It is axiomatic to rational thought that assertions must be supported. You can't prove everything, but neither can you simply take everything for granted (or even most things). So unless you can provide a compelling reason why we should treat it as an axiom that all people have bias (known or unknown), you have no ground to stand on.
Except, as the poster I responded to noted, there's not discrimination going on, and women are not expressly rejected. Furthermore, some women are quite at ease with the status quo, so it isn't shutting women out by doing something all women oppose. It is that a certain subset of women disapproves of the behavior under discussion. Women are welcome to not enjoy certain behavior, but they have no reasonable expectation that others should change their behavior to accommodate them.
In all of these discussions, the assumption is implicit that a group (whatever group is under discussion, programmers in this case) should change their behavior because others don't like it and are pushed away from the activity by it. But why? Presumably those who are there now are there because they enjoy that environment. If you change it so that someone else is more comfortable with it, then that destroys the enjoyment of those who were there to begin with. So why, exactly, is it imperative that things be as bland and unoffensive as possible? What makes the outsiders' wishes more important than those of the insiders?
I don't have a particular need to say it. Hell, considering I don't care who is offended on the internet, I'd say it here (if nowhere else) should I have a particular desire to. It is the double standard itself that bothers me; I hate double standards in general.
I use the term "black" and don't care who is offended. It's a neutral, descriptive term. At worst, it suffers from being inaccurate (since I've never seen a person with truly black skin). Taking offense to it is, in my opinion, like being offended when a doctor says "penis" (because people make penis jokes all the time, so that should pollute the word forever!).
Remember all that talk about how you have unlimited potential? Yeah, it's all bullshit.
That talk should be given to every child, not those of a particular race. Cause let me tell you, no matter how hard I work I'm never going to be the president of the US. There are things that are out of my reach, and were always out of my reach.
That starts out somewhat coherent and reasonable, and just goes off the deep end. I can't say I feel sorry, at all, for this guy getting fired. He did have one good point, though:
Among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black, and whom I shall refer to as black. The cumbersome (and MLK-noncompliant) term “African-American” seems to be in decline, thank goodness. “Colored” and “Negro” are archaisms. What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks.
While it's dangerous to make generalizations across an entire section of the population, especially one that is only defined by a superficial characteristic (I imagine that there are quite a few black people who are seriously offended by the use of the word "nigger" even if it is uttered by another black person), it seems to be largely the social norm that the word is OK to use if you're black, and offensive if you're not. That's a bullshit standard, and it bothers me. Either it's OK for everyone, or it's OK for no one.
Also, he's absolutely right about "African-American" being a stupid term that needs to die. Not only does it fail to recognize that many people feel no particular connection to their ancestry, African or otherwise, but it assumes that every person with dark skin is of African descent. I went to college with a (black) dude who was from Jamaica. Should he have been called "African-American", even though he was neither African, nor American? Stupid.
No, you don't. The fact that people do this doesn't mean they have a right.
I think lack of civility in society is the problem - exemplified by the willingness of one particular segment of society to turn people away from medical care.
Thinking that people's welfare is not the state's concern is not some great act of incivility. You exemplify the problem I'm arguing against with this statement, because you could examine the issue objectively, but you choose to demonize those you disagree with instead.
I'll settle for working to not let people who think it's ok to turn the sick away from the hospital doors get into positions of power.
Which you can do in a perfectly civil manner. Your goal and my goal are not mutually exclusive; stop treating them as such.
You go ahead with your agenda of trying to make us all be civil to each other, which hasn't worked in, oh, all of recorded human history.
That's the worst excuse I've ever heard. That's like saying we should excuse murder because people have been murdering each other since the dawn of time. Bad behavior is unacceptable no matter how long it's been going on, or how deeply ingrained into human nature it is.
I mean, at some point civility goes out the fucking window.
No, it doesn't. Because if it does, you know what? You are part of the problem. To say nothing of the fact that there are lots of opinions that someone might offer as "justification" for their lack of civility which aren't racist, or bigoted, or otherwise indefensible. It's like how people who talk about abortion inevitably get into these shouting matches of "murdering babies is wrong" vs "women have rights, god damn it" (despite the fact that almost nobody, regardless of views on abortion, thinks that we should murder babies, or that women don't have a right to do as they please with their bodies).
