Ah, maybe you haven't experienced Vermont. Yes, you CAN to a certain extent do that. However, riding on icy roads in the dark in the dead of winter is not highly recommended. On good days its somewhat feasible.
Ah, but that is the difference between NYC and Burlington, VT. Believe me, I've spent plenty of time in NYC and Boston as well. I have a pretty good idea of what a transit system is and why it is beneficial there. It is just not the same type of story here.
Eh, really I think the whole debate about mass transit in this country is pretty much moot anyway, we're already toast. Stick a fork in the US, she's done.
I CAN and have, and do bike it, but that works only from May to September in Vermont. Right now today the roads are entirely impassible to bicycles.
In any case, the commute time argument still holds, 10 miles is a good 45 minute ride. Less than the bus, but it is requiring a certain degree of commitment of time.
And PRT can only follow a limited number of routes as well.
Yeah, maybe right now today. There are already places that have buses that can drive themselves on marked routes. There is still a driver, but that seems to be more due to liability concerns than necessity. If a PRT system was built like that, then MOST roads could be properly marked, and at that point it is quite a bit more convenient than a bus.
That's a symptom of an underfunded transit system, not a problem with mass transit per se. Most U.S. residents don't have a clue what a real transit system looks like because generally, we don't have them.
No, the problem really is that unless the density of people is fairly high the required amount of funding PER POTENTIAL PASSENGER is far too high. Ridership is too low, the system cannot realistically be funded well enough to get more people to ride, thus ridership stays low, etc. When the system here was started it was actually profitable, but increasing operating costs have done for that.
More to the point, I am not suggesting all such systems are not economical or don't work well, just giving an example of why it typically fails in many places. Not all that many people actually work downtown here proportionately either. It may work fine in Minneapolis (or at least it DOES work).
What you're describing already exists: streetcars and Light Rail Transit. LRT is generally faster because it has its own private right-of-way, just like PRT.
I am sure I didn't describe this well. OK, you could say 'streetcar', but what I'd like to be able to do is call up a 'streetcar' and have it show up, like a taxi, and it can simply carry me, like any car does now. The advantages are still large, if you don't need a driver. Far less parking required, much cheaper and thus better vehicle efficiency and maintenance, and given that it is a light vehicle not much waste on dead heading.
This is certainly not the last word on the pluses and minuses of mass transit, but it certainly illustrates that mass transit systems are by NO MEANS de-facto more energy efficient than personal transportation.
One big train or bus logically can only come by every so many minutes. You don't want to wait 15 minutes. Plus it can only follow a specific route.
For example, my office is 10 minutes away by car. Yet if I were to ride the bus that goes there it would take 1.5 HOURS because first I have to wait 15 minutes for it to show up, then I have to ride downtown to a central station, wait another 15 minutes for the bus going to where I want to go, and then ride that bus. All the way these buses are starting and stopping and go maybe overall 1/2 the speed of a car.
I don't have 1.5 hours of free time to spend commuting. Judging by the ridership, nobody else that is gainfully employed does either.
Now, if we had say smart electric taxis that would show up when I need my ride and go directly there at speed, it would be basically a no-brainer. I'd be on it in 5 seconds. Even if it DID go half as fast as a normal car, so what? I can live with 20 mins if it will save me money. I might even do it if it cost the same.
But yeah, Bb owns WebCT. The thing is, at least at the place I have taught online courses for several years, ALL of the faculty knows how to use WebCT and EVERY course has masses of material in it. Lots of the faculty members also have things like Excel spreadsheets and whatnot that rely on data exports from WebCT, it is all integrated into the rest of the school's provisioning and other IT systems. So really there is about zippo grande chance they'll ever migrate from WebCT, as long as it continues to exist and be supported.
So, I doubt Bb is going to get rid of WebCT anytime soon, since at that point there would be NO reason to switch to Bb.
I've been an adjunct at a local College here for several years, and done some IT consulting for them. They're entirely WebCT based. Blackboard has been twisting their arms about it, but the faculty in general has zero desire to switch.
I haven't used Blackboard myself, but all I can say is you would have to try HARD to have a worse GUI than WebCT does. It does WORK, usually pretty reliably, but whoever designed it obviously was sans-clue in the user interface department. Has to be the worst webapp I personally have ever used. I guess that makes Bb truly a scary prospect! lol.
That is the problem with people like you, your so wrapped into the "Oh no, not violence" that you don't understand that violence or the threat of it is the only way to enforce something onto someone who doesn't share your views.
