I know, I must be getting old. But I still think the point is valid and yes, the problem repeats itself, but civilization builds on the past and the richness of civilization rests in the minds of the living.
If people of a generation throw off their links with their ancestors (if their history has in it anything to be proud of), then they are are devaluing themselves by taking on a lesser alternative. Existential subjectivism, which this is the practice of (the "so what, who cares, I make up my own reality" approach), results in people who are culturally adrift. They stand to lose a lot by being conquered (and inevitably exploited) by an outside culture - the Australian Aborigines are a good example.
Ah yes, the idealized past argument. Because we all know that these are new problems and people a generation ago were perfect beings who never gave into being selfish and shallow, etc.
It may still be true, despite what you say.
Saying the past was better isn't always incorrect, because in some ways, it was better. Of course in other ways the present is better. But when it comes to cultural wealth then for a country to lose its original language, music, diet, religion, etc., is a sad thing for anyone who enjoyed these things.
Modernism is easily the cause of as many problems as its proponents claim it solves. I'm not talking about scientific progress here, but the sausage-machining of the artistic sphere of people's lives.
You say this like it's a bad thing. It depends on whether people value their culture or not.
Also about 50% television programming and some music does not equal culture.
I never said the original culture was replaced. Rather, a vacuum is left and we find country after country with a youth that has become hedonistic, shallow, selfish, consumerist and unhappy.
But that's not a bad thing if you want to make money from those people. They make great customers.
All it takes is one new generation to grow up behind these 'iron curtains' and the governments have effectively indoctrinated an entire country with the ideals of a select few. All it takes is one generation to grow up exposed to the US media machine and we have a country effectively devoid of any of its original culture. The sword has two edges.
I felt that the poster was using sarcasm to state that a Catholic's prayers for an individual precluded them from hating the individual, and in fact provided direct evidence to the contrary. I was simply pointing out that it was bullshit. You cannot openly state to an individual that they will "roast in hell" for all eternity and then fervently "pray" to your god that they will see the "light" and conform to your traditions and values AND then say that the act of prayer eliminates all the negative connotations of your speech. It does not work that way.
I know what you're saying, but the problem is you can't really criminalize something on that basis (well you can and people have but it wouldn't be a just law). If someone says you will go to hell, then they are threatening you with something for which you cannot demonstrate material damages in this life. But if someone says "my friends will burn your house down" then you have something you can bring before a judge.
If someone "hates" or has negative connotations in what they say, it's still absurd to criminalize that behaviour, wrongful as it may be.
But if someone spits in your face, shouts aggressively at you or stands in your way as you walk towards the door of your workplace, then that's assault and you can bring it before a judge.
In the abortion debate, for example, some of the protesters committed real criminal acts and among their groups they had documentation which justified and encouraged damage to property (using secondary-effect moral reasoning to justify it). This is conspiracy and you can bring it before a judge.
can you respond to my statement and make a little more sense? Ok, I apologize if it wasn't an adequate response.
I hope you can understand that when certain religions preach that you are a bad person, that you will be forever in pain and suffering, that it is hurtful and very easily felt as hate by such people.
Okay, let me take another, more obvious example. It's 1950. The world pretty much universally criminalizes homosexuality and the psychiatric community classifies homosexuality among the paraphilias and considers it a treatable medical illness.
Most people hated homosexuals pretty much universally at that time. Christianity at that time held homosexual acts as morally disordered (not homosexuality itself, if you read the fineprint.. but that's hardly important as you know).
Come the 1970's and the psychiatric community reviews its disease classifications and homosexuality is no-longer a medical illness. Just another (but extremely important) step of the sexual revolution.
But whenever an authoritative body (a religion/government/teacher/rock star) declares something to be disordered, be it terrorism, communism, homosexuality, having HIV, having back pain, then the automatic response of the dumb, unthinking, unwashed masses is to hate.
Some people think homosexuality is wrong, others don't. Same with everything else. Who cares , for example, if people want Saturdays, Sundays or Thursdays or whatever freakin' day as their holy day? As long as there are opinions about it there will be stupid people hating each other over it.
