But then, I would also argue that religion is institutional and communicable mental illness (as they systematically undermine their adherents' ability to think rationally--a fundamental requirement and definition of sanity).
So under your definition of religion, Zen Buddhism is not a religion?
Commercial software vendors will make their apps available on Linux when more users migrate to the platform.
More users will migrate to the platform when the apps they need are available.
Chicken.
Egg.
WINE short-circuits the dependency loop by allowing people who still need this or that Win32 app to migrate to Linux if they want to.
I see you've never heard of the saying "The Chicken is the Egg."
Yes... if someone wants to take an overdose of bleach in the privacy and comfort of their own home, they should be allowed to dammit!!!
Yeah, they should.
Just like if I want to go down to the corner pharmacist and buy a massive overdose of morphine, the size that you have no reason to possess other than to kill someone, I should be allowed to do so, then go home and mainline it all so that I go into respiratory arrest.
Phssthpok was able to kill off a marauding squad of martians using his ships water tank, and later Jack Brennan crashed a comet into Mars, the atmospheric humidity making the martians extinct.
That's incorrect. While it is impossible for something with mass to move faster than the speed of light, if you and I are five feet apart, and we each move away from each other at seventy-five percent of the speed of light, eventually we will no longer be able to see one another, because the photons bouncing off of you will, from my frame of reference, be moving too slowly to ever catch up.
My favorite way of putting it to religious people (I'm atheist) is "I don't respect your believes, but I won't disrespect them."
I rather like that attitude. I personally don't care if someone is religious or not. We all have things that get us through life. But someone who is all up in my face, horribly worked up, telling me why I'm an idiot for having faith in something that cannot be proven is just as bad as someone who gets up in an athiest's face, all horribly worked up, trying to convert them to their flavour of the Kool-Aid. Just because someone's not religious doesn't mean they can't be a religious (or, rather, irreligious) zealot, and nobody likes a zealot.
It's always the same with religious folks (not just christians): we atheists always have to "respect" your beliefs, and if we dare say something about them, you get your pants in a knot and start getting very stiff-necked and angry. On the other, when we express the feeling the story of Jesus and the story of Peter Pan are about as credible, we get flamed.
I'm not a Christian, but I am religious, and I'd just like to say, you don't have to respect my beliefs. You can disagree and argue with me all you want. But do it in a nice way. You don't have to respect my beliefs, but if you're rather rude about it, you will find yourself on the receiving end of a fist.
You're lucky. Atleast you can form cords. Due to a few very stupid injuries to my hands and fingers when I was younger, and when I was not quite so younger (Like when I got my hand stuck between the bowl and the mixer of a Hobart, that is, a dough-mixing machine, when I worked at a pizza joint, and broke some bones in my hand,) I have a very difficult time co-ordinating motions with multiple fingers. Things like typing, or playing single-notes quickly on a guitar are easy, as long as the fingers are moved individually. But when I have to move three or four fingers in a highly complicated manner extremely quickly, in unison, like switching chords, I still have a great deal of trouble, even after an extensive ammount of practice.
I can still make chords. It just takes a rather lot of practice, and I still will fail to do it correctly when the change has to be even slightly quick. For example, the progression of Smoke on the Water's main riff, which for simplicity I'll say is open, third fret, fifth, open, third, six, fifth, is hard for me to do. The quick, small change from holding down on the six to holding down on the fifth is something I consistently fuck up quite often, no matter how many hours of practice I put in.
Of course, I do have alot of other motor-control related dificulties, mainly from brain damage (Yeah, kids. Let me tell you something. The Society for Creative Anachronism looks like a good idea when you're stoned/tripping/robocoping, but being repeatedly knocked out by big burly scotsmen, or, rather, people who are pretending to be scotsmen, leads to brain damage. At present I'm recovering from my 13th concussion. There had been jokes about it due to the number), and therefore I'm not sure if I should blame it all on my fingers.
As a side note, I can use a picture of my brain activity (I forget the name of the machine used to generate the picture,) to scare teenagers out of doing drugs.
Not that I'd want to do that. They have to make their own mistakes, or they'll never mature.
2. "He broke a law, he should go to jail." The court system should be mandated to tell the jurors in all trials about their right to nullify terrible laws. Jury nullifaction is more than a priviledge, it is a right even greater than serving on a jury.
While I applaud the sentiment in this case, I have a hard time with the idea overall. How many whites in the South were cleared because white juries refused to convict them of crimes against blacks?
And it's better for ten guilty men to go free than to convict one innocent man. Didn't you pay attention in School?
Oh, don't worry. We Pak have finally finished contacting Larry Niven's authors. We'll be sending a small scout fleet of manned ram-jets to your planet very soon to 'collect.'