Exactly. My point is so made there are simply no more words to be said. Maybe you should actually visit some of these other countries some time. Put yourself in other people's shoes for once in your life, it will really be an eye opening experience. How would you feel if someone said to you "well, I'm going to MAKE you do what I want with this gun?" Hmmmm? Think man, just once, think!
There are basically 2 choices out there, Blackboard and WebCT. Both of them rot, and there are certainly other FOSS applications that are better, but which one is used is NOT anything IT has the slightest bit of influence over.
The factors involved are mostly related to the faculty and administration of the school. Instructors have LARGE amounts of time and energy invested in learning whichever platform they're on now. Most of them are not amazingly competent in the computer field, and they have high demands on their time already.
Even a HINT of a suggestion that the faculty would have to say switch over all their classes to a new system would provoke instant rebellion, and in a struggle between IT and a faculty department head or dean, there is a 0.0000000% probability of IT winning.
Not to say change is impossible, but it has to come out of admin/faculty. IT is pretty powerless in a University environment.
Could be interesting. Still wish we could have one, lol. Now we have JSP/JSF/Facelets, WPF, and now apparently this eFace. (not to mention of course XUL/XBL...). Not all exactly equivalent, but close, and so it grows! I think 2 of any technology is really enough myself.
Well, lets take WPF as an example. There are, and have been for years, equivalent Java frameworks. SWT and Swing really aren't the same thing at all, they're widget toolkits, not presentation frameworks.
What would have stopped WPF from being implemented on Java? Nothing. Nothing except the narrowly self interested strategy of one company, who could have provided a technology that EVERYONE could use on a mature platform, but instead we have no such thing. Instead man lifetimes worth of engineering talent had to be wasted on reproducing basically a clone of Java so that MS could 'control the technology'.
I don't really criticize MS for that, it is a result of the way business operates and it makes perfectly good sense from their standpoint to do it that way, but MS's standpoint has no relevance to me or other developers. It is just that simple, and IMHO it would be nice if the marketplace were to just slap down that sort of self interested ploy. I'm really not trying to take sides either, I'd have the same opinion if Sun's and MS's positions had been reversed.
I'm not asserting that an unarmed person is defenseless. Sure, some people are quite capable of inflicting damage with their bare hands. I don't really think that is exactly comparable in most circumstances to being armed with say a gun. The difference is so large that it has a different character.
And I can appreciate the utility of weapons in the role of TOOLS, for hunting, defense against animals, recreation, etc. I've owned guns for those purposes too. Of course the real world is not perfectly clear cut. I could shoot someone with my "target" pistol. It isn't a perfect world, but we can make it better, and less weapons makes a better world.
But see the problem is that the DOCTRINE of self defense IS flawed, because it fosters the conditions under which violence, especially large scale violence, and injustice occur. I don't believe that some kind of perfectly peaceful society will ever exist in the foreseeable future, human nature won't allow it, nor that we will all somehow be able to lay down every weapon we have tomorrow. But if we can acknowledge the evil inherent in the way we think about these things now, then we CAN make it better. We can have far less weapons in the world, and far less violence.
What if we just plain stopped manufacturing weapons? The world spends more money on these things than on health care, education, etc every year right now. How about if we divide that by half? And then in half again? The guns we have now will last 100's more years. It is pretty easy to start again if that's what we want to do, guns aren't exactly rocket science.
I just don't see some kind of great advantage of the CLR over a JVM. There really is very little difference between the technologies and 100% of the existing Java APIs are already available on every platform.
I suppose in some version of the future that may come to pass where.Net becomes as well supported and Java somehow fades into the twilight then maybe I'd switch to.Net based technology. I seriously doubt I'd really notice the difference.
As it stands now I'm just annoyed at MS's selfish desire to control their VM to the exclusion of everyone else. What purpose did that serve? Its here and it isn't going away, but it was a fairly pointless move from the rest of the world's perspective and now we're stuck with a fragmented VM technology landscape.
It is kind of sad really, but Java continues to do what we need it to do and there is no convincing reason to WANT to switch.
Don't mistake the right to act because of sovereignty as justification of the act.
What right? The "right" to hold guns to other people's heads? It is ONE world, one human race. No "right" exists that deprives another.
As I said, all claims of illegality rely on some hidden idea that we have no sovereignty. Legal and illegal has nothing to do with your like or dislike of an act. Don't confuse the two and don't conflate what you want with how it is.
