Excellent post, zogger. I first read up on the suspicious actions of the auto industry regarding electric-only vehicles a while back -- here is an online archive of the article:
It's especially telling when you read the part about the car customer who walked into a dealership, saw the nifty-looking EV in the showroom and was repeatedly rebuffed by salespeople every time he tried to ask questions about it.... as if they were required to display the EV yet were desperately trying to discourage anyone from buying it.
Good point! Reminds me of what James "The Amazing" Randi once said about his long-standing wager to anyone who could demonstrate telekinetic powers to him: it was like sitting on the rooftop by the chimney every Christmas Eve night waiting for Santa Claus to show. Just because Santa hasn't appeared does not constitute proof that Santa does not exist.... but if you've waited for twenty years, it's probably time to call it quits.
Okay.... So, when the ancient Greeks developed mathematics and philosophy, and began to question their own religious beliefs, eventually rejecting the idea of the Olympian Pantheon of gods residing in a great palace on the top of Mount Olympus...they were IN THE WRONG?!
The Greeks even came up with an idea to explain the discrepancy between pre-scientific belief and scientific understanding: there was the "mythos" (the sum total of non-scientific belief -- myths, legends, folklore, etc.) and then there was the "logos" (the sum total of scientific knowledge and logical thought; the word "logic" is derived from "logos"). They recognized the fact that people have a natural curiosity about the world around them, they want to know how things work, but in the absence of science all they can do is make shit up.
Had it not been for the thorough vindication of Galileo in the sciences, the RCC probably would *never* have issued their apology for how they (mis)treated him -- and even then it was over 300 years after the fact! That is not something for the church to be proud of. It is something to be ashamed of.
> I think you hit the nail right on the head - as the God bin gets emptied and things which were unknown are predictable, reproducible, and explainable, the threat to major religion increases.
Don't forget the emotional payoff of believing that some all-powerful deity is running the entire show for your personal benefit, even when it seems that He's doing his darn best to kick the living shit out of you! (The Book of Job comes to mind.)
I agree with you: science and religion *are* opposed, and the more progress science makes, the more threatened religion feels. If and when science empties out the God Bin, it'll be interesting to see what happens to religion....
> On the other hand, the people who argue the opposite point [that global warming is nonexistent] stand to gain a hell of a lot from making this all seem like BS.
Wavicle being a particularly obnoxious example. Wonder how many shares of Exxon/Mobil he owns?;-)
> More important that all of that, of course, is the fact that while the arctic ice pack sits on water, the antarctic one sits largely on land... and that Greenland also supports a significant ice pack. Since these are supported by the land (not buoyant force), when they melt, they *would* significantly raise the water level globally.
Exactly. This is literally "an inconvenient truth" that people in the Rush Limbaugh / Michael Crichton camp would love very much to hide from everyone (in fact, Limbaugh used an "ice cube in a glass of water" analogy to argue against the validity of global warming on his now-defunct TV show).
Of course, once people call bullshit on their bogus claims, the anti-greenhouse bunch will just come up with some other reason why global warming is nonexistent -- can you say "moving the goalposts"? *Sigh*
Of course! And a planet-wide climactic change on Earth wouldn't necessarily wipe out entire species of prehistoric flora and fauna, including nearly all of the dinosaurs--
"Alright...we'll call it a draw. --Ohhhh, I see. Runnin' away, eh?! You YELLOW BASTARDS, come back here and take what's comin' to ya!! I'll bite your legs off...!"
> The bottom line is Microsoft is a marketing company. It is not a company that prides itself on building superior technical solutions.... A technology driven company would have put preference on the technically superior solution...Microsoft being a marketing company has done and is doing the exact opposite.
This is *exactly* what's wrong with Micro$oft (among so many other disgusting examples in the marketplace) -- the name means more to them than the game, which is to provide what the people want:
"Software comes and goes. What we're selling is Microsoft, not the individual products." -- Bill Gates
Remember that wretched Time issue way back in the Eighties, the one showing a smug Gates balancing a 5.25" floppy disk on one finger? That was just one of many instances where Micro$oft duped the media into believing the corporate hype, that M$ products were by far the best and most innovative in the market.
Never mind that M$ software was (and still is) buggy as hell. Forget that M$ frequently buys other developers' software, slaps shit all over it, then labels it as M$ product. All that matters is that Gates pushes his brand further and further throughout the market and into people's minds.
With priorities like that, it's no wonder M$ and its offerings are so fucked up.
True -- unless you're measuring weight for certain kinds of materials. This can be illustrated by a riddle that sounds an awful lot like a trick question:
"Which weighs more -- a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?"
The obvious answer would be "Neither!" since logically a pound of x should be exactly as heavy as a pound of y. Unfortunately, there are two different (and maddeningly incompatible) standards for measuring a pound: troy and avoirdupois.
A troy pound is defined as weighing twelve ounces and (historically) is used almost exclusively for precious metals, whereas an avoirdupois pound has sixteen ounces and is used for nearly everything else. Based on this, the pound of feathers weighs *more* than the pound of gold!