As someone who suffers from Psychosis, you are off on your terminology. The word you are looking for is not Psychotic, which describes Psychosis, but Psychopathic. Psychopathy is the condition that can be generally described as a lack of a conscience. A Psychopath doesn't care if they hurt other people. They have a lack of ability to empathise with the pain of others.
As a Psychotic person, myself, I know what is right and wrong. And I do care about whether my actions hurt people. It's just sometimes one can become rather extremely disconnected from reality.
For more information, check out Wikipedia.
Also of note is that Psychopathic behaviour is very often part of the condition known as Antisocial Personality Disorder, which, if memory serves, is commonly called Sociopathy.
This writeup is (once you get through the -killer nonsense) suspiciously pro-Microsoft. Shouldn't it be something like "Micro$oft (sic) Tries To Patent Paper!"?
I seem to recall that on/., anything Pro-Microsoft is suspiciously Pro-Microsoft.
Wow, for such intelligent people, we sure are objective and skeptical.
You have to admit though, the game does very little to promote peaceful solutions to its problems and obstacles, and very much to insinuate that you use violence. How about the assassination-missions in Vice City? How do you kill someone without violence?
Trust me, I think JT is a major dumbass just like everyone else, but to say that a game like GTA does NOT promote violence is actually stretching it a bit:)
With some people you will find that there is no peaceful solution to a problem. There are just varying degrees of violence and threat of violence. If someone is of the mentality where they care so little for what is considered proper behaviour in a society to the point that they physically and psychologically abuse their peers, then they will probably not respond to peaceful means. If they were of the mindset to respond to peaceful means of crisis resolution, they wouldn't be acting this way to begin with.
When you're dealing with a bully, someone who initiates attacks of opportunity against others because those people seem weak or unable to defend themselves, there is only one way to curb that behaviour: It must be made clear to the person in question that their behaviour will be detrimental to themself. Either through legal or other disciplinary repercusions, or through threat or use of violence. If the reason you are being bullied is because you appear an easy or low-risk target, you must bluff to appear more threatening than you are, and should bluffing fail, you must respond through violence.
One thing I have observed, and I wish I could remember who said it, is that the vast majority of humanity only behaves when they're within slapping distance. This goes hand-in-hand with the saying, "Fear is the greatest motivator." The deterant effect of a law is the threat of punishment. But when you are in a school setting, where there is very little actual punishment that can be meted out to children these days, breaking the rules doesn't seem to do much. When I was in Junior High and High School, getting into a fight landed you a seven day vacation. In days of yore, it got you the strap at school, and then when you got back home.
What we need to do to curb this sort of misbehaviour in children is to start disciplining them again.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. The girl next door is not in the same league. She's in a much better league. The one an average human being has a chance with.
I was just wondering where you stood on it, as I don't consider Zen (atleast the Rinzai branch/school of it) to be a Religion.
So under your definition of religion, Zen Buddhism is not a religion?
That'll change when Discordianism becomes mainstream! For Discordianism, that clause reads, "All religions, including this one, are crap."
Of course, once it becomes mainstream, most Discordians will quit it, I suppose. Kinda like what happened to Punk.
More users will migrate to the platform when the apps they need are available.
Chicken.
Egg.
WINE short-circuits the dependency loop by allowing people who still need this or that Win32 app to migrate to Linux if they want to.
I see you've never heard of the saying "The Chicken is the Egg."
I vouch for the truthfullness of this citation.
-- Brennan-monster.
Yeah, they should.
Just like if I want to go down to the corner pharmacist and buy a massive overdose of morphine, the size that you have no reason to possess other than to kill someone, I should be allowed to do so, then go home and mainline it all so that I go into respiratory arrest.
Freedom used to mean something.
Don't mess with the protector.
Indeed.
That's incorrect. While it is impossible for something with mass to move faster than the speed of light, if you and I are five feet apart, and we each move away from each other at seventy-five percent of the speed of light, eventually we will no longer be able to see one another, because the photons bouncing off of you will, from my frame of reference, be moving too slowly to ever catch up.
I rather like that attitude. I personally don't care if someone is religious or not. We all have things that get us through life. But someone who is all up in my face, horribly worked up, telling me why I'm an idiot for having faith in something that cannot be proven is just as bad as someone who gets up in an athiest's face, all horribly worked up, trying to convert them to their flavour of the Kool-Aid. Just because someone's not religious doesn't mean they can't be a religious (or, rather, irreligious) zealot, and nobody likes a zealot.
I'm not a Christian, but I am religious, and I'd just like to say, you don't have to respect my beliefs. You can disagree and argue with me all you want. But do it in a nice way. You don't have to respect my beliefs, but if you're rather rude about it, you will find yourself on the receiving end of a fist.
Chaka, when the walls came down.
Here's a copy of the ruling: ESA v. Illinois
Does anyone have a link to the actual opinion and ruling?