Really? And then by what "hidden idea" do you suppose it is by which the laws of this country may be imposed on anyone who doesn't agree with them? This argument is fatally flawed on the face of it. Law is a tool of necessity. We collectively, the people, all of the people, have exactly the right to have what laws we need, local, national, or international. And we all, as individuals or as nations have the obligation to live peacefully with each other and abide by those just laws. No one group, regardless if it calls itself a "sovereign nation" or anything else is above that law.
Life would be a lot worse off if we didn't have our sovereignty and while you probably won't spend enough time in it to see what the possibilities are, you should know that they won't come to pass as long as we remain a sovereign nation.
My opinion is that where you are going wrong is in somehow believing that there is some kind of "us" and some kind of "them". Nobody is suggesting that people should be stopped from doing what they want to do, except and unless it interferes with everyone else's equal rights. When have I ever suggested that the people of the United States should be submitted in their place on the Earth to someone else's law? There are times and places where WE need to abide by the greater law of the whole, that doesn't give the rest of the world any right to interfere where it isn't justified, and the same rule applies to us.
Read the words that the founders of this nation wrote down. REALLY read them, understand that they are not the words of one people for itself. They are words for all people in all places at all times. If we really actually believe them, if we live them, then what are we doing condemning the people of other countries for wanting to be free to live the way THEY want to live as well. Just because it is different from the way you want to live and the way you THINK they should live does not give us the right to interfere with them.
Finally, look at what it has cost us all to live by this philosophy that our narrow interest is above that of others, that we can ever justify armed force. Surely even if you are not convinced that ultimately peace demands the giving up of all weapons, you can still see what this kind of thinking has done to the world. The treasure we have WASTED in a vain pursuit of security and our own interests has damaged the very Earth, impoverished 2 thirds of humanity and threatens every day to destroy us all with nuclear annihilation. Is that security? Is it peace? Is it SANE? Because in the end, all philosophy aside, if it isn't working then it is indeed INSANE to keep doing it.
It is sort of like saying that Ghengis Khan once spared a city, so he must be a nice guy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not condemning people for being part of a society which bases itself on and glorifies violence above almost everything else. I AM criticizing that society, at its most basic and fundamental level, and it is harsh and deserved criticism. It is also a loving act because only by exposing the illness of society can it be cured.
As for nuclear weapons, I'd say they are illustrative of the extreme degree of the illness of our society. Such a weapon need not be used in war in order to be effective, in fact nuclear weapons are so vile that they do plenty of harm just by existing. Nor is the fact that they have not been used YET in the 63 years we have had them in our hands any great assurance that they will not be used in the future.
If the thrust of your argument is that peace is achieved by arming ourselves to the hilt I can only say that argument is weak indeed. Beyond weak, in my opinion it exposes the lack of any credible justification for maintaining stockpiles of weapons at all.
Change naturally creates fear, but change, the deepest possible change is exactly what is required if humanity will survive. Change or death, the choice is in all our hands. Choose.
But neither will I glorify their actions nor pretend that what they did was right. It was wrong. There is no such thing as escaping the responsibility for your actions. When you lift your hand, when you act in the world it is YOUR will that carries out that act.
It is far past time when human beings stopped playing the game of passing responsibility for what they did onto anyone else.
Nor does the mere lack of prosecution make something legal.
Where is the assertion that this supposed authority devolved onto the Presidency is limited in any way shape or fashion?
Beyond that the assertion you make that "nobody wants to spy on me" flies totally in the face of every bit of evidence we have as to what is actually going on. Furthermore I would have to be a babbling idiot totally devoid of any knowledge of history not to know that every single time the government has acquired the means to spy on its citizens it has happily used that power to the maximum possible extent.
Fools like you are welcome to just toss their rights on the trash heap of history if they wish, but some of us are not so unwise. The end result of any such stupidity WILL be tyranny.
THE fundamental principle which preserves our rights collectively and individually is the principle that when the rights of one are trampled that all the others are obliged to stand and defend them. As soon as you fail to do that you have destroyed any guarantees of any kind you have that your own rights will continue to be respected as well.
We instituted a government of laws and set up a structure of such laws in order to stop exactly this kind of thing. Mark my words, to let this stand as it is is the beginning of the end of our Republic. Defend it or loose it.
Precisely. By arming yourself and participating in the logic of power, which is ultimately ONLY the rule of force and can logically be nothing else you have created the violence.
