Explain to me how enacting a law that nearly half of all Americans don't want would be stepping into the dark ages.
Honestly, whatever you think of abortion, the fact of the matter is that nearly half of all American are opposed to it in any form. If you drill down further, nearly three quarters of Americans disagree with abortion after the first trimester. To put something like this in such a sweeping piece of legislation would be unwise, at best.
If there's any issue which could derail health care reform in America, it's abortion. That debate is best left out of nationalized health care. I'm not sure why we, the taxpayer, should fund an elective procedure which is 100% preventable through other, very realistic means. Adding it to the bill would only antagonize a large part of the population and ensure a Republican filibustering of the bill.
Okay, I realize this drifting a little OT, but I'm curious as to what you have to say to this. So I'll start with your challenge of proving that humans have a soul.
I'm going to start with a rather crude characterization, because this definition is sufficient for the argument at hand: A soul is a conscious, supernatural entity. That is, it does not exist within the confines of matter; you can't see it on an oscilloscope, or measure it with an instrument.
I'll start with some basic tenets:
We have observed the universe to be deterministic. We have no scientific evidence to date that the physical laws which govern the universe are capricious or that they change arbitrarily.
I, as I type this, am causing the transfer of electrical charges from one physical location in my brain to another. That is, this type is the result of a physical process, which, in some manner or another, is initiated by my conscious mind. There are two possibilities that arise from this:
Thus, it is possible that my thinking is merely a large, elaborate chemical state machine. Being deterministic, you are not capable of changing my mind, nor am I of changing yours and the argument is moot. That is, you and I are simply clashing machines who will never adopt the other's position because we lack the capability to do so. That is, my thoughts and yours are created by a deterministic process which we cannot change, much as a computer cannot decide which code it will execute; it simply does as it has been programmed to do, without any choice in the matter.
The second possibility is that the soul exists, that you and I have free will; that we can decide, arbitrarily what to believe and disbelieve. To support this notion, there has to exist an entity which is free from the laws of nature, yet can impinge on the natural world. The degree of impingement is almost infitesimally small - it need change only the state of a single neuron.
I have changed my mind in the past, and seen others do the same. Hence, we must believe that either a soul exists, or that nature is not deterministic. I am not aware of any scientific evidence of the latter.
What a way to light up a straw man. And then accuse me of it yourself! Actually, the Nazis stopped at 12 million, so we can't consider them the same. Right now, pro-choicers are up in Stalin territory, who reputedly killed about 55 million. But I didn't write this post (or its parent) to bash pro-choice people.
But trollish rhetoric aside, there are some points I'd like to clarify:
But since you had to mention the Nazis... the ideological bases for the pro-choice movement originated with Nazi collaborators. This is not hyperbole, I'm not trolling, it's a historical fact. You can Google Margaret Sanger and Eugenics if you don't believe me. It's not that I really believe all pro-choice people are in league with the devil, but merely that they are unaware of the larger, underlying issues in the debate. Maybe you, personally, have other reasons for holding a pro-choice view, but the movement as a whole has some rather unsavory origins. Most people who support abortion rights do not know this, or choose to ignore it. It should be a red flag that maybe abortion rights is a conflict involving issues much deeper than the rights of a woman and her body.
The issue of abortion hinges on the definition of what it means to be human. If the fetus is not endowed with a soul, if they are not a person, then the issue of abortion is moot and has no moral consequence. But if they do have a soul, then abortion is murder. Thus, the issue of what constitutes a human being is imperative.
If we cannot answer the question of what constitutes a human in a definitive way, the precautionary principle would compel us to outlaw abortion because it could be murder.
From a pragmatic perspective, DNA provides a good line for differentiating one human being from another. Thus, both men and women can treat their own bodies as they choose, but not the bodies of others without informed consent.
The sapient alien question is hardly compelling because a moral evil does not require damaging a human being. In Islam, it is morally wrong to mistreat an animal. If the sapient alien would qualify as an animal, we could safely say killing one would be morally wrong, without ever addressing the issue of whether they possessed a soul, were sentient, intelligent, loving, caring, etc...
What the whole thing comes down to, is that we as a society must have a way of knowing what is human and what is not; what constitutes a person and what does not; otherwise, we'll commit the same atrocities as the generations before us.
One last quip. If I were pro-choice, I'd be as mad at the Left as I am with the Republicans for not doing anything about abortion. (Let's face reality: in 20 years of Republican Presidents, the closest we've come to outlawing abortion is a President who refused to sign a bill because it didn't have exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. His son, also a Republican, claimed the country was not ready. Well, with Republicans like these, who needs a Democrat? But I digress...) The simple fact is that the Left could end the debate, once and for all, if they would just commit to providing a definition of what it means to be human and sticking with that. But they rightly suspect that any debate on the issue will expose the fact that they have no clue what it means to be human. So instead, they simply avoid the debate, and their proponents are left in a rather untenable position of being able to do nothing more than assert, without reason, the supposed correctness of their cause.
But without the relevant experience on which to bring your mental faculties to bear, how can you draw a meaningful conclusion concerning the matter?
I think you missed the broader point. It isn't that people haven't been thinking for themselves, but that morality which seems to an unexperienced person to be completely arbitrary is often the result of a much larger and longer process of thought. Someone without those experiences has no data on which to apply the thought process, and can't even begin to understand the question, much less find an answer.
guiding power would convince you to interpret this as a "test".
This statement is so wrong, on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. In spite of my rather broad background in religion, I'm not aware of any formal doctrine, Christian or otherwise, that espouses God "testing" us. I have never heard a pastor espouse this view, either. I have, however, seen it in the movie _Footloose_.
When Hollywood takes liberties with the sciences, the result is laughable. When they take liberties with religious belief, suddenly there appears a contingent of unbelievers who really believe they're looking at reality.
I haven't conclusively figured out where to put the boundaries for individual rights. Anyone who thinks these issues are simple is either naive or a genius on a level I'll never be able to reach. Morality in the real world is messy and arbitrary for everyone who hasn't locked himself into a moral system prescribed by an omnipotent, omniscient deity.
Morality hinges on human experience. It is not a mathematical problem, and approaching it as if it were only overcomplicates an otherwise, often simple, problem.
