If I'm old enough to be contacted in order to register for the Selective Service, I'm old enough to be politically active. In American schools, we're taught to love our country, to pledge our allegiance to it for the freedoms it gives us. The least we could do is learn what it means to exercise those rights.
Also consider that if kids learn to deal with politics as something they have no control over, they risk forming a very dangerous habit of political apathy. If you can manage to get kids angry about the status quo, eager for their chance to vote and anxious to earn the respect that will get their voice heard, then you can bet they'll actually do something with their vote when they get it.
Also consider that politics exists on many levels, and on some of those levels the opinions of kids can be very relevant. One example I can think of in my personal life is high school students and the district governing board. Although students do not have the final say in what goes on within the district, neither do the parents. Learning to tactfully but forcefully construct an argument can help these sway many people who have direct influence over their lives.
The most organized atheist group I've ever been a part of, or even directly encountered, is the Free Thinkers' Club at my highschool. Except even from its foundation it served as a place to discuss atheism, a subject that had gone so undiscovered at my high school that our meetings were filled with theists and deists of all kinds, from Catholic to pantheistic neo-pagan. The group eventually evolved into a philosophical and political discussion forum consisting of less than 50% atheists now. It also functions secondarily as a platform to allow any student activist to set up booths (for example counter-recruitment booths when Army recruiters come to school) at school functions.
I guess my experience with atheistic groups is different than yours.
I've also noticed that I know no militant atheists who did not grow up in a religious environment or according to a religious upbringing. Conversely, I've never met an atheist who had simply never been interested, introduced, or convinced by religion that was angered by or unaccepting towards it. It's the extremes of religion that cause certain reactionary atheists to call religion things like "the opiate of the masses", not the other way around.
There are also some types of violence that are far less effective when motivated by anything other than religion. An extreme sacrifice, be it peaceful martyrdom or a suicide bombing, goes down much easier with the promise of eternal life or a favorable reincarnation. The problem with comparing Atheists (capital A,to emphasize their characterization as a group) to Religious Extremists X is that Atheists don't really exist. The way atheists form groups, if at all is generally differently motivated than the forming of a religious group. While religious groups organize in order to better understand a common source of wisdom or tenet such as a holy book or principles for improving one's (after)life, atheists are more likely to organize around issues upon which they are already agreed and for which they need more representation or something like that.
With all this considered, saying that "Because for the most parts Atheists are not organized and a minority they haven't had the chance to organize into a violent group. However if they were organized and rather high they could get violent." is basically admitting "A group of people who tend not to form mobs could become dangerous if they were to form an angry mob." A true statement, but not a very useful one.
--Patrick C.
DISCLAIMER: I'm a young atheist (under 18) still living with a family that regularly attends church. I've been continuing to attend church for four years longer than I've believed in God, and I've been on all parts of the bitterness/acceptance spectrum that atheists are sometimes characterized by (like the groups you defined in your post).
bnetd is still alive and well as PvPGN. As for its purpose, it has much more value than existing to "be able to play net games with hacked versions". For one thing, should Blizzard ever decide to phase out one of their Battle.net enabled games, the community can pick up their slack. Also, Blizzard only requires one CD key for non-commercial, non-Internet usage. What this means is that at my LAN parties, I can set up a Diablo II PvPGN server and have us all play on LAN, but still have the characters stored on my server to reduce cheating, or I can set up a Warcraft III ladder tournament on the LAN.
But for those who have stood by and watched Kids go unfed till way to late at night, Having the TV or DVD's parent the children while a partner spends the entire weekend online until its become to much and it wasnt the marriage you signed up for...
That doesn't really have anything to do with addiction. Food has never been a high priority for me. As a result, whenever I get really into something, whether it's reading, writing, playing a video game, or coding, I'll sometimes play/work for 4-6 hour bursts. If my day is full of enough of these, I might not eat until right before I go to sleep. But it's not habitual, it's not involuntary, and it's not addiction.
A friend of mine and I have shared passwords for years (we used to just log in to each other's email to read sets of messages (stupid, I know)). The thing is just that we never record the passwords and mine have become really complex over the years so he never bothers to remember them. The end result is that I know all of his passwords and he knows none of mine.:-D
Linux may not be suitable for real "gamers" but it's more than good enough for casual gamers. I host LAN parties of 15+ people annually, playing the games my guests want to play and attend many more than that. For the last two years, I haven't even booted Windows. In fact, at the most recent party, one of the machines didn't have it installed, and furthermore it was a fresh, untweaked Ubuntu installation.
The proprietary games we play are mostly Blizzard and Valve games which both have a good history with Wine, but all of the games I have except for two that I can think of run fine on Linux (of the two in mind one is based on.NET and the other is Crysis).
