That's very well said. I too find it hilarious how the people in the US are so cynical about their own government.
Of course the other extreme is naive too, trusting that the government always knows what's best for us so we don't need to question their authority.
But really, if you think your government is so bad, how about electing a new government. You seem to call it a democracy still. And if you can't find a few thousand good people in the entire country, your country doesn't deserve to survive.
Another funny thing is the UN bashing. Every American seems to think that it is an universally accepted truth that the UN is overly bureaucratic, ineffective and corrupt. Pretty much everywhere else people seem to think that the UN works actually quite well, despite countries like the US not paying their share of it. My best guess is that the myth of a bad UN is perpetuated by the power-sharing elite in the US who doesn't like it that THEY don't have all the say in the world. Of course UN is "ineffective" and "cannot make real decisions" when they don't agree with the American POV.
The UN is probably one of the best things to balance the (apparently now dying) American hegemony since the Cold War -- not that I yearn the return of the Soviet Union either.
Well, either way this world is doomed, but you really need to start seeing the 95% of the world outside your borders. Now that your economy has failed, perhaps you will have to:-)
Will you also install it, negotiating with the possible landowners, maintain it, be prepared to fix it, and provide all the necessary support services for it for that price?
Not that I think 44 billion USD is little money. Whether it will be enough will remain to be seen (probably depends largely among other things on how badly the dollar is going to collapse now that it has happened).
Extremely well said. So well that I'm inclined to add you as a friend and read your other posts:) And this comes from a creationist (although I don't usually apply that label to myself).
Perhaps I should continue on the same line by criticizing fellow creationists.
My view of the debate is that 98% of people who take part in it don't seem to know anything about the issue or the other camp's views. One thing that most probably haven't realized is that it applies as well to both camps. Inflated views of self are, unfortunately, not a sin that taints only the nonbeliever.
The 98% in both camps, as well as 98% of the remaining 2%, seem to just love "debunking" the other side's 98%'s arguments with lines they've mostly learned from books or blogs. And then they are very satisfied with themselves, having corrected someone clearly inferior to them.
From your post, I think it's a fair game to say that you are not part of that 98%, probably not even that of the 98% of the 98% since you refer to creationists who are more clever than [some random evolutionist], which is almost unthinkable to most of the 98%.
The remaining people, the 2% of the 2%, I do admire. I simply cannot comprehend how they have the patience to go on in that horrible signal-to-noise ratio. I'm not one of them; that's because I feel the discussion is just too full of noise to be tolerable (also I hesitate to categorize myself into the 2% that know the issues well, although I have read quite a bit on it from both sides). Well, in addition to the fact that I don't consider the issue very important to me (as a believer, although I can see how some believer could be greatly troubled by the issue). It's just that I haven't seen anyone come an inch closer to knowing God as a result of this debate.
These reasons are why I usually try to steer discussion into other matters pretty quickly at least with the 98% when confronted (at the very latest after showing that it's not as blind faith as they tend to think). There are just so much more important issues to discuss before that with someone genuinely interested in knowing God.
A very refreshing post, at least the part after the last quotation. A real gem among all the I-know-better-than-those-idiots kind in this discussion. Thank you!
I believe we have #1 and #3, however we have maybe around 10 parties and when we choose tens of representatives in municipal elections (depending on the municipality), I think the rule is that each party can set 100 candidates.
Well, trillions of money are quite frankly nothing compared to having the right to secret vote and the right to have your vote count. Really. The politicians elected can make decisions that turn those trillions into zero or shoot those with the trillions.
Apparently you do have elections in the US too where there are hundreds of candidates. Can someone tell me how this is implemented there? I just can't think of a better way than the candidate number in that case.
Well, they (the officials) maintain it cannot. And of course the company that makes the machines would have required an NDA from auditors barring them from disclosing flaws. There's a small storm about this in Finland, and I bet a court will eventually give an order annulling the vote on those three communs where this was tested. By the law it's really not for the Justice Minister (however incompetent she is) to decide one way or the other.
