The whole point of that episode is that all of our languages are metaphor piled on top of metaphor. The difference is that we've lost the connections to much of the context. Example: The word "talent" is used a millions of times every day by people who have no idea that it's a metaphoric reference.
I think I'd prefer a metaphorical language like that of the Tamarians:
im anti religion myself, but if 1 person, whom you dont even know perhaps they just wanted your darwin sticker themselves is the reason you are against over a billion people you need to rethink your methods of choosing enemies
My own mother bought me a car fish sticker that says "Linux" inside the fish, thinking that it was cute and that I'd like it, having been a linux user since slackware was a pup and being a Xtian. I can't imagine putting it on my vehicle though, as I'm not sure what message it transmits.
Unlike something like Taoism, that appears to bond easily to some other worldview (Celtic-Taoist is a combination that is not necesarily incongruous, for instance), the Christian/Darwinist fish symbol bumper sticker wars have made the situation so contentious that I'm afraid someone will misconstrue my intent.
What message does an Ichthys with the word Linux inside it actually present?
That Linux is my religion? I mean, I like Linux, and it *is* a gateway to salvation and all, but I'm not willing to give up Jesus for it yet. Maybe after another 20 years. (Side note: I'm sure that Linus is a $%#$& %^$^#$^% Saint.) That Linux is bigger than religion? That would be like the one where the Evolution fish is eating the little Christian Ichthys and this one isn't like that.
Anyhow, I'm sorry for the guy who lost his darwin fish thing. I'm sure it was clever and not at all designed to demean someone else's heartfelt expression of their belief in the fisher of men. In any event, the person (or wind, or adhesive that loosened the paint when moisture collected) was wrong for taking it, regardless of their intent, religion, cosmology or "act of God/Nature/Physics"-ness.
You should understand Christianity before labeling in bigoted.
I do. It's a religion of dominion which places some grubby sheepherders above all other people, which has been hacked and re-hacked over the years for political purposes.
"Grubby sheepherders" pretty much tells us where you are coming from, brother.
In terms of bigotry, I think you just gave us an object lesson in it.
If I "catch your drift" as far as what you mean by "places some grubby sheepherders above all other people", you show your thorough ignorance of Christianity and of the importance of the Abrahamic family story that preceded it, in terms of describing not just metaphysical points, but also in giving one big extended family's view of a very important period in human history. "Chosen", in a Biblical context is more like "Those that have Chosen", than what I think you are meaning by it.
"religion of dominion".... I'm not sure what to say about that. Around 1095 (let's just round up and call that 1000 years ago), Pope Urban II at Clermont exhorted Christian men of arms of both means and those without means to travel to the holy land to push back against the Mahometans[sic] that had been steadily pushing (for "dominion", perhaps?) westward. It lasted for c. 200 years and the West (Christendom, if you will) hasn't had much in the way of religious wars since.
As for "hacked and re-hacked" and politics. Sure, even the cleanest water will be tainted if it is poured into rusty vessels. People will get it wrong and some people will get it *very* wrong. (It even says that it in the Book.) But looking at the central goals, precepts and directives of the Judaeo-Christian worldviews, I don't see the malice that so many people claim to see there in its core. Sure, there's lots of sin, lots of "missing the mark", even among people claiming to be leaders. There will be lots of people who fall into literalist or mysticist traps and even more that hide their cynicism under a veneer of practiced faith.
That the Church has been used by the state on occasion does not confirm or deny the church's message and actual purpose. It just shows that people suck and can be corrupted or coerced. All the more reason to give them access to a worldview that, while understanding their faults, exhorts them to do better and not suck so much.
Most of the preachers one sees on American television will fall into some kind of heresy within a few minutes. "Word of Faith", "Seed Money" and "Give to Get" are almost ubiquitously connected to Christianity, despite being thoroughly off the map, as far as Christian doctrine goes. Here's an example of where Christian church folk have grown. Christians no longer burn or otherwise kill heretics. Haven't done so in quite awhile. Its always been in the rules ("let he without since cast the first stone", and all) but people are slow to catch on.
Try not to judge a religion by those who *haven't* gotten it right. Try to take a look at what it is really asking of its adherents, what its most thoughtful proponents claim as its goals and ideals, not what its most bombastic hangers-on shout about.
It is no accident that so many hospitals and schools all over the world bear the names of Catholic saints. You can claim "world dominion" all you want, (btw, I'm no huge fan of the Roman Church myself) but they put their money where their mouths were time and time again and fed the hungry, clothed the poor and cared for the sick. Power corrupts, though, and the Reformation provided a bit of a reset. I think we're in another of those reset periods again, where the choices the big American denominations made over the past 100 years are leading to another Reformation,
More often than not, though, I see anti Jew or anti Christian folk that want to ignore their own basic reasoning skills and go prooftexting out the description of one Biblical incident or another, or a law from Leviticus, pointing out how horrible [this or that] is, or trying to frame an incident from, perhaps, the Bronze Age, using a 21st century western perspective or maybe go straight for the Crusades
The ITU is controlled by the UN and the phone system works just fine.
