...of political disagreements become mental illnesses. This trend has also infected to US so that anybody opposing homosexuality is "homophobic" and needs re-education in "tolerance", anybody opposing government power and money-grabs is "selfish" and "greedy"...
Woah, woah, woah there.
You were doing good until somehow you managed to rope homosexuals into that rant.
You do know that some homosexuals are just as interested in living in an honest, free democracy just like regular men are as well? Really!
I guess... I don't know. I wish you could see what it's like to read a rant like that, agree with it, right up until something about you that you can't change gets associated yet again with things that you actually do find philosophically and ethically repugnant.
Sure, sure. Here's Vel, that crazy homosexual, confirming your contention that anybody who cares to say anything negative about homosexuals is "politically incorrect" and "mentally ill."
You know what? I... I just don't know anymore. What are you asking homosexuals to do? Are you asking homosexuals to disagree with you? Are you inviting homosexuals to actually want the shit that 2nd term Obama seems to be simply because you can't stop yourself from implicating homosexuals in that shit?
Look... ok. You can have your DOMA. I don't give a shit anymore. You straight folks cheat left and right and marriage just seems to be a meaningless word to you just like "rape" is a meaningless word in feminism. I really don't care. When I'm in a relationship, I don't cheat, and that's good enough for me. I don't need lipstick on a pig like the word "marriage." You can keep it. Ok? Fine.
No Microwaves, no X-Rays, no grope-fests, no metal detectors, etc.
What the hell kind of lunatic shit is this? Microwaves... useful for heating water. X-rays, useful for medical diagnosis. Metal detectors, perfectly useful pre-Bush. I know what you're trying to say. You're trying to make an appeal to "simpler times."
grope
I really wish you could see your post the way I had to re-read it after you implicated homosexuals.
Guess what. This politically correct horseshit is feminist bullshit. It's a feminist attempt to appease homosexuals while continuing to turn around and call them some kind of, I don't know, double rapist. Two men having sex. That's like double rape, right? That's what feminists want.
I have no idea how gay men buy into feminist shit. I really wish they wouldn't.
Just... think before you post again. Ok?
I really don't want to choose between living in a communist, politically correct police state where it's ok to be homosexual and a free society where fags are lynched on the spot because we all know that all fags are all communists. But maybe that's the choice you want me to make. I don't know anymore.
Ok, I'm on my 7th beer, but I will attempt to respond to you anyway (it's Friday, horray!)
I guess I just wanted to ask you to take a step back. Read what you're writing.
Let's talk about HPV, one of the sexually transmitted diseases you talked about. I was born with HPV and so was my brother, but not the genital wart kind, just the annoying warts one gets on one's hand. IIRC there are roughly 17 strains of HPV, and I have one of them. It may not even be the same strain of HPV that leads to cervical cancer in females.
I'm sorry that you've chosen to see a naturally evolved part of your body as a mole or some other unwanted growth. The male foreskin provides, in addition to additional sensitivity to the male, some measure of lubrication during intercourse. The foreskin can help with the act of intercourse despite what some females who prefer men who have had the cosmetic surgery say.
I don't know. Some men prefer women with fake breasts. As I indicated in my previous post, if you prefer your foreskin to be amputated, I believe that is a choice you are free to make.
So, lets get back to my warts. It may be possible that when I meet this mystical girlfriend my genitals were mutilated to protect, I could put her at risk to cervical cancer by having unprotected sex, such as would be necessary to have a child.
I am deeply disturbed by the process followed by the African study of rate of HIV transmission, and while I have not read the study on HPV transmission, forgive my cynicism as I assume it's similar. When I read the study, the actual data seemed to indicate that circumcision actually increased the rate of transmission of HIV. Can you present any relevant argument?
Let me put it to you this way. The foreskin is the only body part we amputate at birth. The tonsils and wisdom teeth may remain until well past adolescence. In fact, I have a full set of wisdom teeth and both tonsils. My parents asked my consent before removing them and perhaps in some unconscious recollection of the trauma I suffered a day after I was born, I said that I would keep them. They've done me no wrong yet.
Please do some in depth research into the real facts surrounding routine infant male genital mutilation. If you would still prefer to be circumcised, that's your choice. Please do not make the choice for individuals who are not you.
btw, this is slashdot so I had to be somewhat insulting before I hit submit. You're an idiot for comparing a natural, well-formed part of the male body to a "growth." My ex-boyfriend is intact and has never had a problem. You need to learn some basic anatomy.
You're absolutely right. I'd probably recommend this distribution called Xubuntu. I don't think it's much related to this "Ubuntu" we're talking about here.
Clarification for anyone who wants to take cheap shots. The average trans woman begins gender transition only after getting married and having children. The way my genitals were mutilated prevented me from being able to get that far due to the physical pain.
Sorry to reply again, but you also missed the AAP recommendation of accommodating routine infant female genital mutilation to appease Muslims. So again, they're full of shit. Maybe you didn't know it and you're just trying to justify how your own body was violated. It's a perfectly natural reaction. Maybe it went just fine for you, but it didn't me, and it didn't a LOT of men. There needs to be data collected on the permanent damage done by genital mutilation of all kinds, but the AAP has a conflict of interest in that by representing pediatricians, they're not about to tell them to stop collecting that $350 fee for that service nobody wants to talk about honestly "because it's just how we do it."
Besides, why are we even talking about genital mutilation in this thread? Most of Europe considers it felony child abuse, no matter what gender.
It indicates you, and the rest of the anti-circumcision freaks have no idea what the word "violence" means.
No, I think you just called about 90% of men alive in the world freaks. It is NOT NORMAL to be circumcised. Only in the USA is this normal, and it's falling out of favor, too. It is completely unnecessary, and any rational review of the facts would show that.
Furthermore, what are we trying to protect against? STDs? Then fucking wait until I get a girlfriend and we'll make the choice together! Where was that outrage we saw against giving 12 year old girls the HPV vaccine while we're treating infant males like rapists?
Oh wait, I read some of your other posts. So you're telling me that it makes sense to mutilate infants to protect against SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES?!
How many infant males are you having sex with that an infant genital mutilation makes sense for protecting against STDs?
The only argument that remotely makes sense is the UTI argument. However, anyone who has had a baby will tell you that UTI is hardly life-threatening. In fact, it's trivial. The barely statistically significant change in rate of incidence in UTI does not necessitate the amputation of a body part and risking adverse complications, such as my aforementioned inability to have children, not to mention years of physical pain I lived with I thought was normal for a man.
