So if a Chinese citizen decides to get hold of one of these banned games the government won't care? I beg to differ.
Not having your government owned housing bulldozed and being forcefully relocated to the other side of the country if you wish to keep a roof over your head at the corrupt whim of some autocrat is a pretty basic freedom to have I'd think.
Being forced at gunpoint to work in factories producing western goods for 10 years because you said or committed a minor infraction that personally upset some local low level unelected party bureaucrat is a problem for the average person to worry about.
There's layers of government and corruption and nepotism so thick in China it would make even the most big government, red tape loving westerners headspin.
Do you really believe that the Chinese government, the government of a country about 10 years away from becoming a superpower really gives a shit what anyone else thinks about it?
They don't play inane western "pissing match" games. They just get on with owning half of the worlds factories, governments and natural resources while stepping on the throat of anybody in their population that doesn't like them.
Hell, the US secretary of state has already bowed down to China desperate for China to continue buying US Bonds so the US Federal Government can continue to function in any capacity. Very shortly (if not already) much of the west will need China much much more than China with 1 billion people on their way up needs the west.
We'll be wondering wtf happened to the wests dominant position within a decade.
Ok did you miss the last 40 years of Chinese history??
Dear white middle class westerners,
China is not an Asian version of America, the UK or Australia. It is run by a ruthless totalitarian government and said government is not all benevolent smiles, hugs and teddy bears like western governments are. Yes it's hard to believe if you listen to moral relativists in western countries as they bash on their own governments (which *is* a great deal of fun I admit) but there's a reason one doesn't hear the Chinese in China railing against the Chinese government in any meaningful way (and it's not because they're are doing such a bang up job).
Please keep that in mind when reading any Chinese related news.
I'm just sick of people assuming that scientists are some sort of higher beings that are never wrong and are always on teh side of "good". And that an infant scientific field has even 1% of the knowledge needed to assume it can force sweeping changes to 6 billion peoples way of life.
There's no "old guard" arguing against global warming anyway, the old guard are all well and truly on board along with the associated money and new political power it's presenting.
500 scientists of random disciplines add their names to a letter that's pro global warming and suddenly there's undisuptable "scientific consensus" and nobody can dare question it.
An eminent and brilliant scientist raises questions against it and suddenly he's "not qualified" and the mental gymnastics and discrediting of him begins.
There is real science that underlies much of the pro argument. Unfortunately the message is being buried by the useful idiots who want nothing more than a new personal religion for the new millenium, with all the associated hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance and fanatisism of any traditional religion.
In comparison to Dyson you are an insignificant nit. A great mind has some questions perhaps you should STFU and listen rather than trying to drag his reputation into the mud by implying "he's old therefore useless".
I'm sure he's seen his fair share of BS come out of the science community.
If nobody had kids, what the hell would be the point in conservation?
The standard war cry is that it's all *for* the kids, all this reduction in industry that's being threatened, it's meant to be for *their* good.
And talk about over exaggeration, it's not a "fact" at all. Your computer is causing more pollution than any child does. How the hell does a child cause pollution anyway? Some parents in the west choose to create a polluting lifestyle to raise their children in but wtf has that got to do with the child? Most children do nothing to contribute to pollution and they certainly don't drive industry.
Good god.
Only here would such irrational emotionally overloaded drek get modded to +5 insightful, simply because it's anti-parent.
What has driven so many on this site to hate their parents and by extension parenthood? It's certainly not the normal state of things and it's really quite sad.
Oh and nice attempt to deflect the blame for the environment on to everyone but yourself.
In the 1850s hundreds of scientists in the best scientific schools and departments in London were in consensus that "Miasma" was what was causing Cholera outbreaks in Soho, London.
The one individual - John Snow (who I'm sure was called the 18th century equivalent of a "denialist" and "deluded" by the scientific community and the likes of you) who applied real rigourous science in the face of the "scientific consensus" found that to the contrary and completely correctly that it was tainted water not the air causing the outbreaks. Fortunately he had gone to great lengths to document and his research and the great and all knowing "scientific community" immediately reversed their position and accepted his better and obviously correct theory.
Oh wait they didn't, they did exactly what you are doing here.
They completely ignored his research, called him a fool and over the next ten years thousands more died, the equivalent of millions of pounds of taxes was spent on ridiculous "solutions" produced by the "scientific community" for the Government to fix the the so called "Miasma" problem all the while feeling smug in their knowledge that they had "consensus" and were 100% right.
It wasn't until nearly 10 years after his death that he was acknowledged as being correct.
We won't even go into the debacle that confronted Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis from the scientific "community" when he suggested horror of horrors that WASHING YOUR HANDS may prevent the transmission of disease.
Your argument is nothing more than the exact same argument the religious use to shut down dissent, an argument which goes "The establishment has formed consensus, and who are YOU to question what our leaders have studied".
A. Don't be so sure of yourself. B. Stop placing so much faith in a new and very very undefined "science". C. Calling people names and acting all smug makes you come off more like a born again christian than anything else.