The stakes aren't quite as high, in terms of the potential for squelching freedom of speech in the present world where Internet access is far more vital than telephone access.
Also, telephony is long established and one-on-on, for the most part. Internet freedom of expression and of receipt of information is, for what it's worth, access to the common dataset of humanity now.
While I don't think that this ICANN move is that dangerous in and of itself, the phrase "slippery slope" and images of Blue Helmeted Cyber Cops eventually out looking for OUCHTHINK and BADTHINK won't stop echoing in my head as I try to finish this reply.
Where you see ITU, I'm sortof thinking U.N. "Human Rights" Council and U.N. profiteers.
The Internet started out and has remained open and free because it is a system designed, like the United States was designed, to be about individual right of access and local control under an accepted set of protocols designed for maximum cooperation.
The U.S., at our best, and codified in our Constitution, shows the power of the rule of law and puts the individual's absolute right of expression at the top of the list, just as "the Internet" at its best represents cooperation and individual freedom of access to, and dissemination of, information.
Someone (here on Slashdot, I think. My apologies for not having the attribution at the moment.) wrote:
[para]the Internet is America's gift to the world.[/para]
Cacophony of international interests mucking about? Not so much.
Stop screaming the sky is falling. All that is national does not stink, all that is international does not shine. No one has been able to point out any realexamples of how the system isn't working. It only started in the US because thats where the internet went widespread. Let me know when it stops working
While I completely agree with the bulk of this and the main point, I have to call BS on part of it. It isn't "where the internet went widespread". It is where the Internet was conceived, birthed and raised. This is not a trivial distinction.
Interesting? Damn the moderators are stupid today!
So you want to leave it with the guys that practice water boarding...
Better than leaving it to the guys that practice stoning or decapitation of journalists, don't you think. The UN, if it had ever been useful, has long since been co-opted by the 7th Century Set and financial/political opportunists.
The UN is directly in the business of not allowing conflicts to be resolved. How is that beneficial for the Internet?
Re:Better the int'l community, than strictly US.
on
The Politics of ICANN
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The problem is that your "almost every State in the world", most of the time, looks like the bar scene from Star Wars. The US may be going through some political turmoil, as Americans struggle to push back the Big Govt types that have gained a foothold over the last century. That doesn't change the fact that the Internet's structure, whether you like it or not, reflects the culture that gave it life.
I, for one, long for the days when the Internet had a strong hand on the wheel. A dictator at times, perhaps, but power was wielded not for political gain but for the good of the network and to express the will of those of us who called it home. RIP Jon Postel.
It was no accident that it was the University of California where the groundwork for this thing we all rely on so much was laid. Is there any other country in the world where the statement "Be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept from others." could have been written (and taken on so many levels)?
Or where the notion that a network of individual, independent hosts, connected by simple and well-defined protocols, could become something so much more than the sum of its parts could arise?
The rest of the world may have adopted the Internet, but acting like it wasn't born in the same crucible that formed our (currently sullied and slightly battered) Constitution is just silly and unproductive.
History is what it is, and the Internet as we know it, despite regional flavours, is the American Ideal expressed in electronics.
You are relying on the way that agenda driven news and Hollywood movies portray Christianity in the United States, I think, more than anything else.
The bulk of American Christians are just like the people that you talk about just before your OB_SLAP_USA (with a backhand to the Catholics in the process.) The difference is that the US was founded with the express intent that the government was not to show favoritism to a particular denomination. We are an open society so everyone in the world sees our crazy uncles, they see when we air our dirty laundry, and, since we focus on our faults (to a fault) as well, they see all of those and don't often see past that.
We primarily have a problem with two "movements" within American Christianity. I hesitate to call them what they are since the term is loaded with historical baggage, but they are heresies. American Christians tend not to kill their heretics since that would be, well, un-Christian, so these continue to thrive. Reason (the Logos) will eventually win the day.
The first is a form of literalism called Darbyism, or "Dispensational Premillenialism" if you want to be academic about it. We got that from an Irish Protestant called John Nelson Darby who spent a large amount of time in the US and Canada during the US Civil War and in the decade after. He hit us with his particularly un-Biblical brand of Bible literalism when we were at our lowest point and our people, especially in the South, were most vulnerable to the dark vision that it represents. The mainstream, historic Christian faith has been fighting against it ever since. You see it manifested in Hal Lindsey, Tim Lahaye, John Hagee, etc. and is the stereotypical image of Christianity most used in film and television. It is vocal, visible and geographically diverse but is still far out-numbered by traditional Christians. The problem is that many non-Believers encounter these nuts first. I've heard them described as a "vaccination" against the real Jesus.
The second are the "Word of Faith" preachers and their sucke^H^H^H^H^H followers. This is the crowd that will talk about "giving to get" and "seed money". They torture Scripture in the worst imaginable way, down to picking out one word at a time from multiple sources sometimes to construct the basis for their message. They also rely alot on "God told me to tell you." I have never heard a legitimate preacher use that phrase, especially not when it comes to tithes and offerings.
