Um, duh? Rules don't stop anything. Enforcement does. You are making it sound as though you don't believe in the rule of law, in which case I have to ask, what's your plan?
I know it must be hard for you to bear, having a responsible centrist president. But fortunately THESE election results were valid, unlike your Mr. Chimp's first election by judge. It shows your real character, that winning is more important to you than democracy. So I don't feel too sorry for you. In fact, I'm glad the Republicans have become the marginalized party of the deep south, religious fanatics, and wingnuts everywhere. Please, please run Palin for president! That would guarantee another four years of Obama. Seriously, you guys just need to form a new conservative party. Your current one is deceased.
It's not even just that justice is slow. The rich and powerful let guys like Bernie screw people over so that when shit like this goes down, they have a sacrificial lamb. The plebes get to watch a perp walk, and the real bad guys get off scot-free.
The thing about rules is that if you don't have any at all, the bad guys will simply claim they did nothing wrong. If you have too many, it's also a problem. But fixing the problem requires agreement on how many is too many, and which ones are stupid.
The bad guys know that with too few, or no rules, they can get away with even more. They like people like you, who do their cheer-leading for them. If we did away with all rules, you'd be some fat cat's garden slave.
As most of the people responsible walked away with a fat profit, one could posit that they did learn from history. Why should they care that they screwed over the rest of us? Our economic system ignores externalities on that scale. Burn down a house, go to jail. Burn down the economy, get a fat bonus.
Sorry, I looked into the Mises Institute and other Austrian school shit and I didn't find Great Things. I also read your post and didn't find great things. My training must have failed me.
Am I the only one who notices a strange knee-jerk antipathy to solar power amongst some people? Any time a solar power story comes out, you have people rushing to explain why solar sucks, has sucked, and will continue to suck. I'm guessing they just don't want the damn hippies to be right.
He's an idiot with a Nobel. Does Mises have a Nobel? Does Rothbard have a Nobel? Hayek has a Nobel, but he's the only Austrian School economist with one. So, what did you get your Nobel in? Don't have one? Well, if they are giving out Nobels to idiots these days, what does that make you? The fact that you can't see the value in trimming ineffective treatments from a medical system that costs the most while delivering some of the least bang for the buck in the world, gives us a hint.
I see. Point well made. Don't make unwarranted assumptions, got it. Obviously, the story was posted to generate argument and therefore page hits, not because it was accurate or verifiable. It is Microsoft's stated policy not to allow anyone to express their sexual identity in their profile. They can say so 'in person' where they can 'explain the context.' This seems to be a bad policy. If what the woman says is true, she was harassed for being a lesbian and Microsoft did nothing about it. That is all too common. Maybe it isn't true in this case, but it is believable precisely because people in America still think it is okay to oppress gays. And that issue is worthy of discussion, regardless of the facts of this particular case.
Back in the day, when we were all PFYs, we joked that nobody on Slashdot had a girlfriend, and it was mostly true. Some of us probably did live in our parents basements back then. That was a long time ago. I'm going to hit forty soon. Almost all of us moved out of our parents basements and got wives a long time ago. But we still like to joke about the good old days. And because, you know, there's a new generation of PFYs that the jokes still apply to.
Animals aren't bad. Neither are people. That's a value judgment. We're both good and bad, capable of heroism and cowardice, selfless sacrifice and pitiless exploitation, kindness and sadism. You can't consider 'human nature' without considering the human condition. Nature versus nurture is a false dichotomy. When we look at the conditions that prompt anti-social, ineffective, or harmful behavior, we can understand that behavior better and perhaps stop it.
When we judge, we give in to our 'animal' emotions. Emotions are good rough guides to effective behavior, they are in essence an 'analog' computer that can arrive at conclusions much more quickly than our 'digital' higher consciousness. But our emotional circuitry can became dangerously unstable due to damaging circumstance and cause us to act against our own self interest. And some people are born without functional social emotional circuits. They need to learn why it is advantageous to them to behave in certain ways.
Sorry if I sounded accusatory towards you earlier, this thread has knocked me a little off balance emotionally. I find myself losing empathy with 'the other side' and wanting to punish them. Which is stupid and ineffective on my part. Another example of how even our positive emotional circuitry can be misleading.
But suppressing is of course not the answer, better to acknowledge and respect our emotions, and thus move on. If we distrust them, our two natures will fight and we will be a house divided. I look at my emotional self as a little puppy. I can't just beat it when its 'bad' or it will never trust me, but it wants rules and boundaries.