I've got 5 juicy mod points that I'd love to use but I'll just throw this in the mix. I'm 28 and never in 13 years of state schooling was I taught what nouns, verbs or *any* traditional grammar are for.
English for my entire schooling life was filled with touchy feely social and emotional BS, no Shakespeare, no hard literature, no deconstruction, everything was 100% social.
I curse the teachers and bureaucrats with their disgusting little social experiments who failed me and all of the other kids in the school system in the ACT, Australia. Learning all of that as an adult is a bloody pain in the arse not to mention the reduced ability articulate ones thoughts and ideas.
The gutting thing is it's even *worse* now, it's like we were the pilot project and tehy somehow deemed it a success. I have an 8 year old in the school system and he is only literate because we teach him as his school studies are 80% "social" - mostly being told how special indigenous Australians are and saying a little prayer to them at the start of assembly twice a week (seriously this is a major state school). I swear he's being doing that for three terms now and the "learning" is all political - there's no hard history in any of it.
There's a storm coming for the west that's for sure.
If you think Slashdot was at any time in history less "juvenile" towards Microsoft and people who use Microsoft products then you really must be new here.
Ten years ago CmdrTaco himself used to regularly post inflammatory stories with little personal swipes and jabs at whatever took his fancy.
If anything Slashdot has become far more corporate and reserved than it used to be. It is what it is, and it was NEVER as you try and claim - some mythical and refined purveyor of deep discourse. That only exists in your head either as a delusion or a hope. My conclusion? You're a Microsoft fanboi and are using the same tactics conservatives use against the "liberal media" in a weak attempt to get Slashdot to change more to your line of thinking.
It's getting there unfortunately and will soon be just another boring, bland "unbiased" (lol) news aggregator.
Of course then it will become just like all the other pro MS sites on the web - a ghost town.
All you've done is replace "gods will" with "destiny".
There's nothing predetermining the events of the universe, no super being and no magical force. What ever happens in our sphere of influence happens because humans make it so within the bounds of the laws of physics.
It's a depressing cycle, that every fringe philosophy that gains mainstream support, money and power quickly gets taken over by the radicals who then purge the original soft and usually more pragmatic visionaries and then quickly turn the movement *against* them, making the founders appear to be traitors against their own cause.
Examples of movements that started out so well then largely went sour leaving societies stuck trying to figure out how to achieve the aims of the original movement *in spite of* the groups who lay claim to being the "movement".
Hopefully with such a swath of historical examples the next great "movements" will somehow figure out a way of protecting themselves from the power hungry radicals.
Western democratic political systems seem to have largely got that figured out so a model based on that may work.
And if this silicon brain decides that it's had enough of being experimented on?
And what if they don't turn your "pain receptors" off? What if they specifically want to experiment on you to see how much pain you can endure? If you think that medical scientists don't often do brutally unethical experimentation on "lesser" humans you'd be very very wrong (though since the 90's it's gotten much better in the west). As if they're going to care about a brain that they *created*. In fact I can see that as a selling point "see we can do these horrid experiments on this artifical brain so that we don't have to do it on orphans, prisoners and the institutionalised - like we used to".
Then again if you were regarded as a sentient being would they then have to keep you alive for the rest of eternity lest they be charged with murder if they turn you off or delete you?
If you create a sentient being you have a responsibility to that being and no you can't just kill it if you get bored with it or it just doesn't meet your expectations, otherwise there would be a hell of a lot more infanticide.
If you are willing to experiment on one, you might as well just use hobos and orphans and not have to wait a decade for fancy computers(though a simulation would have the huge advantage of read system state out of memory, no mucking around with FMRIs and stuff).
Using orphans, prisoners the military and even middle and lower class children as unknowing guinea pigs was never a problem for many scientists and DRs until the '70s.
One thing to notice is that various government departments are up to their arms in it as well.
Some choice examples:
(1957) "In order to study how blood flows through children's brains, researchers at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia perform the following experiment on healthy children, ranging in age from three to 11: They insert needles into each child's femoral artery (thigh) and jugular vein (neck), bringing the blood down from the brain. Then, they force each child to inhale gas through a facemask. In their subsequent Journal of Clinical Investigation article on this study, the researchers note that, in order to perform the experiment, they had to restrain some of the child test subjects by bandaging them to boards (Goliszek). "
(1962) New York University researcher Saul Krugman promises parents with mentally disabled children definite enrollment into the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, N.Y., a resident mental institution for mentally retarded children, in exchange for their signatures on a consent form for procedures presented as "vaccinations." In reality, the procedures involve deliberately infecting children with viral hepatitis by feeding them an extract made from the feces of infected patients, so that Krugman can study the course of viral hepatitis as well the effectiveness of a hepatitis vaccine
(1962) Researchers at the Laurel Children's Center in Maryland test experimental acne antibiotics on children and continue their tests even after half of the young test subjects develop severe liver damage because of the experimental medication (Goliszek).