There's no civility in politics because of the attitude you describe, coupled with the fact that damn near everyone thinks that views far enough opposed to theirs are completely out of whack. I'm sorry, but it doesn't justify a damn thing. If you throw civility out the window because you think someone's opinions are insane, or repulsive, you are at fault (in part) for the pile of shit that American politics has turned into. It's kind of like arguing that if your neighbor won't stop yelling curses at you, that you have the right to march over and beat him up. That just creates a mess where everyone is an asshole and needs to be thrown into jail until they get their respective heads screwed on the right direction. Which is pretty much what politics is these days.
The biggest thing making American politics so toxic is this sort of callousness.
No. That has nothing to do with it. The problem is not that people have such views, but how we deal with it. I frequently think that something someone says is insane, and profoundly wrong. I don't respond to it by exaggerating things and calling them an evil person. Most people, even if they're saying something which seems crazy, are doing so with good intentions at heart. What is making politics toxic is that nobody (or very few people) wants to act like a reasonable adult, and recognize this. They prefer to fling insane accusations that are almost entirely without merit.
It apparently matters to you whether people are accused of cheering when they turn someone away from the emergency room. What matters to me it's the fact that they think that turning someone away is acceptable.
Those two are not mutually exclusive. You can criticize someone's point of view while still insisting that civility be maintained.
It's hard not to read that as, if not cheering on the death of the uninsured, being more than a bit callous. Pardon me if I fail to make a distinction.
No, I will not. It is fair to call it callous. It is not fair to call it cheering on the death of the uninsured. Failing to make that distinction, and jumping to ridiculous hyperbole, is one of the biggest things making American politics so toxic.
No. Only a few genuine nutjobs actually "cheer on" the death of someone due to lack of insurance. There is a lot of argument that it's not society's responsibility to take care of them, and people saying things along the lines of "it's your fault and I don't have any sympathy", but that is in no way the same as actively celebrating such deaths.
Unless you're one of those sick fucking people that worship the dollar, cheer on the death of the uninsured, and/or pray to God for the death of all the gays, the United States is quickly becoming quite inhospitable.
Almost nobody does any of these things, even the Evil Right (TM) that you're referring to. Hyperbole like what you're using is a huge fucking problem in US politics these days, please don't perpetuate that crap.
Are you claiming that Googles official position is that boot loaders should be unencrypted? As far as I know no one from Google has made such an official statement.
Google's official position is that they don't dictate to hardware manufacturers. They have also said they believe in having open handsets, and the Nexus phones are proof of that.
2)Samsung sells tablets with unlocked boot loaders and then in the *same* update locks it and installs Google Video. They apparently go together.
No obvious connection. Two things happening at the same time does not constitute proof that one is related to the other.
3)An ASUS *official* says that the boot loader is encrypted to support Google DRM.
People say wrong things all the time, furthermore, the statement is measurably false as the Nexus devices (again) support the video store and have unlocked bootloaders. So it is clearly not a necessity to lock your bootloader for that. And even if we interpret his claim to mean that Google forced their hand, it's his word against Google's. It's every bit as likely that he's lying to divert negative attention as it is that he's telling the truth.
4)Motorola's new products since Google purchased them have locked boot loaders. They refuse to explain why they just refer people to a dead end support site.
False. Motorola was locking boot loaders LONG before the acquisition, since the Droid X at least.
5)Simple logic. Google stands to take in billions through Google Video and other store fronts via the Android Market. Google Video goes nowhere if Hollywood isn't satisfied the the DRM. Google lets manufacturers know that if they want support from Google they have to support Google DRM --which means LOCKED BOOT LOADERS.
Supposition.
6)Google has not and will not make an official statement regarding their position on the encryption of boot loaders. They will NEVER take a firm stance on this one way or the other. This, all by itself says everything you need to know.
This tells us nothing beyond that they have a reason to not comment on the issue. Any speculation as to what the reason is... is pure speculation.
You have nothing but tenuous connections and supposition. You have no real evidence whatsoever for your claims. In short, you have a conspiracy theory.
So on the one hand, we have Google's official position which is backed up by the few phones they have been directly involved in. On the other hand, we have someone who a) claims to be a Samsung employee but may not be, that is b) claiming Google makes them lock the bootloaders, probably with no proof whatsoever. And you think that is the more believable claim here!?!? You have seriously flawed judgement of trustworthiness if that is the case.
First, drivers being open-source has nothing to do with cost. Drivers can be provided free of charge, or for a fee, whether they are open source or not. So your argument really doesn't hold water.