As if that weren't bad enough, the troy ounce is *slightly heavier* than the avoirdupois ounce -- therefore an ounce of feathers weighs less than an ounce of gold! Are we sufficiently confused yet??
Funny that you're the only poster who thought of mentioning the heat factor -- it was the first thing that came to my mind when I read this:
> This massive machine has a 20.1" screen, two 120GB hard drives in a RAID 0 array, super-multi DVD burner, analogue and digital TV tuners and an Intel Core Duo dual core CPU.
I mean, Jesus Fucking H Christ!! How many BTUs does all that give off? Not to mention that actual "laptop" users are complaining their machines are practically cooking their thighs; how the hell is anyone going to be able to cope with this 17lb. hi-tech heat generator?
Hmmm.... maybe that could be used by Acer for an ultra-macho-extreme-sports themed ad campaign:
"Are You Tough Enough For It? Acer's Aspire 9800 -- THE LAPTOP FROM HELL!"
> What I find interesting is the term "bad guy". It seems I've been hearing this alot lately. [...] I'm kind of worried, is this the new code word for sub human? For unexplaned threat?
To paraphrase Dave Letterman, "You shouldn't be worried.....You should be TERRIFIED!!" (From the Viewer Mail segment where someone submitted a through-the-passenger-window photo of a GE-brand airline jet engine.)
I'd say that your intuitive unease is spot-on: this sounds like yet another [double/new]speak term for "anyone we don't like for whatever reason". Compare it with the conservative/Republican term "family values" -- a catchphrase that encompassed a hell of a lot of hidden meanings....
- Two-parent family household
o Must be heterosexual married couple
o Husband must be "in charge"; wife cannot have career - Must follow (and teach to children) fundamentalist Christian beliefs, including
o Abstinence before marriage
o No use of contraception (even when married!)
o No abortions -- ever!
o Wife must always "joyfully submit" to husband
o No tolerance of homosexuality
Thankfully, I don't hear people throw around the phrase "family values" very much anymore -- every time I do, I want to either laugh or vomit.
Tell me about it! The whole Creation Science / Intelligent Design camp makes me want to vomit. I still remember a Slashdot message thread I was involved with earlier this year with one such ID-head; it ended when he threw "a priori" and "Nietzsche" (spelling?) and "you can't put your trust in science because the entire world could be [or is?] an illusion" at me.
WTF???
Reminds me of a standup comedy bit that the late Bill Hicks did regarding Creationism: he pretended to strap himself down into a chair and asked how the Bible could have left dinosaurs completely out of the picture. The (hypothetical) Creationism guy answers,
"Dinosaurs? God put those here to test our faith."
Hicks grins, then pretends to test the straps that hold him down in the chair. "Boy, are you lucky I'm strapped in!!" (Laughter from audience)
"I mean, isn't anyone else disturbed by the idea that God is FUCKING WITH OUR HEADS?!"
At that point, the only thing you can do (which I did) is walk away from Mr. Creationism -- otherwise you'll lose your sanity (assuming you don't kill the stupid bastard first).
> And how does any of that have anything to do with the assumtion of slashtrolls that anyone supporting MS for any reason is a shill?
Uh... you *did* read my comment, didn't you?
>> I remain morally certain that some people hold legitimate pro-Microsoft opinions, with better or worse justification.
This is in spite of the fact that the author of the article (Bruce Ediger) has amassed a very damning laundry list of documented astroturfing/shilling incidents on the part of Micro$oft. He's pointing out that it's still possible for perfectly sincere people to express positive opinions about Micro$oft.
That's not the problem.
The third time the little shepherd boy cried "wolf!" *he was telling the truth*. Yet no one believed him. His word was no longer trustworthy.
That's the problem.
>> Microsoft, or its public relations company(s), have so muddied the water with all the shilling and astroturfing that a neutral observer cannot determine whether a paid shill produced an arbitrary pro-Microsoft opinion as propaganda, or a random person produced it as his or her own opinion.
The question isn't simply whether or not honest pro-Micro$oft testimony still exists -- it's *whether or not anyone can tell the difference anymore*. Thanks to Micro$oft's long and sordid history of "disinformation" (which includes lying to a judge in court AND GETTING CAUGHT IN THE ACT) many people no longer accept pro-Micro$oft testimony at face value.
> Oh, wait it doesn't. There's nothing better than watching someone post something they think is on topic and insightful, then poiting out how it's neither. > > Thanks for the opportunity to do that to you.
A great many people in the tech community view Micro$oft with disgust and suspicion (including yours truly) -- so yes, Your Honor, we plead guilty as charged! Now I pose a rhetorical question to *you*:
Whose fault is it? Is it Micro$oft's, for behaving in such an underhanded, dishonest manner? Or is it our fault, the Micro$oft skeptics, for not disregarding the corporation's history of behavior?
First, TFA does contain an inaccuracy: Steve Jobs did NOT co-invent the Apple; he only cofounded Apple Computer. He does deserve credit as being a driving force behind Apple's business plans and strategies.
However, the true inventor of the Apple was Wozniak, aka "The Woz," without whom Apple would never exist. We're talking about a guy who as a kid grew up *dreaming* about designs for computers, the sort of youngster who probably would've gotten into amateur radio in an earlier age. He literally built the first Apple from the ground up -- underlying logic, physical layout, firmware programming, everything.
