We have airconditioning. Yes, I know it technically only makes it less warm by repositioning the heat, but the effect is that the room is cooler, to the layman. We can't make dark, but with optics, mirrors, and absorbancy control of materials we can manipulate light. We can't make quiet, but we can absorb sound, make white noise, redirect sound, or otherwise make it seem quieter.
Maybe ther will eventually be a similar device that appears to counteract one source of gravity, perhaps by utilizing other sources.
By no means am I a n00b or luser, but I am dwarfed in leetnes and e-penis by many people on this site and I've seen so many similar arguments "blah blah you don't need that fancy x, back in my day we did blah blah blah just fine running after doing [leet hax]". Even if you werre joking I bet there's someone here who could do or is doing it.
Like not contain all of your movies, favorite tv shows, play Civ4 or Oblivion, run 40 tabs in Firefox, play all you music, run folding@home, run gaim with 5 chat tabs open, play dvds, run Photoshop, and be downloading pr0n all at the same time? I realize that not everyone works on their e-penis like that, but what do you DO on a $10 PC? IRC, Nethack, ASCII pr0n and...? If it works for you, then yes, you are smarter than those nitwits that buy Alienwares for Solitare but most geeks I know, even non-gamers, have a pretty decent machine to tinker with in all sorts of ways that does all sorts of crazy shit even if they have a cheapo *nix box as a server, HTPC, backup, work, or whatever.
I, for one, live in a digital Germany and NEED my Ferrari (okay, more like riced up Firebird or maybe Mustang) for this the virtual Autobahn on which I metaphorically drive.
How'd the guy know it was Vonage putting him on hold and not the call center? When my cell fails it doesn't put me on hold or tell me if it is service or that number (kinda like an error 404). I just get something generic like "number could not be reached" or "please try again".
Is Vonage without a normal line that common in the country? I would think that you'd be careful about the phones going dead when you are that far away and have some kind of backup whether or not you use VOIP, and if you do have it perhaps use VOIP mostly for lower usage rates. But hey, I'm a city/town kid.
If you like sports, action movies, wild sex, the LOTR, or many other things, you are probably stimulating the aggression centers in your brain. It doesn't mean you are particularly violent, just that it is a part of you. I kill more people in half an hour in a videogame than Ted Bundy killed in his carreer. In videogames. I also do competetive kickboxing. Most movies I enjoy have some level of violence, even if that is only a small part of what makes them great. I've been in one real fight in my life, and it was stopping two guys bigger than me from bullying some kids. Hell, I could almost be a pacifist. I don't even fish or even hurt bugs.
There's a part in a book I am reading, John Harrison's Viriconium, that goes like this (dialougue only):
Nian: "This horror. We have always regarded the Afternoon Cultures as a high point in the history of mankind. Theirs was a state to be striven for, despite the mistakes that marred it. How could they have constructed such things? Why, when they had the stars beneath their hands?" Cellur: "You bid me remember, madam? I fear I cannot." Grif: "They were stupid. They were fools" Cellur: "They were insane towards the end. That I know."
I don't know why people expect so much of humanity. We're the first sapient species we know of. So far intelligent life is as developed as a toddler is to an adult. Of course we aren't going to be rational, sane, cultured beings. Wait until we are succeeded by transhuman, Homo Sapiens Sapiens Sapiens, or AI designed by AI before expecting something beyond the mere survival of intelligent life. The major accomplishments of this and the last century will be not killing ourselves completely or destroying the world in two world wars, a nuclear (and bio/chem) arms race, development of the third world, and feeding our population.
Since when has humanity cared about human lives? Why are our history books filled with wars? Because people like to kill each other. It's basic humanity.
Fortunately, many people can resist that impulse, or redirect it at videogames or some other vent, and otherwise only fight to end fights quickly. The way in which a culture and the individuals in it deal with violent urges is very important to the success of each.
