some of its members, and hopefully you'll learn that they are, in most ways, the same as rest of us.
But then, that idea probably scares you, doesn't it?
Ok, if you're going to be like that, then I'll pick at you a bit more.
I just generally dislike the "fantasy" genre, because we're forced to suspend all rational belief through the whole thing. Unlike sci-fi, where it's easy to say "Well, all of this simply happened on another planet we haven't discovered yet." - they have us believe that this world existed on *our own planet*, yet humans never realized it was there.
No. The creators of fiction do not actually think that these things really happened, nor do they want or expect us to believe that these things really happened. They, like us (except you) understand that it's a story. People like stories. Normal people also understand that stories are usually just for entertainment purposes (although they can also be social commentary, educational, etc.). Now I'm not saying you have to be just like everyone else, but the way you're acting -- that it's some big mystery how anyone could ever like fiction -- makes you look like you're being intentionally dense. We know you're really not that dense, so please think about what you're really trying to say here.
Dragons and gargoyles are cool-looking creatures, and make good children's stories, but beyond that - you just need a little more "substance" to keep us believing in them.
I think that's a typo. What you meant to say was,
I just need a little more 'substance' to keep us believing in them.
Don't project your inability to suspend disbelief onto the rest of us, who have no problem with doing so.
I'm sure that astronauts Roger Chafee, Charles Bassett, Gus Grissom, Elliot See, Edward White, Clifton Williams, David Griggs, and Robert Overmyr would be glad to know that you're so ignorant of our space program's history, the only fatalities you know of are the Challenger explosion.
Man, what do you think Doom 3 is ABOUT? That's why Carmack is doing this rocketry stuff -- he needs to have firsthand research about Martian military installations, so that Doom 3 will be realistic!
Well, four or five years ago, Linux had the advantages of costing no money, running on numerous architectures, and being completely free. I'm not saying it's better, but it's not as if MacOS X is in the same scrappy-upcoming-OS situation that Linux was, so it can be a little misleading to compare them this way.
I disagree with your main contention. The superstardom of the 20th century has been possible because of three things:
1) Recorded music. No longer do you have to have a trained human play music for you -- you can have a machine do it, and have it sound just like the original performance (more or less), exactly the same, every time.
2) Transportation technology (trains, planes, and automobiles). Copies of music can be shipped across the entire country; music is no longer as highly regional as it once was (someone living in California in the mid-1800s might never even hear of a famous performer from the East Coast).
3) Electronic communication (radio, TV, telephones, the Internet). Now you don't even have to have a physical copy of the music sent to you -- it can be sent electronically, faster-than-light.
As a result, mass knowledge of individual musicians has become possible. Two hundred years ago, a few thousand people might have heard of a famous artist. Today, millions and millions of people have heard of them, and can hear all of their music. The only thing that's still "limited" is live performance -- the artist can only be in one place at a time, and due to various physical limits, only so many people can be within sight of the artist at once, watching him perform.
Even if the big labels all go away forever and are replaced by countless independents, we will still see a few superstars packing venues. The best artists with the widest appeal will still be successful, and will still have numerous fans, who will be willing to pay to see them live.
That aside, there's no excuse for poor spelling on Slashdot. Given the fact that we're on the Internet, looking up the spelling of just about anyone's name is a trivial task.
That is, of course, assuming you know how to spell "Google".:)
I can understand the anti-terrorism, pro-patriotism vibe, but I never would have thought that collecting links to offbeat news stories would have been considered terrorism! Maybe it's the amount of time people spend on FARK at work that's caused this reaction...
I played hundreds of hours of violent games all through my youth, sat through thousands of hours of violent television and movies, and read dozens, nay, hundreds of books involving violence, death, and bloodshed.
Yet I haven't been in anything resembling a fight since I was in eighth grade, 11 years ago; I'm opposed to war, using violence to solve societal problems, and so on. Have I ever had the urge to run some asshole off the road, or punch some jerk in the face? Sure. But I'm able to restrain myself.
This doesn't prove that violent games are harmless to everyone; but it does prove that it's at least possible for someone to be exposed to large amounts of violent content without becoming some kind of... whatever it is that the anti-violence lobby thinks you turn into. A Columbine killer, I suppose. Given that the overwhelming majority of kids who play violent games do not themselves become violent adults, if a kid plays violent games and becomes violent himself, it's because he's either stupid, or insane, or was never taught that actual violence is wrong.
We don't ban hammers because some sociopath kills someone with a hammer now and then; and we shouldn't ban video games because some asshole who played them kills someone now and then.
Every distributed client I've ever seen runs itself by default at the lowest possible priority, so as not to take resources away from games or other user-responsive applications. This is a nonissue in general, and F@H itself does run at lowest priority, so it's a nonissue for F@H also. (I've played numerous games with F@H running in the background, and there's been no noticeable effect by the client.)
The disable-when-on-battery-power idea is nice, and I certainly think it would help, but I don't know if the catch-all "quality" is the best term to use. Maybe "laptop-friendliness" would be more precise.