I strongly recommend that you check out the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy, which chronicles (among many other things) the exploits of Wozniak during the heyday of the home computer revolution. The stories of his practical jokes alone are priceless!
> Honest question - why do you, like so many others, assume that anyone who defends MS (or $otherHatedCompany) is a shill?
Uh... why did the villagers assume that the little shepherd boy was lying the third time he cried "wolf"?
Because by then he had lost credibility with them. It took only two times for that to happen. How many times has Micro$oft deceived the public? Let us count the ways....
More to the point, the author closes his article with an answer to your (rhetorical?) question:
> CONCLUSION > The alert reader cannot believe any pro-Microsoft opinion presented in any forum. > > I remain morally certain that some people hold legitimate pro-Microsoft opinions, with better or worse justification. Microsoft, or its public relations company(s), have so muddied the water with all the shilling and astroturfing that a neutral observer cannot determine whether a paid shill produced an arbitrary pro-Microsoft opinion as propaganda, or a random person produced it as his or her own opinion.
The little shepherd boy lost his flock because of his dishonesty. The Micro$oft corporation lost its credibility with the tech-savvy because of its dishonesty. I have sympathy for neither.
Am I the only one who's reminded of the gradual decline of the Big Mainframe Companies way back when (aka IBM and The Seven Dwarves)? To stave off eventual extinction, they kept merging with each other (read: business alliances) as their respective sales/earnings fell, again and again ad nauseum....
But hey, the world is a big spinning carousel -- and here we are again.
Damn, I just remembered the BLADES device that Zak wore in the Cyberia[2] action/puzzle game. Definitely cool looking (at the time), though the backpack-style computer unit seemed awfully problematic....
Actually, there *are* health studies and nutrition surveys that concern that question -- Is a diet full of meat, animal products and fried food good or bad for you? -- and some of them go back to the 1950s! One such study concluded that a diet rich in fiber carried enormous health benefits....in other words, load up on breads and cereals, get plenty of fruits and vegetables, but ease off on the meat and dairy products (which have NO fiber).
Unfortunately, the meat and dairy industry doesn't like it when busybody scientists and medical researchers publish findings like that, so they rarely enter the mainstream attention of the public. Kind of like the smoking studies that kept getting badmouthed or buried by the tobacco industry....
At one point, though, the ills of the meat-and-dairy diet got major exposure when Howard Lyman appeared on Oprah to warn of the possibility of Mad Cow disease occurring in the US (this was the famous episode when Oprah publicly announced that she would never eat another hamburger). Whereupon the meat industry promptly slapped both Oprah and Lyman with their notorious "food disparagement" lawsuit.
Happily, Oprah beat the lawsuit. On a darker note, Lyman's prediction was proved devastatingly accurate when the first appearance of Mad Cow disease in America was confirmed:
However, Lyman isn't just the "Mad Cowboy" who's trying to stop us all from catching this deadly disease -- he's also committed to warning us that perfectly clean meat and animal products are still a poor source of food....
> I'd seen countless friends suffer from heart disease. I'd seen the cancer rate in America increase dramatically. My own health was hardly exemplary: I weighed 350 pounds, my cholesterol topped 300, my blood pressure was off the charts, and I was getting nosebleeds. > > Suddenly the circle came together for me. We were, as a civilization, making one big mistake. This mistake was killing us as individuals.... We were eating animals, and it wasn't working. If those animals had set out to take their revenge on us, they couldn't have done a better job. > > And I became, right then and there, something I never dreamed I'd become: a vegetarian. > > Within a year of eating no meat, my health problems all started to go away. Not only did I feel better physically, but I felt better knowing that there was one answer to many of the different ills afflicting both ourselves and our environment. > > Everything revolves around the fork.
(Excerpt from "Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from The Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat!")
So, to use the old X-Files slogan, "The truth is out there." You just have to dig for it, and bear in mind that some people want very much to keep you from digging.
> Someone mentioned that "ninjitsu is the art of assassination". An inaccurate statement.
Unfortunately, ninjutsu still remains largely misunderstood and grossly misrepresented in the public's mind. Years ago I was no different: when I was a young karate student, the ninja was commonly portrayed as the "evil" shadow warrior, always using stealth, ambush, trickery, and unfair battle tactics to destroy his enemies.
Then I discovered the writings of Stephen K. Hayes, student of Mr. Hatsumi, on the true nature and practice of the ninja arts. From the first of his books I read (Ninjutsu: The Art of The Ninja) I was deeply impressed by the depth and quality of his writing. He covered the historical background and cultural context of the ninja, explained the philosophical and spiritual foundation that ninjutsu is built upon, and stressed that a balanced approach to life was essential to studying the martial arts. ("If you constantly indulge in consuming large amounts of fattening food, inhaling clouds of nicotine-laden smoke, avoiding physical exercise or engaging in needlessly dangerous activities, there is no point in learning a martial art to defend yourself against an enemy. Your worst enemy is yourself.")
It is indeed a travesty that so many people today still have such a distorted view of the ninja, and it will be an even greater tragedy when Mr. Hatsumi is no longer with us....