A legitimate Christian teacher will also not ever promise you anything in return for a monetary gift. That's one of the heresies that started the Reformation. Legitimate Christianity promises the believer nothing in this life except for the example of Christ, the Bible as guide, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
Examples of these "Word of Faith" guys are JD Jakes, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen (who's father John Osteen was the spiritual father of many of the Word of Faith heretics today), Juanita Bynum, etc.
They also present a Christianity that is so ridiculous that it serves, again, as an inoculant against the historic, reasonable Christian faith. (The one that built most of the universities, libraries and hospitals (up till recently) in the world.
I hope you come to understand that, despite the vocal-ness of some of our lost Brothers and Sisters in Christ, most U.S. Christians are more like your grandfather the minister than like Pat Robertson or Jim Bakker. They are just too busy "doing" their lives to be on TV talking about it all the time.
No US fundie is against "stem cell research". They are against government funding of foetal stem cell research. (ie, getting science out of dead babies, to them.)
There is a huge difference, the biggest one being that plenty of practical applications have come out of other stem cell research but the results from foetal stem cell projects have ranged from ineffective to a few outright horror shows.
Calling a socialist uprising in American, fomented by Russian propaganda, a "trend of enlightenment" shows that your world may be upside down.
The "fundamentalist reaction" is just their side of an overall polarisation of American society, once again mainly fomented by outside forces coupled with the laziness we developed as our success created wealth across the American landscape.
Let's not even get into Global Warming/Climate Change. When you can explain how the rest of the solar system is also warming but how it's still human-caused, get back to me. Till then, it's good to conserve, but let's not get crazy about an idea that comes out of an attempt to shackle the industrialised countries (one in particular) into a global carbon tax scheme. Enough with the socialism already.
Christianity insists that everything be tested and examined. It's what has given Christendom the edge. You are correct, though, that many Xtians have not and do not pay attention to this most important of concepts.
Yet, enough do, so that we're always at the forefront and always ready to adapt.
"And this, children, is why Muslims feel so hated and oppressed."
Then Muslims need to quit oppressing others. Our people bend over backwards to show respect to Muslim ways while Muslims will take over a church and piss and defecate all over the alter, destroy artifacts and generally abuse the site. Your books tell us exactly what you are to do with us non-Muslims. It's pretty clearly laid out.
So, by way of a start, here are some things that you could do, as Muslims, to change our opinions:
Stop reacting to affronts with violence instead of reason. Stop pretending that you don't have murderers among you that need to be rooted out. (Then root them out) Stop pretending that, in order to live in the actual world, your religion doesn't need a real Reformation and strong voices to carry it out. Stop allowing (here in the US) organisations with terrorist ties (Like CAIR) to be the spokespeople for you.
Take up the challenge that is addressed in the article cited in the original post and prove us wrong about Islam.
From my point of view, Islam as a whole has done nothing for humanity but provide a murderous bogeyman for centuries, draining the resources of the West that could have gone to lifting everyone higher. The so-called accomplishments, outside of a few brief instances, consist mainly of having translations of Greek and Roman knowledge,gotten through plunder, then exploitation of the plunder by a few caliphs who saw the need and encouraged knowledge (to a point).
The goals, as stated in the Muslim holy books, is conversion or death to all. (with some special provision of mere Dhimmitude in between for the "lucky" ones)
Where is the evidence of an Islam beyond tribalist warfare and subjugation?
Where is the repudiation of violence as a means to any end?
That abc news story that you cite has no reference whatsoever to hate, except for the hate that we get from Muslims for just not being Muslims. Those kids are being told that they will have to defend themselves and their faith someday, possibly with their lives. They are not being told to go out and strap bombs to themselves or go on shooting sprees.
That being said, there are truly militant Xtians, they are still the tiniest minority of Xtians and, any offensive act that they might endorse or carry out would render them apostate.
The difference between Christian violence and Muslim violence is the difference between anecdotal evidence of failure (according to their own standard) and established trends (according to their own standard).
Don't measure a religion by it's apparent adherents failures to live up to it's code. Measure the code itself. After 2000 years Europe was never fully Xtianised, especially after the Muslim invasions that lead to the Crusades. The failures in European and American history have come on the heels of abandonment of Xtian principles, not fulfillment of them.
4000 years is a short time to turn the world around, but it's a heckuvalot better place now than it was before Abraham discovered that there's only one God..mpa
The difference is that Xtians and Jews are not exhorted to violence against others as normative, even in the age it describes.
The point of the story is that Saul did not do what God commanded: to leave no trace of the Amelekites (the words used by Samuel, "Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation--men, women, children, babies, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and donkeys.", is a literary device at the point that the story is written). Saul and his men took what they wanted as bounty from the Amalekites, disregarding the instructions.
Contrast that with Abraham, who showed faith to the point of giving up his most treasured possession when God asked. Saul can't even forgo the livestock of his God's enemy. He even let's the Amalekite king live, as if it was his choice to make.