Lemme guess... You've got a message for the Action Man?
You're lucky. Atleast you can form cords. Due to a few very stupid injuries to my hands and fingers when I was younger, and when I was not quite so younger (Like when I got my hand stuck between the bowl and the mixer of a Hobart, that is, a dough-mixing machine, when I worked at a pizza joint, and broke some bones in my hand,) I have a very difficult time co-ordinating motions with multiple fingers. Things like typing, or playing single-notes quickly on a guitar are easy, as long as the fingers are moved individually. But when I have to move three or four fingers in a highly complicated manner extremely quickly, in unison, like switching chords, I still have a great deal of trouble, even after an extensive ammount of practice.
I can still make chords. It just takes a rather lot of practice, and I still will fail to do it correctly when the change has to be even slightly quick. For example, the progression of Smoke on the Water's main riff, which for simplicity I'll say is open, third fret, fifth, open, third, six, fifth, is hard for me to do. The quick, small change from holding down on the six to holding down on the fifth is something I consistently fuck up quite often, no matter how many hours of practice I put in.
Of course, I do have alot of other motor-control related dificulties, mainly from brain damage (Yeah, kids. Let me tell you something. The Society for Creative Anachronism looks like a good idea when you're stoned/tripping/robocoping, but being repeatedly knocked out by big burly scotsmen, or, rather, people who are pretending to be scotsmen, leads to brain damage. At present I'm recovering from my 13th concussion. There had been jokes about it due to the number), and therefore I'm not sure if I should blame it all on my fingers.
As a side note, I can use a picture of my brain activity (I forget the name of the machine used to generate the picture,) to scare teenagers out of doing drugs.
Not that I'd want to do that. They have to make their own mistakes, or they'll never mature.
And it's better for ten guilty men to go free than to convict one innocent man. Didn't you pay attention in School?
Next.
I think three out of those four have failed. And unfortunately, I can't buy a tank squadron on eBay.
Here's a hint for you: Scrith blocks 50% of neutrinos. Also, didn't you know that a Protector controls the ARM?
Sincerely, Proserpina.
Oh, don't worry. We Pak have finally finished contacting Larry Niven's authors. We'll be sending a small scout fleet of manned ram-jets to your planet very soon to 'collect.'
Sincerely, Phssthpok
Indeed. Just as Darwin himself, I, too, consider Darwin's work on Earthworms to be his greatest contribution to the annals of science!
As someone who suffers from Psychosis, you are off on your terminology. The word you are looking for is not Psychotic, which describes Psychosis, but Psychopathic. Psychopathy is the condition that can be generally described as a lack of a conscience. A Psychopath doesn't care if they hurt other people. They have a lack of ability to empathise with the pain of others.
As a Psychotic person, myself, I know what is right and wrong. And I do care about whether my actions hurt people. It's just sometimes one can become rather extremely disconnected from reality.
For more information, check out Wikipedia.
Also of note is that Psychopathic behaviour is very often part of the condition known as Antisocial Personality Disorder, which, if memory serves, is commonly called Sociopathy.
Wikipedia Article on Psychosis
Wikipedia Article on Psychopathy
Wikipedia Article on Antisocial Personality Disorder
I seem to recall that on /., anything Pro-Microsoft is suspiciously Pro-Microsoft.
Wow, for such intelligent people, we sure are objective and skeptical.
With some people you will find that there is no peaceful solution to a problem. There are just varying degrees of violence and threat of violence. If someone is of the mentality where they care so little for what is considered proper behaviour in a society to the point that they physically and psychologically abuse their peers, then they will probably not respond to peaceful means. If they were of the mindset to respond to peaceful means of crisis resolution, they wouldn't be acting this way to begin with.
When you're dealing with a bully, someone who initiates attacks of opportunity against others because those people seem weak or unable to defend themselves, there is only one way to curb that behaviour: It must be made clear to the person in question that their behaviour will be detrimental to themself. Either through legal or other disciplinary repercusions, or through threat or use of violence. If the reason you are being bullied is because you appear an easy or low-risk target, you must bluff to appear more threatening than you are, and should bluffing fail, you must respond through violence.
One thing I have observed, and I wish I could remember who said it, is that the vast majority of humanity only behaves when they're within slapping distance. This goes hand-in-hand with the saying, "Fear is the greatest motivator." The deterant effect of a law is the threat of punishment. But when you are in a school setting, where there is very little actual punishment that can be meted out to children these days, breaking the rules doesn't seem to do much. When I was in Junior High and High School, getting into a fight landed you a seven day vacation. In days of yore, it got you the strap at school, and then when you got back home.
What we need to do to curb this sort of misbehaviour in children is to start disciplining them again.
If I recall correctly, it's:
The Ringworld is unstable!
Oh, the Ringworld is unstable!
Did the best that he was able
And it's good enough for me!