Well, he's only partly wrong, IMO the part that he's wrong about is that people are peaceful. Many are, but many aren't.
The purpose of government is to protect the rights of its citizens, be it from foreign powers or from each other. Yes, laws are enforced by use of force, and the fact that the government has the power to enforce them which generally prevents people from abusing each other in one way or another (though as is self-evident, this isn't a deterrent if the person thinks they can get away with it).
It's a mistake to suggest that governments don't govern with the use of force at least (if not violence / aggression), but it's an even bigger mistake to think that people would live peacefully together if governments were taken away.
Honestly, I don't know why private mode isn't the default mode on most browsers. Who wants websites to be able to leave things on your computer just because you've clicked on them? News sites (slashdot included) are pretty bad at this - visit one site and you have cookies from dozens of domains. I would prefer it if I were asked if the browser would like to keep the cookies (yes I know you can set browsers up to clear cookies when you exit but this isn't default behaviour and it's a pain to make a persistent white-list. Easier if the browser were to ask "You've just logged in to - would you like your login to persist?" with a "don't ask again" option too.)
Can something be inherently right? This I think depends largely on your viewpoint. We can't be too quick to cast aspersions at what has been looked at as right and wrong in previous generations or by societies different than the one we are in. The fact that gay marriage (for example) has only recently become legal while for centuries was illegal suggests that it's not exactly self-evident that it is right, even though today it is popularly believed to be so.
Governments I think can and should collect certain data about citizens. Births, marriages, deaths, ownership of land or other assets. They don't need to spy to the extent that Google or Facebook does though. (That being said, many of them want to.)
The Porsches without aircon are for 'performance' reasons, they're lightened track versions of standard cars which do have aircon as standard. Most performance car makers do some models like that. Basically they take a lot of stuff away (radio, door handles, floor mats) and charge more for it.
I think it's silly to do this because I'm pretty sure the money that these music companies are making has increased more due to the existence of iPods and other such devices than it has decreased from the potential "losses" that may arise from the sharing of copyrighted music, so it's a win-win situation but these companies seem to want to turn it into a situation where they're the only winners.
No silly, if you run Ubuntu from a LiveCD you have the ability to test it without installing it and if you like it you can just click on the "Install" button and it will install, you don't even need to reboot or get a different CD or anything.
If you plan on using it as a LiveCD (which I wouldn't do, it's a bit slow that way) then you can always store your data on a pen-drive or something, thus you can even run a computer with no HDD at all.
But don't make any claims like "Ubuntu can only boot from a CD" or "It's not as powerful as Vista" because you're wrong on both counts.
I don't think the climate change did it all by itself. Perhaps it would have gotten warmer anyway in the past few decades, perhaps not, but there's no denying that us burning fossil fuels at the incredible rate that we do coupled with the large-scale deforestation taking place all over the world has no effect whatsoever.
The Ozone layer isn't destroying itself, and nor is respiration alone responsible for the large increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Perhaps I may ask what you are qualified as, KFG? It would seem that you know a considerable amount more about climate change than the world's collective climatologists...
In any case, whether or not Global Warming is a threat or even a reality, getting angry and swearing at people doesn't help at all, but cleaning up our lifestyles and making an effort to preserve the environment will help.
Sometimes the climate warms because that's what the climate does.
That's true, and while the evidence is hardly conclusive either way, there's no reason to censor either party just for saying so.
Global warming or no, the fact remains that we do dump a lot of rubbish in the air, which may not affect the temperature of the planet, but it is affecting the lungs of its inhabitants. Global warming is just a theoretical "side effect" of all this pollution.
So if we look at the root of the problem, (i.e. stop all the pollution) then if the "Global Warming" goes away, then we'll know that we caused it, whereas if it doesn't then it's a pretty good indication that we had nothing to do with it and nature is just taking its course as it usually does.
Surely, though, the proper solution wouldn't be to ruin the kid's life (heck, everyone does stupid things when they're 16) and put him in jail and mark him as a sex offender when it's obvious that things went much further than what he intended them to.
I think that the solution should be to crack down on the child porn websites and writers of this malware and stuff, sending their victims (even if not entirely innocent) to prison is just silly.
