Sorry I didn't mean to be rude(or funny) at all. English is not my first language.

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

Seriously, why do we still bother, at this day and age, with these kind of concepts? I say we finally do away with all metaphysical horsecr*p and start, yup, seeing things as they are.

Thanks Stinkie. Now you are talking. I was just referring to Pete's post where he mentioned first time mysticism and expressed same as your attitude.

Why? Answer is quite simple. We are spiritual beings. Leaving this area undeveloped while pushing all industrial and scientific progress forward will result in degrading us to a role of a biological machine, piece of meat. This is something we should not allow. Do you see it different? I am not talking about Christianity only, but all attempts made to keep our spirits their well deserved place in this age of a machine.

Tomasz

Why do you think being a biological machine or a piece of meat is 'degrading' in the first place? If you believe your self to be better (by possessing a 'spirit') and later learn that your judgement are based on false premises do you A. readjust your view based on new found evidence? or B cling to old belief for your dear life and called new evidence 'degrading'. It is degrading to the human intellect to choose the later!

@mike lucey said:

Again somewhat off topic but never the less related! I viewed
a few more talks on TED and can highly recommending listening
to Karen Armstrong, Neil Yurok and Dave Eggers, save Dave till
last as he is very funny. They are a far better watch than a
lot of the stuff on TV.

http://www.tedprize.org/#

Yes it's an infatigable source of inspiration. I was wondering Mike if you are aware of any other sites like TED?

Gaeius

I couldn't help but notice that your portrait has changed from Caligula's head on a coin to what I presume is your own head. What is your fascination with the Roman tyrant?

@bellwells said:

Pete, faith is not belief without knowledge, it is belief without proof. Subtle but critical distinction.

Ron, any knowledge thats worth two cents can be PROVED! Otherwise its speculation at best, hocus pocus at worst. Do you really think people should lay down their life for speculation? Where is the morality of that? There is this wonderful talk by Dan Dennett on Dangerious Memes http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/dan_dennett_on_dangerous_memes.html which applies to all religions and ideologies. Religion is like a virus or parasite. To use a Deleuzian term, they have the same 'engineering diagram'.

I found this on this blog http://www.inbetweenmeals.com/ thought it was pretty funny though not all I'd agree with.

FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

@unknownuser said:

Solo & Chongo...,
If you already read the Book of Daniel, you don’t have to wait for me …!
(re. Iraq)

Cornel
P.S.:
Versions of Proverbs 19:13, for CraigD:
“…a quarrelsome wife is as annoying as constant dripping.”
“…a wife’s quarreling is a continual dripping of rain.”
“…the contentions of a wife are a constant dripping.”

Cornel

Can you quote the entire Old & New Testament back to back? Am I supposed to be impressed by that?

@edson said:

@remus said:

If your want something to do some serious work (3d stuff, video editing etc.) id say go for a PC, if you want something to do the emails on, a bit of image processing (and perhaps even a little bit of modelling, given the new graphics chips theyve got in them) id go for a mac.

remus,

with all due respect, yours is the opinion of someone who does not know what he is talking about. you must be kidding! macs have been known for their high performance, especially heavy duty 3D stuff and video editing. just check the specs of the macbook pros released in the last 2 years. with them the big macpros (the cheese graters) are no longer needed for profesional work unless you are editing movies. and the latest models come with 512 mb nvidia cards and 4gb ram out of the box! a macbook book coupled with a large screen is a fantastic setup.

regards.

Now now lets not get into a Mac vs PC spat here. I know what Remus meant when he said PC are better. If you are truely professional about 3D then usually you'd go for a workstation class graphics card like NVIDIA Quadro FX 2700M Graphics with 512MB2 dedicated memory or NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M Graphics with 1GB2 dedicated memory at top end. Like in this Dell Precision M6400 Mobile Workstation here. http://www1.euro.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/workstation-precision-m6400?c=uk&cs=ukbsdt1&l=en&s=bsd. The OpenGL drivers in those graphics card are optimized and updated regularly. The problem with Macbook Pro line of Notebooks is that they don't give you a choice. And Nvidia 9600M GT is a GAMES CARD with limited OpenGL support! So if I had the money, I wouldn't consider a Mac for professional work.

@solo said:

Amazing how the bible can be twisted to support your convenience. I bet Cornel can even find a passage that have nothing to do with squat that will even support the Iraq war.

I am pretty sure that's happened already . It's pretty scary.

Wow this answered my prayers!

