>Unfortunately, you "Conservative/Libertarian types" don't live in vacuum, >nor on some remote island. Your "choice" has an impact on others. What you >"choose" to consume (or not) impacts everyone else. Aggregated, your "choices" >either help solve the problem... on contribute to it.
As the owner of a car the sole responsibility to society is to maintain and operate the vehicle as proscribed by law.
Within this limitation, people are free to choose whatever vehicle they like based on whatever criteria they like within the means of their pocket book.
>Good. I hope I don't hear a peep out of you when you pay $100 every 10 days to fill up your car. >I hope I don't hear any opinion from you about how to lower gas prices, because you have >obviously no need for lower gas prices.
Like I said, I DON'T OWN AN SUV.
Gas mileage is my number one concern. When I buy my next vehicle it will either be 100% electric or get a minimum of 60 MPG.
But I don't slam people who have decided to buy vehicles with other concerns in mind. If that's what they want to do with their money, that's fine with me.
>We actually are helping pay your car bills because we get to pay for >pollution and road damage even though we may not drive at all... so start considering my opinion.
Since you pay no more for those things than I do myself, it's a wash.
And since I'm also paying gasoline taxes to support the infrastructure, your opinion is worth even less.
Religion just didn't play in our troop. We were basically a hard-core camping group - long hikes in rough terrain, mountain climbing, rappelling, building huge pioneering project structures.
Likewise there were no discussions about sexuality, either. We did have one gay kid (and I heard that he grew up to be a gay man, so it was not just that everyone thought he was "gay"), and he washed out because he did not fit in. Kids are brutal.
>One scout leader, high example of morality that they are, told him to "just lie", but he would not. >I should support a group like this?
Come on, is it/really/ that big of a lie?
Have you never been at a family gathering or some other function, like a baseball game or something, where they said a prayer and everyone was supposed to bow their heads and pray?
What did you do? Jump up and down and scream and cry about how there is no God or did you go along and bow your head and wait for it to be over?
Religion was never a big deal when I was in scouts. Oh, sure, it's part of the scout oath and law, but it is intentionally vague.
The oath:
On my honor, I will do my best To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; To help other people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.
I can never remember religion being a topic of discussion at any Scouting function, except on the rare occasion when were were at some official function where they wanted to say a prayer or something before or after some large affair.
I have never been religious, and my family never went to church. Religion had little impact on my Scouting experience.
As for homosexuality, I have no problem with homosexuality, but I still approve of the Boy Scouts' stance on it. Scouting is an institution that helps boys grow up to be men. It is not an institution to help boys grow up to be women. And aside from being ill-suited to providing guidance to homosexual youths, I would consider it, from seeing it happen, to be an ill-suited place for anyone who is "different".
No matter what the official policy on homosexuals may be by the BSA, they will never fit in and be accepted by the rest of the kids. We had a gay kid in one of the troops I was involved with. Despite all my efforts to stop it, he was the constant point of ridicule and butt of jokes. Kids are simply brutal. I was picked on incessantly for being a nerd, and gay kids are going to be picked on incessantly for being gay. I wish the world was nicer, but it's not.
>And where I grew up, thinking solely of your own needs with no regard >whatsoever for how it might impact others was considered to be a 'might selfish.
Firstly, I don't own a SUV.
When I buy a car, the sole consideration is _me_.
It's _my_ money to buy it, it's going to be _my_ money to make it go. Thus when I buy a car it's going to do exactly what I want it to do, within the limits of my pocketbook and the law.
If I want to buy a car because it looks cool, that's my prerogative. If I want to buy a car because it's bigger and more likely to protect me in a crash, that's my prerogative. If I want to buy a car because it can go off-road even though I will never drive it there, that is my prerogative.
When other people start helping me pay my car bills, I'll start considering their opinions about what to buy.
It should be just plain damn illegal to intercept and modify communications from one person to another. Period.
If I have chosen to log onto www.cnn.com and pull content from that site, linked advertisements and all, then I have made that choice. No one should be able to modify the content stream and/or links to inject other content into it.
What's next? Modifying the content of the actual NEWS?
I took Calculus a long time ago as part of my Computer Science curriculum. Now that I am going back to school for a degree in Mechanical Engineering, I have to take Calculus III - Multivariable Calculus. Since it has been so long since I took Calc I and II, I took them over again.
