Many of the posts were serious: talk announcements, requests for information, and things like "I've just found a ring in the fifth-floor men's room. Who does it belong to?"
... not sure if i lost my cock ring in the men's room i would come forward to claim it
It's my belief that learning is the responsibility of the learner, not of the teacher.
yes, good point and i agree - futher i think the word teacher has unfortunate victorian connotations of some kind of instiller of knowledge - really a teacher should mostly be a facillitator of learning
if you've ever taught you may have noticed that the best students do assume responsibility for their own learning
also if you've ever taught you may have experienced what a weird vibe you get being a teacher and how ppl treat you differently in that role - 'great teacher, fill my head with the things i need to know' - and how this can start to warp your mind in unpleasant ways, and if you're not too careful you'll find yourself ten years down the track, some awful charicature of a victorian pedagogue
finally i recommend ivan illich if you want to think fresh thoughts about 'education'
a little bit of reason in this sea of sentimental dross - was curious to what proportion of the comments on this story would be american 'patriotism' - depressingly it is prob 90%
like i suspect many others i've decided it's not worth the effort to point out some home truths to people who would prefer not to listen - but i applaud your effort and appreciate that at there are at least a few posts like yours
Oh, you want to publish something to some but keep it secret to others who haven't paid? You want to tell someone a secret but you want to guarantee, beforehand, that he cannot possibly tell another?
i like how you link publishing / not publishing to asking someone to keep a 'secret'.
in my personal life i have recently realised that it is wrong to tell someone something and ask them to keep it a secret, or to ask them to keep the information hidden from certain other ppl - it is entirely their perogative once they have received that information as to what to do with it. if you want to keep some information unknown then the only way to do that is to tell nobody - if you tell even one person then you should accept that potentially the whole world can know, and that there are no grounds for you to be upset if this happens as you are the person who originally released the information
this situation is exactly the same with publishing - once you release something to the world by publishing it, then potentially the whole world now has accesss to it and it is morally wrong for you to try to limit the access.
perhaps it is ok for you to request acknowledgement for the work, but it is not ok to try to create artificial barriers (society based laws) to force 'payment' for your work. ppl who license their software under the gpl accept this. i see no difference for 'creative' artists
the only right you have to control access to your 'creative' work is the right to not release or publish it in the first place - either everyone has access to it or no-one does. any concerns for 'payment' are entirely subservient to the moral right of free information transmission
Everyone said Snow Crash was such a great book, so I read it. I will never read another Stephenson book again
reply to above comment:
You should really read Cryptonomicon though
my comment - i suggest you don't take the replier's advice - i felt exactly the same way you did after grimacing my way through the very long-winded, masturbationary text that is cryptonomicon - i.e. i never wanted to go near stephenson's writing again
and by the way, the copy of cryptonomicon I read (which i borrowed from the library) had this fake cut pages effect to it which i've seen in some other american editions - what's up with this? looks like book fetishism to me
flaw in yr argument is th assumption that 'th music industry' invented these technologies - as i understand it this is mostly wrong - th playback equipment manufacturers invented these technologies and th record companies fought th uptake of most of them
I would suggest martial arts (tai chi, judo, karate, yoga)
i would assume that most ppl understand that yoga is not a martial art as incorrectly described in th parent comment
what seems to be less well understood is th correct use of th word yoga itself
yoga is a sanskrit word which roughly translates to union - i.e. spiritual union with th cosmos
it is closed related to th word yoke in english
yoga is a non-religious sprititual science - it is a body of exercises and disciplines which have been systematised - yoga asserts no definitive dogma and merely suggests that these exercises may help you on yr spiritual path
most of these exercises are non-physical - however there is one branch of yoga science which is called hatha yoga that teaches a system of postures called in sanskrit asanas - these are what are commonly thought of as yoga in th west
writing this comment is reminding me of th GNU/linux debate - that aside i do think it is important to encourage th proper use of th word yoga in th west as th word has many thousands of years of tradition behind it and is of course still used correctly in th east - so please try to use th phrase hatha yoga or asanas instead of yoga in this context
i do not know anything about th ppl behind this website however this page provides a more indepth discussion of th relationship between hatha yoga and yoga
thank you for yr reply - it made me think a little more about th subject than i had before
yes you are right that there are two versions of all th greek letters - i felt foolish when i read yr reply as i had forgotten this fact - however i am not sure if they were used as we use our 'upper case' and 'lower case'
before writing more on th subject extemporaneously i want to do some further searching on th internet and thinking - my thought processes at th moment are running along the lines of an initial script designed with high legibility of each letter - evolving into a second more cursive script which is less 'blocky' and easier to write and which increases legibility of whole words rather than th individual letters - and later these two scripts being combinded according to certain rules which vary from language to language when printing was industrialised
one interesting source on this topic i have found so far is here
let me know if you want to continue this discussion further - cheers
simple solution - only ever use lower case in filenames
why have a complete mirroring of th alphabet in another case? th ancient greeks and th romans got along very nicely with just one case - th russians still do today (and perhaps still th greeks?)