They chose to find something offensive that impacted them in NO OTHER WAY but their own offense. Her taking offense, on the other hand, is justified because other people's actions actually impacted her in ways besides her feelings of offense.
So why do you keep bringing up the issue of "Parading it around" unless you want to imply the woman deserved it for "parading it around?" When you talk about what you did with your wife last night, is that "parading it around?" If you are gaming, and your wife asks you to take out the trash, and you say "BRB, wife wants me to take out the trash" is that parading it around?
You may want to look up the Cass Identity Model for an explanation of why gays may go through a phase where they feel the need to "parade it around." If you let them do it, and you don't berate them for it, most will move past that stage to a stage where their sexual orientation is just another facet of their personality. But you can't just tell an oppressed group to get over it and expect that to actually work.
Now that you have outed yourself (far more blatantly than the woman in question allegedly did) as a heterosexual here, how would you feel if a group of homosexuals took to stalking and harassing you? And how would you feel if you were told that you caused them offense and therefore needed to be banned from slashdot?
So you agree with me about homophobia? Oh wait, "I don't care for people who feel it necessary to parade their homosexuality around." Yeah, your gay family must LOVE you. You certainly display an understanding of the difficulties your gay family has living in a culture where everyone else can talk about their relationships, but not them.
If you are saying you are against all public displays of affection, I can understand. I completely disagree, but at least that isn't a totally hypocritical stance to take. Your offense is still your problem.
When I hear the words homosexuality or heterosexuality, I recognize that they are different from the root word, sexuality. When I hear the word 'sexuaility' I think of sexual behavior. When I hear those other words, I think of orientation, NOT sex. I think of all the things that go along with relationships, cuddling, arguing, shacking up, emotional intimacy, meeting the parents, falling out of love, and back in: you know, regular old relationship stuff.
This isn't about feeling superior. I don't lose empathy for bigots, I just have priorities. Stopping the harm the bigots do to others comes before stopping the harm they do to themselves. No 'moral high ground' is necessary. I did not make the claim that homophobes are bad, I said the actions commonly associated with homophobia are harmful, and come from religious and cultural intolerance that is taught. The bigots are just as much victims of that intolerance as the targets of the bigotry.
I regret that you have been modded down. That isn't the way to deal with opinions like yours. The proper way is to simply call you out for being the small minded intolerant bigot you are.
But the fact is, people on Xbox live yell things like 'fag!' and hit on women ALL THE TIME. Deny it and all that will prove is that you've never been on Xbox live. This is blatant hypocrisy on Microsoft's part. It doesn't matter WHAT the woman did or said, others have done worse, far worse, and not been punished. End of story, you lose, your position is indefensible and your bigotry is both obvious and unacceptable to free individuals.
Guys on Xbox live hit on girls constantly. They also shout 'fag!' all the time. They are not punished. Open and shut case, by your own standards Microsoft is guilty. And if you try to argue the veracity of my statements, I can only conclude that you have never been on Xbox live.
Wrong, the majority of society does not automatically think of sex when they hear the words 'homosexual' or 'heterosexual.' That's just you and others like you. Your 'observations' are skewed by your bias. But we weren't even talking about those words. The word in question is 'lesbian.' One can be a celibate lesbian. In any case, your reaction to a word is your problem and no one else's.
Your tactic here is known as 'poisoning the well.' You want to put a shadow of a doubt out there. You have no proof of any misconduct on this woman's part, but plenty of proof of other's misconduct. People shout 'fag' all the time on Xbox Live. Guys hit on girls all the time there. Yet no one punishes them. You hear this woman's story and immediately begin a propaganda campaign implying, again and again, that she must have done something offensive. Why is that?
Why is the focus different for homosexuals than it is for heterosexuals, and why is that the homosexual's problem? If I say 'toothbrush' and you think 'hot sweaty sex,' is that my problem? I have plenty of gay friends and I do not immediately think about dicks in asses when one of them talks about their relationship. Maybe you need to do a little soul searching, and think about why you jump to that image when people talk about their homosexuality.
Where in the Bible does it say that homosexuality is wrong? Did Jesus say that? Or is it, maybe, in the Old Testament? Do you wear mixed materials? Eat shellfish? Will you stone your children to death if they disrespect you? Hypocrite.
It's not getting bent out of shape. My actual feelings on the matter aren't important. I choose to take action and speak out against bigotry because it is wrong. It doesn't matter if I am the only one in the world who sees it that way, I will still speak out against it and say it is harmful, it removes other people's freedoms unnecessarily.
