The important thing is not to deny legitimate use of portscanning tools. How would I know the machine I set up was not advertising services it does not offer? I portscan it! Portscanning is just part of the repertoire of tricks any network admin must know to debug network problems. While it is certainly possible to use it to accomplish goals other than that, the proper, responsible use of such things should be denied.
Will you stop the stupid computer == house analogy? The singlemost bad thinking about security comes from false analogies. In the house analogy, the person is NOT BLIND. A computer, unless it TRIES to connect to the PORT, wouldn't know that the port was actually open. And if you told me you opened the port x on your computer, the only real way to know no errors were committed, is to make the connection.
Gaia, life force and spirits are not Western concepts? Like how? What about writing down the Chinese characters for each one and testing it out for us to see?
Your explanation is indeed correct and right, but to say that the necessary requirement is that "observer and observer" are distinct, is looking at it from the wrong point of view.
It is not wrong for an observer to observe his own bodily chemistry and estimate the probability of those processes happening out there. For example, it is not wrong to observe the amount of solar helium, and attempt to deduce the amount of cosmic helium made at the big bang. It's been suggested, and the objections to that come from practical difficulties and obejctions about contamination, NOT becuase the reasoning for these is wrong.
You might say that there is nothing "metaphysical" about truth at all. If that is so, then it should be easy to say what it is that makes things true. Yet no one has come up with a satisfactory answer so far.
No one has come up with a satisfactory answer? To who? Someone who can never be satisfied?
Define a moral action to be one which is ultimately preserving of an entity's own existance.
Sorry, that's not what most people mean by morality. What they mean may be vague, but it always includes an element of consideration for other people. The way you've defined it seems totally contradictory to this essential meaning.
Tell me an idea you own, and let's see how you enforce that ownership.
Let me try to preempt you from accusing me of stealing it: If you tell me the idea, YOU cannot say I stole it.
The only we you can prevent me from knowing that idea, is to not tell me. But that does not stop me from using my brain to guess what is the secret. If I get lucky, one may find out. Is that also theft?
By flat, we refer to geometry. It answers the question: do photon paths diverge or converge? Closed means they converge. Open means they diverge. Flat means photon paths are straight (at least in the global, universal sense). In an accelerating universe with the non-negative cosmological constant, geometry no longer determines the fate of the universe.
Sorry, but you missed my point. My point is epistemological. "Dark" meaning to say unseen. There's definitely a not insignicant component of the dark matter that is made up of unseen, jupiter sized planets. MACHOS.
By energy, we mean that it is there has its effect on the geometry of the universe, rendering it flat. Nevertheless it still manages to accelerate the voids between galaxy clusters.
And what does it mean to "quote in context" when someone is wholly attempting to make a sincere attempt at communication? Think about that. The neo-nazi says "Freedom is Slavery", likely learning it out of context from Orwell. Regardless of fidelity to Orwell, he has a point that is quite independent of Orwell, that should be argued on it merits, or dismissed on its merits alone. Surely the neo-nazi, in making such a statement, even if quoting a Orwell wrongly, may have a point!
And it is not unfair to dismiss someone's opinions by simply pointing at someone who has done a better job of the argumentation. It is the UNLISTENING dismissal which you dislike, not dismissal in general, which may well be reasonable.
Why? Why is an opinion's origin important? If it means that you can't dismiss a thought with "Oh, that's just so'n'so ranting again" then that is surely a good thing. If so'n'so really is ranting again, then the opinion should be easy enough to knock down anyway.
The origin of an opinion is important, beause that is where the nuances come from. "Freedom is slavery", when said by Orwell, sounds very different from "Freedom is slavery", said by the nazi skinhead with twisted sense of history.
Yes you can choose to be selfish. But in that case, only you can use your own code. That's exactly what the GNU GPL dictates. If one wants to be unaccountable by distributing binaries but not source, then one cannot do this with the GNU GPLed sources. The GNU GPL is a license for transparancy. And transparency leads to freedom.
The problem with that argument is that it betrays a lack of understanding of the rewards of free-software. When people share software, they expect IMPROVEMENTS. The software is GIVEN AWAY, so that improvements, in the form of making the code more efficient, more portable, more usable, are all the "payment-in-kind" for software. What is damaged is not that there's erosion of the user base (there is) but it is also that one can have any expectations. That someone can use something to imporve himself alone, and forget about the rest of the world.
Legend has it that these evil spirits, frightening and powerful though they may be, would not venture into the domain of one's house, unless one lets them in...
That's very strange. In your real world, you can say that "the real world doesn't care what you think", but in his world, he has given the most cogent and insightful commentary, and has been modded up to 5. Who's lving in the real world?.
Now, I'll grant you that slashot mods don't mean a single thing. If you're unimpressed, then consider that I have a major in economics, and what he says, makes perfect objective sense. It is verifiable/falsifiable. Your one little factoid, if true,gets subsumed into his reasoning, but if false, what would it prove?