> I will offer this explanation of why many people are happy with the bible, unchanged and not newly interpreted.... the laws that govern the supernatural (known as moral or spiritual law) is known primarily through revelation. People who believe the bible is that revelation, and complete, are very unlikely to change their interpretation of it....
My question is this: How *much* of the Bible have they read?
I was born and raised a Christian (Protestant) by my parents for all my childhood. Part of my upbringing was going to church and Sunday School, neither of which I particularly enjoyed. Despite that, I never questioned the existence of God or the Holy Trinity.
As time went on, however, I began to feel small, nagging doubts about my religion, "like a splinter in the back of your mind, driving you mad." Questions I directed to my pastor and Sunday School teachers received unsatisfactory answers or evasive responses. One answer I consistently got was, "If you want the truth, you can always find it in the Bible."
Okay, I thought, if everything I'm feeling uneasy about can be resolved by the Bible, I might as well read it. All of it. The whole thing. (I was still a kid at the time, and I was already a voracious reader who devoured entire computer programming texts and technical references -- so it didn't seem that crazy to me.)
Big mistake.
Bear in mind that I was writing and debugging programs on my home computer at the time, so I was accustomed to identifying logical inconsistencies and contradictions in documents. The first whopper was in, of all things, the Book of Genesis: there are *two different* accounts of Creation, and they are mutually incompatible! From there it just gets worse and worse. By the time I had *finished* the Bible, my faith was in worse shape than before!
The only way to reconcile such a horribly inconsistent Bible is to read it *selectively* -- picking out valuable passages while disregarding the others. Yet this runs counter to the idea of the Bible as an authoritative reference! Instead of deriving your judgement directly from the Bible, you'd be exercising your individual judgement ON the Bible. In other words, you'd be *interpreting* the Bible's value system through your own unique value system!
Because of this quandary, I ended up "losing my religion." I could not in all honesty put my faith in a Bible that was literally full of holes; to do so would make me a hypocrite. (Ironically, Jesus had some choice words for hypocrites.)
For a more humurous sendup of old-fashioned Biblical values, check this out:
> By migrating from a costly UNIX platform to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on its workstations, servers and at the hub site, the FAA was able to eliminate costs and ineffective systems, while creating a scalable architecture that met their high-demand environment today and for the future.
The only question is, *which* UNIX did the FAA drop? Though I suppose it doesn't matter that much now....
Hell, I'm a New Age music fan, and I can tell you that most of the stuff I listen to doesn't fit the standard definition of "music" in one way or another:
- A significant portion (perhaps a bare majority) of New Age music does not have singing (instrumentals). - Of the New Age songs that do feature voices, many do not have any lyrics. - Much of the New Age genre lacks a discernable melody, chord progression, or rhythm!
Some of my all time favorite albums are prime examples of this -- "Music for Airports" by Brian Eno, "Circle" by Kit Walker, "Music from The Galaxies" by Fiorella Terenzi, "Soil Festivities" by Vangelis. I've had people tell me flat out that these albums are *unlistenable*!
I guess I'm saying that one person's noise is music to another person's ears....:-)
> Wish they had warning labels on XP. > > "Surgeon General's Warning: Your may get gastritis and sudden rage attacks due to viruses, deleted data, and other annoyances caused by this product, including but not limited to HELLO THERE! Looks like you're reading an EULA!"
Or something similar to the humorous "warning" that was printed on the packaging for Lemmings:
WARNING! Attempted installation and usage of this software may lead to - loss of sleep - loss of hair - loss of sanity
Reminds me of some things my "Army vet buddy" told me about reports....
In the US Army (at least during the Korea-Nam years; maybe things have changed by now) all reports had to be written as single-page documents, regardless of the scope or nature of the topic. This can pose a challenge to even the most ruthless copy editor, but it gets worse.
The report has to start with the letterhead (Office of So-And-So Base, etc.), include several header blocks of Department This-And-That which must specify who originated the report and who is expected to receive it -- and has to be separated by plenty of white space! Following that is the actual *report information*....and then you have to leave even more white space for the authorizing signatures of the office manager, base commander, company commander, et al. After all is said and done, that leaves about *four to five lines* available for the report text. The rest is nothing but header and footer!
Is anyone else thinking about the "Summarizing Proust" sketch from Monty Python? Can anyone imagine a commanding officer being *anywhere close to informed* about the issues if he has to rely on such massively condensed reports?
Combine this with the speed-reading habit of "just skim the leading paragraph and leading sentences afterward" and you have a recipe for disaster -- and this is Standard Operating Procedure! No wonder the Army coined the acronym SNAFU.
I'm wondering if this holds true (and, if so, by how much) in government circles?
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent post, zogger. I first read up on the suspicious actions of the auto industry regarding electric-only vehicles a while back -- here is an online archive of the article:
e res-my-electric-car/20952/
http://www.ocweekly.com/features/features/dude-wh
It's especially telling when you read the part about the car customer who walked into a dealership, saw the nifty-looking EV in the showroom and was repeatedly rebuffed by salespeople every time he tried to ask questions about it.... as if they were required to display the EV yet were desperately trying to discourage anyone from buying it.