A word in English does not always mean the same as it would in Latin. Homophobia is like xenophobia. You may not agree with the definition, but that is how it is commonly used, and it's part of the dictionary definition of the word, so you are simply wrong.
You are in the minority. Your opinions amount to fundamentalist religious intolerance, similar to the Taliban wanting women to wear veils. Your type of fundamentalism brings shame to our entire country and make us look like back woods buffoons to the rest of the first world.
Look at how you've been modded here, and who gets modded up. Still think you're in the majority? If you were, we'd have had anti-gay marriage laws passed nation wide. Even if you were in the majority, you would still be wrong. People used to think owning slaves and treating women like property was okay. Now we look back at those people as backwards, unenlightened savages. That is how future generations will look at you.
You advocate limiting the freedoms of someone else because you find behavior that doesn't impact you in any measurable way offensive. It is your choice to be offended. Some people choose to cut themselves with knives, that is their right.
I'm not offended by your backwards, bigoted, harmful opinions, I just think they are harmful and should be stopped. Like an avalanche or a flood should be stopped. I don't take offense at the behavior of the flood, even though it kills. I just work to stop it.
Wrong. Calling homosexuality a 'deviation' is deviant, harmful to self and others, odd, offensive, and just plain wrong. You are in the minority in your opinion. Homosexuality is not in the DSM. It is not an illness. Homophobia is religious fundamentalism and religious intolerance one would expect to see coming from the Taliban, not a free country. You can have your opinion, but my opinion is your opinion is offensive, and I get to express that, too. You don't get to be a bigot and just assume everyone else agrees with you anymore, sorry, we're here to point out in no uncertain terms that your beliefs put you in a widely reviled minority.
Nope, sorry, he can say whatever he wants, and I can say whatever I want. He's a bigot. He wants to limit the freedom of others for no good reason and get away with it. And you are a hypocrite for telling me to get over my offense, but not him. His bigotry is not a small thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I was being kind. He's really pretty right wing. Just because a bunch of blathering idiots say he's a socialist does not make him one.
In what way, in your book, is he left wing?
Um, duh? Rules don't stop anything. Enforcement does. You are making it sound as though you don't believe in the rule of law, in which case I have to ask, what's your plan?
I know it must be hard for you to bear, having a responsible centrist president. But fortunately THESE election results were valid, unlike your Mr. Chimp's first election by judge. It shows your real character, that winning is more important to you than democracy. So I don't feel too sorry for you. In fact, I'm glad the Republicans have become the marginalized party of the deep south, religious fanatics, and wingnuts everywhere. Please, please run Palin for president! That would guarantee another four years of Obama. Seriously, you guys just need to form a new conservative party. Your current one is deceased.
It's not even just that justice is slow. The rich and powerful let guys like Bernie screw people over so that when shit like this goes down, they have a sacrificial lamb. The plebes get to watch a perp walk, and the real bad guys get off scot-free.
The thing about rules is that if you don't have any at all, the bad guys will simply claim they did nothing wrong. If you have too many, it's also a problem. But fixing the problem requires agreement on how many is too many, and which ones are stupid.
The bad guys know that with too few, or no rules, they can get away with even more. They like people like you, who do their cheer-leading for them. If we did away with all rules, you'd be some fat cat's garden slave.
As most of the people responsible walked away with a fat profit, one could posit that they did learn from history. Why should they care that they screwed over the rest of us? Our economic system ignores externalities on that scale. Burn down a house, go to jail. Burn down the economy, get a fat bonus.
Sorry, I looked into the Mises Institute and other Austrian school shit and I didn't find Great Things. I also read your post and didn't find great things. My training must have failed me.
Am I the only one who notices a strange knee-jerk antipathy to solar power amongst some people? Any time a solar power story comes out, you have people rushing to explain why solar sucks, has sucked, and will continue to suck. I'm guessing they just don't want the damn hippies to be right.
He's an idiot with a Nobel. Does Mises have a Nobel? Does Rothbard have a Nobel? Hayek has a Nobel, but he's the only Austrian School economist with one. So, what did you get your Nobel in? Don't have one? Well, if they are giving out Nobels to idiots these days, what does that make you? The fact that you can't see the value in trimming ineffective treatments from a medical system that costs the most while delivering some of the least bang for the buck in the world, gives us a hint.