Once you arm yourself, you now MUST logically arrogate to yourself the 'right' to use violence, and thus demote all others to the condition of being subservient to your will.
"The US [substitute any name you want here] doesn't need permission to act on anything". You must see the utter contempt for the equality of the rights of all others inherent in this statement. You illustrate perfectly ALL that is wrong with this entire world view, I couldn't have done it better myself.
Moreover your entire statement taken as a whole illustrates the path of reasoning which inevitably follows from the initial flawed assertion. The other is not like me, my actions are always just, I am not bound by any obligations to you, only I have the right to decide what I do, and I'll back that up with violence. What? Does that violence make you right? Is your willingness to kill to get what you think is right a license to impose your viewpoint on the rest of us? I assure you many people will disagree with you, and now you have given them little recourse except to either submit to your tyranny or resist it with their own force.
Peace is not some kind of condition that just happens, peace is a process, it is a state of mind and spiritual development. It is a path that must be followed. You have the choice and the consequences of ALL OF YOUR ACTIONS are always your responsibility and yours alone. You don't have to like that, but it is objectively true and any moral theory that denies the objective truth of the real world is bankrupt and without merit.
See, the way I see it, your response is perfectly understandable, but it fails to make sense when you take a more holistic view of things.
One cannot effectively defend oneself unless one is PREPARED to defend oneself. That might at first glance seem to be merely a sensible thing to do, be prepared (hey I was even a Boy Scout once, lol).
The problem is that being prepared consists of being armed. Once you arm yourself, you ARE by definition now a threat to everyone else. Thus they must arm themselves. Thus even the mildest form of defensive thinking leads directly to an arms race or the conditions for an arms race.
More than that, it leads to a kind of thinking which inevitably involves the logic of power, and the rule of power is the rule of force. Inter armis legis non. No law can exist between armed parties willing to defend their interests by force except force. Either the force of the other party, or the force of some third party.
So peace fails, even amongst well meaning peoples, because first they subscribe to the doctrine of self defense. Second they must arm themselves, 3rd their armed state precipitates a need for all other parties to be armed, and then no authority can exist which is not armed force. Finally that armed force will sooner or later be used. Thus the doctrine of self defense, innocent as it seems on the surface, is the seed which ultimately leads to war and violence.
Even when violence does not proceed directly from the logic of power, it creates a corrupting effect on the thinking of the armed individuals. First they reason that collective security is better than individual security and the full panoply of the armed state comes into existence. People in large numbers acting in a mass in the armed state do not subscribe to any of the recognized moral principles of normal society to any high degree. This is a situation always extremely hazardous to peace.
Finally the corruption goes even deeper in the sense that to arm oneself is in essence a threat, and thus each person in this armed society is essentially at a fundamental level saying to all of the others "I reserve the option to get my way by force." Granted that most people will not want to exercise that option, but it always exists and it has an inhibiting effect on people's willingness to reach a real and genuine accommodation with one another based on mutual agreement and shared benefit.
Thus my position is that the doctrine of self defense is actually antithetical to the best interests of all individuals in the real world. Not in some moralistic philosophical sense, but actually in the real world as it is.
Is I didn't (so far) get 500 responses along the lines of 'you dishonor our sacred warriors!' [rolls eyes].
I mean, I don't have anything really against people who are in the Armed Forces. Glorifying the whole thing though just seems dumb. Certainly doesn't promote peace!
Not only is the RIAA now apparently synonymous with the Justice Department, but we STILL have renditions and we still have a President that believes he has the authority to spy on us (and by extension of the same logic essentially ignore any law or any provision of the Constitution by the same argument).
It was unacceptable when GWB did it, and it is STILL unacceptable and it is still the responsibility of the citizens of the US to put a stop to it.
But hey, Barak Obama is a great guy, we don't need civil liberties.
People can dress it up all they want to, but when you pick up a gun and follow orders it doesn't absolve you of responsibility for what you do. I know the majority of the people in the world just plain worship violentism, but that doesn't change a thing. There is no glory in fighting and killing is wrong, period.
And even the law isn't so blind as to be able to be otherwise. Invading Iraq was immoral and illegal and ALL of the people who participated in it, from top to bottom, committed a crime. Pure and simple.
Some things may be understandable, even forgivable, but that does NOT make them right.
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Ah, maybe you haven't experienced Vermont. Yes, you CAN to a certain extent do that. However, riding on icy roads in the dark in the dead of winter is not highly recommended. On good days its somewhat feasible.