i read somewhere that th terms 'upper case' and 'lower case' are printing terms and correspond directly to th cases in which th metal type letters were kept - hence it seems to be an invention of th printing press age or perhaps goes back to th monastic penchant for illuminating certain letters to give them added emphasis
capital letters always have this feel for me - a kind of victorian sensibility of 'This Is A Very Special Word Which You Must Respect And Hold Dear In Your Heart' - a some words are more equal than others kind of approach - very like that irritating practice of capitalising him and he when referring to Certain August Fictionalities in th bible
and yes, to forestall yr reply of capitals increase legibility - i am aware of that argument, however i think th present model of capitalisation at th beginning of a sentence is tired and could do with some creative alternatives
a good point of this 'keyboard' is that th hand can be held in th thumb up position which is our more natural tool using hand posture and i would imagine places much less pressure on th carpal tunnel
and off on a small tangent i would like to see a 'keyboard' which uses two hands with th fingers lightly wired up and tapping against each other - probably also with chording combinations
palms would be pressed together and held straight out while 'typing' or alternatively with th fingers pointing straight upward and th hands held in front of th chest - a lovely image of us communicating with our computers in a natural attitude of prayer
fuck, yr relatives are coming to australia and all they can think about in advance is how they are going to watch television there??? please tell them not to bother coming - after all tv in australia is much like it is in america - full of crap made in someplace called hollywood
i happen to have lived in australia without watching tv for the last 12 years - how do i survive? - well, i've learnt to speak to the natives and have a bit of a look around the place - you know go outside every once in a while, go to the beach, the cricket, the pub to watch a band etc. etc.
my suggestion in that they save the effort (and us) by staying at home and imbibing the 'real australia' by watching endless reruns of 'crocodile hunter' (did i get that right?) on their beloved tivo
cheers mate
yes i too am wasting too much time on this discussion - yr level of discussion is disappointing me and you are now repeatedly accusing me of being a troll when yr behaviour is more amenable to such an accusation
to wit : the three names i pulled out of this list at random according to you don't "seem to have anything to do with AIDS research. None of them has anything published in medical journals about such research. "
after a web search i found the following information from pages at or near the top of the returned google searches
STEVEN JONAS, M.D., M.P.H., M.S.professor of preventive medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written eight books of his own and edited/co-authored another ten, on personal health promotion, health policy, and national politics. He has also published over 100 professional articles and book reviews, and numerous popular articles on the same subjects. He is editor of the Springer Publishing Company Series on Medical Education, an associate editor of Preventive Medicine, and a member of the editorial boards of several other professional journals in health promotion/disease prevention. A Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, the New York Academy of Medicine and the American Public Health Association
so he does not seem to be a specialist, but he does however seem to be a highly respected generalist as he sits on a number of editorial boatds and would seem to be well equipped to understand and appraise the scientific arguments
the second person is harder to search on being of swiss background - however here are the names of two papers he has published directly on HIV/AIDS
Albonico, H. (1991a) Lichtblicke zum zweiten Jahrzehnt in der AIDS-Forschung. Schweizerische Ærztezeitung 72: 379-380.
Albonico, H. (1991b) Relativierung des HIV-Dogmas-Ein Beitrag zur Erweiterten Sicht von AIDS. Pädagogische Arbeitsstelle, Dortmund
the third person is yes you are correct an expert on toxicology - he is listed on the faculty of the joint graduate program in toxicology at rutgers university as
Sungchul Ji: Associate Professor of Pharmacy, CP; Ph. D. SUNY (Albany).
contrary to your labelling me as a troll for describing the drugs used as highly toxic there seems to be little doubt that drugs such as AZT are heavily toxic - i cannot understand your attempting to deny this, it is readily admitted by the proponents of the drug treatment - and so the views of an expert on toxicology would seem to be highly relevant to a debate on the conventional treatment of AIDS with highly toxic drugs
your point about there being a great deal of debate when AIDS was discovered sidesteps the conspicous lack of debate and rapid development of hegemony over the HIV hypothesis when it was first asserted several years after the early debate on AIDS
finally you repeatedly claim that the dissidents views have been proven incorrect however the best evidence of these claims that you have offered me is a paper by a registered nurse and member of the AIDS lobby (as i responded in an earlier comment, it is almost laughable againt the large repository of papers i offered you by emminent experts and the odd nobel laureate)
you still do not seem to understand that the size of a majority is largely irrelevant - it is very easy and usually the safest option to subscribe to groupthink - while the size and constition of a minority is extremely important, and this is why i detailed the significant number of well-credentialled dissidents to the hypothesis who are happy to publicly express their scepticism when it is clearly not in their own best personal interest to do so
anyway we'll consider the discussion closed - i thank you for yr input, however the interchange seems only to have hardened both of our positions - i guess we will have to leave it for time to tell the eventual answer - an answer which will show the death of millions of people was caused by a mysterious virus unlike all viruses discovered before or perhaps the alternative possibility - that millions of people were poisonously treated by a medical establishment that long ago discarded the ancient hippocratic axiom of first, do no harm
Its not that the scientific community ignored Duesberg's and other views on AIDS, nor were they left out of the debate.