I would think it more accurate to say that "these things" can make you money, should you or your team happen to be the one that finds the key/finds a prime/finds extraterrestrial intelligence. The chance is minuscule in any case. I also hope that the/. readership would be more inclined toward the rightness of the thing, rather than worrying about potential monetary rewards.
Congratulations
on
RC5-64 Success
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
While this is an admirable achievement, I found another distributed computing project which I think is more worthwhile -- namely, Folding @Home, which is a distributed protein-folding simulation effort. This is the kind of research that will end up curing things like Alzheimer's, and I think it's a better use of your processing time than brute-forcing encryption keys (or even SETI, or Primenet). I encourage everyone to participate in F@H instead, as I think it will provide a greater benefit to us all in the long run.
Of course, some on/. may need to be reminded that they are indeed free to run whatever distributed computing software they feel like; I am merely requesting that they run this one.
Err, compared to the above, no. My imagination doesn't even come close.
I believe his point was that your comparisons of Hitler, Scientology, and so on, to registering a cookie at the New York Times, were a bit overdone. I'm surprised nobody invoked Godwin's Law.
My question (echoed by others, unanswered by you) is, why not put fake information into the NYT login? That's what I did about a year ago. No real information in there at all, and I don't have to go about asking others to work around the NYT's system on my behalf. I did it myself, once, and haven't had to think about it since (except for the occasional cookie wipeout, requiring me to login again).
Perhaps they may be tracking where else I've gone, although I've never quite understood how that would work, since my browser won't let sites access a cookie unless that cookie was written by that site to begin with. Maybe you need a new browser?
Why does the fact that pay-to-download services are on the rise, necessarily mean that the RIAA is "winning" this War On Filesharing (which is about as "winnable" as the War On (Some) Drugs)? Is the amount of filesharing actually going down, or is it unaffected (or even rising) while another market entirely (pay-to-download) is growing?
Also, from the article:
Just six months ago, this sort of talk would have been unthinkable, downright apostasy, among those who consider the giant recording conglomerates the bane of free-wheeling musical access and innovation.
Maybe it's a nitpick, but they seem to be painting the situation as if we have two monolithic, unified forces here -- the RIAA and Evil Internet Pirates (tm) (or Righteous Anti-RIAA Guerilla Freedom Fighters (tm)). The use of the term "apostasy" implies that there is some kind of central body or authority to the P2P movement, which isn't true. I'm pointing this out because it's indicative of the mindset the "mainstream" is in -- they don't really know what the situation is, even those who are paid to write about it.
It certainly could just be poor word choice, and the writer actually does know the difference, but since it's the New York Times, I'm inclined to think it's ignorance rather than poor editing.
Yeah, let's hear it for the Liberty Alliance! You know, because I always associate "liberty" with "centralization of power and resources," as opposed to, "distrbution of power so that people may have more control over their destinies." 'Cause, you know, that would suck.
The real irony, as I see it, is that Stallman, someone who claims to be so in favor of freedom, is trying to dictate how we should act -- it appears that he wants to curtail our freedom. Now, he certainly has the freedom to say whatever he wants about the topic -- and I, wondrously, have the freedom to ignore him.
I don't personally think there's any logical reason to call it GNU/Linux, so I'm not going to. Isn't freedom great?
Slashdot Mirror
Homosexuals don't get to choose who they're attracted to any more than heterosexuals do. My advice to you is to go find a gay or lesbian group, get to know some of its members, and hopefully you'll learn that they are, in most ways, the same as rest of us.
But then, that idea probably scares you, doesn't it?
Let's hope they don't try and use this for verifying your age on porn sites. "SCANNING... *BZZT* ERROR. PALMS TOO HAIRY TO SCAN." :)
Well, four or five years ago, Linux had the advantages of costing no money, running on numerous architectures, and being completely free. I'm not saying it's better, but it's not as if MacOS X is in the same scrappy-upcoming-OS situation that Linux was, so it can be a little misleading to compare them this way.
I disagree with your main contention. The superstardom of the 20th century has been possible because of three things:
1) Recorded music. No longer do you have to have a trained human play music for you -- you can have a machine do it, and have it sound just like the original performance (more or less), exactly the
same, every time.
2) Transportation technology (trains, planes, and automobiles). Copies of music can be shipped across the entire country; music is no longer as highly regional as it once was (someone living in California in the mid-1800s might never even hear of a famous performer from the East Coast).
3) Electronic communication (radio, TV, telephones, the Internet). Now you don't even have to have a physical copy of the music sent to you -- it can be sent electronically, faster-than-light.
As a result, mass knowledge of individual musicians has become possible. Two hundred years ago, a few thousand people might have heard of a famous artist. Today, millions and millions of people have heard of them, and can hear all of their music. The only thing that's still "limited" is live performance -- the artist can only be in one place at a time, and due to various physical limits, only so many people can be within sight of the artist at once, watching him perform.
Even if the big labels all go away forever and are replaced by countless independents, we will still see a few superstars packing venues. The best artists with the widest appeal will still be successful, and will still have numerous fans, who will be willing to pay to see them live.