I'll tell you what. YOU want to get circumcised? Be my FUCKING (lol) guest! But why don't YOU explain to my parents why they're not having grandchildren! Why can't you damned circumfetishists just KEEP YOUR DAMNED HANDS OFF MY JUNK.
MY BODY. MY CHOICE.
Eh, but who cares. No matter how loudly I scream, I was still mutilated, suffered physical pain for years, and will never be a whole man who can be a father because of it.
What's even more interesting, though, is that the same rebuttal we get to see here on/. every time there's a story about $big_company yanking an article or refusing to sell things about $controversial_topic still applies. Free speech only applies to the government etc.
Now please help me to understand why Card's opponents, which apparently make up a good amount of the demographic of people who purchase Superman comics, would need to worry about Barbra Streisand?
It seems that what happened here is that what happened to me when I started reading Ender's Game a few years ago is now happening to many, many more people the more vocal Card gets with his bigotry. I found out he was a Mormon, and knowing what Mormons do to transgendered individuals who have the rotten luck to be born into such of a vile, regressive, and sometimes just bizarre "faith," I was unable to read any more of it.
Card has his free speech to say whatever he wants. However, if he can't tell the difference between a transgendered person (me), a homosexual man or woman, and a farm animal, I see no reason to give him any of my money, especially these days now that money is speech.
I mean, what the hell could I possibly be thinking giving money to an individual who fosters an agenda that wants to make the country I own property in a very not-so-nice place for me? I don't care if he's written the next Les Mis FFS! He ISN'T getting my money, because I know that he has an agenda and folks like me are the target.
Let's face it. If folks who were opposed to gay marriage really were about preserving the sanctity of marriage, I've got bad news for them. They're going to need to refocus quite a lot of their efforts on some very basic things such as the divorce rate. Marriage is no longer important, the idea that all the protection you need is a ring is becoming old-fashioned, and gays have nothing to do with it. In fact, these people have nothing to lose! Nobody wants to dissolve their marriages!
All it seems is that the publisher has noticed that I'm not alone and decided that they'd rather not send bad money after good and go through with publishing something that will flop for no other reason than the person who wrote the story is a complete bigot.
All that seems to have happened here is that against all odds the invisible hand of the free market seems to have done something useful for a change. Fortunately, Card lives in a democracy, and as much as I wish he would shut up, I'm not sure I'd like to live in a country where he could be shut up. All he doesn't have is the right to be heard. Rather perhaps, the trouble is that he has been heard, and now enough people have a bad taste in their mouths that they'd rather he just take his ball and go home.
In fact, it's rather refreshing to know that there are enough people who are disgusted enough with Card that it would cause something he worked on to flop. Maybe the blurb I read on Advocate.com the other day that homosexuals are no longer an effective political bogeyman was true. Maybe things really might change. Not that I'm holding my breath.
Ok, I was thinking I was insane or just oversensitive. I remember starting to read Ender's Game and having enough head-scratch moments during the first couple chapters that I decided to see if Card was a religious nutter.
Then, when I found out he was a Mormon, I found myself unable to read another word. Fortunately, a friend had lent me the book so I didn't need to worry about having given money to a member of such a filthy religious movement.
There, I said it. Mormonism is filthy, rotten bigotry dressed up as religion.
Sometimes I wonder if people like Card or a lot of Mormons aren't really closeted homosexuals or transgendered. I have a passing moment of sympathy, since there was a time in my life that I was nearly pulled into Christian fundamentalism. Then I realize that even if that's true, these folks still want to make sure that every time I travel and find myself somewhere new, I always need to worry about which idiot is going to throw a fit and make a public scene.
Hint to Card and just about every straight person out there who supports marriage as "one man one woman." It's not gays that are destroying marriage. You straight folks are doing a pretty decent job of throwing that institution down into the gutters of irrelevance between all your teenage pregnancies, affairs, and quick divorces. And yeah, thanks for calling me a farm animal since your best argument against gay marriage is to invoke disgust at bestiality.
All I can tell from over here is that marriage has next to nothing to do with faithfulness or children. Well, I do know a very few people with children who married the person they had children with and stayed that way. I can count them on one hand.
But what the hell do I care? If I want to marry a chick, I can do it while I'm still legally male. If I want to marry a dude, I can do it after I'm legally female. Take away my ability to change my legal gender? Then you're just going to have to put up with a married couple who appear to be lesbians in every way except on the paperwork. Doesn't matter to me.
At the end of the day, I can sleep knowing that the times during my life I was in a relationship with another person, I was completely faithful. I do not have AIDS or other STDs. However, I'm surrounded by straight folks who see no problem with cheating their asses off, spreading around diseases, and patting themselves on the back because at least they're not gay *snicker*. Sure, you're not gay. Instead you're a diseased hedonist. Congratulations.
Why the hell is research money going into this? Everyone knows that only gay fucking faggots like me get AIDS. In fact, I'm posting this from my gutter where I'm dying of the AIDS that YOUR GOD gave to me because I was gay.
It's obvious that this infant was a gay faggot, and that's why THE LORD GOD gave him/her/it AIDS. This faggot should have been kicked out of home and thrown into a gutter to die of his/her/its depravity.
Furthermore, we all know that routine infant male genital mutilation is a 100% cure for AIDS. There is no way that anyone who has been properly mutilated can get AIDS except by being a homosexual faggot.
Civil rights don't apply while in military service.
Look, I know you want to associate Obama with evil icky homosexuals like me who are the reason fire and brimstone rained down on Chelyabinsk. (And why airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers, and Tropical Storm Sandy, and Hurricane Katrina, and this, and that, and blah.)
There are a lot of reasons Obama hasn't been such of a great president.
The bullshit PR response this petition will get will be just another one of those things.
Why did you feel you needed to bring up ending Don't Ask Don't Tell? How is that even a/civil/ right?
I had considered enlisting when I was younger, but I didn't because I knew that the military would not be a friendly environment for me (read my other posts for why). Don't Ask Don't Tell didn't violate my civil rights.
It was progress however.
Obama's record on civil rights is clear. I would like to know why you felt you needed to bring Don't Ask Don't Tell into this.
As you pointed out, what his administration does as far as legal cannabis in Washington and Colorado will be very interesting, and I expect to be disappointed.
Yeah, summary is wrong. There wasn't even an impact, just explosion and fireball (no solid remains). Carl Sagan gave a pretty interesting description of how it was determined that it was a piece of comet in Cosmos episode 4, Heaven and Hell. Perhaps submitter and/.'s editors should give it a watch. Like in the first 10 minutes iirc. Should still be on instant on Netflix and probably Youtube too.
