Not to be a dick, but a cute story about "some woman you know" and your dad's paranoia about microwaves don't really construct a rational counterargument to a scientific study, regardless of who funded it. Why don't you show us a real scientific study that demonstrates this electromagnetic 'sensitivity', or that increased chance of blood clots? That would be a much more constructive reply.
Damn, you guys know how to spin YRO articles to make everything sound apocalyptic and awful. What exactly do you think this technology is meant to be used for? Do you think that university administrators have such a vested interest in vending machine habits and profit maximization that they want to data mine their own students? Do you think they really care when and how often you go to the bathroom?
Slashdot seems to have missed the boat on the notion of Ubiquitous Computing.
http://jesuspancakes.net/context.htm - A little summary paper I wrote about the field this past semester summarizing a few experimental trials of context-aware systems identical to the one described in this article.
This isn't technology designed to control and monitor people - this is technology intended to make people's lives better, provide interesting new services, utilize all the miniature computers that we carry around to make our lives easier.
I don't trust the damn government any more than the rest of you, but you don't have to implant RFID into your skin in order to try these out - most technologies are based on location badges, Wi-Fi triangulation with PDAs, and cell phone GPS. Guess what - you can turn them off, too!
So yes, blah blah, data mining, government spying, privacy, et cetera. Stop whining about it - these discussions are only useful if you actually think of useful solutions to the privacy dilemnas. If you're not, then you're just being a stubborn Luddite who can't see that it's possible for location-based computing to actually make your life better.
Columbine happened when I was in eighth grade, right when I hit my cool rebellious phase - blue hair, black t-shirts, huge goth jeans. And, like many kids that age, I discovered I have depression (major depression with a splash of bipolar). As a result, I wrote some sad emo journal entries in my English class, and the English teacher informed the school counselor that I might have depression.
I went and talked to the counselor, assuming that the whole "confidentiality" thing was relevant. I failed to realize that Columbine had changed all the rules magically, and that confidentiality was a thing of the past.
She told EVERYONE who had contact with me - all my teachers, all the administrators - and they brought in a police officer to have a little chat with me. Unfortunately, I was a straight-A student, polite in class, hardworking, always helping my peers, always protecting smaller kids from bullies (I was already 6 foot and huge), never late to classes, never broke any school rules, didn't smoke or drink or do drugs, and just generally a really sweet kid back then. I just thought it was cool to experiment with different looks and styles of clothing. All of the teachers laughed it off.
When my parents were brought in, they sent the officer home and told me not to write anything else like that at school. The administration was pissed - they KNEW I was a gun-wielding psychopath who was going to kill everyone in school. They made me see a psychologist, and after two sessions she said "You're obviously very normal and well-adjusted - I don't think you need anything from me".
Two weeks later, I made a web page in the gifted education program. Then, in Latin class, I brought it up and showed it to my teacher - "Hey, look at this cool web page I made!". At the end of the day, I was brought into the technology administrator's office and told that I was kicked off the network. Why? Because the web page I made FOR SCHOOL wasn't 'related to Latin' and therefore I wasn't allowed to use the computers for the rest of the year.
Being able to use computers was one of the only things that made my boring, slow classes worthwhile, because at least I could research interesting things during my free time between classes. If I had actually been unstable, taking that away from me would have been the last straw - but since I wasn't, I just put up with it and spent the last two months of school miserable and bored almost all the time and using other people's accounts to use the Internet when I could sneak off to an uninhabited part of the school.
What it boils down to is self-fulfilling prophecy: these fear-mongering twits actually *want* someone to shoot up the school, or go crazy, or do something to validate their paranoia, and so they use zero tolerance policies to harass and intimidate kids in the perverted subconscious hope that maybe one of the kids will bring a gun to school and validate their otherwise meaningless existences.
The 'debunking' you linked to assumes that the documentary is using 'out-of-date' data and that more recent data supports global warming. However, the documentary asserts - not unfairly - that since an entire industry of scientists has sprung around climate science since the rise in the popularity of the theory of man-made global warming, none of these scientists would be well-served by creating any 'recent science' that disagrees with the theory. That's not proof, obviously, but the claim is never addressed once in his debunking.
Furthermore, nobody addresses the economic consequences of global warming, which are the really interesting part of the movie. Africa needs to develop so its people can stop living subsistence farming lifestyles, but environmentalists won't let them use their own natural coal and oil because of global warming. We ought to be a little more informed on the theory before we consign billions to death by starvation, you think?
I have a problem with anyone who says that there's no disagreement about an issue. If you're interested in why third-world countries aren't developing at all, and if you'd like to see a different perspective on the issue, I'd recommend The Great Global Warming Swindle.
My ID just doesn't scan. For some reason, the batch of IDs made around my twenty-first birthday all have broken magnetic stripes, which I discovered the first time the freedom-hating state-run liquor stores in PA tried to swipe my card. The guy said "Hey... this says your ID expired. Twenty years ago."
