Religion is a choice. I see no reason to effectively exclude it from discussion. I agree that it is a sensitive topic, but it has no place in a list of properties that a person does not have a choice in.
I disagree. The belief in magical beings is a defect of the way the human brain works. It's as unavoidable as being born stupid.
It's just as wrong to judge someone for it's religious beliefs as it is to judge someone for being stupid*.
*: And I mean the true "stupid", you can legitimately judge someone for being an asshole. Feel free to do so with this very post.
People who have something worthwhile to say are usually intelligent and experienced enough to know that being abusive is counterproductive; so, if we got rid of all the abusers and the sites that thrive on them, what is left is actually the 1% or so that is worht spending time and money on - the part that was the actual, original purpose of the internet.
And I suppose everything you say goes inside that 1%, right?
Coincidence?
(Some people would consider that the first step would be to get rid of those who apparently never learned to use semicolons, or those who can't spell, or those who talk about "the original purpose of the internet")
half of the total human population has to worry about receiving rape threats, death threats, and the harassment of angry mobs simply for expressing their opinions.
Do we? Do we really?
I, for one, are quite happy not giving a fuck about threats I receive online. Maybe it's because I have the ability to distinguish between the Internet and the real world.
the bounds of decency.
Oh. You got into shady terrain there. The bounds of decency have proven to be a quite unstable base to hold any judgement that endures the passage of even a few years.
We can start by stating the obvious
Ok. Me first. The sun shines!
Wow, you were right. I feel everything is much clearer now.
we should boycott all sites that publish these materials.
We should boycott a lot of corporations. Are you implying your boycott is the most important at this point?
You say that as it was silly, and it does sound that way if you use terms like "magical invisibility". However, to the actual question of: Should we protect the privacy of the lawyer-client relation to maintain a good quality judicial system, even though we are quite sure that protection is being abused by criminals and terrorists and whatever other enemies of our country we may find, the answer is a strong and convinced "Yes".
Justice is more important than security. Freedom is more important than security.
I have no interest on how much secure is an unjust and non free society. Without justice nor freedom, it's not even possible to know if there actually is security, because the enemy of the individual is the unjust and non-free society he lives in.
Yet on the other I don't see why, if you were trying to stop a serious threat, spies shouldn't be able to monitor these communications in principle, with some clear restrictions:
Because we have been proven over and over again, incapable of defining "serious threat".
Therefore, virtually everything can be identified as a "serious threat" and any law that requires that identification is ineffective.
It's as saying on a law "you can only do this if you believe you're right.". It's as unacceptable as a CEO justifying himself with "at the moment I thought it was the correct course of action." The obvious answer on the latter case "well, it was your job not to be wrong" should be applied to government monitoring.
So, the law should replace "if it's believed to be a serious threat" with "if it later proves to be a serious threat.". And if later we prove it wasn't a serious threat, well, tough luck, you are governing a country, you are expected not to make mistakes and to pay for those you make.
The part concerned by these news in bold. Everything else left uncut because Sun Tzu.
The Use Of Spies
1. Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State.
The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways.
As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.
2. Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.
This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.
3. One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present help to his sovereign, no master of victory.
4. Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
5. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.
6. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.
7. Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies.
8. When these five kinds of spy are all at work, none can discover the secret system. This is called "divine manipulation of the threads." It is the sovereign's most precious faculty.
9. Having local spies means employing the services of the inhabitants of a district.
10. Having inward spies, making use of officials of the enemy.
11. Having converted spies, getting hold of the enemy's spies and using them for our own purposes.
12. Having doomed spies, doing certain things openly for purposes of deception, and allowing our spies to know of them and report them to the enemy.
13. Surviving spies, finally, are those who bring back news from the enemy's camp.
14. Hence it is that which none in the whole army are more intimate relations to be maintained than with spies.
None should be more liberally rewarded. In no other business should greater secrecy be preserved.
15. Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.
16. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness.
17. Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports.
18. Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of business.
19. If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told.
20. Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants, the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these.
21. The enemy's spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become converted spies and available for our service.
22. It is through the information brought by the converted spy that we are able to acquire and employ local and inward spies.
23. It is owing to his information, again, that we can cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.
24. Lastly, it is by his information that the surviving spy can be used on appointed occasions.
25. The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy.
Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.
This is the first time that this type of competitive interference among individuals of the same species has been discovered in animals, the scientists say.
Any Friday night in a dance club should let them review that statement.
Well, if we're replacing all resources for machines, we will have machines hiring, firing, promoting and fluffing other machines.
On a thinly related topic, I still struggle with the concept of automation of work creating poverty instead of wealth. Imagine an alien being coming to Earth and saying "We decided to make contact because you finally achieved the milestone of eliminating the need to work." To which the humanity replies: "Yep, we're all jobless, poor and hungry now."
