MajesticTreeFrog

Indeed, I wish people would begin to factor in the costs of BASIC software, along with the costs of useability and security. Especially reviewers at big sites who will whine about this in one article and then pretend that it doesn't exist in the next. /end rant.

Humans are neither good nor evil. Those are made up concepts. Humans are human, with a variety of drives, hopes, and fears. How we act on those combined with the circumstances determines whether or not we are 'good' or 'bad'. Essentially, we have it within our power to be both. Even at the same time. We also have the power to help people towards one or the other. And yes, people don't choose to be gay. Irelevant of whether genetics are totally or wholly responsible, it is blatantly obvious there is no choice about it involved for most people. If there was, I would have chosen to be gay years ago, when I met this really nice gay guy who liked me. Man, if only that had done it for me. Oh well, found a rockin awesome girl, but it took a while. Still, it sure would be NICE to be able to choose.

hmm, the 1st one says 'thou shalt not have other gods before me..or make graven images'...moral and in everyones best interest? Tell that to those persecuted for believing differently through the years, as it is this passage (among others) that was used for justification. Or, 'thou shalt not take the lords name in vain'. Frankly, this is at most annoying to people. Not #2 material for a list of 10 things you shouldn't do in life. At least its better than #1. Then there is #3, 'Keep the Sabbath.....' Also, not really dealing with morality. Though perhaps everyone's best interest, since we all need a break. It seems a bit of a strange way of saying that though (though, honestly, it does say other things as well, but the following comment applies to those as well). Why not say 'take a break once a week, to be with others and enjoy community' Much more to the point. In fact, a lot of this stuff could be much more to the point, and a lot less 'Rawr! GOD! RAWR!. As for the others, they are pretty generic. I don't think you need a diety to know that its not nice, polite, or moral to kill another person. I have never believed, but that always struck me as sort of obvious. Same for, the 'don't steal' and 'don't lie' and 'don't commit adultery' type of things. Why should you believe that holy book/religion over any other? Because you were raised with it? Fine, but that only counts till you are say...18, at which point you should learn to think for yourself. If you have other, more compelling reasons, that would be nice (not saying you don't, just that I can't tell from your post and it strikes me as unlikely. I could be wrong). There are many holy books, and many prophets, and many religions. Most of them say similar things. The point is, you shouldn't start with saying something is true and then looking for something to disprove it (especially when most religions make claims that simply are outside the realm of proof/disproof). You should demand that a religion prove itself not only better than the others, but in some definitive way. To simplify: A lot of whats in religions probably strikes you as BS, and vice versa. I think its long past time to create a BS test and make em all pass.

Well, lets see...they don't cost much more than any other computer, after software is factored in. Especially the ibooks. Those are very nice for the price.

It wasn't a sex doll. It was just a 12 inch tall action figure.

Ah I see, it is much like how people are owning the original of a painting, or a lithograph, as opposed to a poster or something.

Thanks for the compliment, I will try and fix it up and actually finish it. And you know, have a single design for the site....which will be totally different from the two already badly thrown together. I am not saying vinyl is not usefull, or good, or even fun and neat. Its just not something that people would convert to, since mp3 players are built around the idea of portability. Its a mismatch in terms of markets. For audiophiles, vinyl is wonderfull, which is why I kept mentioning the generally low quality of people's systems. Most people just don't appreciate quality. Its sad.

That is a driver problem. I had similar issues back in the day. Make sure you drivers are working perfectly, using dxdiag Most games will play fine with wack drivers on windows, because they expect things to be somewhat broken. Other games, like morrowind or FF7, demand perfection.

I get my music from http://blogs.allofmp3.ru/ so it only costs me about 5 cents a song. Ever hear of digital turntables? The reason we haven't moved to an ebook society is that, like you with vinyl, people like having shelves of books. However, with cds they can have the advantages of digital as well as the whole 'lookie at my shelf of music' feeling. Also, note that most people don't like ebooks because of two things: DRM sillyness, and crappy crappy crappy(not to mention expensive) ebook readers. When books cost 7 bucks, and ebooks cost 7 bucks + a crappy easy to break $100 reader AND are encumbered by DRM + the need for power, then there is no advantage to ebooks. On the other hand, with music, both vinyl and cds/digital require power. Digital is less restricted because it can be done with batteries + carried around. Cds take up less space and can be purchased used dirt cheap just like vinyl. On most people's (decidedly crappy) sound systems, the difference in sound quality is more or less irrelevant. In addition, taking a CD over to your friends house is easy, because almost everyone has a CD player. Or listening to it in your car. You have to have the right friends to share a LP these days, but the car thing is outright impossible. MP3/digital players are just the next evolution of the CD player. They don't even have to have lower quality compared to CDs(or eventually DVD-A), since a number of players on the market(including the ipod) have lossless codec support.

I agree, it is full of BS, which falls under my 'war being conducted incorrectly' criticisms. That being said, pulling out, in terms of iraq, would put violent terrorist groups in charge of the country, unlike the more organized communists in vietnam. The two situations are different. And yes, we put sadam in power, another mistake. However, now that we, the USA have toppled their government and completely destroyed peace in their country, don't you think we owe it to THEM not to make things WORSE by pulling out foolishly? You may care about the loss of US troops, I care about the loss of EVERYONE. So, once more, for the record: Bush should be held accountable for invading a country without cause. Weapons manufacturers should be sued and put out of business for war profittering. Their execs and anyone who knew about what was going on should be tried and held accountable. Laws should be passed making all weapons/equipment manufacturing be done in the US. Any research, for weapons or otherwise, paid for by the US government should belong to the government and not the firm it hired.