I do think that the classes seem easier than when I took them before, and I think the students are generally not as well versed in the prerequisite material as they were when I took them before.
But I am not very upset about this. The fact of the matter is, except for specialized disciplines, _no_one_uses_this_stuff. Every engineer I have ever spoken with has said they never or almost never use calculus.
I suppose it is good that we are all made to take it so that we have an appreciation for what computers are able to do for us these days, but I'm not upset if there is less emphasis placed on rigorous mathematical study. Such study should be required for people who will be going into fields that actually require it, but it doesn't look to me like mechanical engineering is one of those fields.
The only way I will accept "metered" internet access is if, when I reach my limit, the service stops working and requires consent authorization from me before allowing me to continue to run up charges.
If I have no good way to determine "how many minutes" I've used up of my internet I'll quit using it. I can't stand watching the meter - it's way to stressful a way to use an entertainment device, which is what home internet access is for me.
I don't see why such isolated people are considered as something to protect.
These people are literally still in the stone ages, and some "enlightened" folks want to keep them that way. I don't understand this mentality. If we discovered these kinds of people living in the United States, we'd be clamoring for them to get educated and make something of themselves.
If you want to listen to just about any popular song, cruise on over to YouTube and search for it. It usually has some lame amateur video to go with it, but I just minimize the window and listen to the song.
I agree with you and believe that the era of largely anonymous web use is over. There are now too many large financial interests involved in the Internet, and those interests have the resources to track down anyone.
What is currently the best anonymizer solution out there? I tried JAP for a while, but it was slow, so I quit using it.
>Why does noone take a break between jobs - tell the new job you'll start in a month, and go to the beach. >Or skiing. Of just play D&D for a couple weeks straight. Whatever.
>And if you tell me that you need a paycheck to pay the mortgage, electric bill, or whatever, you aren't being >fiscally responsible having no safety buffer. If you think that it doesn't matter unless something goes wrong, well, >your life sucks more that it needs to because you aren't taking the vacation.
Well you answered your own question. Most people live paycheck to paycheck, hence most people don't have the luxury of losing a job and taking a nice month-long vacation before starting something else.
>Really? You can't comprehend the appeal of sitting in a nice room on a comfortable couch with other human beings?
In my decades of computer gaming I have only once played computer games with other people in the same room. When I play computer games against other people I do it over the Internet.
When I have friends over we don't play on the computer. Nor do we watch TV. We interact with _each_other_.
I have tried one. I think it was an Xbox, but I don't remember.
My PC plays all the games I want on it with little trouble. I did buy a new graphics card a year ago to run Silent Hunter III on, but I don't mind upgrading my computer, because I end up with a better computer.
As for controllers, anything you have on a console I'm sure you can get something similar to plug into a PC.
One of the problems with these persistent, massively multiplayer games, like EVE, or WoW, is the barrier to success seems to be immense. I downloaded the 15 day trial for EVE. It seemed very cool. But it also seems like in order to become a big deal in the game you'd have to put in thousands upon thousands of hours. Thus such games have little appeal to me because I don't have the time to invest.
So I can understand the motivation to make the game more appealing to casual players in order to gain market share.
So the justification for consoles is LAN parties?!?!
In all my years of gaming on my PC, I've been to exactly 1 LAN party. For the other decade or so of gaming I've done on my PCs, I've played solitary, or head-to-head over the Internet.
I did try a console once at a friend's house - it was his son's console. We played some 1st-person shooter. It drove me _nuts_ having two separate games going on on the same TV. Give me my own display, thank you.
Dammit, I _do_not_want_ a separate computer to play games on!
I _have_ a computer. It is primarily for playing games. I don't want another computer for playing games, and a separate computer for email, web browsing, watching movies, etc. etc.
And while more and more of this functionality is showing up on gaming consoles, now I'M RIGHT BACK TO HAVING A COMPUTER AGAIN.
I just do not understand the console appeal. My last console was an Atari 2600.
>Different things work for different people who work in different contexts. In my work, email is >hopelessly slow and ineffective. I can't wait an hour or a day or a week to exchange information with someone. >Very often, my entire workflow depends on getting the right piece of information - the answer to a question, >a critical point of data, the name of a person who I need to get in touch with. If I rely solely on email, >my workflow stops until I get a response. It would be a crazy, foolish mistake to do so.
