Really? Last time I checked, agnostics were undecided about the whole religion thing. Your statement sounds more atheistic than agnostic.
Personally, I reasoned that most of the claims that religion makes are beyond my ability to prove or disprove, so I'll stick to judging people by what they do, not what they say or claim to believe.
So, we have a cartel which has consistently engaged in collusion and price-fixing bribing legislators to create laws that turn copyright, which is a short-term monopoly granted to incentivise art, into a lucrative monopoly on the distribution of popular music.
"This is why any and all software ever written works on every platform available? Of course you make assumptions about the state of the hardware and operating systems in play when you start ANY project. These assumptions are what make Apple products work so well. These assumptions are also what make Apple 5% of the computing market share."
Read what I wrote again. I said the STATE of the hardware or software when DEPLOYING PATCHES. We're not even talking about the same thing.
I don't know if you've written any software yourself, but the first rule about deploying patches to consumer software is that you are NOT allowed to make any assumptions about the state of the hardware or software.
The reason people are up in arms is because apple has raised the possibility of this update permanently bricking your iPhone. That possibility is unacceptable. Any decent programmer would just have the update checksum the software and firmware and overwrite any hacked copies with the new version. None of your arguments about altered radio firmware and so on have any bearing on the issue...what does it matter which piece of firmware we're talking about? If an update requires consistency on the part of other elements of the phone, it needs to ensure that they are consistent, and if they are not, either fix them or fail gracefully.
The bottom line is that there is a lot of precedent for hardware warranties being unaffected by the actions a consumer takes with his software. Any manufacturer who causes users 4-600$ dollars worth of hardware loss via a software update would be liable. End of story.
Believe me, if PC manufacturers could have voided your warranty for installing a different operating system (as they would be able to according to your arguments), they would have years ago.
"Day one revealed what all Apple aficionados fear. That AT&T, through the depths of its incompetence, could derail the iPhone."
This post is not intended as a flame or some kind of universal truth...just my own experiences and observations.
I have purchased 4 ipods thus far (2 for myself and 2 as gifts). I bought my mother a mac mini for her birthday. I think Apple is the most innovative company in consumer electronics right now. I have disposable income and I like spending my money on gizmos.
I live in Boston. I had Cingular / AT&T for four years and verizon for three. I had terrible reception and frequent dropped calls with Cingular and nearly none (in the same place) with Verizon.
Based on my personal experiences I'm going to wait until I can use the iphone with another carrier.
You guys can't bash Apple for this shit, though. A few huge corporations have a stranglehold on the cellular networks in this country, and they're more than willing to keep selling you the same service they've always been pushing as long as they possibly can. Apple had to cut a deal with one of the providers, and why would the market leaders push a product which will force them to offer new features, expand their network, and increase consumer expectations? Thus we get this Apple / AT&T deal.
Bottom line, iphone early adopters are going to have to suffer with a second-best carrier for six months to a year or so, at which point other companies (assuming the thing hasn't flopped) will start making the modifications to support the iphone's data-dependent features. Cell phone carriers that aren't leading the market won't change a thing unless they think it's going to gain them market share, and ones that are won't change a thing unless they're already losing it. It's just the way the game works.
I was objecting to military men painting all conflicts as "kill or be killed" in order to justify their actions. As much as I like sitting in my comfy air-conditioned apartment instead of getting shot at in some sandy hell, I believe volunteer soldiers enable conflicts. Career soldiers HAVE to unconditionally trust their superiors, and this obedience is, in my opinion, the impetus for a lot of bullshit wars.
Ask yourself, how many wars of the last 100 years could have been fought using 80% drafted forces? How does that list compare to the wars that you personally consider just?
Your defense ultimately comes down to the classic "just following orders" position, and I recognize that it is a necessity of being in a professional army. If soldiers, in a very isolated situation, receive orders based on faulty intelligence and kill an innocent civilian, the soldiers clearly have done nothing wrong.
However, you have to realize that by volunteering for the military you are *ENABLING* wars. Thus, you are culpable for the moral consequences of the war as a whole. A soldier's duty to the ideals constitution and the rest of humanity trumps any kind of military duty.