Well the difference between spoofing a MAC address and spoofing an IP address is that MAC address information is stored in the hardware where IP address exists only in software. With that distinction in mind, it makes sense that spoofing (in software) and changing are the same for an IP address. With a MAC address, however, spoofing it in the software would not necessarily "change" it in the hardware.
The question would be whether or not a NIC with a "changed" MAC would maintain that new, modified MAC address inside a new computer, for example.
I don't think the link actually talked about burning anything into the firmware of the device (it just talked about using the ifconfig command to set the MAC address in Linux), but I can see where the confusion could arise.
Anyway, to translate your summary
1) Don't date Jill, date Jane
2) Jill is hotter than Jane
3) I hate and do not trust Jill
What if I'm advising you against dating Jill not because she's worse as a girl, but because she's a lying whore who'll ONLY HURT YOU IN THE END!? *sob*
It's not quite the same for a few reasons, though -PvPGN deals with the server side of Blizzard's game. With WoW this would be potentially much more destructive to their revenue stream -PvPGN emulates servers that really only cost Blizzard money, except for people that buy Diablo I and Diablo II to play it online and wouldn't have bought it if they hadn't known about some PvPGN server (probably very few people) -bnetd was already Free and Open
As a side note, I have a 15-hour LAN party coming up tomorrow, and you can bet that PvPGN is what I'm using for the Starcraft and Warcraft III tournaments.
I could care less about the homebrew games for it--but I'm not talking about piracy, either. I'm more interested in its capabilities as a little portable media player and web browsing device.
I enjoy hugging generally and don't mind hugging strangers, but since many people have the same (not necessarily bad, just different from mine) attitude about hugging as you do, my personal "policy" is not to hug someone unless I know them well enough that they won't possibly object.
Slashdot Mirror
So is this post informative or is it funny?
If I'm old enough to be contacted in order to register for the Selective Service, I'm old enough to be politically active. In American schools, we're taught to love our country, to pledge our allegiance to it for the freedoms it gives us. The least we could do is learn what it means to exercise those rights.
Also consider that if kids learn to deal with politics as something they have no control over, they risk forming a very dangerous habit of political apathy. If you can manage to get kids angry about the status quo, eager for their chance to vote and anxious to earn the respect that will get their voice heard, then you can bet they'll actually do something with their vote when they get it.
Also consider that politics exists on many levels, and on some of those levels the opinions of kids can be very relevant. One example I can think of in my personal life is high school students and the district governing board. Although students do not have the final say in what goes on within the district, neither do the parents. Learning to tactfully but forcefully construct an argument can help these sway many people who have direct influence over their lives.
The most organized atheist group I've ever been a part of, or even directly encountered, is the Free Thinkers' Club at my highschool. Except even from its foundation it served as a place to discuss atheism, a subject that had gone so undiscovered at my high school that our meetings were filled with theists and deists of all kinds, from Catholic to pantheistic neo-pagan. The group eventually evolved into a philosophical and political discussion forum consisting of less than 50% atheists now. It also functions secondarily as a platform to allow any student activist to set up booths (for example counter-recruitment booths when Army recruiters come to school) at school functions.
I guess my experience with atheistic groups is different than yours.
I've also noticed that I know no militant atheists who did not grow up in a religious environment or according to a religious upbringing. Conversely, I've never met an atheist who had simply never been interested, introduced, or convinced by religion that was angered by or unaccepting towards it. It's the extremes of religion that cause certain reactionary atheists to call religion things like "the opiate of the masses", not the other way around.
There are also some types of violence that are far less effective when motivated by anything other than religion. An extreme sacrifice, be it peaceful martyrdom or a suicide bombing, goes down much easier with the promise of eternal life or a favorable reincarnation. The problem with comparing Atheists (capital A,to emphasize their characterization as a group) to Religious Extremists X is that Atheists don't really exist. The way atheists form groups, if at all is generally differently motivated than the forming of a religious group. While religious groups organize in order to better understand a common source of wisdom or tenet such as a holy book or principles for improving one's (after)life, atheists are more likely to organize around issues upon which they are already agreed and for which they need more representation or something like that.
With all this considered, saying that "Because for the most parts Atheists are not organized and a minority they haven't had the chance to organize into a violent group. However if they were organized and rather high they could get violent." is basically admitting "A group of people who tend not to form mobs could become dangerous if they were to form an angry mob." A true statement, but not a very useful one.
--Patrick C.