Second, I didn't insult you. And if you're offended by the phrase "not giving a fuck", well... I don't give a fuck. I neither swore at you, nor insulted you, but apparently that's grounds to swear at and insult me. Interesting.
Google has enough to control to make sure all our boot loaders are encrypted...
Considering the Nexus devices, which have the highest level of Google involvement, come with unlocked boot loaders... your statement is patently false. The hardware manufacturer, nobody else, decides to pull that stunt.
NVidia will be feeling even more pressure as time goes on and people continue hating them for not following in kind with ATI.
How is nVidia going to "feel pressure" from the incredibly small percentage of their users that care about this issue? Even most geeks I know don't give half a fuck about drivers being open source. Your projection sounds like pure wishful thinking to me.
Or, you know. He could do his job, and crack down on the abuses regardless of what political consequences it has for him. I, for one, don't believe in giving our representatives a free pass on not doing their job just because they don't want to hurt their chances of re-election.
You're not only an apologist, you haven't bothered to read anything I've said. I have said (multiple times) that this is an industry-wide problem, and I simply cited the specific example of Apple. That does not imply that I don't recognize the problem anywhere else, it just means that I don't feel the need to qualify that in every single sentence I write.
The fact that Apple is making a token effort, and everyone else is not, does not mean Apple is doing anything worthwhile. A token effort is still meaningless. But you're so determined to recognize all this magical fairy good that Apple is doing that you don't understand that having 89% enforcement of an overly-long work week for underpaid workers isn't actual, substantial improvement. That's PR, and I guess I have to give Apple credit in a way... it certainly fooled you.
Oh, wow, they increased compliance of a 60-hour work week (which is pretty bad by itself) by 5%!/golfclap
Look, if you want to call that "real action" that's your problem. In the real world, that's not real action, but doing as little as you can get away with.
The main problem with jamming is that it is meant to "simulate" piloting such a mech from in the cockpit (and contestants aren't allowed a direct view of the battlefield, which they would have in such a situation even if they were jammed). If there was a way to selectively jam signals so that you could see, but any other signals were jammed, I imagine it would be allowed.
Slashdot Mirror
It is axiomatic to rational thought that assertions must be supported. You can't prove everything, but neither can you simply take everything for granted (or even most things). So unless you can provide a compelling reason why we should treat it as an axiom that all people have bias (known or unknown), you have no ground to stand on.
Except, as the poster I responded to noted, there's not discrimination going on, and women are not expressly rejected. Furthermore, some women are quite at ease with the status quo, so it isn't shutting women out by doing something all women oppose. It is that a certain subset of women disapproves of the behavior under discussion. Women are welcome to not enjoy certain behavior, but they have no reasonable expectation that others should change their behavior to accommodate them.
In all of these discussions, the assumption is implicit that a group (whatever group is under discussion, programmers in this case) should change their behavior because others don't like it and are pushed away from the activity by it. But why? Presumably those who are there now are there because they enjoy that environment. If you change it so that someone else is more comfortable with it, then that destroys the enjoyment of those who were there to begin with. So why, exactly, is it imperative that things be as bland and unoffensive as possible? What makes the outsiders' wishes more important than those of the insiders?
I think if you don't realize your bias then you are unwittingly probably part of the problem.
You're making the (unprovable, and thus invalid) assumption that everyone has bias, whether they know it or not. That's ridiculous.
I don't have a particular need to say it. Hell, considering I don't care who is offended on the internet, I'd say it here (if nowhere else) should I have a particular desire to. It is the double standard itself that bothers me; I hate double standards in general.
I use the term "black" and don't care who is offended. It's a neutral, descriptive term. At worst, it suffers from being inaccurate (since I've never seen a person with truly black skin). Taking offense to it is, in my opinion, like being offended when a doctor says "penis" (because people make penis jokes all the time, so that should pollute the word forever!).
Touche.
Remember all that talk about how you have unlimited potential? Yeah, it's all bullshit.
That talk should be given to every child, not those of a particular race. Cause let me tell you, no matter how hard I work I'm never going to be the president of the US. There are things that are out of my reach, and were always out of my reach.
Among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black, and whom I shall refer to as black. The cumbersome (and MLK-noncompliant) term “African-American” seems to be in decline, thank goodness. “Colored” and “Negro” are archaisms. What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks.
