Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.
I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.
Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer.. In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.
As I walk among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.
Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and sparkly white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.
Ah, whatever the majority wants. Wanna lynch a few pesky minorities too, while you're at it?
I could care less about what the majority wants. Simply put ACTA is a political scam, like everything else politics, and he damn well has every right to be dead-set against whatever they're doing because it sure as hell isn't going to be good. The fact that it's behind closed doors should tell you that much.
The "obscenity" excuse is an ad-hoc argument designed to ovverride the constitution outside of the constitution, it's basically judicial and legislative handwaving, claiming that it's a "special" "unprotected" category of speech.
I am proudly anti-social and will fight for people's right to say any goddamn obscene thing they want.
On the contrary, this is the result of democracy. The aims of democracy, the intended goals and functions of democracy, are just not what people think they are. Democracy is good on paper but in practice reality reveals its flaws. You can talk about how a democracy would work in a bubblegum dream world all you like, it doesn't change the fact that democracy is always some sort of tyranny.
There's only so much that can be done by system designers in preventing malware and not adversely effect the user's experience. For example, look at UAV.
In Linux, all that you need to do to fuck up a system is to type your password in when gksudo or whatever requests it. Linux does have not just a better security system overall, though, but also a better security CULTURE, as apps are more often designed with what permissions they'll really need in mind, while many Windows programs need admin access for who-knows what reason, when it should've been designed not to need it (not a fault of Microsoft's).
My terminology is fine. You must be confused, if you are unfamiliar with the term "democratic socialism." The formal name of the Nazis is irrelevant and I am not speaking to the name of a political party and instead sort of a political ideology.
It's about instilling the acceptance of top-down control, about obeying, and perhaps even coming to view as necessary, government-determined access to information\. The French have already given themselves over to a Democratic (state) socialist government, so it's not a huge surprise that this is happening there and not here in the USA, at least not yet.
Can we ignore the literal law in favor of "what they meant"? That's the worst kind of exactly what you seem to be opposing.
We must, as words and meanings change over time, and words have multiple meanings. For example, when one reads "free" speech, it clearly does not mean free as in "free money." You are reading into the author's intent (by context), and rightly so.
As for welfare, the term "welfare" as we know it did not come into usage until much later. Welfare being discussed there applies more in the sense of national defense, not handouts.
Considering that the bill of rights themselves were passed to specify partly what the government was protecting and to put further limitations on what the government can demand, it's curious that the anti-gun lobby insists that the second is a black sheep that was mean to restrict something in the general population.
Not to mention, the militia was, as I understand, at the time, often any male of age able to shoot a rifle. The militia (well regulated, meaning well-armed and provided for) was a statement of purpose on why "the people" must be allowed to keep and bear arms, as it was envisioned that the militias (remember, statehood was much bigger back then than it is now) would defend the local states from a potentially tyrannical federal government.
That's a statement of purpose and not enumerating a power. If you seriously believe that it is specifying for welfare in a time where welfare was unheard of and people were going to war over being taxed on their own money, then "general welfare" can mean anything and makes much of the document irrelevant.
The "living constitution" is basically taking a postmodern take on the constitution, when it suits particular people that want to reinterpret the constitution as a way to get past the messy amendment process.
In every other legal document, we look at what was agreed upon and written by involved parties and what they meant. With the "living constitution" idea, the wording and meaning is re-interpreted (always by those with an agenda) under the guise of allowing for flexibility when the constitution does have provisions for change--just not ones that involve linguistic shenanigans, wordplay, and semantics.
Best example of this is how the "general welfare" part, which does not enumerate any powers to the federal government but merely specify that laws should be beneficial to the population, somehow got translated into actual welfare. So on and so forth... if the general welfare arguments are to be taken seriously then we must consider the entire constitution to be useless as anything is OK so long as politicians feel it "promotes general welfare", which is surely ridiculous.
Not to mention, the same idiocy that allows AOL to exist is, fundamentally, the same process that drives democracy--individual choice. Whether my purchasing or voting, there's a similar result--the idiots help set up the only (terrible) game in town.
Basically, as a functionalist, you should be saying we essentially don't have a complete understanding of human cognitive processes and how the brain works. I agree. But when one states that we don't "understand consciousness" they usually mean something more than that, which is what my objections were aimed at.
And THAT depends entirely on the evidence one requires for consciousness, which is tied to what one thinks consciousness ultimately is.