Most of Judeo-Christian morality can be deduced by simply paying attention to the plight of others. What is seemingly arbitrary is often the result of our collective experience.
As an example, I'll use homosexuality. According to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, it's wrong. But why?
I honestly didn't know the answer. Why would God care if someone found sexual pleasure in a unique way? He wants us to be happy, right?
I didn't find out until after I had married and had a child. I remember an experience, my son and I in the kitchen, eating breakfast. He spontaneously bursts out, "Daddy and me! Daddy and me! Daddy and me!". In that moment I looked at a person who was a part of the same flesh and blood as my wife and I and it filled me with indescribable joy. I had *no idea* being a father could be so rewarding.
But most homosexuals will never experience this joy, let alone know it exists. Sure, I could describe it a million times, but I remember what it was like when I was single. I really couldn't grasp sex as anything more than an intensely physical pleasure, and the sarcastic rejoinder, "yeah, better than sex" made sense to me. Now it just sounds stupid, as if the person saying it is trying to tell the world how immature and petty they really are. But in having children I discovered that God wants us not merely to enjoy sex, but to have the whole package - marriage and children as well!
And yet, you will find people who have never had children despise the notion of having them. They simply cannot understand - as I did not, prior to having children - the joy of having children. In a similar manner, someone afflicted with homosexual desires, often simply can't understand why they would resist temptation. The first time I met a homosexual, it was immediately apparent to me that they were undergoing an epic internal struggle, the least of which concerned their sexuality. Yet, to them, this condition has persisted for so long it felt "normal" And without the ability to defer judgment to another's experience, they saw no reason to change. Without any understanding that things could be better, they thought of my position as merely trying to take away what little happiness they did posses. (As if I woke up in the morning and said, "Who can I hate today!?")
Most objections to Judeo-Christian morality are rooted in two causes:
Personal vice.
Inexperience.
The first is almost never philosophical. The second is almost invariably philosophical, but dwells on matters in which the philosopher has no actual experience. Having actually seen someone die unexpectedly, it is very clear to me that all human life is valued by God. Until that happened, the abortion issue for me had been largely a philosophical exercise. It wasn't until I witnessed the death of a human being that my mind changed dramatically. But I realize that most reading this have not had that experience.
In fact, most of us will never have all of the experiences which shaped the Torah or the Bible. We simply have to trust that these tenets of morality were written down and copied throughout the ages because enough people recognized the value and truth in them. But how can we as a society trust the experience of others, when we are so arrogant that we think we already know everything?
There is only one thing that distinguishes humans from any other life form.
Actually, there's quite a bit more, and here are some just off the top of my head:
Humans appreciate beauty, and build things for that purpose alone.
Humans are capable of self control. (Though, admittedly, liberals - while seemingly human - do not seem to understand the concept of self control. They believe it is impossible for teenagers to abstain from sex, for bums to refrain from alcohol, etc...)
Humans are capable of selfless service.
Humans are capable of love.
Humans have a soul.
But on to the crux of the argument: If a human does not possess rights - specifically, the right to live - simply because they are human, created by God, then no human has any rights at all.
Any other theory of the rights of man can be easily extended to deny *certain people* their rights based on completely arbitrary characteristics. You said, "How can you consider a fetus to be fully human when it lacks the one basic characteristic of humanity?". Let's run with that, shall we:
First, let's define humanity in our own particular way, to exclude the groups we want to oppress:
White skin is a basic characteristic of humanity.
Being male is a basic characteristic of humanity.
Being "civilised" is a basic characteristic of humanity.
Being Aryan is a basic characteristic of humanity.
Then, take these definitions, and get the public to agree with them:
The notion that a person isn't human because of some arbitrary factor or fine-sounding theory of what-it-means-to-be-human is that these judgments always pave the way for oppression and atrocities whenever there arises social stressors.
Now, these are not hypothetical examples. They actually happened, because someone thought they "Just Knew" their pet theory of what-it-means-to-be-human was correct. And they applied that theory to those "other people" and made fine sounding arguments justifying what were ultimately very oppressive practices.
To make a more salient point, I'd like you to prove, using your definition of what it means to be human, that:
pre-Civil War era Blacks are human. Remember, most can barely speak English, can't read, and would have a difficult time demonstrating what White people of the time would consider intelligence.*
That women of the same time period are human.
That Native Americans are human. They don't even speak English, can't handle liquor*, and can't/don't build dwellings a white man would consider adequate.
That Jews are human.
I think you will have a hard time with at least two of the above, and determined devil's advocate could convincingly argue a third and possibly a forth against your definition. If, OTOH, we argue that a person is a human because they are constructed of and by human DNA, we have no problem at all with the above questions.
* - Yes, you have to take into account the prejudices of the time and the notion of intelligence at this time was not well-developed.
You are a perfect example... journalism is a bullshit profession...
I have to say this statement adds nothing to the debate. In the first place, its a strawman - the parent didn't claim journalism was a bullshit profession, only that the media pushes propaganda. Secondly, the point he makes holds, even if his particular example was a bad one. If he indeed is misinformed, then his point about media pushing propaganda is indeed vindicated.
What I find interesting is that while sports reporters are often the most visibly biased of reporters (bias for the home team!), their readers would never put up with them calling plays that didn't happen, or even failing to report major plays that did. You wouldn't hear, "And Arizona scored well in the third quarter, and that wraps it up for tonight..." without giving the final score. Yet, the media does the very same thing when it comes to reporting events of major political consequence, and no one calls them on the carpet.
If he was however phoning Mr Mehsud of the Taliban and asking for information producing bombs from house hold material and information on which targets Al Qaeda would most like him to blow up and what kind of casualty figures they were looking for then it's a different story.
Apparently he's got a doctorate in Physics:
He already knows how to make bombs (or could easily figure it out), and probably much better ones than Al Quaeda. He has no need of asking them for bomb-making advice. Because he works for the LHC, he has access to "interesting" chemicals as a part of his regular employment. But if he's the cautious type, he could probably do just as well with a trip to the local supermarket.
Again, he's got a PhD. He can figure out what Al-Queada wants blown up with an internet search in a library somewhere. He doesn't need to be told, he could figure it out.