Islam probably considers me an infidel and that if I don't get slaughtered by someone for it in this life, I'll not get paradise anyway so nyer. So I suppose I feel hated by muslims (the ones I haven't met any way). When I go to the sports stadium the people with vertical striped shirts throw beer cans and tomatoes at the horizontal striped shirts every time a free kick is awarded against their team. I suppose that's hatred too.
None of it's right. But you can't just ban football because people believing in it hate, or islam, or medicine, or the word 'head-lice', and so on. It doesn't fix anything.
I remember many times when I was hated for something I did or believed was the right thing for me to do. But so what? "They can piss off" is what I said to myself and went to the pub and had a beer with my mates. If they ever threatened me then I used the law. That's what it's for.
I hope you can understand that when certain religions preach that you are a bad person, that you will be forever in pain and suffering, that it is hurtful and very easily felt as hate by such people. I don't doubt that people hate. Most people hate and most people are very good at it. If you tell kids that head lice is bad, they will start hating kids with head lice. What can be done about that? It's no different with adults, most of whom have not matured beyond childhood.
If Sweden was really serious about "hate speech", they'd have to outlaw Islam and Catholicism as they are currently being practiced, because those religions are intrinsically in conflict with hate speech laws.
Yeah, how dare those nasty Catholics pray for other religions! They must hate people if they pray for them.
If you leak it, not only do it on the sly in a manner that can't be traced to you (or you'll probably never be hired in a position of trust again!) but have an authentication method that can PROVE it's you in case the Feds come looking and you need to roll over. What if it's not the feds but some other less recognizable but similarly irresistible force? If you leave an authentication tag of some sort then they will take the slipper and shove it on everyone's feet until it fits. Better not to leave it there in the first place.
I can say "God, in his infinite wisdom, set the universe in motion knowing in his infinite knowledge that the big bang would surely lead to evolution on Earth and that that would produce the modern world".
Except that there might not have been a big bang. Recent findings are already casting some doubt on that one.
Similarly, free will is the ghost in the machine. It cannot be proven or disproven.
Well, when the day comes when criminals receive brain implanted electrodes to prevent impulsive/criminal behaviours or those with 'personality disorders' have those modified in a similar way.
In the Sistine Chapel painting depicting Man and God - the bent finger one - there is already a hint that the will of man is little more than the slight movement of a finger.
Yes, free will is the 'ghost in the machine' as you say, but people are fools if they think it's any more than that. If science is threatening a religious person's beliefs, then the person's religious beliefs are the problem, not science. If people don't believe in the dogged and humble pursuit of truth, before anything else, then all that will result is the perfection of hypocrisy.
Maybe free will enters at the last moment, allowing a person to override an unpalatable subconscious decision. Maybe, but it's far more likely that decision modification at the last moment is due to something smaller and less easy to detect. Truly free will (in the philosophical sense) has to depend on something that cannot be physically manipulated (and isn't something that science can prove the existence of). Basically, free will is a religious concept, and a threatened one. Science has not left many shadows here.
not web servers that are generally patched and monitored by knowledgeable administrators. Total coincidence that knowledgeable administrators aren't installing a microsoft product for their server software. Nothing to do with Linux being in any way superior with regard to security, right?
Windows is a program which inserts code into the master boot record, often before the user has broken open the packaging of their new computer, resulting in loading of malicious code at power-on which causes the computer to phone-home and results in the gradual loss of available disk space on the affected drive. Multiple other vulnerabilities have also been reported.
Various removal tools are available free of charge. This is considered a critical and urgent update.
Botany Bay is to be used to house all juveniles who fail to pay the double licenses. But only when referring to formatting shit music. Like, when you have hard-drive full of shit music, you might just decide to format it instead of backing it up, since you never listen to the crud any more.
Now, most people YOU know would probably know how to get warez for free. Most people I know know how to get warez for free, but most PEOPLE don't.
Actually, on the contrary, most other people get their unpaid-for stuff from work, or borrowing CD's off friends, or they just go to the shop and buy it. Yes, they don't use torrents or FTP or other online tools. OTOH I don't need to pirate any software because everything I do has an open-source tool available for it, be it programming, word processing, finances, drawing, music playback, sound recording, 5-minute games, or educating the kids.