DISCLAIMER: I'm a young atheist (under 18) still living with a family that regularly attends church. I've been continuing to attend church for four years longer than I've believed in God, and I've been on all parts of the bitterness/acceptance spectrum that atheists are sometimes characterized by (like the groups you defined in your post).
bnetd is still alive and well as PvPGN. As for its purpose, it has much more value than existing to "be able to play net games with hacked versions". For one thing, should Blizzard ever decide to phase out one of their Battle.net enabled games, the community can pick up their slack. Also, Blizzard only requires one CD key for non-commercial, non-Internet usage. What this means is that at my LAN parties, I can set up a Diablo II PvPGN server and have us all play on LAN, but still have the characters stored on my server to reduce cheating, or I can set up a Warcraft III ladder tournament on the LAN.
That doesn't really have anything to do with addiction. Food has never been a high priority for me. As a result, whenever I get really into something, whether it's reading, writing, playing a video game, or coding, I'll sometimes play/work for 4-6 hour bursts. If my day is full of enough of these, I might not eat until right before I go to sleep. But it's not habitual, it's not involuntary, and it's not addiction.
A friend of mine and I have shared passwords for years (we used to just log in to each other's email to read sets of messages (stupid, I know)). The thing is just that we never record the passwords and mine have become really complex over the years so he never bothers to remember them. The end result is that I know all of his passwords and he knows none of mine. :-D
(when they let you make up the question) is to set the question to "No password hint for you!" and then bang in random text for the answer.
In honor of the parent, whose post can only go up to +5, of course. ;-)
(Yes, I do agree with the parent, as well.)
Linux may not be suitable for real "gamers" but it's more than good enough for casual gamers. I host LAN parties of 15+ people annually, playing the games my guests want to play and attend many more than that. For the last two years, I haven't even booted Windows. In fact, at the most recent party, one of the machines didn't have it installed, and furthermore it was a fresh, untweaked Ubuntu installation. The proprietary games we play are mostly Blizzard and Valve games which both have a good history with Wine, but all of the games I have except for two that I can think of run fine on Linux (of the two in mind one is based on .NET and the other is Crysis).
Actually I like crunching Fritos and living by the keyboard.
Well the difference between spoofing a MAC address and spoofing an IP address is that MAC address information is stored in the hardware where IP address exists only in software. With that distinction in mind, it makes sense that spoofing (in software) and changing are the same for an IP address. With a MAC address, however, spoofing it in the software would not necessarily "change" it in the hardware. The question would be whether or not a NIC with a "changed" MAC would maintain that new, modified MAC address inside a new computer, for example. I don't think the link actually talked about burning anything into the firmware of the device (it just talked about using the ifconfig command to set the MAC address in Linux), but I can see where the confusion could arise.
canceling moderation
Why is it cheesy? When it rains, there are rainbows. Also, the imagined homophobic reaction of some gamers is delightful to me.
I'll give you an (offensive, sorry) analogy.
Anyway, to translate your summary
1) Don't date Jill, date Jane
2) Jill is hotter than Jane
3) I hate and do not trust Jill
What if I'm advising you against dating Jill not because she's worse as a girl, but because she's a lying whore who'll ONLY HURT YOU IN THE END!? *sob*
PS: Microsoft, you bitch, you broke my heart.
Real geeks don't joke about real geeks. It's serious fucking business.
The Phoronix Test Suite.
It's Linux only, but a CPU that performs better on Linux will perform better on Windows.
:-) Yay for PvPGN.
It's not quite the same for a few reasons, though
-PvPGN deals with the server side of Blizzard's game. With WoW this would be potentially much more destructive to their revenue stream
-PvPGN emulates servers that really only cost Blizzard money, except for people that buy Diablo I and Diablo II to play it online and wouldn't have bought it if they hadn't known about some PvPGN server (probably very few people)
-bnetd was already Free and Open
As a side note, I have a 15-hour LAN party coming up tomorrow, and you can bet that PvPGN is what I'm using for the Starcraft and Warcraft III tournaments.
I dunno about that. I typed in "matters" and it sent me to Slashdot! How intelligent is that?
This is correct. Thee is an object, and thou is only a subject.
I could care less about the homebrew games for it--but I'm not talking about piracy, either. I'm more interested in its capabilities as a little portable media player and web browsing device.
And that is a very nicely constructed sentence to trick some one into reading the article.
You got me, at least. But hey, it's probably 'cause I'm new around here.
I enjoy hugging generally and don't mind hugging strangers, but since many people have the same (not necessarily bad, just different from mine) attitude about hugging as you do, my personal "policy" is not to hug someone unless I know them well enough that they won't possibly object.
But if you cover that hole how are you supposed to hear him scream?
Oh, shit! I thought that's what he did say! "+1 Funny" my ass.
Well, solved that problem!
;-)
It's not just terrible, it's impossible!
An implosion of the universe would be terrible indeed.