well my experience and those of the general public around me is that they were left out of the debate - despite being a sceptic from the early days of the AIDS story i had never heard that emminent scientists were also sceptical of the theory through the mainstream media - it was never reported - even now with the fact of the president of south africa's scepticism difficult to ignore, media reports on the president's stance never in my experience mention support from major western scientists - i only discovered the virus myth page after hearing an interview with eleni papadopoulos on an independent community radio station and then doing a web search on her name
i can imagine the mainstream media's rationalisation of this blackout goes something like this - there's this awful thing called AIDS, some of our clever scientists tell us that it's caused by a retrovirus they call HIV - some other clever scientists are indicating some sceptisism about HIV being the cause of AIDS - but really we can't report this because it's going to be hard enough to get the great unwashed public to perform safe sex and if we let them know that there's some doubt in the scientific community then our message will not be listened to
maybe you agree with this rationalisation - i certainly do not as it is not how science is meant to be done - and risks the danger that a truly massive crime against humanity may have been practised by feeding people highly toxic drugs on the basis of a flawed hypothesis that was not allowed to be examined with due scientific rigour - you do not seem to appear to realise that instead of a proper scientific culture we live in what could better be described as a 'church of science' culture where scientific dogma is handed down from on high and the media blindly parrots this dogma from the established 'experts'
with respect to your 3rd point - i do not keep on bringing up the 5500 names - i simply responded to a query in yr reply, rather than bringing it up again independently - now as to your assertion that the names may be false i find this rather implausible as it would be giving the other camp a very big stick with which to be beaten as the names are easily checked - i myself just did a web search on three of the names i randomly extracted from the top of the list - they are :
Steven Jonas, M.D.
Hansueli Albonico, M.D.
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
all three returned numerous hits from google searches relevant to them being experts in the AIDS domain of knowledge - please check for yrself - again i assert that if their names were being used without their permission they would rapidly have been withdrawn from the site and/or the website's owners heavily sued
you do not seem to understand my reason for using these people's names as i have previously explained it - it goes back to a policeman's logic - understanding people's motives - in a world where vast amounts of funding and prestige are given to members of the scientific and medical establishment who subscribe to the established theory it makes little sense for members of this same community to attack the conventional thinking - if a large number are doing so then this suggests to me that there may indeed be some substance behind their claims - it does not convince me, nor should it convince others, however it should serve to inculcate some level of scepticism in people with non-expertise if it is allowed to be reported
further on this point i find your assertion that people showing dissenting opinions will be showered with money highly naive or disingenuous in the extreme - look at the example of peter duesberg which i quoted in my first comment who had exactly the opposite experience
finally on point four i did not quote the whole oath in full - i quoted the part that seems readily ignored by the medical establishment and yet to me still seems to be a very noble and necessary ideal to hold on to - the idea of 'first, do no harm' - and yes i do consider chemotherapy 'deadly medicine' - how could anyone not?
ok i've now had a brief look at the paper you linked to - it's by tim teeter RN (RN = registered nurse) - is this really the best you can do? - i give you papers by people with 20+ years in the exact field of virology or nobel scientists in related fields and you come back with a paper by a registered nurse?!! - furthermore not even a disinterested party but a member of the AIDS lobby group - i quote - Tim Teeter is Associate Director of Treatment Support and Publications at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. - my scepticism only grows...
ok some brief responses to material from the paper
AIDS is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the presence of a positive HIV antibody test and one or more of the illnesses known as opportunistic infections (OIs) or a CD4 cell count below 200 cells/mm3.
so even though AIDS was on the scene first it appears to have now been redefined to include a positive result to the 'HIV antibody test' - summary : something is documented as Acquired Immunde Deficiency Syndrome - a hypothesis is put forward that this is caused by something called HIV amd all dissenting opinion is crushed - the originally defined AIDS is redefined in terms of the later 'discovered' HIV - isn't this a gross breach of empiricism?
this is the very first sentence - however two paragraphs down the author flatly contradicts his own definition of AIDS i.e. requiring a positive result to the 'HIV' test
The vast majority of people with AIDS in resource-poor countries have not had an HIV antibody test; even in developed countries, not all people with AIDS have had viral load tests. Those who have had viral load tests showing nondetectable virus generally have no additional tests to confirm the presence of HIV genetic material.
i won't go on - as i said before the burden of proof is on the originators of a theory and not on the sceptics - this paper you've given me is doing a very bad job of convincing me with major logical inconsitencies in it's first three paragraphs
well i notice from the amber light next to yr name that i have now made yr lists of foes - the first time anyone on slashdot has made me one - that's fine by me, and of course you have the right to do so, however you seem by yr action to be continuing the long held practice of ignoring dissent on the HIV causes AIDS hypothesis - i.e. by my speaking out i am now on yr ignore list
thankyou for linking to a paper - i will have a look at it - however i do not feel i have the expertise necessary to judge it's validity - and this is why i listed the names of some fairly respected scientists in my previous comment - these are obviously people who do have the expertise and who are questioning the hypothesis - however i have never heard this mentioned in the mainstream media - like you, the media have set their filters to 'ignore' - their dissent may or may not be good science - but why is the dissent not even acknowledged? - very few people even know that there is dissent from credible scientists on this issue and this is what i wanted to bring to people's attention by my post
the website i linked to in my first post has a large repository of scientific papers contesting the HIV->AIDS hypothesis including at least one paper for every name that i listed in my second post - they are all easily accesible from the whistleblowers page from which i excerpted my list - i imagined that people would go directly to the source rather than expect me to try to paraphrase their arguments - i wonder whether you yrself visited the site?