Good point! Reminds me of what James "The Amazing" Randi once said about his long-standing wager to anyone who could demonstrate telekinetic powers to him: it was like sitting on the rooftop by the chimney every Christmas Eve night waiting for Santa Claus to show. Just because Santa hasn't appeared does not constitute proof that Santa does not exist.... but if you've waited for twenty years, it's probably time to call it quits.
To this date, Randi's wager remains unclaimed.
Okay.... So, when the ancient Greeks developed mathematics and philosophy, and began to question their own religious beliefs, eventually rejecting the idea of the Olympian Pantheon of gods residing in a great palace on the top of Mount Olympus ...they were IN THE WRONG?!
The Greeks even came up with an idea to explain the discrepancy between pre-scientific belief and scientific understanding: there was the "mythos" (the sum total of non-scientific belief -- myths, legends, folklore, etc.) and then there was the "logos" (the sum total of scientific knowledge and logical thought; the word "logic" is derived from "logos"). They recognized the fact that people have a natural curiosity about the world around them, they want to know how things work, but in the absence of science all they can do is make shit up.
Had it not been for the thorough vindication of Galileo in the sciences, the RCC probably would *never* have issued their apology for how they (mis)treated him -- and even then it was over 300 years after the fact! That is not something for the church to be proud of. It is something to be ashamed of.
> I think you hit the nail right on the head - as the God bin gets emptied and things which were unknown are predictable, reproducible, and explainable, the threat to major religion increases.
Don't forget the emotional payoff of believing that some all-powerful deity is running the entire show for your personal benefit, even when it seems that He's doing his darn best to kick the living shit out of you! (The Book of Job comes to mind.)
I agree with you: science and religion *are* opposed, and the more progress science makes, the more threatened religion feels. If and when science empties out the God Bin, it'll be interesting to see what happens to religion....
> On the other hand, the people who argue the opposite point [that global warming is nonexistent] stand to gain a hell of a lot from making this all seem like BS.
;-)
Wavicle being a particularly obnoxious example. Wonder how many shares of Exxon/Mobil he owns?
> More important that all of that, of course, is the fact that while the arctic ice pack sits on water, the antarctic one sits largely on land ... and that Greenland also supports a significant ice pack. Since these are supported by the land (not buoyant force), when they melt, they *would* significantly raise the water level globally.
Exactly. This is literally "an inconvenient truth" that people in the Rush Limbaugh / Michael Crichton camp would love very much to hide from everyone (in fact, Limbaugh used an "ice cube in a glass of water" analogy to argue against the validity of global warming on his now-defunct TV show).
Of course, once people call bullshit on their bogus claims, the anti-greenhouse bunch will just come up with some other reason why global warming is nonexistent -- can you say "moving the goalposts"? *Sigh*
Of course! And a planet-wide climactic change on Earth wouldn't necessarily wipe out entire species of prehistoric flora and fauna, including nearly all of the dinosaurs--
Whoops. So much for that arguement....
No no no NO!! ;-) The scene ends like this:
...we'll call it a draw. --Ohhhh, I see. Runnin' away, eh?! You YELLOW BASTARDS, come back here and take what's comin' to ya!! I'll bite your legs off...!"
"Alright
> The bottom line is Microsoft is a marketing company. It is not a company that prides itself on building superior technical solutions.... A technology driven company would have put preference on the technically superior solution ...Microsoft being a marketing company has done and is doing the exact opposite.
This is *exactly* what's wrong with Micro$oft (among so many other disgusting examples in the marketplace) -- the name means more to them than the game, which is to provide what the people want:
"Software comes and goes. What we're selling is Microsoft, not the individual products." -- Bill Gates
Remember that wretched Time issue way back in the Eighties, the one showing a smug Gates balancing a 5.25" floppy disk on one finger? That was just one of many instances where Micro$oft duped the media into believing the corporate hype, that M$ products were by far the best and most innovative in the market.
Never mind that M$ software was (and still is) buggy as hell. Forget that M$ frequently buys other developers' software, slaps shit all over it, then labels it as M$ product. All that matters is that Gates pushes his brand further and further throughout the market and into people's minds.
With priorities like that, it's no wonder M$ and its offerings are so fucked up.
True -- unless you're measuring weight for certain kinds of materials. This can be illustrated by a riddle that sounds an awful lot like a trick question:
"Which weighs more -- a pound of feathers or a pound of gold?"
The obvious answer would be "Neither!" since logically a pound of x should be exactly as heavy as a pound of y. Unfortunately, there are two different (and maddeningly incompatible) standards for measuring a pound: troy and avoirdupois.
A troy pound is defined as weighing twelve ounces and (historically) is used almost exclusively for precious metals, whereas an avoirdupois pound has sixteen ounces and is used for nearly everything else. Based on this, the pound of feathers weighs *more* than the pound of gold!
As if that weren't bad enough, the troy ounce is *slightly heavier* than the avoirdupois ounce -- therefore an ounce of feathers weighs less than an ounce of gold! Are we sufficiently confused yet??
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/custom.html
No wonder people dumped that Old English system for metric....