It's like the difference between Oman and many other places in the Mid East. Oman was just poor, had oil, had internal conflict, and was primitive, but within 30 years they've made radically positive progress in uniting the country mostly peacfully, utilizing their resources instead of wasting it on the military, educating their people, modernizing their society, and all of this while maintaining their religious identity. It's one of nicest countries I've ever been to (and I've travelled alot), though they still have alot of work to do.
Yes, capitalism exploitative and overall sucky. There was a post on here a while back about American "neoslaves" working long hours for decreasing pay. Americans do get the least sleep on average as a nation. But the alternative is worse. Not to pick on them, but France had a three month period of riots, with thousands of cars burned and at least one little old lady burned alive, and at least one guy in a coma from riot control as a result of youth rioting in response to the dismal employment opportunities they have. Even China is moving to a more capitalistic system for crying out loud. It's not the best system, but no one is. The problem is always the people. The simplest way to reduce the effects of capitalism would be to have fewer consumers, a smaller world population. But the chances of that happening? Nil. Maybe the onset of a Metaverse will decrease the average person's need for material goods and allow for more efficient use of resources - why have a mansion in real life when you can have a completely realistic kingdom online?
Well, I am agreeing in that for most things, it is pretty well organized, but the failures have been pretty spectacular. To be fair, the successes have been as well. In a relative sense, our government is not any less organized than most other national governments, but we can do with some of improvements. Even though we will never achieve a truly efficient government there is room for improvement and without any pressure to improve, it will not.
9/11, Katrina, the WMD fiasco, and the failure to capture bin Laden even when the Pakistanis handed him on a silver platter to Clinton are NOT bureaucratic overhead. Schools are not run well either. Some perts of government run pretty smoothly, like the Marines.
I guess a joke requiring movie knowledge in a conversation about why movies suck is kind of a wrong crowd thing. Oh well, the saving grace of comedy is that if you are bad at it no one will laugh at you.
And people laugh at anime fans. Well, some deserve it. They have the a little higher good-to-crap ratio than Hollywood, but that's still a whole 'nother market, so picking between the best of the two gives you some nice options. Seriously, Hollywood doesn't hold a candle to Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Haibane Renmei, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Princess Mononoke (hell, Miyazaki in general) and the like. As long as you avoid kid stuff (a big clue is the length - most better shows are usually 13 or 26 episodes long; the ones that run forever like Naruto, Bleach, Dragonball Z and such are for kids).
One of the real strengths of the genre is that it won't look perfectly real, so usually creators just focus on making it look pretty good and cool, and then devote some time to plot and characters and cinematography (is the beginning of V Hunter D: BL not one of the greatest ever?), and since it is usually cheaper to make, they can be more adventurous (this is why there is alot more sf and fantasy anime than US films, in fact all I listed above are f/sf).
Two beefs I have with movies that are a little different are: 1.) the frame rate is TOO SLOW for action movies. I heard it was about 24fps. In well-done anime where the speed is high, sction scenes are a million times better because YOU CAN SEE WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING and it isn't all one big blur. This is especially bad when combined with beef 2.) I hate this newly popular camera method of jumping between close-ups every two seconds. It's like the cameraman is a near-sighted kid with ADHD that is a slave to following motion (CS players???). Does a fight scene really have to zoom in on the hero's limb every time they move it (I'm looking at you, Bourne movies)? Combine this jumping and zooming with the slow frame rate, and the action is all a blur that sucks. And usually they are so unrealistic that it loses all the cool (like when a gun pistol has a 50 round mag and can't shoot through a door but can explode a helicopter instantly, like in The Transporter 2, or when a pistol has enough power and ammo to cut a hole in the floor like in Underworld). So even B action movies lose their only good point, the action.
At least with B anime you get a really cool setting, backdrops, characters (if shallow, I mean like original badguys), and action.
Well, I was making a joke along the lines of Firefly's "a government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned".