in relation to the list of 5500 names - these are listed prominently on the major HIV->AIDS dissident page on the web - I would imagine that legal action would have quickly ensured removal of the names of any people who were being wrongly touted as sceptics of the HIV->AIDS hypothesis
my position on the HIV->AIDS hypothesis is simply a sceptical one - in the late 70's and early 80's a syndrome was documented as aquired immune deficiency syndrome - several years later an assertion was put forward that a retrovirus had been found and was the cause of the syndrome - the website i linked to has the papers of highly eminent people questioning both of these claims -
science is all about questioning 'common sense' assumptions - so why have these people been continually left out of the debate? - indeed there has been no debate as mostly they have struggled to be published or have coverage in the mainstream media
i wish you luck in a medical profession that due to massive abuse of power and an increasingly marked desire to enter the pay of the drug companies is rapidly losing the trust and confidence of the common people
finally i'll end with a quote from a fellow named hippocrates - he doesn't seem to have much to say about whether HIV causes AIDS or not - but he does seem to have some commentary on the course that the mainstream medical community has followed in treating the syndrome:
I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.
I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel;
Well my parent comment has already been modded down, so my hopes for an intelligent discussion of whether HIV exists and causes AIDS seem to be rapidly diminishing.
Thankyou for your even-toned reply. However, I do not agree with your line of reasoning. You essentially seem to be saying that the HIV theory dissident's claims have been disproven. You state this without mentioning or linking to any papers along these lines. From my point of view the dissidents seem to have been ignored rather than defeated.
Further, it seems to me that the burden of proof lies with the proponents of the HIV causes AIDS theory. This is the general nature of scientific debate - to substantiate a positive claim against negative (sceptical) arguments rather than the other way around.
Finally there are now a large number of members of the scientific community expressing some level of scepticism about the HIV causes AIDS hypothesis. Some of the major dissidents include:
Dr. Robert Root-Bernstein, who held a MacArthur Prize fellowship from 1981 to 1986, is associate professor of physiology at Michigan State University
Dr. Gordon Stewart is professor emeritus of public health at Glasgow University, and a former WHO adviser on AIDS.
Dr. Alfred Hässig, (1921-1999) was professor emeritus in immunology at the University of Bern, Director of the Swiss Red Cross Transfusion Service, and President of the Board of Trustees of the International Society of Blood Transfusion. With colleagues he formed the Study Group for Nutrition and Immunity.
Dr. Richard Strohman is professor emeritus in molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Etienne de Harven is emeritus professor of pathology, University of Toronto. He worked in electron microscopy primarily on the ultrastructure of retroviruses throughout his professional career of 25 years at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York and 13 years at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, a New York physician and one of the first AIDS researchers, has been questioning the HIV-AIDS hypothesis.
Further, here is a petition questioning the basis of the HIV hypothesis - the present number of signatures is more than 5500 - you can view the list and see that many of these people are established scientists.
To me it seems very strange that people from within the scientific establishment would be questioning common dogma and risking a great deal of mainstream credibility and their own financial security without their holding a genuinely sceptical position - it comes down to a question of motive and i can see no other reason for such people to 'stand out in the cold' except for a personal motivation to uphold rigour and independent thinking in science
a link to some material on whether the widely-spread convention that there is a retrovirus called HIV that causes AIDS is true.
a quote from that site :
"If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document."
Dr. Kary Mullis, Biochemist, 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
this page on the site links to the best introductory articles on the 'virus myth'
an excerpt from one of the articles on the site
The response to the first major critique of the HIV theory, by Dr Peter Duesberg, professor of molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley, was bewilderment, followed by fury. Duesberg had been voted Californian Scientist of the Year for his discoveries in the field of retroviruses (of which HIV is supposed to be one). He argued in 1987 that HIV could not be doing the damage attributed to it, because it was so difficult to find in the body, even in a person dying of AIDS. He postulated that an explosion in the use of recreational drugs during the 1970s was probably the main cause of AIDS. He was first ignored and then pilloried for persisting with his views. He lost a $ 350,000 "outstanding investigator" award and became an embarrassment to his university, which, while unable to fire him, reduced him to chairing its annual picnic committee.
The past 10 years have shown Duesberg to have been right on several counts. He stated that HIV could not kill immune cells, that AIDS would not become a heterosexual epidemic and that the anti-viral drug AZT would kill rather than cure. On all three issues, the evidence has gone his way.
note to moderators : please note that the assertions against the conventional thinking on HIV -> AIDS are being made by respected scientists as shown in the above two excerpts. This comment is not made as flamebait or as a troll. The ideal of science is informed debate, not willful dismissal of dissenting opinion.