Funny that you're the only poster who thought of mentioning the heat factor -- it was the first thing that came to my mind when I read this:
> This massive machine has a 20.1" screen, two 120GB hard drives in a RAID 0 array, super-multi DVD burner, analogue and digital TV tuners and an Intel Core Duo dual core CPU.
I mean, Jesus Fucking H Christ!! How many BTUs does all that give off? Not to mention that actual "laptop" users are complaining their machines are practically cooking their thighs; how the hell is anyone going to be able to cope with this 17lb. hi-tech heat generator?
Hmmm.... maybe that could be used by Acer for an ultra-macho-extreme-sports themed ad campaign:
"Are You Tough Enough For It? Acer's Aspire 9800 -- THE LAPTOP FROM HELL!"
> What I find interesting is the term "bad guy". It seems I've been hearing this alot lately. [...] I'm kind of worried, is this the new code word for sub human? For unexplaned threat?
....You should be TERRIFIED!!" (From the Viewer Mail segment where someone submitted a through-the-passenger-window photo of a GE-brand airline jet engine.)
To paraphrase Dave Letterman, "You shouldn't be worried.
I'd say that your intuitive unease is spot-on: this sounds like yet another [double/new]speak term for "anyone we don't like for whatever reason". Compare it with the conservative/Republican term "family values" -- a catchphrase that encompassed a hell of a lot of hidden meanings....
- Two-parent family household
o Must be heterosexual married couple
o Husband must be "in charge"; wife cannot have career
- Must follow (and teach to children) fundamentalist Christian beliefs, including
o Abstinence before marriage
o No use of contraception (even when married!)
o No abortions -- ever!
o Wife must always "joyfully submit" to husband
o No tolerance of homosexuality
Thankfully, I don't hear people throw around the phrase "family values" very much anymore -- every time I do, I want to either laugh or vomit.
Tell me about it! The whole Creation Science / Intelligent Design camp makes me want to vomit. I still remember a Slashdot message thread I was involved with earlier this year with one such ID-head; it ended when he threw "a priori" and "Nietzsche" (spelling?) and "you can't put your trust in science because the entire world could be [or is?] an illusion" at me.
WTF???
Reminds me of a standup comedy bit that the late Bill Hicks did regarding Creationism: he pretended to strap himself down into a chair and asked how the Bible could have left dinosaurs completely out of the picture. The (hypothetical) Creationism guy answers,
"Dinosaurs? God put those here to test our faith."
Hicks grins, then pretends to test the straps that hold him down in the chair. "Boy, are you lucky I'm strapped in!!" (Laughter from audience)
"I mean, isn't anyone else disturbed by the idea that God is FUCKING WITH OUR HEADS?!"
At that point, the only thing you can do (which I did) is walk away from Mr. Creationism -- otherwise you'll lose your sanity (assuming you don't kill the stupid bastard first).
Hicks, we miss you already....
> And how does any of that have anything to do with the assumtion of slashtrolls that anyone supporting MS for any reason is a shill?
Uh... you *did* read my comment, didn't you?
>> I remain morally certain that some people hold legitimate pro-Microsoft opinions, with better or worse justification.
This is in spite of the fact that the author of the article (Bruce Ediger) has amassed a very damning laundry list of documented astroturfing/shilling incidents on the part of Micro$oft. He's pointing out that it's still possible for perfectly sincere people to express positive opinions about Micro$oft.
That's not the problem.
The third time the little shepherd boy cried "wolf!" *he was telling the truth*. Yet no one believed him. His word was no longer trustworthy.
That's the problem.
>> Microsoft, or its public relations company(s), have so muddied the water with all the shilling and astroturfing that a neutral observer cannot determine whether a paid shill produced an arbitrary pro-Microsoft opinion as propaganda, or a random person produced it as his or her own opinion.
The question isn't simply whether or not honest pro-Micro$oft testimony still exists -- it's *whether or not anyone can tell the difference anymore*. Thanks to Micro$oft's long and sordid history of "disinformation" (which includes lying to a judge in court AND GETTING CAUGHT IN THE ACT) many people no longer accept pro-Micro$oft testimony at face value.
> Oh, wait it doesn't. There's nothing better than watching someone post something they think is on topic and insightful, then poiting out how it's neither.
>
> Thanks for the opportunity to do that to you.
A great many people in the tech community view Micro$oft with disgust and suspicion (including yours truly) -- so yes, Your Honor, we plead guilty as charged! Now I pose a rhetorical question to *you*:
Whose fault is it? Is it Micro$oft's, for behaving in such an underhanded, dishonest manner? Or is it our fault, the Micro$oft skeptics, for not disregarding the corporation's history of behavior?
*sigh* Where to begin?
First, TFA does contain an inaccuracy: Steve Jobs did NOT co-invent the Apple; he only cofounded Apple Computer. He does deserve credit as being a driving force behind Apple's business plans and strategies.
However, the true inventor of the Apple was Wozniak, aka "The Woz," without whom Apple would never exist. We're talking about a guy who as a kid grew up *dreaming* about designs for computers, the sort of youngster who probably would've gotten into amateur radio in an earlier age. He literally built the first Apple from the ground up -- underlying logic, physical layout, firmware programming, everything.