Ah, but that is the difference between NYC and Burlington, VT. Believe me, I've spent plenty of time in NYC and Boston as well. I have a pretty good idea of what a transit system is and why it is beneficial there. It is just not the same type of story here.
Eh, really I think the whole debate about mass transit in this country is pretty much moot anyway, we're already toast. Stick a fork in the US, she's done.
I CAN and have, and do bike it, but that works only from May to September in Vermont. Right now today the roads are entirely impassible to bicycles.
In any case, the commute time argument still holds, 10 miles is a good 45 minute ride. Less than the bus, but it is requiring a certain degree of commitment of time.
And PRT can only follow a limited number of routes as well.
Yeah, maybe right now today. There are already places that have buses that can drive themselves on marked routes. There is still a driver, but that seems to be more due to liability concerns than necessity. If a PRT system was built like that, then MOST roads could be properly marked, and at that point it is quite a bit more convenient than a bus.
That's a symptom of an underfunded transit system, not a problem with mass transit per se. Most U.S. residents don't have a clue what a real transit system looks like because generally, we don't have them.
No, the problem really is that unless the density of people is fairly high the required amount of funding PER POTENTIAL PASSENGER is far too high. Ridership is too low, the system cannot realistically be funded well enough to get more people to ride, thus ridership stays low, etc. When the system here was started it was actually profitable, but increasing operating costs have done for that.
More to the point, I am not suggesting all such systems are not economical or don't work well, just giving an example of why it typically fails in many places. Not all that many people actually work downtown here proportionately either. It may work fine in Minneapolis (or at least it DOES work).
What you're describing already exists: streetcars and Light Rail Transit. LRT is generally faster because it has its own private right-of-way, just like PRT.
I am sure I didn't describe this well. OK, you could say 'streetcar', but what I'd like to be able to do is call up a 'streetcar' and have it show up, like a taxi, and it can simply carry me, like any car does now. The advantages are still large, if you don't need a driver. Far less parking required, much cheaper and thus better vehicle efficiency and maintenance, and given that it is a light vehicle not much waste on dead heading.
You have to account for a lot of other inefficiencies in a mass transit system, for instance
http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html
This is certainly not the last word on the pluses and minuses of mass transit, but it certainly illustrates that mass transit systems are by NO MEANS de-facto more energy efficient than personal transportation.
One big train or bus logically can only come by every so many minutes. You don't want to wait 15 minutes. Plus it can only follow a specific route.
For example, my office is 10 minutes away by car. Yet if I were to ride the bus that goes there it would take 1.5 HOURS because first I have to wait 15 minutes for it to show up, then I have to ride downtown to a central station, wait another 15 minutes for the bus going to where I want to go, and then ride that bus. All the way these buses are starting and stopping and go maybe overall 1/2 the speed of a car.
I don't have 1.5 hours of free time to spend commuting. Judging by the ridership, nobody else that is gainfully employed does either.
Now, if we had say smart electric taxis that would show up when I need my ride and go directly there at speed, it would be basically a no-brainer. I'd be on it in 5 seconds. Even if it DID go half as fast as a normal car, so what? I can live with 20 mins if it will save me money. I might even do it if it cost the same.
But yeah, Bb owns WebCT. The thing is, at least at the place I have taught online courses for several years, ALL of the faculty knows how to use WebCT and EVERY course has masses of material in it. Lots of the faculty members also have things like Excel spreadsheets and whatnot that rely on data exports from WebCT, it is all integrated into the rest of the school's provisioning and other IT systems. So really there is about zippo grande chance they'll ever migrate from WebCT, as long as it continues to exist and be supported.
So, I doubt Bb is going to get rid of WebCT anytime soon, since at that point there would be NO reason to switch to Bb.
I've been an adjunct at a local College here for several years, and done some IT consulting for them. They're entirely WebCT based. Blackboard has been twisting their arms about it, but the faculty in general has zero desire to switch.
I haven't used Blackboard myself, but all I can say is you would have to try HARD to have a worse GUI than WebCT does. It does WORK, usually pretty reliably, but whoever designed it obviously was sans-clue in the user interface department. Has to be the worst webapp I personally have ever used. I guess that makes Bb truly a scary prospect! lol.
That is the problem with people like you, your so wrapped into the "Oh no, not violence" that you don't understand that violence or the threat of it is the only way to enforce something onto someone who doesn't share your views.