The last time they went to scan it, I told them ahead of time that it probably wouldn't scan, then pulled out my Draft Registration and SS card to prove it was me. He called over the manager, but who can deny that kind of ID?
Actually, Diebold's ATMs aren't nearly as reliable as people think. I actually saw and played with an ATM at Carnegie Mellon University which crashed and rebooted into XP... people had it running Media Player until some sleep-deprived kids taking OS couldn't take it any more. Some pictures here.
I don't see how crap like this gets modded as insightful. The parent author clearly has no clue as to what the concept of Fair Use really is.
Um... Yeah. I don't know if you missed the Betamax case, but that's where the Supreme Court rules that recording an entire television program - taking a broadcast and recording it - is fair use. In the same way, format shifting can be considered an extension of fair use.
While it may seem to fit into that set of words, the legal definition has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of 'I want to listen to CD as an MP3' without permission. Now do note that some companies may give permission for such conversion, but that is not fair use; that is their perogative as the owner of the copyright.
Also, ponies made of rainbows fly on the moon! See, I can make shit up too.
Well, at least in Britain, the basic idea behind fair use is protected. In America, you have the right to fair use except when you circumvent measures intended to prevent you from exercising fair use. Or is that Soviet Russia?
Yeah. Isn't it funny how laws can lag so far behind reality? For years, MP3 players have been a burgeoning industry and music on the computer is so entrenched that ISPs and computer manufacturers make specious claims about how their service or product will help you listen to music... yet just now, it has become legal to do anything involving MP3s in Britain.
At least you're *gaining* rights... on this side of the pond, ours are stripped away in great, sweeping anti-terrorist motions.
What the fuck? Start 'wiretapping'? Fuck you, my data is my god damn business.
Universities are ISPs for their students. Why the hell should a University have a right to start packet-sniffing my data? If I use too much bandwidth and reduce service for other students, throttle my bandwidth or cut me off and that'll solve the problem - but looking at the data that I'm sending? There's no fucking WAY a university should do that. Ever. What if I was sending homemade porn movies of myself and my girlfriend's dog to my uncle Lester, or hot-and-dirty chat messages to Ukrainian men, or just a personal, nice email back to home - why should a university get to sniff what I transfer over their network?
Yeah, yeah, I know. PGP and all that shit. I actually have used WASTE up at school with my friends for encrypted file transfers, and that 1) makes your idea completely pointless and 2) protects all that shit. But there's a deeper issue - just because I'm attending a university doesn't mean I don't have some fucking rights. If my tuition (or my tax dollars) are paying for that internet connection, why should the university have a right to look at the data I'm transmitting? Should Time Warner or Comcast be able to arbitrarily look at the porn you download because you spike bandwidth by downloading six videos of a black dude raw dogging a Jew at once? Why, then, would a university?
I have to seriously disagree with your assertion that FM radio is all the quality you can experience in a car. Hell, my shitty Hyundai Elantra has transformed (with +$1000 of equipment) into a great audio environment, and even in the other cars I drive there's a HUGE difference just between FM and CD.
One of my friends has an excellent setup and has a 1/8" adapter to connect his iPod. The difference between FM-transmitted audio (via iTrip or similar) and the direct RCA connection is phenomenal, whereas the difference between FM transmitting in my mom's shitty old minivan and the direct-line CD changer is less, although still noticeable - and that's just a stock Chrysler stereo running to damaged paper cones. And you can bet your ass that the CDs sound much, much better than even the best FM stations.
I agree that HD radio is overrated, but you certainly can get much better audio quality than FM in a car without soundproofing your entire car. In fact, your argument that you'd have to soundproof a car until it's dangerous indicates a total lack of knowledge about either car stereos or good quality audio. It is common to use expensive damping material in car doors to increase sound quality to very high levels, and does not pose any risk to the driver - you can still hear perfectly well what's happening around you.
Sound dampening insulation like DynaMat is meant to reduce generic road noise, not to soundproof a car. And high-quality 5.1 car stereo setups are certainly doable for under a few hundred dollars - one model of Acura ships with a DVD-Audio capable stereo. More to the point, the idea that a stereo FM signal is adequate sound quality is just plain silly - even laymen can tell the difference between a CD and an FM signal. If HD Radio improves audio quality to just CD quality, it will be an improvement.
(Although from what I hear, it doesn't really. HD Radio definitely kind of sucks. But it's silly to assert that FM is good enough. And as for the price, a simple Google Search demonstrates that HD-capable aftermarket CD players can be had for as little as $105, and easily in the $100-$200 range (which is the low-end market for aftermarket players))
I'll be honest - I'm not happy with the default font.
There are two types of fonts. Serif fonts have little squigglies coming off the sides of the letters (like Times New Roman, Courier) whereas sans serif fonts are smooth-edged and end sharply. When you read text, serif fonts tend to slow your eye down whereas sans serif fonts cause your eye to move quickly and smoothly across the text.