While it's dangerous to make generalizations across an entire section of the population, especially one that is only defined by a superficial characteristic (I imagine that there are quite a few black people who are seriously offended by the use of the word "nigger" even if it is uttered by another black person), it seems to be largely the social norm that the word is OK to use if you're black, and offensive if you're not. That's a bullshit standard, and it bothers me. Either it's OK for everyone, or it's OK for no one.
Also, he's absolutely right about "African-American" being a stupid term that needs to die. Not only does it fail to recognize that many people feel no particular connection to their ancestry, African or otherwise, but it assumes that every person with dark skin is of African descent. I went to college with a (black) dude who was from Jamaica. Should he have been called "African-American", even though he was neither African, nor American? Stupid.
You do. Look up "fighting words".
No, you don't. The fact that people do this doesn't mean they have a right.
I think lack of civility in society is the problem - exemplified by the willingness of one particular segment of society to turn people away from medical care.
Thinking that people's welfare is not the state's concern is not some great act of incivility. You exemplify the problem I'm arguing against with this statement, because you could examine the issue objectively, but you choose to demonize those you disagree with instead.
I'll settle for working to not let people who think it's ok to turn the sick away from the hospital doors get into positions of power.
Which you can do in a perfectly civil manner. Your goal and my goal are not mutually exclusive; stop treating them as such.
You go ahead with your agenda of trying to make us all be civil to each other, which hasn't worked in, oh, all of recorded human history.
That's the worst excuse I've ever heard. That's like saying we should excuse murder because people have been murdering each other since the dawn of time. Bad behavior is unacceptable no matter how long it's been going on, or how deeply ingrained into human nature it is.
I mean, at some point civility goes out the fucking window.
No, it doesn't. Because if it does, you know what? You are part of the problem. To say nothing of the fact that there are lots of opinions that someone might offer as "justification" for their lack of civility which aren't racist, or bigoted, or otherwise indefensible. It's like how people who talk about abortion inevitably get into these shouting matches of "murdering babies is wrong" vs "women have rights, god damn it" (despite the fact that almost nobody, regardless of views on abortion, thinks that we should murder babies, or that women don't have a right to do as they please with their bodies).
There's no civility in politics because of the attitude you describe, coupled with the fact that damn near everyone thinks that views far enough opposed to theirs are completely out of whack. I'm sorry, but it doesn't justify a damn thing. If you throw civility out the window because you think someone's opinions are insane, or repulsive, you are at fault (in part) for the pile of shit that American politics has turned into. It's kind of like arguing that if your neighbor won't stop yelling curses at you, that you have the right to march over and beat him up. That just creates a mess where everyone is an asshole and needs to be thrown into jail until they get their respective heads screwed on the right direction. Which is pretty much what politics is these days.
The biggest thing making American politics so toxic is this sort of callousness.
No. That has nothing to do with it. The problem is not that people have such views, but how we deal with it. I frequently think that something someone says is insane, and profoundly wrong. I don't respond to it by exaggerating things and calling them an evil person. Most people, even if they're saying something which seems crazy, are doing so with good intentions at heart. What is making politics toxic is that nobody (or very few people) wants to act like a reasonable adult, and recognize this. They prefer to fling insane accusations that are almost entirely without merit.
It apparently matters to you whether people are accused of cheering when they turn someone away from the emergency room. What matters to me it's the fact that they think that turning someone away is acceptable.
Those two are not mutually exclusive. You can criticize someone's point of view while still insisting that civility be maintained.
It's hard not to read that as, if not cheering on the death of the uninsured, being more than a bit callous. Pardon me if I fail to make a distinction.
No, I will not. It is fair to call it callous. It is not fair to call it cheering on the death of the uninsured. Failing to make that distinction, and jumping to ridiculous hyperbole, is one of the biggest things making American politics so toxic.
No. Only a few genuine nutjobs actually "cheer on" the death of someone due to lack of insurance. There is a lot of argument that it's not society's responsibility to take care of them, and people saying things along the lines of "it's your fault and I don't have any sympathy", but that is in no way the same as actively celebrating such deaths.
Unless you're one of those sick fucking people that worship the dollar, cheer on the death of the uninsured, and/or pray to God for the death of all the gays, the United States is quickly becoming quite inhospitable.
Almost nobody does any of these things, even the Evil Right (TM) that you're referring to. Hyperbole like what you're using is a huge fucking problem in US politics these days, please don't perpetuate that crap.