Exactly. My point is so made there are simply no more words to be said. Maybe you should actually visit some of these other countries some time. Put yourself in other people's shoes for once in your life, it will really be an eye opening experience. How would you feel if someone said to you "well, I'm going to MAKE you do what I want with this gun?" Hmmmm? Think man, just once, think!
There are basically 2 choices out there, Blackboard and WebCT. Both of them rot, and there are certainly other FOSS applications that are better, but which one is used is NOT anything IT has the slightest bit of influence over.
The factors involved are mostly related to the faculty and administration of the school. Instructors have LARGE amounts of time and energy invested in learning whichever platform they're on now. Most of them are not amazingly competent in the computer field, and they have high demands on their time already.
Even a HINT of a suggestion that the faculty would have to say switch over all their classes to a new system would provoke instant rebellion, and in a struggle between IT and a faculty department head or dean, there is a 0.0000000% probability of IT winning.
Not to say change is impossible, but it has to come out of admin/faculty. IT is pretty powerless in a University environment.
Could be interesting. Still wish we could have one, lol. Now we have JSP/JSF/Facelets, WPF, and now apparently this eFace. (not to mention of course XUL/XBL...). Not all exactly equivalent, but close, and so it grows! I think 2 of any technology is really enough myself.
LOL, go ahead, I am pretty sure I stole it from someone else, but then they didn't credit it either, so...
Well, lets take WPF as an example. There are, and have been for years, equivalent Java frameworks. SWT and Swing really aren't the same thing at all, they're widget toolkits, not presentation frameworks.
What would have stopped WPF from being implemented on Java? Nothing. Nothing except the narrowly self interested strategy of one company, who could have provided a technology that EVERYONE could use on a mature platform, but instead we have no such thing. Instead man lifetimes worth of engineering talent had to be wasted on reproducing basically a clone of Java so that MS could 'control the technology'.
I don't really criticize MS for that, it is a result of the way business operates and it makes perfectly good sense from their standpoint to do it that way, but MS's standpoint has no relevance to me or other developers. It is just that simple, and IMHO it would be nice if the marketplace were to just slap down that sort of self interested ploy. I'm really not trying to take sides either, I'd have the same opinion if Sun's and MS's positions had been reversed.
I'm not asserting that an unarmed person is defenseless. Sure, some people are quite capable of inflicting damage with their bare hands. I don't really think that is exactly comparable in most circumstances to being armed with say a gun. The difference is so large that it has a different character.
And I can appreciate the utility of weapons in the role of TOOLS, for hunting, defense against animals, recreation, etc. I've owned guns for those purposes too. Of course the real world is not perfectly clear cut. I could shoot someone with my "target" pistol. It isn't a perfect world, but we can make it better, and less weapons makes a better world.
But see the problem is that the DOCTRINE of self defense IS flawed, because it fosters the conditions under which violence, especially large scale violence, and injustice occur. I don't believe that some kind of perfectly peaceful society will ever exist in the foreseeable future, human nature won't allow it, nor that we will all somehow be able to lay down every weapon we have tomorrow. But if we can acknowledge the evil inherent in the way we think about these things now, then we CAN make it better. We can have far less weapons in the world, and far less violence.
What if we just plain stopped manufacturing weapons? The world spends more money on these things than on health care, education, etc every year right now. How about if we divide that by half? And then in half again? The guns we have now will last 100's more years. It is pretty easy to start again if that's what we want to do, guns aren't exactly rocket science.
I just don't see some kind of great advantage of the CLR over a JVM. There really is very little difference between the technologies and 100% of the existing Java APIs are already available on every platform.
I suppose in some version of the future that may come to pass where .Net becomes as well supported and Java somehow fades into the twilight then maybe I'd switch to .Net based technology. I seriously doubt I'd really notice the difference.
As it stands now I'm just annoyed at MS's selfish desire to control their VM to the exclusion of everyone else. What purpose did that serve? Its here and it isn't going away, but it was a fairly pointless move from the rest of the world's perspective and now we're stuck with a fragmented VM technology landscape.
It is kind of sad really, but Java continues to do what we need it to do and there is no convincing reason to WANT to switch.
Don't mistake the right to act because of sovereignty as justification of the act.
What right? The "right" to hold guns to other people's heads? It is ONE world, one human race. No "right" exists that deprives another.