Not voting at all is basically "I don't care", and a blank vote is usually considered to mean "none of these options is good enough" (the voter obviously cared enough to come to the election premises).
Because there might be 900 candidates for the municipal election.
Hmm, ok, you might have box for each digit, not unlike those optically read forms, but that would make it more complex than necessary, especially for elder people, and counting would need to be done mostly optically (hard to scan by eyes).
No, they are not. From the Open Source Definition:
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form.
No program that disallows distribution of compiled binaries is open source.
OTOH trademarks are a different beast, and demanding that you not call the modified program Firefox doesn't make it non-free (but there are other things in Firefox that do).
To be even more pedantic, it's euro, not Euro. Unless you also capitalize dollar and yen (the obvious exception being title case, but AFAIK capitalizing currency names is otherwise is pretty universally considered broken English).
I tried KDE 4.1 rc1, and there's all kind of "funny" bugs like the key 'E' being a global shortcut for "Go to KDE Website".
I wouldn't like to sound like I'm flaming, since I do like the direction KDE 4 is going, but somehow the 2 hour user experience I got made me wonder if they actually, you know, tried to use it before declaring it release candidate.
The biggest problem I have with the current KDE development is that now that KDE 4 is out, the KDE 3.5 branch is pretty much dead except for some critical bugs (they did release 3.5.9 fixing some). For example there are 100% reproducible hangs when entering some real-world web pages in Konqueror 3.5, but the developers have stated those won't be investigated or fixed since KDE 4 is now where development happens.
Of course there are merits to this approach; I understand that fixing bugs in old KDE delays the first usable version of KDE 4, and that maintaining old less flashy software just isn't fun. But it also leaves the users with two options, either use the way less broken 3.5 but without real bug fix support, or migrate to KDE 4 which is nowhere near even semi-usable judging from 4.1 rc1.
The problem is not that KDE 4 explores new territory. Rather, the problem is the associated "KDE 3.5 is obsolete, we won't fix bugs in it". Ok, some bugs get fixed (they do release 3.5.x releases), but for example, KHTML bugs (the Konqueror rendering engine) do not, since it's now considered obsolete.
So the users are left with two options; KDE 3.5.9, which would be great for them except that it has no bug fix support, or KDE 4, which is innovative and probably will evolve to something good, but just doesn't work yet.
From that POV, I can definitely understand the calls for forking KDE development, so that KDE 3 will get bug fixes and new things that people find necessary for good desktop experience, until KDE 4 is usable.
I've been told that a common trick for large companies in some countries when they hit a thing they figure out might be patentable but they are not interested in patenting it is write a rudimentary description of it and file it as a patent. At least here they've told me that is enough to get the application published in some public PTO journal, but it won't be examined until the examination fee is paid, which they just "forget" to do. So then they have very officially published prior art to similar claims for free.
I'm surprised nobody seems to ask the question why someone needs to be evil to do this, or why people think something illegal must have happened.
In probably _most_ countries, once you've bought a processor, you are free to do pretty much whatever with it, including selling it to Iranians in case there's not a trade embargo between your country and Iran. Nowhere after you first buy the processor does the fact step in that AMD has anything to do with the US, and nowhere do US laws step in.
While I also consider the Bible to be a work of fiction, any reasonable reading implies that since coming of Jesus killing is questionable even as a self defense. Bush and any proponents of death penalty or abortion doctor killing should be immediately expelled from their Church.
Really? I'm a pacifist Christian who opposes the death penalty and Bush, so let me respond from my point of view.
I do not believe the Bible condemns fighting in a war, at least not clearly. The New Testament talks a lot about (Roman) soldiers, and neither Jesus or the Apostles had anything bad to say about them. A centurion even converted to Christianity, and there's nothing there about him having to leave his job. As much as I consider myself pacifist, I do not attribute that to Christianity.