All the proof I need of life outside the solar system is the growing evidence that our planet, its star and distance from that star, and its chemical composition are not unique. I don't think there's anything "mathematical" about that, and I don't know why you keep using that word. The same laws of physics apply everywhere in the universe, or perhaps at least in the observable universe, and those laws of physics seem to predicate that the evolution of life is almost unavoidable.
Basically, we are not special snowflakes. We might be the first intelligent species, or it could be that once a species reaches intelligence, there's a good chance it'll wipe itself out. However, there is nothing special about Earth, and there's no reason to believe Earth is exceptional. It could also be that communicating by radio waves is a fairly primitive way of communicating, and perhaps we haven't even scratched the surface of the laws of nature. Then again, perhaps radio communication is as good as it gets, and all we can conclude is that there aren't any other intelligent species broadcasting radio waves close enough for us to detect.
Now... as far as sky wizards go... I can't even mathematically or logicaly justify any kind of sky wizard I've ever heard of. Life? Probably pretty common. Intelligent life? Probably very hard to evolve and even harder to survive technological adolesence, but no reason it couldn't happen elsewhere. Sky wizards? I can't think of a single thing in the natural world that even remotely indicates the existence of sky wizards, except perhaps for man's own bigotry, superstition, and tribalism.
And besides, buddy, religion has plenty of blood on its hands, too.
Yes. The idea that life could evolve in the same way it did here somewhere else in the galaxy with similar conditions is just as looney as believing in a sky wizard who hates homosexuals and loves killing brown people, who believe in another, but different sky wizard who likewise hates homosexuals but loves killing white people, and each sky wizard claims that the other is a false sky wizard, although they both agree that the world is 6,000 years old. Yeah, those two things are both completely the same. You sure delivered a convincing argument there.
Ditto this. My 2011 Fiesta needs a software update so the passenger side curtain airbag deploys properly. Perhaps OP should take that little "security glitch" into consideration before getting his dick out next time.
Just as long as you keep in mind that "family values" now means that if my ex-parents or brother need help from my homosexual, wage-earning ass you know like babysitting or helping shuttle my brother's kids around, they're not getting it, because "family values" means I'm not part of or deserving of a family.
Undoing a mod to open my gob (sorry there kheldan), but I find this right here the most interesting part of the whole mess.
14th century: You're probably not a musician, not in Europe anyway. Or at least if you are the hit of the day goes something like this: Pie Jesu Domine, donna eis requiem *thwack*
15th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid.
16th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid.
17th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid. If you're very lucky, you might get a fat patronage, but chances are you probably aren't one of the few composers who gets this deal.
18th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid. If you're very lucky, you might get a fat patronage, but chances are you probably aren't one of the few composers who gets this deal.
19th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid.
20th century (at least the latter half): You're a musician. You probably get paid to perform in a local cover band or in a generic orchestra. You perform to get paid. Or hit the jackpot, get signed on to a label, and become a quad-zillionaire and ensure your great-great-grandchildren will never need to work a day in their lives.
21st century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid. People on the other side of the globe can be exposed to your music. Most people won't give you a dime for the copy of the recording they have no matter how much it brightens up their day or helps them define who they are, but some people (like me) will still be willing to hand over some cash to get an official CD (SD card with FLACs or similar in the future?) with printed artwork and a lyrics book with more artwork and photos of your band. There's no need for us to meet in person. We can conduct this exchange entirely over the internet and via courier services. If you're very lucky, you might land a nice deal for a movie or video game, but chances are you probably aren't one of the few composers who gets this deal.
So, basically, what I'm trying to do is illustrate what I'm assuming your point is. The 20th century with its quad-zillionaires is the abberation here, but at least the 21st century is brighter for the average musician when compared to any century before (except the 20th).
The MAFIAA and artists who think they're entitled to be quad-zillionaires or whine about how the quad-zillionaire rock star is a dying breed as though that's always how it's been since the beginning of time (which it hasn't) deserve absolutely no sympathy. There's a reason I'm learning new frameworks for my day job instead of getting serious about learning how to play more than a few simple tunes on my guitar. One of those activities gets me paid; the other does not. (Although it might get me something that rhymes with paid--maybe I'm actually a starving artist too! Look how clever I am! Give me quad-zillions too!)
I really only have a passing understanding of music history and don't listen to nearly as much classical as when I was a teenager, so please feel free to correct my timeline if I'm off, but I'm pretty sure I've got the gist of it (I hope). *ducks*
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
don't you understand?
This, by the way, is the language where they talk about a state-sponsored army in the enumerated powers of congress:
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
Now granted, there's this bit:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States
Except I can't help but to read that the power of the president to be "Commander in Chief of the... Militia" in a kind of jury nullification sense. Just because a judge says you have to convict if so-and-so is presented as evidence, doesn't mean a damned if that jury really doesn't want to convict. The power to rebuke authority is built into the system.
The only thing I don't understand is why the Militia doesn't work the same way as in Switzerland (or why feminists have no interest in being part of said Militia, but that's another topic entirely). The only ambiguity that's often raised is whether the National Guard constitutes said well-regulated militia. It's unclear since service isn't universal (or at least universal for the sex that cares about protecting freedoms).
Although in order to really get any context, you need to read the federalist and anti-federalist papers where it becomes apparent that most of the founders recognize that an armed populace is the only real check against the office of president or the government as a whole becoming a tyranny.
This. A million times this, a billion times this, a googol-plex times this. (That's a lot of this!)
The problem is that a lay person has absolutely no gut instinct for what a properly functioning network infrastructure looks like or what a properly built API looks like. They say that if we built buildings like we build software, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. There's wisdom to be had there. Any lay person who's not a total moron has a gut instinct for what constitutes a solid building and what's going to burn down, fall over, and sink into a swamp in 3 years.
I started to think about why that should be. When I started working at the call center I'm working at (got referred by my roommate who was also working there at the time), bringing up notepad or calc was viewed as misuse of our workstations. Notepad! Calc! Knowing to press win+R and type fscking calc was enough to be branded a hacker! (Of course, the only thing that's changed in that regard is I'm now part of the IT team, so I may now press win+R to my heart's content and draw forth the deep magic of the Run dialog. The problem was never some draconian IT policy; the problem has been and is the kinds of individuals who become successful supervisors in a call center environment and their utter, willful technical illiteracy. That being said, a lot of our supervisors are good people who are well intentioned, it's just that they absolutely cannot abandon their superstitious beliefs about computers.)