To be succinct, any solider who knows of any kind of wrongdoing (from misrepresentation of a war's justification to corruption to waste of life to human rights abuses) and does not either 1) resign 2) expose the abuse 3) discretely try to stop and prevent the abuse is as guilty as if he had done it himself. Knowing complicity equals guilt, even if you're just cooking the damn meals. THAT's my point.
You said: "the people responsible for the where and when and how of soldiers plying their trade is the responsibility of the civilian government" and "the onus on the government to ensure that it tasks its soldiers with only right and just missions is at it's penultimate."
The "trade" and "tasks" in question here are killing people. The "responsibility" and "onus" here is placed on the "civilian government." Thus, you are inferring that volunteering for the army absolves the individual of responsibility for his actions.
I'm not advocating absolute pacifism, a belief that humans are intrinsically good, or any other absolute beliefs like that. I just object to the assertion that an individual is not responsible for his actions as a member of a military organization.
Let's say one man tries to rob a gun shop and gets shot, losing a leg. Another man fights in ww2, and he gets shot saving a fellow soldier, losing a leg.
A person could justifiably mock the first person, calling it "karmic fairness," while still respecting the second person.
In other words, the *REASON* why you suffered some personal loss can change the same affliction from a mark of shame to a badge of pride. People who got PTSD (or any other injury) in WW2 deserve our admiration: they suffered those injuries to save millions. People who are willing to become soldiers out of greed or ignorance or fear are no better than common killers.
Please. Bush would NEVER have been able to draft troops for this ridiculous excuse for a war. If there were a draft tomorrow there'd be riots in the streets and US troops coming home before they got anyone over there against their will. I know that, you know that, and the white house knows that....that's why there hasn't been a draft (despite huge troop shortages), isn't a draft, and won't be one.
Professional soldiers are the *enabling factor* in meddling foreign wars. That's why the founding fathers were against the idea of a standing army.
Sorry, man, I just don't buy your premise. Volunteering for the army with noble intentions is not a "get out of ethical dilemma free card." All of the corrupt fat cats in the world wouldn't get anywhere without an endless supply of sheep willing to commit atrocities for cash.
So yeah it's inhumane, I did it because I had a choice. Kill him or he'll kill me, not a really hard choice for me to make but I have to live with it for the rest of my life.
What about the other choice: not volunteering for the armed forces?
Incidentally, my mother is a teacher too. I definitely agree that teachers end up working as much as anyone else....well...at least the good ones. However, I don't think you can completely write off the benefit of the hours a teacher keeps, though. My mother certainly got to spend a lot of time with me and my brother during the summers when we were home, and her hours (and proximity to our school) enabled her to give us both rides home after afternoon sports. Also, I think it's fair to say that a lot of people get their certificate before they grasp the realities of the job.
So yeah, I think all of the points you made are good ones, and they pretty much match my experience. However, I still think that there are a few teachers who are really trying (with some success) to work until 3pm 9 months a year. As one of my mother's co-workers said: "It'd be a great job if it weren't for all the damn kids." I think she almost bit the woman's head off, god bless her. =)
I'm posting AC because I'm trying to be brutally honest, not go on an ego trip.
I was one of those kids who was labeled as "gifted" fairly early on in my education. My school didn't have a tag program until 6th grade due to budgetary constraints. I can't speak for every school in the country, but your descriptions don't match my experience and they largely seem the product of philosophical / political beliefs.
- My tag program was comprised entirely of real academics. In the 6th grade we did high school chemistry, some astronomy and physics, learned about stock trading, wrote research papers on 20th century history, read some difficult books, started a debate team, and so forth. - My experience in high school people was like pretty much any experience with other people. One or two teachers were brilliant, most were just getting by, a few were misleading, and one was downright malicious. Sure, my school didn't seem to be able to provide for me very well, but it was due to a lack of resources, not any kind of malice or conspiracy. - No matter what you want to believe, some people's brains just work faster than others. One of my best friends in high school was also in the tag program. I did my homework during class, never studied a night in my life, blew away standardized tests without preparing, and spent my nights hacking on linux. She was doing the same work, getting pretty much the same grades, but studying 6+ hours a night to keep it up. Some people couldn't have kept up if they studied 8 hours a night, 7 days a week.