I strongly recommend that you check out the book "Hackers" by Steven Levy, which chronicles (among many other things) the exploits of Wozniak during the heyday of the home computer revolution. The stories of his practical jokes alone are priceless!
> Honest question - why do you, like so many others, assume that anyone who defends MS (or $otherHatedCompany) is a shill?
f t.shilling.html
Uh... why did the villagers assume that the little shepherd boy was lying the third time he cried "wolf"?
Because by then he had lost credibility with them. It took only two times for that to happen. How many times has Micro$oft deceived the public? Let us count the ways....
http://www.inlumineconsulting.com:8080/website/ms
More to the point, the author closes his article with an answer to your (rhetorical?) question:
> CONCLUSION
> The alert reader cannot believe any pro-Microsoft opinion presented in any forum.
>
> I remain morally certain that some people hold legitimate pro-Microsoft opinions, with better or worse justification. Microsoft, or its public relations company(s), have so muddied the water with all the shilling and astroturfing that a neutral observer cannot determine whether a paid shill produced an arbitrary pro-Microsoft opinion as propaganda, or a random person produced it as his or her own opinion.
The little shepherd boy lost his flock because of his dishonesty. The Micro$oft corporation lost its credibility with the tech-savvy because of its dishonesty. I have sympathy for neither.
Am I the only one who's reminded of the gradual decline of the Big Mainframe Companies way back when (aka IBM and The Seven Dwarves)? To stave off eventual extinction, they kept merging with each other (read: business alliances) as their respective sales/earnings fell, again and again ad nauseum....
But hey, the world is a big spinning carousel -- and here we are again.
> Because it's cool to wear shades underground.
Damn, I just remembered the BLADES device that Zak wore in the Cyberia[2] action/puzzle game. Definitely cool looking (at the time), though the backpack-style computer unit seemed awfully problematic....
Actually, there *are* health studies and nutrition surveys that concern that question -- Is a diet full of meat, animal products and fried food good or bad for you? -- and some of them go back to the 1950s! One such study concluded that a diet rich in fiber carried enormous health benefits ....in other words, load up on breads and cereals, get plenty of fruits and vegetables, but ease off on the meat and dairy products (which have NO fiber).
Unfortunately, the meat and dairy industry doesn't like it when busybody scientists and medical researchers publish findings like that, so they rarely enter the mainstream attention of the public. Kind of like the smoking studies that kept getting badmouthed or buried by the tobacco industry....
At one point, though, the ills of the meat-and-dairy diet got major exposure when Howard Lyman appeared on Oprah to warn of the possibility of Mad Cow disease occurring in the US (this was the famous episode when Oprah publicly announced that she would never eat another hamburger). Whereupon the meat industry promptly slapped both Oprah and Lyman with their notorious "food disparagement" lawsuit.
Happily, Oprah beat the lawsuit. On a darker note, Lyman's prediction was proved devastatingly accurate when the first appearance of Mad Cow disease in America was confirmed:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/12/23/mad.cow/
However, Lyman isn't just the "Mad Cowboy" who's trying to stop us all from catching this deadly disease -- he's also committed to warning us that perfectly clean meat and animal products are still a poor source of food....
> I'd seen countless friends suffer from heart disease. I'd seen the cancer rate in America increase dramatically. My own health was hardly exemplary: I weighed 350 pounds, my cholesterol topped 300, my blood pressure was off the charts, and I was getting nosebleeds.
>
> Suddenly the circle came together for me. We were, as a civilization, making one big mistake. This mistake was killing us as individuals.... We were eating animals, and it wasn't working. If those animals had set out to take their revenge on us, they couldn't have done a better job.
>
> And I became, right then and there, something I never dreamed I'd become: a vegetarian.
>
> Within a year of eating no meat, my health problems all started to go away. Not only did I feel better physically, but I felt better knowing that there was one answer to many of the different ills afflicting both ourselves and our environment.
>
> Everything revolves around the fork.
(Excerpt from "Mad Cowboy: Plain Truth from The Cattle Rancher Who Won't Eat Meat!")
So, to use the old X-Files slogan, "The truth is out there." You just have to dig for it, and bear in mind that some people want very much to keep you from digging.
> Someone mentioned that "ninjitsu is the art of assassination". An inaccurate statement.
Unfortunately, ninjutsu still remains largely misunderstood and grossly misrepresented in the public's mind. Years ago I was no different: when I was a young karate student, the ninja was commonly portrayed as the "evil" shadow warrior, always using stealth, ambush, trickery, and unfair battle tactics to destroy his enemies.
Then I discovered the writings of Stephen K. Hayes, student of Mr. Hatsumi, on the true nature and practice of the ninja arts. From the first of his books I read (Ninjutsu: The Art of The Ninja) I was deeply impressed by the depth and quality of his writing. He covered the historical background and cultural context of the ninja, explained the philosophical and spiritual foundation that ninjutsu is built upon, and stressed that a balanced approach to life was essential to studying the martial arts. ("If you constantly indulge in consuming large amounts of fattening food, inhaling clouds of nicotine-laden smoke, avoiding physical exercise or engaging in needlessly dangerous activities, there is no point in learning a martial art to defend yourself against an enemy. Your worst enemy is yourself.")