Death penalty is a punishment for a wide variety of crimes in the Old Testament. That's where it says, "Thou shalt not kill". From what is told in the OT, it seems obvious to me that the alternative rendering of "Thou shalt not murder" captures the intent better. All sides in the Old Testament fight lots of wars and kill a lot, there are even death penalties, and no bad words about that by any profets or anyone else.
In one sense you might be right. You talk about self defense, and that's an issue that's not so clear in Bible. It would be, in my opinion, a fair reading that you should not resort to killing even for self defense. But when commanded by your legitimate king (who got his authority from God, as did all authorities), I believe the Bible tells you to follow the orders of your king unless the orders are in direct contradiction with the Bible - and that would be the Bible as it stands, and you have to weigh what it is credible it means instead of reading into it stuff you'd like to be there, like in my case pacifism and opposition to death penalty.
As much as I'd like to say the Bible condemns wars and the death penalty, I cannot.
The funny thing is, in my experience the most spelling errors (compared to e.g. poor grammar in comments) in code are made by those coders who speak English as their native language.
I just think you are fundamentally mistaken. There's no way China is ever going to be able to get its money out of what the US government bills you, and that's not how it works. The price to the Chinese buyer definitely rises. There is no mechanism for WTO to "take money from the federal government", definitely not without the federal government's consent (as seems to be in this case). In that case WTO does just what you claim it doesn't.
If you RTFA, you can also see that this exact remedy has also been applied once before, in the case of Equador.
Umm, just how do you think Antigua is going to apply anything to the US government without applying it to US citizens? I think you misunderstand this system severely. The players in international treaties are countries, not governments or citizens. That's why sanctions and countermeasures also apply to countries, and it should not be a surprise that makes some of their citizens cry.
Slashdot Mirror
That's very well said. I too find it hilarious how the people in the US are so cynical about their own government.
Of course the other extreme is naive too, trusting that the government always knows what's best for us so we don't need to question their authority.
But really, if you think your government is so bad, how about electing a new government. You seem to call it a democracy still. And if you can't find a few thousand good people in the entire country, your country doesn't deserve to survive.
Another funny thing is the UN bashing. Every American seems to think that it is an universally accepted truth that the UN is overly bureaucratic, ineffective and corrupt. Pretty much everywhere else people seem to think that the UN works actually quite well, despite countries like the US not paying their share of it. My best guess is that the myth of a bad UN is perpetuated by the power-sharing elite in the US who doesn't like it that THEY don't have all the say in the world. Of course UN is "ineffective" and "cannot make real decisions" when they don't agree with the American POV.
The UN is probably one of the best things to balance the (apparently now dying) American hegemony since the Cold War -- not that I yearn the return of the Soviet Union either.
Well, either way this world is doomed, but you really need to start seeing the 95% of the world outside your borders. Now that your economy has failed, perhaps you will have to :-)
How do you propose the society function if taxation is a violation of a person's rights?
Will you also install it, negotiating with the possible landowners, maintain it, be prepared to fix it, and provide all the necessary support services for it for that price?
Not that I think 44 billion USD is little money. Whether it will be enough will remain to be seen (probably depends largely among other things on how badly the dollar is going to collapse now that it has happened).
Extremely well said. So well that I'm inclined to add you as a friend and read your other posts :) And this comes from a creationist (although I don't usually apply that label to myself).
Perhaps I should continue on the same line by criticizing fellow creationists.
My view of the debate is that 98% of people who take part in it don't seem to know anything about the issue or the other camp's views. One thing that most probably haven't realized is that it applies as well to both camps. Inflated views of self are, unfortunately, not a sin that taints only the nonbeliever.
The 98% in both camps, as well as 98% of the remaining 2%, seem to just love "debunking" the other side's 98%'s arguments with lines they've mostly learned from books or blogs. And then they are very satisfied with themselves, having corrected someone clearly inferior to them.