That last link goes into a lot of conspiracy theory bullshit about how the idea of varying intelligence amongst people is an artificial concept, which it coyly blames on some great conspiracy between the Rockefellers, Dewey, Rousseau, blah blah blah. Frankly, a lot of the links you've posted seem politically or philosophically motivated.
Bottom line: - Some people are smarter than others. These categories are not the product of propaganda, conspiracy, or a bunch of fat rich white men smoking cigars and drafting up a "system of order." - Teachers get paid shit so many of them are there because the hours are good, or because the competition is not exactly fierce, or because they are genuinely benevolent, caring individuals. At the end of the day, though, I believe far more of them give a shit than most people believe; I suppose it's more comforting to think that you're dealing with a conspiracy or institutionalized malice than to confront the fact that most of what we encounter in life is the product of people doing the best they can under the circumstances.
Hard core gaming is mostly subjective. It just means that one is more willing than the average person to go the extra mile in any significant facet of gaming. Possible ways to attain hard core gamer status:
- camping out for new releases - beating very hard or frustrating games - having played games seriously for a very long time - investing obscene amount of time in mmos - winning competitions
To answer your questions specifically:
Quantities of games purchased doesn't matter unless they are good games and you play them all. Dropping a lot of money on games you won't play does not make you a hard core gamer. Genres that are written off as being easy or fluffy or aimed at kids will definitely detract from your hard core status.
Although I think 80% of the people out there would agree with most of what I've said, you have to realize that a "hard core" gamer is an entirely nebulous, subjective term. It's not scientific terminology, and there's no one arbiter of what it means. However, if you're trying to get the terms down, this is a good place to start.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you actually insinuating that Al Quaeda managed to cut four undersea internet cables? I'd just like to be clear.
support whomever posts first.
Well, it has keys and can play more than one note at a time. 20 bucks says piano.
Really? Last time I checked, agnostics were undecided about the whole religion thing. Your statement sounds more atheistic than agnostic.
:)
Personally, I reasoned that most of the claims that religion makes are beyond my ability to prove or disprove, so I'll stick to judging people by what they do, not what they say or claim to believe.
You, however, are free to do as you please.
Governments can suppress the videos, but they will never stop the first posters.
Anyone else feel like you're in a zombie movie and your best friend just got bitten?
Me: Bioware? Bioware!?
Bioware: BRAAIIIIINNNSSSSSSS
Me: Nooooooo!
*cocks shotgun*
So, we have a cartel which has consistently engaged in collusion and price-fixing bribing legislators to create laws that turn copyright, which is a short-term monopoly granted to incentivise art, into a lucrative monopoly on the distribution of popular music.
What part of this isn't corruption, again?
"This is why any and all software ever written works on every platform available? Of course you make assumptions about the state of the hardware and operating systems in play when you start ANY project. These assumptions are what make Apple products work so well. These assumptions are also what make Apple 5% of the computing market share."
Read what I wrote again. I said the STATE of the hardware or software when DEPLOYING PATCHES. We're not even talking about the same thing.
"conservative"
That word doesn't mean what you think it means. Perhaps you meant "neo-conservative"?
I don't know if you've written any software yourself, but the first rule about deploying patches to consumer software is that you are NOT allowed to make any assumptions about the state of the hardware or software.
The reason people are up in arms is because apple has raised the possibility of this update permanently bricking your iPhone. That possibility is unacceptable. Any decent programmer would just have the update checksum the software and firmware and overwrite any hacked copies with the new version. None of your arguments about altered radio firmware and so on have any bearing on the issue...what does it matter which piece of firmware we're talking about? If an update requires consistency on the part of other elements of the phone, it needs to ensure that they are consistent, and if they are not, either fix them or fail gracefully.
The bottom line is that there is a lot of precedent for hardware warranties being unaffected by the actions a consumer takes with his software. Any manufacturer who causes users 4-600$ dollars worth of hardware loss via a software update would be liable. End of story.
Believe me, if PC manufacturers could have voided your warranty for installing a different operating system (as they would be able to according to your arguments), they would have years ago.
"I hate hate haters"
Don't send me to jail, I'm too young to waste away in the can!