But the worst part of this is that anyone with an advanced degree in the sciences can likely figure out for themselves how to make a very deadly bomb. Whatever they lack in skill can be filled in by a visit to the university library or engineering department. And they can do this without:
Discussing their plans with anyone.
Taking any pictures of public facilities such as train stations, airports, etc.
Making any notes of any kind.
Making any detailed drawings of bombs - everything calculation could be done on computer (or possibly even a calculator) without leaving any traces.
Contacting any terrorist agents, sympathizers, etc...
The elephant in the closet that no one speaks of is that the same skillset which makes Western life possible - clean drinking water, jet aircraft, electric cars, etc... is also the same skillset required for making bombs. In fact, one can make bombs with only a subset of the engineering knowledge required to build a car.
To make matters worse, we cannot know what a person is thinking or planning, until the moment they commit their act, or they commit it to some non-volatile storage. A reasonably astute person, aware of the danger of doing so, would simply choose not to divulge their intent on a recordable medium.
Ted Kazinski was caught not because the FBI figured out who placed the bombs, but because his brother recognized his writing style. A terrorist bomber content to simply plant bombs and walk away could terrorize people for years on end without being caught.
And speaking of not being caught, Bin Laden has had at least one brigade of the US Army looking for him for the last eight years.
I think we as a society are going to have to rethink our approach to terrorism. I do not know if this man is actually guilty or not - I have not seen the evidence. But I would suspect that if he is indeed guilty, the fact that he was caught has more to do with coincidence than the result of the methods used in the investigation. To accuse someone because they have "ties" to terrorism; to imply that we can simply *know* what someone was intending to do (as opposed to what they've actually done), is a very dangerous erosion of the rights of due process and civil liberties our forebears fought so hard to defend.
The most disgraceful part of all this is that our society - because of the exaggerated risks of terrorism - is destroying itself with feel-good measures and knee-jerk enforcement, instead of drawing its focus on the real, underlying problems facing our society today. And why? Because our "leaders" have made us afraid, not of the most likely calamity to befall us, but rather, one of the most remote.
It's time for Americans to put terrorist back in their place: A statistically insignificant footnote on our larger foreign policy goals of eradicating hunger, disease, and building a more peaceful world. We'll save more lives doing that than we could ever save in the name of fighting terrorism.
To be fair, the Deathers have a point. And the media do tend to portray those who disagree with the President in a negative light, as fanatical extremists. They did the same thing to moderate Democrats during the Bush years (don't want no terrist sympathizers round here).
It's not that Obama intends to put Granny on the chopping block. He's too moderate for that. It's just that in places where socialized healthcare has been implemented, there exist panels which decide when euthanasia is appropriate.* It may not start out this way, but once in place, socialized healthcare will reach a point at which people start asking, "How much is too much", or, more succinctly, The Case for Killing Granny. When I first read the title, I thought it was a joke - they can't be serious, right? After reading the article, I realized Newsweek was indirectly arguing for killing old people, because - GOSH - health care costs are out of control, and old people get sick a lot. Which kind of undermines the point - if I'm not going to be covered when I'm *really* sick, why spend any money at all on health insurance?
And along comes the media, and portrays them as some kind of fanatical idiots. But they aren't idiots - there are actually people on the Left - maybe not Obama - but influential nonetheless - who consider killing people to be a valid means of controlling the cost of health care. These are the people who would orchestrate the "death panels". Think about it: if, during a time when healthcare reform is trying to gain political capital, there are people publicly arguing for killing the elderly, what will it be like when socialized medicine is the accepted norm? Patients with cancer and heart disease are the next logical choice for "voluntary denial of care" treatments.
* -- For Catholics, it's never appropriate, but we're hardly a constituency to be reckoned with in this country - witness Senators Pelozi and the late Kennedy, who claim to be Catholic, yet *publicly* reject church teaching on abortion... but I digress...
About a decade ago, my college installed an "advanced" AV program which blocked the behavior you described. They had to uninstall it almost immediately.
Problem was, the college taught computer science classes, and one of the very first things a compiler does is write a zero-length executable file. Then, it proceeds to modify the code in said executable file. And then the AV suite blocks the compiler, thinking it's a virus.
AV heuristics is an idea at least a decade old. It never really caught on - either it didn't work reliably enough, or pattern matching produced a better business model (subscription).
Would federal officers shut down a bank's internet connection if someone accidentally sent them something illegal, say, terrorist training manuals, or (everyone's favorite...) child porn?
There's a small part of me hoping the GMail account belongs to an IRS auditor a few million short of his quota...
My summer internship at a local Chicago firm paid at least that. And that was 8 years ago!
Granted, I realize the economy is bad. But you'd almost be better off working at Taco Bell. Let's do the math, shall we: 6,000 divided by 12 weeks is $500/week. 500 / 40 hours a week = $12.50 per hour. And if you're the poor sucker who only got 4,500? Well, that puts you in the $9.38/hr range.
Oh, but you get a free Xbox!
After the dotcom bubble burst, I had a humbling experience my senior year, when a friend of mine - who wasn't exactly a stellar student - *rejected* an offer from IBM because it was "only 62k". He took a job somewhere else, I think, for about 67k. I wonder what MS interns will think when they realize that almost everyone else pays more than Microsoft.
I've been a staunch advocate of OS for quite some time now. I'm the guy who asks the awkward questions at the meeting, like, "Why are we paying 40 grand for a vendor toolchain when GCC is free?"
Well, I found out.
I've spent the last few weeks trying to build a cross compiler on Cygwin. Here's what I went through:
First, I download version 4.4.1. This is the latest version formally released, so I assumed it was stable;-)
I actually read the documentation on building a cross compiler that came with it. Oh, look - well, my particular architecture isn't listed as being built, but there's a long historical support for this processor and this architecture with GCC. So I assumed no one had gotten around to building a cross compiler for my architecture with this particular version. As it turns out, this was the first warning.
Reading the docs, I realize gcc needs binutils. So I download that, build it for my architecture, and do a make install. It actually works, without a hitch, the first time.
So I follow the instructions, configuring it --with-this and --prefix-that, with all of the requisite gnu goodness switches. It configures successfully.