When I read comments, I want to be slowed down so I absorb. I want titles to be smooth and continuous while text-heavy content is serif and slows me down to pay attention to detail - I'm getting a headache because my eye moves faster than I want it to across the new font.
I know that smooth fonts are all Web 2.0 and shiny-looking, but they're not pleasant to read a lot of text with.
To be fair, all PRAYER does is 1) confirm belief in God or 2) confirm belief in God. That's why it's stupid to set up self-justifying beliefs.
A Christian can pray. If they get what they prayed for, they count that as a win. If they don't, they say that "God didn't want it". Regardless of the outcome, the act of prayer serves to justify and confirm belief.
About five years ago... No, I'm sorry, six or seven. Anyway, a long time ago, my girlfriend at the time and I were hanging out outside a bowling alley waiting for a ride home and she put her hand down on a hypodermic needle. Now, there was no way of telling whether this had been used for insulin or heroin, and she had to go into a regimen of anti-hepatitis and anti-HIV drugs.
The side effects were... awesome. She became moodier than she had ever been, went from having a period every three months to having one every three weeks, and cheated on me with two of my best friends and two of my other friends.
This time around, Microsoft shipped a Mustang. It's big, loud, and powerful. Sony is going to ship a Porsche; quieter, a little faster, more expensive. (if they choose to eat the extra cost, that would make it a great deal for the consumer.) Nintendo is going to ship a Miata. They don't win drag-races, but Miatas are cheap and fun to drive.
So what you're saying is that the next-gen systems are for men with small penises?:-)
It's protection of players' rights. There is no ban on what you say in private chat (whether guild, party, raid, or whispers) to another friend. In fact, when I play with my roommate, I'll call him a useless nigger faggot in a whisper or while we're questing together.
But if somebody calls me a dirty sand nigger faggot cunt twat boy in public chat, then that is NOT allowed. I'm not gay, but if I were, I'd expect to be able to play without hearing slurs about people like me and incitements to violence, or any other derogatory comments, in the PUBLIC chat. Because, you know, children play these games too.
If someone has a GLBT guild, the only thing that could 'offend' a homophobe would be the fact that the guild exists at all. And if you can't stand to see the name of a guild with "GLBT", "Gay", or whatever in it, maybe you should just... get over it. But no one is forcing you to listen to what they have to say.
But if a gay person sees a guild called "Fag Haters", they're going to feel 1) uncomfortable 2) unaccepted 3) like they don't belong. You might be offended by the word gay, but at least it doesn't imply that the person hates you.
So really, Blizzard is forbidding players to make other players feel like they're hated.
It's this bullshit anti-gay right-wing nonsense all over the place. Homophobes are 'offended' by the fact that gay people exist, and they think to make it fair, they should make signs that say "Gays Burn In Hell". They are NOT equal, they are NOT even closely related. One is simply "Look, this is what I am, if you don't like me then go away" whereas the other is "I believe you're going to burn in hell and that you don't deserve the rights I have." There's a HUGE fucking difference.
I do agree with you that it is a logical fallacy. However, there are times when "slippery slope" effects can actually be observed, e.g. when you give power to your government and they, tantalized by the power over people's lives, grab at more and more. Or (and I hate to use this, but I just discussed it in class) the gradual slide of harm inflicted on Jews in Nazi Germany. First stripped of jobs, then stripped of rights and humanity, and finally stripped of life... well, that's a real-life slippery slope.
Likewise, the slippery slope of presidental power grabs in the past 50 years (troops for 90 days, rubber-stamp approval of troops indefinitely, spying without issuing a warrant until afterward, spying and never seeking a warrant) demonstrates that there are cases when we slide down a slippery slope.
It has to do with a lot of silly mental tricks that people have. The overjustification effect causes the line of reasoning that "Well, I could have stopped the government spying, but I just didn't care... so maybe I really do like government spying for my safety!".
Slippery slope is a fallacy when it's used arbitrarily, but if you provide a real line of reasoning to believe in a slippery slope then it can be a valid fear. For instance, if you provide the reasoning that in a particular case, it has been shown that people are much less sensitive to small changes than large changes, you can empirically demonstrate that each successive choice on a slippery slope becomes more likely as the previous ones come true.
It was 'borrowed'? Tax money is taken under threat of force. It will be taken via physical force from your grandchildren without their knowledge or consent.
Besides, it was really borrowed from the bubble that the U.S. economy is resting on right now. You might know it by the more colloquial name, 'China'.
Why don't we just cremate everybody and save valuable real estate for mad scientists and their ilk?
One of my friends just had to write a will because they were afraid he had cancer. Section 2, Paragraph 3 reads as follows:
When I die, I want to be cremated because I don't want to be no damn zombie.
It's good to have a sense of humor about death:-) His lawyer didn't appreciate it much though...