So what? How does a lay person get a gut instinct for whether a building is solid or ramshackle? He learns how to kick bricks, and he learns that if kicking a brick causes a wall to come down, there was something wrong with the wall to begin with. We recognize that as a society. If I'm buying a house, of course it's within my rights to poke a wall here or there to look for water damage and kick a brick or two.
Except what do we do to people who do the "cyber" equivalent of kicking bricks? As was noted in another discussion, read this in a dalek voice: PROSECUTE, PROSECUTE, PROSECUTE.
Shitty code that crumbles to pieces is legally protected because we as a society haven't figured out the "cyber" difference between kicking a brick and causing the whole thing to implode and launching an RPG or two at the structure. All we see is evil mastermind hacker did SOMETHING and it FELL APART, so HE MUST HAVE BEEN DOING SOMETHING BAD!!!eleven1!1
In other words, if we viewed architechts of buildings that are so easily toppled that the first woodpecker that comes along would destroy civilization the same way we view the individuals and especially companies and corporate entities that pay these individuals who are responsible for such unsound software, then our entire military-industrial complex would be researching the latest anti-woodpecker weaponry.
This is what you're asking to be in the middle of when you want to get into IT. Institutionalized incompetence. Parent is correct, there needs to be some kind of government intervention or else some kind of buy-in with the IT community as a whole for some kind of bar association or certification process that allows one to call oneself a capital P Programmer like there is for capital E Engineers.
Personally, I think the best way forward is targeting individuals instead of corporations for poor software. Hear me out for a second. I used to be a trucker so I know some things about going after individuals (not everything, it's been years since I was out on the big road, my own mistakes I freely admit, I write software better than I can back up a big rig). As a truck driver, I was legally required to keep a log and track when I was behind the wheel, when I was on-duty, when I was off-duty, and when I was sleeping. If I was behind the wheel too much, it was my ass. So if my dispatcher was asking me to drive too much, I had a choice: either I could go cowboy and keep two logbooks or I could politely
So publishing personally-identifying data for 114,000 people is in the security interests of society?
At this point, yes.
There are three things that could have happened. He could have gone through the "proper channels," and, since a middle manager somewhere would need to be embarrassed, he'd still be up shit creek without a paddle. He could have did what he did, publicly humiliated AT&T and made the 114,000 individuals affected acutely aware that AT&T had failed them.
OR, he could have done nothing. Perhaps that's the correct response. Instead, some black hat in $scary_country would have discovered it and exploited it without making anyone aware.
The whole beef I have with prosecuting for "hacking" in this manner is that he merely asked AT&T's server for information, and it merrily complied. To me, it sounds like this case is even more clear-cut than Swartz's case. He didn't break and enter. He didn't place unauthorized equipment in a network closet. He didn't even abuse a relationship of trust between a publisher and a college. All he did was show that all you need to do is politely ask the server for information, and it would happily give it to you.
Auernheimer should've gone to AT&T to report the problem. I've done that myself several times and they've always been very receptive. They might not fix the problem quickly (they're a big company and move slowly), but I've never had them sic the US Attorneys on me for it.
Consider yourself lucky. Or perhaps they know you'd fight back because you're older and have the resources to do so. Going after successful professionals (I can only assume you are) isn't very good for bullies. Bullies need targets they know they can safely victimize. So here we are.
tl;dr "What's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken [the vase] if I hadn't said anything?"
It's difficult to pick apart the things you have correct and the things you have incorrect because you're trying to be too dismissive of the idea of machine intelligence without a real body.
isolated components will give you nothing useful
Except for all the times they do such as machine vision, OCR, Jeopardy champ AIs, self-driving cars, and perhaps one day a decent go AI. Sure, the idea of a knowledge system that an untrained user off the street could access conversationally or of HAL is a bit pie in the sky perhaps, but I'm really not sure what you meant by this sweeping generalization.
I think this part is where I had the most difficulty:
The brain does not process the senses, either. Nor are the senses distinct - they bleed into each other. The brain is then given a virtual model with all the gaps filled in with generated data. This VR has properties the real world does NOT have, such as simplifications, which enables the brain to actually do something with it. Raw data would be too noisy and too much in flux.
Let's go step by step.
The brain does not process the senses, either.
Yes, it does. Your visual and auditory centers get input fed to them directly from the environment. Smell and taste are a bit more nebulous, but essentially the same case. There's also tons of senses that aren't counted in the traditional 5 such as somatic senses and balance. If you've ever stumbled and fell, it was likely because the part of your brain that's interpreting the raw data from the inner ear isn't working properly (such as during alcohol intoxication). I'm honestly not sure what you mean unless you're using the word brain to refer to something else than the gray matter in one's skull.
Nor are the senses distinct - they bleed into each other.
I want to see this as correct, but I'm not sure if you're evoking synesthesia.
The brain is then given a virtual model with all the gaps filled in with generated data.
And at multiple levels you're conflating here. Think about this process: sound waves move hairs in the inner ear, the inner ear transmits a signal to one center in the brain which does some magic and routes it elsewhere, such as to one of the language centers and off to other parts of the brain. I'm probably oversimplifing, but the process can break at any point without necessarily going deaf. Imagine for a moment that you woke up and were disturbed to find that when other people talk to you in your native language, you recognize the basic sounds as familiar, but you're unable to extract any lingustic meaning from the stream of sounds. Yet you can still discriminate music coming from a nearby radio from the person speaking to you.
This VR has properties the real world does NOT have, such as simplifications, which enables the brain to actually do something with it.
Perhaps you're referring to the simplifications that construct our consciousness, in which case if I reframe the earlier parts of this paragraph in reference to that, it makes sense. If I remember correctly from psychology, this is the prefrontal cortex mostly. And goodness knows just how constructed or illusiory or "real" consciousness is. It's certainly not a little man sitting in a room with switches and levers, although the homonucleus makes for an interesting plot device in Stephen King novels.
Raw data would be too noisy and too much in flux.
Except that now I can't help but to feel we're begging the question. Obviously raw data is not too noisy or in too much flux unless we're supposing a homonucleu
Slashdot Mirror
...of political disagreements become mental illnesses. This trend has also infected to US so that anybody opposing homosexuality is "homophobic" and needs re-education in "tolerance", anybody opposing government power and money-grabs is "selfish" and "greedy"...
Woah, woah, woah there.
You were doing good until somehow you managed to rope homosexuals into that rant.