Anyone can take someone else's religious writings out of their historical and cultural context to make points. They key is understanding what the writings mean to the people who believe them and what those writings instruct them to do.
The Bible instructs the Jews and Xtians to be a nation of priests, to be good and kind and fair, but to beware of and prepared for danger from outside while waiting and working for the Kingdom of God.
The New Testament instructs Christians to take it a step further, to personally acknowledge the God of Abraham as theirs, to spread the Word, and to shine a light into the darkness. It tells us to test everything and provides the basis for all of the Rights that we cherish in the West.
Don't measure the religion by its anecdotal failures or it's growing pains but by its ideals and goals, thoughtfully and fully expressed.
Israel and Christendom lay their smallest of failings out for all the world to see, acknowledge them, and resolve to do better.
The rest of the world, especially the atheist socialist and Islamist apologist, hides behind bluster and smokescreens, hoping that, on average, nobody is looking for the man behind the curtain.
GITMO is a special case. The people sent there have all been captured in the act of "being terrorists" (ie on the battlefields of Afghanistan or Iraq) or were known Al Qaeda figures captured elsewhere and in the course of planning or executing acts of terrorism. They are not soldiers and they are not plain criminals so they need to be dealt with in their own particular manner.
At the moment of their capture, they become assets that need to be leveraged.
As assets, they are compromised by allowing communication.
But more to the point: How does the treatment (whether lawful or not) of this statistically insignificant minority serve as an overall indictment of the United States on Civil Rights matters.
If you think that the US is sliding backwards in this regard I think you need to read a little more history and a little less political fiction.
I just don't see where any of us (in the USofA) are any less free than we were in 1999 before President Bush took office. In fact, it seems to me that we're:
a lot more free to spend our money the way we want (tax breaks worked and the economy is still chugging along nicely despite wars, etc),
a lot more free to express dissent (despite many people complaining that they are afraid of harassment, repercussions, etc, there are no documented cases of such behaviour and TONS of dissent everywhere I look.) As a matter of fact, I've seen much more harassment of "conservatives" than I have of "liberals" in the past 10 years or so.
a lot more free to live up to our God-given right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (note that it's "Pursuit" that's guaranteed, not the acquisition.
Btw, the link to the Partisanship study is intriguing and plays against your point. Note the emotion shown in your describing the President as "little old Bush". The emotional content of your own partisanship seems to be playing a hand here....
I'd really like a list of the things that you say that they've done to make you less free. Most of the things that I can think of that limit freedoms have their source long before Bush took office..mpa
The show ended tidily years ago with Scully informing some committee that Agent Mulder was dead. Everything after that is some absolutely uninteresting parallel universe.
I may, however, break down and watch the final episode just to make sure it's really dead and gone for good.
I had a Nino 510 and loved it dearly right up till the moment that someone else decided they loved it more and walked off with it. It was fairly large and it didn't fit easily in my vest pocket so I developed the habit of carrying it around the building in it's case. I set it down one time too many and that was that.
After a suitable period of mourning, and after having gotten fed up with relying on my notebook and phones instead, I replaced it with a Visor.
I have to admit that I was originally taken back by the lack of features I'd gotten used to: large writing area, handwriting recognition, voice recognition, color, scheme and perl interpreters, and most importantly spreadsheets, usable spreadsheets.
On the other hand, this visor has a nice hardshell case, long battery life, smaller form factor and has never once failed to connect to the PC when syncing data. The Nino was hit or miss, mainly miss when it came to making the connection.
What I want, and think needs to be the next phase in mobile computing development is a completely modular system that can scale up and down as necessary. Choose your favorite input and output peripherals and mix/match to suit the occasion.
Oh well, four to six years before something reasonable hits the street. 'Till then I can deal with Palm's limitations when I don't feel like lugging a notebook bag around.
Ob-OSplug: Of course, the really cool part is that it'll run linux. (g)
Right. The point is that we have to protect the FBI from it's own weaknesses and the weakness of any particular individual involved.
Since there are alternatives (duplicate routing of only the court-ordered monitored traffic is the most reasonable) there is no reason to put a system so ripe for abuse in the hands of any agency.
As far as proving they can handle it, I don't think that should ever be put to that test.
The scariest thing about the CNN article and other pieces in which the FBI responds is that it seems that the only thing they've learned is to name these projects better. They consider it a public relations issue, not a privacy one.
"grey market" means that it was purchased from someone other than an authorised distributor. The chances of getting remarked cpus decreases to nearly nil when you buy boxed cpus from Ingram or Tech Data, etc. You pay more for boxed, of course, and have to deal with supply problems (which force many small OEMs to go grey market a couple of times a year anyway to fill orders) but at least you can verify your source.
Slashdot Mirror
The whole point of that episode is that all of our languages are metaphor piled on top of metaphor. The difference is that we've lost the connections to much of the context. Example: The word "talent" is used a millions of times every day by people who have no idea that it's a metaphoric reference.