And yet, if you think on it from a "space colonization strategy game" perspective, we're investing just 1:100000 of our gross world product on the new technology that might let us find the location of our first extra solar colony.
Or, in other words, I defend it's arguably one of the very few things on which it's worth spending money (from an inhumanly objective point of view).
Subscribe to Slashdot to find this and other classics like: "The agency shares most of the bugs it finds, but not all of them." - Mike Rogers, NSA Director. "Smartphones increase the opportunities for terrorist activity to be concealed." - Robert Hannigan, Director of the signals intelligence and cryptography agency.
See?! I told you to keep the actual agendas hidden! Now people are confused. "Should I vote to the party of my favorite animal? Or the one with the agenda I agree with and helps me most." It's an impossible decision. Easily harder than Sophie's choice.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no right to make rape threats. There is a right to make jokes about rape.
Can the rest of the world also decide what is or isn't right? Or you are the final word on the subject.
The point is precisely that it's not possible to define a set of rules of what's OK to be offended about.
Religion is a choice. I see no reason to effectively exclude it from discussion. I agree that it is a sensitive topic, but it has no place in a list of properties that a person does not have a choice in.
I disagree. The belief in magical beings is a defect of the way the human brain works. It's as unavoidable as being born stupid.
It's just as wrong to judge someone for it's religious beliefs as it is to judge someone for being stupid*.
*: And I mean the true "stupid", you can legitimately judge someone for being an asshole. Feel free to do so with this very post.
People who have something worthwhile to say are usually intelligent and experienced enough to know that being abusive is counterproductive; so, if we got rid of all the abusers and the sites that thrive on them, what is left is actually the 1% or so that is worht spending time and money on - the part that was the actual, original purpose of the internet.
And I suppose everything you say goes inside that 1%, right?
Coincidence?
(Some people would consider that the first step would be to get rid of those who apparently never learned to use semicolons, or those who can't spell, or those who talk about "the original purpose of the internet")
half of the total human population has to worry about receiving rape threats, death threats, and the harassment of angry mobs simply for expressing their opinions.
Do we? Do we really?
I, for one, are quite happy not giving a fuck about threats I receive online. Maybe it's because I have the ability to distinguish between the Internet and the real world.
the bounds of decency.
Oh. You got into shady terrain there. The bounds of decency have proven to be a quite unstable base to hold any judgement that endures the passage of even a few years.
We can start by stating the obvious
Ok. Me first. The sun shines!
Wow, you were right. I feel everything is much clearer now.
we should boycott all sites that publish these materials.
We should boycott a lot of corporations. Are you implying your boycott is the most important at this point?
"There's obviously nothing beyond the forest."
The shortness of sight of your kind of people has lost every single fucking time during the entire history of mankind.
And yet, more short sighted people are born to fill every generation.
It's ok. Don't worry. While you insist there's nothing there, other people will find it for you. As every other fucking time since we lived in caves.
Why are so many people so adamant about the notion that consciousness can't come from the physical brain?
Because people are stupid.
(If you're amazed by how many questions are answered by that statement, you might not have a functioning TV.)
So, it works 20% better... until it crashes.
And... we all know most of the Linux user base would want to give up random crashes for 20% better performance, right?
You say that as it was silly, and it does sound that way if you use terms like "magical invisibility". However, to the actual question of:
Should we protect the privacy of the lawyer-client relation to maintain a good quality judicial system, even though we are quite sure that protection is being abused by criminals and terrorists and whatever other enemies of our country we may find, the answer is a strong and convinced "Yes".
Justice is more important than security. Freedom is more important than security.
I have no interest on how much secure is an unjust and non free society. Without justice nor freedom, it's not even possible to know if there actually is security, because the enemy of the individual is the unjust and non-free society he lives in.
Welcome to your new system of government.
New?
Oh, you mean after feudalism?
Yet on the other I don't see why, if you were trying to stop a serious threat, spies shouldn't be able to monitor these communications in principle, with some clear restrictions:
Because we have been proven over and over again, incapable of defining "serious threat".
Therefore, virtually everything can be identified as a "serious threat" and any law that requires that identification is ineffective.
It's as saying on a law "you can only do this if you believe you're right.". It's as unacceptable as a CEO justifying himself with "at the moment I thought it was the correct course of action." The obvious answer on the latter case "well, it was your job not to be wrong" should be applied to government monitoring.
So, the law should replace "if it's believed to be a serious threat" with "if it later proves to be a serious threat.". And if later we prove it wasn't a serious threat, well, tough luck, you are governing a country, you are expected not to make mistakes and to pay for those you make.