Re:A Brief And Entirely Inappropriate Summary
on
Review: Dead or Alive 4
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· Score: 5, Funny
Similarly, the clothing and hair simulation is quite impressive on some of the female characters.
Yes, the CLOTHING and HAIR is what's impressive about the female characters.
The problem with writing a review and trying not to talk about boobs is that you come across like Queer Eye for the Video Game. It's okay, we all like the boob physics.
I don't know if you had to wear a helmet when you were a kid, but I was actually pretty capable of taking care of myself and making my own decisions in a lot of matters from the time I was thirteen or so.
I first looked up Internet pornography when I was nine years old. I continued to look up Internet pornography throughout adolescence and I still do, just like everyone else here. When I couldn't use the Internet-enabled computer (back in dialup days) I would steal books of erotic literature or poetry from my parents' library. If that didn't work, I'd find a Victoria's Secret catalog or even a newspaper underwear ad.
You know what didn't happen? All of those horrible, psychologically destructive things that pornography is supposed to cause. I didn't start to view all women as objects - in fact, I've been in several long-term relationships and have experienced a lot of really good things because I respect women. I didn't become a pervert who stares at pornography nonstop and does nothing but masturbate. I didn't cry myself to sleep because I hated myself for looking at boobs. I got caught a few times, and my parents said "Hey, you shouldn't really do that", but what the fuck did they care?
I also drank when I was thirteen. I know, doesn't it sound terrible? But it really wasn't. I would hang out with older cousins or my friends, have a few beers or some liquor, feel all funny, and just have a good time. My parents didn't get furious about it, either. I was both big and mature for my age, and I never got sick from alcohol until I was nineteen years old at college. I watched porn, drank alcohol, and played violent video games in the safety and comfort of my own home, and that allowed me to understand much more about safety and have much more experience than other people when confronted with a real-world situation.
Your comment pisses me off because of the mythos of being eighteen. What exactly is so special about being eighteen years old? I'm twenty-one, and I don't feel all that different. I don't make particularly different decisions. Hell, I've had similar behaviors, a similar mentality, and nearly identical body size and appearance since I was sixteen years old - what magically happened in 2003 that made me magically 'capable' of being able to handle pornography, cigarettes, and sex with hookers in Nevada?
Nothing. I gained the maturity to handle those things earlier than some people. Other people never gain the maturity and do dangerous things with alcohol and whatnot for most of their lives. There's no magical difference between an adolescent and an adult except experience, and denying someone the ability to gain experience doesn't solve the problem by any stretch of the imagination.
Whoa. Why is everybody buying this business about "People aren't *allowed* to say Merry Christmas"? Did Bill O'Reilly get a hypnotoad for Christmas?
Any private citizen is allowed to say Merry Christmas. It's simply a matter of courtesy. If I'm talking to Chaim the Wonder-Jew, of course it would be rude for me to say "Merry Christmas". The motherfucker assassinated Jesus with nails, he doesn't want to celebrate a pagan ritual that has mysteriously been tied to Jesus' birthday, he celebrates a lamp and oil and burning and something. So I could say "Happy Chanukah" or I could just say "Happy Holidays".
When a company enacts a policy that its workers should say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", it's not some sort of anti-Jesus propaganda to keep the white Christian majority down - it's a policy to ensure that employees of the company are polite in their well-wishing and don't affend Chaim the Wonder-Jew or Akmed the Terrorist or Mumbutu the Kwanzaa-ite.
No, I'm not really a racist, I'm a brown man and I look like a terrorist. It's funny. It's a joke!
To put it another way - what some poor beaten Mexican Wal-mart employee went around saying "Happy Chanukah" all the time? And he said it to a nice evangelical Christian family and they got all offended because Jews killed their savior? Well, you'd say "Hey, Poncho, stop saying Happy Chanukah, just say Happy Holidays so that you don't offend people." Likewise, what if Poncho decided he'd try to cater his wishing depending on the person? What if he ran into someone with a big nose and wished them a Happy Chanukah only to discover that the person was actually a Jew for Jesus and hated Chanukah? Or an atheist, and hated all religious holidays?
Then you just say "Happy Holidays", and your intent is clear - you hope that they have happiness and joy during the holiday season regardless of what they celebrate.
It's a matter of politeness. I don't give a shit if you come up to me and say "Merry Christmas", but if I'm feeling bitter toward the holidays at the time I might retort "Yeah, happy fuckin' Jesus day" because, well, you don't know if I'm an atheist, Jew, Hindu, or a Druid. If you give a shit about not offending the people you care about, then you either know their religion and wish them accordingly or you shut the fuck up and send them a nice generic "holiday" greeting. Unless you're a dick who thinks that everyone should celebrate Jesus just like you.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to be a dick, but a cute story about "some woman you know" and your dad's paranoia about microwaves don't really construct a rational counterargument to a scientific study, regardless of who funded it. Why don't you show us a real scientific study that demonstrates this electromagnetic 'sensitivity', or that increased chance of blood clots? That would be a much more constructive reply.