Maybe someone should ASK them what they need, instead of suggesting projects based on what WE think they should need. I betcha they'd ask for things like Vitamin A tablets and refrigerators and AM radios.
let's not go down this track - official appreciation days really suck - mother's and father's days are bad enough - but over th last coupla decades seems every lobby group been claimin a day for self-congratulatory purposes - in my opininion this is only demeaning to th ppl concerned
ppl who appreciate what you do and know not to take other ppl for granted will always show unprompted gratitude - others who don't or are more self-centered will only resent it and any gratitude they express will be false
Back to the release notes [debian.org]: we understand Debian likes to be eccentric, but isn't it silly to provide the release notes in Catalan? The total number of speakers of Catalan, worldwide, is far less than the number of native Chinese speakers in New York (or even in Queens). And less than the number of native German speakers in Paraguay. The release notes are not provided in either Chinese or German.
yr comment shows that you do not understand th nature of a voluntary project
work in a voluntary project is only done voluntarily - no-one points to another person and orders them to do this or that
hence th fact that th release notes have been translated into catalan indicates that there was someone happy to do this task - a task which does benefit a community, albeit a rather small one
i would imagine that german and chinese translations will also appear quite soon - however this again will be done voluntarily, and not by someone ordering someone else to do it
i would also imagine that yr use of th word 'silly' is offensive to th person who did th catalan translation and who is providing real benefit to a section of th community however insignificant you consider it to be - perhaps you might like to contribute yrself rather than simply being irritatingly critical of work that has been voluntarily performed.
Slashdot Mirror
good comment
if you don't give yr power away
then ppl can't use that power to oppress you
Many of the posts were serious: talk announcements, requests for information, and things like "I've just found a ring in the fifth-floor men's room. Who does it belong to?"
... not sure if i lost my cock ring in the men's room i would come forward to claim it
yes, good point and i agree - futher i think the word teacher has unfortunate victorian connotations of some kind of instiller of knowledge - really a teacher should mostly be a facillitator of learning
if you've ever taught you may have noticed that the best students do assume responsibility for their own learning
also if you've ever taught you may have experienced what a weird vibe you get being a teacher and how ppl treat you differently in that role - 'great teacher, fill my head with the things i need to know' - and how this can start to warp your mind in unpleasant ways, and if you're not too careful you'll find yourself ten years down the track, some awful charicature of a victorian pedagogue
finally i recommend ivan illich if you want to think fresh thoughts about 'education'
congrats on yr post mate
a little bit of reason in this sea of sentimental dross - was curious to what proportion of the comments on this story would be american 'patriotism' - depressingly it is prob 90%
like i suspect many others i've decided it's not worth the effort to point out some home truths to people who would prefer not to listen - but i applaud your effort and appreciate that at there are at least a few posts like yours
congrats for telling it like it is mate
like most cowardly bullies, american imperialists (note i did not say all americans) are psychotically sensitive to criticism
cheers
i like how you link publishing / not publishing to asking someone to keep a 'secret'.
in my personal life i have recently realised that it is wrong to tell someone something and ask them to keep it a secret, or to ask them to keep the information hidden from certain other ppl - it is entirely their perogative once they have received that information as to what to do with it. if you want to keep some information unknown then the only way to do that is to tell nobody - if you tell even one person then you should accept that potentially the whole world can know, and that there are no grounds for you to be upset if this happens as you are the person who originally released the information
this situation is exactly the same with publishing - once you release something to the world by publishing it, then potentially the whole world now has accesss to it and it is morally wrong for you to try to limit the access.
perhaps it is ok for you to request acknowledgement for the work, but it is not ok to try to create artificial barriers (society based laws) to force 'payment' for your work. ppl who license their software under the gpl accept this. i see no difference for 'creative' artists
the only right you have to control access to your 'creative' work is the right to not release or publish it in the first place - either everyone has access to it or no-one does. any concerns for 'payment' are entirely subservient to the moral right of free information transmission
governments should have no secrets at all
governments should be completely transparent
for governments to have secrets
is the direct path to tyrrany
this also applies to corporations
never trust any organisation
that is not happy to be completely transparent
in all their dealings
Everyone said Snow Crash was such a great book, so I read it. I will never read another Stephenson book again
reply to above comment :
You should really read Cryptonomicon though
my comment - i suggest you don't take the replier's advice - i felt exactly the same way you did after grimacing my way through the very long-winded, masturbationary text that is cryptonomicon - i.e. i never wanted to go near stephenson's writing again
and by the way, the copy of cryptonomicon I read (which i borrowed from the library) had this fake cut pages effect to it which i've seen in some other american editions - what's up with this? looks like book fetishism to me
flaw in yr argument is th assumption that 'th music industry' invented these technologies - as i understand it this is mostly wrong - th playback equipment manufacturers invented these technologies and th record companies fought th uptake of most of them
succulent succotash!