(1963) Researchers at the University of Washington directly irradiate the testes of 232 prison inmates in order to determine radiation's effects on testicular function. When these inmates later leave prison and have children, at least four have babies born with birth defects. The exact number is unknown because researchers never follow up on the men to see the long-term effects of their experiment (Goliszek).
(1967)
Researchers paralyze 64 prison inmates in California with a neuromuscular compound called succinylcholine, which produces suppressed breathing that feels similar to drowning. When five prisoners refuse to participate in the medical experiment, the prison's special treatment board gives researchers permission to inject the prisoners with the drug against their will
(1968) Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas and the Southwest Foundation for Research and Education begin an oral contraceptive study on 70 poverty-stricken Mexican-American women, giving only half the oral contraceptives they think they are receiving and the other half a placebo. When the results of this study are released a few years later, it stirs tremendous controversy among Mexican-Americans
(1990) The CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals of Southern California inject 1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles with an "experimental" measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. Adding to the risk, children less than a year old may not have an adequate amount of myelin around their nerves, possibly resulting in impaired neural development because of the vaccine. The CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected into their children was experimental (Goliszek).
I wonder how many here will defend these scientists and their experiments?
God I seriously hope your not trying to suggest that working on PC's is more complicated than working on cars. Software or not.
A car mechanic does a four year apprenticeship then generally specialise in a particular manufacturer who also provide week long training and courses every few years, the average PC repair guy is completely untrained, self taught and gets most of the answers off the internet let alone being a qualified tradesmen (A+ exams LOL). It's almost completely impossible to completely and totally fuck up a computer and even if you do will only cost a grand or so to replace with a new one. Backing up data is trivial so the risk involved in any repair job is absolutely tiny.
Getting a transmission or engine out of a car then rebuilding it takes days, specialist tools and specialist knowledge, there's a million un-obvious things that can go wrong when you're putting it back together that you wont know about until it's back in the car and running (or not running and damaged because of some tiny cir-clip in the wrong way). Getting the engine or transmission in or out alone is up to 8 hours work, so if you do make a mistake that's a couple more days of work instantly. And I know this because I just did a full rebuild on my Hilux with the help of my father - a mechanic of 30 years, and I'm certainly not useless when it comes to cars working on them often with him as I grew up.
I did "PC repair" for a few years and even comparing the two is the absolute height of arrogance the likes of which I find can only be found on "tech" boards like this one.
Even the worst mechanic is more skilled than the average PC repairer.
If people in the west think that this sort of thing is limited to low level Chinese citizens they'd be wrong as well.
Witness the latest Rio Tinto troubles - they've "arrested" an Australian Rio Tinto (a major aussie-uk mining company that operates in Aus) employee on "suspicion" of "economic espionage" - holding him without charge for two weeks now. WTF is "economic espionage"? It's upsetting strategic Chinese interests in the course of doing business with said interests is what it is.
See apparently it's just a happy coincidence that just two weeks ago Rio Tinto majorly embarrassed the government run Chinalco giving it the finger on a $19.5 billion dollar deal to allow Chinas government to own nearly half of Rio Tinto. Also the fact that Rio Tinto has been the loudest in refusing the Chinese governments increasingly aggressive demands to cut the price of Iron Ore 45% has no bearing on the arrest either, or the fact that they also just arrested four CEOS of "private" Chinese steel mills.
No those things have no bearing on anything at all according to China's government run media, and if you can't trust state owned media of a totalitarian government who can you trust?
China's awakening, this sort of thing is going to become more and more common as it asserts its position and we should all be worried.
China earns it's China bashing and then some. The bigger problem is desperately ignorant western fan boys who think China is some sort of Asian version of the US.
The first half of his post is obviously speculation, the second half is is absolutely correct, in fact a little light on, as he forgot to mention that these companies are effectively arms of the government and so don't need private police forces - they have the governments full backing.
Witness the latest Rio Tinto debacle to see what happens when you cross Chinas "private" companies.
That's an extremely starry eyed and naive idea of much primary production regulation.
The alternative and reality in most cases is that huge corporate interests, often the supermarkets and generally large agricultral management corps want to apply pressure on smaller and independant farmers. Large supermarkets don't like having to deal with small farmers and in many cases are in direct competition with smaller farms through their own holdings in large agricultural management firms. And obviously large agri-holdings have many reasons to want to shove the small old school independents out of business.
But you keep believing the government is acting primarily in the interests of the handful of small 100 - 2000 acre unorganized independent farmers remaining in the west rather than the large billion dollar agri-corps and supermarkets that give politicians hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds each year.
A great deal of science and many scientists engage in unfounded theorising and even many "heros" (wtf) of science hold ridiculous unfounded theories on the mechanics and purpose of life and the universe that are so far removed from the "real world" one could only call them immature religious ideas.
You are just as religious as any person who believes in god (just as fanatical to by the tone of your post).