3,
Jesus
Damn, you guys know how to spin YRO articles to make everything sound apocalyptic and awful. What exactly do you think this technology is meant to be used for? Do you think that university administrators have such a vested interest in vending machine habits and profit maximization that they want to data mine their own students? Do you think they really care when and how often you go to the bathroom?
Slashdot seems to have missed the boat on the notion of Ubiquitous Computing.
Wikipedia article
CMU's Aura Project
UbiComp 2007
http://jesuspancakes.net/context.htm - A little summary paper I wrote about the field this past semester summarizing a few experimental trials of context-aware systems identical to the one described in this article.
This isn't technology designed to control and monitor people - this is technology intended to make people's lives better, provide interesting new services, utilize all the miniature computers that we carry around to make our lives easier.
I don't trust the damn government any more than the rest of you, but you don't have to implant RFID into your skin in order to try these out - most technologies are based on location badges, Wi-Fi triangulation with PDAs, and cell phone GPS. Guess what - you can turn them off, too!
So yes, blah blah, data mining, government spying, privacy, et cetera. Stop whining about it - these discussions are only useful if you actually think of useful solutions to the privacy dilemnas. If you're not, then you're just being a stubborn Luddite who can't see that it's possible for location-based computing to actually make your life better.
Mod parent up! Er, I guess someone already did.
Columbine happened when I was in eighth grade, right when I hit my cool rebellious phase - blue hair, black t-shirts, huge goth jeans. And, like many kids that age, I discovered I have depression (major depression with a splash of bipolar). As a result, I wrote some sad emo journal entries in my English class, and the English teacher informed the school counselor that I might have depression.
I went and talked to the counselor, assuming that the whole "confidentiality" thing was relevant. I failed to realize that Columbine had changed all the rules magically, and that confidentiality was a thing of the past.
She told EVERYONE who had contact with me - all my teachers, all the administrators - and they brought in a police officer to have a little chat with me. Unfortunately, I was a straight-A student, polite in class, hardworking, always helping my peers, always protecting smaller kids from bullies (I was already 6 foot and huge), never late to classes, never broke any school rules, didn't smoke or drink or do drugs, and just generally a really sweet kid back then. I just thought it was cool to experiment with different looks and styles of clothing. All of the teachers laughed it off.
When my parents were brought in, they sent the officer home and told me not to write anything else like that at school. The administration was pissed - they KNEW I was a gun-wielding psychopath who was going to kill everyone in school. They made me see a psychologist, and after two sessions she said "You're obviously very normal and well-adjusted - I don't think you need anything from me".
Two weeks later, I made a web page in the gifted education program. Then, in Latin class, I brought it up and showed it to my teacher - "Hey, look at this cool web page I made!". At the end of the day, I was brought into the technology administrator's office and told that I was kicked off the network. Why? Because the web page I made FOR SCHOOL wasn't 'related to Latin' and therefore I wasn't allowed to use the computers for the rest of the year.
Being able to use computers was one of the only things that made my boring, slow classes worthwhile, because at least I could research interesting things during my free time between classes. If I had actually been unstable, taking that away from me would have been the last straw - but since I wasn't, I just put up with it and spent the last two months of school miserable and bored almost all the time and using other people's accounts to use the Internet when I could sneak off to an uninhabited part of the school.
What it boils down to is self-fulfilling prophecy: these fear-mongering twits actually *want* someone to shoot up the school, or go crazy, or do something to validate their paranoia, and so they use zero tolerance policies to harass and intimidate kids in the perverted subconscious hope that maybe one of the kids will bring a gun to school and validate their otherwise meaningless existences.
I am not decided on this issue. That being said:
The 'debunking' you linked to assumes that the documentary is using 'out-of-date' data and that more recent data supports global warming. However, the documentary asserts - not unfairly - that since an entire industry of scientists has sprung around climate science since the rise in the popularity of the theory of man-made global warming, none of these scientists would be well-served by creating any 'recent science' that disagrees with the theory. That's not proof, obviously, but the claim is never addressed once in his debunking.
Furthermore, nobody addresses the economic consequences of global warming, which are the really interesting part of the movie. Africa needs to develop so its people can stop living subsistence farming lifestyles, but environmentalists won't let them use their own natural coal and oil because of global warming. We ought to be a little more informed on the theory before we consign billions to death by starvation, you think?
I have a problem with anyone who says that there's no disagreement about an issue. If you're interested in why third-world countries aren't developing at all, and if you'd like to see a different perspective on the issue, I'd recommend The Great Global Warming Swindle.
YouTube abridged documentary
Torrent of full documentary
Please don't hurt my karma too bad, I just think it's nice to consider all sides of an issue.
Heart,
Your Mom
My ID just doesn't scan. For some reason, the batch of IDs made around my twenty-first birthday all have broken magnetic stripes, which I discovered the first time the freedom-hating state-run liquor stores in PA tried to swipe my card. The guy said "Hey... this says your ID expired. Twenty years ago."
