Bay 12 Games Forum

Really my future father-paranoia is just starting to kick in. Those chat rooms alone were a morally ambiguous place for a teen to go, but to add a webcam just SEEMS so dangerous. What if, like, some guy saw my daughters boobs? I would have to go kill him, except I don't know who he would be.

I'm sure a few years of rational thinking will help me cope with these feelings. Generally speaking, I would think a child can be raised in a way that they wouldn't do that, in the same way a child can be raised to not wear miniskirts or put in nose rings.

I think I like the dark side better.

*gives in to his emotions*

They do have cookies I hear.  However, I bet the good side is full of cookie DOUGH, which is just amazing. More than that... it's peanut butter cookie dough. hmm... I'm imagining having a good-gasm. You know what makes it even better? sharing the good-gasm, because then not only are YOU happy, everyone in your environment is too. Yes, that is heaven on earth buddy, right there.

Oh... what were we talking about again? I'm sure you can find something in there to persuade you to the side of good, I think that's it. Now I'm hungry.

The funny thing - and I could be off here - is that the long Calendar - the one in question - is cyclical and resets every 5000 years.  We happen to be on a cycle that started in ~3000 bc and ends in 2012.  However, homo sapiens have been through at least 20 of these cycles.  You can't even make the argument that the date range coincides with human civilization, since the latest estimates of human agrarian civilization are still in the previous cycle, 1000 years before this cycle began.

That is, unless we're wrong in our date estimates.  But seeing as how the Mayans couldn't even predict the end of their own civilization, they're no smarter than we are...

The obvious point, before going into the coolness of the Mayan calender, is that it doesn't end. In fact, it NEVER ends. It's even more cyclical than ours, as it's actually represented by wheels that move in each other.

Quote from: malimbar04 on December 15, 2010, 12:06:45 pm

Hey, in some cultures pornography is encouraged, and in others sex is taught by example at around puberty, before marriage is even allowed to take place.

Hey, um, which cultures. I, uh, suspect you're making that up or something, and, uh, am definitely not planning to join them.

Haha, I'll pull out my human sexuality textbook and report back sometime this week. If I start fealing zealous it might even be tonight.

[Edit]
Lets see... marriage ceremony of 20,000 couples simultaneously...
The christian-sanctioned rape tha happened before St. Augustine (they should have commited suicide was the justification)...
More judeo-christian oddities...come on, I know there are other cultures...
India has 80%+ disproval of having children out of wedlock, iceland has less than 5% disapproval
of 185 surveyed countries, 155 traditionally allow more than one female mate (and are legally recognized)
a different study, Of 853 preindustrial societies, 84% allowed more than one wife.
King Solomon had a harem of a thousand wives, watched over by castrated men
...
Polyamory (casual sex or group marraiges of multiple men and women)...
Everyone is married (all men are married to all women) in Oneida (new york) from 1848 to 1881
...
maybe a different section...
I submit, It's not in the book. Now that I think about it, the teacher probably said it separately, along with his experience in... damn it all I can't remember. The gist was that they would pay specific people to train teens how to have sex. Then the ideal mate was the one who had the better sex teacher, rather than the most fit one. 

Really dude?  Keeping pornography down is the work of private Christian organizations going around government inaction?

Surely we can all come together to agree that searching for Pokemon, a subject plenty of very underage people are going to look for, on Google Images should not turn up hard core pornography.  Surely, we can agree to that.

We can't agree because of a the motivation behind it. Id say it shouldn't come up because it's not relevant to your search, having nothing to do with it being pornography. There is no real reason to keep children from seeing pornography. Hey, in some cultures pornography is encouraged, and in others sex is taught by example at around puberty, before marriage is even allowed to take place.

And yes,
- "Government inaction" because it would be illegal and unethical to have government enforce morality.
- Christian organizations because they are the dominate moral activists in our country, and in general they are more puritan than other organizations. I include among them organizations like the MPAA (movie ratings) and even Alcoholics Anonymous btw, since they specifically dictate that they have church leaders on their board. 
- Conservative organizations (under the real version of conservative, not rush limbaugh version) is the catch all for other organizations that censor these things. Barnes and Nobles is a conservative organization, as is disney (though religion is sometimes suspect among the owners), as is basically any large retailer or nonprofit. They do a lot of voluntary censorship, but they let a lot through that some people might still want censored

It's not a conspiracy, it's just the little-advertised way things are set up on our side of the world compared to how things are set up elseware.

Yup, it's a laptop.

Meh. No biggie, I suppose.

they do tell you in their sneak little way. Generally  you can find "1 GB =1,000,000, bytes, actual formatted capacity less".
Standard metric is base 10, with incriments in 1,000,
Binary metric is base 2, withincriments of 2^10 = 1,024

What's more evil is your internet speed. 5 mb per second is really 5 megaBITS, not 5 megaBYTES. a megabit is 1/8th the size of a megabyte

And yeah, separate recovery partitions are a cheap way to reduce costs (no recovery CD), with the problem that it doesn't ever save you in case of a failed hard drive.

guilty pleasure: female voiced music.

I don't know why, but the vast majority of songs with a male voice just don't do it for me. You change the song to a version with a female voice, and I'm hooked. I actually have to try to thumb up male voices on Pandora, just so I can broaden my horizons. That and girly movies. Technically I like thinking movies and drama's first (Like Inception or The Butterfly Effect), but to watch a feel good romantic comedy is just a nice way to relax.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What is it!? I'll never figure it out.
<insert 100 evil grins>

[Edit/addition]

Personally, I believe that if something needs to be kept secret, it's because it shouldn't exist or be happening in the first place.  This is my extreme idealism at work, and I admit it's an idea that isn't immediately compatible with the world as it is.  Regardless, the reason military operations need to be secret, is because they're about fucking killing people.  Whether it's hiding corruption or strategical information, the reason it's relevant is because it's about doing harm and there lies the conflict.  It wouldn't be so damn important if it wasn't, at its core, evil, even if necessary evil, which is an extremely subjective and questionable concept anyway.  The only reason anybody cares about the diplomatic cables is because they reveal the games that people are playing with our lives.  Nobody gives a shit if Diplomat A insults Diplomat B behind their back, but they do if they're doing so because Diplomat B is somehow endangering people.  This is information that people want to know out of personal concern.  If it wasn't, people wouldn't care, and nobody would care if it was kept secret or not, including the people keeping it secret.

I believe in personal privacy.  For instance, I really do not give a shit that Clinton cheated on his wife.  He may have been the president, but that was his personal life.  The stuff we're talking about, though, is public affair.  In professional life and public issues, secrets are problems that exist, and the people responsible don't want the people concerned to be aware of these problems.  In the context of this discussion, I am completely against keeping such secrets.

Yes, this is technically true. The problem I see is that secrecy is power. Think of a shooter game, the stealthy sniper almost always is the annoyingly hard to kill guy. Or in dwarf fortress, how the hell did that goblin steal away my children? The problem with power is that the person with more always has the advantage. It can also not be taken away, as then the person who doesn't take them away has the advantage once again. We're not going to get rid of all of our nukes unless we can be damn sure our opponents are as well. Dwarf fortress doesn't have this problem largely because we can't often sneak up AI that know where we are. I take that back, you can tunnel underneath them, and while they're clueless they suddenly fall down 10 z levels, and we pick up their armor. Secrets win again.

Ideally, though, secrets would be subject to review. The most annoying thing about military records is that they can be redacted forever, and you'll never figure out what horrible things they did. Thus we're specifically allowing them to have power over us, without allowing ourselves to have the same power to counterbalance.