It's sad that a great piece of technology like a computer can be used in such a harmful way, causing people to fear them. We can laugh and make "there be dragons" jokes, but in the end we have people that don't want computers because they bring porn to the children. The real criminals here are those that ruin other people's lives, posessions, relationships etc. to cover their own evil deeds and satisfy their own greed, lust, whatever.
As long as we're talking about human languages on Slashdot for a change, let me give you my pitch: STUDY A LANGUAGE.
I think you've touched on an important point there, it's the extra mental activity that increases the brain's longevity, and studying (or even learning on a conversational level) an extra language really streches the brain's proverbial muscles, speaking as a bi-lingual myself. It requitres an increase of one's mental capacities, one eventually learns to think in another language rather than deciding what you want to say in English and translating it before speaking. It's the exercise that helps.
Note the article said that being bi-lingual fends off dementia, not death, as was implied in a post somewhere above this one. Thus not working as hard because of a pay increase due to an extra language has nothing to do with it, and that's totally ignoring the fact that we generally associate working harder with increased longevity (although increased job stress would counter this out).
Unless you're buying a Maybach or Rolls, you can't really say, "Excuse me, but could you make the front seats a slightly lighter shade of beige?"
-b.
With most modern cars you do get a fair amount of customization options (admittedly, mostly on the more expensive options), but since we're putting up houses quickly we might as well make them cheap. If the houses are all basically the same with some options (this sort of scheme works well to provide low-cost housing close to where I live) then costs would be further reduced.
Alternatively, if you're not satisfied with the options of wallpaper that you are presented with, you could opt for a house without wallpaper and put your own in.
I wouldn't yet trust a robot to place fixtures and
wallpaper. I tend to disagree with you there, I wouldn't trust most humans with things like wallpaper, and the fittings are a debatable point. If the robots could be programmed well enough, then they could speed things up significantly, especially if paint were used instead of wallpaper (I actually prefer paint), consider the use of robots in the automotive industry, the precision with which they paint the cars and do the fittings and stuff.
Couldn't this technology be applied to the construction of houses?
Another alternative would be to incorporate easily accessable gaps in the design of the house to install plumbing and electrical systems after the building is completed. This would also make maintenance and repair of the systems easier.
It should be noted that it is far easier for the average home / work user to use Firefox instead of IE than it is for said user to switch completely to a Free Software operating system such as GNU/Linux or BSD.
To contribute to the original question's purposes, here is a little of my history:
My first PC was a Pentium and ran Windows 95 and Office 97 (I didn't know any better at the time...) I was about 12 at the time, I think.
I hated Microsoft then because their stuff just didn't work. Did anyone ever try setting up a LAN with Win95?
I heard about a mystical OS called UNIX from my father, an old hand in the business, but forced into the Windows world by his work.
I then progressed to a 750MHz Duron pc, and win2k and subsequently a processor and memory upgrade and WinXP. The OS got a little better but still annoyed me sometimes. I didn't quite hate microsoft then, I thought they were improving...
I got good marks in my last year of school and my father bought me a new PC (pentium 640 with 1gb RAM) so I decided to try something new on it, I wasn't really gaming anymore, so nothing tied me to Windows. I got hold of a copy of Mandrake 10.1 from a friend and I was hooked. I loved this new Linux OS... It never BSOD'd! I had a few troubles configuring mandrake, being a new environment, but I learned, and progressed through distros such as Fedora Core 5, Slackware 10.2 and finally Gentoo. Throughout this time I learned of the concept of Free Software, And then I hated Microsoft for its anti-competitive business practises and its restrictive EULA's.
Throughout this time I noticed that after almost a year I had gone without having to upgrade my computer (except for the addition or a DVD+RW drive) and then I hated Microsoft for their products being so increasingly resource and upgrade hungry.
Watching the progress of the technological world while using GNU/Linux I hated Microsoft more for its uncompetetive business practises than ever before and I cheered Google at every step for being brave enough to stand up to the giant...
Then I realised that it's a waste of time to hate Microsoft. I don't hate them anymore. They may be a company run by money / power hungry dictators, but it's a far more constructive use of energy to try to build up the F/OSS world than to spend your days hating Microsoft. I simply choose not to use their products (I don't use a computer at work, so I'm lucky enough not to be forced to...)