I'm sorry, but in wake of the foul-ups of 9/11 and the handling of Katrina my level of cynicism is a little higher, and jibes are neccessary to keep the govt. more accountable. Also, when was the last time you visited the DMV? THAT is the standard level of govt. efficiency. As bad as corporations are, govts. are worse. But that's just human nature. After all, the only activities that efficiency is critical are the military, police, and schools. Two out of three isn't great (schools suck pretty bad), but about expected.
You aren't criticizing libertarians. Saying that libertarians are anarchists is a slippery slope argument that is unfounded. They are no more anarchists than a liberal is a communist. They occupy certain ranges of the political spectrum that extends far longer than it is usually used. A conservative isn't a fascist. Extremes of any political ideology approach the next one, and that is when one should be worried.
You are most likely criticizing anarcho-communalists, or some other very radical group.
I want a government that does fewer things (less programs, less laws, less control, fewer branches, etc.) but does a better job in those areas by focusing on fewer things. I think taxes should be simplified, but instead of cutting them or spending, I'd rather not waste that money by throwing schools instead of managing the money right (how about paying the teachers more and getting more, getting more books, and not building new football fields and gymnasiums?) and instead put it to NASA or something else that has many side and long-term effects. Fewer laws, better enforcement, stronger punishments.
What you are saying is simple sociology: people are social creatures. Anyone who thinks that becoming a hermit is returning to the way man was meant to live is wrong, we had tribes for a purpose (and they may have been a superior social organization to civilization in terms of happiness on the memebers and the environment, read Ishmael and Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn).
Slashdot Mirror
I'm unfamiliar with this game. Where can you buy it? Where do I sign up?
Good argument, great fallacy to remember, and I love your sig.
This his true, however,
We have airconditioning. Yes, I know it technically only makes it less warm by repositioning the heat, but the effect is that the room is cooler, to the layman. We can't make dark, but with optics, mirrors, and absorbancy control of materials we can manipulate light. We can't make quiet, but we can absorb sound, make white noise, redirect sound, or otherwise make it seem quieter.
Maybe ther will eventually be a similar device that appears to counteract one source of gravity, perhaps by utilizing other sources.
By no means am I a n00b or luser, but I am dwarfed in leetnes and e-penis by many people on this site and I've seen so many similar arguments "blah blah you don't need that fancy x, back in my day we did blah blah blah just fine running after doing [leet hax]". Even if you werre joking I bet there's someone here who could do or is doing it.
Like not contain all of your movies, favorite tv shows, play Civ4 or Oblivion, run 40 tabs in Firefox, play all you music, run folding@home, run gaim with 5 chat tabs open, play dvds, run Photoshop, and be downloading pr0n all at the same time? I realize that not everyone works on their e-penis like that, but what do you DO on a $10 PC? IRC, Nethack, ASCII pr0n and...? If it works for you, then yes, you are smarter than those nitwits that buy Alienwares for Solitare but most geeks I know, even non-gamers, have a pretty decent machine to tinker with in all sorts of ways that does all sorts of crazy shit even if they have a cheapo *nix box as a server, HTPC, backup, work, or whatever.
I, for one, live in a digital Germany and NEED my Ferrari (okay, more like riced up Firebird or maybe Mustang) for this the virtual Autobahn on which I metaphorically drive.
How'd the guy know it was Vonage putting him on hold and not the call center? When my cell fails it doesn't put me on hold or tell me if it is service or that number (kinda like an error 404). I just get something generic like "number could not be reached" or "please try again".
Is Vonage without a normal line that common in the country? I would think that you'd be careful about the phones going dead when you are that far away and have some kind of backup whether or not you use VOIP, and if you do have it perhaps use VOIP mostly for lower usage rates. But hey, I'm a city/town kid.
If you like sports, action movies, wild sex, the LOTR, or many other things, you are probably stimulating the aggression centers in your brain. It doesn't mean you are particularly violent, just that it is a part of you. I kill more people in half an hour in a videogame than Ted Bundy killed in his carreer. In videogames. I also do competetive kickboxing. Most movies I enjoy have some level of violence, even if that is only a small part of what makes them great. I've been in one real fight in my life, and it was stopping two guys bigger than me from bullying some kids. Hell, I could almost be a pacifist. I don't even fish or even hurt bugs.