After a few hours of my employer's time, the build fails. Tracing through the output, I can clearly see that it is missing a few headers. No problem, I'll just add them.
A few hours later, the build still fails. Tracking down the problem, it was configure's fault - there's a config.in, but the config.h is nothing more than the template. So I modify that by hand and restart the build.
About four hours later, it fails yet again, with a different problem. It complains that it can't link the libraries. So I google the error phrase, and sure enough, it's a known problem with older versions of the compiler. I look at the patch provided, and modify my configuration accordingly. Time to rebuild.
Another few hours pass, and the build still fails. I've now figured out that I've built the cross-compiler portion, and it's now working on the libraries. Here's the problem: things like stdio.h are missing. So I go through this iterative stage by which I start copying headers to the library directory until it compiles and builds. Granted, I'm building this on Cygwin, and I'm concerned that their headers might not match the actual libraries I'll be building. But, I'll leave that for another time. (warning number two...)
It finishes. I do a 'make install'.
Now I can compile the project I've taken over from another department. Mind you, I was supposed to have had this working a week or so ago, but no one has found out yet... So I start the build. The cross compiler works, but then fails at the link stage - missing -lc.
Okay, so I need libc. I download it, untar it, and then run into some problems. When I configure and build it, I can't get it to use the cross-compiler I've just built. Turns out, libc comes with many of the same headers in the Cygwin distro. That little warning flag about headers just went from orange to red. The compiler was compiled with the Cygwin headers, but I can't use them for building the C library. So now I have a conflict between the headers used to build the compiler, and the headers used to build the library. I have to make a choice: I'm going to install the C library headers in Cygwin, and then rebuild the compiler. I don't have time to audit all of the inconsistencies between the two.
So I install the libc headers. And I do a make distclean and a configure. And then I try to build the compiler once again. It fails.
Just as a sanity check, I configure for my host architecture - i686, and build and install gcc. It works like a charm, no problems at all. So I know that the compiler _can_ be built successfully.
This time, it has a whole different set of problems. Can't find ins-modes.h. Yep, it's autogenerated by a program called ge
Disclaimer: I work for Motorola. I'm giving up mod points to post this, as I think some people would consider it a conflict of interest if they knew.
That said, I've been long awaiting this change. I like the feature set - it approaches a consumer class camera (5 MP, 24 Hz video). It looks very functional, very usable. I'm not usually one to get excited about phones, but this looks quite good.
I've heard a lot of people bemoan the proprietary state of cellphone systems. Well, here's your chance to buy a Linux based phone, and show the manufacturers what you *really* want.
"We believe that commercial software companies and the developers that work for them under-participate in open source projects," Microsoft stated.
While I applaud the intent to appear to be open source friendly, they haven't yet begun to address two of the major issues with Microsoft and open source:
What happens when a Microsoft developer inadvertently contributes to their Open Source repository something better than a commercial Microsoft offering?
Most of us developing commercial software *CAN NOT* participate in open source projects due to overly broad non-compete clauses in our contracts. The extent of our participation is not up to us, or Microsoft - it's up to our employer, and Microsoft's recent action in this regard does nothing to change this.
Now, here we have Microsoft reinventing the wheel, aka sourceforge. I could even go for a BSD style license, or even public domain. But I have one question:
Would they host, and allow development on ReactOS? (for those who don't know, it's an open source Windows clone)
How Codeplex and Microsoft deal with this question would reveal far more about their true intentions than what their pundits say about their open source attitude.
Unless Unix somehow detects ignorance or stupidity and stops it?
Yes. In the first place, even the stupidest of UNIX users won't get a virus by surfing a web page or opening their email.
Think about that for a moment: Why would anyone suspect that merely *reading* data - a web page - would infect their computer?
Yet this functionality was *explicitly* designed by MS into a browser inseparable from the OS. It doesn't make sense from a security perspective. It doesn't make sense from a user perspective - they think they're reading data, not "executing the web page". It only makes sense when you realize that one of Microsoft's goals was to create the "stupid user." MS goes to great lengths to hide the internal details of computer operation from the user. The result is even those of average intelligence become "stupid users" because MS deliberately discourages them from learning anything about how their systems actually work. Instead, the user is supposed to remain blissfully naive about the consequences of their actions, and instead concentrate on how flashy the GUI is. Well, Microsoft has succeeded in this regard. The rest of us are left to pay the consequences.
The end result is Microsoft deliberately architects security holes into their systems, intentional or not. Even those users who want to be conscientious about security find it difficult to do so because MS deliberately hides the actual operation of the computer from the user. Instead, they present the user with a model which is dangerously naive. Combine the two, and you get the perfect storm: users who don't know any better doing insecure things on an OS which, by design, subordinated security to usability.
To use UNIX, one must have a rudimentary understanding of what they are actually doing. This element of design keeps people from practicing insecure behaviors. Sure, my mother _could_ run a shell script which cleaned out her home directory. That is, if she knew how to run shell scripts in the first place. Someone astute enough to be doing "dangerous things" in UNIX usually has enough knowledge to know better. But better yet, the system is discoverable - they can learn how the system works if they have the desire. The closed, proprietary, binary-only system configuration done by Microsoft discourages independent investigation and discovery.
What it really comes down to is that security is easy for someone who knows how their computer works. It doesn't surprise me that *YOU* haven't had a virus. You're probably smart enough to know better, as your post mentions. But consider the average person, with no preconceived notions about what a computer is, or how it is supposed to work. Their notion of how a "computer" works is formed largely by the Microsoft model: click on everything, buy an AV suite, and throw away your computer every few years.
They're not "lusers", they just have priorities different from your own.
You mean like, just getting work done? Or perhaps playing video games? Surfing the web?
Sadly, Windows fails on all three accounts. Not because you technically cannot do these things with Windows, but because the *average user* can't do them for very long with a Windows box. Windows is easy to learn - but requires and *expert* to keep running. Linux requires an expert to install, but is very easy to use from that point on.*
Worse, Windows makes them difficult for the people around them - they assume we (the "experts") know everything there is to know about a provably obsolete operating system, and expect that we'll fix their problem for free, in 10 minutes. But it gets worse. Windows users infuriate those of us who actually know a thing or two about computers:
No, it is *NOT* normal for a computer to crash on a regular basis.