"Day one revealed what all Apple aficionados fear. That AT&T, through the depths of its incompetence, could derail the iPhone."
This post is not intended as a flame or some kind of universal truth...just my own experiences and observations.
I have purchased 4 ipods thus far (2 for myself and 2 as gifts). I bought my mother a mac mini for her birthday. I think Apple is the most innovative company in consumer electronics right now. I have disposable income and I like spending my money on gizmos.
I live in Boston. I had Cingular / AT&T for four years and verizon for three. I had terrible reception and frequent dropped calls with Cingular and nearly none (in the same place) with Verizon.
Based on my personal experiences I'm going to wait until I can use the iphone with another carrier.
You guys can't bash Apple for this shit, though. A few huge corporations have a stranglehold on the cellular networks in this country, and they're more than willing to keep selling you the same service they've always been pushing as long as they possibly can. Apple had to cut a deal with one of the providers, and why would the market leaders push a product which will force them to offer new features, expand their network, and increase consumer expectations? Thus we get this Apple / AT&T deal.
Bottom line, iphone early adopters are going to have to suffer with a second-best carrier for six months to a year or so, at which point other companies (assuming the thing hasn't flopped) will start making the modifications to support the iphone's data-dependent features. Cell phone carriers that aren't leading the market won't change a thing unless they think it's going to gain them market share, and ones that are won't change a thing unless they're already losing it. It's just the way the game works.
I was objecting to military men painting all conflicts as "kill or be killed" in order to justify their actions. As much as I like sitting in my comfy air-conditioned apartment instead of getting shot at in some sandy hell, I believe volunteer soldiers enable conflicts. Career soldiers HAVE to unconditionally trust their superiors, and this obedience is, in my opinion, the impetus for a lot of bullshit wars.
Ask yourself, how many wars of the last 100 years could have been fought using 80% drafted forces? How does that list compare to the wars that you personally consider just?
Your defense ultimately comes down to the classic "just following orders" position, and I recognize that it is a necessity of being in a professional army. If soldiers, in a very isolated situation, receive orders based on faulty intelligence and kill an innocent civilian, the soldiers clearly have done nothing wrong.
However, you have to realize that by volunteering for the military you are *ENABLING* wars. Thus, you are culpable for the moral consequences of the war as a whole. A soldier's duty to the ideals constitution and the rest of humanity trumps any kind of military duty.
To be succinct, any solider who knows of any kind of wrongdoing (from misrepresentation of a war's justification to corruption to waste of life to human rights abuses) and does not either 1) resign 2) expose the abuse 3) discretely try to stop and prevent the abuse is as guilty as if he had done it himself. Knowing complicity equals guilt, even if you're just cooking the damn meals. THAT's my point.
Perhaps my metaphor confused you.
You said: "the people responsible for the where and when and how of soldiers plying their trade is the responsibility of the civilian government" and "the onus on the government to ensure that it tasks its soldiers with only right and just missions is at it's penultimate."
The "trade" and "tasks" in question here are killing people. The "responsibility" and "onus" here is placed on the "civilian government." Thus, you are inferring that volunteering for the army absolves the individual of responsibility for his actions.
I'm not advocating absolute pacifism, a belief that humans are intrinsically good, or any other absolute beliefs like that. I just object to the assertion that an individual is not responsible for his actions as a member of a military organization.
Let me give you a counter-example.
Let's say one man tries to rob a gun shop and gets shot, losing a leg. Another man fights in ww2, and he gets shot saving a fellow soldier, losing a leg.
A person could justifiably mock the first person, calling it "karmic fairness," while still respecting the second person.
In other words, the *REASON* why you suffered some personal loss can change the same affliction from a mark of shame to a badge of pride. People who got PTSD (or any other injury) in WW2 deserve our admiration: they suffered those injuries to save millions. People who are willing to become soldiers out of greed or ignorance or fear are no better than common killers.
Please. Bush would NEVER have been able to draft troops for this ridiculous excuse for a war. If there were a draft tomorrow there'd be riots in the streets and US troops coming home before they got anyone over there against their will. I know that, you know that, and the white house knows that....that's why there hasn't been a draft (despite huge troop shortages), isn't a draft, and won't be one.