From your post, I think it's a fair game to say that you are not part of that 98%, probably not even that of the 98% of the 98% since you refer to creationists who are more clever than [some random evolutionist], which is almost unthinkable to most of the 98%.
The remaining people, the 2% of the 2%, I do admire. I simply cannot comprehend how they have the patience to go on in that horrible signal-to-noise ratio. I'm not one of them; that's because I feel the discussion is just too full of noise to be tolerable (also I hesitate to categorize myself into the 2% that know the issues well, although I have read quite a bit on it from both sides). Well, in addition to the fact that I don't consider the issue very important to me (as a believer, although I can see how some believer could be greatly troubled by the issue). It's just that I haven't seen anyone come an inch closer to knowing God as a result of this debate.
These reasons are why I usually try to steer discussion into other matters pretty quickly at least with the 98% when confronted (at the very latest after showing that it's not as blind faith as they tend to think). There are just so much more important issues to discuss before that with someone genuinely interested in knowing God.
A very refreshing post, at least the part after the last quotation. A real gem among all the I-know-better-than-those-idiots kind in this discussion. Thank you!
No. There are no charges in a civil case.
I believe we have #1 and #3, however we have maybe around 10 parties and when we choose tens of representatives in municipal elections (depending on the municipality), I think the rule is that each party can set 100 candidates.
Well, trillions of money are quite frankly nothing compared to having the right to secret vote and the right to have your vote count. Really. The politicians elected can make decisions that turn those trillions into zero or shoot those with the trillions.
Apparently you do have elections in the US too where there are hundreds of candidates. Can someone tell me how this is implemented there? I just can't think of a better way than the candidate number in that case.
Well, they (the officials) maintain it cannot. And of course the company that makes the machines would have required an NDA from auditors barring them from disclosing flaws. There's a small storm about this in Finland, and I bet a court will eventually give an order annulling the vote on those three communs where this was tested. By the law it's really not for the Justice Minister (however incompetent she is) to decide one way or the other.
Not voting at all is basically "I don't care", and a blank vote is usually considered to mean "none of these options is good enough" (the voter obviously cared enough to come to the election premises).
In the Finnish e-vote, a "blank vote" was an explicit option different from not choosing any option.
Because there might be 900 candidates for the municipal election.
Hmm, ok, you might have box for each digit, not unlike those optically read forms, but that would make it more complex than necessary, especially for elder people, and counting would need to be done mostly optically (hard to scan by eyes).
Here you go, a torrent for the 1 gigabyte hi-res video:
advantage-insecurities-exhibit-hires.mp4.torrent
No, they are not. From the Open Source Definition:
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form.
No program that disallows distribution of compiled binaries is open source.
OTOH trademarks are a different beast, and demanding that you not call the modified program Firefox doesn't make it non-free (but there are other things in Firefox that do).
Gimp. And too many others.
To be even more pedantic, it's euro, not Euro. Unless you also capitalize dollar and yen (the obvious exception being title case, but AFAIK capitalizing currency names is otherwise is pretty universally considered broken English).
I tried KDE 4.1 rc1, and there's all kind of "funny" bugs like the key 'E' being a global shortcut for "Go to KDE Website".
I wouldn't like to sound like I'm flaming, since I do like the direction KDE 4 is going, but somehow the 2 hour user experience I got made me wonder if they actually, you know, tried to use it before declaring it release candidate.
The biggest problem I have with the current KDE development is that now that KDE 4 is out, the KDE 3.5 branch is pretty much dead except for some critical bugs (they did release 3.5.9 fixing some). For example there are 100% reproducible hangs when entering some real-world web pages in Konqueror 3.5, but the developers have stated those won't be investigated or fixed since KDE 4 is now where development happens.
Of course there are merits to this approach; I understand that fixing bugs in old KDE delays the first usable version of KDE 4, and that maintaining old less flashy software just isn't fun. But it also leaves the users with two options, either use the way less broken 3.5 but without real bug fix support, or migrate to KDE 4 which is nowhere near even semi-usable judging from 4.1 rc1.