Getting infected with a virus is only inevitable for Windows users. Explaining to a Windows user that my OS is more secure by design leaves them with blank stares. They simply can't comprehend the notion of a computer system that doesn't need antivirus software. And we have Windows to thank for this - Mac zealots don't seem to have this handicap.
My wife has no problem using Ubuntu. But I have relatives who insist on using Windows, only to call me for support when something *BAD* happens to their Windows install.
As a Linux user, I can appreciate why non-technical people are drawn to Windows. But the very existence of this poorly designed piece of software keeps the rest of us up at night. Windows is like the abusive boyfriend:
Even though she knows better, she goes back to her abusive boyfriend, because he's familiar, and *GOSH* he's got that cute {smile|eyes|whatever}.
When the {abuse|crash|virus} happens, she just calls in the {cop|geek} to fix her problem. The {cop|geek} hauls the {boyfriend|computer} back to the {station|basement} to be fixed, and the girl gets to pay for it with a "Thank you" and a smile.
Lather, rinse, repeat
I used to wonder why the cute girls in HS would be attracted to the jerks. Now I see the same parallels between the average user and Windows. They know, intellectually, that they are going to have problems, yet continue the relationship because it is easier to them than learning something new.
Which says a lot about the kind of person who chooses Windows. They're probably attractive, but not very smart, and probably have self-esteem problems.
Look, here's the disclaimer: I am a software engineer. No, not hardware, software.
But I've written camera drivers from schematics and datasheets alone. It's *just not that hard*. Even for a software guy. I don't have an EE, just an interest in electronics.
And digital electronics are, quite frankly, rather simple. If you know ohm's law, and can read a datasheet or two, you could very easily put together a digital camera module. PCB express will happily etch the board for you, and you *might* have to do some soldering. Unless, of course, you buy one of the cameras from sparkfun or other hobby supplier.
If you can't learn drag and drop PCB design, or can't master basic electronics (ohm's law doesn't even require an understanding of calculus), maybe you shouldn't be tinkering with cameras at the circuit level. A fast fourier transform is far more complicated and difficult to understand than the electronics which go into camera sensors, and yet, is the foundation for all modern video and image compression. If you can't understand that, you will most likely not be contributing much of value to computing applications involving a camera.
Granted, I like open source stuff. But there's already plenty of it out there today - just pick the resolution, frame rate, sensitivity, etc... and go. You don't need the frankencamera. You just need the time and interest, and be willing to spend a few bucks on the hardware.
Rather than paying for a patent application, and going through the entire process, you can write up a description of your invention(s), and post them on ip.com.
Once published, you will have irrefutable prior art against a patent troll. (Assuming, of course, that you are not in violation of an existing patent.) Yes, it costs money, and no, I don't advocate them exclusively - you might be able to find another publisher that will do it for free. But defensive publication is valuable in cases where you don't foresee yourself suing others for patent violations.
This little lovely gem is likely to get past most levels of testing, and fail miserably, insecurely, in the field. No, I haven't personally done this, but I've long suspected similar code is the reason for those "You can't have more than 8 characters in your password..." limitations on some websites.
Someday I'm going to start a website for absolutely subversive C source code. It will be my personal therapy...
No. But it does not sound like a good practice to me. I want to test this kind of stuff before committing and publishing the changes. Now, there are builtin commands to merge or cherry pick changes.
I there's some misunderstanding going on here: in CC, one can build with a bugfix without committing changes back to the repository. That is, suppose file.c exists in two branches, A, and B. If there's a bugfix in branch A, I can build branch B with branch A's version without modifying the version in branch A. That way, I can test the bugfix in branch B before committing it to branch B. If it doesn't work out, I haven't modified branch B at all - in fact, while all this is going on, another CC developer can checkout and build branch B without the concern that the untested bugfix would introduce problems with the current release.
Slashdot Mirror
Explain to me how enacting a law that nearly half of all Americans don't want would be stepping into the dark ages.
Honestly, whatever you think of abortion, the fact of the matter is that nearly half of all American are opposed to it in any form. If you drill down further, nearly three quarters of Americans disagree with abortion after the first trimester. To put something like this in such a sweeping piece of legislation would be unwise, at best.
If there's any issue which could derail health care reform in America, it's abortion. That debate is best left out of nationalized health care. I'm not sure why we, the taxpayer, should fund an elective procedure which is 100% preventable through other, very realistic means. Adding it to the bill would only antagonize a large part of the population and ensure a Republican filibustering of the bill.
Okay, I realize this drifting a little OT, but I'm curious as to what you have to say to this. So I'll start with your challenge of proving that humans have a soul.
I'm going to start with a rather crude characterization, because this definition is sufficient for the argument at hand: A soul is a conscious, supernatural entity. That is, it does not exist within the confines of matter; you can't see it on an oscilloscope, or measure it with an instrument.
I'll start with some basic tenets:
pro-choice people are the same as Nazis...
What a way to light up a straw man. And then accuse me of it yourself! Actually, the Nazis stopped at 12 million, so we can't consider them the same. Right now, pro-choicers are up in Stalin territory, who reputedly killed about 55 million. But I didn't write this post (or its parent) to bash pro-choice people.
But trollish rhetoric aside, there are some points I'd like to clarify:
The sapient alien question is hardly compelling because a moral evil does not require damaging a human being. In Islam, it is morally wrong to mistreat an animal. If the sapient alien would qualify as an animal, we could safely say killing one would be morally wrong, without ever addressing the issue of whether they possessed a soul, were sentient, intelligent, loving, caring, etc...
What the whole thing comes down to, is that we as a society must have a way of knowing what is human and what is not; what constitutes a person and what does not; otherwise, we'll commit the same atrocities as the generations before us.
One last quip. If I were pro-choice, I'd be as mad at the Left as I am with the Republicans for not doing anything about abortion. (Let's face reality: in 20 years of Republican Presidents, the closest we've come to outlawing abortion is a President who refused to sign a bill because it didn't have exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. His son, also a Republican, claimed the country was not ready. Well, with Republicans like these, who needs a Democrat? But I digress...) The simple fact is that the Left could end the debate, once and for all, if they would just commit to providing a definition of what it means to be human and sticking with that. But they rightly suspect that any debate on the issue will expose the fact that they have no clue what it means to be human. So instead, they simply avoid the debate, and their proponents are left in a rather untenable position of being able to do nothing more than assert, without reason, the supposed correctness of their cause.