Indeed -- it's "Dijkstra". :)
:)
That aside, there's no excuse for poor spelling on Slashdot. Given the fact that we're on the Internet, looking up the spelling of just about anyone's name is a trivial task.
That is, of course, assuming you know how to spell "Google".
I can understand the anti-terrorism, pro-patriotism vibe, but I never would have thought that collecting links to offbeat news stories would have been considered terrorism! Maybe it's the amount of time people spend on FARK at work that's caused this reaction...
*whisperwhisperFARCwhisperFARKwhisper*
Er, nevermind.
I played hundreds of hours of violent games all through my youth, sat through thousands of hours of violent television and movies, and read dozens, nay, hundreds of books involving violence, death, and bloodshed.
Yet I haven't been in anything resembling a fight since I was in eighth grade, 11 years ago; I'm opposed to war, using violence to solve societal problems, and so on. Have I ever had the urge to run some asshole off the road, or punch some jerk in the face? Sure. But I'm able to restrain myself.
This doesn't prove that violent games are harmless to everyone; but it does prove that it's at least possible for someone to be exposed to large amounts of violent content without becoming some kind of... whatever it is that the anti-violence lobby thinks you turn into. A Columbine killer, I suppose. Given that the overwhelming majority of kids who play violent games do not themselves become violent adults, if a kid plays violent games and becomes violent himself, it's because he's either stupid, or insane, or was never taught that actual violence is wrong.
We don't ban hammers because some sociopath kills someone with a hammer now and then; and we shouldn't ban video games because some asshole who played them kills someone now and then.
Every distributed client I've ever seen runs itself by default at the lowest possible priority, so as not to take resources away from games or other user-responsive applications. This is a nonissue in general, and F@H itself does run at lowest priority, so it's a nonissue for F@H also. (I've played numerous games with F@H running in the background, and there's been no noticeable effect by the client.)
The disable-when-on-battery-power idea is nice, and I certainly think it would help, but I don't know if the catch-all "quality" is the best term to use. Maybe "laptop-friendliness" would be more precise.
I would think it more accurate to say that "these things" can make you money, should you or your team happen to be the one that finds the key/finds a prime/finds extraterrestrial intelligence. The chance is minuscule in any case. I also hope that the /. readership would be more inclined toward the rightness of the thing, rather than worrying about potential monetary rewards.
While this is an admirable achievement, I found another distributed computing project which I think is more worthwhile -- namely, Folding @Home, which is a distributed protein-folding simulation effort. This is the kind of research that will end up curing things like Alzheimer's, and I think it's a better use of your processing time than brute-forcing encryption keys (or even SETI, or Primenet). I encourage everyone to participate in F@H instead, as I think it will provide a greater benefit to us all in the long run.
/. may need to be reminded that they are indeed free to run whatever distributed computing software they feel like; I am merely requesting that they run this one.
Of course, some on
My question (echoed by others, unanswered by you) is, why not put fake information into the NYT login? That's what I did about a year ago. No real information in there at all, and I don't have to go about asking others to work around the NYT's system on my behalf. I did it myself, once, and haven't had to think about it since (except for the occasional cookie wipeout, requiring me to login again).
Perhaps they may be tracking where else I've gone, although I've never quite understood how that would work, since my browser won't let sites access a cookie unless that cookie was written by that site to begin with. Maybe you need a new browser?
Also, from the article:
Maybe it's a nitpick, but they seem to be painting the situation as if we have two monolithic, unified forces here -- the RIAA and Evil Internet Pirates (tm) (or Righteous Anti-RIAA Guerilla Freedom Fighters (tm)). The use of the term "apostasy" implies that there is some kind of central body or authority to the P2P movement, which isn't true. I'm pointing this out because it's indicative of the mindset the "mainstream" is in -- they don't really know what the situation is, even those who are paid to write about it.It certainly could just be poor word choice, and the writer actually does know the difference, but since it's the New York Times, I'm inclined to think it's ignorance rather than poor editing.
MVP seems a lot like the Stonecutters.
Homer: These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined. [sniffs tearily]
(thanks to snpp.com)
Yeah, let's hear it for the Liberty Alliance! You know, because I always associate "liberty" with "centralization of power and resources," as opposed to, "distrbution of power so that people may have more control over their destinies." 'Cause, you know, that would suck.
(My weapon is the razor-sharp sting of sarcasm!)
"Linux... making me angry... can't... contain... emotions... third-person... narration... taking... over... RAAARGHHHH!!!"
*Ballmer transforms into a giant, green-skinned version of himself, tearing his clothes and exposing his enormous gut*
"BALLMER STOMP LINUX!!! RAARRGHH!!! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!!"
The real irony, as I see it, is that Stallman, someone who claims to be so in favor of freedom, is trying to dictate how we should act -- it appears that he wants to curtail our freedom. Now, he certainly has the freedom to say whatever he wants about the topic -- and I, wondrously, have the freedom to ignore him.
I don't personally think there's any logical reason to call it GNU/Linux, so I'm not going to. Isn't freedom great?