The last time they went to scan it, I told them ahead of time that it probably wouldn't scan, then pulled out my Draft Registration and SS card to prove it was me. He called over the manager, but who can deny that kind of ID?
Thanks, broken ID machine! Keep up the good work!
Actually, Diebold's ATMs aren't nearly as reliable as people think. I actually saw and played with an ATM at Carnegie Mellon University which crashed and rebooted into XP... people had it running Media Player until some sleep-deprived kids taking OS couldn't take it any more. Some pictures here.
I don't see how crap like this gets modded as insightful. The parent author clearly has no clue as to what the concept of Fair Use really is.
Um... Yeah. I don't know if you missed the Betamax case, but that's where the Supreme Court rules that recording an entire television program - taking a broadcast and recording it - is fair use. In the same way, format shifting can be considered an extension of fair use.
While it may seem to fit into that set of words, the legal definition has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of 'I want to listen to CD as an MP3' without permission. Now do note that some companies may give permission for such conversion, but that is not fair use; that is their perogative as the owner of the copyright.
Also, ponies made of rainbows fly on the moon! See, I can make shit up too.
Well, at least in Britain, the basic idea behind fair use is protected. In America, you have the right to fair use except when you circumvent measures intended to prevent you from exercising fair use. Or is that Soviet Russia?
Yeah. Isn't it funny how laws can lag so far behind reality? For years, MP3 players have been a burgeoning industry and music on the computer is so entrenched that ISPs and computer manufacturers make specious claims about how their service or product will help you listen to music... yet just now, it has become legal to do anything involving MP3s in Britain.
At least you're *gaining* rights... on this side of the pond, ours are stripped away in great, sweeping anti-terrorist motions.
What the fuck? Start 'wiretapping'? Fuck you, my data is my god damn business.
Universities are ISPs for their students. Why the hell should a University have a right to start packet-sniffing my data? If I use too much bandwidth and reduce service for other students, throttle my bandwidth or cut me off and that'll solve the problem - but looking at the data that I'm sending? There's no fucking WAY a university should do that. Ever. What if I was sending homemade porn movies of myself and my girlfriend's dog to my uncle Lester, or hot-and-dirty chat messages to Ukrainian men, or just a personal, nice email back to home - why should a university get to sniff what I transfer over their network?
Yeah, yeah, I know. PGP and all that shit. I actually have used WASTE up at school with my friends for encrypted file transfers, and that 1) makes your idea completely pointless and 2) protects all that shit. But there's a deeper issue - just because I'm attending a university doesn't mean I don't have some fucking rights. If my tuition (or my tax dollars) are paying for that internet connection, why should the university have a right to look at the data I'm transmitting? Should Time Warner or Comcast be able to arbitrarily look at the porn you download because you spike bandwidth by downloading six videos of a black dude raw dogging a Jew at once? Why, then, would a university?
I have to seriously disagree with your assertion that FM radio is all the quality you can experience in a car. Hell, my shitty Hyundai Elantra has transformed (with +$1000 of equipment) into a great audio environment, and even in the other cars I drive there's a HUGE difference just between FM and CD.
One of my friends has an excellent setup and has a 1/8" adapter to connect his iPod. The difference between FM-transmitted audio (via iTrip or similar) and the direct RCA connection is phenomenal, whereas the difference between FM transmitting in my mom's shitty old minivan and the direct-line CD changer is less, although still noticeable - and that's just a stock Chrysler stereo running to damaged paper cones. And you can bet your ass that the CDs sound much, much better than even the best FM stations.
I agree that HD radio is overrated, but you certainly can get much better audio quality than FM in a car without soundproofing your entire car. In fact, your argument that you'd have to soundproof a car until it's dangerous indicates a total lack of knowledge about either car stereos or good quality audio. It is common to use expensive damping material in car doors to increase sound quality to very high levels, and does not pose any risk to the driver - you can still hear perfectly well what's happening around you.
Sound dampening insulation like DynaMat is meant to reduce generic road noise, not to soundproof a car. And high-quality 5.1 car stereo setups are certainly doable for under a few hundred dollars - one model of Acura ships with a DVD-Audio capable stereo. More to the point, the idea that a stereo FM signal is adequate sound quality is just plain silly - even laymen can tell the difference between a CD and an FM signal. If HD Radio improves audio quality to just CD quality, it will be an improvement.
(Although from what I hear, it doesn't really. HD Radio definitely kind of sucks. But it's silly to assert that FM is good enough. And as for the price, a simple Google Search demonstrates that HD-capable aftermarket CD players can be had for as little as $105, and easily in the $100-$200 range (which is the low-end market for aftermarket players))
I'll be honest - I'm not happy with the default font.
There are two types of fonts. Serif fonts have little squigglies coming off the sides of the letters (like Times New Roman, Courier) whereas sans serif fonts are smooth-edged and end sharply. When you read text, serif fonts tend to slow your eye down whereas sans serif fonts cause your eye to move quickly and smoothly across the text.