Okay, good for you, you think for yourself.
But without the relevant experience on which to bring your mental faculties to bear, how can you draw a meaningful conclusion concerning the matter?
I think you missed the broader point. It isn't that people haven't been thinking for themselves, but that morality which seems to an unexperienced person to be completely arbitrary is often the result of a much larger and longer process of thought. Someone without those experiences has no data on which to apply the thought process, and can't even begin to understand the question, much less find an answer.
guiding power would convince you to interpret this as a "test".
This statement is so wrong, on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. In spite of my rather broad background in religion, I'm not aware of any formal doctrine, Christian or otherwise, that espouses God "testing" us. I have never heard a pastor espouse this view, either. I have, however, seen it in the movie _Footloose_.
When Hollywood takes liberties with the sciences, the result is laughable. When they take liberties with religious belief, suddenly there appears a contingent of unbelievers who really believe they're looking at reality.
"Oh, but I've seen it on tv, so it must be true!"
I haven't conclusively figured out where to put the boundaries for individual rights. Anyone who thinks these issues are simple is either naive or a genius on a level I'll never be able to reach. Morality in the real world is messy and arbitrary for everyone who hasn't locked himself into a moral system prescribed by an omnipotent, omniscient deity.
Morality hinges on human experience. It is not a mathematical problem, and approaching it as if it were only overcomplicates an otherwise, often simple, problem.
Most of Judeo-Christian morality can be deduced by simply paying attention to the plight of others. What is seemingly arbitrary is often the result of our collective experience.
As an example, I'll use homosexuality. According to Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, it's wrong. But why?
I honestly didn't know the answer. Why would God care if someone found sexual pleasure in a unique way? He wants us to be happy, right?
I didn't find out until after I had married and had a child. I remember an experience, my son and I in the kitchen, eating breakfast. He spontaneously bursts out, "Daddy and me! Daddy and me! Daddy and me!". In that moment I looked at a person who was a part of the same flesh and blood as my wife and I and it filled me with indescribable joy. I had *no idea* being a father could be so rewarding.
But most homosexuals will never experience this joy, let alone know it exists. Sure, I could describe it a million times, but I remember what it was like when I was single. I really couldn't grasp sex as anything more than an intensely physical pleasure, and the sarcastic rejoinder, "yeah, better than sex" made sense to me. Now it just sounds stupid, as if the person saying it is trying to tell the world how immature and petty they really are. But in having children I discovered that God wants us not merely to enjoy sex, but to have the whole package - marriage and children as well!
And yet, you will find people who have never had children despise the notion of having them. They simply cannot understand - as I did not, prior to having children - the joy of having children. In a similar manner, someone afflicted with homosexual desires, often simply can't understand why they would resist temptation. The first time I met a homosexual, it was immediately apparent to me that they were undergoing an epic internal struggle, the least of which concerned their sexuality. Yet, to them, this condition has persisted for so long it felt "normal" And without the ability to defer judgment to another's experience, they saw no reason to change. Without any understanding that things could be better, they thought of my position as merely trying to take away what little happiness they did posses. (As if I woke up in the morning and said, "Who can I hate today!?")
Most objections to Judeo-Christian morality are rooted in two causes:
The first is almost never philosophical. The second is almost invariably philosophical, but dwells on matters in which the philosopher has no actual experience. Having actually seen someone die unexpectedly, it is very clear to me that all human life is valued by God. Until that happened, the abortion issue for me had been largely a philosophical exercise. It wasn't until I witnessed the death of a human being that my mind changed dramatically. But I realize that most reading this have not had that experience.
In fact, most of us will never have all of the experiences which shaped the Torah or the Bible. We simply have to trust that these tenets of morality were written down and copied throughout the ages because enough people recognized the value and truth in them. But how can we as a society trust the experience of others, when we are so arrogant that we think we already know everything?
There is only one thing that distinguishes humans from any other life form.
Actually, there's quite a bit more, and here are some just off the top of my head:
But on to the crux of the argument: If a human does not possess rights - specifically, the right to live - simply because they are human, created by God, then no human has any rights at all.
Any other theory of the rights of man can be easily extended to deny *certain people* their rights based on completely arbitrary characteristics. You said, "How can you consider a fetus to be fully human when it lacks the one basic characteristic of humanity?". Let's run with that, shall we:
The notion that a person isn't human because of some arbitrary factor or fine-sounding theory of what-it-means-to-be-human is that these judgments always pave the way for oppression and atrocities whenever there arises social stressors.
Now, these are not hypothetical examples. They actually happened, because someone thought they "Just Knew" their pet theory of what-it-means-to-be-human was correct. And they applied that theory to those "other people" and made fine sounding arguments justifying what were ultimately very oppressive practices.
To make a more salient point, I'd like you to prove, using your definition of what it means to be human, that:
I think you will have a hard time with at least two of the above, and determined devil's advocate could convincingly argue a third and possibly a forth against your definition. If, OTOH, we argue that a person is a human because they are constructed of and by human DNA, we have no problem at all with the above questions.
* - Yes, you have to take into account the prejudices of the time and the notion of intelligence at this time was not well-developed.
You are a perfect example ... journalism is a bullshit profession...
I have to say this statement adds nothing to the debate. In the first place, its a strawman - the parent didn't claim journalism was a bullshit profession, only that the media pushes propaganda. Secondly, the point he makes holds, even if his particular example was a bad one. If he indeed is misinformed, then his point about media pushing propaganda is indeed vindicated.
What I find interesting is that while sports reporters are often the most visibly biased of reporters (bias for the home team!), their readers would never put up with them calling plays that didn't happen, or even failing to report major plays that did. You wouldn't hear, "And Arizona scored well in the third quarter, and that wraps it up for tonight..." without giving the final score. Yet, the media does the very same thing when it comes to reporting events of major political consequence, and no one calls them on the carpet.