According to the news, it is selling faster than apple can make them.

True, but as consoles get better and better, that may change. I know a lot of my friends have stopped playing PC games outside of MMOs and FPS games. And that is because both really need a keyboard+mouse. As soon as a keyboard + mouse becomes standard with a controller on consoles, PC gaming's days are numbered. Even the better resolution thing will go away with HD TV.

Its fine, doesn't bother me at all. Personally I find it strange that homosexuality bothers anyone. I can understand why certain behaviors associated with homosexuality may be disturbing to some people (such as cross dressing or promiscuity). However, those are attributes of those individuals, not homosexuality per say, and even those things strike me as no more odd than BDSM/furries/etc which are just as prevelent in the 'straight' community. And for those who find homosexuality a threat to 'normal relationships', I laugh. Of the people I know the two most committed to their relationships, and in the best/longest/most loving relationships are gay.

The music is the main thing, the problem with vinyl is the annoyance and the non-portability. I like to be able to listen to music in the car, in a train, etc. For this, digital is much much better, and can have fantastic quality. On the other hand, I have a small apartment, with people coming over and all that, and vinyl is expensive/hard to maintain/and easy to break. There just aren't any compelling reasons for me to use it. As for cover art, it can be cool, but having it digital means I can toss it in photoshop, and make it more than just the cover of an album, if I want to.

So if we etched stuff into the plastic on the CD, everything would be OK?

Um,You know you can have much cooler pics on the cover of a CD right? If you don't like the way CDs sound, then work on spreading things like DVD audio or similar tech that has better quality. Digital is here to stay, because analog is a pain to create/maintain/etc. In any case, RECORDINGS these days are mastered on computer, so if they then printed that to Vinyl, it would sound the same. Realistically, sound is heavily limited by the fact that most people have crappy speakers. Heh, they think Bose and Sony make good speakers, when those are just the upper end of crap. If everyone was running around with speakers from paradigm or similar, then maybe things would be different.

You assume I find history gratifying, or that my friends would be impressed. As for the HD dying, the exact same thing as if somebody cracked your records:They would be very damaged, beyond repair. Unlike records, I can make a backup of my HD easily...

I don't know what you mean by faster..... In any case, what I think he needs is actually imageready which comes with photoshop (at least since version 7). That is what is supposed to be used for web graphics.

Actually, take a vinal recording and use a high end record player to output it to a high end A2D converter and encode it in a lossless codec set to some stupid high bitratew and you will get the same level of sound. As for cover art, my computer screen + huge HD allow for as much cover art as anyone could ever design. Too bad the studios don't take any advantage of that. Also, is your vinal portable? Easy to store/share/maintain? There are disadvantages to vinal as well. Also, unless you are using a REALLY high end player(like a laser player), then they do wear out.

PCs are cheaper to purchase, but much more expensive to maintain. The earlier networking problem isn't the Macs, its your IT dept. Macs run on UNIX, which is BUILT for networking. Hell, people are buying mac minis for use in colocated server farms.

The problem is that converting from mp3 to atrac3 (since that is all they play) degrades quality below the original mp3. Worse, getting music back off the device, or using it as a portable HD doesn't workw so the device overall has less value. Also, most mp3 players play other formats, all of which generally have better quality than mp3, in particular AAC (used in ipods) and Ogg Vorbis (used in the Rio Karma and a few others). Even wma is better, and all of these are better and more portable than Atrac3. Finally, at least in America, MD players are rare and not nearly as well supported, not to mention expensive.

NO. I said that as an aside. I even made that clear. The ability for the human to recognize gender differences is used in many ways. That was noted as just a nifty thing that it is used for. The relevant piece, for the 'gay' discussion, is that humans recognize differences between genders automaticallly. It is not a conscious process to do this. The rest was just random niftyness about this, not directly relevant to the discussion, as I noted in my post.

Well, speaking from a viewpoint that most would consider 'liberal', I just want to set the record straight. I felt that going in was a bad idea. HOWEVER, once we were there, I felt we needed to stay there, because leaving prematurely was a worse idea than going in the first place. At that point, my criticism was mainly that things were being badly handled/that certain processes were corrupt. Once again, NOT that we should just up and leave (though I recognize that there were those on the left who advocated exactly that: I am not them. They are stupid. Thank you.)The other main complaint is that the justification for war has been ever changing, and that to me seemed very dishonest. I felt Bush should have been taken to task for the whole WMD BS. Now, with that off my chest, let me say the following: The war, at this point is really not what concerns me. What concerns me is Bush's privatization of social security. That strikes me as a bad idea, for reasons that anyone who has had to work with HMOs will immediately understand.

Its not about thinking or talking. Its a built in ability to recognize gender differences. It is totally innate/non conscious. Later, this will be used for both sexuality as well as mimicing behavior of your gender from role models (usually parents, but it is whoever is around). Interestingly, children model very subtle differences between sexes. Specifically, they key in on the things men and women that they have available as models do differently. I don't mean the big stuff we think of societally, I mean stuff like if the father sighs a lot when the mother/female role doesn't, male children will mimic. Granted, this is just interesting, and doesn't have a tremendous amount to do with the topic at hand. Still cool though.

AH, but you DO know what a boy is. Humans distinguish sex differences at an increadibly early age. That sort of discrimination is built in.