i think he really meant to say - succinct
I would suggest martial arts (tai chi, judo, karate, yoga)
i would assume that most ppl understand that yoga is not a martial art as incorrectly described in th parent comment
what seems to be less well understood is th correct use of th word yoga itself
yoga is a sanskrit word which roughly translates to union - i.e. spiritual union with th cosmos
it is closed related to th word yoke in english
yoga is a non-religious sprititual science - it is a body of exercises and disciplines which have been systematised - yoga asserts no definitive dogma and merely suggests that these exercises may help you on yr spiritual path
most of these exercises are non-physical - however there is one branch of yoga science which is called hatha yoga that teaches a system of postures called in sanskrit asanas - these are what are commonly thought of as yoga in th west
writing this comment is reminding me of th GNU/linux debate - that aside i do think it is important to encourage th proper use of th word yoga in th west as th word has many thousands of years of tradition behind it and is of course still used correctly in th east - so please try to use th phrase hatha yoga or asanas instead of yoga in this context
i do not know anything about th ppl behind this website however this page provides a more indepth discussion of th relationship between hatha yoga and yoga
thank you for yr reply - it made me think a little more about th subject than i had before
yes you are right that there are two versions of all th greek letters - i felt foolish when i read yr reply as i had forgotten this fact - however i am not sure if they were used as we use our 'upper case' and 'lower case'
before writing more on th subject extemporaneously i want to do some further searching on th internet and thinking - my thought processes at th moment are running along the lines of an initial script designed with high legibility of each letter - evolving into a second more cursive script which is less 'blocky' and easier to write and which increases legibility of whole words rather than th individual letters - and later these two scripts being combinded according to certain rules which vary from language to language when printing was industrialised
one interesting source on this topic i have found so far is here
let me know if you want to continue this discussion further - cheers
simple solution - only ever use lower case in filenames
why have a complete mirroring of th alphabet in another case? th ancient greeks and th romans got along very nicely with just one case - th russians still do today (and perhaps still th greeks?)
i read somewhere that th terms 'upper case' and 'lower case' are printing terms and correspond directly to th cases in which th metal type letters were kept - hence it seems to be an invention of th printing press age or perhaps goes back to th monastic penchant for illuminating certain letters to give them added emphasis
capital letters always have this feel for me - a kind of victorian sensibility of 'This Is A Very Special Word Which You Must Respect And Hold Dear In Your Heart' - a some words are more equal than others kind of approach - very like that irritating practice of capitalising him and he when referring to Certain August Fictionalities in th bible
and yes, to forestall yr reply of capitals increase legibility - i am aware of that argument, however i think th present model of capitalisation at th beginning of a sentence is tired and could do with some creative alternatives
a good point of this 'keyboard' is that th hand can be held in th thumb up position which is our more natural tool using hand posture and i would imagine places much less pressure on th carpal tunnel
and off on a small tangent i would like to see a 'keyboard' which uses two hands with th fingers lightly wired up and tapping against each other - probably also with chording combinations
palms would be pressed together and held straight out while 'typing' or alternatively with th fingers pointing straight upward and th hands held in front of th chest - a lovely image of us communicating with our computers in a natural attitude of prayer
fuck, yr relatives are coming to australia and all they can think about in advance is how they are going to watch television there??? please tell them not to bother coming - after all tv in australia is much like it is in america - full of crap made in someplace called hollywood i happen to have lived in australia without watching tv for the last 12 years - how do i survive? - well, i've learnt to speak to the natives and have a bit of a look around the place - you know go outside every once in a while, go to the beach, the cricket, the pub to watch a band etc. etc. my suggestion in that they save the effort (and us) by staying at home and imbibing the 'real australia' by watching endless reruns of 'crocodile hunter' (did i get that right?) on their beloved tivo cheers mate
yes i too am wasting too much time on this discussion - yr level of discussion is disappointing me and you are now repeatedly accusing me of being a troll when yr behaviour is more amenable to such an accusation
to wit : the three names i pulled out of this list at random according to you don't "seem to have anything to do with AIDS research. None of them has anything published in medical journals about such research. "
after a web search i found the following information from pages at or near the top of the returned google searches
STEVEN JONAS, M.D., M.P.H., M.S.professor of preventive medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, has written eight books of his own and edited/co-authored another ten, on personal health promotion, health policy, and national politics. He has also published over 100 professional articles and book reviews, and numerous popular articles on the same subjects. He is editor of the Springer Publishing Company Series on Medical Education, an associate editor of Preventive Medicine, and a member of the editorial boards of several other professional journals in health promotion/disease prevention. A Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, the New York Academy of Medicine and the American Public Health Association
so he does not seem to be a specialist, but he does however seem to be a highly respected generalist as he sits on a number of editorial boatds and would seem to be well equipped to understand and appraise the scientific arguments
the second person is harder to search on being of swiss background - however here are the names of two papers he has published directly on HIV/AIDS
Albonico, H. (1991a) Lichtblicke zum zweiten Jahrzehnt in der AIDS-Forschung. Schweizerische Ærztezeitung 72: 379-380.
Albonico, H. (1991b) Relativierung des HIV-Dogmas-Ein Beitrag zur Erweiterten Sicht von AIDS. Pädagogische Arbeitsstelle, Dortmund
the third person is yes you are correct an expert on toxicology - he is listed on the faculty of the joint graduate program in toxicology at rutgers university as
Sungchul Ji: Associate Professor of Pharmacy, CP; Ph. D. SUNY (Albany).