Apparently he's got a doctorate in Physics:
But the worst part of this is that anyone with an advanced degree in the sciences can likely figure out for themselves how to make a very deadly bomb. Whatever they lack in skill can be filled in by a visit to the university library or engineering department. And they can do this without:
The elephant in the closet that no one speaks of is that the same skillset which makes Western life possible - clean drinking water, jet aircraft, electric cars, etc... is also the same skillset required for making bombs. In fact, one can make bombs with only a subset of the engineering knowledge required to build a car.
To make matters worse, we cannot know what a person is thinking or planning, until the moment they commit their act, or they commit it to some non-volatile storage. A reasonably astute person, aware of the danger of doing so, would simply choose not to divulge their intent on a recordable medium.
Ted Kazinski was caught not because the FBI figured out who placed the bombs, but because his brother recognized his writing style. A terrorist bomber content to simply plant bombs and walk away could terrorize people for years on end without being caught.
And speaking of not being caught, Bin Laden has had at least one brigade of the US Army looking for him for the last eight years.
I think we as a society are going to have to rethink our approach to terrorism. I do not know if this man is actually guilty or not - I have not seen the evidence. But I would suspect that if he is indeed guilty, the fact that he was caught has more to do with coincidence than the result of the methods used in the investigation. To accuse someone because they have "ties" to terrorism; to imply that we can simply *know* what someone was intending to do (as opposed to what they've actually done), is a very dangerous erosion of the rights of due process and civil liberties our forebears fought so hard to defend.
The most disgraceful part of all this is that our society - because of the exaggerated risks of terrorism - is destroying itself with feel-good measures and knee-jerk enforcement, instead of drawing its focus on the real, underlying problems facing our society today. And why? Because our "leaders" have made us afraid, not of the most likely calamity to befall us, but rather, one of the most remote.
It's time for Americans to put terrorist back in their place: A statistically insignificant footnote on our larger foreign policy goals of eradicating hunger, disease, and building a more peaceful world. We'll save more lives doing that than we could ever save in the name of fighting terrorism.
The Case for Killing Granny
To be fair, the Deathers have a point. And the media do tend to portray those who disagree with the President in a negative light, as fanatical extremists. They did the same thing to moderate Democrats during the Bush years (don't want no terrist sympathizers round here).
It's not that Obama intends to put Granny on the chopping block. He's too moderate for that. It's just that in places where socialized healthcare has been implemented, there exist panels which decide when euthanasia is appropriate.* It may not start out this way, but once in place, socialized healthcare will reach a point at which people start asking, "How much is too much", or, more succinctly, The Case for Killing Granny. When I first read the title, I thought it was a joke - they can't be serious, right? After reading the article, I realized Newsweek was indirectly arguing for killing old people, because - GOSH - health care costs are out of control, and old people get sick a lot. Which kind of undermines the point - if I'm not going to be covered when I'm *really* sick, why spend any money at all on health insurance?
And along comes the media, and portrays them as some kind of fanatical idiots. But they aren't idiots - there are actually people on the Left - maybe not Obama - but influential nonetheless - who consider killing people to be a valid means of controlling the cost of health care. These are the people who would orchestrate the "death panels". Think about it: if, during a time when healthcare reform is trying to gain political capital, there are people publicly arguing for killing the elderly, what will it be like when socialized medicine is the accepted norm? Patients with cancer and heart disease are the next logical choice for "voluntary denial of care" treatments.
* -- For Catholics, it's never appropriate, but we're hardly a constituency to be reckoned with in this country - witness Senators Pelozi and the late Kennedy, who claim to be Catholic, yet *publicly* reject church teaching on abortion... but I digress...
I thought he was socialist!
Or maybe that was yesterday...
About a decade ago, my college installed an "advanced" AV program which blocked the behavior you described. They had to uninstall it almost immediately.
Problem was, the college taught computer science classes, and one of the very first things a compiler does is write a zero-length executable file. Then, it proceeds to modify the code in said executable file. And then the AV suite blocks the compiler, thinking it's a virus.
AV heuristics is an idea at least a decade old. It never really caught on - either it didn't work reliably enough, or pattern matching produced a better business model (subscription).
Would federal officers shut down a bank's internet connection if someone accidentally sent them something illegal, say, terrorist training manuals, or (everyone's favorite...) child porn?
There's a small part of me hoping the GMail account belongs to an IRS auditor a few million short of his quota...
Overheard, while discussing a candidate who had built complete systems, hardware and software, by himself:
Then, later, when discussing another candidate who had worked only on large teams, at a large company:
My summer internship at a local Chicago firm paid at least that. And that was 8 years ago!
Granted, I realize the economy is bad. But you'd almost be better off working at Taco Bell. Let's do the math, shall we: 6,000 divided by 12 weeks is $500/week. 500 / 40 hours a week = $12.50 per hour. And if you're the poor sucker who only got 4,500? Well, that puts you in the $9.38/hr range.
Oh, but you get a free Xbox!
After the dotcom bubble burst, I had a humbling experience my senior year, when a friend of mine - who wasn't exactly a stellar student - *rejected* an offer from IBM because it was "only 62k". He took a job somewhere else, I think, for about 67k. I wonder what MS interns will think when they realize that almost everyone else pays more than Microsoft.
Open Source nearly sank my career.
I've been a staunch advocate of OS for quite some time now. I'm the guy who asks the awkward questions at the meeting, like, "Why are we paying 40 grand for a vendor toolchain when GCC is free?"
Well, I found out.
I've spent the last few weeks trying to build a cross compiler on Cygwin. Here's what I went through:
Disclaimer: I work for Motorola. I'm giving up mod points to post this, as I think some people would consider it a conflict of interest if they knew.
That said, I've been long awaiting this change. I like the feature set - it approaches a consumer class camera (5 MP, 24 Hz video). It looks very functional, very usable. I'm not usually one to get excited about phones, but this looks quite good.
I've heard a lot of people bemoan the proprietary state of cellphone systems. Well, here's your chance to buy a Linux based phone, and show the manufacturers what you *really* want.
"We believe that commercial software companies and the developers that work for them under-participate in open source projects," Microsoft stated.