The problem is not that KDE 4 explores new territory. Rather, the problem is the associated "KDE 3.5 is obsolete, we won't fix bugs in it". Ok, some bugs get fixed (they do release 3.5.x releases), but for example, KHTML bugs (the Konqueror rendering engine) do not, since it's now considered obsolete.
So the users are left with two options; KDE 3.5.9, which would be great for them except that it has no bug fix support, or KDE 4, which is innovative and probably will evolve to something good, but just doesn't work yet.
From that POV, I can definitely understand the calls for forking KDE development, so that KDE 3 will get bug fixes and new things that people find necessary for good desktop experience, until KDE 4 is usable.
I've been told that a common trick for large companies in some countries when they hit a thing they figure out might be patentable but they are not interested in patenting it is write a rudimentary description of it and file it as a patent. At least here they've told me that is enough to get the application published in some public PTO journal, but it won't be examined until the examination fee is paid, which they just "forget" to do. So then they have very officially published prior art to similar claims for free.
I'm surprised nobody seems to ask the question why someone needs to be evil to do this, or why people think something illegal must have happened.
In probably _most_ countries, once you've bought a processor, you are free to do pretty much whatever with it, including selling it to Iranians in case there's not a trade embargo between your country and Iran. Nowhere after you first buy the processor does the fact step in that AMD has anything to do with the US, and nowhere do US laws step in.
You remember how the judge didn't like MS's argument that Windows is a valid trademark, and they actually ended up paying Lindows?
While I also consider the Bible to be a work of fiction, any reasonable reading implies that since coming of Jesus killing is questionable even as a self defense. Bush and any proponents of death penalty or abortion doctor killing should be immediately expelled from their Church.
Really? I'm a pacifist Christian who opposes the death penalty and Bush, so let me respond from my point of view.
I do not believe the Bible condemns fighting in a war, at least not clearly. The New Testament talks a lot about (Roman) soldiers, and neither Jesus or the Apostles had anything bad to say about them. A centurion even converted to Christianity, and there's nothing there about him having to leave his job. As much as I consider myself pacifist, I do not attribute that to Christianity.
Death penalty is a punishment for a wide variety of crimes in the Old Testament. That's where it says, "Thou shalt not kill". From what is told in the OT, it seems obvious to me that the alternative rendering of "Thou shalt not murder" captures the intent better. All sides in the Old Testament fight lots of wars and kill a lot, there are even death penalties, and no bad words about that by any profets or anyone else.
In one sense you might be right. You talk about self defense, and that's an issue that's not so clear in Bible. It would be, in my opinion, a fair reading that you should not resort to killing even for self defense. But when commanded by your legitimate king (who got his authority from God, as did all authorities), I believe the Bible tells you to follow the orders of your king unless the orders are in direct contradiction with the Bible - and that would be the Bible as it stands, and you have to weigh what it is credible it means instead of reading into it stuff you'd like to be there, like in my case pacifism and opposition to death penalty.
As much as I'd like to say the Bible condemns wars and the death penalty, I cannot.
The funny thing is, in my experience the most spelling errors (compared to e.g. poor grammar in comments) in code are made by those coders who speak English as their native language.
I just think you are fundamentally mistaken. There's no way China is ever going to be able to get its money out of what the US government bills you, and that's not how it works. The price to the Chinese buyer definitely rises. There is no mechanism for WTO to "take money from the federal government", definitely not without the federal government's consent (as seems to be in this case). In that case WTO does just what you claim it doesn't.
If you RTFA, you can also see that this exact remedy has also been applied once before, in the case of Equador.
Umm, just how do you think Antigua is going to apply anything to the US government without applying it to US citizens? I think you misunderstand this system severely. The players in international treaties are countries, not governments or citizens. That's why sanctions and countermeasures also apply to countries, and it should not be a surprise that makes some of their citizens cry.