There's a part in a book I am reading, John Harrison's Viriconium, that goes like this (dialougue only):
Nian: "This horror. We have always regarded the Afternoon Cultures as a high point in the history of mankind. Theirs was a state to be striven for, despite the mistakes that marred it. How could they have constructed such things? Why, when they had the stars beneath their hands?"
Cellur: "You bid me remember, madam? I fear I cannot."
Grif: "They were stupid. They were fools"
Cellur: "They were insane towards the end. That I know."
I don't know why people expect so much of humanity. We're the first sapient species we know of. So far intelligent life is as developed as a toddler is to an adult. Of course we aren't going to be rational, sane, cultured beings. Wait until we are succeeded by transhuman, Homo Sapiens Sapiens Sapiens, or AI designed by AI before expecting something beyond the mere survival of intelligent life. The major accomplishments of this and the last century will be not killing ourselves completely or destroying the world in two world wars, a nuclear (and bio/chem) arms race, development of the third world, and feeding our population.
Skyne- no way. Nevermind. It'll never happen.
Unless I install this neat little proggy I wrote...
Of course. All video/computer technology is driven by porn. What do you think the real purpose of HD is? Animal Planet? I think not.
Giant plasma screen: $3000
PS3: $400?
Life-sized high definition naked ladies: Priceless
I'll never leave my house now.
fapfapfapfapfapfapfapfapfap
Husband...?
Since when has humanity cared about human lives? Why are our history books filled with wars? Because people like to kill each other. It's basic humanity.
Fortunately, many people can resist that impulse, or redirect it at videogames or some other vent, and otherwise only fight to end fights quickly. The way in which a culture and the individuals in it deal with violent urges is very important to the success of each.
It's like the difference between Oman and many other places in the Mid East. Oman was just poor, had oil, had internal conflict, and was primitive, but within 30 years they've made radically positive progress in uniting the country mostly peacfully, utilizing their resources instead of wasting it on the military, educating their people, modernizing their society, and all of this while maintaining their religious identity. It's one of nicest countries I've ever been to (and I've travelled alot), though they still have alot of work to do.
Yes, capitalism exploitative and overall sucky. There was a post on here a while back about American "neoslaves" working long hours for decreasing pay. Americans do get the least sleep on average as a nation. But the alternative is worse. Not to pick on them, but France had a three month period of riots, with thousands of cars burned and at least one little old lady burned alive, and at least one guy in a coma from riot control as a result of youth rioting in response to the dismal employment opportunities they have. Even China is moving to a more capitalistic system for crying out loud. It's not the best system, but no one is. The problem is always the people. The simplest way to reduce the effects of capitalism would be to have fewer consumers, a smaller world population. But the chances of that happening? Nil. Maybe the onset of a Metaverse will decrease the average person's need for material goods and allow for more efficient use of resources - why have a mansion in real life when you can have a completely realistic kingdom online?
My state is still bigger than France.
Our English isn't as good though...
Ireland is but a small country in the EU.
[US-EU jibe]
Hehe. What country in the EU isn't?
[/US-EU jibe]
That's beautiful. I love it.
Gah, GIMP is so lame.
Well, I am agreeing in that for most things, it is pretty well organized, but the failures have been pretty spectacular. To be fair, the successes have been as well. In a relative sense, our government is not any less organized than most other national governments, but we can do with some of improvements. Even though we will never achieve a truly efficient government there is room for improvement and without any pressure to improve, it will not.
9/11, Katrina, the WMD fiasco, and the failure to capture bin Laden even when the Pakistanis handed him on a silver platter to Clinton are NOT bureaucratic overhead. Schools are not run well either. Some perts of government run pretty smoothly, like the Marines.
I guess a joke requiring movie knowledge in a conversation about why movies suck is kind of a wrong crowd thing. Oh well, the saving grace of comedy is that if you are bad at it no one will laugh at you.