While I applaud the intent to appear to be open source friendly, they haven't yet begun to address two of the major issues with Microsoft and open source:
Now, here we have Microsoft reinventing the wheel, aka sourceforge. I could even go for a BSD style license, or even public domain. But I have one question:
Would they host, and allow development on ReactOS? (for those who don't know, it's an open source Windows clone)
How Codeplex and Microsoft deal with this question would reveal far more about their true intentions than what their pundits say about their open source attitude.
Unless Unix somehow detects ignorance or stupidity and stops it?
Yes. In the first place, even the stupidest of UNIX users won't get a virus by surfing a web page or opening their email.
Think about that for a moment: Why would anyone suspect that merely *reading* data - a web page - would infect their computer?
Yet this functionality was *explicitly* designed by MS into a browser inseparable from the OS. It doesn't make sense from a security perspective. It doesn't make sense from a user perspective - they think they're reading data, not "executing the web page". It only makes sense when you realize that one of Microsoft's goals was to create the "stupid user." MS goes to great lengths to hide the internal details of computer operation from the user. The result is even those of average intelligence become "stupid users" because MS deliberately discourages them from learning anything about how their systems actually work. Instead, the user is supposed to remain blissfully naive about the consequences of their actions, and instead concentrate on how flashy the GUI is. Well, Microsoft has succeeded in this regard. The rest of us are left to pay the consequences.
The end result is Microsoft deliberately architects security holes into their systems, intentional or not. Even those users who want to be conscientious about security find it difficult to do so because MS deliberately hides the actual operation of the computer from the user. Instead, they present the user with a model which is dangerously naive. Combine the two, and you get the perfect storm: users who don't know any better doing insecure things on an OS which, by design, subordinated security to usability.
To use UNIX, one must have a rudimentary understanding of what they are actually doing. This element of design keeps people from practicing insecure behaviors. Sure, my mother _could_ run a shell script which cleaned out her home directory. That is, if she knew how to run shell scripts in the first place. Someone astute enough to be doing "dangerous things" in UNIX usually has enough knowledge to know better. But better yet, the system is discoverable - they can learn how the system works if they have the desire. The closed, proprietary, binary-only system configuration done by Microsoft discourages independent investigation and discovery.
What it really comes down to is that security is easy for someone who knows how their computer works. It doesn't surprise me that *YOU* haven't had a virus. You're probably smart enough to know better, as your post mentions. But consider the average person, with no preconceived notions about what a computer is, or how it is supposed to work. Their notion of how a "computer" works is formed largely by the Microsoft model: click on everything, buy an AV suite, and throw away your computer every few years.
They're not "lusers", they just have priorities different from your own.
You mean like, just getting work done? Or perhaps playing video games? Surfing the web?
Sadly, Windows fails on all three accounts. Not because you technically cannot do these things with Windows, but because the *average user* can't do them for very long with a Windows box. Windows is easy to learn - but requires and *expert* to keep running. Linux requires an expert to install, but is very easy to use from that point on.*
Worse, Windows makes them difficult for the people around them - they assume we (the "experts") know everything there is to know about a provably obsolete operating system, and expect that we'll fix their problem for free, in 10 minutes. But it gets worse. Windows users infuriate those of us who actually know a thing or two about computers:
As a Linux user, I can appreciate why non-technical people are drawn to Windows. But the very existence of this poorly designed piece of software keeps the rest of us up at night. Windows is like the abusive boyfriend:
I used to wonder why the cute girls in HS would be attracted to the jerks. Now I see the same parallels between the average user and Windows. They know, intellectually, that they are going to have problems, yet continue the relationship because it is easier to them than learning something new.
Which says a lot about the kind of person who chooses Windows. They're probably attractive, but not very smart, and probably have self-esteem problems.
Look, here's the disclaimer: I am a software engineer. No, not hardware, software.
But I've written camera drivers from schematics and datasheets alone. It's *just not that hard*. Even for a software guy. I don't have an EE, just an interest in electronics.
And digital electronics are, quite frankly, rather simple. If you know ohm's law, and can read a datasheet or two, you could very easily put together a digital camera module. PCB express will happily etch the board for you, and you *might* have to do some soldering. Unless, of course, you buy one of the cameras from sparkfun or other hobby supplier.
If you can't learn drag and drop PCB design, or can't master basic electronics (ohm's law doesn't even require an understanding of calculus), maybe you shouldn't be tinkering with cameras at the circuit level. A fast fourier transform is far more complicated and difficult to understand than the electronics which go into camera sensors, and yet, is the foundation for all modern video and image compression. If you can't understand that, you will most likely not be contributing much of value to computing applications involving a camera.
Granted, I like open source stuff. But there's already plenty of it out there today - just pick the resolution, frame rate, sensitivity, etc... and go. You don't need the frankencamera. You just need the time and interest, and be willing to spend a few bucks on the hardware.
Rather than paying for a patent application, and going through the entire process, you can write up a description of your invention(s), and post them on ip.com.
Once published, you will have irrefutable prior art against a patent troll. (Assuming, of course, that you are not in violation of an existing patent.) Yes, it costs money, and no, I don't advocate them exclusively - you might be able to find another publisher that will do it for free. But defensive publication is valuable in cases where you don't foresee yourself suing others for patent violations.
char * password = "password";
...
scanf("%s",password);
This little lovely gem is likely to get past most levels of testing, and fail miserably, insecurely, in the field. No, I haven't personally done this, but I've long suspected similar code is the reason for those "You can't have more than 8 characters in your password..." limitations on some websites.
Someday I'm going to start a website for absolutely subversive C source code. It will be my personal therapy...
No. But it does not sound like a good practice to me. I want to test this kind of stuff before committing and publishing the changes. Now, there are builtin commands to merge or cherry pick changes.
I there's some misunderstanding going on here: in CC, one can build with a bugfix without committing changes back to the repository. That is, suppose file.c exists in two branches, A, and B. If there's a bugfix in branch A, I can build branch B with branch A's version without modifying the version in branch A. That way, I can test the bugfix in branch B before committing it to branch B. If it doesn't work out, I haven't modified branch B at all - in fact, while all this is going on, another CC developer can checkout and build branch B without the concern that the untested bugfix would introduce problems with the current release.