I think I'd prefer a metaphorical language like that of the Tamarians:
"Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra."
im anti religion myself, but if 1 person, whom you dont even know perhaps they just wanted your darwin sticker themselves is the reason you are against over a billion people you need to rethink your methods of choosing enemies
My own mother bought me a car fish sticker that says "Linux" inside the fish, thinking that it was cute and that I'd like it, having been a linux user since slackware was a pup and being a Xtian. I can't imagine putting it on my vehicle though, as I'm not sure what message it transmits.
Unlike something like Taoism, that appears to bond easily to some other worldview (Celtic-Taoist is a combination that is not necesarily incongruous, for instance), the Christian/Darwinist fish symbol bumper sticker wars have made the situation so contentious that I'm afraid someone will misconstrue my intent.
What message does an Ichthys with the word Linux inside it actually present?
That Linux is my religion? I mean, I like Linux, and it *is* a gateway to salvation and all, but I'm not willing to give up Jesus for it yet. Maybe after another 20 years. (Side note: I'm sure that Linus is a $%#$& %^$^#$^% Saint.)
That Linux is bigger than religion? That would be like the one where the Evolution fish is eating the little Christian Ichthys and this one isn't like that.
Anyhow, I'm sorry for the guy who lost his darwin fish thing. I'm sure it was clever and not at all designed to demean someone else's heartfelt expression of their belief in the fisher of men. In any event, the person (or wind, or adhesive that loosened the paint when moisture collected) was wrong for taking it, regardless of their intent, religion, cosmology or "act of God/Nature/Physics"-ness.
You should understand Christianity before labeling in bigoted.
I do. It's a religion of dominion which places some grubby sheepherders above all other people, which has been hacked and re-hacked over the years for political purposes.
"Grubby sheepherders" pretty much tells us where you are coming from, brother.
In terms of bigotry, I think you just gave us an object lesson in it.
If I "catch your drift" as far as what you mean by "places some grubby sheepherders above all other people", you show your thorough ignorance of Christianity and of the importance of the Abrahamic family story that preceded it, in terms of describing not just metaphysical points, but also in giving one big extended family's view of a very important period in human history. "Chosen", in a Biblical context is more like "Those that have Chosen", than what I think you are meaning by it.
"religion of dominion".... I'm not sure what to say about that. Around 1095 (let's just round up and call that 1000 years ago), Pope Urban II at Clermont exhorted Christian men of arms of both means and those without means to travel to the holy land to push back against the Mahometans[sic] that had been steadily pushing (for "dominion", perhaps?) westward. It lasted for c. 200 years and the West (Christendom, if you will) hasn't had much in the way of religious wars since.
As for "hacked and re-hacked" and politics. Sure, even the cleanest water will be tainted if it is poured into rusty vessels. People will get it wrong and some people will get it *very* wrong. (It even says that it in the Book.) But looking at the central goals, precepts and directives of the Judaeo-Christian worldviews, I don't see the malice that so many people claim to see there in its core. Sure, there's lots of sin, lots of "missing the mark", even among people claiming to be leaders. There will be lots of people who fall into literalist or mysticist traps and even more that hide their cynicism under a veneer of practiced faith.
That the Church has been used by the state on occasion does not confirm or deny the church's message and actual purpose. It just shows that people suck and can be corrupted or coerced. All the more reason to give them access to a worldview that, while understanding their faults, exhorts them to do better and not suck so much.
Most of the preachers one sees on American television will fall into some kind of heresy within a few minutes. "Word of Faith", "Seed Money" and "Give to Get" are almost ubiquitously connected to Christianity, despite being thoroughly off the map, as far as Christian doctrine goes. Here's an example of where Christian church folk have grown. Christians no longer burn or otherwise kill heretics. Haven't done so in quite awhile. Its always been in the rules ("let he without since cast the first stone", and all) but people are slow to catch on.
Try not to judge a religion by those who *haven't* gotten it right. Try to take a look at what it is really asking of its adherents, what its most thoughtful proponents claim as its goals and ideals, not what its most bombastic hangers-on shout about.
It is no accident that so many hospitals and schools all over the world bear the names of Catholic saints. You can claim "world dominion" all you want, (btw, I'm no huge fan of the Roman Church myself) but they put their money where their mouths were time and time again and fed the hungry, clothed the poor and cared for the sick. Power corrupts, though, and the Reformation provided a bit of a reset. I think we're in another of those reset periods again, where the choices the big American denominations made over the past 100 years are leading to another Reformation,
More often than not, though, I see anti Jew or anti Christian folk that want to ignore their own basic reasoning skills and go prooftexting out the description of one Biblical incident or another, or a law from Leviticus, pointing out how horrible [this or that] is, or trying to frame an incident from, perhaps, the Bronze Age, using a 21st century western perspective or maybe go straight for the Crusades
The ITU is controlled by the UN and the phone system works just fine.