And if terrorists are making money from selling pirated software, then the 'terrorists' are zit-covered teenagets at swap-meets, or short, smiling, hungry-looking peddlers at down-town asian markets with their crate of CD's selling obviously incorrectly labelled software that they burnt at home.
But this is redundant because we knew all this well before this thread started.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey claims that terrorists sell pirated software as a way to finance their operations Who needs to sell pirated software when you can get it for free? And what does the government say to the claims that its secretive services launder money and participate in the illegal drug trade to.. er.. spread freedom and er.. prosperity and.. what's the other one? Democracy, that's right. You launder money and poison my kids, and call everybody a criminal and terrorist, and I get to vote for you - that's sweet. Nawww, not a shred of truth in it Mommy!
A DVD with the Gutsy Gibbon release of Ubuntu in a directly bootable form is included with the book. Wow, absolutely free! And let me guess, the user is greeted by a friendly looking free steak-knives wallpaper on logging in?
I know this will spark yet another flame war, but has anyone considered that the RIAA is making things unavailable by jacking prices to unreasonable levels? I mean, the market for music is HUGE, absolutely massive, and the costs of distribution are falling. It probably costs more to fart these days. If music was cheap like water, as it should be then nobody would spend their bandwidth stealing it.
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I know, I must be getting old. But I still think the point is valid and yes, the problem repeats itself, but civilization builds on the past and the richness of civilization rests in the minds of the living.
If people of a generation throw off their links with their ancestors (if their history has in it anything to be proud of), then they are are devaluing themselves by taking on a lesser alternative. Existential subjectivism, which this is the practice of (the "so what, who cares, I make up my own reality" approach), results in people who are culturally adrift. They stand to lose a lot by being conquered (and inevitably exploited) by an outside culture - the Australian Aborigines are a good example.
It may still be true, despite what you say.
Saying the past was better isn't always incorrect, because in some ways, it was better. Of course in other ways the present is better. But when it comes to cultural wealth then for a country to lose its original language, music, diet, religion, etc., is a sad thing for anyone who enjoyed these things.
Modernism is easily the cause of as many problems as its proponents claim it solves. I'm not talking about scientific progress here, but the sausage-machining of the artistic sphere of people's lives.
I never said the original culture was replaced. Rather, a vacuum is left and we find country after country with a youth that has become hedonistic, shallow, selfish, consumerist and unhappy.
But that's not a bad thing if you want to make money from those people. They make great customers.
TELEPHONE TRANSCRIPT:
Victim: Burglars have been at my house and it's been ransacked and my five year old daughter has been kidnapped!
Police officer: Hold on, how do you spell your name again *tap tap tap tap* .. oh wait, Google's working now.. whew!...
Victim: There's blood on the kitchen floor and..
Police officer: Yeah yeah.. whatever.. oh, I found pictures of your daughter, she was on facebook.
Victim: Facebook?
Police officer: But I'm afraid we have no leads. She hasn't used her facebook account for a while.. oh well, sorry about that.
Victim: So when am I going to see a police officer?
Police officer: Well you can chat to me online.. do you have Yahoo?
*CLICK*
I know what you're saying, but the problem is you can't really criminalize something on that basis (well you can and people have but it wouldn't be a just law). If someone says you will go to hell, then they are threatening you with something for which you cannot demonstrate material damages in this life. But if someone says "my friends will burn your house down" then you have something you can bring before a judge.
If someone "hates" or has negative connotations in what they say, it's still absurd to criminalize that behaviour, wrongful as it may be.
But if someone spits in your face, shouts aggressively at you or stands in your way as you walk towards the door of your workplace, then that's assault and you can bring it before a judge.
In the abortion debate, for example, some of the protesters committed real criminal acts and among their groups they had documentation which justified and encouraged damage to property (using secondary-effect moral reasoning to justify it). This is conspiracy and you can bring it before a judge.