It's important to note here that it isn't the/email/ that is the slowdown here. The email likely arrives to its intended destination within a minute. The slowdown is getting a person to respond to it. If the person you need information from isn't at his desk, then it doesn't matter whether you use an email, phone call, or IM, they aren't there./This/ is why I like email. The message gets sent whether the person you need the information from is at their desk or not. They will get the message when they come back to their desk, and then they can give it their full attention as they compose a response.
Now it is true in this ever-more-connected age that If they have an email-capable phone, like I do, they will even have advance warning of your email and be formulating a response before they get back to their desk. If it is really urgent they can respond back with their phone, by voice or email, and they can of course be called on their mobile phone.
But this expectation of instant response just grates on me. I just don't get how people can be upset that/their/ workflow stops until they get a response, but it's OK to interrupt someone else's workflow to get that response. Email seems to me far less demanding and interruptive, and more polite.
Sometimes I share your sense of despair, but not often.
I used to work with an engineer who constantly lamented he was not an engineer in the late 1800s, when many of the now-common mechanical mechanisms were being invented. He too felt he could have "been someone" if only he lived then.
But the thing is, there is/always/ going to be "the next big thing". There is/always/ going to be innovation. In fact, I'd say that until today's technology becomes common place you aren't really/primed/ for the next big thing. Maybe engine design has to become as boring as applying formulas and tweaking injection pressures before the next big leap in engine technology comes along.
>The song that a search returns could have gotten on that computer by many other methods >(ripped from CD, loaded from a memory stick, downloaded from an authorized on-line music store, >copied from a previous hard drive, placed there by a trojan)
And then just happened to get put into the shared directory of a P2P client.
Slashdot Mirror
>Unfortunately, you "Conservative/Libertarian types" don't live in vacuum,
>nor on some remote island. Your "choice" has an impact on others. What you
>"choose" to consume (or not) impacts everyone else. Aggregated, your "choices"
>either help solve the problem... on contribute to it.
As the owner of a car the sole responsibility to society is to maintain and operate the vehicle as proscribed by law.
Within this limitation, people are free to choose whatever vehicle they like based on whatever criteria they like within the means of their pocket book.
>Good. I hope I don't hear a peep out of you when you pay $100 every 10 days to fill up your car.
>I hope I don't hear any opinion from you about how to lower gas prices, because you have
>obviously no need for lower gas prices.
Like I said, I DON'T OWN AN SUV.
Gas mileage is my number one concern. When I buy my next vehicle it will either be 100% electric or get a minimum of 60 MPG.
But I don't slam people who have decided to buy vehicles with other concerns in mind. If that's what they want to do with their money, that's fine with me.
>We actually are helping pay your car bills because we get to pay for
>pollution and road damage even though we may not drive at all... so start considering my opinion.
Since you pay no more for those things than I do myself, it's a wash.
And since I'm also paying gasoline taxes to support the infrastructure, your opinion is worth even less.
Well said.
Another Eagle here.
Religion just didn't play in our troop. We were basically a hard-core camping group - long hikes in rough terrain, mountain climbing, rappelling, building huge pioneering project structures.
Likewise there were no discussions about sexuality, either. We did have one gay kid (and I heard that he grew up to be a gay man, so it was not just that everyone thought he was "gay"), and he washed out because he did not fit in. Kids are brutal.
>One scout leader, high example of morality that they are, told him to "just lie", but he would not.
/really/ that big of a lie?
>I should support a group like this?
Come on, is it
Have you never been at a family gathering or some other function, like a baseball game or something, where they said a prayer and everyone was supposed to bow their heads and pray?
What did you do? Jump up and down and scream and cry about how there is no God or did you go along and bow your head and wait for it to be over?
That's all you have to do in Scouts, too.
Religion was never a big deal when I was in scouts. Oh, sure, it's part of the scout oath and law, but it is intentionally vague.
The oath:
On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.
"God" can be any God you like.
The Law:
A Scout is:
* Trustworthy,
* Loyal,
* Helpful,
* Friendly,
* Courteous,
* Kind,
* Obedient,
* Cheerful,
* Thrifty,
* Brave,
* Clean,
* and Reverent.