I see. Point well made. Don't make unwarranted assumptions, got it. Obviously, the story was posted to generate argument and therefore page hits, not because it was accurate or verifiable. It is Microsoft's stated policy not to allow anyone to express their sexual identity in their profile. They can say so 'in person' where they can 'explain the context.' This seems to be a bad policy. If what the woman says is true, she was harassed for being a lesbian and Microsoft did nothing about it. That is all too common. Maybe it isn't true in this case, but it is believable precisely because people in America still think it is okay to oppress gays. And that issue is worthy of discussion, regardless of the facts of this particular case.
Back in the day, when we were all PFYs, we joked that nobody on Slashdot had a girlfriend, and it was mostly true. Some of us probably did live in our parents basements back then. That was a long time ago. I'm going to hit forty soon. Almost all of us moved out of our parents basements and got wives a long time ago. But we still like to joke about the good old days. And because, you know, there's a new generation of PFYs that the jokes still apply to.
Animals aren't bad. Neither are people. That's a value judgment. We're both good and bad, capable of heroism and cowardice, selfless sacrifice and pitiless exploitation, kindness and sadism. You can't consider 'human nature' without considering the human condition. Nature versus nurture is a false dichotomy. When we look at the conditions that prompt anti-social, ineffective, or harmful behavior, we can understand that behavior better and perhaps stop it.
When we judge, we give in to our 'animal' emotions. Emotions are good rough guides to effective behavior, they are in essence an 'analog' computer that can arrive at conclusions much more quickly than our 'digital' higher consciousness. But our emotional circuitry can became dangerously unstable due to damaging circumstance and cause us to act against our own self interest. And some people are born without functional social emotional circuits. They need to learn why it is advantageous to them to behave in certain ways.
Sorry if I sounded accusatory towards you earlier, this thread has knocked me a little off balance emotionally. I find myself losing empathy with 'the other side' and wanting to punish them. Which is stupid and ineffective on my part. Another example of how even our positive emotional circuitry can be misleading.
But suppressing is of course not the answer, better to acknowledge and respect our emotions, and thus move on. If we distrust them, our two natures will fight and we will be a house divided. I look at my emotional self as a little puppy. I can't just beat it when its 'bad' or it will never trust me, but it wants rules and boundaries.
Am I making any sense at all here?
They chose to find something offensive that impacted them in NO OTHER WAY but their own offense. Her taking offense, on the other hand, is justified because other people's actions actually impacted her in ways besides her feelings of offense.
Quote me chapter and verse where homosexuality is still an abomination, but eating shellfish isn't. Go on, I'll wait.
So why do you keep bringing up the issue of "Parading it around" unless you want to imply the woman deserved it for "parading it around?" When you talk about what you did with your wife last night, is that "parading it around?" If you are gaming, and your wife asks you to take out the trash, and you say "BRB, wife wants me to take out the trash" is that parading it around?
You may want to look up the Cass Identity Model for an explanation of why gays may go through a phase where they feel the need to "parade it around." If you let them do it, and you don't berate them for it, most will move past that stage to a stage where their sexual orientation is just another facet of their personality. But you can't just tell an oppressed group to get over it and expect that to actually work.
Now that you have outed yourself (far more blatantly than the woman in question allegedly did) as a heterosexual here, how would you feel if a group of homosexuals took to stalking and harassing you? And how would you feel if you were told that you caused them offense and therefore needed to be banned from slashdot?
So you agree with me about homophobia? Oh wait, "I don't care for people who feel it necessary to parade their homosexuality around." Yeah, your gay family must LOVE you. You certainly display an understanding of the difficulties your gay family has living in a culture where everyone else can talk about their relationships, but not them.
If you are saying you are against all public displays of affection, I can understand. I completely disagree, but at least that isn't a totally hypocritical stance to take. Your offense is still your problem.
When I hear the words homosexuality or heterosexuality, I recognize that they are different from the root word, sexuality. When I hear the word 'sexuaility' I think of sexual behavior. When I hear those other words, I think of orientation, NOT sex. I think of all the things that go along with relationships, cuddling, arguing, shacking up, emotional intimacy, meeting the parents, falling out of love, and back in: you know, regular old relationship stuff.
This isn't about feeling superior. I don't lose empathy for bigots, I just have priorities. Stopping the harm the bigots do to others comes before stopping the harm they do to themselves. No 'moral high ground' is necessary. I did not make the claim that homophobes are bad, I said the actions commonly associated with homophobia are harmful, and come from religious and cultural intolerance that is taught. The bigots are just as much victims of that intolerance as the targets of the bigotry.