Science is a method applied by humans and so is perfectly corruptible, just like religion - something I'm sure you are completely ignorant of the mechanics of (how very scientific of you).
It always starts to feel like a religious revival meeting around here when science gets bought up - a hell of a lot of people seem a little to emotionally attached to a utopian ideal.
And no I'm not in the least bit religious.
Religion is corrupt, institutionalized science is corruptible and could easily become just as corrupt as religion.
I think that a great deal of people here have just replaced "religion" with "science" and in the process in their own minds are viewing "science" as a religion rather than as a name to describe a certain methodology that can be and is often corrupted at the hands of humans (at many levels). Also it's being used as a crutch for not thinking for themselves and being fanatical about something - just like religion. One hundred years go the gp poster would probably have been just as fanatical about catholicism or some other religion. In fact I'd hazard a guess and say he somewhat idolises Dawkings in the same way a religious person idolises their respective symbols.
99% of people here have to take the things that most scientists say on faith alone, they cannot and never will be able to personally see those things validated so to the average person the only difference between when a scientist says something - especially in the obscure ephermal fields and when a religious hierarchy says something is occasionally various scientists come out with tangible outcomes via industry. Just as often though the scientist says "sorry forget what I and my peers and few thousand "fan boys" have been vigorously arguing for for the last 10 years it's all different now". Which is fine and obviously part of the process but the problem is the "fan boys" of course never admit that they were wrong and don't learn that perhaps that they shouldn't be *quite* so sure of themselves, especially when they're only working off of third or fourth hand information anyway.
So for the average person there's no difference between the two except science has occasional outcomes usually applied through industry. But then so did religion in the day - getting human civilization through the painful, brutal and savage early stages to a point where "science" could come about as a concept was no mean feat. It was religion that gave people some way of moving forward as a cohesive unit even through the hardship that was life.
Science and modern life has replaced the need for religion but unfortunately some people are replacing their need for religion with science. With unfortunate side effects such as elevating "scientists" to the level of the bishops and priests of old who can do no wrong - a dangerous practice that I see here often.
Science is a magnificent idea but as with any theory once humans get involved it becomes a gigantic clusterfuck of human nature. Like democracy it generally works properly but thanks to the people in it it's far from perfect and occasionally gets corrupted. Some people need to accept that rather than placing rabid blind faith in the utopian ideal of "science" itself being perfect.
As with anything reserved moderation and a suspicious eye are the key to quality.
I spent 18 years attending an evangelical church before figuring out all by myself that at best it's a complete corruption of the movement that the figure known as Jesus began, at worst just a slowly dying culture. I certainly was not alone though and thousands of people do it every day.
The stereotype that many "atheists" describe for quite a few religious people is correct. The sad thing is though in *them* (people such as the grandparent) I see exactly the same type of mindless, blathering, "*I* know the one truth and if you don't see it your crazy", HIGHLY ignorant, paint the opposition as evil whackos ranting and mindset that I used to see in the more fevered members of the church.
Different side of the same bent coin.
If they were born into the church they'd probably be the very people that they rant and rave about - the fanatics.
The rest of us, the moderate religious, agnostic and atheists just get on with it and don't particularly care for holy wars from anyone no matter what they believe or don't believe.
"Yes. Mythbusters is perfect! Teach them to jump to conclusions based on extremely small data sets and horribly designed/non-existent control objects."
Sounds like a great deal of climatology.
Hell sounds like the reality in many "scientific" disciplines (I'm looking at YOU social "sciences" that freely mix yourself up with ultra left wing politics).
The EXACT same thing was said about winter "It's not Autumn (fall) that's a problem...it's *winter*".
It's now winter here in Australia and it hasn't made a difference to the numbers.
And no it's not a genuine concern, it's hype just like Bird Flu was. There are *many* people working in their own interests that make a shit load of money pushing fear and hype as a product - the media are somewhere at the bottom of that list if ordered by profit, government agencies in the middle and Roche (in this case) are absolutely at the top.
I've worked for federal government agencies and currently work closely with Roche, Merck and Novos marketing depts, pushing stuff like this into the media and keeping it there is just business...
P.S
Your continuing lack of anything resembling capitals still disturbs me even after all these years...
Well I weighed 70kgs (140lbs) as an 18 year old, 130kgs (260lbs) as a 22 year old then worked like crazy and weighed 80kgs (160) as a 25 year old.
So I'll call fatties fat if I wish.
And I know! There's *nothing* worse than a reformed fatty or reformed smoker - which I am as well (I'm like a double barrelled shot gun of moral superiority these days!).
And yes my horse *is* very tall, thanks for asking...
Slashdot Mirror
So if a Chinese citizen decides to get hold of one of these banned games the government won't care? I beg to differ.
Not having your government owned housing bulldozed and being forcefully relocated to the other side of the country if you wish to keep a roof over your head at the corrupt whim of some autocrat is a pretty basic freedom to have I'd think.