And people laugh at anime fans. Well, some deserve it. They have the a little higher good-to-crap ratio than Hollywood, but that's still a whole 'nother market, so picking between the best of the two gives you some nice options. Seriously, Hollywood doesn't hold a candle to Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, Haibane Renmei, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, Princess Mononoke (hell, Miyazaki in general) and the like. As long as you avoid kid stuff (a big clue is the length - most better shows are usually 13 or 26 episodes long; the ones that run forever like Naruto, Bleach, Dragonball Z and such are for kids).
One of the real strengths of the genre is that it won't look perfectly real, so usually creators just focus on making it look pretty good and cool, and then devote some time to plot and characters and cinematography (is the beginning of V Hunter D: BL not one of the greatest ever?), and since it is usually cheaper to make, they can be more adventurous (this is why there is alot more sf and fantasy anime than US films, in fact all I listed above are f/sf).
Two beefs I have with movies that are a little different are: 1.) the frame rate is TOO SLOW for action movies. I heard it was about 24fps. In well-done anime where the speed is high, sction scenes are a million times better because YOU CAN SEE WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING and it isn't all one big blur. This is especially bad when combined with beef 2.) I hate this newly popular camera method of jumping between close-ups every two seconds. It's like the cameraman is a near-sighted kid with ADHD that is a slave to following motion (CS players???). Does a fight scene really have to zoom in on the hero's limb every time they move it (I'm looking at you, Bourne movies)? Combine this jumping and zooming with the slow frame rate, and the action is all a blur that sucks. And usually they are so unrealistic that it loses all the cool (like when a gun pistol has a 50 round mag and can't shoot through a door but can explode a helicopter instantly, like in The Transporter 2, or when a pistol has enough power and ammo to cut a hole in the floor like in Underworld). So even B action movies lose their only good point, the action.
At least with B anime you get a really cool setting, backdrops, characters (if shallow, I mean like original badguys), and action.
Well, I was making a joke along the lines of Firefly's "a government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned".
I'm sorry, but in wake of the foul-ups of 9/11 and the handling of Katrina my level of cynicism is a little higher, and jibes are neccessary to keep the govt. more accountable. Also, when was the last time you visited the DMV? THAT is the standard level of govt. efficiency. As bad as corporations are, govts. are worse. But that's just human nature. After all, the only activities that efficiency is critical are the military, police, and schools. Two out of three isn't great (schools suck pretty bad), but about expected.
You aren't criticizing libertarians. Saying that libertarians are anarchists is a slippery slope argument that is unfounded. They are no more anarchists than a liberal is a communist. They occupy certain ranges of the political spectrum that extends far longer than it is usually used. A conservative isn't a fascist. Extremes of any political ideology approach the next one, and that is when one should be worried.
You are most likely criticizing anarcho-communalists, or some other very radical group.
I want a government that does fewer things (less programs, less laws, less control, fewer branches, etc.) but does a better job in those areas by focusing on fewer things. I think taxes should be simplified, but instead of cutting them or spending, I'd rather not waste that money by throwing schools instead of managing the money right (how about paying the teachers more and getting more, getting more books, and not building new football fields and gymnasiums?) and instead put it to NASA or something else that has many side and long-term effects. Fewer laws, better enforcement, stronger punishments.
What you are saying is simple sociology: people are social creatures. Anyone who thinks that becoming a hermit is returning to the way man was meant to live is wrong, we had tribes for a purpose (and they may have been a superior social organization to civilization in terms of happiness on the memebers and the environment, read Ishmael and Beyond Civilization by Daniel Quinn).
Wasn't Stealth a huge bomb?
No no,
...
Also the math makes no sense: Spammed 1.2 million AOL users with onbly 47,000 messages? Huh?
1200000 / recipients_per_Email = 47,000 emails sent.
it's AOHell we're talking about here, that's 47,000 messages each.
Hell, if I had a name like that, I'd be pissed off and randomly destructive too.