I regret that you have been modded down. That isn't the way to deal with opinions like yours. The proper way is to simply call you out for being the small minded intolerant bigot you are.
But the fact is, people on Xbox live yell things like 'fag!' and hit on women ALL THE TIME. Deny it and all that will prove is that you've never been on Xbox live. This is blatant hypocrisy on Microsoft's part. It doesn't matter WHAT the woman did or said, others have done worse, far worse, and not been punished. End of story, you lose, your position is indefensible and your bigotry is both obvious and unacceptable to free individuals.
Guys on Xbox live hit on girls constantly. They also shout 'fag!' all the time. They are not punished. Open and shut case, by your own standards Microsoft is guilty. And if you try to argue the veracity of my statements, I can only conclude that you have never been on Xbox live.
Wrong, the majority of society does not automatically think of sex when they hear the words 'homosexual' or 'heterosexual.' That's just you and others like you. Your 'observations' are skewed by your bias. But we weren't even talking about those words. The word in question is 'lesbian.' One can be a celibate lesbian. In any case, your reaction to a word is your problem and no one else's.
Your tactic here is known as 'poisoning the well.' You want to put a shadow of a doubt out there. You have no proof of any misconduct on this woman's part, but plenty of proof of other's misconduct. People shout 'fag' all the time on Xbox Live. Guys hit on girls all the time there. Yet no one punishes them. You hear this woman's story and immediately begin a propaganda campaign implying, again and again, that she must have done something offensive. Why is that?
Truly, Microsoft must employ master debaters and cunning linguists to come up with these schemes.
Why is the focus different for homosexuals than it is for heterosexuals, and why is that the homosexual's problem? If I say 'toothbrush' and you think 'hot sweaty sex,' is that my problem? I have plenty of gay friends and I do not immediately think about dicks in asses when one of them talks about their relationship. Maybe you need to do a little soul searching, and think about why you jump to that image when people talk about their homosexuality.
Where in the Bible does it say that homosexuality is wrong? Did Jesus say that? Or is it, maybe, in the Old Testament? Do you wear mixed materials? Eat shellfish? Will you stone your children to death if they disrespect you? Hypocrite.
It's not getting bent out of shape. My actual feelings on the matter aren't important. I choose to take action and speak out against bigotry because it is wrong. It doesn't matter if I am the only one in the world who sees it that way, I will still speak out against it and say it is harmful, it removes other people's freedoms unnecessarily.
A word in English does not always mean the same as it would in Latin. Homophobia is like xenophobia. You may not agree with the definition, but that is how it is commonly used, and it's part of the dictionary definition of the word, so you are simply wrong.
You are in the minority. Your opinions amount to fundamentalist religious intolerance, similar to the Taliban wanting women to wear veils. Your type of fundamentalism brings shame to our entire country and make us look like back woods buffoons to the rest of the first world.
Look at how you've been modded here, and who gets modded up. Still think you're in the majority? If you were, we'd have had anti-gay marriage laws passed nation wide. Even if you were in the majority, you would still be wrong. People used to think owning slaves and treating women like property was okay. Now we look back at those people as backwards, unenlightened savages. That is how future generations will look at you.
You advocate limiting the freedoms of someone else because you find behavior that doesn't impact you in any measurable way offensive. It is your choice to be offended. Some people choose to cut themselves with knives, that is their right.
I'm not offended by your backwards, bigoted, harmful opinions, I just think they are harmful and should be stopped. Like an avalanche or a flood should be stopped. I don't take offense at the behavior of the flood, even though it kills. I just work to stop it.
Wrong. Calling homosexuality a 'deviation' is deviant, harmful to self and others, odd, offensive, and just plain wrong. You are in the minority in your opinion. Homosexuality is not in the DSM. It is not an illness. Homophobia is religious fundamentalism and religious intolerance one would expect to see coming from the Taliban, not a free country. You can have your opinion, but my opinion is your opinion is offensive, and I get to express that, too. You don't get to be a bigot and just assume everyone else agrees with you anymore, sorry, we're here to point out in no uncertain terms that your beliefs put you in a widely reviled minority.
Nope, sorry, he can say whatever he wants, and I can say whatever I want. He's a bigot. He wants to limit the freedom of others for no good reason and get away with it. And you are a hypocrite for telling me to get over my offense, but not him. His bigotry is not a small thing.