Professional soldiers are the *enabling factor* in meddling foreign wars. That's why the founding fathers were against the idea of a standing army.
Sorry, man, I just don't buy your premise. Volunteering for the army with noble intentions is not a "get out of ethical dilemma free card." All of the corrupt fat cats in the world wouldn't get anywhere without an endless supply of sheep willing to commit atrocities for cash.
What about the other choice: not volunteering for the armed forces?
Incidentally, my mother is a teacher too. I definitely agree that teachers end up working as much as anyone else....well...at least the good ones. However, I don't think you can completely write off the benefit of the hours a teacher keeps, though. My mother certainly got to spend a lot of time with me and my brother during the summers when we were home, and her hours (and proximity to our school) enabled her to give us both rides home after afternoon sports. Also, I think it's fair to say that a lot of people get their certificate before they grasp the realities of the job.
So yeah, I think all of the points you made are good ones, and they pretty much match my experience. However, I still think that there are a few teachers who are really trying (with some success) to work until 3pm 9 months a year. As one of my mother's co-workers said: "It'd be a great job if it weren't for all the damn kids." I think she almost bit the woman's head off, god bless her. =)
Pretend that was posted AC.
I'm posting AC because I'm trying to be brutally honest, not go on an ego trip.
I was one of those kids who was labeled as "gifted" fairly early on in my education. My school didn't have a tag program until 6th grade due to budgetary constraints. I can't speak for every school in the country, but your descriptions don't match my experience and they largely seem the product of philosophical / political beliefs.
- My tag program was comprised entirely of real academics. In the 6th grade we did high school chemistry, some astronomy and physics, learned about stock trading, wrote research papers on 20th century history, read some difficult books, started a debate team, and so forth.
- My experience in high school people was like pretty much any experience with other people. One or two teachers were brilliant, most were just getting by, a few were misleading, and one was downright malicious. Sure, my school didn't seem to be able to provide for me very well, but it was due to a lack of resources, not any kind of malice or conspiracy.
- No matter what you want to believe, some people's brains just work faster than others. One of my best friends in high school was also in the tag program. I did my homework during class, never studied a night in my life, blew away standardized tests without preparing, and spent my nights hacking on linux. She was doing the same work, getting pretty much the same grades, but studying 6+ hours a night to keep it up. Some people couldn't have kept up if they studied 8 hours a night, 7 days a week.
That last link goes into a lot of conspiracy theory bullshit about how the idea of varying intelligence amongst people is an artificial concept, which it coyly blames on some great conspiracy between the Rockefellers, Dewey, Rousseau, blah blah blah. Frankly, a lot of the links you've posted seem politically or philosophically motivated.
Bottom line:
- Some people are smarter than others. These categories are not the product of propaganda, conspiracy, or a bunch of fat rich white men smoking cigars and drafting up a "system of order."
- Teachers get paid shit so many of them are there because the hours are good, or because the competition is not exactly fierce, or because they are genuinely benevolent, caring individuals. At the end of the day, though, I believe far more of them give a shit than most people believe; I suppose it's more comforting to think that you're dealing with a conspiracy or institutionalized malice than to confront the fact that most of what we encounter in life is the product of people doing the best they can under the circumstances.
As you may or may not be aware, Australia is not a part of the US and has managed to avoid becoming subject to many US laws.
Hard core gaming is mostly subjective. It just means that one is more willing than the average person to go the extra mile in any significant facet of gaming. Possible ways to attain hard core gamer status:
- camping out for new releases
- beating very hard or frustrating games
- having played games seriously for a very long time
- investing obscene amount of time in mmos
- winning competitions
To answer your questions specifically:
Quantities of games purchased doesn't matter unless they are good games and you play them all. Dropping a lot of money on games you won't play does not make you a hard core gamer. Genres that are written off as being easy or fluffy or aimed at kids will definitely detract from your hard core status.
Although I think 80% of the people out there would agree with most of what I've said, you have to realize that a "hard core" gamer is an entirely nebulous, subjective term. It's not scientific terminology, and there's no one arbiter of what it means. However, if you're trying to get the terms down, this is a good place to start.