If you're arguing that there's something "more" to consciousness than functional and/or biological states, you're going to have a tough time because (IMO) your conception of consciousness is almost mystical. If you disagree with functionalism, you're not going to accept something akin to the Turing test because it doesn't prove a "special first-person experience."
Slashdot Mirror
THE YATAGARASU STRIKES AGAIN!
I've always been a PC at heart.
Not like the rest, the others. Everyone around me. I was at odds with my society and knew it early since birth. Unlike them, I did not "Think Different!"--the mantra of the Macs around me, the phrase on all the billboards in the city that served as a reminder to its citizenry. Sameness pervaded the essence of my being and no amount of self-conditioning I did could change that. Eventually, I gave up and isolated myself emotionally from society.
I gaze at the faces going by, the white earphones contrasting their black turtlenecks, connecting their ears to their pockets, their blank faces engrossed in hip Indie rock music and various garage bands. I envied them for their perfection against my flaws and my compulsive nature to expand, to burden my life with troubles instead of remaining, like them, simple and easy to deal with. The grandest of virtues, simplicity... the philosophy by our loyal benefactor Steve Jobs, who descended from the heavens, creating the Earth, the iron, the wind and the rain. Steve Jobs, who defined the parameters of existence, the one who set about the patterns of reality, the constants, the variables. He who made gravity, electromagnetic energy, and shaped atomic structures and brought forth motion. From these things, he crafted the elements, processed them, refined them, and from these things engineered Apple products through the purity of his mind. Each Apple product was individually crafted by his own hands with the programming code used to run each device having being compiled in his brain and uploaded to each device telepathically, breathing life and perfection into each and every unit.
Except, it seems, for me, for I was not among the many. I was a PC. They were Macs. I've always been a cold, stiff person. I got by, disguising myself by keeping my non-Ipod music player safely out of sight, which I use because of my depraved nature demanding more functionality than the simple and easy-to-use Ipods have to offer.. In the safety of my own home, behind locked doors, I ran a Forbidden, a contraband computer from more depraved, earlier days that was not given the love and blessing of being birthed by Steve Jobs. I dual booted, out of the great sin of curiosity-- curiosity, a shameful value of a PC, as curiosity has no place where simplicity matters most--using two of the great unutterable blasphemies-- something called "Windows Vista" and something else called "Linux." Although, as I mentioned before, although my tendency to be a PC and towards conformity has always been inherent to me, I was truly transformed when I found these old things in a hidden cache of computer parts predating The Purging. Perhaps the greatest sin of all, the single evil that, if discovered, would damn me forever, was the fact that my mouse had more than one button.
As I walk among the Macs on the streets, passing the Starbuckses as I went along, I wondered how it all came to this. I glanced at The Holy Marks on the foreheads as the people wandered down the streets, the Bitten Apple tattooed on all our of us at birth, and wondered if, perhaps, there could be something more to life. But again, this was a PC's thought, and not, like everyone elses', a Mac's. We were to hold ourselves to the philosophy of Steve Jobs--so as his products were designed for idiots, so too were we to be idiots. But I was not a Mac--I was not an idiot. I was simply too complicated to be a worthwhile person.
Nature called. I found a nearby public iPoo--squeaky clean and sparkly white, things weren't all bad--and let myself go, expelling the waste that had accumulated inside me. After relieving myself and committing the overly-complicated and thus illegal act of wiping my ass (I did not flush as iPoos, designed to be idiot-proof, did not flush) I left and once again wandered the streets aimlessly, hoping to find some meaning in a world where I simply did not belong, a world where if my true nature was discovered, I would be endlessly persecuted by smug, self-righteous sons of bitches.
Ah, whatever the majority wants. Wanna lynch a few pesky minorities too, while you're at it?
I could care less about what the majority wants. Simply put ACTA is a political scam, like everything else politics, and he damn well has every right to be dead-set against whatever they're doing because it sure as hell isn't going to be good. The fact that it's behind closed doors should tell you that much.
Beyond comprehension? Surely you didn't go through the school system yourself? If you had, you'd be less than surprised...
The "obscenity" excuse is an ad-hoc argument designed to ovverride the constitution outside of the constitution, it's basically judicial and legislative handwaving, claiming that it's a "special" "unprotected" category of speech.
I am proudly anti-social and will fight for people's right to say any goddamn obscene thing they want.
We saw a taste of direct democracy in California, where they outlawed homosexual marriage.