And I disagree. With an ALGORITHM, it is possible to verify that the computer is truly executing THE ALGORITHM, no ifs and buts. With a human, he can tell you that he carrying out alpha-beta minimization, but it is impossible to be absolutely certain THIS IS THE ALGORITHM THE HUMAN IS ACTUALLY USING TO MAKE HIS DECISION.
It is possible to take the source code of the program apart and say which piece came from which programmer, expert or people. It can be HARD to do this with human. How much of Hardy was there in Ramanujan? How would you even begin to answer that question?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually peer review ain't perfect either, but it's a process and that's all we have.
The important thing is not to deny legitimate use of portscanning tools. How would I know the machine I set up was not advertising services it does not offer? I portscan it! Portscanning is just part of the repertoire of tricks any network admin must know to debug network problems. While it is certainly possible to use it to accomplish goals other than that, the proper, responsible use of such things should be denied.
Will you stop the stupid computer == house analogy? The singlemost bad thinking about security comes from false analogies. In the house analogy, the person is NOT BLIND. A computer, unless it TRIES to connect to the PORT, wouldn't know that the port was actually open. And if you told me you opened the port x on your computer, the only real way to know no errors were committed, is to make the connection.
Gaia, life force and spirits are not Western concepts? Like how? What about writing down the Chinese characters for each one and testing it out for us to see?
It is not wrong for an observer to observe his own bodily chemistry and estimate the probability of those processes happening out there. For example, it is not wrong to observe the amount of solar helium, and attempt to deduce the amount of cosmic helium made at the big bang. It's been suggested, and the objections to that come from practical difficulties and obejctions about contamination, NOT becuase the reasoning for these is wrong.
No one has come up with a satisfactory answer? To who? Someone who can never be satisfied?
Sorry, that's not what most people mean by morality. What they mean may be vague, but it always includes an element of consideration for other people. The way you've defined it seems totally contradictory to this essential meaning.
And what sense of "morality" is that.
Let me try to preempt you from accusing me of stealing it: If you tell me the idea, YOU cannot say I stole it.
The only we you can prevent me from knowing that idea, is to not tell me. But that does not stop me from using my brain to guess what is the secret. If I get lucky, one may find out. Is that also theft?
Ideas are not property, give it up.
By flat, we refer to geometry. It answers the question: do photon paths diverge or converge? Closed means they converge. Open means they diverge. Flat means photon paths are straight (at least in the global, universal sense). In an accelerating universe with the non-negative cosmological constant, geometry no longer determines the fate of the universe.
By energy, we mean that it is there has its effect on the geometry of the universe, rendering it flat. Nevertheless it still manages to accelerate the voids between galaxy clusters.
Thank you for oversimplifying an idea.
In astronomy, "baryons" can also include "leptons", simply because leptons are included in the mass that one measures using a galaxy rotation curve.
And what does it mean to "quote in context" when someone is wholly attempting to make a sincere attempt at communication? Think about that. The neo-nazi says "Freedom is Slavery", likely learning it out of context from Orwell. Regardless of fidelity to Orwell, he has a point that is quite independent of Orwell, that should be argued on it merits, or dismissed on its merits alone. Surely the neo-nazi, in making such a statement, even if quoting a Orwell wrongly, may have a point!
And it is not unfair to dismiss someone's opinions by simply pointing at someone who has done a better job of the argumentation. It is the UNLISTENING dismissal which you dislike, not dismissal in general, which may well be reasonable.
The origin of an opinion is important, beause that is where the nuances come from. "Freedom is slavery", when said by Orwell, sounds very different from "Freedom is slavery", said by the nazi skinhead with twisted sense of history.
Yes you can choose to be selfish. But in that case, only you can use your own code. That's exactly what the GNU GPL dictates. If one wants to be unaccountable by distributing binaries but not source, then one cannot do this with the GNU GPLed sources. The GNU GPL is a license for transparancy. And transparency leads to freedom.
The problem with that argument is that it betrays a lack of understanding of the rewards of free-software. When people share software, they expect IMPROVEMENTS. The software is GIVEN AWAY, so that improvements, in the form of making the code more efficient, more portable, more usable, are all the "payment-in-kind" for software. What is damaged is not that there's erosion of the user base (there is) but it is also that one can have any expectations. That someone can use something to imporve himself alone, and forget about the rest of the world.
Legend has it that these evil spirits, frightening and powerful though they may be, would not venture into the domain of one's house, unless one lets them in ...
Now, I'll grant you that slashot mods don't mean a single thing. If you're unimpressed, then consider that I have a major in economics, and what he says, makes perfect objective sense. It is verifiable/falsifiable. Your one little factoid, if true,gets subsumed into his reasoning, but if false, what would it prove?
Get an education.
It is possible to take the source code of the program apart and say which piece came from which programmer, expert or people. It can be HARD to do this with human. How much of Hardy was there in Ramanujan? How would you even begin to answer that question?
Fish? Soon there will be no fishes for you.
Why is this insightful? If you used British English, it would be PAVEMENT.
But language must not obfuscate meaning!
But I suspect all most trolls have multiple accounts, so this method isn't that good.