That's why I used to hate Microsoft, though, I think I went through most of the usual reasons at some stage or other.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, he's only partly wrong, IMO the part that he's wrong about is that people are peaceful. Many are, but many aren't.
The purpose of government is to protect the rights of its citizens, be it from foreign powers or from each other. Yes, laws are enforced by use of force, and the fact that the government has the power to enforce them which generally prevents people from abusing each other in one way or another (though as is self-evident, this isn't a deterrent if the person thinks they can get away with it).
It's a mistake to suggest that governments don't govern with the use of force at least (if not violence / aggression), but it's an even bigger mistake to think that people would live peacefully together if governments were taken away.
Honestly, I don't know why private mode isn't the default mode on most browsers. Who wants websites to be able to leave things on your computer just because you've clicked on them? News sites (slashdot included) are pretty bad at this - visit one site and you have cookies from dozens of domains. I would prefer it if I were asked if the browser would like to keep the cookies (yes I know you can set browsers up to clear cookies when you exit but this isn't default behaviour and it's a pain to make a persistent white-list. Easier if the browser were to ask "You've just logged in to - would you like your login to persist?" with a "don't ask again" option too.)
Can something be inherently right? This I think depends largely on your viewpoint. We can't be too quick to cast aspersions at what has been looked at as right and wrong in previous generations or by societies different than the one we are in. The fact that gay marriage (for example) has only recently become legal while for centuries was illegal suggests that it's not exactly self-evident that it is right, even though today it is popularly believed to be so.
Governments I think can and should collect certain data about citizens. Births, marriages, deaths, ownership of land or other assets. They don't need to spy to the extent that Google or Facebook does though. (That being said, many of them want to.)
We have to allow Islam to do the same.
Again, in defence of the Mormons, they figured these things out within 100 years or so. Islam has been around since... around 610AD IIRC?
Sort of a weak reverse slashdotting... ?
The Porsches without aircon are for 'performance' reasons, they're lightened track versions of standard cars which do have aircon as standard. Most performance car makers do some models like that. Basically they take a lot of stuff away (radio, door handles, floor mats) and charge more for it.
https://xkcd.com/927/
I think it's silly to do this because I'm pretty sure the money that these music companies are making has increased more due to the existence of iPods and other such devices than it has decreased from the potential "losses" that may arise from the sharing of copyrighted music, so it's a win-win situation but these companies seem to want to turn it into a situation where they're the only winners.
No silly, if you run Ubuntu from a LiveCD you have the ability to test it without installing it and if you like it you can just click on the "Install" button and it will install, you don't even need to reboot or get a different CD or anything. If you plan on using it as a LiveCD (which I wouldn't do, it's a bit slow that way) then you can always store your data on a pen-drive or something, thus you can even run a computer with no HDD at all. But don't make any claims like "Ubuntu can only boot from a CD" or "It's not as powerful as Vista" because you're wrong on both counts.
Suit yourself. I can see that arguing with you is just wasting energy, so I'm not going to bother anymore.
I don't think the climate change did it all by itself. Perhaps it would have gotten warmer anyway in the past few decades, perhaps not, but there's no denying that us burning fossil fuels at the incredible rate that we do coupled with the large-scale deforestation taking place all over the world has no effect whatsoever.
The Ozone layer isn't destroying itself, and nor is respiration alone responsible for the large increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Perhaps I may ask what you are qualified as, KFG? It would seem that you know a considerable amount more about climate change than the world's collective climatologists...
In any case, whether or not Global Warming is a threat or even a reality, getting angry and swearing at people doesn't help at all, but cleaning up our lifestyles and making an effort to preserve the environment will help.
That's true, and while the evidence is hardly conclusive either way, there's no reason to censor either party just for saying so.
Global warming or no, the fact remains that we do dump a lot of rubbish in the air, which may not affect the temperature of the planet, but it is affecting the lungs of its inhabitants. Global warming is just a theoretical "side effect" of all this pollution.