The stakes aren't quite as high, in terms of the potential for squelching freedom of speech in the present world where Internet access is far more vital than telephone access.
Also, telephony is long established and one-on-on, for the most part. Internet freedom of expression and of receipt of information is, for what it's worth, access to the common dataset of humanity now.
While I don't think that this ICANN move is that dangerous in and of itself, the phrase "slippery slope" and images of Blue Helmeted Cyber Cops eventually out looking for OUCHTHINK and BADTHINK won't stop echoing in my head as I try to finish this reply.
Where you see ITU, I'm sortof thinking U.N. "Human Rights" Council and U.N. profiteers.
The Internet started out and has remained open and free because it is a system designed, like the United States was designed, to be about individual right of access and local control under an accepted set of protocols designed for maximum cooperation.
The U.S., at our best, and codified in our Constitution, shows the power of the rule of law and puts the individual's absolute right of expression at the top of the list, just as "the Internet" at its best represents cooperation and individual freedom of access to, and dissemination of, information.
Someone (here on Slashdot, I think. My apologies for not having the attribution at the moment.) wrote:
[para]the Internet is America's gift to the world.[/para]
Cacophony of international interests mucking about? Not so much.
Stop screaming the sky is falling. All that is national does not stink, all that is international does not shine. No one has been able to point out any realexamples of how the system isn't working. It only started in the US because thats where the internet went widespread. Let me know when it stops working
While I completely agree with the bulk of this and the main point, I have to call BS on part of it. It isn't "where the internet went widespread". It is where the Internet was conceived, birthed and raised. This is not a trivial distinction.
Interesting? Damn the moderators are stupid today!
So you want to leave it with the guys that practice water boarding...
Better than leaving it to the guys that practice stoning or decapitation of journalists, don't you think. The UN, if it had ever been useful, has long since been co-opted by the 7th Century Set and financial/political opportunists.
The UN is directly in the business of not allowing conflicts to be resolved. How is that beneficial for the Internet?
The problem is that your "almost every State in the world", most of the time, looks like the bar scene from Star Wars. The US may be going through some political turmoil, as Americans struggle to push back the Big Govt types that have gained a foothold over the last century. That doesn't change the fact that the Internet's structure, whether you like it or not, reflects the culture that gave it life.
I, for one, long for the days when the Internet had a strong hand on the wheel. A dictator at times, perhaps, but power was wielded not for political gain but for the good of the network and to express the will of those of us who called it home. RIP Jon Postel.
It was no accident that it was the University of California where the groundwork for this thing we all rely on so much was laid. Is there any other country in the world where the statement "Be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept from others." could have been written (and taken on so many levels)?
Or where the notion that a network of individual, independent hosts, connected by simple and well-defined protocols, could become something so much more than the sum of its parts could arise?
The rest of the world may have adopted the Internet, but acting like it wasn't born in the same crucible that formed our (currently sullied and slightly battered) Constitution is just silly and unproductive.
History is what it is, and the Internet as we know it, despite regional flavours, is the American Ideal expressed in electronics.
You are relying on the way that agenda driven news and Hollywood movies portray Christianity in the United States, I think, more than anything else.
The bulk of American Christians are just like the people that you talk about just before your OB_SLAP_USA (with a backhand to the Catholics in the process.) The difference is that the US was founded with the express intent that the government was not to show favoritism to a particular denomination. We are an open society so everyone in the world sees our crazy uncles, they see when we air our dirty laundry, and, since we focus on our faults (to a fault) as well, they see all of those and don't often see past that.
We primarily have a problem with two "movements" within American Christianity. I hesitate to call them what they are since the term is loaded with historical baggage, but they are heresies. American Christians tend not to kill their heretics since that would be, well, un-Christian, so these continue to thrive. Reason (the Logos) will eventually win the day.
The first is a form of literalism called Darbyism, or "Dispensational Premillenialism" if you want to be academic about it. We got that from an Irish Protestant called John Nelson Darby who spent a large amount of time in the US and Canada during the US Civil War and in the decade after. He hit us with his particularly un-Biblical brand of Bible literalism when we were at our lowest point and our people, especially in the South, were most vulnerable to the dark vision that it represents. The mainstream, historic Christian faith has been fighting against it ever since. You see it manifested in Hal Lindsey, Tim Lahaye, John Hagee, etc. and is the stereotypical image of Christianity most used in film and television. It is vocal, visible and geographically diverse but is still far out-numbered by traditional Christians. The problem is that many non-Believers encounter these nuts first. I've heard them described as a "vaccination" against the real Jesus.
The second are the "Word of Faith" preachers and their sucke^H^H^H^H^H followers. This is the crowd that will talk about "giving to get" and "seed money". They torture Scripture in the worst imaginable way, down to picking out one word at a time from multiple sources sometimes to construct the basis for their message. They also rely alot on "God told me to tell you." I have never heard a legitimate preacher use that phrase, especially not when it comes to tithes and offerings.