Being forced at gunpoint to work in factories producing western goods for 10 years because you said or committed a minor infraction that personally upset some local low level unelected party bureaucrat is a problem for the average person to worry about.
There's layers of government and corruption and nepotism so thick in China it would make even the most big government, red tape loving westerners headspin.
And *everything* is political.
Do you really believe that the Chinese government, the government of a country about 10 years away from becoming a superpower really gives a shit what anyone else thinks about it?
They don't play inane western "pissing match" games. They just get on with owning half of the worlds factories, governments and natural resources while stepping on the throat of anybody in their population that doesn't like them.
Hell, the US secretary of state has already bowed down to China desperate for China to continue buying US Bonds so the US Federal Government can continue to function in any capacity. Very shortly (if not already) much of the west will need China much much more than China with 1 billion people on their way up needs the west.
We'll be wondering wtf happened to the wests dominant position within a decade.
Ok did you miss the last 40 years of Chinese history??
Dear white middle class westerners,
China is not an Asian version of America, the UK or Australia. It is run by a ruthless totalitarian government and said government is not all benevolent smiles, hugs and teddy bears like western governments are. Yes it's hard to believe if you listen to moral relativists in western countries as they bash on their own governments (which *is* a great deal of fun I admit) but there's a reason one doesn't hear the Chinese in China railing against the Chinese government in any meaningful way (and it's not because they're are doing such a bang up job).
Please keep that in mind when reading any Chinese related news.
You assume I'm a "denier".
You're wrong.
I'm just sick of people assuming that scientists are some sort of higher beings that are never wrong and are always on teh side of "good". And that an infant scientific field has even 1% of the knowledge needed to assume it can force sweeping changes to 6 billion peoples way of life.
There's no "old guard" arguing against global warming anyway, the old guard are all well and truly on board along with the associated money and new political power it's presenting.
How convenient.
500 scientists of random disciplines add their names to a letter that's pro global warming and suddenly there's undisuptable "scientific consensus" and nobody can dare question it.
An eminent and brilliant scientist raises questions against it and suddenly he's "not qualified" and the mental gymnastics and discrediting of him begins.
There is real science that underlies much of the pro argument. Unfortunately the message is being buried by the useful idiots who want nothing more than a new personal religion for the new millenium, with all the associated hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance and fanatisism of any traditional religion.
In comparison to Dyson you are an insignificant nit. A great mind has some questions perhaps you should STFU and listen rather than trying to drag his reputation into the mud by implying "he's old therefore useless".
I'm sure he's seen his fair share of BS come out of the science community.
If nobody had kids, what the hell would be the point in conservation?
The standard war cry is that it's all *for* the kids, all this reduction in industry that's being threatened, it's meant to be for *their* good.
And talk about over exaggeration, it's not a "fact" at all. Your computer is causing more pollution than any child does. How the hell does a child cause pollution anyway? Some parents in the west choose to create a polluting lifestyle to raise their children in but wtf has that got to do with the child? Most children do nothing to contribute to pollution and they certainly don't drive industry.
Good god.
Only here would such irrational emotionally overloaded drek get modded to +5 insightful, simply because it's anti-parent.
What has driven so many on this site to hate their parents and by extension parenthood? It's certainly not the normal state of things and it's really quite sad.
Oh and nice attempt to deflect the blame for the environment on to everyone but yourself.
Pathetic.
In the 1850s hundreds of scientists in the best scientific schools and departments in London were in consensus that "Miasma" was what was causing Cholera outbreaks in Soho, London.
The one individual - John Snow (who I'm sure was called the 18th century equivalent of a "denialist" and "deluded" by the scientific community and the likes of you) who applied real rigourous science in the face of the "scientific consensus" found that to the contrary and completely correctly that it was tainted water not the air causing the outbreaks. Fortunately he had gone to great lengths to document and his research and the great and all knowing "scientific community" immediately reversed their position and accepted his better and obviously correct theory.
Oh wait they didn't, they did exactly what you are doing here.
They completely ignored his research, called him a fool and over the next ten years thousands more died, the equivalent of millions of pounds of taxes was spent on ridiculous "solutions" produced by the "scientific community" for the Government to fix the the so called "Miasma" problem all the while feeling smug in their knowledge that they had "consensus" and were 100% right.
It wasn't until nearly 10 years after his death that he was acknowledged as being correct.
We won't even go into the debacle that confronted Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis from the scientific "community" when he suggested horror of horrors that WASHING YOUR HANDS may prevent the transmission of disease.
Your argument is nothing more than the exact same argument the religious use to shut down dissent, an argument which goes "The establishment has formed consensus, and who are YOU to question what our leaders have studied".
A. Don't be so sure of yourself.
B. Stop placing so much faith in a new and very very undefined "science".
C. Calling people names and acting all smug makes you come off more like a born again christian than anything else.
I've got 5 juicy mod points that I'd love to use but I'll just throw this in the mix. I'm 28 and never in 13 years of state schooling was I taught what nouns, verbs or *any* traditional grammar are for.