Okay, let me take another, more obvious example. It's 1950. The world pretty much universally criminalizes homosexuality and the psychiatric community classifies homosexuality among the paraphilias and considers it a treatable medical illness.
Most people hated homosexuals pretty much universally at that time. Christianity at that time held homosexual acts as morally disordered (not homosexuality itself, if you read the fineprint.. but that's hardly important as you know).
Come the 1970's and the psychiatric community reviews its disease classifications and homosexuality is no-longer a medical illness. Just another (but extremely important) step of the sexual revolution.
But whenever an authoritative body (a religion/government/teacher/rock star) declares something to be disordered, be it terrorism, communism, homosexuality, having HIV, having back pain, then the automatic response of the dumb, unthinking, unwashed masses is to hate.
Some people think homosexuality is wrong, others don't. Same with everything else. Who cares , for example, if people want Saturdays, Sundays or Thursdays or whatever freakin' day as their holy day? As long as there are opinions about it there will be stupid people hating each other over it.
Islam probably considers me an infidel and that if I don't get slaughtered by someone for it in this life, I'll not get paradise anyway so nyer. So I suppose I feel hated by muslims (the ones I haven't met any way). When I go to the sports stadium the people with vertical striped shirts throw beer cans and tomatoes at the horizontal striped shirts every time a free kick is awarded against their team. I suppose that's hatred too.
None of it's right. But you can't just ban football because people believing in it hate, or islam, or medicine, or the word 'head-lice', and so on. It doesn't fix anything.
I remember many times when I was hated for something I did or believed was the right thing for me to do. But so what? "They can piss off" is what I said to myself and went to the pub and had a beer with my mates. If they ever threatened me then I used the law. That's what it's for.
Yeah, how dare those nasty Catholics pray for other religions! They must hate people if they pray for them.
Except that there might not have been a big bang. Recent findings are already casting some doubt on that one.
Similarly, free will is the ghost in the machine. It cannot be proven or disproven.Well, when the day comes when criminals receive brain implanted electrodes to prevent impulsive/criminal behaviours or those with 'personality disorders' have those modified in a similar way.
In the Sistine Chapel painting depicting Man and God - the bent finger one - there is already a hint that the will of man is little more than the slight movement of a finger.
Yes, free will is the 'ghost in the machine' as you say, but people are fools if they think it's any more than that. If science is threatening a religious person's beliefs, then the person's religious beliefs are the problem, not science. If people don't believe in the dogged and humble pursuit of truth, before anything else, then all that will result is the perfection of hypocrisy.
It seems that in addition to death and taxes that copyright infringement is the third of the certainties everyone will encounter during their lives.
This is really turning into a war between the greedy and the needy.
Windows is a program which inserts code into the master boot record, often before the user has broken open the packaging of their new computer, resulting in loading of malicious code at power-on which causes the computer to phone-home and results in the gradual loss of available disk space on the affected drive. Multiple other vulnerabilities have also been reported.
Various removal tools are available free of charge. This is considered a critical and urgent update.
Actually, on the contrary, most other people get their unpaid-for stuff from work, or borrowing CD's off friends, or they just go to the shop and buy it. Yes, they don't use torrents or FTP or other online tools. OTOH I don't need to pirate any software because everything I do has an open-source tool available for it, be it programming, word processing, finances, drawing, music playback, sound recording, 5-minute games, or educating the kids.
And if terrorists are making money from selling pirated software, then the 'terrorists' are zit-covered teenagets at swap-meets, or short, smiling, hungry-looking peddlers at down-town asian markets with their crate of CD's selling obviously incorrectly labelled software that they burnt at home.
But this is redundant because we knew all this well before this thread started.
Like the burning of the Reichstag, 9/11 (yeah, Saddam did it and so did you, for all we know), and a hundred other false flags and set-ups.
"In politics, nothing happens by accident." - Roosevelt
I know this will spark yet another flame war, but has anyone considered that the RIAA is making things unavailable by jacking prices to unreasonable levels? I mean, the market for music is HUGE, absolutely massive, and the costs of distribution are falling. It probably costs more to fart these days. If music was cheap like water, as it should be then nobody would spend their bandwidth stealing it.