You do know that some homosexuals are just as interested in living in an honest, free democracy just like regular men are as well? Really!
I guess... I don't know. I wish you could see what it's like to read a rant like that, agree with it, right up until something about you that you can't change gets associated yet again with things that you actually do find philosophically and ethically repugnant.
Sure, sure. Here's Vel, that crazy homosexual, confirming your contention that anybody who cares to say anything negative about homosexuals is "politically incorrect" and "mentally ill."
You know what? I... I just don't know anymore. What are you asking homosexuals to do? Are you asking homosexuals to disagree with you? Are you inviting homosexuals to actually want the shit that 2nd term Obama seems to be simply because you can't stop yourself from implicating homosexuals in that shit?
Look... ok. You can have your DOMA. I don't give a shit anymore. You straight folks cheat left and right and marriage just seems to be a meaningless word to you just like "rape" is a meaningless word in feminism. I really don't care. When I'm in a relationship, I don't cheat, and that's good enough for me. I don't need lipstick on a pig like the word "marriage." You can keep it. Ok? Fine.
No Microwaves, no X-Rays, no grope-fests, no metal detectors, etc.
What the hell kind of lunatic shit is this? Microwaves... useful for heating water. X-rays, useful for medical diagnosis. Metal detectors, perfectly useful pre-Bush. I know what you're trying to say. You're trying to make an appeal to "simpler times."
grope
I really wish you could see your post the way I had to re-read it after you implicated homosexuals.
Guess what. This politically correct horseshit is feminist bullshit. It's a feminist attempt to appease homosexuals while continuing to turn around and call them some kind of, I don't know, double rapist. Two men having sex. That's like double rape, right? That's what feminists want.
I have no idea how gay men buy into feminist shit. I really wish they wouldn't.
Just... think before you post again. Ok?
I really don't want to choose between living in a communist, politically correct police state where it's ok to be homosexual and a free society where fags are lynched on the spot because we all know that all fags are all communists. But maybe that's the choice you want me to make. I don't know anymore.
Thanks
Ok, I'm on my 7th beer, but I will attempt to respond to you anyway (it's Friday, horray!)
I guess I just wanted to ask you to take a step back. Read what you're writing.
Let's talk about HPV, one of the sexually transmitted diseases you talked about. I was born with HPV and so was my brother, but not the genital wart kind, just the annoying warts one gets on one's hand. IIRC there are roughly 17 strains of HPV, and I have one of them. It may not even be the same strain of HPV that leads to cervical cancer in females.
I'm sorry that you've chosen to see a naturally evolved part of your body as a mole or some other unwanted growth. The male foreskin provides, in addition to additional sensitivity to the male, some measure of lubrication during intercourse. The foreskin can help with the act of intercourse despite what some females who prefer men who have had the cosmetic surgery say.
I don't know. Some men prefer women with fake breasts. As I indicated in my previous post, if you prefer your foreskin to be amputated, I believe that is a choice you are free to make.
So, lets get back to my warts. It may be possible that when I meet this mystical girlfriend my genitals were mutilated to protect, I could put her at risk to cervical cancer by having unprotected sex, such as would be necessary to have a child.
I am deeply disturbed by the process followed by the African study of rate of HIV transmission, and while I have not read the study on HPV transmission, forgive my cynicism as I assume it's similar. When I read the study, the actual data seemed to indicate that circumcision actually increased the rate of transmission of HIV. Can you present any relevant argument?
Let me put it to you this way. The foreskin is the only body part we amputate at birth. The tonsils and wisdom teeth may remain until well past adolescence. In fact, I have a full set of wisdom teeth and both tonsils. My parents asked my consent before removing them and perhaps in some unconscious recollection of the trauma I suffered a day after I was born, I said that I would keep them. They've done me no wrong yet.
Please do some in depth research into the real facts surrounding routine infant male genital mutilation. If you would still prefer to be circumcised, that's your choice. Please do not make the choice for individuals who are not you.
btw, this is slashdot so I had to be somewhat insulting before I hit submit. You're an idiot for comparing a natural, well-formed part of the male body to a "growth." My ex-boyfriend is intact and has never had a problem. You need to learn some basic anatomy.
Thanks
You're absolutely right. I'd probably recommend this distribution called Xubuntu. I don't think it's much related to this "Ubuntu" we're talking about here.
Clarification for anyone who wants to take cheap shots. The average trans woman begins gender transition only after getting married and having children. The way my genitals were mutilated prevented me from being able to get that far due to the physical pain.
Sorry to reply again, but you also missed the AAP recommendation of accommodating routine infant female genital mutilation to appease Muslims. So again, they're full of shit. Maybe you didn't know it and you're just trying to justify how your own body was violated. It's a perfectly natural reaction. Maybe it went just fine for you, but it didn't me, and it didn't a LOT of men. There needs to be data collected on the permanent damage done by genital mutilation of all kinds, but the AAP has a conflict of interest in that by representing pediatricians, they're not about to tell them to stop collecting that $350 fee for that service nobody wants to talk about honestly "because it's just how we do it."
Besides, why are we even talking about genital mutilation in this thread? Most of Europe considers it felony child abuse, no matter what gender.
It indicates you, and the rest of the anti-circumcision freaks have no idea what the word "violence" means.
No, I think you just called about 90% of men alive in the world freaks. It is NOT NORMAL to be circumcised. Only in the USA is this normal, and it's falling out of favor, too. It is completely unnecessary, and any rational review of the facts would show that.
Furthermore, what are we trying to protect against? STDs? Then fucking wait until I get a girlfriend and we'll make the choice together! Where was that outrage we saw against giving 12 year old girls the HPV vaccine while we're treating infant males like rapists?
Oh wait, I read some of your other posts. So you're telling me that it makes sense to mutilate infants to protect against SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASES?!
How many infant males are you having sex with that an infant genital mutilation makes sense for protecting against STDs?
The only argument that remotely makes sense is the UTI argument. However, anyone who has had a baby will tell you that UTI is hardly life-threatening. In fact, it's trivial. The barely statistically significant change in rate of incidence in UTI does not necessitate the amputation of a body part and risking adverse complications, such as my aforementioned inability to have children, not to mention years of physical pain I lived with I thought was normal for a man.
I'll tell you what. YOU want to get circumcised? Be my FUCKING (lol) guest! But why don't YOU explain to my parents why they're not having grandchildren! Why can't you damned circumfetishists just KEEP YOUR DAMNED HANDS OFF MY JUNK.
MY BODY. MY CHOICE.