You can be Reverent to anyone you like.
I can never remember religion being a topic of discussion at any Scouting function, except on the rare occasion when were were at some official function where they wanted to say a prayer or something before or after some large affair.
I have never been religious, and my family never went to church. Religion had little impact on my Scouting experience.
As for homosexuality, I have no problem with homosexuality, but I still approve of the Boy Scouts' stance on it. Scouting is an institution that helps boys grow up to be men. It is not an institution to help boys grow up to be women. And aside from being ill-suited to providing guidance to homosexual youths, I would consider it, from seeing it happen, to be an ill-suited place for anyone who is "different".
No matter what the official policy on homosexuals may be by the BSA, they will never fit in and be accepted by the rest of the kids. We had a gay kid in one of the troops I was involved with. Despite all my efforts to stop it, he was the constant point of ridicule and butt of jokes. Kids are simply brutal. I was picked on incessantly for being a nerd, and gay kids are going to be picked on incessantly for being gay. I wish the world was nicer, but it's not.
>And where I grew up, thinking solely of your own needs with no regard
>whatsoever for how it might impact others was considered to be a 'might selfish.
Firstly, I don't own a SUV.
When I buy a car, the sole consideration is _me_.
It's _my_ money to buy it, it's going to be _my_ money to make it go. Thus when I buy a car it's going to do exactly what I want it to do, within the limits of my pocketbook and the law.
If I want to buy a car because it looks cool, that's my prerogative. If I want to buy a car because it's bigger and more likely to protect me in a crash, that's my prerogative. If I want to buy a car because it can go off-road even though I will never drive it there, that is my prerogative.
When other people start helping me pay my car bills, I'll start considering their opinions about what to buy.
It should be just plain damn illegal to intercept and modify communications from one person to another. Period.
If I have chosen to log onto www.cnn.com and pull content from that site, linked advertisements and all, then I have made that choice. No one should be able to modify the content stream and/or links to inject other content into it.
What's next? Modifying the content of the actual NEWS?
I heard once that at Google there are displays in the lunch room and such that show, in real time, the words that people are searching for.
I know I think about this fact every time I do a Google search.
I took Calculus a long time ago as part of my Computer Science curriculum. Now that I am going back to school for a degree in Mechanical Engineering, I have to take Calculus III - Multivariable Calculus. Since it has been so long since I took Calc I and II, I took them over again.
I do think that the classes seem easier than when I took them before, and I think the students are generally not as well versed in the prerequisite material as they were when I took them before.
But I am not very upset about this. The fact of the matter is, except for specialized disciplines, _no_one_uses_this_stuff. Every engineer I have ever spoken with has said they never or almost never use calculus.
I suppose it is good that we are all made to take it so that we have an appreciation for what computers are able to do for us these days, but I'm not upset if there is less emphasis placed on rigorous mathematical study. Such study should be required for people who will be going into fields that actually require it, but it doesn't look to me like mechanical engineering is one of those fields.
The only way I will accept "metered" internet access is if, when I reach my limit, the service stops working and requires consent authorization from me before allowing me to continue to run up charges.
If I have no good way to determine "how many minutes" I've used up of my internet I'll quit using it. I can't stand watching the meter - it's way to stressful a way to use an entertainment device, which is what home internet access is for me.
I don't see why such isolated people are considered as something to protect.
These people are literally still in the stone ages, and some "enlightened" folks want to keep them that way. I don't understand this mentality. If we discovered these kinds of people living in the United States, we'd be clamoring for them to get educated and make something of themselves.
>I wonder who actually first marketed the magic grey rolls?
:) :) :)
They were invented by the SCA.
If you want to listen to just about any popular song, cruise on over to YouTube and search for it. It usually has some lame amateur video to go with it, but I just minimize the window and listen to the song.
YouTube has become my internet jukebox.
I agree with you and believe that the era of largely anonymous web use is over. There are now too many large financial interests involved in the Internet, and those interests have the resources to track down anyone.
What is currently the best anonymizer solution out there? I tried JAP for a while, but it was slow, so I quit using it.
>Why does noone take a break between jobs - tell the new job you'll start in a month, and go to the beach.
>Or skiing. Of just play D&D for a couple weeks straight. Whatever.