English for my entire schooling life was filled with touchy feely social and emotional BS, no Shakespeare, no hard literature, no deconstruction, everything was 100% social.
I curse the teachers and bureaucrats with their disgusting little social experiments who failed me and all of the other kids in the school system in the ACT, Australia. Learning all of that as an adult is a bloody pain in the arse not to mention the reduced ability articulate ones thoughts and ideas.
The gutting thing is it's even *worse* now, it's like we were the pilot project and tehy somehow deemed it a success. I have an 8 year old in the school system and he is only literate because we teach him as his school studies are 80% "social" - mostly being told how special indigenous Australians are and saying a little prayer to them at the start of assembly twice a week (seriously this is a major state school). I swear he's being doing that for three terms now and the "learning" is all political - there's no hard history in any of it.
There's a storm coming for the west that's for sure.
If you think Slashdot was at any time in history less "juvenile" towards Microsoft and people who use Microsoft products then you really must be new here.
Ten years ago CmdrTaco himself used to regularly post inflammatory stories with little personal swipes and jabs at whatever took his fancy.
If anything Slashdot has become far more corporate and reserved than it used to be. It is what it is, and it was NEVER as you try and claim - some mythical and refined purveyor of deep discourse. That only exists in your head either as a delusion or a hope. My conclusion? You're a Microsoft fanboi and are using the same tactics conservatives use against the "liberal media" in a weak attempt to get Slashdot to change more to your line of thinking.
It's getting there unfortunately and will soon be just another boring, bland "unbiased" (lol) news aggregator.
Of course then it will become just like all the other pro MS sites on the web - a ghost town.
Wow nice religion you've got going there.
All you've done is replace "gods will" with "destiny".
There's nothing predetermining the events of the universe, no super being and no magical force. What ever happens in our sphere of influence happens because humans make it so within the bounds of the laws of physics.
I hope you don't rail against the religious.
It's a depressing cycle, that every fringe philosophy that gains mainstream support, money and power quickly gets taken over by the radicals who then purge the original soft and usually more pragmatic visionaries and then quickly turn the movement *against* them, making the founders appear to be traitors against their own cause.
Every single time.
Environmentalism
Communism
Conservatism
Liberalism
Examples of movements that started out so well then largely went sour leaving societies stuck trying to figure out how to achieve the aims of the original movement *in spite of* the groups who lay claim to being the "movement".
Hopefully with such a swath of historical examples the next great "movements" will somehow figure out a way of protecting themselves from the power hungry radicals.
Western democratic political systems seem to have largely got that figured out so a model based on that may work.
Greenpeace cares about is more money for Greenpeace.
Just like any other multinational.
And if this silicon brain decides that it's had enough of being experimented on?
And what if they don't turn your "pain receptors" off? What if they specifically want to experiment on you to see how much pain you can endure? If you think that medical scientists don't often do brutally unethical experimentation on "lesser" humans you'd be very very wrong (though since the 90's it's gotten much better in the west). As if they're going to care about a brain that they *created*. In fact I can see that as a selling point "see we can do these horrid experiments on this artifical brain so that we don't have to do it on orphans, prisoners and the institutionalised - like we used to".
Then again if you were regarded as a sentient being would they then have to keep you alive for the rest of eternity lest they be charged with murder if they turn you off or delete you?
If you create a sentient being you have a responsibility to that being and no you can't just kill it if you get bored with it or it just doesn't meet your expectations, otherwise there would be a hell of a lot more infanticide.
If you are willing to experiment on one, you might as well just use hobos and orphans and not have to wait a decade for fancy computers(though a simulation would have the huge advantage of read system state out of memory, no mucking around with FMRIs and stuff).
Using orphans, prisoners the military and even middle and lower class children as unknowing guinea pigs was never a problem for many scientists and DRs until the '70s.
Sorry scratch that for many it still isn't.
One thing to notice is that various government departments are up to their arms in it as well.
Some choice examples:
(1957) "In order to study how blood flows through children's brains, researchers at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia perform the following experiment on healthy children, ranging in age from three to 11: They insert needles into each child's femoral artery (thigh) and jugular vein (neck), bringing the blood down from the brain. Then, they force each child to inhale gas through a facemask. In their subsequent Journal of Clinical Investigation article on this study, the researchers note that, in order to perform the experiment, they had to restrain some of the child test subjects by bandaging them to boards (Goliszek). "
(1962) New York University researcher Saul Krugman promises parents with mentally disabled children definite enrollment into the Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, N.Y., a resident mental institution for mentally retarded children, in exchange for their signatures on a consent form for procedures presented as "vaccinations." In reality, the procedures involve deliberately infecting children with viral hepatitis by feeding them an extract made from the feces of infected patients, so that Krugman can study the course of viral hepatitis as well the effectiveness of a hepatitis vaccine
(1962)
Researchers at the Laurel Children's Center in Maryland test experimental acne antibiotics on children and continue their tests even after half of the young test subjects develop severe liver damage because of the experimental medication (Goliszek).