Eh, but who cares. No matter how loudly I scream, I was still mutilated, suffered physical pain for years, and will never be a whole man who can be a father because of it.
Yes, it's quite interesting.
What's even more interesting, though, is that the same rebuttal we get to see here on /. every time there's a story about $big_company yanking an article or refusing to sell things about $controversial_topic still applies. Free speech only applies to the government etc.
Now please help me to understand why Card's opponents, which apparently make up a good amount of the demographic of people who purchase Superman comics, would need to worry about Barbra Streisand?
It seems that what happened here is that what happened to me when I started reading Ender's Game a few years ago is now happening to many, many more people the more vocal Card gets with his bigotry. I found out he was a Mormon, and knowing what Mormons do to transgendered individuals who have the rotten luck to be born into such of a vile, regressive, and sometimes just bizarre "faith," I was unable to read any more of it.
Card has his free speech to say whatever he wants. However, if he can't tell the difference between a transgendered person (me), a homosexual man or woman, and a farm animal, I see no reason to give him any of my money, especially these days now that money is speech.
I mean, what the hell could I possibly be thinking giving money to an individual who fosters an agenda that wants to make the country I own property in a very not-so-nice place for me? I don't care if he's written the next Les Mis FFS! He ISN'T getting my money, because I know that he has an agenda and folks like me are the target.
Let's face it. If folks who were opposed to gay marriage really were about preserving the sanctity of marriage, I've got bad news for them. They're going to need to refocus quite a lot of their efforts on some very basic things such as the divorce rate. Marriage is no longer important, the idea that all the protection you need is a ring is becoming old-fashioned, and gays have nothing to do with it. In fact, these people have nothing to lose! Nobody wants to dissolve their marriages!
All it seems is that the publisher has noticed that I'm not alone and decided that they'd rather not send bad money after good and go through with publishing something that will flop for no other reason than the person who wrote the story is a complete bigot.
All that seems to have happened here is that against all odds the invisible hand of the free market seems to have done something useful for a change. Fortunately, Card lives in a democracy, and as much as I wish he would shut up, I'm not sure I'd like to live in a country where he could be shut up. All he doesn't have is the right to be heard. Rather perhaps, the trouble is that he has been heard, and now enough people have a bad taste in their mouths that they'd rather he just take his ball and go home.
In fact, it's rather refreshing to know that there are enough people who are disgusted enough with Card that it would cause something he worked on to flop. Maybe the blurb I read on Advocate.com the other day that homosexuals are no longer an effective political bogeyman was true. Maybe things really might change. Not that I'm holding my breath.
Ok, I was thinking I was insane or just oversensitive. I remember starting to read Ender's Game and having enough head-scratch moments during the first couple chapters that I decided to see if Card was a religious nutter.
Then, when I found out he was a Mormon, I found myself unable to read another word. Fortunately, a friend had lent me the book so I didn't need to worry about having given money to a member of such a filthy religious movement.
There, I said it. Mormonism is filthy, rotten bigotry dressed up as religion.
Sometimes I wonder if people like Card or a lot of Mormons aren't really closeted homosexuals or transgendered. I have a passing moment of sympathy, since there was a time in my life that I was nearly pulled into Christian fundamentalism. Then I realize that even if that's true, these folks still want to make sure that every time I travel and find myself somewhere new, I always need to worry about which idiot is going to throw a fit and make a public scene.
Hint to Card and just about every straight person out there who supports marriage as "one man one woman." It's not gays that are destroying marriage. You straight folks are doing a pretty decent job of throwing that institution down into the gutters of irrelevance between all your teenage pregnancies, affairs, and quick divorces. And yeah, thanks for calling me a farm animal since your best argument against gay marriage is to invoke disgust at bestiality.
All I can tell from over here is that marriage has next to nothing to do with faithfulness or children. Well, I do know a very few people with children who married the person they had children with and stayed that way. I can count them on one hand.
But what the hell do I care? If I want to marry a chick, I can do it while I'm still legally male. If I want to marry a dude, I can do it after I'm legally female. Take away my ability to change my legal gender? Then you're just going to have to put up with a married couple who appear to be lesbians in every way except on the paperwork. Doesn't matter to me.
At the end of the day, I can sleep knowing that the times during my life I was in a relationship with another person, I was completely faithful. I do not have AIDS or other STDs. However, I'm surrounded by straight folks who see no problem with cheating their asses off, spreading around diseases, and patting themselves on the back because at least they're not gay *snicker*. Sure, you're not gay. Instead you're a diseased hedonist. Congratulations.
Hell, I've got karma to burn.
Why the hell is research money going into this? Everyone knows that only gay fucking faggots like me get AIDS. In fact, I'm posting this from my gutter where I'm dying of the AIDS that YOUR GOD gave to me because I was gay.
It's obvious that this infant was a gay faggot, and that's why THE LORD GOD gave him/her/it AIDS. This faggot should have been kicked out of home and thrown into a gutter to die of his/her/its depravity.
Furthermore, we all know that routine infant male genital mutilation is a 100% cure for AIDS. There is no way that anyone who has been properly mutilated can get AIDS except by being a homosexual faggot.
I rest my case. QED. Thanks. Etc.
Oh, I wish I had mod points.
Ok, Mr. internet tough guy. Whatever. This Hector guy is obviously just a pussy and has a dick a fraction the size of yours. We get it.
Civil rights don't apply while in military service.
Look, I know you want to associate Obama with evil icky homosexuals like me who are the reason fire and brimstone rained down on Chelyabinsk. (And why airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers, and Tropical Storm Sandy, and Hurricane Katrina, and this, and that, and blah.)
There are a lot of reasons Obama hasn't been such of a great president.
The bullshit PR response this petition will get will be just another one of those things.
Why did you feel you needed to bring up ending Don't Ask Don't Tell? How is that even a /civil/ right?
I had considered enlisting when I was younger, but I didn't because I knew that the military would not be a friendly environment for me (read my other posts for why). Don't Ask Don't Tell didn't violate my civil rights.
It was progress however.
Obama's record on civil rights is clear. I would like to know why you felt you needed to bring Don't Ask Don't Tell into this.
As you pointed out, what his administration does as far as legal cannabis in Washington and Colorado will be very interesting, and I expect to be disappointed.
But that's why I vote Libertarian.
Yeah, summary is wrong. There wasn't even an impact, just explosion and fireball (no solid remains). Carl Sagan gave a pretty interesting description of how it was determined that it was a piece of comet in Cosmos episode 4, Heaven and Hell. Perhaps submitter and /.'s editors should give it a watch. Like in the first 10 minutes iirc. Should still be on instant on Netflix and probably Youtube too.