Watch this guys. 'The Century of the Self' produced by Adam Curtis for the BBC.
In this documentary (one of the best ever created) Adam Curtis procedes to layout the narrative and creation of the 'Consumer Society' from Freud to PR (and its relationship to Propaganda) to today's party political systems' complicity involvement in media game. It is a astounding piece of work.

Error 404 (Not Found)!!1

(video.google.co.uk)

@unknownuser said:

Has anyone here done any research or reading on the creation of a "consumer society" I remember a conversation a few years back with friends at a diner party and one of those conversations was about the creation or adoption of the television as a medium for displaying consumer products to essentially hook society on the purchase of those products and then ensure that we would have a docile and tranquil workforce that would be happy to work in order to get an income to be able to purchase the products they saw on tv.

Anyway if anyone has links or books they would recommend on this subject let me know. With the current economic situation it is a topic I would like to read more about. here is a link I found with Google but there are simply too many and where to start might be facilitated by listening to people on this forum who have also been interested in this subject and have already sifted through the web for links.

301 Moved Permanently

(www.infed.org)

A quote from that link

"Consumption cannot be consummated, but is the “frustrated desire for totality.”[55]

For Baudrillard, not only are we never satiated and always frustrated, but there is little possibility of resistance. For “the collective function of advertising is to convert us all to the code…The code is totalitarian; no one escapes it: our individual flights do not negate the fact that each day we participate in its collective elaboration.”[56] The code comes to dominate us, to enchain us, by “imposing a coherent and collective vision, like an almost inseparable totality. Like a chain that connects not ordinary objects but signifieds, each object can signify the other in a more complex super-object, and lead the consumer to a series of more complex choices.”[57] Consumers essentially ‘buy’ into the code of consumption so completely that they lose the capacity for critical reflection. Furthermore, any form of resistance is readily incorporated and assimilated back into the code.

It sounds ominous to me.

Great thread!!!

I remember reading Baudrillard's Consumer Society some time ago. What really stuck in my mind was this halirioius comparison of Melanesian Cargo Cult(where tribesmen thought planes flying over head where goods from god for everyone and some how 'white man' found away to hijack all of it for themselves, thus proceded to erect massive effegies of aeroplanes on the ground in order to 'attract' the cargo they thought rightly belonged to them) and consumer culture. He elaborated that the basic delusions are the same (i.e. the promise of attaining what you already have innate in yourself or rightfully belong to you and that can be it 'fulfilled' through codified rituals and practices.) That always cracks me up.

@alan fraser said:

Whether we truly have free will or not is probably less important than if we perceive that we do.

It's a little like the nature of matter. That desk in front of you is actually made up of particles so insubstantial compared to the emptiness surrounding them that there is practically nothing there. Yet you have no choice but to interact with it as if it was a solid object. Similarly, there has to be a concept of free will, because without it we have no concept of good and bad choices, no virtue, no evil, no crime....just predetermined response.

Without freewill actions will still have inderminant out come. At least thats what Chaos theory whould tell us.

Are you by any chance using high poly trees? They are very taxing for sketchup.

I love it when people quote religious texts to 'prove' religion is true. Bravo! Its worse than having a brain tumor.

Humans are genetically, environmentally and socially conditioned animals. There are experienments in the 80s that showed that our unconscious 'acted' before we are consciously aware (by 0.5s through brain imaging) of our effort in decision making. Even David Hume said that our rationality are slave to our passions. The question shouldn't be do we have 'free will' as though so called 'free will' actually exists outside of our complex and dynamic interaction with our current and historical conditions, but rather to what extent can we exercise self-determination given our complex and dynamic interactions with our preconditions.

Mike. Doesn't the new Pros switch between integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M and discrete 9600M GT with 512MB graphics? Thanks for the link, its halirious. Seriously though I've not really experienced much problems with Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I used to have a G4 Powerbook Pro 12". That used to crash more. My dad's using it now. Whats really cool about the new Macs for me is the construction process. Making it out of single piece of Aluminium is just great! Integrating the touch-pad and button is very clever too! I'd advise people to wait for the next refresh. Since Intel is due to release its new CPU (Nehalem) lineup anytime now. I heard it supports multi-threading. Does that mean you get to render 2x faster?

I'd be happy to pay a limb if a Nurb or T-Spline modeler can be as intuitive as SU.

I am slightly concerned about switching back and forth between integrated graphics and discrete graphics card. Is that tested on SU?

Isn't Bezier Curve and Bubble Skin script able to approximate Nurb Modelling?