As I said, all claims of illegality rely on some hidden idea that we have no sovereignty. Legal and illegal has nothing to do with your like or dislike of an act. Don't confuse the two and don't conflate what you want with how it is.
Really? And then by what "hidden idea" do you suppose it is by which the laws of this country may be imposed on anyone who doesn't agree with them? This argument is fatally flawed on the face of it. Law is a tool of necessity. We collectively, the people, all of the people, have exactly the right to have what laws we need, local, national, or international. And we all, as individuals or as nations have the obligation to live peacefully with each other and abide by those just laws. No one group, regardless if it calls itself a "sovereign nation" or anything else is above that law.
Life would be a lot worse off if we didn't have our sovereignty and while you probably won't spend enough time in it to see what the possibilities are, you should know that they won't come to pass as long as we remain a sovereign nation.
My opinion is that where you are going wrong is in somehow believing that there is some kind of "us" and some kind of "them". Nobody is suggesting that people should be stopped from doing what they want to do, except and unless it interferes with everyone else's equal rights. When have I ever suggested that the people of the United States should be submitted in their place on the Earth to someone else's law? There are times and places where WE need to abide by the greater law of the whole, that doesn't give the rest of the world any right to interfere where it isn't justified, and the same rule applies to us.
Read the words that the founders of this nation wrote down. REALLY read them, understand that they are not the words of one people for itself. They are words for all people in all places at all times. If we really actually believe them, if we live them, then what are we doing condemning the people of other countries for wanting to be free to live the way THEY want to live as well. Just because it is different from the way you want to live and the way you THINK they should live does not give us the right to interfere with them.
Finally, look at what it has cost us all to live by this philosophy that our narrow interest is above that of others, that we can ever justify armed force. Surely even if you are not convinced that ultimately peace demands the giving up of all weapons, you can still see what this kind of thinking has done to the world. The treasure we have WASTED in a vain pursuit of security and our own interests has damaged the very Earth, impoverished 2 thirds of humanity and threatens every day to destroy us all with nuclear annihilation. Is that security? Is it peace? Is it SANE? Because in the end, all philosophy aside, if it isn't working then it is indeed INSANE to keep doing it.
It is sort of like saying that Ghengis Khan once spared a city, so he must be a nice guy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not condemning people for being part of a society which bases itself on and glorifies violence above almost everything else. I AM criticizing that society, at its most basic and fundamental level, and it is harsh and deserved criticism. It is also a loving act because only by exposing the illness of society can it be cured.
As for nuclear weapons, I'd say they are illustrative of the extreme degree of the illness of our society. Such a weapon need not be used in war in order to be effective, in fact nuclear weapons are so vile that they do plenty of harm just by existing. Nor is the fact that they have not been used YET in the 63 years we have had them in our hands any great assurance that they will not be used in the future.
If the thrust of your argument is that peace is achieved by arming ourselves to the hilt I can only say that argument is weak indeed. Beyond weak, in my opinion it exposes the lack of any credible justification for maintaining stockpiles of weapons at all.
Change naturally creates fear, but change, the deepest possible change is exactly what is required if humanity will survive. Change or death, the choice is in all our hands. Choose.
But neither will I glorify their actions nor pretend that what they did was right. It was wrong. There is no such thing as escaping the responsibility for your actions. When you lift your hand, when you act in the world it is YOUR will that carries out that act.
It is far past time when human beings stopped playing the game of passing responsibility for what they did onto anyone else.
Nor does the mere lack of prosecution make something legal.
Where is the assertion that this supposed authority devolved onto the Presidency is limited in any way shape or fashion?
Beyond that the assertion you make that "nobody wants to spy on me" flies totally in the face of every bit of evidence we have as to what is actually going on. Furthermore I would have to be a babbling idiot totally devoid of any knowledge of history not to know that every single time the government has acquired the means to spy on its citizens it has happily used that power to the maximum possible extent.
Fools like you are welcome to just toss their rights on the trash heap of history if they wish, but some of us are not so unwise. The end result of any such stupidity WILL be tyranny.
THE fundamental principle which preserves our rights collectively and individually is the principle that when the rights of one are trampled that all the others are obliged to stand and defend them. As soon as you fail to do that you have destroyed any guarantees of any kind you have that your own rights will continue to be respected as well.
We instituted a government of laws and set up a structure of such laws in order to stop exactly this kind of thing. Mark my words, to let this stand as it is is the beginning of the end of our Republic. Defend it or loose it.