It is indeed a travesty that so many people today still have such a distorted view of the ninja, and it will be an even greater tragedy when Mr. Hatsumi is no longer with us....
> I will offer this explanation of why many people are happy with the bible, unchanged and not newly interpreted.... the laws that govern the supernatural (known as moral or spiritual law) is known primarily through revelation. People who believe the bible is that revelation, and complete, are very unlikely to change their interpretation of it....
t m
My question is this: How *much* of the Bible have they read?
I was born and raised a Christian (Protestant) by my parents for all my childhood. Part of my upbringing was going to church and Sunday School, neither of which I particularly enjoyed. Despite that, I never questioned the existence of God or the Holy Trinity.
As time went on, however, I began to feel small, nagging doubts about my religion, "like a splinter in the back of your mind, driving you mad." Questions I directed to my pastor and Sunday School teachers received unsatisfactory answers or evasive responses. One answer I consistently got was, "If you want the truth, you can always find it in the Bible."
Okay, I thought, if everything I'm feeling uneasy about can be resolved by the Bible, I might as well read it. All of it. The whole thing. (I was still a kid at the time, and I was already a voracious reader who devoured entire computer programming texts and technical references -- so it didn't seem that crazy to me.)
Big mistake.
Bear in mind that I was writing and debugging programs on my home computer at the time, so I was accustomed to identifying logical inconsistencies and contradictions in documents. The first whopper was in, of all things, the Book of Genesis: there are *two different* accounts of Creation, and they are mutually incompatible! From there it just gets worse and worse. By the time I had *finished* the Bible, my faith was in worse shape than before!
The only way to reconcile such a horribly inconsistent Bible is to read it *selectively* -- picking out valuable passages while disregarding the others. Yet this runs counter to the idea of the Bible as an authoritative reference! Instead of deriving your judgement directly from the Bible, you'd be exercising your individual judgement ON the Bible. In other words, you'd be *interpreting* the Bible's value system through your own unique value system!
Because of this quandary, I ended up "losing my religion." I could not in all honesty put my faith in a Bible that was literally full of holes; to do so would make me a hypocrite. (Ironically, Jesus had some choice words for hypocrites.)
For a more humurous sendup of old-fashioned Biblical values, check this out:
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/laura.h
> They probably migrated from a unix.
Correct, as TFA *does* state:
> By migrating from a costly UNIX platform to Red Hat Enterprise Linux on its workstations, servers and at the hub site, the FAA was able to eliminate costs and ineffective systems, while creating a scalable architecture that met their high-demand environment today and for the future.
The only question is, *which* UNIX did the FAA drop? Though I suppose it doesn't matter that much now....
Hell, I'm a New Age music fan, and I can tell you that most of the stuff I listen to doesn't fit the standard definition of "music" in one way or another:
:-)
- A significant portion (perhaps a bare majority) of New Age music does not have singing (instrumentals).
- Of the New Age songs that do feature voices, many do not have any lyrics.
- Much of the New Age genre lacks a discernable melody, chord progression, or rhythm!
Some of my all time favorite albums are prime examples of this -- "Music for Airports" by Brian Eno, "Circle" by Kit Walker, "Music from The Galaxies" by Fiorella Terenzi, "Soil Festivities" by Vangelis. I've had people tell me flat out that these albums are *unlistenable*!
I guess I'm saying that one person's noise is music to another person's ears....
> Wish they had warning labels on XP.
>
> "Surgeon General's Warning: Your may get gastritis and sudden rage attacks due to viruses, deleted data, and other annoyances caused by this product, including but not limited to HELLO THERE! Looks like you're reading an EULA!"
Or something similar to the humorous "warning" that was printed on the packaging for Lemmings:
WARNING! Attempted installation and usage of this software may lead to
- loss of sleep
- loss of hair
- loss of sanity
Reminds me of some things my "Army vet buddy" told me about reports....
....and then you have to leave even more white space for the authorizing signatures of the office manager, base commander, company commander, et al. After all is said and done, that leaves about *four to five lines* available for the report text. The rest is nothing but header and footer!
In the US Army (at least during the Korea-Nam years; maybe things have changed by now) all reports had to be written as single-page documents, regardless of the scope or nature of the topic. This can pose a challenge to even the most ruthless copy editor, but it gets worse.
The report has to start with the letterhead (Office of So-And-So Base, etc.), include several header blocks of Department This-And-That which must specify who originated the report and who is expected to receive it -- and has to be separated by plenty of white space! Following that is the actual *report information*
Is anyone else thinking about the "Summarizing Proust" sketch from Monty Python? Can anyone imagine a commanding officer being *anywhere close to informed* about the issues if he has to rely on such massively condensed reports?
Combine this with the speed-reading habit of "just skim the leading paragraph and leading sentences afterward" and you have a recipe for disaster -- and this is Standard Operating Procedure! No wonder the Army coined the acronym SNAFU.
I'm wondering if this holds true (and, if so, by how much) in government circles?