contrary to your labelling me as a troll for describing the drugs used as highly toxic there seems to be little doubt that drugs such as AZT are heavily toxic - i cannot understand your attempting to deny this, it is readily admitted by the proponents of the drug treatment - and so the views of an expert on toxicology would seem to be highly relevant to a debate on the conventional treatment of AIDS with highly toxic drugs
your point about there being a great deal of debate when AIDS was discovered sidesteps the conspicous lack of debate and rapid development of hegemony over the HIV hypothesis when it was first asserted several years after the early debate on AIDS
finally you repeatedly claim that the dissidents views have been proven incorrect however the best evidence of these claims that you have offered me is a paper by a registered nurse and member of the AIDS lobby (as i responded in an earlier comment, it is almost laughable againt the large repository of papers i offered you by emminent experts and the odd nobel laureate)
you still do not seem to understand that the size of a majority is largely irrelevant - it is very easy and usually the safest option to subscribe to groupthink - while the size and constition of a minority is extremely important, and this is why i detailed the significant number of well-credentialled dissidents to the hypothesis who are happy to publicly express their scepticism when it is clearly not in their own best personal interest to do so
anyway we'll consider the discussion closed - i thank you for yr input, however the interchange seems only to have hardened both of our positions - i guess we will have to leave it for time to tell the eventual answer - an answer which will show the death of millions of people was caused by a mysterious virus unlike all viruses discovered before or perhaps the alternative possibility - that millions of people were poisonously treated by a medical establishment that long ago discarded the ancient hippocratic axiom of first, do no harm
in response to yr point 2
Its not that the scientific community ignored Duesberg's and other views on AIDS, nor were they left out of the debate.
well my experience and those of the general public around me is that they were left out of the debate - despite being a sceptic from the early days of the AIDS story i had never heard that emminent scientists were also sceptical of the theory through the mainstream media - it was never reported - even now with the fact of the president of south africa's scepticism difficult to ignore, media reports on the president's stance never in my experience mention support from major western scientists - i only discovered the virus myth page after hearing an interview with eleni papadopoulos on an independent community radio station and then doing a web search on her name
i can imagine the mainstream media's rationalisation of this blackout goes something like this - there's this awful thing called AIDS, some of our clever scientists tell us that it's caused by a retrovirus they call HIV - some other clever scientists are indicating some sceptisism about HIV being the cause of AIDS - but really we can't report this because it's going to be hard enough to get the great unwashed public to perform safe sex and if we let them know that there's some doubt in the scientific community then our message will not be listened to
maybe you agree with this rationalisation - i certainly do not as it is not how science is meant to be done - and risks the danger that a truly massive crime against humanity may have been practised by feeding people highly toxic drugs on the basis of a flawed hypothesis that was not allowed to be examined with due scientific rigour - you do not seem to appear to realise that instead of a proper scientific culture we live in what could better be described as a 'church of science' culture where scientific dogma is handed down from on high and the media blindly parrots this dogma from the established 'experts'
with respect to your 3rd point - i do not keep on bringing up the 5500 names - i simply responded to a query in yr reply, rather than bringing it up again independently - now as to your assertion that the names may be false i find this rather implausible as it would be giving the other camp a very big stick with which to be beaten as the names are easily checked - i myself just did a web search on three of the names i randomly extracted from the top of the list - they are :
Steven Jonas, M.D.Hansueli Albonico, M.D.
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D.
all three returned numerous hits from google searches relevant to them being experts in the AIDS domain of knowledge - please check for yrself - again i assert that if their names were being used without their permission they would rapidly have been withdrawn from the site and/or the website's owners heavily sued
you do not seem to understand my reason for using these people's names as i have previously explained it - it goes back to a policeman's logic - understanding people's motives - in a world where vast amounts of funding and prestige are given to members of the scientific and medical establishment who subscribe to the established theory it makes little sense for members of this same community to attack the conventional thinking - if a large number are doing so then this suggests to me that there may indeed be some substance behind their claims - it does not convince me, nor should it convince others, however it should serve to inculcate some level of scepticism in people with non-expertise if it is allowed to be reported
further on this point i find your assertion that people showing dissenting opinions will be showered with money highly naive or disingenuous in the extreme - look at the example of peter duesberg which i quoted in my first comment who had exactly the opposite experience
finally on point four i did not quote the whole oath in full - i quoted the part that seems readily ignored by the medical establishment and yet to me still seems to be a very noble and necessary ideal to hold on to - the idea of 'first, do no harm' - and yes i do consider chemotherapy 'deadly medicine' - how could anyone not?
ok i've now had a brief look at the paper you linked to - it's by tim teeter RN (RN = registered nurse) - is this really the best you can do? - i give you papers by people with 20+ years in the exact field of virology or nobel scientists in related fields and you come back with a paper by a registered nurse?!! - furthermore not even a disinterested party but a member of the AIDS lobby group - i quote - Tim Teeter is Associate Director of Treatment Support and Publications at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. - my scepticism only grows...
ok some brief responses to material from the paper
AIDS is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as the presence of a positive HIV antibody test and one or more of the illnesses known as opportunistic infections (OIs) or a CD4 cell count below 200 cells/mm3.
so even though AIDS was on the scene first it appears to have now been redefined to include a positive result to the 'HIV antibody test' - summary : something is documented as Acquired Immunde Deficiency Syndrome - a hypothesis is put forward that this is caused by something called HIV amd all dissenting opinion is crushed - the originally defined AIDS is redefined in terms of the later 'discovered' HIV - isn't this a gross breach of empiricism?
this is the very first sentence - however two paragraphs down the author flatly contradicts his own definition of AIDS i.e. requiring a positive result to the 'HIV' test
The vast majority of people with AIDS in resource-poor countries have not had an HIV antibody test; even in developed countries, not all people with AIDS have had viral load tests. Those who have had viral load tests showing nondetectable virus generally have no additional tests to confirm the presence of HIV genetic material.