A legitimate Christian teacher will also not ever promise you anything in return for a monetary gift. That's one of the heresies that started the Reformation. Legitimate Christianity promises the believer nothing in this life except for the example of Christ, the Bible as guide, and the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
Examples of these "Word of Faith" guys are JD Jakes, Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen (who's father John Osteen was the spiritual father of many of the Word of Faith heretics today), Juanita Bynum, etc.
They also present a Christianity that is so ridiculous that it serves, again, as an inoculant against the historic, reasonable Christian faith. (The one that built most of the universities, libraries and hospitals (up till recently) in the world.
I hope you come to understand that, despite the vocal-ness of some of our lost Brothers and Sisters in Christ, most U.S. Christians are more like your grandfather the minister than like Pat Robertson or Jim Bakker. They are just too busy "doing" their lives to be on TV talking about it all the time.
Classic Troll: "anti-scientific fundamentalists ( eg stem cell research"
No US fundie is against "stem cell research". They are against government funding of foetal stem cell research. (ie, getting science out of dead babies, to them.)
There is a huge difference, the biggest one being that plenty of practical applications have come out of other stem cell research but the results from foetal stem cell projects have ranged from ineffective to a few outright horror shows.
Calling a socialist uprising in American, fomented by Russian propaganda, a "trend of enlightenment" shows that your world may be upside down.
The "fundamentalist reaction" is just their side of an overall polarisation of American society, once again mainly fomented by outside forces coupled with the laziness we developed as our success created wealth across the American landscape.
Let's not even get into Global Warming/Climate Change. When you can explain how the rest of the solar system is also warming but how it's still human-caused, get back to me. Till then, it's good to conserve, but let's not get crazy about an idea that comes out of an attempt to shackle the industrialised countries (one in particular) into a global carbon tax scheme. Enough with the socialism already.
Not really Muslim knowledge but regurgitations of Greek texts that they encountered.
Exactly.
Christianity insists that everything be tested and examined. It's what has given Christendom the edge. You are correct, though, that many Xtians have not and do not pay attention to this most important of concepts.
Yet, enough do, so that we're always at the forefront and always ready to adapt.
"And this, children, is why Muslims feel so hated and oppressed."
Then Muslims need to quit oppressing others. Our people bend over backwards to show respect to Muslim ways while Muslims will take over a church and piss and defecate all over the alter, destroy artifacts and generally abuse the site. Your books tell us exactly what you are to do with us non-Muslims. It's pretty clearly laid out.
So, by way of a start, here are some things that you could do, as Muslims, to change our opinions:
Stop reacting to affronts with violence instead of reason.
Stop pretending that you don't have murderers among you that need to be rooted out. (Then root them out)
Stop pretending that, in order to live in the actual world, your religion doesn't need a real Reformation and strong voices to carry it out.
Stop allowing (here in the US) organisations with terrorist ties (Like CAIR) to be the spokespeople for you.
Take up the challenge that is addressed in the article cited in the original post and prove us wrong about Islam.
From my point of view, Islam as a whole has done nothing for humanity but provide a murderous bogeyman for centuries, draining the resources of the West that could have gone to lifting everyone higher. The so-called accomplishments, outside of a few brief instances, consist mainly of having translations of Greek and Roman knowledge,gotten through plunder, then exploitation of the plunder by a few caliphs who saw the need and encouraged knowledge (to a point).
The goals, as stated in the Muslim holy books, is conversion or death to all. (with some special provision of mere Dhimmitude in between for the "lucky" ones)
Where is the evidence of an Islam beyond tribalist warfare and subjugation?
Where is the repudiation of violence as a means to any end?
That abc news story that you cite has no reference whatsoever to hate, except for the hate that we get from Muslims for just not being Muslims. Those kids are being told that they will have to defend themselves and their faith someday, possibly with their lives. They are not being told to go out and strap bombs to themselves or go on shooting sprees.
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That being said, there are truly militant Xtians, they are still the tiniest minority of Xtians and, any offensive act that they might endorse or carry out would render them apostate.
The difference between Christian violence and Muslim violence is the difference between anecdotal evidence of failure (according to their own standard) and established trends (according to their own standard).
Don't measure a religion by it's apparent adherents failures to live up to it's code. Measure the code itself. After 2000 years Europe was never fully Xtianised, especially after the Muslim invasions that lead to the Crusades. The failures in European and American history have come on the heels of abandonment of Xtian principles, not fulfillment of them.
4000 years is a short time to turn the world around, but it's a heckuvalot better place now than it was before Abraham discovered that there's only one God.
The difference is that Xtians and Jews are not exhorted to violence against others as normative, even in the age it describes.
The point of the story is that Saul did not do what God commanded: to leave no trace of the Amelekites (the words used by Samuel, "Now go and completely destroy the entire Amalekite nation--men, women, children, babies, cattle, sheep, goats, camels, and donkeys.", is a literary device at the point that the story is written). Saul and his men took what they wanted as bounty from the Amalekites, disregarding the instructions.