South Park nails it, as usual.
Are you claiming that Googles official position is that boot loaders should be unencrypted? As far as I know no one from Google has made such an official statement.
Google's official position is that they don't dictate to hardware manufacturers. They have also said they believe in having open handsets, and the Nexus phones are proof of that.
2)Samsung sells tablets with unlocked boot loaders and then in the *same* update locks it and installs Google Video. They apparently go together.
No obvious connection. Two things happening at the same time does not constitute proof that one is related to the other.
3)An ASUS *official* says that the boot loader is encrypted to support Google DRM.
People say wrong things all the time, furthermore, the statement is measurably false as the Nexus devices (again) support the video store and have unlocked bootloaders. So it is clearly not a necessity to lock your bootloader for that. And even if we interpret his claim to mean that Google forced their hand, it's his word against Google's. It's every bit as likely that he's lying to divert negative attention as it is that he's telling the truth.
4)Motorola's new products since Google purchased them have locked boot loaders. They refuse to explain why they just refer people to a dead end support site.
False. Motorola was locking boot loaders LONG before the acquisition, since the Droid X at least.
5)Simple logic. Google stands to take in billions through Google Video and other store fronts via the Android Market. Google Video goes nowhere if Hollywood isn't satisfied the the DRM. Google lets manufacturers know that if they want support from Google they have to support Google DRM --which means LOCKED BOOT LOADERS.
Supposition.
6)Google has not and will not make an official statement regarding their position on the encryption of boot loaders. They will NEVER take a firm stance on this one way or the other. This, all by itself says everything you need to know.
This tells us nothing beyond that they have a reason to not comment on the issue. Any speculation as to what the reason is... is pure speculation.
You have nothing but tenuous connections and supposition. You have no real evidence whatsoever for your claims. In short, you have a conspiracy theory.
So on the one hand, we have Google's official position which is backed up by the few phones they have been directly involved in. On the other hand, we have someone who a) claims to be a Samsung employee but may not be, that is b) claiming Google makes them lock the bootloaders, probably with no proof whatsoever. And you think that is the more believable claim here!?!? You have seriously flawed judgement of trustworthiness if that is the case.
First, drivers being open-source has nothing to do with cost. Drivers can be provided free of charge, or for a fee, whether they are open source or not. So your argument really doesn't hold water.
Second, I didn't insult you. And if you're offended by the phrase "not giving a fuck", well... I don't give a fuck. I neither swore at you, nor insulted you, but apparently that's grounds to swear at and insult me. Interesting.
Google has enough to control to make sure all our boot loaders are encrypted...
Considering the Nexus devices, which have the highest level of Google involvement, come with unlocked boot loaders... your statement is patently false. The hardware manufacturer, nobody else, decides to pull that stunt.
NVidia will be feeling even more pressure as time goes on and people continue hating them for not following in kind with ATI.
How is nVidia going to "feel pressure" from the incredibly small percentage of their users that care about this issue? Even most geeks I know don't give half a fuck about drivers being open source. Your projection sounds like pure wishful thinking to me.
Or, you know. He could do his job, and crack down on the abuses regardless of what political consequences it has for him. I, for one, don't believe in giving our representatives a free pass on not doing their job just because they don't want to hurt their chances of re-election.
You're not only an apologist, you haven't bothered to read anything I've said. I have said (multiple times) that this is an industry-wide problem, and I simply cited the specific example of Apple. That does not imply that I don't recognize the problem anywhere else, it just means that I don't feel the need to qualify that in every single sentence I write.
The fact that Apple is making a token effort, and everyone else is not, does not mean Apple is doing anything worthwhile. A token effort is still meaningless. But you're so determined to recognize all this magical fairy good that Apple is doing that you don't understand that having 89% enforcement of an overly-long work week for underpaid workers isn't actual, substantial improvement. That's PR, and I guess I have to give Apple credit in a way... it certainly fooled you.
Oh, wow, they increased compliance of a 60-hour work week (which is pretty bad by itself) by 5%! /golfclap
Look, if you want to call that "real action" that's your problem. In the real world, that's not real action, but doing as little as you can get away with.
The main problem with jamming is that it is meant to "simulate" piloting such a mech from in the cockpit (and contestants aren't allowed a direct view of the battlefield, which they would have in such a situation even if they were jammed). If there was a way to selectively jam signals so that you could see, but any other signals were jammed, I imagine it would be allowed.