>And if you tell me that you need a paycheck to pay the mortgage, electric bill, or whatever, you aren't being
>fiscally responsible having no safety buffer. If you think that it doesn't matter unless something goes wrong, well,
>your life sucks more that it needs to because you aren't taking the vacation.
Well you answered your own question. Most people live paycheck to paycheck, hence most people don't have the luxury of losing a job and taking a nice month-long vacation before starting something else.
>Really? You can't comprehend the appeal of sitting in a nice room on a comfortable couch with other human beings?
In my decades of computer gaming I have only once played computer games with other people in the same room. When I play computer games against other people I do it over the Internet.
When I have friends over we don't play on the computer. Nor do we watch TV. We interact with _each_other_.
I have tried one. I think it was an Xbox, but I don't remember.
My PC plays all the games I want on it with little trouble. I did buy a new graphics card a year ago to run Silent Hunter III on, but I don't mind upgrading my computer, because I end up with a better computer.
As for controllers, anything you have on a console I'm sure you can get something similar to plug into a PC.
One of the problems with these persistent, massively multiplayer games, like EVE, or WoW, is the barrier to success seems to be immense. I downloaded the 15 day trial for EVE. It seemed very cool. But it also seems like in order to become a big deal in the game you'd have to put in thousands upon thousands of hours. Thus such games have little appeal to me because I don't have the time to invest.
So I can understand the motivation to make the game more appealing to casual players in order to gain market share.
So the justification for consoles is LAN parties?!?!
In all my years of gaming on my PC, I've been to exactly 1 LAN party. For the other decade or so of gaming I've done on my PCs, I've played solitary, or head-to-head over the Internet.
I did try a console once at a friend's house - it was his son's console. We played some 1st-person shooter. It drove me _nuts_ having two separate games going on on the same TV. Give me my own display, thank you.
Dammit, I _do_not_want_ a separate computer to play games on!
I _have_ a computer. It is primarily for playing games. I don't want another computer for playing games, and a separate computer for email, web browsing, watching movies, etc. etc.
And while more and more of this functionality is showing up on gaming consoles, now I'M RIGHT BACK TO HAVING A COMPUTER AGAIN.
I just do not understand the console appeal. My last console was an Atari 2600.
>Different things work for different people who work in different contexts. In my work, email is
/email/ that is the slowdown here. The email likely arrives to its intended destination within a minute. The slowdown is getting a person to respond to it. If the person you need information from isn't at his desk, then it doesn't matter whether you use an email, phone call, or IM, they aren't there. /This/ is why I like email. The message gets sent whether the person you need the information from is at their desk or not. They will get the message when they come back to their desk, and then they can give it their full attention as they compose a response.
/their/ workflow stops until they get a response, but it's OK to interrupt someone else's workflow to get that response. Email seems to me far less demanding and interruptive, and more polite.
>hopelessly slow and ineffective. I can't wait an hour or a day or a week to exchange information with someone.
>Very often, my entire workflow depends on getting the right piece of information - the answer to a question,
>a critical point of data, the name of a person who I need to get in touch with. If I rely solely on email,
>my workflow stops until I get a response. It would be a crazy, foolish mistake to do so.
It's important to note here that it isn't the
Now it is true in this ever-more-connected age that If they have an email-capable phone, like I do, they will even have advance warning of your email and be formulating a response before they get back to their desk. If it is really urgent they can respond back with their phone, by voice or email, and they can of course be called on their mobile phone.
But this expectation of instant response just grates on me. I just don't get how people can be upset that
Sometimes I share your sense of despair, but not often.
/always/ going to be "the next big thing". There is /always/ going to be innovation. In fact, I'd say that until today's technology becomes common place you aren't really /primed/ for the next big thing. Maybe engine design has to become as boring as applying formulas and tweaking injection pressures before the next big leap in engine technology comes along.
I used to work with an engineer who constantly lamented he was not an engineer in the late 1800s, when many of the now-common mechanical mechanisms were being invented. He too felt he could have "been someone" if only he lived then.
But the thing is, there is
>The song that a search returns could have gotten on that computer by many other methods
>(ripped from CD, loaded from a memory stick, downloaded from an authorized on-line music store,
>copied from a previous hard drive, placed there by a trojan)
And then just happened to get put into the shared directory of a P2P client.
Riiiiiight. I have this bridge here for sale...