(1963)
Researchers at the University of Washington directly irradiate the testes of 232 prison inmates in order to determine radiation's effects on testicular function. When these inmates later leave prison and have children, at least four have babies born with birth defects. The exact number is unknown because researchers never follow up on the men to see the long-term effects of their experiment (Goliszek).
(1967)
Researchers paralyze 64 prison inmates in California with a neuromuscular compound called succinylcholine, which produces suppressed breathing that feels similar to drowning. When five prisoners refuse to participate in the medical experiment, the prison's special treatment board gives researchers permission to inject the prisoners with the drug against their will
(1968)
Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas and the Southwest Foundation for Research and Education begin an oral contraceptive study on 70 poverty-stricken Mexican-American women, giving only half the oral contraceptives they think they are receiving and the other half a placebo. When the results of this study are released a few years later, it stirs tremendous controversy among Mexican-Americans
(1990)
The CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals of Southern California inject 1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles with an "experimental" measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States. Adding to the risk, children less than a year old may not have an adequate amount of myelin around their nerves, possibly resulting in impaired neural development because of the vaccine. The CDC later admits that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected into their children was experimental (Goliszek).
I wonder how many here will defend these scientists and their experiments?
God I seriously hope your not trying to suggest that working on PC's is more complicated than working on cars. Software or not.
A car mechanic does a four year apprenticeship then generally specialise in a particular manufacturer who also provide week long training and courses every few years, the average PC repair guy is completely untrained, self taught and gets most of the answers off the internet let alone being a qualified tradesmen (A+ exams LOL). It's almost completely impossible to completely and totally fuck up a computer and even if you do will only cost a grand or so to replace with a new one. Backing up data is trivial so the risk involved in any repair job is absolutely tiny.
Getting a transmission or engine out of a car then rebuilding it takes days, specialist tools and specialist knowledge, there's a million un-obvious things that can go wrong when you're putting it back together that you wont know about until it's back in the car and running (or not running and damaged because of some tiny cir-clip in the wrong way). Getting the engine or transmission in or out alone is up to 8 hours work, so if you do make a mistake that's a couple more days of work instantly. And I know this because I just did a full rebuild on my Hilux with the help of my father - a mechanic of 30 years, and I'm certainly not useless when it comes to cars working on them often with him as I grew up.
I did "PC repair" for a few years and even comparing the two is the absolute height of arrogance the likes of which I find can only be found on "tech" boards like this one.
Even the worst mechanic is more skilled than the average PC repairer.
If people in the west think that this sort of thing is limited to low level Chinese citizens they'd be wrong as well.
Witness the latest Rio Tinto troubles - they've "arrested" an Australian Rio Tinto (a major aussie-uk mining company that operates in Aus) employee on "suspicion" of "economic espionage" - holding him without charge for two weeks now. WTF is "economic espionage"? It's upsetting strategic Chinese interests in the course of doing business with said interests is what it is.
See apparently it's just a happy coincidence that just two weeks ago Rio Tinto majorly embarrassed the government run Chinalco giving it the finger on a $19.5 billion dollar deal to allow Chinas government to own nearly half of Rio Tinto. Also the fact that Rio Tinto has been the loudest in refusing the Chinese governments increasingly aggressive demands to cut the price of Iron Ore 45% has no bearing on the arrest either, or the fact that they also just arrested four CEOS of "private" Chinese steel mills.
No those things have no bearing on anything at all according to China's government run media, and if you can't trust state owned media of a totalitarian government who can you trust?
China's awakening, this sort of thing is going to become more and more common as it asserts its position and we should all be worried.
China earns it's China bashing and then some. The bigger problem is desperately ignorant western fan boys who think China is some sort of Asian version of the US.
The first half of his post is obviously speculation, the second half is is absolutely correct, in fact a little light on, as he forgot to mention that these companies are effectively arms of the government and so don't need private police forces - they have the governments full backing.
Witness the latest Rio Tinto debacle to see what happens when you cross Chinas "private" companies.
That's an extremely starry eyed and naive idea of much primary production regulation.
The alternative and reality in most cases is that huge corporate interests, often the supermarkets and generally large agricultral management corps want to apply pressure on smaller and independant farmers. Large supermarkets don't like having to deal with small farmers and in many cases are in direct competition with smaller farms through their own holdings in large agricultural management firms. And obviously large agri-holdings have many reasons to want to shove the small old school independents out of business.
But you keep believing the government is acting primarily in the interests of the handful of small 100 - 2000 acre unorganized independent farmers remaining in the west rather than the large billion dollar agri-corps and supermarkets that give politicians hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign funds each year.
A great deal of science and many scientists engage in unfounded theorising and even many "heros" (wtf) of science hold ridiculous unfounded theories on the mechanics and purpose of life and the universe that are so far removed from the "real world" one could only call them immature religious ideas.