All the proof I need of life outside the solar system is the growing evidence that our planet, its star and distance from that star, and its chemical composition are not unique. I don't think there's anything "mathematical" about that, and I don't know why you keep using that word. The same laws of physics apply everywhere in the universe, or perhaps at least in the observable universe, and those laws of physics seem to predicate that the evolution of life is almost unavoidable.
Basically, we are not special snowflakes. We might be the first intelligent species, or it could be that once a species reaches intelligence, there's a good chance it'll wipe itself out. However, there is nothing special about Earth, and there's no reason to believe Earth is exceptional. It could also be that communicating by radio waves is a fairly primitive way of communicating, and perhaps we haven't even scratched the surface of the laws of nature. Then again, perhaps radio communication is as good as it gets, and all we can conclude is that there aren't any other intelligent species broadcasting radio waves close enough for us to detect.
Now... as far as sky wizards go... I can't even mathematically or logicaly justify any kind of sky wizard I've ever heard of. Life? Probably pretty common. Intelligent life? Probably very hard to evolve and even harder to survive technological adolesence, but no reason it couldn't happen elsewhere. Sky wizards? I can't think of a single thing in the natural world that even remotely indicates the existence of sky wizards, except perhaps for man's own bigotry, superstition, and tribalism.
And besides, buddy, religion has plenty of blood on its hands, too.
Why does the right wing support things like the TSA and marijuana prohibition? Please, no "no true Scotsman" fallacies.
Yes. The idea that life could evolve in the same way it did here somewhere else in the galaxy with similar conditions is just as looney as believing in a sky wizard who hates homosexuals and loves killing brown people, who believe in another, but different sky wizard who likewise hates homosexuals but loves killing white people, and each sky wizard claims that the other is a false sky wizard, although they both agree that the world is 6,000 years old. Yeah, those two things are both completely the same. You sure delivered a convincing argument there.
Ditto this. My 2011 Fiesta needs a software update so the passenger side curtain airbag deploys properly. Perhaps OP should take that little "security glitch" into consideration before getting his dick out next time.
Just as long as you keep in mind that "family values" now means that if my ex-parents or brother need help from my homosexual, wage-earning ass you know like babysitting or helping shuttle my brother's kids around, they're not getting it, because "family values" means I'm not part of or deserving of a family.
Undoing a mod to open my gob (sorry there kheldan), but I find this right here the most interesting part of the whole mess.
14th century: You're probably not a musician, not in Europe anyway. Or at least if you are the hit of the day goes something like this: Pie Jesu Domine, donna eis requiem *thwack*
15th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid.
16th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid.
17th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid. If you're very lucky, you might get a fat patronage, but chances are you probably aren't one of the few composers who gets this deal.
18th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid. If you're very lucky, you might get a fat patronage, but chances are you probably aren't one of the few composers who gets this deal.
19th century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid.
20th century (at least the latter half): You're a musician. You probably get paid to perform in a local cover band or in a generic orchestra. You perform to get paid. Or hit the jackpot, get signed on to a label, and become a quad-zillionaire and ensure your great-great-grandchildren will never need to work a day in their lives.
21st century: You're a musician. You get paid to perform. You perform to get paid. People on the other side of the globe can be exposed to your music. Most people won't give you a dime for the copy of the recording they have no matter how much it brightens up their day or helps them define who they are, but some people (like me) will still be willing to hand over some cash to get an official CD (SD card with FLACs or similar in the future?) with printed artwork and a lyrics book with more artwork and photos of your band. There's no need for us to meet in person. We can conduct this exchange entirely over the internet and via courier services. If you're very lucky, you might land a nice deal for a movie or video game, but chances are you probably aren't one of the few composers who gets this deal.
So, basically, what I'm trying to do is illustrate what I'm assuming your point is. The 20th century with its quad-zillionaires is the abberation here, but at least the 21st century is brighter for the average musician when compared to any century before (except the 20th).
The MAFIAA and artists who think they're entitled to be quad-zillionaires or whine about how the quad-zillionaire rock star is a dying breed as though that's always how it's been since the beginning of time (which it hasn't) deserve absolutely no sympathy. There's a reason I'm learning new frameworks for my day job instead of getting serious about learning how to play more than a few simple tunes on my guitar. One of those activities gets me paid; the other does not. (Although it might get me something that rhymes with paid--maybe I'm actually a starving artist too! Look how clever I am! Give me quad-zillions too!)
I really only have a passing understanding of music history and don't listen to nearly as much classical as when I was a teenager, so please feel free to correct my timeline if I'm off, but I'm pretty sure I've got the gist of it (I hope). *ducks*
What's the closest you've come to giving out the $1M prize?
But BMWs and Lexuses will get you laid.
No, it is not.
Wha? Huh? What part of
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
don't you understand?
This, by the way, is the language where they talk about a state-sponsored army in the enumerated powers of congress:
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
Now granted, there's this bit:
The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States
Except I can't help but to read that the power of the president to be "Commander in Chief of the... Militia" in a kind of jury nullification sense. Just because a judge says you have to convict if so-and-so is presented as evidence, doesn't mean a damned if that jury really doesn't want to convict. The power to rebuke authority is built into the system.
The only thing I don't understand is why the Militia doesn't work the same way as in Switzerland (or why feminists have no interest in being part of said Militia, but that's another topic entirely). The only ambiguity that's often raised is whether the National Guard constitutes said well-regulated militia. It's unclear since service isn't universal (or at least universal for the sex that cares about protecting freedoms).
Although in order to really get any context, you need to read the federalist and anti-federalist papers where it becomes apparent that most of the founders recognize that an armed populace is the only real check against the office of president or the government as a whole becoming a tyranny.
This. A million times this, a billion times this, a googol-plex times this. (That's a lot of this!)
The problem is that a lay person has absolutely no gut instinct for what a properly functioning network infrastructure looks like or what a properly built API looks like. They say that if we built buildings like we build software, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization. There's wisdom to be had there. Any lay person who's not a total moron has a gut instinct for what constitutes a solid building and what's going to burn down, fall over, and sink into a swamp in 3 years.