Contrast that with Abraham, who showed faith to the point of giving up his most treasured possession when God asked. Saul can't even forgo the livestock of his God's enemy. He even let's the Amalekite king live, as if it was his choice to make.
Anyone can take someone else's religious writings out of their historical and cultural context to make points. They key is understanding what the writings mean to the people who believe them and what those writings instruct them to do.
The Bible instructs the Jews and Xtians to be a nation of priests, to be good and kind and fair, but to beware of and prepared for danger from outside while waiting and working for the Kingdom of God.
The New Testament instructs Christians to take it a step further, to personally acknowledge the God of Abraham as theirs, to spread the Word, and to shine a light into the darkness. It tells us to test everything and provides the basis for all of the Rights that we cherish in the West.
Don't measure the religion by its anecdotal failures or it's growing pains but by its ideals and goals, thoughtfully and fully expressed.
Israel and Christendom lay their smallest of failings out for all the world to see, acknowledge them, and resolve to do better.
The rest of the world, especially the atheist socialist and Islamist apologist, hides behind bluster and smokescreens, hoping that, on average, nobody is looking for the man behind the curtain.
I could not agree more.
The UCS *depends* on climate fears for it's existence.
It is as much a political player in this and has as much to gain or lose as any Corporation.
GITMO is a special case. The people sent there have all been captured in the act of "being terrorists" (ie on the battlefields of Afghanistan or Iraq) or were known Al Qaeda figures captured elsewhere and in the course of planning or executing acts of terrorism. They are not soldiers and they are not plain criminals so they need to be dealt with in their own particular manner.
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At the moment of their capture, they become assets that need to be leveraged.
As assets, they are compromised by allowing communication.
But more to the point: How does the treatment (whether lawful or not) of this statistically insignificant minority serve as an overall indictment of the United States on Civil Rights matters.
If you think that the US is sliding backwards in this regard I think you need to read a little more history and a little less political fiction.
I just don't see where any of us (in the USofA) are any less free than we were in 1999 before President Bush took office. In fact, it seems to me that we're:
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a lot more free to spend our money the way we want (tax breaks worked and the economy is still chugging along nicely despite wars, etc),
a lot more free to express dissent (despite many people complaining that they are afraid of harassment, repercussions, etc, there are no documented cases of such behaviour and TONS of dissent everywhere I look.) As a matter of fact, I've seen much more harassment of "conservatives" than I have of "liberals" in the past 10 years or so.
a lot more free to live up to our God-given right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (note that it's "Pursuit" that's guaranteed, not the acquisition.
Btw, the link to the Partisanship study is intriguing and plays against your point. Note the emotion shown in your describing the President as "little old Bush". The emotional content of your own partisanship seems to be playing a hand here....
I'd really like a list of the things that you say that they've done to make you less free. Most of the things that I can think of that limit freedoms have their source long before Bush took office.
The show ended tidily years ago with Scully informing some committee that Agent Mulder was dead. Everything after that is some absolutely uninteresting parallel universe.
I may, however, break down and watch the final episode just to make sure it's really dead and gone for good.
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Sheesh. Both have their uses.
I had a Nino 510 and loved it dearly right up till the moment that someone else decided they loved it more and walked off with it. It was fairly large and it didn't fit easily in my vest pocket so I developed the habit of carrying it around the building in it's case. I set it down one time too many and that was that.
After a suitable period of mourning, and after having gotten fed up with relying on my notebook and phones instead, I replaced it with a Visor.
I have to admit that I was originally taken back by the lack of features I'd gotten used to: large writing area, handwriting recognition, voice recognition, color, scheme and perl interpreters, and most importantly spreadsheets, usable spreadsheets.
On the other hand, this visor has a nice hardshell case, long battery life, smaller form factor and has never once failed to connect to the PC when syncing data. The Nino was hit or miss, mainly miss when it came to making the connection.
What I want, and think needs to be the next phase in mobile computing development is a completely modular system that can scale up and down as necessary. Choose your favorite input and output peripherals and mix/match to suit the occasion.
Oh well, four to six years before something reasonable hits the street. 'Till then I can deal with Palm's limitations when I don't feel like lugging a notebook bag around.
Ob-OSplug: Of course, the really cool part is that it'll run linux. (g)
Right. The point is that we have to protect the FBI from it's own weaknesses and the weakness of any particular individual involved.
Since there are alternatives (duplicate routing of only the court-ordered monitored traffic is the most reasonable) there is no reason to put a system so ripe for abuse in the hands of any agency.
As far as proving they can handle it, I don't think that should ever be put to that test.
The scariest thing about the CNN article and other pieces in which the FBI responds is that it seems that the only thing they've learned is to name these projects better. They consider it a public relations issue, not a privacy one.
"grey market" means that it was purchased from someone other than an authorised distributor. The chances of getting remarked cpus decreases to nearly nil when you buy boxed cpus from Ingram or Tech Data, etc. You pay more for boxed, of course, and have to deal with supply problems (which force many small OEMs to go grey market a couple of times a year anyway to fill orders) but at least you can verify your source.