When I read comments, I want to be slowed down so I absorb. I want titles to be smooth and continuous while text-heavy content is serif and slows me down to pay attention to detail - I'm getting a headache because my eye moves faster than I want it to across the new font.
I know that smooth fonts are all Web 2.0 and shiny-looking, but they're not pleasant to read a lot of text with.
Dude, third grade called. They want their snappy comeback back.
To be fair, all PRAYER does is 1) confirm belief in God or 2) confirm belief in God. That's why it's stupid to set up self-justifying beliefs.
A Christian can pray. If they get what they prayed for, they count that as a win. If they don't, they say that "God didn't want it". Regardless of the outcome, the act of prayer serves to justify and confirm belief.
No! That's true, but it's actually:
Winning an argument on the Internet is like winning the Special Olympics. Whether you win or lose, you're still retarded.
This motherfucker knows what he's talking about.
:-D
About five years ago... No, I'm sorry, six or seven. Anyway, a long time ago, my girlfriend at the time and I were hanging out outside a bowling alley waiting for a ride home and she put her hand down on a hypodermic needle. Now, there was no way of telling whether this had been used for insulin or heroin, and she had to go into a regimen of anti-hepatitis and anti-HIV drugs.
The side effects were... awesome. She became moodier than she had ever been, went from having a period every three months to having one every three weeks, and cheated on me with two of my best friends and two of my other friends.
Fuck these drugs.
This time around, Microsoft shipped a Mustang. It's big, loud, and powerful. Sony is going to ship a Porsche; quieter, a little faster, more expensive. (if they choose to eat the extra cost, that would make it a great deal for the consumer.) Nintendo is going to ship a Miata. They don't win drag-races, but Miatas are cheap and fun to drive.
:-)
So what you're saying is that the next-gen systems are for men with small penises?
What, are you fucking stupid?
It's protection of players' rights. There is no ban on what you say in private chat (whether guild, party, raid, or whispers) to another friend. In fact, when I play with my roommate, I'll call him a useless nigger faggot in a whisper or while we're questing together.
But if somebody calls me a dirty sand nigger faggot cunt twat boy in public chat, then that is NOT allowed. I'm not gay, but if I were, I'd expect to be able to play without hearing slurs about people like me and incitements to violence, or any other derogatory comments, in the PUBLIC chat. Because, you know, children play these games too.
If someone has a GLBT guild, the only thing that could 'offend' a homophobe would be the fact that the guild exists at all. And if you can't stand to see the name of a guild with "GLBT", "Gay", or whatever in it, maybe you should just... get over it. But no one is forcing you to listen to what they have to say.
But if a gay person sees a guild called "Fag Haters", they're going to feel 1) uncomfortable 2) unaccepted 3) like they don't belong. You might be offended by the word gay, but at least it doesn't imply that the person hates you.
So really, Blizzard is forbidding players to make other players feel like they're hated.
It's this bullshit anti-gay right-wing nonsense all over the place. Homophobes are 'offended' by the fact that gay people exist, and they think to make it fair, they should make signs that say "Gays Burn In Hell". They are NOT equal, they are NOT even closely related. One is simply "Look, this is what I am, if you don't like me then go away" whereas the other is "I believe you're going to burn in hell and that you don't deserve the rights I have." There's a HUGE fucking difference.
I do agree with you that it is a logical fallacy. However, there are times when "slippery slope" effects can actually be observed, e.g. when you give power to your government and they, tantalized by the power over people's lives, grab at more and more. Or (and I hate to use this, but I just discussed it in class) the gradual slide of harm inflicted on Jews in Nazi Germany. First stripped of jobs, then stripped of rights and humanity, and finally stripped of life... well, that's a real-life slippery slope.
Likewise, the slippery slope of presidental power grabs in the past 50 years (troops for 90 days, rubber-stamp approval of troops indefinitely, spying without issuing a warrant until afterward, spying and never seeking a warrant) demonstrates that there are cases when we slide down a slippery slope.
It has to do with a lot of silly mental tricks that people have. The overjustification effect causes the line of reasoning that "Well, I could have stopped the government spying, but I just didn't care... so maybe I really do like government spying for my safety!".
Slippery slope is a fallacy when it's used arbitrarily, but if you provide a real line of reasoning to believe in a slippery slope then it can be a valid fear. For instance, if you provide the reasoning that in a particular case, it has been shown that people are much less sensitive to small changes than large changes, you can empirically demonstrate that each successive choice on a slippery slope becomes more likely as the previous ones come true.
It was 'borrowed'? Tax money is taken under threat of force. It will be taken via physical force from your grandchildren without their knowledge or consent.
Besides, it was really borrowed from the bubble that the U.S. economy is resting on right now. You might know it by the more colloquial name, 'China'.