So if we look at the root of the problem, (i.e. stop all the pollution) then if the "Global Warming" goes away, then we'll know that we caused it, whereas if it doesn't then it's a pretty good indication that we had nothing to do with it and nature is just taking its course as it usually does.
Surely, though, the proper solution wouldn't be to ruin the kid's life (heck, everyone does stupid things when they're 16) and put him in jail and mark him as a sex offender when it's obvious that things went much further than what he intended them to.
I think that the solution should be to crack down on the child porn websites and writers of this malware and stuff, sending their victims (even if not entirely innocent) to prison is just silly.
It's sad that a great piece of technology like a computer can be used in such a harmful way, causing people to fear them. We can laugh and make "there be dragons" jokes, but in the end we have people that don't want computers because they bring porn to the children. The real criminals here are those that ruin other people's lives, posessions, relationships etc. to cover their own evil deeds and satisfy their own greed, lust, whatever.
I think you've touched on an important point there, it's the extra mental activity that increases the brain's longevity, and studying (or even learning on a conversational level) an extra language really streches the brain's proverbial muscles, speaking as a bi-lingual myself. It requitres an increase of one's mental capacities, one eventually learns to think in another language rather than deciding what you want to say in English and translating it before speaking. It's the exercise that helps.
Note the article said that being bi-lingual fends off dementia, not death, as was implied in a post somewhere above this one. Thus not working as hard because of a pay increase due to an extra language has nothing to do with it, and that's totally ignoring the fact that we generally associate working harder with increased longevity (although increased job stress would counter this out).
-b.
With most modern cars you do get a fair amount of customization options (admittedly, mostly on the more expensive options), but since we're putting up houses quickly we might as well make them cheap. If the houses are all basically the same with some options (this sort of scheme works well to provide low-cost housing close to where I live) then costs would be further reduced. Alternatively, if you're not satisfied with the options of wallpaper that you are presented with, you could opt for a house without wallpaper and put your own in.Another alternative would be to incorporate easily accessable gaps in the design of the house to install plumbing and electrical systems after the building is completed. This would also make maintenance and repair of the systems easier.
It should be noted that it is far easier for the average home / work user to use Firefox instead of IE than it is for said user to switch completely to a Free Software operating system such as GNU/Linux or BSD.
To contribute to the original question's purposes, here is a little of my history:
My first PC was a Pentium and ran Windows 95 and Office 97 (I didn't know any better at the time...) I was about 12 at the time, I think. I hated Microsoft then because their stuff just didn't work. Did anyone ever try setting up a LAN with Win95?
I heard about a mystical OS called UNIX from my father, an old hand in the business, but forced into the Windows world by his work.
I then progressed to a 750MHz Duron pc, and win2k and subsequently a processor and memory upgrade and WinXP. The OS got a little better but still annoyed me sometimes. I didn't quite hate microsoft then, I thought they were improving...
I got good marks in my last year of school and my father bought me a new PC (pentium 640 with 1gb RAM) so I decided to try something new on it, I wasn't really gaming anymore, so nothing tied me to Windows. I got hold of a copy of Mandrake 10.1 from a friend and I was hooked. I loved this new Linux OS... It never BSOD'd! I had a few troubles configuring mandrake, being a new environment, but I learned, and progressed through distros such as Fedora Core 5, Slackware 10.2 and finally Gentoo. Throughout this time I learned of the concept of Free Software, And then I hated Microsoft for its anti-competitive business practises and its restrictive EULA's.
Throughout this time I noticed that after almost a year I had gone without having to upgrade my computer (except for the addition or a DVD+RW drive) and then I hated Microsoft for their products being so increasingly resource and upgrade hungry.
Watching the progress of the technological world while using GNU/Linux I hated Microsoft more for its uncompetetive business practises than ever before and I cheered Google at every step for being brave enough to stand up to the giant...
Then I realised that it's a waste of time to hate Microsoft. I don't hate them anymore. They may be a company run by money / power hungry dictators, but it's a far more constructive use of energy to try to build up the F/OSS world than to spend your days hating Microsoft. I simply choose not to use their products (I don't use a computer at work, so I'm lucky enough not to be forced to...)
That's why I used to hate Microsoft, though, I think I went through most of the usual reasons at some stage or other.