I started to think about why that should be. When I started working at the call center I'm working at (got referred by my roommate who was also working there at the time), bringing up notepad or calc was viewed as misuse of our workstations. Notepad! Calc! Knowing to press win+R and type fscking calc was enough to be branded a hacker! (Of course, the only thing that's changed in that regard is I'm now part of the IT team, so I may now press win+R to my heart's content and draw forth the deep magic of the Run dialog. The problem was never some draconian IT policy; the problem has been and is the kinds of individuals who become successful supervisors in a call center environment and their utter, willful technical illiteracy. That being said, a lot of our supervisors are good people who are well intentioned, it's just that they absolutely cannot abandon their superstitious beliefs about computers.)
So what? How does a lay person get a gut instinct for whether a building is solid or ramshackle? He learns how to kick bricks, and he learns that if kicking a brick causes a wall to come down, there was something wrong with the wall to begin with. We recognize that as a society. If I'm buying a house, of course it's within my rights to poke a wall here or there to look for water damage and kick a brick or two.
Except what do we do to people who do the "cyber" equivalent of kicking bricks? As was noted in another discussion, read this in a dalek voice: PROSECUTE, PROSECUTE, PROSECUTE.
Shitty code that crumbles to pieces is legally protected because we as a society haven't figured out the "cyber" difference between kicking a brick and causing the whole thing to implode and launching an RPG or two at the structure. All we see is evil mastermind hacker did SOMETHING and it FELL APART, so HE MUST HAVE BEEN DOING SOMETHING BAD!!!eleven1!1
In other words, if we viewed architechts of buildings that are so easily toppled that the first woodpecker that comes along would destroy civilization the same way we view the individuals and especially companies and corporate entities that pay these individuals who are responsible for such unsound software, then our entire military-industrial complex would be researching the latest anti-woodpecker weaponry.
This is what you're asking to be in the middle of when you want to get into IT. Institutionalized incompetence. Parent is correct, there needs to be some kind of government intervention or else some kind of buy-in with the IT community as a whole for some kind of bar association or certification process that allows one to call oneself a capital P Programmer like there is for capital E Engineers.
Personally, I think the best way forward is targeting individuals instead of corporations for poor software. Hear me out for a second. I used to be a trucker so I know some things about going after individuals (not everything, it's been years since I was out on the big road, my own mistakes I freely admit, I write software better than I can back up a big rig). As a truck driver, I was legally required to keep a log and track when I was behind the wheel, when I was on-duty, when I was off-duty, and when I was sleeping. If I was behind the wheel too much, it was my ass. So if my dispatcher was asking me to drive too much, I had a choice: either I could go cowboy and keep two logbooks or I could politely
So publishing personally-identifying data for 114,000 people is in the security interests of society?
At this point, yes.
There are three things that could have happened. He could have gone through the "proper channels," and, since a middle manager somewhere would need to be embarrassed, he'd still be up shit creek without a paddle. He could have did what he did, publicly humiliated AT&T and made the 114,000 individuals affected acutely aware that AT&T had failed them.
OR, he could have done nothing. Perhaps that's the correct response. Instead, some black hat in $scary_country would have discovered it and exploited it without making anyone aware.
The whole beef I have with prosecuting for "hacking" in this manner is that he merely asked AT&T's server for information, and it merrily complied. To me, it sounds like this case is even more clear-cut than Swartz's case. He didn't break and enter. He didn't place unauthorized equipment in a network closet. He didn't even abuse a relationship of trust between a publisher and a college. All he did was show that all you need to do is politely ask the server for information, and it would happily give it to you.
Auernheimer should've gone to AT&T to report the problem. I've done that myself several times and they've always been very receptive. They might not fix the problem quickly (they're a big company and move slowly), but I've never had them sic the US Attorneys on me for it.
Consider yourself lucky. Or perhaps they know you'd fight back because you're older and have the resources to do so. Going after successful professionals (I can only assume you are) isn't very good for bullies. Bullies need targets they know they can safely victimize. So here we are.
tl;dr "What's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken [the vase] if I hadn't said anything?"
It's difficult to pick apart the things you have correct and the things you have incorrect because you're trying to be too dismissive of the idea of machine intelligence without a real body.
isolated components will give you nothing useful
Except for all the times they do such as machine vision, OCR, Jeopardy champ AIs, self-driving cars, and perhaps one day a decent go AI. Sure, the idea of a knowledge system that an untrained user off the street could access conversationally or of HAL is a bit pie in the sky perhaps, but I'm really not sure what you meant by this sweeping generalization.
I think this part is where I had the most difficulty:
The brain does not process the senses, either. Nor are the senses distinct - they bleed into each other. The brain is then given a virtual model with all the gaps filled in with generated data. This VR has properties the real world does NOT have, such as simplifications, which enables the brain to actually do something with it. Raw data would be too noisy and too much in flux.
Let's go step by step.
The brain does not process the senses, either.
Yes, it does. Your visual and auditory centers get input fed to them directly from the environment. Smell and taste are a bit more nebulous, but essentially the same case. There's also tons of senses that aren't counted in the traditional 5 such as somatic senses and balance. If you've ever stumbled and fell, it was likely because the part of your brain that's interpreting the raw data from the inner ear isn't working properly (such as during alcohol intoxication). I'm honestly not sure what you mean unless you're using the word brain to refer to something else than the gray matter in one's skull.
Nor are the senses distinct - they bleed into each other.
I want to see this as correct, but I'm not sure if you're evoking synesthesia.
The brain is then given a virtual model with all the gaps filled in with generated data.
And at multiple levels you're conflating here. Think about this process: sound waves move hairs in the inner ear, the inner ear transmits a signal to one center in the brain which does some magic and routes it elsewhere, such as to one of the language centers and off to other parts of the brain. I'm probably oversimplifing, but the process can break at any point without necessarily going deaf. Imagine for a moment that you woke up and were disturbed to find that when other people talk to you in your native language, you recognize the basic sounds as familiar, but you're unable to extract any lingustic meaning from the stream of sounds. Yet you can still discriminate music coming from a nearby radio from the person speaking to you.
This VR has properties the real world does NOT have, such as simplifications, which enables the brain to actually do something with it.
Perhaps you're referring to the simplifications that construct our consciousness, in which case if I reframe the earlier parts of this paragraph in reference to that, it makes sense. If I remember correctly from psychology, this is the prefrontal cortex mostly. And goodness knows just how constructed or illusiory or "real" consciousness is. It's certainly not a little man sitting in a room with switches and levers, although the homonucleus makes for an interesting plot device in Stephen King novels.
Raw data would be too noisy and too much in flux.
Except that now I can't help but to feel we're begging the question. Obviously raw data is not too noisy or in too much flux unless we're supposing a homonucleu