You are just as religious as any person who believes in god (just as fanatical to by the tone of your post).
Science is a method applied by humans and so is perfectly corruptible, just like religion - something I'm sure you are completely ignorant of the mechanics of (how very scientific of you).
It always starts to feel like a religious revival meeting around here when science gets bought up - a hell of a lot of people seem a little to emotionally attached to a utopian ideal.
And no I'm not in the least bit religious.
Religion is corrupt, institutionalized science is corruptible and could easily become just as corrupt as religion.
There's a great deal of science that's not currently or possibly ever falsifiable.
Whether that's because the pool of people calling themselves scientists is too large or things just aren't that simple is up for debate.
Nothing's ever that simple.
I think that a great deal of people here have just replaced "religion" with "science" and in the process in their own minds are viewing "science" as a religion rather than as a name to describe a certain methodology that can be and is often corrupted at the hands of humans (at many levels). Also it's being used as a crutch for not thinking for themselves and being fanatical about something - just like religion. One hundred years go the gp poster would probably have been just as fanatical about catholicism or some other religion. In fact I'd hazard a guess and say he somewhat idolises Dawkings in the same way a religious person idolises their respective symbols.
99% of people here have to take the things that most scientists say on faith alone, they cannot and never will be able to personally see those things validated so to the average person the only difference between when a scientist says something - especially in the obscure ephermal fields and when a religious hierarchy says something is occasionally various scientists come out with tangible outcomes via industry. Just as often though the scientist says "sorry forget what I and my peers and few thousand "fan boys" have been vigorously arguing for for the last 10 years it's all different now". Which is fine and obviously part of the process but the problem is the "fan boys" of course never admit that they were wrong and don't learn that perhaps that they shouldn't be *quite* so sure of themselves, especially when they're only working off of third or fourth hand information anyway.
So for the average person there's no difference between the two except science has occasional outcomes usually applied through industry. But then so did religion in the day - getting human civilization through the painful, brutal and savage early stages to a point where "science" could come about as a concept was no mean feat. It was religion that gave people some way of moving forward as a cohesive unit even through the hardship that was life.
Science and modern life has replaced the need for religion but unfortunately some people are replacing their need for religion with science. With unfortunate side effects such as elevating "scientists" to the level of the bishops and priests of old who can do no wrong - a dangerous practice that I see here often.
Science is a magnificent idea but as with any theory once humans get involved it becomes a gigantic clusterfuck of human nature. Like democracy it generally works properly but thanks to the people in it it's far from perfect and occasionally gets corrupted. Some people need to accept that rather than placing rabid blind faith in the utopian ideal of "science" itself being perfect.
As with anything reserved moderation and a suspicious eye are the key to quality.
I spent 18 years attending an evangelical church before figuring out all by myself that at best it's a complete corruption of the movement that the figure known as Jesus began, at worst just a slowly dying culture. I certainly was not alone though and thousands of people do it every day.
The stereotype that many "atheists" describe for quite a few religious people is correct. The sad thing is though in *them* (people such as the grandparent) I see exactly the same type of mindless, blathering, "*I* know the one truth and if you don't see it your crazy", HIGHLY ignorant, paint the opposition as evil whackos ranting and mindset that I used to see in the more fevered members of the church.
Different side of the same bent coin.
If they were born into the church they'd probably be the very people that they rant and rave about - the fanatics.
The rest of us, the moderate religious, agnostic and atheists just get on with it and don't particularly care for holy wars from anyone no matter what they believe or don't believe.
"Yes. Mythbusters is perfect! Teach them to jump to conclusions based on extremely small data sets and horribly designed/non-existent control objects."
Sounds like a great deal of climatology.
Hell sounds like the reality in many "scientific" disciplines (I'm looking at YOU social "sciences" that freely mix yourself up with ultra left wing politics).
And no I'm not a conservative or AGW denier.
The EXACT same thing was said about winter "It's not Autumn (fall) that's a problem...it's *winter*".
It's now winter here in Australia and it hasn't made a difference to the numbers.
And no it's not a genuine concern, it's hype just like Bird Flu was. There are *many* people working in their own interests that make a shit load of money pushing fear and hype as a product - the media are somewhere at the bottom of that list if ordered by profit, government agencies in the middle and Roche (in this case) are absolutely at the top.
I've worked for federal government agencies and currently work closely with Roche, Merck and Novos marketing depts, pushing stuff like this into the media and keeping it there is just business...
P.S
Your continuing lack of anything resembling capitals still disturbs me even after all these years...
Well I weighed 70kgs (140lbs) as an 18 year old, 130kgs (260lbs) as a 22 year old then worked like crazy and weighed 80kgs (160) as a 25 year old.
So I'll call fatties fat if I wish.
And I know! There's *nothing* worse than a reformed fatty or reformed smoker - which I am as well (I'm like a double barrelled shot gun of moral superiority these days!).
And yes my horse *is* very tall, thanks for asking...