i won't go on - as i said before the burden of proof is on the originators of a theory and not on the sceptics - this paper you've given me is doing a very bad job of convincing me with major logical inconsitencies in it's first three paragraphs
well i notice from the amber light next to yr name that i have now made yr lists of foes - the first time anyone on slashdot has made me one - that's fine by me, and of course you have the right to do so, however you seem by yr action to be continuing the long held practice of ignoring dissent on the HIV causes AIDS hypothesis - i.e. by my speaking out i am now on yr ignore list
thankyou for linking to a paper - i will have a look at it - however i do not feel i have the expertise necessary to judge it's validity - and this is why i listed the names of some fairly respected scientists in my previous comment - these are obviously people who do have the expertise and who are questioning the hypothesis - however i have never heard this mentioned in the mainstream media - like you, the media have set their filters to 'ignore' - their dissent may or may not be good science - but why is the dissent not even acknowledged? - very few people even know that there is dissent from credible scientists on this issue and this is what i wanted to bring to people's attention by my post
the website i linked to in my first post has a large repository of scientific papers contesting the HIV->AIDS hypothesis including at least one paper for every name that i listed in my second post - they are all easily accesible from the whistleblowers page from which i excerpted my list - i imagined that people would go directly to the source rather than expect me to try to paraphrase their arguments - i wonder whether you yrself visited the site?
in relation to the list of 5500 names - these are listed prominently on the major HIV->AIDS dissident page on the web - I would imagine that legal action would have quickly ensured removal of the names of any people who were being wrongly touted as sceptics of the HIV->AIDS hypothesis
my position on the HIV->AIDS hypothesis is simply a sceptical one - in the late 70's and early 80's a syndrome was documented as aquired immune deficiency syndrome - several years later an assertion was put forward that a retrovirus had been found and was the cause of the syndrome - the website i linked to has the papers of highly eminent people questioning both of these claims - science is all about questioning 'common sense' assumptions - so why have these people been continually left out of the debate? - indeed there has been no debate as mostly they have struggled to be published or have coverage in the mainstream media
i wish you luck in a medical profession that due to massive abuse of power and an increasingly marked desire to enter the pay of the drug companies is rapidly losing the trust and confidence of the common people
finally i'll end with a quote from a fellow named hippocrates - he doesn't seem to have much to say about whether HIV causes AIDS or not - but he does seem to have some commentary on the course that the mainstream medical community has followed in treating the syndrome :
Well my parent comment has already been modded down, so my hopes for an intelligent discussion of whether HIV exists and causes AIDS seem to be rapidly diminishing.
Thankyou for your even-toned reply. However, I do not agree with your line of reasoning. You essentially seem to be saying that the HIV theory dissident's claims have been disproven. You state this without mentioning or linking to any papers along these lines. From my point of view the dissidents seem to have been ignored rather than defeated.
Further, it seems to me that the burden of proof lies with the proponents of the HIV causes AIDS theory. This is the general nature of scientific debate - to substantiate a positive claim against negative (sceptical) arguments rather than the other way around.
Finally there are now a large number of members of the scientific community expressing some level of scepticism about the HIV causes AIDS hypothesis. Some of the major dissidents include :
(excerpted from the whistleblowers page on the virus myth website)Further, here is a petition questioning the basis of the HIV hypothesis - the present number of signatures is more than 5500 - you can view the list and see that many of these people are established scientists.
To me it seems very strange that people from within the scientific establishment would be questioning common dogma and risking a great deal of mainstream credibility and their own financial security without their holding a genuinely sceptical position - it comes down to a question of motive and i can see no other reason for such people to 'stand out in the cold' except for a personal motivation to uphold rigour and independent thinking in science
a link to some material on whether the widely-spread convention that there is a retrovirus called HIV that causes AIDS is true.
a quote from that site :
this page on the site links to the best introductory articles on the 'virus myth'
an excerpt from one of the articles on the site
note to moderators : please note that the assertions against the conventional thinking on HIV -> AIDS are being made by respected scientists as shown in the above two excerpts. This comment is not made as flamebait or as a troll. The ideal of science is informed debate, not willful dismissal of dissenting opinion.
anthony towns has posted a fairly detailed `retrospective' on th release of woody and an `introspecitve' on th future release of sarge here
notice any internal contradiction here?
let's not go down this track - official appreciation days really suck - mother's and father's days are bad enough - but over th last coupla decades seems every lobby group been claimin a day for self-congratulatory purposes - in my opininion this is only demeaning to th ppl concerned
ppl who appreciate what you do and know not to take other ppl for granted will always show unprompted gratitude - others who don't or are more self-centered will only resent it and any gratitude they express will be false
yr comment shows that you do not understand th nature of a voluntary project
work in a voluntary project is only done voluntarily - no-one points to another person and orders them to do this or that
hence th fact that th release notes have been translated into catalan indicates that there was someone happy to do this task - a task which does benefit a community, albeit a rather small one
i would imagine that german and chinese translations will also appear quite soon - however this again will be done voluntarily, and not by someone ordering someone else to do it
i would also imagine that yr use of th word 'silly' is offensive to th person who did th catalan translation and who is providing real benefit to a section of th community however insignificant you consider it to be - perhaps you might like to contribute yrself rather than simply being irritatingly critical of work that has been voluntarily performed.