On the contrary, this is the result of democracy. The aims of democracy, the intended goals and functions of democracy, are just not what people think they are. Democracy is good on paper but in practice reality reveals its flaws. You can talk about how a democracy would work in a bubblegum dream world all you like, it doesn't change the fact that democracy is always some sort of tyranny.
There's only so much that can be done by system designers in preventing malware and not adversely effect the user's experience. For example, look at UAV.
In Linux, all that you need to do to fuck up a system is to type your password in when gksudo or whatever requests it. Linux does have not just a better security system overall, though, but also a better security CULTURE, as apps are more often designed with what permissions they'll really need in mind, while many Windows programs need admin access for who-knows what reason, when it should've been designed not to need it (not a fault of Microsoft's).
My terminology is fine. You must be confused, if you are unfamiliar with the term "democratic socialism." The formal name of the Nazis is irrelevant and I am not speaking to the name of a political party and instead sort of a political ideology.
I didn't say socialist. I said Democratic Socialist.
Their right wing is to the left of our left wing. Europeans, including the French, are ALWAYS bragging here about democratic socialism.
It's about instilling the acceptance of top-down control, about obeying, and perhaps even coming to view as necessary, government-determined access to information\. The French have already given themselves over to a Democratic (state) socialist government, so it's not a huge surprise that this is happening there and not here in the USA, at least not yet.
To be fair, it was the best at one point in time, for a good while, too.
This guy is going to piss himself if he meets a gamer that's in a biker gang.
Can we ignore the literal law in favor of "what they meant"? That's the worst kind of exactly what you seem to be opposing.
We must, as words and meanings change over time, and words have multiple meanings. For example, when one reads "free" speech, it clearly does not mean free as in "free money." You are reading into the author's intent (by context), and rightly so.
As for welfare, the term "welfare" as we know it did not come into usage until much later. Welfare being discussed there applies more in the sense of national defense, not handouts.
The usage in the constitution is a more archaic usage of the term, more common then than today.
AMEN TO THAT!
Considering that the bill of rights themselves were passed to specify partly what the government was protecting and to put further limitations on what the government can demand, it's curious that the anti-gun lobby insists that the second is a black sheep that was mean to restrict something in the general population.
Not to mention, the militia was, as I understand, at the time, often any male of age able to shoot a rifle. The militia (well regulated, meaning well-armed and provided for) was a statement of purpose on why "the people" must be allowed to keep and bear arms, as it was envisioned that the militias (remember, statehood was much bigger back then than it is now) would defend the local states from a potentially tyrannical federal government.
That's a statement of purpose and not enumerating a power. If you seriously believe that it is specifying for welfare in a time where welfare was unheard of and people were going to war over being taxed on their own money, then "general welfare" can mean anything and makes much of the document irrelevant.
The "living constitution" is basically taking a postmodern take on the constitution, when it suits particular people that want to reinterpret the constitution as a way to get past the messy amendment process.
In every other legal document, we look at what was agreed upon and written by involved parties and what they meant. With the "living constitution" idea, the wording and meaning is re-interpreted (always by those with an agenda) under the guise of allowing for flexibility when the constitution does have provisions for change--just not ones that involve linguistic shenanigans, wordplay, and semantics.
Best example of this is how the "general welfare" part, which does not enumerate any powers to the federal government but merely specify that laws should be beneficial to the population, somehow got translated into actual welfare. So on and so forth... if the general welfare arguments are to be taken seriously then we must consider the entire constitution to be useless as anything is OK so long as politicians feel it "promotes general welfare", which is surely ridiculous.
Not according to your own story.
Not to mention, the same idiocy that allows AOL to exist is, fundamentally, the same process that drives democracy--individual choice. Whether my purchasing or voting, there's a similar result--the idiots help set up the only (terrible) game in town.
Get back to me when you have an intentionally malicious compiler/interpreter.
Basically, as a functionalist, you should be saying we essentially don't have a complete understanding of human cognitive processes and how the brain works. I agree. But when one states that we don't "understand consciousness" they usually mean something more than that, which is what my objections were aimed at.
And THAT depends entirely on the evidence one requires for consciousness, which is tied to what one thinks consciousness ultimately is.
If you're arguing that there's something "more" to consciousness than functional and/or biological states, you're going to have a tough time because (IMO) your conception of consciousness is almost mystical. If you disagree with functionalism, you're not going to accept something akin to the Turing test because it doesn't prove a "special first-person experience."