The part concerned by these news in bold. Everything else left uncut because Sun Tzu.
The Use Of Spies
1. Raising a host of a hundred thousand men and marching them great distances entails heavy loss on the people and a drain on the resources of the State.
The daily expenditure will amount to a thousand ounces of silver. There will be commotion at home and abroad, and men will drop down exhausted on the highways.
As many as seven hundred thousand families will be impeded in their labor.
2. Hostile armies may face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day.
This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy's condition simply because one grudges the outlay of a hundred ounces of silver in honors and emoluments, is the height of inhumanity.
3. One who acts thus is no leader of men, no present help to his sovereign, no master of victory.
4. Thus, what enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.
5. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation.
6. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.
7. Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies.
8. When these five kinds of spy are all at work, none can discover the secret system. This is called "divine manipulation of the threads." It is the sovereign's most precious faculty.
9. Having local spies means employing the services of the inhabitants of a district.
10. Having inward spies, making use of officials of the enemy.
11. Having converted spies, getting hold of the enemy's spies and using them for our own purposes.
12. Having doomed spies, doing certain things openly for purposes of deception, and allowing our spies to know of them and report them to the enemy.
13. Surviving spies, finally, are those who bring back news from the enemy's camp.
14. Hence it is that which none in the whole army are more intimate relations to be maintained than with spies.
None should be more liberally rewarded. In no other business should greater secrecy be preserved.
15. Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity.
16. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness.
17. Without subtle ingenuity of mind, one cannot make certain of the truth of their reports.
18. Be subtle! be subtle! and use your spies for every kind of business.
19. If a secret piece of news is divulged by a spy before the time is ripe, he must be put to death together with the man to whom the secret was told.
20. Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants, the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these.
21. The enemy's spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away and comfortably housed. Thus they will become converted spies and available for our service.
22. It is through the information brought by the converted spy that we are able to acquire and employ local and inward spies.
23. It is owing to his information, again, that we can cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.
24. Lastly, it is by his information that the surviving spy can be used on appointed occasions.
25. The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy.
Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.
26. Of old, the rise of
This is the first time that this type of competitive interference among individuals of the same species has been discovered in animals, the scientists say.
Any Friday night in a dance club should let them review that statement.
Well, if we're replacing all resources for machines, we will have machines hiring, firing, promoting and fluffing other machines.
On a thinly related topic, I still struggle with the concept of automation of work creating poverty instead of wealth. Imagine an alien being coming to Earth and saying
"We decided to make contact because you finally achieved the milestone of eliminating the need to work."
To which the humanity replies:
"Yep, we're all jobless, poor and hungry now."
Sadly, one of them will probably be like Pluto.
A dog?
And yet, if you think on it from a "space colonization strategy game" perspective, we're investing just 1:100000 of our gross world product on the new technology that might let us find the location of our first extra solar colony.
Or, in other words, I defend it's arguably one of the very few things on which it's worth spending money (from an inhumanly objective point of view).
I suppose it's this "L.Calçada" guy on the bottom of the image.
It's probably this Luis Calçada: http://luiscalcada.scienceoffi...
Old World Problems.
Also known as the "Make me a ham sandwich" epitaph.
LOL. Another proletarian who can't afford a perfectly working electric car.
Because Elon Musk is a diety on /. He's slashdot's Jesus to Bill Gates' Satan.
For me, he won't be a god until he succumbs to the pressure of a million puns and releases his own eau de parfum.
"Cite your sources" - Anonymous Coward
Subscribe to Slashdot to find this and other classics like:
"The agency shares most of the bugs it finds, but not all of them." - Mike Rogers, NSA Director.
"Smartphones increase the opportunities for terrorist activity to be concealed." - Robert Hannigan, Director of the signals intelligence and cryptography agency.
Slashdot? This is not Slashdot.
You're on "&", also called "the site formerly known as Slashdot" or also "SlashWiggleWiggle".
In & we only have slashvertisement, dupes and slashvertisement.
Our motto is: "SlashWiggleWiggle, adds for nerds, stuff that mattered."
If it wants to be, it will be.
Which is fine, as long as we keep the freedom to complain and express our dissatisfaction. Which we do.
See?! I told you to keep the actual agendas hidden! Now people are confused. "Should I vote to the party of my favorite animal? Or the one with the agenda I agree with and helps me most." It's an impossible decision. Easily harder than Sophie's choice.
Do you have a citation for that?
Yes. Mike Rogers said they din't do that. Which is tantamount to proof of the contrary.
I'm pretty sure that the guy could end world poverty just by acknowledging its existence.
In other news: "Most of our citizens are as free as in America, North Korea's supreme commander Kim Jon Un said, but not all of them."