Why don't we just cremate everybody and save valuable real estate for mad scientists and their ilk?
:-) His lawyer didn't appreciate it much though...
One of my friends just had to write a will because they were afraid he had cancer. Section 2, Paragraph 3 reads as follows:
When I die, I want to be cremated because I don't want to be no damn zombie.
It's good to have a sense of humor about death
Similarly, the clothing and hair simulation is quite impressive on some of the female characters.
Yes, the CLOTHING and HAIR is what's impressive about the female characters.
The problem with writing a review and trying not to talk about boobs is that you come across like Queer Eye for the Video Game. It's okay, we all like the boob physics.
I don't know if you had to wear a helmet when you were a kid, but I was actually pretty capable of taking care of myself and making my own decisions in a lot of matters from the time I was thirteen or so.
I first looked up Internet pornography when I was nine years old. I continued to look up Internet pornography throughout adolescence and I still do, just like everyone else here. When I couldn't use the Internet-enabled computer (back in dialup days) I would steal books of erotic literature or poetry from my parents' library. If that didn't work, I'd find a Victoria's Secret catalog or even a newspaper underwear ad.
You know what didn't happen? All of those horrible, psychologically destructive things that pornography is supposed to cause. I didn't start to view all women as objects - in fact, I've been in several long-term relationships and have experienced a lot of really good things because I respect women. I didn't become a pervert who stares at pornography nonstop and does nothing but masturbate. I didn't cry myself to sleep because I hated myself for looking at boobs. I got caught a few times, and my parents said "Hey, you shouldn't really do that", but what the fuck did they care?
I also drank when I was thirteen. I know, doesn't it sound terrible? But it really wasn't. I would hang out with older cousins or my friends, have a few beers or some liquor, feel all funny, and just have a good time. My parents didn't get furious about it, either. I was both big and mature for my age, and I never got sick from alcohol until I was nineteen years old at college. I watched porn, drank alcohol, and played violent video games in the safety and comfort of my own home, and that allowed me to understand much more about safety and have much more experience than other people when confronted with a real-world situation.
Your comment pisses me off because of the mythos of being eighteen. What exactly is so special about being eighteen years old? I'm twenty-one, and I don't feel all that different. I don't make particularly different decisions. Hell, I've had similar behaviors, a similar mentality, and nearly identical body size and appearance since I was sixteen years old - what magically happened in 2003 that made me magically 'capable' of being able to handle pornography, cigarettes, and sex with hookers in Nevada?
Nothing. I gained the maturity to handle those things earlier than some people. Other people never gain the maturity and do dangerous things with alcohol and whatnot for most of their lives. There's no magical difference between an adolescent and an adult except experience, and denying someone the ability to gain experience doesn't solve the problem by any stretch of the imagination.
Whoa. Why is everybody buying this business about "People aren't *allowed* to say Merry Christmas"? Did Bill O'Reilly get a hypnotoad for Christmas?
Any private citizen is allowed to say Merry Christmas. It's simply a matter of courtesy. If I'm talking to Chaim the Wonder-Jew, of course it would be rude for me to say "Merry Christmas". The motherfucker assassinated Jesus with nails, he doesn't want to celebrate a pagan ritual that has mysteriously been tied to Jesus' birthday, he celebrates a lamp and oil and burning and something. So I could say "Happy Chanukah" or I could just say "Happy Holidays".
When a company enacts a policy that its workers should say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", it's not some sort of anti-Jesus propaganda to keep the white Christian majority down - it's a policy to ensure that employees of the company are polite in their well-wishing and don't affend Chaim the Wonder-Jew or Akmed the Terrorist or Mumbutu the Kwanzaa-ite.
No, I'm not really a racist, I'm a brown man and I look like a terrorist. It's funny. It's a joke!
To put it another way - what some poor beaten Mexican Wal-mart employee went around saying "Happy Chanukah" all the time? And he said it to a nice evangelical Christian family and they got all offended because Jews killed their savior? Well, you'd say "Hey, Poncho, stop saying Happy Chanukah, just say Happy Holidays so that you don't offend people." Likewise, what if Poncho decided he'd try to cater his wishing depending on the person? What if he ran into someone with a big nose and wished them a Happy Chanukah only to discover that the person was actually a Jew for Jesus and hated Chanukah? Or an atheist, and hated all religious holidays?
Then you just say "Happy Holidays", and your intent is clear - you hope that they have happiness and joy during the holiday season regardless of what they celebrate.
It's a matter of politeness. I don't give a shit if you come up to me and say "Merry Christmas", but if I'm feeling bitter toward the holidays at the time I might retort "Yeah, happy fuckin' Jesus day" because, well, you don't know if I'm an atheist, Jew, Hindu, or a Druid. If you give a shit about not offending the people you care about, then you either know their religion and wish them accordingly or you shut the fuck up and send them a nice generic "holiday" greeting. Unless you're a dick who thinks that everyone should celebrate Jesus just like you.