Precisely. By arming yourself and participating in the logic of power, which is ultimately ONLY the rule of force and can logically be nothing else you have created the violence.
Once you arm yourself, you now MUST logically arrogate to yourself the 'right' to use violence, and thus demote all others to the condition of being subservient to your will.
"The US [substitute any name you want here] doesn't need permission to act on anything". You must see the utter contempt for the equality of the rights of all others inherent in this statement. You illustrate perfectly ALL that is wrong with this entire world view, I couldn't have done it better myself.
Moreover your entire statement taken as a whole illustrates the path of reasoning which inevitably follows from the initial flawed assertion. The other is not like me, my actions are always just, I am not bound by any obligations to you, only I have the right to decide what I do, and I'll back that up with violence. What? Does that violence make you right? Is your willingness to kill to get what you think is right a license to impose your viewpoint on the rest of us? I assure you many people will disagree with you, and now you have given them little recourse except to either submit to your tyranny or resist it with their own force.
Peace is not some kind of condition that just happens, peace is a process, it is a state of mind and spiritual development. It is a path that must be followed. You have the choice and the consequences of ALL OF YOUR ACTIONS are always your responsibility and yours alone. You don't have to like that, but it is objectively true and any moral theory that denies the objective truth of the real world is bankrupt and without merit.
See, the way I see it, your response is perfectly understandable, but it fails to make sense when you take a more holistic view of things.
One cannot effectively defend oneself unless one is PREPARED to defend oneself. That might at first glance seem to be merely a sensible thing to do, be prepared (hey I was even a Boy Scout once, lol).
The problem is that being prepared consists of being armed. Once you arm yourself, you ARE by definition now a threat to everyone else. Thus they must arm themselves. Thus even the mildest form of defensive thinking leads directly to an arms race or the conditions for an arms race.
More than that, it leads to a kind of thinking which inevitably involves the logic of power, and the rule of power is the rule of force. Inter armis legis non. No law can exist between armed parties willing to defend their interests by force except force. Either the force of the other party, or the force of some third party.
So peace fails, even amongst well meaning peoples, because first they subscribe to the doctrine of self defense. Second they must arm themselves, 3rd their armed state precipitates a need for all other parties to be armed, and then no authority can exist which is not armed force. Finally that armed force will sooner or later be used. Thus the doctrine of self defense, innocent as it seems on the surface, is the seed which ultimately leads to war and violence.
Even when violence does not proceed directly from the logic of power, it creates a corrupting effect on the thinking of the armed individuals. First they reason that collective security is better than individual security and the full panoply of the armed state comes into existence. People in large numbers acting in a mass in the armed state do not subscribe to any of the recognized moral principles of normal society to any high degree. This is a situation always extremely hazardous to peace.
Finally the corruption goes even deeper in the sense that to arm oneself is in essence a threat, and thus each person in this armed society is essentially at a fundamental level saying to all of the others "I reserve the option to get my way by force." Granted that most people will not want to exercise that option, but it always exists and it has an inhibiting effect on people's willingness to reach a real and genuine accommodation with one another based on mutual agreement and shared benefit.
Thus my position is that the doctrine of self defense is actually antithetical to the best interests of all individuals in the real world. Not in some moralistic philosophical sense, but actually in the real world as it is.
Is I didn't (so far) get 500 responses along the lines of 'you dishonor our sacred warriors!' [rolls eyes].
I mean, I don't have anything really against people who are in the Armed Forces. Glorifying the whole thing though just seems dumb. Certainly doesn't promote peace!
without sarcasm? ;)
Not only is the RIAA now apparently synonymous with the Justice Department, but we STILL have renditions and we still have a President that believes he has the authority to spy on us (and by extension of the same logic essentially ignore any law or any provision of the Constitution by the same argument).
It was unacceptable when GWB did it, and it is STILL unacceptable and it is still the responsibility of the citizens of the US to put a stop to it.
But hey, Barak Obama is a great guy, we don't need civil liberties.
Fools.
People can dress it up all they want to, but when you pick up a gun and follow orders it doesn't absolve you of responsibility for what you do. I know the majority of the people in the world just plain worship violentism, but that doesn't change a thing. There is no glory in fighting and killing is wrong, period.
And even the law isn't so blind as to be able to be otherwise. Invading Iraq was immoral and illegal and ALL of the people who participated in it, from top to bottom, committed a crime. Pure and simple.
Some things may be understandable, even forgivable, but that does NOT make them right.